Doyle stood impassive under the caress of her hand, though Andais had made a torture of caresses. She would tease and torment, then deny them release. She'd made a game of it for centuries.
She touched Frost's arm. "Your tree is dark against your skin now." She moved to Rhys, touching the dual fish. She moved to me, and I fought not to cringe away from her. She put her hand on my stomach where the exact imprint of a moth stood, like the world's most perfect tattoo. "A few hours ago this moth fluttered, struggling to escape your skin."
I looked down at where she touched, hoping she wouldn't go lower. She didn't like me, but she might touch my intimate parts because she knew I loathed her. Sex and hatred always mixed well for my aunt.
"My guards told me that it would become like a tattoo."
"Did they tell you what it was?"
"A mark of power."
She shook her head. "The others have the outline of a creature, or an image, but your moth looks real. It is more like a photograph imprinted on your skin. That is not something that Abeloec's magic can give you. This"—she pressed hard against my stomach—"means you can mark others. It means that those you mark are lesser powers flocking to the warmth of your fire." She curled her arm around my waist, and pressed my body against the black robe of hers. She whispered against my ear, "The men don't like this, no, they don't. They don't like me touching you, not one…" she licked the edge of my ear, "little…" she licked down the curve of my neck, "bit." She bit me, hard and sudden, not to draw blood, but to make me jerk.
She drew her head up and said quietly, "I thought you liked pain, Meredith."
"Not straight out of the box, no."
"That's not what I heard." She let me go and walked around the group of us. "Where are all the other men who vanished from the bedroom with you?"
"The garden has taken them," Doyle said.
"Taken them, how?"
"Taken them into tree and flower and ground," he said, not meeting her eyes.
"As Amatheon rose from the dirt, will they return to us, or was their death the price for this miracle?" She whispered it, but her voice seemed to echo.
"We don't know," Doyle said.
A bird began to sing again. A high, trilling cascade of music fell from the sky, dancing over us. And as if sound could be touch, it wrapped us around in something beautiful, something just out of sight. It seemed a reminder that the dawn would come and death would not be forever. It was the sound of hope that comes each spring to let you know that winter will not last, and the land is not dead.
I could not help but smile. Mistral and Abe raised their faces upward, as if turning gratefully into a spill of warm sunshine.
Andais began to back away as the last sweet note fell upon the air. She backed toward the part of the wall that still held darkness, as if the magic's return could not touch it. "You will make of the Unseelie Court a pale imitation of the golden court that your uncle rules, Meredith. You will fill the darkness that is our purpose with light and music, and we will die as a people."
"Once there were many courts," Abeloec said, "some dark, some light, but all faerie. We did not divide ourselves into good and bad as the Christians do for their religion. We were everything at once, as we were meant to be."
Andais did not bother to respond. Instead she simply said, "You have brought life to the dead gardens. I will not try to pixie on my promise. Come to the Hallway of Mortality and save Nerys's people if you can. Bring that bright Seelie magic into the other heart of the Unseelie Court and see how long it survives." With that she was gone.
We waited for a few heartbeats; then Mistral and Abe stood, mud coating their lower legs. No voice from the dark told them to get back on their knees. I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding.
"What did she mean when she said that our court has two hearts?" I asked.
Abe answered, "Once every faerie mound had a garden or forest or lake at its heart. But every court also had another heart of power—one that would reflect the kind of magic the court specialized in."
"You have brought one heart back to life," Mistral said, "but I am not certain it is wise to reawaken the other."
"The hallway is a torture chamber, where most magic does not work. It's a null place," I said.
"But once, Meredith, it was more."
I looked at the men. "More how?"
"Things that were older than faerie, older than us, were imprisoned there. Remnants of power from the peoples we had defeated."
"I'm not sure I understand, Mistral."
He looked at Doyle. "Help me explain this."
