Evil within Yourselves Read online

  “It was just a pretext to get me killed, remember?” I replied. “He never expected me to return with it.”

  “Ah, yet when he intervened on Olympus to keep you from coming back, do you remember his final attempt? Having gained the upper hand, he offered to spare your friends in exchange for you…and the lyre. Why? He is no musician! I suppose he could have made some use of it, but it would not have done anywhere nearly as much good for him as it did for Dubh. Why then bother with it at all? Including it in the deal made it more likely the Olympians would balk.

  “There can be but one explanation,” she continued triumphantly. “The…being who has bewitched him wants it for something.”

  She might have been just a woman trying desperately to save the man she loved, but the theory was weirdly convincing.

  “Oh Queen, if all this is true, why come to us?” asked Nurse Florence, still unconvinced. “You have all the faeries of England at your disposal…and Olympian cousins far more powerful than Tal. They would surely be interested in fighting the being who made Zeus disappear and corrupted Poseidon.”

  “Lady of the Lake, I would not be so contrary if you came to me for help,” replied Titania, but her voice had more sorrow in it than reproach. “The truth is that my subjects, fooled by Oberon, would not help me now. If I tried their loyalty in such a way, there would be a revolt, and I would be overthrown. As for the Olympians, they distrust me after the plot in which Oberon involved me. They will not heed my call, and, as you know, I cannot travel to Olympus to plead my case without their consent.”

  Much to my surprise, Titania knelt before me and clasped my hand so hard I thought for a second my fingers might fracture. “Taliesin, please! You are my only hope!”

  I sighed audibly. I always was a sucker for a damsel in distress.

  Gently I pulled her to her feet. “Majesty, I can promise nothing…but I will investigate your theory.”

  “Tal—” began Nurse Florence.

  “Investigate!” I reiterated. “Queen Titania, I am not convinced that what you say is true, but even if it is only partially true, it raises issues we cannot ignore. Oberon’s odd behavior by itself could be disturbing, but, added to the disruptions on the Olympian plane, the fact that a high-level demon is lurking around somewhere, and the fact that a madman is running around loose with the lyre of Orpheus…well, the possibility of a connection is alarming.

  “Nurse Florence,” I said, trying to forestall an objection, “we already planned to figure out who had summoned the demon and how to eliminate it as a threat. Besides that, we have promised to help recover the lyre from Dubh as soon as Gwynn ap Nudd can figure out where he is. If the queen is right, we can aid her without deviating much from our plan; if she’s wrong, we stand to lose very little.”

  Nurse Florence looked as if she might have objected further, but the sudden shimmer of a new portal right next to Titania drew her attention—and everyone else’s. Titania herself backed away from it, and she seemed even more apprehensive when Robin Goodfellow shot through it, out of breath and totally unlike his normally mischievous self. I had only met him once before, and I hadn’t imagined his playful face capable of such a display of abject terror. Even facing possible imprisonment by the Olympians, he had been far calmer than this.

  “My queen, Nicneven comes!” he shrieked, hitting the ground with a thud. Picking himself up quickly, he added, “Run!” in an even higher shriek.

  Having the relatively gentle Titania on campus was nerve-wracking enough. Having Robin Goodfellow around made me far more nervous; even when not quaking in fear, his unpredictability made him a problem. But having Nicneven, the bipolar queen of the Scottish faeries whose moods found expression in a physical form that varied from a beautiful young maiden to a hideous old crone? No, I couldn’t take the chance.

  Another portal erupted in the shadows nearby. Without a second thought, I turned my will against it, and it collapsed. Stan’s and Dan’s swords flashed in the dark, and I drew White Hilt, which flamed to life in my hand. Robin, however, did not follow our lead.

  “Are you all crazy?” he asked, his voice still almost at a scream. “You can’t block her like that without suffering her wrath! Our only hope lies in flight!”

  That was easy for Robin to say. He and Titania could flee back to her castle in Annwn. Theoretically, I could take Stan, Dan, and Nurse Florence with me to Alcina’s island.

