Page 10 of The Wicked Lies of Habren Faire

yr ysgolhaig

(THE SCHOLAR)

“The fastest way to the palace is to go to the King’s Road and summon one of Mallt-y-Nos’s steeds. Stop scowling, it isn’t far. I don’t know why you’re so furious.” Neirin tosses the words over his shoulder. “I’m the one who has been wounded, after all.”

He waves his burned palm at me and grins. I’m sure he isn’t as bothered by the pain as he acts.

“I’m angry that I’m stuck with you,” I answer.

Neirin laughs. “Am I worse than death at the hands of a pwca?”

“I’m sure I’ll find out shortly,” I retort.

“Indeed, you will.”

“So long as you get me to Y Lle Tywyll quickly.” I shrug.

“Quickly,” Neirin scoffs and elegantly climbs over a moss-covered log. “You humans love to do everything quickly. I’m a scholar of your kind; I know well how fleeting your time is. But it isn’t so short as to need to tear through every moment.”

Neirin turns to face me as I step onto the log. I’m of an average height and he’s rather tall, but from here I get to look down at him. His upturned eyes are large and gleaming.

I give a short laugh. “Why would you be interested in humans?”

“Why are you interested in us?” he counters.

“Did I say I was?”

Neirin winks. “You don’t need to. Every other human has made as much clear for you.”

I cross my arms, enjoying my vantage point. “Fine. Then can I ask you a question about… this world?”

“By all means.” His eyebrows rise slightly.

“You mentioned Mallt-y-Nos,” I say. “Matilda of the Night. Why can you only summon her horse on a specific road? She rides with the Wild Hunt. Surely she can do as she pleases.”

“You know more than most humans, it seems.”

Something warms in my chest at that tiny bit of praise. I stare at him in silence, awaiting an answer to my question.

“Only this road leads to the palace, and it wouldn’t be a very good palace if the Wild Hunt could just rush in.

She has a deal with the king. Mallt’s horses provided safe passage to and from the palace, and in exchange, the king respects and upholds her traditional hunting rites on lost souls in our world and your own—within reason,” he says, like it’s all the height of common sense, before frowning. “Your people know about Matilda?”

“Obviously.”

Neirin winces. “Damn, she’ll lord that over me.”

I tilt my head questioningly. “Am I supposed to have heard of you? I know plenty of stories about pretty, scheming fairies. If you’ve done something special, you’ll have to jog my memory.”

“Oh, I’m no one.” He laughs earnestly. “But I’m glad you think I’m pretty.” I make an irate noise that he ignores. “What else do you want to know about us?”

I’m tempted to say nothing, but curiosity bites at my heels. “Do you have dragons?”

“Apparently.”

“You’ve never seen one?”

“Dragons keep to their caves and mountaintops; why would I go there?” Neirin laughs without concern. “I bet I know more about your people than you know of mine.”

“Doubtful.” I jump inelegantly down from the log, landing a little too close to him.

Neirin doesn’t pull away. His eyes linger on my attire. I flinch back reflexively, but he’s examining me with a curator’s eye.

“What year are you from?” Neirin says, more to himself than to me. “Hard to tell with a nightgown—interesting garment to go out wandering in, by the way—but from the shape of that coat I’d guess 1840?”

My brow furrows. “1842.”

“So you are unfashionable.”

“No. Just poor.”

Neirin doesn’t seem to notice the offense painted over my face. “Look at this.” He holds out his arms.

A warp covers him, like the waves in the air on a hot day, and when Neirin shakes it off, his black coat has been replaced by a starched white shirt with a high collar and a pristine gray frock coat.

The only thing he is missing is a top hat to shield his eyes from the sun, but I suspect that doesn’t trouble Neirin.

He fixes me with a crooked grin. “See? Don’t I look just like the boys from your village?”

I eye him carefully, but I cannot bring myself to tell him that he looks nothing like the boys I have known. He doesn’t look like a boy at all. He’s an illustration for a shop I can’t afford to buy from—a life glimpsed only in newspaper advertisements.

He looks like money. Not even John Branshaw looks as rich as him.

“You look too new,” I tell him.

“I can age the clothes—”

“Don’t insult me.”

“Insult you?”

I ignore the question. “Don’t you think it’s rude that you’re conjuring up outfits for yourself while I’m trekking around filthy?”

With a flick of his hand and without another word, my clothes lose their stiff crust and smell freshly laundered once more.

No, they smell better. This is not lye soap and cold water; this is magic that leaves lavender in its wake.

I’m so mystified by the simplicity of it, by how he barely had to think to achieve something that would take me an entire day, that I almost miss the way he leans a little closer, an expectant look on his face.

