Merry Gentry 05 - Mistral's Kiss (17 page)

“I don’t know if I’m tall enough,” I said.

“I have to agree with the hag,” Fyfe said. “The princess must stand on her own for the kill to be hers.”

Frost and Doyle exchanged glances, still holding me between them. “Let me down slowly,” I said. “I think I can touch bottom.”

They did what I asked. If I kept my chin pointed up, I could just barely keep the dirty water out of my mouth.

“We have no weapons with us that will kill the immortal,” Doyle said.

“Nor we,” Ivar said.

Sholto looked at me, his face raw with grief, and I fought to meet that look.

He moved, and a tiny wave slapped my face. I began treading water, so I could keep my head above the surface. As I did so, my leg brushed something—I thought it was a bone, but it moved. It was Segna’s arm, limp in the water. My leg brushed it again, and the arm convulsed.

“The bones are a killing thing,” I said.

Then Segna said in a rattling voice, thick with things that should never be in the throat of the living, “Kiss me one…last…time.”

Sholto leaned over her with a sob.

Ivar moved everyone back to give us room. He made certain that Agnes moved back, too, which meant that Segna’s body began to sink below the water. I moved forward, tried to help catch her, as I treaded water. I got a hand on her body, felt the weight of her cloak wrap around my legs. I felt her tense a heartbeat before her arm, which was behind me now, swept forward.

I had time to turn and put both hands on her arm, to keep the claws from my side.

“Merry!” Doyle yelled.

I had time to see her other arm sweeping up behind me. I let go of the arm I was already fending off, and tried to sweep the second arm away from me.

Segna’s body rolled under the water, and took me with her.

I HAD TIME TO TAKE A BREATH, THEN WE WERE UNDERWATER.

Segna’s face loomed under the dirty water. Her mouth opened, screaming at me, blood blossoming from her mouth. My hands dug desperately into her arms, too small to encircle them, as I forced them away from me and she dragged me deeper into the water.

Too late I realized that there were other ways to kill me than claws—she was trying to impale me on submerged bone. I kicked my feet to stay above the bone, to not let her spit me upon it. The point of bone held me on its tip, and I kicked and pushed to keep it from piercing my skin. Segna pushed and fought against me. The strength in her arms and body was almost too much for me. She was wounded, dying, and it was all I could do to keep her from killing me.

My chest was tight; I needed to breathe. Claws, bones, and even the water itself could kill. If I couldn’t push her off me, all she had to do was simply hold me underwater.

I prayed, “Goddess help me!”

A pale hand shone in the water, and Segna was pulled backward, my grip on her arms pulling me with her. We broke the surface together, both of us gasping for breath. Her breath ended in a spattering cough that covered my face in her blood. For a moment I couldn’t see who had pulled her back. I had to blink her blood out of my eyes to see Sholto with his arm across her upper body. He held her one-armed and yelled, “Get out, Meredith, get out!”

I did what he said: I let her go and pushed backward, trusting that there were no bones just behind me.

Segna didn’t try to catch me. She used her newly freed hands to claw down Sholto’s arm, making a crimson ruin of his white flesh.

I treaded water, looking around for Doyle and Frost, and the others. There were no others. I was paddling in a lake—a deep, cold lake—no longer the shallow, stagnant pool we’d been wading in before. There was a small island close at hand, but the shore was far away, and it was not a shore I knew. I screamed, “Doyle!” But there was no answer. In truth, I hadn’t expected one, for I could already see that we were either in a vision, or somewhere else in faerie. I didn’t know which, and I didn’t know where.

Sholto cried out behind me. I turned in time to see him go under in a wash of red. Segna struck at the water where he’d vanished with the dagger from her belt. Did she realize it was him she attacked now, or did she still think she was killing me?

I screamed, “Segna!”

The sound seemed to reach her, because she hesitated. She turned in the water and blinked at me.

I pushed myself high enough out of the water so she could see me. Sholto had not yet resurfaced.

Segna screamed at me, the sound ending in a wet cough. Blood poured down her chin, but she started moving toward me.

I screamed, “Sholto!” hoping Segna would realize what she’d done and turn back to rescue him. But she kept swimming, weakly, toward me.

