Swallowing Darkness_A Novel

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  When he could no longer lean on the trees, he fell to the ground on all fours and began to crawl toward us. The soldiers aimed their guns around him, as if they expected to see what had injured him coming out of the trees. It was a thought. Where was the queen? Why was she letting Cel and so many of her nobles go against her express orders? It wasn’t like her to sit idly by if she could punish people. But watching Crystall crawl, seeing the bloody wounds on his body, I thought that she might be busy. Sometimes she fell so far into her bloodlust that she forgot everything but the pain and flesh under her hands. Was she somewhere intoxicated with sadistic pleasure while her son imploded her kingdom? Had she lost control to that degree?

  I started moving toward Crystall. The soldiers moved with me, guns trained on Dilys, on the trees, on the dark, but I wasn’t sure there was anything to shoot right now. Later. There would be things to shoot later.

  Dilys called across the field in her voice with its edge of fire sound. “Your bloodline is corrupt, Meredith. Your aunt has tortured her guards until they are useless for anything but slaves.”

  I looked at the golden figure, and called back. “Then why are you helping Cel? Isn’t he just as corrupt?”

  “Yes,” Dilys said.

  “You’ll help him kill me, then you’ll kill him,” I said.

  She said nothing, but her light flared a little brighter. It was the magical equivalent of that little smile that you can’t always keep from your face. That satisfied, things-are-going-my-way smile.

  Crystall collapsed, and I thought for a moment that he wouldn’t get back up, but he did. He began to crawl, painfully, slowly, toward that golden glow.

  I started to go forward and help him, but the ring pulsed harder, and I took that as a sign. I stayed where I was. I let him do that slow, piteous crawl. His white hair, which I knew in the right light wasn’t white but almost clear, like crystal or water, dragged on the ground, like a rich cloak fallen on hard times.

  Dawson said, “Do you want us to help him?”

  “No,” I said in a low voice. “I want her to help him.”

  He gave me a look, then when my look didn’t make any sense to him, he did the look with Brennan and Mercer. Mercer said, “But won’t she kill him?”

  “Not if she wants to be saved,” I said.

  “I don’t think she’s the one who needs saving,” Mercer said.

  Dilys yelled at me. “Aren’t you going to help him, Princess?”

  “He’s not here for me.”

  “You speak in riddles,” she said.

  Crystall continued his agonizingly slow crawl across the field with its dead and wounded. But it was clear now that he wasn’t aiming for me. He was crawling inexorably toward that golden glow.

  “Do not let him throw his life away, Meredith. If he tries to harm me in this condition, I will destroy him.”

  “He’s not here to harm you, Dilys,” I said.

  “Why else is he here but to save you and your humans?”

  Crystall had reached the edge of the golden light, but had not quite touched it. The light, like sunlight will, sparkled through his skin and hair as if he were made of his namesake, crystal. Her light caught rainbows along his body. Small, winking colored lights, to chase back the dark.

  He put out his hand, and the moment it entered the circle of her light, he knelt and looked at her. The blood on his body gleamed as if formed of rubies.

  “What magic is this?” Dilys asked, but her voice was not the burning thing it had been.

  Crystall stood, and walked into that light. His body began to glow, like sunlight on water, or the reflected light on diamonds. He moved into her sunlight, and reflected it, making it a thing of beauty.

  “What are you doing to him, Meredith?”

  “It is not me who is doing it.”

  Crystall was almost within touching distance of her golden, glowing form. He stood there, tall and lithe, his body lined with muscles, but lean like a runner. He had always had a delicate strength. He was like a jewel thrown into the sun, gleaming with rainbows from the tips of his hair to every inch of bare skin. The wounds had closed, as if just being near her power had healed him.

  She looked…frightened. “I am no healer, but he is healed. How is this possible?”

  Crystall held his hand out to her.

  “What does he want?” she yelled, and the fear was plain in her voice. “Take his hand, and you’ll know.”

  “It’s a trap,” she said.

