Cold Iron

by D. L. McDermott

  “Elada may find some clue as to where they have gone,” Miach insisted. “Take comfort in this: the prince needs her alive to free the Wild Hunt.”

  Elada found the scorched circle a few minutes later. Miach examined the ground and the surrounding trees. “He let her draw—enough to save herself—but he’s keeping her weak.”

  Conn had to turn away from them. His face felt wet. Beth. Beth. He had failed her.

  “Conn.” The urgent tone of Miach’s voice told him it was not the first time the sorcerer had called his name. He took a deep breath and faced them.

  “We will get her back,” Miach said. “She’s in no shape to summon the Court for him yet. He’ll need to keep her somewhere until she’s strong enough. We will find out where, and we will get her back.”

  “They could be anywhere,” Conn said.

  “Not anywhere,” Elada said sensibly. Conn did not feel sensible. “Beth was covered in blood and likely unconscious. The prince will take her someplace familiar where no one will ask awkward questions. Someplace with servants to tend to her.”

  “Elada is right,” Miach agreed. “We can question his associates, discover where he is likeliest to take her.”

  “And how will we find these associates?” Conn asked. Every minute she was in the power of the Prince Consort was one too many.

  “We don’t have to find them,” Miach said bitterly. “We’re holding one of them on the island. My son, Brian.”

  They lost precious time in the boat. They could not pass to the island, because of the iron chains in the water. Conn paced the deck, jumped to the dock before Elada could even tie up.

  The island looked different by day. There was a wild beauty in the place that no true Fae could resist. Conn saw it clearly now. Miach had not intended this to be a prison. He had meant it to be a place of reflection. There were deer on the island, and turkey, and probably hare as well. There would be good fishing in the shallow pools along the beach, and fresh water somewhere high on the hill. Conn could smell it in the air, running clear and sweet. A bow, a knife, a flint, perhaps, and a Fae could thrive here.

  Brian had all of these things, but he was not thriving. He was surviving on tinned food and spite. They found him in the parlor, sleeping like a hound on the hearth tiles. Conn had not seen this room on his last visit, but he knew it now for the place where Beth had been hurt. He might have missed the bloodstain, but the scorched circle on the floor was unmistakable. Beth.

  The boy rolled over. He was filthy, unshaven, and by the way his lip curled at the sight of his father, unrepentant.

  “The Prince Consort,” Conn said, wasting no time, “has taken Beth. Where would he hide an injured woman?”

  Brian sneered. “I’ll tell you nothing, Druid lover.”

  “You will tell him,” Miach said softly. “Or you will rot on this island.”

  The boy’s lip curled. “You can’t keep me here forever. The younger Fianna don’t like how you and Finn run things anymore. We’re tired of living in slums. We should rule here like kings. You’ve become weak, human, choosing the Betrayer and some Druid slut over your own son.”

  Conn grabbed the boy by the collar, hoisted him into the air, and slammed him against the mantle. “A true Fae wouldn’t eat out of tins like a dog. Perhaps your father has become too human to kill you, but I have not. Tell me where the girl is, now, or you die.”

  “Let me off the island, and I’ll tell you.”

  “You should know better, my son,” Miach said, the weariness plain in his voice, “than to bargain with one of us.”

  “Leave me here,” Brian sneered, “and you’ll never find her.”

  “A bargain it is, then,” Miach said quietly. “Tell us where the prince has taken her, and you may return to the mainland.”

  “Ireland,” Brian said, grinning. “He has a grand house. Old. Beautiful. A palace. Like we should have.”

  “Where is it? What is it called?” Conn demanded.

  Brian laughed. “I don’t know. He didn’t tell me, and I never traveled there. He put me out and we passed. He said I would go mad if I passed with him while I was conscious. And I can’t tell you what I don’t know. But I’ve fulfilled my half of the bargain, so you’re bound to let me go.”

  Miach’s son was smirking, playing games with them. He knew more than he was telling.

  Conn turned to Miach. The sorcerer nodded. “He has told us nothing,” he said, heading for the door. “Do what you must.”

