Chapter 39
Guinevere
I make it to the edge of the woods just before dawn on the second day.
Pausing for a moment, I survey the area, watching for the guards on the gate, planning my next move.
I creep a little closer, beneath a half-fallen tree where I can get a good vantage point.
A tiny bird flutters boldly from the branches of a tree and alights on my shoulder, and it’s only when I look around in surprise that I see its body is half eaten and all the feathers on its head have fallen out revealing white skull.
Unnerved, I look around to see if Alaric has followed me after all, but there’s no sign of him.
I didn’t call to the bird, but it stays fixed on my shoulder nonetheless.
When I look back to the walls, I almost gasp aloud.
Movement near the gate draws my gaze, and I squint to discover a host of bones gathering themselves together into unnatural shapes and lurching to their feet.
The bones are burned and blackened in places and none of them fit together properly.
A man’s skeleton is topped with a horse’s head and the ghoul lumbers awkwardly in my direction.
There’s a shout from the walls and a guard leans over, pointing at the skeleton.
Another rears up, just as unnatural as the first. This one has a human skull, a dog’s body, and a pair of wings like a goose. With no feathers left, they look like spindly fingers stretching backward off the dog’s back.
As it, too, drags itself toward me, I begin to worry. If the guards haven’t spotted me yet, they soon will with my undead stalkers to give me away. I need to move now.
I’ve just made the decision when something hard and boney nudges me from behind. I whirl around. The dead wolf grins at me with its bare skull. It must have followed me through the forest, though I thought I had released it a day ago.
I do not have time to figure out what is going on. I wish for a moment that Alaric were here to ask, but I force that wish down again quickly. Instead I act.
Calling again to the wolf, I send it running out into the open to meet the others. I’m almost jolted from its body when I look for a moment through its eyes and realize there are five of the strange creatures lumbering this way now.
Shutting that out too, I duck low and run through the undergrowth, keeping out of sight of the guards as best I can. I hope they are too distracted to notice me scurrying in the shadows.
As I run, the ghouls turn toward me and I curse, hoping the guards do not identify the source of their fixation. The little bird is still on my shoulder, so with a silent thought, I send it flying off up above the wall to dive at the nearest guard.
There’s a shout and a curse. The guard disappears for a moment. Then more shouts come from below.
This is getting out of hand. I decide to risk scaling the wall. My distractions will not last forever. I have no control over the ghouls. I cannot seem to fix on their location when I search with my mind. They are everywhere and nowhere at once.
I run straight to where the top of the arched gate overhangs the entrance and climb the grid-like pattern of the portcullis. Once I get to the top, the climb becomes more difficult. I have to leap and grasp for a handhold to pull myself up. I almost miss.
My feet swing wildly for a moment, and my fingers begin to slip. I ignore the pain in my fingertips. Grazed skin will heal quickly enough. Even a fall from this height won’t stop me. I have no wish to feel the impact of it, though.
Thankfully I gain purchase on the stone and sling a leg over the edge, happy I wore the prince’s hose rather than a dress with heavy skirts.
I make it halfway over the edge of the wall before a shout tells me I’ve been spotted. “Intruder! Intr—” I cut off the guard’s cry with a blow of my sword hilt to his temple, and he crumples to the floor of the guard tower.
A sharp pain in my side is all the warning I get that the second guard was closer than I thought. On instinct I draw away from it and feel the slice of a blade through my flesh as the dagger slides out of my body. I turn.
This guard’s face is white inside his helm. He stares at me open mouthed, then down at his blade.
I approach him, weapon ready, wound already closing in my side.
He stammers. He backs away but runs into the edge of the parapet, stopping abruptly.
He makes the old sign against evil over his heart, but it does nothing to stop me.
Luckily for him, I have no wish to kill.
I merely need him disabled so he does not raise the alarm.
But then the poor man’s lips move. I lean closer to make out what he is saying. “P-princess Guinevere?”
I freeze. I had not counted on being recognized. But this poor man is simply guarding the gate. I have no cause to kill him.
I slam the hilt of my weapon into his temple and knock him out as I did to his companion.
Then I climb down the ladder and make my way along the road into town, pulling the hood of my cloak over my head and hoping to remain hidden.
People are already stirring in the cottages at the edge of the town.
Though my outfit hides my identity, I will still be conspicuous to any onlookers from the rich fabric of my clothing and the fact that I’m traveling alone and on foot.
As the houses grow closer together, I abandon the streets and use the rooftops instead, jumping from building to building, balancing along rafters and on thatched roofs.
As I approach the town square in front of the inner keep, my progress is arrested by the sight of two figures hunched beneath the doorframe of the inn.
They sit incredibly still. So still I almost miss them in their brown rags.
Then the larger figure lets out a horrid wailing and clutches the smaller one to her.
I drop into a crouch to take a closer look. Someone from a nearby building comes into the square to see what the commotion is, and a guard standing by the inner wall straightens.
“You could not have spared a crust of bread?” The woman wails. “For a starving child. Not even a mutton bone that you might have thrown to the dogs. And now my boy is dead.”
I’m frozen on the rooftop, my throat tight and a false heartbeat hammering in my chest, a remembered feeling from when I was alive.
How has this happened? All of the extras from the palace should have been given to the poor at the end of each day.
All she would have had to do was ask at the gate.
Yet here she is outside the inner keep with a dead child in her arms.
Unconsciously, I reach out to the boy, trying to tell how old. The body in her arms is so small. I cannot tell if that is from malnourishment or age or both. The shape of the vessel is so tiny. The body still slightly warm; the bones seem frail.
I smother a sob with my hand at the feel of the child with my mind. I should continue. Sneak into the palace while the household is still quiet. Before the servants stir. I’ve already delayed too long. Yet this woman’s plight is unbearable.
Anger surges in me at Melantha’s greed. There’s no question in my mind that she is the cause of this. This and all the suffering in Erenvold.
The woman is still crying to anyone who will listen. People have started to gather, and the guard shifts uncomfortably in place.
A man with a cart approaches, bringing goods to the palace. The gate is open for the day. I could sneak to the secret tunnel now while the streets are quiet, but I cannot look away from the woman with the dead child.
The bundle stirs in her arms and shock rattles through me. I didn’t call to him. I try to force my mind away, to focus on something else, but the child still moves.
The woman jumps up, dropping the child, who throws off the blankets and stumbles into the square. People are shouting, pointing. I can only stare in horror. This is my fault. On top of all that this woman has suffered.
I cannot watch any longer.
I turn my back on my people and jump from the roof into an alley full of slippery mud and trash.
I try to shut out their shouts and screams, but they dog me all the way to the secret tunnel in the wall.
I’ve never seen this side of the tunnel, only heard a serving maid talk about how she used to sneak out to visit her lover in the town late at night.
I scratch aside the moss and leaves on the trapdoor and drop inside before anyone can spot me.
As soon as the trapdoor is closed I’m in complete darkness, but at least I’m hidden. I should have moved sooner, while it was still curfew, while I could have relied on the cover of darkness. If I try to move through the inner keep now, I’ll be caught in no time.
I’ll have to wait down here in the dark until night falls and I can make my way to the queen’s solar to hunt for Alaric’s heart.
I shudder. That seems like an awfully long wait in the dark, alone, but there’s nothing for it.
I cross my legs under me and sit, closing my eyes and trying not to think about all the small scurrying things that might be down here with me.
I have traversed a forest full of monsters, but the thought of rats crawling over me makes me want to climb back out and run a mile.