Cobweb Empire (47 page)

At last, the lady wiped her eyes and said:
“So. . . .
This
is how much my mother loves me. I
thank you for the truth, and for not sparing me. Well then, so be
it. If Death is my true Bridegroom, and if the world itself depends
upon this one small thing—small, in the greater scheme of
things—and needs my compliance, then I agree and go to my
fate.”

“My Lady . . .” Percy
whispered, her own eyes welling with tears. “I am so sorry! Oh, if
there was but any other way—”

“It matters not,” said the Cobweb Bride. “As
you say, I am dead already. And now at least I know that
someone
loves and waits for me. And thus, I go gladly to
him. In truth, it was meant to be. Therefore, take me to Death!
Take me to him
now!
”

And no longer able to hold her face
impassive, Lady Melinoë wept hard, with shuddering sobs, putting
her hands up to cover her contorted cheeks.

Beltain and Percy remained in grim silence,
watching her.

They rode on, in the deep night darkness,
for now the moon had sunk below the close horizon defined by
filigree shapes of trees.

The maiden sobbed her heart out, and then
eventually quieted. And for an hour, as cold and grave as a tomb,
there was perfect silence between them, only the sound of their
breathing and the soft snorts of the horses in the chill air.

Half an hour later they had reached Ulpheo.
The translucent capital city reposed, like an anemic lotus blossom
filled with crawling gnats, in the residual phosphor glow of the
night sky bereft of moon and impaled with sharp stars. They circled
past its sickly glass walls and continued onward.

Another quarter hour, and the eastern sky at
their left started to lighten with the faintest precursor of
silver.

The hills ended suddenly, and the last
sparse scattering of forest was all that remained between them and
the wide open plain that was the approaching Morphaea.

It was then, in this strange in-between
time, the delicate slate blue twilight of the dawn, that the form
of the landscape before them began to shimmer and
fade
.

Right before them it was happening, a
strange surreal mirage of permeable half-solidity, and all things
took on smooth edges, all hard delineations softened.

Beltain reined in Jack and pulled back the
mare. They stopped sharply, staring, in disbelief, as the unnatural
phenomenon that they barely knew about was taking place before
their eyes—yet another portion of the land was disappearing—lord
knows where.

And then a wild, impossible thought came to
Percy. . . .

What if it was Death himself, gradually
taking all things to him? And if so, could it be that the place to
which all these things went was none other than the underworld,
Death’s own twilight realm?

“My Lord Beltain!” Percy whispered suddenly
looking up into his eyes, while only a few feet before them the
ground churned and the air warped in an act of displacement, and a
mist arose to cover all things before them in a shimmering ethereal
veil. “Do you trust me, my beloved?”

Beltain did not pause for a second. “You
know I do! I trust you with my life.”

“Then trust me this once, and do what I say,
for it will take us directly on our journey to where we need to be.
Thus, ride forward, my love! Ride directly into this fading land
before us!”

And the black knight nodded, and he gave
free rein to both Jack and the chestnut mare. With a snap and pull,
the horses went into motion.

“Hold on, My Lady Melinoë!” Percy exclaimed,
“Hold on tight!”

And they plunged into the swirling mist.

W
hat happened next
was either the blink of an eye or interminable compounding moments
of grey eternity. They passed through the mist and emerged on the
other side . . . into a now familiar Hall of
boundless silence, with arches and columns lining up in rows unto
the horizon, no end and no beginning, no walls, only the granite
stone slabs under their feet.

Overhead, the distant impossible ceiling
that was neither starry sky nor a dream.

The air was neither cold nor warm, but as
indifferent as the grey silence of oblivion.

The horses’ hooves rang dull upon the stone
floor, as they paused, finding themselves displaced and yet exactly
where they needed to be.

“Oh, thank Heaven!” Percy muttered. “We are
indeed here. . . .”

Beltain’s metal-clad arms pressed around her
and his baritone sounded soft and amazed. “You were indeed right,
we are back in this accursed place! Ah, how well I remember our
last time here.”

