by Melanie Rawn
“I’d rather go have a closer look at that dragon.”
Mieka squinted across the narrow valley. “There won’t be anything to see. Not if it’s Fae you’re after.”
“How do you reckon?”
“They always come from the west. That hill faces west. So if they’re around here at all, they’ll be on this side of the valley. In a cave or a hedgerow or something.”
He didn’t congratulate Mieka on his insight, too annoyed with himself for not having realized it before. He led the way down a narrow track through knee-high bracken, skidding and slipping but managing to keep his feet. Mieka gamboled down after him, trailing the unfinished daisy chain, and about halfway to the stream below misjudged his footing and landed on his backside.
“Clumperton!” Cade accused with a laugh, extending a hand to help Mieka up. A moment later, when the Elf was standing next to him, he exclaimed, “You’re bleeding!”
“Mm? Oh. Nothing to signify.” He hung the uncompleted chain over one elbow and brushed the dirt from his hands. After a brief inspection of the scrapes on his palms, he asked, “This is the way most people take, innit? Those as come to see the Chalk Dragon.”
“What of it?”
“So this is about as far as anybody ever goes, right? Not much of a trail, and it doesn’t go all the way to the bottom.” He pointed to a cluster of yellow-flowering bushes strewn across the path about twenty feet ahead of them, six or seven feet high, very thick, blocking the way. “I’ll wager you that this whole place is a Faerie Vale.”
Cade inspected the scratches on Mieka’s palms with more attention that they deserved. “The first time, I fell down a hill from winter into summer.”
“And met your great-great-whatever granny—yeh, I know.” Mieka looked grim. “If you think I’ll let you stumble back into the Fae world, think again! It could be hours or years before they let you out—if they let you out!”
“Why wouldn’t they?”
The flowering bushes rustled, and from them a high, harsh voice said, “Good question.”
14
Lagging a half instant behind his body, which had flinched and spun towards the voice, Cade’s brain registered the presence of a tall and elegant Fae emerging with graceful dignity from the bushes. His hair and his robes were made of green leaves, his eyes as yellow as the blossoms. He inspected Cayden and Mieka frankly as he took a few delicate steps towards them, gaze lingering on Mieka’s pointed ears that were a sort of child’s version of his own, which were extravagantly large and decorated at lobes and tips with emeralds set in gold. At first he appeared to be handsome, but as he neared, Cade felt a stinging sensation in his guts, for the finely drawn features had in them a hint of cruelty. It wasn’t quite fear, and it wasn’t quite revulsion, but the sensation held elements of both, and the shock of unfurled wings did nothing to comfort him. Those wings also seemed made of leaves: long, slender, translucent leaves like feathers, one overlapping the next, palest green and shimmering in the sunlight.
“It’s not many of the Blood who come this way, this far,” the Fae said. “Mostly they stay up there, staring at that brazen bit of self-congratulation the Giants carved into my hill. As if they ever let us forget who it was who rode the dragons, and left us with naught but the land and water beasts!”
Questions clogged Cade’s mind: What do you mean, your hill? and Giants rode dragons? and Land and water beasts like the ones in the Vathis River? and I know I’m partly Fae, but—Mieka?
Before he could figure out which he wanted answered first, the Elf spoke.
“Your pardon for disturbing you,” he said with a jaunty bow. “We’ve come seeking someone you may know, or may have heard of. A Wizard—with some Fae blood for good measure—who arrived in your part of the world two Midsummers ago as Humans reckon time.”
“Friend of yours?” The Fae arched a mocking brow, as amused by this drawing room civility as Cade was appalled by it. Everything he had ever read about—and the one encounter he’d actually had with—the Fae cautioned wariness in dealing with them. But this one’s wings folded themselves against his back, their upper curves framing his face, as if he were settling down for a teatime gossip.
Mieka didn’t skip a beat. Neither did he directly answer the Fae’s question, which indicated to Cade that he had at least a little sense. “Curious fellow, he is—curious in the way of wanting to find things out, I mean, though the other kind of curious applies as well, now that I think on it. A bit strange sometimes, you know. Anyways, he has very dark skin and curling hair. Rarely seen not cuddling a lute in his arms. Goes by the name Briuly Blackpath.”
