Gossamyr

by Michelle Hauf

  o

  Red Lady's lair, waiting to end it, to take her out.

  Had it been fear for Ulrich that had hastened her away from the marble-lined walls? Nay, fear for herself.

  Blight, that was it. She was afraid.

  The realization stalled Gossamyr in her tracks. Fear? Ulrich would be most pleased. She pressed her knuckles, half staff in hand, to the stone wall at her right. Heavy breaths huffed from her lungs.

  You are notjee. Not even half-blooded!

  Believe and you Belong.

  Shaking her head, Gossamyr struggled with voices crying out from her past and the future that beckoned with a strange crook of its bony finger.

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  Believe? In what? And where to belong?

  This mortal world—no, she was not fascinated by it—horrified her. It offered nothing but filth and depravity and war. The people were not friendly; they did not look at her with smiles but downturned faces. They did not care about Gossamyr, daughter of Shinn. They struggled to survive.

  As would she. She could not believe in this mortal realm. But no longer could she believe in Faery. Or the idea that Faery was her home.

  When you stop believing you cease to belong.

  "I want to return," she whispered. "I do believe. I will always believe."

  But she could not return should the alicorn be restored to the unicorn. Could she stop Ulrich from seeking his wish? Had she any right to keep him from summoning his daughter from death?

  So important, family. Hers had suddenly been yanked away. Not even a real family. Yet, according to Shinn, Gossamyr had family she had not even known.

  The d'Anges were murdered.

  Verity d'Ange. Such a peculiar name. But it intrigued in that it belonged to Gossamyr. Her birth name. Verity—a secret name that had always been hers.

  No!

  She could not belong to a family that no longer existed. But there remained a sister—this unknown sister might be all Gossamyr had now. Might she ever hope to find her? For Shinn's betrayal had cleaved Gossamyr from Faery.

  You love him despite his cruelties. He is all you have ever known.

  They did love one another, had grown closer following the departure of Veridienne. Gossamyr had learned to love—the faery way. A surface emotion that never truly rooted. Or had it? She was not capable of hating Shinn. Love, the mortal passion. "It has always been mine."

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  She thought now of the decimated castle she had explored. How might her life have been had she grown up on the d'Ange demesne? Would she have romped through the meadows with a sister? Were there other siblings? So much to wonder about.

  "I want to know them." The words slipped from Gossamyr's mouth without volition. She wandered forward, not really seeing, her mind stuffed with noise from the past.

  "Always mortal?" She tripped, but braced herself, both hands to each end of her staff against a pole fleched with torn public announcements.

  To her left the careful clops of horse hooves neared. Measured, almost as if the beast was.. .looking. Timing its steps. A massive animal, for the echoes filled the air with a march worthy of a gallant parade.

  Gossamyr straightened, listening. The back of her neck prin-kled, akin to fear, but more so, anticipation.

  A force approached. Be it good or evil? Armagnac, Burgun-dian, or English? Either would taste her skill with an arret to the skull.

  Abandoning foolish wonders about her stolen past, Gossamyr slid her hand down the silk bodice of her gown and unhooked an arret. She began to spin it for release—but immediately relinquished her defensive stance at sight of the brilliant white horse that advanced. No, not a horse. The beast verily gleamed in the clouded twilight, its snow-white hide casting about it an aura of illumination.

  A rider sat upon its back but Gossamyr could not drag her attention from the beast. She held out a hand, thinking to touch its pale pink nose. Long witch locks, elegantly braided with fine strands of silver threading, hung between the animal's violet eyes.

  And there, between the plaits of mane and above the eyes shimmered an ovular spot, the hide bare of hair and looking pink and open. Like a wound, but not seeping.

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  Sucking in a gasp, Gossamyr recoiled. Realization felled her to her knees before the magnificent beast. Bowing, she pressed her forehead to the cold dirty cobbles.

  The rider's dismount clacked boot and spur against cobblestone. "My lady?" a deep male voice inquired.

  Rising, but slinking backward, Gossamyr hissed at the insolent, "How dare you?"

