Cobweb Bride (29 page)

And as the cocoon built, they were encased completely, and strangely, he could yet breathe, for the snow was now like soft cotton, porous and neutral to the touch, and there was now an odd impossible disembodied glow about them in the violet dusk, a faerie light.
 . . . And then, he thought, in that odd preternatural silence and illumination, he could suddenly hear a rhythmic sound, gentle and delicate, like the fluttering of a butterfly. . . . It was her heart!

She was
alive
, was breathing! She had been brought to life somehow, magically restored, and her body was no longer marble, but warming with the impossible coursing of blood in her veins, blood that she had regained somehow. Warm and pliant she had become, lying pressed against him. . . .

And in wonder he reached out, parting her cloak, and then pulling at the laces of her gown, to reveal her pale, soft shoulder, and the delicate column of her neck, whiter than snow in the strange ethereal luminescence around them. She did not struggle, only shifted against him slightly, opening her great smoke-colored eyes wide, letting her slim arms fall to each side pliantly, letting him untie the laces at her throat, then pull the fabric apart, as he searched lower—yes, there, underneath her tiny perfect bud of a breast with its rose tip—searched for any signs of the wound he had inflicted upon her with the long sharp blade of his familial dagger, plunged directly into her heart.

He stared, mesmerized, in an unspeakable effusion of joy and relief, and there was nothing there—not a scratch, no traces of the wound, her skin unbroken, without a single blemish.

He trembled then.
 . . . And at last, in the warm intimate lavender glow, the last remaining pressure of darkness and agony inside him burst, and he wept with exultation, pressing his face against her warm perfect skin, wallowing against her breast, his lips melded to her flesh, burning, burning, while she put her soft gentle arms around his neck, caressing him, whispering his name over and over, like a prayer, a litany. . . .

Vlau
.

P
ercy came awake like a startled bird, in the pre-dawn twilight. Light was barely seeping from the east, or rather its precursor was changing the nature of the darkness.

The snow had stopped falling at some point in the night. At least an inch of it had compounded to line the sides and edges of the cart and the bundled bodies of the sleepers so that they all looked like uniform white bumps in the morass of a great white sea.
 . . .

Percy blinked, seeing the campsite entirely still and everyone asleep, most of them piled in the cart. Only the peculiar young man called Vlau, Claere’s so-called brother, lay in a bundle on the ground.

Next to Percy—she remembered with a sudden jolt of visceral terror—lay the other young man.

The black knight was lying at her side.

Heaven help them all, this was insane!

She glanced down and saw the shadowed planes of his half-covered face in the twilight, the powdering of snow on his cheeks, the closed eyes and long dark lashes on which more white powder had accumulated.

Beltain.

He barely breathed, seeming frozen and rather near death himself.

Percy stilled her own breath, watching him so closely, so tensely, for any signs of the
shadow
, for a gathering of soot in the air nearby to indicate he was no longer one of the living. . . .

But no, there was no unnatural shadow coagulating around him, and thus he was not dead—at least not yet.
 . . .

She had been focusing so hard on him, on seeing the pending death, that it seemed for a moment she had experienced a sudden vertigo instant of tunnel vision.

Percy blinked again and again, trying to clear her sight, and looked up and away from him, this time seeing with the periphery of her eyes the definite
shadow
next to the nearby silent shape of the girl Claere.

It was unmistakable. Which meant, she was seeing true, and
he
was indeed not in any immediate danger for his life.

And as Percy looked up and down, from him to Claere, as though adjusting her eyes, by comparison, to differing levels and degrees of “sight” through a pair of imaginary spectacles, her gaze happened to glance higher—past their campsite, and beyond the path, toward the denser growth of trees and directly north.

And it was then that she saw the
shadow keep
.

There, in the hazy distance, the translucent shapes of night darkness had coalesced into a distinct faraway structure that had the form of a fortress or a castle, with shadow turrets and towers, and shadow walls rising with sharp fine crenellation into the paling sky
 . . . then fading into it, translucent, like bits of storm cloud.

Death’s Keep loomed over the horizon of forest, and its highest central tower pointed due north.

Percy’s breath caught and she forgot everything else. “Oh . . . God,” she whispered. “It is here!”

“What is here?” The black knight, Beltain, woke up. His eyes glittered liquid in the pre-dawn dusk, as he watched her, from inches away.

