by Hal Emerson
Chapter Eighteen: He Who Rules the Darkness
The last time I met with Robin was barely a week before my year was up – a week before I had to decide whether I would stay or go. When I entered the room, he was looking out the window, as usual.
“I’m here,” I said before closing the doorway. It was easy now, almost laughably so, to touch the life of the Bower and ask it through the madness to flow and change. I palmed the heavily grained wood and felt the echoing heat. The wood flowed and closed the door, and I moved forward into the room.
“Tomorrow night,” he said.
I froze.
“What?”
“You heard me – don’t make me repeat it.”
“But tomorrow is a new moon,” I said, confused. “We can’t do anything that night – going outside would be suicide.”
“We won’t be out there,” he said, “you will be.”
“What?”
“You’ll be gone long before the Hunter arrives,” he said, still not looking at me.
“Are you insane? You want me out there tomorrow night when the moon goes down?”
“Yes.”
“Where will you be?”
“In a much more dangerous place than that,” he said softly. I wanted to ask him more, but I knew that I would get nothing else out of him – if he had wanted to tell me, he would have, and any further questions would only turn into him mocking me.
“This is the only chance we have,” he said. “I can’t tell you more.”
“Yes you can, but you won’t.”
“No, I mean I can’t. I mean I’ve figured out what to do, figured out how to draw him out, how to confront him. But it involves something I can’t speak about, something about which I’m sworn to silence.”
He turned around to face me finally, and he looked as though he’d aged overnight. His already gaunt face now had fine lines around the mouth and eyes and across his forehead, and I couldn’t help but feel shocked.
“What happened?”
“Nothing,” he grunted. He moved away from the window and approached me. I tensed, more worried about his presence now than I could remember being for a long time. It was not a sense of physical danger, but of something intangible, something that made me feel sick to my stomach.
“We won’t train tonight.” Now that he was even closer, I could feel the wrongness about him like a cloud of stink, and I almost didn’t hear what he was saying. “Go – come here tomorrow night and we’ll begin.”
“Wait – what am I going to do now?”
“Say your goodbyes. We’re not coming back.”
I left without another word, and as soon as I was out of the room I felt a hundred times better. The sickness passed, and I pushed it from my mind.
Then what he’d said truly sank in.
We’re not coming back.
I started walking in the vague direction of my own room as the realization came crashing down on me. I had been so consumed with the thought of taking my revenge that I hadn’t even thought about what it would mean – hadn’t thought about what would come after or how it would affect the others.
Without Oberon, there was no Bower.
I ended up in the Hall. I don’t remember trying to get there, but I think it was the right place for me to go. That had been happening to me lately – I’d been skipping time, simply forgetting what had happened and somehow appearing at my destination as if by magic.
I sat down at the nearest table, which was deserted. The early evening meal had finished, and most of the Fae were about their work, such as it was on a night before the new moon.
The new moon … the night of the Wild Hunt.
Was that where Robin had been? Had he been wherever it was that Gwyn ap Nudd ruled? Was that the sense of something more that I had felt about him when I’d entered the room, the smell that had made me sick? I’d never encountered the Hunter while holding the madness, but I did not think it out of place for me to have such a strong reaction.
I blinked and the tables were suddenly full of Ilyn.
Shocked, I stood up and stumbled backward, shaking off the fog of sleep. I realized distantly that I’d let go of the madness for the first time in weeks, and that as soon as it was gone I’d fallen into a deep slumber that my body no doubt desperately needed. I don’t know how long I’d been there, but my whole body ached and my legs and hips were tingling with pins and needles as blood rushed back through the muscles.
Some of the Ilyn nearby looked up at me in surprise, almost as if they were confused how I’d gotten there, and I turned away quickly. The surprise rippled through the room and I knew that someone who knew me would see me if I didn’t leave quickly. I couldn’t talk to any of them – not that night.
I turned the first corner of the stairwell that led up in the direction of my room, and my head spun. My vision was cracked and splintered like a broken mirror, and though I staggered onward I was weighed down by the leaden pull of long-neglected sleep. Weeks worth of madness-induced mania had kept me awake and functioning, and now that the support was gone I had fallen straight through the floor of exhaustion.
