Lonesome Paladin

by S. M. Reine

  Titania trembled with anger. “Giving me commands now?”

  “It’s okay.” Oberon rested a hand on Titania’s shoulder. “She’s distraught. She doesn’t mean to be insulting.”

  “Fuck yeah I do,” Ofelia said, reminding Sophie how little time each of these people had been sidhe royalty. This looked to be on the brink of escalating to a slap fight, and that was the least queenly thing Sophie could imagine.

  Oberon must have been worried about something similar. He pulled his queen outside, and Sophie caught a glimpse of Herne’s face before the doors shut again.

  “At least they’re gone now,” Ofelia muttered, tossing her hair in a manner reminiscent of the unicorns. Perhaps she didn’t get along with them because they were too similar. She was similarly kind-eyed when she turned to her companion. “How are you coping, Sophie?”

  She remembered Sophie’s name. Amazing.

  “I’m quite well, aside from being worried about Mr. Hawke,” Sophie said. “He was in no condition to be taken from the dungeons last I saw him, and he is too good a man for such a fate.”

  “He’ll be fine,” Ofelia said, more like she was trying to convince herself than like she believed it. “He’s too dumb to die like this.”

  “He seemed intelligent enough. Admittedly, I did not get to know him for long, but I found myself quite fond.”

  “If you think my brother’s not dumb, then you’re probably dumb too,” said the queen.

  Sophie knew this to be factually untrue, yet she could not think of anyone who had defined her by anything other than her wealth of knowledge, and so the accusation was oddly amusing. “Perhaps I am,” she said with a broad smile.

  Lincoln emerged from the bathroom, damp but dressed. He smelled pleasantly of soap. “Heard people yelling. Problem?”

  “Titania’s a bitch who’s left my brother suffering. That’s my problem,” Ofelia said.

  “What are you going to do once your brother is back?” Sophie asked.

  “I’ll take Cèsar back to Earth immediately, obviously.”

  “I’m afraid the cause is not so obvious to me. Would you please explain your reasoning? Is the cait sidhe uniquely suited to repairing Fritz’s damage?”

  “Cèsar as a cait sidhe is uniquely suited. It’s not a species thing, but a Cèsar thing,” Ofelia said.

  “Sidhe magic is based on emotion,” Oberon said. He returned from the hallway, cinching a silk robe around his narrow waist. Someone had brought him clothing while he was issuing commands to Herne. Sophie was relieved to no longer have his man-parts waggling in her face, not that she had been staring at them. “We don’t grow stronger by learning more spells, and we don’t get weaker when we bleed. But when we love—and when we hurt—things get big.”

  “And many sidhe entities do not turn hostile unless you do first,” Sophie said.

  “Exactly,” Ofelia said. “Cèsar’s trapped by guilt, literally and emotionally. I’ll contain his powers while Fritz and Cèsar work through their shit, but that’s all that I can do. It’s not like he’s got a wound to bandage. Right now he’s gotta be a big black hole of emotion, and it’s the deadliest thing a sidhe can be.”

  The door slammed open again. Herne flew in, breathless. “Cèsar escaped somehow. Laramie and Zachariah were beheaded.”

  “What were you just saying about how deadly uncontrolled emotions are?” Sophie asked.

  “It wasn’t him.” Herne spun a web of magic, splattering an image of the dungeon in midair like a security feed. The image showed an eerie specter of a hooded man ripping a giant feline out of the dungeon. “It was that thing. The guy with the duffel bag.”

  “Dullahan,” Lincoln said.

  Orders flew quickly once Oberon realized his home had been invaded. Sophie watched through the bedroom window as Falias flared with warding magic, locking itself belatedly against an intruder who was already long gone.

  “We’ll have to search for him from here,” Titania said, returning to the room. A trio of female attendants followed with an ornate golden cart bearing an equally ornate golden bowl at its top. “This is our Scrying Vessel.”

  “Oh, I have something like that,” Sophie said. “Though I repurposed something much more modest for the use. I could call it my Scrying Salad Bowl!”

  Titania frowned at her. “Where did you say that you come from? You came with the man, didn’t you?”

  “Ah, yes, I did come from Earth with Lincoln,” Sophie said. “I have no such device. I suppose that was a very poor excuse for a joke.”

