War for the Oaks (21 page)

She lifted her exquisite chin and smiled a little at the phouka. He rose, and Eddi scrambled up after him. The woman spoke again, a lovely and confusing convocation of rounded vowels and rolling consonants.

The phouka drew a long breath. "Might we speak English, Lady?" he said slowly. "My companion does not understand our language, and it would be discourteous to use it before her."

Shocked murmuring rose from the group on the mound. The redhaired woman stared down at the phouka. No frown creased her white brow or marred the perfect shape of her lips, but her green eyes were hard and cold as glass. The phouka went a little pale, but did not drop his gaze.

At last she laughed, a sound like wind chimes or breaking glass. "It shall be as you wish. We would not have it said that we lack courtesy."

But the phouka did not relax.

The peridot eyes were on Eddi now, and she felt small and grubby under their piercing regard. "We are pleased to have you attend us, Eddi McCandry." The red-haired woman smiled. "We have heard naught but good of you."

It was hard to look into that glorious face and not trust its every expression. Compliments from those lips, in that lovely voice, were always true, surely? But Eddi watched the phouka's fingers clench, and said only, "I'm grateful for that."

That seemed to amuse her. "Ah, no, the burden of gratitude is all ours." Which seemed an odd way to put it. "But tell us," she went on gently, "have you come tonight of your own will, or are you constrained to do so?"

The phouka had warned her not to lie. Here was a direct question—and she wasn't sure what the truth was. The phouka had assured her that, if she tried to escape him, she would fall into the hands of one Court or another eventually. He had moved in with her, ordered her around, threatened her.

He had also guarded her with relentless vigilance, saved her life, and cosseted her like a fond uncle. Eddi thought of him, in the throes of a vulnerable drunk, at her kitchen table. She remembered their quarrel in the parking lot before practice—and he'd said then that he wouldn't stop her, if she chose to make a run for it. He had, in the end, begged her to do what he had once been prepared to force from her.

Slowly, she said, "If the obligations of friendship are constraints, then I'm constrained to be here."

The phouka shot her a startled, sideways glance.

"Indeed," said the red-haired woman, and frowned at the phouka. He held his hands out to either side, palms up.

"Come, then," the woman snapped, and turned on her heel. "We'll waste no more time on pleasantries."

Pleasantries, right
, thought Eddi. She asked the phouka in a whisper, "What was all that?"

"A test, of sorts," he replied. His eyes followed the red-haired woman as she stalked up the hill. "I think you did very well."

"She
doesn't."

"Oh, she may come to agree with me yet."

"Hmm. Who is she? She makes me feel like . . . like . . . something disgusting."

"Welcome, then, to a very exclusive club. She is a queen, my primrose."

Eddi tried not to be impressed, and failed.

"She and her kin have been Mab, Titania, Gloriana—and all of those are only shadows of what she is. She is a ruler of the oldest kingdom on earth, and has been so for longer than the span of a mortal empire and all its emperors." A grin flashed on his handsome dark face. "So forgive her, sweet, if she seems a little set in her ways."

"Do you always try to annoy her like that?"

His gaze turned to the sky above the mound, and the full moon that rode the running river of clouds. "No," he said, "I didn't always." Then the stillness was back on his face. "Go up," he told her. "They're waiting."

On the mound, the company had formed into two rows, and the aisle they made led to the two trees at the summit. The red-haired queen stood between them. Light outlined the trees, traced the bark, then leaped across to her like electrical current.

Eddi stepped forward, and stepped again. Leaving the phouka was like jumping out of a plane—he was solid and in his own way comprehensible, and he was the only certain ally she had. All the rest of this was air and danger. But she kept walking.

She was only a few feet from the summit before the queen nodded, and raised both arms. The light from the trees arced out and coursed over her. She felt a snowy chill, heard a single ringing note, breathed in a fleeting scent of some spicy, potent flower. Then the light broke in two, and lay on the grass and in the air above them in a quivering lattice.

"By the Holy Trees," the queen said, and her voice was lovely and terrible, "be these, our words and ways, all sacred here."

