Cobweb Empire (46 page)

“Percy!” Somewhere in back she could hear
Beltain’s familiar voice calling her, but it was coming through
many thick layers of cotton. . . .

Percy placed her one hand, cold as ice, upon
the delicate doll’s hand belonging to the Cobweb Bride, gripping
her tight. She then reached out and placed her other hand upon the
maiden’s death shadow, crystalline and hard and impenetrable.

And then, she reached out in both
directions, the maiden and her death, and she pulled with every
fiber of her being.

The cobwebs in the room started to vibrate.
They floated and shimmered, each tiny strand ringing in an
invisible wind. Faster they moved, vibrating, microscopic,
razor-fine, infinite. . . .

And Percy’s
pull
increased.

There was a sensation of wind gathering in
the chamber. And then, something
exploded
, like a world of
shattering crystals, and the preternatural veil of force was
gone
.

Percy felt herself lose consciousness for a
split second from the impact slamming upon her mind. She had broken
through. All along the room, the cobwebs broke apart, the filaments
turning into fine grains, shattering the bonds between the smallest
parts of themselves, like crumbling formations of salt and sugar,
raining down into pale dust.

The maiden lying before Percy shuddered
suddenly, her eyes growing wide, and she took in a deep breath of
air into long-suspended lungs. She breathed, gasping, and at her
side her death shadow billowed at last, released from its
impossible crystal prison.

The room suddenly came alive—or rather, the
shapes of the women suspended as they were, were freed of their
ethereal bonds at last.

They crumpled down where they were—sitting,
standing, lying. Each was a lifeless corpse. Percy sensed in horror
that their crystalline death shadows—those shadow shapes that she
thought were simply imprisoned—were in fact ancient remnants,
indeed an illusion. Maybe they
had
been something once, real
death energy shadow-forms. But it was oh-so-long ago. Death itself
was leached out of existence, softly, delicately, through the
strange debilitating magic of the crystal veil that separated death
from life.

Because all these other women had died so
long ago, they were not even the animated undead. They were now
simply
gone
.

All except for two—the maiden who was the
Cobweb Bride, and . . . Leonora.

Apparently, while the other women collapsed
all around into sad pitiful shapes of true death, Leonora inhaled a
deep breath of her own, and sat up in her chair.

“Leonora! Oh, my child! You are alive!”
cried the Countess. And the Count rushed forward to support her,
for his spouse nearly fainted.

“Mother!” Leonora exclaimed, her voice
cracking and weak, and her face pale and sickly, but seeming to
regain a little color before their eyes. “Oh, mother! And my
father!”

Their reunion was a thing of joy and, for
Percy, amazement, because Percy noted that there was no death
shadow hovering anywhere near Lady Leonora—which meant that the
girl was well and truly
alive
.

But those observations were incidental, to
be savored later. Because in this immediate instant, the maiden who
was the Cobweb Bride started to rise stiffly from her sepulchral
death bed, and the white crystal dust of shattered cobwebs rained
from her hair, clothing, and limbs upon the stone. And her white
raiment was revealed to be a soft dusky rose, the same shade as her
cheeks. She was strangely vibrant and full of life for someone
whose death shadow billowed at her side.

It was then that all eyes turned upon the
maiden, even Leonora and her parents pausing to stare.

“Who are you, My Lady?” said Percy gently,
addressing the Cobweb Bride.

It took the young woman several breaths
before she could form words. “I . . .
am . . . Melinoë.” Her voice started as a mere
whisper, cracking, and there were hints of sonorous tones in it
that were yet unrealized.

The Countess D’Arvu spoke up. “Dear child,
who is your mother? Is it Her Brilliance, the Sovereign, Rumanar
Avalais?”

The maiden who had named herself Melinoë
appeared to be recalling something. “Yes,” she finally said. “My
mother—the Sovereign, she is my mother. Though I hardly know who
she is—or who I am. I—hardly remember . . . my
name.”

“By Heaven! And has she done this to you?”
asked the Count.

