Lies and Prophecy

by Marie Brennan

  ~

  “Find anything?”

  Grayson’s voice jolted me the rest of the way awake. I sat up abruptly, confused to find myself in a hospital bed. The room was empty, save for the white-haired professor and a tray with a little plastic cup on it.

  How could I cover? She’d obviously found me tranced, and knew what I had done. There was no real way to save face, but I had to try. “Professor Grayson, I—”

  “Did you think I’d forgotten you were in there with him?” she said, before the excuse was out of my mouth. “I was hoping you would do it.”

  “You what?” Confusion and fury vied for the right to choke my voice off. “You wanted me to touch a wilder?”

  “It’s dangerous, I know.” Grayson seemed unfazed by her own understatement. “The best of us are leery of letting someone touch our minds, even under the best of circumstances. Wilders are a thousand times worse. They have natural defenses—they’re taught to control them, of course, as a part of their earliest training, but conscious control left Julian Fiain a long time ago. In his state, he’s liable to kill anything that comes near him.”

  “Then why the hell did you want me to probe him?” I asked through clenched teeth. No wonder I’d had that window of opportunity, without any nurses coming in. Grayson wanted me to work uninterrupted.

  “Two reasons,” she said. “The first is that several people, all of whom I believe, have told me that no one in the world is closer to him than you. If he would trust anyone, it would be you.”

  The “if” and “would” made Grayson’s argument dangerously weak. But I clamped my jaw shut and waited to see if she had anything more convincing.

  “The other,” she went on, “is everything that’s happened since you appeared. You saw instantly that he should be released.”

  “It was obvious,” I said. “The only way to quiet him was to free him.”

  Grayson shrugged. “You saw it. We didn’t. And don’t think I missed his grip on your hand; he held on to you, when he’s tried to destroy anyone else who so much as lays a finger on him. Once he was untied, he still held on, and your voice calmed him.”

  Her gaze bored into mine, relentless. This wasn’t a professor I was facing now; it was an ex-Guardian. “He trusts you like no one else. You’re not an empath, but sometimes that bond of trust can do more to protect and aid you than any amount of talent or training.

  “Now I ask you again. Did you learn anything we can use to help him?”

  I closed my eyes against that iron voice. Could anything be gained by hiding the truth from her?

  No. When I opened my eyes, I told her what little I knew.

  “I don’t know what happened to him. But whatever it was—whoever it was—they bound him against his will. That’s why he snapped when he was tied down. If you want to preserve what’s left of his sanity, don’t try that again.” Grayson nodded, but I went on without waiting for her agreement. “Some of the rest seems all of a piece. Anger and hatred and fear. Despair. Things that could be linked with being held captive. But there are things that don’t fit.”

  Uncertainty made me stop there, until Grayson prodded me on. “Like what?”

  “He … he saw something. I don’t know what. But the feeling I got from him … like the awe you feel, when your gifts first come to life.” I shook my head. “Similar, but not the same.”

  Grayson looked puzzled, which was par for the course. How could that fit with the sink of negativity I had sensed? It seemed she couldn’t tell, either. “Anything else?”

  “Not much. Curiosity, almost strong enough to overpower everything else when it flashed through, but that wasn’t often.”

  “You said ‘they’ a moment ago,” Grayson said, backtracking.

  I nodded, biting my lip as I tried to work through it. “Someone was laughing at him. Not in a good way. I think … I think the hatred and anger were directed at those people.” But there had been others. The kind voice, the comforting touch; some of that I recognized as myself. It was enough to make me cry, knowing I had reached him. The rest of it, though—not me. “Somebody else helped him. Maybe freed him? I’m not sure.”

  Grayson nodded. “All right. Why don’t you lie back and rest a while longer. I’m surprised backlash hasn’t pounded your eyes out of their sockets yet.”

