Gossamyr (12 page)

When she turned back to him his body jerked, as if tugged from
behind, and he leaped about to face the empty darkness.

Could it be a creature from the Netherdred? One who stood yet on
the Faery side of the rift, invisible yet capable of affecting the
Otherside? She should be able to see anything that stood in Faery if
it connected with this world. Why could she not—

"If you cannot afford me the virtue of patience," Ulrich
announced to no one, "I shall see you to Hades where you belong.
Be gone!"

"Ulrich!" She leaped forward and gripped the man by the
shoulders. If he had succumbed to a glamour, perhaps her contact
could unloose him. Because he was rigid and jumpy and jerking in her
grasp, her fingers could not maintain hold. The vexing cloak impeded
her and she toppled, but caught herself with the staff. "You
speak to the night. What is to you, man? Be you luna-touched?"

"Get me free from here," he growled. A flick of his head
to the left and he addressed another unseen entity. "Heaven? You
who takes your own life asks very much!"

"Is it the Netherdred?" she pleaded.

"I know not of nether dreads—only the dreads that stand
before me. Ah! I must concentrate!"

The man had stepped into a realm that frightened even Gossamyr.
She could feel not a presence. No smell or sound could be pulled from
the confusion of the moment. She tugged Ulrich's arm, but resistance
tensed in her grasp. And yet, the man did not pull himself from her.
'Twas is if he were bestiffened.

Banshees? she wondered. No, they were visible figments of white
wailing women. Ghosts? She had not experience with the sort; ghosts
aligned themselves with wizards, witches and forbidden magic.

"I have not the leisure for you all," Ulrich shouted and
twisted from Gossamyr's hold. "I will die of old age to send you
each in his turn. Faery Not, pull harder!"

"I am trying," Gossamyr said. She clutched him about the
waist and planted her toes in the loose dirt. It was as if he were
being held to the center of the roads, fixed with nails pounded
through the soles of his soft-bottomed shoes. Yet she felt not a
single presence. "What is it? A spectral creature I cannot see?"

"Hundreds," Ulrich cried. "Take my hands."

Twisting under his outstretched arm, Gossamyr seized the man's
hands. Though the darkness shadowed features, the agony on his face
showed strongly. As their palms joined, Gossamyr felt cold tremor
through her forearms and up her shoulders.

Horrors! A chill greater than winter's bite trickled through her
bones. "I can feel them," she uttered.

Pushing with all her might, she succeeded in moving Ulrich from
the center of the crossed roads while he shouted and protested with
the unseen forces. Together they shuffled backward. Her toes stepped
onto grass. Fancy snorted and clopped from their way. Finally, Ulrich
tripped and went down. Gossamyr fell forward onto his chest,
collapsing with a huff. The distinctive rip of dried leaves sounded.

Breath wheezed from Ulrich's lungs. Reaching back, Gossamyr felt
over her pourpoint. A rent down the center, up to her mid-section,
she determined.

Now even the crickets silenced. Dark surrounded; the eyelash moon
ignored this little crossroad. Lying atop Ulrich, Gossamyr grew aware
of his breaths, short and hot. The chill had slithered off as if it
had not bitten her so sharply. The man had been assaulted in a manner
she could not comprehend. But that she had rescued him from an unseen
assailant seemed apparent.

She gave a jerk of her head to swish back the heavy corner of the
cloak from her face. "Are you fine and well?"

A burst of laughter shook him beneath her.

Gossamyr bent her legs and knelt over him, trying to assess his
condition. Eyes closed, and his breathing still fast, was all she
could remark. No cold—yet she had felt his flesh to be as ice
when gripping his hands. She scented not blood, but when she thought
to touch his face—check for wounds—she recalled the
bruise. A touch would not be welcome to his tender flesh.

Pushing up, Gossamyr stood and struggled with the cumbersome
cloak. The heavy fabric twisted between her legs. "Blight!"

Ulrich remained on his back. Short bursts of laughter continued,
so she judged him safe. But sound?

Plodding up from behind, Fancy nudged her warm nose into
Gossamyr's palm. With contact, fear flowed out from her. A glance to
the crossroads sighted only stillness. Whatever had threatened was
now gone. She took a breath and expelled it in a lip-fluttering
blast.

