The Black Swan (47 page)

Only von Rothbart stood in the center of the hall, defying the storm—or was he conjuring it? Those courtiers who had not fled cowered against the walls, while lightning struck again and again, while the winds howled insanely about the chamber. Clothilde huddled in her throne, her heart pounding as loudly as the thunder that drove her back against the wood; the very stones beneath her feet shivered. Icy cold bit to the bone, but she could not move; fear, and von Rothbart's glowing eyes, held her where she was as her rich garments were whipped wildly by the wind as if the heavy velvet were as light as gauze, and the canopy tore away from the frame above her.

“Daughter of Eve, temptress and betrayer, you play traitor to your perfidious son as you did to his father.”
Von Rothbart's voice was impossibly clear over the thunder, as if he spoke mockingly into her ear. He moved ponderously toward her, step by deliberate step.
“As your tainted blood runs true in your son, he in turn betrays his own vows, a blackguard poisoned in the womb by his harlot mother!”

How could she hear him? She was near-deafened by the booming of the storm, the banshee wailing of the wind, yet every word burned in her ears!

“Your poison must be purged,”
von Rothbart went on, his eyes shining with demonic glee, raising his hands above his head to emphasize his words.
“Never again will you betray another, for death is the wages of sin! Look up, witch, and see the Hand of God bringing your punishment to the very walls of your iniquitous den!”

He gestured upward, and her eyes followed his gesture involuntarily. She saw a white-hot bolt of lightning race in through the broken window and strike the wall above her head, at the point of the archway that sheltered the dais. Helplessly paralyzed, unable to move to save herself, she watched a fierce, white fire race along the seams of the stonework. Thunder shook the stones to their foundation; she
saw
them moving.

Half the arch trembled, rocked, and fell. She watched the massive blocks of stone descend, and did not comprehend what was happening until it was too late.

She could only watch, clutching the arms of her throne in impotent terror, as the stones hurtled toward her; her mind, her ears filled with the screams of her courtiers mingled with the howls of the wind, and the sound of von Rothbart's mocking laughter blending with the thunder.

Odile did not follow Siegfried once past the doors of the palace; at the moment,
he
was unimportant. Nothing he could do would change what he had already done, however unwittingly.

It was Odette she followed, leaping into the arms of the storm winds and transforming herself as she did. She spread her wings wide and let the wind bear her up; the Black Swan was strong enough to ride the worst tempests, her wings powerful enough to make the wind serve
her
purpose. Odette, transformed out-of-time back into her swan shape, again fully under von Rothbart's magic, could only be fleeing back to the flock.
He
would not let her escape him now.

Odile drove her wings with powerful, deep strokes of her shoulders, and grimly followed on. Without her father draining her, there was no exhaustion; had fury not settled into her heart, she might have found exhilaration in riding the winds. But there was room for only two concerns in her thoughts tonight, and both of them centered on her father. He would not succeed in destroying Odette. And Odile would make him pay for his own double betrayal. The thousands of ice lances of rain beating down on her would not even slow her down; the lightning spears could not frighten her, nor the thunder shake her determination.

She pushed on, using the wind to add to her speed, following instinct rather than sight in rain so thick as to be blinding. She concentrated solely on flying, speeding through the skies, leaving no room for thought.

Abruptly, the rain ended; she blinked ice water out of her eyes, took her bearings, and kept going, but now she did not have to work so hard to stay in the air.

The winds are slacking. . . .
That, and the end to the rain told her she had come to the edge of the storm. When she broke through into moonlight, she caught sight of a far-off glimmer of white that could only be Odette, and a farther gleam of moonlight on water that was her—their—goal. They were nearer the lake than she had thought.

She lost sight of Odette briefly when the swan descended below the tree-line, but she already knew where the Swan Queen was going.
Now
her wings began to feel heavy, as heavy as her own heart. What would Odette say—what must she be thinking? Would she ever believe that Odile had been coerced, tricked, and betrayed, just as she was?

She arced down to the water and back-winged at the last possible instant, to make her landing as short as possible, and as near to the shore as she could. Odette was not there, but furtive glimpses of white among the trees gave her all the clue she needed as to where the flock was.

She drove herself up onto the shore and transformed on the run; one moment, waddling awkwardly, the next, running surely on two swift feet, the clearing before the tree shelter her goal.

But when she saw what awaited her, she stopped abruptly on the edge of the clearing, one hand on a tree trunk.

Moonlight poured down on the clearing, as if the moon was trying to pour balm on a heart wounded past healing. In the center of a fluttering, helpless group of maidens, Odette lay prostrate on the ground, weeping. Her sobs, so deep, so full of absolute despair, shook answering sobs from Odile's throat; the Black Swan's eyes stung and swam, and a sick lump lodged in her throat.

Half the swan-maidens wept with their leader, the other half tried in vain to console her. Nothing any of them could do or say made any difference, and Odile recognized in her disconsolate weeping the desolate sound of someone who wanted only the release of death, for there was no more hope in the world for her ever again, only pain.

