by S A Archer
She collected the gray furball. “You named him ‘Tom Cat’?”
“Sure. Why not?”
Regan rolled her eyes, splatted a wet kiss on his cheek, and followed after Dawn.
Malcolm watched her go, then turned towards Donovan.
“We have everyone. It’s time.”
Malcolm scrubbed his palms on his jeans, still feeling the shape of the ring in his pocket when he did so. “Yeah. Let’s do this.”
***
Donovan remained steadfastly calm, even knowing that this was the last hour of his life. For the Sidhe, for the fey, he would sacrifice himself. That had been true since the day of the Collapse. It was an honorable fate. One he would not regret.
Watching as Malcolm assigned each of the Fey their place in the construction, Donovan fixed within his heart the memories he hoped to take with him. The faces of those who had touched his life. Tiernan, of course, had been his second and his friend. Even still, it was the earthborns he regretted leaving behind. He had done his best. What they became now would be in their own hands. Trip had found her place as caretaker to the sluagh. The Isle of Fey would be her home, and she its guardian. Dawn, he figured, would either return to the fairies or perhaps slip into the court of the Seelie. The lads he worried about more. Bryce wanted so much to be a warrior. And Kieran hungered for companionship. Both desires could lead them down paths that were honorable, or dangerous.
It was for Malcolm, of course, that his heart wept. Without a strong guidance the young man would go feral. It would just be a matter of time. And then his own mates would have to bring him down.
Even still, it was Kaitlin that he would miss the most. He felt her within himself. The one thing that was real and anchored him against the pull of the magic that would consume him.
One by one the exiles they had collected claimed their places. Malcolm’s parents hadn’t said a word since their arrival, but they didn’t need to. They had been needed and they had come. In this, that would be enough. Tiernan had brought the handful of Sidhe that worked with him. None of them had warrior talents, but as Touch peddlers they hadn’t needed them. The lesser fey that had come were the ones Donovan had known he could count on. Eircheard of the dwarfs. Mckenna of the wood elves. Thorn of the fairies. Amon, one of the Brownies. Cormac from the dark elves, bringing one of the sluagh with him. Willem for the Scribes. Bain, prince of the Ghille Dhu. Tiernan had also brought a selkie, a red cap, a troll, a banshee, and even a young Changeling. The banners and pixies sent shaman from their tribes. Others had come and volunteered but with only thirty-six positions they could not all participate. Malcolm and Donovan discussed and agreed on which ones the magicraft needed. Malcolm followed the instincts of the magic. Donovan listened to the chorus.
Even now the chorus of the ancients sang to him, calling him home.
The time had come.
Malcolm climbed into the last position in the matrix, leaving only Donovan to assume the center and begin the weaving. He teleported to the platform. Simply taking his place in the heart of the magic activated the enchantment.
Malcolm clearly did not suspect what was to come or he would have been inconsolable. It was better that no one knew. It was better that everyone focus on their part during the enchantment.
It was time for them to go home.
***
Lugh had accepted direction from the boy without challenge or protest. Donovan had stood behind him as if ready to answer any resistance, but Lugh offered none. He was passed that. Come what may, he was committed to this attempt to create the new fey realm. Although he may have approached it differently, Lugh knew that Donovan had the best intentions when it came to the fey. He would do right by them to the best of his considerable ability. With as much as he couldn’t trust himself for the past month, he knew he had no right to offer protest.
The platform that Malcolm indicated crested near the top of the magical construct. Lugh fixed it with his gaze, then with an effortless flick of his magic he teleported onto the thin bit of magic barely wide enough for him to comfortably position both feet. Standing there as he was, within the golden illumination of the enchantment, the first tender brushes of magic against his flesh whispered of hope. He did not hear voices exactly, more like the echo of voices heard from afar. But even without understanding, they offered assurity that this was indeed his place.
As he stood there, he caught sight of Willem on a platform across the way. The Scribe gave him a nervous, but enthusiastic little wave. Lugh offered a smile of reassurance and a nod. They had begun this journey together. However it ended, it was befitting that they see it through as companions.
More Sidhe gathered to aid in this effort than Lugh once believed survived the Collapse. More than twenty, and all but himself, Kaitlin, and Dawn appeared Unseelie, based on their coloring. Lugh curbed any voice of objection he might raise. He immediately dismissed the notion that perhaps Rhiannon and Manannan should be among the gathered. Manannan made his intentions clear. Ambition ruled his life, even before the greater good of the fey.
Right or wrong, Lugh took responsibility for the decision to withhold this from Manannan. As Champion of the Sidhe, the fate of his people trumped even the fealty to his court.
Positioning all of the fey in their places required less time than Lugh anticipated. With the final two, the young perceiver and Donovan, taking the final two slots.
