Sons (Book 2) (66 page)

I thought we’d be clear then.  We’d have time to kick back a little while, relax, jump over and pack up the gifts.  Then grab a coupla dozen lawn chairs and kick back on the front lawn and wait for dusk.  It was a nice idea and was honestly what I had originally thought would happen last week when I asked Gordon if we could use this place again.

But Bishop
had to ask
if anybody had questions.  People started shouting questions at me like a press conference for an ill-tempered pop star.

Luckily I was more adept with shielding myself this time from the undercurrents of each person’s desires and wants.  It probably had a lot to do with the buffer of Jimmy and my extended family between everybody else.  Their questions ranged between the inane, swashbuckling, “tell us a story”-type from the younger ones to the highly technical type from the elder members.

“How big is your realm, Mr. McClure?” asked a Slavic man from a table in the middle of the room and to the left.  He spoke English with an affected British accent, so he was likely educated in England, though his demeanor and magic defined him as clearly as his mindset.  “Perhaps in relation to say, Ireland or the United States?”

“Well, I haven’t exactly measured anything,” I said.  “I have taken a pair of nymphs to see the sea for the first time and that was quite a distance from where we started.  Off-hand, I’d say that Gilán was bigger than Ireland.”  And I left it at that.  It wasn’t an answer to his question but I didn’t really want to give him one, either.

“Nymphs?” remarked a Swedish man from a nearby table.  “Your previous accounts reported that you only took brownies, sprites and a few fairies with you from MacNamara’s Arena.  There were nymphs as well?”

“No, but there are now,” I said.  “This was my first pair.  Another three pair showed up a few days later, along with a few other types that hadn’t come over with Dad and me.”

“What about the palace that you’ve mentioned twice now?” the Slavic man asked.  “How big is that?  Surely in such a short time you haven’t managed to cobble together something as grand as the Cahill Castle.”

“Mr. Malekovic,” I said, pulling his name from his mind and definitely noticing the irony in his name as translated in English.  “You seem to have a psychological issue with size.  Is there something you feel you need to discuss with the group?”

As the roar of laughter went around the room at the Slavic wizard’s expense, I took a moment to alert Ellorn to a thirty-minute warning that I’d promised him.  The brownie was already waiting beside the well with the cases sitting on the ledge.  He had four others with him and they were quite happy to watch the world-gem turn slowly above the pool while they waited.

“One more question and then I’m afraid I have to run home for a moment and collect the items I’m giving to the emissaries for the Queens tonight,” I said, letting my voice boom through the tent again.

“You’re giving the Queens gifts?  May we see them?” Bishop asked.

“An odd last question,” I said, grinning.  “I believe that I can let you see the
outside
of them.  The inside is too personal, though.  Be back in a few minutes.”  I shifted to the well as I stood.  “They are driving me bonkers,” I said to Ellorn, exasperated, surprising them with my sudden appearance.  They were startled and ran for the bushes, except Ellorn.  He giggled as he turned to me after briefly watching his folks dart for cover.

“We can sympathize, my Lord,” he squeaked cheerfully.  I had to smile at that one, certain that we confused him constantly.  His companions eased out of the underbrush and planters now, realizing it was me who’d startled them, even though it couldn’t have been anyone else.

“What did y’all come up with?” I asked as I stepped closer to the well’s ledge to inspect the empty containers.  I came to the Seelie Queen’s first and examined it carefully.  They’d managed to make the container almost as much a gift as the diamond itself.  It was a flowerpot.  Five sides of the six-sided design were different stones and bore different flowers etched in fine bas-relief.  The sixth side bore familiar marking, “A Gift from Daybreak.”  This panel was larger than the others.  Touching my name, I felt a slight click on the surface of the light blue marble and the panel pulled away with my hand.  Under the panel nestled in a niche of some sort of spongy material sat the replica of the diamond I was giving to her.  I tugged at the clay model then slipped the real on one inside and replaced the panel.

Then I glanced through the soil that they’d placed in the pot, wondering about seeds.  “I take it that the pictured flowers are what’s in the dirt?” I asked Ellorn.

“Yes, Lord,” he said with a small tremor in his voice.  “We are fairly certain that these particular flowers have been extinct in Faery for many centuries, though considering our positions, we cannot be certain of that.  We are confident that they will not grow outside of Gilán’s influence, so with a Gilán diamond hidden in its base…”

“Clever,” I said appreciatively.  “I don’t suppose you thought to make a carrying case for the carrying case?”

“Yes, Lord,” he grinned up at me.  “Two versions, one for if you wanted to grow one of the flowers before presenting it and one for if you did not.”

What the hell was going on with these guys?  They were turning out to be a lot smarter than I thought brownies and sprites were supposed to be and certainly a lot stronger as well.

