Stone Song

by D. L. McDermott

  His thoughts were interrupted when Nieve put her head in the door.

  “How do you feel?” asked Miach MacCecht’s granddaughter, who would no doubt agree with him about his prospects with Sorcha Kavanaugh. Nieve had bound herself to Garrett, who was Finn’s son, and the boy promised to be as brilliant a mage as Miach one day. And Nieve was a fit partner for him. She had proven herself recklessly brave, fighting her eldest renegade brother and his band of bloodthirsty Druids when they had attacked the house last year.

  “I feel fine now.”

  His ribs still ached, but he was used to pain. And it would be easy to get too comfortable here. Nieve was a fantastic cook.

  Even so, he wanted to get out of the fussy, overstuffed bedroom that was his when he slept at Miach’s house. The sorcerer loved the excess of the Victorians. Miach had bought his City Point mansion with the water views from a successful South Boston brewer who had built the place in a nineteenth-century effort to gentrify the neighborhood.

  It hadn’t worked. The house stood out like a sore thumb at the end of a long row of modest double-deckers. But it was big enough for Miach’s sprawling family and followers, and the profusion of ornament, of paneling and marble and stained glass, made the sorcerer happy. It was also a suitable house for a wealthy Irish American philanthropist, which is how most of Boston thought of Miach MacCecht. He gave generously to schools, hospitals, and museums that served the community. The Irish in Southie and Charlestown who remembered the old ways knew better, of course.

  The house made Elada stir-crazy. It made him wish he had bought himself that house he’d been looking at in Quincy, even after Maire refused to share it with him. Simple and classical, it would have been a soothing place to convalesce, particularly after a night like this one.

  “I can’t take any more of this room,” he added, eyeing the Renaissance-revival built-ins with their bulbous carved garlands of fruit, hanging game, and fat, smiling cherubs.

  “Good,” said Nieve. “Because you can’t lounge in bed all night. The old man”—she meant Miach—“has been in his study for an hour with the door locked. He was on the phone with Finn for at least half of that, and you know he can’t stand to talk to Finn for more than five minutes.”

  That was true. Miach’s feud with Finn had reached an uneasy state of détente of late, but it went back two thousand years—and it ran deep. No matter that Nieve was married to Finn’s son.

  “What were they talking about?” Elada asked.

  “Your girlfriend,” said Nieve.

  “She’s not my girlfriend.”

  “And whose fault is that, Elada Brightsword?”

  “What did they say about her?”

  “You think I eavesdrop on my grandfather?”

  “I know you eavesdrop on your grandfather, because you’re the only one who ever knows what’s going on in this family.”

  “So I do,” she agreed. “The old man wants Sorcha Kavanaugh dead. Finn agrees, as you might expect. They say that if she can play the iron music, then she might be a singer—a stone singer—and that makes it too dangerous to let her live. They agreed that if the Prince gets his hands on her and she really does have the true voice, she’ll be able to bring the wall down for him.”

  So Miach suspected Sorcha was a stone singer. Of course he did. He wasn’t stupid.

  “Sorcha wouldn’t do that,” said Elada.

  “So she is a stone singer,” said Nieve.

  “I didn’t say she was a stone singer.”

  “You didn’t have to.”

  Elada got out of bed and reached for his sword.

  “What are you going to do?” asked Nieve.

  “I’m going to reason with Miach.”

  Nieve snorted. “Good luck. He’s already called Donal. He’s leaving nothing to chance. The Manhattan Fae are coming north to kill your black-haired bard.”

  Finn alone would have been a formidable adversary. Against Finn and Donal, Sorcha would have no chance.

  “She may not even have the voice,” said Elada, who knew in his gut that she did.

  “They’re not willing to take that chance,” said Nieve.

  “Thank you.” Elada strapped his sword to his back. His glamour hid it from human eyes, but Miach would understand the gesture.

  He found the sorcerer in his study, the paneled library with the bay window that looked out over Boston Harbor.

  “You should be resting,” said Miach when he saw Elada.

