Mistral's Kiss mg-5 Page 16

  In the dying light I watched Sholto lick his lips. "What would you have of me?" he asked carefully. I heard in his voice what was beginning to be in my mind, a touch of fear. You could police your words, but policing your own thoughts—that was harder, so much harder.

  "Call the wild magic," Ivar said.

  "It is here already," Doyle said, "can you not feel it?" His heart sped under my cheek. I wasn't sure I understood exactly what was happening, but Doyle seemed both frightened and excited. Even his body was beginning to react, pressed against the front of mine.

  The two kneeling figures looked at Doyle. "Do not look to Darkness," Sholto said. "I am king here."

  They looked back at him, and bowed again. "You are our king," said Ivar. "But there are places we cannot follow you. If the wild magic is real again, then you have two choices, king of ours: You can remake us into a thing of flowered crowns and noonday suns, or you can call the old magic, and remake us into what we once were."

  "Darkness is right," Fyfe said. "I can feel it like a growing weight inside me. You can change us into what she wants us to be"—he pointed at me—"or you can give us back what we have lost."

  Sholto then asked something that made me think even better of him than I already did. "What would you have of me, Uncles, what would you have me do?"

  They glanced first at him, then at each other, then carefully down at the ground again. "We want to be what we once were. We want to hunt as we once did. Give us back what has been lost, Sholto." Ivar held out his hand toward his king.

  "Do not remake us in the sidhe bitch's image," Agnes yelled from the shore. It was a mistake.

  Sholto yelled back at her, "I am king here. I rule here. I thought you loved me once. But I know now that you only raised me to take the throne because you wished to sit upon it. You cannot rule, but you thought you could rule through me. You and your sisters thought to make me your puppet." He stood and screamed at her. "I am no one's puppet. I am King Sholto of the Sluagh, I am the Lord of That Which Passes Between, Lord of Shadows. Long have I been lonely among my own people. Long have I wanted some to look as I do." He slammed a hand into his chest. It made a thick, meaty sound. "Now you tell me I have the power to do just that. You have envied the sidhe their smooth skin, their beauty that turns my head. So have what you envy."

  A wail came from Agnes, but it was too dark to see what was happening on the shore. She screamed, a horrible sound—a sound of loss, and pain, as if whatever was happening to her hurt.

  I heard Sholto say, softly, "Agnes." The sound in that one word let me know that he wasn't so terribly certain of what he wanted, or what he had done.

  What had he done?

  His uncles abased themselves, faces pressed to the herbs. "Please, King Sholto, we beg you, do not remake us into sidhe. Do not make us only lesser versions of the Unseelie. We are sluagh, and that is a proud thing. Would you strip us of all that we have kept over the years?"

  "No," Sholto said, and there was no anger in his voice now. The screams from the shore had taken away his anger. He understood now how dangerous he was in this moment. "I want the sluagh to be powerful again. I want us to be a force to be reckoned with, negotiated with. I want us to be a fearsome thing."

  I spoke before I could think: "Not just fearsome, surely."

  "I want us to have a terrible beauty then," he said, and it was as if the world held its breath, as if the whole of faerie had been waiting for him to say those words. I felt it in the pit of my stomach like the chime of a great bell. It was a beautiful sound, but so large, so heavy, that it could crush you with the music of its voice.

  "What have you done?" Doyle asked, and I wasn't sure whom he had asked it of.

  Sholto answered him. "What I had to do." He stood there, stark and pale in the growing dark. The tattoo of his tentacles glowed as if outlined with phosphorus. The flowers of his crown looked ghostly pale, and I thought they would have attracted honeybees, if it had not been dark. Bees are not nighttime creatures.

  The darkness began to lighten. "What did you just think of?" Doyle asked.

  "That if the sunlight had remained, there would have been bees to feed on the flowers."

  "No, it will be night here," Sholto said, and the darkness began to thicken again.

  I tried for a more neutral thought. What could come to his flowers in the dark? Moths appeared among the flowers, small ones, ones to match the moth on my stomach. Small flashes of light showed above the island, as if jewels had been thrown into the air. Fireflies, dozens of them, so that they actually glowed enough to drive back some of the dark.

