by Rene Sears
Sorrow's Son
Crossroads of Worlds
Book Two
Rene Sears
Brown Dog Press
Copyright © 2017 by Rene Sears
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
Book Layout © 2017 BookDesignTemplates.com
Cover Design © 2017 Lou Harper http://louharper.com/Design.html
Sorrow's Son / Rene Sears— 2017
To Jimmy,
For boundless enthusiasm
and your keen eye.
CONTENTS
Gloriana
Morgan
Javier
Morgan
Javier
The Queen's Blade
Acknowledgements
Note to the Reader
Queen of Storms
About the Author
GLORIANA
The queen of Faerie sat on her throne in the Shining Courts and surveyed the gathered peerage of her realm.
I have faced worse than this, she told herself, worse than this, and won. The Flower War, the terrible decades after the king had vanished, the more personal tragedies when she had miscarried the three children she had hoped to have with her husband. But for all that she reminded herself of the challenges she'd won through, she was afraid in a way she'd never been before.
The land was failing.
Not all at once. Not immediately. But Faerie's magic was unbalanced. When she shut the gates to overhill against a threat from a human magician that might have killed innumerable of her people, the magic had snapped back on itself, bereft of its flow through the gates. She'd reacted as she had to, to save Faerie, but she wished she'd found another way. The magician at least was dead, and would trouble her people no more.
The land was failing. Magic twisted and wrong in some places, draining away entirely in others. She could feel it in her body, phantom pains in her limbs, an ache in her guts that nothing could ease. If Oberon was still alive, wherever he was, did he feel it too?
Music floated up to her, the musicians hidden by glamours that changed according to her whim. Right now, the hall looked like the oldest parts of the deep woods, as they had looked before the wrongness came to her land. The people were different, though. They clustered in small groups, talking in low, worried voices. They expected her to fix this, to heal what had grown twisted. She expected it of herself.
Not all of her people, quite. One stood alone: her scapegrace jackdaw, her changeling son. Lord Rowan. He leaned against a column glamoured to look like a tree, his hair falling tangled around his shoulders, face nearly unreadable as her own. Most often she thought he more strongly favored her, but right now she could see the lines of his human father's face, long since gone to dust overhill. Her nobles left a space around him. Perhaps that was why he had stayed so long overhill himself. Perhaps anonymity there was preferable to notoriety here. She had not handled him as well as she might, she could admit that to herself. She would have to deal with him eventually, but for now, let him keep apart if he wished it. He was here; it was closer than he had been in decades.
The tap of a staff on marble echoed from the admitting hallway. The musicians ceased playing as Crane, her majordomo, turned to announce a newcomer. Gloriana sat up straighter when she saw who it was. Finally.
Lady Briar's cloak and riding habit let off puffs of dust as she strode across the hall. Gloriana approved. She had told her to return with all haste, and stopping to change would have been respecting formalities over her duty.
Nobles moved to the side as Briar swept by. Rowan watched impassively. No love lost there; hardly a surprise given their history. Briar sank to her knees before the throne, skirts pooling gracefully on the marble floor. "Your majesty." She bowed her head and waited.
"You may speak," Gloriana said. The hall fell silent except for the rustle of fabric as her courtiers shifted.
"I have your answer," Briar said, still kneeling. "The Oracle of Ashdown tells you that the land will not heal without a sacrifice."
The words pierced Gloriana. Not a sound stirred the hall. Her people waited to see what she would do. She gripped the arms of her throne so hard her fingers ached.
Well. She knew her duty. If she lost all else, she would still have that.
"I am ready," she said. A sigh swept through her gathered people. Grief? Perhaps. Perhaps not. She felt as though her bones were filled with iron, burning and ice-cold at the same time.
"Wait, your majesty." Briar held up a spiral shell chased with gold. "The sacrifice required is not your own."
Blood rushed back into Gloriana's hands, and lips, and heart. The land could yet be saved, and she did not have to die. But the relief was mixed with dread. Every ruler must be prepared to give herself for her land, for her people, but who else would stand ready to make such a sacrifice? What if the land required someone who refused to give themselves to it? What if it needed one of her lieges, whom she had sworn to protect? What if it needed one of the Old Powers of the deep woods? A human?
"Tell us, then," she said to Briar.
Briar ran a finger along the spiral of the shell. The Oracle's voice came out, low and musical. The words were anything but comforting, though.
The tree is dying
But not yet dead.
Go willing the youngest branch of Elm
And yet it may bloom ere midwinter.
The voice from the shell fell silent. Elm, again. That house was everywhere lately, it seemed
"Rise up, Briar," Gloriana said. "You have served us well. We will show you our appreciation in due course." Briar rose, made a courtesy, and retreated. "Now it seems we must ask a service of Elm."
The elder Lady Elm came forward, her mouth a stern line. Elm was an old house, perhaps not the most entwined with court life, but it would be a mistake to think they didn't have their fingers in any number of pies. This would need to be approached with delicacy. Go willing, the Oracle had said; that might mean that the house must give willingly, not only the individual to be sacrificed.
