Cobweb Forest (Cobweb Bride Trilogy) (14 page)

Like a second loyal shadow, holding a drawn sword, Vlau Fiomarre walked closely behind her.

In their wake, Hecate silently followed.

S
now was falling.

It had covered the whole world it seemed, and piled tall on the parapets of Letheburg, adding white caps to the tops of the merlons and filling in the space in the crenels, which however was quickly swept away by the struggling bodies of soldiers, both living and dead, in the endless melee.

Claere was done circling the city and was back in the same spot where she had started, in the center of a wide portion of a bulwark. It was long past noon, and torches had been employed along the length of the battlements, both for illumination and for re-igniting the fires below and keeping the dead at bay.

The invisible circle of power stood around Letheburg, a psychic wall that she had wrought.

It was definitely there.

It rang
.

She could hear its crystal resonance on a strange super-human level. Had she been alive, the hairs along her flesh would have risen.
 . . .

All along, Vlau had been right behind her. He had had occasion to use his sword blade in her defense at least a dozen times as they walked. At one point, while four of the King’s guard appointed to the Infanta’s defense struggled to fight off a dead giant in torn chain mail who had once been a living knight—a thick-necked monster with bulging muscles and the strength of five men—Vlau stepped between the King’s soldiers. With odd elegance and spare movements he did an intricate and fiercely violent figure with his sword and then swung it like lightning. Fueled by the impossible swiftness of the stroke, Fiomarre’s blade cut through the neck muscle, sinew, and bone of the frozen corpse like butter. Soldiers paused to stare as the dead giant’s head rolled several feet and rested in the snow, its maddened eyes fixed upon them, rotating slowly in their sockets in impotent fury. The enemy’s headless torso continued to fight, but now without the head’s guidance it was mostly ineffective, so Vlau simply gave it a powerful shove in the abdomen, sending the beheaded body flying like a boulder back over the parapet.

“Impressive,” Captain Brandeis said to Fiomarre. “Where did you learn that move?”

Vlau’s expression was impassive and perfectly focused as he first glanced to make sure that Claere was unharmed, then turned back to the captain. “I did some fighting at the southern border of Styx,” he said vaguely, then resumed his vigilance at the Infanta’s side.

That had been an hour ago.

Now she glanced at him occasionally from the corner of her fixed glass eye, seeing his soot, his grime-spattered clothing, his worn features, dear and familiar to her in their relentless intensity. And always she saw his eyes, fathomless and deep as winter, as he returned her intimate look. Indeed, it seemed that whenever she turned to glance at him he was already staring at her, his gaze
consuming
her. . . .

Claere forcibly made herself focus on her task and not to think of
him
yet again.

“It is done
 . . . I can feel it,” she whispered at last, coming to a stop in the middle of the bulwark with its relative clearing, away from the thick of the battle and the pile-up of detached human limbs, endlessly twitching like snakes.

Grial, who had been also walking behind them discreetly, a few steps behind the King’s guards, now came to a stop likewise. “Ah, the circle is there indeed, Your Imperial Highness! You did a fine job of it!”

“I thank you, Grial, for your wisdom and all your help in this. What now?”

As Claere spoke, at the far end of the bulwark where they stood, near the edge of the distant wall, a small keg of gunpowder exploded. The impact sent a portion of the wall boulders crashing down together with a whole merlon, and leaving a gap of several feet in the top section of the parapet. Agonized screams were heard as Letheburg soldiers struggled, died, and then “awoke” and loyally resumed fighting on the side of the city. Orange flames burst forth, and at least a dozen dead enemy soldiers started to pour over the wall and onto the battlements. Immediately, garrison soldiers responded, coming to defend the spot with all they had.

Grial paused, silhouetted against the roaring flames, and she observed the melee taking place only fifty feet away from them. “Now, Highness, you simply
stand
. And you make the circle strong with your will and your heart.”

And Grial took two lit torches from the nearest King’s guard—for they were in a semi-circle around them, the King’s guard soldiers and Captain Brandeis, standing protectively around the Infanta, while Vlau Fiomarre with his sword, immediately at her side, was the last line of defense—and she gave the torches to Claere.

