Oh great. Totally insane too.
“I’m so looking forward to your hot cocoa,” Lady Blackbird fluttered at him, as if we were honored guests. “It’s quite famous throughout the realm. Lord Falcon will be so jealous that I had the opportunity to try it.”
Walter beamed at her and I took advantage of the distraction to touch the crystal globe with the barest brush of my thoughts. It felt like the crystal in the cave had, resonant and clear. He didn’t seem to notice my poking around, though he’d been unusually sensitive to any more overt magic.
“Falcon is crazy for my cocoa—and my dragons. He shall have neither!”
“I’m impressed that you control them.” I used my best suck-up-to-the-eccentric-senior-scientist attitude and Walter laughed.
“See, at the Western Keep, here there be dragons.” He waggled his eyebrows at me. “Gwynnie gets the joke.”
Though he’d been speaking in the fae tongue—or one of them, since I sometimes suspected there were different dialects for the various tribes and species—I finally got the clue.
“You’re another immigrant. Like me.”
And another sorcerer.
Walter belly laughed and pointed a finger at me. “You didn’t know. You’re such a babe in the woods.” He fell to the side in the too-big throne, laughing hysterically.
“Nuttier than a drunk pig in a henhouse,” Starling whispered sideways to me. One of Puck’s many sayings that never made a bit of sense.
“The ‘mighty sorceress Gwynn.’” Walter made air quotes with his fingers and pounded his feet against the throne, he was laughing so hard.
“When and where are you from?” I had to raise my voice so he could hear me and he abruptly sobered, sitting up straight.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” he crooned, taunting. “But you don’t get to. No. No, you don’t.”
“Why did you bring us here, if not to talk?”
“I only meant to bring you, Gwynnie sweet. Your companions were unexpected.”
“Then send them back. Sounds like this is just between you and me.”
“No!” Starling whirled on me, but Blackbird put a restraining hand on her arm. Darling vowed his protection. And apologized that the floor was too hot for his paws. I did feel a little bit like Dorothy, holding Toto in my arms while facing the great and terrible Wizard of Oz.
Who turned out to be a humbug.
Important insight.
Walter was drumming his fingers on the crystal globe. “What’s in the box?”
Starling clutched it to her chest. “Nothing.”
“Show me.”
She opened the lid to show him the empty interior and he snorted. “You people are nuts! But maybe I want to keep all of you.”
“Maybe we don’t want to be kept.”
“No?” He waved the staff at the empty room. “Do you expect to be rescued? Nobody knows you’re here. Not even your precious Lord Rogue. But he is, ah, otherwise occupied, isn’t that right?”
I tensed, though I tried not to show it. “What do you know of it?”
He went back to stroking the globe, peering into it with affection. “I know all kinds of things. I am so much more powerful than you are. I really can’t believe the press you get. It’s so not fair.”
“Maybe living out in the middle of the ocean has something to do with that.”
He scowled. “I’m a hermit! It’s meant to be glamorous and mysterious.”
Thumbelina snickered and he pointed the staff at her. “Shut your face, little fairy girl. Or I’ll make you be the prize for the duel.”
“So, this duel,” I prompted him, shifting Darling in my arms. “What’s the plan for that? You and me, I take it?”
Walter continued to glower at Thumbelina, who was twirling her dagger and smiling sweetly. “I don’t like her.”
“Then she won’t be the prize. We’ll pick something else.”
He stroked the globe. “I choose. It’s my prize.”
“Not unless you win.”
“Oh,” he chuckled. “I’ll win all right. And then, when you’re dead, all of Faerie will know that I am the most powerful sorcerer!”
The group went still around me and Starling edged closer. But it was Blackbird who spoke up. “There are many with vested interests in Lady Gwynn’s continued good health who would take it much amiss if she were to die.”
“Who? I don’t give a rat’s ass about Falcon. Puck is a puppet. And—as little Gwynnie knows, even if the rest of you don’t—Rogue is quite out of the equation at the moment.”
