Sons (Book 2) (73 page)

The Accords reacted to the oath and the Queens smiled.  Tendrils of bindings strong enough to obliterate mountain ranges raised up from the Accords.  The oaths I’d spoken caused Daybreak to reach out to take those tendrils and pull them to me.  The Unseelie Accords wrapped themselves around me in their unnatural, unearthly, and unreal power and tried to embed themselves into my being with an energy beyond anything I’ve ever seen.  Save three.

A very important three.  The Twice-Dead God and his enemy were two.  Gilán was the third.  Gilán simply let the bindings slip away and fall back into the scroll.

I lifted my hand away from the scroll and looked up into the shocked faces of the six high-born elves staring down at me.  The Princesses had lost hold on their human countenances in their surprise.  “Would a promise to agree in principle do?” I asked as innocently as I possibly could.

“What… trickery… is… this?!” screamed the Seelie Queen as she suddenly got very, very hot.  I sealed her in a solid shaft of Gilán’s energy, siphoning the heat directly into the nearest seismic vent and down into the crust.  She could rail for a few minutes in there without hurting anyone.  The Unseelie Queen was more composed, but only just.

“How have you slipped through the bindings, Lord Daybreak?  This should not have happened,” she hissed, the very air around her turning arctic in temperature.

“I told you from the beginning that there was a problem, Lady of the Unseelie,” I said as politically as possible.  “The Accords simply do not apply, therefore they cannot bind me.  I am not faery or of Faery.”

“This will mean war,” she whispered fearfully.

“It cannot,” I said softly.  “That would break the Accords.”  I watched her face carefully as she considered the ramifications of that.  “Unless I start it anyway.”  There was even more truth in that little fragment.

The Seelie Queen stepped through the column of Gilán, her tantrum under control.  “Step out of the knowe, Daybreak, and speak the oath again,” she said imperiously.

“Certainly,” I said without rancor, picking up the scroll and rewinding it.  “Would you like me to hold the scroll so that there is nothing between it and me?” 

“Holding it as you are now will be sufficient, Lord,” the Unseelie Queen asserted, fully aware I knew the oath without reading it.  Smiling at them, I started for the edge of the knowe and Cahill’s land.

Unfortunately, our departure created a huge exodus.  I stopped a few yards short of the exit and called out to my people, thanking them for their assistance here.  Their answering good-byes were cheerful and deafening, but they didn’t leave right away.  I walked purposefully out through the field’s gate and down the hill past the pavilion that housed all of us a short while ago with Jimmy at my right and Kieran on my left, the faery behind me trying desperately to not overrun us.  I stopped in front of the Castle, still brightly shining in its full glory.  Marty had to be exhausted by now.

It takes a few minutes to clear two hundred people out of any one area, but we waited.  I wanted the knowe dissolved before I repeated the oath so that there’d be no question of Gilán’s presence here interfering.  I mean, it would anyway, it was an ingrained part of me, just as their lands were a part of them.  The three of us felt the first dimension slip away then I felt the veil of Gilán slip protectively over that volume of space again.

“Are you satisfied that my realm can cause no undue influence from here?” I asked the Seelie Queen, the moat of the Castle roiling in bright crimson behind me.

“Yes, Lord Daybreak, we are satisfied,” Summer said in sing-song.  How such could sound like a threat was both amazing and amusing, but I didn’t question it.

I held the scroll, still wrapped this time, in one hand and pushed hard with Daybreak’s power, lighting the magic undershirt again.  Jimmy, too, lit up like the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center just for being so near me.  Then I started reciting the oath again. 

The power of the Accords once again lifted up off the scroll and wrapped around me.  This time, though, I felt the added force of the whole of Faery behind it, too, urging it on.  The Queens were hoping to add their own power to the geas written there.  I didn’t mind the intrusion, but it was exactly that.  If the geas had sealed around me, they would both have a view into my realm.  For just the quickest instant of time, it looked like the eldritch purple bands of energy might actually take hold before draining off like quicksilver on glass.

The faery entourage stood in shock as I held out the scrolls of the Original Accords of the Unseelie for the Queen to take from me.  She reached out incredibly slowly, then snatched it back quickly.

