By Slanderous Tongues Read online

  Prologue

  The small glade was filled with a silvery light that had no source in sun or moon. It was bordered by giant trees, their leaves a dark mist fading into the seemingly star-studded sky, their smooth-barked trunks shining softly with reflected silver. Between the trees, walling off the outside world, were curtains of spider web, as beautifully patterned as the finest lace, with tiny beads of dew gleaming like jewels along the strands.

  A male being, not a man, for he was fully and truly Other, lay at ease on a raised bed of soft, dry moss. The silver light gleamed on his white skin, picking out with subtle shadows, the powerful muscles of arm and thigh, the flat, faintly ribbed belly, the swelling pectorals. His eyes were so black that no pupils could be seen, but there was a living glow to them; his hair was black too, somewhat tumbled now but showing the deep peak from which it was ordinarily swept smoothly back in springy waves. Even abandoned to utter relaxation Oberon would have inspired awe had any been there to see him.

  Beside him, equally relaxed, lay a vision of perfect beauty, golden hair spread wide over the moss pillow on which her head rested. Her eyes were green, brilliant, their oval pupils, like those of a cat, a sharp contrast to the glowing green. Her skin was alabaster white but somehow warm and living, touched on cheek and lip with a pale rose that darkened provocatively on the upstanding nipples of her bare breasts. And, like alabaster, her whole body seemed almost translucent, lit from within. Titania at rest was an image to be fixed in the mind and cherished forever.

  Titania turned slightly toward Oberon and sighed. “There has been more than usual energy and excitement coming from the mortal world this past week, but it will not last.”

  A very faint smile touched Oberon’s beautifully shaped lips; he did not move his head, but his eyes shifted so he could see his queen. They showed a wary gleam.

  “No, I fear we have some dull years coming,” he said.

  Titania sat up. “And worse to follow, much worse.”

  Oberon shrugged, his glance caressing Titania’s perfect body. “It is all grist to our mill, whether joy or pain the mortal energy comes to feed us, to bring us power for our magic.”

  “Faugh! The sourness of horror and agony coats my mouth, slimes my throat, and roils my belly. I prefer the sweet energy of dancing and singing, of poetry of love and heroism, of rich tales of imagination mingled with joy and tragedy.” She leaned forward, eyes intent, lips thinning. “I do not want the fires of the Inquisition in Logres!”

  “Titania …” Although he had not moved, there was a tense warning in Oberon’s voice. “I cannot deprive the Unseleighe Sidhe of their share. Something calls the energy of pain to them and so their power grows and they feel rich. Our power thins for a time, but only for a little while.” He lifted a hand and touched her shoulder, then allowed his fingers to slide down her arm. “It ill befits you to be so greedy when the evil will last so few mortal years, barely an eyeblink to us. I am lord of both Seleighe and Unseleighe kind, whether the Morrigan admits it or no. That I linger among the Seleighe is my choice. That I favor the Seleighe is also my choice.”

  “So you say.” But Titania’s lips had pursed into a mulish pout. “But I would not see the promise of the great blossoming destroyed and there are threats gathering about the red-haired queen. It would be so easy … Mary is already ailing …”

  Oberon rose so that he was facing Titania. “No! I will have no interference. A path is set. It must be trodden … even by such as you, my lady.”

  His head was well above hers and his shoulders half a body wider, but she faced him without flinching, power rising in her so that her flesh glowed faintly. “Why? There are strange things in the FarSeers’ lens. Some Great Evil is stirring.”

  “I am no less aware than you,” Oberon snapped. “When it moves, I will deal with it.”

  “Yes, I am sure you will, but then it may be too late. If that Great Evil touches Elizabeth, her spirit might be warped, bent into unreason and cruelty so that a blight falls over the blossoming.” She was silent for a moment, then lifted her head defiantly. “If Mary does not provide a fertile ground to plant a seed …”

  “No, I say!” A faint rumble as of far-off thunder disturbed the tranquil air.

