Thrall

by Barbara Ann Wright

“If we kill all the things in the holes,” Hilfey asked, “will this madness stop?”

  “Don’t get that liquid on you,” Aesa said. “And don’t cut the lines that go to the pools, or they’ll wake.”

  Hilfey shook her head. “We need Runa.”

  “There,” Otama yelled. Runa stood near a staircase at Gilka’s side, fending off several guards. Otama ran toward her, dodging pockets of fighting.

  Aesa pointed toward one of the other doors leading into the rock. It looked for all the world like a gaping maw, but anything was better than the bloodshed around them. “Ell, run,” she said in Ell’s language. She ducked and mimed hiding her face. “Hide.”

  Ell blinked away tears. “Aesa…” She hugged Aesa once but didn’t linger, gathering the fini in her wake, and running for safety. The guards seemed to ignore them until one staggered into a guard’s path, and he tore her throat out, letting the body sag to the ground. Ell hurried the other fini on, looking at the fallen one with stricken eyes but not stopping. Aesa shot the guard in one swift movement before waving Ell on.

  She gathered arrows and shot the guards until one came too close, and then she used the tripping strike Otama had shown her, giving her time to claim an axe, so much better suited to her than a sword. All the times she’d had to kill before were immediate, the seconds etched in her mind, but this became as routine as chopping wood, arm rising and falling, soreness building in her shoulders, and her mind straining to be elsewhere.

  Hilfey skidded in a patch of blood. Aesa turned, shaken out of her stupor, but Hilfey fell atop a pile of corpses and cried out. Had she been shot? Stabbed? Aesa knelt at her side, but she’d gone still, eyes rolling up, mouth slackening. The light from the cauldron glinted off something on her chest, small and tinted ruby red.

  A spear. She’d fallen on someone’s spear, and the wicked end of it had gone straight through her. A cavern full of enemies, and she’d fallen to a strike from the dead.

  “Maeve!” Aesa cried. “Help!” She kept a wary eye on the battlefield but leaned as close to Hilfey as she could. “Please, don’t die. Maeve!”

  She was already running toward them. Dimly, Aesa noticed that she’d cut two holes in the cloak so her arms could come through. Smart. Well, Maeve had always been smart.

  Aesa told herself to pay attention, but she’d walked for hours and then fought for the rotten gods knew how long. Maeve knelt at Hilfey’s side, but it wouldn’t be enough. Not even Maeve could combat death.

  “Help me lift her,” Maeve said in a soft voice, telling Aesa that her spirit was still outside her body.

  “Is she alive?”

  “Help me!”

  Aesa slipped an arm between Hilfey and the corpses. Maeve yanked the spear out, staining her bare legs and cloak with more blood. After they laid Hilfey on the cold stone, Aesa stood to guard them both, but the moments dragged on, giving her time to picture Hilfey’s bondmate, the children. What could she ever say to them?

  Finally, Maeve opened her eyes. “Done.”

  “What?” But nothing had gone right for her so far, nothing. “She’s alive?”

  “I saw the battle,” Hilfey said softly. “From high up on the ceiling, I saw…” She captured Maeve’s face. “We were wrong to bar you from our ship, healer. We were so wrong. Thank you.” She kissed Maeve soundly as she sat up. “Thank you.”

  Maeve helped her to her feet. “You weren’t wrong.” She stared at the wounded, the puddles of blood and shredded people. “I can do good here, but this is not my place.” And then she was gone, moving through the dying and healing as she went.

  “I have to go with her,” Hilfey said. “I have to defend her. My family would demand it.”

  She followed Maeve just as Otama came charging back, Runa behind her. Gilka trailed them, killing as she went. Aesa had dreaded this moment, but before Gilka came close enough to speak, the chamber shuddered again, and another fae began to rise. Gilka charged it, bellowing a war cry.

  “If we free the sheep,” Aesa said, “we cut off the fae. They’ve been feeding on thoughts and emotions.”

  “You want to wake them?” Runa said. “We can’t fight all of them and these guards!”

