The Unmaking (The Last Days of Tian Di, #2)(62)

Lai nodded her head. “This is true. Perhaps you are wondering why your mother remains weak. We cannot heal her because your mother is not wounded. It is not injury she suffers, but a lack. It is not a question of healing, but of wholeness.”

“I’m not talking about my mother,” said Eliza.

Lai raised her eyebrows and waited.

“A being who suffers...you could ease the pain? Even if the suffering were caused by Magic?”

“I know nothing of Magic,” said Lai. “But we can ease pain and heal the wounded.”

“And is it true that the Sorma can tame any beast, however wild?”

“This is also true.”

“Then I need your help,” said Eliza.





Chapter


15

Gautelen Mon Lil Mon Shol was half Storm Seamstress, half witch. She was seventeen years old and until a year ago she had been happy. For one year now, though she lived as a queen in the heart of the Faery Kingdom, a place whose beauty outstripped any other place in the worlds, her heart felt like a stone sinking fast through dark water. When she woke in the mornings and remembered where she was, she wished with all her being that she could return to her dreams and never have to walk through another waking day as Queen of the Faeries. All the beauty around her, all the beauty of her husband, was dead to her. The world of Illusion was a prism of glittering despair. Because the lives of her parents depended on her obedience, she performed her duty as Queen and as wife, but she did so with her teeth clamped tight over a rage she would not once have believed herself capable of. When the Faeries asked for a storm, she lit up the sky with colour and sound and they were delighted. She could not give them the storm she longed to make – the hail of destruction, the bolts of flame, the wind that screamed all her despair. But just such a storm had been called for a few days earlier, from a power greater than she had ever known. She had given it with all her heart, feeling in the demand for it a fury that matched her own. That storm had given Gautelen some small relief and she was still weary from it.

She had spent the morning walking in a desultory manner through the Illusions her Faery attendants provided to entertain her when the king was busy. A diamond bridge spanned a starry night sky, but she barely noticed her surroundings. Bored, she napped in a flower as large as a house. On a hillside brilliant with heather overlooking a white city of spires and towers, birds serenaded her and sat on her shoulders, but they were not real and she paid them no mind. It was all false, false, and the wondrous sights had no effect on her. Lying back in the heather, for a moment she thought she smelled the sea. She sat upright immediately, filled with longing. The birds scattered, frightened by something. The heather around her turned black.

Yes, there was salt on the breeze. The Faeries who attended her looked confused. Something glinted further down the hill, like a window of light suddenly opening. Gautelen leaped to her feet and ran towards it. It was a long mirror. She scowled at her reflection as she approached it. Her bright silk robe and the jewels that decked her arms and throat and hair disgusted her. The diamonds around her neck were like shackles. She fingered the brilliant gems, her anger working a slow burn in her, then tore them from her throat and threw them to the ground. She pulled the jewels from her hair also, until she stood before the mirror with diamonds, emeralds, sapphires and gold scattered on the ground at her feet, hair disheveled, the fury she could not act upon throttled in her throat.

“I hate you,” she said in a trembling voice to her reflection. As soon as she had spoken, another woman appeared behind her in the mirror, a lovely women in a robe that matched her own, still decked with jewels, but this woman was fair-skinned with golden hair.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t let that pass,” said the woman. Her voice was honey-sweet and smooth. “Hate is a confusing emotion, I know, but it’s important to keep it focused on those who have deserved it. Never misdirect it at yourself, you poor girl. That is an amateur’s mistake.”

Gautelen looked behind her in alarm, but she was alone on the hillside. The charred heather had risen up in a twisted wall, separating her from her attendants.

“Am I going mad?” she asked unhappily.

“Far from it, your Majesty.” The apparition in the mirror stroked her wild hair but Gautelen could not feel the touch. “Everything is about to come out right. Now promise me you’ll never say such a thing to yourself again!”

Gautelen was baffled but not particularly afraid. What did she have to fear?

“I promise,” she said.

“Good girl. You’re young and you’ve led a sheltered life,” said the apparition. “When it comes to hate, you are terribly inexperienced. So take it from one who has been at this game a great deal longer than you – self-hatred is a fool’s capitulation. Revenge is the only relief.”

The apparition stepped out of the mirror onto the hillside, a flesh-and-blood woman, and Gautelen knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that her closed and dreary world was about to be blasted wide open. She spent her days surrounded by beauty that did not touch her, but this woman’s beauty made her ache with unshed tears, revived the near-dead memory of joy. Perhaps it was because she was powerful and free and Gautelen was not. Or perhaps it was because she brought with her a rush of hope Gautelen had not felt since before her wedding day.

“I was Queen of the Faeries too, once upon a time,” said the woman with a knowing smile. Then Gautelen understood whom it was that stood before her.