The cat spun about, all the fur on his body standing on end, his teeth revealed in a long hiss and a snarl. Lionheart leapt back, startled, and thought the creature looked many times his size, huge and threatening. He raised his beanpole, prepared to defend himself, when he realized there were words in the cat’s caterwauling:
“Run, mortal, run!”
A sudden, hideous baying filled Lionheart’s ears, filled his chest, rumbled and shrieked through his body so that he thought his bones would break. He did not want to, but his body moved for him, turning him about to face whatever was oncoming.
He saw roiling darkness, an entity in itself, sweeping down from above.
A hand caught his arm. A voice he did not quite recognize shouted, “I said, run!”
Then he was pulled into motion. The darkness slapped down, but still he ran, blindly pushing through leaves and branches and tearing foliage. A back corner of his mind wondered if he still followed a Path, but this was drowned out in the fear that drove him. He still felt that stranger’s hand clutching his, and he stumbled after, his body screaming for more air, unable to think anything save, Run! Run! Run!
The baying, deeper than night, surrounded Lionheart. Then something pushed him, throwing him from his feet, and he landed flat on the ground. Branches tore at his face. He wrapped his hands over his head, squeezing his eyes shut as though to somehow squeeze from them that one brief glimpse he had caught—an image of darkness with red eyes howling across the sky, dragging deeper darkness in its wake. Lionheart shut his eyes against it, expecting death, expecting tearing teeth upon his bones, upon his very soul.
But the voice of the darkness rolled over him, then on and away. The echoes, slowly dying, lingered with him perhaps for hours.
When at last Lionheart dared uncurl himself and sit upright, he found Midnight had fallen upon this part of the forest, perhaps never to lift. And he was alone.
The Palace Var was full of wonders.
Every corner he turned led the Boy to something new and beautiful. Like a maze, it wound deeper and deeper into itself, and he could not understand its construction. But what did that matter in the face of so much beauty? He discovered entire wings built of crystal and glass in which vast gardens flourished. Waterfalls fell from upper floors and ran into streams that flowed in channels along the halls. Butterflies flocked in abundance, and everywhere, absolutely everywhere, there were roses.
The scent of roses was rich in the Boy’s nostrils as he wandered the various passages. Sometimes he passed people who wore garments of red and magenta and the deep blush of sunset, their heads crowned in rosebuds of the same hue. Their faces were beautiful, but he did not recognize them, so he went on by without a word. His eyes were wide to take in all he could of the palace itself. The crystal wing opened to other corridors, and he left behind the indoor gardens and rivulets and passed into a long gallery of rich red and gold.
There hung fantastic paintings, larger than life, of more handsome people, also clad in all the colors of the rose. The women wore headdresses with trains woven of rose petals. The men, more fierce though no less beautiful, wore crowns set with thorns and bloodred buds.
The Boy went on. Everywhere he went, more roses met him. His senses swam in their sweetness. “What a good, kind man King What’s-his-name must be,” he mused as he wandered. Only a very good king could rule such a kingdom. Only a very good man could grow such roses.
His roving took him back at last to the assembly hall where he had first been presented to King Vahe, but the Boy did not remember this. When he stepped through the doorway and saw the enormous statues staring down at him, a faint uneasiness passed over him. He walked down the hall between the statues, craning his neck as he looked up at their faces. Roses climbed up their pedestals and draped their white limbs in vibrant necklaces and bracelets. Their faces were solemn but beautiful and, the Boy thought, kindly.
Nevertheless, as he neared the end of the hall, a vague recollection tugged at his mind. An almost-memory of something . . . terrible. Something standing at his shoulder. And the almost-memory was worse than a solid memory could be.
He very nearly turned and fled the room but realized that he was not alone. A princess—and he thought that she must be a princess for she was far too lovely to be anything else—sat in the shadow of the final statue, regarding him with great silver eyes from behind a lace veil. The Boy startled, his eyes widening still more and his pale face breaking out with bright red spots on each cheek. “Hullo,” he said.
