"That's right. Iron is almost impossible to get here. Bringing it in would cause more trouble than it's worth."
I wanted to ask about transmutation—creating iron from other elements—but Naomi, with her preternatural hearing, was too close. I tried to focus on the surrounding elements but trying to puzzle out a new periodic table in my head was too difficult.
I shook my head and realized that over ten minutes had passed while I’d been thinking about transmutation. A typical magician's blank reverie, but here in a new world it would be dangerous.
The road twisted and turned, not following the shortest path through the countryside. I tried to puzzle out why certain sections of land had been avoided but came up with nothing.
I pointed ahead and asked, "Mason, why doesn't your road just cut through that little orchard? Is it protected by spirits?"
"No, that's a slow-time zone."
"What the hell is a slow-time zone?"
"Time is variable in this world. In some areas, like that orchard, time passes more slowly than normal."
Sure enough, now that we were closer, I could see a bird in mid-flight, apparently hovering in the air between those fruit trees. By the time we had walked the five hundred yards around the orchard, the bird had flapped its wings twice.
"You avoid the slow-time zones because it would slow down traffic?"
Naomi added, "Highwaymen love to wait outside a slow-time zone to ambush travelers."
I took a few minutes to process this new information. We had been walking for hours, but the aurora dawn was still rising. Off the road, a cat pounced on a bird, seeming to take seconds to complete his attack. Not as slow as the slow-time zone, but slower than normal.
"Is this road a fast-time zone? How does that work?"
Mason gave me his ‘teacher's approval’ smile and said, "Very good. Powerful magicians can influence the flow of time. When we built this road, I worked with a magician who incorporated fast-time into the structure of the road. Having rapid transport is a great advantage to a fiefdom."
"Imagine being able to cultivate an orchard in fast-time, harvest the fruit, then get it to market in less than a day's time," said Naomi. She continued, "I have heard that the most powerful of the Fae can capture time and spin it around itself in such a way that it can be stored, then released later. To either destroy an opponent by rapid aging, or to trap them in slow-time."
She paused for several seconds. "Such objects might even be more valuable than those portal tokens you made."
"'Time in a bottle,'" I quoted an old song. "That would be a wish come true. Where can I get one?"
Mason’s tone was serious. "Such talents, and such objects, are rare. Very few are created, and we do not trade them."
We finally saw our first traveler. A woman seated on a stallion was coming up from behind us at a steady clip. She had pointed ears and black hair that framed her elfin face, and wore a curious armor—formed from boiled leather molded to her shape. A sword in a sheath was attached to her saddle, and she had a riding crop in her hand.
It was a wide road, and she had plenty of room to pass us. I saw the smirk as she nudged her horse to our side of the road to force us to jump into the brambles.
The horse was smarter than her. He scented a predator and shied away, making her scramble for control. Her smirk turned into gritted teeth and anger. The horse veered away from us, nearly going off the road as they passed, then started racing away in terror.
We continued down the road as if nothing had happened. She finally gained control of her horse and stopped. The thump of her feet as she dismounted gave ample warning that she wanted to take out her frustrations on someone. She strode toward us with her riding crop upraised.
"What did you do to my horse? I'll whip you peasants."
She swung the riding crop at my head, but Naomi appeared in front of me, her twin blades in her hands before her backpack even hit the road.
It was such an obvious bodyguard move that the soldier halted. She stared intently at Naomi as if trying to read her soul. Then she turned her gaze on me.
"Powerless peasants!" The soldier waved a hand and generated a blast of air that would have knocked over any human. Indeed, Kuga tumbled back a few yards, but Naomi, Mason, and I stood fast.
From the tension in her shoulders, I could tell Naomi was furious someone had hurt her lover.
In poetic, intimate-mode Fae, much better than mine, Naomi chanted, "Neither powerless nor peasant, as thou shalt see; thou hast hurt my friend, now I shall hurt thee."
