To Bear an Iron Key (15 page)

Over their heads, the fey capered and jeered. As she ran, Bromwyn felt something whirl past her cheek. Something else splattered against the back of her head, then dripped down her back.

“They say milk is good for the hair,” an overly sweet female voice called out—close to Jalsa’s, but pitched too high.

“But it tends to make witches age!” cried another. “Look how her face has already wrinkled!”

At that, Bromwyn cast an evil look over her shoulder. If she had walked the same Way of Witchcraft as her grandmother, the look truly would have killed.

“That is not aging—that is anger!” declared a third. “Look how ugly it makes her!”

The three false Jalsas tittered laughter.

Rusty pulled her along hard enough to nearly dislocate her shoulder, so she gave up on glaring and concentrated on keeping her footing. The mud squished beneath her as her feet slapped down. She and Rusty dashed through the main intersection, and she realized with dismay that they were heading toward the church.

In front of the church’s wrought-iron gates, directly below two monstrous iron baskets filled with burning pine knots, a large crowd had formed. Bromwyn recognized most of the people, and it looked as if more than half of the village’s adults had gathered there with rage on their faces and murder in their eyes. They all were shouting, and many had their fists pumping in the air. But Bromwyn couldn’t understand a thing they were saying—it was all buzzing, like the rumble of a building thunderstorm.

She and Rusty pushed their way through until she was able to see, directly in front of the church gates, the four people who were facing the mob. She easily recognized Nick Ironside, the village’s blacksmith. In his large hands, he gripped a huge axe.

Bromwyn’s brow furrowed. Was he trying to incite the crowd to attack the fey?

Next to the blacksmith was the village’s priest, looming like royalty for all of his plain brown robes. His arms were wide, as if he were appealing to the mob, but any words he spoke were lost in the crowd’s roar. Instead of looking discomforted, as she would expect a man of the cloth to appear in the face of building violence, the priest seemed at ease, even confident.

The sight made Bromwyn’s throat tighten, and she swallowed the lump that had formed there.

The other two people were on the ground: a man and a woman, lying prone, their arms pinned behind them in thick ropes. Bromwyn couldn’t see their faces, but their clothing was filthy and torn. Before she could try to make sense of it all, the priest spoke.

“Yes,” he shouted, and the crowd settled—but even that hush was a thing of pending action, a palpable sense of something about to occur, of anticipation so thick that Bromwyn felt like she was choking. He declared, “This is all because of these two! What say you, people of Loren? Should they be brought to justice for all the damage they have wrought?”

“Yes!” bellowed the mob.

Bromwyn’s body vibrated with the crowd’s fury.

The woman cried out again, and the man looked up to glare at the priest. Bromwyn’s heart dropped into her stomach as she recognized her husband-to-be. No fey copy was this one; this was her betrothed, filthy and bloody, with two blackened eyes and his hands bound cruelly behind him. Sprawled next to Brend, the blond woman sobbed again, her hands as tightly bound as his. It was the tavern maid, Jalsa, no longer looking so wantonly pretty. Her body trembled, and she begged to be released; she would do anything, she screamed, if only they would please, please let her go.

The priest smirked at her, but his words were to the crowd. “What say you, people of Loren? Do we let her free?”

“NO!” shouted the villagers, and Bromwyn flinched.

“Should she pay for her crimes?”

“YES!”

“I haven’t done this thing,” Jalsa cried, “I haven’t, please, you must believe me!”

“Close your mouth!” Old Nick rasped, hefting his axe.

Bromwyn shouted, “NO!” She pushed her way forward until she was standing in front of Brend and Jalsa. She held her arms wide, as if she could protect them from the wrath of the blacksmith, from the crowd, from the fey circling over them. She cried out, “Are you people mad? Stop this!”

“Out of the way, girl,” Old Nick growled at her, his knuckles whitening on the axe handle.

“Not until you see reason!”

Rusty joined Bromwyn in front of the church gates, squatting low to shield the terrified tavern girl. “They haven’t done anything,” Rusty snarled at the blacksmith. “Let them go!”

“The girl’s in league with demons,” the blacksmith said. “So’s the boy.”

