Ill Met by Moonlight

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Yes.”

  She took another deep, tremulous breath. “May God’s Grace keep me safe,” she whispered, and put her hand in his.

  Blanche sank down into the chair near Elizabeth’s bed and put both hands over her mouth as if to hold in a scream.

  A black spot appeared between the windows, just opposite where Elizabeth’s cradle had stood when she was a babe. Her fingers tightened on Denoriel’s as the blackness grew and grew, swallowing the wall and then the windows. Elizabeth began to tremble. Denoriel eased his hand from hers and drew her to his side, holding her firmly around the shoulders. Elizabeth could hear Blanche crying.

  In the center of the blackness, but far, far away a bright point of silver light appeared. As the circle of blackness grew, so did that of the silvery light increase, reaching the size of a full moon in winter. It faded in brightness as it grew larger but took on lines and splotches, some darker, some brighter, shadows that shifted and formed evanescent pictures.

  Despite the fear that was bringing a cold sweat out on her body, chilling her even in her heavy silk nightdress, Elizabeth leaned forward. Was that a silver tree? the graceful pointed tower of a castle in a picture? a gate? Insensibly she took a step forward, straining to see better. In reflex her hand clutched her cross in its pouch, but her fingers made no move to flip open the flap and pull the cross free. She was drawn to that place—drawn as she had never been before. It called to her. She took another step and another …

  And then, her foot touched the edge of the blackness, and she fell!

  Chapter 13

  Elizabeth screamed, but there was no sound—

  Somehow, that made things even more terrifying.

  But before she could draw breath to scream again, she was standing quite solidly in the most gorgeous place she had ever seen.

  Terror turned to wonder in a single instant. Above her head arched a dome of opal lace, iridescent, coruscating with light, yet plainly thick and solid as stone. The dome was supported on eight fluted pillars of … could it be? Could it really be? She had seen the stone in prized rings, small oval pieces of a rich orange flecked and streaked with less-desirable brown, and here there were pillars of pure orange as thick around as a ten-year-old tree …

  If she was any judge of stones, those entire pillars were carved of chalcedony. At least the floor beneath her feet, although beautiful, was not an outrage to common sense; it was a simply a platform of the whitest, blue-veined marble.

  There was no sun. Although it had been almost noon and sunny when she rose from her bed, the sky above her now, which she could see through the dome, was midnight blue and speckled liberally with stars. But there was no lack of light. She could see with perfect clarity, the platform itself and all around the platform on which she and Lord Denno stood, an even sward, starred with small, slightly glowing white flowers. She bent, Lord Denno’s arm loosening enough to allow her freedom of movement, and peered around, looking for the large and brilliant moon which could give such a bright, silvery light. There was no moon.

  Elizabeth turned her eyes up to Lord Denno, who was looking down, looking somewhat anxious. Before asking any of the other questions that filled her mind, Elizabeth became aware of an oddity. It was the depths of winter, the middle of February, and they were out-of-doors and she was barefoot and wearing only a nightdress. Admittedly, the dress was a heavy silk—another of Denno’s gifts—and it was delightfully warm, but not warm enough for out-of-doors in February.

  “Why am I not freezing?” she asked.

  The anxious frown on Denno’s forehead smoothed out and he broke into a delighted laugh. “Because you are now Underhill, where the weather suits the clothing, not the other way around.”

  “Underhill?” she replied, unable to understand what he meant. “The realm of the faeries, more like. Tell me true, am I asleep in my bed at Hatfield, dreaming?”

  “No. You are here in the flesh. You must not think of yourself as dreaming,” Denoriel warned. “It is beautiful here, Underhill—not Fae-land; the faery … they do not rule Underhill, thank God—but Underhill can be dangerous. Stay close to me where I can protect you. Do not wander away or let yourself be tempted away. Even here in Logres there are creatures, not evil, but mischievous, and with no understanding that someone might be hurt by their actions—the faery, the wee folk, for example, who are very beautiful but have not the sense of a puling babe. Creatures such as these for pure amusement might take you elsewhere and leave you there with no way to return or to call to me.”

