Summer (21 page)

“Better,” she said. Her merriment echoed off the castle ramparts. “So much better. At last we begin to wake from self-induced stupor. Exactly as we should. Wake, and dance, and taste anticipation. For soon enough the Way will be open and we’ll be riding to war.”

The handful of
sidhe
on the ice and the gathering group on the hill near the castle let out a ragged cheer. Someone, and Siobahn thought maybe it was Alice in her fishnet stockings, loosed a piercing whistle.

“Less than thirty.” Nightingale climbed nimbly onto the bench at Siobahn’s side. It was careful to keep its poisonous cloak from her flesh but small puffs of black fog fell from the ragged hem and spread like ink droplets on the concrete below. “You expect to take back the throne with this motley lot? Why, half of them are mad as Finvarra and the other slice undernourished.”

“You will win back my throne,” Siobahn said for Nightingale’s ears alone. “The rest is but window dressing, easily swapped out.”

Nightingale stared up and across at the
sidhe
cavorting again on the ice and undulating on the castle walls, made fantastic and unearthly by the light of the torches and the cloying scent of weeping lilacs. His face, human and wary and youthful, was as easy to read as a volume of his own poetry. Siobahn saw at once that he grieved her exiles even as they danced.

“You care so little for them,” it wondered. “Even as they love you still.”

“Those I loved are dead or gone,” Siobahn retorted. She wrapped the bear pelt more tightly about her body. “All that matters now is my throne and
Tir na Nog
. In that, nothing has changed at all.”

“You and the false queen,” it mused, watching Barker as the red-headed
sidhe
scuffed across the ice on thick-soled boots and was immediately caught up in embrace after embrace, “bad as two wolf-bitches over the same fossilized bone.”

“Aye,” Siobahn agreed without rancor. “But ’twas Gloriana who ordered the Progress fed with the meat of her own people. Gloriana who used the syphoned blood of her subjects to magic up unnatural creations, Gloriana who stole away a passel of mortal wrights trained in human technologies.” She gifted it her sweetest smile. “If not for Gloriana, Nightingale, you might be residing still as Court musician, unchanged and sweet and doted upon. If not for Gloriana, wordsmith, you might still be loved, and you might be able to touch him freely without fear of watching him fail to naught but ash and memory.”

It stiffened and turned at last to look at her, obviously furious. She lifted a long finger to stall its vitriol.

“You’re bound to me, by that same blood magic that made you loathsome,” she said. “I’d hate to have you punished on a night such as this. Dawn’s still hours away and the lilacs are blooming mid-winter. I wish to dance in celebration until my feet ache. Now: sing, sing us a dance. Call my
fada
.”

Nightingale lowered its head in exaggerated obedience. It opened its mouth and sang.

“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing

A flowery band to bind us to the earth,

Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth

Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,

Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkn’d ways

Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,

Some shape of beauty moves away the pall

From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,

Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon

For simple sheep; and such are daffodils

With the green world they live in; and clear rills

That for themselves a cooling covert make

’Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,

Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:

And such too is the grandeur of the dooms

We have imagined for the mighty dead;

An endless fountain of immortal drink,

Pouring unto us from the heaven’s brink.”

Sunrise was but heartbeats away and Nightingale had lapsed into low verse, calling just above a whisper, its voice as beautiful an instrument as it was deadly. A few
sidhe
still danced but most had collapsed on the frozen lawn or lay sprawled on the ice. Several sat upon Belvedere’s turrets, waiting for the pink sign of dawn. Siobahn’s feet did indeed throb and her blood yet raced and she felt more alive than she had since Malachi had fallen beneath
Buairt’s
poisonous tooth.

The heels of her boots were cracked from dancing. She’d lost the bear pelt somewhere in the night but she knew Morris would retrieve it for her and wasn’t worried. Katherine Grey and her human lover were sitting together beneath a spitting torch, lost in quiet talk. Siobahn did not think they were speaking of treason, not from the way their fingers clasped and unclasped. She could so easily be jealous of those small, casual touches and of the frantic couplings she knew were occurring deeper in the park.
Sidhe
passions were rising to the spell of Nightingale’s tongue and that was all the better for Siobahn.

She followed the sound of its voice across the flat ice and found Carran still dancing on the edge between pond and concrete path. He grinned at her, impudent in his youth. Suddenly she missed Winter so painfully she bent in two with the shock of it.

“Majesty!” Carran gripped her shoulders and kept her upright. “Majesty, are you ill?”