“Hullo,” said the princess.
“I think I know you.” The Boy smiled and extended a hand, but she did not take it. “If you don’t mind my asking, what’s your name?”
“They call me Varvare.”
“Ah.” He nodded, still grinning. Then he said, “And if it wouldn’t be too bold . . . What’s . . . my name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ah.” Again he nodded, but the grin faded away slowly, replaced by a sad frown. “I don’t either. Have we had this conversation?”
“Yup.”
The Boy took a seat on the marble floor at her feet. Even here, roses wound across the floor, petals clinging to his trousers. He could almost see them growing. “Don’t you love all the flowers? I don’t remember what they’re called, but they’re pretty, yes?”
“There ain’t no flowers.”
The Boy shook his head at her. “You don’t speak properly for a princess, do you? It’s aren’t any, not ain’t no. Did no one ever teach you?”
The princess narrowed her eyes at him. But she only said, “If you say so.”
Satisfied, the Boy turned his gaze once more to the faces of the statues. “It’s a shame, really.”
“What is?”
“They seem so beautiful, like nothing I have ever seen before.”
Varvare craned her neck to look up into the face of her dead grandmother. She muttered again, “If you say so,” and raised an eyebrow.
“But I wish they weren’t covered up.”
“Covered up?”
“All those . . . those . . . No, I can’t decide. It sometimes seems as though there’s a . . . like a mask over their faces. I can almost see it if I don’t quite look at them. If I look sort of behind them, there’s another side to them, one more real. But I can’t see it. A shame. As beautiful as these are, they must be much more beautiful uncovered!”
Princess Varvare fixed her gaze on the empty face of the Boy, her lips twitching in a wry smile. “They ain’t,” she said. Then, “Want to help me with somethin’?”
“Sure,” said the Boy, pleased by this request.
The princess reached out and took his hands, raising them up to shoulder height. “Straighten your hands,” she ordered. “Thumbs out.” She arranged them to a foot apart, palms facing each other. “Good. Now hold them steady.”
Then, much to the Boy’s bafflement, Varvare pulled something from her pocket and began to wind it around his hands, looping back and forth. Like she was winding yarn . . . except there was nothing there.
“Uh . . .”
“Don’t drop your hands! You’ll spoil it!”
“What are we doing?”
“None of your business. Just hold your hands still.”
“I feel silly.”
“Maybe you are. Now shush.”
The Boy obediently shut his mouth, watching the princess go about her work. She finished winding nothing, slid nothing off his hands, and carefully folded it, stuffing it into the pocket of her long dress. Then suddenly she sat up, craning her neck toward the door. The Boy looked the same direction and again saw nothing. He was beginning to suspect this girl had also lost her mind. “Look,” he said, “I think I need to—”
“He’s sending for you,” Varvare said.
“Who is?”
“The king.”
“Your father?”
At that, her face hardened and she looked away, hunching into herself. “He ain’t my father.??
?
Before she had finished speaking, however, the Boy had ceased to listen. A cold dread overcame him, one that he recognized more clearly than anything else in all that glorious palace. His eyes widened, and he ducked behind the princess, crouching down with his back against the statue’s pedestal.
The unicorn entered the long hall.
It glided rather than walked between the statues, like moonlight sliding along a polished floor. Its progress was both tremendously fast and achingly slow, but inevitable. Like waves eating away at the shore, devouring whole islands, whole continents in time, so the unicorn moved with relentless grace. The Boy trembled and covered his eyes, unable to look. But Varvare sat as still as the statue looming above her and gazed with quiet eyes at the creature approaching.
It bowed its gleaming horn, so thin that it looked as though a child’s hand could snap it in two, so sharp that it might pierce mountains to the heart. It bowed its horn, touching it to the ground at Varvare’s feet.
Then it spoke.
