Child of Darkness-L-D-2 (31 page)

Cerridwen lifted her head, red eyes rimmed with tears and grime. “They are coming,” she whispered, looking fearfully at the Faeries clustered on the grass. Either she did not wish to cause a panic, or she feared for them as genuinely as Ayla did.

“Your Majesty!” Picking their way down the steps were the guard she’d sent back to lock the Palace doors and Cedric. And there was the thing she had not wished to see. Limp over the guard’s shoulders, a body with black wings.

The moment he touched the cool grass, the void lessened. He heard more sounds than just voices. He heard birdsong, the rustle of insects in the soil.

And he felt. The pain was sharp, twisting, bearable only because he knew he would not have to bear it much longer.

“Malachi.” Ayla’s voice. And her cool hands on his face, her lips on his cheek. He opened his eyes, saw her face, so close to his, and she looked back at him, all the sorrow of the world reflected painfully in her gaze.

He lifted his hand, the one that still moved. She caught it, brought it to her face.

“It is all right,” he said, surprised at his own strength after so long. And it would be all right. The same, sacred feeling of rightness that had affected him as he lay beside the pool came to him now. The dirt and the grass embraced him, the air covered him like a silken shroud. He looked to the sky, no longer obscured by concrete tunnel, but blue and wide, stretching on forever, and beyond that, black and dotted with all the stars of the firmament. The sun warmed him, the moon smiled down on him. And there were no winged messengers here. Only the feeling that he was ready to leave, that he was meant to. And so, with a sigh, he left.

Twenty

A yla heard some distant sound above her.

“They are not far off now, Ayla,” Cedric repeated loudly in her ear. Emotionless, almost cruel, Cerridwen thought, that he would break the spell of her mother’s grief before she’d barely had time to feel it.

Ayla looked up, nodded, but it seemed she operated with only a part of herself in command. The other part, the wounded part, had retreated, and it made her appear very small and fragile. “I know what to do.”

She went to Flidais, hauled her up roughly. “Take this and make it show you the way to the boat. Bauchan plans to leave shortly, he waits only for her return. When you arrive at Queene Danae’s Court, you must tell her what has happened here.”

“With respect, Your Majesty,” Cedric began.

Cerridwen interrupted him. “You are not coming with us?”

Her mother turned to her, looked at her the way she had looked at her when she was a child, woken from a bad dream. She opened her arms and enfolded her, stroked her hair. “Calm yourself. We will see each other again.”

It was goodbye. Her mother did not plan to leave this place, not even with the Waterhorses bearing down upon her.

“No!” Cerridwen wrenched away. “We have weapons! We have guards! We can fight them!”

“You do not understand these creatures,” Cedric said, sadly resigned to his Queene’s words.

“Our entire army would not be a match for them.”

Desperation clawed in her chest. “No! I will not leave you here!”

Her words were as effective as one of her childhood tantrums, and her mother deftly ignored them. “Faeries,” she called out, and the worried gazes of what was left of the Court turned toward their Queene. “The Waterhorses are upon us. You will go to the Upworld, and there be led to the Court of Queene Danae, far across the sea. Serve her well, but do not forget me, and do not forget that you are proud citizens of the Lightworld.”

The Faeries mobilized before she finished speaking. They did not need or want a speech; they wanted deliverance. They rose into the sky in a line that stretched like the string of a kite as they streamed out of the hole.

Ayla turned to Cedric, gave him an apologetic smile. “You will have your work cut out for you, I suspect.”

“Mother, no!” Cerridwen gripped her mother’s arm, tugged at it, but she stayed rooted where she was, and did not look at her.

“Take care of her, Cedric.” Ayla embraced him, short, but not unfriendly. “I cannot follow. There will be no hope of asylum from Danae if I do. She will not rest until I am not a threat. It is better to die here, where I can be useful, than fall to an Assassin’s blade in a Pretender’s Court. The Waterhorses come. I will hold them off for as long as I can.”

The guard who had carried Malachi grabbed Flidais, tossed her over his shoulder and rose into the sky. The Faeries rose higher, escaping out of the hole faster and faster.

“Cerridwen, come with me,” Cedric said, his expression sympathetic, but resolute as he took her by the arm.

