by LJ Rivers
“That’s enough, Fae.” His eyes widened. “My Queen!”
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Taliesin, Your Highness. Eagle scout.” He straightened. “Auberon’s soldiers are marching west.”
“How far out?” Taryn asked.
“Eight to ten awrs. Three divisions. Two thousand on unicorns, ten griffins and a dozen Nadredd.”
I stood. “Commander Taryn, execute your plan!”
“At once, My Queen. Alun, gather the manticores by the armoury. Lady Carolina, go with him and make sure every manticore and griffin has a bucket of liquid fire within the awr.”
“On it,” Charlie said. She grabbed Rowan by his cloak and placed a kiss on his lips. “Strike true with every shot, love.”
“I’ll tell you about it when all this is over.”
They ran off, parting ways outside the double doors. Within a minute, the room was nearly empty. Even the naked eagle scout had jumped to his feet and gone after Taryn. The only ones left were Brendan and me.
He took my arms. “I have to go.”
“I know. Don’t let anyone cross the bridge.”
“I won’t.” He pulled me into his arms. “Wild ride, Ruby Ruby Morgan.”
“Wild ride, O’Callaghan O’Callaghan.”
Our lips locked, and for a brief moment I was thrown back to the stone on the banks of Nordee Brook back home in Chester, the place where we had first kissed. I could almost hear the bubbling water and inhale the crisp air.
Brendan let go and leaned back. “And you’ll stay here, right?”
“Not a chance.”
“I didn’t think so.” He flashed a broad smile. “Just promise me one thing, will you?”
“What?”
“When you release your magic, don’t hold back.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
The smell of wet grass and manure was potent, but I was used to it from my days helping out at Mr Durham’s farm back home in Chester. I could vividly recall the first time I stepped into his stable and stood face to face with Goliath, Mr Durham’s nine-foot tall shire horse. I had let out a yelp at the sight of the giant horse and fallen back on my arse, much to the farmer’s amusement.
“You should see this, Mr Durham,” I mused to myself.
“What’s that, Highness?” said the young Fae guiding me between the stalls.
I waved her off. “Oh, just an old memory.”
She turned and skipped backwards, her eyes eager like a child’s on Christmas Eve, reflecting the light from her handheld lamp. “From … the other land?”
“Earth, yes. Growing up, I used to work at a stable, too, when I was your age.” I tilted my head. “You’re about fourteen, right?”
“Twelve, My Queen. I’m used to it. Like you, people think I look older.”
We passed one empty stall after the other; I had counted at least twenty-five on each side, and we still hadn’t reached more than a quarter of the length of the stable.
“You do,” I agreed.
The guard at the castle, whom I had ordered to show me to the stables, had said I would meet Em, the stable hand. I had envisioned an adult, maybe even an older woman. Instead, this smiling, joyful teenager had greeted me as I stepped inside.
“Are you alone here?”
“Yes,” Em replied. “I mean, usually there are twenty of us, but now they’ve all ridden out to fight.” She stopped and motioned to the stall on my right. “Here she is.”
The stall door reached twelve feet above the grass- and sawdust-covered floor, with a ten-inch slit underneath. Behind the door was only darkness. I craned my neck to see above it, but to no avail.
“She’s shy,” Em said. “Until she trusts you, that is. Then she’s the most loving and loyal unicorn you’ll ever find.”
“She?”
Em nodded at the crossbeam over the door. I hadn’t noticed it before, but when Em’s lamp illuminated it, the golden painted letters were easy to read.
“Rhiannon.”
“Rhiannon,” Em echoed. “She’s named after the white unicorn of ancient times. Rhiannon pulled the sun chariot across the sky every day, giving people the sunrise and sunset so they would know when to work and when to sleep.”
“Who taught you that?”
