Amber Moon (Moon Trilogy, Part II)

  Chapter Five

  Blood will reveal treasonous activities…

  Mirie stared at the lady as if she had been blind and suddenly could see. It was as obvious as looking into a mirror. Even Jack murmured a stunned, “God damn,” as they passed him in the hallway.

  The Lady Amycate had beckoned to Mirie to follow her and Anarion had nodded at Mirie encouragingly. She led Mirie out into the gardens and stopped beside what appeared to be miniature rose bushes. Mirie stared at Amycate and then deliberately looked at the rose bushes. Their tips were made of gold and silver and sparkled metallically in the gilded light that was so abundant in this realm.

  Mirie didn’t have a doubt left. If this woman wasn’t her mother, then she was her sister or something else almost as close. She didn’t know what to say to this person who was probably her mother, someone she hadn’t seen in nearly three decades and could not even remember. Instead she remembered her mother, not a woman called Zyvana, but one who called herself Korrah, an odd name especially in Iceland, but Mirie’s stepfather hadn’t complained, at least not that Mirie could remember. Then Mirie was wondering if the Committee had gotten their story straight about their deaths. Would the elves have tracked Zyvana to Iceland and murdered the pair in bloody vengeance, unable to find the child, or perhaps unaware of Mirie’s presence? Had the blood left in the Gray Forest convinced them that the child, Ruaora, had been murdered?

  Amycate stared at Mirie in turn, perhaps unable to comprehend the reality of her adult daughter. “You’re not as I envisioned,” she said finally in English. “Sturdier than I would have thought.”

  And Amycate was softer, the lady in silken gowns with jewelry draped around her neck and at her wrists. The same size as Mirie, she seemed more delicate and refined than Mirie could ever hope to be; Amycate appeared to be a similar age to Mirie and more in line with what a prince would marry. She began to walk again and Mirie trailed uncertainly after her, not sure what to say.

  Finally, Mirie said, “I did what I had to do, in order to fit into the world I was in.”

  “An agent for the Committee,” Amycate said and it wasn’t a question.

  “They have good intentions,” Mirie defended unconsciously.

  Amycate cast a look over her shoulder at Mirie. It looked like the cunning smile that elves were found of giving. It said something about knowing something that Mirie could never know. It made Mirie’s hackles rise up.

  “When I was barely of age I became a consort to a powerful man,” Amycate said. “My family disapproved and made a match with another family of power. I had you barely two years later. One day I spoke to Arisar, the silver seeker and seer, about what would happen to you in your future.”

  They moved into the deepest part of the garden. The green shrubs grew tall here and cast long shadows as if the sun were setting somewhere in this world. Amycate moved delicately forward and moved through the gardens as if she had the place mapped out in her mind. She cast another look over her shoulder at Mirie. “You’re not overrun at the mouth like the humans you were raised with.”

  Mirie was somewhat shell shocked. If she had to take a guess, she would have said that the lady, Amycate, was not thrilled that her errant, missing daughter had abruptly reappeared in her world. It didn’t bode well for their future relationship. “You want me to prattle on about nonsensical notions to make you happy?” she asked flippantly.

  Amycate smiled coldly. “How little you understand of our society. You, Ruaora, were promised to the Halfling prince, the day of your birth. The prophecy came from Arisar’s mother, another seer of unimaginable power. She died in one of the many wars that came after the Fae Wars. It was the same one that saw Anarion captured by the Fae and tortured mercilessly.”

  The scar on his face and those on his back, Mirie now understood. She would have never asked him and it was possible that he would have never told her. It explained some of his hatred for the Fae.

  “Do you understand that he was betrayed by his own?” Amycate asked fastidiously as if the question pained her.

  “Do you mean that the Fae captured him because an elf betrayed him?” Mirie said, horrified.

  “Ai-eee,” Amycate murmured. “And the High Court never knew who did this terrible thing. It made Anarion a suspicious man. Embittered as well, unable to trust.”

