The Faerie Path (8 page)

Anita spotted Gabriel on the far side of the hall. He was in conversation with Edric. She had not noticed Edric in the hall before, and the sight of that familiar but now achingly unknown face gave her quite a jolt.

She pushed away her feelings of betrayal. Why did Edric’s treachery hurt her so much? This was only a
dream
; why did seeing him make her feel so bad?

“And then there’s Gabriel,” she murmured under her breath. She turned to Sancha and said more loudly, “Back then, before I disappeared…had Gabriel captured my heart? He must have, if I was going to marry him, but I can’t remember it at all.”

Sancha looked thoughtful. “You seemed content to marry him,” she said at last. “But I know not whether you truly loved him.”

Anita stared at her in surprise. “Really? Why do you say that?”

“The marriage would have brought together two great houses of Faerie,” Sancha explained. “Our own house and the House of Weir. You knew our father longed for an alliance with the powerful Dukedom of the North. When Gabriel proposed to you, I think you may have agreed to the marriage partly to please our father.”

“It seemed to me that you were dazzled by the glamour and the excitement of it all,” Cordelia added, overhearing. “But you liked Gabriel well enough, I
believe.” She watched him across the room. “He is a handsome man, I dare say, for those who admire such things.”

Suddenly Zara appeared in front of them. “What’s this!” she exclaimed, snatching at Anita’s hands. “Weary already? Fie! The night is young; come, I have called for your favorite dance—Fine Companion. It will blow away all the cobwebs! On your feet, lazy-bones; there is many a measure to tread before dawn!”

Anita gave Sancha and Cordelia a helpless grin as she was towed onto the dance floor by her tireless sister.

It was not until three more dances had passed that Anita was able to escape Zara’s attentions. Slightly dizzy from being spun around and around, she made her way through the courtiers, looking for a place to sit and rest for a while.

Suddenly a hand grasped her wrist and a familiar voice hissed close to her ear. “We must talk.”

She turned her head and saw Edric’s face at her shoulder.

For a split second she was vividly reminded of another time when a boy she knew as Evan Thomas had taken hold of her wrist.

A concert, a few months ago in North London. Loud rock music, battering at her ears, electric guitars screaming through her head, the bass rumbling in the pit of her stomach. The dance floor heaving with sweating bodies. Strobe lights raking the darkened walls. And her in the middle of the
crush, enjoying every frenzied moment of it, until she was caught by a fierce press of bodies as the crowd surged toward the stage. She was trapped in the stampede, gasping for breath, unable to get out. In real danger of falling and being trampled underfoot.

And then—rescue! Evan’s hand, grabbing hold of her wrist, yanking her out of the suffocating pack, towing her to safety.

Relieved. Throwing her arms around his neck. Laughing above the noise. Yelling in his ear. “I think you just saved my life!” And in that moment, awakening to the awesome notion that she just might be in love with him.

The memory only lasted for a moment. Then she was back in the Great Hall of the Royal Palace and the face she was staring at was no longer that of her boyfriend, Evan; it was the face of Edric Chanticleer, the deceitful servant of Gabriel Drake.

“Let go of me,” she snapped. “I have nothing to say to you.” She wrenched her arm free and pushed her way through the crowd, desperate to get as far away from him as possible. The thought of the cruel way he had manipulated her emotions filled her with raw pain, gnawing at her, making her feet stumble. Why did she feel that way? She knew this was only a dream, so why did the sight of him hurt so much?

“Well met, my lady!” She was brought up sharp by Gabriel’s voice. He was standing right in front of her. She had been so intent on putting distance between herself and Edric that she had almost walked straight into him.

“Oh! Sorry.” She gasped, grateful for a friendly face to banish her dark thoughts. She smiled at him. “Are you having a good time?”

“It is a joy indeed,” he said, looking deep into her eyes. “But to step another measure with my lady would put all other pleasures to shame.”

Anita raised one eyebrow. “You’re asking me for a dance, right?”

Gabriel bowed. “If my lady pleases.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’m up for it. But nothing too energetic, please.”

