Bride of Fae (Tethers) (16 page)

Where did that come from? If he had a wife, it would be a political alliance, nothing more. No wife would interfere with his fun. “I will be expected to marry one day,” he said instead. “If I’m ever king.”

“Fairies rarely marry at all,” Max said. “And never for love. Marriages are political bonds, alliances formed with other domains.”

Beverly said, “That’s why your parents didn’t marry.”

“Queen Sifae had to remain available for a political match,” Glory said.

“If I do become king,” Dandelion said, “I’ll marry for the good of the Dumnos fae. Otherwise, there is really no need.”

Glory set the kettle on a table that hadn’t been there when Dandelion and Beverly left for the borealis. There was a new trivet too. She went back to the kitchen and foraged through the cupboard. “Peppermint, peppermint, peppermint!” She wrinkled her nose. “All peppermint. I long for a nice soothing cup of chamomile tea.”

Beverly brightened. “I’ll bring you some. I saw a patch of chamomile…sometime.” a cloud crossed her face then faded. “I don’t remember
when. But I know where it grows. Let me fetch it. It won’t take a minute.”

“Wait,” Dandelion said. It was cold and wet outside. He changed her sandals to soft leather boots. “That’s better.” He followed her to the door and spelled her with warmth as she fairly danced away. She could
definitely be happy here at Mudcastle. When he turned back inside, Max and Glory had grins on their faces.

“What?” he said.

“Did you fall in love?” Glory said. “With a human?”

“That’s ridiculous,” he said.

“Hmph,” Max said. “At least you’ve got her trained to fetch and carry. She already knows where the good biotanicals are, sounds like.”

“No, she’s only been to the lake and…” Dandelion’s heart jumped into his throat. “And the portal.”

He was out the door in an eye-blink. The first drops of cool rain fell as he extended his wings and soared above the treetops. He spotted her just off the walking path near a stand of lilac in full bloom, a clump of chamomile flowers in her hand. She looked up at the sound of his wings and blinked away the raindrops. As he touched ground, he let out a sigh of relief.

She smiled as if he was the most important person in the world
and said, “I wish I could tell Marion to remember her umbrella.”

The
words echoed in the emptiness where Beverly had stood.

T
HE GOBLIN TUNNELS WERE
dark and cool. Here Max could forget what he was, what he’d lost. He could forget what he longed for and lose himself in the comfort of solid rock and yielding metal. Rock was secure and didn’t shift. Metal would always be made beautiful by lap and graver. Unlike the beauty of a certain thieving fairy, the beauty of bright-cut silver was his to enjoy and revere. Gold never denied him. Brass never deemed him unworthy.

He urged his pony Mavis through the tunnel past gobs coming and going, tool bags slung over their shoulders and Davy lights dangling from their hands.

“Whoa, girl.” The wagon rolled to a stop at the back entrance to the Bower of Elyse. He jumped down and stroked Mavis’s golden neck while a crew of goblins swarmed over the rods of cold iron stacked in the wagon’s bed. In pairs, they hefted the rods over their shoulders and hauled them inside.

Goblins were immune to iron’s toxicity no matter what ground it came out of.
It didn’t hurt them like it did other fae. It wasn’t like working with gold and silver or even copper or brass, but any good job was a satisfying thing.

Max had been proud of the tether jewels he’d cut from Dumnos iron—until he learned about Idris’s glimmer glass.

The bower job was not a good job. Fewer than forty gobs worked it, and they had all become worn out and downright cheerless. Idris claimed that stockpiling cold iron was for the greater good of the Dumnos fae, a lie on its face. The regent must have some cruel power over these gobs to keep them working.

By the high gods and the low, Max wouldn’t be here if he had a choice.

Those unloading the wagon were despondent and slow-moving, their eyes to the ground, the cloud of despair around them so thick it could rain grief. Mavis whinnied and Max petted her affectionately, glad he was just dropping off, not going in.

He had more interesting plans for today. Lily
was coming to the faewood so she could embrace her fairy nature, and he intended to make sure no one found out. Terrified Idris would claim the faeling if he learned of her existence, Glory had kept the child at Mudcastle in the human realm for all her three years.

Dandelion didn’t help matters. He supported Glory
in this. The child delighted him and soothed the wound inflicted by the loss of his human. Of course the prince denied any such wound existed. The treesap.

Finally yesterday
Cissa convinced Dandelion and Glory that the longer Lily went unexposed to fae the harder it would be for her fairy nature to settle in. The little girl had to visit the faewood as soon as it was safe.

Cissa was a thief and a trickster, but she was right. If the faeling’s true nature didn’t settle in, she’d never know what she was. It was a nasty way to live. Always the feeling something was missing, never able to quite grasp what it was. Everything colored by a sense of loss. A nagging underlying sense of injustice.

