Chapter 12

After breakfast had been eaten Lugh explained to her, “Under different circumstances I would have liked to have given you time to learn our ways and adjust to life here, but time is not a luxury that we have. There is an army massing in the north, and we are still recovering from the desecration of our Grove.” Rhiannon had to remember to ask someone what the significance of the groves were before she embarrassed herself with her ignorance. Lugh continued. “The council is meeting in an hour and they have requested your presence. I realize that we are throwing you into this very quickly, but as much as I wish it could wait, I don't think that it can. Your existence and your lineage will present hurdles for the minds of some of our elder council members and it may be an awkward and tedious meeting, but before we go, there are others with whom we should speak.” Lugh looked to Nimue. “Please, go fetch our guests and bring them up to meet us.”

Lugh lead them out of the dining hall, down a corridor and up a flight of stairs to what appeared to be a small private meeting room. It was a bright and simple room with a polished wooden table at its centre that could seat about ten. They sat and waited. “I will let you explain,” Lugh said to Rowan who in turn looked at Rhiannon, his eyes gentle yet serious.

Rowan took her hand. “I know that you will not like this. I know you well enough to know that this is not the life that you would choose, but Lugh and I have talked this over to the point of exhaustion and the one thing that we keep coming back to, is that the best thing for everyone, for all of Nova Britannia, the Fay and the Humans, for you and I, and everyone else who is caught between, is to start where your parents left off. We are going to have to head a revolution. If we want a world that we can live in, it's the only way. I contacted Gwydion and asked him to come. He's been here for the last two days and he knows more than he's ever let on about the events surrounding your birth. He's better connected than I'd ever realized. I'd always known that he had spies but . . . Anyway, he can tell you more later, but the bottom line is that Seamus knows you're alive, and he's hunting you. We have a choice between running or fighting, and right now the odds are in our favour if we unite the kingdom and give him a fight. If we run he'll probably win the war, and then he'll have the resources to keep hunting you forever. I know that you don't want to be a Queen, but the good ones never do, and I know that you have more fight in you than you let on.” He looked at her, serious, meaning every word.

It made sense to Rhiannon even though it filled her with dread. The idea terrified her, but in a way, ever since she had discovered who she really was, she had known that this was going to have to happen. She nodded to Rowan.

He continued,“We have to figure out who we can trust, who we can count on, and then we have to turn the Fay council in your favour. We will have to tell them who your mother is. They're stuck with you no matter what, but if you have the Fay kingdom behind you in an absolute sense, morally and in spirit, it will make things that much easier,” Rowan said. “Gwydion and Nessa will be here in a few minutes along with the four of my men who survived the run in at the grove. Just sit and listen for now. That's all you need to do. All that my men know right now is that you are Lugh's daughter by a human woman,” Rhiannon looked a Lugh. He was serious and self contained until he sensed her eyes on his face, then he smiled at her softly and sadly. Rowan continued. “I need to find out where they stand on this subject, and I'm not quite sure how to do this.” He looked at her, sombre and thoughtful for a moment or two then grinned impetuously. Rhiannon shook her head and smiled back. It never seemed to matter how low she felt, when he smiled at her like that, she couldn't keep a straight face.

There came sound of feet on the stairs and the door opened. Nimue ushered Gwydion, Nessa, Thaylum, Cole, and Brian into the room and waited for them to find seats before taking one herself. Because she would have felt awkward if she hadn't, and also in part because of the dark circles under Nessa's eyes and the fact that suddenly seeing her sister-in-law made a familiar feeling of love, family, and belonging flare in Rhiannon's heart, she was up on her feet and hugging Nessa before the taller woman had a chance to sit. Nessa laughed her rich sardonic laugh. “I missed you too,” she said, returning the embrace. Nessa had obviously made her decision. She wore fitted leather pants and a tight leather vest over a utilitarian linen shirt and tall riding boots. Her copper curls had been tightly reigned in and were tied in a braid down her back. There was also, of course, the requisite sword belt, although Rhiannon couldn't help notice that Nessa's blade appeared to be lighter and slimmer than the swords Rowan and Leif carried.

