Chapter Seven

William stared yet again at the place where the passage through the tree had been. He was trapped in the vast hollow inside the enormous tree with five babies, the children of Blackbriar village. Tamara had rescued two of them and gone out of the same hole they had used to climb in, and then the hole had closed. William had tried to use magic to force his way out, to no avail, and then sat back to wait for Tamara and Bodicea to find a way to rescue him and the infants, all but one of whom was sleeping. The exception, a chubby baby boy, was sucking his thumb contentedly and staring at William as if challenging him to come up with a way out of this mess.

"Stop staring at me, will you?" William snapped, glaring at the baby, who only giggled moistly around his thumb.

All right, he thought. Tamara's not coming. Bodicea's not coming. That can only mean something's gone wrong. Something serious. Might well be that they're under attack right now. Wild Edric and his men, like as not. Or these Faeries the damned sprite talked about. Or the sprite herself, and some of her sharp little friends. Not going to figure it out from in here, am I? The major point is, if Tamara's not come to get me, she's got trouble. Which means she needs me. Which means I've got to get myself and these little urchins out of here.

He glanced at the babies again. The thumb sucker plucked his damp digit from his wet, gummy maw and let his arm fall to the side, thumping a baby girl beside him. Whether accident or intention, he woke her, and the little girl screwed up her face and began to wail.

William gazed at her. "I sympathize, little one. I'm about there myself."

He paced the confines of the tree's heart. Other babies began to wake and the chorus of their dissonant cries gave rise to a headache that started just behind his eyes and seemed to run down his spine. He had to get the babies to safety and find a way to help Tamara. No more waiting around simply because she was better at magick. In the back of his mind William had always had a solution, or a potential one. But it frightened him to even consider.

Now, though, it had become his only choice.

"Bugger!" he snapped. Then he sighed and turned to look at the squalling babies, all wailing at him except for the thumb sucker, who still only looked bemused.

He was about to risk all of their lives for his sister's.

Yet perhaps it wasn't so bad as all that. In theory, his plan should work as long as he had the strength of will and the mental focus to carry them all.

"Which," he told the babies, "is precisely what frightens me. I've never translocated anyone else before, and now there are five of you? Certainly, you're small, but... oh, do shut up, William," he said, consciously echoing what Tamara would have said about his blathering, his delaying.

What might be happening while he babbled on? The thought spurred him.

He strode over to the furs and cloaks on the ground, knelt there amongst the babies and gathered them close around. He raised thumb sucker and a dark-haired girl into his arms, and then he took a long breath and closed his eyes, focusing on his destination.

"Under the same sky..." he began, but he faltered, so he paused and

then began again. "Under the same sky, under the same moon, let the spirit winds carry me to my destination."

An impossible wind rushed around the hollow inside the tree. William heard the grating noise that usually accompanied the spell, like metal scraping across metal, but he did not open his eyes, did not let his hopes rise. He focused on the children around him, on every detail of them, and on their destination. His stomach lurched and he felt the sense of freefall, of dislocation that always accompanied this bit of magick, and bile rose in the back of his throat. It was as though someone had thrust a fist into his belly and was tugging on his viscera.

But then he felt the wind on his face and heard the babies crying again.

"Master William? Good God, Mr. Swift!"

William blinked and opened his eyes. The babies in his arms were alive and both crying now, even thumb sucker, who had not bothered to unplug his thumb from his mouth in order to shriek. He glanced around him quickly, counting heads. Two in his arms. Three on the grounds. Five. All of them alive.

"Master William?" the voice said again.

And then Farris was there, reaching for the babies in his arms, and William gazed up at that kind gentleman and felt relief wash through him. He was exultant that he had succeeded, but the moment Farris had taken the babies from his arms, he bent over in the road and vomited beneath the wheels of the carriage. His stomach convulsed, either the magick or the pressure too much for him, and he threw up again. Then his stomach began to settle and he sat back on his haunches, drawing a hand across his lips in disgust. William took several long breaths, steadying himself, and then he stood.

Farris was already putting the last of the five babies in the rear of the carriage. He had taken blankets from beneath the seat and now was making the floor of the carriage comfortable for them, singing to them in a soft but surprisingly melodious voice.

"Will you be all right with them from here?" William asked.

