Thrice Sworn: A Short-Story Prequel to Winterling (2 page)

Things here in the Summerlands were about to get dangerous; Finn could feel it. Of all pucks, Rook should not be here. “You should go home, Pup,” Finn said.

Rook ducked behind a tree. “Why?” came his voice after a moment.

“It’s a bit of a tricky situation here,” Finn explained.

“Finn, I
am
a puck,” Rook protested.

“I know.” Pucks loved tricky situations. “That’s not what I meant. It’s not safe here.”

Silence from Rook.

Finn edged around the tree and peered down at his brother-puck, who glanced up at him.

“I can help,” Rook offered.

“Ah, Pup. You can help by going to the Way and waiting quietly there until sunset and it opens again,” Finn said, “and then you can go through it and wait for me on the other side, where it’s safe. Will you?”

Rook gave a reluctant nod. “I will, yes.”

Finn gave his puck-brother’s shaggy hair a rough tousle and his shoulder a nudge, and then shifted into his dog form again. Rook would be safe enough waiting by the Way.

Now he had some spying to do.

Finn’s first stop was the Mór’s pavilion. Just a slink through the forest nearby was enough to tell him what he needed to know. It was still early morning, but the Mór was astir; he heard the murmur of voices, the creak of leather as horses and other mounts were saddled, a sharp-voiced order. Something was up.

Still in his dog shape, he trotted through the forest until he reached the Lady Tree. Something was up here, too. Finn shifted back into his person shape and crouched in some tall grass, watching. Up in the Tree’s branches was the Lady’s house, resting on a wide platform. Fox-girls darted in and out the house’s door, carrying buckets of steaming water and cloths. At the edge of the platform, with his legs hanging down, sat the human-man, Owen. As Finn watched, Owen got to his feet and poked his head in the Lady-house doorway to say something, then went to the ladder and climbed to the ground. He seemed alert, casting keen glances around the clearing below the tree, and before Finn could shift and slink away, he was seen.

The lanky human bounded over the grass. “What’re you doing here, Robin?” he demanded.

Finn got to his feet and shrugged. “Nothing.”

“Nothing. Right.” The human’s long arm reached out and grabbed Finn’s collar, dragging him closer. “Laury said you’re tricky. Are you working with the Mór? Spying for her?”

“No!” Finn answered, and squirmed to get away, but Owen’s grip was too strong. “Let go, you stupid human.”

“Why are you here?” Owen leaned closer to ask. Then, suddenly, he let Finn go, crossed his arms, and fixed his gaze on Finn.

Finn squirmed. Owen, he realized, was a truth-seer. He’d have to be careful. He straightened his shirt. Then he nodded toward the house in the tree. “Did the Lady have her baby?”

“What’s it to you?” Owen asked.

Finn shrugged. “Nothing. Only the baby is what the Mór said she was waiting for, and I’ve seen this morning that the Mór is up and saddling her horse and calling for her bow and arrows.”

The human went suddenly pale and very intent. “A hunt? She would dare?” He shook his head. “But Laury said you’d lie about something like that.”

“I’m telling you, the Mór said she would come for you and the Lady once the baby was born! So, yes, she hunts you both and your baby. If you don’t do something, she’ll stick you all over with black arrows.” Finn growled. “Is that what you want?”

“No.” Owen gripped Finn again, but his shoulder this time, as a brother would. “Laury said you’re a trickster, but I can see truth in you. Tell me. Will you help us?”

Finn knew he should laugh and say no and let trouble come to this human and his Lady, who had seen betrayal coming and had done nothing to stop it. That would be the puck thing to do. But that story didn’t have a very good ending, not one he’d want to tell his puck-brothers around the fire at night.

“I will, yes,” Finn answered, after a moment. “What would you want me to do?”

Owen let him go. “Laury—the Lady—told me you can turn into a dog or a horse. Is that right?” At Finn’s nod, he continued. “There’s going to be a fight. I need to get the baby away until it’s over, so she’ll be safe.”

Protecting the young ones—that was something Finn could understand. Really, it was something that pucks understood better than anyone.

But he knew what a Huntress was too. “She’ll find the baby if she decides to hunt it,” Finn said. “That’s what she does.”

“I know,” Owen answered. “But there’s a place we can go where she can’t follow.” He nodded, then strode toward the Lady Tree. “Wait here for a minute, Robin; I’ll be right back.”

