And Less Than Kind

by Mercedes Lackey

  "You mean that Vidal somehow bound the Evil and removed it? Why? How?"

  "How? He has been different since he was held by the mist. He often thinks and plans before he acts now, and he has more than enough power." Rhoslyn shivered. "The Dark Court is awash with unhappiness and pain and fear. Why? That I cannot even guess, unless his FarSeers saw Mary's life ending; she is frail. So perhaps he seized the Evil for the purpose he used it? To ensure . . . Oh, merciful Mother . . . to give Mary a child, an evil child, who would ensure the misery of Logres for . . . for eternity."

  Denoriel did not answer her. He looked past her, a little to the side and a moment later his face twisted and a low exclamation of pain forced itself past his lips. He closed his eyes. Rhoslyn started out of her chair.

  Before she could reach Denoriel, he had reopened his eyes. They were what they should have been, except for the dearth of power in the Bright Court, the deep, brilliant green of a young Sidhe at the height of his power. His hair was still white, but it shone silver and almost lifted as if it would throw off sparks. The lines in his face were gone and his body no longer slumped or was held erect by effort. Smooth muscle that hinted of easy strength and energy filled his clothing.

  "Are you all right?" Rhoslyn asked.

  "Yes." Denoriel sounded surprised. "I am. I do not know whether I can do that again, but this time all is well. Come. We need to talk to Pasgen and Hafwen about your suspicions. I know I said we would go to Elizabeth first, but during the day that is difficult and there is a safe Gate in Hatfield that I can open to reach her at night. I will just send the gardener's boy with a note to ask her to have Lady Alana attend her tonight."

  The Gate Denoriel opened from his bedchamber to Underhill was bright and quick, but the Bright Court should better have been called the Dim Court. The moss, which ordinarily sprang erect almost as one lifted a foot, lay limp after Miralys and Talog had passed. Llachar Lle still stood, but the glow was gone; the blue-veined white marble of the steps and portico was dull and worn.

  Denoriel and Rhoslyn did not stay long; there was a strange feel to his apartment, almost as if it were damp and musty. Thus Denoriel bade the air spirits he dispatched to find Pasgen and Hafwen to bring them to Rhoslyn's English manor house in the domain that had once held the self-willed mist. But even the restless mists of Rhoslyn's domain, which usually devised some new detail in her house or lands to surprise and please her, lay quiet.

  Harry met them at the door, at once thrilled to see them and alarmed about the weakness of the Gates. He was torn between relief and concern when he learned how Denoriel had found the strength to make the Gates work, and led the way to Rhoslyn's cozy private parlor before he enquired what drove Denoriel to that expedient. But he was utterly horrified, beyond horrified, devastated, when Rhoslyn told him of Mary's possession.

  "My fault," he breathed. "Human mischief. Why did I not leave the Evil alone? It seemed content in Alhambra. Now it is about to spread to England." His lips thinned to a narrow line. "No. I will not permit it to destroy my country. My fault, my duty to correct it." He looked at Denoriel. "You'll have to Gate me to wherever Mary is. I'll—" he swallowed and shuddered, his eyes glittering with tears. "I'll kill her."

  "Grace of God, no!" Denoriel exclaimed. He did not believe in the mortal God, but so many years of living in the mortal world had fixed his expressions. "We will find a way to separate the Evil from Mary and be rid of one without harming the other."

  "Yes, of course," Harry agreed, drawing a deep breath. He hesitated and sucked his lower lip for a moment, then said, "I would not be surprised if Mwynwen would know how. She cannot cure human illness, but she can heal human wounds, and this Evil is no true part of Mary. Surely it can be drawn out of her."

  "Yes," Denoriel agreed eagerly. "And do not think the Evil would have been forever easily contained. If you had not diminished it and driven it out, Harry, in our present weakness, it might well have flooded over into the Bright Court."

  "Or into the Dark," Rhoslyn said, moving closer to Harry on the sofa on which they both sat and taking Harry's hand. "At full strength it might even have possessed Vidal. He is bad enough as he is. Filled with senseless, unreasoning Evil . . ."

