Veiled Rose (46 page)

Rose Red met him eye to eye.

“No,” she said.

The Dragon vanished. So did the mirror, the chandeliers, the polished stone floor on which the dragons had danced. Rose Red found herself once more in her servant’s dress, though the veil was gone from her face. Despair threatened to overwhelm her. Her lantern was gone, and the darkness, the potent smell of poison from every corner, grappled with her senses. She turned about, seeking some sign of her whereabouts. Was she yet in the Village of Dragons? Or had he transported her elsewhere by some dark art?

The Dragon’s throne caught her eye.

It was a hideous creation, up on a black marble pedestal and carved like intertwining dragon skeletons, polished and dreadful. Bloodstained, it stank of death.

Seated on the pedestal, her feet dangling over the edge and her hands folded in her lap, was Lady Daylily.

“M’lady!” Rose Red cried and darted toward her. The pedestal was taller than she expected, and when she reached it she could not touch Daylily’s feet as she stretched up her hands.

Daylily looked down at her, moving her feet slightly away. “So you’ve come,” she said. “I told you not to.”

“I’m here to fetch you home, m’lady,” Rose Red said. “Please, come down!”

“Your veil is gone.”

“I can catch you if you jump. I’m stronger than I look.”

“It doesn’t matter. I knew the secret behind your veil long ago.”

“Hen’s teeth,” Rose Red muttered. She glanced about and saw a small stairway cut into the marble block. She hurried up and came around beside the Lady of Middlecrescent. “I don’t know where he’s gone off to, m’lady. But we’d best get while we can! I think I can find the way out of here. I’ve walked Faerie Paths before, though none like this.”

Daylily’s eyes were colder than stone when she turned her gaze on Rose Red. “The poison does not affect you, does it, goat girl.”

Rose Red didn’t know how to answer. It affected her, to be sure, but it did not shatter her inside the way she saw it shattering Daylily. “Please, m’lady,” she said. “I’ve got to get you back. What would Leo do if you—”

“Leo? Ha!” Daylily’s laugh was harsh. “Do you think Leo cares for me?” Her face twisted into such an expression of bitterness that Rose Red would not have recognized her. “I’ve watched my dreams die. Every one of them, burned to oblivion. I will never marry Prince Lionheart. I will never fulfill the expectations placed upon me. I wish—” Her eyes narrowed, and her hands twitched as though she might want to hide her face. But she did not. She stared into Rose Red’s eyes, and the Lady of Middlecrescent was as unveiled as the chambermaid. “I wish you would go and let me die.”

“You see what would happen were you mortal as she, princess.”

The Dragon appeared before the pedestal, within reach of Daylily’s feet. Rose Red clenched her jaw and, with strength her tiny frame should not possess, hauled the lady up and back, positioning herself between Daylily and the Dragon.

The Dragon smiled. “Everything would be so much easier were you a mortal child,” he said. “The poisons would work faster on your brain. You’d have asked for my kiss ages ago!”

“I ain’t askin’ now.”

“No, you are not.” He folded his arms. His face was not beautiful now as it had been when they danced. It was ghastly white, and his eyes were black save in the depths of his pupils, where the fire glowed. “It would have been different, too, had I won Prince Lionheart in the game. But no. My sister must take him, manipulate him for her own pleasure.” He snarled, and sparks shot between his teeth. “She’s so selfish sometimes, I wonder how she can live with herself.”

“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” Rose Red said. She felt Daylily sagging behind her and turned just in time to catch the girl and hold her upright. She was not fainted, merely too worn out to stand anymore. Her spirit was broken, and her body failed as well. Rose Red gnashed her teeth in frustration and turned to the Dragon. “I only know that my good master has gone to find out how to kill you.”

“I know.”

“And when he returns, that’s just what he’s goin’ to do. Then . . . then you’ll be sorry.”

The Dragon’s snarl turned into another horrible smile. “He’ll never fight me, Princess Varvare. Your puny mortal prince is destined for another fate. And he will never fight me.”

Rose Red suddenly felt she could not hold Daylily. She knelt down, bringing the pale lady with her, and they crouched there before Death’s Throne as the Dragon approached and climbed the stairs.

“Lionheart is destined to fulfill his dream,” said he. “He will return to Southlands and reclaim his kingdom. He will marry Lady Daylily and make her his queen. Such has he dreamed, and such will my sister do for him. And where does that leave you, my darling? My treasure?”

Daylily curled into a tiny ball, her head pressed into Rose Red’s chest. Rose Red wrapped both arms around her as though she could protect her. But her strength was running out. She’d given all she had, and it wasn’t enough.

“He will forget you,” said the Dragon. “He already has. Do you think he has once stopped to consider you in all these years? For it has been years, my sweet, years and years in the Near World while you have wandered in my realm. He’s a different man now, and whatever you meant to him then, you mean no longer.”

Her heart opened, and the poison flowed in. Rose Red could not stop it. It was like drowning. She felt the fear and anguish wash across her uncovered face, revealing everything to the Dragon’s gaze. She wished for her veil, but it was gone.

The Dragon’s smile grew. “My fumes work such beautiful marks upon your countenance, princess. I’ve never seen you more vulnerable. It enchants me.”

He knelt down before her and the cowering Daylily. His long white hands reached out and cupped her face so gently, like a lover. Smoke poured from his mouth, and his eyes burned bright. He murmured, “There is no one left for you, child. I am all that you have. Will you allow me to kiss you now?”

She had no voice with which to speak, for her fear had struck her dumb. But her lips formed the word.

“No.”

The fire in his eyes flared, and hot embers fell upon her face so that she screamed and crumpled over Daylily, covering the lady with her body. But the Dragon grabbed her wrists, burning her skin with his touch, and pulled Rose Red upright, forcing her to look at him.