The Boy could not understand the words. The sound of its voice roiled terror in his gut, and he bit down on his own finger to keep from screaming. He pressed himself against the princess as though somehow her tiny frame could offer him shelter.
But when the unicorn’s voice had passed, Varvare replied, “You know I cain’t do that. Why do you keep askin’ me?”
The unicorn raised its horn, and the depths of its eyes swirled with thoughts that mortal minds could not comprehend. It did not speak to the princess again but this time turned to the Boy, who by now would have eaten himself if he thought he might escape its gaze.
Come with me.
It spoke without language. The Boy immediately rose to his feet, and his fear was so great that he forgot everything beyond obedience.
The unicorn turned and began to lead him from the long hall. The Boy followed. As he went, however, he felt a hand slip into his own, and when he glanced to the side he found that the princess had joined him. The touch of her hand brought relief; some of his own thoughts rolled back into his mind, including awareness of his own horror. But along with that relief came gratitude to Varvare—though he had already forgotten her name—for not abandoning him to the one-horned beast and whatever fate it had for him.
The Palace Var offered no twisting, maze-like passages to the unicorn. It wouldn’t dare. Where the unicorn walked, all the halls arranged themselves conveniently before it, all the stairs were straight and true, all the doors were unlocked. They met no one as they went, for the people of Var felt the unicorn’s approach and fled so that the palace was as silent as a ruin. The Boy trembled uncontrollably, but his feet moved without his will. Varvare squeezed his hand, a poor comfort, but a comfort even so.
At last they came to a set of double doors taller than any three men and carved all over with roses. It was the very center of Var; the center of the labyrinth to which no one could come without Vahe’s permission.
The unicorn touched the lock with its horn, and as the doors swung open, blinding light poured out, as pure as starlight.
Varvare stopped and, biting her lip, slowly withdrew her hand from the Boy’s. She knew she could not enter here. He gave her one desperate look, but only for an instant before he was dragged without apparent force through the doorway behind the unicorn, into the glare of light.
The doors shut.
Varvare stood before them, and she did not see carved roses. Rather, she saw the ghosts of roses, like trapped spirits, crying out for help. She put out a hand and gently touched one of those faces. Then she turned and slowly made her way back through long, dark passages into which no sunlight fell, and in which there was no scent of roses, but only the stench of captivity.
Somewhere, far away, she heard the wood thrush sing.
Call for him, beloved.
“I won’t,” she said.
5
The Hunter stepped onto the Old Bridge and sniffed. He caught the scent of the cat, which he knew, and that of the Boy, which he thought he recognized, though he could not at the moment place it.
But the scent of the unicorn overwhelmed his nostrils, dispersing all thoughts of the others. He growled and backed off the old boards, which creaked under his immense weight. Then he turned and vanished like a bat into the night, continuing his hunt through the vast expanse of the Wood.
The Wood Between spoke not a word. It did not need to. The ground beat a pulse of hostility. Not a hint of evil, but instead a solemn self-regard that insisted on respect. The eyes of the Wood looked down upon Lionheart and were displeased with this stranger.
He sat in the dark, perhaps for centuries, and wondered if another coming upon him in this place someday would see only a puff of smoke, a haze of memory. Everything in him pleaded to rise, to hasten back the way he had come, to find some exit into the world he knew. But a sensible side insisted that there could be no good in wandering in the dark. Eventually daylight would return and he could take stock of his surroundings.
He should have known that dragon-eaten cat would abandon him. Had the creature not constantly trailed after Una back in Oriana Palace? Her devoted pet, surely he must bear him a grudge. All that talk of being sent was nothing more than a cover, a guise wherewith to lead Lionheart deep into this snare of a Wood. And then to leave him.
These thoughts were unfair, and he knew it. When he looked back upon recent events, everything was a muddle. But he knew the cat had warned him to run . . . after that, Lionheart couldn’t say for certain. He vaguely recalled a hand taking hold of him and dragging him along. He might have dreamt that, however. And of the cat, he could not say.
