Chapter 34
Chapter
Her head cleared slowly. Her first fully formed thought was how it would have been to have endured that lightning-stroke under a dozen interested eyes, with none of Louis’s patience. It would have killed something within her. He was studying her face in the faint light. The moon had risen higher.
She smiled at him. “I am glad of this,” she said. “Whatever comes.”
He’d drawn the blankets away to see her in the moonlight, she realized; his eyes were hot, and his look turned knowing when she shivered.
“I am glad too,” he said, bowing his head to her breast and licking her there.
“But God, Anne, I cannot stand tamely by while you barter yourself to any king now.”
“But there is nothing left to barter,” said Anne, after a slightly rueful pause. “And we do not know what tomorrow brings. When is moonset? Is dawn coming? We must go when it comes.”
“It will set soon,” said Louis. “And I think there is time until dawn. Sleep if you can.”
She was only half-awake when they came together again, the sky just faintly graying through that one traitorous window, the sound of rain still constant on the roof.
She came out of dreams with his mouth on her, and her new-wakened flesh already wet and pliant, and she wrapped both legs around him when he slipped inside, rocking.
He was rougher that time; taking her as though heedless of her soreness, pushing her until suddenly the ache became a piercing ecstasy.
This time he slept, and Anne, tender and fully awake, slipped out of bed and found her clothes.
She could not lace her bodice properly, but she left it loose and put his cloak over, slipped down the stairs.
The tapestries on the walls below were visible in the dawn light.
She considered them, as she had been too tired to do before.
Sea-drakes and horses, playing in an azure sea.
Outside she heard the sound of feet and voices. She went softly to the outer door and opened it.
A lady was walking toward the house in the cool dawn.
She was young and pregnant and very beautiful.
And a korrigan. There was no mistaking the yellow eyes, the thin fingers, the number of teeth.
A diadem was plaited into her long hair, and her robe was silk.
Her hair was damp, and her eyes shone. The old man stood still, watching her approach.
He said, just loud enough for Anne to hear, “Have you come from the dragons, love?”
“Yes,” she said. “But I shall not go again until the child is born. The sea is cold. I must content myself with horses.” She kissed him, smiling, and walked on into the faint dawn. The rain that Anne had heard on the roof starred her hair. Then she was simply gone. Anaon, Anne thought.
The old man stood silent.
Drawing Louis’s cloak tighter around herself, she walked outside, frowning.
The old man turned to her and his face was full of wistful memory.
Anne said, “When I was a child, I used to love the story of a king of men who wedded a princess of the korriganed and ruled an enchanted city. But this lady died in childbed, and the story says that her husband, who was called Gralon Meur, went into the Lost Lands to find her and was lost forever to men.”
The old man made no answer.
Anne said, “Will you tell me your name? I am called Anne, and in the mortal world, I am duchess of Brittany.”
The old man said, “I do not remember my name. Now go inside. You will catch your death.”
Softly, Anne said, “In the story, they say that Gralon Meur was a good king who loved his people. But they never knew if he found his wife in the Lost Lands.”
The old man let out a long, slow breath. “Just this single moment,” he said, after a pause. “It is all I found of her. But it is enough. Every dawn I see her, and every dawn I am content.”
Anne said, “I am looking for Keris. The drowned city, they call it, for your daughter Ahèz turned to evil and the city was taken back into the Lost Lands. She is trapped there in the dark, the korriganed say. The whole city is trapped.”
The old man’s eyes hardened, and for the first time she could see the king in him. Dawn was breaking slowly, and the night wind still blew coldly through the trees. “The city is not drowned,” he said sharply. “The city will stand forever.”
Anne said gently, “Forever trapped. I have come to save it.”
The old man said nothing.
“Will you tell me how to get there?” said Anne.
He shook his head slow and heavy. “How would I know? My road would not be yours, if you are going through the Lost Lands. A unicorn could find it perhaps, but unicorns rarely help the children of men or reward mortal ambition.” He said all this quite gently. “I think you should go home.”
Anne stood still. “I see,” she said.
Of course, Anne thought. That is why Julien Moreau was hunting unicorns. That is why he wanted me, when he knew I had his gift.
