THE GROUND WAS SOFT UNDER OUR FEET AS WE WALKED toward Aisling's body. The sharp, dry vegetation had melted into the softening earth. Much more of this downpour and it would be mud. I had to shield my eyes with my hand to gaze up at the body in the tree.
Body, just a body. I was already distancing myself from him. Already I was making that mental switch that had allowed me to work murder cases in Los Angeles. Body, it, not he, and absolutely not Aisling. The it hung there, with a black branch thicker than my arm sticking out through the chest. There had to be two feet worth of branch on this side of the body. Such force it would have taken to pierce the chest of any man like that, a warrior of the Unseelie Court . A nearly immortal being, once worshipped as a god. Such beings do not die easily. He hadn't even cried out...or had he? Had he cried his death on the air, and I been deaf to it? Had my screams of pleasure drowned out his cries of despair?
No, no, I had to stop thinking like that, or I would run screaming.
"Is he...," Abe began.
None of the men answered him or finished his sentence. We all stared up, wordless, as if by not saying it, we'd keep it from being true. He hung so limp, like a broken puppet, but thick, and meaty, and more real than any doll. He was utterly still and limp in that heavy-limbed way that not even the deepest sleep can duplicate.
I spoke into that rain-soaked silence. "Dead." And that one word seemed louder than it actually was.
"How? Why?" Abe asked.
"The how is pretty apparent," Rhys said. "The why is a mystery."
I looked away from what hung in the tree, out into the twilight of the gardens. I wasn't looking away from Aisling, but rather looking for the others. I tried to ignore the tightness of my throat, the speeding of my pulse. I tried not to finish the thought that had made me turn and search the dimness. Were there other men dead, or dying, in the dimness? Who else was pierced through by some magical tree?
There was nothing to see but the dead branches stretching naked toward the clouds - none of the other trees held a gruesome trophy. The tightness in my chest eased when I was sure that all the trees were empty except this one.
I barely knew Aisling. He had never been my lover, and had only been one of my guards for a day. I was sorry for the loss of him, but there were others among my guards that I cared about more, and they were still missing. I was happy they weren't decorating the trees, but that left me wondering what else might have become of them. Where were they?
Doyle spoke so close to me that I jumped. "I do not see any of the others in the trees."
I shook my head. "No, no." I looked for Frost. He stood close, but not close enough to hold me. I wanted to be comforted by one of them, but it was a child's wish. A child's wish for lies in the dark, that the monster isn't under the bed. I had grown up in a world where the monsters were very real.
"You were holding Galen, and Nicca was with you," I said. "What happened to them?"
Frost brushed his sodden hair from his face, the silver looking as grey as Mistral's in the dim light. "Galen was swallowed up by the ground." His eyes showed pain. "I could not hold on to him. It was as if some great force wrenched him away."
I was suddenly cold, and the warm rain wasn't enough to keep it at bay. I said, "When Amatheon did the same thing in my vision, he went willingly. He just sank into the mud. There was no wrenching force."
"I can only report what happened, Princess." His voice had gone sullen. If he thought I'd criticized him, then so be it; I didn't have time to hold his hand.
"That was vision," Mistral said. "Sometimes on this side of the veil, it's not so gentle."
"What's not so gentle?" I asked.
"Being consumed by your power," he said.
I shook my head, wiping impatiently at the rain on my face. I was beginning to be irritated. The miracle of it raining in the dead gardens wasn't enough to calm the cold fear. "I wish this rain would let up," I said without thinking. Angry and afraid, and the rain was something I could be angry at without hurting its feelings.
The rain slackened. It went from a downpour to a light drizzle. My pulse was in my throat again, but not for the same reason. It was a miracle that there was rain here, and I hadn't meant to make it go away.
Doyle touched my mouth with a callused fingertip. "Hush, Meredith - do not destroy the blessing of this rain."
I nodded to let him know I understood. He took his finger away, slowly. "I forgot that the sithen listens to everything I say." I swallowed hard enough that it hurt. "I don't want the rain to stop."
