Warrior Tithe: Faerie Tales

by T. J. Deschamps

  11

  Fagan

  Fagan rode Aoife across the faerie landscape, his belly knotted with uncertainty. He cherished Aoife, but he did not want to be the queen’s consort. The only reason he stayed the course was because there was nothing left for him but Aoife. Still, he was not happy about this future. He couldn’t even picture what it would be like. All he wanted was to continue the bliss he felt in the kelpie’s company.

  Aoife turned her silken black head as if to peer behind her. After she did this a few times, he saw something akin to fear in her glowing scarlet eyes.

  He glanced over his shoulder. All he could see was mist rolling over the Highland hills. Peculiar, that mist. Like two distinct, land-bound storm clouds swirling the same direction they headed. Fagan hadn’t seen anything like it in his life.

  “Are those fey clouds? Something nefarious?” he asked.

  In answer, Aoife ran faster, zigzagging left and right. The strange clouds followed no matter which way nor how fast she went. Panic rose in his chest. Whatever brought fear to a kelpie’s heart had to be much worse. Fagan had been prepared to die not but a few days ago, but now…now there was Aoife and with her came a shred of hope. Fool he was to have any.

  A head like that of a hound appeared out of the mist. The beast’s eyes glowed and its maw gaped revealing a mouth full of tapered fangs, snapping at the kelpie’s hind legs.

  “Free my hands,” Fagan shouted. His fingers tingled, letting him know magic was at play in releasing his grip.

  He reached for the bow strapped across his back and pulled an arrow from his quiver. Twisting in his seat, he loaded the bow and loosed an arrow at one of the chomping heads.

  The arrow hit true, straight through a glowing, green eye. The swirling cloud solidified into the form of a giant hound. The great beast collapsed.

  Aoife kept running, thank Jesus…or whatever god was responsible for Fagan’s luck. He notched another arrow around the same time the second mist-shrouded hound latched onto Aoife’s hind leg.

  She came to a sudden halt, kicking and thrashing, making it difficult for him to shoot the hound. If Fagan wasn’t bound to the mount by magic, he’d surely have been unseated by now. Aoife finally managed to kick the creature off. He tried to load the arrow again, but the kelpie spun around in a way no ordinary horse could. Although he could not feel the turn, the spinning landscape dizzied him.

  Aoife let out an eldritch cry that chilled his blood before lowering her head. The beast snarled in return.

  Regaining his bearings, Fagan loosed another arrow, cutting through the mist but missing his mark. He cursed under his breath, reaching for another arrow. He’d waste them all before they’d even reach the Sidhe queen’s castle.

  The water horse’s muzzle stretched and stretched, enlarging until it became a monstrous maw filled with fangs even more frightening than those of the monster who threatened them. They charged the ghastly hound.

  The beast tried to turn tail, but Aoife quickly gained on the mist-hound and bound the creature to her.

  Fagan could do naught but watch in horror as the kelpie’s treacherous jaws shredded through flesh and mist until the creature solidified in a bloody, gory mess.

  The water horse’s form shrank and morphed underneath him. Bound to her, Fagan could do nothing but ride out her transformation until he sat astride a naked fae maiden. The magic soon lifted and Fagan was able to awkwardly dismount. He winced as she cried out when his leg scraped her gaping wound.

  Fagan cursed himself for hurting her. He’d been so flustered by the shift in form, he’d forgotten her wounds. He cast a querying eye over Aoife’s body, minding less her nakedness and more concerned about how he may have furthered her injuries. The shift hadn’t healed the kelpie. Her thigh was bleeding from gaping wounds between strips of torn flesh. That was an improvement. He had seen that hellish hound take good chunks out of her hind quarter.

  Aoife rolled on her uninjured side and reached, producing the globe of water and fish out of thin air. The fish swam as if in a natural body of water, undisturbed by the fact that they floated mid-air. Aoife crawled into the sphere until she disappeared completely. She emerged fully healed.

  Fagan gaped, marveling at the fae’s magic as she tucked away the globe of suspended water.

  Aoife cast a worried eye in the direction of the now dead hounds. “We should not tarry here.”

  “What could possibly make a kelpie so afeared?”