Brend didn’t rise to the bait, nor did he beg. Instead, he glared his fury at his master, and the hatred that radiated from him was hotter than the fire of his forge.

Bromwyn shouted, “You have lost your mind! All of you! These two are innocent! Brend works for you, Master Smith!”

“I trusted him like my own son.” The blacksmith shook his head sadly and sighed. “Breaks my heart, but there’s only one way to deal with the devil. And that’s in blood.”

Next to him, the priest grinned.

Rusty yelled, “You can’t do this! I won’t let you do this!”

“Derek Jonasson!” shouted a man’s voice. “You get back here right now!”

Rusty blushed from forehead to chin, but he kept his head high as he turned to face the speaker. “Sorry, Da, but I can’t do that. I won’t let him kill Jalsa or Brend. It’s not right.”

“Master Smith,” Bromwyn pleaded, “put down the axe.”

The blacksmith gripped the handle tighter. “The boy’s got the devil in him. So does the girl.”

“They have no such thing!”

“The priest says it’s true.”

“He is
wrong
,” Bromwyn insisted.

A man shoved his way to the front of the crowd. The mayor, wearing the remnants of his Midsummer finery, shouted, “Look around you!” He motioned to the village at large, where dozens of Brends flew through the air. “The smith’s apprentice and the serving girl both, they caused the chaos here tonight! How else do you explain the demons flying about in their images?”

“They’re no demons,” Rusty shouted at him. “They’re fairies!”

The mayor stared at Rusty for a moment, then threw back his head and laughed. “Hear that?” he said to the mob. “They’re fairies!”

A bubble of laughter from the crowd, along with taunts to make even the fey take note.

Bromwyn bit her lip to keep from screaming at them all. That would do no good, and it would probably make everything worse.

“They are demons,” the priest insisted, and once again the assembled grownups hushed. “That is why our church has been left untouched. They cannot stand the presence of our mighty god.”

“What they cannot stand is the wrought-iron gate around the church,” Bromwyn said.

The priest looked down his nose at her. “This from a witch,” he sneered. “And not even a grown witch, at that. Who are you to question the power of our god? You, who have never set foot within the church?”

She felt her rage building once more, twisting her heart. The priest simpered at her, just for a moment, and then the look was gone—but not before it made Bromwyn pause.

“They are demons,” he said louder, looking at the adults crowding around them. “And as is their way, they have taken the images of those who have summoned them! These two!” He motioned at the prostrate forms of Brend and Jalsa. “They are in league with the devil, and we must cut it out of them! Only that will save the village! Master Smith, you will fulfill your obligation as Village Justice and smite the evil from their bodies with a mighty blow of your axe!”

Bromwyn gaped at him.
This
was the man who was known far and wide to be mild, both in word and deed?

The mob shouted its approval of the priest’s demand, but all Bromwyn could hear was Jalsa’s tortured whimper—and all she could see was how the priest silently gloated. He was goading them on, inciting them to action. It was quite unlike a peace-loving priest.

“This is insanity,” Bromwyn shouted. She turned to the mayor. “Stop this! Whatever you might think, they are still residents of Loren!”

“They forswore any allegiance to Loren when they bargained with the devil,” the mayor decreed. “Their deaths will stop the demons and save the village!”

“Get out of the way, girl, lest you get hurt.” The blacksmith’s voice was gruff, and he raised his axe high, making ready to swing.

Bromwyn glared at the mob, at the faces of the adults of Loren, at the people who either feared her or were repulsed by her, as if she were a monster because of her ability to wield magic. They were so angry, so afraid, so horribly certain they understood the cause of their terror. They were so proud and so
wrong
. How could she get them to listen to reason?

“You can’t kill them,” Rusty cried. “You’re making a mistake! It’s not demons, I’m telling you! It’s fairies!”

A pause, in which Bromwyn heard her own ragged breaths, her own heartbeat thumping wildly. And then once again, laughter rippled from the grownups—all save the priest, whose dark eyes glistened.

“Fairies,” the priest repeated, turning the word into something distasteful. “You have been reading too many stories, boy. Now stand aside, and let the blacksmith dispense justice.”

And like that, Bromwyn knew what to do.

