Moonblood

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  “SOAP!” Lionheart leapt to his feet and darted from the nursery, his nursemaid in hot pursuit. “Bring the soap! Nurse said a naughty thing!”

  Lionheart had been moved from the nursery to the Prince’s Chambers not long thereafter, and as a second child from the Eldest and his queen was not forthcoming, the nursery was left to its lonely self. The mural on the wall faded with time and was for the most part forgotten. But not by Lionheart. Throughout his growing-up years he recalled the childish scene and the silly stories, one of the many threads that wove the fabric of his childhood.

  It wasn’t supposed to be real.

  Anything at all was possible, he realized now, many years later, as he followed the blind poet through the tree-shadowed halls of the Haven, his imagination aching at the thought of being presented before folk of Faerie tales. But he tried to suppress those thoughts in light of a more immediate concern, which was for clothing. He still wore only a nightshirt tucked into his trousers and no shoes to speak of. Eanrin, however, refused to hear whatever protests Lionheart might make on the subject.

  “I know it’s the middle of the night, I know you want your beauty sleep and all that. But if we’re going to make Rudiobus by nightfall tomorrow, we must set out before the sun.”

  “I’m not saying I need sleep! I’m saying I need shoes!”

  Eanrin waved a dismissive hand and continued without another word. It wasn’t until they had stepped from the Haven into the Wood beyond—which was very much like stepping from one patch of forest into another patch of forest unless Lionheart closed his right eye—and met Sir Oeric waiting for them that Lionheart got any help.

  “He’s in his nightshirt, Eanrin,” said the huge knight.

  “Cozy enough, then, is he?”

  “You can’t present him before the king like that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Iubdan would not be amused.”

  “On the contrary. I think my king would be highly diverted.”

  Oeric said, “What would Lady Gleamdrené think?”

  “She—”

  “Yes?”

  The poet frowned, then shrugged. “Very well, then. Find the mortal some clothes and boots, but hurry it up, will you? The sun could rise any minute now.”

  Lionheart turned and found Imraldera at the door. Having anticipated his need, she held a green-embroidered long coat, a belt and scabbard, and boots, sturdy but light enough for walking. The coat was very fine indeed, too fine to go with his travel-stained trousers, but Lionheart was not about to complain. He hurried into the garments while the Chief Poet hemmed and hawed and Sir Oeric folded his arms and exchanged looks with Imraldera.

  “Is the darling dandied?” Eanrin asked as Lionheart buckled Bloodbiter’s Wrath to his waist.

  “I’m ready.”

  “Sure you won’t join us, Imraldera?”

  Imraldera’s face was a frosty mask. “Good-bye, Eanrin.”

  The poet shrugged and suddenly was a fluffy cat disappearing through the forest at a quick trot. Oeric bowed respectfully to Imraldera (who Lionheart guessed outranked the big knight somehow), then motioned Lionheart to follow him on the trail of the cat. Lionheart fell into step behind the enormous man, and soon the Haven was far behind in the moonlight.

  “Are we truly going to Rudiobus?” Lionheart asked.

  Oeric grunted.

  “To see King Iubdan? And Queen Bebo?”

  “Yes.”

  Not even the strangeness of Ragniprava’s realm had been as overwhelming as the simple thought of visiting Iubdan in the Hall of Red and Green. What if they looked like the little caricatures painted on his wall? This was a thought too terrifying to contemplate.

  “Why will Dame Imraldera not join us?” he asked Oeric at length.

  The ugly knight gave him a quick glance, his white moon eyes gleaming with their own strange light. Lionheart could not meet their gaze. “Sir Eanrin,” said Oeric, “is famous throughout the ages for being the lover of Lady Gleamdrené Gormlaith, Bebo’s cousin. You did know that, didn’t you?”

  “Everyone knows that,” said Lionheart.

  “Including Dame Imraldera.”

  “And . . . what? She hates his dreadful verses even more than I do?”

  Oeric thought a moment, his jaw shifting as he considered answers. At last he said, “What Dame Imraldera thinks of Eanrin or his poetry is, I believe, Dame Imraldera’s affair. And,” he quickly added, “if I were you, I should keep my tongue behind my teeth, where it belongs on this subject.”

  Lionheart shut his mouth again and didn’t press for more answers.

