Part 1 - Part 2 - Parts 3 & 4 - Part 5 - Part 6, 7 & 8 - Part 9 & 10 - Part 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 & 16 - Part 17, 18, & 19 - Part 20, 21 & 22 - Part 23, 24, 25 & 26 - Part 27, 28, 29 & 30 - Part 31, 32, 33 & 34 - Part 35, 36 & 37 - Part 38, 39, 40 & 41 - Part 42 & 43 - Part 44 & 45 - Part 46 & 47 - Part 48, 49, 50 & 51 - Part, 52, 53 & 54 - Part 55 & 56 - Part 57, 58, 59 & 60 - Part 61, 62, 63, 64 & 65 - Part 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71 & 72
Welp, a little more violence. Tags have been added appropriately, and bear in mind from here on out it’s probably going to stay violent for a while.
Edit: It’s complete! The queue runs until February 22, at which point it will be done! At a little over 103K words, so much for a speed-writing exercise XD
He lived, of course.
He went through his classes and his studies and his practices like one of the clever clockworks that were brought to entertain the Court. He went through the motions, and presumably pretended to them well enough, as no one complained of his inattention. Dane and Beli tried to get him to go out on the grounds, to at least visit the Royal Gardens, but Adam refused to go that far, refused to so much as look at the woods. He wouldn't climb so much as a tree. Rumors began to go around that he'd been elf-touched and rejected, that he would soon wither away and die, pining after a fairy-maid that had enthralled him for a lark and abandoned him directly after. As rumors went, it didn't go very far; the visit of the priests ensured that.
Adam didn't cry, he hardly spoke, he ate only because Culli-maid and Trout would harass him into it. Spring rushed headlong toward summer and he didn't even notice. Master Leminy assigned him nearly permanently to clean the stables and the training rooms if only to get him to leave his rooms. Adam suspected the teachers there had been instructed to keep him busy, with whatever kind of sparring they could think of if nothing else presented itself. Yet again, they could only report that the prince did his duties with admirable skill. This time they could also add that he did them with little heart.
The first true days of summer found him sweeping one of the long, narrow storage rooms that abutted the elegant hall where the princes were trained in fencing and dagger-work, sweating. His coat had been hung on one of the pegs and Trout dozed lazily in a pocket, wings twitching occasionally; the pixie could fly short bursts, but could not yet maintain altitude.
A class had just ended, and it occurred to Adam as the princes came and went that they were all younger than him. Camlen had given up his claim to the crown at some point, when his family had shown up to beg him to do so. That left only Sean and himself of the Dowager's first attempt at a King. The thought came and went, impossible to hold onto through the fog of his grief. Dimly he was aware that some of the princes had remained behind, likely the older boys sparring with one another. He was aware of the low give-and-take of their voices, of the clash of their swords. Knowledge, rising from unknown depths, told him they were using true blades, and laughing about it. He had to wonder if Rickard's first lesson would linger on with this new set of princes.
He opened a door and the words hit him when he'd thought he could never be wounded again.
" - would just burn down the woods."
He went so still he forgot to breath.
"You can't just burn down the woods, Liam. The people need those for eating and for firewood and whatnot."
"I'm supposed to put their lives above mine?" Liam's voice was both angry and elegantly disbelieving. "There's the river, right there, let them eat fish. They grow grain, they can eat that. Haven't you heard a thing we've been taught? The Folk in the Woods, they're called."
Adam shuddered violently. Trout suddenly snapped from its drowse when it heard the wood of the broom's handle creak. The prince's hands were closed so tightly on it that his knuckles were the color of ash.
"No one's going to let you burn down the woods, Liam," the second boy's voice scoffed.
"When I'm King, who will stop me?"
"They're the Folk In The Woods, Herringmere. I'm pretty certain they would, if no one else."
I think they wouldn’t, Adam thought. I think they very much wouldn’t, because they aren't really in the Woods, are they.
"I wouldn't give them a choice. Arm a few dozen men with blessed rowan-wood shields and iron-tipped spears, and what are they going to do then?" Liam snorted. "They picked this fight. They started this curse. Do you expect I'd negotiate with them? No, burn it all, I say. No more fairies, no more curse."
No more gracious linden tree. No more wild irises nodding against the still waters of the kelpie's old pond. No more elegant willow, fronds always ready to lift someone to their branches. No more generous cherry trees, sharing their bounty of tart little red fruits. No more songbirds bringing gossip, no more nesting pixies, no more stalking bees back to their hollows to steal a single bite from their hard-earned combs, no more, no more, no more...
Adam had thrown the two halves of the broom aside and was stalking across the exquisite marble floor before he knew what he was doing. He felt so cold that everything, skin and flesh and bone, burned him. He made a beeline for the princes. There were four of them, the three he'd heard and one that had yet to speak. They were all young reeds, grown into their lanky teenage years and quickly becoming refined by their education in the Dowager Queen's court.
"No one," he said, startled to find his voice scratching as if he hadn't used it in days, "is burning down the woods."
They stared at him as if he'd grown two heads, until the second boy spoke. "You're Lestrelle, aren't you?"
Adam turned to stare at him. "I'm sorry I don't know you," he said politely, his manners an instinct that refused to die. "But no one is burning down the woods."
"Oh, come off it, Lestrelle." Prince Liam was a rapier of a young man, lean, as elegant as his voice, blond and pale and sharing the deep blue eyes that said his bloodline was as true as Adam's. He was wearing simple training armor and was swinging lightly an elegant rapier. "Look at you. One would think if anyone, you'd be glad to see that place and the Folk inside it gone."
"I would not," Adam said plainly.
Liam's brows went up. "Well, alright," he replied with a lopsided smile. "I'm afraid only the people interested in the crown get a say on this one, Lestrelle." He moved forward.
So did Adam. His hand shot forward and his palm came to rest on Liam's chest. "No one," he repeated tonelessly, "is burning down the woods."
Liam looked down. He was of a height with Adam, not quite two years younger. "You want to take your hands from me, Lestrelle."
"Liam, don't," the boy who'd warned about the commonfolk needing the woods said nervously.
"Herringmere, leave it. You know he's not well." The other boy was solid, wrought of darker colors; perhaps if the future allowed him to live he'd grow to be somewhat a match to Dane, but on that day he barely managed to be the tallest of those there by a wisp of brown hair.
"I wasn't speaking to you, Macallan," Liam snapped.
"You should listen to your friends." Adam said very calmly. "No one's worth spit on hot cobbles without them, least of all a king."
"What would you know of either friends or kingship, Lestrelle? Last I checked, you're only waiting for your birthday so you can go to the woods and forswear the crown." Liam gave him a mocking, indulgent smile. "They won't burn before then, you don't have to worry."
"Herringmere -"
"No one is burning down the woods," Adam repeated.
"You're not the one to stop me, Lestrelle. Look at you. You're a ghost. Have you even bathed recently? Eaten? Changed clothes? You walk the palace like a shadow. Some fairy-maid bespelled you and sucked you dry and you think -"
Liam didn't get to finish that very dangerous accusation. Adam punched him and sent him crashing to the ground with both the suddenness of the attack and the sheer force behind it. For nearly all his time in the palace he'd been sparring with larger, heavier partners. He'd hardened his hands on a troll. He'd taught a boy twice his size to be fast or regret it. Liam was lucky to still have all his teeth when he hit the marble floor.
The two younger boys scrabbled back. The older prince stepped forward. "Mother-Night, Lestrelle, don't -"
"Give him your steel, Macallan."
"Herringmere -"
"Give him your bloody sword, Connor!" Liam scrabbled to his feet and spat blood to one side, his mouth a crimson bruise, his eyes a storm. "Or I swear to all of you I'll run him through unarmed!"
Prince Connor Macallan swallowed visibly, his hand going to the rapier on his belt.
Adam stared at Liam in distant, absent disbelief. He wasn't asking for anything outlandish. He wasn't asking for the impossible. Everything the other boys had said was true; the woods were needed and more, the woods were not the real problem. But in Liam's eyes Adam saw that this was someone who would never tolerate being told 'no', and everything he'd felt against the Prince Beyond The Woods rose in him like a black, deadly tide. "Prince Macallan," he said mildly. "Not your sword, but I thank you for the thought. May I have your dagger?"
"Against a sword?" The prince sounded aghast.
"It's a rapier," Adam told him simply. "I'm sure you're all very good with yours. They're worthless in a real fight. If I may?"
"You can have mine," the last of the boys, who'd said nothing until that point, stepped forward and drew his dagger, offering it to Adam hilt-first. It was very simple, but a faltering hand had stitched leaping fish on the hilt, a tiny gesture of such love that Adam had to forcibly tear his eyes from the sight of it. It wasn't hard; all he had to do was stare at Liam.
Almost before they squared off, Liam came at him in a classic fencing surge. Adam, apparently the only one who remembered this wasn't a fencing match, merely stepped aside, swatted the rapier aside with the dagger, and punched Liam again, sending him staggering into the ground a second time. Against all his fury, all the immensity of his loss turning into fire inside him, he still didn't want to be cornered into a choice that would be far too costly. If Liam could show any sense, any at all -
The young prince yelled in wordless fury and launched himself at Adam.
Adam ducked and twisted around the rapier. A rapier is a fine weapon, but one of precision and elegance. The blade dances nearly as much as the hand that holds it, and not always in the same direction. Liam was exceptional with it, but Adam, once again, had learned speed from two someones who moved like the boughs of a willow in the breeze, like the branches of a linden tree in the wind, like blood spilling from an unexpected wound or the flood of shadow and death that overtakes a fortress with a blood-hungry howl. To him, Liam was moving as slowly as molasses.
To the other princes Adam was a blur.
Liam fought him first with fury, and then with desperation, but he wouldn't yield. He was the sort, Adam realized, that couldn't give up, that had to be always right, that wouldn't abide defeat or challenge or shame. The older prince slashed the laces open on one side of the younger prince's armor, accepted a long, shallow gash to one arm, latched his fingers on the other set of laces and kicked Liam. The prince went down a third time, too winded at that point to do more than grunt in pain, and found himself hopelessly tangled up in his leather armor.
Adam stood before him, breathing a little hard, and patiently waited for his opponent to disentangle himself and get up. "No one is burning down the woods."
Liam cast aside his rapier, drew his dagger and lunged at him.
Adam caught that wild lunge, twisted the young prince's dagger arm away, and sank his borrowed blade all the way to the hilt past Liam's ribs. Those blue eyes, his own for all intents and purposes, widened in shock and disbelief, pain not yet having caught up with their owner. The younger prince shoved himself away, staggering; Adam hung onto the dagger, which came away bloody, and Liam lifted a hand to catch his side, staring without understanding at the blood that filled his palm. His dagger clattered from a grip gone nerveless.
He crashed to the ground, staring at Adam, unable to understand what had just happened.
At some point the training hall had filled with people, teachers and students both; they'd closed in a circle around the princes, but no one had intervened. The Dowager Queen had made it very clear what sort of life, and death, her princes were to expect.
Adam drew a deep breath. He didn't think Liam would understand, not even at that moment, but there were many around them that might take heed of the younger prince's death. "No one," he said very calmly to those deep blue eyes quickly glazing over in death, "is burning down the woods."
***
Dane found Adam sitting on the stands of the jousting yard, his coat on his lap. He sat quietly by his prince, his hands laced in his lap, and they were silent for a very long time in the golden summer afternoon. "He died quick," the young man said at last. "But then I think that's what you meant."
"I meant for him to listen," Adam explained, feeling weary to his bones. He wanted to regret what he'd done, he wanted to mourn the dead prince, but the cold and black rage that had come over him, that had wanted him to see Canemore in Liam, pulsed like a heart inside him, and he almost couldn't feel his grief anymore past it. It was too sweet a relief and he wouldn't be pried from it. "He had... a dangerous idea."
"Was it a bad one?"
Adam closed his eyes. "No. And yes. Everyone calls them the Folk In The Woods, Dane, but they aren't. They never were. They come through the woods, they come from beyond them. The woods were -" His breath ran out abruptly at the very thought of saying the name and he ducked his head, willingly calling up his rage, allowing himself to wallow in it. "Linden's. The woods were Linden's."
Dane popped his mouth thoughtfully. He was the source from which Adam had picked up the habit. "That's not the sort of thing that's easy to explain to people."
"I know. I tried. But it's like he didn't see me, like I didn't matter. Only what he wanted and what he'd chosen did."
Dane sighed. "It's new to you," he explained slowly, "because you don't do that. You've always seen us, Adam. Me, Culli, Beli, we aren't there like your coat and your bed. We're people to you, we're friends." He shook his head. "That's not how it is for nearly anyone else in the staff of the palace. And you've been saying for nigh on nine years that you don't want the crown, so what's that make you? Not a prince, for sure. Just sort of... staff-in-waiting."
Adam thought on that. It would have been foolish of him to pretend that Dane wasn't speaking the truth. Even so recently as Liam's callous disregard of the immense difficulties the commonfolk would face if the woods were burned, he'd always been aware of a deep divide. He'd just never worried about it because he'd grown used to fording it effortlessly.
He buried his face in his hands and groaned low. "They're only going to listen to me one way, aren't they. They're only ever going to listen to me the one way."
Dane blew out a low breath. "Or you could... leave. Go elsewhere. Forget. It might take years and years, but you're bound to find some peace somewhere. You deserve that much."
Adam smiled wearily at the desperate little wish Dane was making for him. "Dane, that girl better snatch you up, there's not a better man than you in this place, and I'm glad you're my friend," he said, even though he knew that not all the years in his life, nor ten times as many, would ever let him forget what he'd lost. "I can't. Today it was Liam. Tomorrow it'll be someone else." He stared at the beautiful summer world without seeing at all. "This is not what I wanted, Dane."
"I know. I'm sorry."
"So am I." Adam rattled out a sigh. "And it might get bloody."
Dane shrugged. "It's been a relief that it wasn't until now, I won't say it hasn't," he admitted. "But a fight is what we signed up for, back when we got hired on to be your friends."
Adam nodded. Together they went back to the palace. He washed up, dressed neatly, and sent word to the Dowager for a brief inquiry. She received him with tea being cleared away, an oddity from all their meetings before, when the cups and saucers were just being set down as a maid showed him into the elegant sun-room. "Adam."
"Majesty." Adam bowed and sat when given leave. "How does one go about cutting off someone from his sphere of power and influence?"
Her delicate brows rose up. "Not even Eleanor?" she asked mildly.
"I would, if I didn't think my father would take advantage of even that slender thread."
"True," she agreed. "Unfortunately so. And you're certain?"
"That I mean to be King?" he asked, consciously misinterpreting her question. "Yes. I think you've done a good thing, stalling them, the Folk Beyond The Woods. I think you did it at a terrible price, a price that you know no one will ever forgive, least of all you. And I think," he looked at her directly, "I think it's not enough anymore. Not for me."
"Didn't you just kill a boy today for threatening them?"
"No. I killed Liam because he wanted to burn down the woods. No one is burning down the woods. My enemies aren't there. That's what I tried to tell you once before. They are the Folk Beyond The Woods. The Folk In The Woods -" For all that he'd planned so carefully every step of this conversation, Adam found himself faltering, strangled by sorrow that kept on trying to rise above the black flood of his rage. He smothered it savagely. "They wanted to be free of them just as much as we do."
She stared keenly at him for a long moment before reaching for a bell and instructing the maid who answered her to fetch the Court Genealogist.
The Fairy And The Prince #66 + #67 + #68 + #69 + #70 + #71 + #72
Part 1 - Part 2 - Parts 3 & 4 - Part 5 - Part 6, 7 & 8 - Part 9 & 10 - Part 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 & 16 - Part 17, 18, & 19 - Part 20, 21 & 22 - Part 23, 24, 25 & 26 - Part 27, 28, 29 & 30 - Part 31, 32, 33 & 34 - Part 35, 36 & 37 - Part 38, 39, 40 & 41 - Part 42 & 43 - Part 44 & 45 - Part 46 & 47 - Part 48, 49, 50 & 51 - Part, 52, 53 & 54 - Part 55 & 56 - Part 57, 58, 59 & 60 - Part 61, 62, 63, 64 & 65 - Part 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71 & 72
THIS IS IT.
103K words and I don’t even know how many months later, and it’s done. If you stuck it out with me, THANK YOU. Thank you from the bottom of my soul. If you enjoyed it, just a little, and would like to let me know, I’d appreciate it. If you hated it, I would like to know as well.
When I first started writing this, I meant to go back and forth between it and Ser Lyrian’s story. I also thought it’d be a short story, a speed writing. It... is not. The size of it boggles my mind somewhat, and I’m the one who wrote it.
If you came this far with me, and would like to do me a kindness, there are five questions I always ask of people who read my writing and express a willingness to go the extra mile.
1. Favorite Character?
2. Least Favorite Character? I’m interested in the character you love to hate, but if you have a character that’s just boring, I want to know about that, too.
3. Favorite Scene?
4. Least Favorite Scene? Meaning a scene that plodded on or was poorly written.
5. Anything else you liked/hated?
Adam managed. He even found the time and the energy, somehow, to scrub at his battered clothing, and to replace his missing sword with the traveling blade kept with his saddle. The peeping, chirping sparrows that made their homes in the vastness of the stables came to greet him; to them he'd always been Adam, and he always would be. They didn't care about crowns or Compacts or trials, lucky them.
He didn't meet any of the stable-hands he heard working in other parts of the vast building. He did meet some few people on the worn path going down to the stables, but sleepy and elderly and blind his horse was still a very large creature, and they scrabbled out of his way, staring in disbelief. Someone ran back up to the palace, and Adam kicked the charger into a light trot; even the jarring gait of its arthritic limbs felt good, felt real and solid against the Prince's own aches. "Trout, would you go tell them I'm coming?"
The pixie took off like a bird. He could hear the ruckus slowly growing somewhere in the depths of the castle as he rode up to the gate, frowning minutely when he realized the closer he drew, the more exhausted he felt, as if he were dragging miles of chains all unseen behind him. Had they snuck up another test on him? Were they truly cheating at the very last possible moment? He'd ride the horse to his bed if he had to, the charger seemed to have no problem carrying him.
His concerns scattered when he reached the palace gates, and a smile as sunny as the dawn broke over his face when he saw Dane standing there, tall and broad and wrapped in priest-blessed armor.
Trout flew back to Adam's shoulder and perched there. Dane caught the reins of the gelding and looked up.
"Dane," Adam greeted.
"Highness," Dane replied.
With a muffled groan Adam slid off the saddle. His ankle tried to give out on him; Dane's hand snapped out to steady him, and Adam caught onto his shoulder. They traded a very small smile, and Adam felt suddenly lighter, as if he were young again, at a time where such things as crown and loss hadn't mattered.
No one stopped them as they made their way through the palace, coming back much as they'd gone the day before, even if Adam was a little poorer in fairy gifts in his pockets, and infinitely wealthier in grime. Somewhere behind him a ruckus was growing where the impromptu messenger who'd caught sight of him on the path to the stables delivered his news.
Adam didn't care. He opened the door to his rooms.
He paused, and after a moment he had to laugh.
The same breakfast on the table, laid out exactly the same to the last plate and spoon. The same books on the desk, quill trimmings on a small bowl. A fire in the hearth. The wash basin ready, steaming faintly. Even Culli-maid's and Beli's clothing were the same, a miracle he would have never believed after seeing the state of Culli's house slippers the night before. He had the feeling that his bed would be rumpled down the same to the last wrinkle on the sheets.
Beli had been pacing restlessly, and Culli had been sitting by the fire, her basket of mending on her lap. It went flying when she sprang up to her feet. That, at least, they didn't have to change; they'd been just as anxious the day before.
"Hello, Culli," Adam greeted her.
Tears spilled down her round cheeks, and she couldn't speak for a moment. "Good morning, Highness," she managed at last.
He swept her into a hug that dislodged Trout off his shoulder, and she sobbed. "Has it killed you, not to make the bed?"
"Oh, it needs changing anyways, Highness," she protested, laughing through her tears.
Adam held her a moment longer before stalking up to Beli. "Look at me," he demanded.
"I can," Beli told him.
"Look at me!"
"I can!" Beli's smile was the brightest Adam had ever seen in the solemn young man. The pale brown of his eyes was bright through tears he refused to cry until Adam caught his face and stared at him; he caught his Prince's shoulders. "I can. I can see you. I can see you just fine."
"Beli." Adam dragged him into a hug as well.
"Don't think this will save you from doing the books with me," Beli warned him in a choked whisper. "Welcome back, Highness."
Adam stared all around them, at this tiny Court of his, his friends, half his world that he'd come so close to losing. He still felt exhausted, crushed, as if he were carrying a millstone on his back, but even that couldn't crush the simple joy of being home, being among friends, being safe.
"Adam," Dane called in warning, and the young Prince turned. There, on the doorway to his rooms, stood the Queen Dowager. She was wearing an exquisite quilted robe over her sleeping clothes, and a long, elegant shawl over it all. Her silver hair hung in a long braid at her back. Without the pomp of her rank she looked tiny and fragile, like a porcelain figurine. There was a single maid with her, likely the only one who'd been dressed and present at that early hour.
Adam left Beli and nodded to Culli, who moved over to further push the door open. The Dowager and the young Prince met by the hearth, and Adam bowed very low before her. "Majesty, good morning."
There were tears caught in the deep blue of her eyes, Adam suddenly realized, but she drew herself up proudly. "Good morning, my Heir."
Something immense snapped so loudly that Adam flinched, instinctively whirling around to cover the Queen, hand going for his sword. The Dowager cried out and staggered, and both Culli and her maid rushed over to catch her. Dane and Beli were instantly by Adam. "What's wrong, what's happened?!"
Adam tried to step back and nearly fell into the hearth. He felt light as air, light as a feather in a stiff breeze. The world, beautiful though it was, shone to his eyes with nearly blinding new colors, with light and life he'd never seen before. "Didn't you hear that, can't you see that?"
"He can't. They can't." It was the Dowager who replied, leaning on the young maid and drawing herself up carefully straight. "The Compact is fulfilled, and the seal in our bloodline's magic is broken. Now, now we are as we were always meant to be." She gestured lightly, and power gathered and spiraled around her fingertips; the smile she gave Adam was radiant. "Thank you, my Heir."
***
Life turned into a whirlwind after that.
Adam insisted on making one last visit alone. He hadn't known what to expect, but after seeing how hard it had been for everyone he'd left behind, he'd wanted to give his oldest nemesis the grace of discretion. Everidge Leminy had wept like a child at the news.
The priests of the Night-Mother and the Tree-Father had come, and before two vast audiences of worried, hand-wringing nobility, Adam had gone through all the tests. He'd been pulled this way and that, brought to far too many meetings, asked a deluge of questions though no one seemed to be listening to his answers, introduced to endless rows of people. Adam smiled and nodded and did as he was told.
He bid his time.
He still found the chance, on the early morning of the first true day of summer, to sneak out of his room and the palace altogether. He ran into the woods and to the clearing where the green pixies nested. Barefoot, in nothing but pants and a light shirt, he climbed up the linden tree and nestled in the familiar crook of a strong branch, watching the vast green sea of the woods ripple in the morning breeze. "I heard you," he murmured. "When I was lost, and I had nothing else, and I called out, I heard you. What a nanny you've been," he teased wryly. "There's not a time I can name when danger came looking for me in these woods that you weren't there to ward it off."
The tree swayed lightly in the breeze, a green, sweetly scented cloud all around him.
"Thank you," he said simply.
Stay, the tree begged in the song of the breeze.
"I can't," he replied, caught off-guard and strangled breathless by the endless well of the tree's heart, that even then would ask him to forgive. To heal.
He stayed there as long as he could, but in the end he had to go back. He was dressed in rich royal finery, fussed over, fawned over.
On that first true day of summer, Prince Adam of the Realm was named Crown Prince and Heir before the worthies of the realm. A great celebration was thrown. He smiled and greeted people and let them fuss over him and make much conversation about their daughters and nieces and sisters and cousins.
He bid his time still.
The next day, for the first time, he made his way to the Chamber of Council. During those two months between his birthday and his coronation, Adam had spent every moment he could spare with the Queen Dowager, with Master Leminy, with the Genealogist and with teachers who'd seen very little of him before. Nine years of education had taught him the theory of the laws and politics of the realm, but in truth none of the princes had any actual practice with the ruling bit of, well, ruling. None of them were firstborns, none of them were heirs to their own family holdings; Adam, himself, was the youngest of several children.
Though neither the Dowager nor the Master of Scions approved of what Adam wished to do, neither would oppose him. They had made very careful plans for that first meeting. Adam walked in to find most of the seats empty, as expected. He'd taken the throne at the vast horseshoe table and been mostly ignored, as expected. The fact he'd ousted the Earl and Duchess sitting at both his sides to allow both the Queen Dowager and Master Leminy to take their places had made them grumble, but there were so many empty seats that it seemed a non-issue.
The first issue, on fisheries and taxation, came up. It was, the Dowager had told him, an old issue. The coastal lords didn't want to pay taxes; they wanted the fisherfolk to pay them instead, leaving their coffers untouched. Adam remembered the kind, warm welcome of the folk who worked the gull-winged ships of the realm. He refused the tax. The lords threatened to override him.
He snapped his fingers and the very long and seal-laden scroll burst into flames.
The chamber went breath-takingly quiet.
"All this time," he said into the silence. "All this time you've known the price the Crown paid to keep the rest of you safe, and still into the grindstone you sent your children, just for a shot at it. And in the meantime, you schemed for power and acted as if the only reason you'd given your loyalty was fear. Fear of magic. Fear of power. If you want to be ruled by fear, I can absolutely do that. I've learned a little about fear from the Court Beyond the Woods. I'm happy to put those lessons to use with you."
"How dare you speak to us so!" One of the nobles shouted, surging to his feet and gesturing sharply at the Dowager. "Do something!"
"The Duke of Cherst misunderstands, perhaps," the Dowager replied mildly, "who answers to whom here."
"Perhaps the Duke is not aware," Adam examined some of the documents before him idly, "that people can burn just as well as parchment, provided the right amount of power is applied." He leveled a hard, dark stare on the man, who didn't need to know it had taken Adam two weeks to be able to pull off that bit of showy magic without setting on fire everything else in the vicinity. "Sit down."
When the ashen-faced Duke obeyed, he threw the list aside. "Fear is a poor way to rule," he said into the silence. "I want to rule with you, but make no mistake, mine is the crown. Mine is the right. I have bled for it, I have faced madness and darkness and death for it. I will hear your voices, and I will take your words into account, as long as you speak sense to me. But you would do well to remember that the power of our armies is meant to be used against our enemies abroad. In here, within our lands, the power is magic and the magic is mine." He stared at them all. "We're not taxing the common folk. If that's your business here today, it's concluded. The answer's 'no'."
"But, Majesty -" A woman protested.
"Your reasons better be exceptional, Duchess, because I have a full day planned ahead for us and you're already costing us lunch. Let's hear them."
She went quiet.
"Hm." Adam gestured. Leminy's secretaries began passing around scrolls. "These are the new taxes and levies; you'll find there's also -" The chamber had gone to chaos at the sound of that dreaded word, and Adam sprang up on his feet with a shout. "Enough!"
Every goblet, pitcher and inkpot shattered. Cracks appeared on several of the glass panes in the windows.
"Levies, yes. You'll find they're generous. There are also exemptions for the provinces that meet the quotas included."
"Majesty," a younger man pointed out hesitantly. "These are quotas for uncured iron and rowan wood army lengths."
