Child of Darkness-L-D-2 (25 page)

“What am I to do with all of them, if the Waterhorses do come?” she asked herself, and only when one of the guards came to attention and bade her repeat her order did she realize she’d spoken out loud. “It’s nothing,” she said, waving her hand. “I was merely thinking. Perhaps another pair of you should go to the Great Hall and try to keep as much order there as possible. With so many in so small a space, and in such fear, there is bound to be a need for your presence.”

“Your pardon, Your Majesty,” one of the guards began, bowing, “but how would we protect you?”

“There is but one of me. Two guards will be more than enough to keep me safe.” All four should go, she knew, but they would balk further at leaving her completely unprotected. When they had gone, she addressed the other two. “I am tired. I wish to go to my chambers and lie down. You may stand watch as you see fit, outside the doors, but do not hover over me.” She stood and walked toward the door to her chambers, then paused. “One of you should go to the dungeons. Any prisoners therein are not a threat to us anymore. Let them go, on the condition they must leave the Faery Quarter, and escort them out of the Palace.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” one of them said, but his words were cut short by the scraping open of the throne-room doors.

Immediately, both guards drew their swords, stepping back to shield their Queene with their bodies. For her own part, Ayla reached for the daggers concealed in her sleeves, but she left them as they were. If it were an Elven horde, or the Waterhorses, they would have already heard the screams of the Faeries in the Great Hall and been warned. The figure who entered wore a long cloak of rough, brown cloth. It halted at the sight of the guards and held up two small hands. Then, slowly, to show it was not reaching for a weapon, it pulled down its hood.

Relief flooded through Ayla, replaced at once by rage. She teetered between ordering the intruder killed and making her guards stand down. She chose the latter. Flidais stayed still in her place, though the guards had sheathed their swords. Her hair was wet and matted, her face streaked with dirt. Her large eyes were rimmed red, with tears or exhaustion, Ayla did not care which.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded, striding past her guards. She felt as though she might strike Flidais but could not say for certain whether she would, until the errant Fae came to a halt in front of her. She lashed out, and Flidais did not shrink from the blow. “How dare you come back!” Ayla screamed, fisting her hands in her sleeves so that she would not be tempted to strike her again. “Do you have any idea what you have done?”

“I did what I believed was right,” Flidais said, her voice maddeningly pitiful. “I heard this morning of your plans. I wish I had known. I had no idea—”

“You had no idea that your actions would destroy us?” Ayla leaned closer to her former advisor’s face, her voice dropping to a deadly whisper. “Tell me why I should believe that, when you were always the first with a solution for any problem? Did you not believe yourself the most brilliant of Mabb’s council? Did you not believe yourself the most brilliant of mine?

Tell me!”

Now, Flidais showed emotion. She quivered beneath the folds of her brown cloak, looked down at her feet. “I was frightened.”

Ayla raised her hand, but stopped it before it could fly again. This was theatrics, all of it, on Flidais’s part. She was not afraid, and she did not return now to apologize. She was truly intelligent, there was no denying that, and wholly Fae. Anything she did, she did to benefit herself.

“If you were frightened then,” Ayla whispered menacingly, “you should be doubly so now.”

She strode away, calling, “Guards! Take this one to the Great Hall and secure her there. Do not let her escape.”

“Please!” Flidais called, still pathetic, still playacting. “I came here to help!”

“To help?” Ayla turned to face her again. “How would you help? How would you correct all of the things you have done to destroy this kingdom?”

“I cannot…undo those things I have done.” The tears in her voice, the way she kept her gaze fixed firmly on her clasped hands, all of it was a show. “But I can help those that are left behind. Upworld, there is a boat, to the east. Bauchan and his party are traveling to it. Humans own it and operate it, but they will smuggle us away and keep us safe from the Enforcers, until we reach the land of Queene Danae.”

And there it was. She had not returned out of guilt. She had returned in a last, futile attempt to gain the rival Queene more followers.

Ayla would not play along. “How long have you been in contact with Queene Danae?”

Flidais’s head snapped up, her eyes flashing anger for a moment. She could school the emotion from her face, but not from her antennae, which flared red. “What do you imply?”

