Author's Note: for those wondering where the Hell I've been, 3 things have kept me from updating the way I want. 1, I didn't have access to a computer (and due to covid protective measures, I couldn't just pop over to my local library like I used to), only my phone, so I couldn't actually log in to FF. I'm actually in the process of porting things over to AO3 (although I will continue to use FF now that I have computer access, at least until FF becomes unusable - which I've been told will be sooner rather than later. Just a head's up). 2, I almost died several times in the last 8 months. 3, I've been having a lot of health issues. There's a public, free-to-read post about this on my Pat. Re. On. if you want to go look. However, we're working on getting these things fixed so I can go back to writing and updating more often.
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Chapter One-Hundred-Forty-Three
An Open Door
that is
A Short Tale of Lamentations of the Dead, Children Up Trees, Discussing Old Geezers, Black Market Barbie Socks, Screwing with People, Villains Relaxing, Formalities, Bargains, Fairy Godsfathers, Good Hips, Luggage, Peering into Darkness, Eggs, Making Friends, Dangerous Demands, Oonagh's Temper, Theories, Wanting to See the Baby, Spreading the Word, Spying, Obligations, Brain Cramps, Poor Little Things, and Lizards
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King Balor wasn't sure if he was hallucinating, or dead, or dreaming. It didn't matter. All that mattered was that she was right there in front of him. Alive? Or near enough as to make no difference at all to him.
"Cethlenn," he breathed, and took a staggering step forward. His hand shook when he reached for her. She looked the same as she had the last time he'd seen her alive - tall and slim as a willow, pale as a moonbeam, her hair like spun garnets cascading over her shoulders, a silvery gleam in her emerald eyes. "Oh, gods...Cethlenn."
How often had he dreamed of her in the centuries since her death? He couldn't count that high. Each time, waking threatened to tear out his heart, but in the grips of those dreams he didn't care that pain would inevitably follow. He only cared that she was with him again.
"Cethlenn...my beloved...my dearest…" The sun seemed to brighten as he whispered her name. A soft breeze brought the scent of pine and wildflowers from the woods towering all around them. They were in the Royal Forest, and they were together at last, even if only for the space of this beautiful, heartbreaking dream.
The old king moved toward the apparition of his wife, heart pounding in his throat, butterflies winging through his belly. It had been too long since he'd had one of these dreams. Or was he dead at last? Was this the otherworld of the dead? It didn't matter, she was here.
"How could you, Balor?"
He jerked to a stop, staring at her. His heart knifed sideways in his chest. Her beautiful green eyes glittered with unshed tears. Grief twisted her features. No, no, no, this was all wrong. In his dreams of her, when she was like this, vibrant and alive, she was never sad. She never wept. She welcomed him with open arms and offered him only love and joy. In his worst nightmares, he dreamed of finding her dead, as he had in the waking world, but this was not the same thing.
"Cethlenn...what? What do you mean?" Perhaps...perhaps she blamed him for her murder, as he had blamed himself all these centuries. But she had never blamed him in these dreams before…
"How could you let him take our son?" Crystal tears spilled down her cheeks. She hugged herself, withdrawing from him. Pain like a taloned hand squeezed his heart as his wife began to weep in earnest. "You let that monster into our home! You let him near our children! How could you, Balor?"
"I…" Shades of Annwn, he knew who she meant. Gods...gods. "Cethlenn, my love, I didn't know! I didn't know he was the one who…"
I didn't know he was the one who had murdered you. Even now, weeks after learning that truth of Sreng Mac Umhor, his old friend, he could scarcely wrap his mind around it. That Sreng, the man who had brought back Cethlenn's lost ring, that had saved Nuada from drowning in an iced-over lake as a boy, that had helped coax Balor from the worst of his anguish over the loss of his beloved queen...was a vile, bloodthirsty killer that had helped take Cethlenn away from him.
Sreng had been so patient and kind to him during those bleak, dark years. More patient and kind than Balor knew he deserved. How could it be that he was the monster that had destroyed Balor's life? Nearly killed both Nuada and Nuala, his precious children? Been the one preying on the northern villages for the last half-dozen years? It could not be!
And yet, Sreng himself had admitted to it. Admitted to all of it.
"I didn't know, mo cridh. I would never have...if I had known, I could never have...Cethlenn, I didn't know. I'm sorry. Forgive me, my heart. I did not know then what he was."
But his beloved only shook her head and stepped back from him.
"Cethlenn-"
"You gave him our son!" There was more than tears there, on her face and in her eyes. There was horror, and disgust, and anguish. "You let that monster steal our son! Where is Nuada?"
Balor opened his mouth to protest, to offer the same measly excuses he had given in writing to the mortal woman who loved the crown prince - the treaty, humans were not to be harmed, the honor of the fae and the Crown - but no words escaped his lips. Grief and shame clogged his throat and he could utter no sound.
"Where is he, Balor? Where is Nuada? Where is our boy?"
Oh, gods, where was Nuada? What was Sreng doing to his boy? He had no way of knowing. They had put Nuala under a magical sleep, wrapped as tightly as a spider's prey with healing spells and protection shields to try and prevent as much of the damage being inflicted on Nuada as possible from transferring to the princess.
Nuada, Nuala had informed him before succumbing to the spell, had shut her out completely anyway. They had no way of knowing where he was or what was happening to him.
My son...my poor boy...I'm so sorry, my poor boy...
"Balor, you must find him! You must help him!" Cethlenn fell to her knees amidst the green and gold of the pine needles and the sprigs of white and pink clover. The plea in her eyes threatened to gut him. "He's our little boy, you must save him! Where is he? Where is Nuada?"
"Cethlenn…" He managed to croak. He shook his head, every movement an agony. "I...I cannot...the treaty…"
"You let him have our son!" She dropped her face in her hands and sobbed, "Nuada...my son...you let him take our son…"
"No," he tried to gasp, staggering back from her. He held up his shaking hands as if to ward off a blow. "Cethlenn, no, I...I didn't! I did not! Cethlenn!" But her sobs swelled until they filled his ears like screams, and he could no longer see her, or the sun that had beamed so brightly, or the towering pines of the Royal Forest, or the forest carpet under his feet. There was only darkness, and the sound of his wife weeping...
