Grave Mistake

by D. D. Miers

  Being Summer Queen, I'd half expected a blonde, maybe a red head. But Titania's hair was the black of rich soil, her skin as dark as a summer night. She glowed like the heart of the sun and held a golden staff in one hand, which seemed to have a living star set in its filigreed head.

  We were brought before her, me walking between two guards and the other three unceremoniously dumped. The bearded man knelt to yank the arrow from Gwydion's chest. As soon as it was out, Gwydion woke, coughing and sputtering.

  I shot a quick look at the men on either side of me, then kicked one hard in the crotch and swung my bound fists up to hit the other full force in the face. While they were reeling, I ran to Gwydion, summoning a swarm of insects to keep the guards at bay as I dragged him over to our unconscious companions.

  "Teleport us out!" I told Gwydion, frantically trying to keep the dead insects between me and the guards, who seemed only mildly annoyed by them and not in a hurry to recapture me.

  "Can't," Gwydion said, still wheezing.

  "What do you mean you can't?"

  "Thank you, Hern," Titania said graciously to the bearded man, ignoring my escape attempt completely. "Please remove the charm on the other two. I'm most curious to hear what brought them to our kingdom."

  Hern bowed deeply, then waved a hand and Ethan and Cole sat up a moment later, blinking in confusion.

  "That's enough of that," Titania said, and the insects I was controlling became a shower of flower petals instantly, without even the slightest gesture from her. I reached for any other power I had and found nothing. Only the lingering peace of the Unicorn's touch kept me from completely freaking out. Titania's dark, glittering eyes turned on Gwydion, as did those of the rest of the court, who stood almost invisible among the flowers of the garden, green and glittering. From the corner of my eye, they did not seem human at all. I saw shifting carapaces and shimmering iridescent wings and eyes like multifaceted jewels.

  "Gwydion Greenwood," she spoke, and her voice shivered on the air and made the flowers turn towards her. "I thought to see your brother kneeling before me one of these evenings. But you, I did not expect. You've always preferred the mundane realms."

  I didn't need to know much about fairies to know that was an insult.

  Gwydion had caught his breath and was struggling onto his knees. I helped him as much as I dared, afraid to take my eyes off the Queen. Gwydion, by contrast, would not even look at her. He kept his head bowed and his posture low.

  "And yet here you are," Titania continued. "And with a gaggle of humans no less. What fascinating plans you must have. Do please share them."

  "Our arrival here was unintentional, Your Majesty," Gwydion said, head bowed so low his hair brushed the glazed mosaic tile. "A thief stole something of mine and fled through a portal. It was only coincidence that the thief chose this place as their destination."

  "We have both lived a very long time," Titania said casually. "Too long to believe in coincidence."

  "Then clearly the thief knew that to lead me here would attract your attention and prevent me from following," Gwydion said quickly. "But you must know I would not have returned to this place willingly."

  "And yet here you are," Titania said again. "And Hern, finest hunter in my court, saw no trace of your quarry. Only of you, blundering through territory that was forbidden to you even before your exile."

  "Your Majesty," Gwydion said, and I could see sweat on his brow. "I have never sought to interfere in your affairs. Even before the foolishness that led to my... departure. You know I have no ambitions."

  "You had none," Titania confirmed casually. "But you have spent a thousand summers among humans, and who knows what toxic influences their petty little minds might inflict? Perhaps you seek to regain your position among the Unseelie by winning them some little victory against us, in this our season of supremacy?"

  "No, Your Majesty, I would never—"

  "You have stolen into my kingdom," Titania said, a wave of heat rolling off the throne, which left me dizzy and thirsty. "Unannounced into a garden where your kind has always been forbidden, bringing with you mortal creatures with foul magic on their souls, and you expect me to believe your intentions pure? Do you take me for a fool, Gwydion Greewood? I know all the syllables of your true name— Sun-at-Midnight, Frostmirror, Shiver Song— I could twist you into a thousand shapes and plant you like one of my trees."

