Too late.
Joey patted Georgie and smiled in the darkness as he whispered, “Atta girl.”
But the messenger seemed unfazed by my blustering. “Understood,” he replied as he turned to go, then paused and looked back at me. “I almost forgot,” he said, raising a finger. “The gate remains here. My lord insists upon security, and seeing the damage you’ve already inflicted…”
He smiled, and I met Val and Toula’s uneasy glances. “Very well,” I said, and followed the messenger through the press of soldiers as the comforting smell of magic faded to nothingness.
CHAPTER 23
* * *
I realize it seems imprudent to allow oneself to be led by a heavily-armed escort to a meeting with someone who’s made little secret of the fact that he’d like one dead, but I was running out of options. As I passed between the ranks, trying to find a workaround for my collapsing battle plan, I took stock of the weapons we had left. Val was armed, but bronze on steel was far from a sure thing. Joey still wore his sword—the fae troops who moved too close to his left side quickly gave him room—but despite the boy’s skill, he wasn’t going to be able to make much of a dent in the forces around us by himself. Georgie, of course, was a walking tank of combustible goodies, but even with a tough hide for protection, no dragon is completely impervious to pointy objects. Meggy had come empty-handed, as had I, and if Toula had hidden a weapon on her person, I had yet to see it.
Yes, I admitted to myself, this was far from the best possible scenario, especially considering the squadron of Geheret’s soldiers left behind to guard the gate. It was taking all of Helen’s resources and concentration to keep the rift open—if she gave the soldiers cause to attack her, she might be able to defend herself, but at the cost of the gate. I hoped the few guards Val had left on our side had the sense to cover Helen, but by then, we had progressed around the curving wall, and the gate was lost to my sight.
I forced myself to stop catastrophizing about what might be happening at the border and concentrated on the moment, looking for weaknesses in the horde around us. True, we were well flanked, and I strongly suspected that leaving without an audience was no longer an option at that point, but the soldiers did not seem to be operating as a unified force. I could pick out individual squadrons by their leaders’ more impressive helmets, and it was almost immediately apparent that the squads had formed along clear lines: there were squads in bronze and squads in steel, but none with a mix of armor. The fae forces were as disadvantaged as we were in terms of magic, and their armor made them obvious targets. Suppose, in a mêlée situation, I were able to take a sword from one of the guards—I could hold my own in hand-to-hand combat, I reasoned, though surely I’d rusted in the last couple of centuries from lack of practice. But swordplay was like riding a bicycle, and given a chance to limber up and let the muscle memory engage…
I was jolted from my thoughts when the messenger grabbed me by the arm and steered me toward a pair of enormous, finely wrought iron doors. “Don’t be clever, boy,” he murmured, waiting as a guard opened the way, then half-shoved me into Geheret’s throne room, the nucleus of the citadel.
As throne rooms went, it erred on the side of grandiosity with a hint of hollowed-out volcano lair. The omnipresent black stone walls curved into a high dome through which sourceless light somehow filtered, augmenting the wall torches and the ornamental braziers placed at regular intervals about the room. A thick red and black carpet, twin to the tile floor in the corridor, muffled our footsteps as we were escorted—none too gently—toward the throne, a jagged stone chair that rose from the floor perhaps six or seven feet, high enough to give its occupant a commanding view of anything around him of roughly humanoid form. Atop it, across a seat large enough for three, sprawled Geheret—and at its base, in chairs made miniature by comparison, sat my family.
My siblings’ faces were composed, masks of calm disinterest, but Moyna’s rouged lips curled into a smirk when the doors closed behind us.
I pushed the messenger off of me and started toward them, conscious of the eyes of the guards and the curious who stood around our little knot. “Geheret!” I called to him as I marched up the rug, willing confidence into my voice. “I believe you have something of mine.”
Slowly, he straightened his pose, brushed his dark hair from his face, and glanced idly at the signet ring gleaming on his hand. “You’ve accepted my offer, then? I admit, I had expected Doran to return with the news of your—”
“Unfortunately, he’s been terminally delayed,” I interrupted, cutting my eyes to Syral in time to catch her flinch. “And no, I do not accept your offer. But as I was informed that you were preparing to kill my daughter, I thought I might stop by and see if you could be dissuaded. It seemed only proper, after all.”
