by L. K. Rigel
“Where did you get this?”
“On Avalos, a present from Kaelyn. Why?”
“Never mind,” he said, still turning the glass in his hand. “For a moment I thought it was one I’d lost, but this was obviously made for you. The etchings match the flowers in your hair.”
“I wonder if it’s the one you lost.” In that moment, Igraine had no doubt that it was.
It’s yours, Kaelyn had said. I have seen it.
Bumbling, self-effacing Kaelyn. Always denigrating her own gifts, making her powers seem like nothing. Yet she knew so much—and so much she didn’t tell. The certainly dawned. All along, Kaelyn had been guiding Igraine to this moment, into the path of this man.
“The goblin added those etchings after it was given to me.”
“Yes, the goblin.” Ross shook his head, smiling. “What strange bride have the high gods sent me?” He raised the glass to his eye—and immediately lost his smile. “You were right about royalty, my love. That banner belongs to Queen Mathilde.”
« Chapter 20 »
The Falcon and the Dove
By the time they rode through the castle gate, the sun was gone but the keep was as visible as in the day, lit by hundreds of torches. Igraine saw that the Tintagos banner was still there, though it flew lower that of the two lions.
Every foot of ground was covered by men standing or on horseback, all dressed for battle. They surrounded a middle-aged woman whom Igraine assumed to be Mathilde and a youth seated on a horse beside her. The boy showed the putative queen no deference, and his calculating eyes stayed on Ross.
“Lord Tintagos, forgive our intrusion at this sad moment.” Mathilde spoke with the confidence of a monarch already crowned, using the royal we. “Our condolences on your loss.”
Igraine dismounted with Ross. She held both their horses and bowed her head as he moved forward and bent the knee before his royal visitor.
“Majesty,” he said. “You’re very kind, especially as you’ve so recently lost your own father. All of Tintagos grieves your loss.”
“Well said, and you’ll now have the chance to demonstrate your love for our father. With our son Henry”—she indicated the young man on the horse—“we would impose upon your hospitality a brief while.”
“You honor us, my queen,” Lord Tintagos said. What other answer was compatible with keeping his head? “You are most welcome.”
The stillness fell away and everyone in the keep burst into action, Mathilde’s retinue and the denizens of Tintagos alike. Each had a part to play, settling in the queen and her people. Ross turned, searching until his eyes landed on Igraine. He gestured to her, indicating she should come to him.
She smiled but shook her head. Not a good idea to introduce a wyrding woman to the queen of England. Ross made his eyes big with false exasperation, and Igraine laughed, but a blast from the horn of the watch interrupted their pantomime.
The queen’s guard protectively surrounded Mathilde, Henry, and Ross as a horse raced through the gate into the keep. Its rider was an overly tall, muscular young man with wild hair and sweat pouring down his face.
“Sir Ross!” he cried. “I have news!”
“It’s Lord Tintagos you address,” said a guard of the watch. He’d come down from the wall to stop the visitor if necessary, but he relaxed when he saw who the rider was.
“Lord Tintagos.” The young man gave Ross a friend’s look of sympathy and jumped off his spent and lathered horse.
“Let him pass. I know him.” Ross left the queen and went to the rider, clasping his forearms. “Braedon, what is it?”
“Stephen’s forces approach, sir—my lord.” Braedon bowed to Mathilde. “It’s known that the queen was headed to Tintagos to seek sanctuary. I’m afraid Stephen’s men intend to attack the castle and take you prisoner, Majesty.”
“He wouldn’t dare!” Mathilde said.
“Is Stephen among them?” Ross said.
“No, but his son Eustace is,” Braedon said.
At this intelligence Henry’s face became a mask, but Igraine saw untempered contempt in his eyes.
“They’re led by a priest, my lord. Bishop Quinn of Winchester.” By the look on Braedon’s face, his opinion of Quinn matched Igraine’s.
“Good work, Braedon,” Ross said. “Now, you will kneel before me.”
“My lord?” Confusion showed on the squire’s face, but he did as told.
“I should have done this long ago, Braedon,” Ross said. He turned to Henry. “Your Royal Highness, most humbly I beseech you, might I borrow your sword?”
