Swallowing Darkness

Chapter Eleven

I saw the white glow of the hunt behind me like a second moon in the sky before I heard the wind of its coming. But I kept my eyes on the fallen sidhe lord. Onilwyn looked unconscious, maybe even dead, but until it was certain, I would not turn and give him a second chance to kill me.

I heard the horses and other things land on the frozen ground. I heard running feet, and Sholto was beside me. He put himself between me and the slumped forms. The bone spear was pointed up, the bone dagger naked in his hand.

I leaned against his back, feeling the strength of him through the remnants of his t-shirt. He, like me, hadn't dressed for the cold. Magic can make you forget practicalities, until the magic recedes and you realize that you are mortal once more. Oh, I guess that was just me. Some of the sidhe never felt the cold.

"Are you hurt?" he asked.

"No, just feeling the cold." Saying it out loud seemed to give me permission to shiver. I pressed myself more tightly against the warmth of his back, and reached around to encircle his waist. I found more in the front of his body than just waist. The tentacles petted and caressed my hands and arms. He was touching me, holding me, just as he would have with his hands if they weren't full of weapons. But Sholto had enough "hands" to hold me and fight. There had been a time when the extra bits had disturbed me to the point that I wasn't sure I could get past them, but such petty concerns seemed ages ago. The tentacles were warm, as if they had blood close to the surface. They reached around his body to hold more of me, stretching as only things with no bones can. Tonight it wasn't disturbing, it was warm.

Yolland moved past us in his court finery, his iron sword bare in his hand. I couldn't see what he did, but he said, "The green-haired guard has only the faintest pulse."

"What about Mistral?" Sholto asked.

"The same."

"We have to get Mistral to a healer," I said, still wrapped in the warmth of Sholto's back, and other things.

"What of Onilwyn?" Sholto asked. I was pressed so close to his back that his words vibrated against my cheek.

I thought of the look on Onilwyn's face, the hatred. He meant my death, and sparing his life wouldn't change that determination in his eyes. He would see it as weakness. "He must die."

I felt Sholto startle; even the tentacles reacted like a hand that almost draws back from yours. "We should ask the queen first, Meredith."

"Are there healers at the sluagh?" I asked.

"Yes," he said.

"Then take Mistral and me there. I must get out of the cold, and he needs the killing metal out of his body."

"Let us take you to the Seelie Court," Yolland said.

I laughed, and it wasn't a pleasant sound. "Without the power of the wild hunt, I would not enter there like this."

"Then the Unseelie Court," Sholto said.

"The men you killed were lords of that court, weren't they?"

"Yes," he said.

"Then it is not safe. Take me to your kingdom, Sholto."

"The sidhe are more fragile than the people of the sluagh. I am not certain our healers are the best for the Storm Lord."

"He needs the metal out of him, and warmth; beyond that, we will see. But time is not his friend, or ours. Kill Onilwyn. When we have survived this night, we will seek an audience with the queen."

"You cannot mean to end the life of one of the sidhe," Turloch said. "My enemies are many, my friends are few. I must prove to the first that to come against me is death, and to the second that I am strong enough to rule here." Then I hugged Sholto and told the truth. "I saw my death and the deaths of my unborn children in Onilwyn's face. If I spare him, he will see it as weakness, not mercy. I do not want him at my back with that hot determination in his eyes. I am pregnant with twins. Would you risk the first royal babies since I was born to squeamishness?"

"It is not squeamishness, my lady," Turloch said.

"Princess," Sholto said. "She is Princess Meredith."

"Fine. Princess Meredith, it is not squeamishness, but the thought of losing another lord of the sidhe. We are so few now, Princess. Even those who are twisted and Unseelie are precious to some of us, for many of them once walked the golden corridors of our court before they fell from favor."

"I am aware that many of our lords and ladies were once yours, Lord Turloch. But that does not change Onilwyn's fate."

"You are not my queen yet, and this I will not do," he said.

Sholto started to speak, but I squeezed him tightly, and he took the hint. He let me speak instead. "I would think long, Lord Turloch, on the fact that I brought a sidhe lord down single-handedly with no weapon."

