Briarheart Read online

  I didn’t say any of this out loud, of course. The others had already had a big enough shock, and when this meeting was over, they’d probably convince themselves that Brianna could not possibly be right about the origins of the Sisters of Saint Everon—that the name was a coincidence and that Brianna, being Fae, had not completely understood what we mayfly humans were doing. Or she’d confused the Sisters with some long-ago master coven that had died out because the Sisters had taken over the same place and the name by coincidence.

  Archbishop Thomas, when he finally appeared, was only too willing to talk to the Abbess immediately. “I’m chagrined that I did not think of this myself,” he confessed. “I thank you, Lady Brianna, for recalling that the Sisters of Saint Everon have the power to reinforce objects against the forces of evil with their holy prayers.”

  Brianna looked as if she wanted badly to correct him with the word “spells,” but she just nodded gracefully.

  “A message sent on swift young feet can travel faster than I.” And before the Archbishop could say anything more, I brought him parchment and writing equipment. He wrote a note, sanded it to dry the ink, and sealed it with his signet ring. Rob practically snatched it from his hand and ran off with it so fast that you would have thought his feet were on fire.

  The rest of the people in the room were discussing how else Aurora could be protected—or they were attempting to think of ways she could—when Rob came back a lot faster than I had thought he would; he must have run like the wind. “The Abbess agreed immediately; I almost didn’t have to say anything. She is on the way with all the Sisters,” he said breathlessly. “They want to do this right now!”

  Well, that certainly got everyone’s attention. As everyone got to their feet and went down to wait for the Sisters, I signaled to the Companions that they should stay behind.

  “Rob, Anna, you stay up here and guard Aurora,” I said, and they nodded. “If you see anything—find a way to make a lot of noise to summon help even if you have to pitch something out a window.”

  “Then we try to keep ourselves between it and her until you and Brianna come.” Rob made it a statement, and I nodded.

  “Be on your guard. I don’t think they’ll try anything this soon, but who knows how Dark Fae think?” I said, and headed out the door with the rest of the Companions.

  “I’m not sure I understand how Light Fae think,” I heard Rob muttering as we left.

  The Archbishop was old, and the steps were steep and narrow. He took them slowly and carefully, and since we were behind him, we were stuck at his pace. If I’d thought about it, I’d have led the others down a different set of stairs, but it was too late now. By the time we emerged, blinking into the light of day, somehow the Abbess and her entire abbey of Sisters, novices, and postulants were already arraying themselves in a rough circle outside the palace walls.

  Evidently, they didn’t consider it necessary for anyone to leave or stop what they were doing, because they were silently and cheerfully getting themselves evenly spaced around the palace, with the novices and postulants sandwiched in between full Sisters.

  Except for the color and simplicity of their gowns and the fact that they all wore full wimples and veils—which almost no one but the most old-fashioned women did anymore—they didn’t look all that different from ladies of modest means who were a few decades behind the fashion. The postulants were all in a faded blue gray—that particular color achieved, I was told once, by heavily diluting the woad-based dye used on the wool. The novices were in the natural gray you got by spinning the wool of black and white sheep together into the same thread, and the full Sisters were in white. They made a lovely pattern against the green grass at the foot of the cream-colored stone wall. At some unspoken signal, they all raised their hands and their eyes, and began murmuring something under their breath in a kind of plainchant. It was strange and pleasing even if I didn’t understand a word of it.

  While I watched, Brianna moved silently to stand beside me. “See?” she whispered to me. “Spells.”

  Well, I had to nod because it certainly sounded to me like a spell—a human spell, that is, because so far everything I had learned about using Fae magic involved internally persuading it to do what you wanted.

  And what they were doing looked like a spell because their hands glowed faintly with golden light, and after a while, so did the palace walls. This was clearly magic, at least as I understood it. Human magic, though, not Fae magic; I felt that part of me awakening and rising to meet and join what was going on in front of me even if I didn’t understand it consciously. Brianna gave me a sideways look. “Relax and concentrate on protecting Aurora,” she said, so that was what I did, and I sensed some of my human power flowing out to join that of the nearest Sister.

