Child of Darkness-L-D-2 (22 page)

“She has left me, and all of us, to our devices,” Ayla had raged in bitterness. “She has used me, and now that she no longer needs me, she will not call on me again.”

He had not tried to explain to her the unselfish nature of the One God. He had not wished to tell her that the Gods and Goddesses she so craved seemed far more mortal and fallible than the One God he had served. It would not have comforted her then, just as another argument would not comfort her now.

“I have never known the fate of another Fallen,” he said patiently. “But I have faith. As you should have faith in me, when I tell you that I will return to you, no matter what should occur.”

She closed her eyes, seemingly too weary to continue with him in this fight that neither could win and both were too stubborn to concede. With a motion so quick and subtle that he would not have recognized it for what it was had he not spent the past twenty years at her side, she wiped away a tear. “Come to the audience, if you must. But I have not yet decided to let you train the militia.”

She did not offer to help him dress. That was her last effort to leave him behind, as she walked out of the room. But he would manage, and she knew that. Just as she knew that, no matter what decree she might make in the matter, he would lead the militia into battle.

Fourteen

T he members of the Guilds had already convened in the throne room. Malachi had gone ahead of her, to sit beside her throne. Usually, he would stand behind her, to her left, to display to the Court that he was not her Consort in an official capacity, that he was no Darkworld threat insidiously worming his way into the politics of the Lightworld. Tonight, though, his strength was not great enough to stand, and her strength was not great enough to embark on this task alone. Tonight, she and her remaining council would represent a single monarch, and the few Faeries who remained loyal to their Queene would feel the combined strength.

Cedric, though, was a worry. He had not returned yet, and Ayla was adamant that she would not appear without him. If the Guilds believed that Cedric, the most loyal of all Faeries to his Queene, had fled, there would be nothing to keep them there.

That was what she told herself, while another part of her raged that it was not true. Had she not been a good and fair ruler to her kingdom? And was she not in a way pardoning those who fled by doubting her ability to inspire loyalty in the very Court she ruled?

No, those worthless creatures who had fled had done so not because she had failed them, but because they had failed her. She drew herself up taller and forced energy from the center of her tree of life outward, to calm her shaking limbs. It served only to start up a shaking of a new kind, an eagerness that trembled in her limbs and brought giddy hope to her, despite the words she’d confessed to Malachi in his bedchamber.

Doom might await her, but she would not rush into its arms with self-doubt and self-pity. She swung the door open and strode into her throne room, and was instantly taken aback at how empty it seemed. Usually, guards would have kept out anyone who had arrived late, simply because they would not fit inside. Courtiers should have lined both sides of the center aisle, jostling each other to get a better view, and to make their way to the front that their petitions could be heard.

Instead, the meager handfuls of Guild members—no more than a hundred—stood in a motley half circle around the front of the dais. Many of them had never been privy to a royal audience, had never even been in the throne room.

Ayla remembered those days, when the Palace was her home, but she had seen only the barracks and Guild halls. When the gap between her world and the world of the Court seemed insurmountable. And it hadn’t mattered, for she had never aspired beyond the life of an Assassin.

So, how to address them? “You honor me with your presence,” would have been appropriate, perhaps, but would they believe it? She would not have, in their position. “I stand before you, not as your Queene, but as a fellow Guild member?” No, that was far too lofty. She stood on the dais—even sitting on her throne seemed too ceremonial—spread her hands and said, “I am frightened.”

There was no audible reaction from the Guild members, but they shifted surreptitious glances toward each other.

“I am frightened,” she continued, “because we stand on the eve of battle with our enemies, and they have more strength and power than our guards. We are faced with a horrible choice—to flee in dishonor and become slaves to an Upworld Queene, or to face the Elves and the creatures they have called forth as their warriors: the Waterhorses.”

This brought a few ill-tempered mutters, but she pressed on. “Yes, it is the Waterhorses that we knew to fear on the Astral plane.” She did not know this, not from experience, but she would not remind them that the Underground was all she had known. No doubt some of them held this in common with her, but she would not remind the elders of the group that she had not only less life experience, but had less experience as an Assassin, than them.

