“This is ridiculous,” Dietrich muttered, beginning to remove his glove.
“No,” hissed Mitchell. “He is Seelie. You wish to anger Titania?” He looked severely at Isana. “The same goes for you.” She looked annoyed at his tone, but nodded. Dietrich paused, then tugged his glove back into place with an exasperated sigh. The puca, oblivious, sang to itself,
“In marble walls as white as milk,
Lined with skin as soft as silk,
Within a fountain, crystal clear,
A golden apple doth appear.
No doors there are to this stronghold,
Yet thieves break in and steal the gold.”
Dietrich looked at the puca with a calculating expression. “Puca,” he said, “do I understand correctly that if we answer your riddle, you will allow us to pass?”
“Fa le ra le ri…” The puca continued its song, half singing, half humming, then stopped. “Just for answering? No, of course not.” It stood, shaking out its fur in a very dog-like manner. “No, no. I already know the answer, you see. I’ll let you continue on your way if you ask me a riddle I don’t know, though.”
“We should just shove past it,” Thomas muttered. “They’re not that powerful, pucas.”
“It will harass us for miles if we do,” said Mitchell wearily, with the voice of someone who spoke from experience. He looked at Dietrich. “I see little option but to play the puca’s game, Dietrich.”
“We are already behind in our travels—”
“An egg,” I said abruptly, then immediately regretted speaking. Dietrich and Mitchell both turned to look at me with matching quizzical expressions.
“I’m sorry?”
“It’s… an egg,” I repeated. “That’s the answer to what it was singing just now.” I shifted my feet, uncomfortable under Dietrich’s intense gaze. “Come on, haven’t you read The Hobbit? ‘A box without hinges, key, or lid, yet golden treasure inside is hid’?” I forced myself to stop talking before I started rattling off some other obscure Tolkien reference.
Dietrich’s expression had taken a distinctly appraising look. I didn’t like it. “Do you know more riddles, Samantha?”
“Um… a few…”
“Very well,” said Dietrich, grabbing my arm. I dug my feet in and jerked away from him. He turned to look at me with a chilling expression. My heart stuttered. There was probably a reason that I hadn’t seen anyone in the group openly defy him, despite the apparent lack of unity.
I swallowed. “I’m not sure why I should help you,” I said, injecting as much boldness as I could (read: almost none) into my voice.
Dietrich smiled humorlessly. “I think we discussed the consequences of any disobedience on your part, Samantha?” He glanced at Isana, who sent me a look that was both helpless and pitying.
Oops. “I seem to remember feeling very unfocused last time she enthralled me,” I said, mock-cool. “Not the best frame of mind for answering riddles, I’d say.”
“Sam,” muttered Thomas out of the corner of his mouth. “Don’t aggravate him.” Too late. Dietrich was looking at me as if seriously considering braining me with a tree branch.
“How about this?” I said hurriedly. “I get one question honestly answered for each riddle that I pose to the puca. Deal?”
Thomas was making a series of quick slicing motions behind Dietrich’s back, evidently intended to tell me to shut up. Dietrich’s gaze became, if anything, even colder. “You do not know what you are doing,” he said finally.
“I think I do,” I said, the words tumbling out too fast. I stopped and forced myself to take a breath. “I am insisting,” I said with deliberate slowness, “that if I help this group, you treat me less like an inconvenient prisoner. And that means letting me know a few things.”
“What can it hurt, Dietrich?” Isana asked.
He sent her a quelling look. “Having someone like you to speak for her will do her little good,” he informed her, in German. Isana’s shoulders tensed in anger, but she took a slow breath, then motioned for him to step to the side with her. She took him a few feet off the path, and they held a quick, murmured conference. I felt weak in the knees. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d stood up to someone like that. Wait—yes, I could. It was during the fight that had gotten me thrown out of my parents’ house. I swallowed. What an encouraging thought. After a moment, Dietrich and Isana turned back to the rest of us, and Dietrich looked at me.
“Very well,” he said, nodding to me. He still looked annoyed, but that was an improvement over ‘murderously angry’, in my opinion. “Be very careful which questions you choose to ask, kinde,” he added in a low tone, motioning me forward.