  "But my sister," Harry said, pulling Rhoslyn closer against him. "My poor sister. What are we to do with her? She never wanted to be queen. She has no skill for the role and no common sense. She has turned a whole people that loved her into enemies of the crown. England is bankrupt by her idiotic return of Church property and her selling of lands to pay for Spain's war. She cannot be allowed to hold the crown, even without that Evil within her. Elizabeth must rule."

  "Not by our doing," Denoriel said firmly. "I know it hurts you to see the realm mismanaged. Elizabeth is half mad with rage and frustration. And her state is worse than yours because she dare not let a word of criticism pass her lips."

  "Poor Bessie—" Harry started to say, but did not finish as one of Rhoslyn's girls slid into the room.

  "Two Sidhe," she murmured, "Pasgen and Hafwen."

  "Invite them in and see we have mead and nectar. And some cakes and nuts," Rhoslyn said.

  "And wine for me, Crinlys," Harry said, smiling. "Mead and nectar are too sweet."

  "Wine for me, also," Denoriel said, and to Harry, "And how do you know that girl is Crinlys? They all look alike to me."

  "Violet ribbon around the neck," Harry said. "Rhoslyn might be able to tell them apart, but I can't."

  Crinlys slipped out but the door opened again almost immediately, held for Hafwen and Pasgen by an identical girl with a yellow ribbon around her neck.

  "Thank you, Elyn," Pasgen said, and the construct closed the door behind him.

  "Yellow ribbon," Harry muttered to Denoriel.

  But Hafwen was looking around the room, her face creased with worry. "What is wrong?" she asked. "Pasgen, I told you something was wrong."

  "And I believed you," he replied, "since I powered the Gate to get us here safely." He led Hafwen to a chair and then went and took Rhoslyn's free hand. "What has overset you so much, sister?"

  When the tale of the Evil that had rooted itself in Mary was told, Hafwen was weeping softly and Pasgen's face was twisted into a hard mask of mixed fear and determination.

  "No matter the cost, it must be destroyed," he said. "You did not see what that Evil did among the Dark, the Bright, and the totally innocent. Hafwen and I—" he moved to her side and put a gentle hand on her shoulder "—we followed its trail. It was—" he closed his eyes, cleared his throat, and began again, "It is unthinkable that that should be loose, should rule, in the mortal world. There will be nothing but grief. The Bright Court will fade to nothing."

  They talked for a few minutes about Rhoslyn's notion that the Evil had somehow shifted into Dakari, perhaps when he had come to spy out Alhambra, that Vidal had captured Dakari and removed him and the Evil from the gnome domain. Pasgen merely nodded when Denoriel asked if he thought Vidal would have seeded Mary with the Evil.

  "That may have been his purpose from the beginning and why he stopped Dakari from running amok, but it doesn't matter who did it or why. The Evil must be removed."

  Everyone agreed to that; there was less agreement on how. Harry suggested that Mwynwyn could draw the Evil out of Mary, but Hafwen thought it would be near impossible to win Mwynwyn's consent to go to the mortal world in the first place and then destroy an unborn child.

  It was not as difficult as they expected. The idea was at first rejected with the near fury Hafwen had predicted, but Mwynwyn was a sensitive and the universal horror clawing at every one of them made her reconsider her impulse to throw them out.

  "Why should I commit such an abomination?" she cried.

  "We do not wish to harm Queen Mary," Rhoslyn said. "This is a separate thing we believe was implanted in her by Vidal Dhu."

  "To keep power flowing to the Dark Court," Mwynwyn sighed.

  Then she listened to what Rhoslyn had felt in Mary's touch, and to Harry with t
ears streaking his cheeks say that if she would not remove the tainted unborn, he would have to kill Mary, his own sister. Harry? Mwynwyn thought, kill his sister? What was in Mary's womb must be truly terrible, and to birth it would be worse than the deliberate death of an unborn child. In the end Mwynyen placed her hands on Hafwen's temples and asked her to think of what she had seen while she and Pasgen pursued the Evil.

