Ill Met by Moonlight

by Mercedes Lackey

  The violent slash of magical claws that would have pierced Denoriel’s shield, merely slid across it.

  Vidal kicked loose the ribbons of force with a curse, bringing his shields down across them to sever them. By the time he had refocused his concentration so that the monster was reforming, a thousand tiny creatures had swarmed over it and were feeding voraciously.

  They first attacked its eyes, so that it could not see and then its claws, which blunted, softened, then, as the monster howled in pain and confusion, every possible appendage was blanketed in the swarm, and all it could do was thrash and wail, helplessly. Vidal roared with anger, cursing impotently. Denoriel danced aside and the thing blundered ahead blindly into the mist.

  Vidal had rid himself of the ribbons at last, and he readied a volley of levin bolts, but before he could launch them, the earth humped up suddenly under his feet and he staggered again, destroying his aim. A volley of energy, formed into bolts of lightning, flashed by Denoriel and off into the mist.

  Before Vidal could correct the flight of the bolts, the humps collapsed into shallow holes, and water filled them, creating a glutinous mud. Vidal slipped, fighting to keep to his feet, as once again he was thrown off balance. The magic he gathered sputtered uselessly in a shower of sparks. He screamed curses with his will behind them instead; he who knew only too well how to set a curse in motion, and Denoriel, who had not thought to guard against something he himself would never use, gasped as a grinding pain caught his gut and nearly doubled him over.

  A curse of illness, flung at one of the Sidhe, who were never ill—it caught Denoriel completely off his guard. A straightforward attack, he was prepared for, but not this! Fighting the pain, he sent a cloud of butterflies toward Vidal. Although equally beautiful, they were not as innocent as the butterflies of the World Above. These could bite and sting, and like the little beasts that had swarmed Vidal’s monster, they blanketed Vidal.

  But their abilities proved useless against Vidal’s personal shield. All the butterflies could do was effectively blind Vidal by cocooning his head in their lovely wings. He brushed them away and crushed them, but they swarmed in again and again, giving Denoriel time to use what counterspells he could against Vidal’s attack.

  But he was no healer, and he had no idea how to successfully counter the curse. His efforts were only minimally successful at easing his pain and the bolts of fire and ice he threw splashed harmlessly into nothing on Vidal’s shield. Worse, because Denoriel could not bear to draw on Unseleighe power, his ability to send manifestations against Vidal was weakening. Worse yet, he was facing the Gate and saw that Vidal’s trap had been sprung. Three ogres, five boggles, and a clutch of pixies, hags, and phookas leapt off the Gate platform, leaving room for three dark Sidhe. His heart cramped, then went cold as ice.

  Denoriel immediately shouted a warning, but the boggles gave their own game away. Instead of quietly sneaking up on Harry and Elizabeth, who were watching the battle between Vidal and Denoriel, one of the boggles leapt off the platform right onto Elidir’s back. Elidir had been on his knees working over the ribbon that encircled Mechain’s neck and the boggle caught him totally unaware.

  Elidir fell flat atop Mechain, who grunted under his weight. But she was an old Sidhe, and had not grown old by being inattentive. She did not permit the fact that Elidir had flattened her to distract her. As the boggle tried to bite through the back of Elidir’s neck, she swiftly drew the knife from Elidir’s belt and thrust upward, stabbing the creature in the throat. The blow was more furious than aimed, but the knife was broad and well honed and the boggle was dead before it could cry out.

  The others paid the first boggle no mind; perhaps they thought that their companion was feeding on the bodies it was lying on. They ran toward Harry and Elizabeth on whom the three ogres were also advancing. But now both Harry and Elizabeth were aware of their presence and their intentions, and neither of them were going to be easy prey.

  Harry shot one ogre in the eye, the second in the throat and the third in the chest.

  All three continued to advance, though staggering; Harry backed away, unable to decide whether to expend his two final bolts on the four boggles or hope to hold all four off with his sword. Meanwhile, he pushed Elizabeth aside, telling her to run into the mist.

