Courts of the Fey

by Martin H. Greenberg

  “Here!” Robin coughed, and the window swung wide. “Best way. Jeremy—”

  He shoved her out, his boot catching the windowsill, and launched himself into empty space as the silver whistle of the lord of Unseelie calling his hounds pierced the Keep, a deadly thread through the eye of a frozen granite needle. They fell, and the lance shivered as it shredded into insubstantiality. His arms closed around Robin’s warm living weight as they plummeted free of Unwinter.

  The phone shrilled, but he ignored it. It was just another job lost. He could find work anywhere.

  Her feet were a mess. He dabbed them with iodine ; she hissed in pained breaths and leaned back, her skirt falling away from bruised knees. Crouched on the bathroom floor, he glanced up at her drawn, flour-pale face and her messy, glowing curls. “Sorry.”

  “I don’t know why you’re bothering. They’ll heal. And there’s a blood trail leading them here.”

  “Let them come.” He smeared the antibiotic cream as gently as he could, wiped his fingers, and reached for the gauze. “We won’t be here.”

  “Gallow—” Another hissing breath, she flinched.

  He glanced up again, his jaw setting itself. “Or, maybe Unwinter won’t come, having what he wants.” It sounded unreasonably hopeful even to him.

  “He doesn’t have what he wants.” Robin’s shoulders hunched. Her arms were bruised, too. What had she suffered before he’d arrived? “I told the truth—I did reserve a phial of the vaccine. He didn’t stop to ask if what I showed him was that particular vial.”

  Of course. “What was really in it?”

  “Holy water.” She gingerly took her foot back as he finished.

  He cupped her other heel, lifted it, examined the damage. “You are dangerous, Robin Ragged.” Blessed water would either do nothing or it would burn fae flesh. Most likely the latter, since they were Unseelie.

  “Isn’t treacherous the word you want?” She moved as if she would free her foot from his grasp, but his fingers tightened. “I should go.”

  Not yet. “You’re not going anywhere. Why were you in Unwinter?”

  “I told you.” An aggrieved sigh. “I heard you—ssss, that hurts. I heard you calling.”

  “And you came to rescue me?”

  “There were also Unseelie chasing me. I thought ...”

  But she didn’t say what she thought. Instead, she leaned back against the toilet tank, alarmingly white, blue eyes half-lidded and her throat working. She was gaunt, her collarbones standing out, and his chest hurt. If fae were susceptible to cardiac arrest, he might think he was having one.

  “You thought to rescue me. Funny. I thought to rescue you.” The necklace glinted, wrapped around his wrist as he cleaned the shredded flesh. “An Unseelie trick, perhaps.”

  She jerked her foot back. “If you’re accusing me of being in league with Unwinter—”

  “Shut up.” He yanked on her ankle. “And settle down, so I can bind these. Where are your shoes?”

  “Lost one when the barrow-wights came for me; lost the other when a group of spreggan—ow! What are you doing, whittling the cuts deeper?”

  “No, just cleaning them. Unwinter will hunt us for this, Robin.”

  “They won’t care much for you. In any case, it matters little. They’re plagued.” A dismissive shake of her tangled curls. “If I stay free long enough, there will be few of them left to hunt me. Or Unwinter will go to Summer for the vaccine, and nobody will care about me.”

  “You are an optimist. The Queen has reason to hunt you too.”

  “Which makes this an excellent time for me to begin a-wandering, as soon as you’re finished torturing my feet.”

  “We.”

  “What?” She shook her head again, like a tired horse. “Gallow, cease. I should be going.”

  “We are going a-wandering, Robin. Not me, not I, but we. If you mean to stay ahead of Unwinter’s hunt, and free of Summer as well, you’ll need me.” His throat was oddly dry, so he focused on her foot, the iodine sting-smelling and staining. More antibiotic cream, and she was silent as he finished and reached for the gauze.

  “I don’t need you, Gallow.” A whisper, as if her own throat was dry as well. “I’ve stayed free so far.”