“An Ambassador from the Upworld came to us with this warning, but he did not seem genuine. Whatever his motives might have been then, they are no more clear to us now. He urged us to flee, and we did not. A mistake, in the eyes of some. But we will not be driven from the safety of our homes by bullies from the Darkworld.

“Are these creatures—monsters that the Elves have bribed with the promise of Faery flesh—

are they fearsome? Yes. And fierce warriors, capable of crippling and maiming even immortals, such as ourselves. But fearsome as they might be, is the prospect of living on the surface, cowering from Human oppression, no less terrifying?

“We are caught between two unwelcome prospects. We can choose to flee our home here in the Lightworld, risk capture and slavery at the hands of those Humans who put us here in the first place, or we can fight the traitor enemy who seeks to obliterate our race entirely, though we once lived together in peace.

“To flee, nothing is required of you. You can choose to live in the Upworld, perhaps live there without ever encountering the Human Enforcers who would kill you or send you back into exile.” Ayla paused, knowing this to be the critical moment. If they chose to leave, she would have nothing. Still, better to make the option available and appeal to their honor, rather than have them march, forced, into a battle they could not believe in. “But it would be another kind of exile, and you would live forever knowing that you are in constant danger of discovery and capture.

“I will tell you what I choose. I choose to fight. To stay here, in the Underground, until my last breath, no matter if it comes tomorrow or two thousand years from now. Perhaps it will never come. But I would rather risk death than live a million lifetimes at the mercy of the Humans, thought of as a coward by another race of Fae.

“If you stay, and you fight, you will play an integral part in winning back our Kingdom. The glory will not go only to the guards, as it has in the past. I recognize your strengths in a way that my predecessor never did. She saw you as capable only of work too lowly for her guards. I know, because I was one of you. And I know, because I belonged to your ranks while Mabb was Queene. Perhaps I have not been as eager to include you in our past military exploits—I apologize for that slight. It was not intended. I value your skills much too highly to see them wasted in a battle that could easily be won by the guard. But these are different circumstances, and your special skills are needed now.”

The throne-room doors opened, admitting Cedric. Irritation, at being interrupted, and at his lateness, spiked in her, and she almost lost her temper and asked him to leave. But the words died on her tongue as he came closer and she saw the state of him. The filth that clung to his robes and hair, and the fact that he had not taken the time to fix his appearance before coming to the audience, were distressing enough. But it was his face that froze the anger in her, compressed it into a pinpoint of worry. His eyes were rimmed red, his face swollen. He did not look up at her, nor did he look at any of the Assassins he passed on the way to the dais. His every movement seemed wreathed in sorrow, and he hung his head as though the weight of his sadness prevented him from lifting it.

“Cedric,” she said, forcing herself to keep an even tone. She would not show the Assassins that she found anything amiss in his manner. Proceed as planned, that was the most sensible way. “I was just about to tell them of their role in the fight against the Elves, if they should choose to fight for us. Perhaps you would be more suited to explain it.”

He looked up at her then, helpless emotions warring in his eyes. He would do his duty as she commanded it, but he would not be able to conceal his pain.

“With Your Majesty’s permission,” Malachi interjected, standing smoothly, as though he had not been so recently wounded, “I would like to address them to that point. After all, I will be the one leading them, will I not?”

It was an ugly thing for him to do, trapping her between his will and Cedric’s distress. But she could scold him for it later, make it clear to him that he would not be fighting. “Yes, of course,” she said, stepping back, letting him know with her easy compliance that he had made a mistake.

He knew it. He smirked. She swallowed her rage and motioned to Cedric to follow her as she stepped down from the back of the dais, to one of the alcoves concealed there by a tapestry.

“Cedric, Gods, what has happened?” she hissed, once they were concealed by the heavy tapestry.

He struggled to speak; with every second that passed, the dread grew, until finally he held forth with an answer almost too simple for the long, difficult wait: “They are dead. All of them.”

“All of…” Ayla’s mind raced. “The Humans? All of the mortals in the Darkworld?”

