The Lethe Stone (The Fae War Chronicles Book 4)

by Jocelyn Fox

  “Mab has executed those she deemed traitors,” said Luca, following her train of thought.

  “I don’t want to be like her.” Tess’s voice shook slightly.

  Luca laid his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him. “Anganhjarta, you will never be like her.”

  She let the assurance in his words wash over her. “What does that mean?” she murmured. “Angan…”

  “Anganhjarta,” Luca repeated with a small smile. She tested her pronunciation of the word again and he nodded, brushing a strand of hair from her face. “It means…joy of my heart.”

  Tess blinked. Would this man ever stop surprising her with the depths of his tenderness and the wholeness of his love for her? She swallowed again, this time against a sudden tightness in her throat. Words didn’t seem sufficient to express the emotions whirling in her chest, so she hugged him and repeated the word again into his chest. He kissed the top of her head and smoothed her hair. Then she drew back again and considered Tyr and Corsica.

  “Are you all right with leaving the bone sorcerer alive and coming with me? Niall will be here to guard him, and Forin and Farin. But…” Tess sighed. It seemed like she had no clear good choice, although at first she hadn’t minded the thought of leaving Gryttrond trapped within the cage built by Tyr and Merrick’s runes. Now she began to second guess her decision as the time drew nearer for her to Summon the Gate. “I trust Niall,” she said, “and I have no doubt as to his strength. He’s Titania’s Vaelanseld, after all.”

  “But it is Corsica and Tyr, and most of all Gryttrond, that you do not trust,” Luca supplied.

  “Exactly. More Corsica than Tyr,” Tess muttered. The silver-haired woman’s head turned sharply in her direction. The Exiled unfolded herself from her watchful posture and slunk toward them. “I think she heard me,” Tess said, torn between embarrassment and defiance. She was the Bearer, but she still didn’t want to be rude.

  Perhaps it is not rude if it is true, the Caedbranr whispered insidiously in the back of her mind. She ignored it. Tyr joined Corsica, tilting his head at her in question, but her azure eyes flashed and he shrugged as he fell into step beside her.

  “You do not trust me, daughter of Gwyneth?” Corsica demanded.

  Tess drew back her shoulders. No use in denying the truth. “No. I haven’t known you long enough to trust you, and I have heard…interesting things…from my companions back in Faeortalam.”

  “All suppositions and sordid half-truths,” said Corsica. “The victors write history, do they not?”

  “The victors or the survivors,” said Luca, nodding once. “Sometimes they are one and the same, and sometimes they are not.”

  “Sometimes they are not,” said Corsica. Her eyes blazed as she turned back to Tess. “The word of a wanderer is worthless. Yet we have not betrayed you. We have not slit the sorcerer’s throat and supped on his blood.”

  “Is that what you plan to do?” A small, rebellious thought inserted itself into Tess’s mind: perhaps letting the Exiled kill Gryttrond would not be such a bad thing. It would leave her hands clean.

  “It is what I want to do,” said Corsica. Tyr touched her arm lightly. “But what we will do is speak to him.”

  “Speak to him about reversing the effects of your exile,” Tess clarified.

  Tyr nodded gravely. Corsica didn’t say anything, her eyes still burning like two blue flames. Gwyneth’s pendant heated at Tess’s throat. She tried not to let her surprise show on her face. The pendant didn’t speak to her often anymore, and she felt like she didn’t speak its language as fluently. Was it expressing approval or doubt? Was it trying to warn her or urge her to trust the Exiled? She wished that Gwyneth had imbued the pendant with the ability to speak…but then again, that wasn’t always helpful with the Sword.

  “After you speak to him,” said Tess slowly, “you will return him to the runetrap until I return.”

  Tyr nodded again, his face serious. His dark gray eyes looked black in the deepening dusk. Corsica stared off into the trees until he touched her arm again; then she looked at Tess and grudgingly gave a little jerk of her head.

  “You will swear on the Iron Sword,” Tess continued. She carefully gathered the Caedbranr’s power into herself as she reached behind her head for its hilt. With its fire compressed into a brightly burning star just behind her heart, she drew the Sword. The blade shone with its own soft light in the shadows as she held it flat over her hands. Tyr let out a sigh of wonder but Corsica stared at the Sword with an almost petulant cast to her mouth. Tess felt the many voices of the Bearers before her well up through her throat, and her taebramh raced down her war markings, shining brightly through her shirtsleeve. “Swear on the Sword that you will guard the bone sorcerer known as Gryttrond until my return.”

