wyrd & fae 03 - fever mist

  WYRD AND FAE BOOK THREE

  Fever Mist

  l.k. rigel

  Also Available in the Wyrd and Fae Series

  Give Me (Wyrd and Fae 1)

  Bride of Fae (Wyrd and Fae 2)

  Fever Mist (Wyrd and Fae 3)

  A Glimmering Girl (Wyrd and Fae 4)

  Fever Mist (Wyrd and Fae 3)

  Copyright 2014 L.K. Rigel

  Published by Beastie Press

  Cover design by eyemaidthis

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. With the exception of quotes used in reviews, no part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  Wyrd and Fae series:

  Give Me

  Bride of Fae

  Fever Mist

  A Glimmering Girl

  Goblin Ball

  What people are saying about Give Me:

  I think I'm in love...Yes, this hardened feminist shell that I wrap around me like a coat-of-arms melted as I read this delightful piece of pure romance. ~The Romance Reviews (top pick)

  Rigel ... masterfully infuse(s) a very intricate magical history ... with today's inclination to disbelieve anything that can't be logically explained ... she makes you believe in magic. ~ Kindle Obsessed

  If you are looking for witches, fairies, royalty, mystery, catty French girls, and a bit of lusty love - then this book is for you. ~ Fictional Candy

  What people are saying about Bride of Fae:

  COULD.NOT.PUT.THIS.BOOK.DOWN!! Rarely does a book grab me like this one did. This story whisks you away to London and you become entranced with the fairies, pixies, goblins and the humans who interact with them. You get to see the light and dark side of the fairie world and their inner politics and workings. L.K Rigel eloquently describes the scenery and paints such a picture in your head that you want to run away to Faeview. ~ Jenn's Review Blog

  I cannot wait for the next book. The way that Rigel started with the present in Give Me and then is going back into the past with Bride of Fae and the next book is really interesting. I don't know if I've read a series like that before, but I'm glad that I am reading the Tether's series. ~ Reading It All

  I love reading stories about Fae and Rigel's description and detail that she put into this fantasy world was amazing. I felt like a piece of me was there. The author also captured a very good sense of time travel within the story. ~ Amanda Blogs, Tales of a Bibliophile

  Table of Contents

  Sorrow’s Prisoner

  Kaelyn

  A Goblin’s Heart

  Merlyn

  Desire is the Fire

  Mistcutter

  Goblin’s Curse

  Fever Mist

  The fever mist first came to Dumnos in the 5th century, just before the time of King Artros of Round Table fame. It came again at the end of the 11th century, and found Elyse at Glimmer Cottage.

  ~ Lydia Pengrith Bausiney,

  Countess Dumnos

  « Chapter 1 »

  Sorrow’s Prisoner

  Eleventh Century Dumnos. Elyse at Glimmer Cottage

  I WAS ON THE ROOF the morning the fever mist rolled in.

  Like rolling thunder made visible, I thought. The mist was black and gray and white… unnatural. What kind of magic is in this?

  Of course I dearly wanted to go to the cliffs for a real look, to be near Igdrasil, but there would be people on the road.

  Even then, a woman scurried through her fields, dodging the sheep as she made her way toward Tintagos Bay to see the strange phenomenon. I recognized her and picked up the glimmer glass for a better view.

  Yes, it was the salt-tosser, Mrs. Thresher. She once accused me of being a fairy and tried to frighten me out of my own house. I didn’t like the farmer’s wife, but I knew her name, and that’s all that mattered. I put down the glimmer glass. Where had I put the satin pouch of dust?

  I have to know a person’s name to use glamour dust on them. I sit in a quiet place—usually the roof of Glimmer Cottage—and say the name three times while tossing a handful of the stuff in the air. As the dust settles, the person’s living image appears, complete with surrounding sounds and smells, the clarity and scope depending on the quality of the glamour dust.

  Of course it’s easier to sit in the chaise with a glass on my lap, but the three-dimensional view from the dust goes to a different level. I can tell if the people in the dust view have been enchanted and whether the source is wyrd or fae.

