Once Upon an Autumn Eve Page 8

  “That was splendid, my love,” she said. “Humorous while at the same time speaking of things unregretted until it is too late.”

  Smiling, Luc nodded, and then sobered and said, “And yet when more time is given, undone they continue to be.”

  “Saisez le jour, eh?” said Liaze.

  “Oui,” replied Luc. “Seize the day, and leave nothing to regret, nothing undone.”

  Liaze leaned closer to him and whispered, “Then why did you resist me so long?” She laughed a silvery laugh, and drew him onto the dance floor, and they joined another reel, and romped through the line of arched hands.

  “Oh, my, what a wonderful evening,” declared Liaze, falling backwards onto her bed.

  “Indeed,” said Luc. “That I remembered the dances amazes me.”

  “Did I not say it was like riding a horse: once learned, ever remembered?”

  “You did, chérie,” said Luc, pouring two glasses of dark wine. “Even so, I was a bit anxious. I have never been with so many people, and all of them having fun.”

  “The poem, Luc, the one you recited, whence?” asked Liaze, sitting up.

  “It came to me all at once on a foggy morn,” said Luc as he handed a glass to Liaze. “I believe it is my own creation, though mayhap it is only remembered from something I once read.”

  “Well, it was quite splendid,” said Liaze, “and quite splendidly told.”

  She raised her glass in a salute, but before sipping she said, “Here’s to many more nights such as this, the happiest of my life.”

  Luc raised his glass in response. “And in my life, too,” he said, and they sipped the wine and smiled at one another, and both began shedding clothes. Nude, Liaze threw back the covers and leapt upon the bed, Luc an instant after.

  They made precious and gentle love, and lay together awhile in murmured converse. But at last Luc stepped ’round the room and capped the lanterns and blew out the candles and crawled into bed. They kissed one another sweetly, and quickly fell into slumber.

  12

  Shadow

  It was well after the mark of midnight when Liaze awakened trembling, not from the cold but from a feeling of dread. She looked at Luc lying asleep, but the darkness obscured his face, and so she slipped from the bed and went to a nearby window and drew aside the drapes. She lowered the sash and opened the shutters, and once again she shivered in the chill autumn air. This night was the dark of the moon, and only starlight shone in.

  What did awaken me, and why this sense of anxiety, as if something quite ghastly is creeping upon us?

  Liaze looked out upon the lawn, and she saw a small dark form scuttling across the sward and pointing up at her open window. Yet that wasn’t what affrighted her so; instead it was a huge dark shadow following, the shadow slithering back and forth, like a giant serpent, or perhaps more as if it were a questing hound, seeking, seeking, flowing upon the grass like some dreadful—

  Of a sudden Liaze saw what it resembled: A shadow of a great hand, creeping this way, with clawed fingers and—

  Liaze spun and cried out, “Luc! Luc, waken!” And even as Luc started up from the bed, Liaze shouted to the unseen ward below, “A foe comes!”

  Luc bolted up and into his chamber, and by the starlight shining in through his open-shuttered, open-draped windows, he snatched his sword from its scabbard lying upon a bedside table. And he grabbed his silver horn and chain shirt and silks and leathers and boots from their rack-stand.

  Back into Liaze’s chamber he ran and to the window, and he said to Liaze, “Step away, they might fly arrows.”

  He sounded his horn, and it was answered from below by the houseguard.

  Luc looked out and down. “What—?”

  He flung on his silks and then his leathers, saying, “I know not what that black thing is, but you need to stay back and safe.”

  As he slipped into his chain shirt, ignoring the warning Liaze stepped again to the window. “Oh, Luc, it’s creeping up the side of the house.” She hauled up the sash and slammed the window shut.

  “My bow, I need to get my bow.” Liaze ran through an archway to an adjoining room.

  A darkness blotted out the starlight, and the house creaked and groaned, as if its timbers were shifting, as if someone or something were trying to crush it.

  Luc stomped his last boot onto his foot, and grabbed up his sword and stepped to the window.

  Just as Liaze came running back in, her strung bow in hand and a quiver at her side, Luc lowered—

  “Luc, don’t!”

  —the sash.