I barely made it to my chamber. I had to apologize to a number of Fae on the way there whom I walked into or fell against as I staggered along. The whole time I was reaching for the madness, trying to get it back, but it was as if that part of me had been erased. It was just no longer there inside me.
I collapsed finally into the nestle in my room, and as soon as I hit the sheets I fell into unconsciousness.
I had disturbing dreams. I dreamt of Titania coming for me in the night, taking me and the other children away, dreamt that I convinced the others that we should go with her only to have her slaughter us one by one like pigs at the edge of the forest, the vulpine faces of the elf-Fae that followed her coldly watching as our blood drained from our necks. I dreamt of Robin killing Oberon, dreamt he clawed the Erlking’s face open with his bare hands, and then he turned to me and said “we are the same – you did the same to Tristan.” I dreamt of the Erlking watching me with horrified and confused eyes as I threw him to the ground and shouted accusations down at him, dreamt that I cried as I did what needed to be done. I dreamt of Brandel and Gwenel crying as the Bower broke apart and fell down around them, leaving them homeless and aimless. I dreamt of Faolan kissing me and telling me he’d been killed because I’d told him who I was, smiling as he said it was all my fault and I was the one who should be ended.
I woke up screaming, in a cold sweat. There was light on me, and I could see that the moon was where it was when I’d fallen into bed. I was confused – what night was it? Had I been out for a full night or for less than a handful of minutes?
There was movement behind me, and I realized I’d been woken by a voice not my own.
“Where were you? I told you to come to me tonight.”
I turned and clawed my way out of bed. By reflex, I opened myself to the madness, and this time it flowed through me easily, infusing my body with fever and energy. The last cobwebs of sleep were cleared from before my eyes, and I focused on Robin.
He was back to his normal self. The lines around his face were gone and the heavy sense of burden had been lifted. There was a lightness to his step and a grin about his face and eyes that confused me. Where had this Robin been the night before?
“How long was I … why did I –?”
“You let go of the madness,” he said, examining me more carefully. “It happens – your body forces you to. Even I let go sometimes. What do you remember?”
“Leaving you, going to the Hall, then falling asleep … waking up, coming here … dreams … lots of dreams.”
“Nightmares.” It wasn’t a question.
“Is that normal?”
“Yes. You can grab it now, though, I can feel it in you. Can you hold it?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Then we’ll wait here until it’s time.”
“When’s that?”
“When it
is.” He smirked at me and I knew I’d get no more from him. I watched him for a moment, standing there awkwardly, and then he moved to the window, where he watched the bare sliver of moon just passing through the height of its arc. Not knowing what to do, I began to pace.
“Stop that,” Robin said immediately. I continued anyway. It was a measure of his own tension that he didn’t try to stop me again.
“Why does it have to be tonight?” I asked abruptly, thinking again of the moon. It would be gone by the time it hit the horizon.
“Because it does,” he said, not looking at me.
I whirled on him, my anxiety making me bold.
“What is it we’re doing? What is your plan?”
Slowly, he turned his golden gaze to me, the fire banked and held back, ready to burst into life again but currently restrained. I didn’t retreat but held my stance, unwilling or unable to back down now.
“To break him,” softly said the Puck, “as I told you.”
I whirled away and again resumed my pacing, making a measured tread up and down the room. The sleep had refreshed me, and the effect of the madness amplified my newly restored energy.
Five paces up, five paces back – five paces up, five paces –
“How?” I asked, turning back to him.
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Then explain it to me – if we’re going to be waiting here forever then you might as well talk to me. What use am I if I don’t know anything?”
“Fine.”
I watched him in surprise, and saw that he was looking far away, nodding his head slowly as if to a silent beat, almost as if he were counting something.
“I’m going to break his power,” Robin said, “by taking away what he rules.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m going to use Gwyn against him. And when Oberon is distracted … he dies.”
I felt dread rush through me at the mention of the leader of the Wild Hunt.
“How?”
“Oberon rules the shadows,” Robin said. “Gwyn rules the darkness.”
