by Karen Chance
The ice in front of my face melted and the puddle began to steam. It looked like the air itself had turned to fire, a boiling mass of knotted lightning. I was surprised that my skin wasn’t doing the same; it felt like my blood was actually boiling in my veins. The Fey put his hand on me again, but where it had been ice before, now it was fire. My shirt began to scorch, as if the fabric had been left too long under an iron. I could feel my skin start to bubble beneath it.
Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped. I collapsed to the ground, splashing in a puddle of water hot enough to burn. My flesh throbbed with every heartbeat; my breath hitched in my lungs as I tried to breathe. I choked on the acrid smell that rose from the burnt edges of my shirt, like the fumes of a candle that had just been extinguished. The Fey pulled his hand away and sat back on his heels. Part of my shirt had flaked away, exposing red, blistered skin that ran from my breastbone to below my belly button. It took me a second to realize why the shape of the injury was so familiar. The perfect imprint of a long-fingered hand had been burnt into me like a brand.
“If I wasn’t protecting you, you would already be dead,” I was told. “But we have two elements to go, do we not?” He wasn’t touching me now, but a constriction was suddenly about my throat. My hands scrabbled at the burning sand beneath me, but I didn’t have the strength to lift them to my neck—I couldn’t even claw at the nonexistent cord. I bit the air, as if I could tear chunks out of it with my teeth, but nothing helped. Too many needs warred in my head—fight back, get air into my lungs, scream for mercy—
Almost as if he’d heard my last thought, the Fey leaned over to look in my eyes. “If you wish to save your life, tell me where the null is to be found.” The constriction relaxed, and I could breathe, although my lungs almost felt like they’d forgotten how. He waited while I gasped and choked. “Nothing to say?” I stared up at him, too raw in every nerve even to glare. Helpless wheezing sighs accompanied my every breath, but I said nothing. I only wished I had enough water left in my parched mouth to spit.
Then I realized the fun wasn’t over, as my lungs kept expanding even after filling to capacity. It felt like I had two balloons in my chest, balloons that were being stretched to their limit and beyond. They would soon burst; they couldn’t possibly hold any more. My eyes blurred with pain and I couldn’t stop a violent shudder. My vision began to fade. Something was screaming inside my head, a high, inhuman sound that had no beginning or end, a raw vibration of wet agony.
Just as I was sinking into blackness, the pressure stopped and I was allowed to exhale. I didn’t cough this time. The air trickled out of me slowly, and I took a few weak, shallow breaths afterward, as if my lungs were afraid to try for more.
I’d hurt worse in the past, but this definitely made the top ten. I wasn’t sure, but it might make the top three. The Fey regarded me thoughtfully, a finger tracing the burns on my chest delicately. “You surprise me. Most of your kind would have screamed themselves hoarse by now.”
I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of the truth, that my throat had locked up, that I’d been too choked on pain to scream. “You’ve never met one of my kind.” It came out as a dry croak, but he seemed to understand.
“No.” The storm-colored eyes narrowed. “I suppose I have not. Well, then.” He stood up, and hauled me to my feet. I stumbled, but that iron grip wouldn’t let me fall. After a moment, the dizziness passed and I found to my surprise that my legs would hold me. I was even more surprised that I hadn’t dropped into a berserker rage. Pain of that magnitude had never failed to bring it on. I never had this much control, not unless…
Unless Claire was around.
I forced myself not to look. That triple-damned Heidar. I’d already promised to kill him, but for this I would kill him slowly.
“Since you act like a warrior, we will treat you as one,” the Fey said. “I will give you the opportunity to die fighting.” He draped an arm around my waist to keep me upright. The feel of it made the sweat on my body suddenly chill. “Do you see the house?”
Since it was lit up like a Christmas tree against the boiling darkness of the sky, it was a pretty stupid question. But then, the Fey didn’t seem to have a lot of respect for human intelligence. I nodded. Anything was better than going on to element number four. I didn’t know what form it might take, but somehow doubted I’d enjoy the lesson.
“If you reach the house, I will let you go.”
“Reach the house?” My voice sounded thin and breathy, not at all like usual. But I was grateful for it. If my vocal cords still worked, I couldn’t be as hurt as I felt. Right?
