Faerie Path #6: The Charmed Return

by Frewin Jones

A bleak smile crossed Jade’s face. “Way to go, Tania!” she said. “That was almost convincing.”

  The sound of the door swinging open took their attention.

  Raphael Cariotis stood in the doorway, the amber jewel glimmering at his chest, his features ruddy in the light of the flames that held Tania and Jade.

  Not Cariotis—Lear! But although Tania knew the true face of the man confronting her, she could still not pierce the mask of his deception. He still looked like Raphael Cariotis—and her head was still full of counterfeit memories of her father’s honored counselor.

  “Ah, you are awake, Tania,” he said, walking into the room. “That is good. I would not have you miss the most momentous event of your short life.” He smiled and gestured so that she floated to the floor. “Noon approaches, my most cherished niece—it is time for your tryst with the Pure Eclipse.”

  “What about me?” Jade shouted, all trace of fear hidden now. “What do you plan on doing with me, mister? How do I fit into your loony plans?”

  Lear turned and looked at her as though surprised at the sound of her defiant voice. “Indeed, what should I do with you?” he mused. “I had given no thought to it, Mortal child. I imagine you will remain here, locked in this place till you perish of hunger and thirst.” He smiled coldly. “Or would you wish a speedier end, child? I can give you the gift of instant death.” He raised his hand, his fingers curled. “Would you wish that?”

  “Not really!” Jade said. “Thanks, all the same.” She nodded to Tania. “I want to stay with her.”

  “You’d share her fate?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Your wish is granted, child,” said Lear. “It can do no harm. You shall ride together in the carriage. And I shall have the pleasure of seeing the terror in your eyes when the moment of her doom approaches.”

  “Thanks a bunch!” muttered Jade.

  “What carriage?” asked Tania, her heart going out to Jade for her courage and friendship.

  “Did you think I would make you walk all the way to the cave on the high downs?” Lear said. “Fie! I would not do you such discourtesy.” He moved his fingers in the air, and although the red flames slowly died away, Tania found that she was still unable to move.

  “You shall ride in comfort and style to the Cavern of Heartsdelving,” Lear continued. “Accompanied by my most chivalrous and trusted knights, and applauded all the way by the glad and loyal subject of your father, the King.” He snapped his fingers and suddenly Tania felt life and mobility return to her limbs. “Come,” Lear said, turning and walking from the room. “The noontide approaches. We must be gone!”

  Although she could move, Tania realized that she had no control over her body. At Lear’s command she walked stiffly across the floor, and with Jade by her side they followed him down the spiraling staircase of Eden’s dark tower toward their fate.

  The festival of the Pure Eclipse was in full swing as the horse-drawn carriage made its way out of the palace and up through the crowded parklands. The sky was clear blue, and a fresh breeze sent the banners and flags and pennants of Faerie flying. A cheering throng lined the route that the carriage took up toward the heathered downs. Some threw flowers till the floor of the carriage was awash with roses and fuchsias and marigolds and violets and a score of other flowers besides.

  There were even pink lilies in Tania’s lap and rose petals in her hair. Jade sat stiff at her side, festooned in chrysanthemum and gerbera petals, her eyes haunted, her jaw set.

  The man with the face of Raphael Cariotis sat opposite them, smiling and waving occasionally to the crowds of cheering onlookers.

  “Can’t they see we’re his prisoners?” hissed Jade between clenched teeth. “Can’t they see it from our faces?”

  Lear leaned forward. “They see what I wish them to see,” he said. “Two merry maids on their way to save the worlds!” He spun his fingers, and as Jade’s arm rose to wave, so Tania found herself unable to prevent her own arm from lifting to the passing people. “You see?” Lear said. “You wave and smile and all is well.”

  Tania scanned the cheering crowds, searching desperately for Edric’s face in among them—wishing with all her heart that he might have returned in time to save them. But there was no sign of him. The crowds cheered and music played and tumblers and jugglers and acrobats performed their arts while knights jousted and cooks prepared sumptuous foodstuffs and the high white sun climbed slowly to the apex of the sky.

