He leaned against the slab, gasping and breathless, hearing the thunder of his own heart and an angry twittering of birds overhead. Just for a moment, perhaps, he had won safety.
"It's very dark!" the queen said, and he choked back a scream.
It was not quite perfect blackness--he could just see the glimmer of her face and hair. While he had come by one side of the slab, she must have stepped through the gap on the other.
"Majesty!" he wailed. "What are you doing here?" The stone was quite soundproof; there would be bedlam out in the cabinet, yet he could hear nothing.
"Hiding from that madman," the queen said in a very normal, conversational tone. "He'd kill us all, you know. He's quite mad. He pulls wings off spiders."
Great flames of the Ark! He had panicked, yes, but if he had any chance of life left at all, then he must flee at once. He had never intended that the queen should come with him.
The guards were out there--she would have been completely safe. Right behind him was a blank wall; the passage was barely wide enough for one person, and she was between him and the way out, the way down to the secret tunnels. A lifetime of training held him back from brashly attempting to thrust by her--if he could--and what would she do, anyway? She might well scream. She might reopen the panel and give him away. She might not be strong enough...
He would have to kill her.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded again in a low voice.
"Waiting for Vindax," the queen said calmly, in the sort of voice she might have used to discuss wallpaper or the temperature of soup.
"He is dead! He had an accident! There was a letter--"
"Lies!" the queen snapped, but not loudly. "Alvo would never do such a thing. It is a trick."
Shadow was stopped short. Was that possible? With a schemer like Aurolron, anything was possible. "But the letter?"
"The letter?" she repeated. As his eyes adjusted to the deep gloom, he could make her out better. "Yes, the letter. Read it to me." She thrust a crackling parchment into his hands.
She had brought it with her. The implications of that struck him like a lightning bolt. The guards would have found the dead king in an empty room. Jarkadon would now be claiming that he was king, for his father and brother were both dead, but he did not have the letter, and no one but Aurolron had seen it. So they would only have his word for it, and there must be limits to how much credibility would be afforded even a prince in such incriminating circumstances.
So there would be even more chaos than Shadow had expected, and his tiny, tiny chance of escape might just be a little bit greater because of it.
The passage was merely a rough-textured gap between double walls, starting where he stood and curving away around the arc of the egg-shaped cabinet itself. In spite of its narrowness, it was very high; small gaps at the top admitted a trickle of light and air. They had also admitted swallows, whose nests encrusted the upper walls and whose litter had piled thick on the floor. The swallows were jabbering angrily at the intruders, darting in and out of the holes.
"I can't see to read, either, Majesty," Shadow said. "Perhaps in a little while..."
"Well, we have lots of time," the queen said. She steadied herself with both hands and somehow managed to sit down in her fine, rich dress on the heaped bird droppings on the floor. She leaned her arms on her knees.
She had gone mad, obviously.
Aurolron and he had shared one thing: They had both hated the dark and never closed drapes. Yet he knew that the human eye could adapt to darkness for some inexplicable and useless reason. Twenty minutes it took, they said, but already he could see much better. Yes, the document he held was the letter from Ninar Foan, but still not decipherable.
"It was very stupid of me," the queen sighed. "I should have explained to Vindax and warned him." She sounded as though she were talking to herself.
"Warned him of what?" Shadow demanded. He ought to be running like hell, yet he had to plan his moves carefully. Was there any possibility that the queen could be of assistance--or of use? A hostage? The uproar and search going on outside must be mind-wrecking.
"Alvo must have got such a surprise," she said. "How proud he will be of Vindax!"
Gods! Was the queen about to admit it?
"They are twins, you know. When I look at Vindax, I see Alvo exactly, as he was. I expect he has aged, but I remember him as he was then, as Vindax is now."
The passage led to a stairway, and that led down to a cellar. Through such passages and cellars and storerooms, it was theoretically possible to move almost anywhere around the palace complex, if he could remember them all. He had shown many of them to the new Prince Shadow. Aurolon, who had liked to be sure of his backups, had inspected secret doors once in a while. Vindax knew of them. But only those three and himself, he was sure. Two were dead. The fourth might also be dead and was at the far end of the kingdom anyway. He did have time, but not much.
"A man would not kill himself," the queen said. "That was what Aurolron thought, but he would never."
A man ought to kill himself--suicide would be much better than a traitor's death. It would have done no good to have stayed and done his duty, denouncing Jarkadon as the assassin, for when the king died, Shadow died. Even if the queen had supported him and he had been believed, he would not have been saved.
"What?" he said, confused.
Now he could see the queen's expression as she explained with great patience, "The king thought that Alvo would kill Vindax, of course. He thought that Alvo would think that Vindax was his son and had been sent to him to be put to death because it would be a breach of honor for a man to let his own bastard sit on another's throne."
Now, that had to be the craziest thing the crazy woman had come out with yet. Honor was not something that Shadow had ever claimed to understand, but he knew that some men had it. Whatever it was, though, no one carried it to those extremes.
"His own son? Madam, is the duke of Foan Prince Vindax's father?"
"You never asked me that before, dearest," she said reproachfully. The clothes had confused her--now she thought he was Aurolon.
"But why do they look so alike?" Suddenly he thought he would go happier to his death if he could get this confounded mystery solved.
"Ah!" The queen sighed blissfully. "Well, you see, I was very much in love with Alvo before I learned to love you. But royalty had obligations, as you told me--you were very patient, my dear. And I gave you what you wanted, didn't I? Two sons? 'An heir and a spare,' you said." She giggled and then sighed. "I should have liked a daughter, but a king likes to have two sons."
He would need different clothes. Servants' clothes, preferably. There was no way he could escape by air even if he knew how to fly those damned birds. An escape on foot into the town was his only chance. Then--Piatorra? Aurolron had sent the king of Piatorra some sculptures once. That meant carts, so it must be possible to reach Piatorra on foot somehow.
Shadow peered at the letter and saw that the words were becoming distinguishable. Astonishing! It had been quite dark when he first came into this smelly stone slot. The twittering of the birds was dying down. He would need money...
"I only thought of it a few days ago," the queen said. "All these kilodays it has puzzled me, and I only thought of it now, too late!" She began to weep softly.