The riding crop stopped in mid-slash, caught in the V formed by Naomi's crossed blades.
"You have no power, no magic," said the soldier. She jerked at her riding crop, but it was held fast.
"No power that thou can see. My magic is of a different order."
Naomi tilted her head, as if deciding, then her knife slashed quickly, leaving a trail of blood down the soldier's cheek. The riding crop hit the road.
The soldier stepped back several feet and placed her hand on her cheek. White light flowed from her hand—some kind of healing spell. She smiled in triumph that she had healed the injury.
The smile held for a moment, then she seemed to feel the tugging of the scar tissue that now pulled her mouth into a permanent sneer. She rubbed her cheek with trembling fingers, aghast that there was a scar.
"What have you done to me? Why won't this heal?"
"I have marked you. A scar for a tumble. Care to go again?"
The soldier backed up to her horse and scrambled into her saddle, never taking her eyes off Naomi.
Sitting on that warhorse, she regained some confidence. Her hand stroked the pommel of her sword.
"If you approach my patron with that sword," said Naomi in her ‘don't-fuck-with-me’ voice, “I will take it from you, geld your stallion with it, and shove it up your ass.”
The soldier's eyes flicked between Kuga and me, trying to decide who was the patron to this hyper-fast killer. She ignored Mason entirely. I felt Kuga moving up to stand behind me.
"You'll hang for interfering with a royal courier."
"What's the penalty for scarring a royal courier?"
"Hanging." She stroked her cheek and blinked back tears.
"And the penalty for killing a royal courier?"
"Hanging."
"The penalty for cutting the pointy ears off of a pain-in-the-ass royal courier?"
"Hanging." The soldier suddenly realized that Naomi had been approaching with each question.
Then Mason spoke up. "And what is the penalty if a royal courier attacks a princess?"
"Hang—" She choked on her words as Mason suddenly started glowing brightly. I blinked a few times to clear my eyes before realizing he was glowing in the magical spectrum, the glare invisible to human eyes.
"Prince Mason," she whispered. "And his princess bride. We were not told she had no magic."
Repeating Naomi, I said, "No magic that you can see." I shifted my eyes to a wolf's amber. The soldier's horse whinnied in fear and backed up. "Now be on your way."
In seconds, she was gone, racing toward our destination. Naomi hugged Kuga and whispered something in Japanese.
We turned back toward the distant castle. Naomi looked at me in reproof. "You shouldn't have sent her away. I wanted those ears for souvenirs."
21
We continued our trek. As the day progressed, we saw other travelers on the road. Most were lower caste; the part of my brain that spoke Fae insisted on calling them peasants.
Although simply dressed, they all appeared healthy and happy. Through scent and sight, I sorted the travelers into groups. Some were almost human, with no Fae scent and rounded ears. Invariably, these were the lowest caste. As the ears grew more pointed and the percentage of Fae DNA increased, the people became better dressed.
"Mason, what did that courier mean about Naomi and I having no power?"
"Neither of you show how powerful you are in the magical spect
rum."
"Is that why she backed off when you started glowing?"
Naomi's ears perked up; apparently she hadn't been able to see how Mason's aura had brightened.
"Fae magicians can judge the power of an opponent by observing the brightness of their aura. The stronger we are in magic, the brighter the aura."
"But I don't see everyone's auras here."
"We can disguise our auras. It's considered rude to flash a bright aura unless you're looking for a fight."
Naomi added, "We have stories of samurai who did something similar. It was a grave insult to touch the sword of a samurai, equivalent to challenging him to a duel. Most samurai belted their sword to hang vertically. But those samurai who wanted to pick a fight would carry their sword almost horizontally to ensure someone would touch it."
Mason nodded his acceptance of the analogy. "We have some slight differences. Most of our 'samurai' are women."
"Why?" I asked.
"On average, Fae men have only about seventy-five percent of the magical ability of Fae women."