"They are." Adam dipped his head politely. "There are thirteen graves behind the palace temples. There are just as many if not more scattered across the realm. That doesn't include the common folk that had the miserable luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The crown is done with the Court Beyond the Woods. We go to war." Before they could get into too much of a fit over those news, Adam pitched his voice to carry. "And because I know first-hand how fragile a matter royal inheritance can be, I will be wed before we march." He gave them all that hard, heartlessly level look. "Consider the choice of my queen a further potential exemption."
"Majesty," a stately woman with far too much make-up smiled graciously at him. "Surely this is a course of action best discussed with all of your ruling lords, not just us measly few?"
Adam popped his lips thoughtfully, as if the meeting weren't going exactly as the Queen Dowager had predicted. Well, barring the glass shattering. At least he hadn't had to escalate to kicking a chair; they were bloody solid and he wasn't sure he wouldn't have broken his foot in the doing, no matter what she said. "Exceptional wisdom, Baroness. On second thought, meeting adjourned. We meet again in one week's time. Enough time for those who wish to travel to do so."
And with that, he swept out of the chamber and left them to their panic.
***
Prince Canemore made one last trip into the hidden keep beneath the Old Place. He made it wearing traveling clothes, his very best; he had very far to go, on a trip he didn't wish to undertake, to a goal he didn't wish to reach.
He found the gateway leading into his secret garden empty, cold and dark. Rubble covered the space beneath it; though he didn't know it, it had been painstakingly carried, one piece at a time, from beneath the empty plinth where the dancing lady had once stood.
Beyond, the frozen summer garden had gone to autumn, against all his power, matched at last to the seasons above. At the center of it, in the perfect clearing, the golden, gilded cage stood, twisted and broken, bars pried apart by the force of the wild growth of the amethyst vine.
Of Linden there was no trace.
He threw the garden into winter and darkness as he left, and stalked away, never to return.
***
His books had been absolutely right, Adam found out: war is not a quick affair. He found his time full from dawn to midnight, accounting for meetings and supplies, oversight of troops and manufacturing. He never faltered when he spoke, and neither did those around him: their enemy was the Court Beyond The Woods, not the woods themselves. The Courts could be powerful allies just as they could be dire enemies; he would point at the winged, golden creature perched on his shoulder whenever the question came up. Trout had already bit someone's fingers off when they'd waggled them too angrily in Adam's face, and no one cared to find out how well it could wield those silver-tipped lacquered hair-pins.
Before he knew what had happened, autumn and winter had come and gone, and spring loomed again. His birthday, the celebration of the Compact being fulfilled, was planned to be a massive celebration, a masquerade to dwarf all others before. The entirety of the realm, it seemed, wanted to attend.
"They're dusting off every relation they can find, as long as they're young and female," Adam protested vaguely as he suffered through one more fitting. "There's girls pouring out of every cellar and cupboard."
"You can't blame them, Adam." The Dowager was directing the seamstresses and examining the Heir's costume with a stern look. "You're the one who opened that door."
"It seemed the thing to do," he admitted.
"Oh." She shooed the seamstresses away so she could speak to him so very, very quietly. "You could try for friendship, Adam. Even a broken heart can have friends."
He managed a wry smile at that. "It can. But it wouldn't be fair to her. She'd expect love. No, it's better like this. She gets a crown, I get iron. Beli, any new contenders on the guest list?"
The Dowager gestured the seamstresses back to work. From his desk in the Prince's rooms, his Seneschal answered. "Not really. It's hard to compete with the fact that Lord Bagley has both the mines and the foundries. There's just one. Their counteroffer is... clever."
He brought a set of papers for Adam to examine, and the Heir looked very surprised. "You're joking!"
"I thought it might be an issue -"
"No, no." Adam found what the letters were telling him, at the very least, amusing in the extreme. There was light and animation to him that had been missing for months. "At least I'll be able to tell her apart from the others. How goes my personal project?"
"The engineers are working the axles and wheels. Water's heavy, Adam, I didn't realize how heavy until they told me. Carrying that much water, and a person to boot? That's hard. They're thinking of sleds at this point."
"As long as they think of something," Adam winced when a pin stabbed him, and looked up swiftly when the door opened, suddenly hopeful.
Dane, just coming in, shook his head as he'd done every morning for nearly a year, and wilted to once again see hope fade from his Prince. Every morning he went into the woods to wait. Every morning he came back having met no one, not even the pixies. They'd abandoned the clearing of the linden tree, and no one could find them.
No Needlemaw.
No Boul.
Adam turned, expression gone to stone. "Well, now I just have to meet the ladies and we'll see what we'll see."
He was eventually allowed to escape the fittings, only to be snared into a few more last-minute meetings. Then it was Culli who rescued him, only to shove him into a bath, though she did manage to sneak in a meal, the first of his day, for all that it came at the price of his dignity, having to subject himself to the ignominy of being scrubbed like a toddler just so he could use his hands to eat.
Clad in his costume, the circlet on his head, an incredibly itchy domino tied to his face, he took his place at the entrance to the palace's grandest ballroom, to greet the mass of people pouring in and be introduced to all their marriageable relations. He wouldn't, couldn't, leave the party without a betrothed; a number of concessions had been granted to the Council of Nobles in exchange for that promise. No one wanted war, and no one could budge the Crown Prince from it, so they were all working as best they could to minimize any potential fallout from it.
Trout, on his shoulder, solved half the itchy part within five minutes, by biting off the domino's feathers and gleefully flailing around with them. Adam couldn't very well be stern at the pixie when the Queen Dowager herself, standing just behind him, could barely keep from laughing aloud at the fierce creature's antics.
He was introduced to the young lady Bagley, grand-daughter of the Earl of Bagley, who stammered through half her greeting and forgot the other half, overwhelmed. She winced openly when Trout spit out a feather. Adam sighed.
Behind her came the first familiar face in that sea of strangers, and the young Heir couldn't help but smile. "Prince Rickard."
Rickard flushed under his elaborate mask, all the more so when the Crown Prince offered his hand, preempting a bow. He took it, and couldn't help a little smile. "Prince Adam."
Adam grinned, the first honest gesture to cross his face since the gala had started. Rickard was costumed as a bull, in violets and reds, and the silver and gold that his family boasted were stitched on every velvet and satin seam. He'd grown into a young bull, too, though he couldn't match Dane in either height or breadth of shoulder. The hand gripping Adam's was powerful, but the callouses Rickard had earned from his years spent at the palace were fading. Still, it was the sight of the man that gladdened him. "Prince Bully," he murmured.
Rickard's discomfort vanished under a very inelegant snort of laughter. "Prince Twerp," he retaliated. "Where are the others? I know there's a few that... made it."
Adam gave him a disbelieving look. "As far away from the palace as they can be," he replied. When his one-time torturer gave him an uncomprehending look, Adam gestured all around. "Every girl of marriageable age in the realm is here, Rickard, prowling for blood. Until you got here, I was the only available bachelor." He watched understanding, horror, and panic flicker over what he could see of the young man's features and jerked him suddenly close. "No running. We die as men," he whispered, and let him go.
"Oh, gods," Rickard squeaked. In all of the ruthlessness and machinations he'd once wielded and devised, this apparently was a trap he'd not seen coming.
He was none too gently elbowed by his companion, and the Crown Prince's mouth twitched. "Duke Lagrace, won't you introduce me to your companion?"
Rickard cleared his throat and gestured to the elegant white, silver and gold doe next to him. "My sister, the lady Elizabeth Lagrace, Majesty."
Elizabeth Lagrace curtsied with great grace. "Majesty," she murmured. She was, astonishingly, built along the same powerful lines as her brother, softened by the fact she'd not spent her formative years trying to survive in a cutthroat court, or learning to fight with every weapon and tactic created by man. Adam could only see that she had her brother's eyes, but her hair was lighter, a riot of golden curls artfully oiled and pinned over her head with an exquisite silver clip.
Silver, gold and priests. The Lagraces would back the Crown Prince's war without hesitation for a shot at the crown. Adam expected nothing less than the lethal predator that her brother had once been behind the dainty doe's mask. Elizabeth Lagrace was one year older than Adam, but they'd been so sure of their offer that they'd sent none of their younger ladies.
"The lady's costume is radiant as a star." Adam took her hand and kissed the lace of her gloves. "I wager it pales before what it hides."
"The Heir's costume seems to have grown lopsided," she replied evenly. "Shall I make a note to stay only to one side of you if I wish my hair to stay of even lengths, Majesty?"
Adam barked a laugh. "They grow them merciless in Lagrace," he noted in amusement at the siblings. "I should like a dance with the lady, if I can find her in the chaos later?"
"I will be found, Majesty," she assured him, lacing her arm through her brother, who was scowling in an entirely brotherly fashion at the Crown Prince. She all but dragged him off.
"Better than Bagley," the Queen Dowager murmured.
"Perhaps a little too much," Adam agreed.
"Adam, what are you looking for? Bread in milk?"
"A queen that won't resent my absence from her life. That one has her brother's wits. If she also has his drive, she absolutely would."
But then who would be coming up to him but Arditty, and he swept her off her feet and spun her around, her lace butterfly wings fluttering with the wind of his delight. She introduced him to her flustered husband and their son, who was young enough to be shy of the firebird stranger, but old enough to do his bow without aid. Adam made her promise him one dance before the endless cavalcade resumed once again.
The first dance, however, went to the Queen Dowager. It was the one move Adam knew couldn't be ascribed to politics or diplomacy. Likely they thought it was an invitation made out of family love, but love was the one thing they knew would never grow between them; they had both done things too terrible, lost too much, to be willing to offer more than affection and loyalty and friendship. But they could indeed be friends, and hers was the wealth of knowledge and courtly savagery Adam knew he would need in the days to come. He would have asked the same of Master Leminy, but the Master of Scions had begged leave to retire, and he'd looked so worn and fragile when at last he'd known himself free of his terrible duty that Adam hadn't had the heart to refuse him.
They moved sedately to the music, the swan and the firebird, and Adam was surprised to find out he'd put on a few inches on her. When had that happened?
He danced a merry jig with Arditty, bringing her back to her husband breathless and laughing, and taking the time to tell him wicked tales of her besting the higher authorities of the palace when they'd been younger. He left them in each other's arms and went on to dance and dance and dance some more, until he found himself wishing for more conversations on supply trains and iron forging just so he could sit at a table and rest his feet. Trout brought him a handful of grapes and Adam didn't ask where the pixie had got them. A special pocket had been stitched into the costume because Adam would not have worn it without, and Trout dove into it, safely away from the noise and crowds. Adam envied him.
He danced with the lady Bagley, and managed to get a timid smile out of her. Rickard was under siege when he went to request a dance from the lady Lagrace. She took his hand with a little curtsy; the music began, and they danced in silence for a few moments before she spoke. "You really aren't here at all, are you, Majesty?"
"I beg your pardon?" Adam jerked himself sharply back to the present.
"Here, at the party," she specified, then added. "You're as far away as if you'd flown to another land."
"I am here now. The Lady Lagrace has my undivided attention."
She scoffed. "I know better, Majesty. Don't insult my intelligence and I shan't insult yours."
"Noted," Adam replied, his curiosity roused. "Is this how the lady means to draw my interest? Veiled insults?"
"Nothing I said would be new to you, Majesty. I asked Rickard to tell me all he could of your time in the palace. I wrote to any of my friends who had family here during that time. No, I shall simply be honest."
"Honest."
"Yes. And share with you my observations."
"Do." The dance spun them momentarily away from one another, then brought her back into his arms.
"You're never going to love your queen."
Adam's jaw tightened until a muscle twitched along his cheek. "The lady Lagrace is correct. 'Correct' and 'bethroted' are quickly becoming mutually exclusive."
She smiled. "Would it help if I admitted I've been mistaken for a while now, and didn't realize it until I met you?"
"Do I truly wear my heart on my sleeve like that?"
"Gods, no. You're one of the hardest men to read I've ever met."
Adam hesitated as he spun her. "Thank you?"
"You're welcome. No, you see, I thought at first you wanted a queen that would love you, even if you don't love her. But I was wrong. You know how cruel that would be -"
"Dangerous."
Her head cocked minutely.
"Cruel and dangerous. I don't need a wife that'll stray. Thrones have fallen for less."
"Ah. Cruel and dangerous, then. And you are many things, Majesty, but you're not cruel. You're simply not here at all. Whatever wife you choose will have to live with that absence. It would break Miriana's heart, you know. Lady Bagley. She might agree to a loveless marriage, but your absence would destroy her. She'd die thinking she failed in some way she can never understand."
"So I should choose you?"
"Lagrace has the best offer to your future military endeavors," she replied coyly.
"You don't strike me as the sort that would abide my not being there."
"Oh, I'm sure it would drive me mad every now and again. But I would have the crown to keep me warm in that empty bed. See, marking your absence and letting you know I do are two different things, Majesty. I'm quite sure you'd never find out how I felt about it. Until I met you I was also fairly certain I could make you happy, but now I know no one can."
The dance ended; Adam held onto her. "And why would that be?"
"Because it's not that you can't love, which is what everyone believes, what I believed until I met you. But that you already love someone, and can never have them." She shrugged gracefully in his grip. "I come into this fight knowing I'm already beat, Majesty. And I'm alright with that. How many girls here can say the same thing?"
She stepped back and Adam let her go. He danced, again and again, but it all came to him in a blur where he didn't register faces or names or music, his feet moving out of training as Elizabeth's words careened through his mind.
You already love someone, and can never have them.
For a while, caught in the whirlwind storm of preparing for war, Adam had forgotten.
Suddenly there was no hiding, and the pain was there, like a fist around his throat, like a dagger through his heart.
Linden.
"Mortal prince?"
"Adam?"
He was sitting, and there was a cup being pressed into his hands. The storm of sound and color of the party came back to him, painfully overwhelming in ways the world hadn't been since he'd learned to master his perceptions of it with his magic unchained. Trout was a warm press against his cheek, and Dane was crouched before him, splendid in the official armor of the Captain-of-the-Guard he was still years from becoming.
"What happened?" he asked hoarsely, dragging off the mask and rubbing at his face. He was sitting on the stone bench that ran along the railing of an oval balcony, one curtain drawn, the other open, and he felt cold to his soul.
"You stopped. Like a clockity-clockwork toy," Trout told him. "You said not to bite you so I called Dane."
"Ugh." Adam buried a hand in his gold-dusted hair. "Did anyone notice?"
"Only that you're tired. The Dowager is making your excuses."
Adam buried his face in his hands. "I really thought I could do this, Dane."
"You're doing fine, Adam. What happened? Trout said you were just talking, no one's come at you with a weapon. And Culli's got the kitchen locked tighter than Beli's purse-strings. It can't have been poison."
"It was words, Dane. It was just words, and suddenly I just remembered everything I'll never have anymore, and I couldn't breathe. I remembered that I miss my other friends. That I never said goodbye to Boul, that I never even saw Needle. That Linden..." He swallowed thickly and threw his head back, eyes closed and hands gone to fists.
"I'll get you out if you want, Adam. Just give the word."
"I never wanted this," Adam whispered.
"I know."
"Well, gods help me if Lady Lagrace figures it out." Adam downed the cup in one gulp. "Trout, thank you for not biting me." The pixie's wings buzzed and its slender chest puffed up proudly. "I need a favor from each of you."
"Name it," Dane said simply.
"I need you to find an alcove, close the curtains and douse the candles. Trout -"
"I'll go find them!" The pixie arrowed away.
"Adam, what are you doing?"
"Making sure I've done one thing right since I came out of the damn woods," the Crown Prince replied, rolling to his feet and tying on the domino with a gusting, weary sigh. "Go on. I suppose I can get in one more dance while you get it all set up."
He was halfway through a dance with a young girl who was giggling so hard out of nerves that Adam had yet to get her name out of her, when he caught sight of Dane waiting for him. The dance ended and she curtsied and fled, leaving him free to meet his friend. "I wonder if their parents told them I eat young marriageable girls for breakfast or something. I know I'm not that terrifying to look at."
"You aren't. The crown you're wearing is." Dane led the way.
"Ugh." Adam followed. "You'll want to wait outside, Dane."
"Adam -"
"This is stranger than Needlemaw."
Dane's jaws worked a great deal around words he would have never told Adam, but was seriously considering telling his Prince. In the end he stepped back and closed the curtains, leaving the Heir in nearly perfect darkness.
"Sluagh?" Adam asked quietly of the dark.
"Oh." Several sets of eyes suddenly filled the dark with their pale, blight-haunted light. "You did ask after us. We did not know what to think, when the pixie told us."
Adam had to laugh a little. "I did. I wanted to know... that you're alright. That you're finding the scraps and the bones left for you."
"Yes." The pairs of eyes moved through the dark. One drew close and suddenly stood up, towering over Adam. He could just make out, in the light of Sluagh's eyes, the faint upper outline of its muzzle, neither human nor animal but something more and something else. "Hunger is less now, because of you."
"You can never not be hungry, can you?"
"No," Sluagh admitted. "We are hungry to the marrow of our hollow bones, to the knots in our empty muscles. We can eat until we gorge, and gorge we have, thanks to you. But there will always be hunger to us."
"Then I'll ask something else. Are you content?"
Sluagh stared down at the Crown Prince. "This is important to you, this answer. Not because you will use it against us, not because it brings you power. But because we... matter to you."
"Yes. You've been watching people, Sluagh, you're learning how they think."
"It seemed important. You were... new to us. There have not been many new things in our lives. And you were neither enemy nor food. It is important to learn, when someone is not either of those things."
"How old are you?"
"We don't count time as you do. We have been since before the War. There was no palace. We are not certain there were any of your people on this land. There were more of us then."
"What happened to them?"
"We ate them."
"I don't know why I even asked," Adam admitted sheepishly. "And no one's tried anything against you?"
"No. The Court Beyond the Woods is quiet. Waiting. They will see what you do, first. Perhaps they will leave, and things will be as they were before. Peaceful. Small. Better."
"I would accept that," Adam said. "I would count it a victory if they left and never came back."
"Ah, there is the shadow that follows you," Sluagh breathed. "Your crown of blood and sorrow and black ice. Until now it was hard to see."
"Hatred."
Sluagh nodded. "We do not feel hatred. We see it, know it, but do not feel it. We do not think it would be a good thing, to feel it, for all its power. It wounds you in ways no one can help." They paused. "And we would help, if we could."
"To know that is almost as good as the help itself, Sluagh. Thank you. I'm sorry if I called you away from something important. This is the first time I've had time to think on all that I should have done and didn't."
"It is fine, bones do not run," Sluagh replied blithely, their head cocking. "Here comes your pixie. Let us give you a gift on this, the day of so many of your births, when you are finally many. Truly a first among your kind." The fairy threw out their spindly, long arms, and bowed with unearthly grace. "We are Sluagh. We greet the mortal king, crowned in loss and wit and heart. We pledge him our service." Sluagh straightened up and crossed their arms. "Be he fair to us, we will always be fair to him." And then the dark fairy was no longer there.
The sound of Trout's wings came, muffled, past the curtains, pausing after a moment. Adam opened the curtains to find the pixie perched on Dane's gauntleted fist.
"It's tin and paste," Dane explained at the Heir's look of disbelief. He rapped his knuckles on the shiny, shiny gauntlet.
"It's gross." Trout was rubbing its hummingbird tongue against the tiny tabard Culli had made for it.
"Trout, please don't lick Dane's armor. Words I never thought I'd say, but here we are." Adam went out to dance and converse and occasionally sneak away to scarf down whatever food and drink Trout and Dane managed to sneak him. He found himself dancing with the Dowager once again at some point close to midnight.
"Any luck?" she asked him.
"I think it might have to be Lagrace," he replied. "Bagley is apparently the sort to get attached, and hurt later from it."
"And Lagrace?"
"She's the sort to not give a damn."
"A dangerous game, Adam. If you should grow to love -"
"I won't."
"If you should grow to love Bagley," she persisted, her tone clipped, "she would at least love you back. Lagrace never will."
"If I were capable of it, I would have never survived the trials," Adam said simply, and she could give him no answer to that.
"I will speak to her father," she said resignedly at last.
The dance ended and everyone clapped. The bells of the temple, the heavy brass of the Night-Mother's and the smaller copper ones of the Tree-Father's, called out midnight.
Conversations and music and the general hum of the party petered out under that double onslaught, until there was a rare moment of silence when the bells at last stopped ringing. In it, the thump of the Seneschal's staff on the marble floor seemed as loud as if he'd cracked the stone with it. "Queen of the Courts of Spring and Summer, her Majesty, Titania."
The entire immense ballroom might as well have been a painting. Even the servants ferrying food and drink had frozen in place. No one could believe what they'd just heard.
Adam closed his eyes and felt inexplicable laughter bubbling up inside him. The year's worth of training in remaining unreadable and stone-faced was the only reason he could turn around and look towards the entrance of the ballroom without looking like a madman before the elite of the realm, drawing in a deep breath through gritted teeth. "Well." He laced his hands at his back and waited to see the shape of this new trick against him.
He faltered almost immediately. He could remember, in vivid detail, Queen Conemara. He had drawn her a few times in his journal, and though he knew he was no artist, he was also certain he'd been faithful to the blinding, painful light and brittle, icy beauty of the Queen Beyond the Woods. Conemara would have been like a clay cup before the gilded chalice that was the Sidhe woman moving through the parting crowd.
She was nearly as petite as the Queen Dowager, of a height with her and even more delicate-seeming, as if she were made of the finest gossamer. Her skin was the pale, soft color of a quail's eggshell, her features sharp and inhuman but without any of the painful starkness that made it hard to look at any of the members of the Court Beyond the Woods. There was a subtle, gentle softness to her, detracting nothing from her inhumanity but making her a flawless, enthralling beauty. Her eyes were green and violet behind the merest hint of a domino. She was dressed in a gown that put to shame the richest costumes the wealthiest nobility in the realm had been able to conjure, all the more absurd because she was a humble spring meadow, a hundred shades of green dotted freely with violets and daisies and bluebells, with larkspur and clover, with fluttering butterflies and bumbling bees. Her hair was a rich crown of vivid crimson braided in a stern, motherly fashion. Her crown was gold, and on it winked a gem of every color known to mortals, and a few they had yet to find. Her wings were a summer sky, the finest spun clouds, sunlight dappling through the trees.
She moved with gracious surety through the crowd, never hesitating as she approached Adam. Dimly the Heir noticed that Dane had rushed to his side, that the Dowager was hurrying to him. Trout clambered up on his shoulder and shifted restlessly, wings slicked flat against its body.
There were three more fairies with the Queen - no, four, Adam realized. A tiny blue pixie perched on Titania's shoulder as Trout perched on his, wings flicking idly as it peered with great interest at everything and everyone around them. He tried to look at those escorting the Sidhe Queen, but his head shied away from them; they looked human enough, and that was enough for Adam to know that they weren't, but even his magic couldn't penetrate the Queen's glamour.
"The throne of Faerie greets the Crown Prince, the Heir to the Throne of this mortal Realm," Titania's voice was a song in the stunned silence. She curtsied with grace that made the heart glad to behold.
Adam bowed with as much formality as he knew. "I am beyond honored to welcome the Queen to the palace, to this party. She honors us with her presence, and even more with her greeting. I'm not sure we can do justice to her visit, but we will surely try." She smiled at him, and Adam felt his heart trying to swell with pride, as if she were a doting mother and he a child who'd done well at a difficult task. He gritted his teeth until they ached.
Linden.
"Your welcome is gracious and warm, Prince Adam. More, because we know it's offered under dire circumstances."
"My moods do not affect my manners, Majesty. I'd be a poor excuse of a future king if I allowed them to do so."
"Ah, one could hope to find such poise and sense of station among our own," she murmured. The Dowager reached them then and, astonishingly, a sunny little smile broke across the Sidhe Queen's flawless beauty. "Charlotte."
"Titania," the Dowager replied, trying not to sound breathless.
Adam blinked at her, and all at once he felt like a fool. All those years and it had never occurred to him that 'Dowager' was her title, not her name. He felt color creeping over his face.
"It has been brought to our attention," Titania's voice suddenly rang clear and sure like a silver bell over the gathering, "that the Crowned Heir of the Realm feels Faerie has deeply slighted him." She pinned those green and violet eyes on him. "Deeply enough that he feels war is the only solution."
Adam saw the question in her eyes, felt it in her power as it reached for him, but unlike Conemara, she didn't force her way in. She waited, as courteously as a guest at the gate. Before her he set the broken half of his heart, the other half shattered and gone. "Majesty, I do," he said simply.
Her eyes went soft and bright. "Oh, your heart," she whispered. "Is peace not an option?"
"I sued for peace," he admitted. "I sued for peace twice. Before the Court Beyond the Woods, before Queen Conemara and Prince Canemore I sued for peace. I asked for one thing. They could not, or would not, give it. I will, if need be, sue for peace a third time before the Highest Queen of Faerie. But that would be a third, and I fear it might be... discourteous."
The Faerie Queen smiled wryly. "It would. Particularly when the fault for this terrible situation lies completely with the Court Beyond the Woods."
Adam recoiled minutely. The entire gathering gasped; no one had expected to hear one of the Fair Folk, particularly their Highest Queen, admit to being wrong.
"When we sent the twins here, it was our hope that being alone, forsaking the joys and merriment of the Highest Court, would teach them the... poise and sense of station that they lacked at the time. Instead it would seem their character flaws have grown into unforgivable behaviors and abhorrent mannerisms." Titania pursed her lips. "The Court Beyond the Woods is no more. They are Queen and Prince no more. They are simply Conemara and Canemore." She looked at Adam. "Would that make peace an option?"
Ah, so that was the trick, then. Adam's smile was brief, thin and bereft of humor. "Majesty, it would not."
The nobles caught their breath. Next to Adam, Dane shifted nervously.
"Hm." Titania looked unsurprised. She tapped long, shimmering nails against the rosebud of her mouth. She had better offers in mind, Adam was sure of it; she hadn't got to them yet, that was all. "Our daughter offered you her brother's life, and you refused it. We will not repeat that mistake. Does the Crowned Heir remember what else she offered? It would help us greatly."
"Knowledge, wealth, power. Majesty, I hardly know what to do with the power I already have. I want no wealth but what keeps my people and their homes safe. I want nothing that she offered."
"Well, we would offer a palace greater than this one by a hundredfold, hidden in the woods," Titania mused, and the Dowager gasped tinily. "But it is not ours to give."
"It does miss its mistress, though," Adam murmured.
"It doesn't!" The Dowager hissed.
"It does," he persisted. "I didn't tell you?"
"I didn't think to ask," she admitted.
"For twenty thousand years we have watched you mortals." The Sidhe Queen's voice filled the immense hall. "We have laughed with you and cried with you. We have raged against you, taught you, learned from you. We have shared so much with you. What we have never done, not once, is win a war against you." Her green and violet eyes passed from spring to summer and back again, spiraling slightly, and for a moment it was nearly impossible for Adam to stare at them, they were so like those many-colored, shattered eyes. His hatred, his sorrow, his rage all rose up inside him until only the force of will that had brought him to that moment kept him from screaming until he lost his voice.
"Adam." Her voice was suddenly very gentle, like rain against the black ice of his hatred. She had reached out to touch his cheek with the tips of three fingers, warm like summer sunlight.
"Please don't do that." He stepped back minutely, his voice strangled. "It hurts too much."
"Ah, it must be a family thing, to give away your heart the once, and never again," she murmured, pulling away her hand and looking knowingly at the Dowager. "Tonight, on this day of celebration for your birthday, you are seeking a consort, I'm told."
"I am." Adam shrugged minutely. "A throne without an heir makes people nervous, and wars have a habit of killing without much care as to who dies, peasant or king. It's better for the realm to have that matter settled."
"And if such a consort asked you for peace?" Titania asked, and stepped gracefully aside.