  "Did you call them?" Sholto said.

  "Yes," I said.

  "You raised the wild magic together," Ivar said.

  "She is not sluagh," Fyfe said.

  "But she is queen to his king for tonight; the magic is hers, as well," Ivar said.

  "Will you fight me for the heart of my people, Meredith?" Sholto said.

  "I will try not to," I said softly.

  "I rule here, Meredith, not you."

  "I do not want to take your throne, Sholto. But I can't help being what I am."

  "What are you?"

  "I am sidhe."

  "Then if you are sidhe and not sluagh, run."

  "What?" I asked, trying to move a little away from Doyle and closer to Sholto. Doyle held me tight and wouldn't let me do it.

  "Run," Sholto said again.

  "Why?" I asked.

  "I am going to call the wild hunt, Meredith. If you are not sluagh, then you will be prey."

  "No, Sholto! Let us take the princess to safety first, I beg this of you," Doyle said urgently.

  "The Darkness does not usually beg. I am flattered, but if she can call back the sun to drive away the night, I must call the hunt now. She must be the prey. You know that."

  I was startled. Was this the same man who had refused to sacrifice me just moments ago? Who had looked on me with such tenderness? The magic was indeed working powerfully in him, to make this change.

  Rhys's voice came, cautious: "You wear a crown of flowers, King Sholto. Are you so certain that the wild hunt will recognize you as sluagh?"

  "I am their king."

  "You look sidhe enough to be welcome in the queen's bed right now," Rhys said.

  Sholto touched his flat stomach with its healed flesh and tattoo. He hesitated, then shook his head. "I will call the wild magic. I will call the hunt. If they see me as prey and not as sluagh, then so be it." He smiled, and even in the uncertain light it didn't look particularly happy. He laughed, and the night echoed with it. There was the call of some sweet-voiced bird, sleepy from the distant shore.

  Sholto spoke again. "It is a long tradition among us, Lord Rhys, to slay our kings to bring back life to the land. If by my life, or my death, I can bring my people back to their power, I will do it."

  "Sholto," I said, "don't. Don't say that."

  "It is done," he said.

  Doyle started moving us toward the other side of the island. "Short of killing him, we cannot stop him," he told me. "You both reek of the oldest of magicks. I am not certain that he can be killed right now."

  "We need to leave then," Rhys said.

  Abeloec was finally pulling himself up on the shore. He still had his cup in his hand, and it seemed as if the weight of it had kept him from coming sooner. "Don't tell me I have to get back in the lake," he said. "If she's touched with the magic of creation, let her create a bridge."

  I didn't wait. I said, "I want a bridge to the shore." A graceful white bridge appeared, just like that.

  "Cool," Rhys said. "Let's go."

  Sholto spoke in a ringing voice. "I call the wild hunt, by Herne and huntsman, by horn and hound, by wind and storm, and wreck of winter, I call us home."

  The dark near the roof of the cavern split open as if someone had cut it with a knife. It split open and things boiled out of it.

  Doyle turned my face away and said, "Do not look back." He began to run, drag
ging me with him. We all began to run. Only Sholto and his uncles stayed on the island as the night itself ripped open and poured nightmares behind us.

  CHAPTER 17

  WE MADE THE FAR SHORE, BUT I TRIPPED ON A SKELETON buried in the ground. Doyle picked me up and kept running. Gunshots echoed, and I saw Frost firing at Agnes as she threw herself on top of him. I had a glimpse of her face; something was wrong with it, as if her bones were sliding around under her skin. I screamed, "Frost," as a glint of metal showed in her hand. More shots sounded. Mistral was beside Frost, blades flashing.

  "Doyle, stop!" I shouted.

  He ignored me, and kept running with me in his arms. Abe and Rhys were with him.

  "We can't leave Frost behind!" I said.

  Doyle said, "We cannot risk you, not for anyone."

  "Call a door," Abe said.

  Doyle glanced behind us, but not at Mistral and Frost's fight with the night-hag. He glanced higher than that. It made me look up, too.

