Shaeonyn
“Look! Look at Aislynn! Look what she is doing now!”
The laughter rains down all around me, suffused into my tears, which only seems to make the crowd howl all the louder with ridicule. I am not dancing the dance that the crowd expected of me as I move to a music that is all my own. My feet bleed from the shoes that I wear and I cry out in horrible pain but the crowd beyond the bright globes of light blazing in my eyes finds my positions comical and my dance an awkward travesty. No matter how hard I try, my fluttering is agonizingly inept and my steps on the stage faltering and wrong. Each more careful move only pushes me into another of the dancers that encircle me, wrenching my feet in the terrible shoes and sending a lightning bolt of pain up my legs.
The dancers around me are faeries clad in dark colors, their wings a smoky gray, their faces all hidden behind ornate masks of steel. They are eyeless, dancing blindly behind the masks, their hands linking them in a circle moving around me. Their movements are different from my own and no matter how carefully I move, I keep colliding with them. Each time I do, they scream at me in outrage, and their voices pierce me to the bone.
Yet I cannot stop the dance, for to do so will, I know, anger the crowd. They would destroy me in their hatred and not me alone; for I do not dance for myself but for the others who are also on the stage anxiously watching me and knowing somehow that everything depends upon me.
Then, as I struggle onward, dancing through my own sobs and tears, the circle around me breaks, dancing away from me across the stage and forming once more around a dancer whose movements are like their own.
“Please,” I call out into the darkness beyond the lights. “Please let me stop!”
But the crowd laughs all the more at me—and my shoes keep forcing me to dance painfully on . . .
FAERY TALES BRONZE CANTICLES, TOME VIII, FOLIO 3, LEAF 23
“Aislynn,” a voice came from the darkness. “It is time for you to wake up.”
“Why—what is it?” Aislynn asked, still groggy from sleep.
“You must get dressed,” Shaeonyn said simply.
“Why? What is the matter?” the Princess asked as she sat up in her bed in the captain’s cabin. She blinked, trying to see. A thin line of morning light could be seen outside the windows to the rear of the cabin but it was not yet sufficient to illuminate the pools of night in the corners of the compartment. It took her eyes a moment to focus in the darkness.
“Where is everyone else?” Aislynn yawned. The other bunks were empty.
“They are all waiting on us, Princess,” Shaeonyn said flatly.
“Oh.” Aislynn wondered how it was she had not heard them rise. She stood up, pulling her nightgown over her head. She quickly tugged on her breeches and reached for her gown, yanking it on over her head. She reached around for the back panel between her wings and started lacing it up on the right side as she spoke. “Has something unforeseen happened?”
“No,” Shaeonyn replied. “Nothing unforeseen.”
Aislynn nodded, lacing up the other side of the panel. There was something changed in their surroundings but she was having trouble grasping it fully. It suddenly came to her. “We’ve stopped! Have we arrived?”
“Yes.” Shaeonyn smiled. “We most certainly have.”
“Wonderful!” The Princess beamed, pressing her feet into her traveling boots. “That’s so much sooner than expected!”
Shaeonyn only smiled. “There is only a little time left to us, Aislynn . . .”
The Princess did not hear her. She reached up out of habit to brush her fingers across the pearls at her neck . . .
The pearls!
Aislynn’s eyes went suddenly wide. She turned at once, her hands flying through the bedclothes on the bunk, pulling the blanket free. She ran her hands once across the boards. She turned around twice, her eyes darting all around the deck. “They’re gone!” she cried. “Where are they? They must be here! Where could they have gone?”
“They have gone here,” Shaeonyn said, pulling back the high collar on her tunic.
The black pearls lay around her neck.
“Give them to me,” Aislynn demanded, her hand reaching out at once for them.
Shaeonyn, however, was ready for her. Her right hand flicked upward, the air suddenly igniting in front of the senior Sharajin. Aislynn fell backward against the bunk rail, knocked nearly off her feet from the blast of heated air.
“Take the counsel of one who is far better trained in the arts of the vision,” Shaeonyn said calmly, her beautiful eyes bright as she spoke. “You and the other Fae representatives of this ill-conceived quest are jeopardizing my mission here. The others are merely inconvenient, but you are worse; you are untrained, soft, and spoiled—a danger to yourself and others. This, truly, was foreseen, and now the political necessity of your attendance has ended.”
