Gossamyr (35 page)

Ahead, a flash of white light stretched down the pale marble
floor. Gossamyr pressed herself to the wall behind a grotesque torch;
the blaze of flame would hide her from discovery. Sweet the candle
fire, flames melting honeycomb. A cool wind tickled the side of her
neck. She slapped a palm over her throat and scanned the smirking
gargoyle to her right. The tiny whispers had stopped.

Had the gargoyle—? No. Couldn't have.

Avenall entered a room and the door began to close. Quickly, she
tiptoed to the door and pressed a palm to it. Though forged of marble
and massive in size it moved on a whisper.

Tang of citrus and hush of myrrh drifted out from the room.
Peering inside, Gossamyr spied a bed of tousled red linens. Elegant
tapestry hangings, fringed in heavy gold tassels canopied the bed. No
other furniture cluttered the vast marble floor. No succubus in
sight.

On the wall opposite the bed there glowed such a marvel—Gossamyr
gasped.

Hundreds of luminous masses glimmered on the wall. Here the song
of Faery blossomed and cried out. Not fearful, but neither joyous.
Tentative, the tones, so leery. This was the melody she had heard.

Avenall thrust one pin into the wall, securing the quivering
orange essence with ease. Silver into stone? The second pin was
secured with equal aplomb. Mesmerizing. In proof, Gossamyr watched as
the pin man lifted his head and looked over the essences, his arms
falling slack at his sides. Trapped in a pose of worship, his hair
dusted the floor at his bare heels. It appeared the crimson had
flowed even farther, leaving barely a hand's-breadth of black at the
tips.

Did the Red Lady possess hair of such color? Shinn had not
remarked such.

And there, from beneath the heavy fall of crimson-and-black hair,
unfurled the gorgeous papilinod wings, spurred with wispy filaments.
Not violet. Not iridescent, so drained of color they were—much
like a revenant. Now she noticed his arms. The Rougethorn blazon
girdled arms and hips. Banishment had not stolen Avenall's blazon,
yet, it was pale, barely a shimmer of curling arcs and dashes upon
his flesh.

Gossamyr drew herself into the room. Wincing at the sharp pain in
her knee, her bare feet made not a sound on the cold marble as she
crept around behind the succubus's minion. So entranced he was he did
not notice her. The glowing, shifting orbs continued their weird
humming. Was the sound a death cry, a captured fée essence,
unable to journey to its final resting place? Did they suffer in
oblivion? Would the revenant's death—somewhere in Faery—see
an end to this captured essence?

No, for she had obliterated the one back in the square, and
Avenall yet retained the speared essence.

The urge to leap forward and yank the pins from the marble flared
in Gossamyr's gut. But she quelled the ache for justice.
Do not
seek vengeance, hold fast to valor.
Be bold, be bold—until
she knew where the mistress of this lair hid, she must be wary—be
not too bold.
Seek the truth!

Who was to know what their release would prove? Mayhap there was
chance, with the revenant's death, the essence could then be granted
the final
twinclian.

For now, she was more concerned with Avenall's faculty.

Following the tilt of the pin man's head, she gathered he stared
at the one essence pinned highest above all the others. A leap to
touch the thick iron head of that pin. The essence there undulated
lazily, fat and palest yellow, as the sun on a cold winter morn. It
was different than the rest. Not as glimmery. More solid. As if...not
filled with glamour.

For the Enchantment still reigned in Avenall? Of course, his
blazon proved as much.

The softest of whispers gave away his fascination. "Mine."

"It is yours," Gossamyr blurted.

The fée startled, his wings twitching, but he did not turn
from gazing upon the yellow essence.

"Be that how she keeps you?" Gossamyr approached the
base of the curved marble stairs. Cool beneath her toes, the slick
stone. "Is it your essence?"

"Oh, yes," he murmured in a reverent hush. Avenall stood
tall and proud. The subtle sweep of his wings stirred heliotrope into
the mixture of citrus and myrrh. Seductive. Can it be as it once was?
Oh, but she ached for it to be so.

"Take it," Gossamyr said. "It is but a leap to your
freedom."

A rabbity moan brewed in the man's throat. The filaments spurring
his wing tips coiled tightly. He shook his head, dusting the cold air
with his vibrant tresses. "It is too high."

