The Dark Throne (57 page)

Vell dismounted, her
faehal
stamping and snorting. The horn, I realized, must have signaled a halt to the massive army behind her. At the edges of my vision I saw sentries gallop onward, halting and setting a perimeter at a small distance from the forward edge of the forces. Titania slid down from her mount, her pure white cape unblemished even as she strode forward through the dust. Mab dismounted last, her black
faehal
tossing its head until Ramel came forward to quiet it. I glanced at my old friend, resplendent in the same darkly gleaming armor as the Unseelie Queen, a blood-red ruby flashing in the pommel of the sword at his belt. He caught my gaze and gave me the barest of smiles before turning his attention back to the Queen’s mount.

Wisp reappeared, arcing over Vell’s shoulder. I tightened my ghostly Walker form, creating enough substance that I couldn’t see the ground through my outstretched hand. The beginning of a headache throbbed low in the base of my skull, warning me not to overreach in making my Walker form too much a part of the physical world. Wisp alighted on my shoulder as though it were perfectly normal for a Walker to become half-substantial; his diminutive form felt heavier than usual.

“Well met, Lady Bearer,” said Queen Titania gracefully.

“And to you as well, Queen Titania,” I replied with as much formality as I could muster.

“How fares the northern vanguard?” asked the High Queen, her golden eyes intent on my face.

“We have recovered the Seer and his three companions.” I knew that right now, Vell was the High Queen and I was the Bearer, but I still had to push down the impulse to grin and give her a sarcastic reply. I had a feeling that would ruin our stately bearing, and that just wouldn’t do in front of Titania, and especially not in front of Mab. “There was a Dark force pursuing them, but none of them were gravely wounded, nor were any of our warriors seriously injured in the battle.”

Vell grinned, a flicker of personality seeping through the queenly mask. “It is always good to wreak havoc on our enemies without any losses.”

I gave another nod. “Our captain has led us well. He told me that you requested my presence.” I felt the coldness of Mab’s impenetrable gaze as the Unseelie Queen stared silently at me. Wisp patted my ear in silent encouragement.

“Yes,” said Vell.

“We have refined the plan of our final assault,” said Titania. “The combined wisdom and experience of three Courts allowed us to consider the feasibility of many ideas.”

“This plan will take place after we’ve ridden back to join the army,” I said, more of a statement than a question. Of course Vell would need her Three—Finnead would need to return with his vanguard, and I needed to bring the power of the Sword to bear on Malravenar.

Something flickered in Vell’s golden eyes. Mab turned her head to look at the High Queen; the sudden freedom from her gaze hit me as an intensely physical sensation, as though a weight pressing in on me from all sides had suddenly lifted. I swallowed and took a deep breath, suddenly grateful that I was only half substantial. I didn’t really enjoy Walking anymore, probably because it reminded me of the ease with which I’d slipped between life and death. But right now I was thankful that I didn’t have to physically experience the power tightening the air as some unspoken struggle took place. Finally Mab looked away, and Vell took a deep breath.

“No,” the High Queen said. “You will not be joining our forces.”

“What about the other vanguards?” I asked. “Surely you aren’t asking us to fight on our own, or simply wait until the final battle is done.” I tried not to show my confusion.

“I recalled the southern and western vanguards almost a fortnight past,” said Vell, her face almost as smooth and unreadable as those of the Sidhe queens.

Her words fell like stones into my mind. I blinked but kept my expression as calm as I could. I could play at this game of courtesy and velvet inscrutability as well. I waited silently despite the questions raging through my mind.

“Your discipline has certainly improved, little mortal,” murmured Mab silkily.

I forced myself to meet her eyes. No hounds howled, no waves crashed, no bells sang through my mind. I felt a prickle of triumph and I made my voice steely. “I am the Bearer of the Iron Sword.”

Mab tilted her head slightly. A small, infuriating smile lifted her beautiful lips. “So you are.”

“The southern and western vanguards should rejoin us within two days,” continued Vell as if my exchange with Mab hadn’t happened. “And then we will ride to meet the Dark host.”

