Swallowing Darkness

Chapter Forty-Five

We reappeared in the winter field hand in hand. We'd dressed ourselves, and tied our weapons back on, and left that place of peace and magic, to step back into the aftermath of battle. No, worse than battle: bomb. There were no enemies to fight, just physics gone horribly wrong.

There were moans from the Red Caps, and for them to make noises of pain meant they were dying. But I knew what to do. I knew it as surely as you know your name, or your favorite color. I simply knew, because the air still smelled of summer, and our skin still held the dim glow of the moon and sun.

We stood in the center of the wounded, and we pushed our magic outward; as the queen had pushed darkness, we pushed blood and flesh. Blood to wash the metal bits from their bodies. There were cries of pain, clouds of blood in the dimness. Flesh to heal the wounds. Then the cries stopped, and the Red Caps got to their feet, a little shaky perhaps, but healed and whole. They stood to a man, and turned to us.

I held Holly and Ash's hands upward in mine. I called out, "The hand of blood!" and Holly stepped forth, his hand held high, his skin and hair and eyes shining with the healing that we had done.

"The hand of flesh!" and Ash stepped away from me, glowing with magic, and smiling.

I held my hands up to the sky and said, "I hold the hands of flesh and blood, and now I can make whole what is torn apart."

The Red Caps gathered around us, then dropped to their knees, their faces covered in blood from the caps that gave them their names. I went to Jonty, and touched his face. The moment I touched him, his cap ran with blood as if I'd dumped a bucket over his head. The other Red Caps clustered around me, touching, and where they touched, they bled. Then one of them grabbed Holly's wrist. Holly snarled at him, but stopped in the middle of drawing his blade because blood was pouring down the Red Cap's face.

Holly stared over his shoulder at me. "I truly have the hand of blood." He made it almost a question.

"Yes," I said, and nodded in case he was too far away to hear my voice.

A look of wonder crossed his face, and he turned back to the Red Cap at his feet and touched him gently with his free hand. The blood flowed faster, and the Red Caps began to cluster around him too.

One of them tried to grab Ash, but they did not bleed faster. "The hand of flesh," Ash said, and it wasn't a question.

I nodded.

The Red Caps clustered around Holly and me, but Ash didn't seem to mind. He just stared at his hand, as if he could feel which one held the power.

Doyle came to me, wading between the Red Caps, like walking through small, kneeling mountains. He went to his knees in front of me.

I shook my head and reached down, taking his hands in mine. I raised him to his feet. He took my hands in his, but he was staring at me in a way that I'd never seen before. "What's wrong?" I asked.

"Look at yourself," he said, his voice soft.

I didn't understand what he meant; then I caught the soft glow on the edge of my vision. There was something on my head, and it was glowing, but the glow was so faint that I hadn't noticed it.

One of the Red Caps unsheathed his great sword, and held it up for Doyle. He took it, and held the flat of the blade so I could see myself. The image was distorted, but I could see something black and silver on my head, though silver was too strong a word. I turned my head, and the moonlight caught the dew, and outlined the spiderweb that formed the crown.

"Oh, my God," I whispered.

"It is the Crown of Moonlight and Shadows," he said.

I stared at him. "But that's the crown of the Unseelie Court."

"Yes," he said.

"And it's mine!" Cel screamed it, from the edge of the field. He held a spear in his hand. The runes glowed across the field, and I knew it was the spear known only as Shrieker. The queen had indeed opened the weapons vault to her son. Shrieker had once been able to slay armies, not with its blade, but with the screaming it made in the air when it was thrown.

I saw a flash of white on the edge of the field. Cel's arm pulled back, and he made a small running start to cover us all with its deadly scream. The white stag leaped. It made a graceful arc, and put itself in the way of the spear. Cel couldn't stop the blow, so the spear buried itself in the white stag's side, and was jerked from Cel's hands as the stag tried to run.

Doyle and the rest were running, closing on Cel. I had eyes only for the stag as it collapsed to its knees. The Red Caps and the brothers ran for the fight, except for Jonty. He scooped me into his arms, as he had that one night when he'd run across the fields to get me to a different battle in time. Now he ran like the wind was at his back to get me to the stag. To get me to Frost's side before he breathed his last.

