Stone Song

by D. L. McDermott

  The Fae beside him was different. Donal was no war leader, no warrior, no sorcerer. He was like Keiran. He flattered and mocked. Sorcha suspected in the presence of his betters, when the Prince was in attendance, he capered, because he believed in the hierarchy the Prince Consort had spoken of. His clothes were like Keiran’s, overly rich and ostentatious. A shearling coat over soft fawn trousers and no shirt, his red hair hanging loose over his chest.

  She hated him on sight.

  Finn gestured to indicate Tommy at his feet. “If your Druid plays as sweetly, we may take her voice and keep her for her skill with the harp, though not an iron-strung instrument, of course.”

  The key was not to panic. That wouldn’t help anything. It wouldn’t help Elada. She would rather die than be caged once more as she had been in Keiran’s house, and she knew that if they had the magic to muffle her hearing with the cuffs, they no doubt had the magic to take her Druid will away from her before she could even take her own life.

  She had an unlikely ally in Donal.

  “There will be no keeping her,” he said. “She will come to New York, where she will be executed for the murder of Keiran, and any would-be Druids will learn what happens when they try to develop their unnatural gifts.”

  “Perhaps,” said Finn, with a wave of his hand. “And perhaps not.”

  “You may have the fiddler if you are so desirous of a musician. I care nothing for him.”

  “You agreed to free him,” said Elada.

  “I agreed,” said Donal. “Here, I release him. He is free to go.” He flicked Tommy’s shoulder, and Tommy appeared to wake up suddenly. “But you are in no position to collect him if Finn wishes to keep him.” He smiled smugly.

  They weren’t going to let Tommy go.

  “Give me the fiddler,” said Elada darkly, “or I will unleash hell.”

  Finn cocked his head, looked at Tommy, then looked at Elada and said, “No. I have danced to Miach’s tune for too long. I am keeping the fiddler and the Druid. Leave while you still can, Brightsword. My grandson is fond of you and I would not have him look at me with censure just yet. There is time enough for that when he is grown.”

  Sorcha reached for her music, but it didn’t come.

  Chapter 15

  Sorcha tried to hum, to find the power inside her and nurture it like a small flame, but there was nothing. Fear and sorcery had turned her mute. She couldn’t destroy the gag as she had the apple, and that left Elada surrounded and outnumbered.

  Donal rose. “I am not leaving without the Druid.”

  “Then stay here,” said Finn. “We’re going home.”

  He snapped. Two Fae moved toward Elada.

  She expected him to reach for his sword. She expected to watch him die. Instead, he snapped the gag that was stopping her mouth and muting her voice.

  She cleared her throat and searched for the right note. She wanted to hurt the Fae who were closing in around Elada, without catching him in the blast. She didn’t know what tone to choose. The cuffs were making it difficult to think clearly.

  Her hesitation was their undoing.

  “Don’t kill him,” snarled Finn. And then he snapped and barked, “Garrett!”

  Two things happened at once.

  Something black and metallic flew out of the darkness and fell over Elada. An iron net, she realized. The rustle of tiny iron links forming tiny iron chains, woven into a lattice. She could hear it even through the sorcery of the cuffs, because it was cold iron and she was attuned to the metal’s resonance.

  In the same instant a man stepped out of the shadows. He was built more lightly than Finn, but something in his bearing, in the way he held himself and moved with preternatural grace, indicated he was Fae. The resemblance, both to Finn and to Nieve’s little boy, was undeniable. This was Garrett, Miach’s former pupil, Nieve’s husband, Finn’s son.

  He held out his hand, and a sense of déjà vu overtook Sorcha like a wave of sickness. She had seen the gesture before. He turned his hand and opened it palm up, then lifted it as though bouncing a ball in the air.

  Her ears popped. Silence descended, utter and absolute. It was the quiet between stars, the void brought here to earth, and it crippled Sorcha utterly. She could neither hear nor speak nor sing. She was utterly defenseless, and she could not help Elada, who was pinned to the ground beside her by hundreds of links of iron chain.

