Chapter 4: Tristan's Curse
They walked quickly, every so often breaking into a jog. Servants were lighting all the lamps. Tristan was grateful he'd decided to stay in his resting room in the palace tonight rather than retire to his quarters off-grounds; it took them only a few minutes to reach the east wing, which was devoted to the royal family's private chambers. The parlor was the first room they came to and its gilded doors stood open.
"Your Majesty," Tristan said as he strode into the room, snapping into a quick salute. "I came as soon as I heard."
The Princesses were on the settee comforting one another, Prince Justin behind them pacing anxiously; the King and Queen stood nervously together. Each of them were still dressed in nightclothes and robes, and the women's hair in loose braids that glimmered in the lamplight. A butler stood to one side with untouched tea.
"Lieutenant," Tristan addressed the other guard in the room. "You are to devote two search teams per wing - check every room - and another three to the grounds outside. Send another down to the basement and work upward. Go." The Lieutenant saluted and rushed from the room. He turned to Princess Beatrice next. "Madame, I take it the last you saw your son was in his bed?"
She nodded fitfully, and dark curls danced over her forehead. "I thought he was asleep…"
"Rest assured, your Highness, we will find him. Perhaps he has gone sleepwalking - in which case, he can't have gone far." He hoped his words sounded more reassuring than he felt they were. It was very unusual for a member of the royal family to have gone completely unseen by the staff. Although reluctant to speak to her again so soon, he realized Madame Suliman might be able to help them. "Lieutenant Arnold and I will go to the top floor and seek the Royal Sorceress' advice. Perhaps she has a way of seeing him that we do not. Please remain here - we will report back as soon as we can." He and Arnold saluted and left the warm light of the room for the cold hallway, their footsteps echoing behind them.
The top floor of the palace was still mostly dark; it consisted for the most part of the Sulimans' rooms, the garden, and an observatory and library. It was far quieter here, too. They took the carpeted marble stairs two at a time.
"You may as well go ahead and search the observatory-library, Arnold," said Tristan when they reached the top, gesturing left. "I'll wake the Sulimans." They separated.
Tristan grew uneasy as he approached ĺde's door, which was first - mostly because of how unusually cold the area was. He paused, puzzled, when he trod in a suspiciously large puddle. He knocked, called for her, but there was no answer. Tristan frowned - ĺde hardly ever slept. Much as he had teased her, he had known the answer all along. He knocked again, tried the door and found it icy-cold - frost melted under his hand. The door wouldn't budge. He decided to go via the courtyard instead.
Tristan was enveloped by the darkness of the internal corridor; he grazed his fingertips over one cold wall to orient himself. In that darkness his uneasiness bloomed into something larger than worry for the young prince.
Demon, demon, demon… a frozen door, a silence.
His steps had quickened to a jog without him realizing. He burst into the corridor and stopped short, nearly slipping on the ice that coated most of it. His eyes went immediately to ĺde's room on the left, where a large drift of ice had frozen open the lattice doors and climbed the walls, spilled out over the plants and consumed the pond. He'd never seen anything like it.
"ĺde?" he called, and made his way quickly and carefully forward in the half-light, wishing for stars.
Her bedroom looked as though a tide had swept through it, and then frozen over. Furniture was toppled, linens starch-stiff with ice matted together, jewelry and trinkets scattered like sunken treasure, icicles dangling from the light fixtures - the orchid terrarium he had often glimpsed her tending was smashed to pieces among the folds of the dress she'd worn that evening. ĺde herself was nowhere to be seen and the notion of her whereabouts being for once unknown to him...
"ĺde!" he called, an unfamiliar panic tightening his throat. He ducked back out into the courtyard garden to make sure he hadn't overlooked anything. His heart began to beat faster.
"My daughter is missing, Captain."
Tristan jerked to a stop at Madame Suliman's voice - strangely bereft of the worry her words would suggest. She sat in her wheelchair just outside her room with a blanket in her lap; magic wheeled her forward.
Tristan scrutinized the older woman, whose face remained impassive. "ĺde -"
"Is not here," Madame Suliman said. She leveled a challenging stare at him.
Tristan glanced again at the thrown-open doors riddled with faintly-glowing ice. He readjusted his footing and when his boot nudged something, he looked down - among similar, smaller shards was a large ingot of amethyst. He picked it up to examine and saw it was internally fractured - no, not a fracture or natural inclusion.
Hair. An unmistakable, shorn strand of it like a seam of gold.
Tristan closed his fist around its chill, looked sharply up at Madame Suliman. He had no proof, but somehow he knew. Not normally a man to go on instinct alone, he was surprised to hear himself growling, "What have you done?"
"My daughter is missing, Captain," she merely repeated, drawing out each word, 'and will be so for some time. I highly doubt you will find her. And before you ask: no, I cannot see the Prince - I suggest you focus your efforts there, where they belong."
