“But how would that explain that the lady who brought your father to Sir Delacar obviously bespelled him?” demanded Rob.
“Oh, that’s simple. She was a human sorceress.” I sighed. “Which means another set of lists to go through.”
The horses were pretty tired by the time we got back, and it took some creative scrambling to stable them and change in time for dinner—seeing as some of us had a lot of cleaning up to do before we entered the palace. But currycombs worked to get all the dirt out of my hair, and a quick wash under the pump took care of all the ground-in soil on my skin. As for our tunics and trews, well, they were the same color as the dirt we’d been rolling in, so nothing showed.
I was the one in the worst shape, so I hid under the chatter of everyone else at the table. I actually felt very sorry for the rest of my friends because they were only just now realizing that they had rescued a dragon. I could tell when the realization hit each of them; their eyes suddenly lit up, and they had to bite their lips or suck in their cheeks to keep from bursting out with it. But they knew that they couldn’t tell, not this time. We’d talked about it. This little excursion had not been authorized, and if we were found out—well, I was not sure what Papa would do. Someday, I’d promised. Someday we can tell. When we’re knights and it will be too late to punish us for it.
Dinner revived me enough that I gave them all the little signal that said we were to meet in the training yard again.
“Well,” Nat said, his face reflecting the fact that the elation from saving Serulan was fading and the realization that we had probably wasted three evenings of research was setting in.
“It’s not wasted,” I said firmly. “Just because Serulan doesn’t know of any female Fae who disappeared, it doesn’t follow that the Fae didn’t have some other reason for not reclaiming her son. We should still think about asking other King animals and trying to think of other ways we can get information about the Fae. And we do need to add sorceresses to our search.”
Nat perked up. Rob groaned. “I don’t mind the talking-to-animals part,” he said, rubbing his head. “It’s the going over the records that’s murdering me.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE NEXT DAY WAS ONE OF MY DAYS WHEN I WAS SCHEDULED to visit Brianna’s cottage alone. Lobo was waiting for me when I came through the door in the oak, and with him was a badger.
It was a much larger badger than I had ever seen before, so I knew immediately that this would be another of the talking King animals, and I gave the fine-looking fellow a little bow of respect.
“This is Haldur,” Lobo said. “Of all the animals I know, he’s the one who knows the most about the Fae.”
“Which is not much, damsel,” Haldur admitted. “But I do collect stories. I know all the ones told by all the badgers in my line and all the ones that anyone I have met has been willing to tell me. Now, I do have a story. But I only tell stories when I am told a story in exchange. Have you a story?”
“Do you know about my baby sister Aurora’s christening?”
“Only that there was a great deal of excitement that went on about it. I would love to hear this story.”
So I sat right down next to the oak and told him everything in as much detail as I could. And when I was done, he sneezed three times and said, “That was a story worth hearing! Now here is mine.
“My family has always had their burrow in a part of the forest that most creatures won’t venture into.”
Lobo shook his head vigorously. “That’s an understatement! You’re practically on the doorstep of the Serpent Sisters!”
Thanks to our reading, I knew who the Serpent Sisters were. They’re among the rare Dark Fae who live together in a family group; at this point, it was more like a clan of about a dozen Dark Fae females (no males, none that humans have ever seen at least). The entire clan seems to have adopted a serpent theme; they wear sinuous snakeskin gowns, they have wings like dragons’, their ornaments are all serpent themed, and the clan leader has a snake-headed staff. There are probably all sorts of internal squabbles going on in that group, but none of that is allowed to show on the surface. When they appear in public, one or more of the subservient sisters play attendant to Sessoranu, the one humans call the Queen Snake.
“It’s nice and quiet, the way we like it,” Haldur said complacently. “They leave me alone; I don’t trouble them. Oh, I should mention this because it’s important. They actually live in a very large cave complex with multiple entrances. One of them—never used but once in my memory—is near my den.”
