Silver's Bane

Another trace of rot swirled delicately past his nose and he blinked, momentarily dizzy. These fools were only trying to make him look as if he was the foolish one. They were trying to blame him for their inability to understand and care for the Queen as if he were the one ultimately responsible for her. “I’m here now,” he snapped.

Hudibras pointed the fan at Timias, as if it were indeed a dagger. “There’s been no word from Artimour, or Finuviel. We don’t know what’s happening on the border, Timias. Alemandine won’t even speak to me except to tell me to go away. She’s placed a spell of binding on the door, and refuses to leave her bed.”

“But that’s not all, most ancient and honorable lord.” The darker, more assertive lady glanced first at him, then over her shoulder, out the window. “The moonflowers are blooming.” For a moment, he was so completely taken aback he could think of nothing to say, and the lady hastened to explain further. “The Queen’s moonflowers. They shouldn’t be blooming while she’s pregnant.”

There was a surreal quality to the whole scene that made Timias pause, just as he had before the stag. It was as if the world around him was ever so slightly…off. But what was it? he wondered. Hudibras and his fan? Rimbaud and his stink? The lady and her moonflowers? Again he felt slightly dizzy as if the very floor on which he stood suddenly swayed. “I must speak to the Queen.”

“She won’t let anyone in, Timias,” said Hudibras, with a twitch of his cheek. “That’s what we’ve been trying to tell you. She’s put a spell on the doors and won’t leave her bed.”

To that, Timias raised his chin. “We’ll see about that.” He strode through the doors that led into the antechamber of the Queen’s bedroom. The twilight filtering into the darkened chambers lent a purple blush to the marble walls, deepened to indigo the pale green upholstery and silken hangings. A profound hush hung over all. He pounded so hard on the ornately carved oak door with his staff that splinters flew in all directions. “Your Majesty!” he cried. “Your Majesty?”

But there was no answer.

He waited, fuming quietly under his breath, and again his nostrils were assailed by the faintest whiff of something foul, something that dissipated even as he turned his head to trace the source of the odor. “Alemandine?” He tried again, rattling the knob, knocking with a hard fist. “Alemandine? Let me in. I command you in the name of your mother, open this door and let me in!”

For a single moment, he thought he would have to blast the doors apart. But then he heard the lock click, and the two doors slipped open as the spell of binding came undone. That was easy, he thought. The doors stood as meekly open as a lamb to the slaughter. He threw a look of triumph over his shoulder at the cowering ladies and an extremely discomfited Hudibras hovering in the doorway. Then he pushed open the doors.

It was like stepping into a wall of rot. The odor made him stagger on his feet, so that he was forced to hang on to his staff to remain upright. The heavy draperies of Alemandine’s favorite pale green silk were drawn, and what light there was slashed through the dark cavern of the room like gold blades. Only once before had Timias ever smelled anything so foul, and that was during a plague year in the Shadowlands, when the whole countryside had reeked like a charnel house. “Alemandine?” he managed to gasp out, before he was forced to cover his mouth and nose against the heavy reek. “Your Majesty? My Queen?”

The bed was empty. The sheets hung over the side of the bed, and were marked by foul greenish stains. A damp trail led across the marble floor to the open floor-length windows.

“My Queen?” he whispered. But nothing answered, and nothing moved. Terrified of what he might find, he stepped out of the ghastly silent chamber, into the grove where one of each of the thirteen sacred trees of Faerie grew in two concentric rings.

A silence even more profound hung over the enclosure and he looked up. The sky above was a dull leaden color, as if something had sucked the blue away. And the trees—at the base of each tree, a perfect circle of leaves lay crisped and sere, their branches partially denuded. Even the holly’s needlelike leaves were tinged brown and yellow and an ankle-deep pile lay around the base of the tree. So many leaves were falling it was like a steady, downward curtain, of mingled yellow, gold and russet. He heard a soft sound from the center of the inner circle, a sound something between a moan and a sigh.

“Alemandine?”

Creeping closer, clutching the staff, shoulders hunched against the weight of that horrific stench, Timias saw that the thing which lay upon the ground was only a fragile approximation of the Queen. Her entire body had shrunk, as if it was collapsing in on itself, as if the muscles and sinews and organs were diminishing, leaving only skin and bones. Only her bloated abdomen rose roundly, like an obscene fruit hidden beneath her white gown.

