Blood and Iron (41 page)

He gasped in pain. Gasped and cringed, and then fell to his knees, his face twisted in torment. He screamed into his fists, and then he folded like a broken doll.

I knelt beside my milk-white steed and cradled his shaking body in my arms, feeling curiously light and contented. I smiled and stroked his hair while he wept. “All's fair in love and war,” I whispered. “I wish I could say I was sorry, Uisgebaugh. It hurts rather badly, doesn't it?”

He nodded against my nightgown; before he was done with weeping I stood him up and I took him to my bower.

It was good to be less than alone.

Chapter Nineteen

"You tricked me,” Whiskey said against my neck, sometime before sunrise. "You tricked me.”

"Poetic, isn't it?” I let one finger stroke his shoulders, gentling a sensitive horse. His flesh shuddered as if he flicked away a fly. “The question, my dear, is have I made you less of a monster, or more.”

“More,” he whispered, sounding small but never hesitating. “Is this what you felt? Mistress? This hurt?”

“More or less.”

“Take it back.”

Everything was numb except the tips of my fingers where they touched him. I was numb. I should have hurt. Should have screamed myself raw as meat, as Whiskey had when I gave him my soul and my name. Instead, I felt hollow: curious milkweed husk with the silk and seeds blown wide by autumn.

An absence. An amputation: the absence of love. The absence of compassion. I don't mean to suggest that there was no more pain. But the pain no longer distracted me.

Already, I could see the advantages.

“I feel like a dragon,” I said to Whiskey, wondering.

“You feel like a Queen,” he answered, moving in my arms. “Take it back. I don't want it.”

“Neither do I,” I lied. “I don't need it anymore.”
“Alas, my love. You do me wrong, to cast me off discourteously. . . .”

Oh, yes. It's not the old songs, only.
“As you are now, so once were we.”

I knew.

I knew why the Mebd had stood before her chair and wept, wept like a woman left utterly alone in the world, with the weight of the world upon her. Wept the cold, silent tears of a creature that could not know love, and could not know hope, but could know fear and loyalty and passion and a kind of cold battlefield courage.

Such a creature she was. And now so was I.

“It hurts,” he said.

“I know.” I stroked his hair one last time and he started to cry again. “It's going to hurt.” Irritated by my own pity, I pushed him away, slid from under the covers and stood. The cold light brewing beyond the window drew me. I leaned against the leaded panes and smiled.

“Gharne.”

My familiar slid through the gold stone of the wall and curled on the window seat, smug as a cat. “Mistress.”

“Take care of Whiskey, please. I have errands to attend.”

My familiar preened his wing talons dismissively. “As you wish it. Where are you going?”

“To visit my lover.”

He cocked his head to one side, eye smoldering under the browridges. Whiskey's sobs became silence. “Which one?”

“Hah.” Naked, I turned my back on the window and summoned a servant to help me dress. While she selected my clothes and laid them out, I searched shadows through the castle, and elsewhere. Through those shadows I heard music, and it drew my attention down the broad golden corridors of the palace, leading me at last to the doorway of the Mebd's quarters. The shadows opened themselves to me, willing, much to my surprise. I realized something else as well.

In the Queen's chambers, Hope sat over her harp singing softly, old songs and the new, while Cairbre filled cups by the wall and the Mebd sat beside a low enameled table. Beside her rested Morgan, in blue jeans and a charcoal sweater. Arthur Pendragon leaned against the wall, as far from the red-haired sorceress as the size of the room permitted.

“We're all family here,” Morgan was saying. “More or less.” She gestured to Arthur. “I wish you would believe me, brother.”

“I still remember the cloak,” he answered quietly. “And how you weaseled Caliburn's scabbard away from me before Camlann.”

She smiled. “Ancient days.” Her fingers flickered out and back: dismissal. “We're on the same side now.”

“You expect me to fight on behalf of the Fae courts.” He shook his head. “Sorcerers. And murderers of innocents.”