Suddenly uncertain, Moyna glanced at her companions, but if she had expected to find reassurance in their stoicism, she was disappointed. “Kill me?” she said imperiously, rising from her seat, but her face betrayed her sudden doubt. “Oh, Coileán, you are a fool.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw Meggy began to dart forward, but I threw out my arm to stop her from running to her daughter’s side. “Am I? And what use are you to Geheret, pray tell?”
“His lover,” she retorted, taking an extra moment to stare at her mother, who sputtered beside me. “And his greatest ally.” Her voice strengthened as she began to recover her slipped footing. “You’re looking at the newest queen of Faerie,” she continued, spreading her hands—and giving the rest of the room an excellent view of her deep blue corset and its corresponding accessory that might, in some distant realm, be considered a skirt. “And when I rule Mother’s court, Geheret’s people will be welcomed home.”
I surveyed the crowd, picking out the clumps of faeries among the natives. “Really? They’re going to abandon Geheret and follow you, is that the plan?”
“Of course not, imbecile. His court will coexist with mine—”
“Oh, so he’s going to join you in Faerie, then? The once place where he has absolutely no power?” The troubled expression flitted across her face once more, and I folded my arms as Moyna tried to make the pieces fit together. “Mother may never have mentioned this to you, but the realm is picky,” I explained. “It doesn’t complain about anyone from our courts, and it accepts some mortals, but with one exception, it is not fond of Mab’s children. I assume the same could be said for what’s left of her court.”
A few of the faeries in the gallery began to mutter amongst themselves, and I looked up at Geheret, who was observing Moyna and me with the same attention one might devote to a fish tank. “So since we’re all present, let’s be honest,” I said to him. “You’ve got no more use for Moyna than you would for any of my idiot kin, and you’ve got them in a conveniently difficult position,” I continued, pointing to the row of chairs at the foot of the throne. “But if you think Faerie is going to welcome you home, you’re bound to be disappointed. It was sorely displeased to see your mother, as I recall. So what do you want?”
He sat back and leaned on an armrest, propping his cheek on two fingers as he looked down at me. “Unity.” I frowned, and he chuckled at my bemusement. “One realm, united under my rule. A noble goal, don’t you think? No more infighting, no more petty bickering, no vigilantes with iron bars”—he grinned knowingly at that—“and no more of this ‘courts’ nonsense. There will be one court and one realm—mine.”
“You…propose to destroy the others?”
“Not destroy, no,” he replied, sounding almost bored. “I’ll simply break down the barriers, flood the mortal realm with power, and take what I will.”
“Aren’t you forgetting—”
“No. Either Faerie will join me, or I’ll seal it off permanently. Mother had the secret—why shouldn’t I replicate it?” Geheret shrugged and swung one foot against the throne. “You’ve yet to enquire about my father, Coileán. Aren’t you at least curious?”
I could sense Georgie
growing restless behind me and wondered what she was seeing. “I assume he was native to this realm,” I replied, trying to match his affected ennui. “Given your proficiency with dark magic. You can’t actually use magic, can you? The two can’t coexist.”
Geheret examined his ring once more. “Magic is inconsequential. And no, to answer your question, I cannot—my father’s gift is simply too powerful.” He breathed lightly on the ring, then began polishing it against his violet robe. “I was sired by this realm,” he said casually. “Not by a native—by the realm. Did you think Faerie was unique in having a consciousness?” he asked, smiling at my surprise. “I know quite well that she wasn’t pleased with my mother. So once you and the brat are out of the way,” he continued, ignoring Moyna’s shocked stare, “and I choose which among your brother and sisters pleases me best as a puppet lord, I’ll give Oberon my terms: join me, bow to me, or be severed.” He sat up and leaned forward to better see my face. “And if you think the souls of our realms are invincible, I have a few lessons I could teach you. But since I’m going to kill you, there’s really no point, is there?”