  “I wear the queen’s ring, Dilys. I saw you burning with the heat of the summer sun, and thought, ‘Where is her balance?’ Where is her coolness to keep her from burning everything to death?”

  “No!” She shouted it at him.

  Crystall simply held his hand out to her, as if he could hold that shining hand out forever.

  Then her golden hand began to move, as if of its own accord. Her fingertips brushed his, and the golden heat became half silver, and I saw the waver of heat meet the sparkle of water in front of them, like the sun on the surface of a summer lake.

  Then they were in each other’s arms. They kissed as if they had always kissed, though I knew they had not. He had never been her lover, her god to goddess, but he was what was left. He was the coolness she needed, and I had called what I could find.

  Her glow banked to a hard, yellow light as if she were carved of it. Crystall glowed as if he were formed of rainbow light.

  “Oh, my god,” Hayes whispered.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “What did you do?” Dawson said.

  “They will be a couple, and there will be children. Two children.”

  “How do you know that?” Brennan asked.

  I smiled at him, and knew that my eyes had begun to glow, green and gold.

  He swallowed hard, as if the sight disturbed him. “Oh, yeah, magic.”

  “Make love, not war,” another solider said.

  “Exactly,” I said.

  Then there was a shriek from the far edge of the field. Cel stood there, screaming wordlessly at me in his gray and black armor, surrounded by followers in every color of armor and some that looked like bark and leaves or animal pelts, but they would stand up to anything but steel and iron. Those dreamlike warriors carried a figure between them, and from the moment I recognized him, my heart failed me. His hair fell loose around him, blacker than the moon-fed night. Their white sidhe hands seemed an insult against all his dark perfection.

  Cel screamed across the field at me. “He still lives, barely! Is this mongrel worth your life, cousin? Will you walk to me across this field to save him?”

  I could not take my gaze from him, dark and so terribly still. Was he even still alive? Only death would make him so still. The thought that I had lost them both, my Darkness and my Killing Frost, was too much. Too much pain, too much loss, just too much.

  I whispered his name. “Doyle.” I willed him to look up, to move, to let me know that if I walked to him, there would be something to save. My hand went to my stomach, still flat, still so unmoved by the pregnancy, and I knew that I could not trade myself for my Darkness. He would never forgive me if I made such a bargain. A wave of nausea washed over me, and the night swam, but I couldn’t faint. I couldn’t be weak; there was no time for weakness. I pushed the feelings away that would unman me, and clung to the ones that would help me: hatred, fear, rage, and a coldness that I didn’t know I had inside me.

  “It’s war, then,” I whispered.

  “What?” Dawson asked.

  “We will give Cel what he wants,” I said.

  “You can’t give yourself to him,” Hayes said.

  “No, I cannot,” I said, and my voice sounded like someone else’s, as if I didn’t recognize myself anymore.

  “If we don’t give him you, what do we give him?” Mercer asked. “War,” I said simply, and began to walk across the field. My soldiers came with me. Either Cel would die this moment or I would. Seeing Doyle thrown onto the ground like so muc
h motionless garbage, I was content with that.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  I ORDERED MY SOLDIERS TO SHOOT THE UNSEELIE NOBLES who were standing. Cel was a prince of faerie. He was heir to a throne. He had diplomatic immunity. They shouldn’t have taken my order, but we had crossed a battlefield together. I had saved their lives. My orders through their sergeant had kept us alive and unharmed. We were a unit, and as a unit they fired on my order.

  I watched the nobles’ bodies jerk and dance to the explosion of the bullets. The noise was deafening. They were wounded in a sort of silence, because the guns were so loud, and seemed to have nothing to do with the movement at the other end of the barrel. It was as if we fired, but they fell because of something else. But not all of them fell; most remained standing. I had to do something before they unleashed their hands of power on us all.

  Blood leaked black in the moonlight, but it wasn’t enough blood. I needed more, so much more. For the first time I felt no dread of my power, no pain at the call of it, just a fierceness that was almost joy. That fierceness poured over my skin in a wash of heat. It hit my left hand and poured out my palm.

  Dawson yelled next to my ear. “What are you doing?”