"Once there were creatures in the Hallway of Mortality that could bring true death to even the sidhe. They were kept there to serve as methods of execution, or torture, or simply the threat of those things. The queen did not care for them because, as you well know, she likes to do her own torturing. Watching some other being tear us limb from limb was not half so amusing to her as doing it herself."
"And we healed better if she did it," Rhys said.
Doyle nodded. "Yes, she could torture us longer and more often if the things did not help."
"What kind of things?" I asked. I didn't like how serious they'd gotten.
"Terrible things. A glimpse of them would drive a mortal mad," he said.
"How long ago did these things vanish from the sithen?"
"A thousand years, maybe more," he said.
"The forests haven't been gone so long as that," I said.
"No, not quite that long."
"Why are you all so worried?"
"Because if you, or the Goddess's power through you, can bring this about," Abe said, motioning at the ever-expanding forest, "then we must prepare for the fact that the second heart of our court can come back to full life, as well."
"Perhaps Merry is too Seelie to bring back such horrors?" Mistral said, almost hopefully.
"Her two hands of power are flesh and blood," Doyle said. "Those are not Seelie magicks."
"I came to the princess for aid for Nerys's people, but I would not risk her now, not for a house full of traitors," said Mistral.
"If we save them, they won't be traitors," I said.
"They still believe that your mortality is contagious," Rhys said. "They still think that if you sit on the throne, we will all begin to age and die."
"Do you think that Nerys's court still has enough honor to realize that I'm trying to ensure that their rulers' sacrifice wasn't for nothing? Nerys gave her life so her house would not die, and I want that to mean something."
The men seemed to think about it for a moment. Finally Doyle said, "They have honor, but I do not know if they have gratitude."
CHAPTER 9
"DEITY MAGIC BROUGHT US HERE," RHYS SAID, "BUT HOW DO WE get out? There's no door anymore to the dead gardens."
"Meredith," Frost said.
I looked at him.
"Ask the sithen to give us a door leading out of here."
"Do you think it will be that easy?" Rhys said.
"If the sithen wishes Merry to save Nerys's people, yes," said Frost.
"And if it doesn't wish them saved, or if it doesn't care?"
Frost shrugged. "If you have a better suggestion, I am listening."
Rhys spread his hands as if to say no.
I looked out at the dark wall and said, "I need a door that leads out of here."
The darkness grew less, and a door—a large golden door—appeared in the cave wall. I almost said, Thank you, but some of the older magicks don't like to be thanked—they take insult from it. I swallowed, and whispered, "It's a lovely door."
Carving appeared around the door frame, vines drawn through the wood as if by an invisible finger. "That's new," Rhys whispered.
"Let us go through, before it decides to vanish," Frost said.
He was right. He was most certainly right. But strangely, none of us wanted to pass through the door until the invisible finger had finished drawing its vines. Only when the wood
had stopped moving did Doyle touch the golden handle, and turn it. He led the way into a hallway that was almost as black as his own skin. If he stood still, he'd blend into the background.
Rhys touched the wall. "We haven't had a black corridor like this in the sithen for years."
"It's made of the same rock as the queen's chamber," I whispered. I'd had so many bad experiences in the queen's shiny black-walled room that seeing the sithen turn black like that room frightened me.
Mistral was the last one through the door. When he stepped through, the door vanished, leaving a smooth black wall, untouched and unyielding.
"The hallway where Mistral and Merry had sex is turning to white marble," Frost said. "What caused this corridor to change to black?"
"I do not know," Doyle said. He was looking up and down the black hallway. "It has changed too much. I do not know where we are in the sithen."
"Look at this," Frost said. He was staring up at the wall across from us.
Doyle moved to stand beside him, staring at what, to me, looked like blank wall. Doyle made a harsh, hissing sound. "Meredith, call the door back."
"Why?"
"Just do it." His voice was quiet, but it vibrated with urgency, as if he were forcing himself to whisper when what he wanted to do was scream.
I didn't argue with that tone in his voice. I called out, "I would like a door back into the dead gardens."
