by Ren Ryder
“Tie him up!” Maere commanded. “Get him on the back of a horse, on the double!”
In quick order, I was gagged and hogtied, then secured to the back of an antlered deer.
It was an uncomfortable trip, especially considering how foreign a mode of transportation it was to me. looking up at the sky with a silken cloth shoved halfway down my throat so that I could only breathe through my nose. With each bounding step, the deer’s firm musculature tensed beneath me, and its gait caused my restraints to dig deep into my flesh.
Chapter Twelve
At first I was so dazzled by reflected moonlight that I felt sun-blind. I would have shaded my eyes with my hands, were they not bound and tied. Instead I made do with a narrow squint until I was able to bear the splendor.
It was an enormous crystal pavilion.
Two rows of crystal pillars supported a wide, long rectangular crystal roof. There was furniture made from opals and sapphires and rubies, diamonds and colored topaz, adorned with coverings and cushions of midnight silk with silver tassels.
Like a gossamer veil, a near-full moon and glowing stars could be seen through the translucent roof. The sky and stars seemed so near that I thought I might be able to reach up and touch them with my hand. With our party’s arrival a crowd of colors came rushing in, staining the floors, pillars, couches, ceiling, and floors with a thousand dazzling hues.
Lady Maere leapt from her mount and moved like liquid to seat herself in a throne hewn from smoky quartz and covered in thick, plush pillows located at the end of the crystal hall. In her place of power and surrounded by courtiers, she looked lovelier than an evening star, and as potent.
I glanced behind me to see a no-nonsense elfin huntress standing behind me had my staff strapped to her back. She had two silver daggers strapped to one hip and a delicate rapier on the other. When she saw me looking the huntress glared and her hand drifted towards the elegant twirling sword hilt at her waist.
Behind her was the twenty-odd hunting party positioned in the middle of the crystal hall. There had to be hundreds more seated at couches while others stood beside pillars or tables. Still others floated or flew in defiance of gravity.
This Night Court was representative of centaurs, giants, harpies, kelpies, elfin men and maidens, humanoids with horned crowns, a trio of ogres opposite a half-dozen dark skinned trolls, gnomes, leprechauns, dark imps, redcaps, a large portioning of banshees, pucks keeping lesser goblins in line, hovering dark spirits, a black griffin with its wings folded, a fearsome wyvern, and various unidentifiable beings that I had no name for.
None of the courtiers looked happy to see me. In fact, their stares were one and all hostile and challenging. The Nightside did not welcome me, not even for appearance’s sake.
“Eyes ahead, champion,” the huntress spat.
Despite her closed-off demeanor, I sighed in relief as I followed instructions and returned my eyes to the throne.
“You there, you may speak, now give me your name.” Lady Maere stretched out a hand to me and held it open, awaiting the gift of my name. Her dainty fingers and hands were covered by soft black leather gloves that stretched up to her bicep.
Bell whispered, “If you give her your name, she’ll gain power over you. Be able to control you.”
“Honorable queen Maere,” I half-bowed and stared at the ground rather than meet her impenetrable black eyes, “I go by Kal.”
My huntress guard swept my legs out from under me, forced me to my knees and pushed my head down into a low bow. “You will show respect when speaking to the Phantom Queen of Thorns!”
The queen showed no reaction to the display.
“And the sylph child? She is accompanying you, no?” Maere’s voice settled in my ears like a comforting lullaby.
Bell raised a dainty hand and exposed her predatory nature. “Call me Bell!”
Bell’s bloodthirst filled the air.
It was then that I understood the gist of Bell’s intentions.
The Nightside ruled by tooth and claw. Where an exchange of words might be respected in the Wildwood, the Darkwood’s inhabitants would be impressed by shows of strength. A silver tongue wouldn’t get me anywhere. In fact, it might get me into trouble.
I felt the faerie queen’s attention return to me. “You find clothes restricting?” Queen Maere asked.
