Page 6 of Wicked Things

Callum suddenly began to cough so strongly that the whole bed shook beneath him, and the healers hurried over to tend to him and asked me solicitously if I would mind leaving so they could bleed him again. Since the procedure was nothing I wanted to stay around to see, I left, telling Callum I would do what I could for him and send word.

I had given him no outright promise that I’d do this thing—marry some unknown, half-mortal boy. I’d merely said I’d see, but truthfully, I didn’t know of any reason not to. Love was nothing I’d ever seen or experienced, so what did I know of it? Indeed, what did I care? If I were to make this boy my consort, I could take over the throne of Gorias and realize my father and grandfather’s ambitions to become the king of all the Aos Sídhe. At least I’d be one step closer. I decided then that I would at least go and take a look at this halfling child of Callum’s mortal witch and then make a decision. Perhaps if he wasn’t too annoying, I’d bring him back to Otherworld with me and see about marrying him. Eventually.

After all, Gorias was a vast and wealthy kingdom. And I had my own prejudices against at least one of the kingdoms, the kingdom of Finias, the birthplace of my father’s second wife.

Since my own poor father had been killed two weeks before Samhain almost a year ago, in a skirmish with the ogres near our border, there had been some rumors of at least one pretender threatening my rightful claim to the throne of Murias.

My stepmother’s father was one name that had been put forward. King Archer, the Finian king, was my stepmother’s father, and grandfather to my two half-brothers. Several of his advisors and mine had tried to dissuade him from making his spurious claim. I was the eldest son of my father’s first wife and the only legitimate heir by law and by my father’s decree—and Archer was begged by his advisors to withdraw his challenge. But he didn’t have the prudence or the wisdom to do so. When he continued to refuse and then had the temerity to challenge me to a one-on-one battle between us, I had gone to Finias, rode right into his castle courtyard with my army to defend my throne. I took off his head with my sword in his own courtyard. I left a Warden there, one of my most trusted men, to govern in my place, and the last I’d heard, the new heir, a distant cousin of Archer’s, had still not brought forth his own claim or any challenging army to enforce it. Perhaps, being fond of his own head, he was waiting to see what I would do next.

Unfortunately, Archer’s had not been the only claim I’d had to face. I’d heard rumors of others. I was a popular choice with the vast majority of my people, but there were always those who would try to advance themselves and profit from any change in a regime. In the past few months, I had needed to successfully defend myself against three more usurpers who had come forward to lay claim to what was undeniably and rightfully mine by birth, blood and law. If I were to marry this halfling, I could conceivably consolidate my kingdom with that of Gorias, and go back to consolidate my claim to the Finian throne. Turnabout was fair play, or so the saying goes.

At any rate, if I was successful in taking Gorias by marriage contract and then keeping Finias by the might of my newly combined armies, then taking Farlias would not be at all difficult. Perhaps soon I could call myself the High King of Otherworld, as who would be left to challenge me or say otherwise?

I had to admit it was a very strong incentive to me to take the Gorian king up on his offer.

The boy had asked if my soldiers had been following him in the past few days, but we had only just arrived in Jorvik and had come immediately to find him. I had so many questions.

Like, who in this realm had been stalking Braden Wanderer before my men and I had arrived? Had they been some of the same enemies of King Callum that he alleged had come from Finias and Falias to murder him? Did they now hope to eliminate his only son or did one of them hope to marry him themselves and attempt to be Gorias’s new king? Again, no Sídhe would let some minor issue like the gender of a person stop them from an advantageous marriage. Not even me.

And if someone else was planning their own takeover of all the kingdoms to become the High King, did that make Callum’s offer even more enticing to me? Yes, indeed, it did. Was their presence related in any way to my own situation and the previous attempts on the throne of Murias? I intended to find out.

If my enemies had somehow gotten word of my plan to go have a look at the boy and had ascertained what I had planned, then they might have taken preemptive action. A marriage between me and the halfling and my subsequent takeover of the Gorian tribe would be potentially catastrophic to them, after all, and to their hopes for my throne. The question would probably need my close attention very soon.

(Reader, I’ll insert myself in here yet again in my Lord Fionn’s retelling of our story by saying that if you think the politics of the Aos Sídhe were complicated and complex, you’re absolutely right. There’s an old Faery saying, ‘Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were also a politician.” But I repeat myself.’ If that phrase seems in any way familiar, like the one my lord used above about ‘turnabout being fair play,’ it’s because mortals have visited our realm from time to time and brought them back to the mortal world because they loved a good phrase. One mortal, in particular, by the name of Mark Twain, who lived with the Faeries for a short time, stole the one above about politics, and changed it to his own form of government—something he called Congress—seven or eight hundred years later. Please refer to my comment above about mortals appreciating a good turn of phrase. And now I return you to my Faery Lord.)