"The saddlebag," Ulrich asked in a gasping voice as his
laughter settled. "Is it safe?"

"Exactly where it should be." Gossamyr bent and this
time stroked aside a clump of hair from Ulrich's temple. No fear in
touching this mortal. Secretly, she felt daring to do so. "What
happened to you?"

"A damned crossroads,"he said in a tone that blamed her
for not guessing the obvious. Moving up to prop on his elbows, he
blew out a bluster of breath. "I wasn't paying attention, and
walked right into the center of the infernal place. Hell would be
most pleased to open a tavern right there." He gestured
forcefully toward the spot he had stood. "Plenty of doomed souls
for the taking."

"What has a crossroads to do with whatever it was that
tormented you?"

"You don't know?"

She shook her head. "When we joined hands I felt something. .
.so icy, I could have frozen."

"Ah. Yes. The chill of death. Do not faeries have their lost
souls? Suicides and murders? They gather at crossroads."

"Who?"

"The souls! Lost and misdirected souls wandering a
purgatorial nightmare. They convene at crossroads because that is
where we
mortals
bury the forsaken."

"Ghosts?"

"Not exactly. Souls, Gossamyr. Souls. Disembodied and
searching."

She turned to look over the place where Ulrich had battled. Souls?
The revenants cannot commence the final
twinclian
without
an essence.
"Like...revenants?"

"I know not what a revenant is."

"They are—" Skeletal flying beasts with wings. She
clasped both elbows. Better to keep that information to herself. "Why
could I not see them? Did
you
see them?"

"Not in a physical way. But believe me, I felt their icy,
possessive bones everywhere. Had you not dragged me away I would have
been trapped until dawn guiding those damned souls to Hades. So
horribly the same!"

"Guiding them? I do not understand. Be this magic?"

"Far from it. Let's walk, shall we?"

Ulrich stood. Bell-wavering forward a few steps, he turned and
groped Fancy's flanks to steady. Had she not known him sober Gossamyr
would have guessed him soused. "Distance, my lady, we need to
get Jean Cesar Ulrich Villon III far from this horrific place. I can
yet feel them leering at me, waiting for me to stumble back onto
their domain."

She squinted, yet sighted nothing but gray shadows upon darkness.
A chirr of crickets resumed their night symphony, and a snort from
Fancy drew her attention around.

"Come, my fashionably challenged misfit." Ulrich slapped
a palm to Fancy's flank and the mule stepped into motion. "Let's
be away."

They resumed the path, Fancy trotting hastily to keep pace with
Ulrich's swaying strides. Gossamyr skipped alongside on the border of
grass. Every third step she stabbed her staff into the ground and
swung forward. "So, you are truly well?"

"Soon enough." He noted her swinging steps and smiled.
"Just a little begroggled is all. My head will clear as I move
farther from Hell's stain. What of you? I heard leaves tearing."

"Still all together," she said. "So... you were
guiding those souls?"

"Not by choice."

"But...you...do all mortals have such an ability?"

"Ah! You are not up on we mortals, my lady. Your disguise
wears thin. Methinks I can see the glimmer on your hands."

The night did not grant such perfect vision, so Gossamyr did not
even check. He lied in an attempt to get her to reveal herself. He
guessed he knew her. He
did
know her. And she sensed no danger
from him. But she must remain wary.

Or must she? A scan of the sky did not sight the fetch. What
horrendous danger must she encounter to bring Shinn to her side? Or
was the lord of Glamoursiege too busy with the revenants to leave?

She whispered blessings for her father's safety.

As for help, she did not need it. Champions were bold.
Be bold,
be bold, be not too bold.
A statement Gossamyr had once read in
the bestiary, written in gold text below the image of a charging
knight.

"This talent of seeing and guiding souls is not a common
one," Ulrich said, drawing to a halt. A stretch of his arm to
the sky and he announced with less than his usual flare, "I
am...Shepherd to Lost Souls."

Their closeness allowed Gossamyr to see the grin slip onto Ulrich
's face. Did he mock her? "Shepherd to Lost Souls?"