  You are Amaias, my beautiful mate. Who should I trust more? Why trust a woman because she was promised to him? Why bring this up at all? Mirie frowned. I mean, what the hell?

  “Anarion was never the same after that,” Amycate said.

  Mirie wasn’t sure what it was that triggered her. She knew that the sight that she possessed enabled her to see people’s magicks and sometimes it told her other things. The seer’s rooms were tangled in restrictive spells. Someone had cursed Arisar to prevent her from telling all that she knew. Furthermore, the same range of purples was wrapped around the Eyes of the Amber Moon.

  “I thought that he would be the one to lead us away from the cursed Artuntaure and his thrice damned political methods.” Amycate had stopped in a deep shadow and all Mirie could see was the curve of her back and the silver of her flowing gown. “The Halfling prince would not stand for the machinations of the human realm nor would he ever allow the degradation of those with witch blood in them.”

  Silently Mirie willed the Lady Amycate to return to a position where the golden light would fall on her fully. She was listening to her words but items were niggling at Mirie’s subconscious like worms burrowing into the black earth.

  A mistress had given the Eyes of the Amber Moon to Anarion, someone he had held dear at one time but later cast away because of her possessiveness. Not Amycate certainly. What man would have an affair with the future mother of his Amaias, his beautiful mate?

  “Her name was Tia,” Amycate turned slightly and Mirie could see the gleam of her violet eyes. Clearly Amycate could follow the train of Mirie’s thoughts. “My father’s by blow, and another Baninois. My half-sister, and your half-aunt. She is Ridon’s mother, the son of her first husband. Our father gave the Eyes of the Amber Moon to Tia for safe keeping, to protect, and she became Anarion’s mistress, as our spy.”

  Mirie stepped backward and bumped into a solid figure behind her. Hands fell on her shoulders and held her firmly. Abruptly she was frozen in place and understood that some kind of spell was binding her. There was an elaborate set of purpling lines cast from Amycate to herself. Amycate was smiling now and stepped out into the light. The magicks were revealed and Mirie could tell that it was she that had ensorcelled Arisar. Previously she had kept out of the brightest light and out of Mirie’s direct line of sight, and Mirie knew that more enchantments were involved in masking Amycate’s natural magicks. Especially from Mirie, who might connect them to what was in Arisar’s rooms.

  A voice muttered into her ear, “Let me kill her now.” It was Laris, one of Anarion’s bodyguards who had stared at Mirie so oddly.

  Amycate’s smile grew larger, an amused predator. “Anarion declined our group’s invitation. It was he who turned Zyvana’s father in. Zyvana took you in vengeance.”

  “Not against you,” Mirie said. “Against Anarion.”

  “Of course,” Amycate said, almost surprised at Mirie’s understanding. “The seers promised you to him, as his Amaias, his truly beloved, and not Tia, who wanted him so desperately. He wouldn’t even take Tia as his consort because he was waiting for you. It was she who betrayed him to the Unseelie Court after he turned her out, much to our displeasure.”

  Mirie’s muscles were like stone. She strained until she could feel beads of sweat popping from her pores and she couldn’t force herself to move. “You’re trying to overthrow the High Court,” Mirie said and thought, Well, duh, Captain Obvious. Can anyone ask for a stalling much moment here?

  “As my daughter you would be the perfect queen for our court, but Zyvana took you instead, for her own agenda, a
nd you were ruined in the human world,” Amycate murmured, her voice containing the icy whip of anger. “Tainted by their vainglorious ways.”

  “I wouldn’t say I was ruined,” Mirie said before wishing she could have bitten her lip. “I would say I wasn’t brainwashed into thinking that a certain group of people is better than the rest. And btw, pot calling the kettle black.”

