Silver′s Bane
Silver's Bane
Anne Kelleher
THROUGH THE SHADOWLANDS: Where the touch of silver was Protection, Power and Peril… AN OTHERWORLDLY INTRIGUE… With the courts of both the Sidhe's Otherworld and the mortals' Shadowlands in contention, nothing seems safe anymore.Now blacksmith's daughter Nessa is caught up in political and military intrigues that might loose the goblin horde. Widowed queen Cecily is fighting for a throne she never expected to have. And Delphinea, lady in waiting to the Faery throne, is caught between the powers of Sidhe and her destiny.A DESPERATE PERIL…The first battles are over, and devastation wracks both lands. With Nessa crossing between worlds to further understanding of each people, Cecily and Delphinea must fight to contain the evil that edges ever closer. Because their honor demands that their countries come before anything–even love. And life…
Praise for Anne Kelleher
“Anne Kelleher’s engrossing fantasy, Silver’s Edge…weaves an enticing tale as Nessa braves unknown dangers to find her father and bring him safely home in this beguiling story of courage and adventure.”
—BookPage
“Ms. Kelleher weaves another fantasy epic of grand proportions, sweeping the reader off into lands, legends and lore. Part Arthurian, part Tolkien and part fairy tale, the mix creates an incredible world for the reader’s fertile mind to take root. It starts off slowly, but then takes off with a bang and never releases you from its grasp.”
—The Best Reviews, on Silver’s Edge
“The characters are complex and multifaceted, and the writing is rich with colorful prose…. Women control their fates, and fear is not an option when it comes to the tough decisions that must be made in a time when all that is held sacred is facing destruction.”
—Romance Reviews Today on Silver’s Edge
“Silver’s Edge is a first-class fantasy. The characters are vivid, believable; they captured this reader’s heart, taking me on an unforgettable journey as they confronted their fears, made tough decisions and accepted the consequences of those decisions, no matter what it cost them.”
—In the Library Reviews
“…displays vivid imagination.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Fascinating—a most ingenious blend of science fiction and fantasy.”
—New York Times bestselling author Marion Zimmer Bradley on Daughter of Prophecy
SILVER’S BANE
ANNE KELLEHER
This book is dedicated with love to all the women
in my life—friends, teachers, mentors, guides and
guardians who are far too many to list—and most
especially to my mother, Frances Kelly;
my stepmother, Alice Kelleher;
my grandmother Rose Castaldi;
my sisters, Sheila Kelly Bauer, DJ Kelleher and Pam Boyd;
my daughters, Kate, Meg and Libby; all those yet to
come and all those who have gone before.
Blessed be.
Glossary of People and Places
Faerie—the sidhe word for their own world. It includes the Wastelands
The Shadowlands—the sidhe word for the mortal world
The Wastelands—that part of Faerie to which the goblins have been banished
Lyonesse—legendary lost land that is said to have lain to the east of Faerie
Brynhyvar—the country that, in the mortal world, overlaps with Faerie
The Otherworld—the mortal name for Faerie
TirNa’lugh—the lands of light; the shining lands—mortal name for Faerie; becoming archaic
The Summerlands—place where mortals go at death
Humbria—mortal country across the Murhevnian Sea to the east of Brynhyvar
Lacquilea—mortal country lying to the south of Brynhyvar
Killcairn—Nessa’s village
Killcrag—neighboring village to the south
Killcarrick—lake and the keep
Alemandine—Queen of sidhe
Xerruw—Goblin King
Vinaver—Alemandine’s younger twin sister and the rightful Queen
Artimour—Alemandine’s half-mortal half brother
Gloriana—mother of Vinaver, Alemandine and Artimour
Timias—Gloriana’s chief councilor and the unacknowledged father of Alemandine and Vinaver
Eponea—Mistress of the Queen’s Horses
Delphinea—Eponea’s daughter
Finuviel—Vinaver’s son by the god Herne; rightful King of Faerie
Hudibras—Alemandine’s consort
Gorlias, Philomemnon, Berillian—councilors to the Queen
Petri—Delphinea’s servant gremlin
Khouri—leader of the gremlin revolt and plot to steal the Caul
Nessa—nineteen-year-old daughter of Dougal, the blacksmith of Killcairn
Dougal—Nessa’s father; Essa’s husband; stolen into Faerie by Vinaver
Griffin—Dougal’s eighteen-year-old apprentice
Donnor, Duke of Gar—overlord of Killcairn and surrounding country; uncle of the mad King and leader of the rebellion against him
Cadwyr, Duke of Allovale—Donnor’s nephew and heir
Cecily of Mochmorna—Donnor’s wife; heiress to the throne of Brynhyvar
Kian of Garn—Donnor’s First Knight
Hoell—mad King of Brynhyvar
Merle—Queen of Brynhyvar; princess of Humbria
Renvahr, Duke of Longborth—brother of Queen Merle; elected Protector of the Realm of Brynhyvar
Granny Wren—wicce woman of Killcairn
Granny Molly—wicce woman of Killcrag
Engus—blacksmith of Killcarrick
Uwen—Kian’s second in command
The Hag—immortal who dwells in the rocks and caves below Faerie; the moonstone globe was stolen from her when the Caul was forged
Herne—immortal who dwells within the Faerie forests, from which he rides out on Samhain night, leading the Wild Hunt across the worlds
Great Mother—mortal name for the Hag
The Horned One—mortal name for Herne
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks to Rosmari Roast, herbalist, wise woman and friend, for eleventh-hour research; to my agent, Jenn Jackson, and my editor Mary-Theresa Hussey for seeing the potential before I did; to Laura Rose and the rest of the Goddess Girls: Anne Sheridan, Susan Grayson, Leslie Goodale, Lisa Drew, Barbara Terry, Jamie King, Louise Rose, Alicia Tremper, Judy Conrad—you guys are the best midwives in the world; to Judy Charlton for reiki; to all the folks in the CT over 40 chat room on AOL, especially GtimeJoe; to all my fellow LUNA-tics in the LUNA-sylum for cheerleading. But most of all, this book would never have been written without the unwavering love and unstinting support of one man: Donny Goodman, I adore you.
Contents
Before
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Afterward
BEFORE
It was the weight of the world above her that nearly drove Vinaver mad. The thought of it crept, unbidden and unsought, from the deep places of her mind, a fat white worm of fear threatening to suffocate her from within, even as she struggled through narrow fissures and sloping corridors of unyielding stone. The pressure bore down on her from all directions, and the fear rose, writhing and squirming, coiling and expanding, filling her lungs, constricting her throat, wetting her palms, so that the lych-light at the end of her slim hazel-wood staff dimmed to a pinprick until she felt she would be swallowed by the dark.
The solid rock surrounding her was nearly as foreign to the intrinsic nature of her kind as the deadly silver from the mortal Shadowlands, for the sidhe of Faerie were creatures of light and air. But Vinaver had been forced to learn the first time her journey had taken her into the places where sunlight was not even a legend, that when the longing for the light and airy open spaces threatened to overwhelm her, she should close her eyes, and breathe, and let the crushing sensation roll over and through her like an enormous wave, until her mind quieted, leaving her feeling as exhausted and battered as the sea after a storm. But at least she was able to grip her staff and go on.
This was the last place anyone would ever think to find a sidhe. Her kind were never cave dwellers, stone carvers or earth diggers. According to the Lorespinners, the Un-derlands had been the realm of the goblins once, in the earliest time before the great Goblin Wars, when the sidhe, led by Vinaver’s mother, the great Queen Gloriana, had bound them into the Wastelands above. At least they’d still been bound in the Wastelands when Vinaver had started on this quest. She had no idea how long she’d been below the surface. There was no day or night, there was no sun or moon to mark the passage of hours, or the advance of seasons. She found the longer she was there, the less time had meaning.
But the domesticated trees within the Grove of the Palace of the Faerie Queen, as well as the wild ones of the Forest, had been adamant. Only the Hag—She who dwelled in the dark places below the surface world—could tell Vinaver why her sister, Alemandine, had failed to become pregnant with the heir of Faerie in her appointed time.
Now Vinaver followed the creature that slithered before her, a near-formless thing that gleamed wetly as it led her through granite canyons, leaving a trail of its own slime, its face perpetually turned away from the yellow glow of her lych-light.
Just beyond a jagged outcropping, her guide paused and drew back, indicating a tunnel leading off to one side. Vinaver stopped. The thing wanted her to follow it. She crept cautiously forward, feeling her way down the rough walls with fingertips made exquisitely sensitive. She peered inside the black slit of the opening. Patches of lichen glowed as she extended the staff as far into the tunnel as she could, and frowned as she saw that the roof sloped away into a low opening that disappeared into deep and utter blackness. It appeared barely wide enough for her shoulders. She’d have to slither through it, wriggling like a worm. Her breath caught in her throat at the thought of the massive rock surrounding her on all sides, and she nearly turned, shrieking, maddened beyond reach, dashing back like a butterfly trapped in a net, frantic for the taste of sun and air. I cannot do this, the voice of her own panic screamed through her mind, as she gripped the hazel staff with wet, white-knuckled fingers. But you must do this, she thought immediately in response. And she forced herself to breathe.
The world above was sick. The trees whispered it in their branches, sighed it in the wind. What beauty Faerie possessed was illusory, fleeting, and fading even as she lingered. If she failed to find out what could be done to heal the land, everything and everyone in Faerie would be lost forever, dispersed into some chaotic void, forgotten and forsaken. Her son’s image rose up unbidden, and her heart contracted that such grace and beauty as was his should be wasted. Finuviel. She saw his coal-black curls and long green eyes, high cheekbones and slanting brows and a smile that contained within it everything right and good and beautiful of Faerie. For him, she thought. For Finuviel, I will do what I must. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the air rushing in and out of her lungs, summoning up the strength to let herself be led into that dark and narrow passage. Finally she was able to nod.
Her guide had withdrawn, crouching in a formless lump. It had no eyes but she knew it watched her. So she nodded again and waved the lych-light. The creature shuddered away from the light, but gathered itself up into a sort of ball and slithered forward.
Disgust roiled through her but she tamped that down too. With a final breath, she entered the narrow tunnel. Almost immediately she was forced to bend, then to hunch, and finally, just as she feared, she was forced to crawl, first on all fours, and then, creeping and squirming like the thing before her. She found that she was grateful for the fluids the creature exuded, for they slicked the walls, easing her passage, even as she battled the panic that threatened to undo her completely when she felt the rock walls close in around her head.
She tumbled out at last, wet with sweat and slime, and she raised her face to the rush of cold still air and looked up into a vaulted cavern covered in tiny pinpricks that resembled infant stars. It was the lichen, she realized.
The thing quivered. The stone beneath her bare feet was smooth and very cold and white mist rose from the surface of a vast, still lake. Within it, patches of luminous phosphorescence lit the whole chamber with a pale greenish glow. An underground sea, she thought. But the thing at her feet was moving again, squirming down the sloping lip to the very edge of the water. It roiled and shuddered and a single arm formed out of the shapeless mass, and a rough approximation of a hand pointed a stubby finger. Vinaver squinted. In the middle of the water, behind the shifting mist, she saw a cluster of boulders that rose from the center of a small island some distance from the shore. “Is that where She lives?”
The words hung flat as if the water somehow absorbed the sound. A heavy stillness permeated the moist cold air, a silence so profound, she could feel the skin stretching over her sinews, the air moving in and out of her lungs, the pulse of her blood against the walls of her veins. Her tongue felt sharp as crystal against the dry leather of her mouth. That this could be the end of all her wanderings made her knees weak and her heart pound like a hammer against her breastbone.
But the wide water lay between her and the Hag, and there was no other way across as far as she could see. She would have to swim. Her breath hung like the mist over the sea. The thought of immersing herself in that cold bath made her bones ache. It had been so long since she’d been truly warm, she thought. She touched her face with one cold hand. She could scarcely remember a time when her muscles were not knotted and stiff, when her bones did not feel like flesh-covered lead. She did not want to bathe in that greenish glowing water. The great rocks themselves seemed to shift and groan and sigh all around her and the stone beneath her feet undulated as if a great beast stirred from some black unbroken sleep.
Vinaver looked down at the thing crouching at her feet, throbbing in time to a silent pulse, and she understood that it had brought her as far as it could. The rest was up to her. She removed her cloak and her gown—what was left of them—and placed them neatly on the stony shore beside her leather pack and the hazel rod. The lych-light faded to a faint twinkle. The gooseflesh prickled her skin and she crossed her arms over her breasts, then walked barefoot, naked but for the ragged chemise she wore, directly down to the water.
The first few strokes were a pleasant surprise. For far from being cold, the water was warm, welcoming as a hot salt sea under a summer sun. She stretched and relaxed into it, her strokes purposeful and sure, steady as the warmth that seeped into her legs and down her toes, caressing her with a deliberateness that was almost aware. Around her the white mist rose—not mist, she thought, but steam—drifting off the surface. She could see the island rising black and barren in the center. She swam on, the warmth bolstering her and sustaining her, trailing through the long locks of her coppery hair like a lover’s fingers.
It was when the water began to thicken around her that she began to worry, that she realized that what she swam through was not water such as that which coursed through the rivers of Faerie, nor even the salt ocean that surrounded it on all sides, but some strange primal sea, and her heart clenched as she saw long, shadowy strands and huge clumps of glutinous fiber swirl through the depths, like shadowy leviathans roaming the deep. If one of those things takes me, I shall be lost, she thought, and she stroked harder, kicked faster, even as the water gathered around her, congealing into rubbery strands. Dismayed, she kicked harder as the stuff twined around her limbs, sapping her strength. But still she had hope, that here, at last she had come to where the Hag dwelled, and she whipped her hair out of her eyes, stroking desperately toward the savage-looking boulders rising tantalizingly, mercilessly, just out of reach.
At last, when finally she thought she could stand no more, her feet touched solid stone. Nearly weeping, she looked down at the thick gelatinous clots that swirled and clumped around her ankles and her calves. She wiped and kicked them away, shuddering with disgust at the way the stuff persistently slimed around her as she plowed up the steep slope. Her teeth began to chatter audibly even before her knees broke the surface of the sea and she clutched her arms close about herself, shivering in the cold, cold air, even as she scraped the thick slime off her chemise and her skin, raking it out of her hair. At last she stood on the shore. She turned and looked back. In the dim greenish light, she could barely make out the white spot of her clothes, the round, black shape of her guide crouching patiently beside it. The water pushed up against the shore, as if searching for her, and she stepped farther away from it, warily peering in the dim light for some sign of the Hag.
She thought she heard a chuckle, and she whipped around, but it was only the insistent lap of the water against the stone. She drew herself up, and opened her arms as wide as her shaking body would let her. “Great Herne,” she whispered, “if ever you were with me, be with me now.” She drew a deep breath and cried, into the thick and chilly air, “Great Hag! Great Hag, come forth upon my call.” The rock was slick beneath her soles, and she felt something slice through her feet as she took a single step forward. She cried out and nearly lost her balance. She looked down and saw that unlike the opposite shore, these boulders were punctuated by shards of what looked like glass. She squatted down, watching her pale blood roll down the slope into the sea, carefully feeling all around her for smooth places between the razor-edged outcroppings. She edged forward, feeling her way with questing hands and careful feet. But for all her care, the jagged edges sliced unmercifully and she nearly fell more than once. At last she reached a relatively smooth plateau, beside the cluster of boulders that rose from the center of the island like the throne of the Goblin King in his stinking hall.
“Great Hag,” she whispered, scarcely daring to give the words voice. “Great Hag, come forth and heed your child’s plea.” Her voice echoed up and around and down the vault of the ceiling, sighing and rippling across the water, and she saw the depths dull to dark green as the drifting shadows within it seemed to thicken in response. It was as if everything about her in some way was so intimately connected to the place that every move she made, every breath she drew, every thought, even, had some effect. “Great Hag,” she whispered, this time pouring every ounce of need, of desire, of hope she possessed into the words. “Come forth.”
But the boulders were silent and the sea was still.
Vinaver sank shaking to her haunches, her arms wrapped around her knees. Her guide was wrong, so obviously wrong. And she was so stupid, so obviously stupid to have trusted him—it. What could she have expected from a blind, deaf, voiceless, practically senseless creature? What could she have expected from the foul misshapen things that led her to it? Tears filled her eyes and spilled down her cheeks, seeping down her fingers, rolling down her arms unheeded. Was all of this for naught? Had she truly come here to the underbelly of the world to find nothing? She would not survive another swim back across that swarming sea. She had failed. Faerie would disintegrate, Finuviel, her fair son, so bright with promise, would die the true death, and all the great and shining beauty that was Faerie would go down into nothingness. Down here, she thought, into this primal soup. There was nothing else to do but wait for it.
She rested her cheek on her knees, and in the soft and swirling mist, wooing as a lover’s whisper, she thought she heard a snatch of music, clear and airy and piping as any ever drifted across a Faerie meadow. A woman’s voice danced through her mind, low and mocking. “A queen who’s never a queen to be—is that who comes to call on me?”
Slowly Vinaver rose to her feet, forcing herself to straighten, as a sudden fear greater than any she had yet known gripped her like a vise. “Great Hag?” she whispered, for the voice was not that of an old woman. Scarcely daring to believe that here, at last, was the end of all her striving, she peered into the darkness, gaping in astonishment as the boulders lifted and shifted and finally resolved themselves into the hideous visage of an old woman hunching over a great black cauldron. The cauldron was balanced over a firepit by a curious arrangement of two polished crystal globes, and a makeshift tripod of iron legs beneath a flat disk where a third globe should have been.
As Vinaver stared in horror, steam spiraled up from the depths of the cauldron, half obscuring the grinning, toothless rictus on the Hag’s gray-blue face, which was striated with wrinkled folds carved like channels into the bedrock of her sunken eyes and cheeks. She gripped what looked like a thick branch—for a few dead leaves still clung to it—in two clawlike hands as she stirred her brew.
The Hag’s bright eyes fixed on her, and Vinaver gasped. Like Herne’s, glowing red then green, they pierced her with a force that made her stagger. She regained her footing and took a single step forward, forgetful of the sharp crystals that slashed her feet to the bones, and cried out as the pain lanced up her leg. As more of her pale blood leaked into the rock, it shuddered beneath her feet, smoothing itself beneath her bleeding soles. And she understood she was to draw closer.
Each step was agony but she refused to flinch. She had come so far. She could go a little farther, after all. There was neither kindness nor cruelty in that glittering green gaze, just a hungry interest. The Hag’s gray tongue flicked over her yellowed and blackened teeth and for a moment her eyes turned red.
Suddenly more frightened than ever, Vinaver paused. Such was the nature of the Hag, Vinaver understood with sudden insight, she who destroys that all might be made new. Everything was fodder for her cauldron, grist for her mill, silt for her sea. Vinaver wanted to speak, but something that felt like her heart blocked her throat. She saw more clearly the improvised contrivance that supported the cauldron in place of a third globe. It was of iron—three cast-iron legs bound into a tripod, a small disk placed on top. And suddenly, with cold and certain knowing, she knew exactly where the third globe was.
“The moonstone,” she whispered, daring to meet the Hag’s eyes. “The moonstone globe—the one that wears the Caul within my sister’s Palace—that moonstone globe is yours.”
The Hag hissed, her rheumy eyes darting from side to side. She gave a great turn to the stick and the steam rose and swirled and in the depths, Vinaver thought she saw a familiar face—a furtive face that turned his back and threw a robe over his head before the image dissipated into nothing.
“Timias,” Vinaver whispered, recognizing her mother’s Chief Councilor and perpetual thorn in her side. “’Twas Timias who took your globe?” Another hiss was the only sound the Hag made as she swung her shoulders in a mighty arc as she gave the cauldron another stir. A shiver ran through Vinaver. She looked down at the other two globes, this time more carefully, and saw that one gleamed black as pitch in the bluish glow of the unnatural fire that burned within the stone pit beneath the cauldron, and that the other was flecked with specks of black, white, green and red. And suddenly, in a flash of insight, Vinaver understood something of the nature of the problem. The black globe—the goblins, perhaps. The other, the mortals, most like. And the missing moonstone that Timias had apparently stolen in some way represented Faerie. It WAS Faerie, Vinaver realized. And Timias had taken it from the Hag. She had always wondered why the stories were so vague about the origination of the globe. “The trees have told me that Faerie is dying. I see that your globe is—is missing.” These two were connected in some way, she was sure of it. She hesitated, attempting to gauge the thoughts behind the creature’s burning eyes. And then she gathered her courage and spoke quickly, lest she lose her resolve. “I know there’s something terribly wrong for Alemandine is unable to conceive her Heir. And the trees told me to come to you, Great Hag, that you would know how to save Faerie.” Vinaver finished quickly, for there was something in the Hag’s eyes that made her want to run into the water, to give herself up to those sultry depths, to the peace the green sea promised.
The steam rose up in a high cloud as the Hag stirred the cauldron. She said nothing, but the same mocking voice Vinaver heard before swirled out of the steam, the words carried on the vapor. “Round about the circle goes, dark to light and back it flows—world without end can never be, so says every prophecy.”
“But what do you say?” asked Vinaver, suddenly brave with the courage of desperation. What, after all, did she have to lose? She had no chance of going back without the Hag’s help. If she were only fodder for the Hag’s eternal soup, so be it. “What do you say, Great Mother?” Something made the Hag look up. She fixed Vinaver with that cold unforgiving stare, but Vinaver refused to shrink. She took one step forward. “Must it end now?”
The rocks groaned, as though shuddering beneath the weight of some eternal sorrow, and the Hag’s appearance rippled, shifting from the hungry visage of She Who Destroys to the drawn and ravaged face of She Who Mourns. Suddenly she did not seem at all malevolent. Her shoulders collapsed, leaving her stooped and frail, and her face thinned and the reddish light in the green depths died. Her lipless mouth twisted and a tear seeped down one ruined cheek.
Time hung, suspended, the moment prolonged beyond all reality. The darkness seemed to shrink, expand, then retreat once more, as a light, white and clean as springtime sun leaped up from the cauldron’s depths. And in that radiant flash, Vinaver thought she saw the Hag transformed, her craggy features melting, dissolving, her flesh rounding and firming and lifting, flushing to a gentle shade of pink, and her eyes faded to violet. The Maiden, she thought. But even as Vinaver recognized the transformation, it faded away, dispersing into the air like one of the squirming things roaming the water’s depths. Finally it was Vinaver who broke the spell. “I think I understand,” she whispered. “You can’t change. Something’s happened. And you can’t change.” The rage that flared from the Hag’s red eyes gave Vinaver her first real thread of hope. “Tell me,” she whispered. “Make me understand. If I should be the Queen, why am I not? Why can you not become the Maiden, and why did Timias take your globe? What is it that’s killing Faerie, and how do I make it stop?”
Vinaver thought at first the Hag would not answer her at all, for the creature only shifted from side to side, and she wondered if the Hag was incapable of speech. After all, Herne had never spoken to her, in their encounter. But in a smooth motion that belied the image of the ancient crone, the Hag suddenly turned to face Vinaver and shrieked, in a voice that echoed across the vaulted space like the harsh cry of a crow, “Why? Why? Why?”
Perplexed, Vinaver stared. “Why what?”
With another shriek, the Hag went back to her stirring and the steam billowed up in great white clouds, wreathing and obscuring her face. For a moment, Vinaver was afraid the Hag would disappear. But as the steam cleared, she was still there, bright green eyes fixed on Vinaver. “Why should I help you?”
It was not a question Vinaver expected and the Hag’s voice alone unsettled her, grating on her ears like a blade scraped over stone. She cast about, taken aback, momentarily confused. What could she possibly say that would convince the Hag that Faerie should be saved? What part was more beautiful than the rest? Where to even begin?
And then Finuviel’s face rose before her, his form danced out of her memory, the tiny infant, delicately made, but sturdy, so fair and strong and merry as he grew, the epitome of what a prince of the sidhe should be. She remembered the first time she’d heard his laugh. A butterfly had landed on his toes. Her eyes clouded with tears and her throat thickened. “Well,” she said at last. “I have a son.”
“Ah,” sighed the Hag, and with a stir of her stick, the great cauldron released another cloud of steam. This time it resolved itself into the angular, antlered face of Herne, the Lord of the Forest and the Wild Hunt.
“You know—you know about my son?” Vinaver said. For the appearance of Herne’s image implied that the Hag knew he’d fathered Finuviel. No one else had ever believed Vinaver. Everyone accused her of using the claim of Herne as a way of concealing Finuviel’s true parentage. The enormity of the Hag’s knowledge burst like a sunrise into her mind and suddenly Vinaver believed that not only was there hope, but that the Hag would help her.
Without another sound, the Hag beckoned. Vinaver crept forward, wincing on her ruined feet, her heart pounding audibly. At the edge of the firepit, just before it was possible for Vinaver to see inside the cauldron, she held up her hand. “Yes,” the Hag whispered, a long, low croon that tickled the back of Vinaver’s neck like the barest stroke of her long sharp claws. “Yes, I know about your son. I know all about your son. And yes, for his sake, and for his father’s, I shall help you. But there is always a price, and so I ask you, Vinaver Tree-speaker, the would-be, should-be Queen—tell me, what will you pay for the knowledge of the Hag?”
“What would you have of me?” The water was still dripping off her hair. It ran in chilly rivulets down her back, between the cleft of her buttocks, trickling down her legs to drip off the two swollen lumps of throbbing flesh that were her bloodied feet. She felt as if she stood in a pool of her own congealing blood. The cold air raised gooseflesh on her entire body, but an act of will greater than any she had ever known she was capable of kept her upright and still. She had come so far and searched for so long that she had nothing left but the rags on her back. What could the Hag possibly want of her?
“There are three things.” The whisper rasped down her spine like a fingernail across granite. “For the first, I want my globe back. For the second, I want the head of him that took it from me.”
At that, Vinaver’s head snapped up. “Timias?”
This time she was standing far too close when the angry light flared in the Hag’s eyes. A searing pain lanced up her leg as she involuntarily stepped back onto a sharp edge, while an image blazed clearly in her mind, the image of Timias creeping away from the cavern, bearing the moonstone globe. “You want me to kill Timias?”
“His life is mine, and my cauldron wants his head.” The Hag’s hiss, her narrowed eyes, reminded Vinaver of a snake. “Cut off his head with a silvered edge, and give it to me for my cauldron. So those are the first two things I want of you. Will you agree?”
The depth of the hatred in the Hag’s voice frightened Vinaver. “All right.” She had no idea how she would actually fulfill the second requirement—for to do what the Hag asked required some forethought. And it had not occurred to her that murder would be involved. Vinaver swallowed hard. “What’s the third?”
This time the Hag’s response was a sinister chuckle. She leaned forward, even as Vinaver instinctively shrank back. “The third is the most important and the most necessary. I want your womb.”
At first Vinaver was sure she had not heard correctly, even as her hands clasped her belly. So she could only stare while the Hag chuckled with anticipatory glee. “What?”
“I need your womb.”
Vinaver looked at the scaly gray claws that gripped the stick, recoiling at the idea of those twisted, thickened digits anywhere near her flesh. “Why?” she whispered, horrified.
The Hag’s laugh was like the rumble of rocks down a hillside. “Ah, little queen. Already the circle widens into a spiral. The spiral turns, the center loosens, and soon all will spin away, down, into my cauldron. And my cauldron must not be cheated. If you would undo what has been done, you must feed it. And that’s what it wants. That’s what it needs. That’s what it craves.” She drew out the last long syllable, beckoning Vinaver closer with a crooked, yellow claw. “Come, if you will, and look within—but feed the cauldron to stop the spin.” She stirred the stick, swaying a little, eyes closed as she chanted. Suddenly she stopped and opened her eyes. “You want your sister pregnant with Faerie’s heir? Give me your womb. That’s how it has to work, I’m afraid.”
Vinaver swallowed hard, trying to control the beating of her heart. The monstrous thing muttered as she stirred, her lumpen shape rolling in slow motion in a large, left-turning spiral. Left-turning, Vinaver thought, the direction of breakdown, banishment and change, and in that moment she understood. As the Hag stirred the cauldron, so the tide of Faerie swung. Turning it to the left meant the undoing of the world. “Stop that!” cried Vinaver. “You’re doing it—stop it—”
The Hag jerked around, the hairs on the end of her nose twitching, as if she smelled Vinaver’s desperation. “Round about the circle goes, dark to light and back it flows,” she chanted, as if Vinaver had not spoken. “She that dares to stop my spin, had better put a tidbit in. Feed my cauldron, pay the price, lest all be lost when light turns dark and dark turns light.”
Vinaver’s stomach clenched and her gut heaved at the thought that that creature might touch her. But she had come all this way, and what need had she of a womb, after all? She’d borne a son in her appointed time, such as it was. What did it matter whether or not she gave up her womb? “But—but if I give you my womb,” she whispered, “will it not mean I can never be Queen?” The Hag threw back her head and howled as if at some unwitting joke, but Vinaver would not be dissuaded. “Tell me—tell me what I shall become—if I give you this—this part of me. If I shall not be Queen, what then?”
“She who comes with bitter need, had better then my cauldron feed.”
But suddenly, Vinaver understood something that had eluded her for a long time. She had never understood why the god had come to her that Beltane night when Finuviel was conceived. No one had believed her. But the Hag knew. Her womb had served its purpose. “All right,” she shrugged. “Done.”
The Hag cackled. Vinaver’s mouth dried up like a desert, and she thought she might faint as nausea flopped in her gut like a dying fish. The Hag’s claws closed around her wrist, drawing her closer, and the Hag’s face seemed to fill her entire field of vision. The Hag’s eyes glittered red, then green in the leaping blue flames, and her craggy face dissolved into unrecognizable chaos. Vinaver collapsed, crying out as she felt the scratch of the Hag’s cold fingers, pulling at her clothing, kneading at her flesh, creeping between her legs, probing for the opening to the very center of her self, seeking, separating, pushing in with sharp, grasping claws.
Vinaver cried out at the first stab of blinding pain, and she pushed away, but the Hag held her hard. She shut her eyes as the pain flamed through her, and a kaleidoscope of voices and faces exploded in her mind, uncurling like ribbons, in long slow swirls of scarlet agony. She heard the wet, sucking rent, as her flesh ripped, but she didn’t care, because she understood at last that it was in the pain that the Hag imparted her knowledge. As her body broke and bled, her mind opened, and a torrent of images cascaded in. She saw her mother, Timias and the mortal by whose hand the Caul was forged. She saw the moment of its making, when the three called down the magic and bound the two worlds—Shadow and Faerie—inextricably together, tightening the normal bonds between them tight as a noose.
In some detached corner of her mind, she felt the Hag tear away her womb, felt the hot gush of blood between her thighs, and she lay flat, legs thrown open, dazed and helpless as a newborn child. The pictures shuddered, swirled, spun and split into a double set of likenesses—somehow at once both that which was, and that which should have been. She saw herself born the sole daughter of Gloriana, Faerie’s great Queen, named her Heir, and made Queen when Gloriana went into the West. She saw a Faerie green and flourishing, Finuviel born in the fullness of time, welcomed as the new King of Faerie, even while, running concurrently, like the overlay of the Shadowlands on Faerie, she saw what had really happened since the forging of the Caul. And then, as the pain settled into a slow throb, she saw faint and pale the images of what might be. She lay back, eyes open, staring into the vaulted ceiling as the ghostly outlines formed and reformed, and the world slowly dissolved into nothingness.
When next she opened her eyes, she was lying flat on her back still, staring up at what she first thought to be pinpoints of twinkling lichen. Then a warm wind rustled through the branches of the trees above her, and she realized that the soft grass beneath her was slick with morning dew. And as she watched through eyes suddenly flooded with tears, the black sky above her brightened to gray as the first light of a Faerie dawn broke the horizon at last.
1
The gremlin’s howls filled the forest. Like an avalanche, like a tidal wave, the sounds of rage and anguish and despair too long checked, exploded through the silent Samhain night, unleashed in earsplitting shrieks that continued unabated far beyond the physical capacity of such a small being to sustain such unbroken cacophony. Delphinea crumpled to her knees, crumbling like a dam against a sudden thaw, and pressed her head against the horse’s side, trying to stifle the wails that wrapped themselves around her, first like water, then like wool, nearly choking her, crushing her with their weight of unadulterated sorrow, anger and need. The moon was hidden and the still sky was only illuminated by silver starlight. The night condensed into nothing but the blood-wrenching screams and the slick salt smell of the horse’s coarse hair beneath her cheek. She felt subtle tremors beneath the surface of the leaf-strewn ground as if the great trees all around them shuddered to their roots. The horse trembled and shook, and Delphinea wrapped her arms as best she could around the animal’s neck, murmuring a gentle croon more felt than heard, trying to create a subtle vibration to act as the only shield she could think of under such an onslaught of sound. But there was nothing, ultimately, that could stand against it, and finally, she collapsed against the horse’s side, the mare’s great beating heart her only anchor.
It was thus, curled and quivering, that Vinaver’s house guards found her shortly before dawn, palms plastered against her ears, the horse only semi-aware, its eyes rolled back, its ears flattened against its head. Petri’s cries showed no signs of diminishing. The orange torchlight revealed the gremlin flopping on the forest floor like a fish caught in a net. As he is, mused Delphinea, within a net of Samhain madness. Every Samhain the gremlins all went mad, and usually they were confined. But nothing seemed to be happening quite the way it usually did.
It took all six guards to overpower him, despite the fact that he was less than half the size of Delphinea. Even the thick gag they improvised from a strip of hastily cutoff doublet sleeve barely stifled Petri’s cries. When at last Petri was subdued, his howling reduced to smothered moans, they turned their attention to Delphinea, sitting quiet and disheveled beside the near-insensible horse.
“My lady?” The dark-haired sidhe who bent over her wore a gold breastplate emblazoned with the Queen’s crest, and for a moment, Delphinea was afraid the soldiers had been sent out by the Queen and Timias to drag both of them back to the palace under arrest. She scrambled backward, as the flickering torchlight gleamed on the officer’s insignia embroidered on his sleeves. But his next words made her nearly weep with relief. “The Lady Vinaver sent us out to find you. I am Ethoniel, a captain in the Third Company of Her Majesty’s Knights. If you would be so kind as to come with us, we will escort you to her Forest House.”
“How’d that thing get out?” asked one of the other soldiers, with a jerk of his thumb over his shoulder in Petri’s direction.
“Petri is not a thing,” she sputtered, even as the captain extended his hand and helped her to stand. Two of the others coaxed her mare onto her feet.
“We’ll take you both.” The captain spoke firmly. “It doesn’t look as if it’ll give us any trouble now. We can’t leave it here.” Indeed, Petri lay in a forlorn little heap, his arms bound to his sides, one leathery little cheek pressed to the pine needles and leaves that carpeted the forest floor, eyes closed, breathing hard, but every other muscle relaxed. “Forgive me for taking the time to ask you, lady, but how did this happen? Did it follow you, my lady? How did it get past the gates?”
She knew that for any other sidhe, the presence of a gremlin leagues away from the palace of the Queen of Faerie, the one place to which they were forever bound, at least according to all the lore, was surprising to the point of shocking. But how to explain to them that despite his incipient madness, it was Petri who’d guided her through the maze of the ancient forest, close enough to Vinaver’s house that they could be rescued? Surely Vinaver, herself outcast by the Court, would understand that Delphinea could not leave the loyal little gremlin behind, for it was abundantly clear that Timias and the Queen intended to lay at least part of the responsibility for the missing Caul on the entire gremlin population. But now was not the time to explain how or why the gremlin was with her. For, if it were possible, there was something even more unnatural within the forest, something she knew these soldiers must see for themselves to believe.
The torchlight illuminated the clearing, but it was not just the broken branches and torn undergrowth alone that made her certain of the direction in which to lead the guards. “The magic weakens as the Queen’s pregnancy advances, Captain.” Surely that explanation would have to suffice. “But I have to show you something,” she said. “Please come?” She gathered up her riding skirts and set off, without waiting to see if they followed or not. It was like a smell, she thought, a foul, ripe rot that led her with unerring instinct back through the thick wood. Once, she put her hand on a trunk to steady herself and was disturbed to feel a tremor beneath the bark, and a sharp sting shot up her arm. The branches dipped low, with a little moaning sigh, and for a moment, Delphinea thought she heard a whispered voice. She startled back, but the captain was at her elbow, the torch sending long shadows across his face.
