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“Captain Ethoniel, you must come!”
“Are we to open the gates, Captain?”
“Captain, come now!”
The voices were closer now, accompanied by the patter of booted feet on the polished stair.
“Open the gates, Captain. But hold them in the courtyard,” said Vinaver. “Come, child, let Leonine put the cloak on you.”
Before Delphinea could agree, the other woman settled the dark cloak over her shoulders. It was a color between dark purple and black, the color of the indigo night sky, and it was soft and thick and silky all at once. “What stuff is this cloak made of?” she asked as she spread it wide. It fell in rich dark ripples, as if it absorbed the light, rather than reflected it.
“Faerie silk, and the shadows of Shadow,” said Vinaver. “There are only two, and how they came to be, I don’t have time to tell you. Finuviel had one. Now you have the other.”
“What does it do?” asked Delphinea, turning this way and that. It had a damp feeling to it that was not completely pleasant.
“It will make you invisible in the eyes of mortals, if you draw it over yourself completely.” Vinaver took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “We’ve not much time, so listen carefully, Delphinea, and I will tell you what I can. Mortals are highly susceptible and suggestible but you must not underestimate the effect they shall have upon you. A fresh mortal intoxicates like nothing else—”
“What in the name of Herne do you mean by a fresh mortal?” asked Dougal. “And do you mind not referring to my people as if we were a race of animals that happen to walk and talk?”
But Vinaver ignored the interruption. “Like nothing you can even imagine. For some it’s the way they smell, or taste, for others, the way they look. Whatever it is, and however it strikes you, beware of it. Keep your wits about you, for mortals are perverse, and when you expect them to do one thing, they will do the opposite. Don’t try to understand it, but seek to use it, if needs must. Keep close to the trixie, and don’t let him from your sight. Keep him tethered to you if you sleep. Water is one sure way back to Faerie, the other is through the trees of a deep forest. For the trees of Faerie and Shadow are linked. Some even say they are the same.” She shut her eyes and took another audible breath. “Listen as you pass below them. Listen and see if you hear them talking.” Her eyes fluttered open. “They will help you. I have no doubt.”
“Why are you so sure?” asked Delphinea. “Is it only the way I look? There are visions that come to me in my sleep—”
“What do you see?”
“I see Finuviel. I hear his name.”
Vinaver reached out once more and touched Delphinea’s cheek with a shaking hand. “I understand why you’ve come. Bring my son and the Caul back to Faerie. You were meant to find them. I’m sure of it.” She closed her eyes.
Delphinea hesitated, wondering if Vinaver truly knew, or if she only wanted to know, and she wondered how much Vinaver really did know, and how much she actually did. But before she could speak, Dougal stopped her with a hand on her arm. “I’ve a word of advice. Don’t go directly to Cadwyr of Allovale. Go instead to his uncle Donnor, the Duke of Gar. He’s the only one with any influence over Cadwyr. Donnor’s an honorable man, whereas Cadwyr’s like a blade too well oiled. He shines pretty, but he turns too easily in your hand. Find the Duke of Gar, and tell him—” He paused, then shrugged. “I suppose under the circumstances it doesn’t much matter what anyone thinks. Tell Donnor that Dougal of Killcairn sent you, and if possible, ask him to get word to my daughter—my girl, Nessa—back in Killcairn. Tell her I’m alive. All right?”
As Delphinea nodded, Leonine stuck her head around the door. “I think, my lady, that you must leave now, if you’re to leave at all. The company from the palace is within the courtyard, and the commander is demanding to be let in.”
“Go, child,” said Vinaver. “And, khouri-kan, remember that I know the secret of your unMaking. Betray me, and I might forget it.”
Petri hissed and bowed and rubbed his hands, and Leonine led Delphinea toward to the door. As she stepped out into the hall, she turned back to Vinaver. “My lady?”
Vinaver’s pain-dulled eyes flickered muddy green in the gloom. “Yes, child?”
