Swallowing Darkness

Chapter Eleven



I saw the white glow of the hunt behind me like a second moon in the sky before I heard the wind of its coming. But I kept my eyes on the fallen sidhe lord. Onilwyn looked unconscious, maybe even dead, but until it was certain, I would not turn and give him a second chance to kill me.



I heard the horses and other things land on the frozen ground. I heard running feet, and Sholto was beside me. He put himself between me and the slumped forms. The bone spear was pointed up, the bone dagger naked in his hand.



I leaned against his back, feeling the strength of him through the remnants of his t-shirt. He, like me, hadn't dressed for the cold. Magic can make you forget practicalities, until the magic recedes and you realize that you are mortal once more. Oh, I guess that was just me. Some of the sidhe never felt the cold.



"Are you hurt?" he asked.



"No, just feeling the cold." Saying it out loud seemed to give me permission to shiver. I pressed myself more tightly against the warmth of his back, and reached around to encircle his waist. I found more in the front of his body than just waist. The tentacles petted and caressed my hands and arms. He was touching me, holding me, just as he would have with his hands if they weren't full of weapons. But Sholto had enough "hands" to hold me and fight. There had been a time when the extra bits had disturbed me to the point that I wasn't sure I could get past them, but such petty concerns seemed ages ago. The tentacles were warm, as if they had blood close to the surface. They reached around his body to hold more of me, stretching as only things with no bones can. Tonight it wasn't disturbing, it was warm.



Yolland moved past us in his court finery, his iron sword bare in his hand. I couldn't see what he did, but he said, "The green-haired guard has only the faintest pulse."



"What about Mistral?" Sholto asked.



"The same."



"We have to get Mistral to a healer," I said, still wrapped in the warmth of Sholto's back, and other things.



"What of Onilwyn?" Sholto asked. I was pressed so close to his back that his words vibrated against my cheek.



I thought of the look on Onilwyn's face, the hatred. He meant my death, and sparing his life wouldn't change that determination in his eyes. He would see it as weakness. "He must die."



I felt Sholto startle; even the tentacles reacted like a hand that almost draws back from yours. "We should ask the queen first, Meredith."



"Are there healers at the sluagh?" I asked.



"Yes," he said.



"Then take Mistral and me there. I must get out of the cold, and he needs the killing metal out of his body."



"Let us take you to the Seelie Court," Yolland said.



I laughed, and it wasn't a pleasant sound. "Without the power of the wild hunt, I would not enter there like this."



"Then the Unseelie Court," Sholto said.



"The men you killed were lords of that court, weren't they?"



"Yes," he said.



"Then it is not safe. Take me to your kingdom, Sholto."



"The sidhe are more fragile than the people of the sluagh. I am not certain our healers are the best for the Storm Lord."



"He needs the metal out of him, and warmth; beyond that, we will see. But time is not his friend, or ours. Kill Onilwyn. When we have survived this night, we will seek an audience with the queen."



"You cannot mean to end the life of one of the sidhe," Turloch said. "My enemies are many, my friends are few. I must prove to the first that to come against me is death, and to the second that I am strong enough to rule here." Then I hugged Sholto and told the truth. "I saw my death and the deaths of my unborn children in Onilwyn's face. If I spare him, he will see it as weakness, not mercy. I do not want him at my back with that hot determination in his eyes. I am pregnant with twins. Would you risk the first royal babies since I was born to squeamishness?"



"It is not squeamishness, my lady," Turloch said.



"Princess," Sholto said. "She is Princess Meredith."



"Fine. Princess Meredith, it is not squeamishness, but the thought of losing another lord of the sidhe. We are so few now, Princess. Even those who are twisted and Unseelie are precious to some of us, for many of them once walked the golden corridors of our court before they fell from favor."



"I am aware that many of our lords and ladies were once yours, Lord Turloch. But that does not change Onilwyn's fate."



"You are not my queen yet, and this I will not do," he said.



Sholto started to speak, but I squeezed him tightly, and he took the hint. He let me speak instead. "I would think long, Lord Turloch, on the fact that I brought a sidhe lord down single-handedly with no weapon."



"Is that a threat?" he asked.



"It is truth," I said, and let him take it any way he wished.



"Do as she commands," Sholto said. "You are still part of the hunt, and I am still the huntsman."



"Only until dawn breaks," he said.



"We will be free at dawn, but whether you are free or condemned to ride forever with the hunt remains to be seen," I said.



"What?" he said.



"She is right," Lord Dacey said, "for we attacked the hunt. Punishment can be to ride forever."



