Gossamyr (32 page)

"I have not been marked, have I?"

"Well..."

"I am...unremarkable? Tell me true." She needed to know!
This man was the only one she trusted.

"It is likely the Disenchantment. Mustn't worry, Faery N—er,
my lady."

She nodded, and yet knew she had not been marked. That Ulrich
would not tell her troubled. Why did he seek to protect her, and from
what? The emotions he so relentlessly strove to dig up from her
depths?

"I'm sorry, Gossamyr. I thought the spell would be
successful."

"It has been." She squeezed his shoulder. "It
worked too well. Let's begin with those sights close by."

He gathered his supplies into the saddlebag and they began to
circle down the stairs. Disregarding the darkness and the cold stone,
she traced her fingertips along the curving walls. The short steps
and tight twists enclosed Gossamyr in her thoughts.

Do you know the truth of yourself?

Why had she not been marked? The Disenchanted had been. Was it her
mortal blood? Did it alter the spell, blinding it to her fée
half? Perhaps Ulrich had merely been too close? Close enough for
Faery, not nearly close enough for her newly kissed desires.

"Likely we need to view my light from above," she called
up to Ulrich.

"Certainly, that is the case."

As they gained the last dozen steps, Ulrich's voice was low but
close to Gossamyr. "So, are we to pretend it never happened?"

Pressing to the wall and looking up to him, Gossamyr feigned
ignorance. A teasing gesture. It took all her determination to keep
the smile from her mouth. She picked at a tuft of fur at her
shoulder. "What never happened?"

"That kiss. Two kisses, actually."

Ah. Touching her lips invited a silly grin to her face. "Of
course it happened," she offered slowly. "I kissed you
because I wanted to."

"Will you kiss me again?"

Blue eyes on a white sky. Exotic, he. "Mayhap. If you are
worthy."

"Ah, I am always up for a challenge put forth by a beautiful
lady. Were I a knight, I should wear your favor onto the tournament
lists."

"Were you a knight, you should come to arms against me in the
tournament lists."

Ulrich's chuckle echoed in the twisting stone stairway. His final
step as he brushed past Gossamyr swept a shimmer of feeling through
her. Touched. Connected. For a moment they two had spoken silently
their needs. It was a moment she planned to hold for ever in her
heart. A heart that would need sweet memories to endure a loveless
marriage.

As he turned to bow to her, Ulrich misstepped and stumbled. The
saddlebag spilled its contents.

Gossamyr lunged to catch up the mortar and pestle and the alicorn.
The blade he'd been using to scrape at the base of the alicorn landed
the ground at Ulrich's toe, but a hair from doing harm. Fine
particles of the alicorn glittered upon the tiled stone floor of the
cathedral. She scooped up everything.

The mortar tucked inside the bags, Gossamyr stood, ready to
chuckle at the man's clumsiness and offer a chiding remark, when
Ulrich's expression silenced her mirth.

"You cannot touch that thing without protec—" he
started. "You're holding it."

His sudden awe switched her attention to what she was doing.

"You are holding the alicorn," Ulrich gasped, "in
your bare hand."

Indeed she did hold the unicorn's horn against her flesh. She'd
picked it up without thought, hadn't been concerned the loose linen
wrap had come off from the horn.

Not possible. She must not—

Suddenly a shock of power hit Gossamyr like a blow to the chest.
Her arms stretched wide and her body tense, she stood within the
vibrations, unable to move but feeling no pain. Something radiated
through her being, seeping into her every pore and permeating her
veins. 'Twas a remarkable sensation limned with a solemn fear.

She must drop the alicorn. This was a sacred horn. Only the pure
could touch it.

"Gossamyr, are you...fine and well?"

Ulrich's voice barely edged the sensation surrounding her as if
with a brilliant beam of cool light. She could not utter a reply.
'Twas as if all the magical lights Ulrich had cast across the city
gathered in her breast, inflamed but not burning.

"You will lead the unicorn right to us!" he cried. "Keep
hold of it, Gossamyr."

"No!" Voicing her fear released Gossamyr from the
paralyzing stance. She was able to open her fingers. The alicorn
landed the cloth Ulrich had kept it wrapped in.

