by Frewin Jones
“Maybe no one’s word,” said Tania. “Maybe we need to try and contact Eden again?” She looked at her sister. “Rathina, will you help me?”
“I will.”
Tania sat, drawing Rathina down to sit facing her. They interlocked the fingers of both hands. Tania closed her eyes. The sun was high and bright by now and the world behind her eyelids glowed with a red light.
“Eden?” She tried to picture her oldest sister again the way she had in Dorcha Tur. But the image would not come, would not hold in her mind. “Eden . . . ?”
She could hear Rathina’s breath—strangely loud and labored. Rathina’s fingers tightened on hers— and then her grip became weak and Tania had the horrible sensation that Rathina was being pulled away from her.
Her fingers snatched at nothing.
She could hear Rathina’s voice, calling frantically from far away. Connor’s voice as well—shouting in alarm.
A coldness filled her chest. Her limbs became heavy. She couldn’t open her eyes. Her head swam, and her whole body tingled and stung as though her veins were swarming with wasps.
The ground gave way under her, and she fell into a dizzying white void.
Chapter Sixteen
The pain was unbearable. It clawed in her abdomen, doubling her up, forcing her knees into her belly. She wrapped her arms around herself, hugging the pain while agonized tears ran from her eyes. The light now was golden—but it was cruel gold, bitter and spiteful, hot needles piercing her head, searing her thoughts.
Then the pain eased. She was able to breathe again, and the light in her brain was white and soft. Shaking, she pulled herself up. She swayed, exhausted in the aftermath of the pain.
She opened her eyes—but nothing changed. The light was still white, diffuse, opaque all around her. She was in a world of bright mist.
A gray shape formed, moving toward her.
“Eden . . . ?”
“Nay, sister—she cannot come.”
“Sancha . . . ?”
The misty shape came closer and was Tania’s solemn-eyed sister, clad as ever in a simple black gown, her long chestnut hair tied back, her face slender and pale.
“You look tired. . . .”
“As are we all, Tania. The Gildensleep drains us.”
“I’m lost, Sancha. I don’t know which way to go. I thought Eden might—”
“Eden cannot squander her power on you, Tania.” The voice was critical but not unkind. “All Faerie depends on her.”
“And on me! On me, too, Sancha!”
“Indeed. That is why I am here. What do you need? If it is in my power, I shall give it. But Tania, you cannot call on us again. You bleed the power from us.”
“Yes. Yes, I understand. . . . I have to know the way to Caiseal an Fenodree. I need to get there . . . I need—”
The words were ripped from her mouth as a great wind took her body and flung it up and far away. Tania found herself speeding along as fast as a falcon, meadows and woods and hills and downs rushing away beneath her.
From high above she saw a narrow valley filled with birch trees. She saw three horses and three people by a thread of silvery water. Two women and a man. One of the women was her—sprawled lifelessly on the ground while the others knelt over her.
She saw the valley curve to the north. There was open country, lush and well tended. There were farms and small villages. A range of rounded hills. A deep, dark forest. A lake as blue as the sky. An island shrouded in mist. The pinnacles of tall steeples and towers. A castle.
A voice in her ear, faint and far away.
“. . . Caiseal an Fenodree . . . remember, Tania . . . remember . . . ”
“She’s waking up!”
A dark blur. Pale faces. Worried eyes.
Tania blinked. Two heads framed by the night sky.
It was hard to form words, hard to move her lips. “You’ve got stars in your hair. . . .” she murmured.
“Does she dream still awhile?”
“No. She’s just a bit out of it, aren’t you, Tania? Do you want to try sitting up now—or are you okay where you are?”
“Up,” Tania mumbled, reaching out with her arms. “Up, please.”
She was helped into a sitting position. She felt like someone woken in the middle of the night by having a bright light shone in her face.
“What happened?” she asked.
“You keeled over,” said Connor. “One moment you were sitting there with Rathina, the next you were out cold like you’d fainted. Only we couldn’t bring you around.”
