A Strange and Ancient Name (33 page)

He caught up the psychic trail he’d been following, and felt that other Power quiver. As they rode on, the shadowy figures moved with them, and Hauberin felt the space between his shoulder blades start to prickle. No magical being could handle iron, but that didn’t mean the Fées weren’t nicely armed with bronze or sharpened stone.

And here we are, neatly caught between forest and ridge.

But the Fées still did nothing more than watch.

“Watch away,”
the prince told them. “I’m
not going to be the first to yield.”

The night darkened. The horses had long ago accepted the alien scents of the watchers, plodding wearily on like equine sleepwalkers, heads down, ears bobbing limply. Alliar, of course, showed not the slightest sign of fatigue, but Hauberin heard Matilde stifle a yawn and had to fight down one himself.

“Can’t we stop . . . ?” the woman complained sleepily. “Don’t think I’ll ever be able to walk again . . .”

“Sorry,” Hauberin murmured. “We don’t dare stop. Not here, not now.”

No answer. The prince settled as comfortably as he could into the saddle, trying to ignore the complaints of his own tired muscles . . . The endless ridge continued without a gap on one side, the endless trees continued without a break on the other, featureless walls, hypnotic in their sameness, going on and on like a tunnel . . . a corridor . . . a dark, featureless corridor . . .

. . .
down which he walked, aching with terror, knowing that this time there would be no escape, this time he was finally close enough to see—

“No! I won’t—
No!”

His own shout brought the prince jarringly awake, nearly falling, not at all sure where he was, hearing startled noises from Alliar and Matilde.

“What’s wrong?” the being asked sharply.

Hauberin swallowed dryly, struggling to catch his breath. “Nothing,” he rasped out. “I . . . fell asleep in the saddle for a moment, that’s all.”

At least he hadn’t dropped the vital ring. The prince glanced down at it, then clenched his fist about it, cold and sick with the weight of hopelessness. It had all nearly ended here; he had come so painfully close to dying in his sleep. If the dream took him again, it would surely win.

Unless, of course, Hauberin thought grimly, he reached the Other first.

The night up ahead was growing too dark. Something was blocking their path, looming up mysteriously as they approached, making their horses shy and dance nervously—It was a hill, only a hill, sloping smoothly out of the surrounding forest, too perfectly round to be natural. Studying it, Hauberin straightened in sudden comprehension. Ah, so
this
was what humans meant by a Hollow Hill! It was an ancient site, so ancient folk had forgotten its purpose as some long-ago chieftain’s burial place: dramatic, but perfectly harmless.

Harmless? The psychic thread he followed led, without the slightest deviation, right into the hill.

Impossible. That’s a solid mound of earth.

A doorway opened in the hillside, a blacker mouth in the blackness, leading back into a long, narrow cave.

I stand corrected,
Hauberin thought wryly.

Green-clad figures moved silently out of the mound to stop, straight-backed and proud, staring coldly at the prince. The prince stared right back in unabashed curiosity. Not much taller than he, these people were thin and lean as hungry hounds, their skin fair almost to unhealthy pallor. Both men and women wore their long, straight white hair in a series of intricate braids woven in multiples of three, six, nine, the magic numbers, a style so old Hauberin had seen it only in history texts; their green robes, though blatantly of human weave, were of an equally antique design. They looked so much alike—the same sharp, narrow, nearly gaunt faces, the same slanted, bitter, green eyes—he could barely tell one from another. And to all of them clung the
feel
of that weak, distorted Power.

And yet, and yet, for all their strangenesses, there could be no doubt: these were Fées, these were folk of Faerie.

Hauberin, amazed, moved one hand in an intricate ceremonial greeting common to most of the magic Peoples.

Not, it seemed, to these. They made not the slightest move in response, save for: “You trespass,” one woman said in the human language.

“Not intentionally.” In the Faerie tongue, Hauberin began the ritual phrase, “We come without harm, we mean you no harm, we pass on without harm.”

Green eyes blinked. “He speaks the ancient tongue,” someone murmured.

