by HDA Roberts
I sighed. "Dare I ask which one of them sent you?"
That is was one of the Queens was a given.
His mouth opened into a doggy grin. He was about to answer when there was a scratching at the door, which then was unceremoniously barged open by Burglar, who took one look at Grontor... and started barking the house down.
He must have heard the Watcher’s own bark.
Burglar advanced and Grontor backpedalled in obvious distress, causing my dog to pursue, tail a-wagging.
"No! You keep away from me, lower beast!" Grontor said, trying to scamper away, only for Burglar to catch him and headbutt him over before sniffing him thoroughly.
For a second, I had a bit of trouble not laughing, but then it occurred to me that allowing my dog to sniff the bottom of a Fairy Envoy might not be the best political decision... even if Grontor's increasingly vocal pleas for Burglar to bugger-off were hilarious.
"No, get away! I don't want to be your friend, I am not a dog!"
Grontor tried to kick Burglar away with a back foot, but my furry friend just sat on his chest and continued his slobbery inspection.
"Graves, control this monster! This is far below my dignity!"
I clicked my tongue and Burglar stopped long enough to give me a pleading look. I clicked again and he vacated his spot on Grontor's (now slightly damp) flank to come settle next to the bed.
"Sorry, he doesn't meet a lot of other dogs," I explained.
"I am not a dog! I just happen to look like a dog!" Grontor protested, his fur actually ruffling.
"Again, sorry. You were saying?"
Grontor took a moment to settle himself back into a dignified stance, snout in the air. That was a bit difficult to pull off after having been given such a thorough going-over by my behemoth, but somehow he (mostly) managed.
Meanwhile, Kandi was hiding behind my back, trying desperately not to laugh.
"Their Majesties, Queens Elora and Adriata, beg the pleasure of your company tomorrow at your Grotto. They shall come with their usual entourage, and you may bring your fellow Archons as well as anyone else you see fit."
"Oh... alright. Any particular time?"
"Midday, if that suits."
"That's fine. Anything I need to worry about?"
"Most definitely. Something we all need to worry about," he said, and then he was gone in a puff of smoke without elaborating. I hated when people did that.
I looked down at Burglar, who was flat on his back, tongue lolling out of his mouth.
"Bad dog, assaulting Envoys like that. You could get me in trouble."
He whined and scrabbled his paws in the air.
I sighed again and reached down to scratch his belly before reaching for my phone. The others were just going to love this...
Lunson (the Centaur) had not been pleased to discover that he was to receive royalty with only thirteen hours' notice, and the other Archons weren't especially happy about it, either. Kron, in particular, was in a bit of a mood, having been up for the last seventy-two hours working on an experiment, which she’d had to abandon just as it was approaching the important part (and don't think she wouldn't hold that against me for years to come).
Still, everything was in readiness at midday.
The clearing was the same one we’d used for the last conference with the Queens; a broad, circular space in the woods between the Grotto and my family home. There was a round, wooden conference table in the middle and a sideboard covered with refreshments at the edge.
Kron was snoozing in her chair, using Killian's slightly bony shoulder as a pillow. Palmyra and Hopkins were gossiping, and I was trying not to worry over what this was all about. Our Wardens were spread out behind us in an arc; even Cassandra was there. She was a reassuring presence next to my shoulder, scanning the woods for threats (not that any could come near me, much less harm me, so close to the Grotto and its potent defences).
The last time, the Queens had come with fanfare, in a procession designed to be showy and majestic. This time, they just turned up, appearing out of nowhere with five guards and two offspring each. The offspring included my favourite two, who smiled when they saw me.
The Queens may have wanted to be relatively low key, but their parties were dressed to impress anyway. Adriata and her two daughters wore dark colours, rich purples and blacks all chased with platinum and black rubies. Elora, Gwendolyn and her brother wore white and golden yellow along with yet more platinum, diamonds and pearls.