“He is only white flesh now,” she growled, in that too thick, too wet voice.

“He is only sidhe, not sluagh.”

So much for her helping Sholto—obviously it was up to me. I took a good breath and dived. The water was clearer here, and I saw Sholto like a pale shadow sinking toward the bottom, blood trailing upward in a cloud.

I screamed his name, and the sound echoed through the water. His body jerked, and just then something grabbed my hair and yanked me upward.

Segna pulled me through the water. I could see that she was making for the bare island. My naked back hit the rocks, scraped along them, as she struggled from the lake. She pulled me with her, until both of us were free of the water. She lay panting on the rock, her hand still tangled in my hair. I tried to ease away from that hand, but it convulsed tighter, wrenching my hair as if she meant to take it out by the roots. She started dragging me closer to where she lay.

I fought to get up on all fours so she wouldn’t scrape more of my skin off on the bare rock. In order to do so, I had to take my gaze off her for an instant.

It was a mistake. She jerked me down with that strength that could have torn a horse apart. Jerked me down, onto my stomach. I wedged an arm under my body to keep me off the rocks.

Then I saw that she still held the dagger. She pressed it to my cheek. I gazed at her along the line of the blade. She was lying down, almost flat against the rocks.

“I’ll scar you,” she said. “Ruin that pretty face.”

“Sholto is drowning.”

“The sluagh cannot die by water. If he is sidhe enough to drown, then let him.”

“He loves you,” I said.

She made a harsh sound that spattered her chin with more blood. “Not as much as he loves the thought of sidhe flesh in his bed.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

The tip of her blade wavered above my cheek. “How much sidhe are you?

How well do you heal?”

I thought it was a rhetorical question, so I didn’t answer it. Would she die of her wounds before she hurt me, or would she heal?

She coughed blood onto the stones, and it was as if she wondered the same thing. She used her grip on my hair to force me onto my back, dragging me closer as she did it. I couldn’t stop her—I could not fight against such strength. She crawled on top of me and put her blade tip over my throat. I grabbed her hand, wrapped both my hands around it, and still trembled with the effort to hold her off me.

“So weak,” she gasped above me. “Why do we follow the sidhe? If I were not dying, you could not hold me off.”

My voice came out tight with strain as I said, “I’m only part sidhe.”

“But you’re sidhe enough for him to want you,” she growled. “Glow for me, sidhe! Show me that precious Seelie magic. Show me the magic that makes us follow the sidhe.”

Her words were fatal. She was right. I had magic. Magic that no one else had. I called my hand of blood. As I summoned it, I tried not to think about the fact that I could have done it sooner—before she hurt Sholto.

I wielded the hand of blood. I could have made her bleed out from just a tiny cut, and these were not tiny cuts. I started to glow under the press of her body. My body shone through the blood she was dripping on me. I whispered, “Not Seelie magic, Segna,
Unseelie
magic. Bleed for me.”

She didn’t understand at first. She kept trying to shove the blade into my throat, and I kept holding her just off me. She dug her hand into my hair so that her claws raked my scalp, bloodied me. I called blood, and her wounds gushed.

The blood poured over me, hot—hotter than my own skin. I turned my head away to keep my eyes clear of it. My hands grew slippery with her blood, and I was afraid that her knife would slip past my defenses before I could bleed her out. So much blood; it poured and poured and poured. Could a night-hag bleed to death? Could they even be killed this way? I didn’t know, I just didn’t know.

The tip of her knife pierced my skin like a sharp bite. My arms were shaking with the effort to keep her off me. I screamed, “Bleed for me!” I spat her blood out of my mouth, and still her knife wormed another fraction into my throat. Barely, barely below the skin—I wasn’t hurt yet, but I would be soon.

Then her hand hesitated, pulled backward. I blinked up at her through a mask of her own blood. Her eyes were wide and startled. There was a white spear sticking out through her throat.

Sholto stood above her, bandages gone, his wound bare to the air, both hands gripping the spear. He pulled the spear out with a wrenching motion.

A fountain of blood spilled out of her neck. I whispered, “Bleed.” She collapsed in a pool of crimson, the knife still clasped in her hand.

Sholto stood over her and drove the white spear into her back. She spasmed underneath him, her mouth opening and closing, hands and feet scrabbling at the bare rock.

