His Frozen Fingertips Page 5

  Kean knocked on the thick wood, an amplified rap echoing behind the doors. He walked close to the wall and touched it with his thin hands, pushing at a certain spot on the stone. He leant his whole weight against it, visibly perspiring with the effort before the door began to move. It swung away from them, opening into a candlelit entrance chamber.

  “What’s this?” Avery asked. “You expecting us to go inside, after all we’ve seen out there?” He gestured to the rock and stone buildings, which had been lit up in their dinginess by the light beyond the doors.

  “Yes,” Kean said simply, propelling Asa through them, oblivious to his struggled protests. “But it is not necessary for you.”

  He managed to restrain Asa within the hall, looking out at Avery standing outside. Asa saw Avery flinch and his face harden. He cringed at the weight of Kean’s body supported on his shoulder and at the anger in Avery’s voice.

  “So, I can simply refuse?”

  “It would make my job a lot easier.” Kean smirked. “But, mind you, you can’t just leave Jundres. Those guards are not only for keeping people out. No one can just enter or leave this city, and certainly not both. There is no tourism, and you can see why. People down here do not last long, a few decades at most. They cannot walk, you see. Their legs give out and society gives up on them. They don’t ever get up after they fall. Faded flowers, dead leaves, they waste away.”

  Asa and Avery had been listening to this in horrified silence. When Kean’s voice trailed away, Asa saw Avery square up to Kean. He opened his mouth, but Asa cut across him before he could speak.

  “Avery, no! Please.” He stared beseechingly at his friend.

  “Asa, you don’t know where you’re going,” Avery said cagily. “It could be a trap.”

  “You heard Kean, you’ll never be able to leave. Is that what you want to happen?” Asa begged him. “Don’t throw your life away over this. I need you.”

  Avery’s face softened at the last three words. He gave Kean a dirty look as he stepped over the threshold, daring him to say a word about his conceding. Kean was silent, so Avery came to Asa’s side, his steadfast expression not revealing that he had decided to give up his chance of leaving this place. He gave Asa a wan smile.

  “Anything for you, mate.”

  THREE

  ASA STEPPED GINGERLY INTO the intimidating hall. The walls, floors, and ceiling were made of some sort of polished rock, flecked and shiny. His shoes creaked upon the clean surface. Avery was but a step behind him, ignoring Clement Kean as the city dweller straightened his already immaculate clothes. Asa looked down at himself. He had not bathed in what seemed like forever, and his tunic was wrinkled and covered in dust and grime from the journey. He half-heartedly dusted himself down, heart not in the action. Compared to Jundres dwellers, he was sanitary.

  They passed through some doors at the end of the room and entered a small chamber that seemed to serve no real purpose but to hold a crystal vase full of yellow flowers. This was soon left behind, though, as they exited through another door and found themselves in a grand sitting room filled with beautiful furniture made of some dark wood, which Asa could not name. The sofas and chairs were upholstered in luxurious navy velvet and fringed with golden beads. Kean paused, allowing them to survey their surroundings before speaking.

  “I will go to see whether or not you are needed at the moment. Make yourselves comfortable. On second thought—” He paused, smirking at Avery. “Don’t. Sit down, keep quiet, and don’t draw attention to yourselves.”

  He swept from the room, not hearing Avery’s low hiss of irritation. Asa kicked his friend in the shins, perching on the edge of a pouffe. Avery grinned cheekily at him, flinging his long body into the most comfortable sofa there was.

  A lone foot tapped on the cold marble floor.

  “Will you stop that?” Avery snapped, pinching the bridge of his nose. Asa flinched at the sudden outburst.

  “Sorry.”

  “No, no. Sorry for snapping,” Avery apologised. “This place is intimidating.”

  “Yeah,” Asa whispered, brown eyes resting on the fixed gases of the portraits surrounding them.

  “Cold, too.” Avery shivered. “Wonder how they managed that? We must be hundreds of feet underground.”

