Phantom: Chainfire Trilogy Part 2

Chapter 26

Rachel yawned. Seemingly out of nowhere, Violet spun around and clouted her hard enough to knock her off the rock she’d been sitting on.

Stunned, Rachel pushed herself up on an arm. She cradled her cheek in one hand, waiting for the stupefying pain to loosen its grip, waiting for everything around her to come back into focus. Satisfied, Violet turned back to her work.

Rachel had been so groggy from not sleeping that she hadn’t been paying attention, allowing Violet’s blow to take her completely by surprise. Rachel’s eyes watered with the tingling hurt but she knew better than to say anything or to make a show of the pain.

“Yawning is impolite, at best, disrespectful at worst,” Violet’s plump face peered back over her shoulder. “If you don’t behave, then the next time I’ll use the whip.”

“Yes, Queen Violet,” Rachel answered in a meek voice. She knew all too well that Violet wasn’t making an empty threat.

Rachel was so tired she could hardly keep her eyes open. She had once been Violet’s “playmate” but now she seemed to be nothing more than an object of abuse.

Violet had become preoccupied with extracting revenge. At night she had an iron device fastened in Rachel’s mouth. It was a terrifying process. Rachel was made to stick her tongue into a beaklike clamp made of two flat, scored pieces of iron. The jaws were then tightened down hard enough to grip her tongue.

Resisting, Rachel had learned, earned her a whipping followed by guards prying her mouth open and then using painful tongs on her tender tongue to help accomplish the task of getting it placed in the clamp. They always won in the end; her tongue had nowhere to hide. Once the clamp was on her tongue, then the iron mask that was a part of it was locked around her head to kept her tongue immobile.

Once it was on, Rachel couldn’t speak. It was hard even to swallow.

After that, Violet locked her in her old iron box for the night. She said she wanted Rachel to know what it was like to be mute and in pain.

And it was painful. Being locked in her iron cage all night with that terrible device clamped down on her tongue had nearly driven her crazy. At first, terrified out of her mind by the feeling of being trapped and alone, unable to get out, unable to get that painful thing off, she had screamed and screamed. Chuckling, Violet merely threw a heavy rug over the box to mute Rachel’s cries. Crying and screaming, though, only made the iron jaws pinching her tongue hurt all the more and leave her bloody.

But what finally made her stop crying and screaming was that Violet came and put her face right up to the little window and said that if Rachel didn’t be quiet, she would have Six cut Rachel’s tongue out for real. Rachel knew that Six would do it if Violet asked.

After that she didn’t scream or carry on. She instead curled up in a ball in her little iron prison and tried to remember all the things Chase had taught her. That, in the end, was what had calmed her.

Chase would have told her not to think of her present predicament, but to keep watching for the time when she could get herself out of it. Chase had taught her how to watch for patterns in the way people behaved, and openings where they weren’t paying attention. So, that was what she did as she lay in the iron box every night, unable to sleep as she waited for morning to come, waited for the men who would pull her out of the box and remove the terrible device for the day.

Rachel could hardly eat because her tongue was so raw and scraped—not that they gave her much to eat anyway. Each morning her tongue throbbed painfully for hours after the clamp was removed. Her jaws hurt, too, from her mouth being held open all night by the device. Eating hurt. But then, when she did eat, everything tasted like dirty metal. Talking hurt, too, so she only spoke when Violet asked her something. Violet, seeing how Rachel would avoid speaking, would sometimes smile in a contemptuous manner and call Rachel her little mute.

Rachel was completely dispirited by once again being in the clutches of such a wicked person, and sad beyond anything she had ever known because Chase was gone. She couldn’t get the memory of him being so brutally hurt out of her mind. She grieved endlessly for him. Her heartache, misery, and utter loneliness seemed unendurable. When Violet wasn’t at her drawing lessons, or ordering people to do things, or eating, or trying on jewels, or being fitted for dresses, then she amused herself by hurting Rachel. Sometimes, reminding Rachel of how she had once threatened her with a fire stick, Violet would hold Rachel by the wrist and put a little white-hot ember from the fire on her arm. Still, Rachel’s sorrow for Chase hurt her worse than anything Violet could ever do to her. With Chase gone, it almost didn’t matter what happened to her.