“You were the one who told me of contact with Ambassador Bauchan. Thinking back on it, you never told me how he contacted you. Or when.” Ayla circled her, looked her up and down. The throat. The spine. The wings. A catalog of ways to cause pain. Thinking about hurting her was all that kept her from actually killing her former advisor.

“I tell you the truth when I say that I did not have any contact with Lord Bauchan before learning of his intention to visit us here.” Flidais met Ayla’s eyes as her Queene came to face her again.

It was a rare talent in a mortal to be able to lie while looking into a victim’s eyes, but not for the Fae. Still, Ayla believed that Flidais had not known Bauchan. “But you did know Danae.”

Flidais did not argue. “I did what I thought was best for my race. I did not believe that Garret would be a good leader. Mabb, most certainly, had declined in her responsibilities, so it was better that she died. I helped put you on the throne in the hopes that you would be better. Instead, you flaunted your love of all things Human. Allowed a Darkling to live within the Palace walls. You are no more a Queene than I am a Dragon, Your Majesty.”

The mocking would have hurt Ayla five, perhaps ten years before. Now, all she felt was amusement that the best Flidais could do when faced with failure was to hurl childish insults.

“Guards! Take her. See that she does not leave the Palace.”

“You would sacrifice all of those Faeries who have flocked to you for help?” Flidais laughed as the guards each gripped one of her arms. “You are a vain, selfish fool!”

“I will sacrifice no one, Flidais.” Ayla crossed her arms, allowed herself a smug half smile.

“You’ve told me of a boat to the east. If the Waterhorses bear down upon us, we will go to it, and I will lead my subjects there, to much fanfare. But you will not be on that boat, and neither will Bauchan and his retinue. Do you have the money to outbid me to the Humans?

For I have all the treasures Mabb collected, and more from my own reign. But the Waterhorses will not come to us. I say this with certainty. As we speak, my forces slay the Elves of the Darkworld. They will not have the breath in their bodies to summon their monsters.”

As she watched the guards drag Flidais from the throne room, she prayed her words would not hold false.

“We followed him this far, but I was running out of wind, and I had to kill him before he went farther,” the archer explained. It wasn’t an apology, just a simple statement of her limitations.

“Good work.” Malachi clapped her on the back. “We’re close now.”

“How do you know?” Cedric asked, in a low voice, as if he did not wish to remind the others that a Darkling walked with them.

Malachi did trouble himself at the thought of offending them. “Because this is an area I was rarely dispatched to. It has been twenty years, and twenty mortal years, at that. I do not recall where we are with clarity, but we are not in an area populated by mortals.”

The runner, who’d been sent ahead with orders to be stealthy and alert, splashed up the tunnel toward them. The water had receded some, but there was still enough to wet the bottom of Malachi’s boots. The sound of the runner’s footsteps echoed like bright thunderclaps in the tunnel.

“If they did not know we were coming before, they surely do now,” Malachi mused aloud to Cedric.

The Faery gave a humorless chuckle. “He is trained to be swift, not intelligent.”

“What say you?” Malachi called when the runner came near.

“The Elven stronghold is ahead.” The Faery leaned over and placed his long, thin hands on his bare, knobbed knees.

Cedric’s hand went to his sword. “You are certain?”

The runner nodded, gasped for breath. “I saw Elves milling about near a doorway…and the doorway was guarded. I could not make out what they said, but there were so many…if it is not their fortress, it is at least a nest of them.” Immortal creature though he might be, he was tired from a long run.

“How far?” Malachi asked. If they did not reach the Elves soon…

“Not far.” The Faery’s breathing began to slow. “I had to flee quickly, because I believed they saw me. And though none followed, I wished to get the information to you as quickly as possible.”

“You have done well,” Malachi reassured him. Then, turning to the soldiers behind him, he called, “The Elven fortress is ahead! Assassins and Thieves, you will go ahead. The rest of us will follow, and we rely on you to keep up your part of the plan!”

Malachi stood by Cedric’s side and watched them go. “When we go in, friend, I will not be coming back out.”

Cedric snorted a derisive sound. “It will not behoove us to become fatalistic, Malachi.”

