Faery Moon Read online

  “Fear not me,” Nuallan said. That hand brushed his face as well, and memory twisted in Caith’s soul like a knife, the recollection of all the hope he had ever had and lost. “Would you serve the Sidhe, man?”

  In that moment he must wish it, in the way of a man forsworn of all he loves, and still, at the call of his king, heart-loyal. Nuallan knew that; and the terrible compassion in the Sidhe’s asking was as hurtful to mortal pride and mortal hopes as another bath in memory.

  “You are gentler,” Nuallan said. “Your curses fall and perish, your heart is yea and nay, you are quicksilver. We are changeless and our blades are baneful to the soul, being not made for the flesh. — Would you serve the Sidhe, Man?”

  “You know that I have no choice.” A calm settled on Caith’s soul at that second asking, like the numbness after a wound and before the pain begins. “Is it this Ceannann you want? And can I have Dubhain back?”

  “Do not curse Dubhain so. He loves you, man, for all his wickedness.” Nuallan reached and gathered up the elfshot which hung at Caith’s neck, fingering this act of rebellion ever so gently. “So do I love thee, despite thy treasons. Never look at him or me with this. The sight would blast you.”

  And letting fall the stone, Nuallan turned and walked away, where a horse waited, saddleless, pale as the moonrise. Dathuil was the horse’s name. He had been Caith’s once; that grace and that power was another thing he had lost, or only thought he once had owned.

  And when Nuallan seized Dathuil’s mane and leaped to his back, the horse leapt away into shadow and into faery, where Caith no longer could have ridden him.

  “A plague on you!” Caith shouted after him, left in darkness, and clenched the elfshot stone in his fist. “A plague on you and all the Sidhe!”

  For now that Nuallan had named the thing he should never do, and told him the consequence, that seed was there to take root in his perverse heart and spread and grow with insidious swiftness.

  Thus Nuallan dealt with a rebel. Caith had never looked on Dubhain or Nuallan through the stone. He carried it as a talisman against other seemings and traps, and he had never truly wished to look at either the bright nor the dark Sidhe until now.

  But now, knowing Dubhain’s wicked nature and his gift for shape-shifting, and after Nuallan’s challenge, he must walk beside Dubhain and lie beside him in the dark and not look at him as he really was—

  There was no faith left him, no trust, no truth. It slid away with Nuallan, back into faery. And there was no one to curse the loss. The lightning only fell; it could not be blamed that flesh burned and human souls withered in the light of a beauty they could never have.

  He found deep night about him, in which the stars shone bright above the skeleton trees, for faery stole time from a man, as well. The moon had risen in the mortal world.

  And other things might have changed.

  “Dubhain,” he whispered, and stood there bereft, until a step disturbed the ground behind him, and a presence breathed at his nape.

  It might have been anything, in this fey, fell woods. But it was Dubhain, with his hair shading his dark eyes in the moonlight.

  “I did nae hear ye, man, understand. Nuallan hae sent me.”

  “To do what?”

  “Och, why, to see men burnin’ and doin’ mischief. D’ ye no’ smell the wickedness?” Dubhain scratched beneath his arm and shook his thick dark hair back with a flash of eye quickly obscured. He pointed then along the streamcourse where the men had taken Ceannann. “Witchery, man. It fills the wind of this vale like the smoke and the bog-stench.”

  “Are they dead?”

  “Is ’t the lad or the lass ye inquire of?”

  “Plague on you! What hurt did they do them?”

  “Why, a scratch or two, a bit of sport, nothing lasting. But I hae followed them a time. Mayhap I disturbed that sport.” Dubhain waved his hand again toward the black water and the far bank, where the woods grew thick and shadows were impenetrable. “A merry lot of bandits, and well on their way, now ye’ve betrayed the lad to them. I would hae thought ye’d do better, my prince. What, ye saved yourself and left your host to such knavery?”

  “So Nuallan did send you.”

  “He hae nae love of sorcery, nay, not at all. The draiocht sets his teeth on edge. And, aye, he sent me hither and sends ye yon. Shall I carry ye, man?”