"Of course, women are superior," added Naomi smugly.
"But even here, the men seem to be physically more powerful than the women. Doesn't that let them boss weaker women around?"
"Mere muscle against magic is not much of a fight. From your own experience, magic in this world is much more effective that on earth."
My thoughts were jumbled, but a lot of the language lessons now made more sense.
The thought frightened me, but I had to ask. "This means your sisters are twenty-five percent more powerful than you?"
Mason laughed. "I said 'on average.' Some male Fae exceed expectations." He lowered his voice. "I'm much, much stronger than my sisters, either individually or together."
I felt better until he added, "And Mom is stronger than all of us."
We finally arrived at our destination, a medieval-looking city. Compared to Tokyo, or even Las Vegas, it was tiny. The city was surprising to my senses. It didn't smell like a medieval city—there were no gutters running with trash, no open sewers, no piles of trash. In fact, the entire city smelled like a well-tended park.
"How many people live here, Mason?"
"About one hundred thousand. There's some variation, because this is the capital and we get a lot of business and tourists, but it that is a close estimate."
"Oh, I can see the castle from here," said Naomi. "We'll be there soon."
"We're going straight to the castle?"
"Of course. We have to meet Mom before anything else."
"Does she know we're coming?"
"That courier will have raced ahead to the castle to announce our arrival."
The reality still hadn't sunk in. I was married to a fairy prince, on my way to meet my new fairy mother-in-law. This was a crazier life than anything I had ever read about or seen in the movies.
I fought down intrusive thoughts. Was I dressed appropriately to meet Mason's mom? How would I introduce myself? Would I embarrass myself with my recently-learned language skills?
My feet were dragging in reluctance when I received a push from an unexpected source. My inner wolf, who had been dozing up until now, woke and nipped me sharply on my phantom butt—her way of telling me to push forward. Werewolves face their problems; alphas face their problems head-on with fangs extended. I gritted my teeth and kept walking.
"So your mom's at home preparing the fatted calf for her prodigal son?"
Mason snorted a laugh. "Mom's not the domestic type. Our welcome will be lukewarm, at best."
"And once she finds out she's about to become a grandmother, she'll be even more pissed," said Naomi.
"None of your sisters have children?"
"Children are rare among nobility. Nobody really knows why—"
Naomi snorted. "Isn't it obvious?"
We both looked at her. "You fairies have bred yourselves into a corner,” she said. “Most men can't match women in magic. Your royals don't want to breed with a man of low power for fear their children will be outmatched in magic."
"That's not why children are rare."
"Really? So, is your dad stronger than your mom?"
"Dad is about the same level, but he's trickier. He's defeated magicians without using magic, which is quite a feat here."
“So your father was strong enough in magic to induce your mother to have another child.” Naomi sniffed. “I bet she wouldn’t mate with a low powered man.”
“Perhaps,” conceded Mason.
We walked several paces more, then Naomi said, "I bet your mom and sisters don't know how strong you are."
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"So I'm right?"
"When I practiced for my test of magical ability, my sister Chrys advised me to not give it my all. I wanted to stay here and not be apprenticed to another family, so I followed her advice."
"‘Apprenticed.’ Is that what they call it when men get traded out for stud service?"
Mason shook his head. "I don't think you're right.”
“But the stronger magicians get apprenticed to families with daughters of high ability?” asked Naomi.
“It might seem that way to an outsider,” said Mason in exasperation. “But you've only dealt with that band of Amazon fairies on the other side of the Tokyo portal. Things are very different in this part of the world."
"Perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps."
I wanted to continue the conversation, but we had arrived at the castle.
In too short a time, we were escorted into the main hall. There were male guards stationed against the wall, dressed like the royal courier we had encountered earlier. The senior guards and officers were all female. The scarred courier was with the officers. The last time someone had looked at me like that, she’d tried to kill me. She turned her head away when I flashed my teeth at her.
