Книга - Silver’s Edge
Silver's Edge
Anne Kelleher
THROUGH THE SHADOWLANDS: Where the touch of silver was Protection, Power and Peril… UNWILLINGLY ENTWINED… There is more danger than usual in the Otherworld of the Sidhe and the mortal world of the Shadowlands. An unlikely group of conspirators–both mortal and Sidhe–plot to overthrow both thrones. They'd stolen the silver caul that protected the borders between the realms–and set into motion a perilous war….A BLACKSMITH'S DAUGHTER, A SIDHE LADY, A MORTAL QUEENThree women stand against the encroaching evil. All they have is a girl's love for her father, a lady's for her queen–and a queen's for her country. Nessa, Delphinea and Cecily are each driven by a personal destiny, yet share a fierce sense of love, justice and determination to protect what is theirs.Will the spirit and strength of these women be enough to turn back the tide of the goblin hordes waiting to overrun the kingdoms? Perhaps. But the battle must still be fought….
Praise for
ANNE KELLEHER
“I found it one of those books which keeps one’s eyes glued to the page…an outstanding piece of work.”
—Andre Norton on Daughter of Prophecy
“…displays vivid imagination.”
—Publishers Weekly
“…engaging and powerful.”
—Voya on The Misbegotten King
“Fascinating—a most ingenious blend of science fiction and fantasy.”
—New York Times bestselling author Marion Zimmer Bradley on Daughter of Prophecy
SILVER’S EDGE
ANNE KELLEHER
This book is dedicated, with love,
to my son Jamie, my intrepid little adventurer—
may you always believe that tall buildings
are made to be leaped with a single bound.
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
Nothing I have ever written has not owed a great deal to the people who have to put up with me while I write. Thanks go to my agent, Jennifer Jackson, who lit a candle just as the lights were going out; to Patrice Fitzgerald, Olivia Lawrence, Robert Becerra and Laura Sebastian-Coleman, who gave me feedback and wonderful suggestions; to Anne Sheridan, who proofread the final draft—any mistakes are mine; to Laura at The Purple Rose and Bobbi at Maggie Dailey’s for providing tea and source material; to Loreena McKennitt, Julee Glaub and Bruce Springsteen, whose music made me see the OtherWorld; to GTimeJoe, who kept my head in the clouds; to the folks in the CT Over 40 chat room on AOL for being so unflaggingly supportive even when I was at my most cranky; to the wonderful members of the FMC for cheerleading; to my darling daughters, Kate, Meg and Libby, who bore the brunt of dishes, laundry and trash; and finally, to Donny. You made it all possible.
Contents
PROLOGUE
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
EPILOGUE
An Interview with Anne Kelleher
PROLOGUE
Then
Down dusty roads the child fled, heart drumming in her thin chest like the gallop of a thousand horses, chased from sleep by hulking hordes of goblins who grabbed at her with gleaming teeth and outstretched claws. She startled awake, the echoes of her dream screams dying in her ears, crying aloud at the sight of the banked grate, where the coals glowed like red eyes in the dark room. A cold wind was howling in the trees, and the window rattled in its frame. A gusty draft stirred the curtains just as something crashed onto the roof above her head. She cried again, louder now, and yanked her thick woolen blanket higher, the rest of her small body stiffening with dread, the whole house, it seemed, shuddering under the impact.
“Nessie? You all right?” Her father’s broad face loomed out of the shadows of the doorway, his white nightshirt luminous in the gray light. He came closer, feet bare, the black hair on his chest curling out of the open collar of his nightshirt. A dark haze of beard shadowed his chin. Disheveled and bleary-eyed as he was, the sight of him relaxed her instantly, even as the sound of something scraping against the windowpane made her eyes widen once more.
“Papa, the goblins,” she moaned. “They’re chasing me—there’s one outside my window—”
“Hush, now.” His voice was a gravelly rumble as compelling as distant thunder. “That’s nothing but the branch I should’ve had the sense to cut down long before this. The wind brought it down, that’s all. There’re no goblins outside, not now, not ever.”
Cautiously the child peered over the homespun sheet, which was soft with many washings. Her father had spoken, her father who was the rock at the center of her world. Her father was Dougal the village blacksmith and the best armorer for leagues around. Even the mighty Duke of Gar came to Dougal when he wanted a new sword or dagger. “But, Papa,” she whispered, “Granny Wren, tonight, at the Gathering, she said the goblins come a-hunting little children—little children is what they like best to eat.”
With a stifled hiss of exasperation, the blacksmith crossed the small space to his daughter’s bed and knelt on the ragged scrap of rug. “Ah, little one, Granny Wren likes to hear herself talk. It’s how she knows she’s still alive, I think, for there’s no other reason for half the things she says. But come now, didn’t you also hear her speak of Bran? Bran Brownbeard, the greatest smith there ever was, in either Brynhyvar or the OtherWorld, the place called TirNa’lugh?” He paused. Her dark eyes were bright in her rosy little face and she shook her head, falling readily into the spell his whisper wove. “Perhaps you’d already gone to sleep by then? Hmm? Such a tired little girl I carried home tonight.” He smiled and smoothed the dark, damp curls off her forehead, his thick slab of a hand bigger than her entire face. “Bran Brownbeard was a mighty mortal man, who with the help of the Queen of the sidhe and her magic, forged the Silver Caul that lies upon the moonstone globe in the great palace in the very heart of the Other World.”
“What’s a call, Papa?”
“A caul, sweetling. It’s like—like a net, or loosely woven blanket, made of purest silver.”
“How’d he do that, Papa?”
“He took silver, for silver hurts the goblin, and the sidhe, too, more than anything else—it burns them and that’s why a mortal man was needed to do it—and with the sidhe Queen of the OtherWorld, who hates the Goblin King, for he would take her kingdom if he could, together they worked great magic and made a powerful web of finest strands of purest silver. They called it the Silver Caul, and the Queen took it to her palace, and there she placed it over a great green moonstone, and there it lies to this very day, keeping the goblins out of Brynhyvar.”
“Why does silver hurt the goblins?”
“I don’t know rightly, sweetling. But it’s why we wear these—” He fumbled at the neck of his nightshirt and dangled his silver amulet on its leather cord before her.
“That’s why we must never take it off?”
“Exactly. The silver protects us.”
“But, Papa, if the Silver Caul keeps the goblins out, why must we wear silver, too?”
Because there are worse things than goblins, he nearly replied. It was the race that called themselves the sidhe that were the worst of all, for they seduced mortals with promises of otherworldly delight, leading them to vanish out of sight and time. Your own mother was snared by one of them, he almost said, but he caught himself. They were treading dangerously close to questions for which he must carefully consider the replies. He pushed aside the curtain and peered out into the night. It was coming up to dawn. The low-lying clouds overlay a sky of lighter gray. Time to stir the oats he’d set to cook last night in the great iron kettle nestled in the warm forge, to check for damage left by the now-passing storm, to try to decide what to tell the child if her questions led them to the subject of her mother, and if she were old enough to know even part of the truth. “Not now, sweetheart. I’ll tell you the story later. I promise. But ’tis so late, it’s early, and I must be about my work. You go back to sleep for a bit, it’s too cold to be running about early today.” He kissed each one of her grubby little fingers in turn, noticing how pink they were beneath a thin layer of grime, then rose to go. He resolved to remember to drag the bathtub from the shed beside the kitchen before nightfall. Her eyelids were already beginning to droop.
“But, Papa?” Her voice stopped him at the door. “The Silver Caul? That’s what keeps the goblins away? For real?”
“There are no goblins in Brynhyvar, Nessa. I promise. So back to sleep with you, now, like a good girl.”
“Yes, Papa.” She shut her eyes with a sigh.
He ducked his head beneath the uneven frame of the low doorway and paused to look over his shoulder at the little face lying on the pillow. Dearer to him than all he owned, dearer than life, she was. He had lost her mother to the sidhe, and he was determined such a fate should never befall her daughter. Such a headstrong little thing, she could be, so like her mother, curious and engaging. But if she seemed more interested in the fire and the forge, hammer and tongs, than in the tools of more womanly pursuits, so much the better. Better her mind be full of iron, he thought, than the sort of empty-headed nonsense which had contributed to her mother’s disappearance.
The child curled on her side, one round cheek pillowed on her open palm, a scrap of threadbare blanket nestled beneath her chin. A line from an ancient lullaby ran through his head. The might of Bran protects thee, the Faerie Queen shall bless thee, no goblin claw will rend thee. But he took no comfort in it, for he expected no blessing from that quarter. He would see to it that if ever goblin or sidhe touched so much as a hair of his daughter’s head, she would be well-prepared to defend herself.
1
Now
The fat spider leapt lightly along the serrated edges of the stone spikes which rose like a lizard’s spine along the high back of the throne of the Goblin King. It scampered across the rough stone, anchored from above by a nearly invisible filament, darting just inches from the leathery maw of Xerruw, the Goblin King, who leaned upon one elbow and watched it with detached interest. So easily he could flick it into oblivion with a snap of his tongue. Its legs waved frantically as it manipulated the gossamer strands, as if it sensed a predator. But, though he watched it with a hungry intent, Xerruw’s mind was not bent on food. Spin, little spider. You have reminded me of the value of a trap.
A smoky fire burned fitfully in the stone pit in the center of the cavernous hall, and a dull gray light filtered through the arrow slits set within the soaring arches of its central tower. A cold draft whined down from the upper reaches, but Xerruw, if he noticed the chill at all, gave no sign. He sprawled across his massive throne, which had been carved out of a boulder bigger than the huts of men, in that last happy age when the goblins reigned supreme and the sidhe cowered beneath the banks of rivers and glens, hiding in the noon, hunted at night like luminous fish flitting through the dark depths of the primeval forests. Those were the days of glory, he reflected, as he picked his teeth with the fingerbone of a human child.
It was an ancient fingerbone, worn sliver-fine from long years of gnawing—they’d not been fortunate to find a child roaming in these lands for more time than he’d care to remember—but he liked to fancy that it retained a hint of the sweet flavor of young man-meat, enough to envision a time still to come when, free of the fetters of sidhe magic, his kind could hunt both the human herd and the sidhe at will. So he watched the spider, sucking on his bone, while in the niches carved into the rock beneath his seat, three hags muttered among themselves as they crouched restlessly on their nests of lumpy eggs, ceaselessly complaining of the lack of meat.
His gray eyes were nearly closed, and he appeared lost in thought, his attention wholly focused on the spider, but he knew that three of the six guards dicing opposite the hags were cheating on the others, and that the goblins sharpening their weapons closest by the door mumbled mutiny. Let them, he mused, enjoying the worn smoothness of the bone against his teeth. Long years he’d sat, brooding on his throne, biding his time, plotting his strategy, awaiting the very news he’d received yesterday.
For the sidhe Queen was in whelp—the sidhe witch who dared to style herself Queen of all Faerie. It was only a matter of time now, and her power would falter, her magic naturally diminish as the birth approached, giving him at last an opening, a foothold, a chance to once again claim all of Faerie for his own. In the past weeks, he had begun to sense it—a subtle but unmistakable weakening in the complex webs of power which held the border of the Wastelands, where her forces had driven his kind after the last war. And this time, they would attack—not just with blades and spears, arrows and bolts, the weapons of sheer brute force. No, this time he would try something worthy of a sidhe’s own cunning. He would succeed where the others of his kind had failed, catching the complacent sidhe off guard when they were most critically vulnerable. Like the spider, he mused. And like the spider, he would weave his own trap and wait.
A chill draft suddenly blasted through the hall, and the hags screeched and cackled, rocking back and forth on their haunches to protect their eggs. The blast of air was accompanied by a thunderous boom—the sound of the inner gates closing. The scouting party had returned. But even as he was about to shift positions and settle more comfortably to await their report, Xerruw bolted upright, for he caught, just beneath the acrid smoke of the fire, a scent, at once coppery and sweet, earthy and sour, threading like a strand of yarn through the smooth texture of the air. He snarled in the direction of the hags, and rose to his feet as Iruk, the Captain of his Goblin Guard, strode in, his fellows jogging behind him, a blur of dull gray limbs and black metal in unison. The guards stopped gaming and sharpening, and looked up, sniffing expectantly. Then the hags caught the scent and their keening cries of pleasure erupted in a hungry harmony. A snarl and another hard glare silenced them, but they licked their lips and stared back at him with eager eyes.
“What is this you bring?” he asked suspiciously, for the unmistakable aroma of man was in the air, and he knew already what lay within the hide-bound burden Iruk bore across his shoulders.
“Great Xerruw.” Iruk circled around the fire pit, stopping at the very base of the throne. He glanced at the hags, who squatted over their nests, crooning softly, as though he half expected them to leap at him. He knelt, staggering a little beneath the weight of his burden, then bent his neck and let it roll to the first step of the throne. He pulled away the hide and the still body of a human male sprawled at the base of Xerruw’s throne, fresh blood congealing on his skull and at his throat.
Xerruw stared down at the offering. His nostrils quivered and saliva flooded his mouth. But even as a ravenous hunger swelled from the pit of his belly, making it nearly impossible not to rip off the closest limb, misgiving made him raise his head and scan the faces of the guards who stared back at him with unabashed glee. Saliva ran down their jaws, and their maws quivered, nostrils flaring. The last time they’d tasted human meat was countless ages past. It was a testimony to their allegiance to him that they’d returned the carcass intact. One of them was missing.
He looked down at the dead human. It had been a big male, dark and hairy, with burly arms and massive shoulders. Strong on him, beneath the scent of blood and flesh and sweat and urine, hung the smell of smoke and burning metal. His face and beard were damp and he was nearly naked except for linen breeches and the amulet he wore around his neck. In the unsteady light, it shone with a clear, soft gleam. Xerruw’s lip curled and his eyes narrowed at the sight. “Silver,” he muttered. “This should not be.” Silver was anathema to sidhe and to goblin, humankind’s only sure defense against goblin teeth and sidhe magic. “I like this not,” he said at last, shaking his heavy head. “Where did you find it?”
“By the lake. Upon the farthest shore. He did not know he’d slid across the border. We took him unawares.” Iruk dragged one claw through the gelatinous clot on the human’s neck, and held it out to Xerruw. The scent of the fresh kill exploded like fire through Xerruw’s veins and he licked his lips without thinking.
“Do you not see the silver?” Xerruw gestured down.
Iruk shrugged. “Base metal, most like. We carried him here well-wrapped—there was no problem.” He threw the clot at his lord’s feet, and gazed up at him expectantly, awaiting some sign of acceptance of the kill. Xerruw squatted down, coiling his tail beneath his haunches, sniffing suspiciously. Iruk was probably right. The amulet must indeed contain a fair portion of base metal. He examined the clothing the human wore. The linen was coarse, the heavily muscled body bore testimony to a lifetime of hard labor. But the hide they’d used to wrap the human in was slightly singed where the amulet had rested, and above it, he could feel a tingle emanating from it, a shimmer in the air. It had potency, enough, then. The amulet must be cast into the deepest part of the lake, where he instinctively knew the dark waters would neutralize its corrosive effect. He pulled his dagger from his sheath and cut the leather cord around the neck. He held the amulet out to Iruk by the cord.
Iruk stepped back with a hiss.
“Throw this in the lake whence it came.” He pushed it closer to Iruk’s face.
Iruk hissed again as the amulet swung near his jaw, jerking his head well out of reach.
“So maybe this metal is not so base, my Captain?”
“So maybe this is not so much mortal meat, my lord. Shall I throw it in the lake, too?”
“Where is Bukai?”
Their eyes collided in a challenge, as a low growl of impatience rolled through the growing crowd.
“He fell beneath the water. The mortal killed him.”
Xerruw snarled, low in his throat, and shook the amulet. “Take it.” With a growl, Iruk grabbed it by the cord and dropped it into a pouch he wore at his waist. It made a slight hiss as the troll-hide closed around it. Xerruw smiled grimly. He bent and ripped a single ear off the mortal with a languid wave of his claw, and, holding it high, shook it, then crammed it into his mouth for all to see. He ripped the other ear off and tossed it to Iruk. “Get that thing out of here now,” he spat out through the mouthful of flesh and blood and gristle.
Iruk nodded, satisfied, turned on his heel and stalked from the hall.
A cheer erupted from the doorways, where the inhabitants of his castle were creeping forward from their dens, drawn by the seductive scent. The hags exploded into gleeful shrieks, and the rest of the scouting party raised their arms and leapt over the fire pit, tails whipping high, joining the dance. Ogres and goblins bellowed, and more hags rushed from the cellars below to prepare the feast. He reached down, and dragged one long claw through the gelatinous clot, which oozed a metallic-smelling steam, and licked the blood slowly, thoughtfully, while his court capered and pranced around him.
The silver’s clear gleam troubled him, the apparent ease with which the human had slipped into Faerie troubled him. He stared down at the hide, where the silver had left a deep mark. Amid the general rejoicing, he felt wary, suspicious. He unfolded his long frame and settled down into his throne, where the spider rested in the middle of a meticulous web. What could account for the presence of silver in Faerie?
The spider scampered higher, as the cacophony rose. Xerruw put the fragile fingerbone in his mouth once more, and crunched down harder than he intended. At once, it snapped into a shower of shards, dissolving into dust on his tongue. He gazed at the stub remaining between his fingertips. There were more goblins now, soldiers from the barracks, hags from the innermost recesses of the keep, capering around the fire pit, leaping high over the flames. Let his people dance. Perhaps this human was a sign—a sign that soon all of Faerie would be his. His mind reeled, as instinct overwhelmed reason. The sweet human scent was sweeping him away into an ecstasy of expectation. He looked around the crowded hall, and forgot the puzzle of the silver amulet, forgot the sidhe witch Queen, forgot everything but the ripe rich aroma that thickened around his head like fog. The bloodlust surged through his veins like a burst dam.
We must grow strong. We must all grow strong. And we will grow strong. He rose to his full height and joined in the rising chorus with a roar. “We will all grow strong on human meat!”
2
“I’m going and you can’t stop me.” The flicker of the lone lantern caused shadows to quiver across Nessa’s face, but the expression in her dark eyes was one of steady purpose.
Griffin closed his own against thumb and forefinger, rubbing away the dry grit of exhaustion. The fat candle within the lantern hissed and spat a gob of tallow. It landed with a sizzle on the dead goblin, which lay between them, slack-faced and limp-limbed, on the straw-strewn dirt of the lean-to next to Farmer Breslin’s barn. The stink of singed hair mingled with the putrid odor already rising from the corpse, and Griffin had to swallow hard against a wave of nausea. “It’s madness and I can’t let you. Your father would kill me—”
“Not if I kill you first.” She gave him one hard look, shot from under full brows which arched in a feminine replica of her father’s own, then looked down at the corpse, assessed it as dispassionately as she might a lump of ore, then shifted to a more comfortable squat beside the body.
The villagers’ decision to place the body in the sty had less to do with proximity or place than concern for the fact that all animals downwind of it within a certain radius whimpered and pulled on their tethers, or pushed against whatever confined them, and it was hoped that the odor might be masked somewhat by the smell emanating from the sty. But the earthy aroma of the pigs was like perfume compared to the reeking miasma which clogged Griffin’s nose. He steeled himself against the stench, and leaned over the body, his voice a husky whisper. “What if you can’t find him? What if you can’t get back? What if everyone thinks you’re mad when you return and won’t have anything to do with you? Why can’t you just wait for the Duke’s men?”
In spite of her obvious resolve, Nessa grimaced as she gingerly touched the clammy flesh which hung slack on the goblin’s face, and this time, the look she shot him was one of utter disdain. “What do I care what they think? Those old biddies do nothing but whisper about me, but they were all quick to rush to the house tonight, weren’t they? Bothersome hens—it was just a chance to poke their noses into the pantry and the kitchen and the bedrooms and make nasty comments about you and me. They don’t care about Papa, they care about sticking their faces in other people’s troubles—not so they can do anything, but so they can talk about it. And the Duke just raised his standard against the King. How much time do you think he’ll spare a missing smith?”
“I should think he’ll make time for a dead goblin. If he doesn’t come himself, you know he’ll send some—”
“Maybe, eventually. But by that time, it may be too late. My father could be dead. Or lost forever, like my mother.” Her mouth hardened and she reached into the leather sack for the small ax.
