by Sarah Remy
“Yes, Crom Dubh,” Pelagius deadpanned. Everyone in the room knew it wasn’t Pelagius’s boredom Everin need fear.
His joints cracked complaint as he dropped to his knees. The air was cleaner near the lodge floor, the opion smoke rising to collect beneath the peaked roof. Drem squatted to join him. Pelagius leaned on his spear. The dullahan, gone preternaturally still, waited. One by one Everin began to stick bronze pins into the map. Gate by gate he made his way from corner to corner, north to south, east to west. Eyes half closed against haze, he struggled to recall Faolan’s secrets. Drem watched without comment. Drem who, with its kin Bail, had run Faolan’s most furtive errands beneath the flatlands.
“You’re more suitable than I for this,” Everin muttered as he stuck a pin into the brown ribbon swale that was Stonehill Downs.
“Drem will tell me if you place one awry,” agreed the Crom Dubh. “I prefer it this way. Your mouth goes tight every time you set a pin, each time you betray your kind. There are grooves alongside your nose from the strength of your rage. And you are weeping, did you know?” It dipped all at once, curled a finger beneath Everin’s chin, and scooped his regret into its mouth, sucking eagerly. “Different tears than those you shed when you rode on my back, I think. Those were relief. This is—”
“Opion smoke,” retorted Everin as he placed the last pin. “The drug makes my eyes burn. There. Are we finished?”
“So many.” The dullahan bent to get a better look. The smoke eddied in circles around him, briefly obscuring the tapestry. Pelagius waved the haze away, squinting. Outside the wind shook the tent, tossing sand against the canvas.
“Scores of them,” Pelagius said, awed. “Worse than beetles in a cactus.”
“Some are sealed,” Drem said. “Around the cities and near the sea. Faolan closed many by the coast. The island witch barred others nearest their king with her spells. The barrow key is nothing against her sorcery.”
Crom Dubh glowered. “I’ve not the time or the strength to pit magic against magic. I’ve given too much of myself already. This is meant to be disport, the contest of mortal against mortal, a culling of our enemies, before I sleep again.” He turned his back on the tapestry map and stalked across the tent, pausing to pour beer into a cup from a silver pitcher. “Tell me. Which are open? Which can I make use of without undue effort?”
“There are two just east of the forest,” Drem mused, leaning over the map. “But difficult to take an army through those woods. Six more that, last I knew, were still undiscovered and within several leagues of their white city. The safest are further west, between their city and the sea.” It glanced under Desma’s long eyelashes at the dullahan. “Into how many fragments will you divide your army?”
“Two, no more,” Pelagius replied. He reached past Everin, pointing. “Our might is in our numbers. Stretch too far and we’re no more fortunate going under the mountain than over.”
Another volley of wind shook the lodge. Outside, guardsmen called back and forth as they hurried to secure tent poles and miscellaneous belongings in the face of the storm. A horse squealed terror. Camels were built to withstand even the most vicious duster. Coastal ponies were not.
The dullahan made a show of deep consideration before he answered.
“We’ll make use of Drem’s eight gates,” it said. “Erastos, Nicanor, Myron. Hypatia of tribe cockerel. Panteleon, Sophus, and Lino. And my Pelagius. Eight bold commanders to make me proud.”
Pelagius shifted uneasily. “And you, Crom Dubh?” he asked. “Where will you ride?”
“Oh, behind,” the dullahan replied, returning to the brazier and warming his hands. “I’ll provide the impetus.”
“The impetus?” Pelagius’s ever-present scowl deepened. “We are wolves, not cowardly flatland sheep.”
“The tunnels affect some mortals badly,” said the dullahan, greedily inhaling smoke. “I expect a few will shy away, once the time comes. It’s important no one is left behind.”
“And why’s that?” Everin asked from below the opion haze. “Hungry sidhe mouths to feed?”
“What?” snapped the dullahan, whirling in Everin’s direction and almost overturning the brazier in the process. “What did you say?”
“It seems to me you’ve contrived a mass exodus. Straight into the mounds. You’re right in that Faolan trusted me with his secrets.” Everin glanced in Pelagius’s direction. “Your people aren’t the only folk starving. While the elders sleep, the barrowmen go hungry. How long have you served Crom Dubh? Surely you can’t be ignorant. Drem, tell Pelagius: What’s your favorite snack?”