Amaryllis ingen Gawain knew how to eavesdrop on grownups without being caught. It helped that, when she couldn't wiggle into a specific place, she could (usually) smoosh her head into the spot instead, then hide her body somewhere else until it was time to put her head back on. Being a dullahan had its advantages. And anytime she couldn't get her head somewhere without being conspicuous, she could send her wight colt instead.
All dullahan had wight horses - a piece of their soul given form, some said. Hers, a black colt with vivid green eyes and a silky burgundy mane and tail, was small for his age and very skilled at not attracting attention when they didn't want to attract attention. Like now, for instance.
Amaryllis curled up in a large hawthorn tree, stretched out across several closely-clustered dark branches so that her legs dangled over one branch, another supported her waist, and another supported her shoulders. She'd set her head on her stomach to make sure it didn't tumble down out of the tree. Her wight colt grazed on hard, brittle winter grasses down below.
Near the colt, two monsters talked in low, guarded tones while they stared off toward the northwest.
One of them was Maurice, one of Amaryllis's favorite people. A tall, broad youth with blueberry skin and curling horns jutting from his temples, he'd been her sister's bed monster before the bandits had come and murdered her. Apparently he knew the Prince's Lady, too, because he'd come to the village of Lallybroch to fight the bandits on the Lady's behalf. Maurice dressed like a human boy from the mortal realm and sometimes liked to break the rules, but he'd always been kind to Amaryllis and her siblings, instead of scaring them like he was technically supposed to.
The other monster was a short, squat, scaly thing that sort of looked like a grotesque kind of rabbit, with long ears and long, pointed feet and clawed hands, and a strangely oblong head. His scales were the color of old, half-dried blood and he had huge, lambent yellow eyes. She'd seen him suck in air to inflate himself to the size of a house so he could kill the bandits attacking the villages. He was a friend of the Lady's, too, and Maurice had said his name was Ickis.
Ickis' nasally voice drifted clearly to the wight colt's sensitive ears, and Amaryllis could easily hear the words through her colt.
"...feel it? Just for a moment, the whole world went cold and still. Tell me you didn't feel it."
"I absolutely felt it!" Maurice chuckled, crossing his arms over his chest. "Felt it, smelled it, tasted it. Apples and pumpkin and blood on my tongue, decay in my nostrils, autumn chill on my skin. Someone summoned a phantom tree and conjured a Door to Samhain."
"Who do you think it was?"
"Probably the Doc," Maurice said. When Ickis made a choked noise of shock, Maurice laughed. "Tell me it's not something she'd do in a heartbeat if she needed to. Besides, the Old Geezer loves her to death."
Ickis flailed his tiny, lizard arms. "You can't call him the Old Geezer! He's the Samhain Keeper!"
Grinning, Maurice bent down so his warty blue face was right in front of Ickis. "Geezer, Geezer, Geezer!" And then laughed like it was the world's biggest joke. Maurice found amusement in nearly everything.
"Shut up!" Ickis moaned, yanking on his ears until they covered his bulbous eyes. "You're going to give me an ulcer! Why does Dylan even put up with you?"
"My charm and good looks!" Maurice grinned wider, showing off the rows of knife-sharp ivory teeth bristling in his mouth.
"Baloney," said the smaller monster, yanking harder on his ears.
Maurice paused to consider, tapping a slate-gray claw against his chin. "Uhhh...I make really good booze in my bathtub?"
Ickis shot him a look. "She doesn't drink."
"Fine," Maurice said, smacking a hand to his chest. "Ya caught me! I know a guy who knows a guy who can get her those black market Barbie socks she wants."
For several long moments, Ickis only peered at him from behind the edges of his scaly ears. Finally he grumbled, "...okay, now you're just making stuff up to screw with me."
"Whaaat?" Maurice's smile turned practically cherubic. "Me? No. Nooo." Then he sobered - which for Maurice meant the manic grin shrunk and the mocking edge to his voice softened. He glanced toward where the moon hung low in the sky to the west and sighed. "She's got more brass than a minotaur with a nose ring-"
"What?" Ickis demanded, baffled.
"She's calling on Himself to get help with something. I can't even imagine what she'd call on him for, all official and stuff. He's fond of her, like the rest of us. She's a favorite. But I don't see her just dropping in on him for morning tea in Druhim Vanashta, do you?"
Ickis shuddered all over, chewing several claws and making distressed, nasal noises. "No," he said around the chewed claws. "No, she wouldn't go there unless it was serious. Getting through the cypresses is dangerous, even with a guide. And the Queen is there, in the capital city, in her Fire Topaz Tower of Absinth and Nightmares...and the Queen hates Dylan."
Up high in her tree, Amaryllis tapped small fingers against her cheeks and pondered what the monsters had said. What queen hated the Lady? Bethmoora had no queen anymore. Neither did Ciocal, and the queen of Eirc was said to be a very kind sort of lady. Where would Lady Dylan go, where a queen who hated her would rule?
Amaryllis knew all about kings and queens and what it meant if they hated you. King Balor, the king of Bethmoora, hated her. He didn't know her name, or even what she looked like, but Amaryllis knew he hated her and her family and her friends and everyone else who lived in Broch Toruch. Otherwise, why would the king refuse to protect them from the bandits that had killed her parents, older sister, and baby brother? The same bandits that had almost killed her, except the Lady's guardsman had rescued her.
If this queen hated the Lady, then Lady Dylan was in danger by going to where this queen was. Because if a king or queen hated you, it didn't matter if you were a good person or not. They would kill you anyway, if they could get away with it.
