Lionheart gulped. Words clogged in his throat, but he forced them out. “I am no prince, mighty one.”
The tiger-eyed man inhaled deeply, his nostrils curling. “I can smell the truth of your heart, Leonard the Lightning Tongue.”
“Then you will smell that I am no prince,” said Lionheart. He thought of the Council of Barons. He thought of their stony faces when they cast their votes against him. He thought of the triumph gleaming in Baron Middlecrescent’s eyes. And he recalled the final words the Eldest had spoken to him:
“Leave my presence . . .”
He closed his eyes, refusing to meet Ragniprava’s gaze, not in fear so much as sudden shame.
The Tiger Lord sniffed again but turned away and motioned to both his guests. “Come. Sit. Eat.”
So Lionheart found himself taking a place across from Poet Eanrin and between two surprised-looking princes of kingdoms unknown to him. He leaned Bloodbiter’s Wrath against the back of his chair. Ragniprava removed his sword and set it to one side of his chair at the end of the table. It was an enormous, double-edged weapon, quite heavy, broadening from hilt to tip. At the hilt was a metal spike, evil as a tiger’s fang. It was a sword intended for hacking or cleaving and looked as though it might sever a wild bull’s head in a single stroke. The Faerie lord placed it within easy reach of his right hand but otherwise seemed to forget it as he sipped his wine and ate from the bounty before him.
Lionheart, tearing his gaze from the weapon, realized that he was starving, and he didn’t quite believe that this was due to some trick on the Faerie’s part. Nevertheless, he could not bring himself to reach for the shining fruit. After all, he did not know what exactly had turned these princes into stone.
Eanrin had no such compunction but bit into a juicy nectarine with apparent enjoyment.
“Tell me, mortal,” said Ragniprava to Lionheart, “tell me once more what brings you to my demesne. You claim you did not come seeking my skin, which I find difficult to believe.”
Lionheart shuddered at the tone in the Faerie’s voice. Though he spoke with the tongue of a man, he sounded like a tiger. Lionheart struggled to find his own voice. “I search for a maiden,” he said quietly, and his words seemed to sink into the vine-covered walls. “Rose Red.”
“And she is a princess,” said the Tiger.
“No, no,” Lionheart replied hastily. “Certainly not. She was my chambermaid.”
Ragniprava nodded knowingly. “And you the master of the house’s son, eh? An unlikely romance, and your father banished the girl.”
“No!” Lionhearted hated contradicting the Tiger but felt obliged even so. “It was nothing like that.”
“Your father did not banish her?”
“No. I did.”
“You banished your love?”
“She’s not my love.”
The vines caught his words and whispered among themselves, like players of a party game, distorting a simple phrase as it travels from mouth to ear so that it comes out wrong at the end. “My love, my love,” the vines whispered.
Ragniprava smiled. “Fine professions, mortal.”
“Our funny Fool has a talent for professing devotion,” said Poet Eanrin between bites of fruit. “Despite his disrespect of high romantic verse.”
Lionheart glowered at the poet, who, just as though he could see, smirked back.
Ragniprava leaned back in his chair, the claws of one hand drumming lightly on the tabletop. “Little mortal,” he said, “you are in a new world now. Here we follow different rules, rules you must understand. You seek a girl in the realm of Faerie. This means you seek a princess, and you will find her where princesses are to be found. It also necessitates that she is your love, the one desire of your heart. You may not realize it yet, but so it must be. You have passed through the Wood Between. You have stepped over the boundaries into the Far World. Do you think I do not understand these things, the motions and rhythms of the land I have prowled since before the Sleeper awoke?”
Lionheart’s jaw worked back and forth. “You don’t know the girl. She is a servant. Loyal in service, to be sure, humble and hardworking. But she could never be my love. And she is . . .” He did not want to speak the words that rushed next to his mouth. Bowing his head, he tried to force them back, but they would be said. “She is my best friend.”
“Ah. I knew it.”
“But she’s uglier than an old toad,” Lionheart hastened to add.
“You think that makes a difference here?”
