Chapter 33
Chapter
They must go immediately. There was an inertia to the Lost Lands, the queen told Anne. The longer you were there, the longer you wished to stay and the more strangely time crawled by.
“Please,” Anne whispered to the lady. “Keep your word and keep my family safe.”
“I cannot break oaths any more than I can lie,” said the lady. She did not bid them farewell. Perhaps that was not done among the korriganed. Henri, Elesbed, and Isabeau took the queen’s gnarled hands and walked straight into a bar of pure clear light, like the seashore at dawn, and disappeared.
Anne and Louis stepped cautiously out of the castle of Never-Was and into a different place altogether.
It was dusk on a lonely hilltop, and when they turned back to the castle, they saw only a heap of moss-colored stones.
Anne could see the castle if she concentrated, standing in a different layer of light, but that was all.
The sky was every shade of lavender and plum and heliotrope, and the first stars had come out in unaccustomed places.
The wind lifted her hair. There was certainly no lost city in view, nor any glimpse of the sea.
There was nothing but the two of them, and it felt to Anne like standing on the edge of the world.
“You’d think that our fine korrigan-queen would offer her guests beds before flinging them into the wild,” muttered Louis.
“She promised her help, and we are here. There must be a reason,” said Anne. “Where are we?”
A cold wind tangled her hair, and Louis, without speaking, drew off his short cloak and put it over her. He had acquired a scabbard and sword-belt after the feasting, so he need not carry his sword. But nothing else had they been given, no clothes, no food. Anne’s teeth were starting to chatter.
She peered stubbornly down the stony brow of the hill and said, “That is smoke, I think. Can you smell it?”
Louis breathed and frowned. “Yes.”
“Perhaps whoever built that fire is friendly.”
“Or perhaps not,” Louis rejoined.
“But we can’t stay here. I think we must brave it.”
He looked dubious. “How far can you walk?”
She considered. “I do not think I can go far.” She ached badly from walking and running in the castle of Never-Was.
He nodded. “All right. Come on, one step, then another. I dare not try to carry you down this ridge in the dark.”
Anne never forgot the climb down from that hilltop.
It was nigh impossible with her tired limbs trembling and the light failing fast. It was as well that Louis had been a soldier and a commander of soldiers, for the cheer in his voice never wavered as they picked their way cautiously.
Toward the end, Louis simply placed each of her wavering feet in turn onto the proper rocks, and finally they reached the abyssal black beneath the trees.
Anne discovered to her chagrin that she could go no farther at all.
But there was firelight between the trees.
She summoned her last reserves, leaned on Louis’s unwavering arm, and made her way toward it.
Finally they found themselves in a tidy yard with a woodpile and the smell of a byre.
It seemed like a human place. But the stars overhead made constellations that Anne didn’t know.
Anne whispered, “If there are dangers in there, I cannot run away.”
“No, indeed,” said Louis, calmly. “But you wouldn’t need to. I have my sword.” With a hand on his sword-hilt, he roared, “Ho there, the house!” This was called in a voice calculated to reach charging cavalry upon the battlefield.
Anne stood stiff, listening.
Suddenly an old man in a leather apron came to the door and called, “Who’s there?” He did not look like a korrigan.
“A knight,” said Louis, haughtily. “And this lady, who is weary.” He walked forward and Anne dropped back a pace on the side of his shield-arm, to free him if he must use his sword.
But only the old man awaited them, white hair to his shoulders and a strong-boned face. Anne began to relax. “Come in and eat, lady, if you are weary,” the old man said hospitably. “I cannot recall when I last had a guest.”
“You are kind,” Anne said.
His face expressed only a gentle—even detached—interest. “Come in at once, daughter, and do not mind the rain. It falls always upon my roof, though the night is clear.”
They crossed the threshold, and indeed, once within, they heard the rain whisper, though it had been dry outside.
The old man’s house was smaller than a tradesman’s—which would have had workshops attached, and quarters for apprentices and journeymen—but it was finer than any villein’s hovel, even a prosperous one.
Its floor was of flagstone, perfectly smooth, and the inside was all paneled wood, with tapestries to keep the warmth.
