Veiled Rose (31 page)

Rose Red looked around Foxbrush’s arm and saw what it was they saw.

“Silent Lady!” she breathed.

Pushing past Foxbrush so roughly that he fell into the wall, she slammed the door, and the whole house echoed with it. “How
dare
he?”

She grabbed Daylily’s elbow and Foxbrush’s wrist, dragging them back. “Come, come with me!” she said, too shaken to be gentle. “Back away now.”

They moved as though drunk, staggering. Even Daylily. Rose Red could see how the poison had sunk into the deep places of her eyes; her face sagged with it. “Hen’s teeth, hen’s
teeth
!” Rose Red swore. How could she have let Daylily come here? Leo’s betrothed, his lovely lady, and she had led her right into the Dragon’s den! “I’ll get you out,” she said as she led them up the narrow passage. “I’ll get you both out; Black Dogs take me if I don’t!”

They were quite near the kitchens now, Rose Red realized. For a moment, she debated, hating to leave the queen upstairs and alone. But she dared not let these two alone again, not after . . . not after that. Taking a tight grip on their hands, she led them like two small children down the passage to the kitchens.

This passage should have been dark without candles. But the eerie half-light filtered through even here, so that the passage was no lighter and no darker than anywhere else in the house. The kitchen looked strange to Rose Red, full of silent people sitting exactly where she had left them. The Eldest sat nearest the door, his head buried in his hands. There were eighteen people, twenty altogether, now she had brought Daylily and Foxbrush. All were of noble birth, proudly dressed, from Southlands’ finest families. All were reduced to quivering phantoms as they drew in more dragon poison with each breath.

She would free them. But she must find the queen first.

Rose Red sat first Daylily, then Foxbrush in chairs around one of the cutting tables. After a moment’s hesitation, she carefully checked to be certain all the big carving knives and butcher’s cleavers were stored where the poisoned ones would not see them. Affected as they were by the Dragon, Rose Red hesitated to trust them with any weaponry. At last, though she hated to let them out of her sight, Rose Red left them and hastened back to find the queen.

She did not have far to go. Queen Starflower had made her way down the great staircase. She was across the entrance hall when Rose Red found her, just putting her hand to the heavy front doors.

“Your Majesty!” Rose Red called and picked up her pace. “Your Majesty, wait!”

The queen did not hear her. She strained a moment, then the door gave way, swinging back and allowing the smoke in the courtyard to billow inside.

“Your Majesty!” Rose Red called again. She felt as though she were moving in a dream. Her feet refused to move as she told them. She reached out, but her arms were not long enough. “Don’t go out there, not yet!”

Starflower turned and looked back over her shoulder. Her black eyes locked with Rose Red’s; it was as if she could see right through the veils. Her lips moved, and her voice carried as though from far away.

“My dreams are dead.”

By the time those words reached Rose Red’s ears, the queen had already stepped over the threshold. “NO!” Rose Red cried.

A flash.

Like lightning but bigger; more like a meteor striking the earth. The Eldest’s House shook to its foundations, and Rose Red was flung to the floor. She lay there with her arms over her head as the silence of a scream never uttered rang in her ears and heat consumed the world just beyond the doorway.

Then it was over. Rose Red uncurled and pushed herself to her feet. She staggered to the doorway, coughing in the smoke, waving it from her face. For an age, it seemed, she stood blinded on the threshold. Then at last the smoke cleared enough for her to see the melted stones that had once been the front steps.

Her nightmare incarnate stood in the courtyard, clothed in a man’s shape.

“Welcome back, little princess,” he said.

I
’VE MISSED YOU.”

Rose Red stood frozen on the threshold as her Dream drifted toward her like another cloud of smoke, across the destruction he had wreaked. “The last time we spoke hardly counted. No chance for intimate conversation with everyone screaming and running about the place. Hardly the reunion I had envisioned.”

He reached out and slipped the veil from her face. She remained unmoving while his gaze crawled over her features.

“Princess,” he said at last, “how sadly wasted you are here. So different from the child I knew in the mountains. You should have returned to me, and then I—”

“I’ll never come back!” Rose Red snapped. She regained enough of herself to back away from him. But he followed her into the house, and his eyes gleamed red in its half-light. “You cain’t make me come back,” she said. Her voice was lost in the echoes of the great hall.