The door appeared again, all gold and pale wood, and carved vines. Doyle motioned Mistral to take the lead. Mistral reached for the golden handle, a naked sword in his other hand. What was happening? Why were they frightened? What had I missed?
Mistral went through with Abe behind him, me in the middle, and Rhys and Doyle following. Frost came last. But before I passed thorugh the doorway, Abe stopped, and Mistral's voice came urgent from inside the dead gardens, "Back, go back!"
Doyle said, "We cannot stay here in the black hallway." Rhys was pressed against my back, Abe pressed against my front. We were frozen between the two captains of the guards, each trying to get us moving in the opposite direction.
"We cannot have two captains, Mistral," Frost said. "Without a single leader we are indecisive and endangered."
"What is wrong?" I asked.
There was a sound from down the hallway—a heavy, slithering sound that froze my heart in my chest. I was afraid I recognized it. No, I had to be wrong. Then a second sound came: a high chittering sound—one that could be mistaken for birds, but wasn't.
"Oh, Goddess," I whispered.
"Forward, Mistral, now, or we are lost," Doyle said.
"It is not our garden beyond the door," Mistral said.
The high-pitched bird-like sounds were coming closer, outpacing the heavy slithering weight. The sluagh, the nightmares of the Unseelie Court and a kingdom in their own right, moved fast but the nightflyers always moved faster than the rest of the sluagh. We were inside the sluagh's hollow hill; somehow we had crossed to their sithen. If they found us here…we might survive, or not.
"Do sluagh wait on the other side of the door?" Doyle asked Mistral urgently.
"No," Mistral called back.
"Then go, now!" Doyle ordered.
Abe stumbled forward as if Mistral had moved suddenly out of the way. We came through the door in a rush with Doyle pushing from behind. He was like some kind of elemental force at our backs. It put us in a heap on the ground. I couldn't see anything but white flesh, and I felt the muscled weight of them all around me.
"Where are we?" Frost asked.
Rhys moved, drawing me to my feet with him. Doyle, Mistral, and Frost were all on alert, weapons out, searching for something to fight. The door had vanished, leaving us on the shore of a dark lake.
Lake may have been too strong a word. The depression was dry except for a slimy skim of water at the very bottom. Bones littered the floor of the dying lake, and the shore where we stood. The bones shone dully in the dim light that fell from the stone ceiling, as if the moon had been rubbed into the rock. All around the shore, the stone walls of the cavern rose steeply up into the gloom, surrounded only by a narrow ledge before a steep drop-off into the lake bed.
"Call the door again, Meredith," Doyle said, his dark face still searching the dead land.
"Yes, and be more specific about our destination this time," Mistral said.
Abe was still on the ground. I heard a sharp intake of breath, and glanced over at him. His hand was black and shiny in the dim light. "What are these bones that they could cut sidhe flesh?"
Doyle answered him. "They are the bones of the most magical of the sluagh. Things so fantastical that when the sluagh began to fade in power, there was not enough magic to sustain their lives."
I clung to Rhys and whispered, "We're in the sluagh's dead gardens."
"Yes. Call the door, now." Doyle glanced at me, then back to the dim landscape.
Rhys had one arm around me, the other hand full of his gun. "Do it, Merry."
"I need a door to the Unseelie sithen." On the far side of the dead lake, the door appeared.
"Well, that's inconvenient," Rhys whispered wryly, but he tucked me closer against his body.
"There is room to walk the edge, if we are careful," Mistral said. "We can make our way between the cavern walls and the lake bed, if we pick our way carefully around the bones."
"Be very careful," Abe said. He was on his feet now, but his left hand and arm were coated with blood. He still held the horn cup in his right hand, though nothing else—he'd left all his weapons behind in the bedroom. Mistral had dressed and rearmed. Frost was as armed as he had begun the night. Doyle had only what he had been able to grab—no clothes limited how much you could carry.
"Frost, bind Abeloec's wound," said Doyle. "Then we will start for the door."
"It is not that bad, Darkness," Abe said.
