“The Seat of Power.” Mal strode across the room, his gaze fixed on an enormous ruby mounted at the apex of the throne’s back. “He said I’d know it when I saw it. That’s got to be it. It’s the most obvious thing in the room.”
Bryce trailed after him, rubbing his chest. “I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right.”
Mal rounded on him. “If you’re so bloody informed, you tell me what it is.”
Bryce circled the throne, studying its sides, although its rear was covered by the tapestry. The One Tree was as detailed and perfect on the back as it was on the front, but the rear-facing figure was a woman in a green gown, her hip-length red hair bound by a thin gold circlet.
He finished his circuit and stopped at the foot of the dais, trying to interpret his newfound senses. Where is it? What is it? Mal shifted from foot to foot next to him in the first sign of nerves he’d ever shown.
Bryce shook his head. “It’s not the ruby. Too obvious.”
“That’s the point. It’s meant to show who’s got the goods, right?”
“No. If it really is something that confers power, you wouldn’t want to flaunt it like that or it would encourage thieves.” He inclined his head at Mal. “Our presence being a case in point. In fact, you probably wouldn’t want to advertise it at all. You’d— No.” Bryce burst into laughter. “It couldn’t be. Could it?”
Mal glanced over his shoulder again. “Look, mate, I’m all for a good joke, but we need to move things along.”
“Don’t worry. I’ve got this.”
Bryce lay on his back at the foot of the throne and slid underneath until his head and shoulders were between the massive claw-footed front legs. There. The woodcarver had made an attempt to camouflage the tiny compartment amid the whorls of Celtic knot-work, but it was as obvious to Bryce as if were outlined in neon. His laugh burbled up again at the pure joy of these new senses, at the proof that he could be more, that he was more, than the nerdy college professor.
“What the bloody hells are you doing down there?”
“I need your hand.”
Mal’s face appeared upside down next to his shoulder. “Now is not the time for a handjob.”
“Don’t be an ass. Here.” Bryce grabbed Mal’s left hand and held it under the compartment. For some reason, he didn’t want whatever was inside it to fall to the floor. He worked his fingernail into the nearly invisible seam and popped it open.
The contents dropped into Mal’s waiting hand, although Bryce couldn’t see what it was from his angle underneath. He closed Mal’s fingers over it. “Don’t drop that.”
He scooted out from under the throne and scrambled to his feet as Mal uncurled his fingers. “This? This is the Seat of Power?”
Holding his breath, Bryce cupped his hand under Mal’s and gazed down at the tiny object: an agate, striped in all the colors of the forest. The stone pulsed in time with the warmth in Bryce’s chest. “Absolutely.”
“Doesn’t look like much.”
“Are you kidding? You don’t see it?”
“See what?”
“Its . . . its energy. Its aura. Its . . . I don’t know, its essence.”
“Just seems like it should be more impressive, is all, with a name like ‘the Seat of Power.’”
“Look at it, though. It has all the layers of the world. Brown for earth. Green for plants. Gold for sun. Quartz for water. Pyrite for fire. It’s the whole world contained in a single stone. It’s perfect.”
“Right, then. You take it.” Mal dumped the stone into Bryce’s hand. “Stow it in your tactical whatevers.”
Bryce cradled the stone against his chest. “You sure?”
“It’ll be safer that way.” Mal glanced over his shoulder at the archway that led to the front door. “But we need to move.”
“All right.” He tucked the little stone into the inner pocket of his vest, the one that rested over his heart, and its pulse aligned with its own.
Mal’s nerves blazed as if they’d been ignited like a Calan Mai bonfire. He’d been on edge since they’d passed the threshold—who wouldn’t be with a possible death sentence hanging over his head—but this was beyond ordinary caution. It didn’t help that the geas brand had started to burn the instant that bloody stone had hit his palm.
Sweat broke out on his forehead and the back of his neck, and his shirt clung to him as if he’d just gone three rounds with his longsword. Then the talisman in his pocket shot a burst of heat straight through the leather and onto his hip.