  The rider, cloaked in black and hooded, tilted his head won-deringly. Dark stones set about the perimeter of the hood clacked, glinting in metallic rays with a strange beauty of their own.

  "You ride the unicorn!"

  A smile eased onto the rider's face and he stroked a gloved hand across the unicorn's braided mane. "You are most perceptive, fair lady." He eyed her staff and looked over her motley clothing, assessing but not judging. "I ride Tor because he allows it."

  "T-Tor?" came out in but a squeak smaller than a mouse's sigh.

  The gall of this man to be so casual about the sacred beast. Lacking an alicorn. This be the one Ulrich sought!

  Or had the unicorn come to her? She had held the alicorn, had felt the power. Had that moment drawn the creature to her? But she had not thought a unicorn would ever allow a man to ride—

  Stepping closer, Gossamyr examined the man's face, finding his movement tilted his eyes out of the shadows and into the pale light of evening. They were deeply colored a darkest violet.

  "You cannot be here," she gasped as another awareness struck. "You dare to approach the Red Lady's lair?"

  "I know naught of a red lady, demoiselle. I go where I will. Rather, this journey finds me following Tor's path."

  "But you.. .you are fee?"

  Another bemused smile curled his lips. A handsome man— fee—Gossamyr corrected her silent summation. Or is itVerity?

  "It surprises me you know so much. You have sighted a unicorn

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  and a faery in less than a breath. I have always thought the common man blind to our true identities."

  Gossamyr straightened, one hand fisted about each end of her staff and leveled at her hips. "I am not common."

  "Indeed not." The man bowed and offered, "I am chevalier Dominique San Juste. You have already met Tor. We've been on a journey—or rather Tor has. I suspect he seeks the missing alicorn."

  "I know he does." Gossamyr made to pet Tor, but recoiled once again. She could not touch the unicorn. 'Twould be sacrilege. But oh, did her fingers itch for one stroke of the silken moon-bright hide. "I know where it is."

  The faery lifted a brow. Tor whinnied and stomped the ground with a fine hoof.

  Gossamyr nodded in answer to both.

  And so fate had been decided for her. 'Twas destiny had brought the unicorn to her.

  Goodbye, Shinn, she thought wistfully. / do love you. But I choose to do what is right.

  Gossamyr beckoned as she started down the street. "Come. I will take you to what you seek."

  Hands clutching the air before him, his neck stiff from the tilt of his head, tears spilled down his cheeks and sweet liquid seeped into his mouth. The false child of Shinn had thought to touch it! His!

  "Mine,"he hissed.

  It glowed seductively. Palest of yellow. Thick and full. Unlike the others. His mistress had not drained it. She wickedly teased him by keeping it whole and out of reach. Dare he take it back? Could he? He lingered in a purgatory of not-dead and not-life. Yet he did not dissipate or rot as he suspected he should. Nor did one of those skeletal creatures lurk within him. Mayhap.

  Alive? No. But neither dead.

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  So long as it glowed and no one pulled it from the wall, he remained.

  "Mine," he whispered again, savoring the sound of the word, floating on the resonance of that claim. His. 'Tw
as all he owned. Yet even that he could not touch.

  Ah, but he had gained a new possession, yes? Information. How his mind bounded with such!

  The Red Lady would be pleased to hear Shinn's false child had been here. But sporting such revelations?

  / know you, AvenaU. Do you not remember me?

  Yes.

  No?

  Pretty Faery lord's daughter, pristine in her blue marble castle. Don't touch. Exotic...

  No, not a faery! She is mortal. A changeling!

  Exotic? Why did he want to remember those muddy brown eyes?

  You are AvenaU of Rougethorn...

  Rougethorn? It was familiar because his mistress so often mentioned it. He muttered it slowly, over and over. Rougethorn. Rouge. Thorn. Rouge... Rogue. Torn?

  AvenaU shook his head, rocking the provoking memories about in his brain. Rogue? Rogue. Torn.

  AvenaU?

  He wondered.

  Hmm. Yes. Avenall.

  "My name."

