by Karen Chance
“Green Fey?”
“The Water Lords.” He tilted his head. “You know, the ones who usually come to earth?”
“Oh, right. Those Green Fey.”
“You probably know them as Alorestri, but that just means ‘They Who Wear the Green’ in their language, and either way, it’s meaningless. Just a name they give themselves so they won’t have to give us their real one.”
“Do you know their real one?”
Pritkin nodded. And then a liquid series of syllables came out of his mouth that sounded almost like singing—a whole song, because it lasted, like, a full minute. “That’s . . . beautiful,” I said, because it was.
“I memorized it as a child. Took me a whole week.”
“As a child?”
“And then there’s the second camp,” he said. “The ones who want to return the staff to the Blarestri and plead their case there. But others say it’s unlikely that the Sky King is going to fight the Lady of Lakes and Oceans—whom he used to be married to, mind you—for nothing more than the return of a piece of his own property. Which, for all he knows, they stole in the first place!”
“I—what?” I was having trouble keeping up. The fey had too damned many names!
“And then there’s the third camp, who want to give it back to us and send us on our way, effectively washing their hands of the whole thing—”
I brightened.
“—and who are in the minority. The others say they have it now, and any group who comes looking for it is likely to hold them accountable.”
“Then . . . then we’ve put them in danger?” I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before. God, I was an idiot.
“The Svarestri put them in danger,” Pritkin said, gripping my arm as I struggled to get to my feet. “They came into their lands, violating a treaty in the process of chasing us.”
“But what about now? What if they come back?”
“We’re well protected here.”
I stared at him. “Did you see those things?”
“Yes, and I’ve seen what our hosts can do on their home ground. They’ve fought off the Green Fey for years now. This place is well warded. They wouldn’t have brought us here otherwise.”
I felt myself relax slightly.
And then a screaming arrow came shooting directly at my head.
Chapter Forty-seven
I shrieked and Pritkin pulled me over by the tree, onto the pile of rugs. And the arrow disintegrated in a sparkling haze just beyond the edge of the platform, sending a few translucent bits of ash fluttering our way. “Looks like it’s time for the entertainment,” he told me.
“Entertainment?”
He nodded, grinning, because he was a bastard. He had always been a bastard, and youth had obviously not changed a goddamned thing—
“You can’t leave,” he told me as I struggled to get up carrying fifty pounds of freaking wool.
“Watch me!”
“But you’re being honored tonight, too. We all are.”
“You call this ‘honored’?”
“Please,” he said, seriously enough to stop me. “They need this. They haven’t had many victories lately, if any at all, and tonight—they need this.”
“What is ‘this’?”
He nodded at the open space between the circle of trees. “Watch.”
And a second later, I was. I was watching us, along with our two stalwart companions, bobbing along an underground river, only this one was made out of sparks. The great fire was throwing them up from below, and somehow the fey were turning them into a shimmering monochrome movie that glowed and flowed and gleamed in the air and had everyone’s rapt attention.
I crawled to the edge of the platform and stared down into a vortex of fire, painting radiant, moving pictures in midair. And felt myself relax again as awe overtook outrage. And I wasn’t alone.
All around us, people were gathering in the trees, crowding the platforms and sitting along the sturdier branches, seeking a better vantage point. There were geriatric grandmothers with long gray braids, children with bright black eyes and noses that had yet to fulfill their true potential, and solid, hairy men with rough hands and battle scars, draped with enough weapons to fight a war. Yet they were staring at the lights with just as much rapt fascination as the kids.
And no wonder. The movie in the air pretty much filled the whole open space, with 3-D graphics Hollywood might have envied. The long rush of river showered down from above on a cascade of sparks, the jagged points of the rocks were picked out in bursts of stars among the tree limbs, and the leaping Svarestri were painted in quick flashes of light amid it all, throwing even quicker bursts at the wildly bobbing heads below.
“This is how they tell stories?” I whispered.
“This is how they tell stories,” Pritkin agreed. “I used to hide in the trees and watch them—from a distance. They showed me remarkable things, battles long over, heroes long dead, great cities turned to dust. But not really gone. Not as long as their people remember them.”
“And now they’ll remember us?” It was almost overwhelming to think of being part of someone’s history, even in a small way. To be remembered . . . Stupidly, I felt my eyes get wet.
“Oh, they’ll remember us,” Pritkin said, sounding amused. “After a fashion.”
I looked back at him. “What does that mean?”
“That,” he said, as fire-me came speeding by the platform, the shower of sparks somehow managing to convey goggling eyes, flailing limbs, and a comically wide-open mouth silently screaming its head off.
I frowned at my unflattering doppelganger. “I thought you said we were being honored!”
“We are. But you know who decides the histories.”
“Who?”
“Whoever’s telling them!” He laughed and pulled me back, as fire-me looked around frantically, made an oh-shit face, and ducked under the fiery river—right before a spear burst into sparks that scattered almost as far as my real toes. I quickly pulled them back under the edge of the fur.