  Caith whirled away from him, sought with his eyes an escape he knew was not there. The black trees stood about him like prison bars. Teile was far away. He would never walk that path back to it, now. The Sidhe would see to that. Fate would. Nightly his dreams changed. The boy grew. The woman set her love on a better man.

  Necessity.

  “Caith, sweet Caith,brave Caith,...”

  He shut his eyes; and when he opened them he had clenched his hand on the elfshot stone, with no idea why. Then he wondered ... his mind flew to it like ravens to corruption ... what Dubhain truly was, without his fond illusions.

  No, he told himself. No. ’T is Nuallan’s trap. Nuallan was angry about the stone, and he set me a temptation with it to teach me a lesson. I would be a greater fool than I have been, if I gave way to curiosity.

  But his hand stayed locked about the stone, and in another corner of his mind he asked himself what good advice the Sidhe had ever given him, or to what good thing the Sidhe had ever led him.

  Which led ineluctably to wondering, not for the first time, what the Sidhe had given to him for a companion, and to what he attached the trust a man had to bestow on some living creature or wither from within.

  For all he knew, Dubhain might be something as dreadful anddamning as lived in this glen.

  But he turned to look at Dubhain only with mortal eyes, at the dark hair and dusky boy’s face. “Oh, aye,” Caith said, all quietly. “What haste in ’t? Where shall we go?”

  “Why,” said Dubhain, “wherever pleases.”

  “How far?”

  “Why, as far as pleases me, sweet Caith. There’s mischief to do, thou’rt apt for ’t, and I maun bear thee.”

  “Hellspawn,” he said in despair. “Than Nuallan, thou ‘rt far the fairer.”

  “I?” Rare perplexity came to Dubhain’s face, and an uneasy laugh. “Than the great Sidhe? Ye do mistake him, man.”

  “Or I mistake you.” Cold touched the nape of his neck. “Take me where I must go, Dubhain.”

  A moment the perplexity lingered. Then Dubhain threw the hair from his eyes and shook himself, loosening his clothes, undoing his belt. “’T is a favor I do ye,” Dubhain paused to say, frowning the while, and his eyes showed a faint glow, like slumbering ember. “Ye do know that.”

  “Silence is a great trial to you, is it?”

  “Mind your impudence, man!” And having said, Dubhain drew a great breath, popped a smooth stone into his mouth, and greyed to shadow, and to utter dark, until his clothes fell all in a heap. A great black horse came down on all fours with a toss of his head, midnight forelock and mane swinging over an eye glowing red with hellfire. The pooka spurned the clothing underfoot, kicked up his heels with a spin perilously close to Caith’s body, and danced a careful and wicked arc just out of reach.

  “Play me no tricks.” Caith bent and gathered up Dubhain’s garments, rolled them up and bound them in the belt with Dubhain’s little pouch of oddments, ignoring all the pooka’s threats. With that in hand, he seized the mane that streamed and flowed over his hands like smoke, and from that moment Dubhain stood still. At that moment it was very easy to mount— Dubhain all but flowed under him as Caith swung himself up and landed astride.

  Dubhain whirled then and plunged straight for the water, altogether as if he would try a pooka’s dearest trick, and drown his rider forthwith.

  But Dubhain breasted that dark stream, scattering droplets in the moonlight and making of Guagach’s threat a moment of grace and beauty— Dubhain could not forbear to take a skip through the beast’s own hunting ground on his way, and Caith’s heart was in his throat unti
l Dubhain came out on the farther bank, coursing up the leafy slope beyond with never a jolt in his stride. Dubhain shook the water from his mane in a moonlit scatter of drops as he struck out through the skeletal woods, taking deadfalls and skirting thickets as smoothly as a dream.

  No man could fall off a pooka’s back. And Dubhain delighted to run his rider under branches and over jumps— but all without a sound of hoofbeats now. It was the wind they were racing, and the dark, and a company of kidnappers of a sort that reeked of Sidhe doings.

  The draiocht sets his teeth on edge, Dubhain had said of Nuallan.

  Black sorcery was set against them.

  And a beast that had surely heard Dubhain’s wanton challenge of it.

