Song of the Fairy Queen (47 page)

The pretty curtains that framed the windows of the little cottage blew in the breeze. The door swung open, creaking. There was no sound, no life there, the cottage was empty…

Nothing.

He was gone…

She turned in the yard….searching….seeking…

Morgan.

Something inside her shattered.

He was gone…

As was the sweet girl who loved him.

It made no sense. What had happened? Morgan would have fought.

Kyri stood helplessly…extended her senses…farther…farther… Nothing… Farther….

Seeking what she couldn’t find…

Tears and grief burned in her and she cried out her fear for him…and for the sweet girl who loved him as she couldn’t…

Crystalline tears rained to the earth…

She’d never known such pain.

He was alive, she knew that much.

But where?

Why couldn’t she find him?

Taking wing, she quartered the lands around the little cottage but there was no sense of him there.

Something had happened. There had been alarm, fear…and pain.

Morgan!
She cried his name silently.

Only iron and earth could hide him from her.

She took flight, winging toward Remagne.

In truth, in all honesty, Oryan almost didn’t expect his Call to be answered and certainly not so quickly. He’d dismissed Caleb only a short time before.

The grizzled old veteran was worried and rightly so.

It wasn’t like Morgan to just disappear.

Then Geoffrey, his voice surprised but warm, said, “Welcome, my Lady. The Lady Kyri, your Highness.”

A familiar light and musical voice answered, softly, kindly, “It’s good to see you, too, Geoffrey, old friend.”

Oryan could hear the warmth in that voice.

He turned as Geoffrey held the tent flaps back and Kyri stepped inside.

The light of the lanterns caught in her wings as she folded them, gossamer haloing her for that brief instant. Her long golden hair was caught back in braids by her face to reveal the graceful curves of her ears, the rest rippled down to her waist, framing her delicate features.

Her aquamarine eyes were luminous and shadowed.

For a moment Oryan’s breath caught. He’d forgotten how very beautiful she was.

She looked tired.

“Kyri, it’s Morgan,” he said. “He’s disappeared. I wouldn’t have called, but…it’s Morgan.”

He’d hated to call her, but he was desperately afraid for Morgan, and for himself.

According to Caleb, there was no apparent sign of trouble, except that Morgan was gone and Joanna with him. No one had heard from either of them. Caleb had contacted Detrick and a few of the others but no one had seen them.

It wasn’t like Morgan.

“I know, I felt it,” she said and there was a desperation in her voice, it caught at him for a moment. “Something happened to him, Oryan. Something terrible but I can’t find him. He still lives but I can’t find him.”

There was fear and an inconsolable grief in her gaze.

If he’d ever doubted that she loved Morgan in truth and with all her heart and soul, he didn’t doubt it then, seeing her haunted eyes.

Crystalline tears rained down her cheeks to patter on the carpet.

“He’s still alive, Oryan,” Kyri said. “I would know if he was dead. I would know if they’d killed him, but I can’t find him.”

Reaching out to her, drew her into his arms, to give her what comfort he could. He pressed a kiss to her forehead, felt her fear like a fever in her.

She leaned into him.

“Are you sure?” Oryan said.

Those luminous eyes looked at him and she nodded.

“I would know,” she said, quietly, surely. “He lives.”

“We’ve got people out looking,” Oryan said. “Trying to find him, trying to find answers, Kyri. If there’s anything, if we find anything, I’ll Call, my word on it.”

A gusty sigh shook her.

She nodded. “I know. I’ll keep searching. Only iron and earth could keep me from sensing him from so far, but if I get close enough, even they cannot stop me. I will find him, Oryan, and I will keep searching until I do.”

Alarmed, he looked at her. “Kyri…”

But she was already turning, her wings opening to catch the moonlight as she stepped out of the tent.

It was late and the village was asleep when the Hunters came, kicking down doors and shouting, their torches held high and flickering, casting a mad light and madder shadows everywhere. There were screams, cries in the night. Gawain was awake in an instant. Fear burst through him. Fire bloomed, flickering between the slats of the shutters.

A barn or something was on fire.

Hunters. It had to be.

His heart pounded.

Like him, his foster parents were awake. His foster father raced to slam the bar across the door to deny the Hunters entrance long enough for Gawain to escape.

It wasn’t them the Hunters wanted, they all knew. They were old. The Hunters wanted strong young men and women to conscript into the army.

Gawain had already lost friends to them.

The door wouldn’t hold long.

“Go, Gawain,” his foster mother cried softly. “Go.”

