Moonblood (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #3) (12 page)

“I should rid myself of those weasels,” Lionheart muttered.

You cannot afford to keep them in your service, my prince. They will only hinder your work.

“I cannot afford to keep men like those in my service.”

Rid yourself of them as soon as possible. Just as you did the girl.

Rose Red! Her face returned to his mind, twisted in terror as she crouched on the edge of the gorge. His best, his truest friend. A hindrance. But he had not killed her! He had done his best, hadn’t he?

He covered his face with both hands, drew a sharp breath, like a sob. “Get out of my head.”

Oh, my sweet prince—

“GET OUT!” He leapt to his feet, tears staining his cheeks. Without a thought, he reached into the dying fire, took up a handful of embers, uncaring how they burned his hands, and flung them into the darkest corners of the room. Anything to chase out that darkness. Anything to chase away that voice. “Get out! Go away from me!”

Silence crept in around him. And that silence spoke in the voice of the Lady.

You are nothing without me.

Lionheart collapsed to his knees, his wounded hands shaking with pain, the fingers curled. Mingled with the silence was another voice, a voice from his memory, full of fire. And from the darkness emerged a figure, black and more real than real, although it was nothing but a memory too.

“Give me her heart, Prince Lionheart, and I will let you live.”

How could he have done it? How could he have given it up so easily?

“Leave me in peace!” He pulled at his hair with his burned hands, desperate to escape the memory. But he could not. He saw himself groveling before a great black King. He saw his own hand opening, and a small opal ring dropped from his fingers. His own voice cried,
“It’s yours. Take it!”

The memory faded. Lionheart stood again in the silence of his rooms. The fire had died, leaving the coldness of tombs behind. He blinked back the last of his tears and sank once more into his chair.

The voice of the Lady returned.

You did what you had to do, Lionheart.

“I did what I had to do.”

There was no other way.

“No other way.”

Now take my hand and walk with me, Prince of Southlands, and I will show you what it means to see your dreams realized.

He looked up into her eyes. They appeared before him in a flash of white, gleaming in the darkness. And her hand, blacker than the shadows in the room, extended to him.

In that moment, the Dragon died.

It was like the shifting of continents, the fall of mountains, the end of worlds. The shock of it rippled throughout the Near World and the Far, and every living thing stopped what it was doing, shivering in terror and awe at they knew not what. Fire burst in their minds, then vanished.

But where Lionheart sat in the darkness of his chambers, the fire did not vanish at once. It grabbed hold of him, plunging him into a dream.

He stands upon an abandoned street in a city he does not recognize. Before him writhes the monstrous form he knows too well, the sinuous limbs and the bat-like wings of the Dragon King. The Dragon lies in the rubble and flames he has made of the city, convulsing in death agonies. Fire rains down upon the world. Lionheart cries out and covers his head, but the flames and ashes fall on him without burning.

All is still for a terrible moment.

Then Lionheart whispers, “I will never fight the Dragon.”

“NO!”

The Lady’s scream blasts the already ruined city, extinguishing the flames of her counterpart. She stands before Lionheart, between him and the Dragon’s dead body. She is as tall as a tree, black as nothingness, save for her streaming white hair, which flows behind her, lashing Lionheart’s face like so many knives. He shies away from her, but she takes no notice of him. She strides through the rubble toward the corpse, wringing her hands and screaming.

“NO! You shall not have this victory!”

For a moment, Lionheart thinks she speaks to the dead Dragon. Then he sees, rising from the ashes, another form he knows: the Prince of Farthestshore.

This time it is Lionheart who screams, and he throws himself facedown upon the stones. But he cannot resist looking up again.

The Prince’s face is resplendent with an unbearable light that banishes the poison from the air. He speaks to the Lady. “Life-in-Death,” says he, “you must let him go.”

“No!” The Lady is twice the Prince’s height, and her voice is foul with hatred. “You cannot have him!”

Do they speak of the dead Dragon? But no, the Lady turns and in three strides is at Lionheart’s side. She plucks him from the stones like a helpless kitten and shakes him. “You cannot have him! He’s mine!”

The Prince steps down from the Dragon’s carcass and approaches. Lionheart is helpless in the Lady’s grasp, yet he can scarcely bear to look at the Prince. He wails and tries to cover his eyes, but his arms hang useless at his sides.

“Let him go,” says the Prince.

“I won him. We played our game, my brother and I, and I won him!”

“Let him go.”

“He is nothing without me. Nothing! If I release him, he will lose everything he holds dear. His life will be over!”

“Better that than the Life-in-Death you offer,” says the Prince. He is unarmed, but the Lady trembles as he strides ever nearer. “Let him go.”

With a final shriek, the Lady draws back her arm and flings Lionheart with all her strength. He flies through the darkness, straight toward the carcass of the Dragon he never fought.

Flames leap into his eyes.

Lionheart startled awake when a candle’s light shone in his face. He sat up in his chair. The room was stuffy with the curtains drawn, but simultaneously cold without a fire. Daylily stood before him, holding a bronze candleholder with both hands. The flickering flame cast strange shadows on her face, emphasizing the hollows under her eyes.

“Lionheart,” she said, “you were moaning in your sleep.”

