by JANRAE FRANK
* * * *
The news of Yukiah's death caused Channadar to postpone the meeting with his mother. He was drawing perilously close to the time his dream vision said he too would die. It seemed as if the Dark One might win after all. He could not allow that, even if it meant ripping the realm to shreds. So he went directly to the mirror upon returning from Yukiah's funeral.
"Six days," Meileilyki said, her face grave. "StealsThunder arrives in four days and I can send the Chosen through on the sixth. My son will be safe."
Channadar was silent for a long time, circled by his Chosen, flanked by Tiderider and Juna. Only two fireflies were present this time Chucomei and Leeza, both held by Tiderider. "Mother, I have a firefly." He spoke softly and then fell silent again, while everyone stared.
Leeza wondered if he was finally going to tell them, and she prayed that he was because she was tired of secrets, of hiding what was between them.
"I love her very much. I've hidden her away. I can't tell you where or who yet. Tiderider knows where to find her."
"My son, what is this?"
"A powerful enemy has threatened to kill my lovers. So I hide her."
"Who dares?"
"Patience." His head tilted down, his eyes unfocused as his attention turned inward. "When I am dead, will you receive and protect her?"
Meileilyki caught the implications of his words and her face turned grim. "You received a sending of the spirits?"
Channadar bowed his head briefly. "Yes, Mother. I watched my firefly weep while Tiderider placed my dead body in your arms, saying 'your son is slain. He died well.' Unless there is some way to alter the omens, within the next six days, I will be dead."
Meileilyki extended her hand to the side and a Chosen placed a pouch in it while another spread a cloth on the carpeted floor before her. She reached into the pouch and threw a handful of runes onto the cloth, reading them slowly, searchingly. She motioned for one of her Chosen to read them and they consulted. Then the Queen of Faewin turned again to her son. "If these shadows are not dispelled... There is treachery and betrayal here. I see you betrayed by those close to you, five of them. Two doors are opened and one closes. Many will die. It will be six days before the mirror gate is stable enough on this end to allow passage of living beings from Faewin. Perhaps the Horn of Sephree will aid you. Talons holds it. Each day we will talk like this and I will send you gifts. On the sixth day I will send Tiderider's Chosen and I will also send Wolfstalker and his Chosen. Together they will avenge you. I love you, Channadar. And you also, Juna. Even when I lose patience with you. I still love you. I love you both. And now the presents."
Leeza pulled away from Tiderider, clutching her shawl tight around her, but the flimsy lace could not warm her. The pale, pale blue Lyrian lace against the equally pale gold of the delicate silk dress and white skin made a pastel toy of her topped with auburn hair. She pulled away from Tiderider and walked stiffly from the room, her eyes filling with grief, confusion, and displacement. She was losing Channadar and she had never really had him – she was not Fae, she was not really even a firefly. She was tired of prophecies and predictions and dire threats from unknown sources in strange languages. Their world was not her world. What few pieces of it they had given her were being swept away. Channadar was a dream, and the dream was about to die. She went upstairs to the bedroom she shared with Tiderider and Chucomei. Pulling open a chest, Leeza found the pair of trousers she had been wearing when she first met Channadar on the road to Havensword three years ago. He had accidentally bumped her into the mud and she had tackled him from behind in response.
Leeza struggled into them; they were already getting snug. Another month and she would need smocks, but by that time she should have gotten back to her family. With all the gold and jewels Channadar had given her over the last three years, she and her family would live well and the child also.
He wouldn't even tell his mother her name. He wouldn't even say her name. He'd locked her out. Here he was at this moment of incredible peril and he'd locked her out of his life. She would never be a piece of his life. No crumbs. She felt like a whore. She was the summerfly. Not Yolany. At least Juna kept his women on his arms – made them a part of his life. She hid the gold and jewels in the bottom of the pack, putting a few of her less expensive clothing on top. She would buy traveling clothes along the way, something a Guildsmon might wear, hire some guards or retired Guildsmyn to get her home.
