Veil of Shadows

by Lindsay

  Beside her face, the little fern that had been so battered by the water now stood straight and tall, its feathery leaves brushing her face. She closed her eyes and used her other sight. In that place, it did not hurt to look, or to breathe.

  The tree of her life force had so many broken branches and snapped roots. Her energy, sickly yellow, moved like the sludge in the bottom of a Darkworld tunnel, and the dirty bubbles of it burst into nothing where they reached a fracture in their path.

  Beside her, the little fern, buzzing with bright green like a swarm of angry bees, bent to brush against her chin again. The fibrous material shocked her skin, dripped blinding green-white sparks onto the surface of her. The energy sank into her own, green for a moment, then blending into the dim mix of her own. A similar prickle snapped at her elbow, another at her thigh. All around her, the plants of the forest touched her, gave her their strength. Was she doing it, or were they? Cedric had not taught her this….

  …that name should have caused her pain, but it did not. She did not have enough strength to feel it.

  She thought of that day in this forest, perhaps very close to where she lay now. Yesterday? It seemed like a lifetime. Perhaps it had been. She might have lain on the forest floor forever, caught between life and death, kept in the former state only by the scant help the plants could give her.

  That was a happy delusion. The hours had not seemed like years, they had been years. The rain that soaked her hair and skin was not the same rain as had fallen before. No, she had been here for as long as it felt she had.

  The plants around her trembled. A breeze brushed her face. And then, a voice, as if underwater, but unmistakably a voice, pulled her out of the other sight.

  A figure, clad in strange, Human clothing, ran toward her. It knelt, features fuzzy as it loomed over her. “I"m here,” it reassured her in a masculine voice. “I"ve got you.”

  “Cedric?” But it couldn"t be, could it?

  He lifted her into his arms, and the pain washed her into darkness again.

  Danae had ordered him tied to the post in the center of her tent, in the same room where he"d fallen so easily for her trick. During the night, one of her crows came to cover him with a blanket. In the morning, they brought him water and something to eat, feeding him patiently.

  The rest of the time, he was alone.

  Days passed this way. How many, he had lost count. He asked for Cerridwen. Had they found her? Was she okay? They ignored him, or merely shook their heads.

  When he slept, images of her, head thrown back, panting, breathless, haunted him. His hands covering hers as she bunched the bedclothes in her fists. Her slender legs quivering where they wrapped around him.

  Always he woke still bound, body aching from lack of movement, tormented by wholly different images in the light. Her confusion, her screams, her pain. The knife blade sinking into her arms, over and over, blood splashing against her linen-pale skin.

  Whenever they brought him food, he prayed it was poisoned. He prayed for an end to the spell that kept him prisoner. Neither death, nor relief, came to him.

  He had heard Danae, all during his captivity, pretending to be concerned when the searchers returned with no news, gloating later to her faithful handmaidens that it would only be a matter of time before she was Queene once more.

  All the time he had listened to her his hatred had grown. He had never imagined such an abhorrence. It consumed him like fire, leaving only ashes behind, and yet even after it had used up the last bit of his will, still it burned. No matter what vengeance he might exact upon Danae—and he prayed that he would, someday, claim that revenge—it would never wash away the foul loathing of her that blackened his heart.

  It was almost nightfall when the False Queene came into the room, dressed all in black, her hair unbound, hands clasped in a unified fist against her stomach—she looked the picture of a somber mourner.

  “What do you think?” she asked, her voice full of tears. “Will this be convincing?”

  He tried to spit at her, but his mouth was dry, and the motion was useless. Pathetic. He hung his head.

  “The searchers have given up,” she declared in a more cheerful tone. “They have found their answer.”

  He looked up, to her hands, outstretched and cupped. In them, feathers. Black, tinted red in the low light of the oil lamps.

  “Good work, Cedric,” she said with a cruel smile, and turned her back to leave.

