Oeric focused his awful white eyes on Lionheart once more. “You can remain here and help me,” he said quietly.
A chill passed over Lionheart’s soul. He could remain, yes. Again, such a lovely, noble excuse. The knight himself suggested it, so how could it be wrong?
“No,” he whispered. “I’m going to Rose Red.”
Oeric nodded. Then he took Lionheart by the shoulder and led him through the halls. Palace Var dared not try to deceive him but opened its portals until they came to the wide gates. There, Oeric pointed across the wide plain.
“That way, young mortal,” he said. Lionheart looked where he indicated. There was nothing to see but more gray plain, forever and ever to the skyline. “That is the Path you must take.”
“It leads nowhere.”
“Walk that way, Lionheart, holding your purpose firm in your heart, and the Path will open before you. But bear this high.” He took hold of the bent blade in Lionheart’s hand and raised it up. Its metal was so blackened with ruin that Lionheart half expected it to break off in the huge knight’s grip. But it didn’t. “Bear this high, mortal. And hurry!”
Lionheart nodded, swallowing hard. Then, stretching the sword out before him, he ran the way Oeric had pointed. Futility snatched at him as he pelted across that flat terrain, never gaining on that far horizon, afraid to look back and find that he had put no distance between himself and the palace.
Then he was on the Path.
He didn’t know when or how it happened exactly, but Lionheart knew that it was true. As though someone had grabbed the end of his sword and pulled him along, faster than any man could possibly run. The world on his peripheral vision went hazy, and he sped along as if carried by the wind itself, hardly seeing where he went.
Then he saw the gateway.
He knew it at once, for he had seen it several times before. It was a cave, the same cave he had found with Rose Red in the mountains when he was a boy. Shaped like a wolf’s head, yawning and black. The sight of it then had been enough to make him shiver.
It was a gateway to Death’s realm.
He hesitated only a moment. Then, setting his jaw, he pressed onward, right into that gaping opening. Darkness surrounded him, as sudden as the Midnight dragged behind the howling Black Dogs. The Path led him down, but it led him straight without any twists or turns. Lionheart was far from Arpiar, far from anywhere he had ever known.
Bebo had said he would have the chance to choose.
A lantern glimmered from a solitary gravestone. He saw it but did not slow his pace. He must stop for nothing, or he might yet change his mind.
A red light appeared before him, and he raced for it as hard as he could, pulled by an unseen force. He thought he saw goblins but was not certain. The stench of dragons filled his nostrils. In the tail of his eye, Lionheart thought he glimpsed Iubdan and warriors of Rudiobus, but his gaze was fixed ahead.
Both near and far at once, impossible to reach in time, he saw the throne of Death. He saw Rose Red bound in its seat.
Bebo had said he would have the chance to choose.
His choice was made. Lionheart opened his mouth and roared as he charged.
Oeric watched Lionheart disappear beyond his line of sight. “Lights Above shield him,” he whispered, then turned to face Palace Var once more.
The palace shivered under his gaze.
He strode into its passages like a king returning home. He wasn’t king here, and Var knew it. But he was born a prince, and Var knew that as well. It wanted to resist him as he navigated its long passages, wanted to bewilder his mind with its beautiful scents, to send him doubling and tripling back on himself until he went mad with confusion.
It didn’t dare.
“Tell him I’m coming,” Oeric said to the trembling walls. “Tell him I will find him, wherever he has hidden himself.”
With those words, he began to fling open each door he came to, scanning the sparse, cold rooms and moving on without a word. Even the ghostly roses hid their faces before him.
The silver moonlight spread throughout the Village, and its light was painfully bright in the eyes of both the goblins and the soldiers of Rudiobus. They lowered their weapons and shielded their eyes, shying away from each other. A terrible hush filled the cavern as all, with hands over their faces, turned their gazes to the skylight.
“Yes,” Vahe whispered. “Yes, look down and see, Hymlumé. See and remember what your children may do!”
