“Mine is capon,” Lara replied. “I do love faerie bread, Mother! I adore that it can be anything you want it to be.”
When they had finished eating, they slept side by side on Ilona’s great bed. Lara awakened once during the night to find the moonlight streaming into the chamber across the bed. She arose and went to look out into the forest, seeing a small herd of does led by a great antlered buck grazing in the clearing of grass outside. Sadness overwhelmed her. The last Autumn would come soon, and then the Icy Season would be upon Hetar. But no spring would follow it. Eventually, much of what had been Hetar, mortal beings, creatures, the land, would suffer and die, or be changed forever. What would Kolgrim do when he had nothing but a dead world to rule? Or would he find a way of keeping his subjects alive, and at his mercy? And would the light come to Hetar again one day as Kaliq and her mother insisted it must? The tears began to slip down her face as Lara returned to the bed, sleeping fitfully until the dawn broke.
Ilona was up first. She magicked a bowl of faerie bread for herself. This morning it tasted like roasted apples and porridge with a hint of sweet cinnamon. She saw the dried tears on the beautiful face so like her own. Lara had wept in the night, and briefly Ilona’s cold faerie heart felt sympathy for her firstborn child. One of the reasons Lara had been born was to save Hetar. The fact that she had been unable to weighed heavily upon her, for she did not quite understand that the magic world had always considered her success unlikely. They had planned a far greater destiny for her, which she would soon learn. Finished eating, Ilona arose and shook Lara awake. “Magick yourself something to eat so we may be on our way. We have much history to visit today,” the beautiful queen of the Forest Faeries told her now-half-awake daughter.
Like a child, Lara did as she was bid while Ilona sent for Parvanah, and gave her her instructions for the day.
When Parvanah had gone off, Lara asked her mother, “Why did you not ask Marzina to take on these tasks?”
“Parvanah will succeed me after her father,” Ilona said. “Unless, of course, Cirillo steps aside from the succession, which he threatens to do every now and again. After all these years you would think the fires of his passion for Nidhug had banked. If anything it burns even brighter. My children, it seems, have a great capacity for love,” Ilona noted a trifle drily. “Parvanah needs to know how to rule, and the great responsibility being a queen entails. Marzina has another path to follow entirely. I love both of my granddaughters equally, but Parvanah will be queen. She needs me more than Marzina. Your daughter has had the advantage of learning not just from me, but from you and Kaliq, as well. Parvanah has only me.”
Lara swallowed down the final sip of apricot nectar. “I am ready, Mother,” she said. Then she sighed. “It is a beautiful day in the forest. What shall we visit first?”
“We begin, as I told you last night, with the fall of the Forest Lords,” Ilona replied. “Take my hand, Lara, and remember. No mortal eye can see us.” Then, catching her daughter’s hand in hers, Ilona uttered the silent spell.
Suddenly they were in a clearing deep within the forest. A beautiful pale colored roe deer with a jeweled collar about its neck dashed into the clearing, panting. Lara could hear the baying of the dogs close by, and the shouts of huntsmen upon their horses crashing through the woodland. The deer stood gasping for breath, for she had led the hunters a merry chase the whole day long. Both dogs and horsemen burst into the clearing simultaneously. The dogs surrounded the deer, snapping and barking, while the mounted men quickly drew their bows, notching them with arrows.
But the roe deer changed suddenly into a beautiful young faerie woman who laughed at the surprise upon the rough faces staring down at her. “How foolish you Forest Lords are,” she mocked them. “Did it not occur to you that a roe deer with a jeweled collar about its neck was of the magic world? Do you usually waste a day chasing after such creatures?” And she laughed again at them.
Following their leader, a young man who was called Ubel, the men dismounted. The lust they had had for the hunt was dissolving into lust of another kind as they viewed the beautiful faerie woman, who was arrayed in sheer golden diaphanous garments, the jeweled collar twinkling about her slender white neck. They stared at her.
Lara and Ilona both could feel the fear suddenly rising in the faerie woman who was called Nixa. Her powers had been exhausted keeping herself in the form of a roe deer, and leading the chase the day long. It was then Lara realized that had the Forest Lords not been so full of themselves that day, the history of Hetar might have been different. But the hunters were angry at the faerie woman who had made fools of them. And they would be forced to return home empty-handed.
“You owe us a forfeit, faerie woman,” Ubel snarled at her.
“I cannot change your stupidity into intelligence,” Nixa told him foolishly.
The hunters surrounding her growled, fully understanding the insult directed at them. Instinctively they moved closer to her. Lara could smell the lust on them, and saw several cocks, Ubel’s among them, pressing an outline against their trousers. Then without warning the young man’s big hand shot out, catching at Nixa’s long blond hair.
He flung her to the mossy earth. The faerie woman’s head hit a small rock rendering her too dizzy to defend herself as, standing over her, Ubel loosened his garments and fell to the ground, his knees pinioning her tightly. He tore her sheer clothing from her so that she was completely naked. Then, taking his cock in his hand, he positioned himself as she began to regain full consciousness. As her startled eyes met his, Ubel thrust himself hard into the faerie woman’s sheath, eliciting a single scream from her.
Nixa lay bloodied and battered upon the mossy forest floor. Some of the hunters had not only ravaged her, they had beaten her, as well. Satisfying himself for the third time, Ubel ripped the jeweled collar from the faerie woman’s neck. Then, taking his knife from its sheath, he slowly slit her throat, taking pleasure as the deep slash he inflicted filled up with bright blood. He noted it was tinged with streaks of green. Then, rising, he straightened his garments and signaled his men to mount their horses.
As the sound of the hooves disappeared, Ilona said in their silent language,
And with those words Lara found herself and her mother observers in a familiar chamber, the hall of the Head Forester. She shivered, for though it had been decades since she had been in that hall as a captive, the memory was yet unpleasant. The Forest Lords sat eating and drinking. There was much laughter that night, and Lara saw that the Head Forester’s wife now wore the bejeweled collar that had belonged to Nixa.
There was a thunderclap, a burst of violet smoke, and Lara saw her late grandmother, Maeve, Queen of the Forest Faeries appear before the High Board of the Head Forester. Lara had only known her maternal grandmother briefly in the time before she faded away, when she was so delicate and frail she could barely been seen clearly at times. This Maeve, however, was powerful and filled with life. She was tall with hair so gold it glittered and bright faerie green eyes. Dressed in the colors of the autumn forest, red and gold, she pointed an elegant finger at Ruggero.
“For centuries we have lived in peace together sharing the forest, my lord. Today, however, your men committed rapine and murder. For that you owe the Forest Faeries a forfeit, though whatever you may give us will not make up for the cruel death of the faerie woman Nixa,” Maeve said. Her anger was palpable, but she restrained it for the alliance between her people and these mortals had been a long one.
“Come, Maeve, and be reasonable. If she had teased the hunting party but briefly and then disappeared, there would have been no ill feeling toward her. But she taunted my men the day long. We are deep into Autumn, and every day we lose is food lost for the Icy Season to come.”
“Justice demands a life for a life,” Maeve said in a cold hard voice. “I want five of the hunters who ravaged and killed poor Nixa in exchange for her life. Our value in the Cosmos is greater than yours, though you will not understand that. It is fair.”
“She got what she deserved, and it should stand as a lesson to your faerie folk to cease their teasing of our
