Anoush was toddling, and seemed fearless. Dillon kept to Lara’s side like a small burr, full of questions and mischief. He made her laugh as no one else ever did.
One afternoon they sat beneath a tree in the grass. Anoush had fallen asleep in Lara’s lap, and Dillon, leaning against his mother, demanded a story from her. It was time, Lara realized, to tell him her story. She began.
“Once a beautiful faerie girl ensorcelled a handsome Midlands farmer lad. She took him away to her bower in the forest where they made love for days on end. And in time she birthed a beautiful daughter whom she loved dearly. But when the baby was just a few months old the beautiful faerie girl had to leave her child, and her lover. She sent them back out into their own world.”
“Why?” Dillon wanted to know.
“Because the beautiful faerie girl had certain obligations to her own mother, and family,” Lara explained. “The lad she loved could not live in her world, nor could she have lived in his. Sometimes, my son, you must place your family duties above all else, and so it was with the beautiful faerie woman.” She caressed his dark hair gently.
“What happened to the farmer’s lad, and their child?” Dillon asked.
“He took his daughter and returned to his parents’ house. But, alas, his father had died in the time he had been away, and his older brother was now the head of their family. The brother did not want the child in his house. He said her faerie blood would bring bad luck on them all.”
“That’s silly,” Dillon said scornfully. “Everyone knows that faeries bring good fortune, Mama. I think this farmer was a fool.”
Lara grinned. “I think so, too,” she said.
“So what happened next?”
“Dorjan, the foolish farmer, said his brother must go, and take his child with him. But Ida, his mother, protested, and said if Dorjan sent his brother and the child from their house she would go with them. Dorjan would not relent, and so Ida, her younger son and the infant went to the City. There the son became a famous mercenary, and Ida raised her granddaughter. But when the child was ten years of age the grandmother died.
“The girl kept house for her father until he found a fine wife, Susanna, the daughter of a Midlands farmer. They wed, and Susanna gave her husband a son whom they called Mikhail.
“But the Mercenary was sad, for he wished to better his position in life. The only way he could do that was by becoming a Crusader Knight. He very much wanted to enter the tournament that was held once every three years to choose new knights, but he had not the means. And then he realized he had one valuable possession—his beautiful half-faerie daughter. If he sold her to Gaius Prospero, the Master of the Merchants, he would have everything he needed for the tournament. A fine warhorse, new weapons and the best armor. His battle skills, he knew, would gain him the place he sought. And when he became a Crusader Knight his wife and son would be moved to the beautiful Garden District into a beautiful house with slaves of their own. His son would receive the finest education. But only if he sold his daughter into slavery. There was no other way for him, and besides, he had not even enough coin to give his daughter a dower portion. And so he sold his eldest child, but she was happy to be the means by which her father might advance himself. And she was very proud when he won his place among the Crusader Knights.”
“What happened to her then?” Dillon asked eagerly.
“She was sold again, this time to the Forest Lords. But the Forest Lords were cruel masters, and so with the aid of a small giant named Og, she escaped the forest. She and Og traveled to the desert of the Shadow Princes, and there she learned how to love properly, and how to fight well, for she had inherited her father’s warrior skills. And after a time the Shadow Princes sent her away into the Outlands where she met a handsome clan lord. She wed him, and they had two fine children.”
“Mama!” Dillon exclaimed. “This is your story, isn’t it?”
Lara laughed, and ruffled his dark hair. “You are such a clever boy, my son,” she told him. “Yes, this is my story.”
“Tell me more,” he begged her.
“I will, but another day,” she promised him. “You must remember all I tell you, Dillon, for when I am gone you will have to tell Anoush so she will know who her mother was, and is.”
And in the days that followed she filled in what she had not told him in that first telling. Bit by bit, piece by piece, Lara fleshed out her story. First she gave him his grandfather’s name. John Swiftsword. Next he learned that in order to become a Crusader Knight a man must look as if he were worthy. As young as he was, Dillon scorned such an attitude for his father had always said a man’s worth showed in what he accomplished and did. Not how he looked. Hetar, he declared, was an odd place.
Lara told her son of her own childhood. How her grandmother had taught her all her own skills of housewifery, medicine, the art of bargaining and how to tell a good fabric from a bad one. And how she had had no friends among children her own age, for they feared her faerie blood. Yet she could not recall ever having seen her mother. And later she learned that her father and grandmother had forbidden the beautiful faerie woman who had birthed her to see her. But her mother had put the crystal Lara always wore about her neck with its guardian spirit, Ethne, within to keep her safe.
Lara explained how Gaius Prospero had let her remain at home until her father won his place. And at the urging of her elderly neighbor Lara had on her last night of freedom asked her father to tell her the story of his involvement with the beautiful faerie, Ilona, and how she had come to be born.
The Master of the Merchants had taken charge of his new slave the morning after her father’s victory and his acceptance into the Crusader Knights. But the beautiful slave he thought to profit from was forbidden from being sold into one of the City’s Pleasure Houses by the Head Mistress of the Pleasure Mistresses’ Guild.
“Why?” Dillon asked his mother. “Did they not think you beautiful enough?”
“I was thought too beautiful,” Lara explained to him. “After I had been displayed for sale to a very elite audience of Pleasure House owners, quarrels broke out over who should purchase me. The Head Mistress, in order to keep the peace, forbade Gaius Prospero to sell me in the City. So I was sent off with a Taubyl Trader to be sold into the Coastal Kingdom.”
As the days passed, and Lara told her son more of the story, the boy learned how she had ended up being purchased by the Head Forester and his brother. And Lara told him of how Og had explained the secret of the Forest Lords to her. That Maeve, the old queen of the Forest Faeries, had cursed them with great cause. That Lara, because of her faerie blood, would not birth any child unless she loved the man involved with all her heart. And since she did not love a Forest Lord, Lara and Og had devised an escape plan.
“Then you loved my father with all your heart,” Dillon noted.
“I did,” Lara answered her young son. She was amazed by his understanding of her story for he was scarcely out of babyhood. But she could see in his eyes that he did, and as the days went by she added more detail to her tale. She told him how she and Og had fled the forest, and arrived in the land of the Shadow Princes. How Prince Kaliq had taken her for his lover, but knowing her destiny was greater, educated her and saw that she learned to fight. Kaliq had realized her mother, Ilona, was the heiress of the old queen of the Forest Faeries. He had engineered a reunion between the three, and Lara had learned the truth of her mother’s desertion. Maeve had needed her. Ilona had had no other choice but to return to the faerie kingdom.
And on certain days Ilona herself would join them beneath the tree in the grass, and add her own voice to Lara’s tale. On other days she would arrive with Lara’s young half brother, Cirilo, who was but a year older than his nephew. The two women would watch as the boys played games together in the meadow, Anoush trailing after them.
“They are forging a close relationship,” Lara noted to her mother one warm afternoon. “When I first began my story Dillon thought Hetarians foolish for thinking faeries