"What be to you? Something great had begun. A signal or
beacon was being sent. The unicorn cannot find us unless you keep
hold of the alicorn."

Gasping in breaths, Gossamyr bent at the waist and caught her
hands on her knees. "I will not be responsible for luring the
unicorn to the Red Lady."

"But it is the only way the unicorn will ever have it back.
Please, you must pick it up again."

"Ulrich." She straightened and, shaking off the
lingering prinkles, toed the cloth carefully over the alicorn. "I
journey to the Red Lady. Any man or beast following me—particularly
a hornless unicorn—will be endangered. I cannot risk it. In
fact, we must hide the alicorn. Yes. Until we can return to it
knowing the unicorn will be safe."

"Unthinkable." Ulrich wrapped up the alicorn and
replaced it in the saddlebag. "I have taken a vow to protect
this horn. It won't leave my sight."

"You
vowed
to protect it?"

"Yes."

"A few whispered words of prayer as you were being chased by
the big bad evils?"

"About like that."

"Sacrilege!"

"To a faith that is not mine, faery! I will give up the
search when the devil is blind. It has given me strength when I only
wish to close my eyes and... Never mind." He stood and made to
stalk off, but Gossamyr caught him by the arm. "It is
human-emotion stuff," he spat. "Stuff you would never
comprehend, so I will not bother to explain it to you." He
tugged his arm from her grip and marched out from the cathedral.

Gossamyr sighed. She comprehended. And that knowing frightened her
mightily.

After they had passed through the Porte St. Antoine, Dominique San
Juste dismounted Tor and landed the cobbles. When he'd agreed to
accompany Tor he'd thought the beast merely in need of a run. Not a
trek to Paris. Relentlessly, the stallion had galloped straight on to
the outskirts of the capital city. The beast had seemed to fly.
Almost.

Now Tor stilled, pricking his tufted white ears. Clanging metal
signaled slops being emptied out a window close by, and beyond that a
baby wailed like the wind. With a glance to Dominique, the beast
regarded the changeling with what Dominique had come to learn a very
sad look.

"I know what you seek, fair friend." Dominique smoothed
his palm across the base of Tor's neck. That one spot, there beneath
the braided witch locks, pleased him so whenever it was itched. "I
will accompany you evermore. Onward?"

The stallion snorted and pawed the ground, hooves scraping hard
cobbles. Dominique remounted, and threading a hand through the witch
locks—for he never reined the beast—he prepared for the
ride. Tor stepped into a regal march. One step, pause to listen, and
then another.

Sliding a hand up Tor's mane and leaning forward, Dominique
wondered if the bare spot on the forehead of the beast wasn't shining
more brilliantly than usual. Could it be Tor had finally located what
he had been missing all these years?

Ill-sprung, this carriage. His jaw clacked as each uneven cobble
bit at the rotating wheels. The pin man drew a pin crusted with dried
blood beneath his nose, remarking the scent as most curious. Female
certainly, as his mistress had remarked. Though not the usual female
scent. Strangely, it seemed familiar. Yet...exotic. How could that
be?

And that the woman had spoken to him with some familiarity struck
him harshly. She could not know him, for he did not recognize her.
Much as he knew his memories of the past were blurry...

Pressing the heel of his hand to his brow, he winced as he tried
to dredge up what he could not touch.

He knew he had been banished from Faery. The markings on his face
were the same as the Red Lady's. But while she knew the reason behind
her banishment, he couldn't conjure the memory— save for the
name Shinn. And that name came to him only because his mistress used
it so frequently.

Was the reason for his banishment so evil he'd blocked it from his
mind? He did not
feel
evil. What be evil true? Blood and pain
and wicked laughter? No. Something deeper, more visceral, like a slug
that cleaves inside one's belly.

He did not subscribe to evil. Serving his mistress sickened him.
The only reason he did so was because he craved freedom. And there
remained the fact he had no choice. The red bitch held him in thrall,
his very essence pinned to the marble wall like the others. But
unlike the others she was able to keep him alive.

Still Enchanted.

The notion stabbed him like a spear piercing an iron-cold night.
He had yet been Enchanted when the Red Lady had found him. She had
been able to take his essence, but not his life, for the Enchantment
kept him alive. A fée in a mortal man's world. Yet, he did no
more feel out of place than he could fly.