But nothing could have prepared him for the horror as the Queen turned her tortured face to his. He gasped and stumbled back. Her white hair streamed about her vulpine face, the lips drawn back so tightly her mouth was nothing but a black slash. Her eyes popped from their sockets, as if squeezed outward by the pressure of whatever foul liquid it was that seeped from every orifice.

Amazingly, horribly, beyond all reason, the thing that he had called his Queen spoke. “Timias?” Her voice was less than a sigh, less than a whisper. “Timias? Timias, what’s happening to me?” She twisted her head back and forth and even as he realized she was blind, he heard the wet rent of tearing flesh. “Where is my sister? Why does she not come?”

He stumbled back, not daring to come any closer lest the thing touch him. Nausea rose in his throat as disgust warred with pity. The creature held out her hand and tried to speak again, but this time the words were lost in a gurgle of green slime that spooled down her chin.

Her form seemed to collapse in and upon itself, her very bones cracking and splintering like rotting wood. A quiver ran through her, and fluids gushed from every pore, bubbling up and out through the stretched skin, which withered as Timias watched.

The earth itself shuddered, the great trees groaned, and the wind made a low mourning keen as it whined around the crystal-paned turrets. With a whimper and a sigh, Alemandine bubbled away, leaving a froth of scum, the filthy remnants of her tattered gown and the long strands of her white, spun-silk hair.

“Great Gloriana,” Timias muttered. His eyes glazed over as, in one horrific moment of insight, he understood that the remains of the creature lying before him was not at all one of the sidhe, but instead something else—something strange and monstrous, a true aberration and abomination that he had not only called into being, but had seen placed upon the throne of Faerie. This was what he and Gloriana had wrought. This was the ultimate consequence of what they had created the night the Caul was made. Even half-human Artimour might’ve been a better choice. But it was the final realization that sent him spiraling down into the well of madness. Vinaver—may she burn in the belly of the Hag—had been right all along.

2

You didn’t think to ask? You didn’t think to ask? Artimour’s accusation slammed like a hammer through her head as Nessa fled down the stairs, out of the keep and into the inner courtyard, blindly heading toward the first sanctuary that occurred to her. She stopped up short before she reached the gates. Molly’s lean-to by the river was most likely destroyed, or so befouled by the shredded goblin carcasses the screaming spirits of the naked dead had left in their wake, it would have to be shoveled away.

As it was, once outside, the stench was so overwhelming she felt nausea rise at the back of her throat, and she stumbled into the forge, where the fire had been left to die. Broken swords and spears, shields, and even bows lay in haphazard piles, hastily dumped by the teams of just about every able-bodied person in the keep as part of the cleanup the harried Sheriff was directing even now. Through the open door, Nessa caught a glimpse of him striding, fat and red-faced, through the courtyard in the direction of the gates, bawling orders right and left, surrounded by harried-looking guards, grooms and a motley assortment of refugees young and old, male and female, who hastened to do his bidding. She peered inside the huge iron cauldron they’d used to melt the silver in. Dull and black and coated with ash on the outside, the inside shimmered, pearly and opalescent in the shifting streams of light that poured in through the shutters. Nessa wiped the tears off her cheeks and sniffed. She had made the dagger.

But she’d no choice. When the Duke of Allovale and the sidhe had appeared at her door, they expected a dagger. Once the Duke decided she was capable of making one, he hadn’t offered her a choice. How was she to know the sidhe intended to use it against Artimour, as part of the plot against his half-sister, the Queen of the OtherWorld?

More tears filled her eyes and she tried to blink them away. Artimour had promised to help her find her father, and after last night’s realization that her mother must be somewhere in the OtherWorld, too, held captive, perhaps, she had intended to ask him if he’d help find her mother, as well. But now, it seemed unlikely he’d even continue to look for her father, angry as he was. Not that she blamed him. It was by her hand, if indirectly, he’d been injured. She should find a way to make it right with him. Wasn’t that what her father would tell her to do? With a sigh, she wiped away the tears with the back of her grimy sleeve, got to her feet, tied a leather apron around her neck and waist and began to sort the piled weapons into some semblance of order. Work was always her father’s refuge, too.