  “I will protect Elizabeth who will bring me my desire …” The thunder drew nearer; the air thickened and grew heavy. The light in the clearing darkened. For a moment the challenge between them threatened to erupt into violence, but then Titania cocked her head to one side and said, “I will offer a bargain.”

  “What bargain?” The thunder receded.

  “I will not myself touch nor send any agent to touch Mary if Elizabeth is allowed free entrance and exit Underhill. Here I or her guardians can heal any hurt done her so that her spirit will remain strong and untrammeled until her fate comes upon her.” She smiled in triumph as the faint light returned to the clearing, and air cleared.

  The overt expression of Oberon’s face and voice as he heard her was wariness, but beneath that was something that Titania could not read or was reluctant to read. Satisfaction? Had he known all along what she desired and was baiting her? Fury rose in Titania. More color touched her cheeks and made her breasts swell slightly so that the nipples were even more prominent and more rosy. She clenched her jaw. And suddenly Oberon leaned forward, touched her lips with his and brushed a fingertip over one rosy nipple.

  “Done,” he said, his lips moving sensuously against hers, and then, “You dazzle my eyes like the mortal sun when you are angry.”

  Anger collapsed again for the moment. She should have been angrier still … and she would be. She would rage … but after, after he had served her a new portion of delight.

  Back | Next

  Framed

  By Slanderous Tongues-ARC

  Advance Read Copy

  * * *

  Elvish Conspiracies Afoot! Heroine, Arise!

  Trouble, trouble, the plots do bubble! King Henry VIII has finally joined his unmerry wives in the afterlife, and the Unseleighe Sidhe, the Dark Elves, are bent on subverting the English throne and bringing back the sorrow, horror and despair of the Middle Ages. After all, that’s what made the bad old days so much fun – for them!

  Enlightenment’s hope? A mere fourteen-year-old girl. A bright and adaptable fourteen-year-old to be sure, but still—what chance has such a young thing against the Unseleighe Sidhe’s tangled web of treachery and depravity?

  A pretty good one. You see, the girl’s name is Elizabeth, and that fiery red hair is no lie. Whether immortal lord or malicious mortal, young Elizabeth Tudor’s enemies cross her at their peril!

  Two hugely-popular master storytellers of historical fantasy brew up an elvish conspiracy for the ages in this exciting sequel to This Sceptr’d Isle and Ill Met By Moonlight.

  “[Mercedes] Lackey… produces elegant, compelling fantasy.”

  —Publishers Weekly on best-selling High Priestess of Fantasy, Mercedes Lackey.

  “[K]nowledgeable readers…will enjoy the interplay between elven intervention and historical fact.”

  —Publishers Weekly on Mercedes Lackey and Roberta Gellis’s This Sceptr’d Isle.

  Cover Art by Stephen Hickman

  * * *

  Hardcover

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  First printing, February 2007

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Pages by Joy Freeman (www.pagesbyjoy.com)

  Printed in the United States of America

&n
bsp; ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-2107-5

  ISBN-10: 1-4165-2107-0

  Copyright© 2006 by Mercedes Lackey & Roberta Gellis

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  http://www.baen.com

  Electronic version by WebWrights

  http://www.webscription.net

  * * *

  BAEN BOOKS by MERCEDES LACKEY

  Bardic Voices

  The Lark and the Wren

  The Robin and the Kestrel

  The Eagle and the Nightingales

  The Free Bards

  Four & Twenty Blackbirds

  Bardic Choices: A Cast of Corbies (with Josepha Sherman)

  The Fire Rose

  The Wizard of Karres (with Eric Flint & Dave Freer)

  Beyond World’s End (with Rosemary Edghill)

  Spirits White as Lightning (with Rosemary Edghill)

  Mad Maudlin (with Rosemary Edghill)

  Bedlam’s Edge (edited with Rosemary Edghill)

  Music to My Sorrow (with Rosemary Edghill)

  Bedlam’s Bard (with Ellen Guon)

