“Has she?” Eanrin had only ever been one place before that was burned so badly. He hated to say, even to think it. But it was true nonetheless. “I could believe I stood once more in Etalpalli.”
But Mouse did not know that name. She turned as first the Chronicler and then Alistair completed the long climb and stood panting, bent over, runnels of sweat cutting through the caked dirt on their faces.
“Well,” said the Chronicler when at last he’d caught his breath, “here we are. What now?”
Mouse couldn’t understand him, so she turned to the cat instead. “Come, we must hurry.” And she started across the plain, her gaze fixed upon the red light of the tower as firmly as it had ever fixed upon the gleam of Cé Imral.
The cat hesitated. “Stay close to me,” he said to the other two. “We’ll keep after her for the moment, but don’t get out of my sight, do you hear?”
“What a dreadful place,” Alistair said, gazing with disgust at the plain around them. “How can anyone live here?”
“They can’t,” said the cat. “They die here.”
The Chronicler shaded his eyes against the sun, staring in the direction Mouse was hastening. “Is that a storm cloud?” he asked.
The other two looked.
Then Eanrin screamed.
Such a sound cannot be made in the throat of a man or even of a cat, but only by a strange blend of the two. Fear and rage and animal instinct combined.
“Back! Back, back!” he cried, taking his man’s form and grabbing both Alistair and the Chronicler by their shoulders. “Back down, into the Wood!”
The darkness swept across the sky. “Mouse!” Alistair cried, shaking free of Eanrin’s grasp even as the cat-man dragged them toward the edge of the gorge. “She’s too far ahead; she can’t hear you!”
“It doesn’t matter! Get back, hurry!”
But Alistair paid no heed. He darted out across the plain, hurrying after Mouse, shouting her name. “Dragon-eaten fool,” Eanrin snarled.
“What is it?” The Chronicler, his face white, struggled to turn, to see.
“It’s the Midnight,” said Eanrin. “The Midnight of the Black Dogs. She sent them for us!”
5
I AM A FAERIE QUEEN; it matters not that I gave up that title and that name. Though I reject it, queenship does not reject me. So I am gifted with three lives.
I woke in a dark place, deep in my new Father’s realm. The Netherworld, the kingdom of Death-in-Life, my true Father. He sat upon a skeletal throne and watched as I struggled to breathe and felt the flame of my inner furnace course into my limbs once more.
“Well done, daughter,” he said. “You nearly killed that little knight. But not quite. Your rending claws succeeded in filling him with poison, but not enough to end his life. See if you can’t do a better job of it this time. I need both him and his brother dead.”
“So will they be, Father!” I replied, and I returned to the Near World.
It looked like an oncoming storm rolling in from the sea. But there was no wind, Alistair noticed as he hurtled after Mouse, who was a good distance ahead of him. The air was thick and sluggish, without movement. He heard Eanrin’s shouting behind him, but he didn’t turn.
“Mouse!” he cried. Though he was certain she heard him, she did not turn, but her pace slowed and then stopped. She stood stock-still, her head tilted to the sky as the darkness rushed down upon them. Alistair put on a burst of speed and drew alongside her. “Mouse, we’ve got to take shelter!” he said, though he knew she wouldn’t understand him.
In the quickly fading light, he saw her face. It had gone chalky, and her lips moved in that familiar prayer of hers.
“Fire burn!”
He whirled about, gazing up into the darkness; there were no clouds to be seen in all the vast stretch. It was the darkness of night that slapped down hard upon this world, nearly knocking him from his feet with its suddenness.
Howling filled the air. Mouse screamed, but the sound was lost in dissonance, in the haunting cry of the hunt. Alistair, thrown so swiftly from daylight into darkness, was blinded.
But in his blindness, he saw.
The Dogs.
The darkness.
Where was the child?
No! Don’t look for the child! This was no dream! Where was Mouse?
He lashed out, both striking at the dark and searching for her. He screamed her name, but nothing could be heard above that demonic din of voices born of wind and fire and emptiness. He thought he felt Mouse’s fingers brush his.
Then red eyes blazed through the dark. Four red eyes, and two great red mouths that howled darkness and flame, creatures bigger than horses, bearing down upon the two helpless mortals on the plain. There was only Death and Midnight and the hollow, empty longing of the Black Dogs baying across the worlds.
———
Then they were gone.