"This is a place of power for the sluagh, not for us," Doyle said. "I would not take the chance that you bleed to death for want of a bandage."
Frost didn't argue, but went to the other man with a strip of cloth torn from his own shirt. He began to bind Abe's hand.
"Why does everything hurt more sober?" Abe asked.
"Things feel better sober, too," Rhys said.
I looked up at him. "You say that like you know that for certain. I've never seen you drunk."
"I spent most of the fifteen hundreds as drunk as my constitution would let me get. You've seen Abe working hard at it—we don't stay drunk long—but I tried. Goddess knows, I tried."
"Why then? Why that century?"
"Why not?" he asked, making a joke of it, but that was what Rhys did when he was hiding something. Frost's arrogance, Doyle's blankness, Rhys's humor: different ways to hide.
"His wound will need a healer," Frost said, "but I have done what I can."
"Very well," said Doyle, and he began to lead the way around the edge of the lake, toward the soft, gold shine of the door that had come because I called it. Why had it appeared all the way across the lake? Why not beside us, like the last two times? But then, why had it come at all? Why was the sluagh's sithen, as well as the Unseelie sithen, obeying my wishes?
The shore was so narrow that Doyle had to put his back to the wall and edge along, for his shoulders were too broad. I actually fit better on the narrow path than the men, but even I had to press my naked back to the smooth cave wall. The stones weren't cold as they would have been in an ordinary cave, but strangely warm. The lip of shore we inched across was meant for smaller things to travel, or perhaps not meant to be walked at all. The skeletons littering the shore were those of things that would have swum, or crawled, but nothing that walked upright. The bones looked like the jumbled-together remains of fish, snakes, and things that normally didn't have skeletons in the oceans of mortal earth. Things that looked like squid, except that squid did not have internal skeletons.
We were halfway around that narrow, bone-studded shore when the air wavered on its far side next to the door. For a mo
ment the air swam, and then Sholto, King of the Sluagh, Lord of That Which Passes Between, was standing there.
CHAPTER 10
SHOLTO WAS TALL, MUSCLED, HANDSOME, AND LOOKED EVERY bit a highborn sidhe of the Seelie Court. His long hair was even a pale yellow, like winter sunshine with an edge of snow to it. His arm was in a sling, and as he turned his head to the light, a faint darkness—like a stain of bruises—touched his face. Kitto had said Sholto's own court had attacked him. They were afraid that bedding me would make Sholto completely sidhe and no longer sluagh enough to be their king.
Four robed figures stood behind him. They fanned out, some toward the golden door, some toward us. Doyle said, "King Sholto, we are not here of our own choice. We ask forgiveness for entering your kingdom uninvited."
I would have dropped to my knees, if there had been room, but the crumbling edge of black earth was only inches from my feet, and my back was plastered against the stone wall. There was no room for niceties on this path. There was also precious little room for the guards to fight—if they attacked us now, we were going to lose.
A blade glimmered from the edge of one of the shorter cloaked guards as he spoke. "You are nude and nearly weaponless: Only something desperate would bring you here like this, with the princess in tow."
"It is the beginning of their invasion," came a female voice from one of the tallest guards. I knew that voice. It was Black Agnes, Sholto's chief bodyguard, and chief among his lovers at this court. She had tried to kill me once before for jealousy's sake.
Sholto turned enough to look at her. The movement revealed that wide, pale bandages were all he was wearing on his upper body. Whatever they covered must have been a terrible wound.
"Enough, Agnes, enough!" Sholto silenced her, rumbling echoes around the cavern.
The black-robed figure of Agnes that loomed over him glanced at me. I had a moment to see the gleam of her eyes in the dark ugliness of her face. The night-hags were ugly; it was part of what they were.
One of the shorter, robed guards leaned into Sholto, as if whispering, but the echoes that hissed along the cave walls were not human speech. The high-pitched tittering of a nightflyer was coming from the human-size figure—though it couldn't be a nightflyer, for it walked upright.
Mistral's Kiss mg-5 Page 9