Veiled Rose

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  Rose Red knew what she was the moment she saw her. She could see in an instant that this woman was a dragon.

  The woman approached. The evil smell came from her blackened skin. She stepped between Rose Red and the door, her head bowed so that Rose Red could not see her face. “Don’t touch that,” she repeated. “You don’t know where it might lead.”

  “I have a fairly good idea,” Rose Red said, though she retreated a few steps into the gallery. “Ain’t many places Death’s Path can lead, now, is there?”

  “Only one end ultimately,” said the woman. Her rasping voice sounded as though it pained her throat. “But you are yet living. Go back while you may.”

  “Another said as much, but he let me by eventually.” Rose Red tried to put more courage in her voice than she felt.

  The woman took a menacing step forward. Her eyes, like two lumps of coal, smoldered with remnant heat, hideous to behold. Her nose wrinkled as she sniffed, and her lips curled back in a sizzling snarl. Rose Red clutched her lantern tight.

  “I smell him on you,” the woman said.

  Rose Red made no reply. The woman took another step toward her, her face wagging slowly back and forth. She was blind, Rose Red realized. But she sniffed again, and her snarl grew.

  “I smell him,” she growled. “The father of my sons.”

  “Oh,” Rose Red whispered. “I know who you are now.”

  “Do you?” said the woman, drawing herself up to her full height. She stood at least seven feet tall. Her burned hair crumbled and fell from her scalp with every movement she made, yet somehow was always replaced with more burned hair. “Who am I, then?”

  Rose Red did not like to say the name out loud.

  “I am the firstborn,” said the woman. “Most powerful, most glorious, most beautiful of all my Father’s children. A dragon such as the worlds have never seen before or since. I was a glory!”

  She was so hideous and so repulsive, her words fell more awfully from her lips. Rose Red adjusted her grip on the lantern and raised it so that its silver light fell on that ravaged face. But the woman could not see the glow of Asha. All hope had long since fled her blind eyes, leaving her in this dark place on Death’s Path.

  “I rivaled the Father himself in might and flame,” said she. “I could not be bound. I could not be stopped by any who moved in the Near World or the Far. Again and again, their finest warriors sought to kill me. Yet though I was slain twice over, Death himself could not bind me. I returned stronger than before. At last I sought even to vanquish the Spheres in their dance in the sky. I could have swallowed Hymlumé herself!” She snarled again, looking far more like a dragon than a woman.

  When she spoke once more, her voice was a pathetic whisper. “Thus my Father took my wings from me. In jealousy, he bound me to earth. A dragon trapped forever in the body of a woman.”

  Her blind eyes fixed on Rose Red. The girl felt as if her soul were exposed.

  “But we can be strong, can’t we, child? We are not so weak as they like to think.”

  The smell of her burned flesh was sickening. Rose Red wanted to turn away but could not, not even when the woman put out a trembling hand and almost, but not quite, touched her veil.

  “Don’t let them fool you, child,” she hissed. “You are strong. You don’t need them. Not the Prince. Nor my Father. You don’t need anyone! You are alone and you always will be. So was I. But I became a goddess, did I not? Do not the worlds still tremble at the mention of my name?”

  “You have no name,” Rose Red whispered. “It was forgotten.”

  The woman stood as though frozen. Then she bowed her head, and her hand fell to her side. “Forgotten,” she said. “Always, we are forgotten.” She clenched her fists and, for just that instant, ghostly fire flickered in the corners of her mouth. “No, it cannot be so! I won’t believe it! The Dragonwitch will live on forever in the nightmares of all worlds!”

  “But you were forgotten,” Rose Red said.

  “I am the Dragonwitch. I need no other name, no other title.”

  Suddenly her hands gripped Rose Red’s shoulders, pinching deep into her skin. It hurt. Rose Red screamed, as terrified by that horrible blind face so close to her own as she was wracked by the pain.

  “Go back to the living world,” the Dragonwitch said in a voice as hot as steam. “Go back and show them all who you truly are. Forget who you have been. You don’t need any of them! Be beholden to no one!” She drew a long breath, then recoiled. She spat, and her hot spittle ate through a corner of Rose Red’s veil.

