Courts of the Fey Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Contents

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  GALLOW’S RESCUE

  AN ANSWER FROM THE NORTH

  GOODHOUSE KEEPING

  THE SONG OF THE WIND

  FIRST BALL . . . LAST CALL

  BEAUTY

  PENNYROYAL

  UNLOCKED GATE

  MUSHROOM CLOUDS AND FAIRY RINGS

  HUNTING THE UNICORN

  THE GREEN MAN

  ANNE

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  ABOUT THE EDITORS

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  Only once will they heed your call.

  They had stood on this very spot: her mother, tall and willowy, with a shock of sunfire hair and eyes greener than a cat’s, holding the girl’s hand and pointing to the rough hewn trunk of the giant oak.

  “This is where I come from, Daughter,” she had said, her voice thick with a honeyed pride that made the girl squirm.

  “The faires will help you should you ever have need of them,” her mother had continued, her voice the timbre of silk. “You have their blood in your veins and that will be enough. Though only once will they heed your call—so use the gift I give you wisely.”

  Now that she stood at the entrance to the Sídhe, the world hidden behind the majestic oak tree beckoning her forward, uncertainty overwhelmed her. Up until that very moment, she’s been so sure of herself and her plan; now she felt lost. The idea that there would be no going back once she’d put the thing into motion had not worried her in theory, but to hand the child over to the fairies when one was actually doing the deed was a very different thing.

  “I know it’s for the best,” she whispered as she pressed her lips to the babe’s ear. “I know it.”

  —from “The Green Man” by Amber Benson

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  Boondocks Fantasy, edited by Jean Rabe and Martin H. Greenberg Urban fantasy is popular, but what if you took that modern fantasy and moved it to the “sticks,” with no big city in sight? Trailer parks, fishing shacks, sleepy little towns, or specks on the map so small that if you blink while driving through you’ll miss them. Vampires, wizards, aliens, and elves might be tired of all that urban sprawl and prefer a spot in the country—someplace where they can truly be themselves without worrying about what the neighbors think! With stories by tale-spinners such as Gene Wolfe, Timothy Zahn, Mickey Zucker Reichert, Anton Strout, Linda P. Baker and others.

  Zombiesque, edited by Stephen L. Antczak, James C. Bassett, and Martin H. Greenberg

  Zombies have long stalked and staggered through the darkest depths of human imagination, pandering to our fears about death and what lies beyond. But must zombies always be just shambling, brain-obsessed ghouls? If zombies actually maintained some level of personality and intelligence, what would they want more than anything? Could zombies integrate themselves into society? Could society accept zombies? What if a zombie fell in love? These are just some of the questions explored in original stories by Seanan McGuire, Nancy A. Collins, Tim Waggoner, Richard Lee Byers, Jim C. Hines, Jean Rabe, Del Stone Jr., and others. Here’s your chance to take a walk on the undead side in these unforgettable tales told from a zombie’s point of view.

  After Hours: Tales from the Ur-Bar, edited by Joshua Palmatier and Patricia Bray

  The first bar, created by the Sumerians after they were given the gift of beer by the gods, was known as the Ur-Bar. Although it has since been destroyed, its spirit lives on. In each age there is one bar that captures the essence of the original Ur-Bar, where drinks are mixed with magic and served with a side of destiny and intrigue. Now some of today’s most inventive scriveners, such as Benjamin Tate, Kari Sperring, Anton Strout, and Avery Shade, among others, have decided to belly up to the Ur-Bar and tell their own tall tales—from an alewife’s attempt to transfer the gods’ curse to Gilgamesh, to Odin’s decision to introduce Vikings to the Ur-Bar . . . from the Holy Roman Emperor's barroom bargain, to a demon hunter who may just have met his match in the ultimate magic bar, to a bouncer who discovers you should never let anyone in after hours in a world terrorized by zombies....

  Copyright © 2011 by Russell Davis and Tekno Books

  All Rights Reserved

  DAW Book Collectors No. 1567.

  DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA).

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  First Printing, November 2011

  DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

  U.S. PAT. AND TM. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

  —MARCA REGISTRADA

  HECHO EN U.S.A.

  S.A.

  ISBN : 978-1-101-54763-2

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction copyright © 2011 by Russell Davis

  “Gallow’s Rescue,” copyright © 2011 by Lilith Saintcrow

  “An Answer from the North,” copyright © 2011 by Sarah Hoyt

  “Goodhouse Keeping,” copyright © 2011 by Mary Robinette Kowal

  “The Song of the Wind,” copyright © 2011 by Paul Crilley

  “First Ball . . . Last Call,” copyright © 2011 by Rob Thurman

  “Beauty,” copyright © 2011 by Jenifer Ruth

  “Pennyroyal,” copyright © 2011 by Kerrie Hughes

  “Unlocked Gate,” copyright © 2011 by Dean Wesley Smith

  “Mushroom Clouds and Fairy Wings,” copyright © 2011 by J.A. Pitts

  “Hunting the Unicorn,” copyright © 2011 by Obsidian Tiger, Inc.