“So,” I said, trying to bring some sort of closure to this.  “What have we decided here tonight?  Agree in principle?”

“That is very… one-sided,” Winter snapped.

“Yes, it is,” I admitted.  “Just not the side you thought it would be, now is it?”

Seelie let out a hearty, throaty laugh that reverberated off the Castle’s front and gardens.  “No, dear boy, it certainly is not,” she said.  “An agreement in principle then.  We will take you at your word.”

“Thank you, Ladies,” I said, canting my head slightly and bowing.  “And please accept my assurances that my gifts to you are intended only to delight and not enthrall or accrue any debt in any way.”

“Just so, Lord Daybreak,” Winter said curtly.  “This has been… an interesting evening.  Until we meet again.”

“Please use the gate, Lady Winter,” I asked quietly and politely.  “You will overwhelm the lad holding the wards.”

“As you wish, Lord Daybreak,” the Seelie Queen answered instead, equally as quietly.  The Princes both snapped their fingers at the same time.  Their mounts heard and answered with whinnies.  A moment later, Avenour appeared riding his impossibly tall horse with the standard he carried held perfectly vertical.  The rest of the elven steeds paced behind him, their heads high and hooves prancing on the soft ground.  I could feel that Marty was already having the road cleared and the gate opened wide for them.

Then far in the distance there were two more whinnies, trumpet calls really, followed by the sound of thousands of hooves beating the ground in a massive stampede.  The sound reminded me of my singular visit to the Crossroads with Kieran and just as the thought hit me, two steeds burst through the western gate at unbelievable speeds, heading straight for the Castle.  These were the Queens’ horses.  Side by side they ran, the right was a mare of bright fiery red whose hooves flashed with flames as they struck the ground.  The left was a cool, bluish-white of solid ice, frozen for centuries.  The ground literally cracked with each beat as its heat was stolen by the mare. 

They arrived within seconds of passing through the gate.  The mares bowed down like elephants in a circus, allowing the Queens to sit atop them, saddle-less and legs to the side.  There was no doubt they would not fall.  The Stone shifted in my cavern and the Pact provided me with a High Faery farewell.

“Fare thee well, young Lord,” the Seelie Queen said solemnly in answer with a small smile on her face.  Then as one, the eight elves turned their mounts and trotted around the drive and down the road, slowly speeding up as they disappeared into the night.  They were at a full run by a quarter of the distance to the gate and gone inside of seven seconds.

I turned and grabbed Gordon by the arm, wrapping us both in portals and moving us to the foyer of the Castle behind Marty.  “Ethan, shore him up for me, please,” I said loudly as I took the poor kid’s shoulders and pushed into his mind.  Sending impulses to override the tension in his body, he released what he’d held for the last ten minutes and fell like a sack of potatoes in my arms, limp and weak, but still holding the Castle up at full power.

“Gordon, I need you to take the Castle from Marty and power it down,” I said calmly as I searched through Marty to make certain that he was merely exhausted.

“What?  I can’t
take
it from him!” Gordon objected.  “It would kill me for trying!”

“What?  No, take it, not overtake it,” I said gently.  This was already hard on him.  Me yelling wasn’t going to help.  “Ethan is holding Marty and the Castle up right now, but Marty is exhausted.  This went on for way too long.  The Castle needs to be brought down by a Cahill.  And we can hold it in abeyance for only so long.  What we can do is slip you underneath so you can shut down the Castle slowly and correctly so that no one gets hurt.  Then someone like John or Billy can switch over at a proper level.”

“How is that possible?” Gordon asked kneeling on the floor beside Marty opposite me.  “He’s all right?”

“Yeah, as soon as you take control, he’ll just be asleep for a few hours,” I said gently, cradling Marty’s head in my lap.  “Don’t touch him just yet.  He’s still hot.  Now I may use different words than you, being unschooled and self-taught.  Just reach up into your wards until you can feel where Marty is working.”  I felt Gordon move his magic timidly through the wards and into the Castle structure.  To me, the interface was phasing neon-colored tubes of iridescent light at about a millimeter thick.  He was barely a shadow on a line.