  “I smell the devotion on you. Evil stuff! It will enslave you, this willingness to serve others at cost to yourself. What do they care for you? Have they ever even seen you? Yet you care for them . . . for one in particular.”

  She flung Rose Red from her. The chambermaid screamed and lost her hold on the lantern, which rolled away in the darkness.

  The light went out.

  Rose Red lay in the half-light, worse than any darkness, for it did not conceal all but revealed only the horrifying shadows of the cliff, the witch flowers, and the looming Dragonwitch. She saw the long arms reaching out, feeling for her in the gloom. Rose Red pushed herself up and crawled away, her bare hand clutching at stones, feeling for a possible weapon. Where had the lantern gone?

  “Love no one,” said the Dragonwitch. “That is the first lesson you must learn if you will become the woman you might be. Love no one. Trust no one. Make them love you instead.”

  Rose Red tried not to breathe, afraid the sound might draw the Dragonwitch her way.

  “You’re alone now. You must be strong.”

  Rose Red could almost hear her own voice speaking, telling herself the same thing. Her own voice made far more horrible in the snarl of the creature’s words.

  “Love will betray you. Better to betray love first.”

  She did not know what the dead woman might do to her. She only knew that she did not want those burned hands touching her again.

  Where was her lantern?

  “You need no one. You need nothing.”

  The voice was seductive. It seared down into her heart to brand its message there.

  “Stand alone, stand apart. Depend on nothing but your own strength.”

  Rose Red’s bare fingers touched something cold and smooth.

  “Then you too might become a queen, a goddess, as I did.”

  Rose Red grabbed the lantern’s handle, and the world filled again with light. It poured through the silver filigree, casting shadows far away, filling Rose Red’s heart with hope once more.

  The Dragonwitch towered directly over her. The light shone into her ruined eyes, and she saw nothing. Nevertheless, she turned away, bowing her head and covering her face with her hands. And now, for the first time, Rose Red could see another strange aspect of her appearance. Though she was burned so badly that her features were scarcely discernable, she was also soaking wet.

  “Leave this place,” she said. Water streamed down her face like tears, but she cried no real tears. “I would if I were you.”

  Rose Red recalled the stories she had heard and shuddered. The Dragonwitch had not burned to death the third and final time: She had drowned.

  Keeping the lantern between the Dragonwitch and herself, Rose Red got to her feet and moved toward the door. The light of the lantern cast images on the cliff wall . . . stars and moons and suns. Those images danced and changed as she moved, and became men, women, and children; they became birds and horses and trees; they became winds and waters, mountains and skies. All pictures made of light, moving through the darkness with hope and beauty.

  The Dragonwitch saw none of it. She did not move until Rose Red stood at the little door in the cliffside and put her hand to the knob once more. Then she said, “You walk freely into Death’s arms. Why?”

  Rose Red made no answer. The poor, dead monster could not understand. She turned the knob and stepped through into the inky blackness beyond, taking the light with
her. The door shut behind her.

  5

  THE NEAR WORLD

  IT SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE to add insult to injury that night, but somehow the fates declared that it must be so.

  Lionheart was just picking himself up from the street when a sharp voice at the gate demanded his attention. He brushed himself off and turned, with as much dignity as he could muster, to see a finely dressed man, a minister of some sort or perhaps merely a high-end servant, standing at the gate with, of all things, a peacock under his arm. He was saying something very fast, and Lionheart could catch only a word now and then. He stepped back up to the gate and tried to convey to the man that he didn’t understand, and could he please speak more slowly?

  “For you,” said the man as though speaking to an idiot. “From the Imperial Glory, Khemkhaeng-Niran Klahan. For your performance.”

  Much to Lionheart’s surprise, the peacock was plopped in his arms.

  “I say!” he cried. The bird hissed at him, showing a gray tongue, and he nearly dropped it. “I really don’t want this!”

  “Your humble gratitude will be conveyed to the Imperial Glory.”