We stood there, everyone tense, waiting. Yes, Aisling was dead, and many more missing, but the dead gardens had been the heart of our faerie mound once, and were more important than any one life. They had been the heart of our power. When this place had died, our power had begun to die.
I saw with relief that the warm spring drizzle kept falling. Slowly, we all let out a breath. "Be careful what you say, Princess," Mistral whispered.
I just nodded.
"Nicca stood up, staring at his hands," Frost said, as if I'd asked. "He reached out to me, but before I could touch him he vanished."
"Vanished how?" Abe asked.
"Just vanished, as if he became air."
"He was taken by his sphere of influence," Mistral said.
"What does that mean?" I asked.
"Air, earth."
I shook my hands at him, as if waving away smoke between us. "I don't understand."
"Hawthorne was engulfed by the trunk of that tree over there," Rhys said. He pointed to a large greyish-barked tree. "He didn't fight it. He went smiling. I'd bet almost anything that if we could identity it, it would be a hawthorn tree."
"Galen and Nicca did not go smiling," Frost said.
"They have never been worshipped as deities," Doyle said, "so they do not know to relax into the power. If you fight it, it will fight back. If you let it take you, then it is more gentle."
"I know that once upon a time, some of the sidhe could travel through ground, trees, the air. But forgive me, guys, that was a thousand years before I was born. A thousand years before Galen was born. Nicca is older, but he was always too weak to be a god."
"That may have changed," Abe said.
"Just as Abe's power returned," Doyle said.
Abe nodded. "Once, so long ago that I don't want to remember, I didn't just make queens. I made goddesses."
"What are you saying?" I asked.
He brought the horn cup in front of him. "The Greeks believed in it, too, Princess. That the drink of the gods could make you immortal; could make you a god."
"But they didn't drink from it."
"The drinking is - " He seemed to search for a word. " - more metaphorical, at times. It was my power, and Medb's, that gave the gods and goddesses of our pantheon their marks of power. The colored lines, Princess, they paint the skin."
Rhys looked down at his arm, where there had been that one faint fish. Now there were two, one swimming down, another swimming upward. It formed a circle, like a fish version of yin and yang. The blue lines weren't faint now - they were bright, clear blue, deeper than a summer sky. Rhys's curls had been plastered flat by the rain, so the face he turned to us seemed startled and unfinished.
"You bear both marks now," Doyle said. With his hair in a tight braid, he looked as he always looked. He stood in the middle of all the disarray like some dark rock I might cling to.
Rhys looked up at him. "It can't be that easy."
"Try," he said.
"Try what?" I asked.
The men were all exchanging some knowledge from look to look. I didn't understand.
"Rhys was a deity of death," Frost said.
"I know that; he was Cromm Cruach."
"Don't you remember the story he told you?" Doyle asked.
In that moment I couldn't remember. All I could think was that Galen and Nicca might be dead, or hurting, and it was somehow my fault.
"Once I brought more than just death, Merry," Rhys said, still gazing down at his arm with its new mark.
My mind started working finally. "Celtic death deities are also healing deities, according to legend," I said.
"According to legend," Rhys said. He gazed up at Aisling.
"Try," Doyle said to Rhys, again.
I looked at Rhys. "Are you saying you can bring him back from the dead?"
"The last time I had both symbols on my arm, I could." He looked at me, and there was such pain on his face. I remembered what he had told me now. Once his followers had worshipped him by cutting and hurting themselves, sacrificing their blood and pain, but he had been able to heal them. Then he lost the ability to heal, and his followers thought he was displeased. They decided he wanted the deaths of others, and they began the sacrifices. He had slaughtered them all to stop the atrocities. Slain his own people to save the rest.
He had never lost the ability to kill small creatures with a touch. In Los Angeles he'd recovered the ability to kill other faerie creatures with a touch and a word. He'd killed a goblin that way, at least.