“Nay.” She managed a grimace and forced herself upright. It wouldn’t do to dwell on regret, especially where her son was concerned. “Nay, only tired. Here, boy, help me to the bench and I’ll sit a while.”

Carran did as she asked, all the while looking about for Morris. Morris, who was probably seeing to the breaking of the Glamour, because Siobahn recognized the trace of orange overhead. She sat heavily on the bench near Nightingale’s left foot, careful as always not to brush the monster’s miasma.

Nightingale didn’t falter in calling, but it did glance down in acknowledgement.

“The queen is weary,” Carran said. “She’ll sit here while I find her man.” The young
sidhe
wheeled and darted away into the new morning.

Siobahn folded her hands in her lap and wished she hadn’t dropped her pelt. It was very cold now, so close to the frozen pond and with the sun not yet in the sky. Across the pond the lilac blossoms had stopped dripping sap and were laced with frost.

Nightingale stopped singing.

“You’re weeping, Majesty,” it said in a voice like silver bells, beautiful and terrible at the same time. “What sorrow takes you?”

“No sorrow,” Siobahn retorted. She brushed at her cheeks in disbelief and found that they were indeed wet. “It’s only reaction to the dance, Nightingale. Joy. Aye, certainly, joy.”

Nightingale crouched, bending its bony knees until they were face to face.

“Joy is warm,” it mused. “You’re shivering.”

It spoke true. Siobahn’s flesh rose in goose pimples and her thighs and forearms quivered. She mentally cursed Morris for a laggard and wondered if she dared conjure warmth in front of her exiles. Would they see it for weakness, that she shook while they basked in the warmth of their own exertion?

To her horror more tears welled and ran over her lashes and down her cheeks, into her mouth, salty and chill.

“Majesty,” Nightingale said sadly, even as its mouth curled into a faint smile. “Let me help.”

Siobahn looked up in surprise, but not in time.

Nightingale reached out, flesh and black wire glistening, and brushed a single knuckle across her cheek. It soothed her tears with a gentle touch.

The Fay Queen suffered a burst of painful surprise and then there was nothing at all.

The
sluagh
were living in a mountain. I’m not sure why I was surprised; even away from the lake they wouldn’t survive long out in the poisonous atmosphere. I think maybe I expected burrows in the ground or some sort of camp with sheltering walls built up of black stone. But, no, the Prince had commandeered a mountain the size of the Matterhorn and somehow made it its castle.

“Grown out of the ground,” Gabby said. We stood smack dab center of a narrow suspension bridge, cataracts of clean smelling water roaring beneath us. The moon was far enough in the sky we had light again. As the horizon brightened so had the mountain appeared, a cracked tooth in the gray sky. “Very old
sidhe
magic, and powerful.” She rolled her shoulders under her robes. In the new twilight I could see streaks of dirt on her hem and up her skirts from when she’d stumbled or fallen on our journey up the foothills.

I’d been led to believe conjuring a Gate was extraordinary. But the Dread Host had managed to conjure an entire mountain.

“They were very powerful once, the Royal Hunt,” Gabby agreed. She looked away from the mountain, leaning over the side of the bridge instead. I followed her lead, breathing deeply. The spray from the river rose in great clouds, droplets beading on our faces and soothing our parched lips. I stuck out my tongue, tasting greedily.

“Looks like something off the Potomac,” I said after a moment, meaning the bridge. “How’s that even possible?”

“Wright-work,” Gabby replied. I had no idea what she was talking about but she didn’t seem inclined to explain so I let it be.

“If they’ve taken Richard and Aine into that,” I said, frowning back up at the angry precipice, “we’re going after. Look, see how the road widens? And that’s the front door to Moria if I’ve ever seen one.” Even from down below I could tell the dark gape in the mountain’s face was big enough to spit out several
sluagh
at once.

“Best not enter by the front door, I think.” Gabby leaned against thick bronze chains, turning her head, seeking this way and that. I couldn’t guess what she was looking for. It made sense that there was more than one way in. Every good fortress has an emergency exit. I just wasn’t sure how she planned to find it.

“It’ll be the water,” my mentor said. “Refuse flows downhill.”

I licked sweet spray from my lips and let her see my doubt. She shook her head. Our hike and the wind off the river had pulled strands of white hair from her braids, turning the crown of her head into a puff. I thought she looked just a bit like a dandelion gone to seed.

She snuffed her starlight and pointed below, past the bridge and ahead to where the river bounced along the foot of the mountain.

“Follow the water backwards,” she explained, “until we find the sewer tribute. Then trace that in, I think.”

