“Can you get me away from here? Can you get me home? Is my mother all right?”
“I’m sure no one has bothered her. I will try to get you home, but it will take time. You must first help me.”
Tom looked around the darkened room. “I don’t want to stay here.”
“You must, for the present. You must pretend obedience to the queen’s powers. You must ride, as she tells you. Once she has trained you in horsemanship and to behave like the real Wylles of Affandar, she will take you out among the villages. You must do as she tells you—it is the only way I can help you.”
“But what does she want? Why is she doing this?”
“She has brought you here to replace the sick prince. You look like him. Vrech searched a long time to find a boy who looks like him, then he—arranged for you to move to the house in the garden.”
The boy’s eyes widened. Efil put a hand on his arm. “There is no time for anger. You can only work at saving yourself. Siddonie will not harm you as long as you impersonate Wylles, as long as you are of value to her.”
“But if I could get away…”
“It would do you no good to escape, Tom. You cannot leave the Netherworld alone. No portal will open for you; they will open only for a Netherworlder.”
“But you can open this portal?”
“In time I can.”
“I don’t understand. And I don’t understand about the Netherworld. A netherworld would be an imaginary place.”
“This world lies below your world. You came here through the portal in the garden where you live—the door carved with cats.”
“The tool shed door? But there’s only a little room inside.”
“That room opens to a tunnel. The wall behind it can be opened by a spell, but only by one of us.”
The boy looked doubtful.
“Where do you think you are, then? What do you think has made you so ill and makes you sleep all the time?”
“Drugs, maybe.”
“Drugs, yes. But magic, too,” the king said. “I will try to get you home. But first you must follow the queen’s lead—let her think you are spell-cast and obedient.”
“And what do
“I want to get you out of here. Your presence will destroy my own plans.” Efil smiled. “Don’t fear, I cannot kill you. It is against the Primal Law. I can only get you home again—at my own time, in my own way.”
He soon left the boy, satisfied with the conversation, certain that the boy would do as he ordered.
Already he had started rumors of the imminent birth of his child by another woman. Soon, he would let his subjects know the queen had brought a changeling into the Netherworld. Later, he would prove that was true. If that caused danger to the changeling boy, what difference?
He took the back stairs down to the stables, thinking about Melissa, hoping she was still alive. He would bring her down, surround her with divining ceremonies by the old soothsayer, let the peasants see her, create all the pomp he could to prove a child was on the way. A Catswold child, who could draw all the nations together—under his rule.
Chapter 39
The Harpy and Mag and the gathered rebels watched, in the Harpy’s little mirror, as Efil talked with Tom. When the king promised to free Tom, the Harpy clacked her beak. “Certainly he will.”
Halek laughed. “Might you show us the dispossessed Prince Wylles? Or does your mirror have the power to reach that far, Harpy?”
The Harpy jabbed her beak at Halek companionably, and brought a sharp reflection of Prince Wylles, alone in a bedroom of the Hollingsworth house.
Wylles had grown fatter, and he had some color now. His face was not pinched by sickness anymore, but only by his sour disposition. He was investigating the bedroom cupboards and closet, tossing the contents onto the floor. He seemed not to be stealing but simply destructive or inquisitive, perhaps fascinated with upperworld trinkets. As they watched he pulled out sweaters, a woman’s shoes, an electric iron, examined each then tossed it aside. He stopped sometimes and looked around him as if he wondered where he was. “Likely,” the Harpy said, “he has not fully regained his memory.
“But still,” she said, watching him more closely, “there is a wariness about him. There is, don’t you think, a look of fear in Wylles’ eyes?” She glanced up at Mag, but held the vision steady as a dark-skinned woman entered the house.
This woman was there often overseeing the boy. She and the skinny, older, pale woman were neighbors in the little communal setting of the garden. The Harpy said, “She knows there’s something strange about the boy. She half believes as his mother does that he is not Tom.” They watched Morian look about her with disgust at the dirty kitchen. The boy, in the bedroom, hadn’t bothered to answer her knock.
