Chapter Thirty-Seven Simran
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Simran
I saw him pass through London. He’s as beautiful as everyone said in the newssheets. I don’t know why, but it frightened me.
Source: Letter from Ellen Biko to Mandy Parrish
The air smelled of smoke, and pennants fluttered in a high, cold breeze. This was already a battlefield. The story was set.
Before them, the battlefield was full of knightly figures, helmed on their horses, lances or axes or swords in hand. But the figures and their horses were ghostly, their flesh misty and insubstantial. They made no noise at all. The howling wind couldn’t touch them.
But the Eternal Prince was flesh indeed.
He stood on the battlefield, garbed in armor.
He was just a boy, a callow youth with a flush to his cheeks, pure and blazing eyes, a sword in his hands.
He looked just as he had when she’d seen him sleeping beneath his chains in the broken abbey, circled by wizened apple trees.
The Queen looked like a girl herself—fresh-faced, pale as snow, her blue eyes fixed upon him. Her hair streamed behind her in the wind, a bloodied flag.
“I’ve waited so long to see you,” he said. His voice was strange—silken, deep. “I slept so long.”
“You should have slept forever,” the Queen replied. She drew her sword and held it ready—a shining flash of steel, a slash of moonlight in her hands. “We will not die for your sake,” she told him.
“You shall,” he said simply, raising his own sword—as blazing as the sun, a blade of steel and fire. “It is your purpose.”
Their swords clashed—a sound that cracked the air like lightning, shook the ground like thunder.
The ghostly knights began to move, raising their fists, circling the battlefield in silent clamor.
Simran looked behind herself. The door was gone.
There was only a wall behind them both, and nowhere to run to.
There was a cry, and Simran whipped back to face the battlefield.
The Queen had stumbled—clutching one arm, which was bleeding lushly, staining her armor and the soil.
As she went down to one knee, she changed again, rippling with age and strength—her hair fading to copper, her skin growing lined.
She was a warrior queen, arms corded with muscle, and her blood was a mark of her valor, not her weakness.
She gasped for ragged breath, face stained with sweat.
The Eternal Prince did not strike her as she kneeled.
Instead he watched her patiently, his body changing in an echo of her own.
He was a warrior—strong and lean, no youth any longer.
The sun had tanned his skin to ruddy gold.
He wiped sweat from his brow with one arm, the other holding his blazing blade steady.
“You could lay down your sword now,” said the Eternal Prince. He sounded pitying. “I would cut your throat cleanly.”
“Never.”
“Your death is written, inevitable.”
“We do not yield to our enemies,” she said, through bared and bloodied teeth. She rose up again. They met once more, with blood and fury that snapped the air like fire.
Their battle was poetry. But like all beautiful things, the flash of swords, the ripple of light over carnage, it ended. The Queen struck a blow upon the Prince that glanced off his armor like rain on stone. He moved toward her, blade outstretched, and found his mark.
The blade went through the Queen’s heart.
The air went silent. The Queen made a choked sound, blood flowering to her mouth.
“No,” she gasped. “No, no.”
“We are bound to one another,” said the Eternal Prince. “You need not grieve your own death.”
“We do not want to die.”
“You never do,” he said.
“We will return,” she gasped.
“You shall,” he agreed. “But it is my time now. Not yours. And I shall hold fast to this Isle as long as I am able.” He kissed her forehead, her fluttering eyelids. “I will slay your Beast,” he said tenderly. “And your loyalists. And your throne will be mine. As it should have been eons ago.”
A gasp, a breath. She was gone. All that remained of her was a golden crown in the dirt. It fair glowed under the sunlight. He picked it up and placed it upon his own brow.
His face changed once more, the boy and the blazing warrior alike melting away. He was a man now—scarred and strong, broad at the shoulders, his jaw sharp beneath his beard, and his mouth thin and cruel.
He was the Eternal King.
His ghostly knights bowed. But the only living beings on the battlefield were Simran and Vina, and the Eternal Prince—the Eternal King—himself. He turned to them and, with dreadful focus, began to walk toward them.
Simran’s knees nearly went out from under her at the waves of tale-rooted power that rose from the Eternal King as he crossed the ground toward them.
His face, smiling and handsome, was like a pearl beneath changing light, shifting.
At first, he was tan-skinned, dark-haired; then he was golden blond, eyes bluer than the midsummer sky.
