Veiled Rose

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  “So why have you changed your mind?” Lionheart asked.

  “I have not,” said the emperor. “I always intended to bring you to the temple. I made you a promise, and it would dishonor me to go against my word when what you asked is within my power to grant.”

  “But . . .” Lionheart frowned. “But you said you would be dishonored if you granted my wish.”

  “In the eyes of my people.” Khemkhaeng-Niran Klahan turned his grave black eyes upon Lionheart. Those eyes seemed far too old for that young face. “But I should be dishonored in my own eyes should I refuse.”

  No doubt about it. The boy Lionheart would have hated this child.

  The exiled Lionheart, struggling to fulfill a quest that was, he knew deep in his heart, impossible, could not help but be grateful. And he was curious too. After all, if the emperor was willing to disguise himself and show up at his door at such an unmentionable hour, then Ay-Ibunda must, in fact, exist. Yet Lionheart could have sworn he had combed every street, every nook, every alley in the last several years, desperate to find it. As far as he could gather, it was not to be found. He still wasn’t entirely convinced it was real.

  Perhaps this strange child was leading him somewhere else entirely. This could be a trap. Lionheart cast the emperor sideways glances as they proceeded up one street, turned, and started down another. This one led past a market square where vendors were already setting up their wares, calling greetings and insults to each other, half of which Lionheart could understand (the insults especially).

  “Have you been to the temple before?” he asked the boy.

  “No,” said the Imperial Glory.

  Now, that was a surprise.

  “Then . . . how do you know where it is?”

  “The same way I knew where to find you.” The boy gave him another of those enigmatic looks. “I am the Imperial Glory of Noorhitam. The Paths of my empire are open to me.” He grinned mischievously. “But don’t let my uncle know!”

  As he didn’t understand what this meant, Lionheart had no reply to offer. He followed the emperor, trying to tell himself that they were not crossing the same streets over again, that they weren’t wandering in circles. The emperor was only a boy, after all. He could easily be mistaken—

  There was no lurch. There was no flash of light. There was no discernable sensation. One moment they were walking up the market square, listening to the shouts of fruit sellers and fishmongers; the sun was swiftly climbing and shining hot upon the streets, baking those who moved about their lives.

  The next, the world was shrouded in mist, and they stood at the gates of a temple.

  Lionheart stopped and stared. The emperor proceeded to the gate. It was not an iron gate, merely wood. But somehow, Lionheart knew that no assailants could penetrate here. The posts were painted blood red, and above the doors were many words written in Noorhitamin characters, which Lionheart could not read. As he drew nearer, rather timidly behind the emperor, he saw that the left-hand post was carved like a dragon, and the right-hand, like some fantastic plumed bird.

  The Imperial Glory raised his voice and spoke in Noorhitamin. “Open to me, Ay-Ibunda,” he said. He sounded so young standing there before that great gate in the dark mist. Why should so powerful a portal open at the word of one so small?

  But immediately the gates parted. Their hinges must have been perfect, the construction exquisite, for though they were enormous and exceedingly heavy, they swung out without a sound, parting the mist.

  The boy emperor beckoned to Lionheart. “Come, clown,” he said. “I will take you to the Mother’s Mouth.”

  The emperor passed to the inner court, vanishing within the mist. Lionheart gulped and hastened after, thankful when he caught up enough to see the top of the Imperial Glory’s hooded head. He cast a last glance back and saw to his surprise (and somewhat to his horror) that the gates had swung shut as silently as they had opened. He decided not to look again but focused on following the little emperor.

  He heard humming.

  Human tones, Lionheart decided after a moment. Low and rich and frightening. There was no melody in the sound, at least not in the sense that Lionheart thought of melody. But it was powerful and sounded as though it had been going on for hundreds of years.

