Thaumatology 11 - For Whom the Wedding Bells Toll Page 14

  The troll stepped forward, reaching for Ceri, and the sudden shock of what she had found in Mack’s mind left her almost too stunned to respond. She pushed forward, out of the chair, rolling on her shoulder and regaining her feet before the troll or Mack could respond. ‘I’m sorry, but I really can’t accept your most generous offer,’ she said. Her power swelled around her and she vanished.

  ~~~

  She was getting much better at handling the disorientation of teleporting. There was no dizziness, no stumbling; she just appeared on the rock ledge where the others were waiting and turned to face them, a deep frown on her face. Now that she was thinking about it, it made a kind of sense. He had given up his right to the throne because he had no queen…

  ‘We need to go,’ she said. ‘Now!’

  ‘Did you find out who did it?’ Ophelia asked eagerly.

  ‘No. Some nameless assassin sent out by someone in the hierarchy at their leader’s orders. But we have bigger problems and we need to get back to the palace and tell Oberon what I did find.’

  The Sidhe sagged. ‘Uh, what did you find?’

  ‘They’re going to come out of here in about a month and attack the palace. They want to take control of Otherworld. Oh, and he wants me to be his queen. Can’t rule without a queen.’

  ‘I assume you declined his offer?’ Michael asked.

  ‘Of course I did, but he claimed I wasn’t being given a choice and, to be honest, if he took his mask off and asked, I might just have had trouble saying no.’

  ‘High Sidhe?’ Ophelia asked. ‘Wait… no queen? He needs a queen to rule and he’s High Sidhe?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘It can’t be…’

  ‘It is. I pulled his identity out of his mind.’

  ‘Who are you talking about?’ Lily asked.

  ‘You should now, love,’ Ceri told her, grabbing her pack. She would change clothes later, when they were well away from the camp. ‘You were the one who made sure he needed a new queen.’

  Lily’s eyes widened. ‘Finvarra?!’

  ‘Yup. Let’s get moving before the damn vargs find us.’

  Ophelia started off toward the higher ground around the valley before Michael could take the lead. ‘Oh fuck,’ she was muttering. ‘We’re so fucked.’

  Interlude

  Pimlico, London, September 29th, 2010

  Twill settled her wings against the headboard of the little bed and spread her legs. Midia crawled between them, a wolfish grin on her tiny face, and Twill let out a moan as the sprite’s tongue began lapping hungrily. Midia’s husband, Anolar, watched from a chair in the corner of the room, a satisfied smile on his face. He had had his turn at their fairy guest already, but Twill was fairly sure he would be wanting to go again before she left.

  It was a rarity for Twill to leave High Towers. She would hunt in the garden, and occasionally slip over the fence, but she did not often go further than the flower beds a hundred yards from the fence. Once in a while she did, and over the last couple of years she had made a few contacts out in the city. Midia and Anolar were two of them. They lived across the river in Pimlico, in the attic of a house. Their home had been cobbled together out of bits of scrap wood, discarded carpet fragments and wallpaper, and the humans living below them had no clue they were there.

  Twill started panting. Sprites were horny little buggers, and they just loved playing with fairies when they could get their hands on one. Twill did not mind, especially today. She had had to get out of the house today. Ceri had come into her power, Lily was losing herself to her demon side, and right at the moment the two of them were fucking each other silly practically every minute of the day. The atmosphere in the house was so torrid that Twill had decided to come get some herself, and hope Ceri could somehow break away from Lily enough to take control of the situation.

  She felt the tension beginning in her abdominal muscles. Her wings fluttered against the headboard and her fingers twisted into Midia’s long, red hair. And then there was the sudden rush of pleasure welling up and washing all thought away with it.

  When the fairy opened her eyes again, Anolar was sitting at the foot of his bed beside his wife. His erection suggested he wanted Twill again, and she had no objection, but… ‘Give me a minute, Ano. You two will give me a heart attack if you keep this up. What’s the gossip?’

  Midia giggled, her arm snaking around her husband’s waist, long fingers wrapping around his shaft so she could tease him. ‘There are rumours that Ophelia has a new beau,’ she said as Anolar lay back with a groan. ‘People are giving him two weeks before she gets bored and either dumps him or offs him.’

  ‘Sounds about right,’ Twill replied.

  ‘Oh, there have been a few noises about some great power that’s suddenly appeared. No one seems to know what it is, but some of the older fae and the vampires are all up in arms about it. Some people are saying that the sorcerers are coming back.’

  ‘Huh,’ Twill said. She crawled down the bed, leaning over Anolar’s hips. ‘Sorcerers are legendary, probably demon-bound mages. The humans will be gunning whoever it is down before the month is out. I doubt they were really some sort of super-magicians.’ She bent forward and Anolar let out an almost pained moan as her lips made contact with his most sensitive skin.

  ‘Maybe,’ Midia replied. ‘Maybe not.’

  Twill did not answer, her mouth was full.

  Mayfair, October 11th

