The Seelie King's War Read online

  “As you know, Balnar, I am no longer queen, but the dowager. When Ailenbran marries, there will be a queen again on the throne. So—not a queen, but still a mother. And it is the mother who is going, not the queen.”

  She turned to Snail and added, “If you are right about how close the horde is, then my late husband’s one remaining son—my son—and his small troop are in terrible danger. I could not help my husband or his other sons when they left this realm. But I will be there for Ailenbran.”

  Balnar recovered quickly. “Who will hold the palace, ma’am?” he asked.

  “Why, you, dear old friend,” she said. “You always have. You always will. We just lived here at your leave, you know. It was you who have kept its ticks and tocks moving all these years, and shall do so till the end of its time and yours.”

  Then she turned to Snail. “Now, have you eaten today?”

  When Snail began to protest, the queen said, “I take that as a no. You cannot go off to war without something warm in your stomach. Balnar will get you some of today’s soup. It was new mushrooms and old venison, stirred with wine and garlic and herbs. Not cook’s best, but perhaps better than we had any right to expect.”

  Balnar bowed, and within moments returned with the soup, not quite as warm as the queen intended, but Snail gulped it down and felt positively refreshed.

  The queen waited until Snail had wiped her mouth on the cloth that Balnar proffered, then said, “Now, where is this flying rug of yours? Do I need a cloak for the ride?”

  “It’s quite cold up there, madam,” Snail replied. She didn’t add that what the queen was wearing was not at all what she needed when flying on the bowser’s back. Or going into a war zone. Just as she was about to mention this, the queen spoke.

  “Then a cloak and gloves, please, Balnar,” the queen said. “The green, I think.” She looked at Snail and shook her head. “The same for m’lady. And be quick about it, for we have no time to waste.”

  “And boots,” Snail said, pointing at the queen’s silken shoes.

  “Of course,” the queen said, nodding at Balnar. “And for m’lady as well, who seems to have but one shoe.”

  “At once, madam,” he said. “I will wake the ladies who should have been in waiting.”

  “They need their sleep.”

  “As do you, my queen.”

  “The old need little sleep. Mourners need less,” she said.

  It sounded to Snail like an ancient argument between them.

  “We will be up on the Queen’s Walk,” Snail told Balnar, pointing a finger into the air. “I will be introducing Her Majesty to the rug. He’s not fond of girls. But I’m certain he will make an exception for the queen.”

  Once on the allure, the moon already beginning its downward descent, Snail and the queen sat close together on the bowser. Despite her worst fears, the rug had taken to the queen at once. And she to him, Snail thought, feeling a small pang of jealousy.

  “And now what?” the queen whispered.

  “Now we ask him to find Aspen,” Snail said.

  The queen bent over and whispered into the rug’s fur. “Find me King Ailenbran Astaeri, Bright Celestial, Ruire of the Tir na nOg, and Lord of the Seelie kingdom. Find me my son.”

  “That’s not . . .” Snail began, meaning to say the bowser knew him as Aspen and as Karl the minstrel, before remembering that Aspen had also flown once as the king.

  Seeming to flex himself, the bowser rose the merest fraction.

  “We have warm clothes coming!” Snail said quickly. “Don’t fly just yet.”

  The bowser gave a tiny shudder and settled back down on the stones.

  Just then Balnar arrived with two cloaks, two pairs of gloves, the queen’s walking boots, and a pair for Snail as well. She was glad to see the boots were sturdy ones, not just for show. Gathering the cloak around her shoulders, she pulled on the gloves. She thought, This time the cold air shouldn’t be much of a problem.

  “Twist your hands in his fur,” Snail said to the queen, showing how it was done. Then she bent over and whispered to the bowser, “Let’s fly,”

  The bowser shuddered.

  “And quickly,” Snail added.

  The queen was a fast learner, and just as well, for the bowser had already begun to lift up, but slowly, as if the double burden he was carrying was an especially heavy one.

  “You carried the king and me before,” Snail whispered to him, the words a bit venomous, “and now you grunt over this slighter burden?”

