Moonblood (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #3) (33 page)

The lake froze in a cold path as the little horse crossed over. She stood at last upon the ice but did not step onto land.

“Iubdan’s beard,” Lionheart breathed.

“Jester, meet Órfhlaith,” said Eanrin, sweeping his hand from Lionheart to the mare. “Órfhlaith,” he addressed the mare, “this is our jester.”

The mare tossed her head and whuffled, so tiny and delicate and yet so horselike. Lionheart could only gape, his mouth open.

Eanrin laughed. “It’s rude to stare.”

Lionheart’s jaw clamped shut, and he hastily averted his gaze. Eanrin laughed again and swept an elaborate bow. “You first, little mortal. Climb aboard!”

“What?” Lionheart’s gaze flickered to the mare again, and he shook his head. “You want me to . . . I’d squash her!”

The poet straightened up, that incessant smile still on his face, but his eyebrow quirked. “Perhaps Oeric would like to show you the way?”

“But that’s—” Lionheart shut his mouth, remembering where he was. In a world where Time could be sold in a bottle, anything was possible.

Sir Oeric strode forward and straddled the tiny mare’s back. Of all the bizarre sights Lionheart had witnessed, this one most stupefied. For the enormous knight mounted Iubdan’s mare without either of them apparently growing or shrinking; rather, it was Lionheart’s perspective that altered. Oeric strode into the water, and though it was but a few paces, by the time he reached the mare’s side, he was of a height to ride her. And yet, though Oeric was so big he could have tossed Lionheart over his shoulder without a thought, Órfhlaith could still have stood comfortably in his palm.

Lionheart shook his suddenly pounding head as it struggled to understand. Bodies need not be bound by size. Not here, in the Far World.

Oeric settled comfortably onto the mare’s back, and she, with a toss of her brilliant mane, carried him across the icy lake, leaving Lionheart goggle-eyed on the shore.

One by one, they crossed behind the white mist of the Fionnghuala Lynn, the great waterfall cascading down the frozen mountainside. Lionheart was glad that Oeric had gone first, for a stern company of guards was ready to meet them, and there was nothing jolly about these so-called Merry Folk. They took Bloodbiter’s Wrath from him without a word, secreting it away somewhere. Even when Eanrin greeted them with a hearty “What ho!” and called each by name (Lionheart wondered how he did this when he couldn’t see them), not one of them cracked a smile. But they led the two knights and Lionheart through the caverns of Rudiobus Mountain.

The Hall of Red and Green looked nothing like Lionheart had ever envisioned, and yet exactly as he had always known it must be. The cavern walls and roughhewn pillars were festooned in holly and pine, lit by a thousand and more candles. Pipe music and wild drums filled his ears, and yellow-headed people dressed in green and white filled the dance floor . . . along with several squirrels, two rabbits, and a silver fox, who danced just as well, albeit with animal variations on the steps. Yet when he blinked, Lionheart saw that they weren’t animals at all, but people whose contours revealed an animal shape underneath.

Eanrin leapt forward ahead of Oeric and Lionheart. His red coat flashed like a cardinal’s wing, and he could not fail to draw every eye in the room. He darted like a leaf on a breeze as the dancing people scattered to make way for him, and he ended in a flourishing bow before the thrones.

Lionheart saw for the first time the King and Queen of Rudiobus.

Iubdan Tynan, the Dark Man of Rudiobus, alone of those who lived within the mountain boasted hair as black as the night. He claimed it was because Evening herself was his mother and Night his father, but since no one living could remember a time when Iubdan was not King of Rudiobus (except Bebo, who kept her own counsel), no one could vouch for the truth of this.

What was true, Lionheart quickly discovered, was that this king, so ancient that the ancients could not recall his beginning, looked nothing like the painting on the nursery wall.

