Rowankind (3 Book Series)

by Jacey Bedford

  “Hold on,” I said. “Timpani, find the gate. Go home. Dancer, you, too.”

  I tried to close my mind to what was behind and seek out what was ahead. I was getting better at finding the gates, but I’d never had to do it entirely on my own, not when it mattered so much.

  A deep bass growl came from somewhere to my left, and an answering one from the right. We were being tracked by something. Could whatever it was be following the smell of blood?

  Corwen tried to sit up, but slumped back down, balanced across Timpani’s neck. If he were to slide from the saddle, I doubted I could get him back into it.

  The growls came again. Then a shot rang out, splintering bark from the oak to my left. The bass growls rose to an unearthly yowl. I still couldn’t see anything, but there was a shadow between us and the riders behind. I heard one of them shout, “Who’s there?” Answered by more growls. The riders turned and fled.

  The growl was closer behind now, but I sensed the gate ahead.

  “Can you hold on?” I asked Corwen.

  In answer, he clicked his tongue, and Timpani sprang forward into a smooth canter.

  “Go.” I gave Dancer his head and suddenly we were galloping through the permanent summer of Iaru. I hoped the thing couldn’t follow. Timpani had slithered to a halt and Corwen had rolled from his back into the grassy floor.

  “Corwen!”

  He was trying to turn into a wolf, but his neck cloth would choke him. I flung myself out of the saddle and onto my knees by his side, pulling the knot loose and dragging his coat from his shoulders. His shirt was loose enough, I didn’t need to worry about it, but I fumbled the buttons of the fall front on his breeches and dragged each boot off, one after the other. By the time I’d flung the last boot to one side, he was well into the change and paws poked out of his sleeve ends.

  “That’s it. Change. I’m with you.”

  He rumbled in his throat.

  “I know,” I said. “It hurts.”

  He rumbled again.

  I held his paws. “Change back. Heal.”

  How many times had I done this with him? How many times could he take such an injury and recover completely? Surely it would take its toll eventually.

  His paws stretched into fingers and his claws retracted into nails. “Yes, change again.”

  His snout flattened, and his silver-gray mane became hair.

  “Hurts.” Was all he managed before he closed his eyes and lapsed into sleep or unconsciousness, but I opened up his shirt and saw the wound on his chest had stopped bleeding.

  “Rossalinde, Corwen, how delightful to see you in Iaru.” The voice sounded anything but sincere.

  I looked up. Dantin, the one Fae I knew was totally unsympathetic to humans loomed above me on horseback, a totally false smile on his lips which didn’t reach his eyes.

  “Dantin, we need help.” I choked down the lump that threatened to cut off my voice. “Please.”

  A column of riders followed Dantin. One horse, black as a moonless night, detached itself from the column and drew level with Dantin’s dark bay. Its rider, dressed in black to match her steed, was eerily perfect.

  “What are these creatures?” a musically feminine voice, more contralto than soprano, asked.

  I cranked my neck back and found myself looking into the most beautiful face I’d ever seen. Her skin was flawless cream without a hint of color in her cheeks, her eyes a penetrating blue fringed by dark lashes. Her raven hair framed a perfect heart-shaped face. She reached across and put her elegant hand on Dantin’s forearm. He brushed his fingers across hers briefly before drawing his hand back.

  “My Lady Calantha, nothing you need worry yourself about. My brother’s pet humans.”

  Calantha. Was this the Fae princess David was supposed to marry? I hadn’t realized the matter was so pressing.

  “Father, would you like me to deal with this matter?” Margann, my Aunt Rosie’s daughter, rode up on Dantin’s other side.

  Dantin gave a short sharp nod, then rode on without a backward glance. A column of ten riders, followed by another column of ten in a livery I didn’t recognize, filed past us.

