Swallowing Darkness (7 page)

A horse flowed out of the mass of shapes. A great white horse, with eyes that glowed with red fire, and steam puffing from its nostrils with every breath. Its great hooves struck green sparks from the floor.

Sholto sat, with the small body in his arms. Gran looked so small there, like a child. His arms, his chest, were covered with her blood as he held her out to me. There were other men in my life who would not have offered me the choice. They would have already decided what they would do, but Sholto seemed to understand that it had to be my decision.

I touched the neck of the horse, and it was real, and warm, and pulsing with life. I leaned against its shoulder, for it was too tall for me to mount without aid. It nuzzled my hair, and I felt something there. I reached my hand up and found leaves. Leaves and berries in my hair, woven in among the garnet glow.

Sholto looked at me, eyes a little wide, still holding the body of the woman I had loved above all other women. “Mistletoe,” he whispered, “entwined in your hair.”

I’d had it happen once before inside faerie, but never outside. I looked past the nightflyers, still glowing, and found Rhys and Galen the only ones still in the room. Galen was shielding his eyes, as the rest of us had done in that night that had brought power back to the sluagh. The night that Doyle had said, “Don’t look, Merry, don’t look.” I had a moment to think of him, carried away from me. He was somewhere in this hospital, maybe fighting for his life. I started to lose my purpose, then I looked up at the writhing nightmares. I remembered that even a glimpse of what had boiled in the ceiling of the cavern had been madness. Tonight I could look into the center of that shining, writhing mass, and understand that it was raw magic. It was only a nightmare if that was what you thought it would be. Raw magic forms in the mind before it forms to the touch.

I stared into it, and knew that until I finished this hunt there was no way to do anything else. It was like starting an avalanche—you have to ride it to its end. Only then could I embrace my Darkness once more. I prayed the Goddess would keep him safe for me until the magic freed me of its power.

Rhys gazed at it all with wonder in his face. He saw what I saw: beauty. But then he had been a god of bloodshed and war, and before that a deity of death. Galen, my sweet Galen, would never be anything so harsh. This was not a magic for the faint of heart. My heart wasn’t faint; it felt as if my heart were missing. Whatever it was that allowed me to feel was gone. I looked at Gran’s body, and there was a roaring emptiness inside me. I felt nothing but vengeance, as if vengeance could be its own emotion cut free of hate, anger, or sorrow. Vengeance as if it were a force of its own, something, almost, alive.

Rhys walked to the circle of nightflyers, gazing up into the writhing mass of white light and shifting shapes. He stopped at the glowing edge of the circle. He looked at me now. “Let me go with you.”

It was Sholto who answered. “She has her huntsman for tonight.”

Galen spoke, still staring at the floor. “Where is Merry going?” He still didn’t understand. He was too young. The thought came to me that he was older than I, by decades, but the Goddess whispered through my head, “I am older than all.” I understood; in this moment I was she, and that made me old enough.

“Take care of her, Galen,” I said.

He glanced up at me, and saw the horse with its flashing eyes and white skin. For a moment, he wasn’t afraid, he was simply amazed. He, like me, was too young to remember when the sidhe still had their shining horses. We had only had stories before this moment.

The circle of nightflyers parted and Rhys and Galen both reached upward, as if it were planned. The white shapes above us reached out toward them. Galen’s reach was longer, so the horse that formed for him was as white and pure as mine. It turned flashing eyes that glowed golden to my red. There was no smoke from this one’s nostrils, and the sparks from the hooves were as golden as its eyes. Only the size and the sense of strength let me know that they were kin.

Rhys’s hand also brought a white horse, but it was like an illusion, or a trick of the eye. One moment white and solid and very real, the next skeletal, like the proverbial steed of death.

Rhys spoke quietly and happily as he rubbed its nose. He spoke in Welsh, but a dialect I could barely follow. I could understand that he was happy to see the horse, and that it had been too long.

Galen touched his horse, as if he were certain that it would vanish, but it didn’t. It butted him gently in the shoulder, and made a high, happy whinny. Galen smiled, because you couldn’t help but smile at that sound.

Sholto held Gran’s body out to Galen, and he took her gently in his arms. His smile was gone, and there was nothing but sorrow. I let him have the sorrow, let him grieve for me, because my own grief could wait; tonight there would be blood.

