Moonblood

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  Taking in deep breaths of steamy air, Lionheart pulled himself to his feet and began a search for a way down into the valley. He had a good head for heights; during his five-year exile he had taken long sea voyages and learned to enjoy climbing in the rigging, that dizzying world above the decks. But this unearthly plunge to the river below gave new meaning to heights and depths. Every time he peered down, his head swam with the perspective and he was obliged to back away quickly. Sometimes an unreasonable sensation came over him, a compulsion to cast himself over the side, to cease struggling against so great a fall and succumb to it. But those were the thoughts of a lunatic, and he shook them away as best he could. Once, to steady himself, he reached out and grabbed one of the flowering vines looping down from the trees around him. The vine let out a sudden purring sound, sweet as a kitten, and started to wrap around his wrist in a most endearing manner. But Lionheart, not appreciating the gesture, screamed and dropped his hold. He ignored the sad mewling the vine made as he left it behind, and took care to touch no more of its kind.

  He could find no descending pathway into the valley. Everywhere the cliff face was equally sheer. There could be no climbing down; he knew that beyond doubt. But what other option did he have? He paused. The sun moved overhead from midday toward late afternoon. This in itself brought Lionheart surprising comfort, for it was more like his world than was the Wood Between. The sun traced hours in shadows, and evening would follow afternoon just as it did in the Near World.

  Only, when he stopped to think about it, the idea of spending the night in this forest was no comfort at all.

  Though the heat was so tremendous that he removed his cloak and outer layers of clothing, leaving them behind in the forest, Lionheart began to shiver. “You must find Rose Red,” he told himself. “This is no time to fall to pieces. You’ve been through much worse! You must find Rose Red.”

  Suddenly, the humming of the forest stopped.

  The abrupt silence roared in his ears like a thousand battle drums, and Lionheart felt his heart stop beating for an instant. Every muscle in his body tensed, though he knew not why.

  Then he heard breathing. Deep, deep breathing.

  He ran.

  He did not look behind to see what pursued him; he only knew he was pursued and ran faster than he had ever run in his life. Right along the edge of that terrible drop, without a care for his footing, he fled. And when a tall, slender tree obstructed his way, he did not slacken his pace or turn aside but ran right up the trunk and into the highest branches he could manage. Only then did he realize that his body screamed for air, that his side was ready to split in pain.

  He looked down into the blazing eyes of the Tiger.

  7

  Where the dragons dwelt, all fires were dead.

  They crouched in the darkness, their human forms doubled up under the weight of shadows and writhing dreams.

  He’s gone. Our Father.

  They had felt the anguish of his passing, and all had roared in death pains. When the roaring stopped, darkness fell, and none could move to replenish the flames.

  The yellow-eyed dragon hid his face in his hands, wondering if this was death. It was worse than he’d imagined. He sat in the interminable darkness, burning inside, alone though surrounded by his kinfolk. His veins pulsed with the tension of expectation for he knew not what; expectation without hope. His mind spun in an endless cycle of memories.

  “Take my fire and lose your chains.”

  In his spirit’s eye, he stood once more in shadows he himself had sought. Before him loomed his King, black and enormous, a mountain of hot ash. Those red eyes burned into his soul and smiled.

  “Take my fire, and you’ll never bow to him again.”

  “I’ll never bow down!” he cried. “Never! I am my own master.”

  “Your own master, free to choose your own chains. Take my fire.”

  “Very well. Give it to me.”

  Then the burning kiss on his forehead. The pain of lava flowing over his body, burning away everything that he loathed in himself, every weakness, every frailty, every kindness that led only to hurt. He screamed in agony, and the scream turned to a roar full of flame.

  “I’ll choose my own chains!”

  “Bow to me.”

  And he bowed.

  But now his Father was gone. He and all his brothers and sisters were alone in the darkness. Worse than death, he lay trapped in chains of his own choosing.

  There were many gateways that led to the Village of Dragons. For different people, be they mortal or immortal, that gate appeared differently. Some saw it as a cave shaped like a great wolf’s head. For some, it was a dark window in a house that was once a home but was no longer. The gateways to the Village were beyond number, but when a man saw one, he did not doubt what he had seen.

