I HAD TIME TO TAKE A BREATH, THEN WE WERE UNDERWATER. Segna's face loomed under the dirty water. Her mouth opened, screaming at me, blood blossoming from her mouth. My hands dug desperately into her arms, too small to encircle them, as I forced them away from me and she dragged me deeper into the water.
Too late I realized that there were other ways to kill me than claws - she was trying to impale me on submerged bone. I kicked my feet to stay above the bone, to not let her spit me upon it. The point of bone held me on its tip, and I kicked and pushed to keep it from piercing my skin. Segna pushed and fought against me. The strength in her arms and body was almost too much for me. She was wounded, dying, and it was all I could do to keep her from killing me.
My chest was tight; I needed to breathe. Claws, bones, and even the water itself could kill. If I couldn't push her off me, all she had to do was simply hold me underwater.
I prayed, "Goddess help me!"
A pale hand shone in the water, and Segna was pulled backward, my grip on her arms pulling me with her. We broke the surface together, both of us gasping for breath. Her breath ended in a spattering cough that covered my face in her blood. For a moment I couldn't see who had pulled her back. I had to blink her blood out of my eyes to see Sholto with his arm across her upper body. He held her one-armed and yelled, "Get out, Meredith, get out!"
I did what he said: I let her go and pushed backward, trusting that there were no bones just behind me.
Segna didn't try to catch me. She used her newly freed hands to claw down Sholto's arm, making a crimson ruin of his white flesh.
I treaded water, looking around for Doyle and Frost, and the others. There were no others. I was paddling in a lake - a deep, cold lake - no longer the shallow, stagnant pool we'd been wading in before. There was a small island close at hand, but the shore was far away, and it was not a shore I knew. I screamed, "Doyle!" But there was no answer. In truth, I hadn't expected one, for I could already see that we were either in a vision, or somewhere else in faerie. I didn't know which, and I didn't know where.
Sholto cried out behind me. I turned in time to see him go under in a wash of red. Segna struck at the water where he'd vanished with the dagger from her belt. Did she realize it was him she attacked now, or did she still think she was killing me?
I screamed, "Segna!"
The sound seemed to reach her, because she hesitated. She turned in the water and blinked at me.
I pushed myself high enough out of the water so she could see me. Sholto had not yet resurfaced.
Segna screamed at me, the sound ending in a wet cough. Blood poured down her chin, but she started moving toward me.
I screamed, "Sholto!" hoping Segna would realize what she'd done and turn back to rescue him. But she kept swimming, weakly, toward me.
"He is only white flesh now," she growled, in that too thick, too wet voice. "He is only sidhe, not sluagh."
So much for her helping Sholto - obviously it was up to me. I took a good breath and dived. The water was clearer here, and I saw Sholto like a pale shadow sinking toward the bottom, blood trailing upward in a cloud.
I screamed his name, and the sound echoed through the water. His body jerked, and just then something grabbed my hair and yanked me upward.
Segna pulled me through the water. I could see that she was making for the bare island. My naked back hit the rocks, scraped along them, as she struggled from the lake. She pulled me with her, until both of us were free of the water. She lay panting on the rock, her hand still tangled in my hair. I tried to ease away from that hand, but it convulsed tighter, wrenching my hair as if she meant to take it out by the roots. She started dragging me closer to where she lay.
I fought to get up on all fours so she wouldn't scrape more of my skin off on the bare rock. In order to do so, I had to take my gaze off her for an instant.
It was a mistake. She jerked me down with that strength that could have torn a horse apart. Jerked me down, onto my stomach. I wedged an arm under my body to keep me off the rocks.
Then I saw that she still held the dagger. She pressed it to my cheek. I gazed at her along the line of the blade. She was lying down, almost flat against the rocks.
"I'll scar you," she said. "Ruin that pretty face."
"Sholto is drowning."
"The sluagh cannot die by water. If he is sidhe enough to drown, then let him."
"He loves you," I said.
She made a harsh sound that spattered her chin with more blood. "Not as much as he loves the thought of sidhe flesh in his bed."
I couldn't argue with that.