  She stood fully naked, approaching so close he could smell the scent of the sea and ocean spray. Violent storms raged in her eyes. Fagan swore he could hear the crashing of waves against rocks and feel the tow of those waves; they threatened to drag him under.

  “I am the daughter of Mannan mac lir himself. I fear no man.” She sighed, long and heavy. “I simply wish to avoid wedding one.”

  Fagan let her words sink in. He pointed at the bloody carcass of the otherworldly hound, his hand shaking with anger and latent fear. “Yer betrothed?”

  “Aye,” she answered after a long pause, voice soft, her bravado fading. “To Cu Roi mac Daire, the sorcerer king.”

  Fagan closed his eyes. He was willing to let a faerie queen use his body, give up his very soul, to be close to a woman who belonged to another. “D’ye love him?”

  “I had tender feelings for Roi until he cheated in a contest to win my hand and I found out that he only wanted to use me for my sight and to warm his bed. Now, I despise him.”

  His heart had thawed with the flames of hope, now shattered. Despite not loving Roi, Aoife was engaged, and a promise was a promise. Fagan glanced at the dead beasts. Monsters. The man couldn’t be much better. Maybe she had good reason to break the promise. “That is what your betrothed sends to beg ye to return to his side?”

  Her eyes lit with what looked like hope. “Then ye understand my predicament? I cannot abide a man who would treat me like a captive.”

  He shook his head slowly. “If I were as powerful as yer betrothed, to command beasts such as the ones we encountered, I’d send ye a thousand fat geese or doves, things of beauty and grace in hopes to win ye. I dinnae fault ye for not wanting to marry a man who sends monsters to hunt ye down like an animal. Cannae ye tell yer father? Surely the god of the sea wouldn’t stand for his own daughter to be treated so?”

  Tears wet her eyes as she shook head slowly, mournfully. A bitter smile touched her trembling lips as she replied, “There was some agreement betwixt them that I wasn’t privy to.”

  He wanted to pity her, but realization dawned that she was on the run from a god and a king and how that varied greatly from the story she’d first told. “You’ve deceived me this whole time. I thought you were on a diplomatic envoy, representing the Folk of the Sea.”

  “I am seeking the Sidhe queen as the daughter of Mannan mac lir.”

  He grimaced, not understanding why she continued to twist the truth. “Yer not representing the court of the sea as an ally. Yer seeking refuge.”

  She lifted her chin, planting her fists on her hips. Her green eyes and pretty features filled with challenge, “I am a powerful ally in my own right. I know all Mannan mac lir’s secrets.”

  “Would ye really give up yer da for marrying ye off? Surely the god had not treated you so poorly before now.”

  Aoife looked away. “No.”

  Fagan didn’t want to presume, but he was sure the queen of the elves under the hill would have more than her fair share of powerful fae. “So, why would the queen of the fae risk angering the god of the sea and a mortal sorcerer?”

  The kelpie shrank under the question.

  What did Aoife have to offer when she possessed naught but a globe of fish and himself tagging along with her? His eyes widened as understanding occurred to him. He’d wondered and wondered why a fae princess would have anything to do with the likes of him. Now he knew.

  “It has all been a trick.” He slowly backed away from the kelpie. He couldn’t be close to her. “All this fae kn
ight business is pure tripe. Ye hoped to offer my life in exchange for refuge.”

  “Nay!” Aoife stepped toward him, but he retreated further. “The queen would not kill ye. Yer a fine lad. She’ll make ye a consort…and a knight! Ye’ll live a life of ease.”

  He cocked an eyebrow and let his features harden, but inside his heart was breaking. He’d tended her wounds. Cared for her sleeping body as she recovered. Slept on the floor and woke to every sound she’d made in her sleep for four nights, worried he had irrevocably harmed such a lovely creature with his trap. He’d fretted over her.

  More than that, she’d made him want to be alive again. Aoife had given him purpose. She’d fed him well, trained him, kissed him as if she loved him as dearly as he was growing to love her. He’d believed he was going to be a fae knight, someone worthy of her. He touched his traitorous lips. He’d been seduced by a fae. All of it a ruse so he would serve a queen for her.

  “Ye intended for me to be the fairy queen’s whore so ye dinnae have to marry someone ye loathed.”