Sreng Mac Umhor stared up at the moon, golden and full, and decided he'd been patient enough with Prince Nuada Silverlance. For a sennight, the bandit captain had kept the prince, and done very little. Hurt him, certainly. Punished him for the transgressions of the cat-brat, as was proper. None of it was permanent. He'd generously healed every hurt doled out to the prince.
Enough of the hurting. It added spice, but Nuada had been...surprisingly well-behaved the last seven days. No attempts at worming his way around or through the oath the prince had made to Sreng. Yes, the bandit captain loved to hear the Silverlance scream. Reveled in the stink of his blood and sweat while the once-proud warrior begged for the pain to end. But, well...Sreng was bored of it, after an entire week able to play as he wished with his toy. Enough of the hurting.
Time for different pleasures.
So he sent slaves to the prince, to bathe him and make sure he groomed himself properly. Sent orders to the kitchens for a fine meal for two. They'd both need their strength, after all, and it might be diverting to toy with the prince's dread and hatred during dinner. And he sent a clean tunic and, for once, trews for the beautiful demon to wear once Sreng finished his own bath and deigned to call on him.
The bandit captain had in fact just stepped out of his bath and wrapped a thick, dark towel around his hips when the door to his purloined suite of rooms slammed open with a crash of wood on stone.
Sreng drew himself up. His single iron-gray eye narrowed. Whoever had just barged into his rooms had better have a very good reason, or it wouldn't only be Elven blood that spilled tonight.
As it happened, there was a good reason.
"What's up, Doc?"
At the informal greeting, some of the tension seeped out of Dylan's body. So, he wasn't going to be full formal. This wasn't a court thing, not yet. For now, it was the pair of them, as friends, with Pipkin's Small Court - who were also her friends - and her family and friends and guards...would that make it less informal? So many people?
Dylan wasn't sure. She hoped not. Not yet, anyway. There would be a specific moment when she wanted to make that mental switch.
"I need your help, Pip."
There. Not Prince Shamhna or Your Dark Highness, not even Joe or Pipkin, but Pip. A reminder of that night several years ago when she had offered her life to Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud, the Samhain Keeper, the Lord of Death and Dark and Time. The night when she'd stood over a child in a lonely hospital room late in the night, leaning down to whisper, "Come on, Pip. Run. Don't let him keep you. Run, Pip."
Immediately the Samhain prince's cocky grin, showcasing those viciously pointed white teeth, slipped away. He studied her with eyes that constantly shifted between the orange-gold of pumpkin fire, the scarlet of fresh blood, the amber of autumn moons, and an oddly human blue. The pupils, flat and rectangular as a goat's, shone with an odd dark rainbow shimmer like an oil slick on a street puddle. The long, dagger-sharp points of his ears twitched once.
"What do you need, un-sister? Why have you called me and my Small Court to you with blood and bone and autumn?"
Dylan was intensely aware of the eyes of all her allies on her - her twin, her sisters, her guards, Wink, her boys, her dogs, Davio, Oblina, and the royals that had agreed to come with her on this quest to help her prince. She ignored them as she gripped her long, black skirts in hands she refused to let shake and swept them out as she sank into the most graceful curtsy she could manage. Pain surged through her bent knee; she shoved it aside.
Informal or not, friends or not, Pipkin was one of the most powerful royals in Faerie. He outranked everyone in their group, and all the royals present were heirs of their own kingdoms. She would show him respect when she asked this next part.
"I need to see Master Moundshroud in a formal court audience. I need to go to Samhain, to Druhim Vanashta, to the October Palace of Towers, to the Citadel of All Hallows', and I need my entourage," here she nodded to the group, "to accompany me. And I need a promise that all of us will be allowed true hospitality and safe passage home after."
Moundshroud was her friend, and he loved her...but Ligeia was his queen, and she had no love for Dylan, or for humans in general.
That was one reason this summoning had been so dangerous: there was no guarantee that Pipkin would be the one to show up. It could have been him, but it could just as easily have been one of Moundshroud's blood sons, or Princess Nerrasen who was wed to one of those sons and despised everything that lived, or Moundshroud's mother Mallt-y-Nos or her wife Perchta the Bright Shroud, or even Ligeia herself. None of them would kill her for such a summoning, but it would have been a debt incurred, if Dylan had called up anyone but Pipkin or his foster-brothers.
No one in Moundshroud's court would dare risk his rage by killing her, or John, but anyone else? Tsu's'di and A'du were protected by Azrharn but other than her boys, she had no promise. She couldn't guarantee their safety just because she cared about them. Only Pipkin could do that. Ligeia hated the heir to the Autumn Throne, but he was the heir, and there was nothing she could do about it, not even kill him - Moundshroud would simply raise him up again, and punish her. If Pipkin promised Dylan's group safe passage, Ligeia had to honor that promise.
But Dylan would have to bargain for it. Even among friends, there had to be a bargain.
"And what price will you pay for that vow, un-sister? Such a large group...you wish the Court of Samhain to host them all? And my word that they will be safe? What will you give me for it?"
Dylan swallowed. She'd thought about this for a very, very long time while she'd been making the cuts across her arm that would give the blood needed for the summoning. The creatures of Samhain were beings of blood and bone, death and decay. Blood held great meaning for them. And you didn't always have to spill it to get their attention.
"If you promise this, Heir of the Court of Samhain, then you have my gift as Princess of Bethmoora and wife of the Crown Prince of the Golden Court - the gift of blood and bloodline in perpetuity, tying our kingdoms in friendship."
Pipkin's blood-bright eyebrow winged upward. "Samhain is forbidden to interfere in the politics of lesser kingdoms."
Behind her, Dylan heard Dastan and Zhenjin sputter over the words lesser kingdoms, as well as Kamaria's hasty, "Shut up, the pair of you! This isn't a sword-measuring contest!"
"I said friendship, not politics," Dylan said with a smile. "We will offer the Samhain Keeper and his sons - including you - the right to be godsfathers to the next heir of Bethmoora."
