Except the Queen (44 page)

“
You read her letters!
” I was appalled, but not surprised. Had not Sparrow read mine?

“All of them. I knew I had to come here, for after your sister, it was Sparrow I was to seek and find. I had to warn her. Explain it to her.”

“Explain
what
?” Was this at last to be the true reason for my exile?

“The Queen exiled you and Serana not as a punishment, but to provide protection to her child. She counted on Sparrow finding one of you, light drawn to light. I was sent to hunt Serana, and thereby the girl, should she come. My Master found another, here in your city, Meteora, to do his bidding.”

“Lankin,” I said, bitterly.

“Yes. I didn’t know that until I came here. Your sister was right to send me here. But I was so blinded by the arum, I could not guard Sparrow. Lankin found her and nearly . . .” He shuddered like a dog, his skin wrinkling with fear.

“But if we are meant to protect her, why are we here now?” I asked, confused, wanting all the little threads to braid together in a single strand. “Should not someone inform the Queen? Is this not her affair?”

“My mother, if that’s who the Queen is, left me on my own a long time ago. I’ve been running ever since. But not anymore,” Sparrow said. “Robin and I are here to make a stand for ourselves.” She reached out to twine her fingers in his, sounding both brave and magical. It was then I noticed in the bright light of the kitchen that the trouble tattoo on her neck was almost gone. Clearly there was power in their union, healing power.

“We’ll be making a stand in the boneyard if we don’t hightail it outta here,” Vinnie snapped. “Run now. Talk later.” She nudged Sparrow toward a low door in the kitchen and behind her Robin followed close, then Jack, still gripping the bat uncertainly.

I hesitated until I saw the gray slag-heap faces of the Boggles pressed against the windowpanes. Too big to creep in as the windlings had done. Kept out by the wards for now, they waited. Waited—but not for long.

Darting after the others, I found myself descending
into a musty, dark cellar. In the dim light of a single bulb the floor appeared like an ocean of shifting fur. Cats—dozens of them—swirled in agitated circles around our ankles, hissing and spitting. Kittens mewled from baskets stacked around the edges of the room.

From above, we could hear the sounds of the front door being splintered and a window shattering. The cats flowed up the stairs behind us in a wave of caterwauls and flashing teeth, their claws scrabbling on the wooden stairs.

“Come, quick. There’s a tunnel here that leads out to the bridge. The cats will hold them for a while.” Vinnie bent low and scurried into a small narrow passage.

“Is that our escape route?” asked Jack for all of us.

“No, it’s where we will make our stand,” Vinnie told him. “Better than this small, closed-in place.”

“How come I never knew about this tunnel?” asked Jack.

Vinnie laughed deep in her throat. “And why would I tell an angry, active boy about something like this?” she said. “Do you think I was crazy?”

“Well,” Jack said, hesitating a moment longer than necessary, “yes, actually I did.”

That made her put her head back and laugh full out. The laugh, like a calming spell, settled us all.

There was no light in the tunnel; we felt our way by running our hands against the smooth walls. I could smell the river and it carried the fresh tang of the Greenwood. Vinnie had chosen well.

The smell grew stronger and, abruptly, the way led upward again, rising to a gentle slope. Ahead, Vinnie called to us to stop. Moonlight slivered into the tunnel, as she shoved a shoulder against a matted wall of twigs and branches, forcing an opening.

We pushed out of the tunnel and were on the banks of a narrow river directly below the bridge. A cluster of ancient oaks surrounded us, and I could imagine in centuries past how they must have filled the banks on either side of the river. Now all that was left of them was a meager stand of twisted trunks.

A rustle in the tangled branches made me glance up and I heard the
krawk
of a crow hiding in the leaves. And then another.

“Awxes!”

He cawed again, exhorting us to move along. He and the rest of his murder were here, watching.

“Have you not lost too much already, old friend? I bid you go and be safe.” But he stayed, and with him the others of his black brood.

