Faerie

by Jacobs Delle

  Philippe pressed Leonie behind him, but she moved back to his side. Nay, she was right. It would take all of them at their best to win this fight.

  “Four heads,” he said.

  “Four arrows,” she replied. “Now.”

  Faster than he could determine her movements, she nocked and shot each arrow, and sang them on their way, each striking the bare neck bones of the gholin guards. The severed heads plopped to the ground and the gruesome skeletons crumpled to the grass.

  Behind him, Ilse growled and lunged at a gholin that had appeared from nowhere. As de Mowbray whirled around, the gholin swung its club, catching the Black Earl in the head. He groaned and fell forward, face into the grass, blood streaming from the back of his head. Philippe whirled. Others of the ghoulish creatures advanced from all around.

  “Defend me!” Leonie shouted as she threw herself to her knees beside de Mowbray, her left hand spreading over the wound to the back of his head. Her right arm extended outward and her hand whirled in the air, fingers splayed out to call her arrows back and sending them flying to their prey around the circle. The gholin backed away from Philippe’s swinging sword, but Leonie called back her arrows and struck again while rising from beside de Mowbray’s sprawled body. God help them, he hoped she succeeded. They could not afford to lose the man now.

  All around them the gholins held back, some again falling to Leonie’s arrows.

  “You have no chance, Peregrine,” said the disembodied deep voice again, echoing as if it bounced off walls.

  Philippe swung his gaze around but saw naught. But a smudge appeared, stretched long and tall, darkened. Human features. A Norman helm. Legs and body in mail, covered by a dark tabard, long black cloak tossing as if in a storm, yet there was no wind. From the dark hood, he could at first see no face. But he needed no face to know who this fiend was.

  “Fulk. Clodomir.” It was Leonie’s thought. She stood again beside him, and he could hear de Mowbray groaning and shuffling as if he might be able to rise.

  “Aye.” Odd, he thought, that the gholins attacked only de Mowbray. They wanted the earl dead, but not him or Leonie. Nor the four prisoners by the trees.

  As Leonie drew the sword de Mowbray had given her, Philippe sent up another prayer to the Almighty that her Faerie skills would extend to the cutting edge as well.

  “You have no chance,” Clodomir growled out like a wolf. “Submit to me or your king will die. And the witch as well.”

  “I think you will kill them anyway.”

  The sorcerer’s laugh roared like an ominous wave sweeping over a ship’s bow. “You need not worry. I have uses for them. But I will dispose of them if I find it necessary.”

  Philippe glimpsed Rufus’s narrowing eyes that said this was a fight that went far beyond kings and kingdoms. Rufus would never forgive him for giving in, no matter the stakes. But the king was helpless in his bonds, and although Philippe was under a death sentence, he was still sworn to protect Rufus.

  The boy, Leonie’s favorite child, and the woman who was her mother, who she now saw for the first time in her own memory. Lumps constricted in his throat. He had to save them all. But how?

  Beside the king a shimmering light, wobbling in layers, enveloped the woman with the long, pale hair. Her body shifted its shape, shrank and re-formed into the tall, gaunt, wizened Cailleach. Her gnarled hands grew smaller and smaller until the binding ropes loosened and slipped from her wrists. Once free, the crone shimmered again and returned to the shape of the proud warrior woman of unearthly beauty.

  “Black Earl!” she shouted. “Awake!”

  De Mowbray’s struggling body shifted. He groaned; his body glowed and twisted, darkened and reshaped. Writhed like trapped eels in an eel net. A tumultuous growl and he rose up, now a huge black dog as big as a warhorse, enormous eyes round and glowing, black as Satan’s kiss.

  “Leonie!” shouted Herzeloyde as she raised her hand high in the air.

  Leonie sent the small sword to fly to Herzeloyde’s hand just as the black moor hound, joined by shaggy Ilse, ripped through rotten-fleshed gholins with their mighty teeth. Philippe swung both his sword and the king’s as Leonie called back her arrows and pitched them yet again, then snatched up a dropped club to slam it against the gholins that grabbed at her. Her dagger in one hand and the club in the other, she slashed and pounded against the demons like a war maiden.