“Ayla has…received a sign.” Signs held much weight with the Fae, and so Malachi was not surprised that Cedric did not argue further. “As I am to die, I wish to do so defending my daughter. My Cerridwen. Return her to her mother. Even if she strikes me down by her own hand, keep her safe, Cedric.”

“I have already given my word to Ayla,” he replied, staring straight ahead, though the Assassins and Thieves had vanished into the darkness.

“I know you have,” Malachi responded patiently. “Now, give your word to me.”

And he would not move from where he stood until the Faery did.

Some time had passed. How much, Cerridwen was not sure. She’d drifted to sleep, against her own better judgment. Snapping awake, her hand went immediately to the knife concealed in her clothes.

Something hushed her, close by. She squinted in the darkness, saw only the shapes of Elves slumbering on tabletops and the dirty floor.

“Stay where you are,” a voice, the same that had hissed at her for quiet, whispered now.

“Who’s there?” she asked, gripping the front of the cage. “I can’t see you.”

“Shh!” it insisted, a bit louder. An Elf at a table close by muttered in his sleep. “Look up.”

Cerridwen tilted her head back, saw the shape of something in the darkness above her, and recognized wings.

And then, a door to the Great Hall opened, and a screaming horde descended upon the Elves.
Sixteen

T he Elves came to life still drunk from their beer, still sluggish from their rotten feast. Cerridwen shrank back in her cage, watched with horrified fascination as the Faery crouched atop her cage lunged and grabbed the nearest Elf, sinking a short sword vertically into the creature’s chest. An arcing torrent of blood stood out black against the murky torchlight, and the creature fell.

“We need more light!” a voice called out, a Faery voice from the cadence, and someone lit a table on fire. Covered as it was with sticky liquor and made from dried-up wood, the thing went up like a great torch itself, illuminating more of the space. And, oh, the wondrous horrors that light revealed. A Faery fell, shrieking, as an Elven scimitar cut the legs from beneath him. An Elf was pinned to a door by two long daggers through the shoulders, and with the deft use of a torch was transformed into writhing, screaming flame himself.

Cerridwen had never seen battle. She’d heard the poetic stories of it, but found now that those stories, with their muddy wording—the heroes always dueled, or clashed, or fought to the death—none of that had prepared her for the truly glorious sight of war. The blood of both sides gleamed like liquid garnet scattered across the floor. The greedy concrete soaked it up, creating tiny puddles in each pock and crevice, bejeweling itself in death. The smell…the smell of all the blood and fire and foul, unwashed stench of the Elves drove the energy in her to a fevered pitch. Her hands clenched so tightly on the knife she now ached to use.

“Keep your gaze to the doors,” someone called out, and she saw that it was Cedric, blood streaking his pale hair as he and the other Faeries fought their way to the center of the room. And he was right to give such an order, as one door, then another, opened, letting in more Elves, these not affected by surprise, not in the same way that the others had been. In the center of the room, most of the Faeries were surrounded. But Cerridwen saw ahead, in her mind’s eye, that this served a purpose. They could fight as one unit, and defend each other, and not worry that an opponent would strike them down from behind. A scream close to her cage startled her. No one on the ground, she looked up and saw a Faery, his wings unbound, carrying an Elf up to the top of the hall. At its height, he dropped the creature, and it fell with a sickening crack to the floor. The bones splintered, showed shocking white where they burst through skin and garments, but the thing was not dead. The Faery folded his wings and fell, driving his feet hard into the creature’s skull, obliterating it, blowing it apart as easily as though it were a soap bubble. But soap bubbles rarely sent such a shocking starburst of blood and thick pulp spraying over the concrete. It was oddly satisfying, and still it made her sick.

At the end of the hall, she saw Malachi. Her mother’s Consort? He had fought in many battles before, she was certain, but he was old now, withering up as mortals did. She watched him dispatch two Elves readily, though, grasping one by the hair and driving a dagger into the side of its skull, striking the other down bloodlessly, grabbing its head and twisting it sharply to the side as it struggled with a Faery.

The Faery, who had been locked in futile combat with the Elf, holding its wrists in an attempt to keep it from plunging a sword into his belly, nodded at Malachi with something Cerridwen thought could be admiration—but why admire a mortal? A Darkling, at that?