Imogen awoke to a chamber vastly transformed from the night before. She no longer slumped in the chair but lay across a soft mattress, covered in an embroidered blanket. Somewhere, between the chair and the bed, she’d lost her clothes except for her shift, and the feel of fine linen and silk on her skin made her sigh and loll deeper in the bed for a moment.
Cededa must have carried her from the chair to the bed. She frowned. The idea made her uneasy. Despite that first terrifying meeting, when he’d greeted her with a blade against her throat, he’d been hospitable. Still, he unnerved her, and she admonished herself for not being more alert.
Sheer netting enclosed the bed in a gauzy cocoon through which weak morning light filtered. She pushed the netting aside and swung out of bed, stumbling as her shift twisted around her legs.
The chamber’s ramshackle state had been replaced by one of pristine luxury. Like the bed, the rest of the furniture appeared new, wood gleaming with a softly polished glow. The fireplace remained unlit, but the inner hearth was freshly swept. She padded to one of the two narrow windows. Still no glass or shutters to cover these, but they didn’t need it. The air outside hung warm and damp, stirred briefly by the occasional breeze that swirled into the room.
This room occupied a high spot in the undamaged portion of the palace, and Imogen leaned out one of the window for a better look at the scenery beyond. Half concealed by mist made jaundiced by a weak sun, the broken city slumbered undisturbed by the voices of people or even bird song.
The oppressive silence that hung over Tineroth permeated the palace as well. Imogen left the window and padded to the door on bare feet. Even the hinges didn’t squeak as she opened it and peeked into the hallway. Only shadows greeted her. Wherever Cededa was, she suspected he’d remain unseen until he chose to reveal himself.
Assured of a modicum of privacy, she retreated into the room. Someone had left a pitcher of water and a bowl on a table by the bed. She found a chamber pot tucked under the bed and dry cloths stacked atop a clothes chest. She set to her morning ablutions, stripping off her shift to treat herself to a quick sponge bath.
The first touch on her neck, smooth and unblemished by the pendant scarring, made her cry out and then laugh. The room held no mirror to confirm what her fingers told her, but she sent Cededa a silent call of thanks for taking back his key. He was welcomed to it. She hoped never to see it or its like again in her lifetime.
She dressed in the one spare tunic and skirt packed away in her knapsack. Her journey clothes lay in a pile on the chair where she’d fallen asleep. If she could find a nearby stream, she’d wash them and lay them out to dry, though in this damp, Imogen doubted anything truly dried. Her lips quirked at the thought of asking an ancient mage-king if he knew where the washing bats and lye buckets might be stored.
There was still no sign of Cededa after she’d dressed and eaten from her dwindling supplies of journey food. The city beyond the windows beckoned with all its mysteries and ancient secrets. Who knew when the king might return, and she wished to see Tineroth in the daylight.
The shadows had only marginally lightened when she opened her door a second time and stepped into the hallway. The palace was a maze of cloisters and stairs, and Imogen tried to remember the path they’d taken the previous night that brought her to this chamber.
After three corridors and several blind turns, she was hopelessly lost in the palace’s belly. Had she not been raised by Niamh and surrounded by her mother’s earth magic, Imogen might have thought it her imagination, but the halls and stairs in this vast place changed their direction each time she made a turn or descended stairs, as if the palace teased her.
She paused in the middle of a long gallery illuminated by gray light that streamed through broken windows on the opposite wall. From where she stood, she glimpsed spires and rooftops spilling over with the ubiquitous vines, a pale sun obscured by clouds.
Hands on her hips, she exhaled a frustrated sigh. “Do you mind?” She called out to the silence. The sudden sensation of another presence—curious and distant, vast—swept across her flesh, leaving chills in its wake. Something listened.
Afraid but determined to find the front door without wandering this unending labyrinth for the next several hours, Imogen held her ground. “I wish only to go outside. To see the city of my childhood fables.” She held out both hands, palms up. “No harm intended. No malice planned.”
A weighty pause, as if that which observed her considered her for a moment before making a decision. A mist gathered in the darkness of the hallway facing her, rolling across the floor like surf over sand. Imogen clenched her teeth to keep them from chattering and crushed the instinctive urge to run. Niamh’s wisdom echoed in her mind.
