The Hunter's Prey (The Fay Morgan Chronicles Book 5) (9 page)

I nodded, shifting my gaze from the unicorn to the great spider and back again, trying to keep both monsters in sight, for either could attack at any second. “I remember,” I said, and took a step back from both of them.

“That was hundreds of years ago, and the lapsed time has been even less kind to me and mine. I stand before you the lone survivor of my species.”

“Yet your child wriggles and bites me from within.” I took another small step away from both of them.

“Yes. There are thousands of eggs filled with hatchlings within me, and they are the last hope for my kind’s future. I still have so many that could be born, that want to be born and lay in wait for their mother to lay them, but therein lies the problem. For I have been hunted, Morgan, so many of my days that I have developed a fear that clings to all that I do. I am not strong enough to raise my young. It takes a mighty warrior to raise a great spider well, and I am far from the mother I need to be. In fact, I have developed an anxious condition and any time I think of hatching my young. I cannot breathe and suffer for days on end.”

“So you will bring me to the witch and exchange me for some bravery so that you may raise your young. The unicorn will get his horn restored, and the vampire brothers, had they survived, would have gotten their brains back, most likely. Pray tell, are you sure this witch can truly restore you, or has she merely fooled you all into thinking she is powerful? It all sounds like some sort of bad movie. Perhaps we could, the three of us, go to her and find out the truth.”

Clever words, I like you. I love you,
said the unicorn and lightly pawed the ground.

I bit my lip to keep from saying that I loved him back.

I took another step backward, toward the rows of drying herbs and tinctures. Toward a spell lodged in the center of some skeins of lichen-dyed wool that I’d hidden there on some paranoid day or another in my past.

“It is no trick. The witch’s promise is a true promise,” said the great spider of Pindaya. “And I must seek it. Or else all I have is extinction. You understand that, don’t you, Morgan?”

“Are you so sure you lack courage? You hunt me. And you send one of your children into me. That speaks of a steel will.”

“And yet I feel sorrow for that little one’s sacrifice within you, though it is for the good of us all.” Shin Harawa clicked her pincers and made a strange shrieking sound.

The spiderling within me made a corresponding piercing shrill from inside my torso. The sound grew. I fell to the floor, clutching my chest as pain exploded from the deepest part of me. Then I felt a burst of heat. It was gone.

“Good bye, small beloved,” the great spider whispered. She shook her head. “I should feel nothing but pride in this moment, but all this fear and sorrow, it eclipses me. Come now, Morgan, let me cocoon you in fine silk and take you to the witch who seeks you. Know that me and mine will always speak of the life you have given our species. Give yourself to me now.”

“Do you remember me so unclearly, old friend? Do you imagine that I would give up without a fight?”

“Very well then. I will take you.” Her pedipalps and fangs made a clicking and chittering sound. She crouched, readying to jump. A drop of venom fell from her mouth and hissed as it burned the floor she stood on.

I took another step backward.

I think I will take her instead.
The unicorn lowered his head and pawed the ground. His horn glowed as he aimed it toward the spider.
I found her first, you hideous insect. I will toast your extinction and drink your brackish blood.
His lovely voice filled the room.

“You may have found her, oh horned one, but to imagine that you might fight me, even in my impoverished state, and come away yet living? I knew your kind spread delusions, but I did not know you were prone to them as well.”

The unicorn charged at the great spider.

Shin Harawa reared back on her back legs and opened her rictus of a mouth, revealing layers upon layers of dripping fangs. She spat a glob of venom at the unicorn’s face.

The unicorn’s horn blazed a brilliant white and the venom fell to the ground with a wet splat. He reared back on his hind legs, pawing his splendid hooves in the air and neighing.

I plunged my hands into the softness of rough-spun wool until I found the small gold coin within, identical to the doubloon I’d used on Merlin. Its spell would work once and only once in teleporting me away.

I touched it to my spelled ring, still active, but I did not ask for safety this time. There was no safety. There was only claiming my fate. “
Perygl,
” I uttered. Danger.

The combined spells did my bidding, and took me away to the most dangerous place on this planet.

12

The Wish

I stood in the white marbled hallway of Agnes Stonehouse’s great palace. It had taken great effort for both my spells to take me here, past all the protections surrounding this place. The gold coin lay cracked and blackened in my hand. Nothing was left of the ring besides a circle of ash on my finger.

I stood there, breathing hard and turning around in a slow circle as I waited to be noticed. Within seconds, a spell grabbed hold of me and wrenched me up into the air. I floated above the ground, frozen, as magic wrapped around all of my muscles and bones and turned me still.

I heard footsteps, and watched, helplessly, as Agnes walked down the hallway toward me. Her heels clicked upon the hard ground.

“And where is the hunter who brought you in?” she asked flatly, looking me up and down.

I stared at her. I waited. My mouth could not move, so I uttered nothing.

She raised one hand and pointed at my face.

My tongue loosened. “I am the hunter who brought myself in, and before the rest of it, I claim the boon of the hunt for myself.”

The witch looked… neither annoyed nor surprised, nor anything really. Her face went slack. Her eyes went unfocused. And that told me something. Something that must have been guessed at in the far reaches of my back brain, for as soon as I thought it, other things that made no sense, such as how she commanded so much power, clicked into place. This entire hunt, and why I was the hunted, suddenly made sense.

“Surely a man as infinitely powerful as yourself does not need to keep me hanging and helpless in the air,” I said, speaking to the empty hallway.

Agnes looked up at me with empty eyes.