  In Tania’s head, louder even than the roar of the crowds, was the constant drumming of hoofbeats. Hammering, hammering away in her skull—louder still and louder until her whole body ached with the pounding of it and she would have screamed for pain if she had been able to.

  Jade had been right in guessing that the hoofbeats were connected to the Pure Eclipse. It had to be so—why else would the noise be growing as noon approached?

  Tania glanced up at the sky. The innocent, powder blue sky and the sun a white flare too bright to look at. And no sign of the doom that was coming.

  Jade let out a moan at her side.

  Voices called to Tania.

  “Bless you, Princess Tania!”

  “The good spirits keep you eternally for your deeds this day!”

  Chapter XXIX

  Tania had known of the cave on the downs all of her life. A small insignificant-seeming crack in the side of the hill, half hidden by heather and gorse, but which led to one of the most sacred places in all the land. She had even been through the low stony mouth once—on an expedition led by seventeen-year-old Eden, lighting their way with a mystical flame as she and Rathina and Zara followed. Tania had been nine, and her folded wings had chafed under her clothes.

  A steep, narrow, winding shaft had led down and down to a sudden wide tunnel with a curved roof. There they discovered the course of the River Elfleet running swift and dark between rocky banks, noisy and icy cold when the spray hit bare skin. They had walked in file along the bank until they came to the awesome Cavern of Heartsdelving . . . years ago, when she still had wings, and before any shadow had fallen upon Faerie.

  The carriage left the crowds behind and ascended the last hill before the cave. Tania stared in shock and dismay. The cave was no longer a small mouth in the hill; it had been dug out and excavated until it was a gaping hole, surrounded by piles of raw earth and mounds of broken stone. Many of the Red Knights of Gralach Hern stood around the gouged chasm, their brooding presence sinister as they silently watched the approaching carriage.

  Lear called for the carriage to halt before the ugly wound in the hills. “’Twas the best that could be worked in the time,” he said, stepping out of the carriage and gesturing toward the great hole in the hillside. “When I am King of both worlds, machines of Isenmort will be brought into this land to perform such tasks with more efficiency. Ah, but they will bite into the backbone of this realm—they will gnaw at its very heart.”

  Tania was again tormented by visions. She saw the massive jaws of excavators gouging into the green hills of Faerie—and she saw smoke-spewing bulldozers, their blades hacking down the forest trees, their rumbling and clanking caterpillar tracks churning the ground to mud. Wrecking balls crashing into the walls of the Royal Palace. She saw flames leaping, A pall of filthy smoke hanging over Faerie like a funeral shroud.

  She looked into Lear’s eyes, knowing that it was his will that put these nightmares in her head and that he enjoyed the pain they gave her.

  She fought back, filling her mind instead with pictures of her family: her Mortal mother and father, her sisters, the King and Queen, her beloved Edric.

  Lear scowled.

  “Would that you were pure Faerie,” he growled as he curled his hands and forced her to step out of the carriage. “I’d play such games in your mind, child, that you’d never know peace nor love again!”

  She glared at him. “But I am not pure Faerie,” she spat. “I’ll fight you every step.” She forced her head to turn toward him. “Why don’t
you show your true face, uncle?” she asked.

  “I shall, when the time is right.”

  She glowered at him. Think! Come on, you can do it! Get control back. Don’t let him make you do these things.

  Lear raised his hand and drew Jade down from the carriage.

  “Let me go, you pig!” snarled Jade.

  “Be silent, Mortal,” he responded. “You are here by your own choice.” He sneered. “Enjoy your fate.”

  While he was distracted for that moment, Tania was able to summon the determination to lift her right arm and swing it through the air.

  Her open palm slapped hard against the side of his face. He stepped back, his expression startled and outraged.

  She laughed, but her laughter was stopped with a violent suddenness. His fist closed in the air and she felt a hand in her chest, squeezing her heart. She shouted in pain, and for a second she thought he would kill her.

  Yes! Yes—kill me now. Then I won’t be able to be used by you!

  But the pain subsided, and she was left gasping and shaking.