“Talking to the trees—understanding the trees—isn’t that a gift reserved for the Queen of the sidhe?”
Vinaver smiled then, but her face was sad. “Child, don’t you understand? You are the next Queen of Faerie. That is, if Faerie survives at all.”
There was the faintest smell of rot in the air. Like the warm tap of a random spring raindrop, the odor drifted, now here, now there, never so much that one was ever quite sure what one smelled. But it was enough to make one pause, turn one’s head, wrinkle one’s nose and sniff again. It had first been detected after Samhain, and it was becoming noticeable enough that a fashion for wearing perfumed lace face masks was spreading rapidly throughout the ladies of the Court.
And it was noticeable enough that Timias had been forced to listen, a prisoner in his chambers, to Her Majesty’s Master of the House, Lord Rimbaud, and her Chatelaine, Lady Evardine, while they lamented the situation for nearly a full turn of the glass, before a summons from Alemandine’s Consort, Hudibras, interrupted their torrent of complaint. Now Timias tightened his grip on his oak staff, and pressed his mouth into a thin line as he hurried through the palace of the Faerie Queen as quickly as his aged legs would allow. A small puff of stink through the lemon-scented air was enough to make him furrow his already wrinkled brow as he scurried through the arching marble corridors, hung with tapestries and mosaics so intricately and perfectly executed, some were known to move. He passed the image of a stag brought down by a huntsman’s bow, the great antlered head lifted in eternal agony, and something made Timias pause, transfixed, before it. The crimson blood flowing from the stag’s side shone with a curious rippling gleam, as if the blood that flowed from the wound was real.
Timias stepped closer, narrowing his eyes. As another trace of putrid odor filled his nostrils, he reached out and touched the gleaming rivulet. For a moment his finger registered the cold pressure of the stone as wetness and he started back, peering closely at his finger, half expecting to see a smear of blood. But his fingertip was clear, without a hint of moisture. Of course there wasn’t any blood, he told himself, there was no blood. How could there be blood? It was only a picture. There was no blood. It was but a trick of his overwrought senses, a consequence of his agonized mind. He had enough to occupy a dozen councilors. His discovery with Delphinea of the missing Caul led to the disclosure of the plot against the Queen, and allowed him to once again assert his position and authority as the oldest of all the Council. The stupid girl had not waited long enough to allow him to thank her properly before she’d run off. The first thing he’d done had been to order the arrests of every one of the Queen’s councilors in residence at the Court. This meant that, while the immediate threat was contained until he could determine who was to be trusted, he alone remained to steer Alemandine through the task of holding her realm together both under the strain engendered by her pregnancy and the inevitable attack by the Goblin King. But the calamity of the missing Caul, coupled with the revelation of Vinaver’s treachery, made what would have been a heavy burden especially weighty. A lesser sidhe, one without so many years and experience as his, would surely not be equal to the task. He touched the wall again, just to make sure. “No blood,” he whispered aloud. “No blood.” He realized he was still muttering as he stalked through the halls to Alemandine’s chambers.
There was certainly enough to mutter about. Vinaver, that foul abomination, had seized the opportunity afforded by his absence in the Shadowlands to hatch some horrific plot against her sister, Alemandine, the details of which he did not yet understand. It was her cronies on the Council he’d had arrested, all of them—all of them save Vinaver herself, who’d prudently retired to her Forest House. Well, he’d not let that stop him. The very hour he’d discovered Lady Delphinea gone missing, he’d sent a company of the Queen’s Guard out to drag both her and Vinaver back to the palace. He’d find out what had happened to the missing Caul and then turn his attention to the defense of Faerie. The calculated way in which Vinaver had so coldly plotted against her sister when the pregnant Queen was at her most vulnerable intrigued him and made him admire her in a way he refused to contemplate.
