The sharp teeth of his guilt gnawed at him for a moment, before a thought occurred to him.
“Mayhap ’twas another tribe that attacked the Romans after the Sluath captured us,” the tracker ventured. “They’d take what they could carry and bury the rest.” That pondering led to another. “Or the Sluath themselves cached the goods. All I may tell you, ’tis no monster hiding in the castle now, Brother.”
Domnall didn’t look entirely convinced. “It doesnae stink to me of demon work. Nor the traps we’ve found in the castle. Yet this place ever wishes to kill us.”
“Not by any will. ’Twas left like one of Broden’s snares, I reckon, to prey on the unwary.” Mael held up his hands and dropped them. “Jenna claims we resolved in the underworld to come to Dun Chaill. With no memory of that vow we yet came. Rosealise fell into the maze, not the ash grove. Mayhap the Gods carved out our path, or ’tis purely by chance, but all led us here.”
“Aye.” The lines of worry on the chieftain’s brow deepened for a moment, and then disappeared. “What say we to our ladies of the mound?”
“All we ken, but only after we burn the stained cloth,” Mael told him wryly.
Back at Dun Chaill they found the women working together in the kitchen garden, where they had removed a mound of weeds from the overgrown herbs. Mael smiled when he saw the vetch stalks that had also been discarded.
“How delightful to see you, Chieftain, Seneschal.” Rosealise brushed the soil from her hands before she picked up a small sack. “Or fair morning, as you have it. I’m happy to say we’ll have enough seed to replant most of the herbs once we’ve prepared the soil.”
“We uncovered another patch of berries, too,” Jenna said from somewhere behind. “A huge one where the birds couldn’t get at it.” She emerged from behind a shrub, holding the edge of her tunic out to keep the mound of ripe fruits from escaping. “Once Rosealise teaches me how to weave some baskets, we can fill a couple dozen. Stop looking so glum. She knows how to make scones.”
Mael eyed the Englishwoman.
“Rather like bannocks,” she explained. “With milk and eggs and I might attempt a flummery, too.”
“Wait, why do you look like you did right before we found the waterfall room?” Jenna asked her husband.
“Edane opened the mound in the forest,” Domnall told her. “’Tis filled with cloth and weapons and goods. ’Twould seem ’tis possessions taken from travelers attacked here.”
“Attacked,” Rosealise whispered. Seeds spilled to the ground as she stared at the chieftain, her gaze blank. “They shot my driver, and the horses bolted. The coach overturned.” She made a harsh sound, covering her mouth with her hand, and then went very still. “I think I must go inside now.”
Chapter Eleven
IN THE DEPTHS of the tunnel Danar pitted his considerable bulk against the collapsed stone again and again before staggering back. Dark blood streaked down the side of his face as he regarded Iolar.
“It does not open, my prince.”
“Get out of my way.”
Summoning the power that had elevated him to rule, Iolar unleashed its full fury, until a white, crackling wall of ice stretched out before him. He struck it with his fist, and the ice shattered, collapsing around his legs.
Beyond it the stone rubble remained in place.
Iolar slapped his claws against the stone, probing it with his magic. Through it he could no longer feel the energy of the underworld, which meant the long passage leading to it had also been completely filled in. But it could not be, for they had used this very same gate only a few hours past.
While they had been hunting souls to cull, someone had come here and sealed off the passage.
“Who did this?” He turned on his deamhanan, all of whom dropped to their knees and bowed their heads. “Who?”
None of the Sluath moved or spoke.
Had he iron at hand, Iolar would have killed them all. “I’ll spare the life of the deamhan responsible, but only if he makes himself known to me. Now.”
Again, the silence was broken only by the faint echo of his voice.
Kicking demons out of his path, Iolar strode out of the cave. The clear skies that greeted him made him bellow his rage, for without a storm he could not take wing. That meant walking to another entrance they could use. Walking, as if he were no more than mortal scum. Behind him the sounds of squabbling came with the thuds of blows, which quickly grew loud as the Sluath began fighting each other.