A shape from above touched Sholto’s shoulder, as if it could not wait for him to touch it, like an overeager lover. The moment it touched him, it formed into something white and shining, but it was not exactly a horse. It was as if the great white steed had mingled with a nightflyer, so that there were more legs than any horse would have, though one graceful head rose from strong shoulders. Its eyes were the empty black of the nightflyers that had begun to sing around us. Yes, sing, in high, almost childlike voices, as if bats could sing as they flew above your head. I knew in that moment that my power had changed what this hunt would be. I was not sluagh, nor pure Unseelie, and though we would be terrible and we would bring vengeance, we would come on the songs of the nightflyers. We would come shining from the sky, and until the vengeance was done nothing could stand against us. The mistake last time had been not giving the hunt a purpose, but that mistake would not be made tonight. I knew who we hunted, and I had spoken her crime. Until she was hunted to ground, no power in faerie or mortal lands could withstand us.

Sholto lifted me to sit on the horse with its red, glowing eyes. He mounted his own many-legged steed. The nightflyers’ song became a chant of words so ancient that I could feel more of the building fall away just from the sound of it. Reality tore around us, and I spoke the words, “We ride.”

Sholto said, “We hunt.”

I nodded, wrapping my fingers in the horse’s thick mane. “We fly,” I said, and kicked my bare heels into her flanks. She leaped forward into the empty night beyond. I should have been afraid. I should have doubted that a horse without wings could fly, but I didn’t. I knew she would fly. I knew what we were, and the wild hunt, hunts from the air.

The mare’s hooves did not so much strike the air as simply run on it. Her hooves flared with green flame at each step, as if the empty air were a road that only she could see. Sholto rode at my side, on his many-legged stallion. The nightflyers spilled around us, still shining, still singing. But it was what followed in our wake that would make the humans turn away, and hide inside their houses. They would not know why, they would simply turn away. They would think our passing the cry of wild birds, or wind.

We rode in a shine of white and magic, and dark dreams flowed in our wake.

CHAPTER SIX

THE MARE MOVED UNDER ME, HER FIERY HOOVES EATING UP
the distance. The muscles in her back and the feel of her mane in my hands were real, and solid, but the rest of it…the rest of it was dreamlike. I wasn’t certain if the feeling of unreality was what it would have always been to ride with the hunt, if it was the shock of all that had happened, or if it was my mind’s way of protecting me from sights that should have destroyed my mortal mind.

Sholto moved up beside me on his own pale horse. His hair flowed behind him like a shining cloak, all white with hints of yellow, as if bits of sunlight were held in his hair, as if that hot, yellow light could be ensnared in the pale beauty of his hair.

The February cold pressed around us, caressing my bare arms and feet, but my breath did not fog in the cold. My skin did not chill. It was as if the cold were a sensation, but it had no power over me. The smoke that flared from my mare’s nostrils wasn’t from the cold. I remembered tales of horses in the wild hunt with flaming eyes and hellfire spilling from their nose and mouth. We could have been riding true nightmares, black and full of fire and terror, but something about my magic had turned the hunt ever so slightly to something a little less automatically frightening.

If you saw black horses that breathed fire riding down on you, you’d be convinced of evil intent, but if you saw white horses spilling toward you, even with eyes that glowed, and a little green fire at the hooves, would you automatically assume evil, or would you pause and marvel at the beauty? We rode the sky as if the Milky Way had brightened and turned into beings that could flow and travel the darkness.

I looked behind us, and found that there were other horses, barebacked, riderless, but spilling like seafoam at our backs. There were also hounds, white with red marks, like all faerie hounds, except that these had glowing eyes, and they were bulkier than the slim ones that had come to my hand only a few weeks ago. Those had looked more like greyhounds, but not these dogs. These were huge mastiffs, except for their colors, and they glowed against the darkness like some white ghost dotted with glowing red, like spilled blood across the purity of their coats.

The name for them came to me, with a scent of roses and herbs. Hounds of the Blood, they were hounds of the blood. Bloodhounds were named not for their bloodthirstiness, but for the fact that they were once only owned by nobles—noble blood. But the hounds that rode at our backs, that began to spill around the legs of the horses, were named blood for other reasons. They rode only for blood, and the gentleness of bloodhounds was not something that this pack would understand. That knowledge filled me with a fierce pleasure.

