He froze, incredulous. “You are dead,” he told her. But there was a slow-dawning fear in his face. He was bent to protect his injured side. His dead wives were ringing him round save the first one, the one with the sword. She offered the sword to Anne, hilt-first. Moreau tried to get hold of it, but the lady slashed once and cut off his reaching hand.
Moreau fell to his knees, clutching the stump.
The lady offered Anne the sword again. It was lighter than it looked. Her lips moved. No sound came out. But Anne understood.Take the sword for better ends.
Anne grasped the sword with both hands. Whispered, “What will you do?”
“We can touch him now,” croaked the drowned lady in a hideous voice. “For that we thank you. This place was always his doom, and he is ours.”
Moreau tried to stand, to run, but the burning lady tripped him and he fell heavily.
“Isabeau,” Anne whispered.
As Isabeau’s arms came round her, holding tight, Anne stepped out of the dreadful light of that chapel, carrying the sword with her, the triumphant cat running at her feet.
The last thing she heard was Julien Moreau’s wail, and the last thing she saw were his four dead wives, clustered close as lovers around his prone body.
Chapter
32
The hall Anne returned towas not the one she had left, and at first she thought she’d made a terrible mistake. These walls were not red, but green as leaves, and the firelight made jewelry of the inlay on the floor.
Yet Louis and Henri stood there panting and bloodied and holding their stolen swords, surrounded by silent korriganed. There was more blood on the floor.
As Anne and Isabeau stepped out of the shadows behind them, Elesbed crawled out from beneath a table where she had taken refuge. “Butter!” she cried.
Anne was still holding the sword. To her surprise, the korriganed drew back, wordless, and left the way clear to Louis and Henri. Watching them warily, she stepped forward. Henri’s mouth pursed in a whistle as she proffered the sword to Louis, who took it up with a reverent hand. It didn’t weigh very much, and the blade was a deep blue, with folds in the steel like the grain in wood, a plain crosspiece, leather grip, the pommel sculped in the shape of a sea-drake’s head.
A little of the tension bled from the room. Henri said, “I beg you will make this child Elesbed a countess at least, for she has the courage of ten knights, and a very clever cat.”
Anne was smiling. “Brother, I am glad to see you.”
Elesbed was already with Isabeau, saying, “And then the abbess asked what I should like and I said I wanted Butter and she came to help me—made us go through a door all made of metal. I could hardly see but I came out into a beautiful room and saw the baron in his armor. He had gone on a noble quest, but only in his mind, and all the people were korriganed. He didn’t see me until Butter jumped on him and I kicked him. I said we had to save you and he followed me. The big doors don’t work, they just lead to pretty places that aren’t real, but there are little doors all hidden too. My cat knew just where to go because she’s thecleverest cat—do you think she’s a faerie-cat?”
The watchful crowd of korriganed parted suddenly, interrupting this interesting monologue, to reveal a small old lady, dressed in beautiful, archaic clothes. “And that is the abbess,” Elesbed whispered triumphantly to Isabeau.
Anne made a reverence, cautiously. Isabeau elbowed Elesbed and they did the same. Louis and Henri bowed. Louis had no means to sheathe the blue sword, but he lowered its naked point.
“Majesty,” Anne said, and felt Louis stiffen beside her.
“Oh, no,” said the lady. “We have different titles than mortals, and those years are gone from me now anyway; they belong to the Lost Lands. I only took a hand because there seemed no other recourse to rid us of yon madman. He was growing more powerful with every change of the moon, with every murdered bride. The true king has not been seen since—oh, I don’t know. Since the sea-drakes disappeared.”
“King?” said Anne. “So thereisa king of the korriganed after all? Not just Moreau the pretender?”
“Oh, yes, there is a true king,” said the lady. “My nephew, I suppose you’d say, but his mother was a mari-morgan, a creature of the sea. After Keris was lost, he went looking for the sea-drakes and has not returned. In the meantime, here was that fool calling himself king, growing ever stronger, going mad, learning the secrets of this castle all the while, searching for a unicorn to guide him. And then heburst into the mortal lands like the plague. If he’d kept more of his sanity, you and we would have been in real danger.”
Anne was watching this lady warily. “The danger felt real enough.” Her arm was still about Isabeau’s shoulders.
“And yet there you are, alive,” said the lady. “And that is a famous sword in your lover’s hand. Aren’t you pleased?”
Anne said nothing, though she felt her face color. She knew perfectly well that Henri was giving Louis a censorious look behind her back. She said, “What is the castle of Never-Was?”
“The royal seat,” said the lady airily. Anne blinked, and for an instant, in a different layer of light, she thought she saw the throne, made of stone and living trees. Then it was gone. The lady’s eyes on her were sharp and knowing. “Most mortals who come here never attain the throne room, but wander dreaming until they die. Some win past it. Some even drink in friendship with the korriganed. Will you dine with us, children?”
Anne said, “Did Julien Moreau find the throne room?”
“No,” said the lady. “Not the true one, though he thought he had. But his greatest desire was for power, and his sorcery was very great, and so he did not die. Above all things he wished to find lost Keris, but that he never could. When he asked the mere for a prophecy, the lady in the water said that only a woman he offered for in marriage would find the way. So he took women to wife and slew them when they could not do it, and each time his mind broke a little more, until all his paths in the Lost Lands led to the same room, where he had buried his dead.” The lady’s face was quite unmoved.