  She resisted, moving with him, then pointed and waved her finger. All four boggles tripped over their own feet and fell to the ground. And the ogre Harry had shot in the eye also toppled over. Too stupid, Harry thought a little hysterically, to realize for a while that it was dead. Soon Harry saw that the hysterical thought might be near true; blood was pouring down the chest of the one he had shot in the throat and although it was wavering on its feet, it was not seeking him. Instead, it was circling blindly in place, in a sickly-comic parody of a dancer—

  The one he had shot in the chest, however, was picking up speed and still charging toward him with purpose—until its feet stuck firmly to the ground. The momentum of the advance carried the upper body of the creature forward and it fell, driving Harry’s bolt right through the body. The ogre did not attempt to rise.

  Harry ducked around the fallen ogre, trying to push Elizabeth behind him, and drew his sword as the boggles climbed to their feet. Elizabeth peered around Harry’s shoulder and two went down again. The third leapt straight at Harry, screaming, hands extended to grip and claw, teeth bared to bite; all Harry had to do was raise his sword and it spitted itself. The fourth was waving a club, and it took Harry a few minutes to work around the vicious slashes and thrusts to kill the creature.

  The two who had twice been tripped were up again, howling with rage. Elizabeth drew breath to invoke gwthio. She was beginning to feel sort of hollow and shaky, but suddenly the tenor of the boggles’ cries changed from fury to terror. They began to beat at their bodies as if they were being stung all over. At the edge of the mist, Pasgen appeared, his face white with anger over the invasion of his private experimental domain. He gestured. The boggles broke and fled to the Gate.

  Then Pasgen fixed his eyes on the Sidhe who was still standing on the Gate platform, apparently holding the Gate open and gesturing to a gang of goblins. Those suddenly stopped, as if they had run into a wall. Pasgen blinked; he had not done that.

  The Sidhe on the platform, who was raising a hand to throw a spell at Elizabeth, drew Pasgen’s attention away from the furious goblins. Pasgen gestured; the Sidhe’s hand fell limply to his side and then he fell too, crumpling bonelessly to the ground near the platform. Pasgen spoke one sharp word, and the Gate closed.

  Elidir and Mechain had regained their feet and their weapons and went back to back. Just in time. In a moment, they were holding off three phookas. At the other side of the gate, Aleneil, a sword of light in her hand, was facing a hissing hag. Another hag lay twitching at her feet. The pixies, shrieking that this was no game and they did not wish to play, had fled back through the Gate just before Pasgen closed it, falling afoul of the goblins and pushing them back.

  The phookas attacking Mechain and Elidir were laughing insanely, changing form, and charging the two Sidhe. But Elidir and Mechain were old hands at dealing with malignant magical creatures and were throwing spells, slashing at them with whips of power, lashing them with branches of fiery thorns, so they cried and retreated. If Vidal began to strangle Mechain again, they would be in trouble, but Vidal himself was too busy to remember Mechain.

  While Denoriel’s butterflies bedeviled Vidal, barely giving the Dark Prince a moment’s sighting of his enemy to cast spells, levin bolts, and curses at him, Denoriel had draped his enemy in a sparkling mesh that tightened around him erratically, interfering with his gestures and aborting half his spells. Denoriel had also been working desperately to deepen and widen the mud pit in which Vidal was standing. He had not added any water to the pit, so Vidal was not completely aware that he was almost hip deep in the ground.

  The two dark mages who had come with Prysor were aware of Vidal’s increasing danger. For some
moments they hesitated, glancing at each other. If they did nothing, there was a chance that the Bright Court Sidhe he was battling would best him and they would be rid of him. And then both sighed, almost simultaneously. They would not be rid of him. There was little chance that the Bright Court mage would kill Vidal. And Vidal knew they were there. And he would know that they had done nothing to help him … and what he would do to them when he was finally victorious would be unspeakable.

  Denoriel’s butterflies were almost gone. Three or four still fluttered around Vidal’s head but they no longer obscured Vidal’s vision enough to protect Denoriel. The bright mesh was melting away. In his own territory Vidal could draw power to replace all that he expended in his attacks on Denoriel. Denoriel had no such resource and his shield was growing very thin. Twice Vidal’s knives almost came through and only a desperate effort at blocking the exact place they would have pierced saved him. But the last of the shield was dissolving, and he had no power to restore it.

