The Iron Sword (The Fae War Chronicles Book 1) (22 page)

“Titania!” I called out, my voice echoing through the dim, wavering light.

The Seelie Queen’s voice whispered in my ear: “You are no ordinary mortal, Tess. You possess power beyond even my imaginings. Mab is spread too thin protecting her realm, and thus she gave you no second thought.”

I looked around me, but Titania was nowhere to be seen. Still her disembodied voice spoke.

“I, however, have much time to think. I have failed my people, and my crown-sister, and soon our fair world will fall under darkness.”

Whirling again, my sword flashing in the half-light, I shouted at the incorporeal Sidhe Queen. “You’re wrong! It’s Molly who has the power!”

“The
fendhionne
pales in comparison to you,” said Titania, the sound of her voice moving from one ear to the other—if she were standing beside me she would have been uncomfortably close, purring into my hair as she moved. “You smell of ancient blood and moonlight, sacred stones and holy women.”

“This is ridiculous,” I muttered.

“Say what you please,” Titania said, her voice growing fainter. “They have found me out, and I am sure that
he
will shackle me in dreams as well…farewell, Tess O’Connor.”

Had I heard a slight note of fear in the Seelie Queen’s voice as she had spoken of her captors? I was sure now that the Enemy had captured Titania—the earth beneath my feet shuddered, and a deep rumbling grew louder. There was a sudden whirl of dark shapes and shadows as creatures fled from the ruins, abandoning their spoils as the earth itself protested, splitting open with a thunderous crack. The charred beams of the great vault-like ceiling quivered high over my head, and pieces of ash fell like snow. I ran, picking my way over the carnage without letting myself look properly at the wreckage beneath my feet, still holding my sword in one hand. I felt there and not there—I wasn’t sure if one of the huge falling beams would crush me, or pass right through me like a ghost, and I didn’t want to find out.

I ran toward a fringe of woods at the edge of the clearing that had held the Saemhradall, and when I reached the forest I stopped, turning back. The ruins of the Seelie hall collapsed in a spray of smoke and ash, swallowed by the cavernous fault that was still widening, the earth jolting beneath my feet. I watched breathlessly, sword-tip resting in the loam of the forest, the bright green leaves of the tree overhead trembling. I leaned back against the tree.

“Well, shit,” I murmured to myself, wondering why I was still very firmly planted in my vision. I didn’t particularly like this whole corporeal-manifestation business, especially when the dreams weren’t of my choosing and leaned closer to nightmares. I thought of the
garrelnost
-rider and suppressed a shiver.

I picked my way through the forest, keeping on the lookout for creepy-crawlies of the nightmare persuasion. The forest was pleasant enough, with sunlight filtering down through the green leaves, the peacefulness a stark contrast to the horrors of the attack at the Saemhradall. I wondered where the young Sidhe woman had fled, and if I would see her again in this dream. I walked for a while and then stopped. I felt insubstantial, but I could still pick up twigs and feel the bark against my skin. I had to concentrate harder to hold larger objects, and after a while my sword grew unnaturally heavy—or I was growing lighter. I stood for a moment and tried to make the vision waver, as it had done back in the ruins, when all the light had gone out of me at once, but I only gave myself an intense headache. I was stuck, half in and half out of a vision that had taken me somewhere into the Seelie realm, corporeal enough to touch things but insubstantial enough to know that I wasn’t entirely there. My half-body seemed to be in better condition than my exhausted physical body, but I still felt tiredness pulling heavily at my eyelids as I wandered through the maze of sun-dappled tree-trunks.

Why had the Shadow-creatures left the forest untouched, if they were so bent on destruction? I wondered idly, hefting my sword again in my hand, trying to get a better grip on the hilt. The sword slipped
through
my hand, and I growled a few curses as I bent over, relegated to gripping the sword with my right hand. For all intents and purposes I’d become left-handed in the weeks since my arrival in Faeortalam, but the sword didn’t feel as heavy in my right hand. Experimentally I swung the sword in a few lazy passes as I walked, and to my pleasure my right hand seemed to bear no sign of the
garrelnost
attack on the dusty road in Texas. At least if I had to fight anything else in this half-substantial state, I could use my right hand too.