"Another of my royal appointments. One I've tried desperately
to shuck, but it is the only one that ever really sticks with me. I
was born one. Will die one. Likely, I shall perish at a crossroads,
inundated by the miserable hordes that seek Hades." Ulrich
reached to grip Gossamyr's shoulder. A firm grasp that demanded her
attention. Here in the darkness she could not see his expression.
"Truth?"

"Please."

"I am a guide for lost souls. Families either hire me before
an imminent death to ensure their loved one goes the direction they
believe it should—Heaven or Hades—or I am called upon
after a death to guide a lost soul."

"How are they lost?"

"Ah, you see, they either aren't sure they led a good life
and deserve Heaven, or well, would you go to Hades if you knew you
should?"

"Heaven and Hades are not familiar to me. Be they in France?"

He gasped. Clutching one of the silver talismans about the chain
at his neck he displayed a cross in the ill night. A holy symbol
associated with the mortal church. Veridienne had once fashioned one
from holly sticks for Gossamyr, but she had broken it when shoving it
in a sap hole to collect a sweet treat. Ulrich's Heaven and Hell may
be very similar to the fée's sacred resting places.

"Infernal and Celestial?" she tried.

"Yes, yes. The same."

Be that so? She wondered if the fée
twinclianed
to
the same place as did mortals. It seemed unlikely.

"How do you guide them? Do you just point?"

"If only it were so easy. I trance. Then, I communicate with
the soul—"

"Can you see it?"

"No." He smoothed both hands over his scalp, pushing
back his tousle of curls. An extravagant gesture into the air
startled Gossamyr back a few steps. "But I can feel it!"
Ulrich announced with such declaration she thought him preaching
doctrine. "And the sensation gives me a picture of the person,
most in their death state. Murders are a nasty picture. As well,
suicides." A forceful exhale lowered his shoulders and he toed a
crop of clover that Fancy had taken to chewing. "Must we go on
about this? I want to clear the crossroads from my mind."

"So you do not enjoy this ability?"

Ulrich turned up a palm and twisted on the rings circling his
fingers. "It is my way; I have accepted it."

"And yet you've performed many other jobs?"

"One of many unsuccessful attempts to replace this
particularly vexing profession. At all means I try to avoid what
happened back there. It drains me. Makes me grumpy. Much like a tired
faery princess."

"A what?"

"Well, I've guessed, haven't I?"

Gossamyr shifted, her toes hanging over the thick cleft of grass
edging the path. Why was it so difficult to be forthright when she
wanted to? An affection for mistruth had never been hers.

Because the dangers of the Otherside had been preached to her
since she could understand.
They capture and keep faeries.
A
truth illustrated not two jigs earlier. Should she have tried to free
the caged fée? For what hope but death, for the Disenchanted,
upon return to Faery, could never hope to regain Enchantment.

Yet you left her to live a tortured existence.
Could she
have given the fée death to end her suffering?

Gossamyr shivered. No, likely not.

"So many lost souls," she noted, "each wanting your
complete attention."

"Exactly. Once again we change the subject. Well! Neither are
graveyards a pretty spot to wander."

"You bury your dead."

"A wise observation for a mortal."

"No questions, Ulrich, not...now. Please?"

"Yes, we are, both of us, exhausted."

Gossamyr nodded. "Onward then."

"I require rest, my lady. I wager you could slip to Nod if
only you'd admit such."

"What of that castle ahead?"

Ulrich stared off toward the horizon. A jagged line rose above a
lush forest of trees. The single tower of a large castle—what
once might have been a formidable stronghold—drew a black blot
in the gray sky.

"Looks to be abandoned." He squinted. "On second
thought, it looks to have been torn from its ramparts. Let us cross
the meadow to that copse of trees and make camp."

"But if the castle is abandoned it may provide shelter."
Gossamyr strode ahead while Ulrich trundled through the tall grasses.
"A wall or two is all we need. Mayhap a bed?"

"My lady of the annoying questions," he called as his
steps took to jumping dashes to navigate the meadow. "The few
things that see a castle abandoned are plague, famine or siege.
Either of the three leaves a heap of dead in its wake. And where
there are dead, there are souls. Dozens of them, surely.
Just...waiting."

"I see." Gossamyr turned and skipped after him. She
would not subject him to further horror. She overtook Ulrich and
rushed up to the trees. "Then we camp here, and I'll scout the
remains in the morning."