When all were seated Rowan launched strait to business, “Hans is still causing trouble I take it.”

Thaylum answered, “Yes Sir. He keeps fighting with the people that we're staying with. They sedated him.” Rhiannon noted that Thaylum seemed neither alarmed nor surprised by this treatment of his comrade and neither did the black haired Cole.

Rowan nodded, not particularly phased by it either, then Lugh spoke up, “This may seem perhaps a trifle . . .” a slightly wicked smile played around his eyes, “Manipulative. However if no harm comes to him, and his attitude is improved by the experience, why don't we leave him with Lyla for a few days. Have her wipe his memory of the last week and a half and she can show him a good time while she's at it. I try not to encourage the Nixies but I have, on occasion, found it useful to take advantage of their predilection for, how shall I put it . . . using and confusing men. Lyla is mostly harmless and generally quite gentle in her methods.”

Rhiannon knew what Nixies were and, in the lore of her world, the beautiful water Fay were not particularly harmless. Rowan's mouth quirked almost imperceptibly but Rhiannon caught it. “Have it arranged,” he said to Lugh then moved on to more pressing matters. Casually, as if it couldn't possibly have been a calculated movement, Rowan crossed his arms pushing his sleeves up and resting his elbows on the table as he did. Rhiannon watched the eyes of the others, in particular the eyes of the three male soldiers. Thaylum didn't react, although his eyes did rest momentarily on the exposed fern pattern that extended far enough down Rowan's arm to be visible with his sleeves up. Cole's eyebrows went up as the pattern caught him, and his eyes widened then flicked to Rowan's face and then to Rhiannon's hand which was also resting on the table, but then he schooled his features and pretended not to have seen. And then there was Brian, who's face showed, perhaps, a more exposed surprise but also understanding and acceptance. Rowan spoke, “It may already be obvious to you but, for many reasons, my life and my allegiance are currently in a flux. I have something that I must ask of you that goes far beyond the duties of King's Knight but first, I need to know where you stand on the topic of the Fay and, in particular, the taboo? I know I have no right to ask this.”

Again Rhiannon watched their expressions. Her eyes flicked briefly to Nessa's face which showed avid interest but Nessa knew what was going on and was, like Rhiannon, simply observing. The three soldier's expressions were fascinating, however. Cole's look was immediately hooded, and Brian had a considering look on his face, as if he actually had to think the question through. Thaylum on the other hand was open and forthright. It was almost as if his answer had been dying to get out of his mouth and now that the question had been asked there was nothing that he could do to stem the flow of his words. “The taboo is horse shit and you know it! The Good King here obviously knows it too if he's had a half human daughter hidden away all these years. I would know what she was from a million miles away. The Sylph blood is like a beacon. Those eyes and that skin.” There was that look again on his face, that same sad fascination that Rhiannon had seen before when she had wondered if everyone else knew something that she didn't. “My children have eyes just like that,” Thaylum said softly. “They get them from my wife.”

“Your wife?” This came from Brian in an incredulous tone.

“Six years ago I took a Sylph for my wife. We were in love. I've never told a soul. No one. Not in six years. We have a little house in the woods at the base of the mountains. She lives there with our children, and I go there to be with them whenever I can.” Thaylum looked directly at Rowan. “I know that Merlin's Shadow is your Grandfather. I've known for some time.” Thaylum was a handsome man in a rugged, green eyed, freckled way. Rhiannon guessed that he was about twenty-six. With a nose that had obviously been broken a few times and a collection battle scars he looked the polar opposite of the delicate Sylphs she'd seen at breakfast, but he sat straight, and there was an ease in his shoulders now, as if the thing he'd been keeping in had never quite allowed him to exhale all the way.

