Moonblood (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #3) (49 page)

Lionheart stands staring at the sword in his hands. For the first time he can remember, the weight on his heart eases. It is as though a burden he had not realized he was carrying is suddenly lifted, and his paralyzed limbs can not only walk but run.

He whirls about and faces the Prince. “He’s gone!”

“And you will never face Death again,” the Prince says and smiles. “Well done.”

Lionheart bows his head then, pride sapped from him and replaced with dawning humility. “I would have fled.”

“But you did not. I am with you now.” The Prince places a hand on Lionheart’s shoulder. “You understand, don’t you, the difference between guilt and repentance?”

Slowly, Lionheart nods.

“You understand that you can never absolve your own sin?”

Again Lionheart nods.

“But you are forgiven. All that is past is past. The man you once were is no more. The man you are now is what matters, and I declare your name in truth: Lionheart. From this moment forth, you will serve me with the courage of roaring lions, and all my foes will tremble at your name, for they will know that you are one of mine.”

Lionheart feels his heart swelling at the Prince’s words. He raises his face and meets the Prince’s gaze, and this time he can smile.

“Walk with me,” says the Prince and begins to lead the way along the shores of the Final Water. Lionheart falls into step beside him, and they walk a long while in silence save for the distant songs above them, the Songs of the Spheres, composed before Time.

At last Lionheart asks, “What will happen now, my Prince?”

“I will give you new life.”

Lionheart’s gaze drifts slowly to the dark waves of the river. “Will we cross the Final Water?” he asks without fear.

Nobody paid any attention to him.

Felix could ask questions until he was blue in the face, and yet they ignored him. Even Imraldera! Lights Above, didn’t he deserve some sort of explanation for all this mayhem? Felix flung up exasperated hands, searching the crowd for some face that looked like it might be willing to give a word of enlightenment.

All around him he saw yellow-headed soldiers gathering, their faces young and sweet but their expressions fierce and sad. They looked remarkably like the illustrations of the Little Folk in the book of Faerie tales he’d grown up reading. Except they weren’t little. Or were they? He blinked, then groaned, rubbing his eyes, for the strange people around him were somehow both very small and very large all at once.

Just as Monster was simultaneously a cat and a man.

But he’d known that all along, hadn’t he? Felix realized with a start that some secret part of himself had always understood that the strange blind cat who came to him and Una out of the Wood six years ago was no mere cat. Then again, he’d never met a feline that considered itself
merely
a cat. They were all lords and ladies in their own eyes. But there was always something different about Monster. Something altogether smug and ancient.

Felix’s head ached. He couldn’t watch those clustered around the fallen form of Leonard the jester (by all the dragon fire, what was
he
doing here?), and didn’t like to look at the miserable face of the ugly Rose Red. He slipped away from the others, down the steps of the dais, taking stock of the burning world around him. It was something out of the worst of his nightmares. The Village, strewn with the bodies of slain and sleeping dragons, was a scene that had been presented to him in poisoned dreams many times over the last few months, dreams which he forgot upon waking but which never quite left his mind.

There were more than dragons too. More ugly people—goblins, he decided, uglier even than the girl by the throne—lay in miserable heaps among the scaly creatures. Some were dead, some wounded, some simply stricken with fear. But they did not move when Felix passed among them, and he felt pity for them.

Something gleaming caught his eye.

He turned to look more closely. It wasn’t so bright a gleam as the light still shining from the brilliant sword. It was much smaller, more delicate. It looked like a horn but was slender as a reed and white as polished ivory. Its glow was faint, but it seemed all the brighter as it lay in a patch of charred and smoking stone.

The stone was still hot but not unbearably so. Felix approached the silver object and put out a hesitant hand to touch it. It was perfectly cool, so he picked it up and stood awhile, looking at it. It was heavier than he had expected, and he needed both hands to lift it. When he turned it, he saw iridescent streaks coiling all the way to the tip.

“What have you there?”

He turned and found his cat standing beside him in man form.

“M-Monster?”

“It’s Eanrin, actually. Sir Eanrin, Chief Poet of Iubdan Rudiobus.” His cat swept him a flourishing bow, but his face was not smiling. “Now tell me, since I lack the proper equipment to see for myself, what do you have there?”

“I don’t know.”

“Hand it over.”

If his cat had still had a tail, Felix would have been tempted to step on it. As it was, there was nothing for him to do but obey. The tawny-haired poet turned it over in his hands, feeling it from base to needle-sharp tip. Then he said, “Come,” and without another word led the way back to the dais. Felix followed obediently, cursing the day that he found himself obeying his own pet. But he did not like to give up that white horn so easily, and he wanted to see what Eanrin would do with it.

“Imraldera,” the poet said, kneeling beside her and Rose Red and the broken body of Lionheart, “I found this. Will it help?” And he handed the ivory object over.

“I found it,” Felix said, but no one paid him attention.

