Gáspár moves to my side, but before either of us can reply Nándor is gone again, his footsteps vanishing down the corridor. My breath shudders out of me. Before, when I had my magic, I could have at least tried to fight him. Now I can do nothing while the ice closes over my head.
The Woodsmen lead Tuula, Szabín, and the bear to the dungeons, and Lajos nudges Gáspár, Katalin, and me toward the Great Hall. I can scarcely feel the floor under my boots. If Nándor is right, I may not leave this chamber alive, even with Gáspár at my side. What can he do to halt the swing of his father’s blade?
King János sits on the dais, crown of fingernails resting on his head like a stag’s weathered antlers. My eyes go at once to the smears of blood dried into its ridges and grooves, small details that I have come to recognize, though I don’t wonder about them anymore. My mother’s fingernails are there among them, but she’s gone now, just like my magic.
The king’s beard has been braided, almost lovingly, and I can’t imagine who has done such a thing. Certainly not Nándor, who spoke so openly of his attempt to kill me in front of Lajos and the other Woodsmen. It frightens me to think that there are only King János’s weak chin and dull-eyed rambling between Nándor and the throne.
There’s a wet gasp from the corner of the room and I twist my head to see the érsek, puddled in the shadows to the left of the dais, nearly invisible until he patters forward into the light. In the mound of his brown robes, he looks like a sleepy-eyed animal peering out from its burrow, head bobbing on his wattled neck. He blinks at the king, and then at Gáspár, and then at me.
“I saw a bear in the courtyard, my lord,” he says.
“A bear?” the king echoes.
“Do not concern yourself with the bear,” says Lajos. “My lord, we found it. We have the turul.”
He reaches into the cloth bag he has slung over his shoulders and pulls the turul from it. Its amber feathers are matted from the long journey, drained of all their previous luster, stiff and cold after six long days being dead. Lajos bows, then lays the turul at the king’s feet.
King János has the look of a half-starved man at the feast table. The eyes of a besotted man at the bedside of his lover. Very gently, he reaches down and lifts the turul, holding it up to the scant candlelight.
“Finally,” he whispers, and then even more quietly, as if he doesn’t expect anyone to hear: “To Kuhale and back.”
He uses the Old Régyar word for the Under-World. Old Régyar is the tongue that was once shared between Southerners and Northerners, before the Southern tongue split off, a branch fallen from a mighty oak. We all still know the language, or at least a few adages and rhymes, but Old Régyar is on its way to extinction: by the time Virág is dead, it will be all but forgotten. The king is not nearly as old as Virág, but I wonder if his wet nurse sang to him in Old Régyar. He is old enough for that.
“Will you have a feast tonight, my lord?” the érsek asks. “To celebrate this boon?”
“Yes,” the king breathes. “Yes, a great power is nearly upon me.”
He passes the turul off to a serving girl, who scurries quickly out of the hall with it. The rheum in the king’s eyes seems to lift. His gaze is clearer and sharper than I have ever seen it when he turns to me.
“Wolf-girl,” he says. “My Woodsmen tell me you were the one to find the turul.”
I glance toward Lajos, who is glowering at me. There’s no use in lying. “Yes.”
“And you stole my seer, and my son, in order to do it.”
Gáspár opens his mouth to argue, but I speak first. “Yes.”
The king draws a breath. He rises from his seat, stepping off the dais, and comes to stand before me. I watch his hands, waiting for him to forge a blade and put it to my throat. Waiting for him to use his stolen magic to kill me.
“Father, please—” Gáspár starts.
“Quiet,” the king says. “You do not need to beg for the wolf-girl’s life; I don’t intend to end it.”
I ought to feel relief, but I can only manage a short, bitter laugh, remembering how I stood in this same hall before, the king’s sword angled over my head. Remembering how it rusted away to nothing in my hand. I’d felt suffused with power then, manic with it, freer than I’d ever imagined I could be. The girl in my memory is a miserable fool for not seeing all the sheathed daggers, for not knowing how to maneuver around the pits in the floor.