Moonblood (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #3) (34 page)

And here Eanrin sang in a voice Lionheart had never heard before, a voice as old as Time or older. As he sang, the icy hand of winter grabbed the passages of Rudiobus, freezing the air, the heart, and all the little folk bowed their heads. At first the words were incomprehensible to Lionheart, though simultaneously familiar. He thought he must have heard them once before, though he could not recall where.

“Els jine aesda-o soran!”
Eanrin sang.
“Aaade-o Ilmaan.”

Then, just as Bebo’s words had restructured themselves in Lionheart’s mind, he found the lines sung by the bard becoming clear in his mind.

“If I but knew my fault!

“I blessed your name, oh you who sit

Enthroned beyond the Highlands.

I blessed your name and sang in answer

To the song you gave.

“Beside the Final Water flowing,

My brow in silver bound,

I raised my arms, I raised my voice

In answer to your gift.

“The words spilled forth in lyric delight,

In song, more than words.

Joy and fear and hope and trembling

Burst forth from all restraint.

“Who could help but sing?”

The song spoke of joy such as Lionheart had never known; but it was a joy made all the more vivid by the pain of its loss. He shuddered, and he felt himself bracing for what he knew must come, for though he had never before heard it, he had known this story all his life.

Eanrin sang:

“Now I cry to you again,

My arms raised once more.

My hands outspread to shield my face

From that which lies before.

“Is the fault in me?”

Imraldera in the Haven ran her finger beneath the lines of her old book and read them with silent lips moving:

The torrents roar, the waves are scarlet

As blood, reflecting flame.

Oh, ravaging flame, burn and burn!

Light my face in fury!

Only spare my children.

I see them running, running, stumbling

Running, as the heavens

Break and yawn, tear beneath their feet,

Devouring, hungry Death!

A beautiful princess sat hunched in the shadows of her ancestors in a place where the moon could not shine. And though she spoke not a word, her heart cried the song through the blackness of her father’s palace:

Where is my fault?

Did I misunderstand the song, the gift

You gave? Was I wrong?

I thought you spoke across the boundless.

You sang, and I replied.

I thought you spoke to me, but now

I hear voices below;

Terror, screaming from the pit.

I thought you sang to me!

In the dungeons of Var, a knight sat in utter darkness, bound with iron chains to a cold wall. Her head bowed to her chest, all her weight sagging against the biting shackles, she whispered:

“I sang back to you.

“Children running. Oh, children, hear

My voice, the song I learned

From o’er the water. Hear no more

The voices in the pit.

“Can you hear me?”

Eanrin sang, and no one saw the tear that fell from beneath a silken patch, for all eyes were fixed on a vision of the past. Iubdan and his queen clasped each other’s hands as the memory swept over them, and they mouthed the words of the song:

“I blessed your name with my first breath,

The song you gave to me.

I sang to you in praise of beauty,

I sang in praise of truth.

“Children running, beauty crumbling.

Oh, Truth, where are you?

My song is frozen in my heart.

I can no longer sing.”

Varvare, alone among the veils, whispered:

“Will you answer?”

The lone knight in the dungeons spoke suddenly, though nobody heard. But she raised her face and sent her voice ringing through those empty cells:

“Children, children, you cannot escape

The screaming pit.

Only death to your great treasure

Will quell its awful greed.”

And Varvare whispered again:

“Will you answer?”

Eanrin raised his fists to his temples, and in his mind he stood once more before the Dark Water, alone and far from his path. Across his memory flashed the last thing he would ever see with his golden eyes. The dart of cruel knives. Then darkness. And pain.

He sang:

“I blessed your name with the gift

You gave. This voice of mine,

This burning heart, my children’s wealth

I used to bless your name.

“Will you answer?”

“Will you answer?” asked Varvare.

“Will you answer?” asked the shackled knight.

Lionheart, cringing against the darkness that overshadowed Iubdan’s Hall, whispered through clenched teeth: “Will you answer?”

Eanrin allowed that last question to hang in the air, the notes unresolved and tense.

Then, deep as the night but rich and full, Oeric’s voice filled the awful silence.

“I blessed your name in beauty.

In fear I still must sing.

I blessed your glorious name in truth,

I bless it now in doubt.”

