by Alexa Egan
7
Bianca looked up from the book. “When I was a child, my father told me the legend of Robin Goodfellow.” Her throat tightened at dusty, half-forgotten memories of nursery tales told before bed. Father sitting in a chair beside her, spectacles sliding down his nose as he read while Nurse tutted her displeasure. “He never mentioned anything about a race of animal faeries.”
Leaning back in his chair, Sebastian steepled his fingers beneath his chin. Light from the window cast his long, solemn face half into shadow. “The Imnada weren’t Fey. Nor were they completely human, but something different altogether. Though they possessed many preternatural gifts, their greatest was the ability to change shape at will.”
“Sounds magical to me.”
His gold-brown eyes shone warm with humor. “Normally, yes, but their enemies possessed much greater magic. And following the betrayal of their king, vengeful rage spurred them to wield those powers very effectively.” Glancing at the longcase clock in the corner, he braced his arms upon the chair, half rising from his seat. “Ah, but we’re keeping the women waiting. And your tea grows cold.”
Bianca shot to attention, her fingers gripping the hand-tooled cover of the book, nerves buzzing. “Now, wait just a moment, you can’t bring me to the edge of my seat, then just dismiss me back to tea and gossip. What happened? I want the whole story.”
“Are you certain? There’s no happy ending. Not for any of them.”
“Show me a happy ending and I’ll show you a fiction as great as any shapechanger prancing about the forest.”
A guarded smile hovered over his mouth, fingers lightly drumming upon the desktop. “Very well. But how to begin?”
“All faerie stories begin with once upon a time.”
“That works as well as any.” Resting his chin upon his clasped hands, elbows planted on the desk, Lord Deane leaned forward, gaze alight with a troubadour’s zeal. “Once upon a time, Other and Imnada existed side by side under the high king Arthur. It was a time when the barriers separating this world and the world of the Fey were fluid as a river’s surface. Magic surrounded us. It lived in the turning of the planets and the turning of the seasons. From the smallest insect of the earth to the birds of the air, all interconnected like fine lace. All important to the eternal balance. And while those bearing the blood of the Fey and those bearing the blood of the beast maintained a wary distance at the best of times, still they lived united in peace under the king’s banner.”
His voice wrapped round her, pulling Bianca along with him into an ancient lost age until the room seemed to waver and fade. As if a curtain drew back to reveal a stage, before her stood enormous, dark, mist-tangled forests, rolling hills splashed with sun, the silver sparkle of twisted waterways all flowing toward the sea. A spring-scented breeze filled her head. Ruffled her skirts. Birds hopped and chirped in the undergrowth. A fox slunk low through the briars.
She blinked, rubbing her eyes. The forest vanished. There sat the desk. The window. Sebastian, his voice slow and measured as music.
Had she dozed? Had days and nights of too little sleep and too much worry finally caught up with her here in this quiet book-lined sanctuary?
“If you choose to see it as a dream, Bianca, then that is what it is and how it will reveal itself to you.”
Sebastian had answered her unspoken question, his voice rippling and curling like the wind in the forest and the waves upon the river. His gold-brown eyes the same autumn shade as the trees. The rustling of papers on his desk became the twitch and twitter of birds in a tangled thicket.
“The past speaks through me,” he continued in that same hypnotic rise and fall. “But the words create the magic. You have but to listen to learn what has gone before.”
His Lordship’s encouragement freed Bianca from the continuing sense of dislocation. Of course. She’d napped. That was all. She’d fallen asleep to Seb’s faerie story, and vivid imaginings had followed.
Vaguely, she knew she should be embarrassed. What sort of guest fell asleep in front of her host? A very rude one, came the answer. Yet, a fierce desire to return to that ancient wood overpowered her good manners. She would make her apologies afterward. Plead exhaustion or illness. Surely, Sebastian would understand.
Decision made, she relaxed back in her seat, letting the words and the dream carry her away.
“. . . At that time the Imnada’s leader was a man called Lucan. Despite the tensions between their races, he ranked high within Arthur’s circle. They were friends as well as monarch and subject, and Lucan’s warriors served faithfully within the king’s armies . . .”
