Moonblood

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  And there it was.

  The third sob.

  It wrenched his gut, for it was much closer than the others.

  Lionheart turned and opened his eyes—if indeed they had been closed, for what difference did it make in this dark?—and saw that he was home.

  Home . . . in his father’s house, the place of his birth and his childhood years. He knew this room very well, an anteroom used by his father for meetings with his various barons. Maps were nailed to the walls, elegant maps much more useful for decoration than for navigation, and heavy curtains hung in the tall windows. The curtains were new. Lionheart noted that right away with the absolute clarity that comes only to dreamers. The curtains were new, for the old ones had reeked of dragon fumes.

  Across from Lionheart was a chair like a small throne, the seat where the Eldest would sit while the visiting baron took a place in a lower chair opposite him. How many times as a boy had Lionheart himself come before his father in this very room? Every time his mother, Queen Starflower, made the threat, “Just wait until your father hears about this!” Lionheart had found himself hustled off to this very place.

  The comfort of familiarity gave way suddenly to the shame and expectation of impending discipline. But no! This could not be! Lionheart was no longer some baby-faced boy to be lectured for practicing fire-eating in the stables. He was a man, and it was his place to sit in his father’s chair. Let the barons sweat, not the son of Southlands’ Eldest. So he took the seat and faced the room.

  And realized that he sat opposite the Prince of Farthestshore.

  Dread dropped heavily in Lionheart’s stomach.

  “Come with me,” said the Prince.

  Lionheart gripped the arms of his chair as though he would break them. “See here,” he said, “I’m sorry about what became of her. I am. But there isn’t a solitary thing I can do about it now, is there?”

  “You can come with me,” said the Prince.

  Lionheart grimaced. “A lot of things happened during my exile. Most of them I wish to forget. She was kind to me when I needed a friend, and . . . and I appreciated her kindness. But I couldn’t help what happened next.”

  “Come with me.”

  Lionheart tried to look away, anywhere but into those so horribly kind eyes. But he couldn’t break that gaze. “There was too much, simply too much when I came back! I couldn’t very well leave, could I, when my people needed me?”

  “Come with me, Lionheart.”

  “But I can’t go with you! I can’t chase after you into a desert full of dragons and get burned to cinders! I cannot abandon my father and my people now for certain death, no more than I could harbor Rose Red when all of Southlands believed her a demon. It would have torn the kingdom apart. Haven’t they suffered enough, Prince? I had to think of them, not myself, not Rose Red, not anyone else. Just Southlands. How could I serve my country by facing the Dragon again?”

  “Lionheart . . .”

  “You know what happened last time! You know what I did as well as I do. I crumpled under his gaze! I could not lift a finger to help myself. I cannot fight the Dragon; I don’t pretend that I can! A man has his limits, and who can face that monster and survive? I did the best I could; I ensured Southlands’ safety. Is that not enough?”

  “ . . . come with me.”

  Here at last, unable to speak, Lionheart wrenched his gaze away from the Prince of Farthestshore.

  He saw who it was who sobbed in the dark.

  Imraldera watched her patient’s face. Though the features did not move, she saw them hardening. She stopped singing over him and sat back with a sigh. Then she turned to the knight beside her.

  “The Prince sent you to bring Lionheart to this Haven. Why didn’t you lead him here directly?”

  “Don’t scold so, old girl! It’s unbecoming,” said Eanrin. He lounged gracefully on a nearby chair, one leg extended and an elbow hooked over the chair’s back, the picture of ease. “We were well on our way, I tell you, when we met a couple of old friends of yours.”

  “Old friends? What are you talking about?”

  She saw Eanrin hesitate, noting how his easy pose tensed for a moment. He opened his mouth, closed it, then finally said, “The Black Dogs. We saw the Black Dogs in the Wood.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him, though the expression was lost upon the blind poet. “Not hunting this mortal, I trust.”

