Ill Met by Moonlight

by Mercedes Lackey

  “There, love,” she said, “no one will know you were crying now.”

  Elizabeth nodded and sighed. “I will have to tell Kat that Denno and I have quarreled again, so she will not wonder why he did not accompany me back to the house and bid her farewell. Let us hope that the real Lord Denno does not come tomorrow with a big smile on his face.”

  Was that a warning, Denoriel wondered? Had Elizabeth felt his presence and tried to warn him away? No, surely she was just voicing a fear. But he had been thinking about coming the very next day. Aleneil could guard her this afternoon, but what about the night? If he could Gate into her bedchamber, Pasgen could do so also.

  Behind the hedge, Denoriel’s knees gave way and he knelt, fighting back waves of faintness. He must go Underhill, and soon. And he could not come here tomorrow. If “he” arrived two days in succession, it would wake doubts in Mistress Champernowne. He would talk with Aleneil; perhaps she would know what to do. His head was spinning.

  Meanwhile, Blanche carefully brushed Elizabeth’s gown and straightened her headdress so there should be no sign of her struggle on the path, and they set off for the palace. Denoriel watched them go, and then forced himself to his feet and made his way out of the garden to the stable, where he dismissed the Don’t-see-me spell in a patch of shadow just inside the door.

  He stood there, leaning on the wall and breathing hard. Slowly the effects of using too much magic became less acute. He stood up straight. As long as he did not need to cast another spell, he could manage. As soon as he stepped into the light, Ladbroke went to fetch Miralys, who was in the rearmost stall.

  “No one saw you ride in, m’lord,” he whispered, handing the rein to Denoriel. “And what happened? I felt … well, I’m not sure what I felt but it was like a thunderclap.”

  Denoriel could only hope that no other mortals had been aware of the magical disaster, but Ladbroke had lived Underhill; he might be sensitized to magical events. And it was just as well, Denoriel thought. He had to warn Ladbroke about Pasgen. That was safe enough; Ladbroke and Dunstan remembered living Underhill, but were bespelled never to be able to mention it or magic or spells.

  “Blanche drove off an Unseleighe disguised as me,” Denoriel said. “I think the thunderclap was the collapse of the Gate he came through.”

  He didn’t dare say that Elizabeth had banished her attacker and he was not certain of it; the evidence of air spirits was not always perfectly reliable. As it was, Ladbroke’s eyes widened in alarm.

  He did not acknowledge in any way what Denoriel had said about the Gate, instead he said, “A person came disguised as you, Lord Denno? My lord … My lord, how are we to be able to tell …” Miralys shifted, and Ladbroke’s eyes were drawn to the elvensteed’s head gear, which he could see, but mostly wasn’t there. “Miralys?” he whispered.

  The elvensteed’s mane suddenly turned bright red, lifted into the air as if whipped by a mighty wind, and turned to brown again as it drifted down exactly as it had been.

  Ladbroke began to laugh, then breathed out a long sigh. “Yes, it’s Miralys. No one could ever make a copy of a horse like this one. You’re Lord Denno all right.”

  “Good man. So, if you see ‘Lord Denno’ and Miralys is not in the stable or somewhere near, throw a horseshoe at him or try to tap him elsewhere with iron.”

  “Will do, m’lord. I’ll set Tolliver to watching too. He’s pretty good friends with the gardeners and suchlike. The lady won’t come out of the house but there’ll be eyes on her.”

  “Good! And warn Dunstan too. Lady Elizabeth is not going to tell Mistress Champernowne what happened because she is afraid that will result in Blanche being dismissed and the removal of Lord Denno’s name from the accepted visitor’s list, so Dunstan must be told. Not the guards, though, or I’ll find myself with a steel sword through me.”

  “You would, too,” Ladbroke said, smiling. “It’s like Lady Elizabeth is a precious heirloom handed down from the duke of Richmond. She’s a lot tarter than His Grace, but they’re all mad about her. They really would die for her, and kill for her … gladly.”

  Just as well, Denoriel thought. Definitely just as well.

  Chapter 7

  Very faintly, at an immense distance, Pasgen heard a woman screaming. He tried to remember whether he had trapped a woman in his sealed chamber and why he had done so, but his mind remained blank and the screaming was coming closer. No one had ever escaped from that chamber; thus the screaming woman must be loose in his house.