I returned to a standing position with some effort. I was sweating. “What? No.”
Maere gave me a thin-lipped smile. “Some of our, more, shall we say, active nymphs tend to disdain the wearing of garments. I assumed you were of a similar predilection.”
I blushed red as a beet as the crowd’s amusement washed over me.
Bell butted in, flying in front of me and waving her arms erratically. “He’s all mine, so don’t go getting any ideas!”
“I’m sure you could be convinced to share of your meal, no?” Lady Maere giggled, hiding her mouth behind a hand as she laughed.
Bell puffed out her chest. “I’ll have you know, I’m his contracted familiar, and I get to drink his blood whenever I want, plus when he bites the dust I get to eat him all up!”
I scowled but said nothing.
“I could simply annul that contract. What then?” Black miasma spilled out of the faery queen and filled the hall with a fine mist.
I didn’t appreciate being talked about like some trinket to be exchanged at anyone’s pleasure.
“No, you won’t,” I challenged.
Lady Maere retracted her black miasma, and it disappeared as if it had never been. “Be that as it may, I take what I want. Hope that my desires do not outstrip yours one day, little sylph.”
Bell shuttered her bloodlust only to replace it with bright burning anger. She kept herself from responding, but it must’ve been an effort since a thin trail of blood ran down from her lip off her chin.
Lady Maere’s face was a picture of calm, but I thought I sensed a faint amusement emanating from her. The queen’s crow fluffed its feathers and nodded its head up and down excitedly. One of its black, beady eyes appraised me like a slab of meat.
Maere patted her crow to settle it. “Can you guess why you were brought before my court?”
I came up with a few different ways to answer her question, then discarded each as they became more flowery than the last. “There’s no good reason I can think of, other than the trials and the Seven Year King. I’m one of many candidates, so, no, I don’t understand the purpose in singling me out.”
“Pfft!” Lady Maere laughed.
As the faerie queen laughed, laughter wove across the crystal pavilion. The sound echoed off the ceiling and reverberated in my ears.
I pressed my mouth into a thin line and made my face a mask while I weathered their amusement.
“Oh, surely not, did you think you were special? Did you think a Seelie Court’s so-called champion would be allowed to frolic across the Nightside unchallenged?”
The crowd jeered.
“Halfling scum.”
“Weak!”
“Prey!”
“Bastard.”
Lady Maere raised a hand, and the crowd quieted. “We may stem from the same ilk, but our ways are much distinct from those soft-bellied dwellers of the Wildwood. No feeble star shall be allowed to rise on our watch.”
Maere pouted her lips, fresh drawn with brilliant blue lipstick. “But we are not savages. Here and now you will be allowed an opportunity to turn back, if you so choose. Your life is in your own hands, champion, to tarry at this juncture is folly.”
“Turn back!”
“Coward!”
“Dead man walking.”
The Queen of the Night called, “Silence!” Once satisfied with the behavior of her courtiers, she gave me a pointed look. “Your answer?”
More tests. Faeries and their tests, they’re obsessed.
I sighed. “I pass these tests, you’ll let us go free?”
“On my word as Queen of the Night.”
I looke
d at Bell, who shrugged and gave me a slight nod.
“Let’s get on with it then.”
Lady Maere unwrapped a thick bolt of black silk to reveal a rusted, pitted bar of jagged iron. With earnest care she picked it up by its base, which had been surrounded by amber and wrapped with gold wire. She extended her arm to one side of her throne, an attendant appeared at her side to relieve her of the weapon.
I felt a chill.
“The test of cold iron.”
I broke out in goosebumps. Feeling repulsed, I wanted to remove myself from the crystal hall if only to get out of sight of that iron bar.
“Choose a side, left or right.”
I shook my head. “What if I’ve already been tested by iron?” I asked, then motioned to the thick scars around my ankles and wrists that’d been seared into my flesh by Ouroboros’s iron manacles.