  “Need you ask?” The poet laughed harshly and shook his head. “Had they hunted the lad, they’d have caught him long ere now, and not a thing could I have done to stop them. I hate dogs.”

  Imraldera nodded, still watching the poet. His profile was set and intent, as though he were making a study of their patient even without his sight. “You’re keeping something from me,” she said.

  He shrugged.

  “Did you meet no one else?”

  “I’ll tell you no lies, Imraldera,” he said, still not turning from the mortal. “But I’ll not tell you all truths either. Lumé love us!” He laughed and tossed his golden head. “After all these years, is a man no longer entitled to a secret or two of his own?”

  She watched the smile lines about his mouth, the crinkles beneath the patches covering where his eyes had been. She saw them fade as the smile slowly melted from his face again. And she wondered many things but kept her peace. She turned back to her patient, wiping his brow with a cool cloth. “You don’t care much for this young man, do you, Eanrin?”

  “Can’t say that he’s a great favorite.”

  “It’s because he doesn’t like your poetry, isn’t it.”

  Eanrin glowered. “When have I ever been so petty?”

  She made no reply to this but turned once more to Lionheart. He was so young, lying there half succumbed to powerful enchantment. His face had the softness of a boy’s despite the thin growth of beard. But the expression was not that of a boy. No child in sleep looked so miserable save in the deepest of nightmares. She wondered what dark paths he walked in his mind. Gently, she put out a hand and brushed the hair across his forehead, which was cold under her fingers.

  Eanrin made a rather cattish growl. “Remember, he gave little Una’s heart to the Dragon. He didn’t fight.”

  “He’s only mortal, Eanrin. Who’s to say what any of us would have done in his place?”

  “I’d not toss a girl’s heart around so blithely!”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  One of those silences followed which a stranger observing would not have understood. But even a stranger would sense the unspoken tension between two people who did not look at each other and did not speak. Even a stranger would realize that some history existed between these two that he could not guess. And even a stranger would realize that he was intruding on a private moment that could, in a flash, explode into an out-and-out fight or, perhaps, if miracles still happen, dwindle into something like understanding.

  But the silence ended instead with the poet rising gracefully from his chair, clearing his throat, and marching across the room to lean against the trunk of a poplar tree. He crossed his arms, the expression on his face something between a sneer and a smile.

  “What of Rose Red?” he said.

  Imraldera, letting out a long breath between clenched teeth, put a hand to Lionheart’s forehead again, though she wasn’t entirely aware of him anymore. “Who?”

  “The goblin girl who served in his father’s house all those years. Are you going to tell me that you would have banished her to certain death when she had done no wrong, just to placate a mob?”

  “I’m saying we cannot know what any of us would have done if faced with the same choice,” she responded softly.

  “Tell that to Oeric. He suffered more than either of us that day.”

  “Yet he carried the lad here. Even when he knew.”

  The poet crossed his arms even farther up his chest. He still smiled, though the rest of his face was a distinct scowl. “I did my part.”

  Imraldera turned to him then,
and her voice was urgent. “Do your part now, Eanrin. Help me sing over him. You know your voice is stronger than mine, and together we could call him back.”

  “I don’t fancy singing over the likes of him.”

  “And what would I have done if you’d said the same of me?” said Oeric.

  The lady and the poet turned to the enormous knight entering through the chamber door, which was simultaneously nothing but a thinning place in the branches of a forest grove. He filled the room, towering above both Imraldera and Eanrin as he approached to look upon the ensorcelled Lionheart.

  Eanrin snorted. “You wouldn’t remember, of course, but I didn’t sing over you, Oeric. I let Imraldera deal with that. She’s better at that sort of thing, being the nurturing sort.”

  “We all know that your voice is stronger . . . when you try,” Imraldera said.

  The poet shrugged.

  Oeric did not hear their conversation, for he was studying the face of the boy. He saw something there, something that moved him beyond the anger he felt toward this person who had caused him so much pain. Whatever he saw, he turned suddenly to Imraldera. “I will help you sing him out.”

