Rosalind looked toward Nicholas, at his long thick black hair, clubbed now at the nape of his neck, and that hardness about his mouth, the promise of infinite violence and cruelty. She felt also the promise of wholeness, perhaps of a long-missing justice. He was now of the Pale, he was now of Blood Rock. This wizard was unfettered; he was at home.
She said to Belenus, her voice imperious, the air shimmering around her, hot and alive, her red hair a fiery nimbus around her head, "You will lead me to Epona right now. I know that I must proceed alone and that my lord must remain here. There is not much time left. What must be done must happen now or else times can overlap and there would be confusion even I cannot fix."
Rosalind felt incredible power flow through her. She embraced it, felt it grow stronger, felt herself one with it. She said to Nicholas, her voice calm, remote, "I am more powerful than the three blood moons. I could lift them out of the black sky and juggle them. Perhaps I could even sing to you as I juggled the moons."
In the next moment, Rosalind stood in the center of a vast stark white chamber. It was as blinding a white as she and Nicholas had experienced at Wyverly Chase—had that happened only the night before? Or a hundred eons ago? There were many windows with white gauzy curtains blowing into the chamber. The windows were not open.
On the far side of the room stood a narrow bed draped in white gauze hangings. The hangings, like the draperies, billowed over it.
She called out, her voice sharp, impatient, "Epona! Come here immediately. I want Prince Egan!" Time passed. "Epona!"
There was only the dead white and silence.
Rosalind wasn't alone. She was standing tall, smiling, atop a large flat platform. Beside her was a smooth flat stone, an altar. On top of it lay a man, his arms and legs chained down. He was naked, unconscious, and it was Nicholas.
His eyes flew open, dark, nearly black. He smiled. "I will kill you," he said. "I will kill you."
"No, you will not." She raised the knife in her hand and brought it down in a firm clean line, and stabbed it deep into his heart. She jerked out the knife, then cut away the flesh. She reached into his chest and cut out his still-beating heart. She raised her head to the heavens and chanted words that had no meaning to her, and then she flung the heart away from her. A great wind came up and blew her hair away from her face, plastered her flowing white gown against her.
She looked down at the man, dead by her hand. And she saw that it was indeed Nicholas. She had killed him just as Richard had seen her do in his dream. She sank to her knees, blind with hollowed pain. She felt her own life seeping out of her, and welcomed it.
Silence fell around her, into her, pain roared through her head. Then she felt something move inside her, and it was awareness, and it was knowledge.
And she knew.
She stood and yelled, "A lie, it was all a lie! You will not fool me again, Epona! Show yourself, you bloody witch!"
Epona seemed to fly in through one of the large windows, though it appeared to remain closed, and the white draperies flowed about her until she was standing directly in front of Rosalind . She was gowned all in white. The material welled up, then settled around her, leaving one very white shoulder bare. Her hair was black as a moonless sky. She looked very young and very beautiful, her mouth as red as the blood tracking down the fortress stones.
Epona looked her up and down, sneered. "You are too late, witch. I had told Belenus to delay you and so he did, because he, like all the others, fears me. Yes, it is too late and you have failed. Sarimund has failed."
"Of course I am not too late, you witless creature," Rosalind said. "That illusion—you plucked it right out of my head, didn't you? You also gave it to Richard Vail in a dream to terrify him."
Epona laughed.
Rosalind said, "Well, no matter now. At last I realized the truth and you will not fool me again. I heard you represented beauty, speed, and sexual vigor." "And bravery!"
"As you wish. Perhaps some of that could be true. However, you strongly resemble your mother. You look like a horse, albeit a beautiful horse, perhaps an Arabian."
Epona flew at her, her nails sharp as daggers. "You bitch! I am a beautiful woman, all say so."
Rosalind laughed as she held up her hand. Epona's nose smashed against her palm. Epona tried to draw back, but Rosalind's palm remained stuck to her nose. She laughed again. "Not only do you look like a horse, your power is pitiful. Where is Prince Egan?"
"Let me go or I will say nothing!"
