by A. L. Knorr
I was about to tell Byrne that whatever he had in mind needed to wait. I had made a bargain. Daracha held true to her side, and I needed to hold true to mine. But I never got the chance.
"Get back," Byrne shouted, eyes alight with a white glow that had not been there a moment before. His hair blew up and back as he put a hand out and shoved me. Hard. I flew through the air as though a powerful elastic had yanked me back by the waist. Almost as if in slow-motion, I saw my father spin and throw a hand towards Daracha. I landed on my backside on the ground several meters back. The ground flexed to catch me. I rebounded back into the air and landed on my feet in a crouch.
In the same moment, a streak of pale purple lightning snapped over Byrne's head as he spun down to one knee. The deadly magic forked into the air over his head. Specks of green light—rosehip seeds—flew from his hand to scatter at Daracha's feet.
A thorny shrub snaked from the earth, already as thick as my arm. It spiraled and curled and wrapped around Daracha's ankle. She gave a piercing scream and tried to step back but tripped. Her skirts flew up as she fell backward, lightning crackling from her fingertips. Her magic fractured into the air, turning white and falling to the ground in an ash-like dust.
Byrne's shape was a silhouette against a backdrop of flashing green and pale purple. He looked back over his shoulder at me, his expression alive with elation and terror. His mouth was moving, he was yelling. Over the sound of angry lightning, I picked out his words.
"Throw your Wisdom! Make it grow!"
He faced Daracha again, his hands and fingers flexing at the base of Daracha, where the thorny shrub thickened by the second.
Daracha's lifted skirts revealed an ankle that was no longer flesh and blood, but woody stem. I gaped as I watched thorns sprout along her calf. A flesh-colored thorn with a green tip sprang from the side of her face. She thrashed against the roots holding her to the ground, eyes blazing and teeth bared. She directed her magic at her ankle, where her leg ended and the root began. A hissing snap and a flash of purple and scorch marks appeared in the root, its growth stalled. Her magic still had power, in spite of this potent new species of rose.
Sucking in a rapid breath, I reached deep into the earth with all the Wisdom I had, every nerve ending lit up and tingled. Power and life surged through my limbs, poured from my fingertips and into the earth around Daracha where a few seeds still lay pulsing on the ground.
Layers of sound, like short bursts of thunder one after the other, filled my ears as the seeds exploded to life, sending roots down deep and trunks and branches into the air. The shrubs grew in a way I'd never seen any other plant grow. Curling and spiraling, looping and almost seeming to dance, the plants expanded in a beautiful display of time-lapsed growth. Deadly thorns glinted from the thicker stems, and the first of several rosebuds came shooting from the branches, pale green and fat.
Coming to stand near my father, who was still on his knees, I added my magic to his, and they threaded into one.
Daracha's magic forked around her, smoking and stinking. But both her legs had become roots, her dress shredded and split into tatters. Incredibly, the fabric began to form leaves. In the shadows between the thickening roots were screaming faces, hollow eyes and open, angry mouths. Daracha's screams became the screams of a raging, furious crowd … all the dead liars.
The first of the rosebuds burst open in full bloom, as deep a green as mint with a smell near to overpowering. Tangy and sharp, peppery and medicinal, a heady mix of rose and eucalyptus, the fae roses filled the air. My eyes watered from its pungency, but my blood thrilled to experience it for the first time. It was totally new and dazzled all of my senses. Even the air tasted pepper-sharp and tingled on my tongue.
The green blossoms continued to burst open one after the other, and the screams of the dead liars began to gargle and choke. Moments later, the faces had been swallowed completely, the screaming swallowed up altogether.
Daracha's face had taken on a woody texture. As I watched, another thorn sprouted from her neck. A vivid green blossom burst from her mouth, obscuring her from my view save for one angry eye. The mad light in the eye faded, and some strange dissonant emotion came through, a weary defeat. Witnessing the moment of Daracha's giving up filled my heart with relief and a touch of pity.
Slowly, we withdrew our magic and the bright green blossoms and thorns slowed and came to rest. Byrne got to his feet as we surveyed the new creation.
