Gossamyr Part 14

"Did you not see his eyes?"

"All that blood?"

"It is not blood." Itching the wimple, Gossamyr then palmed Ulrich's face and-closeness be blighted-explained, "The Red Lady. It is her kiss that releases the revenant from the Disenchanted fee men. The revenant must come out of the body. It cannot happen before the eyes of these innocents. Do you understand?"

Ulrich's swallow was audible. Gossamyr felt much the same. For a time he simply gazed upon her, his marvelous eyes not revealing his truths, but merely a solemnity that confused.

"What are you thinking? Can you work your soul shepherding on it?"

"Oh, no." He twisted his face from her hand. Two strides moved him closer to the crowd, a bend at the waist attempted to survey the scene between legs and shuffling children. He swung and hissed back at Gossamyr, "I don't, I've never- You're sure he's a faery? I don't see any wings- Watch it!" Ulrich dodged to avoid a hunched man wielding a dagger. He moved with the angry crowd around the body. "That man poked me!"

Gossamyr spied the man. She could not see his face, for a cloak covered all, including his hair, but she did see the weapon. It wasn't a dagger but a long pin of sorts. Fixing her staff under her arm, she joined Ulrich's side. "Shall I poke him back?"

"No!" Ulrich turned her away from the crowd and shoved her to a walk. "You've already brought enough suspicion upon our heads. Let's away from this place. It is creepy."

"We cannot leave." She dug her toes into the ground. "I must keep an eye on the body."

"They want to rip the body asunder and bury it deep for fear the plague will creep under their doors and kill them all."

"That is macabre. He will bring them no harm. Not unless the revenant escapes. Revenant, Ulrich. An indestructible skeleton with sharp teeth and a desire to rip out one's essence with its bony hands."

Ulrich eased a hand over his chest and winced.

"Yes," she answered his unspoken fear, "it will leave a mark."

"Fine, but let's keep to ourselves until the crowd settles. Show them we have no interest in stealing their plague-ridden body. We'll keep the dead faery in sight, I promise."

The body was unceremoniously tossed into a cart slimed with old greens and wheeled around behind the stables connected to the Pig's Snout tavern. Soaking it in oil was required, for the heavy substance would fill the sh.e.l.l of bone and coat its flesh, keeping the plague at bay until it could be burned. Old Basequin, who normally buried the unnamed dead, would have to be roused and a keg of valuable lampblack cracked open.

The man who had waited in the shadows of a dilapidated church for the last angry villager to leave now scampered across the grounds and fixed himself to the shadows that cooled the cart. A wisp of red hair slipped over his cheek and he tucked it back inside the hood of his cloak.

Very little time had pa.s.sed since the fee had fallen, and yet, flies buzzed over the dead fee's face, settling on the red-filled eyes for a few beats before taking to flight and repeating the danse macabre. The flitter of a dragonfly's wings alerted, but the man paid the large insect no mind.

Glee in his eyes, the man raised a long s.h.i.+ning pin over the fee's skull- and waited.

EIGHT.

"You are not hungry?"

"I cannot abide strange meat." Gossamyr bit into a bruised yellow apple and proceeded to consume the mushy fruit in six more chomps. They'd slipped inside the tavern and sat near a window so dirty there was but an eyehole of sight to the crowd still looming around the body. Too anxious to sit and wait, Gossamyr had walked back outside. Now she stood next to the hay cart parked at the edge of the square, one eye on the ground where a lazy mongrel slept behind the shade of the cart's rear wheel.

"Strange?" Ulrich chomped on a thick chunk of deer. He balanced a bread trencher in his palm, not too thrilled to be eating on foot. "Let me guess, you eat toadstools and flowers?"

"You make it sound an unnatural diet."

"I suppose it is in the eyes of the chewer."

The cart the fee had been tossed into was now pushed around behind the stables but two buildings down from where they stood. Gossamyr remained alert, ready for the moment when the last of the angry villagers might leave the body alone.

"So you tell me this red lady steals the essences of disenchanted faeries?"

"Yes."

"How? And if the faery is disenchanted...why would this essence have any enchantment in it? It makes little sense."