Adam felt the world tilt out from under his feet. Dimly he was aware that Dane had caught him, was holding him upright, but he couldn't understand anything beyond that.
Behind the Queen of Spring and Summer, shining like the first true kiss of dawn on a night-dark land, was Linden, his friend, his love, his heart, willowy and slender, a willow's grace, an oak's strength, a linden tree's beauty. They were wearing a gown that shimmered through every color of their shattered eyes; Titania was a spring meadow, but Linden was the summer woods, where flowers hid amidst a sea of green, where the sky shone blue and perfect, where sunsets were fire and dawn was golden treasure. They had put on a slender domino made of bark, dotted with bejeweled insects picked out with fantastic accuracy in emeralds, sapphires, rubies, obsidian.
But they were Linden. His Linden, the white fuzz of their hair very short on their head so early in the season, faint green freckles on their sharp brown cheekbones. Adam's Linden, all that was kind and joyous and fierce in the woods, perfect down to the one bark-covered hand. Linden, surrounded by a flock of green pixies, crowned with a circlet of living vines with a single stone blossom nestled between the green leaves, an amethyst heart just peeking through the gray.
"Linden," Adam heard himself say, and the black vastness of icy hatred inside him cracked, his heart struggling in a darkness that had swallowed it for far too long.
"Adam," Linden said, and there were tears ruining the elegant glitter someone had sprinkled so very carefully on their cheekbones.
Titania lifted her hand, and blew lightly, scattering a stirring of dust like golden motes in the air. The Dowager gasped. Adam wheezed for breath.
Needlemaw, the illusion that had hidden her broken, was suddenly on Adam's other side, holding him up when he would have slipped from Dane's grip and fallen. "Come, now," she urged him, "where's that muchness of ye gone that yuir knees go to jelly for naught but a wee bit of glamour!"
"Needle," Adam gasped.
"Aye."
"Needle!" Adam cried out and dragged her close, close enough to bump their foreheads together, so close that he could smell her charnel-and-soil scent, and he felt as if he could not breathe, as if he were drowning in the blackness with which he'd armored himself. He clawed at nothing, trying to escape it -
A gentle, rough hand the size of his chest caught the front of his costume and lifted him effortlessly back onto his feet. "Adam."
Dane, for whom the Queen's glamour still persisted, swore under his breath at the all-too familiar voice, the abrupt pong of a bullfrog's croak, both coarse and gentle. Adam had to laugh. "Hello, Boul," he managed, and realized he was crying. "I'm sorry. I'm being a baby and can't even greet you properly after missing you like someone cut off a limb."
"You always greet me before," the young troll said. "Now, I greet you." He offered his hand in the human fashion. "Like the first time."
Adam, surrounded by his friend both mortal and fae, fought himself to his feet and then collapsed again. "I can't breathe."
"Breathe with me." Suddenly Linden was there, and it really was Linden, kissing their prince, their Adam, sweet and sure and patient, with a love that had known itself so clearly, so certainly, that it had never doubted its time would come. Under the taste of that kiss, lemon and honey, sunlight and summer, wind and laughter, the ice of Adam's hatred didn't stand a chance. It was gone as if it had never existed, and Adam gasped in a huge breath, as if he'd been drowning for the past three years and had only reached the surface there, in that place and moment.
Linden caught Adam's face between their hands, both sun-browned, one smooth, one rough. Adam clung to those hands and brought himself to his feet. Linden laced the fingers of one hand with his, and the young Heir turned to face the Sidhe Queen. There was one more person with her, but Titania had not broken the glamour on them.
"Majesty."
"Crowned Heir," she nodded graciously.
"You asked me a question." Adam found his voice rough, and swallowed to try and keep it from breaking. "I have been asked for peace before. I would not grant it to a friend." He looked at Dane, but his childhood friend looked so profoundly happy for him that Adam knew the prospect of war was not even a thought in Dane's head. "Nor would not I grant it to family." He glanced at the Dowager, who gave him the tiniest nod, her eyes once again filled with tears she refused to shed.
He looked at Linden, who squeezed his hand, and turned to face those green and violet eyes. "But if the right consort asks for peace, I will grant it."
"I ask," Linden whispered.
"It's yours," Adam answered, and they fell in each other's arms.
***
The gala continued. No one had a single solitary clue as to how to handle what had happened, but they also knew that the Queen of the Spring and Summer Court had come expecting a party, not for all the guests to stampede in a panic at her arrival. And so the party carried on.
"Charlotte."
The Queen Dowager had retreated to a seat behind an elegant floral sculpture, where she was nursing a goblet of mulled wine. She looked up into the unchanging face of an old and dear friend, and smiled. "Larkspur," she greeted, offering her hand.
The Sidhe Queen caught that hand in both of hers and crouched before her mortal friend. "Oh, Charlie, why didn't you say something? Why didn't you call for help?"
"I honestly don't know, Larkspur," the Dowager admitted, finally allowing her tears to fall. "Pride? Grief? By the time I realized what he'd done, it was done. I couldn't figure out how to fix it on my own, and then I was too ashamed to admit to it, and you'd gone back home -"
"I would have come back for you. I would have come back for the sister of my heart, you know that."
"I know. Look, I was young, I was in love, I was heartbroken. Common sense was nowhere near my first priority."
They both laughed, sheepish and quiet. "I want to give you something, Charlie, but I won't if it will hurt you."
"What is it?"
"It's something you were promised," Titania said. "Promised, and never given. Your people taught mine the importance of keeping one's word." Without actually reaching into purse or pocket, there was suddenly a small velvet box, black and gilt in gold, in the Sidhe Queen's hand. She opened it.
The Queen Dowager went very still. After a long, long moment she drew in a deep, shaky breath, and reached out to brush her fingertips delicately against the ruby. It was a brooch, without adornment or addition, a single ruby the size and shape of a man's heart. Under her fingers it beat, harried and steady. "It's -"
"Yes," Titania confirmed. "He promised it to you, and lied. And so now he must keep his promise, whether he wants to or not. It is yours. And yours it will remain, until you feel he has earned it back."
"Is it wrong of me," the Dowager asked in a very small voice, "to be a little pleased at the shape of your justice?"
Titania laughed. "Never."
***
They sat, all of them, in an open balcony. Adam debated waking Beli, or trying to pry Culli from the kitchens, but decided against it in the end. Plenty of time in the morrow for them to gather once again and come together, at last, the two halves of his world. They shared their stories, the harrowing trials Adam had faced, the infinite patience of Linden's own escape and race to the High Court, only to be met halfway on the Winding Road by Titania. As Linden had predicted, the Queen had been more than glad to welcome the blue pixie back into her Court. She knew its worth. And its news had spurred her to action at last, to correct the unforgivable infraction her children had tendered against a Danu-child.
Boul and Needle were, in theory, there to escort the Queen, and so they'd had to leave when Titania chose to mingle, disconcerting greatly the massed nobles. But the third person stayed with Linden. She was an older woman with very dark skin and very green eyes, bundled up in simple peasant's clothing that was more cozy than elegant. She allowed them to kiss, but when the kiss lingered she cleared her throat pointedly.
Adam squinted at her. "Do I know you?"
Linden laughed. "Adam, how can you not? She didn't come here for me!"
Adam gave Linden a puzzled look, and then turned to face the stranger once more. The woman gave him a look of such profound and utter affection that the Heir found himself flushing faintly, and the last piece of the puzzle fell into place. He rushed over to hug her, and in those powerful arms he found himself made safe once again, as always he had. "Silly me," he said, feeling near tears once again at that most poignant show of loyalty. "You are wearing a costume, you're disguised as a human!"
The linden tree smiled proudly at him, and brushed back his hair. They hugged again, and when he was at last willing to let go, she turned and walked away through the crowd.
"It's hard for her to be away from her place," Linden explained. "But she really did want to come see you, make sure it was all set to rights. She wanted to know you weren't hurting anymore." When Adam looked down, they bumped him lightly. "She said you heard her."
"I did. She's the only one I hear. But if that's all I ever get, that's more than good enough." Linden beamed at him, then leaned on his shoulder with a grimace. "What, what's wrong?"
"These shoes are very pinchy."
"Kick them off? The skirt's so big, no one's going to notice."
Linden did so, and Adam shoved the delicate green slippers under a bench. "Ah!" Linden sighed in relief. "So much better."
"You still look like your head is full of plans."
"Well, not plans. I've done all the planning I can stomach already. You're the one who's good at planning, I just asked myself 'what would Adam do'. That's how I fixed everything. It's just..."
"What?"
"I don't care for the dress. It's lovely, but it's all over the place. I can't walk without crashing into someone, or something. And do I have to be a Queen? That's what Canemore called me."
"Oh, that!" Adam laughed in relief and stood up. "That's why you see all the women go around with their hands plastered down. Shoves the skirts right back out of your way."
"But what if I need my hands?"
Adam popped his mouth thoughtfully, and Linden swatted him for it, and the sheer familiarity of the gesture made him feel as if his heart might burst with joy. "You don't have to be anything you don't want to be Linden. Consort's just what you call someone who marries a King, so, yes, if we marry, you're a Consort. But that won't take away from you being Linden. It's just a thing people call you."
Linden's expression brightened up like a sunny day. "Oh, it's like having all those princes running around. Prince is just something you call them. Consort... I could be that, I suppose, as long as I can still be Linden."
"You will always be Linden." Adam leaned close, and they rested against each other.
"There's lines on your forehead that weren't there before," Linden brushed the fingers of their smooth hand over those lines. "Can't I fix that?"
"I don't know. The whole point of this mess," Adam waved a hand at the vastness of the hall and the ongoing masquerade, "was to make sure there'd be an heir. A baby, at some point. I guess." He sounded about as sure of the goal as he did the process, and even less thrilled about it.
Linden brightened up. "Oh, I can do that!"
"You can?"
"Yes, of course, it's easy." Linden seemed to think. "Though we're going to need a few cabbages."
Part 1 - Part 2 - Parts 3 & 4 - Part 5 - Part 6, 7 & 8 - Part 9 & 10 - Part 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 & 16 - Part 17, 18, & 19 - Part 20, 21 & 22 - Part 23, 24, 25 & 26 - Part 27, 28, 29 & 30 - Part 31, 32, 33 & 34 - Part 35, 36 & 37 - Part 38, 39, 40 & 41 - Part 42 & 43 - Part 44 & 45 - Part 46 & 47 - Part 48, 49, 50 & 51 - Part, 52, 53 & 54 - Part 55 & 56 - Part 57, 58, 59 & 60 - Part 61, 62, 63, 64 & 65 - Part 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71 & 72
Trials always seem to come with loss.
Adam spared a few minutes to watch Culli-maid go, her back rigidly straight, her shoes muddy beyond recovery. He could hear the church's bells calling, but in the fog that seemed to have devoured everything, they sounded distant and dull, and he didn't wait to hear what time they called.
He turned to head back to the caves, meaning for Trout to catch the scent of Beli's blood there, and something growled, deep and hungry, in the darkness. The pixie pressed close to his neck, growling back.
"I am Prince Adam -," he began calmly.
"Knowing your name will not keep us from eating you," the growl replied. "We are always hungry, and we have been given leave to name you prey."
"Ah," Adam smiled a little. He'd been expecting something like this. "Then I will not use my name. I will use the truth. You are trespassing on the woods on a Hunting Night, and it means your life."
The growl stopped abruptly. "We have been given leave."
"I did not give it. Neither did my Queen." Adam rubbed fastidiously at the despairing amounts of grime on his clothes. "But I'm betting they didn't tell you the truth, and you didn't know to ask."
A circle of shadows slipped out of the brush. They were wolves, or perhaps dogs, but sometimes they were something else, long-legged and lanky, ears too big and sharp. Sometimes there was only one, sometimes there were nearly a dozen. Their eyes burned with a hunger that could never be sated, with wretched lights that spoke of starvation neverending and the bottomless despair that comes with it. "Would you like me to help you escape this trap?"
"There is no trap," the shadow-creature replied, but they didn't sound sure anymore. They looked at one another, sniffed at the ground and at each other, merged into one another and split once again. "We are listening."
"The Compact between my people and the Court Beyond the Woods is very specific. None may interfere with a Hunting Night. The only ones allowed to participate are my people, and theirs. Even the Folk In The Woods can't fight."
"The pixie goes with you."
"The pixie is of my court, because I have made it so. Trout, show them." Proudly, the pixie brought forth its signet shield. "But you, you aren't of the Court Beyond. And you certainly aren't of my court. And they didn't tell you, did they? They just told you what great fun it would be to hunt me down and eat me, they drove you to a froth with words and pretend-promises that they won't have to keep, because if you do kill me, you've broken the Compact, and they will be free to hunt you down for their entertainment."
The shadow-creatures' ears flattened back.
"Would you like me," Adam asked again, "to help you escape this trap?"
"We have nothing to offer for your help," the creature replied after a very, very long time.
"You have your service. Your ears and your nose and your hunter's instincts. Pledge me your service, this one night. I will not ask you to kill for me. I will not ask you to fight for me. I will not ask you to break the Compact at all. I only want your help to find two things."
"Name those things and we will give you an answer."
"I have a friend. He is being held prisoner somewhere in the woods. He is wounded, might be bleeding. Other than me he is the only mortal in the woods. I need you to find him for me. And I need you to find his eyes."
There was another long silence. "That's it? That's all?" The shadow-creatures sounded surprised and disbelieving. Little by little their numbers were diminishing.
"That's it. You don't even have to guide me there, as long as you tell me exactly where they both are, in a way that I can understand and follow. Though once we're done with one another I would suggest you find somewhere to hide until this is all done with. Strongly."
"Hunger is too great a press in an empty belly, and night the only time we can sate it."
"I'm getting to be sick of hearing how many of the Folk go hungry with a Queen and Prince that ought to be looking after them," Adam muttered. "What, exactly, do you eat? Just people?"
"No. Anything that is real and mortal and valuable to someone will do."
Adam frowned. "By that definition you could eat the wheat and barley on the field."
"We have, a few years." A too white smile in the dark.
"Ah," Adam realized grimly, staring into the eyes of failed crops and droughts. "Does it have to be alive?"
"Alive is a thing that matters only to mortals."
"Well, then, why don't you eat the bones and scraps of meat at the butcher's?"
"I bet he can't smell them," Trout whispered. "I bet he's never gone into the city. It smells too much of stone and iron, it has too many lights."
To his surprise, he saw the shadow-creature nod; there was only one anymore. Adam shook his head. "If we have a first bargain?"
"We do. Give me your hand."
Adam pulled off his glove and offered his hand, palm up.
An immense maw closed on it. He saw fangs gleam in Trout's light, felt the touch of a feverishly hot tongue, the immense power of a bite that would have ended his life in a moment, that could too readily take his hand. But though the bite pressed down until it stung, it didn't draw blood, and when the shadow-creature pulled away, there were only a few marks on his skin.
"Pixie, hold onto me. Your light will follow me, and he can follow your light."
"Wait," Adam said. "I will be King, and war is coming."
"War is good. There is no hunger if there is war."
"Perhaps, but war won't happen right away, and hunger is a thing of now. If I give you food, if I find a way for you not to go so completely hungry, will you offer me something in exchange? Will you give me your word that you will not fight for the Court Beyond the Woods?"
"What are you offering?"
"Bones and meat."
"Bones! Bones with their marrow-heart still?" There was hope in their voice that promptly crashed down to suspicion. "Burnt and dead?"
"Uh, no? Fresh. I will tell the palace butchers to set them out for you. I will tell the city butchers to do the same. They'll be put out in a lightless place, with no iron. They'll be put out for you."
"You offer much for a promise that would come to nothing if you die tonight."
"You offer just as much for a war that might not come to pass if I die tonight."
The darkness was silent, and then began to hiss in low, strange laugh. "A second bargain, then, mortal thing." And then, very carefully, "Adam."
"What may I call you?"
"We have too many names, given all by our prey or our enemies."
"But those are the names of people who are afraid, or angry, or who don't care about you. I want a good name to call you."
"... a good name." The shadow creature stood up suddenly from its four-legged gait, a willowy thing of thin limbs and eyes like sickly stars. "We have only one of those. Perhaps you are the one to trust with it. We are Sluagh."
"I am Trout," the pixie replied before Adam could.
"Trout," the shadow paused, and then dipped his head politely. "Follow, then."
***
Each of his friends had taught Adam to travel in one way or another. From Beli he'd learned to sleep on his saddle, from Dane to ride with boneless grace so he wouldn't hurt after a whole day atop a horse. From Linden he'd learned to slip from the hands of one tree to another, fording short distances without actually walking over them. From Boul he'd learned to ask stone to yield him passage, though it was a trick he'd never managed to successfully pull. From Needlemaw he'd learned to stalk and prowl and climb.
Sluagh was faster than any of them in the dark.
They moved in hiccups. When the shadow-creature realized Adam could not follow when the pixie's light suddenly moved twenty steps forward in any one direction, they offered Adam their hand, skeletal, covered by skin thin and cool and slick like a salamander's. Walking with them felt like dipping into an immense river the prince couldn't see, only feel. Every step dragged him forward against that terrible current, and after a little while he was panting, but he didn't protest. He caught occasional glimpses as they traveled, whenever there was enough time for Trout's glow to illuminate their surroundings. That faint gold light didn't touch Sluagh, showed little more than a thin, gaunt profile caught between human and beast and unreal beyond either. But the woods around them were illuminated perfectly, and Adam saw trees so ancient they'd made of their canopies a vast cathedral's roof. They were walking into depths of the woods he'd never visited, not even with Linden.
"The mortal." Sluagh's voice startled him. "He matters to you, beyond the Prince's test."
"Yes." Adam measured his words very carefully against what he'd seen of his strange guide. "If he were gone it would be like a limb that I can never regrow, that I can never get back. It would hurt for all the rest of my life, long or brief."
"Ah," Sluagh mused, and Adam realized they were walking normally. "And yet your people ever stand alone. Your minds never touch, your hearts beat alone. There is only one of you, here and now."
"You've watched my people, then."
"Sometimes." Trout rose and fell in the dark as Sluagh shrugged. "You are prey neither easy nor filling. But we like watching, even though something shatters inside your kind if they chance to see us. You, though. You did not shatter. Adam."
The prince popped his mouth thoughtfully. "Fear can shatter people. Pain, too, and ignorance. But I have been friends with the Folk In The Woods for so long, Sluagh. Even back there, when you came at me to eat me, I still saw you. I might not have known your name, but I still knew that you were you, not a monster or a beast, or a nightmare. Just you, being you."
Sluagh moved them forward, and Adam realized he'd been shifted to walk partially behind the shadow-creature, where the swelling current didn't crash quite so violently against him. "So we cannot shatter you, and we cannot eat you," they mused. "It truly was a trap for us, wasn't it."
"Yes. I don't know why they care so little for everyone else, Sluagh, I really don't. But I'm still sorry that they do."
"I find that I value your empathy. Adam." It almost seemed as if Sluagh couldn't remember to address Adam by name, unless belatedly, but also as if they didn't trust the prince to know that it was him they spoke to. "We are here. Hold on tight." The shadow-creature stepped forward once more...
Adam jerked in surprise. Under Trout's glow he could see they were in an immense, fantastically elegant room, the equal if not the better of any in the Dowager Queen's palace. Sluagh pointed to a gilded double door at the very edge of the pixie's light, one side open. "Walk through the door, follow the hallway. Your friend is bleeding somewhere beyond. If you cannot smell the trail, the pixie will." The shadow-creature began to split up, heads thrown up, sniffing in the dark. "Come back here, and we will find his eyes for you. Right now the tracks are confusing; we cannot tell which is his and which his eyes."
"How many tracks are there?"
"One," Trout said.
"Two," Sluagh corrected. "But they run closely together."
Adam rubbed at his face. "At least they're all in the same place. Hopefully. Will you be safe if we leave you here, Sluagh?"
A dozen eyes like pale, guttering stars turned to stare at Adam in profound silence at the question. "Yes," Sluagh said simply at last.
Adam nodded; Trout leapt onto his shoulder and he headed off into the dark.
The keep, if that's what it was, and not some patchwork figment, sprawled immense all around him. Dust covered everything within range of Trout's light, the gracious furnishings, the paintings and tapestries on the walls, the delicate flowers and vines creeping in plaster along the dark heights of the walls. Cobwebs ruled in the darkness, and every now and again Adam found tracks on the marble floors, like filigree carved into the dust. He peeked briefly into empty, elegant drawing rooms, and found a vast spiraling stairwell, following it down to a heavy, reinforced door.
The door peeked open, and faint golden light filled the air. The smell of blood and violence lingered in the still air. A skeleton, as large as a horse, sprawled before the door.
Adam crouched before the immense skull. Size aside, it was a dog's skull, long and lean and fanged, terrible to behold in death. The Prince couldn't imagine what it would have been like to face the creature in life. The tatters of its black, furred hide were scattered all around it, still pliable.
Trout, leaning forward on Adam's shoulder, growled. "Hunting Hound."
Adam pulled off a glove with his teeth and brushed his fingers over the skull; the bone was raw under his touch. "Trout, go get Sluagh, if they'll come. Tell them what we found." The pixie launched itself off, the whirr of its wings loud in the still darkness. Adam waited patiently until he saw the golden light coming back, until the empty spaces off to one side grew a sickly pair of eyes.
"A Hunting Hound," Sluagh's voice was even more of a whisper than usual, as if the presence of the skeleton hushed them. "Not so many things can kill one of the King's own pack."
"I think this was meant to be a guardian set on my path," Adam said mildly as Trout returned to its perch. "And I don't mean the bones."
"Are you certain?" Sluagh asked, a weight of meaning unspoken in those three words.
Adam popped his lips thoughtfully. It made sense, of course, to put between him and Beli an enemy that he could scarce defeat, by reason or by force. "Does the trail go beyond it, past the door?"
"Yes," both Sluagh and Trout replied.
But to admit that someone else had killed the Hound might be taken as cheating on his part, and Adam was keenly aware of it. If someone else had faced and beaten his challenge, it could render the whole soul-sucking exercise moot. But if someone had simply taken exception to the Hunting Hound being what it was, when and where it had been...
"I am not at all certain of it," Adam admitted. "And it's not like we can ask, is it." Trout had fluttered down to perch on the skull, then squirmed its way into it, peeking through the empty eye sockets in a fit of purely pixie glee, making the prince snort a little in amusement. "Well, if this is the way I must go, then it is what it is."
"Adam," Sluagh asked suddenly, and the prince realized there were eyes everywhere in a broad ring around him, some up high, most low to the ground. "Have you a use for the bones?"
"Me? No. Trout?"
"It would make a fine helm!" The pixie declared enthusiastically before wriggling out from between the fangs. "But it's much-much too big."
"If they are no one's, then they are yours, Sluagh." Adam straightened up. "I think whatever killed the Hound would have eaten them if they could."
***
After examining the door and taking the tiny iron key on the lock, Adam and Trout moved on, into the hallway beyond the door the Hound had been guarding, and found it brightly lit with golden, magical lights. Adam touched one curiously, and found it warm, but not painful. "This isn't glamour. How odd, to keep a dungeon so well lit."
Nothing and no one challenged him as he followed Trout through the simple maze of the keep's dungeons. He peeked into dark chambers, and into others filled with a wealth of oddities; in one chamber, lit by an exquisite hanging chandelier, he found a meadow of blown-glass flowers, perfect to the dew drops on their petals, to the tiny ladybugs and bees seemingly asleep on the occasional blossom. He felt a vague twinge, as if he were meant to want them, but it couldn't root in him. In another room he found rows and rows of shoes, neatly set on shelves and boxes, his skin itching just by looking at them through the tiny barred window on the door. And so it went, magical treasure after magical treasure, temptations of every kind laid out before him.
He nearly missed the Many-Steps. It was hidden in the golden light of two lamps, and it was only their presence, where before one had sufficed at every junction, that made Adam pause long enough to examine their surroundings a little more closely. "Trout, wait!"
The pixie froze in mid-air.
"There's a portal here. Do you still smell Beli?"
Trout returned to its perch on Adam's shoulder, nodding stoutly. "The smell is mostly water, but yes. He's hurt. I can smell the pain, I can smell the blood." It sneezed mightily, growling a little, wings buzzing. "I smell cat, too. But mostly Beli. And mostly-most, water."
Adam had to admit to himself that he'd lost track of where, exactly, they were while traveling with Sluagh. For all he knew they were back at the aquifer caves. The smell of cat puzzled him, but he couldn't fully spare the time for that riddle, not with Beli hurt. "Is the cat smell going to be a problem, Trout? Will it keep us from our hunt?"
The pixie's wings moved restlessly. It wasn't the first time Adam had asked it questions that the Prince knew reached far beyond the tiny creature's nature. But Trout always did try, and Adam didn't want it to think, ever, that its opinion didn't matter. "No. The grimalkin cannot hunt me while I'm with you. They're of no court."
"Then we move on to the obvious problem." Gingerly, Adam slipped past the portal. Nothing much seemed to change, and he found himself immediately dubious. "Can you smell Sluagh, Trout?"
"No. They have no scent."
"What about the Hound?"
Trout tipped its head back. "No. It's too far."
"Of course it is." Adam blew out a weary, resigned sigh. "Half their trick seems to be having me waste time coming and going." On a hunch, they drew in a deep breath and shouted. "Beliwick!"
Swift as lightning came the answer, full of pain and anger, fear and hope. "Adam!"
Adam raced forward until he found a door barring his way. Unlike all the others he'd found, this one was locked, and he clung to the bars of the tiny window. "Beli!"
Hands caught onto his. Beli was shivering, his lips pale, slashes of false color on his cheeks. He'd torn off one of his shirt's sleeves and bound it over his eyes; the linen was bloodstained, and there were crimson smears over his face and his hands. "Oh, Mother bless you, Adam, you found me! You found me. He said you never would. Not here, wherever here is."
"Well, he did make it hard." Adam peeled off his hunting jacket, emptying the pockets as he went, and forced it through the bars; Beli, by the looks of him, had been taken from Adam's own rooms without benefit of so much as a coat. "You've been stashed away far off the beaten path, my friend. Do you know how to open this door?"
"No. All he said was that if you could open the door that led here, you could open this door as well."
Adam looked puzzled for all of a moment before the answer clicked, and he patted himself hurriedly until he found the tiny iron key. "I should be angry at the arrogance of it all," he mused, "but the way he laid it out that key might as well have been on the moon if circumstances hadn't conspired." The lock clicked open and he shouldered the door to Beli's dungeon cell open.
And found himself instead in a vast library.
It wasn't a match to the Royal library, but it was better than most private libraries Adam had ever seen. The shelves rose twice his height and a little more. There was dust and cobwebs everywhere, an empty hearth, a vast map-reading table and the accompanying shelf full of cylindrical leather cases. There were reading plinths and windows that, he guessed, had once pretended to the same magic that had adorned the ones where Culli-maid had been held. These windows looked into nothing but more bleak stone. The lamps were guttering and dying, and the heavy rugs on the cobbled floor were damp enough to draw in more chill, rather than minimize it.
Adam helped Beli into the hunting jacket, rubbing at his friend's hands, which were numb with the cold. "Beli," he asked very gently. "Where are your eyes?"
The young man's breath blew out of him as if Adam had struck him, and suddenly he was weeping in great shuddering and silent sobs. The prince held onto him, saying nothing, offering only the comfort of his presence and the silence of his guilt. Adam held Beli until the storm of his terror passed, until all that was left was pain and cold and exhaustion.
"I'm sorry, Beli. I'm sorry."
