As they moved onto the path, Emily heard the sounds of battle outside the walls. She’d seldom doubted her older sister, but this time, she really hoped Sophie knew what she was doing. If she didn’t, the consequences could be dire.
Forty-nine
Outside the Keep
Meanwhile
Maeve’s people weren’t able to guard the bridge for very long once they were drawn into the battle. Unfortunately, the battle also kept Michael and the others away from the bridge. Although the various factions had very distinct attire and weapons, in the melee it was hard to tell who was on which side. “Who do we want to win?” Michael asked Eamon.
“We want them to destroy each other,” the fairy said, his voice ice-cold. “It will be better for the Realm if all of them are weakened.”
Athena tugged on Michael’s sleeve. “I think we can make it now,” she said. A path had opened, but the fighting was so chaotic that Michael wasn’t sure how long it would remain open. He was still recovering from a gunshot. He had no desire to add a sword wound.
Keeping his bad arm tight against his chest, he ran behind the two old women and Beau as Eamon brought up the rear. When they reached the drawbridge, Michael turned back and fished in his pocket, coming up with a handful of iron nails. “Go on,” he told Eamon before scattering the nails on the ground at the end of the bridge. Then he crossed the bridge and joined the others.
Now they were on the other side of the river, but they were still trapped outside the keep. He wasn’t sure that they were in a better position, other than having a river between them and the battle. “Can we get past that?” he asked.
“Give us a moment,” Amelia said, then she and Athena put their heads together. Peering between the golden bars, Michael spied Jen, Emily, and the other redheaded woman heading down a path between walls of overgrown rosebushes toward the center of a wild garden.
Fifty
The Garden
Meanwhile
Sophie reached the end of the path, then turned to watch Maeve finish following in her footsteps. A faint flutter of glow receded into the hedges, and Sophie sent another silent thanks to her tiny allies. As much as she hated to admit it, it was rather nice to not have to do everything for herself. But was it cheating to get help?
No, she decided. Fairy tales were full of stories about people who succeeded because they got help like that. Maybe that was even the test. One had to prove worthiness to rule by admitting one couldn’t do it all and by recognizing the contributions of the tiniest and ugliest members of the Realm. Besides, it wasn’t as though she was trying for the throne. She was merely making it look like she was helping Maeve while still blocking her.
Maeve came to the end of the path. “Isn’t there supposed to be a maze?” she asked, staring at the unbroken wall of hedge that created a dead end.
“Yes, and the song gives instructions on getting through the maze,” Sophie replied.
“But how do we enter the maze? The hedges must have grown up. There has to be an entry in here somewhere.” Maeve stuck her hands into the hedges and tried to push the branches apart. It would have been lovely if the hedges had bit her arms off at the elbows, thought Sophie, but all they did was snag on Maeve’s sleeves.
“The song tells how,” Sophie said.
The others caught up to them. “Why are you helping her, Sophie?” Emily asked. Sophie resolutely avoided looking at her sister.
Maeve answered for her. “If she wants to take you back home, she has to help me.”
“Sophie, it’s not worth it!” Sophie caught the faint trace of amusement in Emily’s voice. Now Sophie really had to avoid looking at Emily, lest the two of them break down in giggles the moment they made eye contact.
The only problem was, Sophie wasn’t sure what she could do to keep Maeve from winning the throne while also saving Emily and the others. Her allies may have helped by wetting Maeve’s feet and putting a few shells in her path, but was that really enough to disqualify her, or was that just poetic license to make a better song?
“Sing the next verse,” Maeve ordered.
“To reach my side, tell her to find a perfect rose to offer me. The petals fall and pave the way to open wide the door to my heart,” Sophie sang.
Maeve stared with dismay at the walls of rosebushes surrounding them. “Which one is perfect?” she asked. “There must be some trickery here.” Gesturing at her people, she demanded, “Help me search. Look for a perfect bloom.” Sophie suspected that wasn’t the way to go. The only thing picking a perfect rose got anyone in a fairy tale was captivity in the home of a hideous beast. But what would the perfect rose be in this situation?
