The Mebd awaited her, but Seeker did not hurry to dress. She stood before her mirror, feet bare on damp stone, a white linen shift brushing the tops of her knees. The tarnished silver backing of the looking-glass mottled her reflection.

"Hurry," said Robin from the doorway. "Herself will not be pleased at the delay."

Seeker reflected an arch glance at the Puck. "The more you talk," she said, "the longer it takes." She turned back to the mirror and examined her face while Puck hopped on one foot, long ears twitching. She hid her smile, spread her arms, and spun thrice, hair flying about her.

Rippling folds of cloth-of-silver flared as she whirled, swaying heavily when she set her heel and stopped. Pewter-colored brocade skirts brushed the floor, the bodice pushing Seeker's bosom higher and cinching her waist.

She examined herself critically. Nothing but glamourie, and gone on the stroke of midnight. Fortunately, there were no clocks in Faerie. Seeker motioned as if tugging on gloves, and gloves appeared--darker gray than her gown, and of kid. Puck tapped his foot.

"Coming, Robin. Really, you'd think it was something important, and not the same audience every time."

He made no answer, and Seeker snorted in irritation. She too tapped her heel on the stones, but the third time she made the gesture she was greeted not by the pat pat of bare skin but a musical jingle. She raised her skirts in one hand and thrust a foot out, inspecting a slipper of gray-and-white vair decked with tiny silver chimes.

"Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes," she commented, and Puck cut her off.

"And she'll be beheaded by morning if she delays longer."

"That doesn't rhyme, Robin."

"Or scan either. It's modern poetry. Are you ready?"

"My hair's not done." Seeker angled her head and lifted her hands, running gloved fingers through glossy black strands. They fell into place, narrow braids twining accent to pearls and silver, the crude knot with which she had bound Whiskey smoothing itself into a ladderlike four-strand braid bound with silver wire and a single pearl black and shining as a moonlit sea. Seeker touched her ears and throat to conjure quiet jewelry, and passed a hand across her face. "How do I look?"

"Well enough," Puck replied, tugging her toward the door. His legs were much shorter, but she had to step quickly to keep up. Her slippers jangled like sleighbells; she took short breaths of air laden with the scents of wisteria and mist.

They hurried through vaulted corridors wrought of translucent golden stone, past the doorways of rooms that had stood empty for all the twenty-five years of Seeker's service, immaculately clean, waiting like grooms abandoned at the altar.

The Mebd's palace was bigger inside than out, and Seeker could not imagine it full. Its forlorn elegance spanned distances she associated with city neighborhoods and college campuses, and seemed designed for mourning. A certain misty forsakenness became it.

To think of these echoing passages teeming with Fae was daunting, both in the idea of that much alien extravagance, and the vivid realization of how much Faerie had lost.

The small ones had sickened first. The nature spirits, the little lives of brooks and trees. Some prospered, finding niches in wild places or under the aegis of sympathetic householders, but most limped, faltered, died. Imps and pixies, brownies and sprites, were not comfortable in kitchens full of stainless appliances and gardens sown with commercially propagated flowers. This was the true triumph of the Prometheans: to turn even the red, red rose into a warding that kept the Fair Folk at bay. And if the roses lost their scent along the way, it was a small price for safety, for pre-eminence.

William Butler Yeats, who should have know, reported conflicting theories about Faerie. Some, he said, called them the last remnants of the Pagan Gods, shrunk now and small, half-forgotten. Some said they were angels too bad to serve in Heaven, and too good to be damned to Hell. Other stories list them with the Nephilim, among the children of angels who were tempted by the daughters of men, and so fell.

In any case, this much was true. They would not abide the name of the Divine, they preyed on the iron world to enslave knights, courtesans, paramours, poets, and lemen, and--as recorded in the ballad of Tam or Tom or Thomas Lin or Lynn or Lane or Line--at the end of every seven years, they paid a tithe to Hell.

And they took mortals to pay that tribute, as well.

Seeker's quarter century in Faerie had taught her how worthwhile was the price. The scent of a rose, the life of a Fae--for human safety. Annwn's queens were immoral as glaciers, righteous as stones. They locked their hearts in secret places, and they had learned to lock away the hearts of their lovers and playthings, too.