"Oh, be quiet, Adam. We all signed up for this, we all knew it. It's only because of you I'm miles above a collier's son. I can read, I can write, I can do numbers in ways even you can't." Beli steadied himself on Adam's shoulder. "Everyone who comes to service in the Palace knows it might end up in blood. It's not just the princes that die, they're just the ones everyone notices." He sighed, and though it shook he still drew himself up straight. "You're fighting for me. You don't know how rare it is to have that. Even my parents never did."
"What a poor prince, what a lousy friend I'd be if that's how I repaid you for all these years," Adam protested. "But we still have to find... them."
"I know. Trust me, Adam, I would dearly like them back. My hands have told me exactly where I am." Beli sighed in exasperation. "And I can read none of them."
"I have a way to find them, but we'll have to douse every light in here."
"Well, they're not doing me any good," Beli replied dryly, and Adam bit back a laugh in spite of himself.
"Mortal prince, you cannot," Trout said suddenly. "You cannot douse the lights."
Both young men went silent. "Why, Trout?"
The pixie had been fluttering between the shelves, but at the question it flew back to Adam's shoulder. "They're the only thing keeping the prickle-bogs at bay."
"The what?" It was rare for Adam to find a fairy he'd never heard mentioned before. It was even more surprising when he saw Beli make the moon-and-tree sign of protection.
"The prickle-bogs!" Trout replied impatiently. "Can't you hear them?"
Adam lifted a hand to beg for silence from the pixie, and closed his eyes. For a long moment all he heard were the sounds he already knew, the wind mournfully sliding along the dungeon's passageways, Beli's ragged breathing, the faint dying crackle of the lamps in the enchanted library. He focused further, on his own breathing, on the beating of his heart, on the thrumming of his blood.
There, beneath it all, scales rasped against scales as something moved restlessly in the dark. "Beli, you know what he means."
"A wisp-snake, a will o' the wisp," his friend replied. "Their eyes glow in the dark and entrance the lost, draw them away to a bad death in the woods. Then they eat them."
Adam blew out a long breath. "Trout, do they speak?"
"No. They just hunger."
Like the kelpie, or the catfish, Adam realized. An enemy with whom he could not negotiate. "Can you tell how many there are?" Trout, perched on the prince's shoulder, shook its head. "We need Sluagh. Without them I don't like our odds of finding... what Beli's missing." Adam suddenly smiled thinly. "Can they enthrall you, Trout?"
The pixie scoffed. "I do the guiding and the losing in the woods and the falling into swamps, mortal prince. It's not done to me."
"Alright. Beli, come here. Hold onto my shoulder and come this way." Adam let the young man to the empty hearth. "Stay there," he directed as he bid Beli sit in the empty stones, dragging a heavy table and tipping it before the hearth.
"Adam, what are you doing?"
"Learning from you," his prince told him cheerfully. "Don't move, don't make a sound until I tell you it's alright." Adam passed Beli one of the lamps and then crossed the library, climbing up one of the book ladders and settling himself comfortably on the top rung. He tore off the sleeve from his shirt and blindfolded himself, then took from his back the bow, and nocked an arrow. "Trout," he said calmly, "I am trusting you to be faster than my arrows. If you're not, come back to me and stay with me, no matter what. For now, blow out the lights. All but Beli's. And draw blood as you see fit."
The pixie let out a high, shrill sound of ferocious delight, and whirred away. Beyond Adam's blindfold, the light began to fade as Trout came to every lamp and laboriously doused them.
It began as the quietest of slithering sounds, barely a whisper of scales on stone, muted further when it became scales on a rug. Adam cocked his head, trying to figure out how many enemies there were by sound alone, but so far underground echoes rebounded weirdly. When the buzzing of the pixie's wings suddenly filled the still air it seemed as loud as a storm. Something hissed, nearly a whistle, in pain and fury.
Adam drew and fired the arrow in between the beats of his harried, broken, frozen heart. Something screamed in the dark, and he heard a heavy body trashing wildly against the stone floor. He drew another bead by that sound and fired a second time, and the sounds stilled with terrible finality.
One, Adam thought, drawing and knocking another arrow as silently as possible.
They rattled at one another. Again came the sharp, deadly sound of the pixie's wings. This time, jaws snapped sharply, and Trout cried out.
Adam's arrow flew and something shrieked in terrible agony. The sounds drew abruptly muffled.
"Bite someone with that between your nasty ugly prickle teeth!" Trout shouted defiantly. "Give it back!"
Adam put another two arrows in the general direction of those sounds until they stopped. Two.
The ladder he was perched on shuddered. Without missing a beat he drew, aimed down and fired. The arrow bounced off the wooden steps with a loud spanging sound, and beneath him something growled, low and deadly and sure. Adam cursed to himself, scrambling for another arrow when something latched onto his foot, then his leg, and finally his waist, and he went tumbling off the ladder along with his attacker. He felt a blast of breath against his face, reeking of bog water and carrion, dropped the bow and grabbed blind. His gloved hands caught onto a broad, flat set of jaws, the finely cured leather slicing open on teeth as sharp as knives. The creature pushed with tremendous force, but it had no leverage; it merely caused them both to slide along the ground, Adam clinging to his grip even as those teeth sliced into his fingers. He kicked, but he could find no body to strike.
The will o' the wisp slammed him head-first into a set of shelves. Books rained all around them like blows; the predatory fairy didn't seem to care, but Adam had hit the wood hard enough to see starbursts behind his closed eyelids, and for a crucial moment he forgot where he was, what he was doing, who he was meant to be. His grip slackened dangerously, and the will o' the wisp lunged forward.
Trout landed on the prince's face with a snarl and shoved a sharpened hairpin into the creature's mouth with a furious yell. The silver tip went right through, into the softness at the back of its mouth, through its skull and out. It threw itself back, thrashing and choking.
Unseen to Adam, a long and spindly hand picked up the will o' the wisp as it writhed, and snapped its spine in half, silencing it abruptly.
Adam panted for breath in the shocking silence, yanking off his blindfold. "Sluagh," he declared hoarsely, "please don't eat Trout's spears."
"I can wait. Adam," the fairy assured him calmly, dropping the last of the will o' the wisps to the ground with a thud.
***
Adam sat on the floor of the dark library, his hands scrubbing at his hair, his breath and his heartbeat rattling in his chest like a rabbit's. No one spoke, no one harried him. Trout clung to his ear, and nearby the prince could hear the quiet steps of Sluagh as the fairy moved about; by the sound of it, they were pulling out books, examining them, and putting them back.
"Trout," Adam sat up straight when he trusted his voice to sound not so raw, even though his heart was breaking a little. "You should get your spears back, and then we should talk."
"And my shield," the pixie groused. "It bit it!" It took off toward the nearest carcass.
"Sluagh, can you find them?"
"I know what we promised," Sluagh sounded wary, "but we find our promise exceeds our hunting skill. Adam. Your friend has been over every inch of this room. It all smells of him. We know they are here, we just... cannot pinpoint where."
A long silence, broken only by Trout's grunts of effort as it struggled to free its signet shield from the jaws of one of the dead will o' the wisps. "Sorry," Beli offered meekly from the hearth.
Adam sighed. "You tried," he told Sluagh. "You tried fairly, and you tried honestly. I wouldn't ask of you more than I would ask of myself." He brushed his hair back; he didn't know if it was the almighty knock to the head or if he was just tired of having death show up at every corner of this venture, but he felt tired and thin and unaccountably lonely. "Trout," he murmured, rolling to his feet and moving over to the carcass. He yanked free his obsidian dagger and shoved it between its jaws, prying it open just enough for the pixie to rescue its signet shield at last.
Under the light of the pixie’s light the will o' the wisps were ugly. There was no arguing with that fact. They had long, serpentine bodies, covered in irregular scales in brown and gray and green, the colors of a sickly swamp. Their heads were disproportionately large, and their jaws stretched out along their bodies nearly a third of the way. Their teeth were black and very narrow, like the thorns of a poisonous tree. They only had one eye, sitting dead center of their skull, still faintly luminous even in death. Adam stared at the eye of the nearest creature, trying to figure out if it could still mesmerize him, so that he would feel his current loss a little less. "Trout, do you realize what you've done?"
"Got my shield all slimed up, is what I've done," the pixie grumbled, rubbing the signet shield against the rug under their feet.
"Trout, you saved my life."
Even Sluagh went still.
"No I didn't," Trout protested, and there was something very like panic in its voice.
"You did. The prickle-bog had me, it had me dead to rights. It would have taken my face, and then the rest of me, if you hadn't stopped it." For the first time in so very long, Adam felt the bite of tears behind his eyes. "Trout, you're free. You can go. You don't have to fight my fight anymore. You’ll be safe from the war."
Trout's golden light blazed so brightly that Adam had to throw an arm up to protect his eyes. He saw Sluagh flinch and flee for the farthest corner of the room. With an unintelligible screech, Trout threw the signet shield as hard as it could at the prince, and arrowed out of the library.
Adam felt as if he couldn't breathe. He picked up the signet shield and brushed his gloved fingers carefully over it, over the nicks and scars of it.
"You did not have to free the pixie. Adam," Sluagh said.
"I didn't have to," he agreed, "but it was the right thing to do."
"You could have used its help, its service."
"It isn't mine to claim. Trout's not a thing to be owned, not a book or an inkpot, not a weapon. I've no more right to its life than I did when it gave it to me."
"I begin to see why the Twins Beyond the Woods fear you," Sluagh said after a long moment.
Adam rubbed angrily at his face, and then examined some more the dead will o' the wisp. "Sluagh, are you familiar with these creatures, the prickle-bogs?"
"Some. They do not share prey, and they are difficult to hunt."
"Aren't they supposed to enthrall?" Adam picked up the carcass and stared at the creature's single eye.
"They are. Alive or dead. Their magic, their nature, their being is all in the light of their eye. Are you not entranced?"
Adam popped his mouth. It helped, in the moment, to have something else to focus on than the loss of yet another friend. "Why won't it work on me?" he murmured. He closed his eyes to a squint, just barely. At the corner of his eye, Sluagh was a mass of slowly creeping tentacles and vines, something shapeless, one and many. The will o' the wisp was still the ugly, eel-like thing.
Beli's eye stared back at him from the dead creature's skull, and Adam had to laugh, bitter and humorless. "Sluagh."
"Yes. Adam."
"The carcasses are yours. All three, all of them, except the eyes, if you will take Beli to the edge of the woods as quickly as he can make the trip without harm, and make sure he steps out of them safely. Once he's on his way to the palace, that'll be fine." With his obsidian dagger, he cut the eye out of the skull, and as it dropped into his hand it changed into its familiar, human truth.
Sluagh moved swiftly, splitting off two more creatures, all of which bent down low to sniff at the dead predators. "Ah. No wonder the trail kept moving no matter where your friend went. This is agreeable. But what about you. Adam?"
"I have to go pick one last fight. I may have Beli's eyes, but I still have to see them restored in his head." Adam rose wearily to his feet and stepped over to the heart to free Beli. In his makeshift blindfold the prince dropped the first eye, and then two more, pressing them gently into Beli's hands. "Go with Sluagh, Beli. I'll do everything I can to see you restored, I promise. Your eyes, and one more, so you'll miss nothing when you're a King's Seneschal."
"I don't want to leave you, Adam." Beli chewed on his lip. "Everyone's always leaving you, I don't want it to be me, too!"
Adam couldn't help but feel a little better at those words, embracing the loyal young man his childhood's forced friend had become. "You're not. When I go back everything has to be as I left it. You, Culli, Dane, it all has to be the same. So make sure it is, alright?"
"It will be," Beli assured him with all the force of an unspoken vow. "It will be."
Part 1 - Part 2 - Parts 3 & 4 - Part 5 - Part 6, 7 & 8 - Part 9 & 10 - Part 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 & 16 - Part 17, 18, & 19 - Part 20, 21 & 22 - Part 23, 24, 25 & 26 - Part 27, 28, 29 & 30 - Part 31, 32, 33 & 34 - Part 35, 36 & 37 - Part 38, 39, 40 & 41 - Part 42 & 43 - Part 44 & 45 - Part 46 & 47 - Part 48, 49, 50 & 51 - Part, 52, 53 & 54 - Part 55 & 56 - Part 57, 58, 59 & 60 - Part 61, 62, 63, 64 & 65 - Part 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71 & 72
So, uh, this gets a bit violent. As it’s bound to do when a redcap is involved. I’ve added a coupla tags I think would help, but let me know if I should do something differently.
Adam jerked awake from a fragile drowse when he heard his friends coming, Needle's low and rasping voice a pleased and pleasant growl in counterpoint to Linden's songbird cadence. He smiled in appreciation and climbed hastily down from the tree. "Linden, Needle!"
They rushed over to him. "Adam!" Linden cried out gladly, launching at him to hug him. He clung to them, to their friend, to their scent, sweet and familiar, to their deceptive strength, to their endless love. "Adam, what's wrong," Linden whispered, feeling the young prince all but crush them in his hug.
Adam pulled away. "Needlemaw," he said, his voice gone formal. "Could I have a word with you in private, please?"
Something flickered in the warm morning breeze between them all, and the redcap went very still. Her first instinct had been to rise and snarl in challenge; who was this mortal yearling to command her? Then she'd remembered that Adam claimed no crown, refused it even. That he didn't know he already wore one, gold and shining around his heart, earned by the strength of his character and the immensity of his honor. He was calling on that power at that moment, and he didn't even know he was doing it.
The redcap felt suddenly and profoundly uneasy. "It must be alone?" she asked.
Adam laced his fingers through Linden's, his grip almost painful, and the young sapling felt him trembling like a tree before a storm. "It must."
"I'll go see if Boul's awake," Linden breathed out. Something terrible was about to happen, the trees were all but weeping. But their faith in Adam was endless. "I'll try not to be long." They dashed away, fleet like a deer and nearly as panicky as one.
They faced one another, the deadly fairy maid and the young prince, and Adam swallowed painfully.
"Ye might as well spit out the poison before it burns up yer tongue, Adam."
"I don't want to," he admitted in a desperate plea. "It will hurt you and I don't want to."
Needlemaw froze; in all their years together she really had come to believe Adam could surprise her no further, and yet there they were, in that sunny clearing on that early summer morning, and the Prince-That-Wasn't would rather swallow whatever cruelty he was carrying around his heart rather than wound her with it. Three steps brought her to him and she hugged him tightly, felt him shake as he clung to her. "I'll not have it," she told him. "I'll not have that muchness of ye kill ye, Adam, not ever, not never-everty-ever, not for me, not for anyone. Out with it. Let me deal with me hurts." She pulled away and smiled her deadly smile. "If'n it should wound, well, I've friends here to help me with it, aye?"
He nodded and rubbed angrily at his face. "Gods, look at me, you'd think I'm a baby," he scoffed at himself, angrily fighting to keep from crying.
With sudden, heartbreaking and proud insight, Needlemaw realized he'd learned courage from her, of all possible sources in his life. "Adam."
He swallowed with an effort.
And he told her everything.
***
Needlemaw ran wailing from him.
Linden and Boul found him sitting on a root from the old linden tree, his hands tangled over his head, rocking back and forth. He clung to Linden, struggling to breathe, and Boul wrapped himself around them both, crooning the low lullaby of stone and earth, even as Linden brushed their hands through Adam's hair and assured him that they were together, they were there with him, he was not alone, he was safe. Linden had no idea how to bring their friend back to safety from this ledge, and the awareness of their impotence brought to fire the whites and blues and silvers of their shattered eyes. All they could do was hold Adam close. In the end, it seemed to be enough.
The story tumbled out of the young prince a second time. By the time he was done he was ashen and exhausted, sprawled boneless on the linden root, his head on Linden's lap.
"So it's what we thought," Linden declared somberly. "And a little bit worse in the bargain."
"Linden, could she protect him?"
"No."
Adam asked a far deadlier question. "Could you?"
"Ynoes."
"Linden."
"It doesn't matter, you don't want to be a king, so who cares? You're fine, you're safe all on your own. You shouldn't need me, you shouldn't need anyone. You'll be fine."
For the first time, Adam realized that Linden was saying the words as if speaking them out loud would make them true. "She'll hate me now."
"Needle? Never. They're not the sort that hates, her kind." Linden leaned down and Adam felt a cool brush against his forehead, and again against his cheek. By the time he realized what had happened Linden was moving away. "Boul, take him to the palace, to the fountain. I'm going to go find the Culli-maid, she'll know what to do from there."
"Needle?" the young troll asked worriedly as he scooped up the young prince, who found himself too exhausted to move or protest or fight.
"We can't help her right now," Linden admitted. "I wish we could, but we can't help her if she won't let us. I think it's best if we wait on her to sort herself out."
"Linden -"
Boul rumbled in wordless concern about his small family. Linden leaned up on their tiptoes to bump their forehead against the troll's. "Thank you, Boul. It's just hard sometimes, loving a mortal. She'll be alright."
"Linden!"
But Boul was moving then, deceptively fast for something with such seemingly stumpy legs, and Adam had been wrung of the last of his strength. Looking up as the sun shone through the green boughs of the woods, he faded away into welcome darkness, never to remember those kisses and those words as more than a dim dream, impossible to grasp.
***
Needlemaw found Adam cleaning stalls in the royal stables three days later. Normally a punishment duty, Adam often traded other princes for the job; he found it soothing to his mind and freeing to his body, hard and mindless work. That day he was so lost in his thoughts as he threw manure into the wheelbarrow that he entirely missed the equine population growing restive and nervous until one warhorse somewhere cried out a challenge.
"Adam."
"Needle!"
If she'd had any doubt that the Prince-That-Wasn't had bled to tell her cruel truths, which she hadn't, the redcap knew she would have lost them all when Adam came flying out of the pen he'd been cleaning, his eyes hopeful and wounded both. She opened her arms and he flew into them, and she realized, with some chagrin, that he was quickly getting to be nearly as tall as she. "Och, ye and the muchness of ye. Ye cannae carry the sorrows of the whole world on yuir shoulders, Adam. They're broad, they're not that broad."
"Maybe," he admitted, pulling away. "But I'd carry all of yours if I could, Needle."
"I know," she said simply. "I wonder sometimes whose blessing ye are, Adam, because by rights ye must be someone's." She tipped her head. "Let's talk outside, before yon beasties panic enough to break all their leggy-leggies at once."
He followed her dutifully and they sat on the fence around the jousting yard. "I'm sorry," Adam said at last as the silence grew between them.
"Dinnae be," the redcap replied. "Dinnae ever be sorry to offer the truth, Adam. More, when ye try so hard to offer it kindly. Each one is precious; together they're priceless."
"I hurt you."
"The truth hurt me. Ye? Never."
"Feels like the same," he muttered.
"'Tis not, and ye ken that. Leave the stubborn to Linden, now."
"What will you do now?"
Needlemaw blew out a long, very long breath, her tongue touching the tip of her sharp nose. "That, I'm still shaping in me head," she admitted. "I've got the bit at the end, and I've got a bit in the middle, but I need to be speaking with Linden about it, too. I wanted to find ye first. I thought ye might be hurting, and I didnae want that." She touched her fingers to her mouth, and brushed them against Adam's heart. "In truth, I only know one thing for sure, Adam. As much as yui've done for me, I have to ask a biggish favor, and it is a favor. With all the dues that come with it."
Adam ducked his head. "Can I do it as an apology? Not for telling you, but for hurting you? Because I did. I did hurt you, and for all the world I wish I hadn't, Needle."
She dragged in another deep breath. "Someone must have taught ye our rules, Adam, there's days I think ye know them better than half I could name on my side of the woods. Aye. That is fair and right. A favor for the hurt." She offered her hand formally.
Adam rubbed his hand clean on his pants and on his shirt, much to her quiet amusement, and shook.
"Ye got a letter from home, earlier this year. Asking ye to visit for a few days."
"I did." Adam sounded dubious.
Needlemaw's smile was a drawn blade. "Go visit."
The young prince licked his lips, nodded slowly, and trotted away.
Linden didn't wait for an invitation. When Needlemaw found them, looking for bits of white sparkling rock in a small muddy spring Boul had conjured for them from the ground, they flew at her with a glad cry. "Needlemaw!"
"Ooof!" The fairy maid took the impact and hugged her charge, the first true Danu-sidhe born in over three thousand years. "I think yui've forgotten to hate me."
"I forgot that forever ago," Linden replied. "Are you sad? Can I fix it?"
"I'm not sad... Well, I am, a little. I'm other things more. And yes, it can be fixed, and 'twill be fixed. But I'll be needing yuir help and one more to boot."
"Adam will - "
"It cannae be Adam," Needle explained. "I've sent him away. What's to come cannae fall at his feet."
"Oh," Linden merely nodded in understanding, then frowned minutely. "For long?"
Needlemaw chuckled. "No, I wouldnae do that to either of ye. No, a week. That's the tradition, from what I ken."
"Then who?"
Needle drew and held a deep breath. "I need the Culli-maid's help."
***
It didn't take long for Adam to organize. For this trip, with a standing invitation, he needed only to go to Master Leminy. The Master of Scions had grown into a habit of tightening up every time someone came into his offices, every time expecting the worst of news. His relief when Adam explained what he wanted was both visible and nearly solid.
That didn't mean the young prince had his way with it. Nearly one entire bag in the sturdy pack pony he was given was homework. Never one to give such labor to someone else, Adam was still used to having Beli as a study partner, but his friend had begged leave to stay muttering something about 'royal stipends' and 'robbed blind' and talking about getting a personal ledger as if he were making dire threats. Against who, Adam didn't even dare guess, but he was perfectly fine taking Dane instead, and likely a great deal safer. As before, Adam's strapping companion found himself equipped for the trip from the castoffs of too many dead princes; unlike Beli, he actually took all of it to the priests of the Tree-Father and the Night-Mother, and paid them for their blessings. Adam helped him carry a great deal of it, shaking his head to silence Dane when he tried to apologize for the delay.
It still took nearly three days to get ready. For the first time Adam met Dane's mother, a short and plump maid at the palace with flour on her apron and a white and messy bun on her head. The courtesy with which he greeted her flustered both mother and son. He had given his scarce goodbyes and was about to mount up when he found a familiar, unwelcomed face on the palace steps.
"William."
"Adam," the older prince said stiffly, and the silence stretched out unkindly between them. "I've not made time to see you after you came back. I'm sorry."
"Think nothing of it," Adam replied automatically; William's absence had never been the problem.
William replied just as instinctively, as if their learned manners were easier than the hidden truths they both carried and shared unspoken. "You did me a courtesy I should have remembered." He drew a deep breath and stared at the Royal Gardens, the slow-sweeping blades of the water-mill, the distant dark smudge of the royal woods behind it. "Is everything alright? With... her, I mean?"
"It was when I last spoke to her," Adam replied truthfully. Everything had been fine between him and Needlemaw. "Why, is something wrong? Er, between you?" He hesitated minutely. "Ugh, it feels like intruding, asking something like that."
"No, no, it's fine, really. You're her friend. It's just." William looked at him. "It's been six days since I saw her. She's never away that long, unless it's winter, and I just thought, I wanted, I didn't know..." His voice trailed off. Adam could only guess that William was coming to terms with how little he actually did know about his fairy maid. "She's alright, then?"
"William, she's..." Adam sifted through his mental fingers everything he knew about Needlemaw, trying to finding some truth he could offer without betraying her confidence, because the only other option was to leap at William and punch him until he learned respect, and that just wasn't feasible. It would have been profoundly satisfying, but William wasn't his to claim. "She's been rising in importance among her people," he admitted at last.
"Oh? I didn't know that."
Of course not, Adam thought. You'd probably think it sickening to see her threading knucklebones into her cap. "She has her own obligations, William. I'm sure she's told you about that."
"Oh. Oh!" William caught his forehead on a hand. "Oh, I'm a right git, I didn't even think of that." He sighed, his concern swiftly turning to vexation. "So she's alright, then, just caught up on things."
Adam felt any vestige of concern over the older prince die on the spot. He'd never really been worried about Needle; he'd just been fretting about the absence of his shield. "I'm sure she'll make time for you soon, William," he declared. "But I do have to..."
"Oh, right, sorry, of course. Ah, safe trip, and all that." William stepped back and nodded, awkward once again.
Adam turned his back on him, mounted his horse, and rode away without a single glance back.
William did his best to curb his impatience. It was greatly motivated, he knew, by the fact that he'd crossed what every prince knew was the unspoken line between the safety of childhood and the danger of adulthood, and he'd made no other preparations to protect himself beyond courting the fairy maid. He figured divine providence had brought her to him, those few years ago; why tempt fate for two birds when there's one already in your hand?
He went about his life, trying not to feel threadbare and betrayed, and wondering how he might make her apologize to him for abandoning him so. Even a whirl around the jousting yard didn't improve his mood, but finding the letter waiting for him on his writing desk after he came out of his bath certainly did.
It was faintly perfumed, though he couldn't recognize the smell. Something lemony, like tea, or candies. The writing was elegant and lady-like, and his brows climbed up at the sight of it, having never seen his lady-love write, always scoffing at the thought of it as a skill. The apologies were many and elegant, and he allowed himself to be mollified somewhat. And she asked, ever so prettily, to see him. Just for a little while, if that was all they could manage, just for a breath, so she'd know he was safe. She would be waiting, the letter told him, in the wild garden that stood in the ruins of an old gamekeeper's cottage, a building of stone and moss-eaten timbers that was a favored haunt of theirs whenever the weather forced them to seek a roof. One of the cottage walls had caved in and the shutters were long gone, but the garden walls stood strong, and the slate roof still persisted. Mostly.
He dressed with care and practiced his most somber and severe and disappointed looks in his mirror. But William never allowed himself to go so far as to forget he needed the fairy maid. She was his safety, his shield, the only chance he'd left himself to win an impossible crown. His family had no wealth, they scarce had their title, and their blood tie to the Dowager was slim and suspect. For William, the choices were to go back home and languish in hollow honors until he could wed a bride well below his station but with a fat purse, or to survive the trial of the Folk in the Woods.
And that deep streak of cowardice Needlemaw had so clearly seen in him told the prince, without an ounce of compassion, that he would never live through it.
He picked up a small ribbon, a simple thing with a silver clasp, and made haste to the meeting. The bottom of the sun was touching the horizon when he reached the cottage, the early summer air full of golden motes and the deep, rich scents of a hundred wildflowers. He eschewed the iron gate, long gone to rust and impossible to move, and climbed over the wall where a tangle of ivy provided a very useful ladder. Landing inside he roused a cloud of ladybugs and a few errant butterflies, chivvying them aside with gentleness he'd only ever exercised because of the fairy maid. "Needle!"
He moved cautiously through paths they had trod together before, where the stepping stones were barely visible anymore. The warmth was invigorating, the scent in the breeze familiar and yet not, and he felt deeply happy just to smell it, just to be alive on that beautiful summer day, with every flower around him in bloom like a blessing given. "Needle?"
"Over here, William," she called out.
He turned and made his way to where the well had once stood. The brush opened up into a clearing here, where the stones had been put down with more care, set into sand and clay. "Needle?"
She rose and came around the well, and William lost his breath.
She was beautiful.
The fairy maid was tall, as tall as William if not more, but he'd long accepted that as something that couldn't be changed. But instead of boy's trousers or a peasant's woolen skirt, instead of a plain linen blouse saggy and threadbare, she wore an exquisite gown of lavender satin with plum-colored embroidery and cream lace. It tightened around a waist that William could have held with both his hands with perhaps a knuckle to spare, dainty and delicate.
The ugly, smelly russet cap was gone, and the wild mess of her crimson curls had been tamed back under a beautiful set of green enameled combs and a broad gold hair clasp set with black and red gemstones. Her eyes were rich and gold on her narrow, sharp face, but the most subtle touch of make-up softened the thin, angular lines to something sweet and demure. There was a faint touch of pink on her lips that made them a plush invitation. There was a delicate choker around her neck, like the branches of a tree, inset with white and delicate flowers made of some jewel William couldn't recognize.
