Lord of the Beasts

by Susan Krinard

  “Where is my father?”

  “You will find what you seek beyond the Gate…this Gate…in a world you can scarcely imagine.”

  “I see no gate.”

  Béfind stepped back and turned to face two upright stones that dominated the sacred circle. She fluttered her fingers, and a shimmering light filled the space between the stones, a rainbow of color made up of hues mortal eyes were hardly equipped to discern.

  “There it is,” Béfind said. “The Gate that will lead you to your heritage.”

  Ivy set Sir Reginald down and rose from the boulder. She peered into the flickering light, shook her head, and turned to meet Béfind’s gaze.

  “You lied to me,” she said. “You said we were going to London, that my father was in hiding there.”

  Béfind sighed impatiently. “It was necessary to simplify explanations, my girl, or we should never have left in time.”

  “In time for what?” Ivy’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What else did you lie about, Countess? Who are you?”

  “You shall know all these things once we have passed the Gate.” Béfind glanced at Tod, her eyes cold as a snake’s. “Make yourself useful, hob. Tell her that we must go through before she can comprehend the great gift I offer.”

  Ivy looked up to where Tod hovered, astonishment in her face. “You can see him?” she demanded of Béfind. “You can see Tod?”

  “Of course I can see him. He is of a lesser breed, scarcely worth your notice, but he has on occasion been useful.”

  Ivy backed away, staring at Béfind with the beginnings of fear. “Tod, what is she saying? How does she know you? What is she?”

  Tod drifted to the ground, sick at heart, and bowed at Ivy’s feet. “She is Fane, my lady,” he said. “Fane, as you are Fane, as Tod is…though of a lesser breed.”

  “Fane?” Ivy pressed her hand over her mouth. “Like in the stories you told me? And I am…But I can’t be—”

  “You are,” Béfind said. She moved closer to Ivy, graceful hands extended. “Did you never wonder why you felt so discontented with mortal ways, why you spent your time in wood and meadow rather than in the cold, stifling rooms of Edgecott? Did you not ask yourself why you are so much swifter and lighter than any human, how you could survive in a world where most mortal children would perish?”

  Ivy continued to retreat. “My father is Fane?”

  “You were born to a Fane mother, who with all your kin eagerly awaits your return.”

  “Return to where?”

  “Tir-na-Nog, my lady,” Tod said. “The Land of the Young.”

  Ivy stared at him, her eyes begging for truth. “You’re saying that Tir-na-Nog lies somewhere beyond those stones?”

  “Aye, my lady.”

  She gathered Sir Reginald against her, hugging him close. Girl and spaniel shivered. “If you knew what I was,” she said, “why didn’t you tell me long ago?”

  Tod ducked his head, his flesh going hot and cold by turns. “Tod…it was not his place…Donal was Tod’s master….”

  “What has Donal to do with this?”

  “He, too, is Fane.”

  Ivy laughed bitterly. “Is everyone I know of the Fair Folk?”

  “No, my lady,” Tod whispered. “Donal is halfling, like you, but he chose to live in the mortal world. He did not know you were Fane until you came to Edgecott. He would…”

  “Enough of this prattle,” Béfind snapped. “Fleming would have prevented you from rejoining your true kin, just as Hardcastle would bind you to her in mortal sorrow and misery.” She held out her hand. “Come. It is time.”

  Ivy’s jaw tightened. “Donal doesn’t know I am here.”

  “I told you he would interfere—”

  She turned to Tod again. “Why?”

  “He does not know that the countess is Fane,” he said, defying Béfind’s wrathful stare. “He thought only that she would help you find your father, not that she would take you to Tir-na-Nog.”

  “And why wouldn’t he want me to go to Tir-na-Nog?”

  “Silence!” Béfind cried. “Foolish child…did you not wish to escape him and your captors at Edgecott?” Béfind clenched her fist. “I can compel you to enter. The only thing that kept me from you was the amulet.”

  Ivy snatched at her bodice as if she had forgotten that the pendant was gone. Panic flushed her skin.

  “What have you done with my necklace?” she demanded.

  “You have no need of it now, or ever again.”