“Gordon, he’s tired, but… have you met your brother?” I asked him, looking up at his tired and worried face.  Grinning, I realized he really hadn’t, at least not in some time.  Kieran was at the door with Felix, speaking quietly to him and explaining what was happening.  I pushed an image onto the gallery of the ward to use as an avatar and seeped down to the level Gordon was searching.  Jerking him up by his heels, figuratively speaking, I hauled him up to where Marty still controlled the Castle subconsciously while Ethan convinced it to stay passive.

“What I see here is a huge lattice of purple lines similar to what I’ve seen in circuitry builds only much more complex,” I describe to Gordon.  “That, to me, is the Castle defense control structures.  Underneath and underpinning these are another series of similar lines that diverge into much larger and more convoluted structures in a number of different colors and textures.  Do you see these or something like them?”

“Yes,” Gordon said cautiously.  “Not quite in those terms, but I see that.”

“That is Marty,” I said, shaking my head.  “Big brothers.  Don’t sell the kid short, Gordon.  Come on, now, you’ve done this a hundred times before.  Just reach in and Ethan will slip you in and I’ll slip Marty out and the Castle will be none the wiser.”

Finally he just did it and started shunting the angry moat into more peaceful terms through the base of a steep cliff.  Ethan was about to pull away from the Cahill’s defenses just as Marty cooled down enough energy-wise for me to pick up.  I wasn’t the issue, but he didn’t need anything arcing off the floors unexpectedly.  Heading for the Observatory, I was met by John, half-asleep himself until the alarm of Marty in my arms shocked him.

“Sh, he’s just asleep, exhausted,” I whispered.  “Can you watch over him until everybody’s situated?”

“Yes, sir, certainly, right this way,” he said, leading me back into the room.  “What’s Gordon doing?”

“He’s just finishing shutting down the Castle,” I answered him, looking at a couch further back in the room.  John took the hint and went further back than I knew the room went.  He even provided a pillow and blanket for Marty and tucked him as he snored softly, curling into the blanket.  “Marty’s going to be very hungry in the morning,” I said as we entered the foyer again.

“Seth?” Gordon called as he waved his hands in the air as if controlling the energy flows with his fingertips.  “I don’t see anything else to release.  Or I can’t tell what it is from this side, anyway.”

Glancing up at the power structures, Gordon did a good job of releasing most everything and what little he’d missed was just too hard to see from his position.  But they were small things, easily handled by the next man.

“John, who’s set to take the wards now?” I asked.

“Dennis is ready and waiting and Billy takes over in an hour,” John said softly, already heading for the Butler’s Pantry that normally housed the ward holders.

“Okay,” I said, watching Gordon using his lightest touch as he moved around Marty’s psyche.  “Tell him to go as gently as possible when he takes them from Marty.  Poor kid’s exhausted.  I’ll be there, too, to make it as easy as possible.  Gordon, get ready.  This will feel very strange as Marty slips away completely and Dennis comes in.  You’ll just fall away and everything will come to look normal again after a second or two.”

John stopped at the door and looked at me oddly.  “From… Marty?  Not from Gordon?  I don’t understand,” he said.

“You know you can’t swap the defenders while the Castle is up, John,” I said casually.  “Marty still has that position.  Gordon is just bringing those defenses down while Marty is sleeping.  Now let’s get moving and get Dennis in before the wards figure out they’re being tricked.”

Startled, John stepped into the Butler’s Pantry and spoke quietly with someone, presumably Dennis, and almost immediately, Gordon relaxed as Marty eased away and Dennis insinuated himself into the structures.  Abruptly, Gordon fell into his normal visual patterns, snapping back to reality and his ability to interact.

“That was Martin?  And how did you do that?  It’s not supposed to be possible!” Gordon asked, still flabbergasted.

“Yeesss, that was Martin,” I said slowly.  “He’s grown up a lot in the past year, Gordon.  And Dunstan’s was hard on him, but it helped him, too, in the long run.  He held Mike’s veil for a long time under harsh circumstances.  Even with Ian’s help, it scarred them.  Drove the power furrows deeper into their minds.  Bad and good.  You saw the good part in Marty just now.  The stronger side that allows him to even bring the Castle under control, must less to full power.  It probably would have been another year or two, otherwise.