Silver's Lure

by Anne Kelleher

  “I’m fine.” Cwynn picked himself up. His hook was stuck once again, this time between two stones, and the leather straps that held it in place were caught on a jagged piece of rock. “Hey, aren’t you coming down here, too?” The dog turned its back deliberately and growled at something—or someone—Cwynn couldn’t see. Cwynn wrenched his hook into place, wondering what he was doing here and how he was getting out. From above, the dog growled menacingly. The putrid stench was growing stronger all around him. He thought he heard a noise, like a groan, and the earth seemed to shift all around him. He squinted into the dark.

  A thousand eyes looked back.

  Cwynn gasped, then eased forward. There had to be hundreds of scrawny, skinny creatures, with huge ears and eyes, all whispering, all centered around something that lay in the center of the open space. It had a bald spotted head, and the eyes that turned to stare at him might have been human, but they burned with an unnatural light, like an animal’s, in the gloom. It’s belly was enormously distended. The thing opened its mouth and the ground beneath his feet vibrated to the low moan that issued from its mouth. The creatures chattered like locusts. The thing shrieked, and two arms flailed, and Cwynn saw, to his disgust, that they ended in two small human hands. “Help me,” it…she…mouthed.

  But Cwynn couldn’t move. He stood there, as with a jerk and the sound of wet cloth rending, the creature’s midsection began to rip apart. Something white and wet as a maggot squirmed out. It had a sectioned body that ended in a double-pointed tail. With feet, he noticed. Human feet. Ten toes. It had nubs for arms, too, that ended in perfect little hands, just below its head.

  Two huge eyes swiveled around and fixed on Cwynn where he stood, scarcely able to comprehend what he witnessed. From the other side of the room, he heard a hiss, and a snake raised its head. The writhing creature looked up at him with human eyes, and its rosebud mouth opened, but not in a newborn’s cry. “You’re not Father,” it hissed.

  “You’re not a thing meant to live,” Cwynn replied without thinking. He raised his hook and with one fast swipe, buried it in the thing’s chest, ripping the wriggling body almost in two as he gutted it, like a fish. Green and purple slime spilled out, drenching him, but the creature’s eyes burned into his, fixing.

  The rocks all around began to shift and from far away, he heard the dog begin to howl. The rocks tumbled, a mass of boulders to the side and in the round entrance, Cwynn saw a figure outlined, a figure that was tall and seemed to have a goblin’s tail. “I’ll kill you, mortal,” it cried, as it leaped at Cwynn.

  Blinded by the image of the maggot-thing’s eyes seared into his, Cwynn tried to turn and run. But his forehead collided with a wooden beam, and the world went black as he felt two hands close around his neck.

  Catrione closed her eyes as she leaned against the white birch that gave the Grove its name. The bark was smooth and green against her skin, the saturated ground chilly. She felt the familiar uncoiling of energy deep in her belly as her power woke in anticipation of the magical work. But this wasn’t quite like anything else she’d attempted. According to what Sara could discern, she was going to give herself—body, mind, spirit and heart—to the tree.

  She tasted sweat as she drew the heavy air into her lungs. Tingling spread down her spine, down her arms, down her legs as she pressed her back against the tree. The cold sank deep in the sinews under her skin, turning her bones to long lengths of lead. By Alder, Ash and Aspen Trees, Birch and Beech and Rowan three. Hazel, Holly, Elder, Vine, Yew and Apple, Oak to bind…The names of the trees spooled out unbidden. She leaned her head against the trunk, felt her hair tumble down her naked back. She drew her knees up to her chest, wrapped her arms around her legs. She could feel Sora and Baeve and Bride, all breathing, all chanting.

  She felt a tremor in the tree and felt something reach up, through the ground, into her tail bone, a jolt of energy so intense she gasped. Her eyes popped open. She wasn’t in the Grove any longer. The light was an even gray. All around her, the forest rose, arching branches intertwined so far above her head she could not see the sky. She realized abruptly she had somehow changed form. Her elongated body moved across the leaf-encrusted floor like a wave’s over water. The flash of a too-large mouse across her too-low field of vision and the forked flick of a black tongue confirmed her suspicion. She was a snake.