He’d already decided that it had been a mistake to allow Finuviel to take over Artimour’s command, and the sooner Artimour was restored to his proper place, and Finuviel recalled, the easier they could all rest. After all, it was only logical to assume that Finuviel was an integral part of Vinaver’s scheme to make herself Queen in her sister’s stead, and so the sooner Artimour resumed command, the better. After all, Artimour would be so pathetically grateful to have his place back, Timias knew he’d be able to trust him. And maybe not just trust him, thought Timias as he considered new and different roles for Artimour to play. He was always something of a misfit around the Court. He couldn’t have been happy about the revocation of his command. He’d owe tremendous loyalty to the person—or group of persons—who restored it.
It was time to recall Artimour, decided Timias, time to assure the dear boy of their continued support and offer apologies for the terrible mistake they’d made in replacing him with Finuviel, the spawn of that foul abomination, Vinaver. If necessary, Artimour could be dispatched to the mortal world with an offer of assistance. And wasn’t that what should’ve been done in the first place? Timias’s head ached. There was simply too much to think about all at once. He came to himself with a little shake and realized he’d been talking to himself the entire length of the corridor.
The two guards standing watch over Alemandine’s private rooms gave him a curious glance but said nothing, as together they opened the great doors that led into the reception room of Alemandine’s suite.
There, Timias found Hudibras, looking distracted, even as he berated two bedraggled ladies-in-waiting huddled in the window seat. They all looked up, their expressions an odd mixture of both relief and fear, as Timias entered. He pinned the ladies with a ferocious stare, and their wings, fragile and pink as rose petals, trembled above their heads. But why were they both wearing crowns of oak and holly leaves? Oak for summer, holly for winter—why both at once? He peered more closely at them, and realized to his relief the illusion was nothing but a trick of the light and that their small veils were held in place, as usual, by the customary ribboned wreaths that all Alemandine’s ladies wore. “What’s going on? Where’s the Queen?” He addressed Hudibras, but it was one of the ladies-in-waiting who answered.
“She will not unlock the door, most exalted lord,” she replied, olive-green eyes huge in her angular face so that she resembled a frightened doe. Honey-colored hair spilled over her shoulders and across her rose-colored gown, partially obscuring her fichu of ivory lace. It matched the lace of her face mask, Timias saw, as another foul whiff momentarily distracted him. This time the seed pearls in her wreath looked like writhing white worms. He started back and she gave him another questioning look, as he realized that that was exactly the effect the pearls were meant to have. It struck him that this was a bizarre conceit for an adornment for one’s hair, but then, he never paid attention to the fashions of the Court. Since Alemandine was crowned Queen, they changed with such dizzying frequency, he could not keep up.
He really had to get control of himself, he thought. He tightened his grip on his staff and the wood felt dry as a petrified bone in his palm. He must not succumb to the pressure. Surely that’s what Vinaver hoped for, and it occurred to him that indeed, the success of the very plot itself might hinge on his ability to single-handedly uphold the Queen through this hour of her greatest need. He would show Vinaver that while he wore an old man’s face, he yet possessed a young man’s vigor.
Hudibras was wringing his hands in a manner most unseemly and his tone was peevish and demanding. “Whatever you have in mind, Timias, you better get to it, for she refuses to come out. You’ve got the entire Council under arrest, Vinaver’s gone flitting off Herne alone knows where, that wild young thing’s gone running off with that gremlin—” Hudibras marched across the room, struck a mannered pose worthy of a masque beside the empty grate, and, to Timias’s astonishment, removed a peacock-plume fan from the scabbard at his belt. With a zeal that the temperature of the room in no way warranted, he snapped it open with an expert flick of his wrist and began to fan himself. “What’s to be done, Timias? What’s to be done?”
What was wrong with the man? wondered Timias. Since when was there a fashion for wearing peacock-plume fans like daggers? Or white worms in one’s hair? Could it be that something was affecting the entire Court? It was as if they were all going mad. But it was that last piece of information that made him pause. A gremlin with Delphinea? How was such a thing even possible? “Why was I not informed?” Timias asked, gaze darting from the overwrought Hudibras to the stricken ladies.