  This made little difference to the dragons’ privacy. No living person, whether in right mind or otherwise, would willingly pass through the gates and step onto the descending path to the Village of Dragons and the Dark Water. Thus the dragons remained undisturbed. Not one of their kind had been seen since the death of their Father. The Faerie folk could only pray that so it would remain. And they avoided those gateways as children avoid a murderer’s grave.

  Except for Vahe.

  Strong in his new body, he walked with his queen along Faerie Paths out of Arpiar and into the Wood Between. For a moment they stood upon an old plank bridge spanning a small stream. Then Vahe took the queen’s hand and led her swiftly uphill. In the Near World, a palace in ruins stood at that hilltop. But in the Between, Goldstone Wood extended over all save the very crest of the hill. Here too there were ruins, not of a palace but of a once-tall tower of black stone.

  A doorway remained standing. All around it was forest and the rubble of old stone. But through that doorway was . . . darkness.

  “It has been many centuries since I saw Carrun Corgar,” said the king with a smile. “What a rundown little heap it is. Nothing like in my day!”

  Anahid made no reply. She recognized the stench coming through the door and knew where the gateway led.

  “Come, my sweet,” said the king and drew her after him, passing over the threshold.

  Goldstone Wood disappeared, as did the hill. They stood instead upon a wide, empty desert. This was the form the Pathway of Death took for Vahe and his wife. A landscape as barren as Arpiar was lush. The air was stale and hot.

  Tucking Anahid’s arm under his own, Vahe strode across the burning sand. Following the Path, they crossed miles upon miles upon miles of blighted land in moments. They traveled with no escort but each other, Vahe glorying in his freedom as, for the first time in centuries, he escaped the prison of his own kingdom.

  Anahid’s eyes were sharper than her husband’s. She glimpsed a gravestone a few yards from where they walked, and on this gravestone gleamed a lantern of purest silver. The queen bowed her head and did not look again at that light. It was not meant for her. She would follow her master to the Village of Dragons without hope.

  They came to more ruins. So old were these and so blasted by wind and sun that a mortal eye would not be able to discern what once had been mighty Nadire Tansu, the Queen’s City of Corrilond. It was nothing but piles of boulders and rocks, half hidden in sand, colorless save for the Desert’s red stain.

  Vahe led Anahid into the depths of the rubble. Everywhere lingered the smell of death and burning, though the fires were dormant. Anahid trembled at the scent. It had haunted her nightmares these many ages now. Fire, and two bright yellow eyes staring at her out of the immense darkness of memory. She shuddered now as her husband led her through the narrow passages, away from the sun, and down, down into the caverns below the ruined city. And she wondered . . .

  “Magnificent!” Vahe exclaimed. They came suddenly to the mouth of a tunnel and gazed down into the cavern. Below lay the Village of Dragons, silent save for the echo of Vahe’s voice. “Behold, my darling,” Vahe said, sweeping his arm as though he
would grab the whole scene close. “Behold your husband’s army!”

  Anahid looked and shivered, for in the darkness of the cavern her eyes could see as well as in daylight. A thousand forms lay upon the ground. Some were great beasts, serpentine and heavy, with massive wings and claws and tails that coiled behind them. Some were men, and women too, of all ages.

  They were dragons.

  They were asleep.

  “Come, come,” Vahe said and started down the narrow path that led from the tunnel’s mouth into the Village. “They’ll not wake, sweet one; you needn’t fear. But we must inspect them now that we are here, and we must search for the throne.” He let go of her hand and leapt on ahead like a child set loose to play. As soon as he reached level ground, he approached the first dragon, a man whose face was half covered in scales and who slept with both hands clenched in fists.

  “Look at this one!” Vahe said. “He’ll be a captain in my army, wouldn’t you agree? I’d love to see him flaming!” He scampered on to another fallen figure—this one a beast of large proportions—exclaiming over the expanse of her wing.

