“Of course, I still have the map!” she snapped. She snapped her fingers and sent one of the guards off to retrieve it. “Now tell me about the Stone Crown.”
“Well, it was the High Queen Delia’s—” Abioye said.
“Not you!” Inyene hissed at him, and I was surprised at the anger in her voice. Apart from the obvious physical similarity, they didn’t sound like they were siblings at all. I was thinking this thought when I heard what she had to say next, and my blood ran cold.
“It’s not you that I want to tell me about the Stone Crown. I was the one who first told you about it, in case you had forgotten, brother mine – I want her to tell me about it!” she spat.
And I realized that the Lady Inyene, oppressor of my people and decimator of my village, was talking about me.
Chapter 20
The Stone Crown
All eyes inside the throne room turned to me as I continued to stare down at the purple cushion. I was painfully aware of the dagger handle that was poking into the bottom of my ribs, hidden by my folded arms.
Could I pull it out? Run up the steps and plunge it into her black heart?
In the back of my mind I heard a hiss of flame as somewhere, far, far above, Ymmen voiced his own opinion. “Attack! Kill!”
But I had never killed anyone before. Not any person. All of my long nights and days and seasons and years of anger froze in me, like the winter frost that stilled the grasses of the Plains. Now that I was sitting here, with the dagger at my side and my target just a few meters above me.
I balked.
I’d like to think it wasn’t fear that stayed my hand – although in truth, my heart was hammering like a galloping jackrabbit. But it was the crisis of the moment. The decision. Was I the sort of person to attack a woman sitting down, even a woman as evil as Inyene was? To attack her without giving her any warning?
It’s not that she gave the Daza any warning, an angry, almost dragon-like part of me thought. But no. If I was to defeat her, I wanted her to see what it was she had done. To understand why I had done it. I raised my head to look up at her.
Her bright green eyes regarded me quizzically. There wasn’t even any malice in them as she looked at me. Just a sort of detached interest.
“The Stone Crown?” I heard myself say in a small voice. I even wondered what it was that I was going to say. Should I lie to her? Or should I tell the truth?
Which would expose Abioye’s lies, and probably have him punished and Montfre killed. My confusion started to clear as I realized that I couldn’t give into the anger now. People would die. I would abandon the Daza, and Tamin, and Ymmen.
“No!” Ymmen’s voice blew like a strong gale through my mind. Even though I could feel the dragon’s thirst for justice, he also had no desire to see me killed by Inyene’s guards. I could sense Ymmen’s feeling of frustrated impotence at being so far away, and also, strangely, a deep fear.
“You cannot die. I will not feel my bond partner die!” Ymmen was adamant, and I realized then that our bond meant that he would feel everything. It made me feel ashamed. Who was I to throw my life away so recklessly, and hurt Ymmen in the process?
“She clearly has no idea what you are talking about, brother,” Inyene’s eyes flickered from me in an instant. “Take her back to the mines, someone…” she started to say.
I can’t let that happen! I thought in horror. Dagan had said if I was caught escaping again I would be branded – and it would be my last chance. And now, as I saw Dagan Mar puff his chest out and limp down the first step, I knew that the chief overseer would not hesitate to kill me as soon as I was out of sight. “I’ll gladly see to it, my lady—” the chief overseer began.
“Although we have no legends of any Stone Crown, Your Highness”, I burst out quickly, “there are ancient Torvald ruins all across the Plains. I grew up seeing them in the distance.”.
“Wait.” Inyene held out one long, emaciated finger, and Dagan Mar stopped, as obedient as a dog. Her bright, unnerving eyes held me in their icy clutch once more. “Go on.”
I swallowed nervously. I was speaking the truth – or I had started off by speaking the truth, anyway – but the scant fragments of folk lore and history that I was ransacking my mind for felt to me like lies. “There used to be dragons that flew across the Plains regularly,” I said out loud, remembering what the Elders and even my mother said.
“And I was told that Torvald had towers and way stations out here, but which are now broken open and overgrown,” I continued. “We Daza people have always avoided them in the past, because we thought they were haunted.” That bit I made up. “And so, we have to know where they are, in order to steer our cattle and herds away from them.”
I paused, to see that Inyene was still regarding me intently, judging every word.
“We Daza people travel far and wide across the Plains; it is our nature to follow the herds, and for those of an age to spend a season out on the trail,” I said, trying to impress on her that our tribal knowledge was deep.
“And there are places where great battles were once fought,” I said – although this was the flimsiest piece of rumor. It was true that in some areas of the Plains the plants grow rambling and wild, and the ground was unusually churned up. Once, I had heard my mother suggest that is because that was the site of a great battle or a slaughter. I didn’t know which facts would be of interest to Inyene so I blurted them out.
“We Daza have our own names for the places of the Plains,” I continued. “There are the Bone Canyons, the Lakes of the Sun, the Darkening Caves…”
“The Darkening?” I heard Montfre say, but it wasn’t in awe – it was in a sort of aghast horror. “That was one of the very early enemies of the kingdom of Torvald – a magical storm that could suck the life from your very bones!”
“Enough.” Inyene silenced him. “I am satisfied that there might be some use to this theory.” She cleared her throat as she beckoned Abioye closer. I watched out of the corner of my eye as he stood up, with his head still bowed, and ascended the first few steps to once again kneel down, right at the foot of his sister’s throne.
“Ah, my dear, sweet, innocent Abioye,” I heard his sister say in a lower voice – but there was nothing soft about that tone. If anything, it sounded like a threat. “When you first came in here, talking like a crazed child, I was certain that you had been a coward or worse – a liar to me,” she scolded him, reaching down with one almost skeletal-pale hand. She lightly grasped his chin between thumb and forefinger, pushing his head back so that he couldn’t avoid staring back at her.
“I thought that you had refused my call because you feared the combat with the dragon, or that you doubted me.” It was a question, and I could hear that it was a loaded one.
“No, not at all, sister!” Abioye said, his voice slightly garbled from Inyene’s grasp.
“No,” Inyene agreed, giving his chin a little disapproving shake. It was a cruel gesture, and I could see the relationship that they must have had even when they had been young. “Have I not always looked after you, Abioye? Even when everyone around us has betrayed me?” she asked.
“You have, sister.” Abioye swallowed nervously.
“Have I not shown you that we D’lias must be strong? Strong in mind and spirit. Stronger than anyone else if we want the world to listen to us?” she asked.