  A tendril of the Sword’s power reached out in a tongue of white fire that split into two streams of brightness. Tyr held both his scarred hands toward the Sword, as if warming himself by its light. He nodded deeply, mouthing the words: I so swear. The fire licked his forehead and he shuddered.

  Corsica drew her shoulders forward and hugged herself, shrinking back as the tendril of fire advanced on her. She shook her head and muttered to herself, the words too low for Tess to hear; but then Corsica suddenly threw her shoulders back and gritted her teeth. She looked at the Sword and said, “I so swear.” The Sword’s power brushed her skin for longer than it had with Tyr, and she winced as though its touch caused pain.

  The fire funneled back into the Sword, then through its hilt and back through the circuitous path of Tess’s war markings. She let out a breath as the remnants of the Bearers before her receded into quiescence, settling into the depths of her unconscious mind like a smooth stone dropping through the blue waters of a lake. The Sword settled back into its scabbard with a satisfied snap. Corsica shook herself as though trying to rid herself of a biting fly, while Tyr gazed dreamily at the hilt of the Sword, visible over Tess’s shoulder.

  “Now they have been bound by giving their word to the Sword,” said Luca. He glanced over to Gryttrond. Tess hazily wondered at the thoughts lurking behind his now-somber eyes. Was he thinking of the family he had lost to the harrowing of the North? Was he thinking of all the innocents that Gryttrond had killed? She blinked and focused on the Exiled.

  “Thank you for giving me your word,” she said, though she wasn’t sure it was customary to thank anyone for doing such a thing. The strange feeling in her gut that tugged her toward Faeortalam intensified and she pressed her lips together, looking at Tyr. “Take the knowledge you need from him, and no more.”

  The Exiled who reminded her faintly of Chael bowed elegantly in answer, his scarred yet beautiful face solemn. She nodded. She wasn’t sure if there was anything more that she could do to allay her uneasiness at leaving Gryttrond alive while she delivered the Lethe Stone.

  Tyr took her nod as a dismissal. He tugged at Corsica’s sleeve as he turned back toward the runetrap. She followed him, but her eyes were hooded and she glanced sourly at Tess and Luca before resuming her watchful position.

  “I should feel reassured that they swore on the Sword, shouldn’t I?” Tess said quietly, almost to herself.

  Luca shrugged slightly. “You can do no more.”

  Tess bit her lip in thought. “There is one thing more I could do. I could kill the bone sorcerer before I return to Faeortalam.” She sighed and shook her head. “But that would deny Tyr and Corsica the chance to regain a bit of what they’ve lost.” She pressed her lips together. “When I was told about the Exiles, they were painted as traitors who would be bloodthirsty for revenge. The traitor part…that’s not for me to decide. But we wouldn’t have been able to trap Gryttrond in the first place without them, and aside from the initial meeting, they haven’t tried to exact their vengeance on anyone here.” She looked up at Luca, who stared over at the bone sorcerer.

  “It is not always black and white,” Luca said quietly. “You could have killed me when I had the dag
ger bound to my hand, but you chose a different path.”

  Tess nodded. Though it was a timeworn argument by this point, it still rang true. Luca had been sent by Malravenar to kill her, controlled by a dagger imbued with a malevolent spirit. Their fight against Malravenar himself had been clear-cut – the ancient deity’s desire to annihilate the Sidhe and wrest control of the Fae world and the mortal world was easy to oppose. After having faced Malravenar, Tess couldn’t bring herself to consider Corsica and Tyr evil. They had spent centuries in the mortal world, accepting a slow corruption and painful existence over a quick death. She shivered. If anything, perhaps they deserved her empathy.

  Finally, she sighed and met Luca’s eyes. “I just want to be sure that I’m not making the wrong choice.”

  He smiled slightly. “You cannot See the future like your brother, but you are the Bearer and you have been trained well.” One of his eyebrows arched slightly. “And I would tell you if you were being a complete…what is the mortal word…moron.” His smile widened into a smug grin as she smacked his arm.

