Swallowing Darkness

Chapter Eight

There was a confusion of colors: yellows, reds, and oranges, and over it all was gold. Gold like the metal of a piece of jewelry, edging everything. The air itself was full of sparkles, as if gold dust were permanently suspended in the air, so that the very air you breathed was formed of it.

The gold spilled around us, moved by the speed of our passage so that it rained around us, trailed behind us, mingling with the white glow of the magic so that we appeared in the midst of the court in a vision of silver and gold.

There was a moment when I saw the Golden Court spilled out before us. A moment to see Taranis on his huge golden and jeweled throne, with all his magic, all his illusion turning him to a thing of sunset colors and near-sunlike brilliance. His court spilled to either side in its standing lines, and the smaller chairs were like a garden of brilliant flowers formed of gold and silver and jewels. His people had hair in every color of the rainbow, their clothes chosen to complement and please the king. He liked the color of jewels and fire, so as Andais's court looked as if it were always ready for a funeral, Taranis's court looked like a bright version of hell.

I had a moment to see fear on my uncle's handsome face, then his guards poured around the throne. There were cries of, "He is forsworn! To the King! To the King!" Some of that glorious court poured toward the throne and prepared to aid the guards, but some got farther away from the throne, and what they thought would be the center of the fight.

I glimpsed my grandfather, Uar the Cruel, standing head and shoulders above most of the people as they fled. He was like a tree in the midst of their shining river. Looking at him as he stood, tall and every inch a war god, I realized that I had my grandfather's hair. I saw him so seldom, I hadn't realized it until that moment.

Magic flared around us in a deadly rainbow of color, fire, ice, and storm. The guards were defending their king, for whom else would I have been able to call down the wild hunt upon? So many crimes, so many traitors; I felt again that call to be at the head of the hunt forever. So simple, so painless, to ride every night and find our prey. So much simpler than the life I was trying to lead.

A hand gripped my arm, and the touch was enough. I turned to see Sholto, his face serious, his yellow and gold eyes searching my face. His touch kept bringing me back from the thought, but the fact that he knew to keep bringing me back from the brink told me that he'd had his own temptations at the head of the hunt. You can best protect others from temptation if you are, yourself, tempted.

We stood in the center of a magical storm, formed of different spells colliding. Small twisters whirled around the room, formed when powers of heat hit powers of cold. There were screams, and outside the glow of our own magic, I could see people ru

The dogs never hesitated, were never distracted by the spells of others. They had but one purpose, one prey. The hail of spells, and the storms that they themselves were causing, began to die down. The guards had finally realized that we had no interest in the throne. We moved inexorably toward the side of the room. The huge dogs shouldered their way under the tables, and spilled around a figure that was huddled against the wall.

I felt my mare's muscles bunch under me, and I had time to shift my weight forward and get a better grip on her mane before she leaped the wide table in one powerful jump.

The mare danced on the stones, her hooves raising green sparks, little licks of green and red flame coming with the smoke from her nostrils. The red glow in her eyes became small red flames that licked the edges of her eye sockets.

The dogs had trapped my cousin against the stone wall. She pressed that tall, thin sidhe frame as tightly as she could, as if the stone would give way and she would be able to escape that way. Her orange dress was very bright against the white marble wall. There would be nothing that easy for her this night. Again, that spurt of rage and deeply satisfying vengeance came to me. Her face was lovely and pale, and if she had only had a nose and enough skin to cover her mouth with lips, she'd have been as attractive as any in court. There had been a time when I had thought Cair truly beautiful, because I had not seen what she lacked as a mark of ugliness. I loved Gran's face, so her face combined with the face of a sidhe, who were all so lovely, well, Cair could be nothing but beautiful to me. But she had not felt that way, and she had let me know with the back of her hand when no one was looking, with small petty cruelties, that she hated me. I realized as I grew older that the reason was that she would have traded her tall, lithe body for my face. She made me think that being short and curved was a crime, but my face with its more-sidhe features was what she wanted. As a child, I had simply thought that I was ugly.

Now I saw her pressed against the wall, the brown eyes of our grandmother in her face, with its so-similar bone structure, and I wanted her to be afraid. I wanted her to know what she'd done and regret it, then I wanted her to die in terror. Was that petty? Did I care? No, I did not.

Cair looked up at me with my grandmother's eyes — eyes filled with terror, and behind the fear, knowledge. She knew why we were here.