"Indeed, sir. I've no children of my own, but more nieces and nephews than I've fingers and toes."

William shot a glance at the roadside, where the dark wood began, the very place where their trek into the thick forest, the enchanted heart of Blackbriar Wood, had begun. Tamara and Bodicea were in there somewhere, and in danger, he was certain.

"I'm going back in, Farris. If I haven't returned in half an hour, take the babies to the village."

Farris frowned. "Yes, sir, but what then? Shall I come back for you after?"

"Absolutely not. If Tamara and I do not appear by morning, send to London for Nigel Townsend. He will know what to-"

But Farris was no longer listening. William saw the man's eyes go wide and turned to see what had startled him so. There, at the edge of the forest, emerging quietly into the road, were warriors on horseback. Dead soldiers. Ghostly riders whom William recognized as the horde of Wild Edric.

William started for the forest, uncowed. His sister was somewhere in the dark wood and whatever malice these ghosts intended, he would not allow them to keep him from Tamara's side. But William had not yet reached the edge of the wood when the horsemen surrounded him, beasts neighing softly and grunting, and ghost-eyes burning down at him ominously.

"Leave me be!" he demanded, and he felt an anger rising in him unlike anything he had ever known. Tamara might vex him nearly every waking moment, but she was his entire world. He would give his life for her. "I have business in the forest, spirits, and I will not allow you to bar my path."

The nearest of the horsemen dismounted. He slid from his beast with a creak of leather. His hair was long and filthy, tangled wild and within it were tied leaves and sprigs and feathers. In life he had been darkly handsome. In death he had become menacing. He was transparent, of course, for though Wild Edric and his men were cursed, and as such different from ordinary ghosts, they were ghosts nevertheless. Even looking directly into his eyes, William could see the forest through him.

"You saved them? The little ones?" the horseman asked, and his voice was the whistle of the wind through the drafty eaves of an attic.

"Well... yes..." William replied, a bit taken aback.

The ghost gestured to the others and they spurred their horses to spread out. They surrounded the carriage quickly. William stared back at the ghost who had spoken.

"What are you doing?" he demanded.

The spectral horseman glared at him. "We are to protect them. And as you saved them, we are to protect you as well. He will want to thank you."

"He? He who?" William asked, voice rising in protest. "Look here. My sister's in there, and I'm going after her-"

He started forward, but the ghost did not move. Instead it glared at him, eyes blazing brightly, and it reached out to touch one finger to his chest.

William shuddered again and a knot of ice formed in his stomach. Cold fear and dread such as he had never felt spread through him.

No, he thought. Not ordinary ghosts at all.

"He will want to thank you," the ghost rasped. "It would not do at all if you were to force him to kill you instead."

Frozen with a terror inflicted upon him by some curse or ancient bit of magick, William could only stare into the deep shadows of the forest, and pray.

Princess Godda's ladies-in-waiting flitted through the trees, flashes of gold and green and scarlet in the darkness of the wood. There was a whisper as they passed and beneath it an undercurrent of something else, an oddly musical hum, the sound of Faerie magick touching the human world.

They seemed not to run so much as to dance, but with such speed and caprice that it was hard for the eye to know where, precisely, to locate them from one moment to the next.

Fortunately, Bodicea did not have to locate them. She knew precisely where they were headed. Perhaps fifty yards away, through undergrowth and a bramble of low-hanging branches, Tamara had been caught by the Faerie Princess herself. There was another voice in that direction, a familiar one, and Bodicea felt a shudder pass through her ectoplasmic form at the thought.

She'd no idea where William had gone off to, but there was no time for wonder or recrimination. Only for action.

The ghostly queen slipped out of the tangible, darted cross a small patch of the ethereal, and reappeared in the forest in a small, open space in the wood. It was not large enough even to be called a clearing. Her spectral body felt heavier here in these woods. The enchantment upon the forest combined with the magickal attack of the Faeries had made her more tangible. More vulnerable.

Bodicea was bleeding. And as she had no flesh to speak of, she had to conclude that it was her soul that was wounded.

But she had bled before, both heart and soul, and she feared no one on this Earth or beyond it.

She stood her ground, clutching her long spear in both hands, as the Faeries reached the clearing. Despite the clinging darkness all around, each of them seemed cloaked in moonbeams. They were possessed of a terrible beauty. This thought made Bodicea smile. The same had been said of her for long centuries.

