Winterwood, p.29
Winterwood, page 29
part #1 of Rowankind Series
David turned his head so quickly I thought he might spin right around. So Larien hadn’t introduced himself. I’d thought that might be the case.
“Is that why you brought him to me?” His mouth quirked up at the corners.
“David’s heritage is something we hadn’t suspected until recently, but it explains a lot.”
“Your beast knew it all along.” Larien barely acknowledged Corwen’s presence, and I bristled at his offhand dismissal, though Corwen, wisely, didn’t let himself be goaded.
I concentrated on Larien, wondering if our past relationship would help or hinder. Larien had stayed with my family for his own reasons, but he’d been a bondsman, treated like nothing, taken for granted. Old Mrs. Emery’s words came back to me. Something about: I wonder what will happen when folks find that instead of a tame mouser they have a tiger in their barn.
“Come with me.” Larien looked at David and then at me. “Not the beast.”
Corwen stepped forward and his voice remained calm and steady. “Ross and I have jumped fire together. Where she goes, I go.”
It wasn’t exactly a lie.
Larien turned to look at him, and I held my breath, but he merely nodded once and said, “Have a care Silverwolf. We know where your allegiance lies. You play a dangerous game, and you are a world away from the Okewood.”
“My Lord.” Corwen bowed.
We mounted our horses and rode in the column, David with Larien, Corwen and I close behind, and the rest of the Fae following us like an escort, or guard.
I thought we rode through the same Old Maizy Forest, but subtle things had changed. The further we traveled the less autumnal it became. The season ran backward until the green leaves were more like high summer. I spotted creatures in the woodland that I couldn’t identify, brightly colored birds and—only glimpsed for a moment through the trees—one small roan pony with a horn in the center of its forehead.
Iaru, I thought. We were no longer in our own safe world, but somewhere else that existed outside of geography, yet we’d crossed without passing any noticeable border. I glanced at Corwen, and he nodded as if reassuring me that he’d noticed, too.
Larien and David were deep in conversation, David more animated than I’d seen him in weeks.
I’m going to lose him. Finding a family member I could love was a novelty for me, and losing him would hurt. In recognizing that, I knew I’d already accepted the possibility that David’s path may run in a very different direction from mine, but it didn’t make it any easier.
We neared our destination after a journey that may have lasted minutes or days. I heard the sounds first, instruments and voices in perfect harmony. The notes carried my heart away with them. Yet when I saw where we had come to I almost forgot the music as my eyes tried to take it all in. Encampment? Village? City? Palace? It was all and more. All and less.
A woodland glade became a lofty, fan-vaulted hall of tree trunk and arched branch. Indoors, yet also outdoors, it glowed softly with diffuse and dappled light from a totally alien sun. I think I stopped breathing. At any rate I realized I was going dizzy and forced my lungs to suck in a breath of air, inhaling strange spicy perfumes and a hint of tangy smoke.
Six younger Fae came forward, all bearing a look of the Sumners. One dark-haired, fair-skinned female came to me. “I’m Rosie’s daughter, I thank you for caring for her.”
“Margann? That makes us cousins, I believe?”
Was it wise to claim kinship? I held my breath.
She smiled and inclined her head. “It does.” I saw a strong family resemblance to both Rosie and my mother. I supposed that meant to me as well.
“Couldn’t you go to her?”
“I am still counted as a child amongst the Fae, and not allowed to cross over into the world of men without dispensation.”
“And do you always do as you are told?”
“Of course.” Her eyes held humor. “I was given no specific instructions, however, regarding the glamour around her cottage. Did you think one of my father’s workings would be so easy to see through without a little help?”
“Your father? Are you Larien’s as well?”
She laughed and shook her head. “Dantin is my father. Don’t judge him too harshly. He has little liking for your kind, but it’s with good reason.”
I wanted to ask why, but she bowed and left me.
Corwen spoke softly. “I told you they are not like us. Keep your wits about you.”
A young Fae boy took our horses and another brought me a goblet. I didn’t know whether it was more rude to refuse the cup or to take it and leave it full. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Corwen take the cup offered to him, raise it to his lips, but not drink, so I did the same.
More Fae, some single, some arm-linked couples, drifted into the hall to listen to the music or, more likely, to see the newcomers. A fair couple stepped up to us, ignored Corwen, and bowed politely to me. The man touched my cheek and I swayed toward him, fascinated, before Corwen’s hand clamped down on my arm with bruising strength and his lips curled back in a snarl even though the wolf was nowhere to be seen.
“She jumped the flames with me.” He looked straight across me into the eyes of the male Fae.
“And why would I worry about that, beast?”
For a moment their gazes locked and it was as though both men had invisible hackles rising, but the Fae’s gaze dropped before Corwen’s did. The Fae woman put her hand on her partner’s arm and broke his concentration. “There will be others when the rowankind return,” she said, drawing him away.
For a fleeting moment I was angry with Corwen; then I realized how easily I would have slipped into the couple’s thrall.
“Thanks.”
“I told you to keep your wits about you.” He sounded angry.
