Moonblood (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #3) (22 page)

“I think you take too much credit, Vahe,” says the Dragon, still not breaking gaze with his sister. “It was not you who woke me. It was that pretty little slave of yours, what’s-her-name. The Lady of Aiven.”

“She’d not have done it but for my persuasion!”

“Your persuasion? Rather secondhand work, I think.” The Dragon sneers and at last turns to fix his gaze upon the King of Arpiar. His eyes are ringed in flames. “I hardly feel an obligation.”

Vahe screams wordlessly and turns upon Life-in-Death, gnashing his teeth. “My dream! You won the game. I know my rights!”

“You have no rights,” hisses the Dragon.

But his sister narrows her eyes and smiles. She croons softly, “I will see your dream realized, Vahe. My brother knows that I will. One way or another.”

The Dragon rises from his bloody throne and strides forward as though he would tear the Lady to pieces then and there. But she continues to smile and meet him eye to eye, and it is the Dragon who turns away first. He snarls and spits fire as he speaks.

“Very well, King of Arpiar. Perhaps we can make a deal, you and I?”

As he speaks, moonlight breaks through the darkness above the throne, spilling through a skylight high above and lighting upon the Dragon’s face. He snarls again, and the light runs bloodred.

Vahe drew his hand back sharply, hissing at the pain. The memory flashed through his mind in an instant, but in such vivid detail that it might have happened but moments before rather than five hundred years ago. He smiled despite the hurt in his hand.

When he reached out to the throne again he did not touch it, rather letting his hand hover just above the carved stone, feeling the heat from it. The heat told stories, whispered the deaths of hundreds, of thousands. The blood, though old, smelled fresh. Here was a seat of power indeed, though not one on which he would ever sit.

“Anahid,” he said, “come see our future.”

She did not reply.

Vahe frowned and looked about into the gloom. “Anahid!” he barked.

If she heard him she did not respond, for the queen had been making her own search through the cavern.

She knew she shouldn’t. It would only bring pain were she to find him. She rarely felt pain anymore, not after all these years. Perhaps it would be a relief even, were she to set eyes on him once more and feel that sharp sting through her heart, that agony of remorse. Perhaps the suffering would be worth a chance to feel again. But these were foolish thoughts, here in this place of darkness.

Even so, she drifted like a ghost among the fallen ones, studying each face as she went. “You’ll not find him,” she whispered to herself almost as a comfort, perhaps as a warning. “You’ll not find him among these thousands.”

One lay with his face in his hands, his knees curled up to his head. Anahid froze, and the world went cold around her. She did not need to see his face to know. The coldness passed, and in its place came that first dart of pain that is so akin to longing. Oh, why? Why did she come here?

“Anahid!”

Her husband’s voice rang through the cavern, but she did not care. Nothing mattered now, not Vahe and his little plots, not Varvare and her doom. For the moment, however brief, all that mattered were the dreams of one sad goblin girl, hundreds of years ago. Shattered by guilt, ravaged by time, they presented themselves once more. A tear slid down the queen’s cheek, and she put her hand to her face to catch it wonderingly. She’d thought she would never cry again.

The next instant, she was kneeling at his side. His hands were icy cold, but she grasped them and pulled them away from his face. That shard of pain twisted more deeply in her heart at the sight. It was
he
! Of course it was; she’d already known that. But it was
his
face! In that little space of time, as she held his hands in hers and he yet dreamed, it was not the face of a dragon, but
his
face, his dear, dear face.

“Come see our future!” her husband called.

But Anahid could not see the future while gazing at the past. She reached out to touch his cheek, and when she did so, her own tear fell on him.

He woke.

Two bright yellow eyes, dragon eyes, gazed up at her, unseeing. “My Father!” he gasped.

“Diarmid,” she whispered.

His gaze focused, the yellow eyes fixing steadily on her. The next moment, he gave a strangled cry and pulled himself to his knees. His arms were around her, and she felt the fire in his chest beneath her cheek as he pressed her close to him. She closed her eyes and allowed one more tear to fall because she could not hear a beating heart. He had none anymore.