“What is this place?
How . . . did we get here?” Lady Melinoë’s tremulous
voice sounded, and they both glanced to see her dilated frightened
eyes. Maybe she was beginning to regret her decision
now. . . .

“We are within Death’s kingdom, My Lady, and
this is his Keep.”

“But how? We were just riding—”

And Percy explained the circumstances of
twilight and the fading of shadows as it related to entering
Death’s domain. “If we had not come upon this moment of blending
between worlds, we would have had to ride a long way north through
the real world. This was a fortunate shortcut given us. I would not
be surprised if Death himself had intended it to be. And now, we
are here, we have arrived!”

“So where is he?” Melinoë said. “Where is my
Bridegroom?”

“You must call upon him,” Percy replied
gently. “Speak, and he will listen, for all here is his kingdom,
and he hears us even now.”

Melinoë raised her lily-smooth hands to the
hood of her cloak, and she lowered it, revealing her bright golden
hair that did not lose its gleam even here in this place of dull,
disembodied half-light.

“Lord Death!” she exclaimed, in a sonorous
voice that echoed along the stones. “I am here! I am your Cobweb
Bride!”

The echoes ended.

There was only silence.

And then, a remote masculine voice spoke,
ringing in the very stone of the Keep, coming from all directions
in the Hall.

“
Come to me!”

In the wake of the words came a gale of
wind.

T
hey followed the
wind that served as guide, and rode through the hall, hooves
striking stone, past arches and columns in an infinite army of
monotonous languor, until the nature of the shadows changed, and
cobwebs garlanded the niches, hanging like old funereal lace.

Granite soon became bone. Pale ivory cream,
the world transformed around them, and overhead was a softly
floating upside-down sea of cobwebs, spun by ancient spiders that
had long since gone from this lifeless Hall.

This was Death’s grand tomb, a sepulcher of
wondrous proportions. The columns were now caverns of bones,
wrenched from a giant’s ribcage, and it was now impossible to ride
through this chaos.

Beltain dismounted, pulling Percy down with
him, and then he assisted Lady Melinoë from her chestnut mare. Once
on the floor, the lady stood upright with some difficulty, still
rather unsteady on her feet shod in fine traveling boots given her
by the Countess D’Arvu, and wearied after the extended ride.

Percy came to take her hand, feeling its
coolness. And at the same time the death shadow of the Cobweb Bride
responded, compelled to follow and to cleave—it was in fact a
difficult urge that Percy had to fight,
not
to pull the two
together immediately. . . . But she reminded herself
that it was not for
her
, that final sorrowful task, but for
Death himself.

The two girls moved together thus, with
Beltain walking behind them and leading the two horses carefully
over the shards of bones underfoot.

Before them, the cobwebs thickened, and at
the same time the Hall widened into an anemic radiance-filled
expanse. Up ahead, between two massive bone columns, upraised on a
dais amid decadent pallor stood a grandiose ivory throne. Two sharp
needle-spires rose from its high back like horns.

And upon this throne sat a man clad in a
black doublet and hose. He wore a wide starched collar of faded
lace, and he reposed lightly to one side, elegant hand propped
underneath a bearded chin trimmed in the angular manner of an
antique grim Spaniard.

His face was shadowed and for some reason
impossible to look upon directly—as though the focus in one’s eye
shifted slightly when one tried. . . . As though the
face was not there, but a vacant spot of shadow and illusion.

Such was Death.

But the most remarkable thing about him was
that he was
not
alone.

At various spots around the throne and at
the base of the dais sat a number of somewhat dejected human
figures. Indeed, there were six of them. Four were young girls,
bundled in warm winter clothing, and sprawled on the floor among
fragments of bone and on the dais stairs, sitting cross-legged, or
with legs folded, or in one case lying on her back with hands
crossed underneath her head in place of a pillow.

Two more were a lady and gentleman, both
handsome, both attired in once stylish travel clothing that had
undergone quite a bit of combat with dirt and dust and disarray.
The raven-haired lady with a face of sharp faerie beauty sat primly
upon the top stair just next to Death’s elbow, fiddling with her
stained and torn gloves, and right next to her, the gentleman lay,
resting his equally dark but rather wildly tousled and bearded head
in her lap.