  Nat, Giles, and Elle watched with their eyes wide; they obviously saw what was going on too, as little motes of power, like fireflies or bursts of dust or pollen, drifted from the hands of the Sisters to the walls of the palace.

  Now that I was experiencing very powerful human magic in person at a time when I was not concentrating on defending myself or Aurora, it was easy to distinguish Fae magic from human. Fae Magic felt cool, like a welcome spring breeze; it smelled of fresh green grass after a rain and tasted—yes, to me, magic had a taste!—like sweet spring water. Human magic felt like warm sun; it smelled just like fresh bread; and it tasted like toasted grain. And the Dark Fae magic? I vaguely remembered that it was bitter to both smell and taste.

  I think they must have been chanting for an hour or more when they finally stopped all at once with no signal that I could see. It hadn’t seemed that long, though; I felt as if I had been lazing about in a half drowse on a perfect summer day the entire time.

  The Sisters didn’t seem in the least tired, although they could have been hiding it, for all I know. The Abbess, whose robes, wimple, and veil were all of white linen instead of white wool, approached Papa, who bowed to her as she nodded her head in acknowledgment. They spoke together in low voices; Papa sounded relieved; the Abbess, kind. But I couldn’t make out what they were saying. Once or twice the Abbess looked at Brianna and me, and the third time I definitely saw her give Brianna a merry wink. I don’t think Papa saw it, but Brianna did, and she had an expression of satisfaction on her face.

  The Abbess put her hand on Papa’s arm once or twice, as if to reassure him, and he certainly looked as if he felt better when she left him. I wasn’t completely surprised to see her come up to me as the rest of her order assembled on the road in four columns, like an army about to march.

  “Greetings, Sister,” the Abbess said to Brianna.

  “Fair greetings to you, Sister,” Brianna replied. “The Light Fae know their allies of old.”

  “I know you do. And thank you for thinking of us. We had no notion that the situation had turned so dire in so brief a time.” The Abbess tsked. “So the Dark Fae are finding ways around the Rules, are they? The Princess must be more important than we knew.”

  “It certainly seems that way, and the Light Fae are looking into it. There’s nothing in the past to tell us, so the answer must lie elsewhere.” Brianna’s wings waved, which by now I knew was a sign that she was uneasy. “We’re going to have to be just as clever.”

  “Fortunately, we have this child.” The Abbess put her hand on my shoulder, and a gentle warmth radiated from it. Once again, I smelled fresh bread and tasted toasted grain. I welcomed it. After all, this was the Abbess! As with the Archbishop, I had been taught to trust and look up to her all my life.

  I felt emboldened enough to ask a question. “What was that chant you were all doing? I never heard it before, not in holy services, anyway.”

  The Abbess laughed. “That, my dear,” she replied, with humor in her voice and her piercing blue eyes, “is because the Church is above such simple and humble magic in its services.”

  Brianna’s eyes flashed with satisfaction to hear her own words confirmed.

  “It’s the Cra
dle Song, my love,” the Abbess continued. “But in a language older than Tirendell itself. It’s the most potent spell we know for warding against evil, all the more potent for its simplicity.”

  I knew it, of course, when she named it. Every child in Tirendell knows it; we’re taught to say it when we’re frightened or wake up from a nightmare or find ourselves alone in the darkness.

  In darkest night, when shadows fall,

  Infinite Light, on thee I call.

  My sword and shield, my arrow drawn,

  I shall not yield, Shadows begone!

  “It channels strong human magic even in the hands of the uninitiated, Miriam,” the Abbess said. “Never forget that, and don’t hesitate to use it. While Gerrold is a fine man and a good wizard, and he may be able to teach you many things that have specific applications and purposes, I very much doubt that he will ever teach you anything more powerful.”