Every bitter human Max had come across was part fae and didn’t know it.

In the shadows further up tunnel someone cleared his throat and brought up a goodly mass of phlegm. He hocked it into one of the hammered copper spittoons distributed throughout the tunnels. Disgusting. An older gob, evidenced by the old-fashioned candle in his helmet, stepped out to the center of the tunnel and leaned on a pick handle, his beady stare lit by the dim candlelight.

“I’ll be right back, girl.” Max fished the last carrot from his pocket for Mavis and went over to see what the old gob wanted.

“Vulsier.” Max nodded.

“Hmph.” Vulsier grunted. He removed his helmet and set it on the ground, the candle still burning.

“Cool and dry in the tunnels today
.” Max gave a standard noncommittal goblin greeting.

“I won’t keep you, Maxim,” Vulsier said. “This is a courtesy, to let you know I’m done here. I won’t be back.”

“What do you mean?” Vulsier was an older gob, afraid of no one. He worked hard when he liked a job and not one minute when he didn’t.

“You’ll know soon enough when you see what he’s done. Get your eyes off the ground in there. Look at the ceiling.”

No question, the
he
Vulsier spoke of was Idris. Max glanced back at the gobs unloading the iron. They were all younger goblins. Now that he thought about it, the older gobs had been pulling out for weeks.

“I’m sorry to see you go, Vulsier. Truly. But I understand.”

“My grandnephews, Sturm and Drang, are staying on,” Vulsier said.

“Sturm and Drang
. You’re kidding.”

“My niece thinks she has a sense of humor.” The old gob chuckled. “She loves Goethe. At
all events, the boys are young. Idealistic. They believe something good can be salvaged from this mess.”

“Salvage.”
Max grunted.

“I’ve told them to trust no one but you, Maxim. Should you find yourself in need, they’re your men.”

Sun and moon, he had enough to worry about without taking on two neophytes. “I appreciate that, Vulsier. I’ll do what I can for them.”

The old gob bristled. “That’s not what I meant, Maxim, and don’t insult me or my family by taking it that way.”

“You’re right, Vulsier. Of course.” He’d embarrassed himself. He hated that. “I’ve been too long mixed up in court intrigues and pandering. I apologize.”

“I don’t know what hold Idris has over you. It’s not my business to know. I don’t
want
to know.” Vulsier picked up the helmet, the candle still burning. “Sturm and Drang are yours to command, by
my
command.”

Max grunted and nodded.
“The truth is, I’m unworthy, Vulsier. You know that.”

“Yes, Maxim. I know that.”
The old gob blew out the candle. “When the time comes and the fairy prince is ready to fight for the moonstick throne, light this. There are many who live quietly in the hollows and vales, eager for that day. The candle’s summoning spell will call me, and I will call them.”

Max felt like a treesap. “I strive to honor your faith, Vulsier.”

“May your tunnels be cool and dry, my lord.”

Max winced at the honorific, but Vulsier
disappeared up tunnel into the darkness before Max could protest. He was no one’s lord.

Bugger.
He slipped the candle into his tool bag. Cissa would be leaving soon for Igdrasil, but he had to know. He had to see for himself what Vulsier was talking about. He went back to the wagon and reassured Mavis. Then he hoisted a load of iron rods over his shoulder and headed into the bower.

Sturm and Drang
were coming out, and the three exchanged acknowledging nods. The young gobs looked positively sick at heart, and Max’s dread increased with each step deeper into the bower. And then he saw it.

It was dead center in the cavernous room, the thing that had repulsed Vulsier. “Great gods.” The rods slipped from Max’s hold, and one landed on his foot. “Dammit!”

The thing had no top and no floor. It was a simple construct: iron poles jammed into the ground about four inches apart in an arc, three-quarters of a circle. When the circle was complete, it would be large enough to hold a fairy or two.

A
cold iron cage.

It didn’t need a roof. A fairy surrounded by those bars wouldn’t be able to fly away. Wouldn’t be able to use magic at all.

Look at the ceiling,
Vulsier had said. Max bent his head back and squinted. It made him sick to his stomach. At regular intervals, tether jewels were imbedded high in the rock walls and in the ceiling. Idris was building a damn panopticon. He’d be able to spy on his prisoners whether they wore tethers or not.

A young gob
searched his tool bag and withdrew a 260 diamond lap. He tapped it against his chin absently, studying the bars on the unfinished cage.

“Sun and moon.”
Max let out a barely contained growl. He grabbed the gob by the vest and dragged him away from the cage. All work stopped and the bower went dead quiet.