The heavy silence told her she now had everyone's attention. She didn't have to look at Zhenjin or her sisters or anyone to know how quickly they were going to jump to conclusions. Yes, even Zhen, who probably should have known better. Only John, who knew her better than anyone save Nuada, and Wink knew those conclusions would be wrong.
Pipkin's sharp grin sliced across his face. "You pregnant, Doc?"
Dylan rolled her eyes. Tension seeped out of her like blood from a wound at the nickname. "I mean, I plan to be eventually, but I'm not now. Geez."
The Samhain prince laughed, and it was a boy's laugh, surprisingly almost normal, except for the faintest sepulchral echo underneath. Pipkin had sometimes had that echo even before that long ago night when Moundshroud had claimed him as heir. Maybe whatever quality gave his laugh that tombstone tone was what had allowed him to outrun Moundshroud as a thirteen-year-old boy on that long ago Halloween.
Behind Pipkin and off to one side, a woman stepped forward, her long dark braids hanging thick as ropes against her midnight-violet gown. "Weren't you the one who always said never to buy on credit, Dr. D?"
She shrugged at the young woman, one of Pipkin's consorts. "Gotta establish your credit score at some point, Jenny. I'm good for it. How long have I been keeping my word to the fae? To your court and kingdom? Besides, if you didn't want to give me a loan, why did you give me the pumpkin I needed for the summoning?"
"Can we not talk about banks? It stresses me out," said the other woman in Pipkin's entourage.
That was Lady Willow of the City of the Catacombs, another of Pipkin's concubines. There were five in all - Noble Tomasé of Bone Hill, Noble Raleigh of the Barrow Dunes, Lady Janet of the Cypress Forests, Lord James of the Night Circus, and Lady Willow - and these five comprised the Small Court of the Heir, which could have been quite large if Pip had wanted it to be. Instead, he'd kept it contained to only his most trusted. The only people missing from the group were Lady Melissa Mori of the Upyr Gates; Lord Aurelius Voltaire, the Duke of the Shadow Vaults; and Princess Azrhiaz, Moundshroud's granddaughter and Azrharn's daughter. Those three never left the October Palace.
If Azrhiaz were here, Dylan had no doubt Pipkin would have agreed to anything asked of him, bargain or no. The daughter of Night's Master was one of the kindest people Dylan had ever met - a sharp contrast to her wicked, vicious father - and few could resist giving her whatever she might ask for.
Pipkin flashed Willow a quick, feral grin. "Anything for you, Willow-love. Well. Godsfathers all, to the next three potential heirs of Bethmoora."
Dylan blinked. "You're making a lot of assumptions about how many half-Elf babies I can have before I hit menopause."
Pip raised one blood-red brow and smirked. "You got nice hips, you should be fine."
Off to her right, Dylan heard at least two people - from the sound, probably Zhenjin and Dastan - choke. She ignored them; she also wasn't even going to answer the hips quip. She just shot Pipkin a look and reminded him, "I'm mortal, my guy. And half-Elf babies take a long time to grow. I might not have enough life-span-"
"Meh," Pipkin said with a shrug. "Two heirs. The heir and the spare. If you survive long enough to be married, you'll have both."
Dylan eyed him. "How do you know? Last I heard, you couldn't tell the future."
"I didn't," he said with another of those impossibly toothy smiles. He jerked his chin at the golden-haired person with the gold-rimmed glasses magnifying huge blue eyes. "My Noble Raleigh sees all and knows all. Like those plastic fortune teller robots at cheap county fairs."
Behind him, Raleigh stuck out their tongue, then sucked it back in when the Samhain prince turned to smile at them. A dusky flush darkened Raleigh's cheeks. Pipkin only winked at them, then grinned wider when the flush grew darker.
"So - godsfathers to the future heir and spare of Bethmoora, the children of you and His Highness Crown Prince Nuada. In return, you and your party are given hospitality in the kingdom of Samhain and safe passage to and from the kingdom of Samhain. Have we a deal?"
Dylan nodded slowly, never looking away from those ever-changing eyes. She gave another careful, exacting curtsy. "My word as the princess of Bethmoora and wife of the Crown Prince."
Pipkin flashed wicked-sharp teeth in a grin that threatened to split his face in half. "Then the bargain is struck," he hissed, and now his voice was all cavernous crypts and corpsely whispers. His eyes glowed scarlet and amber like jack-o-lantern fire. He gave Dylan a truncated bow.
A cool wind whispered over Dylan's skin and for just a moment she smelled windfall apples and graveyard earth, dizzying and sharp and sickly-sweet. The scar on her forearm, a reminder of her old bargain with Moundshroud, tingled. The slices across that arm gave seven sharp throbs in time with her heartbeat. Then the wind died down. The pain faded. Those odd scents on the air dissipated. And when she looked at Pipkin again, he looked as normal and human and harmless as he had the day she'd met him.
"Well!" Pipkin clapped his hands together. His consorts were all grinning and elbowing each other, like children preparing for the punchline of a marvelous prank. If she'd been anyone else, Dylan might have been scared. "Let's go, shall we? Everyone's got everything? Nobody needs to pack?"
Dylan glanced at the others. She had already packed, and so had Wink. Oblina had insisted she didn't need to bring anything; considering the serpentine monster could store quite a few things inside her own body via stuffing them down her throat, Dylan hadn't argued. But everyone else had just run out here to see what the heck she was doing, unprepared for any kind of trip. She didn't have time to wait for them, either!
"Um…" Francesca began, then hesitated. Wrinkles creased between her dark brows. She bit her lip. "Uh, we don't...um…"
"Raleigh, my darling," Pipkin said, turning to them. "Fix this, would you?"
Raleigh tilted their head to one side, scanning the assembled group of humans and fae. Then they lifted one slim hand, wiggled their oddly long fingers with the disproportionately thick joints, and snapped. There was a muffled whumph! and the sound of several heavy things falling hard to the snow. Dylan's sisters yelped in surprise. Dylan just raised her eyebrow at the packed luggage that had suddenly appeared out of thin air and then dropped to the ground in front of their owners.
