Grim bowed to Mab. "We will dedicate this first kill to you, our lady queen."
"Wait!"
Grim dropped from the podium and into the circle of sand, and the crowd roared as he pumped his trident in the air. Iron nails, this was getting out of hand. Tom drew Caledyr with his free hand, turned to put himself between Grim and Rose.
"Ask Mester Stoorworm how this tasted," he cried, hefting the sword so all could see it. "If I have to fight you, Grim, I will. I’ll skewer you like a pig. I’ll get what I want, and you’ll have suffered for nothing."
"For an immortal, Thomas Rymour, pain is just another way to pass the time." Grim spoke for the audience, earning another cheer. He twirled his trident like a baton, and adopted a pose intended to provoke another cheer. Was he all show? No. Grim had always been savage, a beast sent to prey on mortal cheer. Performing for a crowd was new. So was the trident. Tom would have to assume he was as adept with the latter as the former.
Which meant violence and peril. So he turned his back, dropped Caledyr, and tucked Rose into Katharine’s tunic, "Give Mama a cuddle," he told her, more to distract himself from the tightness in his limbs, the readiness to feel Grim’s trident in his back. But he settled Rose, snatched up Caledyr, and turned to see Grim hadn’t advanced.
"That was honourable of you," Tom said. "Thank you."
The fay grinned. "We want to see you at your best."
"I’m afraid my best might be far behind me," Tom replied, brought Caledyr to his forehead in salute. "I claim my boon in return for felling Grim," he called.
Laughter in the audience, but not the raucous hilarity Tom had expected. Instead he felt apprehension, uncertainty, excitement. They didn’t know who was going to win.
Grim made his claim to his audience. "I claim time with the woman, in return for felling Thomas Rymour."
Tom didn’t need the sword to lend him strength or anger. Strike him down.
"Last chance, Grim," he said, and waited for the fay to turn his face to the crowd to deliver his response.
That’s when Tom charged.
Grim was quick, but he was caught off-guard. He tried to parry the blow with the haft of the trident, and Caledyr sliced through it like it was gossamer, the blade sweeping up and across Grim’s helm. The fay staggered back under the blow, and Tom twisted his feet, shifted his grip, and drove Caledyr up and into Grim’s chest.
He released the sword and let Grim fall to the ground. The arena was silent.
Tom kicked aside one half of Grim’s trident and planted a foot on the fay’s chest. "Now, shall we talk about my boon?"
The audience was sent away, to their disappointment, and Melwas and Mab descended into the arena to stand before Tom. Mab was attended by Puck, who avoided Tom’s eye. Melwas was without an attendant; it would be some time before Herne returned, if he ever did. The Faerie King glared at Tom, and his eye frequently drifted to Grim’s prone, still form. Or to Caledyr, planted in Grim’s chest like a violent flag pole.
"That was an impressive performance, our Tom." There was a hint of pride in Mab’s voice. She cast a disapproving glance at Grim’s body. "Perhaps we put our faith in the wrong champion."
Melwas towered over Tom. "What do you want?" he growled.
Tom had to crane his neck to meet Melwas’ eye. “My boon: I want you to keep Katharine and Rose safe."
"You are beyond boons," Melwas snapped. "You raised a hand to our royal person, unleashed violence upon our people, and used that foul little sorcerer’s magics to undo Herne. We have named you an enemy of Faerie, and any effort we expend on you will be only to see you punished."
Tom looked to Mab, who gave him the tiniest of nods. It hurt. And he hated that it hurt. But hearing those words, seeing them confirmed by Mab, pricked at a vulnerable spot inside of him.
Don’t show it. Stand tall.
He looked back to Melwas and said, "We have been collecting the glarn in order to seal the way between Faerie and Tir. If we succeed, you would be trapped here, and you would no longer be able to sustain yourself on the magic of the world. You would diminish." He looked at Mab. "Until you were no more."
"You would see us ended?" She wrinkled her nose at Tom.
"I just want to see those I care about safe and well."
