Blood and Iron (13 page)

“Ah.” The Merlin seemed to be chewing that thought over. She frowned and sighed, twisting her boot against the bark. The tree wriggled without moving, delighted as a tickled puppy. “What am I supposed to do with this . . . power?”

She didn't try to deny it, Seeker noticed, as if something in her bones told her the truth of every word.
Good. That makes it easier. Maybe the tree wasn't such a bad idea after
all.
“Oh, the usual,” she answered dryly. “Ordain Kings. Foresee the future. If you're lucky, save the world.”

“And if I'm not lucky?”

Seeker coughed into her hand. “Remember the Dark Ages?”

“That's”—Carel stopped and let herself slide down the concave limb of the willow until she crouched in the cradle of its trunk—“a lot of responsibility. Why me?”

Seeker shrugged, and leaned back against another branch of the trunk, bracing her legs against an opposite branch. What sunlight filtered between the tree's golden leaves dappled the backs of her hands as she examined her fingernails. “ ‘Why me?' ” she mocked. “I don't know, Carel. I don't know why me, either. Except that we're born to it, and the world is a stranger, wilder place than I ever imagined, when I thought I was mortal.”

“Are you telling me I'm . . . immortal?”

Seeker wasn't sure what emotion the other woman's tone betrayed. She shook her head judiciously. “No. You're spared that. Although wizards generally live a long time.”

“Oh.” Considering silence and the tree speechless too, humming of warm days and wet autumn breezes. “You're unhappy.”

“Observant.” Seeker straightened and tucked a braid behind her ear, swallowing defiance. “Will you come to Faerie with me?”

“Can I leave again?”

“Anytime you want to.” Seeker's mind went to Mist, though, and the shattered eye of the Mother of Dragons.
The Mebd does not know all the rules. I wonder what she meant.

But she was. Except her very blood and bones would prevent her. And if that wasn't enough . . .

“Hah,” said the willow abruptly, as if his musing had led him to a better answer. “Also, Magi . . . well, some of their practices are bitter.”

“Bitter?” Seeker leaned forward.

“Like metal in the earth, like soured stinking water. They prickle. Not all of them, but some.” The branches gestured like a graceful hand. “Some of them do not love the old things.”

“I know,” Seeker said. She patted the tree's bark, thinking of the Promethean Mage with his ten iron rings. “Some of them work for the freedom of man, as they call it. What they
mean
is the
elevation
of man. Power as a zero-sum game.”

“Dr. Szczegielniak. He seemed very earnest.”

“Earnest. Yes, you could call it that.”

The Merlin drew breath in some sudden understanding. Seeker saw her advantage and looked at Carel with beseeching eyes.
Everyone likes to feel special.
“We need the help,” she said plainly. “Come with me today, and we will visit Faerie, only. I vow.”

And Carel laid a warm, strong hand on Seeker's shoulder, fingers just brushing the skin of her neck, and smiled. “This, I gotta see. But I'm not eating any pomegranates. Where do we go?”

Seeker raised a hand and pointed northeast, toward the arcing shape of the massive drumlin concealed by buildings and the tree line. Thornbrake grew on it, between the cattle fields and alfalfa: native rose and blackberry brambles. “To the land under the hills,” she said, “and over the westering sea.”

Carel grinned, shaking out her braids. “ ‘What is yonder mountain high,' ” she sang, “ ‘where cold winds crack and blow?' ”

“ ‘Yonder's the mountain of Hell,' ” Seeker answered, without taking her eyes from the thorn-topped hill. “ ‘Where you and I must go.' ”

“You've been following her,” Jane said, crossing her legs in tailored, pin-striped pants. She fussed idly with the toast Matthew had made for her, picking crumbs from the edge with a fingernail, but didn't taste anything. Sunlight fell through the window of his tidy kitchenette, highlighting avocado and harvest-gold decor that hadn't changed in two and a half decades.

“Better,” Matthew said. “I found out who the Merlin is. I met her, briefly. I gave her a business card.”

The archmage's eyes sparkled over the rim of her teacup. “
She.
Interesting. Has
she
called?”

