The Unicorn Hunters: A Novel(61)

“We have to go,” she managed, gasping. “You’ll have to take me on your horse.”

All around her shivered impossible lights, strange shadows. Perhaps these were the shadows of the Lost Lands that sent diviners mad. She only hoped the shadows would spare her. She wasn’t sure. Her vision kept trying to go dark.





Chapter


19

    Anne was not insensible for that ride, but afterward her memories came in vivid fragments and some were perhaps mere dreams. She remembered chill half-moon light—saw it over sea and stone and once over a great white tower, before she blinked herself back to the living night, with the proper light and shadow.

Then she drifted away again.

She felt rain on her face, a cool rising mist. She was on Louis’s saddlebow, wrapped in a cloak, her head knocking against his silk doublet, the collarbone hard beneath.

Once she saw Louis looking down at her. She was cold. Her life was flowing steadily out of her, as though she’d opened some inward piece of herself doing whatever it was she’d done. Her lungs forgot to inhale; her heartbeat wandered. She said, “Don’t let anyone hurt Isabeau.” The horse’s hoofbeats jarred her bones.

“I won’t,” he said. “But you’ll be there.”

She shook her head, tried to say something else, but her eyes had slid shut again. There was only his voice talking to her, a slender thread, talking of nothing: hunts and jousts and wars, all the lordly, gilded excess. But he gave her mind something to cling to, though it wanted to fall away into a long dark. It had been gift and poison, she thought. That dragon’s blood.

When next she woke, they were in an unfamiliar courtyard that rang with shouts, horrified cries. She had the vague impression of movement, fire, a bed, but she could not bring herself to care. She missed Hawiz. Madeleine’s voice rose and fell, with a chorus of girls fluting answers, a single deep slow voice, startled, grim. She could not hear Isabeau or Henri or Louis. There was nothing for her to hold on to and she began to slip away. Flinched as a physician cut her arm, felt the blood run, but it didn’t help. Her heartbeat strayed even more, and every thud of it seemed to drive her further from herself.

“I don’t want to die,” she whispered, dreaming. And then, to her surprise, she realized that her eyes were open, and she was alone. Who left a dying duchess alone? She was almost indignant. There should be a crowd packing her bedside, everyone making noise, priests swinging incense in great arcs. That was how her father had died.

No, she was not alone. A lady sat by her bed.

It was the abbess. Not the true abbess of Paimpont, the timid creature. No, it was the false one, the small lady with the seamed face and disconcerting clear-water eyes. She sat quiet, half-masked by gray shadows, wearing the horned headdress and long robe of a great lady from the last century. Or the century before. Anne couldn’t recall. The heavy silk rippled with the lady’s steady breathing.

The lady said coolly, “You will die here if you cannot get out. The unicorn cannot make its way into the houses of men.”

“What?” whispered Anne.

“The unicorn, girl. Why do you think she came to you in Brocéliande? Gave you a piece of herself, so she could find you again? For your pretty mortal virtues—no. They guard the boundary, do the unicorns, and they do not favor virtue, they favor people who can help them. She saw you and knew you, and I think she might save you from this folly of dragon’s blood. If you will only go outside.”

Anne’s mind could not parse this. “Who are you?” She wanted to sit up, tried to roll onto an elbow, found her limbs leaden and thick.

The lady did not move except for a stray breeze that stirred the gauze that veiled her henin. What breeze, Anne wondered. Are we not behind walls? The lady was very small indeed, with eyes large and deep-set and the crowds of her teeth very sharp when she smiled. The light on her face was soft faded daylight. She answered, “I? No one now. My daughter is dead, and my granddaughter lost to a great madness. My line is ended and I am old and feeble, dethroned and forgotten.” Her mouth did not lose its sly curve. “Truly it is delightful to be forgotten. I read all the books that men have lost and cultivate all the flowers of the world. It is a fine thing, to be old. But—” A new resonance came into her voice. “Sometimes, even now, I put my finger on the wheel. Go out to the unicorn, Anne of Brittany. And know that those who have the gift of sorcery are told to avoid the blood of dragons, for it gives them strength beyond their skill but then exacts a price.”

“You are not really here, are you, Madame?” Anne whispered. “And you are korrigan?”

“Yes.”

“Are you the queen?”

She gave no answer.

Anne tried to sit up. “Did your daughter marry the mortal king Gralon Meur? Did you once raise a city from the depths of the sea? Where is this city now?”

“This is what you ask? When you are dying?” The lady’s face had hardened, but not in anger. “My daughter loved, and it killed her. And as for the city—yes. Long ago. The world was different then.”

“Is Keris truly drowned?”

“Such questions. No. But it is lost. Now go outside. And do not be afraid. You will need your courage.” She paused. “And you should remember—the Lost Lands are a map of your own soul.”