Crimson Bound (37 page)

F
inally people started screaming. Justine drew her sword and charged toward Erec.

And the bloodbound attacked.

They had stood in such orderly rows that Rachelle had assumed they were the same as she had been: infected with the power of the Forest but still able to speak and think, obedient to the King because they had chosen obedience over death. But now they burst into wild, wordless screams and flung themselves on the crowd, wielding swords and knives with desperate, animal ferocity.

The world slowed to a crawl. It seemed to take forever for Rachelle to pull up the hem of her skirt and grab the knives. By the time she had finished, the closest bloodbound was nearly upon her—but he was moving slowly too, and it was the easiest thing in the world to whirl and kick. He dodged back, but a little off balance, and she was able to lunge forward and slide the blades into his ribs.

He had been human once. But his eyes were filled with the same sightless madness as the woman she’d killed in Rocamadour.

Then time was moving normally again. The soldiers were trying to pull the nobles into a group that could be protected. Justine was fighting two bloodbound at once, her sword whirling—the Bishop was fighting too, wielding Joyeuse, and his childhood must have included fencing lessons at some point because he had the stance of an aristocrat—

But there were still too many of the mad bloodbound. There were far too many.

“Stop,” she said, as she whirled to slice another bloodbound across the face. But none of them seemed to hear. Then she thought of the Forest and she filled her lungs with the cold, sweet air, and she said,
“Stop.”

And they stopped. They dropped their weapons and straightened to attention, glazed eyes staring blindly ahead of them.

She felt them, a vast, dragging presence like a thousand dull little pebbles in her head. How could Erec have controlled them so easily?

“Kneel,” Rachelle said, and they knelt.

She could hardly breathe.

“Sleep,” she whispered, and they fell to the ground and her mind was free again.

From the other side of the garden, Justine looked at her with a pale face of raw surprise.

Something cold burned against the back of Rachelle’s neck. She whirled and staggered, falling to her knees in the grass. There behind her stood la Fontaine, her makeup smudged. In her hands, she held three roses, their stems plaited together in a knot that looked vaguely familiar.

“I grow more and more curious,” said la Fontaine, “whether I should call you Mélusine or Zisette.”

Rachelle realized that there were three more roses lying on the lawn around her in a triangle.

“Where is Armand?” asked la Fontaine.

“D’Anjou took him,” said Rachelle. “I have to stop him.”

“And what are you?”

“I’m a forestborn,” said Rachelle. “What are
you
?”

“Did I not tell you?” said la Fontaine. “I am an almighty goddess.”

Rachelle stared at the flower she held, and remembered how charms were worked in the south. “You’re . . . a woodwife?”

“Why do you think I filled my Tendre with roses? My mother and I are the only reason this Château wasn’t overrun by woodspawn years ago.”

“The whole Château is surrounded by the Great Forest now,” said Rachelle. “If we get the people inside, can you protect them?”

“A little,” said Fontaine. “I am still not sure if I should kill you first, though.”

“I’ll vouch for her,” said Justine, arriving from behind Rachelle. “And the Bishop will
vouch for me.”

“I am not sure I trust your bishop either,” said la Fontaine, but she lowered the plaited roses and Rachelle was able to scramble back to her feet.

Beneath the simple nighttime rustlings, the air shivered with a not-quite-audible breath.

“They’ve started,” said Rachelle. “Where’s Joyeuse?”

“Here,” said the Bishop, also arriving. Behind him, Rachelle could see the courtiers still huddled together behind the line of soldiers, looking unable to believe the danger was over.

The danger was just beginning.

Rachelle turned to the Bishop. “You carry the sword. Justine, come with us to help hold the forestborn back. La Fontaine, get the people into the palace and keep them as safe as you can.”

“Bring my cousin back,” said la Fontaine. “And tell me this tale in my salon.”

“I’ll try,” said Rachelle, though dread curdled in her stomach. She would have to fail at one of those charges.

