Shadow Weaver (Back on Wattpad 2020!)

Chapter 47

I am standing in the palace throne room on the empty dais. Sunlight streams through the enormous windows behind the thrones. A hushed beauty fills the hall and for a moment I feel at peace.

I turn slowly wondering how I got here. Where is the Prince? As though my questions summon the darkness, the room turns cold and gray. Ice crystals form in the dampness I now notice trickling down the walls. Water drips from the domed ceiling and freezes. Stalactites form at an unnatural speed, their icy points resembling the teeth of a huge beast, its mouth widening, teeth extending to bite me. I stretch out my hands to fumble through the murk. Voices whisper. Wailing, crying, begging me to help them.

I wake gasping and trembling. My face is freezing. I am lying in a pool of water. Shirt, hair, trousers, every inch of me is soaked through.

"That's enough," a voice says. A man with a scar stands over me. Fingers clenched around a jug. Huge pitchers line up across an uneven floor. I struggle to assemble the fragments of what I see into a whole picture.

Energy thunders in the mind-world, as though I am standing behind the torrential curtain of a waterfall.

The harder I try to grasp what is going on, the worse the thundering energy becomes, pulling me to the edge of the waterfall, dragging me down the crashing flow into the vortex.

Pain slices through me as the soldier with the scar drags me by one arm over metal bumps. Commander Linx. His name is Commander Linx. In an instant I regain my senses.

The commander releases me and I fall into a wet heap at his feet. He steps out of the cage.

"Leave it open," Strik says. The agony in my ribs and arm relents and I am spinning, losing balance. Falling.

He strides into a great shimmering hall, walls of ice, floor of ice, thrones of ice. Eight thrones set in a circle, seats facing outwards. Silver carpets like the rays of an argent sun extend from each one. A middle-aged woman with long white-blonde hair sits opposite the door he has entered by.

"Every ten moons," she says, her voice raised to travel the hall, "the children of royal blood are tested and selected to govern the eight kingdoms of Rudeash. Every test is designed to draw out the candidate's strengths and weaknesses. When you are in the test, you will forget everything else. Your mind will believe what you see and hear is real. From this moment on, everything I tell you will become your reality without question." The woman's face softens. "The decision of those present here today is final. Good luck, my son."

He gazes at her, confident, back straight, head high. My sense of my own life starts slipping away. As though her words condition my thoughts as well as his.

The ice cracks and melts, the kings and queens shimmer, growing translucent until they are a mirage of color, until they are gone.

In the place of the ice hall is a frozen white ocean and on the horizon an army. The army wears the Carucan uniform, and bears the Carucan ruby red flags. They ride enormous horses covered in long, thick hair.

The woman, his mother, stands beside him, her shimmering silver and blue dress dancing in the wind. He hands her the looking glass that magnifies his vision. She takes a moment, then says,

"There are too many of them. The shrouders are not strong enough." She glances over her shoulder and he follows her gaze. Behind them, in the sun's low rays stands a magnificent ice-city, towers sculpted into spiral points, domes of misty blue and green swirls, enormous bridges that resemble wet glass. "They have broken the veil. They see everything."