I wanted to cross my arms, but I forced myself to keep my hands at my sides. The last thing I needed was to look like a petulant child in front of these magnificent women. “So you will have your Three in the battle. What is our role?”

“We must face Malravenar in his physical form,” said Vell. “He has created a fortress, a henge near the scar which was once the Great Gate.”

“Wasn’t the Great Gate between the Seelie and Unseelie lands?” I asked, unable to pretend that I understood this twist in the geography I’d gleaned from my studies in Darkhill.

“We slid it eastward, when we realized the poison seeping from it,” said Titania. “It was not an easy task, but there are many layers to this land, not all of them immovable.”

“So as long as the poison was outside your borders, you didn’t have to think about it.” I couldn’t help myself. Wisp squeezed my ear warningly.

“We thought that perhaps if the locus of the Gate was pushed farther from our seats of power, it would diminish in power itself and dry up, like a lake after the river feeding it has been diverted.” Titania looked at me serenely. I remembered her sisterly embrace and felt ashamed at my accusation. But her small smile told me silently that I didn’t need to apologize.

I nodded. “All right. So Malravenar has his fortress near the Great Gate.”

“We believe the Seer was, at the least, a diversion,” said Vell. “If the enemy had captured your brother, there would certainly have been dire consequences. I recalled the southern and western vanguards when the Arrisyn located the Seer.” The
vyldretning
held up a hand at my wide eyes. “Just listen. Merrick located your brother a few days after the vanguards had set out, but then lost him again. You were still hundreds of leagues away from him, and a Seer is exceedingly hard to track. But I knew he was in the north. So I called back the other vanguards. The other Courts arrived. We held council and refined this plan.”

I took a deep breath and nodded. I wanted to ask why Vell hadn’t told us that Merrick had seen my brother in his scrying-glass, but then I thought that perhaps she’d told Luca, and
he’d
been the one to withhold it from me. Then I shook myself slightly. It didn’t matter. Vell was the High Queen. “All right, tell me this plan.”

“It will come at great cost,” said Mab. I decided I was imagining the slight undercurrent of sadness in her cold voice.

“It must be us who face Malravenar,” said Titania, spreading her hands to encompass me and the other two queens. “He wishes to destroy us, so we must destroy him.”

I tilted my head to one side, considering. “I think that was already a given, but it’s poetic.”

“Yes,” said Vell. “And we have discovered more about what created Malravenar.”

“He seeks to destroy us because of the source of our power,” said Mab.

I frowned. “The Morrigan.” The First, worshipped as a deity in the mortal world…and a remnant of which resided in one of Vell’s Three. I began to understand the sudden knowledge about the origins of Malravenar, and I wondered if Arcana had given up her secrets willingly.

“Long ago, he was the consort of the First Queen. The most powerful mage of his era, though that word as we understand it is perhaps not enough to describe the greatness of what he was,” Titania said, her mellifluous voice grave. “He became enamored with the darkest depths of his art. The First Queen warned her lover not to stray into the shadows, but the power over life and death was too tempting for him to resist.”

I felt a chill as I remembered the strange ease of slipping into the realm just beyond life, the gray cliffs appearing in my mind’s eye.

“The Morrigan bore a daughter,” continued Vell. “And just as she reached the flower of her womanhood, this daughter fell terribly ill.” A slight breeze lifted dust into the air around us. “And though she loved her daughter more than life itself, the First Queen could not save her. Knowing her father was walking deeper into the paths of shadow, the daughter begged her mother not to let her father resurrect her.” Vell took a deep breath. Somehow the story, though it was thousands of years old, was still hard to tell. Both of the Sidhe queens looked reflectively at the ground. “So the Morrigan placed wards of secrecy around her daughter and held her as she died, whispering the words of safe passage into the halls of the gods. And when her daughter lay still and cold, the First Queen placed her body on a bier of roses and burned it until there was nothing but ash.”

“Ash cannot be resurrected,” said Mab in a low voice.

