Veiled Rose (51 page)

The Lake of Endless Blackness had long since vanished, taking its rickety dam along with it. But Lionheart knew its location better than he knew his own rooms back home. He stepped across the stream, using Bloodbiter’s Wrath as a support, sticking it deep into the mud, and plopped down on the far bank. For some time, he simply sat there, inhaling the mountain air, allowing his mind to pursue memories, memories that, for once, filled him with neither shame nor dread. He recalled the first time he had encountered the veiled and wafting specter in the forest. He remembered his disgust when he realized she was nothing but a girl. He remembered stick-and-leaf ships sunk with acorns, and muddy adventures when the dam broke and was repaired. He remembered ambushing the postmaster’s boy.

The postmaster’s boy, who had seen a monster.

Lionheart bowed his head, trailing the beanpole back and forth in the stream, sometimes with, sometimes against the current. He remembered the first time he had seen the monster. When he raised his face again, there were tears in his beard.

“Rose Red,” he said softly to the stream and the trees and anyone who might listen, “you said once that if I had any trouble, to sing out and you’d come. Well, I have plenty of trouble. And I need you. If you’ll come.”

“Bah!”

Lionheart startled and turned about where he sat. The goat stood behind him, chewing her cud and gazing at him through half-closed eyes.

“Hullo, Beana,” he said. “I see you survived anyway.” He got to his feet and approached the goat, one hand out to stroke her head. She dodged and gave him a look that can be seen only on an irate goat’s face. Lionheart gave up. “If you’re here, Rose Red’s got to be close.” He looked into the forest, though he knew it was useless. Rose Red would not be found unless she wanted to be.

“Please, Rosie,” he said. “I’m . . . I’m lost. I need you.”

He felt her behind him. How she came to be there, he didn’t know, but he knew as surely as he breathed that she stood there.

“Don’t look around, Leo,” she said.

He gulped. Then he slowly started to turn. “Rosie—”

“No! Please!”

He stopped, licking his lips. “I know already,” he said. “I know you’re without your veil.”

“I cain’t—” Her voice was so small, more frightened than he’d ever heard it before. She hardly sounded like the spunky mountain-climbing companion he’d once known. “I cain’t bear to have you see me like this.”

“But, Rosie, I already saw,” he said. “Remember? All those years ago, when you took me to the cave to show me the mountain monster?”

A sob behind him, very soft, but enough to break his heart. He clenched his fists and forced himself not to turn.

“I thought,” she said, “you hated me then.”

“No!” he said quickly. “How could you think that?”

“When you saw the monster, you were so angry.”

Lionheart drew a long breath, choosing his words carefully before he spoke them. The memory of that night was too painful . . . all the more so now, after he’d faced the Dragon.

“Rosie,” he said softly, “let me tell you why I was angry.”

Another sob. Was her voice fading? Was she leaving him? He turned a desperate glance Beana’s way, but the goat only gave him a sour glare and continued chewing her cud.

Then Rose Red spoke. “Because I’d misled you. Because I hadn’t told you what I was. I hadn’t told you that . . . that
I
was the monster.”

Dropping Bloodbiter’s Wrath, he turned around quickly and took her hand. For a moment, Lionheart stared into her unveiled eyes, and he thought for sure that he would end up on his back with his breath knocked out of him, never to see her again.

But she didn’t move. She stood still, and neither of them breathed, each one taking in the other’s appearance. She saw Lionheart’s beard, that masking disguise. She saw the heaviness under his eyes, the lingering poison deep inside, and all the regret.

And he saw the goblin.

Wide, white-moon eyes, so enormous as to be horrible, set in a craggy rock of a face. Her scalp was bare save for a few sorry strands of coarse hair. Her upper lip, such as it was, twisted to reveal jutting teeth, some stumpy, some sharp. Her nose was flat to her face with wide, slitted nostrils. Her ears were huge, almost batlike. She was tiny and scrawny, but the hand Lionheart held could smash boulders without a thought.