Then I looked up at the bridge, where we were to make our stand. The stench of iron grabbed me by the throat and I stumbled, doubled over by the rank taste of it. Vinnie grabbed me and hustled me toward a narrow set of concrete stairs.

“It won’t be so bad on top,” she said. “And they won’t follow us so easily this way.”

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Not the briared path of righteousness, nor the lily path of wickedness, but the green path to—”

“Elfland! The road to Elfland, atop this monstrosity?” I was heaving with the stench of iron.

Just then I heard Red Cap’s horns blaring in the distance, a call that curdled the mist and drove the stink of sweating hounds and farting Bogglemen on the winds. There was no more time to resist. Red Cap and his minions would be as incapacitated as I by the iron. Vinnie was right. We had to go up there onto the bridge.

V
innie cackled as she bullied me up the stairs. “Gotta find a way wherever you can. The old paths don’t disappear so easily, even when the mortal realm changes. They lurk behind the factory, ghetto, suburban mall.
You
may choose not to use them. But some do. That’s why I’m here. To watch what comes over the bridge.”

We were standing suddenly on the bridge, a wide-open expanse that stretched like a road between the banks. Though I could feel the threaded bones of iron buried in the concrete flesh, I
could
stand. Suddenly the worst of the pain and illness subsided. On the far banks hung a sheer curtain of golden lights reflected in the shimmering surface of the river below. Along the edges of the concrete and metal bridge I could see the faint outline of trees, smell the pungent pine.

It
was
the way to the Greenwood, to Under the Hill and Elfland. For a moment, I thought of abandoning my friends and throwing myself at the lights of home just to be living again in my woods. For just a moment.

Behind me, I heard Sparrow sob and I turned, realizing that I was not the only one entranced by the sight. Robin had his arm around her, consoling, pulling her toward the middle of the bridge. On his face was a mixture of pain and hope. Faerie had always meant the dark halls
of the UnSeelie to him. Now—for the first time in his life—he craved the light of the summer courts.

Awxes and the crows traced slow circles in the air above us. Even Jack had lowered his cudgel to stare in wonder at the undulating lights.

Standing beside me, Vinnie’s ancient face softened until I saw the remainder of the young woman I had once known.
Is that true of my face
, I wondered,
here in the glimmering reflection of the Greenwood
? I laid a hand to my cheek as if I might find it young and firm again.

“Every time I come up here I can almost touch it,” Vinnie said. “I can’t cross anymore, only get close enough to remember those years ago, the infants put to my breast. But alas . . .” She laughed sharply. “No insurance or job security with the fey.” She seized my shoulder, her grip strong. “Will you open it for us?”

“Open it?”

“Yeah. Only
you
can open the way. You’re one of them.”

And then I tasted bitter gall. I was here, but by my banishment the way would not open to me. Vinnie had miscalculated. She had thought I could save us all and so brought us here, to this bridge before a door that would never open to me.

“I cannot,” I stammered, spinning away from her grip. I turned my back to the door.

Vinnie glared at me. “Or maybe you’re as hard-hearted as the rest of the fey. Haven’t I done enough? Don’t I deserve this? Don’t they?” Her chin jutted toward Robin and Sparrow.

Miserable, I looked down at my feet and whispered, “I have been banished, too. By the Queen’s own decree I can never return. There is nothing I can do here. Nothing.”

“You can try,” Jack whispered in my ear.

I turned, looked at him.
Really
looked. His honest face stared back at me.
For him
, I thought,
I could try and fail. But I could try.

Just then Vinnie spoke again. “Trying won’t cut it now.” She spun me around and there on the streets leading to the far side of the bridge was the Dark Lord’s Hunt riding toward us. The Highborn ranks were marked by the silver tines of horns rising above the carved death masks. The Hunt flowed across the paving, the silver shoes of their mounts leaving trails of sparks. By their sides, the hellhounds bayed, running hard. And behind them loped boogans, ogres, even snarling knucklebones, their rock-hard knuckles striking sparks on the surface of the road.

Overhead bananachs flew, their great tattered wings blocking all sight of the stars.

