Song of the Fairy Queen (17 page)

It was a pity Healers couldn’t heal themselves
, she thought with a sigh. Instead she would have to wait until she reached Galan or he reached her. As he was aiding Oryan and Morgan, that would be a time.

She looked at him. “I need you in the sky, on patrol and healthy. We all do.”

For a moment she looked over the carnage they’d strewn through the woods and thought of the carnage that would have been if these had reached the inhabited regions of the forest. She shuddered.

In time the forest would reclaim those that had fallen. The blood would soak into the ground and provide sustenance of a sort for the trees.

Miiri moved behind her, pressed a damp cloth to Kyri’s wounds. It stung. She hissed in a breath, drawing the whistle out to summon a horse.

Even so, even with Miiri’s patching, Tirol had to help her onto the horse’s back.

“I’ll be fine,” she assured him, assured them both, seeing their concern. “Up. We need more patrols with such as these loose in the forest. Go, watch, but don’t engage until help arrives.”

It was a long ride back.

Morgan bent over the map, marking the current positions of the newest cells of the rebellion for Kyri to see so she would be able to tell her people where to find them once she arrived. The map he was using could have been better. It wasn’t helped by the fact that Kyri and her people didn’t visualize things the way men did, nor did they know town and place names, for them their landmarks were rivers and streams, mountains and hills.

The good news was that the rebellion was growing even as Haerold cracked down all the harder on the populace. He was practically driving people to their cause.

Across the tent from Morgan, Oryan read the reports Morgan had gathered and then compared them to the maps they had, poor as they were.

That information only hardened Oryan’s resolve. If Haerold continued as he did, the farmers would starve to pay their taxes, especially once Haerold had conscripted every able body in the village, leaving none behind but the old and the very young to harvest the crops. And what was he doing with those he conscripted?

His army sat in the heartland and added to the strain on the farmers there.

The maps themselves were another thing entirely.

Throwing up his hands in frustration, Oryan snapped, “This is impossible. Morgan, isn’t there any way we can get better maps?”

Morgan said, “Next trip I’ll see what I can find, Oryan.”

He already knew, as did Oryan, that the task was nearly impossible. The best maps of the Kingdom had been in the castle at Caernarvon during the attack and the fires, and were most likely in ashes. Those that weren’t had probably been taken by Haerold himself when he’d abandoned the city. They were likely in Haerold’s fortress. As for mapmakers… Fled or in hiding. Few wished to work for Haerold. The price of a mistake was far too high.

Waving it off and shaking his head, Oryan said, “Never mind, Morgan. We’ll just have to manage.”

They’d lost a great deal when the castle had fallen. Sometimes Oryan worried they’d lost too much. He shook the thought away.

Geoffrey stepped inside and held the door flaps back.

“Lady Kyri, your Highness,” he said.

There was an odd expression on his face, clear distress.

Kyri stepped into the tent with Galan at her heels and Morgan’s heart clenched a little as he looked at her.

She looked like she had tangled with…. a Hunter.

A bruise marred one smooth cheek, there were healed cuts on her arm, the skin still bright pink, and her wings weren’t folded neatly beneath her shift as they usually were. One was clearly injured, the crystalline feathers stripped away in places.

His normally serene face watchful, Galan eyed her from behind a little worriedly.

Despite the bruising, her aqua eyes were as clear and lovely as ever, but she moved stiffly.

“Kyri,” Morgan said. Something in his chest tightened at the sight of her wounded as he straightened in alarm. The urge to go to her, to touch her, was nearly too strong to resist. It was an effort just to keep his voice reasonably level. “What happened?”

Something about the concern in Morgan’s eyes warmed Kyri a little, somehow eased some of the residual pain. Galan was a good Healer, but he was still learning to be the great one he would someday be. She suspected sadly that he would learn far faster and under far more trying circumstances than they’d anticipated.

Looking up at the sound of Morgan’s voice, at the concern and tension in it, Oryan dropped the reports on the table and shot hurriedly to his feet. “Kyri?”

With a shake of her head, a wave and a smile of thanks for the worry in both their eyes, she said, “I’m well enough. Healing. I was out on a routine patrol when we ran into some Hunters.”

“Hunters,” Oryan said alarmed. “In Fairy lands?”

“But you’re all right?” Morgan asked.

It pained him to see her hurt.

She nodded and shrugged it off. “The marks will fade in a day or two more. We Fairy don’t scar much.”

Morgan frowned a little, his eyes going to the paler skin that encircled both her wrists.

She followed his gaze. A shadow touched her eyes as her gaze lifted to meet his. She took a small breath.

Ah, that.
Kyri’s breath caught. This would hurt. It was a painful reminder of old times.

“Cold iron,” she said, softly.