“What are you doing, Nessa?” Griffin stared at her in horrified disbelief. These last few hours were like a long bad dream that refused to end. It had started when Jemmy, the herder’s boy, had run up from the lake shouting that a goblin lay floating in the water.
The village had reacted as one body, men and women and children, all running pell-mell to the sandy shore, where the thick, hide-clad corpse bumped up against the traps set just at knee depth. The men had waded in, dragging it away from the traps with branches, teasing it ashore. A general gasp had arisen when they’d turned the body over, and the stuff of nightmare and legend lay revealed. Long rows of serrated, jagged teeth in a wide leathery maw, slitted eyes and ears like bat wings, and a hard, leathery hide that ended at each hand in three-inch claws. A jagged wound, curiously singed around the edges, disgorged the contents of its entrails, purplish and glistening with foul-smelling slime.
It was decided that despite the lateness of the hour—the last rays of the sun had long since been swallowed up by shadows—a messenger must be sent to Killcarrick Keep, where it was hoped that the Sheriff, if not the Duke himself, would be in residence. It was during the discussion as to who should go that Nessa had raised her clear voice in one anxious question. “Where’s my father?”
But Dougal, who had left the smithy much earlier that afternoon than was his custom, ostensibly to check the very traps that his apprentice, Griffin, had set just that morning, was nowhere to be found. Despite their usual censure, a flock of clucking women descended on Nessa, while the men patted Griffin’s back and muttered encouragement. He’d been left standing at the smithy gate, while the tide of women swept past, bearing Nessa inside in a swirl of skirts and a flutter of shawls, watching it all with a growing sense of foreboding. It was common knowledge that Nessa’s own mother had been swept into the OtherWorld, carried away by a knight of the sidhe who’d induced her to remove her silver, and Nessa had always been regarded as slightly touched, slightly tainted, as if she had possibly inherited some susceptibility they did not want to share. Dougal’s unorthodox method of raising his daughter had drawn harsh criticism, too, for while the goodwives of the village were inclined to be sympathetic to the motherless girl, they strongly disapproved of the freedom he allowed her, the smithing he’d taught her. Each of them had approached the blacksmith about taking the girl under a wing; all of them had been rebuffed. Dougal was above noticing most of it, but these last few years had been hard on Nessa. Griffin had watched her bear it, with the same sort of silence as she watched them argue that there was only a coincidental connection between the goblin and the smith’s disappearance, since there was no sign of Dougal’s amulet.
But Griffin could well imagine the emotions swirling behind Nessa’s shadowed eyes. At nineteen, she was part sister, part rival, part secret love. She adored her father—that had been clear to him from the very beginning, when he’d joined the household as a twelve-year-old apprentice when she was barely ten—and endured the growing distance between herself and the other villagers stoically. In a world without Dougal, Griffin wondered what would become of Nessa. Under Dougal’s tutelage, she had gained much proficiency as a smith, and was, to Griffin’s mortification, his equal in skill if not in strength. The smithy would of course be hers, someday, on Dougal’s death. But was she truly equipped to make her way in the world, he wondered, as he shooed a gaggle of curious giggling girls from her tiny bedroom. She was so different from all the other girls, possessing only what knowledge of housekeeping as Dougal had—what villager would marry her? And how many of Dougal’s customers would frequent a female blacksmith? She would need a man to handle the heavier jobs. That thought gave him a grim satisfaction, for he had fallen in love with Nessa years ago. But now was not the time to think of any possible future. Here was an opportunity at last to show how much he cared for her. And so he hung back, hovering, watching, listening, wondering how best to help, turning the possibilities over in his mind.
The day had begun badly, for something was clearly weighing upon Dougal from the moment he got up. At breakfast, Nessa asked her father who the two visitors were late last night, two visitors Griffin hadn’t even heard come in. Dougal replied with the same hard look as the one with which she’d just answered Griffin. At Griffin’s first opportunity, as he was putting the breakfast dishes to soak, and Nessa was hauling in a sack of coal for the fire, he asked her, “What visitors? When?”
“Last night—long after you were snoring. If you hadn’t been so quick abed you’d have heard them, too.” She answered him in a quick whisper, for Dougal had said little at breakfast. His eyes were hooded, his mouth grim.
“I hauled ore all day,” he protested. “Did you get a look at them? How long were they here?”
“Not long. Papa knew one of them, for I heard him cry ‘You!’ Then they lowered their voices, and spoke a while but I couldn’t hear what they were saying underneath your snores. Then they left—and I heard him working, long into the night.”
“What was he mak—” he started to ask, but Dougal bellowed for the coal, and Nessa hefted her burden. There was no further opportunity to ask more, and when Dougal left the smithy, earlier than normal, muttering about the traps, they had watched him uncover a narrow bundle wrapped in cloth from beneath a pile of gear, and looked at each other with questioning eyes. “That’s what he was making last night,” Griffin had said, as the smith disappeared down the lane in the direction of the lake. “Let’s follow him, and see where he goes with that.”
“Let’s not,” said Nessa, smarting under the rough side of her father’s tongue, for his mood had been dark all day. Griffin could only imagine what she thought about that now. If only they’d followed, they might have a better idea of Dougal’s fate.
As the dinner hour approached, Griffin had laid down his tools, expecting to go down the lane to pick up the evening loaves from the herder’s wife, Mara, whom Dougal paid to bake, since Nessa didn’t know how. It was yet another reason the goodwives whispered, and a chore Griffin assumed to spare her their sometimes ill-tempered comments. But then Jemmy had come charging down the lane, heralding the news about the goblin, and the bread was forgotten, along with everything else, save Dougal.
As the night lengthened, Griffin stayed on the periphery of the activity, fetching wood and water as required, watching over Nessa from afar. She sat at the rough kitchen table, stone-faced and calm, accepting a knocker-full of hard corn whiskey, tossing it back with such ease even Griffin was astonished. Out of Nessa’s hearing, the women argued amongst themselves in lowered voices, alternatively scolding and silencing each other until Griffin wondered how Nessa could sit with such silent dignity. When the last of them had finally departed, it was well after midnight. But instead of going to her bed, she had risen to her feet and rolled her shoulders back in the same stretch with which she approached fire and forge, and reached for the small ax which hung beside the door.
“What are you doing?” he’d asked, puzzled by her obvious purpose. The fire illuminated her tunic. The stains of the day were lost in the play of shadow and the homespun fabric was pinkish in the red light. Her skin was rosy from the fire, color high on her cheekbones, her dark eyes focused with such calm determination, that, as she turned to face him, holding the ax, he was momentarily afraid of her. She looked like the Marrihugh, the warrior goddess, standing there beside the fire, her bare arms round with defined muscle, forearms corded with veins, fingertips still black with soot. Her shoulders were broad, her back was straight. She was not as tall as her father, but she was strong from a girlhood spent hammering molten metal over an anvil. “What are you doing, Nessa?”
“I’m going to find him,” she replied, in the same matter-of-fact tone she might’ve answered a customer.
“At this hour? The woods were searched—where do you mean to look?”
“I’m going into the OtherWorld, into TirNa’lugh. It’ll soon be dawn, and that’s the best time.”
He’d reached across the space that separated them, and grabbed her arm. “Nessie, that’s madness.”
They were just about the same height and she stared back at him, shaking off his arm. “Where else to look? The goblin appears, my father is missing. What else to think but that they are connected? Why else would my father just go off?”
Griffin stared at her, his mind a mad whirl. “Nessie, please—” How to say gently that Dougal might lay dead beneath the water? Dead within the forest? If Dougal had indeed killed the goblin, wasn’t it possible that the goblin had killed him? “Be reasonable. There’s nothing to prove he’s gone into the OtherWorld. What if he’s just lying somewhere—hurt or…even dead?” He whispered the last.
“I won’t believe that.” She lifted her chin in a challenge, her eyes hard nuggets of iron in her flushed face. He had stared at her as she dropped the ax into a leather sack, buckled her dagger around her waist, and wrapped her cloak over her shoulders. Then she slung the sack over her shoulder. “Not one of them—” she dismissed the whole village with a jerk of her head over her shoulder “—would dream of looking for him in the OtherWorld, and it will take an order from the Duke before anyone else dares.” Without another word, she left the house.
He scampered after her, up the hill, in the direction of Farmer Breslin’s sty. She had not replied to any other questions, nor even spoken until just now, when they were kneeling on either side of the goblin. He bit his lip, trying to think of something to say that would convince her to stay, but he knew her in this mood. Arguing was useless. She gripped the goblin’s matted hair and tugged, but the body had hardened into rigor and the head wouldn’t budge. “Then I’ll come with you.”
She rocked back on her heels, regarding him with surprised gratitude. “I know you’d come with me if I asked you to. According to the stories, if I’m alone I’ll have a better chance of getting across the border and into the OtherWorld.”
“And a better chance of getting out if we’re together. What if you run into something like this?” He gestured at the goblin.
“It’s at dusk the goblins hunt.”
“How can you believe the old stories?”
“You mean you can look on this and not?”
He shook his head, mind reeling with frustration and fatigue. “Of course I believe, we all believe now, I suppose. But how do you know the legends are right about everything? What if some of them are wrong? And what if you stumble into a nest of…of these?”
“I can take care of myself.” She patted the dagger which lay in the curve of her waist like a lover’s hand.
“Nessa, will you listen to me? This is madness. You must be moonmazed already if you think you can actually get into the OtherWorld and come back, let alone bring your father back, if that’s truly where he is. I—I mean, the OtherWorld is a big place. Where do you intend to look?”
“I’m going to the Queen, and I’m showing her the goblin’s head. Goblins shouldn’t even be able to get into Brynhyvar. Haven’t you ever heard of Bran Brownbeard?”
“Of course I have but maybe not every story’s true. Don’t you think you should at least talk to Granny Wren?”
“Granny Wren?” Her skeptical tone was a perfect echo of Dougal’s, an octave or so higher.
“She’s a wicce-woman, Nessa, surely you should talk to her before you go—”
“What’s corn magic got to do with goblins? There’s more to this than either of us understand, Griffin. Those visitors last night—the ones who came in so late? Papa recognized one of them, but the other was a sidhe. I saw the eyes when he drew back his hood, just as Papa ordered me back to bed. You think it’s coincidence that one of them comes to the forge late last night, when all decent folk are long abed, and then a dead goblin washes ashore upon our very lake? The same time as Papa disappears? Well, I don’t. For all I know, or you know, or anyone else for that matter, this was all part of some trap to snatch him into the OtherWorld. My mother was lost there, and I won’t lose him, too.” Momentarily her expression melted, as her mouth turned down and her eyes flooded with tears she blinked away hard. She squared her shoulders, mouth set once more in its firm line, and Griffin groaned inwardly. He knew that look. It was the one she habitually wore whenever Dougal set a challenge before them both. “I won’t let them have him. I don’t have time right now to listen to a wicce-woman repeat some ancient story all of us have heard a thousand times. I’ll find Papa and bring him home if it’s the last thing I do, I swear.” She got to her feet and swung the ax over her shoulder. Her hair tumbled down her arms and she thrust it back impatiently. Her father’s insistence that she keep her black curls long was his one recognition of his only child’s sex. “Stand back.”
Aghast by her casual savagery, Griffin moved back as she brought the ax down, the blade grazing the goblin’s slack jaw by a hair. It bit through the flesh and gristle and stopped with a dull thud in the neckbone. She tugged the blade free and raised it once more, heedless of the red slime dripping from it, and in one smooth motion, brought it all the way down again. This time the blade buried itself in the earth, and the head lolled back, rolling slightly to one side on the slight grade. Nessa handed Griffin the ax, picked the head up by the hair and shoved it without flinching into the sack. From somewhere close, a cock crowed experimentally. “I have to hurry.”
She slung the sack over her shoulder and picked up the lantern, as he flung the ax aside with disgust. Easier by far to make a new one, than to imagine cleaning off that gore. “What am I to tell everyone?” he whispered.
“The truth, of course. Oh. Here.” She set the sack down and felt beneath her tunic for the slender cord which held her silver amulet. She bent her head and worked it over her chin and through the tangled length of her hair. “Take it.” She held it out and stamped her foot as the cock crowed again. “I don’t have much time.”
He caught it as it dropped from her hand, then stumbled after her, his mind roiling with disbelief and desperation. With sure steps she strode up the road, through the silent, sleeping village. The crunch of their feet on the cold gravel was the only sound, their breath curling in long white plumes through the predawn air. Not even a barking dog marked their passing. At the smithy gate, she paused. “No sense in you coming any farther.”
He hesitated. What would Dougal want him to do, other than locking her in the root cellar? Nothing seemed viable, but a thought occurred to him. “Wait,” he said. He ran into the house, grabbed a round loaf of bread and a hunk of cheese that one of the women had left. He reached for his own pack, a treasured gift from Dougal at last Solstice, and shoved the food inside. He ran back outside and thrust it at her. “Remember, you mustn’t eat or drink anything of the OtherWorld.”
She favored him with a quick surprised smile, then nodded and slung it on her other shoulder.
“I don’t think I should tell anyone the truth, Nessa, about where you’ve gone. Not unless you don’t come back after a day or so, all right? People already—” he hesitated, loathe to hurt her with a reminder of the shadow under which she lived. “Already talk.” Their eyes met, and hers were steady, full of sure and certain purpose.
“I guess you’re right,” she said.
It occurred to Griffin that he might never see her again. He wanted to take her hand, to tell her all the things he rehearsed alone at night. He was not ill-favored, they worked well together, surely the smithy would someday be hers. They were already a good team. Marriage was not such a ridiculous possibility.
Despite the chill, her face was covered by a fine sheen of sweat, and he thought she had never looked more beautiful. The words felt like a cork in his throat and he felt the moment passing, slipping away as inexorably as the night. He seized her by the shoulders and pressed a hard desperate kiss on her mouth. Her lips were warm and firm and she didn’t immediately recoil. Then she pulled away, and he half thought she might hit him. “Just come home,” he said by way of apology.
She raised her chin and squared her shoulders. “Count on it.”
Then the cock crowed once more. “Hurry,” he said, awed and grateful that she had neither slapped him nor wiped away his kiss.
With a nod of farewell, she strode down the road, veering off toward the thick stand of trees which lay between the village and the lake. The lantern bobbed in rhythm to her steps, twinkling like a star.
“Nessa. Don’t eat or drink anything!” he called after her, wishing the words were sufficient to change her mind and bring her back. But once Nessa made her mind up to do something, it was always easier to get out of the way.
“Best bank that fire,” her voice floated back to him on the wind. “Papa will have your head—” The rest was lost, carried off by the freshening breeze, into a half-heard murmur. The lantern flared once more as though she turned to wave, and then it blinked out, swallowed by the trees. He raised his hand, both in blessing and farewell, and saw a dark trickle edging down his palm to his wrist. He had clenched the amulet so hard, his hand bled.
The thick hide sack barely suppressed the reek of goblin flesh. Nessa shoved the heavy bulge on its leather strap behind her, trying not to think of the thing which nestled now on the curve of her rump. She squinted through the trees. The black forest rose around her, the tree trunks silent as sentries beneath the still star-studded sky. White mist swirled in mossy hollows, and a dense odor, musty and faintly sweet, rose from the forest floor and permeated the chilly air. But the scent of morning was on the light breeze which stirred the few leaves that clung to the late-autumn trees, and just now, behind her, where the village lay sleeping in the predawn quiet, she thought she heard another cock crow. She had less time than she’d hoped.
The soft squish of spongy cress beneath her boots assured her that she followed the thin line of the narrow stream that, snaking beneath the trees, led down to the lake. Streams such as this were called Faerie roads, and usually avoided. For the stream itself was nearly invisible, buried by the thick cover of fallen leaves, their edges crisp and sere. The stories said that water was one of the surest conduits between the mortal world and the OtherWorld, the one called TirNa’lugh in the old language. And it was said, it was during the in-between times and in the in-between places, when and where things were no longer one thing, and not yet quite another, that one was most likely to slip into this intersecting reality.
She quickened her pace, breathing hard, and out of force of habit, groped at her throat with one cold hand, forgetting for a moment that she had removed her silver amulet. For the first time in her nineteen years she was without silver. She felt naked and somehow wicked.
Well, it was wicked. Griffin was right. She dismissed his clumsy kiss as a product of anxiety and fatigue. And disbelief that she would do something so irrational. To accidentally fall into TirNa’lugh, victim of a sidhe’s spell, was one thing. But to remove one’s amulet and to deliberately seek to enter the OtherWorld, was an action so preposterous, Nessa knew of no one who’d attempted it. No one should know better than she the dangers lurking there. Surpassingly beautiful, with voices like music, a sidhe was capable of weaving enchantments so profound that humans willingly gave up home and family to follow their sidhe obsession, trapped out of mortal time, lost to all previously held dear. And, if some hapless mortal did find his or her way back, if he or she had tasted Other Worldly food or drink, he would refuse all human food, thus, to sicken and finally die. Or, even if he could force himself to take nourishment, he would find that while only a year or two had seemed to pass in the OtherWorld, tens or even hundreds of years would’ve passed in the mortal world, and everyone ever known was either old or dead, while his own body withered like an autumn leaf. Once it was known that she had deliberately removed her silver and walked into TirNa’lugh, the villagers were likely to add madwoman to their list of gossip. Enough of them believed she was tainted in some way by her mother’s actions, even though Nessa had been less than a year old when her mother had been spirited away by some sidhe lord who’d tricked her into removing her silver. Now she existed only as a faceless name in her daughter’s memory. Once she had asked her father why he had not sought to rescue her mother, and he had been silent a long time, as if carefully considering his answer. “Well,” he’d finally said. “There was you, you see.” And in those simple words, Nessa felt the pain of his choice.
Nessa tramped on. She would not lose her father. She steadfastly refused to even consider the possibility that he was dead. He could not be dead. He was all the family she had in the world, and she would not accept the idea of a life without him. Trouble was brewing in the land, civil war and general unrest sparked by a King gone mad and a foreign-born Queen whose large family eyed Brynhyvar with hungry speculation. Dougal had spoken of moving up to Castle Gar, and hinted that their skills might soon be needed on a greater scale than ever before. She would not face the village, the world, and war without him. She would find him or die herself.
The light was growing stronger now, long, silvery-gold shafts that streamed through the mist. She blew out the candle and set the lantern down on the forest floor. She would carry it no farther, for the less encumbered she was, the better. She considered dropping Griffin’s pack, but the food was too necessary. With a sigh, she shouldered it once more and set off.
The dawn was nearly over, and with it, her hope of entering the OtherWorld. Ahead, the trees seemed to thin, and through the spindly trunks spears of golden light spiked through the branches, a more intense light than that which seemed to fall about her shoulders. Is it the OtherWorld up ahead? she wondered, as she shifted the sack and gripped the hilt of her dagger. The ground was firmer now, all vestiges of the stream gone, and the thinnest rim of the rising sun just visible above the line of trees. It was nearly morning, nearly day, but the thought of her father ensnared by sidhe magic or goblin claw spurred her on.
She ran faster through the white birch trees, running into the elusive light which seemed to beckon just outside her reach. The spindly leaves shuddered as she passed, until she tripped on a half-hidden root and sprawled flat on her stomach. The goblin head bounced up and down on the earth beside her, and the flap opened and the reek which spilled out made her gag. Bright sun burst above the trees and daylight poured over her. She shut her eyes and banged her fists on the ground in frustration. It was gone. Her chance to find her way into the OtherWorld was over. Sweat broke out on her forehead and hot tears welled up, spilling down her cheeks. She brought one hand to her face, sobbing as she lowered her head to the ground. Griffin was right. She must be mad to have even thought to attempt such a thing. But I won’t give up, she vowed. If the Duke’s men did not come today, she would try again tomorrow. She sniffed and noticed then that the moss beneath her cheek was soft and thick and smelled almost sweet. Soft and thick as flannel after many washings or the herb known as lamb’s ears, and she opened her eyes, pushing up on her elbows to stare down at it, for it was an emerald-green so intense she doubted she could’ve imagined such a color existed. Wondering, she stroked it, for it felt amazingly smooth against her fingertips, tips that suddenly appeared rough with scars and hard with calluses and very, very dirty. The scent that rose from the moss was fragrant, like sun-warmed earth in spring, and she closed her eyes and breathed in deep.
A sudden hiss made her head snap up.
“Horned Herne, maiden, what do you here?”