Violet needed to “discipline” Rachel, as she’d put it, for all the terrible things Rachel had done. Violet had decided that losing her tongue had in large part somehow been Rachel’s fault. Violet had said that it was going to take a long time for Rachel to earn forgiveness for such a serious transgression, and also for showing disrespect by escaping the castle. Violet viewed Rachel’s escape as a shameful rejection of what she called their “generosity” to a worthless orphan. She often went on and on at great length about all the trouble she and her mother had gone to for Rachel only to have her turn out to be an ungrateful waif.

When Violet eventually tired of hurting her, Rachel suspected that she would be put to death. She’d heard Violet ordering the deaths of prisoners accused of “high crimes.” If someone displeased her enough, or if Six told her that the person was a threat to the crown, then Violet would order their execution. If the person had made the grave mistake of openly questioning Violet’s authority, or rule, then Violet would tell her guards to make it slow, and make it painful. She sometimes went to watch, just to make sure that it was.

Rachel remembered back when Queen Milena had ordered executions and Violet had first begun to go watch. As her playmate, Rachel had to go along with her. Rachel always averted her eyes from the ghastly sight; Violet never did.

Six had set up a whole system whereby people could secretly report the names of those people who said things against the queen. Six had told Violet that people who made such secret reports had to be rewarded for their loyalty. Violet paid handsomely for the names of traitors.

Since the time when Rachel had been with her before, Violet had acquired a new fondness for inflicting pain. Six often commented that pain was a good teacher. Violet had become exceedingly fond of the notion that she controlled the lives of others, that on her word other people could be made to suffer.

She had also become acutely suspicious of everyone. Everyone but Six, that was, who she’d come to rely on as the only person who could be trusted. Violet greatly distrusted most of her “loyal subjects,” frequently referring to them as nobodies. Rachel remembered that Violet used to call her a nobody.

When Rachel had lived at the castle before, people had been careful to watch themselves lest they cross the wrong people, but it was more a sense that they were just being on their toes. People had been afraid of Queen Milena, and with good reason, but they still would smile and laugh at times. The wash women would gossip, the cooks would now and then make funny faces in the food, the cleaning staff would whistle as they went about their chores, and the soldiers would sometimes tell jokes to one another as they walked the halls of the castle during guard duty.

Now there was quiet quaking whenever Queen Violet or Six were around. None of the cleaning staff, the washwomen, the seamstresses, the cooks, or the soldiers ever smiled or laughed. They all looked afraid all the time as they hurried to do their work. The atmosphere at the castle now was always charged with terror that, at any time, anyone might be pointed out. Everyone went out of their way to openly show respect for the queen, especially in front of her tall, grim advisor. People seemed to fear Six just as much as they feared Violet. When Six smiled with that strange, empty, snakelike smile she had, people would stand frozen in place, wide-eyed, sweat breaking out across their brows, and then swallow in relief after she had glided out of sight.

“Right here,” Six said.

“Right here, what?” Violet asked as she gnawed on a bread stick.

Rachel eased herself back up on the rock where she had been sitting. She reminded herself to pay more attention. The slap was her own fault for getting bored and not paying attention.

No, it wasn’t, she told herself. It was Violet’s fault. Chase had told her not to take on blame that belonged to others.

Chase. Her heart sank yet again thinking about him. She had to put her mind to other things lest she end up being so sad thinking about him that she start to weep. Violet was not at all tolerant of anything Rachel did without permission. That included crying.

“Right there,” Six said again with exaggerated patience. When Violet only stared at her, Six drew a long finger across the face of the torchlit rock wall. “What is missing?”

Violet leaned in, peering at the wall. “Umm . . .”

“Where is the sun?”

“Well,” Violet said in a snippy voice as she stood up straight again and waggled a finger at the yellow disc, “right there. Surely you can see that this is the sun.”

Six glared at her a moment. “Yes, of course I see that it’s the sun, my queen.” Her empty smile returned. “But where is it in the sky?”

Violet tapped the chalk against her chin. “The sky?”

“Yes. Where is it in the sky? Straight up?” Six pointed her finger skyward. “Are we meant to understand that we are looking straight up at the sun in the sky? Is it high noon?”

“Well, no, of course it’s not high noon—you know it can’t be. It’s supposed to be late in the day. You know that, too.”

