Soul Fire

by R. F. Long

  Twenty minutes later, Rowan had dried her hair and dressed. Would Daire still be there in the woods or had he already gone? Doubt and nerves worried at her unsettled stomach, making her irritable with herself. It had just been a bird. Nothing more. Just a bloody magpie. Both in the woods and upstairs. Much as they upset her, there was nothing unusual about them. A plague in the area perhaps, but just a wretched bird.

  She wished Daire was here with her. Despite the fact she didn’t need him. Something about him made her feel better, that was all. It would have been nice to have someone agree that there was nothing strange about the bird.

  As she descended the stairs, she found the house silent. She made her way through her own home like an interloper, to the kitchen at the rear, listening for the smallest sign of him. The back door stood slightly ajar and her hopes fell. She closed and bolted the door. Suddenly she felt very alone.

  Steeling herself, Rowan turned away and headed instead for the front of the house. As she opened the door and stepped out into her drive, a black-and-white shape hurtled towards her in a hurricane of feathers. Throwing her hands over her face, Rowan cried out and tried to beat it off while retreating towards her home, a distance which, while only a step or two behind her, seemed like an eternity.

  –—

  Twice Daire went over the area where Aidan fell and tracked back from the stream to the fence, but there was no sign of the key. Disgusted, he hunkered down and laid his hand on the earth, trying to call for the Sidhe magic within the artefact. A faint trill rippled through the forefront of his mind. It was here, somewhere. But where? The trace he could catch felt dull and drained, as if it was encased in iron or already in the hands of his enemy. In truth it was a long shot. The spell would only activate against Sidhe skin. This was more like a scent lingering long after the source was gone.

  If Aynia had taken it, surely she would have gone straight back to the Unseelie Court to summon up the Sluagh army and lead them to slaughter all Daire’s kin. No, the key was hidden nearby. But where?

  Daire started to pace towards the trees again when Aynia herself stepped out of the shadows. He froze, his hand itching to seize his sword, but when she didn’t come closer, he allowed a moment to tick by.

  “Seems to me you’re stranded,” Aynia said, her voice as light of the ringing of bells. “Maybe I can help you with that.”

  “I don’t think I need your help, Aynia. I don’t think you have anything I need.”

  Aynia just smiled and shook her black hair back from her shoulders. The wind rose around her, the dead leaves coiling and swirling.

  “Samhain is just a few days off, Daire. When the gate shifts, you wouldn’t want to be stuck here. You’d never find another way home then, would you?”

  Daire gritted his teeth. She was right, but he had no wish to give her the satisfaction of knowing that.

  “Perhaps you’re relying on little Aidan to send help.” She tutted. “Of course, he might, and then again, if you are out of the picture he is Finbar’s heir, isn’t he?” She hummed low in her throat, and the wind responded, driving against Daire, beating at him like the wings of a giant roc. He planted his feet more firmly in the earth, defying her.

  “Come with me, Daire,” she whispered, and despite the distance it was as if her breath played against his ear. He flinched and drew the sword.

  “You have no power here, Aynia,” he reminded her. “Not in daylight.”

  “No,” she sighed and the wind subsided. “Precious little power in this place of men. And neither do you. But I can return home to build up my powers again, while you… Poor Daire, trapped here, where the iron world will slowly drain you dry, unless you find a way to sustain yourself.”

  He couldn’t keep the disgust from his face and Aynia laughed, the same pretty laugh, the same delight in her eyes he knew of old. It had never sickened him so.

  “Well, you don’t have a soul to sustain yourself,” she said. “And you’re too noble to simply take what you need. So I suppose you’ll end up some sort of pitiful ghost, doomed to wander, neither angel nor demon nor Sidhe. Nothing but a memory. My poor Daire, snagged to the mortal world by a mortal’s wiles.”

  “Wiles?” He glanced back to the house, he couldn’t help himself.

