Wolfsbane: 3 (Rebel Angels)

by Gillian Philip

  ‘Rory,’ I said.

  He didn’t answer. He was counting the horse’s strides under his breath, watching the ground, monitoring every dip and rise of the moorland. The horse huffed questioningly and he steered it with his heels. He looked to the rise of hills, hesitated, then pushed it on another hundred metres. The horse made a sound like a laugh, but cantered on obediently and came to a halt when he asked, beating the earth with a hoof.

  ‘Rory, look…’

  ‘Hannah, shut up. I’m concentrating.’ He half-turned. ‘All right. Hold tight. If I’ve got this wrong we’re going to die now.’ Reaching out once again to grab the Veil, he ripped it downwards, and ducked back through to the Sithe side. Breath hissed through my teeth.

  ‘Jee-sus!’

  Rory took no notice. He was concentrating entirely on the black horse and on the surrounding moorland. Very quietly he turned, and took a silent breath, but he was grinning. When I followed his gaze, I only just stopped myself screaming.

  The line of horsemen and women was stretched out behind us, but they were riding away and none of them bothered to look back. I realised we’d come right past the riders on the other side, and were now behind them. Rory’s grin died, and the thought struck me a moment after it must have struck him. There was no sound of a fight, no sign of anyone beyond the riders apart from the chestnut horse, grazing.

  Rory urged the black horse up and over the rise of hills. We were out of the possible sightline of Kate’s troops within fifty metres. Making a sound with his teeth Rory kicked the horse back to a canter, choosing his direction quite deliberately, and it responded to him as if he was its only master and always had been.

  I looked over my shoulder. There was no-one in sight but there was an edge of menace to the air, and when I thought about the file of riders, my bones chilled. ‘Rory?’

  ‘What?’ He was distracted. Slowing, he twitched the reins and the horse veered right.

  ‘What’s happened to Finn and Eili?’ I asked in a small voice.

  ‘Want to go back?’ His coldness made me feel like a worm. I didn’t even have to answer. He knew how terrified I was. He knew as well as I did that I’d get off the horse and run on alone on foot, rather than turn back to help the two women.

  ‘Finn and Eili are dead,’ he said. ‘Their minds are gone, they don’t exist any more. Maybe Jed’s dead too. And I suppose my father’s going to die now.’ He gave a shrug of his shoulders, and suddenly he didn’t seem so tough. He looked like a small boy who was trying too hard to be cool. ‘This is how it all ends up. I always knew it would. I tried to tell them.’

  I hardly dared to ask. ‘So what are we doing back here?’

  ‘Getting away. You don’t think they just watched us go, do you? I should have closed the Veil but I couldn’t do that to Finn, I thought she might have a chance to follow. Bad move. Kate’ll have sent someone after us. She’s timed this, timed it carefully. If there’s a warp in the time she’ll know it. But this way we call her double-bluff.’

  ‘Yeah, but if your dad’s…’ I couldn’t say it. ‘If your dad has lost, this is the last place we should be. Please, Rory. Let’s go back to the real world.’

  ‘That’s not the real world,’ he sneered.

  ‘All right, all right. I just want out of this world, okay? You heard what Finn said.’

  ‘Finn has no say in it any more. Finn’s dead. We have to work it out ourselves now, see? Follow our own instincts, not some dead woman’s.’

  I let go of his waist for a moment, not wanting him to feel the shiver that went through me. He was scary, as scary as his father. But if what he said was true, scariness wouldn’t save us. Otherwise Eili would still be alive, and Finn. And Seth.

  Seth was my uncle. He was my father’s brother, and my father had loved him. Seth had been okay, actually, considering how I’d behaved, and I hoped violently that he wasn’t dead. I wondered how he’d react when he found Finn’s corpse. I wanted to be sick.

  ‘Why can’t we do what you just did?’ It seemed obvious. ‘We can travel on the other side, go to where the dun is, come back through and we’re in the dun.’

  ‘I can’t get through at the dun, even within a few miles of it. The Veil’s too tough there. And if I try the approaches, I could bring us out in the middle of one of Kate’s patrols. She’s been planning this, see? Dad and Jed and Iolaire and Sionnach will have to fight their way back to the dun, if they’re still alive. We wouldn’t have a chance.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Anyway, I don’t think I should try for the dun. It won’t be safe any more. Kate must be confident of overrunning it or she wouldn’t have made her move. I have to keep away from her. Me and her together, that’s what would be fatal. She can’t have me.’ He chewed his thumb. ‘All we can do is run. And I hate to admit it, but you’re right. We need to go to the other side.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘Long as it takes. Till Dad finds us, tells me it’s safe to go back.’

