Duainfey

by Sharon Lee

  "Most gracious Engenium, the chyarch asks merely that the next time you have urgent need of one of those under her care, you send more reason, and less force."

  He reached into the pocket of his vest, withdrew the fessel shell on its cord, and placed it, gently, on the outstretched palm.

  "The chyarch also sends, Lady Sian, that this charm would have slain its intended recipient, had he been forced to carry it so far."

  If Sian was angry, or abashed, or bored, one did not, Meri thought critically, learn it from her face. Her fingers were another matter, as they closed hard around the charm, the fist dropping to her side.

  "I am grateful to the chyarch for her care of my cousin," she said, her voice cool and pleasant. "Will you be returning to Ospreydale, Ranger Ganat?"

  "Lady, my path now lies toward my own wood, from which I have been absent too long."

  "I understand," she said calmly. "Before you go, allow me to thank you personally for your escort, and to offer you a meal, and a bed for the evening."

  Ganat hesitated, threw Meri a glance overfull of some meaning he could not read, and bowed, deeply.

  "You are kind, lady, but I hunger for the voices of my own trees. The moon is bright enough to light me along a path I know so well. By your leave, I will continue onward."

  Sian inclined her head. "Certainly. Walk safely across our land, Ranger."

  Behind Ganat the door opened and the guard Susel stepped within. Sian moved her hand.

  "Escort the Wood Wise to the gate, first stopping at the kitchen so that he may replenish his supplies."

  "Yes, Engenium." The guard gave the casual nod which is a high mark of respect among the Sea Folk.

  Ganat bowed once more. "Lady," he murmured. Straightening, he gave Meri a smile that was not the best he had from the man during their journey, though it was perhaps the most earnest.

  "Rest safe, brother, and heal among kin," he said softly. "Send word through the trees, when you're able."

  Meri's eye stung. He reached out and gripped the other's arm above the elbow.

  "Walk canny, Ranger," he said.

  "And you." Ganat turned and followed Susel out of the room.

  The door closed, leaving Meri alone with his cousin.

  For the moment, however, she seemed to have forgotten his existence. She raised her fisted hand, opening the fingers one-by-one, and stood staring at the charm nestled in her palm as if she had never seen such a thing before.

  Abruptly she spun on her heel, casting the charm down on the desk, and swung back, her eyes on his face, her own showing a tinge of pink along high cheeks.

  "You cannot think I sent that thing to you!"

  Oh, thought Meri, could he not?

  "As of this moment," he observed, "I am free to think what I might." He raised an eyebrow, unable to resist. "Though that, of course, may speedily change."

  "Oh!" She spun away from him and stamped over to the window, staring out over the sea with her arms folded tightly across her chest.

  Meri sighed, walked over to one of the canvas chairs and sat himself down to wait while the Engenium of Sea Hold grappled with her temper.

  There had been a time when Sian could not have risen to rule. Connected by blood to the Queen as she was, yet that blood was mixed, as was Meri's own. His, however, was a simple admixture of Wood and Sea Wise. Sian was Sea Wise, well enough—but her mother had been High Fey, of one of the lesser houses. The Queen's mother proceeded from that same lesser house, which was, to hear any of the full remaining of the Elder Houses tell the tale, an abomination.

  Meri had been born after the war, and had never known a domain under the proper rule of the Elder Fey, nor had he much patience for those arguments which were firmly based upon purity of blood. In his experience, ability counted—and the present Queen, upstart house or no, had no equal in state craft. She could lead, she did lead, and so she ought to lead.

  His cousin Sian, however . . .

  She whirled away from the window and came to where he sat, falling to her knees beside his chair. The face she raised for his scrutiny was damp with tears.

  "Cousin, let us call truce until you are rested at least. Hostilities may commence tomorrow after breakfast. But for the moment, allow me to see you! It has been so long . . ."

  She raised a hand to his face, her fingers tracing the thin scar across his left cheek, then the long one that slanted up from the patch, across his forehead, and into his hair.

  "They said you were . . . terribly wounded," she whispered.

  "Those are the least of what they did," he answered, his voice rough.

  "I would not have had it happen," Sian murmured. "And to see you thus, after you have been asleep so long! Your kest . . ." She looked down, extended a hand and touched the elitch branch at his belt, setting the leaves to whispering.

  "The chyarch," he said, striving for a mild tone—"and Healer Ganat, also—suggest that I may wish to retire to Vanglewood."

  Sian shook her head. "I think it is perhaps best that you stay here."

  "What—" he began, but she put her fingers over his lips.

  "Tomorrow," she said. "Now that you are home, tomorrow is soon enough. For tonight, let us feed you and settle you into your rooms." She moved her fingers and rose, holding her hand down as if to help him rise.

  Or as a gesture of peace.