Gritting her teeth, she cast her magic wide, throwing it deftly over the large group of adults standing around them outside of the church. Once her spell of Sound was in place, she spoke.

“You mock this boy for reading stories,” she said, and her voice reverberated over the crowd as if the winds themselves had taken her words and blown them to everyone’s ears. “And yet, it is you who have forgotten the old stories. The true stories.” She stood taller and took a step forward. “You have forgotten what history has taught us.”

They were all looking at her now, even the priest, and the blacksmith lowered his axe, though he still gripped it hard enough that his hands shook.

“This village sits near a World Door,” Bromwyn said. “And once every year, the Door opens, and fey come through for one night. That time is Midsummer, and that time is now.”

“A child’s story,” the priest declared.

Bromwyn ignored him. “Long ago, when this village first was built, there was only one person who was able to keep the fey in their place. That person was Loren.”

Now the priest laughed. “She speaks nonsense.”

Old Nick murmured, “Let her have her say.”

Apparently, the blacksmith loved a good story. Well and good. “Loren was brave,” Bromwyn said, her voice rising, “and pure, and true to the other villagers. It was Loren who saved the village back then, who was able to tame the fey and use words as weapons, as easily as could those creatures of magic. It was he who tricked the fey into agreeing to come through the Door only once each year, on Midsummer’s night. And it was he who held the great Key that locked the Door behind the fey at dawn, to ensure they did not find some trick that would allow them to steal back before the year was up. Loren was the first Guardian of the fey, and because of that, the village was named in his honor.”

The priest snorted. To the mob he said, “You cannot mean to listen to such things!”

But listen they did. Bromwyn’s spell was strong, and her words were compelling. She said, “You have forgotten Loren. You have forgotten that the fey are real. You have forgotten that they can hurt you, and they long to steal what is most precious to you. Where are your children tonight, people of Loren?”

A gasp went through the crowd.

“They are back in their beds, thanks to the quick thinking of this boy,” Bromwyn said, motioning to Rusty, “who has not forgotten that the fey are real, and that they would do anything to steal human children.”

The baker exclaimed, “Derek, is this true?”

Grimly, Rusty nodded.

“What can we do?” one woman called out.

“Look around you. The only homes and shops untouched are those with horseshoes over their doors, or iron gates around their premises. Iron,” Bromwyn said. “The fey cannot stand the touch of iron, and they will avoid any place with iron over its doorway, or in its shop prominently. Carry a piece of iron on your person, and the fey will leave you untouched.” She stared hard at the priest. “Is that not right?”

The priest said nothing, but his eyes sparkled with mirth.

A murmur rippled through the crowd. “I don’t have horseshoes,” a man yelled.

“The only iron I have is my fryer,” a woman shouted.

“It does not have to be big,” Bromwyn said, still glaring at the priest. “All you need is an iron nail in your pocket.”

“There are nails a plenty at the forge,” said Old Nick, turning to the crowd. “I’ll give nails to those who need them, free of charge! Come with me, all in want of a bit of iron!”

Then, as if a spell had broken—which it did, for Bromwyn unraveled it—the adults made their way to the forge. Bromwyn didn’t watch them go; she was too busy locking gazes with the priest of Loren. Peripherally, she saw Rusty take his knife from his boot and begin to saw through Jalsa’s bonds.

With a soft chuckle, the figure in the brown robes said, “Well played, witchling.”

She bowed her head, acknowledging the compliment. “Where is the good priest, my lord?”

“Winnie?” Rusty paused in his rescue. “What are you talking about?”

Still looking at the man towering over her, she replied, “This is the King of the fey.”

Rusty swallowed loudly, then sawed all the harder.

The false priest’s face pulled into a wide grin. “He is inside his church,” the King said, “in his small chamber next to the alter room, sleeping the sleep of the righteous.” He gestured to himself. “He was not using his form, so I borrowed it.”

“Clever, my lord,” she said, hoping to both praise and stall him. The longer he dallied with her, the less damage he would do in the village. “I must admit my surprise. I would have thought the gates around the church would have deterred one of the fair folk.”

“For any other than myself or my lady Queen, that is indeed the case.” His grin pulled into something wicked. “As long as I do not touch iron, it bothers me none. And as I will never touch it, it will never bother me.”