Swallowing Darkness

Chapter Thirty-Seven



Of everyone I had expected to find at the end of that powerful drawing in, a soldier was not among them. The man lay on his stomach, hidden where he'd crawled into the woods. His uniform had done what my glamour did, hidden him.



I would have questioned whether I'd taken a wrong turn or followed the wrong scent, but the sense of urgency and rightness was too clear. This was the man who had drawn me, blind with magic, through the edges of battle.



I knelt in the leaves and weeds in the winter-locked forest. I had to turn him over with my left hand, for my right shoulder was still full of the nails. I could flex my hand, but I could not raise it high enough to do anything but steady the man's body as I pushed. The pain from just that small helping movement was excruciating. It left me breathless, and the bare trees swam in streamers of sickening black and white. I rested on the man's chest for a moment, eyes closed, not sure if I was going to throw up or pass out.



Then something fell against my cheek. The touch made me raise my head. A single pink rose petal slid onto the man's chest. The Goddess was with me. I would not fail.



I raised my eyes and found the face under the uniform. It was the wizard Dawson, with his pale hair and paler face. So terribly pale among the darkened trees. He looked like his own ghost.



I touched his face with my good hand. He was icy to the touch. I checked for the big pulse in the neck. My chest tightened, because there was nothing. Then... a tenuous, hesitating pulse. He was near death, but not dead.



I whispered, "Goddess, help me help him."



The pink petal blew or rolled onto his lips. His eyes flew wide, and he grabbed my injured arm. The pain took my vision, filled the world with white starbursts and nausea.



My vision cleared, and someone was holding me in their arms. It was Dawson, sitting up, looking down at me. "Princess Meredith, are you all right?"



I laughed. I couldn't help it. He'd been the one who was almost dead, and he wanted to know if I was all right. His hand hovered above my shoulders and arm where the nails were still embedded. He held up a bloody hand, and showed me a nail.



"I woke up with you and this on me. I was dying. I know I was dying. You saved me. How?"



I had no idea how to explain. I opened my mouth to say "I have no idea," but what came out was, "Remember when you felt the call of my touch?"



"Yes."



"I followed your call."



"But you're hurt."



"But you're not," I said. "Help me up."



He did what I asked, no arguing. Maybe it was shock, or maybe he couldn't refuse me. I neither knew nor cared. There was more need out there in the dark. I could feel it.



Dawson kept a steadying hand on my good arm, and let me lead us through the trees. The fighting was a distant sound of guns, the flashing of lightning, and green fire. The fire meant that Doyle was still alive. I wanted to go to him, but another single pink petal fell onto the front of my coat. In that moment, more than any other before it, I trusted in the Goddess. I trusted that she would not have me save the soldiers and lose the men I loved. I prayed for courage enough not to falter or question. My reward was another body on the ground.



The man lay on his back. Dark eyes stared up at the sky. His mouth opened and shut as if he couldn't figure out how to breathe. The front of his uniform was torn away from one side of his chest. It had been peeled away as if by something stronger than human hands. His chest steamed in the winter air. I'd never seen a wound steam in the cold, never thought, "The warmth of life is floating away."



Dawson helped me kneel. He said, "Brennan, this is Princess Meredith. She'll help you."



Brennan's mouth opened, but no words came out, only a trickle of blood that was too dark, too thick. I laid the pink petal on his face, but there was no miraculous waking. He was awake, and the terror in his eyes said that he knew he was dying. I did not know how I had healed Dawson, so I did not know how to repeat it.



I prayed, "Goddess, help me help him."



Brennan shuddered, his body convulsing, and there was a sound in his chest as he tried to breathe. Dawson said, "Help him, please."



I laid my hand on his wound and prayed, and then there was pain. Pain that stole the world, and then I found myself waking, collapsed across the soldier's chest.



A hand was stroking my hair. I opened my eyes to Brennan staring down at me. Dawson cradled Brennan's head in his arms, and they both looked at me. They looked at me as if I were the most wonderful thing in the world. They looked at me as if I'd walked on water. The thought filled me with no comfort, only a vague anxiety. I had never wanted any human being to look at me like that.