“Then you agree to her bargain?” asked Mitchell, sounding dumbfounded.
“I do.”
“Just a second,” said Thomas, catching my hand to pull me to face him. “Be careful,” he said in a low tone. “Pucas aren’t particularly powerful fae, but they can still wreak havoc on a mortal that offends them. Don’t do anything that could be construed as cheating. They’re very vengeful when angry.” Well, that ruled out using Bilbo’s approach to winning a riddle game. I nodded, pulling away from Thomas. “Good luck,” he added.
I stepped to the front of the group, forcing myself to stand tall. The puca’s ears perked.
“Excellent,” it said, stretching out its body, its tail waving behind it in an enthusiastic arc. “I’ve not had a mortal challenger in years.”
I found the sight of its very prominent teeth slightly distracting. “Um… I’m not really challenging you,” I said cautiously. Isana made a quick noise of dissent behind me, so I hastened to add, “Just answering your challenge, I guess.”
The puca grinned, its tongue lolling to the side. “Then I shall start.” It cleared its throat. “As deep as a house, as round as a cup, yet all the king’s horses can’t draw it up.”
There was a long silence. I could feel the others’ eyes on the back of my head. I had the sensation that I’d heard this riddle before, but I couldn’t place it. “Well,” I began, but the puca cut me off.
“Yes, yes, that was a simple one. Your turn, now.”
I stared at it for a second, then almost laughed. Well. A well.
“Okay…” I trawled through my memories. Perversely, only incredibly stupid riddles came to mind (for example: What’s brown and sticky? Answer: A stick. Want another one? What’s green and red and goes ‘round and ‘round? Answer: A frog in a blender). I finally managed to dislodge that one from the front of my brain and came up with one that was moderately acceptable. “Okay. Feed it and it lives, give it a drink and it dies.”
“Fire,” said the puca, yawning. “Come now, you can do better.” I swallowed. It hadn’t even had to think about that for a second. I wondered how far in over my head I was, exactly. The puca sat back on its haunches, then said, “Smaller than a mouse, taller than a house.”
I bit my lip. Okay, ‘smaller than a mouse’ was pretty concrete. ‘Taller’, though, was a relative term… did the item actually have to be taller, or could it just be in a higher position than the house? If that was the case…
I grinned. “Fruit in a tree.” The puca nodded, its tail wagging cheerfully. This wasn’t so bad, I thought, then realized the ball was back in my court. I tried to plan my next move. More riddles would mean I would get more questions answered, but I also had to end this before the puca asked me something I couldn’t answer. Besides, I didn’t exactly have an extensive stash of riddles memorized. What would be a difficult riddle for a Seelie creature? Mitchell had said they were associated with life, laughter, spring and summer…
I had it. “What grows with its roots upward and its head downward?”
The puca blinked its shining eyes. I held my breath. It didn’t speak, but once again began humming to itself.
“Well?” I asked. “Do you know it?”
“Fa le ra le ri… Impatient mortal,” it chided gently. “It’s impolite to rush your opponen
t during a game—” Abruptly it froze, its pointed ears tipped forward and quivering. Then, with a yelp it leapt into the air, vanishing with a sharp crack.
I jumped. “What just—?”
There was a loud creak behind us, back the way we’d come from. We turned around quickly, and there, maybe a hundred yards back, was a dark, horse-drawn wagon.
Isana made a startled noise, and suddenly she and Dietrich leaped between the rest of the little company and the oncoming wagon.
“Should we run?” asked Thomas in an undertone.
Isana shook her head. “He has already seen us. Running would only pique his interest. Stay close and keep Dietrich between yourselves and him.” She motioned for us to clear the path. We did.
“Who—?” I started to ask, but quailed under the fierce looks that Isana, Mitchell, and Dietrich all sent me. So much for being treated less like an inconvenient prisoner. We stood very still as the carriage approached. The moment it came close enough to make out details in the forest gloom, my stomach dropped, and not just from the sight; a sickly smell of decay preceded the carriage by about twenty feet. As it came nearer, Isana dropped to one knee, motioning for us to follow. We did, excluding Dietrich, who remained standing. Thomas had gone an unhealthy pale shade.
