“Please,” she whispered. The silence of the Wood oppressed her. “Please, show me somewhere safe.”
Follow, sang the silver voice, and she raced after that sound. Her feet burned with each step. How long had it been since she’d followed this Path? Not since she was merely Maid Anahid, a lowly creature unworthy of a king’s notice. She had not known then and did not know now where it would lead. She only knew the unicorn could not catch her.
It may have been days; it may have been minutes; for all she knew, it may have been centuries. But the Path ended at last, and once more the forest grew up around her. The queen stood with her heart in her throat, straining her senses for any sign of the unicorn. Panting from her exertion, she struggled to draw a deep breath and almost gagged.
“The Near World,” she said. “I smell mortality everywhere. How can my daughter be safe here?”
Follow me, sang the silver voice.
“Will you not accept her into your Haven?”
Follow me.
She saw no choice but to obey. The trees thinned and ended not many yards distant, and though the undergrowth was difficult to navigate in the darkness, she broke through the forest at last. The ground was rocky and inclined steeply uphill, but after a few minutes’ climb she could take stock of her surroundings. She stood at the bottom of a deep gorge filled from one end to the other with forest, twisting on around a bend beyond her sight. A trail that looked as though it had not been traveled in generations led up from the gorge to the high country above. And over her head, in fantastic, impossible beauty, arched a bridge, spanning the gorge, gleaming white in the moonlight. She recognized its Faerie craftsmanship and wondered that the world of mortal men should boast so beautiful a creation.
The climb up the trail was difficult, and the queen was near the end of her strength when at last she emerged upon the high country. This was not a land she knew, but it was far from Arpiar. She smelled roses, free blossoms unsullied by her husband’s hand. And the moon that glowed above was no illusion. By its glow, she could discern the contours of an enormous garden or park. A king’s grounds, she thought. A fit home for her daughter.
The unicorn sang from the Wilderlands below.
Anahid screamed at the sound and started to run but tripped on the uneven soil and staggered to her knees. The baby wailed.
“Why have you brought me to this place?” the queen demanded, though she did not speak aloud. “We are unprotected in the Near World. Even my husband’s enchantments must fade. It will find her for sure!”
The Fallen One may not enter the Near World. It must remain in the Wood Between.
The unicorn sang again. But it did not call for the queen, so she could not understand the words. Her daughter ceased crying, and when Anahid looked at her, she was surprised to find two wide eyes blinking up at her. “Don’t listen,” she said, trying to cover the baby’s ears.
She cannot hear its voice. Her ears are full of my song.
Anahid breathed in relief and got to her feet. She moved unsteadily across the terrain until she came to a rosebush, not far from the great bridge. Kneeling, the Queen of Arpiar placed her bundle there and stopped a moment to gaze into her child’s face, watching it wrinkle and relax and wrinkle again as though uncertain whether or not to be afraid.
Sorrowfully, she watched the change spread across the little face as the enchantments of Arpiar frayed and fell away. She closed her eyes and placed a hand upon her daughter’s heart.
“With all the love I have to give,” she murmured, “though that is little enough.” Then she closed her eyes and raised both her hands toward the moon, cupping them as though to offer or receive a benediction. “I cry you mercy, Lord, and beg your protections upon my child! Shield her within this land from my husband’s gaze. So long as she dwells in this high country, let her escape the spells of Arpiar.”
A flutter drew her attention, and she saw a bird with a white speckled breast land in the rosebush above the child. Its wings disturbed the roses so that they dropped great red petals upon the baby’s face, the most delicate of veils.
Your child is safe in my protection, now and always.
“Do you promise?” said the queen.
I promise. I claim her as one of mine.
“Then I shall return to Arpiar glad.”
You may stay, child. You are not bound to that world.
“I will return,” she said.
Another voice disturbed the night, an old voice as rough as the earth, rugged with mortality. “Oi! Who’s there?”