“Ancient!” the prince echoed in surprise. “It’s the language of our homeland!”

“Do not taunt us,” the woman replied in so archaic a Faerie dialect the prince had difficulty following her. “You bear the signs of our people,” she continued, gesturing to Hauberin’s face and ears, “but none of the True Blood have such skin, such hair, such eyes. Be gone from here, half-blooded one.” The antiquated word she used,
chaikulai,
held subtle connotations of slavery and shame. “We give no greeting to humankind.”

Hauberin fought back a sharp retort, waving the indignantly sputtering Alliar to silence. “No? And yet you let a human pass into your domain.”

“No.” Her eyes were green ice. “No human has passed this way.”

That, Hauberin acknowledged uneasily, might not be quite a lie; what he’d seen in the cathedral might no longer have been truly Gilbert, truly human. Glad that Matilde couldn’t have understood the words or the implication behind them, the prince said, “Surely you can’t deny you granted someone passage.”

The narrow faces were unreadable as stone. “What we did, or did not, is not your concern,
chaikulai.
Now, begone!”

Power glinted in the air. The pale, lean figures were suddenly robed in splendor, tall, proud, terrible in their fury—

Hauberin laughed angrily. “Enough of this!” he cried, and cast his own illusion over himself: a true enough image of himself shining coldly in princely silver robes, the intricate silver crown of High Ceremony gleaming against his black hair. “Half-blood I may be,” Hauberin said in the human tongue—he would
not
call himself
chaikulai
—“but I am also a rightful Prince of Faerie, acknowledged by the High King and Queen themselves—and I will
not
be treated like a magickless fool.”

Their illusions faltered and fell. Hauberin kept his own a moment longer, enforcing the image. Then, seeing the bitter envy in the slanted green eyes, he let it fade, knowing better than to push too far, and slipped lightly from the saddle (regally schooled face showing no sign of stiff muscles’ protests). Following his lead, Matilde and Alliar also dismounted, Alliar deftly scooping up the three horses’ reins.

“I must pass through your domain,” Hauberin told the Fées. Hunting for the properly archaic turn of phrase, he added, “I hunt a blood-foe, a death-foe. Will you grant me leave?”

Almost reluctantly, the woman who’d first spoken dipped her head. “We grant you leave to enter,” she murmured, which wasn’t quite what Hauberin was seeking. “We grant you our hospitality. You shall speak with our Lady, and then . . .” She shrugged bonelessly. “It is for you and she to decide what follows. Come, lord, will you not follow me?” But then the woman turned with a hiss. “Not she! Not the human!”

Hauberin politely held out an arm to Matilde. She, as regal as any Faerie woman, rested her hand upon it. “Yes, she,” the prince said mildly, and stared into the Fée’s eyes until her gaze fell.

“So be it,” she muttered.

“Not me! I can’t!”
Alliar’s silent words were tinged with panic.
“Hauberin, forgive me, I
—
I can’t go into that closeness, I—”

“Hush,”
the prince soothed.
“You don’t have to enter.”

“But you can’t go in there alone, just you and she and the winds know how many of them!”

Hauberin wasn’t happy at the idea, either, particularly not when the Presence just might be lurking—no. No one of Faerie kind would tolerate That among them.
“Odd though they are,”
the prince said, wondering if he was comforting Alliar or himself,
“these are still Faerie folk. And as such, since they’ve offered me hospitality, they cannot break that vow to do me any harm. I repeat, you don’t have to come with me.”

The being’s relief washed over him. “I’ll wait out here,” Alliar said lightly. “After all, somebody has to hold the horses.
But I’ll be ready if you need me,”
the being added silently.
“And . . . laws of hospitality notwithstanding, walk warily, my friend.”

XXVII

NIGHTMARE

At first, Hauberin thought the Fées were being deliberately petty to the half-human and the human. Why else leave the passageway into the hill in darkness so thorough even Faerie sight was useless? But after a moment he heard the faintest rasp of palms lightly brushing one stony wall for guidance as though performing a familiar ritual, and realized with a shock of amazement that they either didn’t know any light-spells or simply didn’t have the Power to use them. For a moment the prince toyed with the idea of trying a spell of his own . . . No. He had accepted their hospitality, no matter how grudgingly it had been given; he was as bound by its rules as they. And pointing out a host’s failings was hardly hospitable.

