Kitabı oku: «Silver's Bane», sayfa 2

“There are three things.” The whisper rasped down her spine like a fingernail across granite. “For the first, I want my globe back. For the second, I want the head of him that took it from me.”

At that, Vinaver’s head snapped up. “Timias?”

This time she was standing far too close when the angry light flared in the Hag’s eyes. A searing pain lanced up her leg as she involuntarily stepped back onto a sharp edge, while an image blazed clearly in her mind, the image of Timias creeping away from the cavern, bearing the moonstone globe. “You want me to kill Timias?”

“His life is mine, and my cauldron wants his head.” The Hag’s hiss, her narrowed eyes, reminded Vinaver of a snake. “Cut off his head with a silvered edge, and give it to me for my cauldron. So those are the first two things I want of you. Will you agree?”

The depth of the hatred in the Hag’s voice frightened Vinaver. “All right.” She had no idea how she would actually fulfill the second requirement—for to do what the Hag asked required some forethought. And it had not occurred to her that murder would be involved. Vinaver swallowed hard. “What’s the third?”

This time the Hag’s response was a sinister chuckle. She leaned forward, even as Vinaver instinctively shrank back. “The third is the most important and the most necessary. I want your womb.”

At first Vinaver was sure she had not heard correctly, even as her hands clasped her belly. So she could only stare while the Hag chuckled with anticipatory glee. “What?”

“I need your womb.”

Vinaver looked at the scaly gray claws that gripped the stick, recoiling at the idea of those twisted, thickened digits anywhere near her flesh. “Why?” she whispered, horrified.

The Hag’s laugh was like the rumble of rocks down a hillside. “Ah, little queen. Already the circle widens into a spiral. The spiral turns, the center loosens, and soon all will spin away, down, into my cauldron. And my cauldron must not be cheated. If you would undo what has been done, you must feed it. And that’s what it wants. That’s what it needs. That’s what it craves.” She drew out the last long syllable, beckoning Vinaver closer with a crooked, yellow claw. “Come, if you will, and look within—but feed the cauldron to stop the spin.” She stirred the stick, swaying a little, eyes closed as she chanted. Suddenly she stopped and opened her eyes. “You want your sister pregnant with Faerie’s heir? Give me your womb. That’s how it has to work, I’m afraid.”

Vinaver swallowed hard, trying to control the beating of her heart. The monstrous thing muttered as she stirred, her lumpen shape rolling in slow motion in a large, left-turning spiral. Left-turning, Vinaver thought, the direction of breakdown, banishment and change, and in that moment she understood. As the Hag stirred the cauldron, so the tide of Faerie swung. Turning it to the left meant the undoing of the world. “Stop that!” cried Vinaver. “You’re doing it—stop it—”

The Hag jerked around, the hairs on the end of her nose twitching, as if she smelled Vinaver’s desperation. “Round about the circle goes, dark to light and back it flows,” she chanted, as if Vinaver had not spoken. “She that dares to stop my spin, had better put a tidbit in. Feed my cauldron, pay the price, lest all be lost when light turns dark and dark turns light.”

Vinaver’s stomach clenched and her gut heaved at the thought that that creature might touch her. But she had come all this way, and what need had she of a womb, after all? She’d borne a son in her appointed time, such as it was. What did it matter whether or not she gave up her womb? “But—but if I give you my womb,” she whispered, “will it not mean I can never be Queen?” The Hag threw back her head and howled as if at some unwitting joke, but Vinaver would not be dissuaded. “Tell me—tell me what I shall become—if I give you this—this part of me. If I shall not be Queen, what then?”

“She who comes with bitter need, had better then my cauldron feed.”

But suddenly, Vinaver understood something that had eluded her for a long time. She had never understood why the god had come to her that Beltane night when Finuviel was conceived. No one had believed her. But the Hag knew. Her womb had served its purpose. “All right,” she shrugged. “Done.”

The Hag cackled. Vinaver’s mouth dried up like a desert, and she thought she might faint as nausea flopped in her gut like a dying fish. The Hag’s claws closed around her wrist, drawing her closer, and the Hag’s face seemed to fill her entire field of vision. The Hag’s eyes glittered red, then green in the leaping blue flames, and her craggy face dissolved into unrecognizable chaos. Vinaver collapsed, crying out as she felt the scratch of the Hag’s cold fingers, pulling at her clothing, kneading at her flesh, creeping between her legs, probing for the opening to the very center of her self, seeking, separating, pushing in with sharp, grasping claws.

