War For The Oaks Part 21

"Can't be late to my own funeral," Eddi said, meaning it to sound casual. But she couldn't draw her gaze away from the cool green sheet-lightning of the barrier on the stairs. All of the phouka's power, even his transformations, seemed sleight-of-hand beside it. Bright as it was, it should have tinted everything around it green; but deep darkness still gathered in the lee of the wall, and the woods beyond remained full of impenetrable night. "What is it?" Eddi asked finally.

"I could tell you what it's called, but I suspect that's not what you want to know. It forms a ragged circle around the valley in which the creek runs, from just beyond the top of the Falls down to the Missis- sippi. It will contain any forces generated here tonight, and keep even the sound of battle within its bounds. The barrier is invisible to pa.s.sers-by, but they feel a profound disinclination to cross it. And if a park policeman stood on the stairs above at this moment, he would see not so much as a hair of me."

"Would he see me?"

"Yes, but in a very short time, that will be tended to. Air and Darkness, I nearly forgot! Here, face me and close your eyes."

"What? Why?"

"Your ward against glamour, my heart, as I promised you."

She did as he asked. "To begin with a broken promise," she heard him mutter, as if to himself, "that would have been a fine start to the evening's festivities." A fresh, sharp smell filled the night around her, reminding her alternately of sage and thyme and menthol. His light touch on her eyelids made her start, and left behind a trace of something that made the skin feel cool. His finger brushed her nose, then her lips, and each earlobe in turn. He took her hands, turned them palms up, and touched them, and left the tingling feeling there, too.

"A few seconds for that to take effect," he said. "That should do it. Open your eyes, my primrose." She did.

She nearly fell, out of sheer surprise. She saw color and detail around her, where before there had been darkness. But the colors were not the ones the sun brought out; these were dusky, rich, like the shadows in dark-toned velvets. The details were strange, as well. Eddi felt as if she could see the tree trunks from all sides at once. Elements she'd never noticed in her surroundings had become the definitive ones, and the elements she'd thought most important had receded into near obscurity.

"I see why you didn't want me to drive with this," Eddi gasped at last. It was difficult to finish the sentence when she heard her own voice. It sounded more like it did on tape....

"This is-this is really my voice, isn't it?" she said.

"If you mean, are you hearing it as it sounds outside your head, yes. You'll become accustomed to the effects in a few minutes."

The phouka looked like himself, only more so-that was the only way she could describe it. "You don't sound any different."

His smile was slow and sardonic. "That, my heart, is because I have never wanted you to think me anything but what I am."

"No, you never have, have you?" She shook her head. "What is it you've done to me, anyway?"

"Do you think you can walk and listen at once?" he sighed.

"I'm not sure," Eddi said. But she found that, strange as her new perceptions were, they never led her astray. If anything, the stairs seemed less treacherous.

"What you're seeing-and hearing, and all the rest of it-is, simply put, the truth," the phouka lectured over his shoulder. "Your senses are now resistant to illusion, preconception, and willful ignorance."

"How does that account for my being able to see in the dark?"

He sighed again, loudly enough that she knew he'd meant her to hear it. "Do you want me to explain it with physics-lumens, refraction, and the components of your eye? I shall not. It is magic. For the purpose at hand, night blindness is a preconception. Will you settle for that?"

"Yes, boss," she said patiently.

"Good. Because there's a great deal I have to tell you, and no time at all in which to do so."

He stopped on the next landing, turned to her, and took firm hold of her shoulders. She couldn't see very far past the surrounding trees, but something about the slope of the land suggested that they might be near the foot of the hillside.

"Look at me," the phouka said, giving her a little shake, "and pay the closest attention, my sweet. You are about to submit yourself to a ritual of great wonder and not a little terror. You will be asked to do and say many strange things. Balk at none of them." His gaze wandered from hers, and stopped at her shoulder.

He seemed to become aware for the first time that his hand was there. A little too quickly, he let go and tucked his hands in his jacket pockets.

"And try, if you can," he continued sternly, "to seem a woman under a glamour. There's no hope that such a masquerade can go undetected for long, but..."

"But?"

The phouka shrugged. "I have done the unthinkable in giving the ointment to you. Whether it is unpardonable as well will depend on how well you carry your part of the ceremony tonight. So please, my sweet, even if you can't pretend dazzlement, go through with it all no matter what it may be."

Eddi heard the edge of desperation in his voice, at odds with his casual posture. "I said I would, didn't I?

