The Faerie Path (16 page)

They came to an area where the trees grew more thickly. Finally feeling her mood lighten, Tania ran through the trees and the hounds flowed after her, their hides dappled with leaf green light.

Cordelia whistled and the hounds swooped away to join her. Laughing breathlessly, Tania watched as
the hounds flooded down the hill and swarmed around their mistress.

She came to the edge of the knot of trees and waved. Cordelia waved back. Tania was about to run down to join her when a soft voice brought her up short.

She stared back into the trees.

“Tania, it’s me.” Edric stepped out from behind a tree trunk.

Tania frowned, her mood immediately darkening again.

“Please,” he begged, taking a step toward her. “Hear me out.”

Tania stalked up to him and slapped him hard across the face. She had a moment to see his expression of shock and pain before she turned on her heel and ran down the grassy slope toward her sister and the dogs.

Cordelia was staring at her in amazement. “What trespass did Master Chanticleer commit that you should strike him so?”

“Him?” Tania looked back the way she had come. There was no sign of Edric now. “Oh, he’s just a pig. Don’t ask!”

“I already have asked,” Cordelia said.

“Well, I’m not telling you. He deserved it that’s all you need to know.” Tania scooped up a stick and threw it, running with the hounds as they chased it down the hill.

With any luck, that would be the last she’d see of
Edric. He had tricked her and lied to her and he’d made her fall in love with him, all on his master’s orders. And now he wanted to try and make it up with her! Why? So he’d feel better about himself? Not a chance! And if he did come slithering back trying to smooth-talk her again, he’d just get more of the same!

It was late afternoon of the same day; Tania and Zara were in the Princesses’ Gallery, singing together to the accompaniment of the spinetta and the lute. Zara’s voice lifted in descant while Tania sang the melody, her fingers unhesitatingly picking out the notes on the lute. The instrument felt so natural in her hands, its pear-shaped belly resting in her lap, the fret-board held firmly in the crook of thumb and forefinger, and her fingers dancing over the strings.

Cordelia and Sancha were also in the long attic room that stretched out under the roof of the Royal Apartments. Sancha had a book open in her lap, but she had looked up from the page. Cordelia’s fingers held a fine bone needle threaded with green silk. She was working on some embroidery, but had paused to pay better attention to her sisters’ duet.

The song came to an end. Zara gave a final trill on the spinetta, which Tania echoed on her lute. Cordelia and Sancha clapped.

“I have sorely missed your music-making,” Sancha said. “And that is a lovely melody indeed.”

“And a most charming lyric,” Cordelia added. “
I’ll be far from here and by your side.
” She smiled. “Not, I think, a sentiment that Master Chanticleer will ever hear from Tania’s lips!”

Tania turned to her. “We weren’t going to talk about that, remember?” She had asked Cordelia not to mention her encounter with Edric.

Zara looked up with interest. “Tell on,” she prompted. “What of Gabriel’s servant?”

Cordelia grinned. “I can say no more,” she declared. “I am sworn to silence.”

“Oh, thanks,” said Tania with a roll of her eyes. “Way to keep a secret, Cordie!”

Zara slid off her stool and came to sit beside Tania. “I offer you two choices,” she said, putting her arm around Tania’s neck. “You may tell all this instant, or you may endure the pricks and thorns of my curiosity from now until doomsday. The choice is yours.”

Tania looked at Cordelia. “See what you’ve done?”

“You would best confess all,” Sancha said with a laugh. “Zara is remorseless in pursuit of such gossip.”

Tania shook her head in resignation. Sisters! It was worse than being at school. A person couldn’t keep anything private.

“Is it a great scandal?” Zara asked gleefully. “Has he made improper advances to you? A kiss, mayhap, in a cloistered arbor? Words of love whispered at a midnight tryst?”

“No! Nothing like that!” Tania retorted. “Look, if you absolutely have to know, I don’t like the way he helped Gabriel bring me here.”

Sancha closed her book and leaned forward. “Of what methods do you speak?”

“He lied to me,” Tania said. “He told me…Well, never mind what he told me. I don’t think much of it, that’s all.”

“He lied?” Sancha echoed, puzzled. “I do not understand. What falsehoods could he have spoken?”

Zara’s eyes widened in sudden understanding. “He professed love, did he not?” she breathed. “He gulled you with passionate words in order to draw you away from the Mortal World. By my troth, what a rogue!”

Tania felt her cheeks go scarlet. “Well, yes,” she mumbled. “Something like that.” She shook off Zara’s arm and stood up. “Can we talk about something else, please?”