Eh, well, darkness alone never hurt anyone. The floor was smooth under his feet, there didn’t seem to be any hidden snares or branching passages, and if they could use a wall for a guide, so could he, touching fingertips to stone as he walked.

An endless time passed in darkness, with no sound other than faint breathing and the now-familiar slip of palms against wall. The floor sloped ever so gently beneath his feet, and Hauberin wondered uneasily just how deep into the earth they were going. Matilde hadn’t said a word all this while, but her grip on his arm was becoming fierce enough to cut off the circulation.

“You’re going to leave bruises,” he said.

“Sorry.” She loosened her hold ever so slightly. “It’s just . . .”

“Don’t worry. I won’t lose you.”

“But how can they live like this? Crowded into darkness—Oh, Hauberin, when I think of the bright light of Faerie . . . How can they stand this?”

Fée hearing was as keen as any of the Faerie peoples. “Because we are not weak, fearful humans,” a woman’s voice snapped out of nowhere, and both Matilde and Hauberin started.

“I think you hit a sore point,” the prince murmured, right in Matilde’s ear, and heard her give the ghost of a chuckle.

How
did
they stand it? Or . . . did they? What if the Fées didn’t live here at all? What if, despite the ring’s insistence that this was the right way, Matilde and he were blithely walking right into a trap—

Impossible. The place had the
feel
of a lived-in fortress. And no Faerie folk ever lied. No matter how long they’d lived in the hated human Realm, the Fées still could be no exception.

“Look,” Hauberin soothed Matilde, “there’s a glimmer of light up ahead.”

“Amen.” It was the faintest, most heartfelt whisper.

But now the prince had to wonder,
If they have a source of light, why don’t they use it throughout?

Then they stepped down into a vast chamber, a natural limestone cavern with several smooth passageways leading off into more darkness, and he had his answer: the light came from a few widely spaced glass globes set into the chamber walls and charmed to cast a pale white glow.

“Lilialli’al!”

“Of course,” a Fée said condescendingly.

The prince ignored him, staring at the
lilialli’al
in open amazement. He’d never seen one before; nobody in his land used the light-globes any more. The creation of a
lilialli
took tedious, strenuous magic, a foolish waste of time and strength since experiments over the ages had given Faerie simpler, more efficient light-spells.

Just how long
have
these folk been here?

Long enough for many or the nearly everlasting light-globes to have lost their potency. That meant the Fées must have inhabited this land for . . . Powers, for at least since the humans’ discovery of iron, probably much longer. The hall must have been a grand thing back then, all magic and splendor. Traces of that splendor remained: silver still glinted here and there from walls intricately carved in archaic designs that meant little to Hauberin, and a few small gems gleamed from the graceful stone throne that sat against the chamber’s far side.

“But if the
lilialli’al
are failing,” the prince mused aloud, “why don’t you simply use candles or torches?”

That earned him a bitter, scornful laugh. “Those are
human
things.”

Hauberin shrugged. “They’re Faerie things, too, in my land.”

The contempt in countless eyes spoke volumes. The prince deliberately turned his back before he said something he’d regret, making much of studying the throne.

Matilde might not have understood the language, but she certainly understood hostility. “If only they didn’t all look alike,” she whispered unhappily.

Hauberin glanced from the throne and the fading light-globes to the too-pale, too-gaunt, too-similar faces watching him from all sides and felt a sudden uneasy twinge, forcing himself to remember:
These are your hosts, they cannot play you fake.

But he surprised himself with a touch of regret as well for these sad remnants of a once proud race. All too plainly, they had kept themselves aloof from humanity down through the years, scorning to breed the very half-bloods, the despised
chaikulai’al,
that might have given their stock its needed vitality; all too plainly they had mated only among their own small group till what Power this magic-weak Realm allowed them had worn thin and nearly useless. Oh, it would still be enough to frighten a passing human, perhaps even enough to win them such peacekeeping offerings as their green cloth. But he doubted a living child had been born in these caverns within a hundred cycles of the mortal moon. As for the rumor of human children stolen away . . . it was surely that, only rumor. No human child could live for long, shut away from sunlight, from all light . . .

