“Where’s the Village?”
“You cannot go there. It is far down this Path, much too near the Black Water. You must go back.” He growled out the last words, his chest heaving. His pain was so great.
Rose Red licked her lips and drew a long breath. Then, though she did not know why she did so, she put out a hand to the beast, stepping closer. He watched her, snarling, but made no move. She touched a wound at his shoulder. He shook his head sharply.
“Get that light out of my eyes! I beg you!”
She inspected the wound. “I maybe could mend this,” she said gently. “If you’ll let me try.”
The look he gave her was agonized with regret. “There can be no mending for me. They tore me to pieces in the other world. I will remain torn to pieces in this one.”
Rose Red put a hand in her pocket. Sure enough, her fingers found a needle and thread secreted there. She drew them from her pocket, set her lamp down at her feet, threaded the needle, then carefully parted the creature’s coarse fur.
“Witch-fire!” the beast swore. “I told you, you cannot help me!”
“Hold still,” she said. She slid the handle of her lantern up onto her elbow so that she could still hold it as she worked.
“Why would you help me? I ate them; I devoured them, the mortal insects! I enslaved them with fear and worship, made them offer me gifts upon this stone. And they hated me.”
Her needle was sharp. She forced it through the torn flesh. She was glad her veil covered her face against that ghostly blood.
“They hated me, though I loved them, the little crawling things. They were ignorant and dirty; they needed my guidance.”
“Liar,” Rose Red said as she drew the thread tight.
“I did love them!” the wolf snarled. “In my way.”
“No you didn’t.” Her eyes fixed upon her work so that she would not have to return the awful stare he turned upon her. “You’re just sayin’ that to make yourself feel better. You hated them and used them and disposed of them as you liked. I know who you are. I ain’t so easily fooled as all that.”
The beast roared. He broke away from her, yanking the needle and thread from her hand, and bounded back to the other end of the slab, where he crouched behind the central stone, as though frightened of her.
His breathing came hard, agonized and wretched. “Why do you help me, then?”
Rose Red put her hands on her hips. “If I only ever did for them what deserved it, I’d have little enough to do.”
He stared at her, his gaze running over the folds of her veil and down her tiny frame. He could swallow her in a single gulp. But Rose Red slid the lantern back down from her elbow until she held it in her hand once more. The light glowed softly as she approached the monster, and it was he that trembled. She put out her free hand, feeling in his thick fur for her needle, but when she followed the thread back to the wound, she found that her stitches had all pulled out under his violent movements. Fresh blood oozed.
His voice, though that of a wolf, came as a sob. “You see, you cannot help. You and your cursed light. It hurts beyond bearing. I beg you to stop.”
Rose Red paused, uncertain. Then she broke the end of her thread and put the dirtied needle back in her pocket. The wound was worse than ever. She could not fix it. “I . . . I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t have even tried.”
The lantern light dimmed.
The monster raised his face, and the fixed snarl was almost a smile. “I told you as much. There is nothing you can do for those who are dead. Go back now.”
She stepped away, clutching the lantern in both hands. “I’ve got to go on. You must let me pass, Wolf Lord.”
He heaved himself to his feet, his eyes rolling with pain. “It’s a fool’s errand,” he said. “Your friend cannot be recovered from the Village.” He sniffed then, drawing in the scent of her, and when he finished, his eyes opened with a flash. “Or rather, your enemy.”
Rose Red bowed her head. “She ain’t my enemy. She’s my mistress, and I promised to serve her.”
“You hate her.”
“I hate nobody.”
“Dislike her thoroughly, then.”
Rose Red did not answer.
The Wolf Lord shook his shaggy head wonderingly. “I will let you go. But you must leave something of your own behind with me. No one passes through to Death’s realm without paying the toll.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Your lantern.”
She gasped. “No.”
“That evil light is useless to you anyway. Did it help you to mend me? What makes you think it will help you win back this mistress you hate?”
“I cain’t give it to you.”
“Then you will not pass.”
