Gossamyr Part 33

"She does not take mortal souls. Nor is he my man. Avenall! Look at me!"

The pin man merely glanced to the undulating yellow ma.s.s high above the others. "You are too familiar with my name, wench."

"As we have been familiar with one another?"

What power had the Red Lady over him that he did not recognize her? Or was it the mark of the banished, delivered by her father, that had erased his memory?

"The mortal is stalked by my mistress."

"Ulrich will not be fooled by your mistress's wicked cry." If Gossamyr could be there to keep watch over the man. Blight, she had so many to concern herself with.

"Oh, but it is a most delicious cry, fair lady. Irresistible and insatiable. The succubus can make any man want her, as well, hate her as he is kneeling before her pristine skirts."

A glint of malice iced the man's words. Gossamyr guessed at his hatred. So he was not entirely at the succubus's mercy? Bone.

"You despise her, don't you? You merely bide your time until you can retrieve your essence and escape."

"No."

"Oh, yes. Let me pull it down for you and send you on your way. Leave the Red Lady to me. She'll not pursue you for I'll remove her black essence and pin it to the wall before the day is through."

The pin man laughed and snorted and caught himself by clutching one of the wide marble bedposts. "Foolish wench, my mistress has no essence. Why do you think she has such a collection?"

"But she does nothing with them. What is the purpose of keeping them pinned to look upon?"

"She feeds off the Enchantment. Which in turn keeps the Disenchantment at bay. Do you see that one down there?"

Gossamyr looked to the green essence on the bottom, shriveled and flickering intermittently.

"Needs to be replaced anon," the pin man said. "As will they all."

"What of yours? How is it you survive without the essence?"

He lifted his chin defiantly. "My mistress... keeps me strong."

Gossamyr knew the answer. His time was limited. "Is it because you both bear the mark of the banished? Is that what binds you to her?"

Striding in a prancing arc before her, Avenall spun a pin in hand, the huge round head rotating in his palm. A twist of his head upon his neck aimed a hard glare on her.

"Why do you reek of Faery, strange woman? Yet I know you are not fee."

"Half-" Gossamyr started, but Avenall's wicked glee unsettled her. Could it be he did recall her, yet was unable to place that memory? It could merely be that the Disenchantment was so thorough. But no, he must be Enchanted for his wings. Did it matter? He had not recall of the two of them-she must help him to remember. With Avenall as her ally they could defeat the Red Lady and return to- Gossamyr felt a twinge of regret at her lost ties to Faery. Is that how all fee felt the loss? But a mere twitch inside their gut? Surely it must be greater? s.h.i.+nn should have prepared her...

"s.h.i.+nn?"

"What?" Gossamyr squinted at the man. Where had he gotten the name - "Did you peer into my mind?"

"No need." He straightened his shoulders and clacked two pins together within his grip. "Your fear is tangible, daughter of s.h.i.+nn."

"I do not fear- How do you know such?"

"So you are? Or rather-" he stretched his arms out and dashed a theatrical slide across the marble step "-claim to be when it is all a lie."

"Why speak you so, pin man? How can you guess such things? Do you lie about your memory of Faery?"

"Do you deny you are s.h.i.+nn's daughter?"

"No."

She is queer-gotten-not of her parents' blood. Gossamyr shook her head, striking away Ulrich's tale of a daughter he claimed as his own though not a drop of his blood flowed through her veins. Strange to think it.

"But do you remember-"

"s.h.i.+nn has made you believe you are truly of his blood? He has gulled you most effectively."

She stepped back, lowering her staff to her side. The arrets at her hip clicked. Essences danced on the wall. The melody of sadness wrapped about her shoulders. What lies did this leering thing speak to her? To trick her?

"They are not lies." The man stepped forward, a tilt to one of the pins glinting violet. Like a shard of Faery sight. "True blood wears the violet in their eyes,"he said, a wicked curl creva.s.sing the corner of his mouth. "Your eyes, warrior b.i.t.c.h, appear quite not violet to me. Brown, are they?"

Thud of heartbeats trammeled up her throat. Balance wavered.

"Stop." She would not listen to this foul attempt to weaken her.

To make her question. She swallowed back the rising panic. Of course they were brown; Veridienne's had been the same.

The need to help this pitiful excuse for a fee oozed from her intentions. The Red Lady was not here? She would go in quest of the succubus.

Spinning to leave, Gossamyr strode past the wall. Essences of the fee cried out in a purgatorial scream.

Brown, are they?

The pin man sang teasingly, "I know of you, mortal changeling."

TWENTY-ONE.

Changeling?

Gossamyr pressed the heel of her hand to the cold marble wall. What play did the pin man attempt? Yes, pin man. Avenall was long gone. Not a lover. She wanted nothing to do with one who would tease her so cruelly.

Unable to take another step, she closed her eyes, wis.h.i.+ng it were as easy to close her ears to the man's words. "How can you claim to know I am s.h.i.+nn's daughter when you cannot recall our own connection?"

"We? Connected?" A flutter of his life-drained wings swept the foulness of bloodied heliotrope across their distance. "If there was such, memory was stolen from me upon banishment."

She let out a breath.

"I know only what I have been given." Drawing himself straight, his arms lax at his sides, the pins were forgotten for the moment. "After my arrival in Paris, my mistress told me much about s.h.i.+nn of Glamoursiege. And his mortal daughter."

"Half-mortal."

"You are mortal complete," ground out in dripping tones.

Gossamyr made to brush off the impossible declaration with a brave thrust of her chin. "Lies spun by a banished succubus."

"Truth," the pin man hissed, "from a discarded lover." He twirled a pin between two fingers, a smaller version of her staff whisking the air to a violent and metallic hum.

"You honestly believe yourself a half blood?" He stepped right up to her. Not too close for Faery.

