by Jocelyn Fox
“I cannot ride into Darkhill, so I must carry you,” he said. “And passing through the Gate may not be easy.” He was still holding the motorcycle up, but he swung his leg over and moved so that I could see his face. His dark blue eyes were sincere, and as I blinked at him, his mouth thinned and turned down slightly. Was he regretting his decision to bring me here? His face kept sliding in and out of focus, so I couldn’t concentrate properly on his subtle expressions.
“Darkhill?” I croaked.
“The place of the Hall of the Dark Lady,” Finnead explained, carefully leaning the motorcycle on its kickstand.
“Queen…Mab?”
“Yes,” he said. He helped me swing my leg over the motorcycle, and slid his hand under my knees, his other arm about my shoulders. “Are you ready?”
“As I’ll…ever be,” I said, taking a breath between the words. My heart was pounding in my ears and my arm began pulsing with pain. Beneath the bright hurt of my arm, I felt aches in my ribs and back. When Finnead lifted me, the world dissolved into a whirl of agony. I tried to fight it, reaching out with my good hand, feeling something solid and warm, grasping at it and clutching almost involuntarily as shock waves crashed through my body.
Finnead walked quickly, and I could tell through the haze of pain that he took care to make his long strides as smooth as possible, but every small movement sent ripples of blazing agony through my arm, up into my shoulder, through my head and back. I felt my eyes begin to roll back, and Finnead speaking to me urgently.
“Tess, listen to me, you must stay awake for the journey through the Gate,” he said into my ear, increasing his pace.
I gritted my teeth together and realized I held a generous fistful of his shirt in my left hand, clenching it against the pain. “Trying,” was all I could manage.
“Hold on,” he said. “I’m here with you, remember that.”
Why would he say such a thing? I wondered briefly, before I glanced up and saw a glimmer against the darkness of the Texas night, and a dark shape standing by the glimmer that I guessed was the unhappy Corrigan. The slice of silvery light was about the height of a man, and Finnead walked toward it.
“I’m right here with you,” he said again as we neared the Gate.
I opened my mouth to try a sarcastic reply between my shallow, panting breaths, but then Finnead walked through the gate and the silvery light swallowed us whole. The pain of my body disappeared but it was replaced by such a riot of sensation and sound that I wanted to scream—I tried and no sound came out, I couldn’t feel Finnead carrying me, all I knew was that the silver light was eating me alive, stinging like acid against my skin, burning through to my bones, accompanied by sounds that would have been beautiful if they didn’t reverberate through my teeth, overwhelming my ears.
After what seemed like an eternity, the sensation changed—the silver light was still there, but it became even stranger, because I felt as though there was a cord wrapped about my chest, and there were people with the strength of the garrelnost on opposite ends of the cord, pulling and tugging, stretching the cord so taut around my body that I felt as though I would tear in two. And then with a great wrench, the force pulling me forward won out, and the light receded abruptly along with the feeling of the cord, leaving me gasping and nauseous. All physical sensations returned at once, slamming me back into my body. My stomach, already nauseous from the pain of my arm, rebelled. I barely had time to turn my head to the side before I retched, and the instant after that I realized that I was indeed still in Finnead’s arms. But he had anticipated the sickness, dropping to one knee and propping my shoulders against his leg so that he had two hands free. I almost fell onto my injured arm, but his hands steadied me gently.
After there was nothing left in my stomach, I weakly wiped my mouth with the back of my good hand. The aching tremors returned full force and my words came out wobbly from between chattering teeth. “What…the hell…was that?” I rasped.
“That was your first time going through the Gate,” said Finnead, as if that explained everything. “You did admirably. It kills some mortals.”
“Great,” I wheezed as the weight on my chest returned. “Good to know…you aren’t taking…any chances…”
“I think it would be best if you stopped talking,” Finnead suggested.
