Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson Read online

  Her lady was clever, much more clever than Haida, so she followed her rules to the letter. Food.

  “Eat,” the hobgoblin urged the thing that used to be her lady. Would be again. It had worked before, it had to work this time, too. “It’s only a bit of bread and honeycomb. It will do you good.”

  Haida took a bite, to show the thing both that it was edible and that if it didn’t eat soon, Haida might eat all the food. Whatever logic it used, the scarred and broken thing ate as soon as Haida swallowed. As it ate, the outwardly broken parts of it, bones and sinew, knit together and smoothed out into a more pleasing form, until the beast started to look more like Haida’s lady again—outwardly at least.

  Haida’s lady, Ariana, was strong with magic from both sides of her bloodline. The magic allowed her to heal from things that would have killed a hobgoblin. Her father was a forest lord, an independent but powerful fae, her mother one of the high ladies of the highest courts—and would that she were here. But it had been years since she left, and not a word of reply to any message or plea sent by the hobgoblin who had once served her faithfully and now served her daughter.

  Even as Haida thought about her grievance with her lady’s mother, the building around them groaned and shifted. Disturbed by her fretting or, more likely, by the beast’s turmoil. So much power in the hands of the angry and traumatized beast that wore Ariana’s body was not a happy thing, and Haida’s anger was making their home worse. She could do something about both matters, and hopefully their place in Underhill would settle a little.

  Haida focused her thoughts on her task and brought another tray of food to the table, food stolen this morning from three different villages to keep humans from taking too much notice. The food served the dual purpose of distracting the beast from whatever had the floor uneasy under her feet and further strengthening her lady.

  The beast ate everything Haida could provide, then looked up at her with eyes that were solid black. In all other aspects, the beast looked like her lady now, though bruised and battered, but the eyes were always deep, fathomless, black.

  “There is one more necessary thing,” it told her in a voice made hoarse by screaming and slow from terror and exhaustion. That it spoke meant that her lady was near.

  “Yes,” Haida agreed, and prepared to pull a fog over the beast’s recent memories.

  Like most of the lesser fae, Haida had a few things she did very well. But hers was a wilder magic, not easily directed in small spells or bindings. Fogging the beast’s memory was difficult for her, and if it fought her, she would not be able to do it at all. But she didn’t need to keep the memories at bay for long, just for long enough.

  Haida touched the beast’s forehead, and the beast grabbed Haida’s hand and growled. “Sawyl. Samuel. Samuel Whitewolf,” the beast said.

  Haida waited. The beast’s magic was thick, and it flowed by the hobgoblin like a winter wind, biting and uncomfortable.

  “Samuel,” the beast murmured more gently, sounding too much like her lady. It released Haida and rubbed at its eyes as it whispered, “They come, the wolves. Death comes with them. Remember.”

  The beast had powers that her lady did not, powers more akin to Haida’s own, though much more powerful. The hobgoblin had no doubt that the words meant something. It would probably be bad because nothing good could come out of the ugliness that was the beast—so her lady had told Haida, and so Haida believed.

  When the beast did not seem inclined to say anything more, the hobgoblin touched the creature gently and continued with the task the talk of wolves had interrupted. When she had the proper shape of the magic within her, she settled her magic on the beast. She petted its forehead, and said, “Forget. Let the mists hide the worst and leave only the best.”

  Her magic snuck in and clothed the beast’s memories in kindness, a thing possible only because the beast allowed it. The change was immediate—the terrible beast faded.

  Instead of the horrible wounded thing, her lady blinked at Haida, the blackness shrinking down until it was pupil only and her eyes were wide and jewel green. Open wounds were absorbed by deep brown skin, scars hidden by glamour until she looked no different than she ever had.

  “Hobgoblin?” she said, sounding a little confused but not distressed.

  Her lady looked around the kitchen, Haida’s domain. It was neat and tidy as always, if not so grand as the rest of the house. The hobgoblin felt the moss-covered walls of the kitchen, which had pulled back in distress at the beast’s presence, ease back into place—but the stillness had a waiting feeling rather than that of a home at peace, and she worried.

  “Yes, my lady,” said the hobgoblin sadly, because the confusion in her lady’s face was being replaced by worse things as the magic Haida had worked was dispelled, and memory resettled properly. Her lady only needed to forget for that breath of time, so that she would have courage to take back her power and body from the beast.

  Her father the forest lord was dual-natured. He had the form of the sidhe, and another of a forest fae. Ariana’s beast was born of that heritage, but had her father not brutalized her with pain and the terror of the hounds he commanded, it would never have materialized. The beast, a creature of the forest, unlike Ariana, could not disobey a direct order from the forest lord—what had started out as a punishment had borne useful fruit for Ariana’s father.

  Haida’s lady sucked in a breath and looked at her hands, moving the fingers gently, then clenching them into fists.

  “I don’t remember everything the beast did this time,” she said, her voice tight. “Did it do what he wanted us to do?”

  Haida shook her head. “I don’t know, Mistress. Your magic is beyond me. You will have to look at what it created yourself.”