  When the boggles ran for the Gate, Elizabeth had watched them to be sure they would not return. It was then she saw the two mages standing just before it pointing at her Denno. A swift glance showed her that Denno was down on his knees, showed her that the knives Vidal was throwing had nearly touched her Denno. Terror welled up in Elizabeth. Her Denno was already hurt. He would be killed. Rage mingled with the terror and a terrible heat began to build in her body.

  There was no spell she could use on Vidal—and she knew she must not interfere in Denno’s battle directly. Anyway, Vidal’s feet were already useless. Cilgwthio could not affect a man in a hole. But those mages pointing at Denno must be doing something to harm him. She would fix them!

  “Cilgwthio, myfi ymbil” she screamed, pointing at the mage to the right.

  The push was so violent that the Sidhe’s chest caved in and he disappeared completely.

  The other mage, seeing what had happened, began to run toward Elizabeth, raising a hand, mouthing some spell.

  “Stickfoot, myfi ymbil” she shrieked. “Myfi ymbil! Myfi ymbil!”

  The mage stopped dead and began to scream, not spells or curses but plain shrieks of pain and terror. His feet had not merely stuck to the ground momentarily, they had become part of the ground.

  But Vidal—Vidal was about to—he was going to—

  Stop

  Everything stopped. Profound silence. Total stillness.

  Elizabeth’s mental shield rang like a bell inside her skull. By the Gate, atop an elvensteed black as night, there was a being, male but not a man, so beautiful that despite her fear and anger, despite the desperation of their situation, Elizabeth’s still-nascent sexuality yearned toward him.

  Who has loosed mortal magic in my realm?

  If not for the shield, Elizabeth thought, she would have been knocked unconscious. She shook her head slightly, looked around for help, but Denno and Da were frozen into statues, and so was everyone else.

  “Oh, that was me,” Elizabeth said in a very small voice, and the dark eyes of the being turned to look quite through her, to pin her in place like an errant bit of lace. “But I am mortal. I don’t have any other kind of magic.” Then her body straightened, her lips firmed, her jaw jutted forward, her voice strengthened. “And those people … well, there’s only one of them left … they were hurting my Denno! And it wasn’t allowed. We all took oath not to interfere with the duel.”

  King Oberon’s expression had slowly been transmuting from enraged and implacable to astonished and uncomprehending, and he was by now looking almost as stunned as those he had rendered immobile.

  “Who are you?” he asked in a much more normal tone of voice, without all of those—forces behind it.

  Elizabeth had not been bred to court life to no purpose. She recognized authority, even if she could not put a name to it, and she sank into a curtsey right down to the ground.

  “I am the Lady Elizabeth, youngest daughter of King Henry … oh,” her voice caught on a sob. “He … he is dead. My father is dead.” The eyes raised to Oberon were now swimming with tears.”

  “I am sorry to hear that,” Oberon said.

  He was sorry to hear it. Henry’s rule had suited him very well and he knew Edward’s reign and Mary’s would be far more perilous for the magical world. Now he dismounted. The elvensteed nodded gravely, and disappeared off into the mist. He made an idle, absentminded gesture, and a black throne on a dais appeared beneath and behind him. When he was seated, he beckoned Elizabeth closer. She rose and came forward, curtsying again—but then stood straight up, bringing up her chin, determined to face him as one of royal blood.

  “I am King Oberon,” he said. “What is a mortal princess doing Underhill?”

  “It is a very long story, Your Majesty,” Elizabeth said, slowly, to gain her time for thought. “I am more than willing to explain, but I am afraid I would bore you or waste your time.”

  “There are quicker ways to get information than listening to long stories,” Oberon said, and reached carelessly into her mind … only to bruise himself on the shield. “Tangwystl,” Oberon muttered, recognizing her touch at once and thus understanding that Titania was involved.

  For a moment red gleamed within the black of his eyes, and Elizabeth sank down into a curtsey again, head bent against her knee, recognizing royal anger when she saw it. Oberon stared down at her. He could, of course, have broken through the shield—it had only stopped him because he did not expect it to be there—but to break the shield might damage the raped mind.

  For a moment, irritation with his willful queen almost sealed Elizabeth’s fate. Titania deserved to have her pet destroyed … but the visions of Elizabeth’s reign were more potent. That would be a time for the Sidhe! They would be almost as free of the mortal world as they were of Underhill. And the music, and the poetry, the art and the plays … Marlowe, Webster … Shakespeare …

  “Stand up, child,” he said with impatience. “You mentioned a duel. Why?”