  Chrome Circle (with Larry Dixon)

  The Chrome Borne (with Larry Dixon)

  The Otherworld (with Larry Dixon & Mark Shepherd)

  This Scepter’d Isle (with Roberta Gellis)

  Ill Met by Moonlight (with Roberta Gellis)

  By Slanderous Tongues (with Robert Gellis)

  Fortress of Frost and Fire (with Ru Emerson)

  Prison of Souls (with Mark Shepherd)

  Lammas Night

  Werehunter

  Fiddler Fair

  Brain Ships (with Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball)

  The Sword of Knowledge (with C.J. Cherryh,

  Leslie Fish & Nancy Asire)

  The Shadow of the Lion (with Eric Flint & Dave Freer)

  This Rough Magic (with Eric Flint & Dave Freer)By Slanderous Tongues

  Next

  Chapter 1

  Elizabeth’s world had fallen apart again. That morning a messenger had come to Katherine Ashley, Elizabeth’s governess, from William Cecil, to say that a Dirge for King Henry would be sung and the bells rung in all churches that night. It was very kind of Master Cecil, who must be furiously busy. No one else seemed to have thought at all of what the loss of her father meant to Elizabeth.

  A tear dripped down onto the book cover Elizabeth was embroidering, and she found her kerchief to blot her work and wipe her eyes. Across the hearth from her, Kat looked up. Kat had been with Elizabeth since she was three years old and Elizabeth knew Kat loved her as deeply as if she had birthed her. But she did not understand what the king’s death meant. She did not understand that, fickle and often arbitrary as he had been, the king had been all that stood between Elizabeth and peril. She also did not understand that, fickle and arbitrary as he had been, Elizabeth had looked up to, and sometimes even worshipped her grand, glorious father, dazzling even in his ruin. The sun had left the sky, and what illuminated it now? A sad, sickly moon.

  “What will become of me,” Elizabeth murmured, her voice too low to carry to anyone but Kat.

  “Nothing bad, love,” Kat said soothingly. “You were very well provided for in King Henry’s will. You will have lands and manors, and live just as you have always done.”

  “But who will tell me where to live and with whom? You know the king always decided which manor I should use and when I should share households with Edward, and now that is impossible. Edward is the king.” She drew a sharp breath and tears flooded her eyes again. “Will we be allowed to choose in what manor to live?” Impossible, surely, and did she even want it? To decide things for herself—a prospect at this moment more frightening than attractive.

  “I think perhaps you would be considered a little too young for that. You are only fourteen years old. You must give the Council time, Lady Elizabeth. There are so many things they must decide upon and they know you are safe here at Enfield with me and your household.”

  It was not the first time that Elizabeth had posed these questions to her governess since the king, her father, had died, and Kat looked anxiously at her charge. Elizabeth had her lower lip between her teeth, but she did not have that pallid, hollow-eyed look that Kat recognized as a sign of real physical illness.

  The girl’s cheeks were pale, but they always were because she had the white complexion that went with her red hair—except her skin was not so thin and delicate as some redheads and, thank God, she had no freckles. Her eyes were not her father’s blue but her mother’s brown. Fortunately, unlike Anne Boleyn’s eyes, Elizabeth’s were very light, almost golden when Elizabeth was happy. She was not beautiful but she was pretty enough to attract a man.

  There was a prospect that had only just occurred to Kat of late … and not one she relished. Lady Elizabeth was still a valuable marriage pawn. Her disposition would be at the will of King Edward—or rather, King Edward’s governors. Attracting men was not safe.

  Kat bit her lip. Surely Elizabeth was too young to marry, but with her father, King Henry, dead, who knew what the Council would decide to do with the second in line for the throne. Doubtless the Councilors were fighting among themselves for power. Would one of them suddenly appear at Enfield and try to take possession of Elizabeth? The Lady Mary, Elizabeth’s older sister, was the heir apparent, but she was a woman grown and had a much larger household to defend her.

