Moonblood (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #3) (15 page)

But the sight was not as welcoming as Lionheart had hoped. Not even Hill House, where he had known two summers as a boy and of which he treasured many fond memories, could comfort him now. His humiliation was too great.

He had avoided people as much as possible on his journey, and even now at his journey’s end he scarcely spoke to the folk of the house. The night of his arrival, he had nodded to the cook, the housekeeper, the maid, and the footman, said nothing, and gone to his room, shutting the door firmly behind himself. The maid left a plate of food outside in the hall. He rose at dawn, opened his door, and stepped right on it, cracking the plate. The maid found it an hour later, along with the empty bedroom. But there was no sign of the disinherited prince.

“Royalty always has their own ways,” said Redbird, the cook, when the maid came back and reported his disappearance.

“But does he really count as royalty now?” asked the maid. “I mean, now that he ain’t the crown prince no more?”

“Once a royal, always a royal,” said Redbird.

But the maid wasn’t sure she believed her.

Lionheart had gone out to the gardens when the sun was just rising. Before leaving the Eldest’s House, he had shaved off his beard, leaving his face cold now in the morning. He tramped through the familiar but overgrown grounds, recalling boyhood days many years ago when he had been sent to visit his cousin for the summer and spent hours entertaining himself in these gardens.

Back before he climbed farther up the mountain and met the lonely girl who changed his life.

Lionheart had been to Hill House months ago, when he first returned to Southlands after his exile and came searching for Rose Red. It was then that he had knocked out the front boards of the old shed’s door in order to reach inside. No one had repaired those boards since, so when Lionheart came to the old shed, he knew what he would find just within its dark doorway.

He put his hand into the mustiness, brushing away spider webs and crawlies, and took hold of the fell sword, Bloodbiter’s Wrath
.
Which looked startlingly like a beanpole. Perhaps because it was one.

Lionheart pulled the beanpole out of the shed and held it in both hands. It was decorated up and down with messy little carvings, including its name somewhere near where the “hilt” should be. It had been his weapon of choice as a boy and had seen many an epic battle up in the mountain forest where he and Rose Red had played their games. He lifted it up, his knuckles whitening as he squeezed it. With very little effort, he could break it in two. . . .

“There are some things that cannot be repaired once broken.”

Lionheart startled at the voice and whirled about, brandishing the beanpole. He had thought himself quite alone in the morning stillness. Even now, as his eyes scanned the lawns and overgrown hedgerows, he saw no one.

“It smells to me,” the voice spoke again, surprisingly close but from a different direction, “as though you don’t know what it is you hold there. Sad, that. How limited mortal perceptions are.”

Spinning in place, Lionheart scanned the whole of the yard. Still he saw no one. “Where are you?” he demanded, his voice firm, though his heart raced. “Who are you?”

“Oh, come now, I’m hurt.” The voice was masculine, a smooth tenor. Yet there was a slight huskiness to it as well, and an unnatural timbre. “I thought you would remember me. Not that we spent a great deal of time in each other’s company, but I like to think I make a lasting impression.”

“Where did we meet?”

“Oriana.”

At that name, Lionheart’s face broke into a sweat despite the chill morning. His brows lowered and he adjusted his grip on the beanpole. “Come out,” he said. “Come out where I can see you.”

“Really, my lad, you’re blinder than I am.”

The next moment, a large orange tomcat appeared at Lionheart’s feet. It boasted a thick ruff and a plume of a tail, the tip of which twitched continually as it tilted up its whiskered nose. It was a handsome animal, large for a house cat, glossy and healthy looking.

But it had no eyes.

This strange lack made its face altogether too smug as it smiled up at Lionheart. It was a face that would be hard to forget. It was not a face one would expect to speak.

Lionheart gaped. Then he said, “Monster?”

