He nodded weakly. “Hunted us down after the Whitesnakes fell. I think you have begun to concern her.”
Titania had made a terrible mistake. She had bound the ones I had loosed and sent them against me. I would not forgive her for that.
“You never could stay out of trouble,” I admonished him. My strength turned back on itself, healing my body of the damage the attack had done. I no longer was what I had been. Now Titania knew that, if she hadn’t before.
Tides of darkness slowly rolled back. Light returned to the courtyard. Shades of darkness overran the myriad colors of the fountain. Indistinct shapes writhed where ghosts had once danced.
Silverhand stood facing me, his legs spread, brilliant light flaring around him. His eyes were wide and his mouth had collapsed to a tight line. “What have you become?”
I looked him in the eye. “What Titania feared. Where have you cast your lot, Sidhe Lord?”
The crowd lined the battlements and ranked themselves behind their liege. Weapons had appeared in all hands. Light hunched itself into a defense against the darkness. Maeve edged around behind me, a large axe held tightly in a nervous, sweaty grip. I glanced at her, shook my head, and watched her back off a step.
“Why did you come here?” It took me a bit to recognize the voice. Then I saw Nuada’s son step out of the crowd to stand beside his father.
“I came as I said. To see if my fellow captives had arrived. To end this meaningless feud. To see where your father stands. Titania will not let this thing go. Neither will I. If Nuada means to take a hand in this coming conflict, let’s get that over with right now.” Impatience made its way into my voice, masking the heaviness I felt at the prospect of more blood.
“I will not stand between you and Titania,” Silverhand said. “The quarrel we had is as dead as your mortal past, Zethus. You are right in one thing. What you are is not what you once were.”
I could read his sincerity. Nuada wanted nothing more than to have me and my troubles off his doorstep and out of his life. I couldn’t say that I blamed him for that.
“Good enough,” I said. I turned my attention to the fountain and to the captives I had bound there. One by one, I took them out, cleansed them of Titania’s dominion, and cast them out through long Roads of darkness to places far from the lands of Faerie.
The White Wolf leaped away without a word, howling his way down the long midnight corridor. Bright Angel watched me out of eyes that burned. “Be careful. She has taken your measure. She is stronger than you believe. And more cunning.”
I passed a hand across my eyes. “I know. She has had the initiative from the beginning. I will have to pursue an unexpected course.”
Rainbow wings beat against the darkness as she fled.
Blade was the last. He curled in upon himself, a small thing crying in the night. Tearing his blade from him had nearly destroyed him. When I brought them back together, as gently as I could manage, he poured himself into the blade. In my pain and fury, I had shattered the foundations of his self. He had no more independent will. Blade had been the first Captain of my Legion. I had freed him only to tear him apart. He resisted my best efforts at healing. I tried to do what I could. I finished by sending what remained of him to the peace of the far reaches of midnight, a place in comforting darkness where he would be safe and have time to heal. Perhaps he could heal on his own. If I could not bring him back, then perhaps I could lay him to rest.
I had much to discuss with Titania.
I looked past the veil of shadow to see Oisin’s cautious salute, opened black doors, and took myself to the border of Titania’s lands.
CHAPTER XXX
I WANDERED up through the Iron Hills on foot. I thought about what Titania had told me before setting my feet on this path. Had all this been a test, of a sort? Had she expected me to find someone or something here? Had she expected me to know more than I had?
Darkness covered the hills. The Iron Hills lay close enough to the border of Faerie that night came to that place, after a fashion, unlike the endless day that burned in the interior of the Faerie realms. The stars that swam overhead refused to behave in any predictable way. Watching the night sky in that place bore a similarity to watching luminous fishes swim slowly through dark waters.
I smiled, relishing the darkness. I used my awareness to guide me toward the center of the Iron Hills. I had a plan I felt sure Titania wouldn’t like.
