by Alexa Egan
“At least we have light.” The torches had continued on, one after the other, blinking into being up ahead, then winking out as they passed.
“A double-edged sword,” Gray said, glancing back over his shoulder.
“I wish we had a few of those, too.”
Meeryn glanced behind her then down at the strange tumbling surface of the water flowing past. Much like the conjured palace above them, this river was more than it appeared. The surface shone an incandescent green, from which mist rose like smoke. If that wasn’t enough to make her want to avoid it, the smashing anvil inside her skull and nauseous clutching of her innards warned her of the convergence of Fey magic centered within the curling, twisting currents and eddies.
David bent to wash away the blood from his face, but Lucan stopped him. “It’s not wise to take of this place. Neither stone from the earth or water from the river. If this is truly a fold between the realms, there is no telling what effect it might have upon us or what we might ignite with our trespass.”
“Wouldn’t our being down here count as trespass?” David asked in an aggrieved tone of voice.
Lucan shrugged and the two pressed on, David’s gash untended, his fears more than stoked, if the doubtful looks he continued to cast at the murky river were any indication.
“Is he right?” she asked Gray. “Are we tempting something worse by using the thin place to break the curse?”
“Can you think of worse? I can’t.”
She could think of lots worse; the shadows waiting for her when she stepped into the heart of Jai Idrish; the sickening jolt of muscle, tendon, and fat parting as her blade sank into Thorsh’s gut, the hot spill of blood on her hands and spattering her face; Gray palsied with sickness, his face green with fever, his body curled in on itself as the poison of the draught devoured him; and finally, the emptiness of her life should this fail, should she fail.
Gray trusted her to break him free of his curse. He counted on her.
She could not let him down.
“Do you still hear them behind us?”
Gray paused as he listened, then gave a frustrated shrug of his shoulders. “I can’t hear anything above the roar of the river.”
“I almost wish I heard shouts and the clomp of boot heels and a few clanging swords for good measure. Better that, than wondering if they’re out there just beyond the light of the last flickering torch.”
Gray offered her a half smile but she could tell his heart wasn’t in it. “Knowing Badb, she’s got them chasing their tails, literally and figuratively.”
“But even she can’t delay them forever.”
“No. She can’t. They’ll come soon or late. It’s up to us to be ready for them when they arrive.”
They rounded a corner and found themselves in a slick-walled cavern, the roof lost in a strange gathering of mist, as if the river’s surface had risen to coalesce like a cloud above them. The river itself poured through the center of the room, in a tumbling rocky rush, before spilling down beneath an overhang in a gushing fall to be lost from view. Amid the torrent, on a small island accessible by a narrow bridge of rock where the cavern’s floor had been worn away, stood a tall fingerlike stone. Birds fluttered and animals crawled over the carved granite surface; the interlacing knots and spirals of the Fey wove in and out of every remaining cranny. Upon each of the four sides was inscribed a line of runes, the markings matching the odd gibberish in Gray’s ancient text.
“Carspethic.”
“Similar, though much older,” Gray said softly. “I’ve never seen such markings.”
“So you can’t be certain it doesn’t say ‘Beware, traveler. Touch this and you shrivel up and die’?” David quipped.
“One way to find out.” Gray stepped out on the bridge, slick with moisture and a thin sheen of green algae.
“Be careful,” Meeryn cautioned. A silly warning. What did careful matter when they were being chased down here like rats into a cellar, curse hanging like a cloud, poisoning a dose away, and Fey magic scraping the insides of her skull like caged animals howling for release? Slipping on a wet rock rated low on the scale of dangers to be overcome.
He held out a hand to her. “We’ll place Jai Idrish upon the dolmen.”
“Are you certain, Professor Gray?”
“More than a theory, less than a certainty, Lady N’thuil.”
She drew in a steadying breath and stepped, balancing her way on the narrow band of rock. A footstep, then another. She stumbled and nearly toppled headfirst into the drink. An arm wrapped protectively around her middle just as her hem dragged along the murky water.
“I think my heart skipped a beat,” she said, catching her breath.
