He nodded. "And then the Green Fey take replacements from the Dark. But there's damned little left to take these days, at least along the border. And there's no way for these people to cross it, not with more powerful factions ready to destroy them as soon as they do. They've been left between a hammer and an anvil, courtesy of the Svarestri expansion and the Green Fey callousness. If they choose to enjoy the satisfaction of pelting their enemies for a few minutes, believe me, they deserve it."

An edge had crept into his voice. He was watching the light shimmer and change, and his face changed along with it, from cheerful engagement to fierce satisfaction, depending on what shadows the spectacle was throwing. But either way, it looked like he was enjoying the prolonged beating as much as the trolls were.

"I don't know what will happen when they run out of room entirely," he said after a moment.

I didn't answer, although I could have told him. Because the dark fey had been coming to earth in ever-increasing numbers in my day. And congregating in enclaves under glamouries, those who couldn't pass as human, because there was nowhere else for them to go.

I wondered what it must be like to lose not only your home but your entire world, except for the handful of family or friends you brought with you. Of course, immigrants had been doing that for years, but immigrants could always go home again, or work to integrate into their new society. Most of the fey couldn't. They would be forever strangers in a strange land, and that suddenly struck me as terribly cruel.

"Why do the Svarestri need so much land?" I asked. "I thought they didn't marry humans."

He snorted. "They don't."

"Then shouldn't their birth rate be low?"

"It should be. But the rumor is, they've made marriage compulsory, along with childbearing. They're trying to build up their numbers."

"For what?"

Pritkin shook his head. "No one knows."

And then the crowd gasped, a collective inhalation of breath, as the battle on the boat commenced.

"Here's your big scene," I told Pritkin. And then I noticed: the fight had been subtly altered to focus on the little guard's jabs at the fey, which in this version became a prolonged, heroic battle la David and Goliath. Which it sort of had been, since the guard was maybe a third the size of his opponent. But it shortchanged Pritkin, who was left standing to the side, looking on admiringly.

"That's not how it happened!" I said indignantly.

He just grinned.

"Don't you care?"

"Care? I'm being immortalized in poetry and song," he said, referring to the low-voiced chanting the graybeards had been doing. "A thousand years after my death, they'll still sing of my heroic nonparticipation-and yours," he added, as my wide-open mouth-damn it, did they ever show it closed?-shrieked by again.

"Can't they edit me out?" I asked hopefully.

He laughed. "You may as well get used to it. This is how we will forever be remembered by generations of young trolls."

Wonderful.

And then there was another collective gasp, because fire-me had finally got her shit together and shot the Svarestri warrior. Only, in this version, I'd cursed him, because apparently no one had equated the little thing in my hand to his sudden lack of face. He fell backward and the crowd went wild, screaming and yelling and stamping on platforms, to the point that I was afraid some of them were about to come crashing down.

But I guess they were sturdier than they looked, because none did. Even when a thousand voices shook the treetops, and a couple dozen real spears shot through the air, the crowd doing their best to kill him all over again. And I was laughing, because it was impossible not to be affected by their mood, which was bordering on gleeful.

And then everyone oohed, including me, when the huge area among the trees was suddenly lit by a hundred little boats made of stars. And, somehow, the elders had even managed to conjure up what looked like mirror images in the water, with showers of thinner sparks that glittered and gleamed like shimmering reflections. And lit the faces of the watchers with flickering fairy light.

And I'd been wrong; it had to be two, three thousand people staring out through the trees, faces awash with light and wonder.

"You said there were stronger dark fey clans?" I asked suddenly.

Pritkin nodded.

"Couldn't they unite? Push the Svarestri back?"

"It . . . would be difficult."

"Why?" It seemed to me that they had damned good reason. The enemy of my enemy might not be a friend, but I'd find a way to put up with him if it meant not dying. I thought most people would.

And then I thought about the Circle and Senate. Or the Circle and the covens. Or the whole damned supernatural community, for that matter, which seemed impossibly divided. And too busy squabbling and bickering and fighting each other to worry about the greater threat.

I guess maybe I couldn't say anything to the fey, after all, could I?