I took his advice and concentrated on breathing, taking advantage of the silence to push down the pain and glance around. I was half-laying on cool green grass, and the land around us swelled gently in rolling hills. A copse of slender trees stood not far away, pulsating softly with an inner glow that made them seem wrought from silver. I knew at once that this was a different world—every part of my being knew it, even through the pain. There was something lovely and alien about the landscape, something wild and sweet in the cool night air. A part of my soul ached at the foreign feel, but another part reveled in the beauty of this new world suddenly spread out before me.
“I’m going to lift you again,” Finnead warned me.
“How…far…do we have to go?” I asked.
“I thought I told you not to talk,” he reprimanded me—teasingly? Was a Knight of the Unseelie Court teasing me? “It is about…a ten minute walk.”
I couldn’t help but groan a little. I didn’t know if I could hold onto consciousness for that long…and what scared me more was that I didn’t know if I wanted to. Cold, bottomless fear washed over me. I clutched at Finnead’s shirt again and felt tears squeezing themselves from the corners of my eyes. Frustrated, I clenched my teeth and willed myself not to cry.
“One more thing, Tess,” said Finnead, a new urgency in his voice. “When we are at the Court, remember, it would be best if you did not mention you know about iron.”
“Why?” I wheezed, confused. I remembered, with the vagueness of a dream, that he had said something to me about iron, before the silver light. I remembered the cool curve of the horseshoe in my hand, and the sudden heat of it as I stabbed it into the beast’s eye.
“It does not go well for mortals who know the Fae’s weaknesses,” replied Finnead. “It’s for your own safety.”
I couldn’t find the breath to make words, so I just nodded weakly, which set my head swimming. Finnead lifted me again and set off at his long, loping walk, which I was sure would be equivalent to a brisk jog for me. I kept my eyes shut, shivers ripping through me now and again despite Finnead’s jacket wrapped about me. A different kind of pain was settling into my chest. I felt myself breathing faster, heart pounding in my ears.
“Tess,” said Finnead, “you have to relax. We’re almost there.”
As much as I wanted to obey his words, I couldn’t. My body had finally had enough, and I felt myself sliding into unconsciousness, Finnead’s urgent words echoing in my mind as I succumbed to the darkness.
At some point, I awoke, and there were voices around me that I didn’t recognize, blurs of faces that I couldn’t make out. There were a few moments of blinding pain, and soothing hands, and then comforting warmth. Softness. Sleep.
I dreamed of strange things, in the disjointed way of fever-dreams or hallucinations. I saw Molly crowned with blue fire, holding aloft a shimmering gray sword. I glimpsed Finnead on his motorcycle, Molly behind him, her hands crusted with dirt and her eyes red from tears. And then the dreams brought me the image of a beautiful woman—one of the Sidhe, I had no doubt—clad in a white robe, standing straight and tall before a congregation of the Fae with a white-gold circlet on her brow. She raised her hand and spoke but I couldn’t hear her words, and then the image dissolved as if washed away by water, replaced by a glimpse of the same woman. But now she knelt in a dark and gloomy space, her white robe bedraggled and her crown gone. She looked wild and desperate and fragile. Then my dreams turned again to Finnead, and the picture of him as he had looked battling the garrelnost, except this time, the beast wrenc
hed the sword from his hand and swiped at Finnead, knocking him aside as it had Kirby. I put out its eye with the horseshoe, and then ran to where the knight lay, unmoving. This time, deep gashes marred his chest, visible through the great rents in his shirt and jacket. His inscrutable eyes gazed up at me and he said, “You must kill it yourself.”
“But,” I said desperately in my dream, “I’ve never held a sword before…I don’t know how.”
Suddenly Liam was standing beside me, looking down at Finnead and then back at me. “I always have to protect you,” Liam said. “You’ve never been able to take care of yourself, Tess.”
And Liam took Finnead’s sword and stood against the beast. The garrelnost caught him again with his claws and I watched helplessly as the creature dragged my brother toward him—
“Wake up, mae saell doendhine, wake up.”