“Of course not,” said he with a snarl. “After all, you have forgotten me and how once I was your only true friend. Cruel, cruel child, abandoning me for a mortal playmate! But see how my love for you continues despite your faithlessness?”

“You’re despicable.” She spoke with an effort, for his words besieged her senses, trying every possible weakness for an opportunity to break in and overwhelm her. “We were never friends.”

“You have merely forgotten. Forgotten even the promise you made to return—”

“I made no promise!” Rose Red continued backing into the house, and he continued to follow.

“No promise?” His voice was unendingly sorrowful. The awful features, the black teeth, the sickly white skin, even the flames behind his eyes, melted away beneath that sorrow. “What about your promise to the mortal boy?”

Then his voice altered and became a horrible but perfect mimic of Prince Lionheart’s: “ ‘Dearest girl, I will take comfort in knowing my parents have you yet.’ ”

Rose Red swore and turned away from the Dragon, hiding her face in her hands. But he drifted closer, like evening closing in around her. “What a fine job you’ve done with that promise of yours.”

She pulled herself upright and glared in his face. Though all his features were still wrung with sorrow and regret, deep down in the depths of his eyes, she saw a smile.

Rose Red bared her teeth and slapped him.

Though her hand touched his face for only a moment, it burned all the way through her glove and on down through her skin, to the bone. Pain shot through her arm, up her neck, and into her head. But she was angry now.

“You killed her! You demon! Why did you go and do that? You have no quarrel with her. It was meanness; it was evil! Monster!” Rose Red knew she sounded like a child, screaming in his face. She didn’t care. She clutched her burned hand to her chest and yelled so that her voice rang through the Eldest’s House, disturbing the half-light and shadows. “I know who the real mountain monster was all along. You plague people’s dreams, you plague their hearts, you leave them frightened upon their pillows in the small hours of darkness, and they’re terrified to even live. No wonder they poured all that hatred on me. You
made
me an outcast. You did! If not for my old dad and Beana—”

Her voice broke there. An overwhelming loneliness swept across Rose Red, leaving her panting and empty as she glared up at the Dragon.

He handed her the veil. “Put this on, princess. You are not ready to walk without it in this place. Not until you let me kiss you.”

“I ain’t
never
goin’ to let you kiss me.” But her voice was a whisper, barely audible.

“You think not,” said the Dragon. “However, I won the game.” He leaned down. He was so tall that he had to bend nearly double to bring his face level with hers. Rose Red found herself desperately wishing for even the slim protection of her veil between them, and she twisted it in both hands.

“My darling,” said he, “you are in my world now. I warned you, didn’t I? ‘Return to me, or I will come for you,’ I said. Well, I’ve come for you now, and you are mine.”

Rose Red stared into his black eyes, into the fires deep inside. She would scorch in them, she knew. With an effort, she turned away.

And the Name sprang to her mouth. She did not speak it, but it rested there on her tongue, ready. Its presence, even unspoken, filled her heart, relieved her spirit, and she breathed fresh air once more.

When she opened her eyes, the Dragon was gone.

She stood in the smoke of the hallway. The queen was dead. The House was haunted. The moment of peace was come and gone. But the memory of it lingered. Even as Rose Red knelt and covered her face with the veil to hide her weeping, she clung to that moment. She would not let herself think of her failure. She would not allow herself to imagine Leo’s sorrow when he returned and learned of his mother’s fate. There were others who still needed her—the Eldest, Foxbrush, Daylily, and the other sad captives waiting for her in the kitchen. She could not lead them out of the House. The Dragon would kill them; she knew that now. But she could care for them and feed them and do her best to relieve their suffering. For the Dragon’s poison had no effect on her, at least, none that she could feel. So she would care for the prisoners, as much a prisoner as they, and wait for Leo’s return.

For he would return and slay the Dragon. She knew he would.

At last Rose Red dried her tears and started back for the kitchen. At least she would not yet have to explain the queen’s death to the others. In their poisoned state they would not comprehend.

