Veil of Shadows (21 page)

“Gods above, what has happened?” she asked, her face suddenly ashen. But she did not need to ask. She already knew what she would hear. It was clear from the way she held her body, as if anticipating the news.

“There was an attempt on the Queene.s life,” one of the captors called out, and the obligatory chorus of whispers rose from the crowd of bystanders.

“An attempt?” Perhaps Danae had not anticipated this, after all. She seemed genuinely surprised at the proclamation.

Or she did not expect to hear that her plan had failed….

It became clear, like clouds moving away from the sun. Of course. He had seen them, the night before, as he had hidden from the festivities and sat high above, alone with his harp. He.d seen the two of them in conversation, and then their disappearance into the tent. Cedric had emerged with wine splashed on his robes, but he had not looked like a man just engaged in an argument. His expression had been grim, determined.

“Bring her attacker forward,” Danae ordered, and they pushed Cedric toward her. “I wish to see his face.”

As if she did not know what face she would see. Amergin.s mind raced…. Of course they had planned this. And last night, they had decided to act on their plan.

Sickness clenched in his gut. The new Queene was practically a child, and so lost when he had looked into her eyes. No matter how brave a front she had mustered before Danae upon her arrival, she showed fear, and deep despair. Harming her was destroying an already wounded heart. There was no sport in it, no honor. Certainly no dignity.

The guards pulled the hood from Cedric.s head, which drooped on his shoulders, and his bloodstained hair obscured his face.

“Cedric!” Danae.s hand flew to her chest in the kind of dramatic gesture Humans liked to use. She.d probably practiced it before a mirror. “Gods and Goddesses, what have you done?”

Cedric did not respond. Amergin leaned over the rail, then thought better of it. Though a fall would not kill him, he would probably wish it had.

“Tell me!” Danae snapped. “I order you to tell me.”

“I…” Cedric sobbed, as if fighting back the words he did not wish to admit. “I stabbed Cerridwen. While she slept, I took a knife, and when she tried to fight me, I…”

“Enough!” Danae lifted her hand in a good show of anger. “Where is the Queene now?”

“We do not know,” one of the guards admitted. “While waiting for the healers, she…disappeared.”

“So, is she dead?” The eagerness in Danae.s words would go unnoticed by any that did not know to look for it. But Amergin chuckled ruefully. My, how she wished for the girl.s death.

“We do not know, Lady Danae,” the guard said with a bow. “She may have gone into the forest. There were tracks, but they ended.”

Danae considered a moment, her dark eyes scanning Cedric.s humbled form. “Organize a search party! Every able Faery should scour the forests. Bring the Queene back to me, safely, and you will be richly rewarded.”

This would never do. Amergin turned and ducked into the small tent. He had few possessions in this realm, but he would find what he needed in the chest that stood at the end of his cot. A pair of trousers, the heavy woven denim kind favored by modern Humans, to protect his legs from the whiplashing briars growing from the forest floor. Human “sneakers,” thin canvas boots that only laced to the ankle but had thick, hard soles to guard his feet. He found a doublet spun from soft wool, and pulled that on, as well. A flashlight, which he would need if caught out after dark. Good thing he had bought it off the Human trader who had come during the last fair. So much easier than torches.

He also took the pack that he had cobbled together long ago in case he ever wished to run from Danae.s Court and stay hidden. Inside, all manner of food, preserved in aluminum cans by the Humans, strained at the seams, and a small plastic case with a red cross emblazoned on it held some meager supplies for patching wounds. To this strange mix, he added his wand, and slung the long handle of the bag over him so that it crossed his body.

Stepping back out of his tent, he could see that the village was, as expected, in chaos. Danae had known exactly what she was doing by ordering an immediate search. Some would object, others spring to action. Those who objected would do nothing. Those who were moved to act would clash with others who had plans of their own, and the whole of the effort would bog down in petty bickering. By the time a search got under way, the poor girl would almost certainly have bled to death.

He descended into the clearing on the rope ladder from his narrow porch and tried to make his way through the throng without attracting Danae.s notice. But she always noticed him, the way one always fixates on the single guest at a party that they do not care for.