  He tried to open his eyes, and when they seemed glued shut, he tried to raise his hand to wipe at them. It was at that moment that he realized he was in intense pain. He ached all over, as if he had been battered with clubs, and his right arm was exquisitely painful. But not as painful … ah … now he remembered. Not as painful as when he had tried to seize Elizabeth and her cross had burned him even through the silk sleeve.

  Elizabeth? Had it been Elizabeth who destroyed his Gate and hurled him into emptiness? It was her voice that cried “Be gone,” but the spell … that had been cast in a strong woman’s voice. The maid. And the spell had shaken him, yes, but he could have withstood it, had withstood it, until the child had cried “Be gone,” and a rush of burning power had torn him free and flung him away …

  “Hush, Mother, hush. You can see he is breathing and the swelling of his hand is already going down.”

  That was Rhoslyn’s voice. A cool cloth, damp and scented with lemon and verbena dabbed at his eyes, wiped his forehead and cheeks. The screaming had stopped.

  Pasgen was beginning to put things together in his mind. That must have been Llanelli screaming. Pasgen felt irritated by his mother’s senseless emotionalism—and then suddenly remembered the black void into which he had been falling and the vision of Llanelli’s face to which he had clung. He made a tremendous effort, and at last, opened his eyes.

  “Pasgen? Are you badly broken anywhere? Must I summon a healer?” Rhoslyn’s voice was steady, but her eyes were enormous and her skin was shiny and pallid.

  He had clung to the vision of Llanelli and been spewed out by whatever spell had reft him from the mortal world to wherever Llanelli was … that would be Rhoslyn’s domain. Rhoslyn was caring for their mother. If a healer were summoned, the location of Rhoslyn’s domain might be exposed.

  “No,” he whispered. “I do not need a healer.”

  “You are black and blue all over,” Rhoslyn said, her voice now trembling slightly. “Are you sure nothing is broken? You have no injuries I cannot see? Can you feel pressure anywhere inside you?”

  Pasgen closed his eyes again and considered his aches and pains. He hurt comprehensively, but the pain seemed to be on the surface, of flesh and bone. He felt no inner gnawing, no draining of strength as there must have been if he were bleeding inwardly. Actually, he thought, as he again opened his eyes, he felt somewhat stronger than he had when he first became aware.

  Tentatively he tried to move one leg, the other. Both responded—not without complaint but without any sharp increase in agony. His left arm also lifted to his will; his right was less responsive, and a hot, red spark of pain lit just above his wrist. He inhaled sharply but realized that what he felt was much diminished from the white-hot agony that had seized on him in the garden at Hatfield Palace.

  “I do not need a healer,” Pasgen repeated.

  “Then I will have one of my girls carry you to bed,” Rhoslyn declared, her voice less uncertain. “No,” she continued, when he started to lift a hand in protest, “You cannot continue to lie on the floor in the middle of mother’s solar.”

  So it was his mother’s image that had saved him from being lost in the void. He looked around for Llanelli, but she had disappeared. He sighed. Just as well. He dared not thank her for being his soul anchor because to do that he would have to tell her of the danger he had been in, which would frighten her and make her fuss over him, demanding that he never expose himself again. As if living itself was not in some way or ano
ther dangerous. As if living beneath Vidal Dhu’s rule was not more dangerous than anything in the World Above!

  Dark. Why was it so dark? A sharp pang of fear that he had been hurt worse than he believed ended when his eyes snapped open and he realized he had let his heavy lids fall. The first thing he saw was Crinlys, she of the violet neck ribbon, looking at him as if he were a slab of meat; her spider-leg fingers twitched.

  “Bed will do me no good if I am tossed onto it like a sack of wheat,” he said with irritation.

  Rhoslyn smiled at him. “No, Crinlys will be gentle, I promise.” She looked at the starveling construct. “Crinlys, lift my brother and carry him to the bed Lady Llanelli has made ready in the blue room. Gently! Very gently. As gently as if he was a baby bird. He is not to be jostled or bruised.”