The moon’s silver disk slid over the skylight hole in an exact fit, her white eye filling the space, and she looked down.
“Remember,” Vahe hissed.
And suddenly, the light changed.
A stain began to spread over the face of the full moon, a stain like pooling blood. As it spread, the moonlight turned from white to red, the blood red of pain.
Imraldera stood with her knife clutched in her hand, and she felt a sob catch in her throat at the sight. Moonblood! She remembered the night, remembered the fear of the sky filled with suffering, and the falling stars flaming as they struck the earth.
Eanrin covered his face, his mind calling back images more vivid than any other in his memory, of the White Lady sobbing and pressing her hands to the wounds her own children dealt her.
Iubdan, tears streaming into his black beard, collapsed to his knees. All the host of golden-haired soldiers did the same.
Varvare saw the spreading red glow, but she could not tear her eyes away from the unicorn’s deep gaze. For as the moon shone red in remembrance, so the unicorn transformed from gleaming white purity to the hue of blood, spreading from the tip of its horn to the ends of its dainty, cloven feet. For the first time, she saw that it was not the beautiful being she had always seen. It was old and it was fallen. Like a meteor shooting through the atmosphere, so the one-horned beast flamed where it stood, and blood stained the end of its horn.
“You,” Varvare whispered, staring at him. “You did this? To Lady Hymlumé?”
Maiden, it said, and its voice was terrible in her mind. Terrible because the children of Hymlumé, even those fallen, could not know sorrow; yet Varvare heard sorrow pouring from its heart. Maiden, will you kill me?
“I can’t,” she said. “You know I can’t.”
Vahe stood above them, and his voice was harsh when he said, “Do what you must, slave. I command you in the name of Life-in-Death.”
Forgive me, the unicorn said, lowering its horn. It took a step toward her, and she felt the tip touch her breast just where her heart was wildly beating. Slowly, gently, the sharp horn pierced her skin. A single drop of blood fell down the front of her ragged dress, and the princess gasped.
A scrape of claws on hard stone. The Bane of Corrilond moaned in her sleep. A slit of flaming orange pierced her eyelids.
“More!” Vahe cried. “Spill it all!”
The unicorn braced itself.
And suddenly the still hush in the cavern was shattered by a bawling roar. Vahe whirled about with a curse, the unicorn startled back, and all the goblins and folk of Rudiobus turned to see a figure clad in a dirty nightshirt rushing with inhuman speed across the crowded floor without a care for those whom he crashed into and toppled as he went. Up the dais steps he flew, a bent and broken sword raised above his head. With a last cry he brought the sword crashing down on the unicorn’s blood-tipped horn.
The one-horned beast reared up, its hooves dashing the air. Vahe swore and leapt back, his stolen face contorted into that of a monster. Varvare cried out: “Lionheart!”
Lionheart, carried forward from the force of his blow, landed at her feet. Pushing himself upright on his knees, he gazed into her face and saw her as she truly was, beneath all the veils, beneath all the enchantments.
“Rosie!” he said. “I’ve found—”
His face went rigid before her gaze, his eyes widening. Then a slow trickle of blood slid from the corner of his mouth.
The unicorn’s horn pierced him between his shoulder blades,
on through his heart and out the other side. Varvare stared at that dripping tip, then watched it withdraw, as silently and neatly as it had penetrated his body.
Lionheart drew a deep, gurgling gasp. Then he fell to one side, and his face was white with death.
Varvare stared at his fallen form, unbelieving. Then she heard her own voice crying and felt her own limbs wrenching against the bonds that held her.
The unicorn, its body shivering with fire, shook its head swiftly, and blood spattered from the tip of its horn. It turned to the princess once more.
5
Not a soul remained in the twisting passages of Palace Var, unless one counted the lost souls of roses hiding in the crevices and shadows. So confident was Vahe in his own enchantments. All the hosts of Var were emptied to follow him to the Village, and Oeric met no one but his own shadow as he walked those unfamiliar passages. The palace itself watched him with unseen, malevolent eyes, but it dared not interfere with his progress.