She placed Channadar's crystal on the bureau and took Tiderider's crystal from her neck, laying it beside the other.
"Where are you going?" Tiderider asked.
His voice startled her and she jumped, turning toward him. "Home."
"Why? Channadar needs you."
"Channadar does not need me. Channadar does not love me. He cannot even say my name."
"Because of the peril. It hurts him as much as it hurts you."
"No. Love is sharing the peril, knowing the risks. I am a whore, bought, and paid for, stealing into his bed at night. I should be standing at his side, not hiding beneath your arm. I am not Fae. I am closed out of your world on every side. I do not belong and I am reminded of that endlessly."
"He has done what he believed best."
"I cannot deal with this any longer."
"Do you love him?"
"It doesn't matter. I don't want to talk about it. It's over." Leeza shoved past him and left. Tiderider let her go, his eyes falling on Channadar's crystal. Whatever there was to say, the crystal held the words far more clearly than could be spoken. To desert him now – she was a summerfly like the rest. Doubtless Channadar would want the crystal. He pocketed it, wondering if Channadar had ever explained to her that the crystals were far more than an empty symbol like humans and their rings. Tiderider doubted it.
* * * *
"Where is Leeza?" Channadar asked. The session with the mirror, consulting with his mother, and confronting his vision, had left him exhausted. His shoulder hurt. Normally Chucomei Who-Calls-the-Birds and Leeza took turns sitting with him to be certain he had company and wanted for nothing, pleasant company among his Chosen, flowers among the deadly golden fans and swords. Yet a day had passed and there had been only the Mage of Wings and not a glimpse of his beloved Leeza.
Chucomei glanced at Tiderider, wondering where Leeza was, for she did not know either.
"She is gone." Tiderider took the crystal from his pocket, placed it in Channadar's hand, and closed his lord's fingers over it as he dropped to one knee with bowed head, signaling an ending.
Channadar stiffened, taking the crystal from his own neck and placing them together in his hand, closing it again. The crystals locked together. A rush of feelings and voices ran through him – Leeza's – and he saw, heard, and felt what she had. The memories she had of him. First the anger and outrage of the moment she knocked him down in the mud. The laughter of his Chosen laying bets on how long she could keep him there. He had not even known her name then – and he still did not know her last name for she had refused to give it. She was simply on the road to Havensword looking for work and gotten bumped into the mud by a preposterous dandy and was determined to have a piece of him for it; not a fighter, just a scrappy yeomon from one of Channadar's villages who did not even realize she had knocked her own lord down. Leeza.
He had taken her into his company, falling in love with her and she with him; but he was on his way to challenge Galee, and far more aware than he allowed her to be of the dangers, for he kept his own counsels tightly to himself – too tightly he realized now and that was where he had gone wrong with her. He had treated her like a woman when he should have treated her like a man – or like a Fae. She felt shut out, which turned to feelings of abandonment, grief, frustration and finally despair and anger and – Channadar's head came up with a conscience stricken look for there was very little time left him in which to make it right if his vision were true. "Find her. You must find her."
"She left hours ago," Tiderider said. "There se
emed no reason to stop her."
"She carries my son. She thought I would refuse to give him my name. I hurt her. I didn't know. I would have told my mother then had I known."
"Go to Sha, the Guild will help," Chucomei said. "I will call the birds."
"With all the summerflies hanging about Juna, I was angry," Tiderider bowed his head in shame.
"That is not like you, so I will forgive it. Only find her."
Tiderider sent several of the Chosen he most trusted to these tasks and then sat with his lord again. With the danger so close he dared not leave him.
"Her spirit was never more clear to me than now. I saw it and did not acknowledge it from the moment she first knocked me in the mud. She has watched Juna, who is not a warrior in spirit, stand where she, whose spirit is, could not. Juna has the arts, but not the wit. Yet she never once tried to game for a place, because to her there would have been no honor in it. She gave her word and kept it – until she could no longer bear the pain of watching. I pray to Hadjys they find my firefly before something happens to her."
