Chapter 8—Unicorn to Fairyland

Moth came back into her own head. Furious.

“Stupid fae won’t talk.”

“Why, dear one?”

“Some creature tells this is not fae business. They believe.”

I groaned. “Does this mean a visit to your Queen?”

Moth nodded. “Mandrake comes too?”

“He does. How do we get there?”

“We ride unicorn.” Moth explained.

“Unicorn?”

I think he thought I might shift my form. But, of course, that is impossible when you are flying into the land of the fae. Falling out of the sky is something to be avoided at all costs. I hastened to explain.

“It isn’t me in unicorn form. The land of the fae is too well protected for that. No. This is a sort of a taxi. Stick your fingers in your ears and shut your eyes.”

He did as I asked, and I did the same. Even then, the sound of Moth summoning a unicorn made my bones vibrate and my teeth chatter. Fortunately it was a thing that was over almost as soon as it had begun.

“Why have I never heard that before? And please tell me I won’t have to hear it again.”

Moth bestowed her best sever look on our mate. “Is bonding thing. And you will hear worse.” She grinned at me. “You wait until beloved sings. Now. Furs.”

We shrugged ourselves into our furs and Mandrake had a quick conversation with Purslane. He was intuitive enough to understand the need for hurry without being told, and the three of us were outside in the grey cold when the sound of hoofbeats announced the arrival of our ride.

I don’t know what you may have been told about unicorns, but I’m about willing to bet it’s not the truth. Unicorns are not pink, nor snow white. Their horns are not pretty gilded adornments. And they certainly don’t like anything that isn’t a unicorn—or each other, much, now I come to think of it.

The creature who had come to transport us to the fae lands stood about twenty hands at the shoulder. He—for he was obviously a full stallion—was the colour of a storm cloud and his horn was a twisted, saw-edged weapon that had obviously seen a lot of use. He dropped to the ground showily, deliberately showering us with snow as he slithered to a halt. Mandrake growled and the unicorn took a closer look.

“A dragon. Since when did you own a dragon, Mothwing?”

“Mind business horse.”

The unicorn stamped a hoof and I decided to take a hand.

“Were you summoned here to collect Mothwing and her bonded mates?”

He nodded.

“Well know this then. Here we are.”

“The dragon is bonded?”

“He is.”

The unicorn made a brief obeisance and shook his head so that spume flew from his lips.

“I will carry you three then. In safety.”

“Thank you…” I stretched my mind for a second, “Alsviør.”

He preened that I should know his name, before making the knee so we could mount. When we were settled he turned his head.

“Where to Fairy Mothwing?”

“The seelie court.”

Riding a unicorn is about the most uncomfortable means of transportation you can think of as their flight is best described as a series of leaps and drops. It is vomit inducing, but we managed not to disgrace ourselves.

The landing in the courtyard of the seelie castle was considerably more decorous than at Lyon Hall and we were able to climb down easily.

“I shall await you.” Alsviør nodded his head twice and trotted off.

Moth hawked and spat, and Mandrake offered her a tiny bottle from his pocket. “Water and herbs.”

She took a sip and her colour returned to normal. “Thank you, beloved dragon.”

A uniformed elf awaited us. He was a little quieter and more polite than his kind normally are. Mandrake spoke in my head.

‘Elves are generally respectful around dragons.’

‘Why?’

I felt his chuckle in my bones.

‘Elf is something of a delicacy.’

Moth joined the conversation. ‘Hate flesh eating. Could make exception for elves though.’

‘Little bastards.’

Moth climbed onto my shoulder, and we followed our guide through the halls with their strangely slanting floors and odd curves. Mandrake snorted and I smiled up at him.

“Yeah. I know but we generally let her majesty have her little joke.”

“Mothwing, are you holding,” he asked in his deepest most forbidding tones.

“Moth is fine, have eyes closed. Trusting beloved.”

He put his hand to where she sat on my shoulder and touched her face. The intimacy of the contact was both warming and slightly shocking.

“Behave you two.”

Moth sniggered and our elf guide turned narrow, vicious eyes our way.

“Such behaviour is frowned upon in the seelie court,” it snarled.

Mandrake snarled back and Moth speared him with a glare.

