Liam’s half-brother stood before us, but the proud figure that could have graced the hood of a tycoon’s touring car had been subtly transformed. As if someone had taken his image and twisted it, knocked it off kilter. His fawn-colored flanks heaved with each heavy, rattling breath. Blood oozed from a multitude of scrapes along his face and side, marks of the many brambles he’d stumbled through. His forelegs shook with a deep, muscular twitch that disturbed me almost as much as the look on the stag’s face. His noble features were distorted by the dazed way he moved his head, as if he’d heard a sound that was too loud for his eardrums to handle.
“Prince Wyeth,” Liam said in greeting.
“Don’t…” came the reply. A shake of the head, and then, finally, Wyeth’s face shook off the worst of his shell-shocked expression. “Don’t! Don’t you dare refer to me by that title!”
“There is no shame in your honorific,” Liam said quietly.
“There is, if it is the wrong one. And it is wrong, this is wrong! I should be the one wearing the Heir’s barding! I, not you! I was the one who trained for this. For my whole life! This is what I was meant for, what I was born for! And now you…you who know nothing…have the nerve, the gall, the audacity to plunder my destiny!”
“I didn’t ask for this.” Liam stated plainly. “And you? You are the one who knows nothing. The price the Lead Does ask of me is higher than you might think.”
“Don’t lecture me about price! You didn’t run the length of our forest, pushed your body until your heart swelled to burst and your lungs burned! You didn’t give up warm nights with a willing doe to scale the highest peaks of our woods under the summer moon! You never learned to use the fey magic in ways that could burn one’s mind, scorch one’s brain!”
“You’re wrong, Wyeth. I too learned to cross the same length of our forest. Not at your speed, no. But I learned how to do it in pitch blackness, because I had no companions to help light my way. It’s true that I never gave up nights with a willing doe, but I did give up many nights of sleep in order to find something, anything, to fill my empty belly during the winter. And I never learned to use the fey magic the way you have. If I really had any luck in my life, it was only recently that I discovered it. With the humans, the centaurs, the griffins – all the ‘lesser’ beings with whom I befriended. Outside of this close-minded world that you seem to be so enamored with.”
“You dare–”
“Why not? I’m the Heir now, and my word is law. So I’ll forgive you your unkind words to me. Just this once. And if you wish to take my place…I will give the position of Heir to you. Freely.”
“Give me?” A shiver ran up the length of Wyeth’s flank from tail to neck, and then shot up to his head. Spittle sprayed as Wyeth began to shout. “Give me? To forever mark me as the grateful little buck who was given the gift of power by the runt princeling? Even if the Lead Does permitted such blasphemy, I would throw myself off the northern cliff’s rampart before I receive your charity!”
“I’m sure Liam could recommend the right cliff for you,” I said under my breath. Wyeth was well into the process of working himself into a lather, so he didn’t hear me.
“I don’t know what foul sorcery you worked,” he cried, “but you have fogged the good sense of the Lead Does, you’ve befouled our very name by placing a human inside of our fair form, and you’ve disrespected our people by bringing her to our Sacred Grove!”
“Enough!” Liam demanded. “Stop it, before you say something you’ll truly regret.”
“I don’t regret any of my words. Or my deeds!”
Wyeth let out a hiss of anger, like a hot tea kettle. His back legs pistoned and he leaped forward. Liam was ready, and met him in mid-leap. Their antlers locked with a tooth-jarring crash and a knock of bone on bone that echoed from the distant hills.
The clash only lasted a second or two. Liam lacked a full antler on his left side, which allowed Wyeth to bulldog him around to the right. This turned Liam’s face towards me, and his face was stern, unyielding, even as he gave ground.
Liam’s cloven hooves flexed, dug deep into the soft forest loam. Smell of wet, damp earth. A whisper of sound in my ear, a hint of magic. Liam snorted, his breath a hot jet of air, and tossed his head. A gritty scrape as he heaved his opponent back a full three steps and their antlers parted.