“Death’s Keep!” whispered Percy loudly, forgetting caution, and continuing to stare at the horizon. “I can see it! There, in the distance, it stands! It has to be it, and none other!”

“What?” He attempted to rise and look, but failed due to multiple reasons (he was tied up; he was as infirm as an old man), managing instead to move only his head and neck weakly. However, others were waking up around them, and there were a few snorts and soft neighs of the newly-wakened horse, as it stomped in place.

“What is it?” Niosta’s worried sleepy voice sounded.

“Look straight north, there, near the line of trees, what do you see?”

“Huh?” said Jenna, waking up, and then sat up in the cart, and craned her neck to stare as directed. “Where? I don’t see nuthin’!”

“It’s a great big fortress!” Percy continued, feeling herself shaking with emotion she had no words for. “It’s right over
there
, and there are towers, many towers, and battlements—”

But just as she spoke, dawn intensified.

Twilight was fleeing, together with the last shadows of night.

And with it, the shadow structure in the distance
faded
also.

Even as Percy was looking at it, she saw it dissolve into the rapidly paling greyness of the sky of morning. First the edges of the towers went, then the walls, as though wiped from the horizon with a stroke of an invisible giant hand.

How it could be gone? It made no sense!

And yet, it occurred to Percy, it did make sense. Death’s Keep was but another one of his shadows. And all shadows fled with the coming of the light.

Percy exhaled the breath she had been holding. “It is gone,” she said. “But—I know now where it is—where it
will be
—and how to look for it.”

“What do you mean?” Gloria came to and was listening in to all of this. “What do you mean, Percy? What did you see?”

“I mean, I am almost certain, but if we travel fast enough tonight, by evening we shall reach the spot past the trees where I had seen it . . . and when the dusk comes, it will
appear
.”

Chapt
er 12

I
t was time to hurry and start the fire, and boil the morning water.

“Cold, cold! So cold!” Jenna sang, as she jumped up and down in place to warm her young limbs, after being the first to visit the bushes to take care of nature’s business.

The other girls were also gone to their makeshift latrines, but not too far from their tiny campsite just off the path.

Percy hurried to take care of her own nature’s call, then returned back in haste to see how Emilie was doing. The sick girl was the only one who had not moved or reacted to anything this morning, and by an odd coincidence she lay next to Claere and her ever-present shadow.

Percy huddled over her and felt her forehead, which was burning up. In answer to her touch, Emilie barely moaned.

A sorrowful terrible feeling came to Percy. She could do nothing for this poor girl—nothing but offer her plain hot tea and half a roll to eat. None of them could do anything. What Emilie really needed was to be indoors in a warm bed, and someone who knew medicinal herbs to feed her a tonic and watch over her.
 . . .

At least, as Percy examined her with the special
sight
, Emilie was not yet so far gone, and there was no shadow around her either. . . . But she was not out of danger, not at this rate. . . .

“How
 . . . is she?”

Percy almost started when the dead girl, Claere, spoke up.

Looking at Claere, Percy bit her lip, then gently replied: “Not too well, but she still has the fight in her. . . .” And then she added softly, “And how are
you?
Is there anything I can do to help—to
ease
you?”

Claere, pale and delicate, with her great, beautiful, dark eyes in their sunken, smoke-fringed sockets, looked at her serenely. “You can take me all the way to Death’s Keep.
 . . . Please . . . Get me to his doorstep, and I will be grateful beyond all things. . . .”

Percy nodded again. “I promise
 . . . I will do all I can.”

And seeing Vlau watching their exchange with his strange fevered intensity, she addressed him also. “Don’t worry, I mean it. And don’t lose hope, for your sister or yourself. Whatever happens, our journey may yet give us all some kind of respite.”

Saying that, Percy stepped away and went to take care of Betsy who was calling attention to herself by various hungry horse noises. Meanwhile Flor had started to make a fire for the tea. Niosta and Jenna gathered kindling, and then they passed around the few remaining portions of bread rolls and leftover common foodstuff.

Throughout their hurried movements, the black knight was observing them all from his spot in the cart. And Percy, in turn, watched him with discreet sideways glances. Finally he said, “I need to relieve myself. Will you untie me at least so that I can take care of it?”

