Blood and Iron (43 page)

“I will be,” Eoghan said, and made his change.

The wolf Keith lifted in his arms might have been a bundle of dry-rotted twigs wrapped in a moth-eaten blanket, for all he weighed. He'd been a black-hackled tawny thing once, and now he was gray to the ears. Vanya moved back. Ian fell into step beside Keith, and Keith didn't shake him off as he should have. Rather they walked side by side to the doorway, Eoghan nuzzled against Keith's neck. Ian rushed ahead to get the door, and then turned back to watch Keith's progress, his green eyes more curious than fearful. But then, he'd never had the chance to know Eoghan.

And he didn't know what happened next.

Keith crouched to set his father carefully on his feet. The old wolf swayed, lean as a coyote, and then limped forward. He looked back over his shoulder at Keith, who reached out to take Ian's hand when Ian would have gone to him.

Keith shook his head. “From this point onward you go alone, Prince of the pack.”

Eoghan whined once, not eagerly but not in fear.

Keith gestured him onward. “Go on, father. Go home.”

The old wolf shook himself once, from nose to tail tip. Staggered. Caught himself before he could fall, though it cost him evident pain. And went out into the night alone.

Long seconds—Keith counted them, three or four—and then every wolf and every man in the room threw back his head and let his throat swell on a resonant, ringing howl.

Ian rubbed the back of a hand across his mouth. “You just let him go like that?”

No,
Keith thought. “It's what he wants, lad,” he said roughly. “Shut the door.”

“But—” Ian glanced back out into the blackness. “What do we do now?”

“We get drunk,” Keith answered. “And when he's dead, we go and bring the body back—Ian?”

“Father,” Ian said, as something detached itself from the darkness and came through the unclosed door to light on his hand. A bird, a raven. Heavy enough that it dipped his fist inches toward the floor. “It's got a message—”

Keith's sword bumped his leg as he turned. “Who is it for?”
And what kind of raven flies at night?

“For me,” Ian said, a dark line between his eyes as he glanced back up. “It is from the Mebd. I am summoned home.”

Keith swallowed and laid a hand on his son's black-clad shoulder. “I can't come with you. I have to see this out.”

And pretended it didn't sting at all when Ian shrugged and looked up at him, cold and fey again.

“It's all right,” Ian said. “From here I go alone too, it seems.”

We were barely back in the palace when Cairbre came and parted me from the Merlin, dragging her off to some private consultation. I stood in the hallway for a moment after, at a loss, and thought of returning to my rooms . . .

... where Whiskey was no doubt waiting for me.

Perhaps not that. And then I thought,
No.
I owed him what I owed him. And if his grief discomforted me, so much the better. I owed him . . . I owed him what Morgan had explained. Absolution, and to carry his guilt and his sin as my own.

Mortal, I would have feared that choice.

Mortal, I never would have made it.

The palace was completely quiet as I wandered its translucent corridors, even more so than its usual haunted emptiness. Having come from the mortal world, only slowly did I realize how strangely bright it was growing within the walls—and not until I opened the door to my chamber and stepped inside did I realize the reason why.

Whiskey stood silhouetted before the diamond-paned windows, sunlight streaming past him to play with the dust motes hanging in the air. Gharne was curled on the window ledge like a watchful feline, his wings folded tidily against his shoulders. They were watching the sun rise over the morning garden.

“Hope?” I said without thinking. Whiskey turned his cheek to me, regarding me sidelong in that manner of his.

“The Mebd,” he said. “She's blooded the throne. Ian is King, and the silence is broken. The heart of Faerie beats again.”

“Blooded the . . .”

He came toward me, raised his hand, took my shoulders, drew me to the window. “Listen,” he said.

Silence. Outside, birds sang among the lilies and the roses. And then, close by, shattering, almost painful in its brightness and depth, the tolling of a single enormous bell. It banged against my diaphragm, knocked the breath out of my lungs. I would have fallen to my knees if Whiskey hadn't caught my elbow and dragged me upright.
“Dead!?”

“Dead,” he affirmed. I felt for my pulse. It thundered in my wrist. I looked up at him in question, and he shook his head as if in punctuation to the sudden tap on the door.