“Where are we going, lady?”
For a moment, she was too puzzled by this sense of communication with the trees to answer the question, for she had never before felt any particular connection to the trees of Faerie. Indeed, in the high mountains of her homeland, trees such as these primeval oaks and ashes were rare. “This way,” was all she could say. And with a sense as certain as it was unexplainable, she led the grim-faced guards through the forest, to where the slaughtered host of the sidhe lay in heaps beside their dead horses and golden arms that gleamed like water in the gray dawn.
The guards gathered around Delphinea in shocked and silent horror, surveying the carnage. The corpses lay like discarded mannequins after a masque, armor all askew, swords and spears and broken arrows sticking up in all directions like bent matchsticks, impotent as mortal weapons. A mist floated over all, and from far away Delphinea could hear the rush of water. Without warning, a banner stirred and flapped on its staff, blown by a ghostly breeze that whispered through the trees, and as the mist moved over the remains, it seemed for one moment, the host might rise, laughing and whole. The captain raised his torch and Alemandine’s colors—indigo and violet and blue on gold-edged white—flashed against the backdrop of the black trees.
They spoke behind her, in hushed and disbelieving whispers. “Can this be the—”
“Are they the—”
“Is this really our—”
“These are our comrades,” interrupted the captain, answering all. There was a long silence, then he continued, in a voice heavy with loss, “You see, my lady, we, too, should have been among their company. But Prince Finuviel ordered us to stay and guard his mother’s house.”
“What could have done this?” another murmured.
“Who could have done this?” put in a third.
Delphinea could feel them tensing all around her, shuffling their feet, skittish as horses at the smell of blood. The captain bent down, holding his flaming torch a scant foot or so above the nearest corpse. He turned the body over. The face of the dead sidhe was calm, pale, and it crumpled into powder, finer than sand, as the light fell upon it. He ran the torch down the armor, to the insignia, the sword, and spurs the knight wore. A dark slash ran diagonally across the golden breastplate, where the metal itself was scarred and shriveled, as if burnt away to ash. “Silver,” he said after a long pause. He shut the empty helm and rose to his feet. “They’ve died the true death. They’ll be gone when the sunlight hits them.”
“So this is the host, then, that was called up to reinforce our borders? The host the minstrels sing of, in Alemandine’s Court?” She had missed the glorious parade by scant hours, arriving from the mountains too late. A chill ran through her that had nothing to do with the temperature of the air. She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling cold all over. Now she would remember all too well forever this last sight of them.
“That’s exactly who they appear to be, my lady.” The captain handed his torch to one of the others and gestured at his men. “Fan out. We’ll have to come back when it’s light, but let’s see as much as we can now.”
While the bodies are still intact. The chilling thought ran through her mind. But she said nothing, and he continued, “Look for His Grace. Look for the Prince. It’s the first question the Lady Vinaver will ask.” His voice faltered and broke, and Delphinea was struck once again by how much Finuviel seemed to be loved by everyone who knew him. She had begun to suspect that his was the face that haunted the visions that came to her while she slept—the visions mortals called “dreams.” The sidhe didn’t dream. At least, all the others didn’t. But lately the phantoms that haunted her sleep came more frequently, and she was no longer able to ignore them. She had come to Court hoping that someone there could explain them to her, and reassure her, perhaps, that this was not as unheard of as she was afraid it was. She had been afraid to mention them to anyone at all, but she had resolved to tell Vinaver, if she ever had the chance. She didn’t want to think how Vinaver would react to the news that the army her son led had been slaughtered and that her son himself was missing.
For if the minstrels sang sweetly of the hosting of the sidhe, it was nothing to the songs they sang about Finuviel. Finuviel was the “shining one,” loved by all who knew him, claimed by his mother to have been fathered by the great god Herne himself one Beltane. Although everyone dismissed Vinaver’s claim as a pathetic attempt to gain some place for herself at the Court, it was universally acknowledged that Finuviel, whoever his father had been, was the epitome of every grace, and the master of every art. Even those who scorned Vinaver publicly spoke highly of Finuviel, and it was Finuviel that Vinaver and a small group of councilors conspired to place upon the throne of Faerie in the sick Queen’s stead. What would they do, if Finuviel were lost?
But he’s not. The knowledge rose from someplace deep inside her, a small voice that spoke with such silent authority, she felt immediately calmed, although she did not understand either how she knew such a thing, or why she should trust such knowledge. All she knew was that she did. She watched the torches bob up and down across the field as the soldiers wove through the heaps of the dead. At last the captain waved them all back. “Well?”
“We don’t see him, sir,” answered the first to reach the perimeter.
“But it appears that every last one of them was slain. There’s no one of the entire host left, except for us?” The second soldier’s brow was drawn, his mouth tight and grim.
“We should take the lady to Her Grace,” interjected a third. “She has done her duty by bringing us to this terrible place, and we have not yet discharged ours to her.”
There was a murmur of general agreement. Delphinea met the captain’s eyes. They were gray in the shadows, lighter than the gray of his doublet, gray as the pale faces of the dead sidhe beneath the graying sky. “Who could’ve done this, Captain?”
“Mortals.” He shrugged and looked around with a deep sigh. “From what I can tell, they were all killed with silver blades. Who else can wield silver in such fashion?” In the orange torchlight, his face was yellowish and gaunt.
“But why—”
He shrugged and turned away before she could finish her sentence. The sight alone defied reason. We are all sickening, she thought. The Caul must be undone or we shall all sicken and die. She turned away silently, gathering up her riding skirts, the men following. That so many should die the true death, the final death, was terrible enough. But was it really possible that mortals—mere mortals, as the lorespinners dismissed them—could have armed themselves with silver and attacked an entire host?
So much was happening, so much was changing. Round about the circle goes, dark to light and back it flows. The old nursery song spooled out of her memory. But for the first time, she had the sense that the turning wheel of time was in danger of spinning violently out of control.
By the time they reached Petri, the dawn light had strengthened enough to show him lying curled into a heavy sleep. He had stopped making any noise at all except for long shuddering snores and his mouth hung slack over the gag. She wondered how long it would take to convince Vinaver that Finuviel did not lie dead beneath the ancient trees with the others.
For Finuviel was not dead, she was quite sure of that, in an odd way she could not at all explain. Something had happened to her last night, something had changed within her, awakened in her, in some way she did not yet fully understand but knew with absolute certainty she should trust. And she knew that Finuviel was not dead. Not yet.
But these grim guards would have to see for themselves—Vinaver would require as much proof as could be had that Finuviel was not here. She would not take Delphinea’s word for it; why should she? So Delphinea said nothing as they marched back beneath the trees and it struck her that the sound of the wind in the branches was like the lowing of the cattle on the hillsides of her homeland. What wind? Her head jerked up and around, as she realized that the air was still. The captain, ever alert, held up his hand.
“Are you all right, lady?”
The curious sound stopped. She shook her head, feeling foolish. She was only overwrought, and succumbing to the rigors of the night. Best not to call attention to it. What would her mother say to do? Smile. “I but found last night somewhat taxing.”
It was as brave an attempt as she could muster at the polished language of the Court, and no lady with a lifetime’s experience at Court could have phrased it better. Half smiles bent their mouths, but melted like spring snow. How meaningless the words sounded, brittle as the drying leaves gusting at their feet, swirling at their ankles in deepening drifts. There was simply no etiquette to deal with such a loss, which must affect the soldiers doubly hard. What stroke of chance had led Finuviel to send these six back to guard his mother’s house? But why did he think it needed special guarding? How vulnerable could it be so deep within the Old Forest of Faerie? It was leagues and leagues from the goblin-infested Wastelands. Had he suspected something? Had he known that mortals armed with silver might attack?
She felt, rather than heard, a deep throbbing moan as she passed beneath the branches of a nearly leafless giant. Its great trunk divided into two armlike branches that ended in countless outstretched skeletal hands. The Wild Hunt had swept many of the trees bare. Yet the trees of Faerie had never before been bare. Their leaves turned from gold to red to russet to brown to green in one eternal round of color, and if a few fell, new ones grew to take their place, in an endless cycle of regeneration. She thought of the dust on the floor of the Caul chamber, the rust on the hinges of the huge brass doors, of the rotting bodies of her cattle and the foals, the fouled streams. Was this just another piece of evidence that Faerie was truly dying? But she was silent as she allowed the guards to help her onto her saddle. The mare seemed fully recuperated, and tossed her head and whickered a greeting as Delphinea gathered up the reins.
Petri was slung over the back of another horse like a sack of meal. Though Delphinea protested his treatment, the horse shied and whinnied and finally a blanket had to be placed beneath the gremlin and the animal before the horse could be induced to carry him.
“I cannot imagine what circumstances brought you here on such a strange, sad night, my lady.” The captain swung into his saddle, and raised his arm in the signal for the company to ride. He rode past, stern-faced and tensed, and she realized he did not expect an answer. The milk-white horses moved like wraiths beneath the black leafless branches, as a red sun rose higher in a violet-cerulean sky. Even now, stark as it was, it was beautiful, beautiful in the intensity of its pulsing radiance. The air was crisp, but heavy, charged with portent.
They rode in grim silence another half turn of a glass. The light grew stronger and suddenly, the thick wood parted, and a most extraordinary sight rose up. Like a living wall, a latticework of high hedge grew laced between the trees, and just beyond, high above the ground, within what appeared to be a grove of ancient oaks and sturdy ashes, Delphinea saw a house that looked as if it had grown out of the trees, not been built into them.
The reins slackened in her hands as she gaped, openmouthed, at the peaked roofs, all covered in shingled bark, windows laced like spiderwebs strung between the branches. Winding stairs curved up and around the thick trunks, and tiny lanterns twinkled in and among the leaf-laden branches. There is magic yet in Faerie, she thought, and was a little comforted. Her mother’s house of light and stone was nothing like this living wonder, and even Alemandine’s palace, as beautiful as its turrets of ivory and crystal were, could not compare to this house of trees.
As if he’d heard her thoughts, Ethoniel smiled. “Indeed, my lady. The Forest House of the Lady Vinaver is a wonder in which all Faerie should delight, not shun.” He held up his hand and the company slowed their mounts to a walk all around her. He leaned over and touched her forearm. “Slowly, lady. Do you not see the danger that grows within the hedge?”
As they came closer, she saw that the hedge was full of jagged thorns, skinny as needles, some as long as her fingers, with tiny barbs at their ends which would make them doubly difficult to remove, all twined about with pale white flowers that put out such a delicate scent that Delphinea had to force herself not to push her nose into the hedge’s depths, to drink more deeply of it. She realized that the plant was nourished by the blood of things that impaled themselves upon the thorns, and from the profusion of flowers, the thickness of the vines, and the lushness of the scent, there were plenty of creatures that did. She shuddered as she rode through the narrow archway that formed the only gate, shrinking away from what was at once so beautiful, and so deadly, so tempting, and so dangerous.
Only one leather-clad attendant came forward, slipping out from a set of doors within the great trunk of an enormous tree, and Delphinea wondered once again why Finuviel had diverted any number of his host at all to guard Vinaver’s house. Secluded as it was within the heart of the Great Forest, and surrounded by the high hedge of bloodthirsty thorns, it appeared not at all vulnerable, except perhaps to a direct goblin attack. But was such a thing likely? From the talk of the Court, she had surmised that the war was expected to be fought on the borders of the Wastelands, not within the very heart of Faerie itself.
But the fact that Finuviel had regard for his mother’s safety made her like him, too, and she wondered if she was falling under the spell of his reputation. She followed the captain of the guard inside the house, trying not to gawk at the golden grace of the polished staircase that flowed seamlessly around the giant central oak forming the main pillar of this part of the house. From certain angles, the staircase was invisible; from others, it was the focal point that drew the eye up and into the leafy canopy forming the roof. She kilted up her skirts and followed the men up the steps, trying not to trip as the golden radiance filtered down, soothing and nourishing as new milk. She closed her eyes, her feet moving in some unconscious synchrony, bathing in the incandescence, forgetting for a moment the dire news they bore. There was only the warmth and the light. On and on, up and up, she climbed, and the face that filled her vision against the backdrop of rosy light was framed with coal-black curls. But instead of smiling, the face contorted in agony and Delphinea gasped, opened her eyes and tripped.
“Watch your step, my lady,” growled the guard who had Petri, by this time in a dead stupor, slung across his back.
Still groggy from the vision, Delphinea could only murmur. It was bad enough that the dreams came while she slept. If she was going to start having them while she was awake, she would have to talk to someone about them. Vinaver, hopefully.
But as they reached an upper landing, Ethoniel paused before a door and turned to Delphinea. “You’ve had a harrowing night, my lady. This may be somewhat difficult. I don’t expect Lady Vinaver will welcome this news.”
“But I want her to know I’m here—maybe there’s something I can do—” Maybe she will believe me if I tell her Finuviel is alive. But she left the last unspoken, and looked at him with mute appeal.
He looked dubious, but shrugged. “As you wish, my lady. The Lady Vinaver is given to some unexpected reactions on occasion. Beware.” He knocked on the door, and opening it, stepped inside an antechamber. He motioned Delphinea, and the guard carrying Petri inside, then knocked on the inner door. Vinaver herself opened the door.
All potential greetings died in Delphinea’s throat as the expression on Vinaver’s face changed from one of welcome to one of horrified disbelief at Ethoniel’s quick report. She had only stared at him, her eyes glowing with a terrible green fire in her suddenly white and flame-red face. Delphinea thought Vinaver might faint, and she wondered if it was that for which Ethoniel had sought to prepare her.
But nothing could’ve prepared Delphinea for the sight of Vinaver’s collapse, for she fell to her knees in a brittle crunch of bone, as the framework of her wings splintered like icicles. And as Delphinea watched in horror, the wings sheared away completely, the tissues tearing with the wet sound of splitting skin, leaving twin fountains of pale blood arcing from Vinaver’s shoulder blades.
She could think of nothing to say or do, for nothing but intuition made her sure that Finuviel was not dead. Not yet. And in that moment Delphinea understood that if anything really did happen to Finuviel, the consequences would be far more terrible than anything she had yet imagined.
As if from very far away, Delphinea heard Ethoniel bellow for Vinaver’s attendants, saw a very dark and burly stranger rise from a chair beside the fireplace and point in her direction. She felt the room suddenly grow very hot and very crowded, as more guards and attendants rushed in. Vinaver’s blood was flowing over her shoulders like a cloak, running in great waves down her arms, dripping off her fingers, soaking the fabric of the back of her gown. The captain turned on his heel, brushing past her, and she felt strong arms ease her off her feet, as the world finally, mercifully, went dark.
When next she opened her eyes, she was lying on a low couch in the little antechamber of Vinaver’s bower. The door to the inner room was closed. The couch had been placed next to a polished hearth in which a small fire burned. A basket of bread and cheese and apples had been placed beside her, and a tall goblet, filled with something clear that smelled sweet, stood beside a covered posset-cup on a wooden tray. A drone worthy of a beehive rose from the floor beside her. She looked down. It was Petri, lying curled up on a red hearth rug, in a round patch of sunlight, his head on a small pillow, sound asleep. Poor little thing, she thought. If her ordeal had been bad, his was surely worse.
“How d’you feel?”
She bolted straight up at the unexpected voice. It belonged to the big dark stranger she’d noticed in Vinaver’s bower before. He was sitting on the opposite side of the hearth, and she knew instantly what had drawn her attention, even amidst those few terrible moments in Vinaver’s presence. He was mortal.
It was so obviously apparent she did not question how she knew. He looked faintly ridiculous, for the stool on which he hunched was much too low for his long legs. He wore a simple fir-green robe of fine-spun wool, over a pair of baggy trews which from their rough and ragged appearance she assumed were of mortal make. The skin of his bare legs and feet poking out from the bottoms of the trews was bluish white, covered by a sparser pelt of the same coarse black hair that curled across his face. She wondered, with a little shock, if it were possible that Vinaver kept the mortal as a pet, just as in the songs the milkmaids sang, of moon-mazed mortals lost in Faerie, willing slaves to the sidhe. Her mother did not consider such tales seemly and scorned all talk of mortals. Delphinea had never imagined she would meet one, so she examined him with unabashed curiosity.
It was midmorning or later, and the light streamed down through windows set within the upper branches of the trees, filling the room with a brittle brilliance, casting strong shadows on the mortal’s dark face. He must be old, she thought, very old, even as mortals counted years, for his dark hair was shot through in most places with broad swaths of gray and white and his skin was grayish and hung off his face. Deep lines ran from the inner corners of his eyes, all the way past the outer corners of his mouth. His eyes burned with such intensity there was no other color they could be but black.
A tremor ran through her as her eyes locked with his, for it seemed that within those depths lay some knowledge that she not even yet imagined, coupled with pain, a lot of pain. His forehead gleamed with sweat, and as he raised his arm to mop his brow with a linen kerchief, she caught a glimpse of a white bandage, stark against his skin, beneath the vivid green. But his eyes were like twin beacons burning through a storm, and she realized that whatever the source of his pain, he wasn’t afraid of it.
She felt drawn to his solid strength, sensing that he was strong in a way that nothing of Faerie could ever be. His essence was all earth and water, unlike the sidhe, who were manifestations of light and air. One corner of his mouth lifted in the slightest hint of a smile. “You put me in mind of my daughter, sidhe-leen. All big eyes and innocence.” He closed his eyes, and winced as if in pain, then opened them. “I’m Dougal,” he said. “What do they call you?”
Delphinea paused, uncertain how to address him. Meeting a mortal was one of the many recent events her mother had failed to foresee. But the way he looked at her, as if she were a skittish filly, calmed her for some reason she did not understand, and for a moment, at least, she felt comforted. The Samhain sun had risen on a world utterly different from the one on which it had set, and in this upside-down, topsy-turvy world, time suddenly had new meaning. Was it only yesterday that Delphinea had awakened in her bed within the palace of the Faerie Queen? So much had happened—the complete control of the Queen Timias had been able to achieve, and subsequent arrest of all the Queen’s Council, her own escape with Petri, their flight into the ancient Forest and the Wild Hunt that had nearly overrun them, even Petri’s madness, was yet nothing compared to the discovery of the decimated host and the sight of Vinaver’s collapse. Nothing and no one were quite what they appeared; no one and nothing were what she had been prepared to expect. Was it possible this mortal was involved in the whole confused plot? She wasn’t at all sure how to answer the question. “My name is Delphinea,” she said at last. “Will the Lady Vinaver be all right?”
He shrugged and folded his arms across his chest carefully. “Don’t know yet. No one’s come out of there—” he bent his head forward to indicate the closed bower door, then jerked it backward, toward the outer door “—and no one’s come through there since the guard went out to see what’s what.”
She cocked her head, considering. He didn’t sound quite the way she’d imagined a moon-mazed mortal would, and his weary, battered appearance certainly didn’t fit the flowery descriptions of them, either. “May I—may I be so curious as to inquire exactly how it happens that you have come to be here, Sir Dougal?”
At that his smile reached his eyes. “Pretty speech, sidhe-leen. I’m no one’s sir. In my world, I’m a blacksmith. And in this one, too, more’s the pity.” He broke off and the smile was gone. Far from being enchanted, he seemed quite vexed.
“You don’t seem very happy to be here.”
He laughed so hard his shoulders shook, and a whiplash of pain made him clutch his arm. “And that surprises you, does it?” What amazed her more was that he could laugh in spite of everything. But maybe, being mortal, he didn’t really understand what was happening. He sagged, sighed and shook his head. “You’re right, though. There’re many, many places I would much rather be. But that doesn’t answer your question, does it?” He indicated his arm with another jerk of his head. “Met up with a goblin. Woke up on this side of the border. She found me, brought me here. Here I am.”
“The Lady Vinaver healed you?”
“For a price, of course she did.” His mouth turned down in a bitter twist and for a moment, she thought he might say something more. But he only drew a long, careful breath and let it out slowly. Finally he looked at her. “What sort of sidhe are you, anyway?”
There was a long silence while Delphinea, completely taken aback, cast about for some sort of appropriate response. Surely he wasn’t inquiring about her ancestry? He seemed to imply there was something different about her, and she raised her chin, determined not to let a mortal get the best of her, when he leaned forward and caught her gaze with a twinkle. “But the world’s full of surprises, isn’t it? So now you tell me—what’s a small sidhe-leen like you doing traveling alone on Samhain of all nights? We heard the Wild Hunt ride past—I heard the noise that—that—thing made—”
“Petri is not a thing. He’s a gremlin.”
“Oh, is that what you call it?”
“What would you call him?”
“Hmm.” Dougal cocked his head and cradled his injured arm across his chest, as if it pained him. “Looks more like what the old stories say a trixie looks like. Brownie’s another name in some parts and my gram called them sprites. Never saw one myself. Some say they all got themselves banished from the mortal world long ago for their mischief. I say it’s a damn convenient explanation for why no one ever sees them. But whatever it is, why do you keep it naked?”
“Naked?” Delphinea blinked. She flicked her eyes over to Petri. He wore the same court livery he always wore. It was, as always, perfectly clean, although somewhat rumpled. She would have said more, but the inner door opened, and Leonine, one of Vinaver’s attendants, beckoned.
“Lady Vinaver requests you both.” The lady was gowned in a plain russet smock, and her long yellow curls were held back by a simple gold chaplet. “If you will, my lady?” She dropped a small curtsy, then rose, and indicated the open door. “Sir mortal, if you please?”
Dougal made a sound almost like a growl, and again Delphinea had the distinct impression that unlike the mortals she’d heard of, he hated everything about Faerie. But why, when everything she’d seen of Shadow—the dust, the rust, even the clothes he wore—was so coarse, so crude? He needed one hand on the mantel to pull himself up. Delphinea followed Leonine through the door and hesitated, just inside the threshold. Another attendant, this one clothed in the color of autumn wheat, slipped past them, carrying a large willow basket of stained linen.
Vinaver lay on the edge of a great bed, which incorporated a natural hollow within the tree. It was lined with silk velvet that resembled moss, draped with filmy curtains. Her usually vivid color had drained away, leaving her coppery hair dull as the rust that marred the hinges of the Caul Chamber, her narrow cheeks and shriveled lips chalky. For the first time, Delphinea saw the resemblance she bore to Alemandine. And to Timias. Great Herne, he’s her father, too. And didn’t she say he wanted her drowned at birth? She had no memory of her own father—he had gone into the West a long time ago, but her mother never failed to speak of him with anything but bemused anticipation of seeing him again.
“Leonine, bring her closer. Come here, child.” Vinaver’s voice was faint, but still sharp with innate command, and Delphinea was glad to hear Vinaver yet retained something of her determined spirit. But as the attendant gently propelled her across the polished floor, Delphinea’s eyes filled with tears when she saw Vinaver’s face more closely. “Don’t weep for me,” Vinaver said. “There’s not enough time.” Her hand plucked at Delphinea’s sleeve until she slid her warm hand into Vinaver’s cold one. Vinaver tugged weakly and Delphinea leaned over, until her face hung only a scant handspan above the older sidhe’s. It occurred to her that Vinaver appeared only marginally more lifelike than the pale faces of the dead sidhe in the starlight. “I hated those wings. I was a fool to suggest them and a fool to grow them.” She paused, as if gathering her strength, and tugged again once more, until Delphinea’s ear was practically right against her lips. Her breath was like the flutter of a butterfly’s wings. “I want you to tell me, quickly, don’t think about it, just tell me—is Finuviel dead—truly dead?”
Not yet. “Not yet.” The words rose automatically to Delphinea’s lips. All she had to do was open her mouth.
“Not yet,” Vinaver breathed. She closed her eyes, then opened them. “He didn’t come, but you did. With a gremlin of all things. Whatever possessed you?” She gripped Delphinea’s hand so tightly, Delphinea was forced to bite back a yelp of pain. “How was it ever possible you were able to bring the gremlin? And why? What on earth made you do it?”
“He saved me, my lady. He led me here. But for Petri, I might have met whatever killed that host, myself. But, m-my lady—” she faltered. Where to even begin? She didn’t understand any of it. She blurted out the first question that occurred to her. “Why do you ask me if your son still lives? I’ve never even met him. And why are you surprised that I should come? You told me yourself that my life’s in danger, and you turned out to be right. Which is why I brought Petri, for he helped me to escape.” Delphinea turned, following the movement of Vinaver’s eyes, to see Petri crouching in the doorway. “Timias intended to sequester them early. It seemed so cruel—so meaningless—”
“Timias has his reasons, child, don’t ever doubt that Timias does anything without a reason.” An ugly look flashed across Vinaver’s face. “This should not be.”
Delphinea collapsed to her knees, so that she was level with Vinaver’s face. “It seems that there are many things that should not be, my lady. Perhaps you’d better tell me what’s going on. Where’s the Caul, and where’s Finuviel, and who’s responsible for that horror in the Forest?”
But Vinaver only closed her eyes and sighed. “So many questions all at once.” She tried to shake her head a little but winced.
“I have more.”
“Tell her the truth, Vinaver.” Dougal spoke from the door. Petri sniffed at his leg like a hound at a scent, and Dougal swatted him away. “Tell her the whole truth.”
“We took the Caul,” Vinaver answered wearily, her eyes closed, her cheek flat against her pillow. “Finuviel and I, and we gave it to a mortal.”
“But why?” Delphinea rocked back on her heels in horror.
“It’s as you guessed, child. The Silver Caul is poisoning Faerie. I couldn’t tell you the truth in the palace. How was I to know you’d not go running to Timias the moment I’d left your room? We took the Caul, Finuviel and I, and he gave it to a mortal to hold in surety of the bargain.”
“What bargain?” Delphinea drew back, staring down at Vinaver in horror.
“We needed a silver dagger. Where else to get it but from the mortals?”
“You mean to kill the Queen?”
“No.” Vinaver shut her eyes once more. “I could never kill my sister.” She opened her eyes. “But, she’s not really—she’s not really my sister.” Delphinea cocked her head and sank down once more onto a low stool that Leonine had drawn up to the bed, as Vinaver continued. “Alemandine isn’t really anything at all—she’s neither sidhe nor mortal. She’s a—a residue of all the energy that was left over when the Caul was created. The male and female energy mingling in my mother’s womb was enough to create her out of ungrounded magic, magic from her union with Timias and the mortal. They didn’t consider what would happen—they didn’t understand the energies they were working with. No one ever really does, you know. If I learned nothing else from the Hag, I learned that.” She broke off and with a shaking hand pushed back a loose lock of Delphinea’s hair. “There was nothing to say that Alemandine should not be Queen. After all, she was born first. And whatever else Alemandine is, she is a part of me. So no, the intention was never to kill the Queen. Timias is the one meant to die. Timias must die, Timias will die when the Caul is destroyed. For as long as the Caul endures, so will Timias. He will never choose to go into the West. He’ll never have to.”
Delphinea glanced over her shoulder. Dougal stood in the doorway still, his arms crossed over his chest. “Philomemnon said Alemandine would die when the Caul was destroyed. Is that true?”
“I doubt she has much longer to live as it is, though yes, that is a consequence. But what would you have us do? There is no way to save both the Queen and Faerie—and to save the Queen is to ensure that we all die. What choice was there really?”
“So you made a bargain with a mortal—for the dagger. And what was your part?”
“In exchange for the dagger we promised the host—”
“The host in the Forest.”
“We knew the mortal world was in chaos. A mad king sits on the throne, the people chafe beneath the rule of his foreign Queen. The events of the Shadowlands echo Faerie and those in Faerie, Shadow. It was in our best interests to resolve the strife there—”
“Why, that’s exactly what Timias said to the Council,” Delphinea blurted. “That day in the Council—the day he came back—”
“Whatever I say of him, he’s not a fool. He understands better than anyone how tightly the worlds are bound.” Vinaver plucked restlessly at the linen pillow. “But now—” She raised her head and looked directly at Petri. “Now—”
But before she could finish, the door opened and Ethoniel hesitated on the threshold, with a flushed face, breathing hard. From somewhere far below, Delphinea heard distant shouts. They all turned and looked at him, and Vinaver moved her head weakly on the pillow, beckoning Ethoniel with a feeble wave. “What news, Captain?”
At once, Ethoniel crossed the room and went down on one knee beside the bed. “I bring both good and bad news, my lady,” he hesitated. “We found no sign of Prince Finuviel, no sign at all. We found nothing of his—neither armor, nor standard, nor horse—and all of us combed the sad remains as carefully as we could. But there is a company of knights, at least ten thirteens or more, marching on the Forest House. They are coming to arrest both you and the Lady Delphinea—” here, he turned to look at Delphinea over his shoulder “—yes, my lady, you, too, on charges of high treason and the theft of the Silver Caul. They are more than a hundred against my one squad, my lady. What would you have me do?”
Even Delphinea understood his dilemma. He likely was outranked by whoever led the guards. To defy to open the gates was treason. To disobey Finuviel’s orders to defend his mother offended honor.
For a long moment no one spoke. Then Petri hissed from the door and he scrabbled forward, his eyes cast low, his tail tucked under in perfect obeisance. In a series of quick gestures, accompanied by a few stifled hisses, he motioned, I can help you find him, great lady.
Vinaver’s eyes narrowed and she looked down at the cringing gremlin, and then up at Delphinea. “The removal of the Caul from the moonstone must’ve made it possible for him to leave.”
Petri’s eyes were huge, and he looked up at Delphinea with flared nostrils. I can help you find him, lady. I know the way through Shadow. I can find him. And the Caul.
“Petri says he can help me find Finuviel.” Delphinea clasped his hand in both of hers. The thought that she should be the one to look for Finuviel jolted her into the realization of exactly how dire the situation was.
At once Dougal shifted on his feet, crossing and uncrossing his arms. “I don’t like that idea. There’s a saying, never a trust a trixie.”
“What about the knights, my lady? They’ve orders to burn the Forest House if we don’t open the gates.” Ethoniel broke in, desperation clear.
Vinaver moved her head restlessly on the pillow. “We have to find Finuviel. We’re running out of time. The Caul must be unMade before Mid-Winter.”
“I suppose I’m the one that’s seen him last,” said Dougal. “With Cadwyr. That night at my forge.”
Beside Delphinea, Petri tugged on her hand. I can help you, lady. Please, lady, I can help you find the Caul. I can find the mortal Duke. I can find the Caul. I brought you here. He stepped in front of Vinaver and groveled before her. Please, great lady. You know how we, too, are bound to the Caul. It calls to me from Shadow, even now.
“Let me go find him,” Dougal said suddenly.
Vinaver replied with an arch look, “That’s not exactly our bargain, is it, Master Smith?”
“Do you want your son and the Caul found or not? I’m the last who saw him, I know who he was with. Who else do you have who knows Brynhyvar the way I do?”
I know it better than any mortal—I know the Underneath and the In-between. I can take her through the Mother-Wood. Petri quivered, his hands knotted tightly together. “Forgive me, gentle folk, if my unkind voice offends,” he said in his high-pitched strangled shriek. “But I remember—I can lead—let me—let me—”
“Be quiet,” interrupted Vinaver. “Be still, khouri-kan.”
“Delphinea can’t go,” broke in Ethoniel. “They’re here to take her as well.”
“But I’m the one who discovered the Caul was missing,” Delphinea exclaimed. “But for me—”
“But for you, the plan might have proceeded apace, without anyone at Court ever knowing,” Vinaver cut her off with a savagery belied by her appearance.
“Then let me go,” said Delphinea, looking down at Petri, who squeezed her hand and bowed gravely.
“I should be the one to go,” insisted Dougal.
“You cannot go, Master Dougal. You’ve a bargain to fulfill. Don’t you?”
Dougal shut his mouth and crossed his arms over his chest. “What exactly are you thinking, Vinaver? Surely this child isn’t—”
“I am not a child,” said Delphinea. “I may appear young in mortal years, but I have known far more seasons than you, Master Smith. I can find him. I know I can. Petri will help.” She squeezed his shoulder and Petri bowed.
“There you are, Master Dougal. Delphinea has certain advantages—”
“She may have certain advantages from your point of view, but—”
“My lady Vinaver, master mortal, with all due respect, you’ve no time to continue to debate this,” interrupted Ethoniel. “I need an answer, my lady. What shall I do?”
“Open the gates, Captain. I’m in no condition to travel. They may see for themselves if they wish. And no one can make me leave until I am satisfied my son does not lie among that host. Is that acceptable? Does it satisfy both the bonds of honor and command? All I ask is a delay—long enough for Delphinea to cross into Shadow—Leonine, fetch my cloak of shadows.”
As the attendant left the room, Ethoniel hesitated. “There’s nothing more I’d like to do, my lady. But they’ll expect to see the two—”
“Then give them me as well,” said Dougal.
Ethoniel covered his mouth and coughed, then smiled as one might at a well-trained hound. “Unfortunately, master mortal, you and the lady Delphinea bear only the slightest resemblance to each other. Unless you’ve not noticed.”
“Put a cloak on me and let me pretend to be Vinaver. They expect Vinaver to be tall—they don’t know she lost the wings. She’s a tiny thing now—let her lie on her bed and pretend to be the sidhe-leen. What do you say, Captain? Demand they search the field for Finuviel. And unless you’ve a better idea as to how to rig some on that maid there—” He jerked his head as Leonine stepped into the room, carrying a thick, dark cloak. “I’m about as tall as Vinaver’s wings were. Unless you’ve not noticed.”
I shall lead you, lady. Petri smiled up at her and stroked Delphinea’s hand. He rubbed his cheek against the back of it as Dougal frowned.
“Is there no one else to take her?” asked Dougal. “I don’t like the thought of that at all.”
“Why not?” asked Delphinea. “Petri’s been my friend.”
But Vinaver was looking up at Dougal with weary acknowledgment. “You’re right, Master Dougal, there are reasons not to trust the khouri, or trixie, as you call him. But the khouri’s correct. He is bound to the Caul. And Shadow is his native element. So long as the Caul lasts, his power is largely bound to it. I believe him when he says he can find it.”
“And what if Finuviel and the Caul aren’t in the same place?”
But cries echoing up the great stair forestalled Vinaver’s answer.
“Captain Ethoniel, you must come!”
“Are we to open the gates, Captain?”
“Captain, come now!”
The voices were closer now, accompanied by the patter of booted feet on the polished stair.
“Open the gates, Captain. But hold them in the courtyard,” said Vinaver. “Come, child, let Leonine put the cloak on you.”
Before Delphinea could agree, the other woman settled the dark cloak over her shoulders. It was a color between dark purple and black, the color of the indigo night sky, and it was soft and thick and silky all at once. “What stuff is this cloak made of?” she asked as she spread it wide. It fell in rich dark ripples, as if it absorbed the light, rather than reflected it.
“Faerie silk, and the shadows of Shadow,” said Vinaver. “There are only two, and how they came to be, I don’t have time to tell you. Finuviel had one. Now you have the other.”
“What does it do?” asked Delphinea, turning this way and that. It had a damp feeling to it that was not completely pleasant.
“It will make you invisible in the eyes of mortals, if you draw it over yourself completely.” Vinaver took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “We’ve not much time, so listen carefully, Delphinea, and I will tell you what I can. Mortals are highly susceptible and suggestible but you must not underestimate the effect they shall have upon you. A fresh mortal intoxicates like nothing else—”
“What in the name of Herne do you mean by a fresh mortal?” asked Dougal. “And do you mind not referring to my people as if we were a race of animals that happen to walk and talk?”
But Vinaver ignored the interruption. “Like nothing you can even imagine. For some it’s the way they smell, or taste, for others, the way they look. Whatever it is, and however it strikes you, beware of it. Keep your wits about you, for mortals are perverse, and when you expect them to do one thing, they will do the opposite. Don’t try to understand it, but seek to use it, if needs must. Keep close to the trixie, and don’t let him from your sight. Keep him tethered to you if you sleep. Water is one sure way back to Faerie, the other is through the trees of a deep forest. For the trees of Faerie and Shadow are linked. Some even say they are the same.” She shut her eyes and took another audible breath. “Listen as you pass below them. Listen and see if you hear them talking.” Her eyes fluttered open. “They will help you. I have no doubt.”
“Why are you so sure?” asked Delphinea. “Is it only the way I look? There are visions that come to me in my sleep—”
“What do you see?”
“I see Finuviel. I hear his name.”
Vinaver reached out once more and touched Delphinea’s cheek with a shaking hand. “I understand why you’ve come. Bring my son and the Caul back to Faerie. You were meant to find them. I’m sure of it.” She closed her eyes.
