Heir of Danger

by Alix Rickloff

  The tomb was empty. No bones. No Arthur. Máelodor had failed.

  “Arthur’s not dead,” he whispered, his mind beginning to haze, his limbs sluggish as the serpent’s venom crawled through him with needling agony.

  “What?”

  Oss’s knife cut into the flesh of Brendan’s pinky. Brendan watched his blood dripping down over his wrist with clinical apathy. “Arthur lives. Not a tomb. A portal. To Ynys Avalenn.”

  How he knew, he couldn’t say, only that once he said it, he knew it as truth.

  Blood slicked the back of his hand as Oss withdrew his blade. Brendan clutched his hand to stanch the flow. It seemed the sensible thing to do.

  “A portal. A way between worlds.” Máelodor rubbed his chin in speculation.

  “It’s over, Máelodor. Without Arthur to inspire them, the Other will never rally to your cause.”

  “Are you certain?” Máelodor’s transformation seemed to progress before Brendan’s eyes. New scales covered the man’s entire head; long white fangs grew to either side of a flickering tongue. “So I will not have our last great king to lead us into battle, but there will be a reckoning. The Duinedon will fall. And, bones or not, this portal is the key.”

  The clap of his hands came like thunder. As he began the chant that would unlock not a passage to Ynys Avalenn but the Unseelie abyss.

  His gaze fastened on Brendan. “And you will help me, son of Kilronan.”

  The blast of demon magic ripped into Brendan, the burn along his muscles like acid. Shredded glass pulled through narrow veins. And then something else. A peeling away of his soul. A tearing anguish, as if his insides were being flayed to a million pieces. He screamed his agony to the boil of storm clouds as Máelodor slowly inexorably drained him of power and life.

  In the end, finding their way to Brendan had been laughably easy. Or would have been had Elisabeth been in a laughing mood. After all, it hardly took magical tracking or canine smell power when the ground rumbled beneath one’s feet. The sky darkened to a sickly orange-green before being swallowed by rolling storm clouds, and the wind carried a stench of charred flesh and rotting bodies.

  She crouched at the edge of the grove with a stomach-tightening swirl of terror and nausea. Magic infected the air, a sulfurous greasy stench, a black slithering coil of hate and madness penetrating her mind with a dark desperation. All of it emanating from the monstrous creature standing in the center of the clearing. Máelodor had grown unusually tall and thin, his twisted, snarled limbs gangly, his head hooded and scaled like a cobra’s. Eyes lidless and red with death. Mouth fanged and bloody. Bearing enough humanity to make the monstrosity of him all the more grotesque.

  Her hair stood on end. Every impulse screamed at her to run. To flee this place of ruthless savage power. To pray for a quick end.

  Killer gripped her hard until she had to bite back a cry, but it was enough to snap her free of the panic.

  Brendan lay upon the ground, the fingers of one hand plowed deep into the soft earth, his other hand held close to his chest, his face bone-white, his body seeming to thin and pale before her eyes.

  His eyes met hers. The wild gold of his gaze dimmed to a sinister black.

  A blast of thought beat against her brain, overpowering for a split second the pounding rhythm of demon blood. And she knew what she must do.

  Lifting her pistol, she took dead-eye aim. Cocked the hammer.

  “Wait!” Killer shouted as she pulled the trigger.

  With a roar of fire and smoke, she shot Máelodor square in the chest.

  Heard the snap of a twig. Felt the chill of a shadow across her shoulder.

  An explosion burst behind her eyes.

  She knew nothing more.

  Máelodor’s death would have been too much to hope for. Engorged as he was on Unseelie magics, it would take more than a pistol shot to kill the master-mage, but it had been enough to disrupt his concentration. To sever the soul-devouring link between them.

  Brendan would die here. There would be no return from this place. For some reason, the idea did not terrify him as he thought it might. Instead, it filled him with a calming sense of purpose. If this was his inescapable fate, he need not fear the struggle with his own blackened soul. The dark magics he’d loosed would serve their master one final time. And die here with him.

  The Unseelie hovered in the prison of between. Howling, razor-clawed, fangs and jaws clacking, their greasy, fetid charnel-house stench burning his nose and throat. Not yet anchored to this world by ties of the flesh but no longer imprisoned within the abyss, they hovered in a crimson, smoke-filled sky.

