by Tom Deitz
The world whirled.
No! He snapped his lids shut again, squeezing them desperately, first against the pervasive color, and then, with greater force, against the fierce ache that was exploding in his head.
He had almost drowned.
Sleep, he decided. That was what he needed: more sleep.
Not wine. Not the heady, aromatic liquid that someone had set against his mouth, the same someone who was holding him half-upright, he noted, though he could not recall when that had been accomplished.
“Sleep,” he muttered. “Dream. Liz.”
“I fear not, my pretty boy.” A woman’s voice thrummed against his ears.
Somehow David swallowed. Wine burned into his throat, cool and tart, setting sparks to shimmering through his blood. His nose twitched as tortured sinuses were soothed. The pain in his chest receded. The throbbing behind his eyes became more distant. He began to feel a tiny bit more human.
He lifted a hesitant eyelid. It was as he’d feared: the red room was no dream. Which meant the rest was no dream: the capture, the motionless journey through cold, wet darkness . . .
The woman before him was certainly no dream—though perhaps she deserved to be:
She was beautiful, with hair the color of spun copper wire laced with gold which fell past her shoulders. Her high-boned face was pale as porcelain, her lips red as the wine he had just been offered—from a massive two-handled chalice, he discovered, held in a slender hand. He blinked a refocus, looked higher, into eyes the green of bottle glass raised before a candle.
Her dress was ruby velvet sewn with tawny gold. Long sleeves trailed off the side of the bed; the neckline plunged in a deep vee, showing more than a little of the full swell of her breasts. David’s gaze lingered there until he realized she was watching him, then he looked hastily away, blushing furiously.
The woman’s eyes caught his and held them in a stare that was both frank and sensual. One part of him became alarmed, even as another part assessed the situation rationally: This wasn’t right. He shouldn’t be here. Couldn’t be here. He’d been swimming, hadn’t he? With Liz. They’d been naked. He’d given her something . . . but what? He couldn’t remember.
Damn! Where memory should have been was only darkness. His past was a haze, a cloud. A cold murkiness through which he could not pass. He tried, but the pain returned.
“The present is master of the past, boy—and a thousand times more pleasant,” the cat-voice purred again. “It could be very pleasant indeed, if you were to ply your talents properly.”
A hand touched his forehead. Two rings sparkled there, one with interlaced dragons of silver and gold, their heads side by side. The sharp-pointed nails were lacquered the color of garnets.
The finger continued downward, tracing a fine line along the slightly concave ridge of his nose, across the soft fuzz on his upper lip, tickling the lower one, dropping then beneath the outthrust angle of his chin to pause at the hollow of his throat. Then down again, across his bare breastbone—
Jesus! David realized, in his first truly lucid moment. I’m naked!
“And very nicely so.” The woman smiled.
“Stop that!” David cried, aghast.
The finger poised at his solar plexus, inscribing small circles there. “Don’t you like it?”
“I . . . No! Not that! Stay out of my mind! Who are you anyway?”
The woman’s mouth tensed ever so slightly as she drew herself away, but the finger never wavered. “As to who I am, or what I am, that is long in telling. I know your name, however. All in Faerie know your name, David Kevin Sullivan. Windmaster’s Bane, they call you. But I have another word for you, pretty boy, and the word I have is . . . murderer.”
The woman’s eyes blazed then, the fingernail stabbed down into his flesh.
David gasped; his hand shot out in reflex to imprison the fragile wrist.
“No, lady. It wasn’t murder” came his desperate reply, “if you’re talking about Fionchadd. I spared him the Death of Iron. Ailill killed him!”
“With iron! With a common iron kitchen knife lashed to an ash wood staff—which would not have been within his reach had you not brought it into Faerie!”
David released the arm and sat up, scrambling backward until his shoulders thumped hard against a padded headboard. He glanced down, snatched a strip of ruby velvet coverlet across his lower body.
The woman smiled, her anger fading quick as a summer shower. She laid a hand on David’s upper thigh, stroked the tanned flesh absently.
David tensed, but did not move. Dared not move.