But the positions they assumed were not the ones he expected. The perceiver climbed like a squirrel up one of the branches of the enchantment, taking the platform directly to Lugh’s left. Donovan himself teleported into the heart of the magic.
Even before Donovan fully positioned his feet in a comfortable stance, the slowly rotating branches began to spin faster.
Lugh adjusted his own footing, to compensate for the new momentum. He ducked as another rotating branch passed near overhead, though it would have missed him by the breadth of his hand span. The glow of the enchantment increased with the motion, as did the sound, a deep rumbling of building power.
“Relax into the magic!” The perceiver called out. “Let your threads flow. Don’t resist!”
Lugh did just this. Extending his arms to his sides, he allowed the magic of his sunlight to flow forth. The enchantment caught the threads, unraveling them from him. Just as when he participated in a great weaving, Lugh felt the magic stream out of him to join that of the others in the weaving. Only in such a moment could he see threads of magic, just as when they created the Great Veil over Ireland. In these times, he saw the heart of fey magic as it truly was. As he imaged the perceivers might see it.
The platform upon which Lugh stood swooped down and beneath Malcolm’s and then rose and twisted above Willem’s, as he spun opposite of them in the construct. The streams of his magic trailed after him, interlacing with the threads of the others. Then his platform halted, dropped down so suddenly that had he not been imbued with the grace of the fey he might have lost his footing. Back the platform spun, taking him in a close swoop past Donovan in the center. Only the Unseelie leader remained fixed, as all others orbited him. The threads spiraling off the fey were woven into patterns dictated by the enchantment itself. Lugh recognized the seizing knots and the reversed loops, but many of the knots the magic created were unknown to him, and as beautifully intricate as they were complicated.
With a smooth reversal, Lugh was carried upward and back around. His platform paired with the one carrying Dawn, and they pirouetted each other, as did all the other pairings in the weaving, like in one of the complicated dances of the Seelie Court in which all of the dancers created a pattern in the path they followed, before they spun out and away from each other once more. When next the enchantment paired the dancers, Lugh found himself facing the daughter of Taliesin. Her father had been one of the Sidhe who first instructed him in the intri
cacies of magicraft when he, himself, was barely more than a lad. How many centuries had it been since he had seen Tamara? Before he could recall, they spun away from each other once more.
So like life; where people come, bind to you, and then leave again, only to begin the weaving anew with someone else. It was like the great tapestry of fate that was woven between them all. A whole that was so much more than the sum of its parts. A destiny in which they each played a crucial role.
Chapter Sixty-One
London watched as the mechanism began to move. All of the arms spun independently and with a smooth path. Although it might look mechanical, it acted biological, London thought. There was a flexing to the movement, as if it breathed. Even the light around Donovan in the center pulsed, like the beating of a great heart. She tried to keep her eyes fixed on Lugh, but lost him in the building light. A hum like a thousand voices rose from it, harmonious and haunting.
Beside her, Kev gave a small jerk.
London half turned to him, not wanting to look away from the magic.
His hand covered his heart. His eyes closed tightly.
Then about them, the voices of the fey began to rise, offering their harmony to the music.
Kev drew his hand from his chest, and then opened it toward the magic, as if drawing something invisible from himself and offering it. His own voice rose in perfect pitch, joining the song.
Each and every one of the fey around her did the same thing. Drawing forth something from themselves and reaching out their hands. Hundreds of voices from along the hillside joined in with the song of the enchantment. It was more moving than the concerts where the audience waved lighters and sang with the band.
Then the enchantment before them lifted from the ground, glowing like a gas giant. It pulsed, beating with the music of the fey. Once. Twice. Three times.
Then it gave a great heave outward like a deep breath, before collapsing in on itself.
A boom like a jet going supersonic rippled the very air, knocking them back.
***
As the branches began to move even faster, the heaviness of the knotwork forming about Lugh held him fast. He felt the momentum, but was no longer jostled by it, his very body becoming an integral part of the fabric. Thicker and thicker the magic formed about him, drawing forth his sunlight from him.
He allowed his magic to flow without resistance, though the pull became immense. Soon he saw nothing. Felt nothing other than the spin and shifting and the constant strain sucking at the heart of his magic.
The young perceiver had been right. Had he no source of magic feeding him, the very magic of his being would have been spent and he would have unraveled completely.
But instead, the enchantment dragged out his magic just as quickly as the ley lines fed it to him, growing thicker and stronger with every second until the strain on his body pried out a scream. He no longer gave his magic to the enchantment, it rent it out of him.
The light and heat surged around him, brighter and hotter with each second. The voices of the others, or maybe it was the enchantment itself, began to cry out. Louder and louder until it picked up Lugh’s own scream in the chorus.