  Her excuse was likely unconvincing, but Titania didn’t appear to care.

  Titania and Ofelia took position on opposite sides of the Scrying Vessel, linking hands. Magic rose between them. Ofelia’s was bright blue. Titania’s was green. Ice and earth, stone and wood. Combined, their powers illuminated the entire bowl.

  A vision rippled above the surface. It was difficult to make out detail on the surface of tepid water, but Sophie recognized it. “The Veil,” she said. “That’s inside the Veil.”

  The trees drifted across the surface of the bowl, as if someone were standing in the spot and turning their head to look around.

  It focused on a monster. It was man-shaped but headless, pulling a sweater off over its head. The body exposed underneath was barely a body at all. Sophie could make out the deep shadows of ribs on his sunken chest. He only had an inch of his neck-stub in the front, and blood dribbled from it down his ribcage.

  “What the fuck?” Ofelia asked.

  “That’s not queen language,” Titania said, like an admonishing nanny.

  “I don’t fucking care. What the fuck is that fucking shit?” The Winter Queen leaned over the bowl to look closer. “It’s got scales on its legs. Why’s it got scales on its legs?”

  “That’s Dullahan Daith,” Lincoln said with queer certainty. The man had not met the monster; he had only glimpsed it in Herne’s vision. He had no reason to recognize it. “That’s the thing that’s looking for Inanna. Do any of you know who Inanna is?”

  The sidhe exchanged blank looks.

  “I know, actually, who Inanna is.” Sophie lifted a trembling hand. “Inanna was a god of a long-ago triad alongside Utu and Ereshkigal. She was of gaean spirit. Utu represented the ethereal faction among their triad, and Ereshkigal, of course, represented infernal.”

  “If she was a long-ago god, then you mean she doesn’t exist anymore?” Titania asked. “That we’ve got this crazy scaly thing tearing through our forest in search of something that’s dead?”

  “It’s possible that Inanna isn’t entirely dead,” Sophie said. “Gods have souls like anything else, but when they die, their souls fragment to be reincarnated among a handful of mortals. These people are called Remnants. It’s likely that this ‘Dullahan’ is looking for someone carrying a Remnant of Inanna. Perhaps he’s looking for all the Remnants of Inanna.”

  By the time she finished speaking, everyone was staring. Somehow, it was Lincoln’s look that made her feel the stupidest.

  “Where did you get this information?” Oberon asked.

  Sophie floundered for words. She couldn’t think of a convincing lie—or even an unconvincing lie—that could make the conversation end without revealing her status as the Historian.

  Luckily, someone spoke before Sophie could.

  “Hey, I recognize that area.” Titania was still looking into the bowl with Ofelia. The view had continued to pan over the trees, and now it showed the beastly form of Cèsar Hawke shrinking away from Dullahan.

  Beyond Cèsar’s haunches stood a stone pillar.

  “The Lia Fáil,” Titania said. “It’s also known as the Destiny Stone. It marks the boundary between the Summer and Autumn Courts. Is Dullahan trying to escape with your brother?”

  “It doesn’t matter. They won’t get far.” Ofelia wrenched her hands away from the bowl. “I’m going to save him.”

  “Wait!” Sophie leaped forward. “You cannot kill Dullahan in pursuit
of rescuing your brother. If he is pursuing a Remnant of Inanna, he must be a Remnant of Ereshkigal. You will know this to be the case if he never stops moving. When he stops moving, things around him die. He’ll do it selectively, of course, because his grudge is specifically against Inanna, and he has no investment into destroying the rest of the world.”

  “How can you be so certain?” Ofelia asked.

  “Would you not expect a farm boy pulling sword from stone to be Arthur Pendragon? Inanna conquered the Realm of the Dead, which belonged to Ereshkigal at the time, and Ereshkigal didn’t take it kindly. Both were slain before he could get revenge upon Inanna. Vengeance long outlives mortal lives.” Sophie clasped her hands, pleading. “If a Remnant of Ereshkigal dies, everything dies with him. An entire world. You can’t kill him.”

  “And what’s your proof?” asked Titania, hands on her hips. “Furthermore, where did you learn about Remnants? How do you have a Seeing Vessel? What are you doing in the Middle Worlds as a human?”

