Gossamyr. Michele Hauf
her toes. Together, the legs of the creature attacked. Sweeping her staff low, she dashed it across the anklebones, sending them crashing against the marble embrasures. Reduced to dust on impact, the shattered bone glinted as it floated to the tower floor.
“What in all of Faery is it?” Gossamyr called as she swung and caught a disembodied arm with the tip. Fingers clenched the end of her staff. Shake as she might, the evil fist clung. “Shinn?”
Residue from the crushed creature glimmered in a mist about Shinn as his sabre obliterated the wings. “A revenant!” the implacable fée called.
Ill clad for battle, Shinn’s everyday vestments of flowing arachnagoss tunic and elaborately stitched hosen would not protect him from injury. But he did not waver, instead standing proud and defying the thing with a swing of his sabre. He dived to avoid the other arm as it sailed toward him, fingers fisted.
“Let me to it!” Gossamyr cried. An audacious smile crooked her mouth. She had trained for this sort of challenge. Opportunity had finally fallen to her. “I’ve been craving some fight.”
She rushed the attacking arm and connected wood to bone in a hollow crack. “Yes!”
The return swing of her staff proved the attack had not jarred the creepy passenger. Gossamyr slammed the carved applewood upon the tower floor. Finger bones gave loose, but as quickly, scrambled across her toes and gripped her ankle, shaking her off balance. She landed the marble floor with a jaw-loosening dumpf. A skeletal hand scurried up her leg and over her hip moving farther.
Wheezing breaths gasped from her mouth. Dropping her staff, Gossamyr clutched the hand that squeezed about her throat. Probing fingertips threatened to pierce her flesh. She struggled to wrestle the thing off, but it possessed strength immeasurable. It was futile to fight, to kick at the air and pray she connected with some part of an attacker that just wasn’t there.
A murky blackness muddied her thoughts. Shinn—where was he? Needles of numbness loosened her grip on the hand. Her shoulders dropped. She could see nothing, smell not the scent of fresh morning dew and lush rose oil, nor sense the smooth polish of the marble beneath her fingers. An angry peacock mewl echoed Gossamyr’s longing to cry out.
As death crept closer one final sound summoned her audacious smile. The shrill of finely honed obsidian cutting through bone.
ONE
High above the lush cypress and laburnum treetops that encircled the curtain wall Gossamyr followed her father through the carved marble loggia. The castle she had lived in all her life nested at the peak of the Spiral forest as if a bloom upon a verdant bouquet. Pendulous yellow flowers hung heavily on the laburnum that grew only at the top of the forest, contrasting marvelously with the castle. The blue marble was deeply veined with streaks of midnight and palest sky; it mimicked both day and night and shimmered with a fée dust of the ages.
The village of Glamoursiège fit like a twist about the marble screw of the Spiral. Blue marble segued to granite and finally to sand at its lowest where it met the grounds in a mire of marsh and reticulated tree roots. For the entirety was laced with the roots of cypress, ash and hornbeam. The Edge—very few places where the trees did not grow—was ever to be avoided, at least by the un-winged ones.
“I can do this, Shinn! You cannot deny I am the only one able.”
Shinn moved swiftly toward the south tower, speaking his impatience with his strides. “Many are capable,” he called back to Gossamyr.
“Capable, yes,” Gossamyr had to agree.
Faery worked counter to the Otherside, and a war of almost one hundred mortal years had been keeping the mortals to blood and wrath, while Faery enjoyed fellowship and peace. Tribe Glamoursiège had been formed of trooping warriors before the great Peace, a Peace that had existed since long before Gossamyr’s birth.
How long? Time indeterminable, Shinn often answered when Gossamyr would question, for Time was of no concern to the fée.
Though Faery claimed Peace there were still the occasional rises amongst the various tribes. Shinn’s troops were indeed capable and, with the recent arrival of the revenants, increasingly vigilant.
Gossamyr picked up her pace, as well her confidence. “If not for this very challenge, what then has all my training been for? Naught? I am as skilled as any in your troop, male or female.”
“Child of mine, you know well you have been groomed to sit the Glamoursiège throne,” Shinn said over his shoulder. “It is not an idle, benevolent woman who can rule in my absence, but one who possesses all the martial skills I have taught you, and the mind for diplomacy, honor and valor.”
“I will not neglect my duties to Glamoursiège, but…I want this, Shinn. It is such an opportunity!” She hurried up beside him. Where did he go in such a hurry?
“Convince me it wise to send my daughter on such a singular and dangerous quest.”
Ah, there, he had not given an unequivocal no. This gave Gossamyr hope.
“Your fée warriors will not survive the Red Lady’s seductive allure. As you’ve told me, she seduces Disenchanted fée into her clutches. They have not the fortitude to resist!”
Any fée who left Faery for the Otherside risked Disenchantment. Necessary trips to the mortal realm were swift, coached in the knowledge that glamour dissipates quickly and Time could not be trusted. A risky venture for a fée warrior.
A risk chosen by some.
There were those rogue fée, who, seduced by the lure of the mortal, and that intricate city called Paris, chose to remain on the Otherside. To stay meant sure Disenchantment; a condition that saw the fée completely drained of glamour, and often they lost their wings to a shriveling malady attributed to the baneful touch from a mortal. Enchantment gone, they became nothing more than a shell that survived as any mortal. Return to Faery was difficult but not impossible. But never again could the Disenchanted regain Enchantment whole.
Of course, one did not have to be fée to fall under the seductive spell of the Otherside. Gossamyr had lost her mother to the mortal passion ten midsummers earlier. The lure of the unknown was ever beguiling, but Veridienne de Wintershinn had always known the Otherside, for she had been mortal complete.
Shinn stopped abruptly, causing his daughter to collide against his back. Savoring the faintest scent of hyacinth that marked her father, Gossamyr stepped back.
The south tower overlooked a riot of white roses and speckled foxglove in the gardens below. Overhead, the carved marble openwork cast a lattice of shadows across Shinn’s tightened jaw. His blazon, an iridescent tribal marking, curled down his chin and neck and across his upper chest, and shimmered in the blocked patches of sunlight. Glamoursiège blazons showed on neck and upper extremities; placement varied from tribe to tribe.
For all his stern posture and commanding demeanor—even the recent announcement that his marshal at arms should marry Gossamyr—Shinn would ever occupy a soft place in Gossamyr’s heart. All planes and hard slopes his face, only in his eyes could she ever find compassion. And such a find was a rarity to be hoarded. Shinn’s manner switched from cool to disinterested, and then suddenly to genuine concern with such ease. One moment he was gentle and attentive, the next, the battle commander wore a fierce mien. Gossamyr had not known him to be any other way. Attribute to his trying history, she could only assume. They had both loved and lost. Love being one of those mutable words the fée toyed with in exchange for lust, hunger or envy.
“I listened last night to the council’s discussion,” she said. Shinn required she sit as a silent member at council, for her future demanded she take an active role in Glamoursiège matters. “The revenants’ presence in Faery increases. But I was surprised to learn about the rift.” She bent to meet Shinn’s straying gaze. “It has never before been discussed by council. Why did you not tell me of it sooner?”
“It is just something that is…known. The rift has existed since before your birth.”
“That