  “You’ll not best me, child,” he said, rubbing his cheek. “And you’ll not die until the moment I have already chosen.” He smiled grimly, in control again. “Come, the time is almost nigh, and we have a little ways to go yet.”

  He turned, his willpower pulling Tania and Jade along behind him. The Red Knights watched impassively as the three of them entered the cave and began to walk down the steep slope.

  “Way to go with the smack!” Jade managed to whisper to Tania. “Got any more where that came from?”

  Tania shook her head. It had taken almost all of her reserves of strength to make that one futile movement. She knew she would not be given the chance to catch Lear off guard again.

  The galloping hooves were still in her head like a migraine. It was getting so that she could hardly think for the thundering in her brain. But despite her pain the sight that met her eyes at the end of the winding slope came as a jolt.

  Where there had been reverberating noise and racing water in the deep tunnel in the past, there was now only an eerie silence. The dark waters of the Elfleet were immobile, black as ebony, shining in the light of the red torches that lined the river’s course. The waters had not frozen like ice would freeze—rather they seemed to have been turned to black stone in the midst of their flood and rush, so that the surface was rippled and wrinkled and broken by petrified waves.

  “Be wary of your footing, children,” said Lear as he stepped out onto the congealed river. “It is a little slippery underfoot—but I needed a wider pathway for the use of my knights, as you shall see.”

  Tania and Jade stepped down onto the river’s uneven surface and followed along the torchlit passageway.

  They came to a place where the river was split by a sharp edge of stone. The main body of the black river continued into a dark tunnel, but a small stream broke off and led to an immense cavern.

  The Cavern of Heartsdelving. Tania had seen it only once before, its vast vaulted roof and its striated walls lit only dimly by Eden’s mystic flame. But now the great cavern was revealed in its entirety by the naked torches held up by the mounted Red Knights of Gralach Hern. The pocked and fissured walls soared up to a curved roof of rust-colored stone, from which blue-white crystals jutted down like swords and spears, glittering and flashing in the torchlight.

  Tania guessed there must be close to a hundred of the dour knights gathered there, circling the huge round cavern, facing inward and as still and seemingly lifeless as the waters of the narrow stream that lay like a black tongue along the cavern’s floor.

  When it had been alive, the river had fed into a calm lake, a heart-shaped body of water that Tania remembered as a dark mirror, reflecting the faces and forms of the princesses as they had gazed spellbound into its inky depths.

  But now it was dead and smooth like black stone, and it reflected nothing.

  At the lake’s center a small bare island of rock rose to a white crystal stalagmite, its huge finger pointing to the high roof of the cavern. Tania knew the gravity and substance of that pillar of white crystal. It was the Quellstone Spire—the quintessence and focus of the mystic power that flowed through every aspect of Faerie. Like blood flowing through the heart of a body, so the power of the spirits flowed through this place, constantly refreshing and renewing itself before spreading out through stone and tree and river and beast and flower and soil, bringing every fiber of Faerie alive and fueling all the Arts called upon by Oberon and Eden and Valentyne and all other lore-masters of the realm.

  The cavern had been silent and reverent and still the last time Tania had been here—but now the heart-shaped lake was surrounded by people.

  People who cheered and applauded as Cariotis led the two girls forward and up to the lip of the frozen lake.

  Oberon and Titania were there, seated upon the thrones taken from the Great Hall. Tania’s soul ached to see them. The Royal Family was gathered around the King and Queen: Eden and Valentyne, Hopie and Lord Brython, Sancha, Rathina . . . and Cordelia, too. And under Lear’s spell the Royal Family seemed to have forgotten that Cordelia was meant to be dead. She stood with them, no longer filthy and dressed in rags but wearing a gown of leaf green. She was smiling and clapping. Tania knew at a glance that she remembered nothing of what had happened in the Dolorous Tower. Poor Cordelia was now as deeply under Lear’s spell as all the others.

  The earl marshall Cornelius was also in attendance, with his wife, Lucina, and their two sons, Titus and Corin. And there were other lords and ladies, too, representatives of many an earldom—all smiling as they looked toward Tania, all clapping, all glad to see her.

