Authors: R. J. Anderson
‘The prisoner’s awake,’ said a female faery with blunt dark hair, stomping up to Garan and jerking a thumb back over her shoulder. ‘He wants to talk to Rhosmari.’
Rhosmari followed Garan and the stocky female through the passageway to the kitchen. A small cluster of faeries parted as they came in, and she found herself face to face with Martin. His hands were lashed behind him and there was an ugly bruise on his cheekbone, but his eyes met hers with the same cool arrogance as ever.
‘Congratulations,’ he said. ‘You have your revenge. Would you like to hit me again, for old times’ sake?’
Garan shot Rhosmari a startled glance, but she ignored it. ‘What do you want, Martin?’
‘You know the answer,’ he replied. ‘But it seems that freedom on my own terms is not an option at present. So untie my hands, and let me go back to the Empress.’
Rhosmari looked incredulously at the dark-haired faery, who shrugged and said, ‘We offered to let him touch the Stone. He told us he wasn’t interested.’
‘But why?’ Rhosmari asked Martin. ‘After everything the Empress has done to you – why would you
choose
to serve her?’
His mouth twisted in a parody of a smile. ‘I have already touched the Stone of Naming once,’ he said. ‘And what kind of freedom did it give me? Freedom to run in terror, without refuge or rest; freedom to beg, and starve, and live in squalor. At least if I belong to the Empress, I eat well and sleep sound.’
‘You could join the rebels,’ said Rhosmari, but Martin laughed.
‘Go to the Oak and live like a squirrel in a tree? I know better than to imagine I could ever be content with such a life. And they have no more protection from the Empress than I do.’ He raised his voice to address the room at large. ‘You gain nothing by keeping me a prisoner. I can tell the Empress nothing about you that she does not know already, and she will offer neither bargain nor ransom for my sake. So either kill me, or let me go.’
Kill me.
He spoke the words so lightly, as though he hardly cared what became of him any more. And Rhosmari remembered how she had stood in the kitchen only last night, holding a knife to her breast.
‘Let him go,’ she said.
‘Who made you Queen?’ retorted the faery who had escorted her to the kitchen. ‘If you ask me, he ought to be nailed to a stump and left for the crows—’
‘Peace, Thorn,’ Garan said, his gaze on Rhosmari. ‘She has the right to free him, if anyone does.’
‘And we’ll have the right to regret it,’ said Thorn sourly, but she stepped up to Martin and loosened his bonds. Martin shook off the ropes and headed for the door, but Rhosmari called, ‘Wait.’
He did not turn, but he paused. Rhosmari went on, ‘You betrayed me once, and I was willing to forgive you for it. But by joining the Empress, you not only betray your fellow faeries, but Lyn and Toby and all the other humans you once called friends. I know you never cared for me, but can you say the same about them?’
Martin stood still for a moment, his face a cold mask. Then he pushed open the door and walked out.
‘Well, that was all very special,’ said Thorn. ‘But who’s going to break the news to Timothy? He seemed fairly pleased with himself after he knocked Martin out with that poker.’
‘Can you blame me?’ asked a voice unexpectedly from the pantry, and Timothy stepped out into the room. ‘The first time I met him, he knifed me and took my wallet.’
So that was why Timothy had been so eager to fight Martin. Rhosmari should not have been surprised, let alone disappointed. Yet she was.
‘Speaking of Knife,’ Thorn said to Timothy, ‘she’s looking for you. And she’s none too happy, either.’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Timothy. ‘Why don’t you go and tell her where I am? You like to do that.’
‘Cheeky brat,’ sniffed Thorn, but she went. The faeries who remained traded furtive glances and then hurried out after her, until only Rhosmari, Garan and Timothy were left.
‘We must get Rhosmari back to the Oakenwyld,’ said Garan to Timothy. ‘It will be hours before the rest of us finish putting this house in order, and she will be safer there if the Empress should attack again.’
Timothy nodded. ‘We can take her in the car, once Paul gets back.’ He glanced out of the window. ‘Oh good, that’s him now.’ He headed for the yard, and Rhosmari was about to follow, but Garan touched her arm.
‘We will talk later, you and I,’ he said.
The seriousness in his tone made Rhosmari uneasy. Did he just want to share information, or did he have something more personal in mind? But Garan had already walked away, and all she could do was watch him go.