“Mine stopped.” Gray tightened his arms around her for a moment. He withdrew Jai Idrish from the pocket of his coat, the sphere burning a strange milky yellow, its light flattening out along the roughened walls of the cavern and casting upward into the mists to illuminate each silver droplet. “It wakes, Meeryn. I feel a humming beneath my hands.”
He placed it on the dolmen. As sphere touched stone, the light burst outward, bathing them in the same eerie milky glow. Faces hollowed by loss, by battle, by sickness, and by guilt. Without even touching the crystal, she heard the voices whispering in her head, a blur of endless N’thuils sharing their wisdom and their strength. But she also heard the first distant shouts. The scrape of bodies passing quickly through the approaching tunnels.
“Gray!” she said, unable to keep the fear from her voice. But he’d heard them, too. His head was lifted to the sound, the men shuffling restlessly as they touched knives, patted pistol butts, reminded themselves they were not defenseless. They would not go down without a fight.
“Quick! Jai Idrish at the center, the Gylferion at each compass point,” she said, repeating what the voices told her.
“And how are we to tell compass points with a mile of earth above us?” David asked, shooting sidelong glances over his shoulder.
“With this.” Gray pulled a small round box from his pocket and flipped back the hinged lid to reveal a hidden compass. “East. Nivatha Chu. Anada Asantos.”
David, holding the bronze disk, crossed to stand where Gray pointed at the river’s edge. Jaw tight, eyes fixed upon Jai Idrish, he bore an expression of steadfast resignation. He had made his last farewells. He would live or die with no regrets.
“South. Anakalo Filios. Anada Asantos.”
Copper disk in hand, Lucan stood as if he faced an oncoming army without hope of survival. But it was a look of peace. Of finality. Of ghosts laid to rest.
The sounds grew louder. The stamp and scrape of boots. Muttered instructions. No way to tell how many came. No way to tell if Sir Dromon led them or if they faced a rabble of cannon fodder sent to flush them out.
“West. Pinota Asneeri. Anada Asantos.”
Mac clenched his gold disk in a tight fist, green-gold eyes fierce, mouth twisted in a grimace of final hope. No surrender. He would not succumb. He would battle to the last breath for the chance to live free of the Fey-blood’s taint.
“And north. Krylesos Pryth! Anada Asantos.” Gray pulled the leather drawstring bag from its place at his belt, spilling the silver disk into his palm with a hiss of pain. The poison would be seeping through his fingers and into his bloodstream. With every moment that the silver was in contact with his skin, it would be chewing its way through his body and draining his strength. But he did not wince after that initial gasp. Instead he left Meeryn’s side to cross back over the bridge and stand at the river’s edge to her right, eyes flickering blue and silver in the crystal’s shimmering glow.
“Do it, Meeryn!” he shouted. “Now!”
* * *
Gray clutched the silver disk until the edges burned into his skin, his heart near to slamming free of his ribs as Meeryn placed her hands upon the crystal. This was the moment he’d been waiting for since that long-ago summer afternoon at Charleroi when the Fey-blood’s dying breath had stolen h
is own life away.
The shouts grew louder. Two Ossine. Then two more. A pistol cracked the cavern wall above him. David dropped one with a dead-eye shot from his own weapon, his other hand grasping the disk. Mac felled a second.
Sir Dromon stepped into the unearthly light, a hand shielding his eyes. “Stop her! Shoot the girl! She’s the one!”
The remaining Ossine trained their weapons on Meeryn, the cocking of their pistols freezing Gray’s blood. He flung himself across the slippery, narrow bridge even as he was pulling his own pistol free of its holster, cocking it, and firing in one swift fluid motion. Sir Dromon was blown backward, his body limp as a wrung rag.
Gray’s triumph lasted but a moment as the Ossine followed through on their leader’s final orders. The first bullet hit Gray in the shoulder, blood spattering Meeryn’s gown crimson. He fell against her as the second bullet exploded through his chest. His legs gave out as if his strings had been cut. He fell upon the crystal, the sphere covered with his insides, blood pouring down the side of the dolmen.