“Trust me,” he said. “I shall lead you in a dance like no other!”

That sounded intriguing. She allowed him to usher her onto the dance floor.

They stood facing each other. He bowed and reached out his arms. She took both his hands and they danced in a slowly spinning circle.

His gaze was constantly on her face, but his silvery eyes had a faraway look in them.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked.

“I was remembering the last time we danced together.”

“That was some time ago, I suppose,” she said.

“Indeed, a long, long time ago.”

She shook her head. “I don’t remember it at all.”

“Your true self will return in time,” Gabriel promised.

She looked pensively at him. Had she loved him—“a long, long time ago?” She could see how it would
be possible to fall for him. He was very appealing—charming and kind and extremely attractive. She smiled to herself. And rich and powerful, she assumed, although she wasn’t sure whether that ought to matter to a princess.

He gazed back at her, and now his eyes were focused intently on her, as if she was the only point of interest in the whole whirling world.

They were such strange eyes. Silver-gray. Like moonlight shimmering on the surface of a deep, dark lake. Like a white flame reflecting on burnished steel. Like sparks flying as the hammer strikes the anvil. The room spun and she found she could not look away.

The intimacy of their eye contact began to make her feel uneasy, as if she needed to break loose from him before something momentous happened. She tried to pull her hands out of his.

“Do not let go of my hands, my lady,” he said softly.

His eyes seemed to expand until all she could see was the silver of his irises and the black of his pupils. The silver shone like moonlight and the black sparked with points of white light, like a whole sky full of stars. Silver and black. Drawing her in. Holding her fast.

“No,” she whispered. “I won’t.”

“Look down,” he said. “And have no fear.”

Anita looked down. The floor, the Great Hall, and the dancing courtiers had vanished. Instead, the night sky surrounded them—star-strewn and lit by a crescent moon that hung low in a thin veil of lacy mist. There was nothing under her feet; Gabriel was holding her
suspended in the rushing air, and the night-washed land lay far below them.

Overwhelmed by a sudden panic, she let out a moan of fear and clutched at his hands.

“You will not fall,” he said. “Trust me.”

She swallowed hard. This time she had no wings, no control. She had only Gabriel to save her from falling. She had to believe in him.

They were moving very fast through the sky. The wind was on her face and in her eyes, cool and refreshing after the heat of the Great Hall. Her ears were full of its soft voice as it whispered and sang to her. It rustled and hissed in her dress. It plucked at her hair until she felt it streaming out into the night.

Far away, and far below, she could see a ribbon of tiny bright lights, sparkling like scattered diamonds. It was the Faerie Palace speeding away from them, the lights winking out one by one until the night swallowed them all.

Vast stretches of empty heath slipped beneath them, deep purple hills rising and falling like a swollen sea of petrified shadows. At the edge of the moorland, a vast forest stretched out to the edge of sight, dark and dense in the glancing moonlight.

“Where are you taking me?” Anita asked.

“Over the hills and far away,” Gabriel said lightly. He dropped his right hand and lifted his left and she gave a breathless scream as they plunged earthward.

“No! Don’t!” she shouted as the trees hurtled toward them. “Please!”

Her feet were brushing the leaf-laden upper branches when Gabriel lifted his right hand again and their precipitous fall ended in a smooth curving ascent. The stars swam above her head, the moon rocked on the black horizon. The air hummed in her ears.

She gasped. “You did that on purpose, didn’t you?”

“For your delight, my lady,” Gabriel said, smiling.

A little uncertain about his definition of
delight
, she forced herself to relax and gazed down between her feet. There was a clearing in the forest immediately below them. Anita saw dark, angular shapes and tiny squares of yellow and rose-tinted light. Thatched roofs. Gray tracks leading in and out of the trees.

Gone in an instant.

Hills, forest-cloaked at first then rising steeply out of the trees and swelling into rounded green slopes. A wide valley. A long lake so black and still that every star in the sky shone up from it, as if there was another world down there, another night, another Realm of Faerie.