Rose Red ground her teeth, blinking fast. The image of a stairway in the Eldest’s House flashed before her eyes. There were wolves carved into the banisters at the bottom step. Beautiful, polished wolves. “I . . . I’ll give you one of my gloves instead.”
The Wolf Lord growled, deep in the back of his throat. It was like a chuckle but harsher. “You need those, though. Don’t you? They are part of the mask with which you shield yourself. Can you bear to strip even one away?”
Closing her eyes, Rose Red removed one of her ragged gloves. She took the damaged one from the hand she had burned when she slapped the Dragon. “Take it,” she said. “But I cain’t give you the lantern.”
The Wolf Lord sighed then. “No, I did not think that you would. I am beyond the aid of its light, for I am dead.” With a flash of white teeth, he darted forward and snapped the glove out of Rose Red’s hand. It vanished.
“Very well,” he said. “You continue this suicide. But don’t tell anyone that I, the first god of the South Land, never warned you.”
He was gone. As was the Place of the Teeth. The mountain, the whole range, disappeared.
Rose Red stood at the bottom step of the wide stair in the western wing of the Eldest’s House. A chandelier creaked from the ceiling above her, and Rose Red shivered where she stood.
She hid her bare hand in the folds of her garment.
3
THE NEAR WORLD
SHALL I BRING HIM IN, CAPTAIN?”
“Yes.”
“He’s a sullen one. Not trustworthy. Shall I bind him?”
“That will not be necessary.”
Captain Sunan of the Kulap Kanya sat at a narrow desk in his cabin, keeping the ship’s log. Today’s entry noted, among other things, Stowaway finally too much of a nuisance. Time to bring him in.
Sunan always knew what went on on his ship, from the lookout in the crow’s nest to the lowliest ship rat. His crew would swear on their mothers’ graves that he possessed an intuitive sixth sense, if not a full-fledged mind-reading capability. They feared him, they respected him, and they were fiercely loyal to him.
Thus, when he boarded his ship after dining at the Duke of Shippening’s, beckoned his first mate to his side, and said, “There is a stowaway in the hold. Pretend you do not know and leave him alone until I say otherwise. We sail at dawn,” no one had questioned him. No one wondered how he knew about this stowaway whom no one else had spied; of course Captain Sunan would know. No one wondered why he did not have the wretch tossed over the side into the murky harbor along with the rest of the ship’s trash; Captain Sunan always had his reasons.
And if he decided now, six days into the voyage, to drag the creature up to his cabin and (presumably) split him from stem to stern, Captain Sunan knew best.
Two weathered sailors dragged the stowaway suspended between them into Sunan’s cabin and dropped him at the captain’s feet. The brown foreigner barked a string of angry curses in Westerner. One of the sailors kicked him in the ribs. “Stand in the presence of your betters.” The foreigner cursed again. Though the words were strange, the tone was unmistakably rude. The sailor kicked him again.
“Enough,” said Captain Sunan. He rose. Sunan was a tall m
an and very thin, though, despite the thinness, he gave the impression of great strength. He dressed impeccably, even amid the rigors of a long sea voyage. He looked down at the stowaway, and his piercing gaze was worse than the sailor’s kicks. The stowaway shut his mouth.
“Leave us,” Sunan said. The sailors did not hesitate to obey, though they may have thought in the privacy of their minds that it was unwise to leave their captain alone with the foreigner. But if Sunan read minds as easily as they suspected, these were thoughts they dared not long entertain. They stood outside his cabin door, which clicked shut behind them.
Lionheart gathered himself up from before the captain’s feet. The jester’s garb was stuffed inside his server’s shirt, though the colorful fabrics spilled out the front. He looked a fool, something the merchant captain could not fail to notice.
“Rise, boy,” Sunan said, using the western tongue Lionheart knew. Lionheart hastened to obey. He stood as straight and tall as he could, calling into play all his princely bearing. But somehow, in the merchant’s presence, he still felt as insignificant as the kennel hand he had been these last many months. Sunan took a seat at his desk again and regarded Lionheart as a king on his throne would regard a supplicant.