“What’s the difference?” I asked. I realized that I’d gone from pacing to trailing my index finger along the wood grain of the Bower wall. I couldn’t keep my hands still – they kept clutching things at random, and as I walked along the wall I found a thick knot in the grain. I began to pick at it in earnest, my mind drawn to this superficial task like metal to a magnet.
“Shadows are cast by light,” Robin said, speaking almost absently, completely absorbed in whatever he was thinking. “Sunlight and moonlight both cast shadows, but the shadows of moonlight are much stronger. Oberon is the King of Moonlight – he rules the strongest shadows. Darkness is an absence of light altogether. If there is enough of it, it is a power of its own. Oberon rules the shadows because he rules the moonlight – Gwyn ap Nudd rules the darkness, because he and his kind don’t need the light at all.”
“But they’re still Fae,” I said, still prying at the knot.
“They are, but of a darker kind. Just as those who follow Titania are of a lighter kind – a purer kind.”
“Lighter doesn’t mean purer,” I said.
He didn’t respond. A thick slab of wood suddenly came loose, and I stumbled back, feeling a little stupid. It flickered in my hand and I realized I’d accidentally touched the Bower wall with the madness. Robin shifted and I dropped the piece of bark and plunged my hand into my pants pockets. If he’d noticed the movement, he didn’t comment on it.
“It’s time,” he said quietly.
He pushed himself off the wall and I glanced out the window. The moon was just past its zenith. The last moonlight ceremony of the lunar month – if the warped time of the Bower could be construed in such a way – was over.
Robin stopped at the entrance and turned back to me.
“Take this,” he said, holding out his hand.
I reached for it and felt my skin turn warm when it touched his, like my hand had been pressed up against a slowly heating stove. I opened my hand and saw inside a moonstone, one much newer than the one I carried.
“I cannot take it out with me,” he said. “You need to fill it.”
“I … I don’t know …”
“The moonlight fires,” he said impatiently. “The ones that burn in the Hollowed Hall. As you pass them, hold the stone over them. The fire will dim for a moment, and then the stone will begin to glow.”
“Why can’t you take it yourself?”
“Because I need to do something first,” he said. “And where I’m going, I can’t bring that. Stay here until I’m gone. Meet me in the field – in the alcove where all this started.”
He turned away before I could ask more questions, and moved off. I waited until he had disappeared around the deserted corridor and then followed, doing my best to slow my pace.
When I reached the Hall, the children were being ushered into the Bower and led up to their nestles, where they would be safe from the coming Hunt. The rest of the Fae were retreating as well, going up into the higher reaches of the Bower tree where Gwyn ap Nudd and his followers would not venture. There were guards, of course: Half a dozen Urden were stationed on either side of the Hall’s main entrance to make sure that no one left as night began to fall, and to make sure that everyone came back inside.
I waited at the top of the stairs, picking my spot carefully, barely daring to breathe, as hundreds of feet passed by me, their owners none the wiser that I was hiding in the dark corner cloaked in shadow. Once the bulk of them had passed by, sneaking past the rest was child’s play after all that Robin had taught me. Once everyone was up the stairs, I moved down them. There were still Ilyn there, but none of them saw me. They were talking to each other, obviously without nestlings to look after, and once they’d passed by I breathed easier.
I moved to the nearest fire, feeling the weight of the stones in my pocket. I reached in and pulled out the larger one, the one he’d given me, and held it in my palm as I crouched beside the silver fire in the large brazier. I heard movement, slow and lumbering, and knew that Urden were coming up from the depths after checking that none of the children had gone that way.
I wondered where Robin was, but knew I’d never know.
I timed it perfectly – as soon as the Urden were behind one of the fires further down the hall, I threw my hand over the brazier in a quick dash of movement. The flames flickered and seemed to dim, as a thin tendril of the moonlight reached out and connected with the stone. It grew hot in my hand, so hot that I feared I’d be burned, and I dropped the stone to the floor, where it clattered once before coming to a stop.
I threw myself back under the nearest table without hesitation.
The tread of the Urden stopped … and started up again, coming straight for me. I looked out and saw the stone lying not three feet from me, but plainly out in the open. If they saw it, they’d search the tables, and I had no idea if the same tricks I’d learned from Robin about fooling Ilyn would be able to fool the Urden.