She saw one full-headed bloom lying on the ground. As she knelt to study it, she heard Jen call out, “This one looks perfect!” Whatever she’d found, it couldn’t be as perfect as the one Sophie had noticed. This rose had opened fully, and the velvety red petals had darkened almost to black. It was a rose that had lived a full life.
She cupped it gently in both hands and stood. Maeve and her people were severing a bloom from a bush at the head of the path. Maeve grabbed it as soon as it was free from the bush, then waved it at the hedge that dead-ended the path. “Open for your queen!” she shouted.
At the same time, Sophie opened her hands and let her rose fall in a shower of petals. They lingered in the air, drifting slowly to the ground, as the branches of the hedge parted to form a doorway.
Maeve shouted in triumph and grabbed Sophie by the elbow. Her other hand still held the rose by the stem. “Guide us through the maze,” she ordered.
“To reach my side, tell her to turn always looking to the right,” Sophie sang. She moved into the maze and took the first right turn, and then each right that came up after that. Maeve, Emily, and the rest followed. It was a complex maze that could easily befuddle anyone who didn’t have directions. Sophie didn’t notice any skeletons lying along the pathways, and she wondered if anyone had ever made it this far. Instead of leading to the center, this maze took travelers to the other side. When she could see only one wall of hedges remaining, she sang, “One last left turn will bring her home, where she will find the way to my heart.” She turned to the left there, and they were out of the maze.
They came out in front of a wall whose veil of thorny vines was even denser than that of the outer keep. “This is so Sleeping Beauty,” Emily remarked. “What we need now is a prince with a magic sword.”
Maeve released Sophie’s arm and shoved the rose into her hand. Sophie winced as a thorn dug into her skin. “There has to be a way inside,” Maeve said, moving forward to study the wall. “What does the song say?”
Sophie hummed it to herself, then said, “It doesn’t say anything about this.”
“There’s a door here,” Maeve said. A glittering knife appeared in her gloved hand, and she hacked at the vines until the doorway was clear. The door opened easily, without the slightest squeak or creak of hinges even though the door most likely hadn’t moved in centuries. Maeve reached back and grabbed Sophie’s arm to pull her through the doorway with her. It was such a jolt that Sophie momentarily lost her balance and put out a hand to steady herself on the door jamb as she passed. She left a slight smear of blood from the prick of the rose’s thorn, and she sent a quick mental apology to whomever was maintaining this place.
As soon as she was over the threshold, the door slammed shut behind her. Both she and Maeve whirled at the sound, and Maeve tried to open the door again, but it refused to budge. She turned back to Sophie with an evil glint in her eyes. “All the better. When you win my throne for me, no one will be the wiser.”
“I’m telling you how to win the throne for yourself,” Sophie said, refusing to back away from Maeve’s menace. “I’d think you’d want witnesses for that.”
Maeve laughed madly. “You do not know, do you? You have no idea what you are. Do you think I wouldn’t have seized the throne the moment I heard your silly little song if that had been all it took?
”
“I know it takes blood,” Sophie said, glancing at the smear she’d left on the door jamb.
“The key is whose blood it is. Now, come. We must go through yet another garden if we’re ever to find the palace.”
Sophie barely managed to stop a double take. As far as she could tell, they were in a palace. There were marble floors and gilded walls in a corridor that seemed to go on forever. There wasn’t a garden in sight. As she followed Maeve, their footsteps echoed, and all Sophie could think of was what the requirement of blood might mean for her.
Fifty-one
The Keep
Meanwhile
The battle raged on the far side of the river, and Michael watched in sick fascination while he waited for Amelia and Athena to find a way past those golden bars. Eamon gave a clinical running commentary, sounding like a play-by-play analyst on a football broadcast. “That seems to be the last of Maeve’s people to fall,” he said. “Even if she wins the throne, she will have to fight to keep it, for she will have little support.”