“Stealers of infants?” Morgan countered, her smile that much wider.

Arthur blanched. “Aye.” He took the cup that Cairbre handed him, and quaffed it in a mouthful.

“You wouldn't have survived that spear thrust, scabbard or no scabbard,” Morgan replied, as Hope finished the “Fairy Reel” and began to sing an old American song. “After fifteen centuries, Artus. A little faith.”

The King shook his head while I laced the collar of my blouse. “What about Elaine? You're still selling
your
children into bondage. Sister.”

“Yes,” Morgan said. “
About
that ‘child Elaine' . . .”

I glanced over my shoulder at Whiskey and frowned. And then I stepped through the shadows into the Mebd's sitting room, appearing beside her chair. “. . . she's listening, ” I finished for Morgan, bending to kiss my grandmother on the cheek: a dry kiss, the brush of butterflies.

She glanced at me and then raised her hand to her lips, her eyes wild. “Elaine. Oh, you haven't.”

“For Ian,” I said against her hair. “Blood of my blood.” Morgan le Fey closed her eyes, and I moved away, claiming the center of the room.

Arthur's eyes followed me as the Mebd set her glass aside and stood. “Queen Elaine,” they said in unison, and then Arthur laughed and stepped forward, extending a powerful hand. “You seem more Fae than I remember.”

“I am more Fae than I was,” I answered, and kissed Arthur and then Cairbre, a red-bearded cheek and a black. “Have the night's counsels been kind to you?”

“Aye.” The Mebd examined me. “Such courage, kinswoman.”

“It was nothing,” I lied again. “We'll speak later. About Ian. And other things.”

“Yes,” she answered. “We will speak of those things.” She tucked a braid behind her ear, and I frowned at the tug. Unfair, that giving away my Name had not broken the binding on it. I had hoped—

“Good,” I said. I smiled at Arthur. “My lord. My husband has left me to arrange things while he attends his family.”
Husband.
The word tasted strange. “Will you be our general?”

“When is the war?” he answered, as Cairbre handed him another cup and brought me one.

“Good man,” Morgan murmured.

I smiled. “As soon as we find it. We'll have to hunt them where they den. Mebd?”

“Elaine.”

“Where have you hidden Faerie's heart?”

Hope plucked a false note on her harp, and the rill of music fell silent.
“Mother, tell my baby sister not to do the things I've done.”

The Mebd laughed, delighted, her head thrown back and her pale pink lips parted like blossoming rose petals. “You tell me, clever lass. How did you know?”

“Morgan, may I ask you a question first?”

“Of course.”

How could I not have seen this sooner?
“The white hart is the symbol of the King.”

“Yes. That's not a question.”

“It isn't, is it?” I felt the strange lightness take me again. “What's the black hart, Morgan?”

She grinned and tipped her glass. “The symbol of the King.”

It stopped me short. I looked from Morgan to her brother, and then around the room from sister to sister, and then to the bards. I blinked. Arthur took a step forward, feeling for a sword he wasn't wearing. “You fucking bitches,” I said, not bothering to hide the awe in my voice. “Faerie's heart. You put it in the throne. That's why there's no weather in Annwn.”

“No love,” Arthur said. “No passion.”

“No storms,” the Mebd answered. “No sunshine. No sleet, no rain, no hail, no thunder. But a heart needs blood to live, in a body or in a box.”

The music had stopped, and Hope stood and came forth. “What am I?” she asked quietly, one hand pressed to her stomacher.

“The future.” And there was something in the Mebd's smile that silenced Hope, and me. And then she looked at me, the age-old Queen of the Daoine Sidhe, and smiled a smile even older than she was. “There's only one goddess, Elaine.”

“Fuck,” I said, even if it wasn't my Name anymore. “But there are a thousand memories of Her.”

“And a thousand shadows.”

The Mebd seemed ready to burst with delight. “And each of us reflects her somehow. ‘I see it crimson,' ” she quoted. “ ‘I see it red.' You know what we're for, don't you?”