I paused, my thoughts interrupted by a very faint crackling sound. I sniffed the air and a chill ran through the entire length of my body as I recognized the scent of heavy wood-smoke. The Shadow-servants hadn’t spared the forest, after all. I stood and strained my eyes, trying to catch a glimpse of the fire so that I wouldn’t blunder into it—I had no idea if I’d even been walking in a straight line during my musings. I wished fervently that I’d brought the scabbard with my sword when the white fire had overwhelmed me. It was incredibly inconvenient to have to focus on my grip and try to discern the path of the crackling flames.

I knew if I died in Faeortalam, it was the real deal, but what happened if my dream-self—or vision-self, or whatever the hell this was called—got incinerated in a forest fire? Would my sleeping body erupt in flames as well, or would I just be sent back to my physical form, no harm done? I had a creeping feeling that I wouldn’t just pop back into my bedroom if the forest-fire caught up with me in this vision.

Curls of heavy smoke drifted over the forest floor, slightly left of the path that I had been taking. So I hadn’t traveled in a complete circle. I waited for a moment, watching the smoke to make sure it really was coming from that direction and that it wasn’t just drifting…and I was rewarded by a glimpse of jumping orange flames, a blast of heat billowing into me on the slight breeze.

I turned and started running again, as fast as I could with my sword held up and to the side so that if I fell, hopefully I wouldn’t impale myself. A litany of curses spilled out from between my clenched teeth—some generic, most directed at Titania for getting me into this mess. Fortunately I discovered that my dream-body had more endurance than my real body, and being insubstantial had amazing speed benefits. When the breeze blew at my back, I
felt
it pushing me along, and for a moment I was afraid that I would drift up into the sky on a slip of air, lost in the clouds forever. But that didn’t happen, and I concentrated on not tripping over any of the many obstacles on the forest floor.

Then a small, cheery voice rang out through the trees, and my heart leapt.

“
There
you are!”

My knees went weak with relief and I had to sit down on a tree-root as Wisp whizzed into view.

“Thank goodness,” I said a little breathlessly.

“No, thank Flora!” Wisp corrected me. “She was the only one with any sense when you went all white and glowing and then you wouldn’t wake up! She sent me to find you, because I’m the best at Walking.”

“Well, I’m glad you found me before the forest-fire could fry me,” I said, pointing with my sword back in the general direction of the fire.

“The fire is far behind you. You are very fast, for an inexperienced Walker,” Wisp said. He was maddeningly unconcerned as he settled on his customary perch. “We didn’t even know you could dream-walk, Tess, why didn’t you
tell
us?” he asked, sounding more than slightly petulant and a little wounded.

“I’m sorry, Wisp, I didn’t know myself,” I answered truthfully. “I mean, I had some strange dreams when I came to Faeortalam but I didn’t ever
do
anything in them, and some of what I saw hadn’t even happened yet anyway.”

“Details, details,” huffed Wisp, tugging on my hair. “Come on, then. You’ve been Walking for far too long now. Time for you to get some proper sleep.”

“I don’t know how to get back,” I confessed miserably, spearing a hapless leaf with the tip of my sword. “I tried, and I just made my head hurt.”

“Of course you don’t,” replied the Glasidhe. “That’s why I came to find you, isn’t it? Now come on, follow me.”

I followed Wisp as he drifted beneath the trees, apparently in no hurry. He hovered above a tree-shadow.

“Now, look. It’s simple. You just have to melt into the shadow. Think of it like a door back to yourself—your whole self,” he explained.

“That’s it?” I demanded.

“Well of course,” replied Wisp with an air of explaining something to a young child. “What did you expect, some kind of incantation and colored sparks? Come on now, before Flora gets worried.”

“Right,” I said skeptically. “Just fade into the shadow…because that’s something every good kid learns in school…”

But I thought about the wavering feeling, the disconnection from the vision. I closed my eyes and thought of floating, and fading, and as I stepped into the shadow I felt insubstantial, light as air, and then my vision faded into blackness

Chapter 20

A
fter slipping into the shadow, I felt a distinct rushing sensation, as if I were speeding through a moonless night; and then with a jarring jolt my insubstantial half-form slammed back down into my physical body, a metallic clang accompanying my return. I coughed and sat up, gasping a little as I adjusted to feeling so heavy again. I heard Flora and Forsythe talking to Wisp.

“Well, you finally found her. Where was she?”

“Over the river, in the Bright Court’s lands,” replied Wisp. “Titania took her, I think.”

“Typical of those Sidhe Queens,” said a disapproving voice. That would be Flora.