  “But . . . but what am I supposed to do with a dragon-eaten peacock?”

  “And your wishes for his prosperous and eternal reign. Good night!”

  The gate slammed.

  Lionheart looked at the peacock. The peacock looked at Lionheart.

  “If you’re not a stew by the end of the week, it won’t be my fault,” Lionheart said and rolled his eyes heavenward. “Why me?”

  There was nothing for it, though. With the heavy bird under his arm, trailing its ridiculous tail behind, he set off down the hillside and into the lower streets of Lunthea Maly. He’d gone no more than a few yards before the peacock suddenly struggled wildly. Lionheart lost his hold, and it darted off down the road, screaming as it went in an all-too-human voice: “HELP! HEEEEELP! HEEEEEELP!”

  If that didn’t attract every thief and vagrant in the whole dragon-fired city, nothing would.

  The following morning found jester and peacock sequestered away at the end of an alley in the room that Lionheart rented at exorbitant rates. The bird had decided to take his rickety bed, so he’d spent the night on the floor, staring at the ceiling.

  What was he supposed to do now? The sylph had been very specific all those years ago. Find the oracle in Ay-Ibunda. “She will tell you what you wish to know.”

  But honestly, he reasoned with himself, what did a captive Faerie creature know?

  Nevertheless, it was the only clue that had presented itself in the last several years of Lionheart’s travels. During the voyage with Captain Sunan, he had visited port cities in the kingdoms of Aja and Dong Min and dozens more where the Noorhitam Empire began. In each city he had practiced his juggling and clownery for peasant crowds and done what he could to seek out the fortune-tellers and mystics, those who lived closer to the Far World than everyday folk. He found few. Those he did find could tell him nothing of how the Dragon might be destroyed . . . and some refused to answer at all but ordered him from their premises at once.

  So he’d doggedly proceeded to Lunthea Maly as the sylph had said, there laboring to make ends meet and to find some word of the Hidden Temple. There were hundreds of temples in Lunthea Maly. He could have taken his pick! So why, of all the temples and oracles to be found in all the East, must he require Ay-Ibunda? Ay-Ibunda, which could be found only by the emperor.

  The emperor, who had refused to aid Lionheart.

  There was something sickening, after a long night of fretful turning on the hard floor, about waking up to the peacock’s beady eyes glaring down at him from his own bed. “Help,” the bird said, more out of principle than with any real feeling.

  “I wonder how much your feathers are worth?” Lionheart growled as he sat up. Every muscle in his neck and shoulders screamed ill usage. “I could sell them after I pluck you for stew.”

  The peacock hissed at him.

  At that moment, there was a knock at the door. Lionheart never received visitors. He had made no friends in Lunthea Maly, since most people assumed he must be mad—and he felt inclined to agree with them more often than not. The only person who ever came knocking was his landlord, who showed up like clockwork once a week. But he never came at such an unholy hour of the morning. . . .

  Lionheart slugged himself to the door and opened it, blinking like the undead in the face of the rising sun. A man in beautiful red and green garments stood there. How did anyone manage to look that fine when the day had scarcely begun? Lionheart, who was still wearing his jester’s clothes from the night before, tugged at his shirt self-consciously. “Can I help you?” he asked in halting Noorhitamin.

  “Leonard of the Tongue of Lightning?”

  “Yes?”

  “Yesterday evening at the great coronation of the century, the Imperial Glory, Khemkhaeng-Niran Klahan, bestowed his favor upon you in the form of a rare and reverenced bird like unto the incarnate image of the Mother as a Firebird, beautiful in plumage, graceful in deportment.”

  “Help!” said the peacock. It hopped down from the bed and strutted over to stand beside Lionheart’s knees. The gorgeously clad gentleman looked down upon it and bowed gravely. He would never have considered giving Lionheart that homage. The bird hissed at him too.

  The man turned to Lionheart again. “The gift of the reverenced bird was offered in a symbolic nature.”

  Lionheart took a moment to try to translate this in his head. He responded with the Noorhitamin equivalent of “Huh?”

  “You were not supposed to accept the bird.”

