Chapter Eighteen
T he first time I woke up, it was to the smell of something wonderful wafting around my nose. I tried to reach for it, but my hand didn’t work. Or rather, it did; it just felt like it couldn’t get out from under the boulder that was sitting on it.
And my chest.
And my legs.
And my face.
I also had the impression that my mouth was hanging open at an unflattering angle, but I couldn’t seem to close it or stop drooling.
God, whatever that was smelled good!
It tasted good, too, when a spoon of it touched my lips. Like some kind of rich, spicy fish stew, which I could really get into right about now if my mouth would cooperate. It seemed to be having problems, maybe because my brain was still fuzzy, but my stomach was not, and, as usual, my stomach won.
“Don’t swallow so fast,” Pritkin’s voice came to my ears as I got the initial spoonful down and then practically face-planted into the bowl.
I didn’t care; it was delicious. I found that my hands did work, if shakily, at least well enough to upend the bowl and gulp down the contents, sight unseen. It tasted amazing, and my grumbly stomach, which hadn’t shut up in longer than I could remember, suddenly mellowed out and almost purred.
Warmth and contentment spread through me, and I clutched the warm, muscly body holding me like I would have a man-shaped teddy bear. He was fuzzy enough. I could tell since my cheek had landed on his chest, which was still bare.
I approved, I decided, and drifted back to sleep without a worry in the world.
The second time I awoke, my man pillow was missing, and I was cold. I was also being talked to by someone I couldn’t see because my eyelids were all gummed up. I flailed around ineffectually for a minute.
“They say you’re a goddess,” someone said almost accusingly.
I tried to say not even close, but my throat didn’t cooperate. After several tries, I managed to sit up and sprawled against a rocky wall behind me. It was rough and added a few bruises to my collection, but I didn’t care much right then.
“Not even close,” I finally got out, rubbing my goopy eyes.
God, I felt like death.
“Then what are you?” the voice asked grumpily. As if someone had pulled a bait and switch on her, and I was not delivering on the promised wow factor.
What else is new? I wondered, shoving limp blonde hair out of my face and looking around for the first time.
It was a real disappointment.
The damp wall behind me was due to my being in a cave, like the one where Pritkin and I had first entered this crazy place. It was big and black and had a mostly smooth floor that rippled out in both directions, with what looked like more caves branching off from either side. I couldn’t see much, as I was in a depression with a rocky overhang, but the bits I could make out had clumps of stalactites hanging down menacingly from the shadows.
The cave also had a river or canal running through it a little way in front of me, which was where the voice was coming from. Only no. It wasn’t coming from the canal, but from what was floating in the canal, and that . . .
Wasn’t right. I blinked at it, and it blinked back out of a large, fishy eye. The eye was dark blue, like the fins on the highly arched, ridged neck and the ones wafting around a curled tail poking out of the water and. . .
And I just sat there for a moment, like a broken doll, staring at what appeared to be a gigantic seahorse bobbing nonchalantly along the side of the canal.
I did not know what to say to a giant seahorse. It didn’t say anything else, either. It just breathed at me, not out of its elongated face but out of the many small mouth-like things on its neck.
Gills?
They were probably gills. At least, they fluttered a lot. They didn’t help my confusion.
I couldn’t see the bottom of its body as it was hidden by the side of the canal, which was built up like a quay. But what I could see was enough. And considering that all the other oversized/mutated fish things I’d encountered since coming here had been lethal, I think I can be excused for the small mewl that escaped my mouth when my brain finally woke up enough to panic.
Where was Pritkin? Why had he left me on a damp quayside all alone? And what was that smell ?
I got the answer to that last one when Pinkie muscled his way in front of me, not liking my sound of distress. Which was how I noticed belatedly that the horse-sized seahorse had a rider. A small, very non-threatening rider, who jumped off onto the quay looking pissed.
Pinkie made a small screech of defiance and blew up to about twice his usual size, obviously ready to throw down. It was somewhat like watching the hackles rise on a dog only it was slimy fat instead, which was why I took a stubby tentacle to the face. But I fought free of it, got my hands on the mass of gelatinous hide, and pushed.