  As she spoke, the heat grew until I could barely breathe, like standing before a furnace in the desert. Gwydion curled into himself, skin shining with sweat, hair limp. I could see the agony in his face and half expected him to evaporate, a wisp of vapor like a snowflake falling into a fire. Instead, his limbs twisted and strained, his skin turning dark, cracking into bark.

  "My garden could use an evergreen or two," Titania said with lazy cruelty.

  Ethan and Cole were suffering under the heat the same as I was, and both of them were still recovering from the confusion of Hern's sleeping charm. I could see Cole stretch for his magic and finding nothing in reach. Ethan pushed the Wolf to the surface, but heat exhaustion sapped him of his strength and left his teeth dull and his claws barely extended. My arms were around Gwydion, and between my fingers, branches were sprouting, sharp with pine needles.

  "Stop!" I demanded, with all the force I could muster, the sound still weak from my airless burning lungs. "It wasn't his fault! It was Gil—"

  All at once, the heat vanished and the bark disappeared from Gwydion's skin.

  "So, it was Gilfaethwy who returned first," Titania said with a sweet smile. "Why didn't you mention that it was your brother you were pursuing? I might have guessed. He always was stealing your toys. That's what got you into this mess in the first place, wasn't it, darling?"

  Gwydion couldn't speak. He was shaking too hard and barely able to hold himself up. I remembered with sudden fear how what Gwydion had said the Unseelie would do to him if he ever returned. Would the Summer Court do the same and torture him to reach Gilfaethwy?

  I struggled to my feet, drawing on that sense of peace the Unicorn had left me like it was a still pool in my heart.

  "Gwydion isn't yours to punish," I said and heard a murmur of shock and even laughter run through the assembled court. I sensed I probably should have bowed or added a 'Your Majesty' before directly challenging her power, but it was too late for that now. "He doesn't belong to your court."

  Titania raised a dark brow and smiled, amused.

  "I see you follow a new Queen these days, Gwydion," she said, and I tried to ignore the flush in my cheeks at the mockery in her tone. "Is she the one who put the smell of death on you?"

  Gwydion still couldn't manage words. He grabbed for the ankle of my tights with shaking hands, clearly trying to get me to shut up anyway.

  "Well, Little Queen," Titania said with her venomous smile. "True, it is not my place to judge the crimes he originally fled from. But he has trespassed here, an Unseelie in Seelie lands, and for that I have every right by the law to demand his life."

  "But then you would lose Gilfaethwy," I pointed out, thinking quickly and pulling the first reason I could think of out of my ass. "And you'd never have the chance to punish him for what he did."

  Titania considered this, a delicate hand on her beautiful cheek.

  "True," she concluded at last. "But what is to stop me from sparing Gwydion death? In my infinite mercy, perhaps I will grant him his life and merely punish him by inflicting every clever torture my Court can conceive of until his dear brother shows himself just to end the pain?"

  Gwydion's hand tightened around my ankle, and fear like ice water in my veins made the Queen's terrible heat seem tepid.

  "Because it wouldn't work," I said, the words seeming to find their way out of my lips before I'd fully thought of them. I scrambled for some justification for what I'd just said, still wondering why I'd said it. "He... Gilfaethwy has some new kind of shielding magic on him. It's... probably why your hunter didn't notice him even though he was
in your territory longer than we were. It probably blocks his connection to Gwydion. You could torture him forever and Gil would never feel a thing."

  This was absolutely bullshit. I knew no such thing. Gwydion had offhandedly mentioned that Gil had some kind of shield keeping Gwydion from using the Artificer's Glass on him. It was a reach and a half to claim it would keep him from feeling the other half of his soul being tortured. But I said it with as much confidence as I could manage, looking the Queen in her radiant face though it burned like staring directly at the sun, and I saw her recline in her throne with a thoughtful expression. There were smoldering burns on the arms of the living throne where her hands had been.

