Silently, they shook their heads. “ ‘Tis not altogether human, Mama,” Magnus contributed.
Out of the corner of his eye, Rod noticed Elidor trembling. He caught the boy’s shoulder. “Steady, there, lad. You’re with us, now.” He turned back to Gwen. “Of course, the wise thing to do would be to sneak on by.”
Gwen nodded.
Rod turned away. Silently, they picked their way between white trunks in a dazzle of moonlight reflected off silver leaves. After about ten minutes, Gwen hissed, “It doth grow stronger.”
Rod didn’t falter. “So they’re on our line of march. We’ll worry about avoiding them when we know where they are.”
Then, suddenly, they were out of the trees, at the top of a rise. Below them, in a natural bowl, rose a small hill. Light glowed around it, from glittering, moving 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.”
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.
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 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, then 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 beginning to build with Rod’s.
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!”
“The King?” The faery duke looked up, interested. “Of great account! We’ve never had a mortal king to rear!”
Foidin’s gaze shot up at him, shocked. Then he glared down at Rod, pale and trembling. “This is thy doing! Thou hast brought the King to this! But… how? What? How hast thou brought this thing to pass? I left thee safe, behind stout locks and guards!”
Rod mumbled through his gag.
The faery duke nodded contemptuously. “Allow him speech.” A spriggan hopped to pull Rod’s gag.
“Yeeeowtch!” The sticky plaster hurt, coming off. He worked his mouth, glaring up at the Duke. “You should know, Milord Duke, that locks and guards cannot hold a warlock, if he does not wish it. Your lock did open without a human hand to touch it; your guards all sleep.”
“It cannot be!” the Duke fairly screeched, white showing round the borders of his eyes. “Only magics most powerful can bring such things to pass!”
Rod smiled sourly. “Be more careful of your guests—and hope this faery duke doth hold me fast. For now we have a score to settle, you and I.” He felt the touch of the helping spirit again, but its rage was growing—and so was his. “You would have sold all my family, to gain this faery’s aid! Be sure that never do I have a chance to come at thee alone—for I’ll not trouble to use my magic! And this child…” It seemed, now, as though it weren’t himself talking, suddenly, but the Presence. “…who was this babe you would have sold? How shall you gain possession of it?”