  “And they tricked you into thinking I needed you, and you came.” He wrapped the gauze, taped it, and found the slippers he’d put on the bathtub’s rim. Blue, with embroidered roses.

  They had been Daisy’s. They were slightly too tight, with the gauze, but they would serve to protect the bandages. She would only need them a short while. The Half healed quickly.

  His hands moved independently of him, capping the iodine bottle, gathering the refuse of bandaging. “I’ll cook you something. We can rest for a few hours, but before midafternoon we should be gone.”

  “Jeremy.” Now she was hugging herself, palms cupping her sharp elbows. “I am not my sister. I’m not Daisy. I won’t ever be her.”

  Is that what you think? That I want you to play her to me? “I never asked you to be.” The lie stung his mouth. If she hadn’t looked so much like his mortal wife, he would never have followed her that first night.

  Or would he have followed, curious, and let the plagued Unseelie rider chasing her strike to kill? There was no way of knowing now.

  The phone shrieked again. He hauled himself up, glancing at the bathroom mirror. It was speckled, and he was pale. His eyes burned, and he looked more fae than he could ever remember seeming. He unwound the necklace from his wrist, laid it on the counter.

  “I’ll repair that before we leave.”

  He was a fair cook, and they were both hungry. Robin said no more, but she didn’t demur when he led her into the bedroom after a breakfast he could barely remember eating thirty seconds after finishing. He set his alarm for just past one and sank down next to her, pulling the blankets up over them both. He tucked her in, moved closer, and tried to ignore the stiffness in her when he slid an arm around her waist. Dawn had well and truly risen, sunlight striking the closed window and fingering the blinds.

  “Relax,” he said into her hair. “You’re safe, Robin. I promise.”

  He still had his boots on, just in case. The Hunt did not ride by daylight . . . but still. The discomfort kept him awake for a full five minutes before sleep claimed him, and as the darkness covered him he realized she was still tense. Yet her hair still smelled of spiced pears under the tang of Unseelie, iron, and copperblood pain, and for the first time in months Jeremy Gallow slept without dreams.

  He sat up in bed, blinking, the pillow next to his holding a dent from her head and something shining, a supple curve.

  He grabbed the necklace. It was repaired, a Realmaker’s skill still vibrating in the metal. His boots hit the floor.

  His front door opened. He heard the familiar squeak and thump, and he crashed through his bedroom door and the hall. “Robin!”

  The slippers were neatly placed next to his battered couch, the television’s blind eye watching. He had once put his fist through that glass gaze, and remembered Robin kneeling in front of it, patting the shards and slivers back into place.

  Her hair was combed, her dress was patched. The bruises on her arms were fading, yellow-green and shrinking instead of purple-red and fresh. Her hand tightened on the doorknob, and thin winter sunshine was a haze around her.

  She stepped over the threshold. There was a swish of blue skirt, a puff of brown feathers, a flash of crimson, and Jeremy’s knees buckled.

  She was gone.

  Dusk came in a glory of orange and red. Jeremy stood at the edge of the grove of trashwood, looking up the hill. The marks on his arms tingled and itched, alive with danger and sharp exhilaration.

  Up the hill, the trailer gleamed. Smoke billowed, and the flames peeking out through the windows had a good hold. Sirens echoed in the distance.

  It was a good way to break his trail, and hers. He waited as the sun sank, drawing back further into the grove and watching the struggle to co
mbat a fae-laid fire. He’d been thorough; there would be nothing but ashes left. It wouldn’t spread to his neighbors, at least.

  Purple twilight gathered in corners, and through the mortal hubbub came another sound. Jeremy’s head lifted, and he picked up the duffel at his feet.

  It was a thin crystalline whistle, an ultrasonic hunting cry. Any fae within hearing would be frantically digging for shelter; the few humans who could hear it would shiver without quite knowing why and find a reason to stay indoors.

  The Wild Hunt was afoot, and early.

  Jeremy’s lips skinned back from his teeth. He hitched the duffel onto his shoulder and turned away from the ruins of his mortal home.