  A tremor of revulsion shot through her. She forced herself to focus on her own breath, to look through Snake’s eyes and hear with Snake’s ears. This was too easy. I didn’t do this on my own, she thought, struggling to retain her human command of language. I am the adder of the mountain, the serpent of the river. As Snake, she could pass both goblin and sidhe without any fear at all and she could go places she could not in human form. With a final sigh, she surrendered herself and all her senses to the sinuous motion of Snake.

  She flowed across brush and leaves and fallen logs as gracefully as a dark, meandering stream. A crevice at a fork in the roots of a huge tree beckoned and as she moved closer, she saw that the tree was an oak, for the ground around it was littered with acorns.

  Eat one. The idea was not so much a thought as a command that came from somewhere outside herself.

  Experimentally, Catrione licked one and a sensation exploded along the length of her entire body, something that included the scent and taste and smell of the leafy loam, as well as something else so alien and strange to her human perceptions she had no words to give it. She could only allow it to move over and through her. The opening gaped seductively as she swallowed the acorn.

  Even as Snake, Catrione hesitated to enter the black crevice, for she hated dark confined places. But Snake’s consciousness was strong in her now, the acorn burning a trail down the inside of her throat that seemed to extend all the way to her tail. She found herself nosing into a moist world she’d never imagined. The roots of the tree scratched pleasantly all down the long length of her spine, the dirt was drier and spongier and warmer than the chillier air. The warmth invigorated her, and she plunged deeper and deeper, giving herself up to the transformation, allowing it to overtake her in a way she’d never experienced before. Show me, she thought, with the last of language. Show me what I need to know. Show me what I need to see.

  Snake delved on, nosing through the soil as the scent of moisture intensified and the low vibration in the soil increased. She had reached an underground stream. Hissing, she followed the stream bed deeper into the subterranean night.

  The atmosphere turned heavy and oppressive, even as the sense of crushing weight above and around her eased. Catrione probed the air with her forked tongue, and information began to pour in, settling into the crevices of her skin, sinking into Snake’s spine like molten metal poured directly onto living flesh. She was in an open space now, black as pitch. She sensed, rather than saw, the beating of what felt like hundreds of hearts beating all together, against which two others beat in separate counterpoint.

  One sound was a slow tortured throb accompanied by a harsh rasp. The other sounded like a galloping horse, and the pounding had a meaning, evocative as distant thunder and as vague. Faah-THER…Faah-THER…Faah-THER…A face, a human face with bright blue eyes locked into hers and she was swept into a swirling pattern of gray and blue and green and yellow. The colors wound around her in double helix patterns and she realized each color had shape and texture—that gray was slippery and fluid as silk, that yellow was jagged and itched like wool. Green curled in on itself like parsley, and blue rippled like feathered fronds. There’s a man you are to marry. This was the man.

  How can this be what I need to know or see? she thought, horrified. The shock of it wrenched her out and down, into a dark well of black, where soft voices echoed over and over: Come back, druid. Come back, druid. But the words didn’t seem to mean anything and Catrione was content to float.

  Catrione. Wake up, Catrione, wake up. As if from very far away, Catrione heard her name being called. Wake up, Catrione. “Wake up, Catrione, wake up.”
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  Catrione opened her eyes, flicked her tongue across her bottom lip. She was lying on her side, curled around the tree, her feet practically touching the top of her head. Someone touched her legs and she reacted like a serpent, hissing, writhing. A papery hand slapped her cheek gently, and a woman with faded eyes looked deep into hers. Sunlight poured down through the branches. It was clearly no longer evening. And then Catrione realized the screams she heard were coming from her own mouth.

  Timias had not expected the white dog. It confronted him halfway up the Tor, ears back, tail low, teeth exposed in a steady snarl. The animal was clearly intent on preventing him from moving any higher. He grabbed a long stick and tried to beat it out of the way, but the dog was too fast. He rushed it behind a leafy branch, even as the Voice increased in intensity.

  FA-THER…FA-THER…FA-THER…HELP HELP…

  In desperation, Timias rushed at the animal, and thought he might’ve passed through it. But he had no time to consider whether or not he actually had, for the Voice was screaming now, a high-pitched wordless cry. He bolted up the Tor, undeterred by the dog who followed, nipping at his heels.

