Chasing the Bard

by Philippa Ballantine

  Will sighed.

  “What’s the matter, daddy?” Judith tugged his hand; large eyes wide even in the sun.

  Though his heart tightened, Will managed a smile. “Nothing, my sweet.”

  Hamnet, not a few paces from them, was rolling a tender blade of grass in his fingertips. “There is magic here today, isn’t there, father?”

  Will raised his head, tasting the air like an animal, but whatever powers he might have had told him there was nothing. “Not today, Hamnet. Once there was great magic and beauty here, but today, I can’t feel it.”

  “I can,” Hamnet said rather wistfully.

  In the end, Will let the children run and play, seating himself beneath the shade of an elegant willow and watched them, content for a time.

  So this was his life now—how that thought chilled him. A quiet life was something that he had always wanted, and now he could see it all laid out; work and career in throbbing London, only broken by the occasional return to the grey shelter of the home Anne had made for the family.

  He was hollow inside now, all the drama and magic drained from him, and he was left a mortal man like any other.

  Will looked down at his fingers, marked with the calluses and ingrained stains of his trade. Once they had caressed Sive and made her smile and gasp. All the true pleasures in his life had come to him through his hands. Now only one remained, and he didn’t know if he could bear it.

  Without thinking further, Will clenched his fingers in the warm grass on either side of him, and tried to find that Fey kernel, that one spark of it that yet remained. Suddenly, the idea of returning to that strange evening realm was not so frightening. Time ran differently there; she would still only be preparing herself for battle. If Sive were to die, then she would not die alone. After all true love could outlast even death.

  Will always imagined that his Art was only waiting for his efforts, like an unbroken horse waiting for its master to arrive.

  So it was a tremendous shock not to be able to find the reins, nor indeed the animal. Nothing but a gripping emptiness was within him now.

  So Will was alone, mere mortal, as he had always claimed he wanted to be—and as quickly he realized that it wasn’t true.

  * * *

  The huddled thick shadow watching from the ditch licked its lips in anticipation.

  This smallest of the Shattered’s brood was not clever, but its spark of self-preservation had made it slip aside when its master had gathered them all together. Some crafty corner of its consciousness told it that when the Fey fought, no matter how few in number they were, many brood would perish. And one of its few thoughts was of survival. The other was gaining Mordant’s approval; the rewards for that were great indeed.

  Sive was a worthy target, but a little too large for this small menace; Will seemed better. But now as it crouched in the barest of shelter in the hedgerow, it could see the mortal had sturdy Artful defences. Self-doubt and fear had cut his power off from him, but even if he never knew it, Art still protected him. The awesome threads of this power made the little Shadow tremble. It was not the mightiest of its kind, and there was only destruction should he try to slay Will.

  The eyes of unparalleled void tracked the mortal’s distant thoughts. It was well acquainted with despair and hopeless, but when Will’s head came up and he watched his children dance and squeal across the meadow, the shadow took a moment to identify these unknown feelings: hope, love and joy.

  Its grey eyes trailed across the swaying grass to rest on the children. In its dense dark heart, something that might have almost been a smile formed. Oh yes, this mortal’s thoughts dwelt warmly with the thought of his son, cherished and beloved, the hope of his line.

  The shadow settled further into the prickly bushes; there were always more ways to slay a mortal than mere physical force. The scope of its plan would have pleased even Mordant, a plan that would plunge this hated mortal down into horror.

  Already it could feel the warmth of its Master’s satisfaction.

  * * *

  Auberon lay very still and listened to the dying pulse of his realm. Each laboured breath bought him pain and joy; pain because Mordant crushed his ribs, and joy because each sip of air tasted Fey.

  To his right he could feel Sive’s fingers wrapped about his, and they were so hot they burned, but he wasn’t about to let go. He and his sister had not been this close since Anu’s abrupt departure. He hadn’t said what their mother’s last words to him had been. But now might well be Auberon’s only chance to let her know. Through their contact he could feel her body shake, and when she dropped her head down her hair draped across their linked hands. Sive was angry. Nothing unusual in that, but she was not angry in the normal way, full of arrogant rage that only a Fey could muster. Now in the evening of their rule, she was angry in that dreadful hopeless fashion, previously only mortals knew; the end was near.

  Auberon gasped as another crack shuddered through his body, somewhere within a bone had snapped. His natural Fey strength was competing against whatever Art Mordant had used, but it was not enough. That mad and terrifying embrace Mordant had wrapped him in was not easy to get away from. Each time Auberon healed, that alien power would flex and drive him a little closer to the end. It would be an agonizing way to die, broken apart from the inside.

  He wished Moira were alive to hold his hand, or his mother. He wished in the way of the dying another thousand impossibilities, but at least he had one chance to set something right.

  “Sive,” his voice whistled past broken bones and teeth, "sister—I need to tell you something, something about Anu.”

  Her red-rimmed eyes met his, and the need for words dissolved. The siblings had not shared a link for hundreds of mortal years, but now death made it easier somehow.

  Sive was the elder, but Auberon had always been the stronger. Back then; when Anu still breathed and the Fey had appeared unbreakable, he had walked that last moment with his mother.

