Swallowing Darkness_A Novel

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  The skeleton bride offered the shield to Sholto. He took it, and once it was on his arm, the sithen roared around us. It was a sound, not just inside the head for magic, but as if the sithen were some great beast.

  I would have thought that the parade of weapons was over, but I could see more of the figures on the stairs. The curve kept me from seeing how many, but I knew there were more.

  The next figure came to me. She held a pale sword, not white, but almost flesh-colored in its hilt. I reached for it, but Doyle stopped me with a hand on my arm. “Touch it only with the hand that contains the hand of flesh, Meredith. It is the blade Aben-dul. Anyone who touches it who does not wield the hand of flesh will be consumed in the same way the hand of flesh destroys.”

  My pulse was suddenly so hard in my throat that it hurt to breathe past it. The hand of flesh was by far my most terrible magic. I could turn someone inside out, and even meld two people together into one screaming mass. But the sidhe do not die from it. No, they live and scream.

  I’d been reaching with my right hand, and it was the hand of flesh for me, but it was still good to know how terribly dangerous something was before you touched it. Always good to know that the same power that will help you will also trap you, but power is often like that, a two-edged sword.

  I took the weapon, and a collective gasp went up from the sluagh. They had known what it was too, but they had shouted no warning. The hilt that had been plain moved under my hand so strongly that I had to grip it tightly to hold it. It felt alive. Images formed on the hilt of people and fey writhing and being welded together. Then it was suddenly carved with images of what the sword could do. In that moment, I knew that I could cut someone with it, as a normal sword, but I also knew that with it in my hand I could also project the hand of flesh over a distance in battle. It was the only object that I’d ever heard of in legend that was formed to be the perfect match for my hand of power. It had been lost to the sidhe long enough ago that it wasn’t even in any of the stories.

  How did I know about it? My father had made certain that I memorized the list of lost objects of power. It was a litany of what we had lost as a people, but now I realized that it was also a list of what we could recover.

  The next figure held a spear that sparkled silver and white, almost as if it were made of some light-reflecting jewel. There were several spears of legend, and it wasn’t until she moved around us and offered it to Mistral that I was certain of its name. It was simply Lightning. It had never been Mistral’s spear. Once it had belonged to Taranis, the Thunderer, before he tried to be too human, and turned from what he was meant to be.

  Mistral hesitated, then he wrapped his big hand around the spear’s shaft. It could only be wielded by a storm deity. To touch it without the ability to call lightning meant it would burn your hand, or burn you up. I’d forgotten that about the old weapons. Most of them had only one hand that could wield them safely. To all others, they were destruction.

  The spear flared in an eye-searing whiteness that left me blinking with ruined vision. Then the spear was a silver shaft, less brilliant, less otherworldly. Mistral gazed at it as if it were something wondrous, which it was. He could call lightning to his hand, and with the spear, legend had it, he could call and direct storms.

  The next skeletal bride went to Doyle. He had a sword of power, and two magical daggers that had been his for many years. But I had asked for us to be armed, not just to pick and choose. Of course, what lay in the figure’s hands didn’t look like a weapon. It was a curved instrument formed of the horn of some animal I was not familiar with. It was black, and I could feel the weight of ages spilling off of it. It had a strap so it could be worn across the body.

  There was a yell, and the huge nightflyer that had been fighting Tarlach landed beside us. I had a moment to wonder where Tarlach was, but then the nightflyer, the would-be king of the sluagh, reached for what lay in the skeletal hands.

  Doyle did not try to stop him. None of us did.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  THE NIGHTFLYER’S FOUR-FINGERED HAND WRAPPED AROUND the ancient horn. He smiled, a wide, fierce grin, and held it aloft. There were some shouts of approval, but most were silent, watching. They knew what it was. Did he?

  He turned to us, still smiling, still triumphant, then his expression changed. Doubt went across those flattened features, then his eyes widened and he whispered, “No.”