He reached the point where he thought he would succumb to the pressure and pass out, but he didn’t. He passed the point where he thought his own magic would burn up the remains of his life, but it didn’t. Lost in the weaving, his screams no longer even reached his ears. His own light blinded him. And well past the point where he lost consciousness into a dream of the enchantment where all become one, the magic finally burst forth an explosion that cast him out of this realm, and into the next.
***
Around him the chosen of the fey began to spiral. Donovan didn’t look at any of them. He surrendered his awareness over to chorus. The voices of the ancients became more clear and distinct as the magic wove around him. Within the fabric of the threads, visions appeared before his eyes. The faces of those who had gone before him. The lives that had shaped the fey realm since the beginning.
Only one face he recognized, the All-Mother Danu herself.
The ancients gathered close around him. There was nothing he could see now but the mist of their power and the memory of the people they had been. They reached for him, these ancients, their ghostly hands resting upon his body and lifting him up.
They welcomed him. Donovan’s own magic rose to the surface and flooded forth, becoming a golden light just as the ancients were golden.
He gave himself over to them. Every shred of his body… every thread of his magic… every wisp of his mind… All of him, surrendered to the power.
His awareness lost contact with the form his body had taken, that his life had taken. Instead he joined the magic that was the new realm.
The power around him, the living magic of the fey and the memory of the ancients, came together within him, and burst forth with a flood of light and sound and heat and emotion.
Donovan exhaled his life with his final breath. The man he had been for thousands of years… ended in that moment. The imprint of who he was, joined the ancients in the memory of magic that would weave into everything in the new realm. Through him all of the fey flying about him within the enchantment connected to the magic. Lines of power coursed out of Donovan’s soul and connected to the heart of their magic. This was pure fey power, untainted and unrestricted.
As Donovan’s body burst apart… the new realm exploded into existence. One body sacrificed… to grant new life to all.
***
With everyone in place, Malcolm steeled himself against the magic to come. Everyone else was standing. They really didn’t need to. Just as the platform began to move, Malcolm crouched down and gripped the edge of it. It kept him stable as the magic began to weave.
Around and around, they began to move, like a great carnival ride. Some going up, while others dipped down. Then around each other they would spin, and reverse back out again. Right away, the patterns in the magic began to scroll about them all. One of Trip’s black threads snaked around Malcolm, the nearly clear thread from Malcolm looped about her, then they whirled apart again. Down, he dropped, going right beneath Donovan, before rocketing upward to arch over him, circling him in a loop of Malcolm’s bloodhound thread. With each pass, the threads bound and linked and twisted, but never once becoming tangled.
Thicker and thicker the magic flowed, as the beams picked up speed, until the abundance of threads became like taffy being stretched and pulled, over and over. The rainbow of colors reflected like the sheen of light off of oil. Behind the individual magics, behind the hum of the chorus of the artifact enchantments, a buzzing began to build. Like all of the sounds in the magic knitted together, growing louder and louder, until the buzz became a droning hum, and then rose to a roar, like the downpour of a summer storm.
Malcolm stopped watching the fey that traveled about him, each glowing brighter and brighter with the colors of their magic. Setting his resolve against the growing sensations, he fixed his gaze upon Donovan in the center. Only he did not move. As the magic threaded around him, Donovan opened his arms to it. His own magic began to glow brighter and brighter, a golden flow of mist and sparks that tumbled out of him as if there was no gravity about him.
Then Donovan himself floated up from the platform, until he perfectly centered the magic building in layers and layers around him.
Where everyone else fed out their threads from the heart of their magic, something different began to happen to Donovan.
Malcolm couldn’t even call out over the winds and fury of the magic buffeting around him. He meant to stand, but the bindings of threads pinned him into place, wrapping around and around and around him, in ever thicker coats of magic.
But that was not what happened to Donovan.
The threads of magic in his very being lo
osened, and expanded from him.
To Malcolm’s horror, the man who had saved him… taught him to be a Sidhe… to be Unseelie…
Unraveled.
“Donovan!” Malcolm struggled against the magic ensnaring him, but it was useless.
Before his eyes, every thread of Donovan’s being tumbled out into the weaving as if he’d never been anything more than a ball of string.
He was gone.
Just like that.
No scream.
No fight.
Just…
“NO!” Malcolm screamed into the wash of power that stole his voice.
The rising enchantment screamed back at him, with a whirling concussion of magic.
Louder and louder, the noise screamed into Malcolm’s ears. Even covering them with his hands didn’t shield him. Hot moisture leaked out of his ears, slicking his palms and dribbling down his wrists and neck. Until the sheer weight of the sound swallowed itself, abandoning Malcolm into a deafening hiss.
The light came next, too bright to look at. Malcolm shut his eyes against it, but it burned through his eyelids and right into his mind with searing agony.
Dying…
They were all dying…
Malcolm screamed one last time, just as the concussive blast of an explosion battered into him and cast him away, tumbling him end over end into space.