The attendant strode up to me, took my limbs roughly in his hands, then examined my wrists up close. Soon after he released me and nodded to her queen.
Lady Maere dipped her head in acknowledgement. “Take comfort in knowing you shall be spared the rod there. Now, choose a side.”
I took a breath and held it. “Right.”
Three huntresses pincered me. One grasped my neck and wrapped her arm around my midsection from behind. Like snakes the two others constricted one side of my body with both their limbs, holding each of my arms and legs in place so I couldn’t even flinch. I felt no pleasure in their attentions.
“Begin.” Queen Maere let her hand fall to signal the start of the test.
Starting at the underside of my right elbow, the male attendant pressed the iron hard into the skin there. It felt like being jabbed with an icicle. Glacial cold bit into my skin and chilled my blood. Freezing energy traversed my body. My muscles tensed and writhed, trying to escape the iron’s touch of their own accord.
“Tsssssssssssssss,” I hissed between clenched teeth.
A rust-colored rectangular mark was revealed when the attendant removed the bar of iron.
“How many—” I started.
He interrupted in a rough whisper, “As many as it takes.” The attendant brought the iron bar down with the smooth intensity of an accomplished executioner.
Icy, fiery pain shocked me senseless. A moment’s relief. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over— I lost myself in an icy plain of biting cold. I lost control of my limbs and would’ve fallen had the three huntresses not rooted me in place. Had I not also lost any semblance of care for how I might look, I might have held in my screams, but instead I let them loose. They sounded like the screams of an animal in its death throes.
In not turning back I’d refused my single stay of execution. Death was the only escape I’d be granted. Neither was I allowed to escape into unconsciousness; each time I did, I was slapped awake.
Over and over and over and over again, the iron bar was brought down upon my skin, turning my blood to ice.
My eyes rolled back in my head, and when they returned to their natural positions, the attendant had stepped back and I was sprawled on the crystal floors like an invalid.
My eyes fluttered open.
When did I close them? Is it done?
When I looked my entire arm, save a three-inch band around my wrist, was covered in thick rectangular black marks the color of rust.
“Breathing,” the attendant confirmed.
Lady Maere took the iron bar from her attendant and wrapped it back up in its bolt of silk. “The court bears witness, you’ve withstood the test of iron.”
Countless feet stomped the ground, slapped fists against their chests, hit sword-hilts, to produce a general cacophony of sound.
“Witness!” The crowd echoed.
Maere tapped her gloved fingers on her quartz throne, then snapped her fingers. “Take him to get a drink. You, Bell, come here. I would have a word.” The queen’s voice sounded like it came from a far-off place.
My huntress captors dragged me like a sack of potatoes across the crystal hall, past Lady Maere on her throne, to a well less than a stone’s throw away. I felt so disassociated from my body and the Otherworld around me, I didn’t even think to resist. My head lolled to one side then the other, drool dripping from my open lips.
Instead of a traditional well, I found myself tossed to the ground beside a narrow fissure in the earth. Some little work had been done to widen the natural formation to allow for a crystal pail to be lowered into the waters below, but the evidence suggested it had been found rather than created.
“No one is watching,” one huntress hissed.
The second huntress kicked me in the back of the head, making me see stars. “Halfblood bastard or no, we cannot kill him outright, the queen will surely suspect.”
The first huntress countered, “I meant he can do the work of drawing the water himself. I don’t see why we have to do it for him.”
It sounded like she was measuring her words.
“Right, right. An inspired idea. Well? Get to it, cretin.”
The second huntress kicked me in the small of my back. I fell onto my chest right over the fissure. With a clang the crystal pail landed beside my head. With stars swimming in my vision and my body feeling far away, I picked up the bucket and used its silver chain to lower it, with some effort, into the waters below.
Blinking in confusion, I pulled the full pail up hand-over-hand, wincing as it clanged against the inner walls of the fissure.