"Hold, handmaidens of Faerie!" Bodicea commanded, spear at the ready, her gaze taking in all five of them in one sweep.

Godda's ladies-in-waiting were fierce-eyed and when they bared their teeth as they did now, they resembled monsters more than women, like the sirens and gorgons of ancient myth. Yet they still paused and regarded Bodicea carefully.

"The young man and woman are William and Tamara Swift. Protectors of Albion. I have sworn my fealty to them and to their cause. If you intend to harm them, I shall not let you pass."

The nearest of the Faerie women, whose hair was a cascade of golden ringlets and whose features were sharp and cruel, drifted and danced in the air, moving toward Bodicea, her eyes narrowed with mockery.

"You, ghost? You, memory? You, echo of life?"

All of them uttered a high giggle that seemed part girl-child and part hyena. It ripped through the trees and made Bodicea shudder again.

"You shall not let us pass?" the golden-haired one continued, sneering. "Really?"

"Oh, yes. Really."

The Faerie handmaiden lunged at Bodicea, eyes wide and feral, fingers hooked into talons that could rend human flesh and spirit flesh alike, such

was the magick of Faerie. But though ordinary ghosts could not touch humans, the same did not apply to creatures of the supernatural.

Bodicea dodged to one side with such swiftness that even a Faerie could not have caught her. The handmaiden snarled and began to turn, long fingers only claws now, mouth open wide to reveal silver needle teeth set into black gums and a thick black slug of a tongue. The lesson of beauty, Bodicea thought, is that one never knows what is beneath it.

The ghost queen raised her spear like a staff and brought its length around in a fast arc that connected with the handmaiden's skull. In the eyeblink during which she was staggered, Bodicea continued the spear's arc and thrust it behind the Faerie woman's legs, knocking her to the ground. She tried to get up, but Bodicea was no mere spirit in this wood. She slammed her foot down upon the handmaiden's chest and pressed her to the ground.

The others began to shriek in banshee wails and they threw their arms up and tore at their hair, even as they rushed toward her. The first to reach her was a handmaiden whose bright red hair was tied back with flowers into a long tail that hung far down her back. Amongst them all she seemed the most formidable.

Bodicea whipped the point of the spear around and jabbed it straight at the Faerie woman's face. The ethereal weapon was sharp and it slashed the red-haired handmaiden's cheek. The Faerie hissed and stepped back and all of the others, the one trapped beneath Bodicea's heel included, gasped as they watched their sister reach up to touch her fingers to her face.

There was blood on her fingers. Her own blood. Faerie blood.

"I am Queen Bodicea, warrior and magician. I have given my pledge to the Protectors and to Albion. You thought it impossible that you could be harmed here, in the mortal world. Now you see this is not so. By your own blood, I command you, be still. Or I swear upon the graves of my daughters you will all die here, on this mortal ground, and be forgotten forevermore in the realm of your birth."

Several moments passed as they hesitated, but then the handmaiden Bodicea had wounded took a careful step nearer, suspicion clouding her eyes.

"You are fearsome indeed, spirit. But you know that as you can cut us, we can destroy you. Utterly and for eternity. And as fierce as you may be, I do not believe you can kill us all before you fall. So perhaps we shall take our chances."

"You may be right," Bodicea agreed, standing up to her full height, brazen in her nudity, body painted with sigils and the markings of her tribe. She sneered as she moved her foot from the chest to the throat of the handmaiden she had felled. The Faerie began to struggle, gasping, bits of magickal energy seeped from her eyes and her fingers but she could not focus enough to cast a spell.

"But I can kill her," the ghost queen said, driving her foot down harder so that the Faerie under her weight began to weep. She pushed the point of her spear toward the wounded one. "And you, certainly."

With the tip of her spear she swept the clearing to indicate the rest of them. "I am a warrior born, my ladies. Aside from your two sisters I shall certainly take the lives of one or two more of you. Those who destroy me will not do so easily and by that time, your Princess will be through with her business and most of you will have died for nothing.

"So come, then. Attack me. Kill me. But wonder, first, who among you will survive."

The handmaidens stared at Bodicea, hesitant and uncertain now. They glanced at one another, wondering.

