“My Lord Beltain!” Percy whispered suddenly looking up into his eyes, while only a few feet before them the ground churned and the air warped in an act of displacement, and a mist arose to cover all things before them in a shimmering ethereal veil. “Do you trust me, my beloved?”
Beltain did not pause for a second. “You know I do! I trust you with my life.”
“Then trust me this once, and do what I say, for it will take us directly on our journey to where we need to be. Thus, ride forward, my love! Ride directly into this fading land before us!”
And the black knight nodded, and he gave free rein to both Jack and the chestnut mare. With a snap and pull, the horses went into motion.
“Hold on, My Lady Melinoë!” Percy exclaimed, “Hold on tight!”
And they plunged into the swirling mist.
What happened next was either the blink of an eye or interminable compounding moments of grey eternity. They passed through the mist and emerged on the other side . . . into a now familiar Hall of boundless silence, with arches and columns lining up in rows unto the horizon, no end and no beginning, no walls, only the granite stone slabs under their feet.
Overhead, the distant impossible ceiling that was neither starry sky nor a dream.
The air was neither cold nor warm, but as indifferent as the grey silence of oblivion.
The horses’ hooves rang dull upon the stone floor, as they paused, finding themselves displaced and yet exactly where they needed to be.
“Oh, thank Heaven!” Percy muttered. “We are indeed here. . . .”
Beltain’s metal-clad arms pressed around her and his baritone sounded soft and amazed. “You were indeed right, we are back in this accursed place! Ah, how well I remember our last time here.”
“What is this place? How . . . did we get here?” Lady Melinoë’s tremulous voice sounded, and they both glanced to see her dilated frightened eyes. Maybe she was beginning to regret her decision now. . . .
“We are within Death’s kingdom, My Lady, and this is his Keep.”
“But how? We were just riding—”
And Percy explained the circumstances of twilight and the fading of shadows as it related to entering Death’s domain. “If we had not come upon this moment of blending between worlds, we would have had to ride a long way north through the real world. This was a fortunate shortcut given us. I would not be surprised if Death himself had intended it to be. And now, we are here, we have arrived!”
“So where is he?” Melinoë said. “Where is my Bridegroom?”
“You must call upon him,” Percy replied gently. “Speak, and he will listen, for all here is his kingdom, and he hears us even now.”
Melinoë raised her lily-smooth hands to the hood of her cloak, and she lowered it, revealing her bright golden hair that did not lose its gleam even here in this place of dull, disembodied half-light.
“Lord Death!” she exclaimed, in a sonorous voice that echoed along the stones. “I am here! I am your Cobweb Bride!”
The echoes ended.
There was only silence.
And then, a remote masculine voice spoke, ringing in the very stone of the Keep, coming from all directions in the Hall.
“Come to me!”
In the wake of the words came a gale of wind.
They followed the wind that served as guide, and rode through the hall, hooves striking stone, past arches and columns in an infinite army of monotonous languor, until the nature of the shadows changed, and cobwebs garlanded the niches, hanging like old funereal lace.
Granite soon became bone. Pale ivory cream, the world transformed around them, and overhead was a softly floating upside-down sea of cobwebs, spun by ancient spiders that had long since gone from this lifeless Hall.
This was Death’s grand tomb, a sepulcher of wondrous proportions. The columns were now caverns of bones, wrenched from a giant’s ribcage, and it was now impossible to ride through this chaos.
Beltain dismounted, pulling Percy down with him, and then he assisted Lady Melinoë from her chestnut mare. Once on the floor, the lady stood upright with some difficulty, still rather unsteady on her feet shod in fine traveling boots given her by the Countess D’Arvu, and wearied after the extended ride.
Percy came to take her hand, feeling its coolness. And at the same time the death shadow of the Cobweb Bride responded, compelled to follow and to cleave—it was in fact a difficult urge that Percy had to fight, not to pull the two together immediately. . . . But she reminded herself that it was not for her, that final sorrowful task, but for Death himself.
