9. The palace (IV)

By the time he stepped out of the room his dinner companions were already well dispersed. He took a few steps as if to follow the laggards who could still be seen retreating down the hall, but then decided they were already too far off and reversed course, just in time to see a lone figure veer into a distant side gallery and disappear. By the time he turned his head again there was no one in sight in either direction. He glanced into the banquet room; the owl, lance, and tablecloth had vanished, and even the cups and wine bottles had been silently removed.

He began to walk, without haste and without fixed heading, choosing or ignoring branching galleries at whim. Deep in thought, head down, he did not notice Mira's approach until she spoke to him.

“Lose something?” He looked up, startled. She smiled.

“No,” he said, and lacking a better explanation he told her the truth: “I'm just wandering.”

“So I see.” He resumed walking, and she fell in step alongside him. “I've been looking for you, actually.”

“Really?” he replied, concluding that she must after all be right, as she had found him.

“I thought you might like a look around. A tour, I mean.”

The notion seemed at once so obvious and so unexpected, after so many circumstances that had come and gone without explanation, that he stood momentarily befuddled, until she looked at him quizzically and asked “Would that be all right?”

He came to. “Yes, of course. I mean, thank you.”

“Good, then. We'll go this way, for starters.” She indicated an intersection leading to the right, and quickened her pace a bit as she turned. “Did you sleep well?”

Again it took him a moment to reply. “Yes,” he finally allowed. Embarrassed by his torpor, and struggling to recapture his rusty conversational skills, he repeated himself: “Thank you, yes.”

“Well, that's good,” she said, with a half chuckle, a bit, it seemed to him, in the manner in which one might praise a small child or a lapdog who had just performed some actually quite ordinary trick. Or perhaps not quite in that manner, after all; he was still learning to read her reactions, and he wasn't at all sure of his success.

They walked the rest of the way in silence. At last he saw sunlight up ahead, and to his surprise they soon emerged into open air, coming to a halt on a high balcony overlooking a great long interior courtyard or cloister a half-dozen stories below. The sun had already passed beyond the rim of the roof above, leaving the depths of the courtyard largely in shadow. A small stream, neatly channeled, ran its length, paralleling a flagstone path and shaded by a number of tiny trees, barely taller than a man. Every hundred feet or so a little bridge crossed the stream, and at the midpoint between each pair of bridges, in a break in the trees, there was a terrace surmounted by a fountain and ringed by stone benches. The overall effect was delightfully peaceful and cool, notwithstanding the fact that the courtyard was bustling with pedestrians, alone or in twos and threes, hurrying along on unknown errands or stopping to converse with acquaintances. Their muffled voices rose up to him, but except for stray words he could make nothing out.

He leaned on the railing of the balcony for a long time, absorbed in the scene and feeling a light breeze pass pleasantly over the back of his neck. She watched as well, in silence, until finally he realized that she had turned her body to face him, and was waiting for him to see her again. He straightened, looked at her, and returned her patient smile.

“Well, what do you think?,” she asked. “Do you like it? It's one of my favorite places.”

“I think it's wonderful,“ was all he could say, and it was the exact truth.

“Come, we'll go down and walk around — I mean, if you'd like to.”

There was nothing he could like more, and he told her so. To his surprise — but he would not have said to his displeasure — she took his hand and led him along the balcony until they reached an open stairway. They descended, flight after flight, until they reached the courtyard. Joining the long path, they began to walk slowly along the stream. Now and then a passing figure would nod or say hello, as much to him as to her, he thought, but no one broke stride to engage them in conversation. He felt sufficiently emboldened to inquire.

“Who are all these people?”

“They have different jobs. Messengers, or artisans, most of them. Some are going home, or just walking. Like us.”

He didn't follow up, as another question had suddenly popped into his head. “The king, is he your father?” he blurted out.

She stopped walking, dropped his hand, and looked at him with astonishment, then began to giggle, though she quickly caught herself. “The king? Goodness, no. Of course not.” As he had quickly fallen into a rather abashed silence, she herself picked up the thread.

“What do you know about the king?” she asked, peering at him inquisitively.

“Nothing — I mean, I don't know. I may have seen him.”

She was all ears, no longer smiling, as she asked him to explain. While they resumed walking he told her about the banquet, about the old man, the procession, and the lance. She listened intently, but was careful neither to interrupt nor to react as he spoke.

By the time he had finished they were sitting on a bench in a little garden, where the courtyard widened out into a plaza that was sheltered within a square of stone porticoes. They had left the crowd behind, and were alone; the courtyard was darkening as night approached. Gravely she heard the end of his story, waiting a moment to make sure he was done.

“Was that the king?” he asked tentatively.

She nodded, but at once offered her own question. “When you were in the room, when the lance was brought in, what did you say?”

“Say?” He hesitated. “Nothing. I mean — no, I didn't say anything. Should I have —?”

She cut him off, seized hold of his forearm, and pressed the point. “Did you ask anything?”

He allowed as he had not. She considered this for moment, averting her eyes away from him towards the upper storeys of the palace, though she did not appear to be looking for anything in that direction.

“Did I do something wrong?” he asked uncertainly.

“No,” she assured him, but then she seemed to think better of it, and corrected herself. “I mean, I don't know anything about it,” she said rather flatly.

She remained lost in thought for several minutes, then her mood suddenly brightened. She stood, told him to wait for her, and darted off before he could ask where she was going. He sat alone, listening to the faint washing of the stream along its banks, at first confused by the turn in the conversation, until the surroundings and the pleasant night air put him at his ease. Soon he saw a single lantern approaching him; in a moment Mira stepped from behind its glow and set it on the stone bench opposite them, then set down a bottle of wine and a basket of bread, cheese, and grapes beside him.

“I've brought us something to eat,” she declared cheerily.

“So I see.”

They shared their meal, largely in silence. Above them, through the windows of the great palace on either side, a faint glow shone, but not enough to disturb their seclusion. When they had drained the last of the wine she stood up, waited for him to do the same, and hand in hand they began a long, slow circuit of the garden. At last they paused and stood facing each other. He reached for her hand, which she made no move to pull away, and was just gently pressing his lips upon hers, when he heard a muffled whoosh from high above. As he glanced up he noticed that the stars that should have been directly overhead were strangely absent, and that in fact the extent of this unexpected blackness was growing rapidly in diameter, until it filled the whole of what sky appeared between the sheltered enclosure of the palace walls. With furious speed some immense creature collided with them and knocked them both to the ground, then without hesitating brushed over them, beating great dark wings as it vanished from the courtyard into the interior of the palace.

He scrambled to his feet and immediately went to her aid. She was stunned and frightened, but unhurt. He looked around, shielding her in his arms, but the creature was gone.

“What the hell was that?”

She didn't answer, and still seemed too terrified to talk. But at once she collected herself, broke away from him, and began to run desperately out of the garden. He began to follow, but as soon as he did so she stopped short, pushed him back with a firmly extended arm, and sternly commanded him to stop. He stepped back, astonished.

“No, you can't come with me! I have to raise the alarm. Go, run into the palace — go as far as you can! Go!” Before he had time to react she had sprinted off down the courtyard path and disappeared into the darkness. He stood panicked for a second, then ran inside, choosing the opposite wing of the palace from the one into which their mysterious assailant had fled. As he raced down the gallery every single one of the pale lanterns that lined the walls flickered out at once, and he continued running in terror and in absolute darkness.

June 18, 2007

Copyright © 2007 Chris Kearin. All rights reserved.