The witch’s boundary was coming, Caith reckoned it, the place where he had fallen. He tucked Dubhain’s parcel of belongings tight against him and seized a double handful of Dubhain’s mane. He felt the uncanny force in the air raising the hair on his arms.
Dubhain snorted, threw his head. Uncertainty entered in his breakneck gait. The wight had the sense to stop, it might be, or felt compelled to stop— Caith landed both heels in his flanks, and Dubhain squealed and jumped forward with all that was in him, across the boundary of Moragacht’s land, onto the further turn along the loch shore, and then ran hellbent toward the bag end of the glen, where the fortress of Dun Glas, that squat shape with stout and lightless towers, crouched in wait.
Rain spattered them, and Dubhain’s breath whuffed in steady rhythm with the striking of his hooves on mortal earth. Dun Glas jolted nearer, the iron bindings of its gates flickering with marsh fire and the water lapping at its stone reflecting the flashes in the heavens.
“Slow, slow,” Caith breathed, hauling high up Dubhain’s mane to bring his head up.
Dubhain did slow, then, breathing in great gasps, like nothing Caith had ever seen him do. The glow from his nostrils lit the steam of his breaths as they came up to the gates, and he shied aside and struck out like a crazed thing, at what to Caith’s eyes was black and empty air.
Caith held the mane, but slipped to the side— free to do so, now— let his feet hit the ground and found his legs wobbling under him. He still had a fistful of Dubhain’s mane, and leaned against his steaming shoulder, pressing the bundle of his clothing at him, but Dubhain shook his neck and threw his head and snorted, not leaving the pooka-shape.
“Dubhain,” he said, hitting his steaming shoulder with his fist. “Dubhain, ye troublesome wight, come, I need ye....” Lightning flared above the stone, the thunder deafened, and Dubhain shook himself the second time, and backed and spun, dragging Caith with him.
“Hold!” This as Dubhain reared up, jerking him off his feet, and came down, wild-eyed.
Caith had dropped the bundle. He made a grab at Dubhain”s nose to force him, but Dubhain snapped at him, teeth bared.
Ridiculous plight. Caith could all but hear the witch laughing within her walls, and he held Dubhain’s mane, still. He did not let him go. He backed from the teeth, so that the pair of them made half a circle, then stood against his shoulder and thumped him hard on the withers.
“A fair good race to come here,” he muttered, with the rain coming down on them, and Dubhain’s heat going up as steam in the lightning flashes. “And what do we do with a witch’s gates, Dubhain, d’ ye know? Stand, will ye, wight? Stand, if ye will nae change!” Lightning struck above him, and thunder shook him, making him flinch. “Dubhain, lad, we have a wee difficulty here. Will ye spit out the damned stone? Can ye?”
The lightning rent the night around them, and Dubhain flinched. Dubhain tried to spit out the stone, he thought. He was having trouble at it, and the witch’s doors were still shut.
The damned baggage was laughing at them. That was enough. She struck at Dubhain’s dignity with her joke— and that angered him.
“Well enough,” he said, taking a good tight grip on Dubhain’s mane, “well enough. — Lord Nuallan, wake up, you’ve company outside.”
Lightning struck the ground beside them. Dubhain shied and would have gone over him, but for the hold he had on him.
“Easy,” he said, shaking, himself, and patting Dubhain’s trembling shoulder. The hell-light was brighter in the eye that he could see, it flared from the nostril— Dubhain’s temper was rising, too, he saw it, and suspected then a direr threat to Dubhain and to him than a shut door. However old the Daoine Sidhe might be, Dubhain in this form had the Powers in the earth whispering to him. Dubhain was fighting their dark power in the only way he could in this shape, and that was not enough, not at all enough, for long.
He saw no way to work his sword through the gap to raise the bar— the gate was too close; Dubhain was helpless; he was down to necessities and faery for resources and with no way to tell what the case was in faery...
Fool! he said to himself, and lifted the elf-shot stone.
The gate was choked in thorn-branches, in black roses with here and there a thread of silver ivy— and in the moment he looked, the rose branches put out new shoots on either side of them, and those shoots grew leaves and thorns— a thorn raked his arm and snagged the sleeve between himself and Dubhain, another raked his leg as he turned about, trying to keep his hold on Dubhain, but branches were growing between them and Dubhain reared back, pulling at his grip on his mane.
