Chapter Six

Author's notes: Any direct quotes from William Shakespeare's play "Macbeth" are in double quotation marks.

'The Fey?' Sirius asked, as both Minerva and Draco shared an uneasy look. 'How can you be sure, Severus? It was four hundred years ago.'

'I am hardly in my dotage yet,' Severus snapped back. 'And I do not recall questioning your own powers of observation when you named this Riddler as Thomas the Gaunt.'

'Mage Lord,' Minerva interrupted, before the spat became as silly as it was already useless. 'Are we to assume that the Fey and this Riddler are in contact with one another?' she asked. 'If so, we are all but undone.'

Snape closed his eyes briefly. It was enough that she had said as much in front of the Black as she had done, without further letting him know what indiscretions had passed between himself and Merlin in the cave, in the Fey's hearing. He had to get to Bella and Luna; he had to keep Draco safe, and with him Andromeda, and he had to ensure Narcissa's safety. Narcissa... he let his mind drift to the risks she had already taken for his plan: how she had taken the place of the Earl of Moray's daughter, as a woman of suitability high station to woo the real Macbeth, how she had isolated herself from her sisters for three long lonely years in Inverness Castle. And Lucius too, he thought with a groan; damn him to hellfire and back, now he even had to worry about damn Lucius de damn Mal Foi.

'Not yet, Minerva,' he said, his mind racing to formulate some sort of plan to keep his loved ones safe until he executed his master plan, and Duncan and Macbeth with it. Damn de Mal Foi again; if his head parted company with the rest of him, Severus decided he wasn't going to feel guilty about it.

He turned to the Black. However much he disliked him, Severus could not deny his trust in him. 'If I keep the Fey occupied until Minerva gets Luna and Bella to safety, can you make sure this Riddler goes nowhere near Narcissa?' he asked.

The Black nodded. 'What of Draco?' he asked, looking to where the boy stood at the wall with Aricanthe in his arms, something she never allowed Severus to do; she would sit in his lap, at her own behest, but that was all.

'He comes with me. I shall get Minerva to collect Andromeda too. The Riddler has mentioned Banquo, and if he finds he is not at Inverness Castle,' Snape said, nodding to where the ramparts loomed above them in the foggy night air, 'he may go looking for him. Aricanthe will keep them safe,' he added, looking to where his beloved familiar blinked back at him with fond hostility.

'I'm not living inside a cat,' Draco snapped, looking down to where Aricanthe looked back up at him.

'You will do my Mage Lord's bidding, my boy,' Minerva said, 'until he tells you it is safe to do otherwise. This seems no longer the game we played a few days back.'

'She's right,' the Black added, as even Aricanthe seemed to nod her agreement. Sirius looked to Snape. 'What plan have you got, Severus?' he asked. 'It had better be good. Preferably one that addresses what you are going to tell Merlin. He'll have to know your suspicions of the Fey.'

'If he has not his own already,' Minerva added.

'If he is not also in contact with this Riddler,' Severus added, voicing his deepest concern.

'That's a lot of if's, Snape,' the Black muttered.

'In lieu of answers, Black, it is best not to make assumptions that may turn around and bite our arses while bared and unaware,' Snape replied, giving him a hard look. In truth he wasn't sure whether to have doubts about just the Fey, or the Fey and Merlin too, or even just how many other plots were afoot. 'Whatever happens, I must move my beloved wenches to safety tonight. I can tarry no longer, Black. Go to Narcissa now, and let her know I have Draco and her sisters safely hidden, and that she must beware of the Riddler.'

'Where are you going to take them?' the Black asked, as Snape began to walk across the drawbridge.

Severus looked to the sky, a smile curling his otherwise mirthless mouth as the almost full moon slipped through a hole in the mist. 'To the Wolfman, of course. Tomorrow is the Hunter's Moon; mayhap I shall gift him some prey worthy even of him.'

The Black gave him a long troubled look. 'Don't get too inventive here, Severus,' he said. 'Remember what happened at Camelot.'

'That was four hundred years ago, Black.'

