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Chapter 10
In the Bethmora Palace war-room, strategic debate between the Prince and his military advisors raged. A Faerie, a Seelie spy had come to the city on tired wings and with his dying breath warned the army of a human sect, a merchant ship coming to dock in the shattered remains of New York's harbour. It was a dangerous thing, if true; the Palace-City was well-hidden hundreds of feet beneath the streets of New York, but in the war's latter years with humans few and far-between, not so heavily guarded as it once was. If Bethmora should be discovered by those who wish to destroy it, surely the last great Elven Metropolis, along with the rule of its Netherworld Prince, could fall.
"You have not convinced me that this threat is genuine, General," Prince Nuada stated, resting his hands on the edges of the map table in the Palace war-room. The Faerie who died in the city walls was a Seelie – the highest ilk of Faerie; still, he would not have been treated as an equal by the Elves. Fae were spiteful, and not to be trusted. It was no secret that Prince Nuada and generations of Elves before him had bought and sold the Seelie's lower-born kin as common slaves, and it was not unthinkable, then, that a Faerie could mislead the Elves of Bethmora through a fabricated enemy – or even consort with the humans, and lead the Prince into a trap.
"Surely you don't think this creature would speak against us with his dying breath?" the General countered, pensive and unafraid. These were the words of General Rithiel, a warlord in his own right and an older Elf than Nuada; the man had served under King Balor, and as such, his opinion was one Nuada Silverlance would not flagrantly disregard.
"He was Fae," Adrastos countered from across the table, offering his thought without further explanation. A short silence passed in the war-room. "Prince Nuada," the Commander exclaimed suddenly, his features drawn in concern. All eyes fell on the Elvish Royal, and on the trickle of blood that stained the Prince's hand and pooled on the war-room table. Nuada noticed the injury before another could speak and pushed up his sleeve to find the cut. It was a trivial thing – a tiny wound on the palm of his right hand no larger or deeper than a scratch. The Prince scoffed, lifting his eyes from the small injury. He ran his hand over the edge of the map table to find some offending nick or imperfection, but the wood beneath his fingertips was lacquered and flawless. Nuada Silverlance said nothing, and in his pause and uneasy silence settled over the citadel amphitheatre. Without speaking he lifted his golden eyes to those of Commander Adrastos and as quickly as the Commander divined the Prince's intentions, Nuada Silverlance turned on a heel and fled the war-room, his friend and subordinate quick to follow.
The Commander signalled for two of his underlings to escort and, matching Nuada's stride not two paces behind, the three warriors shadowed their Prince through Bethmora's labyrinthine corridors. Adrastos need not ask where the Prince was leading them, and as Nuada neared the narrow hall that led only to the hidden garden, the Commander's underlings too supposed their Prince's fear.
Nuada and his soldiers needn't so much as enter the Solarium to know that something there had gone afoul; the door to the underground garden, long held open with vines of ivy stood half-closed, casting a narrow beam of light from the Solarium into the old hall. Prince Nuada opened the heavy door and saw without surprise that the alchemist's fountain had been opened. Adrastos dashed past the Prince and into the catacombs beneath the garden to see if the Princess' prison-tomb was indeed empty. Nuada did not follow, but rather noticed a single rose lying discarded near the sepulchre's secret door. It was tattered but not wilted – not a blossom knocked from one of the Solarium's rosebushes, as the bloom ended in a long, cut stem. The Prince took it in his hands, a drop of water falling from a dishevelled petal to land on his wrist. He did not need to lift the flower from the fountain's empty basin to know what it was, and by the time Adrastos pulled himself out of Nuala's grave, the Prince's eyes smouldered like fire.
"The Siren freed my sister," Nuada stated simply, his tone as even as he could manage.
"Your Lady Bacchante?" the Commander countered, his voice heavy with a doubt that Nuada's fury erased.
"Send all the men you trust to find my sister, and once she is in your keep return her here."
"And what of–" The Prince didn't let him finish, but hissed in answer, saying the name of his beloved as though it were poison,
"I will deal with Bacchante."
Above the Palace-City of Bethmora, the winter air rang with crystalline chill – silent, glistening, sterile. No birds called through the frosted air and no footfalls marred the virgin snow; void entirely of any imperfections that would indicate life. The forest that stood at the tunnel's end was barren in the late January cold; still, Bacchante needn't be an Elf to see that once the summer came, no leaves would blush the dead wood verdant.
Slowly, Nuala stepped through into a patch of denser forest, resting her hand on the trunk of a lifeless tree. She wandered, childlike, and from the hidden entrance to the old city, the Siren watched. This was her lover's twin – his sister, his kin, a Princess as much as he ruled Prince and yet he had confined her as though she were a common criminal. She was mad as a March hare – whether cause or consequence of her confinement Bacchante did not know, and as she watched the remnants of royalty's grace transmuted to madness the Siren could think only of the Prince's cruelty, his ruthlessness in the dungeon pit, his genocide that turned the world to ash and reasoned that if she had any sanity to speak of, she would not return to him.
