The Goblin Market (Into the Green) (33 page)

“So beautiful, so ambitious,” he sneered. “I simply implied that you would rule beside me as my queen, but never in my stead, or as my absolute equal.”

Meredith was just about to counter his statement with more questions when a great disturbance sounded behind her. Kothar peered up over the crowd, in the direction the commotion had come from. The smooth lines of his placid face grew harsh. He breathed in through his nose, and tightened his jaw against the anger that flared within him. His good eye squinted into a harsh, bitter anger.

It was Gorigast, she saw. Causing a commotion near the double doors that led onto the patio. He railed and struggled against the guards, his high pitched shriek garnering raucous laughter and snickers from the court.

“It would seem your servant has forgotten his place," he uncurled his fingers from hers.

She bit her tongue to keep from muttering, "Or perhaps he's remembered it."

"Please excuse me while I see to this matter."

Without another word, Kothar left her standing in the middle of the ballroom.

She looked around at the sea of strange and eerie faces that crowded in around her, all of their attention suddenly focused in the direction of the disturbance that had called him away. Meredith stretched upward onto her tiptoes, but even at his height, Kothar quickly disappeared into the crowd, and she lowered back into her place, her face wrinkled in despair.

She was terrified, but knew her chance had come. Gorigast had sacrificed himself so she might escape and study the mask further.

She reached into the folds of her gown and disentangled the gold and silver mask from the fabric. She lifted it into the light and it gleamed beautifully. It seemed to drip with ancient magic, and she could feel the splendor of its incredible power tingling in her fingertips. That magic seeped into her hands, spread like warm liquid through her arms, into her chest and heart, and within moments it had taken over her entire body.

In a distant part of her mind, she heard that voice again.
"It is no small secret that many falsities await you on your journey. The prophecies say that in your greatest moment of doubt, the Mask of Truth will bring you back to yourself and give you the glimps of truth you need to carry on."

"The Mask of Truth," she muttered.

The musicians struck up another song, and the court began to dance around her. Meredith looked in the direction of the altercation with Gorigast and spotted Kothar towering over the sniveling servant. Menacing guards flanked him on both sides.

She didn't know how much longer he would be distracted, and everything within her urged her to put the mask on. Meredith drew in a breath so deep it pierced her lungs. She closed her eyes and lifted the mask to rest over the upper half of her face. Releasing the breath, she blinked to allow her eyes to clear the temporary blur that distorted her vision.

Every flutter of her lashes brought the world around her into clearer focus. The court shuffled and swayed beside her, and for the first time she realized they weren't wearing masks at all. Their true faces were the very things the masks had formerly portrayed. They were goblins; dozens of goblins, rat-faced, snaked-faced, crow-faced, wolf-faced, and cat-faced creatures with sharp, glowing red eyes

She nearly cried out at the revelation, but managed to keep her scream inside.

Meredith quickly gathered the hem of her gown and swished through the bustling bodies around her. She raced in the direction opposite of Kothar, toward the double doors she'd originally entered through.

Only once did she glance back over her shoulder to make sure no one noticed her, and then she slipped through the doors.

Alone in the empty corridor, she pressed her back against the wall behind her and tried to ignore the horrid sound of celebration from inside the ballroom. The passageway was familiar, reminding her of a time earlier in the evening when Lunette led her down the stairs and toward her waiting king. It all seemed so long ago, so far from her that it could have almost taken place in another life not quite her own.

She was not the person the she'd been playing all night in Kothar's company. She was…she was…Meredith Drexler.

Yes!

She was Meredith Drexler and she had braved the Goblin Market, trekked through the protective Ambiance Grove and into the Faerie Realm. She'd conquered the Darknjan Wald and she had come to claim her sister from the hands of the goblin king.

“Christina.”

As her sister's name slipped from her lips, a flood of horrific memory stormed the broken gates of her mind.

The minstrels led them to the lake that shone like night. The Nether Lake, he had called it…

Him, her lover, her consort. And she had lost him to the Ancient One. She remembered the peaceful resolution he wore before the final waves tore them apart and sent her crashing to the shore. A gasp wrenched from the tight chasm of her throat, and she lifted a hand to stifle her own cry.

She had lost Him, her one true love, and the pain of that loss was so severe she blocked it out of her mind. Guilt and horror robbed her of her memories, taking her beyond herself and into a frame of calm forgetfulness.

Emotion strangled her heart with such strength she had to brace herself on the stone wall behind her to keep from falling down. It was like the edge of a lifetime’s bladed anguish thrust upon her at once and she was so startled by the pain she couldn't catch her breath.

All that way and for what? To lose the one thing that gave her life real meaning?

In that horrible moment she hated her sister. If not for Christina's foolishness, none of it would have happened.

And that was when a momentary lapse of reason seized her mind. If not for Christina, she would never have known Him, loved Him even if only for those few moments. Would never have returned to that world in which she belonged, and felt at home and at peace with who she really was.

One last time, Meredith blinked back her tears, and swallowed the heartache threatening to carry her back into the place where none of it was real.

"I will not fail you, Chrissy," she said.

And she took off the mask because she no longer needed it. She knew exactly why she was there, and what she had come to do.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Meredith scanned her unfamiliar surroundings, not sure where to begin her search. Her sister was somewhere in the castle, but if she knew Kothar, and by then she was fairly certain she did, the girl was hidden well. She also wasn't sure how much time she had before the king realized she was missing, which meant she had to get searching, and quickly.

She hurried down the corridor, away from the ballroom and ducked into a passageway to her left. As she raced down that hall, the walls began to narrow inward, closing in to a perfect corner at the far end. She turned back, rushing in the direction she came with uncertain panic nipping at her heels.

