Faery Moon

by C. J. Cherryh

  It flowed toward him, and her father’s terror was about her, her father’s power, with aspects of it far more terrible. She reached for him ... him with Ceannann’s blood still on him, and the guilt of Ceannann’s death about him.

  Wrestle her father, aye, when he was in the right. But he was not in the right with her. He had a guilt, now, and his skin was clammy with it, and he could not find a reason to strike at her— not one that would let him use the sword. Geas seemed on him, and his wits scattered. Shadows extended into faery, and into the old gods’ hell.

  The sword fell. He did not feel himself dropping it. His fingers were numb. He only heard it hit a chance stone, like the ringing of a hammer, like the thunder out of Dun Glas.

  “Caith,” she said, faintly, this half-Firinne, half-shadow— even the single eye changed color constantly now, pale to dark to grey and back again by the instant. Her hand fell on his left arm, but what touched his right was cold and strange. “Help me.”

  Only the eye, half a face, lost and frightened by the world. She was no match for the witch, he thought.

  “Gae to the sea,” he pleaded with her. It was the place he knew her kind belonged. “Gae to the sea, Firinne. Do ye hear me at all?”

  A change happened, sudden and terrifying. Tendrils made a form that was not Firinne, nor any creature he knew, and then Firinne was back, at least as much of her as had been.

  Power had gusted up, and abruptly faded— vast power. He could not but think of the dead man, a hollow thing— the mac Ceannann’s man, once, if the witch had used them all.

  But the creature she was had no knowledge of that ... nor any guilt. He understood the wildness rising in her, the mindless release of hurt, and anger.

  If there was power there, if she was the weapon the Sidhe had loosed, he wanted what she wanted. He wanted revenge. He wanted his hands on Moragacht. But his hands were only near Firinne, and he brushed the fair cheek he could see, ever so tenderly, being the rash man he was, and tried not to have his hand shake either with fear or with raw bloody lust for what a weapon she might be.

  “Firinne, lass. Your father was a gentle Sidhe. And Ceannann was a gentle lad.. Not all the world is Dun Glas, lass. Not all the world is sae wicked. Some loved you. D’ ye recall your mortal father? D’ ye recall old Brigit? The witch killed them, so you cannae belong to her, d’ ye hear? If the witch has her way ’t will come a bloody, a wicked age, where good folk cannot fare well at all. Help me, lass— if ye hae the power. I need your help.”

  Firinne held his one hand— the other brushed his arm, strange, and not pleasant, and yet careful of its strength.

  “Moragacht.” It was multiple voices, like shadows of sound, and something substantial looped suddenly about his back like an embrace, and held like rope, with vast strength. But the woman’s eye that looked at him was wide and terrified, shimmering with tears. “I cannot hold a shape. Caith. Caith, hold me! Someone love me ... once ... I’ll do what you ask. Only once. Someone love me!”

  Macha, he thought, and nerved himself to put his other arm around her, or such as he could feel— none so bad, it was, but not a woman’s shape. He kissed the half a mouth that he could see: his stomach was queasy and his mouth met cold flesh, like the dead. And it was not courage that kept him from flinching, it was fey anger at what delivered her to this.

  It was not passion that returned a second kiss, it was a damnation to the Sidhe that damned him to kill her kin, and work misery in the world.

  Save me frae killin’ her, he wished the Sidhe, sunk deeper and deeper into what was chaos, and shadow, and cold. He kissed her full on the lips, once, twice, and the third time deeply, for faery luck, and wickedness, tainted as he was with Ceannann’s blood and her father’s all at once.

  But the kisses she gave back were spells, each one, each one a slippage of her soul toward some unguessed brink ... he forgot himself until the third, and then no longer knew where it was leading, except Firinne was in his arms, the wind was roaring with voices, and the arms that held him turned cold and far too strong.

  Firinne, he called to its new-born innocence, Firinne...

  But there was no reaching it now.

  It explored its new delight in violence, it flowed in through his skin and rummaged through his vitals with cold abandon, taking love, taking and doing as it pleased. There was nothing he could protect from it, not the love he had or the longings he held secret...