This fae rose was the same yet different from the ros fírinn. Rooted there in the corridor of white roses, it was easy to see the magic of one was much greater. Bright green blossoms—so bright even the lack of sunlight did not diminish their vivid color—framed on either side by huge white ones, all nodded their heads sleepily in the mild night breeze of the Scottish Highlands. The air was thick with complex aromas.
We took a few steps back together, my father turning to me, his face shining. "How was it you came to have that powder keg in your pocket?"
Movement near the roofline of Blackmouth Castle drew my eye, and I looked to see a silhouette take shape there.
Byrne followed my gaze. "Of course," he said quietly, lifting a hand to wave. "I should have known."
Queen Elphame's figure could be seen leaning against the transparent railing. Her castle's flags and winding wisteria overlay Blackmouth's concrete features. She rested her hands on the ledge and looked down at us, two small figures within an overgrown maze. Another fae figure appeared beside her on her right, and another joined at her left. More ghost-like shapes came to the balcony; some of them raised their hands over their heads to clap, others raised fists into the air and shook them in a kind of victory dance. Faintly, the sound of whoops and applause reached my ears. Someone struck up a rhythmic drum and flutes joined in.
"Were they watching us this whole time?" My legs felt a little weak with shock as I took in the expanding crowd.
"Of course they were." Byrne turned to me. "There's nothing Queen Elphame likes more than entertaining her subjects."
"So she did turn up; she just didn’t help in the way I had hoped she would.”
“Didn’t she?” Byrne put an arm around my shoulders. "Where did you get the ros vertias? You know they only grow in her garden. She created them. She has quite a talent for inventing powerful botanicals, you know."
I couldn't stop the delighted laugh that rose in my chest, borne of extreme relief and the pleasure of a puzzle piece sliding into place. It seemed Queen Elphame had passed that talent on to Fyfa. The ros fírinn was a hybrid of a rose within and a rose without. The ros veritas was the one she used. I was too relieved to feel angry at Queen Elphame, but now I felt confused about whether she'd actually held up her end of the deal or not.
"What if we hadn't figured it out?" I asked Byrne.
Byrne expressed none of the doubtful feelings I wrestled with. "But we did."
"But if we hadn't? Would the queen have let Daracha kill us?"
My father shrugged. "The queen's intentions are her own. I don't think we'll ever know. Fae don't like to be predictable or fully understood, the queen is no exception."
The ghosts of the fae faded away and the drumming sound grew nearly inaudible. Crickets chirped and an owl hooted once as peace descended over the garden once more.
"We'd better clean this up before morning. Wouldn't be nice for Gavin and Bonnie to wake up and see what we've done to their garden." I looked around at the tangle of growth and the massive white and green blossoms everywhere.
"Aye." Byrne looked around, rubbing his hands together as if deciding where to start a particularly enjoyable job. It made me smile. His second act of freedom was intensive magical gardening, and he looked thrilled to do it.
"Hey, that trick you did of transforming Daracha into the rose ..."
"Transfiguration, in your language." He gave a little bow from the waist. "One of my finer talents."
"Can you reverse it?"
He gave me a scandalized look.
Laughing, I explained, "I don't mean Daracha … I mean the cabin."
"Oh." Byrne's face relaxed. "You want me to put it back?"
"A friend of mine has put a lot of hard work into building it, and I think it probably cost a lot of money. If you don't mind?"
Byrne nodded. He reached out and touched my chin. "As you wish, Daughter. Would you care to assist? We can talk as we work."
A lump came to my throat at the affectionate way he'd said daughter. I swallowed. "I can't think of anything I’d like more ... Father."
Chapter Twenty-Three
Byrne reversed the transfiguration in the glade while I worked on putting the gardens back in their original state. Once he was finished, he came to join me. I’d already reversed the ros veritas back into its original rosehip pod. Holding it in my hand, I was quietly amazed by its power. I wondered if the queen would want it back. Byrne came walking up from the glade, as I tucked it into my pocket.