The hearth gleamed and smelled of fat meat, and the table was scrubbed.
He had chairs, which a peasant would not own. A sword hung on the wall.
The old man bustled in, smiling gently. “My lady is not here,” he said. “She will return at dawn. But I can contrive in the meantime—yes—yes. Sit you down, Madame, and there is cider—I shall draw it. Then supper.”
Anne sat. The chairs were cushioned and the cider was sweet, fresh as though the harvest had been mere days ago.
Warily, Louis said, “Who are you, Monsieur?” He had not sat down, and was keeping the sword on the wall in the corner of his eye.
The old man wrinkled his brow. “I was—I hardly remember,” he said apologetically. “I came here a long time ago.” The faded eyes sharpened. “I am a man and not a korrigan, though. And even here, it is only the monstrous that violate the laws of hospitality.”
Louis nodded slowly. “Very well.”
The old man began spooning soup into two wooden bowls.
A loaf and knife and some freshly washed butter lay upon the table.
The faerie-food in the castle of Never-Was had been airy and insubstantial.
Here, they both made a hearty supper. The old man didn’t ask a single question.
Not their names or homes or where they were bound.
He only waited until they were licking their fingers and said, “If you wish to sleep, travelers, just there behind that door is a narrow stair and a room above. But I must leave you and keep watch for my lady. My lady is coming and I must see her when she does.”
With that, the old man bustled out, taking his lantern.
They were alone. But were they safe? Did it matter? Anne could go no farther.
Louis said, “I have my cloak. I’ll sleep here on the hearth to be sure that none shall come at you in the night.” He turned to add a log to the fire.
Anne watched him. “Will you? Our host did not act like a man who fears attack, and he has been nothing but hospitable himself.”
Louis said nothing.
“You’d be more comfortable upstairs,” she added.
He was staring into the fire.
She was thinking of the wedding-night that had always been waiting for her.
Public, impersonal, inescapable. But she had left that future behind when she left the castle of Never-Was.
She and Louis might die or be lost forever in this trackless wilderness, but if she did return, it would not be to trade her inheritance and her maidenhead to a king far away.
“Orléans?” said Anne. “Louis?”
Finally, he raised his head and looked directly at her.
“Even if we fail,” she whispered, “everything has changed.”
They climbed the stair and passed beneath the low lintel to the bedchamber. It was austere, clean. The moon shone through the casement, while the rain whispered impossibly overhead. Anne sank onto the bed. It smelled of fresh linen and clean wool and herbs.
In the darkness, Louis was reduced to a faint shine of eyes and the glitter of embroidery from his torn doublet.
He hesitated at the door. Then he crossed the room, slowly, and knelt before her.
Their eyes met. There was a question in his.
Then he looked down at the hem of her skirt, which was also torn, and her slippers, which were mere rags now, with her feet bruised beneath.
He traced her instep with a single finger.
“Has anyone ever gone questing in such shoes, I wonder?”
“Only fools,” said Anne.
Very gently, he levered one slipper off, then the other, and paused. “May I?”
She nodded, breath coming short. He pushed away her skirt enough to untie her stockings and roll them down. When she was barefoot, his warm hands closed lightly around her feet and he stayed there a moment, head bowed.
“Yes?” he asked her, still looking down. He sounded breathless. “You are not tired?”
She found herself laughing. “I will not be climbing any more cliffs this evening, Orléans, but no, not in the way you mean. Are you?”
He did not answer in words but pulled her to her feet and kissed her. Against her mouth, he murmured, “Almost I could believe that we are back in Never-Was.”
She pulled away, laughing. “Oh?” she asked innocently. “Was this one of your rooms after all? And I thought you wished only to admire me doing embroidery by firelight…”
“Shrew,” he said, and kissed her again. One hand went to the ties of her sleeves and undid them, and the band of her skirt, letting her clothes fall away in pieces.
When she was in her chemise, he pulled back again.
They were both breathing fast. “It was one of my rooms in Never-Was. And you?” he said.
She smiled slowly, wondering if he could see it in the dark. “I? In the castle of Never-Was? Certainly. There was a bed, and a korrigan wearing your face, ready to make all my dreams of love come true.”
