Anne Kelleher - Silver's Lure

“Is what your mother told me true?”

Anger flashed through him, but he controlled himself enough to smile tightly and beckon. Finnavar was an interfering old crow who belonged, like the rest of the sidhe who completed the change, in the Deep Forest. “I can’t imagine what sort of mischief she’s making now. Come sit, my dear. Tell me all about it.”

Melisande raised her chin. “Should we call it mischief when it’s our daughter’s choice that’s being bargained away? And if we do, I don’t think she’s the one making it.”

Auberon clenched his teeth. In the midst of everything else, his mother couldn’t resist causing trouble. She stubbornly refused to leave the Court, creating an embarrassing situation. It was as if she didn’t quite trust him to rule. Despite all his directives to ignore her no one really did. Her instincts both for causing trouble and ferreting out information remained intact. “Let’s talk.”

“You admit it.”

“Beloved, I—”

“Oh, enough. I’m not your beloved.” She stalked into the room, anger making her sure-footed. “Is it true you promised Timias that you would ask Loriana to consider choosing him to be her Consort?”

“My dear, you’re shaking—there’s no need for unpleasantness—”

“Unpleasantness? Auberon, our daughter is not a prize to be awarded or a—a possession to be handed over. How could you listen, let alone agree—He was raised beside you in the nest—If you were mortal, you’d be brothers and such a thing not even considered.”

“Melisande.” He picked up his pipe. “Don’t you understand it’s not important? I don’t think he’s coming back—I never expected he’d be back, to tell you the truth.”

“You didn’t?”

“Of course not. It was as absurd an idea as I’ve ever heard—learn druid magic and bring it here to Faerie.” He picked up her hands and brought one, then the other to his lips. “Sweet darling queen, it was a way to find something for him to do.”

“So what exactly did you agree to?”

Auberon shrugged, picked up his pipe and tapped dried flowers into the bowl. “He asked me if I’d approach Loriana and ask her to consider his suit. It seemed a small enough thing—considering I didn’t think I’d ever have to do it. Where was the harm, after all? It made him feel useful, gave him a purpose.”

“And what if he does? What if he comes back?”

“You have been talking to my mother, haven’t you?”

“Loriana is of an age to consider such things. Look at us, Auberon—you and I are clearly entering our change. When your mother tells me you’ve made some kind of bargain involving our daughter—”

“Enough, Melisande. There’s no bargain involving Loriana or anyone else. Timias has not been seen in—I’ve forgotten how long exactly. Maybe you should ask yourself why my mother sees the need to bring it up now?”

“She’s concerned. The Wheel’s turning—we have to prepare ourselves and everyone else.”

The dream-weed hit his head just as she spoke. It elongated her words, separated out the subtle shades of tone and melody, turned the light around her face ethereal and fey. He was captivated by the glints of pale yellow and tender gray in her hair and in her eyes. In all the time he’d known her, he’d never noticed these before. A vein beneath her ear beat a steady tattoo in her throat, in time to that which pulsed up through his feet. The firs stood straight and tall, black against the indigo sky, the drooping branches of the enormous willows all silver by their sides. The first stars had already appeared. A low pounding throbbed through the trees, and the leaves rustled as the branches swayed in time.

A horn rose in the distance, its note pure and piercing as a shaft of morning sun. It stabbed into his awareness, made his ears ring and his head ache.

“Auberon?” Melisande shook his arm. “Did you hear that? That’s the alarm. The goblins are rising.”

There was a screech in the doorway. Finnavar stood there, looking like an enormous raven cloaked in black feathers, her nose and chin fused into a long shiny beak, her arms folded back. “Where’s Loriana?” she croaked. Her beady eyes darted right and left, her feathers gleamed blue in the purplish shadows. “Have you seen her? I’ve looked everywhere.”

What little color there was in Melisande’s face drained away. “She’s been told not to leave her bower at dusk.”

“She’s not there now,” the old sidhe screeched.

“She has to be,” cried Melisande as the dull vibration grew stronger, and from somewhere far away, they heard a faint roaring, growing ever louder as the wind carried it closer.

“She isn’t,” answered Finnavar. “Follow me.” She flapped awkwardly off without another word.

Melisande pulled away from Auberon and rushed out the door, nearly colliding with Ozymandian, the captain of the guard. He scrambled past her, brandishing his spear. “My lord.” He sketched a salute, then said, “My lord, you must come. Something’s roused the goblins—all of them, apparently—and it seems they’re headed this way.”

Red steam rose from fire pits of glowing molten rock, seeped from crevices in the floor and hissed from fissures high within the cavernous chambers and passageways that were the realm of Macha, the Goblin Queen. The floors were slick in some places and sticky in others, and the smell of excrement was everywhere. Timias shrank behind an enormous boulder. The air was thick with the steady throb of drums, a sound so constant he sometimes thought it must be coming from inside his own skull. He cocked his head and listened to the squeals and screams and bellows echoing from the chamber, trying to decide if he dared to take the only direct route he knew that led to the surface of Faerie. The druid spell of banishing had finally worn off. He could feel the tattered remnants shredding off him like an old cloak, one thread at a time. He had never expected it to be as effective as it was, for it not only kept him from Shadow—anywhere at allin Shadow—but it prevented him from returning to Faerie, as well. For a mortal year and a day, he’d been trapped in the strange nether places of the World. He was impatient to return, and he risked a slow death by searching for another way to the Forest House. The effects of the banishment still lingered, preventing him from directly returning to the Forest House.

He’d counted on Macha’s halls being silent, the goblins curled up fast asleep, thin and gray as the ghosts of the mortal dead whose flesh they consumed. But something must’ve happened, he mused, in the time he’d been banished. Somehow they’d gotten a taste of living flesh.

It was possible he might find another way to the surface, but he could just as easily encounter lairs filled with starving hatchlings. If the goblins were this lively, they were certainly copulating. The cloak of shadows, woven with a mortal druid on a Faerie loom, might not fool the goblins. Like a river of velvety water, the cloak flowed out of his hands, vaporous as fog, dense and wet as the Shadowlands themselves, its one edge jagged where Deirdre had ripped it in half. He wrapped it around himself, careful to tuck it well over his face and around his hands. He was more afraid of how he’d smell than anything else. But he had to risk that a wafting scent of Shadow, while alluring, would not be as riveting as the sight of a sidhe scurrying along the perimeter of the cavern.

With a last check to make certain he was completely covered, Timias edged down the widening passageway, careful to keep to the sides where the shadows were thickest and his cloak provided the best cover. But he had not counted on the stench.

The closer he got to the central hall, the stronger it was. It pervaded his nostrils, crept into his skin, insinuated itself into the crevices around his nose, his fingers. It filled his mouth and made him gag. Dizzy, eyes burning, Timias crept along the Hall, trying not to breathe too deeply. It was worse than the foulest cesspit, the fullest charnel pit in Shadow.