“Were y’all able to do this type of thing before you came here?” I asked as I threw a small part of my consciousness into the pot to find a seed to sprout.  It wasn’t hard; they’d put dozens there about two to three inches below the top.  Picking one at random, I urged it to life.

“Honestly, Lord Daybreak, I don’t remember much from my life before coming here,” Ellorn said somewhat pensively.  “Just a great deal of fear overriding every facet of my mind and then there you were with a joy that we have never seen.  You share that with us and our lives have meaning now.”

The little sprout burst up through the soil then, visibly growing larger.  I cupped my hands in the well water and dropped some into the pot to help the little seedling along.  At its current growth rate, it should blossom in just a few minutes, then I’d have to slow it down.

The Unseelie Queen’s case sat a yard further along the ledge and looked remarkably similar to the first case.  The sides were more colorful examples of the same flowers as the pot, but it had a top of solid black, marble or obsidian, I couldn’t tell, where the dirt should be.  Suspecting that there was more to this item than just a similarity, I touched one of the colorful sides.  Immediately the image on the side began to fall away like sand, but slowly reform in the center of the black top, duplicating the flower in three dimensions.

“Damn, Ellorn, this is beautiful!” I said once the flower was fully formed.

“We thank you, Lord Daybreak,” the brownie said shyly and bowed deeply.  The four that hid earlier now stood behind him and bowed with him, standing when he did.  They were watching him closely for clues on how to act in my presence.  Joyful they may be, but I still scared the crap out of them.  “There are more variations within the Seelie’s pot than the Unseelie’s.  We were hoping that would balance the permanence of one over the other.”

I touched the black top and the flower began flowing backward onto the side panel again.  Touching the front released that panel and revealed the clay model.  Exchanging the clay disk for the gem, I asked, “And I image you’ve engineered this to only work under Gilán’s influence as well?”

Ellorn giggled and said, “We know no other way, Lord.”

“Every time I turn around, you guys are making me proud,” I said to the five of them.  “For the second time, I have asked for a case for a gift and you have given me a case that rivals the gift itself.”

As the six of us began packing the two pots into plain wooden crates, the faery in the Palace started singing happily.

I wasn’t planning on doing it and Ellorn definitely didn’t expect it.  Neither did his companions.  It occurred to me as we crated the pots.  They would have to get used to it sooner or later, anyway.

“Okay, I think this’ll take care of ‘em,” I said as we closed the lid around the glass dome of the white and fiery red of the delicate flower that bloomed in the Seelie Queen’s flowerpot.  I’d already slowed the plant’s growth rate down to nearly nothing and now we just had to protect what had grown.  The stasis that I’d implemented felt like it would remain until some outside force removed it; it wasn’t that strong a field.

“I think I need an entourage,” I said, sitting on the ledge again.  “You guys think you’re up to it?”

The five brownies froze in place, then turned slowly to face me.  “You want us to accompany you, Lord?” Ellorn asked carefully.

“Mm-huhm,” I intoned, nodding.  “You don’t have to do much, mostly just socialize with some humans, stay near the gifts and the First and me.  We’ll be watching you anyway to make sure no one makes any aggressive moves.  You already know the more powerful people there, Ellorn.”

“I should have someone take my responsibilities while I am away, sir,” Ellorn said.  “Freyson, I think, would be suitable.”

Searching the Palace, I found the brownie Ellorn asked for and watched him a moment before I called.  He explored the far reaches of the Palace and at that moment, he was in the depths of a laundry room, trying to see where the dirty water drained, I think.  Making the call to him gentle so I didn’t startle him, I shifted him directly from the dark hole.

“First off, it’s great that you explore the Palace,” I said casually, “but nobody should go into confined places like that without someone close by.  You could have slipped and fallen, maybe gotten stuck somehow.  So from now on, everybody exploring either goes out in pairs or explores no farther than shouting distance, understood?”

“Yes, Lord Daybreak,” both Ellorn and Freyson said in unison.  It made me feel like I was chastising kindergartners.

Chuckling, I said, “Go ahead and tell him what you need, Ellorn.  We need to get a move on.”  Should’ve plugged my ears first, but their conversation was brief, piercing but brief.  I concentrated on Jimmy and my perspective shifted to see out into the tent of wizards, and someone apparently had asked him a question.

“I have absolutely no idea,” Jimmy answered, directing his eyes at a Hispanic wizard from one of the South American groups who I hadn’t met yet.  “But I can’t imagine ever wanting it.  I mean, it’s a freaking dream job, man!”  Several people laughed and many chuckled, so apparently he had a goofy grin on his face.

Jimmy, would you mind clearing this side of the table for us, please?
I sent to him, indicating the entire right side of the table. 

“Yes, Lord,” Jimmy answered as if I stood beside him.  “Gentlemen, Daybreak needs this side of the table.  Would you mind?”