Janet never would have won Tam Lin back from queens so armed with bitter experience as the Mebd and the Cat Anna.

"Don't hum that," Robin said, and Seeker jerked guiltily.

"Hum what?"

He glanced over his shoulder, then whistled a few quick bars of music, his mulish ears wobbling flat.

Seeker snorted. "Well, she knows better now, doesn't she?"

The Puck answered her with a grimace, and picked up his pace. "She can see through the glamours, of course," he said, with a rude gesture to her dress.

"Of course," Seeker replied, "but she expects the courtesy." And one day I would love to go before her in my robe and slippers. Especially when she insists on hauling me into court the instant I return, weary and salt-stained.

"Aye," Puck answered, and fell silent until they stood before the dark Gothic doors leading to the throne room. An intricate relief worked into the panels cried out for hands to stroke its maidens and men at love and at war; hounds and horse in pursuit of wolves and stags; animal-headed spirals of three points, with the legs of hares or horses interwoven in the knotwork. On either side of the portal a grim guard stood, helm lowered and a green and violet cloak slung around its shoulders, stiff as its own tasseled halberds. Seeker didn't know if they were Men, Fae, or merely animate suits of armor. She'd never bothered to find out.

The Puck stepped away as she squared herself before the door, flicked illusory bell-skirts straight, and stiffened her spine. Mute on weighty brazen hinges, the doors swung open.

Her slippers chiming loud into the unfinished silence of a hundred broken conversations, Seeker entered the presence chamber of the Mebd of the Daoine Sidhe.

At first all Seeker saw was the jostle of silks and colors, the flutter of ribbons and cloaks adorning lords and ladies of the Fae--each taller and blonder than the next, and all taller and blonder than she. They had halted midstep in their dance, and as Seeker pressed forward into the vaulted hall the lines of the pavanne parted before her. She stalked down their ranks, a solitary silver-clad figure amid a prismatic shimmer of green and gold and orange, of umber and periwinkle, ruby and cobalt. She heard the whispers as she passed, the rising murmur of voices over the rustle of stiff skirts and the jingle of her shoes. These were the High Lords and Ladies of the Fae, Elf-knights and green women--not the half-blood changelings that she was charged with returning to the nest, although even some of those rose among the ranks. Still, they drew back from her. Word of the Kelpie has spread, I see.

She tasted a bitter nugget of joy at seeing them afraid.

The last rows parted before her, revealing the Mebd, imperious on her gilded chair of estate, robed in a luxury of emerald and aubergine. A mantle of darkest forest green silk swathed her, so brocaded with embroidery that the fabric was almost invisible. A wimple of finest white lawn hid her throat, and although the Mebd's hair was concealed by the veil of violet silk, Seeker knew it was golden as wheatstraw. And knotted with more knots and braids and bindings than there are stars in the summer night. Concealed behind velvet drapes and under a velvet pall, the shrouded figure of her throne hulked at the back of the dais--rarely used and never uncovered.

The Mebd's pet curled on a velvet cushion beside her chair of estate. A naked human boy who appeared perhaps six, green eyes bright beneath a fetching mop of ebony curls, he fiddled idly with his golden collar. Seeker's eyes avoided him. It had been the same engaging lad curled there for a quarter of a mortal century--longer, in Faerie. The Mebd had ways of keeping things as they suited her.

Seeker came to the foot of the dais and dropped a curtsey that puddled her gown like spilled quicksilver on the azurite-and-malachite tiled floor. Bound, like Whiskey. Poor little treachery. Her throat burned with pity. Her eyes stayed lowered until the Mebd cleared her throat and said, softly, "Rise."

"Your Majesty." Seeker stood and looked into the eyes of her Mistress. They shifted color when the Mebd smiled--perfect lips curving like a harvest moon--violet to jade and then violet again. Seeker was not invited to speak further.

The Mebd's voice was resonant as a dulcimer. "You've brought us charming gifts again, my Seeker, and we are well pleased with you. So well pleased that we have another task--one that, we think, will much challenge your skills."

Seeker concentrated on the formal rhythms of the Queen's speech. Where was the trap? "Your Majesty."

The Mebd inclined her magnificently encumbered head. "We have learned that a Merlin has come into his maturity."

