The Unicorn Hunters: A Novel(90)

She scrambled to her feet.

The world was wholly silent, except for a wind like long, soft breathing. She’d torn her caul and her hair was coming loose, though she still wore the unicorn-hair fillet. Louis was there, searching her for injuries. She looked up at him. “Are you all right?”

“I think so,” he said, stepping back. “I do not know where you have brought us, though.”

She dragged off the ripped caul and let her hair fly, constrained only by the fillet. She turned in a circle, frowning. If she had followed Moreau, she could not see him now. “I know this place,” she said. “But not.”

They had come back to the convent at Paimpont. Or at least, the place where it had stood. The lake still lapped the shore, like quicksilver under a stormy sky. The rain pattered softly down, almost too light to feel on her face, except that she was getting steadily colder.

But where the convent had been stood a castle. A castle of fantastical shapes, fantastical dimensions, rising haphazardly against tree and sky and storm cloud. As though God’s idle hands could fling battlements and towers and buttresses down into a careless heap.

Before that castle stood a woman. Or a creature like a woman. Her face was full-lipped and sharp-chinned, eyes tawny as a beast’s.

She was watching them.

Anne felt Louis tense, staring back. There was still no sign of Isabeau. None of Moreau either. She’d leaped blindly, her heart full of terror, but she hadn’t followed her sister. Or had she? What waited for them in that strange heap of a castle?

“I think,” said Anne, licking her lips, “that—we must ask this lady.”

“That is no mortal lady; she was never of Eve’s getting,” said Louis. He didn’t stir a foot. “That is a korrigan.”

“Nevertheless,” said Anne.

They walked hesitantly across to where the korrigan waited. Louis had her walk a pace behind him, on the side of his shield-arm.

“Madame,” called Anne in cautious Breton, “whose dwelling is this?”

“Why,” said the lady in a high voice, “this is the castle of Never-Was. Here dwells the king of the Lost Lands.” Was there a very faint mockery in that strange voice? Her eyes were full of night, darker than the day around them; the shadows of her did not quite suit the light. Her yellow eyes flicked once and then lingered on the fillet in Anne’s hair. Something in her expression changed.

“Is this king a mortal man?” said Anne.

The yellow eyes dropped, found Anne’s face.

“Yes, that is His Majesty,” the lady said, and again there was that tone of irony. Her nails were sharp, and her eyeteeth were sharp, and her veiling hair was thick and coarse and beautiful. “He went to get a bride and has come home with a child.”

Anne said, cold to the heart, “The child is my sister and I must find her.”

“You may try,” said the lady—the korrigan—for so she must be. “But it is very hard to get anything you want in the castle of Never-Was. The king learned this, to his grief, and then forgot again.” She smiled secretly.

Anne said, “I will find her nonetheless.”

The lady laughed, coldly, and said, “As you wish.” She turned toward the door with a great ring of keys in one long, thin hand, the nails curling over her fingertips. Anne saw then that a strange moon, brilliant with night, hung in that daytime sky, and rain fell upon the castle, though none upon her. Her stomach knotted. The korrigan put her key in the postern. Turned it. Then she flung the door open. There was nothing inside. A void.

Anne stood still, feeling Louis breathe beside her. Every instinct cried out against that threshold and the black maw beyond. Anne said to the lady, “Is there any more you can tell us, Madame, of this castle and its king?”

The lady was staring again at the unicorn-thread. But she said, “Nothing. Go in or go away; I merely keep the door.”

“But he is there?”

“Oh, yes. He is there.”

Anne persisted. “And the child? A girl of my height, with dark eyes?”

The lips were like petals, dimpled by skewering teeth. “Ah, yes,” the korrigan said airily. “His fifth bride, I think. If you hurry, you might even attend the feast.”

Oh, that was fear. Fear like wings beating at her brain. She must think. She must be careful. “Will you guide us to this feast?”

“I cannot,” said the korrigan. “For no two people take the same way through the castle of Never-Was.”

Anne and Louis exchanged looks. “Yes,” Louis said, answering her expression. “Of course we must at least try. Here, hold on to me, we shall not be separated.”

They stepped over the threshold. But it was no good. In the next instant his hand was gone from hers; she heard him call to her, heard herself answer, then there was silence. She was, abruptly, quite alone.

She stood in the raw ruin of a castle courtyard, time-rotted, a tree splitting the stones of it and doors on all sides, hanging drunkenly on broken hinges. Leaves lay thick underfoot, heaped in drifts and turning through the cold, sere air. The doors seemed to mock her.

“Orléans!” she called, but there was no answer.

Be still, she told herself. This was a castle built by the korriganed, a place of the Lost Lands that they had made for themselves. Its nature, its hierarchies, its courtesies were all strange to her. But Isabeau was here. Anne must think, and not panic.