  Amycate shook her head. “We thought you were dead and we conspired to move Anarion to our side of the lines. After twenty years of waiting, it was nearly time. The human realm would be destroyed by the three Moon artifacts, and the High Court of the Land of Light would be abolished and replaced by those who are more suitable. Anarion unknowingly kept the artifact safe until it was needed and Laris kept watch.”

  “But the Committee sent you to spy upon him,” Laris growled. “An elf, one who did not realize she was an elf, and without the honor of her line. His instincts told him that you were his Amaias. An elf who had been raised human.”

  Mirie wished she could spit in his face or at the very least, plant one of her booted feet in an area that make him sing falsetto for a good thirty minutes. “I have honor,” she said firmly. “I don’t stab others in the back like a foul coward. Like Arisar, and like Zyvana and her husband. It was you who came after her, not knowing I was still alive. You made it seem as though Huldufolk murdered them out of political rage. You didn’t know that Zyvana was playing both sides, cooperating with the Committee. You suck.”

  Then she did the only thing that she could do. She screamed bloody murder, until Laris twisted her about and struck her so hard that the stars she saw almost immediately became a pool of blackest darkness.

  •

  Mirie woke up again and wished she hadn’t. Her head, neck, and face all pounded like congas at a particular intense drum festival. She tried to hold her head in her hands but her hands were tied behind her. She was lying on her side on a hard floor and the room was ominously dark. Crap, she thought. Just crap buckets. I meet my mother and she’s a complete hag bitch. I’m never complaining about being raised by the Committee ever again.

  Testing out her bonds, Mirie found she was particularly secured. Her feet were tied. Her wrists were double looped and then strapped to her feet. She was pretty much helpless. Even if her witch blade was still at her waist, she couldn’t have reached it. So she looked around the gloom and waited for her eyes to adjust. After a few minutes she could tell where the door was located. There was a less gloomy outline of light that revealed its contours. The remainder of the room was darker than the rest and she rolled awkwardly over to see what she could.

  Nothing. There was nothing else there. It was some sort of closet sized space that had been emptied out. The walls were wood. The floor was more wood. Everything was roughly hewn and not at all like the palace of the High Court.

  Duh. Not in the palace anymore. They took me. My mother, that bitch, and Laris, hope he falls in a bottomless well. Mirie took a deep breath. She wasn’t gagged. They weren’t worried about her making noise. So she wasn’t in a place where someone could hear her scream.

  “That’s just peachy keen,” she muttered.

  Mirie took a deep breath and concentrated on relaxing all of her muscles. The breathing exercises that the Master Warlock had instructed her in helped her to focus her personal magicks. Her eyes drifted shut and when they opened again she knew her eyes were glowing. The space she was in was adrift with glimmers of old magicks. Some were her mothers and others belonged to people long gone from this place. They were tinged with black and deteriorated so badly that she knew that whoever had cast them had passed into death. This place was filled with old death and black enchantments that boded ill for even the casual visitor. She felt icky by association just from lying on the floor.

  And something tugged at her to move slightly to the left and back. Mirie shifted her body and searched with her fingers, clumsily inching backward to find what it was that her powers were prodding her about. A moment later and she found the sharp end of a board that was warped. It had split sometime in the distant past, leaving something she could use. She pushed herself against the wall and began to saw back and forth.

  It wasn’t easy and it took a long time because the blood caused by the wood slicing over her skin helped make her wrists slippery. The rope parted and loosened marginally and Mirie was able to pull her wrists loose. A minute later and she was free, the ropes a pile at her feet. She checked herself and found that the Eyes of the Amber Moon was missing as was the witch blade.

  Protector, she berated herself. Hah. Apparently I can’t even protect a wet paper bag. Mirie rose up and ignored the pounding in her head. But Mom made a big mistake when she left me still breathing and I’m getting my stuff back.

  •

  “She can be used,” Amycate was saying.

