Anne Kelleher - Silver's Bane

He stumbled back, not daring to come any closer lest the thing touch him. Nausea rose in his throat as disgust warred with pity. The creature held out her hand and tried to speak again, but this time the words were lost in a gurgle of green slime that spooled down her chin.

Her form seemed to collapse in and upon itself, her very bones cracking and splintering like rotting wood. A quiver ran through her, and fluids gushed from every pore, bubbling up and out through the stretched skin, which withered as Timias watched.

The earth itself shuddered, the great trees groaned, and the wind made a low mourning keen as it whined around the crystal-paned turrets. With a whimper and a sigh, Alemandine bubbled away, leaving a froth of scum, the filthy remnants of her tattered gown and the long strands of her white, spun-silk hair.

“Great Gloriana,” Timias muttered. His eyes glazed over as, in one horrific moment of insight, he understood that the remains of the creature lying before him was not at all one of the sidhe, but instead something else—something strange and monstrous, a true aberration and abomination that he had not only called into being, but had seen placed upon the throne of Faerie. This was what he and Gloriana had wrought. This was the ultimate consequence of what they had created the night the Caul was made. Even half-human Artimour might’ve been a better choice. But it was the final realization that sent him spiraling down into the well of madness. Vinaver—may she burn in the belly of the Hag—had been right all along.

You didn’t think to ask? You didn’t think to ask? Artimour’s accusation slammed like a hammer through her head as Nessa fled down the stairs, out of the keep and into the inner courtyard, blindly heading toward the first sanctuary that occurred to her. She stopped up short before she reached the gates. Molly’s lean-to by the river was most likely destroyed, or so befouled by the shredded goblin carcasses the screaming spirits of the naked dead had left in their wake, it would have to be shoveled away.

As it was, once outside, the stench was so overwhelming she felt nausea rise at the back of her throat, and she stumbled into the forge, where the fire had been left to die. Broken swords and spears, shields, and even bows lay in haphazard piles, hastily dumped by the teams of just about every able-bodied person in the keep as part of the cleanup the harried Sheriff was directing even now. Through the open door, Nessa caught a glimpse of him striding, fat and red-faced, through the courtyard in the direction of the gates, bawling orders right and left, surrounded by harried-looking guards, grooms and a motley assortment of refugees young and old, male and female, who hastened to do his bidding. She peered inside the huge iron cauldron they’d used to melt the silver in. Dull and black and coated with ash on the outside, the inside shimmered, pearly and opalescent in the shifting streams of light that poured in through the shutters. Nessa wiped the tears off her cheeks and sniffed. She had made the dagger.

But she’d no choice. When the Duke of Allovale and the sidhe had appeared at her door, they expected a dagger. Once the Duke decided she was capable of making one, he hadn’t offered her a choice. How was she to know the sidhe intended to use it against Artimour, as part of the plot against his half-sister, the Queen of the OtherWorld?

More tears filled her eyes and she tried to blink them away. Artimour had promised to help her find her father, and after last night’s realization that her mother must be somewhere in the OtherWorld, too, held captive, perhaps, she had intended to ask him if he’d help find her mother, as well. But now, it seemed unlikely he’d even continue to look for her father, angry as he was. Not that she blamed him. It was by her hand, if indirectly, he’d been injured. She should find a way to make it right with him. Wasn’t that what her father would tell her to do? With a sigh, she wiped away the tears with the back of her grimy sleeve, got to her feet, tied a leather apron around her neck and waist and began to sort the piled weapons into some semblance of order. Work was always her father’s refuge, too.

She shut her eyes at a wave of loss and grief, remembering with bitter clarity that unseasonably hot autumn night just after the harvest was celebrated, when those two cloaked and hooded figures had come knocking on the door of Dougal’s forge. He’d have been better off if he’d just sent the unlikely pair on their way. That’s what put this whole thing in motion, she thought. The moment he opened the door, it all changed. And that’s exactly how he’d vanished. One moment, Dougal was there, the rock at the center of her world. And the next, he was gone. It was worse than if he’d died and gone to the Summerlands, for at least then she could take comfort in the thought he walked among his ancestors. She could come to terms with his death.

But she would never come to terms with her father lost, like her mother, forever in thrall to the sidhe. And so, armed only with determination and that first goblin’s head, she had gone to look for Dougal in the land beyond the mists that the old stories called TirNa’lugh. The sidhe soldiers who’d found her stumbling over the border had taken her to Artimour, who was different enough from all the other sidhe that she had been able to recognize his mortal blood at once. Different enough to agree to help her.

It was more than that, she knew, for Artimour affected her in a way no one—not even Griffin—ever had. All the village girls older than twelve twittered over this shepherd’s boy or that farmer’s son like a gaggle of broody hens, but she’d never understood what the fuss was all about. She thought of Griffin, of his clumsy kiss goodbye, the way he’d taken her amulet and left his for her to wear, even as her father’s voice echoed out of her memory. This is what they do to you with their OtherWorldly charms. It’s why you stay away from them. Always. And never take off your silver. Never. It was what he’d say if he were here.

But Artimour wasn’t quite like the other sidhe, she was sure of it. His half-mortal blood made him different, much as he might want to deny it, and it was his half-mortal blood that had saved him from the silver’s deadly poison—that and her own work boot.

Nessa fumbled beneath the apron and withdrew Dougal’s amulet. Maybe it only proved Dougal was dead. And maybe I am just a “lovesick, moon-mazed maiden” like all the songs say, she told herself as she dragged three battered shields to the scrap pile she was building on the other side of the forge.

“Nessa?” Molly’s soft voice broke through the smoky gloom, and Nessa looked up to see the corn granny from Killcrag hesitating at the door. “Is that you? Are you in here?”

“It’s me.” She was surprised it had taken Molly this long to find her. She dropped the shields and they fell with a clatter onto the pile. “I don’t want to go to Gar, Molly. Let Uwen tell the Duke what happened with Cadwyr, let Artimour explain how—how he came to be stabbed. Why do I need to be there? Can’t I stay here with you? I can help—”

She heard Molly’s long indrawn breath, heard her soft sigh. “Ah, Nessa.”

Before Nessa could speak, Molly crossed the space between them and drew Nessa into the strong circle of her arms. She felt her throat thicken and her mouth work, and the tears she’d been swallowing spilled down her cheeks. “I don’t know what to say to him, Molly. I did make the dagger. It was my fault he was stabbed—”

Molly gently tucked one errant curl behind Nessa’s ear. “You could tell him you’re sorry.”

“I don’t think he wants an apology.”

“Well, there’s not much more he’s likely to get. What’s done is done, child. It’s the past, it’s over. Yes, perhaps you should’ve asked a few more questions, but Cadwyr is a Duke, a noble Duke. You’d no choice, really. He’ll come around to seeing that.”