At that, the ladies and Hudibras stared at each other, and then at Timias. “But you were, my lord,” said Hudibras.
“Every hour on the hour since the clock struck thirteen,” said the second lady, and he realized with another start that her gown was nearly an exact duplicate of the first’s, except that the shade was slightly lighter. When had Alemandine begun to insist that her ladies-in-waiting dress alike?
Timias shoved that superfluous question away, and pulled himself upright, wondering if he himself were not suffering from some malady. There’d been no disturbances on his door—he’d heard no knocking all night at all. But then of course there’d been no gremlin to answer it. All the gremlins were sequestered in the Caul Chamber. Their shrieking on Samhain had been enough to sour cream. No wonder Alemandine was feeling so poorly. In her delicate condition, her strength already taxed, she must’ve suffered the gremlins’ annual bout of madness dreadfully. No wonder she didn’t want to come out of her room. She probably wasn’t recovered yet.
Another trace of rot swirled delicately past his nose and he blinked, momentarily dizzy. These fools were only trying to make him look as if he was the foolish one. They were trying to blame him for their inability to understand and care for the Queen as if he were the one ultimately responsible for her. “I’m here now,” he snapped.
Hudibras pointed the fan at Timias, as if it were indeed a dagger. “There’s been no word from Artimour, or Finuviel. We don’t know what’s happening on the border, Timias. Alemandine won’t even speak to me except to tell me to go away. She’s placed a spell of binding on the door, and refuses to leave her bed.”
“But that’s not all, most ancient and honorable lord.” The darker, more assertive lady glanced first at him, then over her shoulder, out the window. “The moonflowers are blooming.” For a moment, he was so completely taken aback he could think of nothing to say, and the lady hastened to explain further. “The Queen’s moonflowers. They shouldn’t be blooming while she’s pregnant.”
There was a surreal quality to the whole scene that made Timias pause, just as he had before the stag. It was as if the world around him was ever so slightly…off. But what was it? he wondered. Hudibras and his fan? Rimbaud and his stink? The lady and her moonflowers? Again he felt slightly dizzy as if the very floor on which he stood suddenly swayed. “I must speak to the Queen.”
“She won’t let anyone in, Timias,” said Hudibras, with a twitch of his cheek. “That’s what we’ve been trying to tell you. She’s put a spell on the doors and won’t leave her bed.”
To that, Timias raised his chin. “We’ll see about that.” He strode through the doors that led into the antechamber of the Queen’s bedroom. The twilight filtering into the darkened chambers lent a purple blush to the marble walls, deepened to indigo the pale green upholstery and silken hangings. A profound hush hung over all. He pounded so hard on the ornately carved oak door with his staff that splinters flew in all directions. “Your Majesty!” he cried. “Your Majesty?”
But there was no answer.
He waited, fuming quietly under his breath, and again his nostrils were assailed by the faintest whiff of something foul, something that dissipated even as he turned his head to trace the source of the odor. “Alemandine?” He tried again, rattling the knob, knocking with a hard fist. “Alemandine? Let me in. I command you in the name of your mother, open this door and let me in!”
For a single moment, he thought he would have to blast the doors apart. But then he heard the lock click, and the two doors slipped open as the spell of binding came undone. That was easy, he thought. The doors stood as meekly open as a lamb to the slaughter. He threw a look of triumph over his shoulder at the cowering ladies and an extremely discomfited Hudibras hovering in the doorway. Then he pushed open the doors.
It was like stepping into a wall of rot. The odor made him stagger on his feet, so that he was forced to hang on to his staff to remain upright. The heavy draperies of Alemandine’s favorite pale green silk were drawn, and what light there was slashed through the dark cavern of the room like gold blades. Only once before had Timias ever smelled anything so foul, and that was during a plague year in the Shadowlands, when the whole countryside had reeked like a charnel house. “Alemandine?” he managed to gasp out, before he was forced to cover his mouth and nose against the heavy reek. “Your Majesty? My Queen?”
