Song of the Fairy Queen (71 page)

There was a terrible sense of draining, of something being drawn out of her and the pain.

“It will stop, just tell us where they are,” Haerold said.

Kyri stayed silent.

“No more than we expected,” Haerold said, eyeing her speculatively. “There’s a great deal of power there, though. Enough to share.”

“There is,” his Queen said, gesturing to the guard at the door, “if used carefully. And we shouldn’t waste it, or the opportunity.”

Kyri’s heart pounded as the guards opened the doors and more wizards came in. Magic whispered over her skin.

With a gesture and a nod to one of them, Elissa walked closer, eyeing Kyri curiously.

“Take just a little, Barlow.”

Pain lanced through her.

Kyri had been watching the wizard Queen and not the wizard. Her breath locked in her chest as agony speared through her, the wizard’s expression blissful as light streamed from her and he soaked it in.

With an impatient glance at the next, the wizard Queen eyed her.

Another tap opened within her and Kyri shuddered, pierced and invaded once again, light pouring out of her. It became difficult to think.

“How many can she take?” Haerold asked speculatively.

“We’ll find out,” Elissa said, gesturing to the next.

“The Fairy Queen herself,” Haerold said. “She should last quite some time.”

With satisfaction his Queen nodded and said, “Quite some time, managed properly. And so long as she lives, there will be no other Queen or King of the Fairy.”

Another glyph, another tap, another bright stream of light flowing, another drawing from her as pain impaled her.

Kyri felt the drain of life force, a drawing-off, as their faces reflected their ecstasy and her back bowed. Agony flooded her. Her heart thudded in her breast.

Elissa ran her hand down the Fairy Queen’s flank as she trembled, eyelids fluttering, the sea-colored eyes beneath them hazed with pain, but still aware.

Perfect
.

Elissa nodded to another of the wizards and this time the Fairy Queen couldn’t keep from crying out as Elissa petted her idly, the Fairy’s body tightening as another stream of light spiraled from her.

She was beyond knowing she screamed.

The dungeons had been dark, but now light filled them, flickered and danced over those who stood there.

Her body trembled helplessly.

“Enough,” Elissa said. “Patterson. When she wakes? Pain only. Keep bleeding to a minimum. Don’t injure her wings, under any circumstances, they’re mine. When she outlives her usefulness, I want them.”

“Morgan will come for her,” Patterson said.

The wizard Queen smiled. “We certainly hope so.”

With a sigh of satisfaction, Haerold nodded. “She serves us, one way or another.”

If anything, the cheap taverns in the lower sections of the city had only become more noisome in the past few weeks or months. The squalor was incredible. A strong stench of urine arose from the ditch that passed as a gutter, from men who couldn’t be bothered to find a better place to empty themselves of the cheap ale they’d drunk.

This tavern was no better, dark, dingy, grim. Slipping through the door and keeping to the shadows, Morgan looked around. Had it only been a few months since he’d been here last? So much had changed and so much might be lost… Fear and worry plagued him but he couldn’t afford the distraction. Not here in this place, not with Kyri’s life in the balance.

Jacob sat at the back, his head against the wall, playing a desultory game of cards with another couple of men. His eyes looked too bright and his color was bad.

There was no choice, Morgan had to take the chance.

His hand resting lightly on the hilt of his sword, Morgan stepped up to the table.

“Jacob,” he said quietly, the brim of his hat pulled low, grateful the light was dim. “We need to talk.”

Jacob’s card partners looked up with vague curiosity.

With Morgan’s hat shadowing his distinctive eyes and covering his fair hair, his hand on his sword, his mouth grim, radiating danger from every solid muscle, he was the kind of man neither wanted to mess with.

He didn’t even glance at them, a clear warning for them to go away.

Raising his eyes, Jacob looked beneath the brim of the hat and saw the gleam of pale blue eyes, the familiar tight jaw.

There was no mistaking that low, deep voice either.

Jacob was surprised to see him, for more than one reason.

“Go on, boys,” Jacob said, “Got business to do here. Have a seat, Jack.”

The two men sidled away nervously.

As much as Morgan hated to sit with his back to the room, there wasn’t much choice there either. He sat, looking at Jacob.

If anything, Jacob looked even worse up close.

His skin was grayer, his eyes red-rimmed. He’d lost weight and muscle. It was like looking at a shadow of the man. The ghost Jacob hadn’t yet become.

Looking up at Morgan, Jacob didn’t even wait for him to ask. He didn’t need to, there was only one reason Morgan would be here, only one reason he would take the risk of talking to the man who’d betrayed him once before.