"Your youngest branch, my dear Lady Elm. Tell me."
Elm folded her hands in front of her. She was severe in a dark brown gown, the golden hair that was so often characteristic of the house pulled into a braid down her back. "My youngest son, Eiddon. His wife bore twin daughters three winters back."
Gloriana seemed to remember the children being born, but it hardly mattered in the dismay that swamped her. A child of three could not willingly go to a sacrifice, even if she could overcome the deeply ingrained need to protect such a child. Fae nobles did not often successfully reproduce, as she was all too well aware. "Then we are in a bind, are we not?"
To her surprise, Lady Elm shook her head. "The children are...unusual. They are aging at a surprising rate, neither fae nor mortal. And of course there is the matter of their mother."
Their mother? Ah. Yes, of course. "The human. The former ambassador from the New York group," Gloriana said carefully. Lady Elm knew about her little project, of course, since the human was technically part of her house, but not all of her courtiers did.
"The same. The children are changelings, and last I saw them, they might have been ten." A murmur went through the court. Any fae might dally with a mortal, and c
hildren might result—her own son Rowan was proof enough of that—but one didn't marry them and take the offspring into one's house. Except that Eiddon, Lord Elm, had. Interesting. How useful that he was already in her custody.
The matter of the children aging was interesting as well. Was the land making them ready for the sacrifice it needed? Gloriana knew as much as anyone could about the old magic of Faerie, but even she couldn't answer that. And it might well be easier for her courtiers to accept the sacrifice of a changeling than one of their own.
"You will bring them to me," she told Lady Elm.
For the first time, Elm hesitated. "Your majesty, I would if I could. I do not know where they are."
Gloriana raised a controlled eyebrow. "They are not with their parents. Are they not with some other branch of your family?"
"They are not. I have not..." Elm trailed off. Gloriana could finish that sentence a number of ways. Kept up with them. Bothered to find out where they are. Made them entirely a part of my family. After all, they had not been important, until now.
"Well, then." Gloriana stood. "It seems we have some questions for your youngest son." Elm went pale, but she bowed her head in acquiescence. "And if he is not forthcoming, then we will try other means of bringing them to heel."
As she descended the dais, she looked for her own changeling son. This was the kind of task she would once have given to him. He was no longer at the column, or anywhere in the room that she could see. Perhaps the Oracle's foreseeing had disturbed him. In truth, it disturbed her as well. But no matter.
She would do whatever she had to do. Sacrifice herself, commit unforgivable crimes, turn her hands an even darker red.
Anything, to save Faerie.
MORGAN
The package hung out of the mailbox, the international label clearly visible. I sighed. The mail man was very nice, but he refused to ever consider that contents might be delicate.
To be fair, no matter whether your package was mailed from Vancouver or Heflin, Alabama, you were equally unlikely to obtain a "magical item enclosed" label. Professor Emily Leung had done her best by marking the padded envelope "contents fragile—please hand cancel." I extracted the envelope carefully along with a few bills mashed behind it.
Maybe my nieces could help me decipher whatever it was Emily had sent me. Her email had just said it was jewelry and promised more details with the piece itself. She saved anything she suspected of being possibly dangerous for the rare occasions we were able to meet in person rather than trust it to the mail, so I wasn’t worried. I hoped the girls would enjoy the intellectual puzzle
They needed a distraction. Well, no, that wasn’t completely true. What they could really use was a friend, someone who wasn't me, someone they could blow off steam with. I couldn't provide them with that, not yet.
I'd never really made myself a part of my little community. I worked from home, and I had recently become aware of how I'd kept myself apart from most of the people around me. That might have been okay for me, but it wasn't enough for the girls. They were restless, and I couldn't blame them. School didn't start for another six weeks, and they didn't have enough to do.
I flipped through the mail. My fingers snagged on the one envelope that wasn't a bill or junk—an envelope marked with the school logo. The final set of forms for me and them to sign.
I walked into the house and tossed my keys on the counter. Igraine was reading in one of the kitchen chairs, her bare feet propped on the table, a bowl of grapes at her side. She looked up and took in the package in my hands.
"What's that?"
"I don't know yet. Something from my Canadian friend." I flourished the other envelope. "But I have school forms." Despite my best efforts to make that sound enticing, Igraine frowned. I didn't blame her; I knew this wasn't really where she wanted to be.
I set the school forms on the kitchen counter and let her get back to her book. I took the package into my office and sliced open the padded envelope without really paying attention.
Igraine and Iliesa needed friends their own age. Without that, they'd never feel at home here, never want to stay. I took care of them, but I didn't—couldn't—expect my company to be enough for them socially. Magic couldn't solve this problem; nothing would but time and their going out into the community, which so far they'd been resistant to trying.