“We?”

“Leaders,” the Queen of the Faeries said, but when I shook my head Morgan answered, smiling and toying with her cup.

“Elaine,” she said sadly, “when you go to judgment, blood to the shoulder ...Elaine, smile. And get thee to Hell with dignity, remembering those who go before that same judgment with no defense, save the honor they pledged in your care.”

“You're telling me that what we're doing is wrong.”

“No more wrong than what they're doing,” Arthur answered with a smile made bitter by the lines between his eyes. “But holy things have no mercy for the choices of the battlefield.”

“The evil that exists to oppose other evils? It seems to me I've read that somewhere.” The wine tasted tannic and sweet, full-bodied. I wanted more.

“Somebody has to take the blame,” Cairbre said. “Better to do it knowing.”

The Mebd folded long white fingers in her lap. “Better, ” she agreed, “to choose your Hell.” Her eyes met mine, green and violet all at once, like light shining through three-color jade. “There's another issue we haven't considered.”

“What issue is that?”

“Hell,” the pale Queen said. “Hell. And the tithe.”

“You're going to worry about that now?”

The Mebd shrugged. “There's a way out, of course. There always has been.”

Cairbre snorted. “
If
we dared to take it, and leave ourselves unprotected from the wrath of Heaven.”

“How is Hell protecting us now?”The Mebd's voice rose as the sound of the harp fell away. “What more do we have to fear than what has already befallen? Bound into an otherworld, powerless, painted ever further from the corners of reality?”

“Will you pay it?” Arthur came away from the wall. “Will Àine? Both of you would have to go.”

“She could be made to,” the Mebd answered, turning her ring. She looked down. “No,” she contradicted herself. “I could not make her go willing into Hell. I presume too much.”

Hope caught my eye before she stood, and I already knew what she was going to say. “We deserve everything the Magi have done. They do it to protect themselves.”

“So we lie down and let them?”

Hope managed half a breath, no more. “No. But we're predators. We have been. Do we whine because the sheep have grown fangs?” She seemed strange to me, sharp and fragile as a glass dagger.

“No,” the Mebd replied. “So if it's blood to the shoulders, as Morgan says, then blood let it be. If Àine came to Hell with me, we could pay off the teind once and for all. But she won't, so judge me as you will—and I'll stand to that statement.”

“I don't worry about judgment anymore,” I said, thinking of Tam Lin, looking at Arthur. “Judgment, or pity.”

The Mebd smiled on me. “Excellent. Tell me who shall I pity in your stead?”

“Nobody,” I answered, and turned away. “I've got a Merlin to talk to. Call me if things get interesting.”

At the university, I knocked on the door of Carel's office. It seemed polite, and her frown when she looked up told me I wasn't precisely welcome. “How was the wedding?”

“We missed you.” I pulled out a chair and sat across from her. “Care to go for a walk?”

“No, I . . .” Her hesitation ended when I smiled. “All right. I could use the break. Publish or perish.” She shoved ineffectually at the pile of highlighted papers on her desk and stood. She wore a button-down corduroy shirt today, and blue jeans and boots. “Midterms. Almost Halloween.”

“Halloween?” It's easy to lose track of time in the human world. “Hallow's Eve. Next week?”
The tithe.

Carel gestured out the window, getting her coat. “Week from tomorrow. Notice the leaves?” She shook her head.

“I thought you'd chosen,” I said, trying to make my voice easy and my smile warm. “We need you.”

“I know.” She led me down the broad stairs with their traction strips and through the double doors of the building.

I studied her stiff back, the way her braids bounced as she walked. “You're angry at me about the marriage.”

“You're going to tell me it's only political.”

“That would be bullshit.”

“I know that too.” She stopped and looked at me under the shade of a stand of white pine; her eyes gleamed dark and bright. “Oh, hell,” she said. “Hell. ‘God help the troubadour. ' ”