  Feeling just a touch of chill, Elizabeth stepped closer and took Denoriel’s hand. “Where does—” she began, intending to ask from where the light came without sun or moon, but in that moment a most magnificent horse appeared by the platform and she changed her question to “Where did that horse come from?”

  Denno laughed again. “Hatfield, I suppose, but he may have made some stops along the way. It is Miralys, Elizabeth, come to carry us to Llachar Lle, the Summer Palace—although why it should be called the Summer Palace when the weather never changes, I do not know.”

  Elizabeth felt affronted. Denno teased her sometimes, but this time he was actually trying to make a fool of her. “I have seen Miralys when we went hunting. He was a black horse, very handsome, but nothing like this vision.”

  The creature was a brilliant silver with a blue-black mane and tail and eyes as green as Denno’s own. The horse snorted and on his back appeared the most wonderful saddle of bright red leather with a high, golden pommel, and a second, pillion-seat (shaped much like a saddle rather than the simple pad she was used to seeing) behind the rider’s seat that was clearly designed to carry a child. Elizabeth gasped.

  “All the horses you have seen me ride were Miralys,” Denno said, chuckling. “I have only one horse, but you know it would never do to allow anyone of rank or wealth to know I have only one horse, so Miralys changes his color and his shape just a little so everyone thinks I have a whole stableful.”

  Elizabeth opened her mouth, then closed it again while Denno lifted her up into the saddle. She closed her hands tight over the cantle of the rider’s saddle, feeling nervous at being mounted with no reins in her hand. There was no way for her to control the horse, and she had not ridden pillion behind anyone since the moment she had first learned to control a pony on her own. Blanche did not ride at all, of course, but Kat only rode pillion—being able to ride out for pleasure or to hunt, without Kat, and being in full control of her own horse or pony had given Elizabeth some of the few moments of complete freedom she had ever felt.

  Miralys did not need control, however. He stood like a rock until Denno was mounted. It was only then, when Denno rested one hand on his knee and adjusted the fall of his gown with the other, that Elizabeth realized there were no reins. She flung her arms around Denno’s waist to hold on in case the horse should bolt.

  They started off as the thought came to her, not in an uncontrolled gallop but at an easy canter. “Denno, where are we going?” she cried.

  “To Llachar Lle, as I said.” His voice was assured, perhaps held a note of surprise. “I have an apartment there where we can wait in comfort until we are summoned by Queen Titania. If you are hungry, we could have a nuncheon.”

  “But you have no reins,” she wailed. “How can the horse know where you want to go? How can you control him?”

  “Ah.” Denno reached back and patted her shoulder. “Miralys always knows where I want to go. How he knows, I am not prepared to say … No, I don’t mean I won’t tell you, I just have no idea. When I was a boy, oh, four or five years old, a pony appeared, as it often happens for those of our kind. As I grew, he grew, and we have been together ever since. Miralys is not a … a horse. He is an elvensteed, who chooses to look like a horse most of the time. He can look like anything, I suppose, but since the elvensteeds’ purpose in life seems to be to serve us as our friends and means of transportation, a horse is the best form to wear.”

  Protest against a
place where anything could look like anything else, where the park was flooded with light without sun or moon, where the weather suited the clothes worn by each person—who was not a person but something else—rose to Elizabeth’s lips. She did not voice that protest, however. Just ahead was a … no, it did not matter what Denno said; what she was seeing was a castle out of some mad artist’s dream. Exquisite, yes, but utterly impossible.

  “That cannot be real,” she said. “It is just like a painting on the scene of a masque, an illumination, or a design for a tapestry. No one could build a spire like that. It would fall down. Denno, I am dreaming. That palace cannot be real.”