“Hold these up, Highness, and stand straight and firm. Hold the fire in your mind and think of it as what makes up the circle of defense around Letheburg. It is not the fire burning in the outer moat below, but the invisible fire up
here
, which courses along the parapet walkway perimeter even now, in the very place where you have trod the stones around the city.”

Claere took the torches and stood as straight as she could imagine herself able—even though the act of balancing her atrophied flesh was a great effort. Her thin arms shook slightly, but she was dead, and she felt no pain of straining muscles, only the intensity of
effort
.

“That’s it
 . . .” Grial watched her with a soft smile. “Now, look out beyond the wall, and imagine in your mind, the entirety of Letheburg, contained within this circle of inner fire, this circle of
you
. Nothing can breach it.”

“Yes,” Claere whispered. “I see it.”

“Good. Now, stand, dear heart. Stand here for as long as you can. And you—” Grial pointed to the King’s guards and their captain—“you are now free to go. Your task is done here, for Her Imperial Highness will do the rest.”

“But—” Captain Brandeis said. “What of my orders? Who will stand to defend Her Imperial Highness while all this is happening?”

“I will.” Vlau Fiomarre stepped forward, and positioned himself on the outside of the Infanta, between her and the outer wall of the bulwark. “I will guard her with my body.”

“But it is not enough!”

“Ah, but it is!” Grial smiled and pointed to a large burning projectile that came hurtling in their direction in that very moment. It sailed over the parapet, moved about twenty feet into the air space over the bulwark, and then seemed to have met an
invisible wall
of something in the air. The flaming thing crashed against the invisible something, then bounced backward, and capsized close to the outer edge of the wall.

“Nothing can get through now,” Grial said. “Nothing and no one
uninvited
—for as long as she stands.”

Captain Brandeis and the guards, and indeed all the Letheburg defenders in the vicinity, looked in wonder at what had just come to pass. They witnessed sorcery, or maybe a genuine impossibility.

The captain blinked, his eyes watering from the newest blast of rising smoke, then nodded in acquiescence. “Then I must inform His Majesty at once,” he said in a new voice of hope, signaling his convoy of guards to follow. He bowed deeply before the Infanta, gave a nod of respect to Fiomarre, then hurried away, walking back the way they had come with newfound energy, stepping over rubble and twitching body parts.

Meanwhile, everywhere along the battlements, commanding officers were calling their men to step away from the walls, ignore the attacking dead, and retreat behind the invisible demarcation line of supernatural safety.
 . . . Soon, military trumpet calls came everywhere, signaling retreat and long-needed relief for the city. The bulwark and the battlements were now empty of the defenders of Letheburg, but filling with the unopposed enemy dead that massed forward but could not breach the invisible wall.

Claere remained standing as she was, torches held aloft, straining with her gaze into the freezing-cold wind.

“Well, my dears,” Grial said cheerfully, “I am going to head back home for a while, to do a thing or two that needs to be done, but I promise I will return in a few hours! You, dear girl, keep that chin up, keep those torches up, and keep being yourself!”

“I will, Grial,” said Claere. “Thank you.”

“And you, young man—” Grial turned to Vlau who stood like an unshakable post at Claere’s side—“You might consider coming along with me for a bite of dinner and some hot tea to warm you. She will be perfectly safe—”

“I thank you, but no,” he replied, turning his dark beautiful eyes momentarily to glance at Grial. And then he turned away and continued standing next to Claere, sword in one hand, his feet planted in a deceptively casual stance.

“As you wish,” Grial said, with a strange little smile, then adjusted her wide-brimmed winter hat and headed away along the walkway, and back down into the city.

After she was gone, it seemed the wind had grown colder, its gusts harsher, and the snow was whirling in cruel funnel flurries. Vlau stood motionless, relentless and stoic, face turned into the wind. His exposed skin had lost all feeling and his extremities were numb, snow powdering his raven hair with sterile pallor. He was a dark, tall counterpart of Claere with her upright posture and her torches that flickered wildly but refused to go out despite the gale.

Half an hour had passed, maybe more. It was hard to tell in the strange afternoon dusk, and the slate-grey dome of overcast heaven. Vlau had blinked and briefly closed his eyes, his lashes sprinkled with snowflakes, and it seemed an eternity of silence had passed. . . .

