Aleksey's Kingdom (A Royal Affair #2)(44)

We had a very good meal that night, although I ate nothing of it, for the very sight of the food made me sick, and then turned in for a final night’s sleep. We repeated our sentry duty as the night before, although we were this night given an easier shift just before daylight, so we actually did have the whole night to sleep. I think Aleksey engineered this with Major Parkinson, and I did not challenge it. I do not actually remember falling asleep.

I think Aleksey hoped I would be better in the morning, but as my illness was caused, I believed, by what we were going toward, I could not see how this could be. I think he got it after an hour of riding. He suddenly claimed, “This is in your mind, is it not? Like the ship.”

I pursed my lips. “Possibly, but I think the demon felt it too. I saw him last night, listening to the ground.”

“Do not your people do that? You said you could hear a horse over a mile away and got me to try it one day.”

“Well, yes, but that was because it was funny to see you with your arse stuck in the air and such a grimace of concentration on your face.”

He was about to make a suitable reply when his expression changed, and he held out his hand. “Is it raining suddenly? The sky is not… oh! Look!”

I did. A vast cloud rose ahead of us, as if the earth had suddenly been turned upon its side and we were looking at the sky side on. I hissed with some urgency, “Can you not feel it now? Can you not hear it? Aleksey?”

He nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, I can hear… but we are still many miles from the falls…. Twenty?”

The others had begun to hear it now and comment upon the drumming and rumbling. It was as if a great beast were ahead of us, turning in its den, and the words of the madman returned to me.




I DO not know what I had expected from the falls. Something like the ones that fed into our lake perhaps? Or the big ones where I had taken Aleksey to see the bears, only slightly bigger still?

I had no idea that the world could be so wrong, so terrifying, so alien to man that I felt as a pond bug must if given a glimpse of an ocean. I could not get my breath as we approached from the tree line. The others were eager, straining to see, to experience this wonder. I did not want to emerge from the security of the forest. But I had no choice. We came out onto a riverbank on a small promontory, and there it was.

Everything was wet. The trees, the ground, our hair, our clothes, the horses—all became soaked within a few moments from the cloud that was not a cloud but the breath of the falls. And the noise. I could not speak nor hear anyone for the thunder. I wanted to put my hands to my ears to block the sound but did not think that would help, for it was not only sound but vibration, and that could not be checked.

The falls spread out from our vantage point on the promontory until the end of the earth, as if all the rivers of the world—even the oceans themselves—came to this point and just dropped off, and there was nothing between us and this great terror. I could not believe it. We were standing on the riverbank and there, there was the water, moving so fast I do not think that even Xavier running at full speed could have matched its fearsome pace, and then it just all ended, and the flow at that final point was so green and deep and curved and clear and tempting, as if it called to me….

My legs went from under me, and I sank to the ground. Thank God, I was not the only one. My companions were variously squatting or sitting, looking at the view as if they were enjoying it and seeing something wondrous.

I thought that if Aleksey went any closer to the water’s edge I would scream, and then he did. He went right up to the river and squatted, putting his hand in it. I knew then that he had been marked. The river had tasted him, and it would have him. I tried to call out. Xavier sensed my extreme distress and began to dance and retreat, and Aleksey turned, surprised, and came up to calm him, glancing at me questioningly. I was too busy clinging to the grass so I would not be sucked over the edge to worry about Xavier. Major Parkinson pottered over as if we were on a picnic and chuckled, “Well, superb, quite superb. Well worth the trip. I shall have to bring mother to see them. Quite something, eh? Shall we find this damn fort, sir? The sooner we sort this bloody mess out, the sooner we can return home, what?”

Aleksey nodded and swung up onto Boudica’s back. I could not rise. If I let go of the grass, I would be in the water and over—I knew this as a certainty. But then I felt eyes upon me and looked over. The creature had his hands planted to the ground too. He was staring at me, the doll squashed beneath his hand upon the turf, sodden and smeared with… mud? Nothing would have led me to have something in common with what he seemed to be, so I rose to my feet. He glared at me as if I defied him. I climbed onto Xavier. The boy lifted himself from the ground and seemed about to approach me, but his mother came back from putting her feet in the water and swept him up under her arm, then carried him to the cart. I closed my eyes and let Xavier lead me back into the trees.

I think I got away with my unmanning this time. I did not run screaming through a cabin, breaking down doors and attacking guards. I did not weep or howl, or if I did, no one could hear me for the noise that stayed with us as we rode slowly along the riverbank and toward the fort. Aleksey possibly knew. But he was very taken with everything he was seeing and with the possibility of now finding the answer to the mystery of the abandoned fort, so he was not paying me too much attention. I was better away from the falls themselves, but even now I could not take my eyes off the water. I suppose it is not every day that you see something new. I had traveled fairly widely. I had met men in villages in England who had never been beyond their own borders, never even been to the next parish, although this is hard to believe. I had traveled from England to the New World, from there back to England and from there to Hesse-Davia through the low countries of Europe and now back here. I had seen many things, but nothing quite as not of this world as I saw now. This was a place that would truly make a man believe in the spirit world, or a world beyond one where he was supposed to dwell.