"As do I."
* * * *
Leeza did not immediately desert the palace compound. She was emotional by nature; yet too self-aware to act on those emotions without having considered them, which was why she had stuck it out so long after the going got tough with Channadar. She always wanted to be certain she was not acting on an emotion that would pass and be gone. Her mother had been a fickle creature; someone who had never been able to keep friends for very long and Leeza had been terrified of possibly finding that flaw in herself. So she hamstrung herself instead with indecisiveness, lingering for longer periods than she ought to have. Her mother would take one look at the child's eyes and grind it in her face that she should have known what she was getting into sleeping with one of the Faery folk.
The first place Leeza went after leaving the West Wing was the southwest leaf of the Cloverleaf, which the Guild had allowed to reopen. She knew everyone and no one really, having spent her time there entirely in the company of the clannish Fae. So she needed to think carefully. Her connection to the Fae made her a target for however was doing all the killing and she suspected that was Wrathscar and Galee. Trust no servants and no guardsmyn. Trust no one except the Guild. And with the updrawbridge, she could not get in there. She could, however, get a passing Guildsmon to help if need be. Leeza's hair was now blond, very pale, and short, barely past the lobes of her ears. She wore a new pair of black trousers and a loose mage tunic that hung in folds, sashed at the hips, and carried a stout hickory staff with a glistening hematite orb at the top. Anyone looking for either a runaway firefly or a village yeomon would glance right past her.
A black leather satchel, some pouches, leather pack and a bandoleer of nasty tricks had replaced her original pack. She had also invested in a set of matched belt knives, nearly as long as short swords – she knew how to use them, although she had tried often enough to convince Channadar of that unsuccessfully during the first year of their relationship. She was not Fae. Therefore, she should stand back and allow the Chosen to fight when it needed to be done. She had had only a staff on her the day she squashed him in the mud because her blades had been stolen – girl with a stick. I don't know. I don't know. I can't explain it. I don't want to think about it.
She was still sitting at the little bench in the corridor on the Cloverleaf as the stores began to close when she realized, with a start, how late it had grown and she still had no place to stay. They were letting no one in or out of the castle grounds after dark. Her only options were the palace guest rooms, which would mean revealing herself; the visiting merchant quarters, which meant the Guild asking questions, again revealing herself; or asking refuge of the temple where she could request a seal of silence on her presence and no word would go back to Channadar. The temple then.
* * * *
Queiggy felt it when Eshraf touched the hidden door under the temple and requested that he open the hidden passage to the Guild Wing. The yuwenghau sat on the floor in the darkness of his cellar room, leaning in the shadows with his back wedged between the casks of ale and the wall. Queiggy closed his eyes and spanned his awareness like roots spreading through the soft soil of mother earth until it fully touched both the temple door and the entrance beneath the Guild and opened them. He sensed people with Eshraf, counting their feet on the floor of the corridor. Power shimmered around four of them besides Eshraf, suggestive of a battle unit. Two myn carried something and by their walk it seemed to be a litter, their hands were weighted just right, one pulled forward and the other back. Hmmmn. They were bringing an injured mon. Male or female? Who? Then two more. A child with talent of some kind. Light footsteps walking beside the litter and sending up shimmering waves of anxiety. Someone should teach that little empath to tamp it down. Queiggy sighed. And the second was older, but not by much. Guild or priest students no doubt.
He sighed again and drew his fingers out of the small crack of earth beneath the wall. Eventually he would need to get a stone mage in here to seal all the cracks up he was making, but he needed to nourish himself secretly in order to have the strength to maintain the wards and renew himself. Queiggy ran his hand over his face. More wrinkles were gone. He wondered if people were noticing yet. Well to Hadjys with them. Then he grinned and went off to meet Eshraf.