The tip of her blade wavered above my cheek. "How much sidhe are you? How well do you heal?"
I thought it was a rhetorical question, so I didn't answer it. Would she die of her wounds before she hurt me, or would she heal?
She coughed blood onto the stones, and it was as if she wondered the same thing. She used her grip on my hair to force me onto my back, dragging me closer as she did it. I couldn't stop her - I could not fight against such strength. She crawled on top of me and put her blade tip over my throat. I grabbed her hand, wrapped both my hands around it, and still trembled with the effort to hold her off me.
"So weak," she gasped above me. "Why do we follow the sidhe? If I were not dying, you could not hold me off."
My voice came out tight with strain as I said, "I'm only part sidhe."
"But you're sidhe enough for him to want you," she growled. "Glow for me, sidhe! Show me that precious Seelie magic. Show me the magic that makes us follow the sidhe."
Her words were fatal. She was right. I had magic. Magic that no one else had. I called my hand of blood. As I summoned it, I tried not to think about the fact that I could have done it sooner - before she hurt Sholto.
I wielded the hand of blood. I could have made her bleed out from just a tiny cut, and these were not tiny cuts. I started to glow under the press of her body. My body shone through the blood she was dripping on me. I whispered, "Not Seelie magic, Segna, Unseelie magic. Bleed for me."
She didn't understand at first. She kept trying to shove the blade into my throat, and I kept holding her just off me. She dug her hand into my hair so that her claws raked my scalp, bloodied me. I called blood, and her wounds gushed.
The blood poured over me, hot - hotter than my own skin. I turned my head away to keep my eyes clear of it. My hands grew slippery with her blood, and I was afraid that her knife would slip past my defenses before I could bleed her out. So much blood; it poured and poured and poured. Could a night-hag bleed to death? Could they even be killed this way? I didn't know, I just didn't know.
The tip of her knife pierced my skin like a sharp bite. My arms were shaking with the effort to keep her off me. I screamed, "Bleed for me!" I spat her blood out of my mouth, and still her knife wormed another fraction into my throat. Barely, barely below the skin - I wasn't hurt yet, but I would be soon.
Then her hand hesitated, pulled backward. I blinked up at her through a mask of her own blood. Her eyes were wide and startled. There was a white spear sticking out through her throat.
Sholto stood above her, bandages gone, his wound bare to the air, both hands gripping the spear. He pulled the spear out with a wrenching motion. A fountain of blood spilled out of her neck. I whispered, "Bleed." She collapsed in a pool of crimson, the knife still clasped in her hand.
Sholto stood over her and drove the white spear into her back. She spasmed underneath him, her mouth opening and closing, hands and feet scrabbling at the bare rock.
Only when she stopped moving completely did he take the spear out. He stood swaying, but used the tip to send her dagger spinning into the lake. Then he collapsed to his knees beside her, leaning on the spear like a crutch.
By the time I staggered to him, I wasn't glowing. I was tired, and hurt, and covered in my enemy's blood. I fell to my knees beside him on the bloody rock, and I touched his shoulder, as if I wasn't sure he was real. "I saw you drown," I said.
He seemed to have trouble focusing on me, but said, "I am sidhe and sluagh. We cannot die by drowning." He coughed hard enough that he doubled over, throwing up water onto the rock, as he clung to the white shaft of the spear. "But it hurts as if it were death."
I embraced him, and he winced, covered in wounds new and old. I held him more carefully, clinging to him, covering his upper body in Segna's blood.
His voice came rough with coughing. "I'm holding the spear of bone. It was one of the signs of kingship once for my people."
"Where did it come from?" I asked.
"It was in the bottom of the lake, waiting for me."
"Where are we?" I asked.
"It's the Island of Bones. It used to be in the middle of our garden, but it has become the stuff of legend."
I touched what I'd thought was rock, and found he was right. It was rock, but the rock had once been bone. The island was made up of fossils. "It feels awfully solid for a legend," I said.
He managed a smile. "What in the name of Danu is going on, Meredith? What is happening?"
I smelled roses, thick and sweet.