My muscles slowly became my own again as I floated back to the ground and landed gently upon the marble floor. I heard footsteps, and turned to watch a tall and thin blue man come out of a door and walk toward me. He was impeccably dressed like any wealthy Middle Easterner in a long thawb and linen pants. To say that he was powerful was like saying the ocean was wet. Huge magics surrounded him as he glided across the ground with long strides. He stopped when he stood next to the witch, who looked small and drab beside him.

“Isn’t it time you rested, Agnes?” the blue man asked with a silky voice.

She nodded slowly. “It is time I rested,” she repeated and walked away with shuffling steps and a creased brow.

I craned my neck to study this creature who stood over seven feet tall. The blue man stared deeply into my eyes. “And so we meet, Morgan le Fay. I did not think it would be under these circumstances. You are the first prey to ever bring herself in. An unusual gambit, though in the end it will not save you.”

“Saving myself is not my primary concern,” I answered truthfully. “I had wondered if we would ever meet, ever since your daughter was dragged into Hell,” I said. “But before we speak of Lila and all those matters, Marid, I will claim my wish that you promised to any who brought me to you.”

“Ah yes, a wish!” he clapped his hands. “Let me guess. You wish to be free of me? Or protection for my daughter? Or how about immortality? Invincibility? Name your boon”

I had no ability nor intention of staging this negotiation standing up. I turned and walked away from him, feeling the bristling massive powers of the Marid behind me. I walked as though I knew where I was going and turned into the nearest doorway which happened to be full of settees and high backed chairs. I managed to not collapse as I sank down into the most comfortable-looking one.

Lila’s father followed me in and reclined in the long couch opposite me.

“My boon?” I said. “My deepest wish is for your daughter’s freedom and safety, but you would never honor that wish, would you?” I paused and watched the hint of a smile on his face, confirming what I knew must be true. “So instead I wish for Merlin Ambrosius to be full of vitality, which I will define as having abundantly good health and an ability to heal from wounds, but which expressly does not mean immortality or invincibility.”

“Interesting and more interesting, fair Morgan. In all my years there have been few wishes that were not selfish,” he said. His softly glowing eyes watched me like a tiger toying with a mouse.

“Oh, but my wish is selfish,” I said. “I owe the wizard more than I can ever repay, and I make this wish to even out our debts.” I didn’t add that it was also selfish because when I had seen him wounded today, I discovered I could not live in a world where my Merlin could be so easily wounded. This wish would change that.

“And why not immortality for the wizard?” the Marid asked. “There are scant few roads to immortality these days, now that the Grail is banished to another realm. Easily enough retrieved,” he added and watched me, “though none with real power have bothered yet to go get it.”

I licked my lips instinctively when he said the word Grail. A dizzying and vast thirst and hunger washed through me. Which was, of course, his intention. To test me. To see if I would ask him for the Grail instead, to beg him to bring my addiction back into this realm. How he knew all that about me, I didn’t know. But I did know this creature was used to playing with people.

“Merlin’s vitality,” I repeated.

The Marid rolled his eyes. “No fun.” He began to raise one hand.

“Wait. First hear the full terms,” I said, knowing full well that the wish of Djinn folk was double-edged, and that his kind used any lack of definitions for mischief and misconstrued intentions. So I spent the next nine and a half minutes speaking in great detail about each of the words of my wish and what they meant, and how this wish should be exactingly enacted.

The Marid’s face went from smug, to bored, to annoyed. By which I took to mean that my wish would be accurately granted, so I stopped speaking.

“Anything more, witch?” he asked.

“Make it so, Marid.”

He flicked his wrist. Magic spun off and away from him. “Done. Now, prey, I am sure you are wondering why you are here. Why I staged a hunt to find you and bring you to me alive.” He leaned forward and smiled, showing off his pearly white teeth.

“Alive when all the other mother hunts, staged every thirty years or so, required that the hunted be savagely murdered? Yes, I’d love to hear your reasons,” I said.

The Marid’s nostrils flared but he showed no other signs of being surprised by my knowledge. “It seems you were doing some hunting as well today. Although you must have known you were always going to end up here, yes?”

“Yes,” I agreed. “Now tell me everything.”

13

Necessary Sacrifices

The Marid clapped his long-fingered hands twice, and Agnes Stonehouse shuffled in carrying a platter full of rose-scented baklava, a pot of tea, glass cups, and orange slices. She set them down. “Anything else, master?” she whispered with a flat voice.

“Leave us,” the Marid commanded.

She jerked backward and hurried out of the room.

I watched her leave. “How long has the witch been working for you?”

“Ah, Agnes. Cunning and cruel Agnes.” The Marid poured two cups of tea and pushed one toward me. “Once upon a time she had the skills and magic to capture me. The first to do so in many hundreds of years, and she was quite clever in binding and compelling me to grant all her wishes for a while. But binding me and compelling me to make wishes… it never ends well. One need only make one slip up for one moment. Make one mistake. She asked for her memories of a certain scorned lover, some wizard, to be gone. And so I took those memories from her, as commanded. But then I found that to truly eradicate those memories, I had to make sure no associative thoughts would ever lead back to him, and then I had to make sure those other memories would not remind her of him and so on.”

“Until you took from her the very memory of you and how you should be controlled. And then you enslaved her. Clever.”

He stretched out his long legs and curled his toes like a contented cat. “Yes. And she had already wished herself immortal, so I gained a constant and steadfast servant in dear wicked Agnes.” He gestured toward the tea and tray of food. “Eat and drink freely, prey,” the Marid said languidly. “None of it is bespelled, in case you were worried.”