Song of the Fairy Queen

by Valerie Douglas

  Kyri gave honor to it, the banner of the Fair.

  At the end of the hall, still oddly pristine and white, were Oryan and Gwenifer’s matching thrones. Even the gilt on them still gleamed.

  Kyri turned to Gawain, who stood transfixed, looking around and frowning slightly.

  In his eyes she could see memories floating just out of reach.

  Then abruptly he turned and ran for the side stairs.

  “Gawain,” Gordon called sharply.

  Kyri closed her eyes only briefly, in grief and sorrow, and then followed quickly.

  Not far. Not by any stretch far enough.

  If she’d thought her horror too great before, what awaited them on the stair was very nearly too much even for her...

  Gwen.

  She rounded the corner to find Gawain, frozen, staring at his mother.

  And she was staring, too, with a mixture of horror, pity and grief…

  Here Gwenifer stood, as perfect as the day she’d died, defending in death the stair that led to her husband and son, her swords raised, her gray eyes fierce and determined.

  Kyri cried out, but thankfully Gwen’s life, at least, had flown from the body and not been trapped here in this terrible place.

  A dozen swords had pierced her. Her blood stained the thin shift she’d hastily flung onto herself that long ago night.

  Grief came, hard and fast, in the wake of it, and horror…

  Tears sprang to Kyri’s eyes….

  “Oh, Gawain,” Kyri said softly, “I never meant you to see this.”

  Memories fluttered through Gawain’s mind like gossamer wings.

  A pair of faces, this woman’s one of them, laughing, giving him a quick hug or kiss on the forehead. Unwrapping a present, to find a new sword in it.

  His sword…a present…for his birthday?

  “Who is she?” he whispered.

  Grief thickened Kyri’s voice, as she reached out to touch him and release the spell.

  “Your mother, Gawain. Your real mother. Gwenifer of Giliad.”

  Crystalline tears rang on the stones, delicately.

  She swallowed.

  Her words unlocked his memories, sent them surging.

  A thousand memories raced through his mind.

  His voice cracked as he looked up at the woman who’d bore him. Who’d died defending him.

  “I…remember,” he breathed, reaching out a tentative hand to the frozen figure but not quite touching it. He turned his head to look at the woman beside him. “Did you know her?”

  He’d been young then and she looked so much different now with her hair cropped short…her clothes…her wings hidden.

  “Yes, Gawain, I knew her,” Kyri breathed. “I called her friend once upon a time. She was a good one.”

  Gordon stood behind them shaking his head, stunned.

  “I thought,” he stammered, “I thought… maybe Liliane might be exaggerating, or addled from battle. You know how it gets. I thought, maybe…just maybe… But he is… Gawain’s the Heir, the missing heir. Oryan’s son. The one Haerold’s been seeking.”

  A simple incline of Kyri’s head was all it took to confirm it.

  Still puzzled, still with it not quite all put together, Gawain looked at them in shock and dawning knowledge, his gray eyes widening.

  “Gwenifer. Wife of King Oryan,” Kyri confirmed, looking into his silvery eyes, so like his mother’s, “and father of the future King. You, Gawain.”

  Slowly he shook his head, but it was in denial of the truth that he knew, not negation.

  “That’s mad.”

  His eyes went to his mother.

  “You have her eyes,” Kyri said, softly.

  Gawain went still.

  His mother’s eyes.

  That truth rang within him. Grief and sorrow for her sacrifice burned through him as he looked up into his mother’s face. He remembered loving her as children do, thoughtlessly but completely, knowing themselves well loved in return.

  And Gwenifer had loved him, so much so that she’d died for him.

  Grief burned deep.

  “We can’t leave her there like this,” he said.

  He reached out to touch his mother’s hand, just once.

  The lightest brush and suddenly she was gone, puffed away like smoke.

  Free.

  In shock and grief he cried out and Kyri wrapped him in her arms, rocked him while he grieved for the mother he’d barely known.