  And faery ... that place, too, it found. He tried to protect it— it went up in fire, and thunder, and sank down into dark, where the stone-eyed gods waited, motionless.

  But memory veered away, then, like the beast in the grey waters. It streaked for the sunlit waves ... and home— his home, not a kindly one, granted, not a home that he should ever long to go back to, but he was a boy again. He sat on the rocks of the harbor, pitching stolen bread to the gulls, thinking then how the water blamed no one and accused no one— how it was stronger than the men who beat him, stronger than the storms above it and the rocks of the shore.

  All of that was around him, the smell of the salt wind, the groan of ships against the dock, the crash and sigh of the great salt water—

  Sweet as faery, the sea was to him, and more forgiving, because it only killed, it never damned.

  And in that, he found a kind of peace with the sea, and let it do what it liked with him. The blood in his veins ebbed and rose with the waves and the tides.

  Dubhain! he thought to call, because mortal sanity said he could drown here, and the geas would not let him die, not here, not this way, nor let the selkie stay in power.

  The creature ebbed away then with casual disinterest, and after a time he opened his eyes on cold, rainy daylight, lying half in the water, watching a smooth, grey back breach the surface of the green waves and dive into the sea.

  A second time it breached, southbound, and shoreward.

  There was no third time. He heard the gulls crying and saw the setting sun. He felt cold water lapping against his side, moving his hand and his foot, and that water was red stained, with blood going away into the current. He held something in his hand, that looked like a black stone, but his fingers were numb and he could not feel it now. He only kept it as something he had won and would not let go.

  The rain had gone down to a cold mist, now, the sun a wan red disc above the waves. The rocks and the rolling denes stood like ghosts themselves, black shadow-shapes in the sunset haze.

  But the sea did not have Moragacht’s magic in it. It had its own. It was still clean.

  And it had loved him, as much as its cold heart could love. It left him not empty, but somehow bereft, and if he lay here it would take all of him, and all he had to do would go undone.

  His limbs were half-frozen. Ice was on the plaid of his kilt, and he could not feel his left side.

  And that was the westering sun in the sky, the whole day passed, at which realization he felt a sense of urgency and disaster. He could not remember why. He only knew he would freeze to death if he did not move soon, and it was forever before he could make his arm move, and his leg draw up. He bit his lip until he tasted blood, and got one knee under him, and managed finally to rise, taking three steps this way and three steps that before he could steady himself.

  There was somewhere he had to be going, urgently. His wits were not altogether sound, and blood was running down his hand and dripping on the sand, but with the blood, he recalled Moragacht, and with the sun he recalled the moon, and with the sea he recalled the loch.

  He kept remembering, and growing warmer and angrier with every staggering step he took. He found his sword on the beach, abandoned. He bent and got that, and straightened up with his head spinning and the roar of the waves making direction uncertain. It was the witch’s men he had to dread, he had that recollection back, too.

  He remembered the selkie’s death, and the god in the dead forest, and the castle hulking like a mossy-backed old monster under the moon, fatal and fell.

 
Something disturbed the sand behind him. He spun about, ice making his kilts heavy. He saw a shadow across his own, from behind, again, and he spun again, and held his hand from striking at the empty air.

  That was too much provocation. The temper rose in him. He turned around a third time, and this time, as he watched, a dog’s footprints marked the wet sand near him.

  His heart went cold in him. He turned very calmly, and began to walk away, not quickly, not steadily either, worse luck, thinking of the hounds of mac Ceannann.

  Run from it— acknowledge such things— and open the path for them to follow, that was what he had done. It was on the hunt, now.

  “Dubhain,” he said softly, trying not to fall, but his steps were all unsteady, and he could hear the snuffling of the hound on his track, heard a growl, and the sound of pads striking the sand.

  That was enough. He began to run, his side already hurting, ran among the black rocks, and weaved and dodged as if the stone could barrier what had neither form nor substance.

  Straight into someone’s arms he ran, arms that slid around him and held fast.