  She’d held his hand so that it tingled with her Art. The most beautiful unknowable creature was Anu, and while that was attractive in a goddess, in a mother it was less so. Auberon had spent his whole life wanting to know what went on behind those eyes, what could make her smile.

  They’d ridden Fey horses through the clouds, laughing, but had walked the last steep climb up to this very circle where he now lay gasping his last moments away.

  But even if Auberon had known, he could not have understood, time was a weary concept to the Fey. Anu’s long delicate hands rested on the ancient stone, her eyes looking across the Evening Realm, and her face firm. That dreamy, aloof expression she often wore was absent.

  “I love you, my son,” she whispered, perhaps to make him doubt she had spoken them. “But when I am gone, you cannot rule.”

  It was a double shock—Anu gone, and not wanting him to be King? Sive had never shown any desire to take his place, and the court was ready for a male hand. They’d felt it in the air like he had, their Queen was drifting away from them, and the aura she exuded was that this was right.

  His mother’s finger rested on his shoulder. “Our goddess calls me, Auberon. I must pay for the power given to me at the dawn of worlds.”

  Tears burned their way down his cheeks, but something held him back from speaking.

  “Sive must be Queen after I—there are reasons I cannot tell you.” Anu’s breath caught, and she pulled him into a tight sudden embrace, “Oh beloved boy, I know you’ll do the right thing, but I cannot bide here a moment longer.”

  That scent of warm roses and sunshine filled his head, and he wanted to speak, wanted to release the buzz of questions in his head, but Anu would not stay. She was already dissolving into nothing, falling into another realm he could not follow her to. Auberon raised his hands, tried to grasp her, but as all the other times she was an airy enigma She wasn’t there to see his tears.

  And now Sive’s eyes were the ones he had to face, as the realization of what he had done hit her.
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  Auberon watched her trace the shapes of hurt, anger and weariness. He bit his lip as another snap sounded deep inside him, and turned away. “You were right, sister, I was wrong.” Once those words would have been bitter, now they were barely enough.

  Sive clasped his hand, “Still the fool, Auberon; even if you had come to me, I would not have believed you.”

  “I could have found a way, if I had tried. Anu must have Seen this moment. I cannot think why, but you are needed now for a reason.”

  Pain speared through Auberon as another bone snapped like a dry piece of kindling. Sagging back against the ancient stone he whispered, “Think hard, Sive, there must be something.”

  She was silent, shoulders sagging beneath yet another burden. At last the words dragged themselves from her. “My father was human. I just discovered it myself.”

  It should have disgusted him, or filled him with shock at the least, but Auberon’s heart leapt. With a great effort he reached out. His fingers brushed hers, but Sive flinched as if he’d struck her.

  Every word was a struggle, but she had to see, “Then you might not need a human to break the realms apart. You have both bloods within you!”

  He dropped back exhausted.

  Sive brushed back forming tears from her eyes, and smiled falteringly at him as the idea began to settle. “Why brother, I believe you have had your first workable idea.”

  * * *

  It would be a scene that Will would remember for the rest of his life. Anne, Suzanna and Judith were all there, but it would be his son’s open happy face that would haunt him through all the nights to come. And above all it would be that he had not told Hamnet that he loved him, that he had only showed as much affection as his own father had done to him; a brisk ruffle of the hair and admonitions to look after his mother and sisters. That was all young Hamnet had from his father.

  Will had only been back in London a scant week when the summons came. He was rehearsing scenes with the excited troupe when looking up he saw the grim faced Hamnet Sadler standing near the door. His old Stratford friend had occasionally journeyed to London, but his expression said it all. He had named his son to honour this man. Life was full of unkind ironies.

  Taking his horse, he rode hard through the night. Not even the threat of the animal dropping slowed him, but Will was still too late.

  Anne’s scrubbed red face and empty look told him all. All the remaining life was gone from her eyes. Brushing past his family clumped near the stairs, Will went right to his son’s room. The still form on the bed was not Hamnet; his spirit already fled. Will froze at the door, unable to go any further, part of him thinking that if he didn’t look into the boy’s blank face, it wouldn’t be.

  Someone moved up behind him. His mother’s soft hand, not Anne’s, fell on his shoulder; the faint smell of lavender recalled the comfort she’d given him in youth. How he wished adulthood permitted him that now.

  “What happened?” he asked, throat tightening about reined in tears.

  “A sudden fever, Will, it came up the day after you had gone. It carried him from us so swiftly.”

  Such things could not be. Looking into her pained and weary eyes, he saw the truth. She, who had birthed and buried two children before he even breathed, knew it; there could no denying death. Life was hard, and loss far too easy.

  Patting her wrecked hand, Will whispered, “I’d like to be alone with him.”

  She nodded and retreated, letting her son grieve, as she had once done for her own dead babies.

  Will approached cautiously, dragging his unwilling body to Hamnet’s, until at last he stood at the foot of the narrow tiny bed. The body of his boy looked peaceful as they said the innocent should lie. Will had seen all kinds of death in his time; a knife in the night, the agonizing swellings of the plague, the gentle retreat of a woman after childbirth, but this was different—this was his boy.