  Conn drew the Summoner.

  “Wait!” Brian screamed. “I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you all I know.”

  Miach paused on the threshold. Conn rested the Summoner against the boy’s throat. He was done playing.

  “I don’t know the exact location,” Brian sobbed. “But it can’t be hard to find. It was huge. And it was old. And it was round. Nothing around it for miles, except a mound.”

  Miach nodded. “There are half a dozen houses, at most, answering to that description. It won’t be hard to discover which, if any, of them belong to a Fae.”

  Conn released the boy.

  They returned by boat to the mainland, an awkward journey, during which Miach served as pilot and Elada kept his eyes fixed on the sorcerer’s wayward son.

  They tied the boat up at Miach’s dock in the channel. When they reached the end of the pier and turned toward South Boston, Brian followed.

  Miach halted and rounded on his son. “I said you could return to the mainland, Brian. I did not say you could come home.”

  “You can’t—” Brian said.

  But Miach cut him off. “You are banished from South Boston. There is no longer a place for you at my table. See if the Fianna have any use for you now that you are outcast. You wanted me to be more Fae. I tried to warn you. This is how we bargain with mortals.”

  Beth wanted her practical museum clothes back, her tweed skirt and cotton blouse and snug wool jacket. Instead, the prince sent her a trunk of antique finery. There were Georgian round gowns and Victorian dinner dresses and long velvet evening coats. She knew what message he intended: that she was part of his world now.

  But she wasn’t, and never would be. She chose the plainest thing she could find, a column of pleated white silk and kidskin slippers and left the heaped boxes of jewels, the rosewood, velvet, and lacquer containers, untouched on the dressing table.

  She asked for a meal and a bath. The prince’s servants, silent, efficient, and beautiful, brought her platters of autumn fruit and wild game and cakes soaked in honey. They drew her a bath in the marble tub adjacent to her room, and scented the water with jasmine and neroli.

  She bathed and dressed and by the time the prince returned, she had made her decision. Even if Conn and Miach had bested the Manhattan Fae, that did not mean they would be able to find her here, wherever here was. She couldn’t count on them to save her.

  The prince returned after the servants cleared her meal away. He was dressed this time in a flocked gray coat sewn with pearls atop black velvet jeans. As he entered the room, his eyes traveled her body, and she forced herself not to flinch. “You should have jewels,” he said. “Citrines, to complement your eyes.”

  “I want my earrings back.”

  “Later, perhaps. When we have concluded our bargain.”

  “As you said earlier, I’m a fledgling Druid. What makes you so sure I know how to free the Court?” she asked.

  “The Druids encoded all of their secrets in their blood. If I had not been reasonably certain you had inherited their knowledge—intact—when you came into your power, you would not be here, or alive, today. And if by some mischance your inheritance is defective, then I have no further use for you.”

  He would kill her. She was too weak to fight him. He had planned for everything.

  “Is it?” he prompted. “Is your knowledge defective?”r />
  “No. I know how to free the exiled Fae. I need a solstice gate.” Another revelation that had come with her Druidic inheritance. The doors to the passage tombs in the mounds, the angles and elevations that had perplexed scholars for decades, that allowed light to shine all the way to the center of the structure on two days each year, were not calendars or ritual aids. They were gates to the Otherworld, where the Druids had imprisoned the Fae, confluences of magic and mathematics and the natural lines of power than ran through the earth to form cracks in the fabric of the world that could be widened—or narrowed—with the correct application of force. Druidic force. And there was one at the entrance to every mound.

  “There is a mound nearby,” he said. “We can pass to it.”

  Now she did flinch. She couldn’t do that again. “I’d rather walk.”

  “As you like.” He smiled, and confirmed her suspicion. He had enjoyed her distress when they passed. She was like a toy to him. He would play with her until she broke.

