The next moment, to Una’s horror, right there before the entire assembly, before soup had even been served – which somehow made it more horrible – Prince Aethelbald pushed back his chair and got down on one knee beside her. She found herself staring down into his kind, boring face. She looked away, mouth open, for some sign of help, but all the court of Parumvir was watching with held breath.
“I love you, Princess Una,” Aethelbald said. “It would be my honor and my joy if you would consent to be my wife. Will you have me?”
4
"You refused him?”
“Of course I refused him, Nurse!” Una sat once more before her vanity as Nurse undid her work of the afternoon, pulling curls and feathers from their places and letting Una’s hair fall down her back. “How could I do otherwise?”
“Umph,” Nurse said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing at all, Miss Princess, nothing at all.”
Una turned on her seat to look up at Nurse, who was scowling like a storm cloud. “You think I should have accepted him.”
Nurse stepped back, a bristled hairbrush clutched in one hand like a battle standard. “A match like that, and you up and said, ‘No, thank you.’ ” She shook her head, and the brush quivered in her hand. “The Prince of Farthestshore, by all accounts the greatest and richest kingdom ever heard tell of, asks for your hand . . . and you refused him.”
Una rose from her stool. A feather still in her hair drifted around to tickle under her nose, and she brushed it aside. “He’s saying he loves me when we’ve hardly even spoken. That doesn’t make any sense!”
“It’s romantic.”
“It’s ridiculous.”
“Look who’s talking.”
Una frowned, considering the irony of role reversal. Then she shrugged. “I don’t even know him.”
“He’s prince of a mighty kingdom,” Nurse replied, pointing the hairbrush at Una’s nose. “And you, my dear, are a princess. What more knowing do you need?”
Una swept away, her dressing gown trailing behind, shedding more feathers as she went. Monster batted at them as they drifted by his nose. “I won’t marry him for his rank, and that’s that.”
“You are a princess. What else do princesses marry for?”
Una flung open her tall window door and stepped out onto the balcony. The spring breeze was cool, biting at her face, but she hardly cared. “I won’t marry that man, Nurse.” Her chin rose imperiously. “I won’t marry him, never, and nothing you can say will convince me otherwise!”
She slammed the door, rattling the glass, and stepped to the rail of her balcony. Her chambers on the third floor of the palace overlooked the gardens, which were edged with the light of a bright crescent moon. She leaned against the rail and took a deep breath, closing her eyes. Standing there in the quiet of the evening, she could almost imagine that she heard the murmur of the sea far below the hill. But when she opened her eyes again, it was not the ocean she saw but the dark expanse of Goldstone Wood, which began at the edge of the moonlit garden and swept its way down the hill and off into acres of impenetrable forest beyond.
“Meeaaa?” said Monster, sitting at her feet.
Una looked down at her cat. “I won’t marry him,” she whispered. The wind blew in her face, and she turned once more to gaze at the Wood.
The dark treetops swayed, rippling the moonlight across their leaves.
“It’s my choice. And I won’t.”
Goldstone Wood watched her in silence until at last she gathered up her cat and went back inside. A wood thrush, which long since should have been roosting, threw its voice to the moon.
–––––––
That night, the room was too hot. Una’s coverlet was heavy, and even with her bed-curtains open, the air suffocated.
Una lay in bed, staring up at her embroidered canopy. The embers in the fireplace cast a dull glow. The window curtains were drawn, but a tiny sliver of moon broke through, and by its silver light combined with the bloodred gleam of the embers, she could make out the picture above her.
Her mother had embroidered it soon after Una’s birth. She had made it especially for Una, and if only for that reason, Una loved it. Bold threads of gold, which picked up light from the fire, depicted the contours of Lord Lumé surrounded in a glowing aura. He wore robes like those worn by the old singer who sang at all royal christenings and weddings, though those in the embroidery were much grander and fanned out like flames.
Lord Lumé was the sun, and he sang the Melody.