"Ah, is that a neigh I heard? By all the gods, I pray Egan does not look like you, Epona." Rosalind drew back her hand from Epona's nose and wiped her palm on her cloak.
"Bring him to me now."
Epona cursed under her breath, a strange mixture of ancient Celtic and Latin words, all of them crude and graphic. Rosalind gave her a very cold smile. She felt viciousness sing through her blood. "I will not ask you again, Epona. I will reverse the spell of the witmas tea if you do not obey me. Ah, I wonder what you really look like?"
Epona vanished. Rosalind remained standing in the middle of the room. The air was silent and still. The curtains were no longer blowing inward from those closed windows. She heard a child's voice, coming closer. A boy child, and he was speaking. "Who am I to meet? There isn't anyone left that I have not met."
Rosalind listened, and waited. Suddenly he was in front of her, arms crossed over his chest, and he looked her up and down. He was perhaps eight, a finely knit boy, dark eyes, handsome. "Who are you, woman? What do you want with me? She said only that you were another stupid witch, not even from the Pale, and she would dig out your ugly eyes with her nails. She said she would drown you into eternity. She is very powerful. I would believe her."
"I am Isabella. You are Prince Egan, Sarimund's son?"
"Yes, who else would I be?"
She smiled down at the handsome little boy. "No, you are yourself, of course." Rosalind studied the boy. Did Nicholas look like him when he'd been a boy? They didn't look alike, precisely, but there were similarities, the olive tone of their skin, the dark, dark hair and eyes.
"I do not recognize you. Why do you wish to see me?"
I am in time to save him, to save Nicholas, and she wanted to shout with the relief of it. She whispered, "Nicholas."
51
"No, I am not this Nicholas. I am Egan. Why are you here, Isabella?"
"I am hare to save you from Epona."
"How can you possibly save me when I can outrun you, I can blight you into a white bug?"
Ah, the arrogance in his young voice. But it was Nicholas, she knew to her soul that it was, at least here in the Pale it was. She smiled. "Did Epona not tell you?" She could not bring herself to call the witch his mother, not when Epona wanted to murder him.
Egan said, "No, she never tells me anything of use. I wish to become a man. Sometimes I think that I have been this small size for far too long a time. But who can be certain of anything?"
"You will become a man, I swear it." And soon, she thought, soon now.
Suddenly, Epona was standing beside him, shaking her fist at him. "I am Epona. I am your mother."
"More's the pity," said the little boy.
"You will never be a man, you will never displace me!" In the next instant, Epona drew a knife and lunged toward the hay.
"No!" No time, no time. Rosalind hurled herself in front of the child, and felt the knife sink swift and smooth into her chest. She felt it sink into her heart, rend it clear in two, and settle deep inside her. She felt a great lassitude, a sense that time had somehow stopped, and she was trapped within it. She dropped slowly to the floor. She looked up at Prince Egan, who had fallen to his knees beside her, his small fingers hovering over the knife, but he did not touch it. A smile came out from deep inside her. "I have succeeded. You will be a man."
He said over and over, his hands fluttering over the knife, afraid to touch it, "No, you cannot die." His voice broke into a sob. He looked up at
his mother. "You wanted to kill me. but she saved me. She gave her life to save me. You are more evil than even I believed."
"Now it is your turn, whelp," Epona said, and suddenly another knife appeared in her hand. "Your turn and then I shall rule and all will be as it was supposed to be. I always told Sarimund his spells were worth spit."
She raised the knife, but Egan didn't run. He jumped to his feet and faced her. He said, "You cannot kill me, you cannot. I am a wizard. I will not let you," and he pointed his finger at her and began to chant.
"You are a little nothing!" She raised the knife to plunge it into his heart, but the sound of running feet made her jerk up.
Nicholas ran into the white room, an ancient sword in his hand. He saw Rosalind lying on her back, so still, lifeless, a knife sticking from her heart. A small boy was leaning over her, his hand pressed against her shoulder.
"No!" He threw back his head and howled.
"Get out of here! She failed, you have no business here. He dies now, and there is nothing you can do about it, nothing!"