  “We’re guarding the future King?” Gordon said in disbelief.

  “The Prince. So far as I know, Oryan is still alive. There isn’t much time, either,” Kyri said, wiping her eyes, pushing Gawain back to look him in the eye. “The Hunters won’t have given up. If you wish to see your father again, we have to go.”

  It was another shock.

  “He’s alive?” Gawain cried. “Oryan?”

  A father, too.

  Save for these sudden memories, the closest he’d come to a father had been Gordon.

  Now there was the memory of a loving brush of a hand across his hair, a familiar beloved gesture…

  Gordon shook his head. “Naw. Lad, you know there’ve been stories and rumors that Oryan has been dead since Morgan disappeared.”

  A light frown creased Kyri’s forehead. “Well, we’ll have to find out, won’t we? But not here. I’m looking for someone else here.”

  Morgan himself.

  The sense of him was stronger below her feet, not above.

  Just the thought made her heart ache, for she suspected where she had to go to find him…

  And her heart broke….again.

  Chapter Thirty Nine

  The dungeons held their own horror for Kyri. First, the door was rusted and shrieked like the dead when it was opened, scraping against her nerves. Second, it was iron. Anathema to her folk. Iron cages, iron chains, iron shackles. Then there was the misery packed down here. It struck like a blow. It was also dark and dank, buried beneath the earth, and reeked of damp, mildew and excrement. It was lined with stone, carpeted with noisome straw and inhabited by rats. It was as if the earth and stone pressed on her, against her, closed her in. Enclosing her.

  Iron and earth.

  She fought the terrible oppression of this place.

  This, though, was why she hadn’t been able to find Morgan until now. Until she was close enough to sense him despite it.

  Tears threatened.

  Her head bowed.

  Morgan. His name was a breath on her lips.

  She scanned the cells.

  These weren’t dead, they were alive, some only barely and at least one was almost mad.

  Their despair battered her.

  She closed her eyes, held it all at bay by sheer force of will.

  “Dear Gods,” Gordon whispered. “They’ve talked of this. Haerold’s secret dungeons. We’ve found Haerold’s secret dungeons.”

  Kyri walked along them, the cells, trying not to brush her shoulders against the iron, searching…nearly breathless…looking into each face.

  Then she found him.

  She bit back a cry.

  Involuntarily, she reached for the gate. Pain seared her hands. She was oblivious.

  He was gray and battered, his hair and beard grown long and so filthy it was impossible to tell the color. His eyes were closed and he was dressed in rags and thin, so thin, but she knew his spirit, knew the shape of him.

  There was nothing she would have, should have, recognized. Had she been human. But she wasn’t.

  Morgan.

  A tear slipped free, to ring on the floor.

  The sob she swallowed.

  “Open them, Gordon,” Kyri whispered. “Get them out, please.”

  Gordon was already reaching for the keys by the door, hurrying to each cell, unlocking them.

  Some of those within fled as soon as the truth of their freedom reached them, realizing that they were indeed free. Some fell to the floor as their shackles were released, huddling the
re, caring only to be free of them.

  It was horror.

  For the sake of those others Kyri couldn’t bring herself to rush Gordon, however much she wanted it. Each second was another second too long for Morgan to have suffered, to have been caged here in this terrible place.

  In her mind, though, she called hurry, hurry, hurry. Please hurry.

  How many times had she dreamed of Morgan being lost, suffering…unable to reach him…to find him? And now she had. Here.

  Dazed, Gawain stared. “Haerold? Haerold did this?”

  “This is where he sent people to disappear,” Gordon said. “His secret dungeons, the ones what they talked about.”

  She nodded as Gordon unlocked the cell, raced in after him as he released Morgan’s shackles.

  Filthy, battered and bruised, dressed in rags, but it was indeed Morgan.

  Her throat tightened. She caught him even as he fell, his eyes still closed. Tears burned.

  Incredulous, horrified, she whispered, “Morgan?”

