The horse’s eyes seemed to lose focus for a few seconds, and Father Al was impressed; not many computers would have any theology on storage in their memory banks. Then Fess’s eyes came back into focus again, and Father Al said quickly, “So I have some vested interest in trying to help your master, you see. Properly instructed, he could be a mighty asset to the Church on this planet. But left to himself, he might fall into the temptations that power brings, find a way to return here from wherever he’s gone, and become the leader of a heresy that could rock the Terran Sphere. We dare not leave him there.”
The horse lowered his head again, scratching with his hoof: HIS SAFE RETURN IS ALL.
Father Al frowned, puzzling it out, wishing the robot had been equipped with speech. Then he nodded, understanding. “I see. It makes no difference to you if he comes back a heretic or a saint, as long as he comes back. But don’t you see, with my knowledge of the workings of magic to aid him, his chances of returning are increased? Much increased, if you’ll pardon my boasting.”
The synthetic eyes stared intently into Father Al’s, for a few minutes that seemed to stretch out into aeons. Then, finally, the great horse nodded, and turned away, beckoning.
“I scarce can credit it!” Puck cried. “Thou hast persuaded him!”
Father Al breathed a huge sigh of relief. “I scarcely can believe it, either. It’s the first time in my life I’ve ever made any headway with a computer.” He sent up a quick, silent prayer of thanks to St. Vidicon, and followed Fess.
The black horse stopped, and looked back expectantly. Father Al trotted to catch up, and came to a halt to see a line of stones laid in the grass—the threshold of a Gate to—where?
The great black horse stood to the side, waiting.
Father Al looked up at him, took a deep breath, and squared his shoulders. “Wish me luck, then. You may be the last rational being I see for a long, long time.” And, without giving himself a chance to think about it, he stepped forward. Nothing happened, so he took another step—and another, and another…
… and suddenly realized that the trees had silver trunks.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Gwen stopped suddenly. “Hist!”
“Sure,” Rod said agreeably. “Why not?”
“Oh, be still! I catch a trace of something I like not!”
“Pursuit?” Rod turned serious.
Gwen shook her head, frowning. “ ‘Tis Duke Foidin, and in converse; yet I have only a sense of that which he doth speak with, and it’s somewhat threatening.” She looked down at her children. “Dost thou sense aught more?”
Silently, they shook their heads. “ ‘Tis not altogether human, Mama,” Magnus contributed.
Out of the corner of his eye, Rod noticed Elidor trembling. He caught the boy’s shoulder. “Steady, there, lad. You’re with us, now.” He turned back to Gwen. “Of course, the wise thing to do would be to sneak on by.”
Gwen nodded.
Rod turned away. Silently, they picked their way between white trunks in a dazzle of moonlight reflected off silver leaves. After about ten minutes, Gwen hissed, “It doth grow stronger.”
Rod didn’t falter. “So they’re on our line of march. We’ll worry about avoiding them when we know where they are.”
Then, suddenly, they were out of the trees, at the top of a rise. Below them, in a natural bowl, rose a small hill. Light glowed around it, from glittering, moving figures.
“The faery knowe!” Elidor gasped.
“Hit the dirt!” Rod hissed. The whole family belly-flopped down in the grass. Rod reached up, and yanked Elidor down. “No insult intended, Majesty,” he whispered. “It’s simply a matter of safety.” He turned to Magnus. “You said the thought-pattern wasn’t quite human?”
Magnus nodded. “And therefore could I not comprehend it, Papa.”
“Well, you hit it right on the nose.” Rod frowned, straining his ears. “Hold it; I think we can just make out what they’re saying.”
Duke Foidin and his knights were easy to pick out by their dimness. They stood almost at the bottom of the bowl, off to Rod’s left. The being facing him was taller by a head, and fairly seemed to glow. It had to be the most handsome male that Rod had ever seen, the fluidity of its movement, as it shifted from foot to foot continually, indicating musculature and coordination beyond the human. And he was brilliant; he fairly seemed to glow. His extravagant costume had no color; it had only varying degrees of light. A silver coronet encircled his brow, tucking down behind pointed ears.
“The King of Faery?” Rod hissed to Elidor.