Rhys gazed up at Aisling's still form. "I'll try." He handed his weapons to Doyle and Frost, then touched the tree. He seemed to wait a moment, to see what the tree would do. For the first time I realized that he was wondering if the tree would kill him, too - that hadn't occurred to me.
"Is it safe for Rhys to do this?" I asked.
Rhys looked back at me. He grinned. "If I were taller, I wouldn't have to climb."
"I mean it, Rhys. I don't want to trade you for Aisling. And I really don't want two of you hanging up there."
"If I really thought you loved me, I might not chance it."
"Rhys..."
"It's all right, Merry, I know where I stand." He turned to the tree and started climbing.
Doyle touched my shoulder. "You cannot love us all equally. There is no dishonor in that."
I nodded, and believed him, but it still hurt my heart.
Rhys looked like some white phantom against the blackness of the tree. He was right underneath where Aisling hung. He was just about to reach out toward him when magic crawled across my skin, stopped my breath in my throat.
Doyle felt it, too, and yelled, "Wait! Don't touch him!"
Rhys started climbing back down the tree, sliding on the rain-slicked bark.
"Rhys! Hurry!" I screamed.
The air around Aisling's body shimmered, like a heat haze, then exploded. Not in a rain of flesh and blood and bone, but in a cloud of birds. Tiny birds, smaller, more delicate than sparrows. Dozens of songbirds flew over our heads. We all fell to the ground, guarding our heads. Frost put his body over mine, protecting me from the fluttering, twittering mob. The birds looked charming, but looks can be deceiving.
When Frost raised up enough for me to see clearly again, the birds had vanished into the dimness of the trees. I stretched upward, trying to see. "Is the cavern wall farther away than it was?" I asked.
"Yes," Doyle said.
"The forest stretches for miles now," Mistral said, and his voice held awe.
"They call it the dead gardens, not the dead forest," I said.
"It was both once," Doyle said, softly.
Rhys explained, "This was a world at one time, Merry, a whole underground world. There were forests and streams, and lakes, and wonders to behold. But it whittled down, as our power was whittled away. Until, at the end, it was just what you saw when we entered - a bare patch where a flower garden once grew, surrounded by a fringe of dead trees." He motioned toward the spreading trees. "The last time I saw anything like this inside any faerie mound was centuries ago."
Abe hugged me from behind. It startled me, and I tensed. He started to pull away from me, but I patted his arm and said, "You startled me, that's all."
He hesitated, then hugged me close. "You've done this, Princess."
I turned enough to see his face. He was smiling. "I think you helped, too," I said.
"And Mistral," Doyle added. His deep voice tried for neutral and almost made it, as much as it hurt him to say those words. He'd been convinced that the queen's ring, which now sat on my hand, had chosen Mistral for my king. Only later had I been able to convince him it wasn't so much Mistral as the fact that he was simply the first sex I'd had inside faerie while wearing the ring. Doyle had accepted that, but now he seemed to be wondering again.
"Doyle," I said.
He shook his head at me. "For miracles such as this, what is one person's happiness, Princess?"
I'd almost broken him of calling me princess. I had finally been Meredith, or Merry, to him, but no longer, apparently. I touched his arm. He pulled away from my touch, gently but firmly.
"You give up too easily, my friend," Frost said.
"There is sky above us, Frost." Doyle motioned outward with the gun in his hand. "There is forest to walk through." He raised his face upward, and let the warm rain fall on his closed eyes. "It rains inside the sithen once more." Doyle opened his eyes and looked at Frost, grabbing his arm, dark against light. "How clear do you need your messages to be, Frost? It seems that Mistral did this."
"I will not give up my hope, Darkness. I will not lose it, when it is so freshly won. You should not, either."
"I've missed something," Rhys said.
Doyle shook his head. "You have missed nothing."
"Now, that's too close to a lie, and we never lie," said Rhys.
"I will not discuss this with you, here," Doyle said. He looked past Rhys to Mistral's tall figure. It was a small look, but enough to tell me of his jealousy.
