The City in the Lake by Rachel Neumeier

Author:Rachel Neumeier
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Body, Magic, Juvenile Fiction, Fantasy & Magic, Fantasy, Mind & Spirit, Magick Studies
ISBN: 9780375849596
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2008-10-15T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

he Bastard did not for one moment mistake the woman who came out of the mirror for the girl who had gone into it. The girl had been a mystery, a curiosity, a puzzle . . . but she had not struck the Bastard as dangerous.

The woman, it was immediately clear to him, was exceedingly dangerous.

Her eyes were dark, darker than his: black as the night at the heart of the world. They had seen everything, and forgotten nothing. The weight of that dark gaze pressed on him like a physical force when she met his eyes. And the woman was smiling. The Bastard could imagine a tiger smiling like that as it found its prey at bay, trapped in a corner before it.

“Well,” she said, and looked slowly about the room before bringing that heavy gaze back to press against the Bastard. Her voice was light and pretty. Behind the prettiness was something else: a sleek satisfaction that was deeply disturbing. “My son. Have you no greeting for your mother?”

The Bastard did not doubt this claim. He almost thought he remembered her himself, though he had been only a baby when she had left the City. Her name, he knew, was Lelienne. Her white beauty was as the tales described, but no story recalled her ageless gaze or the sense of power that clung to her: these things she must have hidden from his father. Questions fell through his mind like the pieces to a puzzle, then locked into shape. He said, knowing it was true, “You took my brother.”

“Young Cassiel.” The woman’s smile became a shade more brilliant. “Oh, yes.”

“Why?” asked the Bastard. He had not moved. He did not move now.

The woman did. She took a step forward. “You are my son,” she said. “My son, and son of the King. You can give me the Kingdom. Young Cassiel must first give it to you.”

“I will give you nothing,” the Bastard said flatly.

The woman’s smile did not dim. “How unfilial. My son, is that how you speak to your mother?”

Her tone had been gentle, but the weight of her gaze now became terrible: it pressed on the Bastard until he could not endure it. Though he fought it, it pressed him down. He went to his knees at last with a low cry of anger and humiliation, shaking. He was aware, tangentially, of Galef moving to draw his sword, and then stopping, white and still, with the sword half drawn. He was aware of Marcos beginning to move, and also stopping, one thick hand reaching suddenly out, as though for something beyond his grasp.

The pressure eased once he had been forced to yield to it. On his knees, he looked up at his mother. The Bastard had spent his life wondering about his mother, and now he did not need to wonder: he felt his heart pause in its beating, in terror and dismay. Pride demanded that he try to rise. Sense and the memory of her power suggested otherwise.

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