Chapter Forty-Two #2
Duncan smiled. “We’re beyond that now. Don’t worry about me. You have given me all the help I need, all that I could ask. Tell the truth, I think it was always going to come to this.”
“Destiny.” Bainbridge nodded sagely. “She overmasters us all.”
Duncan held his smile frozen, made an effort not to roll his eyes. Savin cursed under his breath. Bainbridge dug in his pockets, brought out an ornate amber vial. He unstoppered it, walked widdershins about the fire, gibbering something that might have been Latin.
Then he upended the vial over the flames.
Quick, eager rush of purple light, shooting jagged through the fire. A small puff of greenish smoke rose and rolled away eastward.
They stood and waited.
The Huldu came.
—
Six of them, slipping one by one from the gloom under the trees beyond the fence.
Powerfully built warrior caste, honor guard brawlers, haughty with affected disinterest as they quit the tree line and came through the iron gate, but Duncan saw that they had already extruded fangs and talons way past the norm.
Savin swore when he saw them, staggered involuntarily back a step.
“Duncan…!”
“It’s fine,” Duncan said sharply. “Stay calm. They’ll harm no one so long as this is honored.”
The Huldu formed up in two ranks, turned inward to face each other, and Mebhuranon came down the file between them.
Her hair seemed to burn in the dawn like black and silver flame around her face.
Her naked form slipped in and out of view beneath her cloak as she walked.
Savin swore again, this time at different register.
Bainbridge faced the Fae queen and bowed deeply from the waist.
“My Lady of the, uhm, Boughs,” he intoned in really pretty shaky Skogurtal. “I have, as agreed, the supplicant. He has, as agreed, come willingly to, uhm, this place of invocation. He has, uhm, as agreed, undertaken—”
“Yes, very good.” Mebhuranon waved a hand irritably. “Shut up now. Stop talking. Our agreement stands. We give up claim on the child and undertake, as before, to talk further of coexistence between our kinds. It is peace between us for now.”
“I—”
“That is all.” She snapped her fingers and turned about.
Duncan stepped forward to join her. He’d thought it would cost him a large portion of his will to do it, to take the step, but in the event, it was almost easy.
A vast, black anticipation was filling him up, seething in his veins, lapping at his jaw like small waves, seeding an urge to snap and snarl and bite.
He felt the honor guard gather at his back, put his hands on his belt, one touching the hilt of the trench knife sheathed there, felt how they recoiled the faintest fraction as he did, and he grinned.
Then he let the Huldu lead him into the Forest and away.
—
He could not tell how far they traveled, or in what direction, because on the way something happened to time and the light.
The thin blue dawn stayed blue, did not give way to paler shades.
No low, angled sunlight broke through the thinning autumn canopies over their heads as they trekked on a bearing Duncan could not ascertain.
They walked in permanent twilight, feet almost soundless on leaf mold and black mud paths between the trees.
Birdsong faded out, was lost to distance and then to any hearing at all.
Once he saw a raven perched on a branch over the path, but it made no comment, only turned its beak and watched the procession on its way with a beady eye.
A bleak stillness held the Forest in its grip, silence pressed into Duncan’s ears like cotton wool wadding.
They came finally to a broad clearing, slim young beech and elm and a single ancient oak with roots grown out like the gnarled arms of thrones sunk deep into the ground around it.
In front of the oak, Svalenkari was waiting.
The cloak he wore was soft blue to match the twilight, shot through with restless black lightning and kaleidoscope sparks that moved on the fabric.
His hair was long and black to match his eyes, and had been braided intricately in four places.
In his right hand, down at his side, he held the saemdil blade.
He turned, fang-grinning, at Duncan’s arrival, lifted both arms in mock greeting.
“Hello, tree thief, life thief, mortal scum. You’ve grown, haven’t you?
” Stropping the blade back and forth on the air with casual ease, so it made a faint, hollow whoop on every stroke.
“Barren, they tell me, which is a shame, but at least a decent kill in your own right. Do you have a valediction before I take you apart?”
Take you apart. In Skogurtal, there was a cadence to the phrase that rang ornate, carried echoes and significance, dark taste of horror, almost an incantation. But Duncan felt no fear at all. He had no room for it anymore.