  Crinlys knelt by Pasgen, stared at him for a moment, and just before he could protest her too-avid attention, slid her hands and arms under his body. He was twice or three times her weight, but she lifted him in a slow, smooth motion that caused him no discomfort, nestling his head against her shoulder so he would not need to support it himself.

  Eurafal of the orange ribbon was waiting by the bed, Llanelli standing just behind her. Pasgen drew breath to speak, without having the slightest notion of what he would say, but Rhoslyn, who had followed them, took Llanelli’s hand and led her out of the room. Before the door closed, he heard his mother demanding that a healer be sent for, but he assumed that Rhoslyn would win that argument.

  Somehow the two constructs managed to remove his clothing without causing him much discomfort. Then he might have dozed for a while, although he was only aware of closing his eyes and opening them again. Rhoslyn was seated by the bed.

  “What happened?” she asked when she saw he was awake. “You appeared in Mother’s parlor and she screamed.”

  Pasgen blinked twice, aware that he was mostly free of pain. Cautiously, he stretched. His right arm was still sore and his body felt tender, but did not ache nor threaten to explode in more agony if he moved it. He asked in some surprise if Rhoslyn had taken up healing. She answered composedly that she had not, but that Llanelli knew some healing. Pasgen sighed and looked around, but Llanelli was not in the room.

  “We have agreed that Mother will take the night watch,” Rhoslyn said. “You will be asleep then and she will not wake you or trouble you with questions. Now, what happened?”

  “Lady Elizabeth happened,” he said, with weary resignation.

  Rhoslyn shrank back into the chair, her eyes wide with horror. “What did you do?” she whispered.

  “Nothing,” he replied, more than a little irritated at the bald truth of the statement. “I never touched her. No, that’s not true. When she turned to run away, I caught at her.” He lifted his right arm from the bedclothes; it was still slightly swollen and where he had touched the cross, red blisters stood out on his white skin. “You need not waste any sympathy on Lady Elizabeth. I did her no harm. Rather, it was entirely the opposite.”

  “She was wearing FitzRoy’s cross.” Rhoslyn shuddered slightly. “I remember I could come no nearer than an arm’s length to him when he was wearing it. And you touched it! But the cross could not have beaten you black and blue.”

  “No, that happened when they collapsed my Gate. The backlash …”

  “They? What they?”

  “The maid. I don’t know her name but she was the one who damaged Aurelia. And … somehow Elizabeth helped her.”

  “Elizabeth?” Rhoslyn stared at him as if she suspected his mind had been damaged as well as his body. “Nonsense. Elizabeth is not quite eight years old, and a mere mortal child.”

  “Well, the maid was casting a spell. I felt it trying to shake me loose from my grip on the mortal world but I was holding against it until the child cried ‘Be gone.’ There was a … I’m not sure what. An explosion of power, I suppose. And I was flung away, flung into the void …” He stopped speaking, his voice not quite steady.

  “Into the void?” Rhoslyn’s voice had sunk to a whisper. “Such cruelty. Such viciousness. And she only a child.”

  Pasgen knew he should allow Rhoslyn to go on believing that Elizabeth had deliberately meant to consign him to the horror of fading slowly from life in the void. If Rhoslyn believed that, she would even help him dispose of the girl. But he could not. Something … something about the child … and Rhoslyn’s pain, too, forced him to honesty.

  “She did not consign me to the void,” he said. “She had named no destination. I do not think she had any intention at all, save to fling me as far away from herself as possible.” Having subdued the horrifying memory of that falling into nothingness, Pasgen managed a smile. “Likely she didn’t know enough to say ‘from whence you came.’ But I admit I was as frightened as I have ever been. Like a babe, I called for mother, and the spell caught it and sent me to Llanelli.”

  Rhoslyn shook her head. “Are you sure it was Elizabeth who tore loose your Gate? It seems … She is so very young that I find it hard to believe.”

  Pasgen was silent, reconsidering what had happened in the garden at Hatfield. He remembered the pain that had made him release Elizabeth, remembered pushing her so she fell, remembered her threatening to stab him with her scissors, remembered his rage, his determination to break her neck. Then some flaming object had struck his cheek. He had heard the woman’s voice chanting, had prepared to resist, to speak a counterspell, and a thin, high voice had cried “Be gone,” and white lightning seemed to burst from the ground or from Elizabeth herself, and fling him away.

