Blood and Iron (14 page)

“Your son.” As blatant a declaration of intent as a wolf could make, without a challenge snarled.

“My own,” Fyodor agreed, with a quirk of smile that transformed his lined face into radiant beauty.

“Elder Brother,” Eremei Fyodorovich said, stepping back and folding one arm across his belly for a bow that would have done a Tsar's son proud. His tight-curled hair shone dark against the nape of his neck; Keith hurt to look at him.

“Younger Brother,” Keith answered, and bit back his smile, and returned the bow, Eoghan's shoulder brushing his sleeve. The old wolf stood very close, and Keith breathed silent encouragement on his father's scent.
Coward,
he thought again, meeting Eremei Fyodorovich's laughter-sweet eyes. He wondered briefly if Ian's would be as changeable as Elaine's, or if they were green, like his own. And then,
Oh, pity. The Dragon Prince has a son.

“Come along,” Eoghan said, with a gesture that included Keith and the Russian wolves. “Dinner should be ready.”

Keith tasted nothing.
Elaine.
Ian.
I am going to have to talk to Elaine.

Morgan served the Merlin and the Seeker green tea in cylindrical mugs without handles. Seeker traced the green-on-beige outline of the Japanese symbols that ran in tidy rows from rim to base. The Merlin, she noticed, turned her mug with her fingertips but did not raise it to her mouth.
If only she weren't so wary.

If she weren't so wary, she wouldn't be much of a Merlin.
Seeker, on the other hand, drank her jasmine-scented tea and smiled. The Merlin had taken the trip into Faerie as much in her stride as she seemed to take everything: imperturbable, or simply in shock.
“For forty days and forty nights / they rode through bluid red to the knee.”
Seeker caught herself humming when the Merlin turned and lifted an eyebrow. Seeker could only presume she knew the tune.

“You're Morgan le Fey,” the Merlin said when Morgan finished fussing with her kettle, settling across the trestle.

The witch pushed a trencher of bread, cheese, and sliced apples across the table. “I am. Am I not what you expected?”

“Not exactly.”

“May you never cease to be surprised,” Morgan said. It sounded like a benediction.

The silver wolfhound came up beside the table and slipped a black nose into Morgan's palm. Morgan tousled the dog's ears. It raised its head and rested a wise gaze on Seeker, eyes on a level with her own. Morgan noticed the regard and smiled, matching it with one of her own. “Her kind are the reason there are no wolves left in Ireland.”

Seeker looked down and took a slice of cheese, but did not taste it. “What is her name?” the Merlin asked.

“Ah. This is Evèr. Her son is called Connla.”

“Interesting choices,” Seeker said. Carel looked puzzled.

“Terrible jokes, you mean.” Morgan flashed a white-toothed smile. “Cuchulainn's wife and son,” she explained to Carel. “He was called the Hound of Ulster.”

“Oh.” The Merlin pushed her mug away. “I have the feeling, ” she said when the other two turned, “that this is supposed to be a historic meeting. Fraught with significance. The sort of thing bards might sing of, if there were bards anymore.”

“And it feels a little anticlimactic?”

“Yes.”

Morgan pushed her chair back from the table and steepled her fingers. “Seeker, would you leave the Merlin and me alone for a moment or three, please? I believe I need to explain some things to her.”

“She's already forewarned against me,” Seeker said, but stood. She and Morgan shared a glance until Evèr came and leaned against Seeker's thighs. “But tell her what you will. She knows my task already.”
The half of it. But Morgan will know that. I cannot afford to win. And I will not be allowed to fail.

Seeker turned slowly and walked under the high-draped tapestry and outside. She stopped by the rosebushes, taking in well-tended gardens and a mist-silver sky. The shadows were dim in the even lighting. Seeker could have peered inside Morgan's cottage, but some perversity moved her to play fair.

I could trust Morgan to figure something out.
She snorted laughter.
That's always worked out so well in the past.

Evèr followed her outside. “Don't worry,” the great silver hound said, looking up at her face.

Seeker jumped. “You speak?”