I grabbed onto the underside of the table and skidded myself out to the stone. I grabbed it at a full arm’s length, hooked my other arm down under the table again, and pulled myself back with all my might.
My shirt caught and pulled up around me, choking me and almost coming off completely, just as the Urden turned down the row I was in. Trying to control my breathing, blinded and constrained by the shirt up around my head, I stayed completely still. The Urden lumbered down the row, looking around, and then went past.
I stifled a sigh of relief and crawled to the end of the table, holding hard to the madness and keeping it wrapped around me like a second skin. I wrenched the shirt down so I could see again, got to my feet, looked to see the Urden checking another row, and then ran as silently as I could for the foot of the hall. I was bent over so low that my knees were up around my ears as I wildly tried to keep my balance.
I heard the Urden stop.
I froze and tried not to breathe.
I saw the shadow of one of them bend down and look around the base of the brazier, and then saw it straighten again, the green-gray skin looking like a moss-covered boulder in the flickering light.
“This Urden sees nothing,” the creature rumbled. One of its companions grunted in response, and then they had moved off, up the aisle and away from me.
I let out a ragged breath as quietly as I could and began to move along the underside of the far tables for the entrance. I thrust the moonstone back into my pocket, feeling it clink against the one I carried with me. My shoulders were burning with the effort of wrenching my shirt back into place under the awkward angle of the table, and my feet made clammy footmarks on the floor behind me.
I snuck past the Ilyn stationed at the door, cloaking myself easily in the abundant shadows, and then simply disappeared from view around the side of the Bower once I was outside. I scaled one of the roots, the madness making such a thing easy, and then dropped to the grassy ground.
I looked up; the moon was sinking with its slow, measured pace.
Something nagged the back of my mind, but when I tried grasp it, it was gone, and as the night watch of Urden and Ilyn passed me on their final sweep through the clearing, I was forced to move. With the sure, confident tread of my feet came sure, confident thoughts that shouldered my temporary doubt away.
I glanced up at the tree as I rounded it, looking through the tall branches toward the top that was always hidden what seemed like miles away, thinking that Oberon was up there even now, thinking that tonight was the night I would confront him.
I felt a wave of unease wash over me and I pushed the thought away.
When I’d lost sight and hearing of the Urden-Ilyn groups, I moved up the side of one of the tall Bower roots, ducking between two of them that branched overhead like rock formations, and then slipped through the opening they made into the small alcove. I leaned against the trunk of the tree to wait, knowing that no one would find me here unless they knew where to look.
I tried not to think about the last time I’d come here, but of course I did. The memories came, and I found myself looking at the patch of earth where I’d found Faolan. It was overgrown now with grass, all uneven levels, with small mushrooms that grew beside the roots in the eternal shade there, where even moonlight couldn’t touch them. The sound of crickets filled my ears, distant and muted here, and I knew then that the Bower had settled in for the night.
I don’t know how long I waited. Long enough for my heart to still and my breathing to ease, but not long enough that the chill of the evening and the shade could begin to sink into my skin.
When I heard movement at the entrance to the alcove, I moved into the shadows, feeling the press of the mushrooms against my legs, the high grass tickling through my thin silk clothing. I crouched down, trying to make myself as small as possible, and once more drew the shadows around me.
The figure that emerged from the opening was not one I recognized.
My breath caught in my throat, but I made no sound or movement. The Ilyn who’d come in was tall and broad of shoulder, with skin that was almost entirely a pale gold, like the plumage of a rare bird. He moved into the alcove, looking about him with a smooth, simple motion that forced recognition on me, though it did nothing to control my crazily beating heart, which continued to pound against my chest like a mad carpenter trying to rearrange my ribs.
“Robin,” I said, standing.
If my sudden appearance startled him, he gave no sign of it. He completed his glance around the alcove, his golden eyes combing through every shadow, pulling them apart like strands of hair to reveal the bare skin of the world. When his eyes came to me and locked on my face, the Ilyn façade he’d pulled over his body faded, and he stood revealed, his handsome face made even more beautiful by the contrast of moonlight and shadows playing about him.