The bed was empty. The sheets hung over the side of the bed, and were marked by foul greenish stains. A damp trail led across the marble floor to the open floor-length windows.
“My Queen?” he whispered. But nothing answered, and nothing moved. Terrified of what he might find, he stepped out of the ghastly silent chamber, into the grove where one of each of the thirteen sacred trees of Faerie grew in two concentric rings.
A silence even more profound hung over the enclosure and he looked up. The sky above was a dull leaden color, as if something had sucked the blue away. And the trees—at the base of each tree, a perfect circle of leaves lay crisped and sere, their branches partially denuded. Even the holly’s needlelike leaves were tinged brown and yellow and an ankle-deep pile lay around the base of the tree. So many leaves were falling it was like a steady, downward curtain, of mingled yellow, gold and russet. He heard a soft sound from the center of the inner circle, a sound something between a moan and a sigh.
“Alemandine?”
Creeping closer, clutching the staff, shoulders hunched against the weight of that horrific stench, Timias saw that the thing which lay upon the ground was only a fragile approximation of the Queen. Her entire body had shrunk, as if it was collapsing in on itself, as if the muscles and sinews and organs were diminishing, leaving only skin and bones. Only her bloated abdomen rose roundly, like an obscene fruit hidden beneath her white gown.
But nothing could have prepared him for the horror as the Queen turned her tortured face to his. He gasped and stumbled back. Her white hair streamed about her vulpine face, the lips drawn back so tightly her mouth was nothing but a black slash. Her eyes popped from their sockets, as if squeezed outward by the pressure of whatever foul liquid it was that seeped from every orifice.
Amazingly, horribly, beyond all reason, the thing that he had called his Queen spoke. “Timias?” Her voice was less than a sigh, less than a whisper. “Timias? Timias, what’s happening to me?” She twisted her head back and forth and even as he realized she was blind, he heard the wet rent of tearing flesh. “Where is my sister? Why does she not come?”
He stumbled back, not daring to come any closer lest the thing touch him. Nausea rose in his throat as disgust warred with pity. The creature held out her hand and tried to speak again, but this time the words were lost in a gurgle of green slime that spooled down her chin.
Her form seemed to collapse in and upon itself, her very bones cracking and splintering like rotting wood. A quiver ran through her, and fluids gushed from every pore, bubbling up and out through the stretched skin, which withered as Timias watched.
The earth itself shuddered, the great trees groaned, and the wind made a low mourning keen as it whined around the crystal-paned turrets. With a whimper and a sigh, Alemandine bubbled away, leaving a froth of scum, the filthy remnants of her tattered gown and the long strands of her white, spun-silk hair.
“Great Gloriana,” Timias muttered. His eyes glazed over as, in one horrific moment of insight, he understood that the remains of the creature lying before him was not at all one of the sidhe, but instead something else—something strange and monstrous, a true aberration and abomination that he had not only called into being, but had seen placed upon the throne of Faerie. This was what he and Gloriana had wrought. This was the ultimate consequence of what they had created the night the Caul was made. Even half-human Artimour might’ve been a better choice. But it was the final realization that sent him spiraling down into the well of madness. Vinaver—may she burn in the belly of the Hag—had been right all along.
2
You didn’t think to ask? You didn’t think to ask? Artimour’s accusation slammed like a hammer through her head as Nessa fled down the stairs, out of the keep and into the inner courtyard, blindly heading toward the first sanctuary that occurred to her. She stopped up short before she reached the gates. Molly’s lean-to by the river was most likely destroyed, or so befouled by the shredded goblin carcasses the screaming spirits of the naked dead had left in their wake, it would have to be shoveled away.