A wiser man would have run then.
William merely stepped forward, drunk in the summer-rich air. He'd had his blessings from the Tree-Father's priest. He believed, in his heart of hearts, that Needle could not enthrall him. Needlemaw fully accepted that. She was using not a whit of her power.
The garden was Linden's. The wall was Boul's. And the exquisite beauty the redcap had become was entirely Culli's work.
"Needle, oh, look at you. Is this for me?" he breathed out in wonder.
"All for you," she admitted, letting him come to her, speaking very carefully, soft and meek like a mouse. It had taken her hours, and she'd never be able to repay the patience the Culli-maid had shown her in teaching her. "Did you think I was not listening, all those times you asked to see me thus?"
"I didn't think you cared." William reached her at last. He reached out to run his fingertips over the exquisitely bright crimson of her hair. "I didn't think you loved me enough," he said. For just a moment, a single heartbeat, he thought he smelled charnel, spilled blood, torn flesh.
Needlemaw tipped her head slightly. "Ah, William." The rich golden light of the setting summer sun caught on the jewels in her hair clasp.
The prince forgot everything else. She wasn't just powerful, she was beautiful, she was wealthy, she was everything he needed to become king. He slid his hand down to cradle that delicate, fine-boned cheek in the cup of his hand. "Look at you. You do love me."
Needlemaw's eyes closed under that warm, mortal touch. They were a drug, mortals were, but she was lucky: she'd had years to learn what true love was, from her mortal younger brother, from her wild and free and more-fey-than-most ward, from her littlest troll brother. She'd had ample time to see what honor looked like, what loyalty felt like, what goodness tasted like. She set her hand lightly over William's. Her eyes opened and she stared very calmly at this stupid mortal thing that thought she was to be used and unraveled like an undyed cap. "My William," she said. "My loving you isn't the problem; you not loving me is."
She gripped his hand, whipped around, and bit two of his fingers off.
William howled and staggered back, and she let him go. While he'd been busy looking at her the walls around them had risen to impossible heights. While he'd been enjoying the sight of what he thought he'd earned, the garden had shifted all around them, and other than knowing where the well was because he could still see it, he could tell nothing of direction or escape.
Needle rolled the fingers thoughtfully in her mouth and spat something into her dainty hand, holding it up to the light. It was William's signet ring, still holding part of one finger in its hoop.
The prince lunged for his dagger, belatedly remembering that he didn't carry it, he carried no weapons - steel and iron weren't nearly as valuable to him as the protection of his fairy-maid. "You bitch," he sobbed, and lunged at her anyways with his bare fists.
Needlemaw backhanded him with her free hand and he nearly flew half the length of the not inconsiderable garden, crashing down in a breathless, bloody, bruised heap, still scrabbling to turn around; he was terrified to face her but even more of losing sight of her. He needn't have bothered. The redcap prowled after him; she sank black talons into the bodice of the dress and ripped it off, revealing beneath it the threadbare shirt and man's breeches, the leather girdle full of the buttons she'd claimed from her kills. She ripped off the comb and her hair turned into a wild mass, falling over her face, but not fast enough to hide the immense, gashing wound of her maw, filled with needle-like teeth, or the cadmium-yellow of her alien, inhuman, predatory eyes, full of rage and hunger. She spat on the comb; Boul's magic on it broke and it turned in her hand into the russet cap with the threaded knucklebones, and she shoved it in place with a jaunty little pat.
William tried to flee. She leapt and caught him by the back of the neck, lifting him up until his kicking feet were a good arm's length off the ground. She shook him roughly, and he clawed at her with his good hand and the crippled one, smearing his blood all over her.
Her long black tongue came out and licked at the smears, and her smile curled and curled and curled. "I'm told," she told him casually, "that yui're never to be parted from this wee trinket." She held up the signet ring; her tongue lashed out and took the last bit of William's finger from it, and it disappeared with a sickening crunch inside her mouth. "So I'll let yuir family have it because, more the fool me, I really did love ye, William, sweet, stupid William. Just so they'll know what's become of ye."
"Please," he pleaded, weeping and breathless. "Please!"
"Ah, there it is," she purred. "Now if'n only yui'd been a coward when it would've been helpful to the both of us."
"Please, I love you."
"Oh, do ye now. Cross yuir heart?"
"Yes!"
She brought him down until he could make out the yellow of her eyes through the crimson of her curls, until he could smell his blood on her breath. "Let's find out for surety-sure, then," she said cheerfully, and sank her free hand into his chest.
The signet ring was found, along with a single knucklebone, carefully placed dead center of the jousting ring when the first class of the day came by that morning. Needlemaw didn't mind parting with it. She had plenty other knucklebones to stitch into her cap, and William had not been a particularly fearsome kill to merit the honor.
Part 1 - Part 2 - Parts 3 & 4 - Part 5 - Part 6, 7 & 8 - Part 9 & 10 - Part 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 & 16 - Part 17, 18, & 19 - Part 20, 21 & 22 - Part 23, 24, 25 & 26 - Part 27, 28, 29 & 30 - Part 31, 32, 33 & 34 - Part 35, 36 & 37 - Part 38, 39, 40 & 41 - Part 42 & 43 - Part 44 & 45 - Part 46 & 47 - Part 48, 49, 50 & 51 - Part, 52, 53 & 54 - Part 55 & 56 - Part 57, 58, 59 & 60 - Part 61, 62, 63, 64 & 65 - Part 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71 & 72
Originally posted 12/7/2022
Adam jerked awake from a fragile drowse when he heard his friends coming, Needle’s low and rasping voice a pleased and pleasant growl in counterpoint to Linden’s songbird cadence. He smiled in appreciation and climbed hastily down from the tree. “Linden, Needle!”
They rushed over to him. “Adam!” Linden cried out gladly, launching at him to hug him. He clung to them, to their friend, to their scent, sweet and familiar, to their deceptive strength, to their endless love. “Adam, what’s wrong,” Linden whispered, feeling the young prince all but crush them in his hug.
Adam pulled away. “Needlemaw,” he said, his voice gone formal. “Could I have a word with you in private, please?”
Something flickered in the warm morning breeze between them all, and the redcap went very still. Her first instinct had been to rise and snarl in challenge; who was this mortal yearling to command her? Then she’d remembered that Adam claimed no crown, refused it even. That he didn’t know he already wore one, gold and shining around his heart, earned by the strength of his character and the immensity of his honor. He was calling on that power at that moment, and he didn’t even know he was doing it.
The redcap felt suddenly and profoundly uneasy. “It must be alone?” she asked.
Adam laced his fingers through Linden’s, his grip almost painful, and the young sapling felt him trembling like a tree before a storm. “It must.”
“I’ll go see if Boul’s awake,” Linden breathed out. Something terrible was about to happen, the trees were all but weeping. But their faith in Adam was endless. “I’ll try not to be long.” They dashed away, fleet like a deer and nearly as panicky as one.
They faced one another, the deadly fairy maid and the young prince, and Adam swallowed painfully.
“Ye might as well spit out the poison before it burns up yer tongue, Adam.”
“I don’t want to,” he admitted in a desperate plea. “It will hurt you and I don’t want to.”
Needlemaw froze; in all their years together she really had come to believe Adam could surprise her no further, and yet there they were, in that sunny clearing on that early summer morning, and the Prince-That-Wasn’t would rather swallow whatever cruelty he was carrying around his heart rather than wound her with it. Three steps brought her to him and she hugged him tightly, felt him shake as he clung to her. “I’ll not have it,” she told him. “I’ll not have that muchness of ye kill ye, Adam, not ever, not never-everty-ever, not for me, not for anyone. Out with it. Let me deal with me hurts.” She pulled away and smiled her deadly smile. “If'n it should wound, well, I’ve friends here to help me with it, aye?”
He nodded and rubbed angrily at his face. “Gods, look at me, you’d think I’m a baby,” he scoffed at himself, angrily fighting to keep from crying.
With sudden, heartbreaking and proud insight, Needlemaw realized he’d learned courage from her, of all possible sources in his life. “Adam.”
He swallowed with an effort.
And he told her everything.
***
Needlemaw ran wailing from him.
Linden and Boul found him sitting on a root from the old linden tree, his hands tangled over his head, rocking back and forth. He clung to Linden, struggling to breathe, and Boul wrapped himself around them both, crooning the low lullaby of stone and earth, even as Linden brushed their hands through Adam’s hair and assured him that they were together, they were there with him, he was not alone, he was safe. Linden had no idea how to bring their friend back to safety from this ledge, and the awareness of their impotence brought to fire the whites and blues and silvers of their shattered eyes. All they could do was hold Adam close. In the end, it seemed to be enough.
The story tumbled out of the young prince a second time. By the time he was done he was ashen and exhausted, sprawled boneless on the linden root, his head on Linden’s lap.
“So it’s what we thought,” Linden declared somberly. “And a little bit worse in the bargain.”
“Linden, could she protect him?”
“No.”
Adam asked a far deadlier question. “Could you?”
“Ynoes.”
“Linden.”
“It doesn’t matter, you don’t want to be a king, so who cares? You’re fine, you’re safe all on your own. You shouldn’t need me, you shouldn’t need anyone. You’ll be fine.”
For the first time, Adam realized that Linden was saying the words as if speaking them out loud would make them true. “She’ll hate me now.”
“Needle? Never. They’re not the sort that hates, her kind.” Linden leaned down and Adam felt a cool brush against his forehead, and again against his cheek. By the time he realized what had happened Linden was moving away. “Boul, take him to the palace, to the fountain. I’m going to go find the Culli-maid, she’ll know what to do from there.”
“Needle?” the young troll asked worriedly as he scooped up the young prince, who found himself too exhausted to move or protest or fight.
“We can’t help her right now,” Linden admitted. “I wish we could, but we can’t help her if she won’t let us. I think it’s best if we wait on her to sort herself out.”
“Linden -”
Boul rumbled in wordless concern about his small family. Linden leaned up on their tiptoes to bump their forehead against the troll’s. “Thank you, Boul. It’s just hard sometimes, loving a mortal. She’ll be alright.”
“Linden!”
But Boul was moving then, deceptively fast for something with such seemingly stumpy legs, and Adam had been wrung of the last of his strength. Looking up as the sun shone through the green boughs of the woods, he faded away into welcome darkness, never to remember those kisses and those words as more than a dim dream, impossible to grasp.
***
Needlemaw found Adam cleaning stalls in the royal stables three days later. Normally a punishment duty, Adam often traded other princes for the job; he found it soothing to his mind and freeing to his body, hard and mindless work. That day he was so lost in his thoughts as he threw manure into the wheelbarrow that he entirely missed the equine population growing restive and nervous until one warhorse somewhere cried out a challenge.
“Adam.”
“Needle!”
If she’d had any doubt that the Prince-That-Wasn’t had bled to tell her cruel truths, which she hadn’t, the redcap knew she would have lost them all when Adam came flying out of the pen he’d been cleaning, his eyes hopeful and wounded both. She opened her arms and he flew into them, and she realized, with some chagrin, that he was quickly getting to be nearly as tall as she. “Och, ye and the muchness of ye. Ye cannae carry the sorrows of the whole world on yuir shoulders, Adam. They’re broad, they’re not that broad.”
“Maybe,” he admitted, pulling away. “But I’d carry all of yours if I could, Needle.”
“I know,” she said simply. “I wonder sometimes whose blessing ye are, Adam, because by rights ye must be someone’s.” She tipped her head. “Let’s talk outside, before yon beasties panic enough to break all their leggy-leggies at once.”
He followed her dutifully and they sat on the fence around the jousting yard. “I’m sorry,” Adam said at last as the silence grew between them.
“Dinnae be,” the redcap replied. “Dinnae ever be sorry to offer the truth, Adam. More, when ye try so hard to offer it kindly. Each one is precious; together they’re priceless.”
“I hurt you.”
“The truth hurt me. Ye? Never.”
“Feels like the same,” he muttered.
“‘Tis not, and ye ken that. Leave the stubborn to Linden, now.”
“What will you do now?”
Needlemaw blew out a long, very long breath, her tongue touching the tip of her sharp nose. “That, I’m still shaping in me head,” she admitted. “I’ve got the bit at the end, and I’ve got a bit in the middle, but I need to be speaking with Linden about it, too. I wanted to find ye first. I thought ye might be hurting, and I didnae want that.” She touched her fingers to her mouth, and brushed them against Adam’s heart. “In truth, I only know one thing for sure, Adam. As much as yui’ve done for me, I have to ask a biggish favor, and it is a favor. With all the dues that come with it.”
Adam ducked his head. “Can I do it as an apology? Not for telling you, but for hurting you? Because I did. I did hurt you, and for all the world I wish I hadn’t, Needle.”
She dragged in another deep breath. “Someone must have taught ye our rules, Adam, there’s days I think ye know them better than half I could name on my side of the woods. Aye. That is fair and right. A favor for the hurt.” She offered her hand formally.
Adam rubbed his hand clean on his pants and on his shirt, much to her quiet amusement, and shook.
“Ye got a letter from home, earlier this year. Asking ye to visit for a few days.”
“I did.” Adam sounded dubious.
Needlemaw’s smile was a drawn blade. “Go visit.”
The young prince licked his lips, nodded slowly, and trotted away.
Linden didn’t wait for an invitation. When Needlemaw found them, looking for bits of white sparkling rock in a small muddy spring Boul had conjured for them from the ground, they flew at her with a glad cry. “Needlemaw!”
“Ooof!” The fairy maid took the impact and hugged her charge, the first true Danu-sidhe born in over three thousand years. “I think yui’ve forgotten to hate me.”
“I forgot that forever ago,” Linden replied. “Are you sad? Can I fix it?”
“I’m not sad… Well, I am, a little. I’m other things more. And yes, it can be fixed, and 'twill be fixed. But I’ll be needing yuir help and one more to boot.”
“Adam will - ”
“It cannae be Adam,” Needle explained. “I’ve sent him away. What’s to come cannae fall at his feet.”
“Oh,” Linden merely nodded in understanding, then frowned minutely. “For long?”
Needlemaw chuckled. “No, I wouldnae do that to either of ye. No, a week. That’s the tradition, from what I ken.”
“Then who?”
Needle drew and held a deep breath. “I need the Culli-maid’s help.”
***
It didn’t take long for Adam to organize. For this trip, with a standing invitation, he needed only to go to Master Leminy. The Master of Scions had grown into a habit of tightening up every time someone came into his offices, every time expecting the worst of news. His relief when Adam explained what he wanted was both visible and nearly solid.
That didn’t mean the young prince had his way with it. Nearly one entire bag in the sturdy pack pony he was given was homework. Never one to give such labor to someone else, Adam was still used to having Beli as a study partner, but his friend had begged leave to stay muttering something about 'royal stipends’ and 'robbed blind’ and talking about getting a personal ledger as if he were making dire threats. Against who, Adam didn’t even dare guess, but he was perfectly fine taking Dane instead, and likely a great deal safer. As before, Adam’s strapping companion found himself equipped for the trip from the castoffs of too many dead princes; unlike Beli, he actually took all of it to the priests of the Tree-Father and the Night-Mother, and paid them for their blessings. Adam helped him carry a great deal of it, shaking his head to silence Dane when he tried to apologize for the delay.
It still took nearly three days to get ready. For the first time Adam met Dane’s mother, a short and plump maid at the palace with flour on her apron and a white and messy bun on her head. The courtesy with which he greeted her flustered both mother and son. He had given his scarce goodbyes and was about to mount up when he found a familiar, unwelcomed face on the palace steps.
“William.”
“Adam,” the older prince said stiffly, and the silence stretched out unkindly between them. “I’ve not made time to see you after you came back. I’m sorry.”
“Think nothing of it,” Adam replied automatically; William’s absence had never been the problem.
William replied just as instinctively, as if their learned manners were easier than the hidden truths they both carried and shared unspoken. “You did me a courtesy I should have remembered.” He drew a deep breath and stared at the Royal Gardens, the slow-sweeping blades of the water-mill, the distant dark smudge of the royal woods behind it. “Is everything alright? With… her, I mean?”
“It was when I last spoke to her,” Adam replied truthfully. Everything had been fine between him and Needlemaw. “Why, is something wrong? Er, between you?” He hesitated minutely. “Ugh, it feels like intruding, asking something like that.”
“No, no, it’s fine, really. You’re her friend. It’s just.” William looked at him. “It’s been six days since I saw her. She’s never away that long, unless it’s winter, and I just thought, I wanted, I didn’t know…” His voice trailed off. Adam could only guess that William was coming to terms with how little he actually did know about his fairy maid. “She’s alright, then?”
“William, she’s…” Adam sifted through his mental fingers everything he knew about Needlemaw, trying to finding some truth he could offer without betraying her confidence, because the only other option was to leap at William and punch him until he learned respect, and that just wasn’t feasible. It would have been profoundly satisfying, but William wasn’t his to claim. “She’s been rising in importance among her people,” he admitted at last.
“Oh? I didn’t know that.”
Of course not, Adam thought. You’d probably think it sickening to see her threading knucklebones into her cap. “She has her own obligations, William. I’m sure she’s told you about that.”
“Oh. Oh!” William caught his forehead on a hand. “Oh, I’m a right git, I didn’t even think of that.” He sighed, his concern swiftly turning to vexation. “So she’s alright, then, just caught up on things.”
Adam felt any vestige of concern over the older prince die on the spot. He’d never really been worried about Needle; he’d just been fretting about the absence of his shield. “I’m sure she’ll make time for you soon, William,” he declared. “But I do have to…”
“Oh, right, sorry, of course. Ah, safe trip, and all that.” William stepped back and nodded, awkward once again.
Adam turned his back on him, mounted his horse, and rode away without a single glance back.
William did his best to curb his impatience. It was greatly motivated, he knew, by the fact that he’d crossed what every prince knew was the unspoken line between the safety of childhood and the danger of adulthood, and he’d made no other preparations to protect himself beyond courting the fairy maid. He figured divine providence had brought her to him, those few years ago; why tempt fate for two birds when there’s one already in your hand?
He went about his life, trying not to feel threadbare and betrayed, and wondering how he might make her apologize to him for abandoning him so. Even a whirl around the jousting yard didn’t improve his mood, but finding the letter waiting for him on his writing desk after he came out of his bath certainly did.
It was faintly perfumed, though he couldn’t recognize the smell. Something lemony, like tea, or candies. The writing was elegant and lady-like, and his brows climbed up at the sight of it, having never seen his lady-love write, always scoffing at the thought of it as a skill. The apologies were many and elegant, and he allowed himself to be mollified somewhat. And she asked, ever so prettily, to see him. Just for a little while, if that was all they could manage, just for a breath, so she’d know he was safe. She would be waiting, the letter told him, in the wild garden that stood in the ruins of an old gamekeeper’s cottage, a building of stone and moss-eaten timbers that was a favored haunt of theirs whenever the weather forced them to seek a roof. One of the cottage walls had caved in and the shutters were long gone, but the garden walls stood strong, and the slate roof still persisted. Mostly.
He dressed with care and practiced his most somber and severe and disappointed looks in his mirror. But William never allowed himself to go so far as to forget he needed the fairy maid. She was his safety, his shield, the only chance he’d left himself to win an impossible crown. His family had no wealth, they scarce had their title, and their blood tie to the Dowager was slim and suspect. For William, the choices were to go back home and languish in hollow honors until he could wed a bride well below his station but with a fat purse, or to survive the trial of the Folk in the Woods.
And that deep streak of cowardice Needlemaw had so clearly seen in him told the prince, without an ounce of compassion, that he would never live through it.
He picked up a small ribbon, a simple thing with a silver clasp, and made haste to the meeting. The bottom of the sun was touching the horizon when he reached the cottage, the early summer air full of golden motes and the deep, rich scents of a hundred wildflowers. He eschewed the iron gate, long gone to rust and impossible to move, and climbed over the wall where a tangle of ivy provided a very useful ladder. Landing inside he roused a cloud of ladybugs and a few errant butterflies, chivvying them aside with gentleness he’d only ever exercised because of the fairy maid. “Needle!”
He moved cautiously through paths they had trod together before, where the stepping stones were barely visible anymore. The warmth was invigorating, the scent in the breeze familiar and yet not, and he felt deeply happy just to smell it, just to be alive on that beautiful summer day, with every flower around him in bloom like a blessing given. “Needle?”
“Over here, William,” she called out.
He turned and made his way to where the well had once stood. The brush opened up into a clearing here, where the stones had been put down with more care, set into sand and clay. “Needle?”
She rose and came around the well, and William lost his breath.
She was beautiful.
The fairy maid was tall, as tall as William if not more, but he’d long accepted that as something that couldn’t be changed. But instead of boy’s trousers or a peasant’s woolen skirt, instead of a plain linen blouse saggy and threadbare, she wore an exquisite gown of lavender satin with plum-colored embroidery and cream lace. It tightened around a waist that William could have held with both his hands with perhaps a knuckle to spare, dainty and delicate.
The ugly, smelly russet cap was gone, and the wild mess of her crimson curls had been tamed back under a beautiful set of green enameled combs and a broad gold hair clasp set with black and red gemstones. Her eyes were rich and gold on her narrow, sharp face, but the most subtle touch of make-up softened the thin, angular lines to something sweet and demure. There was a faint touch of pink on her lips that made them a plush invitation. There was a delicate choker around her neck, like the branches of a tree, inset with white and delicate flowers made of some jewel William couldn’t recognize.
A wiser man would have run then.
William merely stepped forward, drunk in the summer-rich air. He’d had his blessings from the Tree-Father’s priest. He believed, in his heart of hearts, that Needle could not enthrall him. Needlemaw fully accepted that. She was using not a whit of her power.
The garden was Linden’s. The wall was Boul’s. And the exquisite beauty the redcap had become was entirely Culli’s work.
“Needle, oh, look at you. Is this for me?” he breathed out in wonder.
“All for you,” she admitted, letting him come to her, speaking very carefully, soft and meek like a mouse. It had taken her hours, and she’d never be able to repay the patience the Culli-maid had shown her in teaching her. “Did you think I was not listening, all those times you asked to see me thus?”
“I didn’t think you cared.” William reached her at last. He reached out to run his fingertips over the exquisitely bright crimson of her hair. “I didn’t think you loved me enough,” he said. For just a moment, a single heartbeat, he thought he smelled charnel, spilled blood, torn flesh.
Needlemaw tipped her head slightly. “Ah, William.” The rich golden light of the setting summer sun caught on the jewels in her hair clasp.
The prince forgot everything else. She wasn’t just powerful, she was beautiful, she was wealthy, she was everything he needed to become king. He slid his hand down to cradle that delicate, fine-boned cheek in the cup of his hand. “Look at you. You do love me.”
Needlemaw’s eyes closed under that warm, mortal touch. They were a drug, mortals were, but she was lucky: she’d had years to learn what true love was, from her mortal younger brother, from her wild and free and more-fey-than-most ward, from her littlest troll brother. She’d had ample time to see what honor looked like, what loyalty felt like, what goodness tasted like. She set her hand lightly over William’s. Her eyes opened and she stared very calmly at this stupid mortal thing that thought she was to be used and unraveled like an undyed cap. “My William,” she said. “My loving you isn’t the problem; you not loving me is.”
She gripped his hand, whipped around, and bit two of his fingers off.
William howled and staggered back, and she let him go. While he’d been busy looking at her the walls around them had risen to impossible heights. While he’d been enjoying the sight of what he thought he’d earned, the garden had shifted all around them, and other than knowing where the well was because he could still see it, he could tell nothing of direction or escape.
Needle rolled the fingers thoughtfully in her mouth and spat something into her dainty hand, holding it up to the light. It was William’s signet ring, still holding part of one finger in its hoop.
The prince lunged for his dagger, belatedly remembering that he didn’t carry it, he carried no weapons - steel and iron weren’t nearly as valuable to him as the protection of his fairy-maid. “You bitch,” he sobbed, and lunged at her anyways with his bare fists.
Needlemaw backhanded him with her free hand and he nearly flew half the length of the not inconsiderable garden, crashing down in a breathless, bloody, bruised heap, still scrabbling to turn around; he was terrified to face her but even more of losing sight of her. He needn’t have bothered. The redcap prowled after him; she sank black talons into the bodice of the dress and ripped it off, revealing beneath it the threadbare shirt and man’s breeches, the leather girdle full of the buttons she’d claimed from her kills. She ripped off the comb and her hair turned into a wild mass, falling over her face, but not fast enough to hide the immense, gashing wound of her maw, filled with needle-like teeth, or the cadmium-yellow of her alien, inhuman, predatory eyes, full of rage and hunger. She spat on the comb; Boul’s magic on it broke and it turned in her hand into the russet cap with the threaded knucklebones, and she shoved it in place with a jaunty little pat.
William tried to flee. She leapt and caught him by the back of the neck, lifting him up until his kicking feet were a good arm’s length off the ground. She shook him roughly, and he clawed at her with his good hand and the crippled one, smearing his blood all over her.
Her long black tongue came out and licked at the smears, and her smile curled and curled and curled. “I’m told,” she told him casually, “that yui’re never to be parted from this wee trinket.” She held up the signet ring; her tongue lashed out and took the last bit of William’s finger from it, and it disappeared with a sickening crunch inside her mouth. “So I’ll let yuir family have it because, more the fool me, I really did love ye, William, sweet, stupid William. Just so they’ll know what’s become of ye.”
“Please,” he pleaded, weeping and breathless. “Please!”
“Ah, there it is,” she purred. “Now if'n only yui’d been a coward when it would’ve been helpful to the both of us.”
“Please, I love you.”
“Oh, do ye now. Cross yuir heart?”
“Yes!”
She brought him down until he could make out the yellow of her eyes through the crimson of her curls, until he could smell his blood on her breath. “Let’s find out for surety-sure, then,” she said cheerfully, and sank her free hand into his chest.
The signet ring was found, along with a single knucklebone, carefully placed dead center of the jousting ring when the first class of the day came by that morning. Needlemaw didn’t mind parting with it. She had plenty other knucklebones to stitch into her cap, and William had not been a particularly fearsome kill to merit the honor.
Part 1 - Part 2 - Parts 3 & 4 - Part 5 - Part 6, 7 & 8 - Part 9 & 10 - Part 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 & 16 - Part 17, 18, & 19 - Part 20, 21 & 22 - Part 23, 24, 25 & 26 - Part 27, 28, 29 & 30 - Part 31, 32, 33 & 34 - Part 35, 36 & 37 - Part 38, 39, 40 & 41 - Part 42 & 43 - Part 44 & 45 - Part 46 & 47 - Part 48, 49, 50 & 51 - Part, 52, 53 & 54 - Part 55 & 56 - Part 57, 58, 59 & 60 - Part 61, 62, 63, 64 & 65 - Part 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71 & 72
Ahm. Here the story starts getting a little darker. If you’d like to suggest tags for safety’s sake please do so, because I don’t know what I’m doing when it comes to tags.
Autumn came, and with it William's seventeenth birthday. Unlike Adam's parents, William's family did want to at least look like they gave a damn about the son they'd placed on the bloody altar of the Dowager Queen's curse. They sent what was needed so he could host a small dinner for whatever friends and allies he'd made, and a gift of a fine jousting saddle. Adam was invited, and found himself the youngest once again; it made him think wistfully on what time he had spent at the palace. They ribbed him about his desire never to come to the crown, of course, and he accepted the teasing gracefully. They wondered why he lingered in the palace, if he truly had no intention of claiming the throne. Adam fully admitted to them that he would stay even after someone took the throne; he wanted nothing to do with the parents who'd thrown him into such a mess. Once there were a King, he'd be free to swear fealty, and perhaps they ought to get hopping to it?