Chapter Forty-Six

The fight was between us and the dying stag. As always, Cel was between me and what I loved. Jonty sat me on the ground. My body was splattered with the warm blood of the Red Caps' magic. He looked carved of blood from holding me so close. He drew his own sword to wade into the fight, but I realized that the reason the fight was taking so long was that they were trying not to kill Cel. He wanted them dead, and even as I watched he opened a wound in Galen's arm that sprayed blood, and made him retreat.

There was blood on Rhys's face and a wound in Mistral's side that he was favoring, which meant he was hurt. Cel was no match for them, but if they only wanted to disarm him and he was willing to kill them, it put even the best warrior at a disadvantage. Holly and Ash were actually not fighting, because a goblin does not fight except to kill. It raised again the idea that the Red Caps had once been their own kingdom with its own customs.

Doyle sprang backward just in time to avoid a sword thrust. He had not drawn his sword. I think he didn't trust what he would do to Cel with a blade in his hand. It had been ingrained in them for centuries that they were not allowed to harm Cel, no matter what he did. The queen would have killed them for it. But Andais was no longer queen.

I yelled, "Kill him! Do not die to protect him!"

Galen looked my way, and got a cut across his chest that made him stumble. Cel came in for the kill, and only Doyle's sword kept the blow from falling. He'd drawn his sword at last. He drove Cel back with whirring swordwork so that his blade moved too fast to follow with the eye, like the blade of some handheld electric thing. No one was that fast, no one but Doyle.

Cel actually kept the blade at bay, his own swordwork an answering blur. In that moment, I saw for the first time that Cel wasn't just a mamma's boy. There was a warrior in all that spoiled prince. Few could have withstood Doyle, even for a few moments, but Cel managed. He made no progress, but he kept the blade from touching him or disarming him.

The field had gone utterly silent; there was nothing but the ring of blade on blade, and the grunts of effort from Cel. Doyle worked in silence, except for the slither of his feet on the ground as he moved, and the hiss of his blade along Cel's.

It was too fast for me to follow, but Andais was a goddess of war, and she saw more. She yelled out across the cold air, "Darkness, please, spare him!"

I saw a hesitation, a moment in Doyle's whirring movements. Cel tried to press the advantage, but suddenly his blade was spinning through the air, and Doyle's blade was at his throat, as he lay on the ground, panting up at the other man.

Cel was breathing hard, but he was smiling. He was smiling up at Doyle with that same arrogance I'd seen him wear all his life. His mother had saved him again. The Queen of Air and Darkness had that power.

Doyle stood with Black Madness pressed to Cel's throat, but did not drive it home. Andais was walking across the field toward us. "No, not again" was all I thought.

I looked at Mistral on his knees, clutching his side, leaning on his shining spear, his sword still naked in his hand. Galen was down to one useable arm. He stood breathing hard, his sword in his hand, rage plain on his usually smiling face. Rhys's face bled freely, and I realized that Cel had tried to cut out his only good eye. He had missed, but the fact that he'd tried meant he hadn't taken the fight seriously. He had wanted to hurt us, not necessarily kill us. He had wanted to maim.

Ash and Holly bore wounds, for they had joined the fight after I called for Cel's death. That Cel could wound them so quickly said just how much I'd underestimated him as a warrior.

I said "No." The crown glowed like a dark halo as I moved forward. I looked at Sholto on the edge of the field with his sluagh, and I yelled out, "Why did you not join the fight?"

"The queen forbade it," he called back.

I stared across the field at Andais. She wasn't quite to us. I called out, "Andais, do you see the crown upon my head?"

She hesitated, then said "Yes." The one word sighed and seemed to touch everyone on the field.

"What crown is it?"

Her hand tightened on the pommel of her sword, Mortal Dread, which could bring true death to anyone. "It is the Crown of Moonlight and Shadows. It was once my crown." There was bitterness to that last.

"Now it's mine."

"So it seems," she said.

"You vowed in open court that whichever of us became pregnant first would be your heir. You may not have intended to keep your word, but faerie kept it for you. Goddess and Consort have crowned me."

"You wear the Crown of Moonlight and Shadows," she said.

Cel screamed out, "And it is mine! You promised it to me!" Doyle's sword tip pushed a little harder, and a drop of blood welled black in the moonlight.

Andais stood there with her cloak of darkness and shadows swirling around her. Her helmet was tucked under one arm. We looked at each other over that cold ground.

"Did you promise him your crown?" I asked.

"Yes," she said.

"After promising me the chance to be queen," I said.