The deep voice startled her, so that she scrambled back in a half-crouch, warily straightening, wiping away her tears. The speaker, who stood in the shade of an oak with sprawling branches thick with bright golden leaves, looked unlike anyone she’d ever seen. He was broad of shoulder, the strong cords of his neck just visible above the high linen collar of the shirt he wore beneath a doublet that was made of something that looked even more velvety than the moss. It was nearly the color of the moss, too, and she saw as he emerged from the shadow of the tree that it exactly matched his eyes which slanted above his high, narrow cheekbones. A braid, thick as a woman’s, the color of a honeycomb with the sun gleaming through it, hung over his shoulder, like a silky rope that seemed to invite her to stroke it, to wrap it around her neck and arms, just to feel its texture glide across her skin. There was an intricate insignia embroidered on the shoulders and across the chest of his doublet, and she looked at his face, questions forming in her mind. His lips were plump as peaches, red as apples, and his eyes seemed to burn through her, as though he knew exactly what she was thinking. She lowered her eyes as she felt the color rise in her cheeks, noticing that his chest tapered to a narrow waist and hips, how his hose clung like a glove to his muscled thighs and calves. He held a bow, with arrow knocked and ready. She drew a deep breath, and would have answered, when he muttered what sounded like a curse, and beckoned. “To me. Now. Quickly.” He raised the bow and she nearly startled back, then realized he aimed at something just beyond her. “Now, maiden!”
She hastened to his side, grabbing for the sack and Griffin’s pack, a thousand questions bubbling on her lips. Beside him, she felt herself to be disgustingly dirty, covered in filth and soot and grime, and she wondered how he could stand the smell of her, but he only thrust her behind him, and stood, tensed and ready. The moment hung, suspended, and she wondered if he could hear the pounding of her heart.
The attack took them both by surprise. From the side, a hulking gray shape rushed out of the trees, in a cloud of stench and a rush of leather, a long snout and thick arms which held a giant broadsword of some metal that gleamed with a dark sheen.
But the bowman was quicker. Without flinching, he drew the bow, and the arrow sang across the narrow clearing, landing with a dull thud into the chest of the creature that snarled and lunged even as it collapsed. Nessa stared in horror at the thing that lay in a crumpled heap, its leathery tail still twitching.
Beside her, the sidhe reached over his shoulder for another arrow. “You are just over the border betwixt our worlds, maiden.” He spoke in a low whisper as he fitted the arrow into the bow. “I shall see you back across. It isn’t safe for you here. We stand too close to the realm of the Goblin King. The wards here must be weaker than we realized.”
Nessa gulped. It seemed impossible that such a slender stalk of ash was sufficient to have slain the goblin, but there it quivered in the monster’s chest. Swallowing hard, she wrapped her wet palm in the fabric of her tunic, and tried to stop shaking. “I—I don’t want to go back. I—I came to see the Queen. To show her this.” Without taking her eyes off the still creature in the center of the clearing, she held out the bag.
He frowned as if he wasn’t sure he’d understood her. “You’ve come deliberately into Faerie?” He lowered the bow after a quick glance around the clearing. “And what manner of gift is this?” He frowned at the rude leather, and Nessa felt the full measure of his scorn in his look.
“This isn’t a gift. It’s the—the head of one of—” She paused, gesturing with her chin in the direction of the goblin. “One of them. It was found dead on the lakeshore near my village.”
The color drained from his already pale face. “A lake in the Shadowlands? That cannot be.”
“This is what we found. Is it not kin to that?” She nodded in the direction of the dead creature, and held open the bag. The stench that rose from it was noxious and rank, and made the sidhe grimace in disgust. “And in the same hour that this was found, my father went missing.” She stared up at him with mute appeal. She felt the impact of his eyes meeting hers with nearly physical force. “I came to ask her for her help.”
“By the Hag, maiden, shut that away.” He waved one hand in front of his face. “What’s in that other sack?”
“Food.” She thought briefly of Griffin, how clumsy and crude he seemed beside the sidhe. He seemed a thousand leagues away. Was it only a few minutes ago that he had thrust it in her hands?
“I see. You even brought provisions—how wise. How long has your father been missing, you say?”
“Since the dinner hour last evening. He was going to the lake when he left the smithy.”
“And who killed the goblin?”
“We couldn’t tell. There was a long slash in its belly and half its guts had spilled out. But there was no sign of a weapon, or a battle, or my father.”
He rubbed his face and gazed around, forehead puckered. “There is a lake that lies that way, yonder, over the border of the Wastelands. You indeed are fortunate that if a lake so like it lies so close in Shadow, you stumbled over on this side, and not on that one.”
“What is shadow?” she asked, stabbed by a pinprick of the realization that the possibility which she refused to consider—of a world without Dougal—might, in fact, be far more than a possibility.
“The Shadowlands. The world of mortal men. And maids. You call it Brynhyvar.” He turned back to look at her, and their eyes met once more. Her heart stopped in her chest, as he turned the full force of his piercing green gaze on her. A flush was rising in his face and a small pulse beat a quickening tattoo in his neck just above the collar of his tunic. His skin had the texture of velvet and reminded her of the color of cream. A sweet, fresh scent emanated from him, a scent that reminded her of new fallen snow on pine boughs. “So this is the spell you mortals cast,” he muttered, more to himself than to her. “Like midsummer wine and winterweed.”
Despite a deepening sense of despair, she stared, fascinated by the shades of green swirling in his pupils. Every sense felt inflamed, swollen, and her head was beginning to spin in slow thick circles. She bit down hard on her lip and the taste of her own blood steadied her. She hefted the sack over her shoulder again. She would not lose sight of why she’d risked just this very thing. But she was terribly conscious that her clothes lay rough over her body, crudely made, as if cut by a child’s hand compared to his, and that there were wedges of grime beneath her fingernails, that her tangled mane of dark curls hung in lank, sweat-soaked strands about her dirt-and tear-streaked face. But the way he was looking at her made her feel as if he wanted to devour her. She coughed. “I’ve come to find my father.”
He shook his head, as if to clear away the effect of the attraction, and took a step back. “Maiden, if he fell out of Shadow and into the Wasteland beyond—the Goblin Wastes—” He broke off and sighed, as if reluctant to say more. “I cannot give you the help you seek or even take time now to explain the implications of the news you bring. I can, however, take you to one who quite possibly will help you, to the extent that he can, once he hears your story. For it would appear that if indeed a goblin has somehow fallen into the Shadowlands, even a dead goblin, then a greater magic than expected has failed, and the Queen herself must know of this. No one’s been expecting this—things could go very badly indeed for all of us if what you say is true. You must come with me.” He turned on his heel, still shaking his head, clearly loathe to continue, but anxious to go on.
“But, but wait—” She stumbled after him, hurrying to keep up in boots that suddenly seemed clumsy and stiff, ignoring every injunction every goodwife ever whispered at the end of every tale involving the sidhe. “What about the Silver Caul? Isn’t it supposed to keep the goblins out of Brynhyvar? Why isn’t it working? Is that the magic you mean has failed?”
He turned and made an impatient gesture. “Hurry, maiden. There will be time enough to explain it all to you in safety.” He stretched out his hand and she realized he was wearing gloves of leather so finely wrought they fitted with no more wrinkles than his own skin. “Come. I dare say no more here.”
Was this not what she’d come for? It was too late to have second thoughts now, even as the ferocity with which the goblin had attacked sparked the doubt that perhaps Griffin was right and that the OtherWorld was far too dangerous a place for her to be wandering around in alone.
With a quick nod, she let him guide her through the trees, his steps quick and sure, following a narrow trail which threaded through a thick forest of golden oaks and yellow beeches and blazing red maples. They had gone not even half a league when he stopped suddenly and pulled her close to him, one finger pressed hard against her mouth. Her senses exploded as she inhaled a scent at once so vital and pristine it felt as satisfying as food. No wonder mortals withered, rejecting coarser, more substantive nourishment. Without thinking, she leaned into him involuntarily. Their eyes met again and it felt as if her blood had turned to molten metal in her veins. She thought of Griffin’s clumsy kiss, and knew this as different as a ripple from a wave. But the sidhe closed his eyes and turned his head. “Maiden,” he said, in a whisper so low, she partly read his lips, “make no sound.” For one brief moment, they swayed closer, while she wondered idly in some remote corner of her brain, the possible source of his attraction to her, for she felt herself to be unbearably dirty and disheveled, her clothes and hair stinking of goblin. And then she heard the low grunt.
A cold wave of fear ran down her back as he lifted a horn off his shoulder and handed it to her, then drew the sword out of its scabbard. The brisk leafy-scented air was suddenly polluted by something that stank of the cesspits, a stink she recognized far too well. He drew a breath and swung his sword up, circling around her. “That track beneath the trees, maiden, will lead you to my fellows. Run hard, and blow the horn. They will be alerted to my need and take you to my Captain. Do you understand? You must run, quickly, maiden, upon my signal.” He pointed with the sword at the track, which threaded through the trees. “You must run. And you must not look back.” He moved around then, pushing her behind him. Suddenly he shouted, “Go!” as three goblins armed with battle-axes roared out of the trees.
Nessa charged down the trail, the sack with the head thumping against her rump. Thank the Great Mother that her father had seen fit to let her run with the boys of the village, and not confined her to kitchen and courtyard like the rest of the girls. Her boots felt weightless as she sped in the direction her rescuer had indicated and she lifted the horn to her lips, and blew. The horn sounded one pure clear note, and it echoed through the trees, loud and long. Immediately another horn blew in answer, then another, and she raised the horn once more, dropping Griffin’s pack off her arm. It slid to the ground, as she blew hard into the horn again. Sudden movement in the trees all around her made her knees quake, and she stumbled in midstride. Forgetting the injunction not to look back, she glanced fearfully over her shoulder, and in that moment, collided with a solid form that gripped her with steady arms. She twisted her face up and around and gasped to see a sidhe, every bit as beautiful as the other, staring down at her. “By Herne’s horns,” he said, in a voice as richly sweet as honeyed wine, even as he gestured his fellows to continue on in the direction from which Nessa had come, “a mortal maiden, as I live and breathe.”
3
It was always the light that Timias noticed first whenever he transversed the fluid borders between the Shadowlands and Faerie. Elusive and fey as the sidhe themselves, it shimmered through the trees, limning the edge of every leaf, pulsating with seductive radiance. More than one mortal had become a captive to the glamour cast by Faerie light, bound for mortal ages by fascination with its constantly shifting play of contrasts more acute than any ever cast by the bleaker sun of Shadow.
Now he strode through the thickest part of the stream, the bottom of his staff encrusted in mud, moving as quickly as his aged bones would allow. In mortal years, he was old beyond reckoning, but he, unlike most sidhe, bore the stamp of it upon his face. For Timias had dared to do what few would even contemplate—he had lived among the mortals, allowing the harsh mortal years to take their toll upon his face. His frame was bent, his face was lined like a walnut, the hair which hung in long silken strands around his shoulders was gray. He had thought, once, that the mortal woman for whom he’d given up one lifetime in the Shadowlands, though not a tenth of that in Faerie, had been worth the price he’d paid. Now he wasn’t so certain. For when he’d returned to Faerie, to claim his place among the Councilors to the Queen, he found that Vinaver, that foul abomination, the Queen’s twin, had managed to convince several among the lords and ladies of the Council that so long a sojourn as his in the Shadowlands represented some kind of technical resignation and a vocal few had even had the audacity to call for his removal.
In retrospect he should have expected such a move on Vinaver’s part. They had been instinctive enemies from the moment of her birth. Timias would never forget how the infant, born aware as all the sidhe, had hissed and spat directly into his face when the midwife had placed her into his unwilling arms. From that moment, Vinaver had worked to do all she could to discredit him with her sister, the Queen.
But Timias had a hereditary right to a seat upon the Council—the most honored right of all in Faerie—and no one had ever heard him surrender it. And so he kept his seat, but it was not as before. For he had been irrevocably changed by his extended time spent among the mortals, and in Faerie, change usually happened so gradually it was hardly discernible at all.
Each day in Faerie was as glorious as the day before it, a long progression of hours that flowed as sluggishly as a lazy river. Few things in the Shadowlands could compare to the stately pace of Faerie time, and nothing within Faerie could equal the breakneck speed with which life progressed in Shadow. It was that, as much as anything that had prompted Timias to stay in the Shadowlands so long. Mortals may not live as long as the sidhe, but their lives were lived more intensely. To one accustomed to the leisurely flow of Faerie time, it was as intoxicating as an inhalation of winter dream-weed.
But if his had been an unexpected return, it was also very timely, in Timias’s opinion. For it was immediately clear to him that Alemandine was not the Queen her mother, known as Gloriana the Great, she who’d vanquished the Goblin King and constructed the Silver Caul which kept the deadly silver out of Faerie, had been. Compared to Gloriana, Alemandine was only a pale shadow of the great Queen whose reign had ushered in this Golden Age that had endured for more than a thousand mortal years. Gloriana had birthed her triplets, Alemandine and Vinaver, and her half-mortal son Artimour, without so much as a hiccup in the great webs of power that held the goblin hordes at bay, and Timias was disgusted that it was whispered in some quarters of the Court that Vinaver, who in both coloring and temperament more closely resembled her mother, should have been Queen. Vinaver’s hair was like her mother’s fiery-copper, her eyes the dark green of mountain firs. Alemandine’s hair was white, her skin paler than milk, her eyes like chunks of river ice chipped from the shallows. It was as if Vinaver had somehow sucked up all the pigment out of her twin, as if she would’ve claimed all the life, all the energy for herself. He disliked her just for that.
But tradition, of course, was on Alemandine’s side and so she had taken the throne when the time came at last that Gloriana chose to go into the West. For the first hundred or so comparative mortal years of her reign, Alemandine ruled competently, if with a less sure and certain hand than her mother. The trouble began with her first attempts to call forth her own heir, when the physical strain of her pregnancy seemed greater than it should, and Timias believed that on this short visit to the Shadowlands, he had identified a potential cause that could, with some effort, be ameliorated. Unfortunately it was difficult to persuade the Council of anything, for Vinaver and her supporters managed to convince the others that he was merely the mad sidhe overcome by his addiction to human passion. It was an image he found difficult to combat. For in Faerie, appearances were everything, and the toll of mortal years had cost him more than he cared to admit.
But Timias, who had been present when the Silver Caul and moonstone globe were created and joined together, understood how closely the Caul and the globe bound the worlds, Shadow and Faerie, together so that events were reflected, repeated and echoed in each other. As long as both remained relatively stable, all was well, petty mortal squabblings over land or gold reflected in the trivial intrigues that permeated the Court. The realization that this relationship also created a largely unacknowledged potential for a spiral into disaster prompted Timias to cross the border into the Shadowlands once more.
What he found made him hasten back as quickly as he could. For the war now breaking out in Brynhyvar, the land lying closest to Faerie of all mortal lands, was one which threatened to spill over its borders and engulf the entire mortal world. The situation there only intensified the growing sense of dread he’d begun to feel when Alemandine’s pregnancy was first announced. For while an heir was long overdue, the Goblin King was waiting—waiting for the chance to overcome the bonds of sidhe magic and to overthrow the Queen while she was her most vulnerable. The time of her delivery would be perilous enough—he did not want to consider how full-scale war in Shadow would affect them all, if it coincided with an assault by the Goblin King. The forces of chaos were massing. They must prepare to fight the war on all fronts—including the Shadowlands, if necessary. He glanced up at the piercing blue sky and hurried as fast as he could, hoping that he could catch the Queen in a well-rested mood. For he had noticed that while the Queen might prefer to ignore him, she listened to him more carefully than she oft-times appeared, and that frequently she summoned him to a private audience to discuss the issues he raised. She had always, he wanted to think, regarded him as one of her more trusted Councilors, for he always told her the truth, no matter how unpleasant. It assuaged the remnants of his dignity, and reminded him of the time when he had, indeed, been Gloriana’s most trusted Councilor, her closest confidant, more intimate than her unremarkable Consort, whom she’d chosen for his ability to dance and to compose extemporaneous verse.
But even as he strode up the bank to the footpath which led to the wide gardens surrounding the Palace of the Faerie Queen, he knew what he intended to propose would sound too radical, too incomprehensible to be taken seriously. Blatant and obvious intervention into the affairs of the Shadowlands had never occurred, not even by Gloriana in the Goblin Wars when mortals and sidhe had struck an alliance. Without any precedent, he would have to hope the Queen was in a receptive mood.
He rounded a curve and the trees thinned, opening out onto a broad lawn that swept like a wide green carpet to the white walls of the palace gardens. He looked up as the sun rose above the trees, illuminating the blue and violet pennants which fluttered off the high white turrets. A thousand crystal windowpanes gleamed like rubies, reflecting the red sun as it rose, and on the highest turret, a white silk banner floated on the morning breeze, flashing the Queen’s crest, announcing to all who might have cared to inquire that the Queen of all Faerie was in residence within. She was about to leave soon, he knew, and that, too, was cause for concern. Although tradition demanded that each year she retire to her winter retreat on the southern shores, Timias feared the journey would tax her strength unduly. But Alemandine insisted, clinging to the hidebound traditions like a life rope.
He had a trump card to play, he thought, if he dared to bring it up. There was the lesson of the lost land of Lyonesse, which had once lain to the east of Faerie. It had disintegrated into nothingness one day, collapsing in and over and upon itself until it was no more. Now even the memories of its stories were fading, for it was said that the songs of Lyonesse were too painful to bear. But to imply that Faerie itself stood so close to the verge of ultimate collapse when he was not at all certain that such was actually the case might unduly alarm Alemandine and thus hasten, or even cause the calamity. He needed to convince the majority of the Council to heed his advice, not frighten the Queen, he decided. And to that end, he would seek to use every weapon at his disposal if necessary. But first he would seek to reason with Her Majesty.
So he hastened past the high hedges of tiny blue flowers which opened at his approach, scenting the air with delicate perfume that faded nearly immediately as he passed, trying to think of the correct approach. The lawn ended in a wide gravel path, which opened out onto a broad avenue that encircled a shimmering lake. Ancient willows hugged the shore, branches bending to the water. The sun was nearly above the trees, and the gold light sparkled on the surface. At this hour, both lake and avenue were deserted, but for the gremlin throwing handfuls of yellow meal to the black swans floating regally on the lake.
The gremlin turned his head as Timias passed, fixing him with a hostile stare. Timias met the gremlin’s eyes squarely. There were increasing reports of little incidents of rebellion among the gremlins, who, according to the Lorespinners, had been bred of goblin stock to serve the Faerie. The incidents were generally dismissed as the approach of the annual bout of collective madness that occurred among the entire gremlin population at Samhain. The other obvious threat seemed to elude everyone. When Timias had suggested to the Council, that the gremlins, as distant goblin kin, might find it in their best interests to side with the goblins in the coming conflict, and that being in a position to bring about utter ruin, they might be better banished to some well guarded spot until the child was born, he was laughed at openly throughout the Court. But Timias feared the time was coming when the courtiers wouldn’t be so amused. He would find that thought amusing himself if the consequences weren’t so dire. He picked up his pace, leaning heavily on his oak staff as his aged legs protested.
Once within the palace walls, he didn’t pause on his way through the marble corridors, not even stopping to visit his own apartments. He ignored the fantastic mosaics, the silken hangings, the intricate carvings which graced the palace at every turn, a blend of color, scent and texture so harmonious, mortals had been known to gape for days at just the walls. He strode beneath the gilded arches to the Council Chamber, where the guards straightened to attention and saluted as he approached. But at the open door he paused and peered in, ostensibly smoothing his travel-stained garments, assessing as he did so who was in attendance and their likely reaction to his news.
As he expected, the Queen was at her breakfast, attended by her Consort, Prince Hudibras, and those of her Councilors in residence, and to his dismay, he saw that Vinaver sat at the Queen’s right hand. Perhaps he’d do better to approach the Queen privately.
The idea that Vinaver, who he had always regarded as some mutant perversion of the magic that created the Caul, was able to enthrall her sister with her wiles sickened him. It had been terrible enough to discover that Gloriana’s womb housed two babes—Alemandine and Artimour—fathered separately by a sidhe and a mortal on the same night as the forging of the Caul. But Vinaver’s emergence was completely unexpected, completely unforeseen, an aberration of the natural order of Faerie Timias thought best disposed of. He’d suggested drowning the extra infant to the midwife who’d brought her out for his inspection. The infant’s eyes clashed with his almost audibly, and he felt the desperate hunger stretching off the wriggling scrap of red flesh like tentacles, seeking any source of nourishment. He shook off the infant’s rooting with disgust. “I say drown it,” he said again, shocking the midwife into silence as she turned and carried the infant back to her mother’s arms, to wait her turn for a tug at her mother’s copious teats. Both Vinaver and Artimour were offenses against nature, he’d argued then, arguing tradition, just as he’d argued it when he returned and fought for his Council seat.