  I had no time to explain. I said, “The hand of blood.” I pointed that hand, palm out, toward our enemies. I should have worried that I would hit Doyle, but in that moment I knew, simply knew, that I could do it. I could control it. It was mine, this power, it was me.

  Blood fountained in black sheets from their wounds. They screamed, then Cel raised his hand. I knew what he meant to do. Without thinking, I stepped out from between my men, my soldiers, my people. Dawson grabbed for me to pull me back behind the shield of their bodies, but then Cel’s hand of old blood hit us all, and Dawson’s hand fell away. There were yells behind me, but I had no time to look.

  I screamed “Mine!” There was pain. I could feel the nails in my arm and shoulder again; the knife wound I’d taken in a duel; claw marks in one arm and thigh from an old attack. It hurt, and I bled for him, but he could only make the wound as bad as it had been, and I had never had a blood injury that was near fatal.

  “What did you do?” Dawson asked. “One minute we were bleeding, now we’re not.”

  I had no space in my concentration to explain. Cel’s hand might not kill us, but there were others at his side who could. It was a race now to see if I could bleed them to death faster than they could recover themselves.

  I screamed, “Bleed for me!”

  Blood geysered from them, and I could feel their flesh tearing under my power, their wounds like a doorway that my power could rip apart. The blood arched, black and shining liquid. The sound of it was like rain on the grass and trees around them.

  The brilliant armor in all its rainbow colors began to turn black with blood and gore. They were screaming now, but what they screamed was “Mercy!” They called for mercy, but as I watched Doyle lay motionless at their feet, covered in black blood, I discovered that I had no mercy to give them.

  I had never meant them to die for me. The thought came, “What did you think would happen if you sent soldiers against the Unseelie?” But even Cel wasn’t supposed to be mad enough to fight the United States Army. I hadn’t foreseen this, hadn’t dreamed that he would be so out of control. But my lack of foresight didn’t matter. I had asked for help, and my help was dying around me.

  I stood there bleeding, staring across the yards of the frosted grass at my cousin’s mad eyes. His helmet left his face bare save for a crosspiece down the line of his nose. His eyes burned with the color of his magic. He had called all his power, and I realized that it wasn’t enough. It had never been enough.

  The wind picked up the long blackness of his hair where it spilled free around his armor. He’d always worn it loose in battle. Too vain to hide his beauty, too bad a warrior to be willing to hide the hair that marked him as high court Unseelie. He would never braid it or put it back as Doyle did.

  Cel was weak, evil-minded, and petty. Faerie would never accept him. I was going back to L.A. but I could not leave my people to him. I could not leave faerie in his inadequate hands.

  I whispered onto the wind, “Bleed for me.” The wind carried my voice, my magic, and where it moved it began to form into a whirlwind. A tornado formed of ice and blood and power. Faerie was the land, the land was faerie, and I had been crowned its queen. It rose to my word, my power, and my desire.

  The nobles around him who could move, ran. Those who could crawl did so. They picked up their wounded and fled. Cel screamed at them, “Come back, cowards!”

  His concentration had slipped away from me, and my old wounds were closed, as if by…magic.

  Cel lashed out at his followers. Some fell in the winter-kissed grass, brought low by ancient wounds reopened by the man they would have made their king.

  A wave of blackness moved across the field, as if a different night moved in a line above the frost. This night was moonless, and darker than dark. I knew, before she materialized completely, who would be standing in the way of my cold wind and blood.

  Andais, Queen of Air and Darkness, stood in front of her son, as she had always stood in front of him. She wore her black armor, carried her raven blade. Her cloak spilled out behind her, and it was darkness itself spun into cloth, and more. She held darkness around her, and I felt her power of air push back at my own.

  The twister I had conjured with faerie’s help stopped moving forward. It did not die or fade, but it stopped, as if its twisting front had hit an invisible wall.

  I pushed at that wall, willed my power to move forward, and for a moment the wall softened. I felt the whirlwind move forward; then it was as if the air was drawn away from it, sucked out and sent whirling into the moonlight. She pulled the air from my whirlwind as she could pull the air from your lungs.