  “Because we—at least my friends of the Bright Court and I—we were in Unseleighe territory. At least, they said it might be Unseleighe territory. But, Your Majesty, we didn’t mean any harm. It was the lion. I was afraid it would hurt someone. And Denno and Lady Alana and Elidir and Mechain they all came to help me.”

  “The lion,” Oberon repeated, his lips twitching. “And why was the lion your responsibility?”

  Elizabeth looked down and her voice was small again as she said, “Because I asked the mists to make it.” She looked up. “But, sire, I had to do something. There were two men who had abducted me. I wanted the lion to frighten them but …” Her voice faded again. “But I think it ate them.”

  Oberon was staring at her this time with intense curiosity. “You asked the mists to make a lion?”

  “I didn’t know how. Not really. But I had seen Elidir and Mechain create—” Once again, her knowledge of the ways of kings and their courts saved her. She caught the small gesture that indicated King Oberon had heard enough. Elizabeth stopped speaking and waited.

  Oberon turned his head slightly. “Elidir and Mechain,” he said.

  They stood where they had STOPPED. A phooka was shying away from Mechain’s sword, and a spell still sparkled on Elidir’s fingertips. Oberon pointed—once, twice, thrice; the phookas were gone.

  “You are grossly recovered from the last time I had news of you, slipping away into Dreaming,” Oberon said, gesturing for Mechain and Elidir to approach.

  “We have had work to do, Majesty. Useful work. Intriguing work. Harry,” Mechain said, bowing, knowing that the whole story was doubtless unreeling into Oberon’s mind, “decided that what now lived in El Dorado and Alhambra was unhealthy. We have cleared much of the surface evil away, but we have no way as yet to reach the Great Evil.”

  Oberon leaned forward, suddenly intent. “But you intend to do that? You are not afraid it will touch you? You cannot destroy it, you know.”

  “Yes, we know, Lord Oberon,” Elidir said. “But Har
ry … we think the Great Evil is afraid of Harry; there is something in him—his goodness, perhaps?—that it fears. And Harry thinks we can trap it somewhere … perhaps the Void. Then—”

  “Harry thinks.” Oberon stared at Harry, who straightened from the lunge into which he had STOPPED and came forward.

  “The little FitzRoy,” Oberon said. “You are with us for good now, I see. So you think you can cleanse Alhambra and El Dorado. How quickly you are grown into a man.”

  “Mortals do age quickly, Great Majesty,” Harry said, bowing deeply, and seeming not at all perturbed by Oberon’s overwhelming presence. The fighting had disarranged his hair and the blue star burned bright on his forehead. “And yes, if it does not displease you, Lord Oberon, I do wish to make the forbidden cities open again. It seems a small repayment for the shelter that the Bright Court has offered me. As they stand, they are an invitation to the Inquisition to find a foothold Underhill and threaten us.”

  Oberon laughed. “Mortals! Always thinking ahead.”

  The laugh emboldened Elizabeth, who had been anxiously waiting for Denoriel to be freed. His face was frozen into an expression of anguish and his body twisted in an effort to avoid a levin bolt.

  “Your Majesty,” she said, pleading in every inch of her, “please free my Denno.”

  The black eyes turned to her; the eyes did not smile. “He is my Lord Denoriel, not your Denno.”

  Elizabeth met Oberon’s gaze with more courage than sense but in the golden eyes Oberon saw the delights of an age of furious creation, even new worlds to be discovered. What a queen she would be! But she was very tender of those she loved. Could she be hard enough to her enemies?

  So he asked, “And what of the other, Prince Vidal?”

  The golden eyes glowed even brighter. “Well, I do not rule here, and I do not know your ways or laws. But if I were in your place, Your Majesty,” she said coldly as Denoriel straightened, rose to his feet, and came toward them, a hand pressed to his belly. “I would, I’faith, just make that hole as deep as his sins and as dark as his cold heart, and drop him down it. But I confess to you that I am prejudiced against him. He keeps trying to kill me, you see, and I think it only fair to return the gift.”