Already Gawain was on the floor, scrabbling at the little latch that released the hidden hatch in the floor that every cottage had installed since Haerold had taken the crown. He squirmed through, pushing it shut behind him, flipping the wooden latch to hold it in place. There was no one else in the house of age. He’d been fostered here since his mother had died and they’d been kind to him, but they were old.

He missed Liliane.

Quickly and carefully, his heart pounding, he crawled through the makeshift tunnel, hearing feet kicking down the door above him. He feared for them, but he knew he couldn’t help them and would only make things worse if he tried.

He looked out the little peephole at the back of the cottage, saw nothing but the darkness and bellied out.

Someone snatched him up by the arm, somehow familiar, hauling him up out of the hole, clapping a hand over his mouth and cutting off the sudden, undignified squeak that burst out of him. At fourteen, with his voice was still changing, even in dire circumstances he was boy enough and man enough to be embarrassed by the sound.

Panic hit, fear punching through him. There was an odd flash inside his head.

Before he started to struggle, though, a familiar voice whispered in his ear. “It’s me, boy, shut up and stop fighting. It’s you they’re after. Now, run!”

Gordon. The Miller, Liliane’s old friend.

He’d taken Gawain under his wing after her death, teaching him how to use a sword.

In shock from both the words and the means, Gawain ran, both of them making a bee-line through the bean poles and gardens for the cover of the distant row of trees.

“Don’t stop,” Gordon said, hefting the pack on his back he’d hastily thrown together, “keep running. Once they don’t find you there in the village, they’ll start looking for you elsewhere. They’ll pick up our scent fast enough, for sure. Keep moving. You know your woodcraft, follow the stars. Here, here’s your sword. Don’t drop it.”

Gawain didn’t drop it but it was a near thing.

It was difficult to see anything beneath the trees it was so dark, not even the stars up through the leaves when you were running, but he ran all the same, Gordon grabbing him and yanking him to one side once and then they were beside the stream.

“Go through it,” Gordon hissed.

Obediently, Gawain nodded, splashing through the water.

Then they heard the baying, the howling.

A cold chill went through Gordon. It was too soon, far too soon, although he wouldn’t tell the boy that. Far too soon if they were to have any chance at all.

“Keep running, lad,” he called, keeping his voice even.

Gawain kept running, although the sound of the baying made the hair on his arms stand up and then he splashed up the opposite bank, still running. His lungs burned. It seemed as if they’d been running for hours.

The girl came out of nowhere, angling to intercept them.

She wore a tunic and trews like a boy, her hands held up to show she was no threat. Her hair was a longish cap of dark curls, barely seen in the dark. Her eyes were only a liquid shimmer in the night. A bow and quiver hung from her back, a small sword at her side.

“If you would live, follow me,” she said.

“Why should we trust you?” Gordon barked, wasting precious air.

The howling increased.

“It’s me or them,” she said. “Who would you rather?”

Gordon looked at her. She hadn’t slowed a second, racing along beside them apparently effortlessly.

“My life is as forfeit as yours now, if they catch us,” she said.

There was that.

Gawain nodded.“Go.”

Like a deer, she sprinted off, leaped logs they couldn’t see, her paler clothing giving them a hint, an edge, something to follow in the darkness.

Rain fell, a light drizzle, like insult to injury.

In moments they were cold and wet.

“Keep going,” the girl cried, leading them over a stretch of rock along a ridge and down the other side. “Can you swim?”

The river. Had they run that far? It seemed too incredible.

Gordon remembered. “It’s fast and strong here.”

It was a risk.

She nodded, “And will take us far in half the time and drown our scent, too, if you can stay afloat.”

“In,” he said and they jumped into the icy, rushing waters.

Still, the river nearly drowned them once or twice, but the girl was always there to catch them by the collar until they finally dragged themselves out of the water to collapse on the far bank.

There was only the wind, the tree frogs and crickets.

No howls, no baying. Not yet.

“We can’t rest here too long,” she said. “They’ll follow the river until they pick up our scent again.”

Dragging himself to a seated position Gordon winced and nodded. “God help my old joints.”

In the early dawn light she could see him better, a tallish barrel-chested man of late middle years, his hair thinning and touched with gray.

“What I want to know is, where are the Marshals?”

Gordon stared at her. “Marshals? There are no Marshals, not anymore. Where you been, girl? There’s been no Marshals since Morgan disappeared, oh, two, three year ago. And who the hell are you, anyway?”