Sons (Book 2) (71 page)

“Thank you, Laston,” I sent back to the nervous sprite.  Then I shifted back to the foyer of the Cahill Castle.  “Bored yet, Marty?”

He whirled around on me with fire in his eyes.  “Don’t
do
that!” he yelled, the Castle’s energy coruscating off him like liquid fire as he eased it back into the defenses.  “You scared me!  I could have fried you with that.”

“Sorry, Marty,” I apologized.  “Did Gordon tell you what’s going on?”

“He came down and gave me that
Esteli
-thing,” Marty said.  “And he said you were going to do something big on the hill that you said was gonna mess with the wards.  He said that I should watch carefully but not interfere or I’d crash the Castle.”

“Right, sort of,” I said.  “Did he tell you that the Queens are here?”

“What?  Where?” he cried, angry that he missed them.

“Don’t get upset about it,” I said, attempting to mollify him.  “They probably slipped in under their daughters’ auras.  There’s not a ward in the world that would have caught that, including mine.”  Not true, but they were the freaking Queens of Faery.  For all I knew, they came through the bedrock that the castle itself was built on.  It seemed to placate him some, but he still searched the grounds around the faery encampments.

“What I’m going to do up there is build knowe, which means I’m going to pull a small part of Gilán over here for a little bit and let the Queens walk around in it.  That way, maybe I can put them off actually visiting for a few years and give me some time to grow and stabilize.”

He stood still for a moment, then said, “That sounds reasonable.  But will it work?”

I chuckled.  “You mean, will it put them off for a while?  Pretty sure, yeah.  They agreed to it, anyway.”

“What’s it gonna feel like, do you know?”

“I think for you it’ll feel like the two places will be overlaid,” I speculated.  “Sort of like two pictures printed on top of each other at the same time.  Other than that, it shouldn’t be
that
much different for you.  Your biggest challenge will be them.  They will feel really big in the wards once they announce themselves.  I’m pretty sure the Castle is going to have a fit about it.  There are… contingencies built into it that might be hard to handle.”

“You mean the Faery protocols,” Marty said, reaching up in to the wards and activating a usually unused section of the Castle’s defensive strategies.  “There must be some way to accommodate them.”

“Uhnnn, I don’t see it if there is, Marty,” I said, following him through the protocols.  “If you find one, great.  If not and I see that you’re starting to have trouble, I’ll send Kieran or Ethan down to help.  I don’t want you getting hurt trying to fight an overload of something, okay?  If it does start to happen, let it!  I can handle a power feedback more easily than you can.”

“Okay, Seth,” Marty answered timidly.

“If you don’t believe me, I can stand in the middle of the moat to prove it,” I said, totally lacking in bravado.  The idea of
that
did scare him.  “There’s one more weird thing that’s about to happen.  Did you see the South Gate earlier?  When the limo with Messner showed up?”

“Yeah,” he said, brows knitting identically to his brother then.

“I’m about to pop over to Dublin to get them,” I said.  “I’m gonna take ‘em back with us tonight.  See if I can take care of several problems together.”

“Through the wards?” he asked.  “I thought you couldn’t do that.”

“Moving through Gilán and using portals are subtly different from one another,” I explained.  “They will still show in the wards and they will set them off but I won’t since the wards don’t see me.”

He sighed uncomfortably.  “Okay, Seth,” he said.

“Tell ya what,” I said, searching for something, anything, to put him at ease about this.  “I’ll warn you through the key before I come back and you can watch for it.  That way, maybe we’ll be able to find a way to add something to the wards that will both mark them and us.”  That did perk him up, so obviously I chose right.

“All right, Seth, I’ll look,” Marty said.

“Back in a minute, then,” I said, and shifted through Gilán and back into Dublin, to the airport, one of the few places there that I knew well enough.  It only took a few seconds to draw the lines of sight to put me closer to the terminals.

Double-tapping the call button, I had Messner on the line by the second ring.

“Well, Agent?  How do you and the generals feel about a quick trip across the universe?” I asked him, only being mildly facetious.

“Surprisingly, they have agreed,” Messner said without preamble.  “The ones I could wake, anyway.  One was in a drug-induced coma, but the other two are getting dressed now.”