Why do they stay here? Why didn’t they flee to Faerie ages past?

Before he could find a tactful way to ask, there was a stirring among the Fées, a nervous anticipation. The crowd parted, bowing like wheat in the wind to let their Lady pass.

She was old, this Lady, as Sharailan his court sage was old, with something of the same brittleness, but without any of Sharailan’s tempering gentleness; in her, the untold ages had worn away any trace of softness, and what was left was sharp as any blade. As she took her place upon the throne, green gown sweeping in stiff folds about her, Hauberin thought of an elegant white hunting hound, all lean, fierce, hungry beauty.

He bowed slightly, arms flat at his sides, the Single Courtesy of ruler to ruler, and she dipped her head in response. But her eyes, oh her fierce green eyes devoured him, as though he were the lover she had awaited all the endless years. Or, perhaps, the savior.

Uneasy, Hauberin said, “Lady! You look at me as though you know me, but I fear I don’t know you.”

For a moment longer the hungry eyes studied at him. Then the Lady murmured, “I thought it would be simpler, since you are but
chaikulai.
I was not told you are of the High Ones’ blood as well. Ay me.” Her sigh was soft and infinitely sad.

The vast cavern suddenly seemed chokingly close. Hauberin straightened, trying not to show his growing alarm, all at once very glad of those protecting bonds of hospitality. “Told by whom, Lady?”

“There is no need for you to know. Forgive me.”

She raised a weary hand. And the gathered Fées rushed forward. For a few precious moments Hauberin was too stunned by impossibility, by this breaking of unbreakable Faerie Law, to fight back. Then he raised a wild swirling of Power to hurl his attackers away—only to have it smothered by the sheer volume of their weaker magics.

All right then, damn you, we’ll do this the human way!

Hearing Matilde’s scream of fury and a Fée man’s grunt of pain—no delicate flower, she—the prince slammed a foot onto someone’s instep (thinking wildly,
I’m getting good at brawling!)
,
managed to kick back into someone else’s shin, but then they were upon him, pinning him back against a wall, grabbing at his limbs. He thought he glimpsed shame in the green eyes, mixed with desperation, but before he could call on their now-tarnished honor, a Fée chanced to catch his arm just above the healing arrow-wound, twisting it, and the prince gasped with the unexpected shock of pain, going submissively limp before the wound could be torn open yet again.

But as soon as he had caught his breath, he shouted to the Lady, “And is
this
how you keep your vows? You lie as well as any human!”

The Fées murmured angrily, tightening their grip on him, but their Lady never stirred. “What I do, I do for my people.”

“Even if it means destroying their honor?”

“Ahh,” she sighed, “what is honor where a
chaikulai
is concerned?”

“Stop calling him that!” That was Matilde’s outraged voice; she might not know the word, but she couldn’t have missed the contempt behind it. “He is a prince!”

The Lady smiled faintly, inviting Hauberin to join her bitter humor. “And how can there possibly be honor when humans are involved? Listen to me,
chaikulai:
we are old, far, far older than your few years—ah yes, I can
feel
your youth. These were our lands once.”

“No!” Matilde shouted. “They were never yours!”

“Be still.” A world of warning was in the simple words. Matilde, no fool, fell silent, and after a moment, the Lady continued softly, “For long and long and long we lived in these lands, shunning only the gaudy sun, glorying in the wonders of mortal night. The humans were as they are now: ugly, foolish things. We ignored them or, if they dared disturb us, toyed with them as the fancy moved us. We lived in peace. But then the iron-wielders came.”

“And they drove you back into these caverns,” Hauberin continued impatiently, “where you lingered and dwindled. Yes, yes, I can guess the rest of your story. What I don’t know is why you stayed.”

The Lady raised a languid hand. “These were our lands.”