  After all the years searching…

  He was so much thinner than she remembered, as her arms wrapped around him.

  Briefly, she touched his face.

  Gordon’s head whipped around. “Morgan, did you say? Not that Morgan, not High Marshall Morgan?”

  Behind the matted hair and beard pale eyes the color of the clear blue sky she loved so much opened slowly as she poured Healing into him.

  She could have wept, would have, save for those betraying tears.

  The damage was horrific.

  At some point they’d beaten, flogged and starved him. The shackles on his wrists didn’t burn his skin as it did hers, but it had chafed them raw over the years.

  His pain tore her heart to shreds. She should have looked harder, closer. She’d never thought to look here…in Caernarvon.

  Two years, Gordon had said. Maybe more.

  If Morgan was aware of the end of the pain, of the wounds knitting, he was slow to show it.

  To Morgan it was some kind of a dream, one of the ones that had both tormented and eased his suffering. In some there had been one woman, Joanna, but she was dead. He knew she was dead because he’d seen her die. Watched it.

  He’d loved her quietly and now she was dead. She hadn’t deserved that.

  A spark of rage flickered.

  He could never quite see the face of the other woman of his dreams, he only knew she was beautiful. He had a sense of teasing laughter, of joy, of long golden hair and gentle hands easing his pain. Had he loved her, too? Or was she, too, only a dream?

  Some of the aches he’d known for so long they were almost familiar faded in a rush of tingling warmth that seemed oddly familiar as well.

  “Did you say Morgan?” Gordon demanded.“That Morgan?”

  Gawain had come to the door of the cell, his gray eyes wide.

  Distracted, grief-stricken and guilty, Kyri nodded.“That Morgan.”

  “Well, hell,” Gordon said. “He didn’t disappear, they captured him and put him down here.”

  Morgan clawed past apathy, used the small spark of rage and the memories.

  They kept saying his name.

  Who were these people?

  The sudden sound of howling echoed, a harsh baying, far too close, scraped his nerves. Hunters. That galvanized him. Instantly he shifted to survival mode, his muscles tightened and his mind cleared.

  Kyri looked up in alarm.

  “How do they keep finding us so quickly?” she demanded in furious frustration of no one in particular.

  “We have to get out of here,” Gordon said. “Fast.”

  Helpless, pressed in by stone and iron, Kyri said, “I don’t know of another way out.”

  “As it happens,” Morgan said, his voice rusty even to his own ears, “I do.”

  Kyri looked at him in astonishment, half propped against her shoulder.

  A rush of warmth went through her at the sound of his familiar deep voice.

  Puzzled, he stared at her with no recognition.

  Kyri closed her eyes against a sudden burst of pain.

  It seemed her spell was still working.

  She debated releasing him from it but hesitated, not sure whether it would harm or ease him. Now somehow seemed like the wrong time. For the moment, however much her heart and spirit argued differently, in fairness to him she left it as it was.

  “All right,” she said, getting her shoulder under him.

  Gordon was astonished to see this slip of a girl manhandle a man nearly twice her size.

  He hurried to help her.

  “Through the gate?” she asked.

  Morgan shook his head.

  Kyri’s heart sank.

  “Gawain, close the door then and lock it,” she said, “Quietly, but hurry.”

  The boy raced down the corridor, easing the door shut again, before shooting the interior bolt home.

  With a tip of his head, Morgan said. “Down there, at the back.”

  There was a trap door there, bolted and locked, but one of the keys on the key ring fit.

  Kyri closed her eyes.

  More tunnels, more earth and stone. What she wouldn’t do to see the sky.

  “Down.”

  “Somehow,” she said, staring down into the darkness, “I knew you would say that.”

  Chapter Forty

  The tunnel brought them out by the sea – by Kyri’s standards a long, long way in dark, close quarters, with stone pressing and water dripping. A creature of the light, of the sky, the earth above her head had been oppressive. She’d been shaking by the time they finally left it and was more than glad to put some distance between them and it.