Rhiannon looked at Cole whose expression was no longer hooded but it was however, so complex that she couldn't really get a sense of what he was feeling outside of the intensity of it. He gaped at Rowan for a moment then looked at Thaylum and exclaimed, “The trees and the sea Thaylum! Why did ye never tell me!” his warm brown doe's eyes big and bewildered.

“For the same reason the captains never told us that he's a quarter Dryad. It would be career suicide, and I have a family to support.”

“Well then, I guess under the circumstances it wouldn't bother any of ye to know me mum's a Selkie.” His tone was so fragile as he spoke the 'never to be spoken' words. He looked almost as if he had expected to drop dead, as if an arrow could have flown in and taken him through the heart, but there was no explosion, no one had died, there was only silence.

It was Brian who spoke into the silence and all eyes were on him. He held up his hands, “Now, as far as I know I'm all human, and I've never been with a fairy woman, but Rowan, if you're trying to find out where my allegiance lies?” He raised his eyebrows and looked at Rowan, but then instead fixed his gaze on Rhiannon. She smiled. “Lady, when you smile like that, I would know you anywhere,” he said to her. “The Kingdom hasn't seemed right since Sulamith died, and I would know her heir if I were blind. My allegiance lies with my Queen. Lady, you have my allegiance and my sword. I would follow you anywhere.”

It didn't take Thaylum and Cole any more than ten seconds to put all of the information into place and when they did they stared at Rhiannon, both men realizing full force that a half Fay queen was the answer to their fractured worlds. She was the bridge between their hidden lives, and freedom.

“Lady you have my allegiance and my sword,” Thaylum was the first one with the words out of his mouth with Cole on his heals.

“Gentlemen,” Rowan smiled. “It appears that the Queen has an army. Now we just need to make it bigger.” He continued more seriously, “For the next week I am going to try to maintain my position as Captain of the King's Army from a distance. I think that it's obvious where my allegiance lies,” he looked at Rhiannon, “however it would be impossible for me to maintain my position for long with this,” he motioned to his arm. “I would lose the support of some of the men and it would alert certain members of the council to where my sympathies lie. Like you two,” he looked to Thaylum and Cole. “I have been very careful to maintain a front of political neutrality over the years. What we need to do now, we need to do fast. I've given Leif command of the army in my stead. You can trust him and he is aware of what is happening. It was his parents who raised Rhiannon in the other world. I sent him back to the King's City with the message that my wife had been injured during the run in with the elves and that I would return as soon as she was well enough to travel, which gives us some leeway. Lugh has also sent a contingent of Glaistig to slow Seamus down. If what we are doing is discovered by the wrong people we will be arrested for treason, but what we need you three to do is go back to the King's City and root out our strongest sympathizers and eliminate those who are sympathetic to Seamus. When the time is right, I need you to be in a position to secure the King's castle. I know that this seems daunting, but Gwydion and I have a plan. All we have to do is convince the Fay council to support us.”

“You have my support and I will use what power I have to convince them,” Lugh said.

Then Gwydion spoke for the first time, “I have been keeping an eye on the Human court for some time and I have much to share with you that will be of use. You certainly won't be alone in this, and the task is far from impossible.”

Rhiannon listened to all of this with mixed feelings. Fear, guilt, pride, and anxiety because despite being surrounded by confident, competent, hopeful people, when it boiled right down to it, it was she who would have to turn the council, and as if on cue Lugh announced, “The council will be meeting momentarily. We should go now.”

As they rose to go Rhiannon looked at the three knights and addressed them, “Thank you,” she said softly. “Thank you for understanding.”

“Lady,” Cole said in an equally soft tone. “You don't need to thank us for anything.”

She offered him her hand and he took it and bowed over it and then they left for the council hall.