“No!” She pulled away, clung to her mother. This could not happen. Not another death, not her fault. “You cannot stay here! They will kill you!”

How could she stay so calm, with death only a few steps behind her? She smiled, as if a smile would calm her child’s fears. “Everyone has a destiny, Cerridwen. And my destiny has to be fulfilled before you can find yours.”

“I do not care about your destiny! You are going to die!” she screamed, clutching at her mother’s robes, but Cedric hooked an arm around her waist, dragged her back, and she could not hold on.

At the top of the steps, the Waterhorses appeared. They looked more horrible in the daylight than they had in the dark, and Cerridwen screamed.

“It was my destiny to protect you,” her mother said, drawing two daggers from her hair.

“Now, you must protect your race. Do not fail them.”

The Waterhorses poured down the steps, and Cerridwen screamed one last protest to her mother as Cedric pulled her into the air. Below them, the creatures swarmed around Queene Ayla. Her daggers flashed, she spun, struck at them. Then Cerridwen could look no more.

An Assassin knows no honor.

I strike out before they can reach me, catch one in the throat. Their hides are tough, and I carve through as best as I can. Another grips me with its claws, and I grab its wrist, pull it toward me to sink a dagger to the hilt in the pit of its arm. The flesh here is thinner, vulnerable. It releases me and staggers back. Another takes its place in the blink of an eye. If I do not know honor, at least I know humility. I know that my place is to die here. If I survive, my daughter will not fulfill her destiny. If I survive, my race will not. An Assassin knows no pity.

A lucky strike, and I have felled one of the beasts. I drove the dagger into the curve between his ribs, and caught something vital.

I see Malachi, lying still and destroyed on the grass. I know I am not meant to win this fight, but I must—for him—claim at least one life. A hundred deaths will not replace him, but even one will appease my vengeance right now.

An Assassin is no judge to bestow mercy, but the Executioner of those who have already been sentenced, those Darklings who shun the truth of Light.

There is no reason to save my strength in this fight. I use all of my grief, all of my rage, to fuel me. I grip the scaled head of one creature and turn it sharply, with all the strength I have, to snap its neck. It falls to its knees. Most creatures can be felled this way. I have never given this knowledge to my daughter, and now she may need it.

The fight is over for me. Claws slash my face, and I stumble, my jaw falling open. The pain is more than I expected, and already another set of claws flash at my middle. I feel the spill of my blood and entrails, but see only leaves.

At the end, I am granted a Fae death. I look past the creatures who tear my flesh, up to the trees of Sanctuary and the light of the sky I will never stand on Upworld ground beneath. The light grows, the brilliant-white consumes my vision, and I am free.

For the first time in over a hundred years, Cedric put his feet down on the surface of the Upworld. Chaos surrounded him. The other Faeries, who had perhaps never been aboveground, staggered, blinded by the sunlight. Cerridwen still struggled in his arms, and when he let her go, she fled back toward the hole, but tripped in the forest growth that carpeted the ground and sprawled, cried out in pain.

“Here, let me help you,” he soothed, stooping to lift her, but she kicked at him with her injured leg, sank her fingers into the muddy Earth to pull herself back toward Sanctuary. He did not wish to hurt her, but he gripped her legs and pulled her back, climbing over her until he’d pinned her to the ground. Once subdued, she ceased her struggles and sobbed, her eyes squinted tightly closed against the light that assailed them.

It was early morning. Cedric climbed to his feet and lifted Cerridwen into his arms, cradling her like an infant. He called out to the Faeries around them, tried to order them to stop, to regroup, but they fled, all toward the east, as if they knew the way. He cursed himself, and Ayla, for not thinking this through.

The guards, though, responded. They came to his side immediately, as if eager to be ordered about. The one holding Flidais tossed her to the ground and kicked an Earthy clod of loam into her face.

“Stop that,” Cedric ordered. “She is not to be harmed until we reach the boat.”

Flidais’s eyes flickered to his, and he stared her down. Let her feel the weight of his anger. No doubt, she thought she could save herself, and therefore did not take him seriously. But there was no chance for her now. Let her believe there was, let the end come as a surprise. He would dearly love to see her suffer at that moment, when she died at his hand.