"Is that a threat?" he asked.

"It is truth," I said, and let him take it any way he wished.

"Do as she commands," Sholto said. "You are still part of the hunt, and I am still the huntsman."

"Only until dawn breaks," he said.

"We will be free at dawn, but whether you are free or condemned to ride forever with the hunt remains to be seen," I said.

"What?" he said.

"She is right," Lord Dacey said, "for we attacked the hunt. Punishment can be to ride forever."

"Only the huntsman can free you," Sholto said, "so I would prove myself a good solider, Turloch, if I were you." His voice was cold, and he was very certain of himself. Only I was close enough to feel his heartbeat speed up. Was he not certain of his words, or not certain what the sidhe would do? Or did he agree with the other men that Onilwyn should be spared? The prospect of being trapped in the hunt was a fate that might make them fight us. The magic of the hunt was beginning to fade; I could feel it. It wouldn't be dawn that broke it. We could end up with a second fight on our hands.

We needed more allies who were ours by choice, not by threat. Mistral's life was dripping away. I would not lose him because we hesitated.

I started to step back from Sholto. He held me close for a second, then let me move away from him. The tentacles caressed me reluctantly, like fingertips trailing down my arms.

The ground was colder as I walked away from Sholto. His magic had been keeping me warm. As I moved across the frozen ground, the three sidhe lords watched me, as if I were something to be cautious of, almost as if they were afraid of me. It wasn't a look I was used to seeing on the faces of the noble sidhe. I wasn't sure I liked it, but I knew I needed it. People only follow you for two reasons, love and fear. Money didn't mean anything in faerie. I preferred love, but tonight my enemies had proven that there were more of them than I had known and that there were too many plots to reason with them all. When love and sweet reason will not work, you are left with fear and ruthlessness.

I put my hand over my stomach, still barely different, but I'd heard their heartbeats, saw them moving like some magical, almost unreal shapes on the ultrasound. They were inside me, and I had to protect them. I'd honestly believed that once I was with child the sidhe would value that life, not mine but the children's. I knew I was wrong now, and I could not afford to be soft. Flinching was no longer an option. They say that being pregnant makes women softer, gentler, but in that moment I understood why so many religions have goddesses who are both creators and destroyers. I was barely pregnant, and I was already willing to do things that once would have made me hesitate. The time for hesitation was past.

Yolland had moved Onilwyn off Mistral, so that the Ash Lord lay on his back in the frosted grass. I picked up Onilwyn's dropped sword. "It is cold iron, sidhe lords. He meant to sheath it inside my body. I will give him back his blade."

I raised it two-handed, and I prayed for strength, the strength to protect myself and my children. The strength to protect the fathers of my children, and the people I loved. I prayed, and drove the blade down into his body. The blade pierced his chest just under the sternum. I drove it up through the softer tissue under the ribs. I drove it up into his heart, and left it there, as he'd meant to do to me.

I stood up with blood on my hands and arms, spattering my white gown. "Tell the other lords and ladies that I am with child. I am remade, reborn, and threats to my children and my kings will be met with the utmost severity."

I looked at them, and held out my bloody hands. My skin began to glow through the blood. The power came over me, and I was warm once more. The scent of roses filled the air, and petals began to fall from the sky like pink rain.

A golden cup appeared in the air in front of me. The chalice that had been lost from the Seelie Court centuries before hovered before me. The chalice was to me as the spear and dagger were to Sholto. It appeared and disappeared at whim. It came to my bloody hands, and it was as bright and shining a magic as it had ever been. Blood and death were not evil, but just another part of life.

The petals filled the chalice, and the Goddess moved in my mind. I knelt beside Mistral's still form, and dipped my fingers into the petals, but when my fingers came out they dripped with liquid, and I smelled wine. I touched it to his lips, and he groaned.

"Take the arrows out of him," I said.

It was the dark-haired lord, Yolland, who knelt and began to obey. Turloch said, "It cannot be the chalice."

"Do not trust your eyes; trust your skin, your bones," Lord Dacey said. "Can you not feel the thrum of its magic?"