In the next instant, Cade knew he’d been right to fear the Fae. Wings shuddered with a clicking, rasping sound as muscles tensed and leaves shifted. The yellow eyes lit with sudden fire. “He who stole the King’s Right!”
“Oh, you know him, then?” Mieka smiled winningly. Cade wanted to tell him that he’d lost before he’d even opened his mouth. “At your Royal Court, no doubt, delighting all with his music?”
The Fae’s features had sharpened, his bones like razors beneath skin pale as parchment. All the beauty was gone, leaving something almost feral: the face of a predator. A killer. Cade gripped Mieka’s elbow, but to what end he could not have said. They could never outrun an infuriated Fae. However decorative the wings were, they could not be used for flight; Fae soared and swooped like dragonflies by manipulating the very air around them, and they were rumored to do it with indescribable swiftness. They couldn’t fight him, not with fists or with spells. Perhaps he got hold of Mieka just for the comfort of knowing that Mieka, bone and muscle and warm skin, was real.
“I know of him,” the Fae said harshly. “All the True Folk know of him, after the tribunal.”
“Really?” Mieka sounded mildly intrigued. “And what was the outcome of this tribunal?”
“Witless, chattering Elf! Scant wonder your kind stayed amongst the Humans—the only race even more witless than you! Can you not reason it out? On the one side were those who demanded his death for daring to touch and even to place upon his head the King’s Right. On the other, those who discerned in him the Blood, and argued for sparing his life despite the desecration, for the King’s Right had at last been recovered.”
“Desecration,” Mieka repeated thoughtfully. “It must’ve been rather muddy, I agree. How long did it take to clean the thing?”
He was scornfully ignored. “The Crown may be only slightly less crucial than the Carkanet, but neither are worth anything without Sealing. Our King quite properly refuses to wear his Right until the Queen wears hers again.”
“So why not go get it?” Mieka asked as calmly as if they were indeed sitting in velvet-covered chairs over cinnamon tea and buttered muffins. “If it’s as important as all that …”
Cade astounded himself (and, from the looks of him, the Fae) by saying, “The Oakapple lords—Briuly’s family—once owned Nackerty Close. One of their ancestors stole The Rights. Only someone of that blood could take them from where they’re hidden.”
“Such a clever Wizardling,” snapped the Fae.
“He is that,” Mieka said fondly.
“The Crown,” Cade pursued, “is basically just something fancy to put on the King’s head. It’s the Carkanet that really matters, because it’s the Queen’s Right, and the Fae are matriarchal.”
“‘Dancing Ground’!” Mieka exclaimed.
Cade nodded, and would have said more—though not about the Shadowshapers’ play—but the Fae’s blazing eyes stopped him. “What you do not know, stupid Wizard and stupid Elf, is that this ancestor who stole The Rights was a halfling. Begrudging his place in the Brightlands—lowly, as befitted a half-Human—he purloined Crown and Carkanet in the mistaken belief that he could bargain with them for a high place in the Seemly Court. And when the Humans learned they had been stolen, they began a war to retrieve them that killed many thousands, and—”
“No, they didn’t!” Mieka interr
upted. “’Twas the Fae who made war on the rest of us!”
“Is that the tale they tell in your portion of the world? I say that this halfling was hunted down by Fae and Human alike, and at last he hid The Rights—”
Cade’s turn to interrupt. “And the Humans caught him at it, and before they hanged him, he said that no one but a Fae would ever wear The Rights, and if a Fae—meaning himself, of course—if he couldn’t, no one would.”
The Fae scowled at him, wings rustling. But he made no correction.