“Just the labyrinth, then?” he asked, and I nodded.
We worked side by side and talked as the sky went from black to a canvas of pastel shades of yellow, peach, pink, and blue.
I stole a glance at Byrne as we stood side by side in one of the corridors, shrinking the leafy walls back into the shrubs they’d once been. I'd been stealing these glances as much as I felt I could get away with, but really, I just wanted to openly stare at him, memorize his features.
"What happened to you, exactly?" I asked as we moved slowly down the passageway, leaves rustling as they diminished. "I mean, I know what I saw in the residual, how Daracha made you her slave. But I don't totally understand how you came to father me."
Byrne took a moment of thought before speaking. Gently cupping the huge blossoms and coaxing them to a non-alarming size. "I came from within after my lover—a beautiful Wise named Fyfa—told me the story of how she'd come to be in Stavarjak. To me, she seemed to appear out of nowhere in Queen Elphame's court. I was dying to know who she was and why she seemed so sad. When she told me the story of her twin, I became enraged and determined to end the witches who had done this great evil. She tried to stop me, tried to tell me that it was better to leave things be. She had no intention of returning without so there was no point. But I was headstrong and I have powerful magic, so I was determined to punish the witches who'd victimized Gilbarta and hurt my Fyfa so badly."
Finished with one row of labyrinth walls, we moved in tandem to the next.
"So you crossed over, but how were you overcome?" I recalled the yellow electricity binding Byrne as he hung over the well. "By Margaret?"
"Aye, it was Margaret who bested me. If I had known that she was already so powerful, I would have tried something different. At least, recruited some help." He shook his head at whatever memories had come to mind. "Her power was frightening, even more than Fyfa had described. She had to have absorbed the powers of two Wise by then."
I nodded, cold water pooling in my belly at the thought of those long-ago victims. "Why did Margaret allow Daracha to enslave you? Why didn't she take you for herself?" I thought of how Fyfa had explained that Margaret made Daracha work for the magically enhanced beauty she'd eventually bestowed. Giving Daracha a slave seemed to go against Margaret's stingy nature.
I released the last white blossom on the bush in front of me and turned to the ones behind me. Moonlight had begun to reach the soil in the garden once more.
Byrne moved to follow me. The branches creaked and leaves rustled as we worked together. "The spell they used on me can only be made with powerful, dark magic. The kind of magic those witches wielded is extraordinarily dangerous. You have to make a deal with a great many untrustworthy entities to access it. If you don't do it right or if you anger those entities, they will kill you."
"All the dead liars." I shivered, feeling a cool wind pick up. Briefly, I tucked my hands into my armpits to warm them.
Byrne nodded. "Margaret was using Daracha to give the magic a trial run. If Daracha failed, then she'd die, and Margaret might think twice about using the magic. But it worked. The spell made an exchange of sorts. It trapped my psyche in the bottom of the well and linked the well to the ithe. The ithe was created using black magic, leased—if you will—by the dead liars and controlled by Daracha."
I shook my head. "I'm so sorry that happened to you."
He quirked a smile as we moved along the last wall of the labyrinth. "It sounds terrible, and it was, but there were small mercies and eventually a great mercy. For most of the early years of my enslavement, it was like being asleep. Sometimes a very deep slumber, the kind where you're not aware of anything. Not of time passing or your own consciousness. Other times, I had dreams. They were fragmented and strange, coming from what the ithe was doing as it used my physical form, changed though it was, to move through the world and do Daracha's bidding." He lifted his eyes to mine, gaze soft. "Daracha gave the ithe a command that it should use my seed to populate the world with potential Wise. It was a standing order, and the ithe used my body to fulfill it. She commanded it to prioritize breeding with Sutherland descendants, though I never knew why."
"I do." I looked over at him, my hands tingling from the work. We were nearly finished now. "Fyfa told me."
Byrne’s face stilled. "You know Fyfa?"
"I meant to tell you, but I wanted to hear your story first. I've been within. I know her. She's the first other Wise I have known, and an amazing fae woman." Byrne crossed to stand on the other side of the last wall, a little back so he could still see me. We walked along the rose-shrub together, hands out, contracting as we went.
