by Eileen Wilks
"Yes, I think so. There is one other I would like you to meet," he said to the rest of them. "Her name is Dell."
On the hill behind them, a grassy hump shifted. And stood. And a huge cat with the husky build and oversize pads of a lynx padded down toward them. A cat he couldn't possibly have missed seeing earlier, yet he had. A cat that looked exactly like the one he'd thought he'd glimpsed at the end of the dondredii attack.
"I was sent here," Kai said, "because the realms have shifted. With that shift, the needs of the medallion changed. It's searching for a new holder. I'm supposed to help it find the right one."
"You?" Theil's left eyebrow arched slightly in subtlest scorn. "Your are human."
"The realms have shifted, liege Theil. And I am sent by the Winter Queen. Perhaps she sees something in me you do not."
Did she realize she'd offered insult and challenge as subtle as any sidhe might conjure? Cullen's mount shifted. His saddle creaked. "I'm following Cynna's trail," Cullen said abruptly, turning his horse's head in the direction of those tracks. "Feel free to join me when you're through chatting."
All at once Theil laughed. The sound was silver and wind, and he had a sudden image of a hawk stooping on its prey. "Ki rel abathium!" she cried—which meant, he thought, something along the lines of why the hell not? "We ride, Rohen!"
Her horse spun and leaped into a gallup. Within a single heartbeat, so had the rest.
* * *
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Leerahan Court was stone and it was forest grove. It was both garden and sculpture, structure and meadow and quiet little brook. The fluting edge of one wall rose above the trees on Cullen's left like a giant bird's wing. On his right, twenty feet away, was a staircase. Between wall and staircase was grass—thick, lush, and brilliantly green. Never mind that elsewhere grass was winter-dead. Cullen walked down the wide swath of greensward that was the Leerahan great hall with Rohen's liege, twenty of Rohen's sidhe, a hellhound who looked exactly like a man, and two women. One of those women was not quite a telepath.
There had been time to talk some on the way here. Not as much as might be expected, because Theil had spoken the truth when she said her people could move quickly when they wished. It was damned hard to hold much of a conversation at full gallop. But he'd learned what Kai Tallman's Gift was, and why she was here.
It was the hellhound who'd gained them entrance to the court. Without him, Aduello might have allowed Theil and her half sister to enter, but not with so many of her people. Certainly not with Cullen. But no one was willing to tell the hellhound no.
Not because Nathan Hunter was—or had been?—a hellhound. Because he was Winter's hound. Said in a certain tone, "winter" meant only one thing—the Winter Queen, one of the pair of immortals who ruled all Faerie. The queens didn't rule in Edge, but if Winter's hound wished to visit Leerahan alongside two human women, twenty sidhe from Rohen, their liege, and a bedraggled lupus sorcerer from Earth, no one was of a mind to turn him away.
At the end of the greensward was a stone dais thirty feet wide. Not carved stone, and not precisely a dais, for it was platform and furnishings in one. It looked as if bedrock had been bidden to rise and fold itself into shapes comfortable for sitting, standing, or sprawling, depending on the whims of those who waited there. Cushions were strewn casually among the dips and benches, cupped seats and steps.
Aduello lounged on a stony bench cushioned by thick white fur. He was a tall, languorous sidhe of predictably inhuman beauty—black hair striped with silver falling like rain to his waist. He wore a pair of low-slung black pants that were silk and snug with a loose, flowing shirt and a cropped vest, heavily embroidered. Three of his court stood nearby—two men and a woman, all wearing swords. As did most of the sidhe assembled along the sides of the greensward, watching.
Beside him sat Cynna. In a dress.
That gown—long, gossamer, the color of the Hershey's Kisses Gan liked so much—shook Cullen. It made him doubt. She's playing the bastard, he told himself. She'd let him dress her to please himself because she was pretending to be trapped, enraptured by the glamour he cast.
She was a knockout in it. A thin crimson scarf crossed between her breasts and wrapped her waist, showing off her Amazon's figure. A slit up one side gave a long glimpse of leg. He wanted to lick his way up that leg.
