“Now I cry to you again,
My arms raised once more,
My hands outspread to shield my face
From that which lies before.
“Only spare my children.”
The unicorn, invisible, trembled. And though only Vahe could see it, suddenly the fire that covered it from horn to hoof extinguished, and it stood black as a cold lump of coal, its eyes fixed on the singing mortal.
“I see them running, running, stumbling.
Running, as the heavens
Break and yawn, tear beneath their feet,
Devouring, hungry Death!
“Where is my fault?”
Queen Anahid, hidden in shadows, heard the song as one who hears her death pronounced. She gazed at her daughter, whom she had been unable to save, and resolve cemented in her heart as Hymlumé’s sorrow washed over her.
“Did I misunderstand the song, the gift
You gave? Was I wrong?
I thought you spoke across the boundless.
You sang, and I replied.”
Vahe stood as one transfixed, his mouth agape. The veil over his face slipped, revealing the monster underneath. He snarled and struggled to replace it, all the while not removing his gaze from Lionheart. The jester’s song worked like a spell upon him. His feet were rooted to the floor, and no one in that room could see the battle he waged to free them.
Still Lionheart sang:
“Can you hear me?”
Suddenly, Vahe wrenched himself forward. Lionheart turned from Rose Red and gazed into the monster’s beautiful eyes, watched as death descended, a knife in the king’s right hand. He recoiled, knowing this was the moment.
But the blow did not fall.
Vahe stood with his knife just above Lionheart’s temple, frozen in place, his eyes huge with fury.
What Lionheart could not see was the unicorn, which stood with its horn blocking the king’s blow. It spoke not a word, but its face was too terrible for Vahe to bear.
With a roar, the king turned away. Lionheart collapsed once more, still clutching the twisted sword, uncertain what had just happened. Had he died without realizing it?
Perfect silence held the assembly hall in its grip.
Then, from deep in the darkness of Palace Var’s underbelly, a voice came, so small that it would have been missed had a single person in that room dared to breathe. But all heard, if only as a faint impression on the edge of their minds, the voice of a chained knight singing:
“I blessed your name in beauty.
In fear I still must sing.”
Vahe roared, the sound made the more terrible as it burst from his handsome face. He whirled on Lionheart, frothing at the mouth, and bellowed, “I know what you are! But don’t think you can stop me now! I’ve been promised, and I will have my due! These protections on you now will crumble to ash before the fire I shall wield. This is what I was born to, and you and your fellows will kneel before me and die!”
He barked a command, and strong hands grabbed Lionheart by the arms and dragged him from the assembly, his bent sword bouncing and clattering along behind him.
“Bind him! Clap him in irons!” Vahe cried. “See to it that he can call none of his brethren in behind him!”
Then he whirled upon the princess, who crouched in the shadows behind him. He grabbed her by the chin, forcing her to look at him. “I see it in your eyes,” he snarled. “I see what you’re trying to hide. You called him here, this mortal creature. Is he your true love, then? Have you given your heart to a dust-bound man? But it’s no good, my pretty Rose. A beast like that cannot help you now.”
Vahe flung her away from him and motioned to his slaves. “Take her away and prepare her for Moonblood. Make certain she eclipses the fairest rose with her beauty, for nothing less will satisfy. We leave at dawn!”
2
The Village of Dragons is neither within nor without the boundaries of Faerie. It lies in the Netherworld, on the pathway to Death’s kingdom. Nothing grows in the Village. Things die there instead, even those who make their home in its cavernous darkness. Though the dragons’ lives stretch on generation after generation, they are forever dying. Theirs is an existence in which all dreams have perished.
Eanrin, Imraldera, and the people of Rudiobus did not walk Death’s Path to reach that dark place, however. They crossed into the Near World and the expanse of the Red Desert, where the Netherworld and the world of mortals overlap. Great stones beaten down by time and disaster jut from the Red Desert like ragged teeth, and all traces of carving are blasted away so that they seem no more than strange rock formations and canyons. A twisting trail leads through these and down into darker passages below, where sunlight can rarely find a crack.