  The Dubh Linn was definitely not somewhere Twill went to on any kind of regular basis, but she had a reason to, so there she was. Ceri and Lily had gone out to the university so neither would notice she was gone.

  There were not too many people who knew about the fairy door. It was a pipe which led from the roof of the building, opening out again right beside the bar, which was useful because some of the patrons of the place had been known to eat sprites and fairies. Sean, the darkly attractive Unseelie Sidhe bartender, had actually been known to eat a fairy himself, though his version of eating involved a lot of tongue from what Twill had heard. Well, it took all sorts.

  ‘Sean,’ Twill said as she settled onto the end of the bar.

  ‘Twill, isn’t it?’ he replied, his Irish accent giving his voice a sexy lilt. ‘You wanting a drink, girl?’ He grinned. ‘Or can I show you a trick I learned with a pencil eraser?’

  Flickers of pink light danced around the fairy. ‘Your reputation is keeping me from saying yes. I’m hunting gossip, but I’ll take a glass of mead.’

  Sean produce a small glass from a cabinet under the bar and poured a measure of mead into it. The thick, golden liquid smelled wonderful. Twill opened the small bag she was carrying and produced a five pound note from it, unfolding the sheet of paper which was bigger than she was and placing it down on the counter.

  ‘What kind of gossip, little lady?’ the bartender asked as he put the glass down and took the note.

  ‘I heard tell last month of some big, powerful magician that had suddenly appeared in town, maybe a sorcerer. I was wondering whether anyone knew anything about it.’

  The voice that answered was not Sean’s and it came from just behind Twill’s shoulder. ‘There is a sorceress abroad. Yes. My sister and I have known of her for twenty-four years. She’s been well hidden, but now she’s come into her power.’

  Twill gave a quick glance over her shoulder and then stared straight ahead, lifting her glass and sinking half the contents. ‘Thank you, Lady.’ Even now, a second after looking, she had no idea what the woman looked like. The Lady of the Black Pool, sister to the Lady of Llyn Tegid, according to rumour, exiled from the Unseelie Court for reasons unknown seven hundred years ago. ‘I have a rumour of my own.’

  ‘And what is that?’

  ‘I’ve heard that Gloriandel Wintergreen is in London and knows this sorceress. She’s said that she’ll return to her family if anything should happen to the sorceress and her friends, and whoever has harmed them will suffer for it.’

  ‘That is a most in
teresting titbit, young lady,’ the soft voice said. ‘I’ll see to it that other ears hear it.’

  ‘Thank you, Lady,’ Twill said again, but she could feel the presence behind her was gone. Sinking the rest of her mead, she stood, pushed her change into her bag, and lifted into the air. ‘Thanks for the drink, Sean.’

  ‘Any time, sweetheart. Oh, and if you do want to see that pencil trick, y’know where t’ find me.’

  Twill fled before he could embarrass her further.

  Part Four: Morrigan’s Daughters

  Summer Palace, Otherworld, February 15th, 2013

  They had been put back in the same suite in the tower they had occupied before and Oberon, King of the Fae, was currently wearing a path in the carpet in more or less the same place as Ophelia had done when they had last been there. His queen was looking a little anxious too, but she was doing it while seated on the loveseat beside Lily. Ceri was watching them, rather than Oberon, because that was a political incident waiting to happen and the King was just overreacting to the problem.

  Or maybe he was not. ‘Five thousand? We could raise perhaps three quickly. More if we have time, but he’s sure to move early if he knows you made it back here. I’ve sent out scouts to watch for movement at the Glenn, but… How has he managed to raise such a force without us knowing?!’

  Ophelia cleared her throat. ‘If you’ll pardon me, Highness, but this has been coming for sixty years.’

  Oberon stopped and turned toward her. Titania was the one who spoke, however. ‘How so?’ Ophelia swallowed, looking nervous. ‘Come, Lady Ophelia, speak freely. We’ve need of wise heads and you’re already on trial for murder, things can hardly get worse for you speaking your mind.’ She gave a quirky grin to show she was trying to joke, but her anxiety shone through anyway.

  ‘We’ve had four hundred years of resentment over the defeat of the Unseelie Court at your hands,’ Ophelia said. ‘I’m not saying you’re bad rulers, but you’re Seelie and there are plenty of Unseelie who see you as usurpers, tyrants even. Then the doorways to Earth opened wide again and the Unseelie took Ireland and Scandinavia. They’ve been building strength and confidence ever since, and now they apparently have a leader.’

  ‘He worked fast,’ Ceri said, ‘but he couldn’t have done all this since we freed him. He must have found this Discord movement already in existence and used it.’

  ‘But he was Seelie?’ Titania said, her voice low, almost whining.

  ‘Seelie and Unseelie are more viewpoints than anything else though,’ Lily said. ‘People with one or the other mind set gravitate toward others like themselves and you have the division non-fae think of as almost different species. Finvarra was driven insane by Oona. He spent centuries in a cell in her dungeon being thrown the odd woman once in a while. It was a spell, a curse, but who knows what the long term effects on his mind could be.’

