Stone Cold © 2017 by Rory Ni Coileain
Book Eight of the SoulShares Series
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
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Digital ISBN 978-1-62601-404-6
Print ISBN 978-1-62601-405-3
First Edition September 2017
Chapter One
November 14, 2013 (human reckoning)
The Realm
Slowly Maelduin gave ground, up the uneven terrain of the washed-out river bank. The high ground was his friend, and his opponent’s enemy, provided he could stay on his feet. Blood dripped from his sword-arm, splashed on the toes of his boots, the stones and earth under his feet.
His opponent moved in, keeping a tempting but careful distance; Maelduin was certain that if he yielded to that temptation and lunged, he would come up an exact hair’s-breadth short, overextended, and in danger of losing a limb, and then his life. He knew, because that was what would happen should his opponent do likewise.
It might have been a bad idea, letting that mage imbue it with the ability to kill me if it can.
Maelduin shook his head, sending sweat trickling into his eyes, blurring his vision. He would never have learned what he needed to know, never honed his skill to such a lethal edge, if his life had never been at risk.
His opponent smiled. A rarity—it, he, had never spoken, and had seldom smiled, during all the years of their extended contest. Like Maelduin himself. Why waste time on pleasantries, when his opponent was all that stood between himself and the prize he sought? Smiles would not make him the greatest blade-dancer in the history of the Fae race.
His opponent circled below him. Seeking another way to come up the bluff, most likely. And he would surely find one, because Maelduin had.
He stepped back onto flat ground and continued to pace backward, following the line of the bluff to keep his opponent on uneven ground, and to give himself time to catch his breath, to let the burning pain in his sword-arm subside. The wicked slice had been meant solely to distract, of course—Fae healed too rapidly from any wound not lethal for his opponent to have had any other intention.
His opponent followed, inexorable. Watching him flow up the bluff was like watching a parasol-seed caught in a breeze, beautiful and iridescent and weightless.
Only this seed would be his death, if it reached him—
His opponent blurred into motion, leaping to the high ground, his sword raised despite his own evident exhaustion. Not to parry or defend, but to attack. And even at the limit of exhaustion, after a day and a night and a dawn of fighting for his life, Maelduin was breathless, in awe of the beauty of the other male’s lethal purpose.
His own purpose. His own face, his own form.
His opponent was a mage’s creation, a comhrac-scátha—a magickal ghost, a living mirror, with all Maelduin’s skill with a blade, all his grace, both natural and learned, as well as the wiles and unpredictability of living magick. And all the hatred in the Fae’s heart, his single-minded need to become the best scian-damhsa, blade-dancer, the Fae race had ever known, to allow him to kill the one whose death was the true focus of his life.
The comhrac-scátha was contained in a crystal; normally when he fought it, he carried the crystal in a pouch attached to his belt by a thin cord, easily broken, so he could cast the thing away and end the combat. Yesterday, though, in preparing for this combat, he had laced the crystal into his boot, where there could be no retrieving it in the heat of the fight. It was time to discover whether his decades of training had prepared him to fulfill his vow. The only end to this combat would be death.
And not his own.
Maelduin charged at the same instant his opponent did, sword raised to guard position. Swords rang against each other, louder and more musical than the birds in the dawn light. Gazes locked, two pairs of faceted blue topaz eyes promising pain and death. If there had ever been any strangeness to looking into his own eyes with such hatred, he had accustomed himself to it long ago.
He could feel his opponent’s exhaustion, even desperation, where they strove together. It was time to end this trial. He twisted back and away, opening up enough space to size up the other. Grappling was useless—neither of them had the advantage of physical strength. Just a moment’s opening was all he needed—
His magickal twin slashed down through the space between them. A line burned down Maelduin’s forehead, his cheek, his chest. Blood spilled hot, blinding him in one eye, soaking his blouse.
Distraction. Only a distraction.
Maelduin stepped back. His opponent, still engaged, followed him, off balance. Maelduin spun on the ball of one foot, stomped with the heel of the other on the back of his opponent’s knee, staggering him. And in the instant his twin’s gaze dropped, Maelduin’s sword slashed down, slicing through long blond hair and spine and softer things.
He barely had time to yank his sword free before the mutilated corpse, the image of his own, vanished. The crystal in his boot burned cold with the return of magick to its source.
Slowly, slowly, Maelduin straightened, hardly noticing the crawling burn as flesh knit to flesh or the tightness of drying blood on his skin.
The test was over.
* * *
Maelduin glared at the iridescent dragonfly hovering inches from his face. The dragonfly, unimpressed, glared back, its eyes tiny opals afire with the rays of the setting sun and a spark glinting between its open jaws. The crystal gazebo he had channeled for his garden was a delight to the eyes, but given his lack of knowledge of appropriate warding channelings, he was required to share it with the local microfauna. Which cared nothing for whether or not a Fae might have things to be about, other than staring crossed-eyed at bronze-scaled wings and a minute barbed tail.