“They have until I find you to finish and to gather overnight gear, Agent,” I warned.  “The Queens of Faery wait for no man.”

“The Queens!  You’re fucking kidding me!” Messner exclaimed.

“No, Agent Messner, now where are you?” I asked calmly.

“Airport hotel, eighth floor, hotel has a ‘w’ in it,” he muttered, moving around in his room.  He muffled the phone and yelled something.  “Westeria or something.”

“I’ll find it,” I said, rolling my eyes.  How could you not know where you were?  “Two minutes, Agent Messner.”  Disconnecting the call, I looked around at the tall buildings around me and picked the most likely target.  Then I made a quick series of line of sight portal jumps until I hit the lobby and took the elevator up to the eighth floor.  Their rooms were fairly obvious by the soldiers wandering the halls near their doors.

Pushing call twice again connected me to Messner.  “Agent, I’m in the hall and there is an unusual number of military wandering the corridors.  Should I be concerned?”

“No, sir, not at all,” Messner said.  “They are the generals’ entourage and are a normal part of their procession.”

“Well, they shan’t be accompanying them tonight,” I informed him.  “Which room or are you all coming out now?”

“We’ll come out,” he said and disconnected.  I heard his shouts through the closed doors, “Let’s go!  He’s here and he’s not a patient man!”

The soldiers finally noticed me, too.  “Can I help you, sir?” asked a voice behind me, a deep baritone from a barrel of a chest.

“No, I’m fine,” I said and remained standing in the center of the hall, waiting.  Raising my voice, I yelled down the hall, “Messner, thirty and counting, then I leave without you.”

“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to leave, now,” the soldier said brusquely.

“If I leave before their thirty seconds are up, your generals will be quite upset,” I said mildly.  Several more soldiers paid attention to us further down the hall, their hands floating nearer their sidearms. 

A door opened down the hall and Messner appeared with one of the generals in tow—literally.  Messner was dragging him out by one arm.  The general was barely awake and only half dressed, his jacket still crushed against him.  Seeing the general galvanized the soldier behind me into action, unfortunately for him.

“Sir, I’m afraid you need to leave
now
,” he said firmly and grabbed my shoulder.  That was his mistake, grabbing my shoulder.  Without thinking I turned and grabbed him by the belt and shirt-front, then twisted and pulled.  A second and third door opened, nearly simultaneously, as he flew by down the hall, amid shouts from the soldiers further along and more behind me.  I cordoned off the hallway with simple shield walls as heads came out of the doors just opened, looking after the missile that just went by.  Two more generals staggered out, one barely dressed at all and still holding clothing in his hands.

“Times up.  Who’s going?” I asked Messner, approaching the rushed group of men in the hall.  The mostly undressed man turned to me and weaved in place.  This was obviously the nearly-comatose man Messner mentioned earlier.

“Now, damn it!” Messner yelled into room across from his as I came up to him.  An extremely harried looking officer was rushing to the door with attaches and a gym bag.

“I don’t like this,” he muttered at Messner when he dropped them at his feet.  The man glared at me so I glared back.

“All four of you then?” I asked, eyeing the sudden luggage.  The briefcases might be necessary to Byrnes’ case.  Looking through the veil, I found Ellorn with a small group of his kin in an apartment next to Steven’s along the promenade and assumed this was where he was planning to house them.

“Yes, sir,” Messner said, exhaling hard in relief and satisfied that he’d achieved all he could in the time he had.

Touching Marty’s key, I sent him the message that we were coming, dropped their luggage in the foyer of the apartment Ellorn was readying, and shifted all of us partially through Gilán and back into the alcove with my family.  The move disoriented the military terribly, though Messner took it in stride.  The guys were already moving to the exit to head to the field to meet with me.

“All right, Agent, generals, listen up and listen carefully,” I said sternly.  “You
will not
get any warnings or second chances if you break the rules in any way.  None!  Understand that and it won’t be me doing the pulping so don’t get aggravated at me about it.  Keep getting dressed because they expect you to be at your best but try to
not
be noticed by the Queens.  We will be putting you in the back anyway, but we don’t want either the elves or Gordon noticing you. 