And went nowhere because Pinkie wasn’t budging. That was a problem since his squashy backside had glorped into the slight depression in the rock that I had been stowed in and all but filled it up. Leaving me suffocating under a mass of stinky pink blubber that appeared to have forgotten that humans need to breathe.
“Come on, dude, I’m dying here,” I gasped and pushed some more. The small pissy creature, who I could vaguely see on the other side of Pinkie’s semi-transparent ass, was getting pissier by the moment, watching a “goddess” wrestle an overly protective demon for freedom.
And losing.
That wasn’t entirely my fault. Pinkie had gotten two good meals into him since we arrived and possibly more if he’d been snacking on a fey, and I would not put snacking on a fey beyond him. He did not appear to be picky. And it had given him additional strength.
I, on the other hand, felt like an elephant was sitting on me, and most of that wasn’t Pinkie’s fault.
After my recent forays into magical brinkmanship, I was going to be wiped out for who knew how long, and that meant I wasn’t going anywhere, regardless of whether my power came by to say hi or not.
I sighed and gave up, making myself a small pocket to breathe through by pushing away the nearest chub with my outstretched arms and resigning myself to looking at the world through a bunch of lard.
My conversation partner, however, did not. “You heard her,” she said, sounding less like the woman I’d initially taken her for and more like a girl. “Move!”
Pinkie did not move.
“He’s, uh, he’s kind of dangerous,” I said. “You should keep your distance.”
A snort of derision was all I received back. “I wrestle things far more dangerous than him every day,” she said and started pushing.
And to my surprise, this time, Pinkie went. Maybe because he’d gotten a good look at the kid and decided I wasn’t in danger after all. Or maybe because the seahorse took that moment to give a high-pitched shriek worthy of Pinkie himself, who got curious and headed over there. But anyway, I could breathe.
“Why does it still stink?” the girl demanded.
She was pretty and did not look like she belonged here except for the ears. She had a head full of cornrows as black as her eyes, a light brown face, and a slight grin as she watched me attempt to struggle to my feet, covered in goo. Put her in jeans, a t-shirt with some band’s name, and a knitted cap, and she could be a freshman at any high school.
Instead, she was wearing a tight-fitting, bluish-gray tunic and trousers, almost matching the color of her ride, and made from some material that looked like it had subtle glitter embedded in it. She’d accessorized with some scaley gauntlets and enough necklaces to make Mr. T jealous, although that counted as casual wear around here. She was also barefoot, but I was getting used to that.
I finally slimed my way to a more-or-less upright position, dripping, and tried to slough off some of what Pinkie had shed all over me, but mostly failed. Now, I had two forms of protection: dragonscale and a stench worthy of a large pile of rotten meat. Great.
And then what the girl had said registered.
“What do you mean, still?”
She shrugged. “I hit it with a spell, the one I use on the stables when they get rank. It should have helped.”
“Pinkie, uh, exudes stuff all the time. So that sort of thing doesn’t work.”
“Well, I’ve smelled worse,” she said, eyeing our two companions. They seemed to be getting along famously, the giant wad of demonic phlegm and the oversized seahorse, and were happily screeching at each other.
The noise echoed around the cave, but nobody came running. Unless they were going in the other direction. Couldn’t blame them there.
“I’m Cassie,” I told the girl and stuck out a hand before realizing that it was dripping, too.
She rolled her eyes. “I know. I’m Rieni. I was sent to fetch you.”
“To where?” I asked a little apprehensively.
“Grandmother wants a word.”
“Is that . . . a good thing?”
“No.”
I sat back down.
“Prince Emrys is with her,” she said wryly and had the fun of watching me clamber back to my feet again.
And then onto her seahorse, which appeared to be the only way through the chambers of interlinked caves, some of which hedged the canal pretty tightly. Only that wasn’t nearly as easy as mounting a horse. As I discovered when I almost fell into the canal.
Rieni grabbed me at the last minute, but that still ended with me back on the pier instead of on the beast, which was eyeing me with the same disdain as its master.
“I’ve never done this before,” I told her, although that was pretty obvious.
“You’re a goddess .”
“Half and I mostly got the human stuff.”
She watched me with dark, disbelieving eyes. “And yet you came to this court?”
“Didn’t get the smarts, either.”