  They walked for some while in silence other than the crunch of leaves and twigs under Lionheart’s boots. Oeric moved without a sound, and the cat was far ahead. “Did we lose Sir Eanrin?” Lionheart asked.

  “No,” rumbled Oeric. “We follow the same Path.”

  Lionheart could discern no Path. The night was old now, and the moon had sunk into the tangle of branches. As they went, Lionheart sometimes felt a strange sensation, as though the steps he took were carrying him over much greater distances than one mere stride at a time. His vision was indistinct save straight ahead, so he fixed his gaze on Oeric’s broad back and tried not to glance to either side. The Wood was huge, and he could feel its hugeness all around him, as palpable a presence as either Oeric or the poet.

  “Where are we?” he asked after a while.

  “We follow the Prince’s Paths,” Oeric replied. “It is unsafe to step into Goldstone Wood without a Path. We Knights of Farthestshore always walk the Paths of our Prince, and we do not become lost.”

  Lionheart frowned. “Goldstone? So that’s not just a wood in northern Parumvir?”

  Oeric cast him a glance over his shoulder. “Goldstone Wood extends much farther than it appears to in your world, mortal. Here in the Halflight Realm, it connects all worlds. Your Wilderlands are just as much a part of Goldstone as the little clump of trees that bears the name in Parumvir.”

  Lionheart shuddered and stopped trying to wrap his mind around concepts too strange to be thought.

  Dawn came suddenly, as though they had stepped across some stark dividing line between Night and Day. Lionheart’s head hurt. Nothing was certain to him anymore, not the path he followed, not these strange comrades with whom he found himself linked. Not even his own identity.

  The story he had read from Imraldera’s manuscript haunted the edge of his mind. That man he’d read about shared his name. But could he truly be Lionheart, the Eldest of Southlands’ son? All his good intentions and noble ideals faded to nothing in light of Imraldera’s simple presentation of the facts. He’d betrayed the girl he loved. He’d banished his loyal servant. He’d failed to rescue Southlands.

  “I’m going to fight a dragon someday,” young Lionheart had told his nurse.

  But he’d never fought the Dragon.

  Oeric stopped abruptly, and Lionheart, looking around from behind him, saw the cat sitting in the Path. “Here,” the cat said with a flick of his whiskers. Oeric nodded. The next moment, the cat leapt from the Path and vanished behind an old, moss-eaten stump.

  “Step across,” Oeric said to Lionheart, waving him to follow.

  Lionheart looked at the stump. “This is a crossing into the Far World?”

  “As long as you’re quick enough. Go on!”

  It is always good policy to heed someone who stands half again taller than you. Lionheart did as he was told, stepping over the stump; and just like when he had crossed into Ragniprava’s demesne, he felt no sudden jolt, no dizzying sensation, nothing for which he could brace himself. He simply stepped out of the Wood Between and into the world beyond as naturally as stepping from the hall into the dining room.

  He stood on the shore of a shining silver lake that steamed with frost as the evening came on. The sun setting behind the mountain cast its crags into black silhouette. Snow covered not just the topmost peak but all the forest of aspens in the lower slopes as well. The air w
as like knives in his lungs, his face so cold it burned, and Lionheart was more grateful than ever to Imraldera for providing him with the green jacket.

  Eanrin, a man once more, smiled brightly from the shores of the lake. “I confess, I was not expecting Winter to be paying a call just now. Last time I visited, everything was awash in Summer. Ah well. Where’s our ugly friend?”

  “Here,” said Oeric, appearing at Lionheart’s side. Their breath frosted on the air. “Have you hailed the gatekeeper?”

  Eanrin nodded. “I hear her even now.” And he pointed across the lake.

  Like dangling prisms on a chandelier, the edge of the water tinkled with forming ice, but most of it remained open. Across its surface, spreading ice beneath tiny green hooves, came the mare of Iubdan, trailing a scarlet tail. Lionheart did not see her at first, despite her brilliant colors, because she was so small she might fit in the palm of his hand.

  The lake froze in a cold path as the little horse crossed over. She stood at last upon the ice but did not step onto land.

  “Iubdan’s beard,” Lionheart breathed.