Bodicea stood her ground and let their fear defeat them.

There was an unnatural stillness in the forest. Even the wind seemed to die, so that the leaves stopped their whispering. Tamara stood between Wild Edric and the Faerie Princess and she listened to the sound of her heart beating. Her dress was torn and her hair was in a tangle. There was a long, bloody scratch on her left arm where she had caught herself on a branch, and it stung enough to remind her that she could feel, that she was alive. For if she had relied upon the cursed Edric and the Lady Godda, she would have felt like nothing more than a spirit herself. They glared past her at one another, and for a moment Tamara hesitated even to breathe.

Then a change came over her.

She frowned deeply and narrowed her eyes, glancing first at Edric and then at the Faerie. Godda was beautiful and ethereal, but there was a glint in her eye as cruel as the edge of her sword. Edric was handsome and capricious, but he exuded a bitterness that spoke volumes of what really lay in his heart.

"You really are a pair of idiots, aren't you?" Tamara said.

Edric's eyes widened, but his reaction was nothing compared to Godda's. The Faerie Princess had seemingly forgotten Tamara was even there in that small clearing with them. Now she sneered, lips pulling back to bare those sharp teeth, and she regarded Tamara closely. She raised her sword and started forward.

"Is this another one of your conquests, then? The latest human whore to invite you to bed? Yet her accent isn't local. What happened, Edric? Did you run out of girls in Blackbriar? You had to start expanding your territory?"

Tamara studied them both, her gaze switching from one to the other, and she saw Wild Edric draw his short sword from a belt of gold around his waist. He was not a ghost like those Tamara knew, but a man cursed to be nothing but a spectre until his services as a warrior were needed once more. The fingers he flexed around the hilt of that short sword had felt solid enough on Tamara's skin, and she knew the blade would be no less effective. But it was not meant for her.

""As a matter of fact, I have run out of girls in Blackbriar-" he began.

"Oh, that's enough!" Tamara snapped. "You just shut your mouth!"

Never in her life had she spoken that way to anyone but her brother. But Wild Edric had gone too far.

"Quiet, you little strumpet," Godda hissed, marching at Tamara with her sword. "Sorceress or no, this doesn't concern you. Not any more. You're just one more blood stain now."

Before Tamara could say another word the Faerie Princess attacked. Her

eyes gleamed with power and fury and she raised that crimson sword and darted at Tamara, sweeping the blade toward her throat.

"Aegis!" Tamara cried, and as she threw up her hands a bright orange light spread from her fingers, erecting a glittering magickal shield in front of her.

Godda's sword scraped along the shield as though it were made of metal and the Faerie Princess cursed in the language of her people. But she was a creature of magick and a simple spell was not going to protect her prey. She swung the sword around with such speed that it whistled through the air and became little more than a red streak. The blade struck Tamara's spell-shield a second time, and then a third, and each time the impact sent spikes of pain up Tamara's arms. On the fourth blow, she could not hold the spell any longer. The shield dissipated.

"Godda, no!" Wild Edric called, but in her peripheral vision Tamara could see that he was reluctant to interfere.

The shield would not work again, and Tamara doubted her magick was strong enough to defeat the Faerie Princess in a direct attack.

Right, then, she thought. Something indirect.

She pointed at the ground. "Vorare!" she muttered, fingers contorting into claws as she mimed clutching something from the air.

The ground beneath Godda turned soft as quicksand and roots broke through the earth to wrap around her legs. The Faerie Princess looked down in shock and then back up at Tamara and Edric.

"You... you foolish girl," she said, a note of astonishment in her voice. "You really don't have any idea who you're dealing with."

The ground continued to swallow her, the earth sucking at her legs, the roots tugging her deeper. Godda began to hack at them with her sword, to struggle against the spell.

"Neither do you," Tamara said, cold and resolute. "I am one of the Protectors of Albion, and I say this foolishness is at an end. There are enough enemies in the dark without the two of you creating more chaos. They thrive on it.

"Aether fucus defixus," she whispered, and a red mist began to form in the air, tendrils of it reaching out to wrap around Godda's upper torso, binding her arms tight against her body so that she could not struggle against the voracious earth any longer. It continued to drag her down.

"Let her go."

