Gossamyr Part 34

Now Avenall pushed away trom the wall and spun in a macabre dance step. Gossamyr could not focus for more than a moment. The weird blurring and sudden clearing of her sight made her nauseous.

The pin man stopped, crouched before her, wings flittering annoyingly, and then rose, a sinister grin curving his thin lips as he straightened. The Red Lady's influence grew into his dark hair, coating him with wicked red soot that befouled Gossamyr's memories of him. But the roots of the succubus's thrall dug far deeper, right to his being.

"You are mortal, false child of s.h.i.+nn. Nothing but. Not a drop of Faery ichor runs through your veins. 'Twas the Red Lady who cursed s.h.i.+nn, and you yielded from the exchange. Yes, you benefited! What a life to be raised in Faery! Oh, what I wouldn't wager to return."

"With your essence?" Gossamyr spoke, but the words weren't truly conscious. Benefited by the exchange?

Believe and you Belong. All this time she had believed-no!

"You spin lies! I-I will see you to the Infernal before I allow you to return to Faery. As well, your b.l.o.o.d.y mistress!"

"Ah? Cast your lover to the Infernal? Not very romantic of you."

"The succubus's erie has changed you. Blight, what is your name? Avenall of Rougethorn..."

"I see now why s.h.i.+nn sent you," Avenall declared as he danced up and down the steps. The essences sung a frightened dirge. "A strong wench, be she!"

"I stand here on the Otherside of my free will. s.h.i.+nn did not want me to leave..."

Had s.h.i.+nn knowingly sent off his only daughter? A mortal, unable to return to Faery? A child born to mortals? ...to unite Glamoursiege to Rougethorn.

Gossamyr felt her knees weaken. Icy, the pain streaking from her knee to her ankle. Bile curdled at the base of her throat.

"Indeed a wise choice," Avenall said. "The Red Lady would not recognize a mere mortal come sniffing about her lair. And what sweeter revenge than to send the mortal beast s.h.i.+nn calls his own to avenge the Red Lady's curse!"

"No!" Peeling herself from the marble wall, Gossamyr swung her staff out before her, forgetting it was but half size. The serrated end swished the air. "It is all a lie!"

A changeling? She, a mortal exchange?

Rare, a changeling was born in Faery. Always they were swapped for a sickly mortal babe. It was the way of the fee. None of the mortal children ever survived longer than a day or mayhap a se'nnight...

It seemed an odd ritual now Gossamyr thought on it. Why a sick child? A healthy babe would survive- Had she been sick?

"No." Her voice gasping out in a dry breath, Gossamyr shouted, "It cannot be!"

"Embrace your truth," Avenall said and stepped to the bed, sliding his arm along the silk and stretching out on his back. Unfurled wings and red-and-black hair littered the counterpane. "And mayhap the Red Lady will prolong your life."

"By stealing my essence, like yours?"

"You've no essence to steal, mortal."

"Very well." Gripping the half staff in both hands, she worked at the wood until she felt sure the carvings would etch into her palms and out would pour blood. Not ichor. You are mortal. "I shall leave you with a bit of your own truth, Avenall of Rougethorn. It was my father, s.h.i.+nn, who also banished you."

"This I know."

"And yet-do you know the reason you were sent from Faery without so much as a by-your-leave?"

Rolling to stretch on his side, he propped his chin in hand. "I guess you will tell me."

Gossamyr stepped up to the bed and gripped a thick spiral post fas.h.i.+oned of the same marble as the floor. She knew the Red Lady's heart was colder than the stone. If she possessed a heart. "I will, and then I will consign you to my past and think not another moment for your life."

Avenall sighed and spread out his arms in a waiting gesture.

"My father banished you from Faery because you chose to court his daughter after he had forbidden such a match. He would not have a Rougethorn marry his own. On the night we were to make love, s.h.i.+nn sent you off. I loved you, Avenall."

Gossamyr turned and strode from the room. Her footsteps increased. Her arms pumped. And her heart pounded. She ran down the hallway. The gargoyles' flames flickered and brightened in her wake.

All this time-her father- I will not have a Rougethorn in my family.