“A valediction? How about ‘Keep an eye on your grandchildren, they die easier than you know’?” He bared his teeth back at the Huldu. “You know, I always wondered why Isnorvi was such a twisted little fuck. But now, knowing his bloodline, makes a lot of sense.”
A new stillness gripped the clearing. A score of Fae gazes bent on him in glowering disbelief, lips peeled back from fangs. Svalenkari made a noise deep in his throat, moved away from the oak. He lifted his arm and pointed at Duncan down the length of the saemdil blade.
“Make ready, tree thief,” he snarled. “Your doom is on you. With blade and body only, I come to the glade. I shall need no more.”
“Aye.” Duncan, grinning eagerly as he shrugged his way out of his coat. “That’s what Stordalen told me. And I ate his fucking heart.”
He pulled the sgian dubh out from its sheath in the small of his back, settled it into his right hand.
Drew the trench knife in his left. The hate came seething upward in him, a tension, a dark drug spiking through his veins like some new species of cocaine, a thundering river that would carry him, as he let go, to whatever end this was.
There’s something black and twisted following you, Duncan, and I don’t want Billy anywhere near you when it catches you up.
Well, Billy was away. Niamh was away, too, breathing easy, soft and warm and safe in her bed as sunrise approached. And one day quite soon, Mimi Rush and her mother would stand on the deck of the RMS Northern Light, steaming steadily west to better things.
He’d done what he needed to, his promises were kept.
All that remained was this.
Svalenkari will not be denied, the Fae queen had told him. And I must have order among the Bright Folk once more, no matter the cost.
He hefted the two iron blades, met Svalenkari’s ink-black stare. He bared his teeth again.
“Come on, then, you Fae fuck! Let’s get this done!”
He thought he saw sudden lightning spike in the empty black of the Huldu lord’s eyes, mauve and toxic green, some veinous paroxysm he’d never before seen in any Fae. Svalenkari’s jaws opened, his fangs lengthened visibly by fractions. He gave out a deep, coughing bark.
“Do you hear the tree thief?” He exhorted the other Huldu.
“He thinks this will be quick? Ohhhhh, Duncannnn, you have no idea what awaits you before I finally send you back to the Gray! Once, the hand of the Bright Folk reached out to you, would have lifted you up beyond the muck of your miserable mortal count of days! But you—”
“Come on!” yelled Duncan. “I came to slaughter Fae, not listen to them make vapid speeches! Enough stroking yourself, Huldu! Let’s get this fucking done!”
He rushed the Fae lord with twenty years and more of hatred pumping through his heart. Lashed out with one booted foot, slashed high and low with his blades.
Svalenkari was not there.
Gone, flinched aside in a flicker of pale limbs, striking back left-handed at Duncan’s breast as he moved.
Duncan felt a spike of numbing cold over his collarbone, the same blow Mebhuranon had dealt him in the park.
Any lower and it would have stopped his heart.
As it was, he staggered, felt tendrils of ice reach down and touch the ventricles.
He swung himself clumsily around to find the Fae lord, to face him at least…
Svalenkari stood a short distance off, still in front of the ancient oak, fangs half shrouded in a downward curving sneer.
“You thought perhaps that Stordalen was somebody?” he asked mildly. “A pampered princeling with the name of the Final Isles in his mouth every second breath?”
“At least,” Duncan said, panting, pulling air into his chilled lungs as best he could, “he knew how to keep his word, and theirs.”
“His word?” A deep, mirthless chuckle, as if the oak itself laughed. Svalenkari seemed to shoot a look at Mebhuranon. “The word of the Final Isles? Of a dream five thousand years dying? The word of a corpse walking?”
The Huldu stalked closer. Duncan raised his knives, readied his guard.
“Do you know,” Svalenkari asked him, “what they have in the Final Isles?”
Duncan feinted with the trench knife, swung, whiplash swift, with the sgian dubh.
Trying for the Fae’s throat, but Svalenkari flowed gracefully with the strike, caught the small knife across his shoulder instead.
Sputter of green fire, he fell back a long step, made a hissing noise through his teeth.
The wound smoldered into the twilight air.
Svalenkari pressed his face closer to it, breathed in the smoke as if it were perfume. He grinned skullishly at Duncan.
“Oh, well done. But you see, for the Old Ones like Meb and I, iron is not quite the ward you tree thieves like to believe. Isn’t that right, Meb?”
Across the clearing, the Fae queen said nothing, only watched with blank black gaze.