  Then he started to scream. He screamed, and shrieked, and the sound echoed in the chamber. He collapsed to the sand, the horn still in his grasp, as if he couldn’t let it go. He rolled on the ground, writhing and screaming. It destroyed his mind while we watched.

  When he was still except for a few twitches, Doyle walked to him. He knelt and took the black horn out of the would-be king’s hand. The hand was limp, and did not fight to hold it now.

  Doyle took the horn, and slipped the strap across his bare chest. He looked around at the assembled sluagh and spoke, his deep voice carrying. “It is the horn of the dark moon. The horn of the hunter. The horn of madness. It was mine once long ago. Only the huntsman of the wild hunt may touch it, and only when the magic of the hunt is upon him.”

  Someone actually called out, “Then how do you hold it?”

  “I am the huntsman. I am always the huntsman.” I wasn’t entirely certain that I understood what Doyle meant by that, but it seemed to satisfy the crowd. I could ask for more details later or not. He may have given the only answer he had.

  There was one more skeletal lady on the stairs. She carried a cloak of feathers across her arms. She walked, not to us, but across the sand to where Tarlach lay in a heap on the ground. I started to go to him, but Sholto grabbed my arm. Wait, he seemed to say, and he was right. Though knowing that I could call the chalice and possibly save Tarlach made it hard to watch the slow, stately progress of the skeleton in her graceful dress.

  She knelt beside the fallen nightflyer and covered him with the cloak. She stood, and walked slowly back to join the others in their silent, waiting line.

  For a moment I thought that he was too far gone to be helped by any legendary item, then he moved underneath the feathers. He staggered to his feet with the feathered cloak fastened around him. For a moment he stood there, the blood shining on the white of his belly where he’d been hurt. Then he launched himself skyward, and he was a goose. The other nightflyers launched skyward too, and suddenly the huge domed ceiling was full of geese, calling out. Then they landed on the sand, by the dozens, and were nightflyers when they touched ground.

  Tarlach said, “We will not need the glamour of the king to hide us when we hunt. We can hide ourselves.” He bowed in his liquid way, and the other nightflyers followed him. They knelt like a hundred giant manta rays kneeling without knees, but somehow all the more graceful for it.

  There was movement in the benches around us, then I realized that everyone was bowing. They were dropping to their knees, or their equivalent, in a mass of devotion.

  Tarlach began it. “King Sholto. Queen Meredith!” The other throats took it up, until we stood in the midst of the sound of it. “King Sholto, Queen Meredith!”

  I stood in the only kingdom in all of faerie where you could be voted queen, and the sluagh had spoken. I was queen in faerie at last, just not the kingdom I’d planned on running.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  SHOLTO’S OFFICE WAS FULL OF RICH, POLISHED WOOD, STAINED as dark a brown as it was possible to do and not ruin the wood. The walls were even paneled wood. There was a wall hanging behind the main desk. It was faded, but the threads still showed a scene of the sky boiling with clouds that held tentacles and sights best left to horror movies. There were tiny figures on the ground of people running in terror. One figure, a woman with long yellow hair, gazed up at the clouds while everyone else ran or hid their eyes. As a child I had gazed at the hanging while my father and Sholto did business. I knew from asking that the hanging was almost as old as the Bayeux tapestry, and that the blond woman wa
s Glenna the Mad. She had made a series of tapestries of what she’d seen when the wild hunt had come through her countryside. The tapestries gradually became more bizarre as her senses left her.

  I’d stared into what had driven Glenna insane, and I hadn’t flinched. Had it been shock? Had it been the blessing of the God and Goddesses? Or had all the losses finally caught up with me?

  Doyle was standing behind me, his arms around my waist, holding me against the front of his body. The weight and reality of him were like a lifeline. I was fleeing faerie for good reasons, the right reasons, but I could admit in my head that one of the main reasons was this man. Maybe it was Gran’s death, but I think I’d decided that for Doyle and the children inside me I’d trade a throne.