  “I do not think,” he said slowly, “that what the child did was part of the woman’s spell. That had weakened my hold on my Gate and, yes, the command to ‘be gone’ became part of the spell, but the burst of power that collapsed the Gate and tore me loose from the mortal world … I think that was just a burst of panic, which fueled a tremendous release of power. The child is Talented, like her mother … ah, and untrained, too, like her mother. Like her mother. Hmm. I wonder …”

  Rhoslyn narrowed her eyes. “What are you thinking, Pasgen? No one is going to execute an eight-year-old child for adultery or treason.”

  “Certainly not.” Pasgen grinned suddenly. “But such a child might easily be removed from the succession, which would be sufficient for our purposes.”

  Rhoslyn sighed. “If the FarSeers then See only two futures for England, it will be enough. But as long as the vision of Elizabeth as queen persists …” She shook her head. “And I don’t see how you will manage it. What could a child say or do that would be serious enough to get her disinherited?”

  “About that I am not certain, but it will be easy enough for me to find out.” He bit his lower lip in thought. “I said to you some time ago that Fagildo Otstargi should return to England and begin to tell fortunes and give advice again. As soon as my bruises are healed enough not to start gossip about who beat me, I will open Fagildo’s house and send my card out to my old clients.”

  “Will they return after you left them with so little warning many years ago?” Rhoslyn raised a skeptical eyebrow, and Pasgen did not fault her for being skeptical.

  He shrugged, slightly, and still felt an ache when he did so. “There is only one I really care about—Sir Thomas Wriothesley, who is now the king’s secretary—and he will return both because my advice was very valuable to him and because I put a compulsion on him to favor Otstargi.” He nodded. “I will have to forgo—for a while, at least—my hopes of breaking Denoriel’s connection with the court.” But at least such a move would satisfy Vidal Dhu’s command to gather information about the World Above.

  “Denoriel? What has he to do with this?”

  Pasgen chuckled; even though it had gone wrong, the plan, at least, had been a good one. “I had disguised myself as Lord Denno—the persona he always used when he attached himself to Henry FitzRoy and has resumed to watch Elizabeth. I thought if I abducted her that Denno would be blamed and lose all his usefulness in the mortal world. And
if the High King came to hear of it, Denoriel would have much to answer for.”

  “That was clever,” Rhoslyn said almost purring approval. “I am so sorry you did not succeed. It would do our so noble half-brother good to be misspoken and banished.”

  She had never forgiven Denoriel for, as she believed, murdering the changeling she had created to replace Henry FitzRoy. Sometimes she would still dream of the sweet, loving child and wake up in tears. She remembered that horrible day too well and the unexpected power Denoriel had displayed. Her eyes narrowed.

  “Wait, Pasgen. Are you sure that what collapsed your Gate came from within Elizabeth? Could that have been some latent spell that Denoriel attached to her or to some amulet that responded to the maid’s spell?”

  Pasgen stared at her for a moment, not really seeing her but trying to recall what had happened in those seconds before he had been battered and bruised and flung away. He could not pinpoint the cause of that burst of energy. It had seemed to come from the child, but that would also be true if there had been an amulet concealed about her.

  Could an amulet survive such close contact with the iron cross? Pasgen could not answer that question, but he guessed now from Elizabeth’s reaction to his suggestion that she cover the cross with the bespelled pouch that Denoriel did not do so. And that meant that Denoriel spent considerable time close to the child and the naked cross. And that meant that Denoriel could withstand the effect of cold iron … so perhaps he could devise an amulet that could also withstand the effect.

  “It is possible,” Pasgen said slowly. “It is more reasonable than that an eight-year-old child has such power. And if it is true, it will make dealing with her easier.”

  “Pasgen! You are not going to attempt to seize her again.” Rhoslyn spoke in tones of an order, not a question, and a touch of resentment rose in him. “Do you never learn?”

  But she was right, and he knew it, and every aching muscle reinforced it. “No. No. I will not go near the child. I must examine my resources. If Wriothesley has continued his climb in the court, I will have the perfect instrument for being rid of Elizabeth—one way or another.”