Felix nodded. Then he shook his head. “I don’t see how I can help. Lionheart has your husband trapped up in that tower where no one can get at either of them. How long is he planning to keep him up there?”
“That’s just it,” said the baroness. “We don’t know. We don’t know when Prince Foxbrush will return, and I don’t think anyone can be persuaded not to start killing anyone else until the Eldest’s chosen heir is present and no one can argue his right to the crown. So they need to stay up there indefinitely. I provided everything they could want . . . rope to tie up my husband, a chamber pot for . . . well, you know . . . a good sturdy bolt on the door, firewood in the grate, since the nights are turning chilly. I even put a set of playing cards on the bedside bureau in case they grew bored.”
“They’re ready for a long siege, then, aren’t they?” Felix said.
But the baroness’s eyes brimmed with tears yet again. “I just knew I’d forgotten something. I was thinking it even as the coronation began, even as I marched down the Great Hall. I couldn’t think what it was, though, until this evening, when I asked my goodwoman to bring me a snack.” She bit her lip and squeezed Felix’s hand ruefully.
“Dragon’s teeth,” Felix whispered. “You forgot to give them any food, didn’t you?”
The baroness nodded and sniffed loudly, pressing a hand to her quivering chin. But she composed herself with an effort and smiled again. “Now you see, my dear boy, that is where you come in!”
4
THE HAVEN WAS LARGE, with many lovely, comfortable chambers meant for hospitable refuge in the treacherous Wood. Into one of these—both a sylvan glade of green and a bedchamber with a large, sumptuous bed, depending on how one looked at it—Eanrin half carried the stranger, Imraldera hastening behind.
“Careful. Careful!” she pleaded.
Eanrin dumped the stranger on the bed, where he sank deeply into the blankets and cushions, his blood spilling over all. Eanrin stepped back quickly as Imraldera pushed past to bend over the wounded man. Her brow was stern as she inspected the wound in his leg and the scratches beneath his animal-hide shirt. Eanrin thought he glimpsed a bright gleam from the pouch at the stranger’s side, but his attention was diverted when the young man, his face gray and his eyes wide, suddenly clutched Imraldera’s hand.
“Starflower! You are alive!”
“Yes, yes, but you won’t be for long if I don’t see to this,” she said sharply. She shook her hand free, but Eanrin saw that it trembled as she returned to her examination of the wounds.
“Your voice,” said the stranger. “I always wondered . . . it is so . . .”
“Hush!” said Imraldera. She turned to Eanrin and barked, “Make yourself useful. Fetch me water and bandages.”
The cat-man did not think to argue but dashed from the room with all speed, casting only one last glance over his shoulder. He glimpsed her kneeling down beside the bed, her hands pressed into the gaping leg wound, and heard her sing in her low, throaty voice:
“Beyond the Final Water falling,
The Songs of Spheres recalling.
Won’t you return to me?”
This was all he observed. But he muttered under his breath as he rushed to do her bidding.
As the song flowed over him, Sun Eagle relaxed, closed his eyes, and breathed deeply. He then gazed at the young woman beside him, wondering if he beheld a dream brought on by the pain. He had never before heard her sing; could he truly dream that?
“I thought you were dead,” he said when the song ended. She remained kneeling, her hands pressed against his leg to stop the bleeding, though blood oozed between her fingers. He reached out and touched her face, but she drew back quickly and stood, her head bowed, her hands still holding the wound. “I never thought I’d see you again. Not after the cord broke.”
“Nor I you,” she replied, her voice near a whisper. “I believed you lost forever.”
“I was,” he replied. Then he laughed a mirthless sort of laugh. “I have slain a Faerie beast. More than one!”
“Hush, please,” she begged.
“That was the rite, was it not? A boy enters the Gray Wood, kills a beast, and returns a man? A man fit to take his bride.”
She shook her head, refusing to look at him, but remained where she stood. “Where is that cat?” she growled.
Sun Eagle turned his face away, grimacing at the pain. Then both of them startled and stopped breathing as a horrible roar erupted in the Wood beyond the walls of the Haven. Lioness had followed the trail of blood this far and found she could go no farther, but there was no sign of her prey. Furious, she roared again and again.
Joining that sound came the high, childish, merciless voice of Nidawi.