“Shite!” The bloody thing might leave a brand of its own. “Bryce. Give me one of your gloves. Quick.”
The druid moved fast, Mal gave him that. He unhooked one of the canvas gloves from his ludicrous pants and slapped it in Mal’s left hand—at which point Mal simply stared at it stupidly. He couldn’t put the damn thing on. Meanwhile, the talisman was burning like a bitch. He’d probably have a Celtic knot etched on his arse for the rest of his life.
Bryce grabbed his shoulder. “Either let me help you with the glove or tell me what the problem is.”
“It’s . . . ah, oak and bloody thorn.” Mal gritted his teeth. “My hip pocket. A . . . a coin. Hot.”
Bryce didn’t bother with the glove. He shoved his hand into Mal’s pocket and drew out the talisman. “Got it.”
“Damn it, man. You shouldn’t have . . . at least the glove . . .” Mal struggled to put a sentence together. What was wrong with him? A sense of doom loomed over him like a wyvern inches from clamping its teeth on the back of his neck. Mal grabbed Bryce’s hand, ready to knock the bloody talisman into next week before it could harm those long elegant fingers.
“Hey.” Bryce closed his hand over Mal’s wrist and held the coin up, pinched between the thumb and index finger of his other hand. “It’s okay. It’s cool. To the touch, I mean, not as in copacetic. Although it’s that too.” Bryce grinned. “Mission accomplished, eh?”
“Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that.” Not when they were in the throne room of the Unseelie Court. “We still have to get home, and something tells me we’d better—”
A boom echoed down the hall, and the tapestry behind the throne rippled in a sudden gust of wind.
Bryce’s eyes grew huge behind his glasses. “Was that . . .”
“Front doors. We’re about to have company.” Judging by the hurried tread of booted feet, they’d either been discovered, or someone else had clandestine business in the throne room while the King was playing his power games in the Stone Circle. “At least four. Warriors, by the jangle of metal.”
Which meant swords—while he and Bryce were armed with nothing but a pair of bloody pruning shears and a magic rock.
Bryce pointed at a half-sized door in a shadowy corner behind the throne dais. “Could that be a way out?”
“Probably leads to the kitchens, or the mews. Those are usually staffed by lesser fae.”
“Let’s go, then.”
The booted footsteps were closer, in the corridor between the hall and throne room. “The point of the wee door is to keep big bastards like me out.”
“Have you got another option?”
The first of the warriors reached the archway and shouted a hoarse battle cry. “Not a bloody one. Go.”
They raced to the door, and Bryce flung it open. “You go first.”
“Not likely.” Mal glanced over his shoulder at the group advancing toward them. The fact that they were in no hurry was troubling. Did that mean this exit was a trap? A dead end? Did the passageway get smaller before it reached the kitchen? The notion of getting wedged with a sword at his backside had his breath sawing in his lungs. Shite, he hated small places.
Bryce grabbed a handful of Mal’s shirt. “Can you drop the alpha jerk crap? We don’t have time for it. You know where you’re going. I don’t. I can shut the door. You can’t. Not if the hall is the same size as the door. If—”
“Maldwyn Kendrick. Stand down.”
Mal whipped his head around at t
he sound of that voice. Gwydion’s bloody bollocks—Rodric Luchullain. An evil grin plastered on his perfect Daoine Sidhe face, the bastard slowed to a swagger. The trio of warriors at his back shuffled in confusion, which meant Rodric had them in thrall.
Leaning closer, Bryce murmured, “I’m guessing that since that guy knows you, we’re screwed.”
“You’re a bloody genius. Get on. Now.”
Bryce ducked through the door, and Rodric’s grin morphed into a grimace. “Stop him, you fools.”
Mal took a deep breath, doubled over, and dove through the door, the slap of size twenty-two boots and the zhing of unsheathed swords spurring him on.
He landed on his knees on a stone floor worn smooth by the feet of lesser fae. He tried to catch himself, but his reflexes hadn’t yet twigged to the absence of his right hand. He hit the floor with knees, left hand, and right shoulder, but caught himself before braining himself on the stone.