She shut her eyes at a wave of loss and grief, remembering with bitter clarity that unseasonably hot autumn night just after the harvest was celebrated, when those two cloaked and hooded figures had come knocking on the door of Dougal’s forge. He’d have been better off if he’d just sent the unlikely pair on their way. That’s what put this whole thing in motion, she thought. The moment he opened the door, it all changed. And that’s exactly how he’d vanished. One moment, Dougal was there, the rock at the center of her world. And the next, he was gone. It was worse than if he’d died and gone to the Summerlands, for at least then she could take comfort in the thought he walked among his ancestors. She could come to terms with his death.

But she would never come to terms with her father lost, like her mother, forever in thrall to the sidhe. And so, armed only with determination and that first goblin’s head, she had gone to look for Dougal in the land beyond the mists that the old stories called TirNa’lugh. The sidhe soldiers who’d found her stumbling over the border had taken her to Artimour, who was different enough from all the other sidhe that she had been able to recognize his mortal blood at once. Different enough to agree to help her.

It was more than that, she knew, for Artimour affected her in a way no one—not even Griffin—ever had. All the village girls older than twelve twittered over this shepherd’s boy or that farmer’s son like a gaggle of broody hens, but she’d never understood what the fuss was all about. She thought of Griffin, of his clumsy kiss goodbye, the way he’d taken her amulet and left his for her to wear, even as her father’s voice echoed out of her memory. This is what they do to you with their OtherWorldly charms. It’s why you stay away from them. Always. And never take off your silver. Never. It was what he’d say if he were here.

But Artimour wasn’t quite like the other sidhe, she was sure of it. His half-mortal blood made him different, much as he might want to deny it, and it was his half-mortal blood that had saved him from the silver’s deadly poison—that and her own work boot.

Nessa fumbled beneath the apron and withdrew Dougal’s amulet. Maybe it only proved Dougal was dead. And maybe I am just a “lovesick, moon-mazed maiden” like all the songs say, she told herself as she dragged three battered shields to the scrap pile she was building on the other side of the forge.

“Nessa?” Molly’s soft voice broke through the smoky gloom, and Nessa looked up to see the corn granny from Killcrag hesitating at the door. “Is that you? Are you in here?”

“It’s me.” She was surprised it had taken Molly this long to find her. She dropped the shields and they fell with a clatter onto the pile. “I don’t want to go to Gar, Molly. Let Uwen tell the Duke what happened with Cadwyr, let Artimour explain how—how he came to be stabbed. Why do I need to be there? Can’t I stay here with you? I can help—”

She heard Molly’s long indrawn breath, heard her soft sigh. “Ah, Nessa.”

Before Nessa could speak, Molly crossed the space between them and drew Nessa into the strong circle of her arms. She felt her throat thicken and her mouth work, and the tears she’d been swallowing spilled down her cheeks. “I don’t know what to say to him, Molly. I did make the dagger. It was my fault he was stabbed—”

Molly gently tucked one errant curl behind Nessa’s ear. “You could tell him you’re sorry.”

“I don’t think he wants an apology.”

“Well, there’s not much more he’s likely to get. What’s done is done, child. It’s the past, it’s over. Yes, perhaps you should’ve asked a few more questions, but Cadwyr is a Duke, a noble Duke. You’d no choice, really. He’ll come around to seeing that.”

“Shouldn’t I do something—something to make it right?”

“Make it right? If he were a mortal, perhaps the druid court would set a penalty, but, Nessa, don’t forget. They would also take into account that you are still a child, in the eyes of the law, still beneath your father’s roof, and Cadwyr of such high rank. What choice did you have? No court would judge you half so harsh.” Molly drew back, holding Nessa at arm’s length. “You listen to me, girl. Your father would be proud—”

“That’s exactly it,” Nessa said, her face crumpling. “Artimour promised to help me—but I had this horrible thought last night when I thought about what my—my grandmother’s ghost said to me. What happens if my parents die in the OtherWorld?”

“But no one dies in TirNa’lugh, child. Should you ever find her, your mother will be as young and as fair as the day she was lost to it. That’s what your grammies meant—”

“Molly, I remember one of Granny Wren’s stories, about Vain Thomas who goes to TirNa’lugh and loses his head and his soul is swept up by Herne into the Wild Hunt. Don’t you see, Molly? And Granny Wren said that’s where most of the souls in the Wild Hunt come from, the ones who’re truly lost forever. That’s what I’m afraid of, Molly. I don’t want them lost forever—”

“Well,” said Molly, “you can’t worry about that right now. The lord’s still healing. But I do think if you apologize, Lord Artimour will come around. And besides…” She paused and nodded at the bulky bandage Nessa wore around her left hand to conceal the ring Artimour had given her in token of his promise to look for Dougal in the OtherWorld. “Won’t he want that back?”