She had thought herself ready for anything--any announcement, any task. Not so. Seeker's mouth fell open and she staggered back, tripping on the train of her gown. Silently, she cursed the bravado that had made her add chimes to her shoes; they jangled madly as a falcon's belled jesses.

The Mebd continued, imperturbable. "Your predecessors have had some success with previous Merlins, as you well know. Nimue, Viviane... their names are remembered. Merlins are rarer now than in days of old. And this Merlin has not yet met his Dragon, has not yet grown into his power." The Mebd paused, waiting for Seeker, but all she could manage was a dry-mouthed nod.

Patient, the Mebd waited until Seeker found her voice. "You wish me to entrap him. Your Majesty."

The Mebd's smile warmed, reaching her eyes. "Bind the Merlin, Seeker, and we bind the Dragon. And that is a power that we have been too long without. You must hurry, of course. There is no doubt that our sister has taken an interest as well."

Seeker tried a breath, the next question seasick in the back of her mouth. "Majesty...."

The Mebd waited, eyebrow arched, while Seeker swallowed hard and tried again. "Majesty. Is there a... one of the other sort, as well?" Seeker waited for the slow oscillation of her liege's head, but denial did not come.

"Bind the Merlin," the Mebd said instead, leaning forward, "bind the Dragon. Bind the Dragon; bind the King."

Keith MacNeill waited in a place out of the moonlight, his nose stinging with the scent of roses, and watched as the woman he had loved seated herself on the carved bone bench beside a sleeping man's bier. He had been awaiting his moment. He had been watching her for hours.

The Seeker had exchanged her glamoured gown for slacks, boots and a tunic, her elaborate hairstyle for a single thick black braid with smaller braids wound through it. Emeralds glittered in her ears. They were real emeralds, set in white platinum, wrought by a mortal craftsman. Keith remembered.

She bent over a book sewn into a doeskin binding, writing with a gold-pointed fountain pen. The little chapel was silent. Few came there anymore except attendants and caretakers.

Every so often, Seeker raised her head to glance at the bier, the moonlight falling through latticed walls across the sleeping man's face. Keith could see the sleeper clearly from his vantage place: a warrior in his middle years, perhaps, tall and broad of shoulder, no longer as narrow in the hip as a boy. His hair was reddish blond, graying beside closed eyes. Combed long and neat across his shoulders, it stirred in his breath where a lock lay across his face: his beard darker red and trimmed to follow the line of an arrogant jaw. Keith noticed the aquiline features and the fullness of his lips in repose, the way his big, scarred hands folded over the hilt of the bronze sword laid the length of his chest.

Bronze, and not the star-iron one he once had carried.

Seeker sucked the cap of her fountain pen and added a few more words. When she glanced up, her gaze fell on the sleeping man's face. She paused and marked her place in the book with the pen before standing. Moonlight caught on the twisted strands of her hair, casting her shadow like a stain on the alabaster floor as she came forward.

She laid her hands on the edge of the High King's bier and leaned forward, nostrils flaring. Keith's twitched in sympathy. A heavy funk of crushed roses surrounded the sleeper.

Tenderly, she brushed the disordered hair from his cheek. "Arthur, you son of a bitch."

Her voice came out low, snarled as neglected ribbons. "You could have been the best of all of them. I know the price. But did it have to be the babies?"

Of course he didn't answer. His eyelashes lay against his cheek without fluttering, undisturbed by her voice. She let her weight rest for a moment on her hands before turning aside, reaching for her notebook.

Soundless on cool tile, Keith stepped forward. "Elaine."

She stiffened, glancing back at the sleeping King. Keith bit down on a chuckle as Seeker raised her eyes to him.

He stood casually naked behind the bier and raised both hands to smooth back hair disarrayed by his previous run. Quarter-moon, and he could do as he pleased. Elaine would know that. He saw her glance at the sky. "The wind from one door closing opens another," she said, and the savagery in her voice as she quoted his own platitude pushed him a step back.

Keith drew a breath like boiling lead and looked down at Arthur. "He tried so hard, poor bastard. It's just not fair."

Seeker glared. He flinched; it had not always been so. "What are you doing here?"