“I really wish you’d move,” fretted Lobo. “What if one day one of them takes a fancy to a badger-fur collar?”
Haldur chuckled. “It would clash with their theme. They are as set in their ways as I am. But to continue, it was a day in deep winter when I would ordinarily have been hibernating that I was awakened by rumbles in the ground. It was not unlike an earthquake, and I cautiously poked my nose out only to discover the forest and the air above it swarming with minions of the Dark Fae—in this case, of the Serpent Sisters, who seemed to be hunting for something. I retreated deeply into one of my three dens, and for a time, all was quiet. But then I heard something crawling down my entrance tunnel.”
Haldur was a very good storyteller. By this point, I was holding my breath.
“I gave a warning growl, but what I heard was not the frantic scrambling of something trying to get out of my tunnel before I charged but a soft female voice. ‘King Badger, King Badger,’ she called. ‘Will you let me hide here?’ I sniffed the air and smelled Fae. But more than that, I smelled something so rare that at first I did not recognize it. I smelled a Fae with child.”
I really had to bite my tongue and sit on my hands so as not to interrupt him at that point. I was afraid that if I did, he’d take offense and storm off without telling me the rest.
“Now I know you are bursting to ask me if she was a Dark Fae or Light.” Haldur tilted his head at me. “Well, they smell the same. So I just said, ‘Do you swear by the Compact and your power that you mean me no harm?’ and she said, ‘I swear,’ and I gave her leave to go to the right-hand den, and I went back up my tunnel to sit at the entrance and mask her scent. A few of the Serpent Sisters’ minions came snooping about, but a growl convinced them to look elsewhere. By nightfall, they had given up searching around my den. I went back down the tunnel, told the Fae that I thought it was safe to depart. ‘King Badger,’ she said. ‘Do you know of any place safe where I might go? The Serpent Sisters will kill me if they find me.’ I told her that I did not, but I suggested that she seek out the Goblin Market and told her where to find it. ‘They’ll sell you anything for a price, including safety.’ She thanked me and crawled out into the forest, and that is the end of the story.”
I thought about that for a moment. “So if anyone knows the next part of the story, it will be the Goblins?”
“Perhaps,” Haldur replied. “I never found out if she decided to look for safety on her own or went to the Goblin Market. Trying the market is a desperate move, but she sounded desperate to me.” He nodded gravely to me, with ponderous dignity. “And that is the end of my story.”
“Thank you, Haldur. So far you have been the most help I have been able to find in trying to determine just who my father was.”
The badger nodded again, nodded to Lobo, then turned and ambled back into the forest. He didn’t bother with the road. Then again, he was a badger. There wasn’t much that he couldn’t shove his way through.
Lobo sighed and lay down on the moss next to me “Well, that wasn’t much help.”
“It was more help than you’d think. I’m reasonably certain that this female Fae is my father’s mother. So far, there hasn’t been anyone else who corresponds to the person we are looking for. And what do you know about the Serpent Sisters, Lobo?”
“They’re very minor on the scale of things within the Dark Fae,” Lobo replied thoughtfully. “In fact, it’s speculated that the reason why they a
ll stick together is that singly they’re quite weak, magically speaking, and that they’d end up someone else’s minions if they didn’t pool their powers and their resources. And no one knows how many there are.”
So the mysterious Fae could have been… a dissenter. Or a Light Fae they had somehow captured who then escaped. Or someone who thought she was being recruited as an equal but who found that she was intended to become a minion.
Or one of the Serpent Sisters who dared to become pregnant.
But somehow that didn’t feel quite right. I would have thought that the Serpent Sisters would welcome a new birth into their clan; after all, they would have the opportunity to instill loyalty to the clan from birth. And the child might prove to be a more powerful magician than any of the current lot, making it extremely useful to them.
I nodded. “And that might be why we don’t have knowledge of any Dark Fae disappearing—you can’t know of one disappearing if you didn’t know about her in the first place.”