  A man’s voice on the other end of the phone made me jump. I’d been waiting on hold for a long time. I think they hadn’t believed that I was who I said I was.

  Doyle hugged me a little more tightly, while my pulse calmed a little.

  “This is Major Walters. Is that really you, Princess?”

  “It’s me.”

  “They’re telling me you need a police escort out of faerie.” A tendril of the roses in my crown curled downward to touch the phone receiver.

  “I do.”

  “You do know that the walls of your hospital room melted. Witnesses say you and King Sholto flew out of the room on flying horses, but somehow the Mobile Reserve Team that was watching the outside of your room didn’t see any of this until you were far enough away, then the holes in the walls just appeared to them.” He didn’t sound happy.

  “Major Walters, I am sorry that I upset your Mobile Reserve and anyone else, but I’ve had a hell of a night myself, okay?” There was the tiniest catch in my voice. I took a few deep, even breaths. I would not break down. Queens didn’t do that.

  Doyle kissed the top of my head, laying his cheek between the roses and the mistletoe of the crown.

  The rose tendril wrapped tightly around the phone, and tugged.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “Not physically.”

  “What happened, Princess?” His voice was gentler now.

  “It’s time for me to get out of faerie, Major Walters. It’s time for me to get out of your jurisdiction. I’m too close to my relatives in St. Louis.” The tendril pulled harder, as if it were trying to pull the phone out of my hand. Faerie had crowned me the queen of this mound. It didn’t want to lose me to the human world.

  I whispered, “Stop it.”

  “What was that, Princess?”

  “Nothing, sorry.”

  “What do you need from us?”

  Doyle touched the tendril and began to uncurl it from the phone. He tried to take both of his hands away to do it, but I put one arm back around my waist, so he was forced to do it one-handed.

  I explained that my uncle’s people were outside my refuge and were threatening war on the sluagh unless they handed me over. “My uncle is absolute ruler of the Seelie Court. He’s convinced them that the twins I carry are somehow his, and he’s their king. He claims that the sluagh stole me away, and the Seelies want me back.” I didn’t try to fight the catch in my voice now. “They want to give me back to my uncle. Do you understand?”

  Doyle finally had the tendril unwrapped. I felt it move back up with the rest of the living crown.

  “I heard what he’s accused of, and I am sorrier than I know how to say, Princess Meredith.”

  “Accused of, Walters? Nice that you don’t admit that you believe me.”

  Doyle held me more tightly.

  Major Walters started to protest.

  I cut him off. “It’s okay, Walters. Just escort me back to reality. Get us all on a plane and back to L.A.”

  The tendril slid back toward the phone.

  “You should have a doctor look at you before you get on a plane.”

  I put a hand over the receiver and hissed, “Stop!” The vine stopped in mid-motion like a child caught with its hand going for cookies.

  “Princess, we’ll come and get you, but on the condition that you let a doctor look you over before we put you on the plane.”

  “We melted the walls of the room I was in. Do you really think the hospital wants me back?”

  “They’re a hospital, and they want you safe. We all want you safe.”

  “You don’t want me dying on your watch is what you mean.”

  Doyle sighed, and kissed my cheek. I wasn’t sure if he was warning me not to be too harsh with the humans, or if he was simply comforting me.

  “Princess, that is not what I mean,” he said and he sounded like he meant it.

  “Fine, I’m sorry. Please, come get us.”

  “It will take a little while to get things round, but we’ll get there.”

  “Why a while?” I asked.

  “After what happened last time, Princess, we’ve been given permission, or orders, depending on how you want to look at it, to have the National Guard with us. Just in case the sky boils and monsters come out again. I know your man Abeloec healed the ones who went mad, but enough of them remember some of what happened that this is more than a straight police matter.”

  “Mobile Reserve can’t handle it?” I asked.

  “The National Guard has witches and wizards assigned to their units now. The police don’t.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I’d forgotten that. That horrible thing that happened in Persia.” It had been on the news for days, in horrible living color.