His small, hopeful attempt at a smile slid from his lips. "I've a word for you, Seeker," he said, formally.

Her chin rose, her jaw etched in moonlight. "Your word?"

"A message."

"What's that?"

"Mist requests you attend her. Tonight."

"Mist... requests? How do you know what Mist requests?"

Keith began turning, his form blurring as he spoke. "It came to me in a dream." And nails clicked on pale marble as a powerful red-pelted wolf trotted back into the night.

Jane Andraste was already waiting when Matthew arrived. She held the door to her penthouse open, a rail-narrow woman with silver-streaked hair twisted precisely in a chignon to complement her pearls. Her suit fit as if tailored for her.

It probably had been. And only Jane would be so carefully dressed, even at home in the middle of the night.

Matthew glanced down at her shoes, fingering his rings. Jane caught him at it and winked... and then looked down at her own hand as she extended it to him. Her skin was soft with age, the bones and tendons visible.

"My apologies, Jane," he said, as she extricated her hand from his and turned to latch the door. "My failure--"

"Not a failure." She smiled. "Call it a qualified success."

Matthew wasn't quite so ready to forgive himself, but the tightness across his chest eased at her words.

"Are you hungry, Matthew?" Always gracious, even in declining to answer.

"I could eat," he admitted, as she led him over antique rugs toward the modern stainless and white-tile kitchen. "I laid hands on her, Jane."

The archmage shrugged, running water into the coffeepot. "Frustrating," she said, and then fell silent as she measured the coffee into the filter and turned the switch. She came back to the counter. "But anticipated. Trust an old wizard when she says you did well. Cream, no sugar, yes?"

"How do you manage to remember things like that?"

"Talent," she said, and tipped her head toward the breakfast table in the corner. "Sit, Matthew. If you hover, you're going to make me spill your coffee."

"I see." He pulled out a padded chair and sat, leaning against the back support gratefully. Despite the aroma of brewing coffee, his eyes kept trying to drift closed. "The Seeker--Elaine Andraste--"

"--You'll have another chance at my daughter yet, I expect," Jane said. "We have rituals to set up, a spirit-trace on her and on the pointy-toothed Unseelie Seeker as well. Would you like the milk warmed in the microwave?"

"The hotter the better," Matthew answered, pressing fingertips to his throbbing temples. He loosened the elastic on his ponytail and finger-combed the chin-length locks that fell free, sighing in relief. A warrior or a wizard bound his hair and fastened his clothing and left no unknotted strings about his person when he went into battle, but the ponytail always gave Matthew a headache. "Please don't play coy, archmage. I'm too tired for guessing games."

"Unfair of me," she conceded as the microwave beeped, and poured his coffee into the cup, atop the steaming milk.

"That's a speedy coffeemaker. Why the spirit-trace?"

"Isn't it great?" She slid the cup in front of him and started assembling her own. "The Unseelie Seeker has been in and out of North America on mysterious errands for the past two months. And now Elaine has joined her--"

"Elaine was strong enough to bind the Kelpie."

Jane cupped her coffee in both hands and blew across the steam so that it curled from her lips like a musing dragon's breath. "Their competition can only help us," Jane said. "But whatever they're both Seeking is something we must find first."

"Something? Or someone?"

"I suspect the latter," Jane Andraste said. Her cup clicked on the white tile counter as she reached behind herself to set it down. "Soup or sandwich?"

"Soup and toast?" he said hopefully. She grinned.

"I envy a young man's appetite."

While she opened cans and clattered spoons, he waited for his coffee to cool enough to drink. "Someone," he reminded, when the aroma of chicken stock filled the kitchen.

She chuckled and turned back, raising her wooden spoon. "What could we do with a Merlin, Matthew?"

Matthew blinked. "What couldn't we do? But if you expect one, doesn't that mean a Dragon Prince won't be far behind?"

"Not necessarily," she answered, stirring the soup before it could scorch. "But it's time."

"That could be everything Prometheus needs--"

"Yes," she said, and reached for the ladle on the drainboard. "Everything we need to win this. Once, and finally."

The pain she hid so carefully spoke to a like pain in Matthew, and he leaned back, refusing to give in to it. Everyone's lost someone, he told himself firmly. Your circumstances are not special.

