Ill Met by Moonlight

by Mercedes Lackey

  Elidir started to laugh. “Ah, the joys of youth. You may be completely refreshed by a meal and a short rest, Lady Elizabeth, but the rest of us, I dare say, are badly shaken by nearly losing you.”

  “You may say it for me,” Harry sighed.

  “And for me,” Denoriel said. “I know the Sidhe do not sleep, but that is just what I wish to do, lie down in a bed and become unconscious.”

  “And there is still the last spell to teach you, my lady,” Mechain pointed out. “I think we have seen quite enough of the Goblin Fair. Now we are all ready to return to Llachar Lle.”

  Sighing, Elizabeth allowed herself to be convinced. At any time she loved learning new things, and after the demonstration of how useful the spells she learned could be, she was soon reconciled to returning to Denoriel’s apartment. She could come back, she thought, and Da and Denno would take her to see the other great markets. Her hand went down to touch the outline of the mirror in her purse. She would not even mind going back to St. James’s Palace. There were a few faces she wanted to watch in the new mirror.

  Elizabeth did not intend to include Blanche’s among those faces, but because she was wearing only her nightdress, she had the mirror in her hand when Denoriel returned her to St. James’s Palace. The maid, who looked tired and drawn after a night of watching and worrying, took Elizabeth in her arms and got bruised by the mirror.

  “What’s this?” she cried, taking it from Elizabeth’s hand. “What a beautiful mirror.” She peered into it. “And so clear and bright.”

  “You like the image?” Elizabeth asked, not turning her head to look at it herself.

  Blanche laughed. “Well, I think I look younger and rather worried. But I was worried, Lady Elizabeth. I always worry when you go … ah … away with Lord Denno.”

  Elizabeth’s mouth opened, but the only thing she could get out was an assurance that Denno took good care of her. And when she took the mirror from Blanche’s hand, she dared to look and again saw only the face she knew and loved, a face darkened only by worry. She restrained a shiver. What would she have done if Blanche’s face were changed?

  The mirror might be a good thing, but for now it was better not to use it. It had shown her only what she knew about those she loved. As for strangers—what if she did see something she did not understand in someone’s face? She might make a dreadful mistake. But she would need it, she thought. Someday she would need it.

  For now Elizabeth put the mirror away at bottom of the little chest in which she kept her few jewels. Then she dressed, ate a hearty breakfast, and sat down to make a fair copy of a passage she had translated into Italian. It felt very odd to be completing work that the calendar said she had done the night before and her memory told her, according to the number of times she had eaten and slept in Denoriel’s rooms, was three days past.

  However, by the time she completed the copy and checked it against the original she was feeling much more settled. And when Master William Grindal arrived and began to explain the history lesson they had begun the previous morning—in his reckoning of time—Elizabeth listened to him with only a fleeting thought of tanglefoot, stickfoot, and gwthio-cilgwthio.

  Since the history lesson soon branched out into her tutor’s explanation of the balance of power among Spain, France, and England and therefore why it was necessary to make war on France, all thought of Underhill faded from Elizabeth’s mind. She gave her tutor her full attention.

  There she could ask a mist to make a lion to destroy her enemies; here it was not so easy. Even a man so powerful as her father needed to plan most carefully and negotiate most skillfully to accomplish a purpose. And this was her world; this was where she must live. The dangers in it were not so obvious as lions, but she understood instinctively that they were just as real, and that knowing these things was more important than any magic spell.

  Chapter 27

  When Pasgen was assured that the rout of half-crazed fauns and nymphs had separated Elizabeth and Denoriel and the mortal slaves he had hired had caught her and started toward the reawakened Orbis Gate, he began the transits that would take him home. After all, what could possibly go wrong at this stage? Confidently, on arriving, he passed through the interior Gates into the escape-proof holding chamber he maintained.

  It was empty.

  For one long moment he just stared at the place where Elizabeth should have been, as if by staring, he would make her appear out of nothing.