  “Jester, meet Órfhlaith,” said Eanrin, sweeping his hand from Lionheart to the mare. “Órfhlaith,” he addressed the mare, “this is our jester.”

  The mare tossed her head and whuffled, so tiny and delicate and yet so horselike. Lionheart could only gape, his mouth open.

  Eanrin laughed. “It’s rude to stare.”

  Lionheart’s jaw clamped shut, and he hastily averted his gaze. Eanrin laughed again and swept an elaborate bow. “You first, little mortal. Climb aboard!”

  “What?” Lionheart’s gaze flickered to the mare again, and he shook his head. “You want me to . . . I’d squash her!”

  The poet straightened up, that incessant smile still on his face, but his eyebrow quirked. “Perhaps Oeric would like to show you the way?”

  “But that’s—” Lionheart shut his mouth, remembering where he was. In a world where Time could be sold in a bottle, anything was possible.

  Sir Oeric strode forward and straddled the tiny mare’s back. Of all the bizarre sights Lionheart had witnessed, this one most stupefied. For the enormous knight mounted Iubdan’s mare without either of them apparently growing or shrinking; rather, it was Lionheart’s perspective that altered. Oeric strode into the water, and though it was but a few paces, by the time he reached the mare’s side, he was of a height to ride her. And yet, though Oeric was so big he could have tossed Lionheart over his shoulder without a thought, Órfhlaith could still have stood comfortably in his palm.

  Lionheart shook his suddenly pounding head as it struggled to understand. Bodies need not be bound by size. Not here, in the Far World.

  Oeric settled comfortably onto the mare’s back, and she, with a toss of her brilliant mane, carried him across the icy lake, leaving Lionheart goggle-eyed on the shore.

  One by one, they crossed behind the white mist of the Fionnghuala Lynn, the great waterfall cascading down the frozen mountainside. Lionheart was glad that Oeric had gone first, for a stern company of guards was ready to meet them, and there was nothing jolly about these so-called Merry Folk. They took Bloodbiter’s Wrath from him without a word, secreting it away somewhere. Even when Eanrin greeted them with a hearty “What ho!” and called each by name (Lionheart wondered how he did this when he couldn’t see them), not one of them cracked a smile. But they led the two knights and Lionheart through the caverns of Rudiobus Mountain.

  The Hall of Red and Green looked nothing like Lionheart had ever envisioned, and yet exactly as he had always known it must be. The cavern walls and roughhewn pillars were festooned in holly and pine, lit by a thousand and more candles. Pipe music and wild drums filled his ears, and yellow-headed people dressed in green and white filled the dance floor . . . along with several squirrels, two rabbits, and a silver fox, who danced just as well, albeit with animal variations on the steps. Yet when he blinked, Lionheart saw that they weren’t animals at all, but people whose contours revealed an animal shape underneath.

  Eanrin leapt forward ahead of Oeric and Lionheart. His red coat flashed like a cardinal’s wing, and he could not fail to draw every eye in the room. He darted like a leaf on a breeze as the dancing people scattered to make way for him, and he ended in a flourishing bow before the thrones.

  Lionheart saw for the first time the King and Queen of Rudiobus.

  Iubdan Tynan, the Dark Man of Rudiobus, alone of those who lived within the mountain boasted hair as black as the night. He claimed it was because Evening herself was his mother and Night his father, but since no one living could remember a time when Iubdan was not King of Rudiobus (except Bebo, who kept her own counsel), no one could vouch for the truth of this.

  What was true, Lionheart quickly discovered, was that this king, so ancient that the ancients could not recall his beginning, looked nothing like the painting on the nursery wall.

  Neither did Queen Bebo, for that matter. Other than the king’s black beard and the queen’s golden hair, there was nothing about the faces of these two to suggest their caricatures. Rather than burly, King Iubdan was powerful: red cheeked, yes, but the redness was from much time spent in the sun, and there wasn’t a smile to be seen on his face as he gazed down at his Chief Poet. And Queen Bebo, rather than the long-nosed, long-faced woman she’d been painted as, was childlike and delicate in her features, though her eyes were old and solemn. Her hair was not unbound and flowing to her feet but rather coiled and arranged in a great crown about her head, more beautiful than any crown wrought of metal and jewels. It gleamed in the icy cold of Rudiobus like sunlight bursting through an overcast sky.