As it was, once outside, the stench was so overwhelming she felt nausea rise at the back of her throat, and she stumbled into the forge, where the fire had been left to die. Broken swords and spears, shields, and even bows lay in haphazard piles, hastily dumped by the teams of just about every able-bodied person in the keep as part of the cleanup the harried Sheriff was directing even now. Through the open door, Nessa caught a glimpse of him striding, fat and red-faced, through the courtyard in the direction of the gates, bawling orders right and left, surrounded by harried-looking guards, grooms and a motley assortment of refugees young and old, male and female, who hastened to do his bidding. She peered inside the huge iron cauldron they’d used to melt the silver in. Dull and black and coated with ash on the outside, the inside shimmered, pearly and opalescent in the shifting streams of light that poured in through the shutters. Nessa wiped the tears off her cheeks and sniffed. She had made the dagger.
But she’d no choice. When the Duke of Allovale and the sidhe had appeared at her door, they expected a dagger. Once the Duke decided she was capable of making one, he hadn’t offered her a choice. How was she to know the sidhe intended to use it against Artimour, as part of the plot against his half-sister, the Queen of the OtherWorld?
More tears filled her eyes and she tried to blink them away. Artimour had promised to help her find her father, and after last night’s realization that her mother must be somewhere in the OtherWorld, too, held captive, perhaps, she had intended to ask him if he’d help find her mother, as well. But now, it seemed unlikely he’d even continue to look for her father, angry as he was. Not that she blamed him. It was by her hand, if indirectly, he’d been injured. She should find a way to make it right with him. Wasn’t that what her father would tell her to do? With a sigh, she wiped away the tears with the back of her grimy sleeve, got to her feet, tied a leather apron around her neck and waist and began to sort the piled weapons into some semblance of order. Work was always her father’s refuge, too.
She shut her eyes at a wave of loss and grief, remembering with bitter clarity that unseasonably hot autumn night just after the harvest was celebrated, when those two cloaked and hooded figures had come knocking on the door of Dougal’s forge. He’d have been better off if he’d just sent the unlikely pair on their way. That’s what put this whole thing in motion, she thought. The moment he opened the door, it all changed. And that’s exactly how he’d vanished. One moment, Dougal was there, the rock at the center of her world. And the next, he was gone. It was worse than if he’d died and gone to the Summerlands, for at least then she could take comfort in the thought he walked among his ancestors. She could come to terms with his death.
But she would never come to terms with her father lost, like her mother, forever in thrall to the sidhe. And so, armed only with determination and that first goblin’s head, she had gone to look for Dougal in the land beyond the mists that the old stories called TirNa’lugh. The sidhe soldiers who’d found her stumbling over the border had taken her to Artimour, who was different enough from all the other sidhe that she had been able to recognize his mortal blood at once. Different enough to agree to help her.
It was more than that, she knew, for Artimour affected her in a way no one—not even Griffin—ever had. All the village girls older than twelve twittered over this shepherd’s boy or that farmer’s son like a gaggle of broody hens, but she’d never understood what the fuss was all about. She thought of Griffin, of his clumsy kiss goodbye, the way he’d taken her amulet and left his for her to wear, even as her father’s voice echoed out of her memory. This is what they do to you with their OtherWorldly charms. It’s why you stay away from them. Always. And never take off your silver. Never. It was what he’d say if he were here.
But Artimour wasn’t quite like the other sidhe, she was sure of it. His half-mortal blood made him different, much as he might want to deny it, and it was his half-mortal blood that had saved him from the silver’s deadly poison—that and her own work boot.
Nessa fumbled beneath the apron and withdrew Dougal’s amulet. Maybe it only proved Dougal was dead. And maybe I am just a “lovesick, moon-mazed maiden” like all the songs say, she told herself as she dragged three battered shields to the scrap pile she was building on the other side of the forge.
“Nessa?” Molly’s soft voice broke through the smoky gloom, and Nessa looked up to see the corn granny from Killcrag hesitating at the door. “Is that you? Are you in here?”
