The Seelie King's War Read online

  He may be right, Aspen thought, but I’m all he’s got. All any of them have got!

  “And no time to build any,” added the third-ranker. His straggling beard waggled with each syllable he spoke, like a bad actor in a second-rate troupe.

  Aspen dismissed them, and called in Mishrath, the last wizard in the realm. Too close to death to survive traveling with the army, he was ironically the only wizard still alive after the great battle where the king—Aspen’s father—had died. Mishrath’s study—School of Illusion—had fallen out of favor in recent centuries, so it hadn’t been thought he’d be terribly useful in a battle, anyway.

  Like most old wizards, Mishrath was a wizened creature, eaten up from the inside by the magic he used. He was so wrinkled, shrunken, and stooped, Aspen couldn’t even tell what clan he was from, though if anything, he seemed tortoise-like. That was odd, because there were no tortoise clans in the Seelie kingdom. The last of them had died off centuries earlier, due to change in the weather and the scarcity of ponds, or so his mother had told him when she had given him a crash course in Seelie history since his return. The frog clan, it seemed, might be next.

  “Mishrath reporting, Your Majesty,” the old wizard wheezed, his voice as wizened as he. Standing no higher than Aspen’s waist, he wore robes that had likely once been the black of his order before time and misuse turned them grey. His hat, likewise grey, now slumped from proud and pointy to a simple heap of cloth mounted on top of a wrinkled mass of grey skin. Two milky white eyes bugged out of those folds of skin and fixed Aspen in a myopic gaze. “And what would you have of me?”

  “Your wisdom and your service,” Aspen answered. “But first I must ask you three questions—”

  “Ah, yes,” Mishrath broke in, something Aspen doubted he ever would have done talking to the late king, “I have heard of your three questions.” He held up three fingers. They were all the fingers he had on his hand. “What is the Sticksman?” he asked, then answered himself. “A creature both of and not of the Unseelie Court.” He ticked one finger off, coughed lightly into the crook of his arm, and went on. “How does one become the Sticksman? It is not known of a certainty, but there are whispers of hints of stories of tales that might lead a wise man to the answer.”

  “What?” Aspen was startled. He had asked his questions of dozens upon dozens of folk, and this was more than anyone else seemed to know, though the old wizard’s answers—like prophesies—made little sense and probably would only be understood in retrospect, after they were fulfilled. But Aspen could feel the quest’s magic urging him to find out more. “Where do I seek these hints? From whom—”

  Mishrath ticked off a second finger and went on as if Aspen hadn’t spoken. “How does the Sticksman come not to be once more? That is the most important riddle of the three and the only one that truly wants answering.” He closed his last finger down into a fist and stared at it for a second as if the answer lay tight between his knuckles. This time he coughed into the fist, louder than before, then shrugged. “And of the third question, I have no knowledge at all.”

  Aspen felt the surge of hope die. “Oh. Well, I—”

  “But that does not mean there is not any knowledge.”

  “Oh! Then—”

  Mishrath interrupted him again, and Aspen thought, I am not sure he needs me here for this conversation.

  “Do you know why the Wizard’s Tower was built so high?” the old wizard asked.

  Aspen shook his head, though he knew the wizard did not notice.

  Mishrath pointed down at his feet. “It is so no one ever thinks to look underneath.”

  Then he turned and shuffled halfway to the door, before looking over his hunched shoulder. “Oh, and as to the Unseelie invasion there is nothing I can do. We are all dead. Farewell, Your Grace.” Then he shuffled the rest of the way out, coughing all the while, and Aspen was left alone.

  Gape-mouthed, Aspen watched him go. He knew there were other people he should talk to: diplomats, tradesmen, hunters, weapon-smiths, laborers. . . . But the Sticksman’s quest was hard upon him now, and all he could think about was discovering what lay underneath the Wizard’s Tower.

  “Well,” he said aloud, “Mishrath said we were all dead, anyway. May as well keep this last promise before I die.”