My eyes flew open and I gasped. I blinked and turned my head to the side.
“You were dreaming,” the woman by my bedside said.
I gripped the bed-sheets reflexively. “Who are you?” I croaked. I looked around the small room.
“If you are looking for the knight who brought you, he’s not here,” the woman said calmly. She sat with her pale hands folded in her lap. “I am Allene. Do not be afraid. You are in the Court of the Dark Lady as her….guest.”
Something about the way Allene said “guest” made me think she really meant “prisoner.”
“In Darkhill?” I coughed a little, my throat dry from sleeping for so long. “How long have I been asleep?”
“Two days.” Allene stood and poured a cup of water from a pitcher on the bedside table. She made as if to hold it to my lips, but I shook my head. “I can drink by myself.” Then I paused, remembering some snatch of a myth. “If I drink this…” I said slowly, voice rasping.
“You won’t be bound here just by this drink, or eating something to sustain you,” Allene reassured me. “Only certain special foods fall under that law, and it’s antiquated anyway.”
I believed her. Something in her words made it impossible not to think she was telling the truth. I took the cup clumsily in my left hand—my right was splinted and wrapped in white bandages—and managed to drink, spilling a little down my chin. The sweet sting of the liquid made me cough a little. I realized belatedly that I wasn’t drinking water. I finished and gave the cup back to Allene. “What was that?” I asked, swallowing a few times.
“We call it laetniss,” Allene replied. “Light-water.”
“Where’s Molly?” I asked, feeling a prickle of unease that I was alone, in the Unseelie Court, without Molly or even Finnead. Then I remembered my dream. Liam’s words bit into my mind again. You’ve never been able to take care of yourself, Tess.
I wished suddenly that I hadn’t asked about Molly.
“If you mean the half-blood, then she is in the room just over,” said Allene. Then she checked herself and looked at me. “I apologize,” she said. “It was rude of me to use our words for your friend.”
“Half-blood?”
“Yes. It isn’t considered polite to call them that. But mostly all of us left are full-blooded, since the Overworld became bound in iron and smoke. Most of us haven’t taken mortal lovers for years upon end.” Allene’s lovely pale face looked a bit sad at her last statement. Her pale gray eyes, lit from within by her thoughts, reminded me of the moon.
“You took mortal lovers often?” I couldn’t help myself. Curiosity made me sit up a little straighter in the bed.
Allene sighed longingly, turning her head half away from me as she gazed into the distance. I glanced at the intricate braiding of her dark hair, woven like a tapestry, and felt a twinge of envy at the very beauty of it. “Often enough to miss it now.” Then she glanced at me and the girlishness left her face. “But that’s neither here nor there, saell doendhine.”
“What’s that mean?” I felt like an idiot, asking question after question, and what little strength I had was beginning to fade.
“Saell doendhine? It means…” Allene searched for a moment for the words. “Young mortal. Human. It’s…an endearment.”
“My little mortal,” I said, and chuckled to myself softly. Allen seemed not to hear me as she busied herself with several small containers on the bedside table.
“Here,” she said. “Before you fall asleep again, take these. I will get you more laetniss.”
I didn’t particularly want more of the strangely sweet and biting drink, but I obediently held out my hand. Allene put what felt like pills into my palm. I looked down in surprise to see several white pills of various sizes that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a modern emergency room.
“Painkillers and antibiotics,” Allene said. She smiled a little at my dumbfounded expression as she handed me the cup of laetniss. “Just because we haven’t taken mortal lovers in a while doesn’t mean we don’t keep ourselves up to date with mortal medicine. Just in case.”
“Well,” I said honestly, “I’m glad you do.” I washed the pills down with a swallow of laetniss, and drank the rest of the cup for good measure.
“Good,” Allene said. She rearranged the blankets around me. “Now you’ll sleep more, and when you wake up again you should be mostly well.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Am I going to sleep for three months then? I’m pretty sure my arm was broken.”