  “You and your picking up mortal slang. Did Vivian teach you that one?” Tess shook her head, but a smile played on her lips.

  “You’ll have to get used to it, if we’re to establish a base here in the mortal world,” Luca said, following her as she walked toward the side of the house. She’d decided to open the Gate at the farthest point in the back yard from the trapped bone-sorcerer. Kianryk raised his great head, watched for a moment and then stood, yawning and stretching before loping after them. The shadows painted his tawny gold pelt a shade of darker gold.

  “Let’s focus on one thing at a time, shall we?” replied Tess. “I’d like to untangle this whole mess with Mab as best I can before we think about building a training base or something here.”

  “Many things happen at the same time,” countered Luca. “We know that Gryttrond escaped into this world when Malravenar fell. We don’t know if there are others. And there are creatures that were trapped in this world when the Gate was closed.”

  “That’s a can of worms that I’m not willing to open right now,” Tess said firmly.

  “Worms have nothing to do with it,” said Luca sensibly.

  Tess chuckled. “Would you mind fetching the others who are coming with us while I set up?”

  Luca nodded and walked toward the house, Kianryk at his heels.

  Tess refocused her attention on the Summoning, opening her belt pouch and carefully withdrawing the little silken bag containing the spheres created by the Queens. The Lethe Stone nestled beside them, wrapped in its square of white, and beside that the river stone containing the shard of Malravenar’s spirit rested. Perhaps it was appropriate that the instrument of his defeated henchman was stored next to a fragment of his spirit, Tess thought. She tugged the strings of the pouch loose and rolled the small marble-sized objects into her palm, selected one each from Mab, Titania and Vell – sparkling night sky, white rose suspended in brilliant noon-sky blue, and tiny tree surrounded by the white swirl of snow, all perfect and beautiful to the last intricate detail, sealed with a drop of the Queen’s blood. With her three orbs in one hand, she carefully slid the remaining six orbs back into the pouch. Just as the last rolled over her palm, Corsica’s voice purred into her ear: “Such beautiful things the bountiful ones have bestowed upon you.”

  Tess jumped at the sudden closeness of the Exiled woman and dropped the last remaining orb. Her heart flew into her throat as she dropped to her knees, scanning the long grass until she saw the flash of stars in the midnight sky against the dirt. Corsica bumped into her as the Exiled dropped to her knees as well, gloved hand effortlessly scooping up the orb. Tess stood jerkily, staring at the silver-haired Sidhe. She let her taebramh expand in her chest, ready to force the Exiled to return the orb that was their return ticket after the next visit to the mortal world. She didn’t think that Mab would create any more orbs for a Summoned Gate.

  To Tess’s surprise, Corsica gracefully dropped to her knees again, offering the orb on her upraised hands. Her silver hair fell like a curtain about her face.

  “I apologize, Lady Bearer,” came Corsica’s voice, sounding strangely subdued.

  Tess reached out and took the orb between thumb and forefinger, sliding it back into the pouch. “No harm done,” she said. Corsica stood and sank into her elegant curtsy. “I…there’s no need for that, Corsica,” Tess said, now feeling slightly ashamed that she’d thought she needed to unleash her taebramh on the Exiled to make her return the orb. The Sword’s power stirred uneasily in her chest, and the strange tug toward Faeortalam intensified again.

  “We look forward to your return, Lady Bearer,” said Corsica. “We will remain loyal to you, no matter our scars or our reputation. Bound and banished, burned and bloodied. We are…grateful,” she said, the word almost strangled. “Grateful to you, for allowing us a chance to become some of what we once were. Before.”

  Tess looked at Corsica’s gloved hands, held in fists by her sides. She held up her empty left hand, the rippling scars left by the Crown of Bones clearly visible even in the fading light. “I have scars as well. I don’t judge others for theirs.”

  Something flashed in Corsica’s eyes before she lowered them and bowed her head, then she slid away, murmuring to herself. Tess watched her go and then blinked, shifting the strap of the Sword across her chest. The three orbs felt unnaturally heavy in her hand.

  “We are all here,” said Luca, approaching with Calliea and Merrick. Jess, Niall, Vivian, Ross, and Duke trailed behind them. Tess found that she was relieved that Molly hadn’t left Ramel to come out and watch the Summoning.

