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, cherie,” 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
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
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, Zoe came running in. “I heard the trump. What-?” Zoe dropped to her knees beside Liaze.
Liaze looked at the handmaiden through tear-laden eyes. “He’s gone, Zoe, 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, Zoe 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.”
Zoe rushed back and enwrapped the princess in the cover.
“But you are safe? Nothing herein?” asked Zacharie, gesturing about.
“If there were,” snapped Zoe, “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, Zoe 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, Zoe,” and the handmaiden released her embrace.