  Sighing, Meri put his hand in hers and came, slowly, to his feet.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Over the years Becca had learned not to permit herself to startle suddenly. Not only would such movement set her sister to nattering about fidgety invalids but it would also, depending on circumstance, serve to spill the tea, or tear the roots or leaf of a growing thing, or distort the pattern of thread-count or lead to any number of unhandy outcomes. Treasures to guard . . . well! Of late, her isolation and social invisibility had oft been her greatest treasure.

  And so she rode with that will-not-to-startle foremost in her thoughts, then, feeling a slight reprieve from the oppression about her, she mindfully wrapped that will about her like an over-large shawl, covering herself, and her saddlebags with the precious journals, seeds, and herb kit, over Rosamunde's back and croup, and mentally sealed it with the strongest brooch she could imagine, with a pin almost as long as a dagger.

  Sensible or not, the sealing of that imaginary shawl settled her and drew a backward, arched-eyebrow glance from the not-quite imperturbable gentleman who led them into ruin. His expression was that of surprise, perhaps, or merely distraction.

  The bend in the road was much further than she had supposed. The air grew heavy; breathless. Rosamunde's paces felt mis-paced until Becca realized that the steps were solid—but the sounds were odd.

  Altimere's lead took them to the right of a sudden branch in the trail. She looked down from her perch, past Rosamunde's shoulder, hearing the step, then seeing the hoof strike.

  Well, she thought with relief, it's only that the sound precedes the footfall.

  Looking ahead, and listening intently in the dead air, she learned that the same was true for Altimere's mount: first the sound of hoof against gravel, then the placement of the hoof. How odd.

  For a time, she simply rode, watching the hoof strike belatedly, unaware of anything else, her head heavy and her limbs languorous.

  Just before she slipped into sleep, she did start, for Altimere now led them into the distinct bowl of a valley, surrounded by sere, mounded hills. Surely, they had not come far enough for such a change in the terrain! Unless . . . had she fallen asleep, in truth?

  Directly before them, terrible above the humpbacked hills, the flickering balefire filled the sky with an iridescent fog belying the depth of the darkness growing at the edge of the trail.

  Her good hand as light as possible on the reins, Becca reached with her weak left hand for Rosamunde's withers at the saddle-edge. Hah! Altimere rode courtly, did he? No blanket here, between saddle and withers, but all dependence placed on the leather panels. Tr
ue, she was used to country ways, where oft a horse might be expected to sweat.

  Motion in front of her . . .

  A man's figure limned in darkling light, astride a flickering shadow of a horse, waved at her, his long fingers drifting like snowflakes in the turgid air. Heart in her mouth, Becca caught, looked about her, and gasped. In her inattention, she had nearly allowed Rosamunde to veer onto a thin track to the left, which spiraled away, ghostly, toward the terrible hills with their crown of black light. Carefully, she eased her mount back to the proper trail, and sighed.

  The left-ward track beckoned with flickering fingers, teasing her side vision. Surely, Becca thought, that way was shorter? Perhaps she might—

  But no, she reminded herself sternly; she would not take her own path. She had agreed to this trip, and to the terms. This was a dangerous and tricksy land, as she now knew for herself. She would not allow it to lead her astray. She would follow . . . she would follow . . . Yes. She would follow.

  Do not lose sight of them, my brave! she thought to her filly.

  She moved the reins, a gentle motion being sufficient, the lightest tap of heel . . .

  Rosamunde was willing to close ranks with the lead horse, though it seemed that horse was ignoring her existence. The sounds of hooves on gravel echoed all about them, as if there were a dozen or more horses to be caught, and if Altimere approved or even noticed her new attention he gave no sign.

  Even at this distance, following was not easy. Not only was Rosamunde's sudden tendency to bear left and go off the track a concern, but Becca found the lack of color in the world disheartening. Worse, there was an annoyance she couldn't lay her thoughts on around a plague of aches and pains, as if all the wounds and injuries of her life were complaining at once. . . .

  Rosamunde shied from a rock, and then another, both large enough to cast them down if misstepped, rocks Becca should have seen as she looked between her mount's ears, over her star, at the slow moving gravel they transited.

  Becca could scarcely see the tail of the horse they followed, the colorlessness absorbing light as if they rode in the midst of a hundred rainstorms.

  She felt, in truth, as if she were beaten down by those rainstorms, and the minor aches came upon her at once and in full force: her crippled arm screamed from shoulder to pinkie, each muscle declaring itself afire, and she nearly swooned as the memories of bug bites, stubbed toes, and sisterly pinches took . . .

  There! Ahead was the darkling stallion! She mustn't lose sight! She would not die here, alone and in pain. She would not be lost!

  And yet it seemed that she was lost. Fog enveloped her, rain beat her, and she could scarcely see the ears of the . . . of the . . . horse . . .

  There was no light, no color, no sound. She tried to speak, but the fog forced its way down her throat, muffling her voice.

  There! An image in the fog: A man, his hair golden and his eyes steady; a quiet smile on his pale lips . . .

  Altimere!

