Separated from Yourselves

by Bill Hiatt

  “Almost as soon as I arrived, word came to the Dagda from your double that I was an assassin. I insisted I was innocent, but he locked me up pending further investigation—which I think won’t happen until he finishes his new castle.” Magnus nodded in the direction of a very large stone structure in the distance. When completed, it would look as though it would dwarf Gwynn’s or any other I had seen in Annwn.

  “Why would the impostor have wanted the Dagda to arrest you?” I asked. “To keep the Dagda from riding to Gwynn’s rescue?”

  “Or to keep me from being around while he executes some plan I’d see through,” said Magnus. “Either way, you’d better get me out of here. As you can probably tell, the bars don’t look like much, but this is another one of those magic-won’t-work-in-here kind of devices.”

  I jogged off to find the Dagda. He was easy enough to locate, since his size was gigantic by faerie standards—even bigger than Gwynn—and his self-playing harp was another good clue.

  He was supervising the work on his castle, just as Magnus had sarcastically hinted, but he dropped everything as soon as he saw me.

  “Taliesin!” he said, grabbing my hand. “It is good to see you. I take it from your presence that Gwynn has overcome Tanaquill.”

  “Sadly, I am not here on such a happy occasion. I come in hopes of saving Gwynn from an impostor.”

  Since the Dagda knew about the blood spell from having rescued me on this very island, it was not hard to convince him that the person in Gwynn’s castle was not really me. I had more difficulty in convincing him that Magnus, whom I’m sure he saw as the original Dark Me, wasn’t really an assassin. Once I finally had him convinced, though, he moved with great speed back to the center of the island and released Magnus immediately.

  “Forgive me for misunderstanding the truth,” said the Dagda.

  “I’m used to people misunderstanding me,” said Magnus with a little smile. “Your Majesty is hardly the first…or the last.”

  “Now that you know the truth, Majesty,” I said, eager to change the subject away from Magnus’s somewhat ambiguous acceptance of Gwynn’s apology, “will you help us set things right?”

  “Much as I would wish to do so, I have few troops to rally,” said the Dagda. “If I had become high king, of course, circumstances would have been very different.”

  Well, there it was: the inescapable faerie politics.

  Play dumb!

  “Majesty, surely you have some followers at your disposal. Have not the Irish faerie rulers accepted your claim?”

  “So indeed they have,” he conceded, “but until my title is indisputable, my legal right to intervene is questionable.”

  “The council—” I began.

  “Dithers as it always does,” he finished. “Tanaquill claims Gwynn is trying to subvert her rightful rule of England, a position not without its adherents. Our old tribunal system has broken down, so there is no one left who can adjudicate the dispute.”

  “Surely you don’t believe her claim?” Magnus asked.

  “Of course not, but if I intervene, I risk war not only with the faeries of England but with those of Brittany, France, and Galicia as well.”

  I had seen the Dagda willingly risk death; he was no coward. He was, however, a politician, trying to squeeze out of me my support for his claim before agreeing to help Gwynn.

  “Majesty, I am no faerie king, but if ever my endorsement of your claim could help in your quest to become high king, I will gladly give it.”

  “Perhaps I might intervene if I thought my right to do so would be sustained later,” said the Dagda, pretending to think the idea over.

  “Majesty,” said one of the Dagda’s servants, “pardon the interruption, but a message has arrived from Gwynn ap Nudd.”

  The Dagda broke the seal and looked at the message, first with surprise, then with alarm.

  “Has his situation become more desperate?” I asked.

  The Dagda let the parchment flutter to the ground. “Worse than that, he has agreed to a dishonorable peace.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Gwynn. In what way is it dishonorable?” I asked, wondering what new twist of faerie affairs was going to make my life harder.

  The Dagda stared at me, angry, but not at me—I hoped.

  “Gwynn and Tanaquill have mutually agreed to acknowledge each other’s titles to their respective crowns.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” asked Magnus.

  “Technically, Tanaquill is princess regent on behalf of her mother and ultimately her father, both of whom are now in prison. Endorsing Tanaquill’s use of the title ‘queen’ is the same thing as voiding her parents’ rights before they have actually been convicted.”