"Only the huntsman can free you," Sholto said, "so I would prove myself a good solider, Turloch, if I were you." His voice was cold, and he was very certain of himself. Only I was close enough to feel his heartbeat speed up. Was he not certain of his words, or not certain what the sidhe would do? Or did he agree with the other men that Onilwyn should be spared? The prospect of being trapped in the hunt was a fate that might make them fight us. The magic of the hunt was beginning to fade; I could feel it. It wouldn't be dawn that broke it. We could end up with a second fight on our hands.



We needed more allies who were ours by choice, not by threat. Mistral's life was dripping away. I would not lose him because we hesitated.



I started to step back from Sholto. He held me close for a second, then let me move away from him. The tentacles caressed me reluctantly, like fingertips trailing down my arms.



The ground was colder as I walked away from Sholto. His magic had been keeping me warm. As I moved across the frozen ground, the three sidhe lords watched me, as if I were something to be cautious of, almost as if they were afraid of me. It wasn't a look I was used to seeing on the faces of the noble sidhe. I wasn't sure I liked it, but I knew I needed it. People only follow you for two reasons, love and fear. Money didn't mean anything in faerie. I preferred love, but tonight my enemies had proven that there were more of them than I had known and that there were too many plots to reason with them all. When love and sweet reason will not work, you are left with fear and ruthlessness.



I put my hand over my stomach, still barely different, but I'd heard their heartbeats, saw them moving like some magical, almost unreal shapes on the ultrasound. They were inside me, and I had to protect them. I'd honestly believed that once I was with child the sidhe would value that life, not mine but the children's. I knew I was wrong now, and I could not afford to be soft. Flinching was no longer an option. They say that being pregnant makes women softer, gentler, but in that moment I understood why so many religions have goddesses who are both creators and destroyers. I was barely pregnant, and I was already willing to do things that once would have made me hesitate. The time for hesitation was past.



Yolland had moved Onilwyn off Mistral, so that the Ash Lord lay on his back in the frosted grass. I picked up Onilwyn's dropped sword. "It is cold iron, sidhe lords. He meant to sheath it inside my body. I will give him back his blade."



I raised it two-handed, and I prayed for strength, the strength to protect myself and my children. The strength to protect the fathers of my children, and the people I loved. I prayed, and drove the blade down into his body. The blade pierced his chest just under the sternum. I drove it up through the softer tissue under the ribs. I drove it up into his heart, and left it there, as he'd meant to do to me.



I stood up with blood on my hands and arms, spattering my white gown. "Tell the other lords and ladies that I am with child. I am remade, reborn, and threats to my children and my kings will be met with the utmost severity."



I looked at them, and held out my bloody hands. My skin began to glow through the blood. The power came over me, and I was warm once more. The scent of roses filled the air, and petals began to fall from the sky like pink rain.



A golden cup appeared in the air in front of me. The chalice that had been lost from the Seelie Court centuries before hovered before me. The chalice was to me as the spear and dagger were to Sholto. It appeared and disappeared at whim. It came to my bloody hands, and it was as bright and shining a magic as it had ever been. Blood and death were not evil, but just another part of life.



The petals filled the chalice, and the Goddess moved in my mind. I knelt beside Mistral's still form, and dipped my fingers into the petals, but when my fingers came out they dripped with liquid, and I smelled wine. I touched it to his lips, and he groaned.



"Take the arrows out of him," I said.



It was the dark-haired lord, Yolland, who knelt and began to obey. Turloch said, "It cannot be the chalice."



"Do not trust your eyes; trust your skin, your bones," Lord Dacey said. "Can you not feel the thrum of its magic?"



Dacey joined Yolland. Mistral moaned as they jerked the arrows free. His hands convulsed with the pain, but at least he was still mostly unconscious. As the arrows came out, I touched the liquid from the chalice to each wound. They did not heal completely, for they were made by cold iron, but they did close partially, as if they had had days of healing. The two sidhe lords knelt in the cold, and watched the chalice work its magic. When I had touched every wound on Mistral's body, I turned to the kneeling lords. Sholto had stood and watched, because the chalice was not his magic but mine.



I offered the cup with its flower petals to the lords, and they drank from it. Their lips came away touched with a different color of liquid each time. One smelled of ale, another of beer. Turloch knelt at last, tears shining on his face.



"Goddess save us."



"She's trying to," I said, and let him drink.



The scent of something sweet and unknown to me flowed up.



The petals had begun to sprout small thorny vines, roses growing in the winter cold. We knelt surrounded by the beginnings of a thicket, as green and real as any summer day, as snow began to fall from the cold sky.



"Go back to the sidhe and tell them the wild rose has returned."



Lord Yolland said, "I would bear your mark, my goddess."