  “Will you, Oeric?” Relief filled Imraldera’s face. “Despite what he has done?”

  Oeric nodded. When he turned back to the stone figure, he whispered, “As one who has been forgiven much, how can I refuse to forgive?”

  Aloud, however, he said, “Yes, I’ll help you sing. This lad may be our last link to Arpiar. No one in that kingdom could call a statue.”

  With those words, he opened his mouth and began in a voice as deep as mountain roots:

  “When eve’s shadows fell upon you

  And all your heart was overthrown,

  When the whispers say no choice to you remains

  And teardrops turn into stone . . . ”

  Imraldera reached out and took Oeric’s huge hand in one of hers and placed her other on Lionheart’s cold face. Then she too sang:

  “Beyond the Final Water falling,

  The Songs of Spheres recalling.

  When you hear my voice beyond the darkened veil

  Won’t you return to me?”

  Eanrin stood to one side, his shoulders hunched.

  It was Rose Red.

  When he turned, Lionheart felt the sudden icy blast of winter and found that he stood on the wall of the Eldest’s City. Wind howled, and its voice was the voice of an angry mob, shouting for blood. The faces and figures of a hundred people crowded around him, indistinct as phantoms; but Rose Red, kneeling before him, was clearer than memory. She bent under the painful grasp of the phantom that held her, shielded by a black veil.

  Then she raised her head, and he saw that she wore no veil. Instead, black hair fell away from her face, and she looked up at him in surprise.

  She was beautiful. She was crying.

  Darkness closed in around them. The phantoms vanished; the wall and the angry wind fled. Only he and Rose Red remained. Her eyes were wide and silver, quite unlike the horrible white eyes he remembered seeing and yet strangely familiar to him. Her sobbing stopped with a choke when she saw him. The coldness of her gaze hurt. He wanted to speak and struggled for words.

  “Rosie,” he said, “I’m going to find you.”

  She made no answer.

  “I’ll make it right.”

  She closed her eyes and turned away. Her hair veiled her from his gaze.

  “Please,” he said. “Please, say something.”

  Only her mouth remained visible behind her hair. He saw her lips move. No sound came, but he knew what she had said.

  “You’re lost.”

  Desperation took him, and he reached out to her. But she was miles from him now. How could he make her understand? He wasn’t lost! He knew what he had done; he could look back on his own actions with a steady eye. How could he tell her that, given the choice, he would do it all again? His choices had led to suffering, even to sacrifice. But he had made them with good in his heart.

  Hadn’t he?

  She was farther from him now, and his hands would never reach her. No one would sympathize with the pain he had experienced, so caught up as they were with the pain he had caused. Why couldn’t they see that he had only wanted the good of his people? Why couldn’t they understand?

  Why couldn’t she understand?

  “I’ll find you!” Lionheart called after her through the haze of dreams. “I’ll find you, and I’ll explain everything!”

  Eanrin listened to Imraldera and Oeric sing, and he heard when Imraldera’s voice faltered suddenly with fear. They were losing the mortal.

  Then Imraldera, still singing, turned her gaze upon Eanrin. He felt it, though he could not see it. And he remembered days long ago, back when he’d possessed his sight. Days when those black-as-night eyes of hers could ask him anything, and he would do it. That time was long gone, perhaps, but not forgotten. No, he would never forget.

  Only two people in all the worlds could command Bard Eanrin: His Master and . . .

  Heaving a great sigh, he stepped up beside them and, after only a moment’s hesitation, took Imraldera’s hand and felt the pressure of her fingers squeezing his. Then he placed his other hand on Lionheart’s head. He sang, joining his voice with the other two:

  “Beyond the Final Water falling,

  The Songs of Spheres recalling.

  When all around you is the emptiness of night,

  Won’t you return to me?”

  Lionheart woke, his eyes flaring wide as he cried out, “I’ll explain everything!”

  Oeric, his hand still resting on the young man’s shoulder, answered quietly, “Don’t try.”