  “But it was my father’s…”

  “Your father never gave you anything but his mortal blood.”

  Ivy pressed her hand to the base of her neck, and there was in her eye a look of both fear and determination.

  “Tod,” she said, her voice shaking, “if you were ever my friend, answer me truthfully. Do you trust this woman?”

  Tod understood that his entire future, and Ivy’s, hung on his answer. He opened his mouth to speak. Béfind laughed.

  “How much can you trust your little friend, my dear?” she asked Ivy. “He not only deceived you when he knew of your true origins, but he bargained with me…bargained for your affections. You see, Tod is under a curse, and he knows you cannot care for such a creature as he until that curse is lifted.”

  Ivy licked her lips. “You love me, Tod?”

  Tod shivered. “I do…I do not…”

  “Tod…if you care for me, even a little…find Donal. Bring him here.”

  “No!” Béfind cried. “If you do as she asks, hob, you will never know your true form again.”

  Tod flung himself skyward, his heart so full of emotion that he feared it would split asunder. Blood roared in his ears. No matter what he chose, he would lose: betray Béfind and lose Ivy, or ignore Ivy’s plea and forfeit what little self-respect remained in his hob’s feeble soul.

  He glanced again at Ivy’s face and knew what he must do.

  “I will bring Donal,” he called down to her, and darted away in a burst of speed. But Béfind was to have the last word. Before he could fly beyond her reach he felt the blow, the dizzying gust of enchantment striking him out of the air. His limbs began to change, beyond his control, and rough-woven clothing turned to russet fur.

  As a fox he ran, his voice trapped in the throat of a beast. On four swift feet he skimmed over the earth, his legs pumping tirelessly beneath him. He reached the borders of Edgecott just after the sun had crested the horizon, casting long shadows like cage bars across his path.

  He found Donal at his cottage, tightening the straps on his traveling bags. Donal looked up briefly, glanced down at his bags and turned again to stare at the fox panting on his threshold.

  “Tod?” he asked. “Is it you?”

  Tod yipped and waved his tail, desperate to make Donal understand. Donal left his bags and crouched before Tod, cupping his hand beneath the fox’s muzzle.

  “What is it?” he asked, frowning. “Why don’t you change, so that we can speak?”

  Tod whined in his throat and pawed urgently at Donal’s knee. He conjured up pictures in his head…moving, speaking images of Béfind as the countess, of Ivy at Shapford, of their arrival at the stone circle and the revelatory conversation that followed.

  Donal pressed his fingers to his temples, his eyes squeezed shut. “It’s nearly gone,” he said. “I can barely hear you. Try again.”

  It was hard for Tod to remember human words with his fox’s brain, but he ran through the memories a second time, pushing them at Donal with all his might. When he was finished he knew he had succeeded by the look of horror on Donal’s face.

  “My God,” Donal whispered. “The countess is Fane, and Ivy’s mother? She’s taken Ivy to a Gate?” He seized the ruff of fur at Tod’s neck. “Why didn’t you tell me? How could you permit this to happen?” He pushed Tod away and strode across the cottage floor. “But I fell into her trap as well, when I brought her Ivy’s pendant. Damn it, I believed that Ivy had a right to choose her own future. But Béfin
d’s manipulation will make any real choice impossible. And Cordelia…” He swore brutally. “How can I save Ivy if Béfind has the means to force her through the Gate?”

  Tod covered his face with his paws and whimpered. It was a blessing that he could not explain his betrayal, or the shameful ambition that had led him to trust Béfind. He had failed everyone.

  Donal laughed. “The irony of it is that I was to see Inglesham for a race this morning, and I intended to follow your advice and silence him for good. His threats pale in comparison to the one Ivy faces now.”

  He shrugged into his jacket and ran for the door. Tod fell in behind him, but Donal waved him off.

  “I know of the stone circle where the Gate lies,” he said. “You go to the house and stay with Cordelia. I don’t care how you manage it, but stay with her.”

  Tod had had enough of the fruits of disloyalty. With a bark of acknowledgment, he dashed across the park. The sun had risen another hand’s width, but the house still cast deep shadows when he reached the garden gate.