So that was how it happened. Cade was delighted. He could use this new information to change “Treasure”—no, he’d write an entirely new play, incorporating what the Fae had told him—no, he’d write two plays, one about the initial stealing and the second about the finding, and put “Treasure” in the middle, and perform all three on the same night—if he wrote fast enough, he’d present this innovation of connected tales in the same show before Vered Goldbraider could finish his play about the balaurin—but Vered had been working on the damned thing for the better part of two years, and still hadn’t finished, so it was more than likely that Cade and Touchstone would be credited with a revolutionary new concept in theater, and—
It seemed he had been very far away, because he heard Mieka’s voice, as if from a distance, say, “What about Briuly?”
Briuly. Good Gods, he had completely forgotten that the third play of the group would be about Briuly and Alaen, and the vengeful Fae, and death. Abruptly present in the here and now, and with more of a shock than any time he’d ever come out of an Elsewhen, he looked at the Fae.
All the menace had faded; the eyes were flat yellow again, lightless. Sullenly, like a five-year-old caught raiding the sweets canister, the Fae said, “Deep into the Brightlands he was taken. The Seemly Court was gathered from far and wide—”
“Quite the spectacle, I take it,” mused Mieka.
With a glance of annoyance, the Fae continued, “His crime was weighed against recovery of the King’s Right. I was in favor of killing him.”
“He’s not dead?” Cade blurted. “You didn’t kill him? He’s alive?”
With a smirk: “If you’d care to call it that.”
Cade was scared to ask what that might mean. The Fae was maliciously eager to explain.
“Ask him a question, and he’ll sing you a song. Remark that it’s a lovely sunny day, and he’ll sing you another song. Songs are all he knows. Not even his name. Not a single spoken word leaves his lips. He opens his mouth only to drink and sing—”
“At the same time?” Mieka interrupted.
“Elf!” spat the Fae. “How I have always hated Elves! Rude and foolish—utterly undeserving of the ears of the Blood—”
“Oh, but they look so pretty on me,” Mieka said earnestly. “Everyone says so. Well, much beholden for the information. We really ought to be on our way. Lovely meeting you. Do please give our best regards to Master Blackpath when next you see him!”
The wings rustled angrily. “I’ll have my Tithing first.”
“Sorry, no idea what you’re talking about.” Mieka had hold of Cade’s arm, pulling him backwards one step, then two. “Must toddle off home now.”
“I’ll have my full Tithing of Fae Blood!”
He lunged forward, leafy wings widespread and snapping. Mieka hauled Cade to one side, flinging the second daisy chain over his head. The Fae recoiled, his eyes flaring gold flames once more. But he didn’t back off. Indeed, he took one step forward, then another, wings chittering like the wings of a thousand angry insects.
Mieka dug his free hand into his trousers pocket and came up with a coin, rather large, about two inches across. He tossed it into the air and caught it again. Cade watched the Fae’s yellow eyes follow the dull gray disk and acquire a look of confusion that Cade was pretty sure matched his own.
Mieka smiled with all his teeth. “I really don’t want to lose this,” he said. “But if it’s a tithing you’re after …”
And then the Fae gasped as Mieka threw the coin right at him. Cade, utterly bewildered, yelped as Mieka yanked at his arm again and cried out, “Run!”
They gained the top of the hill, thighs aching, lungs heaving, and at last they stopped. Bent over, hands on his knees, gasping, Cade looked down the path to the bushes. They were simply bushes again, lushly green, frothed with yellow flowers.
“Fucking Hells!” Mieka panted. “That was close!”
Getting his wind back, Cade asked, “You want to explain all that?”
The Elf flopped a hand in the air, still whooping for breath. Cade waited him out. At last he managed, “Daisies are protection against Fae.”
So they were. Something else he’d forgotten. “How did you know?”
“Had a talk with Mistress Mirdley, didn’t I? Back last winter, when I told her about your little side trip to see the Chalk Dragon. Trolls don’t much like Fae. She gave me fair warning, and a gambit or two in case you got foolish and wanted to have another look.”
It shamed Cade that he had not remembered this vital piece of information himself. A laughably simple bit of protective magic that had protected them from—what?
“He wanted our blood!”