I suddenly felt underdressed again, even in my suit and robes of office. The last time we’d had one of these, I’d shown up in a jacket and wellington boots (which had been far more sensible attire for a meeting in the bloody woods), but apparently convention didn’t agree with me and never let it be said that I can’t learn from my mistakes.
Killian nudged Kron’s side, and she woke with a snort.
"What? Oh!" she said, darting to her feet (she'd also been expecting the fanfare, and the accompanying chance to wake up before the monarchs arrived).
"Be welcome in the home of my brother," Kron said once the Sidhe came to a halt.
The rest of us stood as well and both parties bowed to each other.
"Won't you be seated?" Kron offered.
The Queens and their children sat and so did we. There was rarely much in the way of small-talk before these things.
Elora looked radiant and confident, the very picture of courtly grace. Adriata... she looked exhausted, even more drained than she’d been when I first turned up in Unseelie. A certain amount of the weight had left her posture, and there was a touch more confidence in her expression, but her eyes were still haunted, still burdened by what she’d been through.
"Thank you for making us welcome," Elora said, nodding to me; I smiled back. "We have come for a number of reasons. The first was to thank you, Lord Shadow, for your intervention in Unseelie. There is little doubt that what you did saved that world from destruction."
Adriata coughed, glaring at her counterpart, causing Elora to sigh.
"Possible destruction," she corrected, giving Adriata a long-suffering look, which the Unseelie chose to ignore.
"And the second was to warn you about our common problem; the Magician, Ambrosias Myrddin."
We all sat up a little straighter at that.
"We are quite aware of the threat he represents," Kron said cautiously, "though that is considerably lessened now, with the intervention of Lord Shadow."
"No, my Lady," Elora said, her smile vanishing. "If anything, it has grown."
Kron frowned, and so did Killian. I wasn't especially surprised by that news, if there's one thing I've learnt, it's that things will always get worse if they possibly can...
"How’s that?" Killian asked.
Elora looked to Adriata, who cleared her throat.
"My cousin wasn't even born when Myrddin first crossed swords with the Sidhe,” the Unseelie began, “but I was there. I saw what happened. It started as it always does with you... Magicians," that last word spat like a curse. "It started because he was curious.”
She paused, glaring at us.
“Actually, he wasn’t so bad at the beginning,” she continued, her tone softening a little. “I knew him quite well, even taught him from time to time. If I had to describe him, I would say that he was a lot like you, Graves; very moral, very ethical. He killed quite a bit more than you’re willing to, but human life was cheap back then, you either killed or you died.
“One way you differ, though, is in arrogance. You have your moments, don’t get me wrong, but for all your faults, you are a relatively humble man. You understand your limitations. Ambrosias did not. Does not. There was no knowledge he would not seek, no limits he would not explore. He only avoided what you call Black Magic because he knew he would not survive it, but that was a close run thing on more than one occasion.”
She shook her head and leant back a little in her chair.
“Naturally, when Ambrosias discovered the
work his damned father had started on Dimensional Magic, there was nothing anyone could say to stop him running face-first into this new avenue of study. That’s when things really started to go wrong.”
She interlocked her fingers, her grip soon turning them white.
“We don’t know exactly what happened next, we only have guesses based on what little Ambrosias told me before we came to blows. We do know that he discovered what would become known as the Realm of Darkness, and we know that he discovered what lives there.”
Her eyes closed and her mouth curled into a grimace.
“And we know that he tried to Telepathically link to one of them.”
I couldn’t help but wince. That has to be one of the dumbest ideas I’d ever heard of. I’d barely brushed against the mind of one of those things and I’d wanted to curl up and die afterwards. The idea of actually linking my mind to one?
Idiotic; to say the least.
Adriata continued, “There's a saying by a human author that I quite enjoy, Nietzsche, I believe his name was, ‘He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.’ Your Myrddin could have been the example for this."
Nietzsche? Figures Adriata would be a fan of that nihilistic twit...
