Moonblood (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #3) (43 page)

Except for her face.

“Here we are, little mortal,” a goblin said in a honeyed voice. Lionheart heard the grating of a cell door opening, protesting as though it had not been budged in centuries. Then he was thrown forward, and he had the horrible sensation of falling in darkness, unable to judge how far the drop would be. It was only a step or two down, but he might as well have been flung from the Gardens of Hymlumé for all his body jerked and tensed, then convulsed on the floor after landing. Someone was screaming. He realized that it was he and forced himself to stop. The goblins stumped down a narrow stairway, still laughing as they bound his wrists and ankles with shackles so heavy he could scarcely lift them. He felt other bindings slip into place along with the clank of iron: bindings on his spirit, as real as any physical chains.

“No worries, manling,” a goblin spoke from the emptiness above him. “You’ll not die in here. You’ll never again set eyes on a living soul, nevermore taste the sweetness of bread or water. But you’ll not die so long as Vahe holds you in those manacles. You’ll be immortal. Is that not what your kind longs for most?”

The goblins’ laughter echoed through the dark, empty cells long after the clang of the cell door closing had ceased. Lionheart shivered where he lay, his ears ringing, squeezing his eyes shut as though he might squeeze the blindness right out of them.

“Rose Red,” he whispered.

What of the choice? What of Bebo’s promise? Lionheart struggled to pull himself upright, dragging the chains in terrible cacophony across the stones. Immortality faced him. But what about his chance to choose death, to give his life in place of hers?

“Dragon’s teeth!” he snarled, struggling against the shackles, tearing at them with his fingers. It was useless, he knew, but what else could he do? “Dragon’s teeth and eyes and tail!” He moaned and sank his head into his hands.

Suddenly he realized.

He had only to call. What a thrice-cursed fool he was for not thinking of it before! The sweet-smelling enchantments must have addled his wits. Oeric said that no one could enter Arpiar unless called from within. Well, Lionheart was within Vahe’s dungeons, and that certainly had to count. So he raised his head and shouted: “Oeric! Sir Oeric, come to me!”

His voice echoed back to him a hundred times.

Then silence.

He knew he had not been heard. As surely as he would never see the sun again, he knew his voice had not carried beyond the dungeons. He bowed his head, and if Lionheart wept, there was no one to see.

Somewhere in that cavernous blindness, someone spoke. “It’s no use while you’re chained.”

Lionheart sat upright. He was alone in his cell, he was certain. But this voice was near, perhaps only one cell over. He placed his ear to the stone wall. “Who’s there?”

A snort, then: “I’m Beana . . . Rose Red’s goat.”

He could see nothing, not even in his memory, so he could not recall the face of the woman who had stood on the edge of the cliff above the Wilderlands. But he could recall the feel of her fingers about his throat, and he could hear her voice again, speaking low and piercing as a knife.
“Coward!”

He pulled back from the wall as though stung.

A silence followed. At length the woman who was a goat said, “You came to find her, then. Good lad.”

He trembled at her words but was foolishly grateful at the same time. “I couldn’t save her,” he whispered, not expecting to be heard. Perhaps he wasn’t, but the goat-woman answered anyway.

“Don’t give up hope, Leo.”

“Are you . . . are you Sir Oeric’s lady?” Lionheart asked.

She did not answer for a long time. As he waited he heard noises overhead: the sound of trumpets, triumphant and terrible; the shout of many voices, a roar of excitement like crowds gathering for a tournament.

“I knew Oeric,” the goat-woman said softly. “Long ago. Before he was named.”

The roar continued, then faded away.
They are leaving Var,
Lionheart thought.
They are taking Rose Red to Death’s throne, and they’ll spill her blood there.

The horrible thought came and, though he tried to force it back, continued to intrude. Perhaps this was what he wanted. Perhaps this was what he had hoped for all along, to have the choice taken from him. Was it his fault he was clapped in irons, after all? Could he help it if his song provoked Vahe to this end? Of course not. He had his excuses, his noble intentions interrupted by unforeseen circumstances.

