All around them was war. Some still fought in the sky; others had dragged the battle down into the streets, so that the clash of weapons came from Bush Lane and St. Mary Botolph and St. Swithins, converging on where they stood. Hounds yelped, a sound that made her skin crawl, and someone was winding a horn, its call echoing over the city rooftops. But she had eyes only for a set of figures mounted on horseback that stood scant paces from the two of them.
She thrust the sword skyward and screamed, “Enough!”
And her voice, which should not have begun to cut through the roar of battle, rang out louder than the horn, and brought near-instant silence.
They stared at her, from all around where the fighting had raged. She did not see Sir Kentigern, but Prigurd stood astraddle the unmoving body of their sister, a bloody two-handed blade in his grip. Vidar was missing, too. Which side did he fight on? Or had he fled?
It was a question to answer later. In the sudden hush, she lowered the tip of the sword until it pointed at the riders — the ancient kings of Faerie England.
“You have brought war to my city,” Lune said in a forbidding voice, a muted echo of the command that had halted the fighting. “You will take it away again.”
Their faces and forms were dimly familiar, half-remembered shades from scarcely forty years before. Had one of them once been her own king? Perhaps the one who moved forward now, a stag-horned man with eyes as cruel as the wild. “Who are you, to thus command us?”
“I am the Queen of the Onyx Court,” Lune said.
The words came by unthinking reflex. At her side, Deven stiffened. The sword would have trembled in her grasp, but she dared not show her own surprise.
The elfin king scowled. “That title is a usurped one. We will reclaim what is ours, and let no pretender stand in our way.”
Hands tensed on spears; the fighting might resume at any moment.
“I am the Queen of the Onyx Court,” Lune repeated. Then she went on, following the same instinct that had made her declare it. “But not the Queen of faerie England.”
The stag-horned rider’s scowl deepened. “Explain yourself.”
“Invidiana is gone. The pact by which she deprived you of your sovereignty is broken. I have drawn her sword from the London Stone; therefore the sovereignty of this city is mine. To you are restored those crowns she stole years ago.”
A redheaded king spoke up, less hostile than his companion. “But London remains yours.”
Lune relaxed her blade, letting the point dip to the ground, and met his gaze as an equal. “A place disregarded until the Hall was created, for fae live in glens and hollow hills, far from mortal eyes — except here, in the Onyx Hall. ’Twas never any kingdom of yours. Invidiana had no claim to England, but here, in this place, she created a realm for herself, and now ’tis mine by right.”
She had not planned it. Her only thought had been to bear the sword to these kings, as proof of Invidiana’s downfall, and hope she could sue for peace. But she felt the city beneath her feet, as she never had before. London was hers. And kings though they might be, they had no right to challenge her here.
She softened her voice, though not its authority. “Each side has dead to mourn tonight. But we shall meet in peace anon, all the kings and queens of faerie England, and when our treaty is struck, you will be welcome within my realm.”
The red-haired king was the first to go. He wheeled his horse, its front hooves striking the air, and gave a loud cry; here and there, bands of warriors followed his lead, vaulting skyward once more and vanishing from sight. One by one, the other kings followed, each taking with them some portion of the Wild Hunt, until the only fae who remained in the streets were Lune’s subjects.
One by one, they knelt to her.
Looking out at them, she saw too many motionless bodies. Some might yet be saved, but not all. They had paid a bloody price for her crown, and they did not even know why.
This would not be simple. Sir Kentigern and Dame Halgresta, if they lived — Lady Nianna — Vidar, if she could find him. And countless others who were used to clawing and biting their way to the top, and fearing the Queen who stood above them.
Changing that would be slow. But it could begin tonight.
To her newfound subjects, Lune said, “Return to the Onyx Hall. We will speak in the night garden, and I will explain all that has passed here.”
They disappeared into the shadows, leaving Lune and Deven alone in Candlewick Street, with the sky rapidly clearing above them.