“Oh, please. I don’t believe that any more than you. You are of Faerie, not Earth. Why didn’t you return?”

The air was suddenly so sharp with tension that Hauberin braced himself, sure his captors were going to strike him. Instead, to his amazement, the Fées keened softly in anguish. The Lady’s voice was so quiet he almost didn’t hear it over their lament. “We were in this Realm far too long. The way home was lost to us, lost to memory, lost . . .”

“Lost . . .” the others repeated, a thin whisper of sound.

But while they keened, their guard was lowered. In a sudden fierce rush of strength, Hauberin tore free—

Only to stop dead when he saw Matilde trapped in Fée arms, a bronze Fée dagger to her throat.

“And outside,” the Lady said in her quiet voice, “the other, the spirit-in-flesh, is caught by us as well. Do our bidding,
chaikulai,
and they live. Deny us, and . . .”

“Damn you, what do you want of me?”

“Only one thing, only this: to follow where you are bid.”

A Fée woman bent and scooped up the forgotten signet ring in one smooth motion. Hauberin took it from her,
feeling
the psychic thread once more. “But this is insane! There was no need for force—or for you to break honor! Following this trail is what I wanted to do from the first.”

“Is it? Come.”

She stepped with delicate grace from her throne, gesturing to him to follow, the stiff green folds of her gown brushing softly against stone as she walked the length of the cavern. There before them, almost beyond the reach of the
lilialli’al,
was the mouth of yet another tunnel. But this one was never a natural thing. About it flickered the faintest hint of Power, as though there was something very much not of mortal Realms at work.

“Look into this passageway,” the Lady said softly. “Mark it well.”

Puzzled, Hauberin obeyed, the
feel
of the ring telling him that yes, this was the way he must go, down this corridor . . .

. . .
down this dark, featureless corridor . . .

All at once he knew it. All at once the air seemed turned to ice about him, crushing him, stealing his breath, his thoughts, his life:

This was the corridor out of his nightmares.

I can’t go down that, I won’t!

“You must,” the Lady murmured, and Hauberin realized he had shouted that aloud. “You must go, or your friends must die. It is as simple, I fear, as that.”

“No, wait!” Matilde screamed, and Hauberin turned to see her struggling to pull free from her captors, stretching out her arms to him with a lover’s longing. “You can’t go without letting me say goodbye!”

Now, what . . . ?
the prince wondered. But he’d play along; before anyone could stop him, he rushed to embrace her, a corner of his mind wryly amused at the melodrama. But then Matilde’s lips met his in a long, fervent kiss, and for a moment Hauberin forgot they were only acting, for a moment forgot everything but the passion suddenly blazing about them both. He straightened, seeing Matilde staring up at him with something of the dazed wonder he felt.

Then Hauberin came back to himself with a shock as the disgusted Fées around them muttered,
“Chaikulai
and human . . . doesn’t even honor what diluted Blood he has.”

“You’re fine ones to worry about honor,” he began hotly, but Matilde hurriedly whispered in Hauberin’s ear what must have looked like an endearment but was actually, “I don’t dare use this, not while they’ve got Alliar.”

Impatient Fée arms pulled them apart—but not before Hauberin felt Matilde slip a cold, hard something into his sleeve, something with the cold fire of iron to it—

“Go with my blessing,” she cried out as the Fées dragged her away. “Let it be as a blade to defend you, iron to cut through sorcery!”

Oh, clever woman: she’d given him her belt-knife, safely sheathed so the metal wouldn’t harm him. “Thank you, my dearest,” Hauberin said. “I gladly accept your blessing.”

In one smooth movement, he’d drawn the little blade and the Fées shrank back in horror at the sight of iron. Hauberin laughed sharply, for once on the right side of the deadly metal, and lunged at the Lady. If he could take her hostage—

Ae, no. Too many of her people were swarming forward to protect her. Hauberin hesitated, threatening them all with a wave of the knife, seeing them cringe. But one little bit of iron wasn’t going to hold them back for long, and he dared not risk the lives of Alliar and Matilde.