Not so many ages ago. But an infinity of time would not dull the edge.
Lune sighed and turned her head, so that her profile was to the wind. “Imagine you lived all your life in a tower, and saw no more of sun and breeze, forest and grass, than what you could glimpse through your window. And then you had a chance to escape that tower—to walk in the grass, feel the leaves with your hands, and drink in the sun with your skin. Would you say no?”
“If I were to be locked in the tower again,” Irrith said bluntly. “Imprisonment would be all the worse for having escaped it briefly.”
A sad smile touched Lune’s lips. “Ah—but the experience is worth having. The world seems more real to you thereafter, because the one you love lived in it. The colors are richer, the sounds more sweet, because you shared them with another.”
Irrith had the courtesy to consider it for a moment before declaring, “I still don’t understand.”
I did not expect you to. Perhaps it was the touch of mortality shading Lune’s vision, but she sometimes felt far older than the wild faerie at her side. “If you saw more of mortals, perhaps you would.”
She hadn’t meant to hint at the concerns that darkened her thoughts, but Irrith guessed them anyway; they were never far from her mind. “You will return, madam,” she said, gazing across to the White Horse as if London lay before them, and not far to the east, as she had pointed out. The Onyx Hall, and Michael Deven’s grave, which she had not seen these nine years. “And when you do, perhaps I will go with you.”
ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL, LONDON: July 14, 1658
In the darkness, a horse whickered quietly and stamped one foot. The sound echoed off the thick stone pillars and into the vast heights above, far loftier than any stable.
Antony froze, breathing silently through his mouth. Only when he heard no one stirring did he ease forward again, feeling his way carefully across the littered floor, over the splinters of benches and choir stalls, around the pickets of sleeping Army horses, down the nave of the desecrated St. Paul’s.
The cathedral, relic of popery that it was, had seen ten hard years of abuse by the godly reformers who would eradicate every trace of Catholicism from their physical as well as spiritual world. Rain dripped through the broken roof in the south transept and elsewhere, and wind blew through the shattered windows, their painted glass smashed as idolatrous. Seamstresses slept in the portico outside, in flimsy chambers raised between the pillars of the classical face Inigo Jones built to beautify the western end of the aged and crumbling structure. Filth coated the floor from one end to the other.
But such neglect served Antony now. If caught, he would simply plead himself a beggar, seeking shelter from the rain that drummed on the lead-stripped roof. No one would question it. The soldiers quartered here might call him a vagrant and whip him back to whatever parish he named as his home, but no one would see in him the wealthy baronet of Lombard Street who had once served in Guildhall and Parliament.
That man was long gone. In his place stood a man who was, in truth, little more than a vagrant and beggar.
His hands shook as he knelt in the center of the nave. His hands, his knees, like he hadn’t eaten in a fortnight. Desperation gnawed at his gut, as if he were a sot deprived of wine, and his mind held only one thought. I cannot do this much longer. I cannot.
The same refrain, for years now. And somehow, he kept going.
Soundlessly, his trembling lips shaped the words, praying extemporaneously in the manner of the Independents. Almighty Lord, have pity on Your humbled son. Perhaps this is my punishment for my sins—but let me pass, I beg of You, lest I die.
Filthy, stained, cracked as they were, the stones folded soundlessly away, opening a pit in the floor of the cathedral. No light came from below, but Antony’s feet knew the path. He all but fell down the stair, letting the opening close behind him.
He collapsed on the bottom step, gasping, struggling to keep his harsh breathing quiet. The air was pleasantly cool, but it could have been life-saving warmth, penetrating his bones after too long in a winter storm. He pressed himself against the wall, weeping despite his will, and gave himself over to the embrace of the Onyx Hall.
How much longer can I endure?
Neither he nor Lune had realized, when she and her courtiers fled London, what the consequence would be. Queen and Prince, they were bound to the Hall. For both of them to leave it…whether that would have given Vidar a chance to claim the realm for his own, they never learned.
Lune could survive outside her palace, though she might lose her sovereignty in time. Antony could not.
The trembling grew worse, not better, as he huddled against the stone, and he wept silently, waiting for it to pass. Time spent in other faerie realms helped; he forced that as far as he could, driving himself to the limits of his endurance. The Onyx Hall was not safe for him. But in the end, it was this place he had bound himself to, when he became Prince of the Stone; this place, and no other. And humans so touched by Faerie died when they left it behind.
If he died, Vidar might win.
Therefore, he could not let himself die.
But God help him—he wanted to, sometimes. When the yearning grew too bad, and he thought about the dangers that waited below. This entrance was one of three Vidar did not seem to know about, and the safest for Antony; lying as it did beneath the cathedral, the place was uncomfortable to fae. St. Paul’s was also more accessible than the fortified Tower of London, and as for the third…
Vidar knew the London Stone was integral to the Onyx Hall, but not why. Very few fae understood the fundamental structure of the palace, and therefore the locations of its original entrances. Equally few knew the location of the Stone, the linchpin of the Hall. Its mortal half sat in Cannon Street above, but the faerie reflection was hidden, behind the very throne Vidar claimed for his own. And Antony would not do anything that might betray its concealment to the usurper.
So he crouched here, like a rat in its hole, fighting to keep silent, and prayed that no passing fae would hear him.
He fell asleep at last, still on the lowest step, and woke painfully stiff. Touching the wall, he sensed that he had slept the day through, and night had come again. It was safe for him to move—as safe as it ever got.
Rising was the hardest thing he’d ever done, and it grew harder every time. But Antony forced himself to his feet, limped upward through the blackness, and left the Onyx Hall behind.
WAYLAND’S SMITHY, BERKSHIRE: August 6, 1658
Sunset stained the gray trunks of the beeches with ruddy warmth, and elder and sweet cicely honeyed the air. Lune stood before the long, low mound that sheltered within the ring of trees, and watched as Teyrngar, the faerie hound Leslic had given her, sniffed along the margin of the woods in idle search of something to chase. He had proved faithful, if his giver had not, and Lune had in time learned not to see that traitor’s face every time she looked upon him.
She appreciated how freely she could walk in the open, here in the Vale. She stood in front of the gray sentinel stones capping the mound’s south end without any glamour masking her, and never any fear of being seen. It was a freedom unknown to her since an age so distant she could not recall it, and unimaginable in the city she called home.