Crimson Bound (36 page)

The Midsummer Night festival was in the Garden of the Four Fountains: a wide, square lawn, enclosed by trees, with a great fountain at each corner. Lanterns hung on every tree, and candles sat around the rims of the fountains, setting the water alight as it leaped into the air. In one corner, a score of musicians played; in another were tables nearly buried under food and wine; and in the center, almost the whole court milled about, talking and laughing and dancing.

“Is it not glorious?” said Erec into her ear. His arm was tucked into the crook of hers. “Like peacocks, rounded up for slaughter.”

“Peacocks aren’t raised for meat,” said Rachelle. Her heart was beating fast but steady. She felt the vast magical power gathering in the air the same way she felt the exact space between Erec’s body and hers. But she was, for now, not overpowered by either feeling.

“They’ve appeared on the King’s table a time or two. Besides, it’s for their feathers they are killed.” Erec surveyed the glittering crowd. They did look like peacocks, Rachelle had to admit: they wore dresses and coats of crimson, emerald, and lazuli, with feathers in their hair and jewels at their necks. The little heeled shoes that men and women alike wore gave most of them a delicate, mincing gait quite like birds picking their way through grass.

“They’re so very human,” said Erec. “Laughing and dancing and civilized only because of their ignorance. If they knew what was coming, they would tear each other to pieces to escape. But that’s the human way, I suppose.”

“Too bad you’re killing them all,” said Rachelle. “When night falls, to whom will you feel superior?”

“Oh, they won’t all die. We shall keep them as our King keeps peacocks on his lawn. And hunt them as we please, like foxes.”

“Hardly challenging prey, in those shoes and without claws,” said Rachelle, scanning the crowd. “Did you drag Armand out for a final show, or is he staying somewhere safe?”

“Quite safe,” Erec began, but just then the King called out merrily, “D’Anjou!”

They turned, and there was the King bearing down upon them, dressed in cloth of gold, curls waving in the breeze. A step behind him, face solemn and still, came Armand.

Rachelle’s heart slammed against her ribs. His face was pale and grim, but he was alive. He was alive, and he was not harmed, and he met her eyes.

“Your Majesty,” said Erec, and bowed. Rachelle curtsied awkwardly a moment after.

“I thought it well for appearances if my son were here, this final night,” said the King. “After all, the announcement we make tonight closely concerns him, does it not?”

“Of course,” said Erec, and Rachelle knew that she was the only one who could hear the suppressed annoyance in his voice.

“I’ll leave him in your care and Mademoiselle Brinon’s,” said the King, giving Armand’s shoulder a light slap, and then returned to the dancing.

“Well, well, well,” said Erec. “Monsieur Vareilles, whatever shall we do with you?”

“Let him dance with me,” said Rachelle.

“You’ll plot,” said Erec.

“Yes,” she said, “but what can we do? You have your forestborn everywhere in the crowd.”

“That does not explain why I should let you.”

“Because you’ll take me away again at the end of the dance,” she said. “And you would love to show how you can give me and take me away.”

He bowed to her. “You have answered my riddle. Dance, then, while you still can.”

Armand didn’t move, so Rachelle stepped forward, took his hands, and drew them into the dance.

“Are you real?” he asked softly once they were dancing.

“What?” said Rachelle.

“Ever since I let them raise the Forest, the visions are worse. Everything feels like a dream.”

“I’m real,” said Rachelle. “I’m real. I promise.” She wondered what had happened in the past few hours; he looked nearly at the edge of his endurance. If only she had been able to get him out instead of running straight into Erec’s trap.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“You?” He laughed bitterly. “
I’m
sorry. I’ve done everything wrong. First the coup, then giving in when they wanted to raise the Forest. Now everyone’s trapped—”

“I forgive you,” she said. “And it’s all the same once the Devourer returns.”

His gaze flickered from side to side, probably checking for spies. “Did you see my candle?” he asked finally.

