Throne (31 page)

Laughing once more, delighted and surprised by her own action, Maribel turned her attention to Old Man Oak. Already it was pulling away from the slain giant, regrouping, seeking to turn and orient itself on this new threat. Maribel didn’t wait. Instead, she flew at the great face formed of bark and crevasses in its trunk. Amber eyes as large as bowling balls grew wide, and then she dove, sword extending before her, into its cavernous mouth, and was inside.

Darkness. All sound muted, the battle barely audible. She was not truly inside the Oak, not physically, but rather, within its very essence. Hanging suspended in the warm, close darkness, she looked about herself, curious. She could possess him, she knew, reach out through his body, take claim of his roots and branches, his might and age, and walk the field of battle clothed in his leaves and bark. But why bother? Around her the darkness shuddered with a grim and reluctant terror. Maribel extended her hand, released a part of herself, and then burst free of the darkness and was once more flying in the air outside the tree.

Turning, she gazed at her handiwork. Old Man Oak stopped, shivered. Groaned. A sound so resonant and deep that it rolled across the park like waves of liquid lead. He shivered once more, and seemed to sag inwards. As if his core was weakening. Which it was, she knew. She could sense it, the heartwood growing crumbly, gray, turning into mulch and dust. The cancer spread through the great tree’s interior. It was but a matter of moments. His branches sagged, and then snapped off. He fell down, roots scrabbling weakly at the grass as his trunk thudded into the dirt. Vast sections of bark fell into his now hollow center, and when his golden eyes grew dark, she knew that he was dead.

The battle was nearly over. At least half the combatants were simply staring at her. None were truly surprised, but it had been so very long since she had done battle in such form, with such raw, unbridled joy. Perhaps they had begun to forget. Perhaps they had begun to think of her as less than she truly was. No matter. They had been shown, had learned once more. For she was the Queen of Air and Darkness, and none could stand before her.

Maya crouched, shivering, behind a screen of bushes and trees. The cover was thin, and at any moment she expected some nightmare to come crashing through to attack them. But the Unseelie Court seemed to ignore them, and so they crouched, still and silent, watching the battle that raged on beyond. Kevin had paced for the first ten minutes, and then exhaustion fell upon him like a cloak of lead and he lay down and simply fell asleep despite it all. The healing Old Man Oak had effected had drawn from his deepest reserves. Even when the screaming drew close, he didn’t stir.

Maya sat still, knees drawn up to her chest, listening in horror. Bestial noises, bloody sounds. The sounds of war. Through the line of trees she could hear things dying. It sounded like they were being tortured first. The sounds were brutal. She’d used her second acorn as they had fled back into the trees, throwing it behind her as she ran, into the giant’s path, only to see him step around it and keep after them. Heart in her throat, confused, she had hidden, her third and final acorn clutched desperately tight.

The sounds were getting closer. Maya shoved Kevin, who woke clumsily, reached for his blade. While he fumbled and grumbled, she rose to her feet and slunk forward to the line of trees. Reached the first, placed her hand on its skinny trunk, and looked through them at the field of battle beyond.

Shifting shapes. She ghosted forward, moving from tree to tree. Reached the other edge of the belt, and stopped. War. Kevin joined her, and both watched as foot by bloody foot the Unseelie Court drove the Seelie Host back. What was awful was how beautiful it was at times, thought Maya. How some of the combatants managed to make it look like a choreographed dance.

The fighters would come together like leaves swirled into a dust devil by a capricious wind, would tangle and clash and then fly apart, leaving bodies in their wake. There was no martial plan or symmetry. She was reminded of a playground, children screaming and coming together in knots, only to separate once more and race away, shouting.

A figure she recognized moved into view, stepping out from behind struggling forms, sword in hand. Guillaume. She was still having trouble understanding him in human form. She thought of calling out, but then realized that he was already coming toward her. He held a long length of chain attached to a stranger's neck. Had Guillaume taken a prisoner?

“Who is that?” she asked Kevin, who leaned forward and stared. “The man in the chain.”

“Don’t know,” said Kevin. “But it looks like we are going to find out.” And began to creep past her.

She snatched at him, but he was gone. Slinking out over the grass. Right up to Guillaume, who turned to look over his shoulder before looking past Kevin and to where she stood. Summoned by his gaze, she moved forward.