  I wanted to know if that mist did something to the salt-tosser.

  And that’s when I discovered I’d run out. I went down to the kitchen to look for what I had in store, but there was nothing in the cupboards, no spare hidden pouch in the worktable drawers. A glimmer glass lay under a tea towel in its usual basket on the counter, but there was no dust.

  Warm, fresh spring air wafted in from the open window. The day promised to be lovely, this sweetest season of the Dumnos year. Outside, the flower garden was a riot of color. Lilacs, roses, wisteria, lilies, peonies, iris, tulips—any bloom you can think of was on display.

  Being a wyrding woman had to have some advantages. The Dumnos mist penetrated my cottage boundary only when I allowed it.

  I’d started the garden ten years earlier when I returned from the faewood, right after I threw those dreadful, salt-tossing squatters out of my house. Not to worry. No one ever notices the floral phantasmagoria. To confound Idris, and others, I keep an obscuration boundary going continually, all around the cottage perimeter.

  It isn’t the fae alone I fear. I can’t risk human visitors either—can’t risk anyone making contact with the two souls captured in my ring. But having to forego the world doesn’t mean I like it. The loneliness is soul-crushing. It may kill me before I find the means to atone for what I’ve done.

  To fight despair, I use glimmer glasses and glamour dust to keep up with the comings and goings of the people of Tintagos Castle and its surrounds. There are no kings in Dumnos anymore, but a baron is ensconced at the castle. He’s descended from Saxons who invaded Dumnos hundreds of years ago, his father made baron by the invading Normans while I was gone.

  Lord Tintagos has no Oracle, but he’s friendly to the wyrd. I often hear him defend our kind against the rantings of priests secure in the patronage of House Normandum. Our local monks and nuns are as sweet and as benign as ever they were, but the bishops out of Sarumos have grown strong in the world, and their influence increases daily. They don’t bother to hide their contempt for the wyrd or their wish to see us disappear.

  No wyrders live in the open now. In the glimmer glass, I’ve heard people mention a local wyrding woman, Kaelyn. I’ve never seen her, but I’m sure she does exist. One time I watched a banquet where Lord Tintagos waxed poetic about her healing powers—though he may have exaggerated his tale to anger the prior sitting on his right side.

  I’ve narrowed the location of Kaelyn’s cottage to the Small Wood east of the castle, near Nine Hazel Lake, but all my spells have been useless in pinning down the exact place. I’ve searched with the glimmer glass and summoned her with dust, all for naught.

  Sometimes I swear Brother Sun and Sister Moon thwart my efforts. I can’t believe they would be so cruel, though I have no right to complain. Loneliness is my punishment for the unspeakable things I’ve done; I accept that. Most of the time.

  Running out of dust was more than an irritation. It was a threat to my sanit
y.

  I found my herb basket and went outside to gather sticks and leaves. I make an excellent glamour dust from the yew tree not thirty yards beyond the door to Glimmer Cottage. I was taught the formula by my mother, Frona, the great wyrding woman and King’s Oracle, over a hundred years ago. She would have marveled to see how supple and potent our yew has grown.

  Not that I’m that old! Ha-ha. There’s a riddle there.

  It was indeed over a hundred years ago Mother taught me the wyrding ways. It was during the time of King Jowan, the last king of Dumnos. When I was eighteen, I made a terrible mistake with one of my wyrds. In the confusion afterward, I was taken to the faewood and brought before Idris, regent king of the Dumnos fae, who tried to keep me with him there as his lover.

  I escaped Idris before a night and day had passed, but when I returned to Dumnos everyone I knew was gone. A hundred years had elapsed in the human realm, an eyeblink in my life. I rousted the couple who’d taken up residence in my house and lay a boundary around the grounds so that no one, human or fae, would notice my existence.

  I’ve tried venturing out into the world, covered in protective charms and obscuration spells, but the nearer I come to another human being the more Galen and Diantha scream to get out of the double-banded silver and gold Oracle’s ring on my right hand.

