Song of the Fairy Queen by Valerie Douglas Page B

called out to dance as she protested that she couldn’t – and she was right – yet still being drawn out. She’d laughed helplessly as Oryan simply shook his head indulgently and smiled as she looked back at him in appeal, seeking rescue.
    Grief caught Morgan swiftly and unexpectedly. It had never occurred to him that he hadn’t grieved for the loss of the Queen much, either. Yet he’d loved her like a sister. How could he not have, to the woman who’d given so much to his friend Oryan?
    She may not have been a dancer, but she’d been hell’s own vengeance with a sword in her hand, giving no quarter and expecting none in return. He’d enjoyed sparring with her.
    He bit the pain back, it did her sacrifice no good.
    There would be another, better, time to grieve for Gwenifer.
    Someday.
    In the hall below Haerold paced… A tall, dark, bearded figure who bore some slight resemblance to Oryan in the length of his face and his coloring.
    “What do we hear of my brother?” Haerold demanded, harshly.
    Sitting on the throne in Gwenifer’s place was a woman, a wizard – and not a white one. Her shapely legs were draped wantonly over the arm of the chair, her thick, straight, dark red hair spilled nearly to the floor behind her. She was dressed in a velvet and satin gown of dark gold, close fitting and elaborately embroidered as was the fashion abroad. She wore a heavy gold chain encrusted with jewels the color of droplets of blood. It dropped between her abundant breasts to a pendant in the shape of a globe.
    Her features were unnaturally lovely, still and cold. The fingers of one hand played idly with the globe while the fingers of the other danced casually, seemingly restlessly, in the air.
    Standing to one side, watching, was a tallish, broad-chested man dressed all in black. He was as mercenary by his look and his rig – a thing of broad belts of metal-studded black leather crossing his shoulders and girdling his hips. A broadsword was strapped to his back, a saber hung in the scabbard at his side.
    A Northman straddled a chair backwards, his broad arms resting across the back. An axe graced his back.
    Sitting at another place at the table was a slender dark blonde man with a sharpish, clever face, who played idly with a knife, spinning it, point down, in the once glossy tabletop. Now that top was scarred, burned and littered with holes.
    Delaville .
    Now they knew from where the information on his own movements, his coming and goings had come. A member of Oryan’s Privy Council, Delaville would have known everything.
    How had they turned him?
    To judge by his clothes and jewelry, Delaville had betrayed a man who considered him a friend for gold.
    “Nothing,” a voice growled, quite literally, from the darkness. “My people tracked them to the Forest and no farther. We’ve lost the scent.”
    From those shadows stalked another figure, the speaker, and everything in Morgan cried out in horror, in denial…
    Some claimed Haerold himself bore some slight resemblance to a wolf. His features were long like Oryan’s, but more lupine, his eyes hazel where Oryan’s were a deep brown, Haerold’s cheeks more hollow…
    But this…thing…
    “What the hell is that?” Jacob hissed.
    Its face, too, was long, its broad nose more like a muzzle and tipped dark. The hollows beneath its cheekbones were deep and shadowed, its heavy beard, moustache, hair and eyebrows thick, black, silver-streaked and wrong . The creature’s chest was deep, strong, rounded and powerfully muscled. Its arms were sinewy, the waist and hips unnaturally lean. It had strong hands, and claws where fingernails should have been. The thing’s legs canted at an unnatural angle, so he stalked forward as much as stepped into the light. His eyes were as golden and feral as a wolf’s, but no honest wolf would have called this thing cousin.
    Morgan shuddered instinctively in revulsion.
    The creature looked to the others and finally to Haerold.
    “Nor can