I sensed a familiar hunter dogging my trail as I neared my destination. I chuckled to myself in a grim way, and let him close the distance between us. He would be disappointed again in his search for fresh dye for his cap.
He paused well out of what he would have anticipated to have been my visual range, and gathered himself for a rush. I stood at the edge of a level plain of rusty iron, cradled by rolling hills. I turned to face him. “I wouldn’t,” I said pleasantly.
He froze.
I waited, but he said nothing. “Let’s not play games,” I chided him gently. “I know you’re there. Things have changed between us. You sense the lack of Tindalans. You also sense another difference, but you can’t pin the nature of the difference down. You’ve learned caution, but not restraint.”
He growled and tensed. He was working himself toward a charge. After all, it had worked for him before. When he threw himself forward, I reached through the darkness and opened a doorway between us. He threw himself through that door before he even knew it was there. I closed the door behind him.
One good trip deserves another.
I stopped in the center of the plain, where I took a cross-legged seat. I had not measured Titania’s strength, but I knew the racial weakness. The nature of the power I had taken lent itself to binding other power, harnessing it, bending it to a certain shape. There, in the midst of the stretching bulk of the Iron Hills, I thought to take up an ancient weapon, and forge it into a new form for the coming confrontation.
I took my time, reaching down through the heart of the ore, down to the core of it, and laid bare the source of the intolerable heat of the bones of the earth. I worked through the long night, spreading the darkness through the heart of the hills, and binding into the darkness something of the nature of the iron itself.
I thought I would die when I pulled the power back. Tainted by the harsh iron, I folded every hard pain and every trace of eternal heat into the fastness of my soul until my spirit ached from holding it. When the gray light of early morning broke over the hills, touched with the life and color of the light of Faerie, I felt as ancient as the power that filled me.
A shape moved in the ghostly light, drifting closer, until it took on the pale and translucent outline of a man, stooped and walking slowly toward me. His features were familiar to me. I closed my eyes against the light. “Corvinus.”
His colorless face twitched into a brief smile. “Zethus. You went farther than I thought.”
I caught his gaze in mine. “So you managed to escape, after all.”
He shrugged. The line of the horizon showed through his body. “Almost. I can’t seem to escape this place. I had thought to catch you before our friend the redcap when he came upon you the first time. I failed. Where did you send him, by the bye?”
“NightTown. The Master’s private preserve.” I chuckled. “He should provide quite a surprise for them. Depending on who’s hunting whom, he might even make it out alive.”
Corvinus frowned. “You’ve changed. Was it so hard, then?”
I favored him with an evil look. “How can you ask that? What were you thinking, bringing all of this down on everyone? Me in particular?”
He looked abashed. “Actually, I never meant for things to go this far. It got out of hand.”
I snorted. “You couldn’t have thought that pursuing the Fane of the Nephilim could have been easy.”
“Hey, now!” He held up one hand in protest. “I didn’t start out looking for that. All I meant to do was clear up a small matter that had been bothering me. I began inv
estigating the Nephilim themselves, to discover if any might still be walking the Ways.”
“And the Key?”
He frowned. “I never thought that such a thing could be used to track back to the Fane. It was a part of my research. I never saw any tie to the Ways.”
“What? You expect me to believe that? What about the suit? You were one of the masters of the Ways. How could you not know?”
He paused. “Maybe it was never there in the heart for me to find. If the heart had been a map to the Fane, I would have known. I never saw anything like that in my study of the heart. I had thought that through the Nephilim I could find the true nature of the Ways. But then I had hints that unwanted attention had begun to stir. I wanted you to destroy the heart, or take it out into the most hostile places and abandon it if you couldn’t destroy it. That’s what the suit was for. I wanted you to be able to take the attention from us, but I didn’t realize how far things had gone. I don’t think I would have taken the risk of using the Rites even had I known how to find the Fane.”
