Fortune's Fool - Mercedes Lackey [35]
But of course, it wasn’t all that intelligent, and couldn’t know that it was actually telling him the way. When it yielded, Sasha knew he was going in the wrong direction. When it blocked him, he knew he was on the right path. The more it tried to prevent his passage, the closer he knew he was.
There was no doubt that this was his goal. The pond and its surroundings were a curious mixture of ethereal beauty and shadowy menace. The pond itself was bathed in moonlight. Or at least, what appeared to be moonlight. The only trouble with that was that the moon wasn’t up. The water was crystalline clear, so clear that it was easy to see the gracefully waving streamers of water plants and the tiny silver fish that darted among them. Of course, the moment anyone entered the water, those harmless-looking plants would wrap themselves around the victim and pull him under, and the little silver fish would strip him down to the bone.
Everything here told him that she was here, and thought she was here to stay.
Now what Sasha did to her was going to depend entirely on what she was. If she was a ghost, and there was any vestige of humanity left in her, he would try and touch it, to awaken her conscience and maybe, just maybe, persuade her to leave on her own.
If, however, she was nothing but hate…
Well, in a lot of ways, that would be easier. Harder, in terms of a fight, but easier in terms of reducing the problem to a situation of pure black and white. She would be evil, he would be good, and he would have no compunction about singing her into oblivion if he had to.
“Who are you, who lingers at the water’s edge?” came a voice from behind him. It was a sweet voice, yet cold, as if the sweetness was a mask over something much darker. There was an echoing quality to it, and the sense that the speaker was somehow not altogether in this world.
He turned.
Like the pond, the young woman before him was a mixture of ethereal beauty and menace, although he doubted that most men would notice the “menacing” aspect. She was dressed in a simple gown of white with silver and pale blue embroidery at the throat, the wrists, and the hem. Her long, silvery-blond hair flowed down her back like a waterfall. She was slender, delicate, and very pale. There was a transparency about her that told him that this was, indeed, a ghost. He wondered how she had died. How it had happened would have a lot of bearing on what was going on in her mind.
And her eyes were utterly empty. Though he doubted most men would recognize that either.
But her expression changed the moment she got a good look at him, from sweetly cold to shocked.
He had anticipated any number of reactions on her part, but shock wasn’t one of them.
“You!” she exclaimed.
He lifted his eyebrows. “I don’t believe we’ve met?” he replied, carefully. “I certainly do not recall ever seeing you before this moment, and believe me, I have a very good memory for names and faces.”
But she was already backing away from him, drifting just an inch above the grass, her hands upraised. “If I had known that this was your Kingdom…Do not touch that instrument! I have no wish to be sung into oblivion!” Her expression turned angry and sour. “Just let me withdraw in peace. I will find somewhere else. You have won, I have lost and—”
He felt suddenly guilty, even though he had not done anything, and went on the defensive. “Of course I won’t let you settle in to my Kingdom! You Rusalkas lure men to their deaths! Any young man, any man at all that crosses your path! You don’t even trouble to discover if they deserve any punishment, much less that!” He glared at her. “Of course I sing Rusalkas into oblivion, or at least, out of my kingdom! What do you expect?”
She bristled; her shoulders squared, and her eyes flashed. “I haven’t lured any young men to their—”
And then she stopped, and a faint flush came over her cheeks. She looked first embarrassed, then mortified.
He blinked. “You haven’t? But I thought—that’s what all Rusalkas