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The whole situation still felt very odd to me, and if I didn’t consider Tenre generally trustworthy, regardless of her clear dislike of me, I would have been turning everyone around and leaving at this time.
I looked over to Dilorè and Serera, and they had the same slight frown on their face that I imagine I was wearing. It wasn’t a look of distrust, more of wanting to know what in heaven had happened that led to this extreme reaction on the part of the fairies.
The rest of the fairy ‘hazmat squad’ remained behind, with only Meren departing with us. We flew at low altitude onward toward the Royal Grove. After a short flight, we descended into a thin mana fog that I suspected to be sensory in nature, similar to my [Blood Mist], bound for a clearing amidst dense hawthorn trees.
A welcoming committee of fairies in thin raiments stood at the edge of the clearing, holding [Fairy Light] lanterns. As the setting sun could no longer clear the treetops and the mist was cutting into visibility, they had also cast [Fairy Light]s along the path from the boat to where they waited. Other lights twinkled here and there, winking on and off, and moving around. I quickly identified these as passing pixies having fun with Light magic, probably in imitation of their big sisters.
This lighting was for the benefit of the mortals, not the fairies who could see perfectly well without it. So it was probably a novelty to the pixie spectators.
As the boat touched ground, a pre-positioned magic circle activated, covering the vehicle and its occupants in another wave of the same mysterious magic. This was less intense than the focused mana bath in the Castle, more like the first magic they had subjected us to. It vanished after a moment.
Sounding relieved to be done with her task, Meren announced, “Honored Guests, you may all remove the protective suits now. We are now within the safe zone.”
Rod had been wearing a frown for well over an hour, and it didn’t appear to be going away. After we shed the suits and descended the ladder, I decided I had to say something to him.
“Your Highness, fairies wouldn’t go through all this without an extraordinary threat. I believe we can trust them to have a good reason for it.”
His brow wrinkled, then he nodded. “I had the same thought, but what sort of terrible illness could have them taking these measures? And is it really only affecting fairies?”
Meren had disembarked with us. Without her hazmat suit, she now had a normal fairy look, with a spectacular mane of peridot-colored hair and a delicate raiment of chiffon and gossamer that… Well, it was leaving the men uncertain where to look, quite frankly. Since the light levels had dropped to late twilight, the [Fairy Lights] were her primary illumination, and they were doing a great job of highlighting the skin beneath.
Wearing a smile, she bowed to us again and declared, “Your Highnesses and all Honored Guests, we apologize for the lack of explanation. We fear that the Castle is not a secure place to speak at this time.”
“To the point that you can’t tell us why you are making us go through this?” Rod demanded.
“Yes, Your Highness,” she stated, without a hint of guile. “It is indeed to that point. We don’t want the perpetrators to know how much we know.”
In an instant, the problem had changed from a ‘malady’ to some form of sabotage, or espionage, or… something finally clicked in my mind.
“This is about the fairies who were unable to see demonic mana, isn’t it?”
She bowed again, and declared, “As expected of Your Highness, you have grasped the essence of the problem. His Majesty has been waiting a very long time, and I’m sure he intends to explain the issue to you, so I don’t wish to delay any longer. Please come this way.”
Turning, she began walking the [Fairy Light] path and I winced. Her butt crack was clearly visible through her raiment. I heard a sigh from Rod and couldn’t quite suppress my giggle. We were walking two by two, and he had fallen in beside me, so I was able to look over and see his pained expression.
The rest of the welcoming committee were present as illumination, as it turned out. They walked ahead of us, lighting the path for us to follow. Occasionally, branching paths would appear, and Meren would make a shooing sound and a flick of her wrist, sending out a gust of Wind that would disperse them. Giggling pixie laughter completed the sequence on each reoccurrence. Since they had reasonably good stealth, I often couldn’t tell where the pranksters were hiding.
Serera, who had fallen back to rearguard behind the maids and knights, called out, “Make sure you are following the person ahead of you, everyone. These little ones have many tricks they like to play.”
Within the forest, it was dark as night, so it didn’t matter that the sky sometimes visible above was still twilight blue. If anything, it made the rest of the place darker to mortal eyes. And when a sudden rise in the ground appeared ahead of us, I’m sure it came completely from nowhere for them.
But then the fairies lit the yawning cavern mouth before us and it lost its sense of menace, becoming a corridor into the hillside.
We turned a corner into a short hall opening into a room with its own lighting, and Meren finally turned to us again.
“We have arrived in His Majesty’s private villa, Your Highnesses. His ladies are preparing rooms for you to spend the night here. Please allow your attendants to remain here while you and your retinue join him for dinner. We will show them the facilities while you are dining.”
“You’re going to house mortals in fairy style?” I asked, astonished.
She bowed to me and declared, “His Majesty has ordered we do our best to provide mortal comforts.”
They’d better. Fairies are perfectly comfortable sleeping on bare stone. Mortals, not so much.