  Donal was shouting at Finn, but there was no sound, and when he realized the futility of what was going on, he turned on his heel, then crossed the room to Sorcha and struck her a blow that sent her flying across the room and into one of the pillars. Her back struck the column soundlessly. The last thing she saw as she slid to the floor was Donal, marching out the door, and Finn observing her with a smile. Then everything went black and she knew no more.

  • • •

  Elada couldn’t move beneath the iron net. He saw Donal strike Sorcha, but he couldn’t lift his head off the ground. The silence lasted for several minutes. From his limited point of view he could see Fae and half-bloods moving around the room and Finn’s black-clad legs approaching.

  Elada’s ears popped. The silence lifted.

  “If we kill him,” said Finn to an unseen conversant, “she will follow him into death, and I don’t want that. Not yet.”

  Elada recognized the voice that spoke next. “He must renounce her,” said Nieve’s husband, Garrett.

  “Are you ready to give up your Druid slut, Brightsword,” said Finn in the ringing voice that carried across battlefields.

  “Fuck you,” Elada ground out through the pain of the iron.

  “Do it now and you can go home,” said Garrett.

  “Why are you doing this, Garrett?” asked Elada.

  “He is following his father’s orders,” said Finn. “As a loyal son must.”

  But he didn’t like it; Elada could tell that. “Nieve won’t forgive you for this, Garrett,” Elada said.

  “She might not forgive me killing you, but the Druid is nothing to her,” Garrett replied without conviction. “Renounce her and everything will turn out all right.”

  Elada laughed. “If I renounce her, you’re free to kill her anytime.”

  “We’re free to kill her anytime in any case,” said Finn. “But I’d prefer to make a meal of it, so to speak. It’s been a long time for me. And if you don’t release her, I’ll make you watch.”

  “You’re not going to kill her so long as we’re bound,” said Elada.

  “You overestimate your importance, Brightsword. My grandson is fond of you, but he is also fond of tiny plastic racecars and a stuffed giraffe named Boo. I stepped on one of the cars last week and broke it to pieces. He cried for an hour but then he got over his loss.”

  “Little Garrett might forget me, but Nieve won’t. Kill me, even indirectly through Sorcha, and she’ll never take your son back into her bed.”

  “He’s right,” said Garrett. “You have to sever their connection first. Nieve won’t forgive me for taking her minivan-driving white knight.”

  Finn was silent for a moment. “Nieve has already borne you one child. She won’t be able to give you another. Her value is much diminished. I would not be sorry to see you parted from her.”

  “But I would,” said Garrett. “And I am the only one who can render your Druid mute and make her safe to torture.”

  “Then sever their ties and achieve both our ends. You may spare your bitch’s lapdog and I will have my Druid pet.”

  Elada had one final piece of information to use, Nieve’s pregnancy, but it was his last coin, and he knew he must spend it wisely.

  The fiddler, at least, had been left behind when the Fianna had departed. That was something. No one seemed much interested in the dazed and injured musician sitting on the floor, and Tommy Carrell didn’t appear to understand most of what was hap
pening around him.

  Sorcha was out cold. Through the iron net that bound him Elada saw Garrett lift her eyelids and shine a flashlight into her eyes. He did so gingerly, as though she might cut him in half with laser beams, but she was totally unconscious. He didn’t know if Druids had stronger constitutions than humans. He’d never cared before, so had never troubled to find out. He hoped they did. Or that some of his Fae strength, and not just his longevity, had been gifted to her when they’d bound their fates together.

  It was the only thing keeping her alive, that vow.

  It was also good that Garrett was nervous. Elada hadn’t suspected he’d be able to cast a silence. That was advanced magic, and Elada knew that Miach hadn’t taught him that.

