A Risky Proposition (19 page)

The sprite grunted.  “Honey, immortality is a tricky concept.  Even immortals can be killed, if you put their bodies through severe enough punishment.  And as for mental suffering, immortality just gives you that much longer to experience it.  A mortal who’s traded their soul for immortality is usually fine for the first couple hundred years, but then the long separation from their soul begins to wear on their sanity.  The immortality that death djinns grant is a weak version of what true immortals are born with.”

“Can’t anything be done to help?” I asked with a grimace. 

The sprite nodded her head with a mirthless smile. 

“Sure.  Creatures like Balthus, who trade in souls, have the ability to grant their charges a sort of temporary repossession of their soul, to help drive away the madness.  But even if he wanted to, he can’t do it from a prison cell.  And the sad truth is, after a couple of centuries, even the most intriguing of playthings can become tiresome—especially to a creature such as a death djinn,” she said bitterly. 

“By the time the madness hits, djinns rarely remain interested enough to keep their charges sane.  Why bother, if they’ve got a stable full of newly acquired souls to keep them entertained?  Or they’ll find that the madness adds a fresh spin to an old relationship and won’t
want
to do anything to alleviate it.”  She grimaced.

“Now, if we were able to get our hands on a vial of
true
immortality—not just the unnatural immortality granted through the contract—it would halt the madness altogether.  But true immortality is a rare and costly thing.”  She shook her head sadly. 

“No, I’m afraid there’s not much we can do without Balthus.  Ophelia suffers mentally from the extended separation from her soul, and physically from the withdrawal caused by her separation from him.” 

“Withdrawal?” Sunny repeated.

“Yes,” the sprite sighed.  “She gets worse with every day that she has no contact with Balthus.  That’s how he keeps them in line, you know—he gets them hooked on a pleasure that only he can provide.  It’s a powerful physical addiction, and it becomes painful when it’s not sated.”  She looked at me pointedly, as if she knew I had nearly given in to Balthus’ temptation.

“You mean
sex
?  If she doesn’t have sex with him she goes into withdrawal like some kind of heroin addict?” Sunny asked in disbelief.

The sprite gave a bleak nod of confirmation.

“What a miserable bastard!” Sunny exclaimed in disgust.

The sprite snorted her agreement.  “I’ve done my best to get Ophelia over the worst episodes.  But if Balthus isn’t released soon, I don’t know what will happen to us.”

“It looks like it’s been taking its toll on you too,” Sunny said with a wince of commiseration.

“I’m her faerie guardian.”  She shrugged simply.  “Once a sprite chooses to make that bond, it lasts for a lifetime.  Our destinies are linked until one of us dies.”

“I guess in a normal situation the human would go first,” Sunny commented softly.

“Usually—I’ve only known one case where a faerie guardian passed on before her human charge,” she answered, her eyes clouding over with memory.

I felt nauseous.  Not only was this my fate if I didn’t find a way out of the contract, but it would be Lorien’s fate as well.  And it wasn’t lost on me that by asking for Ophelia’s help to keep Balthus imprisoned, I was effectively asking her to doom herself and her faerie guardian to unimaginable misery.

“What’s your name?” I asked quietly.

The sprite blinked at me as if she’d forgotten I was there.  “Emily, honey, I’m Emily.”

“Emily,” I began, forcing myself to continue past the lump of guilt in my throat, “I know I have no right to ask this of you, but will you help me find out what Ophelia knows about the goblin?”

Emily studied me for a long moment, the wisdom and weariness of ages heavy behind her dull violet eyes.  Then her face erupted in a smile, and it was almost as if a small portion of the weight she carried had been lifted from her shoulders.  “I have a spell, cast by Lauringer herself, that I sometimes use when Ophelia gets really bad—to help remind her who she once was.  Let’s see if it can de-fragment her memory long enough to find out what she remembers about your goblin.”

“Thank you,” I replied, knowing it wasn’t enough.

“You’re welcome, honey.  This is no way to spend eternity.  You remember that.”

