Лорел Гамильтон - A Caress Of Twilight

When we could walk, we got to our feet and walked back the way we had come to find Maeve Reed and her husband and give them the magic that we had found.

It was Conchenn in all her glory who waited in my bedroom for her magic kiss. Gordon Reed seemed even more like a grey skeleton beside her glowing presence. The pain in his face as he gazed upon her was horrible to see. Even through the pulsing glow of the magic we held inside us, Gordon's pain was visible. I could not heal his illness, but I hoped to ease his pain.

"You smell of wilderness," Conchenn said. "The heart of the earth beats through you, Meredith. I can see it like a green glow behind my eyelids." She began to cry crystal tears, as if her tears should have been able to be held and set in silver and gold. "Your green man smells of sky and wind and sunlight. He glows yellow inside my head." She sat on the edge of the bed as if her legs couldn't hold her anymore. "Earth and sky you bring us, mother and father you bring us, goddess and god you bring us."

I wanted to say, don't thank us yet; we haven't given you a child yet. But I didn't say it, because I could feel the magic inside my body, could feel it in Galen as he held my hand. It was the raw power of life itself, the age-old dance of earth planted with seed bringing forth fruit. It could not be truly stopped, this cycle, because if it stopped, life itself would stop.

Maeve moved to sit beside Gordon and held one of his thin hands in both her shining ones. Galen and I stood in front of them. I moved to kneel by Gordon, as Galen moved closer to Maeve. We kissed them at the same time, our lips touching theirs like the last movement to some perfect dance. The power jumped from us to them in a rush that raised the hairs on our bodies and filled the room with that close hush like a lightning bolt ready to strike. The room was suddenly so full of magic that it was hard to breathe.

Galen and I moved back, and now I could see behind my own eyes that they both glowed, filled with earth fire and the gold of the sun. Maeve was already moving to kiss her husband's thin lips when we left them to it, closing the door quietly behind us. We felt the moment of release like a wind that poured from under the door and touched us all.

Doyle spoke into the sudden silence of us all. "You have succeeded, Meredith."

"You don't know that for certain," I said.

He looked at me, just looked at me as if what I'd said had been ridiculous.

"Doyle is right," Frost said. "Such power will not fail."

"If I have such fertility power, then why aren't I pregnant yet?"

There was a second silence, not awestruck this time, but awkward. "I do not know," Doyle said at last.

"We have to try harder, that's all," Rhys said.

Galen nodded solemnly. "More sex, we must have more sex."

I frowned at both of them, but couldn't keep it up. Finally I laughed. "We have more sex and I won't be able to walk."

"We'll carry you everywhere," Rhys said.

"Yes," Frost said.

I looked at all of them slowly. I was pretty sure they were kidding, pretty sure.

We were finishing lunch the next day when Taranis called back.

I bolted the last of my fruit salad and fresh bread while Doyle spoke with him. Maeve was pregnant; the magic had quickened inside her. Taranis couldn't know that yet, but I feared what he would do when he found out. It added one more little stress to dealing with the king.

I'd chosen a royal purple sundress with a scoop neck and one of those little ties in back. It was very feminine, very nonthreatening, and a style that had been in vogue for a very long time. The only thing that had changed was the hem length. Sometimes when dealing with the Seelie Court, you wanted to go slow into the twenty-first century.

I sat on the freshly made bed, and it wasn't accidental that the purple of my dress complemented the burgundy bedspread and matched the purple pillows scattered among the burgundy and black ones.

I had refreshed the red lipstick and left the rest alone. We were going for dramatic natural. I had my ankles crossed, even though he couldn't see them, and my hands folded in my lap. It wasn't formal, but it was about the best I could do without a formal answering room.

Doyle stood on one side and Frost on the other. Doyle wore his usual black jeans, black T-shirt. He'd added black boots that reached to his thighs, then folded them down to just above his knees. He'd even pulled the spider necklace out of his shirt so that it gleamed in plain sight on his black shirt. The spider was part of his livery, his crest, and I'd once seen him cause the skin of a human magician's body to split as the spiders depicted in the jewels poured out of the man until he'd become nothing but a writhing mass of them. The unfortunate victim had been the man Lieutenant Peterson thought I had killed.

Frost had gone more traditional, dressed in a thigh-length tunic of white, edged with silver, white, and gold embroidery. Tiny flowers and vines were sewn in such detail that you could tell the vines were ivy and roses, with some harebells and violas embroidered around them. A broad belt of white leather, with a silver buckle, fastened at the tunic's waist. His sword, Winter Kiss, Geamhradh Pog, hung at his side. He left the enchanted blade at home most days because it couldn't stop modern bullets; it didn't possess that kind of magic. But for an audience with the king, the sword was perfect. Its handle was carved bone, inset with silver. The bone had a patina like old ivory, rich and warm, like pale wood polished from all the centuries of being handled.

They both did their best to stand to one side and not overwhelm me physically, but it was hard work. Even if I'd been standing up, it would have been hard work; sitting down it was nearly impossible, but we were trying to have me seem friendly. They would do the unfriendly parts if it needed doing. It was a sort of good cop, bad cop, but for politics.

Taranis, King of Light and Illusion, sat on a golden throne. He was clothed in light. His undertunic was the movement of sunlight through leaves, soft dappled light, with pinpoints of bright yellow sunlight, like tiny starbursts appearing through the light and shadow. The overtunic was the bright, almost blinding yellow of full summer sunlight on bright leaves. It was both green and gold, and neither. It was light, not cloth, and the color changed and moved as he moved. Even the rise and fall of his breathing made it dance and flow.

His hair fell in waves of golden light around a face that was so bright with light that only his eyes shone out of the dazzlement. Those eyes were three circles of brilliant, livid blue, like three circles of three different oceans, each drowning in sunlight, each a different shade of blue; but like the water they were borrowed from, they changed and shifted as if unseen currents boiled within.

So much of him moved, and not in complementary ways. It was like looking at different kinds of light on different days in different parts of the world but having them be forced together. Taranis was a collage of illumination that flashed and flowed and fluttered, and never in the same direction. I had to close my eyes. It was dizzying. I felt I'd grow sick if I looked at it long enough. I wondered if Doyle or Frost were feeling a little motion sick, or if it was just me.

But that wasn't something I could ask aloud in front of the king. Aloud I said, "King Taranis, my part-mortal eyes cannot behold your splendor without feeling quite overwhelmed. I would beg you lessen your glory so that I might look upon you without growing faint."

His voice came in a rush of music, as if he was singing some wondrous song, but he was only speaking. In my head, I knew it wasn't the most beautiful sound I'd ever heard, but my ears heard something beyond beguiling. "Whatever you need to make this conversation pleasant will be given to you. Behold, I am more easy upon mortal eyes."