  “Perhaps the message is not well worded—” I started.

  “It says precisely what it means!” snapped the Dagda. “Yet even that is not all. Gwynn and Tanaquill…are to marry.”

  I had not seen that one coming!

  “Aren’t treaties often sealed by marriages?” asked Magnus.

  “Yes, but only when each side has something to gain.”

  “Perhaps Gwynn thought the peace was worth it,” I suggested. Gwynn was too good a friend for me to ignore the accusation of dishonor.

  “His defenses were holding,” said the Dagda. “It is unlike Gwynn to surrender when the issue is still in doubt. Nor would it be like him to agree to something like this crown-matrimonial provision.”

  Neither Magnus nor I knew what he meant, and after a few seconds he continued. “The crown matrimonial means that each spouse becomes the heir to the other. Whoever lives longest ends up with both crowns, regardless of any other heirs.”

  “So you think—” I began.

  “I think Gwynn will be dead within the year,” said the Dagda. “He has painted a target on his own back. Now you see why I am so alarmed.

  “But even that is not the extent of it. Gwynn is the son of Nudd, whom my people knew as Nuada, a high king of Irish faeries before me. Though the high kingship has never been entirely hereditary, blood is one criterion.”

  “So Tanaquill is aiming to be high queen of all the faeries?” asked Magnus, sounding almost impressed with her ingenuity.

  “If she is queen of England and of Wales, and she can lay a claim to the high kingship of Ireland held by Finvarra, then she would be in an excellent position to put herself forward as a candidate for high queen of all faeries, would she not?”

  “What about Finvarra’s rights?” I asked, feeling a little dizzy, as I always did, when I had to think too hard about faerie politics.

  “There I made a mistake myself,” admitted the Dagda. “I had Finvarra and the other Irish rulers who agreed to support my claim to be high king of all faeries swear allegiance to me. There are legalists among the faeries who insist that no one can properly swear allegiance to someone in an office the person does not yet hold. According to that view, what Finvarra was really doing was swearing allegiance to me as high king of Ireland, effectively renouncing his own claim to that office and becoming merely king of Tuam. However, since simply receiving the allegiances of other kings is not the method by which a high king of Irish faeries is chosen, those who argue that Finvarra has renounced the Irish high kingship by swearing allegiance to me also argue that, since I have not yet been elected to that throne, it now stands vacant, giving someone else a chance to make a claim on it.

  “It would not surprise me one bit if it were Tanaquill who first spread that theory around. Up until now, she would have had no way to profit from a dispute over the Irish high kingship, but marriage to Gwynn would give her a claim.”

  “I don’t believe Gwynn would have agreed to all that willingly,” I said, “and neither do you.”

  “Perhaps not,” admitted the Dagda, “but of what importance is that? Unless I had proof of such an accusation, voicing would just make me look as if I were playing politics.”

  Imagine that!

  “Then we must get proof,” I said
.

  The Dagda chuckled. “You are nothing if not audacious. How would you go about such a thing?”

  “Gwynn’s castle has been hard to reach because of the siege. Now that there is peace, it will be much easier, correct?”

  “Perhaps, but we have little time. The marriage is to take place tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” I asked, beginning to doubt my own plan.

  “Yes. The end of the message is an invitation—which is, of course, also a trap. I cannot take an army to a wedding, but I suspect if I go with only a small guard, imprisonment will be the best I can expect.”

  “Get us into that castle, and we will find you proof,” I said.

  “Audacious indeed!” said the Dagda. “What would you do?”

  I explained the details of my admittedly flimsy, high-risk plan, and the wannabe high king agreed without hesitation.

  Courageous? Yes, he was—as long as there was something in it for him.

  Of course, if my plan didn’t work, his courage would matter very little. We would all be dead.