The sharp edges of the gem cut into his palm as he clenched it harder; its cold had not dissipated and it burned him. "Where is she?" he shouted.
She tilted her head. "Suddenly so interested, Captain? I thought she was merely a means for you to keep an eye on me? Hasn't worked out so well for you, has it?" She resettled. "I thought you would have been happy that for there to be one less of us for you to worry about."
"When the King hears of this -"
"Don't bother. Do you really think your words will stand against mine?"
"Maybe not, Madame Suliman, but two testimonies will be hard to ignore."
Tristan turned around to see Arnold stepping into the courtyard. He was frowning and briefly, contrastingly, Tristan wanted to smile a little. Arnold looked at him and opened his mouth to speak, but in the next moment a bolt of green light struck him. Arnold keeled backward with a grunt and Tristan reached for him, watching in horror as the huge man shrunk impossibly fast like a popped balloon. Before Tristan could blink he was looking at a wooden nutcracker in the shape of a soldier that tottered on its base before falling to the ground.
Tristan reeled on Madame Suliman, teeth bared. The wind was knocked from him as he too was struck with green light that rapidly vanished. He looked down at his body - he wasn't shrinking or changing in any way like Arnold had. He took a step forward and felt abruptly winded and weak. He heaved great breaths in and out, his mouth suddenly like cotton and his throat parched. He wiped a hand against his jaw and panicked to feel how papery they both felt - he held up his hand and couldn't help but give a noise of alarm to see how his skin puckered and wrinkled, little pieces of skin coming loose as if from a healed sunburn.
"Your body feels like a desert, doesn't it? I thought it apt. So...invested in ĺde, a water demon. What a peculiar thirst," Madame Suliman said.
He tried to take a step forward, to draw his sword, but the action made his innards move in unpleasant ways and his skin suck inward against his bones; the dehydration intensified and he coughed, falling to one knee and holding himself up by his sword. He dropped the crystal he held, and it took a couple of attempts to pick it up. It was a chunk of barely-melting ice in his palm and he wanted to swallow it. He didn't want to, but cast a quick, desperate glance at the frozen-over pond.
"If you heed no other advice from me, heed this, Captain: the closer you get to me the closer you are to being nothing more than dust. No amount of water can help you now."
She advanced, he retreated, pulled himself to his feet despite how much it felt like his bones were being sapped of their marrow. Tristan wasn't stupid - he knew he couldn't do much in this condition. He tried to speak but his voice came out as little more than an old man's death rattle. And the way his condition worsened the closer she got to him the more he saw the truth in her words. He wouldn't be able to do anything with a curse on his back.
Tristan stumbled out of the courtyard and back into the hall as Madame Suliman drove him out merely by drawing closer and intensifying the curse upon him. He knew his only hope was to find a witch or wizard comparable enough to the Royal Sorceress to remove it - and there were none in the palace - who knew how long he would last otherwise, to say nothing of restoring Arnold and finding ĺde and Prince Edward.
Sophie gently pulled the door to Morgan's room behind her, leaving it open a crack that cast a band of light down to the foot of the little bed where he slept.
"I still don't see why we have to have them over for dinner," Howl continued, wandering down the hall.
She supposed she should be grateful for his learned ability to keep his voice down at night, even if the words themselves could use a little work. "Howl Jenkins," she teased, "are you still jealous after five years?"
"There's no need for me to be, I promise you."
Sophie didn't quite believe him, but let it go. She smiled. "You know how it important it is to me that Morgan be exposed to other children his age."
"I know, and if it's important to you it will be done," he said with a theatrical flourish and a bow as she came into the kitchen.
Sophie giggled at him and pulled out her chair, sitting heavily in it. Howl sat opposite her and pulled her feet into his lap, rubbing her tired ankles and her sore calves through her thick winter stockings. She sighed contentedly and rested her head on the back of the chair. "You aren't half bad sometimes."
A furious knock sounded on their door. There was only a short pause before it sounded again, weaker.
Sophie looked at Howl, her eyebrows drawing downward. "We're not expecting anyone, surely? It's quite late." She sat forward and drew her feet back to the floor.
A single loud bang of a knock, then a very weak tap and the sound of a heavy weight slumping against the door and sliding downward.
"It's from the Ingary side," Calcifer chimed in from the hearth. "Better get it before Morgan wakes up."
Howl walked quickly to the door, twisted the dial to Ingary's yellow, and then unbolted it. He opened it far less cautiously than Sophie would have liked and upon doing so, stepped neatly to one side as a body fell into the stairwell, breathing heavily.
"Oh my goodness!" she exclaimed and stood. Her hands shot to her mouth.
"Is he dead?" Calcifer asked and grabbed himself more wood, chewing on it and beginning to glow brighter.
Howl knelt in the exaggerated shadows and, after some maneuvering, slung an arm over his shoulder and hauled a man to his feet. A cerulean jacket with ruby epaulettes was about his shoulders.