So that part of the stories of the Fairy was also true. Iron did burn them.

Morgan winced reflexively as Oryan’s mouth, too, went thin.

Shackles
, she meant. Morgan closed his eyes for a moment. Iron shackles.

Men had done that, had put those scars on her. His people. The thought of someone putting her in chains made Morgan’s vision go dark with anger.

There was no need for her to explain.

While the Fairy were a lighthearted and mischievous folk by nature, it wasn’t in them to deliberately harm another that anyone could say, save to defend their own.

Unfortunately, neither of the two men could say the same about their own folk.

Fairy raeds aside – nothing more than mischievous children being mischievous, although such raeds had been used as an excuse for violence on the part of men more than once – there had been many times when Fairy and men hadn’t lived together peacefully. There were always the rumors of Fairy gold…and then there were the Fairy women. Like Kyri. Men had gone into the forests many times with fire and cold iron to take what and who they could.

“Save for these, I wasn’t much harmed that day. It was long ago,” Kyri said, holding the memories of fright and pain at bay, keeping her voice light. “You changed that, Oryan, by outlawing it and you, Morgan, by your enforcement of those laws. This is why we fight beside you.”

Those had been only some among the many reasons she fought beside them. No other King in her memory, or the memories of those who had come before her, had done so.

By those two actions alone, they’d changed much about the attitudes of men toward her folk. Attitudes that still held so far as she could tell.

It hadn’t been a hard law to enforce
, Morgan thought, even before he had come to know the Fairy as well as he did now. They were essentially a gentle people, although fierce enough to defend their own and the forests they cared for.

Morgan looked to the swords on both their hips.

“Not steel,” Kyri said, seeing his look, “although we can handle that better than iron, if it is wrapped well, but these are made of Fairy silver and sharp as a lion’s tooth.”

“But you’re all right, now?” Oryan insisted.

“I’m fine. I will be flying a little more slowly for some little time…”

“A week,” Galan said, firmly.

Her mouth twitched in amusement. “A week, then.”

Morgan said, “What were you doing out on patrol?”

Casting a quick look at Oryan, she said, “No offense, Oryan, but among the Fair it’s held that there’s nothing the Queen or King doesn’t do that the least of their people do.” She grinned mischievously, with a laugh and a glance to Galan. “Just less of it.”

“No offense taken,” Oryan said, smiling.

There were times when he wished he, too, could be fighting, but as much as he envied her that freedom, this was the reason Morgan wouldn’t allow it. If Gawain had been older, they might have taken the chance, until then though…

“Hunters,” Morgan said, “that deep in the forest?”

There could only be one reason Hunters were in the deeper forest.

His eyes met Kyri’s and he saw a matching worry there in the shadows in them, hidden beneath the lightness.

Oryan hadn’t missed the implication of it either. “Haerold is searching for your people.”

With a flicker of her brows, a small wave and a sigh, Kyri said, “We’ve increased our patrols. It was one of the first things I did after Haerold’s attack on Caernarvon. It’s all we can do. As you do. It was inevitable. Haerold would never tolerate our autonomy as you did, Oryan, any more than some of your predecessors.”

It was disturbing news all the same but Kyri was right. It had been inevitable that Haerold would go looking for the Fairy. That didn’t mean Oryan had to like it.

Still, there was nothing that they could do that Kyri wasn’t already doing, not without more men. Those men were coming but it would take time to get them trained, to get them effective.

“If you’re all right then,” Oryan said, getting down to business once more, “Morgan has added to our numbers, a few new cells of rebels to our cause here in the south. Have your people seen where Haerold’s forces are?”

With a nod, Kyri stepped up to the table, shaking her head at quality and condition of the map. On the flat surface of the paper it was difficult to tell where things were in relation to what she saw from above.

Once she identified what she saw as a river in what she thought was the right place, she traced it.

Joining her, Morgan said, dryly, “My Lord King was complaining of the same thing. Few good maps are available.”

“All right,” she said, bending over it a little, trying to envision what she had seen overlaying what lay before her. “I’ll see who’s free enough in that glen to work with us. As for Haerold’s forces, they’re here and we’ve seen his people moving here and here.”

Haerold had split the main force of his army, then,
Oryan noted, but not much. Most, however, were closing now on Dorset.

Why the split?
he wondered. There were several targets to the south he could hit. Which was his objective?

“Can your people keep an eye on these, particularly, and tell me where they go?”

Kyri nodded, oddly and keenly aware of Morgan to her right as she wasn’t of anyone else, Oryan or Geoffrey, in the tent.

“We can do that.”

She sighed, tiredly, and shifted her shoulders to ease the healing wing.

Frowning, Morgan studied her.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked quietly.