“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.
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 stoodthere, 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.