  She took her hand from my shoulder, and I almost begged her to put it back. It felt as if she had been filling me with energy and strength, which, after the last few days, I sorely needed. “Live in the Infinite Light, my dear,” she said, both a blessing and a farewell.

  “Live in the Infinite Light, Holy Abbess,” I replied as she turned and walked to the head of her army of Sisters. I no longer doubted that it was an army; my only question was why she wasn’t leaving some of them here to guard Aurora.

  But as they broke into song and began gliding back to the abbey in the town below us, Brianna answered that question as if she had been reading my mind.

  “The Sisters’ duty is to more than just Aurora or the Royal Family. Their duty is to the entire kingdom. She and the Sisters will now be bending their will to seek out any incursions of the Dark Fae and doing their best to stop them since every incursion gives the Dark Fae more power to attack the kingdom as a whole.” Brianna patted my shoulder. “And truth to tell, the Sisters are not… well equipped for the kind of offensive work that you are. Think of them as a wall. You and your fellow Companions are the guards on the wall.”

  A few weeks ago, my worst problem was to make sure my manchet bread rose properly. Now I was a guard on the wall.

  Too bad I couldn’t throw bread at the shadows to make them go away.

  “Why are you so jumpy?” Anna asked when I requested that she and Rob watch Aurora while the rest of us had dinner. “The Sisters made the palace impregnable.”

  “Against the stuff we know about, but not against things that use doors and gates like regular people.” I rubbed the back of my neck; it ached. “Just because Gerrold says the thorn wasn’t put in place by the maids, that doesn’t mean the Dark Fae haven’t thought of using human agents. I’m having dinner sent up to you from the head table; you won’t starve.”

  “Well then,” Anna said, mollified. “I can stand to have Melalee glare at me every time she thinks I’m about to make a noise for a share of High Table goodness.”

  “Just stay sharp. The Dark Fae may be counting on the fact that now the Sisters have done their work, everyone will be off guard.” I was going to be at the head table tonight, so I couldn’t do this myself, though I wanted to. Papa had invited the Abbess and Archbishop tonight, which meant inviting every other high-ranking ecclesiastic in the city as well so no one would feel affronted, which meant the whole family had to be on show. I suspect that Papa was doing this to reinforce the fact that, although we were depending on Fae and a wizard to keep Aurora safe, we were not forgetting that we were human and were also relying on the power of the Infinite Light. Or something. It was times like this that I was very glad I wasn’t a princess. Balancing all the fragile egos and politics would drive me mad.

  So, within the hour, there I was in my second-best gown with a silver chaplet around my short hair and making polite talk with a Bishop on one side of me and a Sister of some order other than Everon who was supposed to be a noted scholar on the other. Of what, I couldn’t tell you. She mostly used me as a way to ask questions about some tricky theological point of the Bishop, who was slightly deaf.

  And all the while I was thinking, We’ve missed something. I just know it. We’ve overlooked something. At first, I just felt uneasy. Then I felt a growing urgency that made it hard to sit in my chair and pretend that there was nothing going wrong.

  I finally got a little signal from Papa that it was all right to excuse myself, and I did, but I didn’t take the back stair directly up to the nursery. My instincts led me into the rooms that lay just above the dungeons.

  And that was when I saw it.

  If it hadn’t been wincing away from the walls and looking as if it was trying to find a way out, I might not have spotted it, a shadow within the shadows, something like a knight in full armor but only from the waist up. From the waist down there was… nothing.

  A Wraith. Not that I had ever seen one before, but I knew what it was from descriptions in ghost stories. This couldn’t be a Wraith that was tied to the palace, could it? Surely those had been banished long ago, and to make sure that no new ones awakened, the Archbishop performed a banishing ceremony every nine years. This had to be a Wraith that had been sent here from the outside. Last night, maybe, and then it found itself trapped by the Sisters’ blessing.

  Normally, it would have been able to go right through walls to get to the nursery. But thanks to the spell the Sisters had put on all the palace walls, the Wraith was having to find its way through open physical doors and rooms and stairways like any mortal would have to.