When Rhosmari joined Timothy outside, a grey car was idling in the yard, with a blond and strikingly handsome man behind the wheel. He rolled down the window and said, ‘Tim, could you find Peri and tell her I’m here?’
This must be Paul McCormick. Rhosmari bent towards the car to greet him – and saw the carrier strapped into the back seat. ‘Isadora!’ she exclaimed, and the dog yipped in reply.
Rhosmari was glad to take the carrier and reunite Isadora with her mistress, and once she was satisfied that both of them were resting comfortably, she bid Sarah goodbye and returned to the kitchen yard. She found Peri – the pale-haired woman who had thrown the horseshoe at the Empress – sitting beside Paul in the front of the car, and Timothy holding the back door open for her to join them.
‘Hop in,’ he said.
Rhosmari had never ridden in a vehicle so small before, much less with three humans. And yet, after nearly two weeks as a prisoner, she would have braved much worse to escape from Waverley Hall. She slid onto the back seat, and Timothy climbed in beside her.
‘Will Sarah be safe now?’ Rhosmari asked, as Paul turned the car around and headed for the main drive.
‘If she follows my instructions, she will be,’ Peri said. ‘And I gave her one of my iron pendants, just to be sure. But I don’t think Jasmine will come back in any case.’
‘Jasmine?’ asked Rhosmari.
‘The Empress,’ Timothy said. ‘Remember the story Linden told your Elders, about the faery who stole the Oakenfolk’s magic? Well, it turns out that she and this Empress are the same person.’
‘And the first time she met Timothy, she nearly killed him,’ said Peri. ‘As did Martin, for that matter. So of course the first thing he does when we get to Waverley Hall is go haring off upstairs, so they can both have another chance to finish him off.’
She glared at Timothy over her shoulder. He bristled, and Rhosmari spoke up hastily before it could turn into a quarrel: ‘The Empress told me that she had been human once.’
‘She
told
you that?’ asked Timothy.
But Peri did not seem surprised. ‘Three times, actually,’ she said. ‘From what Queen Amaryllis told me before she died, Jasmine was born human. She was adopted by the Oakenfolk as a child, but once she grew up, her Queen sent her back into the human world to learn about creativity. That was when she met a painter named Alfred Wrenfield, and fell in love with him.’
‘In…love?’ Rhosmari blinked, trying to digest this unexpected news. ‘You mean she chose to stay with him, instead of going back to the Oak? Like you did with Paul?’
‘Kind of,’ said Timothy. ‘Only with a lot more yelling and hitting.’
‘One hundred per cent more, in fact,’ put in Paul dryly. ‘Just so we have that perfectly clear.’
Without a trace of self-consciousness, Peri leaned over and kissed her husband’s cheek. Then she went on, ‘Wrenfield could be selfish and unreliable, even cruel at times. But Jasmine’s bond to him was too deep for her to even think about leaving, until he lost his temper and struck her.’
Rhosmari had never heard of such a thing before, but she had studied enough ancient faery lore to understand. A bond was a sacred covenant between faeries – or in this case, between faery and human. But if either party struck the other, all obligations between them were cancelled.
‘Jasmine returned to the Oak angry and bitter,’ Peri continued, ‘and determined to keep her fellow faeries from suffering as she had done. Over the next few years she worked her way up to becoming Queen, and then she cast the spell that used up the Oakenfolk’s magic and cut them off from the human world. But then Amaryllis came back from the outside world to challenge her…and I think you know the rest of the story.’
In my youth I lost a magical contest with a rival
, the Empress had told her,
who thought the best way to humiliate me was to turn me into a human.
‘So that was why the Empress destroyed Philip Waverley’s portrait,’ said Rhosmari. ‘Because Wrenfield had painted it.’
‘Partly,’ Peri said. ‘But she had reason to hate Philip Waverley, too. His wife, Heather, was also a faery, but unlike Jasmine and Wrenfield, they were happy together. In fact, the two of them were so devoted to each other that even after Jasmine stole Heather’s magic and trapped her in her faery form, she couldn’t make her forget Philip or stop wanting to be with him.’
A bond stronger than magic itself? Rhosmari found that hard to believe. ‘So Jasmine let her go?’
‘Of course not,’ said Paul without taking his eyes off the road. ‘She had her executed.’
Rhosmari sank down in her seat, staring at the back of Paul’s blond head. She had known the Empress could be harsh with faeries she deemed traitors, but she had not realised she was capable of outright murder.