She huffed out what might have been a laugh—or a snort of derision, the jury was still out—and then jumped back onto the quayside and pushed.
My dragonscale-covered backside wasn’t as limber as I would have liked, my currently noodle-like arms weren’t as strong, and the damned seahorse kept bobbing about, making itself a moving target. And sometimes moving away and forcing Rieni to leash him while also shoving at me. But I somehow got onto what could in no way be called a back because it was either that or face plant into the water, and I’d had enough freaking water.
And then I just stayed there, clinging to the long spine, because there was no broad back to provide an easy perch. Instead, the creature was essentially perpendicular, leaving me hanging on desperately, like balancing on the side of a ladder. A moving ladder.
“No, no, not like that! You’re covering his gills, so he can’t breathe,” Rieni said as I and the seahorse drifted away from the dock again.
“That part’s in the air!” I said, panicking because the quayside was getting too far away. And because I was pretty sure that seahorses couldn’t breathe air.
Only to be proven wrong, at least where these were concerned.
“They breathe both air and water, but not with your hand there. Now move it!” she said, and I moved it because she was a little drill sergeant in the making.
And then almost fell into the canal.
Again.
Rieni muttered something before pulling my ride back over by the reins, settling my butt onto a shelf-like seat I hadn’t noticed because I’d been too busy holding on, and strapping my legs into knee-high stirrups. The saddle that I finally realized the creature was wearing had two short seats that protruded outward and, along with the stirrups, did give some stability. But it took work to stay on.
Especially when the beast started forward at just a clicking sound from Rieni, who had jumped onto the seat above mine with effortless grace. It was something that her mount shared and began taking us down the canal with an undulating, smooth glide that would have made an actual horse green with envy. I was green, too, but for a different reason.
The world we were passing through was entirely underground but not dark. A sparkly emerald ribbon ran along the cave’s ceiling that I hadn’t been able to see from under the rocky overhang at the quayside, except for some shifting light. But now daylight speared down in stretchy fingers from high above, tinting us vaguely green and causing my armor to run as if it had been dipped in paint.
Only it wasn’t paint; it was daylight filtering through a suspended river.
“Runs all the way to the throne room,” Rieni said, glancing back and noticing my awed expression.
“Is that where we’re going?”
“No.”
I didn’t ask anything else. She didn’t seem interested in conversation, and I was too busy staring upward. It looked like a Chihuly art fixture but was far more beautiful. I’d seen something like it once at the Circle’s HQ in Stratford, but it had been a pale imitation, as if someone had seen a Michelangelo sculpture once and tried to reproduce it from memory. The Circle might have found someone with fey magic—they even had a few part fey in their ranks—to do the spell, but this. . .
No, they hadn’t replicated this.
It was equally breathtaking and terrifying, as the magic holding it up also held back a lot of water. Having almost drowned repeatedly at this point, my body tensed up at even the thought of all those millions of gallons falling on top of us, especially when I couldn’t shift. It was enough to make me wonder if Nimue’s people were able to swim up under an enemy and just . . . jerk them down.
I was beginning to wonder why anyone in their right mind would attack this place, between the water and the scary things in the water. Then I looked around at the passing sides of the canal and doubled that thought. Because while I’d been daydreaming, the scenery had changed.
I guessed we had entered the stables Rieni had mentioned because they did reek a little. Or maybe that was Pinkie churning up the water behind us. I didn’t care either way because both sides of the canal had open-sided stalls built into them like boat docks, only what was in them. . .
Wasn’t boats.
“Oh,” I said loudly enough that Rieni looked back over her shoulder. And, for the first time, appeared vaguely approving.
“They’re magnificent, aren’t they?”
“Beautiful,” I murmured, trying to look like the towering creatures on both sides of the suddenly narrow seeming canal weren’t scaring me crapless. But at the same time, I meant it. Giant seahorses, each two or three times as big as our current mount, reared up on either side of us, and they were much more flashy and raucous than the comparatively small and demure version we were clinging to.
I couldn’t even imagine riding one of them. And not just because of their size, which would have left me a small lump hanging off the great hide like a remora. But because of that, I thought, as one of them turned and snapped at us, biting the air just above my face.
