***Quick update: turns out vacation is a lot like work, in that I have places to go and people to see and my in-law thinks it weird when I take my laptop along in the car. So it'll be a little longer before I post the piece. Sorry, dahlings, I'll finish it and get it up as fast as possible. Today we're going to an aquarium, tomorrow we're off to the firing range, because what is more American than shooting guns on Independence Day? Nothing, that's what!
Oof.
Well, it's been a long damn week. We moved out of our apartment and are now bumming sleepspace off friends until the house in the mountains is finished. Boulder is less on fire than before, which is nice. I haven't finished the first installment of the Pandora sequel yet, but it'll be fun once it's done. I have an idea for a rotating POV: Cody, Jonah, Garrett. It starts from Cody's perspective and picks up with them on their way to visit Garrett's family on Paradise, which you know is going to be exciting:) I'll try to finish it tomorrow, although it won't get posted until the day after since I'll be traveling.
Yes, it's finally vacation time! We're going to Florence (Oregon, not Italy *sigh*) to see an in-law. There are three complete sets of in-laws on my man's side, it's kind of hard to juggle them all, but this time his dad won out. We'll get to see fireworks (Boulder's were cancelled), we'll get to eat real seafood (as opposed to Krabmeat or trout), we'll get to chill for a while...as long as I don't leave the guys alone together too often, all shall be well.
But I feel guilty leaving you all with nothing in the meantime. I mentioned a while back that I was submitting a story to a TEB anthology. Joy for me, it was accepted, so I'll give you a snippet of that to tide you over until I can dedicate some serious love to my laptop. This isn't the beginning of the story, but I hope it doesn't confuse too much.
***
Inside
the fortress of the Winter Fae, Oberon’s stronghold, the air was always
cold. Every breath spread like a plume
of smoke through the air, and even the fires that lined the walls of the throne
room crackled with an icy blue glow.
Outside the fortress, the cold was so intense that it could kill without
the precaution of a warming draught. For
a human, who was very rarely offered such fairy magic, it meant there was a lot
for him to do to become weather-worthy before he stepped outside towards the
kennels.
Thick
layers of clothes wrapped Dis from head to foot, culminating in a headpiece
that left only his eyes exposed, and those recessed within a heavy swathe of
cloth. He took great care to continue
blinking, so his eyes didn’t freeze, and kept his breaths shallow. Once he was inside the kennels it was a
little better, but they were set apart from Oberon’s main castle, at the very
edge of the wall that separated Court lands from the wildness beyond it.
The
pale, watery sun had barely begun to make its presence felt on the horizon, and
the frozen ground cracked familiarly beneath Dis’ feet as he trudged across the
courtyard. The kennels were partially
underground, and as he shivered he actually longed for the somewhat fetid heat
that he was headed toward. At least
there was heat to be had there. Nothing
so nice as what he’d left behind, but Dis wasn’t here to be indulged, as Sable
so often reminded him. The space between
his shoulder blades still ached slightly from her last strike, happily
open-palmed and less likely to damage him than when she curled his fingers into
a fist or a claw. Sable, like all fae,
was much stronger than Dis, and she delighted in showing him just how great the
disparity between them was whenever she thought of it.
Such
blows came so often that they weren’t worth mentioning to Marten, and when he
was in the fae’s arms Dis was so content that he forgot the injuries. Still, he thought Marten might have seen the
shadow of pain in his face that morning, because he was uncommonly somber.
“You
must remember to stay back,” he said as he watched Dis eat the simple meal he’d
brought in the night before. “Let the
hounds do their job, don’t try to interfere.
A boar is more intelligent prey than it first appears, and this is the
emperor of such animals. It will be a
hunt to draw blood, for certain.”
“Then
the Court will be pleased,” Dis remarked flatly, brushing crumbs of sweet bread
from his fingers.
“Some
of the Court certainly will,” Marten agreed.
“Hunts present the greatest chance for upward mobility in the ranks of
the Unseelie. A slip here, a chance
branch there…there is no telling what accidents may befall an unwary
rider. So be sure you don’t get in the
way of any deliberate applications of bad luck.”
“I’m
not worth the trouble,” Dis assured him.
Marten didn’t reply, just smoothed a hand over his own dark hair in a
gesture that Dis had seen whenever he dealt with Sable, which meant he was more
deeply disturbed than he was letting on.
Dis left to ready the hounds, and Marten went to wake his sister.
The
Hounds of Oberon lived below ground in an enclosure that protected them from
the worst of the harsh weather. Above
their pens was a long, low building with a gate in the center of it and ramps
on either side. Let out on one side, the
hounds would enter a spacious run where they were trained and exercised. The other side led to a door that connected
to the forest, where the Court would be waiting in less than an hour. It was barely enough time to do what needed
to be done, but Dis was a fast worker.
Oberon
maintained a pack of the twelve strongest and fiercest hounds for the
hunt. There were others, but the bitches
were kept apart and the young ones that didn’t make the cut were
unceremoniously killed and fed to the others.
That was work for the butcher, not Dis, but since he had taken over
working the kennels he had slowed the hounds’ breeding to a standstill, to
reduce the senseless waste of life. One
of his earliest memories of Sable was the sight of her torturing a puppy, one
of the “spares,” and it had haunted him his whole life. Dis was well aware of the fact that he could
have ended up a spare, that the other children taken at the same time as him
had died. No more changelings had been
brought to the Unseelie Court since his arrival, although occasionally adult
humans were brought in and toyed with.
