there have been developments. Perhaps you’d care to come down to the trial?”
Chapter 21
Outside the haven of the Charovnikov, the noise of the party filled the empty corridors. The music had stopped, but a sea of raised voices in the distance roared and fell like waves, louder and louder as the Falcon led us to the state ballroom. The footmen opened the doors for us hastily onto the staircase leading down to the vast dancing-floor. The ambassador in his white coat sat in a chair beside the king’s throne, on a high dais overlooking the floor; Prince Sigmund and his wife were on the king’s other side. The king was sitting with his hands clenched over the lion-clawed arms of his chair, face mottled with anger.
In the middle of the floor before him, Marek had cleared a wide-open circle, six full rows of shocked and avidly staring dancers drawn back from him, the ladies in their billowing skirts like strewn flowers in a ring. In the center of that circle stood the queen, blank-faced in a white prisoner’s shift, with Kasia holding on to her arm; Kasia looked around and saw me with relief on her face, but I couldn’t get anywhere near her. The crowd was packed up the stairs, hanging over the edge of the overlooking mezzanine to watch.
The royal secretary was almost crouched before Marek, speaking in a tremulous voice, holding a heavy law-book in front of himself as if it could make a shield. I couldn’t blame him for cowering. Marek stood not two paces from him like a figure stepped out of a song: encased in armor of bright, polished steel, with a sword in his hand that could have cut down an ox and a helm under his arm. He stood before the secretary like a figure of avenging justice, shining with violence.
“In cases—in cases of corruption,” the secretary stammered, “the right of trial by combat is not—is expressly revoked, by the law of Boguslav the—” He fell back with a choked sound. Marek had swept the sword up barely inches from his face.
Marek continued the movement, swung the sword around all the room, turning: the breathless crowd drew back from the point. “The queen of Polnya has the right to a champion!” he shouted. “Let any wizard stand forth and show any sign of corruption in her! You there, Falcon,” he said, whirling and pointing up the stairs, and the whole court’s eyes turned towards us, “lay a spell upon her now! Let all the court look and see if there is any spot upon her—” The whole court made a sound together, a sigh that rose and fell, ecstatic: archdukes and serving-maids as one.
I think that was why the king didn’t stop it right away. The crowd on the stairs parted to make way for us, and the Falcon swept forward, his long sleeves trailing down the staircase, and coming to the floor made the king an elegant bow. He had obviously made ready for this moment: he had a large pouch full of something heavy, and he crooked his finger and brought four of the high spell-lamps down from the ceiling, to stand around the queen. And then he opened the pouch and flung a wave of blue sand up into the air over her head, speaking softly.
I couldn’t hear the incantation, but a hot white light came crackling out of his fingers and ran through the falling sand. There was a smell of melting glass, thin wisps of smoke escaping: the sand dissolved away entirely as it came down, and a faintly blue distortion formed in the air instead, so that it seemed I saw the queen and Kasia through a thick pane of glass with mirrors all around them. The spell-lamps’ light shone blazing through the distortion, brightening as it passed through. I could see the bones of Kasia’s hand through her flesh, where it rested on the queen’s shoulder, and the faint outline of her skull and her teeth.
Marek reached out and took the queen’s hand, leading her in a circle on display. The nobles hadn’t seen the archbishop’s trial, Jadwiga’s veil. They stared avidly at the queen in her white gown, her very blood vessels a faint tracework of shining lines inside her, everything glowing; her eyes were lamps and her parted lips breathing a glowing haze: no shadow, no smudge of darkness. The court was murmuring even before the light slowly faded out of her.