  A smile curved his mouth. The realization put him straighter, sucked in a breath and filled his chest with air. Yes. "Avenall.. .of Rogue—Torn."

  Indeed, he had come from the place named thus. Rougethorn. The tribe whence his mistress had hailed. Yet, there remained a missing piece of his name__

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  He had courted—

  The clatter at the door bent him into a crouch. All productive thought dissipated. The Red clamped hold of his volition and he hobbled over to greet his mistress. Regal and lovely, she stood in the doorway, alabaster shoulders erect and one long leg bared to reveal a slender ankle ringed in silver chains of mail. Something dangled from the fingers of her right hand. A.. .head. Attached to a body.

  She deposited the limp body of a man near her feet. He rolled down the step, arms slapping the marble and skull thudding, and landed the main floor on his back. Parti-colored black and yellow hosen wrapped his legs. One arm splayed above his head. Blood purled from his lips. And there, drawing a slug trail across his cheek, glittered a hint of Faery. It was the man who had earlier kept Avenall—yes, Avenall!—from pinning the essences. The man who accompanied the female—Shinn's daughter.

  Do you not remember me, Avenall?

  Yes.. .1.. .1 courted you.

  "Puppy?"

  What distraction was this? Had not the Red Lady gone in search of Shinn? He looked up into her red eyes.

  "My new pet," his mistress announced with a flirting air.

  The satisfied curl on her lips dug into the thrill Avenall had felt at gaining his name, mayhap even more— New pet?

  "No. My lovely pretty. I—I am your puppy."

  Striding past him, her plush skirts sweeping his face in a brushing slap, she paced before the wall of essences. "Worry not. You will always be my puppy. 1 will make this new one my.. .kitten."

  "No!"

  She waved a naughty finger at him. "Ah, ah, ah. Mustn't be jealous."

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  "Do you not know who he is? He be that woman's man!" Yes, Gossamyr!

  No. Avenall coiled into himself. Only for Puppy's ears. He would not give her a name. She did not deserve it now. Oh, cruel mistress!

  "Yes." Pausing, she considered with a sad moue. "Her man... So little you know, Puppy."

  "I know you were led from your goal by this insignificant mortal!"

  "I had thought to draw Shinn into my arms, but instead this bit of skin and bone wandered up. Useless, I had initially thought, until—" Avenall's mistress drew an object out from her sleeve; a bit of black cloth wrapped about something narrow and long. She tapped it against her chin. Menace glittered in her eyes. "I must keep him alive for the moment, for that will bring her to me. Or, if Fortune answers my beckon, it will bring Shinn to me."

  He shrugged. There was that.

  He'd be damned if he'd tell her the wench had been here not an hour earlier. Nor would he mention her strange tale of them having been lovers. If they had been lovers— / think we were. I don't know...

  Kitten? "You—you have kissed him?"

  "Not... completely."

  She teased the tip of the wrapped thing near one of the undulating essences. The viscous blue essence actually cringed, then it brightened to a marvelous indigo, expanded, and suddenly, it burst, showering the Red Lady's face and shoulders with a mist of glimmer. The essence pure. She licked at the splatter, sighing and giggling at the wonder.

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  Stretching the cloth-wrapped item high in triumph, she announced, "Lovely thing, this!"

  "But." Avenall sank to the bottom step and tucked his arms

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  about his bent knees. A forceful breath blew a hideous strand of red hair from his face. He glanced to the sprawled mortal. "You.. .plan to kiss him?"

  "Did you not listen, pin man?"

  He cringed deeper into this new misery.

  "I must keep him alive until we've lured the female here. I know not what her intentions, but I suspect it has something to do with this."

  "She—" Avenall bit his tongue. No. His mistress was undeserving of his confidence. So much she knew about Shinn. Could she confirm his connection to the warrior bitch?

  Now she beckoned him closer with a crook of her finger. Balking—she had brought a new pet into her lair!—Avenall finally scrambled up and knelt before her, the wall of essences but a reach to his side. Sniffing, he detected no discernible odor from the cloth bound about her new toy, save the remnant of mortal aroma. The man's scent.