Nicholas felt pain so great fill him, choke him, he thought he would die with it. But he forced himself to look away from Rosalind , to look at the mad witch, at Epona, holding her knife poised and ready, knowing she'd killed Rosalind , knowing she would kill Egan as well if he did not stop her. It made the pain freeze. Now all he knew was wild rage. He wanted her blood on his hands, the smell of it in his nostrils.
Nicholas saw the witch rise off the floor, her white gown billowing around her, and fly directly at him, snarling, white teeth glistening. But now there wasn't a knife in her hand. Instead she held, in one thin white hand, a short ink-black spear, its tip so sharp it seemed to split the air.
Nicholas shouted, "Black witch, your demon lover gave you the sword, didn't he? Sent it up to you from Hell. What did he expect you to do with it—eat it with your hay?"
Epona hesitated a moment, screamed curses, and aimed the demon sword at him. Bright orange light shot from the end of it, lighting the still air, forming terrifying shapes.
He looked at his own sword, a very old sword, perhaps older than Captain Jared Vail, its handle bejeweled.
He then stared up at the creature who had killed his wife, his wife who'd willingly given her life for the boy. "You are a monstrous evil," he said, voice as soft as the night air. "It ends here, and I am the one to end it." And he leapt upward, slashing with his sword.
But Epona leapt up another five feet into the air, out of reach.
He was in the Pale. He could do anything at all. He rose straight up, his sword aimed at her. "Come fight me, witch, or perhaps you wish to gallop away from me?"
She hurled curses at his head and Nicholas flew nearer to her, only about six feet away from her, and he taunted her, laughed at her—"Your face is the color of fresh dead snow, and all those billowing white skirts—you are ridiculous, witch."
Epona howled at him. "You are nothing more than a mortal loosed upon us who believes himself powerful, but you are so new I can see the wet on your flanks!" She froze, moved farther away from him, hovered, then landed gracefully on the white floor.
He looked down at her, bored as a man six feet in the air could look. She yelled, "I did not mean to say flanks! A new colt has wet flanks, not a human."
Nicholas neighed down at her.
Epona suddenly wore bright red, the skirts still billowing out in an unfelt wind. She rose straight up again, pointed the demon spear at him, mumbled something very, very old, and hurled it at him.
His hurled his owr! sword. It clashed hard against the demon spear in midair, both hitting their tips together; then as one, they exploded, filling the room with a rainbow of lights. Then Nicholas dove for her, his hands outstretched.
She screamed, "No!" and in her hand was a knife. "You damnable wizard! You're dead!"
Nicholas simply thought it and the ancient sword was once again in his hand. He knocked her knife aside and plunged the sword through her, its point sticking out of her back a good foot.
She hung there in the air, staring down at the sword thrust through her chest. Her surprise was plain on her face. She looked up at him. "This cannot happen, it cannot. My demon chant, none can overcome it, but you have killed me."
"Yes," he said. "It is a very old, very powerful sword."
"But my demon spear—"
"Naught but weak and pitiful evil," Nicholas said, and reached out. He pulled the sword out of her body. She hung, as if suspended by unseen strings, until finally she fell onto the floor, on her back. He hovered over her and watched her eyes slowly go blank into death. He watched white drops of blood pool out around her body, seep into her gown, not red now, but white again. And the white mixed together. Her face began to lose its beauty, its youth. She began to change, her flesh growing slack, wrinkles digging into her cheeks, her forehead. She continued to wither until nothing but a skeleton lay on the floor, swathed in white. Then there was nothing save a small pool of white blood where her back had once lain.
Nicholas dropped to the floor and raced to Rosalind . The boy was gone. The knife was still in her chest. "No," he whispered and pressed his face against hers. "No, this was not to happen. You cannot die. You give your own life for the boy's? No, surely that was not to happen!"
"Nicholas, could you please pull out the knife? It is very cold inside me."
He jerked back, stared down at her. He was shaking his head, then suddenly—
"Yes, you remember what Sarimund told me. No evil can touch me. And so it didn't, just blotted out the world for a moment and sent me into darkness. But I am here again and I am all right. Please, pull out the knife. I tried to order it out of me, but I couldn't, and my hands don't want to move. I don't think I yet have the strength."