  The Hunt would find her, no matter how canny she was. All he had to do was follow them, and when they found his Robin he could strike.

  And they would be the hunted.

  The fire crackled and hissed.

  Gallow vanished into the coming night.

  AN ANSWER FROM THE NORTH

  Sarah A. Hoyt

  Along the perfect corridors of the glittering palace of air and light, the intruder came striding. Gloved and attired like the Lords of Fairy, in velvet and silver he came, dark hair glossy, every feature perfect, and his blue eyes sparkling like the ice that had once protected the children of magic.

  Wherever he stepped, his iron spurs clinked against the tiles and left dark marks upon the polished marble floors. And behind him, the beautiful ladies of fairy grew a little paler; the singers of elf-land grew a little quieter, and light flickered and faded just a little.—while magic seemed to flicker and waver, like a flame on the edge of extinguishing.

  “To see Albric,” he came, he said. “The High King of fairies,” he said. “Or elves, or the bright ones, or whatever you call yourselves. For I care not. But I will see him, or else I will sit in your palace like a blight. I will not leave and I will not tire until you agree to see me and to meet my terms.”

  Behind their fans, the ladies of fairyland looked yet paler, their gazes long with fright, and a messenger, a puck, one of the humble woodland fairies, was sent to summon his majesty.

  That was how King Albric sat with the stranger and heard from his rude human lips the conditions and terms laid by his race onto the fair ones, the shimmering ones, the blessed ones—the ones who’d married the land in her youth and espoused her in her splendor, those who harnessed her magic to their purposes, and looked over creation with a benevolent eye.

  He was not old, not as his race reckoned it, but he remembered when ice covered all of the land, making it glitter like a jewel and sparkle with magic. Before human kind, before fire, before the poisoned iron that ripped open the womb of the land and poisoned it ever after for magic and fairy kind alike.

  Then the humans had come, from the south—bringing plow and fire and war-like ways, and hastily built houses, and temples to their barbarous gods. They had no magic and they warred all the time—against the remaining ice; against each other; against their gods and against the world. Ephemeral creatures, the king had thought them. Passing. They meant nothing. They would be nothing. Nothing would mark their passage and after they vanished again, their iron would go with them and fairykind would resume its play upon the face of the Earth.

  Instead they’d grown, populous and fractious, and now one of them was here. Right here, in the palace of fairykind, unafraid and demanding.

  Albric came into the room, wearing his cloak woven of dark, starlit nights, his tunic spun from silken butterfly wings, and met the human who seemed to Albric to be more solid, more whole, made of finer stuff than Albric himself.

  And when they sat together, the human commanded, as though he were the victor of some war that Albric wasn’t aware of fighting, “You will leave all these lands to us,” the human said. “every fertile field. Every pasture meadow. You do not use them and you do not need them. You can retreat to the desolate places, the rocky lands that will not admit plow. You may haunt the lakes and the dreary forests, but you will not,” the human said, looking at the king with his icy blue eyes full of disdain, “you will not take woman or babe. You will no more replace our children with your mewling changelings, nor will you make it so that buildings collapse unless a blood offering is made.”

  Albric had opened his mouth to protest that he’d never done any of those things. Aye, women or babes his court might have taken, now and then, but only for love of the lost and abandoned or to prevent their dying a cruel death in the dark woods. But changelings and human sacrifice—or blood sacrifice of any kind—that he’d never demanded, never thought of. His kind lived of the natural-born grains, the natural-grown berries, the naturally spun magic of the world. The others, the dark ones, those ruled by the Queen of the North, might demand more even of the ephemeral, iron-bearing humans. His kind did not.

  But then he realized protest would be for naught. The humans knew only two kinds: human and not; iron and magic; elf and not elf. They would not be swayed nor consider that within a kind many kinds subsisted, nor would they temper their hatred for one for the sake of the other.

  Instead, he’d thought he needed to gain time. He needed to find if this man were a mere messenger or what his power was to deal with the king. And if he had the authority, Albric must sway him. “And who be you,” he asked. “Who would dictate to the king of magic?”