It’s in the blood!
The voice seemed to burst inside his head with the same crushing agony centered in his chest. A rumbling shook dust from the cavern’s ceiling and mixed with the billowing mists. Jai Idrish’s humming increased until it matched and surpassed the roar of the river. The sickly yellow light exploded crimson and gold, blue and silver. It bounced off the walls, bathed the iridescent river a brilliant blue, and etched a burning white light on the backs of his eyelids.
Weight and momentum carried him onward to tumble headfirst into the river. The water closed over his head, but there was no freezing punch of cold, only a scalding heat centered in his torn and broken chest. He surfaced to hear the sounds of struggle, a woman’s sobbing, ragged screams, but the river dragged him under again, and weightless, boneless, and drained of strength, he let it.
He felt himself falling, a spinning twisting piece of flotsam caught in the cascade as the river carried him away. He tried to breathe but his lungs wouldn’t work. Pain burst against the back of his head. He gasped once and went under. And the world went black.
* * *
A seeming enternity passed as Meeryn knelt on the cavern floor, an arm pressed to her middle, the dolmen casting a shadow over her bowed body. The sphere’s light faded as slowly as the power surging through her body. Every now and then, her eyes would travel to the overhanging lip of rock where the river raged through the gap to spill in a froth deep beneath the earth, as if expecting Gray to climb from the edge of the river sopping wet and fuming like a cat tossed into a well.
“Meeryn?” She winced at Mac’s touch upon her shoulder. The gentle worry in his voice. “Is all well?”
She lifted her eyes, red-rimmed with weeping. “He hated the water,” was all she could muster with another long look at the river as it rushed over the falls and down beneath the cavern’s wall.
Mac and David exchanged glances. She knew what they were thinking. That she’d lost her mind. That she was a hysterical female with straw for brains. That she was as useless a N’thuil as Muncy Tidwell with his grotesque belly and pinhead brain.
“Is it over?” she asked, looking around her, seeking to gather her wits and regain her composure. Her heart might be lying in pieces around her, but she was N’thuil. The crystal had chosen her. It had spoken to her as it had not spoken to anyone in centuries. She would not be found wanting after such a gift.
“Aye,” Mac said, straightening with a swipe of his brow. “Or just beginning, depending upon your viewpoint. With Sir Dromon dead and Gray . . .” He turned away, his hands fisting at his sides. “The clans could tear themselves apart in their fight for a new leader.”
For the first time, she noticed his blood-soaked shirt, his bruised knuckles, the cut upon his chin. St. Leger, too, held himself stiffly as he leaned awkwardly against the dolmen, his blond hair plastered to his head, mist and sweat mingling on his battered face.
The bodies of the Ossine had been laid out as if for burial. She noticed all had death offerings lying upon their chests, above their crossed arms. Sir Dromon, on the other hand, had been hauled to a corner of the cavern and dumped unceremoniously to lie forgotten and unmourned.
“Where’s Lucan?” she asked, reassured by the strength in her voice.
He’s gone. Badb’s words burst in Meeryn’s head as her body burst into being in fireworks of color, her crow feathers ruffling outward in a surge of feathery black. Her cloak billowed and swirled around her pale young woman’s body of pert breasts and narrow hips. Her eyes bore a flat emptiness unlike their usual snapping fire.
“What do you mean, gone?”
The girl tossed the gold disk to the ground at Meeryn’s feet. “I mean he has paid for his sins twice over. Freed from a thousand years trapped in the between of nothing, only to be taken once more by the Gylferion’s powers that you unleashed. He is gone.”
Meeryn took up the disk, fingering the clan mark of the Imnada on the face, the double parallel lines crossed by the diagonal on the back. Gazed at Badb, who stood hunched, hands wrapping her stomach as if she too fought to hold her grief back.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know that would happen.”
“He did. And he chose to go through with it anyway. Your people call him Kingkiller and curse his memory. But love drove him to such a madness. As love drove him to this one. Is that a crime? A sin to be endured or atoned for?” Badb searched each face as if trying to understand, but none had an answer for her. She made a jerking motion with her hand as if cutting off any more discussion. “The tunnel will take you out as it brought you in. Be gone from the shop by dawn. Do not come back. It will not be here.”
