Anne Kelleher - Silver's Bane

“Petri is not a thing,” she sputtered, even as the captain extended his hand and helped her to stand. Two of the others coaxed her mare onto her feet.

“We’ll take you both.” The captain spoke firmly. “It doesn’t look as if it’ll give us any trouble now. We can’t leave it here.” Indeed, Petri lay in a forlorn little heap, his arms bound to his sides, one leathery little cheek pressed to the pine needles and leaves that carpeted the forest floor, eyes closed, breathing hard, but every other muscle relaxed. “Forgive me for taking the time to ask you, lady, but how did this happen? Did it follow you, my lady? How did it get past the gates?”

She knew that for any other sidhe, the presence of a gremlin leagues away from the palace of the Queen of Faerie, the one place to which they were forever bound, at least according to all the lore, was surprising to the point of shocking. But how to explain to them that despite his incipient madness, it was Petri who’d guided her through the maze of the ancient forest, close enough to Vinaver’s house that they could be rescued? Surely Vinaver, herself outcast by the Court, would understand that Delphinea could not leave the loyal little gremlin behind, for it was abundantly clear that Timias and the Queen intended to lay at least part of the responsibility for the missing Caul on the entire gremlin population. But now was not the time to explain how or why the gremlin was with her. For, if it were possible, there was something even more unnatural within the forest, something she knew these soldiers must see for themselves to believe.

The torchlight illuminated the clearing, but it was not just the broken branches and torn undergrowth alone that made her certain of the direction in which to lead the guards. “The magic weakens as the Queen’s pregnancy advances, Captain.” Surely that explanation would have to suffice. “But I have to show you something,” she said. “Please come?” She gathered up her riding skirts and set off, without waiting to see if they followed or not. It was like a smell, she thought, a foul, ripe rot that led her with unerring instinct back through the thick wood. Once, she put her hand on a trunk to steady herself and was disturbed to feel a tremor beneath the bark, and a sharp sting shot up her arm. The branches dipped low, with a little moaning sigh, and for a moment, Delphinea thought she heard a whispered voice. She startled back, but the captain was at her elbow, the torch sending long shadows across his face.

“Where are we going, lady?”

For a moment, she was too puzzled by this sense of communication with the trees to answer the question, for she had never before felt any particular connection to the trees of Faerie. Indeed, in the high mountains of her homeland, trees such as these primeval oaks and ashes were rare. “This way,” was all she could say. And with a sense as certain as it was unexplainable, she led the grim-faced guards through the forest, to where the slaughtered host of the sidhe lay in heaps beside their dead horses and golden arms that gleamed like water in the gray dawn.

The guards gathered around Delphinea in shocked and silent horror, surveying the carnage. The corpses lay like discarded mannequins after a masque, armor all askew, swords and spears and broken arrows sticking up in all directions like bent matchsticks, impotent as mortal weapons. A mist floated over all, and from far away Delphinea could hear the rush of water. Without warning, a banner stirred and flapped on its staff, blown by a ghostly breeze that whispered through the trees, and as the mist moved over the remains, it seemed for one moment, the host might rise, laughing and whole. The captain raised his torch and Alemandine’s colors—indigo and violet and blue on gold-edged white—flashed against the backdrop of the black trees.

They spoke behind her, in hushed and disbelieving whispers. “Can this be the—”

“Are they the—”

“Is this really our—”

“These are our comrades,” interrupted the captain, answering all. There was a long silence, then he continued, in a voice heavy with loss, “You see, my lady, we, too, should have been among their company. But Prince Finuviel ordered us to stay and guard his mother’s house.”

“What could have done this?” another murmured.

“Who could have done this?” put in a third.

Delphinea could feel them tensing all around her, shuffling their feet, skittish as horses at the smell of blood. The captain bent down, holding his flaming torch a scant foot or so above the nearest corpse. He turned the body over. The face of the dead sidhe was calm, pale, and it crumpled into powder, finer than sand, as the light fell upon it. He ran the torch down the armor, to the insignia, the sword, and spurs the knight wore. A dark slash ran diagonally across the golden breastplate, where the metal itself was scarred and shriveled, as if burnt away to ash. “Silver,” he said after a long pause. He shut the empty helm and rose to his feet. “They’ve died the true death. They’ll be gone when the sunlight hits them.”

“So this is the host, then, that was called up to reinforce our borders? The host the minstrels sing of, in Alemandine’s Court?” She had missed the glorious parade by scant hours, arriving from the mountains too late. A chill ran through her that had nothing to do with the temperature of the air. She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling cold all over. Now she would remember all too well forever this last sight of them.

“That’s exactly who they appear to be, my lady.” The captain handed his torch to one of the others and gestured at his men. “Fan out. We’ll have to come back when it’s light, but let’s see as much as we can now.”

While the bodies are still intact. The chilling thought ran through her mind. But she said nothing, and he continued, “Look for His Grace. Look for the Prince. It’s the first question the Lady Vinaver will ask.” His voice faltered and broke, and Delphinea was struck once again by how much Finuviel seemed to be loved by everyone who knew him. She had begun to suspect that his was the face that haunted the visions that came to her while she slept—the visions mortals called “dreams.” The sidhe didn’t dream. At least, all the others didn’t. But lately the phantoms that haunted her sleep came more frequently, and she was no longer able to ignore them. She had come to Court hoping that someone there could explain them to her, and reassure her, perhaps, that this was not as unheard of as she was afraid it was. She had been afraid to mention them to anyone at all, but she had resolved to tell Vinaver, if she ever had the chance. She didn’t want to think how Vinaver would react to the news that the army her son led had been slaughtered and that her son himself was missing.

For if the minstrels sang sweetly of the hosting of the sidhe, it was nothing to the songs they sang about Finuviel. Finuviel was the “shining one,” loved by all who knew him, claimed by his mother to have been fathered by the great god Herne himself one Beltane. Although everyone dismissed Vinaver’s claim as a pathetic attempt to gain some place for herself at the Court, it was universally acknowledged that Finuviel, whoever his father had been, was the epitome of every grace, and the master of every art. Even those who scorned Vinaver publicly spoke highly of Finuviel, and it was Finuviel that Vinaver and a small group of councilors conspired to place upon the throne of Faerie in the sick Queen’s stead. What would they do, if Finuviel were lost?

But he’s not. The knowledge rose from someplace deep inside her, a small voice that spoke with such silent authority, she felt immediately calmed, although she did not understand either how she knew such a thing, or why she should trust such knowledge. All she knew was that she did. She watched the torches bob up and down across the field as the soldiers wove through the heaps of the dead. At last the captain waved them all back. “Well?”