Delphinea hesitated, wondering if Vinaver truly knew, or if she only wanted to know, and she wondered how much Vinaver really did know, and how much she actually did. But before she could speak, Dougal stopped her with a hand on her arm. “I’ve a word of advice. Don’t go directly to Cadwyr of Allovale. Go instead to his uncle Donnor, the Duke of Gar. He’s the only one with any influence over Cadwyr. Donnor’s an honorable man, whereas Cadwyr’s like a blade too well oiled. He shines pretty, but he turns too easily in your hand. Find the Duke of Gar, and tell him—” He paused, then shrugged. “I suppose under the circumstances it doesn’t much matter what anyone thinks. Tell Donnor that Dougal of Killcairn sent you, and if possible, ask him to get word to my daughter—my girl, Nessa—back in Killcairn. Tell her I’m alive. All right?”
As Delphinea nodded, Leonine stuck her head around the door. “I think, my lady, that you must leave now, if you’re to leave at all. The company from the palace is within the courtyard, and the commander is demanding to be let in.”
“Go, child,” said Vinaver. “And, khouri-kan, remember that I know the secret of your unMaking. Betray me, and I might forget it.”
Petri hissed and bowed and rubbed his hands, and Leonine led Delphinea toward to the door. As she stepped out into the hall, she turned back to Vinaver. “My lady?”
Vinaver’s pain-dulled eyes flickered muddy green in the gloom. “Yes, child?”
“Talking to the trees—understanding the trees—isn’t that a gift reserved for the Queen of the sidhe?”
Vinaver smiled then, but her face was sad. “Child, don’t you understand? You are the next Queen of Faerie. That is, if Faerie survives at all.”
There was the faintest smell of rot in the air. Like the warm tap of a random spring raindrop, the odor drifted, now here, now there, never so much that one was ever quite sure what one smelled. But it was enough to make one pause, turn one’s head, wrinkle one’s nose and sniff again. It had first been detected after Samhain, and it was becoming noticeable enough that a fashion for wearing perfumed lace face masks was spreading rapidly throughout the ladies of the Court.
And it was noticeable enough that Timias had been forced to listen, a prisoner in his chambers, to Her Majesty’s Master of the House, Lord Rimbaud, and her Chatelaine, Lady Evardine, while they lamented the situation for nearly a full turn of the glass, before a summons from Alemandine’s Consort, Hudibras, interrupted their torrent of complaint. Now Timias tightened his grip on his oak staff, and pressed his mouth into a thin line as he hurried through the palace of the Faerie Queen as quickly as his aged legs would allow. A small puff of stink through the lemon-scented air was enough to make him furrow his already wrinkled brow as he scurried through the arching marble corridors, hung with tapestries and mosaics so intricately and perfectly executed, some were known to move. He passed the image of a stag brought down by a huntsman’s bow, the great antlered head lifted in eternal agony, and something made Timias pause, transfixed, before it. The crimson blood flowing from the stag’s side shone with a curious rippling gleam, as if the blood that flowed from the wound was real.
Timias stepped closer, narrowing his eyes. As another trace of putrid odor filled his nostrils, he reached out and touched the gleaming rivulet. For a moment his finger registered the cold pressure of the stone as wetness and he started back, peering closely at his finger, half expecting to see a smear of blood. But his fingertip was clear, without a hint of moisture. Of course there wasn’t any blood, he told himself, there was no blood. How could there be blood? It was only a picture. There was no blood. It was but a trick of his overwrought senses, a consequence of his agonized mind. He had enough to occupy a dozen councilors. His discovery with Delphinea of the missing Caul led to the disclosure of the plot against the Queen, and allowed him to once again assert his position and authority as the oldest of all the Council. The stupid girl had not waited long enough to allow him to thank her properly before she’d run off. The first thing he’d done had been to order the arrests of every one of the Queen’s councilors in residence at the Court. This meant that, while the immediate threat was contained until he could determine who was to be trusted, he alone remained to steer Alemandine through the task of holding her realm together both under the strain engendered by her pregnancy and the inevitable attack by the Goblin King. But the calamity of the missing Caul, coupled with the revelation of Vinaver’s treachery, made what would have been a heavy burden especially weighty. A lesser sidhe, one without so many years and experience as his, would surely not be equal to the task. He touched the wall again, just to make sure. “No blood,” he whispered aloud. “No blood.” He realized he was still muttering as he stalked through the halls to Alemandine’s chambers.
There was certainly enough to mutter about. Vinaver, that foul abomination, had seized the opportunity afforded by his absence in the Shadowlands to hatch some horrific plot against her sister, Alemandine, the details of which he did not yet understand. It was her cronies on the Council he’d had arrested, all of them—all of them save Vinaver herself, who’d prudently retired to her Forest House. Well, he’d not let that stop him. The very hour he’d discovered Lady Delphinea gone missing, he’d sent a company of the Queen’s Guard out to drag both her and Vinaver back to the palace. He’d find out what had happened to the missing Caul and then turn his attention to the defense of Faerie. The calculated way in which Vinaver had so coldly plotted against her sister when the pregnant Queen was at her most vulnerable intrigued him and made him admire her in a way he refused to contemplate.
He’d already decided that it had been a mistake to allow Finuviel to take over Artimour’s command, and the sooner Artimour was restored to his proper place, and Finuviel recalled, the easier they could all rest. After all, it was only logical to assume that Finuviel was an integral part of Vinaver’s scheme to make herself Queen in her sister’s stead, and so the sooner Artimour resumed command, the better. After all, Artimour would be so pathetically grateful to have his place back, Timias knew he’d be able to trust him. And maybe not just trust him, thought Timias as he considered new and different roles for Artimour to play. He was always something of a misfit around the Court. He couldn’t have been happy about the revocation of his command. He’d owe tremendous loyalty to the person—or group of persons—who restored it.
It was time to recall Artimour, decided Timias, time to assure the dear boy of their continued support and offer apologies for the terrible mistake they’d made in replacing him with Finuviel, the spawn of that foul abomination, Vinaver. If necessary, Artimour could be dispatched to the mortal world with an offer of assistance. And wasn’t that what should’ve been done in the first place? Timias’s head ached. There was simply too much to think about all at once. He came to himself with a little shake and realized he’d been talking to himself the entire length of the corridor.
The two guards standing watch over Alemandine’s private rooms gave him a curious glance but said nothing, as together they opened the great doors that led into the reception room of Alemandine’s suite.
There, Timias found Hudibras, looking distracted, even as he berated two bedraggled ladies-in-waiting huddled in the window seat. They all looked up, their expressions an odd mixture of both relief and fear, as Timias entered. He pinned the ladies with a ferocious stare, and their wings, fragile and pink as rose petals, trembled above their heads. But why were they both wearing crowns of oak and holly leaves? Oak for summer, holly for winter—why both at once? He peered more closely at them, and realized to his relief the illusion was nothing but a trick of the light and that their small veils were held in place, as usual, by the customary ribboned wreaths that all Alemandine’s ladies wore. “What’s going on? Where’s the Queen?” He addressed Hudibras, but it was one of the ladies-in-waiting who answered.
“She will not unlock the door, most exalted lord,” she replied, olive-green eyes huge in her angular face so that she resembled a frightened doe. Honey-colored hair spilled over her shoulders and across her rose-colored gown, partially obscuring her fichu of ivory lace. It matched the lace of her face mask, Timias saw, as another foul whiff momentarily distracted him. This time the seed pearls in her wreath looked like writhing white worms. He started back and she gave him another questioning look, as he realized that that was exactly the effect the pearls were meant to have. It struck him that this was a bizarre conceit for an adornment for one’s hair, but then, he never paid attention to the fashions of the Court. Since Alemandine was crowned Queen, they changed with such dizzying frequency, he could not keep up.
He really had to get control of himself, he thought. He tightened his grip on his staff and the wood felt dry as a petrified bone in his palm. He must not succumb to the pressure. Surely that’s what Vinaver hoped for, and it occurred to him that indeed, the success of the very plot itself might hinge on his ability to single-handedly uphold the Queen through this hour of her greatest need. He would show Vinaver that while he wore an old man’s face, he yet possessed a young man’s vigor.
Hudibras was wringing his hands in a manner most unseemly and his tone was peevish and demanding. “Whatever you have in mind, Timias, you better get to it, for she refuses to come out. You’ve got the entire Council under arrest, Vinaver’s gone flitting off Herne alone knows where, that wild young thing’s gone running off with that gremlin—” Hudibras marched across the room, struck a mannered pose worthy of a masque beside the empty grate, and, to Timias’s astonishment, removed a peacock-plume fan from the scabbard at his belt. With a zeal that the temperature of the room in no way warranted, he snapped it open with an expert flick of his wrist and began to fan himself. “What’s to be done, Timias? What’s to be done?”
What was wrong with the man? wondered Timias. Since when was there a fashion for wearing peacock-plume fans like daggers? Or white worms in one’s hair? Could it be that something was affecting the entire Court? It was as if they were all going mad. But it was that last piece of information that made him pause. A gremlin with Delphinea? How was such a thing even possible? “Why was I not informed?” Timias asked, gaze darting from the overwrought Hudibras to the stricken ladies.
At that, the ladies and Hudibras stared at each other, and then at Timias. “But you were, my lord,” said Hudibras.
“Every hour on the hour since the clock struck thirteen,” said the second lady, and he realized with another start that her gown was nearly an exact duplicate of the first’s, except that the shade was slightly lighter. When had Alemandine begun to insist that her ladies-in-waiting dress alike?
Timias shoved that superfluous question away, and pulled himself upright, wondering if he himself were not suffering from some malady. There’d been no disturbances on his door—he’d heard no knocking all night at all. But then of course there’d been no gremlin to answer it. All the gremlins were sequestered in the Caul Chamber. Their shrieking on Samhain had been enough to sour cream. No wonder Alemandine was feeling so poorly. In her delicate condition, her strength already taxed, she must’ve suffered the gremlins’ annual bout of madness dreadfully. No wonder she didn’t want to come out of her room. She probably wasn’t recovered yet.
Another trace of rot swirled delicately past his nose and he blinked, momentarily dizzy. These fools were only trying to make him look as if he was the foolish one. They were trying to blame him for their inability to understand and care for the Queen as if he were the one ultimately responsible for her. “I’m here now,” he snapped.
Hudibras pointed the fan at Timias, as if it were indeed a dagger. “There’s been no word from Artimour, or Finuviel. We don’t know what’s happening on the border, Timias. Alemandine won’t even speak to me except to tell me to go away. She’s placed a spell of binding on the door, and refuses to leave her bed.”
“But that’s not all, most ancient and honorable lord.” The darker, more assertive lady glanced first at him, then over her shoulder, out the window. “The moonflowers are blooming.” For a moment, he was so completely taken aback he could think of nothing to say, and the lady hastened to explain further. “The Queen’s moonflowers. They shouldn’t be blooming while she’s pregnant.”
There was a surreal quality to the whole scene that made Timias pause, just as he had before the stag. It was as if the world around him was ever so slightly…off. But what was it? he wondered. Hudibras and his fan? Rimbaud and his stink? The lady and her moonflowers? Again he felt slightly dizzy as if the very floor on which he stood suddenly swayed. “I must speak to the Queen.”
“She won’t let anyone in, Timias,” said Hudibras, with a twitch of his cheek. “That’s what we’ve been trying to tell you. She’s put a spell on the doors and won’t leave her bed.”
To that, Timias raised his chin. “We’ll see about that.” He strode through the doors that led into the antechamber of the Queen’s bedroom. The twilight filtering into the darkened chambers lent a purple blush to the marble walls, deepened to indigo the pale green upholstery and silken hangings. A profound hush hung over all. He pounded so hard on the ornately carved oak door with his staff that splinters flew in all directions. “Your Majesty!” he cried. “Your Majesty?”
But there was no answer.
He waited, fuming quietly under his breath, and again his nostrils were assailed by the faintest whiff of something foul, something that dissipated even as he turned his head to trace the source of the odor. “Alemandine?” He tried again, rattling the knob, knocking with a hard fist. “Alemandine? Let me in. I command you in the name of your mother, open this door and let me in!”
For a single moment, he thought he would have to blast the doors apart. But then he heard the lock click, and the two doors slipped open as the spell of binding came undone. That was easy, he thought. The doors stood as meekly open as a lamb to the slaughter. He threw a look of triumph over his shoulder at the cowering ladies and an extremely discomfited Hudibras hovering in the doorway. Then he pushed open the doors.
It was like stepping into a wall of rot. The odor made him stagger on his feet, so that he was forced to hang on to his staff to remain upright. The heavy draperies of Alemandine’s favorite pale green silk were drawn, and what light there was slashed through the dark cavern of the room like gold blades. Only once before had Timias ever smelled anything so foul, and that was during a plague year in the Shadowlands, when the whole countryside had reeked like a charnel house. “Alemandine?” he managed to gasp out, before he was forced to cover his mouth and nose against the heavy reek. “Your Majesty? My Queen?”
The bed was empty. The sheets hung over the side of the bed, and were marked by foul greenish stains. A damp trail led across the marble floor to the open floor-length windows.
“My Queen?” he whispered. But nothing answered, and nothing moved. Terrified of what he might find, he stepped out of the ghastly silent chamber, into the grove where one of each of the thirteen sacred trees of Faerie grew in two concentric rings.
A silence even more profound hung over the enclosure and he looked up. The sky above was a dull leaden color, as if something had sucked the blue away. And the trees—at the base of each tree, a perfect circle of leaves lay crisped and sere, their branches partially denuded. Even the holly’s needlelike leaves were tinged brown and yellow and an ankle-deep pile lay around the base of the tree. So many leaves were falling it was like a steady, downward curtain, of mingled yellow, gold and russet. He heard a soft sound from the center of the inner circle, a sound something between a moan and a sigh.
“Alemandine?”
Creeping closer, clutching the staff, shoulders hunched against the weight of that horrific stench, Timias saw that the thing which lay upon the ground was only a fragile approximation of the Queen. Her entire body had shrunk, as if it was collapsing in on itself, as if the muscles and sinews and organs were diminishing, leaving only skin and bones. Only her bloated abdomen rose roundly, like an obscene fruit hidden beneath her white gown.
But nothing could have prepared him for the horror as the Queen turned her tortured face to his. He gasped and stumbled back. Her white hair streamed about her vulpine face, the lips drawn back so tightly her mouth was nothing but a black slash. Her eyes popped from their sockets, as if squeezed outward by the pressure of whatever foul liquid it was that seeped from every orifice.
Amazingly, horribly, beyond all reason, the thing that he had called his Queen spoke. “Timias?” Her voice was less than a sigh, less than a whisper. “Timias? Timias, what’s happening to me?” She twisted her head back and forth and even as he realized she was blind, he heard the wet rent of tearing flesh. “Where is my sister? Why does she not come?”
He stumbled back, not daring to come any closer lest the thing touch him. Nausea rose in his throat as disgust warred with pity. The creature held out her hand and tried to speak again, but this time the words were lost in a gurgle of green slime that spooled down her chin.
Her form seemed to collapse in and upon itself, her very bones cracking and splintering like rotting wood. A quiver ran through her, and fluids gushed from every pore, bubbling up and out through the stretched skin, which withered as Timias watched.
The earth itself shuddered, the great trees groaned, and the wind made a low mourning keen as it whined around the crystal-paned turrets. With a whimper and a sigh, Alemandine bubbled away, leaving a froth of scum, the filthy remnants of her tattered gown and the long strands of her white, spun-silk hair.
“Great Gloriana,” Timias muttered. His eyes glazed over as, in one horrific moment of insight, he understood that the remains of the creature lying before him was not at all one of the sidhe, but instead something else—something strange and monstrous, a true aberration and abomination that he had not only called into being, but had seen placed upon the throne of Faerie. This was what he and Gloriana had wrought. This was the ultimate consequence of what they had created the night the Caul was made. Even half-human Artimour might’ve been a better choice. But it was the final realization that sent him spiraling down into the well of madness. Vinaver—may she burn in the belly of the Hag—had been right all along.
2
You didn’t think to ask? You didn’t think to ask? Artimour’s accusation slammed like a hammer through her head as Nessa fled down the stairs, out of the keep and into the inner courtyard, blindly heading toward the first sanctuary that occurred to her. She stopped up short before she reached the gates. Molly’s lean-to by the river was most likely destroyed, or so befouled by the shredded goblin carcasses the screaming spirits of the naked dead had left in their wake, it would have to be shoveled away.
As it was, once outside, the stench was so overwhelming she felt nausea rise at the back of her throat, and she stumbled into the forge, where the fire had been left to die. Broken swords and spears, shields, and even bows lay in haphazard piles, hastily dumped by the teams of just about every able-bodied person in the keep as part of the cleanup the harried Sheriff was directing even now. Through the open door, Nessa caught a glimpse of him striding, fat and red-faced, through the courtyard in the direction of the gates, bawling orders right and left, surrounded by harried-looking guards, grooms and a motley assortment of refugees young and old, male and female, who hastened to do his bidding. She peered inside the huge iron cauldron they’d used to melt the silver in. Dull and black and coated with ash on the outside, the inside shimmered, pearly and opalescent in the shifting streams of light that poured in through the shutters. Nessa wiped the tears off her cheeks and sniffed. She had made the dagger.
But she’d no choice. When the Duke of Allovale and the sidhe had appeared at her door, they expected a dagger. Once the Duke decided she was capable of making one, he hadn’t offered her a choice. How was she to know the sidhe intended to use it against Artimour, as part of the plot against his half-sister, the Queen of the OtherWorld?
More tears filled her eyes and she tried to blink them away. Artimour had promised to help her find her father, and after last night’s realization that her mother must be somewhere in the OtherWorld, too, held captive, perhaps, she had intended to ask him if he’d help find her mother, as well. But now, it seemed unlikely he’d even continue to look for her father, angry as he was. Not that she blamed him. It was by her hand, if indirectly, he’d been injured. She should find a way to make it right with him. Wasn’t that what her father would tell her to do? With a sigh, she wiped away the tears with the back of her grimy sleeve, got to her feet, tied a leather apron around her neck and waist and began to sort the piled weapons into some semblance of order. Work was always her father’s refuge, too.
She shut her eyes at a wave of loss and grief, remembering with bitter clarity that unseasonably hot autumn night just after the harvest was celebrated, when those two cloaked and hooded figures had come knocking on the door of Dougal’s forge. He’d have been better off if he’d just sent the unlikely pair on their way. That’s what put this whole thing in motion, she thought. The moment he opened the door, it all changed. And that’s exactly how he’d vanished. One moment, Dougal was there, the rock at the center of her world. And the next, he was gone. It was worse than if he’d died and gone to the Summerlands, for at least then she could take comfort in the thought he walked among his ancestors. She could come to terms with his death.
But she would never come to terms with her father lost, like her mother, forever in thrall to the sidhe. And so, armed only with determination and that first goblin’s head, she had gone to look for Dougal in the land beyond the mists that the old stories called TirNa’lugh. The sidhe soldiers who’d found her stumbling over the border had taken her to Artimour, who was different enough from all the other sidhe that she had been able to recognize his mortal blood at once. Different enough to agree to help her.
It was more than that, she knew, for Artimour affected her in a way no one—not even Griffin—ever had. All the village girls older than twelve twittered over this shepherd’s boy or that farmer’s son like a gaggle of broody hens, but she’d never understood what the fuss was all about. She thought of Griffin, of his clumsy kiss goodbye, the way he’d taken her amulet and left his for her to wear, even as her father’s voice echoed out of her memory. This is what they do to you with their OtherWorldly charms. It’s why you stay away from them. Always. And never take off your silver. Never. It was what he’d say if he were here.
But Artimour wasn’t quite like the other sidhe, she was sure of it. His half-mortal blood made him different, much as he might want to deny it, and it was his half-mortal blood that had saved him from the silver’s deadly poison—that and her own work boot.
Nessa fumbled beneath the apron and withdrew Dougal’s amulet. Maybe it only proved Dougal was dead. And maybe I am just a “lovesick, moon-mazed maiden” like all the songs say, she told herself as she dragged three battered shields to the scrap pile she was building on the other side of the forge.
“Nessa?” Molly’s soft voice broke through the smoky gloom, and Nessa looked up to see the corn granny from Killcrag hesitating at the door. “Is that you? Are you in here?”
“It’s me.” She was surprised it had taken Molly this long to find her. She dropped the shields and they fell with a clatter onto the pile. “I don’t want to go to Gar, Molly. Let Uwen tell the Duke what happened with Cadwyr, let Artimour explain how—how he came to be stabbed. Why do I need to be there? Can’t I stay here with you? I can help—”
She heard Molly’s long indrawn breath, heard her soft sigh. “Ah, Nessa.”
Before Nessa could speak, Molly crossed the space between them and drew Nessa into the strong circle of her arms. She felt her throat thicken and her mouth work, and the tears she’d been swallowing spilled down her cheeks. “I don’t know what to say to him, Molly. I did make the dagger. It was my fault he was stabbed—”
Molly gently tucked one errant curl behind Nessa’s ear. “You could tell him you’re sorry.”
“I don’t think he wants an apology.”
“Well, there’s not much more he’s likely to get. What’s done is done, child. It’s the past, it’s over. Yes, perhaps you should’ve asked a few more questions, but Cadwyr is a Duke, a noble Duke. You’d no choice, really. He’ll come around to seeing that.”
“Shouldn’t I do something—something to make it right?”
“Make it right? If he were a mortal, perhaps the druid court would set a penalty, but, Nessa, don’t forget. They would also take into account that you are still a child, in the eyes of the law, still beneath your father’s roof, and Cadwyr of such high rank. What choice did you have? No court would judge you half so harsh.” Molly drew back, holding Nessa at arm’s length. “You listen to me, girl. Your father would be proud—”
“That’s exactly it,” Nessa said, her face crumpling. “Artimour promised to help me—but I had this horrible thought last night when I thought about what my—my grandmother’s ghost said to me. What happens if my parents die in the OtherWorld?”
“But no one dies in TirNa’lugh, child. Should you ever find her, your mother will be as young and as fair as the day she was lost to it. That’s what your grammies meant—”
“Molly, I remember one of Granny Wren’s stories, about Vain Thomas who goes to TirNa’lugh and loses his head and his soul is swept up by Herne into the Wild Hunt. Don’t you see, Molly? And Granny Wren said that’s where most of the souls in the Wild Hunt come from, the ones who’re truly lost forever. That’s what I’m afraid of, Molly. I don’t want them lost forever—”
“Well,” said Molly, “you can’t worry about that right now. The lord’s still healing. But I do think if you apologize, Lord Artimour will come around. And besides…” She paused and nodded at the bulky bandage Nessa wore around her left hand to conceal the ring Artimour had given her in token of his promise to look for Dougal in the OtherWorld. “Won’t he want that back?”
“My father always said that honor meant nothing to the sidhe.” Nessa fingered the awkward bump. The central stone was round and hard and felt big as a robin’s egg beneath the linen wrapping.
A stir outside interrupted Molly, and Nessa looked over her shoulder. She heard men calling for the Sheriff, and then Sir Uwen. She glanced at Molly. “Someone’s come.”
Molly nodded. “Nessa,” she said slowly. “Am I wrong to think you’ve never been to the greenwood, as they say, with any man, even the ’prentice lad? Griffin?”
Mortified, Nessa shook her head, wondering how to explain to this kind-eyed woman how Dougal had communicated without words that he both desired and condoned distance between himself and Nessa, and the rest of the village. From memory’s dark well, she heard Dougal’s voice, deep and halting. Your mother was the sort of girl the lads all liked. As long as Nessa could remember, it seemed that there was something about this aspect of her mother that was irrevocably tied to her susceptibility to the sidhe. Which was why the goodwives all watched her. “My—my mother—my father said my mother was the girl the lads all liked.”
“And he warned you away from the lads altogether?”
“Well, no. Not really.” She hesitated. “He said that the reason the goodwives watched me so hard was to see if I was going to be like my mother that way. Because that’s what drew the sidhe, they all thought. That she was…like that.” And the easiest way to avoid their eyes and their whispers and their questions was to avoid all the men as much as possible, as well, thus earning for herself a reputation for being more taciturn than even Dougal.
Molly was silent for a moment, and then spoke slowly. “Well, then. I suppose that explains that.” Again she hesitated. “But tomorrow you’re about to go off—” And again she broke off, and Nessa wondered what the wicce-woman wanted to say.
“What are you worried about?”
Molly’s brows shot up and she laughed. “Worried isn’t exactly the word I’d use. Your father wanted to protect you, but there are things a woman must know, things only a woman can know, and only a woman can teach. You’re far too innocent and unaware of the effect you have on the young men around you.” Once more she paused, and in the gloom, her eyes twinkled. “There’s an old saying that’s proven true more often than not in my experience. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
Flustered, Nessa stared at the weapons lying in half-sorted heaps. “What do you mean?”
Molly smiled gently. “Griffin’s in love with you, did you know that?”
“Griffin?” echoed Nessa. She did not like thinking about Griffin, she realized, especially with Artimour so close. She’d known intuitively, from the moment she had first contemplated Artimour’s arrival in Killcairn, that it would upset Griffin to know how Artimour made her feel. Griffin’s clumsy farewell kiss, the amulet he’d left behind for her, even the pack of food he’d hastily thrust into her hands before she’d crossed over into the OtherWorld—each memory sent a guilty pang through her, even as they bore silent testimony to the truth of Molly’s assertion.
Molly looked at her with one raised brow.
“He took my amulet,” Nessa said, knowing that Molly had already talked to Griffin himself. “And left his for me. Is that why? You really think he loves me?”
Dust motes danced in the shaft of sunlight filtering through a loose shingle on the roof, and Molly’s brown eyes twinkled. “What do you think?”
In colored fragments of sight and sound, images of suddenly remembered snippets twisted themselves around Molly’s sentences, weaving a coherence and a meaning into the fabric of her memories that she only now understood: Griffin watching from the other side of the yard as she shoveled coal; blushing suddenly as she reached for a pitcher and the neck of her summer tunic dipped low; splashing water on her late last summer, then backing away, with a face reddened by what she’d assumed was exertion when the entire bucket upended over her breasts, flattening the thin summer linen against the round curves so that her dark nipples were as perfectly visible as if she were naked, even as Dougal immediately barked, “Cover yourself, girl,” and tossed her a cloak. How long had Griffin’s feelings been growing, while she, all the while, was unaware? “You think I should marry Griffin?”
Molly looked completely taken aback. “Goodness, girl, what gave you thought of that?” She reached out and touched Nessa’s cheek, then her hair. “Your father was right in a way. You’re not like the others—to be honest, I suspect you’re Beltane-made, much as he denies it for some reason. But like your mother, the lads like you, too. Though unlike her, I don’t think you know what you do to the lads. So you trust your heart and mind that birch staff of yourn. That tree has a powerful, protecting spirit to it, and she’s sent a piece of herself out into the world with you. I think if your father’d had his way, he’d’ve built a wall higher than hedgerow and thicker than an oak around the forge, to keep you safe within.” She touched Nessa’s hair again, smoothing it back from her burning face. “But now you’re about to go off with two men—two men, either one of which would set any maid’s heart aflutter.”
“Even Uwen?” Nessa wrinkled her nose. She thought of Uwen’s crooked grin and offset jaw and bony frame. He might be one of the Duke of Gar’s own Company, but she could not imagine anyone finding Uwen the least bit attractive.
But Molly smiled. “Ah, child. I’ve seen a few make it very obvious that they’d happily join Sir Uwen on a trip to the greenwood, and one or two who have. You’ve not been paying attention. Sooner or later, whether it’s Griffin or Uwen, or this sidhe-lord himself, don’t be afraid to lie with any man you truly desire, for what happens between a man and a woman is the root of every kind of magic worked in this world, and the Other, too, I imagine.”
Nessa closed her eyes as she remembered riding through the forest of the OtherWorld, sharing Artimour’s saddle. She remembered the pungent resin rising from the dark green pines, the slow flutter of gold leaves, the feeling of his velvety hose against the backs of her legs as they dangled awkwardly off the horse, the solidity of his chest against her back, the smooth satiny feeling of the saddle between her thighs. A part of her understood that Molly had imparted knowledge of much importance—that had something to do with why the wicce-women were said to be had for a silver coin and what they did to make the fields fertile and the corn grow—but all that really seemed to matter right now was that she somehow make peace with Artimour.
“Granny Molly? Nessa?” Uwen’s voice sounded so different, that for a moment, Nessa wasn’t sure who stood starkly silhouetted at the threshold. It was Uwen’s familiar bony form, but it was hardly Uwen’s voice, for it fell hollow and flat, totally devoid of his usual light, teasing lilt. “There may be a change in plans. A band of Cecily’s clansmen from Mochmorna came in just now. They took refuge last night in an abandoned dovecote somewhere in the hills. But they’d a druid with them who’d an idea of what to do and he summoned up the dead. Seems Donnor’s ghost was seen among them.”
The Duke of Gar was dead, the castle was in shambles, and Cecily, his widow, did not feel at all the way she imagined a widow was supposed to feel. If Donnor was dead, it was his own fault. She’d tried to warn him not to trust Cadwyr, his nephew and his heir, begged him to wait until at least half his Company could be assembled. But no, he insisted on riding out on some trumped-up excuse a blind mule could see through. She had thought, at first, that only she and Kian had seen Donnor’s gray ghost as it picked its way across the carcass-littered field, fading into the blessed Samhain dawn. But everyone on the walls had seen it, and rumor ran rampant as a ram in rut through every level of the castle, leaving even the most hardened of the warriors looking stricken as an orphaned lamb.
Now she picked her way across what yesterday had been the outermost ward, flanked on one side by Kestrel, the ArchDruid of Gar, and at least six of his highest-ranking fellows, and on the other by Mag, the chief still-wife, and as many wicce-women as could be coaxed away from the nursing and the grieving. They would never survive another night if the goblins came back. But if there was a way to prevent them, both druids and corn grannies were conspicuously silent. Her thoughts chased each other like a dog its tail.
A silence as leaden as the lowering sky hung heavy over all, deadening the slap of her boots, muffling the sobs of those few strong-stomached souls who came forward to press a kiss on her hand as they searched amidst the rubble for possessions abandoned and befouled. On the walls, the engineers and stonemasons directed teams in the critical repairs of the curtain wall. On command, the men bent and with a mighty heave, lifted the great stone block on a huge wooden lever as another team swung it into position. The dull thud of stone, punctuated by the creak of timber and the shouted directions of the men echoed flatly across the yard, as if the sounds were swallowed by the huge holes the goblins had torn in the walls, soaked up by the deep gashes of bloodied earth. She pressed the linen square soaked in peppermint oil more tightly to her nostrils and swallowed hard as she realized she had nearly stepped on a foot. “Be careful.”
She held out an arm to prevent anyone else from stepping on the remains, and signaled to a team of stable hands who, with linen kerchiefs wrapped across the lower half of their faces, armed with a shovel, a pick and a wheelbarrow, gathered up remains as carefully as they could.
Smoke from the midden-fires stung her eyes, and on the high tor behind the castle, a slow procession wound up the steps carved into the hill, carrying the bodies to the funeral pyre the druids of lower degree were building. Swarming on the standing stones, others set up the iron frames to hold the plates of glass that, when properly positioned, would focus the rays of the setting sun so as to bring about the spontaneous combustion of the bodies. At least, it was supposed to bring about the spontaneous combustion of the bodies. Kestrel and the other druids had emerged from their hiding place in the wine cellars and announced that all who’d died on Samhain would be given nothing less than a full druid funeral. As if that would bring the dead back. As if that would protect the living when the goblins returned.
A couple of the corn grannies paused and spat thick greenish wads of cud-wort on the ground, aiming expertly between two stones. Cecily hoped her lip hadn’t curled automatically. Cud-wort was considered a low habit, but many of the corn grannies were addicted to it. It was said to give one clearer dreams.
She looked around the ruined ward. All her dreams were nightmares. Now they stood vulnerable, not just to goblins, but to Cadwyr. Cadwyr, who’d murdered Donnor. Cadwyr, who was in league with the sidhe. Before Samhain, she and Kian had told Kestrel their suspicions, but the druid had listened skeptically, clearly unconvinced that either goblins or sidhe existed, except in the mind of a moon-mazed girl. She hoped that last night had made believers of everyone.
But she was even more afraid of Cadwyr, if that were possible, than the goblins, for Cadwyr had made it clear before he left with Donnor that he considered Cecily part of Donnor’s bequest. And for all she knew, she thought with weary realization, maybe she had been. Maybe that’s how Donnor had rationalized taking her for himself, if he had in fact done as Cadwyr charged, and offered himself to her parents rather than Cadwyr as a suitor for her hand. Maybe he considered her as much a part of the holdings of Gar as Cadwyr did. What would they all say if they knew she was too angry at Donnor to care that he was dead?
She caught sight of Kian, Donnor’s First Knight, working with the other men on the walls, stripped down to his shirt despite the cold wind. The strip of linen bound around his face could not disguise his flaxen braids, nor the familiar lines of his body beneath the sweaty, dirty clothes. As she watched, Kian squatted down and gripped one end of the long wooden pole, and, at a signal, pressed down on it with all his weight. His arms and back bulged with the knotted cords of his muscles. At the other end of the lever, a team grabbed the ropes around the block and wrestled it into place. Kian set the lever down, stripped his mask off and used it to mop his face. As exhausted and as frightened as she was, her own body stirred in response.
For Kian was the man she loved. She loved his strength, she loved his smile, she loved the way the other knights loved him. He had the gift of making people like him, for he led with smiles and faultless courtesy. Donnor had loved him, too, until last Beltane, when the goddess had led her to choose Kian to take her to his Beltane bower. From that day, Donnor had been deaf to all but the angry mutterings of his thwarted heart. But Donnor was dead.
“We’ll measure the angles from the top of the tor itself—take them at sunset and dawn, as well,” Kestrel was saying. The ornately embroidered lining of his wide sleeve flashed a startling green against the outer white as he pointed first at the sun, then at the tor, the vivid color at stark odds to the stained gray drab and homespun everyone else, even Cecily, wore.
“We’ll need measurements from the towers, too, won’t we?” put in another.
“But what about the goblins?” Cecily asked. All the druids wanted to talk about were the funeral plans, which would have been understandable, even expected, perhaps, under any other sort of circumstances. “Can any of you tell me if they’ll come back tonight? Or if there’s a way to stop them? If the dead will rise and fight?”
The wicce-women exchanged surreptitious glances with each other and looked pointedly at the druids. Kestrel cleared his throat and the others flapped their robes and shifted from foot to foot. They’d all failed miserably last night, and they knew it. Shouts from above momentarily distracted her, and she peered through one of the huge holes in the outer curtain wall to see a speck of dust emerge from the eastern road leading out of the forest. A rider, she thought, coming fast. Someone else had survived Samhain. She saw that Kian noticed as well, but he went on with the task at hand. There were not many hours of daylight left. So she too turned back to Kestrel. “Well?”
Kestrel linked his hands together beneath his capacious white sleeves and cleared his throat again before he answered. “The bards are studying the druidic verses, my lady, and the elder brethren have been in the groves since early this morning, interpreting the trees. To be sure, however, these are arcane matters, the learning encoded so as not to be easily understood by the uninitiated.”
“I’m not asking to understand, Master Druid. I just want to know how to protect us. Can we count on the dead?” But the only answer was the flap of the mourning banners from the towers. Someone—probably Mag, or maybe even Kian—had seen to that.
“They came because it was Samhain and they could,” whispered a corn granny. “We can’t count on them again, til next Samhain.”
Cecily immediately looked at the women, but it was impossible to know who had spoken. “Will they come back?”
The painful silence was broken by Kestrel’s snort. “They don’t know any more than anyone else.”
“What about the goblins?” Cecily asked again. “Will they come back tonight?”
“At Imbolc,” blurted Mag this time.
“The blood of the new lambs will bring them. Our magic can hold them back til then, but come Imbolc, ’tis druid magic that’s needed.” Another granny spoke up, from somewhere behind Mag. The words were followed by a hawking cough, and a green gob shot through the air, landing with a loud smack right in front of Kestrel. He startled back, and Cecily caught the flash of red Lacquilean leather under his heavy woolen robes. Serves him right, she thought. What sort of fool would wear such finery in a mess like this? An answer ran through her mind unbidden: One who thought it easily replaced. But they’re not likely to be readily replaced, thought Cecily, even as she dismissed all thoughts of Kestrel and his boots.