'I know,' Sirius agreed with a shudder. 'Maybe time will dull my wits and my memory, and the gods grant that I live long enough.'

*****

Severus was hardly prepared for the relief he felt as he entered the cave and found Merlin and the Fey drowsing on one side of the smouldering ashes of the fire pit, and Bellatrix and Luna talking quietly together at the other side.

'Mage Lord?' Bella said quietly, casting a quick glance to where the Fey had fully woken and watched them, with her eyes narrowed in suspicion, which she tried to feign as sleepiness. 'The wench turned you out before the dawn?' Bella went on, lacing her voice with humiliated indictment.

Severus felt her real questions, as Luna stood and kissed him, and he pulled her to him, as though his arms alone could protect from whatever evil lurked. He widened his eyes, first to Bella and then to where his sweet Luna clung to him, her breasts rubbing his side, reminding him of her wiles. 'Leave me, witches,' he snapped, as though weary of them, as he sensed the Fey's interest pique behind him. 'I am tired.'

They both pouted and grumbled, and cast him accusing looks, but he knew they understood he wanted them to leave the cave, and soon they would understand if he absolutely had to take the Fey, it was for their safety that he did so. Quite content with his reasoning, he turned to where the Fey was watching Luna and Bella, too wrapped up in her own potential victory to feel the suspicions she should have felt. She turned to hold Snape's eyes, and her look became speculative.

'The old man sleeps soundly,' Morgaine said quietly, once she had listened to the muttering voices of her old adversaries disappearing into the foggy night.

Snape had already shrugged off his warm cloak, and made to huddle into his blankets. 'The rest of the righteous,' he replied, watching her across the fire pit.

'I sometimes fear I disturb him with my restlessness,' she said, letting her pink tongue run slowly the full circumference of her cherry lips, as Severus imagined it running the length of his cock, and his cock reminded him that it might be no bad idea to turn imagination into reality.

'Perhaps, my Fey Lady Morgaine,' he said, emphasising the word "lady", in a way that made it clear that he thought her no such thing, and would have thought the less of her if he had. 'Mayhap it would be better for all concerned if you were to come to this side of the fire.'

She looked once to Merlin, but he had just snorted fitfully as she stood, his sleep only slightly disturbed. Severus knew full well the ancient one could be wide awake, but didn't care much; he was fulfilling his duty to his loved ones, or so he told himself, and Merlin's wrath would be nothing to their safety.

'Well, Severus, is even now your cock aloft?' Morgaine said throatily, repeating the first words she had said to him when she had arrived on the heath. She dropped her hand to his breeches, without waiting for an answer, her little pink tongue circling her lips again, in a way that made Severus's breath shorten.

It would be unwise to make her wait, he decided, just in case Merlin did wake. He would make short work of this, just long enough to let Minerva get Luna and Bella away, conveniently forgetting that they were already long gone.

He pushed her back from him and drew her bodice down to expose her breasts, nipping each of her fat puckered nipples with his teeth, as they stood out in invitation. It had been too long since he had tasted her flesh, he thought, as his mouth swept down her belly, and his hands fumbled expertly with her kirtle, shoving it aside to expose her gleaming white thighs and her curly thatch. Morgaine spread her legs wide, like the whore she was, and pulled Severus to her, one hand deftly unlacing his breeches, as the other kneaded his cock.

He groaned as she freed him, feeling the heavy ache in his balls remind him what the point of all this prolonged foreplay was. He dipped his fingers to her warmth, coating them in her juices, and then slicking his already drooling prick where it stood like a rigid reminder of what was to come. He watched for just a moment as she licked at the thin clear rope of his leakage, where it dripped steadily between them, before shoving her back and slamming into her. All in the course of protecting my beloved ones, he told himself. As her folds grasped his cock to suck his thick creamy man seed from him in a hot angry rush, he felt a tiny warning push at his mind, the mind he had closed down as carefully as the Fey had closed hers. He wondered if it came from the woman below him, or the old man across the fire, the one he now knew was wide awake, or from somewhere quite different.