Lionheart grimaced and struggled against his chains. No! That wouldn’t be the story of his life! He would succeed; he would die; he would gain back his honor and earn atonement! He must!

The chains were unrelenting.

“All is not lost,” the goat-woman whispered through the wall. “Wait a little.”

In that darkness where time did not pass, waiting was torture. The sounds above were long since gone. Rose Red was far from him. To have come this close only to lose her now!

He felt something beside him suddenly, something he had not realized was there but which must have been there the whole time. Putting out a hand, he touched the twisted blade of a melted sword. Strange the goblins had not taken it from him.

Somewhere beyond that world, a bird sang.

Won’t you follow me?

A cold shriek of protesting iron hinges, and the door to Lionheart’s cell swung open. He tried to get to his feet, but the shackles restrained him, so he pressed against the wall as he felt rather than heard someone approaching him through the blind dark. A hand touched his face, a hard, rocklike hand tipped with claws.

A voice like winter spoke. “You are the mortal my daughter loves.”

Lionheart did not answer. He shivered under that touch.

“I saw it in her eyes when she watched you sing before my husband. She loves you, though she believes now that it is hate she feels.”

The hand left his face. Whoever stood before him was so silent that he heard not even a breath. “Who are you?” he whispered.

“Anahid, Queen of Arpiar.”

He gulped. “Do you . . . do you wish to see your daughter die?”

“I will die myself first.” The voice spoke as though making a vow.

“Then will you set me free? I can save her, good queen! I’ve been promised as much. I can give my life for hers. I owe her that, for she served me faithfully and I betrayed her. I owe her my life in retribution, and I swear upon this sword that I will pay the price!”

No answer came, not a sound. Then suddenly, Lionheart felt a kiss planted on his cheek, gentle and sweet, though the lips were like stone.

“Give her that for me, little mortal,” Anahid said. “Give her that, and tell her how I loved her.”

With those words, Lionheart felt his chains drop away.

There was a cry, like the wind howling on an evil night, and a sudden burst of light. Lionheart yelled and covered his face with his arms, pressing against the wall. But it was over in a moment, and he stood free and unchained in the dungeons of Var. Swiftly he knelt and grabbed the twisted sword, clutching it like a lifeline. But while he felt for it in the dark, his hand brushed the face of the queen lying at his feet.

She was dead.

“Hurry!” said Beana in the cell next door. “Hurry, call for Oeric!”

Lionheart swallowed and felt his way to the cell door. “I’ll free you first, my lady.”

“NO!” his fellow prisoner shouted. “No, don’t you understand? Anahid died breaking your chains. You’ll die if you attempt to release me, and you won’t succeed as she did. No, you must call for Oeric, and you must hurry to Rose Red. Hurry while you still can!”

As fast as he could in the dark, Lionheart groped his way from the cell and along the wall to the dark stairway, calling Oeric’s name as he went.

3

T
HEY CLOTHED HER IN BLACK
, the color of death, and in red, the color of blood, and crowned her in bloodred roses. Varvare, however, staring into her mirror, saw none of these things. Instead she saw rags being draped tenderly across her hunched frame, and a crown of thistles and thorns set onto the bald dome of her head. The veils of her father could not work on her eyes. They could not cover the ugly features of her attendants, some of whom laughed as they prepared her, and some of whom gazed at her sorrowfully.

She knew from their faces, their voices, even their laughter, that Vahe intended to kill her. She simply couldn’t guess why.

When they had finished with her, the senior attendant took her by the hand and led her from her chambers and down what most perceived as a glowing marble stairway softly carpeted in rose petals, but which Varvare saw as poorly carved stone, sharp and ragged underfoot.

