Strangehold (Crossroads of Worlds Book 1)

by Rene Sears

  A grand double staircase was dimly visible across a vast, unlit room at the end of the entrance hall, and numerous doors flanked the hallway itself. The place was quiet, not a ticking clock or distant teakettle to break the silence. "If Marcus is here, how will we find him?" My voice bounced hollowly off the walls and the beautiful wooden floor.

  Falcon shrugged. "I suppose we'll just have to look." He cupped his hands around his mouth and called "Marcus Grey!" Echoes rang through the empty hallway, dispersing and falling away into nothingness.

  I pulled open a door at random. A coat closet. Kind of prosaic for a place like this. The next revealed a sitting room with an escritoire in a corner. I didn't really expect Marcus to be sitting in a room right by the doorway.

  Falcon looked at me and shrugged again.

  As we reached the end of the hall, I thought I heard something beyond the small noises of our movements. I put my hand on his arm to check him. He cocked his head and his mouth thinned. Footsteps. Someone was coming down the grand staircase. The sidheblade rested in the silver bracelet at my wrist. I had not needed to draw it, and I wouldn't except in dire need, out of consideration for my companion. But it was comforting to know it was there.

  Lights flickered into being as a figure walked down the staircase. As she came closer, I saw a delicate fae woman—I couldn’t help thinking "maiden"—in an elegant silver dress, white-blonde hair cascading down her back, one hand on the wooden railing. She looked carved from moonlight, but I didn't trust it. The fae were rarely as fragile as they seemed.

  Falcon dropped to one knee as she came to the bottom of the steps. "Lady Hawthorn." Surprise threaded his voice—and possibly, dismay? Or was I reading too much into two words? "I didn’t know—that is to say, I am surprised to see you here."

  "You should be, since I have taken great pains to conceal myself. I am most wroth you have found me." She lifted her chin and glared at him. Her eyes glowed like amethyst in sunshine. How could Gwen possibly live with people like this? Maybe one grew used to such unearthly beauty. "Are you here on the queen's command?"

  "No, lady. I truly am surprised to see you. I've come on another errand."

  Relief washed across her lovely face. "If I am not to die today, Lord Rowan, then I will be happy to help you. What do you seek?"

  Wait, what?

  "I no longer serve as her majesty's Blade," he said shortly. "I have not for nigh on twenty years."

  Hair stood up on my arms and I found myself rubbing the bracelet where my sidheblade was hidden. Falcon was Lord Rowan? The Queen's Blade? When tensions between humans and fae were at their peak, he had killed dozens of mages. He'd been unstoppable, until the queen had put up his sword when she agreed to the treaty between our worlds. Even though there was peace when I was an apprentice, Matthew had told us ghoulish stories of the murders the Blade had committed—one more reason, for him, why the fae were too dangerous to coexist with humanity. I remembered the impassive figure in gold armor at the queen's back, mouth hard and unforgiving.

  I'd thought he was some minor fae trapped outside the feygate. I'd been riding around with him for the last day and a half, devil-may-care. I'd let him walk me through a gate here, with no idea if it led where he said. I maybe needed to develop some trust issues, because the ones I had were clearly inadequate.

  "And you are?" Lady Hawthorn was looking at me, head tilted questioningly. She had perhaps already asked once.

  "Morgan Tenpenny." I hoped my voice was steady.

  "Oh! How delighted I am to see you. You must come to Marcus at once. He will be so glad you found him, poor man. He was frantic to reach you. Follow me."

  She turned, skirts trailing behind her, and started back up the staircase she had just swept down. Falcon—Lord Rowan—and I followed. He looked at me inquiringly, and I shook my head. I wasn't certain what he was asking, and I didn't know what I was feeling—besides dismay and confusion. He had helped me, and that counted for something. What mattered was Marcus, and the Savannah flu, and Gwen and the girls. A nice comforting moment of succumbing to panic about fae assassins would have to wait until I had time, if I lived that long. If I didn't, well, it wouldn't be my problem.