“Fish is first,” Drem answered promptly. Then it grinned at Pelagius, running its thick white tongue lewdly across Desma’s lips. “But second, human flesh.”
Pelagius had a scimitar in each hand. His eyes were reddened by opion smoke, his face a rictus of horrified realization. He had just enough sense left to back away toward the tent flap instead of challenging the dullahan head-on. As he turned to run, Crom Dubh groaned in mock dismay.
“Kill him,” he said.
In one fluid motion Drem sprang across the tent. It muffled Pelagius’s shout with Desma’s hand. Pelagius dropped one blade in shock, swung wildly with the other. But even diminished by iron, Drem was faster, stronger—an innate killer. It locked an arm around Pelagius’s chin and twisted. Neck bones cracked. When Drem released him, Pelagius fell, limp, on the sisal rug. The smell of fresh urine mingled with opion perfume.
“His death is on your hands,” the dullahan told Everin. “Do not suppose I am unaware of your own contrivances.” It glowered. “He was a droll companion, if dull-witted. Of course we can’t eat them, not while they bristle steel. Bad enough they’ll be bringing iron through the barrows—I fear the taint will linger, but worth it in the end.”
“He was too free with his fists,” Everin replied. Pelagius’s crumpled body was a relief. “This isn’t war,” he continued, gesturing at the tapestry. “This is a farce. You’re not setting them up to win. You’re evening the odds.”
“Mutual destruction,” the dullahan agreed. He meandered to Pelagius’s side, kicked the curved blades away into the corner of the lodge, then prodded the cooling corpse with his foot. “Might opposite magic. Steel opposite iron. Two very different cultures set to clash, and as many of each dead at the end as I can manage.” He shifted Pelagius from back to belly with a kick, then stepped carelessly on the dead man’s spine. More bones snapped. “And after, when beneath our blue skies our soil is drinking their red blood—why, then, certainly, we will feast.”
Everin felt sick. “I’ll kill you.”
“I doubt you can,” replied Crom Dubh, smug. “You set this in motion, when you woke me from slumber. You’ll stay and watch it play out. Because I enjoy the amusing, anguished faces you make when you think no one’s looking. They’re almost as satisfying as vengeance taken.” It stepped once more on Pelagius, this time breaking hipbones. “Almost.”
Chapter 19
The desert scout was dead, cut down by a lancer, but not before he put more arrows through the eyes and throats of five Kingsmen and Brother Absen. Their deaths were instantaneous; Avani arrived too late to save them.
Morgan dispatched a messenger to the king’s constable who was said to be riding somewhere near Wilhaiim’s westmost line. The dead Kingsmen and Absen and Shin were loaded with grim ceremony into a cart for burial in the city. At Morgan’s command their killer was quartered and his head mounted atop the baldachin. Afterward his ghost paced back and forth between the baldachin and the forest, blue eyes tilted always toward the top of the baldachin and his severed head. The theists and three of the soldiers returned to their god without Avani’s assistance. Two lingered, either confused by the suddenness of their deaths or frightened by what might lie beyond. Avani used a banishing cant to send them on.
She let the desert haunt be in the hopes that he might decide to speak anything of interest, but he seemed to care only for his head and the
indignity of that display. Avani didn’t blame him for it.
“Can’t you interrogate it?” Morgan appealed when she mentioned the spirit’s restless misery. “Make it tell us if more are coming, and from where?”
“Mal could,” she said. “I won’t. And I promise you more are coming. Ramp up your guard patrols, my lord, night and day. I expect we won’t have much longer to wait.”
“Can you use his bones,” Liam suggested, “to set further wards around the garrison?” He rested one hand protectively on Bear’s wedge head. The brindled hound, first to sound alarm when the scout breeched the garrison, now refused to leave her master’s side for any length of time.
“Only if he’s willing, and I very much doubt he would be.” Grim, Avani shook her head. “Ai, mayhap the poor dead soldiers, or even Absen, but I did not think and now it’s too late.”