“My da used to tell me the ancient tales at night. He told me about Rhiannon and Pwyll, the black unicorn stallion. Pwyll would ride across the night sky with the moon chariot behind him, lighting all the stars as he went. Rhiannon and Pwyll loved each other, but would only meet on very rare occasions. When the moon and the sun became one in the sky, my da said, it was because Rhiannon and Pwyll were allowed to meet for a fleeting moment.”
“That’s a lovely story,” I said. “We could use some help with the sun now.”
I placed my hand on the stall door. I could sense her presence behind the black and brown wood. It felt similar to how I would sense my father or my brother when they were in the shadows close to me. My skin prickled.
“You want to meet her?”
“Yes, please,” I replied with a slight tremble in my voice.
Em raised the wrought-iron latch securing the stall door and took a few steps back. She took my arm, pulling me with her. “Give her a little space. She’ll come and look at you and smell you.”
Out of the blackness in the stall stepped a unicorn so white it reminded me of how my eyes had hurt when I first entered the brightness of Morgana’s court. If Goliath the shire horse was nine feet tall, this magnificent creature had to be twelve, if not thirteen.
“How are you today, beautiful?” Em’s voice was no longer that of a twelve-year-old girl, but carried the maturity and calmness of an adult. “You have a visitor. Come, say hello to your queen.”
“She’s … she’s …” I had no idea how to describe her.
“I know,” Em said. “She really is.”
Rhiannon took two steps out from her dark confinement, which with her long legs meant she had covered the ten feet from her door to where we stood. Her amber eyes shone like fire, in contrast with blinding white fur. A four-foot spiralling horn, glimmering in a sapphire blue—like my ring—protruded from her forehead. The same colour my father had seen in my eyes when he first held me in his arms, and which he had mistakenly identified as ruby.
The unicorn’s nostrils flared as she sniffed the air around me. I stood frozen, fascinated and frightened at the same time.
“Don’t be scared,” Em said. “If she doesn’t like you, she’ll just go back to her stall.”
“And if she likes me?”
Before Em could reply, the unicorn suddenly pranced and let out a whinny so loud I had to cover my ears. She waved her front legs in the air, before crashing down again, sending a minor earthquake through the royal stables of Pelles.
“Then she’ll do that,” the young Fae said enthusiastically. “She recognises you.”
“Recog—?”
“You’re a Morgana, silly!” Em clasped her hand over her mouth and fell to her knees. “Forgive me, Highness! I didn’t mean to offend you.”
I laughed and lifted her chin with the tip of my finger. “Don’t worry, Em. You didn’t offend me at all. Get up, will you?”
She stood, her eyes still filled with despair from her slip of the tongue.
“I’m not used to all this grovelling. To be fair, all you did was tell the truth. I am rather silly.”
“I only meant to say that Rhiannon knew Morgana so well she would easily recognise her blood in you.”
“Will she allow me on her back?”
Em grinned. “Guess you’ll find out.”
Five minutes and two stepladders later, the five foot two queen and the four foot six or thereabouts stable hand had managed to fasten and secure a saddle on the giant unicorn. It looked nothing like the saddles I had sat in before, not only because of the flat construction as opposed to the curved one of modern times. Every part of it was either monogrammed leather, the golden M of Morgana, or soli
d gold. Even the stirrups shone yellow in the glow of Em’s lamp.
I stepped down from my ladder and walked up to Rhiannon’s face. I stroked her gently, and she replied with a slight bobbing of her head.
“Will you let me ride you, girl?” I asked. “It’s not going to be a nice trot in the fields on a Sunday morning, I’m afraid.”
Rhiannon gave a quick snort.
“She says it’s fine,” Em offered. “She’ll let you ride her.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Really?”
The girl shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Those people who say you look old for your age, Em. Do they also say you’re smart for your age?”
“No. They usually say I’m too smart for my own good.”
I chuckled. “I think they hit the nail on the head.”
There was no point delaying it. My father’s soldiers were already marching across the Avalen plains, and my army, small as it may be compared to his, was assembling outside the walls of Pelles. I returned to the stepladder and climbed it.