The two stags glared at each other. Wyeth looked shocked, amazed at how far back he’d been pushed. Liam’s ceremonial headdress hung off to one side, partially blocking his vision. He shook it off in annoyance and it fell to the forest floor with a jingle.
“Go ahead, denounce me to the Lead Does!” Liam snarled. “The task they’ve set before the Heir is a death trap, and I’ll be more than happy if they revoke my promotion!”
“What good would that do? No, your lies and treachery have corrupted them beyond hope! How else could they have chosen a fawnling like you over a stag like me?” Wyeth shook his head violently. “You’re not the only one who knows how to survive on his own, and you’re not the only one with access to powers beyond his forest. Mark my words, and mark them well: I will make sure that your task ends in ruin! I’ll see you dead, or driven off into the wilderness again. Blind and halt-footed, this time!”
And with that, Wyeth dove into the thickest part of the underbrush. He disappeared in the blink of an eye, in the way that only the Fayleene could. Liam looked grimly the hole that his half-brother had punched through the greenery.
“I’d never thought of Wyeth as having the sharpest antlers in the herd,” he remarked, and his voice grew bitter. “But I underestimated the thickness of bone in his head. If he’d chosen to listen, he’d have figured out that this dragon ‘Sirrahon’ might well take care of things for him.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” I said hurriedly.
Liam pawed absently at where his headdress had fallen to the forest floor. The bright jewels glimmered through the layer of dust that coated them now. He turned to face me, almost shyly. His eyes were fever-bright and on the verge of tears.
“Dayna…” he whispered, “I didn’t know! About any of this! I…I never wanted to become the new Protector, never dreamed that my people would do this to me…”
I let out a sigh. “Yeah, I figured that. Just our rotten luck.”
“I don’t know the first thing about how to fight a dragon!”
“Well,” I said carefully, “I don’t know if that’s completely true. You did encounter one as a fawn, and you did survive with the loss of an antler.”
“I fled from it, evaded it, yes. But that is a far, far cry from what the Lead Does ask of me now.”
“There were two more. The ones that came after Galen and I arrived in your forest, the very first time.”
“I hardly played any part in–”
“Yes, you did,” I stated firmly. “Liam, you did more than you give yourself credit for. You saved my life. I don’t think you know how grateful I am for that.”
He shook his head. “You and the centaur wizard were the ones who killed those dragons. Not me. I wasn’t able to do more than keep it distracted until you turned the tides of battle. You two took care of that part.”
I considered that for a moment. When Galen and I had shown up in the Fayleene woods the first time, we’d been shadowed by a pair of dragons, each the size of a Piper Cub airplane. And it hadn’t been some random encounter. The dragons in question had been trained hunter-killers from the stable of Captain Vazura, the leader of the Andeluvian Air Cavalry.
Former leader, that was. He hadn’t murdered the Good King Benedict, but he’d known about the murderer’s identity and had latched on to his scheme so as to gain glory. On top of that, the man was a sexist pig who hated my guts. So you could say that it had been something of a grudge match.
Galen had been able to hold one of the dragons off, but only while I distracted the other and figured out a weakness we could use to turn the fight in the wizard’s favor. And then only with Liam’
s help had the second dragon been trapped for me to kill. But Liam was right about one thing: alone, not one of us could have prevailed.
So there was only one way forward, when you came right down to it. In a way, it was strange to see that the Lead Does were right. That Liam’s strengths flowed from the friends he had made in the worlds outside the Sacred Grove. He’d saved me once. And I’d refused to turn my back on him when all looked doomed for him. Galen and Shaw had both pitched in and saved him at my side.
I put on a serious face. Well, as serious as a deer face could look, anyway.
“When it comes to killing Sirrahon…I guess this is something we’re all going to have to learn. Together.”
Liam looked at me, puzzled. Then his face brightened like a child’s on opening the biggest, shiniest present on Christmas day.
“You mean it?”
“You know I do, Liam. I’m your consort, aren’t I?”
He fairly glowed at that. “So…what should we do first?”
I lowered my head, used my mouth to grasp Liam’s headdress where it had fallen. Then set it back upon his head as straight as it was possible, without hands.