“Mind business, elf.” The dislike she put in that one word was quite enough to start something I didn’t want to have to finish in the domain of the Faerie Queen. I put an admonishing finger on her lips.

“Hush,” I murmured.

She subsided and that should have been that. But the elf was determined to have the last word.

“I can,” it said, “keep you and your ‘bond mates’ walking round in circles forever. I think you had better mend your attitude renegade fae.”

I sighed and snapped my fingers. The seemingly endless corridors disappeared, and we stood outside the carved oak doors of the throne room.

“What? How?”

I speared him with a glance. “Mind business, elf.”

An elderly elf, who I recognised from previous visits, came barrelling down the corridor. It spared our guide a sideways glare before bowing so low it’s nose all but met its skinny knees.

“Great Lady. It’s glad I am to see you.”

I smiled at him.

“Is there a problem old one?”

“There is. And idiots like this one are making matters worse.”

The young elf snapped out an oath, and we could feel it beginning to construct a spell.

Mandrake reached out a long arm. He lifted the young one by his neck and squeezed gently.

“Put to sleep,” Moth demanded. “Is bad creature.”

Mandrake rapped the elf’s head against the stone of the wall, and it grew limp in his grasp. Moth flew across and touched his face.

“Is pretending.”

Mandrake increased his pressure on the creature’s throat and sure enough its eyes flew open. The elderly elf put a hand on the young one’s head, and it screamed faintly before sagging bonelessly in Mandrake’s grasp.

“Is sleep now.” Moth spoke dispassionately.

I turned to the old elf. “Are you permitted to tell me what is wrong?”

It bowed. “I am, Great Lady, but it might be better if you see for yourself.”

“Very well.”

It clapped its hands and two elves in the Queen’s livery threw open the doors of the throne room.

We stepped into a fairytale. The room seemed to be a clearing in a snowbound winter forest, lit by a gibbous moon. Her Majesty, in roughly human form, sat on a gleaming throne, robed from head to foot in blindingly white fur, and with her glorious hair raining down over her breast like platinum silk. She was eating pink sweetmeats from a silver dish and her lips were sticky with powdered sugar. As we walked forwards, a white wolf uncurled itself from the snow at the Queen’s feet. It snarled, showing sharp teeth that looked stained and yellow against its pristine fur.

Mandrake snarled back at it, and it sunk to its haunches.

“One comes.”

It was a second wolf who spoke from the other side of the throne. The Queen looked up briefly. She must have seen us, but there was no spark of recognition in her eyes. I groaned inwardly and spoke to Moth in my head.

‘Spell caster?’

She concentrated fiercely enough to have an ache beginning at the base of my skull.

‘Under tree.’

Sure enough, if I looked carefully enough I could see a figure beneath the noble oak that dominated the scene. He was broad of shoulder and handsome in a theatrical sort of a way. He was also an elf who radiated power, and some of that power was being expended in weaving a spell he was almost certainly going to cast our way. I felt Moth quietly constructing a screen. When the spell hit it shattered into about a million pieces.

The effect was interesting, and I watched, fascinated, as the bits of broken magic burned holes in the elf’s carefully constructed illusion. He became enormously busy putting out fires, which should have been fine. Except. His little difficulty awoke something older and a thousand times more dangerous.

I bespoke my mates urgently. ‘Some creature is coming, and it must think us already enchanted while we figure out how to deal.’

I felt their acquiescence before withdrawing my conscious mind to a remote corner and overlaying it with a blanket of uncomprehending obedience. Moth and Mandrake followed suit, and we were only just in time. This wielder of magic needed no fanfares, nor pyrotechnics, nor tricks of the light. He was an old, bent, grey human, who employed no illusions to disguise that fact. Instead, he rather gloried in his plainness, leaning on a gnarled wooden staff and walking on bare brown feet.

One snap of his fingers restored order and he turned his attention to the now squirming elf.

“Why have you been burning holes in an illusion it took me ten years to craft?”

The question was mild enough, but I was fairly sure the answer needed to be good.

“Interlopers. I was seeking to defend the Queen from interlopers.”

The old magician looked pained.

“Did you bother to find out who these interlopers might be before you started throwing bolts of lightning about?”

