"Is there a chance that they will try to dispossess Sholto?"
"Some fear that in joining with you he will destroy the sluagh. They have chosen a full-blooded nightflyer in his place as proxy. Only the fact that Sholto has been the best and fairest of kings saved him from waking to a kingdom that was his no more."
"Forgive me," Doyle said, "but could the sluagh simply vote their king out of office?"
Tarlach spoke without trying to look back at Doyle. "It has been done before."
We walked in silence for a few minutes. The sluagh's sithen looked much like the Unseelie's, with dark stone walls, and floors of cold, worn stone. But the energy was different. That thrumming, pulsing energy that was always present inside a fairie mound, unless you blocked it out, was slightly different. It was like the difference between a Porsche and a Mustang. They were both high-performance cars, but one purred and the other roared. The sluagh's sithen roared, the power calling to me louder and louder as we walked.
I stopped so abruptly that Doyle had to touch my shoulder to keep from walking into me. "What is wrong?" he asked.
"We will call, but Sholto needs me now, right now."
"You at his side will not comfort them," Tarlach said.
"I know I look too sidhe for them, but it is the power that they need to see. The sithen is talking. Don't you hear it?"
Tarlach gazed up at me. "I hear it, but I am nightflyer."
"It is roaring at me, getting louder, like the rain and wind of some great storm coming ever closer. I need to be at Sholto's side while he faces his people."
"You are too sidhe to help him," Chattan said.
I shook my head. "Your sithen doesn't think so."
The sound pulsed against my skin, as if I were leaning against some great engine, so that it vibrated along my body. "There is no time. The sithen chose Sholto as its king, as all the sithens once did. It will not take another, and your people are not listening to it."
"If you are truly his queen, and the sithen truly speaks, then ask it to open the way from here to the chamber of decision. It may speak to you, but does it listen to you?"
I remembered the wall trying to close against my wish, but that had been my desire, and the new king had been working against me. Now the sithen wanted something, and I wanted the same thing. We wanted to help our king.
I spoke. "Sithen, open the way to your king and the chamber of decision."
The vibrating energy grew so loud that I could hear nothing but the roar and pulse of it. It staggered me for a moment so that I reached out to Tarlach's slick muscled form for steadiness. Maybe it was the fact that I reached to a nightflyer and not a sidhe, but whatever the reason, the corridor in front of us ended, and became something else. It was suddenly the opening of a great cavern. I could see seats full of sluagh going up and up in a great amphitheater.
Sholto stood on the sand-covered floor facing a huge nightflyer almost as tall as himself. It unfurled its wings, and shrieked at us. Sholto turned a startled face to us. He only had time to say "Meredith" before the nightflyer launched itself at us. Tarlach threw himself skyward and met the larger form in a twisting fight that went upward.
"You should not have come," Sholto said, but he took my hand in his as the benches began to broil into a riot. The sluagh were fighting among themselves.
Chapter Nineteen
The tattoos on our hands flared to life, not as real roses, but as glowing, pulsing works of art. The smell of herbs and roses was thick on the air. I felt the weight of the crown as it curled through my hair, and I knew I was crowned once more with white roses and mistletoe. I did not need to look at Sholto to know that his crown was in place, a mist of herbs blooming above his pale hair.
Rose petals began to fall like rain, but they were not the pink and lavender that they had been before. White petals fell around the two of us.
It slowed the riot, stopped most of the fighting. It turned their faces to us, wide with astonishment. For a second I hoped that the fight would end, and we could talk, then the yelling began.
There were screams. "Sidhe! They are sidhe!" Others screamed "Betrayed! We are betrayed!"
Doyle was at my back, and I think he was talking to Sholto. "We need weapons."
I raised my face to the fall of white petals, felt them hit my face like soft blows. I spoke to the air. "We need weapons."
Sholto had the spear of bone and the dagger in his hand. I stood separate from him, unarmed. The ground underfoot shuddered, then began to split open. Doyle and Mistral grabbed me, pulled me back, but I wasn't afraid. I could feel the power of the sithen revving like the great magical engine that it was.
The opening widened, then stopped. It was a spiral staircase as white and shining as any in the Seelie Court, leading down into the ground. The banister was formed of human bones, and larger bones of things that had never been humanoid.
When the sound of the ground opening stopped there was no sound from the sluagh. It was so quiet that the sound of the rose petals hitting the sand made a noise like snow falling.
Then into that silence came the sound of cloth and footsteps. The sound was coming from the stairs. The first figure came, clothed all in white, hidden behind a cloak and robes that hadn't been worn in faerie for centuries. Hands as white as the cloth held a sword by its hilt. I thought at first that the hands were moonlight skin like Sholto's and mine, but then as the figure came farther up the stairs, I saw that the hands were bones. Skeletal hands held the white handle of the sword. The blade was white too, though it gleamed like metal and not bone.
The figure was tall, as tall as any sidhe. It looked at us with a skull for a face, hidden behind a gauzy veil. Empty eye sockets stared at me. It turned to Sholto, and offered the sword.
He hesitated for a second, then reached for the hilt. He brushed the skeletal hands, but did not seem to mind. The figure walked through the growing puddle of petals, the long trailing gown like some macabre wedding dress. She, for it was she, stood to one side and waited.
The next figure looked like a duplicate of the first: all white, all bone, that gauzy veil in front of the skull face. This one offered a woven white belt and scabbard. Sholto took them, fastening the belt around his waist and sheathing the sword.
A third skeletal figure came, but this one held a shield, as white as the sword. The shield was carved with figures of skeletons and tentacled beasts.