Blood and Iron (47 page)

“I am.”

“What's that?” One of the older Prometheans, a banker with a midtown branch, reached out to lay a hand on Jane's forearm. Matthew heard it a moment later: a peal like the chime of a glass bell, distant and muted under traffic noise. Jane's head came up, graceful on her long, fine neck, and she turned at the precise moment that Matthew did.

The unicorn had paused on the other side of the street, beyond the sawhorses, tossing its sea white mane. Lights gleamed red and green along the blued steel arc of its horn.

It stamped a cloven hoof again, snorting, shadowy nostrils seashell-delicate in its refined muzzle.

“Oh,” Matthew said, the palms of his hands tingling with a sensation like desire. Jane and the others drew away. Jane's hand was insistent on his sleeve, pulling him away from Kelly's chair. He went as if she held his controls, shuffling a little, craning his head to look back at his brother. “Kell—”

Jane shifted her grip, closed a hand entirely around his wrist. Her hands were cold, her fingers like ice. Matthew shook his head and frowned. A taxicab backfired, rolling between the Magi and the unicorn, oblivious to both, its off-duty light glowing. Matthew had the oddest sensation that the unicorn was waiting for the WALK signal.

The light went red. The unicorn started forward. Kelly stood out of his wheelchair.

“Kelly—”
Matthew shook Jane's hand off his wrist and turned back, wondering if she would follow him. He didn't want to risk her. But he couldn't walk away. He wasn't the sort who walked away.

Kelly tottered forward on the ruined stumps of his feet. Blankets tumbled about him, tugged at his ankles, slipped away. He never looked at Matthew, just shuffled toward the unicorn as the unicorn trotted to meet him, the staccato of its hooves increasing in speed.

Matthew ran.

When it reached the middle of the crosswalk, the unicorn lowered its head, accelerating.

Matthew stepped between Kelly and the unicorn.

At first he thought it had missed him, that the blade-spiraled horn had skimmed past both him and Kelly. He thought the staggering blow that struck the center of his chest was the unicorn's shoulder, its hoof. It knocked him against Kelly and he expected to tumble to the ground. But—
Not so fast, Matthew Magus
—the mocking voice of his own common sense—and when he looked down there was the unicorn, eyes calm as forests and a rivulet of his own thick blood twining down the scrolled gutter of the horn, trickling from the base across the white, white brow, beading on the forelock like hawthorn berries on snow. He tried to breathe in, raised his hands to push the unicorn's head away, cradled its cheeks as he had once before—

The pain came in on a rush. The air did not.

There were hands on his waist, a heavy weight against his back . . . a movement as swift and sure as the lunge that had run him through, and he was on his knees, the unicorn five feet away in the crosswalk, blood dripping off its incredibly long lashes and making it blink. Something fell against Matthew's back, a sharper jolt of pain.
I'm certainly taking my own sweet time about dying,
he thought.

And then hands were pulling the rag-doll weight he refused to identify as Kelly off his back, hands were rolling him over. Bright worried eyes hovered over his face. He blinked at the brilliance of them, rolling his head to the side. “Don't move, Matthew.” Jane's voice, and hands unbuckling his reflective vest, stripping open his blood-soaked, inside-out shirt. Fingers pressing his skin, followed first by a startled gasp and then a comprehending chuckle. Cold air prickled goose pimples on wet flesh. “Well, I'll be damned,” the archmage said, and tugged him until he was sitting up. “Not a mark on you, Matthew Magus.”

“Kelly?” It surprised him that his own voice came out a clear, resonant tenor and not a thready pain-choked whine.

“No,” Jane said. “It ran you both through. Are you sure you were never Secret Service, Matthew?” A blatant attempt to provoke a laugh, but he pushed against her hands and got his feet under him and tugged the rags of his shirt closed across his chest. “It's over, Matthew,” she said, and caught his chin when he would have turned to see Kelly's body.

He wanted to tell her that it could only be worse to imagine what it might have looked like, a crumpled rag discarded on the street, but she grasped his cheeks like a unicorn's and made him look into her eyes. “We did it,” she said. “Can't you feel it? We've made our bridge, and there are still other children to be saved.”