  Her cry came too late, for the huge shadow rushed in and snatched Luc up and jerked him out the window, his sword spinning down toward the ground to land on the flagstones with a clang!

  Even as she ran toward the gape, Liaze nocked an arrow to bowstring.

  The shaft was already half drawn as Liaze reached the window. She stared into the night, and saw something small and dark shoot up from the distant trees, dragging the great shadow after, with Luc caught in its grasp. Up and across the sky they flew, and Liaze drew to the full and took aim at the blot resembling an arm and loosed her missile, the arrow to sail through the umbrous wrist and beyond to no effect whatsoever. And there came through the moonless dark a distant laughter of sinister glee as the shadow and Luc and something flying ahead of them disappeared into the night.

  13

  Desolation

  Liaze collapsed to the floor, sobbing. She took up the silver horn and pressed it to her cheek. She did not note the ache in her left breast nor in her left forearm, the bowstring having struck both.

  “Princess! Princess!” With a lantern in hand, Zoé came running in. “I heard the trump. What—?” Zoé dropped to her knees beside Liaze.

  Liaze looked at the handmaiden through tear-laden eyes. “He’s gone, Zoé, snatched away from me by a dreadful dark thing.”

  “Gone? Luc? Oh, Princess, I—”

  The door slammed open. Zacharie and men of the houseguard came crashing in, weapons in hand. “Princess, are you—”

  As men spread out and searched the chambers, Zoé leapt to her feet and ran to the bed to grab up a blanket.

  “—hurt?” asked the steward, dropping down on one knee at Liaze’s side and looking everywhere but directly at her naked form.

  “He’s gone, Zacharie,” said Liaze, raising her face to him, indescribable pain in her eyes. “The shadow took him.”

  Zoé rushed back and enwrapped the princess in the cover.

  “But you are safe? Nothing herein?” asked Zacharie, gesturing about.

  “If there were,” snapped Zoé, “don’t you think she would be fighting them? And as far as being hurt, it is her heart and soul in pain, not her body.” Exasperated, Zoé added, “Men!” She turned to Liaze and knelt down and embraced her and held her close.

  Members of the houseguard came from the adjoining chambers. “Nothing, Zacharie,” said one of them. “No Goblins anywhere.”

  Zacharie rose to his feet. “Two stand ward at the princess’s door. The rest of you, help with the search of the manor.”

  Gaining control of her emotions, Liaze said, “I’m all right, Zoé,” and the handmaiden released her embrace. Liaze then looked up at Zacharie. “Goblins?”

  “Oui, Princess,” said the steward, vaguely gesturing toward the open window. “Louis spitted with a crossbow bolt the only Goblin we saw as it climbed the wall toward your rooms.”

  Liaze set the silver horn aside and wiped an eye with her fist and said, “Why would a lone Goblin climb the wall?”

  Zacharie shrugged.

  Liaze frowned and then took in a breath. “Did it have a cudgel or other weapon?”

  “Oui, Princess, a cudgel.”

  “It must have been sent to break the pane and let the shadow in, but Luc—” Liaze’s voice choked, and she took a shuddering breath. “Luc opened the window himself, and—”

  “Princess,” called Rémy as he came striding in, an unshe
athed falchion in his grip. “It was a witch.”

  “What?” asked Zacharie. “Did you say ‘witch’?”

  “Oui, Zacharie. Anton saw her silhouette against the stars as she flew up from the woods.”

  “That’s what that was,” said Liaze, more to herself than the others. She got to her feet and said, “A witch . . . and she dragged the shadow and Luc after, as she flew away.”

  “Four of you and four of them,” said Zacharie, sighing. “Did I not say?”

  “Rhensibé, Hradian, Iniquí, and Nefasí,” agreed Rémy, nodding. “Since Rhensibé is dead, perhaps it is one of the three who are left.”

  “But why take Luc?” asked Liaze. “Why not me instead?”

  Zacharie and Rémy looked at one another, and neither had an answer, but Zoé said, “Through Lady Michelle, Rhensibé struck at Borel.”

  “That’s right,” said Zacharie. “It was indirect revenge. Perhaps the same is at work here. Whichever witch it is, mayhap she simply wanted to reave true love from you.”

