The Lioness and Her Knight (16 page)

"Why?"

"Come and see."

Luneta glanced over at Rhience, who had his back to them and was kneeling over the fire. "Why should I go anywhere with you? Why should I trust you?" she hissed.

"You've trusted me this far. It's a bit late to start wondering that now," the man replied. "As for why you should go with me, you'll come because as long as you can remember you've dreamed of getting away from your ordinary life, and I'm not ordinary."

He was right, and Luneta no longer hesitated. Pulling her cloak around her shoulders, she stepped into the woods behind the green man. After a few steps, she said, "By the way, I ought to know what to call you. Snowflake isn't your real name, is it?"

"All my names are real," Snowflake said.

He led Luneta through the forest, down trails that seemed perfectly obvious in the night but that Luneta had seen no trace of when she and Rhience had ridden over the same ground in daylight. They didn't go far. After only a few minutes, Snowflake led her to a pond. It could hardly have been more than twenty paces across, but in its center was an island, smaller around than King Arthur's Round Table, and on the island stood a tiny hut, barely large enough for one large adult to stand in.

"Here we are," Snowflake said.

"Are we going into that shack?" Luneta asked. Snowflake nodded, and Luneta said, "Good thing we're both little. How do we get there? Jump?"

By way of answer, Snowflake took Luneta's hand and stepped into the pond, pulling her in after him. At the very first step, they both plunged into water over their heads—indeed, Luneta never did know how deep the pond was, since she never touched bottom—and began paddling forward. Oddly, there was more light under the surface of the water than there was above in the night; a pure blue-green glow illuminated the water around Luneta, and she saw that the pond was much larger than she had thought. Snowflake pulled her hand to hurry her, and she paddled harder, looking around with wonder. They swam together for a long time—time itself seemed larger below the surface than it was above—and never once went up for air. It didn't occur to Luneta that she ought to breathe, and so she didn't bother. Instead, she swam through the warm, clear, beautifully lit water, enjoying the journey and forgetting everything else.

At last they came to land, and Snowflake pulled her out of the pond. They stood dripping on the shore of the island for a moment, outside the shack, while Luneta looked back to the shore where they had started. It was only about three or four paces away, across a narrow strip of black water. She could have flipped a stone to the opposite shore with her thumb. "The pond is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside, isn't it?" she said, half to herself.

Snowflake giggled. "That's impossible, and you know it," he said.

Luneta nodded, then said, "I think over there—on that shore, where we started—it would have been impossible. But there are different rules here, aren't there?"

Snowflake beamed at her. "You astonish me again, my Luneta. Oh, yes, I think we're right about you." He still held her hand, and now he pulled her toward the hut and opened the door. "After you, my lady."

After her experience in the pond, Luneta was only mildly surprised to find herself in a vast stone room with high, vaulted ceilings. There were no windows, but candles lined every wall, and a great fire roared in a huge fireplace. By the fire sat her aunt, Morgan Le Fay.

"I've brought her," announced Snowflake.

"That much I can see for myself," Lady Morgan replied wryly. "Why don't you save your words for when you have something to say?"

Snowflake giggled and swept a bow. "If I spoke only when I had something important to proclaim, then I'd be as boring as you are, my most revered ladyship."

Lady Morgan turned her eyes to Luneta and examined her from head to toe. Luneta felt like a fish at the market, but she waited in silence. When Morgan spoke again, though, it was to Snowflake. "Are you sure of this, Robin? I see no more mark of the enchantress in her than I did six months ago at Camelot."

The elf met Lady Morgan's gaze with a limpid smile. "She has the inner ear, my lady. She heard me speak in her ear in a voice that no one else could have heard. Moreover, when we made the crossing just now she knew at once that we had entered another world, one with different rules than the one she came from."

Now Lady Morgan looked at Luneta with more interest. "Tell me, child, have you ever heard people speak of the Other World?"

Luneta shook her head. "Not exactly," she said.

"What does that mean?" Lady Morgan demanded.