“You don’t run from that which you don’t know. Such cowardice elicits bad judgment. Gain your knowledge first. Then decide to stand or flee.”
Sentient, purposeful, the vapor roiled toward her, swirling around her feet until it moved onward, pausing at the top of a set of stairs as if waiting for her to follow. She did, keeping a safe distance back. It might look like mist, but it certainly didn’t act like it, and if she looked from the corner of her eye instead of directly at the fog, she saw ghostly hands, the faint traces of faces, and the train of a gown in that swirling miasma. Gooseflesh pebbled her arms and back. Revenants. Tineroth was not only ruined, it was haunted.
The path on which it led her seemed straightforward and short, solidifying her suspicions to certainty that the palace itself had been playing a game of cat and mouse with her. She stood before the great double doors in no time. They opened of their own accord, and Imogen blinked in the pool of pallid sunshine that flooded the entrance. Feeling only a little ridiculous, she turned to the mist hovering behind her and bowed. “My thanks.”
That same otherworldly curiosity, overlaid with a hint of approval, buffeted her senses once more. The mist rolled back on itself, disappearing into the palace’s gloom. The doors closed after it on a dull thud as if urging her kindly not to dawdle on the steps.
Imogen shook her head. What a strange place Tineroth was with its pale, immortal king, and ghostly caretakers. She suspected that by the end of her stay here, she’d learn that the reality of the city far exceeded the fantastic tales told.
Tineroth stood even more derelict in the unforgiving daylight. Houses and temples had fallen to ruin, leaving only the skeletons of arches and broken columns standing as markers of where they once stood. Walls had collapsed, spilling rubble into grand avenues from which flowering weeds sprouted between the paver cracks. The houses and businesses leading off the main thoroughfare into alleyways made the temples look pristine by comparison, their hollow carcasses safe havens only for rodents and the ever encroaching vines.
Her light steps echoed in the silence. Imogen didn’t so much mind the quiet as the continuous sense of being observed. She didn’t think it was Cededa. He didn’t seem the type to lurk once he assessed a threat, and she was no danger to him or those things he protected. Something else watched, a new entity with the same curiosity she sensed while in the palace. The soul of the city itself?
An odd thwapping sound broke the almost sanctified hush, startling her. A repetitive sound punctuated by harsh breathing and several grunts, it was the most noise she’d heard since coming to Tineroth, outside of her initial conversation with its monarch.
She followed it like a beacon, sidestepping piles of rubble and clambering over short walls until she reached a long rectangular field surrounded on three sides by levels of stone seating. In the center, the Undying King exhibited his battle prowess, and Imogen forgot to breathe.
Man-sized effigies made of woven straw littered the field, hewn into pieces. Those that remained standing awaited their fate as Cededa spun and leapt, swinging the long glaive with as much ease as if he wielded a feather. Rivulets of sweat streamed off his bare torso, carving shining lines into alabaster muscle and plastering his pale hair to his shoulders and back. His dark trews stuck to his legs, the damp fabric delineating the long line of thigh and calf. He was moonlight and grace, speed and power. To Imogen, he danced on the air, lighter than a butterfly, faster than a striking viper. The glaive’s blade shone in the sun as it sang a metallic song and clove its straw victims into pieces. The thwapping noise had been their dismemberment.
Imogen shuddered and hugged herself. How many intruders into Tineroth had met just such a fate?
Still, she couldn't help but admire his masculine beauty. She was an innocent in body if not necessarily in mind. Niamh didn’t believe in keeping her child ignorant of the ways of people, even if she kept her isolated from them. Imogen had often watched the villagers and townspeople those few times she accompanied Niamh to market day, swathed in both concealing cloth and illusion. She’d admired some of the men, idly wondering what kind of husbands they might make. With no hope of ever forming any attachment with a man, she’d kept any longing at bay, forming no infatuation for any she glimpsed.
There were some so handsome as to make any village maid swoon, but none equaled the man standing before her. She dragged her gaze up from a slim waist with muscles tight enough she’d bet she could bounce a coin off them, to a sculpted back and wide shoulders. She didn't have to see his face to be reminded of those exquisite features. He must have broken scores of hearts when he ruled a living city.
A few more breathtaking spins and arcing cuts from the glaive, and Cededa came to a standstill.
“Good morning, Imogen,” he said before turning to face her.