Veil of Shadows (10 page)

“Only those of us worshipped as heroes.” He gave his answer without embarrassment, but there was no pride in it, either. “You have brought a prisoner?”

“We are both prisoners, actually. The Empath cut my bonds so that I could help row us ashore.” He lifted his wrist and displayed the slashed skin there. “None too gently, I am afraid. But I hope to lose the impression of captivity before we meet Queene Danae.”

He said it as though it were his idea. Cerridwen fumed silently at his nerve. She tried to make herself taller, more imposing, to the Human. “I am Queene Cerridwen of the lineage of Mabb, descended from Queene Ayla and King Garret, brother to—”

The Human spoke over her, as though he had some authority where Faeries were concerned.

“My, but you have the look of your grandmother about you.”

In the moment that Cerridwen.s mouth hung agape at the Human.s disrespect, Cedric said,

“This is Amergin, son of Míl. Known as the White Knee to the Fae.”

“Do not be stupid,” she snapped, irritated at suddenly being treated like a child once more. Amergin, the one that Cedric had told her of on the boat over, would have died centuries before. “It is impossible, he would have to be—”

“Immortal?” The man.s cheerful brown eyes sparkled. “I am Amergin, the very same who turned a storm to calm with my words and came to steal Éire from the Tuatha. Such deeds turn to legend, child, and legend can make a man immortal.” His expression turned serious as a group of Faeries approached them. “For all the good it does me now.”

The four Fae that surrounded them were all male, all dressed in rough garments, their matted hair bound in tails that fell down their backs.

The Empath did not greet them, but addressed them with orders. Her clothing, Cerridwen saw, was the same as the guards, but hers, embellished with shells and stones, marked her out as superior to them. “Those two are prisoners. Take them to Queene Danae immediately. The female claims to be Queene of the Underground Court.” Her cold purple eyes raked over Cerridwen. “She killed Bauchan.”

“Good girl,” Amergin said under his breath.

One of the soldiers pushed her, indicating she should walk. Cedric and Amergin walked ahead of her, neither of them sparing her a glance as they followed the guards that led them.

“How far?” Cedric asked Amergin, and the Human shrugged. “We will not reach her until nightfall.”

Tired, her feet aching, Cerridwen tripped over the stony ground. She glanced up. She had learned a little at sea about the way the sun moved through the sky, and it was not near dark, nor would it be for some time.

Miserably, she watched as Cedric and Amergin moved on. A guard at her back shoved her.

“Go,” he commanded gruffly, and she forced her feet to move, resigned that her loneliness and fear would be her only friends on this trek.

Seven

B y nightfall, they had traveled far inland. The landscape was different now than the last time Cedric had seen it. That had been before the last war with the Humans. Buildings, and their burned-out shells, had stood abandoned by the Humans driven off Éire. By now, those places had crumbled back to the Earth. Coarse grass and scrub had grown over the roads, pushing up the pavement and breaking it down into stone once more.

“The Humans never managed to keep their hold here,” Amergin said beside him. “They reclaimed the East, but they have not managed to gain and keep the West.”

“Since when?” If he did not look closely, Éire was as unspoiled as the day Amergin and the Mílseans had invaded.

“Since Danae led her forces here against them in the last war. She has a constant battle keeping them out, but she does it. Killed a hundred and forty Enforcers just two months ago. But she has done her best to keep Éire free in a way that the Humans were never able to.”

There was a grudging admiration in Amergin.s voice that Cedric did not like. “She can thank me for that, at least in part.”

“She is defending the isle magically, as in the days before your people? If I did not know better, I would think that you support this Queene who keeps you hostage.” He glanced cautiously at the guards, but they did not listen. They were soldiers; they did not care for politics, so long as their side was winning.

“You assume I cared for your Queene, as well.” Amergin sniffed, and then, apologetically, said, “I was sorry to hear of Mabb.s death. Although we often found ourselves on opposite sides of an argument, I had nothing but respect for her. And I know how much she meant to you.”