The door slammed behind him, followed by the thud of a bar dropping into place.
“Come on.” Bryce gripped his arm. “The ceiling’s high enough. You can stand.” He helped Mal to his feet, teeth glinting in a manic grin and eyes sparkling behind his glasses. “Guess it’s bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.”
Mal stared at the ceiling, nearly as high as the one in the entry hall. The hallway should have been dark, but instead it was flooded with light from knee-high windows along one wall—a wall that should have had nothing but more Keep behind it.
The other wall was far enough away that it should have been smack in the middle of the throne room, and above the tiny door, it was splashed with murals depicting all manner of lesser fae wielding weapons twice their size, slaughtering a battlefield full of greater fae.
“Bloody hells,” Mal breathed. “The little buggers have been holding out on us.”
“Don’t tell me. None of the ruling fae ever bothered to look in here.”
“How would I know? I’ve never been to this gods-forsaken realm before.”
“What about in your own realm? Ever checked on how the other half lives?” Bryce studied a spot in the mural where a brownie in an apron stood victorious on the chest of a fallen—and headless—body in the armor of a Daoine Sidhe. “Might be time for a little labor negotiation. Seems they’ve got a few issues with management.”
A boom thudded against the door. Mal grabbed Bryce’s arm. “Save the egalitarian shite for later. In the meantime—”
“Right. Haul ass. I get it.”
They raced down the hall, past more scenes of mayhem, until they fetched up against another half-height door. Mal yanked on the handle, but the door didn’t budge.
“Shite. Do you suppose it’s barred on the other side?”
“Let me see.” Bryce peered along the edge of the door. “I don’t see anything. Maybe if we—” He leaned against the door, and it swung open without a creak. He lifted his eyebrows with a cheeky smile. “Push, not pull.”
Mal scowled at him. “The hinges are on this side, damn you.”
“Magic. Gotta love it.”
“I don’t—”
“Look, you want to argue, or do you want to escape? I don’t know why those goons haven’t made it into the hall yet, but I suggest we take advantage of it, yeah?”
“Right.” Mal shouldered past Bryce into the empty kitchen, under braided swags of onions and sheaves of dried thyme and rosemary, down three broad stone steps into the scullery. He tried the door between two enormous sandstone sinks. It didn’t budge with either a push or a pull, damn it.
He thought of the murals in the hall and what kind of punishment might rain down on the lesser fae if any of the nobles suspected what direction their art took. They’d never risk it. “It’s spelled. All the doors are spelled against greater fae.” He turned to Bryce. “You try.”
Bryce grinned evilly, the prick, and hooked one finger under the carved wooden handle. The door opened without protest. Mal suspected it would have opened without any touch at all if Bryce had simply asked it to.
Bloody druid.
How twisted was it that he found the man totally fecking hot?
The kitchen door opened into a small graveled courtyard. Bryce followed Mal across it into the trees, still gloating over his unexpected ability to—to what? Open tiny doors? Detect magic rocks? Chill cursed metal? Maybe it was trivial and stupid, but damn. Just . . . damn. It was so cool, even if it was nothing compared to whatever magic or battle skills or whatever-the-hell-else Mal and his ilk could do.
He’d always been so ordinary. Workmanlike. Brown in a world that valued bright colors. But this. This was something he could do that even Mal couldn’t. For the first time in his life, he felt special.
As he pounded down the path under the trees in Mal’s wake, he should have been terrified. He was in a place that he’d never dreamed existed. Several really big guys with really big weapons could be chasing them right now. But he didn’t care. If he didn’t need all his breath for running like a maniac, he’d laugh until his belly ached.
He settled for a grin so wide it practically met his ears.
He stopped grinning pretty damn quick, though, when Mal skidded to a halt next to an ancient oak at the edge of the road.
“What is it? Are those guys already out there?”
“They’re not yet, but they will be. Shite.” Mal ran his hand through his hair, squinting through the trees at the way they’d come. “This is not the same bloody path. I have no notion where the gate is.”