“I would be interested in your information about Lord Rogue,” I told him. “Enough to engage in a duel for it.”
“What is this? You’re in no position to bargain. I brought you here to duel to the death and that’s exactly what you’re going to do. I’ve invited people!”
I shrugged, deliberately nonchalant. “Why bother? You’ve already said I’m going to die and you want to keep my companions. I have no incentive to fight.”
“But you have to,” he whined. “It won’t work if I just assassinate you. There has to be a lot more juice to it or it won’t make a good story.”
He absolutely reminded me of a guy from my era, a computer nerd type. But Blackbird said the war had been going on for a long time—whatever that meant to her.
“How long have you been in Faerie?”
Walter gave me a canny look. “Long time, honey pie. Not everyone comes through at the same point in the time continuum. Yeah, I’ve been here, I’m guessing, something like a couple hundred years. It gets hard to keep track, you know?”
“I do know.” Abruptly and absurdly, I felt sorry for the guy. At least I’d found more of a place here. He lived out this extended, isolated life while the magic worked to unbalance him more and more. “Who trained you?”
Squinching his face in suspicion, he glowered at me, tapping his fingers on the globe. “I didn’t need training. Entirely self-taught.”
As I’d suspected, which I felt sure meant he wasn’t truly more powerful or the fae would never have let him roam about unsupervised. He’d developed some neat tricks, but that was all they were. It would be nice to see past that gray barrier in his mind. Getting that staff away from him would show me a great deal.
“Which is why I’ll defeat you,” he continued. “See—you’re stuck in your ivory-tower interpretation of magic and I’m an entrepreneur. Innovate or die, Gwynnie!” He chortled over his joke, the sloppy sound combining with the squeaking of wheels. “Aha—the cocoa is here!”
A team of gremlins, hotfooting it over the floor, dragged a wagon with a great silver samovar on it. I flinched at the sight of so much silver and Thumbelina edged away. Steam hissed out of the top of it, bringing the delicious aroma of heated chocolate, rich, warm and enveloping.
Walter rubbed his hands together and raised his unkempt eyebrows at me. “At least the food is good, huh?”
The gremlins skittered off and Walter climbed—literally—down from his throne and grabbed a flagon, filling it from a spigot on the side of the samovar. “Help yourselves! I would offer you chairs, but ha! I have the only one.”
He hefted himself back onto the throne by dint of crawling up the front, not easy with the staff in one hand and the overfull flagon spilling cocoa in the other. And not a pleasant sight with his robes hefting up over his wide behind to reveal his chubby thighs. I quickly averted my eyes to find Starling giving me such a horrified look that I nearly started giggling.
“Is it safe to drink from the silver?” I whispered and Blackbird caught my eye, giving me a small shake of her head.
“Okay, Walt. Let’s talk about the terms of this duel.”
“You don’t want any hot cocoa?”
“I’m allergic to chocolate.”
“Oh.” He looked childishly disappointed. “Bad luck, that.”
“You said you invited people—when is this duel?”
“Tomorrow. You’ll fight then, put on a go
od show?”
“If you meet my terms, yes.”
He slurped from the flagon, blinking at me owlishly over the rim. “You think you can outwit me?”
“You’re the one who said we needed to discuss rules.”
“True.” He wiggled back farther in the deep seat, oblivious to his robes bunching up. “So here’s the deal, Gwynnie. You don’t do any magic between now and the duel tomorrow at high noon. Then we fight and you can use magic again. For my prize, I get to keep your Familiar and the rest of these idiots can go.”
“All the resources at my disposal?”
“Such as they are, yes.”
“And for my prize?”
“You won’t win.”
“I need at least the possibility of victory or I won’t fight as hard.”
He pouted. “You can go free too.”
“We all go free. But if you want me to fight, I want your information on Rogue’s whereabouts.”
“Stubborn little twat, aren’t you? Fiiine,” he sighed, drawing out the sound, then farting loudly. “Blah blah blah, if, by some miracle you defeat me, I’ll give you that information.”