  What I couldn’t do was take the whole gym full of students and teachers with me. Leaving the architecture aside, there would never be time to portal that many people out of harm’s way. Besides, the various faerie rulers would be angry enough to make Nicneven look like a girl scout if I revealed my magic to that many mortals. No, I couldn’t evacuate the area, and I couldn’t chance running and having Nicneven land here and take her frustration out on a mass of innocent bystanders.

  Another portal flickered into life, and I squashed that one, too. Robin stared at me, silenced by his inability to believe that anyone would risk Nicneven’s terrible vengeance.

  “Taliesin, I should leave you,” said Titania quickly. “Nicneven is coming for me, not you.”

  “Can she sense your presence?” I asked. “Will she know you’ve gone and try to follow you, or will she appear here whether you leave or not?”

  “Alas, I know not,” admitted Titania. “I do not even know how she found me here in the first place.”

  “Treachery!” wailed Robin. “Someone has betrayed your whereabouts to Nicneven.”

  I blocked another portal, this one throbbing with the rage of its maker. At least it appeared that Nicneven was alone and could open portals only so fast. However, now that she knew someone here was blocking her, she might decide to come back later with reinforcements.

  “What does she want, Majesty?” asked Nurse Florence.

  “I have heard whispers that she wants to take my throne and unite the English and Scottish faeries under her rule. Oberon’s situation has weakened my position, else she would never have dared such a thing.”

  As usual, I didn’t have any really great options. Assuming Nicneven was alone, Nurse Florence, Titania, Robin, and I should be more than a match for her magic. She might have soldiers with her, though, if she aimed to capture Titania. In that case, I should try to summon Carla and the rest of the guys. How could I do that without someone noticing? My absence was probably already conspicuous enough. Carla was the band’s only other vocalist, so she couldn’t just leave without tipping off everybody in the room that something was wrong. The same held true for the other guys. Natalie, Stan’s date, knew the truth about us as a result of being trapped with us when Ceridwen attacked, but the other guys’ dates were completely in the dark and needed to stay that way.

  “Majesty, can you tell where Nicneven is?” I asked tensely, stifling yet another portal.

  “Not easily unless you allow a portal to open,” replied Titania sadly. “I would not advise that at this point. However, I can guess she is in or near her castle.”

  “Which is…” I prompted. The original Taliesin had never met Nicneven, and his memory didn’t provide me with any clue except her Scottish origin.

  “In Elphame, of course, but there is a fixed portal that connects to this world at Caithness, and another is said to lead to a secret exit somewhere in the area of Ben Nevis.”

  “What difference does it make where she is?” asked Dan.

  “Because,” I replied with a grim smile, “the best defense is a good offense.”

  “Tal!” protested Nurse Florence, “you can’t mean to attack her! That would pit you against every faerie in Scotland!”

  “And the alternative is…what exactly?” I asked impatiently. “Wait until she breaks through here? I can feel her anger even though she’s still in Elphame. I can block her for now, but what is to prevent her from coming through later and catching us by surprise? We have only two choices: appease her somehow, or fight her.”

  “I will not allow you to risk
yourself,” said Titania firmly. “This is my fight, not yours. Let her through, and I will go with her.”

  Suddenly the previously sniveling Robin grew a spine. “I will not permit this, Majesty! Once you are her prisoner, all hope is lost.” He was still even paler than usual for a faerie, and his whole body was shaking, but suddenly there was a silver sword in his hand.

  “She will still have to abide by faerie law,” replied Titania with as much conviction as she could manage. “If she remains clearly the aggressor, she will not have the sympathy of the other faerie rulers. It would not surprise me if she were trying to provoke conflict that she can then somehow blame on me.”

  I had seen quite a bit of faerie politics in recent months, and I was not as confident in the system as she was pretending to be. I could imagine a lot of faeries being perfectly willing to sacrifice Titania if by so doing they could avoid war with Nicneven.

