Maewyn's Prophecy: A Heart Aflame Page 9

  * * * * *

  Archer went over to Jensen’s office early and was unsurprised to find the old man already there, the window lit up in the predawn darkness. He hit the bell, and Jensen must have seen him coming because he just buzzed him in.

  It was difficult to know just what he wanted to say, but even getting the words out loud might help him decide.

  Jensen looked up; he seemed to understand right away that something was up. He stood up from his crowded drafting table and stepped over to the chairs and coffee table used for discussions with clients. Archer went and sat opposite him.

  “I don’t mean to let you down, Mr. Jensen,” he said right off. “But I’ve got a feeling I need to go back to Edinburgh, and I want to explain it to you because I think you can help me work out what I should do.”

  He looked down at the laminate tabletop, knowing that Jensen would give him time to gather his thoughts, and then laid it out.

  “You’re, um, Tyg druidic, so I know you have ties outside the country and probably know something about the Society, the League of Maewyn, and the sidhe in general ...”

  The story grew long in telling, and by midmorning Jensen had broken off to put Ingrid in charge of their main job downtown and then probed most of the tale out of Archer. His eyes seemed to sink back into their pouchy sockets as he pondered.

  “That’s quite a series of events,” he summed up with characteristic understatement. He turned the tiny cross of metal in his callused fingers, peering at it with a rectangular magnifying glass. “This is clearly manufactured and quite consistent with what I have been told of the League of Maewyn’s alchemical work.”

  He placed it down carefully on the table. “The central question to my mind is whether you did intend to attack the two elves, or whether you were controlled. Because if you were controlled, there might be some light I can shine on the issue. But I do not intend to do anything to excuse your actions if they were under your control.”

  Archer felt his brow crease as he looked at the old man he had come so quickly to respect. “I assumed I had done it, because I saw myself doing it,” Archer said. “And I would be the first to admit I can leap to conclusions and take violent actions when they are not warranted. But I would not hurt Roman. No matter what, I cannot see that.”

  Jensen met his gaze. “The Tyg druids are, as you say, spread around the world quite widely. And though we in Ireland cannot practice the overt arts, we listen and share what we have learned. And there are whispers, very quiet whispers, that the fairy queen erred last year in refusing to screen all her people for the unseelie taint.”

  “But why would she ...”

  Jensen raised his hand. “Let me explain. She was told that some of the seelie elves had turned from her leadership because they felt she was working towards a blending of the elven and human races -- which they would see as the beginning of the extinction of their kind. If there is one thing that cuts across the old lines of loyalty, it is the specter of miscegenation. Elves and humans producing children of mixed race -- seers of other races have begun to see this in the future. Some say it has already occurred.”

  “Why should they care?” Archer said, uncomprehending.

  Jensen smiled. “Said like a young man at peace with the multicultural modern world. You cannot see what the seelie of Underhill fear about this: the loss of their identity and the end of their race. They would do anything to avoid this dilution of their kind. They would turn even to the unseelie, the Maewyn, or both. Who was there when you acted so violently?”

  “Just, well, Roman wouldn’t, and so ... I had thought it must be him.”

  “Heron, close confidant to the only living elven seer, Vavasour. Both of them traditionalists, scornful of elves who live with humans and ape their ways. Using technology from the Maewyn cult. It may be that this issue of blending the bloods has made strange and powerful allies.”

  Archer’s blood ran cold. “My memories -- the feeling they’ve been changed -- they revolve around Heron talking to and touching me. He put this thing in me to make me attack him -- even though he could have died!”

  “For a cause, people will often risk their lives.”

  “But I’m nothing, unimportant. Why would he go to such lengths ... what ends would it serve?”

  Jensen leaned forward and addressed Archer most intently. “Heron might have spoken some part of the truth in saying your powers could be a key to something. Perhaps the destruction of the ward.”