  “The Green Man,” copyright © 2011 by Amber Benson

  “Anne,” copyright © 2011 by Michelle Sagara

  INTRODUCTION

  Russell Davis

  There is an old saw in publishing about there being only seven or twenty or thirty-six or maybe only three basic storylines. I suppose if you’re a deconstructionist, this kind of thinking makes sense. I’m not. Deconstructing a story in that manner is a little like going to a Criss Angel or David Copperfield show and looking behind the curtain. As a writer, I don’t want anyone peeking back there unnecessarily at my work; as an editor, it feels cheap, like I’d be devaluing the work that goes into creating the magic that is a good story.

  I’ve been a co-editor (with Martin H. Greenberg) on a good handful of DAW Books anthologies over the years, and back in 2004, we did one called Faerie Tales. People seemed to like it, which is very important, and I had a lot of fun putting it together, which is not quite as important, but still . . . these are the kinds of projects we do for love. No one is retiring off a theme anthology any time soon, but that’s not really the point. The point, at least for me, is to try and come up with a theme that allows the writers a lot of freedom to create their own unique story and at the same time, works to constrain the overall theme of the book so that readers broadly know what to expect, but get some surprises along the way.

  Now, I might be accused of double-dipping. People like faerie stories, and since it worked once, well . . . maybe I just skipped on back to the well, bucket in hand and a song in my heart. If memory serves, there are at least one or two writers in this anthology that had a story in that one. And maybe that accusation of double-dipping is true. But I don’t think so.

  Co
urts of the Fey, unlike the first faerie related anthology I did, is a bit more constrained, for one thing. The stories all had to relate to the Seelie or Unseelie Courts in some fashion, and while the writers in this volume took that in all kinds of directions I couldn’t have imagined on the front end, no one took the obvious escape route and did a contemporary political story where Glenn Beck is set upon by angry fey creatures sent by the Queen of the Seelie Court, which happens to be situated on a hidden mound beneath the Supreme Court of the United States. (I admit I’d been sort of looking for that one, but maybe it’s better that they avoided the more obvious political implications for this particular volume.)

  The other thing that makes this one different is obvious. No two magicians create an illusion or a magic trick in the exact same way. This is true for writers as well. I could ask a hundred of them to write a story specifically about the death of the Fairy King and I would get a hundred different stories. Interestingly enough, I could then ask that same group to do it again, and get another completely different set of stories. That is why this volume is different than the last, and that is why it’s not double-dipping at all. What writers create is magic and illusion and each time they put pen to page or hands to keyboard, the good ones come up with something different.

  This also explains why those theories about how many (or rather, few) storylines actually exist is so much hooey. Because a story is more than its plot and more than its characters——it is the sum of all the craft and the writers vision, style, and voice that makes each story a unique glimpse into a world that never was or might someday be.

  In Courts of the Fey, you’ll find stories from the incredibly talented Lilith Saintcrow to the beautifully poetic Michelle Sagara; from Amber Benson, who moved on from Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame to her own special gifts as a writer; to Sarah Hoyt, whose worlds have encompassed Shakespeare and beyond. Stories from Rob Thurman and Dean Wesley Smith and Mary Robinette Kowal and more. Twelve writers in all, award winners and bestsellers and maybe a couple you’re reading for the first time ever, conjuring new visions of the worlds of the faerie for your enjoyment.

  I hope that you find walking the paths of these worlds as magical as I did. Step into the mushroom circle, friends, and be transported into the Courts of the Fey.

  GALLOW’S RESCUE

  Lilith Saintcrow

  He sat straight up in bed, the marks normal humans would mistake for tribal tattoos writhing on his arms. They hurt, a fierce sweet pain, and a bolt went through him from crown to toes.

  Jeremy. Her low contralto making the word sweet as caramel. Jeremy Gallow.

  She had said his name.

  The only light was from a weak quarter-moon peering blearily through his blinds. The window was open slightly, and frost traced patterns on the glass, reaching in with tiny insubstantial fingers. He always slept with it open, now.

  Just in case a small brown bird should come fluttering by.

  “Robin?” he whispered.

  Nothing but the moonlight, pale and thin as skimmed milk, soaking through the venetian blinds. Sometimes, on nights this cold and clear when Daisy was alive, he would leave his mortal wife sleeping in their bed and slip out to the field behind the trailer. The lance would spill into his hands from the tattoos, silver shading into iron as he willed, its blade cleaving night air with a low sweet sound. He was slightly less than Half, so the cold iron, deadly as it was, didn’t bar him or poison him.

  No more. Daisy slept under a bed of earth, and Robin had left him.

  Jeremy. A hopeless whisper, her sweet voice blurring. Another shock ran through him, the sort any fae would feel when his name was truly spoken.

  After all, he’d given his oath. If you ever need me, call. And I will come.

  But Robin had merely looked at him, those blue eyes sharp and cold as a knife behind the screen of welling tears. I will never need you, Gallow, she’d said, and swept out into the spring sunshine.

  Need would have to be dire indeed for Robin Ragged to say his name.

  Jeremy was already off the bed and moving, the marks on his arms itching and tingling as they ran. He denied the lance its freedom and it subsided—but only because they both knew he would need it again. Later, or, if Robin were in danger, sooner.

