Ill Met by Moonlight

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Oh, my dear Mistress Scot,” Mary said, “you are still tired and cold from the journey from your brother’s house, and I have kept you talking about my pleasures. I will let you go and rest.”

  “Thank you,” Rhoslyn said, rising and accepting the hand Mary held out to kiss. “You have done what was right, my lady, and secured considerable good. To have done more might not have been wise.”

  Mary nodded. “Jane said so too.”

  “Mistress Dormer is very wise and loves you very much.” Rhoslyn sighed and shook her head. “And I know I have just arrived, but may I ask one day’s leave to do an errand for my brother in London? As you know he is not well and traveling to the city is very hard for him.”

  “I give you leave, and gladly!” Mary was always pleased with an opportunity to be gracious, especially when it cost her little. “And you must forgive me for not asking sooner about your brother’s health. That was unkind, but I was so overset by the events we spoke of, that I quite forgot.”

  Rhoslyn smiled. “You are never unkind, my lady. You have been so understanding about my absences. But he is such a good, kind brother and has no one except the servants. I feel I must be with him when he has these bad spells.”

  “Of course you must.” Mary patted Rhoslyn’s hand. “I am very well attended and also have the queen’s company. She is a fine woman, except … I could wish for different clerics around her. No, no. Do not be troubled over your absences. I enjoy your company, Mistress Scot, and always look forward to your attendance, but it is no great hardship if you must be away.”

  Rhoslyn thanked her again, curtsied, and backed away, pleased that Mary had not this time asked a dozen questions about Rosamund’s wholly imaginary brother. When Rhoslyn had been appointed one of Mary’s maids of honor, she fabricated this brother to explain Rosamund’s frequent absences from her duties. The brother, Patric Scot, Rhoslyn told Mary, was confined by a mysterious illness, which physicians could not identify or cure, to a rural but wealthy estate.

  Always having been frail, Rhoslyn added, Patric had never married and clung to his sister Rosamund, who was his heir and to whom he was very generous. That was why Rosamund had no need for a stipend from Lady Mary and could even, from time to time, make Mary little gifts to relieve financial embarrassment. Mary, grateful to Rosamund and of an affectionate nature, readily accepted Rosamund’s absences to attend her brother when he had particularly bad spells.

  The next day Roslyn did indeed travel to London where she went to Pasgen’s house. From there she Gated directly to the empty house in which she and Pasgen pretended to live Underhill. On arriving she sent a servant for Talog, riding the not-horse to an outer Gate, and Gated to Caer Mordwyn.

  The Gate had changed. What had been the jaws of an enormous serpent, which threatened to snap shut a thousand glittering teeth on any arrival—and occasionally did—was now an elaborate temple of glittering black glass over a clear floor. Below the floor was a pit of seemingly boiling lava from which thin, sharp spires of rock reached upward. The clear floor showed suspicious cracks. Rhoslyn stared in astonishment. What had been going on in her absence?

  Chapter 21

  When she saw the deep cracks in the transparent floor above boiling lava, and the stalagmites that threatened to pierce anyone who fell, instinct bade Rhoslyn spur Talog to leap forward. Instead she tightened her hands on Talog’s reins. Rhoslyn knew stalagmites could not exist in boiling lava; nonetheless she did not desire to fall on one. Still, since Vidal had doubtless created the lava and the stalagmites to drive arrivals out of the Gate, caution bade Rhoslyn hold the reins steady while she looked ahead.

  The path from the Gate had changed also. Where there had been one broad way, lined by writhing carnivorous plants that threatened to reach out and catch anyone going past them, but safe enough if traveled carefully, there were now three paths, all very innocent-looking gravel.

  Rhoslyn promptly thrust a spear of force at the central way, which looked as if it went directly to the palace. Black ooze bubbled up through the gravel. A second thrust of force at the right-hand path went right through; there was no path, only illusion over nothing. The thrust at the left-hand path resulted in a burst of counterforce that could have torn Talog and herself apart.

  There was no safe path.

  Rhoslyn drew a breath, preparing to command the Gate to take her back to the vale of the empty house. It was too late. Talog hissed horribly and leapt forward as the floor of the Gate began to open along one of the cracks.

