Duainfey (42 page)

Fie, Gardener, you need no one else to tell you the answer to that riddle. And, now that you have clear sight, it is time for us to return that which is yours. You will find that we have kept it safe, and husbanded it well.

There was a bolt, as if of vivid green lightning. Becca cried out where she sat, pierced to the heart, the garden gone to motes of light, Sian a standing stone among them—

She took a breath, and lifted her hands, the left rising more slowly than the right, but rising. Pain flickered; her muscles shook, as if she pushed against mud. She turned her head, and clearly saw the inky flow of some—anti-light—staining her fingers. She bit her lip and shoved her hands upward those last few inches, until she touched it.

The collar. It felt thick and heavy on her neck now, and as she touched the bottom it seemed to tighten in warning. But there, before, the threat of death had meant something. Now she was merely a kind leaf away from release.

Unexpectedly, she chuckled with the irony of Altimere's failure to measure her resolve.

And there! Altimere's strength had always been her ignorance and need, and her failure to heed the careful traps he had allowed her to build to imprison herself.

Deny it.

Her fingers against the collar, Becca took a hard breath.

"I, Rebecca Beauvelley, in my own voice and by my own name, deny Altimere of the Elder Fey use of my body, my mind, and my intention."

Three seasons,
suggested the voice in her head.

Another breath, and the words, again, her voice shaking, her resolve firm. The collar warmed, melting the leaf-wax from her fingertips. She pushed her hands upward until all ten of her fingers were pressed to the bottom of her thrall.

A voice, firm, insistent: "That is but two, Rebecca Beauvelley."

Her hands rose higher; the clasp adamant beneath pressing fingers—

The collar grew uncomfortably tight. It would fight to keep her for Altimere. It was, after all, what he had made it to do.

Becca hooked the fingers of her left hand between the collar and her throat, her breath coming ragged now, as it tightened again.

A third time she spoke the phrase to deny it, and if the collar did not loosen, neither did it tighten.

Reject it.

"I, Rebecca Beauvelley," she said, her voice thin, "have no need of this necklace. There is no beauty in it, nor power. It is not mine to hold, nor is it my greatest desire. I wish it gone."

Words. Mere words. What did she think she might accomplish with such puny statements? She felt despair, and swayed where she sat.

Three seasons
, insisted the trees.

She spoke again, the words coming in gasps, her head reeling from lack of air or the effect of the leaves. They came slowly, but she said them, and with each word her fingers clawed into her own flesh.

The words said, she relaxed—and the collar crushed her hands into her throat, drawing on the will to pain . . . 

She laughed, wheezing.

"Foolish construct! I . . . mean to . . . die."

"Again!" Sian shouted.

The words. The ideas. Altimere, who loved her and who had given her this collar as a symbol of his devotion and care.

"Lies . . ." Becca whispered

Reject
!

Her tongue was not so mobile now; her mouth was dry, and her eyes. Altimere was not here. The necklace was a trap to bind her—she saw it clearly. It was woven with deceit and the will to fail, so that once she had it on, she would never be able to remove it.

The breeze shifted, bringing the scent of the garden to her. She struggled for breath, moved her thick tongue, shaping the words, the words, the—

"I wish it gone!"

Caught! Her fingers were numb and trapped, her crippled arm screamed for surcease from its agony, and her throat was full of dust and panic!

Remove it
!

Painfully, she dragged down on the collar with her left hand, freeing her good right hand. Burning fingers sough the catch, touched it, pressed—

The click was audible, and the release so sudden she fell back and would have toppled from the bench if Sian had not reached out and grabbed her shoulder.

Becca looked down.

The collar lay in her lap, touching the bruised and broken leaf. Even as she watched, the duainfey withered and crumpled into ash. The necklace . . . the necklace
melted
, bold diamonds expanding into rugged lumps of coal, the fine golden links twisting into common rawhide cord.

Revulsion filled her soul, the stink of blood so thick she could scarcely breathe; Elyd dying beneath her; Sanalda with a knife in her throat; Altimere petting her, warming her with sweet words of praise.

She was free. Altimere no longer controlled her.

And the hand on her shoulder belonged to a Fey, who lived by dominating those weaker than themselves.

"Now!" Sian said, and Becca heard the frenzy for possession in her voice. "Now, I can help you!"

There was a dagger on Sian's belt. She must act, before she was enslaved again.

Becca lunged, got her hand 'round the hilt—

And sleep fell upon her like a wave.

The nest was well-made; snug for a Ranger grown, but, Meri thought, sliding his pack from his shoulders, t'would do.

"Dinner will be in the common," Jamie told him. "I'll come fetch you." He had then gone off to do whatever duties a child of his village might have, leaving Meri to settle in to his new camp.

He should, he thought, easing down into the woven grasses, go at once to the trees—and he would, after he had taken a moment to savor the simple fact that he was alone, unassaulted by the unnatural brilliance of those terrible auras. The boy—had been almost restful, his aura nothing more than the delicate, washed hues of a Wood Wise born—and wasn't that a tangle! A child of a Wood Wise and a Newman? One could scarcely decide whether to be horrified on one's own account, or laugh aloud and wonder what the High who had deplored breeding with Wood Wise and the Sea Folk would say to
this
misalliance.

Meri smiled and settled back, closing his eye for just a moment . . . 

Diathen the Queen looked from the draggled, sleeping Newman to her cousin Sian.

"I had thought the tale was that he had brought her from beyond the
keleigh
."

"It is the tale," Sian said slowly, "and I believe it. The aura—is much like those others I have seen among the Newmen."

"And what shall I do with her, now that she is mine?"

Sian shifted her shoulders. "That depends on what she might tell you, does it not, O Queen?"

Diathen laughed. "How have I landed in your black books, Sian?" She waved a hand. "No, do not speak. Let the poor child sleep for now."