  At first my eyes perceived clouds, black and grey rolling clouds, or smoke—but that was only my mind trying to make sense of it. I thought I had seen all the sluagh had to offer, but I was wrong. What was pouring down toward the island where Sholto stood was nothing my mind could accept. When I worked for the investigative agency…sometimes at a crime scene—if it's bad enough—sometimes your mind refuses to make an image out of it. It's just a jumble. Your mind gives you a moment to not see this horrible thing. If you have the chance to close your eyes and not look a second time, you can save yourself. This horror will not go into your mind and stain your soul. At most crime scenes I didn't have the choice of not seeing. But this; I looked away. If we didn't get away, then I'd have to look.

  We had to get away.

  Doyle yelled, "Don't look. Call the door."

  I did what he asked. "I need a door to the Unseelie sithen." The door appeared, hanging in the middle of nowhere, just like before.

  "No doors," Sholto screamed behind us.

  The door vanished.

  Rhys cursed.

  Frost and Mistral were with us now. There was blood on their swords. I glanced back at the shore, and saw Agnes—a dark, still shape on the ground.

  Doyle started running again, and the others joined us. "Call something else," Abe said, near breathless trying to keep up with Doyle's pace. "And do it quietly, so Sholto can't hear what you're doing."

  "What?" I asked.

  "You have the power of creation," he panted. "Use it."

  "How?" My brain wasn't working under the pressure.

  "Conjure something," he said, and stumbled, falling. He rejoined us, blood pouring down his chest from a new cut.

  "Let the ground be grass and gentle to our feet." Grass flowed at our feet like green water. It didn't spread over everything like the herbs on the island. The grass sprang up in a path where we ran, and nowhere else.

  "Try something else," Rhys said from the other side of us. He was shorter than the rest, and his voice showed the strain of keeping up with the longer legs of the others.

  What could I call from the ground, from the grass, that could save us? I thought it and had my answer; one of the most magical of plants. "Give me a field of four-leaf clover." The grass spread out before us wide and smooth, then white clover began to grow through the grass, until we stood in the center of a field of it. White globes of sweet-smelling flowers burst like stars across all the green.

  Doyle slowed, and the others slowed with him. Rhys said it out loud: "Not bad, not bad at all. You think well in a crisis."

  "The wild hunt is of ill intent," Frost said. "They should be stopped at the field's edge."

  Doyle sat me down amid the ankle-high clover. The plants brushed against me as if they were little hands. "Four-leaf clover is the most powerful plant protection from faerie," I said.

  "Aye," Abe said, "but some of what is coming does not have to walk, Princess."

  "Make us a roof, Meredith," Doyle said.

  "A roof of what?"

  "Rowan, thorn, and ash," Frost said.

  "Of course," I said. Anywhere that the three trees grew together was a magical place—a place both of protection and of a weakening in the reality between worlds. Such a place would save you from faerie, or call faerie to you—like so many things with us, there was never a yes, or no, but a yes, a no, and a sometimes.

  The earth underneath us trembled as if an earthquake were coming; then the trees blasted out of the ground, showering rock and dirt and clover over us. The trees stretched to the sky with a sound like a storm or a train, barreling down, but with a scream of wood to it. It was like nothing I'd ever heard before. While the trees knit themselves together above our heads, I looked back. I could not help it.

  Sholto was covered in the nightmares he had called. Tentacles writhed; bits and pieces that I had no word for flowed and struck. There were teeth everywhere, as if wind could be made solid and given fangs to tear and destroy. Sholto's uncles attacked the creatures with blade and muscle, but they were losing. Losing, but fighting hard enough that they had given us time to make our sanctuary.

  Frost moved to stand so that his broad chest blocked my view. "It is not good to gaze too long upon them." There was a bloody furrow down one side of his face, as if Agnes had tried to claw his eyes out. I made as if to touch the wound, and he pulled away, catching my hand in his. "I will heal."

  He didn't want me to fuss over him in front of Mistral. If it had just been Doyle and Rhys, he might have allowed it. But he would not have Mistral see him weak. I wasn't sure how he felt about Abe, but I knew he viewed Mistral as a threat. Men don't like to look weak in front of their rivals. Whatever I thought of Mistral, that was how Frost and Doyle saw him.