  If ever, I thought, but I didn’t say it. ‘So where are we going?’

  Rory nodded ahead, and I peered over his shoulder. The ruined castle loomed at the edge of the loch, its eastern wall rising straight and forbidding from the black water.

  ‘There,’ said Rory, and as he cantered the horse out onto the promontory he was already reaching out his hand to grasp at something unseen.

  SETH

  He was off the blue roan before it stopped running and Sionnach was only a heartbeat behind, but he knew they were too late. The two women lay together, Finn curled against Eili, with the dappled grey ten feet beyond them, and further off what was left of the patrol. Seth sank to his knees beside Finn, then looked hopelessly up and around.

  ‘Rory!’ he howled, though he knew it was futile and the breeze whipped his voice into nothingness. ‘Rory!’

  Sionnach stared down at his twin in the rain that was closing in like a mist. His face was entirely blank but as white as hers as his trembling fingers reached for the sword that impaled her. As they brushed the hilt her eyes opened wide, creasing with pain and the semblance of a smile. An answering smile shivered on Sionnach’s lips, and he closed his eyes and slipped into her mind.

  ‘Murlainn.’ Eili’s breath was shallow, her voice barely audible, but she was laughing, a horrible bubbling sound. Seth gave her a sharp look. It was eerie enough being watched by a near-corpse, let alone by her twin inside her. He’d been experiencing it for more than four hundred years, and it still made him shiver when they became one. What in the name of all the gods would become of Sionnach now?

  Then he looked back at Finn’s body, and felt grief begin to cut out his heart, and wondered what in the name of the gods would become of him.

  ‘What d’you think, Murlainn?’ Eili’s laughter gurgled again. ‘Think I’d let her die? Or let her live?’

  His breath caught painfully. Eili’s blood-boltered hand lay limp against Finn’s ripped chest. Tentatively he lifted Finn, easing her backward into his arms, and a sound came from her throat. That didn’t mean anything, as he knew from bitter battlefield experience, so he cradled her against his chest and put his cheek close to her lips. No breath that he could feel.

  Eili: savage and remorseless to her end. It was one last stab at him, he knew: one last thrust that would be worse than anything else she’d done, because now he had to know for sure. Sick to his stomach, he tightened his arms round Finn. He didn’t want to know but he had to.

  Hesitantly he reached out his mind for Finn’s, expecting nothing. There most likely wasn’t a mind there any more, and he desperately did not want to touch the absence of it. Not after he’d felt her chaotic delight when they raced their horses across the machair, not after he’d heard her mocking laughter in his head, snapping him out of a dark misanthropic mood. Not when he’d so recently tangled his mind up in hers as they locked eyes and he moved inside her. He did not want to sink into a hideous vacuum where her whole life had been.

  If Eili was lying to him, h
e’d finish her off himself, even if Sionnach killed him for it. With Finn and Rory gone it was all the same to him, so let Kate win. She probably had, anyway. It was just as it had been with Conal. He thought again what he’d thought then: You’re not meant to die. It’s supposed to be me. ME.

  All right. One last try. Terror choking him, he reached further through the dark emptiness in search of her, his mind on a blade-edge and ready to recoil.

  Then he felt it. Withdrawn far, far below the surface to escape the pain and fear, he felt a tiny moth-wing flutter of awareness. And her name. He felt her name.

  Seth blinked. She was as white as death, but there was light breath on his skin, and a pulse jerked faintly in her throat.

  ‘Ye of little faith,’ sneered Eili.

  ‘Finn,’ he croaked, but no sound came out.

  ‘He told me to heal myself !’ Blood bubbled from Eili’s smile. ‘Nobody tells me what to do.’

  A blowing horse came to an exhausted halt behind them. He heard the ring of the bit and the light thud of first Jed and then Iolaire dismounting. ‘Is she dead?’ Jed sounded seventeen again.

