Gossamyr Read online

  "A rich medieval tapestry woven of fantastic tales of revenge,

  women warriors, faeries and demon fire. Michele Hauf

  captures your attention with vivid, powerful, sexy characters.

  What I wouldn't do for a man like Dominique San Juste!"

  —Award-winning author Lyda Morehouse

  "From her first word to her last, Hauf weaves a magic spell.

  You'll root for Seraphim and sigh over Dominique as they

  risk heaven and hell in this heart-stopping adventure."

  —Emma Holly, author of Hunting Midnight

  "This book kicks butt—in a lush and lyrical way." —Susan Sizemore, author of the "Laws of the Blood" series

  "Michele Hauf has taken the 'Fallen Angels'

  myth and embellished it with many a dark and inventive twist,

  and created Seraphim, a riveting story of a young woman's

  quest for revenge and a destiny chosen for her long before her

  birth. Seraphim is also brimming with intriguing and very strong

  characters, along with a rich and satisfying blend of medieval

  history and fantasy. Fine writing only adds more elegance to

  the story and 1 look forward to book two of Michele Hauf's

  'Changeling' series, due out in 2005."

  —Bookloons

  llSeraphim is stunning, an utterly gripping,

  compelling read that plunged me into fantasies of long ago

  and far away. Michele Hauf is a consummate pro at the

  top of her game. If this is any indication, LUNA Books

  is off to an industry-rocking start!" —Maggie Shayne, author of Edge of Twilight

  Gossamyr

  MICHELE

  HAUF

  www.LUNA-Books.com

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

  First edition May 2005

  GOSSAMYR

  ISBN 0-373-80220-X

  Copyright © 2005 by Michele R. Hauf

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Worldwide Library, 233 Broadway, New York, NY 10279 U.S.A.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

  ® and TM are trademarks of Harlequin Books S.A., used under license. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.

  www.LUNA-Books.com Printed in U.S.A.

  For all who Believe

  Enchantment is Faery's raison d'etre. Many moons ago—during a blue moon's reign—a rift was

  cleaved between Faery and the Otherside.

  No one-man, beast, or fee—can say how or why,

  Only, the act decimated a great source of Enchantment.

  The curtain between Faery and the Otherside has become transparent;

  fee travel back and forth with ease;

  mortals, once banned from Faery after one visit, find return less difficult.

  It is a challenge to keep that which should not be in Faery out. And vice versa.

  Time wends forward, widdershins, and thus.

  Such conditions shall remain until a champion

  can restore the Enchantment complete.

  PROLOGUE

  Faery—betwixt and between

  The revenant swooped down from out of nowhere. Wide gaping maws, fanged and stretched to maul, loosed a shrill cry, shaking Gos-samyr de Wintershinn from her petrified stance. She stumbled backward and landed atop the blue marble floor of the circular castle tower. Eyes fixed to the danger, Gossamyr groped blindly at her side, slapping the stone, in seek of her fighting staff.

  The very flesh had been stripped from her attacker's bones. Swathes of tattered muscle clung to the skeleton. Red glowed within the skull's eyes, molten and dripping, as if blood. The pellicle wings, void of lustrous color, were but a ghostly mesh of flight flapping madly between the shoulder bones. It looked like a winged one—a fee—but it could not possibly be. Never before had she seen the like.

  Be this one of the relentless creatures that had been tormenting Faery for a summer of moons?

  Tattered wings siphoned the air in foul hisses. The wraithlike thing lunged. A skeletal arm slashed out. Claws cut the air—and flesh.

  Gossamyr stroked a finger across her cheek; slippery blood flowed from the cut.

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  Whence came this creature? 'Twas full sun. She had been tending her own pleasures, looking over the muster of peacocks trampling the wild rose garden below that hugged the inner curtain wall. Why did it attack her?

  Shuffling backward, her hand slapped upon something—her fighting staff.

  With a hue and cry to strip the senses, the creature again struck. Gossamyr dived to the right. Gripping the applewood staff and, facing down, she kicked back and up. Her bare toes connected with bone. The creature shrieked as it spun into the crystal-white sky.

  Pushing up and landing a ready stance, Gossamyr swung the longstaff to mark her periphery—the applewood sang a battle cry—then prepared for a return attack. Keenly, she marked her surroundings for additional threat.

  Skeletal arms slashed the air. Bone fingers curled into claws as the creature rushed her. She swung hard, using the force of the staff and counterweigh ting her body into the defense. The end of her weapon cracked skull. Bits of the creature's head scattered like a harvest gourd cleaved by elf-shot.

  Landing the swing, she steadied her bearing. No time to think, only react. Deft twists of her fingers spun the weapon in a hissing figure of eight as she turned to challenge the opponent. Now headless, the creature hung before her, arms spread—yet the wings flapped. Still alive. If bones could harbor life.

  "Remarkable." Gossamyr stepped back. How to defeat the thing? "Can I kill it?"

  "Either that or be killed!" came the unbidden answer.

  The stiff barbs of a feathered cape stroked her cheek. The shing of an obsidian blade drawn from a hip sheath sliced the air. One slash of the fire-forged sabre sectioned the creature at the waist, dropping the leg bones to the tower floor in a clatter.