Kestrel’s lips quirked down as his eyebrows arched up. “There you are, ask the wicce-women,” Kestrel sniffed. “They seem to know all about it.” He turned away, waving a hand back and forth in front of his face, as if the very smell of them offended him. Cecily looked down at the bubbled green slime glistening in the sunlight and felt nauseous herself.
But she couldn’t let that deter her. “Please tell me what you can. Anyone. Please.”
It was the women’s turn to exchange glances, to shuffle restlessly beneath shawls and skirts, like a motley flock of roosting broody hens. They ranged in age from women who looked no older than the oldest of her foster sisters, to the most wizened of crones.
“Please,” Cecily said again. “Whatever you think might help.”
Kestrel coughed.
It was the druids, Cecily knew. The druids looked down on the wicce-women, and their magic was considered something less, because, as the grannies said, they carried their magic in their hearts and not their heads, and certainly not in arcane verses in half-forgotten languages, or obscure symbols slashed on the limbs of trees.
“They’re laughing at us, Your Grace,” Mag sniffed back and folded her arms across her ample bosom. Kestrel claimed that she had sabotaged a Mid-Winter ritual one year by deliberately adding dream-bane to the required mix of herbs. Unable to achieve the necessary trance, the druids had stormed off in a huff, and the rite itself disintegrated into a riotous festival, which culminated in a fight in which several of Donnor’s knights had nearly died. This alone was not so unusual, but the druids were expected to help keep the order, and so Donnor had blamed the druids. And thus the druids, never among the most favored of the inhabitants of Gar, for even the lowest considered himself the equal of the Duke, fell a few more points in Donnor’s grace.
But Donnor was dead. “I don’t think there’s much to laugh about,” replied Cecily.
The speck on the horizon had resolved itself into a rider, who entered the ruined gates with a look of glazed exhaustion. He barely cleared the wrecked gatehouse when he slid to the ground, even as his horse collapsed. Cecily saw guards and two women scavenging amidst the rubble run to his side, even as Kian leaped off the walls and hurried over, calling for water. Let it be from Donnor himself, she thought. Let that shade have been nothing but a trick of the light. Let us all have been wrong.
But she knew in her heart such hope was only futile. She saw Kian glance at her over his shoulder as he swung the rider up into his arms, and understood he’d seek her out as soon as he could. Followed by the women, he took off in the direction of the summer kitchens.
“Please,” she said again.
There was a long silence and another gust of wind brought a blast of reek. “They come three times a year,” said a low, hoarse voice. “Three times…three times…three times, the gates between the worlds swing wide.” The voice quivered, as if some tremendous amount of energy was being repressed. The women parted, and a small, pudgy granny with hair like dandelion wisps stood rocking on her feet, as her hands twitched up and down before her. “Three nights…three times…three nights…our magic cannot hold. Three times our magic cannot hold.”
“Three times? And when—what three times are those?” Cecily prodded. She glanced at Kestrel and the other druids, hoping they had the sense to hold their tongues. They appeared to be paying close attention. The druids were all trained to remember. Many of them could repeat, word for word, conversations that had taken place before them decades past.
But the granny shook her head with closed eyes.
“At Samhain, Imbolc and Lughnasa.” It was another voice, softer this time. A woman with the face of a turtledove and a shawl the color of a robin’s breast eased around Mag. She was chewing a wad of cud-wort that she shifted from cheek to cheek as she spoke. “At Beltane, the sun’s too strong and the light holds them back. But at the other three—only druid magic can hold them back.”
Cecily glanced at the druids. That was the problem. The druids didn’t seem to know what exactly their magic was. “What about the other times? The rest of the year?” The granny visibly quailed, and even Mag wouldn’t meet Cecily’s eyes. “Mag, please.”
Mag huffed. “Do you have any idea what they say about us?”
Cecily drew a deep breath. She looked at the women’s worn, guarded faces, their shoulders broadened and bent, their hands rough and callused. She knew what was said about the wicce-women—that they wanted men for only one thing, that at the dark of the moon, they did unspeakable things to make the corn grow. “You don’t have to reveal anything. Just tell me if you think there’s something you can do.”
Mag nodded shortly. “We think there is.”
“Can you be sure?”
“Our hearts tell us to be sure.” She met Cecily’s eyes steadily.
“Do you really think it will work?”
“We believe that it will.”
“They don’t have any idea it will work at all,” interrupted Kestrel. “Whatever ‘it’ is. That’s the whole point, my lady, and that’s what makes corn magic such a lot of nonsense. They don’t know—they base their knowing, such as it is, on no authority. No verse or rune guides them, no teacher even teaches. It all just comes to them in a flight of fancy. Or in a puddle of that weed they chew.” He sniffed, and immediately pressed his own oil-soaked wad of linen to his nostrils. “The corn grows. The sun shines, and the rain falls. There’s nothing to say their rituals work.”
Cecily drew a deep breath. This was an old, old argument and one that she had largely been able to ignore her entire life, for what the druids, the masters of ancient wisdom, poetry and law, thought of the wicce-women, the healers, the corn grannies who worked the corn magic in the fields, and vice versa, had never affected her in any meaningful way. As the daughter of two of the greatest Houses in Brynhyvar, with a potential role to play in the governing of the land, it was a forgone conclusion that she would study with the druids. And as a woman, her duties required her to have a knowledge of herbs and simples, and that brought her in close contact with Mag, a corn granny longer than Cecily had been at Gar. Both necessary, both separate. But now…
She rubbed her forehead, as if to clear away the flinty edge of desperation and exhaustion that threatened to cloud her mind completely. “There’s nothing to say that it doesn’t. We have to try anything. We can’t waste time arguing who has the greater magic and the truer understanding, for the goblins surely won’t wait for us to decide.”
“Grannies’ll have us all tuppin’ in the fields tonight, you wait,” said a druid from the depths of his hood. A snicker went through the druids like wind through wheat. The women exchanged glances.
Cecily raised her chin. “I’d rather tup out there than die in here.” She met their eyes and tossed her hair back in a gesture she was quite sure was the last one a widow was expected to make, and winked. She turned back to the women, and met the eyes of each in turn. “Say what you will.”
“We’ve no wish to be laughed at.”
“No one will laugh,” said Cecily. She held up her hand. “And if anyone thinks he might,” she paused and looked over the druids. “Think on this first. In five hundred years, since these walls were built, no enemy’s stood where we’re standing now. The walls have never been breached. But the goblins tore these walls apart like they were made of sticks.” She looked Kestrel square in the eyes. “I’ll tup in the fields myself if that’s what it takes.” And expect you there alongside me, she nearly said, but that thought was nearly as horrifying as another goblin attack.
The hint of a smile lifted Mag’s mouth, but she still sounded hesitant. “We must…we’ll begin at sunset, isn’t that right, Granny Lyss? When the sun slips below the trees, below the tor, beside the river, the oldest granny, Granny Lyss, here—” she stepped back and indicated a tiny, wizened, birdlike woman, who was working on such an enormous piece of cud-wort, it slipped in and out between her lips with the motion of her jaw “—will work the rite. We need a volunteer, of course. A man. In his prime, or near approaching it.”
“Nah, the younger the better—fourteen, fifteen.” The old woman spoke in a quavering voice and tapped Mag’s arm with a curved finger that ended in a thick yellowed nail.
“That’s disgusting,” muttered Kestrel. “Completely and totally disgusting.”
“Can you think of anything else?” asked Cecily. The greasy smoke made her eyes burn. Fire, she thought. Perhaps a ring of fire would deter them. She made a mental note to suggest that to Kian.
“Would be better magic if one of them would do it,” said the old woman, and Cecily saw she had no teeth and her lips were drawn into her mouth, like those of the corpses who’d gone with Herne. What lad would volunteer? she wondered. And she wondered if even Kian could be induced to lie with such a woman.
“I’ll do it.” The voice resonated like a born bard’s, but the tall boy who pushed through the druids was slight of build, his skin pimpled patchy red.
“What are you doing here?” demanded Kestrel. “I thought you were gathering up the dead—”
“I was,” he answered. “I overheard.” He gestured to his stained white robes. “What do you need me to do?”
“What’s your name, young druid?” asked Cecily, bemused.
“He’s not a druid.” Kestrel rolled his eyes. “He’s naught but a third-degree bard and he’s always where he’s not needed and never where he is.”
“Well, then, young third-degree bard, what’s your name?” Cecily motioned to Granny Lyss to stop cackling.
“I’m Jammor, Your Grace. Jammor of the Rill, they call me.” He bowed and handed Kestrel his shovel with such a flourish, she nearly laughed aloud despite the situation.
“Oh, indeed, he’ll do right fine,” cackled Granny Lyss. “Come over here, boy, and let me feel your arm.”
“Tell him, first, what he’s in for, and see if he’s still interested.” Kestrel stepped forward and pushed the shovel back into Jammor’s hands. “Get back to work.”
“Now, just you wait, young man,” cried Granny Lyss. “I want a look at you—”
The boy hesitated, even as Kestrel opened his mouth to protest, and the impasse was broken by Kian, who came striding over the rubble, picking his way with the grace of a mountain cat, despite his size. But his expression was grim. At once Cecily asked, “What word, Sir Kian?”
“A sad word, that we expected,” answered Kian. He paused on the periphery of the group and sought her eyes with his. “It’s just as we feared, my lady. Great Gar is dead.” He glanced at Kestrel, then at Mag. “If you’d be so kind as to step aside a moment with me, my lord druid? Still-wife? Your Grace?”
“Shall we talk about the funeral?” Kestrel asked as Kian shepherded the three of them behind a pile of rubble. Blood stained the stones, and goblin gore clung here and there to the ruined wall, but at least the worst had been removed, thought Cecily as she carefully stepped over a suspicious pile of cloth.
“Funeral?” said Kian. He had removed his mask, and his face was furrowed with worry and exhaustion, and grime and sweat streaked his skin. “There’s no time to talk of funerals, my lord. Donnor’s death isn’t the only news the scout brought. Cadwyr of Allovale has raised his colors over Ardagh, and ten thousand mercenaries from Lacquilea are marching up from the south, led by one of Cadwyr’s foster brothers.”
They all gasped. Kestrel glanced around, white robes bluish in the shadows, so that his garments seemed to blend in with the stone. “Surely the messenger’s mistaken? What about the King? What about the Court?”
Kian shook his head, grim-faced. “He never got that close. He was sent back ahead of the rest. He did flank Cadwyr’s army. There’s at least two thousand horse, four thousand foot. Between them and the mercenaries, Cadwyr’s got nearly three times what we could muster ourselves.”
“Where did he get all those men?”
Kian shook his head slowly. “The lad didn’t get close enough to see if they were men, my lady. And if they are—” He broke off and put his hands on his hips. “Who knows what promises Cadwyr has made to others?”
“Do you really think Cadwyr is leading an army of the sidhe?” Cecily asked.
“You can’t seriously believe—” began Kestrel.
“How can you have seen those monsters last night, and Great Herne, too, and not believe what we tell you?” interrupted Cecily. “None of us want to believe it, my lord. None of us wanted to believe it before.” Kestrel had refused from the first to believe Kian’s tale of the blacksmith’s daughter and the sidhe.
“But this was what Donnor meant when he told me an opportunity had arisen suddenly, one that wouldn’t wait. Donnor knew about Cadwyr’s plan to use the sidhe.”
“And now he’s marching on Gar,” said Kian.
“Well, did this scout see any sign of any—any Other?” asked Kestrel. “What other evidence is there, really?”
“Other than Cadwyr’s colors over a castle that’s built on a rock over a whirlpool? What other evidence do you need, you old goat?” asked Mag with such derision that Cecily raised her brow. Mag was, after all, but the still-wife.
“They came upon a squadron or so of archers, who looked to be butchered where they stood,” answered Kian. “Most of them didn’t even have time to draw their sidearms.”
“So no one’s actually seen any—” said Kestrel.
“We’ve a witness,” said Kian. “The blacksmith’s daughter from Killcairn. Don’t you recall?”
“Have you any better explanation, Lord Druid?” asked Mag.
“I don’t want to believe it, either, my lord,” Cecily repeated. “But for all we know, Cadwyr may have a bargain with the goblins as well. I don’t think we can discount any possibility.”
“Cadwyr would not dare—” exploded Kestrel.
“He’s already dared to make himself master of Ardagh. I think we may well believe Cadwyr’s capable of anything,” said Cecily. “How soon will he be here?”
“We must call for an Assembly at once, obviously,” said Kestrel. “Donnor’s funeral will give us our perfect—”
“Oh, will you stop blathering about funerals?” interrupted Mag. “Cadwyr’s loosed both sidhe and goblin on us—how soon will he be here?”
“But I’m the one he wants,” said Cecily, thinking fast. “With Donnor dead, he considers Gar already his. I doubt he’ll attack the castle. Especially if I’m not here.” She looked at Kian, and was grateful to see him nod.
“Not here? Your Grace, you can’t leave—” began Kestrel. “Think of your duty—think of the people—Where would you go?” The color drained from his face and suddenly he looked sick. “And besides, what makes you think Duke Cadwyr would harm you? It has ever been my observation that the Duke cherishes you—” He broke off and glanced away, refusing to meet Cecily’s eyes.
“Cecily has a better claim to the throne.” Despite the situation, Cecily looked up, for it was the first time Kian had used her name in public. Donnor’s dead, and I am free. “She has to leave, my lord,” Kian continued. “We don’t know what Cadwyr’s bringing with him. Obviously he must’ve used the sidhe against Ardagh. There was no damage to the castle, do you understand? Whatever he brought against Hoell was awful enough that they opened the doors and let him walk in. I’ve but a quarter of the men I had yesterday. And I had less than half a full garrison to begin with.”
He used my name, Cecily thought again, and a part of her that was so long buried she had nearly forgotten it ever existed within her stirred to new life. Her heart skipped a beat. Donnor is dead, she thought with a little burst of the most unseemly happiness. Donnor’s dead and I’m free. We are free.
“But you’ve no reason to think—”
“I have every reason to think that Cadwyr intends to force himself upon me, my lord druid,” Cecily snapped. He’d been like this before Samhain, too, insisting on questioning everything.
The druid shut his mouth with an audible pop as a shadow crossed his face, and bitter shrieks made Cecily turn her head to see a flock of ravens rise and wheel off the roof of the Great Hall. The ravens are the Marrihugh’s birds, she thought, and she is marching across this land in her crow-feathered boots. She must’ve been well pleased last night.
“Then where will you go?” asked Kestrel.
“North, of course,” Kian answered. “The scout said Cadwyr’s army was still at least a day and a half out. Sheer size is slowing him down, thank the Marrihugh for some luck.”
“And what about the rest of us?” demanded Mag. “Cadwyr’s coming, and who knows what he’s leading. To go or stay—’tis a choice that must be put to one and all.”
But the druid was shaking his head. “Bah, woman, what’re you suggesting? There’re no guarantees that your magic will work. Her Grace, the knights, they at least have fast horses—they may have a chance of outriding the goblins. But to take wounded women and children on some mad dash ’twould be the death of most of them.” He looked at Kian and pushed his hood off his face, so that it fell back over his shoulders in graceful, fluid folds. He was shorter than Kian, but he drew himself up. “You go, Sir Knight. I’ll stay—we’ll all stay, my brother druids and I. We’ll do what we can to protect the people here. By every means we can contrive.”
Cecily glanced around, assessing the progress of the repairs. Whole sections of the outer wall were missing. The second wall appeared sound, but it had not been built to withstand the brunt of an attack, especially not such a one as last night’s, and she remembered her idea. “What about fire?” asked Cecily. “A ring of fire around the castle?”
“That’s a thought,” said Kian. “Hard to maintain, perhaps. I’m not sure we’ve that much fuel—but still, it might be a way to block those holes. I’ll go and speak to the captain of the watch. We leave—” He broke off and looked up. The sun was still high above the tor. “Can you be ready to leave at dusk?”
“Dusk?” echoed Mag and Cecily as one. Cecily nodded at Mag and she went on, “Begging your pardon, my lord knight, but we need Her Grace.”
“Me?” Cecily blinked.
“For what?” asked Kian.
“She—she should be there. We’re going to need her—her—her presence,” Mag answered. “For the ritual. She’ll bring a certain…energy…that the granny will need. Oh, I’m quite sure she should be there.”
“And for how long?”
“Most of the night.” Mag ducked her head apologetically. “You do want us to try all we can, right?”
Kian ran a hand over his eyes, and Cecily felt a wave of exhaustion sweep over her. And how much worse could it be for him? He’d fought most of the night, snatching only a few hours’ rest between sunrise and midmorning. “We’ll go at dawn, then. We should reach the Daraghduin by midnight tomorrow, if we’re lucky.”
If we’re lucky. The little phrase echoed over and over in Cecily’s mind like a death knell. But Kian was continuing. “You’re the ArchDruid of Gar, my lord, is that not so?” asked Kian. When Kestrel nodded, he went on, “And as such, it’s your role to hold disputed property until such time as an heir can be determined?”
“Yes…” answered Kestrel slowly, as an odd expression crossed his face. “But only with good reason. And Cadwyr is the son of Donnor’s oldest sister. Only a child of his own loins, or a child of that child, has a stronger claim.” He turned to Cecily with an incredulous look. “Is it your intention to also dispute Cadwyr for the duchy of Gar, my lady?”
“Donnor came to me the night before he left,” Cecily said. She could pretend to be pregnant if she had to.
“I see,” the druid said. There was an aloofness in his tone that made Cecily look more closely at him. Was it only the druid’s surprise that there might be yet another claimant for the duchy of Gar? she wondered. Suddenly the walls didn’t feel so much safe as suffocating. But it was Kian’s next words that took her off guard.
“And a child of a child has an equal claim, as well?”
“Well, not as equal as a child—” Kestrel broke off. “What are you saying, Sir Kian? Donnor had a grandchild?”
Shocked, Cecily’s mouth dropped open and she exchanged a wide-eyed look with Mag as Kian answered, “Aye. Donnor had a daughter, got off one of his father’s women when he was very young. She was fostered out on the Isles, and when it came time to marry her off, she refused the man he’d chosen. So he disavowed her—”
“In a court? Before an ArchDruid?” Kestrel was frowning now, twisting his linked hands together beneath the wide sleeves of his robes.
“I don’t know the particulars of all the circumstances, my lord,” began Kian.
“Well, you’d better be quite sure of them if you mean to raise—”
“Lord Kestrel,” interrupted Kian gently. “It’s not me.”
“Then, who—” put in Cecily. This was totally unexpected. She wondered why Kian hadn’t mentioned it to her before.
“It’s not for me to say. He’ll reveal himself when he’s ready. If he were here, he’d have come to you himself,” Kian said as he turned back to Kestrel. “So you’ll do what must be done, to call the Assembly? That’s your duty, no?”
“But—”
Her thoughts drifted as Kestrel continued to sputter questions, all to which she wanted answers as well. “I trust you to keep this information to yourselves, Your Grace, still-wife,” Kian continued. “I only bring this up now because—well, because I suppose there’s a possibility he’s no longer even alive. But he should be given the chance to make his claim, don’t you agree?”
So this was someone they all knew? Someone who lived here? Donnor had an heir he’d known nothing of? She had a feeling that Kian would tell her no more than he was telling Kestrel. “If that’s what it comes to, my lord, yes,” Kian was saying, and she realized the conversation had taken another turn. “It’s not my wish to fight Cadwyr, but what choice has he given us? I’ll be happy to meet Cadwyr in lawful Assembly, as will Her Grace, but we’d rather have an army of our own kin at our backs and know what exactly we’re to face.”
“Come, my lady, there’re things to be done before the ritual,” said Mag. “A bath and such. I’ll explain it to you as we go.”
“Make it up as you go, don’t you mean?” put in Kestrel. “Don’t forget to pack, Your Grace.”
For some reason, that struck her as an odd thing for him to say, odd enough that she paused, even as Mag tugged at her arm. It was like a false note in an otherwise well-tuned harp. She opened her mouth, then shut it, and Mag looked at Kestrel. “What about the lad? Will you let him join us?”
“Absolutely not,” Kestrel said with a dismissive wave.
An image of Kestrel’s red boots of Lacquilean leather jumped into Cecily’s mind, and she glanced down, to see one tip peeking out from beneath the hem of Kestrel’s robe. There was something about those boots that pricked her like a pin lost in a seam. Maybe it was just the way he treated the wicce-women that bothered her. Everyone knows the druids like their comforts. But so does Cadwyr. She remembered the rose he’d brought her the night before he and Donnor had left on that ill-fated journey, the way it had reeked of the OtherWorld. She wondered if Kestrel’s boots were really made of Lacquilean leather, and then the rest of the messenger’s news echoed in her mind. Ten thousand Lacquilean mercenaries are marching this way, as well—he well may think them easily replaced. Could it be he knew they were coming?
“What do you need, still-wife?” asked Kian. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
At that, Cecily’s brow shot up, but before she could speak, Mag answered as she nodded slowly with a speculative look. “You’re not as young as you might be, Sir Kian, but come with me to Granny Lyss. We’ll ask her if she thinks you’ll do.”
Cecily noticed that Kestrel went in the direction of the summer kitchens. He’s going to speak to the scout himself, she thought. Donnor was not quite as universally loved as he had liked to believe. His own heir hated him, and there was another now, another who had not even made himself known while Donnor lived. “Kian,” she asked, speaking softly under her breath as he guided her and Mag around the rubble. “Is it possible that Kestrel and Cadwyr—” She broke off, and their eyes met. He didn’t answer, but she saw him watch Kestrel until he rounded a corner and they could see him no more.
Nessa did not even look up when the long shadow fell across the forge. Once the Sheriff noticed her, and remembered her, he’d summoned the four scullions assigned to help her yesterday, and put them all back to work, this time repairing the endless mound of weapons and other implements the goblins had nearly destroyed. Thus, Uwen startled her as she was hanging the heavy leather apron on a hook. “I need a word with you, lass.”
There was something distinctly different about him, Nessa thought as she stifled a gasp, then bundled her tumbled hair off her face. He looked as if a great weight had suddenly fallen on top of him, and stern, as if he had set himself to do a great task. He leaned against the wall and glanced around the forge. “You’ve been busy today.” His watery eyes were bloodshot and he looked tired. They were all tired, she thought. Up all night, a few hours of wretched sleep snatched at dawn. Now it was late, the scullions long since gone to answer the dinner bell’s summons.
“What’s wrong?” Her wound itched, her shoulders ached, but Uwen looked worse than she felt.
“I need to get to Gar. We’ve been dithering about it all day, but I need to find out what’s going on there—if Donnor’s really dead, what’s happened to Kian and the Duchess and the rest of the Company. I need to speak to the ArchDruid.” He hesitated, as if considering what to say next. “I want you to come with me. You’re the only one who saw Cadwyr with the sidhe, you’re the witness to at least part of the bargain. I don’t know what Cadwyr’s planning, or how things stand, but I don’t want to wait for the upland chiefs to decide who should go and who should come. This is what he’s counting on. There’re more arriving every hour now, and that’s only going to create more confusion. So I’m planning to slip away before first light tomorrow, lass, and I’d like you to come with me. Which is another reason we’ll have to slip away. You’re the last person the Sheriff will want to let leave. He may be as soft in the head as he is in the belly, but he knows enough to know he needs a smith.” He paused once more, then said, “I’m sorry that I caused trouble between you and the sidhe lord.”
“You weren’t to know,” she replied with a shrug. She had for the most part successfully avoided thinking about Artimour for most of the day, but Uwen’s apology brought it all back. “I did make the dagger.”
“You did, but you had no choice. I spent all day with him—he’s not an unreasonable sort. Decent, really, for a sidhe. Or a half-sidhe, which is what Molly says he is. Go talk to him. But go soon—he says he’s leaving tomorrow.”
“So soon?” Her head snapped up. She wanted to talk to Artimour, to make sure that all was right between them before she mentioned her mother. She’d dared to hope that perhaps he’d take her with him. But she knew what her father would expect her to do and she knew he’d be angry if he thought she was moping after a sidhe. The more she thought about it, the more it seemed like the one thing guaranteed to make him the angriest. But she had made the dagger. Dismayed, she stared at Uwen as she automatically bent to retrieve a hammer bumped off the wall, set upright an overturned basket of nails.
“There’s been talk, mutters, rumors. The sidhe are being blamed for the goblins’ attack—”
“But that’s not fair,” she cried. “Artimour had nothing to do with it—”
“Of course you and I know that. But not all these dunderheads do. And he has questions, too, the answers for which are only in the OtherWorld, not here. Nessa, will you come? The longer we wait, the more who will insist on riding with us, and we can only go as fast as the slowest horse. By the time a whole troop gets there, who knows what Cadwyr will have done next? I can carry you on Buttercup if need be. We can be there by noon of the day after tomorrow.”
His voice had a flat desperate edge that she’d never heard before, even on Samhain when he faced the goblin horde. What’s changed? she wanted to ask. But she knew how her father would expect her to answer his question. She glanced around the forge, fingering the amulet. There was plenty of work to be done here. But all she said was, “All right. All right, I’ll come. I guess I better go talk to Artimour.”
“Molly said to suggest bringing him dinner. You’ll find her in the kitchens.”
She heard him sigh as he stood aside to let her pass and she was tempted once more to turn and ask him what was wrong, even as she wondered exactly how much about her Molly had discussed with him. In the doorway she remembered something, and turned to see him looking at something that appeared to be a flat disk that hung around his neck on a metal chain that glinted gold. She was about to ask him what it was, when he thrust it into his shirt, out of sight. “Your sword’s over there—I banged out the rust that had started to eat the blade, and sharpened up the edge.”
She heard him call a startled thanks but did not pause as she trudged on. She had faced the goblins. She had faced Great Herne. Surely she could face Artimour. In the kitchens, she found Molly, looking distracted, but sharp-eyed as ever. She beckoned Nessa and thrust a tray of food into her hands, then pointed upward. She leaned over and spoke directly into Nessa’s ear. “I’ve borrowed your birch staff, lass, but don’t you worry—I’ll see that Uwen has it for you on the ’morrow.”
Surprised, Nessa drew back and opened her mouth to ask why Molly needed the staff, and how would it be that Uwen of all people might have occasion to return it to her. But Molly forestalled her questions with a smile and a firm turn of her shoulders in the direction of the narrow staircase that led to the cramped chambers that normally served as the Sheriff of Killcarrick’s private quarters. “There’ll be time for explanations later, child.”
Nessa glanced down at Molly as she trudged up the stone steps crowded with children and dogs. She was carrying a basketful of bright red cord, cord similar to that which Nessa had been unable to pry out of Granny Wren’s rigid hands back in Killcairn. Whatever magic the granny had worked had held, as she’d said, til Samhain. Were the grannies here about to attempt another such ritual tonight? Was that why Molly wanted the staff? A burning wish to know stabbed briefly through Nessa, then disappeared in a flood of panic as she reached the top of the steps. Suddenly she wished she’d done more than taken the time to wash her hands and rake back her hair. Her shoulders ached, her legs felt like lumps, and she almost stumbled more than once over hounds or children.
The tray of food Molly had given her to carry up felt like lead in her arms, but at least it gave her an excuse to knock on Artimour’s door. From the other side of the door, she heard him call, “Enter.”
She pushed it open, and stepped into what felt like a cool bath of still water, after the heat of the forge and the chaos of the kitchen and the keep. He looked tired. She stepped over the threshold, and saw that his eyes were like smudges of ash in a face as gray and drawn as her father’s after a long day or sleepless night. Only the luster of his hair and the slightly pointed tips of his ears betrayed his mixed blood. In the dull light filtering through the horn pane, even his skin had lost that velvety sheen. It was difficult to restrain her apology. “I brought your dinner.”
He was standing by the open casement, one foot on the window seat, watching the activity below. He glanced over his shoulder, then straightened, obviously surprised to see her. “Put it there.” He shifted from foot to foot. “You don’t have to wait on me—I told Granny Molly that I was well enough to come down.”
“They think it’s better you stay out of sight. They say there’s talk against the sidhe.” She’d seen for herself that grief and shock were giving way to rage. She’d seen two brothers come to blows today over who had retrieved a third brother’s sword, but rumors she’d overheard were so ridiculous she’d dismissed them out of hand until Uwen had mentioned them: the sidhe were coming to save them; the sidhe themselves had been overrun by the goblins at last. The Duke of Gar was at fault for rebelling against the King; the King’s madness was to blame. The Duke of Gar had struck a secret alliance with the sidhe, the Humbrians had struck an alliance with the goblins. The Duke of Gar was dead. The Mad King Hoell was dead. But it was the muttered curses, the furtive looks cast upward as she carried the tray up the stairs that convinced Nessa that Uwen was right. “The people are looking for someone to blame.”
She placed the tray on the low table beside the hearth, then turned, her hands clasped before her, eyes fastened fixedly on the leaping flames. The aroma of toasted bread and warm cheese tickled her nostrils, and she wondered what the food smelled like to him. She flipped aside the napkin to reveal crusty brown bread with a light smear of pale cheese on top, then took a deep breath. The words burst out of her like tumbling stones plunging pell-mell down a hill. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you, truly I didn’t. I’m sorry—I just never thought—there was nothing that made me think—and Uwen says we’re to leave tomorrow—and that you’re going back to Faerie—” Her eyes filled with tears and she blinked them back.
He cut her off with a wave of his hand. “Nessa, it’s all right. I understand. I understand you had no choice.” He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “I was wrong to speak to you so. If you’ll accept my apology, we need speak of it no more.”
Surprised, she stared at him, and then realized that whatever troubled him was so much greater that any wrong she’d done him was insignificant in comparison. What would happen to him if the world to which he intended to return did not expect to welcome him back? What was he walking into? She eyed his straight back, his broad shoulders that looked broader than she’d expected beneath his borrowed clothes. The skin on his hands was paler and finer than most men’s, without any of the coarse curling hair that covered the backs of Dougal’s. But they were large, the palms broad, the fingers square.
Blacksmith’s hands. She shoved the absurdity of that thought away. Artimour was a prince of the sidhe, not a simple mortal smith. But she couldn’t help wondering what he’d look like, stripped to the waist like her father, only a leather apron and vambraces to protect his chest and forearms, and a sudden flush suffused her whole body that had nothing to do with the warmth of the flames. “Can you tell me where you found this?” She fumbled at her neck and pulled out Dougal’s amulet.
“Ah, there it is. I thought it’d been lost in the water. Do you recognize it?”
“I made it for my father when I was thirteen. I’d know it anywhere. Where’d you find it?”
“In the river, on a rock. It looked as if someone had tossed it into the water to try to negate its poison. Running water does, to some extent.”
“But you saw no one about?”
Artimour shook his head. “No one until I met Finuviel. And he was alone, as he should not have been.” He drew a deep breath. “There are many great houses along the river. Your father may have found his way to one, but any sidhe would’ve expected him to remove the amulet before they took him in. I found the amulet a league or two from where you and I parted company, but it may have drifted downriver somewhat.” He hesitated. “I don’t think there’s any way to be sure of anything—”
“But that he’s there,” finished Nessa. She took a single step forward with a raised chin. “Don’t you see? Everyone said I was wrong to be so sure he’d fallen into the OtherWorld. But now you found his amulet. Surely that shows he’s there.” She took another step, her heart beginning to pound. “And last night—last night I realized my mother must be in Faerie, too.”
A shadow crossed his face, and he indicated one of the wooden chairs in front of the fire. “Please sit. I must talk to you.”
He still moved like a sidhe, she thought as she perched on the chair’s hard edge, but she noticed that a furrow had appeared between his brows.
“Nessa,” he said gently. “I’m not sure what’s happening right now in Faerie, but nothing I can imagine is good. Finuviel—the one who stabbed me, who came to your forge with Cadwyr—Finuviel is Vinaver’s son, my own sister’s son. It wouldn’t surprise me if the two of them have been planning this for a very long time, and saw Alemandine’s pregnancy as an opportunity to strike while the Queen was at her weakest. I don’t think he only intended the dagger for me. I think it’s clear he made a bargain with this Cadwyr that Sir Uwen speaks of with such dislike—the dagger, in exchange for the host that Finuviel was supposed to lead to the border. After I found that amulet, before I met Finuviel, I came to a place beside the river where it appeared a great army had ridden across. It didn’t occur to me then they might have ridden into the water and come out in the same way you did, here in Shadow. So the questions have become, where’s Finuviel, where’s the host, and where’s the Caul, for Finuviel must’ve taken it in order to bring the silver dagger into Faerie. For all I know, Alemandine may be dead, and Finuviel already King. And as you say, it’s better that I leave. I’ll go at dawn. It’s at dusk the goblins hunt.” For a split second, he smiled, but then his face darkened, and he looked old, careworn and tired. He paused, drew a deep breath, then continued. “I’ll do what I can to find your parents, Nessa, but you must understand that I don’t know what’s waiting for me. Those goblins that came last night, Nessa, I’ve never seen anything like them. Oh yes, I saw them. I went to the top of the tower. There were so many. I’m not sure there’s magic enough in Faerie to stand against them.”
But silver still works, she thought, fingering Dougal’s amulet as an idea occurred to her. There wasn’t much time, and she was tired, but if she used a sword that only needed repair—she’d have to see what she could find. She leaped to her feet and headed for the door. “Do you know where to find the forge?” She’d have to satisfy her curiosity about the corn grannies and their rituals another night.
He looked startled. “The forge? Where the blacksmiths work?”
“Stop there before you leave? Please?” She only waited long enough to ensure that he nodded, and then she skipped down the steps, curiously more lighthearted than she had felt in days.
3
The afternoon was fading into twilight, when Merle paused on the threshold of the tower room overlooking the western sea. A storm was brewing, and the sound of the surf as it pounded against the rocks that formed the foundation of the house her father had so graciously provided was louder up here for some reason than in her own solar on the floor below. Then a wet breeze licked her cheek and she turned to see her husband’s outline, black against the garish lines of red and violet light flooding through the gray-streaked clouds. “Hoell? My love?” She spoke tentatively, for ever since their perilous escape from the horrible things that had driven them from Brynhyvar, she could not quite believe that not only had they both escaped the fiends, but that Hoell, her one true love and anointed King of Brynhyvar, had come back to himself. He was no longer the meek and gentle creature he’d become as a result of their child’s death. Their first child’s death, she thought, placing her hand on her swelling abdomen. It could happen to anyone, she thought. Lots of people lost children. She felt a feeble flutter against the thick silk of her new chemista and she smiled. Swim, little fish, swim.
But it worried her more than she wanted to admit to find him sitting alone in the dark, leaning so far out the open casement that his hair was damp with spray. But his expression reassured her, as did his words of sweetly accented Humbrian, “Ah, here you are, Merle. Come sit a moment. The sunset’s splendid, don’t you think?”
“My love, aren’t you cold?” But she edged closer, curling her cold fingers around his surprisingly hot hand.
“Come, I’ll warm you.” He folded her against his chest, snuggling her against him so that she felt the beating of his heart against her shoulder. The sea looked angry as it lashed against the rocks and the sky was streaked with red. It reminded her of the blood dripping down the gray stone walls of Ardagh. She still heard the screaming of the dying and the screeching of the sidhe in her dreams. It was one of the reasons her father had given them this house. Only the insistent rhythm of the waves washing over the rocks soothed her. She closed her eyes and turned her face away, willing herself to relax into the circle of his embrace.
“I don’t know what you like to look at up here,” she said. “There’s nothing to see but the water and the sky.”
“Maybe you’re right.” She could feel his breath through the linen of her veil, hot against her scalp. It reminded her of all the nights they’d lain in her bed during his madness, when he’d clutched her to his chest like a little boy. “But when I sit here, and the light is right, I think I see Brynhyvar, sitting out there like a purple jewel, right across—” he extended their arms, folding his hand over hers, pointing with his index finger “—there.”