“She may not have found it yet,” Matthew answered with a shrug. “Elaine was standing next to me when I slipped it into her pocket. But I was able to use it as an anchor to follow her, and I know where she lives and works now. She's a college professor. And as soon as I can figure out how to meet her without presenting the appearance of a creepy stalker type—”

“Excellent,” Jane said. She set her cup aside and rose. She washed the grease from her fingertips at the kitchen sink, then crossed her arms on the countertop and leaned toward the window.

As if she can't look me in the eye.
Matthew set his mug down too, and pushed his chair back, the feet on the metal legs skipping slightly as they snagged on textured tile. “Out with it, fearless leader,” he said, crossing the kitchen to stand shoulder to shoulder beside her.

“You haven't asked to see Kelly recently,” she said.

He didn't glance at her, but let their sleeves brush. “You're my mother now?”

Her sly smile in response shocked him. “I'm everybody's mother,” she answered. “This thing. This Merlin, and the five-hundred-year mark—if there's going to be a Dragon Prince, Matthew, things are going to change. The last upheaval brought our chapter into existence, and five hundred years of work have given us a great deal of strength and control. We're safer from wild magic than ever before in the history of the human race.”

“We?”

“Men, most mortal,” she said. “The old strange powers do not rule us anymore. We've bound the dragons to our chariot.”

“Poetic,” he answered, and sidestepped closer, taking comfort in her warmth.

She sighed and pressed her ear against his shoulder, leaning into his rough, spontaneous hug. She might be more than twice his age, but she wasn't fragile in the least. He knew she felt strongly—about Elaine, for him. She never let it rule her. “Yes. The Dragon Prince could change all that.”

“He could. And even if he doesn't, how can we call it a victory when disasters like Kelly still happen?”

“Like Kelly. Like Elaine.” She rose on her tiptoes to plant a motherly kiss on his cheek, and brushed her hands over the tattooed patterns that peeked over his collar. “I'm glad you agreed to this. You'll need all the protection you can get.”

“It helped Kelly so much.” He stepped back, head shaking.

“He lived,” she said. She held Matthew's gaze on her own, unrelenting. “It's a hell of a business. And there are going to have to be sacrifices made.”

“I know.” He did know, that was the worst of it. And knew in his bones why it was so.

Jane twisted her fingers together. “Make sure you spend some time with Kelly soon, all right? And see what you can do about the Merlin while you're about it. Maybe there's some way to combine the two—”

“All right,” he answered, as she smiled and stepped away.

Chapter Six

Keith waited for Eoghan at the bottom of the stairs. Dinner in the MacNeill house was served late and formally, with the ceremony of a bygone age, and guests were welcomed and usually present. And Keith had no intention of confronting the wolves in the parlor until he could walk in at his father's right hand as befitted a dutiful son.

He pretended he didn't see his father clinging to the banister.
Coward,
he accused himself.

Keith frowned ruefully and ascended the stair, offering Eoghan his arm. They came down together, the old wolf in his kilt and dinner jacket leaning on the young one in his cedar-smelling tuxedo. “Have you thought about what we spoke of?”

Keith chuckled. “If Fyodor Stephanovich wants the princedom of the pack so badly, father—”

“You've spoken with Nuala.”

“How did you know?”

“It was her, or Morag. You'd hand the proud traditions of the pack to that tea-swilling
oborotni?
That Cossack?
Keith.
” Eoghan's disappointment almost dripped from his voice. “Besides, he's too young.”

Nay,
another voice seemed to answer.
Only a few decades, and what's that to a wolf?
It was the same voice that had called him coward earlier, and touched him in the dreams that sent him to summon Elaine into the presence of the Dragon. Keith shivered when he realized it.
Mist?

Ah,
she answered.
Something to lose. Something to win. And thus we speak of Princes, and thereby hangs the tale.
A dark chuckle and the sensation of shifting earth, of a crimson eye splintering darkness, and the presence was gone as suddenly as it had come. Keith bit the inside of his cheek and struggled to keep his face bland as he steadied his father to the landing. His scent peaked, though, and he knew from Eoghan's sidelong glance that his father smelled it as well. Eoghan sighed. “Lord a'mercy, Keith. Where's your ambition, son?”