  A cry woke Amergin, a scream that sent a chill to his immortal bones and echoed through the treetops like the anguish of a dying animal. It repeated, tugging sympathetic pains from his chest. Any creature that could hear such a sound and not shudder in agony in unison with the creature that had uttered it was soulless, at best.

  He rolled over on his cot and felt an unexpected tenderness for Cedric, despite what he had done.

  All through the night, the pitiable screaming went on.

  Fourteen

  S he was never certain if she dreamed or not. Sometimes, the face that leaned over her, full of concern, was that of Trasa. Sometimes, it was her mother. Others, it was the Morrigan herself. It seemed unlikely that any of it could be real, but she could not sort it out.

  Time passed. She did not know how much, but she was certain that it passed, because she felt herself becoming stronger. She also woke to cool hands helping her sit up, and a cup pressed against her mouth. This happened more than once, and each time she drank the bitter liquid offered, she slept until it was time to drink it down again.

  She woke once in the night, and did not know where she was. A fire burned in a stone hearth, and she saw through the wobbly glass in the window beside her bed an ink-black sky full of stars. But she did not remember having a bed next to a window in a stone cottage. She did not remember traveling to one.

  Her head swam, throbbing with exhaustion and pain, yet still feverishly alert and fighting against the confusion the drugged concoction wrought. She meant to call out for water, and to ask where she was, but when she spoke, she cried his name and something twisted sharp in her chest.

  Trasa was at her side in a moment, urging her to lie back down. “Rest. You are not healed.”

  “Where am I?” she asked, and yet the words muddled on the way out, and she really asked,

  “Where is Cedric?”

  “Safe,” Trasa said, but her face blanched. “He wishes for you to rest.”

  Why would she not tell her? And then, with clarity that stung far more than the knife blade had, she remembered. He had done this to her. He had stabbed her, had held her down and slashed at her with a dagger, torn flesh from her arms with the blade as she tried to protect herself.

  She opened her mouth to be sick—What a strange thing, to be sick…. Could a Faery do such a thing?

  What came out instead was a feral scream. She hugged her knees and rocked to comfort herself, but no comfort would come.

  Trasa smoothed her tangled hair at her back, hummed a comforting mother"s tune to her as she wailed. How strange, that one who followed a war-maker Goddess, a death Goddess, should attempt consolation in such a time of pain.

  “I do not know why,” Trasa murmured, and only then did Cerridwen realize that what she had been sobbing, over and over, was “Why?”

  When the tears subsided, and she lay back on her bed, not moving, not really seeing the small cottage before her, Cerridwen asked in a whisper, “Where am I?”

  “You are in my home,” Trasa told her, straightening from the pot that hung over the hearth.

  “Rustic by the standards of modern Human society, but Our Lady calls us to lead a simpler life, to stay in touch with the spirit of the land that is drowned out by televisions and radios and computers.”

  “I have seen a television.” It seemed important, somehow, to let the Human know that she was not ignorant to her culture. “There was one in a pub on the Strip, in the Underground.”

  She remembered how it had looked like a window into another world, or a
painting that moved, hung as it was on the wall. “How long have I been here?”

  “Fourteen days.” The Human ladled out some stew from the pot and brought it to Cerridwen"s bedside. “Eat.”

  The sight and scent of food suddenly reminding her of her need for nourishment, she snatched the bowl and fished hot chunks of vegetables from the steaming broth, not caring that it scorched her fingers and burned her tongue.

  “Easy—easy!” Trasa took the bowl back, and pressed an implement into her hand. “Use a spoon!”

  Cerridwen pushed a tangle of hair away from her face. “Sorry,” she said sheepishly. Her stomach lurched at her next thought, but she could not wait any longer. “What happened to Cedric? Have you seen him?”

  “I have. I brought him water this morning,” she stated, hard, matter-of-factly. “He admitted to what he did to you, and the Court believes you dead.”

  “Why would they believe that?” Cerridwen sputtered around a mouthful of stew.