“Well, well, well,” said King Vahe. “What do we have here?”

8

W
ELL, WELL, WELL,”
said the Tiger. “What do we have here?”

Lionheart scrambled around, trying to find a place to put his left foot and simultaneously pushing aside a bough of leaves. He stared down the long way (how had he managed to climb so far, so fast?) to the forest floor below. “Iubdan’s beard!” he breathed. “It talks!”

“Lumé’s crown,” the Tiger responded in a deep mimic. “It talks.”

“Forgive me!” Lionheart hastened to say as the bough escaped his grasp and swung back to strike him in the face. Scratches stung his cheeks. “I don’t mean to be rude. But I am a stranger to these parts and am unused to such phenomena . . . my lord,” he added.

The Tiger stretched up against the tree. His enormous weight sent the topmost branches rollicking to and fro so that Lionheart thought his stomach might make a leap for freedom. The crown of the tree bent over the precipice, and if the drop had been unbearable before, it was ten times more so when one clung to branches and twigs. Enormous claws sank into the trunk and dragged trenches down to the roots. Then the Tiger sat back on his haunches. The tree was not strong enough to bear his weight, and he dared not attempt the climb. He gazed up at his captive. “No one enters these lands on purpose, and only a fool by mistake.”

Lionheart gulped. “In fact, my lord, I am a Fool, and of no mean scope. I’ve traveled from Southlands to the great city of Lunthea Maly to the courts of Oriana in the north, entertaining kings and emperors with my foolishness.”

“I’ve never heard of these places of which you speak.” The Tiger half closed his enormous gold eyes. “Kings and emperors, you say?”

“Yes!” Lionheart said, his voice very thin as he tried not to look down to the river like a tiny blue ribbon below. “Great masters of kingdoms and empires! Hawkeye, Eldest of Southlands; King Fidel of Parumvir; Emperor Khemkhaeng-Niran Klahan the Eternally Brave and Strong of Noorhitam; Grosveneur of the fair lands of—”

“They cannot be so great if I have never heard of them,” the Tiger said, the words nearly lost in a snarl. “Who would these puny mortal kings be to me?”

Lionheart gulped. “Nothing and no one at all, my lord.”

The Tiger let out a long growl, and the tree quivered, its leaves shushing like frightened animals. “Heroes,” the Tiger said. “You’re all alike! Bent on staining your swords with monster blood. Think you might dress the floors of your great halls with my skin, eh, mortal? Is that not why you have come?”

“No, actually,” Lionheart said and quickly added, “mighty one,” just to be safe. “No, I’m looking for a girl. Rose Red is her name, and she’s very small and very ugly. Have you seen her?”

The Tiger, still growling, thought about this. “All the roses,” he said at length, “are stolen away to Arpiar. Even mine, though they were once rich in this land, have gone to Vahe’s keeping.”

“Then this . . . this isn’t Arpiar?”

The Tiger roared. The precipice caught and echoed it until it filled the valley. Rocks flung themselves down the cliff in response, and the trees waved their branches in terror. Lionheart’s slender tree cast itself about wildly, and he lost one handhold but clung with a death grip to the other, grinding desperate prayers through his teeth to anyone who might be listening. Those prayers must have been heard, for his hold held. But the roar went on, and Lionheart began to hear words in it.

“Arpiar? How could you mistake this place of exquisite beauty, this haven of perfection, for that blighted hole? Have you no eyes to see the splendor? The colors? The jewels? Have you no ears to hear the songs of the trees, the laughter of the waterfalls? Can your nose not smell the incense on the wind? Did your heart not long to die and be buried in this spot of supreme delight? This is not Arpiar! This is the Land of Ragniprava! And who am I? Am I some goblin king who must wear a veil upon his face and cover his kingdom in enchantments? Not so, mortal fool! I am Ragniprava, Bright as Fire, master and god of this realm! I have forbidden any to enter my territory, mortal or Faerie alike, and those who disobey shall know me well and know me very briefly!”

