Authors: Michele Hauf
"The man knows not what he mumbles," the unseen voice
from above Ulrich's head snapped. "Gossamyr is a common name."
Something gave a tug to one of Ulrich's wrists, making him cry
out. He could not see who or what held him. A faery thing, curse them
all!
"Why do you hide things from me, Puppy? There, in the torture
chamber."
Torture? Where was the danger-loving Faery Not when he needed her?
An icy blackness ignited to a dull glow as the alicorn was touched
to an iron torch on the marble wall.
"Shall I chain him to the wall?"
"I don't think it necessary." Two glossy red eyes peered
at Ulrich, the alicorn drawing a line below her pouting lips. To but
see a part of her face, from cheek to cheek and eyebrow to lower lip,
distressed him. "He's weak. Nor will he run without trying to
retrieve his prize, yes?"
Yes, he'd run without the prize. The loss of his wish seemed
ultimately more tolerable when compared to the evils this nasty
half-faced bitch could work upon him. Ulrich had seen the wall of
pinned essences. Souls of faeries the succubus had sucked to a slow
and painful death. Could she do the same to him? Steal his soul and
pin it to the wall? And then, would one of those skeleton creatures
emerge to battle Gossamyr?
A dead soul shepherd would not then be able to retrieve his lost
daughter.
"My kitten will be a good little boy."
The woman's touch felt like ice. No longer did the soft,
susurrating tingle of the divine attract him. Nor could he smell the
myrrh that had filled the halls of this lair; naught but terror
filled his nostrils with a sharp cloying odor.
He saw the tip of fingers coated with the glimmer from his eye
swipe across the air to reveal her neck and the serrated curves of
her bosom.
"Methinks you should not play with kittens," the man he
could not see said as he dropped Ulrich's feet and legs. "They
have nasty claws that will tear my mistress's dress and make her
bleed."
"Oh, Puppy. Come to me."
"Not when you've that horn in hand. It hurts."
"I'll not let this prize from my sight, so you'll have to
learn to live without my touch. Leave him. Shinn's daughter will seek
him, I am sure of that."
"I mean nothing
to Gossamyr," Ulrich managed.
"So she
is
Shinn's daughter?"
Hades, he shouldn't have said anything. Ulrich choked back risk of
exposing further knowledge.
"Your silence speaks volumes."
For once he prayed for a rogue spirit seeking direction to float
on by. Could he use it as a weapon and send it through the succubus's
being?
The fire burn of the alicorn tingled along Ulrich's brow as the
Red Lady drew it slowly over his face. "To what purpose do you
serve Shinn's false daughter, hmm? You are completely mortal, this I
know from your plain scent and unremarkable appearance."
Summoning the few remaining threads of courage, Ulrich worked up
his saliva and spat. Direct hit above and between the Red Lady's
breasts. The globule landed a part of her flesh he could not see, so
it appeared to float.
"Wrong answer." She summoned the minion who lurked in
the shadows with but a flick of her fingers. Footsteps shuffled over.
Ulrich saw the tips of black hair revealed as they wiped her breasts
clean of spittle. "I see we shall have to restrain the miserable
mortal. But I don't want to take away his soul, not yet. So...just a
little kiss."
Ulrich struggled as she leaned over him, but the melody whispering
from her mouth captured his mind in a vise hold and quickly becalmed
him to a ragged mass of muscle and bone. Unable to move, he moaned as
cold lips pressed upon his and summoned the passion in his groin.
Oh, but it was so sweet, her kiss.
Take me, drink me, suck out
my soul...
"I know it is this way." Gossamyr strode ahead of
Dominique and Tor. "East from the edge of the city. I remember
the spire of that great cathedral was in view."
"This man who has been accompanying you," Dominique
called from behind. "What were the reasons the two of you joined
forces?"
Inexplicably compelled, she looked at her palm, the lines deepened
with memory. He'd danced the mortal passion into her soul. Love? "We
were destined to come together. Though I cannot be sure my father did
not place him in my path. Ulrich is a good man."
"As a mortal he will be safe from the succubus's evil?"
"Not sure. The man who serves at her right hand is fée—and
she holds him in an
erie.
His essence is pinned to her wall."
"And that is a faery soul, as you have explained. Incredible.
