Moonblood (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #3) (25 page)

But the poet nodded, and this time his smile, though smaller than before, had a trace of devilish remembrance behind it. “Yes, Lord Bright as Fire. I saw it with my own two eyes back when I had two eyes with which to see.”

A deep growl threatened in Ragniprava’s throat, behind his lace-edged cravat. “Then tell me, bard, though you have not
seen
my princes as such, what make you of the comparison?”

For a long moment, Eanrin stood silent. Lionheart felt his heart pulsing.
Lie, dragons eat you!
He wanted to shout it.
Who cares whose collection was superior? The Tiger, that’s who, so tell him what he wants to hear!

Then the poet laughed. “Oh, most noble lord! I cry you mercy. Though I shall never behold these fair statues of yours, I may say with absolute certainty—as one of the few who has been invited to the demesne of both ChuMana and Bright as Fire—that your collection is by far the more beautiful.” He added with a shrug, “The serpent’s is rather ugly.”

Lionheart let out a deep breath he hadn’t realized he held. But the Tiger’s eyes narrowed as he peered from Eanrin to Lionheart and back again.

“Neither of you happens to be princes, eh?”

“Alas,” said Eanrin with a graceful bow, “though hailed as the Prince of Poetry, I am sprung of humble origins and do but serve those of greater blood.”

“To be sure,” said Ragniprava. In two strides he stood suddenly before Lionheart, nose to nose. “And you, mortal?”

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

T
HE
B
OY 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 pedestals, 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.