Aduello stroked Cynna's arm casually, as one might pet a cat. She didn't move. She didn't even look at Cullen. Her expression was blank, dull. "Theil," Aduello said with a polite nod, "it is good to see you, of course, but you come in strange company. Or perhaps I should say, in strangely numerous company. And you, sir"—another nod, this one for Hunter—"I am unsure what to call you."
Hunter stepped forward. "My most recent name is Hunter, That will do. Thank you for allowing us entry, liege Aduello."
"I'm told…"—another lingering caress of Cynna's arm—"that you are not here hunting breakers of the queens' law."
"I am not on a hunt, sir. But I am here at my queen's behest. My purpose is to escort one she has sent questing. I present to you Kai Tallman."
The tall, broad-shouldered woman stepped forward and bowed her head briefly. "Liege Aduello, I understand the woman beside you is not the only one you rescued from the Ahk."
"That is true."
"I would like you to have the others brought here."
"Would you?" He'd possessed himself of Cynna's hand and toyed with her fingers. This touch seemed to call her back to herself. She cocked her head, giving Aduello a heavy-lidded smile. "And yet I feel no need to do so."
Cynna spoke suddenly. "They're all right." She was still smiling like a fool, but at least she looked at them now instead of the man playing with her. "They're fine. Aduello gave them the rose quartz suite—that's what I call it, anyway. You should see it. It's gorgeous. But…" She looked at the sidhe beside her. "Aduello, they'd like to see Cullen. Can't they come see him? In fact…" She frowned slightly, as if puzzled. "They may want to return with Cullen and these people. They aren't as happy here as I am."
"Ah, well." He patted her hand, all indulgence. "Why not, if you wish it? Ertho, you'll see to it?" He gave the edge of his smile to one of the men on the dais with him. The man left, using an artfully concealed crevice in the stone wall behind them.
"Liege Aduello," Kai Tallman said clearly, "I must ask you not to mindspeak your people. Give them their instructions out loud, please."
He froze for a second. There was no trace of a smile on his face when he looked at her—looked much more closely than he had before. "I have never met a human who could use mindspeech, much less overhear it when another did so. I suspect you are imagining things."
"I do not use mindspeech. I know when it is used, however. I also know when lies are spoken."
Aduello's eyebrows went up. "That would not make you comfortable company at most gatherings," he said with polite disbelief. "But what am I thinking? I have offered you no refreshment." He looked around as if he might have misplaced a servant among the cushions.
"Aduello." Theil smiled at him. "You know why we are here, and it is not for refreshment."
His eyebrows rose. "To collect the humans I collected? And that other one… something like a gnome, yet not."
"We are here about the medallion."
There was blunt speaking. For a sidhe, shockingly blunt.
Aduello's lazy smile didn't falter. "Of course you are. You tried for my lovely Cynna yourself, didn't you? Tried to kill her, that is. And with obab." He shook his head. "Such a messy way to operate, my dear. You must have felt quite desperate. It's not like you to abandon subtlety so thoroughly."
"That," Kai said coolly, "was a lie."
Aduello's eyebrows lifted slightly. "You grow tedious."
"Which leads me to suspect you were the one who tried to kill her. Otherwise, how would you have known about the obab?"
"But Cynna tells me everything." He stroked her cheek. "Don't you, sweetheart?"
She had t
hat puzzled look again. "The obab… that's the slug-men, right? The ones whose touch was poison?" She looked at them again—right at Cullen, in fact. And her left eyelid dipped in a slow wink.
Fierce and strong, victory shot through him.
"Of course Aduello didn't do that," Cynna continued. "I don't know why he accused you of it, ma'am, because he knows who did it. The humans." She sighed. "There's a cabal of them, humans unhappy with their place here in Edge. They tried to kill me because they hope to lay hands on the medallion themselves, poor fools."
She looped her hand around Aduello's arm and turned a smile on the bastard so saccharine it was all Cullen could do not to laugh out loud. Or warn her not to overplay it. "Aduello would never hurt me."
Aduello didn't see what Cullen saw, perhaps because he wasn't looking. He patted Cynna absently, his attention on those confronting him. "I will allow you to take my other guests away with you, if they wish to go. I will allow you to question Cynna concerning the medallion—that is what you wish, I assume? I will even wish you well in your search. But then I must insist that you leave."