But the surrounding crowd didn’t seem to hold my cowardice against me. On the contrary, a new flagon of beer almost bopped me in the head a moment later, having been lowered from a platform above by a couple of cackling old women. And several bright-eyed kids were spying on us through the foliage off to the right, apparently finding us more interesting than the show.
I waved at them before realizing that they might not know what it meant. But then a small hand raised, with nails like dark-tipped talons. And slowly moved up and down as one waved back.
We grinned at each other, both feeling absurdly pleased for some reason. And Pritkin liberated the beer and refilled our mugs, because why the hell not? And the rock throwing and light fey cursing continued, with enthusiastic participation from the crowd.
Very enthusiastic, I thought, as the sparks rippled and swirled and genuine weapons were thrown at Svarestri heads.
I hoped someone had thought to cover the ox.
“I don’t remember this part taking so long,” I said after several more minutes.
“It didn’t. But the people here hate the Svarestri.”
“I thought it was the Green Fey who took over their lands.”
“It was,” Pritkin agreed. “But it was in response to the Svarestri doing as much to them, and seizing most of the fertile land on their northern border. The Svarestri lands are said to be rocky and cold, rich in minerals but not much else.”
“So they take what they need from others.”
He nodded. “And then the Green Fey take replacements from the Dark. But there’s damned little left to take these days, at least along the border. And there’s no way for these people to cross it, not with more powerful factions ready to destroy them as soon as they do. They’ve been left between a hammer and an anvil, co
urtesy of the Svarestri expansion and the Green Fey callousness. If they choose to enjoy the satisfaction of pelting their enemies for a few minutes, believe me, they deserve it.”
An edge had crept into his voice. He was watching the light shimmer and change, and his face changed along with it, from cheerful engagement to fierce satisfaction, depending on what shadows the spectacle was throwing. But either way, it looked like he was enjoying the prolonged beating as much as the trolls were.
“I don’t know what will happen when they run out of room entirely,” he said after a moment.
I didn’t answer, although I could have told him. Because the dark fey had been coming to earth in ever-increasing numbers in my day. And congregating in enclaves under glamouries, those who couldn’t pass as human, because there was nowhere else for them to go.
I wondered what it must be like to lose not only your home but your entire world, except for the handful of family or friends you brought with you. Of course, immigrants had been doing that for years, but immigrants could always go home again, or work to integrate into their new society. Most of the fey couldn’t. They would be forever strangers in a strange land, and that suddenly struck me as terribly cruel.
“Why do the Svarestri need so much land?” I asked. “I thought they didn’t marry humans.”
He snorted. “They don’t.”
“Then shouldn’t their birth rate be low?”
“It should be. But the rumor is, they’ve made marriage compulsory, along with childbearing. They’re trying to build up their numbers.”
“For what?”
Pritkin shook his head. “No one knows.”
And then the crowd gasped, a collective inhalation of breath, as the battle on the boat commenced.
“Here’s your big scene,” I told Pritkin. And then I noticed: the fight had been subtly altered to focus on the little guard’s jabs at the fey, which in this version became a prolonged, heroic battle à la David and Goliath. Which it sort of had been, since the guard was maybe a third the size of his opponent. But it shortchanged Pritkin, who was left standing to the side, looking on admiringly.
“That’s not how it happened!” I said indignantly.
He just grinned.
“Don’t you care?”
“Care? I’m being immortalized in poetry and song,” he said, referring to the low-voiced chanting the graybeards had been doing. “A thousand years after my death, they’ll still sing of my heroic nonparticipation—and yours,” he added, as my wide-open mouth—damn it, did they ever show it closed?—shrieked by again.
“Can’t they edit me out?” I asked hopefully.
He laughed. “You may as well get used to it. This is how we will forever be remembered by generations of young trolls.”
Wonderful.
And then there was another collective gasp, because fire-me had finally got her shit together and shot the Svarestri warrior. Only, in this version, I’d cursed him, because apparently no one had equated the little thing in my hand to his sudden lack of face. He fell backward and the crowd went wild, screaming and yelling and stamping on platforms, to the point that I was afraid some of them were about to come crashing down.
But I guess they were sturdier than they looked, because none did. Even when a thousand voices shook the treetops, and a couple dozen real spears shot through the air, the crowd doing their best to kill him all over again. And I was laughing, because it was impossible not to be affected by their mood, which was bordering on gleeful.
And then everyone oohed, including me, when the huge area among the trees was suddenly lit by a hundred little boats made of stars. And, somehow, the elders had even managed to conjure up what looked like mirror images in the water, with showers of thinner sparks that glittered and gleamed like shimmering reflections. And lit the faces of the watchers with flickering fairy light.
And I’d been wrong; it had to be two, three thousand people staring out through the trees, faces awash with light and wonder.