Deven let out his breath slowly, finally realizing they might — at last — be safe. He ached all over, and he was light-headed from lack of food, but the euphoria that followed a battle was beginning to settle in. He found himself grinning wryly at Lune, wondering where to start with the things they needed to say. She was a queen now. He hardly knew what to think of that.
She began to return his smile — and then froze.
He heard it, too. A distant sound — somewhere in Cripplegate, he thought. A solitary bell, tolling.
Midnight had come. Soon all the bells in the city would be ringing, from the smallest parish tower to St. Paul’s Cathedral itself. And Lune stood out in the open, unprotected; the angel’s power had gone from her. The sound would hurt her.
But it would destroy something else.
He had felt it as they passed through the London Stone. St. Paul’s Cathedral, one of the two original entrances to the Onyx Hall. The pit still gaped in the nave, a direct conduit from the mortal world to the fae, open and unprotected.
In twelve strokes of the great bell, every enchantment that bound the Onyx Hall into being would come undone, shredded by the holy sound.
“Give me your hand.” Deven seized it before she could even move, taking her left hand in his left, dragging her two steps sideways to the London Stone.
“We will not be safe within,” Lune cried. Her body shook like a leaf in the wind, as more bells began to ring.
Deven slapped his right hand onto the rough limestone surface. “We are not going within.”
It was the axis of London and its dark reflection, the linchpin that held the two together. Suspiria had not made the palace alone, because she could not; such a thing could only be crafted by hands both mortal and fae. Deven would have staked his life that Francis Merriman was a true Londoner, born within hearing of the city bells.
As Deven himself was.
With his hand upon the city’s heart, Deven reached out blindly, calling on forces laid there by another pair before them. He had drunk of faerie wine. Lune had borne an angel’s power. They had each been changed; they were each a little of both worlds, and the Onyx Hall answered to them.
The Thames. The wall. The Tower. The cathedral.
As the first stroke of the great bell rang out across the city, he felt the sound wash over and through him. Like a seawall protecting a harbor in a storm, he took the brunt of that force, and bid the entrance close.
A fourth stroke; an eighth; a twelfth. The last echoes of the bell of St. Paul’s faded, and trailing out after it, the other bells of London. Deven waited until the city was utterly silent before he lifted his hand from the Stone.
He looked up slowly, carefully, half-terrified that he was wrong, that he had saved the Hall but left Lune vulnerable, and now she would shatter into nothingness.
Lune’s silver eyes smiled into his, and she used their clasped hands to draw him toward her, so she might lay a kiss on his lips. “I will make you the first of my knights — if you will have me as your lady.”
MEMORY: January 9, 1547
T he man walked down a long, colonnaded gallery, listening to his boot heels click on the stone, trailing his fingers in wonder across the pillars as he passed them by. It was impossible that this should all be here, that it should have come into being in the course of mere minutes, and yet he had seen it with his own eyes. Indeed, it was partly his doing.
The thought still dizzied him.
The place was
enormous, far larger than he had expected, and so far almost entirely deserted. The sisters had chosen to stay in their own home, though they visited from time to time. Others would come, they assured him, once word spread farther, once folk believed.
Until then, it was just him, and the woman he sought.
He found her in the garden. They called it so, even though it was barely begun: a few brave clusters of flowers — a gift from the sisters — grouped around a bench that sat on the bank of the Walbrook. She was not seated on the bench, but on the ground, trailing her fingers in the water, a distant expression on her face. The air in the garden was pleasantly cool, a gentle contrast to the winter-locked world outside.
She did not move as he seated himself on the ground next to her. “I have brought seeds,” he said. “I have no gift for planting, but I am sure we can convince Gertrude — since they are not roses.” She did not respond, and his expression softened. He reached for her nearer hand and took it in his own. “Suspiria, look at me.”
Her eyes glimmered with the tears she was too proud to shed. “It has accomplished nothing,” she said, her low, melodic voice trembling.
“Did you hear that sound, half an hour ago?”
“What sound?”