The elf muttered something indistinguishable, and the master magician laughed. It was not a pleasant sound.

“I thought not. Well I will tell you who they are. They are a female fae of the Queen’s family and her bond-sister who is some sort of half-were. They have lately expanded their bond to include a dragon. It would not be impossible to suppose the fae has brought her new bond-mate to be introduced to her queen. Would it?”

When the elf had no answer, I felt the old one drawing in his will.

“Ten strokes,” he said.

Even as a cruel-looking whip appeared in his hand, I wondered how someone so old and apparently frail would be able to make the elf stand for a beating. But I underestimated his power, because the proud elf drew off his garment and spreadeagled himself against the gnarled bark of the tree, which extruded tendrils and bound him in place. The whistle and snap of the whip echoed around the clearing as did the cries of the suffering elf, but even then the Queen didn’t look up from her greedy enjoyment. This was serious magic, and we were heavily outgunned in that area. We were going to have to rely on guile and brute force—and hope that would be enough.

When the old man had finished punishing the elf, the whip dematerialised as he turned his attention to us. I felt the brush of his mind and made sure that he saw a folksy country girl with very little experience of the greater magics. He came over to where we stood and snapped his fingers in front of my face. I allowed my eyes to focus on his face.

“Good day, sir.” I offered him the dimpled smile that has been the downfall of many males, and I felt him soften a little.

“Good day pretty maid.”

I decided that a show of respect would be in order, so I curtseyed prettily and manufactured a blush. The sorcerer actually patted my cheek. I managed to resist the temptation to bite off his fingers: just.

“What do they call you?”

“Maisie, sir,” the lie fell from my lips without missing a beat.

“Well, Maisie, what brings you here?”

“We come to introduce our dragon to the Queen’s Majesty, sir.”

He relaxed a little more and creased his face in an approximation of a smile.

“What is your fae called, little one?”

“Her’s called Emily.”

He frowned. “Emily? Since when was that a fae name?”

I showed him a blandly uncomprehending face. “Tis Emily, sir. Like the white star emilies what grow in the woods.”

His demeanour relaxed again. “Ah you mean anemones.”

“Yes, sir. Emilies.”

His smile broadened and I understood he had dismissed me as not too bright and no threat at all.

“And what of your dragon friend?”

“What, Telgar?”

“Yes. Telgar.”

I all but scratched my head. “He’s just a dragon.”

“Indeed. But why do you need a dragon?”

“Because travelling herbalists need security. And he’s a very good…” I let the sentence tail off and hung my head.

“I understand,” he said. “But does he have no other function?”

I shrugged. “He’s a dragon, sir, good for fighting and stuff.”

“But what does he think?”

I managed a look of incomprehension. “He’s a dragon, sir. I don’t suppose he do think.”

Which seemed to satisfy my interlocutor. He regarded me fixedly for a few seconds.

“All of which leaves me with the question of what I do about you.”

“Do about me?”

“Yes, about you and your mates. By rights I should kill you. But you are such a sweet thing.”

I staggered as if he had hit me. “Kill Maisie sir? But I’m a good girl.”

“I daresay, but I can’t have you going around talking about what you’ve seen.”

“What us’s seen? I don’t understand.”

He chuckled, although the sound was humourless and unfeeling.

“I don’t suppose you do.”

He stood for several minutes with his head sunk into his chest and I got the sense of him thinking through his options. For a brief time, I thought my innocent country maiden act had bought us the freedom to walk out of the illusion, however, that wasn’t what the magic wielder decided. It would, I thought, cause him a moment of regret but I saw the second he resolved to kill us where we stood. Me first.

He assembled his features into what he thought was a friendly smile and lifted his hands. I knew my options were few, or perhaps even none, and I resolved to face my fate as bravely as I knew how.

The old one had opened his mouth to say who knew what when there came the sound of a footfall from among the trees behind him.

“Who comes?”

His head snapped around as if on a spring and that was his undoing. He never saw Mandrake move, and I’m fairly sure he didn’t feel the blow that felled him like a rotten tree. Even a powerful sorcerer isn’t proof against having his head stoved in by an infuriated dragon protecting his mates.