  2

  Lionheart came painfully back to consciousness.

  He had drifted in and out of dreamless sleep so many times he’d lost count. Now that the comforting stone around him was gone, waking meant returning to the fiery burn of claw wounds in his shoulder. But each time he woke, the pain was less, and this time when he opened his eyes, stiffness in the muscles bothered him more than anything.

  He blinked at the ceiling above him. Then he blinked again when what he had taken for a painted mural of leaves against a blue background stirred in a breeze, the leaves rustling softly. A third blink, and it was a mural once more. Lionheart decided that he wasn’t conscious after all and, groaning, closed his eyes and started to turn over.

  “You’re awake.”

  The voice that spoke rumbled like falling rock.

  “No, I’m not.” But Lionheart attempted another look at the world just in case. He still gazed up at a ceiling of leaves that was sometimes real and sometimes a painting. When he turned his head to the side, he found he wasn’t alone. Seated beside him in the chamber that both was and was not a forest grove was the most enormous person he had ever seen. He was not awkward in his bulk, however, but reclined gracefully in a low chair, his chin supported on one fist and his legs stretched out before him.

  He looked startlingly like Rose Red. Only a whole lot bigger.

  Lionheart’s head started to throb. He groaned again and decided he might as well go back to sleep, or perhaps just die altogether.

  “No, no,” said the stranger in that rumbling voice. “Now you are awake, you should drink something.”

  “I told you, I’m not awake,” Lionheart growled.

  “I’m afraid you are.”

  The next moment, a silver cup was held to Lionheart’s lips. He realized with some surprise that he was parched and accepted the proffered drink gratefully. Only after he had drained the cup dry did he stop to wonder if this was a good idea. There had been plenty of stories in his nursemaid’s repertoire about the dangers of accepting Faerie food from outlandish folk.

  Too late now, he thought as the stranger set the empty cup aside on a nearby table, which was simultaneously a holly bush hung thick with berries. Whatever he had drunk started to flow warmly through Lionheart’s body, easing the burn and the stiffness in his shoul
der. He relaxed muscles he had not realized he was tensing and decided that even if he was now caught in a twisted Faerie spell, it was probably worth it for a drink like that.

  The stranger turned huge eyes upon him. “Now,” he said, “if you are feeling better, we must talk.”

  “What if I’m not feeling better?”

  “We must talk anyway.”

  Lionheart pushed himself upright in the down-soft bed. His head spun, and pain darted from his shoulder down his arm, but it wasn’t as bad as it might be considering he’d been mauled by a tiger the night before. Or was it a week before? He closed his eyes and tried to shake those thoughts of time away. After all, time didn’t count for much in this world—or place between worlds, for he suspected he was in the Wood once more.

  “What do we need to talk about?”

  “I am told that you seek Arpiar,” said the ugly stranger.

  Lionheart realized with a start that this person who looked so much like Rose Red must indeed come from the same land as she. Given his prior experience with the unsavory Torkom, he wasn’t altogether certain he should trust this person, who was half again taller than the dealer. But he’d already accepted the sweet drink from him, and the stranger was making no signs of suddenly bashing Lionheart over the head with a spiked club or whatever was the usual practice of goblinkind. So Lionheart said, “I am. Where can I find it?”

  “If I knew that, I would not be here with you now.” The stranger sat forward, bringing his great white eyes much closer to Lionheart’s face than was comfortable. “I have been seeking the Land of the Veiled People for the last five centuries.”

  Lionheart leaned back against the headboard. “Five centuries? That’s . . . not encouraging.”

  “Five centuries by your count, little mortal,” said the stranger. “Perhaps not so long as the folk of the Far World know it, and scarcely a breath in the Wood Between.” He sighed then, a great, gusty sigh. “That isn’t to say I have not felt the passing years stretching behind me since Arpiar was lost. But I must seek the realm of my birth, and I shall seek it until it is found . . . or until I perish.”