by Frewin Jones
The Seventh Daughter
Book Three of the Faerie Path
Frewin Jones
For John, Jack, Eric,
Alan, and Michael
Contents
Epigraph
Map
What Happened Before…
Part One:
The Palace
I
Tania stared through the arched stone window at the vast…
II
Tania and Edric and the two princesses made their way…
III
Zara was the first to run toward Eden. “You are…
IV
Tania crouched in half darkness, her back bent under the…
V
Gabriel Drake strode up the long Hall with his Gray…
VI
The transformation back into her human shape was no less…
VII
Tania stared down through the trees that formed the southern…
VIII
Beyond Eden’s twinkling emerald dome, night had fallen over the…
IX
It was shortly after sunup the next day, and the…
Part Two:
Ynis Maw
X
The night was full of huge Faerie stars, but their…
XI
It was late in the afternoon, three days on from…
XII
Caer Kymry looked to Tania as extraordinary on the interior…
XIII
Tania was awoken by Edric’s voice. He was leaning over…
XIV
“Cordelia!” Tania screamed. Panic sent her staggering across the flooded…
XV
Tania gripped Edric’s hand, filled with foreboding as the wagon…
XVI
The sun rose in an eggshell blue sky, lifting above…
XVII
They were in a place of knuckled hills that climbed…
Part Three
Ynis Maw
XVIII
The morning was strangely calm as they rode along the…
XIX
Tania stood on the seashore, staring over the waves at…
XX
Night came down over Ynis Maw like a black lid.
XXI
A somber group gathered at the shoreline of Fidach Ren.
XXII
Tania and Cordelia halted their unicorns on the brow of…
XXIII
Servants woke Tania before dawn and she ate breakfast with…
XXIV
Tania stared at her sister, too surprised even to draw…
XXV
“It is a fine dawn, indeed,” Eden said. “Alas that…
XXVI
Tania fought mechanically, her body moving with a fluid, passionless…
XXVII
“Zara! Zara, no!”
XXVIII
“Grieve not overmuch, my children,” King Oberon said gently. “Death…
XXIX
Titania made a soft clicking sound with her tongue, drawing…
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Other Books by Frewin Jones
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Faeries tread the faerie path
Immortal souls in timeless amber sealed
Mortals dwell in flux of Mortal World
Through life and death, their destiny revealed
One soul is torn between the worlds
A road to take, a doom to dare
A flashing blade, a warrior-maiden’s choice
Shall lead to heart’s desire or heart’s despair
Map
What Happened Before…
On the eve of Anita Palmer’s sixteenth birthday, her boyfriend, Evan Thomas, took her for a speedboat ride on the River Thames. Her birthday surprise turned to terror when they saw a ghostly shape on the river and Evan, swerving to avoid it, sent the boat crashing into a bridge.
Anita woke up in hospital. Her injuries were superficial, but Evan, although otherwise physically unhurt, remained unconscious.
At the hospital Anita’s parents brought her a curious parcel: a birthday present sent with no card and no name. It was an old leather-bound book with blank pages that mysteriously became filled with words when Anita started looking.
The book told how Princess Tania, seventh daughter of King Oberon and Queen Titania of the Realm of Faerie, disappeared from the Royal Palace on the eve of her wedding to Lord Gabriel Drake. While reading this story, Anita learned that Evan had vanished from the hospital; later that same morning, believing herself to be experiencing a vivid dream inspired by the story in the book, she followed a young man in Elizabethan clothes, who took her into Faerie.
The young man introduced himself as Gabriel Drake and explained that Evan was in fact his servant Edric Chanticleer, sent into the Mortal World to find and retrieve Anita. Gabriel believed she was his lost bride, Princess Tania: the seventh daughter of Oberon and Titania, with the power to walk between Faerie and the Mortal World. For five hundred years, ever since the disappearance of Princess Tania and the subsequent loss of her mother, Queen Titania, the Eternal Realm of Faerie had been plunged into a sad and gloomy twilight.
When Gabriel took Anita to meet Oberon, the king was so overjoyed that his lost daughter had returned, light and life came back into Faerie once more. Soon after, Anita met Princess Tania’s six sisters. As she learned more about this strange world—and remembered things she could not possibly have known—her certainty that this was all a dream began to waver. At last she was forced to confront the fact that she was truly Oberon’s lost daughter.
Full of pain and anger at Edric’s betrayal, Tania grew closer to Lord Gabriel. It was only when Edric told her the true purpose behind Gabriel’s dramatic rescue of Tania from the Mortal World that she was saved from falling under Gabriel’s spell. Gabriel Drake had planned to marry Tania and use her power to enter the Mortal World and bring back a terrible poison called Isenmort, known to mortals as metal, a substance so deadly in Faerie that a single touch meant instant death. The Faerie Palace was torn apart with treachery—even Tania’s own sister Princess Rathina tried to force her to marry Gabriel.