Anahid leapt to her feet, cast one last look at her daughter, then fled into the night. At the edge of the gorge, she turned, her enormous eyes watching from the darkness. She saw a stocky mortal man, a gardener perhaps, with gray beginning to dominate his beard, step off the Faerie bridge. He went to the rosebush and knelt. Anahid held her breath. She heard the sharp intake of breath, then the man exclaim, “Well now, ain’t you a sight, wee little one! How’d you end up out here on so dark a night?”
I claim her as one of mine, sang the wood thrush to Anahid.
She watched the gardener lift her child, then bowed her head, unwilling to see more. The next moment, the queen vanished down the trail, swallowed up by the Wilderlands below.
The unicorn met her there.
1
THE PRINCE OF SOUTHLANDS WAS BEWITCHED.
Rumor of his bewitchment had been spreading like a plague through the kingdom ever since he was sixteen years old: how the prince had returned from a summer in the mountains, bringing with him a little demon child and installing her as a servant in his father’s house.
Cheap chitchat, to be sure. But fun fare with which to scare the children on a cold winter’s night. “Watch out that you put your muddy boots away where they belong, or the prince’s demon will come fetch you!”
At first, nobody believed it. Nobody, that is, except the servants of the Eldest’s House, who worked with the girl in question.
“She gives me the shivers!” said Mistress Deerfoot to Cook. “With those veils of hers, she looks like a ghost. What do you think she hides behind them?”
“Her devil’s horns, of course. And her fangs.”
“Go on!” Mistress Deerfoot slapped Cook’s shoulder (for she was rather keen on him). “Do be serious!”
Cook shrugged and said no more, for the demon herself passed by just then, carrying a bucket of water. That bucket was large, with an iron handle, and when full probably weighed nearly as much as the girl herself. Her skinny arms did not look as though they could support such a load, yet she moved without apparent strain. Her face was so heavily veiled in linen that not even the gleam of her eyes showed.
She did not pause to look at Cook or Deerfoot but hastened on her way without a word or glance. When she vanished up a servants’ stair, Deerfoot let out a breath she had not realized she held. “Coo-ee! Unnatural strength that one has. What can the prince be thinking to keep one like her around here?”
“He’s bewitched,” muttered Cook. Which was the only natural explanation.
So the demon girl remained at the Eldest’s House. And it was she, said the people of Southlands, who called the Dragon down upon them.
Prince Lionheart stood before his mirror glass, gazing into a face he did not recognize. It was not the face of an ensorcelled man, he thought, despite the rumors he knew people whispered behind his back. It was the face of a man who would be king. A man who would be Eldest of Southlands.
It was the face of a man who had breathed deeply of dragon smoke.
The stench of those poisons lingered throughout Southlands, though in the months since the Dragon’s departure it had faded to a mere breath. In the Eldest’s House it remained the most prominent. And on dark nights when the moon was new, one smelled it strongest of all.
But life must go on. Five years of imprisonment under that monster had taken its toll on the people of the kingdom, but they must struggle forward somehow. And Prince Lionheart would s
truggle with them.
He adjusted his collar and selected a fibula shaped like a seated panther to pin to his shoulder. He never allowed his bevy of attendants to help him dress, rarely even permitted them into his chambers. He’d been five years on his own, five years in exile while the Dragon held his kingdom captive. During that time, he’d learned to button his own garments, and Lionheart would not have attendants bungling about him now.
Besides, their questioning faces unnerved them. Every last one of them, when they met his eyes, silently asked the same question:
“Did you fight the Dragon?”
His fingers slipped, and the point of the fibula drove into his thumb. “Iubdan’s beard!” he cursed, chewing at the wound to stop the blood. The pin fell to the stone floor at his feet. Still cursing, Lionheart knelt to pick it up. He paused a moment to inspect it, for it was of intricate work and solid gold. The seated panther was the symbol of Southland’s heir. When he became Eldest, he would replace it with a rampant panther.