Vahe waited for her in the Boy’s body. Though to the rest of Arpiar he covered the Boy’s face with his own, Varvare still saw the soft, boyish features as yet unhardened into a man’s, the hazel eyes, the messy shock of honey-colored hair. But the expression was all Vahe’s. His real body must be hidden deep within the ever-shifting labyrinth of Palace Var’s corridors.

He licked his lips at the sight of her. “You are indeed most fair, my daughter. Hymlumé herself was never so radiant.”

But it’s all a lie,
Varvare thought, bowing her head.
Secretly, I’m as foul as you.

And she wondered how Lionheart had seen her in the assembly hall. Had he seen the illusion? Or as the horror on his face suggested, had he seen her for what she truly was?

Those thoughts were too painful, so she shook them away as her father escorted her to a curtained litter on the shoulders of two powerful goblins. To her eyes, even the curtains were gray rags. The goblins knelt, and she climbed inside. When they stood, it rocked, and she clutched at the curtain poles to steady herself. She felt like one in a poisoned sleep, carried through a nightmare against her will, unable to wake.

The unicorn stood just beyond the doors of Palace Var. It looked at her as the goblin slaves carried her litter out behind Vahe. It alone of everything around her was beautiful, white and delicate. She allowed her eyes to linger on its face, pure as a star, its long horn gleaming with its own light. It was so beautiful that it could not be anything but good, she thought. Yet it was King Vahe’s slave.

It spoke to her again in that voice no one but the person to whom it spoke could hear.
Will you kill me, maiden?

The princess shook her head and broke its gaze, staring down at her hands instead.

“Lead us onward, beast!” Vahe cried from the Boy’s mouth. “To the Dragon Village, and quickly. We have only until moonrise.”

The unicorn bowed and turned to take the head of the procession. A roar rose up all around, and Varvare, peering out between the wafting rags, saw that all the courtiers of Var were gathered to follow, leering, monstrous creatures, as monstrous as she. She did not see the queen, her mother. But she assumed she stood among the throng somewhere, lost amid all those awful faces. The goblins sang as they went, a terrible sound to which they marched, and they waved sparse twigs and thistles and more moth-eaten rags with all the enthusiasm of people bearing silken banners.

Varvare could not watch them but buried her face in her hands as the goblin slaves lurched forward behind Vahe and the unicorn. The bindings the king had placed upon her were so heavy, she thought she would break.

The wood thrush sang:

Trust me, child.

But she stopped up her ears against him. She’d obeyed, hadn’t she? She’d called Lionheart into Arpiar, and lo and behold, he’d come! He’d come and been locked away, useless and pathetic, waving that twisted sword of his. Just the sort of heroics she could expect, especially from him. Dragons eat him! Dragons eat him and choke on his bones!

A tear slid down her craggy cheek, and Varvare hardly cared in that moment that she journeyed across the bleak lands of Arpiar to her death.

Oeric watched them pass over the Old Bridge.

First came the unicorn, terrible to see, all over fire and destruction.

After it came Vahe, but wearing the body of a boy whose face Oeric recognized. He’d seen this boy at Oriana Palace when he traveled there with his Prince a year ago. What a sad end for the lad to meet, his body taken from him and worn like a set of clothes by the King of Arpiar. Oeric shuddered at the sight.

Following the king came a litter carried by two goblin men, and Oeric saw the Princess Varvare for the first time. Ugly and huddled into herself, she did not raise her gaze from her lap as she was carried into the Wood Between. His heart went out to her, but he dared not move from where he hid.

For behind the litter came all the vast host of Arpiar, tramping single file over the plank bridge. Some he recognized from long ago; most he did not. But they were his people, hideous in aspect, pitiable in spirit. He shared their faces, he shared their sorrows. And he would deliver them from their slavery.

So when at last they had passed over the bridge and on up the hill, on to the ruins of Carrun Corgar, Oeric remained where he lay. He trembled a little, for fear of the unicorn was still upon him. Then he got up and approached the Old Bridge, clutching his long knife in his hand.