Sometimes they were sent back after a brief time, and
sometimes…sometimes Sable got them. And
then they never went home.
Dis
walked down the ramp into the kennel, closing off the gate that would let them
into the run as he did. It smelled rank
in the kennel; it always did, no matter how he cleaned up after them, but he
had grown used to it. He lit a torch and
carried it below, and as soon as he rounded the corner the hounds began to bay. Rightfully he should be feeding them now,
gristly hunks of raw meat leftover from the Court’s latest feast, but Oberon
liked his hounds to be on edge and vicious before a hunt, and that meant no
feeding. Occasionally that hunger
prompted them to go after a courtier on horseback before the hunt even began,
but that too was only cause for amusement.
Dis
walked slowly past the pens, glancing in at each beast to see that they were
well, and had done no harm to themselves during the night. The hounds were huge, with a square muzzle
full of sharp teeth and shaggy white coats that let them blend into the ice and
snow. When they stood on their hind legs
they were taller than Dis, and even on all fours he could look the largest of
them in the eye. Each hound slept in a
separate stall to reduce their propensity for cannibalism, and each one was
barking raucously now, confused and upset when Dis walked by without giving
them their breakfast.
Well,
every hound except one. In the last
stall was Dis’ particular favorite, the youngest of the hunting pack. They weren’t meant to be given names, a fate
that Dis commiserated with, and so he had broken that tradition and called the
new pup Ciurlen, one of the few words he remembered from his youth. Dis didn’t remember what it meant, but he
liked the sound of it. As a puppy
Ciurlen had been sweet and affectionate, almost too affectionate, and Dis had
been afraid the hound would need to be put down for its tender attitude. He later discovered that apparently Ciurlen
was only affectionate with him, and disliked his packmates enough that he
vigorously lashed out at them when given the opportunity. It was a little funny, to Dis, how closely
the fae hounds resembled their masters when it came to their social structure.
“Hey,
pup.” He stopped in front of Ciurlen’s
stall and pulled out a small piece of dried meat, left over from his own
breakfast. The hound padded over eagerly
and licked it off Dis’ palm, then whined for more. “I’m sorry, that’s it for today. Your king wants your fierce for the Solstice
hunt.” Even as he said it, Dis heard the
distant blow of the horn. Oh hells, the
king was ready to begin and Dis had barely begun his work.
There
were different methods for preparing the hounds for whatever task was before
them. Before a breeding, Dis layered the
run with the scent of one of the fertile bitches. For a hunt, he took a piece of whatever he
had salvaged from their last kill and dragged it along the ground and outside,
until the scent reached the gate. The
hounds would follow it, and there Dis would let them scent the next prey they
were set on. In this case he didn’t have
a sample, but on the Solstice it was customary for Oberon to do the baiting.
In
a storeroom in the back of the kennel lay a long shard of elephant bone. Hastily Dis grabbed it, let one end rest
against the floor and then ran up the ramp, the hounds baying mightily as he
passed them. He ran through the building
and into the frosted air, felt his lungs instantly seize but he couldn’t slow
down, not if he wanted to live. The door
to the forest was fairly close. He
reached it, dropped the bone and then began to run back. As he entered the kennel he heard the horn
sound a second time. If it sounded a
third time, Dis knew that Sable would construe his tardiness as offensive, and
Dis had barely survived the last time Sable had disciplined him for being
offensive. Panting harshly, Dis reached
the first stall and flipped the latch.
The hound burst free, almost trampling him, but it obediently followed
the scent trail. He flipped latches and
opened doors as fast as he could, and hoped that the rising noise of the pack
would persuade the king to be patient.
Ciurlen
was the last one Dis set free, and instead of running ahead the hound ran with
him, up the ramp and out to the wailing pack, who had already demolished the
shard of bone and were baying ravenously at the door. Dis shouldered his way through him, grateful
for all the time he had spent convincing the dogs that he was not food, and went through the door,
slamming it shut behind him. Then he
turned and faced the waiting Court and immediately dropped to one knee, bowing
his head. Looking upon the Unseelie en
masse was enough to cow the boldest warriors.
They
were beautiful, these creatures, his owners, but they had a fierceness to them
that was undeniable. They were all sharp
lines and deadly curves, every emotion honed to disturb, every word ringing
with dominance. Marten made an effort to
speak to Dis on his own terms, but the other fae used every art in their possession
to seek the upper ground. They were
nearly impossible to disobey, and Oberon, their king, was the most charismatic
and powerful of them all.
He
sat astride his great grey stallion, his face carved as though from ivory, his
hair falling like sunlight around his shoulders. Oberon was the only one of them who looked
light instead of dark, but his darkness was all inside. Dis simply knelt and held his breath, waiting
for judgment. He heard a low chuckle
from somewhere to the right: Sable. The
sound made him shiver.
Something
crashed to the ground in front of him.
“The bait,” Oberon said. Dis
chanced a look at it. The bait was an
enormous hide, with bristles so thick and sharp they might have come from a
porcupine. The trotters and scalp were
still attached, and Dis could make out the jagged eye sockets, surrounded by
thick, protective skin. It smelled of
musk and rot and old dry blood.
“Release
my hounds.”