Back where she started, she glanced toward the closed doors of the ballroom and felt the pressure of those doors opening. She imagined, as she darted forward again, those doors bursting open and a flood of angry goblins surging toward her with Kothar at their command. This image pushed her to move faster, and as she rounded a corner into another section of the castle, certain relief washed over her to no longer be in sight of the ballroom doors.

A shrill voice called out, echoing off the close walls. “And just where do you think you’re going?"

Meredith froze in place expecting the guards to come blazing toward her, for Kothar himself to appear behind her, but then the piercing voice went on, “…and that was when I told ‘im to mind he’s own never mind, I did. The nerve of ‘im, trying to keep me from going off to visit me mum.”

It faded, disappearing in the opposite direction, and a long breath of relief loosened the tightness that gripped her chest.

At the end of the hall there was a spiraling set of stairs, and she rushed toward it without any clue where it might lead. She lifted the hem of her dress to keep it from tripping her as she hiked upward and around, the circling staircase narrowing as she climbed. It landed on a level platform that stepped up into another wing of the castle, dark with closed doors on both sides of the twisted hallways.

She scanned both directions, realizing at once the castle was more bizarre and frustrating than the dreaded Darknjan Wald.

She could only imagine what awaited her in the shadows, and shuddered as she turned left.

She arrived almost instantly upon another staircase, this one leading downward. She had no idea where it might take her, and for a moment worried she would wind up right back where she started, but she had to take every chance presented to her if she wanted to find her sister before Kothar found her.

Every bend and curve she navigated frustrated her mind, which was still addled from the trauma of rediscovering the repressed tragedy that brought her to the present moment. Solid walls sprang up at the end of hallways, stairways led to nothing, hallways ended with doors that opened into midair above the castle mote, and every obstacle that sprang up felt like another impossible riddle she would never solve.

She back-tracked so many times it became a tiresome routine retracing every step until she found herself on a new course, but it seemed that no matter where she turned she came face to face with the cold, hopeless reality of another dead-end.

She was lost.

Her sister was lost, and the monumental pressure of being the one person always sent to make things right was about to burst out of her chest and devour her in large, bitter bites.

Surely Kothar was behind her, searching the castle for her. It felt like more than an hour passed, and her disappearance would not go unnoticed for long. Paranoia drove her to look into every shadow, and the shadows themselves seem to respond, stretching into hideous, ghoulish lengths as though they thrived on her fear.

Another dead-end and she threw her back into the cold, stone wall, sinking into her hunched shoulders as she muttered, "I can't do this."

When Him walked beside her the futility of her quest hadn't seemed so daunting, but alone it loomed over her head like a thundercloud. In the beginning, she'd only gone forward to save her sister, but she'd never have made it past the Goblin Market had Him and Sir Gwydion not come along.

She was doomed. Her sister was doomed… And for the first time in her life, she wondered if that was how her father felt just before he disappeared. After losing his beloved wife, he'd been alone and helpless at the hands of a merciless fate that made it easier to walk away, rather than face another single moment.

Meredith wanted to walk away. No, she wanted to run and throw herself into the endless lake of stars that snatched Him from her, but she was a coward. Besides, she probably wouldn't have been able to find her way out of the castle anyway.

Her eyes stung.

She was so tired of crying. She couldn’t remember having ever felt so weak and defeated in all her life, not even at the loss of her mother, the absence of her father.

She built walls around herself to make sure she never had to experience those kinds of feelings again, but the one weakness in that wall had been Christina. One weakness led to another as she found herself falling in love with Him, and now the weakness had left her wallowing in the one place she feared reaching most: alone.

A part of her wanted to allow the silent sobs to consume her until she was no more than a puddle of defeat there on the floor, but then a familiar sound captured her attention and she lifted her head to listen as the far off drip, drip drop, of nearby water mesmerized her.

Water. A stale gust of musty air rushed out to meet her from the opposite end of the corridor. She must be close to the dungeon, where Kothar was more than likely keeping her sister.

Merry held tight to the folds of her gown as she darted toward the smell with a renewed sense of hope. At the end of the hallway, there was only one way to go, down and into a dark, foreboding chasm.

She lingered at the top of those stairs, the hideous odor climbing up and teasing her gag reflex. It reminded her of rotting flesh and disease and old cabbage.

Meredith fought to maintain her composure, steadying herself on the cold, damp wall beside her and heading downward into the dungeon.

It seemed to take forever, each stair unfolding unto another and another and the darkness shrank in around her, clinging so close that not even the dim light at the top of the stairs seemed to reach her anymore. She had to feel for each step before committing to it, but she kept moving.

At last, she caught a glimpse of pale, grey light that flickered sadly against the stale breeze. It grew with every step she took, but did not brighten. She squinted, trying to make out the source of the light, but it was a long time before she realized it was coming from an arched window several feet in the distance.

She looked down at her feet, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the poor lighting, and was hopeful to finally be able to see the stairs. There were only a handful left before she reached the platform, and she hurried down them, stopping at the bottom when she realized there was no longer a wall for her to grasp onto. She kept her hand out, feeling for the solidity of stone that guided her into the dungeon, but there was nothing there.

The light from the top of the stairs was no longer visible behind her, and the dim flutter of grey from the window ahead was swallowed by the emptiness on both sides of her. Would the world drop out from under her if she stepped too far on either side? She swallowed, and closed her eyes, trying to calm herself.

"You've already come this far," she said.

She would take baby steps if she had to, all the way to the door.

The toe of her left foot shuffled forward, followed by her right, and that was how she moved all the way to the doorway at the end of the dangerous hallway. Pebbles scuttled from under foot, tumbling over the edge and rattling into the darkness. As they fell, she stopped to listen until she could no longer hear them clattering.