Louis muttered something rude. He’d pulled off her fillet, and her hair was mostly loose.
He pushed the mass of it aside and breathed against her sensitive throat, ran his teeth down to the juncture of her shoulder, drew hard on the skin there until she arched against him, then he said, “What were your dreams of love?”
“I dreamed—” She hesitated, but there was no room for untruths in the shadows between them. “I dreamed that one would touch me who did not revel in my conquest.”
Louis was silent. Then he said, “It is a fair dream.” But he sounded sad. His hands had loosened. She said, suddenly self-conscious, “My dress must be laid aside properly. So it doesn’t crumple.”
“There’s a coffer at the foot of the bed— No, I’ll do it. Your feet are quite bruised enough.”
She sat down on the bed. Clothes rustled somewhere in the dark, and when he came back his body was warm. He’d stripped to shirt and hose.
Louis sat down on the bed beside her and she leaned against his shoulder. His hand closed around the back of her neck, beneath her hair. It was only this close that she could feel the tension in him, running through his shoulder, up into his hand.
“Are you cold? Lie back,” he said, and followed her beneath the heaped-up blankets. She could barely see him, but she could feel that he was propped on his elbow and his free hand, hesitating, hovered, just near enough for her to feel its warmth. “Anne?”
“I’m all right.” She reached, found his dark hair, and pulled his mouth to hers, his body a satisfying weight.
He kissed her, one hand tipping her jaw back, and the other unknotting the string at the neck of her chemise, loosening it until he could slip a hand inside and close it lightly around her breast. And he seemed content to stop there, kissing her slowly, rolling the nipple between his fingers, letting her restraint crumble.
“Louis,” she said, and hardly knew her own voice.
She heard his long sigh of satisfaction. “God, Anne, how many nights did I go to bed half-wild for you and hating myself for it? Will you beg me now? Or is it I who must beg?”
“Don’t be nonsensical. Who is begging? I want—” She broke off. She was pressing against him and hardly knew how to say it.
“Do you?” he asked. “Sit up, then.” He lifted her so he could pull off her chemise. His shirt disappeared, and the hose, and when he pulled her down beside him, there was only the startling heat, multiplied by a thousand, as the idle fingers on her nipples were replaced with his mouth.
He licked and sucked and breathed against her oversensitive skin, and she heard him groan between his teeth. His fingers were on her thighs and his mouth against her ear, and he said, breathlessly, “Spread your legs for me.”
It might have been easier if he’d pushed her legs apart, taken her, let her be mindless, only reacting. But she had told him that she feared conquest. This, perhaps, was his answer.
Trembling, she did part her legs for him, until she felt the air touch her there, where they had flung off the quilts, and knew she was blushing hotly in the dark.
His fingers were light and reverent on her thighs, but still he did not put his hand between; he came close, running patient, grazing fingers along the juncture of her hip, teasing her.
Finally, in the driving need for him to touch her, she caught the wrist of that flitting hand.
“For God’s sake,” she said, could almost see him smile in the shadows, and finally, finally, he put his hand where she wished. “I won’t— You won’t hurt me.”
He laughed, and there was something painful in the sound. “I might hurt myself, sweet, with all this patience.” And a finger slipped inside her.
She went rigid around it, trembling; it was as though she could feel the touch in her womb and feathering along her lips.
She realized her legs had closed around his hand and he was waiting for her again.
But his thumb rested lightly against the juncture of her thighs, and he moved it and moved it again, and her thighs unlocked.
“Like that,” he whispered, raw, when she spread her legs for him, and that glorious thing was building in the place where his hand met her skin.
His free hand pushed her knee down when she tried to close up around the sensation.
“I don’t—” she began, and then she did, her whole body going tense and shattering in a waterfall of white light, and she found she was clinging to him, her thighs wet, and then she was beneath him again, and he’d drawn her knee up, and she felt him brush against the wetness there.
There was the quick rise and fall of his chest against her tender breasts, his weight on his forearms.
“It’s all right,” she whispered, and then she had no more breath to speak for he pressed himself into her body in a single movement and there was no part of her, in that moment, that was not his.