"Look to your own power, Darkness," Abe said.
"Enough," said Doyle. "We must tell the queen what has happened."
"Look at your chest, Darkness," Abe said.
Doyle frowned at him, then looked down. My gaze followed his. It was hard to see against the black of his skin, and in the uncertain light, but..."There are lines on your skin, red lines." I moved closer, trying to decipher what Abe's power had drawn on Doyle's skin.
I started to reach out, to trace the lines on his chest. Doyle moved out of reach. "I cannot bear much more, Princess."
"Your body is painted with your symbol again," Abe said. "It is not just Mistral who is returning."
"But it is he who is returning faerie to itself," Doyle said. "And I was ready to stand in the way of it, for my heart would not let me lose this fight. But that was before this wonder of the dead gardens come back to life, and my sign of power returning. I have served this court century after century as we lost all that we were. How could I do less than serve the court as we begin to win back what was lost? Either my oath to serve means something, or it never meant anything at all. Either I can do this for the good of our people, or I have never been the Queen's Darkness. I either do this, or I am nothing, do you not see that?"
Abe went to him, touched his arm. "I hear you, so honorable Darkness, but I tell you that this power is a generous thing. Goddess is a generous Goddess. God is a generous God. They do not give with one hand and take with the other. They are not so cruel."
"I have found their service most cruel."
"Nay, you have found Andais's service cruel," Abe said, voice soft.
A bird twittered out in the twilight woods - a sound of settling in for the night, sleepy and questioning.
A voice came out of the dimness: "I thought you a drunken fool, Abeloec, but now I realize that it wasn't the drink making you so. It's simply your natural state."
We all whirled toward the voice. Queen Andais stepped from the far wall, where she had emerged earlier. We had been more than careless not to realize she might come back.
Abe dropped to one knee in the mud. "I meant no offense, my queen."
"Yes, you did." She walked only a little way toward us, then stopped, grimacing. "I am happy to see the rain and clouds, but the mud, I could have done without."
"We are sorry that you are displeased, my queen," Mistral said.
"The apology would sound better if you were on your knees," she said.
Mistral dropped to his knees in the mud beside Abe. Their hair was too long, wet and heavy; it trailed into the mud. I didn't like seeing them like that. It made me afraid for them.
She waded through the now ankle-deep mud until she could have touched them, but she walked past. Instead, she reached out to trace her fingers across Doyle's chest. "Puppy dogs," she said, smiling.
Doyle stood impassive under the caress of her hand, though Andais had made a torture of caresses. She would tease and torment, then deny them release. She'd made a game of it for centuries.
She touched Frost's arm. "Your tree is dark against your skin now." She moved to Rhys, touching the dual fish. She moved to me, and I fought not to cringe away from her. She put her hand on my stomach where the exact imprint of a moth stood, like the world's most perfect tattoo. "A few hours ago this moth fluttered, struggling to escape your skin."
I looked down at where she touched, hoping she wouldn't go lower. She didn't like me, but she might touch my intimate parts because she knew I loathed her. Sex and hatred always mixed well for my aunt.
"My guards told me that it would become like a tattoo."
"Did they tell you what it was?"
"A mark of power."
She shook her head. "The others have the outline of a creature, or an image, but your moth looks real. It is more like a photograph imprinted on your skin. That is not something that Abeloec's magic can give you. This" - she pressed hard against my stomach - "means you can mark others. It means that those you mark are lesser powers flocking to the warmth of your fire." She curled her arm around my waist, and pressed my body against the black robe of hers. She whispered against my ear, "The men don't like this, no, they don't. They don't like me touching you, not one..." she licked the edge of my ear, "little..." she licked down the curve of my neck, "bit." She bit me, hard and sudden, not to draw blood, but to make me jerk.
She drew her head up and said quietly, "I thought you liked pain, Meredith."
"Not straight out of the box, no."
"That's not what I heard." She let me go and walked around the group of us. "Where are all the other men who vanished from the bedroom with you?"