“There aren't any children left.” Matthew rubbed the back of his left hand with his iron-ringed right thumb. He raised his eyes and looked at the changing lights, at the weirdly angled buildings, at the awnings and the marquees and the red and white and golden lights. “At least, not any innocents.”

“There's you,” she said, and touched his cheek. “Not everyone can survive being run through by a unicorn's horn. There's a reason they sent virgins to decoy them, of old.”

“I'll be sure to tell the boys at the gym,” he said. He turned his back on her. The unicorn had vanished as if it had never been, leaving only a disarrayed row of reflective sawhorses. “I'm sure they'll get a laugh out of that.”

Keith had not known any pain like it. His vision went white before it went red, and through the agony he closed his hand on Elaine's, as if he could force strength into her. The black hart's antlers parted cloth and flesh, piercing him— breast and belly, arms and thighs—like the closing door of an iron maiden. Elaine didn't scream, didn't so much as whimper, and Keith held his breath thinking he could at least match her courage.

He couldn't. But he couldn't draw a breath to scream, either, so what passed his lips was the high-pitched whine of mortal agony, a sound not distinguishably human, or animal: the resonance of pain. In the dumb, enfolding silence, the sound echoed. As his vision cleared, he saw Kings and Queens and nobles all stand, as transfixed as he and Elaine.

The stags held them up forever, an eternal
now
while Keith swore suns rose and set and the moon slid over the sky a half-dozen times. Keith's breath made a funny bubbling sound in his throat; the air was rank and moist with the smell of blood. Rivulets of scarlet coiled down the black stag's antlers, threaded his ears and the silken, corded muscle of his massive neck.
This is what the Mebd felt before she died. And worse. This is what she felt every time she sat on that throne.

And he knew the truth, that Elaine would not have survived it had she been whole, and that Keith would not have survived it if he were anything but a wolf.

The black stag stepped back, and Morgan caught Keith before he measured his length on the stones. Whiskey must have cushioned Elaine's fall, but he didn't see. Instead he saw . . .

. . . everything.

Annwn cast out before him like a map unscrolled with a snap of the wrists, ragged edges and
Here be Dragons
and great swatches of sepia ink and watercolor blues and greens. He saw a river of blood, high hills, deep vales, and a ring of sacred trees around the well by a Fae smith's anvil. Greens so green they looked ink-wet in the sunshine, and rich black earth like crumbled charcoal. And then it reached into him, sun and shadow, soil and water, heights and valleys—reached into him, and took hold of the beat of his heart, and the pulse of his blood, and enfolded him like the caul a marked child is born under. He heard ringing— rhythmic, measured, a sound like the beating of a smith's hammer.
Down, down, down.

He heard the voices then—small voices. The voices of the earth: of the worms and grubs and the smaller things that keep the soil alive and nourish what grows there.
Look, look here,
the voices said.
Look at this darkness under the grass. Look at this blood staining the soil.
Something stung deep under his breastbone, a pain like the bubble in his side from running too long. Something. A dart, a hook. Something that lanced into him and locked, dragging him upright though Morgan tried to fold him in her arms and keep him down.

A dark and glistening span, dripping red as rust, but it wasn't rust that dripped from the cold iron bars and braces, the black twisted vines of a thing that spanned . . .

Blood-slick, it twisted even as it jabbed into his heart, and the heart of Annwn, which were the same. And he couldn't have put into words, precisely, what it was that it spanned, although he felt the presence and the pressure of the Magi raising it, locking it like a barbed fishhook into the flesh and bone of the Westlands. A bridge. A blade. A sword thrust.

He opened his eyes, struggling against Morgan's grip until she released him, her hand still resting on the nape of his neck. He turned his head to see his wife.

Arthur knelt over Elaine, holding her hands. The ancient warlord said her name and touched her breast with a fingertip. “Elaine. Healed as if it never was.”

Keith looked down at his own breast. Not quite, he saw. Perfect white scars showed through the rents in his shirt.