Lionheart shivered, pressing his back against the tree. Every few moments he realized that somehow the tree had retreated behind him, leaving him without support in the darkness. Then he would scoot backward to press against it once more. It trembled softly, perhaps in response to a light breeze above, perhaps in disgust.
A rumbling disturbed the silent ire of the trees, and Lionheart felt the pressure around him recede as the Wood withdrew into itself. The rumbling increased, a cacophonous crashing through underbrush, the screech of rusty wheels, and a low voice singing a tuneless song. The wheels creaked and footsteps stomped in time.
“The king says he,
‘I’ll find the knight
And eat his nose in one great bite.’
O jolly way have we!
“The king says he,
‘I’ll find the fool
And use his backside for a stool.’
O jolly way have we!”
Lionheart was on his feet with Bloodbiter’s Wrath held ready for action long before he saw the light. But when three lanterns appeared, glowing orange and yellow, he found himself too pleased at the prospect of meeting someone—anyone—in that lonesome forest to attempt escape. Instead, he waited.
“The king says he,
‘He thinks he’s wise,
But I will pluck out both his eyes.’
O jolly way have we!”
The lanterns illuminated a cart on two big wheels, taller than it was wide. A hunched little man hauled it, dressed in long robes that might have been red or might have been purple; it was difficult to tell. He wore a lantern around his neck that swung back and forth like a cowbell as he walked. Two others were strung on either side of the tall cart. His head was down and he focused on his own footsteps.
“The king says he,
‘I’ll find the cat
And stitch his tail into my hat.’
O jolly way have we!”
With that verse he came into Lionheart’s clearing and stopped. He looked up without surprise and met Lionheart’s gaze.
“Well met, mortal.”
Lionheart nodded but squinted as he did so. The face before him was . . . strange, at best. At first he thought it very strong and golden, the features of a warrior or a lord. Then, as though a passing wind caught the contours and distorted the shape, the face became fiercely ugly. Rockli
ke and bloated, with saucer-shaped eyes and a leering mouth.
A face such as Lionheart had seen on only one other person.
“Evening, sir,” Lionheart said.
“Evening, is it?” The stranger looked up at the sky and studied it a moment. “Midnight, more like. The Black Dogs have been this way, have they? Have you no Time?”
“No,” Lionheart said. “I don’t know the time.”
“I didn’t ask if you knew the time,” the stranger said, rolling his eyes. “I asked if you had no Time, but I can see for myself that you haven’t. If you had, why would you sit so long in such vicious Midnight? No matter. I can sell you some if you like!”
The next moment, the stranger pulled a cord and the tall cart unfolded itself with many springs and sproings into a vendor’s stall. Doors swung open, shelves and countertops fell into place, and wares of all sorts assorted themselves with little whirs into pleasing arrangements. Lionheart gasped, and his eyes widened. The stranger laughed and swept his red cap from his head, making an elaborate bow.
“Allow me to introduce myself. I am Torkom, dealer of magicks and marvels across the worlds. Behold!” He took from one of the displays an orange glass bottle filled with sand. “Fresh sifted, and just the thing for the likes of you, new as you are to the Wood. Time himself filled it with his sands, and see how the many colors are layered so pleasing to the eye? Look!”
The dealer shoved the bottle at Lionheart’s nose. But Lionheart, who had heard more than one story as a boy on his nursemaid’s knee, put his hands behind his back and did not touch the Faerie wares.
Torkom the dealer narrowed his eyes and clucked shrewdly. “Or perhaps you do not mind walking in the steps of the Black Dogs? Better to follow behind them than to run before them, eh?”
Lionheart said nothing. The golden-skinned man replaced the orange bottle, then folded his arms inside the deep sleeves of his robe and fixed Lionheart with a heavy stare.
“Tell me,” he said, “what is a mortal such as yourself doing pathless in Goldstone Wood?”