by Jocelyn Fox
Merrick arched his eyebrows at her, blinking in scholarly dismay. “I wouldn’t say that I don’t know. What I’m attempting to convey is that I am not able to read the map with as much precision.”
Vell arched one eyebrow in reply, a hint of a smile turning up one side of her mouth. We had all formed a loose circle, with me slightly in the center, the ulfdrengr ranged on one side, Vell and then Luca and then Chael. Next to Vell there was Merrick, staring at her with a hint of both irritation and admiration; Finnead, and then Murtagh. That put Finnead across from Luca, and I noticed with a sinking feeling that the former Vaelanbrigh’s inscrutable eyes stared over my shoulder unblinkingly, not even sparing a glance for Merrick and Vell’s conversation.
Great, I groaned to myself, this is just what I need. A Sidhe Knight and a wolf-warrior playing rooster while we traveled the perilous road to the Seelie Court. Surely a centuries-old Sidhe and a well-disciplined ulfdrengr, raised in the ice of the North, would be mature enough to keep their manly squabble on hold until we defeated the Big Bad. Finnead’s gaze hardened, and I looked over my shoulder to find Luca staring at Finnead with a devilish gleam in his eyes. A gleam that said, Yes, you just saw the Bearer come out of our shelter with wrinkled clothes and mussed hair, and wouldn’t you like to know what went on inside? The slight curve in Luca’s lips suggested he found the Sidhe Knight’s gaze amusing somehow…and Finnead’s unwavering flat stare conveyed that the Sidhe Knight was deadly serious. I sighed internally and tuned back in to Merrick and Vell’s conversation.
“…some degree of certainty, I can say that it will take us longer than expected. There’s something strange in the scrying-lines, some sort of disturbance that I cannot rightly discern with just a looking-glass,” Merrick said. “Perhaps if I had—”
“We shall scout!” announced Farin jubilantly, her aura erupting in a sunburst of excitement. “We shall discover this disturbance, and if it is a dark creature we shall slay it!”
Vell hid a smile at both the Glasidhe’s exuberant proclamation and Merrick’s look of annoyance at the interruption. “I am sure you will slay any Dark creature stupid enough to cross your path,” she said to Farin, who bared her pointed little teeth in gleeful answer.
“So what time frame are we talking here?” I asked Merrick. “Give me at least a ballpark.”
Everyone except Finnead looked at me quizzically. “Estimate,” I said, my voice choked with sudden and suppressed laughter.
Merrick took a deep breath and ran his hand through his dark hair again. “Anywhere from a fortnight to a month, best I can guess.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You weren’t kidding. There’s some pretty major stuff going on with those lines of power, isn’t there?”
“Yes,” Merrick said soberly. “There is power reaching out, corrupting the very land.”
I shook my head. “The faster we get to the Seelie Court, the better.” But no-one moved. It was as though they were all waiting, as though they all knew that I had something earth-shattering to tell them. I reached back and touched the hilt of the Sword for reassurance and took a breath. “I’ll try to keep this brief, then. When we were in the sirens’ lair, we…I…we found another, um, object.” Forin and Farin hovered just above Merrick’s head. The Sidhe and the ulfdrengr all waited for me to continue. “Another object of power. I knew it was important because one of the sirens talked about using it to bargain with Malravenar in exchange for their continued freedom.”
Vell snorted and Chael spit to one side, his lovely scarred face twisted with loathing at the mention of our nebulous enemy’s name. A low growl rolled from Rialla’s throat. The merriment was gone from Luca’s face, his handsome countenance pale at the mention of the beautiful, terrible sirens.
I pushed away the memory of Riadne’s hands gliding over my body, swallowing hard against the mental image of her long lithe body undulating in the rushing waters of the Darinwel. “Anyway,” I said in a slightly strangled voice. “I…we…took it from them.”
“What, exactly, did you take?” Murtagh asked, his green eyes sharp.
“Are the runes of concealment still strong?” When Merrick nodded silently, I opened my belt-pouch and drew out the tightly wrapped bundle. In answer to Murtagh’s question, I held the Crown of Bones cradled in one palm, heavy as a bird’s egg, and carefully drew back the cloth covering it. For a moment it looked like just a ruby—I laughed a little at that, in the privacy of my own head. Just a ruby the size of my fist. The Sword stirred contemplatively. The relative privacy of my own head, I amended.
