Chapter Thirteen
Robin’s light, quick footsteps sounded just outside the office, breaking the nearly intolerable tension that had built up between them.
Unhurriedly, Oberon turned away. As the sensation of his thighs pressing against hers lifted, she felt the stiffness in her spine dissolve until she felt as shaky as a newborn colt. Good gods, what had she just agreed to?
When the puck appeared in the open doorway, he looked from one to the other inquiringly. “Is everything well?”
“I just conducted Oberon’s post-op exam, and everything is great,” Kathryn told him, straightening her shirt unnecessarily. Oberon had barely touched her, but she still felt disheveled everywhere. “How are you?”
“Well indeed. I have just returned from hunting, and a bounty awaits us in the kitchens. The sun is shining, and the ice is melting.” Robin laughed, a fey, wild sound. “Everything is coming into alignment as it should, and that is all because of you, beautiful mistress.”
Oberon’s expression darkened. “It’s going to take a long time before everything is as it should be, Robin. We have a lot of rebuilding to do. In the meantime, I need to begin the process by assessing the weather conditions so I can make any adjustments if needed. The last thing we need are damaging storms because the temperatures are warming too quickly.” He glanced at Kathryn. “Unless that falls into the category of extraordinary exertion.”
He’d made the shift away from their intimate quarrel with apparent ease, but mentally she struggled to regroup. “No, not at all. My warning was for physical exertion. Just don’t overextend yourself by doing too much magic. Your mind, body, and Power are all one unified biological system, and every part of you needs recovery time.”
“Understood,” he said. The expression in his gaze stroked her like a caress. “We’ll finish this conversation later.”
“As far as I’m concerned,” she muttered, “we finished it just now.”
His soft laugh was insidious as it wound around her senses. “You can tell yourself that if you need to.”
She watched him stride out purposefully. Then she turned her attention to Robin. “I need to go downstairs to hunt for that needle. Will you come with me?”
Revulsion twisted his narrow features. “Must I?”
“Well… no,” she admitted. “But it would give me a chance to talk to you.”
“We are talking right now,” he pointed out, spreading out long, thin hands.
“So we are.” Smiling, she chose not to push against his claustrophobia and aversion to the crystal cave. More soberly, she said, “Robin, I’m going to ask you to go back for Annwyn and her troops.”
The puck’s cheerful demeanor vanished. He gave her a glare that reminded her just how many teeth he had. “Why should I do such a thing? They make noise and insinuations. It is peaceful here without them. I am happy here with you and my liege.”
She sighed. “I understand there are unresolved issues between you and the rest of the Dark Court, but despite how you feel about the others, Oberon needs them. While the surgery was successful, his recovery has only just begun. He needs his people here.”
Robin’s scowl deepened. “He has me. And he has you to guide him to the future.”
She set her jaw as she considered his rebellious demeanor. “Keep in mind what’s really at stake. Every delay you cause here in Lyonesse gives Isabeau more time for her recovery and to make her next moves.”
He grew so still she knew she had hit her target. At last, he muttered, “I will consider your counsel seriously.”
“Do that.” Judging she had pushed him hard enough, she touched his shoulder as she passed by. “Thank you for hunting for us. After I search the cave and clean up, I’ll take a turn at cooking.”
He inclined his head in acknowledgment but watched her go without replying. His feral gaze had gone opaque. She didn’t know him well enough to be able to guess at his thoughts, but he appeared a lot less friendly than he had when he’d first arrived.
Just as she couldn’t fix him, she also couldn’t make him do anything he didn’t want to do. She only hoped her argument about Isabeau was persuasive enough to get him to act, because everything she had said was true. Oberon did need to reunite with his people.
And also, when another physician arrived, it would let her off the hook. And she really didn’t know how she felt about that.
Thrusting the puzzle of her mixed emotions aside for the time being, she headed down into the cave, but no matter how long or carefully she searched, she never did find Morgan’s needle.
* * *
The palace could hold hundreds of people comfortably, but after Oberon’s consultation with Kathryn, the indoors felt stifling and closed in.