“There is your mortal medicine,” said Allene, “and then there is Sidhe healing. You have the benefit of both.” She rearranged my pillow. “I didn’t say your arm would be completely healed, either. You will be mostly well.”
I couldn’t help but smile a little. I lay back on the pillow and yawned. A comfortable warmth spread from my stomach…a product of the laetniss, I suspected. Part of me wanted to ask Allene about Finnead, but sleep stole over me so quickly that I had no choice but to close my eyes. I drifted into dreams again, Finnead’s face the first image in my mind.
Chapter 8
When I opened my eyes again, firelight danced on the walls of my small room. Allene still sat by my bedside, her dark head bent slightly and her long fingers moving gracefully as she drew a needle and thread through blue cloth. Then she looked up, and her moon-pale eyes brightened as they met mine.
“You’re awake again,” she said, deftly tying a knot in the silver thread. She cut the thread with a small pair of scissors and shook out the blue cloth. It was a long shirt, with a broad scooping neckline and loose sleeves. A delicate pattern of silver vines and leaves shimmered about the wrists and neck of the shirt. Allene smiled at me. “You have impeccable timing, saell doendhine. I’ve just finished.” She put her needle and thread aside and stood, draping the shirt over the back of a chair, adding it to the other pieces of clothing folded and arranged there. “Are you thirsty?”
I nodded, finding my throat too dry to speak. She gave me a cup and I was relieved to find that it was water. Sweet, crisp water, but nothing like the laetniss. Allene watched me, a small smile still turning up one side of her mouth. I looked at her once I was finished drinking, unsure of what came next.
Allene took my cup and put it on the bedside table. “If you feel strong enough,” she said, “your friend Molly has been asking for you.”
While I felt much better, just the thought of walking anywhere made my arm ache a little. “Can she come in here and visit?”
Allene shook her head. “This is the healing-room. It is only for those who are injured or sick, and those caring for them. It has…” She paused, searching for the words. “It has a certain kind of power. We call it…I think in your tongue it is called holy.”
I thought about that for a moment. “The power in this room…could it do strange things to a person?”
“Like what?” Allene asked, smoothing a wrinkle out of the bed-sheets with her graceful hand.
“I
’ve had strange dreams,” I said. “Dreams that felt real.”
“They very well may have been. You might have been seeing things that were, or are, or could be,” Allene said. “Especially since you are from the Overworld.” Before I could ask, she clarified. “We also call it Doendhtalam, the mortal world.”
“And what’s the name for your world?” I asked, intrigued by this mellifluous language.
“Faeortalam,” Allene replied. “The true world, the fair world.”
“Dreaming is different here than in Doendhtalam?” I asked, trying out the word. I probably pronounced it wrong, but Allene looked pleased.
“It is from Faeortalam that dreams come,” she said. “Mortal dreams…the very substance of them, it comes from this world, through the gates where Faeortalam and Doendhtalam meet.” Her gray eyes grew distant. “In recent years, most of the gates have closed. And there are only a handful left that our Knights may pass through. Our historians have been scouring the scrolls. We do not know if it is the fate of Faeortalam to die slowly, choked by the smokes of your factories and the death of your dreams.” Her face darkened. “And the evil from our own world…it spreads like a poison.”
I pushed down the covers with my left hand, moving my legs experimentally. I felt weak and a little sore, but other than that everything seemed functional. “If dreams come to us from your world, what does our world give you?”
“Substance itself,” Allene replied. She held up a hand as I opened my mouth to ask another question. “I am no great scholar, saell doendhine. I do not know how to explain it very well, only that without your world, we would probably be little more than shadows, dreams passing through the light now and again.”
I pushed myself into a sitting position with my left arm, and swung my legs off the edge of the bed. Allene stood close by as I stood. Other than a slight head rush and a bit of tremble in my knees, I felt fine. I pulled at the hem of the white nightgown awkwardly, not really wanting to think about how I had gotten out of my jeans and t-shirt.