Vahe was there somewhere, Oeric knew. Of course, most of his spirit now inhabited that poor young prince of Parumvir. To face that prince and kill him would weaken Vahe but not put an end to his third life. No, the parasitic vine must be ripped out at the root.
Palace Var offered no lights in its long passages. The iron sky prevented sunlight from filtering through rough slashes in the rock that served as windows, and all the torches set in their racks along the wall were unlit. But Oeric needed no light to navigate that darkness. He walked with his head low, like a hound sniffing out its quarry, his knife at the ready.
He came to the assembly hall, which he had seen only once before, long ago, when Vahe tried to bargain with him, tried to offer him a place as his officer in the war he planned to wage on the worlds. Oeric, who was then but a nameless outcast, had tried to kill his brother before the eyes of a dozen or more guards and under the gazes of their stone ancestors. A foolish, hot-blooded act.
He’d failed and returned to imprisonment in Carrun Corgar. He’d lived to commit his great sin.
Oeric snarled as he stepped into that hall, and all the statues looked down on him and writhed in sudden panic at the sight of his ugly face. “I am forgiven,” he said as he marched down that long, dark aisle. “I am forgiven, and I have a name.”
The former kings and queens shivered and tried to draw back from him, though their feet were imprisoned in the blocks of marble and their stone hands bound to the ceiling they held in place above. Rather than beautiful, noble faces, Oeric saw the twisted features of monsters—monsters rendered all the more hideous for the malice in their stone eyes. Only the last one did not try to hide herself when she could not be hidden. Though there was fear in her face, she laughed at the sight of him.
He stopped at her foot, before the empty throne of Arpiar.
“Greetings, Mother,” he said.
She shook her head in more silent laughter, her evil eyes squinting down at him.
“Tell me where I may find Vahe.”
“He is too strong for you, my outcast child!” The memory of her voice whispered in his mind. “I chose him over you. I gave him his strength.”
“And I will live forever grateful for that choice,” said the ugly knight. “Tell me where he is.”
“I should have killed you both. I wanted to. I gave my handmaidens the command.”
“Where is Vahe, Mother?”
“But the soothsayer said I must let you live, and I listened to her words. Great destinies were bound up in your lives, she said. Both of your lives, though to one I gave all power, and the other I stripped of everything and cast into darkness.”
Oeric turned from her leering face to study the empty assembly hall. He could feel the workings of Var using its last strength to shield its master from his sight.
“One will wake the Sleeper, the soothsayer said, and be gifted with fire.”
He saw the tremble in the air around the empty throne. Vahe would have a secret chamber, buried in the heart of Palace Var where no one could reach him. But the heart of Var need not be a physical location. He put out his hand, stretching toward the throne.
“But the other will serve a power greater still,” said the memory of the old queen. “And the power he serves will extinguish the fire of his brother.”
“So it shall be, Mother,” Oeric said, taking another step toward the empty throne.
His hand touched an invisible door.
As soon as he felt it, it shed its veils and became visible before him. They were double doors, taller than any three men, and carved all over with roses. But he impatiently waved aside that illusion and saw instead the faces of trapped spirits carved in expressions of sorrow, frustration, and even agony. He tried the latch and found it locked. His mouth set in a grim line, and he drew himself together. Then, with an animal roar, Oeric flung himself at those great doors, heaving his shoulder against them. They shuddered but stood. He flung himself again, and a crack ran between them. A third time, and the bolt on the far side burst, and both doors swung wide.
Inside on a throne sat the King of Arpiar’s own body. Here alone did his veils still work, for Oeric saw a beautiful face, smooth golden skin, elegant but strong hands resting on the arms of the throne. A climbing rose twined about it, but the blossoms were dead.