The boy shook his head. “ ‘Tis a coronet, not a crown. A duke, mayhap, an they have such.”
The faery duke’s arms chopped against each other. “Be done! All this we’ve hearkened to aforetime, and found small reason in. This is no cause for we of Faery to embroil ourselves in mortal war.”
“Yet think!” Duke Foidin protested, “the High Warlock doth champion the White Christ!”
“As have kings done these last two thousand years,” the faery replied.
Two thousand? It should’ve been more like eight hundred, from the medieval look of this land.
“The priests were threat to us at first,” the faery conceded, “yet so was Cold Iron, which came not overlong before them—and we endure. The priests have learned they cannot expunge us, nor we rid ourselves of them.”
Duke Foidin took a deep breath. “Then I offer price!”
The faery sneered. “What could a mortal offer that a faery would desire?”
“Mortal wizards,” Foidin said promptly, “two—a male and female?”
“Should we seek to breed them, then? Nay; we have some use for human captives, but wizards would be greater trouble than use, for they’d ever seek to learn our secrets.”
“Children.”
The faery stilled.
A stream of pure rage shot through Rod, almost seeming to come from someplace, someone, else, scaring him by its intensity. He’d heard the fairy tales about changelings, aged elves left in mortal cradles for the pretty babes the fairies had carried off. The tradition had it that fairies liked mortal slaves, and definitely preferred to raise them, themselves.
And, somehow, Rod thought he knew which children Foidin had in mind.
Foidin saw the faery duke was interested. “And an infant, not yet a year of age; I’ll have it soon.”
Rod almost went for him, right then and there. The snake was talking about Gregory!
But Gwen’s hand was on his arm, and he forced himself to relax. No, of course not; Foidin didn’t know Gregory existed. He wasn’t even in this world.
“ ‘Tis the only mortal thing we value,” the faery said slowly, “yet scarcely worth the fighting for. We’ve ways of gaining mortal children, at far less cost than war.”
And he turned on his heel, and strode away.
Duke Foidin stared after him, unbelieving, rage rising. “Thou knavish wraith!” he fairly screamed. “Will nothing move thee?”
The faery duke stopped, then slowly turned, and the air seemed to thicken and grow brittle, charged to breaking. “Why should we of Faery care what mortals do?” His voice grew heavy with menace. “Save to avenge an insult. ‘Ware, mortal duke! Thou mayest gain the war which thou dost seek, but with the folk of Faery seeking thy heart’s blood! Now get thee hence!”
Duke Foidin stood, white-lipped and trembling, aching to lash out, but too afraid.
“Mayhap thou dost doubt our power.” The faery duke’s voice suddenly dripped with honey. “Then let us show thee how easily we gain all that thou didst offer.” And his left hand shot up with a quick circling motion.
Suddenly, unseen cords snapped tight around Rod’s body, rolling him over and pinning his arms to his sides and his legs to one another. He let out one terror-stricken, rage-filled bellow; then something sticky plastered itself over his mouth. He could still see, though—see Gwen and the children, even Elidor, bound hand and foot, and gagged, as he was,
fairly cocooned in shining cords. Grotesquely ugly sprites leaped out of the grass all about them, stamping in a dance and squealing with delight. Their shaggy clothes looked to be made of bark; they had huge jughead ears, great loose-lipped mouths, and bulbous, warty noses dividing platter-eyes. The biggest of them was scarcely three feet high.
“They ever come, the prying big ‘uns!” they cried.
“They never spy the sentry-Spriggans!”
“Well caught, spriggans!” the faery duke called. “Now bring them here!”
The spriggans howled delight, and kicked Rod up to the top of the rise, then shoved him over. Sky and grass whirled about him and about as he rolled down the hill, with spriggans running along, whooping, rhythmically pushing him, as a child rolls a hoop. Panic hit, fear for Gwen and the kids—and behind it, a feeling of some sympathetic Presence, its anger beginning to build with Rod’s.
He brought up with a thump against the Duke’s feet. Gwen slammed into his back, softening the bumps as the children knocked into her.
Foidin stared down at them, horrified. “Elidor!”
“The King?” The faery duke looked up, interested. “Of great account! We’ve never had a mortal king to rear!”