Another stretch of moorland rushed between her hanging feet. A circle of standing stones, white under the moon. Gray meadows fled by, dotted with sheep. A shining waterfall. Rivers like dark snakes gliding through farmlands and woodland. Another village with fleeting lights, and another.

On and on they flew, the wind chiming like bells across the ever-changing landscape of Faerie.

The land became more rugged. Angled fists of
rock jutted out of the earth. Gnarled fingers of stone clawed at the moon. Sharp valleys clove the mountains, drowned in darkness, harsh and sinister. Planes of cracked and riven rock dimly reflected the moonlight. They were in a land of sultry shadows and of cold light now—a harsh land, cloven and torn open so that the raw bones of the world showed through.

Gabriel dipped his hand again and suddenly they were flying between the jagged peaks. Anita was aware of movement in the valley beneath them. She looked more intently. It was just a gray blur at first, but as they drew nearer she saw that it was a herd of animals with silvery hides running wildly along the narrow valley floor. Their manes and tails rippled as they ran. Their hooves sparked on the stones.

Horses? No! Not horses. Anita saw slender threads of light at their fast-nodding heads, moonlight reflecting off a single spiraling horn.

“Unicorns!” She gasped.

“Indeed,” Gabriel said. “The wild unicorns of Caer Liel. A dangerous breed and untameable.” He began to sing softly, a slow, sonorous melody that made Anita shiver.

“What is that?” Anita asked. “It sounds so sad.”

“It is but a song I learned as an infant,” he replied. He turned his head and stared into the distance. “Behold, my lady,” he said, his voice thrilling with a strange excitement. “The lights of Caer Liel, of Castle Weir, the mountain home of my family, the cradle of my childhood!”

Anita stared into the cracked mountains and saw, perched high on a bleak cliff, a great dark castle with massive stone walls and time-gnawed battlements. Within the walls were rows of sharp, pointed towers and turrets and keeps. A narrow road zigzagged its way up the mountain face to a fortified gatehouse where red-and-black banners fluttered. Crimson flames pranced high on the walls, watch fires troubled by the shrieking wind. Yellow and white lights shone out from lofty windows.

The castle looked ancient and strong, but it made her feel lonesome and mournful to see it clinging there to its high pinnacle, so deep in the heart of these unfriendly mountains.

Anita looked at Gabriel. “Is this what you wanted to show me? The place where you were born?”

Gabriel smiled. “It is a sight worth seeing, I believe. The Castle of Weir may seem an ominous and
forbidding place, my lady, but there is always good cheer and a warm welcome within.”

“Are we going inside, then? Will I get to meet your family?”

Gabriel shook his head. “Nay, my lady, that is a feat beyond my meager powers.”

“I’m sorry? What do you mean?”

“Only this,” Gabriel said, and suddenly the floor of the Great Hall was pressing against her feet again and there was candlelight in her eyes and music in her ears and the swirl of Faerie dancers all around her.

“Oh!” She stumbled and almost fell; Gabriel’s hands in hers were the only thing that prevented her from ending up sprawled on the dance floor.

She gazed dizzily into his eyes. Silver and black. Letting her go. Releasing her from his enchantment.

He led her to the side of the room.

She smiled at him, her brain gradually unscrambling. “Thank you,” she said. “That was some enchantment. It was amazing!”

He bowed and kissed her hand. “My greatest pleasure is in pleasing my lady,” he said. “And now I must beg your leave. I would not overstay my welcome, and there are many others who wish to dance with you.” He straightened up, and with a final smiling glance, he stepped away into the crowd.

Anita gazed after him, her eyes still full of starlight and her ears still ringing with the night wind.

“Amazing…” she breathed. “Totally amazing.”

Anita and Zara were sitting on the bed in Anita’s chamber. The ball had ended, but although they were both exhausted, they were far too excited to sleep. They had been laughing and talking excitedly together for some time, but Anita hadn’t told Zara about her marvelous night flight over Faerie. She wanted to keep it special and private for a little while.

“I saw you dancing with Gabriel,” Zara teased. “He seemed to please you. How you stared into his eyes!” She looked mischievously at Anita. “Are the wedding bells to ring out after all?”

