Then the stone walls fell away on either side, and she was out of the maze. The jackals howled and hooted behind her. The creatures swarming about her ankles chittered and hissed. Before her lay a great flat stretch—tar black, oil smooth, without reflection: the Mere. So this was the place where the Lady Syllva's caravan had found itself trapped so many years ago, this the spot where the boy prince Irrylath had been lured by his nurse to the water's edge and given to the Witch.
Aeriel shuddered, picking her way through the bones that littered the bank. Far in the distance, she saw a white spire rising from the black water: the Witch's palace? It must be—though she had always pictured the whole keep as lying concealed beneath the surface of the lake. She shook her head, wondering how she was to reach it. She dared not touch the poisoned water.
All at once the lake in front of her began to seethe and boil. Aeriel fell back, alarmed. The Witch's creatures milled nervously. Something beneath the surface was rising to the air. A moment later, the huge, pebbled head of a toad broke through. It was pale lavender, almost translucent. Aeriel could not have wrapped her arms about it if she had tried. The creature looked at her with great, bulbous eyes. Its livid tongue, a little ragged flag, threaded along the wrinkled edges of its mouth. The still, black waters obscured all but the creature's head from view.
"So," it said. Its voice boomed like a kettle, like a hunt horn, like a drum. "Another traveler comes to die upon my lady's shore."
Aeriel stared, realizing the identity of the creature: years older now and far more massive, but the same that had once lured the prince's nurse to the Witch's cause and helped her to betray him. Biting back revulsion, Aeriel called out,
"A traveler, mudlick, but not one who has come to die. I would see your mistress and so must cross the lake."
The mudlick cocked one gelid eye.
"How is it you can see me without tasting the Mere?" it boomed. Aeriel touched the pearl upon her brow. The mudlick shifted uneasily, sinking lower in the black water, retracting its pale eyes from the cool, pure light. "You must be the sorceress who has lately caused my lady so very much trouble."
Aeriel nodded. "Will you take me to her?"
The mudlick belched. "My mistress, the White Lady, sees no one."
Aeriel stood disconcerted. She had not expected so quick and final a rebuff. Resolutely, she folded her arms.
"Very well," she replied. "I will not see her, though I have traveled a long road. My message from her mother, the Ancient Ravenna, will go unsaid. Your mistress will thank you for turning me away."
She spun on her heel and started back toward the jackal cliffs. The scrabbling creatures scattered before her. She had gotten three steps when the mudlick called, "Wait."
Aeriel turned but did not approach. She saw the monstrous thing's forelegs in the water now. They seemed oddly small for its great bulk. It nibbled one of its fingers.
"You are a sorceress," it mused. "Why do you not use your sorcery to cross?"
Because I have no sorcery! Aeriel wanted to cry, but she held her tongue.
"Take me across, or not, exactly as you please," she said at last. She had no more patience left.
The mudlick sighed and lapped at the black, poisonous waters. "My mistress would not thank me for bringing her bane."
"As you please," Aeriel snapped, turning on her heel once more. "I leave you to your lady's wrath when she discovers you repelled her mother's messenger." She counted the paces. One. Two.
"Oh, very well!" the creature cried after her. "Have it your own way. I will take you across to my mistress's keep—just in case what you say might be true—though whether she will let you in, I cannot say. Wade out," it told her, rising higher under the Mere's shadowy surface.
Aeriel recoiled. "I won't touch the water."
The mudlick laughed, a deep gonging sound like hot, hammered metal. It heaved itself from the black, unnaturally calm waters, dragging itself up onto the bank. The dark moisture seemed less to run off its skin than to boil away in a thin vapor. Swallowing her revulsion, Aeriel approached and climbed to crouch just behind the great toad's head, uncertain how much of its body would sink back beneath the Mere. Its pebbled skin, covered with great slippery warts, was cold and had an oily feel.
"It's been a dracg's age since I last ate," the mudlick remarked, surveying the little creatures before it on the bank.
With a motion so quick Aeriel could scarcely follow, its vast jaws gaped, and its long tongue swept out, catching up a dozen of the frantically scattering vermin—along with a great quantity of the bank. The mudlick's jaws snapped shut. It laughed and swallowed, bloated sides heaving. Sickened, Aeriel held on desperately as her porter hauled itself around and slid back into the Mere.
"Stupid things," it croaked.
The black waters curled around its snout and trailed along its sides. Aeriel snatched one foot higher to avoid the Mere's touch. The mudlick bobbed, and Aeriel swallowed hard. She caught glimpses of other creatures in the lake around them, though none showed their heads above the glass-smooth surface.