  Another moment. Then Lionheart flung up his hands and swore in every language he knew. “Fine! Take the bird too! Do I look like I mind?”

  “Your veneration and devotion will be conveyed to the Imperial Glory. . . .”

  “HELP! HELP!”

  “And your prayers for his eternal and prosperous reign . . .”

  Lionheart picked up the peacock, receiving several nasty pecks to his hands, shoved it and its wretched tail into the other man’s arms, and slammed the door.

  No stew tonight. And no profit from peacock plumes either. What wretched, wretched luck! He flung himself down on his bed and only then realized that the bird had used his blankets for more than sleeping. “Dragon’s teeth!”

  Another knock at the door. Probably the landlord, coming to charge for the disturbance. Lionheart, busily wiping off his jester’s smock, stomped back to the door, muttering as he did so, “Dragons eat that wretched Imperial Glory and all his wretched Imperial Gloriousness! And all peacocks too—”

  He opened the door and found himself looking down into the delicate face of the emperor.

  At least, that was Lionheart’s first thought. His second was that he must be mistaken. The little boy in front of him was dressed in peasant’s rags, with mud smeared over his cheeks and his hair covered in a ratty old hood. He could be the emperor’s doppelganger for sure, but certainly not the emperor himself.

  Then the boy spoke, and all doubt was banished. “I have come to repay my debts, Leonard of the Tongue of Lightning.”

  He spoke in a smooth Westerner’s dialect with only the slightest trace of an accent. This could be no beggar boy.

  “I . . . wha—Your Majesty. Your Imperial Majesty!” Lionheart sputtered in Noorhitamin—or, what he thought was Noorhitamin—and bowed deeply. Then, on considering, he went down on his knees, prepared to prostrate himself as was considered right in the presence of the Imperial Glory.

  But the emperor, trying to hide a smile, spoke hastily in Westerner, putting out his hand. “No, no, I am incognito! And perhaps it will be best if we speak your tongue when there is no one present. I will laugh otherwise.”

  Lionheart staggered up from his knees, his heart racing. Any moment he expected soldiers to leap out of the doorways down the alley and run him through for daring to speak to the emperor, to even look upon him in such a humble state. “Yo
u . . . Your Imperial—”

  “Don’t call me that,” the Imperial Glory said rather sharply. “Klahan is enough. I have come to repay my debt, but we must go swiftly.”

  “Your . . . I beg your pardon, Your—Klahan. What debt?”

  “I promised anything that was within my power to grant,” said the boy. He backed away from Lionheart’s doorway, looking carefully up and down the alley. It was quiet enough at this hour of the morning. The dregs that lived in this quarter were all passed out asleep and would be until evening. The emperor did not look concerned but wary. “We must go quickly,” he said.

  “Where?”

  “Ay-Ibunda, of course.”

  Lionheart stared. For a long instant, his world froze, and he thought nothing. Then it rushed into motion again, and his mind was awhirl. At last! At last, he would get answers! He was out the door in a moment, scarcely remembering to lock it. (Not that it would do any good one way or another. One did these things out of principle, not practicality, in this part of Lunthea Maly.) The emperor was already moving, and swiftly for his age, back up the alley toward the street on the far end. Lionheart pelted after him, gasping as he went, “But I thought you refused!”

  “Naturally,” said the Imperial Glory. He spoke the word so gracefully. Lionheart would probably have hated the boy had they met when the same age; everything about him was so carefully put together, every word spoken with such care. At age nine, it was not a manner that would win him friends among his peers.

  It might win the respect of an empire.

  “The location of the Hidden Temple of Ay-Ibunda may be known only by the master of the Noorhitam Empire. Should I be seen by all the assembly to give you access to that secret, I should have been forever stamped as weak. As too willing to give up those precious things that set the Imperial Glory apart from mere men. I would be dishonored in the eyes of my people.”

  He turned left at the street and started again at a brisk walk, weaving between the urchins and beggars who were already swarming the city. Lionheart had to be nimble on his feet to keep up. “Besides,” the emperor said over his shoulder, “my uncle would have been furious.”