Everyone immediately went silent. Percy, who was rubbing down Betsy’s legs and adjusting her blanket, did not answer immediately.

“If I untie you, will you promise upon your honor as knight not to try to escape?”

“Upon my honor, I will not.”

He was glaring at her with his steel eyes. Last night his eyes had seemed colorless, indistinguishable in the firelight and in the early dawn light when she had been up-close to him. But now, she could see the storm pallor in the blue.

Percy stopped what she was doing. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and straightened.

“Then, Sir Knight, you will just have to piss in your woolens.”

And Percy returned to working on Betsy.

Jenna giggled, and Gloria hid her face.

He did not skip a beat. “I
could
do that,” he said. “But how many of you will then have to sit in my piss, here in this cart?”

Jenna and Gloria and Niosta all chortled, this time.

“I will take him and watch him,” Vlau said suddenly. “You can loosen his feet, and he will manage—”

“Are you sure?” Percy said, maintaining a very straight face. “Can you hold him? He is a fearsome knight. And you are?”

“I am a man who has held a sword before,” the dark-haired brother of Claere replied, without a trace of levity.

“Percy, you could lend ’im the saucepan!” Jenna exclaimed.

In the cart, the black knight’s expression was darker than night.

“All right.” Percy nodded to Vlau, and then she approached Beltain and started untying his feet. “If you so much as kick me,” she said, leaning over him, “I will wad up your mouth, and not only will you have to wet yourself and stay that way, but you’ll ride till evening with an old sock in your mouth. Understood?”

“Under other circumstances, I would promise you an intricate and drawn out death, for all of this,” he replied, craning his neck to within inches of her face. “But now I’ll just have to settle for promising to thrash you—”

She ignored him entirely. Once his feet had been freed, she and Vlau raised him up in an upright position, helping him out of the cart and then to stand up.

Beltain took a moment to steady himself and regain the use of his nearly atrophied limbs. Grasping the side rail of the cart with both his tied hands, he took a few steps in the snow. Even though he was mostly undressed down to his undergarments, with only a few pieces of armor remaining, he was so tall and formidable that Percy had to raise her chin to look up at his face.

She stood back and let him walk on his own. He made it as far as behind the nearest shrubbery, with Vlau following closely. Vlau was not a short man, but he was dwarfed by the black knight’s stature.

When the two men returned some time later, Flor had the fire going, and the tea was ready. Percy sat in the cart with a mug, pouring tea into Emilie’s mouth while holding her head up. Emilie swallowed with difficulty, and she was very weak with a fever.

“All done? Get him back in here,” said Percy, without looking in the knight’s direction.

Beltain had been swaying on his feet, and had sat down on the edge of the cart with some difficulty and, no doubt, secret relief. No, he was not going anywhere on his own, thought Percy. Gloria and Vlau helped pull him deeper inside, and the black knight collapsed, closing his eyes. He was unconscious.

“When he wakes, give him some tea,” Percy said to Gloria. She then took a small bit of bread for herself and chewed it without tasting, gulping it down with hot tea.

In the meantime, Vlau returned to stand at Claere’s side like a strange sentinel.

J
ust as they were done eating their poor breakfast, and it was almost full light, Lizabette arrived.

She was staggering through the snow along the path, back from where they had come from, haggard like a shade and covered with snow.

It was a miracle she was alive, and not the frozen walking dead. . . .

Jenna noticed her first. “Lizabette! You’re back! You got away from the hunters!”

Everyone turned to stare, and Niosta ran up to her, asking about Catrine.

“Oh L-l-lord
 . . .” Lizabette whispered in a rasping voice, “g-g-give me s-s-something warm to d-d-drink, please!”

Someone immediately passed her a hot mug, and she drank it down wordlessly, hands shaking, standing where she was, and then walked the last few paces to the cart and collapsed.

The girls gathered around her. Her hands and face were dangerously white and cold to the touch, and she appeared to have some degree of frostbite. They started to gently pat down and squeeze her fingers and arms, and her feet, trying to get the blood moving. Gloria pulled a blanket over her, and Jenna blew warm breath at her face and cheeks, then placed her palms to them.

“What happened, Lizabette?” Percy asked when the other girl was back to some semblance of normalcy, sitting upright and shivering in the blanket.

“I ran, and then they g-g-got me!” she began. “Oh Lord in Heaven, there is so m-m-much to tell! I’ve been walking all night!”

