Gossamyr. Michele Hauf

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СКАЧАТЬ her weapon cracked skull. Bits of the creature’s head scattered like a harvest gourd cleaved by elf-shot.

      Landing the swing, she steadied her bearing. No time to think, only react. Deft twists of her fingers spun the weapon in a hissing figure of eight as she turned to challenge the opponent. Now headless, the creature hung before her, arms spread—yet the wings flapped. Still alive. If bones could harbor life.

      “Remarkable.” Gossamyr stepped back. How to defeat the thing? “Can I kill it?”

      “Either that or be killed!” came the unbidden answer.

      The stiff barbs of a feathered cape stroked her cheek. The shing of an obsidian blade drawn from a hip sheath sliced the air. One slash of the fire-forged sabre sectioned the creature at the waist, dropping the leg bones to the tower floor in a clatter.

      “Shinn—”

      “Stand back!” Shinn swung and hacked through the rib cage of the creature. “These things don’t know how to die!”

      Frayed wings—severed from the skeletal body—furiously beat the air above Shinn, her father. The dauntless fée lifted his blade up under the left wing, cleaving it asunder, and brought the blade down through the right wing. He spun toward Gossamyr and shouted, “There!”

      Pulled from her awestruck stare, Gossamyr jumped as a foot trimmed with muscle shreds stamped her toes. Together, the legs of the creature attacked. Sweeping her staff low, she dashed it across the anklebones, sending them crashing against the marble embrasures. Reduced to dust on impact, the shattered bone glinted as it floated to the tower floor.

      “What in all of Faery is it?” Gossamyr called as she swung and caught a disembodied arm with the tip. Fingers clenched the end of her staff. Shake as she might, the evil fist clung. “Shinn?”

      Residue from the crushed creature glimmered in a mist about Shinn as his sabre obliterated the wings. “A revenant!” the implacable fée called.

      Ill clad for battle, Shinn’s everyday vestments of flowing arachnagoss tunic and elaborately stitched hosen would not protect him from injury. But he did not waver, instead standing proud and defying the thing with a swing of his sabre. He dived to avoid the other arm as it sailed toward him, fingers fisted.

      “Let me to it!” Gossamyr cried. An audacious smile crooked her mouth. She had trained for this sort of challenge. Opportunity had finally fallen to her. “I’ve been craving some fight.”

      She rushed the attacking arm and connected wood to bone in a hollow crack. “Yes!”

      The return swing of her staff proved the attack had not jarred the creepy passenger. Gossamyr slammed the carved applewood upon the tower floor. Finger bones gave loose, but as quickly, scrambled across her toes and gripped her ankle, shaking her off balance. She landed the marble floor with a jaw-loosening dumpf. A skeletal hand scurried up her leg and over her hip moving farther.

      Wheezing breaths gasped from her mouth. Dropping her staff, Gossamyr clutched the hand that squeezed about her throat. Probing fingertips threatened to pierce her flesh. She struggled to wrestle the thing off, but it possessed strength immeasurable. It was futile to fight, to kick at the air and pray she connected with some part of an attacker that just wasn’t there.

      A murky blackness muddied her thoughts. Shinn—where was he? Needles of numbness loosened her grip on the hand. Her shoulders dropped. She could see nothing, smell not the scent of fresh morning dew and lush rose oil, nor sense the smooth polish of the marble beneath her fingers. An angry peacock mewl echoed Gossamyr’s longing to cry out.

      As death crept closer one final sound summoned her audacious smile. The shrill of finely honed obsidian cutting through bone.

      ONE

      High above the lush cypress and laburnum treetops that encircled the curtain wall Gossamyr followed her father through the carved marble loggia. The castle she had lived in all her life nested at the peak of the Spiral forest as if a bloom upon a verdant bouquet. Pendulous yellow flowers hung heavily on the laburnum that grew only at the top of the forest, contrasting marvelously with the castle. The blue marble was deeply veined with streaks of midnight and palest sky; it mimicked both day and night and shimmered with a fée dust of the ages.

      The village of Glamoursiège fit like a twist about the marble screw of the Spiral. Blue marble segued to granite and finally to sand at its lowest where it met the grounds in a mire of marsh and reticulated tree roots. For the entirety was laced with the roots of cypress, ash and hornbeam. The Edge—very few places where the trees did not grow—was ever to be avoided, at least by the un-winged ones.

      “I can do this, Shinn! You cannot deny I am the only one able.”

      Shinn moved swiftly toward the south tower, speaking his impatience with his strides. “Many are capable,” he called back to Gossamyr.

      “Capable, yes,” Gossamyr had to agree.

      Faery worked counter to the Otherside, and a war of almost one hundred mortal years had been keeping the mortals to blood and wrath, while Faery enjoyed fellowship and peace. Tribe Glamoursiège had been formed of trooping warriors before the great Peace, a Peace that had existed since long before Gossamyr’s birth.

      How long? Time indeterminable, Shinn often answered when Gossamyr would question, for Time was of no concern to the fée.

      Though Faery claimed Peace there were still the occasional rises amongst the various tribes. Shinn’s troops were indeed capable and, with the recent arrival of the revenants, increasingly vigilant.

      Gossamyr picked up her pace, as well her confidence. “If not for this very challenge, what then has all my training been for? Naught? I am as skilled as any in your troop, male or female.”

      “Child of mine, you know well you have been groomed to sit the Glamoursiège throne,” Shinn said over his shoulder. “It is not an idle, benevolent woman who can rule in my absence, but one who possesses all the martial skills I have taught you, and the mind for diplomacy, honor and valor.”

      “I will not neglect my duties to Glamoursiège, but…I want this, Shinn. It is such an opportunity!” She hurried up beside him. Where did he go in such a hurry?

      “Convince me it wise to send my daughter on such a singular and dangerous quest.”

      Ah, there, he had not given an unequivocal no. This gave Gossamyr hope.

      “Your fée warriors will not survive the Red Lady’s seductive allure. As you’ve told me, she seduces Disenchanted fée into her clutches. They have not the fortitude to resist!”

      Any fée who left Faery for the Otherside risked Disenchantment. Necessary trips to the mortal realm were swift, coached in the knowledge that glamour dissipates quickly and Time could not be trusted. A risky venture for a fée warrior.

      A risk chosen by some.

      There were those rogue fée, who, seduced by the lure of the mortal, and that intricate city called Paris, chose to remain on the Otherside. To stay meant sure Disenchantment; a condition that saw the fée completely drained of glamour, and often they lost their wings to a shriveling malady attributed to the baneful touch from a mortal. Enchantment gone, they became nothing more than a shell that survived as any mortal. Return to Faery was difficult but not impossible. СКАЧАТЬ