“She meant less, as years went by.” He did not feel the need to explain further. Another Human might have taken such a blunt statement of Faery sentiment as a breach of etiquette. But Amergin had lived among the Fae, on the Astral Plane, not as a deceased Human, but as something in between Human and divine. He remembered what it was to be mortal, and would, Cedric recognized with some sadness, always believe he was Human, but he had broken past the barriers of that limited mind. He had the wisdom of the Old Gods, and would accept Cedric.s words for what they were, not judge them by a Human standard or feel the need to respond.

“Your next Queene did not sit on her throne for long. Less than an eyelash.s weight in time,”

Amergin mused. “And her King, far less than that. Was it terribly violent in the Underground?”

“Violent, yes.” It was a shameful thing to admit. “Violence of our own making.”

“If Mabb had not moved against the Humans so quickly, if she had not spread her forces so thin…” Amergin waved his hand. “Ah, but after Paris, there was no hope for any of us, was there?”

Cedric.s mind wandered back to that time, in the city where the Humans had risen up from under the ground and overtaken the immortals who had put them there. And Mabb had been so certain of herself then.

“It was her vanity that trapped you, and kept you trapped,” Amergin continued.

“As your new Queene keeps you trapped, old man,” Cedric told him, putting a warning in his voice. It did not bode well for him, if even one so wise as the White Knee could be kept under Danae.s thrall.

“And as yours keeps you trapped. You do not see it yet.” Amergin increased his pace and walked on, as Cedric stopped, tried to find what it was in the man.s words that bothered him so.

He looked back to Cerridwen. It had been torture to keep ahead of her, ignore her stifled sobs when the guards shoved her or when she tumbled onto the rocky ground. But it was for both of them that he did not go to her aid. If he were bound, treated like the prisoner he still was, no one would speak for him, perhaps not even Amergin, and then there would be no one to speak for her. If he could somehow move Danae to spare her…

It seemed more hopeless than it had before as he watched the seemingly endless line of Fae trooping across the hills they had already trod. Danae would be overwhelmed by so many coming to her for aid.

The loss of two would ease that burden somewhat. Even the loss of one. Yes, that was an argument she would never buy.

Cerridwen.s robes were stained with blood from the many times she.d fallen to her knees. She walked hunched over, arms tied behind her, the picture of pain and defeat that Bauchan would have relished presenting to his Queene. He thought of Caesar parading the Gaul King around those eons ago. The Human Druids had not been pleased at that.

She looked up, caught his gaze, and the accusation of betrayal in her face pierced through him. For a moment, it seemed so real that he almost went to her. Then, he remembered the Empath. Was it possible that Cerridwen played a role to trick the Fae spy?

He knew then what Amergin had meant, and he had known it since he had knelt with her beside Malachi as he died, watching her become something other than what she had been when she had run to the Darkworld. In that tunnel, he had seen a glimmer of something in her that he could care for. Stupidly, he turned his back on that spark, and it had burst into flame, raging away at his defenses. He had not seen the damage until it was too great.

“Cedric, are you coming?” Amergin called, as though he did not know what a profound revelation had been born from his words.

He knew. There was no way such a thing could have escaped his notice.

Again it took a strength Cedric actually found pride in to turn away from Cerridwen and not run to her aid.

She would forgive him for this. She would have to.

The old Druid had been correct when he.d said they would not reach the settlement until nightfall. He told the time almost as well as one of those shiny Human clocks Mabb had coveted. The evening star had only just appeared when they reached a copse of trees that Cedric did not remember.

“The old oak forest?” He reached out in wonderment to touch the bark of one of them, his agony over Cerridwen momentarily put aside. “But they were gone centuries ago!”

“As I was?” Amergin responded. “After the Humans were banished, the trees sprouted again, from nowhere. They thrived off the magic here, and now look at them. As if they.d never gone.”

Under the canopy of the trees, the darkness was almost as thick as it had been inside the crevice of the cliff. There was no road and he resolved to go slowly, to find some excuse to stay closer to her, to keep any of their guards from exacting their own justice in the cover of the forest.

Anyone could go missing in the depths of the old oak forest, he realized with a shock. He could grab Cerridwen and disappear into the night before anyone would see them.