“Come,” I called automatically, and Robin pushed the unlatched door open and came inside.

He fumbled toward us, toward the window, as if blinded by the diamonds falling from his eyes to ring on the golden flagstones, rustle on the thick-laid carpets that he crossed. He shoved something into my hand, his ears drooping, and sagged against my arm.

My fingers closed on it automatically, whatever it might be. It felt smooth and warm and itchy, like a cord, and I held it up into the sunlight to examine it. It
was
a cord. A braid, more precisely, golden as wheatstraw and bound at both ends with golden wire and topaz. “She's gone,” the Puck said, unnecessarily, as I stared at the thing in my hand. He might as well have handed me a snake for all I knew what to do with it.

“Oh, my,” I said. And then fear like a talon closed on my heart. “Ian. The throne. Whiskey, come.” I moved toward the door, the tolling of that bell calling the iron in my blood.

“Wait!” Puck's hand, sharp on my sleeve. “There's more. She said to bring you Ian's heart. I knew where it was kept.”

“Was.” One word, a tooth of ice.

Puck closed his eyes. “Gone,” he said. “Gone from the vault as if it had never been, and a single candle to light its place. A candle I last saw in the Mebd's own hand, Your Majesty.”

“Robin,” I said with a sigh, leaning back on my heels to consider. “Call me Elaine. Or
my lady
if you have to.”

“Yes, Your . . . my lady.” He shook his head. “I don't know what it means,” he said. “But Prince . . . King Ian is gone as well. And Hope. And from the stables, two black horses.”

Whiskey snorted, his head thrown back and his eyes rimmed all around with white. Silver rang on the floor. “
Truly
black?”

“Yes,” Robin said, miserable, and sat down on the floor with his head in his hands. “He's been talking about the Hunt, my lady, but no one thought he'd unleash it.”

“Thousands,” I said, hearing the sound of my teeth grinding together. “Perhaps millions of mortals, dead. They've been chained too long. I can't ... and his heart. Oh, hell. It has to have been Kadiska.”

“Yes,” Whiskey said. “Kadiska, and Cliodhna. It's been a project of some time for them.”

“You
knew
?” Gharne's hood flared, eyes bright slits.

He let his head hang down. “You never asked.”

And he never would have volunteered it, until I gave him a conscience. I remembered him eyeing the Leannan Sidhe at the ball and closed my eyes, and sighed. “I'm an idiot.”

“I'm very old,” he answered, and put his arms around my shoulders. “She meant to trade you the heart for your betrayal. I told her it would work, possibly even be enough to despite your geasa.”

“My son's heart. The Fae are . . . devious.”

“So are you.”

Because he had you distracted fending off seductions, silly cow.
“All right.” I shook myself, peeled fingernails from my palms. “We're going after Ian. Why would Hope go with him?”

“She loves him,” Whiskey said. “And she hates mortal men.”

“So do you.”

“No,” Whiskey said. “I eat them.” And pawed my floor with a dinner-plate hoof, feathers flowing black as wind-torn storm clouds, shaking out a white, white mane as he swelled and changed and grew. “Get on.”

I did, and as his silver-clad hooves rang on the floor, I dragged Puck up in front of me and kneed my grieving stallion forward. I had to duck the doorframe; Gharne sailed through it, flanking us, and Whiskey kept to a rolling canter while I knotted the Mebd's gold-wound braid around my left wrist, where it made a shining bracelet. I would wear it, I decided, as a reminder of sacrifice, and that things are not always as defined as they may seem.

“Do you know where to go?” I shouted in Robin's wind-ruffled ear. He squinted between his knobby black fingers.

“I imagine he's gone where the binding was laid,” Robin answered, leaning over Whiskey's neck as I ducked another doorframe. The white stallion clattered out into the sunlit courtyard, shaking out his mane, gathering himself for a leap.

“Then no water where we're going, Whiskey,” I said. He bunched himself and then soared on an arc like a breaking wave, the power of three thousand miles of ocean behind it. He hit the reflecting pool in the front garden dead center; Robin shouted, bubbling, as we went under.