  Anahid followed more slowly, looking at the faces as she passed. They all wore the same masks of pain, both the monsters and the men. “Poor fools,” she whispered so low that not even the eager echoes could catch her voice. “Poor, sad fools.”

  “By the Sleeper’s waking snort!” Vahe cried from somewhere ahead. “Come, Anahid! See what I have found!”

  She did as he bade her, stepping around the crumpled bodies until she found her husband again. He stood before the most enormous dragon of all, a creature as tall as a house, her scales as red as fresh blood. Her face, of all the sleepers’, was the most twisted in pain. As though even now she experienced the unending throes of death.

  “It’s the queen,” Vahe said delightedly. “The Bane of Corrilond. What a fire she had back in her day! You remember, don’t you, sweetness? It was not long after our blissful wedding day when we saw, even from Arpiar, the glow of flames rising in Corrilond. What a force! Heat carried from the Near World to the Far. There have been few like her in all of history, this most glorious of her Father’s children. Like the Dragonwitch reborn, some said.”

  Anahid shuddered. But the Bane of Corrilond was as stone while she slept.

  Vahe sighed, shaking his head. “She’ll make a fine general come Moonblood. She’ll drive the others to my will as a shepherd drives his flock.”

  “Or she’ll swallow you whole,” Anahid said.

  “Tut, tut, no wishful thinking, darling of my heart,” Vahe said, chucking her under the chin. “There’ll be no snacking on this king; our precious daughter will see to that. And speaking of, where is that throne?”

  He sped off again through the darkness, darting among the crumpled forms of the sleepers. He stepped on hands and faces without care, for he knew they were too far gone in sleep and despair to stir. He spared no glance for the few feeble huts with their gaping doorways standing here and there. The Dragon’s Hoard, a cave stuffed to overflowing with gold and jewels, could not draw his interest. He found an iron cage and paused a moment to sniff it. It smelled of captivity and terror. But it was not what he sought. “Where is it?” he growled and turned back to the main cavern. Then he saw.

  It stood in the center.

  There, upraised on a block of black marble, was the high seat, the Father’s throne, carved like dragon skeletons in black stone, stained all over with ancient blood.

  Vahe smiled, and his beautiful face was terrible to behold in that moment. Slowly, almost reverently, he approached the throne. Dragons were piled on top of each other, as though in desperation they had scrambled toward this spot before the sleep fell upon them. Two or three were collapsed against the black marble dais, their hands upraised to touch the stone, their mouths open in silenced screams. Vahe pushed them over, not caring how they fell, then reached up to touch the throne himself.

  It was hot, burning the skin of his stolen hand. And the heat carried with it a memory.

  He stands in darkness before the throne, which drips with fresh blood. The Dragon sits with a face like a man’s but not, pale as death with black eyes. Blood drips from his mouth. Vahe is afraid as he gazes up at him. But he is eager as well.

  For the Lady of Dreams Realized is beside him, and she carries a set of dice in her hand.

  “I will play for this goblin’s life,” she says to her brother.

  The Dragon grins, displaying all his bloodstained teeth. “Why bother? He will be mine eventually. All of yours must come to me.”

  “I want him,” Life-in-Death repeats. “Play the game with me.”

  The Dragon shrugs and indicates for her to proceed. Vahe draws in his breath, hardly daring to hope. His dream is so perfect, so grand. He must have a deal with the Lady of Dreams or he can never hope to achieve it. And if he cannot have that, he may as well belong to Death, for what use is his life without his dream?

  The dice clatter in her hand. Then they roll across the black marble dais to come to rest at the Dragon’s feet. He does not move his head to look at them, so the Lady herself steps forward. Then she smiles.

  “The game is done,” she says. “I’ve won.”

  Vahe screams in triumph and leaps forward, all his fear of the Dragon vanished in that instant. “I know my rights!” he cries, shaking with joy. “My dream fulfilled! My dream!”

  Sparks ignite in the depths of the Dragon’s eye. “Don’t look at me, little king. I’m not the dream fulfiller.”