Suddenly, all the folk of Rudiobus—the king, the queen, Lady Gleamdren, the stern guards, the dancers and revelers—raised their faces and sang with the Chief Poet. The sound rolled over Lionheart like rushing wind and water, stirring him deep inside so that he thought he must break to pieces. He shut his eyes as it swept across him.

“I need no answer. Do not answer.

You are true and you

Are right, and your name is mighty.

Your name is my life.

“By your name, I accept my doom.”

The song ended. Iubdan’s Bard lowered his hands and softly said:

“So Hymlumé was pierced by her children’s cruel horns as they turned away from her and fled willingly to their destruction. She heard Death-in-Life laughing over her as she bled across the sky. But behind his laughter, all the children of the Lower Worlds heard her sing the Sphere Songs even as the lifeblood flowed from her.

“So it was that He Who Gave the Song appeared and cast the Dragon from the sky. All the way to the Lower Worlds he fell, flaming, and was bound to the Gold Stone, there to sleep a thousand years for the evil he had caused.

“The Song Giver turned then to Hymlumé and tended her wounds. He set her once more upon her high seat, there to sing in a voice more beautiful than before. For he promised her that night that her children should not all be lost. Since that time, she has never ceased to sing her hope, her trust. Though the people of the Near World have long since become deaf to her voice, and even those of the Far find it too easy to forget.

“But every five hundred years, the moon remembers that dark night and shines red upon the Lower Worlds. And the fallen children of Hymlumé walk among us still.”

Lionheart opened his eyes just as Eanrin finished speaking and found Queen Bebo standing before him. Oeric and the Rudiobus guards were now a short way off, and he was alone with the queen.

“Come with me,” she said and beckoned him.

He fell into step behind her, and they left the Hall of Red and Green, which was bright once more with candles. She led him to a winding stair, and an icy draft blew howling down, freezing his face. But she began the ascent, and Lionheart followed with all haste behind her, even as the voices of Rudiobus echoed behind him.

“We bless the name of he who sits

Enthroned beyond the Highlands.

We bless his name and sing in answer

To the song he gave.”

Imraldera closed her book, and many thoughts spun in her head. The Night of Moonblood would be upon them soon. Why did she think that it somehow related to that poor, lost Prince of Southlands? That his story was in some way bound up in the loss of Hymlumé’s children?

“I do not understand,” she whispered. Night had fallen outside, and the moon, almost full, gleamed through the windows of her library so bright as to make her candle unnecessary. She pinched the candle out, then left her desk and made three paces to the window to gaze up at the star-filled sky. “I do not understand. Nothing fits together. What about poor Felix? And Oeric’s love, captured, perhaps slain by Vahe? Do they play into this sorry tale?”

She leaned against the window frame, weary from her many thoughts. “I cannot work this out on my own.”

Far off in the depths of Goldstone Wood, a wood thrush sang its silver notes.

Suddenly, a cloud passed over the face of the moon, snuffing out its light like her candle. Imraldera stood in the darkness of the library she knew so well. Yet in that moment, it felt foreign and unsafe. A shiver of warning from some unknown source ran through her, and she whirled around.

Two yellow eyes blazed like sparks behind her.

“Hello, Imraldera,” said the dragon. “I’m back.”

6

T
HEY MET NO ONE
on the stair, and none of the candles set in crevices along the wall were lit. Moonlight poured down the long stairwell, making each step a contrast of highlight and shadow.

Lionheart followed the queen, the coldness of winter biting down. His breath trailed from him in visible tendrils, but the queen was barefoot, he noticed, and her robes were airy and soft. Cold was unable to touch her.

The music from Iubdan’s hall faded into silence, and the moonlight grew ever brighter. After what seemed like hours, Lionheart saw an open doorway ahead, and through this Bebo led him. He gasped as he stepped from the narrow confines of the long stair. He stood at the summit of Rudiobus Mountain. A silvery world lay below him, including the lake, which was now frozen like glass. The air was sharp in his lungs, and his face felt like it would burn away in that cold. The snow covering the slopes of the mountain, and the woodlands beyond, caught the moonlight and reflected it back until all the night blazed in an icy parody of daylight.

Then, even as he watched, the world fell away.

The night sky itself spread below him, an inky-black landscape unbroken but for a few straggling clouds. Stars bloomed as the brightest flowers around him, and the world, wherever it was, was far from sight. Lionheart stood on the top of Rudiobus Mountain in the Gardens of Hymlumé. And Hymlumé herself was so bright and so near, he thought she would blind him.