“I don’t think that’s very likely,” Anita replied evasively. “I hardly know him.”

“But once you did,” Zara argued. “Once you loved him.”

“Well, I don’t now,” Anita said.

“Ah, poor Tania.” Zara sighed. “To have lost yourself
and your true love at a stroke. It is sad, indeed.”

“But I don’t feel sad,” Anita insisted. “I don’t remember any of it.”

“That is a blessing, I suppose,” Zara said, stifling a yawn. “And it is a delight to have you home once more, even if your mind is addled!” She yawned again. “Oh, mercy!” she said. “I must sleep.” She slumped back on the bed.

“Hey!” Anita protested, shaking her. “In your own bed, please!”

“Oh, very well.” Zara clambered off the bed and headed for the door. “Did you notice how handsome the Earl of Anvis was looking tonight?” she mused as she opened the door. “Now there is a man to sweep a lady off on a white steed!”

“I don’t even know which one he was,” Anita said. “Go to bed!” She laughed as the door closed behind her sister.

Alone in her silent chamber, her ears ringing from the music, she got into her nightgown and slipped between the bedcovers. She lay in bed, propped up on pillows, gazing through the window into a night sky that teemed with stars, remembering how she and Gabriel had seemed to soar together, hand in hand over the drowsy land of Faerie.

Although that had been the highlight of the ball for her, she had joined in with many more dances afterward. She could still see a whirl of rainbow-colored gowns and doublets in front of her eyes. She thought of that first dance with the King, saw his
happy face smiling proudly down at her.

Her father the King.

She grinned. Amazing.

And then she pictured her real father’s gentle, round face, his expression concerned as he leaned over her hospital bed. His voice echoed in her mind. “
How are you doing, my little girl
?”

Anita stared into the distance, shocked. For a moment she had nearly forgotten that this was just a dream. This had to stop.

She blew out the candle. The darkened room filled with the mellow shimmer of starlight. The stars seemed bigger here than back home. Brighter. More mysterious.

She pressed back into her pillows, drawing the covers up to her chin.

“Okay,” she said aloud, sternly. “Listen very carefully. You are going to sleep now. And when you wake up in the morning, you will
wake up properly
back in the real world. Do you hear me? All this Faerie stuff has been lovely, but enough is enough.”

She closed her eyes, concentrating on what the hospital ward looked like, remembering the faces of her mother and father. Refusing to let in Faerie.

She had to get out of this dreamworld.

“Wake up now.” It was a woman’s voice. Anita felt a hand on her shoulder, gently shaking her.

She opened bleary eyes. The room was very bright.

“Nurse?” she mumbled. “What time is it?”

“Half the morning has passed, Tania, and yet I find you slumbering still.” The voice had laughter in it. “Come, it is a beautiful day, and you yet abed, sister! Fie! You should be ashamed!”

Anita forced herself to focus.

She was still in her bedchamber in Faerie. An ocean of flower-scented sunlight was pouring in through her thrown-open windows.

Rathina was sitting by her side, leaning over her, smiling anxiously

“Dearest sister,” Rathina said. “I have not been a friend to you since you returned, and for that I am sorry. I thought you would blame me for what happened to you. But there cannot be coldness between us, Tania. We were always such good friends. Can it be so again? Will you forgive me?”

Anita sat up, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

“Forgive you for what?” she asked.

Rathina hung her head. “If I had not encouraged you to test the powers spoken of in the ancient verse, you would never have been lost to us.”

Still groggy from sleep, Anita blinked at her. “Can you run that past me again?” she said. “I mean, I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

Rathina leaned forward and took hold of one of Anita’s hands. “On the eve of your wedding, we were together in this chamber,” she said. “We talked about the rhyme we had grown up with, the rhyme we had known since childhood:
‘One alone will walk both worlds,
Daughter last of daughters seven
.’”

Anita nodded. It was the poem from the book.

