SELECTED PRAISE FOR
ANNE KELLEHER
“Anne Kelleher will not disappoint…[she] keeps you glued to the pages with anticipation and rewards your diligence with every word.”
—Writers Unlimited on Silver’s Bane
“Anne Kelleher has written a spellbinding work.”
—Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine on Silver’s Bane
“A stand-out fantasy/romance from this talented author.”
—FreshFiction.com on Silver’s Bane
“Silver’s Edge is a first-class fantasy.”
—In the Library Reviews
“Pure fantasy with a cutting edge.”
—Romantic Times BOOKclub on Silver’s Edge
“This book has it all…. Set aside a few hours to read this one. You will not want to put it down.”
—Writers Unlimited on Silver’s Edge
SILVER’S LURE
ANNE KELLEHER
For Donny.
Glossary of People and Places
Meeve—High Queen of Brynhyvar, Queen of Mochmorna
Briecru—her Chief Cowherd
Morla—Meeve’s twenty-seven-year-old daughter, Deirdre’s twin sister
Bran—Meeve’s fifteen-year-old son
Lochlan—Meeve’s First Knight, head of the Fiachna
Connla—Meeve’s older sister and Arch Druid (Ard-Cailleach) of all Brynhyvar
Catrione—druid and daughter of Fengus, King of Allovale
Deirdre—Meeve’s other daughter, druid
Cwynn—Meeve’s son, raised by his grandfather
Auberon—King of Faerie
Finnavar—Auberon’s mother
Loriana—Auberon’s daughter
Tatiana—Loriana’s friend
Timias/Tiermuid—Auberon’s foster brother
Macha—the Goblin Queen
Brynhyvar—the Shadowlands, inhabited by mortals and trixies, call khouri-keen by themselves and gremlins by the sidhe
Ardagh—central point in Brynhyvar
Mochmorna, Allovale, Gar and Marraghmourn—four main provinces of Brynhyvar
Lacquilea—country to the south of Brynhyvar
Eaven Morna—Meeve’s principal residence
Eaven Avellach—Fengus’s principal residence
Dalraida, Pentland—territories lying within Mochmorna and Gar, respectively
Far Nearing—peninsula on the eastern shore of Brynhyvar
White Birch Grove—druidhouse where Catrione and Deirdre live
Faerie, TirNa’lugh or the Other World—otherworldly country bound to Brynhyvar, inhabited by sidhe and goblins
Contents
Before
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
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Afterward
BEFORE
Below
At the bottom of the World, the Hag crouched on the jagged stone lip of her fire pit. Her face was washed with an orange glow by the crackling flames. Her breath whistled between the gaps in her teeth as she chanted, “Now the fire’s nice and hot, now’s the time to stir the pot. Take the changeling, toss it in, stir it hard and watch it spin.” She cackled softly in anticipation. Her claws skittered across the surface of the milky moonstone globe she cradled in the crook of one arm like an infant. “Make the water into stew, season it with something new, hair and bone and blood and skin, once we put the changeling in, boil brew and fire burn and dark to light will then return…” Her voice trailed off, but her words continued to echo off the lichen-lit vault above her.
She was waiting for Herne to bring her the changeling whose birth had turned her from Mother into Hag. The birth of her first offspring, the goblins, had turned her from Maiden into Mother. Mortals and sidhe had followed, but it was the last birth that signaled a turning of the Wheel in the Worlds above. The mortals, bless them, would react like ants dispossessed of their hill, the sidhe—who alone would know what was happening—would shake their heads at the mortals’ antics and the khouri-keen would burrow deep into their dens beneath the surface, only emerging when all was renewed. But the goblins—they would see it as the opportunity it was.
“And why shouldn’t they?” she whispered as she worked. Of all her children, she had come to love them best. They were the easiest to satisfy.
She hawked and spat onto the moonstone, and images of the dark, dirt-lined cave swirled through its milky surface. In it, she saw Herne’s fire-lit face as he bent over her mountainous belly, and for a moment, she was Mother once again, back in the birth chamber, red skin flushed and wet with sweat, body wracked with birth pangs. They’d both known this infant would be their last in this particular incarnation of reality.
The memory of herself splayed like a spider, arms back, thighs thrown wide flashed through her, even as she saw its image reflected in the globe. Her belly contracted once more in a painful heave, doubling her over, causing her to nearly drop the moonstone. She clutched it close, closed her eyes, and saw against her eyelids her final impression of Herne as he caught the caul-covered infant as it slithered out, slick with blood. Through the translucent whiteness of the membrane, she glimpsed a squirming body covered in matted hair.
One blink, and she’d found herself here in her cavern, skin mottled blue-gray, teeth yellowed and jagged, her stick clenched between contorted fingers.
