Shadowsong (Wintersong #2)(45)

“Hellequin, Harlequin, the Italian Arlecchino, Dante’s devil Alichino, whom the Anglo-Saxons called herla cyning,” he said. “They are one and the same. You know him best, Fr?ulein, as Der Erlk?nig.”

Josef sucked in a sharp breath. “The Goblin King.”

“Yes,” he said solemnly. “The ruler Underground.”

The ring in my palm. A promise made, a marriage troth broken. I curled my fingers even tighter, feeling the impression of the wolf’s-head dig into my hand like a brand.

“Then it’s true,” Josef whispered. He trembled in the seat next to me, but not with fear. With excitement. Eagerness. “What the legends have said. What our grandmother always told us. Der Erlk?nig calls to us, beckons us to his side. It’s all true?”

The longing in my brother’s voice tugged at me, tangling the threads of guilt and love that were wound around my heart. We always come back in the end. Twin spots of red stained his cheeks, and his blue eyes shone like gems in the dark.

“Yes, young man.” The Countess looked grave. “It is all true. Which is why we have brought you here, so we can watch over you.”

The letter. The fifty florins. The apartments, the appointments, the auditions, the audiences. All arranged by the Countess. Every thing, down to the even, elegant handwriting that gave no clue as to the intentions of its author, was calculated for this. To bring me to Vienna. To bring me before her.

To the composer of Der Erlk?nig. It was not my music the Countess had been after. I did not know whether to be disappointed or relieved.

“But why?” I asked her. “I am not the Goblin Queen, not anymore. I gave up that power. That responsibility.”

The Countess’s eyes glittered. “The old laws have not given you up, Elisabeth. Think you can remove the taint of the uncanny so easily? You have a gift, child. It makes you vulnerable.”

I frowned. “What gift?”

It was a long moment before she replied. “When I first heard your brother play that queer little bagatelle you both performed tonight, I sensed it,” she said softly.

“Sensed what?”

She turned her head away. “The thinning of the barrier between worlds.”

All the hair stood up on the back of my neck.

“At first, I thought it was your brother who had the gift,” she said, giving Josef a sidelong glance. “He certainly has a marvelous talent for music, but no, it was not his playing that parted the veil between us and the Underground. It was the notes.” She laughed, without humor, without mirth. “Those of us who have been touched by Der Erlk?nig can reach across worlds, in sight or sound or sense. We can hear things, see things, feel things that no other mortals can witness. My gift is sensation, but yours, Elisabeth, is sound.”

The air around us grew heavy, stale, thick, as though we were trapped in a burrow. A barrow. A grave.

“Touched by Der Erlk?nig,” I breathed. “What do you mean? Have you . . . have you met . . . him?”

The Count and Countess exchanged glances. “Not all of us,” he said, shaking his head. “Some of us merely wish to be graced with the gifts of the Underground.”

“You keep saying gifts,” I said. “What gifts?”

“Why, a connection with the unseen currents of the world,” he said, opening his hands and spreading them wide, palms turned up as in supplication. “They say the greatest artists, musicians, philosophers, inventors, and madmen were elf-touched.”

Elf-touched. Magda. Constanze. Me. Those broken, beautiful members of our family with one foot in the Underground and one in the world above. Straddling the here and there had turned them inside out.

“Madness is not a gift,” I said angrily.

“Nor is it a curse,” the Count returned gently. “Madness simply is.”

The Countess shook her head, but bestowed a small, tender smile upon her husband when she thought the rest of us didn’t see. I looked to my brother, but Josef kept his gaze averted. Instead he was staring at the Procházkas, his face a picture of hunger, want and desire honing the features of his face into an almost predatory sharpness.

“You say my gift is sound,” I said to the Countess. “But you fail to convince me that it is of any significance.”

“It is,” she said, “when you are the only one who can speak with Der Erlk?nig himself. When your music creates a bridge between worlds.”

“A bridge between worlds? What does that mean?”

The Procházkas looked at each other again. A silent conversation passed between them, an argument held and resolved within the space of several heartbeats. Then the Count closed his eyes and nodded, before turning to me with a hard expression on his face that was at odds with his cheerful, friendly countenance.

“It means, Fr?ulein,” he said, “that you are the only one who can save us.”

“Save you from what?” I asked.

His face was grave. “The end of the world.”





no one heard the sound of hooves above the music.

The horn and the hound were drowned out by the pipe and the viol, the drumming of horseshoes muffled by the shuffling of dance steps. Black-and-white-clad guests spun over black-and-white-checkered floors, black, white, black, white, red. Scarlet poppies pinned to silk and brocade winked in and out of sight, appearing and disappearing like bloody fireflies against a night-and-day sky.