  Avenall sneered and crossed his arms over his chest. "What is it?"

  "You must guess."

  "I don't want to. It reeks of that man. You are most cruel to your puppy."

  "You wear jealousy like a silken robe, sweet one. I want to devour the fire I see in your eyes."

  She bent to tap his forehead then teased her fingernail down the center of his nose. A lunge and she lapped up the slide of his nose with her pink tongue. He snuggled his face into her palm, seeking assurance of her love.

  The inadvertent touch of the wrapped thing to his chest ignited a violent spark. Avenall was flung backward, landing against the wall, the cold caress of a violet essence hugging his cheek. Scrambling away from the slimy coldness, he pointed to what his mistress held. "It is powerful!"

  "Very much so." She teased it beneath the tumescent curve of a pink essence until it looked ready to burst, then withdrew. "With

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  this, I can draw all the Disenchanted I need to my lair. And I won't have to leave my bed. They will line up at my door. You, my puppy, have but to sit by and watch them wither at your feet. They will journey from far lands to taste my kiss."

  Avenall whirled to face away from his mistress. A shiver of blue ice traced his scalp. He shook his head. Flash of an embrace—

  —myjather is away, he will not discover us.

  —/ love you, Gossamyr.

  What is this? Avenall clawed at the wall. Struggling to grasp hold of the flickers of what could only be memory, they danced just beyond his reach. And then a face appeared in his mind's eye. The warrior bitch. Smiling at him.

  Loving him?

  How to take in this information? Had the touch of that strange object released a picture of his past? Or had he merely been tainted by the warrior's suggestion?

  The man on the floor moaned and shrugged a hand over his face.

  "This," the Red Lady declared, the horn held high and her strides moving her before the wall of essences, "is my triumph over Turiau de Wintershinn of Glamour siege."

  Glamoursiege? Another strange but compelling word.

  Beside his face, Avenall felt the hissing burn of the object. The thing was unwrapped, but held by the cloth to protect his mistress's hand. It hummed. Its voice filled the room, overwhelming the death sobs of the essences. More seductive even than his mistress's call. He jerked his head to the right.

  "No!" cried the man from the floor.

  "Oh, yes," whispered the Re
d Lady into Avenall's ear. "Time to play."

  The welcome shimmer of Faery caressed him from head to toe, moving across his face and around his shoulders—then the reemer-gence stopped.

  Shinn, restrained between Faery and the Otherside, compre-

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  hended the inexplicable barrier that would not allow him to complete his twindian to Glamoursiege.

  Something had named him. A most powerful force.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Tor led the way to Armand LaLoux's home. Gossamyr had once seen a unicorn—she must have yet been a youngling to tether. Her father had spoken in a silent conversation with it while Mince had held her back from a gurgling toddle to embrace the beast.

  That Dominique was fee explained why the unicorn tolerated him riding it. Almost. Unicorns were not beasts of burden. Mayhap the missing alicorn gentled the unicorn's nature? Sir San Juste seemed so mortal. His eyes—normally fee possessed brilliant violet eyes—were violet yet dark. Not true blood?

  "Ask me," Dominique said as they neared the door to Armand's home. "I feel your curiosity. I am ashamed."

  "I mean you no disrespect." But curiosity stirred. "Very well. You are true fee?"

  "Yes. But."

  She quirked a brow.

  "I am a changeling. I was laid in a mortal infant's crib after I was newly born. I know," he said. "I should have perished. Or so say the tales I hear."

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  Gossamyr had always thought Faery changelings died. On the other hand, mortal exchanges were supposed to die, as well. Yet here she stood very much alive and well.

  "But my fee mother had darker reasons for hiding me away. I have never been to Faery. Though I can feel it all around." He scanned the alley, reaching to touch the cool stone wall of Armand's home. "Not in Paris though."

  "Never," Gossamyr agreed. "So you were.. .raised by mortals?"

  "A fine set of parents. They raised me as their own. Despite—"he shrugged, easing his shoulders up as if to work out an itch on his back "—my differences."