  And Edric? Where was he? Hundreds of miles away, lost in the Earldom of Weir.

  The only thing louder than the acclaim of the noble congregation was the crashing of hooves in Tania’s head.

  Lear stepped to one side, his arms reaching out toward Tania as the cheering rose to a wild climax. Only the knights of Gralach Hern did not join in the celebration. They sat on their black horses with their red swords at their hips and with red helmets upon their heads and red armor covering their limbs. And finally, and far too late, Tania realized what had so disturbed her about these horsemen—the thing that had twisted her stomach into knots whenever she had approached them. It was so horribly obvious now! Their swords and their armor were of metal—dark red metal.

  Lear lifted his arms and the applause died slowly away to an excited, watching hush.

  “Welcome, one and all,” he called, his voice ringing down from the domed roof. “Welcome, indeed, to this most auspicious place at this most auspicious time!” He pointed to the very top of the roof. “Let us shed some light on what is soon to come,” he called. “Let us bear witness to the greatest event of the age!”

  Streams of fire ran from his fingers, up and up to the top of the cavern. And where the flames boiled against the stone, so the roof seemed to melt away, leaving a wide cavity through which the noonday sun came streaming down, filling the cavern with golden light.

  There was a gasp and a murmur of awe as the sunlight poured over the gathered people of Faerie and illuminated the Quellstone Spire as if it were a rod of solid white light. Even the black waters of the lake shone now, and the torches of the knights of Gralach Hern were all but quenched in the deluge of daylight.

  “Come forth, those who have been chosen as attendants to Princess Tania,” Lear called. “Come forth and lead her to her destiny!”

  Tania watched in dismay as Cordelia and Rathina and Titus stepped out onto the lake and walked slowly and smilingly toward her.

  “Would you be with her still, Mortal child?” Lear asked Jade.

  “You bet!” said Jade, and although her voice shook with fear, Tania saw a fierce courage in her face. Jade turned to the three approaching people. “Hey! Stop smiling. You have to snap out of it, guys. This is all fake! This is all so bad!”

  But they didn’t hear her—or perhaps Le
ar’s will changed her words to a happy greeting in their charmed ears? Their eyes full of joy and their mouths stretched in unnatural, fixed smiles, Rathina and Titus took Tania by the hands. Smiling also, Cordelia walked in front, Jade forced to follow as the five of them set off toward the island in the black lake.

  Hooves. Galloping. Hurting so bad. Beating at her brain.

  All hope gone.

  They came to the island and climbed the gentle slope to the crystal pillar. Tania was too far gone now to struggle. She felt defeated—tortured by the relentless thudding of the hooves.

  Titus and Rathina led her up to the Spire, turning her so that her back was to the lambent crystal. Through her agony Tania was aware of a sudden creeping coldness filling the cavern. She forced her head up, staring into the small ring of the sky with the white sun at its heart.

  The pain was boiling cold in her eyes. Fire and ice. The heat of the world’s core and the deadly cold of the void between the stars, flooding her veins at one and the same time.

  And still the crashing hooves! Louder and louder.

  Make them stop! Please, god, make them stop!

  The cavern was silent now. Watching. Waiting. As Rathina and Titus pressed her against the Quellstone Spire, Tania could feel its power running through her like electricity, or like something more ancient and more visceral than electricity—like charmed and mystic blood in her veins.

  Cordelia was smiling. Jade looked anguished and helpless, and there were tears running down her cheeks.

  Hooves. Hooves. Hooves.

  Slowly a strange darkness stole across the sky. In the Mortal World to look into the sun would have burned her eyes out, but here in Faerie Tania found she could stare into the sun and not be blinded.

  She saw a thieving darkness biting into the sun’s disk.

  Her whole body vibrated with the galloping horses. So close now—so close she could almost smell their sweat and see the flames in their eyes.

  The pirate moon glided over the sun’s face, plundering its light and heat, moving at a stealthy pace, exchanging day for unnatural night, light for darkness, warmth for cold.