  Then he got hold of himself. Quickly Pasgen estimated the time it had taken him to arrive at home and compared it to the time his amulet should have opened the Orbis Gate and flicked Elizabeth and the two men into his holding chamber. Then he shook his head and laughed at himself. The imp had told him when they turned into the alley. Likely by then the girl had recovered her wits and at that moment, she began to give the men trouble.

  Trouble—

  Suddenly he remembered the burst of power that had destroyed his Gate and could have flung him into the void the last time he had tried to abduct the girl. Fury should have burned in him; instead he felt a reluctant admiration.

  And after all, he had planned for this. The men he had hired were mortals. They would not be affected if she unleashed some wild mortal magic, and if she loosed that kind of power, Goblin Fair would react. If she were Removed, in the sense that the Fair Removed things, that would end the problem and no shadow would fall on him or on the Unseleighe.

  In a way, that would be even better than abduction. No one would know but Vidal and Rhoslyn that he had been the reason the child loosed her magic. He would not even have to justify his actions to Rhoslyn. He could say with truth that Removal was not what he intended; that he had only wanted to bring her into Unseleighe hands. And he could not possibly have known that she would lash out with magic within the confines of the Fair. For that matter, the signs were there for all to see, and surely if Denoriel had given her the ability to use her magic, and had not driven the warning home, well, that was not his fault. It was Denoriel who had taken her Underhill in the first place, and Denoriel who should bear the blame for whatever happened.

  Pasgen should have felt relieved and satisfied, but a flicker of regret touched him. That child was so strong, so vital—and she would make untold trouble for the Unseleighe if she did come to rule.

  Did he care about trouble for the Unseleighe? Pasgen looked around the empty holding chamber. Even if Elizabeth resisted, they should have arrived by now.

  He was uneasy, and he grew more and more uneasy as the moments passed. Moments into minutes, minutes into a quarter and then a half hour. Pasgen stood staring into nothing. Removed? Or had something else entirely gone wrong?

  For some reason Pasgen felt cold. Finally he set an alarm to tell him if something arrived in his holding chamber and Gated into the main body of his house. He ate a meal, but the alarm did not summon him. With a very strange light in his eyes, Pasgen left his house and made his way back to the Goblin Fair.

  From the mouth of the alley, he followed Elizabeth’s aura—it was very strong for a human—to the Gate. Around the Gate he sensed Denoriel and two other Sidhe; their auras flickered with violent emotion. The Gate was dead. Deader than it had been when he first sensed it and decided to use it. Delicately Pasgen probed. The Gate had been shut down a-purpose, but by a purely Sidhe negation of its working. The Fair itself had had no part in killing the Gate. He raised his brows. It still retained some power.

  And it had been shut down from this side.

  Pasgen had a way with Gates. He worked around the cancellation spells that had shut it down and even discovered where it had carried Elizabeth and her abductors.

  Which was not where it had been supposed to go. Now, this was more than interesting, it was fascinating.

  His eyes alight with interest and curiosity, Pasgen made the same transit. The corpse of one of the men he had hired lay right beside the Gate. Pasgen repelled the roiling mist and saw the corpse of the second not far away.

  A
s he stood there, frowning, puzzled by what could have happened—how could one little mortal girl have done this to two grown men—a furious roar echoed, from nearby.

  Much too close, in fact. Pasgen’s head shot up, and his eyes widened as a second roar came from much nearer at hand. Then he stifled a gasp as a lion’s forequarters and head seemingly materialized out of the mist. He did not wait to see more of the beast, and when he closed the Gate down, he made sure it was not going to be reopened by accident. Then he stood still for a moment, waiting until his racing heart slowed, willing himself to look and seem calm when he walked back into the tenanted parts of the Fair.

  When he strode back into the main aisles of the Goblin Fair, Pasgen went to the players’ area and stopped at several eating houses. The expenditure of power to do magic made one hungry; and surely one small child would not have anywhere near the physical resources of an adult mage. It was not at all difficult to discover the place where Elizabeth and her companions had eaten. He sat down at the same table and extended his senses—all of them.

  Happy. They had all been so happy.

