Ico walked closer to her and noticed she was crying.
“This is the queen’s chamber, isn’t it?”
Yorda nodded, her head hanging.
“Was this her only chamber? Is this where she managed the affairs of the castle? Where else might she be hiding?”
In response to the barrage of questions, Yorda lifted her face and walked briskly past Ico’s side to the throne. She was almost running as she clambered up onto the dais, straining with the effort.
What’s she doing? “Is something there?”
The rubble behind the throne seemed like an easier route to the top of the dais, but by the time Ico announced he was coming, Yorda had already finished the climb and was standing next to the throne. A teardrop sparkled on her chin.
Gingerly, Yorda touched one of the armrests. To Ico, she looked like a hunter maiden, reaching out to touch the fur of a sleeping savage beast, not wanting to wake it and yet overcome with curiosity. Stop, he thought instinctively. Let sleeping dogs lie.
Holding her breath like a swimmer about to plunge into the water, Yorda slid onto the throne. She brought her slender legs together and rested her arms at her sides.
“Wait,” Ico said through the thickening mist. “Was this your throne?”
He looked around. The mist was streaming into the room now, making it a sea of white fog so thick it was hard for him to see as far as the throne.
Ico walked quickly up to the dais, waving his hand to sweep away the mist. He felt like he was swimming. Is this the queen’s doing?
“Yorda!” he called out, but there was no reply.
The figure on the throne was no longer Yorda.
In his surprise, Ico jumped back and let the point of the sword drop down to the stones with a loud clang.
On the throne was seated a female corpse wrapped in black robes, a black veil over her face. Her slender body was tilted, leaning up against one of the armrests, one arm dangling over the edge so far the withered fingertips almost touched the floor.
He could see the corpse’s face through the flowing veil, the strong line of the nose, and the tightly closed, bloodless lips.
Ico blinked. It’s the queen, he realized.
Next to the throne, he saw two tall figures standing side by side, facing away from him-one with horns clearly visible through the flowing mist.
Ozuma!
He held a sword that glowed with the blessing of the Book of Light.
“Behold, the queen of the castle,” a low voice echoed in Ico’s mind. He listened, his feet rooted to the floor. “She is our greatest enemy, herald of darkness, child of the Dark God himself.”
Is that Ozuma’s voice? Ico wondered. Who is he talking to?
Now the other figure stepped off to the side, showing his face in profile. He wore a slender golden crown upon his head, an elegant doublet, and a battle cloak trimmed with leather. In his hand, he gripped a crystal scepter of the sort that priests from the capital used during ceremonies.
It was the priest-king of the Holy Zagrenda-Sol Empire.
“It is she,” said the trembling voice of a young girl from somewhere in the mist. “These are my mother’s remains. This is the queen of the castle.”
The priest-king hung his head and closed his eyes for a moment before looking up again. “The body is cold. She must have taken her own life and the lives of her ministers when she realized she could not stand against the power of the Book of Light.” The priest-king lifted his crystal staff and turned toward Ozuma. “Hers was a foolish, pitiful life. Now, Ozuma, end it. The battle has been won.”
“As you say, Your Excellency,” Ozuma said quietly, his eyes fixed on the queen’s remains.
The two men took a step away from the throne, and Ozuma raised his sword, his chain-mail vest creaking with the movement.
“The queen is finished!” the priest-king declared as Ozuma’s sword swung down through the air. There was a flash of brilliant light, and a moment later, the head of the corpse sitting upon the throne separated from the neck and fell to the floor, trailing the long black veil behind it.
“This castle has been purified in the name of Sol Raveh.”
The priest-king made a gesture in praise of the Sun God, lifted his scepter high, and looked up toward the heavens. The white mist swirled upward, concealing his form. Thick and deep, it swallowed Ico whole-
Yorda had witnessed it all. The head dropping from the queen’s body. The corpse upon the throne. Ozuma and the priest-king returning to the castle to declare the end of her mother’s reign.
There was a loud thud, and Ico jumped back as though he had been slapped across the cheek. He blinked. The white mist was gone, vanished, or perhaps it had never been there at all.
Yorda had slipped from the throne and was lying on her side at its foot. Ico ran up to the dais, leaping to the top in a single bound. “Yorda!” Reaching down, he lifted her shoulders off the floor.
Yorda’s eyes were closed tightly. Even still, tears ran from beneath her eyelids, streaking down her cheek. Ico tapped the side of her face, stroked her hair, and gently shook her. “Wake up. Wake up!”
Yorda’s eyes opened. They were swimming with tears.
“I’m so sorry,” Ico said. “I didn’t know she was dead. I didn’t know Ozuma killed the queen.”
Yorda’s face was blank, her eyes unfocused. Ico was not even sure if she knew he was there.
“It’s all right, it’s all right,” he whispered.
Gradually, strength returned to Yorda’s body and she gripped his hand. Ico gripped back. Yorda sat up on the floor, but her eyes were still distant.
Suddenly, Ico felt cold. A chill emanated from Yorda’s body as he held her in his arms, as though she were a pitcher that had just been filled with ice water. He had the sensation that something else was inside the girl, pushing aside the Yorda he knew.
Her head turned, and she looked at him, her eyes sharp like a hawk focusing on its prey.
“If the queen has died, then how can she be here now?” Yorda asked, her lips like flower petals in spring, the space between them forming an ugly scar.
The voice was wrong. This isn’t Yorda.
“How is it that I still rule this castle, when the sword took off my head?”
Ico recoiled, but Yorda moved quicker, arms wrapping around his head and chest, holding him tight. Their faces came close, until he could feel her breath against his cheek. Their eyes met. Not Yorda’s eyes, but the queen’s. Bottomless pools of darkness, black as the abyss.
“Tell me, young Sacrifice. How am I here?”
The queen’s cruel smile spread across Yorda’s face, but Ico saw nothing but those dark eyes staring into his.
5
ICO TRIED TO think, but his mind had lost its moorings, and he couldn’t seem to hold on to any thought for long.
“No answer, Sacrifice?” Yorda’s delicate lips spat out the cold words. “Then I’ll tell you: I am everywhere. I can do anything. The Castle in the Mist is me, and I am the castle.”
Even while Yorda’s body spoke with the voice of the queen, he could still see the true Yorda deep within the pools of her eyes. But her back was turned to him, and she was drawing away, sinking deeper inside.
“You’re the castle?” Ico asked, struggling for breath. The queen tightened her grip on him, squeezing out the air. He felt his ribs about to crack.
That meant that all of the madness, all of the killing that had come when the enchantment fell had been happening inside the queen. She had enveloped the slaughter within herself, absorbing the screams and the bloodshed-all of it.
She loosened one arm from around Ico’s shoulders, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and raised his head up till they were eye to eye. The true Yorda was nowhere to be seen. There was nothing but void, dark emptiness swirling with madness and the sparks of wild laughter.