SIX

THE WATCHTOWER

Stand away from her,” a familiar voice said.

The thing in the Sheriff’s body turned, slightly. Veronica couldn’t move, but she could see him from the corner of her eye, standing between her and the sheriff.

Shandor.

“You’re being foolish,” the Sheriff said.

“This is the March,” Shandor said. “My domain. She is under my protection.”

“The Marches are large,” the Sheriff said. “And this is not your portion of it. Even here you are no match for me.”

“Come, then,” Shandor said. “We will discover if that is true. Together.”

She heard a snick and, straining her neck, she saw he was holding a long, curved sword. He glanced at her.

“Go,” he said. “Get the girl away from here.” He nodded upslope. “That way.”

Instantly, she could move again. She scrambled up. The Brume moaned.

“What’s happening?” the girl asked.

“Come with me,” Veronica said. “Run.”

She pulled the girl to her feet. Behind her, she heard a sound, like an animal snarling, and the air suddenly felt like a balloon stretched to the point of exploding.

“Run!” she repeated.

When she looked back, it was hard to see anything; the wind had started again, picking up the snow and whirling it about. All she could make out were two shadows, coming together.

She thought then, that she ought to go back. To help Shandor.

But the wind redoubled, and suddenly others were there: a boy with flaming red hair and a slight young woman with long black braids.

The boy grabbed her wrist, and the girl the Brume’s. In an instant they were in the air, flying like the wind itself.

She knew them. The redhead was Haydevil, and the girl Mistral, brother and sister to the Brume.

Peat marsh and forest, meadow and taiga flew by beneath them. Veronica saw less and less green and more snow until there was nothing but white, and at last mountains of ice, splendid and blue beneath the persistent moon. The stars were clear and cold, the Milky Way so bright it almost outshone the cratered satellite.

The weirdest and most wonderful of all was the crackling, shifting curtain of colors that hung above the northern horizon. She didn’t know what it was, or how it came to be, but she knew she had never seen it back in the world of her birth. It had to be a product of magic, of the Kingdoms.

At last, they reached a pinnacle in the mountains more regular than the surrounding crags. Like the Mountain of the Winds, it was riddled with caves and tunnels. Soon, they were inside, where it was more stone than ice, in a great hall before a roaring fire.

Veronica did not feel cold; in the eternal night of this place, her heart had stayed quiet in her chest, and her lungs remained as deflated as balloons three days after the party. But she did find the joints of her limbs were stiff, and the heat helped thaw them so she didn’t move like a old woman. She wondered what would happen if she were outside on her own. Would she freeze solid, like a block of ice, still aware but unable to move, speak, or act? Or would she merely become very slow, as she had when the Brume worked her spell on her?

She didn’t know. There was so much about herself she didn’t know. She did recognize that if everything else was the same, but the sun was out, she would be dead now. Not almost dead or mostly dead, but well and truly dead.

Haydevil and Mistral were fussing over the Brume. Eventually they let their sister be and came over to Veronica.

“You’re lucky I can hear a pin drop a thousand miles away,” Haydevil said. “Else you surely would have perished back there, along with my awful, monstrous excuse for a sister.”

“Did you—do you know what happened? Between the Sheriff and Shandor?” Veronica asked.

“Eh—was that his name?” Haydevil asked. “Creature of the Pale, him. Brave to go against the Raggeman. Must have the sweets for you.”

“Do you know?” she pressed.

“We don’t know how he fared,” Mistral said. “We knew who you were. We didn’t know if he was friend or foe, but he was delaying the Raggeman, so we let him.”

“Veronica was looking for you guys, anyway,” the Brume said.

“We know that, goblin-girl,” Haydevil snapped.

“True,” Mistral said. “But we don’t know why. What is your quest, Veronica? Why did you seek us out?”

“I’m trying to find Errol,” she said. “From what you said last time we met, I figured you guys got around. A lot. I thought you might have seen him, or something. Please.” She looked down. “Now that I say it out loud, it sounds stupid, I know. Everything is so big here. But Aster and I had a fight, and I didn’t know what else to do. And I know you guys, and you kind of owe us a favor.”

“Eh—favor?” Haydevil said.

“Your mom,” he said. “The apple orchard? We solved your little giant problem.”

“He wasn’t little,” the Brume said. “He was really big.”

“They know what I mean,” Veronica said.

“It is true,” Mistral said. “We do owe you a kindness.”

“We’re hardly in a position to help anyone,” Haydevil protested. “Driven out of our castle, exiled here. And now the Raggeman knows we’re here, so we’ll have to find another place to hide. And anyway, no, we don’t know where your stick man is—we’ve been far too busy, as you see.”

“Hush, Haydevil,” Mistral said. “We must help her. Certainly we must. We may not know where Errol is, but we know someone who might, don’t we?”

“Do we?” Haydevil said.

Mistral glared at him. Haydevil folded his arms.

“But it’s so far,” he said.

“We’re going to have to leave anyway,” Mistral said. The Raggeman is on his way here.”

“What? Are you sure?”

“I hear him,” Mistral said. “As would you, I suppose, if he were a pin dropping.”

Haydevil’s mouth fell almost comically open.

Veronica felt oddly hollow. If the Sheriff—Raggedy Man? Whatever he was now—was on the way here, did that mean he had beaten Shandor? Was the Gypsy dead? Or had the Sheriff simply broken away from the fight to come after her?

Whatever happened, she hoped Shandor was okay. He seemed to be a decent guy. Maybe she didn’t want to be his queen, or whatever, but he had some good qualities.

“How?” Haydevil asked, incredulous. “How is he following us?” Then he frowned and pointed at Veronica.

“Wait,” he said. “How did he find you?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” Veronica said. “He was just—there.”