"Not when I was awake. But I used to dream sometimes about going to another world, where magic wasn't magic, because it was normal, and where life was much more interesting than in my own world." Lady Morgan's eyes widened, and she shot a sharp glance at the elf. Luneta added, "I thought that was just wishful thinking, though. You see, my own life was so wretchedly ordinary that anything sounded better. You'd have to know my parents to understand."

"You forget, child, that I've known your father since he was in short coats, and I'm perfectly willing to agree that he is depressingly dull."

Luneta felt a stir of anger. "Actually, I wasn't thinking of my father so much as my mother," she said.

Lady Morgan almost smiled, which made her face appear more human. She glanced at Snowflake, whom she had called Robin. "Have you asked her yet?"

"No, my lady," he responded.

"Then how do you know she—?" Lady Morgan began.

"Lady Morgan," Luneta said firmly. "I am right in front of you. If you have anything to ask me, you may do so."

Again, Lady Morgan looked slightly less forbidding, as a trace of amusement flitted across her face. "Very well," she said. "I am here to train you to be an enchantress, if you wish it. If you do not, of course, you will be returned to the World of Men."

Luneta started to mention that she had already received some training as an enchantress, but she had a sudden hunch that Lady Morgan would not be impressed by the beauty lotions and oils that Laudine had taught her. Luneta hadn't decided whether her aunt was good or evil, but whatever she was, she wasn't trivial. Instead she said simply, "I would like to learn."

Lady Morgan nodded briskly. "Very well, then. We shall begin at once—"

But Luneta shook her head. "No," she said. Both Lady Morgan and Snowflake-Robin looked at her with surprise. "First I must know: Why me?"

"You're very pert for one of your years, girl," Lady Morgan said austerely.

"Why me?" Luneta repeated.

Lady Morgan looked at her in silence for a moment, then said, "You heard what Master Robin said just now. You appear to be attuned to things of this world in ways that others from your world are not."

"I don't want to be disrespectful to either of you," Luneta said. "But when you step into a tiny pond and find that under the surface it is as large as a great lake, it doesn't take special powers to realize that you've entered a different sort of world than you're used to."

Snowflake-Robin said with a gentle laugh, "Actually, you would be surprised at the amazing shifts that humans will use to deny the evidence of their own eyes when they don't choose to believe something. Nineteen out of twenty humans who stepped into that water and saw what you saw would have convinced themselves they had simply misjudged the size of the pond."

"Quite true," Lady Morgan said.

Luneta shrugged doubtfully. She still didn't feel that she was anything special, but she was willing to accept that she was at least more perceptive in some ways. "And why you? Why are
you
the one to teach me?"

A spark of anger glinted in Lady Morgan's eyes. "Is the arrangement unsatisfactory to you?" she asked in a withering voice.

Luneta swallowed but answered forthrightly. "I don't know that yet. It might be. I just don't see you as the sort of person who would be a patient teacher."

"No one said I would be patient, child. You'll do well to remember it," Lady Morgan replied, her face stony.

There was an uncomfortable silence as Luneta and Lady Morgan gazed at each other. Then the elf said, "I suppose I can answer that. You see, you are now in what Lady Morgan just referred to as the 'Other World.' This is the world of faeries and magic and the sorts of things that in your world you generally find only in stories. This world is divided in two. There is the Seelie Court, made of benevolent faeries, and the Unseelie Court, made up of the rest. Everyone in this world and everyone from your world who traffics here must choose which side will be theirs."

Luneta took this in, then said to the elf, "Yes, I see. You're from the Seelie Court, aren't you?" He bowed, and Luneta added thoughtfully, "And so is Gawain's squire Terence."

Snowflake-Robin giggled. "Oh, dear me, yes. His Grace, the Duke of Avalon, is very much of the Seelie Court."

That explained a few things, Luneta thought. Then she looked at Lady Morgan. "But I can't tell about you."

"As Master Robin said," Lady Morgan said, "everyone must choose. That doesn't mean everyone must choose at once, however. I am—ah—still undecided."

"And that," said the green man, "is what makes her the ideal instructor. As her student, you will see both sides."

"That sounds pleasant," Luneta murmured to herself.

"And now," the elf said with another bow, "I'll be going."

Luneta turned to him. "Will I see you again?"

"Assuredly, my dear."