Neither did Queen Bebo, for that matter. Other than the king’s black beard and the queen’s golden hair, there was nothing about the faces of these two to suggest their caricatures. Rather than burly, King Iubdan was powerful: red cheeked, yes, but the redness was from much time spent in the sun, and there wasn’t a smile to be seen on his face as he gazed down at his Chief Poet. And Queen Bebo, rather than the long-nosed, long-faced woman she’d been painted as, was childlike and delicate in her features, though her eyes were old and solemn. Her hair was not unbound and flowing to her feet but rather coiled and arranged in a great crown about her head, more beautiful than any crown wrought of metal and jewels. It gleamed in the icy cold of Rudiobus like sunlight bursting through an overcast sky.

“Oh, it’s you” was Iubdan’s kingly greeting of his poet. His black eyebrows drew together in a thick line. “About time you showed up again, wouldn’t you say?”

“My lord and king!” Eanrin cried, raising his arms theatrically. “Many years now have I been absent from Ruaine-ann-Rudiobus! How long has it been since I set joyful eyes upon your face?”

“Hmmm. That would be a number of centuries, my eyeless songster,” growled the king.

“Or heard the dulcet sounds of my sovereign’s voice?”

“Maybe not quite so long.”

“Six years by the Near World’s count, my Lord Dark Man,” said Queen Bebo in a voice as golden as her hair, “since the Prince sent our good Eanrin to guard his Beloved.”

“And six long years they have been, my liege,” said the poet, his face a mask of tragic long-suffering. “How I have missed your mighty company in the interim.”

“Enough of this bosh.” The king crossed his arms, clothed in silks and in black gleaming fur. “I’d begun to think I hadn’t any Chief Poet at all. Don’t suppose I do, even now. You haven’t come to amuse me, have you, cheeky cat.”

“What other view could I possibly have in seeking out your royal company?”

“Let me think.” The king rubbed his beard. “Might there be a certain lady hereabouts for whom you carry a torch?”

All the assembly chuckled so that the Hall of Red and Green bubbled with ill-suppressed laughter. Lionheart looked around for that other famous figure of whom he’d heard so much, that inspiration for all the most wretched poetry a schoolboy had ever been forced to stomach: the fair Lady Gleamdrené Gormlaith. Because all eyes in the room were suddenly turned toward her, she wasn’t hard to spot.

She was not what Lionheart had expected.

For one thing, her lips were not inordinately large or red. Neither was she, as far as Lionheart was concerned, especially beautiful. She radiated the pure immortal glow of all Rudiobus’s merry people. Other than that, she had one of those faces that, if she smiled, could be pretty, and if she sulked, would be sulky. At the moment, she was sulking for all she was worth.

Eanrin turned to her as though he had eyes to see exactly where she sat and, with another flourishing bow, proclaimed in a voice that rang throughout the Hall of Red and Green, “Sweet flower of my delight, once again I find myself in your gracious presence! Might these longing ears hear the honeyed tones of your voice in gentle greeting?”

Lionheart frowned. He had been a performer himself long enough to know a performance when he heard one. Something in the poet’s tone did not ring true. He eyed Eanrin, his dramatic stance, his face full of longing . . . and he saw the lie that it was. Or not a lie, but rather, a mask.

And he thought to himself,
Eanrin is hiding something.
But he could not guess what. After all, what could Eanrin have to hide from the lady who all history knew was the great love of his life?

Perhaps Gleamdren saw that mask as well. And perhaps this explained why she folded her arms, turned up her nose, and refused to look the poet’s way.

Iubdan laughed. “Is that stony silence answer enough for you, bard? After a thousand-some years of Not Speaking, my wife’s cousin is not about to relent in a mere six!”

Eanrin clapped a tragic hand to his forehead and turned away, his shoulders slumped. But two seconds later, he was all smiles and once more addressing the king and queen. “Actually, my liege, my companions and I have come to beg a boon. See yon mortal?” He waved a hand Lionheart’s way. Lionheart stood beside Oeric, still behind the solemn guard of honor. The sovereign rulers of Rudiobus turned their ancient eyes on him, and it was all he could do not to duck behind Oeric’s bulk. But Queen Bebo smiled at him.

“He has been given into our keeping by the Prince of Farthestshore,” Eanrin continued.