Once more Bianca found herself standing within the oak forest, sun streaming through the latticed branches to fall upon a carpet of scattered autumn leaves. A path snaked off to her left toward a crumbling riverbank. Two men walked there, heads bent in conversation. One dark. One guinea gold, encircled by a narrow crown.
“. . . the king’s half sister. A woman as beautiful as she was treacherous. Morgana bore the blood of both Imnada and Other. She was jealous of Arthur’s power. She wanted it for her son Mordred. And through him, for herself. Morgana and Lucan became lovers and, bewitched by her beauty, Lucan conspired with her against the king . . .”
The vision changed like bits of shifting colored glass. The two companions became a man and a woman. The dark-featured soldier from before and a lithe seductress with hair red as a sunset and eyes of honey amber, yet empty of warmth.
They strolled the path, pausing at the stream to spread a blanket upon the ground. Clothing shed. Passions rising. Dream this may be, but it was too real for comfort. The man’s gleaming herculean body. The woman’s soft, shuddering moans. Bianca felt like a lecherous voyeur. The fox returned to sit at her feet. Barked once before slinking away into the brush. Bianca followed, the branches swinging back to hide the lovers from view.
“. . . deciding the Imnada would be better served by a new king—one who bore their blood, Lucan persuaded his men to join with Mordred. On the morning of the final battle, the king positioned himself as he had always done, in the center of the line . . .”
The colors shifted once more, falling into new patterns. New landscapes. Bianca stood at the edge of the forest now. Ahead, the trees thinned to become a wide, sloping plain crowded with men. Banners snapped in a cruel, laughing wind. Horses pawed the ground, leaving gouges in the soft earth like gaping wounds.
“. . . opposing armies fought for hours until finally Arthur gained the upper hand. But without warning, the Imnada changed sides, and what had been a victory turned to a rout as the shifters, ferocious and almost indestructible in their battle madness, swept down upon their former comrades . . .”
Like waves beating against the shore, armies raged and swirled in an unending stink of blood and death. Until at some invisible signal, there came a shifting in the lines and, like a storm unleashed, the plain went black with new shapes and new sounds. Screams of terror and defiance became howls and snarls of victory. Men swept forward with the strength and then the forms of beasts. Washing over the king’s army like a cresting wave.
Alone upon a low hill, Arthur’s banner billowed. The king fought against the onrushing horde. Golden head uncovered. Sword raised, blind to the man approaching from behind intent on murder.
Bianca screamed. Throwing herself toward the attack as if she might stop the events unwinding before her dreaming eyes. But as always in dreams, her feet sank into a quagmire. All her effort and she barely moved. There was no way she would reach the hill in time. Even as she left the sanctuary of the forest for the blood-slick chaos of the plain, it was finished. Arthur lay upon the turf, and Mordred stood triumphantly over the fallen king.
The world shook and shivered in a dazzle of broken light, the sun falling oddly upon the ground. Mist rolled out across the plain with a roar like thunder. Enveloping both the armies. Climbing the hill where the king drew his last painful breath.
“. . . unraveling began. Arthur’s gol
den age became an age of bloodshed and death as stories of the Imnada army’s treachery spread among the Other. In the vengeance unleashed, first the Imnada warriors and then any shifter unlucky enough to be swept up in the purges was killed as ancient feuds reignited . . .”
Panic and helplessness pushed jumpy and skittering through Bianca’s body. Caught up in the storm of vengeance loosed upon the shapechangers, a once tranquil countryside now burned with violence. Women and children cut down as they tried to flee. Men speared as they defended their homes. Whole villages torched. And at the edges of her sight, the twisting, writhing shapes of bird and beast struggling for their lives. Here a bear pierced by a quiver of arrows. There a pack of wolves, silver-gray fur sodden red as they plunged and ducked the swiping strokes of swords and clubs. Eagles riding the currents above, screaming useless defiance.
“There you two are. I began to wonder when you didn’t come in for tea.”
Sucking in a frightened breath, Bianca sat up. The dream vanished in foggy, eye-blinking confusion. Nothing remained but a headache, scratchy eyes, and a painful throb in her throat as if she’d been weeping.
