We were halfway around that narrow, bone-studded shore when the air wavered on its far side next to the door. For a moment the air swam, and then Sholto, King of the Sluagh, Lord of That Which Passes Between, was standing there.
CHAPTER 10
SHOLTO WAS TALL, MUSCLED, HANDSOME, AND LOOKED EVERY bit a highborn sidhe of the Seelie Court. His long hair was even a pale yellow, like winter sunshine with an edge of snow to it. His arm was in a sling, and as he turned his head to the light, a faint darkness — like a stain of bruises — touched his face. Kitto had said Sholto’s own court had attacked him. They were afraid that bedding me would make Sholto completely sidhe and no longer sluagh enough to be their king.
Four robed figures stood behind him. They fanned out, some toward the golden door, some toward us. Doyle said, “King Sholto, we are not here of our own choice. We ask forgiveness for entering your kingdom uninvited.”
I would have dropped to my knees, if there had been room, but the crumbling edge of black earth was only inches from my feet, and my back was plastered against the stone wall. There was no room for niceties on this path. There was also precious little room for the guards to fight — if they attacked us now, we were going to lose.
A blade glimmered from the edge of one of the shorter cloaked guards as he spoke. “You are nude and nearly weaponless: Only something desperate would bring you here like this, with the princess in tow.”
“It is the beginning of their invasion,” came a female voice from one of the tallest guards. I knew that voice. It was Black Agnes, Sholto’s chief bodyguard, and chief among his lovers at this court. She had tried to kill me once before for jealousy’s sake.
Sholto turned enough to look at her. The movement revealed that wide, pale bandages were all he was wearing on his upper body. Whatever they covered must have been a terrible wound.
“Enough, Agnes, enough!” Sholto silenced her, rumbling echoes around the cavern.
The black-robed figure of Agnes that loomed over him glanced at me. I had a moment to see the gleam of her eyes in the dark ugliness of her face. The night-hags were ugly; it was part of what they were.
One of the shorter, robed guards leaned into Sholto, as if whispering, but the echoes that hissed along the cave walls were not human speech. The high-pitched tittering of a nightflyer was coming from the human-size figure — though it couldn’t be a nightflyer, for it walked upright.
Sholto turned back to us. “Are you saying that your queen sent you here?”
“No,” Doyle said.
“Princess Meredith,” Sholto called, “we are within our rights to slay your guards and keep you here until your aunt ransoms you back. Darkness knows this, as does the Killing Frost. On the other hand, Mistral might have let his temper lead him astray, and Abeloec can turn up anywhere when he’s lost in drink, can’t he, Segna?”
The figure in the pale yellow cloak spoke in a rough voice. “Aye, he were unhappy when he sobered up, weren’t you, cup bearer?” I’d heard Abe called that before as a term of derision, but I’d never understood until tonight. It was a reminder of what he had once been; a way of rubbing his face in what he had lost.
“You taught me to be more cautious about where I passed out, ladies,” Abe said, and his voice was his usual casual, amused, bitter tone.
The two hags laughed. The other guards joined in a chorus of hissing laughter, which let me know that whatever the two shorter guards were, they were the same kind of creature.
Sholto spoke. “Don’t worry, Darkness, the hags didn’t help Abe break his vow of celibacy, for that is a death sentence to all. The tearing of white sidhe flesh amuses them almost as much as sex.”
The high twittering voice came faintly again. Sholto nodded at what it had said. “Ivar makes a good point. You are all wet and muddy, and that did not happen here in our garden.” He motioned with his good hand at the caked, drying earth and the water trapped feet below us, clearly inaccessible.
“I would ask permission to bring the princess off this ledge,” Doyle said.
“No,” Sholto said, “she is safe enough there. Answer the question, Darkness…or Princess…or whoever. How did you get wet and muddy? I know that it is snowing aboveground; do not use that to lie.”
“The sidhe never lie,” Mistral said.
Sholto and his guards all laughed. The high tittering mixed with the rumbling bass/alto of the hags and Sholto’s open, joyous laughter. “The sidhe never lie: Spare us that, the biggest lie of all,” said Sholto.
“We are not allowed to lie,” Doyle said.
“No, but the sidhe version of the truth is so full of holes that it is worse than a lie. We, the sluagh, would prefer a good honest lie to the half-truths that the court we are supposed to belong to feeds us. We starve on a diet of near lies. So tell us true, if you can, how came you wet and muddy, and here?”
“It rained in the dead gardens, in our sithen,” Doyle said.
“More lies,” Agnes said.
I had an idea. “I swear by my honor — ” I began. One of the hags laughed at that, but I kept going. “ — and the darkness that devours all things that it was raining in the Unseelie gardens when we left them.” I’d given not just an oath that no sidhe would willingly break — because of the curse that went with the breaking — but the oath that I’d demanded of Sholto weeks ago when he found me in California. He’d sworn the oath that he meant me no harm, and I’d believed him.
The severity of the oath silenced even the night-hags. “Be careful what you say, Princess,” Sholto said. “Some magicks still live.”
“I know what I swore, and I know what it means, King Sholto, Lord of That Which Passes Between. I am wet with the first rain to fall upon the dead gardens in centuries. My skin is decorated with soil reborn, dry no more.”
“How is this possible?” Sholto demanded.
“It is not possible,” Agnes said. She pointed one dark, muscled arm at the door. “This is Seelie magic, not Unseelie. They conspire together to destroy us. I told you, the golden court would never have dared if they did not have the full support of the Queen of Air and Darkness.” She pointed a little dramatically at the shiny door. “This proves it.”
“Meredith,” Doyle said softly, “make the door go away.”
“Whispering will not make you my friend, Darkness,” Sholto said.
“I told the princess to make the door go away, so that you would understand this is not Seelie business.”
Agnes turned so suddenly that her hood fell back to reveal the dry black straw of her hair, the ruin of her complexion, covered in bumps and sores. The hags hid their ugliness, which was an exception among the sluagh. Most of them saw every oddity as a mark of beauty, or power. The hags hid themselves, though — as did the two shorter guards.
Agnes pointed the long hand with its black-taloned claws at me. “She did not conjure this door. She is mortal, and mortal hand never made this doorway.”
“Princess, if you would,” Doyle said low but clear, so that he couldn’t be accused of whispering.
I spoke loudly, so they’d hear me, and the cave caught the echo of my voice, so that it seemed to bounce along the walls. “I need the door to go away now, please.”
There was a moment’s hesitation, as if the door wanted to give me a second to reconsider; then, when I didn’t, the door vanished. Sholto’s guards shifted, and Agnes startled as if something had goosed her. “Mortal flesh cannot control the sithen. Any sithen.”
“I would have agreed with you, until a few hours ago,” I said.
“How did you come here?” Sholto asked.
“I asked for a door to the dead gardens. It never occurred to me that any door I could conjure would bring me to your home, Sholto.”