Faerie Tale (14 page)

‘It could have been worse,’ she said.  ‘I’m
your
slave.  I’d rather be that than … well … I didn’t want you to die.’

Denny sagged abruptly.  He looked as if his insides had been ripped out.  It is a fair bet that this was how he felt too.  He knew instinctively that he could not make this right.  A deal had been struck.  If he wished her free and broke the deal, he and the others would all go back to being dead. It was infuriating. 

‘Who did you make this bargain with anyway?’ he said.

She had been hoping he would not ask this; she had no choice but to answer him.  He was the boss now. 

Even so, she hedged. ‘Are you sure you want to know?’ she asked.

‘
Tell
me.’

Tamar bowed her head obediently, and Denny was suddenly filled with remorse. 

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.  ‘I didn’t mean … I forgot; it’s been so long. 
Don’t
tell me then, I mean unless you want to.  I won’t order you, is what I’m getting at.’

Tamar smiled.  ‘No wonder I fell in love with you,’ she said. 

‘And don’t try to soften me up either,’ said Denny.

Still Tamar hesitated and suddenly it came to Denny in a flash.

‘
Hecaté,
’ he said.  ‘It was Hecaté, wasn’t it?’

‘I asked her, yes,’ said Tamar.

‘And
she
bargained to give up your freedom?’  Denny could hardly believe it.

‘It doesn’t work like that,’ said Tamar.  ‘She had no choice. If I hadn’t given something up she wouldn’t have been able to do it. It’s the way it is.  And I
needed
her to do it.  It was my choice.  Don’t blame her.’

‘I don’t,’ said Denny meaningfully. ‘You could talk a dwarf out of drinking, a mermaid out of swimming, a …’

‘… A woman out of letting the man she loves die,’ finished Tamar.

‘Really?’ said Denny bitterly.  ‘Which one of us did you have in mind?’

~ Chapter Eighteen ~

T
he gypsies all appeared to have gone. The camp was deserted anyway, and it looked as if something bad had happened here.

‘We are sure that they
were
gypsies?’ said Stiles.  ‘I mean, considering who their king was.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Tamar.  ‘They were, at least most of them anyway.  Finvarra just took over because they had power he could use. I’m
almost
certain,’ she added.

‘Do you think they knew who he was?’

‘I have no idea,’ she shrugged.

‘What power?’ said Cindy.  ‘I know that gypsies use magic, but Faerie magic is much more powerful.’

‘Hmm,’ said Tamar.  ‘I wonder.  He must have thought they had
something
.’

‘You mean you don’t know,’ pointed out Denny. ‘They’re all gone now anyway, so who cares?  Let’s get out of here.’

‘Yes Master,’ said Tamar automatically.  Denny frowned, but no one seemed to notice. 

‘Never mind,’ he said.

Stiles stirred up some debris with his foot.  He thought he saw a gleam – something shiny.  He reached down and picked it up.

‘Hey,’ he called them over.  ‘What this?’

It was a strange looking thing.  A sort of open glove made out of bright silver filigreed metal.  A ring for each finger was attached by wires to a vambrace that fitted up the arm and in the centre, where it would sit in the palm, was a large green jewel. 

On the vambrace there were symbols. 

Hecaté shook her head.  ‘This is a very old language’ she said.  ‘Denny?’

He took it and studied it.  ‘Druidic runes,’ he said.  ‘I can make out the word “god” or it might be “avatar”.’  He shook his head.  ‘I’d need my reference books.’

He handed it back to Stiles and before Denny could stop him Stiles slipped it over his hand. 

‘
No
,’ yelled Denny alarmingly.  ‘Take it off, take it
off
,’

It was too late; it was not coming off.  They all watched in horrified fascination as it put out tendrils into Stiles’s skin.  His arm went stiff, and it was possible to see the tendrils extending under the skin further up his arm in a moving fretwork.  Stiles went grey.  ‘Oh shit!’ he said. 

Then his arm relaxed, and it seemed to be over.  Except that the thing now seemed to be permanently attached to Stiles’s hand and arm.  His arm now looked as if he were wearing a gauntlet made of wires, and it shone in the sunlight.

Stiles was still staring at his arm in horror when Denny said. ‘Well, that was a bloody stupid thing to do wasn’t it?’ and stalked off angrily. 

