“It is guarded,” Leta said.
“Ah.” The unicorn tossed its horn, and the movement itself was like song. “Very well. I will sing them to sleep, and then you must follow my light. I will show you a way from the castle and take you to the Haven of my Lord.”
Leta nodded. Anything the unicorn said seemed right. While moments before she had desperately considered death her final option, she saw now the possibility of life, of escape, and even—though this was a more desperate hope—of Gaheris’s rescue.
“Lead me, Ceaneus,” she said. The unicorn, its soft oval ears cupped forward, stepped around her, cloven hooves gently tapping on the floor, and moved to the door. It passed through as though the heavy wood were mist, and Leta felt bereft without its light.
She hastened to put her ear to the door. She heard nothing. Without the unicorn directly before her eyes, it was difficult to believe what she had seen. But she closed her eyes, drew a long breath. Then she took hold of the latch and pulled.
The goblins sat one on either side of the door. Their heads were down, their jaws slack, and one snored as it slept.
Feeling as though she passed the very guards of hell, Leta stepped between them and stood free of the library in the cold corridor. Even in the dark, she could see how the goblins had scored its walls and destroyed all furnishings and tapestries.
A breath of wind touched her face. Ahead, up the passage, she saw a light like a white candle hovering in the darkness.
“Ceaneus,” she whispered.
Though her knees were weak as violet stems, Leta hastened after the light, pursuing it down the passage, down the stairs, and down another passage. Everywhere, she smelled the stench of goblins and felt the weight of her enslaved mortal kindred as though she herself wore their chains. But she followed the light as fast as she could. Down another stairway, her feet making no sound on the stones. She saw no one either mortal or immortal, though sometimes she heard the heavy sounds of goblins.
Suddenly the light turned a corner. Pursuing, Leta rounded the bend in time to see a little gleam on a certain small door. Then, just as the unicorn had slipped through the library door, the light melted into the wood-and-iron fastenings of this one.
Leta put her hands to this latch and found it also unlocked. She pulled, and the hinges screamed in the cold, a sound like razors to her ears. She looked over her shoulder, expecting goblins to come running at any moment. She ducked inside and hadn’t the courage to shut the door for fear of what noise it might make.
She stood in the damp chamber of the castle well.
“The most prized possession of all within Gaheris,” Alistair had boasted to her that day long ago.
Leta looked at it now. It was like a mouth in the darkness, a mouth from which shone a light that illuminated that dank chamber with a ghostly glow. She stepped up to the opening and looked down and down.
Deep within, she saw the flicker of the star.
She’d come too far to second-guess her decision. Taking her courage in both hands, she found the bucket. It was big enough and strong enough to hold her, she thought, and the pulley was rigged in such a way that she might have the strength to lower herself into that black mouth.
“Lights Above!” she whispered. Then she sat on the lip of the well, her feet in the bucket, her hands on the chains, which bit into the flesh of her palms. Her fingers were so cold, she doubted she’d be able to hold on. But she swung out anyway, feeling the drop beneath her, the emptiness waiting to swallow her up.
The chains and her grip on them held.
Whispering prayers, she began to lower herself slowly, hand under hand. The metal bit into her shivering flesh. She dared not look for comfort down to where the star gleamed. She squeezed her eyes shut and focused on her work, and though the sides of the well were frozen with ice, her forehead dripped sweat.
Don’t worry, practical Leta said. If you fall, you’ll drown, and Corgar will never get the secret from you.
“Shut up and concentrate!” she growled aloud. And down she went, deeper and deeper.
Strangely enough, the farther she went, the less afraid she felt. Perhaps because she knew that the drop, however great, was no longer as great as it was when she’d started. Perhaps because the increasing brilliance of the starlight warmed her and melted the ice on the sides of the well so that it dripped with light plink, plinks to water below.
The bucket turned. The chain creaked. And Leta’s eyes flew wide.