Across from him, picked out in delicate silver threads, was his wife, Lady Hymlumé, the moon, and she sang the Harmony. She wore robes such as Una had never seen anywhere else, and she wondered how her mother had dreamed them up. Una thought she would much rather wear the silver garments of Hymlumé than all the brilliant fashions into which the royal tailors stuffed her.
Many sleepless nights throughout her childhood, Una had studied the faces of Lumé and Hymlumé as worked by her departed mother, and wondered about the songs they sang. The Sphere Songs, as they were called, had once been known in Parumvir, her tutor said. But that was long, long ago, back when people were foolish enough to believe in myths about the sun and his wife, the moon. They were pretty stories to be told and woven into tapestries, but nothing more.
Some nights, however, if the windows were left open wide and she heard the whisper of the Wood and the occasional song of an evening bird, Una could imagine that she heard the strains of a song, the faintest memory of a tune that suns and moons might sing.
Not tonight. Tonight Una stared at the embroidered faces, and her imagination could not dwell on songs or myths. It was too hot.
Monster heaved a heavy sigh. He slept on the pillow by her head, and she felt him twitch in his sleep. Suddenly his head popped up and he started grooming his paws. The movement annoyed her. She shoved him off the bed, counted to ten, and felt him hop back up again. He returned to the pillow, plopped down, and flicked his tail over her nose. She pinched the end of it. He tucked it around his body, and that battle ended for the night.
She stared again at the embroidered faces above her.
It was too hot. Far, far too hot.
She considered getting up to open the window, but her limbs were too tired. Too tired to move, too tired to sleep, Una was slowly roasting to death. Sweat beaded her forehead. Her mother’s ring was tight on her hand – so tight she thought perhaps the finger would fall off. Lumé’s face gazed down at her, his arms outspread so that the flames of his robe flared about him. He burned her with his unrelenting glare. She wished she could cover him somehow, wished she could escape his heat.
The air shivered with vapors. She saw them moving in the moonlight, and even the moonlight boiled. She closed her eyes and tried to draw a full breath, but could not.
When Una opened her eyes once more to look up at Lumé and his wife, they were gone. The night consumed her vision and pulled her into a dream.
The Lady waits in a colorless world all her own. She sits alone on a misty throne – expecting no one, hoping nothing. Her world is silent but for a soft, subtle sound that she alone hears.
It is the weeping of dreams that are no more.
Long ages pass, and she listens and waits, her patient eyes downcast. Her eyes are the white of emptiness, the white of nothing, and her face is a mask of onyx. No one dares speak her true name.
The rush of wings on the threshold of her world disturbs the silence, drowning the sighs of the weepers. The Lady does not raise her gaze but hears the heavy tread approaching and feels the heat of fire. A smile twists her mouth, the first movement she had made in an age.
“Sister,” a burning voice speaks, “I am here to play the game.”
“Brother,” she replies, “I am glad.”
She raises her eyes to meet his, which are as dark as hers are white. He is a dragon, vast and black, but as he approaches her throne he dwindles into the figure of a man. A
flame smolders deep within the pupil of each eye.
“It is a woman this time,” her brother says.
“Man or woman, I care not which,” she replies.
“I want her for my child.”
“Did you bring the dice?”
He raises a hand. The skin is leprous pale, stretched thin over black bones, and each finger is tipped with a talon. In his palm he holds two dice, their faces marked with strange devices.
“I want her for my child,” he repeats, and smoke licks from his forked tongue. “She is beloved of my Enemy.”
“Roll the dice,” says the Lady, her eyes not breaking gaze with his.
“I want her, sister.”
“Roll the dice.”
He clatters them together in his hand, then sets them rolling across the mist-churned floor. Her gaze does not move from his face as he follows the progress of the dice. When at last they are still, she sees the flash of triumph pass over him.
“The game is done,” her brother says. “I have won.”