And we—a small band of misfits, two humans, two halflings, one banished fairy, and a murder of ragged crows—were alone on the bridge to face them.

And it was my fault. My fault for meddling. The guilt of it began to eat at me again till I suddenly remembered that I had been sent here to meddle. Sent here to protect Sparrow.

Protect Sparrow
.

“Get behind me,” I cried and thrust myself in front of them. “I may be banished but the law of the courts still applies. They dare not harm me, lest I have done them harm.”

“But you
have
offered offense,” Robin said quickly, “for there rides Lankin and you struck him.”

“The offense was his when he entered the Great Witch’s house,” I said with more confidence than I felt.

“You still need us at your side,” Jack argued and stood to the left of my shoulder, his ash cudgel held high. Vinnie flanked me on the right. Behind me, I felt the children, imagining them still holding hands and making one another strong. Awxes and the crows drifted back and forth above us, wings brushing against the wall of light and making it ripple with the sound of chimes.

The Hunt approached, and the huntsman blew his horn, calling the slavering pack to heel. The Dark Lord turned to the rider beside him and silently commanded
him to go forth. As he approached, I saw him clearly in the glowing lamplight, his silver mask shaped like a half skull, the human side beautiful, the other twisted in pain. Around his shoulders he wore a cloak of burgundy wool, dyed with the blood of innocents: Red Cap, soul drinker, blood eater, bone cruncher, hater of life.

“Stay,” I said. “I must meet him alone.”

“No,” Jack argued.

“It is the only way.”

And I walked away from them toward the center of the bridge, toward Red Cap and the UnSeelie horde.

Oh, sister
, I thought—glad she, at least, was not here—
Sister, remember me
. For well I knew that Red Cap’s swords and arrows could do what mortal weapons could not. Knew that only the eternal law that binds us both held in check his murdering hand.

“You have no right to hunt those under my protection.”

The Highborns and Red Cap broke into raucous laughter, slapping their thighs, rattling their spears and quivers of arrows. An ogre lumbered to the front, turned, displayed his huge, bare arse, and farted, loud as a trumpet.

Removing his mask, Red Cap handed it to a rat-faced page that had scurried up on clawed feet to take it from his master’s hands. Red Cap shifted his weight on the back of his horse. Clearly he was more used to skulking than riding.

“You! You have no power to fight me, Meteora. There be nothing you can do to stop me. Capuchon be my name. Use it if you dare!”

That he knew my true name and spoke it aloud was frightening enough. But I did not dare show my fear. Nor did I speak his name aloud, for I knew there would be a trick in it, else he would never have given it to me so readily.

“No power, you say?” I called back. “Ask your servant, and see where I marked him when he violated the treaty and came uninvited to the home of the Great
Witch.” I pointed to the Highborn in a wraith’s hollow-eyed mask in the line of horsemen behind him.

Red Cap turned in the saddle to look at them.

“Hah! Show your face,” he commanded and then cursed loudly when Long Lankin ripped the mask from his face with a jerk, revealing an angry gash marring the plane of his cheek. It had festered into a ragged furrow as all ill-gotten wounds must. Obviously he had not told anyone, shamed to have been bested by an old woman. So far it was the only glimmer of hope we had. Could I bluff my way a little longer?

Red Cap stood up in his stirrups, his eyes slitted into twin daggers. “And who, little bag of pus, gave you such power?”

“The same goddess who awarded it to you.” The words came to me suddenly, like a gift. “Before we existed, power flowed in the heart of earth, shaping rock and soil, water and air. I have learned that even trapped in this mortal body I can find that power without the leave of Elfland. It is mine by the right of She-Who-Birthed-All.” I knew as I spoke these brave words that they were true. In part. Though aged and weakened, I was not wholly without magic. I held it in my mouth like a wintered berry, withered, but still sweet and nourishing. And I had seen that the mortals here had power, too, though we of the Greenwood scarce acknowledge it. Lavinia’s milk had had the power to suckle and sustain our infants. Clearly the gifts flowed both ways. Faerie to mortals, mortals to the fey. So when would we honor that truth?