“The unicorn’s horn,” rumbled the rich voice of Iubdan. “It has the power to heal, so they say. But not since the days before the children of Hymlumé fell from grace.”

Holding it, Imraldera recalled how it had touched her hands and face after only moments before she’d watched it destroy what was left of young Diarmid within the dragon’s body. Even in the wake of death, it had brought her healing.

“They still remember, King Iubdan,” Imraldera said softly. “They still remember the time before their fall. Some of the good yet remains.”

But even as she spoke, the light in the horn faded, leaving behind a cold and even ugly object, like a long, twisted knife. Imraldera shuddered at the sight of it. “But I fear its last act will be destruction, not healing.”

Then the goblin princess put out her hand.

She took the horn and grasped it tightly, and when she did, a shimmer passed through it. Blues, greens, and purples shot with gold ran from the tip and blended together into a pure, bright whiteness.

Rose Red saw again the depths of the unicorn’s eyes as they gazed at her across the length of its horn and it said,
Forgive me.

“I forgive you,” Rose Red whispered to the still face of the young man she had loved and hated. Then she took the horn and pressed its tip into the cold wound in his heart.

The Prince smiles at Lionheart. “Not yet,” he says.

Lionheart feels a jolt of pain.

Lionheart felt a jolt of pain in his heart as, with a great thump, it learned to beat once more. The awful smells of smoke and death surrounded him, roiling his stomach. Something sharp pulled out of his chest, like the removal of a splinter but a hundred times more terrible. “Iubdan’s beard!” he swore, grinding his teeth. Those assembled on the black dais gasped.

“Leo?” a voice he knew so well whispered.

His eyes flew open. He saw a wide gray face with eyes like great white disks, and pointed teeth, one of which pushed the upper lip into a dreadful leer. His heart, still relearning to beat, bumped painfully in his chest, but he sat up with a glad cry.

“Rosie! I’ve found you at last!”

It was then the Prince of Farthestshore appeared.

1

A
S SOON AS
V
ARVARE
, still holding the unicorn’s horn in one hand and Lionheart’s hand with the other, saw the Prince, a wave of remorse swept over her. Remorse for those long, painful nights of anger, of stopping her ears to his voice. At the sight of his face, she knew the truth, and his words came back to her as clear and strong as the day he had first spoken them to her heart.

I will always protect you,
he had said.
But that does not mean you will not know pain.

In the darkness of Palace Var, lost in Vahe’s sweet-smelling enchantments, she had rejected him. Shame filled her, made all the more painful because he now looked directly into her eyes and said:

“My child, won’t you come to me?”

She was on her feet in a heartbeat, running to his outstretched arms. Like a little girl running to her father for comfort, without a thought for her vile face, her dirty rags, her burned body. His arms closed around her, and he held her gently but with strength, and she cursed herself again and again for doubting him.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“You were long since forgiven,” he replied.

The goblins of Arpiar, weak and ashamed of their faces without the veils of Vahe, stared up at the figure on the dais. Many of them howled in dismay and covered their heads with their arms, slinking away into darkness. But others, though tears filled their awful eyes, crept closer, like dogs afraid of a whipping for disobedience but unable to resist the call of the master. They saw how gently he held their ugly princess, how he did not seem to see the hideousness of her face, and the sight gave them courage.

Iubdan’s soldiers saw the goblins approaching, and Captain Glomar plucked at his king’s sleeve. But ageless Iubdan shushed them quickly. The two Knights of Farthestshore, Imraldera and Eanrin, took Lionheart by the arms and helped him to his feet. He too could not look away from the Prince’s face, and the memory of a shining sword blazed bright in his mind. Recollection of the dark realm by the Final Water’s edge was fading in his mind. But he would never forget, not as long as he lived, that he had fought the Dragon and, with the Prince supporting him, had not backed down.

“Aethelbald!”

Felix leapt forward suddenly, his arms flung wide. “Aethelbald, thank the Lights Above you’re here! What is going on? Did you bring me to this place? Nobody will tell me a blessed thing, but did you see? Did you see that I killed the dragon? She was a big one too, but I brought her down!”

“I saw,” the Prince of Farthestshore said, putting out a hand to tousle the boy’s already messy hair. “Well done.”

“How is Una?”

“She is well. She sends her love.”

“Is she here?”

“No, Felix.” At sight of the boy’s crestfallen face, he added, “Don’t worry, brother. You’ll see her again, and soon. But now . . .”

Here the Prince turned, and his eyes swept over all the great cavern of the Village, still red with fire and the light of bleeding Hymlumé. The dragons lay yet in sleeping heaps, their dark dreams undisturbed. But wide-eyed goblins hid among those sleeping forms. They felt the power of the Prince’s gaze piercing down to their souls. They cowered onto their knees, and some fled after their already retreated brethren. Most remained, however. “Now I have business with the Veiled People.”