  The palace was far in the distance, yet by the time she finished speaking, Miralys had stopped by the wide marble stairs that led up to a portico which stretched all along the front of the building. Denno dismounted and lifted her down. The steps and portico were of the same brilliantly white, blue-veined marble as the platform on which they had arrived. The platform, although large, had not used enough marble to be out-of-sight costly, but this portico …

  She remembered hearing a discussion of the cost of repairing a plain stone landing at Hertford Palace. She could not even guess the price of a marble porch of this size. Worse, before her were the most immense brazen doors she had ever seen. Surely doors of that size were either far too heavy to move or be supported by hinges or were so thin that the metal would crumple like paper. They were ten times man height, brilliantly polished, and elaborately worked in scenes she had no time really to see.

  Elizabeth’s disbelief startled Denoriel as did her expression of rejection, almost anger. Remembering what Titania had said to Aleneil about a reigning queen deciding the wealth of Underhill would solve her financial problems and bringing a horde of steel-armed mortals to raid, Denoriel felt he had better use that rejection.

  “It is real Underhill,” he said, “but if you take anything made by magic from Underhill into your world, it either vanishes away or turns to dross. Just as in the tales of King Arthur’s sister, Morgana, and the palaces she would build in the wilderness which would vanish when morning came.”

  “Ah!” Elizabeth breathed out a satisfied sigh.

  She had been growing more and more frightened by the idea of the wealth and skill that could build such a palace, such a landing place, out of such materials. Why should such people not rise up and overwhelm all England, take all of the people as slaves?

  “You mean it is all held together by magic, and would not last where there is no magic?” she asked, seeking confirmation of her hope.

  “Your world—we call it the World Above, or Overhill, or the mortal world—has magic. All people have magic, and I have brought you here to see if you could learn to use your magic to protect yourself.” He looked down at her with no sign that he was humoring her, which was a comfort. “But Overhill magic is of a different kind than that of Underhill, a kind my people cannot use, and it does not lend itself to making things, or at least, not large things like a house. In your world, we are quickly depleted of our inner magic and become weak.” He chuckled. “That is why my folk do not much care to live in the World Above.”

  “Ah,” Elizabeth said again, no longer feeling like a poor relation allowed to live only on the sufferance of some infinitely more powerful being—a feeling with which she was too familiar. Now she began looking around her with bright interest.

  They had climbed the steps to the portico. Elizabeth was just wondering how Denno would knock on the great doors when he led her aside to a human-sized portal. There he put his arm tight around her and drew her through what seemed like a short open passage. An icy chill ran down her from head to toe, but Denno marched her through it without allowing her to hesitate.

  On the other side of the portal was a short corridor as high and wide as the great doors. It was, Elizabeth thought, larger even than the great hall of the Tower, and at the end was a pair of silver doors, also closed. Again she had no time to make sense of the scenes worked into the doors; Denno led her into a side corridor of normal size where the walls glowed softly in opalescent mother-of-pearl colors.

  Elizabeth looked at them without envy. It was all very pretty, but so were the masques that players presented to her. From where she sat a masque looked so wonderful, so perfect, but when she had called a player close, it was plain that the brilliant gown he wore (for it was a boy playing the role of a woman) was made of cheap, painted cloth, and when she had been taken to look at the scenery, the impressive mountains became just purple and blue daubs on canvas. So although this might look beautiful, it was not real in the sense that it could exist in her world. And if it could not exist in her world, it did not matter. Already in her short life, Elizabeth had learned to dismiss from her mind those things that could not affect her, for there was far too much to worry about already.

  A little way down the corridor, Denno stopped before an open door leading to a meadow with a manor house, backed by a dense wood, in the distance. Again Denno put his arm around her and pulled her close. She heard him say a few words in a strange language, and they stepped through the doorway into a small, square hallway with open arches right and left.

  “Where is the meadow and the manor house?” she asked, amazed.

  “That is only an illusion—” Denno began, then hesitated and said, “You saw the illusion?”

  “Yes, but did you not say that Underhill illusion is real?” she asked, now thoroughly puzzled. “I saw a wide meadow with a manor house and a wood in the distance. Is the palace we entered also an illusion?”

  “No. Llachar Lle is real. But what you might see through the windows here is often an illusion,” he replied, absently. “Hmmm. So—in the World Above you can see through illusion, but not here.” He grimaced, so quickly she almost missed it. “Well. Since you cannot see through illusion Underhill, you must be extra careful not to trust too easily or quickly. Do not believe what you see, unless I tell you it is as it seems, or you have confirmation some other way.”