I stood there before the throne, speechless and trying to understand what Geheret was telling me, when my nose insisted that I pay it heed. It twitched in sudden stimulation, but I pushed its message to the back of my thoughts as I strove to save my skin.
“Why kill me?” I asked him, vying for time. “You need a go-between? Faerie knows me—I could treat with Oberon on your behalf. Keep Moyna here to ensure my reliability,” I suggested. “If I break my word to you, kill her.”
He seemed to mull that over for a moment while my silent siblings looked on uneasily. “An idea,” he finally declared, “but impractical. Far easier to kill the two of you, keep your lovely sister by my side,” he said, pointing down to Syral, “and send another in her stead. I get my envoy, and the true heir never receives Faerie’s gift.”
“You think that will buy your envoy’s loyalty?” I retorted with a laugh. “Sure, keep Syral and send Nanine. If Syral never properly inherits, then all Nanine has to do is wait for you to kill the other three, and the power’s hers. You can’t buy a faerie’s good behavior by appealing to her familial bonds—I tell you in truth that none of those four gives a damn if the others live or die. I’m the exception,” I continued, moving toward the throne. “Make my daughter your hostage, if it soothes your mind, and let me help you.”
Before he could respond, Meggy grabbed my arm and hissed, “We are not leaving her here.”
If she had intended the message only for me, she failed, and Geheret laughed briefly as he leaned over the edge of his seat to look at her. “You’d rather see her dead than a hostage? That can be arranged, but your choice surprises me.”
I wanted to talk Meggy down, but ignoring my nose was no longer working. When I surrendered and acquiesced to its demands, it alerted me to the familiar odor of citronella, faint but swelling.
Magic.
“And anyway,” Geheret continued, turning his attention back to me, “I don’t trust you. They call you the Ironhand, don’t they? A traitor to your own kind. Why should I bother with you?”
“Because,” I replied, trying to surreptitiously pinpoint the source of the sudden magic flow, “I love my daughter, and I won’t do anything to bring her to harm.”
Geheret studied my face as he paused to consider this, then shook his head and murmured, “I don’t believe you.”
I never had a chance to defend myself. The ear-splitting crack of shattering rock boomed around the throne room, and I turned around in time to see a door-sized chunk of the well-warded wall disintegrate. Through the cloud of dust stepped Oberon, still sporting his shorts and sandals but as peeved as I’d ever seen him. Behind him, barely visible through the haze, was a circle of light marking the gate, and a torrent of magic poured through the breach toward us.
An instant later, Geheret had found his feet and was pointing at the intruder in flabbergasted alarm. He shouted something unintelligible to me—I’d never learned the tongue of the Gray Lands, after all—but before he could speak more than a few words, Oberon reared back and flung a blast of magic straight at the throne.
I was aware of only two things in that moment: Aiden screaming behind me, and Geheret screaming before me—the one in agony from the power Oberon demanded of him, the other wailing as his body tried and failed to patch the foot-wide hole that had been punched through his chest.
As Aiden continued to howl in pain, Geheret stared at the room with an expression of deep confusion on his face, then pitched forward and fell to the foot of the throne, narrowly missing Huc’s head. And as Geheret breathed his last, a voice in the corner of the room cried out in a high, inhuman screech that crescendoed over the sudden cacophony of the assembled.
It was too much to process simultaneously, and I looked dumbly around the room, seeing nothing but the terrified crowd and unable to decide how that fact should make me feel. Seconds after Geheret’s death finally registered, Oberon appeared beside me, gave me a brisk shake, and pointed at the empty throne. “When your opponent begins to soliloquize, shoot him,” he barked. “How much more basic does it get, boy?”
I blinked, attempting to connect the shapes I was seeing with the sounds and the smells and the deep sense that I needed to be taking action in some way—and then, as if a switch had been flipped, reality returned to me. “How did you get in here? The wards—”
“Broke through, didn’t I?”