  Truth be told, I hadn’t felt anything. But as soon as Grayson mentioned it, my redirected attention brought the headache down, like a chisel trying to crack my skull in half. How much was picked up from Julian and how much was my own, I couldn’t tell. Grayson jerked her chin toward the little plastic cup, sitting lonely on its tray; I downed the tiny green pills with the aid of the water-tube sticking out of the wall. The professor stood, but before she could walk out, a thought occurred to me—all the more shaming for my failure to think of it before.

  “What about Julian?”

  She paused in the doorway. “He’s resting better now. Get some sleep yourself.” The door clicked shut behind her.

  I tried to get up and pursue—that curt answer wasn’t anywhere near enough, not by half—but I couldn’t make myself move. Bitch. The pills were taking away my headache, and most of my energy with it. They must have been loaded with a sedative, backed by a healthy slug of magical encouragement from my esteemed professor. But I could barely even muster the will to be angry before the medication folded me into dreamless sleep.

  Chapter Six

  If I hadn’t seen with my own eyes that Julian was sleeping more peacefully, I might not have been willing to heed Grayson’s “suggestion” that I go back to my dorm room. But I had, and so I went. It was easier than arguing.

  Given recent events, I should have been alert. But home was safe, and so I went on autopilot as I climbed the stairs. I had the door unlocked, opened, and shut behind me before the skin-crawling presence in my room registered. And then I lost another half-second to the thought oh, it’s just Julian before I remembered he was in the hospital.

  In that half-second, the stranger spoke. “Are you the woman who calls herself Kim?”

  My throat strangled its own shriek. My back smacked into the door, and one hand scrabbled for the knob while the other flew out as if to ward something off. But the person seated in my chair made no threatening move, no motion of any kind, and I started to feel silly because clearly it was just a—

  It wasn’t a wilder.

  It wasn’t human.

  Supernaturally green eyes. Features cast in an unearthly mold. A shock of pure silver hair no homo sapiens ever possessed. He—I thought it was a he—could pass for a man at a distance, but the way my skin was trying to crawl off my body marked that for the lie it was.

  The words stuttered out of my mouth. “Who—who are you?”

  “You may use the name Falcon.”

  Not a real answer. And not my real question. I licked my lips and tried again. “What are you?”

  He inclined his head to one side, studying me like his namesake. And then he spoke the answer my subconscious had been screaming at me since I laid eyes on him.

  “I am one of the sidhe.”

  Only willpower and locked knees kept me upright. My hand had found the doorknob, but to make a fast exit I’d have to turn my back on Falcon. And then what? Out into the hallway, to scream for my fellow students? What good would that do? And he was still just sitting in my chair, doing nothing worse than studying me.

  Though that was bad enough.

  “The Otherworld—it separated from ours long ago,” I said, in a near-voiceless croak. It had to be a joke. He didn’t look human, but it could be a disguise. A costume. Though no costume, no special effect, had ever produced anything like those unbearable eyes. Or the presence, the flesh-crawling presence of raw magical force, beyond anything that belonged in this world.

  “Yes,” he said, as if I’d commented on the weather. “But now it is returning.”

  This time my knees did give out, and I sank into a speechless heap on the floor.

/>   Falcon’s lip curled. “The changeling was right. Do you remember nothing?” My mouth worked silently, unable to form words. “Your world and ours separated long ago, yes, but that was never to be permanent. Truly, did no one remember this? Did the signs of our approach not alert you?”

  Signs of their approach. Samhain? The Tower?

  First Manifestation. A hysterical laugh almost broke free of me. Oh, to be in Sheffield’s class again. I felt like I was trying to stand in an earthquake, like a fault-line just cracked my entire world in half.

  In a way, it had. The sidhe were coming back. They were here.

  One of them was sitting in my chair.

  I occasionally had a proud streak. It nearly drowned me when I was seven and said I could swim further than my best friend Tashelle; it kept me from admitting my doubts and fears regarding CM. It also put me back on my feet, because I refused to grovel in front of this creature, even if my gifts were a pittance next to his … existence. And then pride turned to anger, which gave me the strength to come forward one step. “Are you the ones who held Julian prisoner?”

  “The changeling?” He moved one hand in an unreadable gesture. “Yes and no.”