He wondered what Vinaver might have been up to in his absence, for any differences between the Queen and her sister that he might have nurtured had obviously been resolved. Vinaver leaned forward with a proprietary hand to caress her sister’s forearm as it draped wearily over the cushioned rest of her high-backed chair. Vinaver’s back was to him, and Alemandine was turned away, engaged in choosing a muffin from the basket the serving gremlin offered. The creature wore cloth-of-gold, signifying the highest level of service. The hackles rose on the back of his neck. If only he could induce the Queen to at least banish them from her immediate service.
But it was the others who were gathered around the table that made him narrow his eyes. For with the sole exception of the Queen’s Consort, Hudibras, they were all Vinaver’s closest cronies. Across from Vinaver, on the opposite side of the table, Lord Berillian of the Western Reach sipped from his jewel-encrusted goblet, his attention focused on a dark-haired girl who sat beside him. Timias did not immediately recognize her, but something about her face made him pause, and he realized she was gowned in an old-fashioned gown of Gloriana’s era. He realized that they paid him no mind for they were all focused on her and the room was thick with some suppressed tension.
Several vacant seats apart, Lord Philomemnon of the Southern Archipelago, peeled an apple with overly deliberate intent, while at the opposite end, the Queen’s Consort, Hudibras, caught another tossed to him by his half brother, Gorlias.
Both Philomemnon and Berillian were Vinaver’s closest cronies and cohorts, the voices who’d championed her cause most vigorously in the early days of Alemandine’s reign, who’d shouted most loudly for his resignation.
The early-morning sun flooded through the wide windows which lined one wall of the long chamber, and glinted off the polished surface of the inlaid table that dominated the furnishings. Fragrant steam wreathed the air, redolent with the rich feast spread before them on golden serving plates.
The Queen looked uncomfortable and cross, her pale green gown spilling over the edges of her chair, her wings folded up behind her. The swell of her pregnancy was not immediately obvious, but her normally milky complexion was sallow, and dark smudges beneath her upturned eyes testified to restless nights. Her thick hair, white as snow, was bound up in braids, coiled neatly around her head, and topped by a platinum coronet set with pearls. He could retire, he thought, still unnoticed, and approach the Queen privately. But that would only delay the inevitable confrontation. Might as well throw the idea down before them like a gauntlet. He took a deep breath and single step across the threshold.
Only the unknown girl saw him, as she peered over the rim of the goblet she lifted to her mouth, for Philomemnon was absorbed in his apple, and Berillian was eyeing the girl’s rounded half-moons of bosom which were emphasized by the old-fashioned cut of her gown with unabashed interest. Timias cleared his throat, ready to speak, when red-faced Hudibras caught the apple he’d been throwing back and forth to his half brother Gorlias and tossed it instead to Timias. He raised his gold goblet just as Timias caught the apple in midair. “Well, well, my dear, see what the sunrise has ushered in today! Good Timias, welcome back from whatever grim hovel you’ve been hiding in.”
Sparing Hudibras no more than a quickly veiled glance of contempt, Timias threw the apple back. He strode immediately to the Queen, and dropped as gently as possible onto a knee swollen with the exertion of his haste. “My Queen.” His old man’s rasp cut like a discordant note through the melodious hail of mannered greetings which now rose around the table like a chorus. “I bring grave tidings—tidings which shall affect all of us unless we take heed now. For there is war…war in Shadow.”
Alemandine raised her long white neck and stared at him, a play of expression as complex as windblown clouds crossing her thin face. She shifted restlessly on the pale green cushions which lined her chair, and the look which settled upon her face was one of peevish irritability.
Timias steeled himself. If he could manage to at least make her listen long enough to call for him privately, he would count this breakfast a success. Her pregnancy had grown only slightly more pronounced, but it was clearly unbalancing the ornate wings she had cultivated so diligently, which now arced at least a foot above her head. In the morning light, the infinitesimal network of blue and red veins was visible through the translucent flesh. He wondered briefly why no one had discouraged Alemandine from allowing the wings to grow so high, for they clearly now contributed to her discomfort, and heard a little sniff of disapproval from Vinaver. He turned, ready to say more, when Hudibras let out a loud sigh of exasperation and threw another apple back to Gorlias. “So what of it, Timias? The mortals are always sparring back and forth amongst each other—half the time I don’t know why we ever bothered to protect them from the goblins, they kill each other with as much glee. Come, let us introduce you to a newcomer to our Court—this is the Lady Delphinea, the daughter of our Horse-mistress, Eponea of the High Mountains. Sit, break your fast with us and tell us of your travels. You must be starving after a week or more of naught but mortal slop.”
A few chuckles went around the table, and Timias could not help but spare a moment to peer more closely into the dainty, delicate face of the girl who sat poised on the edge of her seat. She was young, he could see that, barely ready to make an appearance at Court, and he wondered briefly why her mother, Eponea, had not accompanied her. But there was something about the chit’s face—something that tugged at his awareness, even as he turned away from the arch faces and concentrated only on the Queen. For all he cared, they might have been alone. He looked directly into Alemandine’s pale green eyes. “Events in the Shadowlands are moving toward a great war—a war which will sweep across borders and which will create repercussions that we are ill-equipped right now to bear. You must hear me out, Alemandine, I beg you.”
Not once in all her years on the throne had he ever so addressed her and the Queen stared at him, her pale eyes wide in her angular face. For the first time he saw the real fear hiding behind the petulance. Alemandine was afraid. She faced the greatest challenge of her life, and she was afraid. For a long moment he stared back, sympathy wreathing his ancient features. She desperately needed to assert control over the Council, but as long as they resisted acknowledging the breadth of the challenge that lay before them, she was too torn between the unfamiliar demands of her pregnancy and the constrictions of her fear. What would shock the rest of them out of their complacency? Must he invoke the forbidden name of Lyonesse in order to make them understand the enormity of what they faced?
But Lord Berillian was speaking, the movements of his bejeweled hands sending colored prisms across the Queen’s face as he plucked the grapes off the dark purple bunch lying across his plate. The fat locks of chestnut curls lay coiled on his shoulders, the precise shade of his intricately embroidered doublet. “Indeed,” he spoke between bites of grape. “So what if a new war has broken out in Shadow? What is war within Shadow to us? Have we not our own—” he paused and glanced at Alemandine, and then around the table with a look that seemed charged with some meaning Timias could not read “—our own delicate situation on our hands?”
Alemandine lifted one eyebrow, clearly expecting him to answer, and Timias turned to face the rest. At least she hadn’t had him escorted from the room. This was his chance. He forced himself to speak slowly, deliberately, hoping to make an impression with the weight of his words. “War in Shadow can only undermine our already precarious stability. The greater the unbalance there, the greater the unbalance here. And the greater the unbalance, the more we shall all feel the strain. The Caul does more than hold the silver at bay. The Caul binds our worlds together. What is felt in Shadow is felt here—what is felt here is felt in Shadow.”
Hudibras snorted. “You croak like a crow, Timias. Why not just go about in black and have done with it? We’ll all be warned of doom just by looking at you and you can spare us all your speeches.”
“I beg your pardon, my lord,” put in Delphinea suddenly, her pale cheeks flushing pink. “I think if Lord Timias speaks forcefully it is from his concern for the welfare of your Queen and child, and for the continuation of Faerie as we know it.”
Startled, Timias met her eyes and saw that they, unlike those of nearly every other sidhe he’d ever known in all his long life, were a clear and startling sapphire blue. She is not yet one of Vinaver’s, he thought suddenly, grateful for the unexpected support. She’s not in their pocket yet. And he wondered once again what had brought her to the Court, though maybe not so prematurely as he’d first supposed. “Thank you, my lady.” He bowed in Delphinea’s direction. “We all know that it is not a matter of if the Goblin King will attack, but when. It is in our best interests to ensure that there is peace in the Shadowlands while we face this inevitable foe.”
“Well, what do you think we can do about it?” Hudibras asked, his angular face flushing red. “Mortals are best left to decide the outcome of their squabbles for themselves. We of Faerie have never intervened.” At that Philomemnon looked at Hudibras and laughed openly and Vinaver rolled her long eyes to the ceiling. “Not officially, I mean.”
Timias turned back to the Queen, his expression changing from disgust to resolve. “Your Majesty. I have long studied the affairs of Shadow to understand the impact they make upon our world—”
“This we know, my lord.” Her voice was querulous, and she hid her impatience poorly. Timias sighed inwardly. He had hoped that Alemandine would be sufficiently rested first thing in the morning to willingly entertain such discussion, but now he saw that the demands of her pregnancy had intensified to the extent that such opportunities were becoming unpredictable, if they yet existed. They had better yet exist, he thought suddenly, once more overwhelmed with concern for this fragile creature who bore such a great weight. She was nothing like her mother, but she had ruled perfectly adequately for nearly one hundred and fifty mortal years. Why now did he compare her so unfavorably to her mother? Because, a small voice muttered deep in the back of his mind, she wields the power unevenly, and thus she is vulnerable in ways her mother never was.
“Why should we invest even the time to speak of it, when clearly it would divert us from our concerns?”
He leaned upon the table, his gray robes falling around him, the long locks of his gray hair hanging over his shoulders like a cloak. “Your Majesty. This is no diversion. The welfare, not just of your child, but of all of Faerie hangs in the balance. This is not merely one of their usual disputes, Your Majesty. You must believe me when I tell you that this is a most serious war—with the potential to engulf the whole of Shadow, not merely the country that lies nearest our borders, the one mortals call Brynhyvar.”
At that, Philomemnon sat forward, arching his own brow. “Then tell us, Timias, how is this war different?”
“The King of Brynhyvar is mad—there’s some talk it’s because of one of us, but I haven’t found anything to substantiate that, thank the Hag. It surfaced shortly after the young Prince died last winter. At any rate, his Queen is a foreigner, and her relatives see an opportunity to take over Brynhyvar. But the Duke of Gar has raised his standard against the King, and now, war not only overshadows Brynhyvar, but all its neighbors as well, even to the Farthest Reaches, for the web of blood ties, trade agreements, and strategic alliances stretches across the entire world.”
“And how, exactly, do you propose we intervene?”
“A decisive battle on Gar’s side would win the war before it had a chance to spread. But Gar’s forces are spread out, and the troops which the Queen has summoned from her native land are a professional army capable of decimating the current rebels, unless, you see, Gar calls in alliances from other countries, and thus the war will escalate.”
“Surely you are not proposing we send our own soldiers?” Berillian was incredulous.
“I am proposing we send Lord Artimour as an emissary to the Duke of Gar, along with perhaps one of our own hosts—”
The table actually shook as those around it exploded with guffaws. “Surely you jest, Timias,” put in Vinaver, leaning on her hand. Her mouth curved up in a languid smile, as though she tolerated the ranting of a dotard. “Since when have you ever had time for Artimour? And now, now that Finuviel, by the Queen’s grace, has seen fit to answer her call to assume command of the defenses of Faerie—why, Finuviel depends upon Artimour as he does upon no other—Artimour has become his most trusted second. Even now, Finuviel leads a hosting of our finest knights to the Western March, where Artimour holds the line. And to send such a force into Shadow is unheard of and I’m surprised, good Timias, to think you of all of us would even suggest such a thing. What are we of Faerie but our traditions?” Those were his own words, spoken in this very chamber, now flung back at him. The wings she had grown in deference to Alemandine’s fashion quivered.
Timias flushed as Alemandine raised her goblet. “Our brother is needed where he is. The border there grows more tenuous every day—is that not what the reports tell us, good Timias?”
“I do not doubt what the reports tell us, my lady. And I do not dispute that Artimour is a brave and worthy captain, and that his presence is a great help to Prince Finuviel on the border. But among the mortals, his father is revered and loved and stories of him are told around every hearth in every dwelling no matter how rude. Gar would listen, if we offered him enough forces to make the difference. I have every reason to believe he would accept our help if properly presented.”
“And you would risk our own—”
“There is no risk. We cannot be killed by mortal weapons—wounded perhaps, but as you well know, nothing short of total beheading will kill us. A quick victory will stabilize the Shadowlands. One battle, and the entire problem could be settled.”
“But there’s silver there, Timias. Our knights could be killed by that, or have you forgotten the stuff exists?” Hudibras shook his head.
“And what guarantee of victory is there, Timias? Forgive me, my old friend,” said Philomemnon, “and I do not hesitate to call you that, for though your years in the Shadowlands have aged you, long we have dwelt in the same region, you and I. I understand your concern, and I, unlike some others—” here, he paused and looked at Hudibras and Gorlias “—well appreciate the effect the Shadow-world has ever had on ours, much as many of us would prefer to deny it. But there’s no surety your strategy would work. For one thing, mortals are marvelously unpredictable, not to mention wholly illogical. One thing I’ve learned, in my admittedly limited experience of them—” and here he sighed and a bemused smile flitted across his face, like the flutter of a butterfly’s wings “—is that the only possible way to predict what they are likely to do is to decide what I would do in a given situation and then assume they will do the opposite.” He inclined his head with a little flourish, and another chuckle, louder this time, perhaps even a bit forced, went around the table, and Timias shot each Councilor in turn an assessing look. There was an undercurrent he could not quite understand, but Philomemnon was continuing, “Better our energies remain concentrated here.”
To what purpose, wondered Timias, as his gaze fell on the back of Vinaver’s head, where her thick copper braids hung massed in jeweled caul. What mischief had the witch planned in his absence?
“And what’s in it for us, Timias?” put in Gorlias, interrupting Timias’s train of thought. “It’s not as if we could expect their help against the goblins—except as bait.” This time the laughter was longer.
Timias shook his head, suddenly weary with frustration. “Laugh at me if you must, Gorlias. I tell you all, if the war in Shadow expands across the entire mortal world, we will disappear—like the lost land of Lyonesse.” There. He’d said it. He straightened and folded his arms across his chest.
An awkward silence fell across the table while the courtiers exchanged shocked glances and Delphinea shifted uncomfortably in her seat. This time she avoided his eyes. Alemandine rubbed her temples as if her head ached. Vinaver snorted. “If this is all the tidings you bring my sister, Lord Timias, you might consider a stint on the perimeter, yourself. A few weeks and you might begin to understand what we face. If you hadn’t been off indulging yourself in Shadow, you’d have been here to hear Finuviel speak of the situation himself. We have not the troops to spare to such a dangerous distraction.” Her green eyes flashed in a manner so reminiscent of her mother that Timias took a step back. Vinaver raised her head and her wings quivered.
No one could accuse her of not being utterly loyal to her sister, thought Timias.
But now she was rising, bending like a copper lily over Alemandine, her skirts rustling with a soothing swish. “Come, sister, soon we’ll be away from all this. Allow me to make you a posset. ’Twill soothe your head and we’ll talk about what to pack.” Glaring in Timias’s direction, she rose, edging him aside with her skirts, drawing Alemandine to her feet. “You foolish, blind old man. Come, dear sister.” With gentle murmurs, she drew Alemandine from her chair, allowing the Queen’s head to droop against her shoulder, as she led the Queen away. The breeze raised by the trembling of their wings swirled past Timias’s cheek like a voiceless reproach.
“I hope you’re satisfied, Timias.” Hudibras bit savagely into the apple.
“I shall not be satisfied, my lord Consort, until everyone at this table, within this entire realm, understands the gravity of the situation we face.” He looked over his shoulder and lowered his voice. “Our Queen is no Gloriana. We all know it—Alemandine herself knows it. She needs more from us than a nod of approval. Alemandine needs our help, our guidance—”
“Diverting our own forces to the Shadowlands when we know we will need them here is scarcely the way to do it, Timias.” Philomemnon folded his arms over his chest and shook his head.
Timias tightened his grip on his staff, drawing himself up, wondering how to impress upon them the reality of the threat. But then he caught the Lady Delphinea’s look once more. Her expression did not change, but she raised one eyebrow infinitesimally. He swallowed the words, and shrugged. Something about her appearance nagged at his awareness. Perhaps an opportunity to speak to her privately might be arranged. If he could persuade her, there might be a way Philomemnon and Berillian could be brought to his side. And there were others. A majority of the Council would outweigh the voices of Vinaver, Hudibras and Gorlias and help convince the Queen he was right. Better to let it go now. So he spread his hands and only said, “Think on it. But think not long. Events in Shadow proceed apace. Already it may be affecting Alemandine. If we linger too long, our decision may well be made for us. Remember Lyonesse.” He bowed to each of them, turned on his heel, and walked slowly from the room, leaving them sitting in a flood of silent light, gasping audibly that he should have once again invoked the forbidden name.
The news that a mortal maiden, carrying a goblin’s head in a sack, had arrived at the outpost awakened Artimour and brought him blinking, upright, barely two hours after his head had first touched the pillow just before dawn. “A goblin’s head?” he repeated, as Dariel, his body squire, moved about the room, shaking out fresh underlinen, opening a shutter to let in enough light for him to dress. “Are you sure it’s a goblin’s head?”
“There’s no mistake about that, my lord. I was in the kitchens when they brought her in—you could smell it coming half a league off.”
“And how’d she find her way here?” Artimour dragged himself out of bed, and splashed cold water from the pitcher on the table into a basin and onto his face. He looked up to take the towel Dariel proffered.
“The scouting party you sent out after that last raid, my lord. They found her just as she crossed over the border.”
“They’ve all come back?”
“No, my lord.” Dariel handed him hose and underlinen and did not meet his eyes. “The captain of the watch sent them out again. There are three of the company missing.”
“Missing.” He sank down onto the edge of the bed. The word punched through the fog of his exhaustion like a fist. Something had happened last night, something had shifted, changed. He could smell it, like a flake of pepper just under his nose; feel it, like a tiny piece of gravel in his boot. There was a difference in the goblins last night—they had attacked with a ferocity he had not experienced before. He wondered bitterly how far away Finuviel—Finuviel, his nephew and his junior and his newly appointed Commander—was with the much needed reinforcements. The thought of Finuviel automatically made him even more bitter, for it was difficult to accept that the much less-experienced, much younger sidhe had been rewarded with the title of High Commander of the Queen’s Guard, which meant that he was now Artimour’s commander-in-chief and while he had not yet begun to meddle with Artimour’s carefully constructed plan of defense for the outer wards, there was no doubt at all in Artimour’s mind that once Finuviel arrived, he would begin to question everything that Artimour had done up to now. The line was holding, he thought. But something’s changed, something’s different, and will Finuviel listen and understand? Or would he simply assume that Artimour’s half-mortal blood interfered with his competency, as the Queen and her Council so obviously did?
But Dariel was continuing, relaying the mortal woman’s story, “—and what’s more, my lord, she’s insisting she intends to show it to the Queen.”
“Great Herne, that might kill her.” He accepted the shirt Dariel held out, pushing away all thoughts of resentment and Finuviel. He had to deal with this latest crisis with a clear head. “The Queen, I mean. Not the mortal.” He shoved his arms into the sleeves of his shirt. Before last night, they might have laughed. Now not even the ghost of a smile bent either of their mouths. “Any word from—” he hesitated, loathe to speak the name of the rival who’d supplanted his command “—Finuviel?”
“A dispatch came in for you shortly after dawn. I had thought it better not to disturb you.”
“I appreciate that, Dariel.” And he did appreciate it, for there’d been very little rest for anyone lately. And after last night, he doubted there would be more until Finuviel arrived with the reinforcements. And once Finuviel arrived, who could say what changes he’d insist on? The mortal was right in one respect—the Queen and her Council might not need to see the goblin’s head to believe it, but they had to be made aware that a goblin had somehow crossed the border into the Shadowlands. For such a happenstance could only mean one thing. The magic of the Caul—the Silver Caul of lore and legend and song—forged by his mortal father and imbued by his mother Gloriana with her sidhe magic, had somehow—momentarily at least—failed. It was the only thing that could upset him more than the possibility of losing three more of his troops after last night. If only Finuviel were here—it might be amusing to watch him struggle with this unexpected development.