So he must have fallen into the Red Lady's thrall immediately
following his banishment. Not so long ago. He had only been assisting
Her Divine Redness since the spring had pushed up vermilion poppies
in the fields that bordered the embattled city. Intoxicating that
flower's kiss, as was the succubus's kiss.

He traced a finger over the pocked marks curving about his left
eye. Not deep, but permanent. Pores saturated with the Red. Not
blood, but residue from Faery.
Painful. Do you remember?
He'd
cried out in the moment of banishment. Small pokers searing a lasting
punishment into his flesh. And then?

Do you not remember me?

He had
known
the woman who fought with the applewood staff?
When? And where? In Faery? But she did not reek of Faery. It did not
seem feasible...

"Need to remember," he muttered, pressing his fisted
fingers to his temple.

"What did you say, Puppy?"

Myrrh tickled his nose. He sat alongside his tormentor and lover.
"Oh, er, she is close, mistress. I can scent her."

"And with her the man always follows?"

"I wager so. You've only to wait, as is your exquisite role."

"Leave me then. You've the others to retrieve. Two of them
for my collection. But remain within calling distance so you may
track the mortal man when he leaves my arms."

"Ever your servant, most beauteous one." He kissed her
lap, lush folds of scented velvet, and nuzzled his nose deep into her
musky scent, then slipped backward from the carriage and silently
closed the door.

"For now," he muttered.

Bells tolled in Notre Dame to announce nones. Jacqueline, Ulrich
named the largest bell. Her voice carried across the city. They would
first check the Place de Greve, an execution square, Ulrich had
explained, just across the bridge from Notre Dame.

"An actual place for executions." A chill of morbidity
choked in Gossamyr's throat. Such easy violence she had never known.

She looked over the cobbled square. Massive in size, it flanked
what Ulrich had pointed out were the principal city buildings where
the lawmakers and religious leaders and army generals knocked heads.
A bustle of carriages and mounted riders wound through the square;
unlit lanterns carried aloft on sticks dandled this way and that. A
beruffled dog danced by on its hind legs, its master calling all to a
comedy at the nearby theater. Here the air, soaked in stench of the
Seine, felt heavier, sullen.

Leaving Fancy snuffling over a pile of rotten melons, Ulrich
walked across the square, his head held high and his ears pricked.

Gossamyr slapped Fancy's flank. Road dust fumed from the dirty
hide and made her sneeze. It was her first sneeze since arriving in
Paris. Interesting. Mayhap she had adjusted to the Otherside?

Mayhap you belong.

She looked to the wandering soul shepherd. "Ulrich?"

Ignoring her completely, Ulrich tripped over a branch, but kept
moving, as if compelled onward. He walked right before an equipage of
six, barely avoiding the snap of an admonishing whip. A smithy
cradling a horse's hoof in his black apron looked up at the sight,
shook his head, then gave the hoof another pound. Scorched iron
scented the air. Five long strides carried Ulrich into the shadows,
where he disappeared into a narrow alley.

"What in all of the Spiral?" Tugging Fancy along,
Gossamyr trotted across the square. Keeping her head down she dodged
the crowd without rousing concern. She did not know to fear the
English or the French more, and so obscurity was wisest for this lone
woman.

The alley was narrowed by a row of parked carts, empty save for a
few twigs of kindling. She followed him closely, down the aisle of
buildings stacked three stories upon one another. Everything was so
close, too close for a faery. "What is it, Ulrich?"

"It's so...beautiful."

At his slow recital Gossamyr dropped the mule's reins. The hairs
at the back of her neck prinkled. The man was aware of nothing but
that directly before him. Ahead, the alley curved. She couldn't see a
thing that would attract—

"More lost souls?"

Ulrich shook his head. No.

He had so suddenly changed from alert to...led. To walk through
the busy square as if he had been bespelled?

Tilting her head, Gossamyr turned her ear the direction Ulrich
walked and moved in stealthy side steps. She heard nothing. Thick
gray clouds twinkled with rays of escaped sunbeams. The soul shepherd
stretched out a seeking hand and moved onward. It was very obvious he
was being led somewhere.
Not
by a soul?