  “We need to talk about Sorcha Kavanaugh.”

  Miach sighed. “This house has too many ears. Who told you?”

  “Don’t change the subject. This is not about your family. This is about Sorcha Kavanaugh.”

  “The matter has been dealt with,” said Miach. He was used to issuing orders.

  “I’m no longer bound to you by magic,” said Elada. “Only friendship. So I will tell you plainly. What you are planning is wrong.”

  “Of course it’s wrong,” said Miach, his irritation plain. “But it is necessary. If the wall comes down, the Court will enslave or kill my entire family.”

  “Sorcha may not even be a stone singer. You could be murdering an innocent woman.”

  “That is a chance I am willing to take to protect my family.”

  “You didn’t always think that way.”

  “When we fought the Druids,” said Miach, “I refused to let Finn kill the children because they were innocents. I was weak then, and we are paying for it now. The Druids are returning. Rediscovering their power. The girl, at the very least, has the talents of a bard. She can play the old instruments, she can wield a cláirseach. That is dangerous enough that she must be prevented from falling into the Prince’s hands.”

  “Then let me prevent it,” said Elada. “I’ll find her and bring her to you.”

  “Plans are already in motion,” said Miach.

  “Change them,” said a woman’s voice from the door.

  Elada and Miach turned. Miach’s lover, Helene, stood on the threshold, her blond hair hanging loose over her shoulders, her long legs clad in deep-blue jeans, one of Miach’s needle-tailored shirts half-buttoned over them.

  “I didn’t mean for you to find out,” said Miach, looking his lover in the eyes. “But this must be done.”

  “That’s what you said when you tried to kill my best friend.”

  Helene’s voice was steely. Elada had never thought of her as a potential ally.

  They had always been on opposite sides. First, she had thwarted Elada’s attempt, under Miach’s orders, to kill Beth Carter. It had been obvious that Miach had desired Helene even then. The blonde was undeniably attractive. But the couple had gotten off on the wrong foot. And then Miach’s renegade son Brian had kidnapped her and held her prisoner.

  No, not just held her prisoner. He had tortured her. Brian had known she was claustrophobic, and he’d locked her in a narrow attic closet. Miach had rescued her, but she’d wanted nothing more to do with the Fae after that.

  The sorcerer had tried wooing her from afar, but she had rejected all his gifts and overtures. Only when Helene had been stalked by mad Druids herself, when she had understood the stakes, the death and destruction that would be unleashed if the Fae Court escaped their prison, did she come to understand Miach MacCecht’s motives and start to care for him.

  “You have never met this woman, Helene,” said Miach MacCecht. “She is nothing and no one to you. And she poses a mortal threat to this house and everyone in it.”

  It was the wrong tack to take. Elada could have told him that. But when it came to his family, Miach was blind to reason.

  “So was Beth,” said Helene. “You found another way with her. Find another way with this girl. Murdering an innocent woman makes you as bad as the Fae Court you’re so desperate to keep imprisoned.”

  “
Your understanding of the matter is human, and limited,” said Miach. “You could not possibly comprehend the depravity of the Court. And I will do what is necessary to be sure you never have to experience it firsthand.”

  “I’m not sure which is worse. That you planned to hide this from me, or that you planned to do this at all,” said Helene.

  She spun on her heel and walked out. Elada watched her go and turned to face Miach.

  “That was a mistake,” said Elada.

  “She doesn’t understand.”

  “She understands better than you. Helene is right. Sorcha Kavanaugh is an innocent. She’s got no more control of her power than Beth Carter did. And you would have killed Beth—you would have had me kill Beth—and lost a powerful ally had Conn not intervened.”

  Miach shook his head. “This is different.”

  It wasn’t different, but it was clear that there would be no reasoning with Miach MacCecht. Elada could think of only one way to save Sorcha Kavanaugh.

  “Do you mean to renew our bond?” asked Elada.