He paused. I waited. When he resumed, he spoke slowly. “I came to warn you. At least one of the Nephilim still walks CrossTown. That’s the attention I most feared. I knew there were others, who bear the blood, or who bear memories from that time. Before I realized how much attention I had attracted, Titania moved against me. Fetch cleared the way. The vampire killed my body. Fetch sheltered the vampire from my death curse. But someone else cleared the traces after they left, covered the tracks and confused the trail. I couldn’t tell who did it. I’ve never felt that kind of power before. And I still don’t know how Titania found out. I was careful.”
I frowned, remembering Shaw’s account of the killing. That made sense out of Shaw’s account. It meant an enemy unaccounted for. Perhaps more than Fetch had been searching for the heart of stone with destructive thoroughness. “Who altered the heart, if anyone? And who covered Titania’s tracks, leaving her and Fetch free to pursue me into CrossTown?”
“Someone close enough to catch on to my project and Titania’s intent covered the tracks,” he said. “Someone afraid of being revealed by my researches. More than that, I don’t know. How did you discover that the heart could guide you?”
I thought about Chimereon. She had the blood. She had the power. She could have set my feet on the path. But why? And why would she have moved against Corvinus, if she had? Chimereon took the public aspect of a goddess. Revealing that she was or bore the blood of one of the Nephilim wouldn’t be a threat. And she had no dealings with Corvinus of which I had any knowledge. I shook my head. “I think we’re talking two separate events. Chimereon could have opened the Way. She admitted that her father descended from the Nephilim. Who knows what secrets she still possesses?” I watched his face to see if he reacted to her name. He didn’t. “Whoever covered Titania’s tracks wanted to prevent an actual discovery of the Nephilim Fane. I don’t believe that would have been Chimeron. There’s another player out there, probably your last Nephilim.”
The outlines of Corvinus’s shape frayed as the light brightened. “You could be right. Titania and this other both wanted to end any knowledge of the Nephilim. Titania for fear of renewed interest in the power of the Nephilim. The other … perhaps also out of fear.”
I frowned. “Fear?”
“Fear of the return of the Wars of the Brethren.” The light continued to grow in intensity. His voice was fading to a whisper. “Fear of the struggle for the power. Fear of becoming the target of every hungry walker of the Ways.”
I spat. It made sense. Though a Nephilim would make a dangerous target, the promise of power or the fear of the threat that person would represent would draw hostile attention. It also meant that perhaps not all ills lay at the feet of Titania. Would this other pursue me out of fear? Even knowing that no more Nephilim would follow in my footsteps?
I met Corvinus’s failing gaze. “Is there anything you want from me?”
He laughed thinly. “I’m making my own way, boy. I can’t afford to be beholden to any Powers. Not even you.”
He faded as I watched. I doubted he was going to his final rest. Corvinus had always been a hungry, restless spirit. Doubtless, he would even then be figuring out a way to claw his way back into the game.
I didn’t have anyone pegged for Corvinus’s mysterious other player. But I had a couple of suspicions. One had previously seemed unlikely, but was growing on me. And either way, I thought I knew where I’d find the other waiting for me.
Before that, I had Titania and her hunter to confront.
I made my way down, out of the hills. I knew I had come into Titania’s Realm when the grass began withering under my feet. Stone glowed where I stepped. The iron burned bright in my blood.
I felt her gather her forces at her keep. The air danced with power there. Fetch stood waiting for me by the side of the water, within view of the keep.
He stared at the water as I came to stand beside him. His reflection stared back at him as if out of a mirror. Steam curled out of the water where my reflection should have been. The water boiled in a shape roughly corresponding to my outline.
He spoke without turning to face me. “You’ve led me a merry chase.”
I regarded him dispassionately. “This doesn’t have to happen.” I held up a clenched fist. Heat waves curled around it. “I don’t hold you responsible. I don’t need your life.”
He laughed softly. “It’s been interesting. The most interesting quarry I’ve ever run.”