  The rocks blocking the entrance of the SunBirth Chamber tumbled as he approached and he heard the chittering of a hundred or more khouri-keen. Deidre must have all the trixies in the grove up here, he thought as he ducked his head, coughing and choking in the smothering dust. The khouri-keen’s eyes reflected green and the sound rose hysterically.

  In the center of the floor, something that looked like a giant husk or seed pod lay splayed, split down the middle. The tall figure bending over it turned, ichor dripping from the end of one arm, and Timias saw the thing that had been his child, the monster Deirdre had become. As the khouri-keen trembled and moaned, Timias cried out, “I’ll kill you, mortal.” He leaped for his throat, tried to run. He hit his head on the low ceiling. He went limp as Timias closed his hands around the mortal’s neck, and gave it a hard wrench to be sure.

  The wretched dog began to howl, long, wild yelps of alarm. The odor that rose from the corpses was worse than Macha’s lair. Aghast, he edged forward. The moon had risen at last above the trees, and now streamed down into the newly exposed entrance. The thing that had been his child lay, white and round and ghastly as a filleted slug, staring up with vacant human eyes. The thing that had been Deirdre lay beneath it, her body like dry sheaves of paper. Outside, faint and far away, he heard shouts and cries in response to the dog. They were coming, he thought. And if they found him here…He glanced over his shoulder. He’d no doubt what they’d do if they found him here with this—these monsters.

  The khouri-keen were creeping closer to the bodies, eyes bulging, hissing, reaching for them with outstretched hands. It disgusted Timias and he reached down, threw the nearest of the creatures as hard as he could against the chamber wall. “Leave them be!”

  “The crystals,” hissed the creatures, in wide-eyed unison. “Give us our crystals.”

  Timias looked down. So that’s how she did it, he realized. He reached down, fumbled with the body. Beneath it, he found the leather pouch that held the crystals. The khouri-keen gasped and screamed and would’ve rushed on Timias, but he gave the bag a vicious shake and held it high above their reach. “Stay in your dens until I call you,” he said, just as the tops of the first heads came up the Tor. He slipped down the opposite side of the Tor and disappeared over the border.

  10

  A blast of fresh air tickled the back of Bran’s neck, ruffled his matted curls. He shifted gingerly in his hiding spot, trying not to disturb the ragged saddle blanket that covered him. The trixies had retreated to haunt the kitchens as the revel drew near, and the atmosphere within the busy forge was beginning to calm at last. This was the rare quiet hour, when the apprentices had finished their day’s drudgery, and the masters took their ease among the Court. Every muscle in his body ached, from his neck all the way down his back across his shoulders and down his arms. He’d sneaked in here after seeing Morla. He couldn’t bear the thought of any more of the backbreaking, unending work.

  Morla was coming for him. He’d stay here, hidden, till she came, blessedly alone, blessedly unbedeviled. He huddled deeper into his straw-lined niche and willed himself invisible.

  In the shadowy gloom, the purple light filtered through gaps in the overhang sheltering half the yard. Piles of equipment, stacked barrels and parked wagons blended and merged into the black forms of crouching goblins. He sighed and shut his eyes, and thus he felt, rather than saw, the change in the way the light glimmered over and around the empty yard.

  For a moment, he froze, wondering if it were possible to cross the border into TirNa’lugh simply by sitting still, and then he dismissed that idea as being completely absurd. No one could get to TirNa’lugh merely by willing it.

  Footsteps came around the corner, and several pairs of bony hairy legs crossed his line of vision as a gaggle of chattering apprentices shambled by on their way to their quarters and food. Bran dared another peek as they faded into the dusk, reassured that he remained firmly in the mortal world. A few stars twinkled overhead but the western sky was still streaked red and orange. He was settling into another position, this one less cramped, when he thought he heard the song. Faint and faraway as the stars, it teased his ears with a silvery ripple here, a soft trill there. A scent drifted beneath his nostrils, sweeter than roses, lighter than mist. Gooseflesh rose on his arms, and all his senses felt preternaturally aroused. The hair lifted on the top of his head, and he froze.

  “Look, there she is—I told you I smelled her.” It was a trixie voice, and Bran’s eyes widened. Through a rip in the fabric, he peered as best he could, but his angle of vision was limited by the sides of the barrels, the wheels of the wagon.