Dacey joined Yolland. Mistral moaned as they jerked the arrows free. His hands convulsed with the pain, but at least he was still mostly unconscious. As the arrows came out, I touched the liquid from the chalice to each wound. They did not heal completely, for they were made by cold iron, but they did close partially, as if they had had days of healing. The two sidhe lords knelt in the cold, and watched the chalice work its magic. When I had touched every wound on Mistral's body, I turned to the kneeling lords. Sholto had stood and watched, because the chalice was not his magic but mine.

I offered the cup with its flower petals to the lords, and they drank from it. Their lips came away touched with a different color of liquid each time. One smelled of ale, another of beer. Turloch knelt at last, tears shining on his face.

"Goddess save us."

"She's trying to," I said, and let him drink.

The scent of something sweet and unknown to me flowed up.

The petals had begun to sprout small thorny vines, roses growing in the winter cold. We knelt surrounded by the beginnings of a thicket, as green and real as any summer day, as snow began to fall from the cold sky.

"Go back to the sidhe and tell them the wild rose has returned."

Lord Yolland said, "I would bear your mark, my goddess."

"So be it," I said.

A thin vine wrapped around one of his wrists. He flinched, and I knew the thorns cut him, then the living vine was a tattoo around his wrist, as perfect and delicate as the tendril it had been but a moment before. Yolland stared at the mark, wiping away the blood that was still on his white skin.

"The king will not be pleased," Turloch said.

"I have a mark of power from one of our royals," Yolland said. "Turloch, don't you understand what that means?"

"It means the king will see her dead."

"He thinks I bear his children," I said. "He will want me alive."

"How can that be?"

I held the chalice above my head, and let it go. It hovered for a moment, then vanished in a shower of roses and vines. "Magic," I said.

"Is the chalice gone?" Dacey asked, fear in his voice.

"No," I said, and Lord Yolland echoed me. "No, once it simply belonged to its chosen bearer. It has chosen Meredith, and that is good enough for me, Dacey." He touched his new tattoo. "I am yours when you need me. Only call and I will answer."

"You will have no choice but to answer now," Turloch said.

"That you did not ask for a mark is to your shame," Yolland said. "I want to live," Turloch said.

"I want to serve," Yolland said.

"Go, tell what you have seen. It is time to stop hiding. The Goddess has returned to us, and her power is abroad once more," Yolland said.

"They will not believe us," Dacey said.

"They will believe this." Yolland held up his tattoo.

"The king will kill you," Dacey said.

"If he tries, then I will knock upon the sluaghs' gates and join King Sholto and his queen," Yolland said.

"You would ride with the sluagh?" Dacey asked.

"Oh, yes," Yolland said.

Sholto picked Mistral up in his arms. "Dawn approaches. Go back to your courts, and tell them what the Goddess bids. We will tend the Storm Lord."

I laid one hand on Sholto's bare arm, and put my other hand on Mistral's leg. The chalice had helped heal his wounds, but cold iron could be like poison to us. Just because you closed the wounds didn't mean that the poison had stopped doing its deadly work.

Sholto echoed my thoughts, leaning in close to me and whispering, "You have done a miracle with the chalice and stopped his blood loss, but cold iron is a tricky thing, Meredith."

"We must get him to your healers," I said.

"I can get inside my kingdom almost instantly, but I do not know if you are strong enough for the way I would choose."

I felt the strength in Mistral's body under my hand; even unconscious, there was muscle and strength. "Save him, Sholto."

"I am the King of the sluagh, the King of That Which Passes Between. Part of the wild hunt has not chosen its form. I can use it to simply step into the sluaghs' mound."

"Do it," I said.

"You are no longer part of the magic of the hunt, Meredith."

I looked back at what was left of the hunt in the meadow. The Seelie had gotten their horses and ridden away toward their faerie mound. The mare that I had ridden and Sholto's many-legged steed were nowhere to be seen. What remained was the writhing tail of the comet we had traveled on. What was there was white and shining, as if the full moon could be turned into tentacles, limbs, and eyes, pieces and parts that formed nothing that the eye could see, or rather nothing that the mind could make sense of. I'd been told that it would blast my mind to see the unformed hunt, and once it had been true. I remembered the terror of that first time weeks ago. Now I stared into it, and knew, simply knew, that I could form what I saw into anything. It was the raw stuff of chaos, and that is the beginning of all things. I could bring order to it, and form it into the things of faerie. The power of the Goddess still rode with me, and with that, I did not fear.