*

The council hall was a large round building back from the water and surrounded by trees with an arched entry that was carved with a motif of acanthus leaves and rowan branches. The building was beautiful, serene and natural looking in neutral tones and graceful curved lines, Art Nouveau meets Coast Salish. Inside was a vast hall with a skylight in the centre and carved wooden pillars all around. The pillars, Rhiannon understood, represented the various races of Fairy and they vaguely resembled Totem poles, only these were less symmetrical and had as much Celtic knot work and botanical themes as actual depictions of creatures. There was one that was obviously a Dryad, a naked female tree with knot work chains spiralling up into her branches. It was beautiful.

Rhiannon, Rowan, Lugh, Gwydion, Brian, Thaylum, Nessa and Cole walked in and found seats at the large smooth round table. The council members were not yet present, however, almost the moment they were seated, the council members walked in single file and seated themselves. There were thirteen in total and a variety of Fay, but largely the more human looking types. It was then, looking at them, that the answer to a question that had been forming in Rhiannon's mind came to her. Over the last five weeks, before coming to the stronghold, Rhiannon hadn't seen a single First Nations person. Not one of the indigenous people who had, in the world she had come from, been there long before the Europeans had come. In fact most of the humans she had seen fit the Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Viking, Germanic profile. Red, blond or golden brown hair, and mostly blue, green, and grey eyes. There were a few people around who looked more Mediterranean or black Irish, but not many, and several of those people had turned out to have Fay blood. Cole, Rowan, Fenna. She had assumed, incorrectly, that Rowan's dark hair and eyes had come from some distant Mediterranean ancestor. She remembered the history that Gwydion had taught her though. Mediterranean Europe had been wiped out in the plague wars. Rhiannon looked around the table at the council members. She knew where the First Nations tribes were. They had absorbed the Fairies. It explained the longhouses, the carved canoes on the beach, and the long black braids that so many of the Dryads seemed to sport. West Coast Fairies.

The meeting of the council got underway with very little formality as one of the elders dove right down to business, turning on Lugh in an accusatory tone, “Explain yourself Lugh. How is it you feel you have the right to strap us with a half Human heir?”

It was an old wizened woman holding a well worn grey stone in her hand and wearing black and red robes and abalone—like the otter mother in the dining hall—who had spoken. “That's Stone Keeper,” Rowan whispered in her ear. “She's a Kushtaka from the north and the council Chief. She's a bit outspoken, but she's wiser than she lets on.”

Lugh smiled a wicked sardonic smile that made Rhiannon realize just what an elegant creature her father really was. “Don't feel your disdain too sharply just yet Stone Keeper. I didn't just strap you with a half human heir. She is also the rightful Queen of the Human realm.”

The room was silent for such a long time that Rhiannon began to feel frightened. She reached for Rowan's hand, her heart pounding, and then to her surprise the Fairies began to bicker. They were caustic and disgruntled, but more in the way that one would expect if their tax dollars had been wasted. It wasn't the rage Rhiannon had feared. Just a bunch of self righteously indignant, opinionated Fairies.

“You've handed the kingdom over to the humans!”

“What will she be like as a leader if she can't understand what it is to be Fay!”

“She's already partnered to a Human and pregnant with his child! You've polluted our people!”

It went on like this for nearly a half an hour and Lugh did nothing to stop it. Rhiannon watched and noted who was loudest in their protests and who sat back looking thoughtful and vaguely amused. It was indeed the older members who were loudest. She watched the Kitsune that she had seen at breakfast. The woman sat back with a deceptively passive smile on her face. “Her name is Yuka,” Rowan whispered in her ear as he noticed the direction of her gaze.

There was another across the room. A tall man, perhaps a few years younger than Lugh with slim antlers and moss green hair. His eyes were green too with no apparent whites or irises, but he did not protest Rhiannon's presence either. After a time Rhiannon got fed up. She was a puppet, nothing more. There was nothing to carry on about. She had not picked this horrible not accident of her birth. She was nauseous and peeved, so she stood and silently wandered the hall and after a minute or two all eyes were on her and the bickering had stopped. “Thank you. That was rather childish and unnecessary, I'm glad you've stopped,” Rhiannon commented not quite sure where her mouth was taking her but, on impulse, going with it. “Now, I really am horribly ignorant. You'll have to forgive me for it, but I'm hoping that no one will mind a little digression. You see, I was wondering, who was here first?” They all looked at her, puzzled. “Who was here first?” she repeated. “Human or Fay. And if it was Fay, were they just a group of Dryads? I'm curious.”