  “Robin is right, Majesty,” I said forcefully. I think even Robin was surprised to find me on his side. “Letting Nicneven take you gives her too much of an advantage. Besides, it’s, it’s…an affront to my authority. You are here as my guest, and you are under my protection!”

  I was pretty much pulling rank I didn’t have with that last line. It’s not as if I was the mayor of Santa Brígida, much less its king—but my status was…unusual, and faeries sometimes had strange ideas about hierarchy.

  I found myself getting a headache as I squeezed another portal out of existence. I had gotten much better at that kind of maneuver with practice, but even so it drained a lot of power. I could feel myself weakening and knew that we had to act quickly.

  “Tal, even if fighting Nicneven is a good idea, which I doubt,” began Nurse Florence, “trying to attack her in her castle is suicide. She’s sure to have enough troops on hand to overwhelm us. If we take her on, let’s do it here, where we have a chance of facing her alone.”

  “Not at school!” I responded in the most peremptory tone I could manage. “We’d be handing her hundreds of potential hostages.”

  “Or hundreds of reasons for restraint,” suggested Titania. “Nicneven angers every other faerie ruler if she reveals her magic to mortals.”

  “I won’t take the chance, Majesty,” I replied, gently but firmly. “The presence of mortals did not stop Ceridwen or Morgan le Fay from working dangerous magic.”

  “One of them is dead and the other in prison,” countered Titania.

  “Which only demonstrates that the wrath of the faerie rulers is not that much of a deterrent to them.”

  Titania was not accustomed to being contradicted, particularly by a mortal, and she opened her mouth to speak again but then closed it. “What then would you have us do?” she asked finally.

  This was a bad time to have no answer, but that was exactly my problem; though Titania finally considered following my lead, I realized I had no idea where I was going.

  Much as I hated to admit it, Nurse Florence was right: it would be foolhardy to surprise Nicneven in Elphame or in Scotland. Yet I, too, was right: having a magic battle just yards away from my fellow students would be like exploding a small nuke right next to them.

  “I have an idea,” offered Robin, looking a little less shaky. I turned expectantly in his direction. “Any port in a storm,” as the old expression has it.

  “You don’t want to fight here. There is no need to. We can divert Nicneven to any place of your choosing.”

  I tried hard to conceal my disappointment. “Robin, I know I could theoretically redirect her portal, but that takes enormous energy, and the results are as unpredictable as…” I trailed off, realizing I had been about to say, “as unpredictable as you.”

  “No, no!” said Robin, starting to shake more noticeably, but this time more with enthusiasm for his plan than with fear. “I don’t mean that. Just open a portal directly in front of hers. She’ll stride through, and, if you can be quick about it, before she realizes she isn’t in the right place, you can jump through your portal and close it behind you.”

  “That…that just might work,” I said, caught a little by surprise that his suggestion was actually good.

  “I have learned a few things from playing tricks on people for centuries,” he replied with a grin.

  Then I had to slam shut an emphatic effort to open another portal, and my headache began to twitch into migraine territory.

  “We need to do this fast!” I told everybody. Nurse Florence looked concerned but nodded her head in agreement.

  “The others—” began Stan.

  “No way to get them out without causing a scene.”

  “Leave that to me,” said Robin with a wink, suddenly looking much more his usual, playful self now that he had something besides Nicneven to think about. He sheathed his sword, pulled out a faintly glowing wand, and then vanished so quickly I had no time to protest. I had the sinking feeling his attempt to extract the guys from the dance was going to be a train wreck, but I didn’t have the time to go chasing after an invisible faerie who was one of the fastest moving of his kind. I did take the time to send a quick mental message to Carla, telling her to make some excuse for the band to take an early break and then try to work with Robin so that he made as small a mess as possible. She naturally wanted to join me right now, but she was the only one inside who had any magic—or any real possibility of guiding Robin.

  I could feel the energy for another portal building. Instead of squelching it, I just slowed it a little.