A cold silence followed, cold despite the steamy air that wrapped in heavy spices about Lionheart’s head. His thoughts muddled, and he found Rose Red’s face in all its hideous detail springing to mind: Rocklike skin with deep crevices and crags. White-moon eyes, one half covered by a drooping lid. A snarling mouth, ugly when it frowned, uglier still when smiling. The incarnation of a child’s imagined goblin.
He closed his eyes, shaking his head to drive that image away. When he looked again, Ragniprava was beside him, eyes inches from his own.
“The final words,” the Faerie growled. “I’ve smelled them at last. The final words of the Eldest of Southlands, there in your mind. ‘Leave my presence . . . my son!’”
The next few moments happened in a flash of color and noise. Ragniprava roared, a tiger once more, but before his claw-tipped hand could swipe into Lionheart’s face, a scarlet missile flew across the table and barreled into him. The Faerie lord rolled one way, the Chief Poet of Rudiobus another, and Lionheart sprang to his feet and up onto the table, overturning platters of fruit as he did so.
Eanrin leapt up onto the table beside Lionheart. “All right, my lad,” he said, drawing a long knife from his belt, “things could get a bit hairy in a moment. Just stay—”
That was when Ragniprava split himself.
Two Tigers, mirror images, sank to the ground in preparation to spring. One set of eyes fixed on the poet, the other on Lionheart.
“Dragon’s teeth,” Eanrin swore. “There’s two of him now, isn’t there?”
Both of Ragniprava sprang.
The poet pushed, and Lionheart fell off the other side of the table just before the right-hand Tiger landed on him. His elbow smashed into the knee of a stone prince, but he ignored the shooting pain darting up his arm and crawled under the table, which was too low for the Tiger to fit beneath. From this vantage point, he could see the other Tiger giving chase to Eanrin, who had sprung for the ivy wall and was climbing up it as fast as a monkey. The Tiger leapt and landed on the top of the wall, balancing there to meet the ascending cat-man. Eanrin stopped and dropped back to the floor below, then darted from the banquet hall to the passages beyond, calling over his shoulder as he went, “I’ll be back in a trice! Sit tight!”
The Tiger sped after, close on his heels.
10
The Boy awoke gazing up into Princess Varvare’s face and, over her shoulder, up at the statue of the old Queen of Arpiar. They could have been twins, he thought, though the one was stone. To his eyes, they were both solemn and beautiful and sad.
“Hullo,” the Boy said groggily. “What’s your name?”
The princess did not answer but helped him sit up. Only then did he realize he was lying full length on the cold marble floor, and he accepted her help gratefully. “Did I miss something?” he asked, blinking. His head hurt like nothing else, and sitting up sent sharp needles down his neck. He groaned and leaned forward, and Varvare supported him with gentle hands. “I don’t remember . . . anything,” he whispered. “Where am I?”
“Palace Var,” she said. “In King Vahe’s assembly hall.”
“Oh?” The names meant nothing to him, but the girl was kind, so he leaned against her like a child seeking comfort from his mother. She smelled of roses, and he liked the scent, so he closed his eyes.
The princess sat awkwardly with her arms around the half-conscious youth, and felt the gaze of her grandmother heavy upon her. The other statues laughed and pointed from their pe
destals, and she scowled up at them, which only provoked them more. But her ancestors could not touch her from beyond the grave, so she decided to ignore them and concentrated on the Boy. He was groaning and holding his head. Varvare rocked him softly and hummed. Then she sang in a very low voice:
“Beyond the Final Water falling
The Songs of Spheres recalling.
When all around you is the emptiness of night,
Won’t you return to me?”
Tears formed in her eyes and fell into the Boy’s hair. His groaning ceased, and he slept once more, even as Varvare’s voice trailed off into silence.
The unicorn approached.
She looked up and found it pacing silently between the statues, which recoiled from it in terror, writhing on their foundations. But she smiled a little as it drew near, for it was so beautiful.
