Crimson Bound

  “Here,” he said. “There’s a great big sun on the floor.”

  To Rachelle, the floor looked like the same dreary gray stone as the rest of the wine cellar. But Armand sounded absolutely certain. Heart beating very quickly, she knelt and pressed her hand to the cold floor.

  She closed her eyes and reached to awaken the charm.

  Nothing happened.

  “Am I touching it?” she asked.

  “Yes,” said Armand. “Right at the center.”

  She tried again. Nothing happened, except that her head began to ache.

  “Are you—” Armand started.

  “It’s not working,” she said harshly.

  Of course it wasn’t working. Why had she thought that anything would start going right for her now? Why had she thought that she might possibly be able to work a woodwife charm? She was bloodbound. Nothing could change that and nothing could make it better.

  She still gave it one final effort. Black speckled the edges of her vision, but nothing happened. With a sigh, she staggered to her feet.

  “It’s no use,” she said.

  “Wait,” Armand said breathlessly. Then he closed his eyes.

  The air changed. The simple chill of the wine cellar became the sweet cold of the Great Forest. Rachelle’s heart pounded, but she couldn’t move.

  She saw the Forest. Tree roots wove among the wine bottles. Moss and bloodred flowers with teeth swarmed over the walls. Tiny bright blue butterflies—no bigger than her thumbnails—fluttered through the air.

  And beneath her feet, she saw the worn, glittering pattern of a great golden sun inlaid on the floor, its rays flowing out to the edges of the room.

  Armand shuddered and let out a breath. The Forest was abruptly gone, but the golden sun still lingered on the floor.

  The strength ran out of Rachelle’s legs. She sank to the floor. Her fingers touched gold.

  She didn’t have to awaken the charm. It awakened to her, blossoming warmth under her hands. She didn’t even realize it had happened until Armand took a quick breath, and she looked up.

  Before them stood two slender birch trees, their branches reaching toward each other and intertwining to form a door frame. The door that hung within it was made of polished gold; in the branches above the door hung a silver crescent moon.

  Rachelle stood slowly, barely able to believe what she was seeing.

  “Do you see a door?” asked Armand, sounding a little dazed. “Because I do.”

  “Yes.” Rachelle’s voice was tiny and wavering, but she didn’t care. She finally had a chance. Everything she had done and suffered might finally be worth it. “I see it. Yes.”

  She pressed her hand against the golden door. She had expected the metal to be cold, but it was as warm as a cat’s back, and humming with a vibration not unlike a cat’s purr.

  They had found it. They had actually found it, the door that had lain hidden for centuries. Just behind this door waited Joyeuse, and once she had it in her hand, all the horror of her life would be worthwhile.

  But it didn’t open for her.

  “I think this door is for you,” she said, stepping back.

  Armand raised his arm and pressed it gently against the door. It started to swing inward.

  And everything went dark, as if shadow had spilled out of the doorway as blindingly as light spilled in a door opened onto summer noon.

  In a heartbeat, she had reached for Armand, seized his arm, and shoved him behind her.

  But there was no danger she could see. Because she could see nothing—only a darkness so intense it pounded at her eyes. She could hear nothing except her short, quick breaths and Armand’s. She could sense nothing except her own pounding heartbeat.

  “Do you see anything?” she whispered.

  “Yes,” said Armand, and as if in response, four glowing lights appeared, dim and greenish-white but blinding after the darkness.

  Then she realized the lights were eyes.

  Snake eyes.

  She could see now. They were in a copy of the Hall of Mirrors, perfect down to the last curlicue on the picture frames, except that it was all carved out of red-brown rock. In front of them and all around them lay coil upon coil of two vast, dark snakes whose bodies were almost as wide as her own arm span.

  No, she realized as she met the pale double stare. It was only one creature. A lindenworm: the legendary snake with a head on both ends of its body, whose endless hunger would stir it to unimaginable greed and make it guard treasure with a ferocity beyond imagining.

  Beside her, Armand let out a short, sharp little breath, as if to say, So this is how I die.

  Rachelle hadn’t been able to die for love of her aunt. She didn’t intend to die for a snake, even a lindenworm.

  As the nearer head lunged toward her, Rachelle leaped up, sword swinging. With bloodbound strength behind the thrust, her sword sliced through the neck and vertebrae as if they were no more than celery coated in butter. Blood gushed. The remaining head spasmed and shrieked—

  As another head grew out of its severed neck.

  A coil slammed into her chest and sent her flying. She hoped Armand had run.

  But there was no time for disappointment or fear, because now both heads were lunging for her. All she could do was dodge and slash, and Rachelle was fighting better than she ever had in her life, but this time it wasn’t enough. Every wound healed in moments.

  Teeth sank into her right shoulder. For a moment it just felt like a burn too hot to hurt. Then the lindenworm shook her, and she screamed. She could feel its venom seeping into the bite, and it was like molten iron.

  Then it started lifting her up, coiling a lower section of its body around her legs. Darkness speckled her vision, but with her free hand she managed to pull out another knife. She stabbed blindly at its head, once, twice, and then felt the knife slide into the jelly of the eye. Thick, hot ooze seeped across her hand.

