Chapter 15
Tamsin was no great horsewoman at the best of times. Riding a giant magical steed bareback, without a bridle, through thick, wild woodland, when her knees felt like jelly and she was barely managing to hold herself together…turned out to be a lot easier than she’d expected.
Cuan’s broad back carried her as smoothly and gently as a rocking horse. She didn’t think she could fall off if she tried. He responded to every tiny shift of her weight instantly, keeping himself underneath her despite the uneven ground.
If she shut her eyes and ignored the wind whistling past her ears, it felt like they weren’t moving at all. Yet the world whipped by in a green blur, Cuan’s thundering hooves eating up the miles with impossible speed.
Everything seemed dreamlike. She felt as though she was floating, wrapped in a fragile bubble of false calm. She had a weird, irrational conviction that as long as she was on Cuan, buoyed up by his strength, nothing could hurt her.
It was an illusion, of course. Fake. Like everything else in fairyland.
She tightened her arms around Angus, bundled up in a towel on her lap like a small angry burrito. If nothing else, he was solid and reliable. Right now, she really needed that anchor to reality.
“Sorry, baby,” she murmured, petting him. “Not much further. I hope.”
One of Cuan’s ears swiveled in her direction. He turned his neck a little to look back at her, his breakneck pace never faltering. His eyes were a deep, vibrant gold, the same as they were in his wolf form.
“We are nearly at Lady Maeve’s sidhean.” His equine muzzle didn’t move at all, but she heard Cuan’s deep voice as clearly as if he was standing next to her on two feet. Cuan turned his head forward again, ears pricking to indicate the horizon. “Do you see it now?”
Tamsin sat up a bit, straining her eyes. The moon seemed larger and brighter here than in her own world, bathing the forest in crisp, cold light. By that unearthly radiance, she picked out the shape of a large hill thrusting up through the trees ahead.
“That’s what Fair Hill looks like, here?” Thanks to Motley’s portals, she hadn’t had a chance to see it from the outside before now. “It’s bigger than it is in my world, but it still doesn’t look anywhere near large enough to contain all those grand halls and rooms.”
“A sidhean is a special place, a kind of joining-point between worlds. It appears as a mere hill from the outside, but in truth it is much more than that. It exists in its own space.”
“So it’s a TARDIS.” Cuan’s golden eye rolled, giving her a blank look, and Tamsin grimaced. “Sorry. Human cultural reference. Would take way too long to explain. I mean, it’s bigger on the inside than on the outside?”
He nodded, his long black mane flowing with the motion. “Some of our mages are able to alter their structure, summoning new chambers or reworking the old. But if we ever knew how to construct a sidhean from nothing, that art has long since been lost. The ones that are left to us are rare and precious. Doubly so if their connection to the human realm still stands, as this one does. Although we withdrew from your world long ago, many unseelie high sidhe still dream of one day returning to reclaim our rightful place.”
Tamsin shivered at the thought. Cuan’s hide twitched underneath her thighs as though he too found the prospect disturbing.
“The Wild Hunt keep you guys out though, right?” she asked.
“Yes. And the seelie fae guard the borders as well.” Cuan’s nostrils flared in a horsey sigh. “They believe that it would be best for our worlds to be permanently divided. For our sake, not yours. The greatly fear that humans might find a way to devastate our realm too, as you have ruined your own.”
Tamsin had a knee-jerk impulse to protest that humans weren’t that bad…but she stopped herself. Maybe it was best if the fae did believe her world was some kind of bombed-out post-apocalyptic wasteland.
Anything to keep high sidhe like Maeve from moving in next door.
As they drew closer to the faerie hill, Cuan slowed down. He dropped first to a trot, then a walk, and finally stood still. Tamsin glanced around, but couldn’t see anything other than woodland.
“What is it?” she asked. “Do you need me to get off here?”
Cuan didn’t answer for a moment, staring ahead at the dark bulk of the hill. Then he shook himself—somehow managing not to jolt her at all—and started walking again.
“No,” he said, his deep voice dropping yet further. “You are weary. I will carry you inside.”
Tamsin opened her mouth to protest that she wasn’t a weak fainting flower, but he’d already broken into that impossibly fast canter. In a matter of moments, they were out from under the trees.
The flank of the hill rose in a smooth, grassy slope before them. Cuan changed course, trotting toward a patch of hillside that looked—to Tamsin’s eyes, at least—no different from any other bit.
As he drew closer, though, the turf shimmered. Abruptly two towering stones rose in front of them, topped with a third laid cross-ways across the top to form a square arch. It reminded Tamsin of Stonehenge, except this stone formation was big enough for a whole parade of elephants to pass under without ducking.
Light spilled from beyond the arch. Cuan trotted through, and the muffled thud of his hooves pounding over grass changed to a deafening clatter. Tamsin had to put up a hand to shield her eyes, blinded by gleaming white marble.
“Disgusting,” someone hissed.
Tamsin dropped her hand, and discovered a small group of high sidhe glaring at them from the other side of the hall. Or rather, to be more exact, glaring at Cuan. None of the fae bothered to give Tamsin so much as a glance.