“Would there be a revolution?”
“There has never been one in my time, but I would not be surprised.”
“Just how old are you?” Michael couldn’t resist asking.
“It is difficult to say, since time passes differently in the Realm, but I remember a time before the Church came to Ireland.”
Michael was still staring at him, trying to remember when Saint Patrick lived, when Amelia and Athena cried out in triumph. He turned to see the portcullis slowly rising. “Hurry, run through!” Athena panted. “We can’t hold it long.”
Michael and Eamon ducked underneath, then the two women and Beau barely made it before the portcullis dropped with a resounding clang. Michael felt like he’d been imprisoned. He tried to adjust his perspective to think of himself as having escaped to the outside of the bars, but he still felt trapped.
“Now, down this path,” Amelia instructed. Michael was so out of breath he had trouble keeping up with the two old women, and Beau strained at his leash, trying to go even faster.
At the end of the path stood a head-high wall of hedges with a doorway cut into it. Michael reached for the sheet of song lyrics in his pocket. “I think the song gives the key to the maze,” he said. “There’s something about keeping to the right.”
Without speaking, Amelia raised her hand and pointed at the hedges ahead of them. A passage appeared down the middle. “I prefer to take the direct route,” she said with a wink. “After all, we aren’t trying to win the throne.”
They arrived in a courtyard outside another vine-covered wall just in time to see Sophie disappear through a doorway. Jen, Emily, that other woman, and a couple of guards rushed toward the door, but it slammed shut in their faces and the vines snaked across the door, blocking access. One of the guards tried unsuccessfully to cut the vines away.
“The door won’t open until a ruler is chosen,” Amelia said, and the group turned to face the newcomers.
Emily’s face lit up, and she jerked her arms away from the women on either side of her to rush forward. Michael braced himself for a hug, but she ran past him to Eamon. She stopped in front of the fairy as her grin faded to a scowl. “I thought you’d abandoned me.”
“I saw no reason for both of us to remain captive.”
She nodded, considering that. “Okay, I can see that. And you did bring help.”
“As well as spread the word of Maeve’s plans.”
Emily’s grin returned, and she threw her arms around him in a joyous embrace that looked suspiciously affectionate. Michael exchanged a worried look with Athena and Amelia. He doubted Sophie would like her sister hooking up with a fairy, no matter how helpful he was.
It wasn’t his problem, though. He’d let the Drake sisters fight it out, assuming they all survived this. Beau took care of things in the meantime. He wandered over to Emily and butted her in the leg with his head, forcing her away from Eamon until she bent to hug her dog.
Michael had his own problem to deal with, the wife who still stared at him like he was an unwelcome stranger. “Hello again, Jen,” he said softly.
“That’s not my name,” she insisted.
“It used to be,” he said. “That’s what I called you.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know you. I don’t even know your name.”
“I’m Michael.”
She moved closer, frowning. “You wore a uniform.”
His heart leapt. “Yes! When we met, I was a patrol officer, and I wore a uniform.”
She smiled up at him and said, “Her majesty will soon rule the entire Realm, and I will be in her court. I’ll be a princess.”
He fought not to groan in disappointment. How could he hope to compete against being a fairy princess? “That’s nice,” he said blandly.
She spun away and flounced over to one of the guards, wrapping her arm around his waist and resting her head on his shoulder. “And you will be my prince,” she purred. Michael closed his eyes from a pain that was worse than his throbbing gunshot wound.
“You’re all that’s left of Maeve’s court,” Eamon said, his voice cutting harshly through the mood. “The others have been slaughtered outside.”
“The other courts will suffer when her majesty is made queen,” the other woman snarled.
Emily glanced at Michael and rolled her eyes. “They drank the Kool-Aid,” she said. “Literally.”
“Sophie’s alone in there with Maeve?” Michael asked.