He smiled at her. “Precisely. All the church bells of the city rang, and you did not hear a thing. This is a haven the likes of which has never existed, not even in legend. In time many fae will come, all of them dwelling in perfect safety beneath a mortal city, and you say it has accomplished nothing?”
She pulled her hand from his and looked away again. “It has not lifted the curse.”
Of course. Francis had known Suspiria far longer than his appearance would suggest; he had not dwelt among mortals for many a year now. This hall had been an undertaking in its own right, a challenge that fascinated them both, and they had many grand dreams of what could be done with it, now that it was built. But it was born for another purpose, one never far from Suspiria’s mind.
In that respect, it had failed.
He shifted closer and put gentle pressure on her shoulder, until she yielded and lay down, her head in his lap. With careful fingers he brushed her hair back, wondering if he should tell her what he knew: that the face he saw was an illusion, crafted to hide the age and degeneration beneath. The truth did not repel him — but he feared it would repel her, to know that he knew.
So he kept silent as always, and closed his eyes, losing himself in the silky touch of her hair, the quiet rippling of the Walbrook.
The gentle sound lifted him free of the confines of his mind, floating him into that space where time’s grip slackened and fell away. And in that space, an image formed.
Suspiria felt his body change. She sat up, escaping his suddenly stilled arms, and took his face in her delicate hands. “A vision?”
He nodded, not yet capable of speech.
The wistful, loving smile he knew so well softened her face. He had not seen it often of late. “My Tiresias,” she said, stroking his cheekbone with one finger. “What did you see?”
“A heart,” he whispered.
“Whose heart?”
Francis shook his head. Too often it was thus, that he saw without understanding. “The heart was exchanged for an apple of incorruptible gold. I do not know what it means.”
“Nor I,” Suspiria admitted. “But this is not the first time such meaning has eluded us — nor, I think, will it be the last.”
He managed a smile again. “A poor seer I am. Perhaps I have been too long among your kind, and can no longer tell the difference between true visions and my own fancy.”
She laughed, which he counted a victory. “Such games we could play with that; most fae would believe even the strangest things to be honest prophecy. We could go to Herne’s court and spread great confusion there.”
If it would lighten her heart, he would have gladly done it, and risked the great stag-horned king’s wrath. But sound distracted him, something more than the gentle noise of the brook. Someone was coming, along the passage that led to the garden.
Suspiria heard it, too, and they rose in time to see the plump figure of Rosamund Goodemeade appear in an archway. Nor was she alone: behind her stood a fae he did not recognize, travel-stained and weary, with a great pack upon his back.
Francis took Suspiria’s hand, and she raised her eyebrows at him. “It seems another has come to join us. Come, let us welcome him together.”
WINDSOR GREAT PARK, BERKSHIRE: June 11, 1590
The oak tree might have stood there from the beginning of time, so ancient and huge had it grown, and its spreading branches extended like mighty sheltering arms, casting emerald shadows on the ground below.
Beneath this canopy stood more than two score people, the greatest gathering of faerie royalty England had ever seen. From Cumberland and Northumberland to Cornwall and Kent they came, and all the lands in between: kings and queens, lords and ladies, a breathtaking array of great and noble persons, with their attendants watching from a distance.
They met here because it was neutral ground, safely removed from the territory in dispute and the faerie palace many still thought of as an unnatural creation, an emblem of the Queen they despised. Under the watchful aegis of the oak, the ancient tree of kings, they gathered to discuss the matter — and, ultimately, to recognize the sovereignty of a new Queen.
It was a formality, Lune knew. They acknowledged her right to London the moment they obeyed her command to leave. Her fingers stroked the hilt of the sword as one of the kings rolled out a sonorous, intricate speech about the traditional rights of a faerie monarch. She did not want to inherit Invidiana’s throne. It carried with it too many dark memories; the stones of the Onyx Hall would never be free of blood.
But that choice, like others, could not be unmade.