  “I see her.”

  “There she is.”

  “The Faerie-girl, the Faerie-girl…”

  Bran froze as their rough little growls rose in a chorus that a less-sensitive mortal might have mistaken for croaking frogs. “Look, I see her—there, there—”

  Bran peered up and around the pile of hay. The trixies had unerringly appeared to know where he was, for their backs were to him, and they filled all available perches as they confronted something apparently outside his line of vision.

  “Take him, take him, Faerie-girl,” some of the nasty little creatures were saying, “and take us, too. Take us, take us, too.”

  As if a candle had been extinguished, the light diminished, losing its opalescent glow. The trixies jumped and hissed and spit and waved their arms. One by one, then by twos and threes, they disappeared into the cracks of the paving stones, and Bran knew they’d gone after whatever had found him. He wondered if it were maybe the girl from the pool. He unfolded his cramped limbs and got to his feet, glancing cautiously all around. The smells of cooking meat and wafting bread made his mouth water. It was more likely he’d find Morla at the revel, he decided as hunger overwhelmed him.

  Led by the scent, he found his way to the courtyard before the great hall. It was crowded, as usual, for it pleased Meeve to see her people eat. Bran hung around the edges, watching from the periphery as Meeve traded barbs with the ambassador, sending all those around her into paroxysms of laughter that rippled across the crowd. Some had already begun to dance to the tunes the fiddlers and the drummers were practicing. Goblets were being passed through the crowd, and he found one shoved in his hand by the very same serving girl who’d found him beneath the tree. As their eyes locked in surprised recognition, she laughed and pinched his cheek. “Drink up, blacksmith boy who’s-not-a-scullion.”

  “I’m not a blacksmith, either,” he retorted.

  “You’re way too scrawny to be much of anything at all.” She turned and was lost in the press of the throng.

  Bran gulped from the goblet. It was some dark red southern vintage, for he fancied he could taste the hot relentless sun, the tang of acrid soil. It made him a little dizzy, and he clutched the goblet until its rough surface dug i
nto his palm. But there was another taste in it, too, and with a start, he realized that somehow, Meeve had made the sacred fountain flow red wine.

  How is that possible? he wondered as he threaded his way through the throng to take a closer look. The wine was having a greater affect on him than he’d anticipated, for the ground appeared to be rising up to meet his feet, then falling away beneath his sole as he tried to lurch his way across the stones.

  “Hey, now! Watch where you’re grabbing!” A woman gave him a push and he stumbled back, reeling against the stone walls. Clinging to the wall for support, he eased around the periphery, edging closer to the fountain. That’s a sacred spring, he thought. Do they know what they’re doing?

  Goblet after goblet, mug after mug, was filled and passed back, but as far as he could tell, no one else seemed as affected as he was. He sank to his haunches, feeling a cold sweat break out on his forehead. In desperation, he took another sip. Perhaps I need to eat, he thought, as he watched a basket of bread pass through the crowd. He set the goblet on the ground and stood up, biting his lip and clenching his fists. He managed to swipe a piece of cheese off a tray, then staggered back to the wall. But the food seemed to have no appeal for him, and the odour even nauseated him. But I love this cheese, he thought. The cheese of Eaven Morna was legendary, for the brine in which it was washed and the caves in which it was aged. But it was making him sick now, he thought, and he set it down beside the goblet and leaned his head back against the wall, watching through the crowd for Morla.

  They were tossing coins into the pool now, he saw, as if from a very great distance and he wondered, as he watched, if that were truly a good idea. Nothing was supposed to fall into sacred springs, and nothing was to be tossed in without the proper blessing, the proper wards. Every child old enough to stand knew that. It was one of the first things drilled into every Brynnish child’s head from the time he or she could toddle. Droplets from the spring splashed out, raised by something thrown in by a page who perched among the rocks. Bran frowned, for he could clearly see the trixies scurrying up and down the wet rocks, turning somersaults, even biting and pinching the hapless page’s ears. The page couldn’t see them of course, but he swatted at them anyway, cursing all blackflies to the belly of the Hag. Then he paused, his attention clearly diverted by something in the pool. “Look,” he shouted, pointing down. “There’s someone in there—there’s someone looking back at me.”