“When the consort of the First discovered the death of his daughter, he plunged into the darkness, deeper than he had ever gone. He could not resurrect his daughter’s body. In his rage and grief, he took an infant girl and drowned her, placing his dead daughter’s soul in the babe when he resurrected the infant.” Vell’s golden eyes were hard. I felt sick as the terrible origin tale continued. “But the Morrigan’s daughter had a strong soul, and she fought against her unnatural bondage in this new body. So the babe died again, and when the Morrigan discovered what her consort had done—when the mother of the murdered child prostrated herself before the throne, weeping—she banished Malravenar and named him cursed.”

“How was this not known before?” I asked quietly.

“It took a great amount of power for Arcana to remember,” replied Vell. “I would not have known how to draw the knowledge from her on my own.” She paused. “So in retribution for the death of his daughter and his banishment, Malravenar vowed to destroy the Morrigan and all her power. The power she had used to keep their daughter’s death secret, and the power she used to banish him from the bright, beautiful realm. The power that she later bestowed upon the queens.”

I took a moment to absorb the harrowing story. “So…now we know more about him. Which is good, I guess. But what’s the plan to defeat him?”

“Still impatient,” said Mab, but I ignored her.

“The bulk of our force will engage his army. It will be a hard fight,” acknowledged Titania.

Vell drew a small, silken gray pouch from her belt-purse, holding it out to me. It was as light as a bird in my palm, and at Vell’s nod I gently tugged the drawstrings apart. There were two objects in the pouch: a silver ring, too big to wear on a finger but too small to fit around a wrist; and a small glass orb, perfectly round and about the size of an egg. Where the light hit the ring, I glimpsed runes moving like oil on water over the silver surface. The orb’s translucent surface held no runes. “You couldn’t give this to the company’s other Walker.”

“Not all have your talents,” replied Vell with a smile.

I examined the runes on the oddly sized silver ring, but I felt no flash of recognition. And the orb seemed wholly ordinary, albeit that it was lovely in its simplicity, a perfect sphere.

“They may not look like it, but these took us nearly a fortnight to perfect,” said Titania.

“The silver ring will create a portal to our location tonight,” explained Vell, drawing an identical ring from her belt-purse.

“A portal like the tear in the veil?” I stared at the simple object.

“No. That was traveling between worlds. This is traveling within our own world. We created a spell that forms a pathway through the ether. The ring on this end will construct the other side to the portal.” Her golden eyes gleamed as she opened her other hand and showed me a blood-red ring. “With only one ring, the emergence point is fixed.”

“That sounds complex,” I murmured. I frowned. “If the silver rings are for us, what’s the red one for?”

Vell smiled her wolf-like smile and said, “To kill the enemy in his stronghold.”

“The process of creating these enchantments was fascinating,” Wisp whispered into my ear. “There were many rounds of trials before it was perfected.”

“Now,” said Vell, closing her hand around the scarlet ring again, “you need to listen carefully, Tess.”

“I always listen carefully,” I retorted, still examining the silver ring and the glass orb. Titania hid a smile and Vell narrowed her golden eyes.

“Of course you do,” the High Queen said dryly. “The ring takes a large amount of power to function properly. Each person that travels the pathway means that it will take more power to keep it stable.”

“The more people, the more power. Got it.”

“The ring is specifically to move
you
,” said Vell.

“But I
can
move others with it as well,” I clarified.

“Yes, but it will take a good amount of power,” replied Titania.

“How much power are we talking?” I looked at her intently. “Equal to or less than what it took to free you and crown Vell?”

She smiled slightly. “Perhaps a bit less than that.”

I nodded. “I’ll take it into consideration.”

“Well, regardless of whether you decide to take anyone else with you,” said Vell impatiently, “the rest of the plan is pretty simple. We bring our army to meet Malravenar’s host in the heart of the Deadlands. And then, when the battle has begun, and his attention focused on annihilating the entirety of our world’s warriors, we will use
this
portal to emerge into the heart of his fortress.” She held up the hand holding the scarlet ring.

“The orb will glow when we make camp for the night,” said Titania. Mab remained silent. “That will be the signal to use the portal.”

“So who all is coming, when we go to face Malravenar?” I asked softly. “I understand the general thought process…but isn’t leaving the army…isn’t that leaving them leaderless?” It seemed to me a very heartless choice.