“Something broke in him, something important. I believe he was driven mad with terror at what he saw at the heart of the Cruciae, and he dedicated his life to destroying them, or at least controlling the threat they represented. You can, perhaps, imagine what path this led him down?”
We nodded. We knew exactly where it had led him.
“Power became his only goal. He knew he was too weak to take on an entire Dimension full of monsters, and he knew that nobody else would help, because who in their right mind would go poking at a perfectly secure prison? Not that I imagine he framed it like this when he was justifying all the murders he had planned.
“He found Fate's Scissor,” the Gods’ Blade to you and me, “again, I don’t know how or when, but he was quick in making his plans and beginning his cutting. It wasn’t long before he was the most powerful Magician who ever lived. Now, I didn’t know about any of this, and nor would I have cared even if I did. This was Magician’s business and thus, none of mine. It only became pertinent to me after he started attacking the Realm of Darkness.”
Seriously, I knew the man was off his rocker, but there are limits... or there should have been!
“Again, working from a lot of pieced-together information, but by this time, he had the last of the Primal powers at his disposal, and we think that he went into the Realm in order to engage a number of the Cruciae and test himself against them. He even won, but then he repeated his first damn mistake, and tried to mentally subdue one of them. Perhaps you now see what I mean about arrogance?”
No, that was still just stupid, though I didn’t say that.
“Anyway, what few eggs he had left in the box got thoroughly scrambled. I suspect he got a good look at one of those things’ memories and actually saw what had made them, because that’s when he really started going off the rails. He even came to me, begging for knowledge about them.”
"Is that an actual threat we need to worry about?" I asked. “The beings who made the Dark Ones, I mean? Myrddin seemed very certain that they were coming back.”
Adriata shook her head, "The Old Monsters that made the Cruciae are long dead and buried, ash and dust and scattered besides. When an Archangel smites something, it stays smote, believe me. They aren't the problem, and that’s what I told Ambrosias, but of course he wouldn’t believe me.
“And if he was bad before, he got worse after that. He designed weapons specifically meant to destroy the Entities, and he went back in, desperate for more information, and, failing that, to kill as many of them as possible so that their Makers would find no weapons waiting for them when they returned. Unfortunately, what passes for a hierarchy in that place didn’t much like its subjects getting picked off and set up an ambush. Naturally, glutted on the power of the other Primals, Myrddin got away, even obliterated several of the nastier monsters... but he didn’t get away clean.”
“One of the smaller, quicker ones gave chase and even managed to force its way through onto Earth, though far away from Myrddin, who had safeguards around his Gateways. Things might have turned out differently for us all if he’d simply destroyed that Entity, but he didn’t, and it landed almost on top one of my cousins, who was visiting a human... distraction of his.
"Sensibly, my kinsman ran, but the Cruciae followed him right through his Gateway and back into Unseelie, where it was the Goddess' own job to destroy it. I lost a lot of good men that day, and once I’d discovered how it came to be in my kingdom, I was naturally not best pleased with Myrddin."
I could imagine.
"I went to see him myself. I demanded an explanation. There was no First Circle of Archons back then, your kind were scattered around the world doing... whatever it is you do. There were only the Primals. They were the human authority of their day, and now there was only him. I demanded that he give up any work with the Realm of Darkness, he demanded that I help him to delve deeper and kill more of them.
“The conversation turned heated, then ugly, and, not long after, we were at war. In a war, you need allies, especially if you’re fighting in a strange Realm, so I entered into an agreement with his father, who truly loathed the boy. Vallan wanted to see Ambrosias’ mission end as much as I did, though for different reasons; mostly to do with jealousy, I'd imagine. I didn’t care as long as he was useful.
"We gathered our forces, slew his champions and drove him back to his fortress, his Camelot, and began to tighten the noose. We besieged that place for two ugly years, and he never broke, but neither could he break us. Eventually, we got lucky, and we were starting to make progress against his defences. That made him desperate enough to start opening a Gate; the largest Gateway into the Realm of Darkness that had ever been made. If he’d completed his Spell, it would have been large enough to allow through one of the really big Cruciae, the truly monstrous ones.