  Chapter Three

  Down a wooded hill Dubhain went, and over a jump no mortal horse could have taken nor any rider keep his seat in it bareback, except it was a pooka’s mane a man clung to.

  Never a pooka could lose a rider while the pooka wished to keep him— but Dubhain in this shape was far more fey and more wicked than Dubhain on two feet. Dubhain in this shape was a killer, and it must try his pooka soul to refrain from wickedness, with a river constantly near him to offer the temptation.

  Even white Dathuil could not have matched Dubhain stride for stride now. Water lay in front of them, Guagach in another winding, it might be: Dubhain splashed across it in a black ecstasy of mischief, scattered water beneath his hooves with a splash he need not have touched the world to make, and if something in its deep lair was growing more irate by the instant, why, thought Caith, it surely recognized in the pooka a younger cousin, a creature of the river-deep and the cold waters, power without moderation.

  Scatheless still, Dubhain struck out through the thinning woods, past the last few trees— for by moonlight he was in his element, and challenging the beast to catch him, when nothing in faery could keep Dubhain’s pace in the mortal world. He drew the wind into his nostrils and those nostrils glowed with the fire in his blood; but nothing so baneful as the fire in his eye, in which madness— Caith saw it roll at him— blazed full.

  At that, Caith wound his free hand deep in the smoke of Dubhain’s mane and held himself wary of any sudden break for the water, fearing now that any sense in which Dubhain knew him was altogether lost— that Dubhain would finally, in a moment he had feared might one day come, take his life.

  The trees gave way to a broad water-meadow, where Guagach flowed into a broad loch.

  And if Dubhain had run before, now he flew, his long, black body coursing above the grassy loch shore, moving to the hiss and whuff of his breaths, but with never a sound from his hooves since that splash through the brook.

  “Dubhain!” Caith called into his back-laid ears; and the dark head lifted and turned. An eye full of balefire regarded him the space of half a dozen strides— if Dubhain in truth saw anything but the night and a rider who might have borne any name, been any Man, any enemy. Fire from Dubhain’s nostrils lit the steam of his breath, and he kicked out in mid-stride, only to scare his rider, and because the thought sailed through Dubhain’s wicked mind. The wind became like ice. The dry grass passed beneath in a blur and there were other such kicks, jolts to make his rider think of falling ... wilder and madder Dubhain was growing, and Caith knew not now whether they were even on the track Nuallan had wanted them to take, or whether draiocht might have seized on Dubhain and turned him to its own dark purpose.

  Again the ground changed, and became a road beneath Dubhain’s hooves. Then slowly, lightly at first and then louder and louder, a thunder grew, which was Dubhain’s hooves upon the mortal earth.

  Now Dubhain ran not silken-smooth, but with the earthy violence of any horse at full pace, his hooves hitting rain-wet ground in the moonlight, the featureless meadow flying past on their left and the shimmering surface of the broad loch on the other, sparkling black beneath the stars.

  A shadow showed on that road ahead, a little knot of something beneath the stars, growing closer and closer with every stride of Dubhain’s legs.

  “Who are they ahead of us?” Caith asked, for if they had come to what Dubhain was chasing, he reasoned that Dubhain’s sense might— might, in some degree, return, now. “Dubhain, are they enemies, or no?”

  There was no response at all but a tossing of Dubhain’s head: the pace never slacked.

  “Are they our enemies?” Caith cried desperately. “ Dubhain, stop! Stop, and use your wits!”

  Dubhain did the perverse opposite, a palpable increase in his pace until it seemed that mortal or immortal sinew must tear and bone shatter, so thunderously he ran. The wind caught Caith’s cloak and his hair, and Dubhain’s mane all but blinded him.

  “Damn you!” Caith cried. He wished desperately to stop now. He did not want to be carried blindly into what he did not understand, or start a fight only because Dubhain plunged fecklessly into some strangers’ midst. Caith saw the riders swept nearer and nearer, saw one turn in his saddle and saw the alarm spread among the others.