Then a cloud overhead shifted and a shaft of sunlight pierced the Crown of Bones and set it aflame. I almost dropped it as it burned brightly, diaphanous scarlet flames shimmering on the surface of the stone. And then it wasn’t a ruby, but a stone with night and day within it, collected under a dome the color of bright blood, moonlit moors and sunbright vales under a sanguine sky. My hands began trembling with the weight of such power, and with a great effort I rolled the Crown of Bones back into its cloth swaddling, hiding the mesmerizing sight.
Merrick murmured something to himself in the Sidhe tongue. Finnead, unsurprisingly, looked almost bored, his face blank and smooth as a marble statue.
“The Crown of Bones,” said Murtagh, voice bright with interest. For a Sidhe, he was jumping up and down with excitement, I thought to myself drily.
“You should have left it in its watery grave,” Vell spat suddenly. I turned to her in surprise, the Crown still cradled in one palm. “Put it away,” she said in a hard voice, and I slipped it back into my belt-pouch, collecting my confusion to reexamine later.
“So now we are doubly in peril,” Merrick said, but he didn’t make it sound like a bad thing.
A strange light came into Chael’s eye. “I welcome any Dark creature who thinks to attack the Bearer.” Chael and Merrick locked gazes, and Merrick nodded slightly, all trace of the slightly sheepish Navigator gone, replaced by a cool Sidhe warrior recognizing the thirst for revenge in the eye of the ulfdrengr.
“Are you bringing it to Titania?” Murtagh asked.
“Not in particular,” I said. “To be honest, I’m not quite sure what I’m meant to do with it. Until then, I suppose I’m just safekeeping it.”
“We are safekeeping it,” Murtagh said, grinning.
“Fair enough,” I said with an answering smile. At least not everyone was mad at me over picking up the Crown of Bones. “Let’s prepare to move.” I glanced at Vell, but she refused to meet my gaze, staring stonily at the ground. My smile faltered. Was the Crown of Bones really an evil instrument, to garner such a reaction from Vell?
It is not evil, the Sword answered immediately. The herravaldyr’s rage stems from the death of her people. Perhaps such power could have saved them.
“You will take my mount,” Merrick told me, “if that is all right, my Bearer.”
“That’s fine,” I answered absently, pushing away the hollow feeling that accompanied my thought of Kelath. I concentrated instead on solving the puzzle of Vell’s hatred for the Crown of Bones. As I mounted Merrick’s fine-boned Fae steed, I almost asked how the ulfdrengrs would manage with one mount between the three of them, but then I saw that Murtagh had taken Kavoryk’s big steed, and he offered a hand to Vell. Vell glared at him for a full minute, but then nodded to Chael, who took her small fleet mount, and she slipped up behind Murtagh, barely touching him, her hands resting primly on her thighs. Luca didn’t need a mount, I supposed, because he slipped off into the shadows, Kianryk beside him. Merrick rode the mount that we’d used as a pack-horse, a raw-boned animal that lacked some of the grace of the other Fae mounts but seemed strong and sure-footed.
Merrick took the lead, Forin and Farin zipping ahead until their auras were lost amidst the canopy of the forest. He sketched a rune in the air, and my ears popped as runes on the trees flared and pressure built and released, a slight wind rippling across the clearing. We were vulnerable now. Merrick motioned forward silently with tw
o fingers. Finnead fell in behind him, Chael behind me, and Murtagh and Vell on Kavoryk’s steed last, Beryk a liquid shadow streaming through the underbrush. I took a deep breath, settled into the saddle and tried not to jump at every shadow that flickered across our path; the Dark creatures would surely be hunting us, but we were across the Darinwel, and making our way through the perilous Borderlands, drawing closer every moment to the Seelie Court and, hopefully, rescuing its Queen, adding one more great Power to our side before facing Malravenar.
Chapter 27
We traveled for the rest of the afternoon, and when sunset tinged the leaves red, Merrick reined in his mount and turned to me.
