Song of the Fairy Queen (16 page)

That wasn’t all Geoffrey had somehow found and liberated. There were wine cups, plates and even silver. It gave some semblance of place.

Oryan paced across the tent, shaking his head slowly.

Of all the news that Morgan had brought, it was the last that puzzled him the most. The rest, imprisonment and torture, the hunt for wizards, none of it truly surprised him. But that last…

“He’s halted,” Oryan said. “You’re sure?”

Equally grimly and just as puzzled, Morgan said, “My people and Kyri’s have confirmed it. He’s within striking range of Dorset but his people have set camp. The army is spread out across the plain.”

“Intimidation?”

Morgan shrugged, and shook his head, gesturing. “Probably to some extent. He’s close enough but it’s hardly necessary, Philip knows he’s outmatched. Your guess there is as good as mine. From there, though, he can strike almost anywhere.”

“He’s up to something, but if not intimidation, then what?” Oryan said, restlessly. He waved it away. “And you weren’t able to find a wizard?”

Morgan shook his head. “All who could’ve fled did – for the border according to Caleb’s sources. Given what I heard from both Jacob and Caleb I don’t blame them.”

“He’s using them for power,” Oryan said, looking to Kyri. “How is he doing that?”

The thought made Kyri uneasy and her wings fluttered. “I don’t know, there’s nothing in our magic anything like it. But clearly they believe here is a way. If they believe it, it’s very likely true. If so…”

She couldn’t imagine it, a life taken to give power to another. The thought made her shudder. It seemed like madness and perhaps in a way it was.

With a sigh, Morgan said. “I thought you should know, Oryan.”

Oryan nodded, head bowed, considering it.

“There’s no sense continuing to try to find a wizard, then,” Oryan said. “We’ll have to manage without.”

With no wizard he couldn’t hide from the scrying. He had to resign himself to staying on the move. If even a fraction of what they believed Haerold was doing was true, then he strongly suspected there was only one group of people Haerold was scrying for more often than himself – his fellow wizards.

Realization dawned, sent shock waves through him.

Turning to Morgan and Kyri, Oryan said, “That’s why he gathered so many wizards to him in Remagne before the attack on Caernarvon.”

Morgan went still, taking a deep breath, before nodding. “Marking them all, bringing them over to his cause. Eliminating them, or using them.”

Oryan said, “The reports of wizards disappearing, or being arrested? Storing them for power?”

In horror, Kyri said, “He opened a dozen portals across Caernarvon. The power needed for that would have been tremendous.”

“Portals?”

“How he brought his people in that night. Wizard’s magic, my people have no need for such,” Kyri said. Her wings rustled beneath her shift. “We know of them, though, from old. Moments before the castle was attacked we felt magic. Massive amounts of it. I’ve never felt so much magic in one place. That and the death of the Marshals guarding us was what warned us.”

Her gaze went to Morgan in apology. It was his people who’d died for her and her people that night. If not for them she might very well have lost more.

“You can feel that?” Oryan asked.

Slowly she nodded. “Both. Although only the passing of those I know well unless I’m close. I knew those that guarded me, as you
should
know those who might give their lives to protect yours. Magic as well, as a feathering or a prickling of the skin. That night, the magic seemed to explode over us.”

Her eyes were more blue than green and shadowed, haunted by the deaths of that night.

All of them were. For a moment they were silent.

Morgan thought of the reports he’d received in the months before Caernarvon fell, his mouth tightening.

Looking at Morgan, seeing his expression, Oryan shook his head. “Hindsight is the clearest sight of all, Morgan, you know that. It’s always easiest to look behind. Neither of us saw it coming. Forward is what we need now.”

Even so, Morgan shook his head. No matter how he looked at it, though, there had been no evidence, only speculation, rumor…nothing that could’ve warranted invading Haerold’s castle.

Finally, he nodded. “He was planning this for some time.”

“Evidently,” Oryan said. “With some help from his wizards, I imagine.”

Oryan looked to Kyri for confirmation.

“From what I know,” she agreed. “It would have taken a wizard to open each portal.”

Morgan said, his alarm growing, “What’s to prevent them from doing it again?”

“They can, of course,” Kyri said, but held up her hand for him to wait, searching her memories, the memories of all the Queens and Kings of the Fair who’d come before her. “But they must know where the portal will open. Exactly. A guess, even a scrying will not do, as one patch of forest might look similar to another. It’s better yet if you have a wizard at each end. Since they don’t know where Oryan will be from one day to the next he should be safe enough.”

“Is there any way to prevent them from opening?” Morgan asked.

Slowly Kyri shook her head. “That I don’t know. It’s not our magic.”

Oryan said, “At least one mystery is solved then, we know how they did it. So, we learn and move on. I’m more concerned now with why Haerold’s forces haven’t moved.”

Nodding, Morgan said, “I’ll see what I can find out.”

