The Threads of Magic by Alison Croggon (best books for students to read .TXT) 📗

generate a sourceless illumination around her body that lit their path but threw no shadows. How strange, thought Georgette, that a black cat should be luminous. As she followed that fluid, silently padding form, Georgette thought about what she knew of witches. Very little, sadly. She had heard that witches could change their shapes, but she had never heard of talking cats, except in the children’s stories that Amina had told her so many years ago now. Was Amiable a witch in cat form, or a cat who could speak? A witch, probably; after all, she was powerful enough to put a spell of sleep over a whole palace.

They walked through the cavernous, deserted kitchens, past the cold storerooms where carcasses of dead animals hung from iron hooks, past tottering piles of copper pots and pans, out through the back door, straight into the storm.

As soon as Georgette stepped out the door, she was blinded by the rain and soaked through. She might as well have walked into a waterfall. Amiable was a small, dimly lit blur in front of her feet, seemingly completely unbothered by the downpour. Georgette squared her shoulders and followed the cat. The service gates were open, with no sign of guards. They slipped out into a back lane, down a tiny street, across the Royal Plaza, down a dark boulevard, and then into a tangle of streets that Georgette didn’t recognize.

For the next hour, Georgette grew colder and colder. The rain stopped, but the wind didn’t. A fingernail moon slipped out through the rags of clouds, but it just made the streets seem darker. Georgette kept her eyes fixed on Amiable, fearing she might lose her guide.

They reached one of the Five Rivers — Georgette had no idea which one — and followed the cobbled path that ran beside it. It was even colder here, where the wind swept along the surface of the water, and she began to shiver uncontrollably. Just as she started to feel that there would be no end to this journey, they arrived at a pipe outlet that ran into the river. Amiable jumped inside and trotted along a slimy, brick-lined tunnel without looking to check whether Georgette was behind her.

Georgette hesitated for a moment, but all she wanted to do by now was get out of the wind. She scrambled after Amiable, uncomfortably stooped against the low ceiling. She wondered if there were going to be rats. She didn’t like rats. She was very tired, and now she really did have a headache. And then she saw a faint yellow light spilling onto the bricks, and a sound like a roar of people talking that was becoming louder and louder. Shortly afterward she was able to stand up, and then they turned a corner. Georgette gasped.

She blinked in the brightness, briefly forgetting how cold she was. They were in a large vaulted room like a cellar, lit with colored lamps suspended from the ceiling. It was crowded with people of all shapes and sizes and hues.

As she looked more closely, she realized that not everyone here was human. She could see cats, dogs, a donkey, a couple of crows, a few figures she couldn’t identify at all. There was a delicious smell of things cooking, and in the corner someone was playing a lute. Georgette wasn’t sure, but she thought it was a dog.

Amiable spoke for the first time since they had left the palace. “Welcome to the Undercroft, the home of the night people,” she said. “You’re a very privileged day human to be permitted here. I hope it’s worth it. For us, I mean.”

Georgette swept her gaze around the cellar again. Whatever this place was, there was more life in this one room than she had seen for years in the whole palace. She remembered her manners and straightened her shoulders. “I’m honored,” she said. And she added, “I hope I don’t wake up.”

“Stop thinking that you’re dreaming,” said Amiable irritably. “It’s rude.”

CARDINAL LAMIR HAD LONG BEEN SUSPICIOUS OF the housekeeper in the Old Palace. He was sure that Princess Georgette’s regrettable early inclinations to disobedience had come from this woman’s influence.

He considered it a weakness of the old regime that they had employed people who were not of pure Clarelian blood. It didn’t matter how many generations southerners had lived in Clarel; as far as Cardinal Lamir was concerned, they remained foreign. Among his assassins were a few whose ancestry hailed from other countries in Continentia, but if they were to flourish in his employ, they needed to be trained from childhood, and even then they needed to be geniuses like Ariosto. He would never employ a southerner. As an educated man, the cardinal knew that many of the techniques his assassins used had originally come from the south, but this merely proved that southerners were inherently treacherous.

And now there was a direct connection between the boy who had stolen the Stone Heart and this Bemare woman. “It’s disturbing, Ariosto,” he said.

“My men have brought her in,” Ariosto said. “At the very least, she will divulge information about her daughter and her associates. It seems that the young thief was seen about the Old Palace quite often.”

The cardinal looked up sharply. “You should have gone yourself, Ariosto.”

“I had other tasks. King Oswald’s presence here has taken much of my time.”

“I instructed that this investigation takes priority over everything else.” The cardinal’s nostrils pinched with rage. “We can afford no more carelessness.”

Ariosto considered reminding the cardinal of King Oswald’s sense of self-importance, but thought better of it. The cardinal already knew of this but wouldn’t accept it as an excuse.

“Did you confine the woman in the lower dungeon?”

Briefly, Ariosto looked startled. “No, I thought —”

“You didn’t think.” Again that repressed rage, that anxiety. “Did it never occur to you that this woman is very likely a witch?”

Ariosto knew Mistress Bemare. She showed none of the signs of witchcraft that he had learned in