There were things behind the hounds and horses, shapes that writhed and boiled with bodies and limbs that were nothing you would ever see outside of the worst nightmare you can imagine. I stared into the abyss of things that I’d been told not to look at, for fear that one glance would destroy my mind. But those shapes had been black and gray, and these shone like crystal and pearls and diamonds in a radiance that burned from within and just behind them. We trailed a shining cloud of light like the tail of a comet.

I had a moment to wonder—if some telescope did pick us up, would that be what their human mind would make of us? Or would they see a falling star? Or would they see nothing? Glamour didn’t always work around cameras and man-made technology. I said a prayer that we did not accidentally blast some poor astronomer’s mind. I wished them well, as they gazed at the night sky. I wished everyone well, save one person tonight. I realized that I meant that. I wanted Cair dead for the death of our grandmother. The king’s attack on me wasn’t important to me anymore. I understood then that I was truly a part of the hunt. I was moved by the vengeance I had called down. We would hunt Cair for kin slaying, and then…then we would see.

It was strangely peaceful, this tunnel vision. No grief existed here. No doubts. No distractions. It was comforting, in a sociopathic sort of way. And even that thought could not frighten me. I’d heard the term “instrument of vengeance,” but I had not truly understood what it meant until now.

Sholto reached out to me, across the space between our steeds. I hesitated, then I reached for him, my other hand still locked in my horse’s mane. The moment our fingers touched, I remembered myself, a little. I understood the true danger of riding with the hunt then—you could forget yourself. You could forget everything but righteous vengeance, and spend a lifetime listening for the words from some mortal, or immortal, mouth. Oathbreakers, kin slayers, traitors; so much to punish. It would be a simpler life than the one I was leading. To ride forever, to exist only to destroy, and to have no other choices to make. Some saw the riders with the hunt as cursed, but I understood now that it wasn’t how the riders saw themselves all those centuries ago. They’d stayed with the hunt because they wished to, because it felt better than going back.

Sholto’s hand in mine reminded me that there were reasons not to let the hunt consume me. I thought of the babies I carried in my body for the first time since the ceiling and wall of the hospital had melted away. But it was a distant thought. I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t afraid that I might die this night and the babes with me. Part of me felt untouchable, and part of me felt as if nothing, absolutely nothing mattered as much as vengeance. Nothing.

Sholto squeezed my hand as the rhythms of our horses made our arms rise and fall between us. He looked at me with eyes gone to yellow and gold fire, but there was worry in his face too. He was King of the sluagh, the last wild hunt of faerie. He had been the huntsman before, perhaps with less magic at his back, but still, he knew the sweetness of vengeance. He knew the simplicity of the hunt, and the almost seductive whisper of it.

His hand in mine, the look on his face, brought me back from the edge. His touch kept me me. Part of me resented it. Because with me came the first whisper of grief returned. Gran, Frost, my father, Doyle injured. So much death, so much loss, and the chance for more to come. That was the true terror of love, that you could love with your whole heart, your whole soul, and lose both.

We began to spill toward the ground, in a sweep of light that cast shadows below like that of some great, magical plane. But we did not touch the ground as the plane would have had to; we skimmed above it. We wove over treetops, and across fields. Animals scattered before us. I felt the hounds flinch, and tried to give chase, but Sholto spoke one word, and they stayed with us. We were not after rabbits tonight.

There was a flash of white, and something much bigger than a rabbit dashed across the ground. The White Stag fled before us like all the other animals. I almost called his name, but if he had not even turned that great horned head, it would have broken my heart all over again. Then he was lost in the dark, as lost to me as Gran.

The faerie mounds came into view, and we sped toward them. If there were guards out, they did not make themselves known. Did they not see us, or were they too frightened to draw attention to themselves?

The Seelie mound was before us. I had a moment to think, “How do we get inside?” But I had forgotten that a true hunt, with a true purpose, is barred by no door. We flowed toward the mound, and the horses and hounds did not even slow. They knew that the way would open, and it did. There was a moment when I felt the spell on the door, and realized that someone inside had barred the way with their strongest spells. Had they thought that our court would attack tonight? Had they feared what the queen would do for her niece’s rape? The thought was a distant one, as if I thought about someone else. I watched the spell spill away from the door in that spot just behind the eyes where visions happen. One moment the spell was golden and bright, the next it fell away like the petals of some great flower opening for us. The shining doors opened in a spill of warm, yellow light, and our white shine flowed into the gold of it, and we were in.