  Herzeloyde sliced through bodies of the gholins, which fell all about her and were strewn like harvest straw from the raging bite of the black moor hound. Rufus shouted to be set free to join the fray, but none had time for him as they pushed their way closer to the prisoners. Frantically, the bishop worked at Rufus’s ropes while Rufus’s hands attempted to free the bishop. Philippe had seen both of them fight. He would welcome either as an ally.

  Leonie glanced at the king and directed the dagger to him, an easy catch. All of one motion, he grasped it between his bound hands and spun around to cut loose the bishop, who then freed him. Philippe threw Rufus his sword. The bishop grabbed a fallen cudgel.

  The little dagger hit the ground in favor of better weapons. Sigge, forgotten by the real warriors, spotted the dagger and worked it between his hands to cut them free. A gholin came up behind the king with his cudgel.

  “I’ll save you, Sire!” he shouted, and the boy, still hobbled at the ankles, sprang forward between the king’s short legs and stabbed the creature’s foot. Rufus stumbled, but the gholin fell into a tangled pile of bones.

  Rufus was not one to be slowed down for more than a nod to the boy, and he yanked the blade from the ground and tossed it back to Sigge.

  The gholins kept coming. But only a few could fight at once, for there was no room. Philippe desperately wanted to send Leonie away from the fray, but he could not even put her behind him, for his back was as endangered as his front. But they moved, inch by putrid inch, amid the din of clanging blades and shouts of agony, closer to their allies, until they could form an outward-facing ring to defend themselves in all directions. Slaying the slow-moving gholins that moved the circle closer, ever closer, to the black-cloaked sorcerer.

  Philippe turned, the sorcerer in his sight as he bore down on the evil creature.

  From the emptiness beneath the black hood, two crimson eyes began to glow, and the shape of a face traced itself in the darkness. The sorcerer raised his sword and pointed it, as if welcoming battle. The hood fell back, revealing the blackened face of the man called the Warrior of God, but the red eyes glowed with the light of Hell. Fulk.

  Fury filled Philippe from bones to brawn and rushed through his veins as he raised his sword and swung.

  The streak of blue light swept from Fulk’s sword tip and seized Leonie from her fight, tossing her through the air into Philippe’s advancing blade.

  Philippe pulled back, but too late. Her shriek was little more than a startled gasp as the sword point pierced her at the waist. She crumpled to the ground. Philippe dropped his sword and fell to his knees beside her.

  Around them, the tableau of warriors came to a sudden halt, frozen as they were.

  “Leonie!” He grabbed her, trying to lift her, trying to turn time back, trying to undo what he knew deep in his heart had been destined. Nothing mattered now, save her.

  Her green eyes glazed, then she closed them, her head drooping. “Do not speak. Hear me. Place my hands on the wound. Hurry, while I still have strength.”

  Involuntarily, he nearly spoke. But he grasped her thought and laid her on the ground, taking her hands and laying them, interlaced, over the wound.

  “My love—forgive me.”

  “Nay—listen. Don’t let him know you hear me. Don’t let him know what I can do.”

  “Oh, my love.” Silence rang loudly around him as if his ears still echoed from the chaos and clamor of battle hours after it was done. He glanced around and saw all those embattled were frozen in their positions as if time itself had stopped.

  “You cannot save her,” roared
Fulk’s dark voice. “None of your petty human tricks can save her. Only I can. She will die, Peregrine, unless you kneel to me in submission. Quickly now, decide. She can live. It is in your hands if you act before she is gone.”

  Leonie lay as limp as if dead, eyes closed. “’Tis a lie. The curse is a lie. This is by his hand, not yours. But my hand will undo it.”

  Her bright blood seeped and spread, covering her garments, covering him. Doubt hung heavy in his heart. “Can you?”

  “Trust me. But do not let him know. You are the key to all. If he steals your body, he will have the power to enter and destroy the Summer Land, and England and Scotland as well. Kill him for me, my Peregrine.”

  “He cannot be killed.”

  “He can. Only you can do it. You have the powers he does not. He knows you can open the portals. Use it against him. Make him think you give him what he wants.”