Henry frowned and looked to his mother, who nodded her assent. The prince unsheathed his weapon and handed it to Ross—who raised an eyebrow when he saw it and shook his head, smiling.
The baron of Tintagos faced his former squire, and after three taps of the blade said, “Arise Sir Braedon.”
Applause erupted in the keep. The citizens of Tintagos appeared to know and like the young man.
“We’ll get you a suit of armor—and a fresh horse,” Ross said. He returned the sword to its owner with thanks.
“How much time do we have?” Mathilde asked Sir Braedon.
“Three hours, maybe four, before they reach Tintagos,” he said. “But they won’t attack until the daylight.
“I hope the legends of Tintagos Castle are true,” Mathilde said, “that it is impregnable, protected by your Brother Sun and Sister Moon.”
Ross and Igraine exchanged a look, and she nodded. She called to a nearby stable boy and handed off Ross’s horse, but she kept her own and remounted it.
Ross was with her before she settled, and he took hold of the reins. “Where are you going?”
“There’s something I have to do,” she said. “When I return, I’ll set wards over the castle. The queen will be safer if your forces meet Quinn’s outside the wall.”
“I can’t let you leave the keep,” Ross said. “Quinn could well have a forward guard out there, waiting even now.”
“No one will see me.” She spun her fingers in the air and said, “Obscure.”
“Igraine?” Ross blinked and rubbed his eyes. “Where…?”
“I’ll be back soon, my love,” she said. “Don’t worry.”
He was her husband now, in spirit though not in law, and she would do all in her power to protect him. Once she was out of the keep and beyond the castle gate, she tossed a glow ball into the air ahead of her horse to light the way and said, “Nine Hazel Lake.”
By morning, Mathilde’s small army and the knights of Tintagos were encamped in the fields to the south between the castle and Igdrasil. Scouts confirmed that in the night Quinn’s forces had made camp about three miles north of the Ring road.
Igraine had yet to return, but Mathilde was safe inside the castle, protected by the household servants, a rough lot, and by Prior Marrek, armed with rosary and poisoned dagger. He’d promised to lay down his life before he let that blackguard Quinn near her. After that, the prior was the only man of Tintagos Mathilde would allow into her rooms.
Ross paced in front of his tent. He always loathed this time, the hours and minutes before a battle, when all preparations that could be made had been made, and anything else was mere busywork.
Where was Igraine?
He took out the scoping glass and scanned the lands to the Ring road. The device even let him see somewhat into the woods above the road, but he didn’t see his love. He traced the apple blossom etchings on the outside of the glass. They were lovely. If truly made by a goblin, then Ross could never again think of goblins with fear or revulsion.
In point of fact, he’d never actually seen a goblin. Again, lesson learned. Do not judge prematurely.
“Hello there.” Someone tapped him on the shoulder and he swung around to see his love standing with a bundle in her arms and mischief in her eye.
“Igraine.” He took her face between his hands and kissed her.
“My lord!” she said with faux embarrassment.
“I think you’d better take me in.” And she motioned toward his tent.
“My lady, your wish is my command.” He held back the flap, then followed her.
“All is ready, I take it?” Igraine said. “You feel confident you fight for the right side?”
“Yes, and Mathilde’s son gives me all the more reason. He contains within him the mettle of his namesake. He’ll be a worthy king to succeed her. Stephen’s son Eustace favors his uncle Aethelos in every way. Self-absorbed, feckless—how did Lord Sarumen put it?—so pampered he seems destined to be food for the fire. I would not like to see Eustace on the throne.”
“Then I’m glad you’re for Mathilde.” Igraine handed him the bundle. “This is my gift to you, but I’m bound to return it when you’ve finished with it.”
He frowned as he unfolded the silk—then gasped. It was a sword. But not just any sword.
“But how…” Ross said.
“Excalibur,” Igraine said. “My errand. I asked the Lady of Nine Hazel Lake for the loan of it. Take it into battle, Ross, and you can’t die, by—”
“By the law of the high gods,” he finished her sentence. He shifted the weapon from hand to hand, testing its weight, finding its balance. “Marvelous,” he said. Oh, Ross, you self-confident fool. The world isn’t as you thought. It never was.
