Gossamyr Part 30

He gathered his supplies into the saddlebag and they began to circle down the stairs. Disregarding the darkness and the cold stone, she traced her fingertips along the curving walls. The short steps and tight twists enclosed Gossamyr in her thoughts.

Do you know the truth of yourself?

Why had she not been marked? The Disenchanted had been. Was it her mortal blood? Did it alter the spell, blinding it to her fee half? Perhaps Ulrich had merely been too close? Close enough for Faery, not nearly close enough for her newly kissed desires.

"Likely we need to view my light from above," she called up to Ulrich.

"Certainly, that is the case."

As they gained the last dozen steps, Ulrich's voice was low but close to Gossamyr. "So, are we to pretend it never happened?"

Pressing to the wall and looking up to him, Gossamyr feigned ignorance. A teasing gesture. It took all her determination to keep the smile from her mouth. She picked at a tuft of fur at her shoulder. "What never happened?"

"That kiss. Two kisses, actually."

Ah. Touching her lips invited a silly grin to her face. "Of course it happened," she offered slowly. "I kissed you because I wanted to."

"Will you kiss me again?"

Blue eyes on a white sky. Exotic, he. "Mayhap. If you are worthy."

"Ah, I am always up for a challenge put forth by a beautiful lady. Were I a knight, I should wear your favor onto the tournament lists."

"Were you a knight, you should come to arms against me in the tournament lists."

Ulrich's chuckle echoed in the twisting stone stairway. His final step as he brushed past Gossamyr swept a s.h.i.+mmer of feeling through her. Touched. Connected. For a moment they two had spoken silently their needs. It was a moment she planned to hold for ever in her heart. A heart that would need sweet memories to endure a loveless marriage.

As he turned to bow to her, Ulrich misstepped and stumbled. The saddlebag spilled its contents.

Gossamyr lunged to catch up the mortar and pestle and the alicorn. The blade he'd been using to sc.r.a.pe at the base of the alicorn landed the ground at Ulrich's toe, but a hair from doing harm. Fine particles of the alicorn glittered upon the tiled stone floor of the cathedral. She scooped up everything.

The mortar tucked inside the bags, Gossamyr stood, ready to chuckle at the man's clumsiness and offer a chiding remark, when Ulrich's expression silenced her mirth.

"You cannot touch that thing without protec-" he started. "You're holding it."

His sudden awe switched her attention to what she was doing.

"You are holding the alicorn," Ulrich gasped, "in your bare hand."

Indeed she did hold the unicorn's horn against her flesh. She'd picked it up without thought, hadn't been concerned the loose linen wrap had come off from the horn.

Not possible. She must not- Suddenly a shock of power hit Gossamyr like a blow to the chest. Her arms stretched wide and her body tense, she stood within the vibrations, unable to move but feeling no pain. Something radiated through her being, seeping into her every pore and permeating her veins. 'Twas a remarkable sensation limned with a solemn fear.

She must drop the alicorn. This was a sacred horn. Only the pure could touch it.

"Gossamyr, are you...fine and well?"

Ulrich's voice barely edged the sensation surrounding her as if with a brilliant beam of cool light. She could not utter a reply. 'Twas as if all the magical lights Ulrich had cast across the city gathered in her breast, inflamed but not burning.

"You will lead the unicorn right to us!" he cried. "Keep hold of it, Gossamyr."

"No!" Voicing her fear released Gossamyr from the paralyzing stance. She was able to open her fingers. The alicorn landed the cloth Ulrich had kept it wrapped in.

"What be to you? Something great had begun. A signal or beacon was being sent. The unicorn cannot find us unless you keep hold of the alicorn."

Gasping in breaths, Gossamyr bent at the waist and caught her hands on her knees. "I will not be responsible for luring the unicorn to the Red Lady."

"But it is the only way the unicorn will ever have it back. Please, you must pick it up again."

"Ulrich." She straightened and, shaking off the lingering prinkles, toed the cloth carefully over the alicorn. "I journey to the Red Lady. Any man or beast following me-particularly a hornless unicorn-will be endangered. I cannot risk it. In fact, we must hide the alicorn. Yes. Until we can return to it knowing the unicorn will be safe."

"Unthinkable." Ulrich wrapped up the alicorn and replaced it in the saddlebag. "I have taken a vow to protect this horn. It won't leave my sight."

"You vowed to protect it?"

"Yes."

"A few whispered words of prayer as you were being chased by the big bad evils?"

"About like that."

"Sacrilege!"