  He would prefer sooner.

  To oblivious human eyes, he looked like every other skinny-hipped construction worker just barely on the sunny side of forty, old enough to know there were no more options but still with enough juice left in him to sling bricks or take heavy duty. A lean, tensile male, maybe looking for a fight, or maybe just looking for his next bottle of brewski and game caught at the corner bar. The clothes helped—who would expect to find a fae wearing Carhartts?

  But fae, even Tainted or Half, would smell the stench of cold iron on him, the salt-sweet breath of mortal blood, the fume of murder, and besides, his face would be known to no few of them. A Queen’s Armormaster, even one who had turned away from the Summer Court, was not one to bandy words or blades with.

  So when he slid through the swinging door into Goodfellow’s Reste, there was a breath of silence and an uncoordinated but graceful drawing-away. Smoke wreathed the roof timbers, and it was probably Goodfellow’s joke that the whole place looked like a tourist dive impersonating a seventeenth-century English tavern. Right down to the many-fingered dryad birchgirls in black vests and low-cut white blouses, their shallow breasts plumped by the tight lacings and the swish of their long greenish-gray skirts like the sough of wind through branches. Ko-bolding at the back table peered through the smoke, their broad warty faces slack and dull, tankards piled on their tables. Others of the Bright and the Little Folk stared or pretended not to, including a dripping kelpie in biped form, his broad white teeth bared.

  At the bar slim brown Goodfellow paused, wiping at the shiny wood with a snow-white cloth. His dark eyes narrowed, and if his tanned hands dropped out of sight below the bar, Jeremy decided, he would kill the mischievous free fae and take his chances elsewhere.

  A tide of whispers followed the clumping of Jeremy’s yellow workboots; he stepped as heavily as a human out of long jobsite habit. Mortals didn’t like it when they couldn’t hear you.

  Besides, the more noise he made, the greater the advantage would be when he chose not to.

  Goodfellow very carefully rested both his hands on the bar’s surface. Oak, polished to a high sheen. It vibrated, and Jeremy paused before he was tempted to touch it or the brass resting-rail along its foot. Behind Goodfellow, ranked bottles gleamed in jewel tones or umber shades. Some of them were even full of alcohol.

  The free fae’s catslit pupils widened a trifle, the high sharp points of his ears poking through a frayed silken mat of nut-brown hair. The leather and homespun he wore were all shades of rough bark and mud; it would be easy to mistake him for a tree-spirit. White teeth showed as his V-shaped smile rose.

  Sometimes, when the Puck smiled, you could see his true age. But not often.

  “Gallow.” A nod, his sharp chin dipping. “What ale do you wish to ail yourself with?”

  For a moment Jeremy’s voice wouldn’t work. It was always a shock. No matter how long he stayed away, how he surrounded himself with mortals and fell into the rhythms of the mortal world, it only took a breath of the fae to make him feel . . .

  ... at home.

  “Goodfellow.” His jaw threatened to crack. “Where is she?”

  It was perhaps a mistake not to observe etiquette.

  The Puck tilted his head. His smile had fallen away, a discarded leaf. “There are many shes, Gallow, and I keep no track of your lightskirt business.”

  Wrong answer. The marks twinged, Jeremy moved, and the entire bar went dead-quiet, not even the scrape of chairs against rough wooden flooring.

  The lance extended, a solid bar of silver, vibrating on the edge of substantiality against Jeremy’s palms. It was a column of cold moonlight, but the blade at the end was now long and leaf-shaped, dull cold iron resonating as i
t sensed fae flesh. A low hungry sound stitched itself into the silence; Goodfellow pressed back against the shelves of bottles and the lance twitched as it sang.

  “I am not going to ask again,” Gallow said, softly. “Robin. Robin Ragged. My Robin.”

  Goodfellow’s callused brown hands were up, a parody of harmlessness. The snarl drifting over his boyface was probably the last expression his human victims ever saw. “The Ragged cares naught for anyone, Gallow, and for thee least of all. I would have told you for proper payment, or maybe for the mischief of watching her break thy—”

  The lance flickered, sweeping laterally. Jeremy stepped aside, the contours of a battlefield flashing through him and the lance keening as it showed him the next few moments, time and choice interlocking to produce the pattern of the battle. Once seen, the pattern could be disrupted.

  The old Armormaster who had trained Gallow in the lance’s use had never mentioned this gift, and sometimes he wondered why.

  The big black doglike creature howled as the lance bit, quicker than a snake’s tongue. The blade rang silver for a moment, striking to wound instead of kill, and the gytrash thumped onto the floorboards, greenish blood spurting. Goodfellow snarled again as the lance flicked back, the point suddenly cold iron again and pressed against his throat, even though the boy-shaped fae was now crouching on the bar ’s shining surface.

  Jeremy said nothing. A whispering ran through the fae, under the gytrash’s sobbing for breath.

  “Fenwicke Station.” Goodfellow’s shoulders dropped. “Along the third track, the north wall. Her home is there; ’tis all I know. The Ragged has not come for her glass of wine since last halfmoon, and you are not the first to ask questions of her.”