  “It’s not called Persia anymore, Princess Meredith, and hasn’t been for a very long time.”

  “But the creatures that attacked our soldiers were Persian bogey beasts. They had nothing to do with Islam, and everything to do with the original religion of the region.”

  “That may be, but the National Guard will bring magic workers, and after what’s been happening, I think I agree that we need them.”

  What was I supposed to say to that? The tendril curled around the phone and tugged again, and this time I hit it gently with my finger. It curled away as if I’d hurt its feelings. I appreciated being crowned by faerie itself. I appreciated the honor, but a crown wasn’t going to protect me from my relatives. Once I’d thought it would, but I realized that that had been naive.

  “I’ll make the calls. How long can you hold out in the sluagh mound?”

  “If we just stay inside, awhile. But I don’t know how long the Seelie will wait to press the matter.”

  “Do they actually believe that your uncle is the father of your children?”

  “My mother is out there with them, agreeing with it. I can’t even blame them for believing her. She’s my mother. Why would she lie?”

  Sholto pushed away from the wall where he and Mistral had been waiting. I think they were giving me alone time with Doyle. But now, Sholto came and took my free hand in his, and laid a gentle kiss on it. I wasn’t sure what I’d done to deserve such comfort.

  “Why would she lie?” Major Walters asked.

  “Because her greatest goal in life was always to be part of the inner circle of the Seelie Court, and if she can make me Taranis’s queen, then she’s suddenly the mother of the queen of the Seelie Court. She’d love it.”

  “She’d trade your freedom for a little social climbing?”

  “She’d trade my life for a little social climbing.”

  Doyle stood at my back, and held me. Sholto knelt at my feet and wrapped his arms around my legs, gazing up at me. The flowers on his crown were like a mist of lavender, pink, and white. He looked terribly Seelie kneeling there and staring up with those tri-gold eyes.

  “No, Princess, she’s your mom.”

  “She let my uncle beat me nearly to death when I was young. She watched him do it. My grandmother was the one who intervened and saved my life.”

  I touched Sholto’s face, and knew in that instant that here was another man who would risk everything for me. He’d already proven that when he came to fetch me from the Seelie Court, but the lo
ok in his eyes now said more.

  “There’s a rumor that your grandmother was injured. My staff saw some of your men carrying her on horseback out of the hospital.”

  “She’s not injured. She’s dead.” My voice was oddly flat when I said it.

  Sholto’s eyes showed pain, because he was the one who had struck the fatal blow. It was his hand that had killed Gran, even though he had had no choice.

  “What?” Major Walters asked.

  “I don’t have time to explain, Major Walters. I need help. I need a human escort out of here.”

  “Why can’t your Unseelie guard get you out?”

  “I’m not certain what the Seelie would do if they saw Unseelie warriors right now. But they won’t attack humans, especially human soldiers. It would break the peace, and they would risk being kicked out of America for waging war on your soil.”

  “They’re trying to give you back to the man you’ve accused of raping you. That’s not very rational. Do you really think that they’ll let soldiers come in and take you without a fight?”

  “If not, then kick their asses out of America.”

  “Are you setting us up to help you get rid of your enemies, Princess?”

  “No, I’m doing the only thing I can think of that might, just might, avoid any more bloodshed or violence. I’ve seen enough for one night. I’m part human, and I’m going to embrace that part, Major Walters. They keep saying I’m too mortal to be sidhe, well, I’ll go be mortal. Because it is too dangerous to be sidhe right now. Get me out of here, Major Walters. I am pregnant with twins, and I have some of the fathers of my children with me. Get us out of here before something fatal happens. Please, Major Walters, please help me.”

  The tendril curled back away from the phone. Doyle held me against his body. Sholto still had his ams wrapped around my legs, putting his arms between Doyle’s body and mine, but it was all right in that instant, it wasn’t competitive. Sholto laid his cheek against my legs, hiding his eyes.

  “I am so sorry, Meredith, about your grandmother. Please forgive me.”