LITMIR.BIZ

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about apples as he scurried back upstairs, thinking instead of the little wooden figure in the box – The Present King, Your Uncle. Tobin wondered excitedly if he’d be wearing his golden crown, and if he’d let Tobin hold Ghërilain’s sword.

      His mother was still by the window. ‘Who was that on the road, child?’

      Tobin ran to the window but couldn’t see anyone coming yet. He flopped down in his chair, panting for breath. ‘Father sent Tharin ahead – the King – the King is coming! He and Father are –’

      ‘Erius?’ Ariani shrank back against the wall, clutching the doll. ‘He’s coming here? Are you certain?’

      The demon’s cold, angry presence closed in around Tobin, so strong it felt hard to breathe. Parchments and inkpots flew from the table and scattered across the dusty floor.

      ‘Mama, what’s wrong?’ he whispered, suddenly afraid of the wild look in his mother’s eye.

      With a choked cry, she lunged for him and half-dragged, half carried him from the room. The demon raged around them, blowing up the dry rushes into whirling clouds and knocking the lamps from their hooks. She paused in the corridor, looking wildly around as if seeking some way to escape. Tobin tried not to whimper as her fingers dug into his arm.

      ‘No, no, no!’ she muttered. The rag doll’s blank, dingy face peeped out at Tobin from under her arm.

      ‘Mama, you’re hurting me. Where are we going?’

      But she wasn’t listening to him. ‘Not again. No!’ she whispered, pulling him towards the third-floor stairs.

      Tobin tried to pull away but she was too strong for him. ‘No, Mama, I don’t want to go up there!’

      ‘We must hide!’ she hissed, gripping him by both shoulders now. ‘I couldn’t last time. I would have. By the Four, I would have but they wouldn’t let me! Please, Tobin, come with Mama. There’s no time!’

      She pulled him up the stairs and along the corridor to the tower stairs. When Tobin tried to pull away this time, unseen hands shoved him forward from behind. The door flew open before them, slamming back against the wall so hard that one of the panels splintered.

      Panicked birds flapped and screeched around them as she wrestled Tobin up the stairs to the tower room. This door slammed shut behind them and the wine table flew across the room, narrowly missing Tobin’s shoulder as it smashed across the doorway, blocking his escape. Dusty tapestries flew from the walls and the shuttered windows banged wide. Sunlight flooded in on all sides, but the room remained dim and deathly cold. Outside they could hear a great company of riders now, coming up the road.

      Ariani released Tobin and paced frantically around the room, weeping with one hand pressed over her mouth. Tobin cowered by the broken table. This was the mother he knew best – hurtful and unpredictable. The rest of it had all been a lie.

      ‘What are we to do?’ she wailed. ‘He’s found us again. He can find us anywhere. We must escape! Lhel, you bitch, you promised me …’

      The jangle of harness grew louder outside and she dashed to the window overlooking the front court. ‘Too late! Here he is. How can he? How can he?’

      Tobin crept up beside her, just close enough to peek down over the sill. His father and a group of strangers in scarlet cloaks were dismounting. One of them wore a golden helmet that shown in the sun like a crown.

      ‘Is that the King, Mama?’

      She yanked him back, clutching him so close that his face was pressed against the doll. It had a sour, musty smell.

      ‘Mark him,’ she whispered, and he could feel her trembling. ‘Mark him, the murderer! Your father brought him here. But he won’t have you this time.’

      She dragged him to the opposite window, the one that overlooked the mountains to the west. The demon overturned another table, spilling mouthless dolls across the floor. His mother whirled at the noise, and Tobin’s head hit the corner of the stone sill hard enough to daze him. He felt himself falling, felt his mother pulling at him again, felt sunlight and wind on his face. Opening his eyes, he found himself hanging out over the sill, looking down at the frozen river.

      Just like the last time she’d brought him here.

      But this time she was crouched on the sill beside him, tear-stained face turned to the mountains as she grasped the back of Tobin’s tunic and tried to pull him out.

      Overbalancing, he thrashed back wildly, grasping for anything – the window casing, his mother’s arm, her clothing – but his feet were already tipping up over his head. He could see the dark water moving like ink beneath the ice. For an instant his mind skittered on ahead; would the ice break when he landed on it?

      Then his mother screamed and tumbled past him, skirts and wild black hair billowing around her as she fell. For an instant they looked one another straight in the eye and Tobin felt as if a bolt of lightning passed between them, joining them just for a second eye to eye, heart to heart.

      Then someone had Tobin by the ankle, dragging him roughly back into the room. His chin struck the outer edge of the sill and he spun down into darkness with the taste of blood in his mouth.

      Rhius and the King were about to dismount when they heard a shriek echo behind the keep.

      ‘By the Flame! Is it that demon of yours?’ Erius exclaimed, looking around in alarm.

      But Rhius knew the demon had no voice. Pushing past the other riders, he ran out the gate, seeing already in his mind’s eye what he should have anticipated, what he would see again and again in his dreams for the rest of his life: Ariani at an upper window that should have been tightly shuttered, catching the glint of her brother’s golden helm at the bottom of the meadow, imagining …

      He stumbled along the riverbank, following the keep wall around a final corner. There he stopped, and let out an anguished cry at the sight of bare white legs splayed awkwardly between two boulders at the river’s edge. He ran to her and tugged down her skirts, which had blown up around her head as she’d fallen. Looking up, he saw the tower bulking over them. There were no other windows on this side but the single square one directly overhead. The shutters were open.

      A rock had broken her back, and her head had struck the ice and split. Black hair and red blood spread out around her face in a terrible corona. Her beautiful eyes were open and fixed in an expression of anguish and outrage; even in death she accused him.

      Recoiling from that gaze, Rhius staggered back into the arms of the King.

      ‘By the Flame,’ Erius gasped, staring down at her. ‘My poor sister, what have you done?’

      Rhius clutched his fists against his temples, resisting the urge to pull back and strike the man in the face.

      ‘My king,’ he managed, sinking down beside her. ‘Your sister is dead.’

      Tobin remembered falling. As consciousness gradually returned he became aware of a hard floor under him and instinctively pressed his belly to it, too terrified to move. Somewhere nearby echoing voices were talking all at once but he couldn’t understand the words. He didn’t know where he was or how he had got there.

      Opening his heavy eyelids at last, he realized that he was in the tower room. It was very quiet here.

      The demon was with him. He’d never felt it so strongly. But there was something different about it, though he couldn’t say just what.

      Tobin felt very strange, like he was in a dream, but the pain in his chin and mouth told him he wasn’t. When he tried to remember how he’d gotten up here his mind went all fuzzy and loud, as if his head was full of bees.

      His cheek hurt where it was pressed to the stone floor. He turned his head the other way and found himself looking into the blank face of his mama’s doll, which lay just inches from his outstretched hand.

      Where could she be? She never left the doll behind, not ever.

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