In the end Gabriel’s plans were thwarted and the evil lord was banished by Oberon. Peace returned to the Realm of Faerie but Tania was convinced that her mother, Queen Titania, was still alive, trapped in the Mortal World. She and Edric returned to mortal London to seek her out.
Returning to her old life was not easy—Tania had been missing for several days and it hurt that she could not tell the truth to her mortal parents. She was also haunted by the dread that Gabriel Drake would be able to harm her from afar.
Clues led Tania and Edric to the Pleiades Legal Center, where they discovered that Queen Titania worked under the name Lilith Mariner. Their hopes of a swift reunion with the Lost Queen were dashed when they learned that she was away on business.
Things took a sinister turn when Tania found that she could no longer “walk between the worlds.” Soon after, three of Tania’s faerie sisters—Zara, Sancha, and Cordelia—appeared in the Mortal World with terrible news: Princess Rathina had released the Sorcerer King of Lyonesse from the palace dungeons, Oberon had been imprisoned, and Lyonesse’s evil Gray Knights had been set free. The princesses hoped that, with Tania and Queen Titania’s help, they would be able to return to Faerie and defeat the Sorcerer King.
A band of Gray Knights broke into the Mortal World—with Gabriel Drake as their captain. Despite several perilous encounters with the Gray Knights, Tania, Edric, and the princesses managed to find the Lost Queen and together outran their murderous pursuers and found their way back into Faerie.
Part One:
The Palace
I
Tania stared through the arched stone window at the vast blue skies of Faerie. She could hardly believe that her sisters; her mother, Titania; and her beloved Edric were alive, and that they had all managed to get back into the Immortal Realm. They were safe for the moment in the upper room of Bonwn Tyr—the brown tower that stood in the parklands between the deep, dense vastness of Esgarth Forest and the expanse of the Royal Palace.
Her joy at their miraculous escape did not last long—she saw immediately that something was badly wrong in Faerie.
Zara stood at her side. “Some great evil has befallen the land,” she said. “High summer should lie over Faerie. It is not yet the Solstice Day, and yet the trees are withering as if in the grip of a premature autumn.”
Tania had been in Faerie only a few days ago, and then the slender aspen trees surrounding the tower had been in full leaf and the grass had grown thick and lush on the hill that sloped down to the palace. But now the aspens were dying and the ground was brown and yellow, the grasses shriveled as if from a whole season of drought. Farther away, the leaves of the forest were shrouded in dark, autumnal colors.
“What did this?” Tania asked in dismay.
“It is the influence of the Sorcerer King,” said Queen Titania, coming up behind her. “Sickness and death follow wherever he treads. Let us hope that the whole Realm is not so badly affected.” The Queen’s eyes glinted. “But while the Royal House of Faerie survives, Faerie will never be completely ruined.”
Tania leaned from the window, peering through the bleak branches. Her heart quickened. “There are some Gray Knights down there!” she hissed in alarm. “Two of them. In the trees.”
Edric caught hold of her arm and drew her back. “Don’t let them see you,” he said.
“Why should we not?” declared Cordelia. “It is time to take the battle to the Sorcerer King. Let us destroy the evil creatures and be done with it.”
“I’m not sure it’s such a good idea to pick a fight right now,” Tania said. “They don’t know we’re in Faerie. We should try and keep it that way for as long as possible.”
“Tania is right,” said the Queen. “We’ll make our way to the palace without being seen. If the Sorcerer King’s forces are alerted to our presence, it will make our search for Oberon all the more difficult.” She looked at her daughters. “But we should take a few moments to assess our injuries.” She frowned. “Cordelia, your arm is bleeding.”
“We have no time for licking our wounds!” Cordelia exclaimed.
“Yet it would avail us nothing were you to faint from blood loss,” said Sancha. She stooped and tore a strip off the hem of her skirt. Reluctantly, Cordelia allowed her sister to bind the cut on her left arm.
“And now let us be gone from here,” said Zara. “But there is only one way out of the tower. How are we to pass the guards unseen?”
“By giving them some other quarry to chase,” said Cordelia. “Come, I will show you how we may escape.” She walked to the winding stone stairway that led down to the ground floor and up to the flat roof. She stared upward for a moment, then looked uneasily back at them. “We must prepare ourselves for the worst,” she said. “It may be that we will find Eden’s body on the roof.”
A terrible, horror-struck silence filled the tower at that dreadful thought. Titania put her hand over her mouth, her eyes hollow with anguish.
Eden had led Zara and Sancha and Cordelia here and had opened a hole between the worlds—but she had not followed them into the Mortal World. It seemed all too possible to Tania that the Gray Knights that had been pursuing them had killed her.
“If she is dead, then we must bear the pain of it,” Sancha said, her voice trembling. “But let us pray it is not so.”
Cordelia began to mount the stone steps. Titania followed, and Tania could see the dread in the Queen’s eyes as she climbed toward the hatchway in the roof. Tania and Edric came next, and finally Sancha and Zara. The trapdoor had been forced open and smashed—damage that Tania guessed had been done when Eden and her sisters had fled here with the Gray Knights on their heels.