“Why?” asked Iubdan. His expression was not so welcoming as the queen’s.

“The worlds wonder,” said the poet. “We thought perhaps my queen might shed some light upon the subject.”

If Queen Bebo heard the request, she said nothing. Her quiet eyes were fixed on Lionheart, and the smile had not yet left her face. Lionheart wanted to break her gaze but found himself incapable. There was nothing unfriendly in those eyes. They merely looked. But they looked deeply.

“What say you, Bebo, my love?” Iubdan asked, nudging his queen with his elbow in a manner most unkingly. “Have you a prophecy or some such?”

Slowly, Bebo nodded her head. Just once. Then she said, “When the moon has risen, my lord. Then we shall listen and hear what we may.”

Iubdan pursed his lips, shrugged at Lionheart, then addressed his poet. “There you go, Eanrin. Will you stay and dine with us until moonrise?”

“Many thanks, my king,” the cat-man said.

“And will you sing?”

“Indeed, I shall! A song to the choicest fruit among the harvest, a song to the star that gleams most bright in the jewels of the night, a song of the voice as pure as—”

“No,” said Bebo, turning suddenly to Eanrin. Lionheart took a great gasp of air as soon as her gaze left him. He had not realized he was holding his breath. “No,” said the queen, softly. “Tonight, you must sing
Ordenel Hymlumé Nive.
”

Though the assembly had been quiet, the hush that followed was as thick as the ice forming on the lake outside. For Queen Bebo had spoken in the old tongue from the ages before the Near World was formed, the language she had learned from the sun and the moon themselves, which even the Faerie folk were loath to speak. And just like the characters written on Imraldera’s manuscript in the library, the words, when spoken by Bebo, re-formed themselves in Lionheart’s mind, and he heard instead: “You must sing
The Night of Moonblood.
”

The candles wavered and dimmed, or perhaps it was simply all those golden faces darkening and shrinking away that made the room seem suddenly so shadow filled. Lionheart shivered, and the words echoed in his mind.

As much to his surprise as anybody’s, it was his voice that broke the silence, whispering, “What is Moonblood?”

5

I
MRALDERA SAT AT HER DESK
but did not write. Her mind was reviewing images she had not witnessed but which she could imagine with the clarity of one who had. Scenes of Lionheart presented before Iubdan and his lady; of Oeric looming so huge above the little folk of Rudiobus; of Eanrin singing his foolish love ditties to the snub-nosed maiden who wanted nothing to do with him.

But no.

She stood up and moved down the long line of bookshelves, searching for a certain volume. It did no good to wonder about that encounter, to speculate on what Queen Bebo might see when she gazed at Lionheart under the Sphere’s light. Imraldera had remained behind for her own purposes, and she must pursue them.

Her finger, tracing the spines of ancient texts, stopped suddenly as though of its own accord. She plucked the book from its place, knowing without reading the title that it was the one she sought. Evening was falling again outside, so she lit a candle on her desk before opening the leather cover to read what she had found.

The legend on the first page read:
The Night of Moonblood.

“The Night of Moonblood.”

Eanrin stood in the center of Iubdan’s Hall, his head bowed, his voice low. Every eye in that assembly fixed on him, and every heart caught at his words.

“The night Death-in-Life ascended to the heavens and spoke his lies to the children of Hymlumé in a voice they thought more fair than their mother’s song.”

As the poet spoke, it was as though his words were a truth Lionheart had long known deep in his heart. His mind was filled not with the revelation of something new, but rather with the recollection of something his spirit had known since birth.

“She watched them fall,” said the Chief Poet, his voice no greater than a whisper, though it filled all of Rudiobus. “She watched them step out of their heavenly dance, the rhythm of the song she and Lumé had sung since the worlds were first created. Her children heard the voice of Death-in-Life and they thought it beautiful. And Hymlumé watched them as, one by one, they fell like meteors from the sky. Those who had never noticed the Sphere Songs singing in the night heard instead their silencing. And while the thunder of that silence yet rang in their ears, they heard the voice of Hymlumé crying out.”