Melwas’ voice was cold as he said, "And we want to see you holding your own entrails, flayed and burned and begging for the end, knowing that you will not die, that Ankou will stitch you back together so we can pull you apart again, and again, and again, until the sun grows cold and the nights grow long and all is nothing more than dust. And still we will watch you suffer." His anger wasn’t a hot, burning thing, ready to burn out when enough time had passed. This was a cold, frozen thing. Unending. Unyielding. There would be no song in Melwas’ heart when he had Tom tortured. And that made it far more frightening.
"I won my boon in combat,” Tom replied with a confidence he didn’t feel. “You cannot deny me.”
“Cannot?” Melwas’ nostrils flared. "You come to our realm and dictate to us as if Thomas Rymour were king and Melwas his subject."
"You told me to face you." His boon rested on a knife’s edge, and he felt off-balance. "I do only as you commanded."
And Mab smiled her dark smile. The one Emyr said she had stolen from Eirwen. "Be careful what you wish for, my king."
Melwas smiled too. It wasn’t the reaction Tom had expected. "Do you challenge us, little Tom?" he asked, his rich baritone rolling around the shadow of his amusement. "Would you fight for our queen’s hand?"
The sight of Melwas with his hand resting on his sword faded, and Tom found himself hot, sweating, tired, ducking as that same sword carved through the air above him.
Step. Step. Duck. Parry.
Emylt and Caledyr clashed, the impact ringing down Tom’s arms, making his muscles rubbery, already Melwas was shifting, sliding Emylt free of the parry.
Step. Duck.
Melwas spun and the air almost hummed as Emylt cut through it and passed overhead. Too close, he’d barely ducked in time, already Caledyr was moving his feet, but he was too slow, and Melwas was too fast, and he couldn’t win this.
The present moment came back and Tom’s heart was hammering. He took a deep, calming breath. Was that how he would meet death? At Melwas’ hand?
"I suppose it was always going to end that way, wasn’t it?" He sighed. It made sense. Who else had such an interest in seeing him dead? But he’d rather have died at someone else’s hand. Anyone else’s. "But not today."
"But someday.” Melwas smirked as if he had won a great prize. "These are the terms for keeping your woman and your child safe."
"They are not to be fed Faerie food," Tom told them. That would trap them in Faerie forever. "And they will be cared for by Melusine. No-one else."
"Why Melusine?" Mab’s eyes were slits, as if she were squinting against a bright light.
In truth, Tom couldn’t say why. But she understood family, and Tom sensed she would respect the bond of family more than oaths and boons. Besides, she had offered to help. But all he said to Mab was, “She is a mother at heart.”
"What of Lull?" Mab asked. Lull, the Faerie nursemaid. But Tom wasn’t going to leave Rose in the care of someone charged with looking after the mortal children kidnapped by the fay; it would feel too much like he was giving Rose up. Like he was helping Mab steal his daughter.
So he said, "I am not certain if they will be safe with Lull."
"But they will be safe with Melusine?"
"I believe so."
"And if we believe otherwise?"
"These are my terms."
"Indeed?" Mab pursed her lips, somewhere between amusement and irritation. "Then you will take the sprite back with you." She glanced upwards and Tom followed her gaze to see Dank’s sprite hovering above them.
"Very well." Even though he didn’t want a Faerie spy in their midst. "It can help us find Dank."
"Indeed."
"Do you know where he
is?"
"The traitor and his companion are adrift," Mab told him with relish. "Grains of sand that would be a beach if they could find the shore."
Tom had felt that tattering, the way the maelstrom tugged and shredded the edges of the mind and the heart. They hadn’t deserved such an end. Gravinn could have been safe and sound in the Western Kingdom. Dank could have remained here. Not safe. But sound, at least. "Do they suffer?"
"Not anymore."
"They would have done," Melwas added with a cruel smile. "They would have known nothing but pain, and then the hurt of watching their souls unravel and being unable to recall the very thing they have lost.”
Tom tried not to imagine how Dank and Gravinn had felt as they were torn apart. Did they feel abandoned? Did they feel like he had left them to pain and death?
Fight.
The thought surprised him, tugged his gaze to Grim, to the sword that rested in the fay’s unmoving chest. Fight? How?