“Do you know,” said Sunan, his voice just as comfortable in Westerner as it was in his native dialect, “the enemy you have made?”
“I beg your pardon, captain,” Lionheart said, bowing quickly, “I meant no disrespect. I—”
“Not in myself,” the captain said. He was the sort of man who, when he started speaking, caused other people to stop. It wasn’t that he interrupted. Anything he had to say was certain to be more important than anyone else’s thought, so how could that be called interrupting? “In the Duke of Shippening.”
Lionheart gulped.
“That was a brave thing you did,” Sunan continued. “Liberating a Faerie slave. Where I come from, it is a sin to keep such people captive. Perhaps your people do not believe the same.”
This seemed like a question, so Lionheart dared reply. “I don’t think my people have any particular views on the subject. We . . . we don’t interact with people of other worlds. We don’t usually believe in them . . . beyond superstition.” He shuddered at the memory of the Dragon. “Until recently, that is.”
“Strange,” said Sunan. “Strange, for you live very close to the other worlds.” His hands rested on the arms of his chair, his body like a carved statue. “It takes great power to keep hold of a Faerie slave.” His black eyes were narrow as he regarded Lionheart. “Mortals cannot do so unless they are themselves very strong. Or allied with someone stronger. You have made yourself a terrible enemy.”
In the silence that followed, Lionheart considered Sunan’s face, trying to gauge whether he was supposed to respond. He said at length, “I am not afraid of the Duke of Shippening.”
“You should be. He is not the buffoon he projects to the world. And his alliances are powerful, though even I cannot guess at them.” Sunan’s eye fixed on the brilliant-hued fabric escaping from beneath Lionheart’s plain overshirt. Lionheart wished that he dared either stuff it back in or pull it completely out, but he did not move. He simply stood there looking like an idiot and hating his life.
His life which, now that he was a captive stowaway, stood a good chance of being abruptly ended.
Sunan said, “It was a foolish but brave act to liberate the duke’s slave, and for this reason I have allowed you to hide on board the Kulap Kanya and will bear you to safer lands. We will stop at many ports on our voyage back to the city of my emperor. You may disembark at the harbor of your choice.”
Lionheart stood without breathing for a long moment. Then he managed, “You . . . you will give me passage?”
“I will. You have the word of a Pen-Chan, which is word you may trust.”
Lionheart did not know what this meant exactly, but somehow he believed what the captain said. “I am trying to reach Lunthea Maly.”
“The city of my emperor,” said Sunan. “I will take you there.”
“I seek Ay-Ibunda. This temple is in the city, yes?”
For the first time in the course of their conversation, Lionheart saw Captain Sunan’s expression change, if only for a moment. But in that unmistakable moment, Lionheart saw a flash of fear, or dread. Then it was gone, and Sunan spoke in the same even tones. “The Hidden Temple. You will not find it.”
“It is in the city, though, isn’t it?”
“Lunthea Maly shelters the abode of the Mother’s Mouth, yes.”
“Then someone must know where it is. I’ll find directions.”
“No one may find the Hidden Temple of Ay-Ibunda,” said Sunan. “No one knows where it hides save for Emperor Molthisok-Khemkhaeng Niran himself. And he will not tell you.” Sunan rose suddenly and took one stride across his cabin, standing nose to nose with Lionheart. His gaze was nearly unbearable, and Lionheart only just managed to meet him eye to eye.
“You are not a serving boy,” said the captain. “No one would mistake you for the person you have disguised yourself as. And you are not a man of Shippening. You hail from Southlands. The stink of dragon smoke lingers about you.”
Lionheart said, “I hail from Southlands, yes.”
“Who are you truly?”
“I will not tell you.”
“What is your name?”
“I will not tell you.”
“What has the Dragon promised you?”
“The Dragon has promised me nothing.” Lionheart swallowed and almost immediately regretted his next words. “I am going to kill him.”