He held for very life, but the rose branches held him fast, and his fingers could not hold— threads of Dubhain’s mane were all he had left of his grip, and his last sight of Dubhain was the pooka-shape with eyes all fire and fury, breath steaming red, striking out with his hooves and cutting himself on the thorns.
In the next breath, the dark came between him and Dubhain like a veil. The vines drew back and let him go and he was nowhere, standing, floating. He had no feeling but bitter cold.
Darkness gave way to faint shadows, slowly, and those shadows to faintest hints of stonework about him.
He still could not move. He could scarcely breathe, and the place around him came and went with the fitful glow of thedimmest of candles.
If he turned back without advancing another step, he could get through the thorns, back to Dubhain ... he felt that unspoken assurance. He understood it in the way faery’s understandings came, a sure knowledge. And he knew the reason for it: it was a duel of magic that loomed and by the Rules of that duel, even hell was obliged to give a warning.
By those same Rules, in order to gain any power over Nuallan, the dark Powers here had to allow the bright Sidhe to use the weapons he had managed to draw to his hand: himself and Dubhain.
Dubhain was trapped outside. A Sidhe, bright or dark, could not pass the gates or recover his saner form. Not so Caith. So here he stood, himself, alone, the sum total of what the witch was obliged to allow for Nuallan, the one thorn in the witch’s workings against the Sidhe, a small thorn, an all but invisible splinter of a thorn.
Things had not gone well for m’ lord Nuallan, who had far rather have had Dubhain with him, who had far rather have Dubhain alone, if he had to choose one of them. Or Firinne. Or one of the flitting Little Folk, if it came to that. Caith mac Sliabhan had to be the very bottom of the bin, of weapons the Sidhe had.
And m’ lord lily-hands had come asking him that day in the forest, and bidding him and Dubhain come pry the twins out of Moragacht’s hospitality?
If there were subtle victories on their side, now, Caith could not imagine what they were, and if there was something he could do alone, he had no idea what it was, but going backward now ... the geas that bound him to Dubhain did not work that way.
He took the step.
Retreat was still possible. He felt that, again. Second warning.
About to the boundary, that was how far he and Dubhain might run, before everything from Gleann Fiain to the sea was at the witch’s beck and call, Nuallan fallen to her power, and all of faery tottering.
So ... He drew the sword, the marsh-fire spreading over it and onto his flesh. He heard the muted thunder in the stones, and recalled the cauldron rocking where Moragacht had dropped the cup, the red wine seeking channels between the stones.
Third step. In the blink of an eye he stood halfway up the cobbled road, on the track they had ridden that night, himself and the witch’s men. And the way back ... still existed.
Damned cheat, he thought. Three steps, three refusals of the offer to escape should have done it. The rules kept changing, the further he bent them.
Truth was, he could always turn back. She wanted him to turn back. No knowing how far a forth and a fifth step would carry him. Or into what.
“Dubhain,” he said quietly, hoping he might invite him within the boundary by that means. “Dubhain, do you hear, Dubhain, la
d? You’ll be missing a good argument.”
No answer came. The echoes of his offer died beneath the thunder.
“M’ lord Nuallan?” he called then, expecting his voice to be louder and stronger than it sounded. Nuallan, Nuallan, Nuallan, the echoes gave back, and died.
So, well, Dubhain had inured him to frights. He worked his fingers on his sword hilt. They were clenched in a death grip, all but numb. Foolish man, he said to himself. Easy, now
A rose-shoot extended down across his shoulder, and leafed as he struck it away. It pricked his hand, and the wound ran a thread of blood. He sucked it at without thinking.
Fourth step.
Suddenly he tottered on the brink of a pit that breathed with icy cold. And there was no more way forward. But he tested it with his foot, felt stone, and took it.
Fifth step.
Now shapes towered about him, pillars, statues, living forms. Their nature changed with the flickering of the fire and changed back again— the stone gods, the god in the woods, changing and coming and going in the uncertain light.
Quickly, the sixth step.
The intimate, fire-warmed room, the very bed he had lain in— -and to the right, a small table, and m’lord Nuallan ... waxen-skinned, his hands bearing the marks of thorns, a thorn-scratch on his cheek, sat at a fair, gold-serviced table laden with delicate food.