The first thing I noticed about the driver (though it was admittedly kind of hard to miss) was that he had no head—that crucial part sat rotting next to the rest of the body on the seat, grinning obscenely. One of the driver’s hands held the reigns; the other held a long whip that looked suspiciously like a spine. As the wagon jerked closer, the bile rose in my throat. The horse was an emaciated black specter, the diffused light shining on its pelt where its skin stretched tight over its ribs. The wood of the wagon, though lacquered black, was worm-chewed and rotted. The wheels creaked, and almost unwillingly, I looked at them; the spokes were made of thigh-bones that looked just about the right size to be human, tied together with dried brown sinews. The head made a quiet clicking noise as the wagon drew abreast of us, and the horse stopped with a snort.
Dullahan, I thought weakly, feeling sweat bead on my forehead. Mitchell had covered this one in our crash course. It was roughly the Irish equivalent of the Grim Reaper, and it was said to bring death to all it called.
“Sam. Eyes down. Eyes down,” whispered Thomas urgently. I dropped my gaze to the forest floor. Right. Mitchell had also said that dullahan do not like being observed, and would sometimes lash out the eyes of those who watched them for too long. I picked a tiny grey pebble on the ground to stare at and fixed my gaze on it. Silence stretched.
“Greetings, dullahan,” said Dietrich finally. I chanced a glance at him—despite his proud posture, his eyes were downcast as well. “Good health to you.” I thought I caught the merest hesitation before the word ‘health,’ but I wasn’t about to comment on it.
The disembodied head gave a wheezy laugh. “You are far from home, Rhinelander. What business do you have here?”
“We go to the court of your mistress.”
“Ah…” It was like the dying breath of a bullfrog. “The rites?”
“Yes.”
“And you bring tribute to secure entrance?”
“We do.”
“Very well.” There was a pause, during which not even crickets chirped. “The young mortal is frightened.”
A nervous spasm ran through my muscles before I could force myself to remain still. In the fight/flight dichotomy, I am definitely the latter, and holding still with an undead creature two steps away went against my every instinct. Dietrich cast me a look tinged with asperity, then returned his attention to the dullahan. “I expected as much.”
There was a creak, and the dullahan’s body leaned toward us. He touched the tail end (or, I thought, restraining a hysteric giggle, the tail-bone end) of the whip to the underside of my chin, gently lifting my head up. I tried to keep my gaze down, but this proved difficult, so I compromised by staring cross-eyed at my own nose.
“There is no magic in this one,” the head said after a long moment in his creaking voice. “Of what use is she to you?”
“Apologies, dullahan. We prefer to reveal that first to your mistress.”
The dullahan withdrew the whip, and I dropped back into my bow, trembling. “Very well. Perhaps I will see you again in the courts of the Dark Lady… if you are worthy to be there.” With that, the head clicked its rotting tongue again, and the horse resumed its creaking, wobbling gait. The wagon jerked to a start again, rolling unsteadily along the unpaved path. Then, a dozen yards away, it faded from view, dissipating like mist.
Isana returned to her feet instantly. “We need to go,” she began, but at that moment, something snapped inside of me. I turned to the side and vomited. Noisily.
“Look at this,” Dietrich said angrily as I retched. “She cannot withstand this distress. Isana—”
“Give me a break,” I said weakly, wiping my mouth and sitting up. I folded my arms around myself, trying to restrain the trembling. As if he had been perfectly collected the first time he’d run into Death by the side of the road. Then again, maybe he had. I took a shaky breath. “Look, I’m—I’m fine now.”
“She did not cause trouble, Dietrich,” said Isana.
“And what of next time? We will only encounter worse!”
“She helped with the puca,” said Mitchell sharply. I looked at him, surprised. “Isana can enthrall her in seconds if she becomes a problem.” Thomas sent him a quick look at that, but didn’t speak. “For now, we need to move. You heard what the dullahan said.”
Dietrich looked at him for a long moment, then gave a curt nod, turning to go.