  ‘The… man who taught me sorcery,’ Ceri said, her voice a little hesitant at the mention of Ed Perry, an ex-dragon she had said she would kill if she saw him again, ‘he told me that if you spend a lot of time transformed into a different form, you start to think like that form. He was a dragon, but he claimed that the more time he spent as a human, the more he thought like one, and I’ve noticed that I think more like a werewolf as I spend time as one. Oona turned her husband from a philandering man into a monster and he spent a lot of time in that form.’

  ‘It doesn’t really make much difference, does it?’ Michael said. ‘Whatever caused him to become what he is, we have to deal with that. How are you going to stop a five thousand man army of Sidhe and trolls if you don’t have a big enough army yourself?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ Oberon replied. ‘The best I can do is to begin raising a larger force and hope we have the time to do it.’

  ‘Yes,’ Ceri agreed, ‘but I think we need a backup plan. We need some help. Tell me, how would I go about contacting the Morrigna?’

  ‘You don’t, if you’re sane,’ Oberon replied.

  ‘Well, she… they appeared in a dream and said they would help if I chose to let them. I don’t think we have a whole lot of choice.’

  ‘There’s a shrine of sorts,’ Titania said, ‘south of the mountains, about two days travel.’

  ‘I know it,’ Ophelia said. ‘It’s at Chiocha na Teer Abail Riu.’

  ‘That’s it. It’s probably your best shot at reaching them.’

  Ceri sighed. ‘We’ll start in the morning. I want a good night’s sleep before we go.’

  ‘At least we got to have a bath,’ Lily added.

  Royal Pass, February 16th

  By mid-morning, having started off before the sun was up, they had reached the top of the pass which crossed the mountains to the south. Ophelia had called it the Royal Pass, and it was certainly quite broad and kind of regal. It even had a packed gravel road laid into the broken ground to flatten it out and make it easier for carriages. Up at the peak there were no walls on either side, which was making them all feel safer. There was even a small lake on the eastern side of the road which was kind of beautiful in a bleak sort of way.

  There was also a guard post beside the lake; a stone tower had been built there, two storeys with a portcullis over the gate nearest the road. Oberon had told them that there was a contingent of six guards housed there at all times, all of them loyal to the court, which meant he currently did not trust them. There was no way Discord could be stopped from discovering that the King was raising an army, far too many people knew what was happening, but the plan to contact the Morrigna was another matter and keeping that secret was a high priority. So they were going to sneak past the guard tower.

  Luckily enough the relatively flat ground around the pass up here made it easy to take a wide path west of the tower and there were boulders and the odd bush to provide cover. Michael was in charge of the sneaking. He had more experience in that kind of thing than anyone, though Ophelia turned out to be pretty good at it for someone who was supposedly an honest diplomat.

  ‘There must have been a glacier through here at some point,’ Ceri commented as they stopped in the shadow of a boulder taller than they were. ‘My geology is only school-level, but I think this is classic glacial topology.’

  ‘Does she ever stop being a scientist?’ Ophelia asked, grinning.

  ‘During sex,’ Lily replied. ‘Mostly.’

  ‘Hey!’ Ceri squeaked, trying to keep her voice down. Sound probably carried a long way up here. ‘I’m inquisitive.’

  ‘Well,’ Michael said, ‘why don’t we be inquisitive over in that clump of bushes?’ He indicated a low, scrubby patch about a hundred yards further on.

  Ceri raised an eyebrow. ‘You call those bushes? They’re more like brambles with pretentions.’

  ‘It’s the best cover we have.’

  Grimacing, Ceri started forward, keeping low to the ground and wishing she could afford the power budget to make them all invisible long enough to get past the tower. The “bushes” were actually low-growing climbers draped over some rocks. They looked like they might have fruit on them later in the year, but for now they gave just enough cover to be useful.

  ‘Seriously,’ Ophelia muttered as she dropped into the slight depression in the rock, ‘this is not how I trained to spend my time.’

  ‘You trained?’ Lily asked. ‘I thought you just… kind of…’

  ‘Fell into it? No, I had talent the Silvershields recognised, but I was apprenticed to one of the seniors for a century before they let me loose on my own.’

  ‘That seems kind of modern,’ Ceri commented.

  ‘This place may work on Iron Age technology,’ Ophelia said in a rather defensive tone, ‘but that’s because the vast majority of fae don’t like technology. We’ve had a highly civilised society for thousands of years, and it’s been more politically stable that human society for most of that.’

  ‘That,’ Lily said, ‘and apprenticeships back home go back to medieval times at least. What’s that? Like a thousand years?�
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  ‘See?’ Ceri said, grinning, ‘there’s stuff I don’t know.’ She always felt rather proud when Lily knew things she did not.

  ‘Yeah, history,’ Ophelia pointed out. ‘What’s the charge on an electron?’

  ‘Minus one point six-oh-two times ten to the minus nineteen Coulombs,’ Ceri replied without thinking.

  ‘I rest my case.’

  ‘Rest your butt over past that boulder there,’ Michael said, ‘before I give it a swift kick to get it moving.’