  That warning was frightening, but before Elizabeth could ask for reassurance, a shadow fell across the archway to the left.

  “Is that you, Denno?”

  The voice was familiar and Lady Alana stepped out of the arch leading to what was plainly a reception room. The back wall was a huge glass window, the glass smooth and clear as air, nothing like the small, uneven, faintly greenish panes in the windows at home. Through the window, Elizabeth could again see the wide meadow and the forest-backed manor house. She blinked, concentrated on looking through the house and field, but they did not grow shadowy and show what was underneath.

  “Ah, my lady,” Alana said, dropping a curtsey. “I am so glad that you agreed to come and arrived safely.”

  “Are you the great lady we have come to see?” Elizabeth asked, somewhat offended.

  Alana laughed. “Oh, no, no indeed. The great lady is Queen Titania. I am of very little importance here, only Lady Alana. However, the Queen has not sent a message yet.”

  “Good,” Elizabeth said, greatly relieved that she was not to meet a queen in her nightdress. “Then we will have time for Denno to provide court clothing for me as he promised.”

  “I will do that.” Alana chuckled softly. “You don’t want to present yourself in Denno’s notion of what is the proper gown for someone of your slenderness and coloring. Come with me, love.”

  She held out her hand, but Elizabeth, warnings in mind, glanced up at Denno. He nodded and smiled approvingly. “Go with Aleneil. This apartment is well warded and there is nothing here that will hurt you, although you may see some strange things.” Then he said to Lady Alana, “Don’t take too long, Aleneil. I promised Blanche that you would divert Mistress Champernowne so she does not notice that Elizabeth is missing. And on your way, would you leave a message at Mwynwen’s house that Elizabeth is Underhill?”

  Some other message passed between them, Elizabeth guessed, but Lady Alana? Aleneil? only nodded so Elizabeth could not guess what it w
as. She could only follow Alana out of a door at the back of the chamber to a cross corridor from which a branching stairway rose to an upper floor.

  That was impossible, Elizabeth thought, distracted from the slight fear the silent message had awakened in her. There was no room for an upper floor, but she said nothing. It was like the painted ocean of a masque in which you believed, even though you knew that the masque was being played in a palace hall very far from any water … except that here you could walk up the stair to the second floor.

  At the top of the stair were three doors. Alana opened the first to the right, and there was a bedchamber looking a bit like her own in Hatfield. When the door was closed again Alana said, “Take off your nightdress, Lady Elizabeth,” and Elizabeth did so. “Now, take your cross in its pouch, and put it in this bag—”

  Alana held out a small bag made of much thicker stuff than the thin silk of its usual pouch. For a moment Elizabeth hesitated, then with a shrug, obeyed, and hung the whole around her neck. If she could not trust Denno and Alana, she was without hope anyway. She drew the drawstring tight around the encased cross. Then Alana said, “There.”

  Elizabeth looked down at herself and a squeak of protest forced itself through her lips. In spite of all the wonders she had seen since she walked through the black space in the wall, she could not believe this. Yet she was fully and most exquisitely dressed.

  She could feel underclothes, linen drawers, silken chemise, a farthingale with its stiffened hoops. How had they found their way over her body? There was her nightdress at the edge of the bed still sliding down to the floor. Lady Alana put out a casual hand and caught the heavy silken garment; with the other hand, she turned Elizabeth so that she could see herself in a handsome cheval mirror.

  The gown was breathtaking, in the most glorious colors of silver and scarlet, with a wide, square neck above which the snowy white chemise barely peeked. Around her neck was a thick gold chain set with brilliant rubies supporting an oval brooch, also of gold with four oval rubies in the center and huge teardrop pearls hanging from the base. The upper sleeves of the silver gown were tight to about the middle of her upper arm, and folded back over the upper sleeve, from just below the elbow, were huge fur cuffs of a silver fur Elizabeth could not identify.