  “Fagan—”

  Anger and hurt caused him to cut her off. “Surely ye can see the hypocrisy in this plan?”

  He turned his back on her so she would not see how much she’d hurt him. “I’m sorry for yer situation, but I will not trade my freedom for yers. I will not go willingly.” He closed his eyes and waited for her to turn on him and make him her prisoner.

  “I told ye not to pursue me, to not love me. If ye will not come willingly, then this is where we part ways, Fagan.”

  Though he said he would not go, her words still cut. He knew the difference between a barn tupping and making love. Fagan had thought what they’d done was the latter. He should have listened to her words. He meant nothing to her.

  “We haven’t tarried far from the wood where we first entered. Head east and you’ll come upon it. Follow the arch home,” Aoife said.

  He likely imagined the quivering in her voice. This had been all a ruse. Fae didn’t feel things like remorse and love. He’d been a fool to believe otherwise.

  “Aye, so be it,” Fagan replied, or he would have, but she’d already transformed into her kelpie form, galloping past him—out of his life.

  12

  Aoife

  Aoife put as much distance as she could between herself and Fagan, afraid she’d drop to her knees and beg him to come. He had been nothing but kind, and she had intended to trade his freedom for her safety. The kelpie had only delayed her inevitable betrayal of him by spending these past weeks training with him. It had been selfish. She wanted to have Fagan to herself for a little while before they were both swept up in their roles at court, sworn to the queen.

  She would have to swear an oath to Mab, disavow her father, and no longer be one of the Folk of the Sea. Aoife wasn’t even sure if she’d be able to remain a kelpie as one of the Sidhe. All because of Roi…and her own father.

  Her stomach knotted as she spotted the spires and towers on the horizon. Faeries worked in ways the human world did not. This whole time, all she had to do was desire to go to Queen Mab’s castle, and she’d find herself in the castle’s proximity. Her goal in sight, she should have felt elated, but her choice now felt like giving up one prison for another.

  She slowed her pace, shifting into her fae form. She slipped her hand into a cache, pulling out a gown she’d stored there for times she would be late to her father’s events that required formal clothing. As she slid the gossamer material over her head, she fought not to imagine Fagan gawking in awe that she’d pulled a dress out of thin air—as it would appear to him. She hadn’t grown accustomed to his awe of her and discovered only then how fond she was of the reverent way he regarded her.

  Aoife closed her eyes and took a cleansing breath. She would need calm to face Queen Mab.

  A narrow stone bridge stretched over a moat. Aoife felt a slight kinship with the fae that lurked under the waters, but not the same bond as she felt with the Folk of the Sea. At the end of the bridge, she reached a portcullis. Magic foreign to hers pulsed from the ironwork of the grate. Iron in a faerie. She had heard that Mab chose humans as knights so that they could carry iron blades, making them more lethal than any fae. Remembering her iron poisoning from the trap, a shudder passed through her.

  The portcullis lifted.

  She fought not to ogle the iron tipped spikes lining the bottom of the grate. The interior court was a wild garden filled with low fae. Brownies, pixies, and goblins bustled about, tending animals or scurrying to perform their duties within the castle walls. Directly on the other side, a knight of great stature in full gleaming armor sat upon a white horse. The horse itself was saddled and dressed in all sorts of baubles and finery. The knight flipped the grated visor of his helmet. A bonnie human lad of no more than twenty or twenty-one summers peered from underneath.

  “Tamlin,” Aoife gasped.

  Mab’s favorite human, the one who gave Aoife the idea to bring Fagan and hope that the queen would fancy him instead of making him a common castle worker. The gentle curve of Tamlin’s lips doubled his beauty.

  “That is what I am called. Ye have saved me a great bit of trouble, princess. I was bid to fetch ye.” His head swiveled as if scanning beyond her. “Where is yer human companion?”

  “I am alone. I seek—”

  He held up his hand cutting her off. Arrogant snot! “I ken what ye seek. Where is the lad? Her majesty is very keen to meet the mere mortal who stole the heart of Manan mac lir’s favorite daughter.”

  Aoife snorted. “I grew bored of the lad and drowned him for some entertainment.”