“You did not think. I did not think.” Morgan knuckled his eyes. He had not rested or eaten since the morning attack. Avani caught him looking often down the cliff in the direction of Whitcomb, as if by staring he could will his mother more quickly to his side. But the day was coming to close and there was as yet no sign of Wythe. “What good are you and I, then, if we don’t stop to think?”
“Sit and sup, my lord,” Liam coaxed, ladling boiled oats from their cookpot into a bowl. In all the commotion, they’d forgotten supplies at the quartermaster’s tent and now they hadn’t the heart, any of them, to wander back down the hill and in sight of the baldachin where Brother Cenwin grieved, prostrate, in front of his altar. “I’ve added honey.”
“Honey.” Morgan walked from the cliff’s edge and snatched up the bowl, scowling. “This is the banshee’s fault, I think, lurking about. Bringing ill luck to my garrison. I imagine she’s laughing right now, believing us fools.” He made a motion as if to toss the bowl and oats both over the edge of the cliff but Avani stayed his hand.
“If you won’t eat it,” she said. “I will. I’m tired and hungry and sorrowing. I knew Absen only a short time, but he was a good man. I think he would not like to see you blaming yourself. And I do not believe Cleena brought us ill luck, any more than Jacob has. It’s only superstition, to explain away the misgivings that keep us awake at night.”
Jacob, nested comfortably again inside Morgan’s tent, grumbled loud agreement.
Thusly admonished, Morgan sat on the ground to eat. “I know it,” he said after a silence. “We should have expected this—the flatland has been rife with wandering sand snakes since early summer. Only, my mother set the guards and I assumed they were sufficient.”
“They were sufficient.” Liam filled another bowl and placed it in Avani’s hands. The steaming oats warmed her fingers through the pottery. “Against a man on horseback. Mayhap not one sneaking about on foot through the undergrowth, bow in hand and with better aim even than I.”
“I’ve doubled the watch,” Morgan said around a mouthful of honey and oats. “We’ll have word from Wilhaiim before dark, I imagine. And mother soon after.” He scraped his spoon on the bottom of his bowl. “This is good.”
It was good. Avani’s stomach, forgotten for most of the day, woke to sharp hunger. She ate slowly, savoring each bite. Cleena’s honey turned otherwise bland oats sweet. When she was finished, she let Bear lick around the bowl, then rose and wandered to the cliff edge, hoping to catch the beginnings of sunset over Whitcomb.
“Riders on the highway,” she reported before Morgan could ask. “Bearing Renault’s device. Word from the king on the matter, I expect.” She squinted. “Nothing from the coast, that I can tell. The road looks empty.” It had been clearing in the past hour or so, as those who had not already made refuge in the city retreated to hidden places near farm or keep. There was a new sense of urgency in the air, a hastening of preparation. Fires were lit all along the Wilhaiim’s wall-walk; she could see watchmen at work along the barbican and above the northern gate.
“Murder hole,” Morgan said, appearing at her elbow. He sounded reluctantly impressed. “A gap above the gateway from which they send spears, and arrows, and worse. Smell the boiling tar? Pots of it, waiting to be turned over any enemy who comes close. There’s a murder hole over every gate. They haven’t been uncovered since the sidhe wars, I imagine. It’s a wonder they remembered how to light the pots. They’ll have brought the tar up from Low Port weeks ago, I suppose. His Majesty knows his duty. He’ll do whatever it takes to keep us safe.”
“He will,” Avani agreed. She could not yet think on Renault without an uncomfortable mix of sympathy and resentment. She imagined the king standing in his oriel, waiting upon news of invasion while listening to Brother Tillion decry royal immorality from the street below.
“Oi, look!” Morgan pointed at the western horizon. “White smoke on the coast, there, can you see? The sea lords will be preparing their defenses, as well, kindling their watch fires.” He bounced on his toes. “It’s really happening, isn’t it?”
“Aye, my lord, it is.” Avani watched faraway smoke billow in front of the setting sun. It was a pretty picture: the blue sea, the orange sunset, and the white smoke scudding between.
“Come and rest,” Liam called from the cook fire. “While things are quiet. You’ve been standing on your feet all day.”
Morgan’s expression turned petulant. “You’re meant to be my squire, not my nursemaid.”