And just like that, the magic of her race congealed around her, pulling her inward as her feathers disappeared in a strange tightening swirl, popping out with a final burst of weary color.
The three of them seemed to hold close as if offering one another the comfort of nearness. She was grateful, for just the act of keeping body and soul together seemed a Herculean task.
“Can you walk?” Mac finally asked, a hand propped beneath her elbow.
“I’m not hurt. Only heartsick,” she said, taking one last look around her. The crystal shone dim and cloudy once more, its voices silent. She took it in her hands, feeling the warmth beneath her fingers, the eddying vibrations like a dizzying pulse. Her eyes followed the green mist-shrouded river as it disappeared in a roaring spill over the edge of the cavern floor. “Do you suppose he suffered much?”
Mac followed the track of her gaze. “I would think he was dead upon hitting the water. Neither Ossine missed their mark.”
She spat upon Dromon as she passed his lumpish tangled body, bullet-shattered face hidden by the careful drape of an arm. “Nor did Gray. All that bloody training at last paid off.”
18
DEEPINGS, CORNWALL
FEBRUARY 1818
Sigurd Skaarsgard shuffled the papers on his desk, fiddled with his watch fob, then peered over his spectacles at her. It was a stare meant to intimidate, but she had never been easy to cow, and recent events had only firmed her resolve and her backbone.
“The man comes of good family. The Nornala prosper and the holdings are fat with wealth under his handling of the clan in my absence. The new Arch Ossine supports the cross in bloodlines. Why do you refuse?”
Meeryn sat calm and still, hands folded in her lap, eyes ahead. A pose of careful deliberation on the outside. Within she was howling her frustration and grief. “His focus is solely for the Nornala, as it should be, while you remain at Deepings, cousin. I need a man whose love for all five of the clans allows him to see beyond the acres in front of his nose. The next years will not be easy ones for us.”
The Skaarsgard cleared his throat and sat back, arms crossed over his chest. “What you need, Meeryn, is a man who’ll look past your growing belly and take you as his mate anyway. Who’ll be strong enough to keep you safe from your enemies and your child’s
enemies. Do you think they don’t know whose child you carry? Even the bastard son of de Coursy could be a powerful threat if he grows to manhood. There are men out there who would seek to do you and the babe harm. Some who blame you and de Coursy for the state of the clans and seek vengeance for the death of Sir Dromon. And some who see your interference as carrying us toward a new Fealla Mhòr with the Fey-bloods. We live in dangerous times and you need a powerful protector.”
“I know, but Findlaech Orlspath is not the answer.”
He’s the third candidate in two months. You’re not growing any smaller. And the clan’s troubles are not growing any easier.”
She ran a hand over her stomach. Already the gowns she’d ordered in the autumn were straining against her bulk. Gray’s child prospered. She had done what she could. She had accepted Gray’s seed. In a few short months, she would have a living memory of their love. A face to look upon where she might see traces of Gray perhaps in the sweep of the child’s brows or the hard steel blue of its eyes. That both comforted her and saddened her in equal measure.
“The Gather does what it can, but with the throne empty, the clan leaders squabbling amongst themselves as they seek to solidify their positions, and Idrin’s line ended, there is too much uncertainty. You’re the only glue we have that can keep us from fracturing further.”
The Skaarsgard’s criticisms drew her back to the conversation at hand and the concerns of today. Gray had died in the caverns. It was up to those who survived to keep the destiny he envisioned alive . . . if they could. Mac Flannery and David St. Leger tried to hold the alliance between Fey-blood and Imnada together, but even they found the way difficult and the tensions increasing.
“I will think on it, my lord. And give you my answer tomorrow. Is that time enough?”
He smiled, obviously satisfied he’d convinced her. “You always were a headstrong lass, even as a youngling barely free of your mother’s womb, but growing up within the duke’s household has taught you cleverness and to keep your own council. Jai Idrish chose wisely when it chose you.”