  He spoke to an empty room, though he was sure, behind some curtain or in some hidden niche, Balnar, waiting, heard him. That is, Aspen thought, both disturbing and comforting.

  Leaving the small side chamber, Aspen walked back out through the throne room, waving aside an assortment of clerks and courtiers, and Balnar, who suddenly materialized at his side.

  Bowing, Balnar asked, “May I inquire, Majesty, where you are going?”

  “Secrets, Balnar. I am off to discover secrets.”

  He hoped they would be worth the time he was spending. He had so little of it left.

  4

  SNAIL’S MISSION

  The sun had not yet risen when Alith woke Snail, plucking at her shoulder. She looked perfectly rested, though Snail guessed the warrior had probably gotten little to no sleep at all.

  Standing carefully, Snail felt every muscle and bone, each with a different ache, some as sharp as a sewing needle, some spread out like a bruise. She looked around at the soldiers, who seemed to rise from the ground and gather around the campfire with fluid movements. Even the oldest ones seemed unhurt from the previous day’s ride, or the sleep on the damp ground.

  She was about to mention her aches and bruises to Alith when the commander gave a huge snort, like an angry drow, and said in a fierce, breathy whisper, “I shall kill him!”

  Not the time for complaining, then, Snail thought.

  Evidently, sometime in the night, the trooper who’d been dressed down so thoroughly by Alith had bolted. Snail wasn’t sure whether they were better off with or without him. She only hoped he’d gone home and not to offer information about them to the Unseelie generals. Best keep that to myself, she thought.

  However, Alith had come to the same conclusion on her own. She cursed the man, his household, his clan with a ferocity that was truly impressive. “May his name never be noticed. May his clan be lost to him forever. May his limbs wither, his nails fall out, his fore end drop off and his hind end slope away. May his nose . . .”

  With each new curse, Alith threw ashes into the cooling cookfire, and the fire flared, first green, then blue.

  Even in the Unseelie Court, Snail had never heard such ferocious and long-lasting cursing. But she certainly knew dark magic when she heard it, and she shivered from the force of its power.

  Stepping carefully away from Alith, who never even noticed her move, Snail joined the soldiers, one of whom passed her a cup of jav and a piece of greying journeycake. As the food and hot drink went down, Snail felt her brain begin to function again, even though she still worried about climbing back into the saddle.

  When Goodspeed was brought to her, she put her hands once again on each side of the horse’s head, blowing gently into its nostrils, whispering, “I hope you have no aches or bruises from me. I forgive you mine.”

  Seemingly impervious to any aches herself, Alith ended her curses and moved easily into her own saddle, calling at the same time, “Mount up!” to the men.

  “I wish these horses could fly,” Snail muttered as she clambered clumsily up on Goodspeed with the help of old Snaggle. Then, gritting her teeth, she nudged the horse with her heels.

  THEY FOUND THE cursed runaway several miles farther on to the east, hanging from a larch tree by his hair, his arms and legs sprouting red-fletched arrows as if he were some strange, feathered beast.

  Not one of the little troop seemed surprised.

  “That Groan—he always was a bad ’un,” said Snaggle. “Me and the boys had to straighten him out more than once.”

  Snail didn’t inquire about what straightening o
ut meant. Though she did wonder idly if Alith had followed Groan earlier and killed him to stop him selling them to the Unseelie army. She wondered if the commander’s cursing had just been a show to keep the rest of the soldiers in line. Or if Snaggle and the boys had shot those arrows as part of a plan to set the runaway straight. Or if his death was due to the Border Lords. Or the humans. Or . . .

  “Where’s his bloody horse?” someone asked.

  “We’ve no time to look for it now, Pad,” Alith said. “Probably taken by whoever killed him. But, on the way back, maybe we can find—”

  “If the trail’s not too old then,” Snaggle grumbled.

  “Not that it could be older than you,” Pad snapped.

  It broke the tension, and a small chittering that Snail realized was laughter ran through the troop, though Alith didn’t join in.

