“The shadows,” Anne whispered. “The shadows are wrong. Can you see? The sun is not coming from that direction. Those are shadows of men, but no one is casting them.” Her mare was sidling, throwing her head. Anne was turning, bewildered, in the saddle.
Louis had drawn his sword; her guard had done likewise. He nudged his horse in nearer, skin prickling. One of the spilled cups on the table was gently rolling. Anne was still staring into the trees. Almost Louis thought he saw bodiless shadows of men that stepped across the grass.
“Father,” she whispered. And then— “Can you see the light? It’s like—” She pressed her horse forward a step, her expression strange. Like a girl in a dream. “It’s like the last day we picnicked here. Look at the light. Could I go back? Could I—?”
Louis caught her bridle. “Highness, we must go!”
“We must!” De Rieux echoed urgently at her back. Louis didn’t know how to protect her at all. Neither from this, nor from France. When she would have pressed her mare forward again, he kept his grip on the rein and wrenched the mare about as the guards pressed close around them. He did not let the rein go until they were all out of the water-meadow.
She did not protest.
Nor did she smile at him again. She rode with abstracted face and dismounted in the courtyard; her attendants surrounded her and they all left him there without saying a word.
Chapter
17
Anne hardly saw her feeton the way back to her own chambers, hardly heard the voices of courtiers bracketing her in. What had Moreau said? Three signs?Water, fire, memory?
She had thought, just briefly, after the water in Nantes, that she could make an ally of this korrigan, if he appeared. The chronicles did say that men long ago traded with the fair-folk, and treated with them too.
She did not think that anymore. The fire in the night, the scene in the water-meadow, had been unmistakably malicious. That feast had been memory fouled and corrupted: an array of objects like inanimate ghosts, laid out beneath a different sky.
All of them—the water, the fire, the memory—seemed to exist under a different light. Could she see the unnatural light sooner and give warning? She found herself searching the stairs for incongruous shadows as she walked, began to give herself a headache.
Was the korrigan-king even now at court, invisible? Standing in a light she could not see?
Isabeau met her at the threshold of the garderobe, and the frantic pitch of her voice pulled Anne out of the maelstrom of her thoughts. Elesbed had not been seen at all that day. Isabeau cried, “Anne—she’slost! When the Lost Lands are near, some things appear and some things are lost forever. Maybe one of those things is Elesbed!” Isabeau’s smallhands clutched her wrists, her eyes begged Anne todo something.Henri was in the room, keeping close to Isabeau. His face was grim.
The words “lost forever” fell like cold snakes upon Anne’s heart, along with her memory of Hawiz’s faerie-tales:It is often children who are stolen by the korriganed.Isabeau shook her arm, desperate, eyes fixed trustingly on her face. Anne stepped into the garderobe, making her mind work. “Isabeau—perhaps first we search for her thoroughly? She may have gotten lost. She may have fallen asleep somewhere. We shall ask Calyx,” she added, to take the terror from her sister’s face.
Isabeau brightened. “Yes, we must ask him at once!”
Calyx came swiftly to his summons, and when he heard the trouble, he poured himself his cup and drank it off forthwith. Calyx would have little trouble finding Elesbed, if she was anywhere near Nantes.
Hawiz, watching from the other side of the room, wore a look of disquiet.
Calyx took his empty cup to the window embrasure and tipped it to the daylight. He peered, frowned. Peered again, growing steadily paler. He put his hand to his head. A cold sweat sprang up on his brow. Anne was alarmed to hear the reedy sound of his breathing. His cup clattered to the floor. All the maids-of-honor sprang up in fright.
“What is it?” Isabeau burst out, standing too.
“Calyx, what is wrong?” said Anne.
His voice quaked when he tried to speak. “Sunlight. Nightshade. A tower above the sea. In the sea itself and all around her is silver. I do not— This is no augury, Highness. This is some madness. This is a curse of the korriganed.” He put a shaking hand to his sweating face. His eyes rolled back. “They are here,” he whispered.
“Summon a physician!” cried Anne, just as Calyx collapsed to the floor. Anne turned in a circle, but she could see no unnatural lights, no ghosts, no detritus of lost things on the floor. No korrigan-king. She crossed the room in two strides and put her arms around Isabeau, met her brother’s wide eyes.
Calyx was carried away. Isabeau was white to the lips. “Elesbed,” Isabeau whispered, shaking. “She must have been stolen by thekorriganed. I have to go help her, I have to—” She ran for the door. Henri caught the back of her gown, ignoring her protests, and pulled her back. He said, “No, Belle. No solitary ventures this time. Not with danger near.”
Isabeau was panting. “At least—at least summon Julien Moreau.Please—we have to speak to him. He knows—he can help. I’m sure he can.”
Anne looked from her brother to her sister’s frantic, tear-stained face. Slowly, she said, “How do you know he can help, Isabeau? He has insisted always that he has no memory of his time in the Lost Lands. What can he do?”
Isabeau looked briefly ashamed. Anne was suddenly transfixed with alertness, still trying, half-instinctively, to find a flaw in the light around them. Nothing. She touched the fillet in her hair. What had put that look on Isabeau’s face? Hawiz said, sharply, “Isabeau, what have you done?”
Isabeau said in a rush, “I went to see him just after the Triumphal Entry. Elesbed came with me.” Now all the room was staring at her.
“The guard let you in?” said Henri. “I’ll skin them all, see if I don’t. They had strict orders.”