Then the three of them raced into the dark. Rachelle didn’t try to find her way in the dark; she simply followed the glowing red trail of the thread that bound her to Erec. As they ran through the trees, the darkness between the trunks thickened and roughened until it was no longer air but dark, damp stone, and they were walking down a tunnel.

At the end of the tunnel was a door made of metal flowers, and it hummed with a power that forbade humans to open it.

Luckily, only one of them was human.

“I’m going inside first,” she said softly. “I’ll leave the door ajar. When I call, charge inside. Or when you hear screams and fighting.” She took a deep breath and realized that despite everything, she was still afraid.

Justine smacked her shoulder lightly. “Be careful.”

“Go with God,” said the Bishop.

Rachelle nodded. “Stand back,” she said, and touched the door.

The petals licked her fingers with soft affection, and the door swung open, and she slipped inside.

Her first thought was to worship.

Not thought. Instinct. And not hers. The pressure crushed her from every side, as if the very air were made of it: this place was sacred to the Devourer. In this place he had
been worshipped, loved, feared, and reverenced. Hunger was his glory and destruction his delight. Worship him. Worship. Worship.

She realized that she was standing in a round, domed room hollowed out of black rock, and that the floor was carved with a labyrinth, the lines wide as a hand’s span and just as deep, lined with white marble that glowed in the darkness. Forestborn stood in a ring around the labyrinth. They were singing: a low, whispering chant that had no words Rachelle could recognize. And yet she knew the song; it came from the recesses of her heart. It was the same song that had stirred on the cold, sweet winds of the Great Forest.

Our master
, she thought.
Our lord. The hunger of hungers, delight of delights
, and her body stumbled under a wave of desire to kneel and worship. She was a tiny candle flame, guttering in the wind before it went out.

Hands caught her shoulders, lifted her up. Erec looked into her eyes and said, “Sometimes I wish you weren’t so worthy of me.” His face was fondly affectionate, but his fingers had tightened on her arms as if he wanted to break them.

“I haven’t come to stop the Devourer,” she whispered.

“That’s good. Because I brought a hostage.” He glanced toward the side of the room, and there she saw one of the forestborn sitting with Amélie. Her body was rigid, her eyes wide; when she looked at Rachelle, it seemed to take her a moment to recognize her. Then her lips pressed together and she nodded fiercely. Once.

I’m planning to die as well
, Amélie had said to her, and she was brave enough that she had meant it.

Erec was not always so clever as he thought.

“I won’t stop the sacrifice,” said Rachelle. “I promise.”

“Good,” said Erec. “Then come and see.”

He dragged her forward.

While they spoke, the walls of the room had faded away. Though the cold, raw stone was still beneath their feet, now vast, ancient tree trunks reared up around them, taller and thicker than cathedral towers. They were in the Great Forest.

The chanting swelled in her ears, her lungs, her blood. There was almost no difference left, she realized, between the human world and the Great Forest, between day and eternal night. The only wall that separated them now was the fragile human sitting, head bowed, at the center of the labyrinth.

The chanting ceased. The forestborn lady who had held the knife to Rachelle’s throat
said, “Are you ready to accept our lord?”

Armand raised his head. He met Rachelle’s eyes. And then he said, “I will not.”

Erec strode forward, raising his sword, and pointed it at the base of Armand’s throat. “You have one more chance. Then we use another.”

Rachelle could feel the Devourer—could feel the vast, ancient power rising and waking and turning slowly toward the world again, ever hungry and ever yearning. It was like a rising black tide, and her heart stuttered because surely Armand would be drowned in it. Surely anything human would have to drown.

Armand smiled up at Erec and said, “No.”

“Now!” Rachelle yelled, and then she moved. It seemed to take a very long time: hours to shove a hand against Erec’s arm, jolting his sword point aside. Hours to lunge forward, slide, and crash into Armand. She had meant to shove him out of the center, but he hung on to her and they end up tangled together.

She had time to notice that the black tide had risen above them in a vast wave, cold and seeking and desperate. She had time to feel the weight of Armand’s body against hers, his elbow jabbed into her side. And she had time to think,
He is never going to forgive me for this
, before she opened her mouth and said, “Yes.”