  Or the spell he was casting now. It wasn’t a silence. Elada was familiar enough with that particular enchantment. They had used it extensively in their war with the Druids, and Miach had developed the technique to perfection. It was what had allowed them, defeated, scattered, many of them grievously injured, to prevail at last against the Druids.

  Elada had only escaped because warriors like him had not been of interest to the most powerful Druid mages. If he’d been held by powerful magic users, he would not have been able to break free. But he’d been held by a family with only one full operating Druid, who was indolent and often away. The marks he had carved into their flesh that commanded obedience to Druid will had done his acolytes no good, because they had not developed their voices sufficiently to use them. Once they’d been killed, Elada and his companions had ambushed the chief Druid and crushed his windpipe so he could not use his voice.

  They had interrogated him afterward, made him draw maps and indicate who was being held where. Their Druid jailor had not been well placed in the hierarchy, so he had not known the whereabouts of any but the most prized captives: Miach, Finn, the Prince.

  The choice for Elada had been clear. He wanted to free Miach first. But there was no way for three warriors with no magical ability to take out a temple complex of high-ranking Druids, so he had done the only thing he could do. He had freed the Prince first.

  Everyone knew of the enchantment cast on the Prince Consort by the Queen. It conveyed virtual immortality, and marked him forever as hers. Not, to Elada’s mind, an enviable state.

  Elada had been raised with the Court. As a shy introverted child, he’d found the nonstop revelry an assault on his senses. As a serious young student of the blade, he’d found their indolence and decadence despicable.

  But there were those who envied the Prince, because with the Queen’s . . . love wasn’t the right word, but perhaps regard was . . . came status and power. The silver skin was its ultimate symbol. She had cast it, she said, because he was the most beautiful and perfect Fae that had ever been born, and he was hers alone. She would not tolerate scars marring his flesh. Nor would she allow death to part them.

  Elada had seen the effect of the silver skin first hand. He’d sparred with the Prince when he was young, pushed onto center stage by his parents, who’d hoped he might find some favor at Court, and he’d scored points and drawn blood more than once. Always, the Prince’s wounds closed instantly.

  Even knowing that, though, he’d been shocked last year at what had happened when the Prince had kidnapped Beth Carter. The Prince had been holding her at his estate in Ireland, trying to force her to open a gate in the wall between worlds, and she’d tricked him. An amazing feat for a human, even a Druid, to strike a bargain to their advantage with a Fae. But she had. And when the gate had opened, the Prince had been sucked into it. He’d attempted to drag Beth with him into the Otherworld, where she would have been tortured to death, but Conn of the Hundred Battles severed the Prince’s arm with his famed blade, the Summoner.

  The Prince had flown into the void and his arm had fallen to the ground in this world, a relic of pure silver. Living metal. It moved when no one was looking. Miach had kept it locked in a box until it was stolen and the Prince managed to cross the divide once more—and reattach his arm.

  The spell was so powerful that the Druids had never been able to break it, never been able to carve their marks of command on the Prince’s flesh. Elada had hated the bastard. His Queen’s excesses had brought on the whole bloody war in the first place, but he’d needed the Prince if he’d hoped to free Miach, because only the Prince could take out the operating Druids who guarded Miach’s mound without succumbing to the commands of their voices.

  So they had freed the Prince next. There had been no reason to waste powerful Druids guarding him, because the means of holding him were purely physical, as they had been with Elada and his companions. And once the Prince was free, they went for Miach.

  It took less than an hour for the Prince to find and kill the three high-level Druids who’d guarded Miach. For the rest, Elada and his compatriots had stuffed cloth in their ears to muffle whatever weaker Druid voices they might encounter—and charged in.

  Elada had thought Miach was dead when they’d found him. The Druids had been recently at work on the sorcerer, and they had carved him open from neck to navel and used clamps and chains to hold his body spread for their inspection. It was then that Elada saw the true horror of what the Fae had created when they’d given magic to the Druids, but not guidance or wisdom. They’d created a people as wicked, cruel, and callous as themselves.