Vinaver cried out at the first stab of blinding pain, and she pushed away, but the Hag held her hard. She shut her eyes as the pain flamed through her, and a kaleidoscope of voices and faces exploded in her mind, uncurling like ribbons, in long slow swirls of scarlet agony. She heard the wet, sucking rent, as her flesh ripped, but she didn’t care, because she understood at last that it was in the pain that the Hag imparted her knowledge. As her body broke and bled, her mind opened, and a torrent of images cascaded in. She saw her mother, Timias and the mortal by whose hand the Caul was forged. She saw the moment of its making, when the three called down the magic and bound the two worlds—Shadow and Faerie—inextricably together, tightening the normal bonds between them tight as a noose.

In some detached corner of her mind, she felt the Hag tear away her womb, felt the hot gush of blood between her thighs, and she lay flat, legs thrown open, dazed and helpless as a newborn child. The pictures shuddered, swirled, spun and split into a double set of likenesses—somehow at once both that which was, and that which should have been. She saw herself born the sole daughter of Gloriana, Faerie’s great Queen, named her Heir, and made Queen when Gloriana went into the West. She saw a Faerie green and flourishing, Finuviel born in the fullness of time, welcomed as the new King of Faerie, even while, running concurrently, like the overlay of the Shadowlands on Faerie, she saw what had really happened since the forging of the Caul. And then, as the pain settled into a slow throb, she saw faint and pale the images of what might be. She lay back, eyes open, staring into the vaulted ceiling as the ghostly outlines formed and reformed, and the world slowly dissolved into nothingness.

When next she opened her eyes, she was lying flat on her back still, staring up at what she first thought to be pinpoints of twinkling lichen. Then a warm wind rustled through the branches of the trees above her, and she realized that the soft grass beneath her was slick with morning dew. And as she watched through eyes suddenly flooded with tears, the black sky above her brightened to gray as the first light of a Faerie dawn broke the horizon at last.

1

The gremlin’s howls filled the forest. Like an avalanche, like a tidal wave, the sounds of rage and anguish and despair too long checked, exploded through the silent Samhain night, unleashed in earsplitting shrieks that continued unabated far beyond the physical capacity of such a small being to sustain such unbroken cacophony. Delphinea crumpled to her knees, crumbling like a dam against a sudden thaw, and pressed her head against the horse’s side, trying to stifle the wails that wrapped themselves around her, first like water, then like wool, nearly choking her, crushing her with their weight of unadulterated sorrow, anger and need. The moon was hidden and the still sky was only illuminated by silver starlight. The night condensed into nothing but the blood-wrenching screams and the slick salt smell of the horse’s coarse hair beneath her cheek. She felt subtle tremors beneath the surface of the leaf-strewn ground as if the great trees all around them shuddered to their roots. The horse trembled and shook, and Delphinea wrapped her arms as best she could around the animal’s neck, murmuring a gentle croon more felt than heard, trying to create a subtle vibration to act as the only shield she could think of under such an onslaught of sound. But there was nothing, ultimately, that could stand against it, and finally, she collapsed against the horse’s side, the mare’s great beating heart her only anchor.

It was thus, curled and quivering, that Vinaver’s house guards found her shortly before dawn, palms plastered against her ears, the horse only semi-aware, its eyes rolled back, its ears flattened against its head. Petri’s cries showed no signs of diminishing. The orange torchlight revealed the gremlin flopping on the forest floor like a fish caught in a net. As he is, mused Delphinea, within a net of Samhain madness. Every Samhain the gremlins all went mad, and usually they were confined. But nothing seemed to be happening quite the way it usually did.

It took all six guards to overpower him, despite the fact that he was less than half the size of Delphinea. Even the thick gag they improvised from a strip of hastily cutoff doublet sleeve barely stifled Petri’s cries. When at last Petri was subdued, his howling reduced to smothered moans, they turned their attention to Delphinea, sitting quiet and disheveled beside the near-insensible horse.