"How…" Petra stared at her two travel bags. Her duffel, with her weapons, wasn't there. Only her clothes and other necessaries. She turned her wide, gray gaze to Raleigh. "How did you do that?"
They shrugged. "Wrapping things up and preparing for long journeys is, shall we say, my specialty." They grinned when the other members of the Small Court laughed. "I am Layrde of the Barrow Dunes. It's just what I do."
"All right, grab your bags, all aboard Pumpkin Railways!" Lord James said, rolling his odd, pale violet eyes. "Bethmoora to Samhain, first class."
"Jim, dear," Pipkin drawled, "no one takes the train anymore."
"Don't be a spoilsport. I love the train. Everyone loves the train! Who doesn't love trains?"
"Me," Willow said, tossing her hair. She shrugged her uneven shoulders. "I get motion sick."
James sighed, aggrieved. "I'm sorry, darling, I forgot. Shall we take a carriage and four?"
Dylan interrupted, "We're walking, Jim. Horse-drawn carriages make Willow sick, too, remember? It's fine, we can walk through. If we go through Jenny's forest, it won't take so long. I can make that trip."
"There," Pipkin said brightly. "She can do it. Let's…" He trailed off, gaze sharpening to poison green for a long second as he peered into the darkness. Dylan turned to follow his gaze but saw nothing, and no odd frisson of cold or ice in her chest offered a spiritual warning of an enemy. Looking off that way did send a very dull pain throbbing through her temples, though. Wards around the village, maybe? But before she could ask Pipkin what he was looking at, his eyes went back to his sky-blue and he smiled. "Let's go. I'll go first, with Tomasé, Willow, and Raleigh, then you lesser beings-"
"Lesser-!" Someone yelped from the group. Someone else hushed them.
"Then," Pipkin said with fierce politeness, "you lesser beings, and my Jim and my Jenny. Well enough?"
He gestured with a pale, languid hand splashed with freckles and the odd, ghostly door he and his Small Court had come through shivered. A knocker appeared, a huge metal ring held in the wrought-metal jaws of a gaunt, feral-looking man with pointy ears and a gleaming metal bandage around his head. The huge ring lifted and slammed thrice against the door.
Dylan couldn't stop herself from laughing. "He still uses the Marley knockers?"
It was Tomasé who grinned at her. "Of course!" They said. "We all loved them on the old estate, so His Dark Majesty had them installed everywhere."
"Bet Ligeia didn't like that," Dylan muttered, thinking of the Queen of Ghosts.
Pipkin rolled his eyes as the phantasmic door creaked open. "If we cared for her opinion, perhaps we might be concerned. Come along, sweethearts," to Raleigh, Willow, and Tomasé, who followed Pipkin through the door.
Eimh and Setanta came up on either side of Dylan, followed by Wink, who carried her bag. Oblina slithered up her skirts to drape across her shoulders. Dylan took a deep breath.
She hadn't been to Samhain, to Druhim Vanashta, in almost ten years, and the last two times she'd gone hadn't been formal occasions. Once, she'd been pulled there by accident by Moundshroud making his bargain with her, Raleigh, Tomas, Willow, and Jenny. It had been nerve-wracking, but also brief, and Moundshroud had been very kind to her and the others, who'd all been barely thirteen at the time.
The other time, she'd been hauled there by Azrharn when she'd first met him and his brother Chuz, Lord of Madness. When she'd realized the reason Azrharn had come wasn't for her, but to kill the brother who had introduced himself to her mere moments before, and that he'd come to do this because Chuz had badly injured Azrharn's dying mortal wife, Dylan had offered to see if she could save the woman.
Unlike the first journey, where she'd been pulled into a swirling black vortex for the space of thirteen breaths and then deposited on Moundshroud's estate steps, Azrharn had transformed into a great black eagle, grabbed her in his talons, and flown off with her. She'd screamed once at the sudden grabbing, a second time when he'd launched himself into the sky, and then swallowed any other noises trying to claw out of her throat for fear he'd grow too irritated and drop her.
This would be different. She knew the geographic layout of the kingdom of Samhain, probably better than anyone else in Faerie who didn't live in the kingdom...but she'd never been to most of the places she knew about, like Jenny's Cypress Forest, also called Lashevcra, the Witch Forest of Mourning. And she couldn't see anything but darkness beyond that strange, shimmering doorway.
But Pipkin had struck her a bargain, and she trusted him not to play her false. So she took another breath, straightened her spine, and strode through the Door to Samhain.
When she was certain the monsters had gone away to do something else, Amaryllis carefully set her head back on her shoulders and shimmied down the hawthorn tree to the ground. Clambering up onto her colt's back, she lightly kicked her heels against his flanks and he took off at a brisk walk toward the main estate house on the island of Renvyle.
When Lady Dylan and the prince had said that Amaryllis, her younger sister, and her brother Finbar would be going away to Renvyle instead of staying in Lallybroch, all three of them had been nervous at first - until Lady Dylan had promised them that their aunt, their mother's sister, wouldn't be allowed to follow after them.
Amaryllis didn't like her aunt, a beautiful Fomorian Elf like her mother had been, but nowhere near as kind. She'd always hated that Amaryllis and her siblings had their mother's coloring but their father's "presentation," as she'd always put it. Amaryllis couldn't understand why anyone would object to people who could play ball with their own heads and had their own horses. Horses were marvelous, especially wight horses, equine ghosts that could run like the wind, even running across water or up to the highest peaks of the tallest mountains. And unlike Fomorian Elves, dullahan like Amaryllis and her father and siblings were immune to the poison of iron.
Maybe she's jealous of us, the child thought, not for the first time, as she rode up the gravel path toward the stables. Since we can bear the touch of cold iron and lead but she can't. Or maybe she didn't like the wight horses, since her aunt had never learned to ride.