  Lightning split the sulfurous air, thunder deafening. The storm broke over him, rain like knives, pinning him to the slick, churned mud. He willed his body to respond. Dragging himself to his knees, then his feet. Already his mind fragmented as Máelodor’s poison ripped him apart. But he knew what he had to do.

  The spell formed unbidden in his head before lying like acid in his mouth. “Una math esh gousk—”

  A kick to his side interrupted the flow of words.

  Brendan rolled away as Oss drew back to level another rib-crushing blow, but even that small movement almost caused him to pass out. Something was definitely broken. Probably a lot of somethings.

  Brendan looked calmly into Oss’s chillingly blank eyes, but just as the final blow should have descended, a huge snarling blur of fur and teeth barreled into the muscle-bound servant, knocking him to the ground, ripping into his throat with bone-crunching, blood-spraying gusto.

  End this, Erelth! Now!

  The words formed like a shout in his head. No time to understand. No time to question. Brendan completed the spell, its power searing his vision, ringing in his ears and firing his mind.

  Throwing open every chamber of his mind, he drew the power of the thin place into his body before casting it wide in a battering, unstoppable flood of mage energy. If one doorway could be forced open, so could another. And in such a way that both sides must confront one another. Must clash.

  Wind froze to ice. Ice shattered. The chime of bells became the clang of shields and the cries of the dying. Smoke burned his lungs. Ash clung to his lips.

  Battle was joined in a maelstrom of fury and rage and madness as Unseelie and Fey—Dark Court and Light—raged and swarmed the air of the grove like an evil tempest.

  Máelodor fought to control his army, but the demon swarm once freed was deaf and blind to all but a wild killing frenzy. They turned on him, rending him limb from limb before the Fey swept down upon them. Brendan’s last view of him was as a headless corpse tossed back into the abyss to be imprisoned alongside his erstwhile allies.

  Lifting his face to the storm, Brendan let the rain scour clean the poisonous fog.

  And for one moment saw a flame-haired king lifting a sword above his head. His shout carrying a ring of command, his gaze like silver steel as he beat back the challenge.

  Arthur. The last great king of Other.

  Leading the armies of the Fey as they drove the Unseelie of the Dark Court before them.

  The shine of his armor. The golden crown upon his brow. The bloody stain of a crimson sky. The storm blurred them until, like looking through rain upon glass, he saw nothing clearly. Heard only the rush of wind and the ring of bells.

  And a voice sounding clear above the din. “You have done well, heir of Kilronan. Now you may rest.”

  Elisabeth woke to birdsong. The drip of water upon the leaves. The cleansing wash of a gentle rain upon her face. Her head throbbed. She winced, probing the goose egg at the back of her head. Whose side was Killer on anyway?

  Crawling from beneath the overhanging branches, she stumbled to her feet, her gown clinging wet and muddy to her legs, twigs and leaves scattered over her bodice and caught in her hair. No sign of Máelodor or Oss or whatever had stripped the trees bare and churned the clearing to a sea of mud and broken branches. She didn’t think she wanted to know.

  The shape-changer
knelt beside Brendan, his face grave, Rogan’s knife in his hand.

  All weakness burned away. “Stay away from him, you filthy, damned dog!” she shouted as she half ran, half tumbled across the clearing.

  Killer looked up, his dark eyes heavy with sadness. “You’re awake.”

  “Stay away from him, do you hear?” She grabbed Killer’s knife arm, trying to wrestle the weapon from his hand. Easily accomplished. In fact, he handed it to her.

  “I am not your enemy,” he said evenly.

  “Aren’t you?” Blood soaked Brendan’s shirt, pooled viscous and dark beneath him. There seemed to be no part of him without injury.

  “The blood on the knife is my own.” Killer held out his arm, which bled from a gash across his forearm. “Blood from us can be powerful medicine. I offered mine to Douglas as a way to hold his soul within his body.” He shook his head. “But it is not enough. Máelodor stripped much of his essence away, and what the mage did not claim was summoned by Douglas in opening the portals between worlds.”

