Brave Story - Miyuki Miyabe [351]
His words reminded Wataru of something the Elder had said way back in Sakawa. The one who runs the fastest wouldn’t necessarily get to the tower first.
But those words could merely have been wishful thinking—a pep talk to keep him from descending into total despair.
Wataru looked up at the night sky. A thin, translucent cloud passed like a net across the crescent moon.
And there was the Blood Star, still shining red. It hadn’t disappeared. That meant Halnera wasn’t yet finished. The sacrifice hadn’t been chosen.
What is she waiting for? Why prolong the cruelty?
“Who’s there?” Meena suddenly said, her voice a hoarse whisper.
Wataru and Kee Keema both whirled around, their weapons at the ready. A thin, twisted tree grew not ten paces behind them. The edge of a white dress peeked out from behind its trunk, fluttering in the cold night air.
“It’s her,” Wataru said, lowering Kee Keema’s axe with one hand, and calling out. “What are you doing here?”
The girl fearfully looked out from behind her hiding place, her hands pressed to her mouth. Wataru ran over to her. “Why did you leave the forest?”
“You go to the capital, no?”
The girl was shivering terribly. Her dress was too thin to protect her from the cold. Her teeth were chattering. “Please, take me with you. There might be someone left—someone from the palace.”
Wataru hesitated a moment, then took off his jacket and gave it to her. He would have put it on her himself, but she was taller by a head.
“We were just going as far as the city walls. If it doesn’t look like we can go inside, we’ll have to stop there.”
“That is good enough.” Still trembling, the girl drew Wataru’s jacket over her shoulders.
Though it had been the gentlemanly thing to do, Wataru was now feeling cold wearing just a shirt in the chilly air. “Didn’t you hear what everyone was saying back in the forest? The Crystal Palace is gone. They say it was sucked into the Mirror of Eternal Shadow. I don’t imagine anyone in the castle survived.”
The girl’s cheeks were pale with cold and fear. But when Wataru turned to rejoin Kee Keema and Meena, she followed him.
Now they were four. Meena walked in the rear, staring at the girl in the white dress. “Are you from the castle?” she asked as they walked.
The girl hunched her shoulders and didn’t answer.
“That’s a nice dress you’re wearing. Nobility, are you?”
The girl still said nothing. Perhaps she could hear the barely concealed thorns in Meena’s question.
“Well, you must be of high birth, at least. Tell me: when the capital was being torn to pieces, where was the emperor’s army? Where are they now? Aren’t they even going to try to help their own people?”
Before Wataru could say anything, Kee Keema cut in. “When those golem monsters were tearing the city apart, I saw several groups of Knights come down from the castle. They didn’t stand a chance against those things. They were crushed. If any of the troops were left behind in the castle, well, I suppose when the mirror came out…”
Meena was bristling. “Then what about the rest of the army? And what about Sigdora—those special forces? Where were they? What are they doing? You know, don’t you?”
From what he had seen in the mirror hall, Wataru could guess who the girl in the white dress truly was. She was none other than the daughter of Emperor Gama Agrilius VII. She was a princess.
And she looked exactly like Mitsuru’s aunt back in the real world.
As Wataru had met people that were the spitting image of his father and Rikako, so had Mitsuru met ghosts from the real world too. Wataru still didn’t understand the meaning of what Mitsuru had said to her just before he left for the tower. What did he mean, the tilted scales of fortune? And that cheating man and woman he had met in the Swamp of Grief were doing the same thing as