Princess, it said in that musical language without words. It bowed to her as reverently as it would to its master. Princess, the borders of Arpiar are safe. No one will find this realm.
She shrugged. “All right.”
Moonblood is fast approaching.
“So they say. I don’t know what any of you mean by it, though.”
Princess, will you kill me?
She glared at the unicorn then and unconsciously tightened her hold on the sleeping Boy. “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times—I don’t kill things! You’re old and you’re beautiful, and I couldn’t kill you if my life depended on it!”
Your life depends upon it.
Varvare shuddered at the unicorn’s voice, and she dropped her gaze. “If . . . if that’s true, I still couldn’t do it.”
Then I will know sorrow.
“Well, I’m sorry for you. But that’s just how it is sometimes.”
Not for Hymlumé’s children.
With those words, it left her as silently as it had come. Princess Varvare did not even see it depart; it was simply there no more.
Regret and repentance do not always walk hand in hand.
Queen Anahid wore guilt like weighty chains about her neck, but repentance was far from her. Thus she inflicted upon herself all the torments of love forsaken and the bitterness of slavery under the King of Arpiar. It seemed just punishment for her sins . . . for the lives she had taken as the old queen’s slave. For the atrocities she had committed at the bidding of monarchs; first the queen, now King Vahe. She suffered every day, hating each moment of her life, waking or sleeping—for even her sleep was plagued with nightmares.
But it was punishment meted out by herself alone. And in that she found a grain of satisfaction.
Regret, Anahid believed, must be the most intense of all punishments. Regret of chances lost and opportunities forgone. She had made her choice five hundred years ago, however, in turning her back on the love offered her then. For she deserved no such love. Rather, she deserved a life with the king of goblins, bound to his service. She had selected this path with her eyes wide open, and she would make no other choice even now.
But she regretted . . . oh, many, many things!
Anahid sat among the roses in the eastern wing of Var, waiting. The perfume was as poison to her, but over many years she had learned to bear it, even if she never became accustomed to it. She waited, and eventually he came, just as she knew he would.
“Anahid,” said the yellow-eyed dragon.
She looked up into the face that had once been Diarmid’s. If she felt pain at the sight, he did not see it, for her mask was absolute. “I’m glad you’ve come,” she said.
“Anahid,” the dragon said again, as though speaking her name was the sole pleasure he had known in many long generations. He dropped to his knees before her. His hair was long and lank about his face, his skin sallow and his cheeks sunken. Though his features were human, no one could look into those reptilian eyes and fail to see the dragon inside him. The fire that had replaced his heart long ago burned and filled the air with heat.
But for a moment Anahid glimpsed the young man he had once been.
“Tell me,” she said quietly, “do you love me still?”
The yellow-eyed dragon could not look at her, but he remained kneeling at her feet, his hands outstretched as if he would clasp hers, though he did not touch her. “No,” he said. “I can no longer love. I have no heart. It was burned away by Death-in-Life long ago.”
The queen nodded at this, and for a moment they sat in silence. Then she said, “Do you remember your love for me?”
“That,” he said, “I will never forget.”
“Then I will not command you,” Anahid said. “Though because I woke you, I could if I chose. But instead, let me ask you. Let me beg, in light of that love you once bore for me.”
“I will do anything for you,” the yellow-eyed dragon said.
She took his hands in hers. They burned at first, but she did not let go, though he struggled to pull them away. The burning died back, and his fingers lay helpless in her grasp. Only for a moment, however. Then he clutched back, drawing her hands to his breast as if clinging to a lifeline.
Anahid said, “I want you to go from Arpiar. I want you to return to the Prince’s Haven. Return to that place where we met so long ago, and where you loved me once. Find the Knights of Farthestshore and warn them of my husband’s plan.”
The dragon paled, his wan skin turning ashen.
“I have a daughter,” Anahid said. “Varvare is her name. You must have guessed what the king intends to do with her.”
He nodded. “I saw the . . . the one-horned beast.”
She drew his hands up to her lips and kissed them almost fiercely. “Please, my one-time love. Please, the Night of Moonblood will be upon us soon.”
