WOOD, METAL, FLESH; ALL OF IT HIT US AT ONCE. WE WERE LEFT clinging to each other in the center of a blast of power that splashed the lake up over the island. We drowned for a moment, then the world literally moved. It felt as if the island bucked up and dropped down again.
The water cleared, the earth stopped moving, and the chalice and spear were gone. We were left wet and gasping, huddled naked together. I was afraid to let go, as if our arms around each other - our bodies still wedded together - were all that kept us from falling off the face of the earth.
Voices came, yells, shouts. I picked out Doyle's voice, Frost, and Agnes's harsh call. The voices made us both turn, blinking water out of our eyes. On the shore, which was a lot farther away than it had been before, were all our guards. We were back in the dead gardens of the sluagh, but the lake was full of water now, and the Island of Bones was in the middle of it.
Doyle dived into the water, his dark body cutting the surface. Frost followed him. The other guards did the same. Sholto's uncles discarded their cloaks and hit the water after my guards. Only Black Agnes stayed on the shore.
I looked down at Sholto; I was still on top of him. "We're about to be rescued."
He smiled up at me. "Do we need rescuing?"
"I'm not sure," I said.
He laughed then, and the sound echoed against the bare stone of the cavern. He hugged me tight, and laid a gentle kiss on my cheek. He breathed his words against my skin: "Thank you, Meredith."
I pressed my cheek against his and whispered back, "You are most welcome, Sholto."
He buried his hand in my wet hair and said, softly, "I have long desired you to whisper my name like that."
"Like what?" I asked, face still pressed against his.
"Like a lover."
I heard movement behind us, and Sholto released his hold on my hair. I kissed him on the lips, before I lifted my body to see who had made the island first.
Doyle - of course it was Doyle - walked toward us. He gleamed black and shining, water dripping down his nakedness. The light caught blue and purple gleams from his skin as he moved toward us. The light seemed to dazzle on his skin and on the water - reflected brilliance. My skin was warm in the light. Sunlight, it was sunlight again. Like noonday come to this shadowy place.
There was a green haze to the bare rock where Sholto and I lay. That haze took the shape of tiny stems, reaching out over the rock, anchoring themselves as Doyle came to stand beside us.
His face struggled for an expression, and finally settled on that stern face, the one that had frightened me as a child when he stood at my aunt's side. Somehow the expression wasn't nearly as frightening with him naked, and given my now so intimate knowledge of him. The Queen's Darkness was my lover, and I could never again see him as that threatening figure, simply the queen's assassin, her black dog to fetch and kill.
I stared up at him, still pressed tight in Sholto's arms. I sat up, and his arms fell away from me, reluctantly. Since I was still riding his body, it wasn't as if he stopped touching me. His hands slid down my arms, staying in contact. I glanced at Sholto's face and found him looking not at me, but at Doyle.
Sholto's face was defiant, almost triumphant. I didn't understand the look. I glanced at Doyle, and saw behind that stern face a flash of anger. For the first time in weeks I remembered how they had both found me in Los Angeles. They had fought, both convinced that the queen had sent each of them to kill me.
But there had been something personal about that fight. I couldn't remember what they had said to each other that made me think they had some kind of bad history, but I had felt it. The looks they gave each other now confirmed that I was missing something. Some disagreement, or challenge, or even grudge between these two men. Not good.
Rhys came up the slope of the rock, dripping like wet ivory. He stopped short of us all, as if he also sensed, or saw, the tension.
What do you do when you're naked with one lover, and another lover is standing there? Sholto was not my king, or husband. I took my hand from him and offered it to Doyle. Doyle hesitated a moment, his gaze on his rival and not on me. Then those black eyes moved to me. His expression never truly changed, but some breath of harshness left him. Or perhaps some touch of gentleness returned to him.
There was movement behind him, and Frost and Mistral struggled up the slope. They were dressed, and weapons bulged everywhere. Frost actually caught Mistral's arm as the other man slipped. The clothes and weapons had slowed them down.
Now they stood there, Frost's hand on Mistral's arm. Mistral was almost on his knees, from his slip, but they had frozen, staring at us. They hadn't just caught a whiff of tension. Their reaction said clearly that there was bad blood between Sholto and Doyle.
Doyle took my hand in his. The moment he touched me the tightness in my chest, which I hadn't even known was there, loosened.
He lifted me upward, off the other man. Sholto's hands, all of his body, let me go with such reluctance. The sensation of him drawing out of deep within my body shivered through me. Only Doyle's grip kept my knees from buckling.
Sholto raised his arms to help catch me, his hands on my thighs. Doyle pulled me in against his body, half lifting me over Sholto's body. Sholto let me go; otherwise it would have been like a tug-of-war, not seemly behavior for a king.
