“Tell me, Sacrifice,” the queen said in a voice like honey, “did you really think that the child of the Dark God could be defeated by a mere inconvenience to her mortal body?”
“But you couldn’t face the power of the Book of Light!” Ico said through clenched teeth. “Yorda drove you back with the book! She broke your enchantment!”
“Indeed she did,” the queen said, a smile spreading across her face. “But I was not defeated. The only thing I lost when my enchantment was broken was my human form. Just a mask. By destroying my enchantment, Yorda freed me to become what I was destined to be! And the Book of Light? Why should I fear that? No paltry scrap of ancient spell can hope to defy me!”
The book didn’t rob her of her strength. Her strength grew!
If the queen was the castle, then no matter how great an army marched through her gates, they would be nothing more than ants in the palm of her hand.
“But wait,” Ico said, “if you weren’t here anymore…then who was beheaded on the throne?”
The queen laughed low, until Yorda’s body shook with her deep, rolling mirth. “Men are weak and easily deceived. They see only what they want to see. And if the phantasm before them takes the shape of their hearts’ desire, they believe it all the more. Not even a priest-king is immune.”
Ico’s mouth opened. “The chief handmaiden…”
The queen raised an eyebrow-Yorda’s eyebrow-and drew Ico’s face closer, so that their noses were practically touching. Her breath frosted on his skin. “Very clever, Sacrifice. But what difference?”
But the difference was everything. It meant that there was one person who would have realized the truth. When she stood there, looking down at the woman draped in black on the throne, one person would have known: That is not my mother. That is not the queen. That is my pitiful handmaiden, now just a corpse who still trembles in fear of my mother’s power.
Yorda.
Ico knew from the vision he had seen by the throne that Yorda had been there when they found the body. She had seen everything.
She lied to them.
Ozuma and the priest-king had believed her, of course. Everyone else in the castle was dead. The queen’s fell presence had dissipated. There was no reason to doubt Yorda’s words. Had she not previously betrayed her mother, helping Ozuma steal the Book of Light in order to drive her away?
No one could have imagined that, even as the sword bit into a woman’s neck, Yorda was protecting her mother.
The queen laughed merrily, and it seemed to Ico that Yorda’s body was no longer hers at all, but the queen’s possession entirely. Ico trembled in the queen’s arms.
She laughed one last time, a high, derisive laugh, and then flung Ico away like a child throws away a toy. Ico flew through the air, landing on his back on the stones near the throne. His head smacked against the floor, sending sparks dancing behind his eyelids. He couldn’t move.
Yorda stood slowly and walked over to Ico’s side. Ico looked up at her, his eyes watering with tears. They were not for the pain, they were for Yorda.
Ico moaned. He could taste blood in his mouth. “You’re horrible. How could you make Yorda do that? She’s your daughter!”
“You poor thing. It is precisely because she is my daughter and I her mother that the bonds of affection between us are so strong. We protect each other, she and I.”
“Liar!”
The queen leaned down and grabbed Ico by the collar. She tossed him across the room again. This time he landed below the throne. Despite the pain, Ico looked up. “What lies did you tell Yorda?” he shouted. “How did you deceive her?”
“I’ve already told you,” the queen said. “There was no deception. Do you not recognize the love between mother and daughter when you see it? Why should it be strange for a daughter to want to save her mother’s life? Why would she need another reason?”
Yorda slid down the side of the throne platform and walked again toward Ico. She moved differently now. This was not the Yorda he had led through the castle by the hand, the Yorda who would wander aimlessly if he did not call out to her. This was the queen’s double, her puppet.
The realization led to another. What if Yorda hadn’t deceived Ozuma and the priest-king of her own will? The queen could have been controlling her the very moment she stood by the throne, looking down at the body of the handmaiden. Her own self could have been locked away inside her body, held in thrall to her mother’s wishes, just as it was now.
Fresh tears ran down Ico’s face. His back ached, his arms were numb. He couldn’t even reach up to wipe his eyes. Ico lay facedown, crying.
Yorda had been weak, an easy target for her mother’s spell-because she was the queen’s daughter, and she loved her mother.
At last Ico realized why Yorda had struck her own chest and insisted that everything had been her fault. Even though she could have had no way of knowing what suffering her actions would cause over the years in the dark castle, where shadows walked alone, she blamed herself for it all. The shades blamed her too.
“Why the tears?” the queen asked. “For whom do you cry?”
Ico shook his head for an answer. Getting his arms beneath him, he managed to lift himself off the floor. Sitting up now, he turned his tear-streaked face to look at the queen. “I don’t know my real mother,” he said. “My parents were taken from me after I was born. It’s part of the custom when you’re the Sacrifice.”
The queen stared at him. The glow given Yorda’s body by the Book of Light still shone, dim and low like a sickly firefly, as waves of darkness flowed from the queen’s heart into her veins.
“But I was never lonely. My foster parents took care of me. They were always there for me. They looked after me.”
An image of his mother rose in his mind. With a gentle hand, she reached out to rub his cheek, comb his hair, and put him to bed at night. She may not have given birth to him, but she nurtured his life. And she loved him.
“Did you ever love Yorda?” he asked the queen. “You tell me she had feelings for you, but did you love her like my foster parents loved me?”
The queen’s lips twitched, then the right side of her mouth curled upward, as though caught by a fisherman’s hook.
“I am Yorda’s mother. I gave birth to her, I gave life to her. That is the greatest thing a mother can do for her child, the only thing! Love is meaningless!”
The rage that had been boiling in Ico’s heart burst forth, and he shouted, “But Yorda loved you! That’s why she was deceived! That’s why she saved you! Can’t you see that? Is she only a tool to you-is that all she’s ever been to you?”
The queen turned her back-Yorda’s back, as supple as a spring leaf-to Ico and ascended to the throne. Ico watched her go.
She sat on the throne, the queen inhabiting Yorda’s body. She was lost against its tall back, the broad armrests. The light of the book was lost as well. There, on that throne, she was nothing but darkness in human form.
“They saw what they desired, my death, and believing that they had defeated me they left this place,” the queen said quietly, her voice barely more than a whisper. “They left that nasty sword in a cave by the sea-a symbol of the castle’s pacification, I suppose. There they held an empty, meaningless ceremony, bowing their heads to that ungainly hunk of metal.
“All while I became one with the castle. At the same time, Yorda became mine. She was my eyes and my hands. The bonds of blood are great. She was my most faithful servant. I was there, you know, at the ceremony. I watched it through her eyes. The cheeks of the men were flushed with their so-called victory over me-men who are little more than lumps of dirt, pretenders to their weak god’s glory. I watched them board their boats and leave-and Yorda with them,” the queen said, her voice like a song.