NINE

WOODEN HORSE

Errol sat, staring at the bundle. Lotus was back to her writing; she spoke without looking up.

“Why are you afraid of the armor?” she asked.

His first instinct was to deny his fear of it. A man wasn’t supposed to be afraid, right?

But what was the point? The truth was easier.

“Because I’m worried I won’t be able to take it off,” he said. She nodded her head a little. “I know what it’s like to lack choice,” she said. “Being in the pyramid wasn’t my choice. Watching men die to win me—I had nothing to say about that. And if it had been someone other than you, I would have had to marry him and be his sweet little poppet—no choice. So I understand.”

“Yeah,” Errol said. “I guess you do. The thing is, it’s starting to look like I don’t have a choice after all. If I go after Dusk again, and I don’t wear the armor, I’ll get creamed again. But this time it’ll be permanent.”

“How do you know the armor will help?”

“I don’t for sure,” he said. “But you know what? I’m tired of being weak. I’m sick of everyone else having to take up my slack.”

He started to unroll the bundle.

“Wait,” Lotus said. She put her pen down, stood, came over and sat cross-legged in front of him.

“First of all,” she said, “you got here, through the desert, without the armor.”

“I had a little help with that,” he said, and told the story of the lady in the cave.

“You showed compassion,” she said. “You thought you were saving a child. That’s why she helped you.”

“Maybe,” Errol said.

“Okay, but what about this, then? Maybe a hundred guys died trying to get to me. You made it. Without the armor. Without anything special.”

“I would have died if you hadn’t saved me,” he said.

“But nobody else got even that far,” she said. “Those other fellows, they had armor, magical horses—some of them had claws on their hands and feet, talking ropes, all kinds of things. They all failed. Errol, you made it because you aren’t strong, at least not physically. But you have a solid mind, a stout heart, and a good soul. Maybe you don’t need the armor.”

He looked back at the half-unrolled parcel. Then, with a sigh, he trundled it back up and tied it.

“Thanks,” he said.

“You’re welcome,” she said.

“But if you didn’t think I needed it, why did you bring it to me?” he asked.

“Djinn and I assumed it was yours. What we really thought you might want is the horse.”

Errol glanced over at the wooden steed.

“Where was it?” Errol asked.

“In the desert,” she said. “About halfway between the city and where your armor was.”

He remembered the trajectory of the horse when last he’d tried to ride it. Maybe it couldn’t go all that far on its own.

He had tried to ride it once, with disastrous results.

There was no way around it—he was going to have to try again.

He spent a moment finding the little gold sphere Dusk had given him before he’d been shot; it was still there, buried near the little stick. He tied the bundle of his armor around his shoulders, making a crude backpack. Then, feeling a little stupid, he walked over to the horse and pulled it upright. It was as heavy as he remembered.

He sat on it, trying to use his legs to balance.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s try this again. Let’s go get Dusk.”

“Wait,” Lotus said. She got up, stood on tiptoe, and kissed him on the cheek.

“Just so you know,” she said. “I think it probably wouldn’t have been terrible being married to you.”

“Thanks,” Errol said. He picked up the reins of the wooden horse and said the magic word.

The horse bucked violently, hurling him through the air to plow face-first into the sand.

But it didn’t fly away this time.

“Excellent start,” Lotus said.

His next try, he managed to stay on for two or three loud yelps; by the fourth he felt he was making progress. During one of his recoveries, he had a glance at what Lotus was working on. It looked suspiciously unlike writing, and more like a drawing of a cartoon character being thrown from a horse.

Finally, he sat on the thing, and it did nothing at all. He waited, bracing himself. Nothing.

He snapped the reins. Nothing happened.

He leaned forward. The horse shot up so fast he nearly lost his grip.

After a few moments, he found controlling the horse was easy enough, now that it was cooperating. He’d done some riding, western style, and the wooden steed responded to the reins and shifts in the carved saddle pretty much as he expected. The big difference was in the flying. If he went too hard on the reins his mount didn’t just turn, but also started a barrel roll. Leaning forward and back worked for up and down, respectively. If he’d had time, he might have spent a few days learning to control the thing, but he felt like he’d probably put this off as long as he ought to already.

When he first sighted the pyramid city from the air, he was lost in awe for a moment. It was bigger and more dazzling than he’d thought it was.

Then he noticed a lessening of the sun, although there were no clouds.

He banked hard to the right; the bird cut through the air where they would have been.

“Jesus,” he muttered. “This thing again.” He watched it spread it wings, brake, and begin climbing again “Okay,” he told the horse. “If that thing hits us, we’re done. Hurry.”

To his surprise, the horse flew a little faster. He urged it toward the top of the pyramid, but he knew the bird would get at least one more try at them.