“My Lady Bearer—Tess,” he amended at my snort of disgust at the honorific, “I put it to the company that it would be safer to travel through the night, when the creatures of the Dark will roam, and sleep during the day.”
Murtagh guided his mount around a slender ash tree at the edge of the narrow path. Vell sat behind him with her hands still laid neatly on her thighs. “It would be easier to keep watch during the day,” he said in agreement.
“Vell?” I asked.
She shrugged. “To keep watch during the day or at night, it matters not to a wolf.”
“I’ll take that as ambivalence then. Chael?”
“Vell speaks for all of us,” Chael replied, his silver hair shimmering in the fading light. The fresh scars patterning his beautiful face looked even deeper and redder than before.
“I’ll keep that in mind. Finnead?”
“It will take a few days to adjust, but it would stand us in good stead.”
“Just remember, the Skin-wraiths attacked at sunset, so they don’t necessarily keep strictly to the night. And I expect that they’re getting stronger.”
“We will kill them if they attack you,” Chael said, one hand tightening on his faehal’s reins. His mount tossed its head and huffed, pawing the forest ground.
“I have no doubt about that,” I said. I glanced up at the last vestige of the day, blood-red as the light filtered down through the branches of the forest. “We travel until sunrise. Let us make best speed.”
Merrick grinned a little at me. “You sound more like one of us every day, Tess.”
“I don’t know whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing,” I replied drily, raising my eyebrows.
“Well, we are wickedly handsome, so that might make it a bad thing,” Murtagh offered. Vell echoed my expression, golden eyes skeptical as she surveyed the back of Murtagh’s head, crossing her arms. “Or a very, very good thing. It all depends on your perspective, ma saell doehndhine.”
I jumped a little at the nickname, a blade of something like sorrow flashing through me as I remembered the other dear friends who had first used those words to describe me: Allene, now no more than a pile of ash in the clearing, stabbed through the heart; Ramel, still back at Darkhill, braving Mab’s capricious and terrible moods.
“You’re rather cheeky for someone who was almost dead less than a day ago,” Vell commented. Murtagh twisted in the saddle to offer her what he clearly thought was a roguish grin—and he was very, very handsome; but she stared at him blankly until he turned back around with a little shrug, as if to say, What more can I do?
I cleared my throat and pushed the sorrow down. “You must have picked that up from Ramel,” I said, trying to keep my voice light.
Murtagh nudged his faehal closer to me. We couldn’t ride side by side, but I could hear him. “He spoke of you as often as the wards would allow.”
“The wards?”
“We placed wards on your old rooms,” he explained. “Used them as a meeting-place beyond Mab’s ken.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?”
“Oh, undoubtedly.” Murtagh’s crooked grin glimmered in the half-light. “But we needed some way to keep hope alive.”
“Things are that bad.” I said it as a statement, remembering Emery’s angry, accusing stare when I rescued Murtagh.
“I was only a stripling at the time of the closing of the Great Gate, but from what I remember, times have never been so dark.”
“Well,” I said, “we will just have to light a fire to push back the darkness. And the first thing we must do is reach the Seelie Court.”
“Enough talk,” agreed Merrick, pushing his raw-boned mount to a quicker pace.
I was not as sore yet as I’d expected, the gash in my thigh still tender but surprisingly painless as we pushed through the gathering shadows, threading through the skeletal forest on our fleet-footed Fae mounts.
We stopped once during the night, inky blackness pressing in all around as we dismounted to stretch our legs. Vell unrolled her kit and gave a concoction of dried powders to Chael, who swallowed them uncomplainingly, his remaining eye glittering amethyst in the moonlight. Luca appeared, his golden beauty luminous even in the darkness. He flexed his hand silently. The three wolves appeared with glistening muzzles, and I wondered suddenly whether it was a deer or a Skin-wraith they’d downed; but Kianryk stretched with the lazy fullness of a well-fed dog, and my nerves eased.
I checked the bandages on my thigh myself, and found them to be a bit grimy but still unstained by any blood. The leg felt stiff but there was no sharp hot pain warning of infection, so I decided to let it be. I wanted to conserve the healing supplies that we had, because I had the nagging feeling we would need them again before we arrived at the gates of the Summervale.