  Liaze stooped and took up her bow, her blanket gaping wide. “Which way did she fly, Rémy? I lost sight of her and the shadow and Luc in the darkness.”

  “So, too, did Anton,” said Rémy, looking away.

  Liaze sighed and shook her head. But then she looked at Zacharie. “Did we take any casualties?”

  “Oui,” said Zacharie. “Two members of the houseguard—Adrien and Paul—were crushed, as if by a giant hand.”

  Liaze’s face fell. “The witch’s dark clutch, the shadow,” she said, now stepping toward the window. Rémy tried to get between her and the opening, but she waved him away. Liaze looked out upon the starlit lawn, the faint light now augmented by the lanterns of searching men. “It tried to rupture the manor with its terrible grip.”

  “I heard the timbers groan,” said Zoé, her eyes flying wide.

  “I will have the carpenters and masons and roofers inspect every inch,” said Zacharie.

  “My lady,” said Rémy. “We can take part of the warband and go searching for Sieur Luc.”

  “Which way would you ride?” asked Liaze.

  “I . . . I don’t know,” said Rémy.

  “Precisely,” said Liaze, tears welling unseen, for she stood at the window looking out.

  “A seer might know,” suggested Zoé. “We could ask Malgan. He lives in the Autumnwood.”

  An image of the seer sprang to Liaze’s mind: a reed-thin, sallow-faced man with lank, straw-colored hair, his hands tucked across and within the sleeves of his buttoned red satin gown.

  Rémy snorted. “This Malgan: he’s the one who continually whispers to himself and looks about and flinches as if seeing invisible things. Princess, I think him perhaps untrustworthy, mad as he is.”

  “I would not disagree with you, Rémy,” said Liaze. “Alain calls him a charlatan, and Camille says Lord Kelmot—the Lynx Rider—calls him a mountebank.”

  “But he’s all we have,” said Zoé.

  “I would rather travel to the Summerwood and ask the Lady of the Mere, or on beyond to the Lady of the Bower,” said Liaze.

  Zoé nodded and said, “They helped Camille.”

  “Ere we make any rash decisions,” said Zacharie, “let us see what the daylight brings. There might be something we find that points us the right way.”

  Liaze took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “You are right, Zacharie. Let us wait until daylight.”

  Zacharie bowed, as did Rémy, and they withdrew. Zoé lingered and asked, “Would you like me to stay with you, Princess?”

  “Non, Zoé. I’d rather be alone.”

  “Then I’ll just close this,” said Zoé. She stepped to the window and latched the shutters, then drew up the sash and locked the frame into place. She pulled the drapes to, then curtseyed and said good-night and slipped from the room.

  When she was gone, Liaze threw herself onto the bed and released her pent-up grief.

  14

  Riddles

  Weeping off and on, Liaze did not sleep the remainder of that night, and just ere first light she arose and donned her leathers, wincing a bit from the darkening bruise on her breast. She strapped on a long-knife. She took up her bow and quiver of arrows and started for the door, but turned and stepped back and retrieved Luc’s silver horn. Then she went into the hallway beyond.

  “My lady,” said Didier, one of the wards at the door. Patrice, the other guard, bobbed his head. “Zacharie says we are to accompany you, wherever you go.”

  “Non,” said the princess. “I need to be alone to think.”

  “We can stand off a good distance,” said Patrice.

  Liaze sighed. “Very well, but at a good distance: I want no distractions.”

  “How far, my lady?” said Didier.

  “A hundred paces or more.”

  “A hundred paces? But, my lady—”

  Liaze lifted the silver horn. “At need I will call.”

  The warders looked at one another, and reluctantly agreed, and Patrice said, “As you wish, Princess.”

  Down the stairs they went, and the manor was silent, and those whose duties began this early were creeping about, despair on their faces, as if they were in mourning. And as the princess went by, some opened their mouths as if to speak, but they knew not what to say, while others simply curtseyed and lowered their gazes and hurried away on their errands.

  Out from the manor Liaze went with her two guards, and she strode across the lawn toward the willow grove, the early light of dawn just barely in the skies.

  As they reached the golden leaves and drooping branches, Liaze said, “Wait here.”