  They left her gilded prison and traveled down a lofty corridor flanked by wide doorways on one side and tall, corniced windows on the other. She’d already guessed the building was Georgian, but her own chamber had barely hinted at the grandeur of the structure. A palace equal to Versailles somewhere in the Irish countryside, to judge from the soft accents that floated from half-closed doors.

  There were other Fae here. As they passed an open door, she glimpsed one of the prince’s companions from the island, lolling in a canopied bed. He was not alone. The prince paused outside the door, placed a hand at the small of her back. “Would you like to join them?”

  She was not immune to the eroticism of the tableau beneath the canopy. The Fae on the bed was not as handsome as the prince, or as well-formed as Conn, but he was still exquisitely beautiful. He reclined against the headboard, one leg bent, his fingers absently stroking the gilded hair of the woman servicing him with her mouth. His eyes, though, lingered on the tangled bodies at the foot of the bed, where a pretty young brunette writhed between two muscular men.

  Beth’s pulse quickened and her mouth became dry. She tried to look away, but the prince was there at her back, grasping her wrists, turning her to face the spectacle. His breath tickled the back of her neck. “Watch them. Observe their faces. They drown in pleasure, Beth. We Fae are masters of such things. We know infinite variations.”

  “No thank you,” she said.

  “I’ve seen inside your mind, Beth. You are curious. Hungry. Insatiable.”

  “I was. Not anymore. I’m satisfied with Conn.” It was true. Before she’d gone to bed with Conn, she’d been so starved for pleasure that she’d laid carnal banquets in her mind. Imagined every sort of coupling in the privacy of her thoughts. The prince had seen them. But now that Conn was her lover, she didn’t hunger anymore.

  “At present, perhaps.” The prince released her wrists. “But ask yourself this: Would Conn have turned down the invitation? He is Fae, after all.”

  “There will only, ever, be you.” She had to believe him.

  They continued their journey through the house, past rooms heaped with treasure. Art from every century, finery from every corner of the globe. The marble hall bisecting the center of the house, which she’d glimpsed when they’d arrived, before she’d passed out, was even grander than she had imagined. The front doors were closed, but the back pair opened onto a wide terrace overlooking a reflecting pool hundreds of yards long, flanked by English gardens. At the end, glittering in the sun, was a landscaped artificial hillock: the mound.

  Bigger than Newgrange. Bigger than Clonmel. Bigger than anything she had seen in Britain, Ireland, or on the Continent. The top was covered with lush green grass, the sides faced with glittering white quartz, the whole structure ringed with deeply carved slabs of stone. The entrance was crowned by a light box, a square opening carved straight through the rock, and with the sun low in the sky, Beth could see deep into the central shaft.

  “How is it that I’ve never seen or heard of this place before?” she asked.

  “We are on private property,” he explained. “It is mine.”

  It took a moment for her to grasp his meaning. “This was where the Druids kept you.”

  “Until the Romans came,” he agreed. “They tried to break the queen’s enchantment, to mark me, over and over again. First with ink, then with iron, then with acid, and finally with fire.”

  “The enchantment,” she said, hoping against hope, “did it protect you from the pain?”

  “Oh no. Not at all.”

  They had been as bad as the Fae, her Druid ancestors. There was no denying it. And there was no excuse for it. “I’m sorry,” she said. She must not become as they had been.

  “Save your sympathy, little Druid. I’ve had my revenge many times over. Now we must strike our bargain.”

  She had thought it all through a thousand times. This was the only way. “Promise that no harm will come to Conn, that there will be no reprisals against him for conspiring with the Druids. That I can be with him.” She swallowed hard. “And I will reunite you with the Court.”

  “Conn is one Fae,” he chided. “A champion, to be sure, but not of royal blood. When you see the splendor of the Court, you will regret you did not consider your reward more carefully.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  “As you wish, then.” He gestured for her to precede him. The gravel crunched beneath her feet. Blood-red anemones bloomed along the path. Close up, the quartz walls were blinding.

  They stopped outside the entrance. She surveyed the carvings around the door, took note of the angle of the sun entering the light box, illuminating the shaft several feet inside. Yes, she knew how to do this. In theory.

