The Eighth Court (The Courts of the Feyr - By Mike Shevdon Page 0,69

concern. “It’s getting worse. I’ve tried bathing him, but these snap fevers are extreme. He was raving about being shot a moment ago. I’ve sent Alex for some ice and plain towels. If we can wrap him in them, maybe we can hold his temperature down.”

“Should I ask Yonna or Kimlesh to come?” asked Garvin. “As a Warder he’s entitled to the protection of the Lords and Ladies.”

“Will it do any good?” asked Blackbird.

Garvin sighed. “I’ve no idea. I’d know more if I knew what was wrong.”

“Do the wardings for the courts prevent dowsing?” she asked.

“It depends what you’re dowsing for,” said Garvin. “If you’re using it to pry into court business, then yes.”

“But not otherwise? It’s worth a try,” she said. “Get Alex to bring me a pendulum – a rock on a string would do.”

“Here, use this,” said Garvin.

“What is it?” she asked.

“A keepsake. It has sentimental value.”

“It’s not been charmed in any way? There’s no enhancement?”

“It’s just a rock on a chain, Blackbird.”

“Very well,” she said. “It will serve well enough and perhaps it will tell us what we need to know...”

Her voice faded again and I felt myself being pressed down again, consumed by the enveloping darkness. I was wrapped in black velvet, numb to sense or sound, empty of all sensation. I could feel my hold on reality weakening. Something was loosening my grip on life.

I began to hear the slow heartbeat of some great leviathan. Slowly I became aware of a great sea, stretching out to the horizon. The waves lifted, curled high and then crashed, crump, like the beat of a great drum. Then a sigh, as the black water slid over the beach and ebbed back into the deep. Slowly another wave lifted and curled, crump, it came again, and then sigh as it withdrew.

“You shouldn’t be here,” said a voice I knew well. I turned in the darkness to find a figure outlined in fingers of white light in a nimbus glow, standing a little apart on the black sand of the beach. Now that I looked, there were tiny sparks of light in the black sand, like stars.

“Raffmir. I might have known you’d be behind all this.”

“Once again, cousin, you do me disservice. This is none of my doing. Do you even know where you are?”

“Is this like the Glade, but with a beach?”

He laughed, but it had little humour in it. “No one bathes here, Niall. We are on the shores of night, where people come before they die. You have been here before, I think.”

“Me? No... I think I’d remember.”

“You’d be surprised what you don’t remember,” he said. “When you had your heart attack on the underground, you would have met my sister here. She would have caught you like a fly in a web as you crossed between life and death. She stranded you here and followed the trail back to your body, hoping to inhabit it, until the witch-woman called you back.”

“Don’t call her that.”

“Shall I not call the prick in my thumb a thorn? If the name sticks, then it must stand.”

“I don’t remember coming here…” I said, looking round. The beach stretched away endlessly in either direction. Further up the beach there was only more sand.

“Few people do. Even fewer come here more than once.”

“Why are you here?” I asked him.

“Your gratitude knows no bounds, does it Niall? I stand with you on the shores of night and you ask me why I’m here. For you, cousin. I came for you.”

“Why would you come for me? You want me dead.”

“That may be true, but I have also sworn to protect you, have I not? Or at least not to allow you to come to harm.”

“By your hand. Then you do have something to do with this?”

“You accuse me when you should thank me. You show me no respect, even when I intervene to save your sorry life. No, Niall, I came for you because I have not finished with you yet. You have a role to play and there are things that must yet come to pass. The solstice approaches, the place is appointed, and the time is soon. When you die, it will be at my hand, so I have sworn.”

“But you swore not to harm me,” I reminded him.

“And therein lies the paradox that we must resolve. Come, Niall. Leave this place. It is not yet your time.”

“I must warn Blackbird. The solstice...” I said, as the beach faded and the waves