Lobo licked his lips. “It does sound,” he said tentatively, “as if your father’s mother was a Dark Fae.”
“Unless she was a Light Fae captive who was taken prisoner secretly by the Serpent Sisters so long ago that even her own people stopped looking for her. And in either case, if she knew the Serpent Sisters were about to find her again, it explains why she left Father with Sir Delacar and never came back for him. She might even have allowed herself to be recaptured in order to throw them off his trail.”
Lobo nodded. “It does seem as if the Serpent Sisters are where you should start your researches. When Brianna gets back, you should ask her. In the meantime, I will keep asking the others if they know anything. You never know. Perhaps we can find a creature that saw her or encountered her now that we know where and what we are looking for.”
But I already had an idea of where and how I was going to look. “I have to get back. I need to talk to the others.”
“What about?” Lobo asked, his brows suddenly furrowing with what looked like worry.
But I was in too much of a hurry to tell him.
I waited impatiently—lurked was more like it—just out of sight near the archery butts where the other Companions were training. It was easy enough; there was a huge wall around them to prevent misses from hitting anything, and bushes to make the wall less… obvious, I suppose. So I hid in the bushes. It was fortunate that Sir Delacar left early so I was able to slip inside the archery range once he was gone. I whistled softly to get the Companions’ attention and had them gather around me.
“I need you all to leave dinner early with me,” I said, feeling a bit breathless and very nervous because this was a spur-of-the-moment plan, but I didn’t think we’d get another chance at it. “We’ll need to get our horses and take them into the garden before anyone else gets there.” I took a deep breath. “We’re going to the Goblin Market.”
They all just stared at me as if they couldn’t believe my audacity. Since no one immediately objected, I continued talking.
“You know you can buy almost anything for the right price at the Goblin Market. Including information. Maybe we can find out where Lady Thornheart came from and what creature she was working for.” And I quickly related Haldur’s tale.
“I see where you’re going with this, Miri,” Giles said slowly. “But ‘the right price’ more often than not is something bad. The Goblin Market is supposed to be neutral, but everyone knows that it’s not. And you don’t know for sure that this Fae who escaped from the Serpent Sisters was your father’s mother, and you don’t know that she went to the Goblin Market.”
I didn’t feel like arguing with him. “Are you going to help me or not? Because no matter what, I’m going there tonight. The evenings are still really long, and we can get back before anyone will notice that we were gone. I’ll never get a better chance.”
Rob and Elle looked excited, Nat and Anna were interested but apprehensive, and Giles was disapproving. I honestly wanted to shake him, I was so annoyed with him. This was my best chance at finally finding out something about my own heritage, and he didn’t want me to do it! Couldn’t he see how important it was to me? And, of course, it was also our only chance at finding out anything at all about the late, unlamented Lady Thornheart!
“Of course we’ll go, Miri!” Rob burst out. “It’s a brilliant plan!” I smiled at him, relieved, because I knew once one of them agreed, they’d all follow. And, of course, they did.
Even Giles, although he still looked reluctant as we all split up to get ready for dinner.
And thank goodness it was a stew night. There was only one bowl to pass and the platters of bread were within the reach of everyone. We were able to hurry through the meal without seeming to hurry and got out while the other squires were still lingering over their second bowls. They were used to our doing that and didn’t even look up when we left. Even Wulf didn’t give us a second glance.
And it was still daylight, so taking our horses out for a late ride was not unreasonable. The only tricky part was getting them through the garden to the oak before people inside came out to enjoy the early-evening breezes, the flowers, and the minstrels.
Once through the door, we turned in the opposite direction of Brianna’s, and about a mile down that road, we took the first track heading north. This path wasn’t a secret; everyone in this part of the kingdom knows where the Goblin Market is—mostly so they can avoid it. And the farther along we went, the narrower the track became. The trees were closer together, their bark and leaves got darker and darker, and the branches and trunks became more crooked and twisted. Fewer and fewer were “friendly” trees like oak and ash, and there were more yews, willows, and thorns. Spiderwebs glinted among the branches, and black-and-white molds patched the trunks. The undergrowth looked rank and somehow unhealthy. The others kept glancing uneasily at the forest on either side of us. “Look confident, like we belong here,” I whispered. If there was one thing I knew about Goblins, it was to never show your fear in front of them.