  Things clicked together palpably in Archer’s mind. The endless fire, the church ward smooth on the outside but vulnerable within. Heron’s talk of nullifying wards was nothing but a smoke screen. If a mage with enough power could attack from within the ward, they could burn it to the ground. Could it really be that simple? If it was, then Heron’s goal might not be breaking the ward, but preserving it. To do that, one way or another he’d needed to nullify Archer’s fiery powers. And that’s exactly what he had done.

  “I have to go back,” Archer said.

  “Yes,” Jensen said. “I’m afraid I think you do. I only wish it was not so, because I had really begun to see a place for you here, perhaps even as the man to carry this business on for me once I was gone. But I will do what I can to help you, and I want you to know there will be a place for you here. You may have once been defined as a man of fire, but you should know that beneath that, you have a way with stone and a future with it if other paths remain closed to you.”

  Chapter Ten: Scene of the Crime

  A small launch deposited Archer on the docks of Leith, a suburb of Edinburgh and less than an hour’s cab ride from the House. He spent a quiet trip thinking of the last glimpse he’d had of Ireland and the faint flickering of the ward, jagged inside and smooth on its outer surface, just like the church ward but on a far grander scale. It would burn. He just knew that it would burn, and his lack of fire bit even deeper.

  One of Jensen’s Tyg associates handed up Archer’s battered old duffel bag. Percy was an effusive middle-aged man who obviously wished he had a bit more excitement in his life.

  “I could tie up and come along with you,” he offered eagerly.

  “Thanks, but I think Mr. Jensen has a point. The Tyg druids would not benefit from being involved right now.”

  If things went badly, the druids might have an important role to play, and they would benefit from having a little more time to prepare. Archer had no idea how widespread this group, not large even within the druidic sects, was -- or how influential they might yet be.

  His bag clinked as he turned. It was Jensen’s belief that Heron must be unseelie to have colluded with the League, and that meant his true nature could be revealed by the very test Tania had refused to use less than a year ago. Apparently she thought that such testing would produce an atmosphere of suspicion that would be ‘ultimately counterproductive’.

  Well, it was safe to say that Archer had rethought his absolute allegiance to his queen. Even if she had not cast him out, she was placing principle ahead of her people’s safety, or worse still, colluding with those who had done this to him. He simply could not understand how a future where elven and human heritage could blend threatened those whose heritage was more absolute.

  He turned and walked from the boat and found a single figure standing in the dusk, leaning against the derelict ship crane.

  “I do hope this isn’t your time to kill me, Giffen. I haven’t got time for that right now.”

  Giffen swayed upright. “I got to London, got hold of some good shit, and had myself some serious visions, Archer. And do you know what I saw?”

  “Oh, I don’t know ... that Heron and Vavasour are elven bigots in cahoots with the League of Maewyn to prevent elves and humans from having freaky hybrid children?”

  It was immensely satisfying to see a blank look of amazement on Giffen’s face. “And you know how you got mixed up in this?”

  “That’s not quite so clear,” Archer admitted, but he was prepared to go with
Jensen’s supposition. “I should think the League of Maewyn shares this goal, and so they and some elves have formed an alliance. The elves have traded Ireland and the protection of its wards for support in destroying the spell that creates the love bonds between some elves and humans. That can’t really be proven, but it is logical. Elves and humans rarely pair outside its influence, so without it, children of mixed heritage might never be born.”

  Giffen laughed. “And I thought I was so fucking clever for working it out through the sight.” His face fell serious. “I can’t help but wonder if I’d stuck it, and stayed, whether I might have been able to stop ... what you lost.”

  “Or maybe I’d be dead, Giff. So let’s skip all that, and you can tell me what you’re doing here.”

  Giffen dug into his pocket and pulled out a tarnished metal hip flask. “If Heron’s not loyal to the queen -- and that makes him unseelie -- it means the aqua ardens will light up on him.”

  “Snap,” Archer said, hefting his bag. “The thing that worries me is that Tania might be in on it.”