The gathered beings rumbled in agreement.

"Join we together in this?" the queen asked.

Silence stretched for an eternal moment, and even Eddi could feel the tension that sprang up. She realized suddenly that it was not only tension. Something swirled unevenly around her, something that stung her skin like a slap wherever it eddied.

"Aye," the assembly murmured at last, and the many pitches and timbres of their voices became, in an uncanny unison, one voice. The something that hovered in the air swept past and gathered itself with an arctic snap—in the queen's person? It was not a wind, though she felt as if her hair ought to be blown back from her face with the force of it.

The lattice of light blazed up, and cast a frosty illumination on the queen's triumphant face. "We ask with one voice, then. Bind over mortal flesh to the service of spirit; bind the magics of the spirit under the yoke of mortal doom."

"We all so ask," said the company.

The queen swept them with a pale green stare. "What is dearly wanted must be dearly bought.

"Name the fee."

The queen's eyes fixed on Eddi, the fierce, challenging look of birds of prey. "I speak aloud, that none should say he did not know the cost, that all shall know the size of our need by the price we pay." Eddi thought she could feel the crowd stir nervously. "Mortal flesh and mortal doom be one, and mortal will may rule them. Spirit shall reside in flesh, doom reside in spirit, and all shall bow before will."

Great. What does it mean?
She knew it was important—she read it in the queen's face, the watchers' unrest. Was she meant to understand it? She thought not. She committed a shorthand version of the queen's last sentence to memory, as she did when learning song lyrics, but she hadn't time to do more.

"We will pay the price," the eerie voice-of-many-voices rose up around her.

One of the ladies of the court approached the queen. Her sea-green calf-length skirt whispered sweetly of silk when she knelt. Her honey-colored hair was cut very short, except for a layer at the top which fell
to her shoulders on all sides like a translucent veil. She held a white dish so thin that light came through it, with a little round cake on it the color of old piano keys.

The scent of that cake reached Eddi, and all her senses were subordinated to her sense of smell. Perhaps it was something she'd eaten as a child, and loved, and forgotten. No, surely she'd never smelled that before, as surely as she knew she had. Its fragrance was warm, spicy, cool, and mild, and she knew it would be creamy on the tongue and crisp between the teeth. It was difficult to concentrate on anything else.

Then Eddi realized that the cake lay in the queen's palm, white on white. The court lady had rejoined the watchers. An unfamiliar collection of sound dragged Eddi's attention aside: a rhythmic jingling and a soft clatter. They came from the tall figure that stepped up to the queen and bent the knee. The sound of armor.

It was not the metal plate of Hollywood knights; this was both simpler in its lines and more complex in its construction. It was an impossibly harmonious collection of Japanese samurai garb, biker's leathers, and costuming for a science fiction movie. There was golden metal mesh so fine it might have been cloth; shining quilted leather, dyed dark green; and solid plates over the shoulders, torso, and lower legs that looked and sounded like brilliantly lacquered wood. The head was covered by a lacquered helmet that suggested what might have been an animal's face. She couldn't be sure; it was not an animal she'd ever seen. Eddi saw no sign of wear on the armor.

From the figure's gauntleted hand the queen took a knife. It looked like silver, with a short, thin blade. She held it point down over the little cake in her palm. An instant before the motion, Eddi saw what it would be from the tightness in the queen's face. Then the queen plunged the knife into the cake and her own hand, and Eddi was too shocked to cry out.

Blood welled up and stained the white morsel.
Bread and blood, and much good may the knowledge do you
. The queen watched without expression, but her gaze never left her hand, as if she found her own blood fascinating.

The scent of the cake changed. It ceased to be like food at all, or like anything Eddi knew, but it was exquisite and to her horror, she longed for it. This, she knew suddenly, was the part of the ceremony
most changed by the phouka's ointment. Without it, she would have wanted the bloodstained cake and felt no horror at all, like some undiscriminating animal.