This was the Path taken by the knights and Iubdan. Though dark and dreary, it was less terrible than all other Paths to the Village. The blind poet led them, walking confidently though the others followed with more hesitant steps. Iubdan Tynan led a great host, including Glomar, the captain of his personal guard, who had taken the form of a badger. All marched with their weapons at the ready. The knowledge that they walked behind her and that Eanrin strode on before comforted Dame Imraldera as they descended into the darkness.
But when she saw for the first time the cave of the Village, her heart stopped beating for a moment, and she put out a hand to the wall to steady herself.
For though all the dragons lay sleeping, the air they exhaled was filled with the poison of their evil dreams.
“It’s all right, old girl,” Eanrin said, and she felt him take her hand. It was difficult to see anything but the dragons in that cavern. They shone dully with their inner fires, though those flames were mostly banked at present. Their hundreds upon hundreds of bodies, contoured in red, filled the cavern with an evil light and cast shadows over all else. Imraldera was grateful for Eanrin’s hand. “It’s all right,” he repeated. “As long as we follow our Prince’s way, we’re safe.”
“I know,” she said. “It’s just . . . there are more of them than I thought.”
An image flashed unbidden across her mind—an image of the world Vahe sought to create. A world of dragons and fire and destruction. Imraldera had seen, centuries ago, the destruction worked upon the Near World when the mortal woman known as Tavé had taken dragons as slaves. Should the King of Arpiar follow in her footsteps, decimating with fire and covering the wounds with flimsy veils of beauty, how could they hope to set things right again?
Eanrin gave her fingers a last squeeze before letting go. “We’ll stop him, my girl. You’ll see.”
He started across the cavern, and Imraldera followed, and after her marched Iubdan and his host. They had to split up as they went to avoid treading on the sleeping dragons, some in withered human forms, others enormous but no less withered monsters. The dragons breathed in quick puffs, and their sides heaved as though they were under heavy exertion. Their sleep could not be restful as they watched their dreams blaze and die.
In the center of that cavern stood the Throne of Death. Imraldera wanted to retch at the sight of its bloodstained lines. Even King Iubdan swore, “Lumé’s crown!” Then he barked orders to his soldiers, and the fighters of Rudiobus scattered about the cavern, taking cover behind rocks and walls, the half-ruined huts, and even sleeping dragons.
“Vahe will be here soon.”
Imraldera looked down at the orange tomcat sitting at her feet. He smiled up at her. “Come. We’d best prepare our ambush.”
He led her to the largest of the dragons, the terrible Bane of Corrilond, who of all the sleepers glowed the brightest. “Her dreams are the most vivid,” the poet-cat said as he put out a whiskery nose to sniff one of her cruelly curved claws. “She smells ready to explode! She’ll eat half these dragons alive if she wakes, and Vahe wouldn’t be much more than a mouthful should she feel the urge.”
“She’ll have to obey him,” Imraldera said. “Life-in-Death will compel her to.”
The cat shrugged. ??
?It won’t come to that.”
He sprang up onto the Bane of Corrilond’s great hand, then quickly hopped down, for her scales burned. He gave his paws a quick grooming before sliding into the space between the dragon and the wall, bidding Imraldera to join him. She did, hating her proximity to the red monster. All the folk of Rudiobus were similarly hidden, and when she gazed out across the Village, Imraldera could easily have imagined that she and the poet were the only two creatures left awake in that place.
She crouched down, shivering despite the awful heat of the dragon’s body. “In fear I still must sing,” she whispered, drawing the knife from her belt.
Blind. The darkness of the dungeons was so absolute that Lionheart felt as though he’d been blinded. Somehow it was a relief after all the careful beauty of Arpiar, beauty that he knew must be false. Except . . .