“There’s one more thing,” Igraine said. “I wyrded an extra spell into the sword. You can use Excalibur to perform one bit of magic, but only one.” She smiled. “A countermeasure against the possibility of magic forces within Quinn’s arsenal.”
“You think there might be dragons?”
“You say that as if you’d relish it.” Igraine laughed, absently winding the length of silk. “I think a corrupt wyrder or dark fae doing mischief in the mix is more likely.”
“You amaze me.”
“And I hope I always do,” Igraine said.
A blast from a horn stopped them, followed by more blasts.
“They’re coming,” she said. “I have to go.” She turned away, but he grabbed her hand and drew her back to him. “Stay,” he said. “I hate to think of you too far from me.”
“I can better lay wards on the castle from outside it,” she said. “But I need to go to Igdrasil to draw strength.”
This could well be my last day, Ross thought, pulling her close, smelling her hair, memorizing the look of her apple blossom jewels. No kiss in the history of kisses was so short.
He couldn’t say good-bye, and he wouldn’t test his luck by wishing the battle brief. He watched her ride away, heading fast toward the world tree. He kept her in his sight until he had no choice but to turn to his duty. He mounted his horse, and Excalibur felt good and right in his grip. Perhaps it was enchanted, the real Excalibur, after all.
It was real. Early on, Ross stopped counting the men who fell before him—not to him but to Excalibur. At some point well past noon he met Eustace on the field and begged him to yield.
Then he saw Quinn for the first time all day, charging toward them from about a hundred yards in the distance. The man was impeccably dressed and the bishop’s robes under his armor were entirely clean. A peregrine falcon sat on his forearm. Insufferable affectation.
“You can’t win,” Ross said to Eustace. “Look around. Your men are almost gone.”
“These?” Eustace scoffed. “They’re nothing. This isn’t a battle. It’s an errand.” He raised his sword. “Prepare to die, baron.”
Stephen’s son urged his mount forward, and with a weary heart Ross raised Excalibur once again. But he didn’t have to use the enchanted weapon, for Eustace’s head had been severed from his body and was sailing through the air toward the dirt.
Faintly cognizant of a frenzied scream ringing in his ears, Ross looked around and saw Henry, his eyes wild, swinging his bloodied sword in triumph, dancing his horse around the body of his fallen cousin.
Before Ross could sort the scene in his mind, Quinn’s voice broke through. “Igraine!” the bishop cried as he charged past Ross and Henry, headed toward the cliffs—and Igdrasil.
Ross started to follow, but he was stopped by Henry’s cry.
“Lord Tintagos, help me!” The enemy was upon the lad, and it was four to one. Too much for an exhausted seventeen-year-old. Even one who wielded a sword of Dumnos steel and was overstimulated, having just killed his future rival for the throne of England.
If it had been anyone else, Ross would have left him to his fate. But Henry was his future king, and Ross couldn’t abandon him. His love would have to wait; the well-being of all Dumnos was at stake.
Four to one. Too much of a match for Henry, but nowhere near a match for Excalibur. Together, making quick work of it, Ross and Henry dispatched the attackers. Then, before the fourth knight hit the earth, Ross spurred his horse away with Henry’s thanks hanging in the air.
Sun and Moon, don’t let me be too late.
Igraine kept her left palm flat against Igdrasil and stretched her right hand toward Tintagos Castle. From the world tree, she drew more strength and energy than she had known was possible, and she funneled it all into forming the wards surrounding the castle walls.
She averted her gaze from the battle and instead looked out over the waters of Tintagos Bay. Until this moment, war had been a romantic word in her mind. Battle, campaign, siege, agon, crusade… the glory of the struggle to establish what was right and good and to destroy what was evil.
But now she heard the screams, the surprised cries of the dying, shrieks of warriors anxious for the fight, thirsty for blood and more blood, some equally and in good faith as eager to make Stephen their king as others were to see Mathilde on the throne. It was horrible.