  The queen put one gloved hand on Snail’s shoulder, as if to hush her, but then set the other hand onto the bowser’s back, fingers deeply entwined in the mass of the fur.

  Snail realized the queen had not heard her and only touched Snail’s shoulder to keep herself steady.

  “Don’t be afraid, madam,” Snail said.

  “A queen is never afraid,” came the answer. “Only occasionally out of sorts.”

  It made Snail laugh, and the queen joined her until both women, mouths wide in merriment, faced the wind, the cold, and soon the slow rising of the sun.

  21

  ASPEN FINDS AN ARMY

  The fires were burning down, soon to be replaced by the sun’s light. All but the four soldiers who continued to patrol were gathered around the central fire, where Mishrath sat with a collection of herbs and wildflowers in front of him. Everyone looked exhausted, though the soldiers hid it well.

  “Are you sure that is all you need, Mishrath?”

  Aspen looked at the small pile of dried leaves and uprooted plants sitting in front of the wizard. The dried leaves Mishrath had pulled from a pouch hidden in his robes; the rest he had Fayeth and Fennel gather for him from the field and the forest’s edge. It looked pitifully inadequate to the job of creating an illusion big enough to fool an army.

  “Who is the wizard here?” Mishrath said snarkily, “and who is the insolent boy king?”

  Molintien gasped, surely having never heard a king spoken to in such a way. The soldiers’ hands went automatically to the hilts of their weapons, ready to punish such rudeness. Fal’s eyes widened in surprise, but Aspen thought he saw a slight twinkle in them and the hint of a smile in the corners of his mouth.

  And why should a blatant insult to your king be amusing, forester? he thought angrily. But then he remembered the wizard’s tower, and how they seemed to send messages beyond the obvious in everything they did. Suddenly he understood, and snorted out a laugh. He mused for a moment for the perfect reply. And then . . .

  “The first is yet to be determined,” he said, “and as to the second . . .” He raised his nose archly. “I have no idea of whom you speak.”

  Mishrath howled with laughter. Molintien looked horrified. The soldiers looked confused. Fal looked to burst something in his forehead as he kept trying not to laugh.

  “Do you not see?” Aspen asked the onlookers. He explained. “You know the saying ‘On the day you die, you may speak to the king any way you please’?” They nodded. It was an old saw, the joke being that if you spoke too impolitely to royalty, then that day was almost certainly the day you would die. “Well, guess what . . .”

  Mishrath bared his few teeth at them in a grim smile. “This is my day.”

  No one is smiling now.

  “And it will begin soon,” Aspen said. “Let us begin before it does.”

  Mishrath nodded. “This,” he said, pointing to his plant pile, “is just to help me concentrate. For the spell . . . how much do you know about major illusion, sire?”

  “Not a great deal.”

  “Not many do.” The wizard sighed. “After all, we fey all have a touch of glamour at our disposal. And once we make ourselves look good, what else do we need?”

  Aspen might once have agreed wholeheartedly with that last bit, but now he realized how vain and vapid his forme
r self had been. Even as a hostage, he had been a prince, acting—and dressing—accordingly. Or as much as was possible for a hostage prince in the Unseelie Court.

  And how vain and vapid most of the court was, he thought. Both courts, really.

  Though Unseelie courtiers had a very different idea of what physical beauty was from their counterparts in the Seelie Court, they still spent more time before a mirror than before the king and council advising them how to govern.

  And advising is supposed to be their duty!

  “The illusion?” Aspen prompted.

  The old wizard gave his shoulders a shake and continued. “I will use the fires as a base for the illusion. Thanks to all of you, there are plenty of fires about, and they will provide both loci and fuel for the spell. Keep them burning and the spell will go on as long as it is needed.” He nodded to Aspen. “As the king will attest, fire is the most powerful of the five energies, though it can be burned through quickly. The dying fires are actually better for this type of spell, for I need the duration of coals rather than the explosive spark of true flame. But afterward, you must stoke them all, through both day and night.” He did not have to explain afterward. It was written on all their faces.