  “Gods, if that’s the case, then we’re screwed, and there really is no seelie anymore. But there are deeper magics that would betray her before she went so far as to sacrifice her people on such a scale.”

  “I hope so, man. I’m gonna be in enough shit here if I’m wrong.”

  “Even if you’re right, Archer, it’ll mean setting our Heron alight for a second time. I’m not quite sure how the aqua ardens works. Perhaps you better let me do it this time ’round.”

  “No chance,” Archer said. “That prick screwed my life up totally, and I’ll be seeing it through.”

  * * * * *

  Giffen drove them back towards the house. It should have been reassuring to have someone else to back him up, but Giffen seemed nervous, not himself. It rather seemed like he knew more than he was saying.

  “Heron is still at the house, recuperating,” Giffen said. “I gave Wolfy a call, and she said things are tense. Bear has got some glimpses of things from Heron that he doesn’t like, but he doesn’t want to press it, given the pain the elf’s been through. And Roman ...”

  “What?”

  “Roman knows better than to drive around looking for you all over the place. He pressed the queen to get Vavasour to find you and seemed to treat his lack of success with suspicion. Wolfy says he’s managed to have an argument with pretty much everyone from the queen down to every key official and finally Heron, and he’s been shut up in his rooms since then.”

  Archer leaned back. “So get Wolfy on the cell and get her and Bear and Heron together for our little test. I’d be inclined to keep Peter and Roman out of it at first.”

  From a time when faith in the queen was his lodestone, to this. Archer couldn’t help but think that the whole damn Society and the seelie court itself were starting to look like a rickety façade.

  Giffen nodded, turning around to the suburbs that would allow them to approach the house from the rear. He pulled up in a side street and parked his old Renault well out of sight. As he fumbled for his phone, he turned to Archer.

  “There’s one thing that I think might come out of this better than I’d hoped.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “The fire going out, the death I thought I saw ... I never thought it could be anything other than your death.” He wasn’t looking at Archer as he punched a quick-key on the phone, his face lit only by the blue light of the keypad. He pulled a small notepad out of his jeans pocket.

  Strange times when learning you might not be facing imminent death comes as small consolation. “Right,” Archer said quietly as he looked out the window at the darkened street. “What’s the notebook for?”

  “If he’s unseelie, we don’t just want to reveal him and piss him off. A mage like Heron could probably flatten the lot of us. So this is the banishing from seelie.” He held up the notepad, bent back to a page with a few lines scrawled across it in cramped text. “Once he’s been revealed and repudiated by a member of the Society, he’ll have to get the hell out of Dodge. It’s a useful little spell, and I guess I’m going to need to be the one that uses it.”

  Because Archer had been cast out of the Society, that was. Archer grimaced bitterly at that thought, but he knew he had to do this. Not for the Society, but for himself, and Roman. Although there was no telling how Roman was feeling now after being frozen out and deserted ... That thought frightened him more than anything Heron might be able to do.

  Wolfy took some convincing. The conversation ended with Giffen saying ‘trust me’ half a dozen times before he clicked his phone shut.

  “She doesn’t, you know,” Archer said.

  “I know.” Giffen sighed. “Well, nothing for it. Heron’s in the rear parlor; apparently he’s made himself pretty much at home there. Wolfy is, I bloody hope, getting Bear in there now. We’d better get down before she needs to come up with a good reason, because she couldn’t lie to that man for more than a minute.”

  They made their way through the dark. Archer’s fingers curled around his glass flask, its lid worked loose. If all went according to plan, he would cast it at Heron and it would light up with a telltale light that showed an elf was no longer aligned to the seelie queen. He didn’t really know exactly how the banishing would work if he and Giffen had put thing together right. Quickly, he hoped.

  Goddess, please, you’ll have my belief from now on if only this comes out all right.

  Archer’s hands were shaking. Either he would go partway to making things right, or screw them up even further. What if Heron was aligned to the queen and she was part of it? Dark days ahead if that was so, because he’d have to keep fighting. Any elf who’d make a deal with the Maewyn sect and trample over people like Heron had ... the Irish left to starve of magic, he and Roman torn apart.