She stared in horror, unable to tear away her gaze as his face lengthened and covered over with scales and his cloak became wings. His hands dropped hers and became great claws tearing the pedestal beneath him. As he grew, he backed onto the floor below, and soon towered over the throne, over Rose Red and Daylily. His flame burned through the darkness, revealing the highest crags of the cavern, miles above. One arm reached out and tore at the stalactites, and if Rose Red and her lady had not been crouched beneath the Dragon’s body, they would have been crushed in debris.

Fire poured from his mouth onto the floor, surrounding the throne and the pedestal in a lake of flames. The smoke that rose from it was like a thousand ghostly faces howling in silent screams.

Then the Dragon whispered to her.

“You have a friend nowhere, princess. The Prince has dammed up the flow of his compassion against you. Even the knight he sent to guard you has fled my fire. No servant from his courts will stretch out a hand to help you. All heaven has abandoned you; you are alone. See the companions of your childhood from whom you once took comfort?”

The smoke took on flesh and blood, forming faces she knew: Lionheart, Beana, the man she called father. They turned and looked at her, one by one.

“What are they worth?” the Dragon said. “Cast-down child, see how the cowards spit upon you and hate you when you most need them! Behold!”

The effigies distorted into fierce masks, their arms raised against her, then vanished in heat and smoke. The Dragon dominated her view.

“You have no friend left in this world or the other. I have sent word throughout all regions, summoning every prince of darkness to set upon you this night, and we will spare no weapons. We will use all our infernal might to overwhelm you; and what will you do, forsaken one?”

His face, both dragon and human, was close to her own now, and his hot breath seared the skin from her cheeks. “Will you let me kiss you?”

Rose Red opened her mouth to answer.

But suddenly a white light shone so brilliantly that for a moment she thought her own fear had blinded her. Then she heard a voice calling through the smoke and flame:

“Rosie, child! Remember the Name!”

She shielded her face with her hands and saw a tall woman clad in brown and white, carrying the beautiful Asha Lantern. She walked through the flames as though they were not there and stood just beneath the Dragon’s nose.

He looked down upon her, and the expression on his face was pure hatred.
“You!”
he bellowed, flames building up in his mouth.

But the woman spared no glance for him. Her eyes pierced Rose Red’s. “The Name, child! Call upon the Name!”

With a voice that was hardly her own, Rose Red cried out:

“ESHKHAN! ESHKHAN, come to me!”

Protection surrounded her. It had always been there, but she had been unable to perceive it in the fire. Like silver water, like music rushing over her in a shield greater than stone, stronger than iron, the wood thrush sang:

Walk before me, child.

The Dragon shrieked. His wings beat the smoke and flames of the burning hall until they billowed to the sky.

But the birdsong surrounded her:

You are not abandoned.

“What have you done?” the Dragon roared.
“What have you done?”

There was terror in his voice, more horrible than his fire. Rose Red crouched down with her arms over her head, unable to tear her gaze from the sight. He shrieked again, and the sound brought down the last standing pillars of the hall. Then he looked right at her, opened wide his mouth, and bellowed a great plume of fire.

But someone stood between her and the flame.

Her Prince. The Friend she’d once thought imaginary, now powerful and beautiful, unarmed before the Dragon’s fury. Neither human nor Faerie, he was something altogether unique. Something wonderful and dreadful and worshipful. Rose Red covered her eyes, but her ears still heard.

“It is not my time!” The Dragon raged in the face of the Prince. “Your Beloved will be mine!”

The voice that spoke was as the silver voice of the thrush.

“Not this child,” said the Prince. “You will not have her.”

“I won the game! I won, and I must have my due!”

Flames spewed, roaring over the throne, the pedestal, the Prince, and Rose Red, in consuming death. But the Prince did not move. He stood over her and took the blast. The fire could not touch him, and his face was calm in the inferno.

“Away from this place now, Dragon,” he said. “Release your hold and fly. What you seek is not here; you will never claim this child.”

The Dragon bellowed volcanic ash. There was a crack as though worlds split one from another, and Rose Red felt her gut lurch, as if plunging in a terrible dream. She screamed.

Her Prince held her.

Her Imaginary Friend whom she had always known, who was more real than all else in this life. She had known him from the time she slept in her cradle and the wood thrush sang over her.

Exhausted, she rested in his arms, and he rocked her like a baby, the way the man she called father once had done. And the Prince sang softly the song she knew so well:

“Beyond the Final Water falling,

The Songs of Spheres recalling.

When all around you is the vastness of night,

Won’t you return to me?”

She listened and felt the healing of his words upon her burned face and hands. When at last the song ended, Rose Red opened her eyes.

The Village of Dragons was gone. So was the Eldest’s Hall. Rose Red rested in a place beyond them all, and while her eyes were unable to perceive a definite picture of this place, her other senses told her that it was beautiful beyond knowledge. She breathed a sigh and rested her head against the Prince’s shoulder.

“Brave one,” he said, “that battle is over.”

“The . . . the Dragon?”

“He has released his hold on the Eldest’s House and fled Southlands for the northern countries. He’ll not return.”

“How do you know?”

“You are not the one he seeks.”

She studied his face. “Not your Beloved?” she whispered.

He smiled at her then. Her veil was still gone, she realized, and for a moment she shuddered and wanted to hide. But he smoothed a hand over her cheek and met her gaze. “You are beloved,” he said. “You are my child.”

She closed her eyes and felt two tears escaping. The relief of belonging, of being so loved, was too great in that moment to be borne. Then at last she managed to ask, “What of the one the Dragon seeks? The princess he mistook me for?”

The Prince shook his head, and sadness filled his face. “That one, I fear, has yet to suffer his work.”