  The man smiled and looked up, unbowed. “I am Cedric,” he said. “Ruler of my tribe and I speak for all humans who, after us, might live in this land.”

  “And what gives you that right? How can you dictate to us? What will you do if we throw you out and ignore your demands?” the king asked, and tried to ignore the feeling that came from the stranger, and the way the light dimmed and bent around him, as if he were not a mere ephemeral human, but something else, something new.

  “Ah. I dictate by right of plow and iron. If you throw me out, I will come back.”

  “With warriors?”

  “With plows,” Cedric said, and smiled. “And I will tear your palace, and I will plow your land. And I will sow it with iron-laced salt, so that your kind will be no more of this world nor of the next, but captured in between, caught and bent, and unable to live or die while you watch my kind thrive and grow and forget you.”

  “And how did you find our palace?” the king asked. Never before had a human been able to find it unless the elvenfolk wished him to, much less to come into it with iron spurs and ill intent.

  But Cedric only smiled and bowed. And his blue eyes reminded the king of something he wished he could forget. His features reminded the king of his own, glimpsed before his mirror every morning. Albric thought and he thought but he couldn’t remember any indiscretion with a human maiden that could have created this fierce foe.

  Instead he turned his mind to more important thoughts—how to defend from the attack, how to thwart the enemy, how to get Cedric-who-could-violate-fairyland subdued or bought, or silenced. And then, now awake to the danger, Albric would think of a way to turn the humans from the door, to tame them, or to slow them. If they weren’t going to die off, they’d need to be contained, so fairykind’s magic would not die, so elves could survive.

  It was the humans or the fey.

  “Well, Cedric, I lay it upon you, while I think over your message, that you stay with us and share with us bed and board and ease. That you listen to our music, that you taste of our mead, that you be our friend before you are our foe.”

  He expected refusal or else confusion. Surely the man knew—by now they all knew—that tasting the mead of fairyland meant the mortal would leave no more. And if this Cedric who could walk in fairy and bring iron to the hallowed precincts were vanished, surely the other humans would take fright.

  But Cedric only smiled and said, “Three days you have to think. Three days, three nights and not one more, oh king of those who ride the winds and dance at secret revels in the heart of moonlit nights. Three days I’ll bide with you and drink your mead and taste your delights.
Three days and not one night more.”

  In his room, the king called forth Peaseblossom, his attendant nymph and swift rider of the currents of air. Writing fast, in words of light upon a sheet made of dragonfly wings, he sketched a message to an ancient foe. We are besieged, my lady, he wrote. By a human named Cedric, who commands a band of men bearing iron and fire, and who threatens to destroy and desecrate this our abode, unless we agree to be banished to the lands his people neither want nor need. Unless we agree to give up our magic dwelling upon this blessed land and retreat to desolation, he will make us less than ghosts and more than dead. I ask your help. Your people ever were better at fighting and destroying, at cursing and blighting. Now we need your magic to fight this man—to find how he can see our palace and violate our presence with iron. To find how we can make him and his people go away and torment us no more.

  He sealed the missive with his magic ring and handed it to Peaseblossom, who looked back at him with wide, frightened eyes, and who seemed almost as colorless as the winds she rode.

  “Take this,” he said. “Over the bridge of air to the Queen of the Northern Lights. And tell her that it is urgent and not something she should delay, no matter what her resentment against me.”

  Peaseblossom had bowed, her fright glimmering forth from her like a frosty current, and then she vanished, running, towards the invisible bridge that extended between the bright court and the dark.

  That he should have to ask her help rankled Albric, but nothing could be done on that score. If, for once, the queen saw the urgency and acted to save his people and hers all would be well. Could she doubt that, after doom befell him, his own fate would befall her?

  He had a memory of eyes of glimmering ice, of dark, glimmering hair, of her red, red lips so soft, so warm, so yielding, and of her face beautiful like the visions of angels that men tried to sculpt out of clay. He remembered her touch and her smell and the perfume of her skin.