  As they crept around the edge of the lawn, Archer shoved his fear down hard into his stomach and took the lead. The back door was unlocked, and with a glance to Giffen, Archer stepped through. He went first down the hallway and across to the small back parlor. The door was closed, but a seam of light showed someone was inside. He could just hear the sound of Heron’s voice, words blurred but tone querulous.

  Archer grabbed the handle and stepped inside. Bear was already turned towards the door and in the process of standing -- no doubt Giffen and Archer was emoting like foghorns. Bear tried to block them.

  “Archer, I don’t know --”

  Wolfy pulled back on his arm and cut across his words. “They aren’t doing anything that --”

  Archer messily splashed the aqua ardens at Heron, and no more than a few drops could have reached him, but as Giffen began to speak, it seemed to be enough.

  It seemed the banishment was not in English, but a stream of jagged syllables that were met from the beginning by explosive radiance that beamed from Heron’s body. It was light without flame, a beacon.

  Bear stumbled, confused, his hand raised as if to strike at Archer.

  Heron gasped as he staggered back. “You,” he said in a harsh whisper. “You will regret driving me into the unseelie court. From there I will secure your death and that of any human who would collude to pollute our race.”

  His form shimmered and, as shadows rushed up from the ground to engulf it, vanished entirely.

  Giffen’s voice faltered to a halt. He came up to Archer’s side and clasped him by the shoulder. “Well, that was quite dramatic,” he commented anticlimactically.

  Archer sagged back against the wall, cool nausea washing over him. “Bloody hell, I was right.”

  “Well, it had to happen eventually.”

  The door flew open again, and into the crowded chamber burst Roman. He immediately stepped towards Archer and then faltered, his hands half-raised.

  “Archer?”

  Archer took a deep breath, straightened, and surveyed them all. “There is rather a lot to explain,” he said. “Perhaps it would be best to get everyone together somewhere a bit more comfortable.”
>
  There was a lot of talking that night and not much of a chance to get Roman alone. Tania got a call by midnight and arrived at the house by dawn, with uncharacteristic flashiness, in a black helicopter. Her people examined the scene with all manner of arcane devices, and the whole house was in chaos. Everyone wanted to hear what Archer had to say.

  In the flurry, Roman worked his way to Archer’s side and grasped him just above the wrist in an ambiguous gesture -- almost like he was making sure Archer was real and certainly to make sure he wasn’t getting away again.

  Tania took over a study on the second floor, and her guard took people up to her, working through Wolfy, Giffen, and Bear before calling for Archer.

  “Alone, if you please,” the tall elven guard said.

  Roman’s reply was equally terse. “Like hell.”

  “Your relationship with her majesty is already strained, Roman.”

  It seemed rather like Roman and the jumped-up bodyguard were already acquainted. Archer was about to say something, but Roman beat him to it in a most satisfying way.

  “If you speak for the queen, then she should know that it is well past time she changed her ways and started laying down her rules to the unseelie whom she has taken into her trust, not those they have been persecuting. And if you speak only for yourself ...” His voice reached a pitch and tone that silenced the rest of the room. “... then you should pull your head in and get out of my fucking way. Not you, not Tania, and not even the goddess herself are getting me away from this man. Not now, and not for the rest of my life.”

  The guard stiffened, but turned and led the way without another word. Archer turned and laid his hand over Roman’s. They went to see the queen together.

  The room was lit only by a lamp upon the desk. Tania stood by the window, looking out at the blank darkness. As they entered and the door was closed behind them, she turned. She looked at Archer, and then, albeit stiffly, she spoke.

  “Roman has been telling me for weeks now that there was some reason for your actions beyond the obvious. And to my abject shame, I did not believe him. You have been known to act ... impulsively; you even used flame against Peter when thinking he was an agent from the League of Maewyn. But I seek to excuse myself, and there is no excuse.”