But Finuviel was not. Artimour plucked the doublet from Dariel’s hand and whipped it on, then sat down on the edge of the bed, and reached for a boot, thinking fast. Perhaps there was a way to turn this unexpected calamity to his advantage. “Bring the mortal to the library, then have my horse saddled and pack my saddle roll. The Queen must be told of this as quickly as possible.” Tidings such as this should be brought directly to the Queen and her Council. It would also provide him an opportunity to discover how his replacement had been engineered. He paused in tugging his first boot on. “You’re sure it’s a goblin’s head?”
Dariel looked up from handing over the second boot. “You’ll smell it on the mortal yourself, my lord.”
Artimour allowed Dariel to tug and brush and pat until he stepped away, satisfied. “I’ll see the mortal now. And something to break my fast—I can’t remember if I ate dinner last night or not.”
“You had no time to finish it, my lord.” Dariel handed him a parchment packet, and with a quick bow, was gone.
Artimour stalked down the hall to the library he shared with the other officers and sank into the deep cushions of the chair behind his desk. On the one hand, he was sickened by the potential loss of three more soldiers, soldiers they could not afford to lose, men who’d become friends in the long days of their preparations. And on the other, a mortal maiden come to show the Queen the head of a goblin found lying dead in Shadow could only mean that against all expectation, all assumptions, the Caul’s power had failed—or fluctuated, perhaps, like the webs of magic that bound the borders. But how was that even possible? he wondered. The magic of the Caul was supposed to be a special blending of mortal and sidhe energies. It was not linked to the reigning Queen in the same way as the magical wards containing the goblins, and thus, was not expected to be affected by Alemandine’s pregnancy. But how else to explain how a goblin could have fallen into Shadow? It struck him odd that the task of bringing the goblin’s head here—a wholly unexpected stroke of logical behavior coming from mortals he would not have foreseen—should have fallen to a mere girlchild. Were there not warriors worthy of the task? Born under the shadow of mortal taint, he had always distanced himself from anything having to do with humans. And yet, even to him, this action seemed extraordinary, the last thing one might expect from a mortal.
He ripped open the parchment packet. It was from Finuviel advising him to expect the reinforcements in ten days. Ten days? He put the parchment down and rubbed his eyes. Ten days meant something different today than it had before last night, before he’d witnessed his first true death. Ordinarily the sidhe did not die. They boarded ships and went into the West, when their time in Faerie grew wearisome. That is, unless they were slain by either goblin or silver. It was not something he had ever seen until last night, and it had shaken him profoundly, shocked him to his very core. The goblins that had roared across the boundary last night were different, he thought, his mind replaying the events with such crystalline clarity it felt as if he relived them anew. Their hides were tougher, their claws longer and thicker, and they fought with a ferocity he’d never seen before. The web was strained nearly to the breaking point and though ultimately it had held, and they’d successfully driven off the goblins, it had cost him a knight. He had seen Lothalian’s eyes flash green as his essence, his soul, his self was consumed on the spot before them all by a greedy goblin who grinned as he raised the lifeless corpse to his slavering maw. “No!” Artimour had heard himself roar, and with a mighty sweep of his broadsword, he’d beheaded the goblin where he stood. But there was no saving Lothalian.
And now, possibly three more lost to Faerie forever? Winter was coming soon, when the landscape grayed, and the goblins’ natural color gave them an added advantage. He felt a grim and growing certainty that something worse than was predicted lay in store. He scanned the dispatch again. Finuviel had sent it three days previously. They were still seven days out. Riding hard, and alone, he could intercept them probably within two, maybe make it to Court in three. Or he could go directly to Court, and send another messenger to intercept Finuviel.
He’d hear for himself the mortal’s story, and then be off. As if on cue, the door opened, and Dariel stood aside to let the mortal woman pass. Artimour looked up, scrutinizing the first mortal he’d ever seen with an interest far more intense than he would have cared to admit. Dariel followed her into the room, carrying on an inlaid serving tray a basket of bread, fresh from the ovens, a pot of warm yellow cheese, and a pitcher of foaming milk beside two crystal goblets. The squire set the tray on a corner of his desk. He poured the milk into the goblets.
“Thank you, Dariel. You can leave us.” He motioned the squire to shut the door, and stared at the girl who stood before his desk, with raised chin and squared shoulders, proud as any princess, and grubbier than the meanest garden gremlin that had ever worked in the Palace gardens. Long, black curls tangled around her face, haphazardly tied back with a rough ribbon of indeterminate color. Her simple tunic was made of undyed homespun. The front of the tunic was stained with soot and sweat and suspicious smears that stank of goblin. It fell just below her exposed knees, revealing bare legs covered by the slightest shadow of fine dark hair. Her boots were made of leather so crudely cut and sewn he wondered how she could walk in them. She wore a cloak that had as much style as if she’d pinned a tent around her broad shoulders, and a belt barely worthy of the name, a rude scrap of leather buckled around her thick waist. Her face was just as dirty as her hands, which were black to the nails. Her cheeks were streaked with grime, but it was her eyes, her eyes that burned like two dark coals, that arrested him. There was such mettle, such passion in those eyes that something deep inside him responded immediately. His sidhe half recognized it as the potent lure of the mortal, the magnetism that sucked his kind into a vortex of need for the rush of raw energy said to emanate like a tangible thing from every human. He drew a deep breath as those dark eyes seared his skin. He could feel desperation rising from her pores like a hot mist.
But even as part of him responded, another part recoiled, disgusted by the dirt that seemed embedded into her skin, by the sharp odor of stale sweat, by the lank strands of greasy hair. No wonder his mother’s people regarded his father’s as something to be toyed with, or, better yet, avoided altogether. No wonder Timias was mocked and scorned for being mortal-mooned, as they called it. It looked as if these creatures lived little better than their own animals.
Suddenly Artimour was angry, angrier than he could ever remember being. It appalled him to think that three of his comrades—creatures of grace and light and beauty all—might have died for such an appallingly filthy clod of mortal flesh that had the audacity to live and breathe and stand before him as though her dirty little life might be worth even half one of theirs. “They tell me three scouts are missing.” He spoke quietly, evenly, but the accusation was clear. “At dawn, the goblins should have returned to their lairs, weakened by the rising sun. But your human scent drew them on, and into the patrol who should have been safe in their barracks. But for you.”
She cast down her eyes, her hands laced together like a lump in her lap. “I did not mean to make trouble or cause you grief.”
He pressed his lips together. What in mortal experience could compare to the death of a sidhe at the hand of a goblin? He thought about what he knew of mortals. They were born, they dashed through their helter-skelter lives, breeding faster than rats, and then died, burned out like cinders, their bodies turned to ash. In between, they tempted hapless sidhe foolish enough to bother with them. “Cause me grief?” He shook his head, spitting out the words like cherry pits. “You’ve no idea what you’ve caused or what’s been lost.” He looked away, overcome by scorn and disgust and the weight of the potential loss of not just one comrade to the true death, but four.
When she spoke, her words shocked him speechless. “You’re part mortal, aren’t you?”
He gripped the arms of his chair, stunned into forgetting his grief, for he had always been reassured by everyone how remarkable it was he bore no human stamp upon his face. If anything, from the time he could remember, everyone went to extravagant lengths to agree that his eyes were like Vinaver’s, his seat upon a horse like Gloriana’s, his dance step, Alemandine’s. And since Finuviel was born, his hair and skin color were compared most favorably to those of his cousin, as the sidhe referred to every kin relationship which was not parent and child, or consort and mate. “Maiden,” he nearly choked. “How did you know?”
“You aren’t like the others—not exactly.” But her attention had already drifted, her eyes ranging around the room, from ceiling to floor, lingering over the wall-hangings, the scrolls and the weapons. She looked at the food and he saw her throat work as she swallowed.
In what way? he wanted to demand, but her attention was riveted on the intricate patterns in the carpet. Judging by her clothing and the state of her person, the outpost must appear as sumptuous as a palace. He gestured to the food. “Are you hungry?”
She shook her head slowly. “I dare not—don’t you know? To eat or drink of the food of the OtherWorld—it’s dangerous to us—there’s an enchantment in the food—” She broke off, her attention caught by some aspect of the weapons hanging on the long walls above the bookshelves. “I brought some food with me, but I dropped it in the forest when the goblin was chasing me.”
“I see.” Better get on with it, then, he thought. At least she had a compelling reason to go back to her own world quickly. The sooner she returned to her world, the sooner he could be on his way. “They tell me you wish to see our Queen.”
Without leave, she sank down onto the edge of the chair in front of his desk. He heard the soft rasp of her rough fingertips caressing the supple leather on the arms, as once more she fixed him with that piercing look, which rendered him wholly incapable of reprimanding her. “I need to see the Queen. I need her help. My father’s missing. And we—the people of my village—we found the goblin floating dead in the lake. The sidhe who found me here told me there is a similar lake in this world. I believe my father killed the goblin and fell somehow into Faerie. I’ve come to find him.”
Artimour placed the tips of his fingers together carefully. If her father had foundered into the Wastelands he was as good as dead. But she was looking at him with such mute appeal, such naked need, his own heart twisted in his chest and he knew he had to convince her to leave. Her very presence was too unsettling, too distracting, too intoxicating. And the way this one looked at him with her pleading eyes that burned like tiny twin flames in her sweat-streaked face and her desperate need to find her father—this one was rousing memories and feelings and questions he’d thought long buried and forgotten.
Where’s my father? he had asked his mother, one evening when Gloriana had favored his nursery with a visit, for he had just learned that such things existed and that most had one. And she had laughed, softly, touching his cheek with a caress as light as a rose petal. “Don’t worry about your father, child,” she answered. “He’s gone to a place you can never go.” Why has he gone there? he’d asked. “He has returned to his people, who need him,” she replied. But why did he leave me? He was desperately curious as to the identity of the faceless person few ever spoke of. “Because,” his mother answered gently, “you belong to me.” And that was the end of the only conversation he could remember having with his mother concerning his father. Even the Lorespinners generally considered the mortal’s contribution to the making of the Silver Caul scarcely worthy of mention, let alone detail.
He rubbed at his head as if erasing the memory, pushing all the questions he’d ever had about his father back into the dark place to which they’d long ago been consigned. The last thing he needed was this girl, who stared at him as if she expected him to conjure her father out of the air. But her very presence signified a potential problem so large it made his head ache to consider it. “What’s your name, maiden?”
“My name is Nessa. My father is Dougal, the finest blacksmith in all of Gar.”
His head jerked up. He looked at her more closely, observing the deep slices of grime beneath her fingernails, the scars and calluses beneath the charcoal-stained skin. “Your father’s a blacksmith?”
“Yes. He was.”
Again he sat back, stunned, even as that one slip of her tongue told him that the girl who could spot the mortal stamp upon his features was not blind to the possibility of her father’s fate. He stared at her, every question he’d ever had about his own father rising to his lips, for the fact his father had been a smith was the only other piece of information Artimour had about him. A wild, insane thought leapt to his mind from what could only be his mortal half—that Dougal and Nessa were somehow related to his own father. He could smell the scorch of burning metal in her clothes and in the wild tangle of her hair. He hesitated, torn between the urgency to address the situation and the sudden desire to ply her with questions.
But he saw clearly that the consequences of a failure of the Caul’s magic were so dire, they made even his rancor at being shunted aside seem petty. He had to get to the Queen as quickly as possible, not to confront, but to warn. So he drew a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. “My name is Artimour, Maid Nessa. I am the second-in-command here, under Prince Finuviel.” What else was there to say? He should send her on her way, but something held him back, something wanted to keep her talking. A few minutes more wouldn’t hurt. “Tell me how you came to find the goblin.” He leaned forward over the desk, observing every minuscule detail of her appearance. Surely his father hadn’t smelled quite that—that ripe? Distress poured off her like a tide, dragging him back to the present, making him disregard the odor.
“My father left the smithy just before dusk last night—earlier than usual, but he—he—had gone to check the traps at the lake.” She paused, and looked at him, as if considering what to say.
“Go on.”
“He’d been gone just a short time, when some of the children came running back from the lake saying there was a dead goblin floating in the water. And so we all—everyone who could walk—dropped what we were doing and followed the children back. And there it was, floating in the water, among the traps we set to catch the lakefish. But my father was missing. We looked, everywhere we could think of, but there was no sign of him. Only the goblin.”
“And so who decided to cut off its head?”
“I did.”
“How did you know to do that?”
“Do what?”
“Cut off its head. We—the Faerie and the goblins that inhabit this realm—cannot be slain by mortal weapons, but by beheading. If your father really did kill that goblin, unless he used the goblin’s own weapon against it, it would’ve revived ere the sun had set on another day. Did you not know that?”
“There hasn’t been a goblin in our parts for over a thousand years, they say. I’m sure there’s a few things we’ve forgotten twixt then and now.” She leaned forward, fists clenched. “I lost my mother here. I will not lose my father, too. I know about the Silver Caul. I thought the Queen would listen to me if I brought the goblin’s head. Why didn’t the Caul work?”
He shook his head, silent, uncertain how to answer. It was difficult to think at all, because the stink coming off her was enough to turn his stomach. At last he decided to tell her as much of the truth as he believed she would understand. “I don’t know. The Caul was forged in another age—under another Queen. The present Queen carries an heir at last, and thus this is a dangerous time in Faerie, for her magic, which normally sustains the land, is diverted to another source, and the wards that contain the goblins within the Wastelands are strained. This we expected and have, to the extent we can, prepared for. But the Caul was made of greater magic. We did not think that it would fail. And if it has—” Artimour stopped. The possibility that the Caul would fail had never even been considered, and no contingency had even been bandied. The idea of a mortal world vulnerable to the goblins was not what made him shudder. The Caul’s failure meant Faerie lay open to silver. “You’ve achieved your purpose, maiden, for I myself will bear this message to Her Majesty. Even now, my saddled horse awaits. You can re—”
“But—” she leaned forward, and once more he felt the scorch of her stare “—I didn’t come here just to tell the Queen about the goblin. I’m here to find my father. I won’t go back until I find him.”
Her obstinacy was like a brick wall. He couldn’t take her to Court—that in and of itself would cause such an uproar, he would never hear the end of it. It would most assuredly end all his hopes of regaining his command. What could he say to convince her? He cast about. She cared passionately about her father. Maybe there were others for whom she cared just as deeply. “What about the others—the other people—”
“What others?”
He spread his hands. “The others—the other people in your village? Don’t you care about them?”
“Not the way I care about him,” she shot back. She leaned forward and for a moment he thought she would leap over the table. “You don’t understand. The other people in the village, in our district, they all know about my mother. They all know about me. They think I’m tainted somehow. My father raised me to be a blacksmith just like him, and they think that’s odd, too. So no, there aren’t any others. I have no one else in the world. He’s my whole life. I am not going back without him. Dead or alive.” She raised her chin and he groaned inwardly, even as something deep inside him recognized a kinship with her.
He knew what it felt like to stand on the margins of all that is acceptable and accepted. But he had to make her understand that this crisis was greater than even her need to find her father. So he leaned across the desk and met the fire in her eyes with as much calm assurance as he could muster. “I see that your father means a great deal to you, maiden. But there are more lives than his at stake. You must go back and warn the mortals of your village. If the magic of the Caul has indeed broken in some way, the people living nearest that lake are in utter danger. And time runs differently in our two worlds. You’ve spent but a few hours here by my calculation, but a few days or more could’ve run in Shadow. Guards must be set about the lake, armed with weapons tipped in silver. For if even one goblin somehow fell into Shadow, living or dead, it is possible that more will find a way there. And they most likely won’t be dead.”
He watched the realization of the truth in his words dawn across her features and war with her own desire. “But my father—”
“Was he wearing silver?”
“Of course. Everyone does. No one ever takes it off—though I did, so I could get in.”
“Then it’s still extremely unlikely that he’s here, maiden. A magic as great as the Caul cannot simply fail all at once. Even the magic here within the wards that hold the border—a much different sort from that which made the Caul and not as strong—it fluctuates, but does not fail.” At least, he thought, he hoped great Herne would see that it wouldn’t.
“But if a fluctuation in the—the Caul’s magic has let a goblin into Shadow, is it not possible that despite the fact my father was wearing his amulet, the silver wasn’t enough to keep him out?” She pressed on relentlessly, arguing with a determination the most exacting Lorespinner might envy.
The force of her logic, fueled by the intensity of emotion, was inescapable. Much as he would prefer to deny it. He sighed and shifted in his chair, crossing and uncrossing his legs. “You force me to agree. Such a possibility—that at the moment the goblin fell into Shadow, a mortal slipped into Faerie—does exist. So I will order the scouts who escort you back into the Shadowlands to search for him, once they see you safe across, and alert all the patrols from now on to search as well. And if your father has not fallen into the Wastelands, I’m sure we’ll find him. But much as you wish to stay and search for your father, I tell you, your people are in danger. You must make them understand they must act to protect themselves immediately. Samhain is approaching in Faerie, the time when the veils between our worlds are thinnest. If the Caul is failing in some way, the goblins may break through on Samhain, and nothing here will hold them back. Whatever defenses you can mount will have to come from your side. Surely your father would not want you to leave your people so vulnerable?”
To his relief, Nessa sat back. She lowered her eyes. Thank Herne he’d found a way to get through to her. A last-minute check with the captain of the guard—an inquiry into the fate of the scouts—and he could be off. Then she raised her chin, and straightened her back, and this time, when her gaze collided with his, he saw a renewed fire that made him groan inwardly. “There’s something else you ought to know.”
He cocked his head. “Say on, then.”
“No. I won’t tell you, unless you promise to help me.”
“Help you how? I’ve already promised to help you, maiden. My troops are in utter jeopardy out there—and I have duties and responsibilities—”
“Is it not your duty then to hear what I say? I’ve done you a service by coming here—I’ve risked much—you’ve said it yourself. Now you know about a problem you wouldn’t have known otherwise.”
He slumped back in the chair, assessing her eager face, her shrewd eyes, and resisted the urge to wipe his brow. “I shall instruct my soldiers to search for him, maiden.”
“Then I’ll leave and not tell you what else I know.”
“What else you know about what? Maiden, these are troubling, difficult, dangerous times we live in. I don’t have time to play games with you.”
She folded her lips and turned her head away. Exasperation boiled through him. No wonder the sidhe were warned to avoid mortals. This up-and-down rush of feeling was dizzying, disorienting. He slapped his hand down on the desk. “What is it that you want?”
“I’ll go back and warn my people, so you can go to the Queen and take this news to her. But I want to come back. And when I come back, I want you to help me.”
Deny her, shouted the voice of what he knew to be common sense. But something made him hesitate, and think, for just a moment, of what up to now had been unthinkable. The mortal was most likely dead. The odds were great that by the time he’d returned here from the Court, the mortal’s body would’ve been found—either here, by one of the patrols, or in Shadow. It may even have been found already. How likely was it he would have to actually help her search? It was a reason to visit the Shadowlands—a reason to visit a smithy—possibly even to see a mortal smith at work. One quick glimpse, he thought, a turn of the glass or two was surely all that was required to fill the void with some image of the father he’d never known. And the girl—she might be filthy, but she had acted bravely, and while she was clearly motivated only by a desire to save her father, she had undeniably performed a great service. How otherwise might they have known that the power of the Caul had failed to keep a goblin out of Shadow? She deserved some reward.
So he leaned forward and spoke softly, quietly. He had to be careful. There was far more at stake than either of their fathers. “If you go back, just as you say, and warn your people, and promise to wait for me to come for you, I’ll help you search for your father, after I see the Queen. But you must be patient—remember that time does run differently and I must get leave from my commanding officer. But I give you my word that I will come myself, if you give me yours you won’t come back on your own and you tell me everything you know.”
“Agreed.” Her eyes filled with tears, but she spoke with a simple dignity befitting Alemandine herself.
She was not at all what he had been led to expect. He wondered suddenly what sort of human her father was, to have raised a daughter of such determined character, and who her mother was. She’d been lost in Faerie, the girl had said. Did that mean she was still here? But there was no time for idle speculation. “Well, then?”
“Last night, two visitors came late to the forge. They spoke a while to my father, then left. But he was up half the night hammering away at something, and the last we saw him, he was carrying whatever it was toward the lake.”
“And what has this to do with the goblin or the Caul?”
“One of the visitors was a sidhe, for in the firelight, I saw his eyes—they gleamed the way all of theirs do.”
