by Dani Harper
“Even if I feared you, what would your deaths have gained me then?” she asked. “Have I not told you many times that the key to successful conquest is never waste a potential asset? Your brother’s fate strengthened my grip on the Court in a way that simply killing him could not. And whenever they begin to forget what they witnessed, I have only to call him to heel before their eyes.” She lifted a hand and crooked a long golden talon. An enormous black grim slunk into view, its belly close to the ground as it made its way over to lie at Eirianwen’s gold-clad feet.
Trahern successfully hid his bafflement, grateful for Lissy’s warning. The dog was indeed the twin of Braith save for its color—and its hopeless demeanor. Slowly, the large noble head turned toward him, the heavy silver links of its chain-mail collar clinking together. Though the form of the grim was male, for one fleeting instant, it was a woman who looked out from behind the great golden eyes. One he recognized.
Saffir!
Immediately, Trahern knelt before the immense dog and touched its broad forehead with his own, humbled in the presence of such terrible sacrifice. It was plain to him now why she had not accompanied Braith: she had deliberately taken his place! I knew not that you yet lived, he spoke in his mind. There was no answer, but he continued anyway. If you can hear me, if you can only feel my words, know that Braith is well. That he loves you truly—
“Such a charming little reunion, but the celebration will have to wait,” announced Eirianwen. “Now that both my sons are home, we have much to discuss. I have already set our plans into motion.”
Her sons. Lissy had been right, it seemed, and Eirianwen believed the grim she commanded was indeed his twin. He tested his mother further, however. “My brother cannot discuss very much in his present condition. Surely you plan to restore him?”
She laughed. “Why ever would I do such a thing?”
Unexpected rage flooded him. Because he is your child and deserves your love and protection! Because you should never have committed such a cruel act to begin with! He hid his anger with the greatest difficulty, and his voice carried no hint of it when he finally spoke. “Surely you have need of a farseer in your ambitious plans?”
“Do you think I did not glean the information I required before your brother was changed? And while I have much power at my beck and call, even I am constrained by a few certainties. There is no reversal for such a spell. Braith will always be a grim.” The dog vanished from Trahern’s sight, undoubtedly sent to some barren stone kennel until the next time Eirianwen wanted to strike fear into someone.
I will never stop trying to save my brother. And now he would seek a way to help the woman Braith loved as well. Plainly, however, there were no further answers to be gained here. Cadell waits. “I, too, have my constraints. I must return to the Hunt.”
She laughed—not the pretty chime that so charmed the Court but a dark wave-tossed slurry of ice that raised the hair on his flesh. “Ah, yes, you think you are a Hunter now. As if that would somehow shield you from me.”
“The Wild Hunt will certainly shield Gwenhidw from you.”
“Not if its leader is busy elsewhere. And I have seen to it that he will be. By the time the moon rises twice more, my mercenaries will attack the seat of power in Tir Hardd. Lurien will put down the insurrection himself and send Gwenhidw here for safety. And I will be waiting.”
“Then I have a queen to defend.”
“I am your queen!” shouted Eirianwen. “And I will not permit you to turn your back on who you are!”
“I know who I am, and I am not yours to command.” Trahern rose and turned on his heel, but he knew his mother well. Just as he reached the end of the platform, he dropped flat to the polished wooden floor. A roaring blast of searing heat passed over him, singeing exposed skin and hair. Remaining prone, he simply spun in place, shooting out a glittering rope of energy that snared his mother’s feet and yanked her from the oaken chair. With the other hand, he hurled a fiery ball, as white-hot as a miniature sun.
She swatted it away before it could touch her, sending the deadly sphere straight toward Trahern’s face—just as he anticipated. Deliberately, he raised his hand a fraction too late to redirect the ball, causing it to rebound wildly. His other hand, however, had been a heartbeat faster, sending a raging wall of green water to engulf Eirianwen before she could see where the sphere was headed and intervene.