  His name! She grasped, hurled it out into the fog on the wings of her thought. Altimere! Altimere was why she was here! Altimere was the connection she had with this place! Altimere was ahead leading her through this terrible land!

  Sound was all around her like a thunder and wind rolled into one, like the sound of a splintering thill combined with her own screams, or the angry buzz of . . .

  She must flee! There was no safety, up here so high, so exposed. She wanted to leap down from this absurd perch and rush to safety, to—

  No! If she fled now all was lost. . . .

  Her hand, tucked hard between leather and . . . hair. Horsehair, warm and living. Horse . . . her horse was with her . . . brave horse had a name, must have a name, as she must. Altimere was not her name, the horse was not Altimere . . .

  The hand—her hand!—between soft coat and hard edge of the saddle—and the name Rosamunde bloomed in her mind, reflecting back to her Lady Becca I know you, colored with determination—a determination to push through, to arrive at the other side, each with a would-be master behind them, neither with any other place that would accept them, except what might be forward, away from—

  Hold your seat came into her mind, and she knew not if she thought it or the horse, but she tucked her hand hard, touching saddle and horse, concentrating her thought on a place where there was clean water, flowers, grass, light, someplace where they could rest, and she might draw on the slim store of balm and herb that rode, suddenly recalled, in her saddlebag, to leach the agony out of her arm, and soothe away the clamorous small pains.

  Ahead of them only a small eldritch glow outlined a horse's hooves; a greyer patch in the gloom showed where Altimere moved, bent against rain that did not fall and wind that did not blow. The cold swirled with the heat; she was sodden with sweat, as her hands and feet froze.

  It was dark. Even the hateful flickering of unlight ceased.

  Becca leaned forward, one hand gripping the reins, the other gripping the edge of the saddle, her eyes straining until she saw blue flashes, and crimson. Until she saw—

  The star.

  Yes.

  The star on Rosamunde's forehead, beneath the darker forelock, that star was more visible now. The wretched arm ached with the strain of holding on with the hand she still had tucked 'neath the saddle—when had she managed that?—that throbbing in her good arm where her sister always pinched her was no longer a piercing reminder, and the tears—had she been crying the while?—were slowing.

  Sounds. Hooves against earth, the creak of leather. And ahead there was a definite horse and a definite rider and even enough of a track to be called a trail.

  Rosamunde puffed and snorted, wishing to run now, not from fear but toward the places promised ahead. There was scent on the air, and it was clean scent, no matter that the plants suddenly visible here mirrored those she had seen at the start—they were plants, growing things, and there, just ahead, a blade of sunlight crossed the track!

  Becca dared look behind her, at a sheet of fog rising from the ground into the heavens, stitched with flares and shimmers of hideous light.

  There came the sound of hooves on gravel, the unexpected flit of some tiny, urgent bird . . .

  Before them, the dark horse slowed. The rider turned, his face filled with honest dread.

  The dread gave way to some other expression Becca could not name . . .

  He nodded, did Altimere, as Rosamunde drew aside.

  "That meadow ahead," he said without preamble, "is entirely outside the reach of the keleigh. We will rest there; water the horses, and partake of a small meal to recruit our strength."

  Exhausted, shivering with the remnants of pain and fright, Becca hardly knew what to say to these curt commonplaces.

  Rosamunde snorted though, and Becca looked into Altimere's face.

  "You sir," she said, striving to sound as matter-of-fact as he, "will wish to dust your coat."

  He looked down at himself, his chest, his waist, his legs—all wrapped in the slenderest ropes of their poisonous metal. If he craned to the right or left, he could also view the destruction of his arms, likewise bound in chain and secured to staples set in the cold stone wall.

  His flesh was corroded, the wounds seeping, but if they had hoped to undo him with agony, they had miscalculated. The pain had long since exceeded his capacity to feel it.

  He did long for death, yes—as an end to confinement, and the continual assault of their terrible auras. When the one called Michael stepped into the room bearing a poison-metal knife, his first impulse was one of relief.

  Fool.

  Michael's aura was a strong sky-blue, with lightning flashes of orange. Passionate, purposeful and seductive. He held the knife like it was an old friend, and smiled at Meri gently.

  "Give us the secret of creating gold from leaves."

  "I cannot," Meri said, as he had many times before.

  Michael sighed, and moved, the knife flashing at the edge of Meri's eye. It was only when the blood fogge
d his vision that he realized—

  "Hack me to bits, and still I cannot tell you," he said tiredly.

  Michael nodded sympathetically.

  "I told Lord Wing that you'd say the same as you'd done. He said to give you another chance, and this was it, but, hey—you're a regular fella. A hunter, like me. So I'm going to ask once more, nice, see? Tell the man what he wants to know, or worse than you've had done will happen. You don't think that's possible, maybe. Take it on trust that there's worse, and think about it."

  The knife flashed again, slashing his cheek. Meri said nothing.

  Michael sighed, shaking his head, and walked over to yank open the door.