It Speaks
DAPHNE
It is nearly nightfall by the time I have fully explained myself to Ash’s mother and everything has been arranged for departure. Now, Felice stands next to me near the rear of the inner corridor, where one sconce twinkles slightly different from the rest. Reaching for it with a halogen glow about her eyes, she removes the arm and a rock camouflage door swings open on oiled hinges to reveal the black of a tight spiral staircase.
“You’ll have no light for passage without your magic,” she bites out unimpressed, before reaching for a sconce along the opposite wall and gifting it to me. “Use this. It has been lit with pixie magic and can both be extinguished and illuminated with just the shake of your hand. It might come in handy until your magic has returned fully.”
With a nod, I give it a go and shake the thing, marveling when the light turns on and off like the wick of a kerosene lantern. “Thank you, majesty. I’m sure it will.”
Before Klyesque left to secure the few things that awaited last minute preparation, she informed the queen and I, by way of a sloppily drawn map, of the hidden tunnel carved into the castle that would serve as the unmagicked exit from the royal suite. It was supposedly marked by an unsightly flickering torch and sculpted in secret during the years in which the queen slept. A way to protect her from malicious fae looking to absorb her power for their own, while Ash was off in the mortal realm seeking his revenge. According to Klyesque, it was Ash’s preferred route of exit when he wanted no one to know of his presence on this side of the castle, and was originally created so that his mother wasn’t actually trapped. So that if war found this place, Klyesque could get her out safely. The match to the one in the main hall near Ash’s chamber, but without the drop.
Now, I stand here dressed in the queen’s own faerie mail, with boots that await me on the other side.
The queen had her maidservant, Darla, another pixie, braid my hair into a tight coronet that wrapped about my head like handmade crown and was woven with a strange silver ribbon that hardened once the the two ends were tied together. According to Felice, it was a protective headpiece that would find total enchantment once my magic returned, but for now would serve to shroud my identity in a cloak of confusion from those that sought to do me harm.
“It was a gift from your very own mother, once upon a time, and since then I’ve not seen a battle without it,” Felice says as she kisses both of my cheeks, fear and worry tainting the moisture of her eyes. “I wish that I might join you, truly I do. But Ash was right about one thing, my appearance in the realms will only bring trouble your way in this moment.”
With a blush and a curtsy, I throw my arms around her neck in a mortal farewell that has her chuckling sadly into my hair. “Thank you,” I whisper. “Both for being so understanding and for championing my side of this quest.”
“No need to thank me. I am not only looking out for you, but my unborn grandchild that I can feel pulsing in your womb even now” she says, squeezing me gently before holding me apart from her. “You have the right to protect yourself. Something that cannot always be done in this realm without high magic. You deserve to discover yours as well as who you are. Believe me child, when you are in full possession of your gifts, you will understand how selfish it was of me to let you go on this errand.
“Take care, dearest Daphne, your origins await you. And do not forget… you not only possess the power of what is hidden and what is lost. But the daunting thick of shadow as well. Make haste.”
“Shadow?” I chirp in a whisper.
She nods. “Oh yes. The power of two realms resides within you child and if I didn’t hate the winter queen as much as I do, I’d fear for her soul - for yours is a magic to end hers. You will see.”
With a demure smile, I shake the sconce in my hand and turn to face the long dark of the spiral corridor. Klyesque waits, three stories down beneath the castle, where the shadow steeds reside.
“We shall meet again,” I promise, taking my first few steps into the deep pitch of the stairwell.
“We certainly shall,” I hear Felice say, right before an echoing thunk is heard, marking the latch of the tunnel door.
The complete dark that suddenly surrounds me seems to swallow the light of the sconce and my first ten steps down are taken so slowly that I nearly stumble over a particularly narrow step just around the first curve.
“Oh my,” I say aloud, my voice resonating like the reverberation of a harp’s note to narrate the otherwise dismal space beyond.
But with that sound… the veins in rock once again begin to glow. Sparkling like a fuse from top to bottom, a teal iridescence shines back at me and my chest warms gratefully.
“Lovely,” I remark and the walls seem to pulse more brightly in reply. “Thank you,” I say with a gargantuan smile, stroking my hand along the rock in acknowledgement while shaking the sconce once again.
Just in case the spell that illuminates might need conserving, I choose to make my way by light of the tunnel instead and have to force myself not to run the rest of my descent.
Two hundred steps later - and yes, I counted - I am that desperate to be through to the end when I nearly crash head first into what appears to be a black stripe in the wall.
“What the devil?” I hiss.
And that is when the tunnel behind me goes black, every vein of teal lightning withering to dusk and setting my heart on a race between my ears.
Shaking the sconce and holding it before me, I realize, ‘tis not a black stripe at all, but a very clever doorway.
“My lady,” Klyesque’s voice finds me from the other side. “Just walk on through and turn toward the right.”
With a relieved sigh, I do as exactly as beckoned, coming up short when I step into an open draft and find myself face to face with the loveliest horse I have ever known.
“Trielle,” I sigh with ease.
She whinnies happily and I reach for her on instinct, throwing my hand up to pet her nose in greeting.
“Quickly,” Klyesque commands, appearing on my left and tossing my boots at me even as my eyes take in the cavernous construct of what appears to be an underground horse stall. “We must move swiftly to avoid the night guard.”
“Why?” I ask, doing as she bid by taking a seat on a cleverly situated haystack. “What can they do if they spot us? Ash is gone and the queen released me herself.”
Klyesque smirks, grinning down on me as she strings my Dragon’s song over my head and tucks it behind the high neck of my silvered tunic and I don my cloak that she hands me, feeling the heavy weight of the book in one pocket. “We want to leave as little witness to our departure as possible, but you’re right, Daphne, there is not much they can do. Especially as we will be astride shadow steed and they will undoubtedly be on foot. But one never knows what spies lurk and just in case the false one has watchers afoot, we need to be careful.”
“The false one…” I say once the pair of us are saddled upon our mounts and cantering toward the dim light of sunset toward the edge of the cavern.
She meets my eyes. “Your mother’s widower. The false king.”
The Meadow King… a haunted whisper sounds between my ears and I force myself not to gaze around myself in search of the bearer, for I know I will not find one. Not one that I can see anyway.
Klyesque smiles at me, her eyes dancing toward my burden knowingly. She tilts her chin downward and says, “The book… it speaks to you.”
I gasp, “Does it?”
“It does,” she says with a nod, then she leans down to whisper something to Delago and that quickly we are whispers in the wind.
Finally, I am on my way.