“It’s me.” She was surprised it had taken Molly this long to find her. She dropped the shields and they fell with a clatter onto the pile. “I don’t want to go to Gar, Molly. Let Uwen tell the Duke what happened with Cadwyr, let Artimour explain how—how he came to be stabbed. Why do I need to be there? Can’t I stay here with you? I can help—”
She heard Molly’s long indrawn breath, heard her soft sigh. “Ah, Nessa.”
Before Nessa could speak, Molly crossed the space between them and drew Nessa into the strong circle of her arms. She felt her throat thicken and her mouth work, and the tears she’d been swallowing spilled down her cheeks. “I don’t know what to say to him, Molly. I did make the dagger. It was my fault he was stabbed—”
Molly gently tucked one errant curl behind Nessa’s ear. “You could tell him you’re sorry.”
“I don’t think he wants an apology.”
“Well, there’s not much more he’s likely to get. What’s done is done, child. It’s the past, it’s over. Yes, perhaps you should’ve asked a few more questions, but Cadwyr is a Duke, a noble Duke. You’d no choice, really. He’ll come around to seeing that.”
“Shouldn’t I do something—something to make it right?”
“Make it right? If he were a mortal, perhaps the druid court would set a penalty, but, Nessa, don’t forget. They would also take into account that you are still a child, in the eyes of the law, still beneath your father’s roof, and Cadwyr of such high rank. What choice did you have? No court would judge you half so harsh.” Molly drew back, holding Nessa at arm’s length. “You listen to me, girl. Your father would be proud—”
“That’s exactly it,” Nessa said, her face crumpling. “Artimour promised to help me—but I had this horrible thought last night when I thought about what my—my grandmother’s ghost said to me. What happens if my parents die in the OtherWorld?”
“But no one dies in TirNa’lugh, child. Should you ever find her, your mother will be as young and as fair as the day she was lost to it. That’s what your grammies meant—”
“Molly, I remember one of Granny Wren’s stories, about Vain Thomas who goes to TirNa’lugh and loses his head and his soul is swept up by Herne into the Wild Hunt. Don’t you see, Molly? And Granny Wren said that’s where most of the souls in the Wild Hunt come from, the ones who’re truly lost forever. That’s what I’m afraid of, Molly. I don’t want them lost forever—”
“Well,” said Molly, “you can’t worry about that right now. The lord’s still healing. But I do think if you apologize, Lord Artimour will come around. And besides…” She paused and nodded at the bulky bandage Nessa wore around her left hand to conceal the ring Artimour had given her in token of his promise to look for Dougal in the OtherWorld. “Won’t he want that back?”
“My father always said that honor meant nothing to the sidhe.” Nessa fingered the awkward bump. The central stone was round and hard and felt big as a robin’s egg beneath the linen wrapping.
A stir outside interrupted Molly, and Nessa looked over her shoulder. She heard men calling for the Sheriff, and then Sir Uwen. She glanced at Molly. “Someone’s come.”
Molly nodded. “Nessa,” she said slowly. “Am I wrong to think you’ve never been to the greenwood, as they say, with any man, even the ’prentice lad? Griffin?”
Mortified, Nessa shook her head, wondering how to explain to this kind-eyed woman how Dougal had communicated without words that he both desired and condoned distance between himself and Nessa, and the rest of the village. From memory’s dark well, she heard Dougal’s voice, deep and halting. Your mother was the sort of girl the lads all liked. As long as Nessa could remember, it seemed that there was something about this aspect of her mother that was irrevocably tied to her susceptibility to the sidhe. Which was why the goodwives all watched her. “My—my mother—my father said my mother was the girl the lads all liked.”
“And he warned you away from the lads altogether?”
“Well, no. Not really.” She hesitated. “He said that the reason the goodwives watched me so hard was to see if I was going to be like my mother that way. Because that’s what drew the sidhe, they all thought. That she was…like that.” And the easiest way to avoid their eyes and their whispers and their questions was to avoid all the men as much as possible, as well, thus earning for herself a reputation for being more taciturn than even Dougal.