“Once the elves are done and I pull you over to Gilán,” I continued, “Then and only then will you act like people.  Otherwise, you are the shyest, quietest, mutest men in the world.  Got it?”  I picked out David and Steve’s keys and asked them to meet us at the field.

“I’ll tend to them,” said Messner.  I glanced over at Mike and he nodded.  He’d help, too.

“Steve and David should meet us on the way,” I said and turned to leave, the head of the caravan.  I fed the undershirt some power and lit it up.  Then I pushed my presence into the two alcoves abutting ours to send a message to the faery there.

“Let’s get this party started,” I said with a little excitement.

“We’ve drawn baby-sitting duties,” Mike mumbled to Steve and David when they met up with us at the field.  I left them to deal with their charges and concentrated on the tasks at hand.  Mike could handle that and the crowd of people pouring in now would help to hide them some.

Jimmy held his rod out now, walking the outer perimeter and answering quickly asked questions with polite and evasive answers.  Yes, there was “high magic” about to be worked and no, he didn’t know what it was, just that they had to stay outside of that line.  And, yes, he did know he was on fire.  And, yes, as First he can get to Gilán and, no, he would not take them there.  He answered each question easily, but he was away before the same person could ask a second question.  As a result, he answered the same questions often.

“Where do you want us?” Peter asked while watching the melee begin.

“Between the knowe and the people would be best, I think,” I said.  “Kieran, you’ve had more experience in the Castle’s wards than any of us.  I told Marty that if he had any trouble that I’d send either you or Ethan to help him.  Could you do that, please?”

“Of course,” Kieran said.  “Though I don’t think it’ll come to that.”

“I don’t either,” I mumbled.  The faery hadn’t made an appearance yet.  I walked casually out to the center of the field, pushing my presence out into the area until I had a solid feel for the inner circle.  I got to the center and turned back to the entrance, still not seeing a hint of movement from the faery camps.  Finding Mike and his “children” wasn’t hard.  Three keys together were fairly obvious in the clearing.  The nearly naked general had finally managed to dress.

I was losing patience pretty fast after five minutes of standing around kicking at blades of grass.

“Two more minutes and I’m going home,” I called out, booming again.  Everyone between me and them cringed at the volume.  I wasn’t wearing a watch but I was acutely aware of the time.  Ten seconds shy of my limit, Avenour strode out of the Winter camp and headed toward us.  He was in no particular hurry, which irritated me, so I didn’t alter my countdown.  He hit the outer perimeter at exactly two minutes and I started pulling back at the exact same time.  Avenour sensed the change, of that there was no question, but he didn’t acknowledge it.

“Lord Daybreak,” he called.

“Yes, Avenour?”

“The Emissaries have been sent word regarding the visitation request,” Avenour said.  “Her Majesties have agreed to the knowe and are on their way here now.”

“Avenour,” I said sourly, “Are you suggesting that the Queens have left or are you suggesting that they were never here in the first place?”

“Lord?” asked Avenour.  He seemed genuinely startled by the question.  “If her Majesties have been here this eve, I am unaware.”

“Well, whichever the case, you may return with this,” I said testily, “They have exceeded my time limit and my patience.  If they expect me to treat them in deference, then they
shall
afford me the same.  If they wish to play games, I understand that there is a relatively new dragon duchy in Faery.”

Gordon crossed the first perimeter line, heading for Jimmy who met him a few yards in.  I stepped away from the sputtering, completely confused Avenour and already knew the message was delivered, responses being weighed.  While I was curious what that response might be, I wasn’t particularly worried about it.

Gordon and Jimmy had a few quiet words together with Jimmy slipping them slightly out of sync with the universe to mire their conversation slightly.  Jimmy turned and walked to me, turning his back to Avenour and gently shifted us out of sync as well.

Jimmy appeared a little uneasy when he relayed the communication.  “Gordon asked if you would please perform the knowe anyway as he has made promises based on your expected action and this is likely to be the only chance for many of these people to visit Gilán in any way.”

I sighed heavily, grimacing at the same time.  “I did say they’d be able to walk around, too.  It just really takes the wind outta my sails.  Ellorn sent someone out to clear the area for me.  Go see that has been done for me, please.  Then step outside the bounds of the inner perimeter.  I bring it over in three or four minutes and you can come over then.  Okay?”