‘What’s up with
him
?’ said Cindy as Tamar hurried after him.  ‘He’s been like that ever since we all came back – you know from the dead or whatever.  Looks like he’d be glad he isn’t dead. 
I
am.’

Hecaté looked guiltily at her feet. 

‘There’s nothing more to see here,’ said Stiles briskly.  ‘Denny’s right – on both counts – it
was
a bloody stupid thing to do, and we
should
get out of here now.’

‘Are you okay then?’ asked Cindy.

‘That remains to be seen,’ said Stiles.  ‘But I feel all right so far anyway.’ 

He looked up sharply.  ‘Faeries!’ he said.

‘Where?’ said Hecaté looking around. 

‘Over there in the trees.’ And he pointed a finger from which a blinding shaft of light shot out into the shadows accompanied by a distant shrieking then quiet. 

There was a stunned silence, during which Stiles looked bemusedly at his loaded finger. 

 ‘Oh shit!’ he said again.  That seemed to cover it. 

* * *

 ‘Denny!’

He had his back to her and would not turn round.

‘Denny please, we can’t go on like this.’

Stony silence reigned.  Denny hunched his shoulders, clenched his fists but said nothing. 

Denny …?

‘Do you hate me?’ he said suddenly.  ‘Is that what it is?’

‘
What
?’

‘You gave up everything I gave you,’ he said, and he was sure he was being childish and nasty.  ‘There must have been another way,’ he added.

Tamar was aghast. He had never talked like this before. Denny
had
given her her freedom, but he never
ever
mentioned it –
never
.  Never expected gratitude for anything he did. 
Was
she ungrateful?  Did he really think so?

‘I didn’t do this lightly,’ she said defensively.  ‘I had to.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you were going to
die
.  Do you get that?

‘In a war that
you
started,’ Denny pointed out unreasonably. 

‘
I
didn’t start it,’ she said.  ‘The Faeries …’

‘
You
put together an army,’ he said.  ‘
You
said we should fight, and I’m not saying that you weren’t right – you were.  But …’

He turned.  ‘You
knew
what would happen.  You planned for it.’ he sighed.  ‘I just want to know what the hell is going on.  There’s more to this. I
know
you –  remember?  You didn’t do all this just so we could fight and die and achieve nothing.  And you didn’t just decide to give up your freedom at the last minute because you couldn’t hack it.  You’re up to something.  You planned the whole thing, and it’s time to let me in on it, don’t you think?

‘If I knew why,’ he said quietly.  ‘I might be able to handle this better.  I need to know why.’

‘Yes,’ she said.  ‘You do don’t you.’

‘I could
order
you to tell me,’ he told her.  ‘But I won’t do that.  It’s wrong, and besides … it’s, well it’s
you,
isn’t it.  You know what I mean?’

‘Yes,’ she said ‘I know.’

‘So …?’

‘I did it to give us an advantage, that’s all.  There’s no way this is going to be won by fighting.  She knows it, but she doesn’t know that
we
know it.  I gave her what she expected, and now that she thinks we’re all dead she’ll let her guard down.’

‘All?’

‘I slipped off her radar when I went back into the bottle.  It’s the will she can detect you see, the free will of the mind.  And anyway, she has no idea what I really am.  She thinks –
thought
– I was a witch or something.’

‘And now that her guard is down?’

‘There’s nothing more powerful than the combination of a Djinn and her Master. Alone, I was out of my depth but together we can’t lose.’*

‘You were never alone,’ said Denny sadly.  ‘I’m sorry that you didn’t realise that.’

‘This is different,’ she said.

*[When Tamar was freed from the bottle, although she retained her powers she technically became a mortal, which meant that the
strength
of her powers was necessarily diminished. She could, for example, die – if someone killed her hard enough.
]

‘It certainly
is
,’ he agreed ironically.

‘I meant … What the hell was that?’

* * *

‘What do you mean, it’s probably nothing to worry about?  His
eyes
were glowing!’

Denny shrugged.  ‘I’ll translate the text on the arm band,’ he offered indifferently.  Tamar, he mused, had not really changed all that much as a result of her … what would you call it, re-enslavement?  At least not on the surface of it – she still acted the same way anyway.  If he had not
known
, he wondered, would he have guessed? 

