Silver Borne (Mercy Thompson #5)(66)
Author: Patricia Briggs

The long silver gown the queen had been wearing was real enough, but there were dark brown stains that might have been old blood on the hem and near her wrists. The necklace she wore, which had looked like a silver-and-diamond waterfall, was of tarnished black metal, and the set stones were uncut.

My first sight of the great hall she led us to was jaw-dropping, if only for ostentatiousness. The floors were white marble shot with gray and silver, and pillars of green jade rose gracefully to support an arching ceiling that would not have looked out of place at the Notre Dame Cathedral. Silver trees with jade leaves grew out of the marble floor and shivered, disturbed by a wind I could not feel. When the leaves knocked together, they chimed musically. Graceful benches carved out of pale and dark woods, like a wooden chess set, were placed artfully around the room, occupied by lovely women and beautiful men, who all looked at us when we entered the room.

At the far side of the hall there was a raised dais with a silver throne, delicately made and decorated with gems of green and red, each as big as my hand. Curled up next to the chair was a cat that looked like a small cheetah until it lifted its head, displaying huge ears. Serval, I thought, or something that looked a lot like the medium-sized African hunting cat. But I didn’t smell a cat: the whole room smelled of rotting wood and dying things.

And then the room I was walking through wasn’t a room at all.

I didn’t think there were any naturally occurring caves in this area. There are a few man-made caves because some of the wineries have carved their own caverns into the basalt to age their wines. Most of our geology is igneous, which allows for lava tubes, but no limestone caves like the ones in Carlsbad. I suppose magic, if it is strong enough, doesn’t care much about geology – because we were in a huge cave whose walls, ceiling, and floor were not stone but earth and roots.

The Elphame was magic made, but I wondered if it was the fairy queen’s magic that had created it. Ariana had looked at the tree roots in the cave Zee’s entrance had brought us to, and she said that there must be a forest lord about. Looking around, I thought she was right.

The floor was woven from tree roots – I had to look sharp not to trip and draw attention to myself again. The fairy queen’s throne was the only thing in the whole room that had not altered when I saw through the glamour. The pillars were thick roots hanging from the ceiling or bursting from the floor like living stalactites and stalagmites. The benches were formed of living wood, not so pretty as the queen’s illusions, but more beautiful.

Most of the fae in the room were not pretty – though there were a few as long as your tastes weren’t hung up on humanity as a standard for beauty. None of them looked like lords and ladies – Ariana and the fairy queen herself were the most human-appearing among them, and neither would have been able to walk into a store without everyone knowing that she was other.

I didn’t waste much time looking at the court fae, though. It was the creature that lay behind the fairy queen’s throne that caught my attention. It lay huge and still, like a great redwood cut down by the woodsman’s axe. It had bark and evergreen needles – but it also had four eyes as big as dinner plates that glowed like ruby glass lanterns. It was bound with iron chains that glittered with magic. I didn’t know what a forest lord looked like, but a giant tree with eyes seemed like a strong possibility.

Next to the throne was a middle-aged woman who had the strong features and coloring of the Mediterranean people – Greek or Italian or possibly even Turkish. She wore the collar I’d begun to associate with the fairy queen’s thralls, but she was also chained to the throne. My nose told me that somewhere among the fae, the humans, and the dying forest lord, there was a witch. I could see a witch being tough enough that the fairy queen would want more than just a silver ring around her throat to ensure she was controlled.

Among those who call themselves witches, there are various types. Least troublesome are the humans who have adopted Wicca as their religion. Some of them have a spark of power, enough to enrich their faith, but not so much to attract the attention of bigger and nastier things.

Then there are the white witches – people born to the witch families who have chosen to do no harm. Like the mundane-born witches, white witches are usually not very powerful – because witch magic gets its power from death, pain, and sacrifice, and white witches have chosen to eschew that.

Most witches of any power are black witches. They smell of it, some more than others. There are black witches who skirt the doing of actual evil. Elizaveta Arkadyevna, our pack’s witch, is one of those. She is very powerful as witches – even as black witches – go. But, as I understand it, skirting evil is difficult, time-consuming, and requires a lot more from a practitioner than true black magic does. It is so much easier to use the suffering of others to make magic, and the results are more predictable.

This witch – and as we closed toward the throne, the smell got stronger and stronger, making my supposition more and more likely – this witch stank of the blackest magic. In her neighborhood, pets and small children would go missing, and even the occasional homeless man. I was betting that the iron chains binding the forest lord were hers.

The room the others saw, for all its height, was not a terribly big one. The cave I could see was bigger, but almost half of it was taken up by the forest lord behind the throne. It didn’t take long for us to reach the dais.

The fairy queen sat on the edge of the seat of the silver throne and reached down to pet her witch – who didn’t seem to appreciate it much. The queen’s wings fluttered as she sat, then folded so she could lean against the back of the throne.

Her eyelids fluttered with a faint wrip-wrip sound. Once I was facing her, I could tell that her eyes were just . . . wrong. She would stare and stare, then blink rapidly. It was hard to watch.

"Jesse," she said. "Tell me your name?"

"Jessica Tamarind Hauptman," Jesse said, her voice not quite right.

"Jessica," said the queen. "Isn’t that a pretty name? Come sit at my feet, Jessica." She looked at me and smiled as Jesse did as she was bid.

The queen leaned forward to pet her head – Jesse seemed to appreciate it more than the witch had. "She is half-mine already," the queen told me. "Your young man, Gabriel, and I have already done this as well. Haven’t we?"

"Yes, my queen," he murmured tightly.

"I haven’t collared him because of our bargain, Mercedes Thompson, but while a human is in my presence, unless I suppress my magic, they belong to me. It was not smart of you to bring me another thrall." She patted Jesse one last time, then sat back. "But that is not all you brought into my Elphame. Tell me, Mercedes, how is it that you managed to bring not only a fae, but a wolf with you when you were not to speak of this to them?"