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/anne-kelleher/silver-s-bane-42490557/) на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
Anne Kelleher
THROUGH THE SHADOWLANDS: Where the touch of silver was Protection, Power and Peril… AN OTHERWORLDLY INTRIGUE… With the courts of both the Sidhe's Otherworld and the mortals' Shadowlands in contention, nothing seems safe anymore.Now blacksmith's daughter Nessa is caught up in political and military intrigues that might loose the goblin horde. Widowed queen Cecily is fighting for a throne she never expected to have. And Delphinea, lady in waiting to the Faery throne, is caught between the powers of Sidhe and her destiny.A DESPERATE PERIL…The first battles are over, and devastation wracks both lands. With Nessa crossing between worlds to further understanding of each people, Cecily and Delphinea must fight to contain the evil that edges ever closer. Because their honor demands that their countries come before anything–even love. And life…
Praise for Anne Kelleher
“Anne Kelleher’s engrossing fantasy, Silver’s Edge…weaves an enticing tale as Nessa braves unknown dangers to find her father and bring him safely home in this beguiling story of courage and adventure.”
—BookPage
“Ms. Kelleher weaves another fantasy epic of grand proportions, sweeping the reader off into lands, legends and lore. Part Arthurian, part Tolkien and part fairy tale, the mix creates an incredible world for the reader’s fertile mind to take root. It starts off slowly, but then takes off with a bang and never releases you from its grasp.”
—The Best Reviews, on Silver’s Edge
“The characters are complex and multifaceted, and the writing is rich with colorful prose…. Women control their fates, and fear is not an option when it comes to the tough decisions that must be made in a time when all that is held sacred is facing destruction.”
—Romance Reviews Today on Silver’s Edge
“Silver’s Edge is a first-class fantasy. The characters are vivid, believable; they captured this reader’s heart, taking me on an unforgettable journey as they confronted their fears, made tough decisions and accepted the consequences of those decisions, no matter what it cost them.”
—In the Library Reviews
“…displays vivid imagination.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Fascinating—a most ingenious blend of science fiction and fantasy.”
—New York Times bestselling author Marion Zimmer Bradley on Daughter of Prophecy
SILVER’S BANE
ANNE KELLEHER
This book is dedicated with love to all the women
in my life—friends, teachers, mentors, guides and
guardians who are far too many to list—and most
especially to my mother, Frances Kelly;
my stepmother, Alice Kelleher;
my grandmother Rose Castaldi;
my sisters, Sheila Kelly Bauer, DJ Kelleher and Pam Boyd;
my daughters, Kate, Meg and Libby; all those yet to
come and all those who have gone before.
Blessed be.
Glossary of People and Places
Faerie—the sidhe word for their own world. It includes the Wastelands
The Shadowlands—the sidhe word for the mortal world
The Wastelands—that part of Faerie to which the goblins have been banished
Lyonesse—legendary lost land that is said to have lain to the east of Faerie
Brynhyvar—the country that, in the mortal world, overlaps with Faerie
The Otherworld—the mortal name for Faerie
TirNa’lugh—the lands of light; the shining lands—mortal name for Faerie; becoming archaic
The Summerlands—place where mortals go at death
Humbria—mortal country across the Murhevnian Sea to the east of Brynhyvar
Lacquilea—mortal country lying to the south of Brynhyvar
Killcairn—Nessa’s village
Killcrag—neighboring village to the south
Killcarrick—lake and the keep
Alemandine—Queen of sidhe
Xerruw—Goblin King
Vinaver—Alemandine’s younger twin sister and the rightful Queen
Artimour—Alemandine’s half-mortal half brother
Gloriana—mother of Vinaver, Alemandine and Artimour
Timias—Gloriana’s chief councilor and the unacknowledged father of Alemandine and Vinaver
Eponea—Mistress of the Queen’s Horses
Delphinea—Eponea’s daughter
Finuviel—Vinaver’s son by the god Herne; rightful King of Faerie
Hudibras—Alemandine’s consort
Gorlias, Philomemnon, Berillian—councilors to the Queen
Petri—Delphinea’s servant gremlin
Khouri—leader of the gremlin revolt and plot to steal the Caul
Nessa—nineteen-year-old daughter of Dougal, the blacksmith of Killcairn
Dougal—Nessa’s father; Essa’s husband; stolen into Faerie by Vinaver
Griffin—Dougal’s eighteen-year-old apprentice
Donnor, Duke of Gar—overlord of Killcairn and surrounding country; uncle of the mad King and leader of the rebellion against him
Cadwyr, Duke of Allovale—Donnor’s nephew and heir
Cecily of Mochmorna—Donnor’s wife; heiress to the throne of Brynhyvar
Kian of Garn—Donnor’s First Knight
Hoell—mad King of Brynhyvar
Merle—Queen of Brynhyvar; princess of Humbria
Renvahr, Duke of Longborth—brother of Queen Merle; elected Protector of the Realm of Brynhyvar
Granny Wren—wicce woman of Killcairn
Granny Molly—wicce woman of Killcrag
Engus—blacksmith of Killcarrick
Uwen—Kian’s second in command
The Hag—immortal who dwells in the rocks and caves below Faerie; the moonstone globe was stolen from her when the Caul was forged
Herne—immortal who dwells within the Faerie forests, from which he rides out on Samhain night, leading the Wild Hunt across the worlds
Great Mother—mortal name for the Hag
The Horned One—mortal name for Herne
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks to Rosmari Roast, herbalist, wise woman and friend, for eleventh-hour research; to my agent, Jenn Jackson, and my editor Mary-Theresa Hussey for seeing the potential before I did; to Laura Rose and the rest of the Goddess Girls: Anne Sheridan, Susan Grayson, Leslie Goodale, Lisa Drew, Barbara Terry, Jamie King, Louise Rose, Alicia Tremper, Judy Conrad—you guys are the best midwives in the world; to Judy Charlton for reiki; to all the folks in the CT over 40 chat room on AOL, especially GtimeJoe; to all my fellow LUNA-tics in the LUNA-sylum for cheerleading. But most of all, this book would never have been written without the unwavering love and unstinting support of one man: Donny Goodman, I adore you.
Contents
Before
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Afterward
BEFORE
It was the weight of the world above her that nearly drove Vinaver mad. The thought of it crept, unbidden and unsought, from the deep places of her mind, a fat white worm of fear threatening to suffocate her from within, even as she struggled through narrow fissures and sloping corridors of unyielding stone. The pressure bore down on her from all directions, and the fear rose, writhing and squirming, coiling and expanding, filling her lungs, constricting her throat, wetting her palms, so that the lych-light at the end of her slim hazel-wood staff dimmed to a pinprick until she felt she would be swallowed by the dark.
The solid rock surrounding her was nearly as foreign to the intrinsic nature of her kind as the deadly silver from the mortal Shadowlands, for the sidhe of Faerie were creatures of light and air. But Vinaver had been forced to learn the first time her journey had taken her into the places where sunlight was not even a legend, that when the longing for the light and airy open spaces threatened to overwhelm her, she should close her eyes, and breathe, and let the crushing sensation roll over and through her like an enormous wave, until her mind quieted, leaving her feeling as exhausted and battered as the sea after a storm. But at least she was able to grip her staff and go on.
This was the last place anyone would ever think to find a sidhe. Her kind were never cave dwellers, stone carvers or earth diggers. According to the Lorespinners, the Un-derlands had been the realm of the goblins once, in the earliest time before the great Goblin Wars, when the sidhe, led by Vinaver’s mother, the great Queen Gloriana, had bound them into the Wastelands above. At least they’d still been bound in the Wastelands when Vinaver had started on this quest. She had no idea how long she’d been below the surface. There was no day or night, there was no sun or moon to mark the passage of hours, or the advance of seasons. She found the longer she was there, the less time had meaning.
But the domesticated trees within the Grove of the Palace of the Faerie Queen, as well as the wild ones of the Forest, had been adamant. Only the Hag—She who dwelled in the dark places below the surface world—could tell Vinaver why her sister, Alemandine, had failed to become pregnant with the heir of Faerie in her appointed time.
Now Vinaver followed the creature that slithered before her, a near-formless thing that gleamed wetly as it led her through granite canyons, leaving a trail of its own slime, its face perpetually turned away from the yellow glow of her lych-light.
Just beyond a jagged outcropping, her guide paused and drew back, indicating a tunnel leading off to one side. Vinaver stopped. The thing wanted her to follow it. She crept cautiously forward, feeling her way down the rough walls with fingertips made exquisitely sensitive. She peered inside the black slit of the opening. Patches of lichen glowed as she extended the staff as far into the tunnel as she could, and frowned as she saw that the roof sloped away into a low opening that disappeared into deep and utter blackness. It appeared barely wide enough for her shoulders. She’d have to slither through it, wriggling like a worm. Her breath caught in her throat at the thought of the massive rock surrounding her on all sides, and she nearly turned, shrieking, maddened beyond reach, dashing back like a butterfly trapped in a net, frantic for the taste of sun and air. I cannot do this, the voice of her own panic screamed through her mind, as she gripped the hazel staff with wet, white-knuckled fingers. But you must do this, she thought immediately in response. And she forced herself to breathe.
The world above was sick. The trees whispered it in their branches, sighed it in the wind. What beauty Faerie possessed was illusory, fleeting, and fading even as she lingered. If she failed to find out what could be done to heal the land, everything and everyone in Faerie would be lost forever, dispersed into some chaotic void, forgotten and forsaken. Her son’s image rose up unbidden, and her heart contracted that such grace and beauty as was his should be wasted. Finuviel. She saw his coal-black curls and long green eyes, high cheekbones and slanting brows and a smile that contained within it everything right and good and beautiful of Faerie. For him, she thought. For Finuviel, I will do what I must. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the air rushing in and out of her lungs, summoning up the strength to let herself be led into that dark and narrow passage. Finally she was able to nod.
Her guide had withdrawn, crouching in a formless lump. It had no eyes but she knew it watched her. So she nodded again and waved the lych-light. The creature shuddered away from the light, but gathered itself up into a sort of ball and slithered forward.
Disgust roiled through her but she tamped that down too. With a final breath, she entered the narrow tunnel. Almost immediately she was forced to bend, then to hunch, and finally, just as she feared, she was forced to crawl, first on all fours, and then, creeping and squirming like the thing before her. She found that she was grateful for the fluids the creature exuded, for they slicked the walls, easing her passage, even as she battled the panic that threatened to undo her completely when she felt the rock walls close in around her head.
She tumbled out at last, wet with sweat and slime, and she raised her face to the rush of cold still air and looked up into a vaulted cavern covered in tiny pinpricks that resembled infant stars. It was the lichen, she realized.
The thing quivered. The stone beneath her bare feet was smooth and very cold and white mist rose from the surface of a vast, still lake. Within it, patches of luminous phosphorescence lit the whole chamber with a pale greenish glow. An underground sea, she thought. But the thing at her feet was moving again, squirming down the sloping lip to the very edge of the water. It roiled and shuddered and a single arm formed out of the shapeless mass, and a rough approximation of a hand pointed a stubby finger. Vinaver squinted. In the middle of the water, behind the shifting mist, she saw a cluster of boulders that rose from the center of a small island some distance from the shore. “Is that where She lives?”
The words hung flat as if the water somehow absorbed the sound. A heavy stillness permeated the moist cold air, a silence so profound, she could feel the skin stretching over her sinews, the air moving in and out of her lungs, the pulse of her blood against the walls of her veins. Her tongue felt sharp as crystal against the dry leather of her mouth. That this could be the end of all her wanderings made her knees weak and her heart pound like a hammer against her breastbone.
But the wide water lay between her and the Hag, and there was no other way across as far as she could see. She would have to swim. Her breath hung like the mist over the sea. The thought of immersing herself in that cold bath made her bones ache. It had been so long since she’d been truly warm, she thought. She touched her face with one cold hand. She could scarcely remember a time when her muscles were not knotted and stiff, when her bones did not feel like flesh-covered lead. She did not want to bathe in that greenish glowing water. The great rocks themselves seemed to shift and groan and sigh all around her and the stone beneath her feet undulated as if a great beast stirred from some black unbroken sleep.
Vinaver looked down at the thing crouching at her feet, throbbing in time to a silent pulse, and she understood that it had brought her as far as it could. The rest was up to her. She removed her cloak and her gown—what was left of them—and placed them neatly on the stony shore beside her leather pack and the hazel rod. The lych-light faded to a faint twinkle. The gooseflesh prickled her skin and she crossed her arms over her breasts, then walked barefoot, naked but for the ragged chemise she wore, directly down to the water.
The first few strokes were a pleasant surprise. For far from being cold, the water was warm, welcoming as a hot salt sea under a summer sun. She stretched and relaxed into it, her strokes purposeful and sure, steady as the warmth that seeped into her legs and down her toes, caressing her with a deliberateness that was almost aware. Around her the white mist rose—not mist, she thought, but steam—drifting off the surface. She could see the island rising black and barren in the center. She swam on, the warmth bolstering her and sustaining her, trailing through the long locks of her coppery hair like a lover’s fingers.
It was when the water began to thicken around her that she began to worry, that she realized that what she swam through was not water such as that which coursed through the rivers of Faerie, nor even the salt ocean that surrounded it on all sides, but some strange primal sea, and her heart clenched as she saw long, shadowy strands and huge clumps of glutinous fiber swirl through the depths, like shadowy leviathans roaming the deep. If one of those things takes me, I shall be lost, she thought, and she stroked harder, kicked faster, even as the water gathered around her, congealing into rubbery strands. Dismayed, she kicked harder as the stuff twined around her limbs, sapping her strength. But still she had hope, that here, at last she had come to where the Hag dwelled, and she whipped her hair out of her eyes, stroking desperately toward the savage-looking boulders rising tantalizingly, mercilessly, just out of reach.
At last, when finally she thought she could stand no more, her feet touched solid stone. Nearly weeping, she looked down at the thick gelatinous clots that swirled and clumped around her ankles and her calves. She wiped and kicked them away, shuddering with disgust at the way the stuff persistently slimed around her as she plowed up the steep slope. Her teeth began to chatter audibly even before her knees broke the surface of the sea and she clutched her arms close about herself, shivering in the cold, cold air, even as she scraped the thick slime off her chemise and her skin, raking it out of her hair. At last she stood on the shore. She turned and looked back. In the dim greenish light, she could barely make out the white spot of her clothes, the round, black shape of her guide crouching patiently beside it. The water pushed up against the shore, as if searching for her, and she stepped farther away from it, warily peering in the dim light for some sign of the Hag.
She thought she heard a chuckle, and she whipped around, but it was only the insistent lap of the water against the stone. She drew herself up, and opened her arms as wide as her shaking body would let her. “Great Herne,” she whispered, “if ever you were with me, be with me now.” She drew a deep breath and cried, into the thick and chilly air, “Great Hag! Great Hag, come forth upon my call.” The rock was slick beneath her soles, and she felt something slice through her feet as she took a single step forward. She cried out and nearly lost her balance. She looked down and saw that unlike the opposite shore, these boulders were punctuated by shards of what looked like glass. She squatted down, watching her pale blood roll down the slope into the sea, carefully feeling all around her for smooth places between the razor-edged outcroppings. She edged forward, feeling her way with questing hands and careful feet. But for all her care, the jagged edges sliced unmercifully and she nearly fell more than once. At last she reached a relatively smooth plateau, beside the cluster of boulders that rose from the center of the island like the throne of the Goblin King in his stinking hall.
“Great Hag,” she whispered, scarcely daring to give the words voice. “Great Hag, come forth and heed your child’s plea.” Her voice echoed up and around and down the vault of the ceiling, sighing and rippling across the water, and she saw the depths dull to dark green as the drifting shadows within it seemed to thicken in response. It was as if everything about her in some way was so intimately connected to the place that every move she made, every breath she drew, every thought, even, had some effect. “Great Hag,” she whispered, this time pouring every ounce of need, of desire, of hope she possessed into the words. “Come forth.”
But the boulders were silent and the sea was still.
Vinaver sank shaking to her haunches, her arms wrapped around her knees. Her guide was wrong, so obviously wrong. And she was so stupid, so obviously stupid to have trusted him—it. What could she have expected from a blind, deaf, voiceless, practically senseless creature? What could she have expected from the foul misshapen things that led her to it? Tears filled her eyes and spilled down her cheeks, seeping down her fingers, rolling down her arms unheeded. Was all of this for naught? Had she truly come here to the underbelly of the world to find nothing? She would not survive another swim back across that swarming sea. She had failed. Faerie would disintegrate, Finuviel, her fair son, so bright with promise, would die the true death, and all the great and shining beauty that was Faerie would go down into nothingness. Down here, she thought, into this primal soup. There was nothing else to do but wait for it.
She rested her cheek on her knees, and in the soft and swirling mist, wooing as a lover’s whisper, she thought she heard a snatch of music, clear and airy and piping as any ever drifted across a Faerie meadow. A woman’s voice danced through her mind, low and mocking. “A queen who’s never a queen to be—is that who comes to call on me?”
Slowly Vinaver rose to her feet, forcing herself to straighten, as a sudden fear greater than any she had yet known gripped her like a vise. “Great Hag?” she whispered, for the voice was not that of an old woman. Scarcely daring to believe that here, at last, was the end of all her striving, she peered into the darkness, gaping in astonishment as the boulders lifted and shifted and finally resolved themselves into the hideous visage of an old woman hunching over a great black cauldron. The cauldron was balanced over a firepit by a curious arrangement of two polished crystal globes, and a makeshift tripod of iron legs beneath a flat disk where a third globe should have been.
As Vinaver stared in horror, steam spiraled up from the depths of the cauldron, half obscuring the grinning, toothless rictus on the Hag’s gray-blue face, which was striated with wrinkled folds carved like channels into the bedrock of her sunken eyes and cheeks. She gripped what looked like a thick branch—for a few dead leaves still clung to it—in two clawlike hands as she stirred her brew.
The Hag’s bright eyes fixed on her, and Vinaver gasped. Like Herne’s, glowing red then green, they pierced her with a force that made her stagger. She regained her footing and took a single step forward, forgetful of the sharp crystals that slashed her feet to the bones, and cried out as the pain lanced up her leg. As more of her pale blood leaked into the rock, it shuddered beneath her feet, smoothing itself beneath her bleeding soles. And she understood she was to draw closer.
Each step was agony but she refused to flinch. She had come so far. She could go a little farther, after all. There was neither kindness nor cruelty in that glittering green gaze, just a hungry interest. The Hag’s gray tongue flicked over her yellowed and blackened teeth and for a moment her eyes turned red.
Suddenly more frightened than ever, Vinaver paused. Such was the nature of the Hag, Vinaver understood with sudden insight, she who destroys that all might be made new. Everything was fodder for her cauldron, grist for her mill, silt for her sea. Vinaver wanted to speak, but something that felt like her heart blocked her throat. She saw more clearly the improvised contrivance that supported the cauldron in place of a third globe. It was of iron—three cast-iron legs bound into a tripod, a small disk placed on top. And suddenly, with cold and certain knowing, she knew exactly where the third globe was.
“The moonstone,” she whispered, daring to meet the Hag’s eyes. “The moonstone globe—the one that wears the Caul within my sister’s Palace—that moonstone globe is yours.”
The Hag hissed, her rheumy eyes darting from side to side. She gave a great turn to the stick and the steam rose and swirled and in the depths, Vinaver thought she saw a familiar face—a furtive face that turned his back and threw a robe over his head before the image dissipated into nothing.
“Timias,” Vinaver whispered, recognizing her mother’s Chief Councilor and perpetual thorn in her side. “’Twas Timias who took your globe?” Another hiss was the only sound the Hag made as she swung her shoulders in a mighty arc as she gave the cauldron another stir. A shiver ran through Vinaver. She looked down at the other two globes, this time more carefully, and saw that one gleamed black as pitch in the bluish glow of the unnatural fire that burned within the stone pit beneath the cauldron, and that the other was flecked with specks of black, white, green and red. And suddenly, in a flash of insight, Vinaver understood something of the nature of the problem. The black globe—the goblins, perhaps. The other, the mortals, most like. And the missing moonstone that Timias had apparently stolen in some way represented Faerie. It WAS Faerie, Vinaver realized. And Timias had taken it from the Hag. She had always wondered why the stories were so vague about the origination of the globe. “The trees have told me that Faerie is dying. I see that your globe is—is missing.” These two were connected in some way, she was sure of it. She hesitated, attempting to gauge the thoughts behind the creature’s burning eyes. And then she gathered her courage and spoke quickly, lest she lose her resolve. “I know there’s something terribly wrong for Alemandine is unable to conceive her Heir. And the trees told me to come to you, Great Hag, that you would know how to save Faerie.” Vinaver finished quickly, for there was something in the Hag’s eyes that made her want to run into the water, to give herself up to those sultry depths, to the peace the green sea promised.
The steam rose up in a high cloud as the Hag stirred the cauldron. She said nothing, but the same mocking voice Vinaver heard before swirled out of the steam, the words carried on the vapor. “Round about the circle goes, dark to light and back it flows—world without end can never be, so says every prophecy.”
“But what do you say?” asked Vinaver, suddenly brave with the courage of desperation. What, after all, did she have to lose? She had no chance of going back without the Hag’s help. If she were only fodder for the Hag’s eternal soup, so be it. “What do you say, Great Mother?” Something made the Hag look up. She fixed Vinaver with that cold unforgiving stare, but Vinaver refused to shrink. She took one step forward. “Must it end now?”
The rocks groaned, as though shuddering beneath the weight of some eternal sorrow, and the Hag’s appearance rippled, shifting from the hungry visage of She Who Destroys to the drawn and ravaged face of She Who Mourns. Suddenly she did not seem at all malevolent. Her shoulders collapsed, leaving her stooped and frail, and her face thinned and the reddish light in the green depths died. Her lipless mouth twisted and a tear seeped down one ruined cheek.
Time hung, suspended, the moment prolonged beyond all reality. The darkness seemed to shrink, expand, then retreat once more, as a light, white and clean as springtime sun leaped up from the cauldron’s depths. And in that radiant flash, Vinaver thought she saw the Hag transformed, her craggy features melting, dissolving, her flesh rounding and firming and lifting, flushing to a gentle shade of pink, and her eyes faded to violet. The Maiden, she thought. But even as Vinaver recognized the transformation, it faded away, dispersing into the air like one of the squirming things roaming the water’s depths. Finally it was Vinaver who broke the spell. “I think I understand,” she whispered. “You can’t change. Something’s happened. And you can’t change.” The rage that flared from the Hag’s red eyes gave Vinaver her first real thread of hope. “Tell me,” she whispered. “Make me understand. If I should be the Queen, why am I not? Why can you not become the Maiden, and why did Timias take your globe? What is it that’s killing Faerie, and how do I make it stop?”
Vinaver thought at first the Hag would not answer her at all, for the creature only shifted from side to side, and she wondered if the Hag was incapable of speech. After all, Herne had never spoken to her, in their encounter. But in a smooth motion that belied the image of the ancient crone, the Hag suddenly turned to face Vinaver and shrieked, in a voice that echoed across the vaulted space like the harsh cry of a crow, “Why? Why? Why?”
Perplexed, Vinaver stared. “Why what?”
With another shriek, the Hag went back to her stirring and the steam billowed up in great white clouds, wreathing and obscuring her face. For a moment, Vinaver was afraid the Hag would disappear. But as the steam cleared, she was still there, bright green eyes fixed on Vinaver. “Why should I help you?”
It was not a question Vinaver expected and the Hag’s voice alone unsettled her, grating on her ears like a blade scraped over stone. She cast about, taken aback, momentarily confused. What could she possibly say that would convince the Hag that Faerie should be saved? What part was more beautiful than the rest? Where to even begin?
And then Finuviel’s face rose before her, his form danced out of her memory, the tiny infant, delicately made, but sturdy, so fair and strong and merry as he grew, the epitome of what a prince of the sidhe should be. She remembered the first time she’d heard his laugh. A butterfly had landed on his toes. Her eyes clouded with tears and her throat thickened. “Well,” she said at last. “I have a son.”
“Ah,” sighed the Hag, and with a stir of her stick, the great cauldron released another cloud of steam. This time it resolved itself into the angular, antlered face of Herne, the Lord of the Forest and the Wild Hunt.
“You know—you know about my son?” Vinaver said. For the appearance of Herne’s image implied that the Hag knew he’d fathered Finuviel. No one else had ever believed Vinaver. Everyone accused her of using the claim of Herne as a way of concealing Finuviel’s true parentage. The enormity of the Hag’s knowledge burst like a sunrise into her mind and suddenly Vinaver believed that not only was there hope, but that the Hag would help her.
Without another sound, the Hag beckoned. Vinaver crept forward, wincing on her ruined feet, her heart pounding audibly. At the edge of the firepit, just before it was possible for Vinaver to see inside the cauldron, she held up her hand. “Yes,” the Hag whispered, a long, low croon that tickled the back of Vinaver’s neck like the barest stroke of her long sharp claws. “Yes, I know about your son. I know all about your son. And yes, for his sake, and for his father’s, I shall help you. But there is always a price, and so I ask you, Vinaver Tree-speaker, the would-be, should-be Queen—tell me, what will you pay for the knowledge of the Hag?”
“What would you have of me?” The water was still dripping off her hair. It ran in chilly rivulets down her back, between the cleft of her buttocks, trickling down her legs to drip off the two swollen lumps of throbbing flesh that were her bloodied feet. She felt as if she stood in a pool of her own congealing blood. The cold air raised gooseflesh on her entire body, but an act of will greater than any she had ever known she was capable of kept her upright and still. She had come so far and searched for so long that she had nothing left but the rags on her back. What could the Hag possibly want of her?
“There are three things.” The whisper rasped down her spine like a fingernail across granite. “For the first, I want my globe back. For the second, I want the head of him that took it from me.”
At that, Vinaver’s head snapped up. “Timias?”
This time she was standing far too close when the angry light flared in the Hag’s eyes. A searing pain lanced up her leg as she involuntarily stepped back onto a sharp edge, while an image blazed clearly in her mind, the image of Timias creeping away from the cavern, bearing the moonstone globe. “You want me to kill Timias?”
“His life is mine, and my cauldron wants his head.” The Hag’s hiss, her narrowed eyes, reminded Vinaver of a snake. “Cut off his head with a silvered edge, and give it to me for my cauldron. So those are the first two things I want of you. Will you agree?”
The depth of the hatred in the Hag’s voice frightened Vinaver. “All right.” She had no idea how she would actually fulfill the second requirement—for to do what the Hag asked required some forethought. And it had not occurred to her that murder would be involved. Vinaver swallowed hard. “What’s the third?”
This time the Hag’s response was a sinister chuckle. She leaned forward, even as Vinaver instinctively shrank back. “The third is the most important and the most necessary. I want your womb.”
At first Vinaver was sure she had not heard correctly, even as her hands clasped her belly. So she could only stare while the Hag chuckled with anticipatory glee. “What?”
“I need your womb.”
Vinaver looked at the scaly gray claws that gripped the stick, recoiling at the idea of those twisted, thickened digits anywhere near her flesh. “Why?” she whispered, horrified.
The Hag’s laugh was like the rumble of rocks down a hillside. “Ah, little queen. Already the circle widens into a spiral. The spiral turns, the center loosens, and soon all will spin away, down, into my cauldron. And my cauldron must not be cheated. If you would undo what has been done, you must feed it. And that’s what it wants. That’s what it needs. That’s what it craves.” She drew out the last long syllable, beckoning Vinaver closer with a crooked, yellow claw. “Come, if you will, and look within—but feed the cauldron to stop the spin.” She stirred the stick, swaying a little, eyes closed as she chanted. Suddenly she stopped and opened her eyes. “You want your sister pregnant with Faerie’s heir? Give me your womb. That’s how it has to work, I’m afraid.”
Vinaver swallowed hard, trying to control the beating of her heart. The monstrous thing muttered as she stirred, her lumpen shape rolling in slow motion in a large, left-turning spiral. Left-turning, Vinaver thought, the direction of breakdown, banishment and change, and in that moment she understood. As the Hag stirred the cauldron, so the tide of Faerie swung. Turning it to the left meant the undoing of the world. “Stop that!” cried Vinaver. “You’re doing it—stop it—”
The Hag jerked around, the hairs on the end of her nose twitching, as if she smelled Vinaver’s desperation. “Round about the circle goes, dark to light and back it flows,” she chanted, as if Vinaver had not spoken. “She that dares to stop my spin, had better put a tidbit in. Feed my cauldron, pay the price, lest all be lost when light turns dark and dark turns light.”
Vinaver’s stomach clenched and her gut heaved at the thought that that creature might touch her. But she had come all this way, and what need had she of a womb, after all? She’d borne a son in her appointed time, such as it was. What did it matter whether or not she gave up her womb? “But—but if I give you my womb,” she whispered, “will it not mean I can never be Queen?” The Hag threw back her head and howled as if at some unwitting joke, but Vinaver would not be dissuaded. “Tell me—tell me what I shall become—if I give you this—this part of me. If I shall not be Queen, what then?”
“She who comes with bitter need, had better then my cauldron feed.”
But suddenly, Vinaver understood something that had eluded her for a long time. She had never understood why the god had come to her that Beltane night when Finuviel was conceived. No one had believed her. But the Hag knew. Her womb had served its purpose. “All right,” she shrugged. “Done.”
The Hag cackled. Vinaver’s mouth dried up like a desert, and she thought she might faint as nausea flopped in her gut like a dying fish. The Hag’s claws closed around her wrist, drawing her closer, and the Hag’s face seemed to fill her entire field of vision. The Hag’s eyes glittered red, then green in the leaping blue flames, and her craggy face dissolved into unrecognizable chaos. Vinaver collapsed, crying out as she felt the scratch of the Hag’s cold fingers, pulling at her clothing, kneading at her flesh, creeping between her legs, probing for the opening to the very center of her self, seeking, separating, pushing in with sharp, grasping claws.
Vinaver cried out at the first stab of blinding pain, and she pushed away, but the Hag held her hard. She shut her eyes as the pain flamed through her, and a kaleidoscope of voices and faces exploded in her mind, uncurling like ribbons, in long slow swirls of scarlet agony. She heard the wet, sucking rent, as her flesh ripped, but she didn’t care, because she understood at last that it was in the pain that the Hag imparted her knowledge. As her body broke and bled, her mind opened, and a torrent of images cascaded in. She saw her mother, Timias and the mortal by whose hand the Caul was forged. She saw the moment of its making, when the three called down the magic and bound the two worlds—Shadow and Faerie—inextricably together, tightening the normal bonds between them tight as a noose.
In some detached corner of her mind, she felt the Hag tear away her womb, felt the hot gush of blood between her thighs, and she lay flat, legs thrown open, dazed and helpless as a newborn child. The pictures shuddered, swirled, spun and split into a double set of likenesses—somehow at once both that which was, and that which should have been. She saw herself born the sole daughter of Gloriana, Faerie’s great Queen, named her Heir, and made Queen when Gloriana went into the West. She saw a Faerie green and flourishing, Finuviel born in the fullness of time, welcomed as the new King of Faerie, even while, running concurrently, like the overlay of the Shadowlands on Faerie, she saw what had really happened since the forging of the Caul. And then, as the pain settled into a slow throb, she saw faint and pale the images of what might be. She lay back, eyes open, staring into the vaulted ceiling as the ghostly outlines formed and reformed, and the world slowly dissolved into nothingness.
When next she opened her eyes, she was lying flat on her back still, staring up at what she first thought to be pinpoints of twinkling lichen. Then a warm wind rustled through the branches of the trees above her, and she realized that the soft grass beneath her was slick with morning dew. And as she watched through eyes suddenly flooded with tears, the black sky above her brightened to gray as the first light of a Faerie dawn broke the horizon at last.
1
The gremlin’s howls filled the forest. Like an avalanche, like a tidal wave, the sounds of rage and anguish and despair too long checked, exploded through the silent Samhain night, unleashed in earsplitting shrieks that continued unabated far beyond the physical capacity of such a small being to sustain such unbroken cacophony. Delphinea crumpled to her knees, crumbling like a dam against a sudden thaw, and pressed her head against the horse’s side, trying to stifle the wails that wrapped themselves around her, first like water, then like wool, nearly choking her, crushing her with their weight of unadulterated sorrow, anger and need. The moon was hidden and the still sky was only illuminated by silver starlight. The night condensed into nothing but the blood-wrenching screams and the slick salt smell of the horse’s coarse hair beneath her cheek. She felt subtle tremors beneath the surface of the leaf-strewn ground as if the great trees all around them shuddered to their roots. The horse trembled and shook, and Delphinea wrapped her arms as best she could around the animal’s neck, murmuring a gentle croon more felt than heard, trying to create a subtle vibration to act as the only shield she could think of under such an onslaught of sound. But there was nothing, ultimately, that could stand against it, and finally, she collapsed against the horse’s side, the mare’s great beating heart her only anchor.
It was thus, curled and quivering, that Vinaver’s house guards found her shortly before dawn, palms plastered against her ears, the horse only semi-aware, its eyes rolled back, its ears flattened against its head. Petri’s cries showed no signs of diminishing. The orange torchlight revealed the gremlin flopping on the forest floor like a fish caught in a net. As he is, mused Delphinea, within a net of Samhain madness. Every Samhain the gremlins all went mad, and usually they were confined. But nothing seemed to be happening quite the way it usually did.
It took all six guards to overpower him, despite the fact that he was less than half the size of Delphinea. Even the thick gag they improvised from a strip of hastily cutoff doublet sleeve barely stifled Petri’s cries. When at last Petri was subdued, his howling reduced to smothered moans, they turned their attention to Delphinea, sitting quiet and disheveled beside the near-insensible horse.
“My lady?” The dark-haired sidhe who bent over her wore a gold breastplate emblazoned with the Queen’s crest, and for a moment, Delphinea was afraid the soldiers had been sent out by the Queen and Timias to drag both of them back to the palace under arrest. She scrambled backward, as the flickering torchlight gleamed on the officer’s insignia embroidered on his sleeves. But his next words made her nearly weep with relief. “The Lady Vinaver sent us out to find you. I am Ethoniel, a captain in the Third Company of Her Majesty’s Knights. If you would be so kind as to come with us, we will escort you to her Forest House.”
“How’d that thing get out?” asked one of the other soldiers, with a jerk of his thumb over his shoulder in Petri’s direction.
“Petri is not a thing,” she sputtered, even as the captain extended his hand and helped her to stand. Two of the others coaxed her mare onto her feet.
“We’ll take you both.” The captain spoke firmly. “It doesn’t look as if it’ll give us any trouble now. We can’t leave it here.” Indeed, Petri lay in a forlorn little heap, his arms bound to his sides, one leathery little cheek pressed to the pine needles and leaves that carpeted the forest floor, eyes closed, breathing hard, but every other muscle relaxed. “Forgive me for taking the time to ask you, lady, but how did this happen? Did it follow you, my lady? How did it get past the gates?”
She knew that for any other sidhe, the presence of a gremlin leagues away from the palace of the Queen of Faerie, the one place to which they were forever bound, at least according to all the lore, was surprising to the point of shocking. But how to explain to them that despite his incipient madness, it was Petri who’d guided her through the maze of the ancient forest, close enough to Vinaver’s house that they could be rescued? Surely Vinaver, herself outcast by the Court, would understand that Delphinea could not leave the loyal little gremlin behind, for it was abundantly clear that Timias and the Queen intended to lay at least part of the responsibility for the missing Caul on the entire gremlin population. But now was not the time to explain how or why the gremlin was with her. For, if it were possible, there was something even more unnatural within the forest, something she knew these soldiers must see for themselves to believe.
The torchlight illuminated the clearing, but it was not just the broken branches and torn undergrowth alone that made her certain of the direction in which to lead the guards. “The magic weakens as the Queen’s pregnancy advances, Captain.” Surely that explanation would have to suffice. “But I have to show you something,” she said. “Please come?” She gathered up her riding skirts and set off, without waiting to see if they followed or not. It was like a smell, she thought, a foul, ripe rot that led her with unerring instinct back through the thick wood. Once, she put her hand on a trunk to steady herself and was disturbed to feel a tremor beneath the bark, and a sharp sting shot up her arm. The branches dipped low, with a little moaning sigh, and for a moment, Delphinea thought she heard a whispered voice. She startled back, but the captain was at her elbow, the torch sending long shadows across his face.
“Where are we going, lady?”
For a moment, she was too puzzled by this sense of communication with the trees to answer the question, for she had never before felt any particular connection to the trees of Faerie. Indeed, in the high mountains of her homeland, trees such as these primeval oaks and ashes were rare. “This way,” was all she could say. And with a sense as certain as it was unexplainable, she led the grim-faced guards through the forest, to where the slaughtered host of the sidhe lay in heaps beside their dead horses and golden arms that gleamed like water in the gray dawn.