In theory, the Goblin Market is a neutral place; although they are not strictly Fae, the Goblins are a kind of Fae creature, and they have to hold by the Rules. But beyond that, even Goblins need to trade for things they can’t produce for themselves, and a few of the things they want are produced only by humans. If you’re brave or audacious enough, and smart enough to not get outmaneuvered by them, you can make quite a good living selling the things—and the information—you can get from them to humans who don’t dare venture to the market themselves. But the neutrality of the Goblin Market is hedged with a great many “maybes.” While they can’t attack a human directly, nothing in the Rules prevents them from tricking anyone they trade with, and while the Rules say they can’t lie while inside the market, nothing prevents them from withholding truth.
There’s no point in acting coy around them, either. Everything I’ve ever heard or read says to state what you want straight out and let them compete with one another to sell it to you. It also doesn’t pay to act too eager, and if they aren’t being reasonable, you should walk away because there’s always the chance that you can hire someone who is a better trader than you are to get it for you. Sometimes the point of coming out here to the market is to find out if the thing you want exists at all. Of course, that was not what I wanted. I wanted information, and since the last thing I knew about the unknown woman was that she had been advised to go to the Goblin Market, I was pretty sure that this was where she had gone.
There was light ahead of us now—a bright light that, as we continued to ride forward, resolved itself into several light sources that were warm yellow, red, and blue and that stood in stark contrast to the shadow-dark, spiderwebby forest around us. Then I heard music, faintly at first, but it became louder the closer we got. From here, the Goblin Market sounded and looked no different from the Midsummer Faire. I pulled up Star, and the rest came to a halt beside me.
“You all know not to eat anything here, right?” I asked urg
ently.
They all nodded, but Giles spoke. “I know not to. I mean, that’s what the tales all say, but why?”
It was Nat who answered, his voice a little harsh. “Because if you do, you’ll never be satisfied by human food again. You’ll keep coming back here again and again and again, giving everything you have to the Goblins in exchange for their food. And eventually, all you’ll have is yourself, and that’s what you’ll end up giving them.”
Giles licked his lips. “And then what?”
“No one knows,” said Nat. “No one knows if you become a slave to them, or if they eat you, or even if you become a Goblin yourself. All anyone knows is that if the addiction isn’t broken, you’ll finally go to them and never come back again.”
“It’s not easy to break, either,” I added, relying on my knowledge of the wealth of Fae tales I’d read. “It takes a Light Fae, a powerful sorcerer, or a wizard. And you’ll still never be the same again afterward. So don’t eat anything. If juice is squirted on your face, keep your mouth tightly shut and don’t lick your lips. And don’t draw weapons inside the market; that’s an offense, and it will mean they can attack us.”
I nudged Star into a walk and the rest followed me toward the enticing beacon of the Goblin Market.
We stopped just outside the bounds of the market and dismounted. Giles volunteered to hold the horses. We didn’t want to take any chances on breaking any rules by bringing them inside—and we also didn’t want to discover that the Goblins would only trade the information I wanted for the horses!
We walked through an arch made of the intertwining branches of two trees, one on either side of a weedy track. The arch was covered in thousands of tiny moving lights, which looked to be some sort of firefly. But this sort of firefly had a glowing head rather than a glowing tail, and the tail was home to a wicked-looking stinger. And the market looked remarkably like the faire, complete with stalls—except the stalls were woven of still-living, intertwined, black-leaved vines, and the canopies were hanging swaths of moss full of those fireflies. There were also glowing globes of light everywhere, the source of the red, blue, and yellow light we’d seen from the distance. And in every stall was at least one Goblin.
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