Faerie (42 page)

L
EONIE’S MOUTH DROPPED
open. “Then you’re a shade?”

The frown on Philippe’s face increased. “’Twas not what I expected to hear.”

“You thought I’d confess to Faerie blood? Wouldn’t I make a delightful sprite?”

“It would make more sense to me. You say there is evil in being a shade. Why would Herzeloyde trust you? And how is it you know her?”

“Don’t you be impugning Herzeloyde’s honor. Make no mistake, there is naught between us that should not be.”

The man’s voice had taken on an entirely different sound that did not fit the huge, gruff bear of a man. One that was quiet, almost gentle and sad, echoing the lyrical sound of the French language.

“Four lifetimes ago, I was born Valenze of the house of Savoie, on the Piedmont at the foot of the Pyrenees Mountains. There was a Faerie lass I followed into the Summer Land, and like many a man before me, I tarried too long. I returned to the outer world, the world humans know, only to discover I was but a pale wisp of myself, and I could not survive without the body of another. Since then I have been many things. A blacksmith, a soothsayer, even a midwife.

“Black Robert was indeed the vile man you remember. He and his wild friends took it into their bored heads to raid a
convent and rape its nuns when I was there. It was at the end of my sojourn in the midwife’s body, a very old, sick woman in the care of the nuns, and I was desperate to find a new home for my soul before the old one expired. That’s the evil, you see. A shade steals the bodies of others to survive, and he finds a sort of immortality in it. He has only to find a new body when he has the need, and if he chooses wisely, each time he can live a new life again. All men fear death, but to a shade, giving up his soul to death is terrifying. He’ll do anything to find that new body.”

“Meaning he will kill to take over a man’s body?”

“I did not—would not—until then. I had always managed to slip into a body just as life expired, without then expiring with it. ’Tis a tricky thing, you see. Sometimes the body itself dies and can’t be revived, and if the shade doesn’t escape in time, he dies too.”

“How much time?”

“Very little, but it depends on how disintegrated the shade is. I thought I knew exactly how to do it, but that time I had become desperate, for I had failed twice and feared to fail again.”

“So you killed de Mowbray.”

“’Twas easy enough. An iron candlestand to his head while he was busy raping Sister Isa. His friends fled with only a few dents and broken bones. I could have done as I had done before and merely suppressed that villain or forced him out of his body. But then he might have done the same, haps to one of the nuns, or some other hapless man who would then die. So aye, I killed him. And I took over his life. But I did not know how truly evil the man was until I inhabited his body, for there is much more than just the body that remains, you see, and Black Robert de Mowbray had, it seems, many terrible secrets. I live with them now.”

“If you were a knight in battle, you would not hesitate to kill a man,” Philippe said.

“And he deserved to die,” Leonie added. “If you had not done what you did, other innocent people would have suffered and died.”

“Aye. But I thought only of my own life, and only later did I justify what I did. Now I am Robert. The more I live within his body, the more evil I take on. I’m no different from another shade. I am imprisoned by my own fear of death.”

“Yet Herzeloyde trusted you with her daughter.”

Robert’s dark, flashing eyes turned a bitter, barely hidden rage on Philippe. “Do you think I would not do the same to you as I did him, if need be?”

“Haps you would not, when the time came.”

“A man is what he does, my friend. I am not just what I have done, but what all those others have done as well. I know my own evil.” He chuckled crudely. “But don’t you worry, man. I’ve no designs on your body. And you may be sure, Herzeloyde would rip out my throat if I let harm come to her lovely daughter.”

Leonie lowered her head, not quite sure if she ought to laugh along with him or not. For a joke, it seemed very ugly. “But then you do know where to find her,” she said.

“’Tis not so much going to where she is—that I can’t do. ’Tis more a thing of her coming when she is needed.”

“When she appears out of nowhere,” Philippe added. “When I went to find her, she appeared inside Cyne’s house so suddenly I thought she must have been there all along. But when she left, she passed right through the wall.”

“I told you how it was done,” Leonie said.

“Aye, now I know.”

“So then Herzeloyde came to me and warned me of a great evil that has descended on the land. Those bone demons have been gone for many years. We did not know what they were about again. Now, with this faceless thing commanding them—he is a sorcerer, to be sure. Yet I agree, he is also something else.”