Find the shore. That’s what Mab had said. "So we have an agreement?" he asked. "You will keep Katharine and Rose safe. In return, you enjoy watching me attempt to rescue them."
"And you bring us Dank,” Mab reminded him.
"And you fight us,” Melwas added. “For our lady queen’s affections. Once and for all, we will settle this."
"And I will fight you." Tom cast an eye over Mab. Emyr had said she’d taken Eirwen’s smile. Where had she taken the eager look in her eyes? Where had she taken her throaty laugh? Where had she taken the way she talked, walked, smelt?
It was revolting to think that she was a collection of dead things. But when she smiled at him, his body still reacted.
"And when I win,” Melwas said, “you will bend the knee."
Tom blinked. "What?"
"You heard us." Melwas lifted a gauntleted hand, curled it into a fist. "Once I have defeated you, you will swear your loyalty to us. You will declare King Melwas of Faerie your true king, and you will agree to obey all of our commands."
No. He couldn’t. He couldn’t lie, and so swearing such an oath would bind him to it. Wouldn’t it? He had sworn an oath to Duke Regent and fled. Could he swear an oath that left him enough room to disobey?
As if Tom had spoken aloud, Melwas added, "We know how slippery you are, little man. We will make you swear such an unbreakable oath that you cannot sneeze without our permission."
It was too much. Melwas could make him do anything. Hand over the glarn. Kill Six, Emyr, and the others. Hurt Katharine.
Hurt Rose.
He only had to kneel if he lost this fight. But the Faerie King had bested King Emyr. He would best Thomas Rymour too.
But he had no choices, so he took a breath and said, "Yes. I will bend the knee, if I lose.” And he would just have to find a way to win.
Melwas grinned, a proud, arrogant, victorious grin. "It is done," he said, and waved a hand. Melusine stepped forward. Tom hadn’t seen her arrive. Seeing her approach with her arms out replaced his dread with a different kind of fear; the reality of handing his daughter to the fay. He was gripped by a sudden panic and clutched Rose to his chest. He couldn’t do it. He would take her back. He would take care of Rose.
But whatever place Cairnarim was, it would be no place for a newborn babe.
"We will keep her as our own," Melusine promised.
"Keep her as mine," he replied. "Don’t feed her any Faerie food," he repeated.
"We won’t." Her smile was understanding.
"Or let her out of your sight."
"Not for a moment."
"And Ankou isn’t to tend to Katharine. Or Angau. Leave her be."
"Understood."
Tom lifted Rose’s head to his lips, kissed her, smelled her. She began to fuss and squirm. How long would it be before he saw her again? "Tell her about me," he murmured. "Every day. Tell her that her papa loves her."
"We will."
"I love you," he whispered into Rose’s hair. "Papa loves you. Never forget that. Never."
And then he handed her over, and she started to cry, and it was all he could do to keep from snatching her back and running as far as he could. She didn’t belong in another’s care. She needed him. He knew he was doing the right thing. But it felt like he was abandoning her. Like he’d abandoned Degor. "I’ll come back for you," he told her, and took consolation in being able to say it.
"We’ll take care of her until you do," Melusine told him.
"Thank you," he managed, and turned to Katharine before his resolve broke. "I’ll come back for you too," he whispered. He ran a hand through her hair. She was still cold. Still pale. It shouldn’t have happened like this.
"Enough," Melwas said. Tom felt the weight of the sprite land on his shoulder, the light almost painful at the edge of his vision. "You have your bargain, little Tom. Be gone from our sight."
Tom felt a familiar tug, and opened his mouth to say goodbye to Katharine, to say, "I love you."
But Faerie was already gone.
There was no sight or sound within the maelstrom, but the sprite’s voice was a roar, its light was a storm that seared the thoughts, and Tom was an ant next to the inferno.
"Dank is scattered." The words rattled through every corner of his mind, shaking loose his own thoughts. "We must collect him."
And Gravinn. But he had no mouth to say the words. And the maelstrom was already pulling at him. Already he could feel little snags of his self catching on the brambles of the storm.
