Percy put her finger forward and touched it. And it rang! It was like touching impossible immortal glass. At the point of contact, the shadow rang and resounded, singing like crystal, for it was encased in an impenetrable field of energy. It seemed to strain, to want to cleave to Percy, but it could not.
Percy frowned. She looked down at the maiden, and observed her for several long curious moments—hearing meanwhile behind her the sobbing of the Countess and the subdued voices of the men. And then she leaned over the maiden and examined her face even closer, noting the odd pattern of lights reflected in the pupils of her eyes.
Those were the colored stars she had seen in a vision so many days ago it seemed, when she was inside Death’s mind at his Keep. She knew them now for distant prismatic reflections from overhead—for directly above in the ceiling was the base of the Sapphire Throne, and it was like a star field, burning with dots of colors, casting a reflection directly down, in a rainbow sieve of pinpoints of light.
The same dots of light sparkled in the whiteness of the maiden’s hair, as though she was sprinkled with powdered sugar. Such was the strange optical illusion spun by the cobwebs.
Look closer—through the cobweb filaments of her hair and along each strand shine stars. . . .
And Percy forced herself to look. She made her vision into razors, and she cut through the air and narrowed in a beam of force on the edge of infinite sharpness.
She put her fingertips upon the maiden’s white hair, sensing the granules of crystalline energy ring also, in the same manner as the death shadow.
They were both encased in it, death and the maiden.
It was a veil, this energy—a veil between life and death. And it was never meant to be.
Percy felt herself shuddering, her mind filling with the tolling of cathedral bells, deep, primeval, bass tones of dark power. She let go of the maiden’s cobweb-spun hair, and clenched her hands to herself, until her knuckles were bloodless white—
“Percy!” Somewhere in back she could hear Beltain’s familiar voice calling her, but it was coming through many thick layers of cotton. . . .
Percy placed her one hand, cold as ice, upon the delicate doll’s hand belonging to the Cobweb Bride, gripping her tight. She then reached out and placed her other hand upon the maiden’s death shadow, crystalline and hard and impenetrable.
And then, she reached out in both directions, the maiden and her death, and she pulled with every fiber of her being.
The cobwebs in the room started to vibrate. They floated and shimmered, each tiny strand ringing in an invisible wind. Faster they moved, vibrating, microscopic, razor-fine, infinite. . . .
And Percy’s pull increased.
There was a sensation of wind gathering in the chamber. And then, something exploded, like a world of shattering crystals, and the preternatural veil of force was gone.
Percy felt herself lose consciousness for a split second from the impact slamming upon her mind. She had broken through. All along the room, the cobwebs broke apart, the filaments turning into fine grains, shattering the bonds between the smallest parts of themselves, like crumbling formations of salt and sugar, raining down into pale dust.
The maiden lying before Percy shuddered suddenly, her eyes growing wide, and she took in a deep breath of air into long-suspended lungs. She breathed, gasping, and at her side her death shadow billowed at last, released from its impossible crystal prison.
The room suddenly came alive—or rather, the shapes of the women suspended as they were, were freed of their ethereal bonds at last.
They crumpled down where they were—sitting, standing, lying. Each was a lifeless corpse. Percy sensed in horror that their crystalline death shadows—those shadow shapes that she thought were simply imprisoned—were in fact ancient remnants, indeed an illusion. Maybe they had been something once, real death energy shadow-forms. But it was oh-so-long ago. Death itself was leached out of existence, softly, delicately, through the strange debilitating magic of the crystal veil that separated death from life.
Because all these other women had died so long ago, they were not even the animated undead. They were now simply gone.
All except for two—the maiden who was the Cobweb Bride, and . . . Leonora.
Apparently, while the other women collapsed all around into sad pitiful shapes of true death, Leonora inhaled a deep breath of her own, and sat up in her chair.
“Leonora! Oh, my child! You are alive!” cried the Countess. And the Count rushed forward to support her, for his spouse nearly fainted.
“Mother!” Leonora exclaimed, her voice cracking and weak, and her face pale and sickly, but seeming to regain a little color before their eyes. “Oh, mother! And my father!”
Their reunion was a thing of joy and, for Percy, amazement, because Percy noted that there was no death shadow hovering anywhere near Lady Leonora—which meant that the girl was well and truly alive.
But those observations were incidental, to be savored later. Because in this immediate instant, the maiden who was the Cobweb Bride started to rise stiffly from her sepulchral death bed, and the white crystal dust of shattered cobwebs rained from her hair, clothing, and limbs upon the stone. And her white raiment was revealed to be a soft dusky rose, the same shade as her cheeks. She was strangely vibrant and full of life for someone whose death shadow billowed at her side.
It was then that all eyes turned upon the maiden, even Leonora and her parents pausing to stare.
“Who are you, My Lady?” said Percy gently, addressing the Cobweb Bride.
It took the young woman several breaths before she could form words. “I . . . am . . . Melinoë.” Her voice started as a mere whisper, cracking, and there were hints of sonorous tones in it that were yet unrealized.
The Countess D’Arvu spoke up. “Dear child, who is your mother? Is it Her Brilliance, the Sovereign, Rumanar Avalais?”