“How . . . long . . . ?”
“All day and half the night,” Connor said. “Do you remember what happened? I just figured you overloaded your brain trying to make contact with Eden. Is that what it was?”
“Did you speak with our sister?” asked Rathina.
“Yes. Well, no. Not with Eden—with Sancha.” Clarity began to return to Tania’s mind like clouds clearing from a summer sky. “I know the way to Caiseal an Fenodree!” she said. “I can take us there!” She tried to get up, but her legs wouldn’t support her.
“Rest yourself now, Tania,” said Rathina. “You have tried your strength to its limits. The night is already half done. Let us see what the dawn brings.”
She stretched out her hand over Tania’s forehead, moving it down to cover her eyes. Tania lay back in the grass and was swallowed by darkness.
Galleon clouds sailed high across the blue sky, huge and stately, shining like silk as they passed in convoy across the sun. The wind was fresh and clean from the north, and Alba lay open before them, a land of forested hills and heathered glens and wide, flower-scented meadows.
Tania had awoken at dawn, stronger and refreshed by her long sleep. The pain and the weakness were gone—perhaps only temporarily—but the relief filled her with hope and purpose.
And she knew the way to the white palace in the lake—the palace where her Faerie Mother had been born and raised.
Tania had been concerned at first over the time wasted while she was unconscious. Plenty of time for Lord Balor’s hunters to track them down, but whether by luck or some greater design, they saw no sign of pursuit as they climbed into the saddles and rode out of the ravine.
They avoided farmlands and any sign of human habitation, keeping to the open land, moving steadily northward.
Rathina was clearly intrigued by the land they were traveling through. “’Tis strangely like Faerie,” she murmured, “and yet the air has a different scent and the colors are mayhap a little less rich. Curious, indeed.”
It was late afternoon now, and the sun was standing on the western horizon. They had been traveling through dense forest and the trees seemed to have no end. The sun threw blinding arrows of slanting light through the branches, so that the forest was alternately filled with deep shadow and a glaring radiance.
“Are you sure this is right?” Connor asked, peering into the green gloom ahead of them. “This looks like it could go on forever. Wouldn’t it make more sense to head west after all?”
“The palace is this way,” Tania said. “You have to trust me, Connor.”
“But what if Sancha was just a hallucination?”
Tania frowned at him. “You think I can’t tell the difference?”
“I don’t know—can you?”
Rathina came trotting to catch up to them. Her face was anxious as she drew level.
“Problem?” asked Tania.
“A feeling,” said Rathina. “Some danger. Near to us but . . .” She paused, her eyes narrowing. “But . . . veiled,” she finished. “I do not understand it, but we should be wary.”
“Is it Balor, do you think?” asked Tania. “Might he have picked up our trail?”
“Possibly,” said Rathina. “How far to Caiseal an Fenodree, do you think?”
“I’m not sure.”
“This is crazy!” Connor said under his breath.
“Dark evening, day is ending
Through the night
our path is wending
As we softly tread the gloaming way
O harbinger of twilight dusk
Share your evensong with us . . . ”
Rathina’s voice was like a gentle wind through the leaves, singing to herself as they rode on under the trees in the last failing light of day.
Tania was beginning to have doubts. Surely they should have come to the palace by now? And she was strongly aware of Connor riding at her side: He wasn’t saying anything, but she could feel his disapproval.
Maybe he was right. Maybe this was a waste of time.
“Do you feel anything?” Tania called back to Rathina.
“It rises and fades,” Rathina replied. “At times chilling me to the bone—at others nothing but hints and rumors. But there is something, of that I am sure.”
“What’s that?” Connor was leaning forward in the saddle, staring through the trees.
Tania followed the line of his gaze. Yes—there was something, a glittering in the distance—as though scatterings of Faerie stars had fallen to Earth and were shining like diamonds.
They emerged from the trees and found themselves gazing out across a wide dark lake stippled with points of light.