“No, just yours. I already gave some.” He held up his scratched palm. “It summoned him, I think. Strictly by accident, of course, when I tripped on that rock. But I didn’t much fancy watching him open one of your veins.” Frowning at the reddened skin on his hand, he added, “You could’ve been quicker on the uptake, y’know.”
“Forgive me if I didn’t quite believe that a Fae was so insulted by the thought of accepting money instead of blood that he’d—” He stopped. Mieka was looking insufferably smug. “All right, I give up.”
“Too easily,” Mieka scoffed. “’Tweren’t just any old coin, but I don’t s’pose Mistress Mirdley will grumble much at losing it to save your life. I tossed him an ironslip, my dear old Quill,” he explained at last. “From the early part of the war. The only danger was in me forgetting, and spending it!”
As a precaution against the Fae taking advantage of the conflict spawned by the Archduke, King Cobin had ordered iron coins struck, under the theory that if the Fae thought to hide their wings by magic and mix in with everyone else and cause further havoc, daily life necessitated the use of money. And although iron, properly bespelled as in the rings Cade’s grandfather Isshak Highcollar had worn, interfered with a Wizard’s magic, it was pain and poison to the Fae. The slip, of course, would be a Fae’s taking the coin and inevitably reacting to it.
Not that it had ever really worked. There’d been a few anecdotes, mostly suspect, about a Fae’s burned fingers or cries of agony. What the ironslips had really done was make the general populace feel a bit safer from any encroachments by the Fae in a war that wasn’t their own. Most of the coins had been culled from general circulation. Though they were still legal tender, they were rare these days, kept mostly by those who had been in the war, or whose fathers or grandfathers had; the coins served as a convincing prop for implausible tales of outsmarting a Fae.
“Could’ve just used a nail,” Mieka went on. “But the ironslip had more flash.”
“And the Old Gods forfend that you should do anything that lacks genuine style,” Cade teased. He paused, then straightened his posture and settled the daisy chain more evenly around his shoulders. With a low bow, he said, “I am honored, Master Windthistle, to have been invested with the Most Excellent Elfen Order of the Yellow Eye.” After a moment he added, “Though one might have wished—not that I’m complaining, mind you—but it would have been less strain on the nerves if the ceremony had been just slightly less spectacular. You do tend to go for the grandiose, don’t you?”
Mieka pretended puzzlement. “What’s the point, otherwise?”
Even as he burst out laughing, Cade reflected that Mieka had done it to him again. The Elf could always make him laugh, whatever the situation. And this one, anybody would admit, was purely ridiculous.
Back at the crossroads, they hitched a ride with a farmer who was thrilled to be conveying such illustrious young men and plied them with questions about the theater for at least ten miles. Unhappily, he could not take them directly to their inn, for his wagonload of cabbages was destined for a market on the other side of New Halt. Cade expressed their gratitude and asked his name, and told him that two free tickets would be waiting for him at the theater. The man never asked about the daisy chains both wore.
Rafe asked. Cade shook his head and invited him and Jeska into his and Mieka’s room, there to regale them with the whole story. Rafe was incredulous (“Daisies?”), but Jeska was appalled.
“Why did they do that to Briuly? He got them back the Crown, and they punished him by taking away everything but his music!”
“He’s probably happier that way,” Rafe said with a shrug. “You know him—never had time for anybody or anything but his lute. I’d swear that even in his sleep he was fingering songs on his blankets and pillows.”
Cade, who had been trying to avoid thinking about Briuly, seized on to this idea and liked it. But then he thought about Alaen, thorn-thralled and morose all this long while. The notion that Briuly was most likely living a life of perfect contentment, only himself and his lute and his songs, eased some of Cade’s guilt. Still—what would Alaen say when he was told what had happened to his cousin?
He had deliberately forgotten the Elsewhen that had showed him Briuly and Alaen’s discovery of The Rights. Glimpses lingered, nothing substantial—and he wondered if he could track down the rest of it inside his mind for use in the new play. He had the feeling that the cold calculation of it should have disgusted him more than it did. What kind of man was he, anyways?