  White-faced and shivering when she had read Hafwen's memory, Mwynwen agreed to go with them the next mortal night and remove the Evil from Mary's womb.

  A far more serious problem became apparent when Denoriel and Rhoslyn Gated from Underhill to Hatfield not long after midnight to get the token for setting a Gate from Elizabeth. When they told her for what they needed it, Elizabeth's eyes went wide with shock, with grief for her sister for whom she still held a thread of affection, but mostly with horror of the married state, which to her mind had created all of Mary's problems.

  "See what comes of marrying," she cried. "I will never marry, never. Even to have a child is only a deadly trap."

  However, once she was calmed and dried her tears, she became intensely practical. First Elizabeth pointed out that the token Denoriel had given her was bespelled to act when she set it somewhere (a protection for Denoriel who did not want to be frantically trying to build a Gate because one of Elizabeth's ladies somehow found a token and dropped it on the floor).

  And after Denoriel thanked her for reminding him and, sighing over the cost in power, said he would make a new token, Elizabeth asked what they planned to do with the Evil once it was extracted from Mary's womb.

  "You cannot destroy it," Elizabeth said, looking from one to the other. "Da and I talked about that when he was trying to free Alhambra. He and the elder Sidhe were thinking about sending the whole altar to the Void, but Sawel had not got the spell right."

  There was a dead silence while Denoriel, Rhoslyn, and Aleneil stared at her.

  "It will get loose from the—" she searched for an unfamiliar Latin word "—fetus when the fetus dies," Elizabeth pointed out. "Where will it go? You told me that Pasgen and Hafwen think from the gnomes' description that it was using a Dark Sidhe called Dakari. If it got into Dakari, can it get into someone else?"

  "I don't know how it got into Dakari," Denoriel said, "but if what we think is true, Vidal held Dakari and the Evil in him captive for some time. The Evil could not escape from Dakari. Vidal must have had some kind of shield around the Sidhe that prevented the Evil from escaping or striking at him."

  "Mirror shield," Rhoslyn said. She and Pasgen had tried many different shields to protect themselves when they were still part of the Dark Court. "Turned inside out. Mirror on the inside."

  "Can you cast one?" Denoriel asked her.

  "I know how," Rhoslyn told him, "but with my strength at so low an ebb, I cannot think it would be proof against the Evil's power."

  "Can you teach me?" Denoriel asked then. "I can get the power if I must."

  Elizabeth made a wordless sound of protest, but Denoriel, face grim, shook his head at her.

  "I can try," Rhoslyn said. "A mirror shield inside out is a rather complicated spell. But Pasgen will be with us and he knows the spell too."

  "He won't have much more power than you because he will be holding the Gate," Aleneil pointed out.

  "Perhaps if we all three cast it at once," Rhoslyn suggested. "I do not know whether the three spells will blend—likely Pasgen will know that or how to do it—but even if they do not blend there will be three layers, which is better than one."

  "Then you will have at least a few moments to do something final with the Evil before it gets loose," Elizabeth said. "What will you do with it?"

  Another long silence. They had all hoped that the Evil would die when the fetus died. Elizabeth's reminder that Evil could not be completely destroyed brought them forcibly to face a problem they had not, with typically Sidhe disinclination to plan ahead, wished to address.

  "I will come with you," Elizabeth said in a small voice. She sounded very frightened. "I do not think the Evil will be able to break my shields and seize me." She shivered slightly. "It must be me. There is so little power in the Bright Court, I think the shields will be all you can do. I will Push it. I will Push it very hard . . . I hope into the Void. I have done that before."

  All three looked at her.

  "It is my realm," she said, her voice growing stronger, surer. "It owns my life, my heart, my mind, my body." She swallowed. "I am afraid," she admitted, "but afraid or not, it is my duty to save England from any threat."