"So be it," I said.



A thin vine wrapped around one of his wrists. He flinched, and I knew the thorns cut him, then the living vine was a tattoo around his wrist, as perfect and delicate as the tendril it had been but a moment before. Yolland stared at the mark, wiping away the blood that was still on his white skin.



"The king will not be pleased," Turloch said.



"I have a mark of power from one of our royals," Yolland said. "Turloch, don't you understand what that means?"



"It means the king will see her dead."



"He thinks I bear his children," I said. "He will want me alive."



"How can that be?"



I held the chalice above my head, and let it go. It hovered for a moment, then vanished in a shower of roses and vines. "Magic," I said.



"Is the chalice gone?" Dacey asked, fear in his voice.



"No," I said, and Lord Yolland echoed me. "No, once it simply belonged to its chosen bearer. It has chosen Meredith, and that is good enough for me, Dacey." He touched his new tattoo. "I am yours when you need me. Only call and I will answer."



"You will have no choice but to answer now," Turloch said.



"That you did not ask for a mark is to your shame," Yolland said. "I want to live," Turloch said.



"I want to serve," Yolland said.



"Go, tell what you have seen. It is time to stop hiding. The Goddess has returned to us, and her power is abroad once more," Yolland said.



"They will not believe us," Dacey said.



"They will believe this." Yolland held up his tattoo.



"The king will kill you," Dacey said.



"If he tries, then I will knock upon the sluaghs' gates and join King Sholto and his queen," Yolland said.



"You would ride with the sluagh?" Dacey asked.



"Oh, yes," Yolland said.



Sholto picked Mistral up in his arms. "Dawn approaches. Go back to your courts, and tell them what the Goddess bids. We will tend the Storm Lord."



I laid one hand on Sholto's bare arm, and put my other hand on Mistral's leg. The chalice had helped heal his wounds, but cold iron could be like poison to us. Just because you closed the wounds didn't mean that the poison had stopped doing its deadly work.



Sholto echoed my thoughts, leaning in close to me and whispering, "You have done a miracle with the chalice and stopped his blood loss, but cold iron is a tricky thing, Meredith."



"We must get him to your healers," I said.



"I can get inside my kingdom almost instantly, but I do not know if you are strong enough for the way I would choose."



I felt the strength in Mistral's body under my hand; even unconscious, there was muscle and strength. "Save him, Sholto."



"I am the King of the sluagh, the King of That Which Passes Between. Part of the wild hunt has not chosen its form. I can use it to simply step into the sluaghs' mound."



"Do it," I said.



"You are no longer part of the magic of the hunt, Meredith."



I looked back at what was left of the hunt in the meadow. The Seelie had gotten their horses and ridden away toward their faerie mound. The mare that I had ridden and Sholto's many-legged steed were nowhere to be seen. What remained was the writhing tail of the comet we had traveled on. What was there was white and shining, as if the full moon could be turned into tentacles, limbs, and eyes, pieces and parts that formed nothing that the eye could see, or rather nothing that the mind could make sense of. I'd been told that it would blast my mind to see the unformed hunt, and once it had been true. I remembered the terror of that first time weeks ago. Now I stared into it, and knew, simply knew, that I could form what I saw into anything. It was the raw stuff of chaos, and that is the beginning of all things. I could bring order to it, and form it into the things of faerie. The power of the Goddess still rode with me, and with that, I did not fear.



"I see nothing to fear. Bring it, but know that the Goddess still rides me, and she will bring order out of its chaos."



"As long as you are protected, I am content with whatever happens," he said. Then he called, not with words, but I heard the call, not with my ears, but with my body, as if my skin vibrated with some sweet word.



The glowing remnants of the wild hunt flowed around us. It was like being surrounded by flesh that ran like water, and even that was not exactly true. I had no words, no experience to match to the sensations of being carried by raw magic, raw form. My father had made certain that I was well versed in the major religions of the human world. I remembered reading about creation in the Bible. It seemed an orderly thing, as if God said "giraffe" and a giraffe appeared fully formed as we know it. But standing in the midst of the raw chaos, I knew that creation was like any birth, messy and never quite what you expected.



A tentacle touched me, and it suddenly glowed more brightly, then, with a cry, a white horse fell away from the circle that surrounded us. Something that was almost a hand reached for me, and I took that almost hand. I stared into eyes, and I felt this formless shape ask, "What shall I be?"



What would you do, if something asked you what should it be? What form would come into your mind? If only I had had time to think, but there was no time. This was the moment of forming, and gods do not doubt. I was Goddess's vessel, but there was enough of me to know that I would never be a goddess. I had too many doubts.



