Fever Mist (2 page)

Running out of dust was more than an irritation. It was a threat to my sanity.

I found my herb basket and went outside to gather sticks and leaves. I make an excellent glamour dust from the yew tree not thirty yards beyond the door to Glimmer Cottage. I was taught the formula by my mother, Frona, the great wyrding woman and King’s Oracle, over a hundred years ago. She would have marveled to see how supple and potent our yew has grown.

Not that I’m that old! Ha-ha. There’s a riddle there.

It was indeed over a hundred years ago Mother taught me the wyrding ways. It was during the time of King Jowan, the last king of Dumnos. When I was eighteen, I made a terrible mistake with one of my wyrds. In the confusion afterward, I was taken to the faewood and brought before Idris, regent king of the Dumnos fae, who tried to keep me with him there as his lover.

I escaped Idris before a night and day had passed, but when I returned to Dumnos everyone I knew was gone. A hundred years had elapsed in the human realm, an eyeblink in my life. I rousted the couple who’d taken up residence in my house and lay a boundary around the grounds so that no one, human or fae, would notice my existence.

I’ve tried venturing out into the world, covered in protective charms and obscuration spells, but the nearer I come to another human being the more Galen and Diantha scream to get out of the double-banded silver and gold Oracle’s ring on my right hand.

This was how I lived: in the company of crows, grinding dust from my yew tree, with the constant yammer of two captive, lovesick souls constantly seeking and sometimes finding ways to break free and take over my will until I herd them back into their gold and silver prison—a ring I could remove, but only on pain of death, mine and theirs.

I’d never been with a man, and I had accepted the impossibility of ever knowing love. I had turned to watching love’s play where I could find it.

Through the glimmer glass I’ve watched innocent lovers steal chaste kisses on the stairs of Tintagos Castle. I’ve seen a nobleman bed the girl who’d come to light his morning fire while his son was in the kitchen, lifting the skirts of the cook’s helper. Over ten years, my interests have varied. I tend to search in themes. For a time, I watched only redheads, then only couplings out of doors. One year I couldn’t be bothered unless there was force or bondage involved.

When the fever mist came, I’d been on a kick for male beauty. After Idris, who radiated splendor and sexuality, my concept of the male ideal had become… more difficult to impress. I’d planned to spend the day on the roof with glamour dust and a three-dimensional view of the Tintagos Castle and its current guest.

The evening before, a young knight in silver armor had arrived from the south, and I’d caught a glimpse of his welcome. He was on his way to Sarumos—London, he called it—to join King William’s brother on a crusade to the holy land. He had promised to tell all about it at Lord Tintagos’s table this evening.

Not that I cared a whit about kings in Sarumos and crusades in the east. The silver knight was simply the most beautiful human man I’d ever seen, and I wanted to see more.

“Kaelyn calls! Kaelyn calls!” The crow in the yew cried out to me as I broke off the tender end of a low branch and dropped the wand into my basket. “Kaelyn calls!” he said again.

Crows!

Being in the faewood had changed me. It had made me realize and activate my fae nature, and that had informed my understanding of the world. On returning to the human realm, I found that I understood the language of crows.

Confined to the cottage, crows screaming at me from the garden, and two human souls screaming at me from my ring. This should drive anyone mad—but I wouldn't let it. I wouldn’t let Idris win.

I shook out my hair, grown well past my waist, then tucked it back into its net. With my skirt pulled up and tied around my hips, I started to climb the tree. Leaves growing high up in the full sun give glamoured images a robust quality, with sharper colors and clearer sounds.

“Kaelyn calls!” the crow yelled, his beady black eye fixed on me. “Kaelyn calls,” he said again, without enthusiasm, like an afterthought.

I clung to a branch and hung there for a moment, considering the bird.
Why not?
I let go and dropped to the ground.

What if the crow was right? Crows usually were, their missives delivered so tauntingly.
Kaelyn is there.
The crows had watched me on the roof with the glimmer glass, calling out Kaelyn’s name in my incantations. They knew I wanted to find her. They knew I had been searching in the Small Wood.

Anyway, there were yew trees in the Small Wood. It would be interesting to try the bark and leaves from a different stand. And I could gather some hazelnuts from the trees at the lake.
Why not?

“I need a little adventure. Don’t you think so, bird?” I hadn’t been out in such a long time, and I was unlikely to come upon any people up there. I could be back at Glimmer Cottage before the evening meal was served at the castle.

I pushed the prince and princess out of my mind and locked them down in the double ring, Diantha to the silver band and Galen to the gold.

“Sleep.”

Not having bodies, they didn’t actually sleep, but out of sheer desperation I’d discovered the sleeping wyrd put them into a sort of trance. It took much of my power and never lasted long—sometimes only a few hours, sometimes as many as eight—but the respite was worth it. I’d have to sleep all the next day and half the day after to get my strength back.

“Athena!” My horse appeared in the courtyard, two empty sacks hanging from her saddle. I might as well collect other interesting stuff from the Small Wood along with the yew parts.

It felt odd and wonderful and good to be away from Glimmer Cottage. Leaving the courtyard, a cool breeze invaded the fine spring morning and raised chill bumps on my neck. The mist had rolled in from the Severn Sea bringing its strange dark look, like a living thing fed by malice.

Or maybe my guilty conscience wanted to ruin this rare day of freedom.

I turned Athena east on an inland path, out of the way and seldom used, and rode to the Small Wood without incident. I was glad I’d come. The yew trees were old and teemed with power. As I filled one of my sacks, I sensed the enduring energy of the ten thousand things flowing through their bark, branches, and leaves.