Which left it us to choose who qualified as ‘retinue’. Rod looked at me and noted, “Lady Serera and Lady Dilorè should certainly go with us. His Wisdom Matthias and Mr. Kowa as well.”
“And Miss Mireia,” I said firmly. “The Fairy King knows about her, and will probably be interested in meeting her.”
“What about Chiara?” Ryuu demanded.
To be honest, I had been so preoccupied with other matters and had so little contact with Ryuu, I had virtually forgotten he was with us. If Rod hadn’t just mentioned him, I would have been surprised at his presence when he spoke.
I looked at him and considered the question. I knew why he wanted her along; she was still his current side-chick, frankly.
But I thought it would be better not to create a dispute. I invented a reason for her. “She’s still a Royal Knight. Let’s consider her His Highness’s escort.”
“My Lady…” Sir Gald began to protest, but Rod held his hand up.
“They’re required to keep two knights beside me. We’ll bring Sir Gald as well.”
Sir Balad, the head of the detail, was also unhappy, since Lady Chiara’s reputation was pretty much in the negative numbers with them, but I held firm and Rod backed me up. We went to dinner with the chosen crew.
Given the tension between us, it felt good that we had worked through that issue together so smoothly. I wondered if Rod felt the same. Or perhaps only I noticed.
After a flight of stairs and another corridor, we emerged into the outdoors after the Sun had fully set. The ‘patio’ was a flat lawn of grass and clover on a terrace cut into the hillside, but the four cafe tables and the chairs arranged on it somehow looked perfectly natural there.
The sky still had a purple cast to it and fading red hues in the west. The terrace overlooked the forest we had just walked through, covered in the haze of the mana mist and lit in places with [Fairy Light]s or the natural luminescence of mana-loving plant life. The mist gave the scene an otherworldly quality, full of nighttime glows and shifting fog. It looked like it ought to be cold, like a foggy night, but the warm evening air bathed the scene in springtime vitality.
The whole forest had the feel of a mana spring… which would be coming from the spring I previously encountered in the Fairy Queen’s grove. It was perhaps a half-mile from here, but the spring in question was quite rich. Mana-active plants throughout the forest could benefit from it, and play host to pixies and magic life in abundance.
The three fairies waiting for us did not rise when we appeared, because they were the royals of this place. Oberon, Morrígan and Gelon, father, mother and son, simply inclined their heads to us as elven maids appeared and guided us to our tables.
They seated me with the Fairy King and Queen, while Rod and Mireia sat with the Fairy Prince. The other two tables were difficult to sort out for a moment, with both Chiara and Gald protesting they needed to be closer to Rod, but I was less than a pace from him, the way we were seated, so I told them I would be the royal knight protecting the prince, accept it and hush up. Chiara sat with Ryuu and Matthias. Gald, with Dilorè and Serera.
The mood, suffice it to say, was dark. Of course, the Faerie royals knew what happened to Mother and Inda before we arrived; Rod notified Oberon at the same time as he informed Ged. They weren’t wearing black like Rod and me because the fairy tradition is to wear a simple gray raiment. I hadn’t mentioned it until now, but when Serera and Dilorè weren’t in their armor, they were doing the same.
Morrígan took my hand as soon as I was seated, squeezing it firmly with concern etched into her face. Oberon had his eyes fixed on Mother’s amulet, with his lips pursed and his brow furrowed.
“Serera has already reported the details to us,” Morrígan told me with a gentle tone. “Do you also believe that Deharè’s soul is kept in that locket?”
I nodded. “I do.”
She glanced at the king, who was now contemplating the cup of sake on the table in front of him. He wasn’t speaking.
Returning her gaze to me, she commented, “It’s true that the imprint of her aura dwells within it. I cannot deny the possibility. Will you play the role Serera mentioned in bringing her back?”
I told her, “I… have questions I need to ask, before I can go forward with what Gaia is asking me to do.”
Morrígan’s eyes turned sharp. “You haven’t made up your mind yet?”
“Do you understand that she will become like me, if I become her mother? She’ll have to live as a vampire, dependent on mortal blood? I’m not happy about that. I’m not convinced I’m the proper choice to carry them.”
“I doubt Gaia would mislead you concerning that,” Morrígan noted.
Those words twisted in my heart, because I also wanted to believe that the goddess wouldn’t lie to me. But…
“Those three know very well how unlikely I am to make new Elder babies on my own. In four thousand years, I only gave birth to Oberon. This might look to them like a golden opportunity to obtain some more pliable Elder mothers.”
Mother would certainly not balk at having children. My unborn little sister would at worst be no worse than me, and odds were, she’d be more compliant, as just about any other Elder would.
Both King and Queen looked… slightly shocked, but thoughtful. Had that idea really not occurred to them until now? I thought it was obvious.
“If you don’t trust the word of our local tutelary deities, whom do you propose to ask?” Oberon wondered, finally speaking.
“Your wife, for one,” I told him, and turned back to Morrígan. “I want to discuss Gaia’s rationales with you in detail. Especially, whether I am truly the only choice as a mother. Can I have your ear for a while after this?”