  The next night soon after full dark Elizabeth left Blanche on guard by the door of her bedchamber and escaped with Lady Alana, both hidden by the Don't-see-me spell. Aleneil was trembling with weakness from holding the spell over both of them just for the time it took to reach the court where Ystwyth waited. The elvensteed carried them swiftly to the park behind Westminster Palace where they found Rhoslyn, who had ridden Talog from the Golden Bull.

  If either of the Sidhe had been at full strength, she could have used the Don't-see-me spell to bring Elizabeth into Mary's bedchamber. But Aleneil was already exhausted and Rhoslyn did not dare expend the power, which she would later need for the mirror spell. However, Rhoslyn knew the palace and Mary's routine.

  She led Elizabeth, dressed simply as a maid, in through the side entrance Mary's ladies always used. The guards there would recognize Rhoslyn and let her pass; there was no reason for them to know she was not supposed to be at the palace. Except among the servants, none would know her maid, who was safely waiting at the Golden Bull. Elizabeth too was passed without question.

  Only once during their progress through the corridors, did they need to slip into an empty room while a party went past, coming from some business with the queen. Rhoslyn thought she recognized some of the voices—councilors. By bad luck, one might want to speak to her because he thought her a favorite; by the worst luck one of them might recognize Elizabeth.

  When the group passed, Rhoslyn sighed with relief. "Good," she muttered. "That means the queen is still at work. Now she will probably go to her closet to write in her journal or to Philip. If our good fortune holds, the bedroom and dressing room will be totally empty."

  They did not have that much good fortune. Elizabeth stunned the guard, and they slipped through the door. Two of the queen's chamberers were in the dressing room when Rhoslyn opened the door, but Elizabeth was quick with her freezing spell. Rhoslyn closed the door, Elizabeth releasing the guard just as the latch clicked.

  Then they were through the dressing room and out into the bedchamber—which was empty. As Rhoslyn shut the door behind them, Elizabeth said, "Deffro," and the women came to life, never aware that they had lost a little time.

  Elizabeth then jammed the lock on the door so that she could examine the walls and the furniture in peace. If she heard someone trying to get in, she would release the spell on the lock and Rhoslyn would hide them with Don't-see-me, but that would be a last resort.

  The maids, however, remained in the dressing room talking in low tones. Elizabeth settled at last on a short stretch of wall between two paintings, one of Philip and the other of Philip and Mary together. She did not have much choice as much of the wall was covered by furniture or tapestries.

  Satisfied that the space was large enough and that those who came through first could move aside quickly to allow others to enter, Elizabeth laid down her token. Now it was only necessary for them to find a place to hide until Mary went to bed. If they should be discovered, Rhoslyn would conceal them with the Don't-see-me but both hoped that would not be necessary. With luck, they would not need to conceal themselves for long.

  As soon as Mary had dismissed all her attendants except the lady who slept with her and perhaps a maid to bring anything the queen wanted during the night, Elizabeth would set a sleep spell on them all. Once they were ensorcelled she would invoke the token and the others would come through the Gate from Avalon.

&nbs
p; Then the luck turned toward them. Having little to do Rhoslyn had been listening to the chamberers' conversation. Most of it was concerned with the clothing they were working on, but while Elizabeth was looking for a place to hide, Rhoslyn's keen ears detected the maids' decision to go to their own small parlor and take some refreshment before the queen sent for them to undress her.

  When Rhoslyn heard the click of the outer door closing, she and Elizabeth hurried into the dressing room. Here they hoped to find a safe place. The room was crowded with many gowns, undergowns, sleeves, stomachers, sets of shelves that held gloves and stockings and such small articles of dress.

  "Well," Rhoslyn murmured, "how thoughtful of them to lay out her night rail. We need not worry about which shelf they will approach. I think . . . there—" She pointed to a rack that held Mary's very richest gowns. "She will not be wearing any of those early tomorrow, so we need not fear the chamberers will come to that rack to lay out tomorrow's garments."