“Flora,” admonished Lumina gently. “We do not know what duress prompted the Bright Queen to take such measures.”

“She should have asked Tess’s permission,” Flora argued, though her tone was less caustic.

“Aye,” agreed Forsythe, “seeing as how Tess didn’t even know herself that she could Walk.”

“It’s been a very, very long time since there’s been a Walker, and one that’s made her way to Faeortalam too!” Wisp said in a quiet voice that barely contained his excitement.

“Strange that she didn’t know of it herself earlier,” said Forsythe thoughtfully.

“All Walkers come to their power in their own time,” Lumina said, and that effectively ended their conversation.

I sat up and pushed aside the curtains around my bed so that the Glasidhe could see I was awake.

Flora saw me first. “I thought you said she was sleeping,” she said accusingly to Wisp, leaping into the air from her perch atop my desk-chair.

“Well, she should be, at any rate,” said Wisp. “I told her to go to sleep, when I brought her back.”

“I think you need to teach me how to land back in my body a bit softer,” I said, wincing at the hoarseness in my voice. I reached for the glass of water on the bedside table, taking a few swallows to ease my throat’s dryness. “How long was I gone?”

“You were asleep for a bit, and then….we thought you were on fire at first,” Flora said. “But it was just the Walker-power, waking up for the first time in a while. I’ve seen it once before.”

I stretched my legs, wincing at the stiffness. Apparently some of the exertions of my dream-half had somehow caught up to my physical body as well—my arms were still sore from Flora and Forsythe’s sword sessions, and I hadn’t felt that in my vision, but there was a new, sharper soreness in my sword-arm on top of the dull aches of healing muscles. My legs were sore from my sprint through the forest. I pulled my braid over my shoulder and held it out to Flora.

“Do I smell like smoke to you?” I asked.

She drifted forward and after a moment said, “A little. The scent is faint, and I probably would not have noticed if you hadn’t asked, but it is there.”

“Great,” I said wryly. “I get to drag stuff back through my dreams too. That’s just awesome.”

I saw Wisp and Flora exchange a glance, the sort of look that parents swap when they’re trying to decide how to handle a recalcitrant child at bedtime.

“You should really get some sleep,” Flora said.

“I don’t really want to sleep right now,” I said. A jaw-cracking yawn distorted my last few words.

“You don’t want to Walk again,” Wisp corrected me gently.

After a moment I said, “Yeah, I’d rather stay right here. I’d like to sleep, but how am I going to know that Titania or someone else won’t drag me back somewhere like a rag-doll? It was pretty easy for her to break into my head.”

“Your mind is very vulnerable when you are asleep,” said Wisp. “It’s very easy…that’s how I came to you first. I thought I sensed it in you, but that’s a story for another time. Now you should sleep.” He landed on the quilt, dimpling the fabric with his slight weight. “I’ll stand watch. If someone tries to bring you anywhere, I will wake you.”

I looked at Wisp skeptically. “No offense, Wisp, but you really think you can stand up to someone like Titania?”

Wisp puffed out his chest. “Bigger isn’t always better.”

I chuckled a little—Wisp had picked up that expression from his journeys in the mortal world, from the looks that Flora and Forsythe gave him. I think Flora rolled her eyes, but I wasn’t completely sure. I leaned back, letting myself sink a little deeper against my pillow. “How can I go to sleep after all that?” I wondered out loud, talking more to myself than any of the small faeries. I shook my head. “What the hell is going on with me?”

“Nothing is wrong with you, if that’s what you are thinking,” said Flora fiercely, landing emphatically on my knee. “Just because this power has only now appeared doesn’t mean it hasn’t always been a part of who you are.”

I leaned my head back. “I guess. It’s kind of crazy though. I mean, I didn’t think I was anything special. I was perfectly fine with what I had to work with, and then Titania had to drag this out of me.”

“It would have come out sooner or later. Many Walkers use their powers unwittingly when they are children, and then they forget, or they think they just had very vivid dreams. When they are older, and wiser, they realize what they really are.”

My mind caught hold of the threads of a distant memory, one pushed so far back into the curve of my skull that it was hard to draw it out. The frayed threads kept slipping away from me, tantalizing. I knew somehow that it was a very important memory. I felt my forehead wrinkle with the effort.

“Don’t try too hard,” Flora said, moving her hand in reassuring circles on my knee.

