gray.
I was in the middle of a vast plain. Dry, cracked earth stretched out in all directions, studded with jagged rocks and snarls of hostile-looking brambles. Mountains cupped the plain on all sides, looming over the land, and the sky overhead was solid black without a star in sight. Only a few thin clouds broke the darkness, shoved along by a wind I couldn’t feel. The air on the ground was chilly but motionless.
Shivering, I wrapped my arms around myself. I don’t normally mind the dark. The fae aren’t fond of the sun, and the Summerlands exist in a state of near perpetual twilight. There are always shadows in Faerie. It’s just that they’re normally warm, open shadows, the kind that create a welcoming sort of darkness. This wasn’t a warm night. It was a night for endings, and for monsters.
There was something wrong with the perspective. The problem didn’t seem to be with the land around me, hostile as it seemed—it looked entirely proper when I didn’t try to think too hard about what I was seeing. There was something wrong with the way I was looking at things, like I was somehow out of proportion with the landscape. Something—
The candle blazed abruptly upward, forcing me to flinch to keep from setting my hair on fire. I wound up holding it at arm’s length, watching the blue flame burn higher and higher. The Luidaeg said the candle was my map; if it burned out, I might have problems a little more pressing than my slightly warped perspective. I tried blowing on it and shaking it, but there was no change. Finally, desperately, I said, “All right! I won’t think about it! Okay?”
The flame immediately dwindled to an ember. Whatever was wrong, the Luidaeg—or at least her candle— didn’t want me thinking about it. I glared at the candle. I hate riddles, and I hate them even more when I’m forced to play along. I’ve always preferred the direct method: hit the riddler upside the head until he gives you the answer. Maybe it’s more likely to get you hurt, but it’s also a lot less confusing. Still, if they wanted me to play, I’d play. It wasn’t like I had a choice.
I turned in a slow circle, studying the landscape. A forest stretched off toward the mountains some distance behind me, made up of the sort of tall, gnarled trees that act as a natural barrier against the world. It managed to look even less welcoming than the plains, and that meant it was probably where I needed to go. Sometimes dealing with fairy-tale clichés is even more annoying than dealing with fae manners. If I ever meet any descendants of the Brothers Grimm, I’m going to break their noses and possibly a few other convenient body parts.
Maybe I had to play along with this stupid scenario, but that didn’t mean I had to like it. “I am so tired of this gothic crap,” I muttered. “Just once, I want to meet the villain in a cheerful, brightly lit room. Possibly one with kittens.”
Blind Michael’s lands seemed unlikely to supply me with anything resembling an airy sitting room, and any cats I encountered would probably be of the four-hundred-pound, man-eating variety. I was willing to bet that a cat the size of a Sherman tank would bother even Tybalt. I shook my head, trying to make the image go away. Blind Michael’s realm was obviously in the Summerlands. It was probably an Islet, a bubble of space anchored between the Summerlands and one of the deeper, lost realms. Reality is malleable in the Islets. You can’t change it with a casual thought, but fears and phobias have a distressing tendency to come to life. If Blind Michael didn’t have giant attack-cats, I didn’t want to be the one who gave them to him.
The feeling of wrongness was still clamoring in the back of my mind. I didn’t know why, and the Luidaeg’s spell obviously didn’t want me to. I took a deep, slow breath. She didn’t do freebies. Whatever she’d done, it was probably intended to keep me alive, and if that hinged on not understanding, I could play dumb for a little while.
At least her spell had been kind enough to trade my cut-down dress for jeans and a bulky green sweater. It made a certain sense; she wanted me to get back alive, and jeans were more useful than a skirt while crossing the wasteland. A thin leather strap secured my knife to the belt, and a similar leather strap was holding my hair away from my face. If I screwed up, it wouldn’t be due to interference from my wardrobe.
Finally, lacking any better options, I started for the forest.
