by Morgan Blade
I walked to the area where my shadow sea waited. My steps took me onto the blackness. I stopped and tentacles sprouted. They slithered over me. I stroked them. Looking down, as if into fathoms of shadow, I saw red eyes burning up at me. My boys had missed me.
“We’re going to try an experiment,” I said. “I’m going to see If I can call you to me from another shadow pool. I’ve been thinking of something similar to my armory spell, but fed by shadow magic. It’s rather inconvenient to wait for you to come, bringing all this with you.”
On the back of my right hand, I willed my shadow magic to form a spell circle. I changed a few lines, played with the configuration a little, until I felt good about the new spell. “Okay, here goes.” I rolled my fingers into a fist, and stuck my right arm out. I charged the pattern with raw golden magic. The gold sank into the shadow pattern, and a pool of darkness formed three feet above me in the air. I kept it reined in to ten feet across.
I stared down at the over-sized red eyes. “Can you see me through the new pool?”
I looked up. It took a while, but one by one, giant red eyes appeared there, staring down. I looked back down. Those red eyes were still there. It wasn’t strictly logical, but magic is the defiance of logic. This duality made me think of quantum uncertainty. Potentially, I think the shadow beasts could exist in all realms of shadow, choosing which they’d emerge from. I just had to get them to understand this.
“Okay, guys. Pull the tentacles back, and touch me from the overhead pool.”
Slowly, caressing me all-the-while, the tentacles dropped underfoot, vanishing into the darkness there without a ripple. I waited, looking up. After a moment, a few tentacles pushed through, descending to brush my torso. One tentacle wound around my extended arm. The creature was careful not to crush it. As I watched, the darkness underfoot dwindled until the land reappeared as it had been before being possessed. The overhead pool expanded until it was a vast dark disc blocking the starry sky.
Excellent.
I shook off the tentacle around my arm and drew my sword. I lifted the blade and sank it into the overhead sea. My shadow power darkened the titanium so it matched the pool the creatures swam in. With a thought, I contracted that deep well, pulling the black sea into the blade. The sea vanished, leaving me with an all-black katana, except for the reduced red eyes swimming on the surface.
Even better. Once more...
I shifted and stared at the ground in front of the keep’s lowered gate. A black-ink pool formed there under the broken mastodon bones. Obeying my will, black tentacles broke the surface, coiled around the bone pieces, and dragged them down into nothingness. Another thought closed that pool, sealing the monsters off from that location.
Staring at my sword, I saw blackness, red eyes, and floating lengths of white bone. My boys had some chew toys to keep them amused.
I sheathed my katana and walked back. Ammarellis knelt just where I’d left her. She had to have seen the action with the mastodon bones at the gate, but she didn’t bring it up.
“Stand,” I said.
She rose.
I stood in front of her, the keep to my back. “Okay, what have you got?”
“Well, I thought that you might want to spank me.”
“That’s it?” A true masochist would have made it a mission to devise numerous horrific possibilities for me to choose from, painful, embarrassing, but not injurious.
“With the flat of your sword,” she added.
I kept staring.
“It is rather cold out here for a bare ass,” she said.
“Well, that’s true, but I think we can do better. After all, your first punishment needs to be special. Memorable. Come with me. We’re getting out of here.”
I walked toward the keep, wondering if there was still an open portal inside. I didn’t see a magical glow inside. Well, if nothing else, I had shelter, food, sources of heat, and extra clothes. Someone would come back to check on me.
“Lord Deathwalker?”
I paused to let Ammarellis catch up. “If I may ask one thing of my liege…”
Not personal. She’s asking as Queen of Thorn.
“You can always ask. What is it?”
“I am perfectly content to let you tread upon my dignity—in private—but before others, please leave me my self-respect. A queen needs this to keep her Court in line. I am sworn to you, and my people will fight for you, as will my thorns, but if I am weakened by what others know, the support you count on will be weakened as well. I ask for both out sakes.”