She raised her eyes to the edge of the wood. “Lady of the forest, you have come to me twice before,” Anne said. “You have waited for me and I did not know why. But now I think I know. Will you come again?”
Gralon Meur drew in a sharp breath.
The unicorn stepped soundlessly out from between the trees, with snow tangled in her mane, a cold winter light like silver-gilt on the horn. Then she shook the snow away and was in the same dawn as they. She arched her neck.
“Lady,” whispered Gralon Meur. He was silent a long moment, like a man dazzled or dreaming. Then he turned to Anne. “It seems I was mistaken.” His eyes were soft and a little sad. “Go with my blessing.”
“I cannot yet,” said Anne. “My—my chevalier sleeps within.”
Gralon considered her gravely. “What do you want with the city of Keris?”
It was not an idle inquiry. He had been crowned king of this lost city. There could be no lies. Anne said, “I wish to restore Keris to the mortal world, and I wish to be crowned queen of it and add its grace to my dominion of Brittany.”
Gralon stood awhile in silence. “Long ago, we said the test of the rightful sovereign was the hunting of a unicorn. A unicorn never came to my daughter, yet I had her crowned in my place, and only evil came of it. The unicorn has come to you, and your road leads to the sea, but I will tell you now that if you wish to vie for the rule of Keris, you must go alone, with no chevalier to help you. Not if you wish to be accepted as the rightful sovereign.”
Anne stood still. Ride away? But what would Orléans think, when he woke to find her gone?
Would she give up the chance of a realm for this newborn love?
The answer, deep in her bones, was clear. No, she thought. Never.
She whispered, “When he wakes—within—will you tell him—”
“I will send him to you,” said Gralon Meur.
“If you have been successful, the way will open for him. And if you are not, then he may go questing, as many have done before him in this land of faerie, and take his fortune as it comes. But this is your hour now, and the unicorn waiting. Go, lady. No—wait. I have something that will help you.”
He disappeared swiftly into the house, and Anne, after a hesitation, walked over to the unicorn, until their shadows merged beneath the trees.
The unicorn put down her nose and blew warm breath into Anne’s palm.
The dark eyes lay steadily on her. One cloven hoof, white as the purest ivory, scraped the green ground.
“I still don’t know exactly what you wish of me,” said Anne. “Will you take me to Keris?”
The unicorn shook her mane, like a fall of moonlit water. Anne put a hand on the warm neck. The unicorn was no taller than a pony. Her head curved round, filling the air with the smell of flowers and the salt sea.
Gralon Meur came back, and he had a white garment in his hand. He said, “My Malgven wore this when we wed. It is yours now. I think the city will recognize it.”
The unicorn stretched her neck out to the old man and laid her horn lightly on his shoulder.
Anne stripped off her torn gown where she stood and put on the dress that Gralon Meur held out for her.
She could put it on without help, for it was like nothing she’d ever worn, light and simple and fine, sewn all over with pearls.
She remembered that she’d worn white for the unicorn-hunt.
Well, perhaps this was proper. She could hardly draw breath, so fast was her heart beating.
“And this,” he said, and gave her a ring. Gold set with an incised jewel. The device was that of a sea-drake. It was too big for any of her fingers, so he helped her string it round her neck with a hair from the unicorn’s tail.
The unicorn pawed the earth.
Softly, Anne said, “Please—you must explain to Orléans. He will not understand.”
The old man stood very straight. “I will do all that is wanted, lady,” he said. “For do I not know both love and duty? And I think he will understand. For he was born to it, the same as you or I.”
He kissed her hand. Then Anne turned to the unicorn, hesitated. It felt like sacrilege.
But the unicorn, in silent answer, knelt in the grass.
Anne thought of her kind Jonquil with her comfortable saddle.
But she got on the unicorn’s back, and was small enough not to dwarf the beast’s slenderness.
Not a maiden sacrifice now, she thought, but an aspiring queen, who would preserve the unicorn’s grace and with it the way into the land of twilight.
In a breathless instant she thought all these things.
In a breathless instant a legend was born.
And then the unicorn shot away like a loosed arrow, Anne clinging to her mane while the wind of their speed whipped the tears from her wide-open eyes.