Red as Blood, or Tales from the Sisters Grimmer: Expanded Edition by Tanith Lee Read Free Book Online Page A

sleep, and presently he heard the shuffling steps of the one they called Old Man coming back across the red-glowing room. Old Man stood over him and the prince sat up.
    “Tell me, grandfather, why no spinning wheel to grace this house?”
    “Nothing sharp, nothing sharp, no needle, no dart,” Old Man chanted.
    “Why not?”
    “Death will come and the curse will fall, and the city will lie empty.”
    “Which curse is that, old man?”
    “She will send it, the dark one, the Thirteenth Lady.”
    The prince grew very cold, despite the fire.
    “It already came, grandfather.”
    “Thorns!” the old man suddenly cried out in a sharp and startling wail. “Thorns! Thorns! Thorns!” Then he bowed his head and whispered like a dry old leaf: “Seek the Oldest One, in the city. He will be there.”
    He turned then, and shuffled away. The prince lay down, and a black, dank shadow seemed to eat up the room. He fell at once into a deathlike and unbroken sleep.
    * * * *
    In the morning he did what he could with the stone axe to repay them for his lodging. It was an icy but somehow airless day, and the pines craned about him like black shadows.
    At noon he set off back through the trees towards the city, and, as he went, he heard every dog in the village begin to howl.
    Why he went toward the city he was not sure. Perhaps he intended to search out in the ruins the “Oldest One” the grandfather had whispered of—yet how he would find him he had no notion. Besides, he was uncertain altogether—he might have dreamed that dark conversation, even the black-haired woman on the road, the Thirteenth Lady with her silver wheel ring.
    In the city everything was as before in the pale cold daylight, except that now he could see the colors of the glass in the windows, red and gold and indigo. Then he looked up, and stared again at that central hill, covered by its black, thickly-clustered growth. The sense of compulsion came once more. “There is a thing there I would rather were left alone,” the sorceress had said to him on the road. He began to climb the slanting streets towards the hill.
    Another storm came sweeping over the valley as he climbed. The sky went black, dazzling with green lightning forks, and he hurried with his head bowed against the rain. Turning a corner, he came upon a huge circular wall, the boundary of some great house or palace in earlier times. He moved along in its sheltering lee, and then there was a pair of rusty gates. He pushed at them and they slewed apart. As he went between, the lightning opened the sky, and its livid fire burst on a solid shining darkness, and threw over him a shadow as black as ink. Slowly he raised his head, and saw then what grew on the hill.
    Thorns.
    A vast, rearing stronghold of thorns, taller than tall trees, black as night, thick stems interwoven and sharp with blades. A tangle of daggers dripping the diamond rain. The prince gazed at it and his heart lurched. He felt the cold hand close again on his arm. Strewn among the knots and claws were white human bones, and further on a skull hung like an open rose. A mad impulse took hold of him when he saw the skull; he drew his knife and raised it to slash at the thorns. A voice came then, behind him.
    “No, Royal Born. Not yet.”
    The prince turned about, still holding the knife. A man stood in the gateway. He wore skins like the people of the village, and he leaned on a wooden staff. He was old, older than Old Man. The flesh of his face and hands was like lizard skin or tree bark.
    “I mean you no harm, Royal Born,” he said in a voice as thin and as penetrating as the wind. “I am the Oldest One in the valley. I remember things, and I have waited for you.”
    “What is this place?” The prince cried out over the thunder.
    “A place of thorns,” said the Oldest One.
    Then he turned and moved down the street without a word, and without a word the prince followed him.
    * * * *
    He lived in the lowest room of a thin tower, and