Brennan held a bloody nail up so I could see it.



Dawson said, "It fell out, just like mine did. Blood and the nail, and then he was healed."



I nodded as if that made sense to me. This time I had a solider on each arm, but when Brennan took my injured arm, it didn't hurt quite as much. I think I was healing each of my nail wounds every time I healed a solider. Did that mean that I could only heal as many as I had nails in my flesh? On the one hand, being healed would be good, but on the other hand, there were many more soldiers than the nails I had in my body. Would I lose the ability to heal the rest when I was healed myself? I didn't want to stay injured, but... I let the thought go. We would do what we could, then we'd see. I did my best not to think too hard about anything. I did my best to keep walking, and let the men I'd saved help me. If I thought too hard, I'd be like Peter walking across the sea to follow Jesus. He did fine until he thought too hard, then he fell beneath the waves. I could not afford to fall. I could feel the need of the injured in the dark. That need called to me, and I had to answer it.



We found two soldiers together. I didn't know what Cel and his people had done, but it was as if all of the wounded had crawled off to die. Where were the doctors, the medics? Where was everyone? I could hear the fighting in the distance, a little closer now as we moved, but whatever illusion had been used had made them crawl away to die, and not seek help.



Dawson and Brennan helped me kneel beside the fallen soldiers. It took me a moment to realize that one of the soldiers was a woman. She was hidden under a vest and some gear. Her skin was almost as dark as Doyle's in the night of the trees.



Dawson said, "It's Hayes."



Brennan was kneeling beside the other soldier, who was collapsed on one side. "It's Orlando, sir."



I laid my hand against Hayes's neck, and felt something sticky. I didn't bother to raise my hand to the faint light. I knew it was drying blood. It shouldn't be drying that fast, should it? Had I lost track of time?



I spoke out loud without really meaning to. "Was she ever wounded?"



"Yes," Brennan said. "We both got hit in the same ambush. She dragged my ass to safety, just like she did Orlando here."



"Was your chest wound an old wound?" I asked.



"Yes, ma'am. That prince, he pointed his hand at me and it was like the wound just came back. Then he ripped my vest back so he could see the wound. He seemed to enjoy seeing it."



"Was she wounded in the neck?" I asked.



"Yes, ma'am."



Cel was hurting my people. He was hurting people who had sworn to protect me. They were dying to protect me and mine. It wasn't right. We were supposed to protect them, not the other way around.



I prayed to the Goddess as I touched Hayes. She was brave, and had saved lives once with this wound in her body. It seemed wrong to make her live through it twice, but even in the midst of the horror, she had grabbed another solider and dragged him with her. So brave.



There was pain, and this time I didn't pass out. This time I saw the nail push its way out of my flesh in a spurt of blood. The blood spattered Hayes's face as her eyes flew wide, flashing white. She gasped, and grabbed my arm. The nail fell on to her chest, and her other hand closed on it automatically, as if she hadn't noticed.



"Who are you?"



"I am Princess Meredith NicEssus."



She clutched my arm, her fist clutching the bloody nail to her chest. She swallowed hard. "It doesn't hurt."



"You're healed," Dawson said, leaning over her.



"How?"



"Let her heal Orlando, and you'll see."



Dawson helped me stand, but I was feeling a little better, and didn't have to lean so heavily on his arm. I still let him and Brennan help me to my knees. I still couldn't move my shoulder, though my hand and lower arm now had more range of movement.



There was no visible wound on Orlando, but his skin was cool to the touch, and I couldn't find a pulse in his neck, not even that thready hesitation that Dawson had had. I tried not to think what that meant. I tried not to question this miracle, or to think too hard that I didn't really know what I was doing or how. I prayed harder, and laid my hands on the man's cooling skin.



A shower of rose petals blew across us, like pink snow. I felt the man shudder underneath my hands, and there was more pain, more blood, and another nail fell into his half-open hand. His hand convulsed around the nail, just like Hayes's had done.



"Dear God," Hayes said.



"I think you mean Goddess," Dawson said.



The man on the ground stared up at me, his face frightened. "Where am I?"



"Cahokia, Illinois," I said.