  This was how I lived: in the company of crows, grinding dust from my yew tree, with the constant yammer of two captive, lovesick souls constantly seeking and sometimes finding ways to break free and take over my will until I herd them back into their gold and silver prison—a ring I could remove, but only on pain of death, mine and theirs.

  I’d never been with a man, and I had accepted the impossibility of ever knowing love. I had turned to watching love’s play where I could find it.

  Through the glimmer glass I’ve watched innocent lovers steal chaste kisses on the stairs of Tintagos Castle. I’ve seen a nobleman bed the girl who’d come to light his morning fire while his son was in the kitchen, lifting the skirts of the cook’s helper. Over ten years, my interests have varied. I tend to search in themes. For a time, I watched only redheads, then only couplings out of doors. One year I couldn’t be bothered unless there was force or bondage involved.

  When the fever mist came, I’d been on a kick for male beauty. After Idris, who radiated splendor and sexuality, my concept of the male ideal had become… more difficult to impress. I’d planned to spend the day on the roof with glamour dust and a three-dimensional view of the Tintagos Castle and its current guest.

  The evening before, a young knight in silver armor had arrived from the south, and I’d caught a glimpse of his welcome. He was on his way to Sarumos—London, he called it—to join King William’s brother on a crusade to the holy land. He had promised to tell all about it at Lord Tintagos’s table this evening.

  Not that I cared a whit about kings in Sarumos and crusades in the east. The silver knight was simply the most beautiful human man I’d ever seen, and I wanted to see more.

  “Kaelyn calls! Kaelyn calls!” The crow in the yew cried out to me as I broke off the tender end of a low branch and dropped the wand into my basket. “Kaelyn calls!” he said again.

  Crows!

  Being in the faewood had changed me. It had made me realize and activate my fae nature, and that had informed my understanding of the world. On returning to the human realm, I found that I understood the language of crows.

  Confined to the cottage, crows screaming at me from the garden, and two human souls screaming at me from my ring. This should drive anyone mad—but I wouldn't let it. I wouldn’t let Idris win.

  I shook out my hair, grown well past my waist, then tucked it back into its net. With my skirt pulled up and tied around my hips, I started to climb the tree. Leaves growing high up in the full sun give glamoured images a robust quality, with sharper colors and clearer sounds.

  “Kaelyn calls!” the crow yelled, his beady black eye fixed on me. “Kaelyn calls,” he said again, without enthusiasm, like an afterthought.

  I clung to a branch and hung there for a moment, considering the bird. Why not? I let go and dropped to the ground.

  What if the crow was right? Crows usually were, their missives delivered so tauntingly. Kaelyn is there. The crows had watched me on the roof with the glimmer glass, calling out Kaelyn’s name in my incantations. They knew I wanted to find her. They knew I had been searching in the Small Wood.

  Anyway, there were yew trees in the Small Wood. It would be interesting to try the bark and leaves from a different stand. And I could gather some hazelnuts from the trees at the lake. Why not?

  “I need a little adventure. Don’t you think so, bird?” I hadn’t been out in such a long time, and I was unlikely to come upon any people up there. I could be back at Glimmer Cottage before the evening meal was served at the castle.

  I pushed the prince and princess out of my mind and locked them down in the double ring, Diantha to the silver band and Galen to the gold.

  “Sleep.”

  Not having bodies, they didn’t actually sleep, but out of sheer desperation I’d discovered the sleeping wyrd put them into a sort of trance. It took much of my power and never lasted long—sometimes only a few hours, sometimes as many as eight—but the respite was worth it. I’d have to sleep all the next day and half the day after to get my strength back.

  “Athena!” My horse appeared in the courtyard, two empty sacks hanging from her saddle. I might as well collect other interesting stuff from the Small Wood along with the yew parts.

  It felt odd and wonderful and good to be away from Glimmer Cottage. Leaving the courtyard, a cool breeze invaded the fine spring morning and raised chill bumps on my neck. The mist had rolled in from the Severn Sea bringing its strange dark look, like a living thing fed by malice.