The queen took up the dreadful morsel and held it out. Eddi remembered another part of the phouka's words that afternoon: she would do what she did here of her own free will, but she would have to do it just the same. And there was that fragrant, gruesome cake. . . .

"Open your mouth," the queen said, as if to a recalcitrant child. She was frowning.

Eddi had promised the phouka that she would go through with this. And he had warned her about the dangers of broken promises. No, she couldn't do it. To hell with the consequences. But the phouka had said that the consequences would fall to him. What would they do to him? And she
had
promised, after all.

She opened her mouth.
Let me not gag
, she prayed.

The cake evaporated like smoke on her tongue and left behind the flavor of burnt toast.
All that agony and it doesn't even taste good
, Eddi thought vaguely, then had no time for thought or nausea. Pain swatted her to her knees, a blazing hurt all over her. It was the force she had felt stinging in the air only minutes before, but magnified.

It's magic. The magic of all these people, inside me, doing whatever it is they want done
.

How do I know that?

There was cold grass under her, and someone was supporting her head. She opened her eyes (though she couldn't remember closing them), and found the phouka looking down at her. It was one of his knees she felt under her head.

"Hullo?" she said faintly.

He looked relieved. "Sorry. Had I known that would be the result . . ."

"Finish your speech, do," said the queen of Faerie politely.

Faerie?
Eddi wondered.
Now where did that come from?
She turned her head a little and saw the pale queen, whiter still with fury, her eyes so cold they burned. The full strength of her rage was directed at the phouka.

"What would you have done, manikin, knowing the results of your actions?" the queen continued, her voice still tea-table calm. "Left well enough alone? Give us leave to doubt it. Perhaps you would have compounded your error instead, and told your little mortal all you knew. Perhaps you would have given her a stronger medicine than simple truth."

The phouka closed his eyes, as if in pain, and Eddi saw his teeth clench. "Lady, in spite of me she has done all we would ask of her. We are none the worse for it."

"Is that now yours to decide, manikin?"

He bit his lip. "No, Lady."

From somewhere on the hillside above them came a piercing call. It laid silence over the crowd, and yanked the queen's gaze away.

"Saved," whispered the phouka. "Up, my primrose, and dust yourself off." He helped Eddi to her feet. Her legs felt a little too flexible, and her thoughts seemed inclined to chase each other through her head, but the pain was gone.

The armored figure who had given the queen her knife stepped forward. "Sentry, Lady," he said. "They come."

Eddi saw a subtle transformation in the queen—she became, through some inexplicable change in posture or expression, a martial figure. "Aye, they would have scented this. Commanders, order your troops as we have instructed. Oberycum, see to our cavalry, and be our marshal, that we may know when all are in place."

The armored man bowed, and joined the scattering men and women of the court. Eddi saw many of them dressing in light armor, and some buckling on scabbarded swords.

The queen's attention had returned to the phouka. "Go," she said coldly. "You have done a merry bit of work this night. Should it go awry, I shall see that you eat first of whatever fruit it bears."

The phouka bowed, and the queen whirled away and strode down the hill.

"Swords," Eddi muttered. "These people have swords. What am I doing here?"

"For the moment, nothing more demanding than staying alive," the phouka replied. "And to that end, I suggest we remove from this indefensible bit of grass and find a rock to hide under."

"Does that mean I don't have to be right in the middle of everything?"

"By 'everything,' I assume you mean the fighting? Then no. You only need to be on the field, and we fulfilled that requirement as we came down the stairs."

Eddi followed the phouka toward the side of the bowl. Around them the creatures of the Seelie Court bustled, arming themselves, hurrying to their positions. None of them had the leisure to pay attention to Eddi.

"Oop," the phouka said. "Move quickly."

She heard them even as she dashed the last few steps to the bottom of the slope—the sound of many horses' hooves.

They poured like white-crested water from behind the mound, as if they'd come out of the hill itself. After a moment Eddi realized that there were only twenty or so of them, that their constant motion, their size, and their glowing whiteness multiplied them. But she could not dispel that first impression, that this was a host that might ride out against any army, and barely notice as it fell beneath those shining hooves.