“My lady?” The dark-haired sidhe who bent over her wore a gold breastplate emblazoned with the Queen’s crest, and for a moment, Delphinea was afraid the soldiers had been sent out by the Queen and Timias to drag both of them back to the palace under arrest. She scrambled backward, as the flickering torchlight gleamed on the officer’s insignia embroidered on his sleeves. But his next words made her nearly weep with relief. “The Lady Vinaver sent us out to find you. I am Ethoniel, a captain in the Third Company of Her Majesty’s Knights. If you would be so kind as to come with us, we will escort you to her Forest House.”

“How’d that thing get out?” asked one of the other soldiers, with a jerk of his thumb over his shoulder in Petri’s direction.

“Petri is not a thing,” she sputtered, even as the captain extended his hand and helped her to stand. Two of the others coaxed her mare onto her feet.

“We’ll take you both.” The captain spoke firmly. “It doesn’t look as if it’ll give us any trouble now. We can’t leave it here.” Indeed, Petri lay in a forlorn little heap, his arms bound to his sides, one leathery little cheek pressed to the pine needles and leaves that carpeted the forest floor, eyes closed, breathing hard, but every other muscle relaxed. “Forgive me for taking the time to ask you, lady, but how did this happen? Did it follow you, my lady? How did it get past the gates?”

She knew that for any other sidhe, the presence of a gremlin leagues away from the palace of the Queen of Faerie, the one place to which they were forever bound, at least according to all the lore, was surprising to the point of shocking. But how to explain to them that despite his incipient madness, it was Petri who’d guided her through the maze of the ancient forest, close enough to Vinaver’s house that they could be rescued? Surely Vinaver, herself outcast by the Court, would understand that Delphinea could not leave the loyal little gremlin behind, for it was abundantly clear that Timias and the Queen intended to lay at least part of the responsibility for the missing Caul on the entire gremlin population. But now was not the time to explain how or why the gremlin was with her. For, if it were possible, there was something even more unnatural within the forest, something she knew these soldiers must see for themselves to believe.

The torchlight illuminated the clearing, but it was not just the broken branches and torn undergrowth alone that made her certain of the direction in which to lead the guards. “The magic weakens as the Queen’s pregnancy advances, Captain.” Surely that explanation would have to suffice. “But I have to show you something,” she said. “Please come?” She gathered up her riding skirts and set off, without waiting to see if they followed or not. It was like a smell, she thought, a foul, ripe rot that led her with unerring instinct back through the thick wood. Once, she put her hand on a trunk to steady herself and was disturbed to feel a tremor beneath the bark, and a sharp sting shot up her arm. The branches dipped low, with a little moaning sigh, and for a moment, Delphinea thought she heard a whispered voice. She startled back, but the captain was at her elbow, the torch sending long shadows across his face.

“Where are we going, lady?”

For a moment, she was too puzzled by this sense of communication with the trees to answer the question, for she had never before felt any particular connection to the trees of Faerie. Indeed, in the high mountains of her homeland, trees such as these primeval oaks and ashes were rare. “This way,” was all she could say. And with a sense as certain as it was unexplainable, she led the grim-faced guards through the forest, to where the slaughtered host of the sidhe lay in heaps beside their dead horses and golden arms that gleamed like water in the gray dawn.

The guards gathered around Delphinea in shocked and silent horror, surveying the carnage. The corpses lay like discarded mannequins after a masque, armor all askew, swords and spears and broken arrows sticking up in all directions like bent matchsticks, impotent as mortal weapons. A mist floated over all, and from far away Delphinea could hear the rush of water. Without warning, a banner stirred and flapped on its staff, blown by a ghostly breeze that whispered through the trees, and as the mist moved over the remains, it seemed for one moment, the host might rise, laughing and whole. The captain raised his torch and Alemandine’s colors—indigo and violet and blue on gold-edged white—flashed against the backdrop of the black trees.

They spoke behind her, in hushed and disbelieving whispers. “Can this be the—”

“Are they the—”

“Is this really our—”

“These are our comrades,” interrupted the captain, answering all. There was a long silence, then he continued, in a voice heavy with loss, “You see, my lady, we, too, should have been among their company. But Prince Finuviel ordered us to stay and guard his mother’s house.”

“What could have done this?” another murmured.

“Who could have done this?” put in a third.