“Then a demon as well as a shade?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. Haps we should ask instead, what is it they want?”

“They want Leonie,” Philippe said. “And Bosewood.”

“But I think ’tis something bigger. If ’tis Fulk, as you say, then of course Durham is involved. A year ago, Fulk returned from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, changed, I thought. The bishop is not the man he once was, but Fulk even more, for he was once a good, if arrogant, man.”

“So Rufus has said. And now the three powers come together to battle for the border of England and Scotland. Or is there even more at stake?”

“What if it’s not just the border, but England in its entirety?” said Philippe.

“Why not Scotland, too?” Leonie asked. “We do not know what influence he might have on Malcolm Caenmore.”

“Haps ’tis so. Haps even more. A shade, as far as I know, must have once gone to the Summer Land or he would not fade. Fading for the Faeriekind is a different sort of thing, for they have the power to control it. But for one of mankind, there is no control. Even though returning to the Summer Land would mark the man’s death, there is a yearning to return that is almost unsurpassable. Could be Fulk means to destroy the Summer Land, or perhaps conquer it. That was what happened to the land of Annwyn. A vengeful sorcerer found a way to destroy it, and only those Annwyn who were in the world of man survived. Yet, nay, that would not work with Fulk. Surely he would have enough good sense never to enter there again.”

“If he knows Leonie’s secret, then haps that’s what he really wants from her.”

The Black Earl of Northumbria frowned in a pensive way and tugged at his dense black beard.

Leonie frowned and shook her head. “Nay, wait, there is something we’re missing.”

“What, lass?”

Her brow warped as she pressed a fist to her lips. “Something doesn’t make sense.” She held up two fingers on her right hand, and mirrored the gesture with her left. “Two sorcerers. Two wives. Each sorcerer wanted the same thing from each of Philippe’s wives. Is that not odd? And each used the same method to try to get it.”

“You mean to say the two sorcerers are the same?” Philippe asked. “I have never been convinced Clodomir was dead, for his body vanished after I killed him. Is this possible, de Mowbray?”

“A demon might resurrect. And a shade can live many generations, gathering new knowledge from others. A man is not a sorcerer born, but one who sells his soul to the devil for his powers.” De Mowbray rose and paced the room.

But Leonie frowned and shook her head. “I can see that they might attack Bosewood to capture it, but why attack us on the road and demand I be given over if it was Philippe they really wanted? Why not take him, especially since they would have had to kill both him and you to do it?”

“Is Fulk such a man who would tell the truth about what he really wants?” But then de Mowbray frowned back. “Still, you are right. Haps you have thwarted them several times, forcing them to change tactics.”

“Nay,” she countered. “It does not make sense. They did not kill me at Brodin when they could easily do it, nor did they attempt to keep me. Instead, they used me to set a trap for Philippe. Do you think Fulk could have known what decision Rufus would make, or did he expect Rufus to do something else, haps to kill him?”

“Hm, aye. Rufus is a hard one to guess. Haps something else. Haps he thought Rufus would defend his knight, and then
Geoffrey would rise up in rebellion. But how would that help Fulk’s cause?”

“And we have already asked ourselves how Fulk could possibly have known of the events at Brodin in time to ride to the crossroads,” Philippe added. “A man would have to ride straight through the night to make it to Durham and return to the crossroads in time to catch us there.”

“But the gholin the lady saw took on your shape, Peregrine. He could also have taken the shape of someone in the castle. Or haps he was not a gholin, but a shade and a shifter. And that would make him Fulk, the sorcerer, for shades do not keep each other’s company. Who knows what ways a sorcerer might have to pass quickly from one place to another?”

The Black Earl sat in his chair, scratched his head, then rose again and paced. He put hands to his lips, paced some more, and pounded one fist into the other hand. Then he shook his head. “I am missing something. Something long ago.”

Again he shook his head and huffed.

“Another question, then,” Philippe said. “The one you’ve been avoiding. “What is an Annwyn King and how could I possibly be one? I am French and Norman for many generations and there is no royalty in my ancestry.”

“Well, ’tis not that I meant to ignore you, but we have too many questions at once. We have known since your birth of your Annwyn heritage. Such things are watched. But no Annwyn traits have surfaced in any descendant for many generations. A king is so called for his skills, and he would have no kingdom, nor subjects.”