“Did you fight the Dragon?”
He closed his hand around the brooch. “I did what I had to do,” he said. “I had no other choice. I did what I thought best.”
Of course you did.
This voice in his head might have been his own. But it was colder and deeper, and it was no memory.
Of course you did, my sweet darling. And now, with the Dragon gone, you will have your dream.
“My dream,” muttered Lionheart as he looked into the mirror once more and fixed the fibula in its place.
He must make his way downstairs now to the half-constructed hall where a banquet was to be held that night. The scaffolds were pulled down for the week, and the signs of construction hidden behind streamers and paper lanterns. The Dragon had destroyed the Eldest’s Hall before he left Southlands, but rebuilding was well underway. And though the winter wind blew cold through the gaps in the walls and roof, the banquet must, for tradition’s sake, be held there, for this was the prince’s wedding week.
A shadow passed over the sun.
Lady Daylily sat in her chambers, gazing at her face in a glass that revealed a young woman who was no longer as beautiful as she had once been. Not that her beauty was far faded. But the poison that yet lingered in her lungs pinched her features, sallowed her complexion, and left her once vibrant eyes filmed over as with dull ash. She was still lovely, to be sure. But she would never again be what she had been.
Her attendants bustled about her, laying out her gown, smoothing the long headdress as they pinned it to her hair, selecting furs to drape over her shoulders to protect her in the drafty Eldest’s Hall. Daylily must be as elegant as human hands could make her this evening.
After all, the prince’s wedding week was hers as well.
“Out.”
The woman pinning the headdress into Daylily’s curls paused. “My lady?”
“Out. Now.” Daylily turned on her seat. Her face was a mask, revealing nothing. “All of you. I would be alone for a moment.”
“My lady,” said Dame Fairlight, her chief attendant, “the banquet—”
“I believe I have made myself clear.”
The women exchanged glances, then, one by one, set aside their tasks and slipped from the room, closing the door behind them. Daylily sat like a stone some minutes before moving softly to her window. There she sat, gazing out across the Eldest’s grounds.
Like a prisoner gazing on the boundaries of her prison.
Daylily’s view extended over the southern part of the Eldest’s lands, off into the parks and gardens that sprawled for acres. These, like Daylily, were no longer what they had once been, ravaged now by both the winter and the Dragon. Most of the shrubs and bushes had withered into dry sticks and would never bloom again, come either spring or frost. Only the rosebushes remained alive. But these had not bloomed for twenty years and more.
From her vantage point, Daylily saw all the way to where the grounds broke suddenly and plunged into a deep gorge. She saw the white gleam of Swan Bridge, which spanned the gorge in a graceful sweep. But she could not see the darkness of the Wilderlands, the thick forest that grew in the depths of the gulf.
For the briefest possible moment, Daylily thought she should like to throw on a cloak, slip from the House, make that long walk across the grounds to the gorge, and vanish forever into the Wilderlands.
It was a wild fancy, and she shook it away even as it flashed across her imagination. After all, she was Lady Daylily, daughter of the Baron of Middlecrescent, the most beautiful woman in the Eldest’s court (despite the Dragon’s work), beloved of all Southlands and bride of Prince Lionheart. Prince Lionheart, who would one day be Eldest, making her queen. It was her father’s dearest wish. It was the purpose of her entire life.
But how bitter was its fulfillment! Daylily clutched her hands in her lap, refusing even a trace of emotion to cross her face, though there was no one to see. If only she had kept her heart in check. If only she had remained the icy and unreachable statue she must be in order to fulfill this role. If only she’d never permitted herself to love—
She shook her head sharply, refusing to admit that thought. No, better not to dwell on such things. Better to focus instead on the cold reality of her dream come true.
The Prince of Southlands would marry her. But he did not love her.