Kai looked at Cynna. "Ms. Weaver, do you know where the medallion is?"
Cynna glanced first at Aduello. He nodded once. She met Kai's eyes then and said quietly, "After the Ahk captured us, I decided I couldn't let them find it. I misled them. We came out of the mountains well away from the medallion's trail."
Kai glanced back at them. "She's speaking the truth."
"But I do know where it is."
Did Cullen imagine it, or had Aduello's hand suddenly tightened on Cynna's arm?
"At least I think I do," she went on. "The trail leads back toward…" Her eyes lifted as Cullen heard movement to his left, near the grand staircase. She glanced that way, where her father, Gan, and Steve were emerging… and smiled. A real smile, a Cynna smile, cocky and reckless. "This rat bastard beside me."
She jerked her arm free, pushed to her feet, and jumped.
"He's calling them!" Kai cried.
The sidhe lining the walls burst into action, swords flashing from their sheaths as they charged.
Cynna landed on the grass at the foot of the dais and rolled. Fire shot out from Aduello's clenched fist, missing her by inches.
And the woman standing silently beside Cullen—the husky woman who hadn't spoken, whom no one had introduced to Aduello—turned into eight feet of pissed-off kitty cat.
The sidhe flowed around Cullen, moving into the defensive circle they'd planned—but Cynna wasn't within that circle.
Neither was Cullen, by then. He walked forward, concentrating on fire. Fire was his, dammit—and so was the woman that rat bastard was trying to burn. He flung out his hand and sent a rope of fire to meet the one menacing Cynna.
The two flames kissed. Clashed. Cullen felt sweat break out on his forehead. Rat bastard was strong. He opened the diamond on his finger. His flame went from orange to blue… and the tips flickered into black. Aduello looked at him, startled and furious. He spoke a word, made a gesture, and his fire vanished—replaced by a wall of water shooting up from beneath the ground.
Mage fire could burn anything. Even water. But mage fire was damned dangerous to play with, and Aduello wasn't his job. Cynna was, and right now she had a problem with a sidhe slicing at her with four feet of steel.
Cullen throttled way back on the power and sent the fire that way. The sidhe screamed and fell back. Cullen raced to Cynna. "You're okay? You're all right?"
"Watch out!" she screamed.
He spun and sent fire at the pair of sidhe advancing on them. Then called it back, fast, as a huge silver-gray cat leaped on the pair.
"My father," Cynna cried. "And Steve and—hey! He's really something!"
As soon as things broke, the hellhound had drawn his sword and raced to where Steve and Daniel stood beneath the overhang of the staircase. A single guard, realizing the value of hostages, held a sword at Daniel's throat… for a moment. Then he was on the grass, watering it with his blood.
Hot damn. Hunter was as fast as he was. And a helluva lot better with a sword.
Another pair of sidhe advanced on Cullen and Cynna. There was no way he and Cynna could get inside the protective circle the Rohen sidhe had formed. Too many pressed them with both blades and magic. Lots of magic. The air was thick with it. Theil, with the power of her land-tie to draw on, was carrying the brunt of that battle from her place beside Kai.
So Cullen circled Cynna with his arm—and circled them both with a ring of fire. It would discourage the ones with blades, and for the moment, no one was pressing them with magic. Probably because they knew where the real threat lay, because their liege knew. With the still, silent woman in the center of Rohen's circle.
Kai Tallman did nothing visibly, not even to Cullen's vision. Her power lay in an area he couldn't see. The power of mind.
Aduello's wall of water vanished, He pulled a chain from beneath the silk of his shirt, closing his fist around the silver medallion that dangled from it. He wore a look of intense concentration.
Nothing happened.
"Nathan!" Kai cried. "I can't hold him!"
"What's she holding?" Cynna gasped.
"His thoughts. She's not letting him tap into the medallion to—oh, good."
The hellhound flew at Leerahan's liege in a leap any lupus would have been proud of, sailing up from the grass and through the air, the arc of his leap carrying him past Aduello—and that shiny black sword of his swung in a quick, clean stroke.