“You're only just now hearing me,” the dog answered. “I wonder what's changed.” She scanned the tree line, head up and tulip ears attentive. Wolfhounds were sight hounds, bred to follow their prey not by scent but by vision, bred to outspeed and outmuscle any wolf in the world.

“I don't know,” Seeker admitted. “Nothing that I can think of, except binding a Kelpie.”

“No, that wouldn't do it.” She lowered a dartlike head, narrow-muzzled and broad across the cranium, and nosed the tail-lashing shadow that followed Seeker down the garden path. A low whine rose in her throat. “Where are they, Seeker?”

“Where are who, Evèr?” She'd done stranger things than talk to hounds, and the dog had an alert, interested, caring tone.

“The shadows. The beasts bound to you—doe, cat, owl. You've stolen their strengths. Where are their bodies?”

“Dead,” Seeker answered, and turned aside. “I killed them.” A thrush sang.
My tree! My mate! My chicks!

“It is your special gift,” Evèr replied. “What you are. Is it worse than running down a hare to taste its blood?”

“Yes,” Seeker answered, following the contorted canes of the rosebush around to the place where it rooted beside the chimney. The stones were warm with the fire within, and Seeker leaned against them. “How would you feel if I took your shadow?”

“I wouldn't like it any better than you would if I tore out your throat,” the dog said, her tongue lolling over capable teeth. “Or any worse, I warrant.” Laughter floated through the thick wall of Morgan's cottage, muffled but still audible. “The wolves weren't much fond of my kind either. We are what we are.”

“Easy enough for you to say.”

“True.” Evèr's plumed tail wagged twice. Seeker laid a hand on her neck. The wolfhound's coat felt like wire mixed with wool, at once coarse and butter-soft, and slightly greasy. The big dog sighed and leaned against the Seeker's hip.

Evèr looked back up at Seeker, eyes kind under Leo G. Carroll brows, and widened her doggy smile. “Speaking of wolves,” she said, “I should be off. You seem to have a visitor.” She pointed with her nose, after the fashion of sight hounds. Seeker followed around the corner of the cottage.

The other wolfhound, the red one, paced down the trail alongside a wolf of even ruddier coat. A wolf that stopped in his tracks as Seeker came into view, and then sat down on his haunches and curled his tail neatly over his toes. “Set up,” Seeker muttered. She turned to frown at Evèr, but the wolfhound had vanished, and by the time she turned back, Connla was moving away as well, pretending nonchalance. “All right then.”

Squaring her shoulders, she advanced on the wolf.

“Keith MacNeill.” His ears were forward. He waited. Something prickled in her chest; she told herself it was irritation.
What is he doing, running errands for Mist? There's something afoot here bigger than the rivalry between the Mebd and the Cat Anna,
she thought.
Morgan set this meeting up.

“Well,” she said. “If you've aught to say to me, get up on your two feet and say it.” She crossed her arms and scowled.

And he did. The red wolf blurred and stretched, a smooth reshaping of form that left him standing, nude, facing her. Seeker bit her lip and kept her gaze on his eyes, telling herself the breathless pain she felt was nothing but nervousness.

“What do you want, Keith?”

“Peace,” he said bluntly. “I want an alliance.” But his eyes slid off hers, and she turned away, raising one hand to touch the thorn-prickled cane of the climbing rose.

That isn't all.
“What else?”

“I want you to talk to the Mebd.”

“You want to see Ian.”

“Of course I do.” He came up alongside her, close enough that she could feel the heat of his body against her arm, even through the denim jacket that she wore over her shirt.

“You know what the Mebd has done to him, I presume.”

“I've heard.” His breath stirred her hair. “Let me treat with her, E—Seeker. I understand better than you do how to use your power.”

“I haven't any.” She spat vile-tasting words on the ground.

“You have power you can't imagine,” he replied. “If you would only choose to wield it—” He stopped short, sharp accusation in his voice. “No. I'm sorry.”

She held her breath.

“I failed you, Elaine.”

“You screwed me over, you mean.”

He sighed. “I hurt you out of weakness. I . . . betrayed you.”

“Damn straight.” She pressed venom into her voice, wishing she had Kadiska's cobra-shadow, to turn that venom into a bite. She could have pushed him, reminded him who had given the Mebd her Name. But it was history they both knew, and whatever his reasons, the deed was done.

