The faerie mounds looked like soft snow-covered hills, and if you did not know the way in, that's all they would be. Of course, the mounds, like almost everything else in faerie, were never quite what they seemed.
There were two things you needed to go inside the sithen. One, to know where the door was; two, to have enough magic to open that door. If the sithen was feeling playful, the door would move repeatedly. You could spend an hour chasing the door around a hill the size of a small mountain. Or perhaps it only played with me, because when Carrow laid his tanned hand against the white of the snow, there was a sound of music. I could never tell you what the tune was, or if it was singing or merely instruments. But it was beautiful music, and the closest thing we had to a doorbell. Though it was more to let you know that you'd found the door than to announce you to everyone inside. No music meant you hadn't touched the right spot. Carrow laid that small flare of magic against it, and the door was suddenly there. Or rather the opening was there, for there was never truly a door to the Unseelie sithen. There was just suddenly an opening big enough for us all to walk inside, four or more abreast. The opening always seemed to know exactly how big it needed to be. It could grow large enough for a semi to pass through, or small enough for a butterfly.
The twilight had deepened to near darkness, so that the pale white light from the opening seemed brighter than it was. Barinthus carried me into that light. We stood in a grey stone hallway, big enough for the semi to have kept on driving, at least to the first bend of the hallway. The size of the door didn't change the size of the first hallway. It was one of the few things that never changed about the sithen. Everything else could change on the sithen's, or the queen's, whim. It was like a fun house made of stone, so that entire floors could move up and down. Doors that led one place would suddenly lead somewhere else altogether. It could be irritating, or amazing; or both.
The opening vanished as Frost, the last of us, stepped through. It was just another grey stone wall. The door could be just as invisible from this side as the other. The white light came from everywhere and nowhere. It was steadier than firelight, but softer than electric light. I'd asked what the light was once, and been told it was the light of the sithen. When I'd protested that that told me nothing, the reply was, it told me what I needed to know. A circular argument at best, but in truth I think it's the only answer we have. I don't think anyone alive today remembers what the light truly is.
"Well, Barinthus, are you going to carry the princess all the way to the queen?"
The sound of swords clearing sheaths made a soft metallic hiss, like rain on a very hot surface. Guns are quieter when you draw them. But guns and swords pointed down the hall toward that voice, and some weapons pointed back toward the now invisible door, just in case. Barinthus and I were suddenly standing in the center of a well-armed circle.
The sidhe who'd spoken was smiling. The sidhe standing next to him was not. Ivi's smile was insolent, mocking. He made himself the butt of his own jokes more often than anyone else. He was tall, as tall as Frost or Doyle, but he was slender as a reed, and as graceful as a bed of reeds when the wind makes them dance. I'd have liked him better with shoulders a little wider, but the lack of them made him seem even taller, willowy. His hair fell straight and fine to his ankles. The hair was his most outstanding feature, medium to dark green, with a pattern of white veins running throughout. It was only when he got closer that you realized that his hair bore the mark of leaves as if the hair had been tattooed with ivy. As he moved down the hall, it was as if wind blew the leaves apart, and they reformed only as his companion grabbed his arm and held him back. I think Ivi would have kept on in the face of all those weapons; walked down that hallway with a smile on his face and laughter like darkness in his eyes. Once I'd thought him careless, but as I grew older I tasted the sorrow in him. I began to realize that it wasn't carelessness, but despair. Whatever had prompted him to become one of the Queen's Ravens, I don't think he enjoyed the bargain as much as he'd hoped.
The cautious hand on his arm belonged to Hawthorne. His black hair fell in thick waves past his knees. When he turned his head, the light gleamed rich green from those black waves. He wore a silver circlet that held that heavy mass back from his face. The rest of him, from broad shoulders to feet, was covered in a cloak the color of pine needles, a rich deep green, that was held closed over his shoulder by a silver brooch.
"What is wrong, Darkness?" he called to us. "We have done nothing."
"Why are you here?" Doyle called back.
"The queen has sent us to meet the princess," Hawthorne said.
"Why only the two of you?"
Hawthorne blinked, and even from this far away I could see that strange pink shade that his inner circle of eye had. Pink, green, and red were Hawthorne's tricolored eyes. "What do you mean, only the two of us? What has happened?"
"They don't know," Barinthus said, quietly.
"How long have you been standing here, waiting?" Doyle asked. But he'd already relaxed his pose, the gun in his hand beginning to lower to point at the floor.
"Hours," Ivi said, and swirled the edge of his own pale green cloak out like a skirt at a dance.
Hawthorne nodded. "Two hours, or more. Time moves oddly in the sithen."
Doyle put up his gun, and as if that were a signal, swords were sheathed, guns holstered, until they all stood at ease, or as easy as they got.
"I ask again, Darkness, what has happened?" But no one had to explain, because some shifting among the guards had let him see me. I'd forgotten about the blood on my face. I'd wiped some of it off with a bit of wet cloth from one of the men, but not all of it. Only soap would get it all off. "Lord and Lady protect us, she's hurt!"
"It is not her blood," Doyle said.
"Then whose?"