  “Iron born and iron bred, Daire,” said Aynia, spite sharpening her to a knife’s edge. “When next she’s pressed against you, ask about your precious key.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked, his anger infecting his voice.

  Aynia flung out her hand and a black and white bird took to the wing. It flew high, over the cottage. “No power in daylight,” she said. “But the days are short, my love.”

  She tilted her head, gave him an artful smile, and slipped away.

  Rowan’s cry of alarm jarred Daire’s nerves to crystal clarity.

  –—

  Rowan batted at the bird, but it just kept attacking her, wheeling in the air above her head to dive on her again. She heard Daire shout her name and as he reached her side, the magpie flew away, leaving her dishevelled, flustered, but otherwise unharmed.

  “Are you all right?” He caught her shoulders too tightly in his concern, holding her still so he could study her face.

  “Yes!” She pulled back and he relinquished his hold on her. “I… I’ve never seen a bird do that before. I’ve heard magpies are nasty but…” She searched the skies warily.

  Daire sighed and glanced back towards the woods. “One of Aynia’s creatures. An evil thing.”

  Rowan’s mouth went dry. “The woman from last night.” He nodded and waited for the question she still had to ask. “It was watching me, upstairs. It was trying to get in the window. Why attack me?”

  “Because I am here. You sheltered me. I would leave, Rowan Blake, but I have nowhere to go. I would not trouble you at all, but I must find that key. Without it, I am trapped here.”

  Rowan tried to remember a key. To tell the truth, though the events of the previous night remained stark in her mind, they were frightening images, impossible scenes, jumbled together with nightmares. She recalled nothing resembling a key.

  “I don’t remember,” she said. “Not a key.”

  “And there is nothing in the garden.” He frowned as he spoke and looked away.

  Had she dashed his hopes, she wondered? Had he thought she found it? “What about the woods?”

  “Maybe.” He studied the sky.

  Nervously, Rowan checked for signs of more magpies but saw nothing other than the thin puffs of white cloud high above them, like wisps of smoke. “What is it?” she asked.

  “You are planning to go somewhere.” It was a statement of fact rather than a question. Given that she was wearing her jacket and carrying both her bag and car keys, it wasn’t much of a stretch.

  “Yes. To the gallery. I have to sort out the mess the withdrawal has created.” He almost looked like he was following what she said, but how could he? This had to be alien to him, let alone the fact that he did not know anything about her. “I own a gallery,” she explained. “I had a famous artist lined up, but he pulled out at the last minute. I have to see what I can salvage.”

  Daire frowned. “I should come with you.”

  Rowan’s heart jerked up with relief. But then her eyes registered his peculiar clothing and his weapon and she heaved in a breath.

  “No, really,” she replied, deciding that politeness was her best shield here. “You need to search for your key. I’ll be okay.”

  Unless another maniacal bird sent by some pathological fairy woman decides to attack me, of course.

  She left the thought unspoken. Daire didn’t look keen about accompanying her anyway, especially not when he looked at the car. His presence would only complicate matters.

  “I think otherwise,” he replied and Rowan immediately bristled.

  How dare he? Turn up here after her life had fallen apart and expect to take over? Typical man. He’d want to fix her mess for her yet.

  “
Really,” she insisted, making sure that her voice told him that this was no longer a negotiation. “I can manage. I’m a big girl now. Besides, you’d draw rather a lot of attention dressed like that.”

  Satisfied that she had solved the problem and put him in his place, she turned her back on him and strode towards the car, humming a little victory theme to herself.

  “Is this better?” Daire asked.

  She glanced back, couldn’t help but do so, and the car keys slid from her abruptly numb fingers to crash onto the path.

  Mr. Darcy stood in her driveway. Okay, not Mr. Darcy because Daire had red hair tied back neatly, but he wore the outfit with practiced ease and undeniable comfort. He carried a long cane where his sword had been and he could have walked straight out of a Jane Austen novel. If he walked back in again, no one would complain.

  No one would complain in the slightest.