“My people will not try to stop you. But the fourth element will. Touch the house, any part of it, and we will leave you be. Fail—” He shrugged. “I will tell your people where to dig for you.”
I assumed he meant that literally, since the only element left was earth. Goddamned Fey and their goddamned games. I’d heard the stories, but never thought much about them. I had certainly never thought I might die in one. Even worse, that I might die for nothing.
My eyes made a quick survey of the vineyard, but if Claire and Heidar were there, they were hiding well. But were they? The level of control I was somehow maintaining seemed to vote yes, but in that case, why were none of the Fey reacting? Heidar had known the Svarestri were here before I did; surely they would be able to detect him? And then the ground rose up on either side of me like black waves in the sea, and I ran.
I can outrun most things on earth, but not, I discovered, earth itself. I made it to the edge of the rows of vines before a wall of dirt hit me like a club. I tried diving through it, but there didn’t seem to be any end. Acres of soil crashed into me, over me, my overtaxed muscles screaming as I fought uselessly. I was drowning in fine particles that rose up choking thick around me. My abused lungs filled with dust, my eyes and ears clogged with dirt, and heavy clots rained down on top of me like blows from a hundred fists.
I struggled, clawing against the weight with everything I had, but I wasn’t completely certain which way was up anymore. Was I digging toward air and life, or away from it? Was I helping to free myself, or digging my own grave? I couldn’t tell.
Then something rough and hard twined around my ankle and tugged. The ground didn’t want to release me, but the hard ropelike touch wouldn’t be denied. It gave a massive heave, and I shot out of the mound of earth like a bullet from a gun.
There was too much dust in my eyes for me to see, but I felt it when I crashed into the vines like a trapeze artist falling into a safety net. They broke my fall, but not by much. What little air was in my lungs was forced out when I hit the ground, hard enough to rattle my bones. I just lay there for a moment, shocked and unmoving. Then I started to heave and cough up great streams of brown goop, in between trying to suck in whatever air I could.
I heard the sounds of battle going on around me, but it took several minutes for my brain to make any sense of it. Finally, I wiped my mouth on the back of my hand and fought my way free of the vines—including the one still securely wrapped around my foot—just in time to see Claire take on one of the Svarestri. I lurched to my feet, sure I’d be too late, certain she was dead. But instead, I saw the Fey stagger and fall to his knees, screaming. I couldn’t figure out what Claire was doing to him—she wasn’t even touching him—but he acted like he was being slowly tortured to death.
I staggered out of the vines, caked with dirt that kept falling into my eyes, and she saw me. She gave the Fey a vicious kick in the ribs and ran toward me, screaming something my dirt-clogged ears couldn’t make out. Behind her, Heidar was battling two of the Fey, and looked like he was holding his own. What I couldn’t figure out was who was dealing with the others—especially the leader. Then Claire crashed into me, sobbing and shaking. The impact was enough to loosen the land fall in my left ear, so that I would have been able to hear myself being royally told off if she had been at all coherent.
I looked around frantically
for the leader, but didn’t see him. What I did see was Caedmon, kneeling with his hands against the ground—no, in the ground. His fingers were buried deep in the wet, black dirt. Vines had wrapped themselves around his arms and across his back, flowing out like a living mantle behind him. He didn’t see me—his features were twisted in an intense concentration that seemed to border on pain. Nearby, two Fey warriors lay unmoving, impaled on the infant grapevines that, even as I watched, grew up through their bodies to unfurl green, waving arms at the dark sky.
“—ever do that again, I’ll kill you myself. My God, I thought you were dead—” Claire suddenly hugged me, tight enough to bruise my tender ribs. I grunted in pain and she let me go, looked at me for a second and burst into tears.
I spat more dirt and stared at her, not sure what to do. I’d never seen Claire this upset; she was usually the calm one. I looked up in time to see Heidar behead one of his opponents before turning all his fury on the other. “Wh-where’s the leader?” I managed to croak.
