Song of the Fairy Queen (52 page)

He set his hand to it, wincing internally as he looked at it, felt it thrum beneath his hand.

“It’s caught on a rib. This is going to hurt.”

Glancing over her shoulder at him, raising an eyebrow, she said dryly, “More or less so than leaving it in?”

“Point,” he acknowledged, admiring her courage, fortitude and humor. “Ready?”

Still, the thought of hurting her made something inside him ache. She seemed so small, so fragile. It had to be done though, and quickly would be better.

Kyri braced herself, wishing Galan was here…but he wasn’t and she dared not call him.

She was alone here. More so than she’d ever been.

She nodded.

Grasping the arrow, Morgan braced himself. His hand on her hip, he turned the arrow quickly and pulled.

She arched, a thin cry escaping her and then she stood panting a moment, swaying, pain bowing her proud head as she fought and struggled with it.

Quickly, he wrapped an arm around her to support her, holding her, watching as she absorbed the pain. Her eyes stared up at the sky blindly, blinking slowly, panting as the worst of the pain slowly passed. For a moment she simply breathed.

This close he couldn’t fail to notice, even in her pain, how beautiful she was, her firm lips parted, those long-lashed blue-green eyes lovely. He could smell the scent of her, soft and light, the brush of her short curls like silk against his cheek. She was strong, full of courage. For a moment, a moment only, she turned her face to press it against his shoulder for comfort.

Inside him, something that was cold, shifted and cracked. She shivered and he was suddenly aware of how close, how warm, her body was, too.

As much as Kyri loved his arm around her, it also made her heart ache. There was the scent of him, of Morgan, the strength of him, the sheer physical presence of him. It was torture of another kind. She didn’t dare open her eyes to see him standing so close. She would want his mouth on hers…wanted it now with an intensity she nearly couldn’t bear, a pain greater than the one in her back.

It would break her heart. Again.

So she made herself nod.

“I’m well enough now,” she said, softly.

Her Fairy constitution would hold against most injury….

“Are you sure?” Morgan asked doubtfully as she trembled in his arms.

“Yes,” she said, and was sharply aware of the absence of his arm when he drew it away.

With a sigh, she pulled herself together in more ways than one, drawing up the ends of her tunic and wrapping them around her waist to control the bleeding.

On the other side of the chasm, the Hunters howled their frustration.

She glanced at Gordon, Gawain and then at Morgan, all frowning a little, worriedly.

Taking a breath, she looked at them evenly.

“It might be best,” she said, “if no one mentions I’m Fairy. Not to anyone. It’s worth my life and more than my life if you do.”

Morgan looked at her, surprised by the depth of concern in her voice. “Why?”

It was Gordon who answered, his voice thick with disgust.

“For the bounty on her, ya mug, the bounty on Fairy. Haerold’s bounty. ‘Tis said he eats folks like Fairy for lunch and that’s not just a turn of phrase, either. Then there are our own folk, who would as like to tear her apart just for the feathers on her wings. ‘Tis said they have the power to hold off magic.”

Kyri looked at him, as Gawain touched the feather in his pocket in awe and looked at her.

Hunted for her feathers? The thought made Morgan’s jaw clench.

Out of old habit, his fingers rubbed at the talisman he wore.

What the hell had happened while he’d been gone?

Even the rebel bands appeared to have gone into deep hiding Morgan noted as they walked. How much had they lost since he’d been gone? A lot, from what he was seeing. They’d been so close to succeeding when he'd been taken. But people’s eyes were once again furtive, suspicious and afraid. Most folk went around with their heads down, avoiding a direct look from anyone for fear of provoking the wrong person. His jaw tightened as he saw Haerold’s soldiers harass an old woman in a square, laughing. Her clothes were shabby, threadbare.

Almost everywhere he saw signs of poverty, people beaten down.

Quietly he asked, “What happened to the Marshals after I was taken?”

Those memories he held at bay by sheer force of will, his jaw tight.

Gordon shook his head, his voice low, too.

“Most of them spent some time searching for you, trying to find out what’d happened, to find out where you’d gone,” he said. “Where they’d taken you, where they had you, but no one could.”

Something inside Morgan loosened.

They’d looked.

“Haerold went after them with a vengeance,” Gordon said, his expression bleak. “Some was arrested. There were public trials. A man named Corvin was drawn and quartered. It was gruesome to watch, but no one asked whether anyone wished to. With no single leader, they fell into separate groups. Some worked good, some didn’t.”

Morgan nodded. He could guess the good ones and the bad. Corvin had been one of the good ones.

Someone had a lot to answer for. His jaw tightened again, grateful for the reminder.

