Black Forest: Kingdoms Fall (Black Forest Trilogy) Read online

  That was her heritage, her birthright. She was the blood queen. She could feel it then, see it in the stone that sat beneath her feet that day, where it always did during the ritual. As long as blood flowed in the land, she would have the power to seize everything, and where there were men, blood always flowed.

  Even feeling it course through her, though, knowing it was her greatest strength, she wanted no part of the magic that had meant pain for her from the moment of birth. If she had been only one of them, perhaps, instead of the chosen one, she might have been as hungry for its power as they were.

  Instead, newly-spilt blood still coalescing with the old, slick against her fingers, she had taken the stone and buried it amidst their fallen bodies, knowing few would walk the sea of death to find it. Then, leaving them to rot where they had fallen, she left the mountain valley alone, forsaking their way.

  It did not take long to discover that, outside the protection of her tribe, her face had its own power. Strangers came to her aid, offering clothes and food and shelter in exchange for something they hoped to gain from her, until, at last, she landed in the presence of the king, who she discovered was no more immune to her beauty than common men.

  No matter what tribe she was among, it seemed, she was her own best asset, and, if she lost herself, she would have nothing left in the world.

  Setting the stone before her in the snow, Queen Ino glanced through the silent trees and took the dagger from beneath her skirts. Quite alone, she pulled the blade across her palm, watching her blood appear, dark and thick and pulsing, and squeezed her hand, the first drop hanging onto the fist before falling free.

  As her blood met the stone, the winds rose up, the universe opening around her, stars and moons and secrets floating amongst the dormant trees. The answer was there. The answer to everything was always there. Dizzy on her own power, kept buried for so long, Queen Ino reached into the ether and found it.

  · · ·

  By the time she re-entered the castle, the servants were awake.

  Waiting in the vestibule, Lemi rushed to meet Queen Ino as she entered. "I am so sorry, Your Highness, I was not there to tend to you when you woke," she rushed to say. "Do you need something?"

  "I need to get warm," Queen Ino returned, walking by her to the stairs.

  "Yes, My Queen," Lemi responded at once. "I shall bring you tea."

  "And I need time to myself," Queen Ino dismissed her, taking the stairs with care, her footsteps quiet, but intent. Those in the castle who did not work within it slept on, the queen was certain, by the position of the sun in the sky, and, at the early hour, the servants were sure to think she too was returning to her bed.

  The second floor was quiet as she reached it, the only work being done the watching of the chambers, and the guard on duty stood at more rigid attention, nodding deferentially as the queen passed.

  Outside the door of the room she shared with the king, Queen Ino paused, picking up on the familiar drone of the king's breathing, and, familiar with it as she was, she knew he would wake within a short time.

  Morning fleeting, Queen Ino's magic was not. It would wait for another day, and yet it would not wait, for with every step Queen Ino took she lost nerve for the deed. Feeling she may not find it again, she moved quickly to the door at the end of the hall, a room she never had cause to enter, and, mindless of the guard, pushed the door ajar, gaze going instantly to the bed, cloaked in white netting to protect the delicate creature inside. Captivated by the sight, Queen Ino entered, pushing the heavy wood barrier back into place.

  On the other side of the thin wall that separated the room of Snow White's handmaiden from the chamber of the princess, the maid moved about. If Snow White cried out, Queen Ino knew she would have to kill, but the thought, once disturbing, felt oddly satisfying, her desire to draw blood sharp.

  Removing the winter shoes, the second thumped heavier to the floor than she intended, and the queen's eyes went back to the bed. Tucked within it, Snow White slept without care. Of course, she would not start at such a small noise, never exposed to the types of dangers that made a heavy sleep a hazard to one's well-being.

  Across the room to Snow White's bedside, Queen Ino stared through the gauzy veil, seeing what the mirror had seen, pure beauty fair and untouched before her, a stronger pull even than the magic. In sleep, Snow White was so peaceful, it was almost catching, and the queen felt the serenity of it wind around her, wanting nothing more than to crawl into the bed next to Snow White and bask in her innocence.

  Closing her eyes, for a moment the world felt uneven and the queen swayed on her feet, before everything suddenly righted itself again. When her eyes opened, it was as if she had suffered no doubts at all.

  Time slipping on, Queen Ino slipped through the veil and eased back the thick pile of quilts, pulling quickly at the laces of Snow White's sleeping gown. Even with such intimate invasion, Snow White did not wake, and Queen Ino envied the innocence she had just been admiring.

  Sides of the sleeping gown eased apart, the queen exposed a soft chest, paler than ivory, to the chill, but Snow White only sighed, as if the touch of cold brought pleasure. Hand slipping beneath her skirts, Queen Ino pulled the dagger from the band at her calf, the always accessible weapon of a woman who did know dangers before she was surrounded by guards and stone walls.

  Eyes on the blade as it moved to the delicate terrain of Snow White's chest, she remembered its feel against her own body, hesitating for only an instant before flicking a slice into the whitest of skin. With a moan, Snow White came to the verge of waking, but when Queen Ino pressed her lips to the girl's forehead, whispering soothing words, she calmed once more, dangerously placated at the moment of gravest danger.