Turning back to my sextet, “Thank you for taking over, Freyson.  We’ll get you back to exploring as soon as possible.  Now we’re going mostly for show.  First we’re going to show a gaggle of human wizards the carrying cases that you’ve devised and then we’re going to show the cases and the stones to the Emissaries.  Then we’ll send you home.  Okay?

“Now if I could get two of you on each case acting as if you’re setting it down,” I asked them.  They did it, but not together.  It came out as an odd sort of clown act that didn’t quite work.  The boxes were quite heavy now, too heavy for two brownies at a time to lift.  “Let’s try it all together on three, just up and then back down.  Okay, ready?  One, two, three, up!”  I shifted us, changing our positions relative to where the brownies were and where I wanted them to end up on the table.  Considering how heavy the cases were now, I also took the precaution of reinforcing the table, too, forming a Stone shield box underneath.

The illusion worked perfectly.  The brownies appeared to be setting the two crates onto the tabletop just as I phased us into reality.  Ellorn looked on, watching protectively over the pairs of them. 

“Ladies and gentlemen, our time is short,” I boomed through the tent as the brownies quickly uncrated the pots again.  “Once again, my faery have provided me with wonderfully clever packaging and have very nearly outshined my gifts to the Queens.  Please line up and remember that there are others that would like to see as well.  We will be leaving here for the drive in no more than thirty minutes.”

People lined up in front of us in such a huge rush that it reminded me of news footage of riots I’d seen recently.  It mildly amused me as I reached around the pots and unlatched the fronts of both to reveal the diamonds inside.  Then I tapped the rear panel of the Unseelie pot to grow that example of stonemasonry.  The gasps and excitement from the wizards was worth it.  Kieran walked up behind me to examine the stone flower closely.

“Seth, this is beautiful craftsmanship!” he said quietly not taking his eyes off the flower.  “It looks as though they used living models.”

“We did, Lord Kieran,” Ellorn piped up, then answered another’s question with, “Yes, ma’am, that is a real diamond.”

Shrank flew off Kieran’s shoulder, showing himself for the first time today, and flew circles around everything and everyone standing on the table, squealing greetings to the faery as he rounded them.  He was hovering chest-high in front of Kieran in a flash.

“Yes, Lord Kieran, there are several examples of all these flowers depicted both in the Palace and without, though I’ve never seen them in Faery itself,” he told Kieran, backing up Ellorn’s statement.  “They’re mostly around the Palace gardens.”

“They may have outdone you, Seth,” Kieran muttered.  “I’m pretty sure most of those are extinct in Faery now.”

Peter barked a laugh out, grinning.  “You might want to take a closer look at the diamond before you say that, Kieran,” he said, then whispered more quietly, “He packed it full.”

The confusion on his face made sense.  Kieran hadn’t worked with the keys at all since he didn’t use one.  Peter had seen into Dillon’s and we’d had to work on a method to activate it for him since he isn’t able to do it himself.  Still, he knew the concept of what I did.  I could see him pushing his consciousness onto the surface of the Queen’s lock and, much like my father’s oubliette, I’d done my work well—he wasn’t getting past it without breaking the diamond into thousands of pieces.  I intervened and pushed the Queen’s personality aside for a moment, allowing him to see below the surface.

Kieran’s jaw dropped as he took in the first scene, so I let him look and watched the brownies as the parade of people trooped by quickly.  Ethan was curious and slipped in beside Kieran while the lock was down.  As they tripped through several incarnations of Faery landscapes, I surveyed the front of the castle and the sun’s current level, estimating about forty minutes before nightfall.

“Two-minute warning,” I called through the tent to the thirty-odd people still standing in line to get a chance to see my prizes up close.  The line began moving faster as the rear started pushing impatiently at the front.  I ignored the grousing as Kieran came out of his stupor.

“Well, together they’re certainly damn clever gifts,” he said smiling.  “And I think they’ll be received well.  Damn fine job all around, little brother.”

“As long as you’re not doing it to get laid by one of them, I’m happy,” Ethan chimed in, then laughed at my uncontrolled shudder at the unbidden memory of their seeking spells.

“Our apologies, sir, but our time has been exceeded,” Ellorn said to the remainder of the line as the other four brownies replaced the front covers while I was distracted.

“Thank you, Ellorn,” I said, tossing that memory aside as quickly as possible.  “I believe we can get by for the next leg with just the dome over the flower to protect it from the wind, okay?”  I touched the back panel on the stone flower’s pot to make the design refill from the top down and disappear from the black top.  Once they had the clear dome settled, I wrapped all of us–brownies and brothers alike–in portals and moved us to the center of the circular drive.

