Anne said, “How can we be sure that you will not also drive us to madness if we drink together? All our stories of the korriganed are of tricks and cruel deceptions.”
There were smiles all round that ring of watching faeries, smiles full of teeth. But the lady said, “We do not deceive so much as live in a land whose nature is too far removed from the nature of men. I think your tales also note that we are unable to lie.”
Anne exchanged glances with Henri and Louis. She asked, “Willtime pass in its accustomed way? We cannot feast for a hundred years. Or even one.”
“That, I think, is still in my power to promise,” said the lady.
So they sat down at a renewed banquet, though there was no dish or meat that any of the mortals recognized. At the end of it, Isabeau and Elesbed fell asleep, leaning on each other. Henri and Louis had cobbled together some common language with the korriganed and stood with their knights in the open center of the great hall, making fencing passes with their swords and sometimes laughing.
Anne looked the lady straight in the eye and said, “Where is the drowned city? Where, then, is Keris?”
The korrigan-queen looked profoundly unsurprised that Anne had asked. “In the Lost Lands, of course.”
“Butcanit be brought back to the mortal world, as other lost things have been?”
“Who is to say?” said the queen. “It is not like any other place. I do not know who first built it—some people long gone. There was only the city, standing empty, in the far reaches of the Lost Lands, where I found it in my wandering days. I pulled it into the living world, to be a gift for my daughter. But I am sure there was sorcery in its first making, and sorcerers numbered always among its citizens. Its queen was my child, Malgven, after she was married to Gralon Meur.” Anne heard pain in her voice. “But Malgven bore her daughter and died of it, and that daughter, Ahèz, grew to love pleasure and cruelty, and to make no distinction between them. The city had become a place of horrors when my nephew bathed in the blood of a sea-drake and put forth his strength and took the city out of the bay and back into the Lost Lands. There it remains, forever, just as it was on the night it disappeared.”
“And if I wish to draw it into the world?” said Anne. “If Moreau’s prophecy was a true one, then I might be able.”
“Very possibly,” said the lady. “But if you embark upon that questand you don’t succeed, you will die, or go mad, or return to your own world two hundred years hence. There are no half-measures.”
Anne considered her, the firelight in that pale hall adding a sparkle of youth to the lady’s old face. “Would you help me?”
“Why should I? Perhaps I think that Keris is better off lost to the world.”
Anne turned her cup a quarter-turn upon the stone table. “What happened to your granddaughter?”
The lady was silent a moment. “She is still there, so far as I know, still feasting, living in a night that will never end. We do not live by years as you know them in the far reaches of the Lost Lands.”
“And are all her people there too?”
The lady looked up, gave her a narrow look. “Presumably.”
“Then,” said Anne, “I wish to free them.”
“Why?”
For mercy? There was that, but it was not the only answer, and Anne, clever liar though she was, did not dare lie to this lady. She said, “Because it is my only chance now to chart my own destiny. And my father dreamed of ruling a land called Armorica, and perhaps sometimes I dream his dreams.”
The lady considered her thoughtfully. “An honest answer. Perfect in neither virtue nor vice. And perhaps the unicorn would help you.Notto give you mortal power, but because your gift can preserve the border between your own world and the Lost Lands.”
“If I am successful,” said Anne, “I will keep the border. And there will be peace between mortal men and the korriganed, if you wish it.”
“Yes, yes, it is all quite beautiful when there is harmony between us. But what will you do if my nephew comes to claim your sister’s hand? She announced aloud that she meant to offer herself to the king of the korriganed, you know. That is my nephew, if it is anyone. It is no small thing among the korriganed to announce that you will marry. He will have a claim on her, always, unless he renounces it.”
Anne stiffened in surprise. “A child’s foolishness.”
“Yes, now,” said the lady, unruffled. “But the words remain. And what will happen when the child becomes a woman?”
“Then that bridge will be crossed,” said Anne. “But not an instant before. I am not my father, to play games of power with the betrothals of children.”
“As you say,” said the lady. “As you say. Well, my nephew may speak for himself as well. And I will set you upon the path to Keris, if you mean to try to walk it. But it is a crooked, riddling path; you will very likely fail.”
“I will ask leave of my sister,” said Anne. “And if she consents, I will dare the path anyway. And if I go, I ask a further boon of you.”
“You are a saucy girl,” said the lady, amused. “Ask.”
“Take my family home for me, out of the Lost Lands.”