She set the stick aside and for a while, she was busy. The blood that rolled between her thighs and down her legs dried to a slow drip, then stopped and crusted, falling off in flakes that the thirsty stones absorbed. She filled the cauldron, sorted through the contents of the feathered bags made from the carcasses of the Marrighugh’s ravens, summoned up the fire sleeping at the bottom of the fire pit. Finally she turned to her globes that formed the supports on which her cauldron rested.
Besides the cauldron, which was as much a part of her as her own belly, they were her dearest possessions. She cherished and prized them above all else. Originally there had been four, one for each of the primal Elements that made up the Worlds. They had come to her, one by one, when the World was new, and she and Herne were young. With them, she and Herne had created all that was and would ever be.
Now there were only three, the fourth, her favorite, having shattered with such force that it generated a whole new race of beings, each of whom held a piece of the globe. She thought about collecting the pieces of the globe some day, and putting them back together, restoring the fourth globe to its proper place. But that would represent a bigger change than she felt prepared to deal with, and so, while the idea appealed to her, she ignored it for the moment. Some day, though. It amused her to think about it.
She dragged each of the remaining three to the lip of the phosphorescent sea, dipped them into the salty water, then rubbed them clean. When she was finished, she regarded them critically, trying to decide which of the three remaining she liked the best: the black obsidian smoldering with the memory of the fire that had forged it; the lustrous white pearl gleaming pink in the fire pit’s glow, or the moonstone, greenish in the reflection of the phosphorescent sea. She lifted the moonstone, regarding the shifting clouds within its depths. Its surface was as changeable as the Air for which it stood, and she thought this one could be her favorite for a while.
She set the moonstone in its place. It formed a triangula
r support for her cauldron over the pit along with the globes of moonstone and pearl. With the obsidian and the pearl, it formed a triangular support for the cauldron over the pit. With a great heave and a strength that completely belied her appearance, she set the cauldron in its position. She poked her crooked staff below the black kettle’s rounded bottom, into the center of the fire, and the flames leaped up. She stuck her stick into the brew and gave it an experimental stir. At once she frowned at the image that came swirling out of the depths. She bent her head to take a closer look, just as the gelatinous sea began to boil.
In the cauldron, the image swirled away as swiftly as it had risen. The Hag lifted her head, squinting across the rocky shore into the green glow that rose off the phosphorescent water, then licked her lips as the tips of Herne’s horns broke the surface at last. Water gushed off his broad forehead, cascaded through his black curls like a curtain as his enormous head and shoulders pushed up and out of the sea, revealing the chest and upper arms of a man atop the body of a bull. He strode slowly up the sloping lip, onto the jagged surface of the shore, the razor-sharp edges of the rocks smoothing themselves under his hooves as he approached. His wet tail flicked from side to side, his eyes gleamed red.
His arms were empty.
The Hag withdrew her stick and scurried to the other side of her cauldron. “Where’s the changeling? Where’ve you got it? My cauldron’s hungry and wants its head.”
Herne folded his arms and wouldn’t meet her eyes.
The Hag hissed. “What is it, Father? Where’s the changeling? The cauldron’s cold and must be fed.”
“It’ll have to wait a bit.”
She tried to catch his eye, but again, he wouldn’t look at her. Something dark and ugly uncoiled in her gut, and the Hag took another step closer. “What have you done now, Father?”
“You didn’t see him,” Herne whispered. “You didn’t see him as he was born.”
The end of her stick flared red and in disbelief, she watched tears trickle down his face. “Him? That thing is not a him—it’s not a child meant to live—it’s a changeling for the pot.”
“That pot’s all you ever care about,” Herne thundered. The ground shook, a rock tumbled down and splashed into the sea. In the depths, leviathan shapes shuddered and spun.
The Hag curled both hands tightly around her staff and stood her ground. “That’s what I’m supposed to care about—I’m the one who keeps it all turning. You knew what had to be done even before it was born—we both did. Now go and get it, and bring it here. You know what must be done.”
“It can wait.”
An emotion so foreign the Hag didn’t initially recognize it traced a cold finger down her spine, and she peered up at Herne. The only moment she could compare it to was the moment the pink crystal globe had shattered. It was a moment that was irretrievably different from the moment before it, one that separated time into now and then, before and after. “Wait?” she rasped. Pain lanced through her chest and a sea began to boil deep inside her lungs. “What did you do to the changeling?”
“The sidhe-king took him.”
“What?” A fit of coughing overtook her, and she felt a gush of rheumy mucous rise up from somewhere deep inside. She hawked and spat. The gob was flecked with streaks of blood. Now the fire’s nice and hot, now’s the time to stir the pot. The words danced through her mind and she stared up at Herne, wondering if he realized that the fire now burning in her lungs was his fault. “You let it happen, didn’t you—you gave it to the sidhe-king, didn’t you? Why? Why would you do such a foolish, careless thing? It’s not a child—it’s a changeling. It’s not meant to grow up—it’s meant to go in my stew.”