When he strode outside, the bright, cloudless sky was so immaculate it highlighted the destruction in the city below. He strangled the impulse to shapeshift into the lion and go hunting. They didn’t need the food, and despite his restlessness, he was determined to follow Kathryn’s instructions to the letter.
He had to recover fully, and as quickly as possible. Too many people had sacrificed so that he could. They had given everything in the hope that this might happen. It didn’t matter how long it had taken or what doubts they might have had along their paths. They were still counting on him, or they would have killed him by now.
And he owed them for it.
Where were his troops? Where were the city civilians? Had they evacuated to the farmlands, or out of Lyonesse altogether? Annwyn and the others would have answers to his questions. If it weren’t for Kathryn’s admonishments to avoid expending himself physically, he would even now be heading out to meet them.
What he could do instead was help everyone in other ways. Going around to the back of the palace, he walked the neglected paths of the gardens until he found a section of ground that captured a patch of sunlight and was dry enough for his purposes.
Settling cross-legged on the ground, he closed his eyes and went into a meditation that allowed him to astral journey from his body.
Joining the warm air current flowing high overhead, he spun and eddied with the flow and traveled hundreds of miles inland, casting weather spells as needed.
Certain areas had been dry for far too long. Other locales had been deluged with mountains of snow and were now flooding with the onslaught of warmer weather.
He couldn’t do anything about the floods. Many weather conditions couldn’t be changed quickly, and those floods had already been set in motion over the years with abnormally heavy snows. But he could divert other disasters that were in the making, and by the time he had finished working, he knew the next weeks would bring a much calmer spring.
And that would lead to a decent growing season and what he suspected would be a much-needed good harvest.
When his awareness returned to his body, the day had advanced significantly, and he was shaking as he pushed to his feet. There had been a time when he could do weather working for days. Now he could barely handle working a few light spells for a few damn hours.
Stifling a surge of frustration at his own weakness, he went inside. Kathryn had been right. He had to give himself time. His stamina would soon return. For now, though, his belly signaled there was a rapidly approaching crisis and he needed to put food in it immediately.
As he stepped into the cavernous kitchen, he found it warm and full of light and good food smells. His empty stomach growled.
Kathryn stood at the table nearest the main oven. She had changed into a fresh outfit, a deep forest green dress with clean, simple lines that suited her perfectly. She had pinned her hair into a twist at the top of her head, and a few escaping tendrils emphasized the graceful line of her neck.
He had once thought her beauty was understated, but now it shone like a luminous beacon against the mundane backdrop of her surroundings. The sleek, racy lines of her body and classic femininity were deeply appealing.
On the table, golden brown pastries had been piled high on platters. Grabbing one, he took a huge bite. It was filled with seasoned chunks of venison and rich gravy that complemented the pastry perfectly, and it was indescribably delicious.
“You can cook,” he said around his mouthful.
She burst out laughing. “You sound so outraged.”
Rapidly he devoured the rest of his pie and picked up another one. “Not outraged. Surprised. You’re a master-class physician and magician. Is there anything you can’t do?”
She appeared to give that serious attention. “I can’t ski,” she told him. “I’ve tried, but I just don’t have the patience. I would much rather shapeshift and fly. My sword work is only passable. When I was younger, I learned what I needed to keep my father from fussing at me. Can’t paint worth a damn. Not interested in driving… one of those horseless carriages I told you about. Again, I’d rather shapeshift and fly. I don’t sew or quilt. My singing is enthusiastic but lamentable. So you see, there’s a lot of things I can’t do. You just happened to stumble upon the two things I do well—surgery and cooking.” She watched him devour a second pastry and then a third, and her expression turned wise. “You pushed yourself too hard today, didn’t you?”
He glowered at her and reached for a pastry from a different platter. That one was rabbit, and it was heavenly. After swallowing, he muttered, “I didn’t mean to. I was weather working, which leaves me somewhat detached from my body.”
“Do you need me to check you over?”