As soon as Percy approached, holding Lady
Melinoë’s hand, followed by Beltain and the horses, everyone turned
in their direction.

“Lord Death!” Percy
began. . . .

There was a bit of shrieking.

“
Percy!
Oh, Lordy, Lord! Is that you,
Percy Ayren?” The girls had gotten up and it was Catrine, and Sybil
and Regata, her former original companions from the road to Death’s
Keep, all of whom Percy recognized immediately.

“Regata! Catrine! And you too, Sybil!” Percy
was stunned momentarily out of her somber mood, and let go of
Melinoë’s hand. “What are you all doing here? How did you get here?
I thought you had been captured by the Duke’s patrol—”

“Oh, thank Heaven and all blessed saints!”
said the gentleman, rising up on his elbows from the lady’s lap.
“They are indeed here! That is,
someone
is here!”

Percy vaguely recognized both the gentleman
and the lady—they were the same haughty and aristocratic travelers
whose curricle had broken down on the side of the road when the
girls were passing through Chidair lands on the final leg of their
journey to the northern forests—possibly there had been another
lady with them?

But none of it mattered.

Percy looked at Lord Death, sitting on his
throne of bones. His face was in eternal shadow but somehow she
knew he was looking at her, and at the maiden at her side.

Percy glanced at Melinoë and noted her
strange focused stare as she was gazing onward in the direction of
the throne. “My Lady,” Percy said gently. “You may not see him, but
Death sits there, before you.”

“I . . . see him,” replied
Melinoë, never taking her eyes off the one who was Death.

“Oh, you can actually
see
him?” Percy
wondered, recalling that the last time they were all gathered here,
no one could see Death’s human form until she touched him.

“Of course she can see him!” the lady
sitting on the dais stair said in annoyance. “We can all see him,
it is all rather tedious.”

“On, no! Percy!” cried Regata, suddenly
noticing Beltain. “That’s the Black Knight! And his fearsome horse!
Oh, no! He’s here to drag us back to the dungeon!?”

“I assure you, I am not,” Beltain replied
with a rueful smile.

But Percy paid no attention to anything but
Death and his Cobweb Bride.

Melinoë took several slow steps forward, and
neared the throne. Her death shadow drifted behind her.

“My Lord . . .” she whispered
and her face was exalted. “I am your
Bride . . .”

Death moved.

He stood up, a tall, elegant, masculine
shape, and then he walked down the stairs of his dais.

In that moment everyone grew silent.

“You are indeed
she
.” Death’s voice
sounded from the depths and within their minds.

“Will you have me, my Bridegroom? Will you
take me unto you?”

“I take you,” said Death. “As you are
mine.”

And he reached out his hand, his wrists
draped in ivory lace, his elegant fingers with their sharpened
claws. This pale great hand he offered to her.

Melinoë did not hesitate. She put her
delicate lily-white hand into his, feeling his great ivory fingers
close over hers.

With his other hand, Death reached for the
shadow that stood behind her, the death shadow of the Cobweb
Bride.

“
At last. . . .”

His immortal whisper resounded throughout
the Hall.

Melinoë trembled and closed her eyes.

Drawing the maiden and her death shadow to
him, Death leaned down, towering over them both, and he kissed
Melinoë once on the forehead and once on the lips.

And then he
pulled
.

Percy felt the world—the fabric of the world
around her—begin to
shift
and rip asunder.

Columns trembled and the floor underneath
them shook in a deep rumble of moving bedrock and rustling bones.
Stronger and stronger it grew, and a wind arose, becoming gale
force, as it rushed through the sea of cobwebs overhead and swept
through the Hall, buffeting all of them, swirling vortexes of dust
and impossible chaos. . . .

For long interminable moments it raged and
then it was over.

Melinoë was standing exactly as she had
been, before Death, her hand clutched in his, and her death shadow
still at her side.