The wooden floor shook beneath his body as the fireball impacted high up the wall of the dome to his left—and soared away into the night like a meteor. Fragments of burning wood and scorched leaves fell from the gaping hole, even as Eirianwen shook off the drenching that had distracted her, evaporating it entirely without a word. Fury radiated from her, plus something else—purest frustration, he realized. Even a twisted disappointment.
“You would rather have me dead than not be able to control me,” he said. “Why bring forth children at all, if only to destroy them in the end? Surely this is not the legacy you set out to create?”
“Ah, but my legacy was not uppermost in my mind, not at first. I found that I wanted there to be someone like me in our world.” For a moment, she seemed almost wistful. Real or not, it didn’t last. “But you were nothing like me, either of you! Nothing!” She threw her golden fan across the dais. “You grew your own way like wild grapes that would not heed the arbor I set for you. The three of us might have ruled the Nine Realms together if not for the stubbornness of your brother and you!”
“Stubbornness? To be ourselves and not mere shadows of you? Your true desire was never for sons and partners but for mirrors and puppets. You wanted only what you could use.”
His mother did not respond. She still sat upon the oak wood floor like an elegant statue, but her anger radiated from her in waves he could almost see. It was like facing down a venomous serpent, waiting for the strike that would surely come.
Rising slowly to his feet, on guard for any move from her, he spared only a quick glance upward. The charred hole in the dome was more than sufficient for the pwca. Trahern couldn’t see or sense him, but it was a simple matter to reach out to Lissy’s mind. Saying nothing, brushing lightly against her thoughts like a caress, he peered through her eyes for an instant. Long enough to see that Cadell had wasted no time. The faithful creature flew swiftly for the borders of Eirianwen’s territory, spiriting Lissy to safety, leaving her illusory image to linger motionless at the far end of the Hall. Leaving Trahern behind as well but also leaving him free to act.
Perhaps for the first time.
“No more masks,” he said, his full attention falling upon Eirianwen. “No more posturing, no more games. I do not serve the House of Oak, nor do I serve you. And I will not participate in treason.”
“As you wish.” With her power, she drew herself upright in one fluid move—and drew something else with her. With her gold-clad feet hovering a handspan above the platform, an inky shadow steamed from the wood to envelop her like thick writhing smoke: the essence of the Great Oak itself. The massive tree was soaked in magics, from root tip to tallest twig, from rough bark to smooth leaf to rounded acorn—and as the matriarch of the House of Oak, she alone could call upon it. Every blood sacrifice, every torture, every cry of fear or pain, every dark and terrible act that had ever taken place beneath the living dome now enhanced her already formidable abilities. For a wild moment, Trahern considered attacking the tree itself, but Eirianwen would kill him long before he succeeded in destroying the oak.
With pinpoint focus, he wrapped a bright-orange blaze around her, hoping to sever her connection to the tree. But a scant heartbeat later, the fiery cocoon burst apart, forcing Trahern to leap to the stone floor below, rolling beneath the edge of the dais to evade the very flames he’d created as they rocketed through the air around him. Luckily, he had created them. Without his will to sustain them, the small fires fizzled into nothingness wherever they landed. Meanwhile, the roiling shadows fell away from Eirianwen, revealing something unrecognizable in her stead.
She was tall now, far taller than he, her once-perfect features distorted and crudely formed. Flawless white skin was now gray and deeply furrowed; bright almond-shaped eyes sank to expressionless hollows that glowed pale green. Gone were the fine raiments, leaving only tatters of fine gray mist and dull droplets of oozing sap clinging to her rough form. The glory of her hair was likewise the shade of corpses, matted like the hanging mosses in damp forests. And the long arm reaching toward him was a branch clad in thick runneled bark ending in massive knotted hands.