Foidin’s gaze shot up at him, shocked. Then he glared down at Rod, pale and trembling. “This is thy doing! Thou hast brought the King to this! But… how? What? How hast thou brought this thing to pass? I left thee safe, behind stout locks and guards!”
Rod mumbled through his gag.
The faery duke nodded contemptuously. “Allow him speech.” A spriggan hopped to pull Rod’s gag.
“Yeeeowtch!” The sticky plaster hurt, coming off. He worked his mouth, glaring up at the Duke. “You should know, Milord Duke, that locks and guards cannot hold a warlock, if he does not wish it. Your lock did open without a human hand to touch it; your guards all sleep.”
“It cannot be!” the Duke fairly screeched, white showing round the borders of his eyes. “Only magics most powerful can bring such things to pass!”
Rod smiled sourly. “Be more careful of your guests—and hope this faery duke doth hold me fast. For now we have a score to settle, you and I.” He felt the touch of the helping spirit again, but its rage was growing—and so was his. “You would have sold all my family, to gain this faery’s aid! Be sure that never do I have a chance to come at thee alone—for I’ll not trouble to use my magic! And this child…” It seemed, now, as though it weren’t himself talking, suddenly, but the Presence. “…who was this babe you would have sold? How shall you gain possession of it?”
The Duke turned away to hide a sudden look of fear, trembling.
“Turn not away!” Rod barked. “Face me, coward, and give answer—what child was this?”
“Indeed, do stay,” the faery duke murmured. “Or wilt thou so straightaway abandon this thy King?”
“The King!” Foidin gasped, whirling back. “Nay, assuredly, thou shalt not keep him—for if thou dost, my power fails!” He stared at the faery duke, drawn and palsied, nerving himself up to it—then his hand flashed to his sword.
The faery duke snapped his fingers contemptuously, and Foidin doubled over a sudden stabbing pain. “Aieeengggh!”
Gwen seized the moment; Rod’s sword shot out of its scabbard to slash his bonds, then whirled to cut Gwen’s. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Magnus’s little blade shearing his ropes; then he sailed into the faery duke, knocking him back by sheer surprise, over Rod’s knee, Rod’s dagger at his throat. “Release my family, milord—or feel cold iron in your veins.”
But Magnus had slashed his siblings’ bonds, and he and Geoff were holding off a band of spriggans, who were throwing stones but retreating steadily before the boys’ swords. Gwen and Cordelia crouched, waiting, as the faery band ran forward with a shout, glowing blades whipping through the air. “Now!” Gwen cried, and a hail of stones shot toward the faeries, bruising and breaking. Some screamed, but most pressed on—and the thrown stones whirled back to strike at them again.
Duke Foidin saw his chance to curry favor, and whipped out his blade. “Nay, Theofrin,” he grunted around his pain, “I will aid thee!” And he leaped forward, blade slashing down at Rod.
Rod had no choice; his sword snapped up to guard, and Theofrin whiplashed out of his arms as though they were rubber. The Duke’s blade slid aside on Rod’s, but the faery duke Theofrin seized Rod’s sword arm, snatched him high, whirled him through the air, and tossed him to the ground as though he’d been a bag of kindling. Rod shouted, and the shout turned into a shriek as he hit and felt something move where it shouldn’t. His shoulder screamed raw pain. Through its haze, he struggled to his knees, right arm hanging limp—and saw Theofrin stalking towards him, elf-sword flickering about like a snake’s tongue.
Beyond him, Duke Foidin and his men frantically parried faery blades; his try for favor hadn’t worked. One courtier howled as a faery blade stabbed through him, and whipped back out; blood spurted from his chest, and he collapsed.
And Theofrin’s blade danced closer. Rod whipped out his dagger—what else did he have left? Theofrin sneered, and lunged; Rod parried, but the faery duke had overreached, and Rod flicked his dagger-blade out to nick the faery’s hand. The faery shrieked at the touch of cold iron, and clasped his wounded hand, the elfin sword dropping to the ground. Rod staggered to his feet, and waded forward. Theofrin’s face contorted with a snarl; his own dagger whisked out, left-handed.
“Papa!” Magnus’s scream cut through the battle. Rod’s head snapped up; he saw his eldest on the ground, spread-eagled, struggling against invisible bonds. A tall, thin faery stood above him, face lit with glee, as he chopped downward with his sword.