The maiden who had named herself Melinoë appeared to be recalling something. “Yes,” she finally said. “My mother—the Sovereign, she is my mother. Though I hardly know who she is—or who I am. I—hardly remember . . . my name.”
“By Heaven! And has she done this to you?” asked the Count.
“My mother has blue eyes,” spoke Melinoë, starting to get up from her seated position, and Percy immediately assisted her with her hands under her arm. “My mother is beautiful and bright and she rules the Domain. She used to come and visit me . . . in the room of the sun. In the Palace of the Sun. She used to brush my hair and tell me about the flowers in Elysium. And then she stopped coming, and—and I no longer remember.”
“Oh, dear Lord!” The Countess used a handkerchief to wipe her face, while Leonora stared with a dazed and frightened expression around her, at the corpses, suddenly realizing where they were. “What is this place, mother?” she whispered, hugging the Countess in fear. “The last I remember is being in the quarters of the Ladies-in-Attendance, and then—I don’t remember!” And Leonora turned to look at the Cobweb Bride who now stood with difficulty, supported by Percy, and she said, “Melinoë? I do not remember you! Have I seen you in Attendance? Oh, I am so frightened, mother!”
“This lady is the daughter of Her Brilliance,” said the Count.
“What daughter? I know not of such! This must be a mistake,” said Leonora. “I am so confused! What is this terrible place? Why am I here?”
“I think it is time we made our exit,” said Diril in that moment. He had been making rounds of the room, crouching down to examine some of the corpses, and now said to the Count: “This is rather disturbing. I know and recognize some of these young women—they have been fixtures at the Court many years ago—decades. I was a young boy, and I remember one of these at least, when she was a debutante, and another had been deceased and taken, strewn in flowers, in a burial procession along the streets of the citadel. How is it possible they are now here, and even though corpses, they are fresh, and have not aged or deteriorated a moment since? It is definitely a for
m of sorcery. Thus, we need to leave, now, all of us.”
“Agreed,” said Beltain. And he went forward to help Percy with Lady Melinoë.
“What of all these unfortunates?” the Count asked, pointing to the scattered bodies. Should anything be done, perhaps—”
But Diril shook his head negatively, with a grim demeanor.
“Leonora, can you walk, dear girl?”
Lady Leonora nodded, and with the help of both her parents she was up also.
And then they began their intricate and careful trip back up and out of the horrible secret chamber.
Once they emerged from the underground chamber back inside the Hall of the Sun, gently leading the two revived young ladies, Diril himself went to the golden goddess and he pressed and twisted the statuette until the secret floor passage was again concealed.
Next they crossed the Hall and found the secret passage in the wall, and started moving, with as much speed as possible, while half-carrying Lady Leonora and Lady Melinoë, and passing them from arm to arm.
The passage through the exposed remote corridor was the most harrowing portion of their escape.
“Do not fear,” Diril reassured them before they emerged, “The worst is behind us, for the only guard to be expected is in the central potion of the Palace, and their attention has been sorely divided these last few days.”
However, moments after they had come forth, a series of servants turned a corner, one after another. Diril immediately lifted his voice and acquired a nasal accent and embarked upon a cultured lecture about the history of the hanging tapestries in this particular wing of the Palace, achieving the perfect illusion of a palatial tour guide. The Count fell in with him adroitly and asked a series of annoying questions about the noble subjects depicted, while the ladies pretended to examine the wall hangings, and the Countess held Leonora and Melinoë suspended on both her arms, and laughed softly, genuinely seeming inebriated. Beltain, wrapped in his black cloak, took up a calm and bored pose near Percy, who in turn simply moved to the wall and pretended to adjust a bit of tapestry, feeling, unlike the others, utterly conspicuous, ridiculous, and terrified.
The servants bowed and curtsied, and were perfunctorily ignored by the aristocrats who were obviously out on a whim, taking a midnight tour of the Palace.
When they had gone, the Countess D’Arvu nearly collapsed, resting against the wall, and for a moment, it was the two young ladies who supported her.
Somehow they managed to miss any more encounters with Palace servants or guards, and finally entered the underground tunnels with their filth and scrawled graffiti, in utmost relief.
A half an hour more and they arrived at the house belonging to the Count D’Arvu.
But there was to be no rest.
“We can no longer remain at Court,” said the Count to Beltain, once they had come within doors. “I take my family and we leave, with our child Leonora, this very night. There is no knowing how long we have until the Sovereign discovers this, and then—it is unspeakable. The House D’Arvu is done for. Thus, we must run. You are welcome to come with us.”
“I was about to suggest the same to you,” replied Beltain softly. “But I am afraid we go back inside the war zone. I am Lord Beltain Chidair of Lethe, and my place is back north. And especially now, we will be going to a place where no mortal will choose to go willingly. Thus, we part, with kindness.”
“You and the girl have my eternal gratitude,” the Count replied. Where we go, I am not yet certain. But it will be as far away as possible from this evil war . . . and from the monstrous creature who almost destroyed our daughter. I serve the Sovereign no longer.”
