The Iron Sword (The Fae War Chronicles Book 1) (15 page)

I frowned a little. “Not from Mab? Then who am I in danger from? Another Sidhe?”

“No, none at this Court, none would dare to test the Dark Lady’s anger,” Wisp said into my ear. “None at the Bright Court either, not when the White Queen is losing power, maybe even missing.”

“Titania? She’s missing?”

I felt Wisp shifting on my shoulder, and I knew he was probably dancing from foot to foot in agitation. “None know, none know, nothing is certain anymore. No one can be trusted, no one stays true.”

“Come on, Wisp,” I said, holding up my hand again, but he refused to come down from my shoulder. Something had definitely rattled the little glow. “What’s the matter, really?”

“The Evil,” he moaned, pressing his tiny body behind my ear as if he was trying to hide. “The Enemy, his power grows and he kills the small ones, and even if they are beholden the Court does not take notice. The Queen does not care.”

I heard a hard anger in his small voice, and I noticed the lack of blessing after the Queen’s name.

“Wisp,” I said, “if you tell me what exactly happened, then maybe I could help.” But even as I spoke the words, I was unsure. I knew that at least Ramel would listen to me, and probably Bren, maybe Donovan and Guinna, but would that really change anything? Then I realized I knew the most important person at Court at this moment in time, aside from Queen Mab herself. I knew Molly.

“It is easy to speak words, Tess-mortal,” Wisp said, his words imbued with an alarming weariness. “Many mortals have given pretty promises and shining baubles to the smallest of us. They think that just because we are small, we do not notice when they slide around their words.”

“Glows still deal with mortals?” I asked, intrigued.

“We are not bound by the Code unless we put ourselves in service to a Court,” Wisp explained. “And even then, there are limits. We will serve, but not perpetually. We will take messages and perform small tasks, but we are no one’s slaves.”

I began to realize that the smallest inhabitants of Faeortalam possessed no less pride and valor than the Sidhe. “I understand,” I said to Wisp, “or mostly. I’m not asking you to do anything for me, Wisp. I want to help you.”

“It is all a balance,” Wisp said after a moment. With a small push he leapt into the air, hovering in the air just in front of my nose, far enough away that I could look at him without going cross-eyed. “If you help my people, Tess-mortal, we will help you.”

I nodded. “I don’t know what I’ll need help with, but when I think of something I’ll let you know.”

Wisp nodded his head seriously. “It is a good trade. We will be of good service to you, Tess-mortal.”

I remembered my lessons from the etiquette book, and I held out my hand, palm out. Wisp pressed his small hand into the center of my palm, his skin cool against mine. A little trail of goose-bumps ran up my arm.

“So in honor it is sealed,” Wisp intoned gravely.

“So in honor it is sealed,” I repeated softly. A small spark ignited where Wisp’s skin touched mine, and I closed my teeth on a squeak of surprise—the spark felt like a little electric shock. Wisp didn’t miss my surprise.

“It is bound with an oath,” he said. “And hurt will come upon either of us if we break our word.”

I rubbed my palm with one finger. “You take giving your word seriously.”

“As it should be, and as should you,” Wisp replied. He settled down onto the desk, standing on the icon of Darkhill on the open map.

“So,” I said, “will you please tell me what’s going on?”

Wisp turned about, gazing down at the map. His wings began whirring with an incandescent glow, and the toes of his boots grazed the map as he hovered, revolving slowly in a circle until he had gotten his bearings. He flew over to a point west of Darkhill, just before the Mordland Woods. “Just as the Sidhe have their strongholds, so do we,” he explained.

I took out one of the blank sheets of paper left in the drawer of my desk. After a bit of rummaging, I found a slender stick of charcoal, and I broke off the tip, offering it to Wisp. It was still too thick to be a proper writing utensil for him, and I saw the flash of a little knife as he pared it down to a manageable size. I gently blew away the charcoal shavings, and then slid the sheet of paper over the map, smoothing it out so the map-markings were clearly visible through the blank page. “Would you mark it for me?” I asked as I sketched in the rudimentary points on the map, marking Darkhill’s location, the start of the Mordland Woods, the Edhyre Mountains and the Royal Wood. I also sketched in the Darinwel River, the approximate border between the lands of the Seelie and Unseelie Courts.

