Chapter 36: Wherein Taboos Run Thicker Than Blood

She was leaning against the corner of the desk with her head turned to the right and downward, away from him, her palms pressed against the smooth polished wooden surface and her long pale blond – almost white – hair spilled across her cheek. He was standing imposingly near and she could do nothing but feel helplessly weak in the face of her rapidly beating heart.

"Angelique," he said softly, gently moving her hair aside, exposing the side of her face, her neck and her ear. "you can hide yourself from every man in this palace, from every woman and every child, even from yourself, but you cannot hide yourself from my eyes."

He lightly lifted her chin with his finger and thumb, turning her head so that she was forced to gaze into his dark eyes. As she always did in his presence, she noted how strangely he seemed both outstandingly handsome and tediously ordinary. She was overwhelmed with the feeling of repelling disgust that made her skin crawl, yet at the same time, an unbearable fascination that left her unable to look away.

She held his powerful gaze feeling, not for the first time, as if she were a moth drawn to a particularly feisty flame.

"I can give you what you crave," he said.

"You presume to know what I crave?" she asked, trembling slightly as the battle between repulsion and attraction raged inside her body.

He leaned his head toward hers; she could feel the heat of his breath tickling her cheek. His arm snaked around her waist. "Revenge, my dear," he said, his lips less than an inch from hers. "Day and night, awake or asleep, like me, you dream of revenge."

"Revenge won't bring him back."

"But it will set us free," he replied, stealing a kiss that made a thrill rush through her blood alongside a repulsion that threatened to make her faint. It felt shockingly forbidden, which was all the more wonderful. She pulled her lips away but let her forehead fall and rest against the side of his neck.

"Is it his death that you plan?"

He pulled her into an embrace; she allowed herself to sink into the dangerous warmth of the snake's lair. "Death? Death is the total stroke of darkness that will prove nothing. It is too merciful for our King, won't you agree?"

His words sent a shiver through her body. She clung to him suddenly with total conviction. "I'll take it, then," she whispered. "I'll have revenge against him, with you."

***

"Rat! Hoy Rat!"

"The fool. Winterstarch, take him to his room. He decided to relieve the lady of her pain by taking it for himself, though he took too much, hadn't he? And now he's passed out."

My eyes snapped open and I stared at the brightly lit room around me. What I had seen hadn't been any ordinary dream, it had been a memory – Angelique's memory – and whatever was happening to her right now, the reason she was dying, the reason Cooper had died was because of the revenge they had been plotting. Did someone find out about their plan? Or did it backfire?

Or were they willing to sacrifice themselves for it? Cooper's letter to me made it seem that way. My eyes fell upon Angelique's face, there was still pain there, but it was bearable now; she was sleeping and regaining her strength. I unconsciously smiled at her, feeling slightly embarrassed to have witnessed something so intimate. I heaved a sigh, relieved.

"Fine," the old man said gruffly, "don't carry him, he can walk."

"I'm staying," I said flatly. The pain that I had taken from her had faded away to a distant throb, but my muscles felt drawn, as if they remembered its presence. I felt weary and as heavy as a stone, but I wasn't going to leave her side.

Not until she woke up and told me what I wanted to know.

"You've done enough," the Grand Master said in a tone as stubborn as mine. He was unhappy with me because I hadn't come to the ceremony, and I wasn't going to ask how it went.

"I haven't done enough." I said angrily. "She's going to die."

There was a knock at the open door, Morilla walked in with a golden-haired baby in her arms, the child held his head up, his blue eyes wide and curiously watching everything. I heard they named him Erich, a beautiful baby boy, pink-cheeked and sweet as an angel.

A gurgling sound behind me made me turn my head. The old man's eyes were round blue marbles in his face, the whites almost the same colour as his ashen skin. His wrinkled hand shakily rose to press against his forehead. Beside him, Burgen doubled over and grasped his head with both his hands and in the bed Angelique stirred and moaned in her sleep.

And then I felt it, burning up my toes and the tips of my fingers, more pain identical to the kind I had taken from Angelique. My muscles protested as I rose to my feet.

Morilla, whose eyes were on the child, did not notice, "I thought perhaps a visit from little Erich will make his mummy feel... "

"That child!" the old man hissed out through gritted teeth. "Get that child out of here, and keep it far away!" He pressed his hand to his forehead.

Morilla stood there, stunned with the baby in her arms.

I drew a deep breathe, somehow managing to keep the pain from rising up to my head.

"Please, do as he says," I said.

The old man looked hazily and quizzically at me as I spoke but Morilla nodded and whisked herself out of the room, closing the door behind her.

A heartbeat, then another, and another. Gradually, the pain subsided, leaving a strained and hollow feeling in its wake. Angelique stirred in the bed and opened her pale blue eyes.

The Grand Master moved his hand from his forehead to his heart.

Burgen sat on the chair I had previously occupied "What was that?" he asked in an amazed whisper.

"That baby is it," I said. "Erich, he's a Wielder isn't he? He's making this happen?"

The Grand Master shook his head. He looked like someone who has had the world come crashing round their ears — I've seen plenty of people like that in my life on the streets. He shook his head again, as if disagreeing with his own thought process and rubbed his hands together decidedly.

He approached the head of the bed and bent down, looking into Angelique's face. She stared up at him, blinking her eyes, but said nothing.

"Lady Pergam, can you hear me?" he asked.

She closed her eyes, and then opened them again. "Yes," she whispered.

"I must ask you an important question. For the sake of every living soul in our Kingdom, please answer truthfully."