No, she told herself. All is not equal. Both Zoelyn and Ross feared a world with Stephen on the throne. She had to trust their judgment.
Mathilde must be kept safe. Tintagos Castle must be kept impenetrable.
But everything in her screamed out to leave Igdrasil, right this moment, to ride into the midst of the fighting, throw a boundary around her love and take him away from this terrible mundane life. They could go to Avalos. Surely Zoelyn would accept him. They would live in her cottage, and she’d heal all his wounds, physical and spiritual. They would have children together and love each other always…
“Igraine, come away,” said someone behind her, and a chill ran down her spine. “Come away with me.”
She saw Bishop Quinn over her shoulder, mounted on a black stallion, a peregrine falcon on his arm. Was it a taunt? Did he know she was the falcon who had teased him at the smithy?
“I’ll make you happier than any mortal man ever could, Igraine,” he said. “Come with me now. We can leave all this behind.” His eyes flashed, jewel-like, green. Fae green.
Of course! Bishop Quinn was fae… dark fae at that!
Beyond Quinn, she saw Ross riding hard from the field and fast approaching. Quinn reeked of power and sexual magnetism. If she wasn’t connected to Igdrasil at this moment, she felt she might well fall under his spell. Ross would have no defense against him. She had to do something, somehow warn him.
“From the moment I saw you, I wanted you. I adore you, Igraine,” Quinn dismounted. “Can’t you see that?”
“But you could never love me,” she said. “The fae can’t love.”
Quinn’s face distorted with surprise and anger. Igraine let her hands drop from Igdrasil, twisted her body, and the world turned with her. She became a dove, Ross’s symbol of hoped-for peace. He would understand and stay away.
She rose up into the air, far beyond Quinn’s reach. Ah, it felt so wonderful to fly!
“If I can’t have you, no one will!” Quinn screamed. He whispered in the peregrine’s ear, and it was off in an eyeblink.
The bird’s talons dug into her dove heart, and its beak tore into her throat. The world began to spin and spin. She breathed in the sea air and was human again, falling, the waters of the bay coming closer and closer. She saw Ross scream and raise Excalib
ur. He ran the sword through Quinn’s heart, and the dark fae’s body disappeared in a shimmer of light.
She hit the water hard, and then silence.
« Chapter 21 »
Gobs Can Dance
21st Century Dumnos. The Fae Realm
In her first official act, Queen Narcissus ordered the regent Idris to be kept in the terrible cold iron cage of his own design. All the Dumnos fae celebrated their freedom from the regent—fairies, brownies, leprechauns, pixies, sprites, wisps… and especially goblins.
No one knew how it happened, but Idris had let the Dark into the faewood. Queen Narcissus now restored the Light.
Vulsier, eldergob of the Blue Vale, had been made serious for too many centuries during the regent’s reign, and now he turned downright giddy. He decreed a thousand nights of feasting and dancing. Sun and Moon knew that fairy had cast a long shadow over the vale.
There was a millennium of good goblinlike living to catch up on.
Now it’s a fact well known that—unique among the fae, and in spite of their cursed ugliness—goblinkind holds marriage in high regard. The past thousand years had seen a dreary pall cast over the mating rituals of the Blue Vale. Gloom had permeated and soured the natural come-hither sentiments in the women and damped the excitement and zest for pursuit in the men.
So it wasn’t surprising when, at the moment Vulsier issued his Proclamation of the Dance, pent-up demand exploded into a phantasmagoria of goblin courtship. At twilight on the first night of the thousand nights, the vale came alight with bonfires and colorful paper lanterns and alive with music.
The female gobs put on a mouth-watering outdoor banquet of meats and potatoes and squashes and puddings in a gastronomical spectacular of their homely arts.
The men brought casks of jasmine stout and honeysuckle wine and strutted before the gob-ladies with robust, testosterone-charged line dancing.
The goblin Max had ordered new clothes, finished just that day by an overworked leprechaun. He had himself made boots for the occasion, complete with breaking-in spell. Dancing in the line with his fellow gobs, Max let out a joyful Heh! It was good to feel the power in his thighs as he stomped the earth, to fill his lungs to bursting with fresh vale air.