  “You waste valuable time, Peregrine. She will soon be dead, and then you can do nothing for her. Will you lose her by your own hand, Peregrine? As you did Joceline? You should know by now you cannot stop me. I will always win.”

  Philippe touched Leonie’s cheek, smearing her blood as he did so. “My love. I will win. I will kill him. For you.”

  “You are my only love, Peregrine. Forever. I will live for you.”

  He had no choice but to believe. Any other was beyond bearing. He rose from his knees, a man empty of all save his immense hunger for vengeance. But he wiped it from his face and bade God and whatever powers had bestowed the Annwyn skills upon him to guide him. What he would do, he knew not. He dropped his sword to the grass and walked toward the sorcerer.

  Nearby Rufus stood, his sword still in midswing, his pale eyes stricken with horror. Herzeloyde was caught in midgasp as she beheaded a gholin, but she could see the daughter she had been forced to abandon soaked with blood on the ground. And de Mowbray, no longer the black dog, had stopped in his stride toward the bleeding Leonie.

  I am the Peregrine. The Annwyn King. The lover of the beautiful Faerie Leonie of Bosewood. For her, I will win.

  “Kneel to me, Annwyn King.”

  “I am naught but a man.”

  “Hah. Even I know you know the truth by now. Kneel to me and submit to my will.”

  If he did, the sorcerer-demon-shade would enter his body and mind. Philippe drew from Leonie’s mind the image of her fighting the demon that had possessed her. She had won then. He could too. He would let this demon in and then fight it to the death.

  He knelt. He felt the sorcerer drawing near and begged God for the strength he needed. As the long, craggy fingers reached out, coming closer, he steeled himself.

  Nay, wait! That wouldn’t work! If the fiend took his body, he could enter the Summer Land without dying. If Philippe let him in, the sorcerer would become the Annwyn King as well as have a body that could survive inside the portal—which he couldn’t do now.

  Philippe called up a fierce stroke of will and slammed shut his mind like a massive iron portcullis crashing down. The sorcerer hit it like a ballista into a stone wall. In an instant mind flash, Philippe built the portal. He lunged, grappling the sorcerer, and flung both of them through the portal into the Summer Land.

  Still gripping the creature, he forced the portal shut. The shade screamed, a high, agonizing sound. He went limp and collapsed.

  The blackness of the demon shade faded from the body. It was nothing. A body of a man. A shell. No spirit, no soul. No demon, shade, or sorcerer left.

  Aye. His Annwyn heart told him. The evil was gone. The body was only that of Fulk, the true man, who had been rightly known for his piety.

  Philippe grabbed the body by one arm, and as he reopened the portal, he dragged it out into the green glade. The mist and sun sparkled on an earth that had the scent of a new spring day.

  Like frozen branches released in a thaw, the arrested tableau came to life again. Bodies of gholins dropped to the earth among those already slain.

  Leonie still lay in a wide pool of her blood. Still and quiet.

  His heart in his throat, Philippe dropped Fulk’s body and raced toward her, all else forgotten, shouting as he ran, but not even an eyelash moved. He knelt and gently scooped her into his embrace, and her hand dropped limply away.

  “Leonie! You promised me!” he cried, and nestled his tear-soaked cheek next to hers.

  “I’m here.”

  “Leonie!” Sigge screamed. “You can’t die, Leonie! Wake up!” The little boy hopped, ankles still tied, until Rufus grabbed him by the waist and ran with him to Leonie’s side.

  “Tell them.”

  He kissed her cheek and smoothed her wildly rumpled hair, loving the very touch. “She’s still with us, just exhausted.”

  “A wound like that,” Herzeloyde, no longer the ethereally beautiful Faerie warrior, said in a scratchy voice. “The healing itself might have killed her.”

  “’Tis the Alchemy of Spirits,” said the Black Earl to her. “Whatever she was before, now she is far greater.”

  “Aye, I see that now. Tell her for me, Annwyn King, that I have loved her always, and have regretted every moment that I have been forced to leave her.”

  “Tell her for me, my love, I know. I understand. Always will she be my beloved mother.”

  Philippe looked up at the crone. “She gives you her love. She cannot yet talk.”