“Yes,” she said. “And I told the Bishop you were praying. So don’t worry. Just—when the time comes, say no for as long as you can.”

“How will that help end things?”

“I have a plan,” she said. “But I can’t tell you the rest.”

“Because I wouldn’t like it or because it wouldn’t be safe for me to know?”

“Because I need you to trust me,” said Rachelle, her stomach knotting. She knew this was a betrayal, but he would accept the Devourer this instant before he let her take his place. “Can you trust me?”

“I do,” he said. “If we somehow live through this—”

“Armand.” Her voice felt thick and sticky in her throat. She couldn’t tell him, but she couldn’t let him believe— “You have to understand. Whatever happens tonight—I don’t think you’ll get to keep me.”

He pressed his lips together. When he spoke again, his voice was tightly controlled. “You said you had a plan. Is there a chance we could survive?”

“Yes,” she lied helplessly. “But have you forgotten already that I’m a forestborn? When we defeat the Devourer . . . I don’t know what that will mean for me.”

It was as close as she dared come to the truth.

“We don’t know what that will mean for me either. Rachelle, I’m just saying—”

“And even if I live through it, you can’t just take a demon home and keep house with her! Didn’t you ever hear the story about the Duke of Anjou and Mélusine?”

“Yes,” said Armand. “But he let go of her when she transformed, didn’t he? Whatever creature you turn into, whatever form you take, I won’t let go of you.”

“You think that holding hands can make me human? That’s idiotic. You don’t even have human hands.”

She regretted the words a moment after, but his lips only sliced into a grin. “All the better to hold you with. Since, as you keep reminding me, you aren’t even human.”

There was no reply she could make to that. So they danced. The music swayed and rocked back and forth, dragging them around in minor-key circles as light as leaves in air, as ponderous as the planets. The other dancers swirled around them, lovely and heedless as peacock feathers. Armand’s silver hand rested in hers, and that insignificant touch sent a thrill up her arms.

This is the human way
, she thought.
On the edge of destruction, at the end of all things, we still dance. And hope.

The music wound down to a pause. Rachelle looked around and didn’t see Erec anywhere nearby, and she wondered for a moment if they might get a second dance.

“Come,” said a calm voice that made her skin crawl. It was the dark-haired woman who had held the knife to Rachelle’s throat. She laid a hand on Armand’s shoulder.

Swiftly, he leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Rachelle’s lips. Then he let himself be drawn away.

“I love you,” Rachelle whispered, staring after him as he vanished into the crowd.

“So he has another darling?” asked la Fontaine. “Or is she one of your friends?”

Rachelle started and turned to the left. La Fontaine stood beside her, dressed in shimmering, pure white silk; the only bit of color on her figure was the ruby at her neck and the bloodred fan that she fluttered in front of her face.

“She’s not my friend,” said Rachelle.

“Indeed? She’s friendly enough with your beloved d’Anjou.” La Fontaine gave her a glance that seemed to divine all her secrets. “I’m not so ignorant as you might think. Nor yet so merciful, if you are planning to harm my cousin.”

Did she know something? Or suspect? Rachelle opened her mouth, but she had no idea what she was going to say, and then a voice called out, “Silence for the King!”

The crowd parted in the center of the lawn, and there stood the King, resplendent in gold and white, with Erec at his side.

“Dearly beloved children of my ream,” said the King. “On this night, I proclaim to you a new future for our kingdom. Many of you have feared what will happen to Gévaudan without a legitimate heir. But I tell you now that you will need no heir.”

There had been silence for the King’s speech, but now a nervous mutter was rising, and in another moment, Rachelle saw why: behind the King, men were marching through the trees in lines. Their eyes shimmered in the dark with reflected lamplight, like a great horde of hungry rats, and then they grew closer, and Rachelle realized that each one bore a bloodred star on his forehead.

“I am your King and your King I shall remain forever, through the offices of my dear friends.” The King gestured at the forestborn gathered behind him. “Too long we have feared the Forest—”

“Too long, O King, you have made your peace with sin!”