"Because of their past," Pritkin said, looking around, his face alight with wonder. And then he glanced at me. "Don't you know how the fey were made?"

I shook my head.

"They're all the same, really. Even the lordly Svarestri, although they'd likely string up anyone who said so. But it's true."

"What's true?" I asked, watching fire-me now scream my way down a raging river. At least they were consistent.

"That they were all born of the gods."

It took me a second. The big plunge over the falls was coming up, and I'd been tensing like everyone else, despite the fact that I knew we didn't die. And then what he'd said sank in.

And I tensed up some more.

"What?" I twisted around to look at Pritkin. His face had gone back into shadow, as the darkened tunnel scene tempered the light somewhat, but his eyes still shone with reflected sparks. And with the enjoyment of telling me something I obviously didn't know.

"The old gods," he repeated. "The ones out of legend. It's said they came from another world, or worlds, far away. They discovered faerie first, before earth. And when they did, they sought to make servants for themselves, but none of the then-fey would do. And you know the gods . . ."

"Randy little bastards," I said blankly.

He nodded. "They inbred with some of the inhabitants who were already here-most of them, in fact. In some cases, that resulted in what they viewed as positive changes. Proper servants to cater to their every whim. But in others . . ."

"They got monsters," I said, recalling a few of the creatures that had attacked me.

"Or what they viewed that way, yes. The dark fey, as they became known, were forced out of the cities and into the hinterlands, to make their own way or starve. Many starved. But a few survived and bred with each other, and with the remaining original inhabitants, and with the occasional member of the so-called privileged races. . . . The result is the huge variety you see today."

I stared around, suddenly remembering my mythology. And all the stories about the gods siring monsters as well as heroes. For every Perseus there was a Medusa; for every Odysseus a Cyclops. But it had never really occurred to me to wonder why.

I guess I'd always assumed, if I thought of it at all, that the monsters were just some sort of demon. And maybe some of them were; the gods had certainly had monstrous opponents, said to be from the Underworld. But that ignored the monsters who were on their side. Where had they come from? Why get a Theseus one time, and a giant the next?

Maybe because of who you slept with.

"But that doesn't explain why they can't unite," I said. "If anything, what you just said should give them more in common."

"It might have," Pritkin agreed. "But resources were scarce, and new groups were arriving all the time to contest for them. And whenever several groups did band together and begin to gain power, the gods intervened, starting wars and disputes to keep them disunited."

"I'm surprised they didn't wipe them out entirely!"

"They might have, but they had discovered earth by then and become distracted. And some of the dark fey were useful for doing jobs their lighter counterparts wouldn't touch. Thus, they survived, until the day the gods disappeared, vanishing as quickly as they had come. And the world changed."

"There was a war." I didn't even have to guess.

Pritkin nodded. "One so terrible, they don't even sing about it. Some things, no one wants to remember."

"And the dark fey were part of it?"

"Everyone was. But the main combatants were the two leading light fey families, the ones favored by the different groups of gods."

"Different groups?"

"The sir, gods of battle, and the Vanir, gods of nature, who were at each other's throats more often than not. The sir were worshipped by the Svarestri, who remain as martial as their forebears. The Vanir were worshipped by the Blarestri, which is why the Sky Lords' lands are said to bloom like a garden, despite being high in the mountain fastnesses."

"And once their masters left . . ."

"Their servants took up the old conflicts as if nothing had changed, using the weapons their former masters had left behind to savage each other almost to obliteration. And dragged the rest of faerie into their quarrel."

"Why? What was the point? If the gods were gone-"

"What is the point of any war?" He shrugged. "I assume it was to see which family would lead. The Blarestri won-barely-and continue to be the most powerful clan to this day. But it was not so much a victory as both sides fighting to exhaustion, leaving them with little choice but to make peace. They did so, but the groups they'd dragged into their conflict continue to hate each other."

"That's ridiculous!"

But Pritkin was shaking his head. "Put yourself in their place. Unwanted, despised, treated as nothing your whole existence, with no dignity, no power, no pride allowed to you. Until, one day, a war breaks out about which you know little, but which suddenly has the great ones that you have envied and hated and secretly admired for as long as you can remember, coming to speak . . . to you."