  With judicious use of a fox’s paws and teeth, Tod slipped through an unlocked door and sniffed the air for Cordelia’s scent. It lingered throughout the house, but nowhere was it stronger than up the broad staircase.

  Running close to the ground, Tod darted up the stairs and followed the scent trail to a room near the end of the hall. It was empty. The smell of anger still lingered, hinting at the woman’s strong emotions, but she had left the room sometime within the hour.

  Casting a wider net, Tod traced the many interwoven threads of her movements along the hallway and came to another room whose door bore the mark of her scent. The door was open a crack, wide enough so that he could open it with a flick of his muzzle.

  The room was very large, much more so than the one in which the woman denned. A man lay in the immense, canopied bed, propped up amid a fortress of pillows. Tod guessed at once who the man must be: the tyrant called Sir Geoffrey, Cordelia Hardcastle’s father, of whom Ivy had so often spoken with such vivid dislike. Tod shook his head, sneezing at the smell of long illness, and was about leave the room the old man opened his eyes.

  Any mortal might well have been surprised at the presence of a wild beast in his house, but Sir Geoffrey merely stared, his pale blue eyes locked on Tod with a strange intensity.

  Tod could not have said why Béfind’s enchantment chose that very moment to wear off. Perhaps it had not been meant to last more than the time she would need to convince Ivy to pass through the Gate; perhaps she had been too preoccupied to shape it properly. Whatever the reason, Tod felt his body change again, and the old man’s eyes widened in astonishment.

  “Fane,” he said hoarsely. “Did she send you?”

  The mortal’s question was so eerily apt that Tod almost fled in consternation. But Sir Geoffrey sat up, his arms extended in a gesture of entreaty, his wrinkled face a mask of yearning.

  “You come from Béfind,” he said. “You must. You are one of them.”

  Tod backed halfway out the door. “You…you know Béfind, Mortal?”

  “Know her?” The man barked an ugly laugh. “I loved her, Fane creature…loved her as one of her own kind never could. I saw her from the window the day she came to Edgecott…not that I dared tell anyone.” He cast the blankets away from his thin legs. “Where is she?”

  Tod thought quickly, considering what this amazing turn of events could portend. He moved cautiously closer to the bed.

  “You were Béfind’s lover?” he asked.

  “You must know that, if she sent you,” the old man said. His eyes narrowed to slits. “What are you doing in this house?”

  Tod smiled. “It is but a test, Mortal…to see how well you remember your time with my lady Béfind.”

  “Remember? Is that what you wish of me, to prove my devotion?” The man gave a great sigh and fell back among the pillows. “Forty years, and she hasn’t changed. Just as beautiful as she was then, when I was hardly out of boyhood. I had just begun to make my way in the world, full of confidence and vigor…how simple it all seemed.”

  Nothing, Tod thought, could ever be simple with Béfind, especially where mortals were concerned.

  Forty years. Perhaps Béfind had taken more than one lover in her time among humans, but if she had not…

  If she had not, then Sir Geoffrey’s own half-Fane daughter had been living under his roof, and he had never known.

  “How old I must seem to her now,” Sir Geoffrey said, oblivious to Tod’s feverish speculation. “But she did not find me so then.” He met Tod’s gaze. “I gave her my heart, Fane creature…and I never took it back again, even when she left me, even when I was compelled to take a wife I could not love.”

  The mortal wife who must be Cordelia Hardcastle’s mother. A loveless mating…which was ordinary enough among Fane, but a great sorrow among humans, as Tod had begun to understand.

  “Your lady wishes to know if I am still worthy of her?” Sir Geoffrey asked, his voice breaking. “Of who else am I worthy now? I despised my wife. I neglected my children. All my life I have waited for Béfind to call me back.”

  “And would you give anything to hold her?” Tod whispered.

  “Anything.” The old man clutched his bedcovers until it seemed that his knuckles must burst through his flesh. “Only tell me what I must do.”

  “Can you rise from this bed, Mortal?”

  “For Béfind, I can race the sun across earth.”

  “Then prepare yourself for swift travel, and when I return I shall lead you to her.”