A movement near to hand caught her eye. Daylily dragged her gaze from the bridge and the gorge to a closer plot of ground. A small figure, stooped and thin, walked among the struggling remnants of the garden. A nanny goat followed behind her like a tame dog, nosing the shrubs for any sign of something edible, while the girl gathered what greenery she found into a bundle on her arm.
She wore a white linen veil that covered the whole of her face.
Daylily gnashed her teeth. In that instant, she looked like a dragon herself. “Rose Red,” she muttered. “Witch’s child. Demon.”
She trembled with sudden cold when the shadow passed over the sun and fled swiftly across her face.
The day was cold, especially for Southlands, which was used to balmy weather even in winter. The goat snorted, and streams of white billowed from her nose. But Rose Red, bundled from head to toe in her veils, scarcely noticed the chill. She searched the shrubs of the one-time garden for any sign of life. Some rosebushes had miraculously escaped the Dragon’s fire and, though withered, still managed to produce some green. Rose Red ran her hands through them, not noticing if the thorns caught at her gloves or pierced her sleeves. She put her nose up to the leaves, and they still smelled sweet.
It was difficult these days to find anything that could bring freshness to the poisoned chambers of the Eldest’s House. But Rose Red cut stems as she could, gathering a great armload. She would spread these through her master’s chambers while he was busy at the banquet tonight. Perhaps it would cheer him to return and find greenery among those gloomy shadows. Or perhaps he would not notice.
“Beana!” She turned suddenly on her goat, which had a large sprig of leaves sticking out of the corner of her mouth. “Don’t eat that. You’ll be sick.”
“Bah!” said the goat, spattering leaves about her hooves. When Rose Red reached out to snatch the mouthful from her, she shook her horns and turned her tail on the girl.
“Beana, I need every bit I can find. There’s precious little as it is without you snackin’ on it! You don’t behave yourself, and I’m puttin’ you back in the pen where you belong.”
The goat muttered and trotted several paces back up the path, still chewing. Rose Red turned back to her bush, parting the thin stems to better reach a patch of lingering growth.
She paused, taking a startled breath.
Deep within that tangle of brown and dying leaves, almost hidden by thorns, was a blossom. Pure white, almost too pure to be visible, as though made of light itself, but fragrant, extravagant even. It was like nothing the girl had ever seen.
But when she blinked, it was gone.
The goat, standing s
ome distance from her now, turned suddenly and shivered. “Bah,” she said and trotted quickly to Rose Red’s side. “What do you have there?”
Rose Red backed away hastily. “Nothin’ you need to see. You’d probably eat it anyway.”
She moved on down the row of bushes as her goat stayed put, poking her nose into the tangled branches. Beana’s yellow eyes narrowed, and she stamped a back hoof. “Rosie!” she bleated. “What did you see?”
“Nothin’, Beana,” Rose Red repeated without turning to the goat. Her arms were full by now, and she would need to put the stems in water soon if she hoped to keep them alive long enough for her master to see. “You’re goin’ to have to go back to your pen now.”
“I don’t want to go back to the pen.”
“I’m sorry, but I cain’t take you inside with me. Not so long as you insist on bein’ . . . you know . . . a goat.”
Beana blinked slowly. “And what else would I be, dear girl?”
Rose Red did not answer. Many things had changed for her during those five years with the Dragon, even more in the months following his departure. Everything she had known was gone. The man she called father was dead. Her home was destroyed beyond recall. Hen’s teeth, her goat wasn’t even a goat!
And dreams came to life and walked in the real world as living, fire-breathing nightmares.
Sometimes she did not think any of the events in her recent life could possibly have happened. The rest of the time, she simply pretended they had not. Best to focus on the tasks at hand. She must serve her master. And she must stay out of everyone else’s sight as much as possible. Because they all believed it was she who brought the Dragon upon Southlands.
In a way, perhaps she had.
Rose Red sighed as she led the goat back to her pen, where other goats raised lazy eyes and bleated disinterested greetings.