Annwyn had turned away to talk to the spokesman from the local troops again, and she spun back around. “Robin! There you are. The troops are already mustering. We will be ready to ride shortly.”
The puck ignored her, his attention focused on Kathryn. “My Sophie knows a Dr. Kathryn Shaw and loves her.”
My Sophie—both affectionate and possessive. She smiled. “Yes, that’s me. And my Sophie knows and loves a puck named Robin.”
Flinging out one narrow hand, he bowed. “’Tis I, although I was not in this form when we met, nor was I capable of any speech at the time.” As he straightened to his full height again, his smile had disappeared. “She saved my life, at much risk to hers.”
“She’s very brave,” she said. “And generous. I just finished having tea, sandwiches, and scones with her. I know she would love to see you again, whenever that becomes possible.”
The strange creature’s expression shadowed, eyelids lowering. “Perhaps there will be time enough again for that one day.” When he looked up again, his gaze pierced her. He said, “I will carry you.”
It was an assent to a question that Kathryn had not realized had been asked. She wasn’t quite sure how to respond, so she kept it simple. “Thank you.”
At that he shapeshifted into a huge black stallion with fiery eyes and long, feathery black hair at the fetlocks that covered massive hooves. The transition was so abrupt and the stallion’s presence so Powerful, Kathryn fell back a step before she could catch herself.
According to the others she had talked to, Robin was a great many things, but at the moment he was simply magnificent.
“I have two bags,” she told him apologetically. It didn’t seem right for this wonderful creature to be used as a beast of burden, but he had offered.
He shook his head impatiently. “They mean nothing. Put them on my back.”
“All right.” She already had straps she could use to connect her packs. While the twenty troops who would travel with them gathered with their mounts, she knelt and buckled the packs together, then slung them over the stallion’s neck.
He stamped one great hoof and snapped, “I will not tolerate a saddle or bridle.”
She looked into his ferocious eyes. “I would never dream of suggesting it.”
“Then climb on.”
When she started to, a hand on her arm stopped her.
Annwyn said, “Robin can’t teleport like the Djinn can, but when he chooses to, he can move very fast. Falling at such a speed would probably be fatal.” She said to the puck, “Robin, please rethink the saddle and bridle just this once.”
“No,” Kathryn said. When they both turned to stare at her, she told them, “I won’t fall. It will be okay.”
“I don’t want to take the time to argue with you,” Annwyn said impatiently. “You know how much is at stake here.”
Kathryn regarded her and said again, “I won’t fall.”
The other woman pulled a sour expression. “Prove me right, and if the fall doesn’t kill you, I might.”
Then one of her men called to her, and she pivoted on one foot to stalk away.
Kathryn looked at the puck. “Did I refrain from rolling my eyes at that?”
The stallion tilted his head as if he wasn’t quite sure what he had heard.
She added, “I couldn’t tell. I was too busy trying to control myself.”
Stamping one hoof again, he snorted. It sounded quite like horsy laughter. He told her again, “Climb on.”
Not all the other troops had mustered, so it seemed a bit too soon to subject him to her weight. Still, she was beginning to feel the cold, and sitting on his back would be warmer than letting her feet turn to blocks of ice, so she turned and strode away, then whirled and raced toward him. With a leap, she landed on his wide back.
From somewhere nearby, someone let out a low whistle and slow clap. Suppressing a smile, she edged closer to the stallion’s shoulders and arranged the weight of her two packs so that they fell on her knees on either side.
The stallion shook his head and arched his neck. “You may hold on to my mane.”
“That would be helpful,” she said gravely. Wanting to experiment with how much of a handhold would be comfortable, she gathered together a decent amount of the coarse raven hair and gripped it in one fist.
Without warning, the stallion leaped forward.
“Whoa!” she said sharply, more from surprise than anything else, and clamped down with her knees to maintain her seat. She caught a brief glimpse of Annwyn and other soldiers turning to stare, their faces filled with shock and dismay.