It climbed until it was a speck, then came down like a thunderbolt.

“Wait,” he said, more to himself than the horse. “Hang on. If we veer too soon, it might still hit us.”

He barely had the sentence out of his mouth when the horse suddenly rolled hard to the right. He let go of the reins and wrapped his arms around the wooden neck, clamping his legs as hard as he could as the whole world suddenly spun around him. The horse turned upward and sped straight toward the descending raptor.

“No, no, no,” he told the horse. “Terrible idea. Really bad.”

For answer, the wooden steed doubled its speed.

Any second now, he thought. Any second, it’ll turn . . .

The bird thought so too. It figured out it wasn’t going to happen about the same moment Errol did, because it screeched in harmony with his scream.

In that last split second, the bird tried to avoid them, but it was too late for that. The horse slammed head first into one of its wings. The impact was so great, Errol lost his grip on the neck and slid back. He clinched his legs even harder around the horse’s saddle—or, really, the part of the horse shaped like a saddle. Then he had that weightless, belly-tickling feeling you got when jumping off of something high or ramping your bike over Fisher Creek.

Except that it kept going; the horse tumbled, uncontrolled.

Errol was able to clamber back up and clamp his arms around the neck; he grabbed the reins right at the bit and yanked.

For a heartbeat, the horse didn’t respond; then he felt his weight come back, increasing as the magical carving fought its former capitulation to gravity. Black spots appeared in his vision.

Then they were rising again, almost level with the ground. The glass pyramid was straight ahead, and Errol saw the bird folded awkwardly against it, slowly sliding down the side. He felt like hollering in victory, but it took everything he had just to hold on. Anyway, he hadn’t won yet.

A moment later, the horse dropped toward the terrace landing where the bird had dumped him before. Errol felt his heart beating, trying to catch up. He was ready to get off of the crazy thing, to put his feet back on solid ground.

But the horse didn’t land. Instead, it whipped through the narrow door at what felt like seven hundred miles per hour.

He had an erratic, blurred view of the tree, Lotus’s former rooms, and several floors of glass before he finally lost his grip somewhere above the garden, slamming into the top of a palm. It bent under his weight. Although it knocked a lot of his air out, he got a grip on the fronds, so when the tree snapped back it didn’t hurl him like a catapult. The leaves tore, though, and he tumbled unceremoniously to the garden floor.

“This is not good,” he mumbled, when he had enough wind back. He climbed to his feet. Everything was quiet, though, and after a moment or two he relaxed.

Where had the stupid horse gone? Back down to where Dusk had been held prisoner before? Errol didn’t know what kind if spell she had put on the damned carousel pony, but it was as buggy as all get-out.

He got his bearings and was starting toward the stairs when everything suddenly wasn’t quiet anymore. Someone was yelling, not that far away.

He heard a hiss, and a thwump! Suddenly he was staring at a golden arrow in the trunk of the tree next to him.

He ran the way the arrow had been going, trying to keep low, under cover of the trees.

Some rescue, he thought. This was worse than the last time—he hadn’t even made it to Dusk.

He was near enough to the side of the pyramid that he could see the stairway he had once descended. He also saw a bunch of guys in loincloths were coming down it. He zigged and zagged off to his left, trying to remember where the way down was. Maybe he could hide in the caves underneath the place, climb into one of the sarcophagi or something.

He caught a glimpse of gold through the leaves and threw himself forward, just as another arrow whizzed by his head. He rolled back to his feet, but he hadn’t made it five more steps before he saw he was surrounded by the cupid-things.

He stopped, panting. They had their arrows on their bows, but none of them looked like they were going to shoot. Probably they were waiting for Hawk to give the order, now that they had him cornered.

“Listen,” he said. “I know this looks bad—”

One of the golden boys yelped and drew his bow, aiming over Errol’s head. The weapon snapped, the arrow flew—

Something banged into him. Something big, with black-feathered wings. Errol smelled sulfur.

It moved fast; it turned and reared up, kicking sharp hooves at another of the bad cupids. Its eyes blazed red, and suddenly, so did its mouth, spewing flame in a semi-circle that sent his attackers scrambling back into the vegetation.

Only then did he understand what he was looking at; it was Drake, Dusk’s horse as he had last seen it, bigger than any horse had a right to be, dark red and black winged—sort of half-horse, half-feathered dragon.

Dusk was mounted on the beast, holding out her hand to him.

“Come on,” she said. “We don’t have much time.”

He didn’t stop to think. He jumped up and took her hand. She pulled so hard his arm nearly came out of its socket, but then he was on the horse, wrapping his arms around Dusk’s waist.

Drake jumped and beat his wings, coughing out more fire, and suddenly the now-smoking garden was dwindling below them as they flew toward the balconies above.