"Because they wanted something!"

"Of course. When else do the powerful notice the rest of us? But it didn't matter to the tribes of dark fey, who suddenly found themselves decked in the colors of the great houses, with golden chains around their necks and important-sounding titles before their names. They who had been nothing were now valued auxiliaries, and in some cases, even front-line troops-"

"Cannon fodder!"

"What?"

"Nothing." I guess they didn't have cannons yet. "They put them out to absorb casualties, to save the light fey numbers."

"Yes, and the dark knew this. But they thought if they fought hard enough, did well enough, proved their worth, their families would be honored. Be given lands to live on, titles to hold, be able to hold their heads up among any in the land . . ."

"And when the war was over?"

He sat back against the tree. "What do you think? What do you see?"

I looked back at the spectacle and the ring of watching faces and didn't answer.

"But the scars didn't heal," he told me. "The dark fey clans who were on different sides in the fighting still despise each other. For old wounds, for older resentments, and because they cannot fight the ones who were really the cause of their suffering. The light fey are too strong, and the gods . . ."

"Have a lot to answer for. So do their servants!"

Their children, I thought, looking around. Yes, the percentage of godly blood might be small now, might be minuscule even, but once, these had been their sons and daughters. How did you throw away your own flesh and blood? How did you look at a tiny child and call it a monster?

"If it's different from you, it's not so difficult," Pritkin said softly, because I must have spoken aloud without realizing it.

"I couldn't do it."

"No, I don't believe you could. But you aren't fey. And the light fey . . . aren't like us."

I glanced back at him, because there had been something in his voice. And discovered that there was something in his face, too. And this time, I didn't need a translation.

I'd seen the same expression often enough, in the mirror.

It looked like the dark fey weren't the only ones who had felt abandoned.

Chapter Forty-eight.

The crowd was rapt, watching their two heroes courageously battle to keep us from going over the rocks, while showers of sparks sprayed around like fireworks. Or like massive waves of water, suffocating even in the air. All of a sudden, I was finding it hard to breathe.

I sat back against the tree trunk and concentrated on my beer.

"I never knew my parents," I told Pritkin. "They had . . . an accident . . . early, and I was left with a guardian who . . . didn't like me much."

He waited, but I didn't elaborate. I wasn't sure how much I could tell him, how much he'd remember later. We'd shared some pretty memorable events already, but let's face it, the sixth century was the sixth century. I'd probably end up just some crazy witch he met, a crazy witch named Ohshit. I stifled a half-hysterical laugh with my mug, because he was looking fairly serious for once, but it fit. Oh, God help me, but it did.

"Mine didn't like me, either," he finally said.

"You had guardians?" I hadn't known that. Although I supposed I should have guessed. Rosier wouldn't go to all this trouble for a child without seeing that he grew up.

Pritkin nodded. "An old farmer and his wife. My mother was part fey, but she died, and my father . . . I suppose he didn't want the burden of raising a child alone. He told the old couple that he would come back for me someday, but the woman told me not to expect it."

"Why not?"

"Part-fey children sometimes turn out . . . strangely. She used to watch me; I think she was waiting for me to sprout a tail or grow donkey ears or some such! I never did, but she never stopped checking my ears, on the pretext of washing them. I think she was disappointed that they weren't even pointed. She said my father was probably relieved to be rid of me."

"Charming."

Pritkin shook his head. "She was all right. Just superstitious and fearful. They both were. The world was changing, and they didn't know how, or where, or if they'd fit into the new one. I think that's why she didn't like me. She could tell I wasn't afraid."

"Of what?"

"Of everything. According to her, the whole world was a danger, especially to a child. Venture too far into the marshes, and the will-o'-the-wisp would lead you to your doom. Wander into the forest, and the monster Afang would drag you back to his cave, littered with the bones of disobedient little boys and girls. Go swimming, and the mermaids would lure you into dark water until you drowned. And then there was always the bwgan, who would get you for almost anything else!"

"But you weren't worried?"