  “I want a straight answer, gods damn it!”

  He held up his hands to forestall my fury. “The changeling was most recently in our custody, but if you refer to the damage done to him, as I assume you do, then my people are not responsible for it.” His unnatural eyes narrowed. “How much do you know of the sidhe?”

  I had no reason to believe him—except that he was still sitting there, doing nothing worse than taking over my chair. My brain kept failing to put those things together: Dorm room. Sidhe. Utter banality, and numinousness on two legs. I realized he’d asked me a question, and answered it. “Not much.”

  “Do you know of the Great Courts?”

  Courts? As in law? Or royalty? Then I understood. “The Seelie and the Unseelie.” Not just slang terms after all. Gods.

  He nodded. “I am of the former. And those who harmed the changeling are of the latter. The Unseelie are not your friends, nor are they ours. We do not make war with them—not with weapons and death—but we come very close, and when we learned they held the changeling prisoner, we took steps to oppose them.”

  “You freed him.” It wasn’t a question; the mad chaos of Julian’s mind was beginning to sort itself out. I’d scented this presence in his thoughts.

  “Yes.”

  I glanced down. Even looking at that face was hard, let alone those eyes. Gods help me if he ever met my gaze directly. If it weren’t for two years of friendship with Julian, I might have gone screaming out the door. But that wouldn’t help anyone, wouldn’t put together the pieces of this puzzle.

  Being a Guardian wasn’t about battling demons in Times Square. It was about continuing to think, long after your brain wanted to collapse from shock.

  “But Julian disappeared before,” I said, remembering the events of the last three weeks. “And before even that, there was an attack—”

  “On Samhain. He told us of it. He came to our Court briefly, as a guest. We talked with him a great deal, then. This time….” Falcon sighed. “He was not so rational.”

  “He was in the Otherworld?” My grip on calmness slipped dangerously. “How could he forget something like that?”

  “Our fault,” the sidhe admitted. “Unlike the Unseelie, with their attempt on Samhain, we have chosen to keep our presence quiet, at least for the time being. We blanked the changeling’s memory, with his permission, before returning him to this world.”

  I held onto the back of Liesel’s armchair, needing the touch of something solid. No wonder none of us could find him. He’d left this world entirely. Like—like a changeling. I cringed every time Falcon said the word, though I doubted he recognized it as a slur.

  Or did he? How much did they know about our world? Had they been watching us?

  I took a slow breath and tried to think of the basics, the questions I should have been asking from the start. “Why are you here?”

  “I myself? Because of the changeling. The damage he suffered is best healed here, in his own world. But we have not been able to track him since his return, and so I sought out you.”

  “Me? Why?”

  Falcon shrugged. “He mentioned your name often in his ravings. I assumed you were a suitable contact. Can you tell me how he fares?”

  Relief washed over me, weakening my knees again. They couldn’t track Julian—probably because of the hospital shields. We weren’t sitting ducks. I sank into Liesel’s chair, wondering what to tell the sidhe. I shouldn’t be telling him anything; I should be calling the President, or someone at the Pentagon. This was way beyond my pay grade. But Falcon said they were staying quiet, and I wasn’t about to argue with someone who could smear my mind from here to Buenos Aires. Not while he was sitting ten feet away.

  Instead I told him about Julian. “He’s … not well. What happened to him?”

  “We wish we knew,” Falcon said grimly. “But he was not in any condition to be questioned.”

  I tensed, remembering. “He’s getting better, I guess. I managed to get through to him, let him know where he was. I don’t think he realized he wasn’t in the Otherworld anymore.” The memory of his madness crawled along my bones. That, and my impressions of what caused it. “I’m afraid to know what the Unseelie did to him.”

  “I do not blame you,” Falcon replied, and the words were hardly comforting.

  Someone knocked on the door.

  I almost jumped out of my skin. Falcon didn’t, but he stared at the door as though it were a viper poised to strike. Throwing protocol to the winds, I reached out with my mind to see who was on the other side of the door. If it was who I hoped….