“I’m not sure yet. At least about the dragon part,” I allowed. “But you know what I told you earlier? About how we need to try and find the good that’s within our family?”
“Yes?”
I gave him one of my trademark wry looks. “Forget I said anything.”
Chapter Six
We emerged from the depths of the woods and into the bright glade where we’d started early that morning. By now, the sun stood close to its zenith, and it cast a golden glow over where Shaw lay dozing on the grass. His tail twitched slowly back and forth like that of a giant housecat. Next to him, Galen leaned against a handy moss-covered boulder with his nose buried deeply in a book. My bra and panties had been hung neatly on a low-lying branch of a nearby tree, right next to the rest of my clothes.
“Grimshaw,” Galen intoned, “it appears that our companions have returned to us.”
“Eh? ‘Tis time for the noonday meal already?” Shaw mumbled, as his eyes perked open. The griffin got to his feet. He proceeded to do a feline stretch that would have made a yoga instructor jealous, and then did a double-take as he spotted Liam’s outfit. “Attend, wizard! Not all of us have returned as commoners, methinks.”
Galen gave him a puzzled look. “Perhaps I am unclear of your intent.”
“Art thou a creature of the court, or not?” Shaw approached us and knelt before Liam respectfully. “I, at least, recognize the heraldry and sigils of the ascended.”
The centaur closed his book with a snap and then trotted over to join us. “Mayhap this is true? What went on back at the grove?”
“It’s true,” I acknowledged. “The Lead Does have selected Liam as the Heir to the Protector of the Forest.”
“Even after Prince Liam himself thought that he was unsuitable?” Galen hesitated, and then made a sweeping bow. “Well, this is a pleasant surprise and an honor, your majesty.”
“Cut that out,” Liam said, annoyed. “And I don’t want to be addressed with any title for now. Believe me, this is nothing to celebrate.”
“I’m afraid that I’ve gotten off on the wrong hoof today, then. I see no downside.”
“Then you need to look harder.” Liam’s headdress slid askew again, and one of the tassels batted him in the eye. With a shake of his head, he half-slid the piece off, grabbed the dangling bit in his teeth, and tugged it free. He held the scrap of royal cloth between his clenched teeth and added, “Dayna, please tell them!”
“The Protector of the Forest wasn’t stepping down,” I explained. “He’s dead.”
I got a startled exclamation from both griffin and centaur over that one.
“Dead!” Shaw exclaimed. “Was his death fair or foul in nature?”
“The Lead Does say it was ‘fair’, but I’m not so sure,” I admitted.
Liam set his headpiece aside on a nearby stone and then looked up at me. “You think it was foul play? Why?”
“I don’t know. It’s just a few things about the Protector’s body…they didn’t look quite right to me. But that’s a forensic examiner for you. Give one of us enough time, and we’ll see a murder in every death. I’ve got no proof beyond a bad feeling. But that doesn’t really matter all that much. Whether the death was ‘fair or foul’, Prince Liam was the one who walked away with the crown.”
“And I’d gladly give it up,” Liam declared.
“Truly, ‘tis a mad world that I live in!” Shaw exclaimed, with a birdlike squawk. “How is it that I knowest not one, nay, but two heirs to a kingdom’s throne...and neither wish to embrace their duties when their people call?”
“In my case, the people hardly ‘called’ for my ascension,” Galen pointed out. “If you recall, I received the kingship by knocking my father unconscious with a blow from my fist.”
“A call to duty hath many ways to summon thee,” the griffin insisted. He cocked his head for a moment at Liam and added, “But what is this? The Fayleene looks to have grown a few inches, or mine eyes have indeed grown tricksy with age.”
The centaur wizard and I turned our attention back to our cervine friend. And sure enough, Shaw’s keen attention to detail was exactly right. I’d been roughly Liam’s height when we’d arrived at the Grove. Now, I was looking up at him. And his left antler was still little more than a bony nub, but it too had grown a couple of inches, and smoothed out its jagged edge.
“I think Shaw’s on to something,” I remarked.