“I—”
A ululating cry echoed in the woods, startling a flock of starlings out of the trees.
“Shite. They’re on our trail. Now what?”
Bryce’s hot-cold sense kicked in again, aiming him toward a moss-stippled boulder. “Over there.” He led the way past it, then across a rivulet that cut a deep groove in the hillside.
The cry repeated, accompanied by a thunderous crack, underlaid with a sound that lifted the hair on the back of his neck—a sustained keening at the high edge of his hearing. Another crash, like the sound of an ax hitting wood, and the keening increased.
“Augh.” Bryce stumbled, pressing his fingers to his mastoid bones. “Christ. What is that sound?”
Mal stopped next to him, chest heaving. “Most likely the sound of our impending doom. If we don’t find our way out of here, those battleaxes will land on our skulls next.”
“Not that. It’s something . . .” He staggered against the trunk of the nearest beech. “It’s— Oh.” He circled the tree with both arms, Mal’s taunts about tree-hugging be damned. The vibration under his hands felt like the quiver of a plucked violin string. He pressed his ear against the bark, and the sound got louder, lower, more desperate. “The trees. They’re crying.”
“That’ll be us in a brace of minutes if we don’t move our arses.”
A shout echoed through the woods along with another thud of an ax against wood.
“I can’t let them keep that up. I can’t let them hurt the trees.” Bryce pushed himself off and spun around. The road. They’d walked up the road to the Keep. It was—he consulted his new senses, and they didn’t fail him—that way. He took off.
“Shite,” Mal growled, but thudded along in Bryce’s wake.
They broke out of the trees and onto the dusty path. Bryce whirled, waving his arms overhead. “Hey! Over here!”
Mal grabbed him by the front of his vest. “Are you out of your bloody druid mind? You want them to find us?”
“Better us than the trees. We can run. They can’t.” He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Yo! Bozos! This way!”
“‘Bozos’?”
“You wouldn’t understand.” The first of the giant guards crashed through the underbrush onto the path, and the keening retreated to a manageable thrum in his skull. “Now we run.” He sprinted down the road, Mal at his heels.
“Running’s fine, mate,” he panted, “but we need a bloody destination.”
“Don
’t worry about that. I’ve got it.” And he did too. Somehow the sound of the trees changed, herding him in the right direction. Like a glow stick in the dark of a cave, he spied the flag he’d tied around the blackberry cane, pulling him toward the gate.
He grabbed Mal’s wrist and towed him between the trunks of two alders, dodging rocks that might or might not be former trolls.
There. That poor withered beech marked the spot. “Can they follow us across?”
“I don’t know. Depends on what their orders were and whether the bloody conclave on the hill has them locked inside.” Mal was breathless, his right arm clenched against his ribs, his crabbed hand flopping at his waist. His skin had turned from its normal healthy bronze to almost gray.
“Mal. You look like shit. Are you okay?”
“I—” Mal stumbled, and Bryce caught him against his side. “Shite. This bloody place. It’s not friendly to the likes of me.”
“Lean on me, then. We’re almost home.”
A shout behind them, far too close for comfort, spurred Bryce across the stream. One instant, the keening of the trees was vibrating his bones, and the next it was gone, replaced by the familiar sounds of the slough.
But he didn’t stop. He wanted to lure any potential followers as far as possible from the fragile wetlands ecosystem as he could. He hauled Mal along the berm toward the slope of the lawn behind their houses, an odd sizzle in his blood.
Whoa. This must be what adrenaline feels like. No wonder people became addicted to extreme sports. Although running for your life from an alternate realm isn’t exactly something that’s likely to catch on.
Finally, they stumbled up the bank. Around them, everything seemed normal. Birds called cheerfully from the trees; insects hummed; frogs croaked. That damned evil blight hadn’t disappeared, but it hadn’t grown too much either.
“I think we’re okay. Nobody’s following.”
“Yet.” Mal sank down on the grass. “Don’t get cocky.”
Bryce kneeled in front of him. “Are you okay?”
The Druid Next Door Page 10