He considered. “No, I don’t think so. The food is helping. Where is Robin?”
“I don’t know.” Her gaze narrowed. “I’ve been wondering that myself. I have a few questions I want to ask him.” She focused on him suddenly. “Have you by any chance gone down into the cave?”
“Not since the surgery. Why?”
She rubbed her chin with the back of one flour-coated hand. It left a powdery trail of white on her creamy skin. “I went down earlier to look for Morgan’s needle. When I had pulled it out, it released some sort of magical detonation that numbed my hands, so at the time I just flung it over my shoulder.” Her troubled gaze met his. “Oberon, I’ve been over every inch of that cave today, and I can’t find it anywhere. I found my tweezers just fine, but not the needle. Would Robin take something like that?”
“I’ll be sure to ask when I next see him,” he replied, frowning. “I don’t like it disappearing. It could still be dangerous. What does it look like?”
“It’s just a thin sliver of magic-sensitive silver. I agree with you—I don’t like it disappearing either, and I didn’t get a chance to assess it properly. At the time, you were my only concern.”
He took one of her hands and turned it over. She let him gently manipulate the fingers and rotate her wrist. He couldn’t sense any lingering magic on her, only her own light, steady Power. His frown deepened. “You should have said something earlier. You could have been seriously hurt.”
“But I wasn’t,” she told him. “All is well. When I woke up this morning, all sensation had returned. Do you want another pie?” She pointed to the third platter. “I made those with dried figs and cherries, so they’re sweet, not savory.”
“They sound fabulous.” He smiled at her. He had gone for so long without feeling. Now he felt awash in a symphony of emotion.
The rage was still present. It might not die down for decades. Certainly not before Isabeau was dead.
But most prominent among all of it now was desire, and that was a much lighter thing than the cold animal lust he had experienced when he had been trapped by Morgan’s spell—warmer, more complex. It was both deeply familiar and totally new, because now it was wholly focused on the woman in front of him.
Another tendril of silken hair had escaped the knot high on her head. Using it as an excuse to touch her, he tucked it behind her ear. She gave him a wary glance but didn’t pull away.
“I promised you a thousand-year-old bottle of wine,” he said.
“Now that you mention it, yes, you did.” She smiled. “If I’d known you had that kind of treasure tucked away in your cellars, I might not have been satisfied with the first bottle of brandy I came across.”
He grinned. “I’ll be back shortly.”
Other emotions welled up as he made his way to the lower levels of the palace. On impulse, he took a detour to look in the crystal cave where his life had wholly depended on a single woman and her medical skills and ingenuity.
When he ignited the witchlights in the cave, his eyebrows rose slowly as he stared at the scene. It looked like there had been a massacre. There was blood everywhere. It had dripped down the sides of the agate slab, and there were pools of dried blood on the floor with footprints walking through it. The bloody footprints tracked all over the cave. Surgical tools lay where she had dropped them, either on the table or on the floor.
If he were to guess, he would say that normally she was a tidy person and her surroundings would be a reflection of the ordered discipline in her mind. This mess told another story. It provided an echo of the kind of intense difficulty she had endured throughout the long day. Gratitude washed over him. He shouldn’t have lived so long, let alone survived this kind of surgery.
Opening his senses wide, he scanned for the slightest residue of Morgan’s magic but found nothing. The crystal cave had magically returned to its neutral state. If it weren’t for the physical evidence, he would never know that his life had been on the line.
He was quite sure Kathryn would have already searched for the needle with her own highly developed magical sense, but as he had grown well acquainted with Morgan’s magic over the years, he’d hoped he might detect something she had missed.
Was it possible the needle had expelled all its magic, and there wasn’t any residue left to sense? If anyone had that kind of skill with their magic, it would be Morgan.
But Oberon tended to think that the spell had been too powerful and complex to dissipate completely upon detonation. However slight, there should have been a lingering trace of Power…
If the needle was indeed still lying somewhere in the cave.
So it was gone, and there were only three scents in the cave—his, Kathryn’s, and Robin’s. No random thief had crept into the palace undetected.
