“Yes, Lord Daybreak, we are satisfied,” Summer said in sing-song. How such could sound like a threat was both amazing and amusing, but I didn’t question it.
I held the scroll, still wrapped this time, in one hand and pushed hard with Daybreak’s power, lighting the magic undershirt again. Jimmy, too, lit up like the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center just for being so near me. Then I started reciting the oath again.
The power of the Accords once again lifted up off the scroll and wrapped around me. This time, though, I felt the added force of the whole of Faery behind it, too, urging it on. The Queens were hoping to add their own power to the geas written there. I didn’t mind the intrusion, but it was exactly that. If the geas had sealed around me, they would both have a view into my realm. For just the quickest instant of time, it looked like the eldritch purple bands of energy might actually take hold before draining off like quicksilver on glass.
The faery entourage stood in shock as I held out the scrolls of the Original Accords of the Unseelie for the Queen to take from me. She reached out incredibly slowly, then snatched it back quickly.
“So,” I said, trying to bring some sort of closure to this. “What have we decided here tonight? Agree in principle?”
“That is very… one-sided,” Winter snapped.
“Yes, it is,” I admitted. “Just not the side you thought it would be, now is it?”
Seelie let out a hearty, throaty laugh that reverberated off the Castle’s front and gardens. “No, dear boy, it certainly is not,” she said. “An agreement in principle then. We will take you at your word.”
“Thank you, Ladies,” I said, canting my head slightly and bowing. “And please accept my assurances that my gifts to you are intended only to delight and not enthrall or accrue any debt in any way.”
“Just so, Lord Daybreak,” Winter said curtly. “This has been… an interesting evening. Until we meet again.”
“Please use the gate, Lady Winter,” I asked quietly and politely. “You will overwhelm the lad holding the wards.”
“As you wish, Lord Daybreak,” the Seelie Queen answered instead, equally as quietly. The Princes both snapped their fingers at the same time. Their mounts heard and answered with whinnies. A moment later, Avenour appeared riding his impossibly tall horse with the standard he carried held perfectly vertical. The rest of the elven steeds paced behind him, their heads high and hooves prancing on the soft ground. I could feel that Marty was already having the road cleared and the gate opened wide for them.
Then far in the distance there were two more whinnies, trumpet calls really, followed by the sound of thousands of hooves beating the ground in a massive stampede. The sound reminded me of my singular visit to the Crossroads with Kieran and just as the thought hit me, two steeds burst through the western gate at unbelievable speeds, heading straight for the Castle. These were the Queens’ horses. Side by side they ran, the right was a mare of bright fiery red whose hooves flashed with flames as they struck the ground. The left was a cool, bluish-white of solid ice, frozen for centuries. The ground literally cracked with each beat as its heat was stolen by the mare.
They arrived within seconds of passing through the gate. The mares bowed down like elephants in a circus, allowing the Queens to sit atop them, saddle-less and legs to the side. There was no doubt they would not fall. The Stone shifted in my cavern and the Pact provided me with a High Faery farewell.
“Fare thee well, young Lord,” the Seelie Queen said solemnly in answer with a small smile on her face. Then as one, the eight elves turned their mounts and trotted around the drive and down the road, slowly speeding up as they disappeared into the night. They were at a full run by a quarter of the distance to the gate and gone inside of seven seconds.
I turned and grabbed Gordon by the arm, wrapping us both in portals and moving us to the foyer of the Castle behind Marty. “Ethan, shore him up for me, please,” I said loudly as I took the poor kid’s shoulders and pushed into his mind. Sending impulses to override the tension in his body, he released what he’d held for the last ten minutes and fell like a sack of potatoes in my arms, limp and weak, but still holding the Castle up at full power.
“Gordon, I need you to take the Castle from Marty and power it down,” I said calmly as I searched through Marty to make certain that he was merely exhausted.
“What? I can’t take it from him!” Gordon objected. “It would kill me for trying!”
