Gossamyr

www.LUNA-Books.com

Copyright © 2005 by Michele R. Hauf

For all who Believe

Enchantment is Faery's
raison d'etre.

Many moons ago—during a blue moon's reign—a
rift was

cleaved between Faery and the Otherside.

No one-man, beast, or fée—can say how or
why,

Only, the act decimated a great source of Enchantment.

The curtain between Faery and the Otherside has become
transparent;

f
é
e
travel back and forth with ease;

mortals, once banned from Faery after one visit, find
return less difficult.

It is a challenge to keep that which should not be in
Faery
out.
And vice versa.

Time wends forward, widdershins, and thus.

Such conditions shall remain until a champion

can restore the Enchantment complete.

Faery
—
betwixt and between

The revenant swooped down from out of nowhere. Wide gaping maws,
fanged and stretched to maul, loosed a shrill cry, shaking Gossamyr
de Wintershinn from her petrified stance. She stumbled backward and
landed atop the blue marble floor of the circular castle tower. Eyes
fixed to the danger, Gossamyr groped blindly at her side, slapping
the stone, in seek of her fighting staff.

The very flesh had been stripped from her attacker's bones.
Swathes of tattered muscle clung to the skeleton. Red glowed within
the skull's eyes, molten and dripping, as if blood. The pellicle
wings, void of lustrous color, were but a ghostly mesh of flight
flapping madly between the shoulder bones. It looked like a winged
one—a fée—but it could not possibly be. Never
before had she seen the like.

Be this one of the relentless creatures that had been tormenting
Faery for a summer of moons?

Tattered wings siphoned the air in foul hisses. The wraithlike
thing lunged. A skeletal arm slashed out. Claws cut the air—and
flesh.

Gossamyr stroked a finger across her cheek; slippery blood flowed
from the cut.

Whence came this creature? 'Twas full sun. She had been tending
her own pleasures, looking over the muster of peacocks trampling the
wild rose garden below that hugged the inner curtain wall. Why did it
attack her?

Shuffling backward, her hand slapped upon something—her
fighting staff.

With a hue and cry to strip the senses, the creature again struck.
Gossamyr dived to the right. Gripping the applewood staff and, facing
down, she kicked back and up. Her bare toes connected with bone. The
creature shrieked as it spun into the crystal-white sky.

Pushing up and landing a ready stance, Gossamyr swung the
longstaff to mark her periphery—the applewood sang a battle
cry—then prepared for a return attack. Keenly, she marked her
surroundings for additional threat.

Skeletal arms slashed the air. Bone fingers curled into claws as
the creature rushed her. She swung hard, using the force of the staff
and counterweighting her body into the defense. The end of her weapon
cracked skull. Bits of the creature's head scattered like a harvest
gourd cleaved by elf-shot.

Landing the swing, she steadied her bearing. No time to think,
only react. Deft twists of her fingers spun the weapon in a hissing
figure of eight as she turned to challenge the opponent. Now
headless, the creature hung before her, arms spread—yet the
wings flapped. Still alive. If bones could harbor life.

"Remarkable." Gossamyr stepped back. How to defeat the
thing? "Can I kill it?"

"Either that or be killed!" came the unbidden answer.

The stiff barbs of a feathered cape stroked her cheek. The
shing
of an obsidian blade drawn from a hip sheath sliced the air. One
slash of the fire-forged sabre sectioned the creature at the waist,
dropping the leg bones to the tower floor in a clatter.

"Shinn—"

"Stand back!" Shinn swung and hacked through the rib
cage of the creature. "These things don't know how to die!"

Frayed wings—severed from the skeletal body—furiously
beat the air above Shinn, her father. The dauntless fée lifted
his blade up under the left wing, cleaving it asunder, and brought
the blade down through the right wing. He spun toward Gossamyr and
shouted, "There!"

Pulled from her awestruck stare, Gossamyr jumped as a foot trimmed
with muscle shreds stamped her toes. Together, the legs of the
creature attacked. Sweeping her staff low, she dashed it across the
anklebones, sending them crashing against the marble embrasures.
Reduced to dust on impact, the shattered bone glinted as it floated
to the tower floor.

"What in all of Faery is it?" Gossamyr called as she
swung and caught a disembodied arm with the tip. Fingers clenched the
end of her staff. Shake as she might, the evil fist clung. "Shinn?"

Residue from the crushed creature glimmered in a mist about Shinn
as his sabre obliterated the wings. "A revenant!" the
implacable fée called.

Ill clad for battle, Shinn's everyday vestments of flowing
arachnagoss tunic and elaborately stitched hosen would not protect
him from injury. But he did not waver, instead standing proud and
defying the thing with a swing of his sabre. He dived to avoid the
other arm as it sailed toward him, fingers fisted.

"Let me to it!" Gossamyr cried. An audacious smile
crooked her mouth. She had trained for this sort of challenge.
Opportunity had finally fallen to her. "I've been craving some
fight."

She rushed the attacking arm and connected wood to bone in a
hollow crack. "Yes!"

The return swing of her staff proved the attack had not jarred the
creepy passenger. Gossamyr slammed the carved applewood upon the
tower floor. Finger bones gave loose, but as quickly, scrambled
across her toes and gripped her ankle, shaking her off balance.

She landed the marble floor with a jaw-loosening
dumpf.
A
skeletal hand scurried up her leg and over her hip moving farther.

Wheezing breaths gasped from her mouth. Dropping her staff,
Gossamyr clutched the hand that squeezed about her throat. Probing
fingertips threatened to pierce her flesh. She struggled to wrestle
the thing off, but it possessed strength immeasurable. It was futile
to fight, to kick at the air and pray she connected with some part of
an attacker that just wasn't there.