  Lieutenant Dawson barked orders and the soldiers formed two lines, one standing, one kneeling, both pointing at her. Would I have fired on my queen? I had a moment of hesitation, and that was my undoing. Darkness poured over us, and we were blind. The next moment the air was heavy, so heavy. We could not breathe. We had no air even to call for help. I collapsed to my knees, my hands on the cold grass. Someone fell against me, and I knew it had to be Dawson, but I could not see him. She was the Queen of Air and Darkness, a goddess of battle, and we would die at her feet.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  I WAS LOST IN THE DARK. HER BLACKNESS HAD TAKEN THE SKY. Only two things remained, the ground under my cheek, and the body next to me in the choking dark. I no longer knew right from left, and only the frozen ground let me know up from down, so I did not know who lay pressed against me in the blackness. A hand found mine, a hand to hold while we died.

  The frost crunched under my free hand, and I clung to the warmth of that other hand. The frost began to melt against my hand, and I wished for Frost, my Killing Frost. He had let faerie take him away because he thought I loved him less than Doyle. It broke my heart to think that he would never know that I had loved him too.

  I tried to say his name, but there was no air left to spare for words. I clung to the melting frost and the human hand, and let my tears speak for me into the frozen ground.

  I regretted the babies inside me, and I thought, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you.” But part of me was content to die. If Doyle and Frost were both lost to me, then death was not the worst fate. In that moment, I stopped fighting, because without them I didn’t want to go on. I let the dark and the choking wash over me. I gave myself to death. Then the hand in mine spasmed; it clung to me as it died, and it brought me back to myself. I could have died alone, but if I died there was no one left to save them, my men, my soldiers. I could not leave them to the airless dark, not if there was anything I could do to save them. It was not love that made me fight again, it was duty. But duty is its own kind of love; I would fight for them, fight until death took me silently screaming. The babes inside me, without their fathers to help raise the
m, were almost a bitter thing, but the soldiers who clung to me had lives of their own, and she had no right to steal them. How dare she, immortal that she was, take their few years away.

  I prayed, “Goddess, help me save them. Help me fight for them.” I had no power in me to fight the dark and the very air made too heavy to breathe, but I prayed all the same, because when all else is lost, there is always prayer.

  At first, I thought nothing had changed, then I realized that the grass under my hand and cheek was colder. The frost crunched as my fingers flexed, as if the melting that my warmth had caused had never happened.

  The air was bitingly cold, like breathing in the heart of winter when the air is so cold it burns going down. Then I realized that I was breathing a complete full breath of the frigid air. The hand in mine squeezed, and I heard voices saying, “I can breathe,” or simply coughing as if they’d been fighting to draw a full breath all this time.

  I whispered, “Thank you, Goddess.”

  I tried to lift my head from the grass, but the moment my face got more than a few inches from the ground, the air was gone again. Sounds in the dark let me know that I wasn’t the only one who had discovered how narrow our line of air was, but it was there. We could breathe. Andais could not crush our lungs. She would have to come into the dark and find us if she wanted us dead.

  The frost thickened under my hand until it was like touching a young snow. The air was so cold that each breath hurt, as if ice were stabbing me. Then the frost thickened more, and moved under my hand. Moved? Frost didn’t move. There was fur under my hand, something alive, growing out of the very ground. I kept my hand on that furred side, and felt it go up and up, until my hand was stretched tall to follow the curve of something. I stroked my hand down that furred but strangely cold side, and found the curved haunches of something. It was only as my hand followed the curve of the leg to find a hoof that I thought I understood. The white stag had formed out of the frost. My Killing Frost was here, beside me. He was still a stag, still not my love, but it was still him in there somewhere. I stroked his side, felt him rise and fall with breath. The stag’s head had to be far above mine, and if he could breathe, so could I. I rose slowly to my knees, keeping one hand on the stag’s side and the other in the hand that still clung to mine. The hand moved with me, and its owner got to their knees.