Gossamyr stopped chewing. As elementary as the man's mind worked, he did raise a point. Surely someone had to remove the essence. For 'twas certain it was not with the revenant when it left the body, for then the revenant would have little reason to return to Faery in search of such. How then would the Red Lady get said essence? It was not Enchantment that lingered in the essence but the body's glamour. Mayhap the essence had been removed long before the fee expired?

"Do you not know?" she entreated Ulrich. "Surely the death of a fee is no different than your mortal deaths."

"I cannot see a soul. No one can. It is a feeling. I connect with the remnants of life as it leaves the body or after it has already vacated. But what I don't understand...is this revenant thing the same or is it separate from the essence?"

"Separate. Why must you label things same or not the same?"

"I...well, what would you do if twenty years of your life had disappeared in a snap?"

Gossamyr couldn't even guess. Though her concept of a mortal year was midsummer to midsummer-a very long time. She supposed she might react the same. The same? Most likely she would never again be the same should she lose a portion of her life due to her trip from Faery.

"Yes, the same," Ulrich whispered over her shoulder. The grease from cooked meat s.h.i.+ning his lower lip appealed very little to her. "Though you are not the same."

"You have not before met me so you cannot determine my sameness." She stabbed her staff to ground and, with another bite of the apple, followed the billowing cloak of the hooded man she knew had poked Ulrich. What was he up to?

"True. But as a representative of your common mortal woman you are not the same."

"What think you of me representing a fee woman?"

He poked at the gape in his teeth with his tongue; trying to dislodge food? "No wings."

"Not all faeries have wings, you said so yourself."

"You do sparkle."

"I thought this hideous headpiece covered-"

"There is a smear on your cheek. Let me get it."

She dodged his sticky reach and instead swiped her own dirty palm across her cheek.

"Fine and well," he offered. A chomp of the trencher filled his cheek with a bulge of hard bread. He silently offered the lump of finger-poked bread to her. Gossamyr shook her head. Ulrich tossed the morsel to the dog sleeping beneath the cart.

"I should slip around behind the building and keep an eye on the body."

"A death watch?"

"If I see anything come out from it I must kill it before it can flee to Faery."

"What if it is the essence you see leaving the body?"

"I know what it looks like. It is remarkable."

"Well, you'll not be able to feel the essence, that is my talent."

"Then you must come along." The more she thought on it, the more she realized she had no idea how the essence was removed. It could be long gone, or it may yet have been released.

"To the body. Quick!"

The color was beautiful, deep scarlet and speckled with luminous pockets of palest pink. It hovered above the dead fee's head, lingering, undulating, as if adjusting to the atmosphere outside the body. Or perhaps preening. The essence generally behaved as it had when enclosed within the body. c.o.c.ky, elegant and proud, as were most fee.

"Another prize for my mistress's collection. Come, pretty one." The man stabbed the essence with his silver pin. A shriek of death accompanied the action. And following, the howl of the revenant as it began to clamber out from the fee's body.

Even as the skeletal fingers emerged from the core of flesh and muscle, the pin man scampered off. No need to remain and witness the hideous event. Or risk decapitation by an angry revenant.

"Do you see?"

Ulrich looked where Gossamyr pointed. What he saw stopped him cold. The blood slowed in his body and a s.h.i.+ver curled up his spine. Let the bold faery charge into danger, he had come to his limit battling supernatural beasties. Current supernatural beastie being half in, half out, of the dead faery's body. A skeleton, animated and jaws yowling, pushed out of the chest. Boned wings stretched wide in a whoosh. The tattered membranes between the wing bones shrilled a vile note through the air.

Gossamyr reached the cart, staff wielded for fight. The revenant had completely emerged and crouched upon the boneless sh.e.l.l of flesh and fabric, an incubus newly birthed from its host. It glanced to Gossamyr. Deep red glowed in the skull's eye sockets. Fangs glinted. Fingertips clattered, bone against bone, in a challenging gesture. Yowling to the heavens, the creature leaped into the air.

Gossamyr swung her staff, nicking the revenant's foot. Dust of bone and faery glimmer spumed from the connection point.