He came to me quickly, wasting no movement, saying nothing. The only sound he made was the soft whisk of feet passing through the dewy grass, wetting the ends of his pants. The memory of Faolan’s blood came back to me with the force of a blow, and I only just avoided it by clinging to the madness, burying myself in the heat.
“Here,” I said, slipping the first moonstone into his hand, the one he’d told me to bring. He took it without a word and concealed it beneath his clothing; light flared then dimmed as he touched the smooth surface. “What now?”
“Now you go to the middle of the field,” he told me, rummaging beneath the long silk over-shirt he wore. It was different from his normal clothing – bulkier, split down the middle, and seemingly full of pockets.
“But where are you going?”
“Just do what I tell you,” he growled, his golden eyes flashing. He examined me, looking me up and down in one quick flick of motion. Whatever he saw displeased him. He closed the distance between us, which was already a little too close for comfort.
“Two Ilyn will pass back to the Bower as the moon begins to set,” he breathed into my face. “I need you to make sure they do not report what they have seen. They cannot make it to the Bower – they cannot pass you. Do you understand?”
I took a step back, trying to see him more clearly. Was he asking me to…?
“When you’ve done that,” he continued, his breath hot and sweet, like melted licorice root, “you will stay there and watch for any others. There may be more. Your part in all of this is to stop them from reaching the Bower – stop them from reaching the throne.”
“The throne?” I was whispering, so intense was his look and bearing.
“You will stay in the field until I return for you,” he continued, ignoring my question as if I’d never spoken. “You must stay in the field.”
“I will.”
“Swear it,” he said, unyielding. “Grab the madness and swear to me you will not leave that field until I return.”
I swallowed hard, every inch of me saying that I shouldn’t do this. Suddenly the whole foundation of what we were doing cracked and I thought of the way Oberon had stood before us all the night we’d first arrived. I thought of the way he’d taken us in, how the Ilyn had been terribly harsh, but also fair. How all of us save Tristan had survived the madness –
Save Tristan and Faolan.
I became aware again of where we were and realized why Robin had told me to meet him here. He wanted me to remember my hatred, but it now seemed small and shrunken. It was as if I’d used too much of it up too fast. Coming back had made me realize exactly what I was doing and forced me to question it.
“He killed Faolan,” Robin said to me, and I felt my skin crawl as he spoke in response to my thoughts. “He forced me to come out here and gut him.”
It was the spark of anger in his voice that relit the anger in me. My head felt hot, and I realized my fingernails were digging into my palms. The madness was rushing through me, a raging river that I could barely control.
“You will have your revenge,” Robin said, again seeming to read my mind. His voice was coming out in haste now, words clipping against me like a rushing tide. “Swear that you will not move until I come for you. You must be there or all is ruined – those Ilyn must not reach the throne.”
“I swear I will not move until you come for me.”
I felt the truth of the words ring through me, lost in the madness as I was. There was no turning back now – not here where Faolan’s blood had soaked into the very ground. Robin smiled, and I shivered.
“Follow.”
He left the alcove and I did as he bade me, following him a few paces behind. We moved quickly and silently, nothing more than shadows.
There was no one left out in the field – none of the Ilyn, none of the Urden, no one and nothing in sight except the distant trees that lined the field and the glimmering dew-coated strands of grass and flowers.
Robin walked toward the tree line directly in front of the opening to the Bower, and I couldn’t help but think this was too risky. Surely it didn’t matter where we entered the trees –
surely we could go around the far side. But I held my tongue, knowing that if I spoke my question would go unanswered.
He stopped, and I stopped as well, both of our bodies falling still at the same time, me mirroring him exactly without even needing to try.
“Stay here.”
A quick jolt of energy pounded through me once and then disappeared as I clamped down on my heart, forcing its beats to come out slow and measured.
“For how long?”
“As long as I require,” he said, turning to face me, his golden eyes watching me from beneath the hood of the new garment he wore. His face was entirely in shadow, but still those eyes shone out at me and I had to suppress the thrill of fear they caused.
“You still haven’t told me –“
“I’ve told what you need to know,” he said simply, speaking in measured sentences that belied frustration at the time I was wasting. “I need you here. That is all.”
The moon above me was sinking slowly toward the horizon, and if it fell before he returned, then I would be outside on the night of Darkness, when Oberon no longer controlled the Bower. When it no longer meant something to be one of his children.
