Swallowing Darkness

Chapter Thirty-Three

The humvee crawled along the edge of the road, the trees scraping the windows, sides, and roof. "The prince and his people must still be in the road," Rhys said, "or they'd be moving faster."

"Have Mistral tell us who else is with Cel besides the captain of the guard," Doyle said.

I conveyed the request to Gregorio. She looked like she would argue, but he gave her the full force of his gaze. His face must have been almost lost in the dimness of the night and the car, but something about what she saw made her pick up the radio and do what he asked.

The answer came back as a list of the people who had backed Cel for centuries. But the crowd wasn't as large as I'd thought. Important names were missing, which didn't mean that the missing Unseelie were on my side. It simply meant that they'd abandoned Cel. One important oversight was that Siobhan was almost the only guard he had left. We'd discovered that the guards, most of whom had begun their careers as my father's personal guard, had not been asked if they wished to serve Cel. They had been forced, and no oath of allegiance had been given by most of them. Which meant that their service, and their torment by Cel, were illegal by our laws.

To join the guard of our royalty, you had to choose, and bind yourself with oaths. That Cel had stolen their freedom without that was a grave abuse of authority.

Gregorio watched our faces as she relayed the names. If she'd thought she'd learn something from Doyle or Rhys, she'd been mistaken. I think I just looked tired.

"The Queen must have given his guard a choice," Doyle said.

"The choice they should have had from the beginning," Rhys said.

"Yes," he said.

"What do you mean 'a choice'?" Gregorio asked.

"Prince Cel took over the personal guard of Prince Essus, Princess Meredith's father, after his death. By our laws, the guard should have had a choice to either follow the new prince or leave the royal service, but Prince Cel gave them no choice. The princess found this out recently, and petitioned the queen to give the prince's guard that choice."

"So they all bailed on him?" Gregorio asked.

"So it would seem."

"Or maybe they're out in the woods waiting to ambush us," Rhys said.

"That too is very possible."

"Couldn't you sense if there were that many sidhe hiding in the woods?" I asked.

"Not inside this much metal and human-made technology."

"We're almost head-blind, Merry. It doesn't kill us to be inside this much metal, like some of the lesser fey, but it curtails our magic, a lot," Rhys said.

"If there are other guards hiding in the woods, would it explain why Cel isn't attacking?" I asked. I huddled in more tightly against Doyle. Rhys was gazing out the windows, trying to see what lay ahead.

"It might," Doyle said.

Gregorio took it upon herself to hit the radio again. "The prince has a lot more personal guards than those in the road. We might want to check the woods and see what's there."

A man's voice said, "Roger that."

"So it's either a trap," Rhys said, "or he's waiting for the truck with us in it. We're his targets, after all."

"He is most likely saving his attack for us," Doyle said, "but as we cannot work magic inside the trucks, neither can he work magic upon us while we are surrounded by this much metal."

Gregorio asked, "Are you saying that we should let them throw magic at us, and the trucks will take care of it?"

Doyle and Rhys exchanged a look, then Rhys nodded and shrugged. Doyle answered. "The magic should fall apart around the trucks, and as long as your people stay inside them, they should be untouchable."

I turned in Doyle's arms so I could see his face, though dark on dark, I could see little of his expression. Of course, when he didn't wish me to, bright light wouldn't have clued me in to his thoughts.

"Are you saying that we are completely safe inside here from their magic?" Gregorio asked.

Doyle stirred beside me, pulling me even more tightly against him. Rhys took my hand in his, playing with my knuckles again in that worry-stone way, over and over.

"Either they can work magic inside here or they cannot," I said.

"It is not that simple," Doyle said at last.

"Well, since the Humvee with Galen and the others in it is going to be close to them very soon, I suggest you make it simple."

He smiled. "Spoken in the tone of a queen."

"I'm with her," Gregorio said. "I've got people depending on Dawson and me to keep them safe."

I shook my head. "Take the tone any way you like, Doyle, but you're both hiding something from me. Tell me."

"As my lady asks," he said, "no magic from his hand or the others can touch us in here. He may not know that, but we are safe inside the trucks."

"I hear a 'but' in your voice."

He smiled a little more. "But there are things that can pierce the metal."

"Remember, Merry, our people didn't use armor once, for obvious reasons, but we ran into enemies who did. Our metalsmiths came up with a few things that would go through metal."

"Such as?" I asked.

"There were spears forged long ago," Doyle said. "They are locked away with the few other magical weapons left us."

"The queen would have to give him permission to open the vault of weapons," I said.

"She would, which makes it unlikely that he would have such a thing, but I do not like the fact that he and his followers are in the middle of the road, demanding things from us."

Rhys said, "The queen would never permit him to appear weak or evil in front of the humans. She's worked too long and hard to make the Unseelie Court's reputation better to let Cel ruin it now. It's the one thing she's never allowed him to do, to abuse the humans, or be seen abusing anyone else in front of them."

"And now he's in the middle of the road, behaving badly," I said. "Exactly," he said.

"Where is Queen Andais?" I asked.

"Where indeed," Doyle said, and he moved again, as if the seat wasn't quite comfortable. It wasn't, but it wasn't the seat that was bothering him. Doyle could sleep on a marble floor and not flinch.

"You're afraid for her," I said.

"One thing she accused you of, my sweet Merry, is very true. You have stripped her of all the best and most feared of her personal guard. She retained her position, in part, because of... "

"You," I finished for him.

"Not only me."

I nodded. "You can say his name, Doyle. The Queen's Darkness, and her Killing Frost."

"It upsets you to hear his name."

"It does, but that doesn't mean we don't say it."

"It would if you were Queen Andais," Rhys said.

"I am not her."

"But Doyle is being too modest," Rhys said. "Yes, Frost was feared by the queen's enemies, but it was fear of the Queen's Darkness that kept a lot of courtiers in line."

"You exaggerate," Doyle said.

I shook my head. "I'm not sure he does. I've heard people talk about you, Doyle. I know that the queen would say, 'Bring me my Darkness. Where is my Darkness?' and then someone would die. You were her greatest threat, next to the sluagh."

"Are you saying that Captain Doyle here is as feared as the host of the sluagh?" Gregorio asked.

We all looked at her. I said, "Yes."

"One man, against a host of nightmares," she said, and didn't try to keep her disbelief out of her voice.

"He can be pretty scary all on his own," Rhys said.

Gregorio stared at Doyle, as if trying to see more of him in the dim light.

"Shouldn't you tell Sergeant Dawson that the magic will be stopped by the trucks?" I asked.

"I'll tell him it will probably be stopped." She got on the radio.

Rhys said, "Some of them might be able to make illusions real enough to lure the soldiers outside the trucks."

"What kind of illusions?" I asked.

Voices came over the radio, frantic. "Sierra four to all Sierra, we have wounded soldiers in line of travel. Stopping to render aid."

"Those kind," Doyle said.

"Tell them it's not real," I said.

"Tell them not to get out of the trucks no matter what," Doyle said.

Gregorio tried, she really did, but one thing our soldiers are not trained to do is leave their wounded behind. It was a brilliant trap. The soldiers went to check the wounded, and once they left the trucks, the sidhe attacked, and no human magic could stop them.