Ysbryd pren. A woodwight, a rare being far more dangerous than bwganod and warths combined. Trahern ducked and rolled as the long gray fingers snatched at him, and a long low hiss escaped the jagged hole of her mouth. Eirianwen had become one with the Great Oak, its dark heart fused with her own. Instead of repeating her first swipe, she clawed a gobbet of resin from her side and fashioned it into a lumpy sphere more nimbly than such rudimentary hands should have been able to. Before she could complete her spell, Trahern summoned a blade-thin disk of spinning air and threw it—
A heavy arm crashed to the floor like a chopped bough even as a high-pitched shriek stabbed his eardrums and brought down a flurry of oak leaves from the high-domed ceiling. Still, the maddened wight raised her remaining arm. Trahern flung up a shield of protection, but the creature changed her target. With the speed and power of a trebuchet, she flung the sphere overhand toward the inert form of Lissy on the other side of the Hall, where it exploded on impact and ignited into a rippling blanket of burning pitch.
The image vanished, revealing Trahern’s ruse. Roaring out her rage, the wight drew one spear-size splinter of wood after another from her back, like arrows from a quiver, and threw them. Though he dodged repeatedly, each spear merely turned in midair and came at him from a new angle. He’d seen this game before. A simple spell designed to keep the quarry busy while Eirianwen watched for an opening to administer something far more lethal. I will not be distracted! As if to invoke a shield of energy, he threw his hands up—and a half dozen glowing blue hawks took wing. Magical constructs, their reflexes were far faster than those of living birds. As they swooped and dove, they snatched the flying spears from the air. As their claws closed on each one, the wood dissolved away into fine dust.
While the hawks did their work, Trahern had not been idle. Teigr! Teigr mawr! With a single powerful bound, he now clung to the trunk of the wight as a great striped tiger, a form he had borrowed from the mortal plane—but no earthly cat was ever such size. With teeth and claws, he ripped chunks of bark from the wight, roaring like a maddened basilisk as the wight sought in vain to reach him. He got one final swipe across her face before a huge gray hand seized him by the skin of his shoulders and flung him across the Hall.
The monstrosity that was Eirianwen didn’t wait to see what he would do next but stepped down from the edge of the dais on tree-trunk legs far thicker at the ankle than the thigh, her feet immediately sporting long twisted roots that spread over the stone floor and tried to trip him. Still a big cat, Trahern leapt high and bounded back out of their reach. Just as quickly, he feinted to the left before running to the right, testing the wight’s speed and agility—
Fast but awkward. Turning was difficult for her. The stiff movements would smooth out, however, as Eirianwen grew accustomed to the body she’d bound herself to. She’ll be even faster then. Somehow, he had to bring the struggle to a decisive end before that happened. He shed the tiger form at once and gathered his focus.
“Tân du!” he shouted, throwing all his strength behind it. Black fire licked over the vivid colors of the dragonstone floor, racing toward the creature in a rapidly growing wall. A woodwight, even a magical one, could not draw power from rock, but Trahern could and did. The flames burned higher, lapping at the monster’s extremities and searing off the twisted roots from her feet. Eirianwen swung her remaining arm, conjuring a blast of frigid air that turned back the flames with a thick wall of ice, a temporary defense against the pulsing heat. But as meltwater ran freely, enormous living branches tore themselves away from the dome high overhead and joined the battle—
Trahern ran as long limbs crashed down on either side of him like kraken tentacles.
Lissy was grateful that the night wind high over the faery realm was warm—she sure wasn’t dressed for flying. Her hair streamed behind her, and the pwca’s mane flowed around her like a soft river of dark silk as she crouched on his broad back between the enormous wings. From time to time, she stole glances at the land below, illumined by strange bright stars. The stunning and surreal beauty made up for the disconcerting height in some ways, but her stomach wasn’t quite convinced. At least she wasn’t afraid of falling. Cadell must know the same keep-my-butt-on-the-horse spell as Trahern does. She kept one hand wound tightly in the pwca’s long mane just the same.
While she was grateful she was no longer in Eirianwen’s hands, her heart protested that she was going in the wrong direction, flying away from the man she loved while he was in grave danger. But what else could she do? He was right that his psycho mother would only use her against him, but still . . .
Something warm and gentle suddenly stirred in her mind, reminding her of when she’d shared Trahern’s mind to experience his memories. And then it was gone, leaving her strangely comforted. I have to trust him, she thought. I have to trust that he’ll do what he needs to do and come back to us. Fox needs him.