‘And then Philip died of a broken heart,’ said Timothy. ‘Which I didn’t think ever actually happened. But they’d already had two children by that point, one of whom inherited Waverley Hall—’
‘And became Sarah’s great-grandfather,’ Paul added. ‘Or great-great-grandfather. Something of that sort.’
‘And the other,’ Peri finished, ‘is Valerian, the present Queen of the Oak.’
Rhosmari pressed her fingers against her eyelids, her head swimming with all this new information. When she looked up again, the car was speeding between banks of trees and high hedgerows, and Waverley Hall was nowhere in sight.
‘So the Empress really is old,’ she said.
‘She must be well over three hundred by now,’ Peri said. ‘I’m amazed she’s even alive.’
‘She’s stronger than any faery I’ve ever seen,’ Rhosmari murmured. ‘The way she can maintain so many spells at once, and control her followers besides…’ A chill ran through her, and she rubbed her arms. ‘Whatever she did to get back her powers, it must have been terrible. She says she only wants what’s best for her people, but how can she not see all the evil she’s done?’
‘I don’t think she sees anything but her own ambitions,’ said Peri. ‘If she ever had a conscience, it’s long gone by now.’
‘Seared as with a hot iron,’ Timothy said, in a distracted way that made Rhosmari think he must be quoting something.
‘Yes, well,’ said Paul. ‘If we could defeat Jasmine by psychoanalysing her, she’d be dead a hundred times over. But here’s what I’d really like to know, Tim – the next time we go up against her, are you going to dash off and play the hero again, or are you going to follow orders?’
Timothy gave Rhosmari a sidelong glance. Then he said, ‘Follow orders. Probably.’
Paul looked at Peri, and his mouth twitched. Peri sighed. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Believe me, I know.’
Rhosmari had expected the Oak to be a large tree, to hold so many faeries. But as Paul’s car turned the last corner and she saw it looming up against the sky, her eyes grew round. Never had she seen such a mighty breadth of trunk, or guessed that limbs could spread so wide and not crack under their own weight. Surely only magic could have kept a tree of that size alive and undamaged for so long.
‘It’ll be a couple of hours before Garan and the others get back from Waverley Hall,’ said Paul, as he turned into the drive of a tall, peak-roofed house and brought the car to a stop. ‘Would you like to go straight to the Oak, Rhosmari, or will you stay and have some lunch with us?’
Rhosmari hesitated. She had not eaten anything since last night, so she was quite hungry. And though her iron-blocked magic was beginning to come back, she did not feel quite ready to go into the Oak alone. But…
‘Tell you what,’ said Timothy. ‘Come in and eat first, and then I’ll take you over to the Oak. I’ll even come inside with you, if you like.’
‘You can do that?’ asked Rhosmari, but Timothy only looked smug.
‘Timothy’s a bit in love with the Oak, I think,’ said Peri. ‘Any chance to get in there will do. So don’t think you’re putting him to any trouble.’ She opened the door and climbed out, adding over her shoulder, ‘Or us, either.’
Rhosmari looked up at the house, then back at Timothy, who was regarding her hopefully. Why did it seem that every time she thought she knew what to expect from humans, they did something to throw her into confusion?
‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll come in.’
‘Then something wet slapped my leg, so I looked behind me,’ said Timothy, ‘and there’s Lydia in the bottom of the boat, struggling with this…
fish.
’ He flung his arms so wide he would have knocked over the water jug if Peri hadn’t caught it in time. ‘I’m not even exaggerating, it must have been half as big as she was. How she managed to catch it, I’ll never know. And then there’s me, with this—’
He held his fingertips about a hand’s width apart. Paul grinned, and Peri laughed. But Rhosmari was too distracted even to manage a smile.
Here she sat, eating the plainest meal of bread and meat and cheese, at a table so small that Timothy’s knee bumped hers on one side and the wheel of Paul’s chair boxed her in on the other. She was listening to three humans tell stories about places she had never been, people she had never met, and situations that had nothing to do with her – a kind of conversation that most faeries would find meaningless, if not rude. And now Timothy had just told them about a time when he had been made to look ridiculous by his little sister. How could she laugh without seeming to mock his failure?
But of course human ways were different from those of faeries; she had always known that, and no doubt she would get used to them in time. What troubled Rhosmari more was that in spite of the simple food, humble surroundings, and strange company, she was enjoying herself.