  “How well do you trust him?” Falcon asked.

  He was able to tell what I’d done? I wondered with a chill what exactly the limits of Falcon’s abilities were. He must have some. But first I had to deal with our guest. “Robert is Julian’s roommate, and one of his best friends.”

  Falcon nodded, and I rose to answer the door.

  Robert opened his mouth to say something, took one look at my expression, and aborted it. “What happened?”

  I paused helplessly. How did one go about explaining this? Words fell several miles short of adequacy. “You’d better come in.” He passed me, and I shut the door behind him.

  Falcon rose lithely to his feet as Robert entered, and I realized for the first time that he was fully a match for Robert in height. “This is Falcon,” I said, knowing how ludicrous my next words would sound. “He’s one of the sidhe.”

  The two looked one another in the eye, and a silent challenge hung in the air. Falcon’s manner commanded awe; he was unearthly and imposing and strange. But Robert lived with Julian—and more than that, he had boundless reserves of stubbornness, and a refusal to be intimidated. His eyes went very wide, but he met Falcon’s Otherworldly presence with fierce determination.

  Too fierce. Before it could come to a confrontation, I brushed Robert’s mind, offering him my impression of the sidhe. Not friendship, but nothing that merited a fight.

  Falcon broke the standoff by speaking. “She tells me you’re close to the changeling.”

  “He’s my friend,” Robert said. His face had a distant look, and I waited to hear what he would say. Robert had a quick mind. How much could he figure out? “How long have you been here?”

  “Before Samhain, we could not touch this world.”

  Robert nodded absently. “You’re not the one who took Julian this last time, or I’d have found Kim flinging levinbolts your way when I arrived.”

  “The Courts are real,” I said.

  Robert didn’t need more. “I see. You’re of the Seelie, then, or whatever you call yourselves. The ‘good’ sidhe. Why are you here?”

  “The separation of our worlds is ending.”

  It got only a blink, at least on the outside. “So we’ll see m
ore of this in the future.” Falcon nodded, and Robert sighed. He scrubbed at his face with one hand, then scraped it through the reddish tangle of his hair. Robert looked none too well, I noticed. He had to be worried sick over Julian, though he might not admit it—and now this. But at least he hadn’t run screaming, either. Or tried to kill the sidhe.

  “I also came to warn you,” Falcon said, lowering himself once more into my chair. “Time runs short. As of now, passage between our world and yours is not easy, and we are limited in our contact. That will not remain true for long. The way will continue to open.”

  “How long?” Robert addressed his question to the floor.

  “The worlds will become one at some future point; I cannot predict when. The passage between will open fully, however, on the winter solstice. And when that happens, the Unseelie will waste no time in reaching out to the rest of your world.”

  “Why?” I asked. The question had been burning in me since Samhain, and now it had a target. “What are they after? They attacked Julian, but what did they hope to gain from it?”

  “Who can say?” Falcon spread his hands. “Their minds are barred to me. But they seek, as they always have, to overcome their enemies, the Seelie Court. Whatever their purpose in coming after your friend, that victory was their ultimate goal. It always will be. Humans are merely a means to that end. And now their first method has failed, they will find another. This is why I warn you. We will do what we can, but you must be prepared to defend yourselves, or else become the slaves of the Unseelie.”

  His matter-of-fact delivery was more chilling than the most portentous proclamation could have been. But if the attack on Julian was only the first step, then Falcon probably wasn’t being ominous enough.

  They wanted to enslave us, he said. How? Had they tried to rip Julian’s mind out? I shuddered, but forced myself to consider it. No, that made no sense; that would have made him an automaton, not much more use than a golem. Surely they had no need of that. Maybe they’d tried to rob him of his magic—except that made no more sense than my previous idea. The sidhe had plenty of magic without stealing ours. One look at Falcon made that clear. I didn’t like the idea of asking Julian when he woke up—it would be too much like asking him to relive it—but I didn’t see any other choice. To defend ourselves against the Unseelie, we had to know what they were trying to do.