While the human climbed to the house in the tree’s branches, Finn got his shifter-bone out of its little leather pouch and popped it into his mouth, and blurred into his horse shape. He tossed his mane and pranced in place, his legs ready to run. In the distance, he heard a shout—one of the Lady’s people calling out a warning.

Lady, Lady, you are betrayed! The Hunt comes for you!

Up in the tree, Owen hurried out of the house, speaking urgently to two of the fox-girls. Then he took a baby-shaped bundle into his arms. Carrying it carefully, he came down the ladder and across the grass to Finn. As he paused to shove a folded piece of paper into his pocket, Finn nosed a flap of blanket aside to have a look at the Lady’s baby.

Before this he’d only seen squalling, flame-eyed, black-haired puck babies. The Lady’s baby wasn’t all that different. Not squalling at the moment, but pink-faced and wrinkly, with a rosebud mouth and a tiny fist curled under her chin. Finn snorted out a breath and she blinked up at him. He felt a thread of connection, stronger than spider silk, spin out between his heart and hers.

The Mór would not stick any arrows into
this
baby—not if he could help it.

Finn lowered his head and Owen grabbed his mane. “We have to hurry, Robin,” Owen said as he climbed awkwardly onto Finn’s back with the baby. “We have to take Gwynnefar to my mom and then get back here to help Laury fight off the Mór.” He pointed. “We’re going to the Way that goes to the human world. Do you know it?”

With a snort Finn leaped into a gallop, feeling the human start to slip from his back, then cling on. The Way to the human world would open for a human at any time. Perhaps they would make it out before the Mór tracked them. Finn pounded along the forest paths, feeling the human’s urgency, and a faintly buzzing feeling of alarm that seemed to come from the land itself. The Lady was hunted; the land itself was in danger.
Hurry, hurry, hurry,
his hoofbeats said, as he dodged around trees and jumped streams, his tail streaming in the wind of his passage.

“Here!” Owen shouted, and Finn dropped into a walk, his breaths snorting from his nose, his muscles quivering. He brought the human and the baby into a clearing with a perfectly round pool in the middle of it. “That’s the Way,” Owen panted, pointing at the pool. “Go!”

Without hesitating, Finn gathered himself and leaped from the mossy bank straight into the middle of the still waters of the pool. As his front hoofs touched the water, the Way opened and he sailed through for a long, cold, suspended moment, then felt his hoofs crunch into a hard crust of snow.

The human world. It was a winter here: a patch of scrubby forest with black trees, white snow, and the dark blue shadows of approaching night. Finn felt the wrongness of the place at once, like a fogginess in his head. It wasn’t a place where a puck could live. He shook his head and felt the skin under his pelt prickle with dread.

“Follow the path,” Owen ordered, and Finn trotted along a clear line of snow through the woods, along the bottom of a ravine; then he climbed a bank and up to a road ridged with icy tracks. “Keep going,” Owen said.

His hoofs slipping on the ice, Finn trotted along the edge of the road, his snorting breaths coming in steamy clouds now from his nose. He hoped the baby was warm enough in her blanket. He wished he could talk to Owen while they rode, but that was the problem with his horse shape—no talking.

At last they reached a square house at the end of another long, narrow road. As night fell, the air had gotten colder. Shivering, Owen slid from Finn’s back, holding the blanket-wrapped baby close to his chest. Finn spat out his shifter-bone, keeping it in his hand because he’d need it again soon. “What’re you going to do?” Finn asked.

Owen nodded toward the house. “That’s my mom’s place.” At Finn’s blank look, he added, “My mother, Jane. She’ll take care of Gwynnefar until I can come back for her.” He pulled the paper out of his pocket and tucked it into a fold of the baby’s blanket; he added a few other things too—a black feather, a small, flat stone with a hole in it. Then he stared down at her for a long moment. Gently he kissed her forehead and then covered her with the blanket again. “I’ll be right back,” he said to Finn.

With his head down, Owen hurried through the growing darkness to a door at the back of his mother’s house. Crouching, he set Gwynnefar on the doorstep, knocked loudly, then turned and ran back to where Finn was waiting.

Quickly Finn popped the shifter-bone into his mouth and fell into his horse shape, ready to run. Owen waited, one hand on Finn’s mane, one on his back, keenly watching the back door where he’d left the baby. Finn felt his own connection to the baby just as strongly as before. This baby.
This
one. He almost couldn’t bear to leave her, even to keep her safe.