  Chapter 34: Always a Bridesmaid, Never a Bride (Tal)

  Getting me and Magnus into a castle with tight magic security was not going to be easy, whichever theory one believed. The Dagda became more and more convinced by the minute that his invitation was a prettily disguised trap—but danger had never been much of a deterrent to him. I wasn’t as sure the wedding was a trap for the Dagda or any other faerie royal, but I was totally certain that the marriage was a power grab on Tanaquill’s part, and I had long suspected that the Nicneven-Hecate group was backing Tanaquill, which meant my new blood double would be on her side as well. He couldn’t know about any of the developments on Olympus after Hecate’s fall, but that she had fallen Nicneven would certainly know, so my double would as well. That meant he would be on the lookout for me, and probably for Magnus, too.

  Magnus was already in somebody else’s body, and he could hide his mental presence well enough to have a chance of escaping detection. I would be much more obvious. After all, I was still in my own body, and my double would be looking for shapeshifting or similar tricks.

  The Dagda suggested the ideal solution: have me use the blood-double spell to become someone else. We already knew how thoroughly that spell could fool even me, so I readily agreed.

  I was far less pleased with the idea when I discovered whom the Dagda had in mind for me to impersonate: Alroy, the current romantic interest of Doirend, the Dagda’s favorite granddaughter—and someone whose over-the-top flirtation made me profoundly uncomfortable. Her ill-concealed desire to sleep with me upset me, not because she wasn’t beautiful, but because I wanted to be loyal to Eva, for all the good that had ever done me.

  Unfortunately, Alroy was a logical choice. As Doirend’s plus one, he was already on the guest list, and the Dagda could trust him to cooperate without saying anything. Also, because many people knew about the Dagda’s debt to me, someone closer to him, such as a member of his entourage, might be scrutinized more closely than Alroy would be.

  I agreed reluctantly to the Dagda’s choice, and he hurried off to obtain Alroy’s cooperation and blood.

  Magnus had a hard time restraining his laughter until the Dagda had left. “Man, some of us have all the luck.”

  “That’s not exactly what I’d call it. At least she’s bound by a tynged not to seduce me.”

  “Well, she’s not bound by a tynged not to seduce me,” pointed out Magnus, “so if you need to distract her, I’ll be happy to oblige.”

  Magnus kept up that kind of banter until the Dagda returned, and then my evil twin clammed up—for a little while, anyway.

  Because of his greater experience with the spell, Magnus cast it, though I lent him power so the process would be as fast as possible. As soon as Alroy’s blood enveloped me, I became more slender, paler, and red-haired. There was one distinct drawback.

  “Alroy doesn’t have much muscle,” I said, looking down at my arms.

  “He is more a poet than a fighter,” said the Dagda, trying to hide his low estimation of the real Alroy and not succeeding. “If we need to fight, you can shed his form quickly, can you not?”

  “I think I’ll have to,” I said. Magnus was again having difficulty holding in his laughter.

  “What happens if my double is doing a deep scan of every guest?” I asked. “Even though I’m a perfect double of Alroy, my mind is still going to be in there, beneath the surface. I can make that far beneath the surface, but still…”

  “What more can be done in so short a time?” asked the Dagda, eyeing me impatiently.

  “Ideally, we need some kind of distraction if my double seems to be watching too closely.”

  “If the Amadan Dubh tries to crash the party, no one will be paying much attention to you,” said Magnus.

  “But the Amadan Dubh is—whatever did happen to him, exactly?” I asked. “He never reappeared after you beat him on this very island.”

  Magnus smirked. “It’s possible he ended up in suspended animation, buried beneath the sand on Alcina’s island and very cleverly concealed, if I do say so myself.”

  “You did what?” I could hardly believe Magnus would have buried someone alive, even someone like Dubh.

  “He’s feeling no pain, I promise,” insisted Magnus.

  “Maybe not, but I can’t think he’s going to want to join our cause,” I said.

  “All we need is a little of Dubh’s blood and someone in the Dagda’s guard who is willing to volunteer,” said Magnus.

  “The Amadan Dubh is a wanted fugitive,” said the Dagda. “We would need to be careful not to get one of my men killed playing him. If we can guarantee the man’s safety, however, I can think of few things more distracting than an appearance by Dubh. He is supposed to be insane, so his showing up uninvited and risking capture would not necessarily betray the fact that he is merely a diversion for our greater purpose.”