  Miach, though, had been alive—barely. And once he recovered, he found a secluded glen where he could study silence, and there he perfected the making of it. When they next set out to take a Druid mound, he was able to blanket the countryside for a mile in absolute, eerie quiet.

  Elada doubted that Garrett’s silence had a range larger than this room. What he was casting now sounded like the litany of a simple geis. That he needed to use words meant he was still not the master Miach was. That he was uncapping a felt marker and not unsheathing a needle meant he was still perfecting his design and did not mean it to be permanent.

  He touched the tip of the pen to Sorcha’s neck and she jerked. He was hurting her. The boy stopped, rocked back on his heels.

  “I can’t do this,” said Garrett.

  “If you fail me in this,” said Finn, “I will take it out on your precious Nieve.”

  “You wouldn’t,” hedged Garrett.

  “Can you risk discovering you’re wrong?” asked his father.

  Garrett squared his shoulders and returned to his task, and Sorcha’s body jerked beneath his pen. Elada knew he could never kill Nieve’s husband, but a few broken bones might be in order when he next got the boy in his power.

  Garrett worked in tiny quick strokes, drawing something that wound around Sorcha’s throat. When he leaned back, Elada could see that the design was a rope pattern of knotwork, and when Garrett spoke a final word, it tightened around Sorcha’s neck.

  “Take her to the van,” said Finn, standing over his son.

  “I don’t think we should move her,” said Garrett. “She’s got more than a few broken bones.”

  Elada didn’t much like Manhattan, but as soon as he had Sorcha out of this, he was going to New York, and he was going to kill Donal.

  “She’s a Druid,” said Finn. “Find a flower bed and plant her in it and she’ll knit herself back together like the weed she is.”

  “She’s not that kind of Druid,” answered his son. “Stone singers can’t put things together with their voices. They can only break them apart.”

  “I suppose Miach told you that,” said Finn, the skepticism plain in his voice.

  “Yes, he did. And just because you hate him doesn’t mean he’s wrong about everything. She can’t knit her own bones back together.”

  “Then do it for her.”

  “I’m not sure I know how to mend all of them. I’m still learning.”

  “Practice,” said Finn, “makes perfect, and I look forward to breaking the Druid’s bones over and o
ver again.”

  • • •

  Nieve wasn’t in the great room when Miach passed back with a squalling Garrett. He called out to her but heard no answer, and it wasn’t a large house, more of a sprawling cabin. The living space was open, dominated by a giant hearth and leading into an open kitchen and dining area. She had to be in one of the bedrooms or bathrooms upstairs, and he couldn’t leave Garrett like this until he found her.

  Garrett found her for him. The minute he set the boy on the floor, the child took off like a rocket and Miach, already tired from passing twice, had to run to keep up with him.

  Nieve was in the upstairs bathroom that served the children’s rooms. It was a long narrow space, wedged behind a chimney, because the house had originally been built with no indoor baths. She was bending over one of the sinks, retching, and Garrett was busy climbing onto the counter beside her, where he reached to push back her hair.

  It took him only a moment to understand what he was seeing, and a few more to master the turmoil that was engulfing him. “Oh, Nieve,” he said. “No. Dear Dana, no.”

  She lifted her head and smiled weakly. “It’s not so bad this time,” she lied.

  “It isn’t possible,” he said. “Not after the last time.”

  “I guess you patched me up better than you thought, Granddad.” She retched again, and when it was over, she crumpled to her knees, pale as a ghost.

  “Not that well, Nieve. Not that well.”

  “Mommy’s sick,” said little Garrett, leaning over the countertop and observing his mother’s huddled form.

  Miach picked Nieve up off the ground and carried her into the bedroom at the end of the hall. Holding her in his arms, he was reminded that she wasn’t just mostly human, with human frailty, but she was also petite and small boned. Too small to carry another harrowing Fae pregnancy to term. When he had her settled under the covers, he sent Garrett downstairs to play.

  “Who knows about this, Nieve?”