"I thought I was back in the desert. I thought... "



Hayes gripped his shoulder, and turned him to look at her. "It's all right, Orlando. She saved us. We're safe."



I wasn't sure about that last part, but I let it go. I had only a few nails left, only a few more lives to save. When I was healed, would I lose the ability to save them? I wanted to be healed, but I didn't want to lose any of them. They had offered their lives to save us, and I wanted to repay that. They shouldn't die in our war.



I felt the call close by. There were more wounded. I would do what I could. I would do what the Goddess helped me do. I wanted to save them all. The question was, could I?



Chapter Thirty-Eight



I had eight soldiers with me, each clutching a bloody nail, each brought back from the brink of death. Once the last nail was out of my body, the call faded. There was something about the pain and the injury that had made the magic possible.



A sidhe warrior appeared out of the dark, dressed in crimson armor that gleamed in the moonlight, as if made of fire. His name was Aodan, and I knew that his hand of power matched his armor. I felt him call his hand of power, and I spoke without thinking. "Kill him."



They should have hesitated. They shouldn't have taken my orders. Dawson was the ranking officer, but they aimed their recovered guns at the figure and fired. The bullets did what bullets had been doing to faerie from the moment humans had made them. They tore through that brilliant armor, and into the flesh underneath. He died before he could send his hand of fire to scorch us. I could feel them calling their hands of power. If we could keep shooting them before they had time to unleash that power, we could win this. Such a simple solution, if you had soldiers who would follow unhesitatingly, and a complete willingness to kill everything in your path. Apparently, I had both.



Other soldiers joined us, not because of me, but because we had formed a unit on the field of battle. We seemed to know what we were doing, and we had an officer with us. They formed around us because we were moving with purpose, and you need purpose in the midst of battle. Purpose, and no hesitation.



I felt magic come our way. Some cried out in horror at whatever illusion one of the armored sidhe had created. I'd been able to share glamour with one or two other sidhe before. I spread that pool of protective glamour out and out. I spread it farther than I'd ever attempted before, spreading it over my people, the way you'd spill water over fevered skin.



As the screams of my men stopped and they began to murmur, I spoke low to Dawson. "Shoot the ones in armor." I had to concentrate on keeping all of us free of the illusions. Even shouting would make me stumble.



Dawson never questioned me. He simply yelled out my order, "Shoot the ones in armor! Fire!"



Immortal warriors who had seen more centuries than any of us would ever dream of fell before our weapons. They fell like dreams brought down to earth. They couldn't cloud the minds of the men, and without their illusions to stop the soldiers from firing, we mowed them down.



Dilys stood, all in yellow, glowing like she had swallowed flame, and it had filled her skin and her hair, and blazed out of her eyes. She wore no armor of any kind. Her dress looked as if she were expecting to walk down some marble staircase to a ball. But where the warriors fell, their magical armor pierced by human ingenuity, she stood. The bullets seemed to hit a wavering glow, like heat off a summer road. The bullets hit, hesitated, then melted, in little spurts of orangey light.



"What is she?" Dawson said, beside me.



"Magic," I said. "She is magic."



"What kind of magic?" Hayes asked.



"Heat, light, sun. She's a goddess of the summer heat." I'd always wondered what she'd been before she fell from grace. Most of the really powerful ones hid their pasts, some out of shame for power lost, others for fear of enemies who had retained more power settling old scores. But as I had returned Siobhan's illusions to her, so apparently I had given Dilys, or whatever her real name was, back her heat.



Others of the armored warriors had hidden behind her wavering shield. They huddled around her as they were supposed to huddle around me, but I would never burn like that. I was not sun, but moon.



In that moment, I didn't want to kill her. I wanted her to come back to me. I wanted her to be one of my court. I wanted the summer's heat to warm us all.



I called, "Dilys, we are all Unseelie. We should not be killing each other."



She spoke in a voice that held an edge of roar, and I realized it was the sound of some great fire, as if her very words burned. "You say that because your human weapons cannot harm me."



Hayes flinched beside me. She whispered, "It hurts to hear her speak."