Gossamyr strode up both steps to stand beside the man. It had been
a time since she had stood alongside her lover. Anticipation thrummed
her heartbeats. But here she felt his anxiety, a veritable shiver
emanated from his being. And there, the remnants of desire yet
cleaved to her bruised heart. Oh, but he must remember her!

The return of his essence—yes, surely that would make him
whole?

"It is but a leap. Shall I get it down for you?"

"No!" He clapped a hand over his scalp and winced,
lunging forward in a moaning sway. "It is forbidden."

"I have not been told as much." Gossamyr stepped
forward.

The pin man thrust out his foot, successfully tripping her. She
landed her palms and stared up at the humming, pulsating wall. A
reach away, one of the pins. The essence of her fellow fée
groaned and moaned before her. Life captured there. Stolen life.

Gossamyr lifted a finger to touch. A strange reverence befell her.
How dare she touch another faery's essence?

"Sacred," she murmured at the same time Avenall skipped
down the stairs.

"Where is she? Your mistress?" Gossamyr spun up and
stood. "Quickly!"

"Away." The man clapped his hands over his head and did
a spinning jig before the crimson bed. "Won't you stay?"

"I believe I shall." She released an
arret
but
did not swing it to full speed. Instead she spun it gently, winding
it about her forefinger and then unwinding it.

Avenall's attention preened over her. Once compassion and a fiery
interest had glittered in his violet eyes, now a malicious spark of
red glinted at Gossamyr. He smelled of heliotrope and myrrh and
something so evil.

He asked, "What
are
you?"

"You don't know? Can you not sniff me out?" A lift of
her chin stretched the cut that slashed from cheek to jaw. She nodded
toward the sheath of pins at his hip. "One of those is mine, is
it not?"

"You reek of Faery," he said, pacing around her,
cautious to keep his distance.

Gossamyr bent and sat on the lowest step, propping her wrists on
her knees. She did not sense immediate danger from this man. Never
had she felt fearful in his presence. But he had changed. She must
caution herself to be wary.

"But Faery you are not. Nor are you an elf." He tapped
his chin. "But mortal?"

She smirked at his confusion. "Your mistress would have me
dead by now were I anything but mortal." How strange to feign
mortality with the very man who had allowed her to accept her half
blood as an exotic attribute.

"Mayhap she keeps you alive until she has pinned your man's
soul to her collection?"

"She does not take mortal souls. Nor is he my man. Avenall!
Look at me!"

The pin man merely glanced to the undulating yellow mass high
above the others. "You are too familiar with my name, wench."

"As we have been familiar with one another?"

What power had the Red Lady over him that he did not recognize
her? Or was it the mark of the banished, delivered by her father,
that had erased his memory?

"The mortal is stalked by my mistress."

"Ulrich will not be fooled by your mistress's wicked cry."
If Gossamyr could be there to keep watch over the man. Blight, she
had so many to concern herself with.

"Oh, but it is a most delicious cry, fair lady. Irresistible
and insatiable. The succubus can make any man want her, as well, hate
her as he is kneeling before her pristine skirts."

A glint of malice iced the man's words. Gossamyr guessed at his
hatred. So he was not entirely at the succubus's mercy? Bone.

"You despise her, don't you? You merely bide your time until
you can retrieve your essence and escape."

"No."

"Oh, yes. Let me pull it down for you and send you on your
way. Leave the Red Lady to me. She'll not pursue you for I'll remove
her black essence and pin it to the wall before the day is through."

The pin man laughed and snorted and caught himself by clutching
one of the wide marble bedposts. "Foolish wench, my mistress has
no essence. Why do you think she has such a collection?"

"But she does nothing with them. What is the purpose of
keeping them pinned to look upon?"

"She feeds off the Enchantment. Which in turn keeps the
Disenchantment at bay. Do you see that one down there?"

Gossamyr looked to the green essence on the bottom, shriveled and
flickering intermittently.

"Needs to be replaced anon," the pin man said. "As
will they all."

"What of yours? How is it you survive without the essence?"

He lifted his chin defiantly. "My mistress... keeps me
strong."

Gossamyr knew the answer. His time was limited. "Is it
because you both bear the mark of the banished? Is that what binds
you to her?"