I leaned back and touched the silver figurines my father had given me the Christmas I was ten. My sister Guinevere had two just like them. Dad had been an Arthurian scholar and the statuettes were supposed to be Guinevere and Morgan le Fay, who we'd been named after. They weren't magical, weren't energy wells or wards or anything else, but Gwen and I had made a habit of opening ourselves to the leylines and wishing on them whenever we wanted something as kids. I hadn't done it in years, but I did now.
It wasn't a spell. None of what I was hoping for could be helped with magic. Just a wish.
I wish the girls would be happy here. Help me find them a friend, I thought. And while I was at it, Help me find Gwen and bring her back to her girls. I don't think I'm doing this right.
And then, the silver warm beneath my fingers, Please, please bring Rowan back to me. Then I let the figurines go and closed myself off from the ley energy.
I wouldn't even think of Rowan by his true name, Conant, while I was touching the ley, for fear of accidentally somehow compelling him, but he'd been gone for so long. I hoped he was all right. I hoped he still wanted to come back to me.
Then, because I still had work to do on things I could control, I turned back to the envelope and told myself to pay attention.
But in the back of my mind, I was still wishing.
JAVIER
I'd been running from the monster for three days now, and I wasn't even out of Atlanta.
Towering metal-and-concrete canyons had given way to a sprawling expanse of strip malls and highways. This particular strip mall housed a glass-fronted shop with a faded display of black cloth and cards bracketed by iron bars between a vape shop and a payday advance place. A tattered sign above the cards read THE MAGIC SHOPPE in a curly font. I had no real hope there would be any actual casters here, but...I don't know why I stopped, except I was desperate for someone to see me and know what I was.
I surreptitiously touched the lump of incense in my pocket. I had yet to get a hit off the spell I'd cast at least once a day since I left my aunt's apartment, but this place might—might—hold a clue. If I could find someone else like me, maybe they could explain why the monster had come after me.
Bells jangled as I pushed through the door. It was musty inside, dark and close, and when I called my spellsight, nothing glowed. Except...I went deeper into the shop, following the faintest smudge of light. I followed it to a metal chest in the back of the shop. I tipped back the lid. The light inside was pale and gray, but brighter than what I'd been following, just barely. I touched the tiny silver frog on a cord around my neck for luck and reached into the chest.
The glow led to a blunt dagger set with glass "jewels"—more a letter opener than an actual knife—but it was pretty, and at one point it'd been imbued with magic. Either it was used in a ritual or it was spelled to do something. I couldn't tell what. The traces of magic were faint with age. Disappointment hit me—whatever magic had touched this blade, it had happened long before the Savannah flu and its death toll for magic users.
"Can I help you?"
I turned. The man behind the counter was paunchy and a graying ponytail hung down his back. I didn't sense any wards or charms on him. He squinted at me through wire-frame bifocals.
"I was just admiring this knife." I knew how I looked after three days sleeping on the streets, and I probably smelled, but the look he turned on me was more thoughtful than like he was about to kick me out of his shop. My spellsight didn't turn up anything, but maybe—
"There was a fella in here a little while ago, kind of looked like you, asking about...where are you from?"
Grim humor turned up t
he corner of my mouth. I'd been asked this question a few times since leaving the island. "South Carolina."
"No, I mean—where are you from? Where's your family from?" He waved vaguely at his face. I frowned. "No offense."
"What was the guy asking about?" I asked instead.
"He was looking for his brother."
"I don't have a brother." I wished I did. Someone to share the weirdness with would have made my childhood infinitely better. I set the knife down carefully and ran my fingers over the paste jewels, trying not to think about all the family I didn't have anymore. "How much is this?"
His brow crinkled as he looked at the knife. "Twenty bucks."
"I'll give you ten." It couldn't be actual silver, not for twenty bucks.
"Fifteen." I considered the steadily-dwindling stack of cash my aunt had given me before she left. I really shouldn't spend any of it on something like this—I had no way of knowing when she'd be back. Still, the knife drew me—even old and unused, it was the first link I'd seen to other casters.
"I'll take it." I crossed the store to the counter, fishing three crumpled fives out of my wallet. This close, the guy smelled like patchouli and smoke. There was a display of bongs labeled water pipes next to the register. The guy wrote a note in an actual ledger—no bar codes here—and popped a button on an antique cash register to put away the money.
"If that guy comes back, what should I tell him?" He raised faded blue eyes to meet mine.
I shrugged. "Whatever you want. He's not looking for me."
"If you say so." He wrapped the knife in newspaper—for fifteen bucks I wasn't getting the chest—and dropped it in a plastic bag with THANK YOU printed on it in red letters.
"Safe travels," he said after I thanked him, and retreated though a clacking beaded curtain to the back of the shop.
The parking lot had been mostly empty when I walked up, but now there was a conspicuous addition next to the old Cadillacs and rusted Hondas: a gleaming black SUV with rental plates. I didn't know a ton about cars, but I'd been learning since I came to the mainland, and this one was obviously expensive.