“Here.” Em handed me the reins. “As soon as you sit down, she’ll show you if she accepts you.”
“What? You said she recognised me, and that she would let me ride her.”
“I’m twelve, My Queen. I could be wrong, but you’ll soon find out. I’ll have a force field ready for you on the floor.”
Oh, crap!
I placed my left foot in the stirrup and grabbed the gold horn at the front of the saddle. With a swift movement, I swung my right leg over the unicorn’s back and landed on the padded seat. I clung to the horn and reins, waiting for Rhiannon to throw me off, but she stood quiet and calm like we were mimicking King George’s statue in Trafalgar Square.
“See? I told you.” Em stood on top of her stepladder, smiling as if this was the most natural thing in the world.
“Thank you, Em,” I said. “Run back home and stay safe, will you?”
“Promise you’ll do the same?”
“I’ll do my best. Now run, little Fae.”
She grimaced. “Run?” She turned and threw herself off the stepladder, her tiny wings unfolding instantly, carrying her above the stable floor.
Leaning forward, I put my mouth as close to Rhiannon’s ear as I could. “I really, really envy them those wings.”
Rhiannon wiggled her ears.
“Right then, it’s you and me, gorgeous.”
I clicked my tongue and tugged at the reins softly to the left. Rhiannon moved her head accordingly and started forward. Her feet clopped on the floor in a gentle, familiar rhythm. As we left the double doors at the end of the long stable hallway, I tapped the sides of the ridiculously wide unicorn’s back with my boot heels. Again, Rhiannon responded as I was used to from riding normal horses, increasing the pace of her gait.
The gravel path that led from the stables to the castle, and which I had come down some twenty minutes earlier, was well suited for a novice unicorn rider. I tapped Rhiannon’s sides again, and she switched to a trot. It took me five or six of her strides to stop bouncing and synchronise my up and down movement to her rhythm.
I leaned forward, patting the side of her muscular neck. “We’ll hold off on the galloping for now, I think.”
She gave a little snort again.
“I’ll go with Em’s interpretation and take that as a yes.”
I steered the unicorn up the curved path towards the castle gate. Four guards stood outside, one of whom had told me where to find the stables. He had also objected to me going down there alone, but I had used my most regal voice as I ordered him and his colleagues to wait for me by the gate.
As I neared, he raised his hand to greet me. “I see you managed on your own, Highness.”
“I did. Let’s hope this fine lady will join me in battle.”
“Queen Morgana would be the first to convince you of that.”
I rode past them and inside the castle walls. A few soldiers were still within the premises, guarding those who would not partake in the battle. One by one they stopped by the cobbled road through the castle, raising their swords, spears, and axes as I rode by.
“Hail the queen,” a woman shouted from one of the open windows.
“Send the usurper to the Nethers!” another voice cried.
The air gradually filled with cheers and shouts, either praise to me or various ways I was to kill my father. I smiled and waved, hoping I could live up to their expectations. And hoping I would not have to kill my father to fulfil them.
I rode my unicorn through the southern castle gates and into the streets and roads that made up the south end of Pelles village. There were a few people in the streets at first, but by the time I reached the south wall, some two hundred of them followed behind Rhiannon and me. Little by little, the uncoordinated cheers and shouts had turned into one united chant.
“Hail Queen Ruby, saviour of Avalon!”
The giant double doors of the south gate opened, courtesy of three men operating the chain wheel construction. I turned to wave at the citizens, shocked to see that I had been way off in my estimate. The narrow street was stacked to the brim with at least two thousand men, women, and children. At least a dozen midnight blue banners with the golden M waved over the crowd.
“Thank you,” I shouted, but my voice was drowned in the noise.
I tapped my heels on Rhiannon’s sides, and she resumed her trot. With the chants fading behind us, I leant forward once more.
“Show me what you’ve got, love.” I loosened the reins a little, still gripping them tight, then gave them a quick shake while bumping my heels against her.