  “And all ready to return to Faeortalam,” said Merrick, his gray eyes alight with anticipation. Haze rode on Calliea’s shoulder, his small hand touching her ear every so often for balance as Wisp had once done with Tess. Forin and Farin hovered high over the group, watching from the air.

  Tess nodded, the words of the Summoning rising in her mind. “All right then, let’s go home.”

  Chapter 35

  Ross watched as Tess performed the complex ritual that would open a portal between the worlds. A Gate, Vivian had told her excitedly. She hadn’t been enthusiastic about her friend venturing outside so soon after her injury, but Vivian had stubbornly insisted, and Niall had reassured Ross that he’d stay close by the redhead. Ross still had her doubts about the whole business, but the events of the past days had all but forced her to grudgingly accept the fact that there were supernatural powers in the world about which she knew nothing…and that Tess, the little sister of Duke’s teammate, carried one of those supernatural powers in the sword on her back.

  Niall, while he kept his word to Ross about staying close to Vivian, positioned himself so that he was angled to intercept the Exiled should they attempt to throw themselves through the Gate. While Niall had said that travel through the portal typically required a mark from the creator of the Gate – a passport, Ross had thought with a bit of amusement – he was still wary of the ancient knowledge that the Exiled possessed. Tyr and Corsica, for their part, showed little interest in the Summoning. Tyr still performed his endless circuit around the cage, and Corsica crouched in her customary spot. She stared down at one of her hands, a look of childlike wonder on her face. Probably a bauble she’d found in the overgrown brush by the river, thought Ross. Bottles of colored glass and other oddments occasionally emerged from the tangle of greenery, borne downriver by the muddy water and deposited into the brambles.

  The air tightened as Tess murmured an incantation. Ross worked her jaw to relieve the building pressure in her ears. Duke slipped his hand into the pocket of her shorts and she smiled. She wasn’t much for public displays of affection like holding hands, so this was their compromise. For a tough as nails, sarcastic and at times cynical operator, Duke surprisingly enjoyed physical expressions of their relationship.

  Vivian leaned forward, watching raptly as Tess raised a little glass orb in one hand, her chant
almost a song. She threw the orb onto the ground and smoke that looked like a dark, star spangled night swirled up out of the shards. An unnatural wind raced toward Tess, plucking at their clothes as it rushed past, throwing Vivian’s curls into a waving mass of fiery red that seemed to take on a life of its own about her head.

  Tess smashed a second orb, and the mist roiling up from this one blazed bright as a summertime noon, twining with the dark smoke in two twisting columns. Goosebumps prickled Ross’s skin as she recognized the outline of a door…or not a door, she thought. A Gate to another world. Luca, Merrick and Calliea stood behind Tess. Ross couldn’t see their faces but she could read their eagerness in the set of their shoulders. Tess threw the third orb onto the ground and a gust of icy wind blasted back from the Gate. The columns solidified as if frozen by the white mist from the third orb, and a shivering pane of frost hung suspended between them.

  “Come forward to be marked,” Tess said, drawing a dagger from her belt. She pricked her finger and pressed her blood to the foreheads of the four traveling with her. Then she turned back to the Gate, drew back her shoulders and slid her bloodied fingertip across the pane of frost. A silent explosion rocked the ground for an instant, and the pane rippled. Colors swirled behind a veil of mist. Ross strained her eyes and thought she made out the vague impression of a sort of pavilion. The veil kept shifting, whirling with a kaleidoscope of shadows and colors. She glanced at Niall, and he wasn’t watching Tess. His eyes were trained on Tyr, who gazed at the Gate with naked longing on his scarred face. Corsica watched from her crouch, her gloved hands held against her chest as though she pressed something precious to her heart.

  Tess turned back to the small group gathered behind her. Without a word, Calliea and Merrick walked forward. Merrick smiled and bowed slightly to Calliea, gesturing for her to go before him. She rolled her eyes at him but, with Haze on her shoulder, she gracefully slid into the mist of the Gate. Merrick followed as soon as she disappeared from sight. Luca said a Northern word, and Kianryk grinned his wolf grin. Tess looked relieved as Luca vanished through the Gate, the tawny wolf leaping after him. She turned to look at those remaining behind. Ross saw with a start that Tess’s green eyes had been overtaken by white fire.