  Elisabeth gathered Brendan’s hands in her own, his fingers cold, the tips blue. Strange—he wore a silver and pearl ring that glowed softly in the strange twilight of the grove. Elisabeth had never seen it before. “Brendan? Can you hear me?”

  “Dying . . . not deaf.” His smile broke her heart into a million jagged pieces.

  Killer stood abruptly, his body rigid, hackles raised. “There is one chance yet. A slim one, but it’s worth a try.” To Brendan, he said, “Hold on. This may hurt.”

  Bending, he lifted Brendan in his arms as easily as if he were a baby. Carried him across the grove toward the cave, where white light spilled like water and a strange shimmering glassy melody rose and fell as if the wind had been given voice.

  “Why did you hit me?” she asked, mainly as a way to keep from thinking. Thinking was not a good thing right now. Thinking would lead to uncontrollable weeping, and she refused to have Brendan’s last image of her be tear-streaked and blubbery. No. Not his last image of her. That meant he was dying. That there was no hope left. That Máelodor had won.

  “The mage would have sensed your conscious mind and attacked it as he did with Rogan,” Killer explained. “I let him believe I was the shooter. Magic does not work on me in quite the same way.”

  Before ducking beneath the toppled broken slab that served as entrance to Arthur’s tomb, Killer sought her eyes with his. “Do you come?”

  She returned his questioning look with a determined glare.

  “Then take hold of Brendan’s hand and do not let go. That should keep you safe in the between of worlds.”

  She’d no time to ask for an elaboration before he stepped into the wash of white light, the color blanched from his face and body, replaced by a strange blue-silver glow that crackled over his skin and clothes. Quickly she grabbed Brendan’s right hand, squeezing it as if she were stepping out onto a narrow cliff ledge above a raging sea. A roar filled her ears, her body buffeted in rip currents of air and water, leaping flames and grinding earth. And together they crossed the threshold and entered the cave.

  From the outside, it was no more than a granite slab lying at a crooked slant against a shorter, stouter stone, barely large enough for a full-grown man to stand upright.

  Inside, the narrow mouth opened into an immense cavern, the walls rising around her glimmering with an opalescent fire. Water ran over folds and ridges in the rock before being channeled into a marble bowl at the base of the opposite wall. In the center of the cavern stood what looked like an altar or a sarcophagus. Long. Narrow. Its side separated into intricately rendered panels depicting the lost king’s life from birth within a Cornish fortress to defeat at the hands of his traitorous son. Carved into its lid, a dragon coiled round a sword protruding from a rock. The details wrought so well one almost saw the twitch of a tail, the gleam of steel.

  Arthur’s tomb. The resting place of the last great king of Other. Fantasy come to life.

  She’d no time to be awestruck before shadows surfaced within the cave’s strange shimmering mother-of-pearl walls. They moved within the rock like figures seen through thick, wavy glass or beneath murky water. As she watched, they took on definition and then form as one by one they stepped from the walls to ring the chamber. Nine gray-robed women, silver diadems upon their brows, each one so beautiful she was almost painful to look upon. Elisabeth gazed on them only in quick snatches and only through downcast lashes.

  Killer didn’t seem to have the same reaction to the faery women. He looked upon each one of them in turn as if searching their expressions for the slightest hint of sympathy. But none weakened or spoke or moved to assist them. They were still and white as marble, gazing as though staring into eternity.

  Killer stepped forward, laying Brendan down at the foot of the tomb, Elisabeth kneeling beside him with a clamped hold of his hand, willing her life into him.

  Standing tall, the shape-changer scanned each woman in turn. “You can feel its call or you would not have shown yourselves. Douglas bears a token of Ynys Avalenn. He is known to one among yours.”

  It seemed as if minutes ticked away with no one moving, Brendan’s grip upon her hand weakened, his eyes growing opaque, breathing becoming shallow, so that his chest barely rose and fell. “Help him!” she shouted to the women, her patience snapping.

  They looked through her, remote in their apathy.

  “You’re Fey. You can save him!” Frustration and fear burned through her like lava. She’d never been so angry in her life as she was at these stone-faced women. “What’s the good of being immortal and all-powerful if you won’t use your power to save a life? You’re a bunch of cowards. Deceitful, false-hearted, conniving, hypocritical—”

  “Not helping . . .” Brendan whispered while Killer muttered, “Why don’t you tell them how you really feel?”