The almost hand in mine became a claw. The eyes that I stared into changed to something like the head of a hawk, but it was all white and shining, and too reptilian to be a bird, and yet... The claw cut my hand as it pulled away, and my blood fell like rubies, catching the white, white light. The drops of blood spun through the chaos, and where they touched, they formed shapes. All the oldest magics come down to blood, or earth. I had no earth to offer as we spun inside the whirlwind of flesh, bone, and magic, but blood, that I had.



I thanked the... dragon for reminding me what blood was for. Fantastic shapes formed; some of them had existed in faerie before, but some were new. Some had only ever existed in books, in fairy tales, not truth, but I was part human, and I had been educated in human schools. I had never seen many of the creatures of legend, so I could not wish them into being. It was as if my imagination was being mined for shapes. Some of the forms were beautiful, some were horrific. Never had I regretted more some of the horror-movie marathons that I'd had with friends in college, because they were there too. But some of the darkest shapes gave me eyes filled with compassion before they spilled away into the night. Some of the most heartrendingly beautiful shapes gave me eyes that were pitiless, like the eyes of a tiger that you'd hand-reared until the day you realize that it was never tame, and you are just food.



Then we were inside the sluaghs' mound with the last shining remnants of the wild magic, and the sluagh themselves turning to fight us.



Sholto yelled, "We need a healer!"



Most of them hesitated, staring at us as if struck deaf and dumb. Nightflyers peeled themselves from the ceiling and flew down one of the dark tunnels. I hoped they had gone to do as their king bid, but the rest of the surprised sluagh still seemed uncertain what to do.



The shining circle around us knelt if they had legs to kneel with, and I knew what they wanted. They wanted guidance. Guidance to pick what they would be.



I realized that we were in the great central hall. There was the throne of bones and silk at the center of the main table. This was where the court ate, and when there was an audience or important visitors the big tables were moved away. Throne rooms often doubled as the formal eating area in castles, in or outside faerie.



I spoke to the assembled sluagh. "This is wild magic; it waits to be given form. Come and touch them, and they will become what you need, or want."



A tall hooded figure said, "The wild magic only forms to the touch of the sidhe."



"Once magic was for all of faerie. Some of you remember that time."



It was a nightflyer clinging to the wall who spoke, in their slightly hissing manner. "You are not old enough to remember what you speak of."



Sholto said, "The Goddess moves in her, Dervil." And the name let me know that it was a female nightflyer, though a glance could not have told me.



The shining, kneeling circle was beginning to fade. "Would you lose this chance to show the sidhe that the oldest magic knows the hand of the sluagh?" I asked. "Come, touch it before it fades. Call back what you have lost. I was the dark Goddess this night." I raised my still-bleeding hand. "The wild magic tasted my blood. It shines with white light, but so does the moon, and is that not the light in all your night skies?"



Someone stepped forward. It was Gethin, in a loud Hawaiian shirt and shorts, though he'd left his hat behind somewhere, so that his long, donkeylike ears draped bare to his shoulders. He smiled at me, showing that his humanlike face was full of sharp, pointy teeth. He had been one of the ones who had come to Los Angeles when Sholto first approached me. He was not one of the most powerful of the sluagh, but he was bold, and we needed bold tonight.



He put his small hand on one of the shining forms, and it was as if his touch were black ink poured into shining water. As the dark color hit the shining light, the form began to change. The light and darkness mingled, and for a moment I couldn't see, as if some magical veil had come down to hide part of the process. When it was clear to the eye again, it was a small black pony.



Gethin gave a cackling, delighted laugh. He threw his arms around the shaky neck, and the pony nickered happily at him. The happy noise showed that the pony had teeth as sharp as Gethin's, but bigger. The pony rolled its eyes up at me, and there was a flash of red.



"Kelpie," I whispered.



Gethin heard me, because, smiling, he said, "Nay, Princess, 'tis an Each Uisge. It's the water horse of the Highlands, and nothin' is meaner than the Highland folk, unless maybe the Border folk." He hugged the pony again, and it nickered at him again like a long-lost pet.



Others came forward then, with eager hands. There were hairy brown creatures that were not quite horses, but not quite anything else. They looked unfinished, but the sluagh cried gladly at the sight of them. There was a huge black boar with tentacles on either side of its snout. There were black hounds, huge and fierce, with eyes that were too large for their faces, like the hounds in the old Hans Christian Andersen story about dogs with eyes as big as plates. Their huge round eyes were red and glowing, and their mouths were too wide, and seemed unable to close, so that their tongues lolled out around pointed teeth.