The plains were wider than they looked. I had barely covered half the distance to the trees when my legs informed me that I needed to take a break, now, and that if I didn’t find something to sit on, they’d be fine with dumping me on my ass. Choosing rest over close contact with the treacherous surface of the plain, I walked to the nearest rock and sat. My candle was burning steadily. That was good. The spell that brought me to Blind Michael’s lands was tied to the candle, and I probably wouldn’t survive for long if the candle went out. If I was lucky, losing it would kill me quickly. If I wasn’t …
The Luidaeg called Blind Michael a child’s terror. He wasn’t likely to be happy with an adult intrusion into his lands. “Great,” I muttered. “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” It helped to hear my own voice, but something was wrong with it. I stood, trying to make sense of the conflicting messages my senses were delivering. The candle blazed again, illuminating the land around me as the Luidaeg whispered on the edge of my hearing,
Hunting horns blared in the distance as the flame turned orange and dwindled to a pinprick. I took a step backward, confusion forgotten in the face of panic. I knew what those horns meant; there was only one thing they
Taking another step back, I started to run.
My breath was harsh and loud as I ran, but nowhere near as loud as the horns sounding on the other side of the horizon. They were coming and there was nothing I could do to stop them. A thought struck me as the horns sounded again, a thought that seemed almost brilliant in its clarity. If I stopped, they might listen to reason. They’d take me to Blind Michael, and he’d understand; he’d return my children without complaint. He was a good man at heart. He—
The candle flared, splashing wax down the length of my arm. The pain was stunning, knocking me out of a haze I hadn’t even felt coming down. The bastards were blowing enchanted horns. Of course they wouldn’t listen! Blind Michael’s Hunt has never had a reputation for mercy. I’d die if I stopped. I might die anyway, but at least if I ran, I had a chance.
Even without their suggestive power, the horns were getting louder. I wasn’t going to reach the forest before the Hunt reached me. Still running, I started scanning for a place that I could hide.
There was a tangle of brambles up ahead that looked promising. I ran toward it, grimacing as I saw the length of the thorns. They didn’t look like pleasant bedmates. I was considering looking for another place to hide when the horns sounded again, closer now than ever. Right. Gritting my teeth, I dropped to my knees and began squirming into the shelter of the thorns.
I stopped once there was a concealing wall of brambles between myself and the plains, tucking my candle down behind my knees to hide its light. I could hear hooves pounding the earth as well as the trumpet of the horns; they were getting closer. I scooted backward, heedless of the thorns. A little blood was a small price to pay for staying alive.
Holding my breath, I waited for the Hunters.
They didn’t appear. A girl ran into view instead, crying as she raced for the woods. Her dress hung in bloody tatters, and more blood matted her curly brown hair. I opened my mouth slightly, breathing in the balance of her heritage. Hob half-blood, probably no more than fourteen. She was barefoot, but she ran over the stony ground without stopping. Something worse than death was following her, and she knew it. She was clutching a half-grown Abyssinian cat against her chest. A thin haze of magic surrounded the cat, rebounding randomly off the shadows around them and shattering them without doing anything productive. Cait Sidhe almost certainly; they specialize in moving through shadows, opening portals to take them from here to there. But the shadows here were Blind Michael’s, and the poor kid wasn’t getting a foothold.
The girl closed her eyes, finding a last burst of terrified speed as the horns sounded again. The cat in her arms went still, eyes fixed on the forest’s edge. The Cait Sidhe tend to be realists, and that cat knew as well as I did that they’d never get there in time. I stayed where I was, biting my lip. I wanted to tell them to hide while they had the chance, and I couldn’t. The Riders were too close. There was nothing I could do but watch, and remember, and take whatever I saw home to tell their parents.
Whatever happened would be my responsibility, because I didn’t save them. Sometimes doing nothing is the hardest thing of all.
The horns sounded a final time, and Blind Michael’s Hunt poured over the hill. There were at least a dozen of them, dressed in mismatched armor and mounted on vast horses whose hooves ripped the earth as they ran. They