“Sure, Seth,” he said and gave me a big smile.  “I’ll leave right after you fill this place up again.  I wanna make sure you’re okay before I leave you alone.”  He patted my shoulder as he walked away behind me.  It was really nice to have someone feel that way about you, someone that cared that much about your welfare.  My problem, though, was that of every love spell or potion.  It rang hollow at inopportune times, and that made it nice and unfulfilling.

“Avenour,” I called, returning my attention to the still sputtering elf.  “Master Cahill has reminded me that as part of my bargain for agreeing to the knowe in the first place, I agreed to allow members of the councils to review the monument after the Queens had their opportunity.  If I piss off because of them, Gordon looses face among his peers because I throw a hissy fit.  And as it turns out that his peers are my peers, I lose face as well.  So I am going to accede to Master Cahill’s request and continue with the knowe.

“Should the Queen’s wish to pull their heads out of the asses,” I continued.  “They are welcome to join us, but they have lost their right to deferential treatment here tonight.  Now if you wouldn’t mind stepping outside the perimeters, please?”

As I turned, I darkened the undershirt completely, then pushed out hard on Daybreak and Gilán to intensify my presence within the land itself here.  Marty would feel this as an itch he couldn’t identify a cause for.  Avenour turned and swiftly left the field, moving directly for the Summer private alcove.  Jimmy slipped over into Gilán.

“Daybreak?” my First called from Gilán as he passed outside the perimeter of the monument.

“Yes, Jimmy?” I answered as I began shifting the dimensions around in the way that created the knowe, a sort of faery origami in real space.  You had to do it incredibly fast or it would unravel before it could fall into place.  The difficulty was directly proportional to the volume of space shifted.  Mostly because it didn’t matter how large the volume, the timing still had to be perfect.

“You didn’t specify that none of ours were allowed to watch along the outside perimeter,” my First sent through our link.  “There are a bunch around right now.  Should I send on their way?”

“No, I don’t mind them being there,” I said.  “What are they doing?”

“They are waiting in case the humans wanted the fairy spoken and translated,” Jimmy said with a hint of a laugh.  “They’re a cheerful bunch tonight.”

“We’ll be there in a moment,” I said.  It was time to start concentrating on the task at hand.  Building this did take some crafting after all.  This was a far bit larger than my closet doorway or a mirror’s face, really.  I felt Kieran push an emotional suggestion at Marty through the ward.  It wasn’t interfering, just a comforting pat on the back sort of feeling.  Excellent timing as I pulled the monument into the center of the field and Gilán snapped into place around me.

I was home.  Except that thirty feet out from me I got this weird double vision.  One was a version of Ireland with a few short of two hundred council class wizards and their aides, and the other was Gilán with close to a thousand sprites, brownies, fairies, and a few pixies gathered around the outside perimeter with Jimmy, still bright and fiery.  Huh.  I had pixies now.  It was a little startling to see so many here at this time of night as no one actually lived near here at the moment.

“Hi, guys,” I called out to everyone in a Faery common dialect so I didn’t confuse the wizards.  “It’s good to see everyone tonight and I’m not going to send anyone away, but… what are you doing here?”  Eighty answers flooded cheerfully at me, which I guess I should be grateful that it wasn’t all of them at once, and it was incredibly sweet.  In a subconscious gesture, the undershirt glowed with Daybreak’s aura and showed them how I felt about it.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” I said, projecting my voice enough to be heard by everyone but not be overwhelmed.  “I present to you one of three gifts my people gave to me just yesterday.  It resides just a few feet away from the portal that they escaped through when I gained their freedom and tells that story in vivid detail.”

The Emissaries camps stirred with power and emotions as the Queens began to seethe in anger at my slight.  Let ‘em; theirs was worse.

“To further your appreciation of the monument, a number of my people have gathered around the perimeter of the knowe to speak the faery tongue and to translate if you’d like.  They’ve come a fair distance and of their own accord, so please be courteous to them.  Otherwise, enjoy yourselves.”  I spread both arms out in a welcoming gesture.