Every inch of Fairy lands was known to Kyri, it was bred in her blood and bone – even those they’d ceded to the race of men – as it was to some extent in that of all her people. They lived the land, the forest, they knew its rhythms and cadences and its wounds. They made their homes in it, found sustenance in it, played, lived and loved in it. It had its dangers, the big forest cats were as much a danger to the Fair as they were to the deer and the birds. Even wolves could be a threat to an unwary Fairy on the ground, coming in low, fast and silent as they did. In that the smaller creatures of the forest, the birds, squirrels and such were their friends as well, their early warning signal.

Here those creatures were silent, a sure sign of a predator or predators loose in the forest.

This wasn’t a mountain cat, nor wolves, not as Kyri knew them, for there was something about this silence that was confused, uncertain. Those of the forest didn’t know what these things were. Mountain cats, wolves, even men, these were all known things to the creatures that lived here, these that came were not those.

Kyri tightened her bowstring, gliding through the treetops not quite as silently as the great owls although she could, but quietly even so, the two other members of the patrol flying with her nearly as silently as well. Amid the rustling leaves such a level of silence wasn’t necessary.

Patrols ran now through every Fairy forest as they hadn’t for all the years of Oryan’s reign and the Fair had thought never would again. Now they needed to learn and remember once more the lay of the land so that they should know it as well as the creatures that lived it daily and also to watch for those dangers that they did know.

These were none of those.

A chill went through Kyri as she watched the creatures run through the forest, upright like men, but in a loose pack like wolves and as swiftly. Even from so far away, she caught the faint sharp scent of them. The memory of that single encounter with one of them in Caernarvon was enough.

Hunters.

In Fairy lands.

Her mouth tightened. They couldn’t be allowed to remain. Nor could any be allowed to escape with knowledge of this place. Haerold could never learn there were Fairy here.

The three of them dove as one, closing as they twisted and turned around the trees. At the last minute Kyri’s wings flared and she fired, picking off the Hunter at the end. The wolf-thing she now knew Haerold called a Hunter tumbled and died.

At her left Miiri did the same, but her shot missed as the pack instantly split, diving, leaping or rolling away in search of cover.

Tirol gave a cry and swooped around a tree, narrowly escaping one of the Hunters as it turned and leaped from the cover of the brush.

On a wingtip, Kyri turned and rolled, fired and hit the Hunter as Tirol gained height. It howled in response, wounded, but not dead.

The hum of a bowstring and a yelp to her left told her Miiri had at least wounded another.

Kyri suspected they would only be more dangerous wounded, reverting to their animal instincts, but with human cunning.

Her nerves hummed with tension.

These Hunters were fast….frighteningly fast, and smart enough to seek cover and wait until Tirol had flown within range. As smart as men, as fast as wolves…

Three were left and at least one was wounded, maybe two.

Far more cautiously, Miiri and Tirol circled, searching for sign, the twitch or tremble of a branch, a smaller animal breaking from cover. Kyri did the same. She spotted a movement in the bushes below and sent a warning to the other two as a Hunter feinted and another burst out of hiding. Miiri’s sharp eyes caught the first and fired. It howled and fell.

Kyri’s own arrow narrowly missed the second.

Then there was a blur in the corner of her eye and she twisted automatically to try to avoid it. It still hit her hard, if not where it intended, its teeth snapped at her arm, its back feet clawed at her. With its weight and the distraction, it was enough to pull her out of her climb. They tumbled and dropped. She released her bow and pulled her belt knife even as they fell. A quick slash of the blade across its belly and the thing released her, but not before doing damage to her wing. Pain seared like fire.

Pulling out of the dive, she tucked, tumbled and rolled to her feet, letting go of her belt knife in favor of drawing her sword.

Here on the ground she would need reach and something against her back if she were going to survive. She couldn’t fly, the injured wing wouldn’t bear her weight.

She raced for a tree that speared up from between the rocks, hearing pursuit as one of the Hunters closed on her through the brush, Miiri and Tirol darting through the trees in pursuit. Their bowstrings hummed as they fired.

The Hunter or Hunters were quick. And closing.

Fairy were quick, though, too.

A leap and Kyri turned in mid-air, planted her feet on another tree, bounced off of it as the Hunter closing on her snarled with fury. It scrambled below her as she flipped in mid-air to land on her feet on the rock with the tree at her back.

Already it was leaping….

Kyri spun on her heels, both hands around the hilt of her sword as she swung, taking its head, ducking as its momentum shot it over her, drenching her in it’s blood.

Tirol got the last, even as it raced toward her.

For a moment the three of them stood silently, listening to the forest, trying to get their wind back.

The real pain hadn’t hit yet, Kyri knew, but what there was was bad enough. It only burned a little, now. Later she knew it would hurt a great deal more.

She looked to Tirol and nodded at the claw marks on his leg that seeped blood.

“You’ll have to come to me,” she said.

“Kyri,” Tirol protested as he eyed her own wounds.