“She is yours, then,” the Lady replies. “Take her. But ’ware, brother! You’ve not won yet.”
Her brother snarls, revealing sharp teeth blackened by fire. “When I have through, it will not matter whether I win or lose! My Enemy will hurt with a pain that cannot be comforted. The heart of his Beloved will never be his.”
The Lady makes no reply to this, but her empty eyes flash one last time, meeting the burning coals of her brother’s gaze. “Take her, then, my brother. But touch not those who belong to me.”
“I shall honor our game, my sister.”
With those words, the Dragon withdraws and becomes once more his true self as he flees the borders of his sister’s land.
Una awoke to pain.
Something rough grated the skin of her hands, and she opened her eyes with a start to find Monster grooming her fingers as determinedly as he ever groomed his own paws. She sat up, pulling her hands away.
“Dragons eat you, Monster!” she hissed. But she spoke with relief.
The dream was already almost gone from her memory, but the heat remained.
She sat with her hands close to her chest for a long moment, staring down at her cat, who sat with his tongue out, his sightless face upturned to her. Then she looked at her hands.
They were red. A searing burn mark ran across the fingers of both, as though she had grabbed a hot fire iron. Her fingers throbbed. What could she have touched that had burned her so badly?
Though the room was still stuffy, Una found herself able to move. She slid out from under her coverlet and staggered across the room to her washbasin. Grimacing when her seared fingers brushed the cold porcelain, she poured water from the pitcher into the bowl, then plunged both hands in. The cool water helped, but the pain did not go away.
Muttering, she reached up to pull the curtains aside and open the window. A breeze wafted through the chamber, and the moon, now unhindered, poured light onto the floor. Una, bleary-eyed, gazed up at the night sky. On impulse she lifted her hands, dripping water from the basin. The red marks glowed as bright as the brands in her fireplace.
But even as she looked, they faded. As though the moonlight itself were a soothing ointment, the burning cooled, the redness dissipated and then was gone. The pain was a memory, and even that evaporated so that she wondered if she’d dreamed it.
The air on her face pleased her. The world was wet from an earlier spring shower, and the night was chilly, which had motivated Nurse to close the window before retiring. It was too early in spring to leave it open.
Yet the room had felt near to roasting just a few moments before. Leaving the windows open and resigning herself to a scolding from Nurse in the morning, Una climbed back into bed and pulled the coverlet up to her chin. Monster sniffed her cheek, his whiskers prickling against her skin, and she swatted him away. Then she closed her eyes.
The cat perched on the pillow beside her, silent as a statue, hardly moving save for the occasional twitch at the end of his tail. When at last he was certain she slept, Monster hopped off the bed, padded to the window, and slipped out into the night.
–––––––
Despite the lateness of the hour, in another wing of the palace, a fire still blazed bright in a marble fireplace. Prince Aethelbald sat before it, his back bent, his elbows resting on his knees, studying the moving flames, or perhaps gazing into the shadows behind them. The room was silent save for the snapping of embers, until a scratching outside his window drew his attention.
“Meea?”
Aethelbald rose from a chair and crossed to the window. The scratching increased, along with a persistent “Meea? Meeeowl?”
Drawing back the curtains and opening the latch, Aethelbald came face-to-face with a pink nose on a whiskered face. The cat slid gracefully into the room, took a seat on the comfortable chair where Aethelbald had just been sitting, and set to work grooming himself. Aethelbald folded his arms, watching the cat and waiting several patient moments before he said, “Yes?”
The cat gave his coat a last lick, then turned his ears to the Prince. “My lord,” he said, “she dreams of him.”
Aethelbald did not answer. He paced to the fireplace, resting his hand on the mantel as he gazed down into the flames. “Are you certain?” he asked at last.
“I smelled him,” the blind cat said. “I smelled death. I smelled burning.”
The Prince closed his eyes and nodded.
The cat hopped down from the chair and rubbed around the Prince’s ankles, purring and flicking his tail. “Must it be this way, my Prince?”