  • • •

  The little hobgoblin, green-gray and covered with wiry hair from head to feet, was closer to the Heart of Magic than the Tylwyth Teg, the greater fae like Ariana. Haida was like a shepherd who cared for the flocks and Ariana a weaver who worked tapestries with their yarn. One was not inherently more skilled or powerful than the other but differently able. Other fae did not see it as Ariana did, including Haida. To them, lesser fae were weak, but for her father, their home shivered and groaned, while only Haida could bring it comfort. If it had not been for Haida, Ariana knew she would have long ago been lost to the beast.

  Ariana shed the last of the hobgoblin’s veil of shadows, ready to face the results of her father’s bidding and the beast’s obedience. The first few times she’d been able to remember what she’d done after her father reduced her to that other aspect. But eventually, her memories had not been so clear. This time, like the time before, she could remember nothing after she’d broken under the wave of terror that was the banehounds’ magic.

  Her father would succeed in destroying her. All she could hope for was to ensure that he got no gain by it. She was so afraid that she would fail even in that.

  She stood up carefully, but although she was dizzy and weak, the pain of her injuries was fading quickly.

  “How long this time?” she asked Haida as Ariana walked out of the kitchen and down the hall with the poise her mother had drilled into her before she left. The advantage of moving with grace was that it kept her centered, so she didn’t fall on her face. Every time her bare feet touched the floor, she drew magic from the earth to strengthen herself just as the food she’d eaten had strengthened her.

  “Four days,” Haida told her. “He left as soon as the dogs finished.”

  That was unusual. He liked to supervise her work, though what she did was so far outside of his forest-bound magic that he could not follow it. There was something she should remember about the dogs . . .

  The color of old blood and snow, with fangs that tore, the hounds delivered pain and terror to freeze her forever. That was the gift of the white and red hounds of the forest lord, terror that stopped the bre
ath and heart.

  “My lady?”

  Not that. She couldn’t remember that, or she wouldn’t stay in control. If she were reduced to her other aspect, the one who could only follow the orders of the power that gave a forest lord dominion over the beasts in his forest, all would be lost.

  There was nothing left, now, of the father who had loved her. The one who had taken her on long walks in the woods and taught her to speak to the deep-voiced oaks and the quivering willow. No more than there was anything left of the daughter who had loved him and believed that he could do no wrong.

  He’d told her that he had a commission for which he’d been well paid in favors and power—the power was what he craved, almost as much as he wanted to see her reduced to something that could only obey him, something he had no reason to be jealous of. She was to make a weapon that could be used to siphon the magic from any fae, sidhe, hobgoblin, and anything in between.

  Her father couldn’t or wouldn’t see beyond his immediate goals to what such an artifact meant.

  He was not the only fae who had lost power beneath the growing tide of iron, nor was he the most corrupt. The Tuatha Dé Danann who commissioned the work was powerful—but there were others yet stronger. By the artifact’s very existence, it would cause a war that would not end until there was no one left who desired it. Ultimately it would bring an end to the fae and everything they would destroy in their wake.

  Her father, blinded by need, was determined to force her to use her magic to make the artifact. She was more determined that she would not.

  Ariana turned into her workroom and looked at the fist-sized lump of silver that lay on the table. As soon as she picked it up, she understood that she had failed.

  “The main spell is set,” she told Haida, her voice raw. She held the destruction of the world in her hand. “We are undone.”

  “Can you use it to destroy him?” asked the hobgoblin, ever practical.

  “When the sight of him turns my knees to water?” Ariana said bitterly. “He has changed me. Made me a frightened and powerless creature who is as obedient to his command as any of his hounds ever were. I cannot move against him in his presence.” Once, she’d been strong-willed and powerful, but now she was nothing, a shadow of what she had been—broken to her father’s will except in these stolen moments.

  But there was something about her father’s hounds, something she should remember.

  “Then we are undone,” said Haida practically, licking delicately at her hand, then smoothing it over the hair on her cheeks. “If you have finished what he wanted, we should leave. He will follow—he cannot be what he is and not give chase. But he will play with his new toy first. It will give us a chance to lose ourselves in the world. I can keep us hidden from his hounds for many days. My magic is not powerful, but it is subtle.”

  Courageous hobgoblin. Haida always examined a problem and found the best path from where she found herself to somewhere she might survive.

  Ariana drew upon her example and examined what had already been done and sealed within the silver. Until this time of awakening when her father was gone, she’d been able to destroy the work she’d done before he noticed. Once a spell was sealed into the silver, she could not unwork it—any more than anyone else could. She held her hand near and watched as the silver called her magic.

  “As I said,” she told Haida slowly, “this will eat the magic of any fae.” She paused, examining the flow of the magic in the silver because there was something unexpected that she had to work out. “Maybe I can squeeze the flow until it is only a bare trickle. If it can only pull a little, how much harm can it do?”

  The hobgoblin sank down on her haunches and smiled, revealing sharp green teeth. “I told you. Told you that you would outsmart him.”