Adrenalin shocked through him, and Rod charged. Theofrin stepped to block his path. Rod barrelled into him, dagger-First, and the faery duke skipped aside with a howl of rage, the cold-iron dagger barely missing his ribs. Then Rod’s shoulder caught his son’s adversary in the midriff, and the sword-cut went wide, slicing his dangling right hand. Rod bellowed with the pain, but caught the hilt and wrenched the sword free. He howled again; it was cold, burning his flesh like dry ice; but he clung to it, lunging after the faery, stabbing. The sword cut into the faery’s belly, and it folded with a scream, sprawling on the ground. Rod didn’t stay to see if it were dead; he whirled back to his son, and saw the blood flowing from Magnus’s shoulder as he struggled up on one elbow, the invisible bonds gone with the faery whose spell had forged them. “Magnus!” Rod clasped the boy to him. “What’ve they done to you!”
“Just… a cut…” the boy choked out. His eyes had lost focus. “Couldn’t break his spell, Papa… Strange… too strong…” Then he collapsed across Rod’s arm.
Panic shot through Rod as he stared at his eldest son, dread clawing up into his throat. It couldn’t be—so full of life! He couldn’t be…
“Dead?”
A metal point pricked his throat. Rod looked up, and saw Theofrin grinning down, with glowing, gloating eyes. “Dead, as thou shalt be! Yet not too quickly. I’ll have thine entrails forth for this fell insult, mortal, and pack hot coals in their place, whilst yet thou livest! Thy wife shall be our drudge and whore, thy children slaves, with torques about their necks!” His mouth twisted in contempt. “Warlock, dost thou name thyself? An thou hadst been such, there’d have truly been a battle royal! Hadst thou been Lord Kern, now, our faery ropes would have crumbled ere they touched thee; our spriggans would have turned to stone! Cold iron in a thousand guises would have filled the air about thee, and thine every step would have waked the sound of church bells!”
Then Rod heard Gwen scream in rage. He darted a glance toward her, saw her kneeling with Cordelia and Geoffrey clasped against her. She had caught three fallen swords with her mind, and they wove a deadly dance about her, warding off a dozen faery courtiers; but the faeries’ blades all flickered closer, closer…
“They are not done with her, quite yet,” Theofrin said. “They’ll play with her a
while longer, then beat down her witch-swords. Then will they play with her again, and her witchling with her. When that is done, if they feel merciful, they may then slay them.” His eyes gleamed with a chill, self-satisfied light.
Rod glared up at him, terror for his family boiling into anger. He shot that energy into a craving wish for steel to fill the air, for church bells to ring—anything, to banish this fell faery!
And up beneath his rage it mounted, that sense of a kindly, outraged presence, a spirit other than his, reassuring him, but smashing out with all Rod’s rage in one huge hammer blow.
Distantly, a bell began to toll.
Closer at hand, another bell began to peal.
Then another joined it, and another, north, east, south, and west—and more, and more, till the bells in every village church for miles around must have been clamoring.
He’d done it! He’d broken through his barrier, through to Gwen—and she’d set the bells to ringing!
The faery duke looked up, horrified; his glow seemed to dim. Then he threw back his head and let out a howl of rage. It echoed from every side as his court picked it up, till the whole of the glen was one huge scream.
Then, still screaming, they flew. A door swung open in the mound, and the faery folk lifted off the ground and whisked away toward it, like dry leaves borne on a whirlwind.
The duke tarried a moment, glaring down at Rod. “I know not by what magics thou hast wrought this, wizard—yet be assured, I shall avenge it!” Then he shot up off the ground and towards the mound, with a long, drawn-out scream of wrath, that dwindled and cut off as the mound’s door shut. For minutes more, there was screaming still, muted and distant, inside the knowe; then all was quiet. Moonlight showed a peaceful glen, silver leaves tinkling in the breeze; only a circle of flattened grass remained, to show where the fairies had danced.
And the Duke Foidin, and his henchmen. The Duke stood staring at the fairy mound; then, slowly, his eyes moved over the glen, till they fastened on Rod. He stared; then a leering grin broke his face, and he moved forward.
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