"The garden has taken them," Doyle said.
"Taken them, how?"
"Taken them into tree and flower and ground," he said, not meeting her eyes.
"As Amatheon rose from the dirt, will they return to us, or was their death the price for this miracle?" She whispered it, but her voice seemed to echo.
"We don't know," Doyle said.
A bird began to sing again. A high, trilling cascade of music fell from the sky, dancing over us. And as if sound could be touch, it wrapped us around in something beautiful, something just out of sight. It seemed a reminder that the dawn would come and death would not be forever. It was the sound of hope that comes each spring to let you know that winter will not last, and the land is not dead.
I could not help but smile. Mistral and Abe raised their faces upward, as if turning gratefully into a spill of warm sunshine.
Andais began to back away as the last sweet note fell upon the air. She backed toward the part of the wall that still held darkness, as if the magic's return could not touch it. "You will make of the Unseelie Court a pale imitation of the golden court that your uncle rules, Meredith. You will fill the darkness that is our purpose with light and music, and we will die as a people."
"Once there were many courts," Abeloec said, "some dark, some light, but all faerie. We did not divide ourselves into good and bad as the Christians do for their religion. We were everything at once, as we were meant to be."
Andais did not bother to respond. Instead she simply said, "You have brought life to the dead gardens. I will not try to pixie on my promise. Come to the Hallway of Mortality and save Nerys's people if you can. Bring that bright Seelie magic into the other heart of the Unseelie Court and see how long it survives." With that she was gone.
We waited for a few heartbeats; then Mistral and Abe stood, mud coating their lower legs. No voice from the dark told them to get back on their knees. I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding.
"What did she mean when she said that our court has two hearts?" I asked.
Abe answered, "Once every faerie mound had a garden or forest or lake at its heart. But every court also had another heart of power - one that would reflect the kind of magic the court specialized in."
"You have brought one heart back to life," Mistral said, "but I am not certain it is wise to reawaken the other."
"The hallway is a torture chamber, where most magic does not work. It's a null place," I said.
"But once, Meredith, it was more."
I looked at the men. "More how?"
"Things that were older than faerie, older than us, were imprisoned there. Remnants of power from the peoples we had defeated."
"I'm not sure I understand, Mistral."
He looked at Doyle. "Help me explain this."
"Once there were creatures in the Hallway of Mortality that could bring true death to even the sidhe. They were kept there to serve as methods of execution, or torture, or simply the threat of those things. The queen did not care for them because, as you well know, she likes to do her own torturing. Watching some other being tear us limb from limb was not half so amusing to her as doing it herself."
"And we healed better if she did it," Rhys said.
Doyle nodded. "Yes, she could torture us longer and more often if the things did not help."
"What kind of things?" I asked. I didn't like how serious they'd gotten.
"Terrible things. A glimpse of them would drive a mortal mad," he said.
"How long ago did these things vanish from the sithen?"
"A thousand years, maybe more," he said.
"The forests haven't been gone so long as that," I said.
"No, not quite that long."
"Why are you all so worried?"
"Because if you, or the Goddess's power through you, can bring this about," Abe said, motioning at the ever-expanding forest, "then we must prepare for the fact that the second heart of our court can come back to full life, as well."
"Perhaps Merry is too Seelie to bring back such horrors?" Mistral said, almost hopefully.
"Her two hands of power are flesh and blood," Doyle said. "Those are not Seelie magicks."
"I came to the princess for aid for Nerys's people, but I would not risk her now, not for a house full of traitors," said Mistral.
"If we save them, they won't be traitors," I said.
"They still believe that your mortality is contagious," Rhys said. "They still think that if you sit on the throne, we will all begin to age and die."
"Do you think that Nerys's court still has enough honor to realize that I'm trying to ensure that their rulers' sacrifice wasn't for nothing? Nerys gave her life so her house would not die, and I want that to mean something."
The men seemed to think about it for a moment. Finally Doyle said, "They have honor, but I do not know if they have gratitude."