Which meant if I let her play the haughty queen as a public face, in private, she’d be anything else I wanted. It sounded like a hell of a deal.
“Fine.”
She breathed a deep sigh of relief.
I said, “I’m not stupid.”
“No, my lord.”
“I understand the necessity.”
“Yes, my lord.”
The ground was smooth, no loose rock, no fragment of bone. We entered the gate and then a stone passage. A portcullis was lifted at the other end. A courtyard lay beyond. Still no glowing portal. No sign of life. Everyone had gone as I’d ordered. Of course, the population had always been light with Izumi getting by with loaners from her mother’s court.
“One thing, those bracelets and that belt…?” They took piercings to an all new level.
We stopped outside the portcullis. She touched the thorny vines on her left wrist. “Yes, my Lord?”
“Do you simply enjoy pain, or do they have some other purpose with them?”
“I have spells woven into the tendrils. The weave itself gives shape to magic, like the pattern on the back of your hand.”
“So, you’re always ready to fight?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Then didn’t you give in too quickly?”
“No, my lord. I had heard from my spies that you are a great pain in the ass. Had we remained enemies, I’d have only deprived myself of such an experience.”
“Are you really a masochist,” I asked, or is this just a phase you’re trying out to relieve the boredom of centuries?”
“I don’t know yet. Ask me again in half a century.”
I grunted, absorbing her comment. And then the world turned bloody red as Selene’s portal opened around us and we were dragged in.
TWENTY-THREE
“Fools laugh at us on the inside, where
we can’t see. That’s why they survive.”
—Caine Deathwalker
We came out of the portal at the treehouse. The place was quiet. A few Will-o’-the-Wisps wobbled casually through the air; one glowed jewel-tone pink, the other sea-foam green. Lamps burned on the wrap-around deck high in the tree, as I expected, but the garden was empty except for us and Selene. She sat on the jet throne, near the splashing marble fountain. Wrapping the fountain’s basin, the silver vines were night-blooming, the buds spiraled open, showing their silver throats to the night.
Massive roots surfaced to provide extra seating. Leather-wrapped cushions were slung on them for comfort. A couple of blue-furred cats had recently made the garden their home. They were on the pads, sleepy eyes surveying their kingdom. At least, I thought they were only cats. In Fairy, you never really knew for sure.
Ammarellis turned around, ooing and ahing over the details. “This place is lovely. So much more than I expected. They all say you’re just an uncouth, barbarian warlord from outworld.”
“Hey,” I protested, “I have couth. I’m a very couthy person, I’ll have you know.”
I left her, strolling over to Selene. She stayed seated on my throne, smiling a welcome. I leaned in to give her a kiss. She accepted one, stole two, then gave me a sigh. “I can’t leave you alone for a minute. I turn my back and you pick up a new slut.” She said it with a smile, without killing heat in her voice.
“This is Ammarellis, the Queen of the Thorn Lands. She’s given me her tie, and sworn loyalty. Her people will support us, and represent a ne
w market. Be nice to her.”
“How nice?” Selene asked.
“She’s experimenting with masochism—privately. If you’re mean to her in the bedroom, she’ll probably like it.”
“But that’s no fun. People aren’t supposed to enjoy being afraid of me. That’s just—weird.”
I turned to check on Ammarellis. Seemingly oblivious to our conversation, she scratched the chin of one cat and brushed the back of the other. They enjoyed the attention, acting not the least bit feral. I think the truth of Fairy is that everything is feral, it’s just hidden very well.
I turned back to find Selene perched on the forward edge of the throne, hands in her lap. She smiled. “Want to tie me up and lash me—with your tongue? I can take it.”
I put my hands on the armrests and leaned back into kissing range. “I have no doubt, but on a more survival oriented issue, are we set up for defense in case of other surprise visits?”
“Who’s left to come at us?”
“Just the Phantom Court. Then we focus on the Wildlands.”