“There must be,” Liam agreed. “Once I was crowned Heir, I felt…charged somehow. Like the very woods themselves were sending me energy. I feel stronger. More potent, magically.”
Galen immediately stepped forward, his ever-present curiosity aroused. “In what way? How has it affected your spell casting?”
“Let me see.” Liam closed his eyes and concentrated. Again, that same tiny whisper of magic that I’d felt as much as heard, when Liam had clashed with Wyeth – and thrown the bigger, heavier stag back.
A cloud of bright blue jays, yellow-crested kinglets, and rainbow-sheened songbirds materialized from the nearby trees and swooped in, serenading the Fayleene Heir with their song. A dozen of the jays grasped the barding on Liam’s back and carried it off, while another half-dozen did the same with his headdress. With a whirl of color and a final trill of song, they flitted back into the trees as quickly as they came.
The griffin’s tongue flicked from his beak and he exclaimed, “How marvelous! Thou canst summon snacks now!”
“Shaw,” I said, “stop with your teasing.”
“I wasn’t speaking in jest! T’was a very useful form of magic, in my opinion.”
Galen cleared his throat before Liam could add his two cents and get the argument rolling. “Speaking of useful forms of magic, it is time to turn Dayna back to a human. Unless, of course, she’s found the Fayleene form such to her liking that she wishes to remain a doe for a while longer.”
“No, thank you!” I threw Liam an apologetic look. “No offense, Liam. I like the enhanced senses, but I’ve got a meeting back in Los Angeles this afternoon. They’re going to look at me funny if I arrive like this.”
Liam chuckled. “I understand. Though in truth, I will miss seeing you in this form.”
I went to stand next to the tree where all of my clothes still hung, as if from an evergreen clothesline. Galen spoke a few sentences of magical incantation, and a golden circle of light began to form overhead. It grew slowly in brightness, like a fluorescent lamp that was just warming to the task.
“The spell returning a subject to their original form is much less dramatic,” Galen explained. “In the next minute or so, the light will envelop you and allow your body to revert back to the one of its birth.”
I nodded, shifting back and forth on my cloven hooves in anticipation. I hadn’t been kidding when I told Liam that I liked the enhanced senses. But aside
from the fact that the Fayleene were a bunch of snobs – with the occasional psychopath like Wyeth thrown in – I couldn’t wait to get my human hands back. Among other things, I needed them to pick up freshly brewed cups of coffee.
My three friends continued to watch as the shimmering light slowly grew in intensity. And right then, believe it or not, a thought occurred that made me blush.
“Um, guys?” I said. “When I change back to human, I’m going to be naked as a jay bird.”
My three friends traded a puzzled look between themselves that all but cried out: Do you know what Dayna is talking about? Because I don’t have a clue.
“Yes,” Galen acknowledged. “Typically, jay birds are without clothes.”
“Well, it’s kind of…embarrassing for me to be without clothes in my human form.”
“Why?” Liam asked. “You see us without clothes all the time.”
“That’s different.”
“And you’re without clothes right now, aren’t you?”
“I said, that’s different!”
“How?”
The shimmering light began to peak in intensity. “It just is, okay?
“Truly, ‘tis a strange notion,” Shaw added. “While human haunches are not as tasty-looking as those of a Fayleene, certainly one wouldst–”
“All right!” I barked, at the top of my lungs. “Everyone, about face!”
As one, the three swung around to look in the opposite direction.
“Goodness, I think we offended her,” Galen remarked.
“That, and someone got up on the wrong side of the meadow this morning,” Liam whispered.
“Thou speakest true!” Shaw whispered back.
The golden light engulfed me with a soundless flash. A moment of disorientation, the crawling feel of my flesh reshaping itself, and it was over. I got up from my hands and knees, reeled for a moment as I rejoined the ranks of bipeds. The forest and the sights around had shifted back to a monochromatic shade of green, and the sounds were duller, fainter.
The Deer Prince's Murder: Book Two of 'Fantasy & Forensics' (Fantasy & Forensics 2) Page 4