  The not-horse landed with a loud squelch in the center path. Stinking black liquid fountained up as the creature’s clawed feet struck the path, liberally spattering mount and rider. To Rhoslyn’s surprise, aside from the fetid odor, it did no harm.

  Rhoslyn muttered a few choice expletives over Vidal’s sense of humor. Few of the Dark Court would believe the most direct path was essentially the safest; most would fall afoul of the traps to left and right. Rhoslyn now assumed the traps were not fatal, because presumably Vidal would not wish to deplete his court by killing too many of his followers … but with Vidal, one could never tell. However, the not-horse seemed quite satisfied with the footing and was already trotting forward. A dozen strides took them past the black ooze.

  A spell to clean herself and Talog was Rhoslyn’s immediate concern. For a moment she curbed that impulse, realizing that use of magic could alert Vidal to her arrival. She did not wish to see Vidal and possibly remind him about Elizabeth. After all, she had come to see Aurelia, not Vidal. Then she shrugged. The lances of force she had used to test the path had doubtless already betrayed her, and she liked being stained with the fetid sludge even less than she liked finding some excuse for her presence to Vidal. A firm thought and a gesture removed all evidence of the filth, and she rode on toward Vidal’s palace, resigned to the idea that Vidal would be waiting for her when she arrived—or, at the least, would send someone to meet her to deliver orders to attend upon him.

  Even so, the newt-servants who came to take Talog had no message for her, nor did any Sidhe come hurrying from the palace to intercept her. Rhoslyn breathed a sigh of relief. Either Vidal was not in Caer Mordwyn, or he did not wish to see her. Either possibility was equally satisfactory to Rhoslyn, who hurried up the black marble stairs toward the doors.

  Preoccupied with what she intended to say to Aurelia, Rhoslyn slipped through the magically opened door and negotiated the minor traps in the corridors and stairway without really noticing them. At the head of the stair the same half-drugged Sidhe as always was on guard; this time he did not argue when Rhoslyn sent him to inform Aurelia of her arrival. Rhoslyn wondered whether he was so drug-addicted that he no longer possessed a will of his own, but he carried the message correctly. The Sidhe brought Aurelia’s invitation to enter as he came out.

  “Well? Is Elizabeth free for our taking?” Aurelia asked with a show of impatience, before Rhoslyn had properly shut the door.

  Rhoslyn turned and bowed slightly. The Roman couch on which Aurelia had reclined the last time Rhoslyn had seen her was gone. Now she sat in a cushioned chair drawn up to an elegant gilded desk on which lay an open book. From the way the pages writhed and flickered when Rhoslyn glanced at them, she was sure the book was a grimoire sealed to Aurelia. Beside the book was the ubiquitous glass of cloudy bluish liquid, but it was full.

  Aurelia’s direct question left no room for prevarication. Rhoslyn sighed. “Unfortunately Elizabeth is still beyond our touch, even though the boy I set to watch her did catch her in a serious indiscretion. She went out near midnight and apparently flung herself into the arms of a man.”

  Aurelia’s lips thinned. “And the king tolerated such behavior?”

  “He never learned of it.” Rhoslyn sighed again and told Aurelia what had taken place in the garden from the time Stafford had seen Elizabeth run into a man’s arms to the glimpse Mary had had of a man she knew to be long dead.

  “Only Stafford saw the man Elizabeth ran to meet, and o
nly Mary caught one glimpse of the man she believes Elizabeth conjured from the dead and who disappeared before her eyes,” Rhoslyn admitted, with a grimace. “The guard at the gate—and all agree that he was standing right there, upright and alert—swore that no one had entered the garden or left it. Mary’s gentlemen searched the whole place most thoroughly and could find no one but Elizabeth and her maid, and the maid explained everything Stafford and Mary thought they saw, insisting they had mistaken her for the man.”

  “The maid,” Aurelia repeated darkly, as she turned fully to face Rhoslyn and raised a hand to rub her forehead. “I would know more about this mortal. Is this the same maid who has been with Elizabeth since her birth? The maid who wears a necklace of black iron crosses?”

  “Yes, I believe it is the same maid,” Rhoslyn said, rather surprised at how easily Aurelia had been distracted from the target of Elizabeth.

  Aurelia reached out and took a sip from the glass on the desk, stared into it for a moment, then set it aside.

  The gaze she now turned on Rhoslyn was penetrating—and fierce. “The maid is a commoner with no important connections except Elizabeth herself—true?”