“The lore-masters said that if
you
were the seventh daughter spoken of in the verse, then your powers would come to you on your sixteenth birthday.” Rathina stared into Anita’s eyes. “And from that moment on, you would have the power to walk both in Faerie and in the Mortal World.” Her fingers tightened around her hand. “You were to be wed to Gabriel Drake on your sixteenth birthday. We waited until the midnight bell had struck, and then I urged you to try to step out of our world and into…into that other place.” She shook her head. “It was but a game, Tania. I meant no harm. My heart near broke with fear when you…when you…” Her voice trailed away.

Anita felt a stab of sympathy. Five hundred years was a long time to think you had helped your sister to disappear!

“It wasn’t your fault,” she said. “I don’t remember anything about it. In fact, I don’t remember anything about this place at all, except for a few weird things that don’t make sense to me. But I’m sure you didn’t do anything to make me disappear. I was the one who walked between the worlds when I didn’t know what would happen.” She smiled. “Of course we can be friends. I’d really like that.”

Rathina let out a relieved breath and jumped off the bed. “The very best of friends!”

Anita nodded. “Sounds good to me.”

“Then get up, sleepyhead!” Rathina said, yanking the bedclothes away from Anita. “There is much for you to see and do today. You say you remember nothing? Then I shall be your guide. We shall tour the palace together, and by evening, you will have remembered everything!”

Anita clambered out of bed. “Okay,” she said. “It’s a deal. But do I get breakfast first? I’m starved.”

“Breakfast first, indeed,” Rathina said. She ran to the window, spreading her arms wide. “And then, away into the world!”

Rathina took her first to a small dining room where servants brought them chunks of fresh-baked bread with butter and cheese, and pieces of fresh fruit, all washed down by a tall glass of milk.

Anita had hoped to find Zara or one of the other sisters there, but it seemed that Zara was still in bed, and that the others had breakfasted and gone about their business some hours earlier. The servants told them that the King and various other important lords and ladies of the Court were “closeted together in conclave,” whatever that meant, and weren’t expected to emerge until noon. Anita assumed they were having some kind of high-powered meeting. Perhaps this was the Council she had heard Oberon mention. She wondered if they used magic—the Mystic Arts—to govern the kingdom.

After breakfast, the tour of the palace began.

Rathina led Anita up a long winding stairway in a
narrow tower. They squeezed through a small doorway and emerged onto a flat, walled rooftop. The warm breeze whipped their hair around their faces as they looked down on the palace grounds.

Anita leaned over the battlements and gasped. The palace was even larger than she had imagined. She had seen it briefly before, during her flight, but it had been dark then and she hadn’t been able to grasp the scale of the place.

The red-brick buildings and courtyards immediately below her were laid out exactly like Hampton Court Palace, with long lawns that sloped gently down to the river. Yet the Faerie Palace was far more expansive than the historic house Anita had seen on her school trip; here, they stretched way beyond the confines of Hampton Court in twenty-first-century London. The great red-brick buildings with their cream-colored stone ornamentations and their arched windows and slotted battlements extended eastward along the river into a hazy blue distance, tower beyond tower, wall after wall, bastions, turrets, and gatehouses, spreading out alongside the winding river as far as she could see. On the very edge of sight, the river became wider, and she could just make out large wharves and jetties and great sailing ships with tall masts and rigging like cobwebs under the blazing sun.

To the south, across the river, the land seemed to be one great green forest that went on forever. A few bridges spanned the flowing blue water, including the one with the white towers that she already knew.
Where the bridges met the far bank, there were always a few clustered houses and mooring places, and Anita got the impression of roads pushing their way in under the trees.

“What do you call the river?” she asked, gazing down at the crystal water as it glinted and sparkled in the sunlight.

“The Tamesis,” Rathina replied, leaning over her shoulder.

“Tamesis?” Anita echoed. “That’s quite like Thames.” She looked into Rathina’s inquiring face. “That’s the name of the river that runs through London,” she said.

“London?”

