Anne did not reply. In truth, her heart was caught with wonder. She had never been so mad for tales as Isabeau, but she had still heard many stories of Keris. And yet the reality of that palace gave every legend the lie.
Never-Was had been built by the korriganed with no mortal logic. The castle of the dukes of Brittany was made according to the rules of nature—practical, not wondrous. But the palace at Keris had been wrought with the gifts of both men and korriganed, and so it partook of the best powers of both. Soaring rooms led gracefully one to the next, and they housed glorious impossibilities. One room was columned with trees. Another was carpeted with flowers. A third was lit by a pure and sourceless dawn light.
The unicorn went through them all, though Anne could feel how tense she was, see by the daylit glow in her horn how near she was to fleeing altogether. The crowd ran and sobbed and sang in their wake. She had whipped them up with all her skill; she must control them now, if she could.
Then a door barred their way, a double door of great height, bound in gilded iron and studded with wrought bronze. It was unguarded. A smell of smoke and wine and food gone sour crept from beneath.
“Open it,” said Anne, trying not to let the knight see the tension that knotted her throat.
He threw open the two doors, and stepped aside.
Anne had thought the palace a thing of glory. But the other rooms were nothing compared to the great hall of Keris. The vaults of the ceiling were as irregular and as arresting as tree branches, and they glittered with pale lights. A beautiful chaos of stonework comprised the floor.
And yet it was sticky and stained, chipped in places, and a haze of unpleasant smoke veiled the pale lights. The bells outside still sounded, but muffled, as though the night might reassert itself, here in the heart of this ancient place.
A great crowd packed that room, dressed in sweat-stained robes of silk. They looked like flowers beneath the stone trees. When they sawthe unicorn, they all stirred as one. There was something wanton and pagan about the movement of all that fabric, the rhythm of their speech, already reasserting itself in hasty murmurs as they recovered from their surprise.
Anne’s eye was drawn half-instinctively to the object of the court’s furtive glances.
At a high table, on her feet, a young woman stared incredulously at her. She wore a fiery diamond circlet round her brow, jewels at her throat and ears, and furious eyes the color of molten gold.
Ahèz, this queen was called in legend. The lady of keys. Half-korrigan, half-mortal.
The legends spoke of carelessness, and voluptuous cruelty. They never said she was so young.
She looked Anne’s age, no more. Her silk robe was patterned like the foam of the sea where it lingers like lacework near the shore, and it cradled her young body, grazed her breasts, flattered her golden skin. Her plaited hair was studded with flowers, and her lifted hand had thin, sharp-nailed fingers.
It was like staring into a fair and wanton mirror. Perhaps for Ahèz it was the same, for she stood still, taken aback. People were spilling into the hall behind her, but they all stopped, as though frozen in the queen’s gaze.
“Get out!” screamed the lady, and Anne watched the shifting light, braced for sorcery. None came. The girl’s eyes were fixed on the unicorn. “Have you come at last?” she whispered to the unicorn.
Anne slid off the unicorn’s back and bowed. “Majesty.”
In that archaic Breton, the queen said coldly, “Who are you?”
Anne said, “I have met your royal father.”
A stir went through the room.
“My father is lost,” said the lady, colder yet. “You are presumptuous.” But her hands clenched. Her gaze strayed again from Anne to the unicorn.
“Yes, he is lost. But I found him, if only for a little time,” saidAnne. “He would tell you, his daughter, that no city should dwell in the dark forever.”
“It can if I want it to! I like it. There’s a feast every night, and a new person to love me.”
The folk in the room seemed barely to breathe.
The queen added, “My father abandoned me. He went to find Mother. He loved her best; he didn’t love me at all. He has no voice here. I shall kill anyone who speaks with his voice. I shall kill you.”
The hall filled with a stark noon light. Anne had only a breath to react, and only a quick smell of the sea to tell her what was coming. With a wrench of strength she didn’t know she had, she flung herself clumsily onto the unicorn just as the creature dodged sideways.
Then a sea-drake lay twisting on the floor, larger even than the one that had come to Nantes. It lunged, the unicorn caught the edge of its mouth with the tip of her horn, and it recoiled, open-mouthed.
Anne thought,No wonder the sea-drakes abandoned the realms of men, if they kept being dragged forth as the weapons of the mad.
The drake reared up and the unicorn reared in answer, shrilling, and Anne cried to her, “Help me! Can’t you see where it came from? The light on the water?”
The light flared and the sea-drake twisted into it. Anne saw its eye, flatly silver, the size of her two fists and knowing. She felt the cold blood from its mouth as it fell heavily on her cheek.