With a mental shrug, Amaryllis stopped at the stables and slid down from her colt's back. She grinned when she spotted the Elf girl from her village, Iuile, strolling by with her baby. Seeing the dullahan girl, Iuile grinned and came over to her.
"Hello, Amaryllis!" Iuile had always been nice to her back in Lallybroch, even when her father had been unkind. Iuile was an Elf, but she was in love with a gancanaugh, and anyone in love with a Love Talker tended to be nicer to other death- and dark-fae.
"Can I see Baby Dylan?" Amaryllis asked immediately. She loved babies.
Iuile bent a little so that the little girl could look down at the baby's face. A couple months old now, the halfling child could recognize faces that came into view often enough, and she liked Amaryllis as much as Amaryllis liked her. The moment she caught sight of the auburn curls so dark they were nearly black and the scarlet-flecked emerald eyes, Baby Dylan gurgled and wiggled, flapping her tiny hands in delight.
"Hello, peata," Amaryllis cooed. "Hello, hello!" It always made her tummy feel a bit funny when she talked to Baby Dylan or played games with her, because it reminded her of her lost baby brother, Declan, but it also made her smile. Baby Dylan liked her, and it was nice to be liked.
And the baby was also special. People were still talking about it: the halfling daughter of a commonborn Elf girl was the godsdaughter of the Crown Prince, the baby's mother had been hand-picked by Lady Dylan herself to be her lady-in-waiting whenever they came to this estate, and the baby's adoptive gancanaugh father was the prince's chamberlain here at Renvyle. The amount of favor that showed was a lot, apparently, although Amaryllis didn't quite understand it all. But if the baby was special, it meant bad men like the bandits might try to hurt her, and Amaryllis was determined to protect her tiny friend the way she hadn't been able to protect Declan.
"Have you been out all morning?" Iuile asked as Amaryllis led her colt into the stable and to his stall. Lord Liam, Iuile's husband, had set aside stalls for her colt, her sister's filly, and Finbar's mare as soon as they'd all arrived in Renvyle. Knowing that the actual Chamberlain of this grand, royal estate had spoken to the actual Steward and Master of Horses on her behalf to give Amaryllis her own stall made her feel nervous and wriggly with happiness and very grown up.
"Yes," she told the older girl, grabbing the curry brush. Dullahan rode bareback, so there was no tack to deal with, but she knew her colt loved a good brushing after a ride. "I heard the monsters talking."
She didn't worry about telling Iuile this. Iuile was almost grown up herself, with a husband and a baby and a real position in a royal household, but she was also Amaryllis's friend and wouldn't scold her for sneaking, because Amaryllis had helped her sneak around back in Lallybroch whenever Iuile had needed to see Lord Liam.
"And I suppose you listened?" Iuile asked with a smile, gently bouncing her baby.
Amaryllis nodded. "They were talking about the Lady. She's going to a place called...Dunham Vanish?"
Iuile's smile disappeared in a blink. "Druhim Vanashta?" She asked sharply, and Amaryllis nodded, suddenly uncertain. Had she been wrong to listen? Maurice was her friend, like Iuile, and everyone always left her out of things because she was little, less than nine centuries, and she wanted to know things in case something bad was on the way...but maybe Iuile didn't think those were good enough reasons…
But Iuile saw the unease on her face and smiled at her.
"You're not in trouble, sweetling. I'm glad you told me. I'm just...worried for Her Ladyship."
"Why?" Amaryllis asked. Maurice and Ickis had been worried too, because of the queen who hated the Lady. Did Iuile know who the queen was?
"Because it's dangerous to go to Druhim Vanashta," Iuile murmured. "Your father, did he ever tell you about the kingdom of Samhain?" Amaryllis nodded. "Druhim Vanashta is the capital city. It's very difficult to get there. If Lady Dylan is going there, there's a dire reason."
Fear suddenly clutched at Amaryllis's throat. A shiver rippled down her back and she slipped her arms around her colt's neck and hugged him close; she felt her own arms embracing her like a phantom echo of the hug.
"Bandits?" She asked in a choked whisper. "Because of the bandits?" Could the bandits be coming here, to Renvyle? Would that make the Lady risk something so dangerous? She and her family and the prince had already risked so much to protect the people of the northern villages…
"No," Iuile said softly. "No, she would simply call on her family again to deal with those beasts. It has to be something else. Something worse." Iuile's golden eyes widened, turning a sickly yellow gray as an idea struck her. "Oh...oh, no."
"What?" Amaryllis whispered. "What is it?"
"The prince," she said in a strange, far away voice. Amaryllis wondered if the older girl was even talking to her anymore. "The prince is in trouble." Shaking herself, she reached down and took Amaryllis's hand. "Come on. We have to go find Liam."
Much to the bandit captain's annoyance, Oonagh ingen Sreng marched the cat-girl into her father's room. The cat-girl sobbed, hands over her eyes. But a quick glance over the child told Sreng that the chit was unhurt, only frightened. Doubtless, she assumed every meeting between herself and the leader of the bandits would be her last. She was young, too young to understand the full import of the bargain her liege had struck with Sreng.
Giving Oonagh her own once-over, he supposed he couldn't blame the child for being afraid, or for Oonagh interrupting him to present the girl to him. Oonagh was a striking beauty; Sreng was her father, so perhaps he was a bit biased, but even the slaves she kept sometimes eyed her vivid scarlet hair and flashing iron-gray eyes with more than a little longing. They might try to deny it, but the bandit leader knew better.
Yes, Oonagh was impossibly lovely, something she had inherited from her Fomorian mother, and so he could well understand why she would drag the child to him now: no doubt it had something to do with the raw egg yolk spattered across her velvet tunic and stringing through her hair, or perhaps the bird droppings and streaks of slime also on her clothes and in her hair.
No one on guard would have even dreamed of smiling at the sight of her smeared with egg and droppings. Though more than three quarters of the bandit group were Sreng's children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, he knew Oonagh would have no compunction over gutting anyone who dared to laugh at her predicament.