  “It’s…um…” She struggled for words, then gave up and crouched down to scrabble for the keys.

  Daire spread his arms wide and studied his clothing. “Is there something amiss?”

  The bewilderment in his voice forced her to look up and before she knew what was happening, she smiled. “No. It’s wonderful, very accurate, but people don’t dress like that anymore.”

  Understanding warmed his features. “Ah. They wear workman’s clothes. Like your brother.”

  Rowan checked back a laugh at the thought of Matthew’s reaction if he heard his designer jeans and limited edition hand-printed T-shirt referred to as workman’s clothes.

  Her fumbling hand found the keys and she got to her feet. “Yes,” she replied firmly. “Like Matt. But maybe a bit plainer…”

  He nodded and the clothes shimmered around him, patches of light flickering off each leaf, the noise a faint rustling noise filling the air. For a moment, Rowan stared, catching brief glimpses of naked skin beneath them, just for instants, like looking at images between the pages of a flicker book. Her eyes met Daire’s and, embarrassed at the beauty she found, she looked away.

  The sound stopped. “Like this?” he asked.

  Dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt, he still caught and held her eyes. The clothes accentuated the lines of muscles underneath. The burnished red-gold of his hair was still tied back, but not so tightly. Loose curls softened the hard lines of his face, his high cheekbones, his jaw. It lightened his bronzed skin and made his green eyes glow with an inner light.

  The clothes were plainer than Matthew’s, but that did nothing to lessen the impact of the man inside them.

  Sidhe, Rowan’s mind whispered. He’s Sidhe, not human. And not mine.

  Chapter Six

  Rowan concentrated on driving the narrow road from her cottage to Weathermere, the picturesque village where she’d grown up, and where she’d decided to start a fine art gallery three years previously. It had been a dream to get back to her home and she had struggled every day to make it happen. While artists could live and thrive outside the city, galleries rarely did and she had called in every favour and connection she had to make Blake’s Gallery a going concern.

  And now, with a single display of ill-advised trust, she might have blown it all.

  She gripped the wheel a little tighter and felt Daire’s eyes on her. Glancing towards him she was shocked to see how ill he looked. Colour had drained from his face, and his mouth was a thin hard line, all in all a shocking transformation.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Your carriage—”

  “Car,” she said and then felt badly for her quick correction. He took it with grace.

  “Your car—” he tested the word as he said it, “—is a box of impure metals. It runs on substances scoured from the earth at the expense of the natural world. It is an ill-gotten thing.”

  Rowan, who loved her car, tried not to bristle. “I’d be stuck without it,” was all she could say in reply. “The car is upsetting you?”

  “Once, my cousin Síne was trapped in a box of metal by the Unseelie’s followers. They left her there for twenty-one days and nights until she died. Then they returned her body to us. She had worn her fingers to bloody stumps trying to get out. The metal had entered her blood, blacked her lungs and turned her heart to a rotten apple core. The metal burned her and, surrounded by it as she was, she could not work magic or heal herself. She could not get out.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Rowan. “Why did they do that to her?”

  “Because we are at war. And they are cruel. At least when I kill them, I do it outright. They love to play with their victims, like cats, like humans.”

  Rowan tried to ignore the jibe, but it was sharp with the pain in his voice. She realised he did not have much time for her kind. Pity for him to be dependent on her now. And yet, she had not insisted he accompany her. Daire had been the one demanding to come along for the ride.

  “But how did they get the metal box? It would hurt them too, wouldn’t it?”

  He nodded. “They have servants who are not so afflicted. Humans mainly, seduced and turned, or simply dominated. Aynia is especially talented in that regard. It amuses her, I think. She can capture a human male, make him obey her in unquestioning obedience and do unspeakable things. Usually they die in her service. Sometimes—” He looked out of the window, hiding his expression from her. “Sometimes she lets them go, returns them to the world with the memory of what they did for her. The purer the soul to corrupt, the better she likes them. They do not live long afterwards.”