He stood up, straightening his shirt and shaking his head to drive the weariness away. Not that it helped. “What are you doing in here, Daylily?” His voice was thick.

She said nothing at first, merely gazed up at him. Were those tears he saw gleaming in the candlelight? “I’ve just heard,” she said.

“Just heard what?” The memory of his dream remained vivid in his mind. The smoking carcass on the street.

“My father told me.” Her hand trembled, and the candle flame flickered. “The Council of Barons has been called.”

Her words drove everything else from Lionheart’s head. He stood still, gazing into those blue eyes of hers, and for a moment he thought how beautiful she had once been.

“That’s it, then,” he said.

“I . . . I’m afraid so.” She licked her lips. Was she uncertain what to say? Daylily was never uncertain. It was not part of the pattern that made up the Lady of Middlecrescent. Yet there was hesitancy in her eyes as she put out a trembling hand and touched his. “Leo.”

He pulled back sharply, stepping out of the glow of her candle, back into the deepest shadows of the room. She took a shuddering breath. When she spoke again, however, her voice was steady. “I cannot marry you now.”

The Lady’s words returned to him:
“He will lose everything he holds dear.”

“Of course not,” said Lionheart. He turned his back on Daylily and her candle, his shoulders hunched. “Of course not. I understand.”

“Please, Lionheart—”

“Go away now, Daylily.” His voice was unnaturally calm. “Go away. Marry Foxbrush. Tell him that I hope he enjoys the task of fixing what cannot be fixed and bearing the blame when it remains broken.”

She did not reply. Gliding like a ghost, she made her way to the door, pausing a moment to look back. Then, surprising herself, she said, “You should never have banished Rose Red.” Lionheart whirled to face her again, but she could not see his expression in the dark. He could see her, she knew, so she raised her chin, her face set in a calm mask. “You should never have banished Rose Red,” she repeated. “If you can, you should find her.”

“How can you say this now?” he cried. His voice was piteous rather than angry. It cut her to the heart. “You did not speak for her when she needed you. You left her to the mob’s demands, refusing to offer help. You would have let them hang her! You let me . . .”

How could he finish? He dropped his head and let the words die.

Daylily remained as cool as ever. She softly repeated, “You should find her, Leo.”

Then she left the room, shutting the door in her wake.

Lionheart, alone in the dark, wrung his burned hands at the door. Curses welled up in his mind, too many to escape his mouth. At last, he cried to the silence, “I did what I had to do! There was no other way!”

But this time, no voice in the silence reassured him.

1

I
T’S TRADITION,” SAID
K
ING
F
IDEL
.

“I don’t like it,” his son replied.

The close confines of the carriage suddenly seemed closer still as the king and his son glowered at each other. They turned away, each looking out a side window. The king’s view took in both the distant and not-too-distant towns and villages they passed along the way, and sweeping fields beginning to put forth a show of the harvest to come.

Prince Felix’s view was of the sea. Gaheris Road skirted the seaside cliffs, offering travelers a breathtaking vista of tossing waves, of distant sails, and of inescapable bigness. Storm clouds gathered on the horizon.

These were as nothing compared to the storms brewing within Felix’s breast.

“It’s not a matter of like or dislike,” Fidel said. He kept his eyes firmly fixed upon the landscape, careful not to look at the boy. He was afraid he might say something he would regret if he did. In the last two months—ever since Una’s wedding—Felix had grown progressively more impossible. He was inexplicably moody, liable to shout and storm one moment and sink into still more sinister sulks the next.

Rather like now. Fidel drew a long breath, reminding himself that lads of nearly fifteen were often a bit turbulent, and it befit him as king to treat his son with kind but firm resolve. Or at least not to shout.

“It’s not a matter of likes or dislikes,” he said in what he hoped was a mild tone. “Tradition is what tradition is. Now, of all times, we need to give our people a sense that the security of the past will continue through the present and beyond.”

“That doesn’t even mean anything,” Felix snarled, watching a ship faintly silhouetted on the far horizon. For some reason, he felt an overwhelming desire for the gathering storm to rise up and swallow it whole. Perhaps if he willed destruction hard enough, he could somehow make it happen. His eyes, unseen by his father, narrowed to slits.

“Perhaps, my son,” said Fidel through his teeth, “you are refusing to understand the meaning.”

“I don’t see,” Felix said, “how the name of a new palace makes any difference to anyone. It doesn’t change anything that happened. It won’t make the people feel more secure. And I don’t like it.”

“The kings of old have always named their palaces after their sisters,” Fidel replied. “Amarand, Oriana . . . both of them named for the sisters of the ruling kings of the day. You will be King of Parumvir soon enough. It will please your subjects if you follow the tradition of your forefathers.” Here at last, Fidel turned to face his son, who was slumped down so far in the carriage seat that one would never guess the gangly heights to which he had grown in the last few months. He would be a tall man, and handsome too, once he caught up with himself. But Felix’s face was almost unrecognizable to his own father.

Unrecognizable but also familiar. Dangerously familiar. With the familiarity of things that should be forgotten yet nevertheless linger and press upon the memory. Something in the gleam of the boy’s eyes, something like fire, something like . . .