  Slipping the dagger back into place, the queen watched the blood seep bright red to the surface. There was no need to spill blood to make good magic, she had always told herself. She too had innocence once.

  "At your death," Queen Ino whispered, tongue moving across her lips as she watched the blood come closer, "your beauty shall be mine."

  Lowering her lips to the wound, tasting the substance she had watched her ancestors drink with disgust many times, she finally understood their taste for it, for she could imagine no sweeter taste than that of Snow White's blood on her tongue. Though it was only the taste she needed, the queen stayed long, until Snow White sighed, her hand moving in sleep to land against the queen's where it had come unknowingly to rest against her stomach.

  Pulling back with sudden fright, Queen Ino whispered words of healing and watched the skin close. With shaking hands, she tugged Snow White's gown together, but did not spare the time to tie it, pulling the netting closed and grabbing her boots as she left, her presence there known only by the guard, whose memory she would be forced to take.

  · · ·

  Slightly deeper into the day, Snow White woke and looked toward the narrow window at the high sun, which shined unnaturally bright as it reflected off the snow-covered ground.

  Sitting up, the laces of her gown fell open and, face going red, though there was no one to see, Snow White reached for them, grimacing as her hand brushed against her chest. Pulling the gown open again, she expected to find a source for the pain, but found nothing except the slightest traces of pink. Her favorite color.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Rapunzel

  The air in the tower breathed easy, far from the stench and decay of the village, and it was good for Rapunzel's song. Each deep breath gave it power, and, for hours, she could sing, notes floating across the tree tops to intermingle with the songs of the birds.

  The freshness of the air would save her nose, her mother told her. In the village, the excrement in the streets piled higher than the coverings on one's feet, and the magic they used was a wicked one, designed to bring about fear and turn people into slaves.

  The slavery of village life would never be Rapunzel's burden. She would never breathe their poisoned air. She would not hear the cries of the st
arving and the heartbroken and the damned. Protecting her from such things was why her mother had put her away in the tower. Without doors, even those who dared traverse the forest could never get to her. Her safe passage through life was guaranteed. That was how much her mother loved her.

  Heaped upon her from birth in the forms of isolation and inaccessibility, though, as Rapunzel grew, she began to question that love. Alone day and night, but for her mother's evening visits, she started thinking thoughts that were uncomfortable in her head.

  How was the tower safe passage through a life she did not live?

  How was she being protected when no danger was near?

  Not very old when she first had the thoughts, only old enough to think too much, Rapunzel asked these questions of her mother. As answer, her mother began bringing bound pages she called books when she came to visit that showed terrible images of things in the world. Perhaps, her mother said, they would make Rapunzel understand why she was there, in the tower, kept away from the evil that abounded across the kingdom.

  The first time she opened one, Rapunzel gasped at the horror shown on its pages. After that, her mother never failed to come with a new book. She would point out every danger that lie within, and then leave Rapunzel to the darkness and terrible noises of the tower at night.

  Rapunzel did not know the words. At the time, she did not know the word 'word.' Each time her mother brought her a book, she would simply stare at the startling images - a beast with fire, breathing it down upon a man who held a piece of metal helplessly against it, or maidens being squirreled away by a monster, lined up in a dark and frightening dungeon for a later meal - and she would understand how much her mother loved her to keep her from such things.

  Then, one night, Rapunzel had a most incredible dream. She dreamt she was standing at the window, and that the books, rising from their piles on the floor, closed in at her. Closer and closer they came until she felt the open air at her back and had no place left to go.

  Feeling the cold stone beneath her palms, Rapunzel screamed as a single book tumbled to the window ledge beside her, the spine cracking backward, pages rustling in the wind. When she looked down, the words she saw made sense, and Rapunzel woke with a start.

  The book was one she recognized, but that she liked least, for in the places of creatures and people and vast waters with no borders, there were only things Rapunzel already knew, like the sky and the clouds and the trees, with dots and lines and dashes beside them.

  Not quite awake, the tower was not quite lighted for the day, but Rapunzel had stumbled from her bed, finding the book at the bottom of a large stack.

  When she pulled back the cover, nothing made sense. The words were the same as in her dream, but she had no more comprehension of them than she had before. Staring at the pages until her back began to ache from hunching, she at last began to notice how the words aligned with the pictures - the letters T-R-E-E pointing to the object she knew as a tree, W-A-T-E-R pointing to what she knew as water - and Rapunzel began to understand the connections between them, how some of the words sounded the same in some places and not in others.

  With all the time in the world to study, she soon figured out the pattern, and, not long after that, she discovered she could read anything, even if she did not always understand it. She knew what a dragon looked like, a palace, a cloak, a horse, for those things always seemed to fill the pictures. There were other words, though, for which there were no images, like "hope" and "destiny" and "desire," that she understood only somewhat, but would not dare ask her mother to explain.