  Giant tears flooded down the old hag’s face. “I long so desperately to touch my child, but it is my geas that I am forbidden to touch those I love. I did not ask to be taken from her, but it cannot be otherwise. I only beg forgiveness, and give my great gratitude for all those who have loved and protected where I could not.”

  “She knows,” he said. “There is no forgiveness, for none is needed.”

  Beside the crone stood de Mowbray, his face heavy with sweat. But Ilse sneaked between the warriors, whimpering, and suddenly swiped her tongue over Leonie’s face. Leonie grimaced and jerked back. Her eyes popped open.

  The odd company of warriors laughed. Philippe tightened his embrace and laughed with them.

  “Aye,” de Mowbray added, “’Tis a miracle she’s survived. And she had already used some of her energy on me.”

  Rufus knelt down too. “Lady, I thought you were gone. How could you have survived? I don’t understand. What is all of this about? The old woman here, I deduced. And I know of your connections to her. But the rest?”

  The Black Earl shifted his jaw about and frowned. He huffed a sigh. “She has a talent for closing wounds,” de Mowbray said. “But ’tis a chancy thing. She’s failed before. ’Twould have been a dire thing if she’d saved me, then lost herself.”

  “Her Faerie blood, then? But Philippe? What was that?”

  “He’s of the old race of Annwyn, long gone and scattered. No one has ever seen the powers pass on beyond the second generation. But these last few weeks it’s come out, not just as one with the blood, but an Annwyn King. ’Tis how he can build the Summer Land portals.”

  Rufus stepped back, and his eyes turned bright and rounded like two pale moons. “The Peregrine, a king? I cannot believe it. Just who are his subjects?”

  “I have none, Sire,” Philippe said, feeling his face heat like a young girl’s.

  “’Tis a matter of skills and talent, not of subjects, Red King,” said the Cailleach. “Annwyn is no more.”

  “So this is why you chose him?”

  The old woman chuckled, her voice as rough as sandstone. “I told you I cannot foretell. But if you were a mother seeking a husband for your daughter, and looking out over that silk-skirted group you call your household knights, which one would you choose?”

  A cynical frown furrowed the king’s face. “I’ll never believe you do not lie when it suits you, old woman.” Then, with narrowed eyes, Rufus faced Philippe. “Well, Peregrine, have you made your choice?”

  Philippe startled. He’d never thought he had anything to say in that matter between him and the king. “I have, Sire.” />
  “And to whom do you owe your allegiance?”

  “I am bound by law, loyalty, honor, and friendship to my king. I am bound by law, loyalty, honor, and love to my wife. Never will I give over either to the enemy, with or without a fight.”

  “And if you should have to choose?”

  “I will not choose. That is something I have learned from my Leonie. There is always another way.”

  Philippe waited for the characteristic purple rising in the king’s face that meant his rage was about to boil over. But this time, Rufus merely stared, then raised a hand to stroke his copper-colored beard.

  “Well. One must protect one’s family,” he said. The king’s face turned to a dark frown as he turned to de Mowbray. “And you,” he said, raising a finger to point, then shook his head. “Nay, don’t even try to explain. That I do not want to know.”

  The Bishop of Durham had said little. But now he knelt beside the body of Fulk. “I loved this man,” he said. “He was like a son to me. How did he deceive me so? He led those bone beings against me—against us.”

  It was de Mowbray who joined the bishop on his knees beside the body. “That was not Fulk. That sorcerer killed Fulk and stole his body when he was on pilgrimage, then planted demons in your mind so you thought his own thoughts. That evil is destroyed. But now here is Fulk’s body back, free of evil. Take him home and bury him with Christian dignity, for Fulk was a good man, worthy of what he was called, worthy of our tears.”

  The bishop’s head bowed and nodded slowly as a tear trailed down his cheek.

  Rufus let something rumble in his throat, and then he cleared it. “Come, all of us together. Lady Leonie, can you rise?”

  “Soon,” she said, though Philippe could see she was still weak.

  “Well, then, we shall all kneel to where you are. You, too, boy. You are old enough and brave enough to save your king’s life, so you must join this pledge.”