“I think I remember…using it,” I said quietly. “Before Dad died. I went and played in a garden with blue roses, and there was a beautiful woman who taught me how to jump rope. I’d never been able to do it before, and I was so excited.”

The Glasidhe sat silently, listening.

“It felt—
different
, in the garden,” I continued, letting my thoughts lead my words. “Like I was in a world all my own. I loved the feeling. There was the beautiful woman—I called her the White Woman, because her hair was so golden it was almost white—and there was a boy older than me that came with her sometimes, with red hair.”

I sat very still, hoping that maybe my mind would follow suit—but memories were racing behind my eyes at breakneck speed, flashing by like trees from the window of a fast car—and then there were the feelings that came with the memories, threatening to overwhelm me. I heard myself gasping, and the glows talking tersely to one another, small hands at my knees and on my face and tracing the curve of my ears.

“Tess, Tess, Tess,” I heard Wisp say in my ear. “Say it, say it and you’ll know. You can’t fight it. I should have told you the first night, I saw it in you and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I’m sorry, Tess!”

The wretched sadness in Wisp’s voice drew me back out of the raging whirl of memories. “It’s all right,” I said breathlessly. “It’s all right, Wisp.”

“No, it’s not all right,” Wisp said into my ear, “but thank you for saying such a thing.”

“Did it make you feel better?” I said, blinking and breathing hard. How had I not remembered the blue rose garden, all these years? And the White Woman, and the boy? The boy who had really been a young man, I realized, but he’d played my games with me all the same, not caring that they were childish.

“Of course,” Wisp said.

“If you say what you know out loud,” Flora said, “you might have a better time of it.”

“If I say it out loud,” I said in a suddenly wobbling voice, “it will make it real.”

“It is all very real anyway,” Forsythe said seriously but gently.

I drew my legs up to my chest, encircling them with my arms. Flora and Forsythe relocated themselves to my kneecaps, and Wisp stood on my shoulder. Lumina sat at the edge of the bed, shadowed by Galax.

“I think,” I said slowly, “that I was Walking when I was younger. The White Woman…she was a Sidhe from the Bright Court.” I drew a slow breath. “And the young man was Ramel. That’s why I felt like I’d met him before.”

“When did you stop remembering it?” Wisp asked quietly.

“After my dad died,” I said. “Somehow I couldn’t get back to the garden…all I could think was that the roses would be dead…and they reminded me of the wreaths on his casket.” I shuddered at the vivid memory, flooding back with force.

“You were no longer a child,” Lumina said from the edge of the bed, “and you had no teacher.”

“We should have found you,” Wisp said. “Or the Lady should have sent us to you.”

“How was it that the White Woman—whoever she was—how was it that she wasn’t breaking the High Code?” I asked slowly.

“I don’t rightly know,” replied Lumina, “but I suspect that this rose garden was a place between the two worlds, not entirely within Faeortalam and not wholly a part of Sionntalam.”

“Ramel has some mortal blood,” I said thoughtfully.

“That would let him move between the two worlds…not necessarily following the High Code, but it would be easy for him,” Flora said.

We sat in silence for a few moments. I couldn’t fully process everything yet, so I asked the first question that popped into my head: “Did my sword come back with me?”

“Fortunately yes,” replied Flora dryly, “but it almost cut Galax in half when it fell out of thin air.”

Galax made a noncommittal sound.

“Sorry,” I said sheepishly. “That’s another thing I’ll have to learn.”

“All in due time,” said Flora. She cleared her throat. “I think it would be best if you tried to sleep now, Tess. You were Walking for a good while, and sometimes that can pass as sleep, but not with your partial manifestation. That takes a great amount of energy.”

The Glasidhe took to the air, leaving me free to snuggle down under my quilt again.

“I have absolutely no idea what you just said,” I told Flora with a yawn, “but I’m sure you’re right.”

“I am,” Flora replied with a flourish of her wings.

“Someone,” I said, sleep dragging at my words, “someone should go tell…that Titania was captured…and the Saemhadrall was destroyed…”

I distantly heard grim murmurings from the Glasidhe, but Flora’s voice cut over them. “We will take the message,” she said reassuringly.

“Thanks,” I murmured drowsily, my body finally succumbing in its battle against exhaustion. I felt a small weight settle down onto my pillow. I opened one eye blearily and saw Wisp sitting straight-backed by my head, his expression determined. With a slight smile, I closed my eyes and slipped into the comforting softness of sleep, drifting on dark dreamless tides.