"Before," she said.

"You are an oathbreaker, my aunt. The wild hunt lives."

"I know you and my Perverse Creature can summon the wild hunt. I know you slew your cousin and the other conspirators of the Seelie Court."

"Would you have us hunt you?" I asked.

"Would it save my son's life?"

"No," I said.

"But still, I am an oathbreaker. I deserve to be hunted."

Andais was the ultimate survivor. There was only one reason she would choose to die.

"Before Sholto and I give chase, I will order Cel's death," I said. "Our chase will not give him time to escape, and I don't think he has enough friends left in court to save him."

"I have allies," Cel yelled from the ground.

I looked only at my aunt, not at him, as I said, "Siobhan is dead, and your so-called allies fled when they could. The only one who came to save you is your mother. If she is dead, then I think, cousin, you will find that you have no allies left. They don't follow you. They follow her."

"They will not follow you, Meredith," Cel said. "Crown, or no crown, if it is not me on the throne, then they will kill you and choose their own ruler. My spies have heard them plot this."

I laughed, and finally looked down at Cel. Whatever he saw on my face widened his eyes, and made him catch his breath, as if he saw something that frightened him. "You never understood me, cousin, or you, my aunt," I said. "I never wanted to rule. I know they hate me, and no matter how much power I show them, they will always see me as the future of the sidhe. They see me as the diminished them. They see in me what they see in Sholto, that the sidhe grow weak. They would rather hide in their hollow hills and waste away than change and go outside to meet the world. I had hope for our people. My father had hope for our people."

"His hope is what killed him," Cel said.

I looked down at him where he lay on the ground, Doyle's sword at his throat, but he didn't look frightened. He believed that Andais would save him. Even now, he was confident in her power to protect him.

"How do you know that hope killed my father?" I asked.

Something crossed through his eyes, some thought or emotion. I smiled at him.

"It's just an expression," he said, but his voice wasn't so confident now.

"No," I said, "it's not." I knelt beside him.

"Cel," Andais said, "Cel, don't... "

My smile stayed. I couldn't seem to stop smiling, though I wasn't happy. "I hadn't seen you fight before. I didn't understand how good you were."

Cel tried to sit up, but Doyle's sword point pushed him back down. "I am glad you finally understand that I could lead our people."

"You killed him. You killed Prince Essus. You yourself. It's why we couldn't find an assassin. It's why no matter how many people Andais tortured they had nothing to tell us about my father's death."

He yelled, "She's mad, Mother. You ordered me not to plot against my uncle. I obey you in all things."

"But you didn't plot," I said. "You did it yourself. Because you were good enough with a blade, and because you knew he would hesitate. You knew my father loved you. You counted on it."

Andais's voice was almost a wail, "Cel, tell me she's wrong."

"She's wrong," he yelled.

"Swear by the Darkness that Eats all Things. Swear by the wild hunt. Swear, and I'll believe you," she said. "Swear those oaths and I will fight to the end for you."

He tried. "I swear by the Darkness That Eats All Things... " and for a moment I thought I'd been wrong, then he stopped. He tried again. "I swear by the wild hunt... I swear." He screamed it. "I swear!"

"What do you swear, Cel? Son, tell me you did not kill my brother. For the love of Goddess, tell me you did not kill Essus."

He lay on the ground, staring from Doyle to me, to the circle of my other guards who had gathered around us. He stared up at us, his eyes wide, shifting back and forth as if seeking a way out. Rhys stood beside Doyle, his face a mask of blood. Galen came to kneel by me. He had no good arm left to both hug me and keep his blade. He leaned his head against my cheek, and whispered, "I'm sorry, Merry."

Mistral was still kneeling where he'd been left, which meant he was hurt indeed. But he called out, "Essus was the best of us."

Cel yelled, "So good, my uncle, that they wanted him to be king. They wanted him to kill my mother and be king."

"Essus would never have done that," Doyle said.

"My brother loved us!" Andais screamed it at him. She looked at me, and there was real pain in her eyes. In all the years of seeking, it had never occurred to her that it was her own son.

"Yes," Cel said. He grabbed my arm, and Doyle's sword brought another drop of blood from his throat. "Do you know what your father's last words were, Meredith?"

I could only shake my head.

"He said he loved me." Then I felt his power spill up and over us all. One moment he was helpless, the next he was the wielder of old blood, and everyone around him had wounds to be reborn.