You teach me much in so little time."
Time. The unrelenting enemy.
Gossamyr stopped, stretching out a hand to give the others silent
orders. Tor's hooves clopped to a halt behind her and the hematite
stones on Dominique's cape ceased clacking. The caw of a crow,
unseen, but close, made her tilt her head to the side. The air
smelled clean, strangely so. They were far from the marketplace, but
close, the calls of river men, as their skiffs sluiced silently
through the dreadsome dark waters.
The warm huff of air at the back of Gossamyr's neck danced through
her system, invigorating and smelling of summer mead buzzing with
honey-dripping humble bees. She reached back. Tor pressed his nose
into her palm. Hot suede. Huff of misty breath.
She and Dominique exchanged glances.
"He trusts you," the changeling offered.
"If that be so then I beg the unicorn remain far from the Red
Lady's lair. If she has Ulrich, no doubt she holds the alicorn."
Dominique shrugged and smoothed a hand over Tor's braided mane. In
response, the unicorn stomped the ground twice with its foreleg and
dropped into a regal bow, nose to the cobbles and fettered forelegs
bent.
Fearful of such deference from the sacred beast, Gossamyr managed
a bow and gestured the beast rise. But Tor did not. "What is he
doing?"
"He will yield to your request. Many years Tor has searched
for the alicorn."
"Time be tricksy."
"He knows it is close, but is aware of the risk. Evil cannot
be calmed when such power lies at hand. Do not lead us astray."
"I will not. I have seen and touched it. I will bring it back
to you...er, Tor. I pledge my honor to you."
The beast rose and reared up grandly upon its hind legs,
stretching twice the height of Gossamyr. It then turned and cantered
off down the street.
"He will remain close but unseen," Dominique said as he
gestured they continue. "Are we near to her lair?"
"Too close." Gossamyr walked up to the iron gate
surrounding the humble manor. Four guttered candles lit the shell
path to the stables. And there, at the edge of the stable lay a
puddle of darkness. Gossamyr rushed across the path, her bare feet
making little noise, and plunged to the fabric that resembled a slick
of mud. It smelled earthy. "Ulrich's cloak. She has him."
"I...can feel her."
Gossamyr spun around to spy the changeling standing in the center
of the shell path. The dark cloak listed on the wind, skillfully
disguising wings. His eyes closed, he pressed forth a palm to caress
the air before him, feeling, scenting—
"No!" Gossamyr shoved Dominique out from the succubus's
erie.
"She is calling to you. Do not listen.
Don't—blight, perhaps you should remain out here."
"I will not abandon you now."
"But you hear it?"
"A call? Yes. Gorgeous and seductive."
"I can do this on my own."
"Oh? You remind me of my wife. Headstrong and stubborn, she
is always getting herself into a fix." He cocked his head,
closing his eyes. "So...gorgeous."
Swinging her staff to gently land Dominique's chest, Gossamyr
said, "Please, you need to understand the power of her call. It
can devastate."
Dominique blinked from the reverie he'd slipped into. "But
you said I am in no danger. If I have never been Enchanted...?"
"A faery essence lives inside you. A sweet waiting to be
plucked by the Red Lady."
Dominique nodded, agreeing. "Very well, Tor and I shall stand
guard outside."
Pausing before the door to the lair, her hand pressed to the base
of a stone gargoyle with horns curled about its ears, Gossamyr
surveyed the darkening perimeter. Thick vines grew over the garden
and sweatered the side of the mansion. Their leaves were sharp and
smelled foul. She had not before noticed them. The stable door hung
open, revealing the carriage but no equipage. Dominique strolled
outside the gate, arms akimbo, his head twisting. Dark hair listed
across his cape. Had the changeling resistance to the Red Lady's
allure, he might have proven a boon to her. But knowing little of the
glamour he held—Enchanted, Disenchanted, or mayhap
Celestial?—she could not trust he would be resilient.
Facing the door, she summoned courage. It no longer mattered that
she defeated some evil force and made Faery safe. Nor did it matter
that she returned to her father's side, valorous and proven.
A
champion.
Her own desires mattered little.
Ulrich, the truest friend she had ever known, needed her. And
mayhap there was yet hope for Avenall. Avenall Eloi Papilion of
Rougethorn.