  Didier raised his hands in protest. “But my lady, we will not be able to see—”

  “I will be within a hundred paces, or thereabout, and I have the horn,” said Liaze, cutting off his objection. “I need to be alone, and the pool with its welling water is soothing unto me.”

  Again the guards looked at one another, and Patrice said, “As you will, Princess.”

  “But please, my lady,” said Didier, “keep the horn at hand, always within reach.”

  “I will,” said Liaze, then she turned on her heel and walked in among the golden leaves, soon to be lost to sight.

  With willow branches swaying behind her, Liaze came to the glade, and in the light of dawn she saw a crone at the water’s edge, weeping.

  A witch?

  Liaze raised the horn, preparing to blow, but then she hesitated.

  Wait! It is said witches are unable to weep ought but falsely, shedding no tears whatsoever.

  She scanned the crone’s face, and real tears flowed down.

  Loosening the keeper on her long-knife and nocking an arrow to string, Liaze stepped toward the side of the pool across from the crone.

  As she took station on the flat rock opposite, the hag looked up and uttered a wail. “My shoe, my shoe,” she cried, and pointed at the wooden sabot floating in the welling water. “Will you fetch my shoe?” And she wailed and buried her face in her hands.

  Liaze looked over her shoulder and listened for racing footsteps.

  The guards. They’ll come running at the crone’s keening.

  But they did not.

  The ugly, withered old woman looked up and again wailed. “My shoe, my shoe; please, oh please, fetch it.”

  Liaze frowned. A hag who has lost her shoe: where have I heard that be—?—Borel!

  Her heart pounding with hope, Liaze slipped the arrow back into the quiver and stepped ’round to the rill flowing outward and waited. Soon the shoe came drifting toward the outlet and into the stream. She stooped and took up the sabot, its straps tattered, and part of the wooden sole missing. With her long-knife yet unfettered—just in case—she stepped across the rill and walked about the remainder of the pool to the crone and held out the wooden shoe.

  “Why, thank you my dear,” said the hag, smiling a single-toothed grin. “Would you slip it on my foot? I am old, and bending to do it myself cau
ses a pain in my weary bones.”

  Liaze set aside her bow and knelt and slid the shoe onto the crone’s knobby, dirty, and hammertoed foot.

  And in the pale dawn light shining silver above and down into the glade, the hag transformed into a slender and beautiful woman, her eyes argent as was her hair. And from somewhere nearby there came the sound of an unseen loom.

  “Lady Skuld,” cried Liaze, and she threw herself into the woman’s arms and wept as if her heart would break.

  “There, there,” said Skuld, holding Liaze close, and rubbing her back, and rocking her ever so gently.

  “Luc, he’s gone, snatched away by a witch,” sobbed Liaze.

  “I know. I know,” said Skuld. “And on the happiest night of your life, until she and her shadow came.”

  Snuffling, Liaze drew back and looked with amber eyes into those of silver. “You know?”

  “Indeed, child, I know.”

  Liaze got control of her breathing and wiped her nose on a sleeve of her leathers. “Of course you know, Lady Wyrd. You are the weaver of the future. Oh, Lady Skuld, I have always believed that I was strong, but here I am”—Liaze wiped her cheeks with both hands—“weeping like a lost child.”

  Skuld nodded and said, “It is good for one to know there are times one can lose all strength. It signifies one is only Human . . . or Elf . . . or of another race. Yet, heed, the force of your will must surely return if you do not give in to despair.”

  Liaze disengaged and said, “Lady Skuld, I throw myself upon your mercy.”

  “You threw yourself upon Fate, as well,” said Skuld, smoothing out her dress.

  A wan smile flickered at the corners of Liaze’s mouth but then vanished. And she said, “Oh, Lady Wyrd, will you help me?”

  “Perhaps, for I am bound by the Law: it requires a favor from you—which you have done. Then there comes a riddle from me, a riddle to be answered by you. If you accomplish that, then, lastly, I am permitted to give you a bit of guidance, perhaps obscure to you, but quite clear to me. It is the Way of the Three Sisters.”

  “I know the Law,” said Liaze. “You helped Camille and then Borel, and all I ask is that you help me.”