Abruptly, the woman withdrew the hand and reached toward a low, cast-metal table that stood beside the bed. A golden wine ewer gleamed there, from which she filled two of the double-handled chalices. One she offered to David, which he accepted with some reluctance.
“I would drink a toast to you, boy.”
“A . . . a toast?” David replied uncertainly as he took the proffered wine.
The woman paused with her lips upon the rim. Beads of condensation had formed on the metal surface.
“A toast,” she repeated, “to murder.”
David felt his breath catch; he swallowed hard. “To murder,” he managed to croak, as he raised his drink in turn.
The woman took a sip, her eyes never leaving his. “No, not to murder,” she amended. “Let us rather say to death.”
“To death,” David whispered hopelessly.
Her brows lifted ever so slightly.
“The death of Ailill!”
David’s throat locked and he nearly spit out his wine, but clamped his jaws, curling his lips inward even as his cheeks puffed out. A thin stream of crimson nevertheless trickled from the corner of his mouth and slithered down his chin.
The woman intercepted its flow with a corner of her sleeve.
“Ailill! Christ, who are you?” David choked out in a strangled voice, then coughed in truth as a bit of wine burned into his lungs.
The woman’s face hardened abruptly, became cold and dispassionate. “My name is Morwyn, boy, since you seem determined to know it: Morwyn verch Morgan ap Gwyddion.”
David frowned. “Sounds Welsh, not Irish. I thought—”
The woman’s brow wrinkled. “Wales—yes, that is what men call Bran’s Country now. Annwyn is my home—most lately. That place where I was born, the place my father came from. But my mother’s land has no true name in any tongue you have heard of.”
David stared incredulously. “You mean you’re not from Faerie?”
“Oh, aye. Or at least in part I am. My father was from that realm, but not my mother. She is a—Powersmith is perhaps the best term for it.”
“Then you’re not Sidhe?”
The woman shrugged. “Nor wholly Tylwyth-Teg. But do not change the subject. There are other names I would speak of: Ailill mac Bobh, for one, King’s brother to Finvarra of Erenn. Once That One’s Ambassador to Annwyn. Of late his Voice in Tir-Nan-Og. Stormshaper, Windmaster—all these names they call him. But to those I would add another: Kinslayer. And that an abomination!”
“Kinslayer,” David whispered, recalling how that word had rustled through the host of the Sidhe nearly a year before when he had stood before their assembled Riding after the Trial of Heroes, while a makeshift spear protruded from the chest of a fair-haired Faery boy who might someday have become his friend. The boy’s father had wielded that spear, but it had nevertheless been of David’s making. And then the accusing Faery chorus had begun: “Kinslayer.”
“Kinslayer,” Morwyn said again, her voice cold as bitter ice. “And among my mother’s kind such deeds demand accounting.”
David sat up straighter and rearranged the cover, wishing the woman would go away at least long enough for him to get his act together. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked slowly. “What’s it got to do with me?”
The woman leapt to her feet, spun about to glare at him. “Because, fool of a mortal, Fionchadd was my son! Because Ai
lill was my . . . husband, you would say, though he would not. Because I loved him once and he betrayed me, then betrayed Fionchadd perhaps beyond any Power to recall, and for that I must have my vengeance!”
David was suddenly wary. “Wait a minute—what do you mean ‘Beyond any Power to recall’? Does that mean Fionchadd’s not dead?”
Morwyn shrugged again and began to pace back and forth beside the bed. “Who can say? What is death? Death is the breaking of that which links Earth and Air: matter and spirit. With your fragile kind, there is no mending. With the Sidhe, the link can ofttimes be rejoined, but by strength of will alone. Yet with the Death of Iron, it is not so simple. Iron blasts the body past repair. Sometimes it can even shatter the spirit, so that it remains forever lost, forever fearing a return of the agony that marked the breaking.”
David nodded thoughtfully. “I suppose there would be pain.”
“What do you know of it?” Morwyn shot back fiercely, stopping dead in her tracks. “Imagine, boy, that you cut yourself. A mere scratch. Then imagine that the scratch takes fire. Imagine each tiny part of your body aflame. Burning outward from that point, slowly, oh so slowly, but without quenching or hope of solace. Were the flesh in truth consumed, the pain would be no greater!”