I didn’t bleat that time. I just stared—at huge, wild, golden eyes; at a zebra-striped hide, black and off-white and with the pattern going everywhere in a wonderfully epic scrawl; at the massive bony protrusions spearing out of its neck that looked like bare tree branches, so many and so thick that I didn’t see how anyone could ride him if they would even dare to try; and at the aggressive way he tossed his head. And that was before the deceptively tiny-looking mouth opened unbelievably wide, showcasing pointed teeth that I was pretty sure seahorses weren’t supposed to have.
But this was Faerie, where everything could and would kill you at the first opportunity, so of course they did. They would have been eaten long ago otherwise. But Rieni didn’t appear impressed.
“Shut it, Golygus,” she said, smacking the great neck. “He knows how pretty he is,” she said, rubbing the spot she’d just made and laughing. “That and being our champion makes him high and mighty.”
Golygus took this rebuke better than I’d have expected, maybe because of the handful of shrimp that accompanied it, pulled out of a bag at Rieni’s waist.
“Your champion?” I asked.
“Fastest ever, three years in a row,” she said proudly. “Only no one can handle him but me. I raised him from a fry.”
I assumed that meant a baby but didn’t have a chance to ask, as the champion was trying to eat Pinkie. But all that got him was a punch in the nose from one of the little tentacles, which seemed to work much like Rieni’s slap. The aggrieved-looking monstrous creature tossed his neck wildly and postured but didn’t try to tear Pinkie a new one, to my surprise.
And most of the rest of the high-spirited creatures seemed more interested in the shrimp than they did in me or my smelly companion. Rieni tossed a few here and there as we passed, mainly to the best behaved, and soon, all of them had settled down in the hope of a treat. I stared at two-story-tall giants hunkering down and trying to behave themselves so that the tiny fey child might bless them with a shrimp and wondered if I was dreaming.
But no, one even leaned down to nuzzle Rieni’s shoulder affectionately as we passed. It was a bright neon pink specimen with soft-looking protrusions that wafted about like delicate scarves instead of the thorn-type that Golygus had boasted. They were blue shading to pink at the bottoms, and I found myself wanting to touch one to see if it felt as soft as it looked.
I didn’t.
I’d learned a few things over the past month in Faerie.
But it was hard to keep that in mind as the procession continued. If this wasn’t the royal stables, it should have been, I decided, staring at the beauty on display. That included a gorgeous iridescent green with bony orange protrusions; several more of the flashy zebra-striped ones, with eyes of sapphire, gold, or emerald green; and a burnt sienna, super bumpy one, with skinny, off-white stripes running across the nobby hide and a “mane” that looked like a little girl’s ponytails gathered up and down its spine, where the skin had pulled into tufts that ended with hair-like filaments.
I tried to pick a favorite but couldn’t. I loved a dark purple one with lavender on its belly, a brilliant neon blue with a pale green underside, and an eye-searingly yellow with delicate blue fins. Of course, they all had fins, with some on their heads like mohawks that perked up as we floated by and others on their backs and along their curled, prehensile tails. A few of the latter reached up from underwater to hesitantly stroke Pinkie or me as we passed, obviously as curious about us as we were about them.
“They’re amazing,” I told Rieni, with awe that I didn’t try to conceal, which seemed to mollify her a bit.
“I’m glad you think so. You’ll be riding one soon enough.”
“I’m already riding one,” I said, half disbelieving, as a pale green reached out a tail to brush filmy fins over my extended hand. I closed my grip slightly as the softer-than-silk mass trailed over it, like a handshake from another world. And grinned, pleased to a ridiculous degree and equally enchanted.
These creatures were amazing!
“No, I mean in the race,” Rieni said, tossing the last of her shrimp to the green one who had greeted me so nicely.
“What?” I asked.
“The next challenge,” she said impatiently. “If you and the prince are competing, you’ll be riding. It’s a race .”
I just sat there, or clung there to be more accurate, staring at her. Until she harrumped like an old man and turned back around. And kicked our ride into high gear.
“I hope you’re a quick learner, goddess,” she shouted as we tore through the water like a speedboat. “They’re a bit hard to control!”
I would have had a reply to that, but my brain was busy screaming.