“What the hell are you doing?”

The gob paled. “I—I’m getting ready to do a rough,” he said.

“You’d dignify this…this atrocity with bright-cut?” Max seethed. “What design did you have in mind? A river of tears?”

The gob paled. “I…I didn’t think.”

“Hear me now!” Max roared into the bower. “Any gob who puts lap and graver to this work will answer to me!” He let the poor treesap go and stormed out of the bower, consoled somewhat by the approving grunts among the goblins he passed.
Sturm and Drang, Max noticed, stood a little taller as he passed by them.

Not surprising,
Cissa was nowhere to be found at court. The courtiers were unusually relaxed, almost giddy. In the throne room a leprechaun was sprawled over the moonstick throne, his head thrown back while two pixies poured wine into his open mouth. When he saw Max, his face turned white. He fell over himself scrambling off the dais.

A serving pixie popped in and crashed
against Max’s shoulder. “Ooh, the gob, the gob!” she said. “Exqueeze me!” She bowed dramatically in the air and lurched to the side. Drunk. She fit right in.

“What’s going on?” Max said. “Have you seen Princess Narcissus?”

“She’s gone, she’s gone.” The pixie hiccupped. Her eyes widened and she blushed. “Maybe she went to Sarumos with King Idris.”

“Idris is in Sarumos.”
That explained why Cissa and Morning Glory chose today to bring Lily. “For what purpose?”

“
Shhh. A secret, a secret,” the pixie said loudly. “He’s going to marry Queen Brienne!”

“Hmph.” Max turned on his heels and walked out of the throne room. Cissa must already be on her way to Igdrasil to meet Morning Glory and the child.

He was still grumpy when the pony cart reached the edge of the faewood. He never liked coming out on this side. One clean portal between realms was better than a hundred haphazard rifts on a threshold.

Glimmer Cottage lay to the south, far too close for his comfort. He didn’t hate the wyrd as the fairies did, but it was always good practice to keep clear of that witch Elyse.

He jumped down from the wagon and patted Mavis. “Stay here, girl, until we see what’s what.” The pony nickered and batted her hoof against the ground, but she didn’t follow him.

He kept to the edge of the woods, passing in and out of the fae and human realms, and moved north toward Igdrasil and the cliffs of the Severn Sea. He couldn’t stop thinking about the bower. There had to be a way to confound that cage.

He was lost in an idea when he became aware of shouting up ahead.

“No!” Morning Glory cried
out. She was standing near Igdrasil with Lily in her arms. “You can’t have her!”

Idris’s cold laugh rang out over the fields
clearly, as if Aeolios himself carried the sound. The regent’s entourage joined in with clapping and jeers. So much for going to Sarumos to court Brienne. But Idris hated being in the human realm. He must have discovered Morning Glory’s secret.

Max scanned the clearing and the trees frantically. Cissa had to be here somewhere.
Thank sun and moon.
He spied the princess but a few yards away, watching the scene from behind an ash tree. Her eyes sparkled with terror and fury. She began to extend her wings.

No!
Max’s heart raced with fear. If Idris saw her, she’d be in more trouble than poor Morning Glory. Max ran. He tackled the princess and pinned her to the ground. She started to protest, but he put a finger in her face.

“There’s nothing you can do.” He half whispered, half mouthed the words. She
stopped struggling and nodded understanding. Max felt his cheeks burn as he fully appreciated the position he’d put her in. He pulled her to her feet and focused on Glory.

“Great gods,” Cissa whispered behind him. They both
watched in horror, helpless as Morning Glory ran with the little faeling looking over her shoulder, wild-eyed.

“Your magic is nothing
to mine, Glory.” Idris didn’t bother moving. “It’s absurd to think you can run from me. Do you imagine Igdrasil will help you?”

Idris’s entourage erupted with mocking laughter as he stretched forth his hands. “Come
to…”

King Idris didn’t finish the spell, for
he had nothing to lay it on. Morning Glory and the child had disappeared.

“Find them!” Idris screamed. His bewildered entourage
scattered
and pretended to look under flowers and among blades of green grass, all careful to stay away from the dreaded Igdrasil. “Bring them to me!”

“She’s gone,” Cissa said.

“And so should we be, princess. Now.” Max took Cissa’s hand, and she didn’t pull it away.

He led her through the trees
toward the pony wagon. He should be worried about Idris, about Glory and poor vulnerable Lily. Instead he was enraptured by the strong beat of his own heart and the soft exquisite smallness of Cissa’s hand in his.

They reached Mavis and the wagon, and he lifted
the princess onto the driver’s bench and jumped up beside her. Idris’s screams carried on the breeze as Max grabbed the reins and urged the palomino onward.