Only when she stopped moving completely did he take the spear out. He stood swaying, but used the tip to send her dagger spinning into the lake.

Then he collapsed to his knees beside her, leaning on the spear like a crutch.

By the time I staggered to him, I wasn’t glowing. I was tired, and hurt, and covered in my enemy’s blood. I fell to my knees beside him on the bloody rock, and I touched his shoulder, as if I wasn’t sure he was real. “I saw you drown,” I said.

He seemed to have trouble focusing on me, but said, “I am sidhe and sluagh.

We cannot die by drowning.” He coughed hard enough that he doubled over, throwing up water onto the rock, as he clung to the white shaft of the spear. “But it hurts as if it were death.”

I embraced him, and he winced, covered in wounds new and old. I held him more carefully, clinging to him, covering his upper body in Segna’s blood.

His voice came rough with coughing. “I’m holding the spear of bone. It was one of the signs of kingship once for my people.”

“Where did it come from?” I asked.

“It was in the bottom of the lake, waiting for me.”

“Where are we?” I asked.

“It’s the Island of Bones. It used to be in the middle of our garden, but it has become the stuff of legend.”

I touched what I’d thought was rock, and found he was right. It was rock, but the rock had once been bone. The island was made up of fossils. “It feels awfully solid for a legend,” I said.

He managed a smile. “What in the name of Danu is going on, Meredith?

What is happening?”

I smelled roses, thick and sweet.

He raised his head, looked around him. “I smell herbs.”

“I smell roses,” I said, softly.

He looked at me. “What is happening, Meredith? How did we get here?”

“I prayed.”

He frowned at me. “I don’t understand.”

The smell of roses grew thicker, as if I were standing in a summer meadow.

A chalice appeared in my hand, where it lay against Sholto’s naked back.

He startled away from the touch of it as if it had burned him. He tried to turn too quickly, and it must have pained the open wound on his stomach, for he winced, sucking in his breath sharply. He fell back onto his side, the spear still gripped in one hand.

I held up the gold-and-silver cup so that it caught the light. It was really only then that it sank in that there was light here. It was sunlight, glinting on the cup, and warm on my skin.

For my life, I couldn’t remember if there had been sun a moment ago. I might have asked Sholto, but he was focused on what was in my hand, and whispered, “It can’t be what I think it is.”

“It is the chalice.”

He gave a small shake of his head. “How?”

“I dreamt of it, as I dreamt of Abeloec’s horn cup, and when I woke it was beside me.”

He leaned heavily on the spear, and reached toward the shining cup. I held it out toward him, but his fingers stopped just short of it, as if he feared to touch it.

His reluctance reminded me that things could happen if I touched one of the men with the chalice. But weren’t we in vision? And if so, would that hold true? I looked at Segna’s body, felt her blood drying on my skin. Was this vision, or was it real?

“And is not vision real?” came a woman’s voice.

“Who said that?” Sholto asked.

A figure appeared. She was hidden completely behind the grey of a hooded cloak. She stood in the clear sunlight, but it was like looking at a shadow—a shadow with nothing to give it form.

“Do not fear the touch of the Goddess,” the figure said.

“Who are you?” Sholto whispered.

“Who do you think I am?” came the voice. In the past, she had always either appeared more solid or been only a voice, a scent on the wind.

Sholto licked his lips and whispered, “Goddess.”

My hand rose of its own accord. I held the chalice out to him, but it was as if someone else were moving my hand. “Touch the chalice,” I whispered.

He kept his grip on the spear, leaning on it, as he stretched out his other hand. “What will happen when I touch it?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Then why do you want me to do it?”

“She wants you to,” I said.

He hesitated again with his fingers just above the shining surface. The Goddess’s voice breathed around us with the scent of summer roses:

“Choose.”

Sholto took in a sharp breath and blew it out, like a sprinter, then touched the gold of the cup. I smelled herbs, as if I had brushed against a border of thyme and lavender around my roses. A black-cloaked figure appeared beside the grey. Taller, broader of shoulders, and somehow—even shrouded by the cloak—male. As the cloak could not hide the Goddess’s femininity, so the cloak could not hide the God’s masculinity.