The guards gathered around Delphinea in shocked and silent horror, surveying the carnage. The corpses lay like discarded mannequins after a masque, armor all askew, swords and spears and broken arrows sticking up in all directions like bent matchsticks, impotent as mortal weapons. A mist floated over all, and from far away Delphinea could hear the rush of water. Without warning, a banner stirred and flapped on its staff, blown by a ghostly breeze that whispered through the trees, and as the mist moved over the remains, it seemed for one moment, the host might rise, laughing and whole. The captain raised his torch and Alemandine’s colors—indigo and violet and blue on gold-edged white—flashed against the backdrop of the black trees.
They spoke behind her, in hushed and disbelieving whispers. “Can this be the—”
“Are they the—”
“Is this really our—”
“These are our comrades,” interrupted the captain, answering all. There was a long silence, then he continued, in a voice heavy with loss, “You see, my lady, we, too, should have been among their company. But Prince Finuviel ordered us to stay and guard his mother’s house.”
“What could have done this?” another murmured.
“Who could have done this?” put in a third.
Delphinea could feel them tensing all around her, shuffling their feet, skittish as horses at the smell of blood. The captain bent down, holding his flaming torch a scant foot or so above the nearest corpse. He turned the body over. The face of the dead sidhe was calm, pale, and it crumpled into powder, finer than sand, as the light fell upon it. He ran the torch down the armor, to the insignia, the sword, and spurs the knight wore. A dark slash ran diagonally across the golden breastplate, where the metal itself was scarred and shriveled, as if burnt away to ash. “Silver,” he said after a long pause. He shut the empty helm and rose to his feet. “They’ve died the true death. They’ll be gone when the sunlight hits them.”
“So this is the host, then, that was called up to reinforce our borders? The host the minstrels sing of, in Alemandine’s Court?” She had missed the glorious parade by scant hours, arriving from the mountains too late. A chill ran through her that had nothing to do with the temperature of the air. She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling cold all over. Now she would remember all too well forever this last sight of them.
“That’s exactly who they appear to be, my lady.” The captain handed his torch to one of the others and gestured at his men. “Fan out. We’ll have to come back when it’s light, but let’s see as much as we can now.”
While the bodies are still intact. The chilling thought ran through her mind. But she said nothing, and he continued, “Look for His Grace. Look for the Prince. It’s the first question the Lady Vinaver will ask.” His voice faltered and broke, and Delphinea was struck once again by how much Finuviel seemed to be loved by everyone who knew him. She had begun to suspect that his was the face that haunted the visions that came to her while she slept—the visions mortals called “dreams.” The sidhe didn’t dream. At least, all the others didn’t. But lately the phantoms that haunted her sleep came more frequently, and she was no longer able to ignore them. She had come to Court hoping that someone there could explain them to her, and reassure her, perhaps, that this was not as unheard of as she was afraid it was. She had been afraid to mention them to anyone at all, but she had resolved to tell Vinaver, if she ever had the chance. She didn’t want to think how Vinaver would react to the news that the army her son led had been slaughtered and that her son himself was missing.
For if the minstrels sang sweetly of the hosting of the sidhe, it was nothing to the songs they sang about Finuviel. Finuviel was the “shining one,” loved by all who knew him, claimed by his mother to have been fathered by the great god Herne himself one Beltane. Although everyone dismissed Vinaver’s claim as a pathetic attempt to gain some place for herself at the Court, it was universally acknowledged that Finuviel, whoever his father had been, was the epitome of every grace, and the master of every art. Even those who scorned Vinaver publicly spoke highly of Finuviel, and it was Finuviel that Vinaver and a small group of councilors conspired to place upon the throne of Faerie in the sick Queen’s stead. What would they do, if Finuviel were lost?
But he’s not. The knowledge rose from someplace deep inside her, a small voice that spoke with such silent authority, she felt immediately calmed, although she did not understand either how she knew such a thing, or why she should trust such knowledge. All she knew was that she did. She watched the torches bob up and down across the field as the soldiers wove through the heaps of the dead. At last the captain waved them all back. “Well?”
“We don’t see him, sir,” answered the first to reach the perimeter.
“But it appears that every last one of them was slain. There’s no one of the entire host left, except for us?” The second soldier’s brow was drawn, his mouth tight and grim.
“We should take the lady to Her Grace,” interjected a third. “She has done her duty by bringing us to this terrible place, and we have not yet discharged ours to her.”
There was a murmur of general agreement. Delphinea met the captain’s eyes. They were gray in the shadows, lighter than the gray of his doublet, gray as the pale faces of the dead sidhe beneath the graying sky. “Who could’ve done this, Captain?”
“Mortals.” He shrugged and looked around with a deep sigh. “From what I can tell, they were all killed with silver blades. Who else can wield silver in such fashion?” In the orange torchlight, his face was yellowish and gaunt.
“But why—”
He shrugged and turned away before she could finish her sentence. The sight alone defied reason. We are all sickening, she thought. The Caul must be undone or we shall all sicken and die. She turned away silently, gathering up her riding skirts, the men following. That so many should die the true death, the final death, was terrible enough. But was it really possible that mortals—mere mortals, as the lorespinners dismissed them—could have armed themselves with silver and attacked an entire host?
So much was happening, so much was changing. Round about the circle goes, dark to light and back it flows. The old nursery song spooled out of her memory. But for the first time, she had the sense that the turning wheel of time was in danger of spinning violently out of control.
By the time they reached Petri, the dawn light had strengthened enough to show him lying curled into a heavy sleep. He had stopped making any noise at all except for long shuddering snores and his mouth hung slack over the gag. She wondered how long it would take to convince Vinaver that Finuviel did not lie dead beneath the ancient trees with the others.
For Finuviel was not dead, she was quite sure of that, in an odd way she could not at all explain. Something had happened to her last night, something had changed within her, awakened in her, in some way she did not yet fully understand but knew with absolute certainty she should trust. And she knew that Finuviel was not dead. Not yet.
But these grim guards would have to see for themselves—Vinaver would require as much proof as could be had that Finuviel was not here. She would not take Delphinea’s word for it; why should she? So Delphinea said nothing as they marched back beneath the trees and it struck her that the sound of the wind in the branches was like the lowing of the cattle on the hillsides of her homeland. What wind? Her head jerked up and around, as she realized that the air was still. The captain, ever alert, held up his hand.
“Are you all right, lady?”
The curious sound stopped. She shook her head, feeling foolish. She was only overwrought, and succumbing to the rigors of the night. Best not to call attention to it. What would her mother say to do? Smile. “I but found last night somewhat taxing.”
It was as brave an attempt as she could muster at the polished language of the Court, and no lady with a lifetime’s experience at Court could have phrased it better. Half smiles bent their mouths, but melted like spring snow. How meaningless the words sounded, brittle as the drying leaves gusting at their feet, swirling at their ankles in deepening drifts. There was simply no etiquette to deal with such a loss, which must affect the soldiers doubly hard. What stroke of chance had led Finuviel to send these six back to guard his mother’s house? But why did he think it needed special guarding? How vulnerable could it be so deep within the Old Forest of Faerie? It was leagues and leagues from the goblin-infested Wastelands. Had he suspected something? Had he known that mortals armed with silver might attack?
She felt, rather than heard, a deep throbbing moan as she passed beneath the branches of a nearly leafless giant. Its great trunk divided into two armlike branches that ended in countless outstretched skeletal hands. The Wild Hunt had swept many of the trees bare. Yet the trees of Faerie had never before been bare. Their leaves turned from gold to red to russet to brown to green in one eternal round of color, and if a few fell, new ones grew to take their place, in an endless cycle of regeneration. She thought of the dust on the floor of the Caul chamber, the rust on the hinges of the huge brass doors, of the rotting bodies of her cattle and the foals, the fouled streams. Was this just another piece of evidence that Faerie was truly dying? But she was silent as she allowed the guards to help her onto her saddle. The mare seemed fully recuperated, and tossed her head and whickered a greeting as Delphinea gathered up the reins.
Petri was slung over the back of another horse like a sack of meal. Though Delphinea protested his treatment, the horse shied and whinnied and finally a blanket had to be placed beneath the gremlin and the animal before the horse could be induced to carry him.
“I cannot imagine what circumstances brought you here on such a strange, sad night, my lady.” The captain swung into his saddle, and raised his arm in the signal for the company to ride. He rode past, stern-faced and tensed, and she realized he did not expect an answer. The milk-white horses moved like wraiths beneath the black leafless branches, as a red sun rose higher in a violet-cerulean sky. Even now, stark as it was, it was beautiful, beautiful in the intensity of its pulsing radiance. The air was crisp, but heavy, charged with portent.
They rode in grim silence another half turn of a glass. The light grew stronger and suddenly, the thick wood parted, and a most extraordinary sight rose up. Like a living wall, a latticework of high hedge grew laced between the trees, and just beyond, high above the ground, within what appeared to be a grove of ancient oaks and sturdy ashes, Delphinea saw a house that looked as if it had grown out of the trees, not been built into them.
The reins slackened in her hands as she gaped, openmouthed, at the peaked roofs, all covered in shingled bark, windows laced like spiderwebs strung between the branches. Winding stairs curved up and around the thick trunks, and tiny lanterns twinkled in and among the leaf-laden branches. There is magic yet in Faerie, she thought, and was a little comforted. Her mother’s house of light and stone was nothing like this living wonder, and even Alemandine’s palace, as beautiful as its turrets of ivory and crystal were, could not compare to this house of trees.
As if he’d heard her thoughts, Ethoniel smiled. “Indeed, my lady. The Forest House of the Lady Vinaver is a wonder in which all Faerie should delight, not shun.” He held up his hand and the company slowed their mounts to a walk all around her. He leaned over and touched her forearm. “Slowly, lady. Do you not see the danger that grows within the hedge?”
As they came closer, she saw that the hedge was full of jagged thorns, skinny as needles, some as long as her fingers, with tiny barbs at their ends which would make them doubly difficult to remove, all twined about with pale white flowers that put out such a delicate scent that Delphinea had to force herself not to push her nose into the hedge’s depths, to drink more deeply of it. She realized that the plant was nourished by the blood of things that impaled themselves upon the thorns, and from the profusion of flowers, the thickness of the vines, and the lushness of the scent, there were plenty of creatures that did. She shuddered as she rode through the narrow archway that formed the only gate, shrinking away from what was at once so beautiful, and so deadly, so tempting, and so dangerous.
Only one leather-clad attendant came forward, slipping out from a set of doors within the great trunk of an enormous tree, and Delphinea wondered once again why Finuviel had diverted any number of his host at all to guard Vinaver’s house. Secluded as it was within the heart of the Great Forest, and surrounded by the high hedge of bloodthirsty thorns, it appeared not at all vulnerable, except perhaps to a direct goblin attack. But was such a thing likely? From the talk of the Court, she had surmised that the war was expected to be fought on the borders of the Wastelands, not within the very heart of Faerie itself.
But the fact that Finuviel had regard for his mother’s safety made her like him, too, and she wondered if she was falling under the spell of his reputation. She followed the captain of the guard inside the house, trying not to gawk at the golden grace of the polished staircase that flowed seamlessly around the giant central oak forming the main pillar of this part of the house. From certain angles, the staircase was invisible; from others, it was the focal point that drew the eye up and into the leafy canopy forming the roof. She kilted up her skirts and followed the men up the steps, trying not to trip as the golden radiance filtered down, soothing and nourishing as new milk. She closed her eyes, her feet moving in some unconscious synchrony, bathing in the incandescence, forgetting for a moment the dire news they bore. There was only the warmth and the light. On and on, up and up, she climbed, and the face that filled her vision against the backdrop of rosy light was framed with coal-black curls. But instead of smiling, the face contorted in agony and Delphinea gasped, opened her eyes and tripped.
“Watch your step, my lady,” growled the guard who had Petri, by this time in a dead stupor, slung across his back.
Still groggy from the vision, Delphinea could only murmur. It was bad enough that the dreams came while she slept. If she was going to start having them while she was awake, she would have to talk to someone about them. Vinaver, hopefully.
But as they reached an upper landing, Ethoniel paused before a door and turned to Delphinea. “You’ve had a harrowing night, my lady. This may be somewhat difficult. I don’t expect Lady Vinaver will welcome this news.”
“But I want her to know I’m here—maybe there’s something I can do—” Maybe she will believe me if I tell her Finuviel is alive. But she left the last unspoken, and looked at him with mute appeal.
He looked dubious, but shrugged. “As you wish, my lady. The Lady Vinaver is given to some unexpected reactions on occasion. Beware.” He knocked on the door, and opening it, stepped inside an antechamber. He motioned Delphinea, and the guard carrying Petri inside, then knocked on the inner door. Vinaver herself opened the door.
All potential greetings died in Delphinea’s throat as the expression on Vinaver’s face changed from one of welcome to one of horrified disbelief at Ethoniel’s quick report. She had only stared at him, her eyes glowing with a terrible green fire in her suddenly white and flame-red face. Delphinea thought Vinaver might faint, and she wondered if it was that for which Ethoniel had sought to prepare her.
But nothing could’ve prepared Delphinea for the sight of Vinaver’s collapse, for she fell to her knees in a brittle crunch of bone, as the framework of her wings splintered like icicles. And as Delphinea watched in horror, the wings sheared away completely, the tissues tearing with the wet sound of splitting skin, leaving twin fountains of pale blood arcing from Vinaver’s shoulder blades.
She could think of nothing to say or do, for nothing but intuition made her sure that Finuviel was not dead. Not yet. And in that moment Delphinea understood that if anything really did happen to Finuviel, the consequences would be far more terrible than anything she had yet imagined.
As if from very far away, Delphinea heard Ethoniel bellow for Vinaver’s attendants, saw a very dark and burly stranger rise from a chair beside the fireplace and point in her direction. She felt the room suddenly grow very hot and very crowded, as more guards and attendants rushed in. Vinaver’s blood was flowing over her shoulders like a cloak, running in great waves down her arms, dripping off her fingers, soaking the fabric of the back of her gown. The captain turned on his heel, brushing past her, and she felt strong arms ease her off her feet, as the world finally, mercifully, went dark.
When next she opened her eyes, she was lying on a low couch in the little antechamber of Vinaver’s bower. The door to the inner room was closed. The couch had been placed next to a polished hearth in which a small fire burned. A basket of bread and cheese and apples had been placed beside her, and a tall goblet, filled with something clear that smelled sweet, stood beside a covered posset-cup on a wooden tray. A drone worthy of a beehive rose from the floor beside her. She looked down. It was Petri, lying curled up on a red hearth rug, in a round patch of sunlight, his head on a small pillow, sound asleep. Poor little thing, she thought. If her ordeal had been bad, his was surely worse.
“How d’you feel?”
She bolted straight up at the unexpected voice. It belonged to the big dark stranger she’d noticed in Vinaver’s bower before. He was sitting on the opposite side of the hearth, and she knew instantly what had drawn her attention, even amidst those few terrible moments in Vinaver’s presence. He was mortal.
It was so obviously apparent she did not question how she knew. He looked faintly ridiculous, for the stool on which he hunched was much too low for his long legs. He wore a simple fir-green robe of fine-spun wool, over a pair of baggy trews which from their rough and ragged appearance she assumed were of mortal make. The skin of his bare legs and feet poking out from the bottoms of the trews was bluish white, covered by a sparser pelt of the same coarse black hair that curled across his face. She wondered, with a little shock, if it were possible that Vinaver kept the mortal as a pet, just as in the songs the milkmaids sang, of moon-mazed mortals lost in Faerie, willing slaves to the sidhe. Her mother did not consider such tales seemly and scorned all talk of mortals. Delphinea had never imagined she would meet one, so she examined him with unabashed curiosity.
It was midmorning or later, and the light streamed down through windows set within the upper branches of the trees, filling the room with a brittle brilliance, casting strong shadows on the mortal’s dark face. He must be old, she thought, very old, even as mortals counted years, for his dark hair was shot through in most places with broad swaths of gray and white and his skin was grayish and hung off his face. Deep lines ran from the inner corners of his eyes, all the way past the outer corners of his mouth. His eyes burned with such intensity there was no other color they could be but black.
A tremor ran through her as her eyes locked with his, for it seemed that within those depths lay some knowledge that she not even yet imagined, coupled with pain, a lot of pain. His forehead gleamed with sweat, and as he raised his arm to mop his brow with a linen kerchief, she caught a glimpse of a white bandage, stark against his skin, beneath the vivid green. But his eyes were like twin beacons burning through a storm, and she realized that whatever the source of his pain, he wasn’t afraid of it.
She felt drawn to his solid strength, sensing that he was strong in a way that nothing of Faerie could ever be. His essence was all earth and water, unlike the sidhe, who were manifestations of light and air. One corner of his mouth lifted in the slightest hint of a smile. “You put me in mind of my daughter, sidhe-leen. All big eyes and innocence.” He closed his eyes, and winced as if in pain, then opened them. “I’m Dougal,” he said. “What do they call you?”
Delphinea paused, uncertain how to address him. Meeting a mortal was one of the many recent events her mother had failed to foresee. But the way he looked at her, as if she were a skittish filly, calmed her for some reason she did not understand, and for a moment, at least, she felt comforted. The Samhain sun had risen on a world utterly different from the one on which it had set, and in this upside-down, topsy-turvy world, time suddenly had new meaning. Was it only yesterday that Delphinea had awakened in her bed within the palace of the Faerie Queen? So much had happened—the complete control of the Queen Timias had been able to achieve, and subsequent arrest of all the Queen’s Council, her own escape with Petri, their flight into the ancient Forest and the Wild Hunt that had nearly overrun them, even Petri’s madness, was yet nothing compared to the discovery of the decimated host and the sight of Vinaver’s collapse. Nothing and no one were quite what they appeared; no one and nothing were what she had been prepared to expect. Was it possible this mortal was involved in the whole confused plot? She wasn’t at all sure how to answer the question. “My name is Delphinea,” she said at last. “Will the Lady Vinaver be all right?”
He shrugged and folded his arms across his chest carefully. “Don’t know yet. No one’s come out of there—” he bent his head forward to indicate the closed bower door, then jerked it backward, toward the outer door “—and no one’s come through there since the guard went out to see what’s what.”
She cocked her head, considering. He didn’t sound quite the way she’d imagined a moon-mazed mortal would, and his weary, battered appearance certainly didn’t fit the flowery descriptions of them, either. “May I—may I be so curious as to inquire exactly how it happens that you have come to be here, Sir Dougal?”
At that his smile reached his eyes. “Pretty speech, sidhe-leen. I’m no one’s sir. In my world, I’m a blacksmith. And in this one, too, more’s the pity.” He broke off and the smile was gone. Far from being enchanted, he seemed quite vexed.
“You don’t seem very happy to be here.”
He laughed so hard his shoulders shook, and a whiplash of pain made him clutch his arm. “And that surprises you, does it?” What amazed her more was that he could laugh in spite of everything. But maybe, being mortal, he didn’t really understand what was happening. He sagged, sighed and shook his head. “You’re right, though. There’re many, many places I would much rather be. But that doesn’t answer your question, does it?” He indicated his arm with another jerk of his head. “Met up with a goblin. Woke up on this side of the border. She found me, brought me here. Here I am.”
“The Lady Vinaver healed you?”
“For a price, of course she did.” His mouth turned down in a bitter twist and for a moment, she thought he might say something more. But he only drew a long, careful breath and let it out slowly. Finally he looked at her. “What sort of sidhe are you, anyway?”
There was a long silence while Delphinea, completely taken aback, cast about for some sort of appropriate response. Surely he wasn’t inquiring about her ancestry? He seemed to imply there was something different about her, and she raised her chin, determined not to let a mortal get the best of her, when he leaned forward and caught her gaze with a twinkle. “But the world’s full of surprises, isn’t it? So now you tell me—what’s a small sidhe-leen like you doing traveling alone on Samhain of all nights? We heard the Wild Hunt ride past—I heard the noise that—that—thing made—”
“Petri is not a thing. He’s a gremlin.”
“Oh, is that what you call it?”
“What would you call him?”
“Hmm.” Dougal cocked his head and cradled his injured arm across his chest, as if it pained him. “Looks more like what the old stories say a trixie looks like. Brownie’s another name in some parts and my gram called them sprites. Never saw one myself. Some say they all got themselves banished from the mortal world long ago for their mischief. I say it’s a damn convenient explanation for why no one ever sees them. But whatever it is, why do you keep it naked?”
“Naked?” Delphinea blinked. She flicked her eyes over to Petri. He wore the same court livery he always wore. It was, as always, perfectly clean, although somewhat rumpled. She would have said more, but the inner door opened, and Leonine, one of Vinaver’s attendants, beckoned.
“Lady Vinaver requests you both.” The lady was gowned in a plain russet smock, and her long yellow curls were held back by a simple gold chaplet. “If you will, my lady?” She dropped a small curtsy, then rose, and indicated the open door. “Sir mortal, if you please?”
Dougal made a sound almost like a growl, and again Delphinea had the distinct impression that unlike the mortals she’d heard of, he hated everything about Faerie. But why, when everything she’d seen of Shadow—the dust, the rust, even the clothes he wore—was so coarse, so crude? He needed one hand on the mantel to pull himself up. Delphinea followed Leonine through the door and hesitated, just inside the threshold. Another attendant, this one clothed in the color of autumn wheat, slipped past them, carrying a large willow basket of stained linen.
Vinaver lay on the edge of a great bed, which incorporated a natural hollow within the tree. It was lined with silk velvet that resembled moss, draped with filmy curtains. Her usually vivid color had drained away, leaving her coppery hair dull as the rust that marred the hinges of the Caul Chamber, her narrow cheeks and shriveled lips chalky. For the first time, Delphinea saw the resemblance she bore to Alemandine. And to Timias. Great Herne, he’s her father, too. And didn’t she say he wanted her drowned at birth? She had no memory of her own father—he had gone into the West a long time ago, but her mother never failed to speak of him with anything but bemused anticipation of seeing him again.
“Leonine, bring her closer. Come here, child.” Vinaver’s voice was faint, but still sharp with innate command, and Delphinea was glad to hear Vinaver yet retained something of her determined spirit. But as the attendant gently propelled her across the polished floor, Delphinea’s eyes filled with tears when she saw Vinaver’s face more closely. “Don’t weep for me,” Vinaver said. “There’s not enough time.” Her hand plucked at Delphinea’s sleeve until she slid her warm hand into Vinaver’s cold one. Vinaver tugged weakly and Delphinea leaned over, until her face hung only a scant handspan above the older sidhe’s. It occurred to her that Vinaver appeared only marginally more lifelike than the pale faces of the dead sidhe in the starlight. “I hated those wings. I was a fool to suggest them and a fool to grow them.” She paused, as if gathering her strength, and tugged again once more, until Delphinea’s ear was practically right against her lips. Her breath was like the flutter of a butterfly’s wings. “I want you to tell me, quickly, don’t think about it, just tell me—is Finuviel dead—truly dead?”
Not yet. “Not yet.” The words rose automatically to Delphinea’s lips. All she had to do was open her mouth.
“Not yet,” Vinaver breathed. She closed her eyes, then opened them. “He didn’t come, but you did. With a gremlin of all things. Whatever possessed you?” She gripped Delphinea’s hand so tightly, Delphinea was forced to bite back a yelp of pain. “How was it ever possible you were able to bring the gremlin? And why? What on earth made you do it?”
“He saved me, my lady. He led me here. But for Petri, I might have met whatever killed that host, myself. But, m-my lady—” she faltered. Where to even begin? She didn’t understand any of it. She blurted out the first question that occurred to her. “Why do you ask me if your son still lives? I’ve never even met him. And why are you surprised that I should come? You told me yourself that my life’s in danger, and you turned out to be right. Which is why I brought Petri, for he helped me to escape.” Delphinea turned, following the movement of Vinaver’s eyes, to see Petri crouching in the doorway. “Timias intended to sequester them early. It seemed so cruel—so meaningless—”
“Timias has his reasons, child, don’t ever doubt that Timias does anything without a reason.” An ugly look flashed across Vinaver’s face. “This should not be.”
Delphinea collapsed to her knees, so that she was level with Vinaver’s face. “It seems that there are many things that should not be, my lady. Perhaps you’d better tell me what’s going on. Where’s the Caul, and where’s Finuviel, and who’s responsible for that horror in the Forest?”
But Vinaver only closed her eyes and sighed. “So many questions all at once.” She tried to shake her head a little but winced.
“I have more.”
“Tell her the truth, Vinaver.” Dougal spoke from the door. Petri sniffed at his leg like a hound at a scent, and Dougal swatted him away. “Tell her the whole truth.”
“We took the Caul,” Vinaver answered wearily, her eyes closed, her cheek flat against her pillow. “Finuviel and I, and we gave it to a mortal.”
“But why?” Delphinea rocked back on her heels in horror.
“It’s as you guessed, child. The Silver Caul is poisoning Faerie. I couldn’t tell you the truth in the palace. How was I to know you’d not go running to Timias the moment I’d left your room? We took the Caul, Finuviel and I, and he gave it to a mortal to hold in surety of the bargain.”
“What bargain?” Delphinea drew back, staring down at Vinaver in horror.
“We needed a silver dagger. Where else to get it but from the mortals?”
“You mean to kill the Queen?”
“No.” Vinaver shut her eyes once more. “I could never kill my sister.” She opened her eyes. “But, she’s not really—she’s not really my sister.” Delphinea cocked her head and sank down once more onto a low stool that Leonine had drawn up to the bed, as Vinaver continued. “Alemandine isn’t really anything at all—she’s neither sidhe nor mortal. She’s a—a residue of all the energy that was left over when the Caul was created. The male and female energy mingling in my mother’s womb was enough to create her out of ungrounded magic, magic from her union with Timias and the mortal. They didn’t consider what would happen—they didn’t understand the energies they were working with. No one ever really does, you know. If I learned nothing else from the Hag, I learned that.” She broke off and with a shaking hand pushed back a loose lock of Delphinea’s hair. “There was nothing to say that Alemandine should not be Queen. After all, she was born first. And whatever else Alemandine is, she is a part of me. So no, the intention was never to kill the Queen. Timias is the one meant to die. Timias must die, Timias will die when the Caul is destroyed. For as long as the Caul endures, so will Timias. He will never choose to go into the West. He’ll never have to.”
Delphinea glanced over her shoulder. Dougal stood in the doorway still, his arms crossed over his chest. “Philomemnon said Alemandine would die when the Caul was destroyed. Is that true?”
“I doubt she has much longer to live as it is, though yes, that is a consequence. But what would you have us do? There is no way to save both the Queen and Faerie—and to save the Queen is to ensure that we all die. What choice was there really?”
“So you made a bargain with a mortal—for the dagger. And what was your part?”
“In exchange for the dagger we promised the host—”
“The host in the Forest.”
“We knew the mortal world was in chaos. A mad king sits on the throne, the people chafe beneath the rule of his foreign Queen. The events of the Shadowlands echo Faerie and those in Faerie, Shadow. It was in our best interests to resolve the strife there—”
“Why, that’s exactly what Timias said to the Council,” Delphinea blurted. “That day in the Council—the day he came back—”
“Whatever I say of him, he’s not a fool. He understands better than anyone how tightly the worlds are bound.” Vinaver plucked restlessly at the linen pillow. “But now—” She raised her head and looked directly at Petri. “Now—”
But before she could finish, the door opened and Ethoniel hesitated on the threshold, with a flushed face, breathing hard. From somewhere far below, Delphinea heard distant shouts. They all turned and looked at him, and Vinaver moved her head weakly on the pillow, beckoning Ethoniel with a feeble wave. “What news, Captain?”
At once, Ethoniel crossed the room and went down on one knee beside the bed. “I bring both good and bad news, my lady,” he hesitated. “We found no sign of Prince Finuviel, no sign at all. We found nothing of his—neither armor, nor standard, nor horse—and all of us combed the sad remains as carefully as we could. But there is a company of knights, at least ten thirteens or more, marching on the Forest House. They are coming to arrest both you and the Lady Delphinea—” here, he turned to look at Delphinea over his shoulder “—yes, my lady, you, too, on charges of high treason and the theft of the Silver Caul. They are more than a hundred against my one squad, my lady. What would you have me do?”
Even Delphinea understood his dilemma. He likely was outranked by whoever led the guards. To defy to open the gates was treason. To disobey Finuviel’s orders to defend his mother offended honor.
For a long moment no one spoke. Then Petri hissed from the door and he scrabbled forward, his eyes cast low, his tail tucked under in perfect obeisance. In a series of quick gestures, accompanied by a few stifled hisses, he motioned, I can help you find him, great lady.
Vinaver’s eyes narrowed and she looked down at the cringing gremlin, and then up at Delphinea. “The removal of the Caul from the moonstone must’ve made it possible for him to leave.”
Petri’s eyes were huge, and he looked up at Delphinea with flared nostrils. I can help you find him, lady. I know the way through Shadow. I can find him. And the Caul.
“Petri says he can help me find Finuviel.” Delphinea clasped his hand in both of hers. The thought that she should be the one to look for Finuviel jolted her into the realization of exactly how dire the situation was.
At once Dougal shifted on his feet, crossing and uncrossing his arms. “I don’t like that idea. There’s a saying, never a trust a trixie.”
“What about the knights, my lady? They’ve orders to burn the Forest House if we don’t open the gates.” Ethoniel broke in, desperation clear.
Vinaver moved her head restlessly on the pillow. “We have to find Finuviel. We’re running out of time. The Caul must be unMade before Mid-Winter.”
“I suppose I’m the one that’s seen him last,” said Dougal. “With Cadwyr. That night at my forge.”
Beside Delphinea, Petri tugged on her hand. I can help you, lady. Please, lady, I can help you find the Caul. I can find the mortal Duke. I can find the Caul. I brought you here. He stepped in front of Vinaver and groveled before her. Please, great lady. You know how we, too, are bound to the Caul. It calls to me from Shadow, even now.
“Let me go find him,” Dougal said suddenly.
Vinaver replied with an arch look, “That’s not exactly our bargain, is it, Master Smith?”
“Do you want your son and the Caul found or not? I’m the last who saw him, I know who he was with. Who else do you have who knows Brynhyvar the way I do?”
I know it better than any mortal—I know the Underneath and the In-between. I can take her through the Mother-Wood. Petri quivered, his hands knotted tightly together. “Forgive me, gentle folk, if my unkind voice offends,” he said in his high-pitched strangled shriek. “But I remember—I can lead—let me—let me—”
“Be quiet,” interrupted Vinaver. “Be still, khouri-kan.”
“Delphinea can’t go,” broke in Ethoniel. “They’re here to take her as well.”
“But I’m the one who discovered the Caul was missing,” Delphinea exclaimed. “But for me—”
“But for you, the plan might have proceeded apace, without anyone at Court ever knowing,” Vinaver cut her off with a savagery belied by her appearance.
“Then let me go,” said Delphinea, looking down at Petri, who squeezed her hand and bowed gravely.
“I should be the one to go,” insisted Dougal.
“You cannot go, Master Dougal. You’ve a bargain to fulfill. Don’t you?”
Dougal shut his mouth and crossed his arms over his chest. “What exactly are you thinking, Vinaver? Surely this child isn’t—”
“I am not a child,” said Delphinea. “I may appear young in mortal years, but I have known far more seasons than you, Master Smith. I can find him. I know I can. Petri will help.” She squeezed his shoulder and Petri bowed.
“There you are, Master Dougal. Delphinea has certain advantages—”
“She may have certain advantages from your point of view, but—”
“My lady Vinaver, master mortal, with all due respect, you’ve no time to continue to debate this,” interrupted Ethoniel. “I need an answer, my lady. What shall I do?”
“Open the gates, Captain. I’m in no condition to travel. They may see for themselves if they wish. And no one can make me leave until I am satisfied my son does not lie among that host. Is that acceptable? Does it satisfy both the bonds of honor and command? All I ask is a delay—long enough for Delphinea to cross into Shadow—Leonine, fetch my cloak of shadows.”
As the attendant left the room, Ethoniel hesitated. “There’s nothing more I’d like to do, my lady. But they’ll expect to see the two—”
“Then give them me as well,” said Dougal.
Ethoniel covered his mouth and coughed, then smiled as one might at a well-trained hound. “Unfortunately, master mortal, you and the lady Delphinea bear only the slightest resemblance to each other. Unless you’ve not noticed.”
“Put a cloak on me and let me pretend to be Vinaver. They expect Vinaver to be tall—they don’t know she lost the wings. She’s a tiny thing now—let her lie on her bed and pretend to be the sidhe-leen. What do you say, Captain? Demand they search the field for Finuviel. And unless you’ve a better idea as to how to rig some on that maid there—” He jerked his head as Leonine stepped into the room, carrying a thick, dark cloak. “I’m about as tall as Vinaver’s wings were. Unless you’ve not noticed.”
I shall lead you, lady. Petri smiled up at her and stroked Delphinea’s hand. He rubbed his cheek against the back of it as Dougal frowned.
“Is there no one else to take her?” asked Dougal. “I don’t like the thought of that at all.”
“Why not?” asked Delphinea. “Petri’s been my friend.”
But Vinaver was looking up at Dougal with weary acknowledgment. “You’re right, Master Dougal, there are reasons not to trust the khouri, or trixie, as you call him. But the khouri’s correct. He is bound to the Caul. And Shadow is his native element. So long as the Caul lasts, his power is largely bound to it. I believe him when he says he can find it.”
“And what if Finuviel and the Caul aren’t in the same place?”
But cries echoing up the great stair forestalled Vinaver’s answer.
“Captain Ethoniel, you must come!”
“Are we to open the gates, Captain?”
“Captain, come now!”
The voices were closer now, accompanied by the patter of booted feet on the polished stair.
“Open the gates, Captain. But hold them in the courtyard,” said Vinaver. “Come, child, let Leonine put the cloak on you.”
Before Delphinea could agree, the other woman settled the dark cloak over her shoulders. It was a color between dark purple and black, the color of the indigo night sky, and it was soft and thick and silky all at once. “What stuff is this cloak made of?” she asked as she spread it wide. It fell in rich dark ripples, as if it absorbed the light, rather than reflected it.
“Faerie silk, and the shadows of Shadow,” said Vinaver. “There are only two, and how they came to be, I don’t have time to tell you. Finuviel had one. Now you have the other.”
“What does it do?” asked Delphinea, turning this way and that. It had a damp feeling to it that was not completely pleasant.
“It will make you invisible in the eyes of mortals, if you draw it over yourself completely.” Vinaver took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “We’ve not much time, so listen carefully, Delphinea, and I will tell you what I can. Mortals are highly susceptible and suggestible but you must not underestimate the effect they shall have upon you. A fresh mortal intoxicates like nothing else—”
“What in the name of Herne do you mean by a fresh mortal?” asked Dougal. “And do you mind not referring to my people as if we were a race of animals that happen to walk and talk?”
But Vinaver ignored the interruption. “Like nothing you can even imagine. For some it’s the way they smell, or taste, for others, the way they look. Whatever it is, and however it strikes you, beware of it. Keep your wits about you, for mortals are perverse, and when you expect them to do one thing, they will do the opposite. Don’t try to understand it, but seek to use it, if needs must. Keep close to the trixie, and don’t let him from your sight. Keep him tethered to you if you sleep. Water is one sure way back to Faerie, the other is through the trees of a deep forest. For the trees of Faerie and Shadow are linked. Some even say they are the same.” She shut her eyes and took another audible breath. “Listen as you pass below them. Listen and see if you hear them talking.” Her eyes fluttered open. “They will help you. I have no doubt.”
“Why are you so sure?” asked Delphinea. “Is it only the way I look? There are visions that come to me in my sleep—”
“What do you see?”
“I see Finuviel. I hear his name.”
Vinaver reached out once more and touched Delphinea’s cheek with a shaking hand. “I understand why you’ve come. Bring my son and the Caul back to Faerie. You were meant to find them. I’m sure of it.” She closed her eyes.
Delphinea hesitated, wondering if Vinaver truly knew, or if she only wanted to know, and she wondered how much Vinaver really did know, and how much she actually did. But before she could speak, Dougal stopped her with a hand on her arm. “I’ve a word of advice. Don’t go directly to Cadwyr of Allovale. Go instead to his uncle Donnor, the Duke of Gar. He’s the only one with any influence over Cadwyr. Donnor’s an honorable man, whereas Cadwyr’s like a blade too well oiled. He shines pretty, but he turns too easily in your hand. Find the Duke of Gar, and tell him—” He paused, then shrugged. “I suppose under the circumstances it doesn’t much matter what anyone thinks. Tell Donnor that Dougal of Killcairn sent you, and if possible, ask him to get word to my daughter—my girl, Nessa—back in Killcairn. Tell her I’m alive. All right?”