He raised his head, looked around him. "I smell herbs."
"I smell roses," I said, softly.
He looked at me. "What is happening, Meredith? How did we get here?"
"I prayed."
He frowned at me. "I don't understand."
The smell of roses grew thicker, as if I were standing in a summer meadow. A chalice appeared in my hand, where it lay against Sholto's naked back.
He startled away from the touch of it as if it had burned him. He tried to turn too quickly, and it must have pained the open wound on his stomach, for he winced, sucking in his breath sharply. He fell back onto his side, the spear still gripped in one hand.
I held up the gold-and-silver cup so that it caught the light. It was really only then that it sank in that there was light here. It was sunlight, glinting on the cup, and warm on my skin.
For my life, I couldn't remember if there had been sun a moment ago. I might have asked Sholto, but he was focused on what was in my hand, and whispered, "It can't be what I think it is."
"It is the chalice."
He gave a small shake of his head. "How?"
"I dreamt of it, as I dreamt of Abeloec's horn cup, and when I woke it was beside me."
He leaned heavily on the spear, and reached toward the shining cup. I held it out toward him, but his fingers stopped just short of it, as if he feared to touch it.
His reluctance reminded me that things could happen if I touched one of the men with the chalice. But weren't we in vision? And if so, would that hold true? I looked at Segna's body, felt her blood drying on my skin. Was this vision, or was it real?
"And is not vision real?" came a woman's voice.
"Who said that?" Sholto asked.
A figure appeared. She was hidden completely behind the grey of a hooded cloak. She stood in the clear sunlight, but it was like looking at a shadow - a shadow with nothing to give it form.
"Do not fear the touch of the Goddess," the figure said.
"Who are you?" Sholto whispered.
"Who do you think I am?" came the voice. In the past, she had always either appeared more solid or been only a voice, a scent on the wind.
Sholto licked his lips and whispered, "Goddess."
My hand rose of its own accord. I held the chalice out to him, but it was as if someone else were moving my hand. "Touch the chalice," I whispered.
He kept his grip on the spear, leaning on it, as he stretched out his other hand. "What will happen when I touch it?"
"I don't know," I said.
"Then why do you want me to do it?"
"She wants you to," I said.
He hesitated again with his fingers just above the shining surface. The Goddess's voice breathed around us with the scent of summer roses: "Choose."
Sholto took in a sharp breath and blew it out, like a sprinter, then touched the gold of the cup. I smelled herbs, as if I had brushed against a border of thyme and lavender around my roses. A black-cloaked figure appeared beside the grey. Taller, broader of shoulders, and somehow - even shrouded by the cloak - male. As the cloak could not hide the Goddess's femininity, so the cloak could not hide the God's masculinity.
Sholto's hand wrapped around the chalice, covering my hand with his, so that we both held the cup.
The voice came deep, and rich, and ever changing. I knew the voice of the God, always male, but never the same. "You have spilled your blood, risked your lives, killed on this ground," he intoned. That dark hood turned toward Sholto, and for a moment I thought I saw a chin, lips, but they changed even as I saw them. It was dizzying. "What would you give to bring life back to your people, Sholto?"
"Anything," he whispered.
"Be careful what you offer," the Goddess said, and her voice, too, was every woman's, and none.
"I would give my life to save my people," Sholto said.
"I do not wish to take it," I responded, because the Goddess had offered me a similar choice once. Amatheon had bared his neck for a blade, so that life could return to the land of faerie. I had refused, because there were other ways to give life to the land. I was descended from fertility deities, and I knew well that blood was not the only thing that made the grass grow.
"This is not your choice," she said to me. Was there a note of sorrow in her voice?
A dagger appeared in the air in front of Sholto. Its hilt and blade were all white, and gleamed oddly in the light. Sholto's hand left the chalice and grabbed for the knife, almost by reflex. "The hilt is bone. It is the match to the spear," Sholto said, and there was soft wonder in his voice as he gazed at the dagger.
"Do you remember what the dagger was used for?" said the God. "It was used to slay the old king. To spill his blood on this island," Sholto replied obediently.