And thus it was that several riders left the citadel that night. Two riders traveled through the northern gate—Beltain and Percy, riding the great black charger, and on a chestnut mare provided by the D’Arvu, came the Lady Melinoë, bundled in a thick dark coat, hooded, and tied securely to the comfortable side-saddle. Next to her on the saddle, unseen by all except Percy, rode the maiden’s death-shadow. Beltain held both the reins of Jack and the mare, and led them past the gates in the wake of several peasant carts and noble carriages.
Thus, the Cobweb Bride left the Sapphire Court.
Chapter 22
No one spoke much until they were well away from the citadel walls and on the road heading north. The moon rode the sky in her full radiance, and was beginning to sink toward the tree-lined horizon, for it was now many hours after midnight, and the world reposed in a contrast of silver, blues, indigoes and shadows.
“My Lady, how are you?” said Percy at some point, watching with concern the nearly limp form of the young woman to whom she was so strangely bound.
“I am well. . . .” Lady Melinoë raised her hooded face and the moonlight illuminated a part of it, in particular her shimmering liquid eyes.
“Apologies that we may not rest just yet,” said Beltain. “But we cannot risk stopping until we are well away from—your mother’s Court.”
“I have no wish to rest,” Melinoë said. “I have been resting a very long time.”
“Oh, can you remember any of it?”
But the maiden shook her head. “All I remember are . . . endless dreams.”
Percy felt a painful constriction in her chest. This girl was young, gentle, beautiful, and seemed in good health—except for the death attached to her. What abomination made her suffer this fate? How had it come to pass?
“So you remember nothing at all, of your mother?”
“I am not sure,” the lady replied. “I remember her kindness. Then, nothing.”
“What manner of kindness is it, to conceal her own daughter from the world? And then, to perform dark sorcery?” mused Beltain in a hard voice.
Percy said nothing. There was yet the most difficult thing to be said—something that they had not told her yet.
For all appearances, the Cobweb Bride had no notion that she was dead. Or that she was intended to meet Death, her Bridegroom.
How was one to even explain such a thing?
And what if—what if after all this time, she learned the truth and then refused to comply with her singular and horrible fate? And as a result, the world would have to continue as it was, broken?
Percy took a deep breath and began. “Lady Melinoë, there is something you must know.”
Lady Melinoë Avalais, daughter of the Sovereign of the Domain, listened to the grim details of her true nature and her fate explained to her as gently as possible, while they rode underneath the waning moonlight.
Afterwards, she spoke nothing for a long time.
Percy, terrified on her behalf and feeling wrenching guilt—a completely new, unexpected circumstance she had never dreamed she would be subjected to in the course of her fulfillment of Death’s quest—glanced at the maiden repeatedly, seeking any kind of reaction in her delicate face painted by the moon. Eventually she noticed the liquid pooling in Melinoë’s eyes, and then, as drops coalesced, long streaks appeared, illuminating her cheeks. She cried wordlessly, with her face unmarred by emotion, and it was peculiar indeed to observe a dead one cry. Was it even possible?
At last, the lady wiped her eyes and said: “So. . . . This is how much my mother loves me. I thank you for the truth, and for not sparing me. Well then, so be it. If Death is my true Bridegroom, and if the world itself depends upon this one small thing—small, in the greater scheme of things—and needs my compliance, then I agree and go to my fate.”
“My Lady . . .” Percy whispered, her own eyes welling with tears. “I am so sorry! Oh, if there was but any other way—”
“It matters not,” said the Cobweb Bride. “As you say, I am dead already. And now at least I know that someone loves and waits for me. And thus, I go gladly to him. In truth, it was meant to be. Therefore, take me to Death! Take me to him now!”
And no longer able to hold her face impassive, Lady Melinoë wept hard, with shuddering sobs, putting her hands up to cover her contorted cheeks.
They rode on, in the deep night darkness, for now the moon had sunk below the close horizon defined by filigree shapes of trees.
The maiden sobbed her heart out, and then eventually quieted. And for an hour, as cold and grave as a tomb, there was perfect silence between them, only the sound of their breathing and the soft snorts of the horses in the chill air.
Half an hour later they had reached Ulpheo. The translucent capital city reposed, like an anemic lotus blossom filled with crawling gnats, in the residual phosphor glow of the night sky bereft of moon and impaled with sharp stars. They circled past its sickly glass walls and continued onward.
Another quarter hour, and the eastern sky at their left started to lighten with the faintest precursor of silver.
The hills ended suddenly, and the last sparse scattering of forest was all that remained between them and the wide open plain that was the approaching Morphaea.
It was then, in this strange in-between time, the delicate slate blue twilight of the dawn, that the form of the landscape before them began to shimmer and fade.
Right before them it was happening, a strange surreal mirage of permeable half-solidity, and all things took on smooth edges, all hard delineations softened.
Beltain reined in Jack and pulled back the mare. They stopped sharply, staring, in disbelief, as the unnatural phenomenon that they barely knew about was taking place before their eyes—yet another portion of the land was disappearing—lord knows where.
And then a wild, impossible thought came to Percy. . . .
What if it was Death himself, gradually taking all things to him? And if so, could it be that the place to which all these things went was none other than the underworld, Death’s own twilight realm?
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