As Delphinea nodded, Leonine stuck her head around the door. “I think, my lady, that you must leave now, if you’re to leave at all. The company from the palace is within the courtyard, and the commander is demanding to be let in.”
“Go, child,” said Vinaver. “And, khouri-kan, remember that I know the secret of your unMaking. Betray me, and I might forget it.”
Petri hissed and bowed and rubbed his hands, and Leonine led Delphinea toward to the door. As she stepped out into the hall, she turned back to Vinaver. “My lady?”
Vinaver’s pain-dulled eyes flickered muddy green in the gloom. “Yes, child?”
“Talking to the trees—understanding the trees—isn’t that a gift reserved for the Queen of the sidhe?”
Vinaver smiled then, but her face was sad. “Child, don’t you understand? You are the next Queen of Faerie. That is, if Faerie survives at all.”
There was the faintest smell of rot in the air. Like the warm tap of a random spring raindrop, the odor drifted, now here, now there, never so much that one was ever quite sure what one smelled. But it was enough to make one pause, turn one’s head, wrinkle one’s nose and sniff again. It had first been detected after Samhain, and it was becoming noticeable enough that a fashion for wearing perfumed lace face masks was spreading rapidly throughout the ladies of the Court.
And it was noticeable enough that Timias had been forced to listen, a prisoner in his chambers, to Her Majesty’s Master of the House, Lord Rimbaud, and her Chatelaine, Lady Evardine, while they lamented the situation for nearly a full turn of the glass, before a summons from Alemandine’s Consort, Hudibras, interrupted their torrent of complaint. Now Timias tightened his grip on his oak staff, and pressed his mouth into a thin line as he hurried through the palace of the Faerie Queen as quickly as his aged legs would allow. A small puff of stink through the lemon-scented air was enough to make him furrow his already wrinkled brow as he scurried through the arching marble corridors, hung with tapestries and mosaics so intricately and perfectly executed, some were known to move. He passed the image of a stag brought down by a huntsman’s bow, the great antlered head lifted in eternal agony, and something made Timias pause, transfixed, before it. The crimson blood flowing from the stag’s side shone with a curious rippling gleam, as if the blood that flowed from the wound was real.
Timias stepped closer, narrowing his eyes. As another trace of putrid odor filled his nostrils, he reached out and touched the gleaming rivulet. For a moment his finger registered the cold pressure of the stone as wetness and he started back, peering closely at his finger, half expecting to see a smear of blood. But his fingertip was clear, without a hint of moisture. Of course there wasn’t any blood, he told himself, there was no blood. How could there be blood? It was only a picture. There was no blood. It was but a trick of his overwrought senses, a consequence of his agonized mind. He had enough to occupy a dozen councilors. His discovery with Delphinea of the missing Caul led to the disclosure of the plot against the Queen, and allowed him to once again assert his position and authority as the oldest of all the Council. The stupid girl had not waited long enough to allow him to thank her properly before she’d run off. The first thing he’d done had been to order the arrests of every one of the Queen’s councilors in residence at the Court. This meant that, while the immediate threat was contained until he could determine who was to be trusted, he alone remained to steer Alemandine through the task of holding her realm together both under the strain engendered by her pregnancy and the inevitable attack by the Goblin King. But the calamity of the missing Caul, coupled with the revelation of Vinaver’s treachery, made what would have been a heavy burden especially weighty. A lesser sidhe, one without so many years and experience as his, would surely not be equal to the task. He touched the wall again, just to make sure. “No blood,” he whispered aloud. “No blood.” He realized he was still muttering as he stalked through the halls to Alemandine’s chambers.
There was certainly enough to mutter about. Vinaver, that foul abomination, had seized the opportunity afforded by his absence in the Shadowlands to hatch some horrific plot against her sister, Alemandine, the details of which he did not yet understand. It was her cronies on the Council he’d had arrested, all of them—all of them save Vinaver herself, who’d prudently retired to her Forest House. Well, he’d not let that stop him. The very hour he’d discovered Lady Delphinea gone missing, he’d sent a company of the Queen’s Guard out to drag both her and Vinaver back to the palace. He’d find out what had happened to the missing Caul and then turn his attention to the defense of Faerie. The calculated way in which Vinaver had so coldly plotted against her sister when the pregnant Queen was at her most vulnerable intrigued him and made him admire her in a way he refused to contemplate.
He’d already decided that it had been a mistake to allow Finuviel to take over Artimour’s command, and the sooner Artimour was restored to his proper place, and Finuviel recalled, the easier they could all rest. After all, it was only logical to assume that Finuviel was an integral part of Vinaver’s scheme to make herself Queen in her sister’s stead, and so the sooner Artimour resumed command, the better. After all, Artimour would be so pathetically grateful to have his place back, Timias knew he’d be able to trust him. And maybe not just trust him, thought Timias as he considered new and different roles for Artimour to play. He was always something of a misfit around the Court. He couldn’t have been happy about the revocation of his command. He’d owe tremendous loyalty to the person—or group of persons—who restored it.
It was time to recall Artimour, decided Timias, time to assure the dear boy of their continued support and offer apologies for the terrible mistake they’d made in replacing him with Finuviel, the spawn of that foul abomination, Vinaver. If necessary, Artimour could be dispatched to the mortal world with an offer of assistance. And wasn’t that what should’ve been done in the first place? Timias’s head ached. There was simply too much to think about all at once. He came to himself with a little shake and realized he’d been talking to himself the entire length of the corridor.
The two guards standing watch over Alemandine’s private rooms gave him a curious glance but said nothing, as together they opened the great doors that led into the reception room of Alemandine’s suite.
There, Timias found Hudibras, looking distracted, even as he berated two bedraggled ladies-in-waiting huddled in the window seat. They all looked up, their expressions an odd mixture of both relief and fear, as Timias entered. He pinned the ladies with a ferocious stare, and their wings, fragile and pink as rose petals, trembled above their heads. But why were they both wearing crowns of oak and holly leaves? Oak for summer, holly for winter—why both at once? He peered more closely at them, and realized to his relief the illusion was nothing but a trick of the light and that their small veils were held in place, as usual, by the customary ribboned wreaths that all Alemandine’s ladies wore. “What’s going on? Where’s the Queen?” He addressed Hudibras, but it was one of the ladies-in-waiting who answered.
“She will not unlock the door, most exalted lord,” she replied, olive-green eyes huge in her angular face so that she resembled a frightened doe. Honey-colored hair spilled over her shoulders and across her rose-colored gown, partially obscuring her fichu of ivory lace. It matched the lace of her face mask, Timias saw, as another foul whiff momentarily distracted him. This time the seed pearls in her wreath looked like writhing white worms. He started back and she gave him another questioning look, as he realized that that was exactly the effect the pearls were meant to have. It struck him that this was a bizarre conceit for an adornment for one’s hair, but then, he never paid attention to the fashions of the Court. Since Alemandine was crowned Queen, they changed with such dizzying frequency, he could not keep up.
He really had to get control of himself, he thought. He tightened his grip on his staff and the wood felt dry as a petrified bone in his palm. He must not succumb to the pressure. Surely that’s what Vinaver hoped for, and it occurred to him that indeed, the success of the very plot itself might hinge on his ability to single-handedly uphold the Queen through this hour of her greatest need. He would show Vinaver that while he wore an old man’s face, he yet possessed a young man’s vigor.
Hudibras was wringing his hands in a manner most unseemly and his tone was peevish and demanding. “Whatever you have in mind, Timias, you better get to it, for she refuses to come out. You’ve got the entire Council under arrest, Vinaver’s gone flitting off Herne alone knows where, that wild young thing’s gone running off with that gremlin—” Hudibras marched across the room, struck a mannered pose worthy of a masque beside the empty grate, and, to Timias’s astonishment, removed a peacock-plume fan from the scabbard at his belt. With a zeal that the temperature of the room in no way warranted, he snapped it open with an expert flick of his wrist and began to fan himself. “What’s to be done, Timias? What’s to be done?”
What was wrong with the man? wondered Timias. Since when was there a fashion for wearing peacock-plume fans like daggers? Or white worms in one’s hair? Could it be that something was affecting the entire Court? It was as if they were all going mad. But it was that last piece of information that made him pause. A gremlin with Delphinea? How was such a thing even possible? “Why was I not informed?” Timias asked, gaze darting from the overwrought Hudibras to the stricken ladies.
At that, the ladies and Hudibras stared at each other, and then at Timias. “But you were, my lord,” said Hudibras.
“Every hour on the hour since the clock struck thirteen,” said the second lady, and he realized with another start that her gown was nearly an exact duplicate of the first’s, except that the shade was slightly lighter. When had Alemandine begun to insist that her ladies-in-waiting dress alike?
Timias shoved that superfluous question away, and pulled himself upright, wondering if he himself were not suffering from some malady. There’d been no disturbances on his door—he’d heard no knocking all night at all. But then of course there’d been no gremlin to answer it. All the gremlins were sequestered in the Caul Chamber. Their shrieking on Samhain had been enough to sour cream. No wonder Alemandine was feeling so poorly. In her delicate condition, her strength already taxed, she must’ve suffered the gremlins’ annual bout of madness dreadfully. No wonder she didn’t want to come out of her room. She probably wasn’t recovered yet.
Another trace of rot swirled delicately past his nose and he blinked, momentarily dizzy. These fools were only trying to make him look as if he was the foolish one. They were trying to blame him for their inability to understand and care for the Queen as if he were the one ultimately responsible for her. “I’m here now,” he snapped.
Hudibras pointed the fan at Timias, as if it were indeed a dagger. “There’s been no word from Artimour, or Finuviel. We don’t know what’s happening on the border, Timias. Alemandine won’t even speak to me except to tell me to go away. She’s placed a spell of binding on the door, and refuses to leave her bed.”
“But that’s not all, most ancient and honorable lord.” The darker, more assertive lady glanced first at him, then over her shoulder, out the window. “The moonflowers are blooming.” For a moment, he was so completely taken aback he could think of nothing to say, and the lady hastened to explain further. “The Queen’s moonflowers. They shouldn’t be blooming while she’s pregnant.”
There was a surreal quality to the whole scene that made Timias pause, just as he had before the stag. It was as if the world around him was ever so slightly…off. But what was it? he wondered. Hudibras and his fan? Rimbaud and his stink? The lady and her moonflowers? Again he felt slightly dizzy as if the very floor on which he stood suddenly swayed. “I must speak to the Queen.”
“She won’t let anyone in, Timias,” said Hudibras, with a twitch of his cheek. “That’s what we’ve been trying to tell you. She’s put a spell on the doors and won’t leave her bed.”
To that, Timias raised his chin. “We’ll see about that.” He strode through the doors that led into the antechamber of the Queen’s bedroom. The twilight filtering into the darkened chambers lent a purple blush to the marble walls, deepened to indigo the pale green upholstery and silken hangings. A profound hush hung over all. He pounded so hard on the ornately carved oak door with his staff that splinters flew in all directions. “Your Majesty!” he cried. “Your Majesty?”
But there was no answer.
He waited, fuming quietly under his breath, and again his nostrils were assailed by the faintest whiff of something foul, something that dissipated even as he turned his head to trace the source of the odor. “Alemandine?” He tried again, rattling the knob, knocking with a hard fist. “Alemandine? Let me in. I command you in the name of your mother, open this door and let me in!”
For a single moment, he thought he would have to blast the doors apart. But then he heard the lock click, and the two doors slipped open as the spell of binding came undone. That was easy, he thought. The doors stood as meekly open as a lamb to the slaughter. He threw a look of triumph over his shoulder at the cowering ladies and an extremely discomfited Hudibras hovering in the doorway. Then he pushed open the doors.
It was like stepping into a wall of rot. The odor made him stagger on his feet, so that he was forced to hang on to his staff to remain upright. The heavy draperies of Alemandine’s favorite pale green silk were drawn, and what light there was slashed through the dark cavern of the room like gold blades. Only once before had Timias ever smelled anything so foul, and that was during a plague year in the Shadowlands, when the whole countryside had reeked like a charnel house. “Alemandine?” he managed to gasp out, before he was forced to cover his mouth and nose against the heavy reek. “Your Majesty? My Queen?”
The bed was empty. The sheets hung over the side of the bed, and were marked by foul greenish stains. A damp trail led across the marble floor to the open floor-length windows.
“My Queen?” he whispered. But nothing answered, and nothing moved. Terrified of what he might find, he stepped out of the ghastly silent chamber, into the grove where one of each of the thirteen sacred trees of Faerie grew in two concentric rings.
A silence even more profound hung over the enclosure and he looked up. The sky above was a dull leaden color, as if something had sucked the blue away. And the trees—at the base of each tree, a perfect circle of leaves lay crisped and sere, their branches partially denuded. Even the holly’s needlelike leaves were tinged brown and yellow and an ankle-deep pile lay around the base of the tree. So many leaves were falling it was like a steady, downward curtain, of mingled yellow, gold and russet. He heard a soft sound from the center of the inner circle, a sound something between a moan and a sigh.
“Alemandine?”
Creeping closer, clutching the staff, shoulders hunched against the weight of that horrific stench, Timias saw that the thing which lay upon the ground was only a fragile approximation of the Queen. Her entire body had shrunk, as if it was collapsing in on itself, as if the muscles and sinews and organs were diminishing, leaving only skin and bones. Only her bloated abdomen rose roundly, like an obscene fruit hidden beneath her white gown.
But nothing could have prepared him for the horror as the Queen turned her tortured face to his. He gasped and stumbled back. Her white hair streamed about her vulpine face, the lips drawn back so tightly her mouth was nothing but a black slash. Her eyes popped from their sockets, as if squeezed outward by the pressure of whatever foul liquid it was that seeped from every orifice.
Amazingly, horribly, beyond all reason, the thing that he had called his Queen spoke. “Timias?” Her voice was less than a sigh, less than a whisper. “Timias? Timias, what’s happening to me?” She twisted her head back and forth and even as he realized she was blind, he heard the wet rent of tearing flesh. “Where is my sister? Why does she not come?”
He stumbled back, not daring to come any closer lest the thing touch him. Nausea rose in his throat as disgust warred with pity. The creature held out her hand and tried to speak again, but this time the words were lost in a gurgle of green slime that spooled down her chin.
Her form seemed to collapse in and upon itself, her very bones cracking and splintering like rotting wood. A quiver ran through her, and fluids gushed from every pore, bubbling up and out through the stretched skin, which withered as Timias watched.
The earth itself shuddered, the great trees groaned, and the wind made a low mourning keen as it whined around the crystal-paned turrets. With a whimper and a sigh, Alemandine bubbled away, leaving a froth of scum, the filthy remnants of her tattered gown and the long strands of her white, spun-silk hair.
“Great Gloriana,” Timias muttered. His eyes glazed over as, in one horrific moment of insight, he understood that the remains of the creature lying before him was not at all one of the sidhe, but instead something else—something strange and monstrous, a true aberration and abomination that he had not only called into being, but had seen placed upon the throne of Faerie. This was what he and Gloriana had wrought. This was the ultimate consequence of what they had created the night the Caul was made. Even half-human Artimour might’ve been a better choice. But it was the final realization that sent him spiraling down into the well of madness. Vinaver—may she burn in the belly of the Hag—had been right all along.
2
You didn’t think to ask? You didn’t think to ask? Artimour’s accusation slammed like a hammer through her head as Nessa fled down the stairs, out of the keep and into the inner courtyard, blindly heading toward the first sanctuary that occurred to her. She stopped up short before she reached the gates. Molly’s lean-to by the river was most likely destroyed, or so befouled by the shredded goblin carcasses the screaming spirits of the naked dead had left in their wake, it would have to be shoveled away.
As it was, once outside, the stench was so overwhelming she felt nausea rise at the back of her throat, and she stumbled into the forge, where the fire had been left to die. Broken swords and spears, shields, and even bows lay in haphazard piles, hastily dumped by the teams of just about every able-bodied person in the keep as part of the cleanup the harried Sheriff was directing even now. Through the open door, Nessa caught a glimpse of him striding, fat and red-faced, through the courtyard in the direction of the gates, bawling orders right and left, surrounded by harried-looking guards, grooms and a motley assortment of refugees young and old, male and female, who hastened to do his bidding. She peered inside the huge iron cauldron they’d used to melt the silver in. Dull and black and coated with ash on the outside, the inside shimmered, pearly and opalescent in the shifting streams of light that poured in through the shutters. Nessa wiped the tears off her cheeks and sniffed. She had made the dagger.
But she’d no choice. When the Duke of Allovale and the sidhe had appeared at her door, they expected a dagger. Once the Duke decided she was capable of making one, he hadn’t offered her a choice. How was she to know the sidhe intended to use it against Artimour, as part of the plot against his half-sister, the Queen of the OtherWorld?
More tears filled her eyes and she tried to blink them away. Artimour had promised to help her find her father, and after last night’s realization that her mother must be somewhere in the OtherWorld, too, held captive, perhaps, she had intended to ask him if he’d help find her mother, as well. But now, it seemed unlikely he’d even continue to look for her father, angry as he was. Not that she blamed him. It was by her hand, if indirectly, he’d been injured. She should find a way to make it right with him. Wasn’t that what her father would tell her to do? With a sigh, she wiped away the tears with the back of her grimy sleeve, got to her feet, tied a leather apron around her neck and waist and began to sort the piled weapons into some semblance of order. Work was always her father’s refuge, too.
She shut her eyes at a wave of loss and grief, remembering with bitter clarity that unseasonably hot autumn night just after the harvest was celebrated, when those two cloaked and hooded figures had come knocking on the door of Dougal’s forge. He’d have been better off if he’d just sent the unlikely pair on their way. That’s what put this whole thing in motion, she thought. The moment he opened the door, it all changed. And that’s exactly how he’d vanished. One moment, Dougal was there, the rock at the center of her world. And the next, he was gone. It was worse than if he’d died and gone to the Summerlands, for at least then she could take comfort in the thought he walked among his ancestors. She could come to terms with his death.
But she would never come to terms with her father lost, like her mother, forever in thrall to the sidhe. And so, armed only with determination and that first goblin’s head, she had gone to look for Dougal in the land beyond the mists that the old stories called TirNa’lugh. The sidhe soldiers who’d found her stumbling over the border had taken her to Artimour, who was different enough from all the other sidhe that she had been able to recognize his mortal blood at once. Different enough to agree to help her.
It was more than that, she knew, for Artimour affected her in a way no one—not even Griffin—ever had. All the village girls older than twelve twittered over this shepherd’s boy or that farmer’s son like a gaggle of broody hens, but she’d never understood what the fuss was all about. She thought of Griffin, of his clumsy kiss goodbye, the way he’d taken her amulet and left his for her to wear, even as her father’s voice echoed out of her memory. This is what they do to you with their OtherWorldly charms. It’s why you stay away from them. Always. And never take off your silver. Never. It was what he’d say if he were here.
But Artimour wasn’t quite like the other sidhe, she was sure of it. His half-mortal blood made him different, much as he might want to deny it, and it was his half-mortal blood that had saved him from the silver’s deadly poison—that and her own work boot.
Nessa fumbled beneath the apron and withdrew Dougal’s amulet. Maybe it only proved Dougal was dead. And maybe I am just a “lovesick, moon-mazed maiden” like all the songs say, she told herself as she dragged three battered shields to the scrap pile she was building on the other side of the forge.
“Nessa?” Molly’s soft voice broke through the smoky gloom, and Nessa looked up to see the corn granny from Killcrag hesitating at the door. “Is that you? Are you in here?”
“It’s me.” She was surprised it had taken Molly this long to find her. She dropped the shields and they fell with a clatter onto the pile. “I don’t want to go to Gar, Molly. Let Uwen tell the Duke what happened with Cadwyr, let Artimour explain how—how he came to be stabbed. Why do I need to be there? Can’t I stay here with you? I can help—”
She heard Molly’s long indrawn breath, heard her soft sigh. “Ah, Nessa.”
Before Nessa could speak, Molly crossed the space between them and drew Nessa into the strong circle of her arms. She felt her throat thicken and her mouth work, and the tears she’d been swallowing spilled down her cheeks. “I don’t know what to say to him, Molly. I did make the dagger. It was my fault he was stabbed—”
Molly gently tucked one errant curl behind Nessa’s ear. “You could tell him you’re sorry.”
“I don’t think he wants an apology.”
“Well, there’s not much more he’s likely to get. What’s done is done, child. It’s the past, it’s over. Yes, perhaps you should’ve asked a few more questions, but Cadwyr is a Duke, a noble Duke. You’d no choice, really. He’ll come around to seeing that.”
“Shouldn’t I do something—something to make it right?”
“Make it right? If he were a mortal, perhaps the druid court would set a penalty, but, Nessa, don’t forget. They would also take into account that you are still a child, in the eyes of the law, still beneath your father’s roof, and Cadwyr of such high rank. What choice did you have? No court would judge you half so harsh.” Molly drew back, holding Nessa at arm’s length. “You listen to me, girl. Your father would be proud—”
“That’s exactly it,” Nessa said, her face crumpling. “Artimour promised to help me—but I had this horrible thought last night when I thought about what my—my grandmother’s ghost said to me. What happens if my parents die in the OtherWorld?”
“But no one dies in TirNa’lugh, child. Should you ever find her, your mother will be as young and as fair as the day she was lost to it. That’s what your grammies meant—”
“Molly, I remember one of Granny Wren’s stories, about Vain Thomas who goes to TirNa’lugh and loses his head and his soul is swept up by Herne into the Wild Hunt. Don’t you see, Molly? And Granny Wren said that’s where most of the souls in the Wild Hunt come from, the ones who’re truly lost forever. That’s what I’m afraid of, Molly. I don’t want them lost forever—”
“Well,” said Molly, “you can’t worry about that right now. The lord’s still healing. But I do think if you apologize, Lord Artimour will come around. And besides…” She paused and nodded at the bulky bandage Nessa wore around her left hand to conceal the ring Artimour had given her in token of his promise to look for Dougal in the OtherWorld. “Won’t he want that back?”
“My father always said that honor meant nothing to the sidhe.” Nessa fingered the awkward bump. The central stone was round and hard and felt big as a robin’s egg beneath the linen wrapping.
A stir outside interrupted Molly, and Nessa looked over her shoulder. She heard men calling for the Sheriff, and then Sir Uwen. She glanced at Molly. “Someone’s come.”
Molly nodded. “Nessa,” she said slowly. “Am I wrong to think you’ve never been to the greenwood, as they say, with any man, even the ’prentice lad? Griffin?”
Mortified, Nessa shook her head, wondering how to explain to this kind-eyed woman how Dougal had communicated without words that he both desired and condoned distance between himself and Nessa, and the rest of the village. From memory’s dark well, she heard Dougal’s voice, deep and halting. Your mother was the sort of girl the lads all liked. As long as Nessa could remember, it seemed that there was something about this aspect of her mother that was irrevocably tied to her susceptibility to the sidhe. Which was why the goodwives all watched her. “My—my mother—my father said my mother was the girl the lads all liked.”
“And he warned you away from the lads altogether?”
“Well, no. Not really.” She hesitated. “He said that the reason the goodwives watched me so hard was to see if I was going to be like my mother that way. Because that’s what drew the sidhe, they all thought. That she was…like that.” And the easiest way to avoid their eyes and their whispers and their questions was to avoid all the men as much as possible, as well, thus earning for herself a reputation for being more taciturn than even Dougal.
Molly was silent for a moment, and then spoke slowly. “Well, then. I suppose that explains that.” Again she hesitated. “But tomorrow you’re about to go off—” And again she broke off, and Nessa wondered what the wicce-woman wanted to say.
“What are you worried about?”
Molly’s brows shot up and she laughed. “Worried isn’t exactly the word I’d use. Your father wanted to protect you, but there are things a woman must know, things only a woman can know, and only a woman can teach. You’re far too innocent and unaware of the effect you have on the young men around you.” Once more she paused, and in the gloom, her eyes twinkled. “There’s an old saying that’s proven true more often than not in my experience. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
Flustered, Nessa stared at the weapons lying in half-sorted heaps. “What do you mean?”
Molly smiled gently. “Griffin’s in love with you, did you know that?”
“Griffin?” echoed Nessa. She did not like thinking about Griffin, she realized, especially with Artimour so close. She’d known intuitively, from the moment she had first contemplated Artimour’s arrival in Killcairn, that it would upset Griffin to know how Artimour made her feel. Griffin’s clumsy farewell kiss, the amulet he’d left behind for her, even the pack of food he’d hastily thrust into her hands before she’d crossed over into the OtherWorld—each memory sent a guilty pang through her, even as they bore silent testimony to the truth of Molly’s assertion.
Molly looked at her with one raised brow.
“He took my amulet,” Nessa said, knowing that Molly had already talked to Griffin himself. “And left his for me. Is that why? You really think he loves me?”
Dust motes danced in the shaft of sunlight filtering through a loose shingle on the roof, and Molly’s brown eyes twinkled. “What do you think?”
In colored fragments of sight and sound, images of suddenly remembered snippets twisted themselves around Molly’s sentences, weaving a coherence and a meaning into the fabric of her memories that she only now understood: Griffin watching from the other side of the yard as she shoveled coal; blushing suddenly as she reached for a pitcher and the neck of her summer tunic dipped low; splashing water on her late last summer, then backing away, with a face reddened by what she’d assumed was exertion when the entire bucket upended over her breasts, flattening the thin summer linen against the round curves so that her dark nipples were as perfectly visible as if she were naked, even as Dougal immediately barked, “Cover yourself, girl,” and tossed her a cloak. How long had Griffin’s feelings been growing, while she, all the while, was unaware? “You think I should marry Griffin?”
Molly looked completely taken aback. “Goodness, girl, what gave you thought of that?” She reached out and touched Nessa’s cheek, then her hair. “Your father was right in a way. You’re not like the others—to be honest, I suspect you’re Beltane-made, much as he denies it for some reason. But like your mother, the lads like you, too. Though unlike her, I don’t think you know what you do to the lads. So you trust your heart and mind that birch staff of yourn. That tree has a powerful, protecting spirit to it, and she’s sent a piece of herself out into the world with you. I think if your father’d had his way, he’d’ve built a wall higher than hedgerow and thicker than an oak around the forge, to keep you safe within.” She touched Nessa’s hair again, smoothing it back from her burning face. “But now you’re about to go off with two men—two men, either one of which would set any maid’s heart aflutter.”
“Even Uwen?” Nessa wrinkled her nose. She thought of Uwen’s crooked grin and offset jaw and bony frame. He might be one of the Duke of Gar’s own Company, but she could not imagine anyone finding Uwen the least bit attractive.
But Molly smiled. “Ah, child. I’ve seen a few make it very obvious that they’d happily join Sir Uwen on a trip to the greenwood, and one or two who have. You’ve not been paying attention. Sooner or later, whether it’s Griffin or Uwen, or this sidhe-lord himself, don’t be afraid to lie with any man you truly desire, for what happens between a man and a woman is the root of every kind of magic worked in this world, and the Other, too, I imagine.”
Nessa closed her eyes as she remembered riding through the forest of the OtherWorld, sharing Artimour’s saddle. She remembered the pungent resin rising from the dark green pines, the slow flutter of gold leaves, the feeling of his velvety hose against the backs of her legs as they dangled awkwardly off the horse, the solidity of his chest against her back, the smooth satiny feeling of the saddle between her thighs. A part of her understood that Molly had imparted knowledge of much importance—that had something to do with why the wicce-women were said to be had for a silver coin and what they did to make the fields fertile and the corn grow—but all that really seemed to matter right now was that she somehow make peace with Artimour.
“Granny Molly? Nessa?” Uwen’s voice sounded so different, that for a moment, Nessa wasn’t sure who stood starkly silhouetted at the threshold. It was Uwen’s familiar bony form, but it was hardly Uwen’s voice, for it fell hollow and flat, totally devoid of his usual light, teasing lilt. “There may be a change in plans. A band of Cecily’s clansmen from Mochmorna came in just now. They took refuge last night in an abandoned dovecote somewhere in the hills. But they’d a druid with them who’d an idea of what to do and he summoned up the dead. Seems Donnor’s ghost was seen among them.”
The Duke of Gar was dead, the castle was in shambles, and Cecily, his widow, did not feel at all the way she imagined a widow was supposed to feel. If Donnor was dead, it was his own fault. She’d tried to warn him not to trust Cadwyr, his nephew and his heir, begged him to wait until at least half his Company could be assembled. But no, he insisted on riding out on some trumped-up excuse a blind mule could see through. She had thought, at first, that only she and Kian had seen Donnor’s gray ghost as it picked its way across the carcass-littered field, fading into the blessed Samhain dawn. But everyone on the walls had seen it, and rumor ran rampant as a ram in rut through every level of the castle, leaving even the most hardened of the warriors looking stricken as an orphaned lamb.
Now she picked her way across what yesterday had been the outermost ward, flanked on one side by Kestrel, the ArchDruid of Gar, and at least six of his highest-ranking fellows, and on the other by Mag, the chief still-wife, and as many wicce-women as could be coaxed away from the nursing and the grieving. They would never survive another night if the goblins came back. But if there was a way to prevent them, both druids and corn grannies were conspicuously silent. Her thoughts chased each other like a dog its tail.
A silence as leaden as the lowering sky hung heavy over all, deadening the slap of her boots, muffling the sobs of those few strong-stomached souls who came forward to press a kiss on her hand as they searched amidst the rubble for possessions abandoned and befouled. On the walls, the engineers and stonemasons directed teams in the critical repairs of the curtain wall. On command, the men bent and with a mighty heave, lifted the great stone block on a huge wooden lever as another team swung it into position. The dull thud of stone, punctuated by the creak of timber and the shouted directions of the men echoed flatly across the yard, as if the sounds were swallowed by the huge holes the goblins had torn in the walls, soaked up by the deep gashes of bloodied earth. She pressed the linen square soaked in peppermint oil more tightly to her nostrils and swallowed hard as she realized she had nearly stepped on a foot. “Be careful.”
She held out an arm to prevent anyone else from stepping on the remains, and signaled to a team of stable hands who, with linen kerchiefs wrapped across the lower half of their faces, armed with a shovel, a pick and a wheelbarrow, gathered up remains as carefully as they could.
Smoke from the midden-fires stung her eyes, and on the high tor behind the castle, a slow procession wound up the steps carved into the hill, carrying the bodies to the funeral pyre the druids of lower degree were building. Swarming on the standing stones, others set up the iron frames to hold the plates of glass that, when properly positioned, would focus the rays of the setting sun so as to bring about the spontaneous combustion of the bodies. At least, it was supposed to bring about the spontaneous combustion of the bodies. Kestrel and the other druids had emerged from their hiding place in the wine cellars and announced that all who’d died on Samhain would be given nothing less than a full druid funeral. As if that would bring the dead back. As if that would protect the living when the goblins returned.
A couple of the corn grannies paused and spat thick greenish wads of cud-wort on the ground, aiming expertly between two stones. Cecily hoped her lip hadn’t curled automatically. Cud-wort was considered a low habit, but many of the corn grannies were addicted to it. It was said to give one clearer dreams.
She looked around the ruined ward. All her dreams were nightmares. Now they stood vulnerable, not just to goblins, but to Cadwyr. Cadwyr, who’d murdered Donnor. Cadwyr, who was in league with the sidhe. Before Samhain, she and Kian had told Kestrel their suspicions, but the druid had listened skeptically, clearly unconvinced that either goblins or sidhe existed, except in the mind of a moon-mazed girl. She hoped that last night had made believers of everyone.
But she was even more afraid of Cadwyr, if that were possible, than the goblins, for Cadwyr had made it clear before he left with Donnor that he considered Cecily part of Donnor’s bequest. And for all she knew, she thought with weary realization, maybe she had been. Maybe that’s how Donnor had rationalized taking her for himself, if he had in fact done as Cadwyr charged, and offered himself to her parents rather than Cadwyr as a suitor for her hand. Maybe he considered her as much a part of the holdings of Gar as Cadwyr did. What would they all say if they knew she was too angry at Donnor to care that he was dead?
She caught sight of Kian, Donnor’s First Knight, working with the other men on the walls, stripped down to his shirt despite the cold wind. The strip of linen bound around his face could not disguise his flaxen braids, nor the familiar lines of his body beneath the sweaty, dirty clothes. As she watched, Kian squatted down and gripped one end of the long wooden pole, and, at a signal, pressed down on it with all his weight. His arms and back bulged with the knotted cords of his muscles. At the other end of the lever, a team grabbed the ropes around the block and wrestled it into place. Kian set the lever down, stripped his mask off and used it to mop his face. As exhausted and as frightened as she was, her own body stirred in response.
For Kian was the man she loved. She loved his strength, she loved his smile, she loved the way the other knights loved him. He had the gift of making people like him, for he led with smiles and faultless courtesy. Donnor had loved him, too, until last Beltane, when the goddess had led her to choose Kian to take her to his Beltane bower. From that day, Donnor had been deaf to all but the angry mutterings of his thwarted heart. But Donnor was dead.
“We’ll measure the angles from the top of the tor itself—take them at sunset and dawn, as well,” Kestrel was saying. The ornately embroidered lining of his wide sleeve flashed a startling green against the outer white as he pointed first at the sun, then at the tor, the vivid color at stark odds to the stained gray drab and homespun everyone else, even Cecily, wore.
“We’ll need measurements from the towers, too, won’t we?” put in another.
“But what about the goblins?” Cecily asked. All the druids wanted to talk about were the funeral plans, which would have been understandable, even expected, perhaps, under any other sort of circumstances. “Can any of you tell me if they’ll come back tonight? Or if there’s a way to stop them? If the dead will rise and fight?”
The wicce-women exchanged surreptitious glances with each other and looked pointedly at the druids. Kestrel cleared his throat and the others flapped their robes and shifted from foot to foot. They’d all failed miserably last night, and they knew it. Shouts from above momentarily distracted her, and she peered through one of the huge holes in the outer curtain wall to see a speck of dust emerge from the eastern road leading out of the forest. A rider, she thought, coming fast. Someone else had survived Samhain. She saw that Kian noticed as well, but he went on with the task at hand. There were not many hours of daylight left. So she too turned back to Kestrel. “Well?”
Kestrel linked his hands together beneath his capacious white sleeves and cleared his throat again before he answered. “The bards are studying the druidic verses, my lady, and the elder brethren have been in the groves since early this morning, interpreting the trees. To be sure, however, these are arcane matters, the learning encoded so as not to be easily understood by the uninitiated.”
“I’m not asking to understand, Master Druid. I just want to know how to protect us. Can we count on the dead?” But the only answer was the flap of the mourning banners from the towers. Someone—probably Mag, or maybe even Kian—had seen to that.
“They came because it was Samhain and they could,” whispered a corn granny. “We can’t count on them again, til next Samhain.”
Cecily immediately looked at the women, but it was impossible to know who had spoken. “Will they come back?”
The painful silence was broken by Kestrel’s snort. “They don’t know any more than anyone else.”
“What about the goblins?” Cecily asked again. “Will they come back tonight?”
“At Imbolc,” blurted Mag this time.
“The blood of the new lambs will bring them. Our magic can hold them back til then, but come Imbolc, ’tis druid magic that’s needed.” Another granny spoke up, from somewhere behind Mag. The words were followed by a hawking cough, and a green gob shot through the air, landing with a loud smack right in front of Kestrel. He startled back, and Cecily caught the flash of red Lacquilean leather under his heavy woolen robes. Serves him right, she thought. What sort of fool would wear such finery in a mess like this? An answer ran through her mind unbidden: One who thought it easily replaced. But they’re not likely to be readily replaced, thought Cecily, even as she dismissed all thoughts of Kestrel and his boots.
Kestrel’s lips quirked down as his eyebrows arched up. “There you are, ask the wicce-women,” Kestrel sniffed. “They seem to know all about it.” He turned away, waving a hand back and forth in front of his face, as if the very smell of them offended him. Cecily looked down at the bubbled green slime glistening in the sunlight and felt nauseous herself.
