Blood and Iron (48 page)

Hope watched, and said nothing.

“I'm going to get Ian's heart back now. It's chancy, what I have to do, and if I don't return, he's King. It'll be your duty to be his conscience and his compassion. Do you understand?”

“No.” But the lie was in her eyes. “This isn't fair.”

“You're starting to understand.” The garden was bright beyond the windows, and clouds sailed and broke in the sky. “I've asked Morgan to lift the magics that were keeping your gifts in check. You'll have your storms.”

“You must love him very much.”

“No,” I said. “I can't love him at all.” A cold tear itched in the corner of my eye. I blinked it back. “Go to him,” I said. “Stay with him if you can. It may destroy you; it will certainly hurt.” A milk-white stallion, patched with black, cantered along the path among the lilies. He stopped below Hope's window and tossed his mane, snorting. I flung the casement wide.

“Mistress,” Whiskey said, until he saw my hair flying in the breeze and whickered, his ears pricked.

“Call me Elaine.” I stepped onto Hope's low balcony. “I won't constrain you to go where I must go. But I would as soon not go alone.”

“It will be as you wish it,” he answered, and came up beside the banister, so I could step from its broad stone surface to his back. The wind in my hair felt alien as he leapt into a gallop, headed west.

Whiskey's ears flicked back to catch my voice as he ran. I sighed before I spoke. “I thought it would be Halloween.”

“Well,” he answered. “You were right, if only barely. And more, this is just the overture. But the veils between this world and that are thinning and when they're thinnest is when they'll strike.”

“Tonight. At the dark of the moon. When Keith is weakest. ” I thought of Harold Godwinson and his frantic charge from one end of England to the other.

“Aye.” He slowed to a canter as we came to the crusted banks of the river of blood that flowed between the Mebd's lands—
my
lands—and those of the Cat Anna. “And we not knowing how many of them there are, or where lie their strengths.”

“No,” I said. The blood was hot against my skin as Whiskey plunged, swimming strongly. “But I mean to make Àine tell me.”
Scian, Lile.
“I don't want to destroy the humans, Uisgebaugh.”

“It's us or them,” he replied. “They know that. It's how they've managed to bind us and break us, these past few hundred years. Their steel has wounded the earth too deeply for us to do more than cling to the edges of memory now.”

Clean water washed the dripping blood from his flanks, was less successful with my skirts. “Why is the iron in blood and earth no problem for you, Whiskey?”

He snorted and shook the high crest of his neck. “Why doesn't it trouble you? Forged iron, forged steel. A weapon is only a weapon with a will behind it, and a chain is only a chain when someone holds the key.”

“Ah.” And it always
was
forged iron, in the stories.
Iron, cold iron.
“It's not just a weapon,” I said.
Telescopes and scalpels and printing presses.
“I was human once.”

“So you were.” He stood for a moment, poised and silent.

“Were I still . . .” I didn't know how to finish the sentence. “ ‘Nature red in tooth and claw,' ” I said at last, helpless to explain.

“Aye,” he answered. “And Faerie and the world are brutal and arbitrary by their nature, and man is the thing opposed to that chaos. Where one prevails the other must suffer.”

I opened my mouth, and shut it.
I've chosen my side,
I almost said, but something stopped the words at my lips. “Must it? Are there games no one loses?”

His ears flickered in an equine shrug. “I cannot say, now, in the cold light of conscience, that any vengeance wreaked on me is unwarranted.”

“But still you choose Faerie.”

A shudder ran the length of his barrel and he shifted under my weight. “I am what I am.” There wasn't any apology in it, but there was a sorrow I hadn't heard from him before. It reminded me of someone.

It reminded me of Morgan.

“Whiskey,” I said softly. “You sound like a grown-up.”

He snorted and pawed the earth. I could hear the iron growing through the soil, see the green grass dying at the root. “There are sins on both sides,” he muttered.

“Oh, hell,” I said. “John Henry couldn't have done it without a hammer, you know. But you were right about one thing.”

“What's that, Elaine?”

“I do have a tendency not to want to face the consequences of my choices. I'll try to do a little better at that.”

