Knight's Blood (17 page)
Authors: Julianne Lee
Tags: #Kidnapping, #Science Fiction, #Fantasy fiction, #Married people, #Scotland, #General, #Fantasy, #Children - Crimes against, #Fighter pilots, #Fiction, #Time travel
“Did they have a story for why she left?”
“Did they need one? I don’t know why she left. Maybe she couldn’t stand living with you anymore.”
That cut Alex in places he’d never known he had. In backlash without thinking, he said, “Maybe she was horrified she’d given birth to a pointy-eared freak.”
For one suspended moment it seemed Trefor would leap from his horse to tackle his father. If they hadn’t both been mounted at the time, he probably would have hauled off to clobber Alex. But instead he fell silent and looked out across the countryside through which they moved so slowly.
They rode that way for a long time, the only sound the dull thudding of hooves on the dirt track. Alex’s eyes were on James and Hector who rode ahead, but his attention was on his son. He wanted to take back what he’d said, but didn’t have the words for it and didn’t want whatever words he might say to be thrown back in his face. So he didn’t speak and wished Trefor would.
Finally Trefor did open his mouth. He said, “They taught me how to be lucky.”
Alex looked over at him. “What does that mean?”
Trefor shrugged. “I don’t know. Except that if I concentrate hard enough I can make luck happen.”
“How?”
A sharp glance at Alex, then, “You can’t do it yourself.”
“Why not?”
“Just, trust me, you can’t.”
“So tell me why.”
“Because you’re not a pointy-eared freak.”
Alex pressed his lips together to hold back the remark that came to mind, and stared off to the side of the road. Then he said, “You’re saying that you’re one of them?”
“I’m saying my mother is one of them.”
Alex turned to gawk at him, but realized he shouldn’t be surprised. Trefor was plainly his and Lindsay’s son, and those ears had come from somewhere. Now he had to ask, “Does she know?”
“You tell me. I’ve never met the woman. But the wee folk who approached me a year ago say I’m descended directly from someone named Danu, through the female line. Apparently that’s some sort of big deal, and they were disappointed I was a boy. They say I would have been more powerful if I’d been female.”
Danu?
Alex stared at Trefor, trying to see her in him, but couldn’t. Himself and Lindsay, but not Queen Danu. Except, of course, for those blasted ears.
Alex stared at Trefor, trying to see her in him, but couldn’t. Himself and Lindsay, but not Queen Danu. Except, of course, for those blasted ears.
Trefor saw the look on his face and said, “What?”
“Danu. They told you she was your ancestor? Lindsay’s ancestor?”
Trefor nodded.
“Huh. That would explain a few things.” Like the book of psalms. Now he realized he should have been more curious about Danu’s interest in Lindsay. Her insistence the baby be born in the future. But it raised other questions. Alex thought back over each exchange he’d had with the faerie queen in this new light, but it was all a muddle of partial memory and unclear motives. He would need to think this out carefully.
And Lindsay was a descendant of the faerie. That certainly knocked him sideways. Had she known? Had she been hiding her true nature from him the same way she’d been hiding her gender from the world those years they’d been together? Could he trust her if he saw her again?
CHAPTER 9
They reached Stirling late that evening, and like everything else in the military, their situation was a case of hurry-up-and-wait. The MacNeils encamped alongside the Douglases on the flatland near the Bannock Burn, which had of late been the battlefield where Robert’s foot soldiers stymied all the best knights of Edward II of England. James Douglas took his highest-ranking men, including Alex and Hector, into the town below the ruined castle to wring it of as many uncommitted fighting men as they could find and hire. For several days they talked and drank with the locals. Sometimes Trefor sat with them, but was mostly silent when he did. Mike stayed away, and for that Alex was glad.
One morning Alex, standing in the muddy, stony street at the foot of the hill, looked up toward the ruins and saw Trefor perched on a pile of stones, staring out across the countryside. Alex started up the hill to talk and hoped Trefor would stay until he got there. Trefor watched him climb the slope, saying nothing as he approached but only shredding a bit of grass he’d plucked from beside his feet, and when Alex reached the tumble of rocks, he looked up at Trefor and said, “Is this a thin place, too?”
“Relative to what?”
“Edinburgh, what else?”
Trefor shrugged and glanced about. “The whole country is more tuned to the realms than other places, but relative to Edinburgh, no. Stirling is no closer to the other side than anywhere else in Scotland. Not that I can tell, anyway. Edinburgh is . . . sort of like an orifice.” He grinned. “Like the asshole of the faerie realms.”
“Oh.” Alex had to chuckle at that. He climbed some more and took a seat near Trefor’s on the chunk of fallen wall. Below, the closely packed buildings of the town seemed tumbled atop each other and clinging to the granite slope like barnacles. Off in the distance was the wood that covered the rise from which Robert had launched his warriors in the recent battle, the Bannock Burn wending its way around it. Not far, on the other side of the burn, was the field where William Wallace had also clobbered the English a couple of decades ago. Today some people wandered here and there, going about their business in peace. The hilltop was quiet. There was no wind today. Alex sat in silence with his son.
Then Trefor said, as if continuing a conversation in progress, “They named me Trefor Andrews.”
“Who did?”
“The people who found me in the Dumpster.”
Dumpster? Alex’s face warmed with anger at the people who had done that, and at himself for failing to prevent it. He looked over at Trefor’s impassive face. More than impassive, it was blank beyond lack of expression. There was a dreaminess about it as he gazed out across the land where less than two years ago his parents had faced the army of King Edward II and his mother had nearly died. “How did you end up in a Dumpster? Those faeries took you, and then just threw you away?”