  “—treacherous scum!”

  “Enough.” The smooth, vivid voice echoed through the chamber before rattling around in Elisabeth’s skull. The throbbing in her temples moved down into her neck and shoulders.

  Two figures stepped out from behind the phalanx of silent attendants to approach Elisabeth and Brendan.

  A woman with long blue-black hair, but for a thick streak of silver. A face unlined with years yet shrewd with ancient, immeasurable wisdom. She wore a gown of deepest azure blue beneath a surcoat of beaten silver scales. From a wide leather girdle at her waist, a sword hung ominously.

  Even as statuesque as she was, her companion dwarfed her. His head crowned in hair that glowed burnished red and gold. His face set in bleak and battle-hardened lines. His sword, he clenched still in a scarred fist, black stains splashed up and down the blade.

  A prickling shiver ran over Elisabeth’s skin before settling low in her stomach. This might be Arthur’s tomb, but if she wasn’t mistaken, this was Arthur in the flesh and very much alive.

  Killer stepped forward, his expression respectful but not submissive. “I have brought you Brendan Douglas of the House of Kilronan. He carries a talisman of the Fey. One you cannot ignore.”

  The woman’s gaze was like a bolt of lightning. “The ring allowed you to pass into the between separating our worlds, but do not presume, shape-changer. We owe this one nothing.”

  Meanwhile, Arthur knelt down beside Elisabeth, laying a hand upon Brendan’s shoulder. “He is dying.”

  As if she didn’t know that already, she wanted to snap, but didn’t. After all, one didn’t snarl at dead myths come to life. And there was real sorrow in his solemn voice for all that he stated the obvious.

  “There is nothing we can do,” the woman replied, her voice cold as the first breath of winter frost.

  Arthur shifted to meet her eye. “There is a way, Scathach.”

  Scathach? This was the warrior-queen and head of the Amhas-draoi? Elisabeth held her breath. Brendan was under a death order. If this woman so chose, she could fulfill it with one fierce hack of her sword. There was no one to stop her.

&n
bsp; “Impossible,” the woman said, dismissing Arthur as if he were a child.

  A sly smile curved Arthur’s lips. Despite the centuries that had passed since he’d lived among men, his humanity remained. No Fey could match that look of boyish mischief. “I am proof it’s not impossible.”

  “There is a difference. You are a man conceived in magic. Your life among us was fated as soon as you drew your first breath in the circle of your mother’s arms. Douglas is fully human. To bear him to the summer kingdom is not wise.”

  “He will die otherwise.”

  “Then he will die. That is the way of mortals. And as he is the last of the Nine, it is right that his death should signal the end.”

  Elisabeth glanced at Killer, but he remained placidly awaiting the outcome of this back-and-forth, his dark eyes unfathomable. Come to think on it, between the two of them, Arthur seemed the more human. Perhaps he was. She didn’t know anything about the Imnada other than the tiny bits she’d gleaned in the last few hours.

  She decided to address Arthur, as he seemed the one most likely to be swayed by emotion. “Please. He may have been a part of them once, but he risked his life in the fight to stop Máelodor. To prevent a war that would destroy the Other— your blood kin. Doesn’t that count for anything?”

  The three of them stared back at her with varying degrees of surprise, but no one had any answer for that.

  Brendan had never been so cold in his life. Miserable Irish weather. He blinked. No, not the weather. He needed to keep his wits. At least a little longer, but it was difficult. He wanted to close his eyes. Wanted to sleep, but something screamed at him that sleeping right now would be very bad. Why? He tried concentrating, but he couldn’t remember. Not why he should stay awake. Not why he seemed to be in a room with candles blazing and all these people staring at him. Not why Elisabeth looked so sad.

  “Stay with me, Brendan,” she called from down a long tunnel.

  Was he going somewhere? He didn’t think so. He couldn’t even move. Not to touch her face. Not to caress skin he knew would be soft and warm. Lifting his arm was too much trouble, and his left hand felt as if someone had shoved a stake through the center of it and twisted.