“Hurry up,” the second huntress snapped, kicking me in the ribs and almost making me drop the line.
Water splashed out the pail and I feared I’d have to do the whole exercise again, but when I brought the bucket up it was more than half-full with glittering liquid.
I hesitated.
The first huntress didn’t allow me to linger. “Drink. Drink deep! I want to see the bottom of that pail when you’re through, and not a drop wasted!”
“I—” the third huntress began in a raised voice.
“Quiet!” The second huntress interrupted her before she could get started.
“Not a word, Maive. Not another word.”
The huntress, Maive, closed her mouth with visible reluctance.
Their arguing brought me partway to my senses. I was consumed by thirst. My throat and tongue never felt so dry as when I brought the crystal pail up to my lips and prepared to drink.
“Go on, halfling. Drink.”
“Drink drink drink,” the first huntress chanted.
I drank.
Never had I tasted such cool, clean water. The persistent cloud hovering over my head was swept away. A fragile strength flooded my limbs.
“All of it!”
I tipped the bucket back to take a breath, but two of the huntresses forced it back to my lips to make me choke down the remainder. I was struck by a coughing fit the moment I was through.
I wiped my mouth off and stood. I was a bit shaky, but felt otherwise renewed.
“We should return before anyone suspects.”
While the huntresses supervised me closely, I walked back to the crystal hall under my own power. I sensed I surprised the waiting courtiers by my actions.
I snickered.
I took up my original position opposite the queen, facing away from the crowd.
My stomach and the area of my chest around my heart grew hot.
Lady Maere raised her eyebrows at me. “And so, how do you fare, champion? Water drawn fresh from the Well of the Spirit is quite potent.”
“… what?” I asked.
“You face the test of spirit,” Lady Maere clarified with a long-suffering tone. “How do you feel?”
“Fine. I feel fine.” And I did feel fine, thank you very much.
Bell flew over to my side. “How much did you drink?” she sounded concerned.
My vision fuzzed and I saw stars. Dizzy, I staggered a step before regaining my balance.
I wish they’d give my staff back.
&nb
sp; Bell pointed. “Kal, Kal, Look!”
Woozy, I brought my hands up to my face and stared.
I was glowing. A soft nimbus of light surrounded me. The sigil on my chest glowed silver and steam rose off my skin in waves. Mana boiled off me like a kettle left too long over the fire.
“No no no. This isn’t good. Hang in there, Kal. Focus, focus on me!” Bell slapped both my cheeks and held my face up to hers.
“What’s… whatsit?” I slurred.
I felt something stretching, tearing my insides.
I tensed all my muscles and clenched my fists to weather the storm raging inside me. My spiritual pressure skyrocketed, making my hair stand on end. Courtiers screamed as members of the crowd were thrown off their feet.
“Back! Get back!” Lady Maere commanded the huntresses, and they skittered off like roaches from the sun.
The crystal floor shattered beneath my feet.
Lady Maere raised a hand, and the shadows around her lengthened, then exploded with black thorns. The thorns moved of their own accord to form a tangled web around the two of us. Soon I was completely enmeshed inside a ball of dark thorns.
My skin went translucent. My veins all stood out like ink on parchment.
Maere’s overpowering barrier wrapped me up tight. The energy coming off me boiled away a patch of thorns only for them to be replaced thicker, stronger.
“Kal! Make that power your own, you have to!” Bell cried.
A silent scream rose in my throat. I bent over and dug my nails into the skin on the back of my neck.
“— can’t,” I struggled to speak.
“You have to!” Bell repeated.
“I’ll… try,” I gasped.
With a great effort, I began to cycle the foreign energy throughout my body. At first it felt like stirring a pot of water with my pinky finger. As I started to gain ground a vortex of energy formed in my body, whirling around my source like a hurricane around the eye of a storm. My source groaned under the strain.
“Good, that’s good, you’re doing it, keep going!”
When I closed my eyes I could see clear through them.