  What should I do, Kat wondered fearfully, if a Councilor appears and demands that Elizabeth be in his charge? Kat glanced toward the door, outside of which one of Elizabeth’s four guardsmen stood. They were devoted and good fighters, but none of them was young and there were only four, although Dunstan, the Groom of the Chamber and the two stablemen, Ladbroke and Tolliver would fight too.

  What if men coming to take Elizabeth had a legal writ signed by Edward? Then to resist them would be treason. But if they did not have a writ, then not resisting them would be treason… . And how could Kat tell a legal writ from one that was forged?

  Oh, she was being ridiculous, Kat told herself, no one was going to try to seize Elizabeth. The young king, Edward, was whom they would be fighting over. And there would be much jockeying over which noble daughter he would wed, too. Young as he was, younger than Elizabeth, they would want him safely wed, and bedded to, if that were possible. But Kat wished Lord Denno would come. He would know what was going on in London; he would know what to do. Surely Lord Denno had not abandoned Elizabeth. She looked at Elizabeth again, but said nothing, returning her gaze to her own needlework.

  Elizabeth, however, had been aware of the slightly tremulous quality in Kat’s voice and of her anxious scrutiny. For a moment, her vision was too blurred to take another stitch, and she looked into the lively fire in the small hearth. The tears refracted her vision so that for one instant she thought she saw a little red salamander twisting and leaping with joy in the flames.

  A single blink restored the fire to just orange and yellow light. Elizabeth sighed. Having her world fall apart was no new sensation for her. The first time it had happened she had been only three. That was when her mother had disappeared and no one would tell her where or why Anne Boleyn had gone. And suddenly she was no longer Princess Elizabeth but only Lady Elizabeth and instead of being cosseted and almost drowned in clothes and so many toys she had no time to play with them, there were no new toys at all and hardly enough clothing to keep her warm.

  The world had slowly mended itself. Darling Kat had come to be her governess and a new household, much smaller but in some ways closer and warmer, had formed. And she had been taught to read and write—what a joy that was. She had hardly been conscious of what was happening outside her own small world, but her father had taken a new wife and had a son. That was very good because she was no longer a source of trouble for him. So now and the
n she had some notice from the king, her father, and his blessing. Henry had still been hale and hearty enough to be a modicum of the godlike, glorious “Bluff Hal” of his best years.

  Only little Edward’s mama had died. The next lady had not been to her father’s taste, but she was willing to be divorced. So her father had been free to marry Catherine Howard, Elizabeth’s own cousin. At first that had been all joy; Elizabeth had been invited to Court and made much of until the truth of Catherine’s promiscuity was exposed … and Elizabeth’s world had been shattered again.

  Elizabeth swallowed, set down her embroidery, and chaffed her hands together to warm them. The memory of the black desolation that had seized her after Catherine’s execution—a desolation laid upon her by a spell that nearly killed her—could still chill the very marrow of her bones. She knew it could never happen again; she had protection now. Defensively, staring into the fire, Elizabeth raised her shields both inner and outer, felt herself inviolate behind them, and was reassured.

  Raising the shields in her mind and on her body reminded her that she had a few other tricks too. The corners of Elizabeth’s lips quirked when she thought of the effects of tanglefoot and stickfast, and, in dire need, of gwythio and cilgwythio.

  She lifted the embroidery and set another stitch, then frowned and looked at it more closely. “Kat,” she said, “I have just bethought myself … Is this work grand enough? Do you think I should redo part of the embroidery using more gold and silver thread? Edward is no longer my dear little brother. He is king now.”

  Relieved to hear such a practical and reasonable doubt, instead of the repeated fears about what would happen to her, Kat leaned forward and took Elizabeth’s work from her hands.

  She looked over the design carefully and said, “Grace of God, I never thought of that. It is true that any pretty design was enough in the past. King Edward would have enjoyed it because you made it for him. He does love you dearly but … but as you say, he is king now.”