  “It’s disgusting,” Asa affirmed. “That the rich get to live in such luxury, whilst the poor . . . did you even see them, Avery? They’re sick. They’re dirty. The people from this palace live in the same place as them, see the suffering on their doorstep, but still don’t let them leave. What did Kean mean by the queen being “too afraid” to open the borders? I don’t understand why she keeps her palace under such strict security. It’s selfish and cowardly, if you ask me.”

  “Be quiet, Asa.” Avery lowered his voice. “Yeah, I know. But what can we do about it? We’re only two people. There are thousands of them.”

  “There must be something.” Asa rubbed his cold hands together. “Come on, we’re both intelligent people. How can there be no possible solution?”

  There was a pause, and then Avery spoke, voice weary with travelling.

  “Why are we here, Asa?”

  “You know why,” Asa replied, examining his own dirty fingernails. “Save the nation and whatnot.”

  “But why are we actually here, Asa?” Avery’s voice was quiet now, younger. He stared at the ceiling with unseeing hazel eyes. “What do they want from you?”

  “I don’t know,” Asa admitted.

  “You can’t fulfil a quest. You’re not supposed to be exerting yourself!” his friend exclaimed. “You have a heart problem; you’re hardly the best person that they could find. This whole thing is completely ridiculous.”

  “You decided to come with me,” Asa said resignedly.

  “Yeah,” Avery sighed, kicking his legs. “It’s just . . . you know.”

  “I didn’t think it’d be so real,” Asa finished his sentence. “I understand.”

  They sat in comfortable silence, facing each other on the sofas. Asa refrained from fidgeting, allowing restless eyes to wander around the room. His chest hitched as he tried to regulate his breathing, mind dwelling compulsively on the what-ifs. What if he wasn’t good enough? What if the quest was too dangerous? He clucked his tongue and winced. What if he died?

  Asa fixed his chocolate eyes on the door. His heart was thrumming in his head. As though timed by a metronome, the door snapped open with a loud clack, making Avery leap up and out of the chair in surprise. Asa chuckled breathlessly, getting to his feet. Three large bodyguards surrounded Clement Kean. He beckoned wordlessly to the two of them, a smug smile playing around the edges of his lips.

  “You are wanted in the Throne Room,” he stated, looking unconcerned about the large, burly men who stood by him. Asa dragged his feet as he followed Avery to the doorway. “Remember what I taught you.”

  Asa gulped. “I will.”

  Kean looked taller inside. It was like he had been moved into his natural habitat. He moved with a leonine grace—confidence making him look predatorial. He stared into Avery’s hazel eyes. A strong hand caressed his jawbone, tilting the man’s chin up, a clear threat.

  One of the guards led the trio through some elaborate corridors, their boots leaving dusty marks on the crimson carpets. Asa blushed just that colour at the irritation on the maid’s faces that they passed. He knew that he was filthy, but there was nothing that he could do about it. He tried to walk taller, to carry himself with that unconscious grace which all the members of court seemed to possess. He couldn’t do it. His body would not let him do so.

  They reached a door made of solid shiny wood and engraved with many curious scenes and items. Asa froze as he caught it in his gaze. It seemed to reach right to the high ceiling above them. Kean stepped forward to knock upon it. Asa wanted to reach out, to arrest the movement before he was able to tap the door. But he was too late.

  There was the hollow sound of rapping upon wood. They stood in the flickering candlelight
, erratic shadows dancing over their skin. The guards looked formidable in such surroundings, like golems made of stone. Asa thought that Kean was excited. His face, though impassive, was alight with a passion that Asa had not yet seen in the man. Avery merely looked bored, only the tension in his shoulders and back testament to the nerves that he surely felt as much as Asa.

  “Come in,” a queer, accented voice called.

  Asa wiped his dirty shoes on the carpet. It would be better that they would be cleaned here, rather than upon whatever elaborate flooring was inside. Kean gave him a scathing look and Avery stuck his hands deep into his pockets, uttering a low whistle. Asa tried to grin at him, but his face was so frozen that he did not know how. He stepped forward towards the door, only just realising that he was in front. He paused before a pair of thin hands on his back pushed him in that direction. He swallowed before pushing the door open.