“My mother has blue eyes,” spoke Melinoë,
starting to get up from her seated position, and Percy immediately
assisted her with her hands under her arm. “My mother is beautiful
and bright and she rules the Domain. She used to come and visit
me . . . in the room of the sun. In the Palace of
the Sun. She used to brush my hair and tell me about the flowers in
Elysium. And then she stopped coming, and—and I no longer
remember.”

“Oh, dear Lord!” The Countess used a
handkerchief to wipe her face, while Leonora stared with a dazed
and frightened expression around her, at the corpses, suddenly
realizing where they were. “What is this place, mother?” she
whispered, hugging the Countess in fear. “The last I remember is
being in the quarters of the Ladies-in-Attendance, and then—I don’t
remember!” And Leonora turned to look at the Cobweb Bride who now
stood with difficulty, supported by Percy, and she said, “Melinoë?
I do not remember you! Have I seen you in Attendance? Oh, I am so
frightened, mother!”

“This lady is the daughter of Her
Brilliance,” said the Count.

“What daughter? I know not of such! This
must be a mistake,” said Leonora. “I am so confused! What is this
terrible place? Why am I here?”

“I think it is time we made our exit,” said
Diril in that moment. He had been making rounds of the room,
crouching down to examine some of the corpses, and now said to the
Count: “This is rather disturbing. I know and recognize some of
these young women—they have been fixtures at the Court many years
ago—decades. I was a young boy, and I remember one of these at
least, when she was a debutante, and another had been deceased and
taken, strewn in flowers, in a burial procession along the streets
of the citadel. How is it possible they are now here, and even
though corpses, they are fresh, and have not aged or deteriorated a
moment since? It is definitely a form of sorcery. Thus, we need to
leave,
now
, all of us.”

“Agreed,” said Beltain. And he went forward
to help Percy with Lady Melinoë.

“What of all these unfortunates?” the Count
asked, pointing to the scattered bodies. Should anything be done,
perhaps—”

But Diril shook his head negatively, with a
grim demeanor.

“Leonora, can you walk, dear girl?”

Lady Leonora nodded, and with the help of
both her parents she was up also.

And then they began their intricate and
careful trip back up and out of the horrible secret chamber.

Once they emerged from the underground
chamber back inside the Hall of the Sun, gently leading the two
revived young ladies, Diril himself went to the golden goddess and
he pressed and twisted the statuette until the secret floor passage
was again concealed.

Next they crossed the Hall and found the
secret passage in the wall, and started moving, with as much speed
as possible, while half-carrying Lady Leonora and Lady Melinoë, and
passing them from arm to arm.

The passage through the exposed remote
corridor was the most harrowing portion of their escape.

“Do not fear,” Diril reassured them before
they emerged, “The worst is behind us, for the only guard to be
expected is in the central potion of the Palace, and their
attention has been sorely divided these last few days.”

However, moments after they had come forth,
a series of servants turned a corner, one after another. Diril
immediately lifted his voice and acquired a nasal accent and
embarked upon a cultured lecture about the history of the hanging
tapestries in this particular wing of the Palace, achieving the
perfect illusion of a palatial tour guide. The Count fell in with
him adroitly and asked a series of annoying questions about the
noble subjects depicted, while the ladies pretended to examine the
wall hangings, and the Countess held Leonora and Melinoë suspended
on both her arms, and laughed softly, genuinely seeming inebriated.
Beltain, wrapped in his black cloak, took up a calm and bored pose
near Percy, who in turn simply moved to the wall and pretended to
adjust a bit of tapestry, feeling, unlike the others, utterly
conspicuous, ridiculous, and terrified.

The servants bowed and curtsied, and were
perfunctorily ignored by the aristocrats who were obviously out on
a whim, taking a midnight tour of the Palace.

When they had gone, the Countess D’Arvu
nearly collapsed, resting against the wall, and for a moment, it
was the two young ladies who supported her.

Somehow they managed to miss any more
encounters with Palace servants or guards, and finally entered the
underground tunnels with their filth and scrawled graffiti, in
utmost relief.

A half an hour more and they arrived at the
house belonging to the Count D’Arvu.