  “Yes.” Rhoslyn was still puzzled.

  Aurelia smiled smugly. “And it is by the maid’s word and by her clever explanations that the mistake Elizabeth made was kept from her father?”

  “Ah.” It appeared that Aurelia’s mind was not wandering from the subject of Elizabeth, after all. Rhoslyn nodded, also smiling, pleased to have found something that was a lawful target for Aurelia’s obsession. And the maid was an adult. Neither Oberon, nor Rhoslyn’s conscience, would be troubled over being rid of the woman. “Then, madam, I see your thought; we must get rid of the maid.”

  “Agreed,” Aurelia said. “We must get rid of the maid, by purely mortal means—one of the other servants must attack her. And I would like to see to that myself.”

  “That will not be so easy.” Roslyn swallowed, thinking of Aurelia’s arrogance and her moments of confusion; bringing her to the mortal world might well be a disaster. “I am known as Mary’s lady, so I have a place at court and a reason for being there. But Elizabeth did not escape intact from her escapade. She has been banished to St. James’s palace in London, and I have no reason for being there.”

  “I did not plan to walk up to the gate and demand entry,” Aurelia snapped. “I am sure there are many places in so large a building or on the grounds where so skilled a Gate builder as your brother could open a Gate for me. He has not been of much use in any other way.”

  “No matter how skilled the Gate builder,” Rhoslyn replied swallowing down her irritation and anxiety, “he needs to know the terminus, or the Gate might go awry.”

  “So?” Aurelia waved a careless hand. “You have been no more successful than your brother in removing Elizabeth from the line of successors of Henry VIII. The least you can do is find a way for me to begin to solve the problem myself. The maid must be removed; you agreed with me on that score. Without her we should have far less trouble in arranging Elizabeth’s death or removal. And for what she did to me, I must in my own person make sure that she suffers.”

  Rhoslyn argued for a while, trying this excuse and that for dealing with the maid herself. In a very short time, however, she realized that all she was accomplishing was to annoy Aurelia. Before Vidal’s consort dismissed her and said she would take the matter to him, Rhoslyn agreed to arrange for a Gate to transport her.

  “In no long time,” Aurelia said grimly, as she gestured Rhoslyn to leave. “I have waited long enough. I will not wait much longer for my revenge.”

  Furious but helpless, Rhoslyn left. Mounting Talog, she rode around the palace, and then to the opposite end of the domain, entering the first Gate to which she came. Although it took three extra stops, Rhoslyn eventually arrived at the Bazaar of the Bizarre. Following the winding path Pasgen had laid out for her, three more Gatings took her to her brother’s domain. By the time she arrived at his door, his burly guards were waiting to take Talog, and Pasgen himself was at the door gesturing her inside into his living room.

  “I heard you coming two Gates away,” he said, grinning, when she had seated herself. “My, my, Rhoslyn. I didn’t know you knew such language.”

  She laughed, albeit reluctantly. “It must have been more pungent than I realized to drag you out of your workshop.”

  He shrugged, evidently in good humor. “Ah, no. I was only sitting here reading—or trying to read—some old texts about the djinn from Alhambra.”

  “Alhambra!” She looked at him with surprise. “I thought that elfhame was dead and cursed.”

  “Yes. Dead and cursed. I did not stay long.” He shook himself, like a dog ridding its coat of something noxious. “But what brings you here in such a mood?” He frowned, showing a touch of anxiety. “Not Mother?”

  “No, Mother is fine and she seems to be taking a real interest in healing since she helped soothe your bruises,” Rhoslyn replied, glad enough of the chance to ease into the subject that had brought her here. “I am encouraging her. No, it’s not Mother. Did you remember that Aurelia had set her mind on having Elizabeth disgraced and stricken from the succession so she could be abducted?”

  Pasgen made a disgusted noise. “Idiots. There are three lives between her and the throne. If Edward lives a full life, he will marry and have sons and they will stand between her and the throne also. She could catch some childish ailment and die. She could grow to womanhood, and plague could carry her off. She could, all by herself, fall into some conspiracy and be imprisoned or executed. Or she could succumb to her own hot blood and fall into disgrace. Why chance raising Oberon’s ire, when natural events in the mortal world are likely to remove Elizabeth?”