"Why?" the God asked.
"This dagger is the heart of the sluagh, or was once."
"What does a heart need?"
"Blood, and lives," Sholto answered, as if he were taking a test.
"You spilled blood and life on the island, but it is not alive."
Sholto shook his head. "Segna was not a suitable sacrifice for this place. It needs a king's blood." He held the knife out toward the God's shadowy figure. "Spill my blood, take my life, bring the heart of the sluagh back to life."
"You are the king, Sholto. If you die, who will take back the spear, and bring the power back to your people?"
I knelt there, the blood growing tacky on my skin. I cradled the chalice in my hands, and had a bad feeling that I knew where this talk was going.
Sholto lowered the knife and asked, "What do you want of me, Lord?"
The figure pointed at me. "There is royal blood to spill. Do it, and the heart of the sluagh will live once more."
Sholto stared at me, the look on his face full of shock. I wondered if my face had looked that way when the choice had been mine. "You mean for me to kill Meredith?"
"She is royal blood, a fit sacrifice for this place."
"No," Sholto said.
"You said you would do anything," the Goddess said.
"I can offer my life, but I cannot offer hers," Sholto said. "It isn't mine to give." His hand was mottled with the force of his grip on the hilt of the knife.
"You are king," the God said.
"A king tends his people, he doesn't butcher them."
"You would condemn your people to a slow death for the life of one woman?"
Emotions chased over Sholto's face, but finally he dropped the knife on the rock. It rang as if it were the hardest metal rather than bone. "I cannot, will not harm Meredith."
"Why will you not?"
"She is not sluagh. She should not have to die to bring us back to life. It is not her place."
"If she wishes to be queen over all of faerie, then she will be sluagh."
"Then let her be queen. If she dies here, she will not be queen, and that will leave us with only Cel. I would bring life back to the sluagh and destroy all of faerie in one blow. She holds the chalice. The chalice, my lord. The chalice after all these years is returned. I do not understand how you can ask me to destroy the only hope we have."
"Is she your hope, Sholto?" the God asked.
"Yes," he whispered. There was so much emotion in that one word.
The dark figure looked at the grey. The Goddess spoke. "There is no fear in you, Meredith. Why not?"
I tried to put it into words. "Sholto is right, my lady. The chalice has returned to us, and magic is returning to the sidhe. You use my body as your vessel. I do not think you would waste all that on one bloody sacrifice." I glanced at Sholto. "And I have felt his hand in mine. I have felt his desire for me. I think it would destroy something in him to kill me. I do not believe my God and Goddess so heartless as that."
"Does he love you then, Meredith?"
"I do not know, but he loves the idea of holding me in his arms. That I know."
"Do you love this woman, Sholto?" the God asked.
Sholto opened his mouth, closed it, then said, "It is not a gentleman's place to answer such questions in front of a lady."
"This is a place for truth, Sholto."
"It's all right, Sholto," I said. "Answer true. I won't hold it against you."
"That's what I'm afraid of," he said softly.
The look on his face made me laugh. The laughter echoed on the air like the song of birds.
"Joy will suffice to bring this place back to life," the Goddess said.
"If you bring life to this place with joy, then you will change the very heart of the sluagh. Do you understand that, Sholto?" the God said.
"Not exactly."
"The heart of the sluagh is based on death, blood, combat, and terror. Laughter, joy, and life will make a different heart for the sluagh."
"I am sorry, my lord, but I do not understand."
"Meredith," the Goddess said, "explain it to him." The Goddess was beginning to fade, like a dream as dawn's light steals through the window.
"I do not understand," Sholto said.
"You are sluagh and Unseelie sidhe," the God said; "you are a creature of terror and darkness. It is what you are, but it is not all you are." With that, the dark shape began to fade, too.
Sholto reached out to him. "Wait, I don't understand."
The God and Goddess vanished, as if they'd never been, and the sunlight dimmed with them. We were left in gloom. It was the twilight of the underground of faerie these days - not the aberration of the momentous sunlight that had bathed us moments ago.
Sholto yelled, "My God, wait!"