Aduello's head fell to the stony dais a second before Hunter landed. His body toppled second later, a geyser of blood shooting from his neck.
Everything stopped.
Hunter walked to the edge of the dais and spoke loudly. "Leerahan's liege was insane, driven mad by what he tried to hold. My lady tried to control his madness, and could not. I killed him. If any here dispute my judgment, you may make your claim to my queen."
"That," Cullen said very softly, "was part of the deal. Hellhounds are the only ones allowed to go around executing sidhe lords. A land liege isn't precisely a lord, but close enough."
A dark-haired sidhe—the first visibly aged one Cullen had seen—stepped forward. "I am called Raellian. I accept your judgment. My brother tried to master the medallion through his land-tie." The sidhe's face worked briefly. "He changed. He began to believe… to do things which made little sense. I was pledged to him, but I argued… he would not listen. The medallion drove him mad."
A murmur of voices rose. The sound, overall, was accepting.
"Leerahan," Theil called out strongly, "I have no desire to make claim on your land, but your land wants claiming. Your liege is dead. One of you must make the tie. Your three days begin now. Rohen will stay to witness, if you wish."
That steered the murmurs in a whole new direction.
Raellian spoke, his voice firmer now. "What of the medallion? Even I can hear it calling. It's voice will only grow louder as its need grows. Who can take it back to the gnomes safely?"
Cullen sighed. This was the part he didn't like. "I think that would be me."
"What?" Cynna's head spun. She scowled at him. "No way are you touching that thing."
"Shields," he said simply. "No one else has shields like mine. I'm the only one who can—"
"That won't be necessary," Kai said. "Look."
A small orange Buddha sat on the dais, chubby legs dangling over the edge. Smiling. The silver chain around her neck was spattered with blood, as was the heavily inscribed disk hanging from it. "Hey," Gan said, swinging her legs. "This is pretty cool."
"Gan!" Cynna sounded like she was about to cry. "Oh, no, Gan. Oh, no." She walked up to the dais. "What have you done to yourself?" she whispered.
Kai walked up and put an ami around Cynna. "She's all right. She's the true holder. I can see the bond forming already, and it's… it's quite lovely, really."
"It's okay, Cynna Weaver," Gan said kindly. "I thought it wouldn't be, when First Councilor t
old me I had to do this if Bilbo got killed. I wasn't going to. First Councilor thought the medallion wouldn't eat me because of me still being partly demon, but maybe it would. She wasn't all the way sure, so I wasn't going to do it. But then Steve Timms saved my life, and you helped, and I understood. Getting a soul hurts because then you start getting friends, and things that hurt them hurt you, too. I couldn't let my friends get their brains eaten. Just like Steve Timms couldn't let the Ahk throw those rocks at me and kill me. Because maybe I'd be okay, but none of you would be."
She looked at Cullen then, and there was something… more… in her eyes. "Not you, either, Cullen Seabourne. Your shields are good, but the medallion has been very lonely and very confused. It would have kept calling and calling, and people would have killed you to get it. And I'm one of you, so I couldn't let that happen." She giggled. "I'm one of a lot right now, but that's okay. It feels good. Like having lots of friends. Hey." She cocked her head to one side. "Cynna Weaver? Do you have any of that chocolate left?"
* * *
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Cynna collapsed onto a grassy mound. Cullen sat beside her. They'd escaped from the court proper to a space that was more outdoors than in, though the enchantment of the court lingered here. The air was warm and summery.
The sky overhead was still dark, of course. Cynna stretched out in the grass. "You think they'll be talking long?"
"For at least the next three days. I'm not sure how sidhe settle who will make the land-tie, but I'm pretty clear that it involves a lot of talking." Cullen eased down onto his side, propped up on an elbow to smile at her. "Don't worry. We'll leave long before then."
"I guess that means on horses."
"I'm afraid so. Cynna…"
Something in his voice worried her. "Yeah?"
"I know you were playing Aduello. Pretending that his glamour had stuck so he wouldn't kill you and maybe the others. I want you to know that it's okay. Whatever you had to do to keep him from guessing you were free of the glamour, it's okay. I don't mind."