A huge tentacle the width of a man dangled from the ceiling. I looked up to find that it covered the ceiling. I'd seen the tentacles at the hospital and in Los Angeles, but I'd never seen more than the tentacles. Now I gazed up at the entire creature. It took up the entire upper dome of the huge ceiling. It clung to the surface much as the nightflyers did, but its tentacles didn't help it cling. They were turned outward, and dangled like fleshy stalactites. Two huge eyes gazed down at us, and the moment I saw the eyes I thought, "It's like some kind of humongous octopus," but no octopus ever had so many arms, so much flesh.



That long tentacle touched the last glowing shreds of the magic, and suddenly there was a man-sized version of the tentacled creature. All the other things that had formed from the magic had been animals: dogs, horses, pigs. But this was obviously a baby of what clung to the ceiling.



The tentacles on the ceiling gave a glad cry, which echoed in the hall and made some flinch, but most smile. The huge tentacle picked up the smaller version, and lifted it to the ceiling. The tentacled creature that I had no name for clung to the larger tentacle and made small happy sounds.



Sholto turned a tearstained face to me. "She has been alone so very long. The Goddess does still love us."



I put an arm around him, a hand on Mistral. "The Goddess loves us all, Sholto."



"The Queen has been the face of the Goddess for so long, Meredith, and she has no love of anyone."



In my head, I thought, "She loves Cel, her son." Out loud I said only, "I love."



He kissed me on the forehead, ever so gently. "I'd forgotten what it was to be loved."



I did the only thing I could. I went up on tiptoe and kissed him. "I will remind you." I gave him all that he needed to see in my face as I gazed up at him, but part of me was wondering where the healer was. I was going to be queen, and that meant that no one person was so dear as all of them. I was having one of those moments now. I was happy that Sholto was happy, and happier for his people and the return of so much, but I wanted Mistral to live. Where was the healer while the miracles of the Goddess were happening?



The nightflyers poured back from the far tunnel. "They will have the healer with them," Sholto said, as if he'd read my doubts in my face. There was a sadness around the edges of his happiness. He knew that he would never be my one and only. I was queen, and even more than most, my loyalties were divided among my people.



Chapter Twelve



I expected to see one of the sluagh with the nightflyers, but it was a man. He looked human, though he had a large hump on his back. He was handsome, with short brown hair, and a smiling face. He had a black doctor's bag with him.



I looked at Sholto.



"He is human, but he has been with us too long to set foot on mortal soil."



Humans could come to faerie and never age, but if they ever went back, all the years they'd cheated would come upon them all at once. Once you stayed in faerie any length of time, you could never go back, not and be truly human.



"He was a doctor before he came, but he has studied long in faerie. He will heal your Storm Lord if anyone here can."



I realized that I'd touched Mistral's body only through his clothes for a time. I moved so I could see his face, and what I saw was not a comfort. His normally shining white skin was almost as gray as his hair. Some of the sidhe, myself included, could change their skin color with glamour, but this pasty gray was not that.



Had the Goddess distracted me with magic, only to let me lose one of my kings? Surely not.



The healer said, "King Sholto and Princess Meredith, I am honored to serve." But it was a cursory greeting. His brown eyes were already looking more at the patient than at us. That was fine with me. He felt for Mistral's pulse with one well-groomed hand. His handsome face was very serious, and his eyes had that distant listening quality.



He touched one of the partially healed wounds. "My king, some magic has healed his wounds, but he is still very ill. What made these wounds?"



"Arrows tipped with cold iron," Sholto said.



The healer pursed his lips, and ran his hands quickly over Mistral. "Let us find a room where I can tend him properly."



"We will take him to my room," Sholto said.



The healer looked startled for a moment, then simply said, "As my king wills it." He began to walk back toward the tunnel from which he'd entered.



Sholto said, "Meredith, follow the doctor."



I started to argue that I wanted to be able to see Mistral, but something in Sholto's face made me simply nod. I followed the doctor and only glanced behind to see that Sholto was following with Mistral still in his arms.



Sholto was right. There was no guarantee that I did not have enemies here in the sluagh. We thought I was safer here, but I'd had people from this faerie mound try to kill me too. It had simply been for a different motive. The hags, as in night hags, who had once been Sholto's personal guard had tried to kill me out of jealousy. They were more than just bodyguards, as were my own guards, and the hags had thought that Sholto would forget them once he had his first taste of sidhe flesh. But the hags who had meant my death were dead themselves now. Two I had killed in self-defense. One had died at Sholto's own hand, to keep me safe. There were still some among his court who feared that me being with their king would change them forever and take away what made them sluagh. That my magic would make them into a pale version of the Seelie. It was the same fear my aunt Andais, the Queen of Air and Darkness, felt among her own court.