Lionheart wrapped his arms in a bear hug around the trunk, shutting his eyes. The Tiger went on roaring, sometimes slipping into inarticulate rage, sometimes with words, until Lionheart thought he would be deaf long before his strength gave out and he fell to those waiting jaws. But the Tiger stopped abruptly and sniffed.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “You have a friend with you.”

“What?” Lionheart shook his head. “I have no friend.”

“Don’t be so down on yourself!”

The voice was high and bright and familiar. The next instant, an orange tomcat without any eyes trotted to the space beneath the tree, right before the Tiger. The cat purred. “Surely someone somewhere must still think well of you?”

“You!” Lionheart cried.

“Did you miss me?” The cat smirked.

The Tiger sniffed again, his huge eyes focused on the little cat. “Who are you?”

“Oh, do forgive me, Ragniprava. Allow me to introduce my—”

Another great roar interrupted him, and Lionheart yelped in surprise as the Tiger suddenly sprang. The cat was just fast enough, however, and a small orange streak outstretched the larger orange streak as the two dashed to the tree not six feet from Lionheart’s. Lionheart watched the cat scale to the higher branches with the speed of a squirrel and, if he weren’t so frightened of the mighty Ragniprava, he might have laughed at the sight of the cat’s tail puffed out as huge as an ostrich plume.

“No one!” roared the Tiger, pacing back and forth between the two trees. “No one calls the Lord Ragniprava by name!”

Lionheart glared across the branches at the cat. “Well done. Looks as though we—” He stopped.

In the tree opposite him sat a man in bright scarlet, tawny hair sticking out from under a jaunty cap. Both his eyes were covered with silken patches.

The Princess of Arpiar did not care for the company of her grandmother. Not that the statue was the old queen herself. But it was filled with the memory of her and was, Varvare thought, a terrible gossip.

Nevertheless, she was the best company to be found in all of Palace Var if only because she actually did speak now and then, even if what she had to say was never worth hearing. All the other inhabitants avoided the princess with such thoroughness that she was lucky if she ever spied one. And if they realized that she saw them, they ducked their heads and fled.

They knew, she thought. They knew that she could see behind their veils.

So she sat in the shadow of the queen, busy with her handwork, half listening to the stony whispers. For the most part they weren’t interesting, the vain ramblings of an angry old woman. But sometimes, though she knew she shouldn’t, Varvare perked up her ears and listened with more attention.

“He may have murdered me, but he’s still a better choice than my other son would have been.”

Varvare didn’t look up from her work, but her mouth twisted with thought. The news that King Vahe had killed his mother was not new to her. It was the old queen’s favorite gripe. But Varvare had not known until now that the old queen had ever had another son. Which meant Varvare had an uncle.

“I told Sosi to kill it.”

Well, maybe she’d
had
an uncle.

“Sosi was too squeamish for that kind of work. Anahid was better. But a queen? Faugh! He’s made her pretty enough, I’ll grant you, but she’ll never have the force to rule Arpiar! Vahe likes his ornaments, but he has no idea what it takes to make a queen.”

Anahid. Varvare shivered, and her fingers faltered for a moment. Her mother. Her mother who never looked at her.

“Vahe has what it takes, dragons eat his soul. Murdered me before his seventh birthday. That’s the kind of mettle it takes to rule Arpiar. Goblins require a ruthless ruler!”

Varvare sighed. As much as the old Queen of Arpiar loathed Vahe, she could go on forever about him. The princess wondered if her grandmother really took such bizarre pride in her murderous offspring, or if Vahe had enchanted the statue to say those things. She focused on her work, ignoring the queen again. Slowly, silver threads spun together into a cord, but the cord was still so thin. She paused and tested it now and then, pulling to see how the fibers held. She had almost used up her last harvest, the tiny tendrils of spells she had pulled from the ghostly roses. She would have to go wandering the halls again soon to gather more.