“Anahid,” said he, “you know what will be my fate if I do as you ask.”
Tears glistened in her eyes, but her voice was even when she spoke. “Our lives were both destroyed by Death-in-Life long ago. But my daughter, my sweet Varvare, she may yet live, Diarmid. She may yet know the grace from which we have strayed so far. But only if . . .”
Her words ended in silence as the yellow-eyed dragon raised his face to meet her gaze. Age-old memories passed between them in a moment, along with a knifelike flash of the future to come. And suddenly the dragon took her face in his hands and kissed her forehead, gently, so that his lips would not burn her skin.
Two tears rolled down her cheeks.
Then he was gone, and Anahid remained among the roses, which had turned their faces away, their petals drooping and brown-edged with sorrow.
Fear was not well-known to Sir Eanrin. He generally found it got in the way, so he bypassed the emotion entirely. The last time he could remember being truly afraid, he had lost his eyes, so really, what good had it done him? And after the loss of his eyes, what could anything or anyone take from him that he valued more? His life? What a foolish thing to fear, especially for a cat!
So as he sped through the ruins of Ragniprava’s palace, Eanrin was not afraid, though he felt the hot breath of the Tiger on the back of his neck more than once. A touch of concern, perhaps, seeped into his heart; concern for the mortal, though, not for himself.
The twisting passages were easy enough to navigate. For century upon century, Eanrin had explored all the most fantastic palaces and temples and labyrinths of Faerie, and he knew what to expect, even among these ruins. In the darkness that fell as suddenly as the snuffing of a candle, he moved more easily than a man with sight would have, used as he was to blindness.
Lionheart, however, was not so lucky. When all the lights gleaming from the strange plants of Ragniprava’s demesne suddenly extinguished, he gasped where he crouched under the table. It was as though ink had been poured into his eyes. He heard the Tiger breathing, snuffling, attempting to get his huge body underneath the low table.
“Come out, little prince,” he said. “I don’t want to damage you before adding you to my collection, but I will if I must. Come out and it will be easier on you.”
Lionheart said nothing. His ears were his only ally, so he scarcely breathed as he strained them to hear every movement the Tiger made. He knew when Ragniprava had drawn up to his right, and he rolled left just in time. He felt the wind of enormous claws swiping into empty air.
“It’s no good,” Ragniprava said, and Lionheart heard him leap onto the table above. Platters clanged and fruit rolled; then the Tiger came heavily down on the other side. Lionheart rolled right, and again just missed losing an arm. His lungs screamed for air, but still he dared not draw a complete breath. He started, very slowly, to crawl toward the end of the table, between the rows of stone princes’ feet.
The Tiger leapt onto the table again, walking just above Lionheart as he moved. “I can hear you, mortal. And I see well in this pitch night. Don’t think you can escape the will of Ragniprava!”
But Lionheart crawled on, feeling carefully before him as he went. He thought he must be near the end of the table now, and reached forward, his hand seeking.
The Tiger guessed his plan.
Just as Lionheart’s hand touched the hilt of the enormous sword, Ragniprava sprang down, his great bulk knocking aside the chair, shattering it to pieces. The sword, which had been propped against it, clattered down out of Lionheart’s reach. The Tiger paced heavily up to it, then instantly was a man again. He picked up the sword, hefting it in both hands. Predatory eyes gleamed in the darkness, fixing upon Lionheart where he crouched beneath the table.
“Come out, come out, mortal man,” said Ragniprava. With a heaving cry, he swung the blade. It clove through the stone table, shattering the air as it rang out its strength. Lionheart gasped and crawled back even as the sword came down again. This time a whole chunk of the table fell away. No giant’s cleaver could have dealt so deft a blow. “I’ll have you out myself if I have to cut away all the stone in my realm!”
Lionheart’s hand touched something on the floor. Long and thin but familiar. He took hold of Bloodbiter’s Wrath and, dragging the beanpole along, backed out from under the table, opposite Ragniprava. He stood up, bracing himself, the beanpole brandished in both hands.