He couldn't, couldn't—he grasped the hilt and jerked it out of her. He stared down. There was no blood, only the rent in her white wool gown.
"Ah," she said, still not moving, "that feels much better."
He went back onto his knees. "I believed that monster had killed you."
"No, no. You killed her, just as you were supposed to, just as I knew you would. I was conscious, I simply couldn't move, couldn't speak. Where is Egan?"
"I saw the boy leaning over you when I came in, but then he was gone."
"Well, now, that makes sense, doesn't it?"
"Nothing makes sense in this accursed place."
Rosalind lightly touched her fingers to her chest. The gown was whole once again. "Ah, I am coming back to myself." Slowly, she sat upright, smiled at his hand cupping her elbow.
"You swear to me you are all right?"
"Oh, yes. Egan is gone, Nicholas, because you cannot meet yourself, even here in the Pale. You know that."
Suddenly they heard Taranis trumpet.
Nicholas and Rosalind walked out of the strange stark white room. But there was no endless corridor with statues of warriors and rooms filled with colorful cushions. No, they were once again standing on the ramparts of Blood Rock.
They raised their faces to see Taranis hovering above them, his wings whipping the rivulets of blood outward on the black rocks, making them splatter to the rampart stones.
Taranis raised his huge head and trumpeted again, the sound echoing off the rocks, making the sky lighten to a pale gray color. The wind died. All was silent, save for the echo of Taranis's shattering bellow. She knew all could hear it— every Tiber, every Lasis, even the yellow Sillow tree. And the wizards and witches.
He sang to them, "All is well. All is well. You saved Prince Egan, mistress, as you were supposed to. Ah, Sarimund, finally, his spell succeeded.
"To know a modern man can kill a monster, it is gratifying. It is over. The mistress saved the prince, and you, the man, paid your debt to her. It is over and Prince Egan will rule as he was meant to rule."
Nicholas smiled at her. "I wonder how high I can jump here in the Pale?"
"As high as the eggplant clouds. After all, yo
u can fly." She couldn't help herself, she threw back her head and laughed. "Ah, Nicholas," she shouted, and threw herself against him, her arms locked around his back.
He kissed her once, twice, unable to stop until Taranis cleared his mighty throat in what sounded like a muted roar. Nicholas released her, stepped back, and raised his head to the heavens. He spoke in a voice that shook the very rocks of the fortress. "Sarimund! She saved the boy who is your son. I paid my debt. Epona is dead. You heard Taranis, now Egan will rule over the Pale as it was meant to happen.
"All will be different now, all will proceed now in the Pale on a very fine path indeed."
He nodded, as if hearing a reply. He looked back at his wife and smiled at her. "Do you hear the rumbling? It is time for us to leave. The boy is now a man. It is time for the change to come." He gave her a crooked grin. "As much as I would like to, I cannot meet him. What would happen were the two of us to come face-to-face? I do not know and I don't want to know."
Nicholas lifted her onto Taranis's back. The dragon lifted into the sky above Blood Rock and hovered. He sang to them.
A new season for the Pale, A new life force to leaven the plains, A calm darkness to bless the nights. And wisdom to light the spirit.
As they rose higher, they watched as the fortress began to tumble in on itself. Black rocks began to crash down the side of Mount Olyvan, the sound like mad thunder, deafening them. The turrets tumbled, the arches split asunder, the air was thick with rubble and dirt.
They watched until Blood Rock was no more, until the top of Mount Olyvan stood quite bare. Slowly, they saw Mount Olyvan begin to green, wildflowers spring up, bushes with incredible color begin to cover the mountain. There were yellow Sillow trees spouting from the very rock itself, glowing bright.
"Ah, the new kingdom," Taranis sang, "and a new leader for our land." And they watched a white fortress build itself, the stones fitting themselves together, rising into the air to great heights, brilliant white turrets springing upward, gleaming beneath a new sun that glistened over all the land.