The Unicorn Hunters: A Novel(91)

Was it within her power to simply step through the shadows to where Isabeau was?

She tried to find it, the step from here to there. But a spike of agony flared, a vision of thorns hemmed her in.

Consider the doors. One was of wood and had been painted green, but the tint was peeling away. Another was carved elaborately with lilacs and lilies, twined in wild profusion. Another was carved in a frieze of unicorns with jeweled eyes being set upon by dogs, their heads flung back in terror. She shuddered.

Another was an austere thing of smoke-dark oak, with iron nails. And one looked as though it had been made from the bones of a beast, but it was gilded top to bottom.

Which door? She turned in a circle, thought: Perhaps it does not matter.

She suspected that it did. But she had no way of knowing. She wrenched the nearest sagging door back in a howl of hinges. It was the one with the unicorns. She passed through it and was shocked to find herself standing, not in the ruined hall she half-expected, but in a tumult of light and color.

She was in a great hall. At a banquet. A victory banquet, and to her shock everyone she knew was there seated. Orléans and Dunois, Comminges, Madeleine. Isabeau. And as soon as she stumbled into the room, they all roared in acclamation, and toasted her and called her blessed.

She stood there bewildered. Saw that daylight streamed through high windows, recognized that she was in the Guardhouse in Rennes. They were all congratulating her. The French were defeated. She was sovereign duchess, they said. Isabeau smiled at her.

“Isabeau?” Anne said.

“Do you great honor, sister, on this day of victory,” returned the child, and abruptly Anne stopped hurrying toward her. The small girl’s eyes were deeply yellow.

She turned. All their eyes were yellow, all their smiles showed the points of sharp teeth.

Never-Was, thought Anne. This never was.

She backed up a step, another, and fled across the room to a door in the far wall. She wrenched the door open and stumbled through, gasping. Louis was in the next room, and she stopped short upon seeing him.

Her first feeling was relief. “Orléans, I—” She couldn’t finish. He’d crossed the floor in three great strides, had taken her into his arms and put his mouth on hers. Then he pulled back and said, “My wife. My love.”

She stared. “But I am not.” There was a great bed behind him, his eyes were soft with love. But his fingers were spindly as spider legs. She gasped and pulled away. Louis—no, not Louis. A korrigan stood there, smiling at her quizzically, and his eyes were lambent, yellow as a candle-flame; she could feel the draw of him, like quicksand, knew how easy it would be to imagine that he’d the eyes of a man. The eyes of a lover.

With shaken courtesy, she said, “Monsieur, where is the man whose face you are wearing?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said the korrigan, after a pause. He might have been surprised. “For there are no truths here; no real loves, no real victories, no real kings. But you may choose a dream, one that never was, and live that forever. For do not men number among their losses the things they never had? Will you choose me? I will make you happy.” He reached for her again. His fingers were as long as a good dagger.

She stumbled back. “No! No, thank you.”

She fled again and the castle pulled her on, bright dream after bright dream, like sweets strewn across her path. She knew with a cold, creeping terror that as she wearied, her ability to parse the truth from the fantasy would grow less and less. Until in the end she’d choose one, because she could fight no more. This was a trap, laid by the korriganed, for mortals who dared their realm.

Had Moreau run through these halls? Had he chosen a dream to live in? What dream was it? She suspected that he might have wanted Keris, but in the end all he had was poisoned hope and murder.

The next chamber contained her own mother, who had died when Anne was small. She told Anne that she loved her and would never leave her.

Anne turned her back on this apparition too, but she was breathing hard, her hip beginning to spasm.

Think.

Louis was here somewhere. So was Moreau. Perhaps each walked as she did, in a gallery of his own dreams. She must leave her own behind and find theirs.

Anne left the peaceful room with her mother’s voice calling plaintively that her daughter’s heart had grown cold. Carefully, Anne began to retrace her steps.

She paused in the grand hall in which they had crowned her empress and stood swaying, thinking, Oh, yes, this is my day and my hour. Then she shook the thought off, frightened, and kept walking, limping badly.

Finally she found her way back, trembling, to the simple room, round as though in a tower, where Louis again waited with sharp teeth and a great bed behind him and yellow eyes that promised joy.

He smiled. “Have you chosen me, lady?”

“In a manner of speaking,” said Anne.

In the courtyard of doors, there had been a barrier of thorns in her mind when she sought to travel by shadows. But this time she did not seek her sister. Instead, she thought, This would be one of Louis’s rooms too. Or near enough.

How near?

She looked for his shadow on the floor.

It was there, unmistakable.

She reached for it, saw the korrigan’s eyes widen, saw his long-nailed hand go out. But it was too late; she caught the hand attached to that shadow and pulled herself into the never-was of Louis of Orléans.