“Really? And how are we to know that? After all, it makes no difference what I know it must be. The drawing must say what is. It can’t elicit comment from me, now, can it?”

“I guess not,” Violet admitted.

Six again drew her finger across the wall beneath the sun. “What’s missing, then?”

“Missing, missing . . .” Violet muttered. “Oh!” She quickly drew a straight line right where Six had indicated with her finger. “The horizon. We need to fix the time of day with the horizon. You told me that before. I guess it slipped my mind.” She glared over at Six. “It’s a lot to remember, you know. All this stuff is hard to keep straight.”

Six held the cold smile frozen in place. “Yes, my queen, of course it is. I apologize for forgetting how hard it was for me to learn all these things way back when I was your age.”

The drawing that Violet was working on was complex beyond anything else in the cave, but Six was always there to remind Violet of the right thing to draw at the right time.

Violet shook the chalk at Six. “You would be well advised to keep that in mind.”

Six carefully knitted her fingers together. “Yes, my queen, of course.” She pursed her lips and finally drew her glare away from Violet as she turned back to the wall. “Now, at this point we need the star chart for this domain. I can give you the lesson in the specific reasons later, if you want, but for now why don’t I just show you what’s necessary?”

Violet glanced to where Six was pointing and shrugged. “Sure.” She went back to sucking on the bread stick as she waited.

Six opened a small book. Violet leaned in, squinting in the flickering light. Six tapped the page with a long nail as Violet finally bit through the crunchy bread stick.

“See the azimuth? Remember the lesson about the referent angle to the horizon for this star, here?”

“Yes . . .” Violet drawled, looking like she actually did know what Six was talking about. “That would involve this angular reference, here, then. Right?”

“Yes, that’s right. It’s an aspect of the binding agent that ties it all together.”

Violet nodded. “In turn tying it to him . . .” she said, thoughtfully.

“That’s right. The link is one element of what is necessary to lock it in place at the time of the concluding connection. That, in turn, makes the horizon you just drew necessary to fix this angle. Otherwise it would be a floating correlation.”

Violet was nodding again. “I think I see, now, why they have to connect. If the interrelationship is not fixed”—she straightened and gestured to an arc of symbols—“then these could happen any time. Today, tomorrow, or, or, I don’t know, a dozen years from now.”

Six smiled in a sly manner. “Correct.”

Violet smiled in triumph at her accomplishment. “But where do we get all these symbols, and how do we know where to use them in the drawing? For that matter, how do we know that they are needed at the precise points that you had me draw them?”

Six took a patient breath. “Well, I could teach it all to you first, but that will take about twenty years of study. Are you willing to wait that long for vengeance?”

Violet’s frown darkened. “No.”

Six shrugged. “Then I suggest that the shortcut of me helping direct the design is the shortest route to the result.”

Violet screwed up her mouth. “I suppose.”

“You have the basics, my queen. You are doing quite well for this stage of developing your talent. I assure you, even though I am helping you with some of the complexities, none of this would function without your considerable talent added in. I couldn’t make this work without your ability.”

Violet smiled like a prize pupil. Taking another careful look in the volume Six was holding open, Violet finally went back to the wall, carefully drawing the elements she needed from the book.

Rachel was amazed at how well Violet actually could draw. All the walls of the cave, from the entrance all the way back into the deep place where they were working, were covered with drawings. They were stuck in every available space. In places it looked like they had been squeezed into small spots left between older drawings. Some of the drawings were very good, with details like shading. Most, though, were simple drawings of bones, crops, snakes, or other animals. There were pictures of people drinking from mugs with skulls and crossed bones on them. In one place a woman, looking like she was made of sticks, was running out of a house that was on fire; the woman, too, was covered in the flames. In another spot a man was in the water beside a sinking boat. In another scene a snake was biting a man’s ankle. The walls were also covered with pictures of caskets and graves of all sorts. All the pictures had one thing in common, though: they were of terrible things.

But there was not one single drawing in the entire cave that began to approach the complexity of the thing Violet was drawing.