The alternative was frightening and impractical, and Siren though she was any flight Bacchante made through that frigid, lifeless forest could only end in her death. No, she thought; she could not run from Bethmora, and Nuada Silverlance knew this – it had been engineered to prevent her escape; beautiful though it was, his Kingdom was her prison, and he her gracious keeper.
Without warning a soft rushing broke the perfect silence of the January morning, the first sound save the footfalls of the Princess, and the Siren's own breath. With a start Bacchante turned to the source of it, seeing nothing in the bleak forest. In her periphery, the lady watched snow fall from the boughs of an evergreen, landing on the earth with a whispered hush and foolishly held that sound responsible for the broken silence. Uneasily, Bacchante scanned the clearing for the Prince's sister, reeling in fear when she saw the lady gone. Frantically the Siren stepped into the forest, combing the snow for Nuala's footprints, but the footfalls of Elves were faint and delicate, and in the glare of the sun on glistering snow the Siren saw none.
"Nuala," Bacchante called into the barren chill, her voice made fragile by the cold. Somewhere behind her a twig snapped. "Nuala!" the lady repeated, stronger now, distress giving way to panic. She ran out into a clearing, wheeling in circles searching for any sign of the Princess, footprints, a glint of sun on moving fabric, and with a whistle of fletching an arrow sliced through the winter air, coming to rest in the supple flesh between the Siren's ribs.
The force of the blow knocked the lady to her knees and the breath from her lungs. With grim insight she saw not the fair Nuala hiding in the forest, but mortal men armed with guns and crossbows, dressed in wool and worn leather. She saw them step into the clearing, her breath growing weak and the glare of the sun on bleach-white snow ever stronger, its light more painful than the arrow piercing her side. Half-dreaming, Bacchante caught in the corner of her eye the flicker of a silver dress, and saw the Princess in-between the evergreens. Their eyes met for half a moment before the Siren's sight waned, bathing her in white more sterile than new-fallen snow, the voices of the human archers fading to a high-pitched ringing like the shattering of fine crystal. This she endured until that divine white faded to purest black, the ringing to utter silence, and Bacchante felt no pain.
Nuala's sanity flickered. Her eyes met those of the Siren, the Siren wearing her dress stained red with blood who let her see the sun, and in a brief moment of reason, the Princess ran. She bounded quickly back from where she came, away from the humans her brother hated and through the stone archway that opened to stairs spiralling down to the Kingdom-City. Her pace was frantic – she could feel her brother's anger raging somewhere in her mind, the distant, amber glow of a forest fire burning through unseen hectares, and in her insanity this was what she ran to. She felt him still, his presence, searching the halls of his Palace, walking quickly but without direction – a caged animal smelling its prey from behind the bars.
The winding, endless stairwell down to the underground metropolis took its toll on the lady, and even with the strength that so often blessed the mad she paused to rest, pressing her lithe frame against the worn, damp walls of the ancient passageway. Still, she did not stop, and though she knew this flight to her brother was a flight to her captor she could not end it. Her life had been one of sacrifice – as the lives of Royals so often are–as the life of her brother was – and even parted from Nuada through madness and years of sleep she felt something pure behind his rage. Carnal obsession, yes, but perhaps for her brother that passed for love. If anything, if this wounded Siren could soften the heart of the Destroyer of Worlds, the Princess would gladly trade her freedom for it.
Closer now, Nuala ran down once-familiar corridors and found her brother before he felt her. He saw her in only half-surprise, coming toward him on the Palace balcony that overlooked the city. She wore that delicate silver burial gown gossamer as spider-silk, carrying herself with the precarious grace of a fallen Seraph, and speaking with the frailty of a ghost,
"I could feel you," Nuala murmured, airy and forgetful as she clutched the fabric of her brother's shirt in her hands, grasping it lightly with muted desperation, "I dreamed of you." Her eyes fell on him, looking over Nuada like shards of broken glass.
"Nuala, my sister–" he began, his words harsh and uneven; desperately the Prince searched for the anger that served as his near-constant companion, but somehow she evanished it and like hope in the shadows of Pandora's box, only guilt was left behind.
"Your Siren dies." Whether it was her ethereal, placid whisper or something in her countenance, Bethmora's Prince heard her words without emotion; watching a massacre through panes of glass. "She bleeds in the snow like a fawn slaughtered in spring, frightened and unready to die." She said this as one would say a poem only half-remembered, disjointed and intangible, and held him fast with her eyes – looking through him without fear. In her golden gaze, once so very like his own, the Prince saw only shadows and felt the visceral horror of looking into a mirror and seeing nothing. Timidly, Nuala raised two fingers to her brother's face and held them there, her eyes never leaving his. In reverie, he let the heavy silence pass.
"We have... so many scars," the Princess whispered finally, her words a tired, inconsolable lament, "Is this not enough?" Through her touch, Nuada saw what his sister had: the image of Bacchante, her wounds staining red the virgin snow...
"My lord!" The voice of General Rithiel pulled the Prince from his sick chimera, rending his sister from him with words alone. In a torrent Nuada's sense returned, and he tore himself from the gaze of his twin, realizing only then with horror the implications of her memory.
