Chapter 15
Chapter
Elesbed was sure that Isabeau had used the confusion of the not-fire to slip Moreau that jewel-backed mirror from Brocéliande. She was very disturbed. She went up to the room with all the odd furnishings so she could think.
“Butter,” Elesbed whispered, “what do we do? What if Moreau is not so kind as he seems? What if the korrigan comes for Isabeau and the duchess does not know? She will be so sad.” But she had promised to keep Isabeau’s secrets.
“Do I tell the duchess?” she whispered to her cat. “What if Moreau is lying? What if he is in league with the korriganed? I think I must tell her.”
Just then, Butter hissed, loud as water on flame.
Elesbed looked up. Moreau himself stood in the doorway, the spiraling stairs behind him gold with faint torchlight.
His face was laid thickly in shadows. Strange shadows, just as if he were anaon.
She scrambled to her feet, backing up. Did they never lock his door?
Or could he be— Was he cheating the lock somehow?
Her cat was growling with flattened ears. Delicacy and decorum formed not the smallest part of Elesbed’s nature. She yelled for help as loud as she could, loud enough for half the castle to hear.
But there was no sound of protective voices or thud of friendly feet. Moreau merely watched her, looking impatient. Why was no one waking up? Elesbed turned to run deeper into the room, to hide.
She ran full-tilt into a wall. A wall that hadn’t been there.
She fell back, her vision exploding with white.
When, frantically, she rolled upright, trying to clear her head, tasting blood from a bashed nose, Moreau had not moved, though he held his mirror glimmering in one hand.
She could not see or hear her cat anymore.
The light had changed on Moreau’s face. Now it was lit gold with torchlight, though the world around them was clustered thick with black shadows. They weren’t in the same place anymore.
Elesbed, staring around wildly, didn’t think they were in the castle of the dukes of Brittany at all.
The mirror glittered in Moreau’s hand. Thinking fast, Elesbed lunged like a cat herself to snatch it.
But she was a little girl in the dark, and so he simply sidestepped her lunge and clouted her across the head as she passed him.
If he’d been weak before, he wasn’t now. Or perhaps he’d been lying all along.
She rolled and lay stunned, panting. For a second time, she fought the clouds from her vision and got, swaying, to her knees.
He said mildly, “I wish you trusted me, child, as Isabeau does. But I cannot have you telling the duchess. Not yet. I beg you will forgive me.”
How did he know? She fought the tears and said stubbornly, “Where am I? Where is my cat?”
He shook his head slowly. “It doesn’t matter. Don’t you see the way the light falls? You are in the Lost Lands. The korriganed call it the castle of Never-Was.”
She whispered, “How can I be in the Lost Lands?”
With strange ferocity, he answered, “It is only poor hedge knights who must follow a unicorn into the far, strange country. For men of true power, the Lost Lands are but a step away.”
Perhaps she could keep him talking. “Are you the king of the korriganed? Is it you that wants to marry the duchess?”
“I am. King of men and of korriganed. It is my fate. Forgive me, sweet child, but I will not let you interfere.”
He took a step back, and as he did, Elesbed saw behind him the familiar castle stairs, a light that matched his firelit skin. She sprinted at the light, the familiar light.
But he only smiled and took one more step back and disappeared.
The darkness closed around her, and Elesbed was alone. She wanted to wail for her mother, for Hawiz, for Cook, for Butter. She didn’t. Silence was a lesson she’d learned the night the brigands came.
He wasn’t a korrigan, she thought. That was why all the iron and prayers hadn’t found him out.
He was just a man, but a man who had lived in the Lost Lands for a long, long time.
Maybe he’d learned all that the korriganed knew and now had come back out with terrible plans for the rest of the world, shamming sickness all the while so the kindly duchess would take him in.
Maybe Elesbed would be here for two hundred years, and never see Butter or Hawiz or Isabeau or the duchess again.
Elesbed wiped her eyes fiercely, fighting off panic, and tried to see where she was.
She turned in a circle. All around her, like open mouths, were doors.
Many doors. She made herself consider each in turn, but they all looked the same in the darkness.
She stood hesitating, wrestling with her tears.
Then something slammed into the back of her legs and she screamed and fell and scrambled away on all fours, only to look back and see Butter, sitting on the stone floor, licking a paw.
“How did you get here?” Elesbed whispered, cuddling her cat, somehow crying even harder.
“Did you come find me? He put me in the Lost Lands. He’s a bad person.
You are the prettiest and cleverest cat in the world.
” Her mamm said all cats were travelers.
Butter did a hard squirm and Elesbed let her go. Tail very high, the cat trotted toward one of the doorways. Elesbed hadn’t noticed it. It was barely more than a hole in the wall. “Really?” Elesbed faltered. “How do you know?”
Butter just sat there, tail wrapped tidily around herself, and stared at her.
“All right,” whispered Elesbed. “Lead the way.”