  ‘No.’ It was all Seth could say as he reached out his thoughts, coaxing her back, terrified of frightening her away beyond his reach. ~ Don’t be scared. They’ve gone. It’s me. Please come back. I love you. Please. Caorann. Caorann.

  ‘Give her to Jed. I said she’ll live.’ Eili’s voice was reduced to a breath but it cut through his consciousness. ‘C’m’ere, Murlainn.’

  Raindrops glimmered in Finn’s black hair, condensed out of the wet mist, so Seth looked at those as he eased her into Jed’s arms, and not at the edges of the messy wound that looked as if they’d been sealed with a staple gun.

  ‘Best I could do,’ whispered Eili. ‘Arteries are a bit neater but you can’t see those.’

  Turning reluctantly away from Finn, he crouched over Eili. Sionnach stood motionless beside them, his whole self submerged in his twin.

  Eili had saved Finn’s life, then, as she’d once saved his, only there wouldn’t be the vicious aftermath, because Eili herself was not going to live. She’d spent everything she had saving Finn instead of herself, and Seth wondered why. He forgot the helpless rage of thirteen years, forgot that a moment ago he’d been ready to kill her. He remembered then how much he’d loved and wanted her. Hands cupping her face, he brushed away the film of rain with his thumbs. ‘Who was it? You know him?’

  ‘You bet. Kilrevin.’

  Seth drew a breath. ‘He’s dead. Long since.’

  ‘Assure you he isn’t.’ Her smile was asymmetrical, as if the two of them shared a private joke her dark half didn’t get. ‘Rory got away, Murlainn.’

  His eyes widened as the dull despair lifted. ‘But I can’t See him.’

  ‘He’s over the Veil. It’ll be obstructing you. You know how hard it is to See across it. Shut up. Listen. Doesn’t hurt but I haven’t long. The tear: it’s ten yards beyond the horse.’ She could move no more than a finger but she gave him the direction with the tip of it. ‘Kilrevin followed, only him. Kate’s cocky, Murlainn. She’s in no hurry.’

  ‘If Sionnach can take the sword out…’ He bit his lip.

  ‘No. No. It’s taken everything just to stay till you got here. Almost everything.’ She gazed at him, ancient fondness warring with something else, and he felt pain snake into his scars and bite hard. He clenched his teeth and met her eyes without flinching, and after a moment the pain ebbed. She gave a long hissing sigh. ‘And now there’s nothing left at all.’

  ‘Eili.’ His voice cracked.

  ‘Murlainn. That was for old time’s sake.’ She gave him an odd smile and her eyes slewed to her brother’s still figure. ‘Now out, Sionnach. Out. You are not coming with me. Not this time.’ Opening his eyes, Sionnach made an animal sound as his mind was forced out of hers. ‘Don’t cry, Sionnach. I got to be myself again. She’s gone, that Udhar.’ She ran her tongue along her teeth. ‘But hold my hand. Like before. Remember? Like before we were born.’

  Sionnach knelt at her head as Seth stood up. The dirk hissed out of his sheath as Sionnach took her hand, winding his fingers into hers.

  ‘No, Sionnach,’ she murmured. ‘Wouldn’t make you do that. I’ll do it myself.’ Eili’s eyes lost their focus as she turned her gaze inwards, and the pulse in her throat slowed as Sionnach lay down and wrapped his arms around her.

  Her facial muscles contorted once in a last spasm. Strange and horrible, Seth thought, how much it looked like a smile of pure joy. The pulse fluttered twice more, and he watched for it again, but it had gone, and her brown eyes were lightless and empty.

  Turning his back on her, he went to Jed, standing helpless with Finn in his arms. Seth pulled aside his lover’s slashed shirt with one finger and looked at the ragged wound. There was blood everywhere but it was dry and darkening despite the misty rain, and he could see living blood pulsing through her veins. As a distant rumble of thunder intensified the rain, he pushed aside the tendrils of wet hair that clung to her face.

  He trusted Jed more than any living soul, but it wasn’t good enough. He wanted to take care of her himself; he wanted to find Rory. He couldn’t do both. I told you this would happen, he wanted to yell at her. Do you think I can cut myself in two?

  But there was no point. It wasn’t her fault, it wasn’t Rory’s, and for once it wasn’t even his own. It was just how things were when you went and exposed your heart to the cold air, like a fool. His innards twisted like a rope, tightening from his gullet to his gut. He wouldn’t have believed binding could hurt so much; perhaps it might kill him if it went on long enough. But that was what Kate wanted, after all.