It brought wry laughs because they could all too readily see his plight in their own, and they returned to making William's birthday as memorable as they could.
Full of good food, warmed by strangely unexpected cheer and wobbling a little from too much sherry, brandy, and other rich liquors, Adam found himself unwilling and unable to tolerate the walls of the palace. He found his way to a bench in a nearby garden and flopped down on it with a groan that said he'd learned his lesson well: only two servings of roasted stuffed goose with peach glaze next time. Three, tops.
A crack of thunder woke him up so violently he fell off the stone bench, crashing down to the ground with a stinging impact, drenched by a freezing, torrential downpour that had failed to rouse him even as it chilled him to the bone. He sat up, panting as if he'd run for miles. His head was pounding with the aftereffects of too much liquor, and the food had gone to a stone in his gut.
There was someone walking along the lawn. Adam roused to his feet, feeling sick to his heart. In the light of a lightning bolt he saw it, clear as if it were daylight, indelibly etched in his mind and his memory: someone was walking across the green grass with the jerking, rigid motions of a puppet, pulled and pushed this way and that by its strings. On a second flash of light Adam realized that whoever they were, they were not alone: another figure, lithe and slender, a ghost of fog, a shape drawn in raindrops and wind, was dancing around them.
"Hey," he croaked, his voice strangled by fear and drowned by the rain. He took a few uncertain steps forward.
The whispering voices of the water-spouts called out his name. They were full of warnings.
"Keep talking," he urged them. "Keep calling my name. Please. So I won't forget it."
They sang his name, all of them, an endless echo powered by the violent rain, and Adam gasped for breath, unaware that he'd been all but drowning until that moment. "Hey!" he shouted.
Lightning answered. The swirling thing around the walking figure came to a standstill.
Adam walked. He ran. "Hey, stop!"
The thing of rain and wind and fog began to dance and circle again, and the walker jerked forward. Adam slid on the grass and the mud. "Stop! Leave him alone! Let him b-!" He skid to a halt, mouth open, every thought and emotion gone to a jumble and a knot in his heart.
Prince Rickard stared back at him, and took another step toward the woods. "Adam," the older prince croaked. He'd just become eighteen late in spring. "Adam, help me." Another step.
Adam realized, with the most profound horror, that Rickard was aware. He knew exactly what his body was doing, there in the rain. He was wearing a shirt and pants, but no boots, no coat. He'd been ready to go to bed, likely relaxing in his room, when the Prince in the Woods had sent his emissary to summon this newest sacrifice. And try as he might, and the older prince was very much trying, not all his terror and hate, not all his rage and ruthless determination, not one jot of his willingness to kill for the crown was helping him. His feet carried him one step closer to the woods, looming immense and black before them, alien and menacing as Adam had only once before known them to be.
"Rickard, stop."
"I can't," the prince wheezed.
"Why should you," the thing of rain and fog whispered, and Adam saw her clearly at last, beautiful and deadly, inhumanly so in every regard. She wore a maid's shape, and next to her Arditty would have looked plain and forgettable. She had pale eyes and wind-tossed hair, and sometimes she wore fine courtly clothing and sometimes nothing at all. "Come, prince, my prince. Come. Are you not now a man? Should a man not be a king?" Her lips brushed against Rickard's cheek and the older prince made a high sound of terror and revulsion.
"Leave him alone!" Adam shouted at her, and she laughed at him, high and cold and cruel. "Rickard, stop!"
"I can't." Through the sodden shirt Adam could see that Rickard was truly trying. Every muscle on the older prince's body was standing out starkly, to no avail. He'd taken three more steps already on his way. "Adam, strike me, break my legs, do something. Stop me. Help me, please."
"What's to help, oh, what's to help, prince, my prince?" She tangled up around him as intimately as a lover in bed, running her hands and her too-sharp fingers through Rickard's rain-plastered hair. "Have you not lied, cheated, schemed for this crown you wish to claim? Have you not killed, have you not spilled blood, oh, blood, warm and rich." She licked along the side of Rickard's neck, who closed his eyes tightly and fought his head away. She spun around him in a flash of lightning, laughing. "Is this not what you have always wanted, prince, my prince, my sweet, delicious prince?"
Adam saw the treeline far too close, and shadows like wolves prowling along the edges. "Rickard," he said at last. "Rickard, answer her."
"Help me," the older prince croaked. "Adam, please." Nothing remained of the bully, of the older boy, sure of his strength and his cold machinations. There was only a terrified young man trapped by a power entirely beyond his understanding.
"Rickard, answer her!" Adam shouted. "Tell her! Tell her you don't want the crown! Tell her you give it up -!" He had to throw himself back, crashing down on a heap in the muddy ground when the fairy maid lunged at him, hissing like a blizzard wind, her fingers gone to talons of ice. "They can't take you if you do!"
Rickard fought to drag in a breath. Everything he'd done, everything he'd lost and sacrificed, every part of his heart and his soul that he'd cut away, came crashing down on him like the most terrible of avalanches. He'd thought it would all be worth it if he could only claim the crown. He'd never imagined it had all along been a contest he'd lost before he'd even begun. "I -" His voice strangled, gone to nothing; she'd closed her hands around his throat.
"Cheat!" Adam cried out. "You're cheating!"
The rain cut off as if an ax had swung and murdered it. The wind went perfectly still. The fairy maid gasped and locked her pale white starlight eyes on the young prince. "You dare -!" All her power suddenly came to rest on him, bidding him be silent, bidding him be still.
Somewhere far behind him the spouts whispered his name, and Adam flicked his hair from his face and her power from his mind. "You're cheating," he told her sharply. "He has to take your test, but only if he wants the crown. You can't make him if he doesn't want it, and if you don't let him choose, you're cheating."
"He wants it," she hissed.
"You don't speak for him."
Something, immense and dark and so powerful it felt as if the night itself were speaking, did something at the edge of the woods. Growling, she released her grip on Rickard's throat, and the older prince crashed down to his knees, coughing, breath rasping in and out of him erratically.
"Rickard," Adam said. "Rickard, tell her. Tell her now, because we're here and it's about to be too late. Tell her."
The older prince went down until his forehead touched the mud, and began to weep. "I," he croaked, "do not want the crown."
"Liar." She coiled around Rickard like a snake. "You've killed for it. You've bleed for it. You've done everything for it."
"I do not want the crown," Rickard repeated, straightening up to his knees. "I forswear it. On my heart, on my life, on my blood, I renounce it. Let it go to someone else. I do not want it!" he shouted the last bit at her, his voice raw with all that he'd done and lost for a prize he could never have.
She went to pieces under the force of his voice, or so it seemed. One moment she was there, and the next they were alone in a patch of cold fog, two young men at the edge of the woods. The rain began to fall again, but this time it was just an autumn squall, cold and dreary, already losing strength.
Rickard went down again, hands curled to fists in the mud, and wept. Adam crawled over to him and wrapped his arms around his once-enemy, not knowing what else to do.
***
Prince Rickard went home the morning after, alone on his charger, after giving up his claim before the Dowager Queen. He was ashen and there were shadows like bruises under his eyes, but his voice was steady and his steps sure.
Adam watched him go, and went down to the edge of the woods. The rain had washed them clean, and there were birds flitting through the nearly naked branches, hunting down gifts of rosehips and slugs. "I do not want the crown, I surrender my claim to it," he told the birds and the trees and an errant beetle, and waited.
A wood thrush sang somewhere in the woods. The beetle crashed against his boot and fell on its back; Adam bent down to right it, and looked at the autumn wilderness in exasperation. "Really, now. Do we have to wait until I'm eighteen? I know what I want."
A breeze tore a few leaves from the trees and sent them spiraling down. Adam resisted the urge to stomp his foot in vexation; he was not a baby to be throwing a tantrum when balked. "Fine. Until I'm eighteen, then," he declared, and went to find his friends.
***
The last few days of autumn were marred by Adam catching a terrible cold that the palace's physicians couldn't explain; it wasn't as if the young prince had gone traipsing about in a freezing downpour an entire night, after all. He was left restless and unhappy in his bed, plucking at the blankets that were piled on him in an effort to break his fever. He tried to study, but he could barely focus on food, let alone reading. There was a bit of a nervous moment for his human friends when one of the healers came to give him his hourly medicine and the prince, half delirious, started calling out for people with very inhuman names.
Culli-maid went out to the woods after that, bundled up in a heavy shawl, carrying a basket with honey and bread and figs from the Royal hothouse, and a crispy roasted trout.
She needn't have bothered with the offerings. Linden nearly ran her down when they saw her coming, their fingers tangled up in each other like the knotted roots of a surly tree. Needlemaw had heard from William that Adam was sick, but little else; all they otherwise knew was that Adam had been out on a Hunting Night. Culli's news were far more welcomed, worrisome as they were, than any gift of honey. She was sent back with word to leave one of the windows in the prince's rooms open. Boul looked deeply crestfallen at that; he was a troll, a creature of earth and water. Climbing was one thing he'd never learned, in all his years with his wild friends. Culli-maid solved that by sending Dane down with a wheelbarrow, ostensibly for firewood.
Adam woke up from a heavy, feverish sleep to the scent of linden flowers and a cool hand brushing back his hair. "Would you please," he whispered hoarsely, "thank the water-spouts for me. They helped me more than they know."
Linden couldn't help but laugh. "What were you thinking, what were you doing?"
"I wasn't thinking much," Adam admitted. "I had five servings of stuffed goose and I think I drank half the bottle of blackberry brandy, and never, ever again."
"Well, 'tis a hard lesson learned, that, but a good one to learn," Needlemaw's voice purred low at him, full of wry amusement, as Linden sprawled on the bed next to their best friend.
He told them everything, these two disparate groups that had become the bonds of his life, strange as it was and stranger as it had become. He drowsed once in the middle of the telling, and then picked up the thread again as he woke up, unaware that he'd stopped. He slept again after that, only vaguely aware that the physicians had come back with his medicine; Culli-maid heard much of how the treatment was surely working, making the young prince biddable and meek.
When he woke up again the hearth was banked to rich red coals. Culli's shawl and mending basket rested on the chair by the window, and the nearby study table was covered in books and scraps of well-worn parchment. Adam licked his lips and grimaced at the taste of bitter medicine, and heard a low, familiar chuckle. "You wouldn't laugh if you had to drink it," he muttered, grinning.
"I don't get sick from the rain," Linden replied, their voice low and cheerful.
Adam turned. He felt wrung out and exhausted, but clear-headed for the first time in forever. He gazed at the shattered, many-colored eyes. In the dark, Linden's wild burst of gold-tipped white hair had slicked down, pressed close to their skull, and their features looked sharp and deeply inhuman in the gloom, sun-kissed to the color of a tree's bark. "I'm sorry I worried you."
"Ugh," Linden replied, shifting in the immense bed and seeking out Adam's hand so they could lace their fingers with the prince's. "And you thinking you're selfish." When Adam smiled at that, they went on. "You'll get better now, then?"
"I suppose. Anything so I don't have to drink any more bitter tea."
Linden snorted. "You could have let him go, you know. He's been nothing but horrible to you."
Adam rubbed at his mouth with the sleeve of his sleeping shirt. "Linden, lots of people are horrible to me. Lots more are always going to be horrible to me. That's not my fault, it's never going to be, but I can't be horrible back just because. How exhausting would that be for nothing gained." He licked his lips and grimaced at a lingering taste no rubbing could take away. "You should always start out being nice. I did. I didn't stay nice for Rickard, but when he stopped picking fights I didn't go looking for them. I didn't want to be his friend, I just wanted him to leave me alone."
"Did he?"
"Yes. The thing with being nice right off is, other people end up being nice back. Because they already were, or because they're ashamed, or just because they're tired of being mean, or a lot of other reasons. Rickard being nice was him leaving me alone, and I don't mean the fighting. He could have just made me part of his schemes. He didn't. And... Maybe, if things go the way everyone thinks they will, someone will be there, like I was for him."
"I will be."
"I think that would just scare me more. I'm used to the thought of me being in trouble. I don't know what I'd do if it were you instead." Adam paused. "Are you in trouble now? For being here after dark?"
"No. I told them I wouldn't come back until I knew you were alright, and if they got in my way I wouldn't come back at all."
They laughed at that, their small bits of defiance, unaware or perhaps simply uncaring of the vastness of what they'd accomplished. Adam rubbed at his mouth once again and licked. "Ugh!"
"It's stained your lips, too," Linden pointed out.
"That's probably why I can't get rid of it. Wouldn't have hurt them to put a bit of sugar in it."
Part 1 - Part 2 - Parts 3 & 4 - Part 5 - Part 6, 7 & 8 - Part 9 & 10 - Part 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 & 16 - Part 17, 18, & 19 - Part 20, 21 & 22 - Part 23, 24, 25 & 26 - Part 27, 28, 29 & 30 - Part 31, 32, 33 & 34 - Part 35, 36 & 37 - Part 38, 39, 40 & 41 - Part 42 & 43 - Part 44 & 45 - Part 46 & 47 - Part 48, 49, 50 & 51 - Part, 52, 53 & 54 - Part 55 & 56 - Part 57, 58, 59 & 60 - Part 61, 62, 63, 64 & 65 - Part 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71 & 72
Happy Solstice! The good thing about posting all this stuff in advance is that holidays don’t stop the posts. So here you go, a bit of sweetness before things go as pear-shaped as they’re gonna get.
As autumn sank its grip into the land, Adam abandoned the canvas in favor of paper and charcoal, and began to sketch. He quickly became aware of the disconnect Linden had pointed out, wondering how he could have possibly missed such an obvious thing before. Unable to practice on anyone but his friends, he focused on other studies, much to the despair of his art teachers.
On a blustery, dark night, tapping at one of his windows snapped him awake, heart hammering in alarm he couldn't yet understand. "Needlemaw!"
The redcap slithered into the room and turned to help Linden in before facing Adam. "I didnae want to go without telling ye," she began without any warning. "There's war."
"War!" Adam felt all warmth drain from him.
"Among the Underfolk, my people, Boul's people, the smaller sorts beneath the Court," she hurried to clarify, and her heart both ached and soared to see his stricken look ease not one bit. "'Tis not uncommon, Adam. We chafe at each other’s edges, and the Queen doesnae help, she's never bothered. Since she don't care, none of them do, this is how we solve such things."
"Will you be alright?!" he demanded. "Will Boul? Can I help? What if you're hurt?"
"I dinnae ken about Boul, but I think he might be too young to fight. And me, I'll be hurt, I'm sure of it," she admitted casually. At his look she added, "there's pointy bits to every side of me, Adam. Did ye think my enemies were naught like me?"
"No, but..." He chewed on his lower lip. "But it's you I know," he said at last, as usual striking to the core of the matter in a way the fairy-maid could, and did, understand.
"Och." She hugged him tightly.
"What about Linden?" Adam turned to face their friend. "Can you help?"
"I would," Linden looked wounded and angry. "They won't let me, not Boul, not Needle."
"What!"
"Linden cannae be seen to be choosing sides within the Court, Adam."
"Oh, always with the stupid Court! Why can't it just be gone, everything I hear makes me think everyone's life would be better if they were gone. Back to wherever they came from, to pester their like there."
"Yui're not saying new things, Adam," Needlemaw said wryly. "Yui're just saying them louder than most."
He growled, and then lunged at her and crushed her in a hug that startled the redcap with its strength. "You come back. Can I ask that? You come back to us."
"Needle, please." Linden's arms wrapped around them like the strong branches of a tree. "Please promise you'll come back. That's all I want."
The redcap had never known safety as she felt in that moment, in that embrace. "I cannae promise I'll come back," she admitted. "But I promise I will try. I will try with all that I am."
Something sounded, far away in the woods, and it was impossible to tell if it was a wolf's howl, or a stag's bugling call, or a hunting horn. She slipped away from them like sand running through their fingers, and was gone as abruptly as she'd come.
Linden and Adam closed the window and curled up before the fire, lost and clinging to one another, feeling like children bereft in the dark.
It didn't get any better. As the last harvest festival was planned and prepared, Linden came into the woods one morning to warn Adam that Boul had been decreed old enough to fight. He wasn't even given a chance to say goodbye.
There was no one they could ask for news. Adam brought dry cherries and cracked barley for the finches and the sparrows, but there was only so much they could tell him; they weren't travelers, sticking close to nest and mate and flock. The swallows had left when the cold weather closed in. He brought bacon rinds out and spent a night under the jousting yard's stands, but the smallfolk there were shy, peaceful creatures. They pointed him out to the kelpie's old pond, and told him to bring salt and meat.
He snuck out on a bitterly cold night with a small bundle over his shoulder, and met Linden in the woods. They raced to the pond as they had once before, their hearts pounding, unsure of what they'd find. As they drew close they saw them at last, rainbow lights dipping and dancing and twisting over the breath-thin ice on the water's surface, and Linden recoiled. "Adam."
"Will they help?"
"Adam, we can't -"
"Linden, I don't care what they are. Will they help?"
"Maybe," Linden admitted. "But pixies are dangerous, Adam. They answer to no court, they answer to no one. They claim everything as their prey, even -"
As they watched, three lights suddenly converged against one. A thin, high shriek reached them from across the water. Blood spattered over the delicate ice, steaming for a brief moment. One of the lights went out.
" - each other," Linden finished.
Adam drew a deep, shaky breath. "I'm beginning to think it's only your people who are nice, Linden."
"We're mostly nice," Linden agreed, their voice gone breathy. "Do you still want to do this?"
"Do you?"
"Yes. I wither a little each day, not knowing."
Adam nodded and took down the bundle. He opened it, reached in, and threw a heavy piece from a steer's leg on the ground before them.
For a moment nothing happened. But as the scent of raw meat and blood spread on the cold night air, they saw a change come over the idle, lazy chaos of multicolored lights over the still, dark water. Like moved to like and they began to swirl faster and faster in tiny hurricanes.
Adam unwound his scarf, dropped his gloves in the middle of it, and twisted it around sharply, waiting. "Get ready."
The pixies came like a swarm of angry hornets. They didn't come for the meat; they arrowed at those who they feared might keep them from such a feast. Adam was done being polite; two of his friends were embroiled in a conflict that he didn't understand. From what little he knew, it was fighting that could have been avoided, if the Queen Beyond the Woods had bothered to even try.
He swung his makeshift weapon looking for no prisoners.
Two pixies went flying, one to crash into the water and disappearing at once, another to slam against the trunk of a nearby oak with a cry, stumbling down into the blanket of leaves beneath the tree, its golden light nearly gone. Two more, though clipped, managed to backwing away. One avoided the prince altogether, hissing like an airborne viper at him.
A smaller, green flock chose to ambush the survivors. Above, a small cloud of violet light swirled. Watching, Adam guessed. A stream of blue tried to use the foliage of the wild irises as cover to rush up on the two friends.
Linden cried out something Adam couldn't understand, and the blade-like leaves closed into an impenetrable wall. No lights came out.
Slowly, so slowly, a single violet light spiraled down. "We greet the Danu child. We greet the mortal prince." The pixie was not human; of all the fairies he'd met, Adam had yet to see one that was so distant from the mortal seeming. It was as if someone had taken clay and smoothed from it two legs and two arms, adding at least two extra joints to each limb but adding no actual body or further noticeable features. It was the size of Adam's forearm. Its wings were a dragonfly's, and its skin was an eel's, smooth and speckled, a deep violet that colored the light coming from it. Its voice was the low growl of a small, angry animal cornered in its den.
"I greet you in return," Adam replied. "And for your courtesy, I offer this gift to you and yours." He gestured to the piece of beef and pointedly backed away a step.
The pixie curled up in the air, twisting a leg around until it could scratch its face with the long, birdlike toes on it. There were no eyes to its face, no nose, no ears. Only a gash of a mouth where jagged teeth like broken glass flashed whenever it spoke. "Freely given?"
"For your courtesy," Adam repeated.
It twittered something and the violet flock crashed down onto the meat, snarling as they tore it apart. Adam let them eat, aware that the green flock, four lights in all, was still floating warily at a distance, and that a dim golden glow was barely visible under the blanket of the dead oak leaves.
Eventually, the same pixie (or so Adam hoped), left the others and fluttered up to Adam, though just out of arm's reach of both him and Linden. "You have more gifts, mortal prince. We can smell them."
"Ah, those are not gifts. Those are payment for favors done."
The flock rose at once. "What need have we to do favors for what is rightfully ours!" the pixie hissed.
"What need have I to offer payment for favors not done." Adam shrugged. "Winter comes. Prey goes to ground, to sleep the winter sleep, to hide under cover of snow and ice. Winter is a lean time for all predators, even the best ones."
"We do not answer to you, mortal prince. We do not answer even to the Danu child!"
"I would never ask that you heed me," Linden replied. "I know what rights you claim, and what you paid for them. They are yours in my woods, always."
The pixie, apparently bereft of the fight it had been expecting, hung silent in the air. "What favors?"
"News," Adam said quickly. "Information. There is a war -"
"It is not our concern."
"I do not ask that you make it your concern," Adam agreed. "I ask, yes or no, do you understand it, the reason for it? The ebb and flow of it?" He crouched down and from his bag pulled out a plucked duck.
"Duck," the pixie breathed. "Greasy, rich, dark, fed fat and lazy duck."
"Careful, pixie," Linden warned, and the trees all around them creaked in no wind. "We will not be lied to."
The violet light pulsed like a small heart. "No and no," it snarled.
Adam hung his head, and threw them the duck all the same. They scattered away from it. "We cannot give you what you ask," the pixie demanded.
"I did not ask you to," Adam told it. "I asked you two questions, and you answered them fairly. The payment's yours. Take it in good faith, but we have no more to say to one another."
They fell on the duck with enough zeal that a fight nearly broke among their numbers, tearing it apart and dashing away with the bits.
"What about you?" Linden called out to the flock of green hovering over the water. "Can you answer fair and honest?"
They didn't draw very close; they were the smallest of all the flocks, barely four in number. "What we want, the mortal prince does not have in his wee bag." The pixie's voice was a mournful loon's call. "What we want, the Danu child alone can give."
Adam looked at Linden in surprise. "It is autumn, nearly winter," Linden sounded just as surprised. "I've very little I can give at the best of times, less now. But ask, and I will give you an honest answer, if nothing else."
"We want a home."
"Traitors!" Voices within the wild irises hissed and snarled. "Cowards!"
"We are hungry! We are tired!" A single green light, parting from the flock, shouted back and moved to hover before Linden. "We know war, Danu-child. We know what brings it about. We fought our own for our freedom. But that freedom tastes stale and false when our children wither in their cocoons from hunger. Freedom has brought us nothing but death. Give us a place in your woods. Give us your law; we have watched you, every season of your life. We know you will be fair as the Queen Beyond the Woods will never be. We ask that you count us yours."
Linden stared helplessly at Adam, who could only shrug. "Do you trust me, pixie?" They stretched out a hand.
Light as a bird, the pixie alighted on their palm and crouched down. They were much tinier, their body no bigger than Linden's outstretched hand. "We do."
"I have no court. I only have my woods, my friends."
"Your woods and your friends are more potent a force than you can imagine, Danu child. We cannot go on as we are. Our light will be gone from the world and we will be forgotten, and I... do not want that for my flock."
Linden drew a deep breath. "Then I count you and your flock mine, pixie. And these are your first laws: you hunt to eat, not for sport. You do no war upon your kin unless they do war upon you. And if they do, they do war upon me."
The woods whispered, and Adam felt as if a hundred eyes were bearing witness to something profoundly momentous. Tiny, twittering, nervous sounds came from the wild irises.
Lightly, Linden kissed the smooth, narrow top of the pixie's head. "It is autumn, nearly winter. But I will find a safe, warm place for you and your flock. If I am warm, you will be warm; if I have food, you will have food. Now answer the mortal prince's question."
The pixie, crouched down on Linden's hand, turned to stare sightlessly at Adam. "Yes. And no."
Adam groaned, but he crouched down and brought out a string of sausages, the last wealth inside the sack.
The pixies squealed like rusty hinges. "Oh, long squish smoke guts!"
"Meatsy meat!"
"Crunchy grains and twiggy herby herbs!" They dove upon the string when Adam dropped it.
"Mortal prince," a thin voice of wind on dry reeds rasped out. "I have the answers you seek."
Linden stared all around in shock. Adam turned toward the oak, not entirely surprised. "Do you?"
"On my life I do," the last of the golden pixies declared, its voice full of pain. "Spare it, and I will give it to you. I have the answers to your questions, and if what I know does not satisfy you, then I will find those that will."
Adam balked. "I don't want to own anyone. I'm not like the Folk in the Woods."
"I don't care," the pixie snarled. "My life is all the coin I have. I cannot be of the woods, I am of the city. If you want your answers, I must live long enough to give them. And if you give me my life, I only have it to repay you."
Adam and Linden crossed a look. The night had gone nowhere they'd meant for it to go. "You know it's right, Adam. If we leave it like this, the moment I let the others loose they'll fall on it. That's their way," Linden said quietly.
"I know, I know, but it's not a thing, it's not an inkpot or a book or something to be owned." Adam pressed his hands to his face and made a high sound of profound impatience. "A task then," he exclaimed on a whim. "If I give you your life, you must find a way to give me mine. Truly and fairly."
"Truly and fairly." The pixie dug itself out from where it had hid, among the autumn-kissed leaves. "And then?"
"And then your life is your own. If you stay, you don't stay because you owe anyone, you stay because you choose to."
"And if you die before I can repay you?"
"Then you're free anyway."
"You make poor bargains, mortal prince."
"Maybe," Adam admitted, shrugging off his coat. "But that's only because I could make them unfair, and choose not to. Pixies." He showed the flock of green lights the heavy coat. "To warm you, until Linden can find something better. In exchange for one sausage."
"Is that satin?" one of the pixies cried out in delight.
"Are those buttons brass?"
"The stitching is gold!"
They all but threw the sausage at his feet. Adam dropped the coat and snatched the treat up, moving closer to the golden pixie and unwinding his scarf. "Can you move?"
It was the size and color of a young trout, golden and rainbow, pink and white and green, flecked with black and brown. Its wings were terribly crumpled and broken. "I have moved all that I could, mortal prince," it admitted wearily.
"Don't bite me," Adam warned. As carefully as he could he scooped the tiny fairy up and bundled it up in the scarf, giving it the sausage at last; it was heavier than Adam had expected, and clung to its sausage as possessively as a miser to a coin. "Oh, gods, now what do we do?"
"Well, you go back to the palace before you freeze blue," Linden told him tartly before gesturing at his coat, which was moving all on its own, full of admiring and delighted pixies. "But I have to tend to this. Pixie, the mortal prince's questions?"
The golden pixie shifted tiredly its featureless head, too exhausted and wounded to even eat. "Yes. And yes."
"Go," Linden told Adam. "Find out what you can, and tell me tomorrow."
Adam ran.
***
He named the pixie Trout, because it had no name Adam could pronounce. That night, it sat trembling on the prince's desk as Adam bathed its broken wings on willow-tea and stretched them out from the crumpled, broken heap they'd ended up in. "You don't look hurt anywhere else."
"I am not hurt anywhere else. I do not need to be. My wings are all I am."
Trout knew of war. Sitting there and instructing Adam on the brutal attention to its wings, it spoke on its whispering, papery voice. It was an old creature, though pixies were only a step above the kelpie: they counted 'yesterday', 'today' and 'tomorrow', but little else. It had seen war, and had fought in one where pixies had won, and demanded to be free of any Court, a wish which had been granted to them, and which had turned out to be more curse than blessing. But it couldn't tell Adam how long ago, or against who, or on whose side. Only that the palace had not been there when it had been fought, and the lights of its folk had outnumbered the stars in the sky.