The half-light never altered. When Rose Red entered the kitchen, it looked exactly as she had left it, dim and melancholy. The despair on the prisoners’ faces was increased by the shadows settling into the hollows of their cheeks. She went to the Eldest first, gently taking his hand. He did not notice her. The tears had dried on his face, once so stern and strong, now withered into that of an old man. His eyes sought the window, though the smoke swirled too heavily against the glass to allow any view of the outside world. They were cut off from other worlds entirely, floating somewhere in a dark limbo.

Rose Red shuddered at this thought. She murmured comforting words to King Hawkeye that she did not think he heard, then moved on to the next prisoner. She came at length to Foxbrush, who sat bolt upright in his chair near the large kitchen fireplace. He looked strange to Rose Red with his hair unoiled and sticking up about his face. He bore a strong resemblance to his cousin, especially at this moment with his normally squinting eyes opened as wide as they would go, staring, staring. . . .

Staring at what? Rose Red turned to follow his gaze. One of the kitchen doors stood ajar, revealing a narrow passage that, Rose Red knew, eventually took one to a small breakfast room where the queen had liked to sit most mornings. Foxbrush stared at it with something between terror and rapt fascination.

“Sir Foxbrush,” Rose Red whispered, touching his cheek with one finger. “You all right, there?”

He did not move. Rose Red poked him again and waved her hand before his eyes. Not even a blink. Rose Red gulped and turned back to the door. Perhaps
he
stood just beyond. Terrorizing these poor prisoners with his presence. As though his poisons weren’t torment enough! She set her jaw and marched to the door, flinging it wide.

A half-lit passage, empty, lay beyond.

Rose Red narrowed her eyes at Foxbrush. “There ain’t nothin’ here, Sir Foxbrush,” she said. “You’re safe with me—Silent Lady!” She gasped and pressed a hand to her chest, whirling back to look down the hall.

For she realized that Daylily was not in the kitchen.

“Silent Lady shield us,” Rose Red whispered, then hastened down the hall, one hand pressed against the wall to guide her in that awful half-light, her burned hand clutched to her chest as though she could somehow still her racing heart. Not Daylily too! Not her master’s beautiful betrothed! He’d already lost his mother today . . . she could not allow him to lose his lady! She must find her. How could she have been such an idiot as to allow Daylily to accompany her here? She should have shown more will and stood up to her, should have disobeyed orders for the lady’s sake. It wasn’t in Rose Red’s nature to disobey, but what excuse was that now? She should have known the poison would affect even the baron’s daughter! For all her beauty, for all her strength, she was only mortal.

The breakfast room was empty, but the far door stood open. Rose Red went through it, paused a moment in the passage beyond, uncertain which direction Daylily would have taken. Then her heart sank to her stomach, and she thought she would be sick.

For she knew exactly where Daylily had gone.

She could not help it. Her pace slowed despite all her efforts to hurry. Fear grabbed her by the shoulders and struggled to hold her back. “I’m doin’ what he wants,” she told herself. “I shouldn’t go; it’s just what
he
wants me to do! I should go back, care for the others, give her up for lost. Leo will understand. Or if he don’t . . .”

Even as she tried to convince herself, she knew she would not succeed. Though everything in her spirit warned her away, Rose Red continued doggedly forward until she came at last to that narrow pass where she had found Daylily and Foxbrush (was that only minutes ago? It felt like hours, or days) standing before a door that led to a servants’ stair.

The door she had shut with such force.

The door that was now open again.

It gaped like jaws, and there was no stairway spiraling up. Instead, a tunnel lay beyond the door, a tunnel leading down, down, into darkness. As Rose Red stood in that doorway, her hands clutching the frame, she thought she heard a trickle of water, a stream, deep inside.

It was the mouth of the mountain monster’s cave. Here, in the Eldest’s House. A stench like death rose up to meet her.

“Silent Lady,” she whispered. “Silent Lady!”

She bowed her head and shuddered as she drew another long breath of that stench. Never, in all her life, had she been more alone than she was now, standing at Death’s own door.

How long Rose Red stood no one could have said. But the only observer in that household, watching from the darkest shadows, knew full well what she would eventually do, no matter how long it took her to reach the decision. He knew; and when she passed through the doorway and vanished into the darkness of that cave, he smiled. Fire gleamed in his mouth.