Delphinea could feel them tensing all around her, shuffling their feet, skittish as horses at the smell of blood. The captain bent down, holding his flaming torch a scant foot or so above the nearest corpse. He turned the body over. The face of the dead sidhe was calm, pale, and it crumpled into powder, finer than sand, as the light fell upon it. He ran the torch down the armor, to the insignia, the sword, and spurs the knight wore. A dark slash ran diagonally across the golden breastplate, where the metal itself was scarred and shriveled, as if burnt away to ash. “Silver,” he said after a long pause. He shut the empty helm and rose to his feet. “They’ve died the true death. They’ll be gone when the sunlight hits them.”

“So this is the host, then, that was called up to reinforce our borders? The host the minstrels sing of, in Alemandine’s Court?” She had missed the glorious parade by scant hours, arriving from the mountains too late. A chill ran through her that had nothing to do with the temperature of the air. She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling cold all over. Now she would remember all too well forever this last sight of them.

“That’s exactly who they appear to be, my lady.” The captain handed his torch to one of the others and gestured at his men. “Fan out. We’ll have to come back when it’s light, but let’s see as much as we can now.”

While the bodies are still intact. The chilling thought ran through her mind. But she said nothing, and he continued, “Look for His Grace. Look for the Prince. It’s the first question the Lady Vinaver will ask.” His voice faltered and broke, and Delphinea was struck once again by how much Finuviel seemed to be loved by everyone who knew him. She had begun to suspect that his was the face that haunted the visions that came to her while she slept—the visions mortals called “dreams.” The sidhe didn’t dream. At least, all the others didn’t. But lately the phantoms that haunted her sleep came more frequently, and she was no longer able to ignore them. She had come to Court hoping that someone there could explain them to her, and reassure her, perhaps, that this was not as unheard of as she was afraid it was. She had been afraid to mention them to anyone at all, but she had resolved to tell Vinaver, if she ever had the chance. She didn’t want to think how Vinaver would react to the news that the army her son led had been slaughtered and that her son himself was missing.

For if the minstrels sang sweetly of the hosting of the sidhe, it was nothing to the songs they sang about Finuviel. Finuviel was the “shining one,” loved by all who knew him, claimed by his mother to have been fathered by the great god Herne himself one Beltane. Although everyone dismissed Vinaver’s claim as a pathetic attempt to gain some place for herself at the Court, it was universally acknowledged that Finuviel, whoever his father had been, was the epitome of every grace, and the master of every art. Even those who scorned Vinaver publicly spoke highly of Finuviel, and it was Finuviel that Vinaver and a small group of councilors conspired to place upon the throne of Faerie in the sick Queen’s stead. What would they do, if Finuviel were lost?

But he’s not. The knowledge rose from someplace deep inside her, a small voice that spoke with such silent authority, she felt immediately calmed, although she did not understand either how she knew such a thing, or why she should trust such knowledge. All she knew was that she did. She watched the torches bob up and down across the field as the soldiers wove through the heaps of the dead. At last the captain waved them all back. “Well?”

“We don’t see him, sir,” answered the first to reach the perimeter.

“But it appears that every last one of them was slain. There’s no one of the entire host left, except for us?” The second soldier’s brow was drawn, his mouth tight and grim.

“We should take the lady to Her Grace,” interjected a third. “She has done her duty by bringing us to this terrible place, and we have not yet discharged ours to her.”

There was a murmur of general agreement. Delphinea met the captain’s eyes. They were gray in the shadows, lighter than the gray of his doublet, gray as the pale faces of the dead sidhe beneath the graying sky. “Who could’ve done this, Captain?”

“Mortals.” He shrugged and looked around with a deep sigh. “From what I can tell, they were all killed with silver blades. Who else can wield silver in such fashion?” In the orange torchlight, his face was yellowish and gaunt.

“But why—”

He shrugged and turned away before she could finish her sentence. The sight alone defied reason. We are all sickening, she thought. The Caul must be undone or we shall all sicken and die. She turned away silently, gathering up her riding skirts, the men following. That so many should die the true death, the final death, was terrible enough. But was it really possible that mortals—mere mortals, as the lorespinners dismissed them—could have armed themselves with silver and attacked an entire host?

