Moonblood (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #3) (42 page)

He glimpsed her for no more than a moment, but in Faerie a moment can be forever, and it seemed an eternity before Lionheart dragged his gaze back to Vahe’s scowl looming over him.

“My . . . my name,” he stammered, attempting a winning smile, “is Leonard the Lightning Tongue. I am a humble jester.”

Someone snorted. Someone else laughed. “A jester indeed,” the goblins muttered and mocked. This little beast wearing only his nightshirt—they’d taken the fine green jacket—and a grubby pair of trousers? This somber-eyed mortal who looked as though he hadn’t smiled in a century or more? “Sing us a funny song, then!” someone shouted from the crowd, and the heckling boiled up until it filled the assembly room and even the marble statues writhed in mockery on their pedestals.

Vahe did not laugh. As he gazed down on the self-proclaimed clown, he kept trying to see something just beyond the edge of his vision—a danger that he could not quite identify. He wanted, very badly in fact, to cut the mortal’s head off then and there and send it rolling down the aisle for his goblins to chase like so many dogs after a ball. But somehow he dared not.

“Well,” he said, and when he spoke the crowds immediately hushed. “You hear your audience’s request. Will you entertain us, jester?”

Lionheart got to his feet, shaking so hard that he was uncertain he’d be able to stand upright. He knew that behind the lovely faces surrounding him were monsters, and the knowledge that they were there but he was unable to see them made them all the more terrifying. They were laughing at him already, every last one of them. Laughing because he was so pathetic standing there among them with all his flimsy mortality on display.

He looked down at the twisted sword in his hand and almost felt like laughing himself. What did he think he was doing, barging into this goblin kingdom, the land that wasn’t supposed to exist beyond his nursemaid’s stories, with nothing but a bit of warped steel and a hatful of arrogance? Did he expect to storm the ramparts alone, burst through Vahe’s defenses, carry off the princess, and be home in time for tea?

No, that wasn’t it at all. He expected to die.

Lionheart raised his gaze and met Rose Red’s, and her face was unnaturally still, more still and unreadable than the faces of the marble statues above him.

This must be it, then,
he thought.
This must be the moment when I die. When I open my mouth and say something stupid, and the king cuts me open like a holiday pudding. But my death will spare her somehow. Bebo promised.

So he opened his mouth and said something stupid:

“I blessed your name, O you who sit

Enthroned beyond the Highlands.

I blessed your name and sang in answer

To the song you gave.

“Beside the Final Water flowing,

My brow in silver bound,

I raised my arms, I raised my voice

In answer to your gift.”

The hall went silent save for his voice rising clear and clean up to the highest domes above. And how strange he looked, that ragged mortal, standing in the center of all unnatural beauty, singing that tremulous melody! The song of Hymlumé washed over the goblins, and Vahe’s veils shuddered.

“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

T
HE
V
ILLAGE OF
D
RAGONS
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.