The Tangle Box by Terry Brooks

He could not remember.

“What does he want with me? I will never be any good for him, no matter what he thinks! I will be neither wife nor consort! I will be his worst enemy until I am dead!”

The Knight inhaled the forest air, smelling the green freshness of the leaves and grass, the musky damp of the soil, and the pungent dryness of bark and old wood. What were the answers to her questions? Why could he not remember them? He withdrew into himself, thinking to find peace. He took comfort in knowing who he was and what he did. He found reassurance in his strength and skill, in the press of his weapons against his body, in the smooth fit of his battle dress.

Yet his armor was still missing. He had felt its presence when he had been forced to step between the Lady and the Gargoyle, but it had not shown itself. Why was that? It reached out to him, yet stayed hidden, as if playing cat and mouse. His armor—it was lifeless and yet seemingly possessed of life, a paradox. Like the medallion he wore about his neck, it was a part of who and what he was. Why then could he not remember its source?

The Lady was a silent ivory carving before him, watching intently, wanting to come forth from within herself he sensed, but unable to do so. What was she hiding from him? Something frightening. Some deep, secretive admission.

She folded her slim hands within her lap, and the disdainful look crept back upon her face. “You are powerless,” she declared bitterly. “You have no self-will, no independent spirit with which to act. You are a tool to be wielded by whoever wears the crown. How sad.”

“I am a servant of that crown.”

“You are a slave to it.” She cocked her head slightly, the raven hair shifting in a glimmer of black light. Her eyes fixed him. “You can make no decision that conflicts with your master’s orders. You can make no judgment on your own. You took me without asking why. You keep me without wondering why. You do what you are bidden, and you are careless of the reasons for your actions.”

He did not like to argue with her. It gained nothing for either of them. He was not good with words; she was not possessed of his sense of honor and obedience. They came from different lives.

“Who is this King who would have me for his own?” she asked pointedly. “Speak his name.”

Again, he could not. He stared at her, trapped.

“Are you so ignorant as to not know it?” she pressed, irony sharpening the edges of her anger. “Or are you afraid to give it to me? Which is it?”

He kept silent. But he could not look away.

She shook her head slowly. She was hard-faced and cold-looking with her dark hair and white skin, with the set of her jaw and the glint in her eyes. But she was beautiful, too. She was as perfect as a fond memory lovingly worked over the passing of time, all the roughness rubbed away, all the flaws removed. She enchanted him without trying, without meaning to do so, drawing him past her anger and despair, carrying him out of what was into what should never be.

“Whatever I would tell you,” he forced himself to say, “would mean nothing.”

“Try, at least!” she whispered at him, and there was a sudden softness in her voice. “Give me something!”

But he could not. He had nothing to give. He had only himself, and she wanted no part of that. She wanted reasons and understanding, and he had neither. He was as adrift as she was, thrown into a place he did not know, into circumstances he did not understand. The Labyrinth was a mystery he could not fathom. To do so, he must first escape it. That, he understood intuitively, would not be easy.

“Have you no feelings at all for me?” she asked plaintively, but this time the falseness in her voice betrayed her immediately.

“My feelings have no place in what I am about. I do what is required of me.”