  Through the mist, Lionheart thought he caught glimpses of men in black robes, a few in white. They stood in clusters, and their heads were bowed, so he never saw their faces. This was a strange relief. The idea of anyone in this dark place looking at him gave Lionheart the shivers. There were statues in the gloom as well, huge statues which he only saw when he was about to run into them. But then he could make out the features of a tall man who was simultaneously a tall woman, wrought in black-and-white stone. Other statues were man-and-woman, but also dragon-and-bird. They were grotesque yet beautiful.

  Lionheart hated them the moment he saw them.

  The emperor led him across the courtyard, which was strangely long, and at last to the first door of the temple. Here he turned to Lionheart, a silken scarf in his hand. “I must blindfold you, Leonard of the Tongue of Lightning,” he said. “Mortal eyes are not meant to see the inner halls of Ay-Ibunda.”

  “What of you?” Lionheart asked as the emperor fixed the blindfold in place. “Are you walking blind as well?”

  “I am the Imperial Glory,” said the emperor. “I am permitted to see what mere men may not.”

  But there was a tremble in the Imperial Glory’s voice. Lionheart realized that the boy emperor was afraid. Mortally afraid, and desperately trying to conceal it. This knowledge did nothing to decrease Lionheart’s respect for the child. In fact, he marveled at how steady young Klahan’s hands were as they tied the scarf, then took hold of Lionheart and gently led him inside.

  The smell was different here. It was more like a sensation of heat, followed very quickly by ice-cold. But he felt neither hot nor cold; he merely breathed it. The emperor led him down what must have been a long passage. Lionheart counted thirty steps. Then a left turn and fifteen steps; a right, and ten; another right, and fifteen . . . he lost track eventually. He wondered if the emperor was lost. After all, he had never been here before. But the Imperial Glory never hesitated; his grip on Lionheart’s arm never slackened or tightened but remained comfortably firm.

  They stopped.

  “Here,” said young Klahan, “you must go on alone if you wish to speak to the Mother’s Mouth.”

  “I do,” said Lionheart.

  “She may require something of you. Have you anything to give?”

  Lionheart had brought nothing with him, not even his bell-covered jester’s hat. He frowned.

  The emperor pressed something into his hand. Something tiny and round, no bigger than a pea. “Give her this,” he said. “They are rare. She will like it. Now kneel, Leonard of the Tongue of Lightning.”

  Lionheart obeyed. The boy guided his hands so that they gripped the frame of a very low, open doorway. “You must crawl,” Klahan said. “When you reach the end, set this at the feet of the Mother’s Mouth and ask her what you would know of the Mother.”

  Lionheart nodded. Then, because he didn’t know what else to say, he ducked his head through the doorway and started to crawl.

  He expected this leg of his journey to take no more than a few moments. He was wrong. The low tunnel in which he found himself stretched on forever, and his knees and back were sore and protesting long before he felt empty space above his head again. He still wore the blindfold. The Imperial Glory had not told him whether or not he could remove it. But there didn’t seem much use in keeping it on now, so he slid it down around his neck. It made no difference. Wherever he had crawled was a black void and he could not guess how high the roof might be. But he had come to the end of the tunnel, of this he was certain. When he put out his hands to either side, he could not reach the walls. He must be near the Mother’s Mouth now. If he went just a little farther—

  “Stop!”

  He obeyed. His heart thud
ded into the pit of his stomach and stayed there for what seemed a long time. Then it began racing double time. Clutching the little something the emperor had given him tightly in his hand, Lionheart slowly reached out. “I . . . I bring a gift,” he spoke in halting Noorhitamin.

  Whoever was in the chamber with him began to speak. He did not understand the words. They sounded Noorhitamin but not a dialect he had ever before heard, not Pen-Chan, Chhayan, or Kitar. This was much older than any of those, more lyrical, though the voice that spoke them was old and unlovely.

  “I’m sorry,” Lionheart said. “I don’t understand.”

  The voice stopped. When it began speaking again, more slowly this time, it continued in the same language in which it had begun. But strangely enough, Lionheart heard each word ringing through his head in his own tongue. The sensation made him sick inside.

  “Have you a gift for the Mother’s Mouth?” the voice asked. It was a woman’s but so ancient as to be almost genderless now.