Wisp, for his part, sketched in what looked like a tiny castle, adding exquisite detail to his drawing. I wished I had a magnifying glass. From what I could make out, the castle’s structure reminded me of an impossibly elegant bee hive, with hexagonal windows and additions arcing off the main structure. I waited patiently while Wisp finished his sketch. There was reverence in his movements, a studied concentration to every stroke of his diminutive pencil that led me to believe that this beautiful little structure no longer existed. He was sketching it as faithfully as he could from memory. A little pang hit my heart: I knew the feeling, tracing contours of my father’s face beneath the cool glass of a picture frame so that I wouldn’t forget the strong curve of his jaw, the way his eyes crinkled at the corners when he laughed.

Finally, after about ten minutes of intense concentration on Wisp’s part, the drawing was complete. I saw that the structure was built about a tree, with the main castle or palace built on a sturdy lower branch, and then smaller versions of the palace hanging from branches like icicles or stalactites.

“There were many trees like this,” Wisp said, his voice heavy with sadness.

“It looks beautiful,” I said honestly, imagining a grove of trees filled with the small glows flying through the air.

“On the edges of what the Unseelie Court calls the Mordland Woods, there was a stand of oak trees that have been the home of the trooping Fae since before any alive could remember. And at the center of the stand there were the Three Trees, where we made what Court we desired.” Wisp hovered above his drawing, and even though I couldn’t see his face amid the glow, something told me he was gazing longingly at his sketch. “All were welcome, and we could come and go as we pleased, and those of us that served the Night made no quarrel with those that chose to perform tasks for the Day. White Queen, Dark Queen, it made no difference your loyalties. The greatest loyalty was to each other, and to the sacred Three Trees.”

“You all lived there?” I asked.

“No,” Wisp said, shaking his head. “We may make our homes wherever we wish. Some live behind the waterfalls of the Darinwel, some in the coldest caves of the Edhyre Mountains, some in the canopies of the Royal Wood. But the Three Trees always offered us shelter and comfort and company of our kin.” Wisp stopped and I could see him trembling, his glow pulsing and fading a little.

I had the feeling he wouldn’t be able to tell me what had happened, he was so distraught over it still, so I took a deep breath and decided to say it for him. “And…the Three Trees were destroyed.”

Even though my voice was as soft and gentle as I was able to make it, Wisp flinched. His light faded a little more.

“Flames,” he said, his voice so soft that I had to lean closer to hear him. “Dark flames, licking up the trees. Many were killed. Many who did not deserve to die.” His wings whirred angrily. “We have no allegiance to Night, no allegiance to Day! Our quarrels are not their quarrels!”

I pressed my lips together. “Wisp,” I said gently, “now it seems as though your quarrel
is
the Courts’ quarrel.” I sketched an arrow on the edge of my copied map. “Did you know that three knights of the Unseelie Court have been killed? They were killed by the same evil that destroyed your home.”

“Three?” cried Wisp in a voice that I had never heard him use before. He flew up and hovered right in front of my face, so that I could clearly see his small hands as he jabbed an accusatory finger toward me. “Do you know how many of the Glasidhe were killed? Do you know how many young ones, how many old ones?” The glow about his wings burned scarlet. I resisted the urge to lean away from him, because as diminutive as Wisp was, his rage frightened me a little in that moment. “Scores!
Hundreds!
And there is no help from the Courts! There is no help for us!”

“That,” I said quietly, “is where you’re wrong, Wisp.” I looked at him until the red faded from his glow. “I’m going to help you.” I held up a hand and after a long moment, Wisp landed in the center of my palm. He sat down cross-legged and put his head in his hands. The sight of him so distraught twisted my heart. “Wisp,” I said, “what is it that your people need most right now?”

He lifted his head from his hands. “Sanctuary. We do not know where there is safety.”

“How many are with you?”

“Twenty two,” he answered promptly. “But of those, fifteen have decided to seek sanctuary at our other settlements, with those they know in the Edhyres or beneath the falls of the Darinwel. So, seven, including me.”

I frowned a little at his word choice. “Wisp,” I said slowly, “are you some kind of royalty?”

Wisp sat very still for a long moment before he said anything. Then he sighed. “No. But from what is easily explained, I am what you would probably call a noble. My family has always served the Dark Court, and that is part of why I was chosen to come to you, Tess-mortal. And my princess…she is with me. She must be protected.” He turned his small heart-shaped face up toward me. “The Dark Queen thought I could be trusted.”