As the Murian king, I needed to get back home and attend to my other duties as well. It was now very close to Yule, the shortest day and the longest night of the year, when from this point on, the days would lengthen, and we would celebrate the return of the sun back to the earth with feasting and other ceremonial events.

In this hated realm of the mortals, they called Yule by the name “Yuletide”—I could never keep up exactly on what day it was on their calendar and why should I? But I’d heard that their priests sang masses in their churches on that day and told stories from their holy book about the birth of their god and his virgin mother.

It was completely different from Yule, of course. Yule had been usurped, like our other holidays, by their priests when they were first making converts in these parts of the “heathen” mortal world to get the people to celebrate with them. As Christianity spread like a blight throughout Northern Europe, early Christian leaders overlaid the holidays with their own and merged the winter solstice festival of the Danes and north men with the celebration of the birth, in the hopes that Yule would simply be absorbed into their holiday and everyone would forget about the other, much older one.

But I had lain for too long thinking about all of it when I should have been sleeping. The straw mattress left much to be desired, so it was still almost an hour later that I drifted off to sleep, lulled by soft snores, the crackling fire, and the sweetish smell of purple asters, mixed ever so slightly with the scent of forbidden indulgences. I was coming to associate that scent with the boy named Braden, who was the halfling son of King Callum and not at all what he seemed to be.

Chapter Three

Braden

I awoke the next morning before it was even light outside to the sound of the men around me moving in the crowded room. I came instantly awake and sat up abruptly, terrified to learn that it hadn’t been some kind of dream. I was afraid to see what this day would bring. Their leader, the impossibly gorgeous man I’d spoken to the night before, was not in his bed and nowhere to be seen in the room, but the others, all soldiers from the look of them, were busy packing up their gear and getting ready to leave. The mean one from the night before came over to me and pulled me roughly to my feet.

“We’re going down to see if there’s any food we can eat in this pigsty. Make a scene and we’ll cut your throat and that of every mortal in this place. Do you understand me?”

“I understand,” I replied sullenly, in no doubt that he would absolutely do it and cheerfully too. He grabbed me by my arm and yanked me out of the room to walk beside him down the narrow corridor and stairs to the room below. There I saw the one who looked like a Faery Lord from the night before, whom I’d already decided must be important, with his hood up to cover his hair and shadow his face. He was talking softly to the innkeeper. He’d clearly roused the poor man from his bed. Apparently, he needed an early start. He turned to look at us as we came down the stairs, all the others now with their own hoods up or their caps pulled down low on their faces and ears, all except for me. He nodded toward the fireplace, and we all sat down close to it on the long table there for a little extra heat that frigid morning.

A serving girl, still in her nightdress with a shawl draped around herself, brought us ale and dark bread. It was probably at least a day old, but toasted to make it nicer, and there was no meat on the table, like I’d expected there to be. But there were slabs of cheese and pitchers of milk, for those like me, who didn’t drink ale. The innkeeper also brought in a big pot of steaming gruel, a thin, simple porridge made by boiling oatmeal in milk. It was bland but filling, and when my portion was put down by me, along with a hunk of bread and a thick slice or two of the cheese, I ate it quickly. I had no idea when I’d get the chance to eat again.

Everyone shoveled their food down quickly, and then we set off, stepping out before daylight. In fact, I could see that even though the storm was over, it was still quite dark, though there was a narrow quarter moon perched above us, with a bright star at its nether tip. And I could see the frozen stars, which looked close enough that I could reach out and touch them. An icy wind was still blowing, and I began shaking from the cold right away, but one of the soldiers threw me a fur that I quickly wrapped around my body, pulling it up high on my shoulders to provide some protection for my ears and face. The others were wearing similar furs across their shoulders and began following the Lord, who was at the front of the column as we all trudged through the fallen snow piled up in drifts down the street.

What was I doing out here so early on this snowy morning, and for that matter, why in God’s name had I been taken by the Faeries?

Once again, my thoughts went back to my uncle. I sent up a prayer of sorts that he had returned home safely and was no part of any of this. I wasn’t a true believer, by any means, but I thought Leofric was, and I thought that he’d appreciate my prayers. I knew better than to ask about him again, though, and it occurred to me suddenly that I might never know what happened to Leofric.

I wondered if I should call out or start some kind of fight before we left the city walls. I’d be quickly killed, no doubt, but better to be killed here than somewhere in the forest or countryside, where the animals and birds would pick at my body until nothing was left but my bones. I was thinking seriously of calling out to the guards there or making some kind of disturbance when the Faery lord suddenly turned and came back to walk beside me.

He took my arm and glared down at me, growling, “Your thoughts are so loud I can hear them plainly, boy. Don’t even think about shouting out, or I’ll cut out your tongue here and now, and make it hurt.”

“Go ahead,” I said defiantly. “Kill me while you’re at it. You’ll do it soon enough anyway.”

“Don’t make my decision so easy for me.”