But she couldn’t let that deter her. “Please tell me what you can. Anyone. Please.”
It was the women’s turn to exchange glances, to shuffle restlessly beneath shawls and skirts, like a motley flock of roosting broody hens. They ranged in age from women who looked no older than the oldest of her foster sisters, to the most wizened of crones.
“Please,” Cecily said again. “Whatever you think might help.”
Kestrel coughed.
It was the druids, Cecily knew. The druids looked down on the wicce-women, and their magic was considered something less, because, as the grannies said, they carried their magic in their hearts and not their heads, and certainly not in arcane verses in half-forgotten languages, or obscure symbols slashed on the limbs of trees.
“They’re laughing at us, Your Grace,” Mag sniffed back and folded her arms across her ample bosom. Kestrel claimed that she had sabotaged a Mid-Winter ritual one year by deliberately adding dream-bane to the required mix of herbs. Unable to achieve the necessary trance, the druids had stormed off in a huff, and the rite itself disintegrated into a riotous festival, which culminated in a fight in which several of Donnor’s knights had nearly died. This alone was not so unusual, but the druids were expected to help keep the order, and so Donnor had blamed the druids. And thus the druids, never among the most favored of the inhabitants of Gar, for even the lowest considered himself the equal of the Duke, fell a few more points in Donnor’s grace.
But Donnor was dead. “I don’t think there’s much to laugh about,” replied Cecily.
The speck on the horizon had resolved itself into a rider, who entered the ruined gates with a look of glazed exhaustion. He barely cleared the wrecked gatehouse when he slid to the ground, even as his horse collapsed. Cecily saw guards and two women scavenging amidst the rubble run to his side, even as Kian leaped off the walls and hurried over, calling for water. Let it be from Donnor himself, she thought. Let that shade have been nothing but a trick of the light. Let us all have been wrong.
But she knew in her heart such hope was only futile. She saw Kian glance at her over his shoulder as he swung the rider up into his arms, and understood he’d seek her out as soon as he could. Followed by the women, he took off in the direction of the summer kitchens.
“Please,” she said again.
There was a long silence and another gust of wind brought a blast of reek. “They come three times a year,” said a low, hoarse voice. “Three times…three times…three times, the gates between the worlds swing wide.” The voice quivered, as if some tremendous amount of energy was being repressed. The women parted, and a small, pudgy granny with hair like dandelion wisps stood rocking on her feet, as her hands twitched up and down before her. “Three nights…three times…three nights…our magic cannot hold. Three times our magic cannot hold.”
“Three times? And when—what three times are those?” Cecily prodded. She glanced at Kestrel and the other druids, hoping they had the sense to hold their tongues. They appeared to be paying close attention. The druids were all trained to remember. Many of them could repeat, word for word, conversations that had taken place before them decades past.
But the granny shook her head with closed eyes.
“At Samhain, Imbolc and Lughnasa.” It was another voice, softer this time. A woman with the face of a turtledove and a shawl the color of a robin’s breast eased around Mag. She was chewing a wad of cud-wort that she shifted from cheek to cheek as she spoke. “At Beltane, the sun’s too strong and the light holds them back. But at the other three—only druid magic can hold them back.”
Cecily glanced at the druids. That was the problem. The druids didn’t seem to know what exactly their magic was. “What about the other times? The rest of the year?” The granny visibly quailed, and even Mag wouldn’t meet Cecily’s eyes. “Mag, please.”
Mag huffed. “Do you have any idea what they say about us?”
Cecily drew a deep breath. She looked at the women’s worn, guarded faces, their shoulders broadened and bent, their hands rough and callused. She knew what was said about the wicce-women—that they wanted men for only one thing, that at the dark of the moon, they did unspeakable things to make the corn grow. “You don’t have to reveal anything. Just tell me if you think there’s something you can do.”
Mag nodded shortly. “We think there is.”
“Can you be sure?”
“Our hearts tell us to be sure.” She met Cecily’s eyes steadily.
“Do you really think it will work?”
“We believe that it will.”
“They don’t have any idea it will work at all,” interrupted Kestrel. “Whatever ‘it’ is. That’s the whole point, my lady, and that’s what makes corn magic such a lot of nonsense. They don’t know—they base their knowing, such as it is, on no authority. No verse or rune guides them, no teacher even teaches. It all just comes to them in a flight of fancy. Or in a puddle of that weed they chew.” He sniffed, and immediately pressed his own oil-soaked wad of linen to his nostrils. “The corn grows. The sun shines, and the rain falls. There’s nothing to say their rituals work.”
Cecily drew a deep breath. This was an old, old argument and one that she had largely been able to ignore her entire life, for what the druids, the masters of ancient wisdom, poetry and law, thought of the wicce-women, the healers, the corn grannies who worked the corn magic in the fields, and vice versa, had never affected her in any meaningful way. As the daughter of two of the greatest Houses in Brynhyvar, with a potential role to play in the governing of the land, it was a forgone conclusion that she would study with the druids. And as a woman, her duties required her to have a knowledge of herbs and simples, and that brought her in close contact with Mag, a corn granny longer than Cecily had been at Gar. Both necessary, both separate. But now…
She rubbed her forehead, as if to clear away the flinty edge of desperation and exhaustion that threatened to cloud her mind completely. “There’s nothing to say that it doesn’t. We have to try anything. We can’t waste time arguing who has the greater magic and the truer understanding, for the goblins surely won’t wait for us to decide.”
“Grannies’ll have us all tuppin’ in the fields tonight, you wait,” said a druid from the depths of his hood. A snicker went through the druids like wind through wheat. The women exchanged glances.
Cecily raised her chin. “I’d rather tup out there than die in here.” She met their eyes and tossed her hair back in a gesture she was quite sure was the last one a widow was expected to make, and winked. She turned back to the women, and met the eyes of each in turn. “Say what you will.”
“We’ve no wish to be laughed at.”
“No one will laugh,” said Cecily. She held up her hand. “And if anyone thinks he might,” she paused and looked over the druids. “Think on this first. In five hundred years, since these walls were built, no enemy’s stood where we’re standing now. The walls have never been breached. But the goblins tore these walls apart like they were made of sticks.” She looked Kestrel square in the eyes. “I’ll tup in the fields myself if that’s what it takes.” And expect you there alongside me, she nearly said, but that thought was nearly as horrifying as another goblin attack.
The hint of a smile lifted Mag’s mouth, but she still sounded hesitant. “We must…we’ll begin at sunset, isn’t that right, Granny Lyss? When the sun slips below the trees, below the tor, beside the river, the oldest granny, Granny Lyss, here—” she stepped back and indicated a tiny, wizened, birdlike woman, who was working on such an enormous piece of cud-wort, it slipped in and out between her lips with the motion of her jaw “—will work the rite. We need a volunteer, of course. A man. In his prime, or near approaching it.”
“Nah, the younger the better—fourteen, fifteen.” The old woman spoke in a quavering voice and tapped Mag’s arm with a curved finger that ended in a thick yellowed nail.
“That’s disgusting,” muttered Kestrel. “Completely and totally disgusting.”
“Can you think of anything else?” asked Cecily. The greasy smoke made her eyes burn. Fire, she thought. Perhaps a ring of fire would deter them. She made a mental note to suggest that to Kian.
“Would be better magic if one of them would do it,” said the old woman, and Cecily saw she had no teeth and her lips were drawn into her mouth, like those of the corpses who’d gone with Herne. What lad would volunteer? she wondered. And she wondered if even Kian could be induced to lie with such a woman.
“I’ll do it.” The voice resonated like a born bard’s, but the tall boy who pushed through the druids was slight of build, his skin pimpled patchy red.
“What are you doing here?” demanded Kestrel. “I thought you were gathering up the dead—”
“I was,” he answered. “I overheard.” He gestured to his stained white robes. “What do you need me to do?”
“What’s your name, young druid?” asked Cecily, bemused.
“He’s not a druid.” Kestrel rolled his eyes. “He’s naught but a third-degree bard and he’s always where he’s not needed and never where he is.”
“Well, then, young third-degree bard, what’s your name?” Cecily motioned to Granny Lyss to stop cackling.
“I’m Jammor, Your Grace. Jammor of the Rill, they call me.” He bowed and handed Kestrel his shovel with such a flourish, she nearly laughed aloud despite the situation.
“Oh, indeed, he’ll do right fine,” cackled Granny Lyss. “Come over here, boy, and let me feel your arm.”
“Tell him, first, what he’s in for, and see if he’s still interested.” Kestrel stepped forward and pushed the shovel back into Jammor’s hands. “Get back to work.”
“Now, just you wait, young man,” cried Granny Lyss. “I want a look at you—”
The boy hesitated, even as Kestrel opened his mouth to protest, and the impasse was broken by Kian, who came striding over the rubble, picking his way with the grace of a mountain cat, despite his size. But his expression was grim. At once Cecily asked, “What word, Sir Kian?”
“A sad word, that we expected,” answered Kian. He paused on the periphery of the group and sought her eyes with his. “It’s just as we feared, my lady. Great Gar is dead.” He glanced at Kestrel, then at Mag. “If you’d be so kind as to step aside a moment with me, my lord druid? Still-wife? Your Grace?”
“Shall we talk about the funeral?” Kestrel asked as Kian shepherded the three of them behind a pile of rubble. Blood stained the stones, and goblin gore clung here and there to the ruined wall, but at least the worst had been removed, thought Cecily as she carefully stepped over a suspicious pile of cloth.
“Funeral?” said Kian. He had removed his mask, and his face was furrowed with worry and exhaustion, and grime and sweat streaked his skin. “There’s no time to talk of funerals, my lord. Donnor’s death isn’t the only news the scout brought. Cadwyr of Allovale has raised his colors over Ardagh, and ten thousand mercenaries from Lacquilea are marching up from the south, led by one of Cadwyr’s foster brothers.”
They all gasped. Kestrel glanced around, white robes bluish in the shadows, so that his garments seemed to blend in with the stone. “Surely the messenger’s mistaken? What about the King? What about the Court?”
Kian shook his head, grim-faced. “He never got that close. He was sent back ahead of the rest. He did flank Cadwyr’s army. There’s at least two thousand horse, four thousand foot. Between them and the mercenaries, Cadwyr’s got nearly three times what we could muster ourselves.”
“Where did he get all those men?”
Kian shook his head slowly. “The lad didn’t get close enough to see if they were men, my lady. And if they are—” He broke off and put his hands on his hips. “Who knows what promises Cadwyr has made to others?”
“Do you really think Cadwyr is leading an army of the sidhe?” Cecily asked.
“You can’t seriously believe—” began Kestrel.
“How can you have seen those monsters last night, and Great Herne, too, and not believe what we tell you?” interrupted Cecily. “None of us want to believe it, my lord. None of us wanted to believe it before.” Kestrel had refused from the first to believe Kian’s tale of the blacksmith’s daughter and the sidhe.
“But this was what Donnor meant when he told me an opportunity had arisen suddenly, one that wouldn’t wait. Donnor knew about Cadwyr’s plan to use the sidhe.”
“And now he’s marching on Gar,” said Kian.
“Well, did this scout see any sign of any—any Other?” asked Kestrel. “What other evidence is there, really?”
“Other than Cadwyr’s colors over a castle that’s built on a rock over a whirlpool? What other evidence do you need, you old goat?” asked Mag with such derision that Cecily raised her brow. Mag was, after all, but the still-wife.
“They came upon a squadron or so of archers, who looked to be butchered where they stood,” answered Kian. “Most of them didn’t even have time to draw their sidearms.”
“So no one’s actually seen any—” said Kestrel.
“We’ve a witness,” said Kian. “The blacksmith’s daughter from Killcairn. Don’t you recall?”
“Have you any better explanation, Lord Druid?” asked Mag.
“I don’t want to believe it, either, my lord,” Cecily repeated. “But for all we know, Cadwyr may have a bargain with the goblins as well. I don’t think we can discount any possibility.”
“Cadwyr would not dare—” exploded Kestrel.
“He’s already dared to make himself master of Ardagh. I think we may well believe Cadwyr’s capable of anything,” said Cecily. “How soon will he be here?”
“We must call for an Assembly at once, obviously,” said Kestrel. “Donnor’s funeral will give us our perfect—”
“Oh, will you stop blathering about funerals?” interrupted Mag. “Cadwyr’s loosed both sidhe and goblin on us—how soon will he be here?”
“But I’m the one he wants,” said Cecily, thinking fast. “With Donnor dead, he considers Gar already his. I doubt he’ll attack the castle. Especially if I’m not here.” She looked at Kian, and was grateful to see him nod.
“Not here? Your Grace, you can’t leave—” began Kestrel. “Think of your duty—think of the people—Where would you go?” The color drained from his face and suddenly he looked sick. “And besides, what makes you think Duke Cadwyr would harm you? It has ever been my observation that the Duke cherishes you—” He broke off and glanced away, refusing to meet Cecily’s eyes.
“Cecily has a better claim to the throne.” Despite the situation, Cecily looked up, for it was the first time Kian had used her name in public. Donnor’s dead, and I am free. “She has to leave, my lord,” Kian continued. “We don’t know what Cadwyr’s bringing with him. Obviously he must’ve used the sidhe against Ardagh. There was no damage to the castle, do you understand? Whatever he brought against Hoell was awful enough that they opened the doors and let him walk in. I’ve but a quarter of the men I had yesterday. And I had less than half a full garrison to begin with.”
He used my name, Cecily thought again, and a part of her that was so long buried she had nearly forgotten it ever existed within her stirred to new life. Her heart skipped a beat. Donnor is dead, she thought with a little burst of the most unseemly happiness. Donnor’s dead and I’m free. We are free.
“But you’ve no reason to think—”
“I have every reason to think that Cadwyr intends to force himself upon me, my lord druid,” Cecily snapped. He’d been like this before Samhain, too, insisting on questioning everything.
The druid shut his mouth with an audible pop as a shadow crossed his face, and bitter shrieks made Cecily turn her head to see a flock of ravens rise and wheel off the roof of the Great Hall. The ravens are the Marrihugh’s birds, she thought, and she is marching across this land in her crow-feathered boots. She must’ve been well pleased last night.
“Then where will you go?” asked Kestrel.
“North, of course,” Kian answered. “The scout said Cadwyr’s army was still at least a day and a half out. Sheer size is slowing him down, thank the Marrihugh for some luck.”
“And what about the rest of us?” demanded Mag. “Cadwyr’s coming, and who knows what he’s leading. To go or stay—’tis a choice that must be put to one and all.”
But the druid was shaking his head. “Bah, woman, what’re you suggesting? There’re no guarantees that your magic will work. Her Grace, the knights, they at least have fast horses—they may have a chance of outriding the goblins. But to take wounded women and children on some mad dash ’twould be the death of most of them.” He looked at Kian and pushed his hood off his face, so that it fell back over his shoulders in graceful, fluid folds. He was shorter than Kian, but he drew himself up. “You go, Sir Knight. I’ll stay—we’ll all stay, my brother druids and I. We’ll do what we can to protect the people here. By every means we can contrive.”
Cecily glanced around, assessing the progress of the repairs. Whole sections of the outer wall were missing. The second wall appeared sound, but it had not been built to withstand the brunt of an attack, especially not such a one as last night’s, and she remembered her idea. “What about fire?” asked Cecily. “A ring of fire around the castle?”
“That’s a thought,” said Kian. “Hard to maintain, perhaps. I’m not sure we’ve that much fuel—but still, it might be a way to block those holes. I’ll go and speak to the captain of the watch. We leave—” He broke off and looked up. The sun was still high above the tor. “Can you be ready to leave at dusk?”
“Dusk?” echoed Mag and Cecily as one. Cecily nodded at Mag and she went on, “Begging your pardon, my lord knight, but we need Her Grace.”
“Me?” Cecily blinked.
“For what?” asked Kian.
“She—she should be there. We’re going to need her—her—her presence,” Mag answered. “For the ritual. She’ll bring a certain…energy…that the granny will need. Oh, I’m quite sure she should be there.”
“And for how long?”
“Most of the night.” Mag ducked her head apologetically. “You do want us to try all we can, right?”
Kian ran a hand over his eyes, and Cecily felt a wave of exhaustion sweep over her. And how much worse could it be for him? He’d fought most of the night, snatching only a few hours’ rest between sunrise and midmorning. “We’ll go at dawn, then. We should reach the Daraghduin by midnight tomorrow, if we’re lucky.”
If we’re lucky. The little phrase echoed over and over in Cecily’s mind like a death knell. But Kian was continuing. “You’re the ArchDruid of Gar, my lord, is that not so?” asked Kian. When Kestrel nodded, he went on, “And as such, it’s your role to hold disputed property until such time as an heir can be determined?”
“Yes…” answered Kestrel slowly, as an odd expression crossed his face. “But only with good reason. And Cadwyr is the son of Donnor’s oldest sister. Only a child of his own loins, or a child of that child, has a stronger claim.” He turned to Cecily with an incredulous look. “Is it your intention to also dispute Cadwyr for the duchy of Gar, my lady?”
“Donnor came to me the night before he left,” Cecily said. She could pretend to be pregnant if she had to.
“I see,” the druid said. There was an aloofness in his tone that made Cecily look more closely at him. Was it only the druid’s surprise that there might be yet another claimant for the duchy of Gar? she wondered. Suddenly the walls didn’t feel so much safe as suffocating. But it was Kian’s next words that took her off guard.
“And a child of a child has an equal claim, as well?”
“Well, not as equal as a child—” Kestrel broke off. “What are you saying, Sir Kian? Donnor had a grandchild?”
Shocked, Cecily’s mouth dropped open and she exchanged a wide-eyed look with Mag as Kian answered, “Aye. Donnor had a daughter, got off one of his father’s women when he was very young. She was fostered out on the Isles, and when it came time to marry her off, she refused the man he’d chosen. So he disavowed her—”
“In a court? Before an ArchDruid?” Kestrel was frowning now, twisting his linked hands together beneath the wide sleeves of his robes.
“I don’t know the particulars of all the circumstances, my lord,” began Kian.
“Well, you’d better be quite sure of them if you mean to raise—”
“Lord Kestrel,” interrupted Kian gently. “It’s not me.”
“Then, who—” put in Cecily. This was totally unexpected. She wondered why Kian hadn’t mentioned it to her before.
“It’s not for me to say. He’ll reveal himself when he’s ready. If he were here, he’d have come to you himself,” Kian said as he turned back to Kestrel. “So you’ll do what must be done, to call the Assembly? That’s your duty, no?”
“But—”
Her thoughts drifted as Kestrel continued to sputter questions, all to which she wanted answers as well. “I trust you to keep this information to yourselves, Your Grace, still-wife,” Kian continued. “I only bring this up now because—well, because I suppose there’s a possibility he’s no longer even alive. But he should be given the chance to make his claim, don’t you agree?”
So this was someone they all knew? Someone who lived here? Donnor had an heir he’d known nothing of? She had a feeling that Kian would tell her no more than he was telling Kestrel. “If that’s what it comes to, my lord, yes,” Kian was saying, and she realized the conversation had taken another turn. “It’s not my wish to fight Cadwyr, but what choice has he given us? I’ll be happy to meet Cadwyr in lawful Assembly, as will Her Grace, but we’d rather have an army of our own kin at our backs and know what exactly we’re to face.”
“Come, my lady, there’re things to be done before the ritual,” said Mag. “A bath and such. I’ll explain it to you as we go.”
“Make it up as you go, don’t you mean?” put in Kestrel. “Don’t forget to pack, Your Grace.”
For some reason, that struck her as an odd thing for him to say, odd enough that she paused, even as Mag tugged at her arm. It was like a false note in an otherwise well-tuned harp. She opened her mouth, then shut it, and Mag looked at Kestrel. “What about the lad? Will you let him join us?”
“Absolutely not,” Kestrel said with a dismissive wave.
An image of Kestrel’s red boots of Lacquilean leather jumped into Cecily’s mind, and she glanced down, to see one tip peeking out from beneath the hem of Kestrel’s robe. There was something about those boots that pricked her like a pin lost in a seam. Maybe it was just the way he treated the wicce-women that bothered her. Everyone knows the druids like their comforts. But so does Cadwyr. She remembered the rose he’d brought her the night before he and Donnor had left on that ill-fated journey, the way it had reeked of the OtherWorld. She wondered if Kestrel’s boots were really made of Lacquilean leather, and then the rest of the messenger’s news echoed in her mind. Ten thousand Lacquilean mercenaries are marching this way, as well—he well may think them easily replaced. Could it be he knew they were coming?
“What do you need, still-wife?” asked Kian. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
At that, Cecily’s brow shot up, but before she could speak, Mag answered as she nodded slowly with a speculative look. “You’re not as young as you might be, Sir Kian, but come with me to Granny Lyss. We’ll ask her if she thinks you’ll do.”
Cecily noticed that Kestrel went in the direction of the summer kitchens. He’s going to speak to the scout himself, she thought. Donnor was not quite as universally loved as he had liked to believe. His own heir hated him, and there was another now, another who had not even made himself known while Donnor lived. “Kian,” she asked, speaking softly under her breath as he guided her and Mag around the rubble. “Is it possible that Kestrel and Cadwyr—” She broke off, and their eyes met. He didn’t answer, but she saw him watch Kestrel until he rounded a corner and they could see him no more.
Nessa did not even look up when the long shadow fell across the forge. Once the Sheriff noticed her, and remembered her, he’d summoned the four scullions assigned to help her yesterday, and put them all back to work, this time repairing the endless mound of weapons and other implements the goblins had nearly destroyed. Thus, Uwen startled her as she was hanging the heavy leather apron on a hook. “I need a word with you, lass.”
There was something distinctly different about him, Nessa thought as she stifled a gasp, then bundled her tumbled hair off her face. He looked as if a great weight had suddenly fallen on top of him, and stern, as if he had set himself to do a great task. He leaned against the wall and glanced around the forge. “You’ve been busy today.” His watery eyes were bloodshot and he looked tired. They were all tired, she thought. Up all night, a few hours of wretched sleep snatched at dawn. Now it was late, the scullions long since gone to answer the dinner bell’s summons.
“What’s wrong?” Her wound itched, her shoulders ached, but Uwen looked worse than she felt.
“I need to get to Gar. We’ve been dithering about it all day, but I need to find out what’s going on there—if Donnor’s really dead, what’s happened to Kian and the Duchess and the rest of the Company. I need to speak to the ArchDruid.” He hesitated, as if considering what to say next. “I want you to come with me. You’re the only one who saw Cadwyr with the sidhe, you’re the witness to at least part of the bargain. I don’t know what Cadwyr’s planning, or how things stand, but I don’t want to wait for the upland chiefs to decide who should go and who should come. This is what he’s counting on. There’re more arriving every hour now, and that’s only going to create more confusion. So I’m planning to slip away before first light tomorrow, lass, and I’d like you to come with me. Which is another reason we’ll have to slip away. You’re the last person the Sheriff will want to let leave. He may be as soft in the head as he is in the belly, but he knows enough to know he needs a smith.” He paused once more, then said, “I’m sorry that I caused trouble between you and the sidhe lord.”
“You weren’t to know,” she replied with a shrug. She had for the most part successfully avoided thinking about Artimour for most of the day, but Uwen’s apology brought it all back. “I did make the dagger.”
“You did, but you had no choice. I spent all day with him—he’s not an unreasonable sort. Decent, really, for a sidhe. Or a half-sidhe, which is what Molly says he is. Go talk to him. But go soon—he says he’s leaving tomorrow.”
“So soon?” Her head snapped up. She wanted to talk to Artimour, to make sure that all was right between them before she mentioned her mother. She’d dared to hope that perhaps he’d take her with him. But she knew what her father would expect her to do and she knew he’d be angry if he thought she was moping after a sidhe. The more she thought about it, the more it seemed like the one thing guaranteed to make him the angriest. But she had made the dagger. Dismayed, she stared at Uwen as she automatically bent to retrieve a hammer bumped off the wall, set upright an overturned basket of nails.
“There’s been talk, mutters, rumors. The sidhe are being blamed for the goblins’ attack—”
“But that’s not fair,” she cried. “Artimour had nothing to do with it—”
“Of course you and I know that. But not all these dunderheads do. And he has questions, too, the answers for which are only in the OtherWorld, not here. Nessa, will you come? The longer we wait, the more who will insist on riding with us, and we can only go as fast as the slowest horse. By the time a whole troop gets there, who knows what Cadwyr will have done next? I can carry you on Buttercup if need be. We can be there by noon of the day after tomorrow.”
His voice had a flat desperate edge that she’d never heard before, even on Samhain when he faced the goblin horde. What’s changed? she wanted to ask. But she knew how her father would expect her to answer his question. She glanced around the forge, fingering the amulet. There was plenty of work to be done here. But all she said was, “All right. All right, I’ll come. I guess I better go talk to Artimour.”
“Molly said to suggest bringing him dinner. You’ll find her in the kitchens.”
She heard him sigh as he stood aside to let her pass and she was tempted once more to turn and ask him what was wrong, even as she wondered exactly how much about her Molly had discussed with him. In the doorway she remembered something, and turned to see him looking at something that appeared to be a flat disk that hung around his neck on a metal chain that glinted gold. She was about to ask him what it was, when he thrust it into his shirt, out of sight. “Your sword’s over there—I banged out the rust that had started to eat the blade, and sharpened up the edge.”
She heard him call a startled thanks but did not pause as she trudged on. She had faced the goblins. She had faced Great Herne. Surely she could face Artimour. In the kitchens, she found Molly, looking distracted, but sharp-eyed as ever. She beckoned Nessa and thrust a tray of food into her hands, then pointed upward. She leaned over and spoke directly into Nessa’s ear. “I’ve borrowed your birch staff, lass, but don’t you worry—I’ll see that Uwen has it for you on the ’morrow.”
Surprised, Nessa drew back and opened her mouth to ask why Molly needed the staff, and how would it be that Uwen of all people might have occasion to return it to her. But Molly forestalled her questions with a smile and a firm turn of her shoulders in the direction of the narrow staircase that led to the cramped chambers that normally served as the Sheriff of Killcarrick’s private quarters. “There’ll be time for explanations later, child.”
Nessa glanced down at Molly as she trudged up the stone steps crowded with children and dogs. She was carrying a basketful of bright red cord, cord similar to that which Nessa had been unable to pry out of Granny Wren’s rigid hands back in Killcairn. Whatever magic the granny had worked had held, as she’d said, til Samhain. Were the grannies here about to attempt another such ritual tonight? Was that why Molly wanted the staff? A burning wish to know stabbed briefly through Nessa, then disappeared in a flood of panic as she reached the top of the steps. Suddenly she wished she’d done more than taken the time to wash her hands and rake back her hair. Her shoulders ached, her legs felt like lumps, and she almost stumbled more than once over hounds or children.
The tray of food Molly had given her to carry up felt like lead in her arms, but at least it gave her an excuse to knock on Artimour’s door. From the other side of the door, she heard him call, “Enter.”
She pushed it open, and stepped into what felt like a cool bath of still water, after the heat of the forge and the chaos of the kitchen and the keep. He looked tired. She stepped over the threshold, and saw that his eyes were like smudges of ash in a face as gray and drawn as her father’s after a long day or sleepless night. Only the luster of his hair and the slightly pointed tips of his ears betrayed his mixed blood. In the dull light filtering through the horn pane, even his skin had lost that velvety sheen. It was difficult to restrain her apology. “I brought your dinner.”
He was standing by the open casement, one foot on the window seat, watching the activity below. He glanced over his shoulder, then straightened, obviously surprised to see her. “Put it there.” He shifted from foot to foot. “You don’t have to wait on me—I told Granny Molly that I was well enough to come down.”
“They think it’s better you stay out of sight. They say there’s talk against the sidhe.” She’d seen for herself that grief and shock were giving way to rage. She’d seen two brothers come to blows today over who had retrieved a third brother’s sword, but rumors she’d overheard were so ridiculous she’d dismissed them out of hand until Uwen had mentioned them: the sidhe were coming to save them; the sidhe themselves had been overrun by the goblins at last. The Duke of Gar was at fault for rebelling against the King; the King’s madness was to blame. The Duke of Gar had struck a secret alliance with the sidhe, the Humbrians had struck an alliance with the goblins. The Duke of Gar was dead. The Mad King Hoell was dead. But it was the muttered curses, the furtive looks cast upward as she carried the tray up the stairs that convinced Nessa that Uwen was right. “The people are looking for someone to blame.”
She placed the tray on the low table beside the hearth, then turned, her hands clasped before her, eyes fastened fixedly on the leaping flames. The aroma of toasted bread and warm cheese tickled her nostrils, and she wondered what the food smelled like to him. She flipped aside the napkin to reveal crusty brown bread with a light smear of pale cheese on top, then took a deep breath. The words burst out of her like tumbling stones plunging pell-mell down a hill. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you, truly I didn’t. I’m sorry—I just never thought—there was nothing that made me think—and Uwen says we’re to leave tomorrow—and that you’re going back to Faerie—” Her eyes filled with tears and she blinked them back.
He cut her off with a wave of his hand. “Nessa, it’s all right. I understand. I understand you had no choice.” He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “I was wrong to speak to you so. If you’ll accept my apology, we need speak of it no more.”
Surprised, she stared at him, and then realized that whatever troubled him was so much greater that any wrong she’d done him was insignificant in comparison. What would happen to him if the world to which he intended to return did not expect to welcome him back? What was he walking into? She eyed his straight back, his broad shoulders that looked broader than she’d expected beneath his borrowed clothes. The skin on his hands was paler and finer than most men’s, without any of the coarse curling hair that covered the backs of Dougal’s. But they were large, the palms broad, the fingers square.
Blacksmith’s hands. She shoved the absurdity of that thought away. Artimour was a prince of the sidhe, not a simple mortal smith. But she couldn’t help wondering what he’d look like, stripped to the waist like her father, only a leather apron and vambraces to protect his chest and forearms, and a sudden flush suffused her whole body that had nothing to do with the warmth of the flames. “Can you tell me where you found this?” She fumbled at her neck and pulled out Dougal’s amulet.
“Ah, there it is. I thought it’d been lost in the water. Do you recognize it?”
“I made it for my father when I was thirteen. I’d know it anywhere. Where’d you find it?”
“In the river, on a rock. It looked as if someone had tossed it into the water to try to negate its poison. Running water does, to some extent.”
“But you saw no one about?”
Artimour shook his head. “No one until I met Finuviel. And he was alone, as he should not have been.” He drew a deep breath. “There are many great houses along the river. Your father may have found his way to one, but any sidhe would’ve expected him to remove the amulet before they took him in. I found the amulet a league or two from where you and I parted company, but it may have drifted downriver somewhat.” He hesitated. “I don’t think there’s any way to be sure of anything—”
“But that he’s there,” finished Nessa. She took a single step forward with a raised chin. “Don’t you see? Everyone said I was wrong to be so sure he’d fallen into the OtherWorld. But now you found his amulet. Surely that shows he’s there.” She took another step, her heart beginning to pound. “And last night—last night I realized my mother must be in Faerie, too.”
A shadow crossed his face, and he indicated one of the wooden chairs in front of the fire. “Please sit. I must talk to you.”
He still moved like a sidhe, she thought as she perched on the chair’s hard edge, but she noticed that a furrow had appeared between his brows.
“Nessa,” he said gently. “I’m not sure what’s happening right now in Faerie, but nothing I can imagine is good. Finuviel—the one who stabbed me, who came to your forge with Cadwyr—Finuviel is Vinaver’s son, my own sister’s son. It wouldn’t surprise me if the two of them have been planning this for a very long time, and saw Alemandine’s pregnancy as an opportunity to strike while the Queen was at her weakest. I don’t think he only intended the dagger for me. I think it’s clear he made a bargain with this Cadwyr that Sir Uwen speaks of with such dislike—the dagger, in exchange for the host that Finuviel was supposed to lead to the border. After I found that amulet, before I met Finuviel, I came to a place beside the river where it appeared a great army had ridden across. It didn’t occur to me then they might have ridden into the water and come out in the same way you did, here in Shadow. So the questions have become, where’s Finuviel, where’s the host, and where’s the Caul, for Finuviel must’ve taken it in order to bring the silver dagger into Faerie. For all I know, Alemandine may be dead, and Finuviel already King. And as you say, it’s better that I leave. I’ll go at dawn. It’s at dusk the goblins hunt.” For a split second, he smiled, but then his face darkened, and he looked old, careworn and tired. He paused, drew a deep breath, then continued. “I’ll do what I can to find your parents, Nessa, but you must understand that I don’t know what’s waiting for me. Those goblins that came last night, Nessa, I’ve never seen anything like them. Oh yes, I saw them. I went to the top of the tower. There were so many. I’m not sure there’s magic enough in Faerie to stand against them.”
But silver still works, she thought, fingering Dougal’s amulet as an idea occurred to her. There wasn’t much time, and she was tired, but if she used a sword that only needed repair—she’d have to see what she could find. She leaped to her feet and headed for the door. “Do you know where to find the forge?” She’d have to satisfy her curiosity about the corn grannies and their rituals another night.
He looked startled. “The forge? Where the blacksmiths work?”
“Stop there before you leave? Please?” She only waited long enough to ensure that he nodded, and then she skipped down the steps, curiously more lighthearted than she had felt in days.
3
The afternoon was fading into twilight, when Merle paused on the threshold of the tower room overlooking the western sea. A storm was brewing, and the sound of the surf as it pounded against the rocks that formed the foundation of the house her father had so graciously provided was louder up here for some reason than in her own solar on the floor below. Then a wet breeze licked her cheek and she turned to see her husband’s outline, black against the garish lines of red and violet light flooding through the gray-streaked clouds. “Hoell? My love?” She spoke tentatively, for ever since their perilous escape from the horrible things that had driven them from Brynhyvar, she could not quite believe that not only had they both escaped the fiends, but that Hoell, her one true love and anointed King of Brynhyvar, had come back to himself. He was no longer the meek and gentle creature he’d become as a result of their child’s death. Their first child’s death, she thought, placing her hand on her swelling abdomen. It could happen to anyone, she thought. Lots of people lost children. She felt a feeble flutter against the thick silk of her new chemista and she smiled. Swim, little fish, swim.
But it worried her more than she wanted to admit to find him sitting alone in the dark, leaning so far out the open casement that his hair was damp with spray. But his expression reassured her, as did his words of sweetly accented Humbrian, “Ah, here you are, Merle. Come sit a moment. The sunset’s splendid, don’t you think?”
“My love, aren’t you cold?” But she edged closer, curling her cold fingers around his surprisingly hot hand.
“Come, I’ll warm you.” He folded her against his chest, snuggling her against him so that she felt the beating of his heart against her shoulder. The sea looked angry as it lashed against the rocks and the sky was streaked with red. It reminded her of the blood dripping down the gray stone walls of Ardagh. She still heard the screaming of the dying and the screeching of the sidhe in her dreams. It was one of the reasons her father had given them this house. Only the insistent rhythm of the waves washing over the rocks soothed her. She closed her eyes and turned her face away, willing herself to relax into the circle of his embrace.
“I don’t know what you like to look at up here,” she said. “There’s nothing to see but the water and the sky.”
“Maybe you’re right.” She could feel his breath through the linen of her veil, hot against her scalp. It reminded her of all the nights they’d lain in her bed during his madness, when he’d clutched her to his chest like a little boy. “But when I sit here, and the light is right, I think I see Brynhyvar, sitting out there like a purple jewel, right across—” he extended their arms, folding his hand over hers, pointing with his index finger “—there.”
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/anne-kelleher/silver-s-bane-42490557/) на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
Anne Kelleher
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
Отзывы: Пока нет Добавить отзыв
О книге: THROUGH THE SHADOWLANDS: Where the touch of silver was Protection, Power and Peril… AN OTHERWORLDLY INTRIGUE… With the courts of both the Sidhe′s Otherworld and the mortals′ Shadowlands in contention, nothing seems safe anymore.Now blacksmith′s daughter Nessa is caught up in political and military intrigues that might loose the goblin horde. Widowed queen Cecily is fighting for a throne she never expected to have. And Delphinea, lady in waiting to the Faery throne, is caught between the powers of Sidhe and her destiny.A DESPERATE PERIL…The first battles are over, and devastation wracks both lands. With Nessa crossing between worlds to further understanding of each people, Cecily and Delphinea must fight to contain the evil that edges ever closer. Because their honor demands that their countries come before anything–even love. And life…