“Doesn’t that earn a thank-you?”

I exhale through my nose. “Thank you, Neirin, and I’ll thank you even more if you cease your constant chatter.”

Neirin groans, his head tossed back. “How boring this walk will be.”

“Good,” I say beneath my breath.

We continue through the forest for an hour, and though he tries to drag me into more conversation, I manage to resist. He asks, “What do humans like to eat,” and I reply, “Food,” which he finds very funny.

He even asks about my family, but when all I’ll give him is that I certainly have one, he realizes he’s getting nowhere and lapses into silence.

“The road is ahead,” he tells me after a while.

“You’re certain we can summon a horse here?”

Hopefully, Ceridwen will still be on foot and I can cut her off at the palace. If I find her before she volunteers as champion I’ll be able to weasel out of this deal with Neirin and bring us both home.

“Sure.” Neirin shrugs. “But when we get to the palace, you’ll go in alone.”

I nod, recalling his earlier explanation. “So I can make the deal for myself.”

“Oh, that too—I was mainly musing on the fact that the king doesn’t like me.”

My mouth gapes. “Perhaps you should’ve told me that before.”

“Whether he likes me won’t matter if you win,” Neirin says. “He is bound to honor the rules of his trial once you enter the palace grounds. But that doesn’t mean he won’t try and stop me from entering.”

“And what are those rules?”

“Do you need everything spelled out for you?”

“Clearly.”

Neirin puts his hands on his hips and fixes me with a bored look.

“Fine,” he says. “Y Lle Tywyll lies at the northern edge of our known lands. It goes underground, but no one who has entered has emerged intact enough to confirm just how deep it goes. Ever since it opened, the teg have been getting sick. The land, too. Those that lived near the fissure were the first to fall. When they did, some of my more noble countrypeople went searching for survivors, but they came back… changed. They’ve become mindless, violent creatures.

The disease is spreading fast, infecting the teg more.

So the king has started asking our human guests to be our champions. ”

I laugh bitterly. “But we’re disposable, right?”

He looks me up and down. “No. Just stupid enough to value a prize over your lives.”

“You keep saying ‘champion,’” I point out. “I’ll be competing against others?”

Neirin shrugs. “Multiple people can claim the prize, so long as they come out together.” He puffs out his chest, mimicking a storybook savior. “‘Champion’ is a more appealing word than ‘sacrifice.’”

“Have you been to Y Lle Tywyll?”

“Absolutely not.” Neirin laughs. “But the reports have been drastic.” His smile wavers and his eyes narrow slightly as he stares at the ground. “I can feel the wrongness, though, a dull ache, like an ill-healed bone hiding just beneath the skin. We all can.”

My stomach turns. “Well, that sounds lovely.”

Neirin takes a jaunty step forward and calls back, “We wouldn’t need a champion if it were easy!”

Suddenly, the road appears before us. It’s a cobblestone path winding north, lined with silver lampposts that bear small flags sporting an unfamiliar emblem of a crown wrapped around the trunk of a great tree.

They’re dark now, but I’m certain that later tonight they will flicker to life without the aid of a lamplighter.

“Ready?”

Neirin stops beneath an unlit lamp with his arms crossed, a brow arched expectantly.

I smooth down my nightgown. “I thought there would be people here.”

Neirin taps the corner of his eye. My nostrils flare. Of course—true sight.

“There’s a fruit seller.” He nods across the road, then grins at someone. “With rather fetching wings.”

I whip around, hoping for an outline—a shimmer, some sort of hint—but there’s nothing at all.

A shiver rushes down my spine. Until he gives me the sight, Neirin has such control over me.

He has just acknowledged a presumably harmless fruit seller but, though he cannot lie, I wonder at all the things he might be neglecting to mention.

“Will you call a steed now?” I ask, trying to sound merely curious and not as if my sister’s life depends on me beating her to court.

Also, I’m quite excited to see the famous horses of the Wild Hunt, if my mortal eyes allow it, though I don’t want to tell Neirin that.

“Of course,” he says. “It’s easy.”

I gesture petulantly. “So, do—”

But a scream in the woods cuts me off.

I freeze, squaring my shoulders. Neirin puts himself between me and the trees, and as I turn toward the forest once more, he grabs my wrist. His grip isn’t tight, but it sets the hairs on the back of my neck at attention.

Our eyes lock for a moment and my wrist goes rigid beneath his touch. “Can you see what made that noise?”

“No,” he says. “But—”

Another scream. Louder, more desperate—terrified.

“Fy chwaer!”

Ceridwen.

I wrench my arm from his grasp and without another thought I race after my sister.