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figures.
"The faery knowe!" Elidor gasped.
"Hit the dirt!" Rod hissed. The whole family belly-flopped down in the grass.
Rod reached up, and yanked Elidor down. "No insult intended, Majesty," he
whispered. "It's simply a matter of safety." He turned to Magnus. "You said the
thought-pattern wasn't quite human?"
Magnus nodded. "And therefore could I not comprehend it, Papa."
"Well, you hit it right on the nose." Rod frowned, straining his ears. "Hold it; I
think We can just make out what they're saying."
Duke Foidin and his knights were easy to pick out by their dimness. They stood
almost at the bottom of the bowl, off to Rod's left. The being facing him was
taller by a head, and fairly seemed to glow. It had to be the most handsome male
that Rod had ever seen, the fluidity of its movement, as it shifted from foot to
foot continually, indicating musculature and coordination beyond the human.
And he was brilliant; he fairly seemed to glow. His extravagant costume had no
color; it had only varying degrees of light. A silver coronet encircled his brow,
tucking down behind pointed ears.
"The King of Faery?" Rod hissed to Elidor.
The boy shook his head. " Tis a coronet, not a crown. A duke, mayhap, an they
have such."
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The faery duke's arms chopped against each other. "Be done! All this we've
hearkened to aforetime, and found small reason in. This is no cause for we of
Faery to embroil ourselves in mortal war."
"Yet think!" Duke Foidin protested, "the High Warlock doth champion the
White Christ!"
"As have kings done these last two thousand years," the faery replied.
Two thousand? It should've been more like eight hundred, from the medieval
look of this land.
"The priests were threat to us at first," the faery conceded, "yet so was Cold Iron,
which came not overlong before them and we endure. The priests have learned
they cannot expunge us, nor we rid ourselves of them."
Duke Foidin took a deep breath. "Then I offer price!"
The faery sneered. "What could a mortal offer that a faery would desire?"
"Mortal wizards," Foidin said promptly, "two a male and female?"
"Should we seek to breed them, then? Nay; we have some use for human
captives, but wizards would be greater trouble than use, for they'd ever seek to
learn our secrets."
"Children."
The faery stilled.
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A stream of pure rage shot through Rod, almost seeming to come from
someplace, someone, else, scaring him by its intensity. He'd heard the fairy tales
about changelings, aged elves left in mortal cradles for the pretty babes the
fairies had carried off. The tradition had it that fairies liked mortal slaves, and
definitely preferred to raise them, themselves.
And, somehow, Rod thought he knew which children Foidin had in mind.
Foidin saw the faery duke was interested. "And an infant, not yet a year of age;
I'll have it soon."
Rod almost went for him, right then and there. The snake was talking about
Gregory!
But Gwen's hand was on his arm, and he forced himself to relax. No, of course
not; Foidin didn't know Gregory existed. He wasn't even in this world.
" 'Tis the only mortal thing we value," the faery said slowly, "yet scarcely worth
the fighting for. We've ways of gaining mortal children, at far less cost than war."
And he turned on his heel, and strode away.
Duke Foidin stared after him, unbelieving, rage rising. "Thou knavish wraith!"
he fairly screamed. "Will nothing move thee?"
The faery duke stopped, then slowly turned, and the air seemed to thicken and
grow brittle, charged to breaking. "Why should we of Faery care what mortals
do?" His voice grew heavy with menace. "Save to avenge an insult. 'Ware,
mortal duke! Thou mayest gain the war which thou dost seek, but with the folk
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of Faery seeking thy heart's blood! Now get thee hence!"
Duke Foidin stood, white-lipped and trembling, aching to lash out, but too afraid.
"Mayhap thou dost doubt our power." The faery duke's voice suddenly dripped
with honey. "Then let us show thee how easily we gain all that thou didst offer."
And his left hand shot up with a quick circling motion.
Suddenly, unseen cords snapped tight around Rod's body, rolling him over and
pinning his arms to his sides and his legs to one another. He let out one terror-
stricken, rage-filled bellow; then something sticky plastered itself over his
mouth. He could still see, though see Gwen and the children, even Elidor,
bound hand and foot, and gagged, as he was, fairly cocooned in shining cords.
Grotesquely ugly sprites leaped out of the grass all about them, stamping in a
dance and squealing with delight. Their shaggy clothes looked to be made of
bark; they had huge jughead ears, great loose-lipped mouths, and bulbous, warty
noses dividing platter-eyes. The biggest of them was scarcely three feet high.
"They ever come, the prying big 'uns!" they cried.
"They never spy the sentry-Spriggans!"
"Well caught, spriggans!" the faery duke called. "Now bring them here!"
The spriggans howled delight, and kicked Rod up to the top of the rise, dien
shoved him over. Sky and grass whirled about him and about as he rolled down
the hill, with spriggans running along, whooping, rhythmically pushing him, as a
child rolls a hoop. Panic hit, fear for Gwen and the kids and behind it, a
feeling of some sympathetic Presence, its anger beinning to build with Rod's.
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He brought up with a thump against the Duke's feet. Gwen slammed into his
back, softening the bumps as the children knocked into her.
Foidin stared down at them, horrified. "Elidor!" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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