  Trasa did not answer immediately, pretending instead to be more concerned with the frayed hem of her sleeve. “Because it is safer for you, if she thinks so.”

  “Why?” And then, mocking, she realized. “Danae was behind this somehow? But that is impossible. Cedric—”

  Cedric had wielded the knife. She looked down at the rough black robe she wore, held up her arms and let the sleeves fall back. Bandages swathed her forearms. Cedric had done this to her, the morning after he had met with Danae in private.

  “No.” She shook her head and pushed the bowl away, suddenly no longer hungry. “No, that is not possible.”

  Trasa did not argue. It was not enough. Cerridwen wanted her to apologize for thinking such a thing, to laugh away the suggestion. Her silence was as harsh an accusation of Cedric as her words had been.

  “It is just not possible,” Cerridwen repeated firmly. She looked out the window. She saw no trees, just an endless expanse of night. “Where are we, now? In relation to the Court?”

  Trasa gazed out the window as well. “Outside the forest. Far enough that my Sisters and I could hide here to escape the Enforcers. Close enough that I can still serve at Danae"s side.”

  “You will continue to serve her? You said that you were loyal to me.” If the Human truly believed that Danae had tried to kill her, what kind of loyalty was that? Was she even safe here, in the cottage?

  “We are loyal to Our Lady,” Trasa corrected, no sign of regret on her features. “But we do still remain allies of yours. If we stay close to Danae, we will be on hand when all is revealed and the Court sees her for what she truly is.”

  “And what is she?” Cerridwen needed to hear her slandered, even though it was a pathetic revenge, at best.

  “A coward,” Trasa said simply. “She wanted you dead, but did not possess the courage to do the deed herself. She sent someone in her place.”

  They fell silent then, and Cerridwen"s wounds throbbed, as if to remind her of the agony her heart should still feel. “I thought Cedric found me. In the woods.”

  “No.” Trasa went to the hearth and stirred the embers. “No, that was Amergin. He found you within hours of your disappearance, and good thing, too. You would have died had he not.”

  “Thank you,” she said, miserably picking the bowl back up. She would eat, whether she was hungry or not. Not to would be ingratitude. “For all of your kindness.”

  Trasa nodded. “Do not thank me just yet, though. You are not healed, and you cannot have given thought to what you will do next.”

  Not only had she not given thought to what she would do next, she hadn"t thought that it was something to think about. Now that the Human had brought it up, it seemed obvious that she could not stay here in the cottage forever. And she had no money, no possessions, no connections. Where would she go?

  Perhaps it would have been better to die in the forest.

  “You cannot lose hope, Your Majesty,” Trasa told her, kneeling beside the bed. “You have more allies than you know. It will simply be a matter of calling them together, and striking at the right time. You will be Queene, and greatly admired, if you plan your next steps carefully.”

  Cerridwen did not have the courage to tell the Human that she was no longer interested in being a Queene, that none of that mattered now. She might survive for centuries, but she would never live. She would merely exist.

  The brew Trasa fed her later, before she banked the fire and went to her own pallet, was not as strong as it had been before, and Cerridwen lay awake, staring through the blue-dark night.

  She had grown so used to Cedric"s presence beside her, it was unsettling to sleep without him there. She balled up the blankets and tucked herself next to them. It was foolish, she scolded herself, to miss him, after what he had done—even more foolish to pretend he was there with her. All it did was delay the inevitable, that one day the reality of his absence would strike her a crippling blow. He would never lie beside her again, never tell her that he loved her as he had the night before that horrible morning.

  As he had whispered while trying to kill her.

  Her stomach turned at that, and she punched at the blankets wildly, unwinding them. Instead of comforting herself with phantoms, Cerridwen chose to spend the sleepless night alone.

  Cedric woke, unsure when he had fallen asleep. The raw ache in his throat reminded him at once of the night before, the horrible sight of those feathers in Danae"s palms. He closed his eyes and willed his heart to stop beating, but the immortal will of his body to go on living could not be broken.