  But it wouldn’t take long for the Wraith to get to the nursery, where it could kill Aurora with a touch. I had to run.

  I hauled up my skirts above my knees and ran, grateful that Papa had allowed me to wear my sword even though I was in a dress.

  I knew where all the shortcuts were, and I kicked off my soft-soled slippers so I could run in my bare feet. Otherwise I’d have broken my neck on the polished floors. I pelted up the servants’ stair two at a time and skidded into the nursery, startling Melalee, Anna, and Rob.

  “Wraith!” I gasped, dropping my skirts and pulling out the sword as I turned to face the only door into the room.

  “I’ll get the others,” Melalee said instantly, and she ran off much faster than I had given her credit for being able to do.

  “What are we going to do?” Anna asked, unsheathing her own blade.

  “I have no idea, but we need to figure out something because it’s on the way and no one will be able to see it but us, Gerrold, and probably the Abbess of Everon.” I took a moment to pull my Fae power into my left hand and give both Anna and Rob magic shields because all they had with them were ordinary swords, which were not much good against a Wraith. Then again, without knowing whether I could use Fae magic, was my sword any better? Would what little human magic I had even work against a Wraith? While I was doing that, Melalee returned, panting like an exhausted horse and being towed between Giles and Nat, with Elle bringing up the rear.

  Melalee staggered to the cradle and imposed herself between it and the rest of the room.

  Just as the Wraith appeared in the doorway, I pointed my sword at it. The others gasped.

  “Begone,” I said, hoping that I sounded confident. It just stared at me, and I felt my human magic stirring along with my Fae magic. But how should I use it? What should I do with it? Where should I put it, assuming that I could figure out how to channel it?

  I should feed it into the sword, I decided. That would at least make the sword look more formidable, and maybe it would reinforce the enchantments against evil. Fae magic probably wouldn’t touch this thing; the Wraith used to be human, so maybe human magic was the only way to attack it. If only I knew so much as a single spell!

  Wait—I did!

  “In darkest night, when shadows fall…” My voice wavered a little. “Infinite Light, on thee I call.”

  By the time I got to the word “Light,” Giles had already figured out what I was doing. He placed his hand over my hand that was holding the sword hilt, gra
bbed Anna’s hand, smacked it on top of his, and picked up the chant.

  “My sword and shield, my arrow drawn.” Then Rob and Elle added their hands to the stack and their voices to the chant. There wasn’t any room for Nat, but he put his hands on my shoulders and added his voice to the rest. “I shall not yield, Shadows begone!”

  We started the chant again, and as my magic flowed into the sword, I felt something coming from them that followed my power into the sword as it flared into light and grew brighter and brighter with every moment. Just as Gerrold had said—every human had a little magic in them—and now mine was drawing theirs in with it.

  The Wraith screamed in what sounded like defiance rather than fear. But it didn’t seem as if it could get past us to Aurora, and I was perfectly prepared to stand here all night chanting and holding it at bay—or at least until one of the holy people downstairs figured out that there was trouble and that they were needed to exorcise this thing.

  However, it seemed that my human magic had another idea in mind.

  As we started on the third iteration of the chant, my sword got so bright that I couldn’t look directly at it, and I felt the magic winding tighter and tighter, like a bowstring being pulled, until the finale “Begone!”

  Then something like a bolt of lightning shot from the tip of the sword and struck the Wraith directly. I winced and looked away as the light flared up and covered the doorway. The others did the same or tried to cover their eyes.

  The Wraith screamed again, but this time it was clear that it was a scream of pain.

  When I looked again, the Wraith was still there, but it was not in good shape. In fact, there was a hole blasted right through the middle of it. The edges of it were on fire as if the whole creature were made of parchment and I’d just stuck a red-hot poker through it. It screamed again and stared down at itself in horror. All the Wraith seemed to be able to do was freeze and stare as the fire devoured it. And with one last scream, the Wraith was gone.