"Have your men return her to the antechamber," Nuada ordered, his steely command laced with fear his twin alone could see. Pulling himself from her, Bethmora's Prince clutched his sister's wrist, bloodied burgundy from their common wound, and sent her quickly into the General's keep. "Inform Adrastos of this. He will accompany you." Nuada Silverlance did not wait for an answer before he turned for the surface, ascending from his cavern-Kingdom.
In the Prince's absence, the warlord Rithiel offered his arm to his Princess, looking upon her as a parent would see a wayward child. He knew her in her youth, as he had known them both, and mourned her descent; even in her delirium she saw this much, and as he led her to her lonely doom she placed her arm in his and did not fight.
Above his Palace-City, Nuada met the winter's blinding, spectral white not with awe but savage determination, narrowing his eyes to the sun. With practiced ease he unsheathed his silver spear, the weapon poised in his hand like that of some avenging angel. The Fae had not lied; in his sister's memory he had seen the humans who had slain the Siren, and did not doubt that they would fight him if they could. Truly, it was foolish to leave the city alone – but if he was to save Bacchante, if she lived still, he could not have waited longer. Swiftly and soundlessly he stalked through the forest, following Nuala's memory to the clearing where the Siren lay.
The sharp whistle of an arrow's fletching from behind caught his attention, and with a fell stroke the Ancient Prince knocked aside the shaft with his spear, turning to slaughter the man who'd fired it. Three humans came from out the forest – swiftly Nuada Silverlance ran his blade down the chest of the first, a whisper of a touch that felled the human in a pool of blood. A careful stroke, dodging a switchblade and he slit the throat of the archer; a final thrust of the weapon buried it in the third man's chest. The Prince withdrew the blade and his attacker's corpse collapsed in the snow, the only noise to desecrate the morning's immaculate silence. Nuada stepped over the dead man's body, flicking the blood from the tip of his spear. A cursory glance revealed no further life in the frozen woods and the Prince stepped from where the men had fallen, deeper into the forest.
The Siren Bacchante lay in a clearing surrounded by cedar trees, their branches long dried and dead. The Elf Lord saw her and dropped to one knee by her side, lifting her head from the bloodied snow. Her body was cold and catatonic and her eyes closed, but a touch was all the Ancient creature needed to see that his love was alive, if only just. Carefully Nuada hovered his hand an inch above her body, pausing as he neared the arrow sheathed between her ribs. Assuring himself that she slept and felt no pain, the Prince withdrew his arm from her neck and instead pressed upon the injury, using the other to pull the arrow from her side. It came cleanly, with a rush of blood that stained his gold skin red and her blue dress black. At his action her eyelids flickered, and whether from shock or pain or the warmth of his hand on her flesh, the lady began to wake.
"I know what you've done." Her voice, faint and frail as his sister's, rang out in the winter chill like the cracking of ice in spring. She opened her eyes only enough to see the Prince, his golden gaze as sharp and unrelenting as the sun. "You monster."
An eternity passed between them before the abject silence was broken, not by speech, but by the dreaded, familiar whisper of an arrow's fletching; the weapon struck true, its shaft buried in Nuada's back before he could move. A moment later and three others whistled through the frosted morn, flanking the Prince's spine like wings of bone. He heard motion, human voices speaking in their indelicate tongue, and every instinct within the Ancient Royal screamed for him to rise – fight, but as the seconds passed he laboured for breath, and as his strength waned he fell to the snow by the Siren's side, numb to all but her hatred.
General Rithiel, Adrastos and four of their common underlings had escorted the Princess half-way through the halls of Bethmora's Palace before she faltered in Rithiel's arm, crumpling to the floor with a cry of unanticipated pain. Blood blossomed from the lady's back, staining her gown in small florets like petals of a crimson rose.
"The Prince," a lieutenant exclaimed in horrid revelation, his gaze darting between the General and Commander.
"He has been attacked – gather a battalion and send them to the surface; his Majesty must be saved–"
"No." Adrastos said this softly but with firm resolve, silencing the General with the utter boldness of his contradiction, "Clearly the humans have a greater presence than even the Seelie spy had anticipated; if we send troops, we risk losing them all, and revealing to the mortals the location of Bethmora. Should they find it, we all shall die. We can save Prince Silverlance by saving his sister; so long as she lives, as does our Monarch." Without another thought the Commander caught the Princess by her shoulders, and as the pain of her brother's wounds sapped her strength he lifted her into his arms, "She needs a surgeon, not a grave."
"This is treachery," The General hissed, moving to stand before Adrastos, blocking him from the corridor.
"Though you are a General and I merely a Commander, I remind you, Rithiel, that I was the Prince's second-in-command. As such, you will not question me." Adrastos said this placidly, and after only a moment's pause he left the General's presence, taking Nuala to the royal doctors.
In the newfound quiet of the palace hall the warriors looked one to another and none spoke, even as all thought the Commander's fading footfalls sounded of heresy.
Author's Note: AHHHHHHHHHH! sorry it took me so long to update... i blame university. I also realize this chapter is a little strange. To all of you who are still reading this, thank you so very much for your support. I'll try not to go so long between updates again, but with my course-load i can't make any promises.