Trefor shrugged. “I guess. That’s where the authorities found me. A Dumpster in a place called Carthage, Tennessee. They say I was nearly dead, lying among the garbage for a day or so, dehydrated and all. A couple of weeks old, so the ones who kidnapped me had kept me for a while, I guess. It’s probably why I survived.”
“Long enough to get you from London to the U.S.”
“I think that wouldn’t have been much trouble for them. I found out a year ago it was the Bhrochan who did it. They came to me to let me know what they’d done.”
Alex made a rasping, disgusted noise. “Bragging?”
Trefor shrugged again. “Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t think it was the same particular people who came to me. One was an old lady who was part human, and she told me everything.”
“No, she didn’t. She told you lies.”
Trefor bristled. “She told it to me as she saw it.” Alex wondered how come Trefor was so touchy on the subject of these Bhrochan. The faeries were crazy; if he had met some of them he should know that. “She knew who my parents were and where to find you.”
“And you just believed her?”
Trefor peered at him. “I found you, didn’t I?”
Alex had to admit he had a point. He asked, “What was her interest in you?”
Trefor chewed on the inside of his cheek, almost like a cow chewing cud, and for a while it seemed Alex wouldn’t get a reply. But then Trefor said, “Fate, she said. It was . . .
she
was my fate. And I think I agree with her.” An odd note had slipped into his voice.
she
was my fate. And I think I agree with her.” An odd note had slipped into his voice.
“Ending up in a Dumpster was your fate?”
Trefor gave a wry laugh. “Apparently.”
“So she told you your name was MacNeil and then, poof, sent you to my island?”
“No. First she told me my destiny was here, and then taught me to speak the language and to be lucky.”
“And you just bought that and bailed from your life?”
“What life? I was a cook in a greasy spoon. One of those nasty hole-in-the-wall places that open for the locals for breakfast in the middle of the night and shut down right after lunch. I spent my mostly predawn days frying eggs and hash browns and flipping hamburgers. Restaurants. Always restaurants.”
“You didn’t think you could do better than being a short-order cook?”
Trefor shook his head. “I had to fight to get that. On my eighteenth birthday the system turned me loose and that was that. No driver’s license, no high school diploma, no place to live, nothing. Even the army didn’t want me.”
“You’re a wiz with Farsi and the army didn’t want you?”
Trefor tensed and gave him a blank look. Alex knew he was sounding critical and knew he should back off. Trefor then said, “No foreign languages for me in high school; I sure wasn’t going to college. Everyone knows as much Farsi as I knew back then. The army was full up with guys more fluent than I was.”
Alex blinked and frowned. “
Farsi?
Nobody—”
Farsi?
Nobody—”
“Twenty years later, man. It was twenty years after you left.”
“Oh.” Alex nodded. “Oh, yeah.” Twenty years. He realized he’d been thinking of Trefor as a month-old adult.
Trefor continued. “It wasn’t until I started working in restaurants a few years ago that I discovered I could learn languages. I thought about trying to be an interpreter, but nobody wants to communicate through a guy who never graduated high school, who wears his hair long to cover his deformed ears, and who smells like a slum apartment. See, the foster folk and social workers taught me nothing and told me nothing. I didn’t even know how much I didn’t know. I didn’t know how to fill out a job application. I didn’t know how to write out a check, which wasn’t an issue for a while because it was years before I had money for a checking account. I’m still not good with them, and I kinda like the barter system they’ve got here.”
Alex couldn’t imagine not knowing those things and couldn’t remember where he’d learned them. It boggled him that some children weren’t taught.
Trefor continued. “At first Mike and I bounced around homeless shelters for a while, then I finally snagged a steady job by lying like a rug about just about everything on the application. Got an apartment and a rickety old car.” He shook his head. “That place made your no-plumbing-or-electricity castle look like a . . . well, a castle.”
Alex resisted a grin at the joke, but his mouth twitched.
“You bet your sweet ass I bailed.” Trefor stuck a piece of the grass into his mouth to chew on the end.
“No, I guess I can’t blame you.”
“Anyway, that should answer your questions.”
Alex frowned. “What questions?”
“The ones you came up here to ask. The ones that have been bugging you ever since I showed up.” Trefor’s face didn’t give away any indication whether he was a reader of minds or just a good guesser.
Alex looked out over the medieval landscape devoid of roads and strewn with thick forests, and wondered if he’d really wanted to know the things Trefor had just told him.
In the week James spent in Stirling he managed to recruit eight more swords. Then the army of raiders headed south for the Borderlands.
While riding, there was a lot of time for Alex to think about Lindsay and the revelation Trefor had made about her. He tried to figure out all the implications, but whenever he went back over Danu’s involvement, his thoughts all crumbled to nonsense. Why hadn’t Lindsay told him? Why hadn’t Danu told him? How did this news reflect on the question of why the Bhrochan had taken Trefor? Indeed, why had they taken him? Those creatures were all crazy; could it be the more humanlike Danann were just as bonkers, but hid it better? Alex kept looking over at his son, surreptitiously, and wondered if Trefor had inherited the faerie mentality. God forbid. The last thing he wanted was to have a flake like that guarding his back on a battlefield.
And that thought brought to mind Trefor’s lack of skill with a sword. Probably Mike’s as well, but Alex would just as soon that nitwit die in his first raid so they would all be rid of him. Trefor was another matter entirely. All things considered, he’d rather Trefor would live. As they approached the Marches, Alex went to him one evening and said, “You need to learn how to swing a broadsword.”
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