Sarah stood in the doorway, candle shine gilding her hair. Sconces flickered, and a branch of candles burned upon a table. Another on Sebastian’s desk. A cheerful fire danced within the grate against the night beyond the window.
Bianca glanced at the longcase clock. Heat stained her cheeks. She bit her lip. “I’m sorry. I can’t believe I drifted off. That is . . . Seb was telling me a story and I . . . I must have been more tired than I knew.”
Sarah threw a guarded gaze toward her husband before waving away Bianca’s stammering excuses. “There’s nothing to apologize for, sweeting. You’re all done in. I’ve half a mind to bundle you upstairs and put you to bed for a proper rest.”
Bianca forced a smile, trying not to reveal how deeply her dream affected her, how the weighty pain of loss clung like a shroud. She smoothed her hand over the book. For a flash, the plain of her dreams stood before her. The eerie, silver-lined mist hovering above the armies. The king shrouded within its pale folds as a mother draws a blanket round a child. The thunder becoming the echoing chime of bells.
She curved her arms around the book, loath to place it on the desk and lose her only source to the Imnada. “May I borrow this?”
Sarah lifted one slender brow in surprise. “Heavens. Why on earth would you want to wade through that dull muddle? I knew it. You’re still upset over Kinloch’s death. It’s no wonder you’ve the pallor of a wheel of soft cheese and you’re falling asleep where you stand. Now, come upstairs. I’ll send a maid with a warming pan and we’ll bring you a tray. Seb, tell her. She’ll listen to you—”
He interrupted Sarah’s monologue with a simple “Of course you may take it, although there’s not much more in there than a few dry facts. Unfortunately, the man who collected the stories is dead. And few are left to care about a race all but forgotten to history.”
Bianca glanced at the spine and the gold lettering stamped there—GILLES D’ESPE. “None of the Imnada survived?” Bianca asked, surprised to feel the sting of tears in her eyes.
“No, my dear. Nothing remains of the shifters but some dusty faerie stories and that mark you doodled,” he answered.
The mysterious crescent. The mark of the Imnada. How and why had it found its way into Adam’s journal and onto the torn piece of paper in his ransacked house? Coincidence? Or—her stomach sank into her slippers with a heavy thud—something far more disturbing?
* * *
Wallace placed two tumblers of whiskey on the table. “When Adam first sought me out, I feared he might have been sent by the Ossine’s enforcers to finish what they began. I nearly took his head off with a pitchfork.”
“That’s when Adam explained what happened to us?”
Mac sat at a scrubbed pine-topped kitchen table. Obviously the heart of the house, it was a comfortable, lived-in room. The faded aromas of baking and stews and a woman’s perfume hung in the golden dust-moted air.
If Mac closed his eyes, he could imagine himself in the kitchen at Concullum, Mother preparing luncheon to take to the men in the fields, her work interspersed with snatches of song. After her death, the singing had ended, and a weighty silence took its place. Father trapped in his grief. Siobhan too young to understand, and Mac struggling to hold the family together even as he yearned to venture beyond the fog-shrouded valley and the narrow world enclosed within the Paling.
Wallace pulled Mac from his memories as he slid into a seat opposite. “Aye, Adam told me the whole, though it only took a few hours before no explanation was needed. Saw it for myself, now, didn’t I?”
“And you weren’t . . . shocked or . . . appalled?”
A corner of Wallace’s mouth twitched. “Can’t say I wasn’t shocked. A forced shift is a hard thing to watch when there’s naught you can do to help. But I’m not one to hold a blood taint against a man. Not when my own name’s been erased from the Ossine’s scrolls. To the Imnada, Jory Wallace no longer exists.” He leaned back in his chair, running a hand over his stomach. “Though, for a spirit, I’m a bit on the portly side. Marianne’s cooking. The woman knows her way around a meal, that one does. Adam used to do all but lick his plate clean. Said he gained a full stone after every visit.”
“Adam visited often?”
“Not at first, but by the end I teased him about paying rent. He didn’t have to hide what he was when he was here or pretend to be what he wasn’t. He could take to the fields and meadows with no greater worry than a poacher or two. Oh, and mayhap Squire Fruddy’s dogs, but they’re a worthless pack of hounds that wouldn’t know a wildcat from a wildflower. Adam could run rings around the sorry curs.”