  ‘I’m sorry, Finn,’ he said quietly, and looked up at Jed. ‘Take them to the dun. Be careful. Kate has patrols out and you might need to fight. Iolaire can take Hannah’s horse.’

  ‘Let me come with you,’ pleaded Jed.

  ‘No. Get Finn back to the dun. You do that for me, Jed, and I’ll find Rory.’

  The moment was a long one, but ‘All right,’ said Jed at last. His jaw was tight. ‘Be careful.’

  Seth shut his eyes briefly. ‘Jed, send patrols to the outlying communities and bring our people into the dun. Get them to bring what supplies they can. You don’t have long. And if you get the chance, send a party out for those men.’ He nodded to the corpses strewn among the stones. ‘Tell them to go well-armed and get the water horse too if they can, but not at risk to themselves. You might be able to negotiate a sortie; depends how civilised Kate’s going to be. Branndair.’ He made a sound through his teeth and rubbed the wolf’s head. ‘Stay with Finn. Don’t leave her side. Not for anything.’

  Jed looked from Branndair back to Seth. ‘I’ll take care of her too. I promise.’

  ‘I know you will. Jed? Take care of Sionnach as well.’ He couldn’t look at his lieutenant for more than a moment. There was no sound from him. The sword had been wrenched out of Eili and thrown aside. Sionnach knelt over her, hacking so hard and wildly at his hair that his dirk was leaving deep gashes on his scalp. Blood trickled in thin streams down his face and neck but there was no expression on his face. Seth winced.

  ‘Go on, Jed,’ he said. ‘You haven’t long. Kate’ll be coming. Do your best till I get back.’

  ‘Seth.’ Iolaire touched his arm. ‘Kilrevin’s a tracker, he was famous for it. He will get to Rory, and he can force him to take him through the Veil. He won’t need a watergate. You have to get to Rory first.’

  ‘I know.’ The desolation could have unmanned him right there. ‘I know.’

  ‘Please find him.’ There were tears in Jed’s voice. ‘And please live. This time live, MacGregor.’

  ‘Same to you, you jumped-up whelp.’ They glowered at one another for a moment, then looked away simultaneously. Seth mounted the blue roan. ‘Listen, Cuilean, Rory’s in good company. The closest he’ll ever get to Conal.’

  ‘I don’t… oh.’ Jed blinked. ‘Hannah? Oh!’

  �
�Hannah.’ Seth tried to smile.

  Clutching Finn tighter, Jed stared at him as he rode past the dead kelpie, stopping a few yards beyond it. The roan snorted as he rode it back and forth over a five-metre stretch, fingertips brushing the air. Come on. Come on.

  The horse stopped, a tremor running in its flank, and Seth leaned a little forward and out of the saddle, his hand seeking something.

  ‘Hah,’ he said softly. ‘Sgath. There you are again.’

  The roan sidestepped elegantly, and they crossed to the otherworld together.

  ALASDAIR KILREVIN

  He was a patient man. You didn’t live to be Alasdair’s age without a bit of patience. But he resented being ordered around by Kate NicNiven, especially when she had got it so clearly and colossally wrong.

  There was no sign of Murlainn’s boy or the redheaded girl. A deer fence stretched from one side of the moor, curved round a small forestry plantation and disappeared, but there was no-one hiding among the young trees. The low hills rose towards the west and the land fell away to the south and east. You could see a long way, but the boy was not here. Not anywhere.

  Alasdair didn’t get to be this age without stopping to think.

  The time balance was screwed up, Kate had known that before she made her risky move, and Alasdair didn’t fancy ducking straight back through the tear in the Veil and coming face to face with Murlainn, a sword in his hand and his dead lover at his feet. That would not be a good scenario, not for him, though it might give a little brief satisfaction to Murlainn.

  Alasdair, after all, was running quite an account with that boy, and payment had been overdue even before this latest development. It was more than four hundred years since he’d pulled his sword from Griogair Dubh’s gurgling throat, but he would never forget his glimpse of the black-haired boy’s reflection in the oily, bloody black water of the well. He would never forget the look on the child’s white face. And it was a fair bet that Murlainn hadn’t forgotten that day either.