“This is so pointless,” I had said.
My mother slapped me.
I felt the stinging imprint of her hand even now, as if the blow had left a permanent mark on my cheek. I remembered the look of surprise on everyone’s faces, even my mother’s. I remembered the shock, the embarrassment, but most of all the pain on my mother’s face. The shame. The tears. I closed my eyes. I felt my face burning once again.
I opened my eyes.
I was staring at my mother’s face, and she was crying.
But where was she? I did not recognize her room. It was no room of the castle, at least that I knew. There were bars on the windows. There were bars at the door. She was sitting on a little wooden chair, and she was weeping.
“Mother? Mother what’s wrong?”
She looked up then, and she saw me. I saw shock on her face — then wonder, surprise and finally fear. She shook her head, put her finger to her lips.
“Mother, what’s happened?”
When I had been a child, we had played a game. Read My Lips. We had taken turns until I could read everything my mother said, without any sound.
Now she was telling me something. She was completely silent, but her lips were moving, and I read them.
“Your father... is in danger. Get him first, then me. Get him first, then me.”
I shook my head. I mouthed:
“I’ll get you now, and then we’ll get him together.”
She shook her head, but what did she know? I had no time for her self-sacrificing.
I reached out my hands and grabbed onto her, and felt the strange feeling of being in two places at once. The air was much cooler and damper in the cell than in Woltan’s chamber. I felt Woltan standing up behind me, and then I was pulling her through. There was a great deal of resistance, and I spoke a word.
Durch.
Woltan’s hand was on my shoulder, and power flowed through him into me. We pulled at her together. There was a noise, and then we had her through, but the gateway was open.
I looked back at the gateway. There were other faces there now, angry old faces with eyes that glowed with rage. They stared at me and one of them spoke a word of power that hit me like an ice cold hammer. I felt myself falling as Woltan tried to hold me steady. Still, I fell, but I got out one last word
schliessen
and then all went black.
When I woke again I found myself in a chair, a wet cloth on my forehead. “Mother?”
But she was nowhere to be seen. I was still in Woltan’s study. Woltan was there, though, and Kara too. It was Kara who spoke. “She’s been taken to a healer. She’s alive, don’t worry, but dark magic has been worked upon her. The same spell hit you too, but I think she took the brunt of it.”
“I just feel groggy.”
Kara looked at me. “Your mother is unconscious, and we can’t wake her up. It may be that you have more magical resistance; or perhaps Kalle’s cloak came in handy. It could have been your merpeople blood. They have a special resistance to malicious spellwork, and their blood runs in your veins too.”
It was all my fault. If only I had listened to her. “Will she live?”
Woltan nodded. “We can keep her alive, I have no doubt. How soon she will regain consciousness, however, I have no idea. It may be hours, days, or...”
“Or what?”
“Or months, I’m afraid.”
“Why can’t you be sure?”