Grumbling, Maelduin bent again to his work, smoothing his open right hand over the soft vellum spread out on the table before him, clearing away its fine sprinkling of metallic scales. He raised his head again, sharply, at the smell of scorched hair. A few strands of his pale blond hair fell to make elegant patterns on the vellum before him, their tips charred black.
I swear it’s laughing at me. Dragonfly fire smelled like burning uiscebai.
Enough. Maelduin cupped a hand around the tiny creature and urged it on its way, then bent again to regard the document he was writing. Was trying to write. The first few words he had written still gleamed wet and black on the fine sheepskin, sprinkled with tiny bronze shards.
Eithne, mo colcathrair le cúrtés…
Even Maelduin wasn’t certain whether he spared Eithne, by naming her as “cousin by courtesy,” or insulted her. She was, in fact, a near-cousin by Fae standards, her grandmother having been the half-sister of Maelduin’s grandsire. Fae, even bound as they were beyond all reason by love of kin, were loath to be recognized as sharing his tainted bloodline. Distancing the fair Eithne from the Cursed House was, perhaps, an act of kindness. But, then, Eithne and her entire line had rejected him from birth onward, because of that taint. So why concern himself with whether or not he spared her anything?
Probably because considering such matters allowed him to put off what he had to do.
What it was, at last, time to do. Taking a deep breath, he picked up the quill once again.
By my own hand and will, I do resign to you all rights and titles and magicks falling to me as Head of House…
The ancient words were pretty, but carried little true meaning, at least the part about the magicks of a Head of House. Some of the Great Houses, the lap dogs of the Royals, invested their Lords and Ladies with unique magicks. His own House had been poor even before its fall, and now possessed little more than its pride, which had been destroyed, utterly, before Maelduin had been born.
Now he would reclaim it.
No Fae would ever know that the honor of his House had been restored, of course. Not even the new Head of that House. Maelduin supposed that was a pity. He couldn’t be sure, though, as he’d never had any use for pity, and knew himself unlikely to recognize it in whatever guise it presented itself.
But he, himself, would know. That would more than suffice.
Single-minded Fae were rare. No one discipline could hold the attention of most Fae for longer than a double hand of years or so, before the Fae grew bored. To the extent, that is, that any Fae other than a mage would bend to something called a ‘discipline’ at all. But Maelduin’s entire life, over a century and a half of it, had been devoted to a single purpose. A purpose he had at last achieved.
The cost had been high, as other Fae might reckon it. The last of his House’s wealth, save only what was needed for the crafting of his blade, had gone to an ancient mage, years ago, for the creation of his comhrac-scátha.
The crystal that had housed the comhrac-scátha sat on the edge of the table, now, glowing a faint, dull violet. A good keepsake, perhaps the only one that interested him. He palmed it, and tucked it safely away.
Fae had no patience for signs or portents. Yet his victory had been one such, he knew. The time for training was over. It was time, now, to pay the final cost, half his soul. Time to take up the weapon he had become, and kill the male who had been the best scian-damhsa before him. The male who had murdered his father and disgraced his House, and left behind a child to be suckled on scorn, never to so much as imagine the cherishing every other Fae child knew.
Maelduin stared at the sheet of vellum, pondering. He had nothing more to say. His journey lay before him, the journey from which no Fae ever returned. It was time to lay down the pen, and take up his sword, the oath-blade with truesilver beaten into the steel of it, the blade that would not taste blood until it drew the blood of his father’s killer, or else it would turn on him and take his own life for his oath-breaking.
One last task for the pen, though. He dipped the quill, and waited for his hand to steady. And signed away his old life, to make room for the new.
D’rér mo lámh—
Maelduin Guaire.
* * *
You should be away, sister.
The word forming out of the silver-blue lines under Aine’s feet was not ‘sister’ in any language remembered by post-Sundering Fae; it had nothing to do with the blood kinship so prized by the Fae, and everything to do with the ties of magick, the web of the Loremasters.
“I know,” Aine murmured. Her official task was complete; she had added to the Pattern the channeling she had discovered in the Loremasters’ ancient library, to give those who passed through an Air Fae’s gift of understanding all languages borne on the air. Time was too short on the other side to risk any misunderstanding.
But she made no move to rise; her lilac skirts still pooled where she knelt, gathered close in places where she had had to move it to read the d’aos’Faein script used by the Loremasters still within the Pattern. “I must go. Yet I do not wish it.”
She tilted her head back and looked up, at the sliver of the full moon visible at the edge of the round window. She shivered slightly, wrapping her arms around herself. Of all the strange news from the human world, Cuinn’s tale of binding the moon and its magick—no, her magick—was the most unsettling. Cuinn had bound one of the Mothers of the Gille Dubh, and forced her magick to serve the Pattern.
The Dancer must pass through.
“He is death itself, dancing the blades. And he is sworn to kill the guardian of the nexus. How can this bode well?”
Lines could not shrug, but these lines tried. We have not Foreseen everything. But we know he must be allowed to pass.