“Arthur,” Elaine said. “The Merlin and I were followed when we came into Faerie. The Magi are here. They're building . . .” She paused to find the name, while Keith himself fought to get breath into his lungs. “They're building a bridge. Something to lock Annwn into the mortal realms. Take the pack. Take the forces of the Daoine.”

Arthur stroked his beard judiciously. “Where must I go?”

“Bring me a map,” Keith said, pushing Morgan aside to sit up as well. “Wait, never mind. I can show you. Come on.”

He rolled to his knees and then his feet. “We ride to war.”

“Keith.” Elaine's voice, sweet and empty as the toll of a bell, cool as a blade.

He closed his eyes.
Too much, they ask too much.
“Elaine. Don't ask to come with us.”

“No,” she answered. That damned Kelpie stood beside her, quivering with eagerness. Someone was missing: Cliodhna. Elaine spoke on. “I have another task.”

“What's that?” Arthur asked.

Morgan's jaw tensed. Keith stepped between them and his wife, reaching to touch Elaine's sleeve. Silent understanding: all he could give her now.

“Ian's heart,” Elaine said. “I told the Unseelie bitch that I was coming for it.” And then she kissed him, once, and turned and took her leave.

Chapter Twenty-three

The hallway outside Hope's room was full with music: skeins and skirls of it, the dance of bow across fiddle. Three guards stood beside her door, armored Elf-knights bending together in low conversation. I wouldn't have trusted the task to common men-at-arms. There was glamourie in Hope's music, and the power to bring a heart to trials and tears.

I wished I had time to stand at the gates and watch Keith ride out at the head of the army. I wished I were riding with him as Morgan and Carel rode. They would observe, at least, and lend such power as they could. The first blood of much blood.

I wondered what the Magi had sacrificed to cloak their eldritch bridge in so much gore.

The Elf-knights stood aside for me, and I spoke to the eldest in low tones, asking him to ride out with the others and meet the enemy laying siege upon our borders. He nodded and took his brother knights with him when he went, a little spark of respect or possibly fear in his eyes. I stood for a moment watching billowing cloaks and listening to jingling spurs as they made haste down the corridor.
There's more to it than being called Queen.

I shook my head, cold air seeping through the holes in my ragged gown and my plait moving like a serpent against my spine. Then I squared my shoulders and pushed open the door, entering the presence of the mother of my grandchild-yet-to-be. She ignored me when I gestured her final guard to follow the others. I watched her for a moment: standing before her window with her fiddle under her chin, a perfect statue with her rippled dark hair hanging loose and long. Her lashes lay like tear-smudges across her cheeks as she made the music dip and weave.
“And oh, their hearts were weary,”
she played. Then she finished her song and turned to me, laying the fiddle aside.

“Your Majesty.” Cold, but not as cold as the Fae are. “You intend to keep me prisoner?”

“No,” I answered, refusing to show the ice pick of pain locking my knee. “I'm here to take your parole.”

In other days, I could have laughed at the perfect round O her mouth made. She found her voice after a moment. “Ian?”

“He's recovering. The knights are riding out, Hope. War's on us, and I need to be able to trust you.”

“I see.” She studied the window. “My loyalty is to him.”

“Damn you, girl.” There wasn't any force behind what I said; it just came out tired. “Don't you understand? He can't have both his heart and the throne. It's one or the other.”

“One or the . . . what do you mean?”

“The throne would kill him. The Mebd meant to force me to choose. Because she knew nothing but a threat to Ian would make me do what I've done.”

She turned back to me, painfully lovely. Painfully young.
She loves him.
I suppose it's never easy, for any mother. I had been cheated of Ian for so long. I would have thought that would make it easier to let him go, but it didn't. “You're usurping his place. You've chained him.”

I smiled and jerked the pearls out of my hair. There was a comb on her vanity, and I took it up. She watched while I worked the old braids out of my hair. One, and then another—my shadow ghosts, my ancient familiars. Whiskey and Gharne. Ian. The loose strands felt strange as they floated around my face. “In case anything happens to me,” I said to the mirror. My golden bracelet shifted on my wrist, prickling.