“Who wants black currant scones?” Ophelia trilled, oblivious to the charged atmosphere in the room.  She reappeared from the kitchen, carrying a rose-patterned china plate piled high with the warm pastries.  She set it on the coffee table with care and delicately placed three of them on matching smaller plates, distributing them between us. 

She looked at Emily and frowned, then her eyes lit up and she said, “I know, Emily, you can share mine.”  She crumbled off a small piece and gently nudged it toward the rim of her plate.

Ophelia watched us expectantly until we all took a bite, as if she was a child who had just tried out her Easy-Bake Oven for the first time.  The scones smelled delicious, and tasted even better—soft enough to melt in your mouth and with just the right amount of sweetness.  Ophelia glowed with pleasure at our chorus of deliberately happy chewing sounds.

I tried to savor mine, but the effort of forced enjoyment turned it into a tasteless paste in my mouth.

“These are perfect, honey,” Emily complimented.

“Thank you, Emily,” Ophelia answered primly around a mouthful of scone.  “Would you like some tea?”

“Not right now, honey.  I have a happy spell I want to try on you.  You remember our happy spells?” asked Emily.

“Oh, yes!  That would be lovely!”  Ophelia clapped her hands.

“Alright, honey, here we go.”  Emily glided up to hover above Ophelia, reaching inside her drab dress to pull out a tiny pouch.  She sprinkled a heavy golden dust over Ophelia, who blinked, and then shook herself as if awakening from a dream.

She gave Sunny and me a startled look, and then shifted her attention to Emily.  “Was I getting bad again?” she asked worriedly.  There was a light of awareness in her eyes that hadn’t been there before, and she seemed to glow faintly golden with the spell.

“Not too bad,” Emily grinned, some of the dullness lifting from her eyes as well.  “These ladies need your help.  That’s mostly why I cast the spell.  But it’s worth it just to see you like this.”

Ophelia smiled affectionately at Emily before turning her attention back to us.  “I must apologize—I’m not myself lately.  And I fear Emily’s spell won’t last very long.  What can I do to help you?”

“Uh, no need to apologize,” I stuttered, trying to get past my shock over the radically different woman the spell had revealed. 

“I just appreciate you being willing to help.  I wanted to see if you remembered anything about a goblin that you and Balthus met several weeks ago.  Apparently Balthus won some sort of bet with him and took a soul as payment?”

Ophelia gave me a quizzical look.  “As a matter of fact, I do remember that goblin.  Balthus and I were having a drink at a tavern on the outskirts of the goblin territories.  There were quite a few goblins at the gaming tables that night, but this one approached Balthus directly.  He said he was feeling lucky and offered Balthus good odds on a wager. 

“Balthus wasn’t really there to gamble, but when the goblin offered a soul to secure the bet, he decided he couldn’t refuse.  The goblin seemed desperate, like maybe he was on a gambling binge or something.”  Ophelia shook her head.  “Sometimes they get like that.  They won’t stop until they win big or lose everything. 

“Anyway, he lost.  And he didn’t even put up much of a fuss about it.  He just handed over the soul and walked away.”  She shrugged, as if to say that there was no accounting for the actions of goblins.

“Did you happen to catch the goblin’s name?” I asked hopefully.

Ophelia shook her head slowly.  “No, sorry.  And you know goblins—they really do all look alike.  They take pride in it.  Although, if I recall, there
was
something different about him…that’s right, he had a tattoo or a mark of some kind on his hand!” she recalled with excitement.  

“It was on his palm.  I think he was trying to keep it hidden, but I caught a glimpse of it as he tossed the dice.  It looked like the number eight.”  She traced the symbol on her own palm with a manicured nail, one loop flush with her index finger and the other with her pinky.

“Sideways like that?  Looks like the symbol for infinity,” I said, frowning in thought.

“Does that mean anything to either of you?” Sunny asked them.  “An infinity symbol tattooed on a goblin’s hand?”

Ophelia and Emily exchanged mystified glances, both shaking their heads in the negative.

“Oh, and one more thing,” Ophelia added with an uncertain grimace at Emily.  “I overheard him talking about the Unseelie Court.”