The two girls moved together thus, with Beltain walking behind them and leading the two horses carefully over the shards of bones underfoot.
Before them, the cobwebs thickened, and at the same time the Hall widened into an anemic radiance-filled expanse. Up ahead, between two massive bone columns, upraised on a dais amid decadent pallor stood a grandiose ivory throne. Two sharp needle-spires rose from its high back like horns.
And upon this throne sat a man clad in a black doublet and hose. He wore a wide starched collar of faded lace, and he reposed lightly to one side, elegant hand propped underneath a bearded chin trimmed in the angular manner of an antique grim Spaniard.
His face was shadowed and for some reason impossible to look upon directly—as though the focus in one’s eye shifted slightly when one tried. . . . As though the face was not there, but a vacant spot of shadow and illusion.
Such was Death.
But the most remarkable thing about him was that he was not alone.
At various spots around the throne and at the base of the dais sat a number of somewhat dejected human figures. Indeed, there were six of them. Four were young girls, bundled in warm winter clothing, and sprawled on the floor among fragments of bone and on the dais stairs, sitting cross-legged, or with legs folded, or in one case lying on her back with hands crossed underneath her head in place of a pillow.
Two more were a lady and gentleman, both handsome, both attired in once stylish travel clothing that had undergone quite a bit of combat with dirt and dust and disarray. The raven-haired lady with a face of sharp faerie beauty sat primly upon the top stair just next to Death’s elbow, fiddling with her stained and torn gloves, and right next to her, the gentleman lay, resting his equally dark but rather wildly tousled and bearded head in her lap.
As soon as Percy approached, holding Lady Melinoë’s hand, followed by Beltain and the horses, everyone turned in their direction.
“Lord Death!” Percy began. . . .
There was a bit of shrieking.
“Percy! Oh, Lordy, Lord! Is that you, Percy Ayren?” The girls had gotten up and it was Catrine, and Sybil and Regata, her former original companions from the road to Death’s Keep, all of whom Percy recognized immediately.
“Regata! Catrine! And you too, Sybil!” Percy was stunned momentarily out of her somber mood, and let go of Melinoë’s hand. “What are you all doing here? How did you get here? I thought you had been captured by the Duke’s patrol—”
“Oh, thank Heaven and all blessed saints!” said the gentleman, rising up on his elbows from the lady’s lap. “They are indeed here! That is, someone is here!”
Percy vaguely recognized both the gentleman and the lady—they were the same haughty and aristocratic travelers whose curricle had broken down on the side of the road when the girls were passing through Chidair lands on the final leg of their journey to the northern forests—possibly there had been another lady with them?
But none of it mattered.
Percy looked at Lord Death, sitting on his throne of bones. His face was in eternal shadow but somehow she knew he was looking at her, and at the maiden at her side.
Percy glanced at Melinoë and noted her strange focused stare as she was gazing onward in the direction of the throne. “My Lady,” Percy said gently. “You may not see him, but Death sits there, before you.”
“I . . . see him,” replied Melinoë, never taking her
eyes off the one who was Death.
“Oh, you can actually see him?” Percy wondered, recalling that the last time they were all gathered here, no one could see Death’s human form until she touched him.
“Of course she can see him!” the lady sitting on the dais stair said in annoyance. “We can all see him, it is all rather tedious.”
“On, no! Percy!” cried Regata, suddenly noticing Beltain. “That’s the Black Knight! And his fearsome horse! Oh, no! He’s here to drag us back to the dungeon!?”
“I assure you, I am not,” Beltain replied with a rueful smile.
But Percy paid no attention to anything but Death and his Cobweb Bride.
Melinoë took several slow steps forward, and neared the throne. Her death shadow drifted behind her.
“My Lord . . .” she whispered and her face was exalted. “I am your Bride . . .”
Death moved.
He stood up, a tall, elegant, masculine shape, and then he walked down the stairs of his dais.
In that moment everyone grew silent.
“You are indeed she.” Death’s voice sounded from the depths and within their minds.