Just as he had the thought, a guard called out, “Torches!” and immediately the woods were illuminated with flames carried by Danae.s soldiers. He had missed his chance. It was just as well. If what Amergin told him was correct—and it likely was—there would be no place on Éire that was not controlled by Faeries, and those Faeries would be controlled by Danae. He had to accept that they were trapped for now.

As they moved deeper into the forest, signs of inhabitance began to reveal themselves. Light appeared from torches planted in the ground. A sudden, crude road wound through the trees, and the shadows of bodies crossing it ahead of their party stretched impossibly tall on the ground. A cracking twig, and his gaze snapped to a slender Human slipping between the trees, a jug of water balanced on her shoulder.

“Humans? You said there were none to the East,” Cedric said, keeping his voice low as he followed behind Amergin.

“I said they had not managed to keep a hold on the island.” His jaw set hard, angry, the sharpness made more severe by the flickering torchlight. “They are slaves. They aren.t even the children of Éire, mostly. Many of them came here, thinking the Fae would welcome them. It.s as though they paid no attention to the events happening around them for the past two hundred years, preferring instead to believe what Humans have always believed about your kind.”

Cedric did not have to ask what that was. Humans had believed, might always believe, that the Faery folk were harmless, mischievous…childlike. They took Human-drawn conclusions about the nature of Faeries and believed it as truth, made the Fae into a race of toothless, even friendly beings who wished nothing more than to enchant the lives of Humans.

He stamped down his rage as the water bearer passed by, unchained, unbranded. “Slaves?”

Amergin nodded, appreciation glittering in his shrewd eyes. “To their own desire to touch the beautiful, the favorites of the Gods.”

The Humans deserved their fate, Cedric decided, but he would not say such a thing to Amergin, who yet had some feeling for the creatures. Although, it was ironic: the Fae emulated Humans, and the Humans worshiped the Fae. No wonder the Veil tore, with everyone clamoring to grab hold of beauty.

The road led to a village. The dwellings were simple, constructed out of wood, with thatched roofs. They were small and placed in groups of threes, each triad arranged around a common area with a fire and cooking pot. There was a familiar, unpleasant smell to the place.

“The Human quarter,” Cedric said, and Amergin nodded, though he had not sought confirmation from him.

Humans, far too happy to be slaves, stopped in their nightly rituals to watch the new Faeries pour into their camp. Some of them cheered, others held children on their shoulders to see the spectacle.

“Is that the Faery Queene?” a Human male called to the guards. “The one who wants to take Danae.s throne?”

Though he had not believed Bauchan.s insistence that they had come to the Lightworld meaning no harm, the blatant confirmation of it turned Cedric.s hands into stone fists and pushed every rational thought from his mind. It would take considerable willpower not to kill Danae with his bare hands.

He looked back to Cerridwen. The guards treated her more roughly now, shoving her more often, shouting at her, all a performance to bring the Humans to a frenzy. It had been Danae.s plan to display her might over the Underground Faery Court by humbling Ayla, but she would be as satisfied with Cerridwen.

How humbling a beheading would be, he thought, and a chill raced up his back, between his wings.

The road forked many times as they followed it. Some paths snaked like serpentine tendrils across the dark forest floor, others lay as straight as though mapped by the angular shadows of the trees on the loam. Always, they stuck to the main road, past stretches of dark trees that gave way to an isolated Human dwelling now and again or the larger group configurations that seemed fairly common. Through the trees, a dome of light became visible. The heart of the encampment would be there, Cedric knew, and he held his breath. The moment was fast approaching, and he was not ready for it. He tried to calm his emotions; the Empath still followed them and would no doubt record every intercepted feeling to be used against them at their trial.

The village bore little resemblance to the Human homes they had passed. These were the Faery dwellings, the kind Cedric had lived in, the kind they had all lived in on the Astral Plane. The structures were little more than canopies of thatched panels anchored between trees, the walls fabrics of all kinds and colors draped from those. The light was different, too. Magical lights, Faery orbs, floated through the air, bathing the scene in gold. Fae hovered close to the ground, feet barely dragging the vegetation on the forest floor, while others flew and flipped through the air. Platforms ringed the trees, with more dwellings constructed on them, some stacked close on top of one another, high up in the leaves.