  His professorial tone reminded Aspen of Jaunty, his old tutor in the Unseelie Court, whom he had last seen in the Unseelie camp before the battle that killed his father.

  I hope Jaunty is still alive. Aspen shuddered. Unless Old Jack Daw discovered that he spoke to me in his tent early that morn. If so, then I hope he managed a quick and painless death.

  “The trees that fuel the fire,” Mishrath continued, “were once alive.” He motioned Fennel forward and pointed at his pile of plants. She spoke the tiniest word of power and set them alight. Strangely, the flowers were burning strongly before the dried leaves even caught. “In a sense, this spell brings them back to life. But in a different form.” He frowned in concentration for a moment, staring into the small fire before him. “And not truly alive, either, I suppose.” He cocked his head to one side, and the burning flowers now shadowed his deeply lined face into crags and canyons that mapped the millennia he had practiced his craft. He chuckled. “But you’ll see something today, children. You will certainly see something today. And any of you who are left alive after . . . tell what we do here today. That will be my glory—and yours.”

  Then he stood, creakily at first. But when Aspen stepped forward to assist him, Mishrath waved him away angrily. Throwing off his cloak, he puffed his chest out and began to speak. His voice was bold and clear, with none of the sputtering and coughing of the last few days.

  “I am Mishrath of the Five Mountains,” he said, giving name to a region far to the south where neither the Seelie nor the Unseelie had ever reigned.

  I wonder what brought him here, Aspen thought, and why he stayed. And he suddenly realized that he would never know. Would never have a chance to ask. He was deeply saddened by this new knowledge, and it surprised him.

  “Slayer of the Kolkorath, the Wyrm of the Wastes, and the Guardian of Dreadstane.”

  More names Aspen did not know.

  “I turned the One Who Awoke into the One Who Will Never Wake Again and stole the treasure of the Fire Crèche from under their soot-blackened noses.” The words seemed to make the old wizard grow taller before them, though whether this was an illusion or not, Aspen could not say.

  And yet he will die for me. Aspen looked around at the small company he led. For all of us.

  “Bear witness to my last spell,” Mishrath intoned, “and tell your children’s children that you were there at my passing.”

  He looked at Aspen, eyes white and unreadable. Aspen nodded solemnly. There were tears in his own eyes, and he could tell he was not alone in this.

  But not Mishrath. His eyes were dry and his voice strong as he began a deep humming way back in his throat. It rumbled and tumbled through the deep octaves, lower than any voice had a right to go. At times, it sounded like more than one voice, as if he had summoned dozens of dead wizards to join him in the making of the spell. The humming kept going, creating low harmonies that bypassed the ear to shake the very bones of the listeners. Smoke from the dried leaves roiled up before him, and Aspen thought he saw small images in it: swords and spears, silver armor and polished shields, tiny elven warriors to wear and wield them.

  He is putting the pieces together.

  There was a mist on the ground now, and Aspen saw that it was spreading out across the field.

  No, he thought, it is pouring out from the dying fires.

  The mist quickly covered the whole field, and figures were rising out of it: the warriors from the smoke now life-sized and armored, bristling with weaponry. There were also creatures of war: horses and unicorns and hippogriffs, their bardings covered with clan badges surrounding the Seelie sigil.

  It is incredibly detailed, Aspen thought, for now came camp followers and supply wagons as well as specialized troops: dwarven sappers, gnomish engineers, skirmishers, scouts. A hardened old trooper in the blacks and tans of the Basilisk Clan, the so-called turncoat clan that had left the Unseelie side and joined their old enemy eons ago, stepped up to Aspen. He saluted, and Aspen could hear the snap of the trooper’s boots slapping together, the creak of old leather shifting. He could even smell the soldier stink of him: sweat and dust and musty horse, with just a hint of olive from the whetstone oil of freshly sharpened weapons.

  “It is done,” the trooper said in Mishrath’s voice.