"I see nothing to fear. Bring it, but know that the Goddess still rides me, and she will bring order out of its chaos."

"As long as you are protected, I am content with whatever happens," he said. Then he called, not with words, but I heard the call, not with my ears, but with my body, as if my skin vibrated with some sweet word.

The glowing remnants of the wild hunt flowed around us. It was like being surrounded by flesh that ran like water, and even that was not exactly true. I had no words, no experience to match to the sensations of being carried by raw magic, raw form. My father had made certain that I was well versed in the major religions of the human world. I remembered reading about creation in the Bible. It seemed an orderly thing, as if God said "giraffe" and a giraffe appeared fully formed as we know it. But standing in the midst of the raw chaos, I knew that creation was like any birth, messy and never quite what you expected.

A tentacle touched me, and it suddenly glowed more brightly, then, with a cry, a white horse fell away from the circle that surrounded us. Something that was almost a hand reached for me, and I took that almost hand. I stared into eyes, and I felt this formless shape ask, "What shall I be?"

What would you do, if something asked you what should it be? What form would come into your mind? If only I had had time to think, but there was no time. This was the moment of forming, and gods do not doubt. I was Goddess's vessel, but there was enough of me to know that I would never be a goddess. I had too many doubts.

The almost hand in mine became a claw. The eyes that I stared into changed to something like the head of a hawk, but it was all white and shining, and too reptilian to be a bird, and yet... The claw cut my hand as it pulled away, and my blood fell like rubies, catching the white, white light. The drops of blood spun through the chaos, and where they touched, they formed shapes. All the oldest magics come down to blood, or earth. I had no earth to offer as we spun inside the whirlwind of flesh, bone, and magic, but blood, that I had.

I thanked the... dragon for reminding me what blood was for. Fantastic shapes formed; some of them had existed in faerie before, but some were new. Some had only ever existed in books, in fairy tales, not truth, but I was part human, and I had been educated in human schools. I had never seen many of the creatures of legend, so I could not wish them into being. It was as if my imagination was being mined for shapes. Some of the forms were beautiful, some were horrific. Never had I regretted more some of the horror-movie marathons that I'd had with friends in college, because they were there too. But some of the darkest shapes gave me eyes filled with compassion before they spilled away into the night. Some of the most heartrendingly beautiful shapes gave me eyes that were pitiless, like the eyes of a tiger that you'd hand-reared until the day you realize that it was never tame, and you are just food.

Then we were inside the sluaghs' mound with the last shining remnants of the wild magic, and the sluagh themselves turning to fight us.

Sholto yelled, "We need a healer!"

Most of them hesitated, staring at us as if struck deaf and dumb. Nightflyers peeled themselves from the ceiling and flew down one of the dark tunnels. I hoped they had gone to do as their king bid, but the rest of the surprised sluagh still seemed uncertain what to do.

The shining circle around us knelt if they had legs to kneel with, and I knew what they wanted. They wanted guidance. Guidance to pick what they would be.

I realized that we were in the great central hall. There was the throne of bones and silk at the center of the main table. This was where the court ate, and when there was an audience or important visitors the big tables were moved away. Throne rooms often doubled as the formal eating area in castles, in or outside faerie.

I spoke to the assembled sluagh. "This is wild magic; it waits to be given form. Come and touch them, and they will become what you need, or want."

A tall hooded figure said, "The wild magic only forms to the touch of the sidhe."

"Once magic was for all of faerie. Some of you remember that time."

It was a nightflyer clinging to the wall who spoke, in their slightly hissing manner. "You are not old enough to remember what you speak of."

Sholto said, "The Goddess moves in her, Dervil." And the name let me know that it was a female nightflyer, though a glance could not have told me.

