The two guards standing watch over Alemandine’s private rooms gave him a curious glance but said nothing, as together they opened the great doors that led into the reception room of Alemandine’s suite.
There, Timias found Hudibras, looking distracted, even as he berated two bedraggled ladies-in-waiting huddled in the window seat. They all looked up, their expressions an odd mixture of both relief and fear, as Timias entered. He pinned the ladies with a ferocious stare, and their wings, fragile and pink as rose petals, trembled above their heads. But why were they both wearing crowns of oak and holly leaves? Oak for summer, holly for winter—why both at once? He peered more closely at them, and realized to his relief the illusion was nothing but a trick of the light and that their small veils were held in place, as usual, by the customary ribboned wreaths that all Alemandine’s ladies wore. “What’s going on? Where’s the Queen?” He addressed Hudibras, but it was one of the ladies-in-waiting who answered.
“She will not unlock the door, most exalted lord,” she replied, olive-green eyes huge in her angular face so that she resembled a frightened doe. Honey-colored hair spilled over her shoulders and across her rose-colored gown, partially obscuring her fichu of ivory lace. It matched the lace of her face mask, Timias saw, as another foul whiff momentarily distracted him. This time the seed pearls in her wreath looked like writhing white worms. He started back and she gave him another questioning look, as he realized that that was exactly the effect the pearls were meant to have. It struck him that this was a bizarre conceit for an adornment for one’s hair, but then, he never paid attention to the fashions of the Court. Since Alemandine was crowned Queen, they changed with such dizzying frequency, he could not keep up.
He really had to get control of himself, he thought. He tightened his grip on his staff and the wood felt dry as a petrified bone in his palm. He must not succumb to the pressure. Surely that’s what Vinaver hoped for, and it occurred to him that indeed, the success of the very plot itself might hinge on his ability to single-handedly uphold the Queen through this hour of her greatest need. He would show Vinaver that while he wore an old man’s face, he yet possessed a young man’s vigor.
Hudibras was wringing his hands in a manner most unseemly and his tone was peevish and demanding. “Whatever you have in mind, Timias, you better get to it, for she refuses to come out. You’ve got the entire Council under arrest, Vinaver’s gone flitting off Herne alone knows where, that wild young thing’s gone running off with that gremlin—” Hudibras marched across the room, struck a mannered pose worthy of a masque beside the empty grate, and, to Timias’s astonishment, removed a peacock-plume fan from the scabbard at his belt. With a zeal that the temperature of the room in no way warranted, he snapped it open with an expert flick of his wrist and began to fan himself. “What’s to be done, Timias? What’s to be done?”
What was wrong with the man? wondered Timias. Since when was there a fashion for wearing peacock-plume fans like daggers? Or white worms in one’s hair? Could it be that something was affecting the entire Court? It was as if they were all going mad. But it was that last piece of information that made him pause. A gremlin with Delphinea? How was such a thing even possible? “Why was I not informed?” Timias asked, gaze darting from the overwrought Hudibras to the stricken ladies.
At that, the ladies and Hudibras stared at each other, and then at Timias. “But you were, my lord,” said Hudibras.
“Every hour on the hour since the clock struck thirteen,” said the second lady, and he realized with another start that her gown was nearly an exact duplicate of the first’s, except that the shade was slightly lighter. When had Alemandine begun to insist that her ladies-in-waiting dress alike?
Timias shoved that superfluous question away, and pulled himself upright, wondering if he himself were not suffering from some malady. There’d been no disturbances on his door—he’d heard no knocking all night at all. But then of course there’d been no gremlin to answer it. All the gremlins were sequestered in the Caul Chamber. Their shrieking on Samhain had been enough to sour cream. No wonder Alemandine was feeling so poorly. In her delicate condition, her strength already taxed, she must’ve suffered the gremlins’ annual bout of madness dreadfully. No wonder she didn’t want to come out of her room. She probably wasn’t recovered yet.
Another trace of rot swirled delicately past his nose and he blinked, momentarily dizzy. These fools were only trying to make him look as if he was the foolish one. They were trying to blame him for their inability to understand and care for the Queen as if he were the one ultimately responsible for her. “I’m here now,” he snapped.
Hudibras pointed the fan at Timias, as if it were indeed a dagger. “There’s been no word from Artimour, or Finuviel. We don’t know what’s happening on the border, Timias. Alemandine won’t even speak to me except to tell me to go away. She’s placed a spell of binding on the door, and refuses to leave her bed.”
“But that’s not all, most ancient and honorable lord.” The darker, more assertive lady glanced first at him, then over her shoulder, out the window. “The moonflowers are blooming.” For a moment, he was so completely taken aback he could think of nothing to say, and the lady hastened to explain further. “The Queen’s moonflowers. They shouldn’t be blooming while she’s pregnant.”
There was a surreal quality to the whole scene that made Timias pause, just as he had before the stag. It was as if the world around him was ever so slightly…off. But what was it? he wondered. Hudibras and his fan? Rimbaud and his stink? The lady and her moonflowers? Again he felt slightly dizzy as if the very floor on which he stood suddenly swayed. “I must speak to the Queen.”
“She won’t let anyone in, Timias,” said Hudibras, with a twitch of his cheek. “That’s what we’ve been trying to tell you. She’s put a spell on the doors and won’t leave her bed.”
To that, Timias raised his chin. “We’ll see about that.” He strode through the doors that led into the antechamber of the Queen’s bedroom. The twilight filtering into the darkened chambers lent a purple blush to the marble walls, deepened to indigo the pale green upholstery and silken hangings. A profound hush hung over all. He pounded so hard on the ornately carved oak door with his staff that splinters flew in all directions. “Your Majesty!” he cried. “Your Majesty?”
But there was no answer.
He waited, fuming quietly under his breath, and again his nostrils were assailed by the faintest whiff of something foul, something that dissipated even as he turned his head to trace the source of the odor. “Alemandine?” He tried again, rattling the knob, knocking with a hard fist. “Alemandine? Let me in. I command you in the name of your mother, open this door and let me in!”
For a single moment, he thought he would have to blast the doors apart. But then he heard the lock click, and the two doors slipped open as the spell of binding came undone. That was easy, he thought. The doors stood as meekly open as a lamb to the slaughter. He threw a look of triumph over his shoulder at the cowering ladies and an extremely discomfited Hudibras hovering in the doorway. Then he pushed open the doors.
It was like stepping into a wall of rot. The odor made him stagger on his feet, so that he was forced to hang on to his staff to remain upright. The heavy draperies of Alemandine’s favorite pale green silk were drawn, and what light there was slashed through the dark cavern of the room like gold blades. Only once before had Timias ever smelled anything so foul, and that was during a plague year in the Shadowlands, when the whole countryside had reeked like a charnel house. “Alemandine?” he managed to gasp out, before he was forced to cover his mouth and nose against the heavy reek. “Your Majesty? My Queen?”
The bed was empty. The sheets hung over the side of the bed, and were marked by foul greenish stains. A damp trail led across the marble floor to the open floor-length windows.
“My Queen?” he whispered. But nothing answered, and nothing moved. Terrified of what he might find, he stepped out of the ghastly silent chamber, into the grove where