She pushed it open, and stepped into what felt like a cool bath of still water, after the heat of the forge and the chaos of the kitchen and the keep. He looked tired. She stepped over the threshold, and saw that his eyes were like smudges of ash in a face as gray and drawn as her father’s after a long day or sleepless night. Only the luster of his hair and the slightly pointed tips of his ears betrayed his mixed blood. In the dull light filtering through the horn pane, even his skin had lost that velvety sheen. It was difficult to restrain her apology. “I brought your dinner.”
He was standing by the open casement, one foot on the window seat, watching the activity below. He glanced over his shoulder, then straightened, obviously surprised to see her. “Put it there.” He shifted from foot to foot. “You don’t have to wait on me—I told Granny Molly that I was well enough to come down.”
“They think it’s better you stay out of sight. They say there’s talk against the sidhe.” She’d seen for herself that grief and shock were giving way to rage. She’d seen two brothers come to blows today over who had retrieved a third brother’s sword, but rumors she’d overheard were so ridiculous she’d dismissed them out of hand until Uwen had mentioned them: the sidhe were coming to save them; the sidhe themselves had been overrun by the goblins at last. The Duke of Gar was at fault for rebelling against the King; the King’s madness was to blame. The Duke of Gar had struck a secret alliance with the sidhe, the Humbrians had struck an alliance with the goblins. The Duke of Gar was dead. The Mad King Hoell was dead. But it was the muttered curses, the furtive looks cast upward as she carried the tray up the stairs that convinced Nessa that Uwen was right. “The people are looking for someone to blame.”
She placed the tray on the low table beside the hearth, then turned, her hands clasped before her, eyes fastened fixedly on the leaping flames. The aroma of toasted bread and warm cheese tickled her nostrils, and she wondered what the food smelled like to him. She flipped aside the napkin to reveal crusty brown bread with a light smear of pale cheese on top, then took a deep breath. The words burst out of her like tumbling stones plunging pell-mell down a hill. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you, truly I didn’t. I’m sorry—I just never thought—there was nothing that made me think—and Uwen says we’re to leave tomorrow—and that you’re going back to Faerie—” Her eyes filled with tears and she blinked them back.
He cut her off with a wave of his hand. “Nessa, it’s all right. I understand. I understand you had no choice.” He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “I was wrong to speak to you so. If you’ll accept my apology, we need speak of it no more.”
Surprised, she stared at him, and then realized that whatever troubled him was so much greater that any wrong she’d done him was insignificant in comparison. What would happen to him if the world to which he intended to return did not expect to welcome him back? What was he walking into? She eyed his straight back, his broad shoulders that looked broader than she’d expected beneath his borrowed clothes. The skin on his hands was paler and finer than most men’s, without any of the coarse curling hair that covered the backs of Dougal’s. But they were large, the palms broad, the fingers square.
Blacksmith’s hands. She shoved the absurdity of that thought away. Artimour was a prince of the sidhe, not a simple mortal smith. But she couldn’t help wondering what he’d look like, stripped to the waist like her father, only a leather apron and vambraces to protect his chest and forearms, and a sudden flush suffused her whole body that had nothing to do with the warmth of the flames. “Can you tell me where you found this?” She fumbled at her neck and pulled out Dougal’s amulet.
“Ah, there it is. I thought it’d been lost in the water. Do you recognize it?”
“I made it for my father when I was thirteen. I’d know it anywhere. Where’d you find it?”
“In the river, on a rock. It looked as if someone had tossed it into the water to try to negate its poison. Running water does, to some extent.”
“But you saw no one about?”
Artimour shook his head. “No one until I met Finuviel. And he was alone, as he should not have been.” He drew a deep breath. “There are many great houses along the river. Your father may have found his way to one, but any sidhe would’ve expected him to remove the amulet before they took him in. I found the amulet a league or two from where you and I parted company, but it may have drifted downriver somewhat.” He hesitated. “I don’t think there’s any way to be sure of anything—”
“But that he’s there,” finished Nessa. She took a single step forward with a raised chin. “Don’t you see? Everyone said I was wrong to be so sure he’d fallen into the OtherWorld. But now you found his amulet. Surely that shows he’s there.” She took another step, her heart beginning to pound. “And last night—last night I realized my mother must be in Faerie, too.”
A shadow crossed his face, and he indicated one of the wooden chairs in front of the fire. “Please sit. I must talk to you.”
He still moved like a sidhe, she thought as she perched on the chair’s hard edge, but she noticed that a furrow had appeared between his brows.
“Nessa,” he said gently. “I’m not sure what’s happening right now in Faerie, but nothing I can imagine is good. Finuviel—the one who stabbed me, who came to your forge with Cadwyr—Finuviel is Vinaver’s son, my own sister’s son. It wouldn’t surprise me if the two of them have been planning this for a very long time, and saw Alemandine’s pregnancy as an opportunity to strike while the Queen was at her weakest. I don’t think he only intended the dagger for me. I think it’s clear he made a bargain with this Cadwyr that Sir Uwen speaks of with such dislike—the dagger, in exchange for the host that Finuviel was supposed to lead to the border. After I found that amulet, before I met Finuviel, I came to a place beside the river where it appeared a great army had ridden across. It didn’t occur to me then they might have ridden into the water and come out in the same way you did, here in Shadow. So the questions have become, where’s Finuviel, where’s the host, and where’s the Caul, for Finuviel must’ve taken it in order to bring the silver dagger into Faerie. For all I know, Alemandine may be dead, and Finuviel already King. And as you say, it’s better that I leave. I’ll go at dawn. It’s at dusk the goblins hunt.” For a split second, he smiled, but then his face darkened, and he looked old, careworn and tired. He paused, drew a deep breath, then continued. “I’ll do what I can to find your parents, Nessa, but you must understand that I don’t know what’s waiting for me. Those goblins that came last night, Nessa, I’ve never seen anything like them. Oh yes, I saw them. I went to the top of the tower. There were so many. I’m not sure there’s magic enough in Faerie to stand against them.”
But silver still works, she thought, fingering Dougal’s amulet as an idea occurred to her. There wasn’t much time, and she was tired, but if she used a sword that only needed repair—she’d have to see what she could find. She leaped to her feet and headed for the door. “Do you know where to find the forge?” She’d have to satisfy her curiosity about the corn grannies and their rituals another night.
He looked startled. “The forge? Where the blacksmiths work?”
“Stop there before you leave? Please?” She only waited long enough to ensure that he nodded, and then she skipped down the steps, curiously more lighthearted than she had felt in days.
3
The afternoon was fading into twilight, when Merle paused on the threshold of the tower room overlooking the western sea. A storm was brewing, and the sound of the surf as it pounded against the rocks that formed the foundation of the house her father had so graciously provided was louder up here for some reason than in her own solar on the floor below. Then a wet breeze licked her cheek and she turned to see her husband’s outline, black against the garish lines of red and violet light flooding through the gray-streaked clouds. “Hoell? My love?” She spoke tentatively, for ever since