I
thought she’d spent too much time as a mouse running in the Metro tunnels but I didn’t dare say so out loud. She wagged a finger at me.

“Foolish child. This is the
óstach fiáin
, the host of hosts, born of the fay Court. They may be monsters, but they weren’t always, and they’d never fain live in the filth. They raised a mountain. Certainly they also managed baths and latrines and the like?”

I laughed because Gabby sounded so certain. The situation was absurd. Cliché, the oldest trick in the book. Who needed a back door when you could sneak in through the sewers?

Then I tried to imagine the malformed, wretched
sluagh
Prince ordering up a stone urinal or soaking tub and laughed harder.

Gabby’s cheeks crinkled in quiet amusement. “Come,” she ordered. “You’ve young, sharp eyes. Help me find the way down.”

It took some work and a lot of courage and even more precious time, but eventually we discovered a bit of cliff beneath the bridge where the stone was less a sheer drop and more an abrupt descent. I took off my Doc Martens, hung them around my neck, and we picked our way slowly down the rock face. Not for the first time I was glad of my
sidhe
heritage. Finger holds that would have baffled the human eye were clear to mine. My bare toes easily found crevices that would have made a monkey stretch. Lizard-like we scaled a good fifty-foot drop with ease.

I couldn’t help thinking of that old movie,
Nosferatu
, one of Lolo’s Halloween favorites, and then I remembered Brother Dan’s thinly veiled references to demons. I thought about the church consecrated sword,
Buairt
, and how it turned
sidhe
to helpless lumps and then to corpses all because it had once been blessed by some guy in a miter who believed in good and evil, black and white.

Belief is a really powerful thing.

We reached the bottom of the cliff without falling to our deaths, which was no mean accomplishment, even for two fay. By the time we touched ground my fingers and toes were cramped. I was light-headed from forgetting to breathe. A narrow shore of black sand ran on either side of the busy river. The grit was cold and wet and my feet sank into the ground, but the water was clean and nothing burned.

There were plants growing in the shallows beneath the bridge, green mossy things with short, thin roots. Gabby pulled a handful from the water. Her mouth moved but I couldn’t hear what she said. I put my hands to my ears, thinking maybe Siobahn’s gems were reasserting themselves, but then I realized I couldn’t hear her in my skull, either.

It was the roar of the river, of course, but it had been so long I didn’t recognize white noise when it blew every other sound to nothing. Like the plume of spray, the barrage of water over rock brought a measure of odd peace, a surcease of sensation when I’d been so long with nothing but painful input.

Reluctantly, I tapped my ears again, this time making a point of catching Gabby’s attention.

“Can’t hear you!” I shouted. I felt the press of air in my lungs and the exhale of sound through my throat and the vibration of words in the bone bridge of my nose, but the river washed away the noise. It was lovely. I hated to have it spoiled.

“Oh, aye,”
Gabby said in my head, spoiling it.
“I keep forgetting
—
Never mind. It’s threadwort, you see? Very valuable, even across the Way. Strange that it’s taken root here.”

I shrugged my shoulders, making the boots around my neck bang against my chest. I opened my mouth on a question, then clicked it shut again. She wouldn’t hear me, either, obviously. Not the natural way.

Pushing an internal dialogue into another person’s head is like threading a needle while wearing dark glasses. It isn’t impossible, but it also isn’t easy. At least for me. I’d managed before once or twice, with Richard, who’d hated it, and Bran, who’d claimed a headache after, and once with Aine. But it isn’t my particular strength. I just don’t have that sort of finesse.

“Maybe the ghouls are gardeners as well as architects,”
I tried to infuse the thought with as much sarcasm as possible. By the twist of her mouth, I could see it worked.
“Down river?”
Past the bridge the river roared over a gentle incline then crooked sharply west to curve around the Matterhorn.

She nodded. We slipped under the darker shadow of the bridge and then back again beneath the white moon. Black sand squished pleasantly between my toes as we navigated the edge of the riverbed. I was glad we’d left pebbles and scree behind. The damp off the river seemed to ease those blisters on my hands and face that weren’t already soothed by Gabby’s blood salve. I knew it was probably my imagination. As far as I could tell the river water wasn’t anything special. It was just clean.

Gabby gathered more threadwort as we walked. I wondered if she planned to carry a bouquet of the things through the mountain. Assuming we ever found our way inside. Secretly I thought we’d end up using the front door and hoping for the best.

I was wrong. The river grew deeper, quieter and slower as it hit the edge of the mountain, becoming a pale, peaceful watercourse beneath the white moon. Thin fingerlings ran off the foothills, trickling over rock and slope and into the greater torrent. Most of the feeder streams were hardly more than rivulets and not what Gabby was searching for.