  Mirie had slipped out of the unlocked room and into a large building with dozens of empty rooms and an air of antiqued neglect. It had been some fancy manor once and now it was musty and decaying with emptiness. Outside the windows she found to her surprise that it was dusk and knew she was no longer in the Land of Light. The ground was black with death and skeletal trees pointed to the skies in the background. It didn’t look like anywhere she’d been before, so she discounted Earth. It was another dominion where Her Ladyship, Amycate Sumrah, and her criminal posse were taking refuge while they planned the revolution.

  Another voice said, “You mean Prince Anarion will do our bidding if she remains alive.”

  Laris said, “His Highness has formed an instant attachment to the girl. The connection is there. Mirie Baldursdottir is his Amaias. His beloved mate, just as Arisar’s mother predicted. He would do anything for her.”

  “I wonder if Anarion would be more willing to cooperate if we sent part of her back to him in a golden box. Perhaps a finger,” Amycate said emotionlessly.

  So not getting her a mother’s day card this year, thought Mirie mutinously.

  “We’ve experienced the prince’s anger before,” the unknown voice said. “He is resistant to such maneuverings.”

  “You were torturing him, not his beloved mate,” Amycate said. “The difference will be that he will make his fingers bleed to do our bidding. As long as my daughter remains breathing.”

  It dawned on Mirie rather suddenly that the three were conversing in English and that the third unknown person had an American accent, much like any newscaster on a public network had. The unknown person was not an elf, but a human.

  Easier to kill then, she thought coldly. First, retrieve the Eyes of the Amber Moon. Then teach Mom about familial obligation. Mirie reconsidered. No, first, find a weapon. A large, sharp, lethal weapon.

  The group of three continued to plot. Mirie cast her personal magicks about and found two other living souls nearby. One was an elf unfamiliar to her. The other was another human. They were close but not so close that Mirie couldn’t take them out without Amycate, Laris, and the other human hearing.

  Easing down the hallway, she found a great room that reminded her of a ball room. The ceilings were high and arched, the floors were crumbling stone. Once there had been elaborately painted murals on the walls of lords and ladies dancing through a starlit night. Their costumes were reminiscent of the human realm’s 1800’s with long courtly dresses and starched high collars. Now it was dimpled with black mold and large patches of paint were falling away. The overlarge windows were cracked and broken with a chilled dusk wind blowing its way through.

  Mirie inched her way around the room, listening to the faintness of Amycate’s voice as it grew distant from her. The opposite side of the room held three doors. One to an anteroom, and the other two doors led to a cavernous kitchen with rusting iron stoves and debris of remote meals. Ratlike animals skittered away from her as she entered, their claws scratched along the floor as they eagerly departed.

  She could feel the elf n
earby and she suspected the person was in the next room. The door hung halfway off its frame and the man was crouched on the floor, fiddling with her witch blade. The weapon was cold and nescient. Did the elf know that it needed Mirie for its activation?

  Her approach was silent. The fact that the elf was alone and untied, and playing with her blade had condemned him to his fate. She stood behind him as he brought the blade close to his face, examining the intricate shapes and lettering on the sides of the handle. Swiftly and gracefully Mirie reached around and touched a single finger to the handle, and said, “You shouldn’t play with it if you don’t know what it’s capable of doing.”

  Once her finger made contact with the metal, the witch blade was triggered. There was a burst of violet light that blinded the elf before the blade elongated to its normal length. As the business end of the weapon was inches away from his face, the blade sliced efficiently through his eyes and into his brain. He was dead before Mirie finished her initial criticism. In fact, her fingers ably grasped the handle of the weapon before his dropped away.

  His body crumpled to the ground and Mirie looked around her before she rolled the dead elf into a dark shadow. Putting the witch blade into her belt, she took a moment to search him. There was another knife and a pocketful of odd coins that she didn’t recognize. She took the knife and stuck it in her belt.

  Minutes later she found the human. He was in another antechamber, sitting on a rotting chair, fiddling with a Blackberry that wasn’t working. Mirie was on him, with the witch blade at his throat, about to slice through it without compunction when she recognized him.