"She's going to be killed by a dead thing," Ulrich murmured. Clinging to Fancy, and to the saddlebag, he contemplated rus.h.i.+ng to a.s.sist. A glance about ensured no witnesses. Another swing doubled the creature. Gossamyr stood tall. "On the other hand, Faery Not is little afraid of anything. I would hate to interfere. Once already been chastised for that."

With each swing of Gossamyr's staff, the revenant's bones were broken and crushed. Faery dust veiled the air surrounding the battle. But the thing did not attack-more like it tried to defend so that it could...leave.

"For Faery," Ulrich gasped in realization. "Just let it go! Don't risk your life, my lady!"

"My life is to defend my own!" she shouted and took another swing. A bend of her waist, and she swung the end of her staff up behind her and knocked the thing's legs off just below the knee. "Did you see the man?" she shouted.

"What man?"

"The one who stood at the cart as we arrived? I saw him earlier."

Gossamyr's yelp put Ulrich to his feet. The revenant's fangs gashed open her wool sleeve. The half-bodied creature flapped its wings and soared too high for Gossamyr's swing to connect. And with another flap it was gone in a twinkle and a froth of glimmer.

"Take this vision from my eyes," Ulrich hissed. So much he did not wish to see! And all because of his dance.

"Blight me!" She swung furiously up through the air, fighting but the shade of the creature. "It is on to Faery."

"But only half of it," Ulrich rea.s.sured as he tugged her toward Fancy. "Come, we must be away from here. The entire village will be upon us after that ruckus." He shoved her up onto Fancy's back. "Let's be off!"

Mounting behind her, Ulrich heeled the mule, and was delighted the beast kicked into a gallop.

Gossamyr tugged off the wimple and tossed it to the ground. "Wait!" She pulled the reins and turned Fancy toward the cart. "What of the essence? That man with the pin took it. I saw it leave the body before the revenant broke out."

"Why did not the bony creature go after the thief?"

"I don't know. Mayhap, the essence was injured by the pin."

Fancy plodded by the dead fee. It lay there, literally a bag of bones tossed onto the cart. Above and behind, Gossamyr sensed the flight of the fetch. With little fanfare the empty body suddenly fizzled to a fine dust. But a glimmer glinted at the bottom of the cart. Not the final twinclian, such was much more spectacular.

"Sorry, Father, I tried."

A swipe of her fingers through the dust in the cart drew a line. The hum of Faery jittered upon her fingertips. Bringing them to her lips, Gossamyr blew the dust away. It sifted through the air, slow and receding, until but one final particle twinkled to naught.

"If I were your father, I'd be here by your side, helping."

"s.h.i.+nn must lead the Glamoursiege troops against this threat." It was for her to prove herself, to return the champion. "They risk falling to the Red Lady's allure. As I've said, I do not."

"This mission of yours seems a trifle ill stacked, and not in your favor."

"What mean you?"

"Your father and his troops fight these beasties, while you are one lone woman."

"But I have not been charged to battle an army of revenants. My task is much more singular."

"Would that you could simply attempt such a singular task. But I sense we've not seen the last of those skeleton things."

Indeed, the Red Lady's thirst for Enchantment would not wane, but increase.

"She attacks only the males?"

"Fear not, Ulrich. I can do this."

"Yes, but can I?"

An hour later, they arrived at a stable that offered change of horses for travelers going to and from the city for a fair price. Faery coin purchased the one remaining palfrey from the dark stall at the back of the stable.

"I must admit my surprise."

Gossamyr flinched as Ulrich touched a wet tip of his s.h.i.+rt to the cut on her arm. The revenant had not escaped to Faery without claiming some damage to its aggressor. He dabbed carefully, like a doting Mince. "What surprise?"

"You do not bleed ichor. Nor do you heal at a remarkable pace."

"Why should I? As I have said-"

"Yes, yes, half faery, half mortal. But not even a sparkle? I've no lint cloth to cover the wound, but it no longer bleeds. It is shallow and should heal aright."

"I've no worry for scars."

"Indeed, a remarkable woman." A snap of his bejeweled fingers called Fancy to his side. He tugged the saddlebag, checking that all was secure, then followed with a smoothing pat to the leather. "We should be off. You were able to procure a mount from the stables?"