“What? No, take it, not overtake it,” I said gently. This was already hard on him. Me yelling wasn’t going to help. “Ethan is holding Marty and the Castle up right now, but Marty is exhausted. This went on for way too long. The Castle needs to be brought down by a Cahill. And we can hold it in abeyance for only so long. What we can do is slip you underneath so you can shut down the Castle slowly and correctly so that no one gets hurt. Then someone like John or Billy can switch over at a proper level.”
“How is that possible?” Gordon asked kneeling on the floor beside Marty opposite me. “He’s all right?”
“Yeah, as soon as you take control, he’ll just be asleep for a few hours,” I said gently, cradling Marty’s head in my lap. “Don’t touch him just yet. He’s still hot. Now I may use different words than you, being unschooled and self-taught. Just reach up into your wards until you can feel where Marty is working.” I felt Gordon move his magic timidly through the wards and into the Castle structure. To me, the interface was phasing neon-colored tubes of iridescent light at about a millimeter thick. He was barely a shadow on a line.
“Gordon, he’s tired, but… have you met your brother?” I asked him, looking up at his tired and worried face. Grinning, I realized he really hadn’t, at least not in some time. Kieran was at the door with Felix, speaking quietly to him and explaining what was happening. I pushed an image onto the gallery of the ward to use as an avatar and seeped down to the level Gordon was searching. Jerking him up by his heels, figuratively speaking, I hauled him up to where Marty still controlled the Castle subconsciously while Ethan convinced it to stay passive.
“What I see here is a huge lattice of purple lines similar to what I’ve seen in circuitry builds only much more complex,” I describe to Gordon. “That, to me, is the Castle defense control structures. Underneath and underpinning these are another series of similar lines that diverge into much larger and more convoluted structures in a number of different colors and textures. Do you see these or something like them?”
“Yes,” Gordon said cautiously. “Not quite in those terms, but I see that.”
“That is Marty,” I said, shaking my head. “Big brothers. Don’t sell the kid short, Gordon. Come on, now, you’ve done this a hundred times before. Just reach in and Ethan will slip you in and I’ll slip Marty out and the Castle will be none the wiser.”
Finally he just did it and started shunting the angry moat into more peaceful terms through the base of a steep cliff. Ethan was about to pull away from the Cahill’s defenses just as Marty cooled down enough energy-wise for me to pick up. I wasn’t the issue, but he didn’t need anything arcing off the floors unexpectedly. Heading for the Observatory, I was met by John, half-asleep himself until the alarm of Marty in my arms shocked him.
“Sh, he’s just asleep, exhausted,” I whispered. “Can you watch over him until everybody’s situated?”
“Yes, sir, certainly, right this way,” he said, leading me back into the room. “What’s Gordon doing?”
“He’s just finishing shutting down the Castle,” I answered him, looking at a couch further back in the room. John took the hint and went further back than I knew the room went. He even provided a pillow and blanket for Marty and tucked him as he snored softly, curling into the blanket. “Marty’s going to be very hungry in the morning,” I said as we entered the foyer again.
“Seth?” Gordon called as he waved his hands in the air as if controlling the energy flows with his fingertips. “I don’t see anything else to release. Or I can’t tell what it is from
this side, anyway.”
Glancing up at the power structures, Gordon did a good job of releasing most everything and what little he’d missed was just too hard to see from his position. But they were small things, easily handled by the next man.
“John, who’s set to take the wards now?” I asked.
“Dennis is ready and waiting and Billy takes over in an hour,” John said softly, already heading for the Butler’s Pantry that normally housed the ward holders.
“Okay,” I said, watching Gordon using his lightest touch as he moved around Marty’s psyche. “Tell him to go as gently as possible when he takes them from Marty. Poor kid’s exhausted. I’ll be there, too, to make it as easy as possible. Gordon, get ready. This will feel very strange as Marty slips away completely and Dennis comes in. You’ll just fall away and everything will come to look normal again after a second or two.”
John stopped at the door and looked at me oddly. “From… Marty? Not from Gordon? I don’t understand,” he said.