“We were seeing the stars reflected in the water!” said Connor breathlessly.
Maybe three hundred yards away, out in the middle of the night-black, star-flecked lake, there lay on the water a ball of pure white mist.
“This is it,” Tania said in relief. “We’ve found it!”
“Great,” Connor said dispassionately. “What’s the plan? Yell for a boat or swim across?”
“I would not advocate overmuch shouting,” said Rathina, turning in her saddle and staring back the way they had come. “Danger presses hard upon us. There is a cruel claw in my mind’s eye, and it reaches toward us. Tania, we dare not remain here long!”
Tania gazed out over the lake, remembering her mother’s advice. Use these words to ensure that you are greeted as friends. Speak the words ‘caraid clainne.’ Remember them, Tania . . .
“Tania!” Rathina’s voice was an urgent hiss. “The danger is upon us!” Tania stood up in the stirrups and called out softly.
“Caraid clainne!”
Chapter Seventeen
Tania’s voice fell flat, engulfed by the still night. She called again, louder this time, “Caraid clainne!”
“What is wrong?” hissed Rathina, her iron sword ringing as she drew it. She swung her horse around to face the forest. “Tania! Why does it not work?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you saying it right?” urged Connor, panic showing in his face.
“I think so.” She leaned perilously far over her horse’s head, shouting again, “Caraid clainne!”
The mist hung on the water. The stars sparkled on the lake. The trees gathered like a silent army at their backs.
Nothing happened.
A wind blew through the clustering trees—or perhaps the rustling and creaking were not the wind at all—perhaps they were horsemen. . . .
“Tania?” Rathina’s voice was a low growl as she peered into the trees. “We must act!”
Tania noticed a movement on the water. The reflected stars were shifting position, gliding over the inky surface, creating new patterns on the lake, circling, forming whirls and eddies of light points on the smooth black water.
“Something’s happening!” she said. “Look, it’s working!”
Gradually the shifting stars began to move more rapidly, coming together into racing arrowheads of silver that skimmed the lake—that drew together, scintillating and twinkling until the entire width of the lake was empty and a path of starlight led from the bank at their feet across the lake and into the heart of the mist.
“Is that real?” said Connor, his wide eyes brimming with the silvery light. “I mean—will it hold us, do you think?”
A smile touched the corner of Tania’s mouth. “Let’s see.”
She pressed her heels into her horse’s flanks and gave a flick of the reins. Without any display of unease or fear, the horse stepped carefully down the bank and onto the path of stars.
Water splashed as the horse walked out onto the lake. Tania could hear a sound like voices—long, high notes that hung in the air around her—as though the stars were singing.
The path across the lake was only wide enough for a single horse. Connor followed Tania and Rathina came last.
Tania turned in the saddle to make sure that her companions were all right, and she saw that the path of stars was unraveling at their heels, the flecks and motes of light skipping away over the black water to find their original places and to reflect the sky once more.
The mist expanded as Tania rode forward. She glanced back again. The eaves of the forest were dark and sinister. And then the mist was all about her, and there was nothing left to see.
She was aware of her horse’s head dipping as it clambered up a sudden slope. The ground evened out, and she could smell flowers.
“Crazy,” muttered Connor. “This whole thing— totally crazy!”
The mist rolled away, and they were on a path of gray pebbles and the palace of Caiseal an Fenodree filled their vision.
It was a grand edifice of pale gray stone set in gardens of trimmed hedges and well-tended flower beds. The palace itself was buttressed by round towers traversed by battlements and topped by slender conical roofs that rose to pure white points. Light shone out from many windows in the high flanking walls, and torches sent flames up from the ornate saw-toothed balustrades.
But it looked old to Tania—old in a way that the ancient castles and palaces of Faerie never looked. The gray walls were stained by the centuries, the slate roofs patched with lichen, the towers fingered by ivy.
It looked Mortal. It looked . . . real.