“Indeed we cannot!” Zara exclaimed. “I must be
told every detail of Master Chanticleer’s perfidy, or I shall not be able to sleep for thinking on it!”

Tania looked at her. She wasn’t upset by her sister’s guileless curiosity, but her history with Edric was still too painful for light-hearted conversation. “Then I’m afraid you’ll just have to lie awake nights,” she said with a half-smile. “I’m going to find Rathina; at least she won’t make fun of me.”

Cordelia looked up at her. “Do not be angry,” she said. “Zara meant it only in jest.”

Tania smiled. “Yes, I know that,” she said. “I’m not annoyed.” She headed for the door. “I’ll see you guys later.”

She ran down the long twisting stairway, suddenly eager to be with Rathina, maybe even to confide in her once more—to pour out all her fears and troubles and pain, to rekindle the loving friendship of her forgotten childhood.

She knocked on the door of Rathina’s chamber. There was no answer from within. Disappointed, she turned the handle. The door opened silently into a room of dark red shadows.

“Rathina?” Tania called. Still no reply. She stepped over the threshold and looked around. Red silk drapes stretched in swaths across the ceiling and hung from the high walls, moving constantly in billows and ripples as though troubled by a breeze. If there were any windows in the room, they were shuttered. The only light came from a large chandelier that hung
from the ceiling, the thick yellow candles giving off a sultry, brooding glow.

Where the candlelight struck the blousing drapes, the silk glowed scarlet, but in the folds and creases, the sumptuous shadows were a deep wine red.

The bed was also swathed in dark red silk, the curtains gathered at the head and spilling down so that the bed seemed to flow with dark blood. Swags and swaths of silk hung from the furniture, collecting in a scarlet froth on the maroon floorboards.

Tania became aware that dark shades were moving across the swelling curtains of silk, human figures gliding in a slow dance, their dark and ghostly images somehow imprinted on the flowing silk.

She shivered, the hairs on the back of her neck prickling. The atmosphere of the room was weird and disturbing. Uneasily, she approached the rippling drapes. The slow-moving dancers slid silently over the silk, holding hands, their heads bowed, their eyes hidden. Suddenly, as she came closer, a head lifted and a face looked briefly into hers—a gaunt white face with hollowed-out featureless eyes. A hand reached toward her and skeleton-thin fingers beckoned.

Tania stepped back with a gasp.

She heard a sound behind her.

“Tania!” Rathina swept into the room. She pulled curtains aside and threw open a shuttered window. Warm evening sunlight poured into the room, driving away the shadows.

Tania gasped, blinking in the sudden burst of
light. “I was looking for you.”

“And I for you, my dear sister,” Rathina said with a smile. “Did my dancers unsettle you? Do not fear; they are always sad when I am absent. See how they dance now!”

Tania gazed at the flowing silken drapes. The mournful tempo of the dance had changed completely. Now the brightly dressed figures were circling the room with swift-moving feet and merry faces.

“What did you want me for?” Tania asked.

“It is time for you to meet with Maddalena,” Rathina said, linking her arm with Tania’s and leading her from the room. “And maybe in the morn, your riding lessons can begin.”

“I’d like that,” Tania said. “I’d like that a lot.” She looked fondly at her sister. “And there are some things I’d like to talk to you about, if that’s okay.”

“It is most definitely…
okay
,” Rathina said slowly, then she smiled. “You see? I have been practicing. Soon I shall have learned all your strange new words.”

Tania laughed, squeezing Rathina’s arm. “Good for you!”

Rathina led Tania out across the twilight gardens for her first visit to the royal stables, a huge complex of wooden buildings that lay west of the maze. Several pairs of intelligent equine eyes watched the princesses from behind half-doors. The cobbled courtyards were filled with warm pools of evening shade; stable boys and girls ran about their duties, bedding the horses
down for the night and lighting the lanterns that swung from the gables.

Having spent the last sixteen years of her life living in a city, Tania felt a little intimidated about being up close to such big animals, and she was wary and watchful as Rathina led her into the stall of her favorite horse.

“This is my bold beauty, Maddalena,” Rathina told her, giving the neck of the glossy bay mare a firm pat with the flat of her hand. “She is beautiful, is she not? Do not be afraid to touch her. She will do you no harm.”

Tania reached out tentatively and stroked the horse’s long nose. She was certainly a handsome animal, with a flowing black mane and large, clever dark eyes. Maddalena snorted and nodded, one forehoof thumping the ground.

“She’s wonderful,” Tania said, breathing in the strong scent of horse and straw.

“I shall show you my finest saddle and bridle and trappings,” Rathina said. “They were a gift from our father on my sixteenth birthday. Made by the finest leather-workers in all of Dinsel. Come.” She opened the gate to the stall and Tania followed her out into the walkway.