“Yes, she’s here, they brought her in a little while ago by portal, they’re going to announce it in the morning, tell people they have her, show her to the crowds. She’s alive. They don’t know you’re here yet, or they’d have been here asking. I doubt they epected you to find out so soon or get here so quickly.”

Jacob had tried to get a message out, to let someone know, but – unsurprisingly – no one trusted him anymore.

“Morgan,” Jacob said grimly but as kindly as he could, “just so you know, they plan to hang her. She’s to be hung, drawn and quartered.”

The news went through Morgan like a knife, at the thought of it… seeing it too easily.

“They’re already building the gallows.” Surprisingly, Jacob’s voice was gentle.

Jacob looked at Morgan’s familiar face and a thousand memories chased through his mind.

Once he and Morgan had been friends, very good friends. They’d trusted each other. There had been a lot of good times and a few damn scary ones, but not as scary as they’d been since Haerold.

Jacob remembered the night he and Morgan had raided Caernarvon, their first run-in with the Hunters and the brilliant flash that had been Kyriay, Queen of the Fairy, coming between Morgan, him and sure death from the Hunters, giving Morgan time to kill the thing and taking another herself.

Perhaps it would have been better if she hadn’t saved him that night.

Rumor had had it for a while that there had been something between Morgan and the Fairy Queen, before Joanna, and it looked as if it was true again.

Morgan closed his eyes, his stomach twisted.

Alive
. Kyri was alive, though and here, not in dark, terrible and distant Caernarvon. It rang through him, some little consolation. Very little and it was bad enough that she was here, remembering what that wizard had done to her.

But still, she was alive. There was a chance.

‘
I’m coming, Kyri
,’ he thought, shouting it as loud as he could in his head.

He looked at his old friend.

“Do I have to worry about you, Jacob?” Morgan asked quietly.

Morgan didn’t have to say it, but it was there all the same. The only question that mattered.

Would Jacob betray him again?

It went through Jacob like a knife, piercingly, but he knew to his shame that he deserved it.

He took a breath and looked at his old friend steadily. Looked into Morgan’s blue eyes..

“No, Morgan. Not anymore.”

For a moment their eyes met and held.

There was something, some trace of the old Jacob, in those dark and reddened eyes. Morgan would have to trust it, he had no other choice. He nodded.

Laying his hand on the table, Morgan got up.

Then he offered that hand to Jacob. To the man who’d once been among his closest friends.

Surprised, for a moment Jacob could only stare at it. His eyes burned, his heart twisted. Looking up at into those clear blue eyes, Jacob nodded and took it. Held tight, nodding once and then releasing it.

It was goodbye and he, they, both knew it.

Grief pierced him sharply, for the friend he’d lost and for what he, Jacob, had done to him.

Jacob watched Morgan go, his long powerful strides and those sharp crystal blue eyes clearing the way in front of him.

On the table was a gold piece.

Enough and more than enough to keep Jacob going for a while. Even with all he’d done…

Jacob wanted to swear. And he wanted to weep. He bowed his head, briefly.

Instead, he signaled to another man across the room.

The man came over smiling. They knew each other well, too, of late.

Jacob hated him, hated the need.

“How much will this buy me? “ Jacob asked, holding up the coin.

It would be enough.

Jacob remembered Morgan as the Bliss took him, all the times Morgan had stood at Jacob’s back and the times Jacob had stood at Morgan’s. Sweet Joanna. And the lovely little Fairy Queen with her golden hair, her incredible wings and her warm and impish smile.

Morgan wouldn’t have to worry. Jacob made sure of it.

They came an hour later, Haerold’s men, and spotted Jacob in his usual place in the back corner with his head back against the wall.

He was smiling as they walked toward him and they smiled back.

And then they swore.

He was no longer really there.

The man’s name was Hart and he was sympathetic to their plight. After all, he was in much the same position, he had someone in the dungeons, too. All he’d been missing was the manpower to do the job quickly enough. Now he had it, in spades, but still…

Every other day the sluices from the cisterns on the roof of the castle were opened to clean the channels in the walls for the privies throughout the castle or after a while they stank unpleasantly. The water then ran down into the moat, effectively rinsing it as well, sending the filthy water into the river.

“We can only get in when the sluice gates are open and the water passes through from the cisterns on the roof,” he explained. “Even then we’ll have to work fast to get the gates blocked so they don’t close on us and we have a way back out again. We’ll still have to get through the wall between the chambers.”

Which was why he’d needed the manpower, the strength. He’d been chiseling at the mortar for months but it would take brute force to hammer the stones out of the way. “To do that, we have to wait for the gates to open.”