“No, just the Wild Hunt. If we have their support, or we kill enough of them, the rest of the wild fey will fall in line.”
“Right. Now, about the Phantom Court…”
All subservience gone, Ammarellis draped herself over my back to join the conversation. She looked over my shoulder at Selene while speaking into my ear. “You speak of the Tainted Ones.”
“Why call them that?” I asked.
Ammarellis shrugged, squishing tits into my back, pricking me with her sartorial thorns. Pain and pleasure…carrot and stick. “You probably know, when we fey die, we don’t leave ghosts behind. That’s a human thing. Only halflings have to worry about becoming specters instead of Will-o’-the-Wisps in their next incarnation.”
“Interesting,” Selene said. “So tainted means mixed blood.”
Ammarellis nodded. “The fey in the Phantom Lands have an abnormal fascination with the human variety of death. They steal most of the changeling children from your world these days. Over decades, they have tried to breed themselves human with those they take, but are so infertile, it has not been successful. As the land declines and the fey die off, the Phantom Court thought they’d endure and even thrive off of human vitality.”
I shrugged. “One way to go, but if any pure-blood fey survived, the humanized fey would be vulnerable to stronger magic.”
“Ah, but the humanized fey—as you call them—would compensate with spectral powers the true-blood fey wouldn’t know how to counter,” Ammarellis said. “In recent years, the emphasis has change to harvesting spirits from Earth to act as servants.”
Selene’s eyes went huge, her lips kissing air. “You mean we might be fighting ghosts? Oh, I can’t wait!”
“Not impossible,” I said. “Ghost have severe limitations.”
I had a little experience in this. I’d dealt with spirits in Santa Fe, with the help of a real-life ghost whisperer and her two-ton fu dog Tukka. Mental note: see what Grace is up to these days. She’s not a contact I want to lose touch with.
“You know how to fight them?” Selene asked.
She shot a narrow-eyed glare at Ammarellis. She’d spent entirely too much time on my back apparently. Properly interpreting the glare, Ammarellis backed off and came around so we formed three points to triangle. I straightened, pulling my hands off the armrest of the throne.
“Two weaknesses, actually. One; they can’t manifest until after dark, and two; they have the same weakness fey do to iron. Stick an iron poker into a ghost, and you can force them to go immaterial, temporarily losing cohesion. Do it enough times, and the ghost becomes too weak to manifest, or pull poltergeist mischief.”
Ammarellis caught my eye. “Pole-tyr-guyst? I don’t know this word.”
“It’s like when a wind-mage makes a room full of furniture fly wild so everything not nailed down becomes a weapon.”
The Thorn Queen nodded. “Ah! I see.”
I needed a little information to make sure our situation was stable. “So, ah, Selene, what about the wolves and the personnel from the mountain keep?”
“Wolves are out on the plains, chasing rabbits and grouse,” Selene said. “I warned the villagers not to leave the village tonight. Izumi is there with her mother’s servitors and guards. The villagers are taking advantage of the visitors, throwing together a street fair.”
Having so much to keep up with back on Earth, I hadn’t seen the village lately. I owed it to them to let them know there was a lord to this land and that their concerns weren’t totally ignored. “Sounds fun. Maybe we should go.”
I knew the village had been swelling with refugees from other lands. Word had gotten out to other kingdoms that the Dragon’s Eye encouraged capitalism and peasants weren’t bound to work the land with no other future. My people were well treated—as long as they didn’t stir up trouble. The result was a thriving, growing community of farmers and craftsmen.
“I’ll get Colt,” Selene said. “He’s investigating the treehouse.”
Red light washed her out. She vanished, leaving an empty throne. Fey and human magicians used portals. Devine beings were living portals, among other things. Ammarellis blinked her eyes back to normal. Mine weren’t affected, not quite human anymore. My Villager eye was black with a red core. My Dragon eye had a golden iris and a vertical black pupil, along with several invisible eyelids to filter out windborne grit and high intensity light. To me, the miracle was that I didn’t need special glasses to reconcile the divergent DNA. While my dragon nose had the advantage over my Villager olfactory sense, my dragon eye and Villager eye seemed equal in strength to a point I didn’t notice a difference. Or maybe my brain somehow compensated. It also seemed like my Villager strength and dragon strength were about equal—unless I was actually in dragon form. Then my power went through the roof, especially if someone hit me with lightning, my element.