So I walked behind the doctor with Sholto behind me. Even with Mistral's life in our hands my safety was to be worried about. Would it always be that way? Would there never be safety inside or out of faerie for me now?



I prayed to the Goddess for safety, for guidance, and for Mistral. The scent of roses came gently to me. Then the scent of herbs followed. Thyme, mint, and basil, as if we walked upon strewn herbs, but a glance down showed that the floor was bare. In fact, it was the most cavelike of all the courts, all bare stone that looked more water-carved than hand-hewn.



"I smell herbs and roses," Sholto said from behind me.



"As do I," I said.



The corridor opened wider, and there were two cloaked figures before a pair of double doors. For a moment I thought they were night hags as his guard had been once before, but then they turned and looked at us, and the figures inside the cloaks were male. They were almost as tall as Sholto himself, pale and muscular, but there was some smoothness to their faces, lipless cuts for mouths, and oval, slitted eyes that held darkness like a cave.



"My cousins," Sholto said. "Chattan and Iomhair." The last time I'd seen his guard he'd added two uncles, but both had died defending him. I wondered if these two were the sons of those lost uncles, but I did not ask. It isn't always good to remind someone that you (meaning I) were there when their fathers died. People tended to start blaming you if you were always around when people died. That one hadn't been my fault, but if you can't blame your cousin and king, I wouldn't make a bad target for blame.



I greeted them, and they said, very formally, "Princess Meredith, you honor our sithen with your presence." It was way too polite for sluagh society.



I answered automatically in a formal tone. Years of being at court had made it habit. "It is I who is honored to be among the sluagh, for you are the strong left hand of the Unseelie Court."



They exchanged a look as we went through the doors. One of them, and they looked so alike I couldn't be sure which, said, "It has been long since that title was given to the sluagh by an Unseelie royal."



Sholto carried Mistral to the large bed on the far side of the room. I turned to answer the guard. "Then it has been too long since the sluagh were given their due by the Unseelie Court. I come here tonight seeking shelter and safety among the sluagh, not among the Unseelie or the Seelie. I come with your king's unborn child in my body, and I seek safety here among his people."



"Then the rumor is true? You bear Sholto's child?"



"I do," I said.



"Leave them, Chattan," said the other guard, Iomhair. "They have wounded to tend."



Chattan bowed, and closed the doors, but he watched me as he did it, as if it were important. I stood there and held his gaze, because there was weight to it. There were moments when I could feel not just magic, but also fate weave around me. I knew that Chattan was important, or that the small conversation we'd just had was. I could feel it, and it wasn't until the doors closed that I felt free to go to the bed to see to Mistral.



Sholto and the doctor were stripping him of the last of his clothes. I remembered him as so strong, so very alive. He lay on the bed as immovable as the dead. His chest rose and fell, but his breaths were shallow. His skin still had that unhealthy gray pallor to it. Without the clothes in the way you could see how many wounds marred his body. I counted seven separate ones before Sholto came to me. He grabbed my arm and turned me from the bed.



"You look pale, My Princess. Sit down."



I shook my head. "It's Mistral who's hurt."



Sholto took both my hands in his, and looked into my face. He seemed to be studying me. He let go of one hand so he could touch my forehead. "You feel cool to the touch."



"I've been out in the winter cold, Sholto." I tried to see around his body to the bed.



"Meredith, if it comes to a choice between having the healer look at you and the babes you carry or saving Mistral, I will choose you and the babies. So sit down and prove to me that you are not going back into shock. Riding with the wild hunt is not often an occupation for women, and I have never heard of a pregnant woman or goddess doing it at all."



I heard his words, but all I could think of was that Mistral might be dying.



He squeezed my hand hard. The pain was enough to make me frown up at him and try to pull away. "You're hurting me," I said.



"I would shake you, but I don't know what that would do to the babies. Meredith, I need you to take care of yourself so we can take care of Mistral. Do you understand that?"



He let go of my hand, and led me gently by the elbow to a chair that must have been there all along. It was as if I hadn't seen the room until that moment, as if all I could see was Mistral, Sholto, and, vaguely, the healer. Was I in shock? Had I gone back into shock as the magic receded? Or were all the events of the evening simply catching up with me?



The chair Sholto sat me in was large. The arms under my hands were carved wood, smooth from years of other hands caressing it. The cushions underneath me were soft, and the draperies that were curled over the back of the chair were silk, a deep purple like ripe grapes or the darker color of wine. I looked around the room and found that most of the room was done in shades of purple and burgundy. I think I'd expected black and gray the way the Queen's room was done. Sholto spent so much time in the Unseelie Court trying to be as good as, and fit in with, the Unseelie nobles that I'd just assumed that the black he wore at court was what he would have done his home in, but now I was here, and it was nothing like I'd imagined.