Sunan drew a long breath. But his face did not alter as he stood mere inches from Lionheart. When next he spoke, his voice was low. “There are those among my people who worship the Lady and her Dark Brother. The Dragon.”
Lionheart said nothing.
“But,” Sunan continued, “I will, nonetheless, bear you to Lunthea Maly. You have liberated a Faerie from the Duke of Shippening’s enslavement. Perhaps you will liberate others. But be forewarned, man of Southlands: Should you, by some miracle, find your way to Ay-Ibunda, and should you speak to the Mother’s Mouth, you will be given what you ask. But the price at which it is given will be terrible.”
Lionheart nodded. “I have been warned. Thank you.”
“What will you call yourself now you have left behind all you know?”
“I am . . .” Lionheart paused a moment and licked his lips. “I am Leonard,” he said. Then he smiled. “Leonard the Jester.”
“You are Leonard the Fool,” said Captain Sunan.
“Tell me what you want.”
Lionheart opens his eyes and finds the night has grown very dark around him. The hammock in which he rests sways back and forth. But steady in the blackness above his face are two white eyes like beacons, gazing down upon him.
“Tell me, my darling.”
“I want to find Ay-Ibunda,” Lionheart said.
“Then you shall.”
“I want to speak to the oracle.”
“Then you shall.”
“I want . . . I want to be a jester.”
The darkness parts. Lionheart sees white teeth flash in a smile.
“Is that all, my child? Is that the deepest desire of your heart? To be free at last to become the person you have always wanted to be?”
Lionheart turns his gaze from hers. “I . . . I don’t know. I need to find the temple. That’s all I know.”
“You shall. And you shall find it as a jester.”
She vanishes.
Lionheart closes his eyes and sleeps once more.
Lunthea Maly, the Fragrant Flower of Noorhitam, was capital of the greatest empire in all the known world and home of his Imperial Majesty, Molthisok-Khemkhaeng Niran.
Who died.
People have a tendency to do so once they reach a certain age. Or, as in Emperor Molthisok-Khemkhaeng Niran’s case, they reach a certain level of importance and acquire a certain number of enemies, wh
ich the emperor’s brother-in-law insisted was the case.
But not to worry! Molthisok-Khemkhaeng Niran, though relatively young when he expired, had survived long enough to produce a male heir, the new Emperor Khemkhaeng-Niran Klahan.
Who was nine.
What a blessing it was, then, that the boy emperor had an uncle so loving to guide him in the way he should go, to gently take the reins of the empire from such tender young hands and steer it on a safe and true path until such a time as the young Klahan should be old enough to rule in his own right. Just like his father.
In the meanwhile, the boy emperor must be crowned.
“I want clowns,” said the emperor.
“Imperial and Everlasting Glory,” said his uncle, one Sepertin Naga, who looked rather like a snake with arms and a mustache, “you must take heed. The rites of your magnificent forefathers must be maintained, the holy words of the Sacred Cycle said in accordance with the passing of the spheres, and—”
“We never have clowns,” said Emperor Khemkhaeng-Niran Klahan. “Not funny ones. The only clowns I’ve ever seen always teach a moral.”
“Such is the role and duty of those who strive in the comedic arts, to instruct and enlighten their Sacred Father.”
“Who?”
“You, most Glorious One.”
“Oh. Yes.”
The emperor was small even for his age, with a round, soft face. He looked frail as he sat cross-legged on a cushion in his schoolroom, contemplating the list of coronation regulations his uncle had spread on the floor before him. Sepertin Naga liked the look of that babyish face. It reminded him of his dear, departed sister. She had been a most pliable girl.
But there was a set to the emperor’s jaw that his uncle failed to see. This jaw he had inherited from his father and a long line of emperors. Dynasties are not made of weak links. Young Klahan was certainly not about to be the breaking point in this chain of history.
And he knew what he wanted at his coronation.
“I want funny clowns. Clowns that do tricks. And sing amusing songs.”
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