While he was sure Kathryn would be adept at dancing around truthsense if she felt the need, she hadn’t lied once since he had met her. Besides, she was the one who had brought up the needle’s absence, so there was only one inescapable conclusion to be drawn.
Why had Robin taken the needle? For safekeeping, or for some agenda of his own?
Thoughtfully, he headed back up the stairs and over to the wine cellar, located in a separate area. There, more emotion welled up in the form of pleasure and nostalgia. He made his way back to the dusty room that held his rare, older wines.
After inspecting them, he was torn between choosing one of Lyonesse’s oldest vintages, because he thought Kathryn would enjoy the history of it, and a precious bottle of golden salveri wine from Ys.
Combining food and magic were an integral part in all the Other lands, for healing properties, for food storage, and for pleasure, but nobody mixed food and magic together quite like the kingdoms in the Other land of Ys. Their crops were unique and their skills unparalleled.
In the end, he decided against picking one bottle over the other and took both upstairs.
As soon as he stepped into the kitchen, he could tell Kathryn’s mood had changed. Large pieces of roasted venison had joined the platters of pies on the center table. The cavernous space had warmed from her cooking, and she had propped open the back door to let in the fresh afternoon air.
She stood leaning against the door looking out, her expression closed and remote. He studied her profile as he approached. As he drew close, she gave him a preoccupied smile.
“What’s wrong?” he asked as he set the wine on the table.
She shook her head without answering and turned to watch as he opened both bottles. “Two bottles? Very extravagant.”
“I think waking up from a years-long stasis spell and surviving a high-risk surgery entitles me to a little extravagance.” He held up one bottle with his left hand. “This wine is made from the very first harvest here in Lyonesse after we had created our demesne. And this one…” He held up the second bottle with his right hand. “…this is a bottle of golden salveri wine, from Karre in Ys.”
Her eyes widened. “I’ve heard of salveri wine, but I’ve never gotten the chance to taste it before.”
“You are in for a treat. It’s indescribable. The finest champagne I have ever drunk tasted like raw vinegar in comparison to salveri wine.” He smiled. “After this, I will have only five bottles left.”
“Isn’t it illegal to export salveri from Karre?” She watched him locate two plain glass goblets, which he set on the table beside the bottles.
“It was when I put myself into stasis,” he replied. “So I imagine it still is, but I’d acquired my dozen bottles before that law went into effect… That was a very, very long time ago.”
Fascination had taken over her expression, but she made no move to leave her spot by the door. “What about the hallucinations?”
“As long as you don’t drink several bottles at once, they are beautiful and harmless. In Karre, the visions are considered sacred, a gift from their Exalted—their ruler who is both a mystical leader and head of their nation. They drink salveri during several religious ceremonies and at their Festival of Rebirth every spring. They believe the visions that come during the festival are a foretelling of what will come into their lives over the next year.”
“Is there any truth to that?” she asked curiously.
“Possibly. I’ve never attended their Festival of Rebirth, so I don’t really know.” Carefully he poured a portion of the luminous liquid into each goblet and picked up both glasses to join her at the door. Fragrance from the wine had bloomed when he poured it, and her expression changed as she caught the scent.
She breathed deeply. “That is heavenly… I can’t decide if it’s floral or fruity. I just know I’ve never smelled anything like it before.”
“And you never will again. Salveri is unique. I’ve heard stories of thieves who’ve attempted to steal cuttings from the vineyards, but no one has ever managed to grow salveri vines away from Karre soil. Between their salveri and their magic-infused oils and spices, Karre is one of the wealthiest countries, either on Earth or in any Other land.” With a smile, he offered her one of the goblets. When she accepted it, he touched the rim of his goblet to hers. “Thank you for my life, Kathryn.”
“You are most welcome, Oberon.” Closing her eyes, she held her goblet close to her nose and inhaled deeply again. “How impaired will we be?”