It seemed to be the right thing to stop Claire’s tears. They turned at once to rage. “Æsubrand,” she spat, her cheeks flushed and damp. “When I find the bloody evil cowardly bastard, I’m going to… going to… oh, God, I can’t think of anything hideous enough right now, but it will be bad, really, really bad!”
Heidar had almost finished off his other opponent and I decided it was safe to collapse. So I did. And immediately regretted it when Claire burst into tears again and began shaking me. “I’m not dead,” I told her as distinctly as possible with the inside of my throat coated in dirt.
“Water,” she gasped. “You need water.”
I needed a two-month vacation on a beach, but water would do. I nodded and she ran off in the direction of the house. I thought about what Louis-Cesare would say if he saw me now, after my declaration of competence, and decided to sit up. Caedmon had finished growing his crops—the two Fey were now vine-covered hillocks that had already started to form tiny green grapes. He collapsed beside me, looking smug for some reason.
“You’re early,” I croaked.
“It seems I was almost late,” he replied, lifting my grimy, scratched and bloody hand. “My apologies.” Then he drew me close and kissed me.
Power sang in the air. I felt it on my tongue, thick and syrupy and sweet, and then it flowed into me like a spring flood, and my body grasped it like a parched thing. Caedmon’s hand smoothed down my side and my whole body tingled and came alive. I opened my eyes, but I couldn’t see him. The creature holding me was a brilliant light in the darkness, bright as a sun, eternal as a mountain and utterly unmistakable for anything but what he was.
Gradually, the brightness faded and I came back to myself. My first thought was that Radu was going to need a new vineyard. The straight, symmetrical lines were no more. In their place was a riot of green—grapevines and small trees sprouted everywhere, and thin delicate garlands of bougainvillea and hibiscus draped over it all. Heavy with blossom, they swayed in the cool breeze, dropping an occasional orange or vividly pink petal onto the soft, grass-carpeted floor beneath us. The storm clouds had rolled back, and the sky was a pale, rain-washed blue.
“ ‘Caedmon’ means ‘Great King’ in Gaelic,” I said, as a vine burst into flower over my head, like a living firework.
“Does it?” Caedmon looked mildly interested. Heidar gave a yell and chased a retreating Fey into the vines.
“And your loyal retainers would be where?”
The king shrugged. “Serving my interests in Faerie. That is why we were to meet tonight—I needed time to contact and assemble them. But when an informant told me the Svarestri had been seen in this area, I sent word to my people to join me here as soon as they might, and returned to be on hand in case anything went wrong in my absence.”
We sat in silence for a moment while I picked red petals out of my hair. “Claire’s uncle was part Fey,” I finally said. “He couldn’t have made all that wine, otherwise.”
“Hmmm.”
“And her father was Dark Fey. Making her just slightly over half-Fey.” I shot Caedmon a dirty look. “You planned this.”
His lips twisted wryly as he unwound an overly affectionate vine that was trying to twine up his arm. “My dear Dory, I assure you, I did not plan for the deaths of two of my oldest retainers, nor for my own nephew to try to murder me.”
“But you did plan for Heidar to end up with Claire. You sent him to that auction, didn’t you?”
“What we parents must do to get our offspring happily settled.”
“Why?” I asked in bewilderment. “Why not just introduce them?”
He shook his head, dislodging the flock of butterflies that had come to rest there. Some fluttered off, but one lit on his knee, fanning extravagant orange wings in voluptuous contentment. “Heidar is just over one hundred of your years old—a teenager, by our standards. And, like most young men of his age, the last thing he wants is to follow orders from his sire. Had I told him in advance that I meant her for him, he wouldn’t have touched her—nor, in all likelihood, would she have had him.” He smiled at me smugly. “As it was, their attraction had an irresistible forbidden quality to it.”
“That resulted in an heir for you.”
“Already?” Caedmon’s smug grin widened. “That’s my boy.”
I refrained from slapping him. Just. “How is it that no one knew? I thought the Fey are obsessive about genealogy.”
“Oh, yes, particularly among the noble houses.”
“Then why did Æsubrand know nothing about Claire’s uncle?”
“We are obsessive about our ancestry, Dory.” When I still looked blank, he elaborated. “Light Fey ancestry.”
