Page 41 of Nyall

Speal went to the railing to watch the sunrise, where Teine joined her and handed her a mug of ale. Most of the Cait Sith remained below, still recovering from their full moon night. Because they had spent it on a vessel surrounded by water they had been unable to run free as they did every other month when they changed. She vaguely remembered her sisters screeching their fury before turning on each other, and how she had held onto her own sense long enough to herd them below deck.

“How many injured?” she asked the one-eyed shifter.

“All,” Teine said. “Dearg’s tending to the worst. We’ll need another week so they may fully recover. ’Twould be faster on land where we might hunt some mortals. That Ronalsee island–”

“No’ there.” The thought of their sisters becoming entrapped by the standing stone, as she had been, made her bilious. “’Tis deserted, and barren. We must return to Insii Orc.”

The sound of the door to the captain’s cabin opening made them both glance over their shoulders at Dearg, who looked as if she had been threshed by a hundred flails. The little shifter quietly closed the door before hobbling over to them.

“Our princess shall sleep the day.” She touched a wound on her lips. “She changed last night, but no’ into her true form. She became a woodland Fae.”

“How can you remember such?” Teine demanded. “We’re all but mindless when we go to fur.”

“She cast her magic over me to end my change, and then spoke of her love for Mar for hours and hours.” Dearg sagged against the railing. “I could sleep for a year now, I reckon.”

Speal frowned. “How could words wound you?”

“She mistook me for Eilonwy, the prince’s murdered wife.” A yawn spoiled her pout. “At the end she lost her temper and promised beat me to death. She nearly did, and then she wept, asking my forgiveness.” She moved her shoulders. “She forgot all but her own notions, I reckon.”

What she wasn’t saying or thinking suggested there had been more to the night than Derdrui’s ravings and tantrums. The little shifter’s pretense of indifference concealed her fear, but not completely.

“Help her below,” Speal told Teine, and then kissed the little shifter on her bruised brow. “You did well.”

Once the pair had gone into the hold Speal walked over to the cabin and pressed her ear against the door before she opened it and slipped inside. The large room appeared ransacked by marauders, with torn gowns and splintered furnishings covering the floor. Trace of magic still shimmered in the air, which smelled of a dark, heavy perfume, and the walls bore fresh red flecks over the old blood stains. On the bare ticking of the bed lay the enchantress, most of her dark beauty restored after her long night of revelry. Only her hands remained gnarled like old crooks, with talons still curving on the ends of her fingers.

Speal went over to open the window on the far side of the cabin to let in some fresh air.

“Eilonwy was the only one who loved him as much as I,” Derdrui murmured. “For that I loved her, even before I killed her.”

“She’s been gone a thousand years now, my sovereign.” She closed her eyes, drawing in a deep breath before she faced her, and nearly screamed.

The dead fish monger’s wife now lay on the bed, her heavy body naked against the rumpled linens.

“You know what love is, do you not, my faithful one?” the enchantress asked as she ran her taloned hands over her altered form. “This one you adored at first sight, and meant to make your lover. Only a mortal stole her from you, just as Eilonwy did Mar from me.”

Speal knew she should cater to their sovereign’s obsession with her past, and allow her this chance to torture her and appease her twisted Fae needs. Yet to have the one she had truly loved used as the means for that made all she had suffered well up in her.

“I ken love.” She walked over to the bed and looked over her dead love’s bountiful curves. “’Tis what I and my sisters hold in our hearts for you, my princess. Yet you seem bent on destroying us, one by one. You nearly beat Dearg to death last night during your ravings. Now you torment me. How long imagine you shall we go on loving and serving one who but punishes us so cruelly?”

“You bovine idiot.” The enchantress shifted back into her darkly beautiful form, and rose from the bed. “I should kill you for showing me such disrespect.”

“Aye, end me, just as you did Fiacail,” Speal countered. “And the next leader you choose, doubtless she shall soon need killing for some annoyance or disrespect. Shall you slay her in your endless anger, or wretchedness over the past, or simply your boredom? How many of us can you butcher before you’re left alone in the midst of the sea, with no one sailing the facking boat?”

The air between them grew thick with Derdrui’s magic, but the enchantress simply stared at her as if she didn’t recognize her now.

“I vowed serve you forever, and so I shall,” Speal said, weariness making her sit on the edge of the bed. “Until the end of my life, I’m yours. Only ken I cannae give you what you wish if I’m dead. Nor may the others. You need the Cait Sith in the mortal realm, my sovereign. We’re no’ your enemy. Show us your mercy and permit us serve, I beg you.”

Slowly the air cleared, and the enchantress turned away from her.

“I have needs that you leave unattended,” Derdrui said. “I will not explain it to you, for you cannot understand the true Fae. If you wish to spare yourself and the others suffering, find mortals to entertain me.”

“We shall return to Insii Orc for a time, then.” Speal bowed.

A knock came on the door, and Teine peered inside. “Forgive the intrusion. We’ve sighted a large fisher sailing toward us.”

The enchantress grinned with delight, looking in that moment eerily like Dearg. “It seems we do not have to return to the island of pigs. The swine have come to us.”

Chapter Thirteen