  "Shinn—"

  Gossamyr 9

  "Stand back!" Shinn swung and hacked through the rib cage of the creature. "These things don't know how to die!"

  Frayed wings—severed from the skeletal body—furiously beat the air above Shinn, her father. The dauntless fee lifted his blade up under the left wing, cleaving it asunder, and brought the blade down through the right wing. He spun toward Gossamyr and shouted, "There!"

  Pulled from her awestruck stare, Gossamyr jumped as a foot trimmed with muscle shreds stamped her toes. Together, the legs of the creature attacked. Sweeping her staff low, she dashed it across the anklebones, sending them crashing against the marble embrasures. Reduced to dust on impact, the shattered bone glinted as it floated to the tower floor.

  "What in all of Faery is it?" Gossamyr called as she swung and caught a disembodied arm with the tip. Fingers clenched the end of her staff. Shake as she might, the evil fist clung. "Shinn
?"

  Residue from the crushed creature glimmered in a mist about Shinn as his sabre obliterated the wings. "A revenant!" the implacable fee called.

  Ill clad for battle, Shinn's everyday vestments of flowing arach-nagoss tunic and elaborately stitched hosen would not protect him from injury. But he did not waver, instead standing proud and defying the thing with a swing of his sabre. He dived to avoid the other arm as it sailed toward him, fingers fisted.

  "Let me to it!" Gossamyr cried. An audacious smile crooked her mouth. She had trained for this sort of challenge. Opportunity had finally fallen to her. "I've been craving some fight."

  She rushed the attacking arm and connected wood to bone in a hollow crack. "Yes!"

  The return swing of her staff proved the attack had not jarred the creepy passenger. Gossamyr slammed the carved applewood upon the tower floor. Finger bones gave loose, but as quickly, scrambled across her toes and gripped her ankle, shaking her off balance.

  JO Michele Hauf

  She landed the marble floor with a jaw-loosening dumpf. A skeletal hand scurried up her leg and over her hip moving farther.

  Wheezing breaths gasped from her mouth. Dropping her staff, Gossamyr clutched the hand that squeezed about her throat. Probing fingertips threatened to pierce her flesh. She struggled to wrestle the thing off, but it possessed strength immeasurable. It was futile to fight, to kick at the air and pray she connected with some part of an attacker that just wasn't there.

  A murky blackness muddied her thoughts. Shinn—where was he? Needles of numbness loosened her grip on the hand. Her shoulders dropped. She could see nothing, smell not the scent of fresh morning dew and lush rose oil, nor sense the smooth polish of the marble beneath her fingers. An angry peacock mewl echoed Gossamyr's longing to cry out.

  As death crept closer one final sound summoned her audacious smile. The shrill of finely honed obsidian cutting through bone.

  ONE

  High above the lush cypress and laburnum treetops that encircled the curtain wall Gossamyr followed her father through the carved marble loggia. The castle she had lived in all her life nested at the peak of the Spiral forest as if a bloom upon a verdant bouquet. Pendulous yellow flowers hung heavily on the laburnum that grew only at the top of the forest, contrasting marvelously with die castle. The blue marble was deeply veined with streaks of midnight and palest sky; it mimicked both day and night and shimmered with a fee dust of the ages.

  The village of Glamoursiege fit like a twist about the marble screw of the Spiral. Blue marble segued to granite and finally to sand at its lowest where it met the grounds in a mire of marsh and reticulated tree roots. For the entirety was laced with the roots of cypress, ash and hornbeam. The Edge—very few places where the trees did not grow—was ever to be avoided, at least by the un-winged ones.

  "I can do this, Shinn! You cannot deny I am the only one able." Shinn moved swiftly toward the south tower, speaking his im-

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  patience with his strides. "Many are capable," he called back to Gossamyr.

  "Capable, yes," Gossamyr had to agree.

  Faery worked counter to the Other side, and a war of almost one hundred mortal years had been keeping the mortals to blood and wrath, while Faery enjoyed fellowship and peace. Tribe Glamoursiege had been formed of trooping warriors before the great Peace, a Peace that had existed since long before Gossamyr's birth.

  How long? Time indeterminable, Shinn often answered when Gossamyr would question, for Time was of no concern to the fee.

  Though Faery claimed Peace there were still the occasional rises amongst the various tribes. Shinn's troops were indeed capable and, with the recent arrival of the revenants, increasingly vigilant.

  Gossamyr picked up her pace, as well her confidence. "If not for this very challenge, what then has all my training been for? Naught? I am as skilled as any in your troop, male or female."

  "Child of mine, you know well you have been groomed to sit the Glamoursiege throne," Shinn said over his shoulder. "It is not an idle, benevolent woman who can rule in my absence, but one who possesses all the martial skills I have taught you, and the mind for diplomacy, honor and valor."

  "I will not neglect my duties to Glamoursiege, but...I want this, Shinn. It is such an opportunity!" She hurried up beside him. Where did he go in such a hurry?

  "Convince me it wise to send my daughter on such a singular and dangerous quest."