If I wasn't going to, dummy, I wouldn't be here." Her words didn't sound as light as she'd meant them to be-or perhaps it was only the effect of the phouka's ointment on her hearing.

"Well," he said softly, "that brings me promptly to my last three bits of counsel. Tell no lies tonight, to anyone; do not give your word lightly; and do not break it. Lies and broken oaths are weapons in the hands of your enemies. And in the dance we dance tonight, there's no knowing who the enemy is."

Then he turned from her and strode off down the stairs. She settled the black beret on her head, straightened her own back, and followed him.

When she got below the trees, she saw them. They milled restlessly in the steep-sided bowl of land before her, and at first she perceived them only as the many-celled organism of an army. Then faces and bodies separated themselves from the ma.s.s.

There was a shrunken, brown figure, too lean and wrinkled to identify as male or female, who wore nothing but a knee-length tunic of rough leather. It carried a wooden cudgel as long as it was, and possibly twice as heavy, and watched her with bright, black, hostile eyes.

Eddi couldn't tell the s.e.x of the next creature, either, any more than she could tell at a glance the s.e.x of a cat. It had short fur the color of toffee and a long-nosed, chinless face. It was squatting on its haunches on a fallen tree, cleaning the curving edge of something that looked like a wooden sickle. When Eddie met its eyes (large, without whites, and bright blue), it ran a long pink tongue over its lips.

A quick motion at the edge of her vision was all the warning she had. Then something white the size of her hand flapped across her face and caught heavily in her hair. She stumbled backward and nearly tripped over the last step. Her hair swung in front of her eyes, and with it a feral white face with a nimbus of cobweb hair, milky wings, a long spidery white hand that reached out and pinched her nose-the thing launched itself into the air with a fierce kick to her chin, and she recognized it as a creature like the one the phouka had summoned to her windowsill.

A trill of laughter sounded ahead of her, breathtakingly sweet and cold. It was laughter at her expense, from a slender, pale young man whose brown hair was tucked behind his pointed ears. Then he turned his head a little, and Eddi decided she'd been wrong; it was a young woman. With a last taunting gesture, the young woman looked like a man again, and Eddi was relieved when he/she turned his/her back and wandered into the crowd.

There was a crowd. They gathered at the foot of the hill, some perching on the few picnic tables that dotted the gra.s.s. Eddi saw b.e.s.t.i.a.l figures, hulking-shouldered and heavy-headed. She saw ethereal ones that glimmered like moonlight on wet gra.s.s. She saw uncounted pairs of eyes, all watching her with unfriendly curiosity, with cold fascination. She cursed the phouka's ointment that enabled her to see them all in the dark.

Even as she thought of him, the phouka was at her side. His face was immobile with the effort of keeping his thoughts off it. But his body betrayed him; there was eloquence in the way he held out his hand to her, not as a command but as a courtesy offered to an honored guest.

There's no knowing who the enemy is, the phouka had said. Now he stood among her supposed allies, his own kind, as defiant as a prisoner of war. To the rest of the Seelie Court, she was the next best thing to the angel of death; she understood their chilly looks. She wished she could make as much sense out of the phouka. She laid her hand in his as regally as she could manage, and he guided her through the sullen throng.

As the crowd thinned, Eddi could see what the phouka was leading her toward, and the sight made her steps falter.

There were fifteen or twenty of them between the two elms that grew on the gra.s.sy mound. All of them were human-shaped and human-featured, but she would never have mistaken them for ordinary men and women. They were tall, slender, and preternaturally graceful; they radiated beauty like a blinding light that seared the eyes and scattered the wits. Their attire was splendid and fanciful. On their clothing and hands, gold and silver flashed, and the many lucent colors of faceted jewels.

A terrible longing swelled in Eddi as she watched them, like a balloon being inflated painfully in her chest. Her vision distorted with tears, and she blinked them quickly away. She had no idea what she longed for, but she felt as if the memory of that glittering a.s.sembly would remain with her forever, and the rest of the world would look dim and blurred beside it.

At the foot of the mound, the phouka dropped to one knee and drew her down next to him. She vaguely noticed that she'd knelt on a stone. The phouka squeezed her hand, and she turned to find him, head bowed, watching her out of the corner of his eyes. Then a clear, low voice sounded above them, speaking a language Eddi didn't know, and she looked up.