  The steps were marble, the railing some golden wood carved to resemble living vines, much like the bridge across the abyss outside. We went up two flights, and Lady Hawthorn led us down a hallway. She opened the last door on the right, and an unfortunately familiar smell assaulted me: antiseptic battling with sickness. It had been six years, but it took me right back to Dad with the hospice nurse sitting behind him, amber vials of medicine piled on the bedside table, his strong frame withered and small. Mom hunched over next to him, as if the cancer had shrunk her too, her fingers winding through his. I shook my head sharply.

  "Did he bring the flu—the magic sickness here?" Falcon—Rowan turned to Lady Hawthorn.

  "A magic sickness? My dear, such an imagination. People have been trying to make such a thing for centuries and no one's had any luck with it. Poor Marcus has a stomach cancer. We thought it was but dyspepsia for the longest time..." Her voice trailed off. I tried to shove away the memories of Dad's all-too-quick decline, and walked over to the bed.

  "Marcus?" It was as bad as I remembered; another strong man I loved reduced to a frail shadow of himself. His gray hair had thinned since I'd seen him, and wrinkles etched deeper around his mouth and eyes. Smile lines were mixed now with lines carved by pain. His hands were spotted and thinner than I remembered.

  His eyes opened and he rolled onto his side, bracing himself against the pillow behind him and reaching for the glass of water on the bedside table. He took a long swallow and then smiled a cut to my heart. "Morgan. You found me."

  I shrugged. "I had help."

  He looked over my shoulder and his eyes widened. The sclera were yellow. "Lord Rowan. It's been a long time."

  Rowan nodded. "I regret the circumstances."

  Marcus grimaced. "As do I." He looked over my shoulder at Lady Hawthorn, who turned gracefully to Rowan.

  "Perhaps you would care for some refreshment, Lord Rowan?"

  The former Queen's Blade shot me an unreadable look, then allowed himself to be led away.

  I sat in the chair next to Marcus's bed and took his hand. His fingers were bony and as wasted as the rest of him. The plain gold band was missing from his ring finger, but a deep groove in the flesh marked where it had rested for decades, even after David died. A flash of gold chain at his neckline made me suspect it had just migrated. He searched my face, then released my hand to fumble a pill from one of the vials by his bedside. The pill had a faint silvery shine, perhaps cast to work faster.

  "Marcus...I would have come sooner if I'd known you were..." I trailed off. I couldn’t have come sooner. I hadn't known he was alive, much less where he was.

  He swallowed the pill, grimacing at the taste, then followed it with a sip of water. "I didn't want you to know—any of you. I could spare you having to watch...this." His face relaxed as the medicine took effect. "I came here to die on my own terms." Perhaps that was so, but he'd vanished from my life after Matthew tried to start another fae-human war.

  I swallowed my resentment. It was done, and nothing could change it. Even if I'd been here, there was nothing I could have done that he wasn't already doing. I wasn't a healer, and even healers couldn’t heal cancer. "You didn't call me to...say goodbye?"

  His smile was a wretched thing. "If things had worked out as I wished them, you would have gotten a letter and a few things after I died. Easier on both of us that way. No, I called you because of the girls." I looked at him, still trying to digest that he was dying, that he'd had no intention of letting me know until it was too late. Easier? Easier for him, maybe. "Your sister's girls," he clarified.

  "What about them?" My hand went unthinkingly to my heart, where the tattoo that linked me to them lay quiescent. They were still safe, for now.

  He tracked the movement and smiled faintly. "Have you already do
ne something to protect them? Good. They'll need it." He drew in a deep breath, winced, and rested a hand on his abdomen. "Rose saw something about them."

  "Who's Rose?"

  "She's the caster that built this place."

  "One caster built all this?"

  He smiled. It was a feeble shadow of his old smile, but it was real, and some of the weight compressing my chest lifted. "Lady Hawthorn helped some, but yes—Rose did most of the work, back in the fifties." Damn. I had done a few things, magically, that I was proud of but I couldn't conceive of undertaking something this complex. I couldn’t conceive of having the vision to even think of the possibility in the first place.

  And she had done it decades ago, and kept it secret all the time since—just as much of an undertaking, really. "In the fifties? How old is she?"

  "She died twenty years ago." He shifted uncomfortably while I tried to reconcile what he'd just told me. How had this woman known about the girls twenty or more years before they were born? "Rose told Damana—Lady Hawthorn—that they are at the heart of a storm that encompasses Faerie and earth, and they are the only way out."