“Beg pardon, my lord, but I was speaking to Lady Avani,” retorted Liam, meeting Avani’s eye over the top of Morgan’s head. “Though you look as if you could do with some shut-eye yourself, and I’ll not pretend otherwise.”
“Turn around is fair play.” Avani winked at Morgan. He was a good lad, and terribly earnest, and she could see his mother’s determination in the set of his jaw. “I’ve sent that one to bed too many times to count when he was your age and more interested in playing hide-and-seek with the stars. I am weary,” she confessed, turning toward her bedroll. “So should you be. Will you rest a time, my lord?”
She thought he would consent, but then that stubborn jaw grew firm as he remembered duty. “Not quite yet,” the young earl demurred. “I should speak again to Brother Cenwin, see if there’s aught he needs in his grief. And I want to check the horses another time before dark, to make sure they’re well-guarded. The king’s message may contain new orders; I’ll meet the riders as they come, I think. And mother—” he peered again at the highway below “—will expect me to be on hand when she arrives.”
“As you will, my lord.” Her heart broke for his conviction. Liam, too, had been a resolute child, but Liam had never been taxed with the responsibilities of an earldom.
She left Morgan standing lookout and unrolled her bedding on a level spot near the earl’s tent with the cook fire to warm her back. Liam hummed under his breath as he banked the flames and scrubbed the pot and laid out Morgan’s nightshirt for later. She realized, with some surprise, that he sounded happy. Bear snuggled up along Avani’s front, laying her heavy head on Avani’s thigh. Jacob, preferring the shelter of the tent, pretended not to hear when she whistled invitation.
The sky was the color of good red weaver’s dye when she closed her eyes. Bear was snoring. And thanks to Cleena she was still blissfully alone in her own skull, warded inwardly against intrusion.
Nevertheless, she dreamed.
She dreamed she was crawling again in the barrows beneath Stonehill, Jacob hopping on the muddy ground a few paces ahead. She followed the raven down and down through the tunnel, hastening when she lost track of black feathers. The space was uncomfortably tight, as it had been when she’d first wriggled through Faolan’s hidden gate. Dangling root and glowing moss ticked the back of her head, making her shudder. Thin streams of water ran down the tunnel walls, miniature waterfalls. She lacked a mage-light but she wasn’t blind. Minuscule fragments of silver rock caught in the mud reflected a sourceless white glow, turning night to day.
The scrollwork gate at the end of the tunnel was cracked open. She could see the chamber beyo
nd. Following Jacob, she crawled over the threshold. Once through she had enough room to stand. The ceilings were high, the old cavern at least as large as the village above. Moss and more vine dripped from the ceiling. Stone teeth grew out of the ceiling and the floor. The organic pillars were covered all around in carvings: sidhe sigils made for the purpose of protection and illumination. The chamber walls shone a diffuse white. The sidhe, who no longer walked beneath a natural sun, were forced to conjure light of their own.
“This light,” agreed Mal, walking now at her side. “Not so different than that in the old laboratories. And the sigils—” he walked dark fingers along limestone “—not so different than those in the theist spell books. Mayhap you’re more right than you know. Mayhap it all comes from the same source.”
“There are no gods but the sidhe?” Avani grimaced. “Jacob would disagree.” The raven flew in circles over their heads, neatly avoiding tangle with root and vine. His wingspan seemed to shrink and then swell as he circled, sending strangely shaped shadows onto the damp floor.
“Look,” Mal insisted. He scraped a nail against stone then held up his finger. A minuscule amber pebble glittered on the tip. “The jewel in your ring. Khorit Dard’s Heart. The magestone set in the doors of the Rani’s palace. And the yellow gem set in Faolan’s torque. Why have we never thought to wonder from whence the amber came?”
“Every stone comes first from the earth, Mal.” Impatient, Avani hurried after Jacob. “He wants me to go that way. The river tunnel.”
At the cavern’s westmost curve were four arched doorways, their mouths dark against the cavern’s glow. Once gates had secured the openings; large bronze hinges still hung in places from the limestone. More littered the ground around the old portals where, torn from the wall, they lay rusting in the mud and damp. Sidhe marks decorated the stone above each opening. Some of the sigils she knew as well as the freckles on her arms and legs—the same decoration had been carved with sidhe knives into Liam’s flesh in the very same chamber.