“We came the under way,” the Brume said. “It would have been hard to track us.”

“She must be calling him, somehow,” Mistral said.

“I most certainly am not,” Veronica said.

“No,” Mistral said. “Not on purpose. But do you have something—a charm, an amulet, a ring—something he might be able to sense from far away?”

“I don’t think so,” Veronica said. “I—”

Then she remembered. She reached into her pocket and pulled put the silver sphere.

Haydevil made a funny noise. Mistral’s eyes grew wide.

“The Silver Kingdom,” Mistral said. “That would do it.”

“That would absolutely do it,” Haydevil said.

“This means we have to leave now,” Mistral said. “We cannot wait. He will find us in moments.”

“He’ll follow us,” Haydevil said. “If we have this thing.”

“Then we won’t have it,” Mistral said. “I will take it and lead him off the trail. You take Veronica to the Watchtower.”

Haydevil stared at the sphere. “I want to see it,” he said. “Before you take it away. I’ve never seen one of those.”

Veronica handed the sphere toward him.

“What is it?” she asked. “Aster had it—”

She stopped when she saw the look of pure glee steal over Haydevil’s face.

“Devil!” Mistral cried. “No!”

“Nice try, sister,” he said. He turned once, twice, and spun so fast he was only a blur of color before he shot off through the tunnels.

Mistral started after him but had only gone a few feet before she turned back.

“You may well regret that,” she said. “But there is no time or sense in going after him, now. Come. Let’s go to the Watchtower.”

She took Veronica and the Brume by each of their hands and they were once again airborne, the mountain of ice dwindling behind them.

The world had run out of green. Below them now, Veronica only saw shades of white. The stars were more interesting; they grew brighter with each passing breath, and when she closed her eyes the larger ones left red spots, like the sun. The rainbow curtain drew nearer, too, and now she could hear it. It sounded like the crinkling of a hard candy wrapper or something tearing. It began as the thinnest whisper.

But it got louder, like someone turning up a radio tuned to static, almost but not quite on a station. At times she thought she caught part of a word or the rising tone of a question, an exclamation. The volume continued to grow, and now there were hundreds of voices trying to be heard. Just as she was almost able to understand some of it, just as it all was about to become clear—like the tuner finally finding a station—it started getting worse again, and quieter. The entire sky was alive with colors, but as the sound faded, so did the light. Soon the curtain was far behind them.

Veronica felt in her bones that they passed through some sort of border, just as they had when crossing the Pale into the Kingdoms. If so, where were they now?

The stars, still bright, grew even brighter. She remembered a night, which now seemed long ago, when she and Errol had laid on their backs in tall grass, and he had explained the constellations to her. That night, that moment, his voice, his presence, had changed her, or at least shown her the possibility for change. She knew lust well: the hunger of a man for a woman’s body, her own desire for the blackest part of a soul. But of love she had never known very much, and most of what she had known she had either forgotten or had been twisted by her years as a nov.

Love was peculiar, and it was terrifying. It required more than lust. Love wasn’t conquest or submission, it was connection, kinship that went beyond mere blood, acceptance—vulnerability. She wasn’t even sure it was something you could look for, but more something that found you.

It had found her that night. She hadn’t wanted it; she’d told herself she was playing a sort of game, that she would have a laugh at Errol’s expense when it was all over. If he’d a had a different reaction, that might have been how things went. Instead, she had changed.

She missed him. And she missed Aster, too, despite their quarrel. They were the closest thing to family she still had.

Ahead of them, a shadow blotted out the stars. Soon, however, it was more than shadow, for the starlight gleamed on snowy slopes and broke into pale rainbows where it struck the beveled faces of glaciers. Veronica had never imagined a mountain so large; it was like an entire world, unto itself. She wondered if it was even rooted in the Earth—or if instead it was simply floating in the sky, like the moon.

Mistral took them still higher, and the mountain kept rising, until even the ice no longer clung to the stone, for they were now higher than any cloud, beyond the kiss of sleet and snow. From there on it was only bare rock, cold and grey in the light of the stars.

Even after that, it was a long time before they finally reached the summit.

The mountain did not come to a perfect point, but instead split to form a valley. In the center of the valley a lay a nearly round pool.

They settled on the moon-colored stone of the valley rim, several hundred feet from the water.

It didn’t feel cold at all, but it was very still. So still, that Veronica realized the only motion besides the three of them was that of the stars. They moved very slowly of course, but most peculiar was how they moved. Rather than arcing across the sky from east to west, they appeared to be revolving around the mountain, with one star straight above that did not move at all.

“The Watchtower,” Mistral said. “From here, with keen eyes, one might see anything in the Kingdoms.”

“Is that why we’re here?” Veronica said. “To look for Errol? Do you have binoculars or something?”

“I will look,” Mistral said. “But I fear you are right—there is too much to see, and too little time. They say wisdom can be found in the pool below—if you dare.”

“If I dare?”

“Some who have looked in the pool have never returned. Others have, but were driven mad. If you want to know where Errol is, though, you must try.”

“Well,” Veronica said. “I guess I will, then.”

The pool was like a perfect mirror, the Milky Way reflected in a blaze upon its surface. And there was her own image, in shadow, but her eyes glowing faintly green. She paused, for a moment, thinking how inhuman she looked, how strange. What did others see when they saw her? What did Errol see?

Or Shandor?

She reached to touch the reflection of her hand and ripples distorted her image. Her mouth seemed to widen and fill with teeth, her hair to squirm like serpents.

Then there were only wavelets.

“Oh,” she said. She stood there for a moment, wondering what she was supposed to do. She stood like that for maybe two seconds.

Then a hand darted from the water, grabbed her arm, and pulled her in.