  “I’m too weak to open the gate. I need to draw from you.”

  “I give you my permission.” The Prince Consort rolled back the pearl-encrusted sleeve of his coat and held out his hand. She took it. “Within reason.”

  His hand felt smooth and warm, his grip light but firm. There was a startling intimacy in the connection. She’d never drawn intentionally, with forethought, from a Fae like this. With Conn it had been instinctive. With Miach desperation and pain had guided her.

  She opened herself, pulled. The prince’s power was different from Conn’s and Miach’s, more alien, more difficult to channel and make her own. Especially since she had to keep her guard up against him, her thoughts hidden, and because it was all too tempting to enjoy it. The power buzzed over her fingers like an electrical charge and burned through her like Miach’s whiskey, smooth and intoxicating.

  His grip tightened. She was hurting him. He was a creature of careless appetite and cruel perversities and she should not care, but for all the Druidic learning she now had, she was still a woman. Inflicting pain on another being did not come naturally to her. She wasn’t certain she had drawn enough power for what she intended to do, but there was no way she could go on siphoning magic out of him. She could see how the pleasure of it had corrupted her ancestors, how it could corrupt her. She released him.

  The prince shivered and shook himself. No. He hadn’t enjoyed that at all. But the eager gleam hadn’t left his eyes either. “Do it,” he said.

  She nodded and turned to the mound.

  She’d seen the calculations when the Druidic knowledge had flooded her mind. The exiled Fae weren’t prisoners beneath the earth. That was simply a way to describe what had been done. The Fae were . . . elsewhere. The Otherworld. On earth, but removed. Out of step with the human world. To reach them, she must tilt this world until it met the next. Until the shaft in the mound led from this world into the other.

  She pushed . . . on the world. It was like standing on a teeter-totter. She was the lever and the fulcrum at the same time. Imperceptible to anyone but a Druid or a Fae sorcerer, the world shifted. The shaft of light passing through the box over the door len
gthened until it hit the back wall of the tomb, and passed through the stone.

  The gate to the Otherworld was open.

  The iron chains were gone from Miach’s study. Conn prowled restlessly as the sorcerer made phone call after phone call, directed Liam, still obstinately going about with his bruised and broken nose, and Nial, and the rest of his prodigious family as they aided in the search.

  And discreetly dispatched a car to fetch Helene Whitney home.

  Miach’s human kin treated him with respect, but not awe. Amidst the comings and goings, the square-jawed girl with the toddler reappeared and brought Miach his tea at his desk. She blithely disregarded his request for an extra lump of sugar and removed his empty cup as if from long habit. It was torture to take in the thousand little details of domestic life, this happiness that Conn had once had, and lost, and now might never know again. Not without Beth.

  He had nursed his grievances, remained out of the world, too long. He’d known it the second he’d seen Beth across that crowded gallery. Now he understood how much he had missed.

  “Two of the Fianna also went to the prince’s house with Brian,” Liam was saying.

  Miach considered, then said, “Have Angus and Kermit fetch them here.”

  Liam hesitated. “It may cause trouble with Finn.”

  “Nevertheless,” Miach said.

  An hour later Angus and Kermit, who must, Conn decided from their vividly Fae looks, be closer in blood to Miach, perhaps only great-grand or grandsons, escorted two of the Fianna in. Conn recognized Finn’s get from the island. Boys. Thin blood. Generations removed from their Fae ancestors, trying hard to conceal their terror at being “invited” by strong-bloods like Angus and Kermit to attend Miach MacCecht.

  The Fianna boys confirmed Brian’s description and fell over one another, swearing that neither of them had touched Beth or Helene. Conn thought he saw Angus and Kermit exchange amused smiles as the “guests” stammered their apologies.

  Miach dismissed the Fianna, then ordered Angus and Kermit to deal with Frank Carter. “Meet the police at the hospital,” he said. “I’ve already arranged for the detectives to be among our friends on the force. Conn can tell you what this man’s crimes are. Frank Carter is to confess in writing.”