“Ah! You do remember me, then,” said the cat with a trill. “Only, I’d rather you did not refer to me by that name. I allow only friends to address me thus, and you, my lad, are far from being my friend.” The voice was bright and cheerful, but there was an edge to it that made Lionheart step back. “You may call me
Sir
. Or
Your Grace
. Even
Your Eminence.
I’m not especially picky.”

During the course of Lionheart’s travels, he had encountered dragons, emperors, sylphs, oracles, priests, dukes—any number of fantastic peoples, mortal and immortal alike. The memory of Rose Red’s goat transforming into a tall woman and shaking him within an inch of his life was burned into his memory. But he had never before heard human speech cross the lips of a house cat.

A house cat who had more than one reason to dislike Lionheart.

“You belonged to Una,” Lionheart said.

“Well,
belonged
might be stretching the point,” said the cat. “Rather, I was her guardian. And a noble occupation it was while it lasted. But my sweet young mistress has since married and gone to live in her husband’s kingdom, far, far away.”

Lionheart said nothing for a long moment. Una, married? To whom? It did not take long for his imagination to fill in that missing piece. Who else but the Prince of Farthestshore? It must be he. The Dragon truly was dead, then, and his nightmare of several months back was reality.

He would never fight the Dragon.

The cat seemed to be awaiting a reply. “I . . . I am happy for her,” Lionheart said.

The cat’s tail lashed back and forth. “Your happiness concerns me not a whit. Una is happy, and that is all I care for at present. You, however, have yet to earn my regard, and I am only here now because I was sent. The Lights Above only know why!”

“Sent? By whom?” He hated to ask but needed to know. “By Una?”

“Iubdan’s beard, no. By my Master, the Prince of Farthestshore. Though you may be assured, it was not an assignment for which I asked. I would have preferred that he allowed me to search for lost Prince Felix.”

Lionheart frowned. “Something has happened to Felix?” He thought of Una and the dreadful change worked upon her by the Dragon. Had a similar fate befallen her younger brother? For a moment, sorrow filled Lionheart’s heart. But it was swiftly replaced by something more sinister—a dreadful hope.

So the Prince had rescued lovely Una but left the brother to suffer? So much for his nobility! Even the Prince of Farthestshore had his limits. Generosity and goodness only ever reach so far.

The cat growled. Then, as though he had read Lionheart’s mind, he said, “Think no evil of my Master, jester. Your thoughts discredit no one but yourself.”

“Since when do cats acknowledge masters?” Lionheart snapped.

The cat’s ears went back and his tail lashed again several times. But when he spoke again, he said only: “He has sent me to you, Lionheart of Southlands, though for what purpose I cannot fathom. I would be much better employed searching after young Felix. But I fear he has been taken beyond my reach.”

“What happened to Felix?”

“Why should you care?”

Lionheart had no ready response. He couldn’t even say that he did care beyond pure curiosity. But something in the cat’s manner prompted him to urge an answer. “I saw what became of . . . of his sister.”

“Such was not Felix’s fate, if that’s what bothers you,” said the cat. His whiskers drooped and his eyeless face became sad. “No, something far more mysterious has taken Felix. He has heard the unicorn.” Like a performer, the cat gave a dramatic pause.

“Um,” said Lionheart.

“You have no idea what I’m talking about, have you?”

“No, sorry.”

“Mortals,” growled the cat. Then he plunged into his story, told with far more embellishments than Lionheart needed. But there were few born who could stop this cat once he began a tale. And Lionheart, leaning against Bloodbiter’s Wrath, found himself moved despite every effort to maintain disinterest as the cat’s narrative unfolded. He had not known Felix well during his time at Oriana, but he remembered the bright-eyed, fair-haired boy with the teasing laugh and good humor. The idea of something so dreadful and so strange happening to him was hard to take in.

“That moment at the bridge was the last I saw of Felix,” said the cat as he reached the conclusion of his tale.

“So you say this creature—this
unicorn
—stole him?”