Seeker paused in the darkness at the base of the down, in a narrow valley overgrown with gorse and heather. The moon was slipping over the edge of the world and a cold fog coiled her ankles like an anxious cat; she closed her eyes and ducked her head. Three deep breaths brought little calm.

Seeker raised her face, looked around, and set off down the bank of a rocky stream that ran along the bottom of the vale. She saw in the dark with owl-eye facility, now that her shadowbound familiars were rested. If the sun would break through the mist once in a while. If it would thunder and rain. Why is it, I wonder, that we are permitted moonlight and not sunlight? What's so terrible about weather? She laughed at the thought, her voice echoing strangely off the moss-and-ivy hung rocks. The sound was eerie; it struck her to silence.

Below a sheer escarpment, Seeker splashed through the brook, slick rocks turning under leather-soled boots. She could see the shadow of a greater darkness behind the thick tapestry of briar-rose and ivy. A frog jumped under her footstep; she recoiled, almost falling as she put her foot down hard. She windmilled her arms, regaining balance, and thought she heard the echo of a bubbling, neighing laugh.

She closed her lips on the first comment that came to mind, counting silently to five. "Behave yourself," she said softly, "unless you plan to challenge me again today, Uisgebaugh."

The narrow brook chortled over the rocks in answer. Seeker stepped onto the bank as the music of trickling water changed to the clatter of hooves. "I shall bide my time. I am patient."

"So the legends tell me." She glanced over her shoulder. Whiskey stood just as he must have risen, dripping, out of the chattering stream. He bowed his head to her with a little toss of his mane that made the gesture into mockery.

Then he snorted, a giant pale shape in the darkness, his black-splashed head raised, Roman nose in profile against the sky. "Walk into that cave, Mistress, and you'll never walk out. There's something in there older, even, than I."

"Your concern flatters me."

"Hardly. Your death means my death, unless I kill you myself. I am knotted in your hair."

Seeker had heard the ritual words before. So close after the werewolf's visit, they all but burned her. "I am sorry." She turned back to the green-shrouded entrance of the cave. She reached out and took a handful of hanging vines, careful to grab the canes of briar-rose between the thorns.

It was in bloom, out of season or not. The roses never faded in the Blessed Isles. Seeker was tempted to strip the five-petaled blossoms from it with her bare hands for spite.

"Permit me to protect you."

"If you want to protect me," Seeker answered, lifting greenery aside, "don't tell the Mebd." She pushed into the cave.

When the curtain of vines fell behind her, shutting the Kelpie and the starlight away, the darkness was absolute. Even her cat's vision could not penetrate it. Seeker felt the dry stone of the cave under her boots and raised her right hand, calling foxlight around her fingers. It cast a flickering St. Elmo's fire throughout the arched stone tunnel, revealing the marks of chisels and hammers and the gold-flecked veins of quartz for which the dwarves had delved. Vapor coiled her limbs.

Cool air redolent of moldering leaves and old charred wood filling her lungs, Seeker started down the tunnel. It descended to a shallow, spiraling slope broad enough for two lanes of traffic. The floor was almost polished, chiseled with patterns of ivy and roses to echo those that hung by the entryway. In the souls of the craftsman who carved this mine, utility was no excuse for a thing to be anything but beautiful.

The odors of rot and burning grew stronger as she crept into the heart of the earth. She let the foxlight die off her fingers when a dull crimson glow began to cast relief shadows along the carvings. When the threads of mist lit orange-red, she almost hesitated. But if she stopped, she wouldn't start again.

Seeker took a final step around the corner into a painful light. The tunnel opened halfway up the wall of a cavern as vast and changeable as a view of the sea. Mist coiled within it like twisted pennants, drifting in banners and streams on cool currents of air. And within the mist--lay Mist.

Fog-white tendrils scrolled about her face, a face that transformed from moment to moment while the Dragon lifted her massive head. Eyes gleaming in streaked planes of hot light, translucent as fire opals, considered Seeker. When the Dragon bent her neck to shift a wing long as a battlefield, an ashen sheen rippled over char-dark scales. The hide between glared golden, scarlet, lava cracking as it flowed.