  “Oh, it’s you” was Iubdan’s kingly greeting of his poet. His black eyebrows drew together in a thick line. “About time you showed up again, wouldn’t you say?”

  “My lord and king!” Eanrin cried, raising his arms theatrically. “Many years now have I been absent from Ruaine-ann-Rudiobus! How long has it been since I set joyful eyes upon your face?”

  “Hmmm. That would be a number of centuries, my eyeless songster,” growled the king.

  “Or heard the dulcet sounds of my sovereign’s voice?”

  “Maybe not quite so long.”

  “Six years by the Near World’s count, my Lord Dark Man,” said Queen Bebo in a voice as golden as her hair, “since the Prince sent our good Eanrin to guard his Beloved.”

  “And six long years they have been, my liege,” said the poet, his face a mask of tragic long-suffering. “How I have missed your mighty company in the interim.”

  “Enough of this bosh.” The king crossed his arms, clothed in silks and in black gleaming fur. “I’d begun to think I hadn’t any Chief Poet at all. Don’t suppose I do, even now. You haven’t come to amuse me, have you, cheeky cat.”

  “What other view could I possibly have in seeking out your royal company?”

  “Let me think.” The king rubbed his beard. “Might there be a certain lady hereabouts for whom you carry a torch?”

  All the assembly chuckled so that the Hall of Red and Green bubbled with ill-suppressed laughter. Lionheart looked around for that other famous figure of whom he’d heard so much, that inspiration for all the most wretched poetry a schoolboy had ever been forced to stomach: the fair Lady Gleamdrené Gormlaith. Because all eyes in the room were suddenly turned toward her, she wasn’t hard to spot.

  She was not what Lionheart had expected.

  For one thing, her lips were not inordinately large or red. Neither was she, as far as Lionheart was concerned, especially beautiful. She radiated the pure immortal glow of all Rudiobus’s merry people. Other than that, she had one of those faces that, if she smiled, could be pretty, and if she sulked, would be sulky. At the moment, she was sulking for all she was worth.

  Eanrin turned to her as though he had eyes to see exactly where she sat and, with another flourishing bow, proclaimed in a voice that rang throughout the Hall of Red and Green, “Sweet flower of my delight, once again I find myself
in your gracious presence! Might these longing ears hear the honeyed tones of your voice in gentle greeting?”

  Lionheart frowned. He had been a performer himself long enough to know a performance when he heard one. Something in the poet’s tone did not ring true. He eyed Eanrin, his dramatic stance, his face full of longing . . . and he saw the lie that it was. Or not a lie, but rather, a mask.

  And he thought to himself, Eanrin is hiding something. But he could not guess what. After all, what could Eanrin have to hide from the lady who all history knew was the great love of his life?

  Perhaps Gleamdren saw that mask as well. And perhaps this explained why she folded her arms, turned up her nose, and refused to look the poet’s way.

  Iubdan laughed. “Is that stony silence answer enough for you, bard? After a thousand-some years of Not Speaking, my wife’s cousin is not about to relent in a mere six!”

  Eanrin clapped a tragic hand to his forehead and turned away, his shoulders slumped. But two seconds later, he was all smiles and once more addressing the king and queen. “Actually, my liege, my companions and I have come to beg a boon. See yon mortal?” He waved a hand Lionheart’s way. Lionheart stood beside Oeric, still behind the solemn guard of honor. The sovereign rulers of Rudiobus turned their ancient eyes on him, and it was all he could do not to duck behind Oeric’s bulk. But Queen Bebo smiled at him.

  “He has been given into our keeping by the Prince of Farthestshore,” Eanrin continued.

  “Why?” asked Iubdan. His expression was not so welcoming as the queen’s.

  “The worlds wonder,” said the poet. “We thought perhaps my queen might shed some light upon the subject.”

  If Queen Bebo heard the request, she said nothing. Her quiet eyes were fixed on Lionheart, and the smile had not yet left her face. Lionheart wanted to break her gaze but found himself incapable. There was nothing unfriendly in those eyes. They merely looked. But they looked deeply.

  “What say you, Bebo, my love?” Iubdan asked, nudging his queen with his elbow in a manner most unkingly. “Have you a prophecy or some such?”