When we began our trek again, Murtagh again pulled his mount up close. I couldn’t see his face throught the cloying darkness. “Did Ramel ever teach you the rune of self-weaving?”
“Self-weaving? What in the world is that?” I frowned.
“It’s a rune that essentially weaves your Walker-self with your body. It prevents you from Walking.”
“Why would I want to prevent myself from Walking?” I asked, even as a burst of hope flared in my chest: the waking world was exhausting enough, but then to be dragged out of my body while I was asleep…it made for never-ending days. No rest, no respite from the heart-pounding adventures of Faeortalam. Murtagh raised one eyebrow slightly at my question. I pressed my lips together, unwilling to show weakness. Besides, I had to meet Ramel and Liam…I counted quickly in my head. Not tonight, I realized with another wave of relief. Tomorrow. I cleared my throat. “Perhaps you could show me, when we make camp.”
Murtagh nodded, his eyes glimmering in the shadows. We rode in silence for a moment, and then he said, his voice so low that I barely heard, “Tess, you do not always have to be strong. We are all here for you.”
And without waiting for a reply, Murtagh pressed his heels to his mount’s sides. I swallowed thickly. Murtagh had been with the company mere days, and granted, I had saved his life, but in perilous Faortalam it seemed that everyone saved one anothers’ lives twice before breakfast, so I didn’t count it as much anymore. For him to declare such a thing, for a Sidhe, was even rarer than declaring their fealty: it was not only pledging loyalty, it was pledging emotion and support—two things that the inscrutable Sidhe did not seem to openly lavish on one another, much less a mortal interloper. Though I was as much an interloper as any of them, now, I corrected myself. I breathed in the silky night air, tasting the deepness of the earth and the sharp tang of the forest, a cool breeze whispering through the trees. Faeortalam was as much a part of me as my own home now.
We traveled the rest of the night in silence, keeping a brisk pace on our sure-footed mounts despite the thick darkness cloaking the forest. As we journeyed onward, the night seemed to press around us more closely, the shadows clotting between the branches of the trees and strangling the moonlight. Slowly the sounds of the night forest died away, and we traveled in true, eerie silence: no whirring of wings or cricket-song in the shadows; no rustling of little creatures on the forest floor or branches bending beneath the weight of a leaping squirrel. Even the slight breeze died down, leaving the air hanging heavy and still as curtains about us.
I sens
ed the growing watchfulness of my companions. Forin and Farin dampened their auras as they made their scouting reports to Merrick, and they no longer teased the navigator as they had at the beginning of the evening. When the sky lightened to struggling grey and a weak twilight filtered down through the webs of shadows, I glimpsed moving shadows on both sides of my mount. My heart jumped, but then I recognized Beryk, on the left, threading through the ever more skeletal trees with sinuous grace; and on my right, unmistakable even in the predawn gloom, was giant Kianryk, shadowing my mount with a silence I would have thought impossible for a wolf of his size. I watched him move for a few moments, struck by the wild beauty of the muscles rippling beneath his tawny fur. I searched for vestiges of his imprisonment, and glimpsed a few scars parting the thick fur of his pelt on his sides and back, but other than that, and the fact that his ribs still showed through his skin if he moved just right, I was amazed by the wholeness of him. Chael bore the most physical signs of his imprisonment, with his scars and his eye; but then again, I thought grimly, Chael’s memories surfacing within my own mind, it might not be the visible scars that changed him the most. And that led me to think about Liam. As we’d said in the dream, I was beginning to understand his life. I didn’t pull the trigger on a weapon, but feeling my sword slice through flesh was perhaps even more visceral. My battle, I was sure, sounded much different—no staccato report of gunfire, or ear-ringing explosions, but all the same, I knew what it was to leap into danger with my heart in my throat, not knowing whether I would be alive to see the end of the battle, or no more than an empty husk littered on the ground with the other battlefield dead, my flesh cooling beneath the hungry stare of carrion crows.
When I saw my brother again, I wanted to ask him whether it ever went away, that feeling of standing on a knife-edge, waiting to see what random chance dealt out for those I loved. Because no matter how good a warrior’s skills, all it took was one arcing slice of a blade, one whistling arrow, one miscalculated step—and their skills didn’t matter. It was all chance, no matter how hard you fought.