“My father always said that honor meant nothing to the sidhe.” Nessa fingered the awkward bump. The central stone was round and hard and felt big as a robin’s egg beneath the linen wrapping.

A stir outside interrupted Molly, and Nessa looked over her shoulder. She heard men calling for the Sheriff, and then Sir Uwen. She glanced at Molly. “Someone’s come.”

Molly nodded. “Nessa,” she said slowly. “Am I wrong to think you’ve never been to the greenwood, as they say, with any man, even the ’prentice lad? Griffin?”

Mortified, Nessa shook her head, wondering how to explain to this kind-eyed woman how Dougal had communicated without words that he both desired and condoned distance between himself and Nessa, and the rest of the village. From memory’s dark well, she heard Dougal’s voice, deep and halting. Your mother was the sort of girl the lads all liked. As long as Nessa could remember, it seemed that there was something about this aspect of her mother that was irrevocably tied to her susceptibility to the sidhe. Which was why the goodwives all watched her. “My—my mother—my father said my mother was the girl the lads all liked.”

“And he warned you away from the lads altogether?”

“Well, no. Not really.” She hesitated. “He said that the reason the goodwives watched me so hard was to see if I was going to be like my mother that way. Because that’s what drew the sidhe, they all thought. That she was…like that.” And the easiest way to avoid their eyes and their whispers and their questions was to avoid all the men as much as possible, as well, thus earning for herself a reputation for being more taciturn than even Dougal.

Molly was silent for a moment, and then spoke slowly. “Well, then. I suppose that explains that.” Again she hesitated. “But tomorrow you’re about to go off—” And again she broke off, and Nessa wondered what the wicce-woman wanted to say.

“What are you worried about?”

Molly’s brows shot up and she laughed. “Worried isn’t exactly the word I’d use. Your father wanted to protect you, but there are things a woman must know, things only a woman can know, and only a woman can teach. You’re far too innocent and unaware of the effect you have on the young men around you.” Once more she paused, and in the gloom, her eyes twinkled. “There’s an old saying that’s proven true more often than not in my experience. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

Flustered, Nessa stared at the weapons lying in half-sorted heaps. “What do you mean?”

Molly smiled gently. “Griffin’s in love with you, did you know that?”

“Griffin?” echoed Nessa. She did not like thinking about Griffin, she realized, especially with Artimour so close. She’d known intuitively, from the moment she had first contemplated Artimour’s arrival in Killcairn, that it would upset Griffin to know how Artimour made her feel. Griffin’s clumsy farewell kiss, the amulet he’d left behind for her, even the pack of food he’d hastily thrust into her hands before she’d crossed over into the OtherWorld—each memory sent a guilty pang through her, even as they bore silent testimony to the truth of Molly’s assertion.

Molly looked at her with one raised brow.

“He took my amulet,” Nessa said, knowing that Molly had already talked to Griffin himself. “And left his for me. Is that why? You really think he loves me?”

Dust motes danced in the shaft of sunlight filtering through a loose shingle on the roof, and Molly’s brown eyes twinkled. “What do you think?”

In colored fragments of sight and sound, images of suddenly remembered snippets twisted themselves around Molly’s sentences, weaving a coherence and a meaning into the fabric of her memories that she only now understood: Griffin watching from the other side of the yard as she shoveled coal; blushing suddenly as she reached for a pitcher and the neck of her summer tunic dipped low; splashing water on her late last summer, then backing away, with a face reddened by what she’d assumed was exertion when the entire bucket upended over her breasts, flattening the thin summer linen against the round curves so that her dark nipples were as perfectly visible as if she were naked, even as Dougal immediately barked, “Cover yourself, girl,” and tossed her a cloak. How long had Griffin’s feelings been growing, while she, all the while, was unaware? “You think I should marry Griffin?”

