“Aye, again approximately. As you know, after the Unseelie King killed the queen, Cruce stole his beloved concubine and made the king believe she was dead. In an act of atonement, the king dumped all the formidable power of his dark magic into the Sinsar Dubh, and cast it out into the world. But as Fae things do, it evolved and, furious with the king, obsessed with him, the dark doppelganger began to stalk the Unseelie King, wreaking havoc wherever it went. The two played a game of cat and mouse for hundreds of thousands of years.”
“Wait a minute, I have to ask this: we were led to believe the Sinsar Dubh was nearly a million years old. It’s only a half a million?”
“Depends on how you look at it. The Sinsar Dubh is commonly regarded as a million years old because it contains the Unseelie King’s knowledge from the time he began creating his dark court, nearly a million years ago, until the time he divested himself of it, over half a million years later. Technically, it is only half a million years old. Again, this is all only approximate.”
I nodded. “Go on.”
“When the king finally managed to capture his dangerous alter-ego, roughly one hundred fifty thousand years ago, he needed a secure place to contain it with guards. Conveniently, there already existed a shian on a planet, rich in magic, laced with the proper elements, the perfect place to entomb it; a place the Seelie would never go because they’d already buried their ancient enemy there and abandoned it.”
I gasped. “Are you kidding me? Are you saying…” I trailed off in disbelief.
He cut me a dark smile. “Aye. The Unseelie King paid a visit to our world, and hid the Sinsar Dubh beneath what is now Arlington Abbey, above the entombed gods, then created the sidhe-seers as his final Unseelie caste, to serve as his watchdogs. He gave your order the power to penetrate Fae glamour, the ability to ward your land against Fae, and various gifts to fight them if they came.”
I shook my head, dazed by the thought. “The gods have been slumbering beneath our abbey this entire time?”
“Och, lass, from the hints I’ve gathered here and there, your abbey perches atop many powerful things. I’d like to explore the Underneath if you’d permit it. Soon. We’ve a mess on our hands and require every advantage we can find.”
I nodded. We would find a way to work together.
“Back to the timeline. The war between gods and Fae had ravaged the earth. Queen Aoibheal, who’d once been mortal herself, had watched too many planets destroyed. Eventually, and I can’t pin that event to a time, she forcibly removed the Fae to a separate realm, fabricating walls by tapping into the power of the Unseelie prison walls, striking a Compact with a clan called the Keltar, and trained them as druids to uphold it. Here’s where it gets complicated. I’m going to try to explain the realm of “Faery” to you in a nutshell.
“Under the First Queen and Seelie King, Faery consisted of only the Seelie Court, a vast, resplendent land with four distinct kingdoms, with royal houses governing each: Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. Over them all, the queen ruled.
“When the king left the Seelie Queen and became Unseelie, he expanded Faery to hold the enormity of his own demesne. Within his kingdom he constructed the nearly infinite White Mansion, and tied it to the truly infinite Hall of All Days. He also fabricated the Silvers as a secondary means of travel, initially for his and his concubine’s use only. Faery grew from a single court to an enormous tapestry of connected worlds. Some say the battle we wage here on Earth between mortal and Fae is happening on countless other worlds with countless other Fae courts connected by this network, in a multiplicity of universes.”
He saw the look on my face and laughed. “Aye, the thought boggles my mind, too. Eventually, the Silvers were cursed and the terrain of Faery became even more complex, as if it wasn’t already enough of a mess. But for simplicity, think of Faery as the Light Court and the Dark Court, the Hall of All Days, the Silvers, and the White Mansion all in one enormous, otherworldly realm. But it’s no longer otherworldly. No walls divide us. It exists adjacent to, spilling into, our own.”
Which was why we desperately needed Mac to figure out how to use her power as Fae queen, so she could sing those walls back up and restore our world to its normal order without Fae preying on humans. “How do you know all this?” I asked. This was the kind of history we’d long been seeking.
“I sent my clan into the White Mansion, to the king’s true library, and had them bring me every book and object of interest they could find. The castle, as you’ll soon see, is stuffed with books and bottles and potions and endless artifacts that we’ve transported to Draoidheacht Keep. Heed me well, touch none of it. They’re not your usual books and bottles and such. Dani can tell you a thing or two about what might be found in the king’s collection.” He laughed. “Ask her about the Boora Boora books. But don’t ask her about the Crimson Hag, and no matter what you do, once you arrive at my castle, bloody hell, don’t open any bottles you might see lying around.”
“If they’re so dangerous, why did you bring them out into our world?”
“Many might prove useful. Knowledge is power. So is power,” he said dryly. “A controllable Crimson Hag would be a hell of an advantage. I don’t sleep, Kat, I study. I learn about myself, about the Fae race. I prepare. The gods and Fae are going to war again, and that battle could well destroy our world. The gods want humans eradicated, the Fae want humans enslaved. It’s a lose-lose for us either way.”
I said, “What does this have to do with Sean? I’m assuming it ties in somehow?”
“We, too, were made dramatically more powerful by the ancient melody. It was months before the full transformation occurred for me, and yet another few months after that for Sean. I suspect it’s moved slowly for the Seelie, as well. We all change at our own unique pace. I’ve learned to control what I’ve become. But Sean, ah lass, your Sean has not. And he must. He’s running out of time.”
* * *
π
We arrived at the perimeter of Christian’s heavily warded kingdom just before dawn. He’d carved apart fifty thousand acres of the Highlands for his own, and begun repairing and fortifying the enormous, ancient castle he’d christened Draoidheacht Keep. It was in that great, sprawling castle he and Sean lived, in the finished parts of the crumbling ruin. As we soared over a final ben, Christian said, “Brace yourself, lass, it’s not pretty.”
Even prepared, I was stunned by the vision that greeted us as we cleared that final ben, broke through clouds and soared over his kingdom.
Everywhere I looked, the earth was black.
Gone was the lush greenery, the abundant profusion of foliage and life. Beneath an endless bank of low-hanging, dense, rumbling thunderclouds that stretched as far as my eye could see—a churning, crashing dark gray roof—the earth was burnt and barren, as if it had been charred to a crisp.