Annwyn roared, “ROBI—”
The wind snatched away the last of his name.
Powerful muscles surged underneath Kathryn, and the wind bit into her skin. The land plunged by so quickly, by the time she looked over her shoulder, the encampment at the crossover passageway had already disappeared.
What. The. Hell.
She didn’t know what was going on, but she knew for certain this was not what Annwyn believed would happen. They were supposed to travel as a group, but for some reason, Robin had decided to forge ahead on his own and leave the others behind.
The bones in her face were beginning to ache, but she didn’t want to risk letting go with one hand to pull her hood up. It might be impossible to sound calm while breathless, but she gave it a try. “Robin, I don’t like this. We weren’t supposed to leave them behind.”
The puck said, “That was not what I promised.”
There was a vicious note in his voice, and her heart sank. She had heard all too many tales of bargains made with ancient creatures that hadn’t been worded carefully enough. “But it’s what Annwyn believes. Turn around and go back. It’s not too late to fix this.”
This, whatever this was. This kidnapping?
He ignored her. Where was he planning on taking her?
She was tempted to wait to find out, but just as it wouldn’t have been fair to explore the manor house while the others waited, it didn’t seem fair to prolong whatever this was either.
Crouching low over the stallion’s back, she shapeshifted, and as soon as her body had transformed into a falcon’s, she launched. She thought of her packs regretfully as she flung upward, most especially her physician’s bag and the fire-starter kit she’d had for so long, but sometimes you just had to let go.
As she gained in height, she looked back at the puck. The stallion plunged around in a circle, completely at a loss, just as Annwyn and the troops had been moments ago. Rearing, he screamed at her in wordless rage and frustration.
She almost laughed except he was too dangerous, and she didn’t know what he would do next. For all she knew, he could shapeshift into a bird and follow her. From Sophie’s stories, he had been a small dog, and then a monkey as well as the horse.
Besides, flying away into the night wasn’t what she had come here to do either.
With an inward sigh, she wheeled on the wind and arrowed back to the puck. Landing some distance away, she shapeshifted back into her human form, put up her hood, and crossed her arms.
He had wheeled to face her and stood, head lowered, almost as if he were a bull and she a red flag.
“Why did you leave them behind?” she asked.
He said nothing. Every line in his body was furious and recalcitrant, as if he were a two-thousand-pound, stubborn child. Gods, what a thought.
Cautiously she walked forward. “If you don’t talk to me, I will fly away and not come back. Is that what you want?”
“Of course not.” He gnashed huge teeth at her.
“Did you ever have any intention of taking me to Oberon?”
His pause went on a little too long for her liking. “Yes. Eventually. Probably. Annwyn might have studied you. She might have decided you were safe to have around our king. But I haven’t, and I don’t listen to what Annwyn or anyone else in the Dark Court says.”
Sophie had been right. There was a long-held resentment, and
possibly even jealousy, vibrating in those words.
In the meantime, the wind had grown even colder, and now both her cheeks and toes had gone numb. “I need my cloak, and it’s in one of the packs on your back,” she said. “Do you mind?”
He glowered. “No.”
Warily she approached, but he held still while she dug in the right pack to pull the cloak out. Shaking it out, she draped it around her shoulders and pulled the hood over that of her coat. Heaviness settled around her, but it was without warmth.
She was going to have to use one of her body warmers. Digging into the pack again, she pulled out a packet. Once she opened that and tucked it inside her coat, it began to put out a welcome heat that sank through her layers of clothing. Wrapping her arms around her chest, she hugged it close.
After a few minutes’ thought, she said, “I’m not on Annwyn’s side.”
He lifted his head to stare at her. “Whose side are you on?”
Nobody’s side. Not Annwyn’s. Not yours. She rejected each possible answer as it occurred to her, as she tried to figure out what he wanted to hear.