“You said there were stronger dark fey clans?” I asked suddenly.
Pritkin nodded.
“Couldn’t they unite? Push the Svarestri back?”
“It . . . would be difficult.”
“Why?” It seemed to me that they had damned good reason. The enemy of my enemy might not be a friend, but I’d find a way to put up with him if it meant not dying. I thought most people would.
And then I thought about the Circle and Senate. Or the Circle and the covens. Or the whole damned supernatural community, for that matter, which seemed impossibly divided. And too busy squabbling and bickering and fighting each other to worry about the greater threat.
I guess maybe I couldn’t say anything to the fey, after all, could I?
“Because of their past,” Pritkin said, looking around, his face alight with wonder. And then he glanced at me. “Don’t you know how the fey were made?”
I shook my head.
“They’re all the same, really. Even the lordly Svarestri, although they’d likely string up anyone who said so. But it’s true.”
“What’s true?” I asked, watching fire-me now scream my way down a raging river. At least they were consistent.
“That they were all born of the gods.”
It took me a second. The big plunge over the falls was coming up, and I’d been tensing like everyone else, despite the fact that I knew we didn’t die. And then what he’d said sank in.
And I tensed up some more.
“What?” I twisted around to look at Pritkin. His face had gone back into shadow, as the darkened tunnel scene tempered the light somewhat, but his eyes still shone with reflected sparks. And with the enjoyment of telling me something I obviously didn’t know.
“The old gods,” he repeated. “The ones out of legend. It’s said they came from another world, or worlds, far away. They discovered faerie first, before earth. And when they did, they sought to make servants for themselves, but none of the then-fey would do. And you know the gods . . .”
“Randy little bastards,” I said blankly.
He nodded. “They inbred with some of the inhabitants who were already here—most of them, in fact. In some cases, that resulted in what they viewed as positive changes. Proper servants to cater to their every whim. But in others . . .”
“They got monsters,” I said, recalling a few of the creatures that had attacked me.
“Or what they viewed that way, yes. The dark fey, as they became known, were forced out of the cities and into the hinterlands, to make their own way or starve. Many starved. But a few survived and bred with each other, and with the remaining original inhabitants, and with the occasional member of the so-called privileged races. . . . The result is the huge variety you see today.”
I stared around, suddenly remembering my mythology. And all the stories about the gods siring monsters as well as heroes. For every Perseus there was a Medusa; for every Odysseus a Cyclops. But it had never really occurred to me to wonder why.
I guess I’d always assumed, if I thought of it at all, that the monsters were just some sort of demon. And maybe some of them were; the gods had certainly had monstrous opponents, said to be from the Underworld. But that ignored the monsters who were on their side. Where had they come from? Why get a Theseus one time, and a giant the next?
Maybe because of who you slept with.
“But that doesn’t explain why they can’t unite,” I said. “If anything, what you just said should give them more in common.”
“It might have,” Pritkin agreed. “But resources were scarce, and new groups were arriving all the time to contest for them. And whenever several groups did band together and begin to gain power, the gods intervened, starting wars and disputes to keep them disunited.”
“I’m surprised they didn’t wipe them out entirely!”
“They might have, b
ut they had discovered earth by then and become distracted. And some of the dark fey were useful for doing jobs their lighter counterparts wouldn’t touch. Thus, they survived, until the day the gods disappeared, vanishing as quickly as they had come. And the world changed.”
“There was a war.” I didn’t even have to guess.
Pritkin nodded. “One so terrible, they don’t even sing about it. Some things, no one wants to remember.”
“And the dark fey were part of it?”
“Everyone was. But the main combatants were the two leading light fey families, the ones favored by the different groups of gods.”
“Different groups?”
“The Æsir, gods of battle, and the Vanir, gods of nature, who were at each other’s throats more often than not. The Æsir were worshipped by the Svarestri, who remain as martial as their forebears. The Vanir were worshipped by the Blarestri, which is why the Sky Lords’ lands are said to bloom like a garden, despite being high in the mountain fastnesses.”
“And once their masters left . . .”
“Their servants took up the old conflicts as if nothing had changed, using the weapons their former masters had left behind to savage each other almost to obliteration. And dragged the rest of faerie into their quarrel.”
“Why? What was the point? If the gods were gone—”
“What is the point of any war?” He shrugged. “I assume it was to see which family would lead. The Blarestri won—barely—and continue to be the most powerful clan to this day. But it was not so much a victory as both sides fighting to exhaustion, leaving them with little choice but to make peace. They did so, but the groups they’d dragged into their conflict continue to hate each other.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
But Pritkin was shaking his head. “Put yourself in their place. Unwanted, despised, treated as nothing your whole existence, with no dignity, no power, no pride allowed to you. Until, one day, a war breaks out about which you know little, but which suddenly has the great ones that you have envied and hated and secretly admired for as long as you can remember, coming to speak . . . to you.”