At the lake I tied Athena outside a hunter’s cottage and walked to the hazel trees on the far shore which gave the lake its name. Legend has it that Nine Hazel Lake is the sacred home of the Lady of the Lake. She sleeps beneath the surface with Excalibur, King Artos’s sword of power, in her arms.

I peered into the pristine waters, half hoping and half afraid to catch a glimpse of the mystical sight, and a sudden breeze whipped through the trees. I inhaled the cold air and listened to the sound of leaves in the wind. Something strange was in that breeze, but I couldn’t put a name to it.

I filled my second bag with hazelnuts. On the way back, I passed a flat rock at lake’s edge which jutted out over the water, a pleasant spot to do the work I had in mind. I sat down with my two sacks and withdrew a few handfuls of yew sticks and some dried leaves I’d found on the ground.

Using the pestle from my purse of stuffs and devices, I ground the pile of yew to the coarse consistency of grain, chanting:

Vide infra, vide supra.
Vide, vide, vide.
Audi infra, audi supra.
Audi, audi, audi.

Engrossed in my task, I was surprised when a voice very close and very male said, “My lady, I beg pardon for the intrusion.”

« Chapter 2 »
Kaelyn

I
JUMPED TO MY
feet as the voice—resonant and masculine
and
real
—filled the air. A man emerged from among the hazel trees, and I clenched the marble pestle with the fleeting—and pitiful—thought it might serve as a weapon. My heartbeat quickened as he came into view.

A shower of white-blond hair fell over the man’s shoulders. His skin was pale but healthy. His black eyebrows arched gracefully over kind hazel eyes. His teeth were straight and white, and his lips were full. With his smile a dimple formed on the side of his mouth. He was tall and strong-looking. Perhaps a little younger than me—though it was hard to tell ages now.

He wasn’t mesmerizing like Idris. He was just… lovely. No promised terror, no power, no hidden trickery.

“Who are you?” The hope and wonder in his question was charming. This could be no ordinary human, and yet he had no magic about him. Flawless as he appeared, he was no fae. At least, no fae like any I’d seen.

Idris—the regent king of the Dumnos fae and the only man who’d ever shown an interest in me—had been compelling, a glorious sexual predator. This man had a different kind of physical power. Natural, earned, and owned. His tunic, cloak, and boots weren’t magic-made, but were all of fine quality. A suit of armor tied down on his horse’s back was so thoroughly polished it shone—like silver.

The silver knight was a human man—and a fine exemplar. He came closer.

“Are you the Lady of the Lake?”

I laughed out loud—and louder still at his puzzled reaction.

“No, Sir Knight. I am not.”

I was sorry for his consternation, but the notion any man would mistake me for a goddess, and one reportedly beautiful beyond compare, was… laughable.

He took another step toward me. I believe he intended to kiss me, and I intended to let him. His lips were so close, and mine tingled with anticipation, but the crackle of dry leaves stopped us. We both looked toward the Small Wood.

An old woman on foot appeared from among the trees. She wore a green tunic and cloak, its hood thrown back, exposing long gray curls. Her blue-gray eyes were the color of a mourning dove. She fixed on me but spoke to the blond knight. “Not yet.” She flicked her wrist at him in dismissal.

He turned back to me, but his gaze went through me. Frowning, he looked back to the woman and shook his head as if he couldn’t understand where she’d gone—but she was coming right toward us. He turned in a circle, frowning, then made the sign of the cross over his breast and kissed the beads he wore around his neck.

The old woman bent down and took up a bit of the stuff I’d made, still spread over the rock. She whispered something over the dust in her open palm, and as the knight wandered by she spread the charm over his tunic.

“Hello, Elyse.” She knew my name.

She clasped my forearm and, not at all subtly, worked the same dust into my skin. Did she think I wouldn’t notice? I noticed! And yet… I didn’t so much care.

She chuckled. “That’s right. You don’t mind.” She had the sweetest, friendliest smile I’d ever seen.

“Kaelyn?” I said.

“There’s a fever mist about.” She nodded. “Why don’t you come have a nice bowl of stew with me?”

“What’s a fever mist?” I said, following her. We left the knight to his own devices. I was disappointed to walk away from him but… I’d found Kaelyn!

“Hmph. For a King’s Oracle, you don’t know much.”

I stopped. My stomach felt like it had turned over. “There are no kings in Dumnos anymore.”

The old woman waved her hand and kept walking. “Tell me that’s not the Oracle’s ring on your hand,” she said over her shoulder. “You have nothing to fear from me, my dear. But let’s get inside, away from the mist.”

I’d never seen the mist come off the bay so far as the Small Wood, but then I didn’t look in the glimmer glass every day, did I? And I’d
never
seen a mist that scared me. I laughed at the thought, but I followed Kaelyn as she turned onto a wide path that ran along the side of a hill.

I don’t know why I trusted her sweet smile. My sister, Lourdes, had shown me how evil could lie in wait behind a sweet smile.

Then again, I had destroyed Lourdes. The evil was in me.

But I did trust Kaelyn. At least she didn’t call me a fairy, like those awful Threshers, and throw salt at me. In truth it felt so good to hear another human voice, and one so friendly and accepting, I had no thought of
not
following her.

Abruptly she said, “Here we are. Home, sweet home,” then turned and without hesitation walked straight at the hillside.

“What are you doing?”

She was swallowed up by the hill, but I could hear her. “What do you mean? Come in, come in.”

I looked for the way, but felt rather foolish doing it.

Kaelyn walked out of the hill again like she’d just stepped out her front door. “So that’s how it is with you,” she said. “I suspected as much.” As if it all made sense. “Give me your hand.” She took hold of me without waiting and pulled me into the hill.

“Wait a minute!”

“Too late.” Kaelyn laughed and laughed.