“Rose Red!” he snarled and struggled fruitlessly against the goblins holding his arms. They laughed at his weak flailing and tightened their grips until he thought his arms must break. At least, as they descended deeper, the sweet perfume of roses cleared from Lionheart’s head and he could make his thoughts take shape. But no images would come to his mind in those black depths, as though along with his sight the dungeons also took away all memory of sight.
Except for her face.
“Here we are, little mortal,” a goblin said in a honeyed voice. Lionheart heard the grating of a cell door opening, protesting as though it had not been budged in centuries. Then he was thrown forward, and he had the horrible sensation of falling in darkness, unable to judge how far the drop would be. It was only a step or two down, but he might as well have been flung from the Gardens of Hymlumé for all his body jerked and tensed, then convulsed on the floor after landing. Someone was screaming. He realized that it was he and forced himself to stop. The goblins stumped down a narrow stairway, still laughing as they bound his wrists and ankles with shackles so heavy he could scarcely lift them. He felt other bindings slip into place along with the clank of iron: bindings on his spirit, as real as any physical chains.
“No worries, manling,” a goblin spoke from the emptiness above him. “You’ll not die in here. You’ll never again set eyes on a living soul, nevermore taste the sweetness of bread or water. But you’ll not die so long as Vahe holds you in those manacles. You’ll be immortal. Is that not what your kind longs for most?”
The goblins’ laughter echoed through the dark, empty cells long after the clang of the cell door closing had ceased. Lionheart shivered where he lay, his ears ringing, squeezing his eyes shut as though he might squeeze the blindness right out of them.
“Rose Red,” he whispered.
What of the choice? What of Bebo’s promise? Lionheart struggled to pull himself upright, dragging the chains in terrible cacophony across the stones. Immortality faced him. But what about his chance to choose death, to give his life in place of hers?
“Dragon’s teeth!” he snarled, struggling against the shackles, tearing at them with his fingers. It was useless, he knew, but what else could he do? “Dragon’s teeth and eyes and tail!” He moaned and sank his head into his hands.
Suddenly he realized.
He had only to call. What a thrice-cursed fool he was for not thinking of it before! The sweet-smelling enchantments must have addled his wits. Oeric said that no one could enter Arpiar unless called from within. Well, Lionheart was within Vahe’s dungeons, and that certainly had to count. So he raised his head and shouted: “Oeric! Sir Oeric, come to me!”
His voice echoed back to him a hundred times.
Then silence.
He knew he had not been heard. As surely as he would never see the sun again, he knew his voice had not carried beyond the dungeons. He bowed his head, and if Lionheart wept, there was no one to see.
Somewhere in that cavernous blindness, someone spoke. “It’s no use while you’re chained.”
Lionheart sat upright. He was alone in his cell, he was certain. But this voice was near, perhaps only one cell over. He placed his ear to the stone wall. “Who’s there?”
A snort, then: “I’m Beana . . . Rose Red’s goat.”
He could see nothing, not even in his memory, so he could not recall the face of the woman who had stood on the edge of the cliff above the Wilderlands. But he could recall the feel of her fingers about his throat, and he could hear her voice again, speaking low and piercing as a knife. “Coward!”
He pulled back from the wall as though stung.
A silence followed. At length the woman who was a goat said, “You came to find her, then. Good lad.”
He trembled at her words but was foolishly grateful at the same time. “I couldn’t save her,” he whispered, not expecting to be heard. Perhaps he wasn’t, but the goat-woman answered anyway.
“Don’t give up hope, Leo.”
“Are you . . . are you Sir Oeric’s lady?” Lionheart asked.
She did not answer for a long time. As he waited he heard noises overhead: the sound of trumpets, triumphant and terrible; the shout of many voices, a roar of excitement like crowds gathering for a tournament.
“I knew Oeric,” the goat-woman said softly. “Long ago. Before he was named.”
The roar continued, then faded away. They are leaving Var, Lionheart thought. They are taking Rose Red to Death’s throne, and they’ll spill her blood there.