But she didn’t smash Lionheart.

Tears welled up in the huge eyes that were made to see in the depths of mines. They splashed down the crags of her cheeks.

Lionheart took the claw of her hand in both of his and squeezed gently. “No,” he whispered. “That wasn’t it at all. I already knew what you were . . . or, at least, I suspected. I wasn’t the brightest of lads, but I wasn’t a total fool. Not then. No, when I caught that glimpse of you reflected in the water, I wasn’t surprised, wasn’t even scared.

“I was angry because I saw myself.”

He bowed his head, unable to meet her searching gaze. “Just for a moment,” he said, “I saw my real face. And I realized that the mountain monster wasn’t any one person, any one beast. It was me. It was Foxbrush. It was Leanbear and Redbird, all the people of the village who were so terrified. Because all that terror that they fixed upon you, all that hatred . . . it was really only what was coming from inside of them.

“And my desire to hunt the monster, to kill it . . . that was because I knew, in my heart, that I was nothing but a coward. I am and always have been my own monster. My own worst enemy.”

His voice broke. He dropped Rose Red’s hand and covered his face.

You did what you had to do,
whispered the Lady.

“Her heart for your life,”
said the memory of the Dragon.
“It is the only way.”

“Rose Red,” Lionheart said, not even certain if she still stood before him, she was so silent. “Rose Red, I never fought the Dragon. I . . . I gave him what he wanted, and I fled. I haven’t told anyone. As far as they know, I faced him after he left, faced him and killed him. I didn’t. I made a bargain with him instead. Yes, I saved Southlands; the Dragon won’t return. But I . . . never fought the monster.”

To his surprise, he felt two spindly arms wrap around him. With a deep breath of relief, he hugged her back, and they stood there, prince and goblin, beside the quiet stream with only a goat for audience.

“It’s all right, Leo,” Rose Red said. “You’re still my good, kind master. No matter what happens, I will serve you.”

“Will you?” Lionheart asked, still holding her. “Even after what I did?”

“There ain’t nothin’ you can do that will turn me from you.”

“It’s been an adventure, to be sure,” said the prince. His voice was heavy, burdened. “All this mess of ours, I mean. And there is yet so much to be done. I can’t promise this will be a happy story, Rosie.”

“Maybe it will have a happy ending,” said she. “When everything’s complete and come full circle. This part ain’t so nice, but maybe somethin’ good will come of it?” She gulped and stepped back to look up at the prince, for the moment forgetting what she was, not caring as his gaze moved across her face. “Remember, you have to read all the legends together to know for sure, and we don’t know them all yet. There may be a story out there somewhere to make this one happy.”

Leo nodded, and there was a trace of a smile behind his beard. “I’d like to know that story someday.”

Rose Red turned away then. For no matter how deep or how sincerely she felt, there were some feelings not right for a servant to express to her master.

“Will you come back to my father’s house, then?”

She nodded. The people of Southlands hated her. They wanted to kill her. But somehow, she would serve the prince even so.

Lionheart, as he had done those long years ago, took her hand and kissed it. “There was never such a one as you, Rose Red,” he said. “Bless you a thousand times!”

So they started back down the mountain, Lionheart leading the way with his beanpole, Rose Red trailing behind with Beana. Perhaps it wasn’t the joyous ending to the five long years for which one would have hoped. The hero did not return home triumphant from battle. The girl did not find comfort in the arms of her beloved. But the Dragon was gone, and rebuilding could begin. And they had each other for support. Dawn would find them on the road back to the Eldest’s House, back to whatever new life the day could bring.

And the silver song of the wood thrush echoed through the mountains, calling:

Won’t you return to me?

T
HE UNICORN STOOD
before the gates of Palace Var. It guarded the paths to and from Arpiar, watching them with eyes that burned through all tricks and disguises. The roses climbing the stone walls of Var cast their moonlit shadows upon the unicorn’s back in dappled patterns. If a wind swelled, those patterns shifted, but the unicorn never moved.