She lowered her head, pointing her sapphire spear straight ahead, then leapt forward. My stomach somersaulted as her trot changed into a gallop. I couldn’t help myself and let out a small cry of excitement. I felt in control, even if my charger was the size of a small bus and probably twice as strong.
We rode past the hundreds, maybe thousands of tents that made up my army’s camp. From the top of each tent, a line of grey smoke rose to the dark sky. I imagined them sitting by the fires the night before, talking about the upcoming battle. Or maybe they told stories about their loved ones back home, and how they hoped to see them again.
My army.
I could write a list of all the strange and unbelievable stuff that had happened over the last twelve to fourteen months. The fact that I was not a half Fae, for instance, would certainly make it into the top three. And then there were the knights, of course, moving in and out of a magical prison hidden between time and space. Not to mention the actual time-travelling portal I had gone through myself.
But somehow, the concept of my army topped the list.
What a wild ride.
The Breudwidd River crossed the Avalen plains from southwest to northeast, and the Queen’s Crossing bridge was about ten miles south of the Pelles wall, or five of the Avalonian pancemiles. I seemed to recall having read that a racehorse could gallop at thirty-five to forty miles an hour at top speed. There was no guessing what pace Rhiannon the unicorn could maintain, though, but I figured twenty miles an hour might be within her reach. That would mean we could be at the bridge in half an hour.
The road turned into a steep climb. Instead of pulling at the reins, I used my body the way I remembered from one of Mr Durham’s lessons, gently steering her with my legs and bending to the side while slowing my breath. Rhiannon finally fell into a light trot as the orange hue of the sky on the other side of the ridge rose ahead. We reached the top of the climb and I made the unicorn stop.
Below us, only a few hundred yards downhill, a multitude of torches lit up the area around the bridge. Dark figures were lined up on this side of the river, in groups of ten soldiers wide and fifteen deep. Behind the first line of groups stood another, and another behind those, and so on. There were thousands of soldiers, all ready to fight for Avalon.
In the name of Morgana.
On the south side of the river, the silhouettes of the Twin Hil
ls rose from the ground. The Culach Pass was nothing but a black line between them, which in all fairness should have been called mountains, judging by their size. Somewhere beyond, if all went to plan, my father’s soldiers would face our first line of defence, the archer platoons.
I clicked my tongue and got Rhiannon moving again, approaching the back lines of my army.
One of the soldiers, a Fae with a spear in his hand, looked back at me. He whispered to a Fae on his right, and the murmur spread rapidly through the ranks. By the time I had passed the lined-up soldiers, the whispers had reached the front rows. I couldn’t hear all that was said, but some words caught my attention.
“… she was hiding back at …”
“… was a coward …”
A small group of soldiers stood by the bridge, and I let out a sigh of relief when I recognised both Brendan and Commander Taryn among them. My Master of War threw a glance over his shoulder, and I had to bite my lip not to burst out laughing at his gawking expression. It quickly changed to one of despair, or maybe anger. It wasn’t always easy to tell with those already sharp, inquisitive eyes of his.
Rhiannon came to a halt ten feet in front of him, and I started swinging out of her saddle. The drop from the stirrup to the ground was twice what I was used to from normal horses back home, and it was sheer luck that kept me from falling as I landed on the grass. Luckily, I had chosen to dismount the giant unicorn on the side facing away from the thousands of soldiers, and I hoped none of them had noticed my less than elegant move.
Brendan turned, too. He simply smiled and nodded at the back of Taryn, as if to let me know I was in for a scolding.
“My Queen!” Taryn hissed as he approached. “You can’t be here! We agreed that—”
“I am here, Commander Taryn, and that’s the end of it.”
“But it’s too much of a risk. You’re too—”
“I’m of no value to these people if they think I’m hiding under my bed. I appreciate your concern, but I have made my decision. Don’t waste more precious time quarrelling. This is how it’s going to be.”
There was a slight twitch under one of his eyes, but other than that, he reacted every bit as professionally as I had hoped. “Very well, My Queen.”