"To a faith that is not mine, faery! I will give up the search when the devil is blind. It has given me strength when I only wish to close my eyes and... Never mind." He stood and made to stalk off, but Gossamyr caught him by the arm. "It is human-emotion stuff," he spat. "Stuff you would never comprehend, so I will not bother to explain it to you." He tugged his arm from her grip and marched out from the cathedral.

Gossamyr sighed. She comprehended. And that knowing frightened her mightily.

After they had pa.s.sed through the Porte St. Antoine, Dominique San Juste dismounted Tor and landed the cobbles. When he'd agreed to accompany Tor he'd thought the beast merely in need of a run. Not a trek to Paris. Relentlessly, the stallion had galloped straight on to the outskirts of the capital city. The beast had seemed to fly. Almost.

Now Tor stilled, p.r.i.c.king his tufted white ears. Clanging metal signaled slops being emptied out a window close by, and beyond that a baby wailed like the wind. With a glance to Dominique, the beast regarded the changeling with what Dominique had come to learn a very sad look.

"I know what you seek, fair friend." Dominique smoothed his palm across the base of Tor's neck. That one spot, there beneath the braided witch locks, pleased him so whenever it was itched. "I will accompany you evermore. Onward?"

The stallion snorted and pawed the ground, hooves sc.r.a.ping hard cobbles. Dominique remounted, and threading a hand through the witch locks-for he never reined the beast-he prepared for the ride. Tor stepped into a regal march. One step, pause to listen, and then another.

Sliding a hand up Tor's mane and leaning forward, Dominique wondered if the bare spot on the forehead of the beast wasn't s.h.i.+ning more brilliantly than usual. Could it be Tor had finally located what he had been missing all these years?

NINETEEN.

Ill-sprung, this carriage. His jaw clacked as each uneven cobble bit at

the rotating wheels. The pin man drew a pin crusted with dried blood beneath his nose, remarking the scent as most curious. Female certainly, as his mistress had remarked. Though not the usual female scent. Strangely, it seemed familiar. Yet...exotic. How could that be?

And that the woman had spoken to him with some familiarity struck him harshly. She could not know him, for he did not recognize her. Much as he knew his memories of the past were blurry...

Pressing the heel of his hand to his brow, he winced as he tried to dredge up what he could not touch.

He knew he had been banished from Faery. The markings on his face were the same as the Red Lady's. But while she knew the reason behind her banishment, he couldn't conjure the memory- save for the name s.h.i.+nn. And that name came to him only because his mistress used it so frequently.

Was the reason for his banishment so evil he'd blocked it from his mind? He did not feel evil. What be evil true? Blood and pain and wicked laughter? No. Something deeper, more visceral, like a slug that cleaves inside one's belly.

He did not subscribe to evil. Serving his mistress sickened him. The only reason he did so was because he craved freedom. And there remained the fact he had no choice. The red b.i.t.c.h held him in thrall, his very essence pinned to the marble wall like the others. But unlike the others she was able to keep him alive.

Still Enchanted.

The notion stabbed him like a spear piercing an iron-cold night. He had yet been Enchanted when the Red Lady had found him. She had been able to take his essence, but not his life, for the Enchantment kept him alive. A fee in a mortal man's world. Yet, he did no more feel out of place than he could fly.

So he must have fallen into the Red Lady's thrall immediately following his banishment. Not so long ago. He had only been a.s.sisting Her Divine Redness since the spring had pushed up vermilion poppies in the fields that bordered the embattled city. Intoxicating that flower's kiss, as was the succubus's kiss.

He traced a finger over the pocked marks curving about his left eye. Not deep, but permanent. Pores saturated with the Red. Not blood, but residue from Faery. Painful. Do you remember? He'd cried out in the moment of banishment. Small pokers searing a lasting punishment into his flesh. And then?

Do you not remember me?

He had known the woman who fought with the applewood staff? When? And where? In Faery? But she did not reek of Faery. It did not seem feasible...

"Need to remember," he muttered, pressing his fisted fingers to his temple.

"What did you say, Puppy?"

Myrrh tickled his nose. He sat alongside his tormentor and lover. "Oh, er, she is close, mistress. I can scent her."

"And with her the man always follows?"

"I wager so. You've only to wait, as is your exquisite role."

"Leave me then. You've the others to retrieve. Two of them for my collection. But remain within calling distance so you may track the mortal man when he leaves my arms."

"Ever your servant, most beauteous one." He kissed her lap, lush folds of scented velvet, and nuzzled his nose deep into her musky scent, then slipped backward from the carriage and silently closed the door.

"For now," he muttered.