The Devourer was falling too swiftly and greedily to turn aside from any willing sacrifice. The dark wave crashed down on her and filled her up. Her body shuddered and writhed under the weight. There was no sound in her ears but the screaming of the nighttime wind. Her vision blurred; she saw Justine and the Bishop charge into the room, saw the forestborn turning to fight, but it was like watching distorted shadow puppets on a faraway wall.

In one flash, she saw Armand’s gray eyes, wide with panic. She couldn’t see Amélie, but she knew that she was somewhere in the room. There was still a chance that both of them could live, and she thought to the darkness inside her,
Yes, yes, yes.

Then nothing mattered, nothing besides the raw fury that she had been tricked, that
this was the wrong vessel.
This one still stank of human foolishness, but it was not human, and her lips drew back in a snarl of helpless rage.

“Rachelle?
Rachelle!
” Someone was shaking her shoulders and screaming.

She blinked open her eyes at the worthless traitor sacrifice—

“In the name of Tyr and Zisa, let her go!”

Her body shuddered. “Armand,” she gasped. She could feel his fingers digging into her shoulders, but the feeling wasn’t quite connected to her.

She remembered sitting with Amélie in the darkness and talking about peace.
Just a few brushstrokes
, Amélie had said.

“What did you do?” Armand demanded.

Two steps. One word.
A certain idiot abnegation
, Erec had said, and it was easier than he had ever guessed.

“Joyeuse,” she said. “The Bishop has it.”

She saw Armand understand, saw him shatter with the knowledge.

“Please,” she whispered, because the dark tide of the Devourer was pouring over her again, into her eyes, her nose, her mouth, drowning her and refashioning her, and she knew that he was trying to burn through her and absorb her so he could take another vessel. So he could rule.

Armand looked like a broken window, desolate and razor-sharp. He stood—he shouted useless human words—and then he had the abomination, the blasphemous sword created to defy her. He was going to kill her when he should worship her, he was
vile faithless ungrateful—

She blinked, and she loved him again. Joyeuse was clinging to his hand, and his face was set in the trembling, absolute resolution that had held the Devourer back for six months.

He had never been so beautiful. She had never loved him so much.

There was fire and blood and battle all around them, but they were the only two people in the world.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and then the blade was between her ribs, and it didn’t hurt, but it burned like fire and ice, like the sun and the moon and the host of stars.

And then there was night.

She was in a forest.

But it was not the Great Forest. That forest, as dark and terrible as it could be, was riotously alive. This was the forest of her dreams, and it was dead. Leafless trees stretched writhing, naked branches toward the sky. Dark red blood oozed from the cracks in their rough black bark, the only color in the bleak world. For the ground was covered in powdery white dust, while the sky was gray. Not the mottled, damp gray of overcast clouds, but a flat, featureless gray that no sun would ever burn away. The air itself was dry and dead; her breath rasped in her throat, and every breath stole away a little more of her strength.

But she didn’t need to be strong now. Rachelle dropped to her knees. Black speckled
her vision and
it didn’t matter.
She had been eaten by the Devourer and she had been killed with Joyeuse. She had, she hoped, killed him along with her. Was this lifeless world a last flickering dream before she fully died, or was it the beginning of her eternity?

She started to fall forward and caught herself on her hands, sending up a wave of dust that made her cough and gag. It didn’t matter. She had done what she could, made what amends she could, and all the rest was beyond her.

Almost all the amends she could. She’d never said the rosary that was to be her penance. She tried to form the words, but her mouth was too dry, her breath too short. Besides, penance was for those who had a hope of heaven, and she wasn’t at all sure that God could hear or find her in this place.

But that was all right, wasn’t it? She had first talked to the forestborn—to Erec—because she wanted to save the world. She had known she was risking her soul, but she had gone ahead anyway, and she had gotten her wish. She might have repented, but she couldn’t quite regret.

This was her home. This, her inheritance.

She hardly felt it when she crumpled to the ground. Her vision was swiftly going dark. She thought of Armand and Amélie; she could take those memories, at least, into the darkness.