  Lionheart extended the hand holding the tiny drop. He felt a wrinkled claw of a hand take his, and he placed the gift into that one’s keeping and withdrew.

  “Ah! A pearl!” said the voice. “I feel the smooth whiteness, like sea foam made solid. A gift of the water gods, beyond compare.” Little clucking, smacking noises then, as though the speaker salivated. Had the oracle eaten the pearl? Lionheart shuddered.

  “You have come to ask a question of the Mother, have you?”

  “I have.”

  “You realize that when she answers, your life will forever change?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Hope? Here?”

  A light struck and flared. It nearly blinded Lionheart and he covered his face with his hands. When he looked again, he saw an ancient, wrinkled woman sitting cross-legged before him, smiling a hideous smile. She held a candle cupped in both hands, and the glow from it cast her face in awful shadows.

  Her eyes were white. She was blind.

  “There is no hope in this place,” she said, her mouth speaking one set of words while Lionheart heard another. “There is no hope, only fulfillment.” Those sightless eyes looked into the space above his head, and her smile grew, revealing bare gums. “Tell me what you want.”

  “Tell me what you want.”

  The white eyes before him are no longer blind. They are penetrating, staring at him from a smooth ebony face. The glow of the candle is gone. There is no light in this place, though Lionheart sees clearly.

  He sees the Lady of Dreams Realized. She is beautiful. She is horrifying.

  “Tell me what you want.”

  “Who are you?” he gasps.

  “You know who I am.”

  And Lionheart knows this is true. He recognizes her from a hundred dreams, only he knows that he is not dreaming now.

  “Tell me what you want.”

  Never in his life, not even when he gazed into the eyes of Death, has he been so frightened. But somehow he finds a voice and says, “I want . . . I want to know how to deliver Southlands from the Dragon.”

  She smiles. Her white hair flows about them both like storm clouds, and Lionheart feels as though he is being dragged toward her.

  “That is secret knowledge, indeed. The secret of my brother’s doom.”

  “You asked me what I want. I have told you.”

  “And I will give you your answer, my darling, but only if you tell me something first.”

  He has come this far. He knows this is his only chance. “What do you need to know?” he asks.

  “Tell me what you want.”

  “I just told you!”

  “No, my child. That is not your dream, your secret dream most dear to your heart; that is merely your mission. Tell me your dream, Lionheart, for I am the Lady of Dreams Realized and I long to realize your dream for you.

  “Do you wish to remain where you are? Free from the duties to which you were born, free to be the man you choose to be? Free to love whom you will, free to go where you please? Do you dream of freedom?

  “Or do you wish to return? Do you long to fulfill the desires of your mother, of your father? Do you dream of being the prince you were born to be, of becoming the king? Will you marry as they have chosen for you and take up the burden of your forefathers? Will you be Eldest of Southlands?

  “Tell me what you want.”

  Lionheart is suspended in blackness, enormous blackness without floor, ceiling, or walls. Perhaps he is falling; he cannot say. The weight of the choice pressures him from all sides while simultaneously tearing him in two. He knows the moment of decision has come. But he hates it. As though he must kill a piece of himself, sacrifice one man that the other might live.

  In the end, there is only one choice he can make.

  “I will be Eldest of Southlands,” he says.

  “So be it.”

  Lionheart blinked and saw the glowing candle once more. Then he saw the rest of the room as well. No longer did it seem a vast and unsearchable vacuum. It was nothing but a bare little room with a wooden floor, wooden walls, a straw pallet in one corner, and a basin in which something nasty reeked. A hermit’s hovel would seem lavish in comparison. It was dark, dank, and disgusting, well suited to its occupant.

  The Mother’s Mouth gazed at him, the smile fixed on her ugly face.

  “You have seen the Mother, yes?”

  He shivered under her blind gaze. More than anything Lionheart wanted to crawl back out of that chamber as fast as possible. “I . . . I still have no answer to my question.”