Philippe’s eyebrows rose. “Long ago?”

“Aye.” De Mowbray narrowed his eyes. “Long. Hundreds of years, in man’s reckoning. There was something. Before that, even.” Then his bulbous black eyes widened as his jaw dropped. “The myths. Something in the myths of Annwyn. Lady Leonie,
your Faerie skills have grown greatly in the last few weeks, is it not so? And you had few before? And you, Philippe, none of these traits came upon you before now?”

Leonie nodded.

“Not that I ever noticed,” Philippe said. “I’ve always had very sharp hearing, but naught else.”

“And all of these changes occurred after Rufus sent you to Brodin, where you met Lady Leonie for the first time as a grown woman.”

Leonie sidled a glance at Philippe, as he did to her.

De Mowbray sat again in his chair, his head shaking so hard both his thick curls and heavy beard bobbed with the movement. “It was only a myth from the distant past told around the fireside at night. The Alchemy of Spirits. I never thought it could be true.” And he sat, silent for once, his thick fist drawn up thoughtfully before his mouth.

“But perhaps you might take a moment to share it with us?” Philippe asked.

“Well, ’tis clear you are among those who need to know. The story was that in the old days, matings sometimes occurred that brought about a meshing of the souls, so that both grew in strength and skills beyond what any others have been. Neither one, alone, would have such talent, but together they had the power to rule kingdoms, to create and destroy as none other had done. Eventually the folk of the Faerie realm and the Annwyn planned such unions so that their rulers could protect their folk from the outside world.”

“And you think this is what happened for us?”

“’Tis said it could only be one of the Faeriekind and one of the Annwyn, and the Annwyn no longer exist. Yet here you are.”

“Clodomir must have known something about it when he took Joceline, then.”

“Haps I’m wrong. But a sorcerer, especially one who is also a shade, could be so ancient as to know those things. If he knew the truth, that your ancient blood had surfaced, he would want your talents, even those not yet seen.

“Another thing: a shade’s ordinary victim might be trapped at the moment of death. An Annwyn King might be too powerful for a shade, even though he be a sorcerer, to subdue. The victim would have to submit willingly. Your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness. And only to save your beloved could you be forced to submit. But this went untested when Joceline broke free and you caught the sorcerer unguarded. The body, you killed. But not the shade. And now he seeks to become an Annwyn King.”

Leonie shivered at the thought. “He might have known about me all along, too. Haps he meant to kill Philippe and take his body, then in that masquerade persuade me to marry him.”

“God protect us,” de Mowbray said. “God save us and save the people of this earth.”

“More than that.” Instinctively, Philippe touched the hilt of his sword. “You say a sorcerer destroyed Annwyn and scattered its people.”

“You are the last Annwyn King. And you have no idea of your powers. If the sorcerer had taken on your power, how many nations—how many worlds—could such a being destroy?” The Black Earl shoved himself away from the wall where he had been leaning. “Well, you wanted to find out how to break the curse. We need Herzeloyde.

“Come,” he said, and took off at a lope across the hall.

As if his retainers read his mind, they appeared quickly to arm him for battle. “Lady Leonie will need a sword,” he said to one of them. “The small Breton one will be right for her.”

“I have no training in sword fighting, Lord Northumbria. I would not know how.”

“You’ll know, lass. ’Tis in your blood.”

Returning to his long-legged lope, de Mowbray headed out of the hall and across the bailey to the stable where they found both Tonerre and the brown palfrey, as well as the great black stallion de Mowbray rode. Quickly, they mounted.

“I thought you said you didn’t know where to find her.”

“I don’t. But Ilse does.” De Mowbray looked down at the grey hound that danced and whined at his feet. “What is’t, Ilse? Aye, girl, let’s go. On chase, my pretty hound!”

As de Mowbray climbed into his saddle, the hound leaped into the air, her big paws clawing. She rose as if running on the ground, yet there was naught beneath her but air. De Mowbray’s huge black stallion followed, and behind came Philippe on Tonerre. Leonie clung with tight fists to her palfrey’s mane, not daring to look down. The silent hooves pounded the air as they soared, rising above the oaks, which in the few days they had been gone in the wilderness had turned to rusty red.