But there was a cold, black pebble within him that was unmoved.
"That will keep you safe," boomed the sprite. "Cling to it." And the light turned away from Tom and shone across the nothingness. Like an incandescent beast. Like a gargantuan will of the wisp, luring the lost and the prey. Ready to consume.
"We call to him," the sprite said.
What do I do? he wondered. He could feel his edges fraying. Why was he here?
"He might not trust us." The hurt was impossibly big, like a black ocean of loss. "You must call too."
How? I have no voice.
"This place is magic," it replied. "And you have magic."
Would the pebble grow larger?
"You would rather leave him here?"
No. So Tom reached out, the way he reached into the twig and into the coin and into the monolith at Cairnagwyn. It felt too easy now, as if he could extend his entire mind and let it be whisked away, and the maelstrom urged him to do it, throw himself into the chaos and find the calmness of nothing.
A single wisp of the sprite encircled Tom, a heatless tendril of bright flame that would burn him if it got too close. "Call. Do not chase him, or you will be scattered too."
The storm was less within the sprite’s embrace, the worst of it kept at bay. It made it easier to hold himself together. Iron nails, he had to get out of this place. He reached out past the sprite’s defences with a single thought: here. Here.
Nothing. Each thought he sent out was swept away. Did a part of him go with it? Was he forgetting himself? He couldn’t remember Degor’s first birthday. What colour were Katharine’s eyes?
"You’re panicking." The sprite’s disdain washed through him. But it was right. Had he breath, he would have taken a deep one. But the thought of it felt the same as doing it, and he felt calmer. He reached out again.
There. He felt something. Not even a thought. Like a fish brushing your ankle in the shallows. He reached for it but it swam away.
"Gently." The sprite’s voice was like a slap. So Tom kept reaching out. Here. Here. Here.
Here? Where? Here?
The thoughts weren’t Dank's. Tom could tell immediately. He didn’t recognise them. Who were they?
"Wayward travellers."
We should help them.
"They are too long lost. They can’t remember how to be together."
They would remember. But the sprite ushered them away and held Tom back. He reached past as best he could. Come back. Stay, we can help. But the furious light of the sprite was
too much to bear, and they fled into eternal nothing.
Tom?
There! That was Dank. He reached for it, but found nothing more than that same thought over and over. Tom? Tom? Tom?
Where was the rest of him?
"He will gather himself to himself."
That didn’t make much sense, so Tom kept calling into the maelstrom. But nothing else seemed to come forward. He tried to ape what the sprite was doing, reaching around Dank’s single thought and keeping it from the scattering winds, but it wasn’t easy when that same wind was buffeting his own mind.
"No. Let it be free. Let him hear himself."
Tom let Dank’s thought go, watched it drift away. Tom? Tom? Tom? He wanted to snatch it back, hold on to at least this part of Dank. But the sprite placed a tendril of burning light between the thought and Tom’s own. All he could do was watch it go and call after it: here. Here. Here.
We’ll lose him, he thought.
"Have faith," the sprite replied.
In what?
"In your friend."
That shamed Tom, but not enough to quash his fear. If he lost Dank after having hold of him, even a small part of him, it would be his fault. He would have failed them, Dank and Gravinn. He would have abandoned them to this place.
"You’re panicking again."
No. He was afraid. And angry. He was losing too many people. He wouldn’t lose more. So he called out, with all his fear and rage and desperation.
DANK! GRAVINN!
And the little black pebble grew a little more, and the sprite shied away.
But the little thought wavered. Held. Tom. It sounded less hesitant. More certain. Yes, Tom.
Yes, it’s me. Come back to us, both of you. Come back.
There, another thought. One of Dank’s, saying to itself safe, safe, safe over and over. And with it came another, a different shape and texture. One of Gravinn’s. This one had no words, just fear. But Dank’s thought embraced it and held it against the maelstrom. And there was another, and another. Dank’s thoughts came together, and each came with a fragment of Gravinn.
"He heard you." The sprite approved, even as it shied from the black emptiness of spent magic that Tom carried like a lodestone around his neck.
The Realm Rift Saga Box Set Page 103