  None of them seemed to question who the runaway’s executioner had been. It was as if they already knew—perhaps by the way he’d been killed or by some clue in the arrows. Of course, Snail didn’t know one arrow from another, or one method of execution from another. Or if she was the cause of Groan’s death.

  She could have asked but kept silent.

  Actually, she didn’t want to know.

  AT LEAST THE troop took time to bury him, cutting off his clan badge to bring back to his people, something Snail knew none of the Unseelie folk would have done. Even the Border Lords—who liked to boast of their closeness to one another—would never do any such thing, of that Snail was sure. She’d seen how they’d acted when she and Aspen had crossed the river between the two kingdoms. The Border Lords hadn’t even tried to rescue their comrades from the carnivorous mermen or search for their bones. She shuddered at the memory.

  While the rest of the troop finished the burial, Alith sent Snaggle with a younger soldier—Snap—up ahead.

  “Eyes and ears only,” she warned them. “No heroics. Just count the enemy, note how and where they are situated. Come back with a report.”

  After the two had gone, Snail and the others pulled back until they were hidden again in the woods. Alith alone moved forward to the edge of the trees to keep watch for the scouts’ return.

  Easing herself off the horse without any help, Snail sighed with relief, though not loud enough to be heard.

  “Doing well, m’lady,” said another of the soldiers. Mums was her name, about Alith’s age. She’d none of the commander’s grace, or beauty, but had a grin that seemed to wreath her mouth. “Well, that is, for someone unused to riding.” Her grin softened the critique.

  “Does it show?” Snail grinned back.

  “Only when you get up or down,” said Mums.

  Snail humphed. Not so bad, then.

  “Or when you’re riding.” Mums grinned even more broadly at that, and Snail realized she’d not been criticizing but making a joke. Or at least mostly a joke.

  The sun had passed above the trees and was well toward the horizon when the scouts returned. They trotted along the road as if careless of who or what might see them. Their coats with the clan insignia had been hidden in their packs, along with their bows and arrows. They wore weather-beaten straw hats slumped on their heads. To the casual eye, they could have been two old farmers out for a ride or returning from a harvest, except for the way they sat in their saddles, straight-backed and with a feral alertness to everything around them.

  “Mount up,” Alith commanded, and everyone was up and ready by the time Snap and Snaggle reached them. That included Snail, whose mounting ability still consisted of scrambling, wiggling her bottom, and trying not to kick Goodspeed too badly on the way up.

  “You took your time,” Alith said dryly to the scouts. They obviously hadn’t. Their horses were bathed in sweat and houghing.

  “’Twas a nice day for a leisurely ride,” Snap said.

  “Report, then.”

  Snap was first. “Quiet until over the second hill, and then—”

  Snaggle interrupted, “Way down below, a big encampment. About two thousand folk, but that includes women, children. In the center, a gaggle of greenish wagons, three, maybe four.”

  “Which is it?” Alith said quickly.

  Snap and Snaggle glanced at one another.

  “Four,” Snail said, “all connected by arched roofs about eight feet high. Twelve large wooden wheels, six on each side. It makes the cart look top-heavy, like a moving mill, but it’s an amazing contraption. Breaks down into a stage for performances.”

  “How does she . . . ?” Snap whispered to Snaggle.

  “Who is she,” Snaggle countered, “to know all that? A spy . . . ?”

  What he said confirmed what Snail had already guessed: only Alith knew the whole of their mission.

  Alith nodded, looking at Snail. “The professor’s, I presume.”

  “Yes.” Snail spoke directly to her.

  “Then we ride.”

  Alith was about to give the order when Snap said, “Sir!”

  She turned. “Yes, soldier?”

  “The wagon’s in the middle of those two thousand changelings, many of them armed.”

  “Not the children,” Snail said.

  “Armed with what?” Alith asked at the same moment.

  “With whatever they scavenged from our dead and the Unseelie, I’d guess,” said Snaggle directly to Alith. “Them changelings don’t usually go armed except with—well—turning forks or scythes or horseshoes.”