The Bishop’s voice cracked across the garden as he came striding out of the trees, Justine at his side, and a troop of soldiers behind him.

“King Auguste-Philippe II, I accuse you of betraying your kingly consecration by making an abominable covenant with our enemies, the forestborn. Kneel down and beg God for mercy before this accursed foolishness goes any further.”

“Such idealism,” said the King. “But I think you’ll find it comes too late. D’Anjou?” He turned to Erec. “Tell them.”

“Indeed, sire,” said Erec. “It is much too late to care who rules this kingdom.”

In a heartbeat, his sword whipped out to slice the King’s head off his shoulders.

Nobody moved. It was too sudden, too unreal, for anyone to believe what had just happened.

“You have looked on the last daylight,” cried Erec, his voice ringing through all the garden. “Now begins the rule of the Forest again.”

SO ZISA WAS FOUND WORTHY TO TAKE HER brother to be sacrificed on a hill of raw, dead earth. Here on a throne of black rock sat the previous vessel with flowers on his head. His ribs still moved with each breath, and his skin still stretched across his face. In this sense he was alive, but no other.

“O my daughter,” said Old Mother Hunger, “tell our lord he has a new body.”

“With gladness,” said Zisa, “but first I would dance before him.”

So Zisa unbound her hair and danced. When she had finished, the Devourer hissed through the lips of his vessel and said, “I once granted your mother a wish in return for her dancing. Would you have the same of me?”

“Yes, my lord,” said Zisa. “I wish to see you face-to-face.”

The Devourer breathed upon her, and she vanished from the hill. Let us say that she walked into his stomach. To her, it seemed that she walked through a wood where the trees wept blood, and among the roots of a tree covered in ice, she found what looked like a glowing pearl, and she knew it was the moon. She cupped it in her hands and stole back the way she had come.

Back onto the dead hill she stepped, and she held high the moon. Old Mother Hunger screamed and leaped for Zisa, but it was too late: the moon flew out of her fingers and up into the sky, and as its light dropped down upon the eldest of all forestborn, she withered and faded and fell to ash.

“Farewell, Mother,” Zisa whispered.

But while the light of the moon had killed Old Mother Hunger, it restored to Tyr his name and his wits, and he opened his eyes and saw his sister.

“You have found a way to destroy him?” asked Tyr.

“Yes,” said Zisa, “but there is something else I must do first.” She turned to the Devourer’s vessel and said, “I still have not seen your face, my lord.”

He hissed, but then he breathed upon her. This time she wandered the bleeding forest until she found a tree charred black from root to twig. Beneath it lay a kernel of golden light. When Zisa stepped back again onto the hill, the seed flew up into the sky and became the sun, and the world filled with light.

“Now for the final stroke,” said Zisa, and from her skirt she took the two needles and gave one to Tyr. In their hands, the needles became swords, Durendal and Joyeuse.

Brother and sister were ready to strike; but the Devourer said, “O my daughter, have you wondered what befell the souls of your mother and father?”

“They are dead,” said Zisa. “You can trouble them no more.”

“The souls of those my servants kill are mine by right,” said the Devourer. “Lay down your sword, come face-to-face with me, and perhaps I’ll give them back to you.”

She had hated her father; she had loved her mother. But Tyr, the fool, had loved both; so she could not resist. Though Tyr begged her to say no, she laid down the sword and let the Devourer’s vessel breathe on her a third time.

Zisa hunted the bleeding forest without success until she came to a desert. When she stepped upon the sand, a voice behind her said, “Turn around and face me, little girl.”

She turned and saw his face and, seeing him, knew he held no souls captive, for loneliness was in his nature.

But seeing him, she belonged to him. And on the hill, the old vessel crumbled to dust, and the Devourer opened Zisa’s eyes and said to Tyr, “You never yielded to me. So you cannot touch me.”

Tyr looked at his sister whom he loved more than life and who loved him more than reason.

And that is when he stabbed me in the heart.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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