“This was never part of Dwynwyn’s plan nor—” Aislynn stopped abruptly. “But you aren’t in the service of Dwynwyn, are you? This is not Dwynwyn’s mission that you are fulfilling, is it?”
Shaeonyn spoke. “Take only what you think absolutely necessary. It’s a long way.”
“Who are you working for?” Aislynn was furious.
Shaeonyn held her silence.
“Who do you serve?” Aislynn screamed. Without conscious thought, she pushed both her hands out in front of her. Darts of ice formed in the air, ripping instantly toward the treacherous Seeker. Shaeonyn crossed her hands in front of her face, light pooling suddenly in front of her and its heat nearly vaporizing the shards as they flew to their mark. One of the darts slipped through, however, cutting deeply into her perfect cheek. A bright line of blood suddenly marred her flawless complexion. Shaeonyn cried out from the pain, falling to her knees as her hand reached up to press against the wound.
The door to the cabin flew open. Bachas leaped toward Aislynn but the faery was too quick for him. She pressed upward with her wings against the ceiling just as the Mantacorian reached for her. Bachas slammed against the bunk, smashing the side rails, and tumbled to the floor.
Aislynn saw Djukan and several more Mantacorians struggling to come through the door. She turned at once, flicking her hand. The heavy door to the cabin swung back, slamming against Djukan’s fingers holding the door frame. He cried out but his hand kept the door from latching shut.
Aislynn spun in the air to face Shaeonyn once more but a large hand suddenly closed around her neck. She struggled for a moment but its grip was like steel and as cold as a mountain stream before the thaw. It pulled her down from the ceiling with brute force. Aislynn looked up with dismay into a familiar face.
“Deython,” she rasped.
“Your Highness,” answered the Commander of the Dead, his powerful grip still firm on her delicate throat. “Please do not struggle.”
“But you can’t do this,” she said, tears streaming down her face. “You’re mine.”
“No longer, Your Highness,” Deython intoned sadly. “No longer.”
“This is an outrage!” Gosrivar bellowed as Aislynn was dragged up onto the quarterdeck, gripped painfully from behind by Captain Bachas. “I demand to know the meaning of this!”
The Kyree guards were all on deck, each with a drawn sword facing the faeries, and there was a line of Mantacorian archers with their bows waiting just behind them as well. Everyone was facing the faeries with grim determination as Bachas shoved Aislynn unceremoniously from behind out across the quarterdeck toward Obadon, Valthesh, and Gosrivar, who were all standing against the aft railing. Obadon was tense, his fists alternately clenching tightly and unclenching in his rage and frustration. Valthesh was quiet and contemplative, her wild hair blowing in the slight breeze. Gosrivar was nearly purple with indignation.
“Djukan!” Aislynn said quickly. “You’ve got to stop this!”
“I’m sorry, Princess,” the Kyree leader replied as he climbed to the quarterdeck and stood next to Bachas. His voice was heavy and thoughtful. “I have little choice left in the matter. At least one of them has been harboring a terrible secret that jeopardizes this mission—indeed, we suspect several of you of conspiring to commit murder.”
“Impossible!” Obadon said flatly, his anger simmering in his eyes.
“The Fae are incapable of lying,” Gosrivar snapped. “That’s entirely a Famadorian failing.”
“Yet not incapable of scheming against one of your own,” Djukan said quickly, “for events have proven otherwise. One or more of the four of you most certainly assassinated Ularis; a fact we have known since leaving port. The body was found and the matter was brought to me directly as soon as we returned from town.”
“Then why include me in your accusation?” Aislynn asked. “I was with you that night in Kel Cliff and, as you no doubt recall, certainly in no condition after that to have committed such an unspeakable act!”
“Certainly not afterward—but quite possibly before. Ularis’s flesh had long grown cold,” Djukan returned. “You could well have killed him before we left that night. Indeed, we have evidence that Ularis specifically set out to find you after you left camp that night. In any event, where we are going we cannot afford to bring a murdering faery along nor have we the ability to return to the faery lands and sort out this entire mess. One of the four of you did the deed—if not more than one—and that makes whoever did this doubly dangerous.”
“So what do you propose to do about it?” Valthesh asked calmly, her arms crossed defiantly in front of her.