“Here,” said the fox-man, tossing the chain to Kevin. “This man was a prisoner of the Unseelie. I believe he is important to their Queen. As such, he is equally important to us.”

The man was stunned, kept turning his gaze to the night sky, searching for something. Kevin held the chain awkwardly, but before Maya could ask another question, Guillaume stepped forward, and brushed a finger across her cheek. He smiled at her, a smile that was at once pained and kind, and cocked his head to one side. “The battle may seem lost, but there is always hope. No matter how cold the Winter, Spring always returns.” Then he grinned and turned and loped back into battle, sword already held at the ready.

Maya wanted to cry out something, to have said a goodbye, but it was already too late. Kevin took her by the hand and pulled her and the chained older man back behind the cover of the trees.

“Who are you,
hombre
?” asked Kevin, giving the man a shake. He was older, in his fifties perhaps, face pale, haggard. The remains of a fine suit hung from his body, slashed and muddied and streaked with blood.

“My name is Antonio,” he said, English accented with a strange inflection she couldn’t place. “Maribel’s husband.”

“Yeah?” asked Kevin, examining the ring about Antonio’s neck. “Lucky you. Why’ve they got you chained up?”

“Because I’m Maribel’s husband,” said Antonio, turning his eyes back to the battlefield. Searching still.

“Who is Maribel?” asked Maya, but part of her had already begun to figure it out. Knew.

Antonio shuddered, took a step back. “She is.” He raised his hand to point at the night sky. Kevin and Maya followed the direction of his finger and saw the woman from the House of Asterion descend through the air to dive into combat with a knot of centaurs. Maya felt her mouth open. How were they supposed to fight her, she wondered? Maribel looked glorious. Alive with some terrible energy, her face even more beautiful than before, her hair dancing in the wind, streaming and lashing. She looked inhuman, clothed in beauty like the night.

“Maribel,” said Antonio, and Maya heard true pain in his voice, slow and wounded. “What is going on? Have I gone mad?”

“Yep,” said Kevin, putting a hand on Antonio’s shoulder. “That’s as good an explanation as any. For real. Because the alternative…?” Kevin indicated the battlefield. “Know what I mean?”

They watched the battle rage on, and anger and horror arose within her once more. “So stupid,” said Maya, voice leaden. “I was so stupid. This is horrible. All of them dying. For what? A gesture?” Her tears were hot now, burning tracks down her cheeks.

Kevin opened his mouth, glum, and then closed it. He shrugged, and turned away.

“What are your names?” asked Antonio. “Why are you here?”

“I’m Maya, and that’s Kevin,” she said. Trying to struggle above the void of depression that was swelling within her. “We were… were pulled into this. Asked to help. Though I don’t think we’ve done anything worth mentioning.”

“Maya,” said Antonio, looking her in the eyes. He was handsome, she realized, in an old man way. Even after all he had been through, he still managed to exude a sense of confidence, shot through with sadness. “I have seen wars before, in many countries. Do not try to make sense of them. They make no sense, especially the actual violence. It is a horrible thing. There is nothing you can do.”

“But I started all this,” she said. “I was the one that told them to come fight.”

“Maya,” said Antonio again, using her name as if trying to ground her. “I do not understand what is going on, but this seems bigger than us. I doubt this is happening simply because of you, yes?”

Kevin turned around. “He’s right, you know.” He studied his sword, and then looked up at her. “The way these guys talk, it sounds like they’ve been doing this since forever. In different places, different times, but always fighting. This ain’t nothing new.”

Maya sighed. They were offering her a way out. It even made sense. But she couldn’t take it. Not with the screams still resounding through the air. She hugged herself tightly to stop her hands from creeping up to her ears. “Maribel,” she said, trying to keep her mind focused, distracted. “You’re her husband?”

Antonio nodded, sighed. His shoulders slumped. “It is… very complicated. She was pregnant. I was gone, much of the time. Working. I work as… it doesn’t matter. I thought my work was important, but… I lost sight of things.” Antonio was no longer looking at her, Maya realized, but rather through. Not even talking to her. “She came to New York a few weeks ago. It was a dangerous time to fly, she was very advanced in the pregnancy. But she did it I think to be independent. Of me, of our life. It was dangerous, and she lost the baby in the hospital. Premature delivery.”