  "What an interesting Little Queen you've found," Titania told Gwydion, who was still kneeling at my feet, fingers clutching my tights like he was trying to tear them. "I am intrigued. It is so rare these days to see something new and amusing. Humans can be dreadfully tiresome in numbers, but I do miss the days when those rare exceptional mortals decided to do something foolish. They're so terribly stupid and inventive. Immortal minds tend to stick on the idea that they've tried everything already and what they haven't tried isn't worth the effort. It makes them unbearably dull."

  "Honestly, I've seen that attitude in a lot of humans too," I said, a little giddy with stress.

  The Queen laughed, a clamorous sound like brass bells ringing and summer thunderstorms. It shook me so badly I almost fell to the ground beside Gwydion.

  "Well then, Little Queen," Titania said, crossing her legs and arranging her skirts with a second pair of arms I hadn't yet noticed. "Please, tell me how you would resolve this matter. I am most curious to hear."

  I swallowed hard and glanced down at Gwydion, who was shaking his head subtly. A glance at Cole saw him also shaking his head, much more emphatically, and Ethan gesturing with a flat hand across his throat in the universal signal of 'shut up before you die.'

  I decided to ignore them.

  "Penance," I told the Queen. "The punishment for the four of us trespassing should be penance. We'll repay you for our crime by... by bringing you someone guilty of a much greater crime. Let us go, and we'll catch Gilfaethwy and bring him back to you for judgment."

  Titania's perfect mouth curled up into a wide, sharp-toothed smile that put me in mind of a Cheshire cat.

  "What an amusing suggestion," she said. Gwydion's hand fell from my leg, and Cole hid his face in his hands. "Oh, it has been too long since I have had the chance to play with humans. Other Fae know all the steps already. You can never really win, or only by inches. What a delight to see someone blunder directly into their own pointless deaths for once. I didn't even have to suggest anything. Delightful!"

  My stomach sank approximately eight miles into the dirt.

  "Very well," Titania said, tapping her scepter on the tile, which rang like bells. "I accept. I will forgive you for your trespassing and allow you to leave, on the condition that you return with the traitor Gilfaethwy and surrender him to me. As I am generous, I will give you a fortnight to secure him. At midday in two weeks' time, if you have not brought him to me, your penance will have failed, and I will do as I like with all four of you."

  We were summarily ejected from the palace. We sat in the dirt beyond its gates, catching our breaths.

  "You idiot," Cole groaned, his face still in his hands. "You complete— God! Have you never read a fairy tale in your life?"

  "I didn't have a choice!" I said defensively. "She would have killed us all! At least I bought us some time."

  "She wouldn't have killed any of us!" Cole snapped. "She would have tortured Gwydion, maybe traded him to the Unseelie. But we're humans tricked here by an exiled Fae not of her court. She had no power over us. She could have tried to trick us into staying or otherwise made things difficult for us, but she couldn't kill us. At least, not until you promised all our lives to her in exchange for Gil!"

  I turned red, ashamed and embarrassed.

  "I couldn't have known that," I said, feeling like an idiot. "I did the best I could!"

  "Also, may I remind you," Gwydion said quietly, still sitting with his head between his knees. "That if we succeed and bring Gilfaethwy to her, his death will be mine as well?"

  I swallowed hard.

  "Her wanting Gilfaethwy more than you was the only leverage we had," I said. "We'll figure something out. At least now we have some time."

  Gwydion took a deep breath, then slowly stood up, offering me a hand to my feet as well.

  "You're right," he said, keeping his voice very even, though he wouldn't look at me. "There was no better course of action. You have preserved all our lives, if only for the moment. Now, we must go and find my brother, at which point I intend to cleave him in two, throw one half in the lap of the Queen, and take the other home to live the rest of his miserable life in the smallest, most uncomfortable cage I can find."

  "It's a plan," I said with a shrug. "I'll take it."

  "Question," Ethan interrupted. "Uh, so, first of all… That was the fairy queen?"

  "One of them, yes," Gwydion replied reluctantly.

  "This place is where fairies come from?" Ethan assumed, gesturing broadly at Tir Na Nog.

  "No," Gwydion said with a sigh. "This is merely the seat of the Seelie Court. Frankly, it is unknown which of the Other Lands the Fae emerged from, and it's assumed that access to that place has been lost."