"Mine," Frost said, and he moved up through the crowd of guards, and again, as if that were a signal, they all began to move down the hallway toward the other two guards.
Ivi wasn't smiling when he said, "What happened?"
Doyle told him, the brief outline, leaving out what happened when Barinthus touched the ring.
Ivi was shaking his head. "Who would dare? Princess Meredith bears the queen's mark. To harm her is to risk the queen's mercy. None of her Ravens would risk that." There was absolutely none of Ivi's banter in those words. It was as if the news of the assassination attempt had frightened him out of his jokes and into something more real.
Hawthorne's tricolored eyes were wide. "Who indeed would dare?"
Barinthus was still holding me in his arms, but there was no snow now, no cold. I touched his shoulder. "I can walk now."
He looked at me as if he'd forgotten he was holding me, and maybe he had. He had to bend over to put me safely on the stone floor. I shook the back of my skirt in place, smoothed it with my hands, and knew that the pleats in back simply would not be perfect until the skirt was ironed. There was nothing I could do about it. I just hoped that the news of my near death would distract her from my less-than-perfect clothing. You never knew with Andais; sometimes she would direct her anger at small things if she couldn't deal with the large.
Ivi went to one knee before me, and when he did, the cloak caught on his leg and pulled to one side, baring his shoulder, part of his chest, and the edge of his hips. He was nude under the cloak.
"Princess Meredith, greetings from the Queen of Air and Darkness. She sends us as gifts." That lilt of mockery was back in his voice.
Hawthorne had also dropped to his knees, but the way he held the cloak tight with only his hands showing made me wonder if he were wearing anything more under his cloak than Ivi was.
"We are gifts for your stay if the ring doth know us," Hawthorne said, and he sounded as if he would have been angry if he dared.
"Surely this can wait," Onilwyn said. "If the queen truly does not know of what has happened, then she must be told."
It was Usna who answered that. "If you want to hurry off and give the queen bad news, by all means run along. I, for one, do not want to be the first person to tell her." He was still nude, carrying his sheathed sword in his hand. The queen had been known to shoot the messenger, as it were.
Onilwyn looked a little pale. "You may have a point."
"But so do you," Barinthus said. "The queen needs to know. I cannot believe that no one has contacted her."
"She did not know near three hours hence," Hawthorne said.
"If she knew now, there would be more men," Doyle said, and no one argued with him.
"She was entertaining herself," Ivi said, his voice rich with that self-loathing humor, as if every word meant more, "and gave word that only the princess's arrival would be good enough to disturb her."
"Surely someone would have interrupted her fun and games for this," Barinthus said.
Hawthorne looked up at him. "You are one of us, Lord Barinthus, but she does not treat you as she treats most. She respects your power. The rest of us are not so lucky. If we interrupt her game, then we are to take the place of the one she plays with." He looked down and a shudder passed through him. "I would not interrupt her for an attempted assassination."
"If I'd died, then one of you would have told her?" I asked, and my own voice held an edge of what Ivi usually sounded like.
"You have stripped us of all who were powerful enough to beard her in her den, Princess," Hawthorne said.
"Darkness, Frost, Barinthus," Ivi said, "teacher's pets compared to the rest of us."
"Mistral is still here," Doyle said.
Hawthorne shook his head. "He fears her, Darkness, as do we all."
"She has gotten better in the last few months," Barinthus said, "easier to talk to."
"Again, Lord Barinthus, perhaps for you," Hawthorne said.
"Let us finish our speech," Ivi said. "Then you can all draw straws for who gets to be the bearer of such evil tidings."
"You say that as if you don't get to draw a straw," Rhys said.
"We don't," Ivi said.
"Hawthorne, explain," Doyle said.
"We are gifts for the princess, if the ring doth know us."
"You said that already," Rhys said.
Doyle gave him a look, and Rhys shrugged. "He did."
"And if the ring knows you," Frost said.
"Then we are to invite the princess to bed us." Hawthorne was careful to look only at Doyle, as if I weren't standing there.
Ivi snorted, as if trying not to laugh.
"What is funny in that?" Doyle asked him.
"That's not what the queen said."
"It is the meat of what she meant," Hawthorne said, and there was an air of offended dignity in his tone.
Ivi laughed out loud.
"What did the queen say, Ivi?" Doyle's tone was resigned, as if he really didn't want to know, but understood there was no choice.
"If the ring knows us" - and he finished the rest in an imitation of the queen's voice good enough to raise the hair at the back of my neck - "then fuck Meredith, fuck her as soon as you see her. If she gets picky then you may go to her room, or yours. I don't care, just get the job done."
"Well," Galen said, "that's..."
"A little less than poetic even for the queen," Rhys said.
"That'll do." Galen looked a little shocked.
"Do I get a say in this?" I asked.
Hawthorne bowed until his forehead nearly touched the stone. "I am sorry, Princess."
"What he won't tell you," Ivi said, "is that he asked what we were to do if Princess Meredith did not wish to bed us as soon as she entered the sithen." He imitated the rhythm of Hawthorne's speech.
"And what did my aunt say?" I asked.