“Meirneal,” he shouted over the din.
The diminutive deamhan rushed out of the cave and fell before Iolar face-down in the dirt. “I would never betray you, my prince, never. You must believe–”
“Stop your prattling.” He seized Meirneal’s curly head and dragged him up to his eye level. For all his prettiness the sight of his fear most gratified the prince. “Where is the nearest entrance we may use?”
His cherubic lips trembled. “There are no more left open, my prince.”
Iolar had not experienced this degree of surprise since long ago learning that the rebels had escaped. He found it immensely unpleasant.
“If you’re jesting with me, you little fiend, I will use your bones as my toothpicks.”
“They are all sealed, my prince,” Meirneal whispered. “Like this one.” His eyes shifted toward the cave. “Attend our prince, you blighted scum,” he called out.
Iolar’s most trusted deamhanan staggered out of the cave and fell to their knees.
“All of the gates are like this?” he demanded.
“We would have told you sooner, my prince.” A battered Clamhan crawled over to them, and tugged down his broken skull mask. “We did not wish to trouble you.”
Iolar dropped the small deamhan. The glamour cloaking his lieutenants had begun to bulge in odd places as the souls they had devoured fought to free themselves. There was a similar roiling in his own belly and chest.
“If we cannot return to the underworld,” he said, using his pleasantest tone, “we cannot feed on our prey, or contain them. They will escape us. Our slaves below will die.” As the deamhanan stared up at him the air became filled with snow and he shouted, “Have you fools no understanding of what you have done?”
“We disappointed you, Prince Iolar.” Seabhag rose from his knees and tottered forward. His shifting form went from a buxom female to that of an old crone and back again. “But we remain loyal to you, as always. This had to be the work of the traitor who freed the rebels and stole your treasure.”
“You are as quick to point the finger of blame as you are to swear fealty,” Iolar said. “Is there nothing you can offer me but excuses and sniveling?”
He heard a snicker that drew his gaze to one of the newer deamhanan. He could not recall the name he had taken, but he had barely survived the change. Even as the prince watched, a culled soul escaped the newling’s lips to fade on the wind.
Iolar crooked a claw at the now-pale deamhan. “You, come to me.”
The Sluath rose and crept closer, stopping just beyond the prince’s reach. “’Twere no’ I what done this to ye, milord.”
“You still speak like a fucking mortal.” He cocked his head, aware that Seabhag and Meirneal were quickly moving away now. They still had some value to him, so he ignored their cowering. “Have we taught you nothing of what it means to be Sluath?”
The newling made as if to reply, had a bright moment, and instead clamped his mouth shut.
“I speak of the nobility of our kind, and the dignity with which we conduct ourselves. All that we have learned through traveling the ages and culling the weakest from mortal kind. We are the most powerful beings in creation, the embodiment of carnal glory, and yet you dare babble at me like some dirt-wallowing peasant.” He tasted the thin tendrils of the deamhan’s fear. “What is your name?”
The deamhan started to reply, and then gasped as a shaft of ice impaled him through the gut. As black blood poured from the wound, he shook his head frantically.
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“No, please, milord—my prince,” he begged. “My name ’tis Frew. I’ll learn to do right, to speak as the others.” He choked as a second soul escaped him. “Please, I wish to live.”
“You should have thought of that before you flapped your lips, Frew.” Iolar approached him, twisting the shaft that connected his arm with the deamhan’s gut. He created a second with his other. “But do beg me again for your life. Persuade me why I should spare it. Perhaps mention what value, if any, you have to me.”
“I ken, I know…what…what…”
A liquid gurgle cut off Frew’s voice as the prince rammed the second ice shaft through his broad neck. Using the shafts like shears, Iolar tore the deamhan’s body apart, shaking off the ice and the torn carcass. The remaining souls contained by Frew’s form burst from the remains and vanished. The body then began to revert back to what it had been before attaining demonic power, curling up and shrinking into a twisted ruin.