Then she told him the truth. “I’m on Oberon’s side. That’s always true whenever I take on a patient—I’m on their side, especially the children and those who can’t speak for themselves. Not their families. Not the courts. Theirs.” She paused. “Your king is going to die unless something is done for him.”
“Can you fix him?” Despite how he obviously wanted to keep his guard up, hope and need slipped into his voice.
“I don’t know. I can assess his condition, and I can do what is best for him—I will do everything I possibly can, but there’s no way I can know what that might be without examining him. And the truth is, I might not be able to do anything. Only one thing is certain, Robin. Your king is going to die unless something is done for him. Why didn’t you want to bring Annwyn and the troops with us?”
He stamped at the snow desultorily. Other than tangling his mane and tail, the wind and the massive cold didn’t seem to affect him at all. “I wanted to judge you for myself while they weren’t around. If you were a threat, I would take care of you.” He looked at her sidelong to see how she took his words.
He might be old, unpredictable, and dangerous, but he had nothing on a cantankerous, bullheaded dragon. She said gently, “You were looking after your king.”
“He told me to guard his place and watch them. A long time ago, Isabeau took me and held me captive for years. I failed him once. I won’t fail him again.”
Holding back a sigh, she thought, in the meantime, while you play out your guilt-ridden power fantasies, he is going to die unless something is done for him.
She bit back saying that too. Instead, she asked, “How long will it take them to reach the city on their own?”
He gave an equine equivalent of a scornful shrug. “Perhaps a fortnight?”
“Okay. You know what? I think you should pay attention to what your Sophie thinks, not what Annwyn says or does. Your Sophie would want you to take me to Oberon. You can shadow me all you like. You can ask whatever questions you need to ask, and you can watch any procedure I might need to do. And I can explain everything I need to do before I do it. How does that sound?”
“That’s a bargain I’m willing to accept.” He bared his teeth. “And I can be there to stop you if you try to harm him in any way.”
Annwyn would be beyond furious of course, but Kathryn had told Robin the truth when she’d said she wasn’t on Annwyn’s side. She was on Oberon’s side, and this was the fastest way she could get to see her patient for the first time.
“Of course.” She shrugged. “That too.”
* * *
Sometimes you could slog away at something for months or years and never seem to make any headway. A long project, a difficult situation, a challenging surgery. In a way, Kathryn’s journey to get to Lyonesse was like that—there had been so many moving parts, it had seemed to take forever.
And then suddenly life speeds up. You make a breakthrough, end the project, complete the difficult situation, finish the surgery. For Kathryn, that came the closest of anything she did to the feeling of flying while she was on the ground.
Until now.
Land streaked by as the stallion raced at a breakneck pace. She caught glimpses of the ever-changing landscape—sometimes it seemed like Scotland and at other times like Spain. It was its own unique place. Now she wanted to stop and sightsee. She couldn’t imagine when she would have the time. She would probably never get the chance.
At one point they raced along a seemingly endless shore while dark thunderclouds larger than cities towered overhead and the howling of the wind sounded like a live creature full of viciousness and teeth. Robin’s speed was incredible. They were traveling faster than she could fly.
And she loved it.
Leaning forward, she shouted, “Go faster!”
There was the slightest hitch in his stride. She had surprised him. Then he tossed his head and bugled in response. Stretching his body out, his long, powerful legs a blur, he raced faster. In that moment she forgave him everything—his recalcitrance, duplicity, obstructiveness, everything.
Just before dawn, as a knifelike light began to silver the restless shore, they came upon a dark, ruined city so quickly she could only snatch at details. Like the bones of an immense creature, the shadowed columns, roads, archways, and buildings flashed by, leaving behind an impression of broken grace and beauty. Half of it lay underwater, and what was left was covered in gargantuan swaths of ice and frozen icicles. It was a gorgeous, tragic place.