  “No,” said Miach. “I want Helene for a partner and can’t offer her anything less than a full commitment. She and I are bound. I’ll share her span, however long or short that may be. I am not free to be tied to a right hand anymore.”

  It meant he would fight unprotected unless Elada chose to protect him, and out of friendship, Elada always would, but it also meant something else. “Then I am still free,” Elada said, “to bind myself to a human.”

  “And Maire is more than worthy of that honor,” said Miach.

  “Maire refused me,” said Elada. “What we shared was always friendship, nothing warmer. Our affair has ended, leaving me free to bind myself to any woman I choose, and that includes black-haired bards who can wield a cláirseach.” And if Elada was bound to Sorcha Kavanaugh, killing her would take Elada’s life, too.

  Miach’s eyes opened fractionally. “That is a ruthless piece of emotional blackmail. And I always fancied myself the master strategist in our partnership. It would be an effective threat, if you really meant to do it.”

  “I will do it,” said Elada, “if it is the only way to stop you.”

  “You would be throwing your life away for a woman you’ve barely spoken to.”

  “I’m not doing it for Sorcha Kavanaugh. I won’t deny that I want her, but I barely know her. This is about more than that. I’m doing this for you. If you kill Sorcha, you’ll lose Helene. You’ll lose Beth Carter as an ally. And you’ll lose the better, more human, part of yourself.”

  Elada didn’t stay to hear Miach’s counterarguments. He found Helene Whitney downstairs on the phone in the hall, an overnight bag slung over her shoulder. She hung up and turned to Elada.

  “That was one of Miach’s pet policemen. He called to tell us there was a break-in at the Black Rose, and an assault. One of the musicians was just taken to Mass General. They said they were attacked by a Fae.”

  Sorcha.

  “Are you going to tell Miach where she is?” asked Elada.

  “Are you going to prevent him from killing this girl?”

  “I’m going to try,” said Elada. “But I’m not Conn of the Hundred Battles. I’m only the former right hand of a sorcerer.”

  Helene smiled. He was fairly certain she had never smiled at him before. And he was surprised to discover that he liked it, the approval radiating from his best friend’s lover.

  “You’ve kept Miach safe all these years,” she said. “And god knows even I want to kill him sometimes, so one itinerant musician should be no trouble for you.”

  Her confidence fortified him. Of course, it wasn’t the itinerant musician that concerned him. He could have disarmed Sorcha Kavanaugh in the alley if he’d been willing to hurt her. It was Finn and Donal who worried him. Both would be fierce adversaries, for all their cultivated ennui.

  He understood why Helene was leaving, but he hadn’t intended to come between Miach and his lover.

  “Miach is a good man,” said Elada. “He was right when he refused to put the Druid children to death two thousand years ago. And it is his love for his family, and for you, that drives him to contemplate murder now.”

  Helene swallowed. “Do you think it’s easy for me to leave him? It isn’t. But I can’t live under his roof while he plots to kill a woman as blameless as Beth was. And I can’t come back if he carries out this killing.”

  “Then I’ll have to stop him for you,” said Elada.

  He put Helene in a cab and made sure that the driver was a local who knew that he would risk Miach MacCecht’s displeasure if the woman failed to reach her Back Bay apartment safely. Then he set out for the West End.

  When Elada arrived at Mass General, he expected to find Sorcha Kavanaugh in the emergency room, but instead it was the other player, the fiddler, Tommy Carrell who was lying in a curtained bay, doped up on painkillers, bruised and cut, with one arm broken and several fingers in a splint.

  Tommy Carrell screamed when Elada entered, and the Fae was forced to compel the injured man to silence.

  Compulsion was not one of his talents, and he hated to use it, because he knew he was clumsy. Miach could compel with gentle suggestion, thread his thoughts into those of others, and weave his voice into another being’s mind with consummate skill. Elada could not. His own abilities were more akin to barking orders at a frightened child.

  The interrogation that followed was a necessary evil, and when it was done, Elada knew where Sorcha Kavanaugh had been taken, and by whom.