He moved with impossible speed. I grunted with the blow, watched him clothe himself in power as pale as bone. A slashing stroke cut me deeply. The heat of my iron blood curled out over him. He screamed and fell back. Black flames licked the air from the wound he had opened in my belly.
I caught him in a relentless grip. I pulled him close and held him as iron fire blackened the air around us. I locked him in place until his struggles weakened, then dropped him back to the earth. The aspect of death faded from his face. He breathed in great gasps, his eyes narrowed against the light. I bent down over him, the gray and stinking smoke of scorched flowers and grasses rising from a circle stretching around my feet. “I don’t want your death, Fetch. I never wanted any of this.”
I left him there, curled on himself against the pain. I strode on up the path. I stopped at the drawbridge, staring up into the complex, beautiful structure, a working older than humanity. I built careful layers of defense. Beyond, from within the keep, I felt the first cautious probes.
If she had expected me to trot on inside, she had fooled herself. That confident I wasn’t.
Power curled out of me, probed down through the earth, carrying the iron taint. Flame burst up around me and clothed my limbs, but did not burn me. My flesh had passed through greater fires. The flames raced toward the keep. The waters of her moat boiled and frothed as the iron fires crossed under it and threaded delicately through the foundations of her place of power.
Brightly colored fish scattered for quieter pastures.
A horde of spirits came roaring out against me then, boiling out of the heart of the keep to descend on me in a furious storm of white power. She had assembled a mighty host and mounted them on steeds of elemental force. Her Legions marched in concert. They rolled down over me in choreographed waves. I was vulnerable: I could not disengage my extended power from the destruction of the keep quickly or easily.
Titania herself followed her host in spirit, her will falling on me as a furious storm of blades. The blow broke through the defenses I had raised and smashed me to the ground, laying me low under a maelstrom of sharp power. But as I fell, iron flames broke through the walls of the keep. The stone itself burst into flame and ran in molten streams down to the waters of the moat. Clouds of steam rose around the site as a scream of pure rage rose from the keep.
I drew the darkness back, trying to build enough power to break Titania’s attack as her attention faltered. Her will fell away from me as she fought to hold her fortre
ss in place. Her Legions fought to consume me as I knelt there on the ground.
I built my power steadily, then broke the bindings of her massed Legions in a whirlwind of pale iron flames. Titania remained distracted by the fortress, her body still inside. I smashed her control of her Legions. They surprised me. Fully a quarter of her minions fought on after I had broken their bonds. I cast them out, away from the land of the Fae. I pulled myself to my feet to see Titania come stalking out of the burning ruin of her keep.
Her eyes blazed with rage and white fire. I saw no fear in her. She threw herself toward me, naked but for a bright veil of power, her shape twisting to something all claws and teeth and appetite.
I needed an additional weapon. I laid my hand on the first and best at hand. I sent my strength to the far reaches of midnight. Blade, trapped in his broken shell, screamed like vengeance itself as I brought him out of the darkness. Blade met Titania in mid leap.
She must have been preparing something special for me. A silent roar shook the ground, and all of reality vanished in an instant of hot, white light. Curling licks of power picked me up and gave me a playful toss toward the horizon.
I clung to the shield of my iron fires. When I rose unsteadily from where I had come to rest, I could see no trace of Blade or Titania. Her fortress resembled nothing so much as a nuclear pile in the process of melting down. Clouds of steam rose from the stream for a thousand paces to each side of the keep. I found myself hoping that the fish had been fast on their fins.
I looked back at Fetch, rising from where I had left him, and watched him flee.
I opened the doorways of shadow, walked out along the distant Ways, and set all of the spirits I had recently imprisoned free, even those from Titania’s Legion. I could not let my duty to them fail. I had nothing else left to me. I thought of the spirits who had fought on after her bonds had been broken. I wondered what that said about Titania. Then I banished doubt from my mind. I couldn’t afford further distraction.
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