  “Damn you!” Caith cried, while his free hand necessarily sought the hilt of the sword that hung at his side, and he had no hold at all on Dubhain. “Who are they? What cause do they serve? Stop, damn your scattered wits, Dubhain! Hold back a little!”

  Dubhain but snorted and threw his head.

  “Dubhain, will ye make me their murderer for no reason, thou damned fool? Slow, let me at least find out who they are!”

  But for his own protection— Dubhain giving him no sign of understanding— Caith pulled the cursed blade from its sheath and held it at the side and not in the riders’ sight. He was calmer now. Now that he had that familiar weight in his hand, he was himself headed down the track of deadly, practiced estimations: where his first targets must be if it came to blows, to what quarter the first would break in flight, and what he should do if Dubhain perversely stopped in the midst of them. He was ice cold, now that he believed Dubhain would force him to it, will he, nil he ... and now that he had a weapon drawn.

  They were twenty or more, these riders, and in the narrowing distance and the starlight he made out a paleness about the head of one.

  It was Firinne, of a certainty, her hair astream in the wind— and near her, less bright, shone the pallor of Ceannann’s hair.

  When Caith saw that, he was for a single breath completely willing to ride in among them and deal death on the bandits that had abducted two innocents and burned their cottage.

  But then a reasonable doubt held him— because he had no clear knowledge what side the Sidhe had cast him on, whether rescue or revenge or any cruel trick of harm and guilt such as the bright Sidhe loved to play on mortals.

  If the men threatened to kill their prisoners, and he could not stop— if Dubhain had utterly lost his reason and was sweeping honest men to hell— there was nothing he could do to prevent it except let himself be killed ... and that, that, he had not the courage to accept. He had tried that escape long since, and the Sidhe would not have him escape so easily as that.

  Not their dearest, most useful weapon.

  “Hold,” he muttered, when they were coming up on the riders’ backs, and them going at all their speed. “Dubhain, damn you...”

  Then he saw the hindmost rider turn in the saddle, saw the arm outstretched straight at him, and felt a blow to his shoulder as if he had ridden full tilt into a branch: that was what his shocked wits believed in the instant the blow spun him half from Dubhain’s moving body. He snatched after Dubhain’s mane with his left hand in blind confidence he could not fall, his right still holding the sword he did not want to lose.

  But, from the moment of that blow, the pooka-ride seemed slowed, and things began to happen in eerie stateliness— he found himself falling indeed, which was impossible. No chance blow could take him from Dubhain’s back—

  Unless Dubhain willed— or unless it were a Power great enough to overwhelm a Sidhe.

  He was thinking that, as his right leg slid helplessly over Dubhain’s rump and his body
hurtled through empty air.

  He met the ground. He skidded over stones with a violence at once appalling and numbing, a battering tumble over reeds and water and unyielding rock until at last he found a stopping place, his back strained and his legs at a crazily twisted rest.

  That was well enough, he thought. He was still whole. He had stopped moving. He lay there dazed, the wind knocked out of him, eyes open in contemplation of the dark and the shock.

  The earth beneath him shook with the thump of hooves. They will ride me down, was his first thought; and hard upon it came the realization that, although the pain was comparatively dull now, he might well be dying, anyway, if he could not soon get a whole breath into his body.

  He had been shot, he decided. He could not, through the general dull pain, tell where the arrow had gone. But he wanted a breath so badly his wits were hazing and no breath would come into his throat, for the life of him.

  “Dubhain,” he tried to say aloud; but without breath, he could not utter a word, could not even keep his wits from scattering.

  Was this what you Saw, Dubhain? Draiocht to sever us one from the other? Draiocht greater than you could defeat?

  Badbh curse you, what a time to leave me!

  Perhaps his legs were shattered. Perhaps everything was. He struggled with his arm to lift himself, and at the black verge of fainting, rolled onto his back and got a thin, small gasp into his throat.

  Then the dark of his vision became a black of night again, and he saw a ring of horsemen towering above him, against the starry night.

  The Badbh take you, he railed on Nuallan. Is this your plan? It lacks, it verily lacks in many points, Lord Sidhe...

  One rider urged his horse forward until it blotted out half his view of the sky, the stirrup all but over his head.