The shining, kneeling circle was beginning to fade. "Would you lose this chance to show the sidhe that the oldest magic knows the hand of the sluagh?" I asked. "Come, touch it before it fades. Call back what you have lost. I was the dark Goddess this night." I raised my still-bleeding hand. "The wild magic tasted my blood. It shines with white light, but so does the moon, and is that not the light in all your night skies?"

Someone stepped forward. It was Gethin, in a loud Hawaiian shirt and shorts, though he'd left his hat behind somewhere, so that his long, donkeylike ears draped bare to his shoulders. He smiled at me, showing that his humanlike face was full of sharp, pointy teeth. He had been one of the ones who had come to Los Angeles when Sholto first approached me. He was not one of the most powerful of the sluagh, but he was bold, and we needed bold tonight.

He put his small hand on one of the shining forms, and it was as if his touch were black ink poured into shining water. As the dark color hit the shining light, the form began to change. The light and darkness mingled, and for a moment I couldn't see, as if some magical veil had come down to hide part of the process. When it was clear to the eye again, it was a small black pony.

Gethin gave a cackling, delighted laugh. He threw his arms around the shaky neck, and the pony nickered happily at him. The happy noise showed that the pony had teeth as sharp as Gethin's, but bigger. The pony rolled its eyes up at me, and there was a flash of red.

"Kelpie," I whispered.

Gethin heard me, because, smiling, he said, "Nay, Princess, 'tis an Each Uisge. It's the water horse of the Highlands, and nothin' is meaner than the Highland folk, unless maybe the Border folk." He hugged the pony again, and it nickered at him again like a long-lost pet.

Others came forward then, with eager hands. There were hairy brown creatures that were not quite horses, but not quite anything else. They looked unfinished, but the sluagh cried gladly at the sight of them. There was a huge black boar with tentacles on either side of its snout. There were black hounds, huge and fierce, with eyes that were too large for their faces, like the hounds in the old Hans Christian Andersen story about dogs with eyes as big as plates. Their huge round eyes were red and glowing, and their mouths were too wide, and seemed unable to close, so that their tongues lolled out around pointed teeth.

A huge tentacle the width of a man dangled from the ceiling. I looked up to find that it covered the ceiling. I'd seen the tentacles at the hospital and in Los Angeles, but I'd never seen more than the tentacles. Now I gazed up at the entire creature. It took up the entire upper dome of the huge ceiling. It clung to the surface much as the nightflyers did, but its tentacles didn't help it cling. They were turned outward, and dangled like fleshy stalactites. Two huge eyes gazed down at us, and the moment I saw the eyes I thought, "It's like some kind of humongous octopus," but no octopus ever had so many arms, so much flesh.

That long tentacle touched the last glowing shreds of the magic, and suddenly there was a man-sized version of the tentacled creature. All the other things that had formed from the magic had been animals: dogs, horses, pigs. But this was obviously a baby of what clung to the ceiling.

The tentacles on the ceiling gave a glad cry, which echoed in the hall and made some flinch, but most smile. The huge tentacle picked up the smaller version, and lifted it to the ceiling. The tentacled creature that I had no name for clung to the larger tentacle and made small happy sounds.

Sholto turned a tearstained face to me. "She has been alone so very long. The Goddess does still love us."

I put an arm around him, a hand on Mistral. "The Goddess loves us all, Sholto."

"The Queen has been the face of the Goddess for so long, Meredith, and she has no love of anyone."

In my head, I thought, "She loves Cel, her son." Out loud I said only, "I love."

He kissed me on the forehead, ever so gently. "I'd forgotten what it was to be loved."

I did the only thing I could. I went up on tiptoe and kissed him. "I will remind you." I gave him all that he needed to see in my face as I gazed up at him, but part of me was wondering where the healer was. I was going to be queen, and that meant that no one person was so dear as all of them. I was having one of those moments now. I was happy that Sholto was happy, and happier for his people and the return of so much, but I wanted Mistral to live. Where was the healer while the miracles of the Goddess were happening?

The nightflyers poured back from the far tunnel. "They will have the healer with them," Sholto said, as if he'd read my doubts in my face. There was a sadness around the edges of his happiness. He knew that he would never be my one and only. I was queen, and even more than most, my loyalties were divided among my people.