Among the burgundy and purple there were hints of red and lavender, gold and yellow here and there, interwoven with the darker colors. My apartment in Los Angeles had been mostly burgundy and pink. It hadn't occurred to me until that moment that whoever I married would have a say in the decor of our home. I was pregnant with their children, but I didn't really know their favorite colors, except for Galen. I'd known that Galen liked green since I was small. But the rest of the men, even Doyle and my lost Frost, hadn't had time to tell me their likes and dislikes of small things. Colors, cushions, rugs, or bare wood; what did they prefer? I had no idea. We'd gone from emergency to emergency for so long, or been working to make ends meet, that there hadn't been time to worry about the typical things couples discuss.



I'd spent my early life with my father out among the humans, American humans, so I knew how to be a couple, but I had the same problem that all royals had. We could try to be ordinary, but in the end, it wasn't truly possible. What we were would always overwhelm who we were.



Sholto appeared in front of me with a cup in his hand. Steam rose from it, and it smelled thick, warm, sweet. I could identify some of the spices in it, but not all.



"Mulled wine, but I can't drink, not while I'm pregnant."



The healer spoke from the bed. "Did you see the servant bring in the wine?"



I blinked at him, past Sholto's shoulder. "No," I said.



"You must have something to help you, Princess Meredith. I believe you are going into shock again, and how many shocks can you take in one night while pregnant with twins? It's a hard thing on a body, and although the fact that you are descended from fertility deities is a help to you, you are also part human, and part brownie. Neither of them is free from complications."



"What do you know of brownies?" I asked, as Sholto wrapped my hands around the cup. I needed both hands for the smooth wood.



"Henry has treated many of the lesser fey while he has been with us," Sholto said. "One of the reasons he came to our court was his curiosity about our many forms. He thought he could learn more here."



"So you've helped brownies birth babies?" I asked.



Sholto used one hand to start the cup toward my mouth. My hands stayed around the cup, but didn't help him. I felt strangely passive, as if nothing mattered that much. They were right. I needed something.



"I have," the doctor said, "and I promise you, Princess, that one cup of mulled wine will not harm you or your children. It will help you think more clearly, and warm you from the terrible things you have seen this night." He sounded very kind, and his brown eyes were full of sincerity.



"You're a witch," I said.



"A good one, I promise, but I did train as a doctor, and I am a healer. But, yes, I am what the humans call a psychic now. Back in my mortal day I was a witch, and that, along with the hump on my back, put me in grave danger of being killed for dealing with the devil."



"The old king of the sluagh," I said.



He nodded. "I was seen with some of the sluagh one night, and that sealed my fate among the humans. Now drink. Drink and be well." There was more to his words than just kindness. There was power. Drink and be well. I knew there was magic and will in his words, and more than just spices in the wine.



Sholto helped me drink it, and from the first touch of the warm, spicy liquid on my tongue I felt a little more alert. Swallowing it spread warmth through my entire body, in a rush of comfort. It was like being wrapped in a favorite blanket on a winter's night, with a cup of hot tea in one hand, a favorite book in the other, and your beloved lying with his head in your lap. It was all that in one cup of warm wine.



I drank, and by the end of the cup Sholto was no longer having to guide my hands.



"Better?" the doctor asked.



"Much," I said.



Sholto took the cup from me, and put it on a tray on the small table beside the chair. There was even a lamp beside the chair, curved up over the back of it. It was a modern lamp, which meant that this room at least was wired for electricity. As much as I had missed faerie in my exile on the West Coast, seeing the lamp, and knowing that I could turn it on with the flip of a switch, was very comforting. There were moments lately when magic seemed so plentiful that a little technology was not at all a bad thing.



"Do you feel well enough to join us at the bed?" the doctor asked.



I thought about it before answering, then nodded. "Yes, I do."



"Bring her, My King, for I need your help."



Sholto helped me stand. I had a moment of dizziness. His hand was very solid in mine, his other hand on my waist. The room stopped moving, and I wasn't certain if that was because of the wine, the magic in the wine, the night, or something about carrying two lives inside my body. I knew that if I was human, truly human, twins were supposed to be hard on the body. But it was very early in the pregnancy, wasn't it?



Sholto led me to the bed, and there was a ramp up to it so that it was on a dais, but with no steps. I wondered if the last king of the sluagh hadn't found steps to his liking. The pure-blooded nightflyers didn't have feet to use steps, so a ramp would work better. Of course, they could fly, so maybe the ramp had been meant for some even older king.