“Where do you go, wizard?” she called out.

He stopped and bowed to her. “To search for the missing Queene, as you commanded.” He paused, then added, “Your Majesty.”

Her chest swelled with an outraged breath. “You will watch your words more closely, wizard. There are many things I can think of to do with a body that does not die.”

“I am sure there are.”

And with that, Amergin slipped into the forest.

The rain had stopped, and the cold had become warmth to her. She opened her eyes, the great effort in that simple movement stabbing pain through her head.

Beside her face, the little fern that had been so battered by the water now stood straight and tall, its feathery leaves brushing her face. She closed her eyes and used her other sight. In that place, it did not hurt to look, or to breathe.

The tree of her life force had so many broken branches and snapped roots. Her energy, sickly yellow, moved like the sludge in the bottom of a Darkworld tunnel, and the dirty bubbles of it burst into nothing where they reached a fracture in their path.

Beside her, the little fern, buzzing with bright green like a swarm of angry bees, bent to brush against her chin again. The fibrous material shocked her skin, dripped blinding green-white sparks onto the surface of her. The energy sank into her own, green for a moment, then blending into the dim mix of her own. A similar prickle snapped at her elbow, another at her thigh. All around her, the plants of the forest touched her, gave her their strength. Was she doing it, or were they? Cedric had not taught her this….

…that name should have caused her pain, but it did not. She did not have enough strength to feel it.

She thought of that day in this forest, perhaps very close to where she lay now. Yesterday? It seemed like a lifetime. Perhaps it had been. She might have lain on the forest floor forever, caught between life and death, kept in the former state only by the scant help the plants could give her.

That was a happy delusion. The hours had not seemed like years, they had been years. The rain that soaked her hair and skin was not the same rain as had fallen before. No, she had been here for as long as it felt she had.

The plants around her trembled. A breeze brushed her face. And then, a voice, as if underwater, but unmistakably a voice, pulled her out of the other sight.

A figure, clad in strange, Human clothing, ran toward her. It knelt, features fuzzy as it loomed over her. “I.m here,” it reassured her in a masculine voice. “I.ve got you.”

“Cedric?” But it couldn.t be, could it?

He lifted her into his arms, and the pain washed her into darkness again.

Danae had ordered him tied to the post in the center of her tent, in the same room where he.d fallen so easily for her trick. During the night, one of her crows came to cover him with a blanket. In the morning, they brought him water and something to eat, feeding him patiently. The rest of the time, he was alone.

Days passed this way. How many, he had lost count. He asked for Cerridwen. Had they found her? Was she okay? They ignored him, or merely shook their heads.

When he slept, images of her, head thrown back, panting, breathless, haunted him. His hands covering hers as she bunched the bedclothes in her fists. Her slender legs quivering where they wrapped around him.

Always he woke still bound, body aching from lack of movement, tormented by wholly different images in the light. Her confusion, her screams, her pain. The knife blade sinking into her arms, over and over, blood splashing against her linen-pale skin.

Whenever they brought him food, he prayed it was poisoned. He prayed for an end to the spell that kept him prisoner. Neither death, nor relief, came to him.

He had heard Danae, all during his captivity, pretending to be concerned when the searchers returned with no news, gloating later to her faithful handmaidens that it would only be a matter of time before she was Queene once more.

All the time he had listened to her his hatred had grown. He had never imagined such an abhorrence. It consumed him like fire, leaving only ashes behind, and yet even after it had used up the last bit of his will, still it burned. No matter what vengeance he might exact upon Danae—and he prayed that he would, someday, claim that revenge—it would never wash away the foul loathing of her that blackened his heart.

It was almost nightfall when the False Queene came into the room, dressed all in black, her hair unbound, hands clasped in a unified fist against her stomach—she looked the picture of a somber mourner.

“What do you think?” she asked, her voice full of tears. “Will this be convincing?”

He tried to spit at her, but his mouth was dry, and the motion was useless. Pathetic. He hung his head.

