“The first significant mention of the Fae appears approximately one million years ago, although they existed long before that. Originally there was a single Light Court of Four Seasons. The Light King became dissatisfied with life at court, left and declared himself the Dark or Unseelie King. Sometime after that he met his mortal concubine, became obsessed with her and sought to make her immortal like him. Since the Song of Making was a matriarchal power, he had to petition the Light Queen to transform his lover. It was when the queen refused that everything began to go to hell.
“The Unseelie King retired to his dark kingdom, vowing to re-create the Song and make his lover immortal himself. The Unseelie or Dark Court was born as a result of his endless experiments. As far as I can tell, he spent roughly a quarter of a million years working on it. Again, approximate, I believe Cruce was born three-quarters of a million years ago, and was one of the last remaining Dark Court the king created.
“As you know, Cruce betrayed the king to the queen and told her what the king had been doing, about five hundred thousand years ago. Cruce wanted the Unseelie Court to roam freely in the world, mingling with the Seelie, which was forbidden by the king. The king knew what the queen would do if she discovered he’d created a Dark Court of his own, especially if she learned that the mortal lover she so despised was still alive, secreted away in a realm beyond time to keep her from aging.
“When the queen learned of the Dark Court’s existence, it started a war to end all wars. When Seelie and Unseelie clashed, they destroyed their own planet, splitting it down the middle. The unthinkable happened: the Unseelie King killed the Seelie Queen, before she was able to pass the Song of Making to her successor.
“The Song was all that kept the Fae powerful. They, alone, possessed that ancient melody of life.”
“No doubt, stolen somehow,” I said, unable to resist the acerbic comment. No god I believed in would have entrusted a thing of such power and beauty to such a shallow, power-hungry, ruthless race.
“As you’ve seen, the Song seeps into reality and replenishes fading magic. Once they lost the ancient melody, the Fae were doomed. Over time they would have grown weaker, until they vanished on the wind, with only legends of them remaining.”
“But when Mac used the Song to heal our world they were restored,” I said grimly.
“Precisely. What the melody didn’t destroy, it made stronger. As happened long ago in the mists of Time, the Song sank deep into the fabric of all things and crooned ‘Awaken.’ Another of Mac’s double-edged swords. That woman does tend to wreak havoc from time to time.”
I began to protest but he waved it away.
“I ken it, lass. She had no choice but to use the Song or the Cosmos itself would have been destroyed by the black holes. We’re lucky she was able to wield it, and I’m grateful. But no action is without consequence. Indeed, there are times the most desirable, correct, necessary action results in catastrophic consequences. We’re facing them now.
“Back to the timeline: Subsequent queens moved the Light Court from world to world, draining yet more power from the court each time they moved, desperately seeking a planet richly steeped in magic. They knew they were diminishing, bit by bit. Many of them drank from the Cauldron of Forgetting, to forget how powerful they’d once been, how weak they were becoming.
“Eventually, around two hundred thousand years ago, they discovered our world, which still pulsed with considerable magic. But it was already occupied by both gods and ancient man. It was a peaceful time on our planet before the Fae arrived. The gods were mostly benign and, although they occasionally warred among themselves, they cared for and tended the mortals who worshipped them and there was a strong bond between them.
“The Fae, deceitful bastards that they are, feigned far less power than they had, and begged sanctuary from the gods, claiming their world had been destroyed through no fault of their own. The gods, sensing no threat, gave the Fae a fair amount of land, and things were peaceful for a time.
“But the Fae were busy gathering intelligence, desperate to seize and rule our magic-rich world. They covertly studied the gods, seeking weaknesses. Their attack was patient, stealthy, and a shining example of slanted press on a global scale. They abducted the gods one by one, used their Fae glamour to impersonate them, and began punishing, torturing, and killing humans. To humans, it seemed their gods had turned on them.
“In kind, humans turned on their gods, and the gods that remained turned on their humans for betraying them—for refusing to listen when they tried to explain what the Fae had done. Then, the great, benevolent Fae finally stepped in to ‘rescue’ humans.
“The gods realized the Fae had been concealing their true power all along, but gods can’t penetrate the glamour of the Fae, and the Fae gathered up and killed most of the deities on our world, leaving a scattered handful of those too powerful to kill, or those who devised ways to elude their clutches.
“I’ve no idea how many remain but I’d wager a few hundred or so. Those gods they couldn’t figure out how to kill—unlike Fae, all gods can’t be killed by two commonly known weapons, each has one unique way they can die and it’s a tightly guarded secret—they captured and entombed them in the earth. They relinquished one of their most powerful shians or Fae mounds to use as a prison.
“For a long time the gods slumbered in the soil, faded to mere wisps of their former selves, but when the ancient Song was sung again, it awakened and released them from those tombs. The gods had learned from their mistakes. They came back weak, as mere shadows, and bided time as stealthily as the Fae once had, laying low, absorbing power from the newly reinvigorated Earth, until they were once again powerful. Only recently have they begun to show themselves.”
I murmured, “And they despise the Fae more than ever and plot their destruction.”
“Worse than that, Kat. They despise humans, too. They loathe both races and want both gone, and the odds aren’t quite so against them now. The first time the gods and Fae battled, sidhe-seers didn’t exist. The Fae weren’t on our world and there was no need for them. But now they do exist and the gods have an enormous advantage they once lacked. Before, they couldn’t have seen a Fae standing right next to them if it was glamoured as a human. With sidhe-seer watchdogs, they can.”
I shuddered. Was that where our twelve sidhe-seers had gone—abducted by gods? I knew better than to assure him that our sidhe-seers wouldn’t help them. Dole out enough torture, eventually someone will cooperate. “Have you discovered when our order was born?” Our roots were a mystery to us, I was fascinated by our origins. I knew the why of it; to protect the Sinsar Dubh.