After a few more silent moments of winter, of whistling wind and horrible stumbling dead, beating themselves in grotesque futility against the invisible wall of power just a few feet away from Claere, she spoke to him, without turning around to look. “Vlau
 . . .” she said gently. “Please go back and get some rest. I will be fine here.”

“No,” he said in a voice cracking from the cold. “I cannot leave you.”

“But it will only be for a little while! And look how freezing it is getting! The wind is picking up and there is no end to this snow—”

“Claere,”
he said, and there was so much intensity in his voice that she had to turn around at last and look at him. “Claere, I will never leave you. Never. I may not, even if I could, even if I wanted to.”

“What are you saying?” she whispered.

“I am saying, I
cannot
leave, my Claere. For . . . there is no more need. Now I will never leave you again.”

And he took one stiff, frozen step to close the small distance between them, and he touched one of her hands, even as she continued to hold up the torch.

His fingers upon her hand were like ice.

If she were to look closely upon them, she would see their bluish grey color, the absence of movement of blood under the skin.

And if she were to look at him with the eyes of
sight
—at his elegant shape, his well-formed broad shoulders and his slim waist, his proud posture and his stilled dark eyes—if she could look thus, she would see a familiar new shadow at his side.

A death-shadow of billowing smoke, similar to her own.

But there was no need to look, for in her heart she already
knew
.

Snow was falling.

L
ady Leonora D’Arvu had escaped everyone and now sat upon a stone bench in the garden of the villa, in the cool late afternoon approaching dusk. Vestiges of sunset still stained the western horizon with streaks of persimmon and rust, and the breeze had cooled enough to require a shawl, but Leonora did not feel the need for warmth.

Instead she attempted to take deep perfumed breaths of evening air, and to listen to her own heartbeat.
 . . . It was there, surely; to hear it, all she had to do was focus on the familiar pulse in her temples, in her inner ear, the sound that had been with her for as long as she could remember, since the first self-aware moments of infancy and childhood. Indeed, it had been with her even when she first started seeing the impossible wonder of
her
, the infinite and eternal woman with the
sky blue eyes—

No!

She focused on her breath. She inhaled and exhaled, and her lungs worked like mechanical bellows. But then, if she stopped thinking about it, stopped thinking about breathing, so did her breath.

It stopped.

There was also silence in her temples, no soft regular rush of blood to mark her time.

Nothing.

The fragrance of the ever-blooming acacia blossoms was overwhelming even in winter, and the trees surrounded this garden spot in a private alcove. Branches clustered with large dark green leaves hung low and spread around and above her like swaying green fingers gently reaching for her.

From her vantage point the whole world was filling with the rich purple of approaching twilight.

She felt sudden panic. There was a sharp moment where the trees and the blossoms and the purple air all seemed to press down on her, and she felt she could not breathe, and her lungs had then stopped indeed, and her chest was utterly silent, and she was clutching the stone bench beneath her with fingers that had somehow grown “thick” and senseless.

No!

“Lady Leonora. . . .”

Percy Ayren stood before her, a plump peasant girl in a simple light dress. Percy’s expression was profound and very attentive, her eyes filled with murky things, like the gathering twilight, and her knotted hair, the color of shadows, framed her round plain features, lending her an otherworldly gravity.

Leonora looked up at her with frightened eyes, and once again she had forgotten to breathe, and thus she was
not
breathing. . . .

“What—what is happening to me?” Leonora said, making the effort to move the air through her mouth and shape the words.

“I am so sorry,” Percy said. “I know this is an impossible thing, and what you are feeling is beyond anything you know. It is unimaginable and it is unfair. I am so sorry!”

“Am I really dead?”

“Yes. . . .”

“And that thing—that whatever you call it, death-shadow—it is at my side?”

“Yes. It is right here. It stands waiting.”

Leonora glanced to the right where Percy pointed, willing herself to see, but there was nothing, only the side of the stone bench. Another surge of panic came to her, this time a numbing horror, so that she could almost feel a chill, but did not
quite
feel it, only vaguely sensed things around her through the remote thickness of cotton.

“Why can I not see it? Why is it that
you
can?” she spoke at last.

Percy sighed. “May I sit with you, My Lady?”

Leonora nodded and the girl sat down on the bench beside her. She then told her a long peculiar story of visiting Death in his Keep, and the quest for the Cobweb Bride.