  Aspen looked over at Mishrath. He bowed to the old wizard, something a king rarely does. “And it is amazing.”

  “Yes,” the wizard said, “it is.” Then he paled and toppled, collapsing from the ground up, legs buckling, back arching, head wobbling loose on his neck. Fal caught him before he hit the ground, lowering him gently the rest of the way. Rushing forward, Aspen knelt by the wizard’s side and put a hand on his forehead. His skin was already cooling.

  Apparently, having waited so long to take the old wizard, death was not going to be slow about it.

  Aspen knelt with his hand on Mishrath’s forehead for a few more moments, then got to his feet. He was suddenly very tired. Looking over his small group of companions, he saw that they were all crying openly, whether in great wracking sobs like Fayth and Fennel or in the silent tears that trickled down Fal’s stoic face. Even Snarl’s and Bite’s eyes shone with something other than martial fervor. Yet there were no longer any tears in his own eyes.

  You cry for your enemies, but not for your friends? It was a good question, but he had no answer for it. I have no answer to any questions. He thought about burying the old wizard, but they had so little time.

  “Put him in the cart and wrap him in my cloak,” Aspen said. “If we all survive till this evening, we will bury him then.”

  “Perhaps,” Molientien said carefully, “we should leave him unburied and within view of his army in case we break that connection.”

  “Surely,” Fal said just as carefully, though there was an edge in his voice, “death has already broken that connection.”

  “I take both your meanings,” Aspen said quickly. “But the truth of it is that we really do not know if he needs to be nearby. So to err on the side of caution, we will keep his body unburied and safe as long as the army exists. Quickly, you, Master Moat”—he pointed to the troll—“take him to the wagon.”

  The troll moved forward, nodded at Aspen, then picked up Mishrath’s body as if it weighed no more than a sack of grain, though he carried it with great care to the wagon. Then he wrapped the old wizard in the king’s cloak, his broad hands the size of shovel heads surprisingly gentle as he did so. Afterward, he stood up, squared his boulder-sized shoulders, and returned to the others, seeming—Aspen thought—more animated than he had been since leaving the moat.

  Aspen looked again at the army Mishrath had died to create. He tried desperate
ly to find something more inspiring to say to his companions than This had better work.

  Nothing sprang to mind. Before he could think more about it, the sun finally peeked over the hilltops and revealed another great host just coming over the hills across the stream.

  And that army is real. He did not mean to shiver, but a shudder escaped him. If anything, Jack Daw’s army looked bigger than when it had defeated Aspen’s father.

  Perhaps because I am closer to it. He had watched his father die from atop a mountain.

  Much closer.

  “Molintien,” Aspen said, hoping his voice didn’t quaver, “prepare a flag of parley. It is time to talk to Old Jack Daw.”

  Molintien nodded quickly, but then asked, “Will he, sire?”

  “Will he what?”

  “Talk.”

  “Almost certainly.” Aspen took a last glance at Mishrath in the wagon. He looked withered and even smaller wrapped in the cloak, with no hint of the power he had so recently wielded.

  That is not Mishrath any longer, he thought. Just the vessel that once held him.

  Aspen worked hard not to let the weariness take hold of his voice. “We have given the virtual Unseelie king something unexpected. A major army at my back. He will want to know all that he can before he makes his next move.”

  At least I hope that is true, Aspen thought. I cannot say Jack Daw is cautious, having taken over one kingdom and now moving on another. But he does like to plan things out far in advance. Suddenly remembering how Snail and he had escaped Jack Daw’s clutches, he added to himself, And he hates surprises!

  “My friends, Mishrath has bought us time. Good time. Let us not waste it.” Turning, Aspen strode to his horse, hoping he looked kingly. “Molintien, Croak, Snarl, and Bite: you are with me.” The gentlewoman for courtly reassurance, three real soldiers to add power and authority. At least he hoped so.

  He mounted his horse, and the four he had called mounted as well, Molintien with a white cloth tied to her lance. We look martial enough, I suppose.