"If he'd succeeded, your world would have been in serious jeopardy, not to mention my forces engaged in the siege. Thankfully, Vallan Myrddin was no slouch himself, when it came to Dimensional Magic, and he’d been itching for a chance to show his son a trick or two. We worked together, and though it cost us, we turned his Gateway back on him, wrenching him into a Pocket Dimension, along with his castle and all his remaining supporters, partly here, partly in Unseelie, but truly in neither, locked by barriers made of both places and sealed away, we'd hoped forever."
Well, that put a new complexion on Myrddin's story of a man wronged by his own father and his sneaky Sidhe allies, not that I hadn't taken that story with a pinch of salt.
"But then you came along," Adriata continued, glaring at me. "A creature of this world, but also part of us. The prison could not stand that, and it weakened. Because Ambrosias was of this world, he'd always been able to snake his power through to here, even at the height of his prison’s powers, enough to create his soulless monsters. But with the walls weakened by your existence, he was finally able to get at me as well, to create them in my Realm. It was an access we never could have anticipated. It was a long time before we even suspected who was responsible."
She sighed and rubbed her eyes.
“It was a nightmare. Armies came as if from nowhere, burning and slaughtering before vanishing as if they’d never been. Then they came back, their ranks bolstered by the reanimated bodies of the slain. I believed that this plague came from Earth, and so I worried that it was only a matter of time before it could get into Seelie as well. I knew that I’d be able to stop them if only I could keep them from moving long enough to pin them down. What were a few reanimated corpses, after all, compared to the might of the Unseelie?
“So I persuaded Elora to help me close off our Realms... and I played right into Myrddin’s hands.
Even then, I still didn’t know it was his doing, and wouldn’t until much later, when my Scryers finally managed to uncover the true energy signature of those... horrors.
“The barrier went up, but the attacks continued, of course. The Prime was clever. It kept its advantages from me and never revealed the full measure of its power until its army had become an insurmountable threat. Only then did we realise that it had its own form of transportation magic, that it had a way around our Barrier... and that it had never even seen your ugly planet.”
She paused and a tear rolled down her cheek, quickly cuffed away. That shocked me; Adriata had always been so indomitable. It was shaking to see her so emotional.
"Even then, I still believed that I could win; that I would prevail as I always had. I wanted to keep my cousins safe, true, but I also thought that I couldn’t lose and by the time I realised that wasn’t true...”
She paused, taking a breath, her eyes narrowed in pain.
“My vanity cost, at the last tally, over nineteen million Sidhe lives, countless serfs and a nearly incalculable amount of devastation to my Realm’s wildlife and ecosystem. Many of our lands will never be the same again; some species were even hunted to extinction, all grist for their war machine."
Elora covered Adriata's hand with her own, trying to offer support, but Adriata recoiled.
"No!" she snapped. "Never comfort me! My hubris was the cause of this. I did this to us."
"You weren't to know it would be so bad, you were just trying to protect us all," Elora said softly.
"Intentions do not matter. Only what happened. Look what I did!"
An uncomfortable silence descended on the gathering. Nobody knew what to say. Hell, nobody there could even really understand the depth of her pain. She had nearly lost an entire world because she had fallen into a trap.
But no, it wasn’t her fault. At least, not entirely.
“If I may, your Majesty?” I said gently, looking at Adriata.
She glared, but nodded.
“I know that there is nothing I can say that will stop you blaming yourself for what happened, but it wasn’t you who attacked the Unseelie Realm. You only did what you thought was best for your people and your cousin’s. Intentions do matter, and yours were good. With the information you had, there was no way of knowing that you were doing anything wrong. Myrddin had fourteen hundred years to plot and prepare his plan. You shouldn’t blame yourself. Not for something that was outside of your control. You’re not omniscient, you’re not infallible, don’t take on the burdens of someone who is.”