Once she saw Louis looking down at her. She was cold. Her life was flowing steadily out of her, as though she’d opened some inward piece of herself doing whatever it was she’d done. Her lungs forgot to inhale; her heartbeat wandered. She said, “Don’t let anyone hurt Isabeau.” The horse’s hoofbeats jarred her bones.
“I won’t,” he said. “But you’ll be there.”
She shook her head, tried to say something else, but her eyes had slid shut again. There was only his voice talking to her, a slender thread, talking of nothing: hunts and jousts and wars, all the lordly, gilded excess. But he gave her mind something to cling to, though it wanted to fall away into a long dark. It had been gift and poison, she thought. That dragon’s blood.
When next she woke, they were in an unfamiliar courtyard that rang with shouts, horrified cries. She had the vague impression of movement, fire, a bed, but she could not bring herself to care. She missed Hawiz. Madeleine’s voice rose and fell, with a chorus of girls fluting answers, a single deep slow voice, startled, grim. She could not hear Isabeau or Henri or Louis. There was nothing for her to hold on to and she began to slip away. Flinched as a physician cut her arm, felt the blood run, but it didn’t help. Her heartbeat strayed even more, and every thud of it seemed to drive her further from herself.
“I don’t want to die,” she whispered, dreaming. And then, to her surprise, she realized that her eyes were open, and she was alone. Who left a dying duchess alone? She was almost indignant. There should be a crowd packing her bedside, everyone making noise, priests swinging incense in great arcs. That was how her father had died.
No, she was not alone. A lady sat by her bed.
It was the abbess. Not the true abbess of Paimpont, the timid creature. No, it was the false one, the small lady with the seamed face and disconcerting clear-water eyes. She sat quiet, half-masked by gray shadows, wearing the horned headdress and long robe of a great lady from the last century. Or the century before. Anne couldn’t recall. The heavy silk rippled with the lady’s steady breathing.
The lady said coolly, “You will die here if you cannot get out. The unicorn cannot make its way into the houses of men.”
“What?” whispered Anne.
“The unicorn, girl. Why do you think she came to you in Brocéliande? Gave you a piece of herself, so she could find you again? For your pretty mortal virtues—no. They guard the boundary, do the unicorns, and they do not favor virtue, they favor people who can help them. She saw you and knew you, and I think she might save you from this folly of dragon’s blood. If you will onlygo outside.”
Anne’s mind could not parse this. “Who are you?” She wanted to sit up, tried to roll onto an elbow, found her limbs leaden and thick.
The lady did not move except for a stray breeze that stirred the gauze that veiled her henin.What breeze,Anne wondered.Are we notbehind walls?The lady was very small indeed, with eyes large and deep-set and the crowds of her teeth very sharp when she smiled. The light on her face was soft faded daylight. She answered, “I? No one now. My daughter is dead, and my granddaughter lost to a great madness. My line is ended and I am old and feeble, dethroned and forgotten.” Her mouth did not lose its sly curve. “Truly it is delightful to be forgotten. I read all the books that men have lost and cultivate all the flowers of the world. It is a fine thing, to be old. But—” A new resonance came into her voice. “Sometimes, even now, I put my finger on the wheel. Go out to the unicorn, Anne of Brittany. And know that those who have the gift of sorcery are told to avoid the blood of dragons, for it gives them strength beyond their skill but then exacts a price.”
“You are not really here, are you, Madame?” Anne whispered. “And you are korrigan?”
“Yes.”
“Are you the queen?”
She gave no answer.
Anne tried to sit up. “Did your daughter marry the mortal king Gralon Meur? Did you once raise a city from the depths of the sea? Where is this city now?”
“This is what you ask? When you are dying?” The lady’s face had hardened, but not in anger. “My daughter loved, and it killed her. And as for the city—yes. Long ago. The world was different then.”
“Is Keris truly drowned?”
“Suchquestions. No. But it is lost. Nowgo outside.And do not be afraid. You will need your courage.” She paused. “And you should remember—the Lost Lands are a map of your own soul.”
Before Anne could speak again, the korrigan-queen got up, graceful as a deer despite her lined face. Then she stepped back, and back into the light of a different day, and was gone.
Then Anne blinked and her bedsidewascrowded—Henri and Louis and Isabeau and a confessor, and the incense. The physician with his bloody fleam in his hand. She suspected Elesbed was lurkingin the shadows. The sieur de Châteaubriant—Madeleine’s father—was there with the rest, wearing the slightly panicked expression of a man whose sovereign is about to die in his hall. A chattering knot of girls were surely Madeleine’s five sisters, all of them agog at that night’s happenings.
Anne’s world wavered and split, seemed to catch into silver flames over and over. It felt like each breath must be the last. She wondered if her dream had spoken truth. About the dragon’s blood, the poison of it. The unicorn. “I have to go outside,” she said.
“You are not well, Highness,” said the priest. “You must confess your sins and put yourself well with God.”
“No,” said Anne, raising herself on one elbow. It took all her strength, and it hurt. “Well, yes—but first I must go outside.”
She tried to struggle upright but the pain in her head was going to split her in half, and she fell back, gasping. “Orléans,” she said. “Louis.”
Louis knew she was dying. He’d held men in battle, felt the life flow out of them, and knew the life was running out of her too. But then she caught at his sleeve—his—not her brother’s, not anyone else’s in that room. Her eyes were open, dark on his face. “Please,” she said. “Take me outside.”
Isabeau had crawled onto the bed and was holding tight to her sister, but she wasn’t crying. Her face was set. She looked far older than her age. “Take her outside, then!” she cried when no one moved. She rolled to her feet, fierce as a terrier. “That is what the duchess wants. Take her outside!”
Louis could see Châteaubriant’s lady already turning to give the orders—perhaps a litter—something comfortable, to do the duchess honor. But he met Anne’s eyes and knew a small flame of hope. Her eyes did not wander, in the way of the dying. They clung to his face, determined. A litter would take time. “Now,” she said. “Orléans—please—now.”
For the third time in that endless day, Louis reached down, and—ignoring the volleying cries of remonstrance and anxiety—picked up the duchess of Brittany. He said, “I begin to feel like your Jonquil, packing you about.”