  Ah, there, he had not given an unequivocal no. This gave Gossamyr hope.

  "Your fee warriors will not survive the Red Lady's seductive allure. As you've told me, she seduces Disenchanted fee into her clutches. They have not the fortitude to resist!"

  Any fee who left Faery for the Otherside risked Disenchantment. Necessary trips to the mortal realm were swift, coached in

  Gossamyr 13

  the knowledge that glamour dissipates quickly and Time could not be trusted. A risky venture for a fee warrior.

  A risk chosen by some.

  There were those rogue fee, who, seduced by the lure of the mortal, and that intricate city called Paris, chose to remain on the Otherside. To stay meant sure Disenchantment; a condition that saw the fee completely drained of glamour, and often they lost their wings to a shriveling malady attributed to the baneful touch from a mortal. Enchantment gone, they became nothing more than a shell that survived as any mortal. Return to Faery was difficult but not impossible. But never again could the Disenchanted regain Enchantment whole.

  Of course, one did not have to be fee to fall under the seductive spell of the Otherside. Gossamyr had lost her mother to the mortal passion ten midsummers earlier. The lure of the unknown was ever beguiling, but Veridienne de Wintershinn had always known the Otherside, for she had been mortal complete.

  Shinn stopped abruptly, causing his daughter to collide against his back. Savoring the faintest scent of hyacinth that marked her father, Gossamyr stepped back.

  The south tower overlooked a riot of white roses and speckled foxglove in the gardens below. Overhead, the carved marble openwork cast a lattice of shadows across Shinn's tightened jaw. His blazon, an iridescent tribal marking, curled down his chin and neck and across his upper chest, and shimmered in the blocked patches of sunlight. Glamoursiege blazons showed on neck and upper extremities; placement varied from tribe to tribe.

  For all his stern posture and commanding demeanor—even the recent announcement that his marshal at arms should marry Gossamyr—Shinn would ever occupy a soft place in Gossamyr's heart. All planes and hard slopes his face, only in his eyes could she ever find compassion. And such a find was a rarity to be hoarded. Shinn's manner switched from cool to disinterested, and then sud-

  14 MicheleHauf

  denly to genuine concern with such ease. One moment he was gentle and attentive, the next, the battle commander wore a fierce mien. Gossamyr had not known him to be any other way. Attribute to his trying history, she could only assume. They had both loved and lost. Love being one of those mutable words the fee toyed with in exchange for lust, hunger or envy.

  "I listened last night to the council's discussion," she said. Shinn required she sit as a silent member at council, for her future demanded she take an active role in Glamour siege matters. "The revenants' presence in Faery increases. But I was surprised to learn about the rift." She bent to meet Shinn's straying gaze. "It has never before been discussed by council. Why did you not tell me of it sooner?"

  "It is just something that is.. .known. The rift has existed since before your birth."

  "That long? And all this time you haven't once thought to—"

  "It has never been in my mind, Gossamyr. Until recently. There are none who can name the reason for the rift cleaved between Faery and the Other side; only we know it exists. Such a tear in the fabric that separates our worlds allows the revenants to return with ease. I am sure I mentioned it when I explained the revenants to you."

  "You did not." Hand to her hip, she paced in short turns, point
ing the floor with the tip of her staff. Shinn had explained the revenants two midsummers earlier when she had witnessed a natural fee death. Normally the fee essence leaves the body and experiences the final twinclian. But there are those fee—those of darker natures—who do not twinclian to the Celestial. Instead, their essence merely pops, and the revenant follows, its destination—the Infernal. It is a rarity.

  The sudden appearance of revenants in Faery—not newly emerged from a natural fee death—had given clue someone on the Other side was stealing the essences. And so was discovered the Red Lady.

  Gossamyr 15

  As frustrated as Gossamyr was to just now learn something she should have known about, she took it all in. Knowledge was required for a successful mission. "Still, I do not understand why, or how, those skeleton creatures return to Faery. Are they not dead?"

  "Did that creature look dead?"

  Actually, yes. However, not if death implied stillness. "So it was alive, yet.. .1 don't understand."

  "That thing I killed—"

  "Skilled."

  "Yes. We." A nod verified her participation in the event. But too brief, Shinn's reassuring smile. "The Red Lady stole its essence, leaving the revenant in limbo. Somehow she can feed off the essence of another—the essence holds the former body's glam-our—delaying her Disenchantment interminably. The revenant is a shade of the fee that cannot find final rest without the essence, so it returns to Faery in seek of a new essence."

  "But why Faery? Can it not locate a fee on the Otherside?"

  "It is compelled back to Faery. The rift literally sucks them back home. I don't believe it could remain in the Otherside if it wished."

  "This essence..." Gossamyr leaned against a blue machicolation, tapping the cool marble with a thumb. "When I witnessed the fee death something blue rose from the body. Is it something the Red Lady can draw out and.. .possess?"

  "Yes and no. Inside the body it is our very being. Outside the body, well, it either twinclians or it pops." The elegant fee lord tilted his head to look upon his daughter. A sigh hung in the air between them, a resolute pause. "The essence is akin to.. .a mortal soul."