Mac longed for that freedom with all his heart. To shift without fear, stretching every sense until he could feel the swift-moving mountain storms break in his chest and taste the winds whipping across the moors. To breathe the soft-scented air of meadow and woodland and run beneath a cloud-scudded sky until he burst with joy. To fully inhabit his body and draw on his Imnada powers when and how he chose—not at the whim of a Fey-blood’s dark magic.
He’d spent his youth wanting to escape the restrictive confines of clan life. Now he’d pay any price to find a way back.
He clutched his mug to keep his hands from shaking. Focused on his reason for being here. Shoved aside pointless bitter regrets.
Wallace rubbed a finger against the tabletop. “I tried to help as I could—even went up to London once or twice, close to the new moon. Adam and I shared clan and holding once. I needed to honor that bond, even broken as it was. Adam didn’t like me to see the curse working, but I couldn’t leave the poor lad alone.”
Mac understood Adam’s dread of those nights of Morderoth. Trapped between man and animal, the curse flooded his body like shards of glass through his veins, his brain throbbing with a wracking, crushing pain and sight, naught but a river of blue and silver fire.
One of those visits to Adam must have been what Bianca had witnessed and misinterpreted. Not two lovers, but a man ministering to a helpless friend.
He’d laugh if the whole horrible situation wasn’t so goddamned bloody tragic.
“But Adam broke the curse,” Mac said, pulling the conversation toward the point of his visit before he could fall into self-pity. “He found a way to combat the Fey-blood’s magic.”
“Aye, he did. He said it was his fault the four of you lived under the Other sorcerer’s taint. Fell to him to repair the damage.”
“It wasn’t his fault. There was nothing else to be done. The Fey-blood knew too much. The threat had to be eliminated. Who could foresee what would come of it?”
“Mmm, yes. A useless, worn-out argument, by my way of thinking.” Wallace’s tone hardened, his hand tightening around his tumbler. “But a thousand years of indoctrination is hard to fight.”
“I didn’t mean your wife was a threat just because she’s out-clan.”
; “Didn’t you?” Wallace rose to poke once more at the kitchen fire, his arms thick around as tree limbs, his hands scarred and callused with work. He looked back over his shoulder. A keen-edged light in his eyes. “Well, since I’m the one happy with wife and children and you’re the sorry bastard infected by the Other’s twisted magic, I guess I can afford to be forgiving.”
Mac winced at the truth of that bald statement of fact. The man pulled no punches. He was tough, but with reason.
“Adam was a good friend,” Wallace continued. “I was away in Gloucester when I read about his murder in the papers. Rode straight for London. Don’t know what I thought I’d do when I got there, but I knew Adam had recorded his discovery and that he’d have wanted you and yours to have it.”
A redheaded man. Brawny. Tall. “It was you who gave the constable a clout on the head?”
“Aye, the idiot fool tried stopping me. Said I wasn’t allowed in, but I knew once those blockheads laid hands on Adam’s rooms, there’d be no hope at all. Not that it did me a bit of good. The place had already been turned upside down. Everything broken and busted and naught to be found among the rubbish but a few stray pages and a letter or two he’d never finished writing. I’m sorry, Flannery, but Adam’s journal was gone, and with it any hope of breaking the curse.”
Mac pulled the battered book from his coat pocket, laying it on the table between them. “Was this what you were looking for?”
* * *
“Jory Wallace? Damn, there’s a name from the past. He’s still alive? I figured he’d have turned up his toes long ago.” David St. Leger tipped his chair back against the wall as he flipped a coin back and forth across his knuckles like some gaming-hell elbow shaker.
Tobacco smoke hung low in the crowded chophouse’s greasy air as Mac poked at his fatty beefsteak. “Not only is Wallace alive, but he lives a mere thirty miles away.”
“So, Adam and he knew one another. Not so hard to understand.” Back and forth. Back and forth. The coin jumped and spun across David’s knuckles. “Adam probably figured that, as a fellow emnil, they’d have lots to chat about.”