So much was happening, so much was changing. Round about the circle goes, dark to light and back it flows. The old nursery song spooled out of her memory. But for the first time, she had the sense that the turning wheel of time was in danger of spinning violently out of control.

By the time they reached Petri, the dawn light had strengthened enough to show him lying curled into a heavy sleep. He had stopped making any noise at all except for long shuddering snores and his mouth hung slack over the gag. She wondered how long it would take to convince Vinaver that Finuviel did not lie dead beneath the ancient trees with the others.

For Finuviel was not dead, she was quite sure of that, in an odd way she could not at all explain. Something had happened to her last night, something had changed within her, awakened in her, in some way she did not yet fully understand but knew with absolute certainty she should trust. And she knew that Finuviel was not dead. Not yet.

But these grim guards would have to see for themselves—Vinaver would require as much proof as could be had that Finuviel was not here. She would not take Delphinea’s word for it; why should she? So Delphinea said nothing as they marched back beneath the trees and it struck her that the sound of the wind in the branches was like the lowing of the cattle on the hillsides of her homeland. What wind? Her head jerked up and around, as she realized that the air was still. The captain, ever alert, held up his hand.

“Are you all right, lady?”

The curious sound stopped. She shook her head, feeling foolish. She was only overwrought, and succumbing to the rigors of the night. Best not to call attention to it. What would her mother say to do? Smile. “I but found last night somewhat taxing.”

It was as brave an attempt as she could muster at the polished language of the Court, and no lady with a lifetime’s experience at Court could have phrased it better. Half smiles bent their mouths, but melted like spring snow. How meaningless the words sounded, brittle as the drying leaves gusting at their feet, swirling at their ankles in deepening drifts. There was simply no etiquette to deal with such a loss, which must affect the soldiers doubly hard. What stroke of chance had led Finuviel to send these six back to guard his mother’s house? But why did he think it needed special guarding? How vulnerable could it be so deep within the Old Forest of Faerie? It was leagues and leagues from the goblin-infested Wastelands. Had he suspected something? Had he known that mortals armed with silver might attack?

She felt, rather than heard, a deep throbbing moan as she passed beneath the branches of a nearly leafless giant. Its great trunk divided into two armlike branches that ended in countless outstretched skeletal hands. The Wild Hunt had swept many of the trees bare. Yet the trees of Faerie had never before been bare. Their leaves turned from gold to red to russet to brown to green in one eternal round of color, and if a few fell, new ones grew to take their place, in an endless cycle of regeneration. She thought of the dust on the floor of the Caul chamber, the rust on the hinges of the huge brass doors, of the rotting bodies of her cattle and the foals, the fouled streams. Was this just another piece of evidence that Faerie was truly dying? But she was silent as she allowed the guards to help her onto her saddle. The mare seemed fully recuperated, and tossed her head and whickered a greeting as Delphinea gathered up the reins.

Petri was slung over the back of another horse like a sack of meal. Though Delphinea protested his treatment, the horse shied and whinnied and finally a blanket had to be placed beneath the gremlin and the animal before the horse could be induced to carry him.

“I cannot imagine what circumstances brought you here on such a strange, sad night, my lady.” The captain swung into his saddle, and raised his arm in the signal for the company to ride. He rode past, stern-faced and tensed, and she realized he did not expect an answer. The milk-white horses moved like wraiths beneath the black leafless branches, as a red sun rose higher in a violet-cerulean sky. Even now, stark as it was, it was beautiful, beautiful in the intensity of its pulsing radiance. The air was crisp, but heavy, charged with portent.

They rode in grim silence another half turn of a glass. The light grew stronger and suddenly, the thick wood parted, and a most extraordinary sight rose up. Like a living wall, a latticework of high hedge grew laced between the trees, and just beyond, high above the ground, within what appeared to be a grove of ancient oaks and sturdy ashes, Delphinea saw a house that looked as if it had grown out of the trees, not been built into them.

The reins slackened in her hands as she gaped, openmouthed, at the peaked roofs, all covered in shingled bark, windows laced like spiderwebs strung between the branches. Winding stairs curved up and around the thick trunks, and tiny lanterns twinkled in and among the leaf-laden branches. There is magic yet in Faerie, she thought, and was a little comforted. Her mother’s house of light and stone was nothing like this living wonder, and even Alemandine’s palace, as beautiful as its turrets of ivory and crystal were, could not compare to this house of trees.