  “Can you taint the essence that’s feeding them? So they die?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps…” She ran toward the bottom of the cauldron and climbed among the crystalline tubes. Aesa followed, watching Gilka, trying to watch Maeve, and keeping an eye on the place where Ell was hiding, all at the same time. One person had been saved, but there were so many more that needed saving.

  “Weapon up, cub,” Otama said at her side. She fell into combat again, drawing Aesa with her.

  *

  Laret paused to listen for Ari’s footsteps, but she could hear almost nothing over the sounds of combat echoing through the tunnel. It didn’t help that Ari had visited an ancient fae city before. If this one had the same layout, she’d know it far better than Laret.

  “Dain,” she said, “do you know—”

  “Shh.”

  Ahead came a scrape of stone. Laret ran, knife in hand. She had to get close this time, couldn’t rely solely on blood magic. Ari had too many weapons in her magical arsenal, like the cloud of blood she’d surrounded herself with. It was tainted, cursed blood, and Laret thought it part of some kind of leeching curse, designed to pull the life from Ari’s victims far faster than Laret could.

  One of the warriors pointed ahead, and all three darted around Laret, searching the gloom for Ari’s torch. “There!” one said.

  But the light wasn’t moving. “Stop!” Laret cried.

  A spattering of tainted blood flew from a shadowy corner and caught one of Ulfrecht’s warriors. He slumped, skin blackening. Laret scrambled back, Dain following her.

  “Come out and fight!” Dain called.

  Ari didn’t even bother to laugh. Laret sent her spirit out, feeling for the taint that surrounded Ari, trying to slough it away. She felt it hovering, greasy, malevolent, but before she could get hold of it, Ari was on the move again, skulking through the shadows. At least Laret could follow her now. She pointed but warned the warriors to keep low. One took her advice and sprinted into the shadows. He managed to avoid a burst of blood, but when he lunged for Ari, the shield that surrounded her flowed up his sword and engulfed him.

  With a curse, Dain dragged Laret back. “How are we supposed to fight her?”

  Ari did laugh then. “Did you cleanse my curse from this one? I can’t call to it.”

  “You cannot win,” Laret said, but her confidence had fled.

  “When I say—” Dain started.

  A tendril of blood flew from the darkness. Laret tried to drag Dain with her, but they weren’t fast enough. The flick of gore hit him, and Laret tried to use her power, but life drained from him before she could blink, and he dropped into Laret’s lap.

  “Dain,” she said softly. She hadn’t known him well, but he’d been brave. Separated from Ulfrecht’s group, he’d even been kind. And now he was dead, just like that. No songs, no glory, no spirits come from the afterlife to claim him.

  She’d known they had to be more careful around Ari. She never should have let him come with her to this fight. Gently, she laid him to the side, having trouble remembering when the last person she’d been even a little close to had died. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  Ari stepped from the shadows, her shell of blood not as dense as it once was. “I suppose you won’t come with me even if I offer a place for your lover, too.”

  “A place in what?” Laret asked as she stood.

  Ari rubbed her chin. “Maybe I should just ask Maeve. How often do you meet a healer with a bear as a second skin? We’d find that quite useful.”

  Laret nicked her fingertips, and even through the fatigue, the fear, a jolt of pleasure hummed through her. “Who is we?”

  “She still speaks of you, you know. I will admit to a bit of jealousy, even though I’ve surpassed you. I tried to tempt Maeve
once, but even she was too enamored of you.”

  Laret licked her lips with a tongue that felt as coarse as tree bark. “Who speaks of me?” But she already knew the answer. She’d been right all along. The witch of Sanaan had been Ari’s teacher, impossible as that still seemed.

  Ari laughed. “Are we going to fight, or are you going to let me go? Unless of course, you’re curious enough to come with me.”

  Laret took a step forward.

  “Pity.” A spray of blood shot from her shield. Laret put all her spirit into repelling it, fighting the magic’s natural urge to harm. Ari’s magic knocked against her like a huge slap. She tried to keep her feet, but Ari leapt for her, shoving her backward. She braced herself to hit stone, but she kept falling, feet scrambling as she plummeted down a shaft she hadn’t even seen, a thing Ari had probably known was there the entire time.