“He was so beautiful, Mother,” whispered Herne. “You were gone, the moment I pulled him from you. You didn’t see…You couldn’t see…how different he was…from all the others…all the other changelings…” His voice trailed off, he closed his eyes and shook his head. Then he looked down at his open hands, gazing with something like wonder on his face. “I never saw such a perfect child—his arms and legs so round, so pink. He was like a rose dipped in milk, and his eyes were green, then gray and his head was covered in curls soft as spider silk and black as—” He broke off and turned away, his hands clenching into fists.
“Black as the shit you’ve landed us in,” the Hag screeched. “Blacker than any midnight you’ve yet to see—have you forgotten Lyonesse?”
“He’ll come down to your cauldron sooner or later—everything does.” Herne reared back, narrowed eyes flaring red. His chest appeared to broaden and deepen, his head widened so that more than ever he resembled an enormous bull towering over the tiny woman.
The Hag didn’t flinch. Another burst of coughing overtook her and this time the phlegm landed next to Herne’s foremost hoof. “And how long do you expect me to wait, Father? What will feed my cauldron? What will keep it turning, while this beautiful changeling of yours slithers through the land?”
“I’ll bring him myself if he causes trouble.”
“He’s already caused trouble—I saw it in my cauldron. I didn’t understand what I was seeing, but I do now. All Faerie’s in uproar—Father, what do you think you’ve started?”
“I was going to say his hair was black as yours was, Mother.” Herne dropped his shoulders and turned away, head bent. “Perhaps I should’ve brought him here, let you see. You’d understand.”
“Of course you should’ve brought it here. It doesn’t belong in the World. It belongs in the cauldron. That’s the way it goes—take the changeling, toss it in, stir it hard, watch it spin.”
“I couldn’t let you do that.”
“Bring it here at once.”
Herne shook his head. “I can’t do that.”
“You have to do that.”
“It’s already too late—they gave him a name.”
A name. The first anchor of awareness into one’s own flesh for every being—no matter what sort of being it was—began with a name. A changeling never had a name. It wasn’t supposed to live long enough to need one. The disruption she’d glimpsed in the cauldron was a greater rift than she’d realized. “You have to fix this, Father.”
“Why can’t you just agree to wait a bit? You know he’ll end up here eventually like everything else.”
The weight of all existence fell upon her like an enormous rock, and for a moment she wondered if she would ever breathe again. Automatically, because it was the only thing she knew to do, the Hag tottered to the cauldron. She dipped her stick into the brew, and the cauldron rolled gently, settling into place onto the three globes. Tentatively, feeling as if the ground beneath her feet might open and swallow them all, she began to stir in a widening figure eight as she frowned into the broth. “This isn’t something easily undone, Father. This one’s got away from us—gotten itself a name, even. Oh, this is a clever one, indeed. Cauldron only knows what havoc this one will wreak.”
The weight was like a black cloak, settling over her as dense as the soupy water lapping against the rocks. It choked her throat, made the words hard to form and turned her voice into a guttural growl. “Round about the circle goes, dark to light and back it flows, now the fire starts to burn, and the brew begins to churn. Gently simmer in the pot, while the changeling-child rots—take it, break it, let it burn, that Hag to Maiden then return.” But even as she chanted, even as she bent her back and pulled the stick through the frantically bubbling brew, she knew it was already too late.
1
THEN
White Birch Druid Grove, Garda Vale
The trixies were restless and the butter wouldn’t churn. Meeve’s messenger, one of her elite corps of warriors called the Fiachna, and sorely afflicted with arrogance, had come and gone and Catrione had been glad to see him go. Since dawn, rain had been sluicing off the thatched roofs like water from an overturned bucket, and while at one time, the thought of his wet, uncomfortable journey might’ve quietly pleased her, this was the first quarter
Catrione had ever served as Ard-Cailleach, the head sister of the Grove, and she was too caught up in the turmoil spiraling all around her to give him another thought.
She dodged the widest puddles as she hurried across the chilly yard toward the low stone still-house, but her feet were soon soaking wet, her hems sodden. The oldest cailleachs, on whom she might’ve relied for support and advice, had all left for the MidSummer rites at Ardagh, summoned there early to a special conclave by the ArchDruid, Connla. Catrione, being one of the younger sisters and head of the Grove for the quarter was left with the few druids either too old to travel or too young to be called. There were reports of blight spreading across the land, of increasing numbers of unnatural births—two-mouthed fish and six-legged calves—and rumors that goblins were stirring. The queen’s messenger didn’t say why Meeve wanted her daughter, Deirdre, home. He had not once looked directly at Catrione, nor any of the other druids, and after he left, the serving maid who’d warmed his bed spoke of trouble between the ArchDruid, Connla, and the Queen.
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