Other drawings were only infrequently life-size pictures of people and even those only had a few things added, like rocks falling on them, or them being trampled beneath a horse. Most of the drawings showed the same sorts of things but were only a few hands’ widths across. Violet’s drawing, though, went on and on for dozens of feet, from the ground to as high as she could reach, working its way deeper into the cave. Violet had drawn the entire thing all by herself, with Six guiding her along the way, of course.

What alarmed Rachel the most, though, was that after Violet had been working on the drawing for quite some time, after she had drawn in stars and formulas and diagrams and strange, complex symbols, she had in the center of it all finally drawn a figure of a person.

The figure was Richard.

Violet’s drawing was unlike anything else in the cave. It made them all look simple and crude by comparison. The other drawings all had easy, obvious things in them, like maybe a thundercloud with angled lines for rain, or a wolf baring its teeth, or a man simply clutching his chest as he fell back. There was little else on the walls but a few simple things around the figures.

Violet’s drawing was covered with things that were completely different. There were numbers and designs, words in strange languages, some written along the lines of diagrams, numbers carefully placed where angles came together, and there were strange geometric symbols cast everywhere throughout the illustration. Whenever Violet drew any of those symbols Six would stand close, concentrating, whispering guidance for every single line, sometimes correcting where Violet was about to place the chalk, preventing her from even touching it to the wall for the next line lest it be out of sequence or out of place. Once Six even became alarmed and snatched Violet’s wrist before she could touch the chalk to the wall. Sighing in relief, Six then moved Violet’s hand and helped her begin in the correct place.

Unlike every other drawing in the cave, Violet’s was done in different colors. The other drawings all along the way deep into the cave, to where Violet had started hers, were simple chalk drawings. Violet’s drawing had green trees in one spot, blue water in another, a yellow sun, and red clouds. Some of the designs were done entirely in white, while others were multicolored yet in an orderly manner of colors.

And, unlike every other drawing, when they left the cave and Rachel looked back she could see elements of the drawing glowing in the dark. It was not the chalk that made it glow, because the same chalk in other places in the drawing did not glow in the dark.

There was also a part of one symbol that glowed when left to the darkness. It was a strange face glowing out from an otherwise dark drawing made entirely of complex designs. Whenever the torch was near, the face wasn’t visible and it only looked like a network of lines. Rachel could never see what aspects of the design could possibly make up the face. But in the dark it stared out at her, the eyes following her, watching her leave.

The thing that really gave Rachel goose bumps, though, was the picture of Richard. It was a drawing done so well that Rachel could actually recognize him by his face alone.

It amazed Rachel to see how well Violet could draw. There were other things to tell who Richard was, though, even if the drawing hadn’t been so good. His black outfit was depicted accurately, just the way Rachel remembered it. It even had some of the mysterious symbols drawn around the edge of his tunic. Six had been very careful in her guidance of precisely how Violet was to draw those designs. In Violet’s picture, Richard also wore the flowing cape that looked to be made of spun gold.

The way Violet had drawn it made it look almost like he was in water.

All around him, too, were wavy colored areas that Six called “auras.” Each color had complex formulas and designs lying between them and Richard. Six had said that at the end, as the final step, those interposing elements between him and his essence would be connected to form an intervening barrier. Whatever that meant, Rachel didn’t know, but it was obvious that it was important to Violet.

Six seemed especially proud of that part, of the intervening barrier elements. She would sometimes stand for long periods of time and just stare at them.

In the picture, Richard had the Sword of Truth, but it was drawn faintly, as if it was there with him, but not. It almost seemed part of him, the way Violet had drawn it with Richard holding it so that it crossed his chest, yet Rachel couldn’t tell for sure if he really was meant to be holding it because it was drawn so faintly. Violet had worked hard to make it that way. Six had her do it over several times because she said that it was too “substantive.”

Rachel was puzzled by the sword being drawn with Richard, since Samuel had Richard’s sword now. Still, it somehow only seemed right for Richard to be drawn with the sword. Maybe Six felt that way, too.

Violet stood back, cocking her head, appraising her work. Six stood transfixed, staring at it as if no one else were there with her. She reached out, tentatively, and lightly touched the designs around Richard.

“How long until we make the final connection of elements?” Violet asked.

As Six’s fingers moved slowly, lightly, along the designs, some of the interposing elements responded to her touch, sparkling and glowing in the dim light.

“Soon,” she whispered. “Soon.”