Once he stepped into the city, Robin had to slow down until he walked, picking his way along ruined causeways and climbing sides of aqueducts. Neither spoke, the eerie, howling wind ever present. She thought about offering to get down to walk but staying clenched in the same position throughout the long hours of the night had made her stiffen, and she decided not to mention it if he didn’t.
Soon they left the submerged part behind as the puck picked a route that led uphill, and something else began to intrude on her awareness. The crazy wind was getting to her. She shook her head, but the feeling persisted. Covering her ears with both gloved hands, she tried to concentrate.
A sense of danger slid icy fingers down her spine. There was a Power that resided here, and it felt dark, vengeful, and awake. Like a predator, it tracked their progress through the streets but chose not to attack, at least not yet. It felt like it was biding its time.
Twisting, she studied the empty streets around them and took in deep lungful of the briny air. She caught no scents other than land, stone, and sea.
Robin, she said telepathically. Something is tracking us. Do you sense that?
Yes. He sounded strangely peaceful. He knows we’re here.
Holy hells. For the first in what seemed like a very long time, she felt seriously shaken. That predatory, malevolent-feeling Power was Oberon?
I don’t get it, she thought. When all the members of the Dark Court spoke about Oberon, it was with a combination of love, pain, and respect, as if he was some kind of missing goddamn hero. How could they love this? It felt like a monster contemplating a slaughter. Oh Shaw, what have you gotten yourself into now?
“Wow, do I feel welcome,” she muttered.
The puck appeared to miss her tone of sarcasm completely. “You should. When Annwyn and the troops arrive, the storms will rage through the city until ice shards drive through glass, and midday will seem black as night. You will want to shelter in place when that happens.”
Surprise took her over. “What’s the difference between our arrival and theirs?”
“Me,” Robin said simply. “Maybe because I was the last one he saw before he fell to his sleep. Maybe because he gave me orders that I’m supposed to follow. No one knows for sure.”
Fell to his sleep.
The puck’s odd wording snagged her attention. It sounded ominous, like falling to his death. “Well, I’m glad I too
k you up on your offer to bring me. I had no idea just getting to him was going to be so difficult. What would happen if we split up?”
“I suggest you do not leave my side.”
Oh, no worries about that. She had no intention of doing so.
By the time they came up to the palace, it was almost anticlimactic. The structure was, she decided, very palace-y—a large sprawl of a stone building with crenellations along the top, turrets at each end, and rows of columns and arches along the front.
The design seemed almost Moorish and looked both attractive and defensible. A long scar along the ground that bordered the front of the building might once have been a functional moat. Now that area was nothing more than a slick-looking, frozen smear.
Many years of doing her job had taught her one thing: to grab any chance available to get her needs met while she could. As they approached the building, she dug into a pack and pulled out a piece of jerky to chew while she considered what came next.
“Would you take me directly to him?” she asked.
The surprise was back in his voice as he replied, “I thought we might rest? It has been a long journey for both of us.”
“I know you’re tired, and I am too,” she told him. “But from everything I was told, Oberon is supposed to be unconscious, yet his Power feels aware, and it appears to be reacting to stimuli. I would rather introduce myself right away in case he might be aware enough to take it in.”
“He is asleep.” The flat, uncertain note in the puck’s voice persisted.
She explained, “Comatose patients can be more aware than people think. Sometimes after they awaken, they report hearing voices and conversations that occurred around them while they were in their comas. I don’t know that Oberon is in a coma exactly, but I’d like to see if we can tell whether he will accept my presence. I don’t want to be attacked by some freak bout of weather while I’m trying to sleep.”
“You make a good point,” he said after a moment. “We will go to see him straightaway.”
“Thank you.”
They had reached the wide, icy palace steps. When Robin drew to a halt, she slid off his back and dragged her packs off. Stiffly she bent to unbuckle them while the puck shapeshifted. As she pulled them apart, one of his thin, strong hands came into view.
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