  "What, some kind of prophecy?"

  "I suppose so." He closed his eyes and lay back against the pillow. "Where are they?"

  "Underhill with their mother."

  "You must get them out. If the queen becomes aware of their importance..." His eyes flicked open. "For that matter, you must not let the Association get their hands on them either. Some would want to use them as a weapon against Faerie. They don't deserve that."

  "You always told me prophecy was bullshit."

  He smiled, a ghost of his former grin. "That was before I met Rose."

  "When did you meet her, exactly?" If she had died twenty years ago, around or slightly before I was his student, and he had told me then that there was no such thing as prophecy...I was confusing myself.

  "When I first came here, after I left New York." He sighed. "She's not a ghost, precisely." Another thing he'd told me was bullshit. "She tied herself to Strangehold before she died, and she just...never left. I'm not entirely certain how she did it. And the thing about the girls—It's not exactly prophecy, it's that Rose isn't anchored in time the way the rest of are. Magic leaks from here into our world, but it's not a one way trip. Some of it comes back, and when it does, she gets images. Fragments of things that have happened, or will happen, or may happen..."

  "Magic leaks from here into our world?"

  "And into Faerie. You're at the source, Morgan. The source of all magic." He smiled again, and his face transformed. I remembered this expression from when he taught me; when he was making a point he was particularly excited about it, he lit up. "It's not just a theoretical plane. We're here."

  "Amazing." No wonder the magic outside had been so strong. I sat back, awed. Whoever this Rose was, she had clearly been—was?—a caster of incredible vision.

  He took another sip of water. His hand shook, and some of it slopped over the edge of the glass, but when I leaned forward to help him, he glared at me. "Get the girls out of there, and teach them everything you can. They'll need it. About Rowan—he's dangerous, Morgan. He's deadly. I've seen him kill. Why is he with you?"

  "We're just traveling together until we can get underhill. I didn't know he was the Queen's Blade. Listen, Marcus, I can't just go into Faerie and grab the girls. The feygates are closed." I filled him in on everything that was happening outside of Strangehold—the Savannah flu, Eliza's sickness, Gwen's coming to me for help—Rowan trapped outside the feygates. Marcus's expression turned inward as I spoke until I had nothing left to tell him.

  "Fuck!" He turned his head to the side and clenched his shaking hand. "And I can't do a damn thing to help."

  I took his hand. "You have to take care of yourself, Marcus."

  "It's not enough." He sighed. His eyelids fluttered down again and his chin sagged onto his chest. I let my fingers slide down to his wrist to feel the reassuring beat of blood in his veins, and then I stood as quietly as I could and left.

  *

  It took some wandering around before I found the kitchen. I was thirsty and I wanted some time to sit and come to terms with the fact that Marcus was dying and a dead Tolkien nerd thought my nieces were important to world events. I went down endless staircases, down long hallways, and more by luck than design, I stumbled across the smell of baking bread, and after that, I followed my nose.

  A square of warm yellow light spilled out of a doorway at the end of a hall, along with the yeasty bread smell. Maybe there would be coffee if I was lucky. I made for the door, then stopped before I crossed the threshold. Low voices conferred—Rowan and Hawthorn. It was rude to listen in, but under the circumstances, I wasn't going to let that keep me from finding out more about either of them. Rowan had not deceived me about who he was—he had said I could call him Falcon, not that it was his name—but nor had he volunteered any additional information. Then again, I wouldn't be eager to tell anyone about my illustrious career as an assassin either, if I had one.

  "...thinks you're dead."

  "My dear young man, that is entirely by design. I am content to stay here with my Rose and leave all the rest of it behind. Politics are so tiresome. We have guests enough through Strangehold to keep me entertained, and I don't miss the court at all. You must know, if you have left your former post."

  "The problem with a weapon that thinks is that it may come to think its wielder wrong."

  "The one who wielded you was never one to let a weapon go easily."

  "Nor did she this time."

  "Well, you may stay here as long as you like, but your human friend may need some help. Marcus has bad news for her, I fear. Family, you know."

  "I'm afraid I don't." His voice was icy.