  Excruciating pain racked her body with every untrue word. At one point, Aoife thought she might lose consciousness under the duress of the head-to-toe agony, but she managed to stay conscious. Contrary to what humans thought fae could lie, but the experience was so unpleasant they weren’t prone to do it. Any natural born fae would be able to detect the cause of her discomfort. Love him or not, she doubted Mab or any of her court shared with Tamlin the secret.

  Tamlin said naught, only eyed her. With an elegant shrug, in perfect imitation of a fae lordling, the knight sighed. “Very well. I suppose ye should come with me then.”

  A niggling voice bade her to shift to kelpie form and run far from this knight and this castle. But where should she go? To that, her instincts had no answer. If she ran now, the kelpie could never stop running for Roi would not soon forget his pursuit.

  Tamlin dismounted, handing the reins of his silver white horse to a fae stable hand who suddenly appeared. The fae led the horse toward the interior stables.

  The knight took off his helmet, revealing hair a shade of auburn closer to burnished copper than her own scarlet tresses. His skin had a sun-kissed quality and freckles, like her own, dusted his nose and high cheekbones.

  Aoife followed the broad-shouldered lad into the building, past the interior courtyard—no, Tamlin was no lad. Mab had stilled his aging when she had transformed him from a mortal man to a fae. It was a great show of power to be able to do this. Aoife’s own father could not. None of the other kings or queens knew how Mab had done it.

  The mystery shrouding Tamlin’s transformation made the Queen of the Sidhe the most feared of all the fae monarchs, Seelie or Unseelie. The act also made Mab the most loathed. Envy ran deep in fae veins.

  Aoife followed the knight through a hall that reminded the kelpie of her father’s receiving hall in size, but nothing like it in aesthetic. The castle Aoife grew up in had a sea theme whereas Mab’s castle was all about the flora and fauna of the land. Roots in the floor was the only delineated trees from ambulatory dryads. Fauns in their half-fae, half-animal forms mingled with high elves, trolls, and giants—foreign dignitaries.

  All eyes turned to her as she passed. As far as fae beauty and gowns went, hers was nothing out of the ordinary. She possessed a sturdier frame than the Sidhe highborn with their waifish builds.

  Tamlin bent toward her, confiding in a low tone, “Th
ey love the scent of fresh meat around here. The trouble is sorting which desires to tup ye and which hungers to devour ye.”

  “I’m new to this court, not a bairn or human afeard of fae. If they choose to bite me, I’ll bite back.”

  Tamlin barked a laugh. “They might like it from fair fae such as yerself.”

  Aoife grinned mockingly. “This isn’t my only form.”

  “Have care. Ye shall find it troublesome to shift into yer kelpie form now that you are in the seat of Mab’s power.”

  “I thank ye for yer warning, but I’m dangerous enough either way.”

  The copper headed dolt spared her a rueful smile. “For yer sake, I hope so.”

  Dryads parted to reveal a dais atop a good deal of stone stairs. At the top of the stairs, Mab herself sat on a throne. She had a fae maiden form with skin like still waters, reflective and silvery. Vines grew from her head and her gown was made of an ephemeral material. Her crown was wood and gold, horns of fae fallen to her in battle. A teardrop jewel glimmered from a chain hanging on the queen’s neck.

  Aoife had heard a rumor that the jewel connected the queen or whomever possessed it to the land.

  “Is this your betrothed?” Mab asked.

  Aoife’s eyebrows drew together in confusion. She glanced at Tamlin and sidled away from closeness. “Nay. I only just met him.”

  The queen ignored her, angling her face to somewhere on the dais beyond where Aoife could see from below.

  Aoife’s heart lurched when Roi stepped into view. He looked plaintiff and melancholy, the scorned lover. “Aye. That’s the one Mannan mac lir promised me.”

  “No.” The kelpie took a step back and another. She tried to shift to her kelpie form, but in this place, she could not reach her other self.

  “A kelpie draws her power from the sea, from the god Mannan.” Mab swept her arm, indicating their surroundings. “This is the goddess Danu’s domain and you may only draw power at her will. It is not her will for you to run from me, water horse.” Her gaze turned to Tamlin. “Bring her forward, my dear heart.”