Leonora listened, in particular responding to the part of her own rescue from the chamber of cobwebs underneath the Sapphire Throne. Memories of it had haunted her all day, all sleepless night since their long carriage ride, since her liberation from the debilitating soft morass of—

Whatever it was, Leonora could not remember. She only saw vague snatches of spinning images . . . the strange beautiful blue eyes of the Sovereign, her sublime face hovering close over her. But most often she saw only the gossamer whiteness of cobwebs.

“What was done to me?” Leonora whispered. “How did I die? Why do I not remember?”

“It might be of some use to give you the water from the River Lethe to drink,” said Percy gently. “Unfortunately I have none with me—it can only be obtained at Death’s Keep, and indeed the whole underground river flows there—”

“Oh, God, the water of Lethe!” Leonora’s eyes, vulnerable and tragic, suddenly became wild. “I remember it! That was many weeks ago, indeed, months! Oh, what am I saying, maybe years! I was so young then, maybe fourteen—but no, how could that be? I am seventeen now, so how could it be years when I only entered her service when I was sixteen? In any case, there was a goblet of very strange water, at the Palace of the Sun. Her Brilliance the Sovereign had called it the water of Lethe and instructed me to keep it in my own quarters until she called for it, and to allow no other Lady-in-Attendance near it. I was told to watch over it and make sure no one touched or drank even a drop, for it was dangerous—”

Percy listened closely.

“It is a very strange story, and the time it seems to span makes very little sense, now that I think about it—years, months, weeks?” Leonora continued, while her retinas were seared with the imprint of
sky blue eyes
. . . . “Her Brilliance had been somewhat indisposed, or possibly saddened somehow, for many days this past spring—or was it two springs ago? Maybe three? No, that is nonsensical! We all noticed it but it was very subtle and hard to put into words. Indeed, it is always difficult to tell moods with Her Brilliance because she is such a delight and brings such joy always—what am I saying! Even now, I think of her as radiant and kind and beloved, when she did all this horror to me! But no, let me continue. And so, she kept me late one evening and instead of retiring for the night, she instructed me to fetch the goblet and to carry this same goblet with her into the Hall of the Sun, and there she sat down upon the Sapphire Throne. . . .”

“Please go on,” Percy said, because Leonora went silent, her words fading, and her eyes appeared lost.

“Yes, she sat upon the throne. No one else was in the hall with us, not even her personal guards. I had thought it very strange at that time, but of course I loved her and obeyed her every command. And thus, she sat on the Sapphire Throne for long moments so that the moon rose and I was growing weary of standing motionless before her. Indeed, her face, now as I remember it, it was so sad! So impossibly sad, as I had never seen her to be, not ever. It was sad and somehow
real
. Her expression—it hid nothing. No duplicity. And it was tragic, and her eyes—her beautiful
blue eyes
—they appeared strangely dark in the moonlight, and they glistened with tears.

“Then she turned to me and asked me to give her the goblet. And she told me that whatever happened next, I was not to tell anyone, and if the
worst
happened, I was to simply turn around and leave the chamber. What ‘the worst’ meant, I did not know. . . . But I was terrified. And then, I watched her drink.”

“How many sips did she take, do you remember?” Percy asked.

“Oh yes! She drank the first sip, and then sat back. And her face became relaxed with utter peace. She looked at me, and her eyes held no recognition, and then she looked at the goblet in her hands, as though considering it. . . . Moments later, she must have made some decision because she lifted it to her lips again and she drank another sip, or possibly a gulp. And immediately her face contorted. ‘No, no, oh, no!’ she exclaimed, and she started to weep, clutching the goblet loosely so that I was afraid it would fall, and its liquid sloshed around from the trembling of her fingers. I had never seen her thus! Oh, what indescribable rending sobs filled her, and she shook and she wept, sitting on the throne, painted by the moonlight! And when I asked if there was anything I could do, she cursed me, and then the very next moment begged me for forgiveness . . . and then she took a deep breath and she drank again—”

“For the
third
time,” Percy whispered with sorrow.

“Yes, and for the fourth and more!” Leonora’s speech cracked and she pulled in more air into her lungs to continue. “Indeed, she drank down the whole goblet!”