I need him.
A blinding flash of bloodred light replaced the magnificent nightscape. Dazed, she lurched to one side, scrambling to keep her balance, as the pwca banked hard. Before she could think to ask what was wrong, Cadell screamed—
And then they were falling.
THIRTY-THREE
Not one but several gaping holes now pierced the dome of the Great Hall. Broken tree limbs littered the floor, charred black by magic. Dark flakes of ash, the remains of thousands of fallen oak leaves, eddied upward into small whirlwinds. Somewhere among the fragments were the remains of Trahern’s riding leathers and even his boots. He’d burned them from his skin with a single word to reveal his ledrith marks to the element of air. The words of conjurations and symbols of power glowed bright enough to cast a halo of light around him as he fought, clad only in simple gray braies that barely reached his knees.
Now, however, Trahern had drawn nearly all the magical energy he could from the rock beneath his bare feet and the swirling air around him. Sweating, winded, burned, and bleeding freely from a dozen wounds large and small, he stood as far from the oaken dais as possible, carefully contemplating his next move. His muscles ached, and his ledrith had begun to fade, but—a small comfort—the thing that was Eirianwen looked far worse.
One rough gray leg dragged, nearly sliced through and leaking strange oily tannins onto the bright stone floor. Her matted hair was charred and missing entirely from one side, and a greenish eye had gone dark. Bark peeled back like rind from a fruit in many places and was nonexistent in others. She’d managed to replace her lost arm, but such a rapid regenerative spell must have consumed an immense amount of power from the Great Oak—it no longer sent its branches to chase him. Those that yet upheld the walls and ceiling of the dome seemed visibly shriveled in the dawn’s light, and the remaining leaves had darkened and wilted.
The two of them had struggled throughout the night, until slowly, surely, Trahern had begun to prevail. Still, Eirianwen was far from defeated. Though exhaustion and rage had made her slightly careless, she was no less dangerous and was already forming up another spell. She will not stop, he thought. If she succeeds here, she will move on to hunt Lissy and Fox. It will not end unless I end it.
His leathers were gone but not the tangible weapons he carried. Imperishable, they lay somewhere among the debris. “I fy llaw!” His light whip flew to his open hand. Its leathern handle fit comfortably in his palm, and the tingle of electricity was familiar and welcome. As a glittering web of dark magic hurtled toward him, he snapped the whip
into the air. Blue light flashed as it destroyed the grasping net, sundering it into a shower of tiny, harmless sparks.
A pity he couldn’t do the same with Eirianwen. She could subvert the power to her own purpose if he struck her directly. But perhaps there is another way . . .
Again, he raised the whip, and this time called to the very sky itself with all that was left in him—and the sky answered. Thunder filled his ears, and static electricity, the presage and promise of unfathomable power, traveled the length of his arm into his body, enlivening and strengthening him even as it shook him like a warth with a bone. Steadying himself as best as he could, Trahern breathed deep, breathed again, and drew down lightning. The blinding bolt latched on to the tip of the light whip—and obeyed it as he snapped it full-length along the floor at Eirianwen’s feet. The castle shook to its ancient foundations as earthen elements struggled, then finally bowed to the rule of air. Dragonstone flared and caught fire, crumbling away to create a broad crevasse that plunged through the many floors as easily as a knife through a cake, stabbing deep, deep into the mountain’s heart beneath.
Hoarse, guttural screams issued from the wight’s jagged mouth, and Eirianwen pounded the sundered rock at the edge of the gaping chasm that now separated them. Quickly, Trahern coiled the whip again. If he could just catch her good leg, jerk it from under her—
But it was Lissy who stood there, shivering as cold air blew up from the abyss, whipping through her long dark curls and plucking at her thin clothes. The sight of those sable eyes so wide and frightened scored his heart with an invisible knife.
The wight was nowhere to be seen.
An illusion. It must be. Raw power yet surrounded him, his snowy hair flying free from its tether as electricity gathered to his call. His arm hovered in midair, muscles trembling, ready to release the light whip one last time.