  "How did we get there?" Ethan asked, ignoring the bigger questions that statement raised. I briefly relayed everything that had happened between Gwydion being shot and them waking up in front of the Queen. Gwydion rubbed the arrow wound in his shoulder with a grimace as I mentioned it.

  "Alright," he said, shaking his head. "Okay. I think I've got it now. One more question. How are we going to find Gil?"

  "I may be able to assist you with that."

  We looked up as the man with beard and the golden crown, Hern, stepped out of the palace gates beside us.

  "Your Highness. Why would you help us?" Gwydion asked bluntly.

  "I am the finest hunter in the Summer Court," Hern replied, equally straightforward. "My shadow in the Winter Court is of similar position. Neither of us has ever let a thing we declared prey slip away. For your brother to have passed through my territory unnoticed, and I to step over his very trail and not sense it, is an unspeakable insult. If my shadow learned of it, the shame would undo us both. I must track him, at least as far as he went in Tir Na Nog, for the sake of my own honor."

  "Then you will have your honor and our gratitude, King Hern." Gwydion confirmed.

  "I will also have that," Hern said, pointing at me. My eyes widened for a moment, before he clarified. "There, in your coat. In the pocket. The key which opens the doors between worlds."

  I reached into the pocket of Gwydion's coat, and my hand closed around something wooden. When I pulled it out, it grew into the Staff of Abeona. Gwydion paled.

  "You will not repay my efforts on your behalf with mere empty gratitude," Hern said. "You will give me that, and I will expand my hunting grounds to all worlds."

  "I have other trinkets," Gwydion claimed. "Things of far more use to you than the staff. The Hunting Horn that your shadow lost the last time the Wild Hunt rode across the mortal realm. A shoe cast from the hoof of Sleipner, which will give any mount that wears it the speed of the King of Horses."

  "It is that staff I want," Hern declared. "And I will have that or nothing."

  "Then nothing," Gwydion said through his teeth. "And we will find Gilfaethwy on our own."

  "You have mistaken my offer for charity," Hern said, standing cold and tall, the light glinting on his crown. "I will hunt Gilfaethwy with or without you. And if you refuse me, I will certainly find him before you and return him to my Queen by the teeth of my hounds. Accept my assistance, give me the staff, and I will give you a head start."

  Even I could tell we were out of options.

  "We need it to catch him," I said, interrupting despite how badly m
y deal making had gone last time. "Can we give to you after he's been handed over to the Queen?"

  Hern considered it for a moment.

  "I would require a bond," he said. "Collateral to ensure payment. One of the humans would do."

  "No," I said immediately.

  "They would not be harmed," Hern pushed. "And would be returned immediately upon delivery of the Staff."

  "Something else," I insisted. "No humans."

  "Here," Gwydion reached into the coat I was still wearing and drew out something else, which I recognized after a brief glimpse as the White Stag Mirror and quickly averted my eyes. "This. You were there the night of Gilfaethwy's mistake. You know how much I value it and what it would mean if it were lost to me. It's far greater insurance than the lives of a few mayflies such as these."

  Hern thought it over for a moment, then shook his head. "That thing offends the eyes of my Queen. I would not carry it for any price. It is the staff, or nothing."

  I exchanged a look with Gwydion, who ground his teeth and finally took the staff from me, handing it over to Hern.

  "The deal is made," Hern said, shrinking the staff and tucking it into his golden doublet. "I will find by which door Gilfaethwy left Tir Na Nog and leave you to track him for three nights. When the moon rises on the fourth night, I will ride after him myself. If you fail to return the traitor to the Queen, then I will, and you will surrender yourselves to the Queen's mercy as failures. Run and I will hunt you to the end of all worlds."

  Chapter 12

  Our time limit reduced from a fortnight to three days, and we followed Hern the Hunter back into the forests of Tir Na Nog. All three of us were thoroughly sober by now, the childlike wonder of magic intoxication jaded to an anxious mistrust of everything we saw.