B
ut there was to be
no rest.

“We can no longer remain at Court,” said the
Count to Beltain, once they had come within doors. “I take my
family and we leave, with our child Leonora, this very night. There
is no knowing how long we have until the Sovereign discovers this,
and then—it is unspeakable. The House D’Arvu is done for. Thus, we
must run. You are welcome to come with us.”

“I was about to suggest the same to you,”
replied Beltain softly. “But I am afraid we go back inside the war
zone. I am Lord Beltain Chidair of Lethe, and my place is back
north. And especially now, we will be going to a place where no
mortal will choose to go willingly. Thus, we part, with
kindness.”

“You and the girl have my eternal
gratitude,” the Count replied. Where we go, I am not yet certain.
But it will be as far away as possible from this evil
war . . . and from the monstrous creature who almost
destroyed our daughter. I serve the Sovereign no longer.”

And thus it was that several riders left the
citadel that night. Two riders traveled through the northern
gate—Beltain and Percy, riding the great black charger, and on a
chestnut mare provided by the D’Arvu, came the Lady Melinoë,
bundled in a thick dark coat, hooded, and tied securely to the
comfortable side-saddle. Next to her on the saddle, unseen by all
except Percy, rode the maiden’s death-shadow. Beltain held both the
reins of Jack and the mare, and led them past the gates in the wake
of several peasant carts and noble carriages.

Thus, the Cobweb Bride left the Sapphire
Court.

Chapter
22

N
o one spoke much
until they were well away from the citadel walls and on the road
heading north. The moon rode the sky in her full radiance, and was
beginning to sink toward the tree-lined horizon, for it was now
many hours after midnight, and the world reposed in a contrast of
silver, blues, indigoes and shadows.

“My Lady, how are you?” said Percy at some
point, watching with concern the nearly limp form of the young
woman to whom she was so strangely bound.

“I am well. . . .” Lady Melinoë
raised her hooded face and the moonlight illuminated a part of it,
in particular her shimmering liquid eyes.

“Apologies that we may not rest just yet,”
said Beltain. “But we cannot risk stopping until we are well away
from—your mother’s Court.”

“I have no wish to rest,” Melinoë said. “I
have been resting a very long time.”

“Oh, can you remember any of it?”

But the maiden shook her head. “All I
remember are . . . endless dreams.”

Percy felt a painful constriction in her
chest. This girl was young, gentle, beautiful, and seemed in good
health—except for the death attached to her. What abomination made
her suffer this fate? How had it come to pass?

“So you remember nothing at all, of your
mother?”

“I am not sure,” the lady replied. “I
remember her kindness. Then, nothing.”

“What manner of kindness is it, to conceal
her own daughter from the world? And then, to perform dark
sorcery?” mused Beltain in a hard voice.

Percy said nothing. There was yet the most
difficult thing to be said—something that they had not told her
yet.

For all appearances, the Cobweb Bride had no
notion that she was
dead
. Or that she was intended to meet
Death, her Bridegroom.

How was one to even explain such a
thing?

And what if—what if after all this time, she
learned the truth and then
refused
to comply with her
singular and horrible fate? And as a result, the world would have
to continue as it was, broken?

Percy took a deep breath and began. “Lady
Melinoë, there is something you must know.”

L
ady Melinoë
Avalais, daughter of the Sovereign of the Domain, listened to the
grim details of her true nature and her fate explained to her as
gently as possible, while they rode underneath the waning
moonlight.

Afterwards, she spoke nothing for a long
time.

Percy, terrified on her behalf and feeling
wrenching guilt—a completely new, unexpected circumstance she had
never dreamed she would be subjected to in the course of her
fulfillment of Death’s quest—glanced at the maiden repeatedly,
seeking any kind of reaction in her delicate face painted by the
moon. Eventually she noticed the liquid pooling in Melinoë’s eyes,
and then, as drops coalesced, long streaks appeared, illuminating
her cheeks. She cried wordlessly, with her face unmarred by
emotion, and it was peculiar indeed to observe a dead one cry. Was
it even possible?