  “Don’t leave me behind, Sweet Hamnet. Without you all is silence”, Will whispered, but his boy could no longer hear him. Looking down into that face which had been so precious to him, he wondered. If he had taken up Sive’s challenge, if he had surrendered his soul and become immortal—could not his children have been immortal too? The idea dropped him to his knees, so that fingers clenched in bedsheets, and breath fell on a son who would breathe no more. “What have I done to you?” he whispered to Hamnet. “If I had not been so foolish, could you not have lived?”

  No mortal ear would have been able to hear the sound, indeed Will did not hear it, but he sensed it. At first he sat still, heart beating in his head. But it was there, a furtive dry rustle under the stool by the window. It was neither the patter of rat’s feet, nor the dry creaking of the old house; it was something that should not have been here in this human realm. As long as Will didn’t look, his world would remain the same as it had for the past year, as long as he did not turn and look over his shoulder, all would be as it should. But this was his son lying dead, and the truth was more important than comfort.

  So when the noise rattled against his brain again, he turned his head. The ragged little shadow underneath the stool glared back at him, confident that mortal eyes could not see it. Except Will’s eyes were not completely human, and they never had been. The creature grinned; its own eyes flat and malicious locked on its work, the dead son.

  Will roared and sprang up from the bed. Picking up the little table by the bed he hurled it with all his might at the evil shadow. It dodged with ease. Below his family was no doubt raising their eyes to the ceiling, hearing the maddened man thump and rage above. Such unseemly displays of grief were best ignored.

  Will didn’t care. He chased the malicious scrap of shadow around the room. The creature was not however of the human realm, and far faster than Will’s very human reflexes.

  It stuck its little hooked feet into the daub of the wall, grinning wider, and then worst of all it spoke. “Mordant laughs, puny human, your line will end. No son for the enemy of my Lord.”

  Will, half blinded by tears, his heart shattering, had a very real hardness in his throat.

  He had done this, denied all he was, and left his family unprotected. How foolish he had been to think that he could meddle with the Fey and not draw danger to those he loved.

  “I shall have my revenge, foul and unnatural creature!”

  Art bloomed behind his eyes, rushing through his body like water let loose from a dam. It flooded him, and carried him away with its strength.

  The shadow too late realized its mistake. It should not have stayed to gloat; it proved to be a fatal error. Will’s hand lashed out holding nothing but his newfound Art, and where it pointed golden light followed. His voice found words that seemed to bite in the air. “I will kill you in a hundred and fifty ways. Tremble and despair.”

  The light trapped the malicious shadow, and it squawked in terror.

  The mortal’s expression was calm, but his blue eyes were not’ they swirled and sparked with Art and immeasurable rage. Grabbing the slayer, he held it struggling aloft. “Your master will pay for my child’s death, but you will pay now!”

  He didn’t even need to think, for his Art had already plumbed the depths of horror, and now obeyed his grief.

  The light snapped sending the room into complete whiteness, when it faded enough for Will to see again, only a sprinkle of fine dust on the floor told of the creature’s fate.

  Will sunk once more to his knees. He wasn't drained—he had never been better in fact—but it was the sudden realization that he'd chosen path. He knew full well that there was no going back now. He would track Mordant down, and dispense justice with the gifts that fate had given him, Art and all the rest. No other choice remained now.

  And that path would lead Will back to her, Sive the Shining.

  * * *

  The darkness leapt into the light. They invaded the Evening Realm. Even as Sive stood with her cousin Puck—knowing this could very well be the end—her heart thundered under her ribs, and
every inch of her skin prickled. She had never fought in the Fey, nor had this much to lose. At her back were her people, and while she drew strength from their presence, she wished them out of harms’ way. Each life behind was precious.

  Sive settled her fingers more firmly around her sword and murmured a prayer to their goddess. Puck shifted at her side, and sitting in a ragged apple tree not far away, Macha croaked her own battle cry. No soaring above the battlefield today for the raven, her wings remained crushed. They would share the same fate.

  The maw into the Between was gaping wide now, and there couldn’t be much time left. Their plan would have to work the first time, they both knew that.

  As badly as Puck wielded a sword, he was still better than most of the Fey. Sive’s people were a gentle race, who sang music and danced rather than fought. Brenna and those who had been part of Anu’s guard were their strongest arms, and their only real hope. This battle could only be short, so she would have to rush her mission.

  Puck tilted his head. “So this is what a last chance looks like.”

  “After our deaths, the mortals will be next.” Sive’s lips compressed and went bone white. “Then they will regret being so foolish.”

  By ‘they’ she meant ‘he’. Puck shook his head, “You turned Will away, cousin, and he would have tried.”

  “He had nothing to offer,” she spat. “I have the all the blood that we will need.”

  They both knew the price of failure. What remained unsaid however was her desire to have Will live, even if it was for only a little longer.

  The Between gave up its nightmares, all claws and hungry eyes they spilled into the Fey. The scent of decay and despair followed, rolling out and cutting into the ranks of Fey long before the real enemy did.