  “Och,” Dubhain said against his ear, “when ye go a-courtin’, ye dinnae go by halves, do ye, me darlin’ Caith?”

  “Damn you!” he cried and struck out to be free, but he was nothing against Dubhain’s strength, nothing against any Sidhe’s grasp. He could only lean against the wretch and catch his breath, and take the warmth Duhain lent him, warmth that burned and hurt, it was so potent.

  “Let me go!” he cried, trying to move his arm against Dubhain’s strength. “Let me go, damn ye!” He had the sword still in his hand and, absent any threat of the hound behind him, he tried to fling it into the sea for once and all, resolved to be quit of the Sidhe.

  Dubhain caught his arm, and held it fast, his warder and his keeper, and his only friend that would not die.

  “Nay,” Dubhain said, holding him fast, then, “nay, dinnae be sae rash, my prince, ’t is hell waking wi’ the moon, and we maun do what the bright Sidhe hae bidden us.”

  He stopped fighting Dubhain’s hold. He let his sword arm fall, and Dubhain let it. Dubhain’s hands rested on his shoulders, lending him warmth against the chill, bringing ease of pain, so much so that the numbness left, and now the lesser aches hurt. His face was wet, chill in the wind. It might be the rain, and he hung in Dubhain’s embrace, staring out at the sea, at the rain-washed grey calm of it.

  “Not for the likes of thee, that escape, my Caith. Ye’re no the sun-born kind, and ye dinnae breathe the water, ye great fool. Whate’er were ye thinking of, t’ lie down wi’ such as her?”

  He did not know, now. He could only shiver in the cold, and shiver harder, until Dubhain took his hands away, and left him warm enough to live.

  His hand felt ... empty. The stone. The black stone.

  He had dropped it. And in the water washing at his feet, amid the froth and the bubbles and the sand, rode what he had dropped, a lump of burned wood, urging it at him, with every roll of the sea against the sand.

  He bent and picked it up, that lump of cinder, and closed his fingers around it, looking out at the sun, that reddened the white sky about it, and turned the sea to smoldering fire.

  Charred wood, waterlogged now: the piece of wood Firinne had rescued from the fire, in the hillfort. Wood that held Padraic’s blood. And Padraic’s curse. Had she Seen this moment? Was it her gift?

  He tucked it in his belt like a weapon. He put the sword away in its sheath, and over its grating sound, out of nowhere, heard a sudden flurry of hoofbeats and felt a spray of sand— a black horse sped past him, taking an impatient course along the water’s edge, in the fire-red light. Dubhain’s clothes and belt were where he had shed them, and Caith picked them up without thinking, watching the creature skite along the water’s edge, flirting with the angry sea and making a game of it.

  “Dubhain!” he shouted at him.

  A moment more the pooka-shape had to defy his calling.

  But it came about again, back toward him, a phantasm, a thing half smoke, half horse, and full of violence. It shook its mane and bowed its head to him.

  The sun had gone now, behind a thick bank of cloud, and the sky and water had gone to iron grey. The red fire was banked in the eye that regarded him, the faintest glimmering.

  “To Dun Glas, is it?” Caith asked. He wondered even ... whose the summons was, now.

  But he had no choice. He seized the cloudy mane and hurled himself up to the pooka’s back.

  At once Dubhain was off, scattering sand from his hooves, splashing through the leaden water, and then over it, and faster, faster, with every stride, racing the moonrise.

  * * *

  The sun could still cast shadow.

  And some smaller darkness loped beside them, doglike, as Dubhain’s course turned and his long body gathered itself and stretched. His hooves touched the grass atop the denes and two rough strides thundered on the earth— only that. The rest was in the grey air.

  With a deathgrip on the mane, Caith risked a look back, fearing what might be behind them, but his hair flew in his eyes and his cloak flew and snapped about him, and he could not see what had become of the dog-like thing.

  Dubhain was the greater danger to him in this state— the abandonment, the delight in the dark and the glow of hellfire in his eyes. They had not the fair, bright banners of faery to carry against Dun Glas, not being the pure or the kindly or the innocent. The iron the bright Sidhe could not touch, that was the weapon they carried, that, and the anger and the unrepentance that would not own a master, not in faery, not on earth, and not in hell...