“You know you can’t swap the defenders while the Castle is up, John,” I said casually. “Marty still has that position. Gordon is just bringing those defenses down while Marty is sleeping. Now let’s get moving and get Dennis in before the wards figure out they’re being tricked.”
Startled, John stepped into the Butler’s Pantry and spoke quietly with someone, presumably Dennis, and almost immediately, Gordon relaxed as Marty eased away and Dennis insinuated himself into the structures. Abruptly, Gordon fell into his normal visual patterns, snapping back to reality and his ability to interact.
“That was Martin? And how did you do that? It’s not supposed to be possible!” Gordon asked, still flabbergasted.
“Yeesss, that was Martin,” I said slowly. “He’s grown up a lot in the past year, Gordon. And Dunstan’s was hard on him, but it helped him, too, in the long run. He held Mike’s veil for a long time under harsh circumstances. Even with Ian’s help, it scarred them. Drove the power furrows deeper into their minds. Bad and good. You saw the good part in Marty just now. The stronger side that allows him to even bring the Castle under control, must less to full power. It probably would have been another year or two, otherwise.
“As for how,” I continued, watching Gordon as he thought about Marty going through the tortures at Dunstan’s again. “The wards here were originally built as a gestalt. When the Queens arrived, I asked Kieran and Ethan to watch Marty and help with the wards if the Queens started to overload them in any way. The Faery protocols are finicky and aren’t geared for peaceful visits by someone of their levels of power. So I asked Marty to watch them carefully and if he had any problems to toss any dangerous energies my way because I could handle them better.
“Ethan slipped into the gestalt shortly after I built the knowe and Kieran entered to recite at my faeries’ request. This isn’t something we could have done normally, but I stacked the deck ahead of time. And if I realized that this was going to go on for so long, I would have suggested bringing the Castle down to high warning levels or something. Marty held seven major ley lines moving in tandem for over eight hours by himself before Ethan even started helping him, but he hit the wall then, poor kid.”
“I should have thought of that,” Gordon muttered to himself, getting angry.
“Don’t go kicking yourself, Gordon,” I warned him. “Be proud of him, instead. He did a damn good job of this and so have you. And he might have wanted to go run and play among all the people and faery, but he got a very unique perspective from where he sat. He won’t soon forget what he saw here. Just wait, he’ll be jabbering ninety to nothing in the morning about it.”
“I guess you’re right,” Gordon said slowly. “It’s just that he looked so frail when you caught him, so tiny.”
Kieran called from the doorway. “Well, let’s go kick a few hundred people out of your house so you can rest.”
“My bed. That sounds glorious,” Gordon said, slumping his shoulders tiredly and dragging his feet to the door, if only for a moment. No one else saw Cahill in any sort of weakness, but we were family now. He stopped a few paces from the door, turned back to me and said with some humor in his voice, “Oh, no! You need to leave! I’ll never be rid of them if they think you’re still here. Much as I’d appreciate the help, too many people would be hiding in the shadows trying to get another word in to you for that right now, and the promise of my bed before sunrise is too great. Your brothers can help and manage well enough.”
I smiled at him. Big. “All right, Gordon. I’ll go. Thank you for your hard work. I owe you for this. It went better than I thought it would.”
“We can talk about that tomorrow,” he answered, smiling and pleased with the compliment. “Late tomorrow. And you’re welcome.”
Jimmy, I called through the geas, let’s go home.
Chapter 35
“But there was so much left to do,” Jimmy grumbled as we walked down the Road toward the barracks. “And I used to get a kick out of ducking the housework. What have you done to me?” He whacked my arm playfully when he asked that, making me chuckle at him.
“It’s called growing up, big boy,” I said, winding our way through the short maze to Alsooth’s office where Laston was overseeing a rather tense meeting with two of the generals and Major Byrnes. “And unfortunately, we would have gotten more in the way than helped. Gordon was right to send us away.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t have to like it,” he grumbled again.