The cat sniffed. “That’s not what I said at all. I said the unicorn
called
him. Whether or not it stole him is a different story altogether.”

“But why?”

“Why what?”

“Why would it want anything to do with Felix?”

The cat gave an impatient twitch of his ears. “Who can say? But the unicorn did not want the boy for its own purposes; that is certain. It and its brethren desire little to do with mortals. It must have been sent, and I have a fair idea by whom.”

“Yes?”

But the cat was disinclined to communicate further. He started grooming his paw. When he had finished the first, he moved to the second, and when he finished that, he began chewing a back paw as well, spreading the toes so that sharp claws extended.

Lionheart gave up. “What do you want with me, then? Do you suspect I am involved in the boy’s capture?”

“Did I say capture?” said the cat, still chewing.

“Disappearance, then.”

“I really couldn’t say that I had any ideas concerning you whatsoever,” said the cat, finally finishing his primping and sitting upright again. “I am only here because my Master sent me. Rather than pursuing any traces of the unicorn or Felix, I am compelled to your little kingdom, all the way up to your little house on your little hill to help you with your little problems.” His ears went back. “So tell me, mortal, what are your little problems?”

“I don’t have any problems.”

The cat snorted. “Funny, that.”

“None that need your help, anyway,” Lionheart insisted. He looked at Bloodbiter’s Wrath
,
which he twirled idly in his hands. He knew why he had desired more than anything to escape to Hill House. It was as remote a location as could be found in all Southlands, as far as one could get from the Eldest’s Court without leaving the kingdom. It was also the location of his dearest memories—of games on the hillside with his best friend, building stick ships and sailing them on a muddy pond, of stories and imaginary battles, of foes that could always be overcome.

Memories of true companionship.

But even those memories were soiled. He knew this, now that he stood once more with the beanpole in his hands. More dirty in his mind even than memories of Oriana and Princess Una were all those thoughts of childhood camaraderie with Rose Red. Rose Red, who had trusted him. Rose Red, who had risked her life for his sake on more than one occasion. Rose Red, who had given up everything to serve him.

Rose Red, whom he had banished to an unknown fate.

“Why don’t you go after her?”

Lionheart glared at the cat, who smiled back. “Can you read my mind?”

“No.” The cat sniffed and seemed to smile. “I can smell it. Which is made the easier for the stink your thoughts give off. All this self-pity and moping!
I did what I had to do.
Lick my whiskers, you did. Be a man, and face your actions for what they were!”

“You don’t understand,” Lionheart said, turning his back on the cat. “No one does.”

“While I am a firm believer in the uniqueness of each person,” said the cat, “the motivations of the spirit are as predictable as the seasons.” He paced around to stand once more before Lionheart.

“Why don’t you go?” he said to the cat. “You don’t wish to be here, and I’ve told you I need nothing from you. Go search for Felix as you wish and leave me in peace. If your Master complains, tell him I sent you away myself. He can’t argue with that.”

The cat’s voice was a low growl. “That is out of the question.”

“Why?”

“The ways of my Master are mysterious, to say the least. He would not leave my young charge to the unpredictable whims of Faerie. I suspect that my search for Felix is somehow wrapped up with your own search. That by helping you I will, in fact, be helping the boy.”

“You’re wasting your time. I have no search.”

“What of Rose Red?”

Lionheart frowned. “How do you know her name?”

“I have my ways. So what about her, mortal?”

Taking care to consider his words, Lionheart began, “I cannot . . .”

“Cannot what? Cannot attempt to repair the damage you’ve done? And why is that? Because you cannot bear to admit your mistakes in the first place?” The cat shook his head and once more laid his ears back. “Coward.”

For a beautiful moment, Lionheart envisioned bringing the beanpole down with a crack on the cat’s skull. But there was something dangerous about this cat; a wildness in his every movement, blind though he was. Lionheart suspected that there was more power contained in that small orange body than he could begin to guess.