As if he’d heard her thoughts, Ethoniel smiled. “Indeed, my lady. The Forest House of the Lady Vinaver is a wonder in which all Faerie should delight, not shun.” He held up his hand and the company slowed their mounts to a walk all around her. He leaned over and touched her forearm. “Slowly, lady. Do you not see the danger that grows within the hedge?”

As they came closer, she saw that the hedge was full of jagged thorns, skinny as needles, some as long as her fingers, with tiny barbs at their ends which would make them doubly difficult to remove, all twined about with pale white flowers that put out such a delicate scent that Delphinea had to force herself not to push her nose into the hedge’s depths, to drink more deeply of it. She realized that the plant was nourished by the blood of things that impaled themselves upon the thorns, and from the profusion of flowers, the thickness of the vines, and the lushness of the scent, there were plenty of creatures that did. She shuddered as she rode through the narrow archway that formed the only gate, shrinking away from what was at once so beautiful, and so deadly, so tempting, and so dangerous.

Only one leather-clad attendant came forward, slipping out from a set of doors within the great trunk of an enormous tree, and Delphinea wondered once again why Finuviel had diverted any number of his host at all to guard Vinaver’s house. Secluded as it was within the heart of the Great Forest, and surrounded by the high hedge of bloodthirsty thorns, it appeared not at all vulnerable, except perhaps to a direct goblin attack. But was such a thing likely? From the talk of the Court, she had surmised that the war was expected to be fought on the borders of the Wastelands, not within the very heart of Faerie itself.

But the fact that Finuviel had regard for his mother’s safety made her like him, too, and she wondered if she was falling under the spell of his reputation. She followed the captain of the guard inside the house, trying not to gawk at the golden grace of the polished staircase that flowed seamlessly around the giant central oak forming the main pillar of this part of the house. From certain angles, the staircase was invisible; from others, it was the focal point that drew the eye up and into the leafy canopy forming the roof. She kilted up her skirts and followed the men up the steps, trying not to trip as the golden radiance filtered down, soothing and nourishing as new milk. She closed her eyes, her feet moving in some unconscious synchrony, bathing in the incandescence, forgetting for a moment the dire news they bore. There was only the warmth and the light. On and on, up and up, she climbed, and the face that filled her vision against the backdrop of rosy light was framed with coal-black curls. But instead of smiling, the face contorted in agony and Delphinea gasped, opened her eyes and tripped.

“Watch your step, my lady,” growled the guard who had Petri, by this time in a dead stupor, slung across his back.

Still groggy from the vision, Delphinea could only murmur. It was bad enough that the dreams came while she slept. If she was going to start having them while she was awake, she would have to talk to someone about them. Vinaver, hopefully.

But as they reached an upper landing, Ethoniel paused before a door and turned to Delphinea. “You’ve had a harrowing night, my lady. This may be somewhat difficult. I don’t expect Lady Vinaver will welcome this news.”

“But I want her to know I’m here—maybe there’s something I can do—” Maybe she will believe me if I tell her Finuviel is alive. But she left the last unspoken, and looked at him with mute appeal.

He looked dubious, but shrugged. “As you wish, my lady. The Lady Vinaver is given to some unexpected reactions on occasion. Beware.” He knocked on the door, and opening it, stepped inside an antechamber. He motioned Delphinea, and the guard carrying Petri inside, then knocked on the inner door. Vinaver herself opened the door.

All potential greetings died in Delphinea’s throat as the expression on Vinaver’s face changed from one of welcome to one of horrified disbelief at Ethoniel’s quick report. She had only stared at him, her eyes glowing with a terrible green fire in her suddenly white and flame-red face. Delphinea thought Vinaver might faint, and she wondered if it was that for which Ethoniel had sought to prepare her.

But nothing could’ve prepared Delphinea for the sight of Vinaver’s collapse, for she fell to her knees in a brittle crunch of bone, as the framework of her wings splintered like icicles. And as Delphinea watched in horror, the wings sheared away completely, the tissues tearing with the wet sound of splitting skin, leaving twin fountains of pale blood arcing from Vinaver’s shoulder blades.