Both animals had sunk to their knees on the stone road. A hideous spider, larger than a man, crouched above them. Snarling and cursing, Haggar did his best to clear the darkness he had made, conjuring up a wind to blow the mist away, break apart the clouds. But he knew that whatever he did, he would find the day had sunk to twilight. Whatever creatures lurked in the catacombs and forests of Cendriane, their feeding time had come.
But there was a full moon here, too, or almost full, brighter than its counterpart in the mortal world. By its light, and the light cast by the girl, he could watch the spider wrap its kill in pale cords as thick as a man’s wrist. In the other direction, toward the eastern gate, the way was blocked by a dozen or more of the undead, their bone-bleached skin luminous in the moonlight. Skeletal, with swollen heads and grinning jaws, they carried weapons of a type Haggar had never seen, swords that shone like crystal, and bows of yellow horn. One of them nocked a gleaming arrow, and in a moment the eladrin driver fell, shot through the eye.
Again Haggar paused, one forefoot upraised. This was not his fight. But then he saw another of the eladrin stumble to his knees, a sword through his belly. The final soldier was just a boy, and he fought bravely, his yellow hair matted with blood. But then one of the pale creatures pulled him down from behind, which left only the girl, twisting away from a behemoth with an axe, cutting him through the ribs and then shying back, her green fire diminished, almost extinct.
Haggar threw back his head and howled, and a single bolt of lightning hit the spike of the creature’s axe, sending him sprawling. A peal of thunder shook the ground, and then Haggar was upon them, snatching the thin bones of the skeletons’ legs. And when the girl fell, he seized hold of the collar of her shirt, gripping the fragile cloth in his narrow jaws, dragging her away. At the same time a miasma of fog seemed to spill out of the ground, and the creatures, disoriented, hacked and stabbed at shadows, while a freezing wind surrounded them in a sudden squall of snow. Haggar backed away from them, dragging the girl over the icy stones until they reached the gate at the base of the avenue, an enormous arch of carved and decorated marble, with friezes and embellishments of fighting beasts, and a squat stone eagle on each corner of the roof.
On the other side of the arch, the moon rode high and unimpeded above the forest’s edge. Not knowing if she was alive or dead, Haggar dragged the girl out through the gate, out of the city, and immediately found himself returned to his common form, a lurching half-breed orc, gesticulating impotently with his totem stick while the fingers of his other hand grasped at her torn collar. Back through the arch he could still see the blizzard, but here everything was still.
Or not quite. There was a sound of melancholy laughter. Then a man detached himself out of the shadow of the gate, and Haggar understood without knowing that this was Lord Kannoth, archfey ruler of the catacombs of Cendriane.
He was a man of middle height, dark, delicate, and slender, and dressed in a jacket of wine-colored velvet. His only weapon was a flower, a lily at the end of a long stalk. Bending down over the recumbent girl, he touched the lily to her brow, her lips. His voice was light and mocking. “When I first saw you, I thought perhaps you were an enemy to be feared, some wild lycanthropic berserker out of Brokenstone Vale. But in the moonlight, as you perceive, these illusions have melted, and here we are, a simple eladrin maiden, a cowering orc, and me.”
As he spoke, the snow died away on the other side of the arch. The mist dissipated, and as far as Haggar could see, the Avenue of the Gods stretched unimpeded to the blue-tiled pool. The wreckage from the fight had been pulled away. The stones were white as chalk under the moon.
“Tell me,” said the archfey. “Now that everything is still, and if you can remember, and if you have the wisdom to speak, what is the impulse that has powered all this violence? Don’t worry,” he said, as Haggar crouched over the girl’s body, stretched out his hand and then drew it back. “She is asleep, waiting for you to wake her. It is love, is it not? It is love that has caused all this.”
He didn’t deny it. In slumber, in the moonlight, all the anger and contempt that had disfigured her were bleached away. She lay on her back, her hair away from her face.
“And what about her? What does she feel? An orc and a fey maiden-I must confess to you, a story such as this could touch my heart.”
Haggar shook his head. Lord Kannoth smiled. “But that might change. You must not give up hope. Don’t be afraid-she cannot wake unless you kiss her lips.”
Haggar looked up in wonder into the archfey’s pensive face. Again he put his hand out, pulled it back.
“Boy,” advised Lord Kannoth, “it is a token of my good will. But do not make me wait. For only a few more moments will I consent to be amused.”
And so Haggar closed his eyes, leaned forward, and placed the lightest possible kiss on the girl’s lips. Instantly she came awake, and when she saw him, she twisted away as if he’d burned her. She turned her face to the ground and spat. “Pig!”
Lord Kannoth laughed. “This boy has saved your life. Show some gratitude, my child. Pride is nothing, beauty is nothing, compared to the virtues of an honest heart. Believe me, this I know.”
With his lily wand, he pulled the hair back from his feral, delicate face. And wherever the flower touched, the skin changed. What had been pale and pure, in a moment was scorched and ridged, grotesque and distorted, with ragged lips pulled back in a grin. “Child,” he said softly. “What’s your name?”
“Astriana, my lord,” she mumbled into the dirt.
“Astriana, that’s a flower’s name. Accept your fate, Astriana, as I have accepted mine. This is your husband. Do you understand me?”
Tears glistened in her eyes. “Yes, my lord.”
“Speak the oath in your heart, where I can see it. Good. Then it is done.”
He stood and turned away from them. The moon slid behind a cloud. When it came free again, Lord Kannoth had disappeared.
“Come,” Haggar said, after a moment. “Let’s leave this place. It’s not safe to stay here.”
A hundred paces from the road, the forest waited. “No one will harm us,” murmured Astriana. “Are you so stupid that you did not hear? He gave his word.”
She was weeping into her fists. She crouched in the road as he stood over her, embarrassed. The air around them stood still.
“Are you so stupid that you don’t understand?” she continued. “You’re my husband now. Anything you ask, I am sworn to deliver, especially on this night.”
“That is not the custom of my tribe,” he said.
Moaning into her hands, she didn’t hear. “I am carefully punished. All these months I’ve used my own self to entice you, everything I am-I knew what I was doing. Why else would you have come?”
Then she looked up, her cheeks wet, her eyes glinting savagely. “What do you want? Don’t keep me in suspense. Whatever it is, I am bound to give it, as a good wife should.”
Standing in the bone-white roadway, Haggar cleared his throat. He fiddled with his totem stick, picking with his thumbnail at the chunks of agate. “In my clan,” he murmured humbly, “that is not the measure of a good wife.”
She gave him a glance in which a moment of clear gratitude was immediately clouded with suspicion. “Easy to say. Are you so stupid that you can’t understand what I’m offering you?”
He smiled, because he thought he understood how to disarm her. “Astriana,” he said, and saw her flinch. “Woman,” he amended, “this is what I want.” Again she cringed away, as if from a blow. “I want to understand why you have brought me here, to this place. For nine years you made the journey to my world. ‘Put him with the others,’ you said, when I was lying in the cart.”