She was cautious about the unknown and considered everything before she took action. He told her, “You’re full Wyr, so I don’t think very impaired. It’s not the same experience as drinking other alcohol. If we decide to finish this bottle and the bottle of Lyonesse wine in one sitting, we will feel exceedingly pleasant but nothing more. I give you my word, you will be quite safe from any ill effects.”
“Okay.” Giving him a grin, she took a careful sip, and her expression changed again, this time with sheer delight. “Dear gods.”
Her wonder pleased him so very much.
“That’s how I remember it,” he said with satisfaction. Now that he’d had a chance to enjoy her reaction, he took his own first sip. Bright, exquisite flavor flowed over his tongue.
He held it in his mouth to experience the full complexity of notes. When he swallowed, warmth and light filled his midsection, and he felt embraced with a sense of incredible well-being.
Beside him, Kathryn made a quiet, inarticulate sound. Her expression had become transfixed, her gaze filled with awe. She whispered, “What am I looking at?”
“I don’t know. It’s different each time for everybody. The first time I drank salveri, I felt like I was surrounded by people I could barely see who loved me immensely.” He smiled at the memory. “I knew right then I was going to take home as many bottles as I could transport. Karreans call the experience the ‘song of souls.’”
“How wonderful.” She sighed. “I’m not seeing people… I’m seeing something like translucent flames, like I’m totally immersed in this bright golden light. I can still see everything around me just fine, but it’s all veiled with the shining light.”
“Very nice.”
“It is so lovely.”
Then his own vision overtook him. He heard himself whisper, “Ah, damn.”
“What is it?” Her attention sharpened.
“Nothing.” He turned away to stare at the ruined vegetable gardens outside. “Everything is fine.”
“But what happened?” She laid a hand on his arm. “What are you seeing?”
He had to work to get words out. “Orchards full of fruit, a clear jade sea, and fields of ripe wheat rippling in the wind. I’m seeing Lyonesse the way she used to be—the way she should be.”
Her fingers tightened gently. “She will be that way again.”
“If I have anything to say about it, she will. I just need to hunt down Isabeau to make sure she can’t hurt us ever again.”
Kathryn studied his expression. “I don’t think I ever heard how the whole conflict with Isabeau started. What happened?”
He barked out a bitter laugh. “She’s always been bigoted and xenophobic, and she used to hunt us for sport. It was one of the reasons we banded together to create Lyonesse, but the fact that an entire demesne of mixed-race people exists is an affront to her world view. According to her, we are freaks of nature, and we need to be eradicated. She hates those with Light Fae blood the most. We have become her obsession. She won’t stop until we make her stop.”
“Four weeks,” she told him.
“What?” Jolted out of his preoccupation, he frowned at her.
“You can go to war in four weeks.” She shrugged. “Technically, since your surgery was yesterday, you can go in three weeks and six days.”
The Daoine Sidhe couldn’t wait that long. The time slippage between Lyonesse and almost everywhere else was too great. Four more weeks would give Isabeau far too much time to plan and execute her next attack.
But he didn’t tell Kathryn that. Instead, he pressed her fingers where they rested on his bicep. Then he went to retrieve the bottle and poured them more wine.
More to change the subject than for any other reason, he said, “I took longer to get the wine than I had expected. I took a detour down to the crystal cave.”
She made a face. “It’s a mess down there.”
“Not important. I’ll get someone to clean it up.” He savored another swallow of the salveri. “I wanted to see if I could catch any hint of magical residue from Morgan’s needle, but there was nothing. I think Robin took it.”
Her gaze flashed to his, then away again. “I do too. I just don’t understand why he would, yet not tell us about it.” She set her goblet on the table, and her mood changed again. Wearing the same closed, remote expression from when he had returned with the wine, she told him, “I also think I know why he disappeared again.”
Raising his eyebrows, he set aside his goblet too. Savoring the salveri wine seemed too fine a pastime for where this conversation appeared to be headed. “Very well, then—why?”
She swung back around and gave him a level look. “Because I asked him to bring Annwyn and the others here as fast as he could.”