  “You’d guess?” Alith glared at him. “I don’t send scouts out to guess.”

  Snail interrupted the dressing down she feared was about to begin. “It’s what we changelings do,” she said in a steady voice. “We scavenge, adapt, change, make better. We invent, reinvent . . .” As she spoke, she understood for the first time what she really was. “And the professor is the greatest of us all. It’s why King Ailenbran wants me to speak with him.”

  “Sorry, m’lady. No offense meant.” Snaggle turned back to Alith. “There’s more.”

  “Spit it out.”

  “Spiders big as trolls. Bigger. All around the perimeter.”

  “Nonsense. Spiders don’t grow that big. That would take magic. Changelings do not have magic.”

  “He’s right,” Snail said. “But those spiders are made things. Out of iron and—”

  “Iron?” Alith shuddered.

  “But they won’t hurt me,” Snail added quickly. “Or any of the humans. Iron only hurts the fey. Get me to that second hill, and I’ll ride into the camp alone.”

  “No! I have my orders from the king,” Alith said. “You will not go alone.”

  “Even the king can’t command the spiders or get help from the professor without me,” Snail said. “It’s got to be done my way.”

  “We will get you over the second hill or around it,” Alith agreed. “Whichever seems safest. After that, we shall see.”

  Which means, Snail realized, that I’ll have to make it happen.

  Meanwhile, Alith had turned to her troop. “We ride. Snap and Snaggle in front. Me next. Then m’lady. Then Mums, Fen, and Pad.” She drew a deep breath, let it out. “Damn that mouthy, silly Groan. Seven’s a better number than six.”

  The others grunted their agreement, even Snail.

  Alith added, “We could have used him now. And his horse.”

  “For target practice,” mumbled Snap, but no one thought that funny, and Alith gave him a look that could have curdled a mouthful of milk.

  The warriors moved their horses into the lineup, and off they went, first walking, then trotting, along the open road.

  A horse walking, Snail thought, is bearable. But what she thought about trotting was lost in a melody of pain. Only when they burst into a canter did she get some sense of what real riding could be like—wind in hair, blur of trees, a loose, rocking sensation. Unfortunately, even fey h
orses couldn’t sustain a canter for long. Especially the exhausted mounts of Snap and Snaggle. Now Snail understood why Alith was so angry at Groan. We could have swapped out horses and set a faster pace. Without a spare, there would be less cantering and more walking. It left trot as their fastest, easiest gait.

  Easiest for the horses.

  Not—alas, as Snail already knew—for the riders.

  5

  ASPEN AND THE WIZARD GAMES

  Sprouting from the earth on a hillock some fifty paces to the east of the main building, the Wizard’s Tower was not precisely a part of Astaeri Palace. It was ostensibly attached, but only by an invisible bridge that presumably stretched from an arched opening in a fourth-floor wall in the eastern wing of the palace to the Eldritch Door on the second floor of the tower. To visit the tower was to put yourself entirely in the power of the wizards who resided there. Unless you could fly.

  Aspen could not fly. At least not without the bowser. And the bowser was somewhere with Professor Odds and the changelings.

  The humans. If he was to make a pact with them, he had to remember to call them what they called themselves. Using the term changeling would only remind them of their shared history, a history in which the Seelie people did not feature as heroes or even friends.

  He stood at the arch that opened to the air, looking across the invisible bridge to the Wizard’s Tower and down to the rocky ground below and wondered. He wondered a little about why the door into the tower had a name but the portal out of the tower did not. But mostly he wondered why he could not fly.

  Plenty of fey fly, he thought miserably. Why not the king of the fey? I command armies and fire, and yet the smallest, silliest sprite has the advantage of me up here.

  He almost turned back around, but the thought of returning to the throne room to hear more bad news made him push forward.

  Mayhap, I’ll fall to my death and not have to watch my kingdom destroyed.

  With this comforting thought, he stepped out into thin air.