‘I need a drink,’ he said and stalked off. 

She did not even
try
to stop him. 

‘Oh, yes,’ he thought.  ‘I
would
have guessed.’

Stiles himself was the least worried of any of them.  He felt fine, more than fine actually and was, therefore, disinclined to argue with recent events.  At last, he had a power.  He had not exactly been hankering after supernatural powers and it was not as if he had been treated any differently for being the only one without.  He had always known he had a contribution to make.  But he
had
wondered what it would be like, and he
had
been aware of the difference, it just had not bothered him.

He was being treated differently now though.  Which was ironic really, when you came to think about it.  Everyone – except Denny he noticed – was stepping on eggshells around him.  If he had not known better, he would have said they were afraid.  Whether they were afraid
of
him or
for
him, was hard to say. 

The problem, according to Tamar, was that they had no idea where his new powers had come from or what kind of power it was.  They had been down this road before, she pointed out, when Denny had found the Athame. The truth was they were all getting a little nervous of Stiles.  Denny had shown definite signs of being taken over by an evil nature during the early part of his guardianship of the Athame. Stiles, while he did not appear to be evil exactly, was manifesting powers that seemed to the others to be distinctly Faerie like.

It had almost been too late by the time Tamar had discovered Denny’s slippery slope toward evil.  She did not intend to make the same mistake twice.  That was why she had to make Denny see how important it was to find out about the … glove thingy.  He was just going to have to get over himself. 

* * *

Even Cindy had noticed that Denny was drinking pretty heavily at the moment.  And he was not the friendly amiable drunk that he had once been; he had become a surly drunk, moody and unapproachable.  Tamar marched into the dining room, a place which, at the moment anyway, angels would fear to tread. 

At first, it seemed to be empty then a figure detached itself from the shadows in the corner.  He had a bottle in his hand and was lurching slightly.  He regarded the bottle venomously for a moment then hurled it into the fireplace where it smashed satisfyingly. 

Tamar sighed and picked up her bottle from the hearth ‘That never works you know,’ she said.

‘I know,’ said Denny.  ‘That’s the fifth time I’ve tried it. Today anyway,’ he added.

Tamar waved a surreptitious hand and sobered Denny up instantly.*

*[
She used to use a foul potion for this, but that was just to teach him a lesson.  Now she was in a hurry
]

 ‘What did you do that for?’ he asked indignantly.

 ‘Jack needs your help,’ she said bluntly.  ‘Your
friend
,’ she added slyly acerbic.  ‘The one who risked his life in the Faerie castle to save you. 
Remember
?

‘What about him?’ said Denny.  ‘He’s all right isn’t he?’

‘He’s … not himself,’ said Tamar uncertainly. 

‘Who is around here?’

‘Denny!’ she said warningly.

‘All right, all right.’ He shifted his persona and became … well, himself again. ‘The engraving said something about an Avatar,’ he continued.  ‘I’ll need to …’

‘Avatar?’ interrupted.  ‘What’s that?  Is it anything like a Faerie?’

‘What?  No, why would you say that?’

‘Jack’s acting awfully … Faerie like.  You haven’t noticed?’

‘Okay, I’ll get right on it,’ he said.  ‘And … I’m sorry.  I’ve been a bit …’

‘Upset?’

‘Yeah well… that’s as good a word as any I suppose.’

* * *

It was good to see Denny back at the computer console; it made things seem almost normal (as normal as things get around here anyway) Tamar felt. 

Stiles had held out his wrist co-operatively to let Denny copy down the runes. 

‘Stop it,’ said Denny as he scribbled on his pad.

‘What?’ said Stiles, innocently.

‘Changing the runes,’ said Denny.  ‘I can
see
you, you know?  I’m not
deaf
.’

‘Blind,’ said Tamar automatically.

‘I wasn’t doing it,’ protested Stiles.  ‘It does it all the time.’

Denny narrowed his eyes.  Stiles was lying he was sure.  For one thing, the runes were not exactly changing; it was only his perception of them, as if he had oil in his eyes.  Had he been an ordinary human, he would never have noticed. 

‘We can’t trust him anymore,’ he realised with a shock.  He looked at Tamar with a startled expression.