“I’m sorry,” said Maya, the words wooden in her mouth. Horribly, it seemed just another item to tag on to the bottom of a list of such tragedies. Antonio nodded. “She went mad. Refused to come back home to Spain. Denied that our child was dead. I tried to speak to her, but… well. She didn’t want to listen.”

Silence. The three of them stood, facing each other, opposite corners of a triangle. The common sounds of battle were suddenly overwhelmed by a vast groan, cracking and straining like a massive beam of wood being twisted out of shape. It rolled over them, and Maya felt tears come to her eyes anew. “Old Man Oak,” she whispered, and buried her face in her hands. “Make them stop,” she whispered fiercely to nobody in particular. “Make them stop.”

“Why New York?” asked Kevin. Something in his voice. “Why here?”

“She had a photo gallery,” said Antonio. His voice raw. “She had a photo gallery opening. She takes photographs. Beautiful photographs. She… they were shown here.” It was like listening to a man trying to remain calm while sinking in quicksand. “She was so talented.”

“Photographs?” asked Kevin. Maya lowered her hands. “What kind?”

“Why does it matter?” asked Maya. “Who cares?”

Kevin held up his hand, stopping her. “What kind of photographs?”

Antonio, exasperated, looked from side to side, eyes searching the darkness, “I don’t know, photographs of the places we traveled through. Cambodia, the Congo. Photos of people, of children, of war.”

“What?” asked Maya, looking at Kevin. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m not sure,” said Kevin. “I don’t know, but maybe—didn’t they say that Maribel is now the Queen of Air and Darkness? But that the Queen is also Maribel? That they’re the same?”

“Yes?”

“So… even though she’s turned into a death dealing bitch, part of her is still the Maribel from before, right? Maybe we can use something from her past against her? Distract her, or…?”

Maya felt hope fluoresce within her, and then still, die. “But how?”

“I don’t know,” said Kevin, face falling. “It was just an idea.

Maya tried to think. It was so hard to marshal her thoughts over the screams. The screams that were like nails tearing through her flesh. She pushed her fists into her eyes and fell into a tight crouch, and tried to think.
Think
. Photographs. Of children. Of war. Maribel had lost her baby. She had been driven to this… by grief. By loss. Photographs. Her own creations. Like her own children. Made by her. Of war, of grief. Something. Something.

“Where is this gallery?” she asked, looking up at Antonio.

“It’s in the West Village,” he said. “On Hudson and Christopher Street.”

“Can we get there?” Maya stood up. A vague idea. A sense of potential. Nothing definite, nothing formed, nothing real yet, but there.

“Like, catch a cab?” asked Kevin. “Yeah, I think there might be some cabs in Manhattan.”

“No, too slow,” she said. “We need to get there faster.”

“Well…” Kevin stopped. “If we could get Old Man Oak to help us?”

Maya bit her lip. That rolling cry. A death cry. There had to be a way. The House of Asterion, perhaps. Something, a short cut, a way to connect the dots not with a line but by simply jumping from one directly to the other. Maya pulled out her last remaining acorn.

“I’m going to try something. It might not work. But I feel that it might, it feels right. Stand back.” Before any of the others could speak, she held the acorn up high and then cast it down at the ground. “Please, Old Man Oak,” she whispered, “Please let this work.”

The acorn embedded itself deep into the earth, and immediately unfurled a tender sapling, which thickened and wizened with the bark as branches sprouted from its trunk. With a rushing, groaning roar, it surged up into the air, roots knotting and writhing through the loam, growing thick and powerful and pushing the three of them, stumbling, back. Within moments, a great oak tree stood before them, not nearly as mighty as Old Man Oak himself but still broad and hoary and old.

“Now what?” asked Kevin, exasperated, “We climb it and jump?”

“No,” said Maya, moving forward, palm outstretched. “No, not that…” She reached the tree’s trunk, stepping carefully over its roots. The tree had given away their location. Already the cries of their enemies were closing in. Maya ignored them. Listened instead to that instinct, that voice within her. Allowed her need to take form, visualized where she wanted to go. She wasn’t the Lady of Light and Laughter, but she felt something akin to power. Thought of the gift that the Green Man had given her, that wondrous ability to create through simple need—and if ever she needed something, it was now. She closed her eyes, and
pushed
.