  Chapter 6

  Sorcha hadn’t known what passing would be like. If she’d had to guess, she might have imagined it was instantaneous, that you closed your eyes and when you opened them again, you were someplace else. Or maybe that it worked the way it did for Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, that the Fae could click their heels three times and think of home and be there.

  It was nothing like that. The Prince Consort had reached out a hand, drawn Sorcha to her feet, and . . . traveled . . . her through wood, concrete, dirt, stone, water, earth, and air. It was like being buried, suffocated, obliterated.

  When she emerged in the yard beside Gran’s house, gulping in air, her mind was still frozen with terror. Her body shook with horror and revulsion and the only thing that tethered her to reality, such as it was, was the Prince, his fine-boned fingers laced in hers.

  But he wasn’t paying any attention to her at all. Their strange passage hadn’t affected him. He was as elegant, as assured as he had been moments before in the Black Rose. And his face was alive with childlike delight. He was utterly fascinated by Gran’s house. He released her hand and stalked to the door, touched the narrow wooden clapboards beside it, but not, she noted, the cold iron latch, hinges, nails, or straps.

  “Who built this place?” he asked.

  She didn’t want to answer, but she didn’t have a choice. Her cold iron was gone, and the Prince’s whims were her commands. And the Fae wine still had her in its grasp. Even after that horrific journey, she was still in the grip of a powerful, unwanted lust.

  At least in the matter of the house, she could frustrate him by answering honestly. “I don’t know who built it. It was Gran’s house, but it’s really old, and she wasn’t exactly a member of the historical society.”

  The Prince turned a baleful eye on Sorcha. “Why are you so sure she didn’t build it?”

  “Because it’s been here for at least two hundred years.”

  He shrugged. “A reasonable span for a Druid, if she was skilled.”

  “My grandmother wasn’t a Druid,” Sorcha said.

  “No? Then why did she gird her house with so much iron?”

  “To protect me,” Sorcha said, but even as the words left her mouth, she knew that wasn’t right. Gran’s house had been ironbound before Sorcha had arrived.

  The Prince laughed. “Oh,
Sorcha, I think you have more secrets than I guessed. Let’s peel them back, one by one, shall we?”

  He ordered her to open the back door and hold it wide for him to walk through and, bereft of cold iron, she complied like the puppet she was. Once inside, he made a cursory examination of the kitchen, eyeing the iron pots and pans with distaste. Then, with preternatural speed, he gripped her arm, spun her about, and lifted her onto the island countertop in the center of the room.

  The Prince pushed her skirt up, grasped her below the knees, and yanked her forward, and she found herself lying on the butcher-block surface, her legs hanging off the end, the Prince standing between them.

  It was difficult to think straight. She despised him, but she wanted to run her fingers through his long black hair and taste his wide lush mouth. Sorcha gripped the countertop, and she tried to push herself away from him, but he said, “None of that, my pretty black-haired bard,” and when he caressed down her thighs to her aching center, she froze and mewled like a kitten.

  He lowered his head and began, at long last, to minister directly to her need with his mouth, and she went boneless for him, her whole being concentrated on the place between her legs. Her arms slid to her sides, then off the counter, where they encountered something cold.

  Iron. More than the delicate ring that used to pierce her nipple. A metal bar set into the side of the island. Enough cold metal to cut through her haze of desire, to wake her to the horror of what was happening, but the Prince’s grip was firm and she was trapped. Frantic, her hands yanked at the iron rail but it was bolted to the wood.

  Her fingers searched up and down the bar until they encountered something else. A hook. Welded to the bar. A pot hanging from the hook.

  Salvation.

  She wrapped her fingers around the handle. The Prince was wholly intent on his seduction, his attention focused on the juncture of her thighs. So she lifted the pot off its hook and swung.

  The Prince’s reflexes were faster than those of a man, but not fast enough. He raised one elegant hand to deflect the blow, and took the full force of Sorcha’s swing on his wrist. The pot connected with an audible, sickening crack. Momentum carried it farther, and it glanced off one angular cheekbone.