  *

  As the fighting moved closer, Ell pressed the fini farther down the tunnel. In her mind, she kept seeing that shapti tearing out a fini throat.

  “What is happening?” someone muttered.

  “Try not to think about it,” Ell said. “Think only on pleasant things.”

  They clutched at her and murmured assent. A shadow came toward them down the tunnel, and they shrank away, but it followed.

  “It’s a shapti,” one of the fini said.

  “Maybe she’s come to lead us out.”

  Ell doubted that. Whatever was happening in the main cavern with the aos sí was driving the shaptis insane. Ell waved the fini farther back. The shapti turned a little as if listening, and Ell saw her face in the light coming from behind her.

  “Siobhan?”

  She focused on Ell, her face as angry as Niall’s had been. They could run, but where could they go in the darkness? Chezzo growled as another shapti rounded Siobhan’s side. Ell clenched her fists. She’d hoped never to utter these words, but she couldn’t let the fini be slaughtered. “Chezzo, kill!”

  When he leapt to do her bidding, she called, “Stay here,” to the fini and then ran, tearing past Siobhan and the other shapti, heading for the cavern, for the warriors, for Aesa. Footsteps pounded after her. Chezzo had only slowed one, but it was good that the other followed, she told herself, the thought fighting the terror that crawled up her throat. Chezzo would kill the other shapti, and she would lead this one away from the fini. She burst into the cavern to find the fight still raging, but she didn’t see Aesa near the doors.

  She ran for the nearest clump of fighters, hoping someone would help her, but no one turned her way, and the shapti would be on her in a moment. She ran toward one of the milky pools, almost to the edge. At the last moment, she dropped, curling into a ball.

  Siobhan hit her at a run and tumbled over, flailing into the liquid. Ell scooted away from the pool as it bubbled, the thick liquid slopping against the stone. Someone grabbed her arm, dragged her to her feet, and she thought it would be Aesa, but Niall stood there.

  Ell pushed away from him, fighting his grip on her arm.

  “It’s me, it’s me!” he said.

  She stilled, and he released her. “What happened to you?”

  “I don’t know. I woke up near one of these pools. Ell, these are aos sí.”

  “I noticed.” One rampaged through the cavern, tossing warriors and shaptis out of her way. “They were feeding on us, Niall. If you free the fini, you’ll be starving them.” She eyed him closely. “You lost your mind.”

  He went even paler. He’d never been as light as some shaptis, too much fini blood again. “I don’t think I can fight them.”

  “You must decide for yourself. I have to see to the fini.” She strode past, and after a moment, he caught up with her, pilfering a sword as he went.

  “I knew we shouldn’t have come in here,” he muttered.

  Ell glanced about for Aesa and hoped she was all right. “There has to be something we can do to stop this.”

  He shook his head as if trying to clear it. “It’s like a call, hard to resist. Something about being in those pools…”

  “Maybe being in one brought out the fini in you, and you regained your mind.” She looked to the one Siobhan had fallen into, but no one emerged.

  “And this place is pulling at something else.” He glanced at her from the side. “If the barbarians kill the aos sí and free your people, you’ll still have them to deal with.”

  She shrugged. “What else can we do?”

  He strode through the doorway with greater purpose. “Follow me. I have an idea.”

  *

  So many people needed Maeve’s help. She felt like a ghost, her spirit half in her body as she drifted over the wounded, flitting from one to another. Dimly, she sensed Ari’s curse, not as Laret could, but as a sickness hovering just under the surface. She hadn’t known what it was in Dain, but now she fought to stay away from it, healing only those who didn’t have it.

  She barely recognized Einar when she healed him. When he blinked at her stupidly, she said, “Be happy you didn’t have the curse.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” She touched his chest before she moved on. “Don’t think of even glaring at me or Laret or Aesa ever again.”

  His eyes widened, the whites glinting. “I won’t, I promise. Thank you.”

  Maeve shook his thanks away and kept moving. She didn’t notice right away when her touch rested on a guard instead of a warrior. She’d sensed one more wounded person, but when she tried to heal him, she could only touch half his spirit. The other, the foreign spirit, came harder, stubborn.