The Queen of Arpiar could see the unicorn through a window in her chambers, where she lay upon her pillows. She turned her gaze away, closing her eyes.

“My queen,” said her head woman. “The child lives. You have a daughter.”

Across the darkened room, a newborn made no sound as gentle hands wrapped it in red and gold. When the babe had not cried at its birth, the queen had thought perhaps it was dead.

“A daughter,” she whispered. Tears slipped down her cheek. “No.”

Before she could dash traces of weeping from her face, her husband entered. Without a glance for his queen, he went to the cradle and looked inside. He smiled, and though his face was more beautiful than tongue could tell, the queen shuddered at the sight.

“A daughter!” Triumph filled the king’s voice. He turned to the queen and laughed in her face. “A pretty daughter, my pretty bride. With blood as red as the red, red rose. Her name will be Varvare.”

“Please,” his wife spoke in a small voice. “Please, my lord.”

“Please what, sweet Anahid?” The king laughed again and moved to the queen’s bedside. He took her hand and, though she struggled against him, would not release his hold. “You’d think I was disappointed in you. On the contrary, beloved, I could not be better satisfied! You have proven more useful than I dared hope.”

He dropped her hand and addressed himself to her head woman and the other attendants present. “See to it you care well for my darling Varvare. My perfect rose.”

With those words he vanished from the chamber, though the shadow of his presence lingered long afterward.

Nevertheless, the moment he was out of sight, Queen Anahid rallied. She pushed upright on her cushions, turning once more to that sight out her window. The unicorn stood at its post near the roses, and it was hateful to her. But there was one path, she knew, that it did not guard.

“Bring me clothes and a cloak of midnight.” She turned to her attendants, who stared at her. “At once.”

They exchanged glances, but no one moved. In all the realm of Arpiar, not a soul could be found who loved the king. But neither was there a heart that did not sink with fear at the mention of his name. Thus the queen’s servants remained frozen in place when she spoke. The queen stared at them with her great silver eyes, and they would not meet her gaze.

“Will no one serve their queen?” she asked.

They made no answer.

Straining so that a vein stood out on her forehead, Queen Anahid flung back the soiled blankets of her labor and rose from her bed. Her head woman gasped, “My queen!”

In that moment, the princess, who had made no more than a whimper since the time of her birth, gave a cry from her cradle. The piteous sound worked a magic of its own on the assembled servants. One leapt to the cradle and gently lifted the child. Another ran to the queen’s side, and a third did as the queen had asked and brought her clean garments and a cloak as black as the night.

The queen was weak from her labor, but her strength returned in the face of need. She let her servants clothe her, then took and wrapped the deep cloak about her shoulders. “Give me the child,” she said, turning to the youngest of her maids, who stood trembling near to hand, shushing the babe.

“My queen,” her head woman spoke, “are you certain—”

“Do you doubt me?” The queen’s eyes flashed. She took the baby, adjusting the scarlet and gold cloth that bound the tiny limbs tight. She tucked the warm bundle inside her cloak, close to her heart.

“Tell no one I have gone,” she said, striding to the door. “Any of you who follow me does so at your own peril.”

The blackness of her cloak shielded Queen Anahid and the princess as she made her way through the corridors of Palace Var, unseen save by the roses, which turned their faces away and said not a word. She slid from shadow to shadow. Woven enchantments whirled in endless grasping fingers everywhere she turned, but these Anahid had long ago learned to see and to elude.

But all paths from Arpiar led past the unicorn.

The queen stood in the darkness of the courtyard, breathing in the perfume of roses, gazing at the gate that stood between her and the empty landscape. She felt the tiny beating heart pressed against her own and gnashed her teeth. “Would that he had been devoured on the shores of the Dark Water!” Then, closing her eyes and bowing her head, she called out in the voice of her heart, a voice unheard in that world but which carried to worlds beyond.