Iolar went to perch on a rock and watch the skies. After a long interval Danar came to stand beside him. He could hear the others setting fire to Frew’s remains and speaking quietly among themselves. His anger faded beneath the dismal prospect of being trapped in the mortal realm. It was no coincidence that all the gates had been sealed while he’d been here. Nothing like this had ever been done to him, and he wanted to know why.
“My prince,” Danar said, his tone as careful as his expression.
“If you try to placate me now,” the prince said, “I shall rip off your face with a blunt claw.”
“I must speak to the necessities of our situation,” his second said. “We need a place to dwell until such time as we may return to the underworld. Horses as well, so we might travel quickly. Then we will have time to find the bastard responsible for this sabotage and gut him by inches as he roasts over a fire.”
Idly curious, Iolar regarded the big deamhan. In Danar’s eyes was the ever-present respect, but no true fear. He looked hungry, but he had the sort of appetite that would never be satiated.
“What were you before you came to the Sluath?”
Danar’s mouth curled on one side. “A barbarian king. I set fire to great cities, and plundered their riches, and slaughtered more men than could be counted. I then raped their women, and enslaved them and their children.”
“Ah. That’s probably why I never want to disembowel you.” He regarded the horizon. “Send scouts to the highest ground to look for suitable caves. If we can’t reopen any of the gates, then we will create one.”
Doubt flickered across the Sluath’s face. “It’s been thousands of years since the first of our kind fashioned them, my prince. None that knew how it’s done are…left.”
Iolar approved of his cautious wording. Being reminded that he had assassinated them all in order to take the throne never bettered his mood.
“Our pet druid may prove useful in that regard. Find him.”
Chapter Twelve
THE STRANGE TRANCE Rosealise experienced in the garden was not what had made her weak and trembling, but she kept the true cause of her fear to herself. To reveal it would distress her friends, who would wish to help. She knew nothing could be done for her now. It also gave her reason to insist Jenna leave her and go with her husband to inspect what might be salvaged from the hidden cache.
“I will have a rest in my room, and later help you sort what the men bring back,” she promised. Forcing a smile, she turned to Mael but kept from touching him. “You should go with them.”
The seneschal first accompanied her to her chamber, where he removed his tartan and wrapped it around her.
“You yet shake,” he said when she tried to refuse it. “And you’re as pale as snow. ’Tis the shock of recalling the attack.”
“I don’t, really,” she admitted. “What I said came purely in response to Domnall’s revelation. Simply words. I have no true memory of what occurred.” What had made her feel as if she’d frozen inside threatened to overwhelm her now. “I am very tired.”
He led her into the room. “You’ve a headache again, I’ll wager.”
“I’m becoming quite the invalid.” She went to sit down on her bed, wriggling a little as the evergreen branches shifted under her. If he didn’t leave soon, she would expose her secret. “Go and join the others, please, if you wish.” And now she would have to lie again. “I will soon recover, I promise you.”
Mael lingered for another moment before he nodded and left. Rosealise lay down on the furs and glanced at the hand she’d used to cover her mouth in the garden. She then turned her face into her pillow to muffle the sound before she released the cough she’d been holding back. It led to another, and more, until she tasted a coppery wetness.
She lifted her face from the pillow to stare at the patches of wet crimson now staining the sacking. The same stained her palm. The brief, knife-like pain in her chest when she’d spilled the seeds had disappeared. Yet the location of the pain and the blood confirmed her suspicions, and wrote what would rule the last chapter of her life.
Consumption.
Rosealise drew Mael’s tartan tightly around her and turned the pillow over to hide the stains. How she recognized the deadly affliction was lost along with her memories, but she knew its effects and progress. Nothing could be done to stop it. She would slowly decline from her present state to a pale, feverish infirmity plagued by a worsening, liquid cough. Her lungs would fill slowly, diminishing her until she could no longer rise from her bed. In the end a gradual suffocation would snuff out her life.