"Not as much as it would if the princess wasn't shielding us all," Dawson said.



He was right. The glamour that protected them from the illusions was also saving them from the full force of that burning voice. She wasn't fire, she was the heat of sun. It fills the fields with life, but too much of it and the fields wither, die, and become lifeless dust.



You needed water and heat for life. Where was her mate? Where was her balance? The ring on my hand pulsed once. It had been known as the Queen's Ring for centuries. Andais had given it to me to show her favor. But she was a thing of destruction and war only. I was life as well as death; I was balance. The ring had once belonged to a goddess of love and fertility. Andais had taken it from the Goddess's dead finger.



Death should never take the tools of life, because it won't know how to use them. But I knew.



There was a rain of pink petals around me and my soldiers. The ring pulsed harder, hot against my finger. Something moved at the edge of the clearing. A white figure limped out from among the trees. It was Crystall. The last time I'd seen him, he'd been in the queen's bed, being tortured to a red ruin. One of the serious downsides to being immortal and being able to heal from almost anything was that if you fell into the hands of a sexual sadist, the "fun" could last a very long time.



She'd picked him as her victim because he'd been one of her guards who had tried to answer my call. He would have come to L.A. with me, but Andais declared that she could not lose all her guard to me. So she punished those who had to stay but did not wish to stay. She wasn't getting volunteers to take the place of the guards who had come to me. She'd been too harsh a mistress for too long. The men knew what to expect, and they just weren't signing up. That had made her even worse to the men she still had. Crystall showed that as he moved into the clearing.



When he could no longer lean on the trees, he fell to the ground on all fours and began to crawl toward us. The soldiers aimed their guns around him, as if they expected to see what had injured him coming out of the trees. It was a thought. Where was the queen? Why was she letting Cel and so many of her nobles go against her express orders? It wasn't like her to sit idly by if she could punish people. But watching Crystall crawl, seeing the bloody wounds on his body, I thought that she might be busy. Sometimes she fell so far into her bloodlust that she forgot everything but the pain and flesh under her hands. Was she somewhere intoxicated with sadistic pleasure while her son imploded her kingdom? Had she lost control to that degree?



I started moving toward Crystall. The soldiers moved with me, guns trained on Dilys, on the trees, on the dark, but I wasn't sure there was anything to shoot right now. Later. There would be things to shoot later.



Dilys called across the field in her voice with its edge of fire sound. "Your bloodline is corrupt, Meredith. Your aunt has tortured her guards until they are useless for anything but slaves."



I looked at the golden figure, and called back. "Then why are you helping Cel? Isn't he just as corrupt?"



"Yes," Dilys said.



"You'll help him kill me, then you'll kill him," I said.



She said nothing, but her light flared a little brighter. It was the magical equivalent of that little smile that you can't always keep from your face. That satisfied, things-are-going-my-way smile.



Crystall collapsed, and I thought for a moment that he wouldn't get back up, but he did. He began to crawl, painfully, slowly, toward that golden glow.



I started to go forward and help him, but the ring pulsed harder, and I took that as a sign. I stayed where I was. I let him do that slow, piteous crawl. His white hair, which I knew in the right light wasn't white but almost clear, like crystal or water, dragged on the ground, like a rich cloak fallen on hard times.



Dawson said, "Do you want us to help him?"



"No," I said in a low voice. "I want her to help him."



He gave me a look, then when my look didn't make any sense to him, he did the look with Brennan and Mercer. Mercer said, "But won't she kill him?"



"Not if she wants to be saved," I said.



"I don't think she's the one who needs saving," Mercer said.



Dilys yelled at me. "Aren't you going to help him, Princess?"



"He's not here for me."



"You speak in riddles," she said.



Crystall continued his agonizingly slow crawl across the field with its dead and wounded. But it was clear now that he wasn't aiming for me. He was crawling inexorably toward that golden glow.



"Do not let him throw his life away, Meredith. If he tries to harm me in this condition, I will destroy him."



"He's not here to harm you, Dilys," I said.



"Why else is he here but to save you and your humans?"