And mine don’t? he wanted to ask.
She jerked her head slightly toward the door, and continued. “I saw how his skin shone. I understood why some call them the Shining Ones.”
Them? he nearly shouted. It offended him to his very core that she excluded him from the people he thought of as his own. But this new piece of information was as tantalizing as a little puzzle piece, one of those that could fit nearly anywhere. It teased his brain, tempting him to gnaw at it like a hound over a bone. With effort he dismissed it. He rose to his feet, resolving to think on it while he rode. “We must both be off.”
But her next words made him reel. “Was it your father who was mortal?” she whispered.
He fumbled for the gloves he usually wore tucked inside his belt, and when they weren’t there, he flexed his hands, wondering what she would say if he told her the truth. “My father—” He paused. Her father was the center of her world. His was nothing more than the name of a minor character in a holiday masque. Nothing he could say now would make sense to her, and to say more would only delay them from their purpose. “My father is of no concern to anyone anymore.” She looked at him as if he’d slapped her, but he was too unsettled to feel anything like remorse. There was part of him that whispered how easy it would be to follow her over the border, to peek, as it were, into his father’s world. She could even show him a smithy. But another part of him hoped the blacksmith’s body would be found with little further ado as quickly as possible, and suddenly he wanted to be away from this dark-eyed mortal who saw so much. This was the part that would prevent him from following her into the Shadowlands. He tugged his doublet into place, and scooped a hunk of cheese out of the pot with the crusty heel of the bread. It was warm and tangy and rich in a way he instinctively knew nothing of Shadow could match. He chewed and swallowed and gestured to the door. “Come with me, maiden. We must get you across the border ere the shadows lengthen over Faerie. It’s at dusk the goblins hunt.”
Timias was not terribly surprised when a face materialized in his mirror just as he had finished adjusting the drape of fresh sandalwood-scented robes more comfortably around his shoulders. He was, however, quite horrified to see the wrinkled features of a house-gremlin coalesce within the glass. The small figure stepped out of the glass and bowed. Silently it proffered a wax-sealed parchment.
Out of habit, Timias took it, broke the seal and scanned it. Amazingly, it was from the Lady Delphinea, but the fact that a gremlin had stepped through the mirror appalled him. Such magic was only the purview of the sidhe. The idea that a gremlin had unlimited access to the network of mirrors throughout the entire Palace made his blood cold, and he wondered who would have thought to teach one such a thing. He would have to speak to Delphinea at once.
He looked at the gremlin, brow raised. “Who told you to come through the mirror?”
The gremlin bowed, its impassive face not changing. The gremlins had long ago been forbidden to speak, since their voices were so harshly discordant. Instead they communicated with the sidhe by means of gestures, involving both hands and tail. With eyes downcast, the gremlin answered: The Lady Delphinea bid me come to you through the mirror, great lord. Her matter is of great urgency.
“I understand that,” replied Timias, deeply disturbed. “But who taught you such a thing? Who allowed you admittance?”
The Lady Delphinea, great lord. One day when the Queen was in great distress. It’s been said I saved her life.
Timias raised one eyebrow as he felt a deep foreboding. Delphinea’s understanding of the gremlins and their nature was obviously deplorably lacking, but what truly troubled him was the fact that this rank newcomer to Court, this young girl who scarcely looked as if she belonged away from her mother, not only knew the mirror magic but understood it well enough to teach it to a gremlin. He would have to speak to her about it. But there was no help for it now. The damage was already done. This one knew the mirror magic. Soon they all would, if they didn’t already. Steps would have to be taken to protect the Queen. “Would the lady receive me now?”
She bid me tell you she will come to you at your convenience, great lord.
There was nothing wrong with the gremlin’s attitude. He spoke with sufficient humility, not a hint of aggression or bad temper. But it galled Timias nonetheless to think that Delphinea may have unwittingly exposed the Queen to attack. He said nothing to the gremlin, of course. “Fetch your mistress, then.” He gathered his robes and turned away, unable to watch it step back through the glass.
He fumed until a gentle cough behind him made him turn in time to see Delphinea step out of the frame in a rustle of heavy satin skirts. Her gown was the color of midnight skies, and tiny diamonds twinkled in the dark folds like stars. She had not been at Court long enough to have been infected by the fashion for growing wings, and indeed, the old-fashioned style of her gown precluded them, for a great lacy ruff rose from the back of the gown, framing her wide-eyed face and graceful neck in a style he had not seen since Gloriana first established the Court of Faerie. He wondered if the gown itself was meant to serve as a message of some sort, for Delphinea looked as if she’d stepped out of one of the tapestried panels which depicted the beginning of Gloriana’s glorious reign. And he wondered why Eponea had not come herself. But as lovely as the girl was, he could not control his annoyance. “My dear Lady Delphinea, you are a delight to look upon but I did not expect the pleasure of your company quite so soon. And, while it may be rude of me to be so direct with you, my lady, whatever possessed you to teach that detestable creature the mirror magic?”
She paused in the very act of settling her skirts and raised her startling eyes to his. She met his gaze with a directness that bordered on insolence, and he felt a twinge of discomfort. What was it about this young girl-sidhe that was at once so compelling and so unsettling? Her words shocked him even more. “Petri is not at all detestable, my lord. He is a good and faithful servant to me, and his quick action saved the Queen much distress.”
“I see.” He measured her up and down and decided that her honesty was not so much born of courage as an utter lack of artifice. She would speak her mind, until she learned the value of holding her tongue, a lesson she would learn soon enough at the cutting hands of the Court. And then it occurred to him that she resembled someone—someone not immediately obvious. He frowned, trying to remember what her mother looked like.
The frown intimidated her and he saw that his assessment was correct. She was not so much insolent as she was innocent. Her mother had not taught her to lie at all. “Forgive me, Lord Timias, it was not my intention to intrude on you.” She stumbled over her words as she turned to look over her shoulder, into the mirror’s polished surface. So she’d been at Court long enough to know she could’ve been followed.
He softened his gaze and extended his hand. “It’s no intrusion, my lady. But you must understand a gremlin is the last thing I expected to see stepping out of my mirror.” He frowned a little. “Is everything all right?”
She reached up and drew the thick velvet curtains over the mirror. The network of mirrors within the castle meant that it was possible for the unscrupulous, the bored, and the curious to eavesdrop in any room a mirror hung, although to linger more than a minute or two was to risk the danger of becoming visible. Thus all mirrors were curtained. It was possible however, for a careful listener to overhear. He drew her through another door, into the antechamber of his suite, where all the walls were lined with long windows that overlooked his tiny gardens. He shut the door to his dressing room firmly. “Now you may speak freely, lady.”
“My mother told me to seek you out, Lord Timias. The others don’t want to listen to me, but she said your loyalty to Faerie was unquestionable.”
He bowed, reading as much as he was able in the fast play of emotions which swept across her face. She was too young, too unschooled in the ways of the Court to dissemble. And she was frightened. He could see that clearly. “I wish more on the Queen’s Council shared your sentiments, my lady.”
“Ah—the Council.” She shook her head and walked to stand beside a window, gazing out into the garden below, small hands clasped before her. They were lost in the magnificence of the gown. A green marble fountain splashed merrily in the bright autumn sun, and tiny gold finches twittered among dark purple sage and golden snapdragons. “It’s all so beautiful, my lord. But since I’ve been here, I think I’m the only one who sees how fragile it is—how easily it could all be broken and brought down into ruin.”
She turned and once again he was startled by the uniqueness of her beauty. Her hair was glossy and so black the highlights were blue. They matched her eyes, which were the color of the sapphires embroidered into the frilly frame around her sober face. “I believe there is something terribly wrong, my lord. Something terribly wrong within the land—within the fabric of Faerie itself. That’s what brought me to Court. My mother sent me here. Alemandine did not summon me.”
Her words shocked him speechless for a moment. No one ever came to the Court unless at the express invitation of the Queen. To simply arrive without an invitation was a breach of such long-standing protocol no one but the Lorespinners remembered its origins. “What are you talking about, my lady?”
“The reason I came to Court. You know I’ve never been here before?” She paused, as if putting her thoughts in order, then continued. “The Queen has not summoned a Council and no Convening has been called—for all are occupied with their own defenses and the raising up of their hosts. But I had to come—even my mother agreed—” She broke off, clearly too upset to continue.
“What is it, my lady?” Her distress unnerved him, distracted him from remembering something much more important that continued to evade him.
“The cattle are dying.” She said the words slowly, deliberately and he frowned. The great herds of milk-white cattle which roamed the hills and pastures of her mother’s mountain province provided the ultimate source from which so many Faerie delights were concocted. The herd had roamed for as long as anyone could remember over the rolling meadows, sheltered by the high mountain peaks, fed by the lush green acres of thyme and clover, and watered by the clear streams which ran down from the heights. The care and tending of this herd had passed in an unbroken line from mother to daughter for as long as anyone could remember. “The first time it happened—a few springs ago—our people came to my mother and asked her to come and see the body of a calf they’d found in one of the pastures. This calf—” She shuddered and turned her face away, as though from the memory. “It did not die a natural death, for I had never seen anything like it. The body was marked all over by a pox that oozed some greenish, foul-smelling pus. It was as if something ate it from the inside out. Then it didn’t happen again for a while, and we hoped that perhaps it was simply some odd incident. But then, just before Alemandine’s pregnancy was announced, last Midsummer Eve, there was a spate of such bodies and not just within the cattle herds. Birds, fish, the great cats that roam the highest peaks—we found these and more. One stream was fouled by the bodies, so thick did they lie. And then, my mother’s foals began to die. I came here for Alemandine’s help, never suspecting to find her so—so weakened.”
Timias stared into her face, which was no less lovely for the worry that creased her forehead. “And you’ve no idea of the cause?”
“Well…” She turned back to the window and crossed her arms, as though bracing herself. “I do. But everyone—including my mother—considers it so outlandish, no one will listen.”
“A position I’ve found myself in more than once recently, my lady, as you saw this morning.” Timias bent toward her, gesturing with one hand in the general direction of the Council room. “You just heard me advocate the leading of a Faerie host into the Shadowlands, and you were kind enough to encourage the others to listen to me. How could I not do likewise?”
The half smile that quirked across her lips was displaced immediately by a look of such gravity, Timias leaned forward as if to offer comfort. But Delphinea only spoke with that same simplicity that this time chilled his bones. “I think it’s the Caul—the Caul made of silver that’s poisoning the land, the cattle—” She broke off. “I think the Caul must be removed.”
Despite his resolve to listen to her with as fair a hearing as she had given him, he shook his head vehemently. “Lady, surely not. I was there when the Caul was forged—every precaution was taken, only the mortal handled it—”
“But think of it, my lord—” She raised her chin, refusing to back down. “All these turning years, it’s lain, untouched, unlooked at—no one goes near it—and there it just sits on that green globe. The most poisonous thing in all of Faerie. What if—what if it’s the Caul that’s poisoning the land? If it’s the Caul that’s weakening Alemandine? Is that not possible?”
Timias backed away, her words tumbling in his mind as a new vision occurred to him—one so monstrous it defied comprehension. Could it be that the Caul—deemed so necessary, so perfect a solution to the problem of both silver and goblin—was in reality slowly leaching poison into the fabric of Faerie over the years? Alemandine had indeed appeared sickly, even to his untrained eye. The Queen was bound to the land more intimately than the Caul to the Globe. Could it be that her growing weakness was due to the very thing they thought protected them all? Could it be that they had erred? He shook his head. It was difficult to even wrap his mind around the idea. It was too terrible to consider, but he was forced to confront the possibility of truth in Delphinea’s words. He sank down onto a chair, and even as the plush cushioning relieved the ache in his back, he felt the enormity of the potential problem as a physical pang in his chest. He must simply find a way to prove Delphinea wrong. For the first time he actually feared he might not make it into the West. If he weren’t careful, a true death might yet claim him.
For Delphinea was continuing, pressing her point on with a passion almost mortal in intensity. “I know you based the making of the Caul in that most elementary of magic—the law of Similiars. But the amount used in such undertakings is critical—the amount that determines whether it heals or kills—”
“Do not lecture me, my lady!” He raised one gnarled hand to his forehead, feeling every one of his thirteen hundred mortal years. They stared at each other in a shocked silence, and then he said: “Forgive me, my lady. I should not have spoken to you in that tone. The tension of the times affects us all. Soon we will all be squabbling like mortals.”
“My lord Timias,” she replied, her eyes dark with pity. “I don’t mean to imply you and Gloriana and the mortal deliberately did wrong. It was made with the best of intentions—surely that’s why the Caul’s magic has prevailed for so long. But what if too much silver was used in its making? This was something no one ever tried before—how could you or anyone else have been sure what was too much?”
Timias stared up at her. Backlit by the window, she stood poised before him like a harbinger of doom made more terrible by its beauty. “Have you told anyone this?”
“I’ve tried. They think it’s nonsense. I can’t get into the Caul Chamber alone, but I can’t convince any of the lords or the knights to come with me. Even that sot Berillian—he fawns all over my bosom in a manner most unseemly, but can’t bestir himself to help me open the doors.”
He rubbed his head. In Faerie, where the progression of years was experienced as a never-ending circle rather than a linear march into some indeterminate future, shifting accepted thought was as difficult as shifting the calendar in the mortal world. The sidhe understood that what was materialized around them was an expression of their collective thought. An idea such as the Caul, which had worked for mortal centuries, would not easily be abandoned. “And is that what you suggest we should do, my lady?”
She smiled, and knelt at his feet, covering his spotted hands with her own like new-milked cream. “My mother said I should come to you. All I ask is that you come with me—we can go through the mirrors and no one need see us. How could it hurt to look? Maybe these are only the fancies everyone says they are. After all, when was the last time the doors were even opened?”
He shook his head, gazing past her face at some spot outside the window. She was right about one thing. There could be no harm in looking at the Caul. The spell which held the doors of the Caul Chamber was a relatively easy one to overcome—it required a simultaneous touch of the combined polarity of male and female energy. “To my knowledge—never. For once it was done, it has never seemed that there was a need—” He broke off and took a deep breath. “That’s not to say that no one has ever gone to look.”
She gave him a reproving look and he was forced to admit to himself she was correct about that. Once done, the sidhe would not return to it, because they would not expect it to change. It was the fundamental difference between the mortals and the sidhe. It would simply not occur to anyone in Faerie to enter the Caul Chamber. He lowered his eyes to the bubbling fountain, where the finches hopped from rim to ground to shrub, reminding him of the courtiers who leapt so lightly through the days, as if the gravest danger they’d faced in ages was not at hand.
He remembered the night the Caul was forged, the ring of the hammer as it slammed down on the soft metal, fixing it with that raw energy that had crackled through the air like bolts of lightning. What if that energy had not been sufficient to bind forever the relentless poison of the silver? He turned to face her and held out his hand. “Come. You must lead me, lady—’tis an age or more since I have used the mirror magic.”
With a look of gratitude, she took his hand and he led her to stand before another mirror. He placed one hand on her shoulder, the other clutched his staff. For a moment they stood poised, reflected in the polished surface of the glass, and Timias felt his heart contract when he stared at the perfect beauty of her face. It was the color of her eyes, he decided, that gave her appearance such a compelling quality, one that was as fascinating as it was apparent. Or was it? he mused, murmuring aloud to cover for his moment of hesitation, “When I look at you, my lady, I see how foolish I am to waste any time at all in Shadow.”
Despite the cast of worry in her dark blue eyes, a delicate pink stained her cheeks, and her lips quirked up in a fleeting smile. “I’m glad you came back when you did, my lord Timias.” Despite the guileless innocence of her reply, he felt a fleeting throb of warning. There was more to this girl-sidhe than met the eye. Far more. She pressed his hand against her shoulder, then stepped into the glass. Together they walked through the weirdly refracted world behind the mirrors, through twisting corridors and winding staircases lit by intermittent shards of splintered light, until at last they stood behind the mirror which hung opposite the chamber deep within the very heart of the palace.
As she attempted to step through glass, for the first time that Timias had ever experienced, the surface of the mirror seemed to impede her progress, as though it were covered in some sticky, translucent film. She backed away, fine strands of some sticky white fiber clinging to her hand. “What is this?” she murmured.
She pushed through the film with more determination and it gave way with a slight puff. She forced her way through it. As they stepped into the vestibule, they looked back and Timias saw the surface of the mirror was covered with a fine sheen of what he recognized at once as dust. “What is this stuff?” she whispered, more to herself than to him.
Dust, he realized. But did she even know the word? Dust did not exist in Faerie. “It’s dust,” he said aloud.
“Dust,” she echoed, shaking out her skirts. “It’s all over the place.” But there was no more time to wonder about its presence, for she gripped his hand, and pointed at the floor. It was covered with the same sheen of fine white dust as the mirror. And clearly, just as their outlines were visible in the dust of the mirror, the outline of a single set of footsteps led from the set of doors in the left wall, directly to the high bronze doors opposite the mirror.
“Someone else has been here. Not that long ago.” Her voice was flat in the stillness.
“And we cannot ask the guards on the other side of that door, can we?”
“Why would something that cannot be touched need a guard?” Her lips quirked up for a moment in a satirical little smile.
The footsteps led directly to the door, and both Delphinea and Timias were careful not to disturb them. “I wonder who it was.”
“A single person alone could not open the door.”
Whoever had come in had paused before the door, then reversed himself, and exited the vestibule through the set of doors in the right wall. Whoever it was had not wanted to leave by the same way he’d entered.
“Could these be your footsteps, Delphinea?”
“No. I’ve only looked through the mirror. I didn’t even know about that—that dust.”
All around them, Timias had a sense of enormous age, as if something heavy beat through the atmosphere, like the throb of a great drum, more felt than heard. He had fled this chamber, thinking then he would never come back, shuddering in the wake of the magic they had raised. Now nothing of that awful midnight echoed in the chamber. A vague sense of dread descended on him. This was one place he had never hoped to revisit.
Delphinea placed one palm flat on the right hand side of the golden panel set on each of the bronze double doors. The metal glowed and hummed at her touch, and the great hinges groaned, as if rousing themselves from an age asleep. Timias placed his left palm on the left panel, and gripped Delphinea’s left hand with his right. The doors themselves shivered, and with a harsh screech, the great doors swung inward, to reveal a small chamber where the ceiling soared fifty feet or more, all the way to a round window of faceted glass, where the morning sun streamed down in long prisms of color. The colors formed a shifting pattern that shimmered in long shafts all around the moonstone, which stood on a simple pillar of white marble in the middle of the room. Timias clutched at the door, and Delphinea stifled a cry. “Timias, whoever it was got in.” The single set of footsteps led directly to the marble pillar.
In the bright light, the moonstone shone a pale, milky green, its surface polished to a high shine. It sat upon its marble base, seemingly as pure and pristine as the night it had been placed there, bare and round and naked as the rump of a newborn child. The Silver Caul was gone.
4
The low moans of the wounded and the dying rose and fell from the floor of the great hall of Castle Gar, the sullen light of flickering fires and fretful rushlights glowing red on blood-crusted bandages and pain-ravaged faces. A small army of women roamed between the crowded rows, their skirts rustling over the blanketed forms, voices low, as they offered water, changed bandages, spooned gruel, and oversaw the removal of the dead to the stables, which had been hastily set up as a temporary morgue.
Donnor, Duke of Gar, standing on the balcony which in happier times served as a musicians’ gallery, folded his arms across his chest and his lips into a thin, tight line as he surveyed the scene below. Despite the unseasonable late-autumn heat, low fires burned in the great hearths along the walls, numerous iron pots steaming on tripods over the banked flames. The stench of mud and sweat, blood and fear, was thick in the heavy, humid air, but there was no escaping it. More wounded crowded the corridors leading into the hall, and even more of the less wretched, those who’d escaped the battle with only minor injuries, such as a severed finger, were being tended out in the courtyard. Thank the Great Mother that the blasted rain had ended at last. The carnage on the battlefield was far worse than this, if such a thing were possible, and the heavy rain made the retrieval of the dead impossible.
An image of his last glance at the battlefield as his captains had urged his retreat flashed before his eyes: the dead in contorted heaps of arms and legs and torsos; discarded spears and swords and broken arrows sticking up at crazy angles like twisted, tortured trees out of a nightmare forest; the red flare of fires; white smoke, which stung his arid eyes, drifting like ghosts above the corpses, even as lightning forked across the sky, thunder rolled down the valley, and the enemy poured across the hills like the sudden onslaught of rain that enabled his own escape.