At the far end of the room, seated at a throne fashioned from living wood, sat Mason's mom, Princess Perla. A skylight above her streamed warm sunlight onto her head.
I blinked at the sunlight, then scanned the skylight. Like a reverse prism, the glass of the skylight took the colored light of the aurora and compressed it back into pure white light. I itched to take one of those panes apart to see how it worked, but pushed my curiosity aside for now.
Arrayed around the throne were Fae women who smelled so much like Mason that they had to be his sisters. They stood beside the throne, four on one side and three on the other, and watched us approach.
Each of the sisters wore a different color gown of purest silk. From left to right, they wore red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Their hair color matched their gowns, like a lineup of Japanese anime princesses.
Once we were close enough to distinguish, I could see that their eyes also matched the color of their gowns. I felt drab and plain in my hiking clothes and jet-black hair.
Aside from the colors, all were as alike as peas in a pod. Same height, same slender physique, same weight, almost the same posture.
I recalled the Thompson twins from high school, identical twins who’d played tricks on the teachers by swapping clothes in the girl's room. Until my first transformation, I couldn't tell them apart. Even afterward, only their differing diets told me who was who. Vegans just smell different from omnivores.
Were Mason's stepsisters some kind of magical clones? That would be one way to breed powerful children in greater numbers.
Princess Perla wore a gown of a fabric finer than silk. At first glance, it appeared white, but it had shimmering reflections of colors, like mother-of-pearl. Unlike her daughters, her eyes seemed to be silver, reflecting everything like tiny darting mirrors. Her attention appeared to be on a document in her lap, a scroll wrapped around a wooden roller.
Mason stopped at a precise distance from the throne, what would have been the free-throw line in basketball, and dropped to one knee with his head bowed. Kuga and Naomi hung back several feet.
I searched my me
mory for protocol. Should I bow? Curtsy? My years of overnight lessons hadn't included meeting a princess.
But I'm American, I thought. And I'm an alpha, and if Mason is correct, I'm also a princess—of equal rank to this gaggle of fairies.
I nodded my head.
There were murmurs from the onlookers. The scarred fairy was the loudest. "She should prostrate herself!"
I snorted dismissal and looked over my stepsisters-in-law. Now that we were closer, tiny differences were clear. They were physically identical, but inner personality had sculpted their features. Two had fond smiles for Mason, two had resting bitch faces, others were indifferent—but the one dressed in blood red worried me. Her look of hatred was as intense as Scarface's.
Princess Perla finally deigned to look up. "Mason, my dear boy. Welcome back." The words were said in a tone as cold as liquid nitrogen.
Still looking down at the floor, Mason replied. "Thank you, Mother. I would like to present my bride—"
"Who has not learned common courtesy," interrupted the princess.
Mason stopped talking as soon as she opened her mouth. Turning to me, she said, "We have heard that you have canine heritage. Some kind of experiment with bestiality?"
"You could say that," I said in my warmest voice. "I heard you fairy people are also descended from some kind of animal-human mixture. Tinkerbell screwing a skunk, right?" I sniffed obviously. "That would explain the smell."
Thunder rumbled outside, and the skylight darkened. Perla rolled the scroll she had been reading into a tight roll around its wooden dowel.
"Fetch!" she said, in a voice that brooked no resistance. She threw the scroll off to the side and it landed nearly at the feet of Scarface.
The compulsion to obey was overwhelming. I had turned to follow the scroll and was running before I realized what was happening. The onlookers started laughing at the antics.
My hand wrapped around the scroll and I hated myself for the happiness I felt at being able to take it back to the master. I had been immunized against Fae mind-control magic, but she was so much more powerful than anything I had ever encountered that she overrode my conditioning.
Lycan Legacy - 4 - 5 - 6: Princess - Progeny - Paladin: Book 4 - 5 - 6 in the Lycan Legacy Series Page 18