Crystall had reached the edge of the golden light, but had not quite touched it. The light, like sunlight will, sparkled through his skin and hair as if he were made of his namesake, crystal. Her light caught rainbows along his body. Small, winking colored lights, to chase back the dark.



He put out his hand, and the moment it entered the circle of her light, he knelt and looked at her. The blood on his body gleamed as if formed of rubies.



"What magic is this?" Dilys asked, but her voice was not the burning thing it had been.



Crystall stood, and walked into that light. His body began to glow, like sunlight on water, or the reflected light on diamonds. He moved into her sunlight, and reflected it, making it a thing of beauty.



"What are you doing to him, Meredith?"



"It is not me who is doing it."



Crystall was almost within touching distance of her golden, glowing form. He stood there, tall and lithe, his body lined with muscles, but lean like a runner. He had always had a delicate strength. He was like a jewel thrown into the sun, gleaming with rainbows from the tips of his hair to every inch of bare skin. The wounds had closed, as if just being near her power had healed him.



She looked... frightened. "I am no healer, but he is healed. How is this possible?"



Crystall held his hand out to her.



"What does he want?" she yelled, and the fear was plain in her voice.



"Take his hand, and you'll know."



"It's a trap," she said.



"I wear the queen's ring, Dilys. I saw you burning with the heat of the summer sun, and thought, 'Where is her balance?' Where is her coolness to keep her from burning everything to death?"



"No!" She shouted it at him.



Crystall simply held his hand out to her, as if he could hold that shining hand out forever.



Then her golden hand began to move, as if of its own accord. Her fingertips brushed his, and the golden heat became half silver, and I saw the waver of heat meet the sparkle of water in front of them, like the sun on the surface of a summer lake.



Then they were in each other's arms. They kissed as if they had always kissed, though I knew they had not. He had never been her lover, her god to goddess, but he was what was left. He was the coolness she needed, and I had called what I could find.



Her glow banked to a hard, yellow light as if she were carved of it. Crystall glowed as if he were formed of rainbow light.



"Oh, my god," Hayes whispered.



"Yes," I said.



"What did you do?" Dawson said.



"They will be a couple, and there will be children. Two children."



"How do you know that?" Brennan asked.



I smiled at him, and knew that my eyes had begun to glow, green and gold.



He swallowed hard, as if the sight disturbed him. "Oh, yeah, magic."



"Make love, not war," another solider said.



"Exactly," I said.



Then there was a shriek from the far edge of the field. Cel stood there, screaming wordlessly at me in his gray and black armor, surrounded by followers in every color of armor and some that looked like bark and leaves or animal pelts, but they would stand up to anything but steel and iron. Those dreamlike warriors carried a figure between them, and from the moment I recognized him, my heart failed me. His hair fell loose around him, blacker than the moon-fed night. Their white sidhe hands seemed an insult against all his dark perfection.



Cel screamed across the field at me. "He still lives, barely! Is this mongrel worth your life, cousin? Will you walk to me across this field to save him?"



I could not take my gaze from him, dark and so terribly still. Was he even still alive? Only death would make him so still. The thought that I had lost them both, my Darkness and my Killing Frost, was too much. Too much pain, too much loss, just too much.



I whispered his name. "Doyle." I willed him to look up, to move, to let me know that if I walked to him, there would be something to save. My hand went to my stomach, still flat, still so unmoved by the pregnancy, and I knew that I could not trade myself for my Darkness. He would never forgive me if I made such a bargain. A wave of nausea washed over me, and the night swam, but I couldn't faint. I couldn't be weak; there was no time for weakness. I pushed the feelings away that would unman me, and clung to the ones that would help me: hatred, fear, rage, and a coldness that I didn't know I had inside me.



"It's war, then," I whispered.



"What?" Dawson asked.



"We will give Cel what he wants," I said.



"You can't give yourself to him," Hayes said.



"No, I cannot," I said, and my voice sounded like someone else's, as if I didn't recognize myself anymore.



"If we don't give him you, what do we give him?" Mercer asked.



"War," I said simply, and began to walk across the field. My soldiers came with me. Either Cel would die this moment or I would. Seeing Doyle thrown onto the ground like so much motionless garbage, I was content with that.