I sat back a little in my chair. Then I smiled a little. “Always surprises,” I said, mostly to myself, but Wisp heard me and replied.

“Yes,” he said, “I was greatly surprised by you, Tess-mortal, when I saw you here in Faeortalam. The Small Folk, we still pass freely into the mortal world. But we have not seen one of you
here
in…a long time.” He gave up trying to put words to the amount of time that had passed since a mortal had been in Faeortalam.

“Over five hundred years,” I supplied.

“A long time,” agreed Wisp. He leapt lightly from my palm and came to rest on his favorite perch on my shoulder, grasping the hair by my ear lightly for balance.

I glanced around my room. It was spacious enough. “What if you and the seven with you, what if you lived here for a time?” I felt Wisp sit up ramrod straight on my shoulder.

“With
you
, Tess-mortal?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, but then I felt a little unsure. Was there some law that I didn’t know that forbade Small Folk from being within a certain distance of the Sidhe, or some rule of etiquette that mandated some kind of segregation? “Is that…I mean, is it…
proper
?”

“Proper?” repeated Wisp. Then he laughed impishly, the first time that he had sounded truly like himself during our visit. “Not at all, Tess-mortal! It is very improper.” He tugged on my hair a little in his excitement. “And that’s why I like it.”

I smiled at his sudden jubilance.

“I will speak to one of the Queen’s ladies about what has happened to your people,” I said, thinking of Guinna, “and in the meantime, I will do whatever I can to make sure that you are very safe here.”

“Tess-mortal,” Wisp said, his voice sober again, “I do not want to anger the Dark Queen. There is no laws against the Small Folk speaking to mortals or even living with them…but this is Darkhill, and her word is law.” I felt him shiver a little, and an answering shiver scurried down my own back as I thought of the dangerously soft voice and gimlet eyes of the Unseelie Queen. I gathered my thoughts.

“Well,” I said finally, “you’ll find this out eventually, so I’ll just tell you. The Queen has bound me here in her service.” I ignored his gasp. “I either have to perform a task that pleases her enough to release me…or she’ll kill me, I guess.”

“There is no guessing about that,” Wisp said quietly. “Oh, how I wish you had come to the Three Trees and slept under the stars! Tess-mortal, being bound to the Queen by her own word is…is…”

“Bad?” I offered.

“Worse than bad, Tess-mortal, worse than bad!” Wisp tugged on my hair in his agitation.

“All right,” I said. “First of all, stop pulling my hair. Second of all, yes, I know how bad it is that I’m bound to Mab until I do something that tickles her fancy. She seems pretty hard to please. And third of all,
please
stop calling me Tess-mortal. Both you and I know that I’m a mortal, so it’s a little redundant, don’t you think?”

“Very well…Tess,” Wisp said. He had let go of my hair and was instead using the top of my ear for balance now. His cool hands felt odd but it was better than the hair-tugging.

“Here’s how I think of it,” I continued. “I’m bound in the Queen’s service, and you’re bound in my service, in a different way of course, but still. So if you’re doing me service, then indirectly you’re doing
her
service. See?”

“Your mortal logic is hard to follow,” Wisp said, and he made me repeat myself twice before he finally understood. While it was clear he wasn’t completely convinced that the Queen would have the same idea if she discovered the Glasidhe taking refuge in my chamber, I assured him that no one but me, and maybe one or two of the Sidhe I trusted, would know about them.

“Go and get your friends,” I suggested, “and I’ll go find Guinna. I’ll tell her what’s happened, and hopefully she’ll know how to approach the Queen about it.”

“Very well,” Wisp said.

I opened the door for him, and I saw him dim his glow a little and furtively flit down the passageway. As I shut the door, it occurred to me that I had just offered to share my room with eight of the Small Folk. I wondered for a brief moment if I had gone completely insane, and then shook my head, figuring it was just the effects of Faeortalam on my mortal mind. All the same, what exactly was I getting myself into? I thought long and hard, getting out my sword and strengthening my bad wrist again. The pain barely registered, I was so lost in contemplation. Half an hour later I still had no answer for myself, so I gave up thinking about it, and went to go find Guinna, hoping that she could help me. After a moment’s hesitation, I strapped my sword-belt around my waist. I left the door to my chamber just a crack ajar, so that if Wisp and his companions returned they could slip into the room, and hurried down the passageway toward the dining hall.