  The room was startlingly clean. Asa blinked and gingerly stepped over the threshold, bowing his head in an act of submission to the queen. He stared at the reflection of his trudging feet in the shiny marble tiles, a queer lump in his throat. He looked to his right. Avery gave him a reassuring smile, a small wink.

  “Asa Hounslow,” the voice said. It was spoken in soft tones, yet held a note of undeniable authority. They were all silent, Kean and the guards sinking into elaborate bows. Asa looked up.

  “My lady,” he managed to say, though his fingers were quivering.

  “Come forward.”

  He saw that the room was large, sparsely furnished and pristine. His shoes squeaked on the stone as he walked towards a huge wooden throne on a low platform at one end of the space. It was fairly insubstantial, apart from the two wide carved wings that protruded from behind the back of a bulky figure seated in it. The queen beckoned to Asa, who crept to the bottom of the platform and knelt.

  “Do you know why I have called you here today?” she asked.

  Asa shook his head.

  She was a well-muscled woman, clad in fine velvet and silk. Her skin was milky white and free from any sun blemishes or a tan. A crown rested on top of the russet hair that was most prized by the upper classes. She wore a pair of thick, dark spectacles that covered half of her face.

  She sat up, seeming to look into Asa’s brown eyes through her black glasses. Asa resisted the urge to shut them, feeling as though his mind was being penetrated by the queen’s intense stare. Queen Ria raised her eyebrows.

  “Well, do you?” she asked.

  “No, my lady,” Asa mumbled.

  The queen stretched luxuriously, like a well-fed cat. She seemed to examine Asa reflectively for a moment, staring right through him, before blinking and smiling.

  “Yes, I guess that you’ll do.”

  “For what?” Asa asked desperately, before reining himself in. “Sorry, my lady. That was out of line.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Queen Ria brushed it off, the direction of her stare wandering over Asa’s slight body. “You look a lot like your mother, did you know that?”

  Asa started.

  “You knew Mother? How so, my lady?”

  “But with his father’s temper,” the queen said to herself. “Oh yes. That will do.”

  Kean stepped forward. “Your Royal Highness—”

  “Quiet, Kean,” the queen snapped, still looking at the dark-haired youth in front of her. “Asa, how would you like to go on an adventure?”

  “I would like it more than anything.” Asa breathed, a slow smile spreading over his face.

  “Good.” The regal figure snapped her fingers and a small boy scurried to her side, arms piled with papers and ink. “You know how to read?”

  “Yes, since I was five.”

  Queen Ria took a sheet of fine paper from the boy and spread it on the desk next to the throne. She filled an inkpot with a practised hand, dipping a gold-nibbed pen into it and drawing what looked like a jagged circle in a single elegant stroke.

  “This,” the woman said, somewhat proudly, “is Eodem.”

  Asa nodded. “It’s smaller than I thought.”

  The queen sketched a forest covering one side of the country to the west, and a line of mountains splitting through the trees to the east side. She then drew a sharp black curve, splitting the eastern section from the rest of the country. Asa recognised it as soon as he saw it. It was the one prominent landmark visible from Salatesh. The wall.

  “Do you know what this is, Asa?”

  “The wall,” Asa replied.

  “Good.” The queen let a single blot of ink fall to the paper next to the line, on the convex side. “This is Salatesh.”

  She marked it with a curvy, calligraphic S. The blot was nestled deep in the forest, in such a precise location Asa somewhat expected the queen to have a reference picture somewhere.

  “That is where your journey begins,” Queen Ria stated.

  “But not where it will end, I hope?” His voice rose. “We’re not just going back home?”

  “No,” the queen said. “No, you’re not going back.”

  She drew a dashed line from Salatesh to another ink blot, which she labelled with a swirled B.

  “Brandenbury.” Asa was sure of his answer.

  The queen nodded. She continued the line until she found a sizable clearing of sketched trees and rested the nib upon the paper until it was sodden with ink. She wrote a J, in that same sleek, predatory hand above the ink.