  He ordered wine. It was good wine, but sour in his mouth. He put down the goblet, but before he could rise to leave the place, a goblin was standing before him. He had a bright-eyed kitten perched on his shoulder—a kitten with wings. The goblin laid several amulets on the table.

  “She made the kitten, but was willing to trade it to me,” the goblin said. “When it came to me I became changed. I am learning to duplicate and preserve it. It will be of great value to my people.”

  Pasgen shrugged and pushed the amulets back toward the goblin. “I am glad you benefited. There is no rule against that.”

  The goblin shook its head. “I told her protector that the men had taken her to the Orbis Gate, so I am giving back your payment for delaying her so that she would be caught in the rout of fauns and nymphs and could be abducted.” The creature’s face wrinkled with thought, and it said slowly, “However, it was not the protector who saved her. She and the men went through the Gate. Only she returned. Perhaps I will keep two of the amulets. Is that fair?”

  “Fair?” Pasgen looked at the kitten, which had folded its wings and draped itself around the goblin’s neck, then returned his gaze to the goblin’s face, now feeling sorely puzzled. “When did your kind worry about fair?”

  Stroking the kitten, the goblin said, “You evidently mistook me for something else.” And he took out his little rod and disappeared.

  Pasgen pocketed the remaining amulet, wondering why the goblin was allowed to use the rod for transport within the Fair. Everyone else used his own two or four or any number of feet. Then he remembered that he had never seen the goblin move … well, change place; it had moved its arms to lay down the amulets and to stroke the kitten. Perhaps it could not move except by the power of that rod, and if the Fair permitted that, the power, Pasgen thought, was not magic—at least not any magic he knew. And why in Dannae’s name was he thinking about that meaningless goblin?

  Because he did not want to think about Elizabeth. Pasgen sighed. He was going to have to order his thoughts and sort through his emotions. Being puzzled by the child was interesting, but the happenings of this day were going beyond puzzlement to irritation. That mortal child …

  Pasgen got a grip on his jangled emotions, sorted them, and finally was able to look at the situation with some objectivity.

  Elizabeth was gone.

  A serving girl had overheard the group with the child say they were returning to Llachar Lle. She was safe from him there, and safe in the mortal world too. He did not know for certain, but he could not imagine his half-brother being so careless as to leave her unprotected after this incident. She would be shielded now against any attempt to invade her mind, and probably able to shield her body too.

  Pasgen lifted his wine and sipped. He would have to go to Rhoslyn and tell her that Elizabeth had escaped once more.

  Oddly, now that he was calm again, he found that he did not mind at all—and he did not think that Rhoslyn would mind either. He thought of the lion and the two dead men and smiled. England would be an interesting place when Elizabeth came to rule.

  And she would, he thought. In fact, she should. The FarSeers had seen it, and perhaps the Vision was more than a possibility. Could it be that events were taking on their own momentum, impelling the present toward all three specific futures shown? If so, Vidal would not be able to stop her … and he, Pasgen lifted his head and took a deep breath—he was through trying.

  He sipped the wine again. It was good wine, he thought.

  For Elizabeth life slipped back into a comfortable pattern. Lord Denno came almost every day. Most days he came openly and rode out with her. Other times he met her in the park in secret. On those days, they stayed hidden in what cover they could find and Elizabeth practiced tanglefoot and stickfoot on innocent passersby. Once or twice she did gwthio or cilgwthio but that was dangerous. Anyone could trip or find a foot caught in something and think nothing of it. To be pushed violently or held in place against an attempt to move forward was too unnatural.

  Her more ordinary, mortal lessons were pleasant too, her knowledge of Italian improving apace. William Grindal was a good tutor. Elizabeth missed Cheke’s brilliance and Ascham’s appreciation of her increasingly lovely penmanship, but Grindal’s interest in history also included current events. Thus, Elizabeth knew that her father had sailed for France on the fourteenth of July and had arrived safely to supervise the siege of Boulogne.