I stood there wrapped in Doyle's arms, staring up at his face, trying to decipher what he was thinking. Around me the tiny plants unfurled tiny leaves, and the world suddenly smelled of thyme, that sweet, green herb scent that Sholto had said he sensed when I was smelling roses.
The delicate herbs tickled along my foot, as if reminding me that there were some things more important than love. Staring up into Doyle's face, I wasn't sure that was right. In that moment I wanted him happy. I wanted him to know that I wanted him happy. I wanted to explain that Sholto had been lovely, and the power had been immense, but that in the end, he meant nothing to me, not when I had Doyle's arms around me.
But you can't say that out loud, not with the other man lying behind you. So many hearts to juggle, including my own.
The herbs touched me again, wound around my ankle. I glanced down at the greenery, and thought of my favorite thymes. My gran had grown them in the herb garden behind the house where my father raised me - so many varieties. Lemon thyme, silver thyme, golden thyme. At that thought, the plants around my ankle were suddenly tinged with yellow. Some of the leaves on some of the plants turned silver, others became pale yellow, and some that bright sunny yellow. There was a scent of faint lemon on the air, as if I had crushed one of the pale yellow leaves between my fingertips.
"What did you do?" Doyle whispered, his deep voice thrumming along my spine so that I shivered against him.
My voice was soft, as if I didn't want to say it too loudly: "I just thought that there is more than one kind of thyme."
"And the plants changed," he said.
I nodded, staring at them. "I didn't say it out loud, Doyle. I only thought it."
He hugged me. "I know."
Mistral and Frost were with Rhys now. They did not approach us, and again I wasn't sure why. They waited, as if they needed permission to come closer - the way they would have waited to approach Queen Andais.
I thought it was me they waited on, but I should have known better. Sholto said behind me, "The sidhe do not usually stand on ceremony, but if you need permission, then I give it. Come closer."
Mistral said, "If you could see yourself, King Sholto, you would not ask why we stand on ceremony."
The comment made me look back at Sholto. He was sitting up, but where he had been lying was an outline of herbs. Peppermint, basil - as I recognized them, I smelled their perfumes. But the herbs spreading out from where he had lain, where we had lain, wasn't what made the men stop. Sholto was wearing a crown; a crown of herbs. Even as we watched, the delicate plants wove like living fingers through his hair, creating a wreath of thyme and mint. Only the most delicate of the plants, entwining themselves as we watched.
He raised a hand, and the moving plants touched his fingers as they had touched my ankle. I was wearing an anklet of living thyme, gold-flecked leaves, smelling of green life and lemons. The tendril wrapped around his fingers like a happy pet. He lowered his hand and stared at it. The plant wove itself into a ring as we watched - a ring that bloomed on his hand, the delicate spray of white blossoms more precious than any jewel. Then his crown burst into bloom, shades of white, blue, lavender. Finally, the blooms spread across the island, so that the ground was nearly solid with tiny, airy flowers, moving not in a breeze - for there was none - but nodding as if the flowers were speaking to one another.
"A crown of flowers is not a crown for the king of the sluagh!" Agnes shouted, harsh, from the shore. She was on hands and knees, hidden completely under her black cloak. I saw the flash of her eyes, as if there was a glow to them; then she lowered her head, hiding from the light. She was a night-hag. They didn't travel at noon.
Ivar spoke, but I couldn't see him. "Sholto, King, we cannot approach you in this burning light."
His uncles were half-goblin - which, depending on the type of goblin, might make sunlight a problem. But they were also half-night-flyer, and that definitely made sunlight a problem.
"I would that you could come to me, Uncles," Sholto said.
Doyle's arms tightened around me, a warning. "Be careful what you say, Sholto; you do not understand the power of the words of someone whom faerie itself has crowned."
"I do not need advice from you, Darkness," Sholto said, and again there was bitterness in his voice.
The sunlight faded, and a soft twilight began to fall. There was the sound of splashing, then Ivar and Fyfe came up upon the island. They were nude except for enough clothing to hold their weapons. They fell to one knee before him, heads bowed. "King Sholto," Ivar said, "we thank you for sending the light away."
Sholto said, "I didn't..."
"You are crowned by faerie," Doyle said again. "Your words, perhaps even your thoughts, will shape what will happen this night."
I said, "I thought - only thought - that there is more than one variety of thyme, and it changed the herbs. What I thought about became real, Sholto."
Agnes called from the shore, "You have freed us from the light, King Sholto. You have given us back the Lost Lake and the Island of Bones. Will you stop there, or will you give us back our power? Will you remake the sluagh while the magic of creation still burns through you, or will you hesitate and lose this chance to bring us back into ourselves?"
"The hag is right, Your Highness," Fyfe said. "You have brought us back the magic of making, wild magic, creation magic. Will you use it for us?"
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, dragging 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.