"I suppose I should not be surprised that you've met, given your proximity to the witch." He cocked his head. "So why Sutherlands then?"
"Because it was a Sutherland judge who sentenced Margaret to die," I explained. "Daracha wanted revenge, even if it was on his descendants. The ithe must have learned my mother's married name somehow. I don't actually have a drop of real Sutherland blood in me, ironically. It's Brent, my mother's ex-husband, who was the Sutherland. My mom—Liz, or Elizabeth—is a Sheehan by birth."
Byrne nodded, his expression enlightened. "I have fragmented dreams of meeting a woman in a pub in Edinburgh named Elizabeth Sutherland."
"That was her. You got—I mean, the ithe using your body—got my mother pregnant. It used some kind of magic on her, an amnesia spell or something. She doesn't remember much about it."
Byrne nodded, unsurprised. "Tampering with memories is one of my skills, along with transfiguration and glamorizing text."
"That was how you gave me the code to the vault in the treasury." I turned things over in my brain as Byrne watched me. "But I don't understand how you had the power to do that but not the power to escape. I mean, if you had enough power to glamour text, or put a message in the vault, then you had control over the ithe at points in time, right?"
The last of the labyrinth was returned to normal and we stood side by side, contemplating our work. Byrne had a secret smile as he looked at the garden around us, now dusted with early morning light. Birds twittered in the trees and shrubs and the rosebuds were just beginning to open. We walked to one of the stone benches and sat down together.
"It was thanks to the roses." He reached a hand out to touch the nearest bud, now the standard size. "It took me years to figure it out. The ithe continued to function according to Daracha's commands even after she was entombed in the wall, which was how you came to be born even while Daracha was stoned up. I was able to witness her entombment through the ithe's eyes, more clearly than just through a fragmented dream. I didn't know why this memory was so clear at first. But the ithe would return to the site of Daracha's walling up every so often, and when it did, I always had a clear awareness of it. I figured out that when the ithe would pass through this garden to get to Daracha's resting place, I could exert some small amount of power over it. The curse made me feel as though Daracha's will and my will were in a wrestling match, whenever I had awareness, that is. I would fi
ght for control of the ithe, but I would always lose. But when the ithe walked through this garden, I could win a little bit. At first, all I could get the ithe to do was slow down so it took longer to walk through the maze. Then I had enough control to get it to touch the roses, which gave me even more power. But that power would always vanish whenever the ithe was away from the garden. The next time it was here, I made it swallow a rose, and that gave me power that lasted longer. Even after the ithe left the garden, my will would be strong enough to dominate for a while afterward."
Something else clicked into place. "That's why the well smelled like old potpourri," I said with wonder.
He cocked his head quizzically. "What's potpourri?"
"Dried rose petals. People put bowls of it in their bathrooms to keep the air smelling nice.”
"Ah. Fresh ones would be better, surely." Byrne dimpled.
I laughed and agreed. "But the ithe never knew what was happening?"
"The ithe was just a spell, it had no intelligence of its own or any ability to problem solve. It could only do what Daracha commanded, and it could use my magic to execute her wishes. But with the help of the roses, I could temporarily take control.
"And Daracha?"
"She wasn't aware it was happening even after she came back to life. Her first clue that something was amiss was when I carried your cage so you could be closer to the garden, but she was arrogant, and that arrogance was her weakness. She thought it was impossible that the ithe could ever defy her. If it wasn't for the roses, she would have been right to think so."
"Incredible, that it was the work of your own lover that enabled you to take back some control over your body," I murmured.
Byrne's eyes misted and he brushed a hand across his face. "Fyfa told me about her hybrid rose, but I never dreamed of its part in my future. I have her to thank for my freedom." He took my hand and squeezed it. "And you."
My face heated with embarrassment. I looked down and cleared my throat. "But how did you find me to begin with? I get that you were able to glamour Jasher's letter, but how did you even know I'd been born? My birth-town is a very long way from here."