I just grinned as we turned into Alsooth’s office. An odd tableau greeted us. Laston faced us, sitting crossed-legged atop the large desk with another sprite on his right who seemed to be ready to take notes. He smiled serenely at the two generals opposite him at the desk, their backs to us. Major Byrnes sat on the right, dressed in a silk suit surprisingly reminiscent of Jimmy’s.
“No, sir, he’s not being obstinate,” Byrnes was saying to the generals as we walked in. “He’s making a statement of fact. This is as private as it gets here. Laston has authority over the barracks at the moment and therefore has cognizance of everything that goes on here, regardless of whether he is in the room or not.” He stood abruptly with Laston and his aide as I walked in with Jimmy, stopping just inside the doorway.
“Good evening, Lord Daybreak,” Laston and his aide called together cheerfully, bowing. Byrnes was quick behind him, a welcome depth of voice. The generals both started to stand as I came around to the free side of the table.
“Good evening, Laston and… Zero? Really? How cute!” I was gushing at the two little brownies as I sat down. I must have been more tired than I thought to show this much emotion in front of strangers. “Oh, I shouldn’t have said that. Now in a few generations there’ll be a few million Zeroes and it won’t be so adorable anymore.”
The little brownies giggled, huddled together. Laston said, “Don’t worry, Lord. Your secret is safe with us.”
“No, please, there will be enough secrets over time,” I said smiling at the two them, “that such a simple pleasure shouldn’t be one of them. Tell whomever you like and, please, carry on. You seem to have things under control. Good evening, Major Byrnes, you were saying?”
“He was trying to explain why we could get no privacy,” the man on my left said sternly. “But that would seem to be a moot point now that you’re here.”
“Really? How so? It doesn’t change it in any way,” I asked, leaning into the table on my elbow. The sprites sat back into crossed-legged postures, still smiling serenely, undoubtedly uncannily to the men across from them.
“We’re here to negotiate for their safe return to US soil, Mr. McClure,” the man said.
Jimmy was a flash of blue fire as he lurched over the table, thrusting his truncheon in a wide arc to hit directly in front of the man in a brilliant flare of light and heat. Shocking both men, they fell back from the table, shoving hard on their chairs. The fire on the stick instantly died away, but Jimmy’s fires fell more slowly. “He is Lord Daybreak. Here, on Gilán, to
use any other name shows disrespect to him and his people. Showing disrespect can be extremely dangerous. Am I making myself clear?”
The man nodded, shaking and unsteady, adding a weak, “Yes, sir.”
“You remember my First from when you were escorted across the border,” I said, waving my hand at Jimmy as he sat back down beside me smugly, snapping the truncheon back in place. I suppose I was pretty smug about it, too, as he slowly let the fires die off to a mere glow.
“Yes,” both men muttered. The left one went on to say, “That was quite an unusual experience for us. We were not expecting to see such marvelous creatures on this kind of a diplomatic mission. Col. Echols was adamant that we would be dealing with a completely human contingent.”
“You are,” Byrnes said. “At least the ones in charge are human, the Lord and his First.” Now he was being smug, but his was more polished and less obvious than ours.
“Now, why would I negotiate for their release with you, anyway?” I asked, leaning back from the table. “You were the ones trying to kill them. Why would you think I would trust you with their safety a second time? Why would they?”
“That is a good question, General Harmond,” Major Byrnes agreed, leaning into the table with interest.
“And now I have a name. Thank you, Major,” I said, nodding to him.
“My apologies, Lord Daybreak,” Laston cried and jumped up quickly. “I assumed you knew their names and I should not have. This is Brigadier General Samuel Harmond, Pentagon Judge Advocate General’s Office, Detached, and Lt. Col. Vincent Morelli, also of the Judge Advocate General’s Office. They claim to be members of the defense team guiding Major Byrnes and his men.”
“Thank you, Laston, and it is reasonably fair to assume I knew them since I sent them over,” I explained to him. “But our introduction was cut off and this was arranged rather abruptly. And where is Agent Messner, General Harmond?”
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