“Will you have me, my Bridegroom? Will you take me unto you?”
“I take you,” said Death. “As you are mine.”
And he reached out his hand, his wrists draped in ivory lace, his elegant fingers with their sharpened claws. This pale great hand he offered to her.
Melinoë did not hesitate. She put her delicate lily-white hand into his, feeling his great ivory fingers close over hers.
With his other hand, Death reached for the shadow that stood behind her, the death shadow of the Cobweb Bride.
“At last. . . .”
His immortal whisper resounded throughout the Hall.
Melinoë trembled and closed her eyes.
Drawing the maiden and her death shadow to him, Death leaned down, towering over them both, and he kissed Melinoë once on the forehead and once on the lips.
And then he pulled.
Percy felt the world—the fabric of the world around her—begin to shift and rip asunder.
Columns trembled and the floor underneath them shook in a deep rumble of moving bedrock and rustling bones. Stronger and stronger it grew, and a wind arose, becoming gale force, as it rushed through the sea of cobwebs overhead and swept through the Hall, buffeting all of them, swirling vortexes of dust and impossible chaos. . . .
For long interminable moments it raged and then it was over.
Melinoë was standing exactly as she had been, before Death, her hand clutched in his, and her death shadow still at her side.
Nothing had happened.
Everything and everyone had gone terribly silent.
And Lord Death himself, if such a thing were possible, appeared perplexed.
Percy released a held breath and stared in terrible confusion.
“What is the meaning of this?” said he who was Death, holding the hand of his Bride and her shadow. “Why is there no union?”
Lady Melinoë opened her eyes and looked up at the one who held her by the hand. “Am I still . . . dead?” she whispered. “What has come to pass?”
And Death continued looking at her with his shadowed visage invisible to all, and he said, “I do not know.”
Then, slowly, he turned to look at Percy. “You, who have been given a fragment of my heart—come to me.”
Percy wordlessly obeyed. She climbed the few steps of the dais and stood before her immortal liege.
“Now, you must try to do what I have taught you. Take my Bride and her death and unite them!”
“What? I?” whispered Percy. “But if you yourself, My Lord, cannot—”
“You are mine also, and my power is yours. I must observe what comes to pass when it is exercised.”
With her trembling fingers, Percy reached out and received Melinoë’s ice-cold hand and then she took hold of the billowing shadow. . . . She felt the immediate gathering of dark roiling power, and the familiar echoing sound descending upon her mind.
Dear Lord in Heaven! She was supposed to do this thing before Death himself, as if she were his young apprenticed pupil!
Percy felt the immediate connection between the maiden and her shadow, and then she drew upon all that was contained within herself and pulled the two together—recalling the same thing she had done before in the shadowed chamber underneath the Sapphire Throne—only this time it was not merely to break the bond of the energy veil, but the real thing, to enact the final true death.
She pulled, and the world within her mind fell apart to mirror shards and crumbling pieces then coalesced together again from the effort. She pulled—
And nothing happened.
Percy let go of Melinoë and drew her hands to her mouth in fear. “My Lady Melinoë,” she said, “can you feel me when I attempt to do this thing? Was there anything at all you felt just now?”
“Yes . . . I feel a slight pull, as if my soul is being called forth, and then, nothing.”
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake! What now?” suddenly said the beautiful, shrewish lady still seated on the dais. “This is simply unbelievable! What on earth is going on?”
The young gentleman meanwhile placed his tousled head between his legs and groaned. “No! Oh, no, no, no! A thousand times, no! This cannot be happening!”
“I do not understand,” Death said again. “Why is there no union?”
“Maybe because a union requires love, or, at the very least, a bit of affection?—nay, familiarity? An attempt at courtship? Mild flirtation?” exclaimed the lady, while the gentleman hurriedly retorted, “Hush, my dear Amaryllis! By Jove and Tartarus, do hold your delightfully waspish tongue, at least with this particular dark gentleman—”
But Death seemed to attend to her words.