“What if I kill you—how will you deliver?”
He harrumphed at me. “It won’t do you any good. It’s not like you can rescue him.”
“That will be my problem.”
He drained the flagon and tossed it aside with a clatter. “Deal. But for your eyes only. Show our guests to their rooms! Except for Gwynnie here. She’s earned a special private meeting.”
The gremlins swarmed in, rearmed with their spears and poked at the others to go. Starling gave me a worried look and I smiled to reassure her, handing Darling to Thumbelina.
“Look sharp,” she whispered to me.
I intended to.
Chapter Seventeen
In Which I Employ Smoke, Mirrors and Sleights of Hand
One of the tricks of magic is to remember that the possibilities are as varied as the imagination. Never do the expected thing.
~Big Book of Fairyland, “Rules of Magic”
Walter watched them go. “Kind of a wacky bunch of sidekicks you’ve got there, Gwynnie. I take it back—the little fairy chick is kind of hot. You want to throw her in too. Sweeten the pot?”
“What do I get if I do?” I suppressed my reaction to him using Titania’s term.
“I’ll tell you a secret.”
“About what?”
“Well, if I tell you then you’ll know the secret!”
“How do I know it’s any good?”
“Oh.” He snorted. “It’s good all right.”
“Okay then.” Since I had no intention of losing, I might as well go for all the prizes possible. Fortunately his bargain had given me exactly what I needed to defeat him—if what I suspected was true.
“Come sit up here with me.” Walter wiggled over, making enough room for me to sit beside him. My stomach frankly turned at the prospect, but it would probably pay off for me to keep him pacified. I wedged my boot onto a jeweled leg of the throne and pulled myself up, scooting in next to him without actually making physical contact.
“Pretty good view, huh?”
We sat side by side, surveying the enormous room. You could see the whole thing from his perch—not that there was anything to see.
“It’s big so the dragons can visit,” he explained. “They like the floor hot, so they keep it that way. Really, you should get a castle of your own. Of course, you’ll be dead, so it’s a moot point.”
“How do you control the dragons?”
“Aha!” He waggled his eyebrows. “I don’t.”
“No?”
“No. They like to help me because I know what they like best. That’s the secret.”
“And what do they like best?”
“You can’t tell anyone—none of your little friends.”
“Agreed.” I really hoped the answer wasn’t going to be babies.
“Human magic. Our kind. You and me, baby. We’re like a drug to them.”
“I thought dragons are impervious to magic.”
He fiddled with the staff. “It’s a conundrum, all right. I just know it works. They gave me this castle and do me favors and all I have to do is let them hang out with me.”
“So you communicate with them?”
“If you call it that. I tell them stuff. They don’t talk back.”
“Did they give you that?” I pointed at the staff with the crystal globe and he moved it out of my reach.
“No touching.” He caressed it, with a fond expression. “It’s mine.”
“Is that how you saw Rogue?” I could see it being a similar iteration of the cave, amplifying reach and vision.
Walter looked surprised. “Not such a babe in the woods, after all, huh, Gwynnie? Not that you aren’t a babe.” He leered at me. “Hey—wanna do it? Might as well have a last hurrah before you die!”
“Tempting, but no thank you.”
“Yeah.” He elbowed me knowingly. “Gotta keep that game edge, right?”
“So, you’re going to show me Rogue?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay—looky, no touchy.” He hiked his rainbow robes up higher and wedged the globe between his pudgy knees, the long wooden staff end propped on the floor. He rubbed his hands over the surface, whispering magical-sounding words that came across as so much nonsense. How could he not know his show didn’t work on me? I wondered if he’d learned the fae tongue because he didn’t have the telepathic mind magic. I hadn’t been able to read Nancy’s mind either, come to think of it.
Interesting.