I expected . . . sympathy, or something. What I got was pure, unadulterated Uisgebaugh. “You'll have to do better. You're among the heroes now. The choices you make, you make for all of us.” Before I could frame an answer, he plunged forward, shifting to a hard run once again.

My knee wouldn't absorb the punch of his stride, to ride over the jouncing. I sat on my ass and took it.

The Cat Anna's palace was stark white stone, fantastic gables and crenellations, gaily bedighted in banners of a thousand colors. Most interesting to me was the one granted nearly equal dignity with Àine's own banner: plain vermilion silk, tattered at the edge to resemble flames—the banner of an emissary of the Prince of Hell.

“Good,” I murmured into Whiskey's backward-flicked ear.

“Two birds with one stone.” I patted him on the shoulder and slid down his side, my ornate and tattered skirts stiff with my own blood and the blood from the river. I thought of the source of that blood, and shivered. We'd put it to a high tide soon, or die in the attempt.

The thought would have clenched my stomach hard, not very long ago at all. Now I examined it with a sort of cold, alienated regret.
We are what we are. No. We're what we make of what we're given. The Dragon said as much.

“And did you think you'd be rid of me that easily?” A shadow detached itself from the roof of the gatehouse, gliding weightlessly down to settle on Whiskey's withers.

“Gharne. I . . .” Self-consciously, I reached out and pushed loose strands of hair behind my ear. The emeralds set in my wedding band caught a few strands.
Keith. Be safe.

“You should have discussed it with me,” he said, and hopped to my shoulder. “But that's all right. As long as I have your word you'll come get me back if anything bad happens.”

“Of course.”

Whiskey shifted and shrank. He tilted his head and picked an imaginary spot from his white silk velvet sleeve. “Are you going to dress in glamours?”

“No,” I said, smoothing the raggle-taggle brocade. “I look as I intend.” The sweep of cloth left dull red brush-marks on the pale stones as I passed over them and made my way to the gates. They stood open, guarded, and the Elf on the right lowered his halberd to block my path.

“State your business, my . . . lady,” he said.

I frowned, and crossed my arms over my chest. “I am Queen Elaine of the Daoine Sidhe,” I said, as Gharne mantled behind my head, flaring a cobra-hood, not troubling himself to hiss. “We require an audience with the Cat Anna.”

“I will send a page.” His voice stayed level, while his expression commented on the ruin of my gown.

“She will see me,” I said, “if she wishes Annwn to endure another year. Now let me pass.” I moved to brush past him. His companion stepped into my way, and Whiskey was moving forward to shatter the Elf's halberd when a lynx-like cough interrupted.

Kadiska coiled into the doorway, a hood of shadow flaring behind her to match the one Gharne made over me. Tiny golden bells tinkled along the seams of crimson trousers as the Unseelie Seeker came to me. “Seeker,” she said through filed teeth. “I am glad to see you've finally come to visit me at home. Let her pass.”—that last aside to the guardians.

“Call me Elaine,” I said, and walked across the bone-white flagstones to take her hands. She kissed the air by my cheek, her tight little smile including Whiskey and Gharne. The shadow behind her melded with Gharne's outline, fused and then tugged apart again as she leaned back. I felt his talons prickle my shoulder like a cat's small claws.

“You've untangled your hair,” she said softly, leading me within the curtain walls and the bailey.

“I'm not Seeker anymore.” My spine was stiff under the weight of ruined brocade. “I want Ian's heart back.”

“I am sorry about that,” she said.

I let my shoulders rise and fall and kept my face impassive. “I know,” I answered, pleased that my voice never wavered. “I would be too. What can you tell me about . . .” Whiskey snorted softly as I angled my eyes toward the orange-red banner that snapped overhead on a breeze warmer than it had any right to be. “. . . the emissary?”

"One of the dukes, I think. I've been away.” She gestured helplessly with the hand that didn't rest on my sleeve. “You know where.”

“I'd thought to find your Queen in collusion with Heaven.”

“They sent a Voice.”

"And?”

“And? Àine closed the gates in his face. Ninefold wings and all. She does have some pride. You know who she was, once. Which of the sisters.”