The orations had gone on for quite some time. Lune suspected her fellow monarchs were luxuriating in the restoration of their dignity and authority. But in time she grew impatient; she was glad when her own opportunity came.
She stood and faced the circle of sovereigns, the London Sword sheathed in her hands. The gown she wore, midnight-blue silk resplendent with moonlight and diamonds, felt oddly conspicuous; she still remembered her time out of favor, hiding in the corners of the Onyx Hall, dressed in the rags of her own finery. But the choice was deliberate: many of those gathered about her wore leather or leaves, clothing that less closely mirrored that of mortals.
Lune had a point to make. And to that end, she lifted her gaze past those gathered immediately beneath the oak, looking to the attendant knights and ladies that waited beyond.
Lifting one hand, she beckoned him to approach.
Standing between the Goodemeade sisters, Michael Deven hesitated, as well he might. But Lune raised one eyebrow at him, and so he came forward and stood a pace behind her left shoulder, hands clasped behind his back. He, too, was dressed in great finery, faerie-made for him on this day.
“Those of you gathered here today,” Lune said, “remember Invidiana, and not fondly. I myself bear painful memories of my life under her rule. But today I ask you to remember someone else: a woman named Suspiria.
“What she attempted, some would say is beyond our reach. Others might say we should not reach for it, that mortal and faerie worlds are separate, and ever should stay so.
“But we dwell here, in the glens and the hollow hills, because we do not believe in that separation. Because we seek out lovers from among their kind, and midwives for our children, poets for our halls, herdsmen for our cattle. Because we aid them with enchantments of protection, banners for battle, even the homely tasks of crafting and cleaning. Our lives are intertwined with theirs, to one degree or another — sometimes for good, other times for ill, but never entirely separate.
“Suspiria came to believe in the possibility of harmony between these two worlds, and created the Onyx Hall in pursuit of that belief. But we do wrong if we speak only of her, for that misses half the heart of
the matter: the Hall was created by a faerie and a mortal, by Suspiria and Francis Merriman.”
Reaching out, Lune took Deven by the hand, bringing him forward until he stood next to her. His fingers tightened on hers, but he cooperated without hesitation.
“I would not claim the Onyx Hall if I did not share in their belief. And I will continue to be its champion. So long as I reign, I will have a mortal at my side. Look upon us, and know that you look upon the true heart of the Onyx Court. All those who agree will ever be welcome in our halls.”
Her words carried clearly through the still summer air. Lune saw frowns of disagreement here and there, among the kings, among their attendants. She expected it. But not everyone frowned. And she had established her own stance as Queen — her similarity to Suspiria, her difference from Invidiana — and that, more than anything, was her purpose here today.
The day did not end with speeches. There would be celebrations that night, and she would take part, as a Queen must. But two things would happen before then.
She walked with Deven at twilight along the bank of a nearby stream, once again hand in hand. They had said many things to one another in the month since the battle, clearing away the last of the lies, sharing the stories of what had happened while they were apart. And the stories of what had happened while they were together — truths they had never admitted before.
“Always a mortal at your side,” Deven said. “But not always me.”
“I would not do that to you,” Lune responded, quietly serious. “ ’Twas not just Invidiana’s cruelty that warped Francis. Living too long among fae will bring you to grief, sooner or later. I love the man you are, Michael. I’ll not make you into a broken shell.”
He could never leave her world entirely. The faerie wine he drank had left its mark, as Anael’s power had done to her. But it did not have to swallow him whole.
He sighed and squeezed her hand. “I know. And I am thankful for it. But ’tis easy to understand how Suspiria came to despair. Immortality all around, and none for her.”
Lune stopped and turned him to face her, taking his other hand. “See it through my eyes,” she said. “All the passion of humanity, all the fire, and I can do no more than warm myself at its edge.” A presentiment of sorrow roughened her voice. “And when you are gone, I will not grieve and recover, as a human might. I may someday come to love another — perhaps — but this love will never fade, nor the pain of its loss. Once my heart is given, I may never take it back.”