I walked over to the flowerbeds and watched the irises, snap-dragons, and pansies with their bruised faces, sway in the evening wind. Part of my mind noticed when Ammarellis felt free to sit on my throne, a message that she considered herself every bit equal to Selene. Of course, I hadn’t told her that Selene was the Bloody Goddess of fey legend who’d once broken the back of the Wild Hunt. They feared me nearly as much. Storm Court assassins had made the mistake of using lightning back when they were trying to kill me, before I shattered the tie to their kingdom, broke their magic, and caused a feedback that killed many of them off.
I was sending a message to the rest of Fairy that day. They’d taken my adopted daughter Julia captive and threatened her life. I never looked too closely into what was left of the Storm Court after that. Not that it would have kept me awake at nights. Insomnia is for men of conscious, pushed to do bad things. Lacking a conscious was never a problem for me. I didn’t really miss it. I had a sort of code, lines in the sand I’d drawn for myself, that I wouldn’t cross. This gave me focus, control of impulses that might otherwise get me shot, lynched, or castrated.
I may be a sociopath, but I’m not a psychotic. Those guys are crazy. Me, I’m just a product of being raised by demons.
Scales rubbed. Golden eyes opened in the dark shadows in the back of my mind. My inner dragon looked at me. Then why are the demons I’ve met all nicer than you?
I stared back at him. Shut up.
A blast of light heralded Selene’s return. I turned toward the fading light that coalesced into her and Colt. He’d changed out of his usual hoodie. Probably because of the bloody paw prints it had acquired. He looked a lot less like a wanna-be hoodlum and more like someone who’s momma dressed him funny.
My first impulse was to laugh. Manfully, I refrained, but it was a close thing. Selene had stuffed him into a red leather pantsuit. The pants tied off at his knees. Red stockings continued down to red satin slippers. His sleeves had peek-a-boo slits cut in them to flash a long-sleeved undershirt of golden lace. More of the lace gave him an Elvin look around
the neck. The outer coat ended at crotch level, its form bell like, creating an illusion of excess weight that he didn’t actually carry. His face displayed misery. He looked at me with desperate eyes, but this was his mother that had done this to him; there was no way I could spare him.
I walked over, knelt, and looked him in the eyes. “What can’t be helped must be endured. Suck it up, little man. You can do this.”
Selene gave me a sharp stare. “Endured?”
I frowned to show displeasure, hoping she might relent from showing her boy off in such a way. “At least give him full length pants. People will think he’s a sissy. Think of his male pride.”
She bristled at my comment. “I think it looks fine. Besides, if anyone says anything, I’ll just kill them.”
Ammarellis ambled over, looking Colt over with grave interest. There’s nothing more adorable to a fey than a human child. She smiled. “It’s perfect.”
Selene looked surprised. “You think so?”
“Yes. I wouldn’t change a thing.”
Colt glowered at her. “Thanks a lot.”
The Thorn Queen smiled at him. “A little pain is good for the soul.”
“It is getting cold,” I said. “You probably want to give him a cloak. A strong, manly black one would be good.”
Colt’s face brightened with hope.
“You’re right,” Selene said. A dazzle of red lights detonated around her hands. The light-play resolved into a satin cloak, glossy and a bright, a robin’s egg blue.
The hope in Colt’s face crumpled to nothing. He rolled his eyes and sighed as his mom settled the cloak over his shoulders. No one was going to have trouble seeing him coming, decked out in primary colors.
My personal consolation was that I wasn’t going to be the only parent that Older Colt had issues with. That gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling on the inside.