  The lindenworm dropped her. Rachelle’s stomach lurched as she fell through the air, and then for a few moments, she didn’t feel anything. Then she realized that she was on her feet—barely—and Armand had an arm around her waist as he dragged her toward the windows. They were not glazed, like the windows in the real Château; they were empty slits looking out into darkness, but they were better than staying with the lindenworm. When Armand shoved her in front of them, she flung herself through.

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  When she hit the ground, she rolled. White-hot pain seared up her shoulder, and for a few moments, the world went away. After a while, the pain faded into a steady burn that allowed her to breathe and think. She was flat on the ground; she could see nothing, but her shoulder burned with pain.

  And then it healed. With each breath she drew of the cold, sweet air, the pain grew less. She knew that the muscles and skin were knitting themselves back together; when she sat up, she knew that her wound was gone. She saw the flicker of a far-off bonfire, she saw the starlight through the weaving net of tree branches overhead. They were in the Great Forest.

  A curious peace descended on her. Everything before this moment had been an illusion. There was nothing but the cold darkness around her, the swift, warm pulse of blood inside her. She felt nothing but the empty, echoing darkness in her heart. That was all she was: a shell filled with the same darkness that surrounded her.

  “Rachelle?” whispered Armand in his weak human voice, and the name felt useless, irrelevant, almost obscene beside the holy strength flowing into her body with every breath.

  She was swiftly adjusting to the dim light; she could see Armand now, could see the pale, resolute set of his face. He was afraid, but he wasn’t going to run.

  He should be weeping with fear. He was weak. Prey. Captive. She should kill him, crush him, master him. She thought this quite calmly, with an icy relish as she imagined his blood seepi
ng between her fingers.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  The cold in her shattered like glass, and she realized what she had been thinking. She slammed a fist into the nearest tree.

  I am not a forestborn, she thought. I will not be a forestborn. Not yet.

  The scar on her right hand ached. She was so nearly a forestborn already.

  “Rachelle?” Armand sounded truly worried.

  “I’m all right,” she said. “I’m already healed.”

  “Good,” said Armand after a moment. “But you have a grudge against that tree?”

  “I don’t like this place,” she said.

  “I thought it was your home.”

  “That’s why I don’t like it.” She drew a breath. “We have to leave. Now.”

  “Lead the way.”

  But of course, there was no trace left of the stone hall they had fled. They were somewhere in the vast expanse of the Great Forest—though “somewhere” might not even be the right word, not in this ever-shifting, infinitely unmappable maze of trees.

  The string on her finger glowed bright red as it flowed into the undergrowth. If she followed it, would it lead her back to her forestborn? He wanted her to stay alive until the Devourer returned; he might help her, if not Armand.

  Then she heard the horns.

  No.

  She didn’t “hear” them; the horns sounded, and they devoured her. Her blood pulsed in time to their call, and she wanted nothing except to run after them, ride after them, to join the hunt and run their foolish mortal prey to death.

  Then she glanced at Armand. He had planted himself with his chin at a stubborn angle, but she could see the fear in his rigid shoulders.

  Foolish mortal prey.

  They would hunt him. They would run him to death in the woods, and then they would tear him limb from limb. But they might let her live, because she was bloodbound and destined to become one of them.

  She felt like a rabbit bolting across the fields with foxes at its heels. Nobody escaped the Forest. Nobody could fight the Wild Hunt. If she tried to help Armand, she would die as well. And she had a reason to live now, as she hadn’t when she lifted the knife over Aunt Léonie. There were other men with royal blood who could open the labyrinth for her, but no one else knew how to find Joyeuse and stop the Devourer.

  Armand looked at her with a sort of resigned fear, as if he knew it was inevitable that she would betray him and he would die tonight.

  The horns sounded again, louder, closer. Rachelle shuddered and gripped his arm.

  Nobody could fight the Wild Hunt. So she would just have to cheat them.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” she said. “Just do as I say.”

  And then the Wild Hunt was upon them.

  First came the spectral hounds, their crimson muzzles dripping with blood. Then came the hunters themselves, riding horses and stags and tigers. Light clung to every member of the hunt; they were riotously arrayed in silks and jewels and silver and gold. Their faces shimmered with impossible light and their eyes were dark with unknowable dread.

  Their gazes made her feel like a small, frightened animal. But she was one of them. She had to be one of them, so she remembered Erec’s arrogance and her own anger and the chill, sweet bloodlust of the Forest wind, and she stood up straight.

  The hunt swirled around them, parting to either side, and drew into a ring. One hunter halted before them: a tall man, clad in rags and golden chains, riding a great black stag.

  “You are not yet one of us,” he said, in a voice that was deep and soft and terrifying.

  “Nevertheless.” Her lips were dry and stiff. “I am your sister, and I am here by right.”

  He looked at her. And then, in a movement more terrifying than all his pride, he bowed. The stag on which he sat bowed down as well, muzzle touching the ground, and all the Wild Hunt with him.

  They bowed to Rachelle. Was her heart so cruel already, that they honored her?

  Or were they simply bowing to what they knew she must become?