Thomas grabbed my hand and helped me to my feet. “I don’t understand,” I said as the others fell to arguing in German. We started moving, Dietrich setting a pace that was nearly a jog. “Why is it so important to get away from here?” Not that I was complaining.
“That last thing it said, about us being worthy,” said Thomas, clearly agitated. “It’s as good as a challenge.” He quickened his pace so that we were practically on the others’ heels. “Aerenia’s been known to send obstacles to winnow out weak competitors before they reach the Court.”
Oh, boy. “What kind of obstacles?” I managed to force out past my constricted throat.
“Who knows? Whatever it is, though, it’ll be nasty if it catches us.”
From then on, despite my dislike of them, I stayed very close to the others. I had no desire to find out what the fae queen had in store that was worse than the dullahan.
Chapter Seven
“Thomas. Samantha,” said Mitchell. He motioned for us to stop walking. Dietrich and Isana continued on. Isana glanced back but didn’t seem concerned about us lagging behind. We’d been moving at a brisk pace for a time, during which Mitchell, Dietrich, and Isana continued their debate in heated German. I hadn’t been able to catch much of it, but I had managed to slow down the heart palpitations that the dullahan encounter had given me. Eventually we had emerged from the forest at the side of a shining lake, ringed by fields of wildflowers. In the late afternoon light, everything seemed bathed in a wash of gold. “There’s been a change in plans,” he said. “We intend to take the Easain path.”
“What?” asked Thomas, startled. “Come on, you really think the dullahan’s going to send something worse than whatever’s lurking in that river?”
“Yes,” said Mitchell flatly. “Whatever we encounter along the Abhainn an Easain, it will not be expecting us or specifically planning to kill us. The same does not hold true for Aerenia’s minions.”
“What’s lurking in the river?” I asked, alarmed.
“Shellycoats, kelpies, fuathan…” said Thomas at the same time that Mitchell said, “Beithir, aughisky, water leapers…”
“Okay! Okay, I get it.” I didn’t need to be any more freaked out than I already was. Hey, I’ve got an idea, I wanted to say. Why don’t we head back to the world that isn’t chock-full of magical creatu
res bent on eating us? You know, the one you kidnapped me from? But I suspected the comment would not be well-received. It would help, I thought, irritated, if I knew why it was so important for Dietrich to win this contest. But of course no one was going to answer that. Unless, I realized suddenly, I used that as one of the questions I’d earned. How many riddles had I asked the puca? I thought back. Two. I could get two questions answered. It wasn’t enough, not by a long shot, but it was something.
“There is, however, another problem,” Mitchell continued. “The river—the Abhainn an Easain—is a wellspring of magic. We all—you excluded, Samantha—will feel its effects.”
“Effects?”
“We’ll all be stronger,” said Thomas. “Or our magical abilities will be, anyway.”
I frowned, wondering why they were treating this like a bad thing, given that we were taking the detour to avoid whatever Aerenia might send. Surely amplified abilities would be a good thing here? “Okay, so…?”
Mitchell lowered his voice, despite the fact that Dietrich and Isana were now a good hundred feet ahead of us. “If either of you feel threatened,” he said quietly, with a meaningful glance in their direction, “for any reason, tell me immediately. Do you understand?”
I raised my hand. “I feel threatened,” I said.
“It’s not a joking matter,” Mitchell snapped. I blinked in surprise at his tone, then looked at the ground, suddenly frustrated with myself for feeling that way. I shouldn’t have let the fact that Mitchell was speaking to me on equal terms with Thomas make me forget that I was a prisoner here.
“I don’t think she was joking,” said Thomas, looking at me with concern. “Were you?” I shook my head.
Mitchell sighed. “I’m sorry, Samantha. I do understand that this is alarming. And you’re right; this is not an easy situation.”
That was putting it mildly, but it wasn’t the ‘situation’ I’d been referring to when I’d said I felt threatened. Every time Dietrich so much as looked at me I felt like… like my skin was trying to crawl off, like I was a rabbit facing down a cobra… I failed to come up with an adequate comparison. “I don’t understand why you’re working with Dietrich,” I said, still looking at the ground. “You clearly don’t trust him either.”
Fae Bound Page 6