Neither side could claim victory, but time was of the essence. If the warchiefs of the North did not respond to his call for assistance immediately, his cause could very quickly be crushed beneath the weight of the foreign army the Queen Consort was surely summoning from her homeland of Humbria across the Morhevnian Sea. He had sent a messenger north nearly three weeks ago, and so far, there had been no reply from any quarter. But the usual late-autumn storms in the higher mountain passes may have delayed both the messenger and any response, he tried to reassure himself.
Out of habit, he cursed the ill-fated day that he and the other members of the King’s Council had granted approval to Hoell’s marriage to Merle, the young princess of Humbria. He remembered the eager, earnest look on the younger man’s face as he pled with the Councilors to allow him to marry Merle. A match to seal an alliance, a friendship between the two nations forever, Hoell had argued. The princess was young, healthy, and being from a family of seven brothers and six sisters, surely fertile. And Hoell himself—approaching thirty and free of fits for nearly ten years—surely it was past time he married and produced his own heir? Not that he was in a hurry to disinherit his dear kinsman, Donnor. He’d added that last so charmingly, so disarmingly that Donnor and the other members of the Council—old men all—looked at each other and in the young King’s words felt the tug of their own faded vigor. How could they deny the King the chance to father his own legitimate heir, after all? And so, beguiled by their own deepest regrets, fears, and wishes, they failed to see the trap they’d fallen in. The shrugs and nods had gone around the table, from Councilor to Councilor, from old man to old man. We were seduced by our memories, not convinced by fact, Donnor thought bitterly.
But a seed of foreboding had been sown that day in the back of Donnor’s mind—a nameless fear he steadfastly, and in retrospect foolishly, ignored through all the days of Hoell’s official engagement. As the wedding approached, misgiving repeatedly raised its face and danced an ugly jig; each time a cousin, a younger sister, a nephew-by-marriage of the new Queen was granted some post or title at the Court. But for a year after the wedding, nothing of consequence happened; Hoell seemed content and the newlyweds held court in a style that reflected the new Queen’s Humbrian preferences. The new courtiers made no secret of the fact that they thought the customs of Brynhyvar rude and uncouth if not downright barbaric compared to their own, and Hoell, eager to please his bride, allowed their influence to grow to the point where even the chiefs of the Outermost March spoke openly at the Beltane Gathering that foreigners were taking over the Court.
Donnor retired to Gar and hoped the new King’s infatuation would run its natural course. Then, within a few months of the marriage’s first anniversary, three of the Council members either died or reached an age where it was impossible for them to continue in their duties. They were replaced, as was customary, by three members of the same clans, although of these, two were recently married to Humbrian wives, and held Humbrian titles, and the other was a cousin of the Queen’s, a member of the clan in question only by virtue of the fact that he had married into it.
Cadwyr, Duke of Allovale, Donnor’s nephew and heir, demanded that they raise their standards then. But Donnor insisted on waiting, torn by loyalty to the oaths he had sworn both to Hoell and to his father.
And then, on the second anniversary of the marriage, just as it was announced that the Queen was pregnant, the youngest brother of the Queen, Renvahr, the sixth in line to the throne of Humbria, was named the Duke of Longborth, one of a series of titles normally reserved for the heir to the throne of Brynhyvar, a title that should have been bestowed on Donnor himself long before this.
Almost immediately it was clear that Donnor’s reluctance may have cost them the rebellion. For in the same year that Hoell’s baby son died of a lung infection, Hoell’s fits returned, leaving him docile, innocent as a child, and utterly unfit to rule.
Too late Donnor recognized the strategy of the King of Humbria—overburdened with children, he ranged far and wide, brazenly gobbling as many thrones and titles as possible through strategic marriages and their resulting alliances. The Duke of Longborth’s appointment as Protector of the Realm in his own stead was the final slap to his honor. For he, Donnor, both by blood and marriage, was the rightful heir to the throne of Brynhyvar—not the foreign upstart Renvahr, whose only claim was his relationship to the Queen Consort and a title he had no business receiving. It should have been Donnor’s place to rule the country while the King was incapacitated, rampant rumor blaming the fit on a chance encounter with one of the Shining Ones.
Privately Donnor disbelieved the theory. There was madness in Hoell’s family—but dynastic necessity demanded his brother marry the lovely Elissade. Lovely she was, but dangerous, too, a woman given to fits of anger so fierce she was finally locked away in a tower for her own good. She died by leaping out the window in the midst of a fit, dashing her brains on the paving below. Fortunately Hoell had not inherited his mother’s rages. Instead he became meek as a newborn lamb, easy to care for, but wholly unable to deal with the fractious, brawling chiefs and lords who comprised the nobility of Brynhyvar, let alone the insinuations of his foreign bride and her relatives.
Another image flashed through Donnor’s mind: the bewildered look in the King’s sad, slack eyes when Donnor had thrown down the ritual gauntlet on the floor beside Hoell’s chair at the head of the Council table, where Hoell sat, a forlorn figurehead, King in name only. Queen Merle shrieked a curse in her native tongue, her black eyes blazing like jet in her white face. The other Councilors, all foreigners like Renvahr and the Queen now, gasped as one body.
But Hoell only picked up the glove, and stroked the much-creased leather. “You dropped this, Uncle,” the King said, a hesitant smile lifting the full, soft mouth as plump and red as a woman’s. Donnor closed his eyes, remembering the pain of betrayal that lanced through his chest.
Renvahr rose to his feet, hand fumbling for the hilt of his sword, while the two Councilors sitting on either side of him struggled to hold him back. “You want war, Gar?” he shouted. “Then, by the goddess, you shall have it!” Renvahr’s eyes had flicked over to Cadwyr, where he stood beside the door, waiting to follow Donnor out of the room. “And what about you, Allovale?” he’d barked. “Will you betray your blood?”
“You are no blood of mine, Renvahr,” had been Cadwyr’s terse reply. They had stalked out of the Council chamber together, shoulder to shoulder, the only two native-born members left, for not even Renvahr had dared to remove them. Yet. Donnor allowed himself one last look at Hoell’s face, and felt another stab of guilt that he should so betray his brother’s son, even as the Queen screamed obscenities, Renvahr cried for order, and Hoell dissolved into a slow stream of tears.
Below, a low, keening wail erupted from one of the women as she recognized a father, a brother, a lover, or a son, and Donnor braced his shoulders against the nameless woman’s grief. A familiar form crossed his line of sight—the slim, blond shape of Cecily, his Duchess—as she hurried to the grieving woman’s side. Was she even five-and-twenty yet, he wondered? Surely she’d been no more than sixteen when her parents had agreed to the match. It was a wildly advantageous marriage for him, for it linked two rival septs of the Clan Garannon, but it did not prevent tongues across the breadth and length of Brynhyvar from whispering about the forty-year difference in their ages. But he’d learned long ago that such a plum ripened only rarely, and he hastened to seize it while he could. In all the eight years she’d been his wife, she’d failed him in only one respect—she had never carried a living child to term. Now the front of her apron and her gown was stained with blood and dirt and worse, while worry creased her forehead and sleeplessness smudged dark shadows beneath her eyes. She looked nothing like the innocent girl she’d been when they’d danced at their wedding. How happy he’d been that day, how sure that at last, he’d found his heart’s own yearning. How much he’d looked forward to settling down into the rosy glow of the late afternoon of his life, beget an heir, or two or more. A sadness, a regret swept over him at how differently it had all worked out.
If only they’d had a child, he thought. Surely things would be far different, if only they’d had a child.
With a sudden screech, a black shape plunged from a ledge high above and as Donnor startled back, a raven swept low over the hall. It wheeled and dipped over the long rows of wounded, gave a shrill caw and flew out an open window. There was a general stir throughout the hall, and Donnor shuddered involuntarily. There was no mistaking that omen, for the raven was a harbinger of the Marrihugh, the warrior goddess. He could almost feel her striding across the land in her crow-feathered boots, crying out for foreign blood. But how many of his own men must die? he wondered, as he watched the stretcher-bearers carry away the corpse, while Cecily folded the grieving woman in her arms, rocking her gently as if she held a child. How many more must die, he wondered, before her thirst was slaked?
He noticed that Cecily looked up, following the raven’s flight, as she hugged the woman close. Then his eye was caught by the familiar gleam of hair so pale it was nearly white, and he saw that Kian, the First Knight of his household, and thus the captain of his personal guard, had slipped into the hall, and was making his way across the crowded floor to Cecily. From this height, he could not see Kian’s expression, but Donnor had no doubt of the eager light burning in Kian’s eyes. Since Beltane, Donnor saw it every time his captain looked into his Duchess’s face.
In only a few quick steps, Kian was beside her, the thick strands of his long hair clinging damply to the green and blue plaid he wore flung over one shoulder. Donnor stared, rooted in place by a hard anger made even hotter by shame. It had been a year—no, closer to two, really—since he had last shared Cecily’s bed. After the last hope of an heir had bled itself away, he had excused himself, murmuring that he could not bear to hear her weep over yet another unborn babe.
But that was not the real reason. If he went not to her bed, it was because he could not, and if ever Cecily bore a child, he would have to know it was not his. As her husband, he would be bound to acknowledge the child or cry her out for adultery, and see her burned at the stake. As Kian bent over her, his mouth close to her ear, Donnor broke free of the spell, turned on his heel, and fled, unable to watch any longer.
Cecily heard the crow’s harsh cry, and looked up from the desperate clutch of Rowena’s arms. Beside her, she could feel the comforting bulk of old Mag, chief still-wife, who could always be counted upon as much for a broad shoulder and an open ear as a soothing brew in times of trouble and distress. So many dead, she thought, as Rowena’s warm, wet weight pressed against her neck. She had known the moment she had seen the long procession of wounded carted through the gates that the slaughter begun on the battlefield wasn’t over. As the stretcher-bearers lifted the corpse, she whispered the ancient words to speed the newly-dead to the Summerlands, and hugged Rowena closer:
“These three things I bid thee keep—
The memory of merry days and quiet nights
Of quiet days and merry nights,
Honor unstained by word or deed
And all the love I bear for thee.”
Rowena’s thin shoulders shook with sobs as the body was borne away. “He was my whole heart,” she choked, while old Mag crooned a gentle hush.
Cecily glanced up at the balcony, where Donnor still stood, staring fixedly at the door as if he could will the messenger to arrive. She wondered if he even saw the men dying here below. She could not imagine weeping so hard for Donnor, if it were his body on the bier. Would she feel anything but a nebulous sense of regret, if the old lion, as most of the inhabitants of the castle lovingly referred to their Duke, were to die? As she rocked Rowena back and forth, she imagined herself a widow, and recognized it felt as odd to imagine herself a widow as it did to remind herself that she was Donnor’s wife. Lately she’d been plagued more and more by the constant vague feeling that there was something else she should be doing, some other role she was meant to play. Whatever it was, it continued to escape her.
Easy for him to stand above, removed, and watch, she thought, suddenly angry, leaving her to deal with this river of death; leaving Kian to deal with what defenses they could muster until the clan chiefs answered Donnor’s summons. She sighed to herself as she thought of Kian—at just past thirty, he was tall and strong and courageous, well-liked by all for the uplander’s courtesy he extended to even the meanest of the castle scullions. Although he had been a member of Donnor’s house for at least three years now, their duties kept them separate and apart much of the time and she had never even noticed him except in briefest passing. It was only this past Beltane their eyes had met and she had noticed a look in his she attributed to the nature of the rite, a look that had made her knees weak as a wave of longing and desire swept over and through her. That night, after the feast, as was her right, she had turned to him to lead her out into the forest. She closed her eyes against the memory of how gently he had kissed her before they were swept up by the goddess and the god into a maelstrom of passion that left her wondrously replete as a foggy sun rose over the low hills, and changed, changed completely. As the last shadows faded to gray, he had covered her body with his once more, and tenderly, tiredly, made love with her a final time—all sense of god or goddess long vanished. That was when I fell in love with him, she thought, and tears sprang into her eyes as loss and need closed like a fist around her heart and for a moment she shared Rowena’s grief utterly. But the marriage contract was exacting, explicit, and under the current circumstances, divorce was not to be thought of. But since that Beltane night, neither she, nor Kian, nor Donnor had been the same.
“My lady Duchess?”
Kian’s low voice startled her, so that she pulled away entirely from Rowena’s stranglehold grasp, and stared up, feeling that he must have appeared in response to her thoughts. His dark brows were knit over his intense dark eyes, his mouth drawn down and grim. As he leaned down to speak into her ear, his hair, the color of sun-bleached seashells, brushed against her cheek. It was damp from the rain, and on his blue and green plaid, tiny droplets of water gleamed like pink-tinted pearls in the reddish light. “If you will, my lady, I need a word with you at once.”
Cecily took another step back. In Kian’s presence she felt herself young, and ripe and ready as a peach to fall into his hand—the opposite of everything Donnor made her feel. But she heard a new timbre in Kian’s voice that she had never heard before—an urgency that bordered on fear. She saw him glance above, and following his eyes, saw that Donnor no longer stood like a sentinel at the watch. “What’s wrong?”
Kian shook his head, his mouth barely moving. “I—I cannot say here. Please, come with me, my lady.”
Their eyes met, and while her spine stiffened against her body’s involuntary response to his closeness, she realized that there was nothing of the lover in the man who stood beside her, tense as a stallion poised to bolt. With a brief murmur to Mag, and a final squeeze on Rowena’s shoulder, she allowed Kian to lead her to a seldom-used retiring room off to one side of the hall, now stocked with barrels and baskets of every description and size, in which were piled high everything from candles and the season’s first apples to bandages and twine. “What is it? What’s wrong?” She wiped her hands on her apron, and watched, puzzled as he led her into the center of the room, then shut the door behind them. He filched an apple from a large basket beside the hearth and turned to face her. His expression was as grim as she had ever seen it, but it was colored by that new element, an element that looked very much like fear and tinged by doubt and disbelief. He looked, she decided, like a man who’d seen a ghost. Or a sidhe.
He hesitated, clearly gathering his thoughts. “In truth, I scarce know how to begin. I would have showed it to you before I had it burned, but I would not inflict such a curse upon your memory.” He ran the apple under his nose. “Faugh—the stink of it is still on me, and I’ve washed my hands three times.” He threw the apple into the empty hearth, where it landed with a bounce and a roll.
Show me what? she wanted to interrupt, but he went on, his words tumbling over themselves like stones falling downhill. “It was just past three—” she startled at his words, realizing that the day was much farther advanced than she had realized “—just past three, just as I had come to stand my turn upon the watch—you know that every able-bodied man over fourteen is taking a turn?”
When she nodded, he continued. “Within the first hour, two men came in. The first was from Tuirnach of Pentland. Donnor’s own messenger hadn’t arrived yet, not by the time this messenger left, which was only two days ago, which is troubling enough in and of itself, but it’s the second one that has unsettled me, to the point where I stand before you now like a moon-mazed calf.” He paused and shook his head as if to clear it. When he spoke again, his voice was so low, she had to strain to hear it in the quiet room. “The second messenger—though he’s no more a messenger than I am a cook—came from a little village, in the uplands, just above Killcarrick Keep. Donnor knows it—it’s the village where Dougal lives—Dougal the smith who forged the sword Donnor wears in battle. You know the smith I mean?”
She nodded mutely, listening intently, trying to discern the source of his disquiet.
“Donnor’s messenger isn’t the only one missing. For Dougal himself is missing—he disappeared four or five nights ago.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know what happened. I do know that the piece of carcass this man showed me was part of nothing ever spawned in this world.” His eyes sought hers and held them, as if gauging her reaction. “For you see, in the same hour that it was realized Dougal the smith was missing, the villagers found a goblin—a dead goblin, thank the goddess—floating in Killcarrick Lake.” He took a deep breath and in the gloomy light that filtered through the translucent sheets of yellowish horn which filmed the windows, she saw that he absolutely believed the truth of what he said. “I saw it—smelled it—touched it—” He shut his eyes and grimaced. “I told my squire to burn it behind the midden, lest the stench of it alone cause a panic.”
Cecily’s mind raced. A thousand years or more had passed since the days of Bran Brownbeard, and the only time one heard talk of goblins was in the legends told around the winter fires, in the histories chanted through the annual cycle of ritual and ceremony. “But—but that isn’t—that’s not possible.”
Kian gave a soft snort of derision. “Believe me, if what that man had in that sack wasn’t goblin flesh, I don’t know what would be. The claws—they were exactly as the old tales describe, and the way it reeked—” He shuddered. “There’s no doubt in my mind at all. But beside the problem it presents all its own—which is how a goblin got here in the first place—there’s the effect it could—it will—have on the outcome of our rebellion. For after yesterday, we hang on by not much more than a few threads here. The Humbrians are loading up their warships even as we speak. If the men desert our cause to return to protect their homes from goblins, we shall not stand.”
For a long moment, she was silent. “But—but,” Cecily began, frowning. “If this is true, at the news of a goblin in Brynhyvar, the druids will step in—surely there will be a halt to the hostilities—the druids will insist—”
“Indeed, and the Humbrian army will continue to grow on the other side of the water and we will not be able to mobilize or maneuver while the druids wrangle amongst themselves.” He looked at her, and she knew he expected her to understand the greater meaning contained in his words, beyond the obvious. “If that happens, Donnor will be forced to call in old alliances across the Sea and beyond the mountains. And the war will spread across our borders, like a fire raging out of control.”
“Why have you come to me?” Her voice quivered, for his presence unsettled her. She clasped her hands before her, to steady them. Too easily he stirred up feelings she thought firmly suppressed. And why did he always make her feel as if there was something about her that he knew and she did not, as if he could see some aspect of herself she could not? In the hazy light, his pale hair glowed with a pearly luminescence and not for the first time, she thought he looked like a lord of the Shining Ones.
“Where’s Donnor?” he asked abruptly.
“Gone to rest at last, I imagine. He was up on the balcony until just now—hoping some word would come, I think. He will be glad to hear from Tuirnach at least.”
“I sent the messenger to eat—he’s ridden without stopping through two nights to reach us as quickly as he did.”
She took a single step closer, and fancied she could see the beating of his heart through the thin linen shirt. “You didn’t answer me.”
His dark eyes bored into hers, and the room was so quiet, she could hear her pulse pounding in her ears. In two quick steps he was beside her, and for a moment, she thought he might sweep her up into his arms. But he only spoke in a whisper that seared her to the bone. “I come to you, my lady, because I remember who you are, even if you choose not to.”
She stared up at him, taken aback. “If I ever forget that I am the wife of the Duke of Gar, I am always reminded soon enough.” Tears welled in her eyes. “Kian, I wish we could leave all this behind us. This is Donnor’s war—Cadwyr’s war—it doesn’t have to be ours. We could go somewhere, anywhere—south, perhaps, to Lacquilea—leave this whole dangerous mess—” she broke off, as sobs of frustration and fatigue choked her.
“Ah, Cecily.” With a sigh, he pulled her into the circle of his arms, cradling her head against his rain-damp chest. She relaxed against him, savoring the blend of horses and damp wool beneath the acrid tang of his sweat-stained linen. He pressed his cheek against the top of her head, and she heard him draw a deep breath. When he spoke, his voice was low with regret. “You know we cannot do that. Would you have us be outlaws, exiles, unwelcome at every hearth? We must just be patient a little while longer, until—”
“Until what?” she asked, as the tears spilled down her cheeks and she twined her fingers in the rough wool of his plaid. His dagger’s leather hilt dug into her waist, but she pressed closer uncaring. “Until our cause is lost?”
“Hush now, don’t say that. We will prevail. It’s just the northern chiefs are somewhat slow to rouse themselves—”
She pulled back and met his gaze with a stubborn chin. “Don’t pretend to me, Kian. I see the look on your face—on Donnor’s. I see the number lying here and I see how many didn’t come back at all. And now you say they’ve found a goblin of all things. What difference does it make if we stay or go?”
“You have but to say the word, lady, and ten thousand men of Garannon and Garleugh both would march beneath a standard of your raising. It is you should reign in Brynhyvar, not that old lion run to fat. And Cadwyr crowds close behind—think you the throne will pass to you, should Donnor fall?”
“Cadwyr is loyal to Donnor,” she choked out.