She entered the darkness of the Paris night with a cry that echoed out and spiraled into the heavens.

TWENTY-TWO.

Dominique San Juste startled at the female cry drifting over all of Paris. He could not fix a location to the sound, instead it encompa.s.sed all, the air, the cobbles, the stone walls and creaking wooden signs, and finally, resonated in his bones. Mournful and vehement, the howl was tinged with a glimmer of which he had never known-but had always carried within him-Enchantment.

Unsettled, he stroked a palm across Tor's bone-white withers and searched the darkness.

"You feel it, too, my friend," he said to his equine companion. "What mischief have you led me to?"

The stallion bristled and reared upon its hind legs in brilliant display.

And Dominique sensed every moment that followed would place him closer to a most dangerous Enchantment.

"Where is he?" Gossamyr stumbled across the threshold into Armand LaLoux's home. The old man nodded toward the ladder. Gossamyr scaled the rungs two at a time. Ulrich met her at the top. She plunged into his arms but took no time for courtesies. Pulling him across the floor toward the window, she stood for a moment, catching her breath. Not once had she broken her stride from the Red Lady's lair.

Manic visions twisted her thoughts here, there and widders.h.i.+ns. A changeling? Completely mortal? Believe and you Belong...

Where did she belong?

So much she had always accepted, thought to know as truth!

"What is it? Did you track the pin man? Sit on the floor, my lady, you're out of breath."

She followed his direction and sat, crossing her legs. When he remained standing, she clung to his wrist and pulled him down, leveling his face with hers. Gripping his head between her palms, she ignored his wince when she pressed upon the bruise staining his cheek. Heaving yet from her race, she was unable to get out the words.

Warm hands bracketed hers, pulling her shaking fingers from his face. "Gossamyr? If you do not speak I shall a.s.sume the worst. Have you been followed? Harmed?"

Harmed? Mayhap by the very man she had called father all these years.

"You are bleeding."

She shook her head that he should disregard that insignificant bother.

Oh, but an ache had begun to pulse in the depths of her being. The old wound had been sc.r.a.ped and now this new knowledge tore open her bleeding heart.

"Gossamyr?"

She shot a gaze into the man's eyes. "What did you call me?"

"It is your name."

Yes, her name. Was it? Gossamyr Verity de Winters.h.i.+nn of Glamoursiege. Truly?

She had not been able to conjure Avenall's name complete. It was there, just at the edge of her mind. Ah! He had utterly changed. Physically and mentally. He knew nothing of himself. Puppy? Yet, he claimed to know much about her.

Could he speak the truth of her?

"Tell me you are not harmed elsewhere," Ulrich whispered. "You tremble so-"

"No!" That shout released her dry and twisted tongue, and Gossamyr began to cry long-buried tears. She could not keep them back. Be blighted, the champion, the wandering refugee from Faery simply needed to let out some pain.

"Mon Dieu, this is serious. Faery princesses are not supposed to cry."

Ulrich pulled her to him. His hair brushed her face and for a moment Gossamyr recalled that time long ago, when she had been but a child and had stood watching the dancer...

There in the center of the toadstool ring, his hands swaying in the air, a mortal danced. A male, for he was hearty and dressed in striped hosen and doublet. His head tilted back and mouth open, he laughed and giggled and shouted out in joy.

Gossamyr tilted her head, studying the mortal's movements. Almost as if commanded by the mistress of the Dance, a puppet dancing for the twisted pleasure of the ma.s.ses. "Poor thing."

Gossamyr worked her way to the edge of the ring where the gra.s.s had been trampled to an emerald mat and stood, her barefoot propped on the head of a wide loamy toadstool. No one paid her mind. Even the piskies soared by without so much as a teasing thrust of their lavender tongues.

Splash of mead sprayed her cheek and she swept out her tongue to lick away the sweet liquor from the corner of her lips. Dozens of fee danced a tribal rhythm about the mortal, a circle of violet eyes. His own eyes were closed, oblivious to a danger Gossamyr could not know. But she sensed it.