But he bulled on. “What the man would do out of fear, the wolf should refuse to do, out of loyalty.”

“Are you saying that you were afraid of the Mebd? You owed her no service, no more than any of the wild Fae do.”
Like the Kelpie.
“Except you're not Fae, and she couldn't even have bound you! You owed her nothing.”

“No,” he said, and heard the frown in his voice. She turned back and lifted her eyes to meet his, wolf-green, with the lines of old sorrows at their corners. “I'm saying that I couldn't bear to see you get old.”

If there were a sun in the sky, it might have moved the width of a finger before Seeker found her voice, standing there in front of Keith, looking up into his unblinking eyes. A werewolf might live two hundred years or more. A human woman, half that.

The Seeker of the Daoine Sidhe need never die.

“I'll ask her to lift the prohibition,” Elaine said.

He inclined his head and placed a hand on her shoulder. She struck it aside, her lip curling. “Find a way,” she said. “Get me my son back. Get him free of her. Do that thing, Keith MacNeill, and we'll talk again.”

“Done,” he said, and slowly backed away.

The grass beside the stone wall at the edge of Morgan's garden was wet with mist. Seeker sat on it anyway and pressed her face against her knees. She reached into the shadows, groping toward Morgan's cottage, and felt as if her fingers brushed slick, opaque ice.
You will not pass.

She sighed, resting her chin against the back of her hand.
Some of us are not going to survive this.
Keith's quiet confidence that he could, in fact,
do
something only made her more certain of that. She dug at the ground absently, fingers burrowing like worms in the cool earth, stopping when brittle grass broke between them. She picked her head up and looked, frowning. Burned-gold stalks powdered and crumbled, friable as moldy hay when she rubbed them.

“That's not right,” she said. The grass smelled like high summer and high prairie drought when she raised it to her nostrils, but—yes—the ground was wet. And the grass was green and soft, on the surface at least; but when Seeker parted the stems and peered between them, she could see it was dying at the root. She thrust a finger down into the soil, feeling grains under her nail, and rubbed some between thumb and forefinger.

A susurrus as of small voices caught her attention, and she was about to bend her head to listen closer when the crunch of feet on a leaf-littered path turned her head. Morgan crouched beside her and extended a hand. “You could have sat on the wall,” the sorceress said.

Seeker reached out muddy fingers and let Morgan pull her to her feet. Carel stood under the crimson and bone-white shower of the rambling roses, breathing deeply. She turned to face them as Seeker and Morgan walked back. “I think of roses as a summer flower.” Carel fingered the petals of one half-open bloom.

“They are,” Morgan said. “Summer and again in the fall.”

“What were you two discussing?” Seeker wondered if they would lie.
Don't trust me,
she thought, meeting Carel's eyes.

“Wizards.” Morgan's face gave away nothing, smooth as a mirror. “Their instruction and training. Meanwhile, I think your guest would like to go home.”

“Carel?”

“Yes,” the Merlin confirmed. “Take me home.”

“I had thought to bring you to meet my Queen.”

“Perhaps later.” Confidence surrounded her. “I should talk to the other side as well. If”—the Merlin hesitated— “I am, as you assure me, free to make my own decision.” She shook a clatter of braids over her shoulder, the sweep of her hand encompassing the dale and the line of the forest beyond, before she tucked it into her pocket.

Seeker drew herself up short. “You always have been.”
Is this Morgan's game, or the Merlin's test? Oh, I am not meant to swim in waters this deep
. . . which made her think of the Kelpie, which made her think of Mist, which made her think of Keith.

“Then you'll take me home.”

"I'll take you home. Let me set my familiar to watch over you, at least?”

"The inkstain thing?” The Merlin pursed her lips, seeming to consider. Seeker heard Morgan breathing, but the sorceress did not speak. “No,” she said, and forestalled Seeker's protest with an upraised hand. “I believe I'm what you say I am . . . which means I have to learn to take care of myself, doesn't it? And as Morgan has kindly offered to tutor me, I think I should hear what both sides have to offer.”