  The witch of Dun Glas wanted them. And, Macha, she should have them, as they were, as far toward her as they could reach. Once they had reached the sea, there was nowhere else to go but back to her.

  Geas and draiocht.

  Someone’s magic drew them.

  And he no longer cared which power that was.

  Chapter Twelve

  They rode the selkie’s storm, until its sea-warmth met the icy cold of the mountain height at the back of Gleann Fiain in a shock of thunder and lightning. Rain sluiced down the mountainside in freshets, all such streams being the witch’s messengers, but Dubhain leapt the torrents, spurned the water with a thump of his heels, cavorting in wicked delight.

  Then the mountain dropped away under them. Rock and brush came up at them, stark in the lightnings, and if Caith had not flinched at obstacles before this, alarm touched him now. He thought Dubhain meant to try to leap that height ... but Dubhain did not. A second leap brought the night and depth under them. Dubhain left the mountain for empty air, hooves jolting on rocks that came up under him, and jumped again, one after the other—

  Macha, Caith thought, clinging tight. Scare him?

  “Damned fool!” Caith shouted into the wind, and Dubhain bucked and kicked out as out they soared out and down, crack! onto rock, and then thundered onto muddy earth. Bits of gorse and heather came down with them as Dubhain swung about and made part of the descent backwards, nothing daunted, then leapt onto a skidding course down to the road at the very shore of the loch, beside waters white-capping in the lightnings and blackly shivering with storm.

  Caith ducked his head into Dubhain’s mane. The cold wind stung his face, drew tears from his eyes as Dubhain splashed through the stony shallows, damn him, sending up lightning-lit drops, then landed on the dry ground with a shock that went through his bones.

  “If the witch hae nae ken’t we were comin’,” Caith cried, then locked the rest behind his teeth. Encourage the mischief and suddenly there was all too much of it.

  A giddy flood of strength flooded up him from the pooka-shape, power numbing and healing his wounds, keeping the cold away ... strength poured through him that he did not want, from out of Dubhain, half mad with storm.

  Not preventing them, no, Caith began to think. No, by all evidence, the lady in Dun Glas was not preventing them at all. The lady let them come, encouraged the
storm until it ran through bone and nerve and there was no distinction between themselves and the wind and rain. They were everywhere across the wide sky, they were in the lightningsand across the waves of the loch, out of all governance.

  Too much power. Dubhain was drunk on it.

  He kicked Dubhain, hard, in the flank, Dubhain jumped in indignation, and dived for the ground. Caith kicked him again as his hooves met earth, and the hellfire blazed in the pooka-shape’s eye as Dubhain bent his head around, teeth glowing blue in the lightnings, slyly reaching back for his leg.

  “Mind where you’re going!” Caith kicked him with all the force he had, and jerked his fistful of mane.

  The head swung back forward. Dubhain flung his head and kicked and ran, wind flying past so fast it burned like a winter gale. There were bucks and kicks, sideways and backward, there were shocks against the earth and shaking of his head and a sound he had never made, neither horse nor human, something of pain, as the shore flew past them.

  Ask if Dubhain remembered the boundary, ask if there was a thought in a pooka’s head but its own freedom, and its own will, and ultimately the drowning of its rider...

  So every kick from Dubhain won a kick in his flanks, and every shaking of Dubhain’s head a jerk on his mane, reminding the fool he had a rider.

  Beside them in the loch, a great back broke the surface and washed the shore with the wave it made. Dubhain crossed the wave in two strides, spurned the threat and tore along the bank, kicking out his heels for pure extravagance. The next stream they crossed, Dubhain did not jump, but splashed through with a vengeance,.

  Caith kicked him again, for the keep of Dun Glas was in view. And here Dubhain suddenly gave a snort of fierce pleasure and took to a course above the earth— just as a second shape breached the surface of the loch, and sounded with a wave that surged up the marshy channels and over the road.