Molly looked completely taken aback. “Goodness, girl, what gave you thought of that?” She reached out and touched Nessa’s cheek, then her hair. “Your father was right in a way. You’re not like the others—to be honest, I suspect you’re Beltane-made, much as he denies it for some reason. But like your mother, the lads like you, too. Though unlike her, I don’t think you know what you do to the lads. So you trust your heart and mind that birch staff of yourn. That tree has a powerful, protecting spirit to it, and she’s sent a piece of herself out into the world with you. I think if your father’d had his way, he’d’ve built a wall higher than hedgerow and thicker than an oak around the forge, to keep you safe within.” She touched Nessa’s hair again, smoothing it back from her burning face. “But now you’re about to go off with two men—two men, either one of which would set any maid’s heart aflutter.”

“Even Uwen?” Nessa wrinkled her nose. She thought of Uwen’s crooked grin and offset jaw and bony frame. He might be one of the Duke of Gar’s own Company, but she could not imagine anyone finding Uwen the least bit attractive.

But Molly smiled. “Ah, child. I’ve seen a few make it very obvious that they’d happily join Sir Uwen on a trip to the greenwood, and one or two who have. You’ve not been paying attention. Sooner or later, whether it’s Griffin or Uwen, or this sidhe-lord himself, don’t be afraid to lie with any man you truly desire, for what happens between a man and a woman is the root of every kind of magic worked in this world, and the Other, too, I imagine.”

Nessa closed her eyes as she remembered riding through the forest of the OtherWorld, sharing Artimour’s saddle. She remembered the pungent resin rising from the dark green pines, the slow flutter of gold leaves, the feeling of his velvety hose against the backs of her legs as they dangled awkwardly off the horse, the solidity of his chest against her back, the smooth satiny feeling of the saddle between her thighs. A part of her understood that Molly had imparted knowledge of much importance—that had something to do with why the wicce-women were said to be had for a silver coin and what they did to make the fields fertile and the corn grow—but all that really seemed to matter right now was that she somehow make peace with Artimour.

“Granny Molly? Nessa?” Uwen’s voice sounded so different, that for a moment, Nessa wasn’t sure who stood starkly silhouetted at the threshold. It was Uwen’s familiar bony form, but it was hardly Uwen’s voice, for it fell hollow and flat, totally devoid of his usual light, teasing lilt. “There may be a change in plans. A band of Cecily’s clansmen from Mochmorna came in just now. They took refuge last night in an abandoned dovecote somewhere in the hills. But they’d a druid with them who’d an idea of what to do and he summoned up the dead. Seems Donnor’s ghost was seen among them.”

The Duke of Gar was dead, the castle was in shambles, and Cecily, his widow, did not feel at all the way she imagined a widow was supposed to feel. If Donnor was dead, it was his own fault. She’d tried to warn him not to trust Cadwyr, his nephew and his heir, begged him to wait until at least half his Company could be assembled. But no, he insisted on riding out on some trumped-up excuse a blind mule could see through. She had thought, at first, that only she and Kian had seen Donnor’s gray ghost as it picked its way across the carcass-littered field, fading into the blessed Samhain dawn. But everyone on the walls had seen it, and rumor ran rampant as a ram in rut through every level of the castle, leaving even the most hardened of the warriors looking stricken as an orphaned lamb.

Now she picked her way across what yesterday had been the outermost ward, flanked on one side by Kestrel, the ArchDruid of Gar, and at least six of his highest-ranking fellows, and on the other by Mag, the chief still-wife, and as many wicce-women as could be coaxed away from the nursing and the grieving. They would never survive another night if the goblins came back. But if there was a way to prevent them, both druids and corn grannies were conspicuously silent. Her thoughts chased each other like a dog its tail.

A silence as leaden as the lowering sky hung heavy over all, deadening the slap of her boots, muffling the sobs of those few strong-stomached souls who came forward to press a kiss on her hand as they searched amidst the rubble for possessions abandoned and befouled. On the walls, the engineers and stonemasons directed teams in the critical repairs of the curtain wall. On command, the men bent and with a mighty heave, lifted the great stone block on a huge wooden lever as another team swung it into position. The dull thud of stone, punctuated by the creak of timber and the shouted directions of the men echoed flatly across the yard, as if the sounds were swallowed by the huge holes the goblins had torn in the walls, soaked up by the deep gashes of bloodied earth. She pressed the linen square soaked in peppermint oil more tightly to her nostrils and swallowed hard as she realized she had nearly stepped on a foot. “Be careful.”