“But you still haven’t told me whether or not Fionchadd’s really dead,” David ventured at last.
Morwyn shook her head emphatically. “Oh, he is dead—in that body. Whether his spirit may find or build another, I cannot say. Such a thing requires Power. It requires will. I do not know how much of either Fionchadd had. I tried to teach him well, but he had been long from my keeping when he died.”
“But he was your son—”
“I have seldom seen him since he was a child. He was fostered with Finvarra.”
David couldn’t take much more. His head was clearing rapidly. The wine was helping a lot. Memories were returning; the cobwebs of muddle were nearly gone.
“Okay, look,” he said carefully. “What do you want? You wouldn’t have snagged me from . . . while I was . . . while I was swimming, if you hadn’t wanted something. So what is it? I presume it has something to do with Ailill, but what? And can I have my clothes, if you don’t mind? I’m a little sick of sitting around here naked!”
Morwyn raised an eyebrow. “As to what I want, that I will tell you shortly. As to your clothes,” she added airily, “I suppose they are where you left them.”
“Well, that’s just great!” David snarled bitterly.
“I rather like you the way you are.”
“Humph” came David’s derisive snort, as he tried to adjust to another of Morwyn’s abrupt mood swings. “Do you no good.”
“And how do you know that it has not already?”
David felt his cheeks burning. “You didn’t!”
“Maybe.” The woman’s smile was cryptic. “It is best when both desire it, when spirits link as well as bodies, when—”
“Okay, okay, I get the message,” David snapped, his voice rising on every word. “And I know I’m probably stupid to do this, probably stupid to get pissed off and holler at a sorceress who’s got me naked and helpless and half-drunk and God knows where—but if I’m not dressed and out of here and on my way back home by the time I count fifteen, I’ll—”
Morwyn laughed aloud, the sound oddly light and crystalline, yet filled with biting mockery. “What? In one of my dresses? At the bottom of a lake? For that is where this World touches yours. Would you like to drown? You almost did, you know. Of a certain it would be no problem to arrange.”
“What do you mean?” David asked with forced civility. “Isn’t this Tir-Nan-Og?”
Morwyn laughed again. “Oh no, young sir. Lugh’s realm is closed, its borders lately sealed. We are in quite another place, a place a Powersmith alone might venture.”
“Not Tir-Nan-Og?”
“Oh no. A bubble into another World, perhaps. The fires under your land, as Tir-Nan-Og is the sky above it.”
Damn! David raged, in large part at himself. More Faery metaphysics! Distracting him from the matters at hand. Like escape, first of all. Like figuring out Morwyn’s intentions for him, which seemed to be the only way to accomplish the former.
Morwyn’s voice became suddenly earnest. “I need a hero, David. More to the point, I need a thief.”
David’s mouth popped open in amazement. “Me? You stole me from my world and now you want me to steal for you? You’ve got to be kidding. And steal what? The friggin’ crown from Lugh’s head? That’d be a trick, wouldn’t it? Or maybe a pile of shit from Ailill’s stable? Bet you could grow some fine taters with that stuff! Give me a break, woman. I’ve never stolen a thing in my life—and even if I could, why would I do it for you?”
Morwyn fixed him with an appraising stare. “To save your life, perhaps? To save your family?”
“Bullshit. I’m protected!” He felt automatically for the ring, first at throat, then at finger. A cold fist gripped his heart.
“By Oisin’s ring?” Morwyn suggested coolly.
“Yeah, by the ring,” David flung back recklessly. “I gave it to my girl friend, but it should—” His voice faltered as a shadow of doubt clouded his conviction. “It should protect whoever she loves now. And I think she loves me, at least she said she did.”
Morwyn’s lips curved wickedly. “But about this ring . . . Tell me, does it have Power?”
David folded his arms and looked away sullenly. “I expect you know that. You know everything else.”
“It protects you and everyone you love against the Sidhe? Against physical intervention by the Sidhe?”
“No comment.”
