Her face clouded with disappointment. “Why not? You need a servant.”
“The princess might not agree.”
Her face became puzzled. “Why not? I am only a servant. She would have no cause to be jealous.”
What Niall glimpsed in her mind perplexed and disturbed him. It was almost as if they were talking about two different Merlews. He was suddenly chilled by a sense of foreboding, of learning something he would prefer not to know.
He forced himself to smile at her. “Let me ask her first.”
“All right.” Her face became radiant again. “Can I get you something before you go to bed — a drink, something to eat?”
He shook his head. “No thank you.”
She dropped him a curtsy before she went out, and he realised that she already regarded herself as his servant.
He sat down on the edge of the bed, which yielded softly beneath his weight, and stared blankly at his reflection in the mirror on the wall. It was like looking at a stranger. Yet it was not merely his physical appearance — the blue uniform of a king’s son, the white braid round the hair — that brought this sense of estrangement. It was the feeling that all his inner certainties had been undermined.
Two hours ago, he had been in a daze of happiness to realise that Merlew found him attractive. It seemed impossible that she could love him; but when she kissed him in the bathroom, he had come to feel that it was incredible but true.
Now that certainty had evaporated. It had happened as the servant girl stared up into his face. Suddenly, he had realised that she was a bribe. Like this bedroom, she was intended to keep him happy. But she had not told him the truth — that Kazak had ordered her to be his servant. She had made it sound as if it was her own idea, and that she would have to ask the king for permission. He had to be flattered into cooperation.
Had Merlew also been ordered to bribe him — with kisses, with implied promises of love? Now, suddenly, he seemed to hear her voice: “What, that skinny boy? You must be joking,” and his heart seemed to wither inside him.
The uncertainty was intolerable. He slipped off his sandals and crossed the room. His door opened noiselessly. Facing him across the corridor was a door painted royal green; the handle was shaped like a serpent. As he reached out for it, he hoped for a moment that he would find the door locked; yet even before he touched it, he knew it would be open. The handle yielded, and he pushed the door ajar.
The room was lit with the same rose-coloured flames as his own. At a dressing table on the other side of the bed, Merlew was sitting, brushing her hair before the mirror. She was dressed in a long, silky garment of a creamy white colour and her feet were bare. Her yellow hair was spread over her shoulders, and she was completely absorbed. If she had moved her eyes a fraction of an inch, she would have seen Niall’s face watching her through the open door; but she was gazing into her own eyes, lost in thought.
He opened his mouth to speak to her, then changed his mind. Her beauty seemed to hurt his senses; he was unwilling to expose himself to further misery. Then, as he watched her face, his mind seemed to find her thought-vibration. For a moment, he was quite certain that she would sense his presence and turn round. But her absorption made her oblivious.
Then, quite suddenly, he was inside her body, drifting along with the stream of her feelings and sensations. In that moment, all his misery and jealousy disappeared; since his own identity was merged in hers, jealousy would have been an absurdity. He was aware of her essence, her reality. A few moments before, she had been an imaginary girl, a dream image created by his desire and inexperience. Now, suddenly, she was a real person, and he was ashamed of his stupidity. The girl he was now looking at was the Merlew he had glimpsed through the mind of the servant girl, who had known her since childhood. This reality was at once more complex and more commonplace than his dream image of femininity.
The real Merlew was generous, good natured and easy to please. She was also imperious and capricious; she regarded having her own way as a law of nature.
At this moment, she was wondering idly what had happened to Niall. She liked Niall. The skinny boy, whom she had found interesting but slightly ridiculous, had improved greatly in the months since she had last seen him. He was taller and stronger, and some experience had made him more mature. Although she had been carrying out her father’s orders, it had been a pleasure to make Niall fall in love with her. He was a good-looking young man, and she liked good-looking young men. At home she had been surrounded by them; here in the spider city, she felt deprived. Of course, Niall was shy and awkward, with no experience of love-making; but she could soon remedy that. In fact, she was looking forward to becoming his teacher; it gave her pleasure to teach men the rudiments of lovemaking. . .
Niall closed the door silently and went back to his own room. He felt like laughing aloud. It seemed incredible that so much misery and jealousy could evaporate so quickly and so completely. He still found Merlew beautiful and desirable, but the feeling was unadulterated with illusions; he felt as though he had been married to her for ten years. He also felt as though he had aged ten years. It was not an unpleasant sensation.
All desire to sleep had vanished. He went to the window and looked out; the main avenue outside was bathed in moonlight. It looked totally deserted. By standing at an angle, he could see the white tower; it seemed to be shining in the moonlight with a milky glow. At the same time, he experienced an inexpressible sense of longing which was somehow amplified by his new feeling of freedom. Like the moon, the tower seemed remote and untouchable. Now he no longer dreamed of Merlew, the tower seemed to have become the focus of his deepest desire.
He picked up the metal cylinder from the chair where he had dropped it, and touched the button that made it expand, observing as he did so that it was not necessary to exert any pressure. The end of the rod caused a tingling in his fingers; it was the same sensation that he had experienced that morning, pressing his hands against the tower.
He went out into the corridor and closed the door behind him. At the far end, someone went past, mounting the stairs; it was one of the servant girls. He stood until she was gone, then went to the head of the stairs. As he began to descend, he heard the sound of a door closing softly. Merlew was standing in the corridor. As he watched, she knocked gently on his own door, then turned the handle and entered. Niall went on down the stairs.
The hallway was empty. He tried the main door; it was locked. But the door into the rear courtyard was open. So was the gateway into the street. Niall made no attempt at concealment; he was aware that the spiders hunted by will, not by sight, and his strange inner-calm gave him a sense of invulnerability.
The sight of the tower at the end of the avenue released a sense of serene exultancy. Even among these towering buildings, it looked enormous, and the moonlight seemed to magnify its size. His eyes remained fixed on it as he walked along the avenue. When he reached the square, he observed two wolf-spider guards standing outside the entrance of the building with the black façade. They watched him without curiosity as he crossed the square; anyone who walked so casually in the moonlight must have an official reason for being abroad.
Near the tower, the smell of explosive still lingered in the air. The earth underfoot was soft where the crater had been filled in.
Niall walked slowly round the foot of the tower, staring at its milky surface. At close quarters, the glow seemed stronger than the moonlight, as if it came from inside. And as he stared at it, a curious sense of anticipation swept through his body. The rod in his hand was now tingling, prickling against the damp skin as if emitting tiny points of light. It was the sensation he had experienced in the past when dowsing for water, and it seemed to draw him towards a particular spot on the northern side of the tower. As he approached, the sense of inner certainty became stronger. He took the ends of the rod in both hands, and as soon as he did so, experienced a dizzying sensation that made him feel the ground was swaying. He looked up, and the tower seemed immense, stretching up as far as the eye could see. The metal contacted its surface, and the dizziness became a sudden acute nausea; for a moment, he was choking. His knees were buckling, and he was staggering forward into a whirlpool of darkness. Then his senses cleared, and the darkness changed into light. He was standing inside the tower.