“Yes.”
“He has not found her yet.” The cat stopped purring, his nose twitching as he considered his words. At length he said, “I’ve become fond of the girl. I’d hate to see her . . .”
“No,” said the Prince quietly.
The cat lashed his tail once, then stalked a few paces away, keeping his ears trained back on Aethelbald. “I know,” he said. “I know you love her more than I could. I just wish . . . I wish I understood.”
“I will do everything I can for her,” Aethelbald said. “Everything.” He looked at the cat, his eyes full of compassion.
The cat felt the expression that he could not see and relaxed under the Prince’s gaze, purring once more. “Do you know what has brought on these nightmares?” he asked.
“Torkom was selling visions in the market today.”
“That old goblin?” The cat bristled. “What’s he doing so far from home?”
“The usual mischief.” Aethelbald’s face became hard. “She touched a dragon scale.”
“Torkom dared sell . . .” His lip curled back in a snarl. “Dragon-kissed fiend!”
Aethelbald turned back to the fireplace. The flames danced and played across his vision, writhing hungrily over the logs. The light shone off his cheekbones and brow but cast his eyes in shadows. “The fire stirs already, Sir Eanrin,” he said in a low voice. “Soon it will wake.”
He closed his eyes and made a quick motion with his hand. “Please return to the princess. Guard her dreams as best you can.”
The cat bowed after the manner of his kind, haughty and respectful at once. Then he whirled and leapt out the window, swallowed by moonlight and darkness.
5
Felix disliked few things in life more than sparring by himself in the practice yard. But his father’s guard never found time to practice with him, and his own attendants were hopelessly inept with a sword, or at least pretended to be whenever they sparred with their prince. Therefore, bright and early in the morning, Felix made his way alone to the barracks yard, his wooden practice sword strapped to his side, and began the basic stretching exercises.
He did not need to come here to practice, of course. Oriana Palace furnished a room where noblemen and their sons could study the arts of fencing and swordplay. But Felix did not feel that it was authentic to learn weaponry surrounded by gold-framed mirrors and stepping on a polished wooden
floor. He visited that room only to take lessons with his fencing master, a tight-faced old man who emphasized in a reedy voice that fencing was an art.
“What good will art do me on the battlefield?” Felix had once demanded.
The fencing master refused to answer. His mouth had squeezed into a severe wrinkled line across his face as he slapped the prince on the wrist with the flat of his sword and told him to assume first position.
Felix never practiced in that room unless absolutely necessary. Much better the dirt and grit of the guards’ practice yard, where real men pitted their skills against those of their peers and learned what it meant to prepare for war and battle and glory and honor. None of which had anything to do with art.
But the guards refused to spar with him. Felix suspected that they laughed at him behind his back when he practiced by himself against one of the wooden dummies suspended on poles at intervals across the practice yard.
Felix flexed his fingers and stretched his arms and legs, a scowl souring his face. He’d quarreled with his senior attendant before venturing out to the yard that morning, for the man had once more tried to insist that he should go to the noblemen’s room and practice with one of the barons’ sons or some such nincompoop. Felix had stood his ground, but on his way down to the yard he had been obliged to listen to whispers among his three attendants trailing behind him, and he suspected they were discussing his swordsmanship in unflattering terms.
Felix glared at the dummy before him, drew his wooden sword, and assumed first position before it, saluting first as he’d been trained. A snort of laughter exploded behind him somewhere, and he turned to glower over his shoulder, but none of the off-duty guardsmen in the yard were looking his way. No others were practicing at that moment, though a few men stretched their muscles near the fringes of the yard. Felix faced his inanimate opponent once more, raised his sword, and lunged. The dummy swung around on its pole, its own wooden sword flailing uselessly through the air. Felix jumped away, carrying his leading foot back behind his rear foot and touching on the balls of his feet. He executed the maneuver perfectly, he thought, and wondered if any of his father’s guard would notice.