Silence. Eventually, seeing that no one else was going to answer Lugh spoke up. “Many Fay came to Nova Britannia from the old country, and many humans. There were some settlements of people, some Dryads, Kushtaka and Selkies, although those aren't the names that they went by then, but it was a vast forest and those from the east were tired and diminished after the journey that brought them here. There is little recorded information from that time. It was eight hundred years ago. We adopted the ways of the people who were here, their houses, their canoes, but were they all Fay or human? I don't know.”

“Oh,” she said brightly. “That's very interesting.” She continued to wander, running her hands over the pillars as she passed. “The world where I grew up is very different in some ways, but in others it is very much the same. The land is very similar, and some of the races of humans. Far fewer Fay however, and no Unicorns that I've seen. Some events have been the same, but much of our histories have played out differently. People from the old countries, or Europe as we call it, did come to the area that is geographically equivalent to this place and, although they came much later, when they came, they found a people already living here. Those people used to live a life that was very much in tune with nature. They have thick dark hair, warm skin tones and dark eyes. Before the Europeans came they lived in longhouses and they still carve canoes and tall beautiful pillars.” She ran her hand over a pillar carved with a raven. “They are also, coincidentally, really very human. There are stories of the Fay in the other world, almost every culture has some variant. I used to read them obsessively. I didn't know that I was Fay. In some of the stories they say that the Fay needed Humans to reproduce. They say that the Gwragedd Annwn often took Human men as husbands. It's fascinating to find here, that Selkies pair with Water Nymphs and Dryads with Sylphs,” she looked around the room with wide eyes, noting all of the uncomfortable looks. “But pair a Human with a Fairy?” She circled another pillar examining it. “Did you know that I can open a doorway into that other world. That's how I got here. I did it on my own. No one showed me how. I can also heal someone so well that they show no scar. Did you know that I can even start a fire without a flint. I thought that was pretty neat. Now I don't mean to be base or crass, but everybody knows what you get if you mate a horse to a donkey right?” Her audience nodded like bewildered children. “You get a mule, and everybody knows that a mule isn't viable. But if a Fairy has a child with a Human, because they're in love, and they want to be together, do we call that child something different and ostracize them . . .? I think that would be cruel.” She gave them a hard look. “And just in case there is someone in this room who doesn't know, I think that I have pretty conclusively proven that I, unlike a mule, am viable.” Rhiannon said it in the driest tone she could muster and was so insanely proud of herself for not blushing that she could actually feel the little coloured flames dancing on her arms and shoulders, and as if to prove a point she raised her hand and let the lights dance on her fingertips. “Now as for my question, who was here first? I'm pretty sure that if we could travel back into antiquity, we would find that they were human, and I'm pretty sure that they are still here. In fact I don't think that it's a matter of Fay versus Human. Do you want to know what I think?” She didn't give anyone space to answer, she just ploughed on through. “I think that some of you have just as much human blood running through your veins as I do. I don't think that there is a difference between us. If there were, I wouldn't be here.”

Rhiannon had arrived back where she'd started. She looked around the table. Some were looking into their laps like chastened children. Yuka, Stone Keeper, and the antlered green man had satisfied smiles on their faces, and the rest looked shell-shocked, as if they were in the process of readjusting their world view, except for Rowan, Cole, and Thaylum, who were grinning proudly. She took her seat, and before anyone else could speak she asked, “Lugh . . . Father. Would you tell me about my mother? How did you come to meet her?”

Now all Fairies love a good story, and she had Lugh cornered. It was time for a tale.