“So you see, little Duncan. You’ll have to do better than that.”
Duncan rushed him again, trench knife up like a shield, sgian dubh looking for a low slash to belly or thigh. Almost absently, Svalenkari tilted and kicked him in the chest. Knocked him back ten feet and onto the Forest floor. Jarring impact, right down his back to the base of his spine.
It was all he could do to keep hold of his blades.
“But you interrupted me,” the Huldu lord rumbled, ambling toward him, shoulder wound still fuming faintly.
“You know what they have in the Final Isles, Duncan? They have cities. Just like you, just like the tree-thief scum, they live under roofs, behind walls, like creatures frightened by the majesty of the Forest that enfolds us, that gives us life. They hide, Duncan! Is it any wonder they find time to spin their webs of law and rule and given word, till we all are bundled and bound like spiders’ prey? ”
He reached down with big, pale, taloned hands.
Duncan slashed desperately from the ground.
Svalenkari laughed, blocked the trench knife, and seized the hand that wielded it at the wrist. Savage, biting cold, deep into the bone.
He took another gash from the sgian dubh, this time across the ribs, rode it with a grunt.
He lifted Duncan effortlessly off his feet by the arm he held, hurled him casually across the clearing.
Duncan hit and tumbled, over and over, lost the trench knife from fingers gone numb, barely avoided stabbing himself with the sgian dubh as he rolled.
Laughter around the clearing, like the burble of some dark brook he couldn’t see.
“Did you think you were the hero of this tale?” Svalenkari asked him, circling around Duncan, not even in a fighter’s crouch.
The wound in his ribs smoked faintly, but his voice was untroubled, musing.
“Because you bested a Final Isles princeling and tasted Fae blood? Did you think you were Pendragon returned, perhaps, the once and future king of mortal mud piles, the champion of tree-thief men?”
He stepped close. Duncan slashed with the sgian dubh, tried desperately for an Achilles tendon.
Svalenkari danced aside, stomped down hard on his right arm, pinned it to the ground.
Ice flowed up and down the limb, numbing to the shoulder, down to the fingertips and there, the sgian dubh trickled away from his grip.
He flexed his ringed fingers desperately, both hands, working to get feeling back. Without feeling, there was no—
“Let me tell you a secret,” Svalenkari said amiably. “One you won’t read in your mortal legends. We took Arthur Pendragon when his power grew troubling among our own kind as well as yours. We took him into the west, we took him to the Final Isles, and there, for his insolence, we took him apart.
“And now, pinned to this great oak, that’s what’s going to happen to you.”
The Fae lord bent over him, dodged a weak punch, and took the rings on his forehead.
Flash of green fire, he grunted again, shook his head, and blinked to clear his vision.
He struck Duncan hard across the face in turn, bloodied his mouth and nose with the blow, turned his head.
Duncan jolted and flopped like a landed trout.
His vision shattered apart in tiny points of light like the pattern on Svalenkari’s cloak.
The Fae lord grasped him by the collar, dragged him bodily, blood dripping, across the clearing to the oak.
He raised the saemdil blade for the first time since the fight began.
He held Duncan pinned against the rough gnarling of the bark with his free hand.
“Would you like to beg?” he wondered.
But Duncan just grinned at him through bloodied teeth.
Spat blood at the ground between his feet.
“Get it done,” he snarled. “You faithless Fae cunt.”
—
He clambers up next to his mother on the sofa, with the big book under his arm. He opens it and pushes it into her hands. Snuggles against her soft warmth.
But Duncan…Something close to horror in her tone. She shrinks from him. This is a fairy tale. You’re eleven. You’re too old for fairy tales.
He looks into her face for a long moment, sees nothing there he can call on, hold to, make his own again. He sits solemnly a long moment, blinking into the firelight.
You’re too old for fairy tales, Duncan, she insists.
Tears well up, balance on the lids of his eyes.
He turns away from her to hide them.
He scuffles off the sofa again, walks away, leaves the book, the warm fire flicker and lamplit haven of the room. He stands a moment in the gloomy corridor outside, back pressed to the wall as if pinned there, as if held against some immovable ancient oak.
You’re too old for fairy tales.
He’s come home. He held on to desperate memory and fought his way here. He is done.
There is no more.
He climbs the darkened stairs to his room and to find sleep, as he has always been, alone.