The male on the cot's face was obscured with a gauzy mask with a hole through which he breathed and Queiggy suspected that his face must have either been seriously burned in the fire or damaged in some other fashion, though he wondered why they had not simply brought him across the quad.
"I want to place him in the new secured annex," Eshraf told him.
Queiggy saw then that Osterbridge and Isen were the ones he had sensed, for they stood very close to the injured mon. "You should have brought him sooner. I sense a kind of auric disturbance about him."
Eshraf shook his head. "We needed to get him stable first. He is one of my secret allies. Expect many visitors for him and allow them a path through your wards. They will not come through the doors."
"I don't know about that," Queiggy frowned.
"If you set it right, they can enter and nothing of the dark can."
"That will take a delicate touch." He considered a moment. "Put him in the topmost star room. Well, come along then."
Queiggy led them in silence for a bit, waiting for them to tell him who the man was. When they did not, he asked. "Who is he?"
"I cannot tell you yet."
* * * *
Sha and Aramyn arrived as Durav finished changing the bandages on Channadar's shoulder. Night had fallen. Channadar had watched the skies change through his window, growing more and more worried for Leeza with each passing hour. Tiderider, Juna, and Chucomei sat with them. He turned his gaze from the window as the two Guildsmyn entered and knew from Sha's expression that the news must be bad.
"Leeza?" he asked, dismissing Durav with a flick of his fan. His physician bowed low and left. Only then did the Guildsmyn speak.
Aramyn shook his head. "We cannot find her and there is no way that she could have left the compound at any point today. We keep lists of everyone entering and leaving, even the cats and dogs. All carts, wagons, and carriages are thoroughly searched. The palace is paranoid."
Channadar considered that somberly. "Then I must assume they have taken her."
"That is my guess," Aramyn agreed. "I am sorry. You should have been more open with us. When all the trouble started we would have placed her in secure rooms in the Guild Wing. Where no one could have threatened her."
"She carries my child and now I have lost them both because I tried too hard to protect them and thought like a Fae instead of a Creeyan. I did not trust enough."
Juna put his hand on his brother's unwounded shoulder. "It is my fault. I gave you too much reason not to trust, collecting so many summerflies. I will not do that any longer. Tomorrow I will choose between them and settle down."
"You are a good brot
her, Juna," Channadar touched his hand. "But I would rather you made a marriage with someone our mother approved of. No more summerflies."
"Can I keep them for a few more days?"
Channadar heaved a sigh. "A few more days. Then send them all away."
Juna looked chastened as he nodded. "So be it."
"We'll keep looking, Channadar. Depend on that," Aramyn said.
* * * *
The mon lay in a modest bed within a chamber at the top of a star room. His chest moved faintly with each breath instead of still and unmoving – and somehow that seemed wrong. He heard people around him, but he could not see them as they moved about him quietly. His awareness drifted in and out of warm twilight, not yet ready to release his hold upon it and rise toward the light he knew was beyond it. His mind told him that he was dead, but his body told him that he was alive. He could not remember his name, only that he had once been a Guildsmon.
His good hand drifted to the place where the godmark should have been over his heart and sensed that it was gone. He worked his fingers through the opening in his robe to touch the spot flesh to flesh and the skin was smooth, unblemished as if it had never been there. His god had forsaken him. A yawning chasm of desolation opened within his breast, dragging his consciousness closer to the surface. He felt certain he had done nothing to deserve this, and yet he could not remember anything.
The greatest fear of the Guildsmyn was to become undead, feeding upon the souls, blood, and bodies of the living, and thereby forced into the service of the dark ones. For this reason the godmark on their bodies cast their souls to their liege-god in the flickering of an instant at their deaths before it could be trapped, down to his great halls and safety. The one drawback being that their hearts and breathing, once stopped in the early stages of death could rarely be restarted by healers and lifemages.