Perhaps she was under a glamour after all. n.o.body could be as beautiful as this. Wide-set, sloping eyes of peridot-green, dark red hair that spilled over one shoulder in a thick waist-length plait, a white inverted triangle of a face with none of the ruddiness that should have accompanied that hair... Eddi remembered words that w.i.l.l.y had sung the night before.

True Thomas he pulled off his cap And bowed him low down to his knee "All hail, thou mighty Queen of Heaven, Your like on earth I ne'er did see."

For a giddy moment, Eddi wanted to ask this woman if she was the one in the song. But the answer might be yes, and she didn't want to know it.

The red-haired woman wore a fitted jacket of velvet and satin, in a green so pale it was almost white. It was embroidered all over with silver and pearls, and her close-fitting white pants were trimmed with silver down the seams. The silhouette was popular with avant-garde French designers. The effect was that of a padded doublet and hose. A short black velvet cape hung like a partial eclipse from one shoulder, fastened with silver and emeralds.

She lifted her exquisite chin and smiled a little at the phouka. He rose, and Eddi scrambled up after him. The woman spoke again, a lovely and confusing convocation of rounded vowels and rolling con- sonants.

The phouka drew a long breath. "Might we speak English, Lady?" he said slowly. "My companion does not understand our language, and it would be discourteous to use it before her."

Shocked murmuring rose from the group on the mound. The red-haired woman stared down at the phouka. No frown creased her white brow or marred the perfect shape of her lips, but her green eyes were hard and cold as gla.s.s. The phouka went a little pale, but did not drop his gaze.

At last she laughed, a sound like wind chimes or breaking gla.s.s. "It shall be as you wish. We would not have it said that we lack courtesy."

But the phouka did not relax.

The peridot eyes were on Eddi now, and she felt small and grubby under their piercing regard. "We are pleased to have you attend us, Eddi McCandry." The red-haired woman smiled. "We have heard naught but good of you."

It was hard to look into that glorious face and not trust its every expression. Compliments from those lips, in that lovely voice, were always true, surely? But Eddi watched the phouka's fingers clench, and said only, "I'm grateful for that."

That seemed to amuse her. "Ah, no, the burden of grat.i.tude is all ours." Which seemed an odd way to put it. "But tell us," she went on gently, "have you come tonight of your own will, or are you constrained to do so?"

The phouka had warned her not to lie. Here was a direct question-and she wasn't sure what the truth was. The phouka had a.s.sured her that, if she tried to escape him, she would fall into the hands of one Court or another eventually. He had moved in with her, ordered her around, threatened her.

He had also guarded her with relentless vigilance, saved her life, and cosseted her like a fond uncle. Eddi thought of him, in the throes of a vulnerable drunk, at her kitchen table. She remembered their quarrel in the parking lot before practice-and he'd said then that he wouldn't stop her, if she chose to make a run for it. He had, in the end, begged her to do what he had once been prepared to force from her.

Slowly, she said, "If the obligations of friends.h.i.+p are constraints, then I'm constrained to be here."

The phouka shot her a startled, sideways glance.

"Indeed," said the red-haired woman, and frowned at the phouka. He held his hands out to either side, palms up.

"Come, then," the woman snapped, and turned on her heel. "We'll waste no more time on pleasantries."

Pleasantries, right, thought Eddi. She asked the phouka in a whisper, "What was all that?"

"A test, of sorts," he replied. His eyes followed the red-haired woman as she stalked up the hill. "I think you did very well."

"She doesn't."

"Oh, she may come to agree with me yet."

"Hmm. Who is she? She makes me feel like... like... something disgusting."

"Welcome, then, to a very exclusive club. She is a queen, my primrose."

Eddi tried not to be impressed, and failed.

"She and her kin have been Mab, t.i.tania, Gloriana-and all of those are only shadows of what she is.

She is a ruler of the oldest kingdom on earth, and has been so for longer than the span of a mortal empire and all its emperors." A grin flashed on his handsome dark face. "So forgive her, sweet, if she seems a little set in her ways."

"Do you always try to annoy her like that?"

His gaze turned to the sky above the mound, and the full moon that rode the running river of clouds.

"No," he said, "I didn't always." Then the stillness was back on his face. "Go up," he told her. "They're waiting."

On the mound, the company had formed into two rows, and the aisle they made led to the two trees at the summit. The red-haired queen stood between them. Light outlined the trees, traced the bark, then leaped across to her like electrical current.

Eddi stepped forward, and stepped again. Leaving the phouka was like jumping out of a plane-he was solid and in his own way comprehensible, and he was the only certain ally she had. All the rest of this was air and danger. But she kept walking.