  “I will give it,” said the oracle. “The Mother has declared this wisdom unto me. Listen closely, mortal man! What you desire may be found when you have received a certain ring out of Oriana Palace in Parumvir. You will know this ring by two things: its stones, fire opals, as hot inside as a dragon’s flame; and its giver, a princess who will fear you at first, but later will laugh.”

  “A ring?” Lionheart frowned. “How . . . forgive me, Mother’s Mouth, but how will a ring help me kill a dragon?”

  “Did you ask how to kill a dragon?”

  “I . . . yes. I must deliver my kingdom.”

  “This is the Mother’s answer. I have no other to give you.” Her smile did not shift. The candle flickered and made it seem a snarl. “Find your ring, mortal. Find your ring, and your dream will be realized.”

  She blew out the candle.

  The horror of being in the dark with that crone was too much. Lionheart backed out on his hands and knees, finally turning around and crawling as fast as he could. Much to his surprise, within moments he hit his head, and the little door swung open. He fell out into the passage beyond.

  “Close your eyes!” cried the voice of the young emperor. Lionheart obeyed immediately. There was something about that boyish voice that compelled obedience despite his tender years. Lionheart lay in a pile on the temple floor, his eyes tightly shut. Small hands untied the knot of the blindfold behind his neck, then retied it across his eyes.

  The Imperial Glory helped Lionheart to his feet. “Did you receive what you sought?” he asked as he led him back down the twisted, silent passages.

  Lionheart did not know what to answer. At last he said, “I must make my way to Oriana Palace in Parumvir.”

  “Across the world?”

  “Yes.” Lionheart sighed. “Across the world.”

  6

  THE NETHERWORLD

  THE MOMENT ROSE RED was through the door, she heard the Black Dogs howling.

  It was too late to turn back. When she whirled around to put her hand on the latch, the lantern light showed her only a solid rock face. Frantically, she felt among the sharp stones. Surely the door could not have vanished! But it had.

  The circle of lantern light was her whole world, and empty space extended forever all around her. There was no half-light in this place; here the blackness was almost solid. And somewhere out there the Black Dogs bellowed, hunters pursuing their prey with never-slackened bloodlust.

&n
bsp; They pursued her now; she knew it. And those whom the Black Dogs chased, they always caught in the end, bearing that luckless soul away to Death. Unlike the Wolf Lord and the Dragonwitch, they were very much alive.

  Rose Red began to tremble, her back pressed against the rocks of the cliff that stabbed like daggers. But her lantern still glowed, and the dogs were some way off.

  “Move your feet, fool girl,” she growled. “Move them!”

  Slowly, she obeyed herself. Then faster. Not a run. No, she would not be chased. She would walk with purpose, keeping the light steady, and find what she found, whatever it may be.

  The dogs bayed as one, and the voice was darkness.

  Rose Red’s hand shook, but the lantern yet glowed.

  She heard a new sound: The gentle lap of water against a shore, rising and falling. Had she come to an ocean? The sound grew, so she knew she must be drawing near to it. Perhaps not an ocean, but certainly a large body of water. How was she supposed to cross? The Path led this way, she was certain, but it led to nowhere.

  The Black Dogs cried again. Then they were upon her.

  Fear was almost enough in and of itself to kill her when Rose Red saw their enormous bodies before her, blocking her path. They were too big to be measured. Sometimes she thought they were bigger than mountains, sometimes only the size of horses. Their baying deafened her so that she could not hear her own scream. She wanted to cover her ears, to curl up into a ball. She wanted them to swallow her and be done with it so that she would not have to endure this terror a moment longer.

  But the lantern continued to shine, and the Black Dogs drew no closer.

  Why didn’t they finish her off? They skirted the lantern light, refusing to let its glow touch their shadowy bodies. When it even glinted in their red eyes, they turned away with hideous snarls.

  Maybe she wasn’t going to die. At this realization, Rose Red felt her heart slowly calm. It seemed like years, but at last she was breathing again and able to stand, shivering only slightly, and consider with a rational mind the problem before her.