"Sholto," I said. I had to say it twice more before he looked at me.
His face was stricken. "I don't know what they want from me. What am I to do? How do I bring the heart of my people back with joy?"
I smiled at him, the mask of blood cracking with it. I had to clean off this mess. "Oh, Sholto, you get your wish."
"My wish? What wish?"
"Let me clean off some of this blood beforehand."
"Before what?"
I touched his arm. "Sex, Sholto, they meant sex."
"What?" The look on his face, so astonished, made me laugh again. The sound echoed across the lake, and again I thought I heard birdsong.
"Did you hear that?"
"I heard your laughter, like music."
"This place is ready to come back to life, Sholto, but if we use laughter and joy and sex to make it happen, then it will be a different place than it was before. Do you understand that?"
"I'm not sure. We are going to have sex here, now?"
"Yes. Let me wash off some of the blood, and then yes." I wasn't sure he'd heard anything else I'd said. "Have you seen the new garden outside the throne room doors in the Unseelie sithen?"
He seemed to have to fight to concentrate, but finally he nodded. "It's a meadow with a stream now, not the torture area the queen had made of it."
"Exactly," I said. "It was a place of pain and now it's a meadow with butterflies and bunnies. I'm part Seelie Court, Sholto, do you understand what I'm saying? That part of me will impact the magic we do here and now."
"What magic will we perform here and now?" he asked, smiling. He was still leaning heavily on the spear, the raw wound of what the Seelie had done to him bare to the air. I'd had enough of my own injuries to know that just the touch of air hurt when the skin was abraded. The bone knife lay next to Sholto's knees. Truthfully, I'd thought it might vanish when the God and Goddess went - for he had refused to use it for its true purpose. Nevertheless, Sholto was still surrounded by major relics of the sluagh. He'd been visited by deity. We knelt in a place of legend, with the possibility of bringing his people to a rebirth of their powers. And all he seemed to be able to think of was the fact that we might be having sex.
I looked in his face. I tried to see past the almost shy anticipation there. He seemed afraid to be too eager. He was a good king, yet the promise of sex with another sidhe had chased all the cautions from his mind. I could not allow him to leap in, though, until I was sure he understood what might happen to his people. He had to understand or...or what?
"Sholto," I said.
He reached out to me. I took his hand to keep him from touching my face. "I need you to hear me, Sholto, to truly hear me."
"I will listen to anything you say."
He was willing to follow my lead. I'd noticed that about him in L.A. - that the dominant, frightening king of the sluagh became submissive in intimate situations. Had Black Agnes taught him that, or Segna? Or was he just wired that way?
I patted his hand, more friendly than sexual. "What I bring to sex magic is meadows and butterflies. Some of the corridors in the Unseelie mound are turning to white marble with veins of gold."
His face became a little more serious, less amused. "Yes, the queen was most upset," he said. "She accused you of remaking her sithen in the image of the Seelie Court."
"Exactly," I said.
His eyes widened.
"I didn't do it on purpose," I said. "I don't control what the energy does with the sithen. Sex magic isn't like other magicks - it's wilder, and has more a mind of its own."
"The sluagh are wild magic, Meredith."
"Yes, but wild sluagh and wild Seelie magic aren't the same."
He turned my hand palm-up. "You bear the hand of flesh and the hand of blood. Those are not Seelie powers."
"No. In combat I seem to be all Unseelie, but in sex magic it is the Seelie in my blood that comes out. Do you understand what that might mean for your sluagh?"
All the light seemed to drain from his face, so somber now. "If we have sex, and the sluagh are reborn, you might remake the sluagh in your image."
"Yes," I said.
He stared at my hand as if he'd never seen it before. "If I had taken your life, then the sluagh would have remained what they are: a terrible darkness to sweep all before us. If we use sex to bring life back to my people, then they may become more like the sidhe, or even the Seelie sidhe."
"Yes," I said, "yes." I was relieved that he finally understood.
"Would it be so terrible if we were more sidhe?" He almost whispered it, as if he spoke to himself.
"You are their king, Sholto. Only you can make this choice for your people."
