Swallowing Darkness - Laurell K. Hamilton [30]
His hand in mine, the look on his face, brought me back from the edge. His touch kept me me. Part of me resented it. Because with me came the first whisper of grief returned. Gran, Frost, my father, Doyle injured. So much death, so much loss, and the chance for more to come. That was the true terror of love, that you could love with your whole heart, your whole soul, and lose both.
We began to spill toward the ground, in a sweep of light that cast shadows below like that of some great, magical plane. But we did not touch the ground as the plane would have had to; we skimmed above it. We wove over treetops, and across fields. Animals scattered before us. I felt the hounds flinch, and tried to give chase, but Sholto spoke one word, and they stayed with us. We were not after rabbits tonight.
There was a flash of white, and something much bigger than a rabbit dashed across the ground. The White Stag fled before us like all the other animals. I almost called his name, but if he had not even turned that great horned head, it would have broken my heart all over again. Then he was lost in the dark, as lost to me as Gran.
The faerie mounds came into view, and we sped toward them. If there were guards out, they did not make themselves known. Did they not see us, or were they too frightened to draw attention to themselves?
The Seelie mound was before us. I had a moment to think, “How do we get inside?” But I had forgotten that a true hunt, with a true purpose, is barred by no door. We flowed toward the mound, and the horses and hounds did not even slow. They knew that the way would open, and it did. There was a moment when I felt the spell on the door, and realized that someone inside had barred the way with their strongest spells. Had they thought that our court would attack tonight? Had they feared what the queen would do for her niece’s rape? The thought was a distant one, as if I thought about someone else. I watched the spell spill away from the door in that spot just behind the eyes where visions happen. One moment the spell was golden and bright, the next it fell away like the petals of some great flower opening for us. The shining doors opened in a spill of warm, yellow light, and our white shine flowed into the gold of it, and we were in.
CHAPTER SEVEN
WE SWEPT INTO THE GREAT ROOM WHERE JUST A FEW HOURS ago there had been reporters, cameras, and police. Now there were brownies cleaning up, levitating chairs and tables, and making the trash of paper and plastic roll like small tumbleweeds. They looked up at us, eyes wide. I had a moment of my heart squeezing so tightly that I could not breathe. Would they fight us, as Gran had? But none of them lifted a hand, or threw so much as a dust rag at us. Then we were past them, and the far door that had looked too small to let the horses through was suddenly just big enough. The faerie mound, the sithen, was shaping itself to our use.
But beyond the doors was a solid wall of roses and thorns. Thorns like daggers pointed at us, roses bloomed and filled the hallway with sweet perfume. It was a lovely way to defend, so terribly Seelie.
I thought we were stopped, but the wall to the right widened, with a sound like rock crying. The sithen widened the hallway, not in inches, but in horse lengths, so that the lovely and deadly vines collapsed inward, like any climbing rose will do when its support is cut. That heavy mass of thorns fell inward, and into the ringing silence after the rock had stopped moving I could hear the screams of the guards underneath the painful blanket.
Fire blossomed out from the edge of the thorns rich and orange, and the heat reached us, but it was like the winter cold. I could feel it, but it did not move me. The fire spattered into wasted sparks, curling into empty air, as if the fire itself turned away rather than hit us.
We swept through rooms of colored marble, silver-and gold-edged. I had a vague memory of coming this way in Lord Hugh’s arms, when he and the nobles who