Once out of the pyramid, Drake went nearly straight up, leveling out only when the pyramids below looked no larger than a collection of children’s toys. Soon the city was completely out of sight, and they were winging over what appeared to be endless desert.

“I thought you were dead,” she said. “I am . . . happy I was wrong. But how?” She had to shout because of the wind generated by Drake’s flight.

“Lotus,” he shouted in her ear. “Came back for me. Brought me some fruit.”

She nodded to show she understood.

“Thank you, Errol.”

“Nothing to it,” he shouted back. “Where are we headed?”

“You tell me,” she said. “The Kingdom of Gold. You have it.”

“What?”

“The sphere I gave you.”

“Oh.” He fumbled in his pocket, and brought it out.

“What do I do?” he asked.

“Close your eyes,” she said. “Think of Aster—and hope she found the sphere I left her.”

He did as she said, trying to picture Aster, with her almost-red hair, her funny nose, a look of vexation on her face.

He wasn’t sure what was supposed to happen, but nothing did.

He tried thinking of her as he’d last seen her, in the hospital, Veronica standing by her side.

Veronica. He felt a pulse of guilt at the thought of her.

In his fist, the sphere stirred, pulling his hand until it was pointing off to their left.

Dusk, glancing back, saw.

“Very well,” she said. She turned Drake in that direction.

Desert gave way to mountains, and beyond the mountains green jungle and a river delta like a million half-coiled silver snakes, then a long, sandy strand, followed by a blue-green ocean. The sun had finally moved toward the west, in the direction they were traveling, although it was still far from the horizon.

Finally, they passed over a green archipelago, and Dusk circled Drake down for a landing. They dismounted on a rocky beach overseen by a jumbled forest of giant ferns and palms.

“Drake needs to rest, and eat,” she said.

“I could use a break, too,” Errol said, as she unsaddled the beast. When she was done, it trotted into the jungle.

The sun was still not touching the horizon, but it was quite low, and that made a huge difference. It was cool, and the wind from the sea made it more so.

“Neat trick,” he said. “The wooden horse was Drake all along.”

“Drake could not exist as such in the Reign of the Departed,” she said. “I didn’t transform him back immediately because we didn’t stand a chance against Hawk and his people. I hoped if left him in wooden form, you could ride to my rescue. And you did.”

“Eventually,” he said.

“You did well with him. I’m glad he didn’t kill you.”

“Yeah,” Errol said. “Me too.”

“Errol,” Dusk said.

“Yeah?”

For a moment, she seemed to have trouble choosing her words, which was unusual for her.

“Why?” she asked.

“Why what?”

“You came back for me. Again. After what they did to you. After what I’ve done to you.”

He had seen Dusk in a lot of situations. In battle, captive, attacking him. He had even seen her mortally wounded. Even then, he had never seen her looking so . . . vulnerable. It was shocking.

“I—ah—why don’t we have a little fire? I’ll get some wood. I assume you can do some sort of hocus-pocus to make it burn?”

She nodded.

“Great,” he said, and went to collect some sticks.

To Errol’s surprise, Dusk started the fire with flint and steel rather than magic, throwing sparks into a little wad of dried fern and threads of palm bark, gently breathing them to more ardent life. She placed it in the little tent of sticks he’d built, and soon the fire was burning merrily.

Errol sat across from Dusk, who still looked thoughtful.

“You’ve been a better companion to me than I deserve,” she said, after a little while. “If you will bear with me, I will try to explain myself. Not to excuse my actions, but so you will understand them.”

“Okay,” Errol said.

“When the curse came, I was ten years old. My mother was queen. Our mansion was filled with siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, servants, and all. They became strange, distant from us, their children. Soon after, my mother vanished and within days the other adults went missing or became stone or beasts in the woodlands. We began to understand we were on our own. Like those boys we first met, yes, you and I?”

“Jobe and those guys,” he said. “Yeah, I remember.” He also remembered how cruel and lawless they had become, and that they had not come to a good end, any of them.

“I have two brothers and two sisters. Hawk you have met; he is eldest. There are also my sisters Nocturn and Dawn and my brother Gloam. Hawk made himself king, and we accepted that at first, for each of us had palaces and lands to spare. He gave Nocturn the north to rule, Dawn the east, Gloam the south, and me the west. I made it my quest to discover the cause of the curse, its nature, and what its ultimate affects might be. As we grew older, would we, too fade into obscurity? I had to know.

“I traveled much, to many far kingdoms. I found a few answers, and many more questions. But at the heart of it all was Kostye Dvesene, Aster’s father, my—stepfather.”

“Wait, wait,” Errol said. “Your stepfather?”