  “Do you come to hunt with us?” asked the forestborn. “There is little time left, but plentiful prey.”

  “No,” said Rachelle. “I would. But I have business back at home. Will you take me there?”

  The hunter’s teeth glinted in a smile. “We would be honored.”

  Two slender forestborn women helped Rachelle and Armand mount a huge white horse. Their fingers burned cold against her arm and made her shiver; their eyes were worse. When Rachelle was on the horse with Armand before her, she wanted to tell him, I won’t let them hurt you, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t even think it, because when the hunter looked at her, she felt like she was made of glass.

  Instead, she stroked his hair like he was a pet and then said—her voice quiet but carrying—“Ride well for me, and you might live till morning.”

  She could see the edge of his smile. “Yes, my lady,” he said, and then the horns called again and the hunt started. Armand straightened; Rachelle wrapped her arms around his waist. She could feel the movement of his ribs as he breathed.

  And they rode, through the wind and through the night, the Great Forest whispering around them, the air full of hoofbeats and hunting calls and the wild, tuneless singing of the forestborn.

  Far too soon, they stopped. Rachelle had so lost herself in the thrill of speed that it took her a moment to remember why they had been riding with the hunt.

  “Dismount,” said the hunter, and Rachelle slid off the horse’s back. She staggered a moment, then straightened in time to catch Armand as he dismounted.

  “Walk forward,” said the hunter, “and you will be returned.”

  “Thank you,” said Rachelle, and instantly wondered if forestborn ever thanked anyone.

  “Remember me,” he said, “when our lord returns.”

  And then the Wild Hunt streamed around them and was gone into the night.

  Rachelle realized that her heart was pounding and she was gasping for breath. They had ridden with the Wild Hunt, and they had lived.

  She looked at Armand. “Are you all right?”

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  “Then walk,” said Rachelle, and started forward, Armand following her. They were out of the Great Forest now, she realized; the darkness was flatter, the wind thin and drab.

  “The forestborn were stranger than I expected,” said Armand.

  “Why?” she asked. “What was yours like?”

  “Well,” Armand said after a moment, “he had more clothes on.”

  “Clearly, yours was special,” said Rachelle.

  Or had hers been special? She could remember the faces of the forestborn they had ridden with just now; they had been terrible to look upon because of the inhuman power she could sense dwelling within them, but they had been shaped like human faces. She could remember the lines of their eyes and noses and mouths. The face of her forestborn had always left her memory the instant she looked away from him. Was he older and more powerful? Or did all forestborn have the ability to hide their faces, and he was just the only one who bothered?

  “They’re immortal children of the Devourer who have lost their human hearts,” she went on. “What would you expect them to look like?”

  “What does that mean?” asked Armand. “Losing their hearts?”

  “Do you know what’s the difference between bloodbound and forestborn? It’s not just how powerful they are. When bloodbound turn into forestborn, they lose their hearts. The power of the Forest burns them away, and they can’t love or pity anyone. They can’t want anything except destruction. That’s why some of them go mad. The loss of their hearts destroys their reason.”

  In her first month at Rocamadour, she’d seen a mad bloodbound executed. He could no longer talk, and when he wasn’t chained up, he would try to attack anyone in sight. There was nothing left of him but the desire for blood.

  Armand was quiet a few moments. Then he said carefully, “The forestborn I met w
as cruel. But he wasn’t mindless. Or much more inhuman than anyone at court. I don’t think it’s that simple.”

  “Then what makes them all turn that way?” asked Rachelle. “Every time?”

  “Maybe it’s just that, once they’re so deep in the Forest’s power, they don’t want to remember loving anyone.”

  “Why are you trying to convince me that we can be saved?”

  His grin sliced through the darkness. “You’re my jailer. Of course I want to think you might have a change of heart.”

  For a little while they walked on in silence.

  Then the screams started.

  The hunt, thought Rachelle, and there was nothing she could do—nobody fought the Wild Hunt and lived—but she was already running forward, Armand right behind her.

  There were not just screams, but shouts and crashes. Clangs. Snarls. Woodspawn, perhaps? She could fight woodspawn. She pushed herself to run faster.

  And there was an open field ahead of them, with the low stone wall that all northern folk used to keep the trees back from their lands. Rachelle vaulted it in a moment, then remembered Armand, but when she glanced back, he was already over the wall.

  Rachelle flung herself forward into an all-out run. At the far end of the field, she could see flickering lights from the village. Bonfire? Torches? Or had an actual fire broken out?

  She was closer now. She could see human figures running between the houses—yes, one of them was on fire—and wolf-shaped creatures running among them. Woodspawn.

  She caught a glint of metal and heard a clang. They were trying to fight the woodspawn with scythes and hoes. Not bad weapons. But against this many woodspawn, human hands were much too slow.

  And then she was charging into the ring of houses and the flickering firelight, and there was no more time to think. She drew her sword and lunged at the nearest woodspawn; the blade slid easily into its neck, but as the creature dissolved into muck, two more sprang at her.

  One of them she got in time. The other one slammed into her, knocking her to the ground. Instinctively Rachelle threw an arm over her face, then screamed when the woodspawn’s jaws crunched down on her arm.