  I took Frost's hand and tried not to act concerned about his wounds. "He called the hunt. Why are they attacking him?" I asked.

  "I warned him that he looked too sidhe," Rhys said. "I wasn't saying that just to stop him from doing something dangerous to us."

  Something warm dripped over my hand. I looked down to find Frost's blood painting my skin. I fought the spurt of panic and asked calmly, "How badly are you hurt?" The blood was coming steadily—not good.

  "I will heal," Frost said, voice tight.

  The trees closed overhead with a sound like the ocean waves rushing along a shore. Leaves tore and rained down on us as the branches wove a shield of leaves, thorns, and bright red berries above. The shadow it cast made Frost's skin look grey for a moment, and it frightened me.

  "You heal gunshot wounds if the bullet goes through and through. You heal nonmagical blades. But Black Agnes was a night-hag and once a goddess. Is your wound of blade, or claw?"

  Frost tried to take his hand back, but I wouldn't let him. Unless he wanted to be appear undignified, he couldn't break free. Our hands were covered in his blood, sticky and warm.

  Doyle was at Frost's side. "How badly are you hurt?"

  "We do not have time to tend my wounds," Frost said. He wouldn't look at Doyle, or any of us. He arranged his face in that arrogant mask, the one that made him impossibly handsome, and as cold as his namesake. But the terrible wounds on the right side of that face ruined the mask. It was like a chink in armor; he could not hide behind it.

  "Nor do we have time to lose my strong right arm," Doyle said, "not if there is time to save it."

  Frost looked at him, surprise showing through the mask. I wondered if Doyle had never, in all these long years, called Frost the strong right arm of the Darkness. The look on his face suggested so. And maybe it was as close as Doyle would come to apologizing for abandoning him to the fight with Agnes in order to save me. Had Frost thought Doyle left him behind on purpose?

  A world of emotion seemed to pass between the two men. If they'd been human men, they might have exchanged some profanity or sports metaphor, which is what seems to pass for terms of deepest affection between friends. But they were who they were, and Doyle said, simply, "Remove enough weapons so we can see the wound." H
e smiled when he said it, because of all the guards Frost would be the one carrying the most weapons, with Mistral a distant second.

  "Whatever you're going to do, do it fast," Rhys said.

  We all looked at him, and then beyond him. The air boiled black, grey, white, and horrible. The hunt was coming toward us like a ribbon of nightmares. It took my eyes a moment to find Sholto on the island. He was a small, pale figure running—running full out—with that sidhe swiftness. But fast as he was, he wouldn't be fast enough—what chased him moved with the swiftness of birds, of wind, of water. It was like trying to outrun the wind; you just couldn't do it.

  Doyle turned back to Frost. "Take off your jacket. I'll make a compress. We're not going to have time for more."

  I glanced back toward the island. Sholto's guards, his uncles, tried to buy him time. They offered themselves as a sacrifice to slow the hunt. It worked, for a while. Some of that fearful boil of shapes slowed and covered them. I think I heard one of them scream over the high bird-like chittering of the creatures. But most of the wild hunt stayed on target. That target was Sholto.

  He crossed the bridge and kept running. "Goddess help us," Rhys said, "he's coming here."

  "He finally understands what he's called into being," Mistral said. "He runs in terror now. He runs to the only sanctuary he can see."

  "We stand in the middle of four-leaf clovers, rowan, ash, and thorn. The wild hunt cannot touch us here," I said, but my voice was soft, and didn't hold the certainty I wished it had.

  Doyle had ripped Frost's shirt away and torn Frost's own jacket into pieces small enough to be used as compresses.

  "How bad is it?" I asked.

  Doyle shook his head, pressing the cloth in an area that seemed to run under Frost's arm and into his shoulder. "Get us out of here, Meredith. I will tend Frost. But only you can get us out."

  "The wild hunt will pass us by," I said. "We stand in the middle of things that they cannot pass through."

  "If we were not its prey, then I would agree," Doyle said. He was trying to get Frost to lie down on the clover, but the other man was arguing. Doyle pressed harder on the wound, which made Frost draw a sharp breath. He continued, "But Sholto told us to run, if we were sidhe. He has conjured it to hunt us."