  Morgan sat by the shore on the remains of an old pier and, using Gordon’s borrowed razor, shaved the remainder of a long beard from his face. He’d taken his shirt off to reveal his broad, strong chest – a torment of its own for her, remembering the times when she’d laid her head on it – and she saw he still wore her talisman. They hadn’t been able to take it off of him. She closed her eyes. At least there had been that. They hadn’t been able to do to him what they’d done to Philip and rip out his soul, or parts of it.

  A quick dunk in the ocean had cleaned them all up at least a little, washing away much of the stench of the dungeons.

  Now he looked far more like the Morgan of old than he had before but there was something cold and distant in his eyes, something in his spirit, that worried and pained her. He was thinner than she remembered, his square handsome face more hollow.

  Kyri waited, hunkered down on her heels, listening to the sounds of the surf and looking back worriedly at the distant castle.

  Over the sounds of the sea, she couldn’t hear the howling, but she assumed the Hunters were still searching. It would be a time before they reached the dungeons to break the door down as they must, but still... They were too close even so.

  They’d done the introductions, but Morgan hadn’t even flinched or blinked at the names.

  Not at hers, not at Gawain’s, not at Oryan’s. His face had been still, cold and set.

  “Do you know where Oryan is?” she asked.

  “How the hell would I know that?” he answered sharply, his blue eyes turning to her, lifting his chin in the direction of the castle behind them. “I’ve been in there for two years. Not surprisingly, they wanted to know that, too. I couldn’t tell them that then and I can’t tell you now.”

  Anger and hate burned through him.

  It was wonderful to be clean, Morgan thought, but even better to be free, to breathe fresh air and see the sky after so long.

  “Will you help us find him?” Kyri asked.

  “Find who? Oryan?” He looked at her, his blue eyes going colder. “Thanks for getting me out, but I’ve got my own agenda.”

  It was the answer she’d feared.

  “Oryan was your friend, Morgan. Once you nearly died to save him and his son.”

  “Yes and you know what? Look where it got me.�
�

  The bitter words struck her like a blow and she winced, closing her eyes.

  Morgan.

  She wanted to weep and couldn’t, for the betraying tears. None of these knew her for what she was. Not yet. They hadn’t noticed the earlier ones, but that wouldn’t last long.

  Gordon stomped away in disgust, the boy Gawain just looked sad and disappointed. Morgan hardly cared, but the girl…

  She was beautiful beneath the dirt, now that it was washed away, her features fine-boned and those eyes… the color was incredible.

  Morgan looked out toward the ocean as the sunlight caught in a wave. It was the same color. Something moved inside him and some part of him took pity on her.

  And there was the basic truth that until they got away from the Hunters, they were stuck with each other. He had a pretty good idea that Haerold would want him back in that cell pretty quickly once Haerold found out he’d escaped. Having the ex-High Marshal on the loose again wouldn’t please Haerold much.

  There was a certain satisfaction in that.

  Haerold wouldn’t be too happy with the ones who’d released him, either. Morgan owed them that much.

  “I’m going west,” he said, “To Remagne. If you want, you can follow.”

  Shocked, alarmed, Kyri said, “Remagne. Why in the world would you go there, to Haerold’s own city, Morgan? They’ll kill you on sight. Or put you back in prison.”

  “Do I know you?” he demanded.

  “Once upon a time,” she answered, “a long time ago. But that doesn’t answer the question. Morgan, why would you go to Remagne?”

  “I’m going to see a man about a traitor,” he said. “You might as well go, too. There might be one or two people on the way and one or two people there” including the man he wanted to kill, “who might be able to help you find Oryan. If he’s still alive.”

  Kyri had nothing else, no other choice.

  She’d promised Oryan.

  Her first goal had been to get Gawain safe. Once she’d sensed him, her second had been to find and free Morgan. The third now was to find Oryan, if she could, and deliver his son safely to him, to honor that promise. The only problem was she didn’t have the same strong connection to him that she had to Morgan…and still had.