There could be only one explanation for her vast knowledge: I watched someone die of this. Judging by the sorrow that came with the understanding of the illness, someone she had loved dearly.
So I will die the same.
It seemed she had some time left. The blood that had come from her coughing appeared bright red and had been scant. She would have to tell Mael, for she had kissed him. Such intimate contact put him at risk of catching her dreadful disease. Absolutely there would be no more kissing, but not out of deference to a lover she couldn’t remember.
My dear friend. Rosealise rolled onto her back and stared up at the thatched boughs over her. Now I may never again feel your embrace.
Forcing herself to get up, she used water from a skin Jenna had given her to wash her hands and face, blotting them with the edge of her borrowed tunic. It was then she noticed the edge of something pale protruding from a gap between two stones in the wall beside her bed. Hoping it wasn’t a bone, she reached down to retrieve it. Her fingers stilled as she touched the rolled edge, which felt like stiff paper. It took some prying to work it out of the stones, but once she did she saw it was a flattened scroll. Carefully she opened it, and carried it over to the window slit to better look at the dense markings.
It appeared to be a map. The drawing appeared very recent, and yet in a style quite archaic. It showed a sprawling stone structure of many levels, each crammed with tiny details. Rectangles drawn in dozens of spots over the building had been scraped clean and filled with tiny pictures: rigid-looking warriors with fuzzy heads, two frothing waterfalls, and gems so beautifully rendered their ink seemed to glitter. She saw no citation, legend or scale indicator, but a small triangle at the bottom seemed to indicate the north direction.
Only when she spotted the maze next to the structure did she realize what the map depicted: Dun Chaill.
“By my honor,” she murmured.
Rosealise turned over the parchment but the back had been left unmarked. She then crouched down to examine the stones where it had been left. She couldn’t fathom why anyone would attempt to hide the scroll in such a spot. Her chamber offered far more suitable areas for concealment.
Someone wanted me to find it.
Faint scratches on the edges of the stones suggested someone had chipped away at this spot—and quite recently, judging by the sharp condition of the edges. When she touched a fingertip to the gap to gauge its depth a flick of light passed through the rock
, which then dissolved.
Backing away, Rosealise watched as more flickerings spread, and an arch-shaped portion of the stone wall disappeared, engulfing her in a cloud of dust. She coughed in earnest now, which stabbed another dagger of pain into her breast. Clutching the scroll she stumbled to her bed, but lack of air drove her to her knees.
The door to her chamber flung open, and Mael rushed in to lift her into his arms.
“No,” she gasped. The coughing spasm ended, but she still turned her face away from him. “You must not…” She stopped and gulped some air.
“I couldnae leave you here alone, thank the Gods.” Carefully he placed her on the bed, retrieving the waterskin to bring it to her, and then froze. “Rosealise, ’tis blood on your lips.”
Unable to speak of it, she met his gaze. From the dread in his expression Mael also knew the cause. He propped her up with his arm and gave her some sips from the waterskin spout. The coughing finally abated, allowing her to catch her breath.
“I do beg your pardon,” Rosealise murmured, swallowing against the rawness in her throat. “I’d hoped I was wrong, but in the garden I left blood on my hand, and I knew then what afflicted me.”
His jaw tightened. “I’ll fetch Edane. We saw the white plague many times as lads, and he kens much of healing potions–”
“Nothing he can do will cure me.” She tried to smile. “You’ve been very brave, Seneschal, but you must leave me now. Do tell the others not to come too close now. I would not condemn anyone else to my fate.”
Mael looked away, and then saw the arch that had appeared in the wall.
“By the Gods.”
“I neglected to mention,” Rosealise said, “that I believe I’ve found another magical trap, and this.”
She held out the scroll, but he was already up and approaching the arch. She pushed herself off the bed, reaching for his hand.
Everything around them grew dazzling white, and Mael and the room vanished.
Chapter Thirteen
Mael: Immortal Highlander, Clan Mag Raith Book 2 Page 7