  “When all he has to do to keep me stupefied with terror, obedient to his command, is call on his hounds?” Ariana asked. “You are overly optimistic. As long as he has the hounds . . .” And for an instant she knew why he’d left, knew that it was important, but she couldn’t get past the thoughts of his hounds, and the reason for his departure trickled out of her grasp like water.

  Survival meant that she pay attention to the embryonic artifact in her hands—and not pull the beast inside her back to the forefront by fretting about the hounds. She turned to Haida. “Even if I slow the draw to little more than nothing, eventually it will amass power. I can make it take years, centuries maybe, but eventually it will hold enough to be valuable.”

  “What it holds someone can take,” the hobgoblin agreed. “Can you stop that?”

  “No.” She was powerful but not as powerful as some. To lay such locks on the artifact that no one could break it open was beyond her. And it would be unwise, even if she could. If it did nothing but sit in the cottage and steal magic from the fae that passed near it—eventually it would eat all magic and concentrate it in the lump of silver that fit into her hand. She didn’t know how much the metal could hold—but an explosive release when the silver could hold nothing more would be destructive on a scale she could almost not comprehend. Not as horrible as what would happen if it was able to hold all of the magic indefinitely—without magic, all life would cease.

  “But I can make it so the magic it collects dissipates back to the Heart of Magic.” The Heart of Magic was the center of the world. Magic held in the Heart did not come readily to anyone’s hand but caused the wind to blow and the rain to fall. Ariana smiled fiercely at her little friend. “And—thus fulfilling the geas and thwarting my father.” She considered how to do that. “I need you for this, Haida, and it will probably not be easy.”

  Haida bowed low. “It is my joy to aid you in any manner I might. But himself will be back soon—it is unlike him to be absent for long. Is there time?”

  “Yes,” said the beast that now dwelled within Ariana. “The hounds have fled, and he seeks the means to recall them.”

  Ariana closed her eyes and took in a shaky breath, waiting for the beast to subside. That was what she had needed to remember. His hounds were gone.

  She should have felt relief but could not shake the feeling that her father was more dangerous than ever. Could not quiet her fear of him, and that fear made the beast stir again. She could not afford to let her beast take control, not with such delicate magic to embroider. She collected herself and looked at the hobgoblin, who was watching her warily.

  “Haida, we can do this,” she said with more confidence than she actually felt. “The hounds have been chaffing under his leash, and they have left him. That’s where he has gone—to reclaim the hounds. We might have enough time to do this thing.”

  • • •

  Using Haida’s sense for the wild magic that lingered in the smallest thing and was closest to the Heart of Magic, Ariana worked until the hobgoblin made her stop and eat. Then she worked some more, the constant drain from the emerging artifact only a slight handicap.

  The very slowness of its working was evidence that her other self was fully engaged in the attempt to mitigate the harm the artifact could cause, something she had not known for certain. The beast had seen the way to render this artifact mostly innocuous, just as Ariana had, and had shown itself to be an ally of sorts.

  A fae of average power would have to keep the artifact the beast had crafted for weeks before it had an appreciable effect on his magic. So much the beast had managed.

  She lost track of time, so tired she did not realize that it meant the beast had come to help. When she came to herself, she held a silver bird in her hand and just enough magic in her body to tell that it was an artifact, sealed and done. But she could not tell if she had accomplished her purpose or not.

  She cupped the little silver bird in her hands, trembling with fatigue, as the walls trembled around her. This was her father’s house, and it did not take joy in those who would work against him.

  “It is done,” sh
e told Haida, who was hovering nearby. “Can you tell if it is for good or ill? I have burnt out my magic in its making.”

  “Leave the silver bird,” said Haida. “It will distract him, and much good may it do him. I am not such as you to read an artifact. You have done what you could. Come, let us leave this place before it collapses apurpose. Underhill is no longer stable, and it is angry with us.”

  “Underhill is angry with the sidhe and not your kind,” corrected Ariana tiredly, though she staggered to her feet. “Though my father’s home is not best pleased with the two of us, that is also true.”

  Underhill had been necessary for her work. Magic did not lend itself to complicated things in the Outside, the land that now belonged to the short-lived, magic-blind folk.

  “Underhill does not concern itself with sidhe or not,” grumbled Haida, steadying Ariana when she would have fallen. “Only fae and not fae. And the fae are failing it, allowing the humans to bind what was not meant to be bound.”

  The hobgoblin was a great deal stronger than she looked, which was useful under the circumstances. But she was tired, too, so their travel was slow. If they could get out of her father’s lands before he returned with his hounds, they might have a chance at eluding him for a short while.

  But Ariana knew there would be no real escape. Artifact or no, it was her destruction that her father craved. So when the ground warned her, the trees whispering his name as flowers trembled—and then his horn sounded, summoning his hounds—she was not overcome with dismay. She would have had to have some hope to feel dismayed.

  “We are finished,” she told Haida, feeling fear rise like bile even without the magic of his hounds touching her. That he called to them meant that he must have found a way to win them back. “You need to flee.”

  The hobgoblin snarled at her.

  “Do not make me make it an order,” Ariana said—but it was already too late, for either of them.