“Leave you here to sort it out among yourselves,” Bachas said with a sharp-toothed grin. “We all discussed it and it seemed like the most polite thing to do.”
“Leave us? Leave us where?” Aislynn asked, gesturing at the sea.
“Why, where else?” Bachas smiled and pointed off the port-side beam. Aislynn looked to her left. Against the horizon she could see low, dark green mounds rising out of the sea.
“The Wingless Isles,” Djukan said. “The Kyree used this place to exile its most violent offenders from all over the empire. They are actually a group of islands in a long chain, but not one of their shores is close enough to any other land for even the strongest of the Kyree to fly the distance all at once—let alone the delicate Fae.”
“The wind is freshening,” Bachas advised Djukan as his eyes searched the rigging overhead. “We had best hurry this along, if you please.”
“My men and, for that matter, Bachas’s crew are prepared to kill you if you attempt to return to this ship or try resisting us in any way,” Djukan said in warning. “Your only hope—like many others before you—is to Walk the Sky.”
“Walk the—what?” Aislynn asked incredulously.
“It’s an ancient tradition of the Kyree actually,” Sargo said as he examined his map most carefully. “Kyree agitators, mutineers, traitors, and criminals have been marooned by this same rite for centuries.”
“This is not to be borne!” Gosrivar stammered.
“Fly straight north—keep the rising sun on your right,” Sargo said, “and you should be able to see a tiny spot of land jutting upward from the middle of some nasty reefs about twelve miles away.”
“Twelve miles!” Gosrivar gasped.
“That’s Merlock Atoll,” Sargo continued as he once more consulted his map, “and you would be well advised to rest there. There is no food, no water, and no shade on the atoll, but it is fully another ten miles to the north before you’ll encounter Chytree Island. That’s the main island in the group and where most of the penal settlements were located.”
“And just how will the criminals of the Kyree welcome four faery ambassadors?” Valthesh asked in tones that dripped sarcasm.
“They won’t,” Sargo chuckled. “We anchored among these islands when we fled the fall of the empire. Whatever happened to the Kyree mainland happened here as well. There will be no welcome—warm or otherwise—for there is no one left there to greet you.”
“We’re wasting time,” Djukan spat. “We will return for you as soon as it is feasible to do so, but—as Shaeonyn has aptly pointed out—for now this mission is too important to endanger it with unnecessary and dangerous unknowns.”
Aislynn glanced around her. She had to do something! She searched within herself and found the magic there, burning as it gathered within her. She concentrated, her mind shifting through different thoughts and dreams, images and connections for just the right combination that would somehow take shape and make everything right.
“Oraclyn-loi!” Shaeonyn had come up from the cabin at last. “Do not show your foolishness in an act that will get you and others killed. You are untrained and have only a minor talent for the vision. You are no match for me and certainly no match for the Guardians of the Dead whom I now command. You know this is true.”
Aislynn turned to the young Kyree lord. “Djukan, you’re making a terrible mistake.”
Djukan shook his head sadly. “No, Princess. You were among those who did not answer my questions.”
Aislynn eyed the Sharajin with bitter hatred, her black pearls draped around Shaeonyn’s neck. “But it was you who told me to hold my silence!”
“No, Lord Djukan,” Shaeonyn said evenly. “I did no such thing. She lies.”
Aislynn gazed on the Sharajin in shocked disbelief.
“But,” Sargo stammered. “I though you said that the Fae cannot lie.”
“That is true.” Shaeonyn took a step toward her Oraclyn-loi, eyeing her critically. “But if this one has somehow acquired the ability then she would be doubly dangerous to us and our quest.”
Aislynn looked at Djukan. The Kyree lord’s face was set, his mind made up. The weapons of all the ship’s crew and the Kyree were against them, but none of this was as terrifying to her as the fact that her Sharajin-loi had lied. She alone knew it in that moment—and feared that the knowledge would die with her.
“Go now,” Shaeonyn commanded, as cool as the morning breeze. “This is no place for a princess to die.”
Aislynn considered this for a moment—then smiled.
“You are quite right, Shaeonyn,” she said. “This is no place for either of us to die.”
With that Aislynn flapped her wings and rose from the deck—heading across the waters with the rising sun off her right hand.