Once, they passed over something so long and huge she gasped.
"That is only a mereguint," the toad told her, "one of my lady's water dragons. She has two: great enough to swallow ships. If you should fall in, little messenger, they will make short work of you."
A vision filled Aeriel's mind of the treacherous mudlick rearing back to dump her into the teeming Mere for sheer sport. She clutched tighter to the great toad's back.
"See me safe to the palace," she warned, "or you will answer to your mistress for it. I bear Ravenna's gift for her, more precious than my life."
The mudlick only laughed. Aeriel realized it could feel her shaking—for even without the dragons, she was terrified, and not just of the enchanted water, but of any water. She could not swim, and so clung to the mudlick with all her might. It swam steadily on. The great castle hove nearer, rising up from the Mere.
These spires could be only the top, she thought in awe, only the tiniest tip of an enormous keep. The rest lay below the lake. Again the mudlick's booming chuckle.
"You thought it would all be underwater, didn't you? Used to be, not many years past. But it's grown so, she can't keep it all beneath the surface now."
One eye swiveled to look at her. Aeriel managed to glare back. As the mudlick brought her to the edge of the crystal keep, Aeriel scrambled off in relief onto a narrow terrace a few inches above the waterline. To her astonishment, she found that the ledge was cold, far colder than the mudlick's skin.
Glass smooth, it was so chill the soles of her feet adhered to it. Uneasily, she shifted from foot to foot.
What stone, what jewel had been used to make this tower? The pearl upon her brow brightened, suffusing her with warmth.
"Well, little sorceress," boomed the mudlick, "I have brought you here. Now enter if you can."
With a final deep laugh, it sank from sight below the surface of the Mere. Nightshade was very late.
From the tilt of the stars, she saw that it must be nearly Solstarrise. She shifted her feet once more to keep the soles from binding to the stone. If not for the pearl, she realized, the cold would have been unbearable. Gazing up at the blank, unbroken white walls of the palace, she began to walk along the landing, searching for a door.
She walked until she felt dizzy, her neck stiff, but she could find no window, no portal, no chink or opening. At last she stopped, baffled and exhausted. Desperation ate at her. Somehow she must get in.
She had not come all this way to be turned back now. Aeriel felt an odd stirring in the back of her mind, a low, almost unintelligible murmuring.
Place your hand against the stone, it seemed to whisper—so softly that in the next instant, she was not even sure it had spoken at all. Nevertheless, she placed one palm against the frigid surface, gingerly, lest it stick. Nothing happened. Frustration welled in her. She pressed harder, heedless now, throwing her whole weight against the keep. Open, she cried silently, angrily. Let me in!
The stone surface beneath her hand abruptly vanished. Aeriel stumbled forward. Catching her balance, she spun around to behold the outer wall now parted in a broad archway. Pearllight gleamed on the clear, white crystal of the palace interior. Aeriel touched the jewel upon her brow again, astonished.
Even as she watched, the wall seamed soundlessly together once more, forestalling retreat.
She stood in a deserted hallway. Starlight filtered in through the crystalline walls. Despite the pearl's warmth, she was shivering hard. The fierce cold of the Witch's keep numbed her. Her breath came in gasps, swirling up in puffs like scentless smoke. Something told her she would be well enough as long as she kept moving. Though the pearl's power was great, it was subtle. She must not pause, must not rest.
Aeriel started down the long, empty hall.
The walls around her were uneven but smooth, in some places nearly transparent. Sometimes she sensed she was passing along the outer wall of the keep and what lay beyond was open sky. It must be nearing Solstarrise by now, she knew. Her breath, when she leaned closer, seeking to peer beyond the ripples, fogged the crystal stone. Once she brushed against it in passing, and the dry cold adhered to her like something tacky and alive. She had to snatch her arm away.
Her path led mostly downward at first, so that after a time she was certain she had passed below the waterline. The stone of the wall was clearer here. Beyond, the dark waters of the Mere moved sluggishly.
A flock of hatchet-shaped swimming things darted past, their huge mouths gaping. Something long and grey slid after them, doubling back on itself. It snapped bladelike teeth at her. Aeriel jumped. Farther out, something much vaster circled, very black: one of the Witch's mereguints, a water dragon. Aeriel hastened on.
Journeying deeper, she passed through mazes of corridors with faceted walls, each throwing her image back at her until she halted, baffled, scarcely able to tell where her own form ended and her reflection began. Always the pearl guided her onward and through. Once, at a juncture of two hallways, she sensed that if she had taken the other fork, it would have led inevitably down to where the captured duaroughs labored, deep in the palace bowels, beneath even the mud bottom of the Mere.