Molly was silent for a moment, and then spoke slowly. “Well, then. I suppose that explains that.” Again she hesitated. “But tomorrow you’re about to go off—” And again she broke off, and Nessa wondered what the wicce-woman wanted to say.
“What are you worried about?”
Molly’s brows shot up and she laughed. “Worried isn’t exactly the word I’d use. Your father wanted to protect you, but there are things a woman must know, things only a woman can know, and only a woman can teach. You’re far too innocent and unaware of the effect you have on the young men around you.” Once more she paused, and in the gloom, her eyes twinkled. “There’s an old saying that’s proven true more often than not in my experience. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
Flustered, Nessa stared at the weapons lying in half-sorted heaps. “What do you mean?”
Molly smiled gently. “Griffin’s in love with you, did you know that?”
“Griffin?” echoed Nessa. She did not like thinking about Griffin, she realized, especially with Artimour so close. She’d known intuitively, from the moment she had first contemplated Artimour’s arrival in Killcairn, that it would upset Griffin to know how Artimour made her feel. Griffin’s clumsy farewell kiss, the amulet he’d left behind for her, even the pack of food he’d hastily thrust into her hands before she’d crossed over into the OtherWorld—each memory sent a guilty pang through her, even as they bore silent testimony to the truth of Molly’s assertion.
Molly looked at her with one raised brow.
“He took my amulet,” Nessa said, knowing that Molly had already talked to Griffin himself. “And left his for me. Is that why? You really think he loves me?”
Dust motes danced in the shaft of sunlight filtering through a loose shingle on the roof, and Molly’s brown eyes twinkled. “What do you think?”
In colored fragments of sight and sound, images of suddenly remembered snippets twisted themselves around Molly’s sentences, weaving a coherence and a meaning into the fabric of her memories that she only now understood: Griffin watching from the other side of the yard as she shoveled coal; blushing suddenly as she reached for a pitcher and the neck of her summer tunic dipped low; splashing water on her late last summer, then backing away, with a face reddened by what she’d assumed was exertion when the entire bucket upended over her breasts, flattening the thin summer linen against the round curves so that her dark nipples were as perfectly visible as if she were naked, even as Dougal immediately barked, “Cover yourself, girl,” and tossed her a cloak. How long had Griffin’s feelings been growing, while she, all the while, was unaware? “You think I should marry Griffin?”
Molly looked completely taken aback. “Goodness, girl, what gave you thought of that?” She reached out and touched Nessa’s cheek, then her hair. “Your father was right in a way. You’re not like the others—to be honest, I suspect you’re Beltane-made, much as he denies it for some reason. But like your mother, the lads like you, too. Though unlike her, I don’t think you know what you do to the lads. So you trust your heart and mind that birch staff of yourn. That tree has a powerful, protecting spirit to it, and she’s sent a piece of herself out into the world with you. I think if your father’d had his way, he’d’ve built a wall higher than hedgerow and thicker than an oak around the forge, to keep you safe within.” She touched Nessa’s hair again, smoothing it back from her burning face. “But now you’re about to go off with two men—two men, either one of which would set any maid’s heart aflutter.”
“Even Uwen?” Nessa wrinkled her nose. She thought of Uwen’s crooked grin and offset jaw and bony frame. He might be one of the Duke of Gar’s own Company, but she could not imagine anyone finding Uwen the least bit attractive.
But Molly smiled. “Ah, child. I’ve seen a few make it very obvious that they’d happily join Sir Uwen on a trip to the greenwood, and one or two who have. You’ve not been paying attention. Sooner or later, whether it’s Griffin or Uwen, or this sidhe-lord himself, don’t be afraid to lie with any man you truly desire, for what happens between a man and a woman is the root of every kind of magic worked in this world, and the Other, too, I imagine.”