Ivi smiled up at me, and his dark green eyes held a fierce triumph that I didn't understand.
Hawthorne answered with his face still bowed toward the stones, his voice holding sorrow the way Ivi's usually held mockery. "Are you Unseelie sidhe or not? Persuade her."
Ivi kept his darkly joyful face turned up toward me. "He asked, and if she will not be persuaded?" And again he echoed the queen's voice so well that it raised chills upon my skin, "Persuade her, or take her, or tell her what I have said, and let that be your persuasion. If Meredith will not take the pleasure I offer her, then perhaps she will take pain instead. For there is both to be had here among the Unseelie. Remind her of that if her sensibilities are too delicate for fucking."
"I would change what she has sent us for, if I could," Hawthorne said, and he prostrated himself against the stone, his forehead pressed to the floor.
I turned from Ivi's gloating face to Barinthus. "I thought you said she'd gotten better over the last few months."
"She has, she had," he said, and he had the grace to look embarrassed.
"Come on, Princess," Ivi said, "put that pretty hand out and see what happens. If the ring doesn't know us, then we're all free."
"He's right," Doyle said, "let them touch the ring, and if it is cold to them, then we can go to the queen and give our news."
"And if it is not cold?" Frost asked.
"Then we can fuck up against the wall," Ivi said.
"Over my dead body," Galen said.
"If you want it that way," Ivi said.
"Boys," I said.
Galen looked at me. Ivi continued to look at Galen.
"No killing each other unless I tell you to."
Ivi looked at me then, and that fierceness held a note of puzzlement. "What does that mean?"
"It means that if you annoy me enough, Ivi, I have more than half a dozen of the best warriors the sidhe ever produced, and if I asked nicely, they'd slice you into pieces for me."
"Ah, but that would not be obeying the queen's directive."
I bent down just the little bit I needed to be face to face with him, and I felt an unpleasant smile cross my face. "Oh, but it would be. Corpses routinely have one last orgasm just as they die. The queen's exact orders are not to come before her without your seed upon my body. She didn't specify where or how that happens, now, did she?"
The triumph was gone, the mockery faded as I watched, until the only thing left in those dark green eyes was fear. It didn't make me happy to see him fear me, but it did give a certain satisfaction.
He licked his lips as if they'd suddenly gone dry, and said, "You are your aunt's bloodline."
"Yes, Ivi, I am, and it would be best if you did not forget that" - I leaned in close above his lips - "ever again." I laid a gentle kiss upon his mouth, and he flinched.
As I raised my hand to cup Ivi's face, Barinthus grabbed my wrist and pulled my hand away from the other man's flesh. "Perhaps the queen should know of other events before we use the ring again."
We all had a moment of exchanging glances. Hawthorne said, "What else has happened?"
"Let us say, that the ring has risen in power," Barinthus said, "and I am no longer certain of what will happen when the princess presses it to anyone's flesh."
Ivi gave a dark laugh. "I see what happened when she touched you, Lord Barinthus." He was staring at the other man's groin, and the stain that had set into the front of the leather pants.
Abloec pushed to the front, to stand near Ivi. He knelt down beside the other man. It was the steadiest I'd seen him, as if the cold had sobered him. "I am soaking wet, freezing, and sober. I don't want to be any of those three things. You are going to shut up, and we are all going to go to the queen." He looked up at the rest of us. "When she hears about the flooding, she'll want to make sure that the princess is in a secure area before the ring is used."
"Flooding?" Hawthorne said.
"Every river in the area," Abloec said.
Hawthorne glanced up at Barinthus. "You mean touching Lord Barinthus flooded the area?"
Doyle and Barinthus said in unison, "We believe so."
Galen and Rhys said in unison, "Yes."
Usna pushed through us all, still nude, and getting angry. "We're going to see the queen now, because I want to be warm again."
"Would you risk your life for a little comfort?" Frost said.
Usna gave him a wide grin. "What else is there to risk one's life for these days? Haven't you heard, Killing Frost, the days of myth and magic are gone. The days when there was anything worth fighting for are over." He looked at Barinthus as he finished, then his grey eyes found me, and he gave me a lingering look. It wasn't sexual, or food, or anything that I would have expected from Usna. It was a considering look. A look that held far too many guesses that were far too close to the truth.
The moment passed and his eyes were simply full of good cheer. He clapped Abloec on the shoulder. "Let us go forth and beard the queen in her den of iniquities."
Abloec got to his feet frowning. "You would help bear such news, knowing what she may do?"
"She'll hate the assassination attempt, someone will bleed for that one, but the rest" - Usna threw his arm across the other's shoulders - "the Queen will love the other news." He started moving Abloec down the hallway, and the rest of us began to trail after. Usna called back over his shoulder at me, "If I were you, Princess, I'd be worried that she does not put you in a magical circle like an animal in the zoo, and just send one of us after another to see how many of us you can bring back to..." He put his sword pommel over his lips as you'd place a finger to say, Shhhh. "Save that for the queen's ears, eh." And he glided down the hallway ahead of us, his nude body in its calico colors leading the way, with Abloec still pressed to his side.