“The searchers have given up,” she declared in a more cheerful tone. “They have found their answer.”

He looked up, to her hands, outstretched and cupped. In them, feathers. Black, tinted red in the low light of the oil lamps.

“Good work, Cedric,” she said with a cruel smile, and turned her back to leave.

A cry woke Amergin, a scream that sent a chill to his immortal bones and echoed through the treetops like the anguish of a dying animal. It repeated, tugging sympathetic pains from his chest. Any creature that could hear such a sound and not shudder in agony in unison with the creature that had uttered it was soulless, at best.

He rolled over on his cot and felt an unexpected tenderness for Cedric, despite what he had done.

All through the night, the pitiable screaming went on.

Fourteen

S he was never certain if she dreamed or not. Sometimes, the face that leaned over her, full of concern, was that of Trasa. Sometimes, it was her mother. Others, it was the Morrigan herself. It seemed unlikely that any of it could be real, but she could not sort it out.

Time passed. She did not know how much, but she was certain that it passed, because she felt herself becoming stronger. She also woke to cool hands helping her sit up, and a cup pressed against her mouth. This happened more than once, and each time she drank the bitter liquid offered, she slept until it was time to drink it down again.

She woke once in the night, and did not know where she was. A fire burned in a stone hearth, and she saw through the wobbly glass in the window beside her bed an ink-black sky full of stars. But she did not remember having a bed next to a window in a stone cottage. She did not remember traveling to one.

Her head swam, throbbing with exhaustion and pain, yet still feverishly alert and fighting against the confusion the drugged concoction wrought. She meant to call out for water, and to ask where she was, but when she spoke, she cried his name and something twisted sharp in her chest.

Trasa was at her side in a moment, urging her to lie back down. “Rest. You are not healed.”

“Where am I?” she asked, and yet the words muddled on the way out, and she really asked,

“Where is Cedric?”

“Safe,” Trasa said, but her face blanched. “He wishes for you to rest.”

Why would she not tell her? And then, with clarity that stung far more than the knife blade had, she remembered. He had done this to her. He had stabbed her, had held her down and slashed at her with a dagger, torn flesh from her arms with the blade as she tried to protect herself.

She opened her mouth to be sick—What a strange thing, to be sick…. Could a Faery do such a thing?

What came out instead was a feral scream. She hugged her knees and rocked to comfort herself, but no comfort would come.

Trasa smoothed her tangled hair at her back, hummed a comforting mother.s tune to her as she wailed. How strange, that one who followed a war-maker Goddess, a death Goddess, should attempt consolation in such a time of pain.

“I do not know why,” Trasa murmured, and only then did Cerridwen realize that what she had been sobbing, over and over, was “Why?”

When the tears subsided, and she lay back on her bed, not moving, not really seeing the small cottage before her, Cerridwen asked in a whisper, “Where am I?”

“You are in my home,” Trasa told her, straightening from the pot that hung over the hearth.

“Rustic by the standards of modern Human society, but Our Lady calls us to lead a simpler life, to stay in touch with the spirit of the land that is drowned out by televisions and radios and computers.”

“I have seen a television.” It seemed important, somehow, to let the Human know that she was not ignorant to her culture. “There was one in a pub on the Strip, in the Underground.”

She remembered how it had looked like a window into another world, or a painting that moved, hung as it was on the wall. “How long have I been here?”

“Fourteen days.” The Human ladled out some stew from the pot and brought it to Cerridwen.s bedside. “Eat.”

The sight and scent of food suddenly reminding her of her need for nourishment, she snatched the bowl and fished hot chunks of vegetables from the steaming broth, not caring that it scorched her fingers and burned her tongue.

“Easy—easy!” Trasa took the bowl back, and pressed an implement into her hand. “Use a spoon!”

Cerridwen pushed a tangle of hair away from her face. “Sorry,” she said sheepishly. Her stomach lurched at her next thought, but she could not wait any longer. “What happened to Cedric? Have you seen him?”

“I have. I brought him water this morning,” she stated, hard, matter-of-factly. “He admitted to what he did to you, and the Court believes you dead.”