Chapter XXXIX
XXXIX
There was only one place to go, really.
I knew Jacques wanted to speak to me, but I kept us riding at a gallop, heedless of our poor horses.
Outwardly, I was a model of righteous determination, with a show of clenched teeth and eyes narrowed in focus on the road ahead.
Within, my emotional state was spinning like a weathercock in a storm.
Was I angry? Goodness yes, I was furious. Was I confused? Yes again—utterly lost, in fact. Was I afraid? Most certainly.
Was I wounded?
Heartbroken. Almost unbearably.
The tender hope I had allowed to grow in my heart over the past weeks—against all good sense—had now been savagely uprooted. The hole it left was a ragged wound that ached with every breath.
As the fields and farmsteads thundered past on either side, I tried to conceal my inner discord from Jacques. This was made more di?cult by Sarmodel’s insistent (and quite shrill) objections in the back of my mind.
Sebastian! Do not dare ignore me! Sebastian, you are fooling precisely nobody! he said, as my conflicting passions spun and spun inside me. Where are you going? Turn around immediately! We were just getting started!
But Sarmodel—Antoine is Michael’s puppet!1 How is it possible? I replied. Then terrible understanding came to me once again. This is my fault! Because of what happened. Because of what I did. What he saw.
Does it matter? Really? Sebastian, he is meat!
Delightful meat, but still just meat. Did you think he would love you so very much, after a few months of frottage in the mountains, twenty years ago?
I thought we resolved this last night. He growled impatiently.
Are we really not going back? They were disarmed—and naked! You love it when they’re naked!
But the things he said—he wanted to kill me!
I want to kill you! he snapped. Now either turn this horse around, or calm down. You are in an embarrassing state. And I will not be teased like this again, do you understand?
I knew he was right. Regardless of how effectively I had stymied the bishop and the Archangel, I was taking us into possibly even greater danger. I would need to be thinking clearly.
I slowed our reckless pace, allowing Jacques to ride up alongside me.
“Professor, where are we going?”
“We are going, sir, to see if we can remove the Beast’s curse from your flesh, as I promised you.
We may or may not succeed. You may or may not survive, even if we do,” I answered.
“After that, I do not know as—thanks to you—we are also now on the run from the barony’s soldiers and the Bishop of Mende. ”
There was no indignation, no righteous rebuke from the young lord. He simply nodded. “Very well. Lead the way.”
The way was closed.
I was not surprised. Cecile had warned me, and our path up the mountain had been marked by dispiriting signs.
The lightning-split rowan had been taken over by a nest of beetles.
The circle of toadstools was skewed and broken, trampled heedlessly by the creatures of the forest. We saw not one wild Spirit on the journey.
In their place was a forlorn, disconcerting stillness.
Where I remembered a singing ascent into the Fey realm, I had found only a procession of neglect and abandonment.
Where was Dayane, the lady of the leaping waters?
We had left our horses at the foot of the mountain, by the stream.
Jacques was eager, impatient even, to begin the journey.
He slipped under the musical enchantment of the Fey song just as easily as his father had.
But the great symphonic instrument of the woods was uneven and faltering.
It took most of my concentration just to maintain the melody.
I had led him beside the stream, just as I had led Antoine, up the secret ways I still remembered.
This time there was no holding of hands, no childlike wonder as we ascended.
Instead we held weapons—I kept my silver blade2 at the ready, and Jacques carried his musket upright by his shoulder.
We had arrived at last at Dayane’s threshold, where the treetops swallowed the sun and the green gloaming lit the way.
And stretched across the path before us was an enormous silver spider’s web.
The silken threads glittered with dew, and the one who had woven them was nowhere in sight.
In the Arcane realm, the web was a floating membrane of soft pink light: the barrier that protected Dayane’s shrine.
I could feel its resistance to our presence.
Twenty years previously, Antoine and I had stepped into the naiad’s glade without impediment, but she was protecting her sanctuary now.
I raised my arm just in time to stop Jacques from walking into the trap.
He was barely aware of the world around him—he offered me only a questioning smile as I stopped him a hand’s breadth from an unpleasant demise.
Can you feel her, Sarmodel?
Yes. She is hiding, but she is here.