"They would hate me for making this choice." He stared at me. "But what other choice is there? I will not spill your life away, not even to bring life back to all of my kingdom." He closed his eyes and let go of my hand. He began to glow, soft, and white like the moon rising through his skin. He opened his eyes, and the triple gold of his irises gleamed. He traced a glowing fingertip across the palm of my hand, and it drew a line of cold white fire across my skin. I shuddered from that small touch.
He smiled. "I am sidhe, Meredith. I understand that now. I am sluagh, too, but I am also sidhe. I want to be sidhe, Meredith. I want to be fully sidhe. I want to know what it feels like to be what I am."
I drew my hand back from him, so I could think without the press of his power against my skin. "You are king here. You must make this choice." My voice was a little hoarse.
"It is no choice," he said. "You dead, and lost to all of faerie - or you in my arms? It is no choice." He laughed then, and his laughter, too, echoed across the lake. I heard chimes, or birds, or both. "Besides, Darkness and Frost would kill me if I took you as a sacrifice."
"They would not slay the king of the sluagh and bring war to faerie," I said.
"If you truly believe that their loyalties are still to faerie rather than to you alone, then you do not see their eyes when they look at you. Their vengeance would be terrible, Meredith. The fact that there are still assassination attempts against you only shows that some of the sidhe do not yet understand how short-leashed the queen has kept Darkness and Frost. Especially Darkness," he said, his voice going low. His face looked haunted. He shook the thought away and looked back at me. "I have seen the Darkness hunt. If Hell Hounds, Yeth Hounds, still existed among us, they would belong to the sluagh, to the wild hunt, and the blood of that wild hunt still runs through Doyle's veins, Meredith."
"So you do not kill me for fear of Doyle and Frost?"
He looked at me, and for a moment let the veil drop from those glowing eyes. He let me see his need, such need, as if it should have been carved in letters across the air. "It is not fear that impels me to spare your life," he whispered.
I gave him a smile, and the chalice still gripped in my hand pulsed once against my skin. The chalice would be part of what we did. "Let me wash some of this blood away. Then I will put my glow against yours."
His own glow began to fade a little, his burning eyes cooling to as normal as they ever got. It was hard to call his triple-gold irises normal, even by sidhe standards, though. "I am hurt, Meredith. I would have had our first time together be perfect. I'm not certain how much good I'm going to be to you tonight."
"I'm hurt, too," I said, "but we'll both do our best." I stood up and found my body stiff with injuries I hadn't even realized I'd suffered - small wounds that I must have received in the fight.
"I will not be able to make love the way you wish it," he said.
"How do you know what I wish?" I asked as I made my way slowly across the rough and smooth of the rock.
"You had quite an audience for Mistral's turn with you. The rumors have grown, but if even part of it is true, I will not be able to dominate you as he did."
I slid into the water. It found every small cut and scrape. The water was cool and soothing, but at the same time it made the wounds burn. "I don't want to be dominated right now, Sholto. Make love to me - let it be gentle between us, if that is what we want."
He laughed again, and I heard bells. "I think gentle is all I'm capable of tonight."
"I do not always want rough, Sholto. My tastes are more varied than that." I was shoulder-deep in the water now, trying to get the blood off me. The blood began to dissolve in the water, washing away almost more easily than it should have.
"How varied are your tastes?" he asked.
I smiled at him. "Very." I dunked under the water in a bid to get the blood off my face, out of my hair. I came up gasping, wiping the runnels of pinkish water from my face. I went under two more times until the water ran clear.
Sholto was at the edge of the island when I came up the last time. He was standing, using the spear like a crutch. The white knife was tucked carefully through the cloth of his pants, the way you'd stick a pin through: in, then out, so the point was exposed to the air. He offered me his hand. I took it, though I could have gotten out by myself, and I knew that bending over must hurt him.
He lifted me out of the water, but his eyes never got to my face. His gaze stayed on my body, my breasts, as the water ran down them. There are women who would have taken offense, but I wasn't one of them. In that moment he wasn't a king, he was a man - and that was just fine with me.