  “Nurse Florence, as soon as you can tell where Nicneven’s portal is going to open, open one to Alcina’s island right in front of it.” She nodded and began building her own mystic energy. It suddenly occurred to me that it really should have been Robin matching the two portals, since he’d had centuries of practice with it. However, there was no use worrying about that now.

  “Be ready!” I ordered. I should probably have addressed Titania separately and more diplomatically, but I had no time for courtesy right now. Fortunately, she didn’t seem offended.

  “We’ll only get one chance at this,” I added, though everyone knew that.

  Nicneven’s portal shimmered open, and a second later Nurse Florence’s covered it completely. So far, so good, but if Nicneven wasn’t in a hurry, we were sunk.

  I had never met Nicneven, but I could feel someone passing from one portal to another…someone with a great deal of power.

  “Now!” I barked, jamming Nicneven’s portal closed, then plunging toward Nurse Florence’s, boosting my speed up to faerie levels. Even so, if she wasn’t surprised enough, she might conceivably jump back into Santa Brígida before I could reach the portal. The next few seconds would be crucial.

  No one had emerged by the time I threw myself through the portal, a battle cry on my lips and White Hilt wreathed in flames, Titania at my heels and the others surprisingly close behind. This was going to work after all!

  And it might have, too—except that we came tumbling through the portal and into the early morning sun on Alcina’s island to confront…someone who couldn’t be Nicneven. I had worked enough with faeries to recognize one even when the faerie was shape-shifted, at least if I concentrated hard enough. The gray-robed, gray-haired woman who stood before us did have power, but she was human, not fey. We had caught her by surprise, but since she wasn’t the one we needed to surprise, we had to figure out what was happening quickly. From a different plane I could no longer block Nicneven’s efforts to open a portal into Santa Brígida. On the other hand, I couldn’t leave whoever this woman was roaming around on our island; I had to figure out what she was up to…and quickly!

  “You there!” I said in my most authoritative voice, this time borrowing liberally from my life as Hephaistion, one of Alexander the Great’s commanders. For good measure I pointed White Hilt at her. Nothing unnerves most people more than a flaming sword. “What is your business here?”

  To my surprise, the woman didn’t even flinch. If anything, she stood up taller and gave me wha
t I imagined was her haughtiest expression.

  “It is my mistress’s business I do. Who are you to demand anything of me?” She looked oddly familiar, but I couldn’t quite remember in what context I had seen her before. It had been some time in this life, though.

  “Who do I have to be?” I countered. “I am now Taliesin Weaver. Once I was Gwion Bach, who drank from the cauldron of knowledge and was reborn from the womb of Ceridwen as Taliesin and became a member of the court of King Arthur. Before that I was Hephaistion, son of Hephaestus and commander of the army of Alexander. Before that I was Heman, son of Joel, son of Samuel, friend to King David of Israel. Before that I was Patroclus, who fought at Troy with Achilles. I can go on if you like.” No, I’m not anywhere nearly that arrogant, but in the supernatural realm pedigree can be very important, and most people couldn’t remember even one of their past lives, let alone all of them.

  The woman remained unmoved. “I care not who you were. My mistress is a queen, and she will not hesitate to punish you for capturing her envoy.”

  “Well, I am a queen as well,” said Titania, stepping forward. “If you will not answer to Taliesin, answer then to me, for it was I who ordered your capture.” I raised an eyebrow but did not contradict Titania.

  “Queen, yes…but for how long, I wonder,” sneered the woman. If nothing else, she was gutsy. I wondered if she had any reason to justify such confidence.

  “Long enough to make you regret your insolence,” said Titania, quietly but somehow menacingly at the same time. I would have been interested to see how this battle of wills played out, but I couldn’t spare the time. I tried to reach into the woman’s mind, but she met me with what felt like formidable shields. Breaking through them would take time.

  “We need to imprison her,” I said to Titania and Nurse Florence, “and then we need to get back to Santa Brígida. Nicneven could be there by now.”