  The crow came to bring him water. As always, she looked on him with disgust. Today, though, instead of staying silent as she pressed the dipper to his mouth, she said, “You have a guest to see you.”

  He gulped greedily, far more eager to get the liquid down so he could speak than to slake his thirst. He choked on the last bit of it, fought through it before she could leave. “Who?”

  “A friend,” she said tersely. Striding to the flap that separated the space from the Throne Room beyond, she said, “I hope what you did to her was worth it, in the end.”

  It was the first time anyone, apart from Danae, had mentioned Cerridwen"s murder to him, and her words shocked him. He was not surprised that she would condemn him—he condemned himself, so why should she not, as well—but it surprised him that Cerridwen had been embraced by anyone in the Court during the very short time since her arrival.

  “You don"t have much time,” the crow whispered to whoever waited in the other room.

  “Danae will return before the noon meal. Leave the way you came.”

  Cedric struggled to sit up straighter against the post he was tied to, the muscles of his back and his folded wings protesting with the motion. When he saw who had come to him, he stopped breathing.

  Amergin stood at the doorway, looking at him with a strange mixture of pity and loathing.

  Danae"s words floated back to him on a cruel wave of hope. You cannot tell anyone, Human or Fae.

  The man who stood before him was not wholly Human, but neither was he Fae. He was something apart, elevated to the level of Demigod by the faith of a people who had immortalized him.

  He was Cedric"s last hope, if any remained, and the man knelt before him now with a concerned expression on his sharp features.

  “I am under a spell,” Cedric blurted, and hoped that Amergin would not dismiss it as a foolish defense.

  “I can see that,” the Human said simply, looking at a spot over Cedric"s shoulder. “Anyone who would bother to look at you would be able to tell that.”

  “Corpse Water,” Cedric said, unable to hold back, now that he could speak the words. “She poisoned me with Corpse Water and ordered me to kill Cerridwen.” He stopped, his chest squeezing tight, as though he had just uncovered a hidden well of screams. “I did not want to.

  I fought it, I tried to warn her, but I could not tell her. I could not utter a word of it to anyone Human or Fae.”

  “And I am neither.” Ame
rgin rocked back on his heels. “I should go, before anyone knows I was here, then.”

  “Do not leave me!” Cedric could not let him go, not without…“Cerridwen…Danae said, that is…They brought back feathers.”

  Amergin looked away. That one gesture told Cedric all he needed to know.

  “She was alone. She fled to the forest, and she died there.” He nodded his head, as though he could force himself to accept it. “I killed her.”

  “Do not think of that now,” Amergin said faintly. “I cannot stand another night of your wailing. You must be strong if we are to repay Danae for this.”

  “You know the truth,” Cedric insisted. “You can tell them, and Danae can be—”

  “Your revenge will not come today, friend.” Amergin moved to the back of the room, lifted the cloth wall. “I will do what I can, but for now, you must keep this meeting secret.”

  “I will do what I can,” Cedric vowed as the Human slipped under the curtain.

  His revenge would not come that day, but waiting another would not be impossible.

  Cerridwen was gone. If nothing else kept him alive, it would be his hunger for vengeance. No matter how long he was forced to wait.

  The long hours that Trasa was away serving with the other Sisters were unbearably boring now that Cerridwen was conscious of them. The long, black robes that Trasa had lent her covered her wings, so she felt safe enough wandering on the grounds of the cottage.

  The building stood halfway down a gentle slope. The grass appeared exceptionally greener against the sunless white sky, and dark lines of stone fence dissected the hill into neat squares. For as far as Cerridwen could see, there were no other Human dwellings, only the vague imprint of a Human road at the bottom of the hill suggested that mortals had ever lived there, aside from the presence of the little cottage. The road made a ghostly impression with chunks of broken black paving, grown over by sickly yellow grass. On the other side of it, another stone fence, and beyond that, the forest.