Margann walked back into the circle hand in hand with a young Fae lord. I had to look twice to see that it was David. He was the same but different. Why hadn’t I noticed how beautiful he was? I’d never seen his hair brushed back from his face, except when wind-lashed, so to suddenly see a perfect widow’s peak accentuating a broad intelligent forehead made me wonder if I’d ever looked at my little brother before.
My guts twisted. I had lost him.
Larien clapped his hands once. It was as if he’d signaled the start of a business meeting. All the Fae who had no reason to be there melted away and only the council of seven Fae lords remained, plus David and the six young Fae. Seven tall chairs stood in a circle where there had been no chairs before. The lords sat, a young Fae standing behind each chair. David moved to stand behind Larien. Corwen and I filled the only spare space in the circle’s circumference, standing like supplicants. Corwen’s knuckles brushed against mine, and I took strength from the touch.
I managed to lock glances with David and mouth, “Are you all right?”
I got a tight nod in return. He looked like a beggar who’s been invited to sup at a king’s table, slightly bemused and not quite sure which spoon to pick up first.
“What do you want of us?” Larien asked.
“I ask the same question.” I took the winterwood box from my pouch, unwrapped it and held it out. Some magical force lifted it gently from my fingers and suspended it in midair.
The oldest Fae cleared his throat and in doing so had complete attention. His dark hair had gray wings and the skin around his eyes had developed folds. I wondered how old he might be. “The time is approaching,” he said.
“We have waited long.” The next Fae in the circle spoke.
“That which your family took from Iaru . . .”
“May soon be restored.”
“Yours is the task . . .”
“If balance is to be maintained.”
Each Fae spoke in turn, finally coming around to Larien. “The box must be opened and an end put to the Summoner curse.”
My heart lurched.
“I don’t understand. What curse? What’s in the box? Why must it be opened?”
Larien focused on me. I suddenly remembered him with my mother, in her bed, and my face heated. I’d been too young to understand then. Now I wondered if he’d made her happy for a time. I hoped so.
The Fae elder said, “More than two centuries ago as you reckon time, a Summoner called us from the forests to ask for our help. He said England faced its greatest danger in five hundred years, an invasion force from Spain.”
“You helped Martyn the Summoner to defeat the Armada?”
The lord to Larien’s left, the one in the chair attended by Margann, leaned forward swiftly, his weight almost on his feet as if he would leap up at any moment. “The affairs of humans are not the affairs of the Fae!”
“Dantin.” Larien put one arm sideways to still his neighbor and turned back to us. “It is as my brother says. Our concerns are not for the world of men. We refused him and returned to the forest, but before we did, we gave him our word not to interfere in his task, however he chose to complete it. You must understand that our word, once given, is binding, for the Fae do not lie.”
The lord to Larien’s right spoke. “Though the Summoner’s power . . .”
“Was greater than we thought.” The lord to his right finished off his sentence.
“The mistake was mine,” Larien said. “I judged him of little consequence and I was wrong. When we refused our help, he summoned our servants. They were less able to resist. Those woodland sprites whom our forefathers had drawn forth from the living rowan trees to mingle their seed with ours. Those children became the rowankind, children of our own flesh, who lived alongside us for many thousands of your years. They had their own wild magic, a magic of growing things and natural forces. They became our servants, yes, but also our friends and often the mothers of our children. A gentle people, yet with a deep power of their own. Martyn summoned them across the borders of Iaru into the land of men.”
“A whole race,” Dantin added.
“Found their power . . .”
“Sucked away . . .”
“Like mother’s milk from a tit.”
“But unlike mother’s milk . . .”
“There was no replenishment.”
The sentence went around the lords again, and Larien took up the explanation once more. “The Summoner drew thousands of our rowankind to him, fastened upon their power of weather-working, called it forth, and left them empty, like eggshells.”
Dantin scowled. “And we had sworn not to interfere, though there were those of us who would have willingly broken our oaths.”
“The elders forbade it,” Larien said.
Dantin exhaled sharply. I had no doubt that he was one of the rebels. “Martyn promised to restore them, but he could not. The time came and passed. We could do nothing to ease their torment except erase the memory of what they had once been, in their minds and also in the minds of men. My own leman amongst them.”
He’d lost his lover. Was that the reason for Dantin’s bitterness?
“A kindness to prevent the rowankind from going mad,” Larien added. “Soon after we made an agreement. England’s queen decreed that they would be provided for in the households of her subjects.”
The older Fae spoke up again. “Within a few generations they became chattels, their sacrifice forgotten and the Summoner himself withered and gone from the world, beyond our reach, his evil unpunished.”
I knew little enough of magic beyond what I’d needed for myself over the years. I couldn’t claim to be learned, but I did know that magic didn’t simply vanish without consequence. Whatever Martyn the Summoner had taken from the rowankind had to have gone somewhere.
A cold knot filled my belly. I reached for Corwen’s hand and found it waiting for me, warm and reassuring against my icy fingers.
“I’ve got it, haven’t I?”