Stirring the sea of gold and jewels on which she nested with one lazy five-taloned hand, the Dragon blinked. She shifted again--scales now more black, like sharp-chipped obsidian; now red as magma; now a dark hot gold like molten steel. The wings first spread wide and then the body coiled sinuous and narrow--the head horned and then maned and then antlered a moment later.

The eyes remained unchanged.

The Dragon's voice like forged iron. "Elaine Elizabeth Andraste, Seeker of the Changed. Enter freely into my domain, secure in love and trust."

"Dana," Seeker tried to say, or one of the Dragon's other Names. "Mist." Her knees went to water. She fell under the density of its presence, ducking her face toward bedrock. Carved stone scored her palms; the heat of blood smeared the petals on the bas-relief briars. She managed one breath, and then another, and then her voice. "Grandmother Dragon. I am not Elaine Andraste. I have no name."

Hot breath surrounded her, fragrant of summer. The voice was tolerant and amused, maternal in its enormity. "Of course you have a name, child. Your mother gave it you, did she not?"

"I am the Seeker of the Changed. The Queen of the Daoine Sidhe has me tangled in her hair." Something stiffened her spine as she said the words, however, and Seeker raised her eyes to meet Mist's. "She's stripped me of such insignificant things."

The Dragon chuckled, rattling small stones loose from the tunnel roof. Seeker felt the vibration between her teeth. "Foolish child. Has no-one ever explained the rules to you?"

"Yes." It's no worse than being condescended to by the Mebd, and you bow your head to her. But another rogue voice whispered, but here you have a choice, and Seeker pressed her slashed hand against the stone and, wincing with pain, pushed herself to her feet. "I know the rules. I've spent my three chances, Grandmother Dragon."

"Chances are nothing. These are the older rules, and even the Mebd must abide them--that in life one may be bound or bought, but in the end you go to judgment naked, clad only in what you were born with and what you have earned, lessened only by what you have sold or given away. That which is taken by force, for good or for ill, goes unconsidered. Understand?"

It is perilous to admit weakness. It is even more perilous to lie to dragons. "Mist, I do not."

"No matter. You will. For mortal men, immortality is of the soul--but for Faerie immortality is of the body only, as they have no souls. And you were born mortal, Elaine Andraste." The ever-changing head rocked from side to side.

"I was born a changeling. I am of Faerie now."

Mist seemed to ignore the statement. Pricked ears swiveled forward at the top of the mountainous head--then they smoothed into scales and antlers emerged in their place. The Dragon that is all dragons. Seeker thought the Dragon smiled.

"Perhaps that is as it is." Wryness colored the voice, and a forked tongue thick as a hawser darted forward to taste Seeker's sweat. And then a lightning shift, quick as the flicker of that tongue. "Your task is to bind me."

Seeker blinked at the suddenness of it. "Yes." A sour taste filled her mouth, her heart hammering in her chest. If she slays me, I don't have to worry about the Mebd--or my crimes in her service--any more. Another realization, a heartbeat later, like a ragged follower to the first. But I don't want to die.

"You know that here, in this place, you stand in the heart of my power. Even your Queen cannot protect you."

"Yes." A cold fear, like a dagger pressed up through the diaphragm and under Seeker's breastbone.

"And despite this, you came before me."

Seeker swallowed. Dangerous to lie to Dragons. Gold coins rattled like beach pebbles beneath the Dragon's feet. Seeker thought of the sound of a shaken length of chain. She understood that she was being tested, but she did not know the nature of the test. "Yes."

"Why?"

What is the right answer? Quickly, without thinking, Seeker closed her eyes and blurted, "Because you asked nicely."

Silence--a great and echoing silence. Followed by laughter that knocked Seeker from her feet again and rolled her aside, literal gales of laughter. Seeker curled into a ball, huddled on the knotty carved granite, arms drawn up to protect her face. It went on for a long time, smelling of roses and the end of winter, and at last trailed off with a satisfied sigh.

Seeker risked uncoiling enough to open her eyes and look out. The Dragon's enormous red-shattered eye hung over her, blinking lazily. "You'll do," the Dragon said. "When the time comes, remember this conversation. What I have told you will prove useful. And take some pains to conceal it from your Mistress--she would be angry."