It pained Kyri to hear that Corvin was gone and even more for the manner of his death. She hadn’t known of it. Whatever else, he’d meant well.

What of Detrick, then? Some of the others?
She feared for some of her friends.

They waited until they’d circled the town, avoiding the soldiers there, before they hitched a ride on a passing wagon.

Kyri wondered how long it would be until they scried for Gawain again, if they were scrying.

As much as she could, she tried to block the connection, but that would only work as long as she was awake. And how much good it did she didn’t actually know. She could be wasting energy, but she had to try.

Her only comfort at the moment was the fact that this was an average road for almost anywhere in the Kingdom, surrounded by grain fields such as one would find almost anyplace and the wagon a normal wagon. Nothing was distinctive.

But it worried her.

“Something on your mind, Kyri?” Morgan asked.

She’d been pensive and quiet for some time yet, which wasn’t normal for her.

He kept finding himself watching her, partly because she was easy to look at, her tumbled curls dancing in the breeze around her fine-boned face – she was slender, high-breasted and lovely. Partly in curiosity, but partly in this odd nagging sense that she was somehow familiar.

Kyri looked at him, a small frown creasing her brow.

She tried not to look at Morgan too often, the memories were too strong, the sense of him as he’d once been even stronger.

“I think Haerold has Oryan’s scrying bowl,” she said, finally and worriedly.

Morgan leaned back against the side of the wagon.

He remembered. How many times had he watched Oryan bent over that bowl, watching his son in it?

“Scrying bowl?” Gawain asked.

Looking at him, Kyri nodded. He should know this.

“I made it for your father so he could watch over you. The thought of being separated from you was bad enough, but the knowledge that he’d also miss watching you grow pained him even further. It gave him the ability to watch you as you grew.”

For some reason it gave Gawain an odd and absurd sense of pleasure to know that this father he barely remembered had cared enough to watch over him.

“So, why did he send me away then?” he asked bluntly, bitterly.

He’d wondered. It was the only thing that hurt.

If Oryan was this great King… Why hadn’t his father wanted him? Why hadn’t he kept him with him?

He vaguely remembered talk, debate, but he’d been absorbing the grief over the loss of his mother. The image of the woman on the landing, his mother, his true mother, her gray eyes determined, came back to him. He couldn’t picture this father, though…

“Oryan didn’t send you away,” Morgan said. “He protected you. He knew he was going to be hunted. And not just now and then. Haerold doesn’t dare let either of you live, you’d always be a threat to his claim on the throne. If Haerold caught Oryan, he’d kill him, or you both if you were there as well. So Oryan sent you to safety. It was one of the hardest decisions I ever saw him make.”

Next to letting Gwenifer go…and Morgan knew how painful that had been…

Gordon said. “So, this scrying bowl? What is it? It lets anyone who looks in it see Gawain? Where he is and what he’s doing?”

Kyri nodded. “I’ve been blocking it, I think. Not something one would usually do, so I can’t be sure. Since I made it, though… If it works, though, it only works while I’m awake. So, don’t let me nap.”

They gave that some consideration.

“It’s hard to tell much in the dark,” Morgan commented.

She smiled a little. “There’s that.”

“So,” Gordon finally said, turning to Morgan. “What happened to you, then? How’d you disappear?”

Kyri winced at the bluntness, but that was Gordon as she’d learned.

“I don’t talk about that. Ever,” Morgan said flatly.

He closed his eyes and leaned back against the side of the wagon. He missed his hat, or he’d have drawn the brim down over his eyes as well if he’d had it.

There were parts of what happened to him that Kyri was picking up, moments when the pain would burst up out of nowhere in him to give her horrifying glimpses of what he’d been through.

Remagne, Haerold’s walled city seat. The one place Kyri never cared to be and Morgan himself was taking her there. Memories crowded her. Kyri shuddered at the very idea of going in there almost as much as she’d hated the idea of entering Caernarvon. There, though, had been only the dead and no real threat. Here? Her eyes went up to the pediment where she’d once stood and followed the trail of her trajectory where she’d come down. Morgan had been there for her then, solid and sure. Her heart. She’d trusted that he would come for her and he had.

Who would come for her this time if she ran into trouble? Who would watch her back?

She’d banned Galan and Dorien from coming, trusting to the old Morgan, not to finding him so changed. Nor would she call them now and put them at risk, too.

Especially not Galan. Not here.

She fought against fear and a touch of despair.

Remagne was the same place of stone and shadows she remembered.

Her eyes lifted to the rooftops, remembering.

“Frightened?” Morgan asked, intending it to be derisive, but somehow he couldn’t put his heart into it.

Her eyes went to his.

“Yes,” she said, simply and honestly.

Inside, Morgan winced.