  Each question made Sophie recoil further and further. “I can’t answer your questions. I’m sorry. But Lincoln knows what I’m talking about,” Sophie said. “He knows everything I’m saying to be true.”

  Now Lincoln was the focus of all those sidhe eyes.

  He rubbed the back of his neck, hanging his head. He didn’t speak. Didn’t agree or disagree. Just...looked down. Sophie would have hurt less if she’d fallen into a wasp’s hive.

  “I’m going after Cèsar,” Ofelia declared. “I don’t make it a habit to kill anyone who doesn’t need to be killed, but I’ll do whatever it takes to stop Dullahan and get my brother out. Anything.”

  Titania shook her head. “Oberon locked down Falias, so you can’t even teleport in and out unless we open a door.”

  “Then open a door!”

  “I won’t,” Titania said. “Even the greater Summer Court is a secondary responsibility compared to caring for NKF’s cathedral. We can’t risk whatever that is getting at God. I’ll put together a force to protect Falias, but we’re not going to go out there and make ourselves vulnerable!”

  “Then you’ll sit on your fat ass while my brother and his friend die?” Ofelia slammed her fist into the cart, and the Seeing Vessel jumped, water sloshing over its side.

  Titania’s mouth fell open in shock. “Fat?”

  “Oh, what, you’re more offended being called fat than being called a coward? Because that’s what you are. You’re a fat fucking coward!”

  “This! This right here! This is why you’d never be prophet, O,” Titania said. “Because you think two men’s lives are more important than an entire kingdom’s, you selfish cow!”

  Ofelia took a step back. She looked like she’d been slapped.

  Titania turned to her husband, red-cheeked and puffing. “Get the Riders together! If that thing shows up at our door, I want it nuked to oblivion.” Oberon kissed her knuckles and then swept out, leaving Sophie dumbstruck and unheard.

  Lincoln never once met her eyes.

  CHAPTER 19

  The meeting terminated. Sophie left with Ofelia, arguing as to why Dullahan could not be killed. Oberon left to organize the army. Lincoln was left with Titania, her temper, and her guard.

  Herne seized Lincoln’s bicep.

  “You can’t be trusted to be left alone, so you won’t be,” Titania said, gesturing for her handmaidens to take the Seeing Vessel away. She had not regained composure since her fight with Ofelia. In fact, she’d turned roughly the color of an overripe radish. “I treated you like a guest. Healed you, dressed you, fed you. You thanked me by escaping my party and letting that bitch Ofelia into the Summer Court.”

  “What’s the problem between you two?” Lincoln asked. “I thought all you faeries were allies.”

  “Sidhe,” Titania said through her teeth. “We are sidhe. Not faeries.”

  “A rose by any other name,” he said.

  “Faerie is diminutive. It’s insulting.” Titania tossed her hair, and it fell in a shimmering wave over her shoulder. “Ofelia’s just jealous. She can’t get over the fact that I was chosen as prophet, even though apparently I’m a fat coward. She can think whatever she wants! NKF gave me the fairest lands to rule over, put His cathedral in my city, and now only speaks directly to me. Who is she to question the will of God?”

  Lincoln couldn’t help himself. The words just slipped out. “Which God?” Jesus, he was starting to sound like Sophie.

  Titania took the snark about as well as Lincoln usually did. Her expression hardened. “Ofelia’s not the queen in this town. I will be obeyed!” Titania shoved a finger into Lincoln’s face, and he figured that her scowl was meant to look intimidating. “The worst of your sins is bringing this Dullahan thing into the Summer Court. It came for Cèsar, and you brought him, so that makes you responsible. You’re going to kill him. You have an hour to think of a clever plan, and then I’m sending you into the forest to fix your mistake.”

  “You mean…”

  “Kill Dullahan,” Titania said. Which was exactly what Sophie had told them not to do.

  Lincoln was getting a headache. “Don’t tell me. I won’t have support from your army.”

  “They have to protect Falias,” she said.

  She didn’t get as blunt as Fritz did. Faerie queens didn’t tell people they were disposable, at least not to their faces. But Lincoln understood her meaning just fine.

  He was disposable.