“Probably why you’re still alive and not completely frozen
 . . .” Percy said.

“How’d you get away? Where is Catrine?” persisted Niosta.

And Lizabette told them. She told them how, when the patrol had arrived, she had run into the forest, but in moments was grabbed by at least two men-at-arms. “I don’t know what happened, but when I looked back, it was as if I was lost completely . . . there was no trace of the path, or the cart, and I could only see Regata in her nice coat on the other side, being taken also, and hoisted up by a filthy mounted man, who then rode off with her somewhere. . . .”

“Did you see Catrine?”

“No!” Lizabette said, her usual, somewhat snotty intonation returning, which was surely a good sign. “But I did notice one strangest thing. . . . As those ruffians dragged me behind them, we doubled back to where I had been at first, and when I looked behind me from
that
place, I could suddenly
see
the path again, and the cart and Betsy, in the distance! And you were there, Percy—but you were, all of you, somehow
transparent!
You were
fading!
You, and the horse, and the cart! And as we moved further away from the path, you disappeared altogether—not out of sight, like around a tree or something, but it was as if by magic, you dissolved into the air!”

“All right, I don’t really understand what you mean, but do go on,” Gloria said.

“Afterwards, they continued dragging me some distance, and then there were others, equally gruesome and filthy, and they kept running up to my captors, or riding by, and they were all supposedly looking for their captain—who it turns out, is none other than the terrifying
black knight
himself—”

Jenna and Niosta and Marie exchanged looks.

“—and so then they sighted a great monstrous warhorse running loose, that must have been
his
. But the knight himself was not on it—was apparently missing. No one could catch him—I refer to the horse, not the knight. . . . And so they stopped and made camp, and there was a great big fire, then at least a dozen more of them arrived there, all talking—”

Lizabette paused with a shudder, and asked for more tea.

“What were they talking about?” Jenna asked. “Are they looking for us?”

“Yes!” Lizabette drank thirstily from the mug, holding it tight with her reddened fingers, for warmth. “They are looking for us, naturally. But even more so, they are looking for
someone else. . . .
I could hardly believe it, but supposedly, the Emperor’s own daughter, the
Infanta
herself, is somewhere in this forest—right this very minute!—also on her way to become a Cobweb Bride! Can you imagine that? They say she has gone mad, or maybe she is dead—but in either case, the Duke Chidair himself is on the lookout for her—you know, the one they call Duke Hoarfrost—”

As Lizabette chattered, taking momentary breaks to gulp down the tea, Percy grew more thoughtful.

“As for me,” Lizabette continued, “I must tell you how I got away, because it is very
important.
 . . . Listen—at some point those two cretins watching me, had taken a few steps aside—to gab with their superiors, I suppose, or whoever else is in those patrols—and I simply started running. It was as if some kind of crazy terror came upon me, I just ran, and in seconds I had gotten away. . . . I could hear them follow me. But then, all of a sudden, there was that path—I recognized one spot on it, early on, back where we had just gotten on it. . . . So I turned onto our path, just because it was easier to run on it than to crash through godforsaken bushes. . . . I knew they were going to be upon me in a heartbeat—”

“Oh, go on!” said Jenna, very attentive.

“Well, I ran for about twenty feet along the path, and then I looked behind me, and I saw them, at least three hunters in pursuit of me. They ran this and that way, and
they did not see me
. I was right there, in front of them—I even stopped running, and just stood there, in the middle of the path. But it was as if I’d gone invisible! And for that matter, it was as if they could not see the
path
was there, either!”

“So what you’re saying—” Percy began.

“I’m saying there’s something unnatural going on! Magic!”

Everyone stared at her.

“No, I have
not
gone daft!” exclaimed Lizabette, “I tell you, this path we’re on, it’s very special! I wager, it’s all Grial’s doing, somehow! She must’ve spelled it for us, to keep us safe, or—”

“I actually believe you,” said Percy. “Because there is no other explanation as to why we have been so impossibly
lucky
all these few days. I mean, the forest is full of the patrols, and they’ve been so close—”

“Yes, and they are looking for
everyone!
And now, oh, I wonder,” Lizabette interrupted, “where the Infanta is! Just to think, that the Grand Princess, Claere Liguon herself is somewhere, maybe on our path—”