  “I’m sorry, Ross.” Margann dismounted and knelt by Corwen. “My father can be infuriating when he feels the need to keep up appearances, and Calantha is a princess, literally and figuratively. My father didn’t want to be the one in charge of escorting her here, and he’s making everyone suffer for his displeasure, except her ladyship, of course, with whom he seems to have something in common.”

  Margann’s voice held little fondness for the princess.

  “Is she the one David’s been told he has to marry?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “She looks a lot older than him.”

  “Not by much more than two centuries.”

  “Two centuries!”

  “Shh, keep your voice down. It’s not that much. In another hundred years no one will notice. Now, how can I help?”

  22

  Iaru

  CORWEN CHANGED BACK to wolf and then back to human, by which time the entry and exit wounds had scabbed over and he’d stopped bleeding from the mouth, but he’d lost a lot of blood and needed complete rest and plenty to drink.

  “We should get him back to the Okewood where he can recover,” I said, helping him into his breeches, but not bothering to tuck in his shirt.

  “The glade is closer,” Margann pushed back the lock of hair that had fallen over one eye. “Besides, I’m sure Larien will want to see you both. It looks as though your visit to the king did not go as planned.”

  “Threatening a monarch never does. I said all along that the Fae should have taken their own message.”

  She sighed. “My father and Larien disagree on this, but they’ll come to an accommodation, I’m sure.”

  “Here, help me to sit Corwen up. We need to get him onto Timpani. Dantin and Larien never intended us to succeed, did they?”

  “I’m sure if you had, it would have been the best solution, but, no, neither of them thought it would work, though Larien hoped it would. My father wanted to bring about a disaster, a great and unnatural storm that would make it clear from the very beginning that the Fae’s power was not to be underestimated. Then he wanted to deliver an ultimatum from a position of strength.”

  She bent forward, and we slid our arms beneath Corwen. He groaned as we eased him into a sitting position, but he didn’t fight us.

  “And Larien?” I asked Margann.

  “Said the humans deserved the opportunity to correct their mistakes without penalty, and that the Fae should not show their hand too soon.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not sure sending us to ambush the king and deliver a message unofficially was the best way. A king expects ceremony. The Fae could have provided that. He had no reason to trust us, and he didn’t—as you can see.”

  “It’s difficult for our people to enter human cities. The stench, the fumes, the dirt, the press of bodies . . . It makes us ill. London is the worst of them all.”

  “Larien came to Plymouth.”

  “It took months of purification afterward for him to recover. While he was there, it was all he could do to keep up the illusion of being rowankind. He wasn’t able to use his power.”

  “He seduced my mother. Didn’t he use a charm for that?” Did I want to think my mother had not taken him to her bed willingly?

  Margann smiled. “That’s not our way. If he bedded my aunt, she was willing, believe me. Now, move out of the way and let me lift Corwen up onto his horse.”

  Margann was no taller than me and slender as a willow, but she scooped up Corwen in her arms as if he were a child and lifted him into Timpani’s saddle.

  I raised one eyebrow. “You’re stronger than you look.”

  She laughed. “Fae,” she said.

&nbs
p; We walked alongside Timpani, me on the left and Margann on the right, in case Corwen toppled sideways, but he wasn’t that far gone. He managed to stay upright in the saddle. Dancer followed behind.

  “I used to wonder”—Margann’s voice came from the other side of Timpani, but I couldn’t see her—“what it would be like to live in your world. Is it so very different from Iaru? I’ve only ever crossed over a couple of times.”

  “The cities are different, obviously, but the countryside is green and beautiful in summer. In winter the trees lose their leaves, the ground sparkles with frost in the mornings, and snow falls like a blanket. It looks lovely, but it’s cold and makes travel difficult. Sometimes you have to cancel your journey and sit at home by the fire.”

  “It sounds cozy.”

  “Yes. If you have a home and a fire, it’s very cozy, but the poor suffer dreadfully in winter.”

  “My mother taught me about money. We don’t use it here.”

