The Unicorn Hunters: A Novel(76)

“I am also angry,” she said. “I will go to my wedding angry that all my roads led me there, to a loveless bed and a life lived far from home. But there is nothing to be done. I will try to be happy, whatever happens.”

He was silent. Then, with a very visible effort, he let her go and left her there.





Chapter


25

    It was days since Anne had slept properly without drifting half-awake. But that night she did sleep, wrapped in warm memory. And that night, despite all the house’s watchful care—guards and locks and unsleeping servants—Isabeau disappeared.

Anne woke with only a little dew-fall softness in the air to tell her that dawn was not far off, and knew that the great bed was empty.

She threw the curtains back and rolled to her feet. “Isabeau?” she said, straining her eyes in the dark.

In the antechamber the guard heard Anne call, and there was a swirl as tapers from the fire were borne in to light the great pillars of candles around the bed. Someone went to the half-dead fire and broke the coals with a jab of the poker. Light flared red, then gold. Elesbed sat up blinking on her pallet by the hearth.

Isabeau was not in the bedchamber. Nor was she in the solar. “Isabeau?” said Anne again. Elesbed was on her feet.

To the room at large, Anne said in blood-freezing tones, “Where is my sister? Did she go past you? Alone?”

The maids wrung their hands in bewilderment; the guards looked as though they wished to. “No, Madame. She has not come past at all.”

“Find her,” said Anne in a voice that shocked them all. She turned back into her chamber to dress as the house was roused suddenly to violent life. Terror choked all Anne’s senses; how could she have slept?

And even as she thought all those things, she knew that Julien Moreau had found his means to persuade her, just as he’d threatened.

Commotion spread through the house, a chaotic search beginning, but Anne stood rigid before the renewed fire, trying to think.

Her new diviner was an aleomancer, a diviner by dice, with the skill of finding near Rennes. He bustled in and accorded her a well-drilled courtesy, but she missed Calyx fiercely.

She almost said, I think you will endanger yourself trying to divine my sister’s whereabouts, but she did not. The aleomancer threw his dice with all proper urgency. The room was airless with massing candle-flames, all the tapers lit at once so he could read his dice.

The aleomancer finally whispered in hoarse bewilderment, “The dice say—that the lady is on a ship in the deeps of the sea. And riding the back of Leviathan.” The color was draining steadily from his face; sweat stood out and he choked, falling to his knees.

In a voice that did not soften, Anne said, “Take him away and minister to him.”

Her body felt bloodless, her heart shuddering as it beat against the frightened void in her breast. Where was Isabeau? Anne thought of Elesbed, caught in that black shadow, and how Butter had stepped out of it, shown Anne where to look with all a cat’s insouciance.

She remembered the strange seeing that had come to her with the sea-drake’s blood. It had nearly killed her. But what choice did she have but to look again?

She turned her face into the farthest reach of candle and firelight, where dark and light mingled. Tried to find the layers in the world. It had been easy with the dragon’s blood on her. Now it was not.

But it was possible. She was sure it was possible. She went and got her unicorn fillet and used it to tie back her loosened hair. Remembered how she and the unicorn had stepped so easily between the mortal lands and the Lost Lands on the day of the hunt in Brocéliande. I traveled by shadows that day.

Determinedly, Anne searched.

Slowly—too slowly—the world showed its depth to her: layers of daylight and darkness. Her head started to ache. Anne strained her eyes, strained her untrained mind, until the headache spiked and she felt the reality of the world dissolving. Shadows without corresponding lights crawled across her face, darkened her eyes, spread black across the floor.

There.

There was the same dark place. Anne struggled to see more, thought she caught just a glimpse of Isabeau’s plaited hair. She fought to make of the shadows a threshold she could reach across, the way she had caught Elesbed’s hands.

“Isabeau!” she called. But her sister did not turn.

Anne set her teeth and tried again.

Almost—yes. The darkness lapped at her feet. She was terrified. She heard Henri come into the room, heard him calling her name. She didn’t turn.

She stumbled forward and the shadows swallowed her.

And found herself in a great room, ill-lit and ringed with doors. She staggered in shock, but didn’t fall.

In the center of the room, Isabeau stood before Moreau. He had his hands on her shoulders. Isabeau was facing Anne when she came through, but before she could bolt toward her sister, Moreau’s grip tightened. Isabeau fought him, eyes wild with rage and panicked confusion. “Anne! I didn’t mean to! I don’t know what happened!”

“You will not touch her,” Anne said furiously. Her temples throbbed with headache, but it was not as bad as it had been the last time. There was no drake’s blood on her skin to drive her past her own limits, and the unicorn’s touch had strengthened her. She could move, she could think.

His eyes were bright. “Did you follow me? And all untrained? But this was foolish; you have not learned how. You will kill yourself or go mad or be hopelessly lost. And now you have put yourself in my power. That is all I wanted.” His voice coaxed. “This falls out well. Only stay with me and I will send the child home.”