Suddenly, it was no longer important to Odile that Odette understand her role as unwilling fellow victim. Whatever
she
felt was insignificant compared to the despair that held Odette's heart in its stygian darkness.

So she stayed, frozen, at the edge of the clearing, unable to go to Odette but unable to leave. Hours crept by, the moon traveled slowly across the sky, and still Odette wept, as if she could fill the sea with her tears, and still not weep enough.

The moment he saw Odette, and saw who he had
really
pledged to wed, Siegfried's guilt and grief drove him in an instant past sanity and into a kind of focused clarity that made him see that he had only two choices at this moment—either to give up and drive his own dagger into his heart, or to follow Odette and attempt to save her, somehow. Stricken, he watched her take on swan form and be wrested away by the tempest outside. With thunder and von Rothbart's laughter deafening his ears, he ran—ran—seeing only her despairing eyes, feeling his heart torn and bleeding by what he had done to her.

He must have found the stables, he must have had the sense in his frenzy to select a horse, because in his next moment of clarity, he discovered himself on the back of the fastest courier-horse in the herd, racing headlong through the storm on the road to the lake. Rain lashed him, lightning blinded him, thunder deafened him, and none of these things held him from his wild gallop. Not even concern for the horse induced him to slacken his pace. Lightning struck the road in front of him, and the horse shied. The moment it faltered, he urged it on, cruelly, with whip and spur, wresting its head around and cutting at its flanks. Maddened by pain and the tempest raging about its head, the horse responded with hysterical energy, somehow keeping its feet as it pounded through the darkness.

He was not in much better condition than the horse, driven by the whip and spur of his own tattered emotions; soaked to the skin, numb with cold, eyes burning, muscles aching, and the bitter taste of bile in his mouth. Only the lightning flashes showed them the road ahead of them; there was the sharp scent of ozone in the air whenever a bolt struck too near to the road.

Abruptly they broke out of the storm into moonlight; he shook the last of the rain out of his eyes and shouted to the beast to encourage it. The beast responded to better conditions and the prince's continued goading by putting on more speed, though no mortal horse could have matched Siegfried's never-ending demands. Whenever it tried to slow, he spurred it savagely. The black-and-white landscape swept past him, the lathered horse strained beneath him, he never seemed to get any nearer to his goal, and the nightmare ride stretched on with no sign of the end.

Hours—days—years later, the horse plunged into the blackness of the forest. It did not get as far as the lake, for its strength gave out. Finally, the poor beast could no longer answer to the demands of whip and goad. It stumbled, recovered as he fought to wrench it to its feet, then stumbled again and went to its knees.

He knew the horse was done when it stumbled the second time and was ready when the horse failed beneath him. He tumbled off its back, falling heavily to the ground and bruising his shoulder. Somehow, he got to his feet and raced headlong into the tree shadows, leaving the horse to live or die on its own.

He stumbled through the underbrush alone now, with branches tearing at him, roots and stones tripping him. The storm he had outraced was catching up to him; he heard thunder growling behind him, and caught the occasional flicker of lightning. He must have fallen a hundred times; he barely felt the bruises, but struggled to his feet, and ran on, his sides aching, and his lungs burning.

He burst into the clearing where Odette lay, prostrate and beaten by despair, surrounded by her weeping maidens; before his courage could fail him, he flung himself down on his knees beside her and gathered her into his arms.

A hateful, familiar chuckle rumbled like the approaching thunder; he looked up, torn between guilt and rage, but saw only the maidens cowering away from a shadow shape.

“How charming,” said von Rothbart.

O
DILE felt the darkness of her father's presence only a moment before he laughed, by the way her skin crawled and the faint tug she felt toward a darker shape among the trees. She froze before he made his presence known; the flock responded to his cruel chuckle by shrinking away from him as Siegfried started and looked up. She shrank back into the shadows and cloaked her own presence from him. This might be a coward's move, but until she was certain he could drain no more power from her, she would not reveal herself. She could probably stand against his draw on the flock, but she was not certain she could withstand a direct attempt to steal her magic. If he did not know she was here, he could not mount a special trial on her.

She sensed the pull on her increase as he
tried
to extract power from her—and from the others—but she resisted successfully. The pull increased. It felt exactly like a cord connecting Odile with her father, stretching tighter, tighter; she clutched the tree trunk and continued to resist, clenching her jaw and closing her eyes to concentrate. If she did not keep her wits about her, she would find herself answering the pull by coming out into the open.

It was tempting, so tempting, to sever the cord at that moment and let it snap back on him. That might have disoriented him long enough for the swans to flee. But doing that would surely reveal her presence, and it would have snapped back on
her
as well, and she was none too certain that she could absorb that shock. Such a tie worked both ways, and all actions at this point would have multiple repercussions.

If her father noticed her resistance, he made no sign. Perhaps he didn't; his attention was taken up with marshaling his powers and mocking the prince. Since he wasn't aware she was here, perhaps he marked down the resistance to putative distance from him.