  “Jundres,” she affirmed, forehead creasing as the line was extended through the blot, to the east. Asa exhaled as it passed through the wall, his stomach turning. Whatever was inside the wall did not bear thinking about. His voice wobbled.

  “Through the wall?”

  “Yes,” came the response. “Through the wall.”

  The queen’s face hardened. Asa saw her tighten her grip on the pen, knuckles whitening with the force. She dipped it into the inkpot again and slashed it across the page, drawing a jagged black line away from the wall and to the end of the country. She left a blot there, too, and labelled it with the letter C. “And to the concourse.”

  There was a moment of silence. Asa frowned at the makeshift map, wondering what it meant. It was not a short journey, not one for only two to make. No one whom he knew had ever been inside of the walls. As far as most people were concerned, the world ended there. Life was too short to go exploring in places that were not your business.

  “I see.” He glanced at the queen, wondering what to say next. “So, you’re telling me that this is where I am to go?”

  The queen nodded. “You are leaving tomorrow.”

  “What?” Asa exclaimed, choking on his words. “Tomorrow?”

  “Yes.” The queen wasn’t looking at him.

  “Surely not, my lady!” Asa’s voice shook as he addressed the powerful woman. “It’s a long route, there may even be bandits and suchlike. You cannot send us on the morrow. We’re not trained warriors, my lady! We’re just boys from up north. We won’t survive a day. And, well, I’m sick. I have a weak heart, ma’am,” he added as an afterthought.

  “That’s it,” Queen Ria replied, looking weary.

  “That’s what, my lady?” Asa asked, pressing cold fingers to the bridge of his nose.

  “You’re dying.”

  “The exertion will kill me,” Asa stated, looking imploringly at the woman. “It’s a long way to the wall, and I was told that I have only a few months left. I’m not brave enough to go away in knowledge of my own death. I can’t do this, my lady. I’m sorry, but I cannot.”

  “This was not an invitation.” The queen shook her head. “Asa Hounslow, you have been conscripted from all of the eligible people in Eodem. You are obliged to go.”

  “But why Asa?” Avery pushed into the conversation, looking like he could not hold his tongue any longer. “Why him? Why a sick country boy? We know that you have warriors here. We’ve seen them. It makes no sense to send him out all that way. What do you want him to do anyway? That’s a beach. Is he going
to count shells or something? This is ridiculous.”

  “The concourse,” Queen Ria explained, “is home to the sorcerer whom we know as Erebus. I’m sorry, Asa. We cannot lose any more warriors.”

  It hit him like a swift punch to the stomach.

  “Me?” Asa whispered. “You chose me?”

  “Yes.”

  “But why, how? Many have failed before.”

  “Your parents put your name on a list of the eligible children to be trained for the job. Your father in particular was insistent of it. They were both high-ranking officers in the Guard. It would be natural for them to put your name down when there was such a slim chance, a hundredth of a thousandth, that it would be chosen.”

  A prickle of annoyance ran through Asa. “I might have known. So, my name was chosen?”

  “No,” the queen whispered. “No. After the death of the prince, we have decided to step back from the situation. There are more important things than this.”

  “You will send Erebus token fighters, but you’re giving up? You’re withdrawing, if in spirit rather than flesh.”

  “Yes.” Queen Ria handed Asa the rough map. “You will be given a horse and enough food to last you there.”

  “Two horses,” Avery corrected. “And enough food to get us there and back.”

  The queen barely flinched. “If that is what you so wish. One who chooses this fate cannot be relied upon to understand the complexities of the matter.”

  Avery bristled. “I understand well enough, thank you. You must have some sort of a device that could be of use to us. Give it to me. Give us a fighting chance.”

  The queen thought for a moment before nodding. With stiff hands she unhooked something from around her neck. It was a pendant, with a milky rainbow jewel dangling from the chain. She placed it over Avery’s head, fingers twitching as they brushed against his hair.

  “Take it, then,” she told him, pain masked in her words. “For my son. It contains some of the simple magic that I am able to control. Once you have completed the quest it will shine with a brilliant light. If you touch your forefingers to it then you shall be returned here, safe to live again.”