Both Queens emerged from their encampments with their daughters and their husbands beside them.  Marty spiked alarm through the wards at the sudden appearance of two such powerful figures and both Gordon and Felix turned to face them as they entered the field.  They were seething, literally, their anger cascaded in powerful waves off of them, Summer burning the ground she walked on and Winter freezing it to brittle hardness.

When they hit the outer perimeter, I slapped a Faraday cage around the six of them, a very strong and a very tight cage.  I’d even disabled the connection to Faery itself.  They were completely powerless for the duration of the cage.  They were even less happy, even distraught at the situation.  I walked very close to their cage to speak to them.  I didn’t want to air my dirty laundry so publicly but they’d chosen the venue, not me.

“Act right or I’ll send you home with your tails between your legs,” I said as I lit a wall of Gilán’s fires around them to cover the possibility of the cage from human eyes.  The mood had to be serious and strong or I’d be kowtowing to them forever.  “Seriously, were you expecting me to snivel at your feet, Ladies?  You’ve met my father, right?  My brother?”

Of the two, the Winter Queen was actually the slower to regain her composure while the Summer Queen fought tempestuously back and forth with her emotions.  The Princes and Princesses of each nation had kept their composure throughout.  Apparently those fissures in their minds’ hearts kept them in good stead when their sovereign railed on in her extremes.  Or perhaps, they found themselves strangely at peace being cut off from Faery for a moment.

Glancing over, Gordon stood nearby nearly glowing with pent-up energy, his body tense and worried.  On the other side, I could see my father equally tense and coiled, five or six spells at the ready in his mind.  Peter moved in slowly, casually in my periphery toward Dad.  Mike was taking his clues from Peter and Ethan, apparently, because he was ushering the generals toward the monument and moving some of the councilmen with them, too.  “Nah, Seth’s got it under control,” Mike said softly and airily.

“Remember this moment, Ladies,” I said quietly, just loud enough for the two of them to hear and using the flames to bury the sound outside the three of us.  “I would much prefer for us to treat each other fairly and politely.  But if you push these silly little games on me, I will oblige you only so far.  Now which will it be?  Do you want to act like elves or do I send you to stand in the corners like children?”

They sublimated their anger quite well before they agreed.

“Thank you for allowing us this visit, Lord Daybreak,” Summer said, adding a scent of honeysuckle to the breeze as I let the cage fall and Gilán’s fires recede.  “My cousin and I do apologize for our late arrival.”

“Yes, thank you, Daybreak, it has been millennia since we have stepped into a new faery realm,” Winter let out a veritable gush.  “This is quite an auspicious day.”

“Then please, enjoy yourselves,” I said, politely stepping to the side and gesturing them forward. 

Jimmy was walking in slow circles around the monument, gently coaxing the still nervous wizards forward and into the circle of strange looking grass.  From the outside of the knowe, it looked completely different than its surroundings in a hundred different subtle ways.  To me, the most obvious was the very slight, very pale blue sheen of power that coated every aspect of Gilán.  Nobody else seemed to see that, though, according to Ethan.  But it was a little brighter because the starscape was brighter and the moons were out on Gilán, but the largest moon was waning here.  The grass was a different shade of green and denser in the knowe.

Without fail, as each wizard crossed into the knowe he or she would feel the crossing and react in some way.  They were even more shocked when they looked back into Gilán and so the faery folk gallivanting around them.  The wee ones weren’t exactly the most “on-task” of the faery.  Leave enough of them alone with nothing to do and they’d amuse themselves soon enough.  They did stop playing and straighten up when the Queens and I entered the knowe.  Both Queens stopped on the first step and looked down at their feet.

In that instant, in what I felt was extraordinary, several occurrences happened simultaneously.  Both Queens thought, to their obvious disbelief, “This is Faery.”  My faery started singing my name.  And the Palace started singing the twined names of Gilán and me.  All I could do was stand there and enjoy it.  The Queens continued to stare at their feet and their emissaries stared at me, slack-jawed in awe as the Palace entered the decrescendo.  Jimmy still circled the monument with a monumental smile on his face, his fires quenched for now and his staff shrunk and snapped onto his thigh.