What had that stupid child gotten into now?
The cat-girl's words came more clearly through her sobs as they drew closer.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I told him the mama would come back, I told him!"
"Shut up," Oonagh snarled. Yanking open the door in Sreng's suite that led to the captive prince's room, she pushed the child in and slammed the door closed. Then she whirled toward her father. "Do you know what that little beast did to me?"
Sreng arched the eyebrow split by the knife-scar Nuada had given him millennia ago. "Threw eggs at you, I expect."
His daughter opened her mouth. Closed it again. Scowled. Sreng merely waited. He knew his girl, his own dear lieutenant. He knew she had a temper, and a proud streak, and hated to be denied anything by her inferiors. And the little cat-girl had said she'd warned someone of something. One of Oonagh's children, perhaps? One of her favored brothers? One of her slaves, trying to ingratiate himself to the bandit woman?
The thing was, he knew his girl, and he loved his girl. But she knew better than to lie to him.
"No," Oonagh growled at last. "A nest tipped in the tree and the eggs smashed onto me. But she did it on purpose!"
"With magic?" He hadn't been aware Nuada's little cat had any magic beyond shapeshifting.
Oonagh's lovely face twisted into a scowl. "No, not magic. She was up in the tree by the nest. She tipped it and tried to pretend she was going to fall out."
Sreng's languid manner evaporated. The child hadn't looked hurt, but...he forced his voice to remain calm when he demanded, "Fall out of a tree?" If the girl hurt herself doing something on the order of either himself or one of his people, especially one of his own blood, the vow he'd made to Nuada would be void. His life would be forfeit. Oonagh's life would be forfeit. And he would have nothing to ensure Nuada's obedience.
"She was only pretending! Lying!"
"Why was she in a tree to begin with?" Sreng demanded. Cat or not, trees were dangerous for small children. His own had hurt themselves often enough, clambering about where they had no business being.
"Eoghan wanted the eggs," Oonagh snapped. "What does it matter?"
Eoghan. Oonagh's youngest brother, Sreng's third-youngest child out of the hundreds he could claim. The boy was a few years older than the cat-child. Old enough to know better than to strike her or hurt her...but young enough, perhaps, not to realize that if the girl were hurt obeying his orders, it would still break Sreng's vow. The bandit captain had assembled his men and warned them after the bargain had been struck with the prince, that the little cat girl was to be pampered like a princess, cosseted like a hothouse flower, and that no harm was to befall her or Sreng himself would slit the belly of whoever drew her blood. But Eoghan was young…
"And the mother bird returned to the nest?"
Oonagh glared at him, then made an expansive gesture to her befouled clothing and hair. "As you can plainly see."
Sreng sneered. Oonagh reared back from him, affronted, but the outrage vanished from her face when his hand whipped out. She flinched back from him. His palm stopped barely a breath from her cheek.
"My dearest daughter," he rumbled, and the color drained from her cheeks. "You forget your place. The child is our bargaining chip. Rein in your temper, and I will rein in your brother."
"I am telling you, Father," Oonagh protested, "the girl did it on purpose. I've seen her scampering around up in the trees with Collum's Maeve and my Sibeal, she's as surefooted as any cat. But she happens to lose her footing the moment I step beneath her? I refuse to believe it."
The bandit leader lowered his arm. "She's a child. A servant." At least Maeve and Sibeal, two of Sreng's granddaughters, were treating the girl well. It spoke well of the treatment she was receiving, that she felt comfortable spending time and playing with some of the other children.
"She's a conniving little bitch. This isn't the first time this has happened. Foul things falling on my saddle, stink bombs in my tent, pepper in my wash water?" Oonagh leaned in. Sreng saw the way she fought for calm. "Ever since that little bitch has arrived here, things have been going wrong for me. She's doing it on purpose. It wouldn't surprise me if the Silverlance were putting her up to it, since you can't punish her."
At that, Sreng blinked. Stared at his daughter for a long moment, before turning to regard the closed door to the captive Elf's chamber.
"...hmmm. You may be right, my darling. Well…" He turned back to Oonagh. "Go and have a hot bath. I'll send a slave up to you to wash your hair and give you a massage, hmmm? But don't dally with it. I'll want you back downstairs in a few hours."
She eyed him. "Why?"
"Because," Sreng said, allowing a snarl to edge his voice, "if my pet is putting his little cat up to mischief, we should punish him, shouldn't we? But I'll soften him up for you first. Father's privilege."
Oonagh smiled and canted her head. "Thank you, Father."
Prince Shaohao of Dilong stared at the group of humans as they disappeared through the silvery, tree-shaped portal in the middle of the village square. For a moment he'd feared that whoever that strange boy with the bright red hair had been had seen him, because there had been a split-second eternity when the violently venomous green eyes had pinned him like a butterfly to a corkboard. A brief eon where the stench of graveyard earth and rotting autumn fruit and blood had flooded his nose, choking him, and a vise had clamped down upon his skull, threatening to shatter bone.
Then had come a feeling of acceptance and the pain had disappeared, along with the stink of death in its many forms. Shaohao had no idea what the boy was, or who. His spies had never spoken of a red-haired boy with green eyes who looked rather Elven but wasn't, who came in company with five beings who looked human but weren't.
Shaohao didn't like puzzles. And he didn't like not knowing things. He also didn't like boys too young to even grow a beard jabbing around in his skull and making pests of themselves.
If he hadn't had things to do, obligations to fulfill, he'd have dropped his glamour and slit the boy's throat right there. Or perhaps eaten him, though eating something when he didn't know what it was or where it had been was usually a recipe for indigestion, even in his full dragon form. But he did have things to do, scorch it. Zhenjin was among the group leaving through that portal, and so was the little moon cow or whatever it was his brother called the human.
But where was the Silverlance?