  As Sir Geoffrey rose from his bed with a groan and a curse, Tod sped from the house as fast as his will would carry him. There was but one more thing he must do before leading this desperate mortal to his lost beloved.

  Once he found Cordelia Hardcastle, he would take both father and daughter to the Gate, for Ivy was not the only one in peril. Donal must not face Béfind alone, or he might very well become her next victim.

  CORDELIA HAD RIDDEN nearly all the way to Inglesham’s estate when she met his carriage on the lane leaving the park.

  Burning anger had sustained her throughout the four-mile ride, and it did not falter as she reined Desdemona alongside the brougham. Inglesham poked his head out the window, brows arched in surprise, and instructed his coachman to stop.

  “Cordelia!” he said. “How delightful to see you on this fine morning. I was just on my way out, but if I had known you were coming…”

  “You have not been expecting me?” Cordelia asked, bristling at the sight of his smiling, ingenuous face. “I should not be surprised, since you obviously never considered that I might discover your scheme to gain my fortune.”

  Inglesham’s smile tightened. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You know perfectly well to what I refer, sir. Would you rather discuss it here, or in a more private situation?”

  The viscount glanced up the lane, his face drawn in an excellent approximation of bewilderment. “Of course, Cordelia. I should not wish you to remain upset with me when we can so easily resolve this matter with a little conversation.”

  “I doubt that very much,” Cordelia said. She urged Desdemona into a trot and rode ahead while Inglesham’s coachman laboriously maneuvered the brougham back toward the house. No servant appeared to greet her; she dismounted and tied the mare to a shrubbery while she waited for Inglesham to join her.

  He was all humble reassurances and courtly bows as he ushered her into the drawing room. Cordelia tried, and failed, to remember why she had ever found him so charming and attractive, or when he had changed from the spirited boy she had known to this deceitful cad.

  “Please, make yourself comfortable,” Inglesham said, indicating his favorite chair. “I fear most of the servants are out today, as I expected to be away, but Mrs. Gazard should still be on the premises. I shall send for tea—”

  “Pray do not trouble yourself,” Cordelia said, declining the offered seat. “I shall get right to the point. Your plot has
been uncovered. It has been brought to my attention that you—” She paused, her anger seething white-hot, as Inglesham tugged the bellpull and faced her again with a faintly condescending smile. “I know what you’ve done, enticing my father with poisonous substances and threatening to withhold them if he did not actively support your bid for my hand in marriage.”

  Inglesham showed no dismay and not the slightest remorse. “Who told you such a farrago of lies, my dear? Is it too audacious to speculate that your friend Dr. Fleming had something to do with these allegations?”

  “The manner in which I learned of your treachery hardly signifies,” she said sharply. “I saw the evidence of it, and my father has been suffering to rid his body of the poisons you forced upon him.”

  “No one forces anything upon Sir Geoffrey,” Inglesham said. “I am sorry if he has become dependent upon these ‘poisonous substances,’ as you call them, but I assure you—” He glanced toward the door, where his thin and fragile-looking housekeeper had appeared with a tea tray. “Will you pour, my dear? A little refreshment will do us both good.”

  Cordelia wanted to laugh at his brazen insolence, but her nerves were so tightly strung that she feared for her own self-control. She thanked the housekeeper, sat and poured out the tea, grateful to find that her hands were not shaking.

  Inglesham picked up his cup and sniffed it with appreciation. “As you were saying?”

  “What more is there to say? You have offered no explanation for your behavior, only pretended ignorance and denials which I do not credit in the least.” She raised the cup to her lips and drank as if the liquid were some potent liquor by which she might supplement her courage. “I know you are guilty. I know that you are greatly in debt, and that you would have broken your promise to allow me continued control of my fortune after our marriage.” She drained the cup. “You may dismiss any hopes you may have nourished regarding our marriage. I should sooner wed one of our footmen.”

  “Or a country veterinarian?” Inglesham said dryly. “Oh, no, my dear. I doubt that you will lower yourself.”

  “Dr. Fleming is a man of impeccable honor. If he should offer—” her cheeks burned “—I should accept, with pleasure.”