A soldier, Sophie realized and rushed forward to help. She hesitated for a moment when the man managed to raise his head - his face in the light was withered somewhat, like an old man's or the leaves of a thirsty tree, though he was obviously around the same age as she. His breathing rattled out of him and disturbed his disheveled brown hair; he was only just about managing to put one foot in front of the other to get up the short flight of stairs.
"Haven't we had enough cursed people in here by now?" Calcifer said.
"Captain De Leon," Howl was chipper as always, "wasn't expecting you to drop by. Something to drink, perhaps?"
Sophie gave him a quick look of warning as she took the Captain's other side and helped him over to one of their armchairs in front of the fire. As soon as he was there she darted back into the kitchen proper to find a glass. "It's a curse? Are you sure?"
"Seems so," Howl said, "Though I can't quite make out the handiwork…" he trailed off for a moment. "Regular water won't work, Sophie," he called over the armchair. "I'll be back momentarily with something more sophisticated." He paced away to the stairs, presumably to fetch a potion.
Sophie stopped short with the glass, feeling her frown etch itself deeper. She set it aside and after a moment's thought, rummaged in a drawer and procured a notepad and a pencil before hurrying to the Captain. She knelt beside the armchair, helped him sit upright.
"It's all right - we'll help you," she said.
She'd never met him before and couldn't imagine how Howl knew him, much less why he'd be cursed. She still knew so little of it and yet to her untrained eye this seemed a work of some skill. The Captain eyed her tiredly with astonishingly sad brown eyes, his chest heaving, but his chapped lips couldn't utter a word.
"Here," she took one of his hands and pressed the pencil into it, helping him position it on the paper. "Can you write? Who did this to you?"
The Captain managed, after a couple of attempts, to write the name 'Suliman'. It was followed in a few attempts by the words 'find daughter'.
Sophie looked up at him. "Daughter?" Howl's footsteps trotting down the stairs had her looking up. "He said it was Suliman who did this to him."
"Sadly that doesn't surprise me," Howl said as he joined them. "Here we are Captain - I trust you don't mind that we don't stand on ceremony, and you drink straight from the bottle." He helped the Captain drink from a small, squat purple bottle that reeked of mint and aniseed. "It won't lift your curse but it should enable you to speak at least, and give you back some strength. Drink it all."
The bottle was drained; Sophie withdrew the pencil and paper, and then herself, to sit on the hearth beside Calcifer and wait. Howl stood upright and backed away a couple of steps.
"Give yourself a moment," Howl advised.
The Captain coughed once, dryly, then the second cough was wetter. His breathing became more even, and he ran a leathery hand over his face - Sophie watched as it regained a little more substance and youth. He raised his eyes to them, spoke slowly and softly at first but with growing urgency, "ĺde - I...I was looking for Prince Justin's son, Edward, and in the process I discovered that ĺde - Madame Suliman's daughter - was missing too. I confronted Madame Suliman and she cursed me. I can't go near her. Please - I need your help."
"Little Edward is missing?" Sophie asked, a mother's dread rooting itself in her gut.
The Captain assented. "I was called only an hour or two ago - there's a chance he's simply lost in the palace - but ĺde -"
"So it's true; there is a 'Daughter' Suliman," Howl said.
Sophie frowned at his skeptical tone. "Why don't you sound convinced of it, somehow?"
She was surprised when Howl simply looked at the Captain with a knowing smile, and waited for the Captain to supply the answer himself.
"Not a daughter by blood," the Captain said at length. He seemed very reluctant to add, "Not a daughter at all." His voice dropped even lower. "A demon."
Sophie's head felt very groggy all of a sudden with all this new information. "Wait, why would Madame Suliman pretend that a demon is her daughter in the first place? To say nothing of a demon taking human form. And furthermore, if you confronted her that must mean you suspect her of something, surely? But why would she be involved in her own daughter disappearing? I don't understand."
"Seems the palace has kept many secrets from us," Howl added and folded his arms. Sophie wasn't fond of his derisive tone but had to admit her sympathy was being replaced by a similar skepticism.
"I didn't know," the Captain said, and then repeated it more softly to himself and hung his head. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a chunk of amethyst-like stone, balling it in his fist. Sophie noted with interest that a few drops of water squeezed through the gaps in his fingers and rapidly sunk into his dry skin. "When I confronted Madame Suliman she did not seem concerned about ĺde - she told me quite flatly that she was missing and 'would be for some time'. She said it was highly unlikely that I'd find her - like that was what she wanted." He coughed.
Sophie looked at Howl, found him casting a wary glance at Calcifer as he grew thoughtful. After a moment's quiet she stood, laid a hand on the Captain's shoulder. "I'll make you some tea."
"It won't do any good, Soph'," Howl murmured as she passed.
She smiled at him. "Tea does more than quench a thirst."