Have you asked yourself, then, how, if your lady’s love protects you, I could capture you?”
David’s breath hissed a sharp intake as horrible realization dawned on him. An edge of fear stabbed into his gut and twisted there like a dagger.
“Half of my blood is not of the Sidhe, David Sullivan, and that half is enough.”
“But Fionchadd? The ring worked against Fionchadd, and he’s your son!”
“Fionchadd’s blood was quartered, mine is half.”
“Oh,” David said in a small voice, suddenly feeling very foolish.
Morwyn smiled her triumph. “So you see, you have no choice. No real choice, except to aid me.”
David shook his head. “No, I don’t guess I do.”
“Good. So we can talk now. We have plans to make.”
“I’d be more willing to talk if I had something to wear.”
The woman’s eyes filled with sudden merriment, making her look almost girlish. She pointed absently toward the wall opposite the foot of the bed. “I forget, sometimes, how tiresomely modest you mortals are. You may find some clothes behind that panel with the golden dragon on it.”
David sighed and heaved himself out of bed, wrapping the velvet coverlet about his hips with an angry flourish. It dragged behind him as he found the panel indicated. A gold-worked dragon indeed coiled there, devouring its own tail, its legs an intricacy of knotwork.
“Press the eye,” Morwyn called.
David did. The panel popped open; inside were piles of velvet and silk—red, of course. He pulled them out and stared at them doubtfully.
On top was something that looked like a pair of tights, but with a series of laces at the waist and a flap tied on in front. David knew what that was for, what it was called. But even thinking of it made his cheeks burn. He glanced around at Morwyn, made vertical, spinning motions with his fingers.
“Could you?”
“Indeed not!”
He sighed again and sat down on the floor with his back to the woman. With some difficulty he began to tug on the hose. It was damned awkward. Halfway through he had to stand up. Inevitably the wrap slipped off. He shrugged, and pulled them the rest of the way up. At least they weren’t too uncomfortable.
A glance at a nearby mirror showed Morwyn’s face. She looked amused.
David c
ompleted the ensemble as fast as he could: a long shirt of crimson silk (why hadn’t he found that first?); a tight red jacket that the hose laced to; a short, pleated tunic of burgundy velvet with absurd flowing sleeves that fell almost to his calves. Thigh-high boots of scarlet suede.
“I feel like an idiot,” he choked when he had finished, certain his face was redder than the fabric. He tried to fold his arms and look disgusted, but the unwieldy sleeves got in the way.
“You look magnificent,” Morwyn countered pleasantly. “Quite the Elven prince. Rather short, perhaps, but one can’t have everything. And the color sets off your cheeks to perfection.”
David rolled his eyes. “Tell me about it.”
“Your anger seems to be subsiding,” Morwyn noted.
“Anger won’t get me out of this,” David gritted. “Common sense might. If I didn’t have some of that, Ailill would’ve got me the first time I met him.” Seeing no obvious chair nearby, he helped himself to a seat on the floor.
Morwyn’s eyes sparkled as she tossed him a cushion and sank down beside him. “Ailill is that way, isn’t he? But still too devious for his own good.”
“This is about him, then? This business about stealing?”
“Oh, aye,” Morwyn replied instantly, handing David a goblet of wine in lieu of the earlier chalice he had not finished. “Ailill has escaped.”
David paused, his hand frozen above the offering. “Escaped? But Nuada said there were locks on him, locks and spells!”
“Four metal and four magic,” Morwyn quoted. “Not counting the binding spells—according to his sister.”
“His sister?” David’s face contorted in a mask of horrified dismay. “Oh, Jesus, no!”
“Oh, yes! Ailill has a sister—Fionna nic Bobh, by name. Worse even than him, I suspect, from our two or three encounters. Or at least less scrupulous. She it was released him. I sought to capture him, but he escaped. I tried to scry him out, but he eluded me. My summoning did not find him.”
It was him, David thought. Ailill was the Crazy Deer. “Maybe he couldn’t come,” he said slowly. “I think he may have been in deer-shape—elk-shape, actually. And he may have been wounded; a car hit what I suspect was him, anyway—you know what a car is?”