“Fare you well, my darling,” Rathina called to Maddalena as she closed the gate behind them. “I shall see you anon.” The horse whinnied.

“Did I ride much…uh…
before
?” Tania asked, sniffing her hand and quite liking the horsey smell
that lingered there.

“You did, indeed,” Rathina said as they walked along. “But you sat in the saddle like a sack of wheat and spent much of the time clinging onto your steed like a leaf in an autumn gale.”

“Oh! That’s a shame.” She had hoped that she might have been a good rider.

“I shall tutor you in better ways, if you would have me do so,” Rathina offered. “Give me six weeks, and I shall make a centaur of you!”

“I’d like that,” Tania said, meaning it.

They walked across another cobbled courtyard, and Rathina led Tania through a small door in a low thatched building of white plaster and black timbers.

The walls were hung with bridles and reins and girths and halters and bits. There were saddles on wooden stands, and folded blankets and sacks of feed and wooden boxes that held various pieces of equipment that Tania didn’t recognize. The room smelled powerfully of leather and grain.

Tania paused in the middle of the room, suddenly aware that Rathina had stopped in the doorway. She turned. There was a strange expression on Rathina’s face. Tania couldn’t quite make it out. It was like a mixture of determination and unease, as though Rathina was about to do something that she knew Tania wouldn’t like.

“What’s wrong?” Tania asked.

Then Rathina’s eyes slid off her face and Tania saw that she was looking at something beyond her shoul
der. She turned to follow the line of her sister’s gaze.

Edric had appeared from behind a wooden partition.

Tania froze. “What’s going on?”

“He begged me to bring you here,” Rathina explained. “You must stay and listen to his words.” She backed out, drawing the door closed behind her. “Forgive me, Tania; it is meant for the good.”

The door banged shut and the latch clicked down.

For the space of maybe three heartbeats, Tania stared at the closed door, before she slowly turned and faced Edric.

“Well?”

She saw him swallow. “I want you to know the truth,” he said. “You have to listen to me. If you don’t believe what I tell you, I promise I won’t bother you again.” He gave a weak smile, his hand coming up to his cheek. “You can even hit me again if it makes you feel any better, but please just listen to me first.”

“If I remember correctly, I did a whole lot of listening to you back home,” she said in an icy voice. “I don’t want to hear any more of your lies.” It annoyed her that her voice sounded so choked up. All she wanted to do was to get out of there before she burst into tears.

She spun on her heel and headed for the door, already stretching one hand toward the latch.

“You’re still my sun!” She turned at his voice, trembling, and looked at him again. “Remember?” he said. “Romeo and Juliet.
But soft! What light through
yonder window breaks. It is the east, and Juliet is my sun!
”

“Don’t!” Tania spat. “Don’t say that.” Against her will, all her old feelings for him were being stirred up again. “Don’t talk to me like that. It was all lies!”

“No, it wasn’t,” Edric said, taking a step forward.

“Get away from me!” she said, backing toward the door.

He stopped. “I love you.” He shook his head, his eyes pleading. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like that. I was sent into your world to bring you back here. And yes, I made friends with you at first in order to do what Drake wanted. But then, when I got to know you better, I realized I didn’t care about his plans anymore. I just wanted to be with you.”

She stared at him, unable to speak. Her blood was pounding in her ears, beating out
Liar! Liar! Liar!

“You destroyed my life….”

“I know you think that,” he said. “And I know I hurt you. But that day on the river, I was going to tell you the truth. The whole truth about who I was and about who you really were.”

Tania remembered him saying he had something important to tell her. She had been so nervous that he might be going to tell her he loved her! That would have been a whole lot easier to deal with than the truth.

“And then,” Edric was still speaking, “then I was going to tell you the truth about Drake.”

“What do you mean? What about Gabriel?”

“He never loved you,” Edric said, gazing steadily
at her with the eyes she knew so very well. “Not now, and not before you disappeared all those years ago. He only ever wanted to marry you because he wanted your power to walk both worlds. That’s
all
he wants from you, a way into the Mortal World.” He moved toward her again, and this time she didn’t back away. “That day on the river, do you remember what happened?”

She nodded.

“Just before we crashed,” he urged. “Did you see anything on the water? Anything strange?”

She forced her mind back to those panic-filled moments. She heard Evan’s voice, rising above the growl of the engine and the smash of water on the hull. “
There’s something important I have to tell you
.”

And then she remembered how a cold shadow had suddenly come down over them out of nowhere. Evan had gasped. His head had turned suddenly. He had looked scared.