I was relieved. I had feared that we would come all the way to Dayane’s doorstep to find that she, like the forest Spirits, had disappeared.
I began to sing again, the same devotion song that had drawn the water nymph to me twenty years before.
But this time I sang not only to adore her.
This time, my poesy was filled with sorrow and great remorse, seeking not only her favor, but her forgiveness.
I felt a stirring in the air around us as her awareness shifted toward me.
The spider’s web trembled as though plucked.
“My lady, please,” I murmured. “Whatever wrong has been done to you, let me make amends.”
But still the way did not open. I waited the space of a few breaths and then I felt the nymph’s attention begin to withdraw.
Sarmodel. We need to get inside. Can you do it?
Hmm. We don’t have a lot left after your performance in the village. It’s going to smart.
Very well. Gently, now.
I felt his presence sharpen like a great tusk overhead.
He thrust into the barrier once, and then again.
He roared as the third plunge tore through the delicate Fey membrane and the spider’s web was suddenly engulfed in scarlet fire.
It disintegrated and fell away, revealing a dim opening choked with mountain salvias.
I paid the price immediately, a debilitating drop in my vital force. I was momentarily overcome with vertigo. I leaned on Jacques as the world slowly righted itself.
Thank . . . thank you, my love. I was suddenly ravenous.
“Come, sir,” I said, tugging on Jacques’s sleeve. “We have arrived.”
“I am glad,” he replied, his eyes faraway. Then his brow creased in sudden confusion. “Did we bring a gift for the lady? I do not wish her to think us rude.”
“We did, sir.”
I kindled the Violations on my silver blade. The surface began to swim with liquid heat. Then I parted the foliage carefully and we stepped through into the sacred glade.
I gagged immediately at the smell. Dayane’s pool was not as I remembered.
By the Rift, said Sarmodel. My love, be very careful.
The gemstone-green pool was still clear and deep.
The water nymph’s cascade still fell in a glittering line onto the foaming granite slab.
But Dayane’s glade had become a slaughterhouse heap of animal bones and rotting flesh.
Gone was the smell of fresh rain. The remains of every type of woodland creature were decomposing in the grass.
My boots crunched on the corpses of martens and scrub fowl.
The crawling, flyblown carcass of a boar lay at the water’s edge.
Its ragged hindquarters were half submerged, as though it had been dragged into the shallows before its violent end.
All around us gaped the dead eyes of deer, wolves and rabbits.
“Will the wait be long, Professor?” asked Jacques dreamily. “I am growing hungry.”
What has happened to her? I asked, looking around wide-eyed at the carnage. Some of the carcasses had been there for months, but others, like the boar, were relatively fresh. Sarmodel, was it a mistake coming here?
We’ll soon see. Keep that brandy at the ready.
I took out the bag of offerings I had planned to dedicate to the water nymph. Within were a precious pouch of sugar, some tea and a handful of oats, along with a fine silver spoon engraved with a scallop-and-swan motif.3 None of it would entice the mistress who now presided over this abattoir.
Fortunately, I had other options.
“My lord, come.” I brought Jacques right to the edge of the water and bade him kneel. Disconcertingly, the water weeds beneath the surface flexed toward us like grasping hands.
Jacques complied like a marionette when I asked him to hold out his hand. He barely blinked when I pulled back his sleeve and sliced his forearm. His blood snaked down his wrist and began to drip from his fingertips into the water.
I did not sing. It was clear that Dayane would no longer respond to supplication. I took a deep breath.
“Dayane, attend!” I called across the still surface. “I have brought the price that was promised.”
1. “Puppet” is not precisely accurate. Antoine would not have been explicitly aware of Michael’s presence at all.
Angels are not permitted to take possession of a mortal host, or even to reveal themselves directly in the Mundane world—it’s another one of those important prohibitions in the Covenant they signed with the Almighty.
Michael and his brethren must rely on guiding their chosen with holy visions, voices and dreams, to preserve the gift of free will.
2. I replaced my wonderful Walloon silver just after the Red Winter. I opted for a more modern curved sabre style this time, similar to what would become known as the briquet of the Napoleonic Wars.
3. Yes, it was all stolen from the kitchens of the Baron d’Ocerne. Technically, I was still executing a contract on behalf of the chateau, so I felt quite entitled to a few of the family’s resources.