Tania’s heart thumped sickeningly and a horrible pain grew in her stomach as she approached the broken trapdoor. But when her head came out into the open, she saw that the flat stone flags of the roof were bare, save for a ring of blackened markings like fire scorches on the stones.
“Eden did not die here,” Cordelia said.
They all came up onto the roof. “Was she captured, mayhap?” Sancha asked. “Could it be she is their prisoner?”
“She may have escaped them altogether,” Zara said. “She is very powerful.”
Edric touched Tania’s arm. She turned to him and saw that he was staring southward with an appalled look on his face. Titania had moved to the southern side of the waist-high stone balustrade, her body stiff and tense, her hands tightened into white fists at her sides as she gazed at the Royal Palace.
Tania let out a gasp of shock. A scene of utter devastation met her eyes. The Privy Gardens that lay between the parklands and the palace had been laid waste. It was as if some hideous disease had passed over the flower beds and lovingly tended groves of trees, leaving only bare bones and blasted earth. The fountains were dry and many of the statues that decorated the pathways had been broken or knocked down.
Beyond the blistered gardens, a haze of dirty gray smoke hung over the palace. Here and there from blackened windows and collapsed roofs, spirals of darker smoke curled into the sky. The palace was vast, and Tania could see that much of it was still undamaged—the high red-brick walls of countless towers and turrets and buildings and halls still standing proud along the river’s winding course—but the Royal Apartments, the parts of the palace that Tania knew best, had been seared and scarred by fire.
“How has the Sorcerer King wrought such destruction is so short a time?” murmured Zara, coming up beside Tania. “In but a few brief days…”
“I knew that he was mighty in evil sorcery and that he would wish harm upon us,” said Sancha. “But not like this…not like this…”
“The menagerie is deserted,” Cordelia said, shading her eyes as she peered to that part of the gardens. “If he has harmed the animals, I swear I will cut the very heart out of him.”
“Perhaps they got away,” Tania said. “I can’t see any bodies or anything.”
“I pray it is so.” Cordelia turned away. “There is work to be done.” She moved to the far side of the roof and let out a series of lilting high-pitched whistles.
A few moments later a pair of crows came flapping up from the trees and landed on Cordelia’s outstretched arm. She spoke briefly to them in a low voice. They each gave a single caw in response and flew away.
“It is done,” said Cordelia. “The birds will create a diversion so that we may escape this place. Let us go down to the doorway and wait.”
Tania was glad to get away from the sight of the palace. As she descended the spiral stairs she saw in her mind the glorious halls and chambers of the Royal Apartments; it was hard to believe that all the beauty and splendor of the place that she had only just accepted as her second home had been destroyed in just a few days.
They gathered in the lower level of the tower. Cordelia opened the door a fraction. Tania stood at her shoulder, peering out through the trees to where two Gray Knights sat astride their skeletal steeds. Edric was close beside her. Their eyes met and she knew he was thinking of their recent encounters with the undead Knights of Lyonesse.
The sudden screeching of birds and the sound of beating wings took her attention and she looked back at the Gray Knights. Scores of different birds were attacking the silent watchers; Tania recognized ravens and starlings and crows and magpies rising and falling and whirling about the heads of the knights and their horses. A frantic neighing came from the animals as they were attacked by beak and claw. The knights drew their swords, shouting and howling in their hal
f-human voices as they fought. The gray horses reared and bucked. White swords slashed this way and that. Black feathers flew and birds fell.
“Now is the time,” Cordelia said, throwing the door wide. “Follow close!” She ran through the doorway, Tania and the others on her heels, following her through the leafless trees toward the palace.
Cordelia’s eyes blazed with anger. “I curse the Sorcerer King that he has made me ask such a sacrifice from living creatures!”
She halted where the trees ended. Tania and the others gathered behind her, staring out from behind the slender trunks. The great northern gatehouse of the palace stood about a mile away from them, a crudely painted version of the banner of Lyonesse billowing from its high turret: a black serpent on a bloodred background. Two mounted knights guarded the gate.
“We can’t cross all this open space,” Edric said. “We’ll be seen.”
“We should keep to the edge of the forest,” Titania said. “Head east to the orchards and vineyards. We can use the trees and vines as cover to get to the palace from there.” Her voice hardened. “And once Oberon is free, I swear we will have such revenge that the damnable island of Lyonesse will tremble to its deepest foundations!”
Tania looked in surprise at her Faerie mother—at that breathtakingly familiar face, the face that was a mirror to her own, with the green eyes and the high slanted cheekbones, and the frame of tumbling red hair. A change had come over Titania; already Tania could hear the formal elegance of Faerie speech in her mother’s voice, as though the five hundred years of her exile were melting away. In the Mortal World, Titania had established herself as a powerful business woman specializing in human rights law, but now it was brought starkly home to Tania that this woman was the Immortal Queen of Faerie, prepared to do whatever it took to save her husband and her kingdom.