"Be strong," she muttered. "Be bold, be bold..."
She would not speak the final "be not too bold."
Gripping an
arret
to the ready and tucking her half staff
under her arm, she kicked the door open and marched over the
threshold.
Gossamyr strode forward, passing the leering marble gargoyles that
clung to the walls as if captured midscamper. Constant whispers
tickled her ears. Did the stone creatures speak? The chill of such a
notion shivered through her limbs.
She pressed onward but indecision slowed her pace. Would she find
Ulrich there in the room filled with moaning essences? Would the Red
Lady leave such a well-marked path to her destruction? If only she
could
twinclian
into the room, remain small and scope it out.
Touching her neck where the distinctive blazon had once shone, she
felt nothing. Mortal now.
Always had been, and always will be.
So
powerless without the blazon of Faery.
And yet...still a force.
Shinn had trained her to jump out in the face of danger and offer
it up a challenge. And that was what Gossamyr intended to do.
The whispering had stopped. A movement at the corner of her eye
snapped her gaze to the left. Just in time to see one of the gargoyle
torches move its horned head. Watching?
Testing, she tapped the head of a stone beast with her staff. No
movement.
"Methinks I am being tapped by souls unseen," she
murmured. "Blight! Be to it!"
"Where are you!" she called out, announcing her arrival.
"Show yourself, banished one."
A shove of the staff tip against a door to her right opened into
darkness. Cool air crept out, fluttering the candle held by her stone
watcher. The stone claw faltered, dribbling candle wax onto the
floor.
Gossamyr strode onward, her wake whipping the remaining torch
flames in a mad dance. Stabbing open the door on her left revealed a
thin stream of light cutting across the marble floor. Peering through
the crack, Gossamyr spied a single form suspended in the center of
the empty stone-walled room.
"Ulrich!"
Rushing inside, she skidded to a halt before the soul shepherd.
His body, stripped to but his parti-colored hose, hung suspended by
nothing more than the succubus's
erie.
The weight of his torso
stretched his arms; they had turned unnaturally inward at the
shoulder. His head hung upon his chest but his eyes were wide.
Fingers twitching, he moved slowly in a circle. "I will get you
down from there."
"No." Weak and barely there, his voice. His thumb
twitched. A miserable moan preceded his whispered, "Let
me...die."
"And have you forfeit your chance at a reunion with your
daughter?"
"I will see her...anon. If Heaven will admit a miserable soul
such as mine."
Gossamyr stepped beneath Ulrich. He was very high.
"Gossamyr, save the alicorn. I am not worthy... I just want
to die. Rhiana waits for me..."
He wanted to be with his daughter. His
dead
daughter. "Has
she taken away your soul?"
"Not...yet... She comes!"
Leaping high, Gossamyr managed to brush the toe of Ulrich's
pointed leather shoe. She landed in a crouch.
A wide sweep of white light flooded in through the doorway.
Gossamyr looked up from her crouch, into the blood-red eyes of her
father's disgruntled lover. Pinpricks of red circled her left eye and
arabesqued onto her cheek, a match to Avenall's mark. Hair the color
of scarlet anemones poured over her shoulders. The simple white plush
gown caressed her body and was cut high to expose her legs to the
thighs. She drew a silver pin beneath her nose, tipped with brown.
Dried blood, most likely. Gossamyr's?
"Delighted you could join the fete," the woman purred in
a sensual stir of tones reeking of Faery. "I have looked forward
to meeting Shinn's false daughter for quite a time. Pity we cannot
speak as allies."
Gossamyr stood upright. A glance to the ground spied her staff,
too far to grasp.
"You have an interest in my pretty, mortal kitten?" The
Red Lady gestured to the suspended soul shepherd.
"He has done nothing to you; release him and you shall have
the alliance you have waited for."
"Mmm, no." The woman drew out an object from her
wide-cuffed sleeve and pointed it at Ulrich's form. "I am not
finished playing with him."
A fine stream of glimmer shot from the alicorn's tip and zapped
Ulrich into a spastic disarray of jerks and twitches. "Nor you."
She turned the alicorn toward Gossamyr and winked. "Gossamyr de
Wintershinn of Glamoursiege, you will do my bidding!"