A murky blackness muddied her thoughts. Shinn—where was he?
Needles of numbness loosened her grip on the hand. Her shoulders
dropped. She could see nothing, smell not the scent of fresh morning
dew and lush rose oil, nor sense the smooth polish of the marble
beneath her fingers. An angry peacock mewl echoed Gossamyr's longing
to cry out.

As death crept closer one final sound summoned her audacious
smile. The shrill of finely honed obsidian cutting through bone.

High above the lush cypress and laburnum treetops that encircled
the curtain wall, Gossamyr followed her father through the carved
marble loggia. The castle she had lived in all her life nested at the
peak of the Spiral forest as if a bloom upon a verdant bouquet.
Pendulous yellow flowers hung heavily on the laburnum that grew only
at the top of the forest, contrasting marvelously with the castle.
The blue marble was deeply veined with streaks of midnight and palest
sky; it mimicked both day and night and shimmered with a fée
dust of the ages.

The village of Glamoursiege fit like a twist about the marble
screw of the Spiral. Blue marble segued to granite and finally to
sand at its lowest where it met the grounds in a mire of marsh and
reticulated tree roots. For the entirety was laced with the roots of
cypress, ash and hornbeam. The Edge—very few places where the
trees did not grow—was ever to be avoided, at least by the
un-winged ones.

"I can do this, Shinn! You cannot deny I am the only one
able."

Shinn moved swiftly toward the south tower, speaking his
impatience with his strides. "Many are capable," he called
back to Gossamyr.

"Capable, yes," Gossamyr had to agree.

Faery worked counter to the Otherside, and a war of almost one
hundred mortal years had been keeping the mortals to blood and wrath,
while Faery enjoyed fellowship and peace. Tribe Glamoursiege had been
formed of trooping warriors before the great Peace, a Peace that had
existed since long before Gossamyr's birth.

How long? Time indeterminable, Shinn often answered when Gossamyr
would question, for Time was of no concern to the fée.

Though Faery claimed Peace there were still the occasional rises
amongst the various tribes. Shinn's troops were indeed capable and,
with the recent arrival of the revenants, increasingly vigilant.

Gossamyr picked up her pace, as well as her confidence. "If
not for this very challenge, what then has all my training been for?
Naught? I am as skilled as any in your troop, male or female."

"Child of mine, you know well you have been groomed to sit
the Glamoursiege throne," Shinn said over his shoulder. "It
is not an idle, benevolent woman who can rule in my absence, but one
who possesses all the martial skills I have taught you, and the mind
for diplomacy, honor and valor."

"I will not neglect my duties to Glamoursiege, but...I want
this, Shinn. It is such an opportunity!" She hurried up beside
him. Where did he go in such a hurry?

"Convince me it wise to send my daughter on such a singular
and dangerous quest."

Ah, there, he had not given an unequivocal no. This gave Gossamyr
hope.

"Your fée warriors will not survive the Red Lady's
seductive allure. As you've told me, she seduces Disenchanted fée
into her clutches. They have not the fortitude to resist!"

Any fée who left Faery for the Otherside risked
Disenchantment. Necessary trips to the mortal realm were swift,
coached in the knowledge that glamour dissipates quickly and Time
could not be trusted. A risky venture for a fée warrior.

A risk chosen by some.

There were those rogue fée, who, seduced by the lure of the
mortal, and that intricate city called Paris, chose to remain on the
Otherside. To stay meant sure Disenchantment; a condition that saw
the fée completely drained of glamour, and often they lost
their wings to a shriveling malady attributed to the baneful touch
from a mortal. Enchantment gone, they became nothing more than a
shell that survived as any mortal. Return to Faery was difficult but
not impossible. But never again could the Disenchanted regain
Enchantment whole.

Of course, one did not have to be fée to fall under the
seductive spell of the Otherside. Gossamyr had lost her mother to the
mortal passion ten midsummers earlier. The lure of the unknown was
ever beguiling, but Veridienne de Wintershinn had always known the
Otherside, for she had been mortal complete.

Shinn stopped abruptly, causing his daughter to collide against
his back. Savoring the faintest scent of hyacinth that marked her
father, Gossamyr stepped back.

The south tower overlooked a riot of white roses and speckled
foxglove in the gardens below. Overhead, the carved marble openwork
cast a lattice of shadows across Shinn's tightened jaw. His blazon,
an iridescent tribal marking, curled down his chin and neck and
across his upper chest, and shimmered in the blocked patches of
sunlight. Glamoursiege blazons showed on neck and upper extremities;
placement varied from tribe to tribe.

For all his stern posture and commanding demeanor—even the
recent announcement that his marshal at arms should marry
Gossamyr—Shinn would ever occupy a soft place in Gossamyr's
heart. All planes and hard slopes his face, only in his eyes could
she ever find compassion. And such a find was a rarity to be hoarded.
Shinn's manner switched from cool to disinterested, and then suddenly
to genuine concern with such ease. One moment he was gentle and
attentive, the next, the battle commander wore a fierce mien.
Gossamyr had not known him to be any other way. Attribute to his
trying history, she could only assume. They had both loved and lost.
Love being one of those mutable words the fée toyed with in
exchange for lust, hunger or envy.

"I listened last night to the council's discussion," she
said. Shinn required she sit as a silent member at council, for her
future demanded she take an active role in Glamoursiege matters. "The
revenants' presence in Faery increases. But I was surprised to learn
about the rift." She bent to meet Shinn's straying gaze. "It
has never before been discussed by council. Why did you not tell me
of it sooner?"

"It is just something that is...known. The rift has existed
since before your birth."

"That long? And all this time you haven't once thought to—"