Aine closed her eyes with a sigh. She had participated in the group Foreseeing, as best she could; she knew the truth of the vision as well as her voluntarily imprisoned peers. And if her unofficial task bore the fruit she hoped it would, perhaps the worst possible consequences could still be avoided. Her fingertips brushed the little parchment scroll tucked under the hem of her skirt; she dared not be too specific in her warnings, but surely even a vague oracle was better than the silence upon which the other Loremasters insisted. And might distract the Dancer from his purpose. “Let us hope, then—”
And froze, like a dart-wing in amber, in the throes of a lesser Foreseeing. The dark-haired human, Kevin. Tiernan’s SoulShare. His body wracked with sobs, shuddering, unable to draw breath. Alone.
She would have collapsed as the vision released her, had she not already been kneeling. Not trusting herself to stand, or even to speak, she extinguished the magick of the wall-mounted torches with a whispered word, and Faded.
But only to a copse of trees, a stone’s throw from the tower. She was, after all, the closest thing the Pattern had, or needed, to a guardian.
And when the moon rose, and with it the wind, and the screams, she was the closest thing to a witness.
Chapter Two
Washington, D.C.
“This floor is going to be fucking amazing.”
Terry couldn’t help laughing at Garrett’s enthusiasm. The blond pole dancer was bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet on a six-foot-by-six-foot section of ash sprung flooring, with a grin on his face that could have lit up any of the monuments on the Mall. “It is. Talk Tiernan into installing it downstairs on the pole stage, too.”
“Hells to the yes.”
The square of flooring Garrett was checking out was a sample—one of several supplied by various dance floor manufacturers eager to get the business of a brand-new state-of-the-art dance and fitness studio, and in Terry’s opinion far and away the best of the lot. And it looked as if his business partner agreed with him. Or would, once he stopped bouncing.
“You look ready to get back on the pole.”
“Once again I say, hells to the yes.” Garrett jumped down, circling his shoulders and pulling his elbows across his body to stretch out his triceps as he wandered around the shell of what would eventually become one of the three planned studios—one ballet, one pole and aerial, and one that would be used mostly for fitness classes, but could be tricked out as a small performance space for special occasions. Even a shell was better than what they’d had a month ago, and it would be even better soon, once some of the workers who were busy with sheet rock, flooring, and ceilings in Purgatory proper were freed up to start on the studios.
Not that anything about Purgatory was, or had ever been, proper. Terry missed the hell out of the place, and he knew that whatever he was feeling wasn’t even close to what Garrett was going through. Terry had only been forced to put off his studio dreams for a few months when Purgatory imploded after the gas leak—dreams he had only let himself start to have a month or so prior to the collapse. But the club—more importantly, the dancing in it—had been Garrett’s whole life for more than ten years.
Except for the part of his life that involved Lochlann, of course. By now, the twinge of jealousy that plucked at Terry every time he was reminded of a friend’s partnered bliss was such an old familiar companion, he barely noticed it. Except, of course, when he was reminded of Josh and Conall, given that Josh was the proverbial One Who Got Away. Or maybe the proverbial One He’d Been Dumb Enough to Leave for a Rich Asshole. Who had then dumped him for a supermodel, or close enough to one.
G
arrett paused next to a pile of construction debris and nudged it with a toe, simultaneously nudging Terry out of his swiftly-deepening funk. “What’s this all doing in here?”
Terry frowned. Paint trays and rollers, a couple of tarps that had seen better days, a flat-bladed concrete rake, a stack of ceramic tiles and lengths of pipe, and what he thought was a urinal, albeit one designed by someone with Tiernan Guaire’s sense of humor. “Looks like we’re the dumping ground for all the miscellaneous stuff from downstairs.”
Garrett shook his head. “I suppose they’re running out of room outside.”
True enough—the trailer the general contractor had been using as an office had been hauled out three days ago, once enough of the electrical had gone in downstairs to let them set up in a corner of the once and future club, because the walls of the new building were crowding the trailer out. “And most of this can’t go in the dumpster in the alley.”
“It’s ruining the aesthetic.” Garrett pouted.
“Soon, Little Grasshopper.” Impossible to stay in a funk when Garrett was trying to make him laugh. “Let’s worry about getting the floor in and the walls up before we worry about the aesthetic.”
“Says the man who spent 14 hours last week looking at paneling samples.”
Terry laughed. He couldn’t help it. “Guilty.”
Garrett glanced at his watch. “Damn. I have to run, or I’m going to be late for dinner. You want me to talk to Mac about getting this shit out of here?”
Mac had been acting as Tiernan’s liaison with the general contractor since construction had started, with occasional help from his husband Lucien, and their partner Rhoann, when a construction worker needed a talking-to. Lucien wasn’t big on the talking part, but a bouncer who was nearly as broad as he was tall and furry from neck to toes could be amazingly persuasive without saying a word. And Rhoann… well, 6’5” of spectacularly well-muscled blond could get more or less whatever he wanted out of more or less anyone.
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