Tamara turned toward that voice, so different now. Wild Edric was staring at her, short sword in his hand, but while he had seemed reluctant to act a moment earlier now he started forward.

"You've no business here. This matter is between myself and the Princess Godda."

"What?" Tamara demanded, recoiling with disgust. "You mean between you and your bride, don't you?"

She gestured toward Godda and the spells she had cast dissipated. The Faerie Princess was no longer bound - not that the coils of red mist would have held her much longer - and the ground had solidified again.

It would take her a minute to dig her legs free.

Tamara did not retreat from Edric's advance, but moved toward him instead. At her words he had slowed and his expression had changed. He seemed almost petulant now, and any charm he had retained was now gone.

"You dare much, girl," Godda snarled as she dug at the soil with her sword. But there was little threat in the words. The Faerie Princess had powerful magicks of her own and could easily have attacked Tamara directly now.

She did not.

"Too much," Edric added.

Tamara slapped his face with such ferocity that the stinging sound echoed through the trees. The cursed man stared at her, mouth gaping in astonishment, and held a hand to his cheek, greatly affronted.

"I really do not think I have ever met two more repulsively selfish individuals in my life, living or dead, human or supernatural. You say it isn't my business, but it is. The village of Blackbriar requested my interference, and that has made this my business. Even if they had not, as Protectors of Albion my brother and I could not have ignored your self-indulgent games.

"You, Edric, are the worst sort of philanderer, one who sneaks about on his wife and shows no remorse. Instead, you're offended that she is angered by your actions. And that is to say nothing of the horrid way in which you've taken advantage of the girls of Blackbriar, stealing their innocence-"

"None of those girls was what you'd call innocent!" he protested.

Tamara glared at him, and Wild Edric closed his mouth.

"I have felt your influence, sir. If your Faerie Princess is willing to be your lover without the sort of coercion you find it necessary to employ upon young maidens, you should have counted yourself lucky."

Godda was now free, and she glared at them with those glowing eyes and began to drift toward them, sword in hand.

"Precisely my point, sorceress," the Faerie Princess said.

"Oh, put away the sword. You're not going to kill him, and you know it. You love him in your sickeningly twisted way," Tamara spat, nauseated by what the two of them had done. "And you are even more cruel and heartless and selfish than he. He fathered children upon the girls of Blackbriar and you stole them away, tore them from their homes and put them in danger-"

"They were never in danger," Godda said, lowering her sword.

"They were stolen from their mother's arms!" Tamara shouted. "Drop the veil covering your eyes! You left them in a hollow inside a tree, for God's sake. You've done something to their mothers as well."

"Not... not all of them," Godda said, hesitantly, glancing away. "And my ladies-in-waiting were caring for the-"

"That's enough," Tamara said, and though her voice was low it reached them both. "You've left some of those girls broken, at least one of them possessed by a demon. I don't think I even want to know how that happened or what sort of excuse you'll offer. You keep telling me what's between you is between you, and that is as it should be. So let it be between you. You should both be ashamed of yourselves. I will see that the babies are returned to their mothers but it is up to you to restore those girls to their right minds."

The Faerie Princess narrowed her gaze and took two steps toward Tamara. "Who do you think you are, girl?"

"I've told you who I am. Perhaps I have the power to defeat you again, or perhaps not. But if you refuse to attend to your responsibilities, you will have to kill me to stop me hounding you. And if you kill me, there will be my brother to contend with. And if you kill him, there will be another Protector after us. You're worse than children, the two of you. If you want to destroy one another, do so, but I will not allow you to harm another innocent over your disregard for one another."

For a long moment, no one spoke. Then, at last, Edric nodded.

"She's right."

Tamara glared at Godda until the Faerie Princess sheathed her crimson blade.

"Fine."

"And what of the changeling children? The monstrous babes you left in place of your husband's bastard offspring?"

Now Godda stood up a bit straighter, staring down her nose at Tamara, and she sniffed haughtily. "We shall care for them, my ladies and I."

"And I," Edric said softly.

The Faerie Princess raised an eyebrow and looked at her husband. "You?" Wild Edric nodded slowly. "It's the least I can do. If you'll have me." Tamara had other things she wanted to say, but she thought that the time had come for her to be silent.

Now, she thought, glancing around, where has William gone?