  ~~~

  Twill and Ishifa were waiting down the pass when the larger people who could not become invisible naturally climbed down the low wall at the side of the road.

  ‘You weren’t spotted,’ Twill told them, ‘but you were right to sneak past.’

  ‘We found the bodies of the real guards hidden in the cellar,’ Ishifa added.

  ‘Not long dead,’ Twill continued. ‘I’d say sometime last night, though I’m no forensic pathologist. It would appear that the entire squad has been replaced by Discord operatives.’

  ‘They’d only do that if they need to control the pass,’ Michael commented. ‘How often do the guards change?’

  Ophelia shrugged. ‘Once a week, maybe.’

  ‘So they’ve got it for six days, tops. Probably less. They’re making their move ahead of schedule, and they’re sending some of their forces through here.’

  Ceri nodded, agreeing with his assessment. ‘We need to get moving. We can’t even assume we have a day.’

  ‘Okay,’ Ophelia said, ‘there might be a way to speed things up. Wait while I check something…’ She closed her eyes and began to slowly turn on the spot muttering something in a language which sounded like Low Fae, but was not. Ceri figured it was High Fae; it made sense that they would use it for magic. After about ten seconds there was a word which was definitely not High Fae. ‘Damn!’ Then she went on with her chant, frowning more deeply. ‘Got it! It’s just under ten miles away. Down the pass, then east three or four miles. There’s a ley line there that goes on to the temple. It’s a pretty big one, we could be there in… seconds.’