Dantin snorted, a half-laugh. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
“You have some of it,” Larien said. “As do all the Sumners, down the generations.”
“How do you mean?”
The young Fae behind the chairs stepped forward and knelt before them, each facing the center. David followed suit.
“These are all Fae children of a Sumner mother,” Larien said. “David you know about, and Margann who is daughter of Dantin and Rosie Sumner.” Margann inclined her head. “And here are the other Sumner children. Alder is the son of Eileen, your grandfather’s sister.”
A dark boy nodded but didn’t smile. Alder had to be at least as old as my mother and Rosie, but he looked about twenty. The villagers in Summoner’s Well had said there were rumors that Eileen had carried a child, though she’d never married.
Then Larien introduced Bronn, Elva, and Nerea—children of earlier Sumner generations. Again they still looked to be barely more than children. Though there had to be at least twenty years between each of them, they looked the same age as each other. At last he held out his hand to a fair-skinned, golden-haired one who appeared only a few years older than me. The young man bowed stiffly but managed a smile with his eyes.
“And I am Galan, son of Jane Summoner, who was the youngest daughter of Martyn the Summoner himself.”
That would make Galan almost two hundred years old. I hastily revised my estimate of the lifespan of the Fae.
“We each have a part of it, Ross,” David said. He waved a hand to the Sumner-Fae. “What they believe is that you have the Summoner talent, the Great Talent of the firstborn, that can draw the power out of us and transfer it back to the rowankind who rightfully own it. You can release their magic back into the world. Right the wrong done by Martyn the Summoner.”
“And does the box contain the means to do it?”
There was a silence.
“They don’t know,” David said. “They think so. Summoning isn’t a part of Fae magic, but Martyn left it for a purpose, and they think it’s a way to undo what he couldn’t do in his lifetime.”
“We still don’t know how to open it.”
“Your mother had the power, but not without her sister, and once they were sundered, that was impossible,” Larien said. “Now we think her children, yourself and David together, may succeed.”
“You mean we could have opened it at any time?”
“We think that the box is sensitive to the power-holders, and that it can only be opened when the right people are gathered together to complete the transfer of power. The rest of the Sumners—your Aunt Rosie, Margann, and the other Fae-children—must be present to willingly yield their power.”
“Or have it ripped from them,” Dantin spoke.
“All of them?” I asked. My fingers tightened on Corwen’s hand.
He nodded.
I glanced at David. He’d gone a shade or two paler.
“And what happens to us all when we relinquish the stolen magic?” I asked.
Larien shrugged, a curiously human gesture, and I wondered if his time in Plymouth might have made him a little more understanding of humankind than most Fae. “I don’t know. Each of you has a different magical inheritance.”
“I don’t mean magic. Will we live through it?”
Dantin cut in. “Expendable.”
I saw the surprise in David’s eyes. The other Fae youngsters seemed to know, even though Margann licked her lips and swallowed hard.
“Expendable how?”
“When the rowankind power is sucked away, we don’t know what will be left.”
“What happens to me if I’m the one doing the sucking?”
“We don’t know that either,” Larien said. “The Sumners have a strand of magic that’s purely their own. You’ll be using that. If you’re strong enough, you may survive.”
Thanks, Larien. What a comfort.
The full realization of what might happen if we succeeded hit me. Wild magic, such as had not been seen for centuries, would suddenly be loosed. The rowankind tabbies would turn into tigers. I dropped Corwen’s hand. What part would the Green Man, his Lady, and all of their creatures play in this?
“Think it through, Ross,” Corwen muttered.
“I am. That’s the trouble.”
We had come so far in just the last thirty years and now science and industry, our very society, would be overturned if magic came back into the world. Would that be good or bad? Reason could so easily become unreasonable, chaotic, disordered. Dangerous.
I began to see what Walsingham’s mission was. Why he intended to purge the Sumner family from the face of the earth.
And I wasn’t entirely sure that he was wrong.
It might be the end of the world as we knew it and the start of a new era for humankind, one dominated by magic. But if I didn’t open the box, a whole race would continue living in unjust servitude.
It all hinged on the Fae. What would their part be in all this? What did they intend for my kind? I couldn’t trust that they’d be humane. I’d already seen that they didn’t care about our life or death. What did they intend for the rowankind? Would they go from one servitude to another under the Fae, their creators and masters?
I needed time to think.
“There’s a Sumner child missing,” I said. “My brother Philip.”
“He’s dead,” Larien said.
“No, he isn’t. He’s been taken by a man called Walsingham. He’s in London.”
I didn’t think it possible to surprise a Fae, but Larien’s eyes registered shock before he regained his composure.
“I have to free Philip,” I said. “If you’re right we can’t do this without him.”
Dantin leaned forward. “It will take all the Summoner’s offspring, Larien, and we cannot travel to the city without—”
“I know.” Larien sounded irritated. He turned to me. “How do you propose to go about this task?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Walsingham has magic. He’s more than just witchkind, he’s a sorcerer. He works with darkness and spellcraft. He works with blood.”