I urged my horse forward, through the growling pack of hounds. I reached out to her with the dried blood on my hands.

She screamed and tried to move, but the huge white and red dogs moved closer. The threat was there in the bass rumble of their growls, the drawn lips showing fangs that were meant for rending flesh.

She closed her eyes, and I leaned forward, my hand reaching for that perfect white cheek. My hand touched her, gently. She winced as if I'd struck her. One moment the blood was dried and begi

I held my bloody hand up so the sidhe could see it, and cried out, "Kin slayer I name her. By the blood of her victim, she is accused."

It was my Aunt Eluned, Cair's mother, who came to the edge of the dogs, and held her white hands out to me. "Niece, Meredith, I am your mother's sister, and Cair is my daughter. What kin did she slay to bring you here like this?"

I turned to look at her, so lovely. She was my mother's twin, but they weren't identical. Eluned was just a little more sidhe than my mother, a little less human. She wore gold from head to toe. Her red hair like my own and her father's sparkled against her dress. Her eyes were the many-petaled eyes of Taranis, except that my aunt's were shades of gold and green intermingled. I stared into those eyes and had a memory so sharp that it stabbed through me from stomach to head. I saw eyes like these except only shades of green — Taranis's eyes above me, as if in a dream, but I knew it wasn't a dream.

Sholto touched my arm, lightly this time. "Meredith."

I shook my head at him, then held my bloody hand out toward my aunt. "This is your mother's blood, our grandmother's blood, Hettie's blood."

"Are you saying that... our mother is dead?"

"She died in my arms."

"But how?"

I pointed at my cousin. "She used a spell to make Gran into her instrument, to give her Cair's hand of power. She forced Gran to attack us with fire. My Darkness is still in the hospital with injuries that Gran gave him with a hand of power she never owned."

"You lie," my cousin said.

The dogs growled.

"If I lied I could not have called the hunt, and pronounced you kin slayer. The hunt will not come if the vengeance is not righteous."

"The blood of her victim marks her," Sholto said.

Aunt Eluned drew herself up to her full sidhe height and said, "You have no voice here, Shadowspawn."

"I am a king, and you are not," he said, in a voice as haughty and arrogant as her own.

"King of nightmares," Eluned said.

Sholto laughed. His laughter made light play in his hair, as if laughter could be yellow light to spill in the whiteness of his hair. "Let me show you nightmares," he said, and his voice held that anger that has passed heat and become a cold thing. Heated anger is about passion; cold anger is about hate.

I didn't think he hated my aunt specifically, but all the sidhe who had ever treated him as less. A few short weeks ago a sidhe woman had lured him to a bit of tie-me-up sex. But instead of sex, sidhe warriors had come and cut off his tentacles, ski

The magic of the hunt changed slightly, felt... angrier. It was my turn to reach out and warn him. I'd always known that to be drafted to ride in the hunt could mean being trapped, but I hadn't realized that calling it could also trap the huntsman. The hunt wanted a permanent huntsman, or huntswoman. It wanted to be led now that it was back. And strong emotions could give it the key to your soul. I'd felt it, and now I saw Sholto begin to be incautious.

I gripped his arm until he looked at me. The blood that had left a mark so bright and fresh on Cair's face left no mark on his arm. I stared into his eyes until I saw him look back, not in anger, but with that wisdom that had let the sluagh keep their independence when most of the other lesser kingdoms had been swallowed up.

He smiled at me, that gentler version that I had only seen since he found out that he was to be a father. "Shall I show them that they did not unman me?"

I knew what he meant. I smiled back, and nodded. The smiles saved us, I think. We shared a moment that had nothing to do with the hunt's purpose. A moment of hope, of shared intimacy, of friendship as well as love.

He'd meant to show Aunt Eluned what nightmares could truly be. To show his extra bits in anger to horrify. Now he would reveal himself to prove that the nobles who had hurt him had failed to mutilate him. He was whole. More than whole, he was perfect.

One moment it was a tattoo that decorated his stomach and upper chest, the next it was the reality. Light and color played on the pale skin, gold and pale pink. Shades of pastel light shone and moved under the skin of the many moving parts. They waved like some graceful sea creature, moved by some warm tropical current. When last he'd come to this court, he'd been ashamed of this part of himself. Now he was not, and it showed.