They waited for one breath, and another, and then the door cracked open and a shaft of golden light spilled out. Finn saw a shape silhouetted there: a tall, straight-backed woman who bent to pick up the bundle of baby. The woman stood abruptly and stared out into the night. “Owen?” she called, her voice sharp with fear.

For just a moment, Finn felt Owen rest his forehead against his back. “I have to go back to Laury, Mom,” he whispered, though he knew his mother would not hear. A second later, he’d swung onto Finn’s back. “Let’s go,” he whispered urgently into Finn’s ear. “Hurry.”

Finn galloped as fast as he could through the cold winter night, back to the Way and then through to the Summerlands again, where almost no time had passed since they’d left, because time ran so much faster in the human world. It was still early morning. But the sun was dimmer now—clouds were rolling in, a sudden summer storm. The air felt still, but taut with danger, the threat of thunder, lightning, betrayal, disaster.

Finn raced through the forest to the Lady Tree. He came to a stop and Owen slid from his back and ran up the ladder. A quick look into the house and he tumbled down the ladder again and back to Finn. “She’s not here,” he reported, looking wildly around.

In the distance, echoing through the forest, came a sound. Finn jerked up his head, his ears twitching. The sound came again—the high, thin call of a hunting horn.

“Oh, no,” Owen panted. “We’re too late.” He’d gone stark white, his eyes wide and frightened.

Finn snorted. Come
on
, Owen. Let’s ride.

As if understanding, the human scrambled onto Finn’s back; at once Finn was off, following the sound of the Mór’s hunt. The wind of the coming storm roared out of the air behind them. The tops of the trees thrashed in the wind, and thunder joined the sound of the horns in the distance.

It was on a roll of thunder and a gust of wind that Finn and his rider crashed into the clearing surrounding the other Way out of the land, where the Lady and her loyal fox-girl maids had fled, trying to escape the Mór’s hunt.

But this Way was closed. Would stay closed until sunset, and that was still hours away.

Finn spared a thought for his young brother-puck, who he’d sent here to hide.
Stay hidden, Rook,
he thought desperately.
Stay safe.

“Thank you, Robin,” Owen breathed. He slipped from Finn’s back and raced across the clearing to where the Lady stood, supported by the fox-girls. Owen went to her side and she leaned against him. The fox-girls backed away, trembling with fear, and bloody from their fight to protect their Lady. The Lady’s moonlight-colored hair hung long and tangled down her back; she wore only a white shift stained here and there with blood, and her face was pinched and pale. Her body was weak from giving birth and from the hunt, but her eyes were fierce.

Facing her, high on the back of a tall, white horse, was the Mór, clad all in black silk, her stern face as white as bone, her silver eyes gleaming in the stormy light. The Mór had hunters with her: the people she’d tricked into her service, wolf-guards riding mounts of their own, and others, too, all ranked against the Lady. Laurelin pushed herself away from Owen and faced her Huntress. “Why do you do this? You are sworn to me, and to this land. You know you cannot break your oath without consequences.”

Slowly, with grim inevitability, the Mór reached over her shoulder, pulling a long arrow fletched with black feathers from the quiver on her back.

“Stop!” Laurelin cried. “Stop before it is too late!”

Without speaking, the Mór nocked the arrow and drew back the bowstring.

In the center of the clearing, Owen whirled to embrace the Lady, turning his back to the Mór.

“Owen, no!” the Lady cried out.

No,
Finn wanted to shout at the same time, but he was still in his horse shape, and he felt frozen with fear.

A flash of lightning ripped through the boiling clouds above the clearing. As the crash of thunder followed it, the Mór released her arrow. It flew, swift and sure, straight for Owen’s back, piercing him through and the Lady Laurelin with him.

There was a short cry, cut off. Then silence.

Green-black clouds pressed down over the clearing. The Mór lowered her bow. For just a moment, she bowed her head, shuddering as her oath to her Lady shattered into pieces. She would pay a price for this betrayal. But what price, she could not know.

Pinned together by the arrow shaft, the Lady and Owen fell.

Finn whinnied a shrill protest. Beneath his hooves, he could feel the change in the land as the Lady’s blood seeped into the ground. A wave of wrongness spread out from the clearing. The trees shivered with the horror of it; the grass trembled with dread. Then the clouds overhead opened and the rain poured down.