Oeric raised his knife.
“Kill him now,” said the memory of his mother, “while he sits helpless. Then you will be a true King of Arpiar.”
“I will never be king,” Oeric said.
In a loud voice, he cried out his brother’s name.
Vahe raged.
His shrieking voice filled the cavern and continued to fill it to overflowing, and the red light of the moon shuddered in response.
“Kill her! Kill her, slave!” he screamed. “Don’t stand there staring. You were given to me by Life-in-Death, and I have a promise to claim! Kill the maid now. This fool is nothing.”
The unicorn stood as stone, gazing at the princess bound to Death’s throne. For her eyes were fixed upon the fallen form of the dead man.
His blood was already beginning to congeal. His face was rigid in death. But the Princess Varvare, her own voice now silenced, looked upon him, and a world of emotions broke across her face.
The unicorn spoke to her.
You love him.
She gave no answer, but it read the response in her eyes.
He hurt you.
She swallowed. Even the pain of her own wound was forgotten in that moment.
He betrayed you, even to death.
Her eyes closed, and two silver lines of tears streamed down her face.
But you love him.
“Leo,” she whispered.
Somehow, through the din of Vahe’s screams, through the thick curtain of blood-light streaming through the window above, the unicorn heard something it had not heard in many dark ages.
It heard its mother’s voice.
Beyond the Final Water falling,
My blessed songs recalling
A promise given that my children should be found.
Won’t you return to me?
It turned its fathomless eyes from the maiden to the skylight above. It saw the Lady Hymlumé, and she bled from many wounds just as she had the night her children pierced her with their horns. But she gazed on the one-horned beast with love in her shining eyes.
A silver voice sang:
You are still my child.
Won’t you return to me?
“Kill her, slave!” Vahe cried, his voice faint and far behind the music that only the unicorn heard. “Kill her! Your master commands you!”
The one-horned beast turned away. It passed down the black steps of the dais, its ears deaf to the King of Arpiar’s voice screaming, “Come back! If you walk away from your chains, you will surely die!”
It passed between the cowering folk of Rudiobus and the quivering goblins of Arpiar. It passed near the blind poet, who turned his ravaged face away. It passed a lady knight, who alone
of all who watched saw it for what it was in that moment, fair and shining and white as pure starlight. And she too drew away from it, filled with fear.
It passed between all of these and approached the one at the end of the cavern.
The Bane of Corrilond watched the unicorn’s progress through her slitted eye. Dreams still filled her vision, dreams once held dear, now burning and dying and burning and dying again. She saw the beast like a bull with a fanged face and its sword-sharp horn approaching her, and it was like the death of her dreams personified. Though sleep still clouded her mind, she raised herself upright, her massive claws tearing into the rock beneath her, her fire suddenly billowing up in her throat.
The goblins and the soldiers of Rudiobus screamed as one voice and fell over one another as they scrambled away from the rising red mountain of the dragon. But she did not see them. Her burning gaze was fixed on the one-horned beast. She, who had not known fear since accepting her Father’s gift, shuddered where she sat, and her massive wings beat the stale, hot air.
Still the unicorn approached, moving with that world-destroying pace of stars.
The Bane of Corrilond flamed.
Throughout her sleep her furnace had built, and now its heat was enough to knock flat all who stood in that room. But the fire was focused on one small place, that place where the unicorn stood. It took her fire, absorbing it, but still more came, straight from that hollow where her broken heart no longer beat. She stood, bracing her powerful forelegs as the fire billowed from her.
The folk of Rudiobus jumped behind sleeping dragons, using the scale-covered hides to protect themselves. The blind poet grabbed the dame’s hand and dragged her with him behind a stone, shielding her with his cloak and body, though the heat scalded his skin. The princess on the throne turned away, her face writhing in pain that had nothing to do with the heat. Vahe alone stood firm and watched with eyes that saw the death of his own dream. For his vow could no longer be fulfilled.