strange, as if she had looked around and discovered the trees were pink and orange instead of green; her mind spun, and yet the directional buzz was as strong as ever. She had come to where she was supposed to be; but she had never come to the place directed before and not known what she was to do there.
The urgency boiled up all the higher, pressing against the inside of her ribcage, against her heart, feeling like a fist in her throat: she swallowed. 'Who-who is it Camilla is to marry?'
'I can never remember his name. He's old-a lot older than Camilla-his wife died some years ago, and he went into seclusion for some time then, and then his only daughter died five or six years ago, and he withdrew again, but this time when he came out I guess he realized he had to marry again since he had no heirs, and I guess he decided to waste no time.
'I remember-he or his ministers sent Ossin, or Goldhouse, a portrait of his daughter not too long before she died, and everyone here wondered why, even us farmhands, because a big powerful king like him who can afford a golden coach for his bride was certainly not going to marry his only child to a tin-cup prince of a back-yard kingdom like ours-where a wedding coach is just the same as any other coach with a few posies tied to the rails, except that there's usually no coach at all.
There was a whole swarm of courtiers who came with the portrait, the whole country knew about it. We thought he must just be puffing out his importance. And now it's him going to marry our princess. I still can't remember his name. Oh, wait-his daughter's name was Lissla Lissar. Funny I remember that, but it's such a pretty name. Her mother had been called the most beautiful woman in seven kingdoms and she supposedly took after her-I never saw the portrait. I've even heard a story that old Cofta paid court to the mother before he settled down with Clementina.
Deerskin-are you all right?'
Lissar seized the arm held out to her. 'They-they aren't married yet?' Lissar shook her head, failing to clear it, although the directional hum was gone, vanished with Lilac's words. 'I don't even know what your marriage rituals are.'
'Noo, they're not married yet,' said Lilac, looking worriedly into Lissar's face.
'But as good as, or nearly. They're taking their vows today, although the public show and the party for everyone who can walk, ride or crawl here is tomorrow-the one we can go to-the one the golden coach is for. They aren't really married till tomorrow. She sleeps alone with her ladies in the next room, one last time, tonight.
She only turned seventeen a few days ago-but she forbid any notice to be taken of it, saying it was her marriage that mattered. She's so young ... Deerskin, what is the matter?'
'Where?'
'Where do they take their vows? In the throne room. Not the receiving-room, where you went your first day. The throne room is behind it, smaller, and grand.
Very grand. It's not used much. Is it that you know something about him?'
Lissar's eyes slowly refocussed on her friend's face, but her own face felt stiff and expressionless. 'Yes-I know something about him.'
There was a tiny silence, a silence unlike any either of them had experienced before, as if the silence were a live thing, making space for itself, expanding, pushing the noise of the inn and the crossroads back, so that the two of them stood in another little world: a little world where it was known that this king was no fit husband for the young, kind, responsible princess Camilla. No fit husband for any woman.
'It is curious, I was so sure I would see you today, I kept looking out of the front window. I told myself I was just bored, that I was thinking of you because this is where we first met. But I was really expecting you. The ceremony will be read out at midday; you'll have to hurry. Do you want my horse?' Lilac's words dropped into the silence, echoing, almost, as if they stood in a chamber with thick bare walls.
Lissar shook her head. 'No; the dogs and I will make our own way quicker; but I thank you.'
Lilac smiled a little. 'It's true, it would look odd, the Moonwoman on horseback; they'll make way for you more quickly, this way.'
'I am not the Moonwoman.'
'Perhaps you are not, after all; would the Moonwoman not know what she had come for? But then the stories never say that she always knows what she'll find; only that she arrives in time. Sometimes just in time.'
Lissar was already gone; Lilac touched her cheek where her friend had kissed it, knowing that she had done so and yet not remembering its happening. She could not even see Lissar on the road ahead of her.
THIRTY-SIX
IT MUST HAVE BEEN TRUE, WHAT LILAC SAID, FOR LISSAR FOUND
nothing but empty road spinning out before her. She was dimly aware of people lining the narrow clear way, dimly aware of the noise of them, but she seemed to move in the little world of silence that had been born in her last words to Lilac, silence undisturbed by the quietness of her bare feet striking the ground, and the dogs' paws. For they ran swiftly, the last desperate effort before exhaustion; but that last effort was a great one, and so seven dogs and one Moonwoman fled, fleeter than any deer or hare, and the people rolled back before them like waves, parting before the prow of a ship running strongly before the wind.
It was a long way from the crossroads to the last innermost heart of Goldhouse's city, and the woman and the dogs were already tired, for they had come far in a very short time. Ash ran on one side of Lissar, Ob on the other, and the other five ran as close behind as the afterdeck rides behind the bow. The wind whistled out of their straining lungs, and flecks of foam speckled the dogs' sides, but there was no faltering; and the people who saw them go would tell the story later that they moved like Moonbeams. Some, even, in later years, would say that they glowed as the full Moon glows, or that mortal eyes saw through them, faintly, as Moonlight may penetrate a fog.
But Lissar knew none of this. What she knew was that she had to get to the throne room before Camilla's vows were uttered; somehow, that Camilla should merely be bodily rescued was not enough.