  Rhoslyn shook her head. “I think Aurelia’s desire to seize her is … is personal. Even though Elizabeth was only a baby at the time of that battle, Aurelia blames her for what happened. But she hasn’t lost sight of the fact that it was the maid who actually damaged her. Right now she wants to get into St. James’s Palace so she can personally see that the maid is attacked, hurt, and killed.”

  For a moment Pasgen stared past his sister. Then he said, “Did you know that Aurelia is far less of a fool than Vidal?”

  Rhoslyn laughed weakly. “She is a woman, after all. To be cleverer than a man is natural.” Then she said more soberly, “I suspected she had more brains than Vidal when she first came, but she was far more damaged than Vidal in the battle.”

  Pasgen nodded. “And she knows it—and admits it, which is more than Vidal does. He is recovering, but I think he may never recall all that he lost, whereas Aurelia is seizing grimoires from every mage she can dominate and is relearning what she lost. She may come out well ahead of Vidal in control of magic, in fact.”

  Rhoslyn nodded wisely. “Ah, I thought that was a grimoire on her desk, but it shimmered and coiled away from my sight as if it had been sealed to her.”

  “That was the bargain she made with several mages.” Pasgen laughed, but his expression was full of admiration. “They write one for her and seal it to her and she will leave the original grimoire with its master. But if I were one of those mages, I would never perform a spell that is not already written in the book I gave her—or at least, I would never perform it where or when she could learn about it. She is very vindictive.”

  Rhoslyn gave him a sharp look. “Did you give her any spells for Gates?”

  “I gave her nothing,” Pasgen said coldly.

  Rhoslyn lifted one brow. “I thought you found her … attractive.”

  “What has that to do with anything?” Pasgen asked, and then added, with a wry twist to his lips, “She is not so beautiful any longer. Most of her looks are illusion.”

  “You can see through illusion now?” That was a surprise. She didn’t think any Sidhe could do that—or at least, not without dispelling the illusion itself.

  “No one can see through illusion Underhill,” he replied dismissively. “
Underhill is illusion. No, I can feel the spells humming around her. Never mind that. You said Aurelia wanted to get into St. James’s Palace to arrange the death of the maid. So take her through the Gate to the London house, bespell the guards—”

  “No!” Rhoslyn countered emphatically. “Aurelia wants to go now, and she wants you to make it possible. I have tried to convince her to wait a few weeks until Elizabeth’s household is settled, but she will not. I think she believes I am delaying for some secret purpose—although what secret purpose she thinks I could have, I do not know. And to bespell the guards now would be disastrous.”

  “Hmmm, yes,” he agreed, rubbing the side of his nose thoughtfully. “With supplies and messengers coming every other moment, to find the guards frozen at the gate would scream of magic.”

  “Yes, and though getting in would be easy enough, after the maid is killed there will certainly be a hue and cry, so getting out will not be so easy,” she reminded him sharply. “What I would like is for you to build a Gate from Caer Mordwyn to wherever I am in the mortal world and hold it until we return.”

  It was not what Aurelia had demanded, but Rhoslyn was in no mood to give Vidal’s consort a Gate into the palace where Elizabeth dwelled at least part of the time. Given such a tempting tool, Aurelia was bound to use it.

  “Rhoslyn!” Pasgen protested. “Do you know how much power that will take?”

  She sighed. “Yes, but I have a bad feeling about this business. Aurelia wants to prolong the maid’s suffering to punish her, but she wants to arrange the punishment to come from another mortal … well, that is very sensible. Still, the maid is unlikely to suffer in silence. She will scream and struggle and attract attention, and Aurelia wants to be there to enjoy it all.”

  Pasgen snorted. “Surely in a great palace with wide grounds there would be private places?”

  “Yes?” Rhoslyn was exasperated with him. He had spent enough time in the World Above to know how it was there! “And how am I to draw the maid there? I cannot go near her because of that accursed necklace she wears, so I cannot bespell her. Even assuming that my spell would not go awry because of the iron in the necklace. She hardly ever leaves Elizabeth—and Elizabeth can see through whatever illusions we use so I cannot tempt the maid away by, say, appearing like Champernowne.” She sighed. “It will have to be a time and place where she customarily goes alone or remains alone after Elizabeth has been taken elsewhere.”