  “Those who have it want to keep it. Those who don’t have it want to get it. Mostly, they work for it. Sometimes they beg or rob for it.”

  “It sounds like a terrible system.”

  “Yes, except I can’t think of anything to replace it.”

  We arrived at the Fae grove. It was here, in the hall made from hundreds of stately trees meeting over our head, that I had called the magic out of the generations of Sumner children and had given it back to the rowankind.

  Margann turned to lift Corwen down from Timpani, but he slithered down by himself, landing on his feet and staying upright by clinging onto the saddle.

  “Over here.” Annie waved to us from an alcove. “David says he’ll come as soon as he can. He’s been called to meet her.” From the emphasis I knew Annie meant Calantha.

  Margann and I walked Corwen slowly to the alcove which had a door of hanging vines, and actual furniture in it, though the design was somewhat fanciful. There was a bed with silken coverlets and a chair.

  “I could sleep for a week,” Corwen mumbled as he collapsed onto the bed. “Wake me when it’s spring.”

  “You’re in Iaru. It’s never spring, always summer.”

  “Hmmm.” He made a soft sound halfway between a groan and a sigh. “Wake me in time for Christmas.”

  And with that he was deeply asleep.

  “It’s the best thing for him,” Margann said. “My mother taught me how to doctor humans. Said it might come in handy one day.”

  “Your mother’s a wisewoman.”

  “She is, indeed, in more ways than one.” Margann departed to attend her father.

  Annie brought a meal for me, some kind of thick meaty soup with chunks of fresh bread. She brought broth for Corwen, and though he needed the fluid, I didn’t want to wake him. I wasn’t even sure I could.

  “How are you doing, Annie?” I asked.

  “I’m all right, Mrs. Rossalinde.”

  I sighed inwardly. She rarely called me Ross. Even though I’d asked her to a number of times, she soon slipped back into addressing me more formally.

  “I mean . . . really. With David being pushed to marry the princess?”

  “It’s done.” She sighed. “Dantin stood in for David in the court of the Merovingian Fae. They’re wed by proxy.”

  “How can that be? There’s got to be a way to undo it.”

  “Not without losing honor, and David won’t let his father down.”

  A small tear escaped the corner of her eye, but she wiped it with her fingertip when she thought I wasn’t looking.

  “It’s all very well David wanting to please Larien,” I said, “but where was Larien when David was being brought up as a bondservant? Obligations go both ways.”

  She sniffed. “You know David—always trying to do what’s right.”

  I nodded. That’s what I liked about him. My late brother, Philip, had been exactly the opposite. Always doing what was best for himself.

  “Don’t worry, Annie. You know how he feels about you.”

  “I know it, but it doesn’t make it any easier. Those Merovingian Fae have a dark reputation. They’re French, you know.” She might as well have said they eat babies. The French had been natural enemies of the English since the Normans had tried to unite the two countries and failed miserably. Annie came from Plymouth where the French were counted as bad as Satan and all the demons of Hell. She gave me a meaningful look, gathered up my bowl and spoon with a clatter, and left me to tend Corwen.

  As I curled up on the empty side of the bed, with Corwen still deeply asleep, I worried over what I could do to help David and Annie, until I fell into a jumble of weird dreams, none of which I could remember in the morning.

  * * *

  Corwen woke early, hungry, thirsty, and with a desperate need to empty his bladder. All his bodily functions seemed to be working, and there was no sign of infection around the wounds. The ball had passed through cleanly. Or maybe infection wouldn’t dare to manifest in Iaru.

  Annie and David brought breakfast for us and themselves. Corwen wolfed his porridge down in half the time it normally took him, and he didn’t even like porridge that much. Bread and honey next. He ate his own and stared at mine until I broke it in two and gave him the larger piece.

  Annie laughed. “I’ll get more. I’m not used to feeding wolf-men.”

  “More for me, too, Annie, please.” Well, I was eating for two, or possibly three.