Then he was changed again: hair russet, skin golden.
At her side, Vina sucked in a breath, then kneeled. Not as if the weight of his presence had buckled her legs, but as if she had read the tides of tale-spinning and responded accordingly. A king required knights—and Vina could kneel as one, welcomed, safe from his blade.
Simran as a witch had no such reassurances. But she thought, Maiden, think of me as a young maiden, don’t see the magic in me—and swept into a curtsy, bowing her head. The King fair glowed in response, his tale fed.
“Majesty,” said Vina. “Welcome.”
“Majesty,” Simran echoed, throat dry as if fire had scorched it.
“We know you,” he said, wonderment in his voice.
His eyes were on Simran—blazing with light, as if coals lay within the cup of his skull.
“You freed us. Dear maiden, have no fear,” the Eternal King said, his expression beatific.
“We will be a glorious and just ruler, for a glorious and just Isle. And we will reward you for your service.” His gaze slid away, eyes distant—changing to the color of winter’s light. “But first, we must slay the Beast.”
“Majesty,” said Vina. Kneeling, head raised, hand to heart, she was the picture of a true knight. But Simran could see the tension of her jaw, the narrowness of her eyes upon him. “What beast do you speak of?”
“We feel it,” he says. “It cries in terror because it feels us in return. We have killed many of its kind. Beasts born of whispers, secrets, tales ill-told. Tales we would not welcome at our midwinter table.” A shadow passed across his face as he said this, as if there were no greater crime.
“A creature of murderous truths, and a creature of change. It cannot be borne. We are the only change the Isle requires.”
His hand went once more to the bloody hilt of his sword.
“Beast Glatisant,” he called, and his low voice carried as if the baying of hounds lay within it. “Beast of Voices. Beast of my great quest. We come for you. Your life is ours.”
His ghostly knights moved with a howl. His white horse drew to him, and he leapt into the saddle, moving like silver across the field—which withered, and faded, as he departed. Nothing was left but a courtyard.
Simran’s mind was dizzy with the memory of what she’d seen when Adder had howled and snapped. Its birth, the very first tales that had shaped it, the shelter it had grown for its kind…
She held her hand out to Vina, who was still kneeling, staring into space, dazzled by the weight of the King’s power.
“Vina. Stand,” she said. “We have to go. The Beast can’t die.”
Vina looked up at her. She laid her hand in Simran’s own, and rose.
“It’s ancient,” said Simran. “I felt it when its ink touched my skin. The Beast is… old as the Isle. It’s every tale the library carried.
It’s made of stories so old we don’t even have words for them—we just feel them, living in us.
” She shivered, running hot and cold with adrenaline.
“If it dies, the Isle will lose its true heart,” said Simran.
“So many, many stories. Maybe the Isle will still stand but it’ll have its soul cut out, Vina.
I swear it. I felt it. We can’t let it die. ”
“Simran,” Vina said. “It’s going to be damnably hard to stop him.”
Simran raised her chin.
“I know,” she said. “Are you with me, sir knight?”
“Witch,” said Vina. “I am always with you.”
They left the field, making their way to the stables. Vina’s own destrier was already saddled, just as the Spymaster had said.
“I don’t understand that man,” Vina muttered. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say he can see the future.”
She grasped Simran by the waist and lifted her up onto the horse’s back, then leapt up herself.
Grace and strength—and Simran could only clutch onto her awkwardly, and hope she would not fall off.
This was nothing like riding the ghost deer that met her at the base of the Copper Mountains.
That had been a creature of magic. This was a horse, a real horse, and Simran was just a real woman who’d never ridden one.
“I won’t let you fall,” said Vina, which was a sweet sentiment but did little good for Simran’s nerves when the destrier began to move apace, running like the wind across the Palace grounds, toward the distant Tower.
It was a powerful creature under her weight, and she was just a clumsy woman who didn’t want her head cracked open.
The streets of London were growing stranger than they had been before—twisting into ancient buildings the like of which Simran had never seen. She looked up, holding on tightly to Vina. The skyline was changing, distant buildings fading.
An ominous feeling settled in the pit of her stomach. They had to get to the Tower, and soon.
“We can’t outpace him,” Simran yelled, not sure Vina would hear her over the wind howling around them, the twisting of the city as it reshaped, broke, reshaped again.