*****

Severus lay awake all night and well into the dawn, until he was sure that the Fey had finally succumbed to sleep. He stood carefully, not summoning his heavy cloak until he got to the mouth of the cave, for fear of waking either Merlin or the Fey. He wanted to be away from here now, not caring to admit to himself how exposed he felt in the face of unknown danger without even Aricanthe at his side.

As he turned to leave the cave, Merlin cracked one bleary eye open. 'I am wroth with thee, Severus,' he said. 'Seek not to hide from me that which cannot be hidden.'

Snape let his eyes slide to where the Fey slept, knowing full well that Merlin's anger had nothing to do with their coupling, that such trifles were far below the weightier matters with which he saw fit to concern himself.

'Makest thou now in haste, Severus, ' Merlin said. 'Mayhap eld maketh me a lesser buck to ride this doe, but I would acquaint thee that I know her bounteous bosom heaveth with desire and malice, both in equal part.'

'You sent her to spy on me, while I walked the moor with Bella,' Snape murmured in reply, yet somehow relieved that he would not have to tell Merlin he suspected Morgaine of treachery.

'Not I, Severus,' the old man replied. 'Nor did she leave this cavern alone.' He turned to the entrance of the cave, and as he did he allowed Snape, for just a moment, to plumb the vast depths of his mind, to find mischief and greed and scheming aplenty, yet of guile in the matter of the Fey, there was none. 'Make haste,' Merlin repeated seeming satisfied that Severus would trust him. 'We shall talk anon, and at greater length. "Light thickens, and the crows make wing to th'rooky wood",' he said. 'Tarry not, lest "night's black agents to their preys do rouse".'

Snape gave the old wizard a long look, before ducking out of the cave. He had forgotten to ask Minerva if the Fey had left the cave when he had walked with Bella, and he found he was unsure if he were less or more troubled than he had been. He went to the burn, about fifty paces or so from the cave, and splashed the freezing peaty water on his face, before turning to the bushes to take a long satisfying piss against them.

*****

His first stop was the Wolfman's cave. Lupin was already building up his fire, Luna at his side, talking quietly to him. Snape knew they would want to take advantage of as much of this day as they could, as though in some way that could make up for the cruel night ahead of them.

He didn't intend to stay long with the Wolfman, just long enough to check his brides were safe, and that Andromeda was with them. Though he would have been content to blame James the Pot Peddler's presence for hastening him on his way, it was really Draco's information that the Black had called an hour before dawn, to say that Macbeth had been summoned the few short leagues to Forres Castle, to see the king, and that he had already left Inverness Castle to go there.

Severus hoped he had gone alone, and not with the Riddler at his side. He could well do without Duncan dying before the appointed time, and anything else that could possibly go wrong, and given his track record, very probably would.

He dropped to his haunches between Luna and the Wolfman. 'I shall be back soon,' he said, glancing to the sky, as though he could even now see the Hunter's Moon rise in the early morning mist. 'Long before she calls you.' He laid his hand on the Wolfman's shoulder, feeling his helplessness, as he always did.

'Sirius said you might have a task for me,' Remus said, his gold-flecked eyes troubled.

Severus looked to where James had lifted his head from his blankets, and was watching them warily. He sensed the Pot Peddler's usual antagonism, but this was no time for centuries old petty rivalries to raise their heads. He needed them all tonight; he knew that. 'James and Sirius will be with you, Wolf,' he said. 'I need you tonight though, you and my beloved Luna.' He looked again to James, and thought his hostility had dropped a little at his name being mentioned. 'I'll be back from Inverness as quickly as I can, but I must meet with Narcissa. It serves us not to have any one of us cast adrift in this storm that seems to be gathering.'

'Who else is coming?' James asked, now seeming content to include himself, now that Snape had done the hard work. 'Shall I call the Weasel Catchers?'

'Not just yet,' Snape replied. 'But I shall need them soon, for something quite different.'

With that, he stood and wrapped his heavy cloak about him, disappearing into the morning mist, leaving just a space where he had been.

*****