Someone snapped their fingers in my face. It startled me, made me see the doctor's face close to mine. "The wine should have taken care of this distraction. I am not certain she is well enough to help us, My King." The doctor, Henry, looked worried, and I could feel his concern. I realized that he could project his emotions. If he could choose what emotions to share with his patients, it must have made his bedside manner amazing.



"What do you need us to do, Henry?" Sholto asked.



"I have put a poultice on each wound, and it will draw some of the poison out, but all the denizens of faerie are magic. They need it to survive the way humans need air or water. I've long maintained that the reason cold iron is so deadly to faerie is that it negates magic. In effect, the iron in his body is destroying the magic that makes him live. We need to give him other magic to replace it."



"How do we do that?" Sholto asked.



"This is magic of a higher order than I have in my poor repertoire. It needs the magic of the sidhe, and I will never be that." There was a taste of regret to his words, but no bitterness. He had made peace with who and what he was long ago.



"I am not a healer," Sholto said.



The smell of roses and herbs returned. "It isn't healers who are needed, Sholto," I said. "Your doctor is a great healer."



Henry bowed to me. His twisted spine made it a shallow bow, but it was as graceful as any I'd been given. "You are most generous with your praise, Princess Meredith."



"I am honest." The perfume of roses was growing stronger. It was not the heavy, cloying scent of modern roses, but the light, sweet scent of the wild. The herbs added a warm, thick undertone to the scent, as if we were standing in the middle of an herb garden with a hedge of wild roses around it to guard it and keep it safe.



The wall beside the large bed stretched inward, like the skin of some great beast being pushed farther away. When the Seelie or Unseelie sithen moved, it was almost invisible. One moment this size, the next bigger or smaller, or just different. But this was the sluagh sithen, and apparently here we'd get to see the process.



The dark stone stretched like rubber into a darkness more complete than any night. It was cave darkness, but more than that, it was the darkness at the beginning of time before the word and the light had found it, before there was anything else but the dark. People forget that the darkness came first, not the light, not the word of Deity, but the dark. Perfect, complete, needing nothing, asking nothing, simply all there was was the dark.



The scent of roses and herbs was so real that I could taste it on my tongue, like drinking in a summer's day.



Dawn broke in the darkness. A sun that had nothing to do with the sky outside the sithen rose in the distant curve of sky, and as the soft light brightened, it revealed a garden. I would have said it was a knot garden, that time-consuming art of grooming herbs into clean, curved, Victorian lines, but my eyes couldn't quite make out the herbs' shape. It was almost as if the longer you tried to see the plants, and the stone walkway between them, the more your eye couldn't make sense of them. It was like a knot garden based on non-euclidean geometry. The kind of shapes that are impossible with physics the way it's supposed to work, but then there was a sun underground, and a garden that hadn't been there moments before. What was a little nonstandard geometry compared to that?



A hedge bordered the entire garden. Had it been there a second before? I could neither remember it; nor not remember it. It simply was. It was the circle of wild roses, like the one I'd seen in a vision once. That had been a mixed vision, part wonderment and part near-death experience. I fought not to remember the great boar that had nearly killed me before I'd spattered its blood on the snow, because with creation magic what you thought could become all too real.



I thought about healing Mistral. I thought about my babies. I thought about the man standing beside me. I reached for Sholto's hand. He actually startled, looking at me with eyes too wide, but he smiled when I smiled.



"Let us take him to the garden," I said.



Sholto nodded, and bent to pick up the still-unconscious Mistral. I looked back at the doctor. "Are you coming, Henry?"



He shook his head. "This magic is not for me. Take him, save him. I will explain where you are."



Sholto said, "I think the garden will remain here, Henry."



"We'll see, won't we?" Henry said with a smile, but there was regret in his eyes. I'd seen that look in other humans inside faerie. That look that says that no matter how long they stay, they know they can never truly be one of us. We can prolong their life, their youth, but they are still human in a land where no one else is.



I knew what it was to be mortal in a land of immortals. I knew what it was to know that I was aging and the others were not. I was part human, and it was moments like this that made me remember what that meant. Even with the most powerful magic in all of faerie coming to my hand, I still knew regret and mortality.



I went on tiptoe and laid a gentle kiss on Henry's cheek. He looked surprised, then pleased. "Thank you, Henry."



"It is my honor to serve the royals of this court," he said, in a voice that almost held tears. He touched where I had kissed him as I moved away, as if he could feel it still.



I went to Sholto, who stood there holding Mistral as if he weighed nothing and he could have held him all night. I took Sholto's arm, laid my other hand on Mistral's bare skin, and we walked into the garden.