Shaohao wasn't overly fond of the Tuathan prince, but Zhenjin loved him, and Nuada clearly loved Zhenjin as well. So whatever the shadow was, that threatening something his dear Golden Sparrow had sensed growing stronger and deadlier as the days passed, Shaohao needed to tell the other prince.
Rather difficult, Shaohao muttered silently, since the wretch isn't out and about where it would be convenient to find him. Well, whatever. He would tell the human instead. The star bubble. She'd tell Nuada and his obligation would be discharged.
Which meant he needed to follow her through that portal to who knew where. Well, she didn't seem concerned about anything, and if she was safe, he certainly would be. He was the eldest child of Emperor Huizong Ti-Lung and the rightful heir to the Dilong throne. Nothing could truly harm him except, perhaps, a human with a gun.
"Are you going to come out or not?" The final remaining boy suddenly called. Then, pitching his voice to both sarcastic and wheedling, he added, "Heeere, lizard, lizard, lizard!"
The words sent a shock of hot, baffled rage through the prince and he stared mouth agape at the human-but-not boy with hair like fine milk-thistle and eyes such a pale violet they were almost white, who stood staring back at him from a couple dozen paces away. His long black coat seemed to suck up all the torchlight in the square. The girl next to him, plump with long dark braids, giggled and perched a pair of spectacles upon her nose.
Shaohao stepped forward, dropping his glamour.
"Did you just call me a lizard?"
He had to have been hearing things. No one wanted to die that badly. Not in such a messy, flashy, crispy way. Surely not.
"Yes. Come here. You want through our Door as well, don't pretend you don't."
The way the boy spoke, it was obvious the word Door was a proper noun, a special kind of thing that held either exquisite promise or, possibly, another form of messy death.
Shaohao stared at him.
"What are you?" He demanded. "I like to know what I'm eating before I roast it."
"I think he's upset you called him a lizard, Jim," the girl said with another giggle. She offered Shaohao a gentle smile, almost fond. "It's all right. Jim likes lizards. He didn't mean anything by it."
"I did, though," Jim protested. The girl jabbed him in the ribs. "Ow! Jenny! Why?"
"Don't be rude. Can't you smell one of ours on him? Can't you smell Chuz on him?"
The boy turned back to Shaohao, who was still staring at the pair of them, trying to figure out what in the Hell was happening. Any non-human ought to have felt the rage and power and madness swirling around him. Did these two not understand? Eating them seemed unfair if they didn't quite comprehend what they were dealing with. But...but...lizard!
Jim leaned forward a little and drew a long, sniffing breath. He blinked and reared back. Brows so pale they were almost invisible shot up toward his hairline. It was his turn to stare.
"You're a madman married to a firebird."
Rows of curved, serrated fangs exploded in Shaohao's mouth and he bared his teeth. How had this stripling been able to smell his Golden Sparrow?
The girl, Jenny, held up both hands.
"Wait, wait! I swear on the Darkness, we mean you and your firebird no harm. Firebirds are one of our people. Like some dragons. Not your kind, I don't think, but some! It's okay. We just wanted to scoot you through the Door before keeping it open becomes too difficult."
Shaohao's brows rose. "Scoot...me…"
The girl nodded. "Yes. You need to go through, don't you? To Samhain? Because of Doctor Dylan?"
Oh. Oh.
Everything clicked into place in an instant. Dylan was going to Samhain. With Zhenjin? And so many others? But not the Silverlance. Why? He could find out later. And these two, and probably the other not-humans and the not-Elf with the poisonous eyes, had been necessary to open the way for her. All right. But why, by the Black Dragon of Dilong, were these children not terrified of him?
"If you're wondering why we're not cowering and gibbering at your immensity," Jim drawled lazily, "it's because we have more power than you do. If you tried to fry me, I would simply trap your mind in a drop of eternity and let your husk freeze to winter glass and glacial topaz."
Jenny kicked him in the ankle and he swore.
"Ow! Why?"
"Stop threatening the poor little thing," she demanded.
A muscle under Shaohao's left eye twitched. His brain tried to wrap around the words poor little thing and, failing that, threatened to cramp.
"I swear, Jim Nightshade, you're as rude as an ill-bred dog sometimes. What my beloved means to say," she added to the prince, "is we have more magic than you, because we're members of the Small Court of Samhain. We're consorts of the crown prince. You felt him a few minutes ago when he was thinking about shattering your skull."
Oh. Oh, dear. The crown prince...consorts...then…
Jim Nightshade. Jenny.
"You're Lord James of the Night Circus and Lady Janet of the Cypress Forest," Shaohao said stiffly. They both smiled brightly at him. The Red Dragon of Dilong stared at the pair of them for a long moment before saying, "I need to speak to Lady Dylan." He wasn't going to ask. He needed to keep at least some of his dignity.
Lord James swept an elegant, mocking bow. "After you, Your Highness Prince Shaoha- Jenny, do not kick me again!"
"Then stop being a brat!" She actually took Shaohao's arm when he came close enough. "Come on! I'll escort you. Don't pay any attention to the screaming skulls or the hell-visions when you step through, sometimes that just happens. As long as you don't try to attack them, they won't eat your organs or anything."
Before he could say anything to that, the girl - Lady Janet of the Witch Forest of Mourning, the girl was the Lady Janet, the first-rank consort of the heir of Lord Moundshroud, what was that impossibly vexing star cow doing with these people? - pulled him through the Door.
Just as Lord James stepped through after them and began to close the Door, Shaohao found enough wit to say, "I am not a lizard."
And then all was darkness...until the skulls started shrieking.
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Author's Note: several characters and locations in this chapter are LA Knight-transformed ideas from Tanith Lee's Tales of the Flat Earth and Ray Bradbury's novels The Halloween Tree and Something Wicked This Way Comes. Pretty sure there was also a reference or two to the Vampair Animated Series by Daria Cohen, which can be viewed for free on Youtube. Maurice and Ickis are from the film Little Monsters and the show Ahhh! Real Monsters respectively.