It took me a moment to understand what he meant. “You’re telling me Claire’s uncle was Dark Fey?”
“I believe his great-great-great-grandmother was a quarter Brownie. It works out to a very small percentage for Claire, but enough to make any child born to her and my son more than fifty percent Fey. And therefore, by our laws, my legitimate heir. Assuming it is male, of course.”
“And you think the Svarestri will accept a king who is part Dark?” I couldn’t see someone like Ǽsubrand bowing to Olga or Stinky. Or anyone with similar blood.
“There is nothing in the old rules about what kind of Fey blood it must be,” Caedmon assured me. “I suppose it was considered so obvious that it must be Light that it was never written down. As for the Svarestri, if I am right about their intentions, no Blarestri ruler will satisfy them for long.”
“Which is why you’ve been skulking about, pretending to be dead?”
Caedmon grinned delightedly. “Skulking. Was I really? How… divine.”
“Caedmon!”
He laughed. “Do you have any idea, Dorina, how long it has been since anyone has dared to address me so familiarly? Skulking.” He laughed again.
Heidar came through the forest of vines, dragging an unconscious, or possibly dead, Fey behind him. He looked up and saw us, and a delighted smile broke over his features. It was so like his father’s that it might have been a mirror image.
“That is why,” Caedmon whispered as his son came closer. “If the Svarestri believed me dead, I thought there would be no reason for them to attack my son, who they knew could never rule. It would give me time to find him and your friend while my retainers searched for Ǽsubrand. The only factor I did not anticipate was Claire proclaiming to all and sundry that she was carrying my heir!”
“Which forced Ǽsubrand to go after her if he wanted the throne.”
Caedmon sighed. “My sister spoiled him; I always told her it would end badly.”
“But it hasn’t ended. He’s still on the loose, and now he knows you’re alive.”
“There are always problems, Dory. That is why we live for the few shining moments that make the rest worthwhile.”
“Do you see, lady?” Heidar beamed at me, dropping his trophy at his father’s feet. “I told you he wasn’t dead.” T
he Fey moaned, so I supposed he was still alive. “Where is the Lady Claire?” He looked a little apprehensive. “We… we have something to tell you, Father.”
I looked around, frowning. “She went after water for me.” But that had been a while ago, hadn’t it? I wasn’t sure. My time sense had taken a beating.
I looked toward the house, and it was eerily still. No half-breeds, Fey or otherwise, roamed about outside, and if anyone moved within, it wasn’t obvious. Louis-Cesare, I suddenly recalled, had said he would join me. And Radu should have had the wards back up by now, only I hadn’t felt anything. I glanced at Caedmon. “I hope you enjoyed the moment, because I think the problems are back.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Oddly, the house looked more sinister in broad daylight than it had under an overcast sky. It also looked deserted. We paused in the little courtyard with the fountain, but the only discernible sound over the trickling water was the buzzing of a few insects hovering about the bougainvillea and my own breathing. It sounded loud and harsh in my ears. The Fey didn’t seem to be breathing at all.
They had that in common with the corpse lying half in, half out of the shadowy hallway. The hair was black. I bent down and rolled the face toward me, but I didn’t know him. Not one of Radu’s humans, then.
I checked his shoulder and back, but there was no black circle tattooed anywhere I could see. Nor was there a silver. That didn’t mean he wasn’t a mage, of course. Just that he wasn’t a very good one.
The cause of death was a heart attack brought on by the fact that someone had thrust a long, skinny blade through it. I looked up, and saw Caedmon noting it, too. Louis-Cesare may as well have signed his name to the body. Farther down the corridor, I saw a spill of gold against terra-cotta. Without being told, Caedmon started around the back and Heidar circled around toward the front entrance. I followed the trail of bodies into the house.
A blond and two brunets later, I was in the living room. The painting of Mehmed had swung out into the room, revealing an empty three-tiered shelf. Okay, so I knew where Radu had kept his power source, whatever it was. There were no bodies in the room, but a wash of blood-scented air slapped me in the face as soon as I entered. I didn’t see any puddles, and it would take something that big to send off so much of an odor. But the door to the main entryway was open, and there was a cross-breeze.