Striding in a prancing arc before her, Avenall spun a pin in hand,
the huge round head rotating in his palm. A twist of his head upon
his neck aimed a hard glare on her.

"Why do you reek of Faery, strange woman? Yet I know you are
not fée."

"Half—" Gossamyr started, but Avenall's wicked
glee unsettled her. Could it be he did recall her, yet was unable to
place that memory? It could merely be that the Disenchantment was so
thorough. But no, he must be Enchanted for his wings. Did it matter?
He had not recall of the two of them—she must help him to
remember. With Avenall as her ally they could defeat the Red Lady and
return to—

Gossamyr felt a twinge of regret at her lost ties to Faery. Is
that how all fée felt the loss? But a mere twitch inside their
gut? Surely it must be greater? Shinn should have prepared her...

"Shinn?"

"What?" Gossamyr squinted at the man. Where had he
gotten the name— "Did you peer into my mind?"

"No need." He straightened his shoulders and clacked two
pins together within his grip. "Your fear is tangible, daughter
of Shinn."

"I do not fear— How do you know such?"

"So you are? Or rather—" he stretched his arms out
and dashed a theatrical slide across the marble step "—claim
to be when it is all a lie."

"Why speak you so, pin man? How can you guess such things? Do
you lie about your memory of Faery?"

"Do you deny you are Shinn's daughter?"

"No."

She is queer-gotten
—
not of her parents' blood.
Gossamyr shook her head, striking away Ulrich's tale of a
daughter he claimed as his own though not a drop of his blood flowed
through her veins. Strange to think it.

"But do you remember—"

"Shinn has made you believe you are truly of his blood? He
has gulled you most effectively."

She stepped back, lowering her staff to her side. The
arrets
at
her hip clicked. Essences danced on the wall. The melody of sadness
wrapped about her shoulders. What lies did this leering thing speak
to her? To trick her?

"They are not lies." The man stepped forward, a tilt to
one of the pins glinting violet. Like a shard of Faery sight. "True
blood wears the violet in their eyes,"he said, a wicked curl
crevassing the corner of his mouth. "Your eyes, warrior bitch,
appear quite not violet to me. Brown, are they?"

Thud of heartbeats trammeled up her throat. Balance wavered.

"Stop." She would not listen to this foul attempt to
weaken her.

To make her question. She swallowed back the rising panic. Of
course they were brown; Veridienne's had been the same.

The need to help this pitiful excuse for a fée oozed from
her intentions. The Red Lady was not here? She would go in quest of
the succubus.

Spinning to leave, Gossamyr strode past the wall. Essences of the
fée cried out in a purgatorial scream.

Brown, are they?

The pin man sang teasingly, "I know of you, mortal
changeling."

Changeling?

Gossamyr pressed the heel of her hand to the cold marble wall.
What play did the pin man attempt? Yes, pin man. Avenall was long
gone. Not a lover. She wanted nothing to do with one who would tease
her so cruelly.

Unable to take another step, she closed her eyes, wishing it were
as easy to close her ears to the man's words. "How can you claim
to know I am Shinn's daughter when you cannot recall our own
connection?"

"We? Connected?" A flutter of his life-drained wings
swept the foulness of bloodied heliotrope across their distance. "If
there was such, memory was stolen from me upon banishment."

She let out a breath.

"I know only what I have been given." Drawing himself
straight, his arms lax at his sides, the pins were forgotten for the
moment. "After my arrival in Paris, my mistress told me much
about Shinn of Glamoursiege. And his mortal daughter."

"Half-mortal."

"You are mortal complete," ground out in dripping tones.

Gossamyr made to brush off the impossible declaration with a brave
thrust of her chin. "Lies spun by a banished succubus."

"Truth," the pin man hissed, "from a discarded
lover." He twirled a pin between two fingers, a smaller version
of her staff whisking the air to a violent and metallic hum.

"You honestly believe yourself a half blood?" He stepped
right up to her. Not too close for Faery.

Gossamyr pressed her shoulder blades to the marble wall. Reaction
fled. She could not scent him, save for the blood on the pins. She
could but listen, stare into those violet eyes. Eyes that had once
looked upon her with desire but were now clouded with a viscous red
sheen.