“No. But I can guess.”

“They called her Caillech. The Lady of Cats. The Queen of Sorceresses.”

Whiskey angled his head down at me, his blue eye rimmed in white. “Tuatha de Danaan,” he said. “My father was born of the union of the earth and the sea.”

“Children of Dana. I haven't forgotten. Nor have I forgotten who Dana is.”

Kadiska's hand slipped off my sleeve. I wondered if her fingers felt as numb as mine. “Who Dana is? The mother goddess.”

“Yes,” I answered, and opened my hands like butterflies. “And more. The Tuatha de Danaan, the old gods who followed their own rules before the new gods came. They're her sons and daughters. Dana is the mountain and the chasm. And moreover, Dana is the Dragon.”

I almost felt the earth shiver under my feet, heard the rattle of a distant chain. How ridiculous, to think iron could hold something like that, unless it chose to be bound.

Whiskey shied, silver ringing on the flagstones, bare footsteps taking on the echo of hoofbeats. “And you're her granddaughter too,” he pointed out. He moved a step closer, as if to shield me with his body, and the gesture scored my heart; he was never meant for such things as caring, and I could see the realization in his face, of how he'd fallen, gentled, from what he was.
“Alas, my love, you do me wrong. . . .”

I blinked and laid a hand on his arm, noticing the blood under my fingernails with amusement. “That's what it's about, isn't it? She won't choose one set of children over the others. We have to work it out on our own.”

“Like any good mother,” Whiskey answered, “she will offer advice.”

“We'll kill each other.”

“Then she'll start over, as she has a dozen times before.” It was a smooth voice, androgynous and cultured, unexpected. I didn't turn. “She is what she is, after all.” A hesitation as suspicion blossomed in my heart.
The emissary. The speaker for the Prince of Hell.

“Hail, Queen Elaine,” the voice continued, smooth and seemly. “Eleanor, Helen, Ygraine. A queenly name. Your mother chose well. I could wish I had seen you before today.”

“Good afternoon.” If I had had a soul it would have quailed. “They told me you went as the tithe, and went willing. ”

“Yes,” he said, and I turned to regard him, Murchaud, son of Lancelot.

He was shining dark, and exceeding fair: beautiful and awful, his long hands pale as bones against the red velvet of his coat. He had, I thought, Morgan's hands: strong-fingered, capable. His hair shone blue-black in ringlets and a ruddy light gleamed behind the windows of his eyes, as clear as water running over stones. It would have been amazing, indeed, if my mother could have resisted him. If any woman could.

Except for greener eyes, Ian favored him.
“What is yonder mountain high, where evil winds do blow?”

“Was it very terrible?”

“Hell?” He smiled. “Yes, it was very terrible. Your mother yet lives, Elaine. A dutiful daughter would visit her.”

“Do
you
visit her?” It came out cold, and I was pleased.
My father is the son of Morgan le Fey and Lancelot du Lac. My father is an Elf-knight.
I thought of the ballad of brave Isobel, and the seven King's daughters.
My father is a Duke of Hell.

“When my duties permit,” he answered. Whiskey moved between us when my father came to take my arm, and I was grateful. I couldn't have borne the fever of that touch. “I've come to take you to the Queen. And speak a moment, truth be told.” He hummed a bar of music, and for a moment I was only relieved that it wasn't “Tam Lin.”

“She wept for you, you know.”

“Possibly,” he answered. “Whom stand I accused of wounding?”

“The Mebd wept for you when the Merlin sang her ‘Greensleeves.' ” I heard Whiskey breathing in the silence—deep, slow, measured breaths.

“A tithe doesn't count unless you place some value on it. But you are only in part correct. Come along, Your Majesty. The Cat Anna awaits you.”

They flanked me on either side, Kadiska and Whiskey, with Murchaud leading the way. My father was slim and straight, broad-shouldered, wearing his oiled jet hair in a gleaming club at the nape of his neck. His boots made scarcely any sound at all upon the flagstones, and fey sunlight sparkled on the rubies in the scabbard of his sword. It made me feel strange inside to look at him. Strange, and sad, and . . . fey.