“Yeah. But I think she’s up to something. I’ve never seen her that quiet and passive. That means an explosion is brewing. I wonder if there’s a fallout shelter near here.”
“What do we do?” Michael had never felt so helpless, not even after he was shot and lying in that hallway bleeding and fighting for breath.
“We wait, Detective Murray,” Athena said with a pat on his arm. “We wait and see just how formidable our Miss Drake really is.”
Fifty-two
The Palace
Meanwhile
The corridor finally ended in a great hall so massive that Sophie couldn’t see the ceiling. Slender windows that went from the floor all the way up the walls would have filled the hall with light if they hadn’t been covered with vines. Through gaps in the vines, shafts of light dappled the marble floors.
In the hall, a great feast had been laid out. The food looked fresh, not like it had been sitting for centuries. Even if she hadn’t known that eating fairy food was dangerous, Sophie would have been suspicious of this magical feast.
“Ah, refreshments!” Maeve said, moving toward the table. She filled a goblet from a pitcher of wine and drank deeply. Apparently, fairies didn’t have fairy tales, Sophie thought. Maeve didn’t keel over immediately, but that wasn’t generally the way things like this worked. There was no telling what the spell might be. “Such a strange place for a feast, though,” she remarked as she took a handful of grapes from a bowl. “Here, in the middle of a garden.”
“It’s a picnic,” Sophie said, trying to keep her tone even and calm in spite of her inner agitation. There was only one verse left in the song, the one involving blood that would presumably secure the throne, and she didn’t know if she—or her allies—had done enough to thwart Maeve. Sophie was on her own once more. Her tiny helpers appeared to have been locked outside, and she was surprised to find that she missed having backup.
While Maeve ate, Sophie glanced around the hall, assessing her surroundings. There, at the very far end of the hall, which was practically on another continent, stood a tall silver throne. Without realizing what she was doing, she walked slowly toward it.
In spite of the distance, it seemed like no time before she stopped in front of the steps that led up to the dais where the throne sat. From this angle, the throne towered above her, gleaming in the dappled light. For such a large, heavy object, it looked surprisingly delicate. Its back was a tall Gothic arch, and it was carved and filigreed in a pattern that looked like
it was woven from ivy vines and then turned into silver. She began climbing the steps, drawn inexorably toward it.
As her foot landed on the top step, she got a prickling feeling between her shoulder blades and spun just in time to see Maeve rushing toward her.
“You will not take my throne!” the fairy shrieked, her eyes wild. She grabbed Sophie’s arm and threw her to the ground. Sophie didn’t have a chance to react before Maeve’s knife flashed at her, slashing across her inner wrist and sending blood gushing to the surface. Maeve clasped Sophie’s bleeding wrist and brought away a hand gloved in blood. Shoving Sophie away, she approached the throne.
First she raised her bloody hand in triumph, then she placed her hand on the arm of the throne and shouted, “It is mine! At last!” Slowly and regally, she lowered herself onto the throne and gripped the arms.
Sophie held her breath, waiting to see what would happen while she pressed the hem of her skirt against the bleeding wound on her arm. Something should happen to verify that the throne had been taken. Otherwise, why bother with all those tests, trials, and obstacles? There should be flashing lights or royal trumpets. At the very least, the vines should disappear from the windows as the castle came back to life.
But none of these things happened. Even Maeve seemed disconcerted, like she wasn’t sure it had really worked. “You,” she hissed at Sophie. “You did something. You tricked me.”
“Maybe,” Sophie admitted through teeth gritted against the pain in her arm. She was starting to get lightheaded, though surely she couldn’t have lost that much blood yet. Slitting one’s wrists was supposed to be an ineffective suicide method. You had to do it in warm water to keep the blood from clotting before you bled out. Not that she’d studied suicide methods. She’d merely watched more than a few crime shows on TV. Her father had liked those. Then she realized her mind was wandering and forced her focus back to the present.
A Fairy Tale Page 26