"This is no war," it told Adam. "The Court is bored. There are almost no princes left to kill, not until the new crop is weaned. So they made it seem that the above-folk want something from the below-folk and the below-folk went killing the above-folk, and of course neither will abide the other doing that, and here we are."
"For fun." Adam had to stop to steady his hands. "They did this for fun. They started a war for fun."
Trout turned its empty face toward him. "You seem to be caring more about them than about you. I'm not certain those are sensible priorities, mortal prince."
"Call me Adam. Everyone here is a prince, but I'm still the only Adam." He went back to work. It had to be hurting, yanking and tugging on the pixie's wings, but other than grinding the jagged rows of its teeth, Trout did not react. "Do you know who's winning?"
"No one. Whenever one side gets an advantage, they go sneaky-sneaking in and fix it so it's all blood and chaos again."
Adam said nothing to that, because there was nothing he trusted himself to say. Instead he got up and very carefully poured the rest of the willow tea into his wash-basin, thinning it and cooling it with some water from the pitcher. "If you soak your wings in this, they should hurt you less."
Trout eyed him warily, and Adam added a kerchief next to the basin. "And wash your face, too, you have bits of sausage all over it."
"It was good sausage," Trout admitted wistfully.
"If you get better quickly, and can fly to take messages, I'll get you more sausages. And bacon."
"Bacon!"
"Don't fall asleep in the basin, Trout. I don't want to get bit fishing you out," Adam teased, weary to his bones and yet somehow glad to know at least one problem in his life could be solved with something so simple as bacon.
Trout huffed with offended dignity, and proceeded to do exactly that. But at least it remembered not to bite when Adam did fish it out and set it down on the pillow next to his own.
***
Winter came on full of bluster and bitterly cold. With pleasant entertainment, the Court didn't see a need to try and shorten the season, and all the misery they'd been holding back was left to catch up with the mortal world.
Adam got somewhat used to carrying a pixie in his pocket as Trout healed, and discovered perhaps the only good thing to come from the war: the Court would have no winter celebrations. It would not close its doors. Linden could stay in the woods. They didn't seem nearly as elated about those news as Adam was, at first, and the prince felt his delight wane into wariness. "Isn't that a good thing? Don't you want to stay?"
"Of course it's a good thing!" Linden was watching pixies come and go, filling old squirrel nests with pilfered wool to make nests no one would oust them from. Perched on Adam's shoulder, Trout watched as well. "Of course I want to stay. It's just. I mean.... Oh, butter and burrs!" They threw themselves down on the worn root of the linden tree and mumbled.
"What?"
"I said," Linden exclaimed with an exasperated sigh, "that my hair falls out in winter!"
Adam blinked, the concept of Linden concerned over something so alien as vanity impossible to understand. Then, quite mistakenly, he thought he'd got it. "Oh, so you'll need a hat, then! You don't have any."
Linden peeked at him. "I suppose," they replied, sitting up with ill-grace and staring closely at Adam. "You won't think me a silly sight, bare like a tree in winter?"
"Linden, I never think you silly. Reckless and obstinate, but we're matched on that." Adam brightened up. "You'll be here for my birthday! And for the Longest Night! Now I know what to get you for a present." Linden suddenly hugged him, nearly sending Trout tumbling. "They've called you silly for it, haven't they?"
"Yes."
"Well, when has their opinion ever mattered to us?"
Bereft of half their family and forced to wait for Trout to heal before they could do anything about it, they focused instead on younger, simpler times, roaming through all the old familiar places, bringing up rich and merry memories of childhood, unwilling to think of the future and refusing to give the bleak present the pleasure of ruining their time together, taking refuge in the past instead. Linden did lose all their white, gold-tipped hair at about the same time the linden tree lost the last of its leaves, revealing a fine spattering of green freckles on the bark-brown, smooth skin; they promptly hid them beneath a satin-lined woolen cap, and then under any number of caps and hats acquired for them not just by Adam, but by Dane and Beli and Culli.
Without that tempting crown of foliage they discovered the horses were no longer inclined to try to chew on Linden, and suddenly riding was not only possible, but enjoyable.
Sometimes the black dog haunted their wake. Sometimes the black stag shadowed them through the woods.
"Perhaps I should have you teach me archery," Linden commented tartly one of those times, and they saw their everpresent shadow no more, even if the pressure of his presence didn't ease.
In the winter-sere woods, Adam learned to draw Linden at last; the true Linden, the long-limbed creature as graceful as a willow, as sweet as a linden, as powerful as an oak. He learned the true shape of those graceful hands that would gently lift a pixie up to catch a breeze, the sharp bark talons that could snatch and rend the life out of a rabbit so they could have dinner over a small fire. He groused endlessly about the smaller things, far more precious, Linden's laugh, the way the shattered eyes shifted through every color with their moods, the way they curled up among the linden tree roots, stuffed in a whole bunch of coats and cloaks and scarves, having merry conversations with the birds that didn't leave the woods through winter.
He let his eyes lead his fingers as the charcoal stick raced over paper, instead of the other way around. He drew anything and everything, Trout as the pixie peeked warily out of a pocket to speak to the green pixies, always seemingly surprised to be treated with courtesy by them. He drew the woods and added details from memory. He sketched his absent friends and those who waited for him in the palace, Dane and Beli and the Culli-maid, left to his service once Arditty had wed and departed to her own domain.
He would never, he realized one day in profound chagrin, be an artist. Oddly, it didn't hurt him as it had before. This time he'd tried, he really had. He'd found the flaw in himself and corrected it. He could expect no more of himself.
It was also the day, two weeks before the Longest Night festivities, that he realized there were only two princes older than him in the palace. Everyone else was now younger. When had that happened?
Linden, who'd been sitting in the sun, head upturned and eyes closed, basking in the silver, pale light for it brightness rather than its warmth, looked at Adam as he froze in realization. "Are you finished, then?"
Adam looked at the drawing, and felt something inside him hurt in the best possible way. How could it not be love? "I suppose. I'm not very good at it, but it's as done as it's going to get." He felt heat spilling over his face but made no effort to hide the workbook as Linden moved to their feet and approached eagerly.
"Well, let me see." They stared curiously at the drawing. No oil or paint or canvas, only charcoal in fine, measured lines, with precision and care. "Is this what you see," they asked, their voice gone still. "Is this what you see when you look at me?"
"Yes," Adam admitted readily, his heart beating like a warring sparrow's wings. "The most beautiful creature in the world."
Linden's breath caught with a sharp little sound, and they turned to stare at Adam, who stared right back, almost defiantly. The many-colored eyes bloomed into spring and went to a riot of summer right there in that empty winter clearing, and so slowly, so gently, Linden leaned down and kissed their young, oblivious mortal of a prince for a long, long moment. When they parted away Adam gasped briefly, tasting linden flowers and honey on his lips.
"Adam, what do these people teach you, that it's taken you this long?" Linden teased.
"Nothing useful," he admitted, his voice hoarse.
"I've bound my life to a blind idiot," Trout commented dryly from its pocket, and Linden laughed, and for a moment it was summer, sweet and golden, in the shadow of the linden tree.
***
Adam couldn't keep it to himself, least of all from those who'd known him nearly as long as Linden. Dane took a look at him when he came back that night, dazed with realization, and shook his head, smiling faintly. Beli gave him a narrow-eyed look, and merely warned him very tartly, "Well, this better no interfere with your studies."
Culli merely smiled. After dinner, as she examined his mending, which was never too onerous a task, with Beli and Dane arguing quietly about something to do with the temperature in the rooms and the outrageous price of ink, she gestured him close. Adam stood before her like an errant schoolboy. "Well," she told him. "It's been a bit long coming, hasn't it."
Adam sagged and blew a long breath. "Am I the only one who didn't know?"
"Well, it's not that we knew," she corrected him. "It's just that there had to be a reason for such as Linden and such as you to come together."
"We were friends! We've always been friends."
"Aye, Highness, that's the very point. I'm not saying they loved you from the first. But they did want to be your friend from the first. Their heart was freely given on nothing but what they saw and weighted on a wee lad. How many do you know of their kind that do that sort of thing?"
Adam licked his lips. "Only the ones they've brought. Only our friends."
Culli nodded, and then shook her head in wonderment. "It's hard to know you and not love you, Highness," she told him, and laughed a little when he flushed red to his ears. "Well, go on now. Whatever Beli and Master Leminy might have to say about your lessons, you have to make up for lost time now, don't you? Will you be inviting them to the Longest Night ball?"
Adam chewed on his lip. "I want to, Culli. I want to so much. But it seems so dangerous. The Dowager's so blind in her hatred. I think I need to speak to them about it."
"About it and about many other things." She gave him a pointed look.
Adam scurried into his bedroom as fast as he could.
The thing was, they didn't want to talk about the future, because to discuss a future without including Boul or Needlemaw in the conversation seemed too much like tempting fate to snatch them away in the present. Trout's wings were sloughing off like skin from a sunburn, and the pixie was even more impatient than Adam to be airborne, often clinging to the ears of the prince's charger as the horse raced over the meadows just so it could feel the bite of the wind, as if afraid it would forget what it felt like. Until the pixie could fly they couldn't send word to either of their friends about the Court's treachery, couldn't know if sending word would even do any good.
In the end, Linden decided against the ball. Much as they wanted to see the glitter and beauty that Adam described, much as they hoped that in its own way it would be better than the wondrous galas of the Folk Beyond The Woods, they knew the Dowager Queen for another deadly enemy, and the party for another trap wrapped in satin, gossamer and jewels.
Adam had never really attended the ball beyond showing up, dipping his head politely at the Dowager and making a round of whatever adults had been invited; nothing else was expected of him. It took longer that year because he was repeatedly stopped to hear commentary about how tall he was getting, how broad across the shoulders, how fair on the face. In the end he had to practically sneak into the kitchen, snatching snacks as he went and shoving a crispy meat pastie into the pocket of the elegant, severe blue frock coat he was wearing as a Prince of the Blood. Trout's appreciative trill nearly broke glass.
He dashed away into the woods with a satchel full of gifts, and dropped it in shock when he came to the clearing.
Lights hung everywhere, delicate floating bubbles of color. A few were Linden's pixies; the rest they'd conjured to dispel the shadows of the longest night upon the world, and the clearing basked in delicate, multicolored light that made the ice flash like precious jewels.
He gave them their gift, a wheel of cheese cut into fourths and a whole cured ham hock cut into thin slices, and watched them dance in delight, grinning. Until the sight of Linden took his breath away.
Before they'd decided against attending the ball, Linden and Adam had discussed the matter of attire with some trepidation. Apparently in the Court they were given no choice as to what to wear; it was provided for them and that was that. Adam had no such concerns, and was quietly and deeply incensed at the casual cruelty of such a simple thing as taking choice away from someone you wanted to impress. He explained in great detail the cut and fit of his own outfit, and with some difficulty the more complex and colorful gowns of the ladies of the court, to which he'd never paid a great deal of attention. It was just as well they'd decided against the ball, and both of them blew secret breaths of relief at it.
But that night Linden had chosen an attire for the only person in the world for whom it mattered. They were a fey thing indeed, as luminous as the pixies. The green freckles on their skin gleamed in the dark. Their shattered eyes glowed like sacred lights. Exactly a replica to Adam's clothing to every stitch, they wore a fine white shirt and a rich cravat under a frock coat of every shade of green, every tree stitched in brown with painstaking precision. Their pants were the soft, dark brown of rich earth, dotted with stitched shapes of birds, of mice and squirrels and deer, of wolves and hawks and snakes. Their feet were bare.
There was a thin circlet of living vines on their very bald head.
"You'll be cold," Adam protested in a daze. "You're beautiful, Linden. You're a prince more than I ever will be."
Linden laughed and it was alright, it was really Linden, his Linden. "Do you like it? It took forever to make and I kept thinking someone in the smallfolk would tell you and it wouldn't be a surprise anymore."
"I think it suits you," was all Adam could say. He dropped the satchel and rummaged through it until he found a present. Unsurprisingly, it was a hat.
"Oh, thank you, yes." Linden threw the crown of vines aside, where it promptly burrowed and slithered into the ground, and dragged the hat almost to their ears. Only then did Adam notice that one of their hands was still bark, rather that smooth brown skin.
"Linden."
"Mm? Oh, that." They smiled in triumph and offered the hand. "Look."
Adam took the hand in his and looked. His breath caught; there, surrounded by bark, sat the iron ring, untarnished but made harmless not by fey power, but by the very nature of Linden themselves. "You did it. Linden, you did it!"
"I did! I told you I could." They chewed on their lip. "I gave the knife to Needle, before she left. I hope she's alright. I hope that was alright."
"Well, the handle's from some sea creature, so she should be fine if that's all she touches." Adam saw the light of the shattered eyes falter, and drew himself very straight, offering his most refined and elegant bow. "May I have this dance?"
Linden laughed, caught by surprise. "Are you sure it's alright? Dressed like this? Maybe I should've got the other kind of clothing."
"It's just clothing. It's like me being called a prince, it's just a title because I'm related to the Dowager. Honestly I have no idea how they dance with all those skirts piled on top of one another. This is much nicer." Linden surrendered their hands, and Adam took them, and they danced to music only they could hear, knowing only that they had one another, and that it was enough. "I wouldn't care what you wore, Linden. I only care that it's you."
They kissed, sweet and shy and glad, and then laughed and danced until the cold chased Adam back to the palace.
Neither of them saw the mismatched eyes, one green and one gold, staring at them with hate from the dark.
Part 1 - Part 2 - Parts 3 & 4 - Part 5 - Part 6, 7 & 8 - Part 9 & 10 - Part 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 & 16 - Part 17, 18, & 19 - Part 20, 21 & 22 - Part 23, 24, 25 & 26 - Part 27, 28, 29 & 30 - Part 31, 32, 33 & 34 - Part 35, 36 & 37 - Part 38, 39, 40 & 41 - Part 42 & 43 - Part 44 & 45 - Part 46 & 47 - Part 48, 49, 50 & 51 - Part, 52, 53 & 54 - Part 55 & 56 - Part 57, 58, 59 & 60 - Part 61, 62, 63, 64 & 65 - Part 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71 & 72
Well, let’s see how many little things eighteen years have picked up and put in Adam’s pockets, shall we?
She came for him when the last of the sun's light faded from the sullen sky. Adam and Dane had settled under the eaves of the far end of the stables, eating warm pasties and drinking mulled cider by the light of a single golden lamp. "Mortal prince, my prince."
Dane saw Adam twitch, not so much at the voice, a whisper of fog and wind, but at the words. Nine years; the young man Dane followed had spent nine years fighting against those words, and the instinct to do so still was very strong.
"Ah, well. I was wondering if anyone was coming at all," Adam said mildly, putting aside his wooden cup and brushing his hands carefully.
"You challenged us, mortal prince," her tone turned arch.
"A great deal of graves around the realm beg to differ as to who started this fight," Adam replied without missing a beat. He moved to his feet; Dane already had his leather jacket on hand, and while Adam worked the clasps he picked up the bow and quiver to give to his prince.
"Do you really think your weapons will help you?" she mocked.
Adam had learned to explode into action from a redcap. He'd never beaten either Linden or Needlemaw when it came to speed, but the only fairy faster than either of them actually had wings. Before either Dane or the Sidhe maid knew what had happened he'd snatched his bow, and an arrow was quivering on the ground by her feet. "I think a great many things not related to the challenge might make me feel a little better," he replied calmly. "I'm just choosing not to do them."
She hissed at him, but she could feel the black burn of the iron arrow-head a scarce breath from her dainty, fog-slippered foot, and she said nothing as Dane helped Adam with bow, quiver, and weapons. She was still and silent as Adam drew in a deep breath and turned to the young man who'd been by him for so long. "Dane -"
"I could follow you to the edge," Dane rushed to say. "I wouldn't go in, but -"
"Dane." Adam put gloved hands on the big man's shoulders, and grinned just a little. "No."
"But -"
"I don't trust them not to do something to you, just for being my friend," Adam explained, and watched Dane's ghost of hope collapse. "Go back. Go find your lady, and thank her for bringing us our meals."
Dane walked away with the lamp, clad in priest-blessed weapons and armor of steel and leather and iron, and Adam turned. Apparently having realized that she wouldn't be able to play her usual games, the Sidhe maid had abandoned her usual, wispy glamour. She was a very dainty creature, shorter than Adam by nearly a foot, leached of all color; her flesh, her exquisite gown, the long curtain of her hair, everything was white or the palest of grays. Only her eyes were black, like pools of tar. Adam could feel the pull of them, trying to steal his will and his awareness away, but there was nothing in him for the hooks of her power to catch. Her gaze could never compare to the beauty of a pair of many-colored, shattered eyes.
He gestured for her to lead, and she did. For a long time they walked in silence until she spoke at last. "Is it truly so terrible?"
Adam, who was watching and waiting for her to lead him into an ambush, realized that her voice was simply like that, a sigh and a whisper. "What is?"
"Death," she replied simply.
He nearly stopped walking. "I very nearly let you find out, back there."
"No, you meant to hurt me," she replied simply. "And I have been hurt before. But no one has ever killed me."
"Some of your people must have died that you could see."
"No." She shrugged. "None that I know."
Adam didn't even know how to take that in. "Do you have things you enjoy?"
"Yes," she admitted, and then swung into a pout, "but you won't like me speaking of them."
"I suppose that's true. Death would mean that you cannot do them anymore."
She shrugged. "Then I will find something else."
"No, you can't do that, either."
She scowled delicately at him. "Well, then -"
"No, not that either. Not even the choosing, not even the thinking."
She stopped and stomped her dainty foot. "But if I want to -!"
"You don't want, either. Death is a void, an absence of choice and will."
"But then I am not," she frowned. "Without those there is nothing, there is no me."
"Yes," he said mildly. "Without them, the world goes on. It just goes on without you, and it doesn't care."
She went silent, turning to begin walking again.
"Is there nothing else you need to tell me about the test?" he prompted her after a moment.
"Not yet. I was told it would be best if I didn't speak to you at all outside it." Slowly, she added. "I think perhaps my Queen was right about that."
"Is there something I should or shouldn't do to be proper?"
She cocked her head at him. "Proper? You would still be proper, after this morning?"
"My hatred doesn't impede my good manners," Adam replied wryly.
"Oh." He saw faint gray creep over the too-sharp line of her cheekbones. "Well, I hadn't thought of it that way. Do you truly hate us all?"
"Yes, I'm afraid so. Because any one of you could have told Canemore, 'Don't do this'."
"He would have never listened."
"No. But it would have been said. Sometimes you have to fight not because you know you'll win, but just because you know it must be done. Else a part of yourself is cut away, and it's very hard to get it back."
"You say such strange things," she frowned again. "Most of the time when mortals speak it's all nonsense, but your words are both strange and true. If I had said it, you would not hate me. Is it magic?"
"No," Adam nearly smiled. "I just know that I'm talking to a fairy. I can't speak to you of mortal things, they won't make sense to you. If I want you to listen, to hear me, then I have to speak of things that would matter to you. Just as if you were talking to a mortal about fairy things, they'd never understand you. They're not fairies."
Her frown didn't go away. "That is... sensible." They walked on, past the Royal Gardens, closer to the woods. "We like stories. Every test is a story." Instead of heading for the woods, she detoured into the Gardens.
"Ah. Am I to tell a good story, then?"
"All stories are good. If you want our favor, you should make it long. All the others have been so brief."
"Death will do that."
"Well, it's no fun when a story ends, 'and then he died'."
"I'll do my best not to die."
"Good." She turned to look at him. They had reached an elegant little plaza, cobbled in an artful spiral, with a decorative well at the center and stone benches surrounding it. The decorative planters had not yet bloomed, and the stones were slick with damp.
On one of the benches sat Prince Canemore. Adam's escort moved to kneel before the Prince Beyond the Woods. "I have brought him."
"That I see, that I know, that I thank you for, Baen." He reached out to put his hand on her head as if bestowing a blessing.
She looked up at him. "Do not do this."
Canemore froze. For that matter, so did Adam.
"You spoke with him," the Prince hissed.
"I am not a creature of silence," she shrugged gracefully.
"Go," he commanded through gritted teeth, drawing his hand away.
She rose and walked away.
"Lady Baen," Adam called out. When she turned to look at him, he held up a gloved hand, index and thumb far apart. He drew them a little closer to one another and watched her empty, bottomless eyes widen minutely in surprise before she left them.
They faced one another, the near-powers of two very disparate worlds that sat so close to one another. "So many times in your life you could have done us all the courtesy of dying," Canemore said at last.
"I was a very contrary child, I'm told," Adam replied evenly, swallowing a hint of bile. "For that matter, it occurs to me that we might not have ended up here tonight if at some point you'd said 'hello'."
Canemore smiled at that. "Oh, no. No, no. You see, Prince Adam, I have spent too much time watching your kind. I know you for the deadliest of plagues. You change everything you touch."
"Change isn't bad, though, it simply is."
"Change is a poison," Canemore snapped at him, rising to his feet. "We are unchanging, immortal, forever. We have no need of your kind, we never have, and if I could erase the lot of you from existence I gladly would." The Sidhe Prince smiled. "And yet, you know, something you once said has stuck with me for a little while now. 'Heed your friends. No one's worth spit on hot cobbles without them, least of all a king."
Adam felt the faint taste of bile in his mouth become all the stronger. "I stand by those words."
"I thought you might." A woman's scream trailed up from the well, full of terror. Canemore leaned lazily against it.
Adam rushed to the edge, leaning on the stones and peering down into the darkness, even though he knew he'd never be able to see anything. "What did you do," he demanded, strangled by fear. He knew that voice.
"Friends are such a dangerous noose around one's neck," the Sidhe Prince replied. "Anyone can come by, grab that rope, and pull it tight."
"My friends are my strength."
"Are you theirs? You knew exactly what you were doing today, or so you thought. Catch us unprepared, find an easy challenge. We are not children, Prince Adam, though this is, and has always been, a game -"
"To you."
Canemore shrugged. "You could have left. You could have forsworn the crown."
"You could have kept your hands off Linden." Canemore's glamour slipped and he snarled at Adam, a thing of shadow and glass and deadly darkness. A moment later the point of Adam's sword was at his throat. Somewhere deep in the darkness, the woman's voice sobbed. "That better not be Culli-maid."
Canemore's smile was a wolf's. "Here is your test, Prince Adam of the realm. You left your house this morning thinking yourself quite clever. You must return to it before a full day has passed; it must be exactly as you left it, barring the passing of a day. How lucky for you that you kept your man-at-arms with you the whole day. Or is it caution that he carries so much iron on his person, all of it blessed by your priests?" The Sidhe Prince shrugged. "Your housekeeper keeps your keys, so a key you'll need to free her. Your wise advisor needs his eyes to gather wisdom -"
"Did you hurt Beli?!"
"Oh, please, it's just his eyes. We can put those back and he'll never remember he was missing them. Provided, of course, you prevail."
Adam was having a hard time convincing himself not to shove the sword forward a few inches.
"Put your house to rights if you would be King, Prince Adam. Return to it every inch its lord, horse and tiercel by your sides. Be King before your household’s eyes, and we will abide your crowning."
"Where are they?" Adam asked through teeth gritted so tight they were hurting him.
Canemore stepped back, smiling still, arms spread open as if to welcome Adam's sword.
He could try, the young prince realized. He could really try. And Canemore would let him, and they might spend the entire night doing absolutely nothing except feeding Adam's rage, and he would lose. He slammed the sword back in its sheath, put a boot on the rim of the well, and murmured, "Hold on tight, Trout."
He leapt into the well.
***
Adam fell into darkness for far longer than he should.
It was deathly silent, completely empty. All he could hear was the rushing of his blood, the thrum of his heart. He couldn't even feel the rushing wind that should have been passing him by, he couldn't hear the thunder of it. He couldn't smell any of the damp and stone of the well. He tried to cry out, and heard nothing. He simply fell, and fell, and at some point he had to wonder if he was indeed falling. Perhaps he was dead. Perhaps he was trapped in madness, and something of the Court would put on his skin and trample out of the woods and all his hatred would be for nothing in the end.
The beating of his heart saved him in the end. He knew his heart. He'd listened to it many times at night. Nearly every winter night of the last nine years he'd spent going to sleep lulled by no other sound. During the day the everyday noises of his mortal friends had kept him, but at night there had been only that measured beat, reminding him that spring was coming closer, no matter how endless the cold season might seem.
He clutched his hand over his chest, and suddenly the wind was roaring all around him. He was falling. He was alive. He was real, and that seemed far more precious than he'd ever thought it to be. He came to that realization a split second before he crashed down into the dark, still waters of the royal aquifer with an almighty splash, and a different sort of deadly darkness closed a bitterly cold grip all around him. Adam swam up to the surface and broke through it with a gasp and a cough. Screeching like a vexed starling, Trout scrabbled out of its pocket and onto the prince's shoulder, its golden glow breaking the cavernous darkness all around them. "It mightn't have helped the test," the pixie declared, brushing water off its signet shield and fussing over a tiny scrap of leather that secured a lacquered, sharpened pair of hairpins to its back, between its wings, "but it would've been a nice bit of a start to run him through before you went jumping into wet dark places."
"I was tempted," Adam admitted. "But then I'd have had blood on my sword, and it would have got us killed." He drew in a deep breath and whistled a long, steady note until he ran out of breath.
"I do," Adam closed his eyes and used everything Boul had taught him about stones and caves and darkness, until he found the nearest shore of the aquifer; he began to swim for it. "I suppose Canemore's trick is to get them to eat me."
"They're always hungry."
"Yes," Adam agreed. "But it's hard to eat someone whose name you know."
"Who brought you gifts of dandelion crowns and sweet surface fruit," another voice, a rasp of scales on stone and fang against fang, suddenly came into the conversation.
"Who listened to you sing and loved it without falling thrall to it. Who thought you beautiful," a second voice sighed, "even after an eternity away from the light."
"I'm sorry to come disturbing your waters," Adam offered politely.
"You never disturb us, Adam." They were staying just out of reach of the pixie's light, pale white eel bodies rippling through the dark waters. "You were always kind. You were always generous. And we have been quite disturbed already."
"Prince Canemore," Adam said. He was still carefully, oh so casually, swimming for the shore.
"Yes."
"He came to hide something in the aquifer?"
"And to steal from us," a third voice declared, a male's, some anger seeping into it. "What little we had, most of it your gifts, he took. He will not give it back unless we give him your bones, licked clean."
"We have not eaten in so long."
"But it is hard to eat someone whom you know."
"Someone who has been kind."
"Someone who brought us the memory of what we were."
Adam felt Trout cling very tightly to his ear, growling low. Dealing with the Cave Singers had always been tricky, as was dealing with any predator, and he'd always been on solid ground when he did. "I am eighteen today," he admitted to them. "And I mean to claim my crown from Canemore."
The slide of the white bodies under the dark water paused; the only ripples on the surface were suddenly those of his own movements.
"I will be King," he told them. "And a King can do many things that a child and a prince cannot do. I never asked you, because I thought it would be rude and unkind, but today I will ask, with apologies: do you want to go back to your home?"
"Is it unkind of him?" one of the voices asked uncertainly.
"No," the one male replied, but he sounded unsure.
"Yes," the two older females countered, and then one corrected, "but only because we remember. We remember sun-warm rocks, we remember tides. We remember storms and vast broken ice. We remember light and vast green and blue forests full of food. We remember. You do not."
"You are too young," the male added. "You were born here in this darkness, long after the stone had stolen all flavor from the water."
"Oh," the one voice accepted that thoughtfully. "Do we want to? I know the stories and the songs you've taught me of the Place Before, with its tides and its currents, with its light. Where there is no hunger."