“What if you are gone until the moon is down?” I barely kept the panic from my voice.
“I will return before darkness falls,” he said to me, sounding annoyed, as if the fact I needed reassurance just proved my incompetence.
I swallowed hard. He turned and disappeared in a swirl of motion, leaving me alone. I crouched down in the grass, making myself as small as possible. The wind whipped at my face and then died down again, settling into a heavy humidity.
The Ilyn came soon after.
In the middle of the field as I was, there were no shadows to cloak myself in, but the grass was tall and kept me hidden until they were only twenty yards away. They saw me and paused, and I noticed that they were both young – almost completely white, with only a few patches of purple on either of their bare chests.
“What are you doing out here, changeling?”
One of them was looking at me seriously, while the other just looked impatient.
“The Puck told us we were needed inside,” he said to the other, ignoring me, but the one who’d spoken first shrugged off the comment. When the silence between us lengthened, he came closer with easy steps.
I let go of my mind and let the madness flow. I felt myself close the distance, and then I was spinning to strike the leg out from beneath the Ilyn to my right, the one looking past me into the Bower. He collapsed to the ground in a heap, where I struck his head with the bare heel of my foot. His eyes went blank and he lay still.
A hand grabbed my shoulder, thick nails digging into my skin through the silk of my shirt. I tried to spin away from it, but the Ilyn followed me, and I was forced to change direction, smacking into his legs, locking out his knees and tripping him. He fell over me easily, turning the motion into a roll, from which he emerged unscathed. I came after him, feeling the whispery-lightness of the grass against me feet and the dew slicking and weighing down the ends of my pants.
The solemn Ilyn watched me come, and crouched at the last second, trying to use my momentum to throw me. I spun and threw my legs into the air, arching over him to crash into the ground, my knees pounding down painfully even through the cushion of grass. He turned, and I stuck a foot out in a powerful side kick. He gasped as I found purchase in the center of his stomach, and my hard heel pushed the air out of him. He staggered back and I rushed him, feinting left. He blocked a blow that never landed, and I swung around the other way to crash my heel into his temple. He fell to the ground and lay still, his face buried in the grass.
I tried to calm my breathing, but it wouldn’t be calmed. My mind slowly came back to me as I emerged from the madness and realized what I’d done. Standing over the Ilyn I couldn’t help but feel as though I’d betrayed more than just the Erlking.
But then I remembered all the beatings I’d suffered, all the degradation, and I hated them both all over again, even though I didn’t know them. They were Ilyn – they were just like Ai’Ilyn and all the others – just as bad as Oberon for letting Faolan die when he didn’t live up to what they expected us to be.
Ilyn who were once changelings themselves.
I tried to tell myself that made it worse – tried to tell myself that they were complicit in this then, that they had condoned the very thing they should have tried to fight against, but my mind turned to Brandel and Gwenel and the fact that they soon would be Ilyn themselves, that they would train future generations and help them through the trials they would face –
“Help them by beating them senseless,” I snarled under my breath to no one.
I turned away from the fallen forms and stared out into the forest, feeling sick to my stomach. My foot ached, but not badly. Suddenly I was homesick. The feeling rushed over me in a rolling wave, drowning me beneath the power of it before I could even think to muster a defense. I felt a sob welling up in me, but I forced it down, denying it purchase inside my heart and voice in the cooling air of the dying night.
I hated the thing I loved, and it was tearing me apart.
Breathing heavily, I turned back to the Bower, looked into the yawning mouth of the Hollowed Hall, now dark and empty. But the beauty of it was too much, so I turned back to scan the tree line, going from one patch of shadow to another, one by one, trying to make out which, if any of them, might contain the Puck.
I looked up into the sky, at the last timid sliver of the crescent moon that would soon be made new when it dipped beneath the horizon line. It was much farther down the side of the sky than I’d imagined possible – one of the strange time quirks that made the Bower so hard to understand.
I tried to still the rising panic that threatened to engulf me, but it was useless. I tried to reach out to the madness, but I found no refuge there either. I looked back to the tree line, searching back and forth, but saw nothing.