Percy was stunned. She sat clutching her hands in her lap while Leonora paused again. The dusk around them turned from purple to deep indigo. Somewhere behind them the villa lights bloomed forth and candlelight spilled from windows, while the garden lanterns outside were also set to burning by discreet servants.

“She should have died
 . . .” Percy said at last. “Anyone else in her place would have died, for Death told me that one cannot have more than two sips of the water of Lethe. The third sip means such unimaginable death that it takes you beyond all things and casts you from the world.”

“Oh!” Leonora looked at Percy in new fear. “How then—”

“She is immortal,” Percy said. “She is the Goddess Persephone. My understanding is, she drank death, but death could not take her, and thus an
impossibility
was created, a paradox. And it
broke
her.”

“She is a goddess?” Leonora’s expression was disbelief. “But why did she do this senseless thing? Knowing who she was, what did she think—”

“I think she wanted to die. Desperately. She drank on purpose, because she was looking for a way out.”

“A way out of what?”

“Out of the universe. Out of being. Out of performing her divine function.”

Percy rubbed her forehead. “In truth, I do not know—at least I have only an inkling, but I am not certain. But tell me, My Lady, what happened next, after she finished drinking the goblet?”

Leonora frowned with the effort of remembering. “I am not sure, but I think, after she was done drinking, she handed the empty goblet back to me, and her eyes—they were now perfectly
empty
. No—that is, they were cognizant and intelligent and aware, and she recognized me perfectly. But she was suddenly hard and cold and insensate, and yes, she was
wicked
—as though she no longer had a heart or a shred of sympathy. As though she, or any living soul inside her, had in fact
died
. Indeed, the first words out of her lips were, ‘child, what an ugly face you have.’”

“You say this,” Percy mused, “as though her wickedness was a new thing?”

“Oh but it was indeed!” Leonora spoke hurriedly. “Her Brilliance was suddenly different, had become someone she had never been before. I was only seven—oh lord, why do I keep seeing myself at that age in her presence? That is ridiculous! No, I mean, obviously, I must have been sixteen, for surely this all happened only last spring—and yet even now I
feel
like I had known her all my life—”

“She was different, you say. Which suggests that indeed the water of Lethe had caused her to be what she is now. Caused her to perform acts of cruelty for occult reasons and whatever she thought she was doing when she took you and the other maidens in that chamber, robbing all of you of will and life—”

“No, oh, no! I admit, I do not understand any of it,” Leonora said. “I am suddenly very confused, not only to be told that My Liege, the Sovereign is, as you say, an immortal goddess—which is a bizarre impossibility—but I am confused by my own memories and my own place in this whole thing. Why is time and my recollection of it so distorted? Why do I see myself before her both when I am a child and then later, as a young woman? As if the entirety of my life has been a jewel preserved along a string, covered in unnatural cobwebs. . . . Could it really be some kind of sorcery?”

“That, My Lady, I do not know,” Percy said thoughtfully.

“Or maybe I am just an insane madwoman! A dead one!”

“I do not think,” Percy said gently, “that you are mad. But it is likely that you have been harmed considerably by whatever had come to pass—the events that you in fact cannot recall. Those same events that have made you into the Cobweb Bride.”

Leonora got up from her seat, holding herself up with rigid awkwardness. She stood, balancing stiffly on her feet, her knees trembling from the effort. “I cannot speak of this any more . . .” she announced coldly. “You must forgive me—I remain grateful for your help in rescuing me, and you are always deeply welcome in this house, but—but I cannot—” And with those words Leonora hastened away toward the lantern lights, returning back into the villa.

Percy got up and returned to the house also.

W
hen Percy entered the guest boudoir given to them by the family D’Arvu, Beltain was waiting for her.

Warm candlelight made the large airy chamber comfortable, while outside the windows was an ink-blue evening sky.

“Percy!” he said, and stood up from the deep chair in which he had been seated, still fully dressed. “How did it go?”

“Not well
 . . .” Percy sighed, and looked up, seeing his familiar grey-blue eyes, and immediately feeling a warm energy surge between them, invigorating her. She stood before him, suddenly a little awkward, remembering all kinds of things that had nothing to do with Leonora or death or the entirety of the world around them. And then she said, “I do not think Lady Leonora is ready to be Death’s Cobweb Bride. Nor do I think she might ever be—or at least not in a long while.”