We broke water into clean air and bright sun in the North Atlantic, tasting the salt of seawater that is more than salt and more than blood. “Then I'll get you as close as I may,” Whiskey answered, and I felt him gather himself beneath me again, a ship winged in white sails bellying the wind, a wave wreathed in white froth cresting on the sand. “Hold on tightly. You'll not have seen this before.”

He cut water to a standing foam on either side, while Robin at first hid his eyes in Whiskey's mane and then peered around, thrilled at the sensation of speed. Gharne flitted overhead, graying the light that fell through his wings. I bit my lip in fear, but there was nothing to do but hold on and will Whiskey to ever-greater speed. “Gharne,” I shouted, the words ripped from my lips by the teeth of the wind, “find Keith for me. Tell him what has happened.”

“Mistress,” the gliding shadow answered, and banked northward and was gone.

Not too much later, Whiskey hauled himself up the bank of something that wouldn't have been dignified with the name
river
anywhere but in the American West. A puddle. A creek, a rivulet, a wash. Sage crushed under his hooves. Mesquite stung my nostrils. He blew air heavily, head hanging almost into the dust. “Whiskey?”

“Tired,” he said. “No matter. Which way, mistress?”

I showed him with a shift of my weight, my hand on his neck. “Should that have tired you so?” I could have come here faster, but I needed Whiskey. And Robin couldn't hurt. Ian would have to do it the hard way—overland in Annwn, where distances are deceptive, and then parting the veils to the world beyond—under hill and out where the thorn trees grow.

“None of us are what we once were,” Robin answered for the water-horse, sitting very still and small astride Whiskey's withers, his black hands knotted in the white froth of mane.

“True,” I said, which seemed a terribly inadequate answer—and all the answer needed, nonetheless. Whiskey just snorted and lengthened his stride: stumbling walk to jarring trot, jarring trot to weary canter. “Brave thing,” I murmured in his ear as his hooves pounded the waterless soil. Every impact rattled through him like a hammerblow.

Silver shoes or not, this was not easy.

The sun fell swiftly, becoming a red and corpulent thing low on the horizon, crimson light outlining dun-colored hills and lending texture to the rutted hardpan. Whiskey, stumbling at every fourth or fifth stride, staggered to a halt and almost went to his knees. I slid off his shoulder in an undignified hurry, dragging Robin with me. “They're not here yet,” Whiskey said, gagging and spraddle-legged.

“They could have been and gone.” Robin leaned on the stallion's heaving flank, a sort of wincing crouch demonstrating the pain in the little Fae's bandy legs.

“No,” Whiskey answered, cool water flowing from his hide, streaking the clotted dust, wetting the hardpan. “We would have felt the bindings break.”

“Are we sure it will be here?” I reached up and draped an arm over his withers, feeling the heat rising from his skin. “One of the other railroads? Something else?”

“This was the golden spike,” Whiskey answered.

I almost heard the ghost of a coyote's laugh. “Then we wait,” I answered. “Maybe they'll come with the moon.”

“Maybe they will,” Whiskey said, and dropped into the mud.

I felt him fall away under my leaning arm, straight down, like an imploded building. I knelt beside him, sliming the knees of my trousers. His hooves were cracked, bleeding at the tender frog. I felt a cold sort of pity as I touched the watery blood. “Whiskey, you're injured.”

“There is no water here,” he answered. “T'will heal. It would have been worse without the shoes, mistress. A little rest, and I'll be right as rain.” He chuckled at his own joke.

“Mmmm.” I pulled shadows up around us as the sun finished in a swirl of bittersweet colors and stars simmered against the indigo sky. The Milky Way spread overhead; I could make out Betelgeuse and Bellatrix, gaudy epaulets on the broad shoulders of the Hunter. Giant red stars, full of iron. The same sort of stars that, a few million or billion years before, might have been the source of the iron in my blood, the iron tainting seawater and the red earth of Utah and Nevada and Arizona.
I wanted to be an astronomer.

The thought didn't even sting. I felt no loss, no sorrow— except the sorrow of wanting to feel that loss.