  Or maybe my guilty conscience wanted to ruin this rare day of freedom.

  I turned Athena east on an inland path, out of the way and seldom used, and rode to the Small Wood without incident. I was glad I’d come. The yew trees were old and teemed with power. As I filled one of my sacks, I sensed the enduring energy of the ten thousand things flowing through their bark, branches, and leaves.

  At the lake I tied Athena outside a hunter’s cottage and walked to the hazel trees on the far shore which gave the lake its name. Legend has it that Nine Hazel Lake is the sacred home of the Lady of the Lake. She sleeps beneath the surface with Excalibur, King Artos’s sword of power, in her arms.

  I peered into the pristine waters, half hoping and half afraid to catch a glimpse of the mystical sight, and a sudden breeze whipped through the trees. I inhaled the cold air and listened to the sound of leaves in the wind. Something strange was in that breeze, but I couldn’t put a name to it.

  I filled my second bag with hazelnuts. On the way back, I passed a flat rock at lake’s edge which jutted out over the water, a pleasant spot to do the work I had in mind. I sat down with my two sacks and withdrew a few handfuls of yew sticks and some dried leaves I’d found on the ground.

  Using the pestle from my purse of stuffs and devices, I ground the pile of yew to the coarse consistency of grain, chanting:

  Vide infra, vide supra.

  Vide, vide, vide.

  Audi infra, audi supra.

  Audi, audi, audi.

  Engrossed in my task, I was surprised when a voice very close and very male said, “My lady, I beg pardon for the intrusion.”

  « Chapter 2 »

  Kaelyn

  I JUMPED TO MY feet as the voice—resonant and masculine and real—filled the air. A man emerged from among the hazel trees, and I clenched the marble pestle with the fleeting—and pitiful—thought it might serve as a weapon. My heartbeat quickened as he came into view.

  A shower of white-blond hair fell over the man’s shoulders. His skin was pale but healthy. His black eyebrows arched gracefully over kind hazel eyes. His teeth were straight and white, and his lips were full. With his smile a dimple formed on the side of his m
outh. He was tall and strong-looking. Perhaps a little younger than me—though it was hard to tell ages now.

  He wasn’t mesmerizing like Idris. He was just… lovely. No promised terror, no power, no hidden trickery.

  “Who are you?” The hope and wonder in his question was charming. This could be no ordinary human, and yet he had no magic about him. Flawless as he appeared, he was no fae. At least, no fae like any I’d seen.

  Idris—the regent king of the Dumnos fae and the only man who’d ever shown an interest in me—had been compelling, a glorious sexual predator. This man had a different kind of physical power. Natural, earned, and owned. His tunic, cloak, and boots weren’t magic-made, but were all of fine quality. A suit of armor tied down on his horse’s back was so thoroughly polished it shone—like silver.

  The silver knight was a human man—and a fine exemplar. He came closer.

  “Are you the Lady of the Lake?”

  I laughed out loud—and louder still at his puzzled reaction.

  “No, Sir Knight. I am not.”

  I was sorry for his consternation, but the notion any man would mistake me for a goddess, and one reportedly beautiful beyond compare, was… laughable.

  He took another step toward me. I believe he intended to kiss me, and I intended to let him. His lips were so close, and mine tingled with anticipation, but the crackle of dry leaves stopped us. We both looked toward the Small Wood.

  An old woman on foot appeared from among the trees. She wore a green tunic and cloak, its hood thrown back, exposing long gray curls. Her blue-gray eyes were the color of a mourning dove. She fixed on me but spoke to the blond knight. “Not yet.” She flicked her wrist at him in dismissal.

  He turned back to me, but his gaze went through me. Frowning, he looked back to the woman and shook his head as if he couldn’t understand where she’d gone—but she was coming right toward us. He turned in a circle, frowning, then made the sign of the cross over his breast and kissed the beads he wore around his neck.