“Love . . .” he uttered. “I know not of it—not as a proper mortal man, for I am not one of you. And yet, I know that when I take your kind upon me, each one of you is more precious and beloved by me in that one moment than the entirety of the world.”
“A lovely sentiment, but a bit excessive upon first acquaintance,” said Lady Amaryllis. “For indeed, that is all any of us gets with you, Lord Death, is it not? A moment for acquaintance and then—pouf!—and then only Lord knows what happens next. I do suggest you start enriching your time with our mortal kind. Have you considered an extended wooing ritual? Begin with a simple flower folded in a sealed and perfumed note declaring your true affections—it would be a rather fine start. Followed up with, perhaps, a lovely serenade under the balcony of a moonlit boudoir? Or is that too much to expect in exchange for uncharted eternity?”
“Maybe—” Percy meanwhile said gently, with a glance at Beltain who stood behind them all, observing with unbelieving eyes. “Maybe when I freed you, Lady Melinoë, maybe I broke something in the process? For, I still don’t quite understand the dark sorcery, the nature of that ethereal veil that held you imprisoned and fixed in stasis.”
“I know that you set me free,” Melinoë replied, looking at her with a lost but sincere expression. “Whatever my previous existence had been, whatever illusion or lies or horror my own mother, the Sovereign had enacted—”
“Wait, her mother is the Sovereign of the Domain? The Sovereign?” whispered Catrine, staring at the other girls.
“—Whatever it was,” Melinoë continued, “I am grateful to be free of it. If only I knew more, if only I remembered! My own mother did this thing to me! How could she? She who braided my hair and brought me blooming flowers to adorn me and told me wondrous tales? My beloved mother with her kind blue eyes? She is no mother of mine!”
“Perhaps,” Death said, musing, “I might try this thing, this mortal courtship. I will try to woo my Cobweb Bride who is no longer bound in Cobwebs. . . .”
“Well, that’s just splendid and dandy!” exclaimed the gentleman with the unkempt demeanor and an untrimmed beard. “And while he woos and courts her, what are we to do in the meantime? Ea
t our knuckles?”
“To be fair, it is all your fault, Nathan,” said Lady Amaryllis, “for if you had not made us go sailing on that infernal river, we would not be here in the first place, stuck and unable to depart this excruciating unrelieved hell, next to this mirthless, immortal antique!”
“No! No, no!” Nathan moaned again. “This! To be resigned to this eternity in this dank hall surrounded by bones and these poor girls, and now these newly arrived persons, whoever the hell they are—”
“We have been told that a Cobweb Bride is all that is required to set the world aright!”
“—and all I wanted was to have a bit of steak once more, a single decent dinner before I became a stiff and walking corpse myself!” Lord Nathan went on.
“Silence!”
Everyone heeded Death’s ringing voice of power.
And the dark Bridegroom turned to Melinoë and again offered her his hand. “My Lady Bride, come to me. Tell me your name, so that I may woo you.”
“My Lord, I am . . . Melinoë Avalais,” she replied. “At least it is all I can remember of my former life. I remember nothing else but vaporous dreams, and none of them have solid form. Nothing to grasp or recollect. . . . I—I am—”
“Tell me . . .” spoke Lord Death gently, and for the first time his immortal masculine voice took on a strange vulnerable sound, as though a wound had been opened to the air. “Tell me of yourself. . . . All that you can remember.”
“But there is so very little!” Lady Melinoë cried. And yet she took his hand.
And leading her thus, Death took the lady to the first stair and helped her step upon the dais and stop before his ivory throne.
“I have no seat to offer you but my own,” he said. “Take it, if you choose.”
But, “No,” said his lady Bride. “Sit in your own place, My Lord. And I will lie by your side. . . .”
And as Death resumed his throne, the maiden came to rest at his feet, beside his throne, lying down softly on the dais of bone, and resting her head against his sculpted legs clad in dark hose, in a gesture of perfect trust.
She remained thus, for long moments, in silence.
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