“The Unseelie Court!  Oh Ophelia, Balthus hasn’t been associating with them, has he?” Emily groaned in alarm.

“No, no—of course not!” Ophelia exclaimed anxiously.  “I just happened to overhear the goblin bragging to some of the others about his connections.  He claimed to be a regular guest on the Hell Ride.  And maybe that’s all it was—bragging.  I wouldn’t even have mentioned it, except for that I thought it might somehow help you find him.”

She looked uncomfortably from Emily back to Sunny and me.

“Okay, I’ve heard of the Seelie Court—but what’s the Unseelie Court?” I asked in confusion.

Both Ophelia’s and Emily’s gazes shot to me in disbelief.  Emily was the first to offer an explanation.  “The Unseelie Court is the opposite of everything the Seelie Court stands for.  They’re the largest organized force for evil in the faerie realm.  Their sole purpose is to upset the balance of good and evil, with the hope that chaos will take reign and evil will come out on top.  They pose an ever present threat to the Seelie Court’s efforts to keep the balance in check.”

Sunny and I exchanged glances. 

“And what’s the ‘Hell Ride’?” Sunny asked.

“That’s the Unseelie Court’s idea of a fun way to spend an evening,” Ophelia answered in distaste.  “A bunch of them get together on the Hell Barge and fly through the night sky, kidnapping unsuspecting mortals that are unlucky enough to cross their path.  Then they torment and terrorize their victims until they grow bored, and deposit them unconscious back where they found them. 

“People who have experienced it usually wake believing it was all a horrible nightmare.  Creatures called gleaners are responsible for erasing the memories—but sometimes they don’t do a good enough job of it.  Most of the people who claim to have been abducted by aliens are probably just remembering being taken on the Hell Ride.”

“Great—now I have to worry about evil faeries kidnapping me for an anal probe,” Sunny muttered under her breath.

“So, basically what you’re telling me is that I’m looking for a goblin with a tattoo on his palm, and the only places we know he’s been are at a tavern near the goblin territories, and possibly on this Hell Ride,” I reiterated, trying not to sound as bleak as I felt.

“That’s all I know,” Ophelia grimaced apologetically.

“Well, it’s more than I knew before.”  I sighed.  “Can you tell me the name of the tavern, and how to go about finding the Hell Ride?”

“The tavern was ‘The Grimy Goblin’.  Any of the pegs who work near the goblin territories should be able to get you there.  And as for the Hell Ride, I don’t know of any way to find it—but your friend has the right of things,” Ophelia said with a nod in Sunny’s direction.  “Trust me; you don’t want anything to do with it.”

“Maybe you could request an audience with Lauringer,” Emily suggested tentatively.  “She’s pretty reclusive, but she’s always been sympathetic to the plight of mortals who’ve lost their souls.  She’s the one who gives me this spell for Ophelia.  If anyone can help you, it’s probably her.”

“How would I go about requesting an audience with Lauringer?” I asked.

Emily gave a hesitant shrug of her small shoulders.  “I keep in contact with her to request refills for Ophelia’s memory spell.  If you want, I can explain your situation and let you know what she says.”

“I’d really appreciate that, Emily.  Thank you,” I agreed gratefully.

Ophelia let out a soft moan.  “I’m sorry,” she gasped with a pained smile.  “It’s starting to hurt again.”  A tremor passed through her pale form and sweat began to bead across her forehead.

“Thanks for all your help, Ophelia,” I said softly.  “I’m so sorry about this.”

She gazed up at me in reassurance.  Then, as I watched, the light in her eyes dimmed and her expression faded to blankness, the golden glow of the spell winking out of existence.

“It’s okay, honey, I’ve got you,” Emily cooed in a comforting tone as she sprinkled silvery healing dust over Ophelia.

“Thank you, Emily, that’s much better,” Ophelia said, her voice turning child-like once more.  “Would you like some more scone?”

“No thank you, honey, I’m full.  They were very good, though.”  Emily smiled, but I could see the pain behind the renewed dullness in her eyes.