  That plan seemed as if it could backfire, but I couldn’t come up with a convincing alternative to it, so in the end I accepted the idea. Magnus rushed off to draw blood from his sandy captive, and the Dagda went off to recruit someone I hoped would really be a volunteer. Both were successful, and in a while we had a wild-eyed, ornery duplicate of the Amadan Dubh. My double might conceivably see through this disguise as well, but he had no reason not to take the Dubh at face value. My double had all of my memories, but he wouldn’t know any of the things Magnus had done after separating from me, which meant he wouldn’t know Dubh was Magnus’s prisoner, and no one would think the Dubh likely to be in league with me.

  That just left us with the question of gear. For Magnus, his borrowed faerie body suitably disguised, the Dagda had arranged a place among Finvarra’s bodyguards. That cover also had the virtue of letting him bear a weapon. Mine as a guest, however, did not. Nor could the Dagda carry a weapon. However, when I pointed out the problem, he had no easy solution to suggest.

  “Maybe an ordinary weapon,” the Dagda said slowly. “Something that could be camouflaged. White Hilt would be hard to conceal from your double, and certainly my club puts out too much power to be slipped in easily, either.”

  “I know that’s true, but I’d feel naked without White Hilt,” I said.

  “Naked?” asked Doirend, entering the tent in a rustle of a spring-colored party gown. I could feel my blood pressure rising.

  “Granddaughter, welcome,” said the Dagda, embracing her.

  “We wouldn’t want Taliesin to feel naked,” said Doirend mockingly. “Perhaps I could carry in his sword if it were disguised in some way. No one will be checking me for weapons.”

  “The disguise would not hold if any faerie looks closely enough,” the Dagda reminded her sternly. “I don’t like the risk.”

  “Going at all is a risk,” said Doirend, waving her hand dismissively. “Smuggling in Taliesin and the others is a risk. Carrying a weapon or two? That is no riskier.”

  She had him at “weapon or two,” since t
hat raised in his mind the possibility that he could sneak his epic club into the wedding after all. Perfecting the weapon disguises took almost as long as perfecting ours had, but eventually the Dagda achieved an effect that even he grumpily acknowledged might survive all but the closest inspections. Both his club and my sword had been transformed into small gold brooches that Doirend could wear without arousing suspicion. Just to be sure, the Dagda had made their appearance relatively unremarkable to avoiding tempting people to admire them too closely.

  “I would have preferred something more eye-catching,” said Doirend as she put on the brooches, “but at least this way my two favorite men will need to stay close to me.”

  Magnus snickered a little at that, and Doirend winked at him. This was going to be a long day.

  Right before we left for the wedding, Vanora and Nurse Florence arrived from Earth with at least a little bit of good news.

  “There’s a lot of uneasiness in Wales, but whoever was attacking seems to have stopped, and Coventina is in the process of getting things back to normal,” said Nurse Florence. “She used the Lake to show us visions of home, and everyone still seems to be safe, though there’s a lot of concern about the evacuation and the fact that people can’t seem to get straight answers.”

  “Do you wish to check your town in person?” asked the Dagda. “If you accompany us to the wedding, I cannot guarantee your safety,” he added with uncharacteristic pessimism.

  “Taliesin was right before,” said Vanora. “By ourselves we can’t retake Santa Brígida. We’d like to help here if we can.”

  The Dagda gave them a little smile. “Very courageous, ladies. Let me see what kind of disguise I can arrange.”

  He returned very rapidly with the news that they were going as ladies-in-waiting for Mab, the faerie queen of Connacht, who had sent them appropriately festive green gowns.

  The wedding was scheduled to take place at Tanaquill’s castle, no doubt so that whatever con she was running would only have to pass muster with her own guards and not with Gwynn’s. I had never visited Tanaquill’s castle, so I couldn’t have opened a portal there, but Doirend could, so we were able to arrive on our own power, and separately from the Dagda. In order to preserve our cover, we decided that the more distance there was between him and me, the better.