He shook his head, still unable to look her in the eye. “No. The Gypsies. They are all dead. Even…”

He could not say the name, and Ayla’s arms came up to encircle his shoulders. Cedric remained stiff in her arms, though, and did not break down as she feared he might. She heard Malachi, still addressing the Guild members from the dais, and relaxed. He would hold them in his thrall long enough for Cedric to compose himself and return. She stepped back. “I am sorry to hear about your…woman. Was it an attack by the Elves?”

“It was the Waterhorses.” The disgust in his voice raised his volume, but he remembered, at least, where they stood, and lowered it again. “But as the Waterhorses are here by command of the Elves, I hold them culpable.”

“As do I.” She did not care for Humans, but she could not accept such an act of violence. “It is despicable, that the Elves have sullied the Underground by bringing them here.”

“They sent them off to feed, I have no doubt,” Cedric seethed. It was, Ayla realized, likely the first opportunity he’d had to voice his anger. “As if the Gypsy camp was merely a trough of slops. And they did not just feed. They continued to kill for pleasure. The men, the women, the children…”

A chill gripped Ayla, and she spoke quickly to chase it away. “Could there have been any survivors?”

“None that I saw evidence of.” He paused, his breath held in tight as he struggled to keep back the tears that shone in his eyes. A moment passed and he continued. “There were Wraiths there, feeding on the death energy, but still, I managed to catch glimpses. It seemed to happen so fast that it was unlikely anyone could have escaped. And Humans are strange…they seem to doubt their mortality. They will fight until death, and when that death comes, it surprises them.”

Ayla thought about Malachi, about his willingness to go into battle, possibly at the cost of his life. Perhaps he was more Human than she had thought. Perhaps he was more Human than even she was.

“Did you see how many there were? The Waterhorses, I mean? Where you able to discern a number?” She did not wish to be callous about his loss, but there were other matters pressing down on them, and he would understand this.

He shook his head in despair. “I did not. I could not. There were more than ten, more than twenty. Beyond that, I cannot say how many the Elves have enslaved. But they were able to decimate this camp, Ayla. Hundreds of people, in mere seconds. This does not bode well for our small force.”

“Well, then, we shall have to strike the Elves down before they can release their scourge upon us.” She sounded more confident than she was. Outside, Malachi’s address to the Guilds winded down; Ayla peered out of the tapestry and chewed her lip.

“I must go out,” she told Cedric, giving his arm a squeeze. “Stay here, until you are…able to speak. If you cannot speak to the Guilds, then stay here until they are dismissed. But we have much to talk about.”

“I am ready now,” he said, and the shaft of light that entered the alcove from the edge of the tapestry illuminated his face, hard as stone once again. “Lead on.”

He followed her out to the dais, and she felt his every step behind her as though his sadness chased her, tried to drag her down with him. She squared her shoulders and stood back while Malachi finished his proposal to the crowd.

When he finished, he nodded to her, shot a worried glance toward Cedric, and went back to his chair. Ayla faced the Guild members. “So, what say you, then? Will you fight?”

“When?” a voice rang out from somewhere in their midst.

Cedric stepped forward, any trace of his grief and anger erased as if by magic, though his ruined clothes still testified to some ordeal he had faced. “Tomorrow night. One full day for training, though you will not need much. Then, we will march. We wish to strike down the Elves before they can think to loose the Waterhorses on us.”

A rumble of dissatisfaction came up from them, then, and Ayla raised her voice to be heard over it. “What do you balk at? A day of training, that you do not truly need, to hone skills you already have? If this is the case, you can march on the Elven quarter now. Or, do you protest at being asked to go into battle with so little preparation? You, Assassins, who engage in fights far fiercer than any an Elf could put up, forced to think two, three moves ahead while in the heat of combat? You, Weaponscrafters, who know the art of the weapons you make far better than any who will ever wield them, in order to make them stronger, more deadly? You, Thieves, who are more adept at cunning and trickery than the shadows themselves? I do not believe that a one of you could not face an entire army of Elves this very night.”