Connor and Rathina rode up on either side of her, and the three of them brought their horses to a standstill on the beachy path. The mist was gone now, and they could clearly see the lake and the distant forest. The purpose of the mist seemed to be to mask the castle only from the outside; once within, the enchantment was no longer necessary.
“So”—Rathina’s voice was little more than a breath— “we come at last to the Mortal cradle of our Mother’s infancy. Will they remember her, do you think? I’m told Mortals are fickle and forgetful.”
“I’m not sure that’s true,” said Tania.
“I guess we should knock or ring the bell or something,” Connor said. “Let’s hope they like unexpected guests from overseas.”
“Unexpected relatives from overseas . . .” murmured Tania. “Rathina and I could be their long-lost great-great-great-great-grandaunts or something.”
“Now that’s going to take some explaining. . . .” He looked keenly at her. “Here’s a question,” he said. “What are you going to tell them about us? Who are you going to say we are?”
“We should play it by ear, I think,” Tania said. “Kind of ease them into the idea gently if we can. All we really need from them are directions out of here.”
“So, up front we’re just three travelers?” Connor asked.
“Something like that.” Tania nodded. “Yes—we’ll tell them that until we know what they’re like. Neither of you say anything else unless I do, okay?”
“Fine with me,” said Connor.
Rathina raised an eyebrow. “It should at least be . . . interesting,” she said. “But I will tell no lies, sister— remember that.” She dismounted and led her horse forward, her sword back in her belt. Tania and Connor followed suit, their feet crunching on the pebbles as they approached the palace’s large square door.
They had hardly crossed half the distance when the door was thrown open from within. A group of people emerged, some carrying candelabrum. The two foremost figures were dressed in fine clothing that reminded Tania of oil paintings she had seen of noble folk in the times of the Stuart Kings.
They were a man and a woman in their middle years. T
he man was clad in tunic and knee britches of dark blue with a large white collar and long white cuffs. Black hair cascaded in curls over his shoulders, framing a narrow, bony face with a high forehead and heavy-lidded eyes. He was smiling as he walked toward them and his arms were spread in greeting.
The woman was wearing a gown of aquamarine picked out with golden ribbons and bows and also with a wide, white lace collar and a foam of lace at her wrists. Her red hair was drawn back and tied at the nape of her neck, leaving only a cascade of ringlets to frame her face with its high cheekbones and wide full-lipped mouth. Even at a distance Tania could see that the woman’s eyes were seagreen and full of intelligence.
The other folk formed a half circle around them, dressed in plain browns and grays, holding the multi-armed, wooden candelabrum high, their expressions seeming cautious but intrigued.
“Welcome, wayfarers,” called the man, looking them up and down. Tania got the impression that he found their disheveled appearance amusing.
You try looking good after what we’ve been through!
“Yes, welcome indeed,” echoed the woman. “Welcome to the gentle haven of Fendrey Holm. I am Lady Derval and this is Lord Cillian Fendrey, my most revered and beloved husband.”
Fendrey? Yes, Fenodree could easily have been shortened like that over time.
“I’m very glad to meet you,” Tania replied. “I’m Tania Aurealis, and this is my sister Rathina.” She assumed the royal surname would mean nothing here, and besides, she and Rathina looked nothing like princesses right now. “And this is our friend Connor Estabrook.”
“Thrice the guests, thrice the welcome!” said Lord Cillian. “You come at an auspicious time. Tonight is the Festival of Danu Danann—of the children of Danu, the great annual celebration of our people. Many are gathered from far and wide—feasting in the grand banqueting hall. Come within, I pray. There is easily room enough for three more travelers at table!”
“You are very trusting, my lord,” said Rathina. “Some might greet strangers more warily.”
“We have no need to fear you, mistress,” said the lord. “None that wish us harm may cross the lake. It is a magic that has existed for time out of mind, although in these less wondrous days, none that live could conjure such a marvelous defense.”