  Once Rapunzel learned the words, she went back through every book in the tower, discovering that, in the stories with the dragons that breathed fire and the trolls and the cheats and the killers, there were other kinds of creatures too, and people who were not all bad, knights and priestesses and mothers who stayed with their children. There were people who were brave, who did wonderful things, who loved so deeply they risked everything, and Rapunzel wanted to know what else existed in the worlds that she read about.

  "Will I ever leave here?" she asked her mother one day.

  "You have seen what is in the world," her mother replied, pointing a crooked old finger at the books. "Why would you want to be a part of that misery?"

  Rapunzel did not know if her mother was lying, or if she could not read the books herself, if she saw only the dangers in the pictures, not the beautiful things in the words.

  "Are there not other people in the world like you?" she asked, knowing she must be careful in her questions, that if her mother knew they made her long for something else, she would take the books away, just as she had brought them to pacify her.

  "Like me?" Her mother appeared strangely uneasy at the question.

  "Good people," Rapunzel smiled. "Those who love their daughters as you do."

  It was always worrying, talking to her mother, having to use such caution to use only the words she was certain her mother had taught her and not ones she had learned from the texts.

  "No others have protected their daughters as I have," her mother would say, and Rapunzel hid her understanding behind a half-hearted smile.

  On that point, she believed her mother sincere, having come to understand from the books that no mothers could protect their daughters as her mother had, by hiding them away in a doorless tower that reached far into the trees and could not be escaped.

  Her mother had many times told her that an old lady with an ugly countenance could not expect much from the world, yet there were always books and fresh cakes and new fabric for clothes and the tower, which she knew her mother had erected herself. That is how she knew her mother was a sorceress, who could be either good or evil, but rarely acted on the intentions she said.

  "There must be some worth meeting," Rapunzel would gently argue.

  "There are not," her mother would declare, but Rapunzel knew it was untrue. For, if there were no people who loved and sacrificed and dared, who wrote of such people?

  "Will I ever see anything else?" Rapunzel questioned at last.

  It became her only question. Every time her mother came to visit, she would ask, and every time her mother's answer was the same.

  "When you are older," she would say.

  It would always be the answer, Rapunzel realized, until her mother one day grew so old she simply stopped coming, or the tower fell, or she, herself, failed one morning to wake from sleep.

  With the knowledge of all she would never see, the days in the tower stretched longer, and the song Rapunzel sang turned melancholy, filling the air around the tower with a sadness that quieted the birds in their joy, but that no one else would ever hear.

  She would see another place, she knew, but it would not be the world outside the tower. The world in which she lived would always be only words and pictures on pages. For her, there would be nothing more until she reached the world beyond it, as so many had before her, only in death.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  A Shared Song

  Cinderella was never meant to be a thief. Even when learning the trade might have made escaping her life with her stepmother and stepsisters possible, she could not separate the skill from the emotional toll. It was not so much the stealing itself, but the uncertainty in it. Appearance was deceiving, she knew, one could never truly know what another had, and the idea of taking from anyone who had less than the fractured bricks of the fireplace on which she slept had stayed her hands and kept her a prisoner in her own home.

  The bountiful food of the harem gone, though, Cinderella quickly discovered there was nothing free in the kingdom of Naxos. Everything was done on trade, and she had nothing to give. At least, nothing she was willing to give up. Akasha had given her a better understanding of the looks on the faces of the men she crossed paths with in the streets, so every apple held up from a cart or every fish offered on bread looked like more like bait than benevolence.

  Hiding the first night, alongside dirty women and children who also kne
w better than to wander alone in the darkness, the foreign arid air settled on top of her, drying her mouth and her chest, making it hard to draw breath, but, despite the oppressive heat, Cinderella shivered the night through at the type of deal she would be forced to make if she did not figure out how to care for herself in a foreign kingdom. All her life, she wanted nothing more than to flee. Amongst the darkest recesses and squalor of a new land, though, she understood suffering had its perks when it took place indoors and there was enough sustenance to keep her well enough to work. Much like Akasha's harem. No part of Cinderella longed to return to the harem or to her father's household, but nearly every part of her longed for their comforts.

  She would not survive in the village. She knew by the second day when the sun reached its peak again, hotter than she had ever known, even when she had spent entire days hauling water from the well to refill the supply for her household. The sun had burned her skin then, but it was nothing like the burn of the Naxos sun, which seemed to sink right through her out-of-place gown and set her aflame.

  So, Cinderella began to look beyond the walls.

  The villagers talked about them, the woods outside of town. They were a treacherous place, they warned, filled with things so dangerous, many brave men perished from sheer fright. There was no need to venture into them. They would do so at autumn harvest, a man told her, once Cinderella found the daring to approach a stranger in the marketplace. Another man added that a dozen men had gone missing when they harvested in early summer. With enough food stores to get them through two cycles of the moon, there was no cause to risk another venture before the supply ran low again.

  So, although, during the day, the gates of the kingdom were left wide, they offered only the illusion of true freedom, for no one ever passed through them.