The horrible thought came and, though he tried to force it back, continued to intrude. Perhaps this was what he wanted. Perhaps this was what he had hoped for all along, to have the choice taken from him. Was it his fault he was clapped in irons, after all? Could he help it if his song provoked Vahe to this end? Of course not. He had his excuses, his noble intentions interrupted by unforeseen circumstances.
Lionheart grimaced and struggled against his chains. No! That wouldn’t be the story of his life! He would succeed; he would die; he would gain back his honor and earn atonement! He must!
The chains were unrelenting.
“All is not lost,” the goat-woman whispered through the wall. “Wait a little.”
In that darkness where time did not pass, waiting was torture. The sounds above were long since gone. Rose Red was far from him. To have come this close only to lose her now!
He felt something beside him suddenly, something he had not realized was there but which must have been there the whole time. Putting out a hand, he touched the twisted blade of a melted sword. Strange the goblins had not taken it from him.
Somewhere beyond that world, a bird sang.
Won’t you follow me?
A cold shriek of protesting iron hinges, and the door to Lionheart’s cell swung open. He tried to get to his feet, but the shackles restrained him, so he pressed against the wall as he felt rather than heard someone approaching him through the blind dark. A hand touched his face, a hard, rocklike hand tipped with claws.
A voice like winter spoke. “You are the mortal my daughter loves.”
Lionheart did not answer. He shivered under that touch.
“I saw it in her eyes when she watched you sing before my husband. She loves you, though she believes now that it is hate she feels.”
The hand left his face. Whoever stood before him was so silent that he heard not even a breath. “Who are you?” he whispered.
“Anahid, Queen of Arpiar.”
He gulped. “Do you . . . do you wish to see your daughter die?”
“I will die myself first.” The voice spoke as though making a vow.
“Then will you set me free? I can save her, good queen! I’ve been promised as much. I can give my life for hers. I owe her that, for she served me faithfully and I betrayed her. I owe her my life in retribution, and I swear upon this sword that I will pay the price!”
No answer came, not a sound. Then suddenly, Lionheart felt a kiss planted on his cheek, gentle and sweet, though the lips were like stone.
“Give her that for me, little mortal,” Anahid said. “Give her that, and tell her how I loved her.” r />
With those words, Lionheart felt his chains drop away.
There was a cry, like the wind howling on an evil night, and a sudden burst of light. Lionheart yelled and covered his face with his arms, pressing against the wall. But it was over in a moment, and he stood free and unchained in the dungeons of Var. Swiftly he knelt and grabbed the twisted sword, clutching it like a lifeline. But while he felt for it in the dark, his hand brushed the face of the queen lying at his feet.
She was dead.
“Hurry!” said Beana in the cell next door. “Hurry, call for Oeric!”
Lionheart swallowed and felt his way to the cell door. “I’ll free you first, my lady.”
“NO!” his fellow prisoner shouted. “No, don’t you understand? Anahid died breaking your chains. You’ll die if you attempt to release me, and you won’t succeed as she did. No, you must call for Oeric, and you must hurry to Rose Red. Hurry while you still can!”
As fast as he could in the dark, Lionheart groped his way from the cell and along the wall to the dark stairway, calling Oeric’s name as he went.
3
They clothed her in black, the color of death, and in red, the color of blood, and crowned her in bloodred roses. Varvare, however, staring into her mirror, saw none of these things. Instead she saw rags being draped tenderly across her hunched frame, and a crown of thistles and thorns set onto the bald dome of her head. The veils of her father could not work on her eyes. They could not cover the ugly features of her attendants, some of whom laughed as they prepared her, and some of whom gazed at her sorrowfully.
She knew from their faces, their voices, even their laughter, that Vahe intended to kill her. She simply couldn’t guess why.
When they had finished with her, the senior attendant took her by the hand and led her from her chambers and down what most perceived as a glowing marble stairway softly carpeted in rose petals, but which Varvare saw as poorly carved stone, sharp and ragged underfoot.