  Grindal was kept abreast of the doings of the court by Ascham, who had been Grindal’s teacher and had got him the position as Elizabeth’s tutor. Grindal told Elizabeth that Queen Catherine had been made regent in Henry’s absence. Elizabeth was thrilled. No queen consort had been so honored since the days of Catherine of Aragon; it betokened Henry’s trust in his wife and salved much of Elizabeth’s fear that her father would rid himself of this wife too. With that dark shadow lightened, Elizabeth began to feel impatient of peace and crave the excitement of court life.

  On the last day of July, Elizabeth wrote to the queen in Italian, both to show off her new skill and so that no casual glance would expose what she was really requesting:

  ” … I have not dared write to him [the King’s Majesty]. Wherefore I humbly pray your most Excellent Highness, that, when you write to His Majesty, you will condescend to recommend me to him, praying ever for his sweet benediction, and similarly entreating our Lord God to send him best success, and the obtaining of victory over his enemies, so that Your Highness and I may, as soon as possible, rejoice together with him on his happy return.”

  It was the nearest she dared come to a plea to be allowed to return. She did not utter that plea in vain. The queen, with no children of her own, and especially no daughter, was starved for childish affection—Mary was hardly a substitute for Elizabeth, who shared Catherine’s intellectual curiosity and love of learning, and who was still young enough to want a guide.

  Catherine Parr’s recommendations were apparently of such good effect, that by August Elizabeth rejoined the rest of the children—there were now a flock of young maidens to give her countenance, too—and by the eighth of September Henry wrote to his wife, that he sent his hearty blessings to all his children. Elizabeth was no longer in disgrace.

  Although she did not know it at the time, Elizabeth had never been in serious disgrace. She had been punished for indiscretion, the simple folly of wandering in a dark garden when she should have been abed, but no more than that. However, to her distress, Mary had hardly greeted her. Nonetheless, it was through Mary that she learned, quite by accident, that her father had never intended to do more than slap her wrist.

  In the heat of the afternoon, Elizabeth with Lady Alana, Kat Champernowne, Lady Jane Grey, Ann Parr (the queen’s younger sister), and two of the four daughters of Anthony Cooke had walked out into the palace gardens. Elizabeth carried with her the book cover that she was embroidering to enclose her New
Year’s gift for the queen. She sat down to work on it on a bench in the shade of a hedge. Lady Alana kept her company while Kat went with the other girls to look at the little pond in the center of the garden.

  Elizabeth had hardly set ten stitches in the hearts-ease flowers when she stiffened and looked over her shoulder at the dense hedge behind her. “Someone … someone like you is coming,” she whispered to Lady Alana, and then more faintly, “With my sister, Mary. Should we join the others?”

  But Aleneil had also sensed Rhoslyn and heard the soft murmur of Mary’s voice, and she laid a hand over Elizabeth’s and murmured, “Shield.”

  A sigh eased out of Elizabeth as she cast her shield. She was always forgetting she had that protection. Relieved of fear, she listened. Her ears were very keen—sometimes to her sorrow—because she heard Mary say that she did not know what to do. She had tried to protest to the queen about Elizabeth’s recall to court, to explain that the king would be angry.

  “And she told me,” Mary’s voice rose just a little so that it was very clear, “that my father did not really believe any ill of Elizabeth. And to assure me of that, she told me of the bequeathing of the crown as delineated in the will he had written just before he sailed for France.”

  “He named Elizabeth?”

  Elizabeth stiffened again, this time with surprise. The woman with Mary, who Elizabeth was sure was Sidhe, sounded not only surprised but pleased. Elizabeth’s breath eased out. Then this Sidhe—it must be Mistress Rosamund Scot; Elizabeth had never seen another Sidhe in Mary’s company—was no enemy to her. It was odd that neither Denno nor Alana talked much about her except for a mild warning, but the Sidhe was attached to Mary and possibly Elizabeth was not supposed to know her.

  “By name!” Mary said bitterly, her voice louder as the two women came closer. “After my brother Edward and his issue, to any issue begotten on his dearly beloved wife, and for lack of such issue it was to descend first to me and my heirs—and what heirs will I have, no husband ever having been chosen for me?—then to her, by name, Lady Elizabeth.”