She swallowed. "I will."

"Who fathered Erich?"

She closed her eyes, exhaled, and inhaled, she opened her mouth, but no voice came out.

"Erich's father is not Prince Joaquin, am I correct? You need only nod."

She nodded.

"He is Cooper's child, is he not?"

Her eyes remained closed; she exhaled softly and nodded:"He is."

The Grand Master sighed and wiped his face with both hands. I did not even know or understand the beginning of what that expression meant. There was a stunned silence in which the repercussions of her words were comprehended only by him. "Child," he moaned looking at Angelique gravely, "What have you done?"

She opened her eyes and gazed at him, tears pooling up within the pale blue orbs, "I didn't know that this would happen."

"But Cooper did," the old man said numbly

"Does this mean that Erich is Rat's brother?" Burgen asked, his voice overly-cheerful, causing the Grand Mast to bristle

"No," I replied flatly. "'Cause I'm not Cooper's son."

"Silence!" barked the old man, his face growing red with anger — or despair. "Both of you imbeciles fail to see the point. Have you never heard of what can happen when two Wielders conceive?"

Burgen's expression grew somber at once, and he gaped at Marning for a long moment.

I looked curiously from one person to another, feeling as if I had not been privy to some important piece of information. "What happens when two Wielders conceive?" I asked carefully.

Burgen swallowed, and when he spoke, his voice was muted. "The Wielder's Taboo."

"I've read about that somewhere!" I blurted out.

The Wielder's Taboo. The clue Cooper had left me, the chapter that had been cut from the book.

Or had it been a warning?

"When two Wielders conceive," said the Grand Master, "what they bring into the world is a terrible curse that destroys life and magic."

"And that baby boy, Erich," Burgen continued speaking after a moment, "he is 'the terrible curse'?"

The old man looked to Angelique; her tears flowed freely down from the corners of her eyes and onto the pillow. "It is not the time nor place to discuss this," he said grimly. "The lady must rest. I will give instructions to have the infant separated from other Wielders. Burgen, Rat, come."

"I'm staying." I said, sticking out my chin to show my defiance.

The Grand Master sighed, looking weary. "Do as you please."

***

Later, after Burgen and the Grand Master left, I must have fallen asleep, because my eyes opened when a cool hand touched my forehead. I lifted my gaze, meeting Angelique's.

She was weak, her cheeks were still as white as frost, but her eyes were clear, and she looked directly at me. "It seems as if someone took Harlock and turned him into a boy," she said and offered me a smile. Lady Pergam's smile was as pale and washed-out as her appearance; it made me feel uneasy, as if it wasn't really a smile she was offering me, but what it was I couldn't be certain of.

"I get that a lot." I replied, straightening up. Something slipped off my shoulders – a blanket – I really had been asleep then, and someone had draped a blanket over me. I stretched. "Are you feeling better?" I asked.

"Much better," she said softly, and nodded toward me, "thanks to you."

"Lady Pergam," I said, my voice low and serious. "I didn't help you for free."

To my surprise, she nodded without hesitation, taking my seriousness seriously. "I didn't think you did." Either her acting was supreme, or she was truly a cunning woman. "What is your condition, Cooper's Rat?"

"The Revenge, I want in on it. I want revenge. Cooper knew something about the Wielder's Taboo that no one else knows, so he's using it to put the King under a curse that'll make him suffer. Am I right? I want to help."

"As expected," she said solemnly, "from Harlock's boy."

"I'm not... "

"If you're not his son, then what are you?" she asked. That made me shut my mouth with a snap. She had a strong gaze. In Auranora, the strength of a man was often weighed by the strength of his gaze; women's gazes travelled gently about, coming in and out of focus in an unthreatening manner. But Lady Pergam, as frail as her body must have been from her illness, gazed at the world like a man.

"There is an oath I took," she finally said after a moment's silence. "I do not know who else is involved, but he told me, when the time comes, to expect others."

"What's the oath?"

"An oath of blood, unbreakable. You will have to carry this out to the end – or die."

She extended her hand toward me and laid it palm upward against the blanket. "Cut your thumb and put it on mine. When you mix the blood, the oath will be sealed."

I used a spell as sharp as broken glass to cut my thumb and with my bandaged hand I traced the fine scar on the tip of her thumb. Her skin was so pale and her hand so bony, fragile and cold, it seemed a shame to cut her and I hesitated before passing my spell over the scar. The beads of blood that appeared were so dark they seemed black against the paleness of her skin. I pressed my cut thumb to her thumb.

A blood oath is a scathing thing to take. It writes itself in unreadable words within your bloodstream, until it burns brightly in your heart, and then it is over in a second, leaving behind it a rough pink patch of confusing emptiness. I pushed my thumb into my mouth and closed my bandaged hand over her thumb, her dark blood soaking into the bandages.

"You no longer have a choice but to carry it to the end," she said.

"But what must I do?"

"I asked the same thing," she said, shrugging, I noticed an odd spark in her eyes, could it be regret? "He just told me that the oath will lead me. I wish I knew what he was going to sacrifice. I would have stopped him."

"From what I heard about him, you probably couldn't have, even if you knew."

"The artful thief," she agreed bitterly.

A/N - There you have it folks - answers! But, as you've perhaps come to realise, every answer comes with its own slew of unanswered questions.

"A terrible curse coming their way..." (That's from the blurb) Will the Tournament be cancelled? Or will the curse be stopped before? And what has Rat gotten himself into by taking that oath?