  “If you send me into the forest without your army, there’s no guarantee I’ll kill Dullahan. I might just head back to the ley line,” Lincoln said. “But I promise I’ll go after him on one condition: I want to go into the cathedral right now, before I leave. I want to talk to NKF myself.”

  Titania gave a disbelieving laugh. “You’ll die if you go in there. How exactly are you going to kill Dullahan for me if you’re already dead?”

  “Then I’ll do it after I kill Dullahan,” Lincoln pressed. “But I’m not worried about what happens when I go into that cathedral. I’ll only die if God wants me dead. I’ve got faith.”

  The queen was silent for a long moment as she studied his face.

  Finally, she nodded. “Kill Dullahan, and I’ll let you into NKF’s cathedral. And may He have mercy on your soul.”

  Herne took Lincoln to his room. It wasn’t far from the queen’s, though his was at the back of the palace, so it couldn’t catch the sunrise creeping over Alfheimr.

  “What should I pack?” Lincoln asked, glancing around the sparse room. Little of what he’d brought into the Middle Worlds had survived the trip, and even that had been decimated hunting down the falhófnir.

  “There’s some extras around the room,” Herne said. “Like hotel toiletries. Help yourself.”

  “How in damnation are hotel toiletries gonna help me kill a monster?”

  “That doesn’t sound like my problem.” He checked the wall clock. “I’ll see you in about fifty minutes.”

  Herne left, shutting the door behind him.

  Lincoln riffled through his stuff. His backpack had been recovered from the river, but its contents were useless. Aside from that, he only had a few of the OPA daggers left. Lincoln didn’t see much point in taking those. They’d snapped when he tried to use them on unicorn hide. But they did fill out his belt nicely, and he jammed the unicorn horn into the empty loop.

  There was nothing to pack beyond that, and still almost an hour to wait until his suicide mission to kill Dullahan.

  He stepped into the bathroom to piss in the sparkly gold trough that served as a urinal in this pit of decadence, and when he was done, he washed his hands with soaps that smelled as offensively floral as Queen Titania.

  “Who the fuck is Dullahan?” Lincoln asked, bracing his hands against the sink to stare into the mirror. “Come on, you ugly bastard. You useless deputy. You piece of fucking shit. Who is Dullahan, and how are you gonna kill him?”

  Getting insulted by the man in the mirror didn’t give him ideas. He was clea
ner than he’d been coming back to Alfheimr, but there was still something ragged and wild looking to his reflection. His beard was growing back in. His arms looked shrunken from months of undernourishment. The muscles in his neck were ropey, his cheeks sucked in, his eyes a little too bright. This was a stupid, ugly, useless piece of shit who couldn’t hold down a job, protect the undersecretary, or kill Dullahan Daith.

  And Elise was standing behind him.

  Lincoln spun.

  The room was empty.

  He didn’t see any sign of Elise in the bathroom, even though he was confident the pale oval of her face had been just behind his shoulder. For a second, he’d even thought that he felt the brush of her fingers against the nape of his neck. His heart was beating as fast as though she’d been there.

  Lincoln turned back to shut off the faucet.

  Elise looked back at him from the mirror. She was bleeding from her ink-black eyes, and a shimmering black brand marked her forehead.

  He leaped back with a strangled cry, hands flying to his face. Elise leaped back too. He had become Elise and there was blood on him. It was really there.

  Lincoln whirled back to face the door to his bedroom. But the walls had gone blank. The tile was unbroken by anything—even mirrors or plumbing.

  He turned again, and the unbroken walls vanished too. He was surrounded by darkness.

  Even though he tried to stop moving, he felt like he continued to turn, turn, turn. The world was spinning. He was falling into somewhere dark and deep.

  It was hot. The wind blew over him with merciless claws of sand.

  Lincoln didn’t need his eyes to work in order to know that he was in Hell again.

  I’m in Hell again.

  Yet when a dim light filtered through the room, he wasn’t in the stark red-and-orange wasteland of Dis. He was somewhere black laced with neon blue. He’d sunk to the deepest trenches in the ocean, where the only light came from occasional magma spurts and luminescent fish.

  He stood upon a wide granite platform. It had no walls to keep him from falling off the side, and something told Lincoln that whatever was glowing down there was a long fall away.