“Aye, to Donnor for he is Donnor’s heir, but what if Donnor falls in battle? I do not trust Cadwyr—his eyes are slippery and he unpockets his smile at will. And Donnor will not listen to me. Oh, he trusts me to preserve his life, for he knows I shall stand upon my word. But ever since Beltane, he hates me, Cecily, and all I say to him falls on deaf ears.”
She lowered her eyes against the pain she read in Kian’s face. They had not, either of them, in fact betrayed the vows they had sworn to Donnor. Beltane was sacred—it was not unheard of for husbands and wives to choose others—although it was usually by preagreement.
But the goddess was on me, she thought, I could not help myself. There was no dishonor, no shame in what they had done. Honor was all, but the goddess and the god must be answered as well. And honor was cold comfort on winter nights, and honor was a lonely partner when memory made the blood run hot. With effort she ignored the recollection of his hands on her breasts, and asked, “So, you want me to go to Donnor…?”
“No.” The force with which he answered took her aback. “Cadwyr, curse him, was right. We should have thrown down the gauntlet long ere this. But we did not, and thus we must play the hand we’ve dealt ourselves. The carcass is burned and I’ve ordered the man who brought it not to speak of it, and thank the goddess he seems to understand the reason not to cause a general panic. But I promised I’d go back with him—back to the village where they found the goblin and organize a search for the smith and possibly the messenger, and make sure nothing else is amiss. And I will see to the gathering of the clans myself. I’ll take a small troop with me—a couple dozen or so. They can fan out across the upcountry, while I attend to this other business.”
“But—but, Kian—” She understood that there was something he seemed to be asking her, but she failed to comprehend what it could be. “Why do you come to me? ’Tis Donnor’s place to bid you stay or go.”
He took her hand and caught it up between both of his, and she curled her fingers around his involuntarily. “Can you not see? Donnor is old, and already defeated. He sees the mistakes he’s made—indeed that’s all he sees. He will not outlive this war, I see it in his eyes. And unless you are content to live in a land ruled by Cadwyr, you are the one with the best claim to the throne of Brynhyvar. You I would follow into the deepest dungeon of the Goblin King himself. Cadwyr I would sooner leave upon a dung heap.”
She made a soft sound of derision and smiled ruefully. “Well, my gallant champion, you are an army of exactly one.”
“You’re wrong, Cecily. You were not trained in sword-craft, and you cannot throw a spear, but you could rule this realm. Too soon your parents sold you out to Donnor. You have a claim in your own right. Donnor is failing—Donnor will fall. And when he does, I do not want to see Cadwyr step into his place, but Cadwyr will take it the moment he has the opportunity, unless another choice clearly presents itself.”
Wonderingly she searched his face. “You truly believe this.”
“Of course I believe it. I will not bend my knee to Cadwyr. I ride out within the hour. Tell Donnor I have gone north to rally the clans. But say nothing of the goblin—at least not yet, and not until we have more information and nothing—nothing at all of any of this—to Cadwyr. He should not be here for another day or two, at least. Donnor sent him into the east to raise up Far Nearing.” He raised his hand and for a moment, she thought he might kiss her, but he only tucked an errant blond strand behind her ear. “I will go to the chiefs, and I shall raise up an army—in your name, not Donnor’s. And when I return, my lady, I’ll bring you an army that marches beneath your colors, not Gar’s. ’Twill remind everyone, including Cadwyr, that there are certain choices yet to be made—and while he may be Donnor’s heir, he will only be King by the consent of us all.”
He bowed and would have swept out of the room, but she held out her hand, and spoke. “Kian—”
He reached for her then, and crushed her to his chest, his arms wrapping around her, holding her close. He bent his head and spoke quietly but harshly, his words hotter than his breath. “Do not think because I do not touch you I don’t want you. I burn for you, Cecily, night and day—” He took her hand and crushed it against the rigid bulge at his groin. She moaned a little and swayed on her feet. “But we cannot let this love we have between us divert us from the greater purpose, and I cannot let this lust keep me from what I know I must do.” He turned his head and his mouth found hers.
The world spun, and she shut her eyes, surrendering to the insistent pressure of his lips. He lifted her hand up, entwining his fingers with hers in a desperate fist. Then he set her back on her feet, and lifted his head. “Stay well, my lady.”
For a long moment after he had gone, she stood motionless, feeling the blood pound in every vein, her mind racing. He was right, of course. If they took off, across the sea, or south, beyond the Marraghmourn Mountains, they would indeed be exiles in every sense of the word—for while Kian’s sword would be welcomed into the service of any foreign lord, the hearths and halls of their own country would be forever barred. It was more than anyone had any right to ask. There was wisdom, too, in saying nothing about the goblin—for it may indeed yet turn into nothing, she thought. Some strange fluke, some odd coincidence. An omen, perhaps, but scarcely a good one. With a puckered frown, she opened the door, and thought she saw, slipping up the staircase behind the dais at the far end of the hall, two tall shapes, both cloaked in plain black. The hood slipped off the first’s head, as he turned around to speak to his companion. He drew it quickly over his head, but not before Cecily saw the unmistakable gleam of Cadwyr of Allovale’s bright gold hair. But how could that be, she thought. Kian had just said that Cadwyr was in the east, to rally the lords of Far Nearing. She hurried closer, trying to make sure, for if Kian’s hair glowed like the full moon, Cadwyr’s shone like the noon sun. They were as different as night and day, too, she thought, as she squinted in the semidark. The second figure, who appeared leaner than the first, followed close behind, and the black cloak he wore blended so perfectly into the shadows, he seemed to vanish. She blinked, and he did vanish, and all she saw was the one, moving up the stairs with Cadwyr’s familiar swagger, two and three steps at a time. As she stepped on the first stair, he reached the top of the staircase, then rounded the corner and disappeared out of sight. By the time she set foot on the first landing herself, she could see that the corridor in both directions was deserted.
Images of Cadwyr, Kian and goblins roiled in her mind as she walked up the steps. She disliked Cadwyr—had always thought him overforward, and aggressive, but he had always seemed devoted to Donnor. After all, in the absence of a son, Cadwyr was Donnor’s heir. She paused in midstep, catching the wooden banister for balance, as a monstrous thought occurred to her. Cadwyr was Donnor’s heir. Cadwyr had been one of the loudest voices insisting on the rebellion—insisting Donnor lead the rebellion—but Donnor was an old man, well over sixty. If the old warrior did not survive to rule, who would be surprised? She went up the steps much more slowly, pondering. Kian had not meant to imply the possibility of treachery, or had he? At the top, she paused and looked both ways down the corridor. The heavy door of Donnor’s Council chamber was closed. On a whim, she pushed the door. It swung open without a sound to reveal a chamber empty but for the long table littered with maps in the fading afternoon gloom.
At the other end of the corridor, the door to the antechamber of Donnor’s bedroom was closed. Could she have been mistaken, she wondered? The two figures—nothing but a trick of the shadows and an imagination overwrought by Kian?
She bit her lip, uncertain, then straightened. Kian was right about one thing. Her claim to the throne of Brynhyvar was as good, if not better than Donnor’s alone. She strode purposefully to the door and knocked. She heard quick, heavy footfalls, and then Donnor himself opened the door. He looked very surprised to see her. “My lady Duchess?”
“I came to see if there was anything you required, my lord,” she said, using the only excuse she could think of.
He narrowed his eyes, and she noticed the deep pits smudged beneath them, the furrowed wrinkles in his grizzled brow. “No. No, my lady, nothing.”
She tried to see over his shoulder, into the room beyond. “Someone told me that my lord of Allovale has arrived?”
He started at the name and his face flushed an ugly red. “Cadwyr? No, of course not.”
He glanced down and she knew, in that moment, that he was lying, that Cadwyr had somehow come into the castle, unannounced and unnoticed, in a manner so unlike him, that coupled with Kian’s insinuations, made her immediately suspicious. What possible reason could there be for Donnor to lie to her about Cadwyr’s arrival? But she only backed away, and dipped a bob of a curtsy. “I see. I must’ve misheard. Forgive me, my lord, for the intrusion. If there’s nothing else you require—”
“Disturb me only if a messenger comes.” He shut the door firmly even as she backed away.
Why would Donnor lie? She wandered in the direction of the staircase. It was possible for someone to enter the hall from the back entrance, the one which led from the kitchen yard. But was it possible for anyone as well known as the Duke of Allovale to enter the castle without being recognized? I ride within the hour. Kian’s voice echoed in her mind. Kian would know if such a thing were possible, and certainly Kian should know what she’d seen just now, before he left. She raised her skirts and scampered down the staircase. At the bottom, she stopped the first guard she saw. “Go to Lord Kian at once,” she said, crisply, feeling oddly, wholly sure of herself. “Tell him I must speak with him before he leaves—I shall await him in my retiring room.”
She watched with satisfaction as the guard bowed and went to do her bidding. Perhaps this war was not just Donnor’s war after all.
5
“Slide the bolt,” Cadwyr said from the shadows, as Donnor turned away from the door. “What’d she want? I thought you said she never comes here.”
The insolence with which Cadwyr referred to Cecily made Donnor frown. Angry as the sight of Cecily and Kian together made him, it burned in his stomach to lie to her. He was already taken off guard that Cadwyr should suddenly appear, just as afternoon was fading into dusk, unannounced and accompanied by only one companion—a companion who was standing still and silent beside the empty hearth, his black hood pulled low over his face. Donnor folded his arms across his chest and pinned Cadwyr with his most piercing stare. “So what’s this about, Cadwyr? Why have you come sneaking into my house like a thief in the night?”
Cadwyr grinned, showing even white teeth in a face many thought handsome, and glanced at the other. His nostrils flared, and Donnor narrowed his eyes. The younger man’s face was flushed, the color high in his broad cheekbones. There was a furtive quality about the way he hunched on the stool, in the way he clasped his hands together on the unpolished surface of the table and spoke in a hoarse voice so low it was nearly a whisper. “I’ve brought someone I want you to meet, Uncle.” He glanced once more at his companion, then licked his lips. He turned back to Donnor, eyes dancing in his sweat-streaked face with some suppressed emotion Donnor could not read. He looked at the stranger, standing so motionless and quiet beside Cadwyr, his black cloak falling around his tall, lean frame as fluid as a shadow. “Who are you?” Donnor barked. “Show yourself, man.”
The stranger bowed. “As you wish, my lord of Gar.”
Cadwyr made a sound that might have been a chuckle as Donnor hissed in reaction to that unmistakable cadence. The stranger raised black-gloved hands and pushed the deep cowl off his face, and for the space of a heartbeat, Donnor stood mesmerized. Coal-black curls fell in lush waves to the sidhe’s shoulders, framing a fine-boned face the palest shade of gold, in which green eyes glittered like emeralds in the wavering flame. A scent, sweet as summer meadows and clear water, rose from the folds of his garments. Then the implications of the presence of a sidhe in his own bedchamber broke the spell and he stepped back, staring in disbelief. “Cadwyr—by all that’s holy and all that isn’t—what have you done?”
Cadwyr coughed. “Uncle…Donnor, Duke of Gar, may I present the Lord Finuviel, Prince of the Sidhe.”
Donnor gasped. The creature before him glowed like a candle in the low-ceilinged room, which suddenly seemed far too small for all three of them. “Great Mother,” he breathed. “I can’t believe you’ve done this.” Heedless of the sidhe, he gripped Cadwyr by the upper arm and half-lifted, half-dragged him into the inner chamber, where his bed and a few chests beneath the windows were the only furnishings. He slammed the door shut, then rounded on Cadwyr. “Whatever are you thinking? If this is known, every poor wretch down there who isn’t dying of his wounds will die of terror. What about Far Nearing? Have you forgotten what we’re in the midst of here? What madness is this?” He tried to keep his voice to a low hiss, for from the open courtyard far below, the voices of the guards floated up in disembodied snatches, signaling the changing of the watch. He ran a hand over his balding head, forcing himself to remain calm. “First that disaster of a battle and now this. What in the name of the Great Mother are you thinking?”
Cadwyr glanced at the door, then looked back at Donnor, a wolfish smile on his face, bright hair gleaming like the morning sun. He reached out and gripped Donnor’s forearm, his eyes excited in the uncertain light. “That battle was no disaster, for they suffered losses as heavy as we did, if not heavier. But that’s of no matter now, Uncle, for I bring us hope—no, even better. I bring us victory—victory assured and certain.”
“Victory?” The word felt like gravel in Donnor’s throat. There was a damp flush on Cadwyr’s face and his lips were full, swollen, as if he’d just swallowed wine. He looked drunk or worse, thought Donnor, like a boy in his first rut. Donnor narrowed his eyes and shook free of Cadwyr’s eager grip. “Control yourself, man. That sidhe has you all unsettled.” He drew a deep breath to calm his own beating heart. “Now tell me, if you can, why you’ve brought this creature under my roof when it could be the ruin of everything before it’s scarcely begun?”
“Uncle.” Cadwyr’s voice quivered with suppressed excitement. “I am not moonmazed, I swear it. Finuviel has offered us victory; indeed, he hands it to us on a plate. We have a chance to strike decisively at the Queen before the main body of the Humbrian army reaches our shores. If we can crush them now—now while they believe we wait for the clans to rally—we can drive the Pretender and the Queen into the sea before the rest of the scum ever reaches our shore.”
Donnor hesitated, for the strategy that Cadwyr outlined was ideal. Indeed, it was why he so desperately awaited word that the chiefs had answered his call. But the idea that help could come from the sidhe—the Shining Ones who treated mortals as playthings at best—was so preposterous his mind refused to consider even the possibility. He snorted at the sheer absurdity. “And you believe him? No good ever comes of anything they meddle in for they delight in making fools of us and worse. Have you forgotten that some say they’re to blame for Hoell’s fits? And don’t you recall my own great-grandsire? He was trapped in TirNa’lugh more than a hundred years and when they finally let him go he was a wreck of a man. What’s this one promised you?”
“He’s promised us an army of the sidhe. Archers, foot and horse of his own house who can’t be slain by mortal weapon—”
“Save those of silver,” finished Donnor sourly. “And what’s he want of you?”
Cadwyr flushed a dark red and he drew back as though stung, but he lifted his head and met Donnor’s eyes with a brazen assurance. “Nothing that will matter to either of us. But I’ll let him explain. You’ll see.” A high thin wail curled through the open window as a lone piper called the changing of the watch, and Cadwyr jerked his head in the direction of the door. “Come, Uncle, the Prince is here. ’Tis rude to keep him waiting.” With a dark look, Donnor shouldered past Cadwyr, flung the door wide and strode back into the antechamber, where Finuviel waited beside the empty hearth. In the light of the single candle, he cast an enormous shadow against the dark bricks. “Why’ve you come here?” Donnor asked without preamble.
There was a brief pause while Cadwyr and Finuviel exchanged a look Donnor didn’t understand. Then the sidhe began to speak, and Donnor was forced to concentrate, lest he lose the thread of meaning in the seductive rise and fall of the sidhe’s speech. “I understand you mortals are at war amongst yourselves because you seek to wrest the throne of your country from the mad King who reigns over it, and from the foreign Councilors and the foreign Queen who rule in his stead.” As musical and as lilting as the voice was, it was yet entirely and completely masculine. Donnor blinked, trapped for a moment in the full thrall of that compelling stare, so vividly green in the candlelight, as Finuviel continued. “And just as you have need of my help to drive the foreign infection from your soil, I have need of yours.”
Repelled, but utterly fascinated, Donnor found himself wondering if Finuviel’s skin really were as velvety as it appeared, if the curls that spilled over his hood and brushed against his smooth-shaven chin were truly as soft as spun silk.
Abruptly Donnor straightened, even warier than before. “And what do the affairs of your kind have to do with us?”
Finuviel had grace enough to shrug. “Not a thing that need concern you, my lord Duke.” Once again his eyes locked with Donnor’s. They glittered with an alien light, so cold, so foreign, that despite the superficial perfection of his manner, his look sent a chill down Donnor’s spine.
“Then what kind of help do you look for from us?”
Cadwyr leaned forward, as if he feared Donnor would insult the sidhe. “My lord—”
“Hush, Cadwyr.” With a flick of his hand, Donnor silenced Cadwyr and turned back to confront Finuviel. “Let him answer.” The idea that there was something within their ken a sidhe needed enough to bargain for was even more unbelievable than Cadwyr’s sudden arrival in Finuviel’s company. For all the old stories—especially the ones about the great-grandsire who’d been seduced by the Queen of the Sidhe herself—emphasized that the sidhe treated humankind as playthings, and at best, in something of the same way as Donnor might a favored hound. He met the sidhe’s eyes and this time steeled himself against the beguiling charm. “Well?”
Finuviel’s gaze shifted to Cadwyr, who shrugged and answered. “He only wants a dagger, Donnor. I told you ’twas nothing we couldn’t provide easily. He only wants a dagger—a dagger made of silver.”
“Made of silver? What for?”
“That’s none of your concern, mortal.” Finuviel’s voice was so cold, Donnor swore the temperature in the stifling room dropped noticeably.
But Donnor was the veteran of more battles than together he and Cadwyr had years and he would not be intimidated. “You agree this is an unusual request, my lord sidhe. For a silver dagger must be commissioned—it’s not that we have such things lying stored. How soon must we produce this? And why would you be wanting or needing such a thing? Is not the touch of silver poison to all your kind?”
“The hilt will be of leather and bone,” burst in Cadwyr. “The blade itself won’t hurt him so long as he doesn’t touch it. And what does it matter to us how he means to use it? And as for where to find it, we go tomorrow night to get it.”
“Where?”
“I went to your favorite smith, Donnor. Dougal—the smith who forged your own sword.”
At that Donnor felt as though the air had been punched from his lungs, and he sagged as though he’d been struck. For a moment, he said nothing, as he gathered his scattered, racing thoughts. He wondered if perhaps exhaustion had finally brought on some sort of waking dream state. But the stench of his own sweat and the ache in his muscles assured him that he was indeed wide awake. “You went to Dougal?” he said at last. “Dougal of Killcairn?”
“And why not? Is he not most skilled? And there’s some story of how he was taken into Faerie—”
“It was his wife, not him,” Donnor muttered.
“That’s not the story I’ve heard.”
“What matter the story? What story did you tell him? What did he say when he saw a sidhe at his own door?” Donnor sat back, incredulous at Cadwyr’s daring. He could not imagine how Dougal had reacted, but something Cadwyr said must’ve convinced him to do such a thing. That or what Cadwyr had offered to pay. Or what Cadwyr had threatened to do. Suddenly a cold finger of fear traced itself down his back. What else would Cadwyr dare?
“I told him we needed such a dagger to win the throne of Brynhyvar. What else would I tell him but the truth? For that is the truth, Uncle. Think of it—a host of the sidhe—with such a force we need not wait for the northern chiefs to bestir themselves, nor crowd upon the walls, searching the horizon for signs of allies. We need not beg for favor or parley away that which is not even ours yet to parley. We need not rely on the strength of new friendships bandaged over old sores. With a company of the sidhe we can draw the foreign scum through the Ardagh Pass and drive them into the sea. Just think of it, Uncle.” Cadwyr shook Donnor’s forearm. “Think of it. Renvahr and the Queen can never prevail if we have troops that can’t be killed—”
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- Жанр: Зарубежные любовные романы, Книги о войне, Современная зарубежная литература
- Язык: Книги на английском языке
- Объём: 520 стр. 1 иллюстрация
- ISBN: 9781408976326
- Дата выхода книги: 11 мая 2019
- Версия: 📚 Электронная книга
THROUGH THE SHADOWLANDS: Where the touch of silver was Protection, Power and Peril… UNWILLINGLY ENTWINED… There is more danger than usual in the Otherworld of the Sidhe and the mortal world of the Shadowlands. An unlikely group of conspirators–both mortal and Sidhe–plot to overthrow both thrones. They'd stolen the silver caul that protected the borders between the realms–and set into motion a perilous war….A BLACKSMITH'S DAUGHTER, A SIDHE LADY, A MORTAL QUEENThree women stand against the encroaching evil. All they have is a girl's love for her father, a lady's for her queen–and a queen's for her country. Nessa, Delphinea and Cecily are each driven by a personal destiny, yet share a fierce sense of love, justice and determination to protect what is theirs.Will the spirit and strength of these women be enough to turn back the tide of the goblin hordes waiting to overrun the kingdoms? Perhaps. But the battle must still be fought….
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