Keith smiled as they paced across the flagstoned hall, toward the parlor. Already he smelled woodsmoke and whiskey and the scents of three or four wolves. “You should have had another son, father. One to follow in your footsteps.”

“I've one,” Eoghan said calmly. “And a fine sense of duty he has, even if he's lacking in ambition. He'll serve.”

And if Fyodor's a Dragon Prince, what then?
Keith wasn't fool enough to think he could stand against
that
. But then, it was unlikely in the extreme that anyone would believe that Dragons spoke to Keith MacNeill, werewolf and expatriate. He released his father's arm as they came up on the door of the parlor, leaving Eoghan his pride. Keith tugged the door open, the brazen handle cool and finger-polished. There was a shallow dip in the flagstones in the center of the corridor, a passage worn by hundreds of feet and hundreds of years.

Side by side, Keith and his father entered the parlor.

Fyodor Stephanovich dominated the room with the careless ease that one would expect of a Prince among wolves. He leaned casually beside the mantel of his Prince's fireplace, surrounded by a court of two. There was a snifter of brandy cupped in one daddy-longlegs hand, an inch of bare wrist and knobby bone showing beyond his shirtsleeve. His wild dark hair, though glazed into ringlets, had defeated whatever product he'd worked through it, and the curls tumbled over his forehead to brush his brows. Deep-set eyes glittered like mica chips on either side of a scar-bridged gypsy nose, and he straightened and smiled as Keith and Eoghan entered.

“Sire,” Fyodor said. The Russian wolf lowered his glass with his hand, the other hanging flat by his hip, and drew himself to a stately height, turning his head to show his long, ridged throat to Eoghan. “Elder Brother.” This to Keith, with a respectful nod, but he did not turn his head. Instead he came across the floor, switching his glass to his left hand and extending the right.

Keith took it.

Keith topped six feet, broad chest and thick limbs showing the heritage of the same Norse raiders who had left Scotland his burnished red hair and the feral gleam in his eyes. Those eyes were level with Fyodor's chin, when Fyodor straightened to his full height. The black Russian wolf—the
oborotni
—seemed wired together out of broom-sticks, but the grip that matched Keith's was as unyielding as the ambition in his eyes.

“Younger Brother,” Keith answered, and didn't let the growl constricting his throat color his voice. His father's presence at his shoulder was all that kept him from stepping back. “I don't believe I know all your friends.”

There were two other wolves, both wearing the same wary, powerful look as Fyodor. The black wolf angled his head at a stocky man with ash-colored hair and a trimmed beard. “Sire, Elder Brother. May I present Younger Brother Ivan Ilyich.”

“Please, call me Vanya, Elder Brother,” Ivan Ilyich said, a perfectly unaccented voice and a close-mouthed smile belying his modulated handshake and his unwolflike refusal to stand on formality. His eyes were a blue pale as a sled dog's, a cold dawning color like a shadow on snow.

Surnames were a recent enough thing in their country that the Russian wolves rarely bothered with them except when dealing with false papers and mortal society, and Keith didn't ask for one. Particularly once Ivan Ilyich
did
show Keith his throat—just an angling of his jaw, but enough. He stepped back at the same moment Keith did, not quite giving ground. “Welcome to Scotland . . . Vanya. I am Keith MacNeill.” He hesitated. “Keith.”

And the younger packmate squeezed his eyes half shut and smiled through the lashes.

Keith ignored the stiff prickle of Eoghan's disapproval.
If he wants me to be a Prince, I'm not sure I can prevent it. But I'll be my own sort of Prince. I will.

Perfect politeness, perfect dignity. And the tension in the room was enough to raise Keith's hackles and make his eyeteeth itch. He turned his gaze on the youngest wolf— Fyodor followed propriety even in the order of the introductions—and blinked. The boy could have been the black wolf's younger, more beautiful twin. Keith caught Eoghan's subtle nod out of the corner of his eye, and showed teeth. “Eremei Fyodorovich,” Fyodor said, and Keith smiled more at the tentative way the cub took his hand.