Dancers spun past her in increasing speed, stomping and twirling and lifting skirts high to expose moonlight-pale thighs and bronze ankle chains. Fluttering wings swept the air in heady perfume of heliotrope, rosemary and rose.

She spied the mortal dance closer. For all matters he looked as all fee did, having two legs, two arms, a torso, head and hair-rusty hair. Wingless, as was she-not uncommon in Faery. But the eyes, when they flashed wide to take in the merriment, were not violet. A pale noncolor. From where she stood, Gossamyr could not determine what shade or tint.

The wind of the Dancers' reel stirred Gossamyr's hair as the mortal pa.s.sed her by, oblivious to all but the music. "An endless moment,"she recalled s.h.i.+nn once saying as he'd explained in few words her frequent questions.

Closing her eyes, Gossamyr drew in the heavy green scent of moist meadow gra.s.s. A musty aroma drifted up from the frilled underside of the toadstools. Blackberries crushed, spiced, and brewed to summer mead spilled down throats and from bronze goblets.

Drawing deeply, she sensed another aroma, a scent she had not before smelled. Earthy and tainted with the ripe lush dregs of crushed grapes.

Mortal scent? She leaned forward. Delicious. Beguiling.

Stretching out a hand, she wished with all her might-and it happened.

The skim of hair across her fingers. Swift, but the moment slowed, so she could sense every individual strand and memorize the texture as if she had studied it for centuries.

Clasping her fingers to her chest, she closed her eyes and stood on tiptoe. The canorous swing of the revelers faded into the background as her wishes, her pa.s.sion was born.

The Otherside. She would journey there someday, to explore and discover and learn all that she could of the beguiling creature called mortal, for she was part of the realm, as well-by half.

Staring at her fingers now, Gossamyr perused the lines of life. There, mayhap the trail of the Dancer's hair deepened that line. Reaching out, she touched Ulrich's hair. Overwhelming tears rushed to her eyes.

"Gossamyr?"

It was him. This mortal had Danced for her unknowing. Not so long ago, he would remark. Many dozens of moons, she knew. An endless moment. Tricksy, this time difference between Faery and the Otherside, moving neither forward in synch, but twisting in and upon itself. Avenall had spoken the truth of Time.

Truly, this man was the mortal who had unearthed her pa.s.sion for the Otherside.

And yet, be it only because she was mortal? Her pa.s.sion for all things not Faery stirred up from the depths of her being? Had the mortal pa.s.sion led her here after all? Why hadn't Veridienne told her?

Do you already subscribe to a truth you cannot trust?

Believe and you Belong.

Believe in what?

She did not want to belong-not here!

"Am I mortal, Ulrich?" She gripped his s.h.i.+rt, fingering the needlework dragonflies. "Do you think I am mortal? Not of Faery?"

"What are you babbling about?"

"Avenall-the pin man. He...he told me things."

"Bizarre things surely."

"You've said yourself, I am more mortal than fee."

"Yes, but you've told me you are half-blooded."

"You never believed me. And the spell in the cathedral tower, it did not locate me!"

"The spell-but I am not a mage, precious one. 'Twas merely a trick that may or may not have succeeded. Why are you so upset? You take the word of some minion who tries to make you believe such nonsense? Gossamyr, I saw you the moment you left Faery. I saw the blazon."

Conscious of her lost glamour, she smoothed a palm across the base of her throat and over her collarbones. "Any mortal who spends time in Faery develops a blazon. It is the glamour fixing to one's essence. Have I an essence? Or but a mortal soul? Oh, Ulrich, you must help me!"

"You need rest, Gossamyr. You have not rested properly since we have joined up. Your mind, it plays cruel tricks upon your brain."

"But the Red Lady told him about her banishment. Ulrich, the succubus was banished from Faery by s.h.i.+nn. The very man who would call me daughter was betrothed to marry the Red Lady. Why would he not tell me? Why the lie?"

"You would believe a succubus's minion over your own flesh and blood?"

"I-I am not s.h.i.+nn's blood," she whispered.

"What?"

"Avenall claims I am but a mortal exchange for s.h.i.+nn's changeling child."