“Moon and stars,” I breathed, “Aiden—”
“Looks all right to me,” he interrupted, glancing over his shoulder at my sobbing brother. “May have an interesting headache after this,” he allowed, “but see, he’s alive.”
I squinted at the gate, trying to make out the shapes behind Helen’s tense body. “The guards…where are the guards?”
Oberon grunted. “They seemed confused about my intentions, so I was forced to incapacitate them. Oh, don’t look so panicked,” he snapped, “they’ll wake soon enough.”
I was dimly aware that Val and Toula had set up a shield network around us, and that Joey, apparently having decided that all bets were off, was bellowing atop the dragon as she incinerated a dozen men. My siblings hadn’t moved, nor had Moyna, who stared down at Geheret’s body with her hands over her mouth.
“Glad you changed your mind,” I said, squeezing Oberon’s bare shoulder. “Thank you.”
He shrugged me off with a snort. “I didn’t. She insisted. And stay behind the shields, you little idiot,” he said as he grabbed Meggy’s arm, nearly jerking her off her feet as she tried to run for the throne. “Or better yet, go back through the gate. You’re getting in my way.”
Meggy snarled, but as I moved between them, someone deep in the crowd began to shout, and the rest of the room quickly fell silent. Georgie looked around in confusion, and I held Meggy away from the throne with one arm and watched for a clue until the throng parted, revealing a slim figure in steel plate who was walking our way. It paused a few yards from us, then removed its helmet, revealing a visage that would pass for human only under significant glamour. The being was cerulean and hairless, and each of its solid black eyes was accompanied by a pair of lesser eyes extending toward its temples, giving it a vaguely arachnid appearance. Its ears were small and slightly pointed, as were the teeth it revealed when it addressed us in perfect, if heavily accented, Fae. “I am Nath,” it said, pausing to breathe deeply through its nasal slits while the dome echoed its words. When the reverberation subsided, it closed its eyes, and its armor dissolved into a flowing white robe, a more refined adaptation of Geheret’s bloodstained outerwear. “I am Nath,” it repeated, looking at us once more, “and I am my father’s chosen.”
Oberon regarded Nath in perplexed silence, and so I took the lead. “My, uh…lady?” I guessed—Nath’s voice sounded somewhat feminine, but the shape visible under its robe offered no hint as to gender.
Nath’s head bobbed. “‘Lady’ is sufficient
ly close,” it—she—replied. “Lords of Faerie, do you desire war?”
“No. With your leave, I’ll take my daughter and trouble you no longer.”
“A moment,” she said, then looked about her as if seeing the citadel for the first time. Four of her eyes squinted closed, and in the space of a long exhalation, the rock around us vanished, leaving the entire company standing in the black sand beneath the realm’s slate-hued sky. Before my eyes finished adjusting to the light, the temperature had risen at least thirty degrees, making my jacket unnecessary and at least lessening half-dressed Oberon’s discomfort. The bottom of Nath’s robe shifted, and I saw her long toes digging down into the sand as she smiled. “I have been entombed alive too long,” she murmured, catching my eyes, then raised her arms into the air as a wide circle of silver-leafed trees rose from the wasteland around us. Another tree began to sprout at the circle’s heart, but twisted itself into a generously-proportioned throne of black wood overhung by a living canopy. The crowd parted for its new queen as Nath climbed the three short steps to the throne and seated herself without further ceremony. “Now,” she said, beckoning to Oberon and me, “we may treat.”
“After you,” he muttered.
I led the way across the expanse, skirting Geheret’s body and ignoring my siblings, who had congregated in a little knot beside the corpse. “Lady Nath,” I began, pausing a respectful distance from the throne, “I want only what is mine.”
She cocked her head and gestured toward Moyna. “If I am not mistaken, the child came of her own accord.”
“And as you are aware, she is a child.”
“And foolish, yes. Though I have no such excuse for the others,” she added, glancing at my siblings. “Still, the girl is of no use to me, and I have nothing to gain by holding her captive. I return her to you willingly, Lord Coileán, and suggest that you guard her better in the future.”
The Faerie King Page 42