Gossamyr pressed her shoulder blades to the marble wall. Reaction fled. She could not scent him, save for the blood on the pins. She could but listen, stare into those violet eyes. Eyes that had once looked upon her with desire but were now clouded with a viscous red sheen.

A lover? s.h.i.+nn and the Red Lady? He had not told her such!

Your truth will impede your safe return to Faery.

"It is most curious s.h.i.+nn chose to keep the truth from you all this time. Quite the feat, I am sure. Though a mortal who lives very long in Faery does become Very Close."

"I am half-blooded," Gossamyr growled. Or she thought she spoke with a forceful snarl, but it seemed to come out as a whimper. "Fathered by Lord de Winters.h.i.+nn and my mortal mother, Veridienne of..." Of where? Paris? Veridienne had never told her whence she'd come.

Steel pins clicked against one another as the pin man took one more step. Toe to toe they stood. He had gained presence in these few moments. A tilt of his head leveled his eyes with Gossamyr's. Menace glittered in the violet depths.

Kiss me.

Would a kiss bring memory flooding back?

Dare she?

Of a sudden the malice in Avenall's stare softened, and he smiled. "s.h.i.+nn has not told you of your birth? Your...coming to Faerv?"

"You cannot know things about me when you do not even remember we were once lovers!"

"Lovers? Indeed? Hmm." He strode a gaze over her body, his face almost touching her for their closeness. Sweet his breath, sweet with memory. But foul his hair, tainted with the Red that attacked the Disenchanted. "Mayhap. But you fight to change the sides of this exchange. Be you lover or warrior matters little to me of so pale memory. All I know is what she tells me. 'Tis only what concerns me."

"You should strive to remember."

"Have you not ever wondered why you are wingless?"

Heartbeats pounding in her breast, Gossamyr swallowed. Too close for her bruised heart. "M-many fee are wingless." Try as she might, she could not step away from Avenall. She wanted to stand close to him, in his scent. But this air-heavy, not right.

"Yes, there are wingless ones, but their eyes be not muddied by the Otherside."

"It is my mortal blood that makes them brown."

"Oh no, half bloods always wear the violet eyes of the fee."

"You spin tales for your mistress. Slave to a succubus! You will die pining for your essence, pin man."

"And you will die a mortal death, false daughter of s.h.i.+nn." Now he pressed his palms to the wall above her shoulders. Too close! Hot breath hissed across her nose and lips as he spoke rapidly. "My mistress adored the pompous lord of Glamoursiege. They were to be wed-to unite Glamoursiege to Rougethorn. But when s.h.i.+nn learned she dabbled in magic, he spurned her and took another. Yet the Red Lady remained his slave. He toyed with her affections, you see, trapping her heart for eternity, then discarding it as if a fall-sapped leaf. s.h.i.+nn took Veridienne of the Otherside as his wife and she became full with child."

"Me-me," Gossamyr stammered.

"Oh, no, mortal fool." A silver pin tapped her chin. "The Red Lady pined for the love she once had. s.h.i.+nn ignored her. So to avenge her broken heart she bespelled the child in Veridienne's belly. It was born a hideous changeling. Enraged, s.h.i.+nn marked the Red Lady with banishment and cast her from Faery. The troop commander possesses a quick temper. He reacts without regard."

"No."

"Oh, yes! That much I do recall from my banishment. Swift and unforgiving."

Gossamyr gasped. s.h.i.+nn had banished the Red Lady. But even more remarkable- They were to wed? To unite- But- Such knowledge pried into her courage with vicious precision. Why, to learn this from so horrible reminder of a bittersweet past?

...trapped her heart for an eternity...

Like Gossamyr's own trembling heart?

"You know it has been but a mortal year since the Red Lady was banished?"

Gossamyr lifted her chin, taking this announcement with a hard jaw. She had learned the measurement for year. It was not so long as to have occurred before she had been born. Yet, Ulrich's claim to have lost twenty years-it did not figure!

"Faery time is different from time here in the Otherside. So mutable, twisting this way and back, forward and then quickly past. Twenty years pa.s.s in Faery while one or two pa.s.ses in the Otherside. Vice versa, widders.h.i.+ns and thus," he hissed into her face.

Time was indeed the enemy.

"H-how long have you been here?"

He shrugged. "That is not in my memory. A few mortal weeks? Less than a moon cycle."

Impossible! It had been so much longer... Gossamyr had aged many dozens of moons since s.h.i.+nn had banished Avenall.

"My mistress strives to survive, but it is difficult. There are fewer and fewer Disenchanted who journey to this mortal city. What is it, changeling? Cat gnawing at your tongue?"

She wasn't hearing, for the t.i.tle "changeling" stuck in her skull like the tip of an obsidian arret.

"Not a changeling." Gossamyr shook her head, unwilling to accept the man's lies. But knowing, for fact, s.h.i.+nn had many secrets. "I cannot be..."

"No, you were not the changeling babe," the pin man spat, his breath covering her face with odorless heat. "You were the mortal exchange. You understand?"

She stared deep into his red-glossed eyes. A glint of humanity sparkled, drawing her into his truth, the will to believe, to trust and know. Could she make him believe his own truth?

Of what matter to her now? Be he enemy or lover, this knowledge threatened far worse than lost memories. Everything she had ever believed -had it all been a lie?

A wooziness s.h.i.+mmered inside her skull. Avenall's image blurred then sharpened.

"s.h.i.+nn took his befouled babe to the Otherside and exchanged it for you, warrior b.i.t.c.h. Veridienne wanted a child-and if it be mortal, like herself, all the better. s.h.i.+nn created a lie to keep you safe in Faery, claiming you were the child of Veridienne's belly, half-blooded, descendant blood to the Glamoursiege reign. Imagine that!"