Marie Brennan - Midnight Never Come

Lune did not know what effect the sword had, now that one half of its pact had passed out of the world, but if they could take it to the Hunt, as proof of Invidiana’s downfall… a slim hope, but she could not think of anything else to try.

Her own fingers came well short of the hilt. She looked at Deven, and he shook his head; Invidiana had been even taller than he, and he looked reluctant to touch a faerie sword regardless.

“Lift me,” Lune said. Deven wrapped his bloodstained hands about her waist, gathered his strength, and sent her into the air, as high as he could.

Her hand closed around the hilt, but the sword did not pull free.

Instead, it pulled her upward, with Deven at her side.

CANDLEWICK STREET, LONDON: May 9, 1590

She understood the truth, as they passed with a stomach-twisting surge from the alcove to the street above. The London Stone, half-buried, did not extend downward into the Onyx Hall. The Stone below was simply a reflection of the Stone above, the central axis of the entire edifice Suspiria and Francis had constructed. In that brief, wrenching instant, she felt herself not only to be at the London Stone, but at St. Paul’s and the Tower, at the city wall and the bank of the Thames.

Then she stood on Candlewick Street, with Deven at her side, the sword still in her hand.

All around them was war. Some still fought in the sky; others had dragged the battle down into the streets, so that the clash of weapons came from Bush Lane and St. Mary Botolph and St. Swithins, converging on where they stood. Hounds yelped, a sound that made her skin crawl, and someone was winding a horn, its call echoing over the city rooftops. But she had eyes only for a set of figures mounted on horseback that stood scant paces from the two of them.

She thrust the sword skyward and screamed, “Enough!”

And her voice, which should not have begun to cut through the roar of battle, rang out louder than the horn, and brought near-instant silence.

They stared at her, from all around where the fighting had raged. She did not see Sir Kentigern, but Prigurd stood astraddle the unmoving body of their sister, a bloody two-handed blade in his grip. Vidar was missing, too. Which side did he fight on? Or had he fled?

It was a question to answer later. In the sudden hush, she lowered the tip of the sword until it pointed at the riders — the ancient kings of Faerie England.

“You have brought war to my city,” Lune said in a forbidding voice, a muted echo of the command that had halted the fighting. “You will take it away again.”

Their faces and forms were dimly familiar, half-remembered shades from scarcely forty years before. Had one of them once been her own king? Perhaps the one who moved forward now, a stag-horned man with eyes as cruel as the wild. “Who are you, to thus command us?”

“I am the Queen of the Onyx Court,” Lune said.

The words came by unthinking reflex. At her side, Deven stiffened. The sword would have trembled in her grasp, but she dared not show her own surprise.

The elfin king scowled. “That title is a usurped one. We will reclaim what is ours, and let no pretender stand in our way.”

Hands tensed on spears; the fighting might resume at any moment.

“I am the Queen of the Onyx Court,” Lune repeated. Then she went on, following the same instinct that had made her declare it. “But not the Queen of faerie England.”

The stag-horned rider’s scowl deepened. “Explain yourself.”

“Invidiana is gone. The pact by which she deprived you of your sovereignty is broken. I have drawn her sword from the London Stone; therefore the sovereignty of this city is mine. To you are restored those crowns she stole years ago.”

A redheaded king spoke up, less hostile than his companion. “But London remains yours.”

Lune relaxed her blade, letting the point dip to the ground, and met his gaze as an equal. “A place disregarded until the Hall was created, for fae live in glens and hollow hills, far from mortal eyes — except here, in the Onyx Hall. ’Twas never any kingdom of yours. Invidiana had no claim to England, but here, in this place, she created a realm for herself, and now ’tis mine by right.”

She had not planned it. Her only thought had been to bear the sword to these kings, as proof of Invidiana’s downfall, and hope she could sue for peace. But she felt the city beneath her feet, as she never had before. London was hers. And kings though they might be, they had no right to challenge her here.

She softened her voice, though not its authority. “Each side has dead to mourn tonight. But we shall meet in peace anon, all the kings and queens of faerie England, and when our treaty is struck, you will be welcome within my realm.”

The red-haired king was the first to go. He wheeled his horse, its front hooves striking the air, and gave a loud cry; here and there, bands of warriors followed his lead, vaulting skyward once more and vanishing from sight. One by one, the other kings followed, each taking with them some portion of the Wild Hunt, until the only fae who remained in the streets were Lune’s subjects.

One by one, they knelt to her.

Looking out at them, she saw too many motionless bodies. Some might yet be saved, but not all. They had paid a bloody price for her crown, and they did not even know why.

This would not be simple. Sir Kentigern and Dame Halgresta, if they lived — Lady Nianna — Vidar, if she could find him. And countless others who were used to clawing and biting their way to the top, and fearing the Queen who stood above them.

Changing that would be slow. But it could begin tonight.

To her newfound subjects, Lune said, “Return to the Onyx Hall. We will speak in the night garden, and I will explain all that has passed here.”

They disappeared into the shadows, leaving Lune and Deven alone in Candlewick Street, with the sky rapidly clearing above them.

Deven let out his breath slowly, finally realizing they might — at last — be safe. He ached all over, and he was light-headed from lack of food, but the euphoria that followed a battle was beginning to settle in. He found himself grinning wryly at Lune, wondering where to start with the things they needed to say. She was a queen now. He hardly knew what to think of that.

She began to return his smile — and then froze.

He heard it, too. A distant sound — somewhere in Cripplegate, he thought. A solitary bell, tolling.

Midnight had come. Soon all the bells in the city would be ringing, from the smallest parish tower to St. Paul’s Cathedral itself. And Lune stood out in the open, unprotected; the angel’s power had gone from her. The sound would hurt her.

But it would destroy something else.

He had felt it as they passed through the London Stone. St. Paul’s Cathedral, one of the two original entrances to the Onyx Hall. The pit still gaped in the nave, a direct conduit from the mortal world to the fae, open and unprotected.

In twelve strokes of the great bell, every enchantment that bound the Onyx Hall into being would come undone, shredded by the holy sound.

“Give me your hand.” Deven seized it before she could even move, taking her left hand in his left, dragging her two steps sideways to the London Stone.

“We will not be safe within,” Lune cried. Her body shook like a leaf in the wind, as more bells began to ring.

Deven slapped his right hand onto the rough limestone surface. “We are not going within.”

It was the axis of London and its dark reflection, the linchpin that held the two together. Suspiria had not made the palace alone, because she could not; such a thing could only be crafted by hands both mortal and fae. Deven would have staked his life that Francis Merriman was a true Londoner, born within hearing of the city bells.