When we stumbled across the
sluagh
sewer we almost didn’t recognize it. I would have walked right past it if not for the sudden burst of stink. It wasn’t so much run-off as a slick of mud and things much worse, painting the rock in a sluggish gray trickle.

“Oh, fuck me,” I sighed, rolling an eye at Gabby. “Really?”

The river was slow enough now that she might have heard me, but if she did, she pretended ignorance. She only paused to tie her gown up around her legs and waist, baring long pale legs. She bundled gathered threadwort safely in the hem, then scrambled off the riverbed and onto the mountain, tracking up and along the slick of sewer.

I put on my boots and followed. The foothills were much less sheer at this level, and we were able to shuffle up and along without too much difficulty. In fact, I quickly realized that my mentor was, as usual, quite correct. The disgusting run-off wasn’t naturally occurring. Some worker of miracles had managed to cut a shallow trough up and along the spine of the mountain. The trough was smooth as well-laid concrete, and if not for the stink and shock of
sluagh
garbage and shit, it might have been a pleasant climb.

“I hate this,” I said when we were far enough above and away from the river. “Air’s getting bad again, and I don’t mean crap stink.” My eyes were smarting with more than sewer fumes and I could feel the burn of bad air against my already damaged face. I’d barely had time to heal from the Cold Fire burns I’d earned in the pit beneath the Metro, and the new skin on my ear and eyebrows was sensitive.

“There,” Gabby said calmly. She didn’t so much point as incline her body. “Do you see? Just up ahead. There’s the mouth of it.”

I wiped my face with my wrist, blinked a few times, and finally picked out a darker shadow against black rock. The mouth of a small cave, not much wider than my shoulders, set into the side of the mountain just above our trough.

I paused. Craning my neck, I looked up. The mountain rose sharp and straight over our heads. If I leaned back and squinted I thought I could see the blot of the ’front door’ a skyscraper’s length still above us. I looked back down at the river. Even as we’d scaled the slope we were still not yet even with the bridge. We’d only lost elevation and the mountain looked very, very tall indeed.

When I squinted back up at the peak I thought I could see something pass between the white moon and the sheer summit. Then again, and again, until the garish orb was nearly blotted out by the clot of distant wings.

“
Sluagh
,” I realized. From this distance they looked small and insubstantial as sparrows, but I knew better. I’ve spent half my life chasing the monsters; I’d recognize them from three worlds away. “They’re outside the mountain.”

And pissed off, I thought, but didn’t bother saying out loud. It was obvious from the agitated swoop and roil of the distant ghouls that something was up.

“Now what?” I wondered. Whatever was going on up there, it had to do with Richard and Aine, I just knew it. A good part of me wanted to kick up a fuss and diversion, catch their attention, draw them away from the peak.

“And then?” Gabby demanded. “Throw stones whilst they smash us against the river bed? Use your head, child. We’re no good to anyone as we are, clinging to the side of a mountain.” She stood on her toes and peered into the mouth of the sewer. “It’s not so bad,” she said. “Drier in than out.  Boost me up, please.”

She sounded suspiciously eager. Too much time as a mouse, I figured. Preferring tight spaces to open air. Exposed on the side of a mountain, the
sluagh
army flocking overhead, I realized I couldn’t blame her. She was right. We’d do no one any good perched as we were without weapon or defense.

I tried not to think of Richard and Aine as I turned away from the blotted sun and grasped Gabby with both hands around her waist.

“On three,” I warned. “One. Two. Three.”
Sidhe
are bird-bone light. A little heave and then she was in, reaching down to pull me after.

It was a simple tunnel, remarkable only for the smooth, curved walls and ceiling, a perfectly proportioned half pipe. The bottom was trenched but mostly dry. It made me wonder if maybe there were a lot fewer ghouls using the system than when the mountain was first raised.

The ceiling brushed the top of my head, which made it low. Gabby had to bend her knees. We shuffled forward maybe twenty feet before the roof and walls opened up. We stumbled out of the tunnel and stopped.

The space around us felt cavernous but it was difficult to tell because the only light came from a handful of sickly blue orbs struggling to chase away darkness. I stood very still, straining past the pounding of my heart in my ears. I could hear the drip of sewer behind us, and Gabby’s nervous panting, and a faint humming that reminded me of the vibrations I picked up along the Metro line.

“No Wards,” Gabby said after a moment. “What have they to guard against but themselves?”