  “How are you?” I asked David. “Annie told me about the proxy.”

  “What’s all this about?” Corwen asked.

  “David got married while you slept, or, rather, Dantin got married for him and brought his bride home, but it’s all right because she’s only two hundred years older than he is.”

  Corwen hissed his disapproval. “Is she as unhappy about it as you are?”

  “Calantha? I don’t know.” David sounded glum. “She’s like an ice princess, cool and reserved. We’ve hardly said two words to each other. We were introduced. I kissed her hand, and that was it.”

  “Well, don’t do more than that,” Corwen said.

  “What do you mea— Oh.”

  “Exactly. Once you bed the wench you’ve lost any argument. She’s yours. You’re hers.”

  “I’m not sure I could . . . I mean, she’s so unapproachable. I couldn’t imagine . . . you know.”

  “How about Annie?”

  David blushed. “She’s not unapproachable at all.”

  I’d forgotten how fast rowankind matured. I still thought of Annie as a child, but she was a young woman now.

  “That wasn’t what I was asking. I meant what’s her status?”

  “I don’t know. I won’t let the Ice Princess treat her like a servant, though.”

  “Good for you,” Corwen said.

  Annie returned with more breakfast, this time with cheese and salt pork as well as the bread and honey. We ate with relish. As if to prove what he’d said about Annie not being treated as a servant, David gathered up all our plates and utensils and carried them away with Annie following in his wake.

  With a long morning stretching in front of us and, for once, nothing pressing, Corwen took the opportunity to change to wolf and back again, and then rested. I sat in the chair and took a notebook out of my pocket, my notebook this time, into which I’d copied some of the items from Aunt Rosie’s that made most sense to me, plus some observations of my own. Some of the things I could do seemed random, but as I continued working, I started to see a thread linking them.

  I was still learning about magic. Aunt Rosie’s notebooks helped, but I knew I had to find my own way, so I was making my own book. Is this what Walsingham had done? He didn’t have his own magic. He’d learned spellcraft, preparing spells in advance to use as weapons when he needed them. Twists of paper that became deadly in his hands. His notebook could be used by anyone
skilled enough to decipher its code.

  “What are you thinking?”

  I hadn’t noticed Corwen was awake and watching me.

  “About notebooks and magic. About Walsingham.”

  “That’s our next task.”

  “You need to recover from the damage this task has inflicted,” I said. “The Fae could have made this so much easier. With their magic they could have isolated Frogmore House and spoken to the king themselves.”

  “I think they intend that when they do finally show themselves to humans, they do so in a grand manner and instill enough fear to get their own way instantly.”

  “A good guess and almost correct.”

  I jumped and dropped my notebook. Larien bent and picked it up, putting it into my hands.

  Corwen swung his legs off the bed, meeting Larien sitting upright. It said a lot about his injury that he was not immediately on his feet.

  Larien conjured up another chair out of nowhere and sat facing us both.

  “I’m sorry for your hurt,” he said to Corwen. “Your king’s retinue must be . . . what’s your term? Trigger-happy.”

  “It only takes one sharpshooter with a rifle,” I said. “One of the king’s equerries, perhaps. They’re often from the ranks of the military. The new rifles can be accurate to four hundred yards in the right hands.”

  “Lucky the ball found its mark in your flesh, wolf-man.”

  “Exactly what I was thinking,” Corwen grimaced. “Though lucky is not the word I’d choose in this instance, but better the shot found me rather than Ross.”

  “Then we agree.”

  That obviously ended the matter for Larien. Discussion over.

  “So what do you intend next?” I asked.

  “Dantin has a plan.”

  “I’m not sure I like the sound of that. Dantin despises humans. He won’t mind if a few die. Hell, he won’t mind if a few thousand die. I can’t let that happen.”

  Larien looked at me as if he knew what I’d said was ridiculous. How could one human prevent the Fae from doing exactly as they liked? He had a point, but I wasn’t ready to give up.