Anita shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

She made her way over to the other side of the tower. To the north, the land was more open. Close under the wall of the palace, she saw wide, ornate gardens with yellow pathways and colorful flower beds. Farther away there were scattered clumps of woodland, but there were also wide-open stretches of grass, like a vast park. There was a lake of clear blue water, encircled by reeds and willows. In a ring of tall trees, she glimpsed the slender white spires of a solitary building. And beyond that the land rose into rolling hills of purple heather.

Anita leaned farther over the parapet wall and stared down at something that had caught her eye, close under the tower where she was standing. It was a triangular clump of greenery. As she looked more
carefully she saw that it was a tight network of neatly tended hedges.

“Is that a maze?”

“It is,” Rathina said. “Do you remember it?”

“Well, yes,” Anita said. “But not from here.” She looked at her sister. “I remember it from back home. From Hampton Court.”

Rathina smiled uncertainly. “I have never heard of that place. Is it far from here?”

“That’s the whole point,” Anita said. “It’s not
here
at all. Or at least, it is, but it’s different. It’s back in the world I come from—the real…I mean, the Mortal World.” It felt odd to use that phrase.

“Ah yes, I have heard of such things,” Rathina said, to Anita’s surprise. “Sancha would be able to explain it more clearly.”

“Explain what?”

Rathina held her hands up, palm to palm but not quite touching. “The Realm of Faerie and the Mortal World lie close together,” she said. “But there are places where the veil between the two worlds is very thin, where Faerie and the Mortal World almost touch.” She brought her hands together, linking her fingers. “Maybe this is such a place.”

“I suppose that would explain how I ended up here,” Anita said.
And keep slipping back
, she thought. She smiled at Rathina. “So, where to now?”

“To the Queen’s Apartments,” Rathina said.

They went back down the winding stairway and walked arm in arm through a seemingly endless
succession of function rooms and gorgeous sun-filled courtyards and shady ivied cloisters and enclosed formal gardens. Anita recognized some of it as being part of Hampton Court, but there was far more that she didn’t know and had never seen. They came into a wide, grassy courtyard, and for the first time, Anita found herself in the presence of Faerie children.

Two young women in sky blue gowns were watching over them as they played. The children ranged from babies to a few that Anita guessed must be about nine or ten years old. But what struck her with a jolt was the sight of long slender gossamer wings sprouting through slots in the backs of the children’s clothing.

Wings!

They looked exactly the same as the ones she had grown and lost that night in the hospital.

A toddler of about eighteen months was sitting in the lap of one of the women, playing with a straw doll. Every now and then, he would toss it away, and then clap his hands and rise up out of the woman’s lap and fly awkwardly on straining wings to fetch it back. Once his little wings failed him and he plopped down into the grass and cried so that he had to be gathered up and comforted.

A group of older children was playing with a ball, throwing it high into the air so that each in turn had to spring up and fly to retrieve it. Others were playing tag, chasing one another around the courtyard, flying into the air to escape being caught, their fine wings
iridescent in the sunlight.

Anita felt a pang of loss that her wings had withered so quickly. It would be wonderful to fly again.

Then she noticed that the eldest children were playing games that did not involve flying, and one or two of them were even wearing clothing that covered their wings, creating lumps in the backs of their clothes.

She looked curiously at Rathina. “You haven’t got wings, have you?” she asked.

Rathina gave her a shocked, slightly offended look. “Indeed not,” she said. “Fie, Tania! Do you think me a child?”

Anita tapped her forehead with one finger. “No memory,” she said. “Remember?”

Rathina laughed. “Then you are forgiven, but to suggest that a grown person still has their wings is to call them childish.”

“Why is that?”

“We are born winged, and for the first ten or twelve years of our lives the wings grow with us, but as we near adulthood, the wings wither and fail until at last they are quite gone.” She squeezed Anita’s arms. “I remember you as a child, flitting through the corridors like an errant damselfly, full of mischief and waywardness. You told me once that you never wanted to lose your wings, that you wanted to be able to fly forever.” She smiled. “But on your tenth birthday, you ordered a gown without the back slashes and you never flew again.” She nodded. “And that was as it
should be. We cast off such childishness when we are grown.”