Gordon and his parents along with my parents stood on the center of the driveway.  His people held the other wizards at bay up the hill a fair distance away.  Without a word to each other, Kieran, Ethan, Peter, and I each faced a different direction and began searching the grounds again.  I created a shelf of energy, painted a marbled veneer over it and slid the flowerpots on top.  The brownies hopped up beside them, dangling their legs off the sides, waiting and watching.

The wards buzzed three times loudly and Enid and my mother started up the steps to their places while the others started over to us.  Martin appeared in the open doorway to the foyer and yelled out to everyone, “We’re ready whenever you are, Gordon!”

“Go ahead and bring up the mains then, Martin!” Gordon yelled back.  “Looks like about fifteen minutes before the sun starts to hit the horizon, Seth.  Marty will have the Castle ready in a minute and we’ll be ready to go.”

Guffawing, I said, “Yeah, and just won’t it be my luck to get stood up?”

“I don’t see anything,” Ethan said, coming out of his stupor and shaking his head.  “Are you grousing about not having a date for the prom?  Ask Dillon; he’ll take you.”

“Hey!” Peter cried, shaking off his searching, too. 

Kieran simply turned around and joined the conversation.  “If they do not, then that makes them a lesser issue in our considerations.  Frankly, we can use that right now, so here’s hoping.”

“Yeah, like anything with him has been simple,” Ethan said sarcastically.  He plopped back into the lawn chairs that Gordon setup.  We followed suit as the castle front darkened more as the sun set behind it and cast pinks, purples, and reds into slightly cloudy sky.  The power of the castle itself began a minor counterpoint ebb of color in yellow and gold from the ley lines as it halted their flows, capping their power for its use. 

Someone in the castle was singing lightly, just humming really.  I caught the voice, though, and followed it through the wards.  He wasn’t particularly a good singer or loud, but it followed the Castle up to full power as the sun told a glorious goodbye to today.  It wasn’t until the end of the Old Irish folk song that I realized it was Marty who’d been humming the exciting tune and he’d timed it perfectly to hit the crescendo on last light. 

“What a show-off!” Gordon muttered cheerfully, clapping his father on the back while watching his little brother intently for signs of stress.

“Seth!  We have elves at the western gate!” Marty yelled from the Castle.

“See?  You didn’t get stood up,” Ethan said as we all headed for the steps.

“Now he’ll obsess over the corsage,” Peter muttered as he hurried past us.

“Okay, guys,” I said to the brownies.  “Two more little hops and we’ll have you home again.”  I moved Jimmy and the brownies to the foyer with me to a point that wasn’t in a direct line of sight to the outside.  Marty skidded across the tiles to me excitedly.

“Can I get a look?  Gordon rushed me out just after you left and I have no idea what you’re giving them,” he asked eagerly as Dad and my brothers hustled in the front doors.

“They’re coming a lot faster this time,” Dad said as they rushed in.

“Sure, Marty, just don’t touch,” I said.  “We don’t want any psychic residue that they can trace back to you or anything weird like that.”  Then I rose up into the wards to view the elves’ progress.  I should have just looked out the door.

Marty might be standing in front of me looking at the pretty pots, but up in the wards he was quite actively working several different protocols and moving seamlessly between them.  Gordon may have been right.

Dad was.  The elves were quite a lot faster this time.  They were already waiting on the driveway, mostly exactly as the last time, but there were some notable differences.  The lead elf was astride his magnificent and impossibly tall stallion with the chestnut coat and perfect starburst pattern on its forehead.  The entire front line of elves matched perfectly, as if it had been carved in granite and simply dropped into place again a week later.  They did stand as if carved in stone, not a muscle moving on either horse or rider.

“Well, the comic books got them all wrong,” Jimmy said with a snort.  He was leaning against the stairs and looking out the front doors at the elves.  He’d pulled back his aura and now looked wholly human, his stick put away on his thigh.  “I like ours better.”  Ellorn glanced up to me, grinning.

“There are some notable differences in the lineup from last time,” Marty said, centering his attention back onto the driveway.  “One couple from each side has been replaced with another.  Other than that, they feel exactly the same.  The changes to the wards aren’t showing anything either.  It looks clear.”

“Thanks, Marty,” I told him, avoiding touching him.  He was wired into a considerable load of power at the moment and while it might be interesting to see what would happen if we cross-wired each other, I don’t believe it would have been pleasant for either of us.  “You’re doing a hell of a job!  Jimmy, stay where you are and watch the boys for me.  I’ll call when I’m ready for you.”

The Castle was ablaze in human magic, strong and organized but stunted with emotion and personal energies.  In the Castle, it formed a powerful gestalt that rose beyond its meager beginnings.  The Cahills had something to be proud of here, but it was a maelstrom of energy.  Added to that the major helping of wizards on the hillside all clutching at defensive spellwork.