"And when I see you, I believe I should call you by your real name. It's Robin, isn't it?"

The little man shrugged. "I am called that as often as anything. Call me as you will, but for myself, I believe I shall always think of myself as your Snowflake." Then he was gone. Luneta stared at the space where he had stood a moment before; then, calm on the outside but shaking within, she turned to face her teacher.

"Before we begin, I must know," Lady Morgan said imperiously, "if you have ever been taught any magic at all. Did anyone show you any potions or oils when you were a little girl?"

"Not when I was a girl—" Luneta began.

Shaking her head, Lady Morgan said, "I wouldn't have believed it."

"But I did learn a few things when I was staying with Lady Laudine of Salisbury."

Lady Morgan covered her eyes with one hand. "Laudine," she repeated, with a slight moan. "Don't tell me that was who you were off to visit when you stopped at Camelot."

"It was."

"What was your mother thinking? Of all the flitter - wits to whom to hand over one's daughter!"

"Laudine has a very kind heart," Luneta said defensively.

"I am indifferent to the quality of her heart. It can be as kind as she likes, but it will never change the quality of her mind. What did she teach you? Creams for your complexion? Lotions to give you thick, lustrous hair and repair those irritating dry ends?"

Luneta couldn't help grinning. "Mostly, yes."

"You will oblige me by forgetting all such foolishness," Lady Morgan snapped.

"But Lady Morgan—"

"And you will oblige me even more if you will not argue with me."

"I was only going to point out that you yourself have an unearthly beauty that must be the result of magic, so it seems that—"

Lady Morgan's eyes widened. "What do you mean, 'must be the result of magic'? Is it not possible that I am this beautiful without any magic at all?"

"No."

Lady Morgan's lips parted, and she stared at Luneta in shocked amazement.

"For beginners, you're my great-aunt. I don't know how old you are, but you must be at least fifty, and very likely older, so—"

"If I, in years past, enhanced my beauty with magic," Lady Morgan said in a perilously calm voice, "you may be certain that I was already a beauty to begin with. It was a very different story with your precious kind-hearted Laudine, I assure you! When I began teaching her, she was a tall, awkward, ungainly, and extremely plain girl!"

Luneta looked at her fuming great-aunt for a moment, then nodded slowly. "That explains it, then. That's why she's so obsessed with keeping her beauty. Poor thing."

"Believe me, child. Laudine is an object for contempt, not pity."

Luneta looked into Lady Morgan's stormy eyes for a long moment. In them she saw a barely suppressed anger, and so Luneta turned her own eyes demurely to the stone floor and said, "I beg your pardon for distracting you, my lady."

In an awed voice, Lady Morgan said, "Good Gog, child. You're patronizing me, aren't you? 'Let's not get the old lady all wrought up.' That's it, isn't it?"

Luneta hid a smile. "I don't know what you mean, my lady."

"I have trained a dozen enchantresses," Lady Morgan said, "and not one of them has ever made me lose my temper or has ever driven me to defend myself. Not
one
of them has dared to interrupt me. And I assure you that not one of them would have dreamed of patronizing me."

"That must have been dull for you," Luneta commented.

Slowly, Lady Morgan's icy mask melted. "It was, in fact, you abominable child. Come, let us begin. The first step in magic is to gain control over physical objects..."

Luneta couldn't have told how long she was in the stone chamber with Lady Morgan. In that windowless room, days and nights seemed irrelevant, and besides, without ever being told, Luneta knew that time itself was different in that world than in the one she was used to. She learned how to manipulate physical objects, even distant objects, without touching them, how to make a piece of wood give off more light than any torch, and how to start a raging fire with a pinch of dust and an incantation. She learned how to hasten and to delay natural processes—so, for instance, she could touch a caterpillar and make it go through its cycle and become a butterfly all in a matter of seconds. She learned to make potions that would either sicken or heal, and various oils and lotions and unguents of more practical value than Laudine's beauty aids—such as the lotion that would soften untreated iron or another that made steel nearly unbreakable. She even learned how to control her own senses and experiences. For example, she could make herself feel no hunger, and she learned a spell that made hot feel cold and cold feel hot.