“Were any of the Faeries that came up before us healers?” He prayed they were, guessed from the grim expressions of the guards that they did not know, or doubted it. “Then we must move quickly. Can we reach this boat by nightfall?”

Flidais closed her eyes and turned her head. As if that would make him give up questioning her. He kicked her, not hard enough to do any damage, but with enough force to make her fear his anger. “You will answer me or you will march us to the boat on broken legs! Where is it, and can we reach it before nightfall?”

She choked on her gag, and rolled to her side to nod vigorously.

“Get her up. Remove that stupid thing. If she cannot talk, she cannot tell us where to go.” As the guards hauled her to her feet, Cedric turned away from them, bent his head to Cerridwen’s ear. “Can you walk now? Or fly, at least?”

She did not face him, but nodded miserably and did not dash back toward Sanctuary when her feet touched the ground. “I cannot see,” she sniffed, reaching out for him, and he took her arm, tucked it into the fold of his, and guided her after the guards, who had set off through the trees.

It was slow going, and he whistled to the guards occasionally, signaling to them to wait if Cerridwen needed to rest or had a difficult time navigating an obstacle. They did not complain; if they had, he would not have had the patience not to kill them. The day wore on, and he could not think of what had happened the night before, or that morning. To do so only increased his weariness, and he knew that the hour of rest was far off. Beside him, Cerridwen said nothing, not even to complain of the pain in her leg. She kept her wings folded against her back and never once attempted to use them to relieve her feet. They were a reminder of her father, no doubt, and her mother, and, were Cedric in her position, he would not wish to be reminded, either.

The sun at their backs cooled and faded, leaving them with only murky twilight to guide them. He called to the guards to stop, and came to face Flidais. “You said we would reach the boat by nightfall. Where is it?”

“We are not far,” Flidais replied, too cooperative. “No more than a mile.” She did believe, then, that she would ultimately survive. He nodded to the guards, and they pulled her after them, tripping her so that she had to scramble for balance.

“I do not understand,” Cerridwen said quietly beside him. “Why is Flidais treated so?”

“Flidais freed Ambassador Bauchan and led the Faeries of the Court to flee.” He hesitated. He did not wish to diminish Cerridwen’s guilt at her own part in the Faery Court’s destruction, but he did not wish for her to blame herself entirely, not when Flidais had made so noble an effort to betray her race as well. “She did so without your mother’s permission, and in doing so depleted our guard. If she had not, then perhaps there would have been enough of a force to destroy the Waterhorses. Perhaps things might have ended differently.”

Cerridwen was silent for a long moment. Then, with a bitterness that had not been in her voice that morning, not even after their harrowing flight through the Darkworld, she said,

“But it has not ended, yet.”

Flidais was true to her word. Just as the total blackness of night fell over the forest, the trees gave way, revealing a Human settlement unlike any that Cedric had ever seen. The dwellings were plain wood, and built so close together as to be nearly on top of each other. Electric lights burned from the windows, the sounds of their strange theater boxes spilled tinny into the night.

“Where there are Humans, there are Enforcers,” Cedric warned the guards. “We must move cautiously.”

Cerridwen covered her wings, closed her shirt over them, though they were almost more conspicuous poking out below the hem of the garment. If they thought they could fool any mortal with their appearances, they were very foolish, in Cedric’s opinion. Flidais was bound, led by Faeries in matching tabards gripping spears. Cedric himself was soaked in blood and caked in grime from battle, and Cerridwen looked much the same, and with an angry wound in her exposed ankle.

Luckily, though, the narrow streets were clear. They passed one or two mortals who gave them strange looks, but said nothing, passed another who gave them a strange look and warned, “Lots of Enforcers around. Not a good night to be playacting.”

Flidais led them to where the little houses clustered along one side of the street; a pebbled beach and open water edged the other. Then, she showed them a narrow path, two dirty tracks winding across grass that disappeared into more trees, past a weathered sign with peeling paint that said Salem Ferry in Human letters. A swath of cracking white paint attempted to cover the dark shape of a witch on a broomstick—the Human interpretation of a witch, anyway—and another sign, this one not painted, but printed with large orange letters against black, No Trespassing.