"Do you want to?" the male asked.
The silence hung immense in the darkness beyond the pixie's golden light. Adam all but felt the older merfolk hold their breath.
"I don't know. I've never known light."
"You've seen my torches, my candles," Adam countered. "The caves are full of mushrooms and moss, mold and slime that all glows with its own light. Trout here has light of its own."
"But that's not the same thing as in the songs, is it?"
"No," Adam admitted, and caught his breath. "But I can show you sunlight, true sunlight. I can give you the taste of the waters that your people left behind when chance trapped them here, underground. If I show you these things, if I give them to you, will you help me, help us? Help me find what Canemore hid here, and take us safely to shore after I have it?"
"Yes," one of the females agreed.
"But only if it's true," the other warned.
Adam stopped swimming and reached into his pocket. "You'll have to come closer, though. You'll have to come into the light."
"How will I see this light, if I'm already in it?"
"No offense to Trout," Adam smiled wryly at the pixie, who buzzed its wings, "but there is no comparison."
She slid closer, a white and deadly ghost underwater. Her hair was a blue mantle running down the back of her eel-like body, turning into a long dorsal fin. Her head tried to be beautiful, but it was hard when darkness had bleached it of all color and most substance, leaving it so pale that the delicate web of veins was visible under the pale violet-tinged whiteness of her skin. Her eyes were small and copper-ringed; she had no ears or nose, only a perfect smoothness down to the lovely rosebud of her mouth, which didn't move at all. Directly beneath it, a thin and nearly imperceptible line along her chin hid her true mouth, and the forest of peg-like fangs in it. Her neck was far too long and far too boneless, and black and pink ripples covered her torso, fluttering in the water.
Adam reached out an arm, and she clung to it, the boneless tendrils of her fingers spiraling around it. "Close your eyes," he told her, "until you can just peek at me. Otherwise it will hurt you until you're used to it."
She obeyed. Rare as it had been that the children would come so deep into the caves as to reach the aquifer, still they'd met the merfolk trapped in those waters every now and again, and they had no reason to distrust Adam. He had never given them one.
He fumbled in his pocket and closed a fist around the sun that was his last memento from Linden; he brought it out, holding it just over the surface. "Ready?"
"Yes," she breathed out.
He slid his fingers open, and sunlight, true and rich and warm, spilled into the darkness of the cave, revealing the beautiful work of water on stone, immense and deceptively delicate columns, pale lace-like lattices, vast shelves of limestone festooned with minerals. She cried out in shock, and then spun all around, eyes narrowed but struggling to take it all in. "Oh! Oh, there are colors everywhere!"
Adam lifted his hand and, finger by finger, opened his grip until the golden glow of that summer-caught sunlight filled the space.
"It's so warm!" She laughed in delight, her tail thrashing beneath the surface. "It's so beautiful! Can I touch it?"
"You can have it," Adam offered, "if you help us. But I offered you something else, didn't I? Two trades for two favors."
"Yes." She beamed at him. "To help you find what the Prince hid. What's the second one?"
"Take this then," he offered her the bit of sunlight, and she took it in her free hand, throwing the aquifer into dancing chiaroscuro shadows, "and open your mouth," he instructed her, and she did. Adam found himself facing several rows of fangs, curved slightly inward. Reaching again into his pocket he found the round salt stone that Boul had given him that morning; water had made no dent on it. With great care to avoid those teeth, he touched it to her tongue and slid it down carefully along it. "There."
She smacked and clacked her lips, then sank under the water and did so again. Adam saw the black dot at the center of each copper-colored eye suddenly grow immense. "It's like food, but not bitter. And it lingers!"
"It's not afraid. Fear is bitter," one of the females replied, drawing close. She was twice the size of the one Adam was speaking to. "I have nothing to offer, Adam, but could I taste your sea-stone? I will promise you anything."
"I will promise you myself if I can taste the stone," the male was smaller than the older female, but larger than Adam.
"It lingers because it does not die," the third female replied, matched in size to the male. "I do have something I can offer, Adam. I will sing for you the Deathless song, for as long as you want me to. For as long as I can."
Everything in him wanted to simply give this to them, if only because it was the kind thing to do, and ever he'd wanted to be kind. He could scarcely imagine what it had to be like to be trapped away from the light and the sea for so long that even the taste of home was forever erased from the water in which you lived. "I will give it to you, though it's a gift from a very dear friend. But I will not keep you here to sing anything for me, not if you choose to go home. A child couldn't help you, and a prince is scarcely any better. But a King, a King can do many things. I want you to think on your answer to my question. The salt-stone I will give you as a trade, to take me and Trout safely to shore once I find what Prince Canemore hid."
"Yes," they chorused at him. He put out the stone, and someone yanked it from his grip.
Suddenly they were moving so swiftly over the water that Trout nearly went flying off his shoulder with a yelp. They flew in flashes of light, blazing out of the water when the mermaid who carried it leapt over it, dimly lighting their way when it was only Trout's glow. They raced on forever, it seemed, until Adam could hear the stone overhead, but only barely so. They were at the deepest part of the immense aquifer.
If they betrayed him then, there would be nothing he could do.
"The pixie cannot come with you," the oldest of the females told him. "He would never make it."
Trout huffed in vexation, and rose to hover. "You'd best be taking good care of him, then."
She moved closer and caught Adam's hand. "You'll need the iron you have brought. The thing that guards your treasure has no mind or heart you can appeal to."
"Does it bleed?" Adam drew his sword.
"Yes," she admitted. "And I will try to remember that we have made a bargain with you, Adam. But you must find what you are seeking quickly, and we must leave swiftly. It will matter very little, how sorry we might be to break our agreement, if we've eaten you already."
"Fair," the prince could only say, squirming out of his bow and quiver and handing them over to the male to hold. "I can't breathe water as you do, remember that. I can only hold my breath so long."
"I will sing breath for you," the other female assured him. "Stay close. If you can hear me, you will be fine."
They dove. The darkness was profound, until the youngest joined them, carrying the little bit of captive sunlight with her. They dove endlessly, the cold and the pressure becoming nearly painful until one of them began to sing, a high and steady note that curled up and down like a gust of wind over foaming waves, like a warm breeze along a golden beach. Adam found he could breathe, though the cold only grew even more brutal.
They reached the bottom before a low cave. Even the sunlight could not pierce the darkness inside it, and Adam realized why when a phantom green glow began to spread over it in a perceivable pattern. Two bright, empty eyes shone like a cat's for a brief moment, and Adam went very still.
So did the rows of gleaming color.
He lifted his sword. The immense creature surged slightly forward, and the prince froze once again, before he started moving with immense, careful slowness. The eyes moved in the light as the creature turned this way and that, trying to hunt down those minute vibrations, and it surged briefly out of the cave, but aimed at no particular target.
It's blind, Adam thought. Like most everything that lives in these caves, it's blind. It doesn't need eyes. Only the Singers kept them because they're fairies, and fairies don't change unless they're made to change.
It was an immense catfish, made huge by age and pale gray by darkness. Skin had grown over its eyes and whorls of color that only showed in the dark adorned its scarred flank. Adam eyed those scars and turned to look at the hands of the older mermaid, floating still in the water by his side. This, then, was why they only had the one child. The fish was easily three times the size of the largest of them. A single fishing hook, absurdly small for its size, was embedded on the catfish's lower jaw. From it hung an even tinier pearl set on a silver pendant in the shape of a key.
Adam lifted a hand, catching their eye. Pointed at the oldest one and gestured to a spot behind him. The catfish pivoted toward him, but she'd gotten the gist of what he wanted, and let herself float away sedately. He turned to point at the youngest, pointed at himself, and gestured up. She nodded.
Now it only left the actual killing of the damn thing. Adam hung onto his sword and waited.
Somewhere directly behind him, something struck the stone of the ground with immense force.
The catfish surged forward. Adam thrust his sword up and nearly had it ripped from his hand. A fin slapped his face with punishing force and he clung to it with his free hand, trying to not lose his wits, holding onto his breath. For a moment it was all darkness and cold and a crushing, deadly pressure, until either the catfish turned back towards the cave or the singing mermaid caught up with them.
The damned thing's belly, after so long resting in the aquifer, had become embedded full of stones. It might as well be armored on what should have been its most vulnerable spot. The catfish writhed and twisted, all too aware that something was clinging to it, dragging it down and throwing it off-balance. As it turned, jaws snapping blindly, Adam shoved the sword into the soft fleshy bit of its mouth. It didn't stop it, didn't seem to even slow it down, but the prince hadn't meant for it to do so; instead, when it came looking to bite at him again, he snatched for the fishing hook and the pendant, and yanked it through the soft flesh there.
A tiny rivulet of blood, darker than the darkness, spilled into the water.
"Sunlight!" Adam cried out in the language of the cistern fish.
The youngest mermaid was suddenly there, slamming into him and rushing him up, up towards the distant glow of the pixie's light, up towards life and breath and warmth. But behind them came the catfish like a raging dragon, even though the other two mermaids were clinging to it, mouths sunk into its flesh. It was too big to care. It snapped upwards and caught Adam's foot between its jaws and the prince screamed the last of its breath underwater.
He hooked the foot that the catfish had captured on the hilt of the sword he'd left in the monster's mouth, and kicked it as hard as it could. The giant heaved; from outside Adam could hardly reach anything of importance, let alone anything that bled. But from inside, he'd shoved the blade straight into the catfish's head. The point peeked out of one eye.
Blood spilled like a cloud on the water. The fish heaved and spat him out, like any fish will when it feels it has bit into a hook, and the youngest mermaid raced him up, up and away, even as her mother and her aunt went into a frenzy, tearing and gouging and biting at the catfish, their song an eerie, maddened shriek. They burst out on the surface and Adam choked on his first breath, coughing until he felt as if he might catch on fire.
"What happened!" the male demanded.
"Swim!" was all the youngest was saying, and then they were flying through the water, outrunning the spill of death and blood and madness.
Or, at least, that was what Adam hoped, but he was too dizzy to know. Or to put up a fight.
***
"Adam."
There was a cool hand on his forehead, brushing away damp hair, and a rough surface under him, which he could feel even through the heavy quilting of his jacket. Had he been sick? Was he hurt? He couldn't remember anything. He'd had a terrible nightmare.
"Mortal prince, do I need to bite you again?"
Ah, so it hadn't been a nightmare.
"Trout, everything with you is an excuse to bite," he croaked out and sat up with an effort, coughing and spitting out a few more lungfuls of water. "Is everyone alright?"
"Yes," the oldest of the mermaids replied. "And well fed, and unafraid. It has been very long since we had any of those." She was an immense white body coiled around him in the shallows of the aquifer, on a beach he knew from happier times, when they'd visited with food and trinkets just to hear the merfolk sing. He'd been saved by those visits, Adam realized. By his familiarity not just with the Singers, but with their song. He'd grown used to the deadly beauty of it. Even if they wanted to, could they have driven him mad with it? Because that would have satisfied Canemore as well, Adam suspected.
"Well, something good came out of that. I don't think I have a right to ask more, since I didn't even know what I was doing, or what to expect."
"Will you face all your trials like this?"
"I hope not. I'm tired of putting friends at risk."
She was silent for a long moment. "That is not what I asked, for all that the answer fits. But that is a very mortal way to look at it."
"I am very mortal," Adam agreed wearily, working his foot on its boot. It hurt, horribly, but nothing felt broken. "I don't know. I thought there would be more magic to it, less violence. I forget that both can get me killed."
"I don't believe you forgot, Adam," she said gently. "I believe you do not care. I know what that is like. We stopped caring, too, a long time ago."
"But you care for her."
"And only for her. You named her, you know."
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to presume -"
"You did not. You offered the name, and she accepted it. But we don't know how to repay you for that gift."
Adam ground his hand against his head. "Well, I can't ask you for my sword, you can't touch it."
"No."
He looked at his hands, uncurled his fists. The pearl-key sat on one. "Then help me. When Canemore came, did he have a mortal with him? A woman, young."
"No. She, he brought in later, and took her much farther into the caves, along with a blind man. He was bleeding."
Adam closed his eyes. "I am," he said very calmly, "going to be King. And I am going to wage war on the Court. It's very possible they'll come to ask you to join them, because the trolls and the redcaps have already abandoned them."
She nodded. "We will not fight. We have a reason to care now. I offer you this third trade, Adam. We will not join your enemies. We will keep the aquifer safe. And when you are King, you will bring Sunlight to the sea."
"But what about you?"
"Perhaps we will come with her," she shrugged, the blue dorsal fin shifting from one side to another. "I don't know how you could do this thing. I will not ask it for all of us, because I do not know if it can be done for all of us. But for Sunlight, it must happen."
"If it happens for Sunlight, it will happen for all of you." He offered his hand. "Hang onto hope. One of us should."
She took his hand and shook it, and retreated into the water.
"Trout," Adam said, moving to his feet and looking about until he found his bow and quiver. "Beli came by here, and he was bleeding. Can you sniff out his trail?"
"Oh, that's easy!" The pixie took off, looking about for the familiar scent.
"I'm glad one of us thinks so," Adam muttered wearily.
***
Magic had been laid in traps all along his route, but the dizzying, maddening spirals of it had no more effect on Adam than the frenzy-song of the merfolk had. He could have been lost in the caves forever, he realized. He should have been, thrown off the path, his mind slowly fracturing. But even down here he had unexpected allies; in many places he saw the smallfolk, in their mushroom hats and mole coats, trundling by and taking away the magic of the traps, piece by tiny piece, in their tiny ribcage sleds. He paused to share with them a scarce handful of dry cherries, misplaced in one of his pockets and gone soggy after his dive in the aquifer, and they were exceptionally appreciative.
Following the golden light of the tiny, ruthless predator keeping him company, Adam wandered past the caves he knew and found himself looking at an immense stone arch of light and magic. Squinting showed him the same thing; so did holding onto the hilt of his dagger. "Trout, what am I looking at?"
The pixie perched on his shoulder. "It's a Many-Steps. Big magic for those without wings. Step in and step out and step somewhere else far away."
"And get stranded and lose by default." Adam examined the beautiful stonework, illuminated by its pale silvery magic. "Or half of me gets left here and half gods know where."
"Many-Steps don't stop just like that," Trout chided him tartly. "They only close if there's nobody using them. What sort of cheap worthless magic have you been taught, mortal prince?"
"I beg a thousand pardons." Adam considered that; then he bent down, took off his soggy boots, and put them directly in the middle of the archway before stepping forward over them, holding his breath. The glow of the archway remained steady.
They were in a stone-lined hallway, dry and dark and empty. A constant, steady hissing sound filled the air, broken occasionally by stray wisps of distant, heart-broken sobbing.
"I can't smell Beli anymore," Trout warned, returning to its perch on the prince's shoulder.
"That's fine," Adam replied, hurrying along the hallway until he came to a crossroads. Pulling his dagger and about to notch a mark into the stone, he paused and instead dropped to his hands and knees and rapped the hilt lightly against the stones at the bottom of the wall until the low, growly and muttering language of the smallfolk answered him. One of the smaller stones pivoted open and they peered up at him, stout and small and shy, but all familiar with him and his generosity of dry cherries, of bacon rinds, of charcoal and sunflower seeds.
They lit their lamps for him.
Adam ran into the vast maze to which the Many-Steps archway had transported him. They couldn't guide him, of course, and he absolutely refused to allow them to help. It would have meant choosing his side, and he couldn't stomach the thought of what Canemore might do to them for it. Life would be hard enough for them all soon enough. But wherever he went , the lamps on either side of the hallway would come to life, tiny wicks burning on floating chestnuts, pet fireflies, potted mushrooms, all of them at near-ground level. Twice he found himself at a dead end, and as he raced back to pick another path the lights changed for him as well.
The weeping led him to the ruins of a great, round room with a vast cupola overhead and moonlight pouring in through elegant windows bereft of glass panes and framed by the ruins of exquisite gilded velvet curtains. The entire room gleamed with far more than starlight, the elegant marble floors polished until a near-perfect mirror of the room gazed back at Adam from the depths of its abstract design. The walls and columns supported the cupola looked like something out of a fantastic mausoleum.
Adam froze at the doors. Two, perhaps three dozen Culli-maids sat in a double circle in the room, each one attending to their own spinning wheel and quietly sobbing. They all wore the same simple dress, a woolen overgown over a sensible linen blouse and a warm woolen skirt, with tidy leather house slippers and a knit shawl on surprisingly bright grays and greens. The wheels were the source of the constant, steady hissing, thread coming to life along their endless circle and then shooting upward, coming together by twos and by threes until a slender, silver cord ran out of the room through the marble of the cupola, away. Even from a distance Adam could feel the seething magic of it, and he suspected he knew where it went. He also believed he knew this game; the Folk Beyond the Woods, he'd realized from all the stories he'd been told, weren't able to come up with ideas of their own, and their tricks, while many, tended to repeat themselves.
He closed his eyes and squinted at the crowd of Cullis, but his head almost immediately began to pound. There was too much magic in the room. He shook his head and rubbed at his eyes, and stared instead at the windows, nodding minutely when he realized the view through each gracious arch was different. "Trout, stay away from the windows, they're a trap."
"Are there enemies?" The pixie reached back for its sharp little hairpins.
"No," Adam took a step forward. "They're a trap for you." He took a second step forward, soundless without his boots, and called out, "Culli-maid."
And he listened very closely.
They all turned to him and cried out. "Highness!" some of them screamed.
"Adam!" others wept.
Adam nodded with a grim little smile. He did know this game. "Well. That takes half of you out of the running very neatly, doesn't it? The real Culli fought me nine years on it." He pointed out those he knew for sure had called him 'Adam'. "Keep spinning, but turn your wheels around."
"But Adam -" One of them began.
"No," he said coolly. "I don't know what you're spinning yet. Until I do, none of you stop. And if you've turned your chair around, don't talk to me. Don't talk to one another. Don't speak at all."
He walked along the circles. They were flawlessly identical, each and every one of them, exactly as Culli-maid had been when he'd seen her last, just that morning. Some sobbed even as their hands turned wool into thread and into magic. Others struggled to be brave for him. A few looked stricken, lost and haunted. If fear could possibly have a face, all of the possible variables of it were to be found there, in that circle of spinning wheels.
Adam crouched down. A beautiful pearl and gold chain and cuff secured each Culli's leg to the chair where they sat. He suspected his key would only work the once.
"I could bite them," Trout suggested dubiously. "Maybe the real Culli-maid will taste of real blood."
"And maybe she's a troll under the glamour and squashes you flat for the daring. No, Trout, I'm not willing to risk you. I know the Culli-maid. If I don't know her well enough to beat this game, I don't deserve her loyalty." He straightened up. "I can only take one of you, can I?"
"Yes," they all chorused.
"Can I ask as many questions as I like?"
"Yes," they repeated.
Adam stepped back nearly to the door, where he could see them all clearly. "What's your real name, Culli-maid?"
"Sophronia," they all replied in nearly perfect synchronicity.
Nearly.
Adam grinned wryly. "It's embarrassing, really. But Culli, it's so useful that you don't say your own name the way the rest of the world reads it and speaks it." He drew seven of the replicas forward, to a third circle. "Keep spinning," he told the rest. "Turn around. Don't make a sou- ah!" He gestured sharply to one of the false Cullis, who'd tried to bare very un-Culli-like fangs at him. "I have neither chosen nor rejected you. Keep. Spinning."
She obeyed, snarling. "To free the wrong one is your death, mortal prince. To free the right one is to free us all, and still your death. What do I care what you command?"
"You care enough to obey and that's good enough for me," Adam replied distractedly, staring at the seven Culli-maids. "Don't run. When I free you, Culli, don't run, and don't stop spinning. Because I'm pretty sure the windows are enchanted to take you places, but not to bring you back. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Highness," they agreed tearfully.
Adam breathed out slowly. So far he'd been counting on the fact that a fairy replica would want to get every little detail right; the problem with that was, of course, that he'd asked questions meant to have flawed answers. And the fakes left along with the real Culli were the ones that knew that to fail a little could mean victory all the same. He also couldn't ask questions with complex answers - he'd never hear the right one over the chaos of too many words spoken too quickly at him. He ran his hands through his hair in exasperation. "Damn it, Culli, you actually know too many of my secrets, I don't trust any of them to be safe from this lot," he laughed ruefully. "Guess it'll have to be yours, and I'm sorry for that."
He looked into all those red-rimmed, frightened, soft brown gazes, and remembered the brightest smile he'd ever seen from the maid, the only time he'd seen her truly charmed. He remembered being sick, but having his friends there - all of them, even the one who couldn't climb. All because someone had found a way. "You never wed, Culli. You never even entertained a suitor. Every boy and every man who came calling, none of them touched you. None of them charmed you. Why is that? Who were you waiting for, Culli? Name him for me."
Every Culli had stopped weeping. Some had gone very red. Some had gone deeply pale. The only sound in the room was the spinning of the wheels.
They couldn't answer, Adam realized. This was a secret Culli-maid had never surrendered. One that Adam had guessed at, but which had never been spoken out loud. In a way it was his fault; the moment he'd suspected it had happened he should've asked the priests to make sure it was real, and not simply Culli getting elf-touched by accident. At that point, in that elegant room full of magic, it didn't matter anymore: it had grown into something real and powerful in silence and in secret.
"Adam," one of the Cullis whispered.
"You," another breathed. "I was waiting for you."
"Oh, Adam..."
He gave them time to answer. Some secrets are hard to surrender. In the end, only two refused to answer, and Adam suddenly realized why: the real Culli knew he knew the answer; the false one was waiting to steal it from her mouth.
He gestured the others back to their places. "You know how it goes. I'll repeat it a third time, but at that point you'll be magic-bound and I'll be more than a little angr- don't. Hiss at me," he warned one of the false Cullis. "You played a cruel game and lost. What you pay for failing is not my problem. Culli," he urged the last two gently, "go ahead. Whatever you answer, I'll take it from there."
The wheels spun and the magic cord gleamed.
They both opened their mouths, like perfect mirrors of one another, and Adam couldn't have said which one spoke first. "Boulders..."
"... for Brains," they both finished. Quiet tears slipped down their pale cheeks.
"A troll?!" someone hissed in disbelief from somewhere in the room.
"If you don't understand why, you would have never won this game anyway," Adam replied casually, coming to stand before the two Cullis. "Boul is a creature of loyalty, Culli. We both know that. In his silence, everything is said without words. He might not have known of your love," he admitted, reaching under his shirt and pulling on the leather cord there until the opalized shell peeked out, "but he knew you a true friend, didn't he?"
Two hands went to two necks. One of them tugged a shell the match of Adam's out from the severe linen shirt Culli wore when the weather was chilly. The other, of course, had nothing to find.
Adam caught that questing, empty, panicking hand in his, and guided it back to the wheel. "Don't stop, Culli. I still don't know what you're weaving, but I have a nasty suspicion."
"You lied!" the false Culli-maid squealed at him like an angry ferret, even as Culli-maid, sobbing, worked her spinning wheel.
"I didn't." Adam tucked the shell back under his shirt. "This was one of Boul's gifts to me, when we were young. And all of my friends know Culli-maid is true, and honest, and kind. And I would cut down every last one of you for the terror you've caused her," he snarled at the entire room of them. "But getting her to safety comes first, always. Those with me, those I call friend, those who have given me their loyalty, I owe them in equal measure. Pity your Prince and your Queen haven't taught you that."
"I will be there when Canemore rips your beating heart from your foolish chest, mortal prince," the false Culli hissed. "And I will forget you a moment after."
"Busy night for you," Adam replied. "I'll forget you the moment I leave this room. Culli, can you walk?"
"Yes, Highness." She scrubbed fiercely at her tears with one hand, the other tending to the wheel.
"Good, because we might have to run." It had finally occurred to Adam that there was only one work of magic that would require constant attention in the maze where Culli had been imprisoned. "I won't ask that. I just need to know if I have to carry you."
She flushed very pink. "To get out of this place and away from this folk, I will run."
"Do you discount our hospitality, maid?" one of the replicas asked, her voice silky soft.
"Begging the lady's pardon, this place's very nice, if a bit chilly," Culli-maid replied, her hands going white as they worked the wheel. "But I was tricked out of my rooms and tranced out of the palace and given no choice about the coming or the going to whatever this place might be. It sours a person some, that."
Adam waited for the Folk Beyond the Woods to reply to that, but none did. He leaned down and caught the cuff in one hand, slipping the pearl key into it. The chain went to pieces, and he was left holding a pearl-and-gold lock along with the pearl pendant-key.
The windows slammed shut, the glow of moon and stars coming from them vanishing as if shutters and curtains both had been closed over them. Every other fairy in the room vanished, as did their spinning wheels. The vivid light of the magic they'd been weaving threatened to gutter out like a candle in a storm, alive only by the last languishing thread coming out of Culli's wheel. The entire room shook, dust falling from the high cupola.
"Bad time to be right," Adam muttered. He offered a hand to Culli and yanked her out of her chair, and then they were running, Trout just ahead of them, following the tiny path of lights the smallfolk had created for him as the entire maze rumbled.
"The Many-Steps!" Trout cried out. "Adam, it's failing!"
"I know!" Adam all but shouted back. Before them the gleaming stone-and-magic portal was struggling to close, reduced to the thickness of a thread and collapsing down on itself, held back from fully closing off only by the soggy pair of boots planted firmly in the middle of it. He scooped Culli up in his arms and threw himself across; they landed in a heap with a tiny squeal of dismay from her to find herself so indecorously close to a young man, even if she more or less counted him her son.
"Trout!" Adam called out, felt the light impact of the pixie against the side of his face. He snatched up his boots before they were either crushed or sliced in half, and the portal collapsed immediately into darkness, broken only by the golden glow of the pixie.
They stayed there, breathing hard, staring at the raw rock of the caves, letting the chill of the damp air cool them down from their frantic sprint. "Well," Adam wheezed at last, "that's a lot more like what I expected." But then Culli-maid was clinging to him, sobbing in belated terror, and he picked her up and rocked her in his arms until the storm of her emotions had settled. "I'm sorry," he told her at last when she would hear him.
"Ugh." She swatted him lightly. "Don't be. Don't you dare be sorry. We all knew it would come to this. You're worth fighting for, Highness. I'm just being a right twit, is all."
He sighed deeply, and kissed her forehead. "But I'm sorry all the same. As much of a fight as I know life is going to be for us all, this was not the violence I expected to bring to your doorstep." He let her go and set about putting his boots back on.
"You didn't bring anything, they did," Culli-maid replied, brushing at herself and moving to her feet.
Adam tested his foot. It had finally settled down as he walked the maze, but it was stinging once again after their rush to escape. He switched the obsidian dagger so there'd be something solid to give his leg some support, and looked up at Culli. "I should have asked," he told her very quietly.
She hugged the shawl to herself. "It was nice to have love,"she replied, staring into the dark. "Even if it wasn't real. I could have gone to the priests, but it was nice, and it was safe, because I knew nothing would come of it. And then, eventually, it simply was nice to have."
"I won't ask you to give it up, Culli. If you can prove to me it's not hurting you."
She smiled weakly at him as he stood up. "Oh, I should. Who knows what it's done to my head, if my thoughts are really my own after all these years." She blew out a long, low breath. "Well, what are we to do now? How can I help you, Highness?"
"You go home," he told her. "I'll take you out of the caves and to the edge of the woods. Get back to the palace and wait for me there, because you have to be there for me to win." He offered her the gold lock and the pearl key. "And if anyone stops them, you show them this, and tell them your part in the test is done. They're yours now." Adam smiled wryly. "A key to open any door, and a lock to close it. Fitting gifts for a King's housekeeper, I think."
