Mistral's Kiss

"Yes, I did, but now it is gone. Now the gardens are dead, dead as they will always be."

A pale green light sprang from the darkness. Doyle holding a cup of sickly greenish flames in his hands. It was one of his hands of power. I'd seen the touch of that fire crawl over other sidhe and make them wish for death. But as so many things in faerie, it had other uses. It was a welcome light in the dark.

The light showed that it was no longer her fingertips that held Mistral's chin upward, but the edge of a blade. Her blade, Mortal Dread. One of the few things left that could bring true death to the immortal sidhe.

"What if the gardens could live again?" Doyle asked. "As the roses outside the throne room live again."

She smiled most unpleasantly. "Do you propose to spill more of Meredith's precious blood? That was the price for the roses' renewal."

"There are ways to give life that do not require blood," he said.

"You think you can fuck the gardens back to life?" she asked. She used the edge of the blade to raise Mistral up high on his knees.

Doyle said, "Yes."

"This, I would like to see," she said.

"I don't think it will work if you are here," Rhys said. A pale white light appeared over his head. Small, round, a gentle whiteness that illumined where he walked. It was the light that most of the sidhe, and many of the lesser fey, could make at will; a small magic that most possessed. If I wanted light in the dark, I had to find a flashlight or a match.

Rhys moved, in his soft circle of light, slowly, toward the queen.

She spoke: "A little fucking after a few centuries of celibacy makes you bold, one-eye."

"The fucking makes me happy," he said. "This makes me bold." He raised his right arm, showing her the underside of it. The light was not strong enough, and the angle not right, for me to see what was so interesting.

She frowned; then, as he moved closer, her eyes widened. "What is that?" But her hand had lowered enough that Mistral was no longer trying to raise himself up on his knees to keep from being cut.

"It is exactly what you think it is, my queen," Doyle said. He began to move closer to her, as well.

"Close enough, both of you." She emphasized her words by forcing Mistral back high on his knees.

"We mean you no harm, my queen," Doyle said.

"Perhaps I mean you harm, Darkness."

"That is your privilege," he said.

I opened my mouth to correct him, because he was my captain of the guard now. She wasn't allowed to simply hurt him for the hell of it, not anymore.

Abeloec tightened his hand on my arm. He whispered against my hair, "Not yet, Princess. The Darkness does not need your help yet."

I wanted to argue, but his reasoning was sound, as far as it went. I opened my mouth to argue, but as I looked up into his face, the argument fell away from me. His suggestion just seemed so reasonable.

Something bumped my hip, and I realized he was holding the horn cup. He was the cup, and the cup was him, in some mystical way, but when he touched it, he became more. More…reasonable. Or rather his suggestions did.

I wasn't sure I liked that he could do that to me, but I let it go. We had enough problems without getting sidetracked. I whispered, "What is on Rhys's arm?"

But Abeloec and I stood in the dark, and the Queen of Air and Darkness could hear anything that was spoken into the air in the dark. She answered me, "Show her, Rhys. Show her what has made you bold."

Rhys didn't turn his back on her, but moved sort of sideways toward us. The soft, white sourceless light moved with him, outlining his upper body. In a battle it would have been worse than useless; it would have made him a target. But the immortal don't sweat things like that—if you can't die, I guess you can make as obvious a target of yourself as you like.

The light touched us first, like that first white breath of dawn that slides across the sky, so white, so pure, when dawn is nothing more than the fading of darkness. As Rhys got closer to us, the white light seemed to expand, sliding down his body, showing that he was still nude.

He held his arm out toward me. There was a pale blue outline of a fish that stretched from just above his wrist almost to his elbow. The fish was head-down toward his hand and seemed oddly curved, like a half circle waiting for its other half.

Abeloec touched it much as the queen had done, lightly, with just his fingertips. "I have not seen that on your arm since I stopped being a pub keeper."

"I know Rhys's body," I said. "It's never been there before."

"Not in your lifetime," Abeloec said.

I glanced from him to Rhys. To him, I said, "It's a fish, why…"

"A salmon," he said, "to be exact."

I closed my mouth so I wouldn't say something stupid. I tried to do what my father had always taught me to do, think. I thought out loud…"A salmon means knowledge. One of our legends says that because the salmon is the oldest living creature, it has all the knowledge since the world began. It means longevity, because of the same legend."

"Legend, is it?" Rhys said with a smile.

"I have a degree in biology, Rhys; nothing you say will convince me that a salmon predated the trilobites, or even the dinosaurs. Modern fish is just that, modern, on a geological scale."

Abeloec was looking at me curiously. "I'd forgotten Prince Essus insisted on you being educated among the humans." He smiled. "When you're reasoning things out, you aren't as easy to distract." He tightened his other hand, with the cup still gripped in it.

I frowned, and finally stepped away from him. "Stop that."

"You drank from his cup," Rhys said. "He should be able to persuade you of almost anything." He gri

"I guess she's not human enough," Abeloec said.

"You're all acting as if that pale tattoo is important. I don't understand why."

"Didn't Essus ever tell you about it?" asked Rhys.

I frowned. "My father didn't mention anything about a tattoo on your arm."

The queen made a derisive noise. "Essus didn't think you were important enough to be told."

"He didn't tell her," Doyle said, "for the same reason that Galen doesn't know."

Galen was still lying in the dead garden. All the other men who had fallen to the ground were still kneeling or sitting in the dead vegetation. A soft greenish white glow began to form above Galen's head. Not a nimbus like that of Rhys, but more of a small ball of light above his head.

Galen found his voice, hoarse, and had to clear it sharply before he said, "I don't know about any tattoos on Rhys, either."

"None of us has told the younger ones, Queen Andais," Doyle said. "Everyone knows that our followers painted themselves with symbols and went into battle with only those symbols to shield them."

"They eventually learned to wear armor," Andais said. Her arm had lowered enough for Mistral to be comfortable on his knees again.

"Yes, and only the last few fanatical tribes kept trying to seek our favor and blessing. They died for that devotion," Doyle said.

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

"Once we, the sidhe, their gods, were painted with symbols that were our sign of blessing from the Goddess and the God. But as our power faded, so did the marks upon our bodies." Doyle said it all in his thick-as-molasses voice.

Rhys picked up the story. "Once, if our followers painted their bodies to mimic us, they gained some of the protection, the magic, that we had. It was a sign of devotion, yes, but once long, long ago, it literally could call us to their aid." He looked at the faint blue fish on his arm. "I have not held this mark for nearly four thousand years."

"It is faint and incomplete," the queen said from the far wall.

"Yes." Rhys nodded and looked at her. "But it is a begi