Images floated up in the globe and I watched, utterly fascinated, at the movie play of them. Icy peaks, with sharp edges, rolled past, as though we soared above them. Not ice—glass. The infamous Glass Mountains, ridge after ridge of them. I’d flown over the Rocky Mountains more than once and these had to be twice as tall.
In the distance, one peak rose above them all, crowned with a fantastical castle made entirely of glass. It glowed with a beacon of light. The walls peeled away as the images unfurled, taking us inside to a fabulous throne room, this one crowded with fae of all shapes and sizes, glittering with color, while the sky outside glowed like the northern lights.
Perched on the throne sat Titania, in all her naked loveliness, her body featureless as a Barbie doll’s, colorless gleaming hair flowing around her. Her pale eyes surveyed the crowd. Beside Titania, in an identical throne and devastatingly handsome in black, was Rogue.
She smiled at him and he took her hand, interlacing his fingers with her many-segmented ones, as he had so often with me, and then kissed her pale skin. Leaning over the joined arms of their thrones, she threaded her free hand into Rogue’s glossy loose hair, tugging him down for a deep and sultry kiss, which he seemed to greatly enjoy. She whispered something against his lips and he threw back his head, laughing.
Sitting next to the awful, stinking Walter, who sniggered like a twelve-year-old at the kiss, I felt like I was back in seventh grade, certain that the kids laughing at the next table over were making fun of me.
“She’s a babe too—in a creepy, preteen kind of way,” Walter observed, rubbing a greasy finger over the smooth crystal as if he could touch her that way. “But you can see that your mighty Lord Rogue has moved on to greener pastures. Pretty sucky of him to leave you unprotected, but all the better for me.”
“Right. Our duel to the death.”
He nodded, then put his hand on my leg. I had to stiffen all my resolve not to knock it off like a poisonous insect. “You know, maybe it doesn’t have to be that way. We could be partners—combine powers. I can teach you all kinds of stuff. We could challenge Rogue and Titania to a duel! Like Masters of the Universe stuff!”
“Gee, Walter.” I affixed a sadly hopeful look to my face. “Would you really do that for me? I’d hate to drag down your reputation and make you look weak.”
“Hmm.” He pursed his lips, looking uncomfortably like a duck a
bout to barf. “I do have that to think of. Sorry, Gwynnie—no can do. Gremlins!” He shouted, right next to my ear and I flinched. “Take Lady Gwynn to her rooms. Tomorrow, we duel.”
* * *
I’d been concerned that he would have separated us—which would have been the smart thing to do—and that I’d have to go looking around for the rest of the crew. Fortunately, despite the great size of the castle, there didn’t seem to be many actual bedchambers, and we’d all been stowed in the same tower.
Starling shrieked my name and ran up to embrace me, tears in her eyes. “I was afraid we’d never see you again!”
“Silly.” I tugged a lock of her hair. “This would change color if anything happened to me, right? Besides, ol’ Walter is all about the big duel tomorrow.”
Darling, Blackbird and Thumbelina all came trotting in from their various rooms, greeting me according to their natures. Darling complained that the battle armor itched and, with an apology and deciding that undoing wasn’t the same as doing, I poofed it and used my nails to give him a good scratching.
“Please tell us you have a plan for tomorrow and you know what you’re doing,” Blackbird said.
“Hey guys—I have a plan for tomorrow and I know what I’m doing.”
Thumbelina snorted and Starling rolled her eyes.
Blackbird did not look amused and instead regarded me with a stern look and a tapping foot. “This is hardly a joking matter, Lady Gwynn.”
“No.” I stood up and found a chair to sit in. Darling followed and immediately leaped into my lap, dragging his tail under my nose. “But I really do have a plan that I feel 98 percent sure will work and then we have much bigger fish to fry.”
“And that 2 percent chance that it won’t work?” Thumbelina turned her dagger in her hands.
“Then I’m dead and you all have to figure out your own way out of here—something you might want to put thought into, Thumbelina, since Walt added you into the bargain as his girl toy.”
Rogue’s Possession Page 22