  “Dragons!” Vahe cries, wringing his hands eagerly. “Give me dragons! Give me my army! That is what I wish!” He turns from brother to sister and back again, his expression somewhere between a smile and a grimace of pain, so intense is his longing. “Give me dragons, and I will show you what the worlds may be when I clothe them in my veils! There is too much ugliness, too much weakness . . . but I will make them beautiful. And strong. Only give me dragons!”

  The Lady of Dreams fixes her white eyes upon her brother’s face when she replies, “King Vahe, my darling, I will see your dream realized. But the dragons are not mine to give.”

  Vahe sees the look exchanged between the Dragon and the Lady, sees the silent argument being waged. But he cannot see who is winning. He shrieks, clutching his head. “You owe me!” His face is very ugly, for he cannot make his veils work upon Death and Life-in-Death. The desperation in his eyes makes them all the more horrible. “You owe me, Dragon! If not for me, you’d yet be bound to that Gold Stone.”

  “I think you take too much credit, Vahe,” says the Dragon, still not breaking gaze with his sister. “It was not you who woke me. It was that pretty little slave of yours, what’s-her-name. The Lady of Aiven.”

  “She’d not have done it but for my persuasion!”

  “Your persuasion? Rather secondhand work, I think.” The Dragon sneers and at last turns to fix his gaze upon the King of Arpiar. His eyes are ringed in flames. “I hardly feel an obligation.”

  Vahe screams wordlessly and turns upon Life-in-Death, gnashing his teeth. “My dream! You won the game. I know my rights!”

  “You have no rights,” hisses the Dragon.

  But his sister narrows her eyes and smiles. She croons softly, “I will see your dream realized, Vahe. My brother knows that I will. One way or another.”

  The Dragon rises from his bloody throne and strides forward as though he would tear the Lady to pieces then and there. But she continues to smile and meet him eye to eye, and it is the Dragon who turns away first. He snarls and spits fire as he speaks.

  “Very well, King of Arpiar. Perhaps we can make a deal, you and I?”

  As he speaks, moonlight breaks through the darkness above the throne, spilling through a skylight high above and lighting upon the Dragon’s face. He snarls again, and the light runs bloodred.

  Vahe drew his hand back sharply, hissing at the pain. The memory flashed through his mind in an instant, but in such vivid detail that it might have happened bu
t moments before rather than five hundred years ago. He smiled despite the hurt in his hand.

  When he reached out to the throne again he did not touch it, rather letting his hand hover just above the carved stone, feeling the heat from it. The heat told stories, whispered the deaths of hundreds, of thousands. The blood, though old, smelled fresh. Here was a seat of power indeed, though not one on which he would ever sit.

  “Anahid,” he said, “come see our future.”

  She did not reply.

  Vahe frowned and looked about into the gloom. “Anahid!” he barked.

  If she heard him she did not respond, for the queen had been making her own search through the cavern.

  She knew she shouldn’t. It would only bring pain were she to find him. She rarely felt pain anymore, not after all these years. Perhaps it would be a relief even, were she to set eyes on him once more and feel that sharp sting through her heart, that agony of remorse. Perhaps the suffering would be worth a chance to feel again. But these were foolish thoughts, here in this place of darkness.

  Even so, she drifted like a ghost among the fallen ones, studying each face as she went. “You’ll not find him,” she whispered to herself almost as a comfort, perhaps as a warning. “You’ll not find him among these thousands.”

  One lay with his face in his hands, his knees curled up to his head. Anahid froze, and the world went cold around her. She did not need to see his face to know. The coldness passed, and in its place came that first dart of pain that is so akin to longing. Oh, why? Why did she come here?

  “Anahid!”

  Her husband’s voice rang through the cavern, but she did not care. Nothing mattered now, not Vahe and his little plots, not Varvare and her doom. For the moment, however brief, all that mattered were the dreams of one sad goblin girl, hundreds of years ago. Shattered by guilt, ravaged by time, they presented themselves once more. A tear slid down the queen’s cheek, and she put her hand to her face to catch it wonderingly. She’d thought she would never cry again.