Bells tolled in Notre Dame to announce nones. Jacqueline, Ulrich named the largest bell. Her voice carried across the city. They would first check the Place de Greve, an execution square, Ulrich had explained, just across the bridge from Notre Dame.

"An actual place for executions." A chill of morbidity choked in Gossamyr's throat. Such easy violence she had never known.

She looked over the cobbled square. Ma.s.sive in size, it flanked what Ulrich had pointed out were the princ.i.p.al city buildings where the lawmakers and religious leaders and army generals knocked heads. A bustle of carriages and mounted riders wound through the square; unlit lanterns carried aloft on sticks dandled this way and that. A beruffled dog danced by on its hind legs, its master calling all to a comedy at the nearby theater. Here the air, soaked in stench of the Seine, felt heavier, sullen.

Leaving Fancy snuffling over a pile of rotten melons, Ulrich walked across the square, his head held high and his ears p.r.i.c.ked.

Gossamyr slapped Fancy's flank. Road dust fumed from the dirty hide and made her sneeze. It was her first sneeze since arriving in Paris. Interesting. Mayhap she had adjusted to the Otherside?

Mayhap you belong.

She looked to the wandering soul shepherd. "Ulrich?"

Ignoring her completely, Ulrich tripped over a branch, but kept moving, as if compelled onward. He walked right before an equipage of six, barely avoiding the snap of an admonis.h.i.+ng whip. A smithy cradling a horse's hoof in his black ap.r.o.n looked up at the sight, shook his head, then gave the hoof another pound. Scorched iron scented the air. Five long strides carried Ulrich into the shadows, where he disappeared into a narrow alley.

"What in all of the Spiral?" Tugging Fancy along, Gossamyr trotted across the square. Keeping her head down she dodged the crowd without rousing concern. She did not know to fear the English or the French more, and so obscurity was wisest for this lone woman.

The alley was narrowed by a row of parked carts, empty save for a few twigs of kindling. She followed him closely, down the aisle of buildings stacked three stories upon one another. Everything was so close, too close for a faery. "What is it, Ulrich?"

"It's so...beautiful."

At his slow recital Gossamyr dropped the mule's reins. The hairs at the back of her neck prinkled. The man was aware of nothing but that directly before him. Ahead, the alley curved. She couldn't see a thing that would attract- "More lost souls?"

Ulrich shook his head. No.

He had so suddenly changed from alert to...led. To walk through the busy square as if he had been bespelled?

Tilting her head, Gossamyr turned her ear the direction Ulrich walked and moved in stealthy side steps. She heard nothing. Thick gray clouds twinkled with rays of escaped sunbeams. The soul shepherd stretched out a seeking hand and moved onward. It was very obvious he was being led somewhere. Not by a soul?

Gripping him by the elbow, she tugged him to a halt. "Be you pisky-led? Close your mind to whatever it is you are hearing."

"No piskies here. Far from Faery." He tugged from her grasp. Spreading his arms wide, he encompa.s.sed the unseen. "Can you not hear it, faery princess? It is like rain on a stream. Bells ring in my head."

"It is not the cathedral?"

"No. She sings to me."

"I don't hear- She?" Her heart thudding, Gossamyr twisted around and scanned high and low. Not a single face appeared behind the dirty windows. The fetch was absent. Quiet this street. "She? Here?"

The Red Lady plied her game of seduction, luring Ulrich into her deadly embrace. As she had lured him since he'd taken the alicorn into possession. Gossamyr should have persuaded Ulrich to hide it, to leave it at his uncle's home-no, the old man was far more susceptible to a Faery erie.

They rounded a turn in the street, Ulrich blindly pursuing the musical call Gossamyr could not hear no matter how she strained. Her feet tripped quietly over the cobbles. Stilling the clicking arrets at her waist-gown or not, she would not walk the city unarmed-she skipped onward, but maintained a distance. As well, her staff was always to hand.

While she must protect the alicorn from danger, it might serve to learn the direction of the Red Lady's lair. Could it be so simple as following Ulrich?

Two mounted riders clopped into view. Sensing danger, Gossamyr hiked up her skirt and tucked portions of the yellow silk into the waist of her braies. Freedom to dash or leap was imperative.

Staff at the ready, she focused.

Twin blood horses snorted and stomped the cobbles. No visible livery. Not the watch then. Fully armored, mail c.h.i.n.ked with the horses' movements. The steel bourquinette helmets were open.

Ulrich walked right up to them, unmindful to their drawn swords. And their red eyes.

Was the man always so oblivious to danger?

More for you. Is danger not what you crave?