  Such tones came from bitter experience. Rowan touched his arm with her free hand, offering a gentle comfort. “Was it…was it someone you knew?”

  “A priest. Hundreds of years ago. His name was Peadar. I think he would have been a saint, if she had not entered his life. It was that betrayal that finally made me see her for what she is. It nearly cost me my life. I found him, seven years later, a hermit. But he didn’t stay alone for communion with Heaven. He feared what he would do, if he met another mortal. He begged me to kill him.”

  She was about to ask if he did it, if he had given Peadar the release he needed, but Daire turned to look at her again and by the expression on his face, she didn’t need to. His eyes filled with pain and his mouth formed a hard line.

  Guilt flared in her stomach. Here she was worrying about the gallery when Daire was trapped here, at Aynia’s mercy, and he might never go home, not without the key. Her heart ached for him. There had to be a different way.

  “Can you find another Sidhe to take you back?” she asked.

  “No. Only one may travel with a key and it is forbidden to carry more than one unless coming to the rescue of another Sidhe, so if they did happen to be in your world, they would not have one to spare. I had hoped Aidan would have returned by dawn, or at least have sent help. But he did not. Or if he did, he could not find me.”

  “Oh,” she sighed, deflated that her Good Samaritan act might be the very thing that had placed him in this awful predicament. “I didn’t know what else to do but bring you…”

  He shook his head solemnly. “You did the right thing. Had I lain in the forest, drained of energy and helpless, Aynia would have found me.”

  “But surely your family will miss you?”

  “The veil distorts time. Aidan may not have made it back yet. Or his wounds could have been too severe.”

  Rowan’s stomach sank. “You mean he could be dead?”

  The line of tension in Daire’s jaw tightened. “We do not die easily,” he told her after a long moment.

  Except in metal boxes, she thought. Or when drained of all energy. She didn’t say it though. Especially since she had brought him into this particular metal box and she was the one in control of it. Was it trust that made him join her? Or did he fear Aynia would use her, as she had once used Peadar?

  Damn, that was it, wasn’t it? The scene with the magpie this morning, the reason Daire was with her now instead of looking for the key. He feared another attack, another bird directed by Ayni
a to send Rowan stumbling into a trap.

  “Aidan might not have regained consciousness,” he went on, mistaking her silent fear for contemplation. “But our mother is famed as a healer. She will not allow him to come to harm. She will save him.”

  Good old mum, thought Rowan absently. But how long until Aidan was well enough to send them help?

  “And the veil can be opened again this evening?”

  “In twilight and at dawn, the in-between times. But soon the gateway in the veil will move. Come Samhain, I must have found my way back, or that path will be lost to me.”

  She copied his pronunciation—Sow-Anne. It rolled off the tongue like old, heavily accented Irish. The lilt made her think of her grandmother, a tiny, concentrated whirlwind of a woman who had left Mayo for Weathermere eighty years ago to start a better life. Grams’ voice had sounded like that. The folklore of her childhood was alive to her, real and tangible, and Rowan had inherited the same fascination. Matthew called it hocus-pocus or sometimes, in his darker moments, witchcraft, but as a girl Rowan could not get enough of it.

  “Halloween,” she said. “What happens then?”

  “One end of the gateway shifts. It might be this side; it might be the fae side. There’s no way to tell. Either I will have lost it, or it will open to me and take me into the hands of my enemies.”

  “Can you find another?”

  Daire shrugged, a swift, animal movement, but the serious glint in his eyes belied the apparent nonchalance. “I may find one. Your ancestors ringed them with iron-stones, like the one in your forest to protect themselves and ward against us, but there is no predicting where they will go, or if they will return to a previous location. Until they are established, there is no telling where they will take a traveller. Samhain, Beltane, Lughnasa and Imbolc are all changing times, the times of transference. Iron days, my forefathers named them, just to remind us how dangerous they are.”

  “This world is killing you. And everything about modern life. Iron is like kryptonite to your people.”