  "Oh, hrm, yes, well. Forgive me, I had forgotten the manner of your upbringing." I didn't believe that for a moment.

  "Do not hold my blood against me, and I won't hold yours against you." For the first time he sounded like a killer. He spoke quietly, but his voice dripped menace.

  She trilled a laugh that sounded genuinely amused. "I wouldn't dream of it, my dear. I am hardly in a position to cast stones. And in turn, I won't hold your attempt to threaten me in my home against you. Oh here, now, none of that. Stand up, you're forgiven. I said I wouldn't hold it against you." The fae took hospitality very seriously, and guest threatening host was a serious faux pas.

  I decided this was an opportune time to take a few noisy steps down the hall and into the kitchen. Hawthorn's eyes were still sparkling with amusement, but they dimmed as she turned to me. "Are you well, my dear? He is very changed. It must be a shock to you."

  The sympathy in her voice brought tears stinging to the corners of my eyes, when in front of Marcus himself they had remained dry. "How long does he have?" My voice was rougher than I liked.

  "Rose does what she can for him, but what she can do is mostly keep him comfortable. He might have a few months yet." The grim set to her mouth said she didn't really think it would be that long.

  "I appreciate what you both have done for him."

  "He is a very old friend, and always welcome here, no matter how long the stay." Or how short, I filled in. "May I get you anything? Water? Wine?"

  "Coffee would be welcome."

  "Certainly." She walked to a counter and started fussing with a kettle and press, her silver ball gown incongruous with the domesticity of the task.

  Rowan looked at me, his face impassive, but I sensed wariness in him—or at least none of the ease which we had previously enjoyed.

  "Marcus tells me my nieces are in trouble, and I need to get to them." I had meant to work my way into it more subtly. Oops. "So if you still need to get underhill, looks like I'm headed that way myself."

  A mirthless smile twisted his lips. "You don't fear traveling with the Queen's Blade?"

  I shrugged as casually as I could. "You said you're done with it, and I believe you."

  The smile rel
axed into something a little more real. "Then I thank you."

  "Well, as long as we're both—" I stopped and looked at him. The fae didn't thank anyone, and they didn't like it if you thanked them. It was a thing.

  "I have lived overhill for some decades now," he said. "I have learned to be flexible."

  "Coffee!" Hawthorn pushed down the plunger on the press and poured a stream of dark, bitter coffee into a delicate blue cup. "Would you care for some, Rowan?" He shook his head, and she passed me the cup and set the press next to me. "In ordinary times, I would send you straight to your sister and her children, but Rose tells me our little back door won't be useful to you at the moment."

  "Is it closed like the feygates?"

  Her smile was charmingly smug. "The queen would have to know about it to close it like that. Unfortunately, one of the ways we conceal our door is by moving it about—or Rose tells me Faerie moves around our door, actually, but the result is quite the same. As it stands now, the door would still get you underhill, but until it moves, you would be stuck in the queen's gaol. We had occasion once to retrieve someone from the oubliette, and I'm afraid it still resets there sometimes," she added, seeing Rowan's horrified expression.

  "If you could direct it to the oubliette, couldn't you direct it to Gwen's home?"

  Hawthorn shook her head regretfully. "Rose could do it when she was alive, but now I'm afraid she doesn't have the power for it."

  "Could she use mine?"

  Hawthorn's eyes narrowed speculatively, but then she shook her head. "She thinks she could do it, but you'd be exhausted afterward, and no use to your sister's children. Don't worry. We'll think of something." She paused again. "And we will do it quickly, because Rose says it must be soon."

  *

  Hawthorn gave me a room just down the hall from Marcus's, and Rowan one next to mine. There was a connecting door, about which I felt ambivalent, but it was locked, about which I felt just fine. I did believe Rowan was done with his former career, and I didn't think he wanted to hurt me, but—he had been the Queen's Blade. I had trouble reconciling one of the fae bogeymen with the person I'd come to know, albeit briefly. I'd heard horror stories about him, tales from the days when humans and fae were at each other's throats. He'd killed mages, he'd killed assassins sent to kill him; he was one of the fae excesses that Matthew had cited as reasons humans should break the treaty.