Time began to trip forward in odd leaps and spurts. I glanced up at the moon periodically and managed to convince myself that it was going very slowly, that I had plenty of time. I bit the inside of my cheek so hard I winced and tasted blood. I looked back at the Ilyn, suddenly thinking that maybe they would wake, wondering what I would do.
Robin would return. I had to believe it. I had to believe in someone. I couldn’t believe in Oberon, couldn’t believe in Faolan, but Robin I could believe in. We shared a hate – and that was stronger than anything else.
I looked up at the sky once more and barely stifled a moan. The moon was only just above the tree line on the far right side of the field. I looked back to where Robin had disappeared, but still saw nothing. I began to hope that one of the other Ilyn or even an Urden would make their way back toward the Bower. Robin had said there might be more – he’d said that –
The quality of the light changed and I watched the sliver of moon disappear over the edge of the trees. Some of its light still shown through the leaves, scattering beams that were weak and sickly, the last dying tendrils of this month’s light.
On reflex I grabbed for the madness, and it came.
I crouched down in the grass, letting my mind go free, trying to find a way out of this, but unable to do so. I was trying to make myself as small as possible, as hidden as I could be, but I knew it would be useless.
Soon, the stars were all the light there was to illuminate the scene, and as such they barely illuminated a thing. The humidity dropped away with each passing second, and a chill filled the air as it dried, the moisture drained away by some unseen force. I could make out nothing but vague shapes all around me; moving shadows and the noise of wind seemed to come from every side, buffeting me, questing through my hair, stinging my cheeks and bringing tears to my eyes.
I was as deep in the madness as I could go, but it was useless. The oath I’d sworn to Puck forced me to stay in the field. Even the thought of going back was too much for me, and I began to sweat and shake as if with si
ckness. I turned around, swinging one leg behind the other, and my stomach cramped so violently that the blood drained from my face, sweat burst free of my skin, and I almost lost control of my bowels.
I remember thinking that something had gone wrong. I don’t know how I was still so naïve – I don’t know how I hadn’t figured it out the moment I was left there. But I was convinced, beyond a single shred of doubt, that something had happened to Robin. Somehow he’d been found out by one of the Ilyn – or maybe the Urden had been called – or maybe Oberon himself –
And as my thoughts ran wild, the light faded and died.
Darkness fell, so complete that I couldn’t see an inch in front of my face. Wind began to blow ceaselessly, moaning and wailing and bringing with it the distant sound of trumpets and drums.
I thrust my hand into my pocket, reaching for my moonstone. My hands were cold and numb from the sudden wind, and panic raced through me as I feared I’d lost it, but finally I felt the familiar surface, hard and smooth. I grabbed it and thrust it above my head. The stone burst into light, shining and beating back the darkness –
Figures moved out from the trees, dozens of them, scores, too many for me to count – and leading them, detaching himself from the from the head of the group and making his way straight for me with two hounds snarling at his side, was the Hunter himself. He passed the chains holding the huge black creatures to the one I recognized vaguely as his brother, and came forward alone, until he was just outside the ring of immediate light cast by my stone. Then, very deliberately, he took a step forward, violating the barrier of the moonlight circle.
Gwyn ap Nudd towered over me, the low cheekbones of his face, his prominent brow, and the sickly yellow eyes of a rabid wolf, all illuminated in sharp contrast to the darkness of which he seemed made. His lips pulled back, revealing yellowed teeth and releasing the stench of rotting meat. I gagged and recoiled, but he followed me. I turned to run, but from the depths of the madness I could feel shadows moving behind me and I knew that his followers had surrounded me, blocking off my retreat.
A hand grabbed my hair and pulled me off my feet. Pain exploded in my head and I felt like the skin of my scalp was about to be torn off. I stumbled as the hand turned me around, using my hair as a handle, controlling me. Fear was pounding through my body, sickening white lines of it that pulsed through me and tried to break through my tight-fisted control. I had to get away, I had to –
The moonstone was knocked from my hands to the ground, where it flickered and died, plunging my whole world into darkness. I felt hot, stinking breath on my face. Hands grabbed at me and held me tight.
Terror encompassed me; I began to scream.
Gwyn ap Nudd began to laugh.