“My father died before I was born. My mother married Kostye when I was very little. It was a political match, for the good of the Kingdoms. I did not know him, only that my mother hated him. He is the most powerful sorcerer our histories tell of, and history is steeped in his evil. Empires rose and fell at his whim. It was said he once stopped the very sun in her track across the sky.

“Not long after they married, he withdrew to a mountain fastness, deep in the wilderlands. He stayed there for many years and then—for no reason anyone can tell—he loosed the curse upon the world and fled it. He was pursued, of course. But all who confronted him perished or were caught by the curse.

“I came to believe he had escaped to the Reign of the Departed, where most magic cannot reach. It took a long time, but I was finally near to finding him when I ran across you, and Aster and Veronica.”

“Yeah. You decided to tag along with us.”

“To discover Aster’s aims. I assumed she was on a mission for her father. When I learned she sought the water of health, I reasoned that I could use it to restore my mother, or better , find the source of the curse and use it there. First I had to wrest control of the Kingdom from Hawk, who had become somewhat deranged and declared war on the rest of us. After leaving you in the castle of gold. I went to Aster’s father and convinced him I was she.”

“That’s what she figured,” Errol said. “You took her pictures, and her diary.”

“It worked at first,” she said. “We returned, and my brother fled before Kostye’s power. My sister Nocturn fought, but her lands were conquered. Gloam, my brother, surrendered to him. Dawn, the youngest of us, vanished. I set about trying to right things. Kostye’s memory was still strange, at that time. Once, when mad with drink, he spoke of the ‘island where it all began.’ I went in search of it. When I returned, the chancellor, Vilken had come, and everything was changed. Vilken—I will say more of him later. The point is that when I tried to convince Kostye I was his daughter, he didn’t remember having any daughter at all. He imprisoned me, but I escaped.”

“What does all of this have to do with me?”

She lowered her head. “You think I am heartless,” she said. “But everything I did, I thought it was best for my Kingdom. My people. When I left you, I knew I was abandoning you to your doom. I—regretted it. Later—after fleeing Kostye—I went back to see what had happened. I found you, or what was left of you, and I took the remains to certain women I knew of. They told me you yet lived, and that you might be my companion in all of this. My helper. They made the arms and armor you still carry. Then I followed Billy’s trail back to you.”

“Because you thought I would help.”

“I did,” she said. “And I was right. The weavers were right.”

Errol poked at the fire. “You don’t get off that easy,” he said. “You could have told us. Aster would have—”

“Aster had only one goal,” Dusk said. “Her father came before everything else. I could not let her cure him. If he remembered everything he was, if no one had control of him, I feared he would do terrible things.”

“But that’s exactly what happened, right?”

“No,” she said. “It’s far worse. Vilken holds his reins, now. I’m not sure how, exactly, but he is able to control him as I was not.”

“Why is that so bad? Who is this Vilken guy?”

“Back in the far-off days, they say Kostye and Vilken were friends, or at least trusted peers. Something changed between them. After Kostye made the curse, Vilken and others set out after him. Vilken’s companions all died. He himself forgot who he was, and became exiled in the Reign of the Departed. You know him as the Sheriff.”

He let that sink in.

“Aster said she blew him off the roof. That’s a long fall.”

“Vilken is not frail,” she said. “But he is—different now. Not the Sheriff, but perhaps not as he was before, either. Kostye has forgotten the strife between them—he remembers him as a peer.”

“What does Vilken want?” Errol asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t know what he actually wants, because I don’t know what he is. He’s convinced Kostye the curse can be broken by sacrifice.”

“What sort of sacrifice?”

She laughed, roughly.

“A thousand worthy girls,” she said.

For a moment, he couldn’t find any reply to that at all.

“That’s insane,” he finally said.

Dusk nodded. “You see how serious it is.”

“Then what the hell are we doing? What was your plan?”

“My plan was to convince Hawk to become my ally against Kostye and Vilken. Short of that, I meant to steal the Kingdom of Gold and flee. I was afraid I would fail. I needed you to come get me if I did. As you would say, you were my back-up.”

“You could have explained that to me.”

“I thought I would need to win you over before explaining,” she said. “I thought I would have time. Once again, I was wrong.”

“What now?”

“We need Aster,” Dusk said. “I hoped we wouldn’t, but without Hawk or Nocturn we have no hope of taking the fortress or invading Vilken’s demesne, where the girls are sent.”

“Fine,” Errol said. “Let’s go get her, then.”

Dusk stood up. He rose, too, thinking she was ready to go. Instead of calling Drake, she stepped around the fire until she was right in front of him.

“You never answered my question,” she said. “Why?”

Errol didn’t usually know when a girl wanted him to kiss her. Usually, they had to either make the first move or send him an unmistakable signal.

“You should kiss me,” Dusk said.