  She healed what she could, and he coughed, staring at her. His arm moved weakly, trying to swat at her, but she backed away, her spirit grazing the ground. It touched one of the pools, and she gasped.

  The milky water was almost entirely spirit, everything that made people what they were. A spirit bath; the idea repelled her. Inside, she sensed an inhuman presence that rivaled what she’d felt in the guard. But not all of the guards were like that, she sensed as her spirit skittered across them. Some had more human than fae. Dimly, she wondered if she could bring the human spirit out, darkening the inhuman one. In some, perhaps.

  But this battle would still rage. She turned to the warrior woman who’d followed her, the one she’d healed from the spear. “Why are you following me?”

  “You saved my life.” And as a guard rushed them, she stabbed him with her sword.

  Maeve turned away from the act even as she was thankful for it. She healed her way toward where Runa sat amidst a nest of crystalline tubes. “Can you break this magic?”

  Runa shook her head.

  “What if we work together?”

  Runa’s eyes slipped open enough to give her an incredulous look. While the warriors guarded them, Maeve touched the crystalline tubes and let her spirit travel into them. Human emotions, hopes, and dreams lived inside them. She felt through that energy, seeking its origins.

  She could feel the fini who’d been in those pools, could sort through them as if they stood before her now. Even at this moment, some still bathed. They were always running for the pools. The more the magic of this place decayed, the more the fae had to feed to keep them healthy.

  Ah, that was the secret. The fae didn’t sleep because they wanted to. They had to. Their time on the earth was done, but they couldn’t give way and die. Perhaps they thought that if they soaked up enough human energy, they could awaken and take up where they left off. Maeve sent her healing energy into the stream of spirit, pushing it back the way it had come, reversing the flow of emotion.

  “Good, Maeve, good!” Runa called. She pitted her magic against that of the fae until the magic of the pools weakened, and Maeve felt the river of light go dark.

  *

  Aesa watched Gilka fight, her hammer against the fae’s massive strength. She slammed the fae’s leg, sending him to one knee, one hand against the floor. He slapped at Gilka, but she rolled out of the way and sprang to her feet quickly enough to crun
ch into the side of his hand. He howled, and all the guards in the chamber shrieked with him.

  Gilka ran inside his reach and bashed him in the chin, caving in the bone. She grabbed a hank of silver hair and climbed. The fae bucked, reaching for her, but she pushed off against his shoulder. When she swung back, she smacked him in the temple, sending him to the ground. She hit him in the head, over and over, sending brains and bits of skull skidding across the floor. When she straightened, she glistened pink as if she’d bathed in his blood.

  Aesa sighed, feeling as if she’d stepped back in time. Gilka was still the thrain of her dreams, everything Aesa thought she should strive to be. But when their eyes met, Aesa knew the truth. Gilka would never have her back. They saw each other clearly, but neither could ever understand the other, not truly.

  Runa and now Maeve still worked their magic. Aesa helped guard them along with Otama, Hilfey, and now Velka, who’d cut her way through the press. The room shook again, and all the tubes leading to the pools winked out. The guards fell to their knees and shrieked, hands tight to their heads. The light from the cauldron shuddered and went dim, sending the cavern into darkness.

  Aesa dropped into a crouch. Lights bloomed here and there as her people lit torches. Runa struck another as she dropped to Aesa’s side. “There’s more magic beneath us, but I can’t tell what it is.”

  “I felt it, too,” Maeve said. She gave Aesa a look from the side of her eye. Whatever was beneath them, Maeve didn’t want Runa to find it. Could she tell what kind of magic it was, and she didn’t think Runa would tolerate what she wanted to do with it?

  The pools nearest them had stopped bubbling, but some of the fae still careened around the room, on the edges of the light, and there were guards fading in and out of the darkness. Aesa hacked at one that lunged from the shadows. Runa flung a hand toward another, and he sagged to his knees. A warrior near them fell, his torch dropping to the ground. Maeve snatched it up as Aesa shot the guard ripping at the warrior’s body.

  “Gilka needs light,” Aesa said, pointing the way.