She was only a few feet from the summit before the queen nodded, and raised both arms. The light from the trees arced out and coursed over her. She felt a snowy chill, heard a single ringing note, breathed in a fleeting scent of some spicy, potent flower. Then the light broke in two, and lay on the gra.s.s and in the air above them in a quivering lattice.

"By the Holy Trees," the queen said, and her voice was lovely and terrible, "be these, our words and ways, all sacred here."

The gathered beings rumbled in agreement.

"Join we together in this?" the queen asked.

Silence stretched for an eternal moment, and even Eddi could feel the tension that sprang up. She realized suddenly that it was not only tension. Something swirled unevenly around her, something that stung her skin like a slap wherever it eddied.

"Aye," the a.s.sembly murmured at last, and the many pitches and timbres of their voices became, in an uncanny unison, one voice. The something that hovered in the air swept past and gathered itself with an arctic snap-in the queen's person? It was not a wind, though she felt as if her hair ought to be blown back from her face with the force of it.

The lattice of light blazed up, and cast a frosty illumination on the queen's triumphant face. "We ask with one voice, then. Bind over mortal flesh to the service of spirit; bind the magics of the spirit under the yoke of mortal doom."

"We all so ask," said the company.

The queen swept them with a pale green stare. "What is dearly wanted must be dearly bought.

"Name the fee."

The queen's eyes fixed on Eddi, the fierce, challenging look of birds of prey. "I speak aloud, that none should say he did not know the cost, that all shall know the size of our need by the price we pay." Eddi thought she could feel the crowd stir nervously. "Mortal flesh and mortal doom be one, and mortal will may rule them. Spirit shall reside in flesh, doom reside in spirit, and all shall bow before will."

Great. What does it mean? She knew it was important-she read it in the queen's face, the watchers'

unrest. Was she meant to understand it? She thought not. She committed a shorthand version of the queen's last sentence to memory, as she did when learning song lyrics, but she hadn't time to do more.

"We will pay the price," the eerie voice-of-many-voices rose up around her.

One of the ladies of the court approached the queen. Her sea-green calf-length skirt whispered sweetly of silk when she knelt. Her honey-colored hair was cut very short, except for a layer at the top which fell to her shoulders on all sides like a translucent veil. She held a white dish so thin that light came through it, with a little round cake on it the color of old piano keys.

The scent of that cake reached Eddi, and all her senses were subordinated to her sense of smell. Perhaps it was something she'd eaten as a child, and loved, and forgotten. No, surely she'd never smelled that before, as surely as she knew she had. Its fragrance was warm, spicy, cool, and mild, and she knew it would be creamy on the tongue and crisp between the teeth. It was difficult to concentrate on anything else.

Then Eddi realized that the cake lay in the queen's palm, white on white. The court lady had rejoined the watchers. An unfamiliar collection of sound dragged Eddi's attention aside: a rhythmic jingling and a soft clatter. They came from the tall figure that stepped up to the queen and bent the knee. The sound of armor.

It was not the metal plate of Hollywood knights; this was both simpler in its lines and more complex in its construction. It was an impossibly harmonious collection of j.a.panese samurai garb, biker's leathers, and costuming for a science fiction movie. There was golden metal mesh so fine it might have been cloth; s.h.i.+ning quilted leather, dyed dark green; and solid plates over the shoulders, torso, and lower legs that looked and sounded like brilliantly lacquered wood. The head was covered by a lacquered helmet that suggested what might have been an animal's face. She couldn't be sure; it was not an animal she'd ever seen. Eddi saw no sign of wear on the armor.

From the figure's gauntleted hand the queen took a knife. It looked like silver, with a short, thin blade.

She held it point down over the little cake in her palm. An instant before the motion, Eddi saw what it would be from the tightness in the queen's face. Then the queen plunged the knife into the cake and her own hand, and Eddi was too shocked to cry out.

Blood welled up and stained the white morsel. Bread and blood, and much good may the knowledge do you. The queen watched without expression, but her gaze never left her hand, as if she found her own blood fascinating.

The scent of the cake changed. It ceased to be like food at all, or like anything Eddi knew, but it was exquisite and to her horror, she longed for it. This, she knew suddenly, was the part of the ceremony most changed by the phouka's ointment. Without it, she would have wanted the bloodstained cake and felt no horror at all, like some un-discriminating animal.