But his left hand was let across the table to a young and lovely lady, fingers laced in fingers, with the servitors standing about, in armor, some, in damask and gold, the others.
A gold wine-cup was in Nuallan’s right hand, and Nuallan set it by and looked at him in apparent bewilderment.
“I thought you might win through,” Nuallan said. “My dear and stubborn servant. Where did you leave Dubhain?”
“Outside,” Caith said, harshly, looking at the opulence all about him, ... a banquet, it was, a feast. M’ lord with his lily fingers locked in the lady’s, servants to wait on him, of course the servants, those lost souls that had once served the mac Ceannann.
Damn you, he wanted to cry, for everything he had suffered.. Oh, it was like everything he knew of Nuallan, sitting here in comfort, while others bled.
Nuallan lifted a cup from the table— everything was gold and silver. He held it out to him. “Come,” he said, “sit with us. ’T was all a testing, Caith, my dear, gentle Caith. The moon is up and the game is won.” The other hand wove fingers with the witch, and the scratches on it were healed. Nuallan laughed. “Come, man, thou ‘rt free, was it not ever thy wish? Thou hast gained the prize. Here.”
“What of Dubhain?”
“What would you, with Dubhain?”
“That you dealt better with him.” He seized up the elf-shot and looked through it. The witch frowned at him, a frowzy, sullen woman, and the creature with his hand locked in hers was one of her men-at-arms.
“I counted,” he could not resist saying. And took the seventh step, magical seven, as the witch’s voice rang after him, crying, “Be damned with him, then.”
He stood in darkness, with the smell of age and wet stone.
He heard the lap of water against the shore, echoing in the vault.
“M’ lord?” Caith said, and, his eyes still full of the light above, had difficulty seeing the faint glow from the midst of the vault. Like glass, were the silver vines, like glass and gossamer was the Sidhe lying among the wreckage, in an iron cage.
Too late, Caith’s heart said, at first, until he saw Nuallan stir and lift his head, and rise.
In stubborn silence, oh, aye, too arrogant to stay sitting like a sensible wounded creature. No, m’lord had to be on his feet, gazing at him through the bars.
Well, he could understand the Sidhe in that much.
But Nuallan said, in a whisper of a voice,
“It took you long enough.”
“Oh, aye, we dallied among the wee folk and had a feast! Damn you, come out of there and lend a hand to your own rescue, will ye not? Call Dubhain through!”
“Thou ‘rt late, Caith. Thou ‘rt well late, the moon is up, and now I cannot reach him. — Do not!” Nuallan said sharply, as he lifted the elf-shot stone to be sure of what he saw. “Fool, did I not warn you?”
“How do I believe ye, then? And where can I walk? If I take the eighth step, where will I be?”
The Sidhe stretched his hand through the bars. “Here. Do not look at me with that. Take my hand.”
Not to look, this one asked of him, the way Nuallan himself had asked.
It was the chancy way of faery. He heard the thunder again now, beneath the stones, he heard the lifting of the water-gate, the ratchets turning and the chain clanking that would open the chamber.
He reached out his hand and took the eighth step. Nothing happened.
But Nuallan said, “The right hand, Caith.”
The right hand. The sword hand. The creature was full of conditions and fancies, and the gate was rising, to what purpose he could well guess, opening this vault to the loch. Lightnings flickered outside and danced on the water. The beast would be coming.
“Caith!”
He traded his sword to the left hand and gave the other through the dark iron bars. Nuallan’s hand closed on his, and at once a pain shot through his fingers as if he had taken up hot metal. He tried to pull away, suspecting treachery, but the creature held fast, and the pain shot through all his hand, like ice now, as he looked, half-fainting, into the ice-pale eyes.
Then the Sidhe let his hand go, and smoke rose from Caith’s fingers.
But there was a key in Nuallan’s fingers, the silver key out of faery.
“This,” said Nuallan, “this, she cannot have.”
Wherewith the bars were gone, and Nuallan was gone, leaving him in dark, except thelightnings, and the sheen off the unbarred water.
And the pain of his hand.
He did not even cry out in his indigation. He simply shifted his sword to his silver-burned hand and cursed in silence the Sidhe, the beast, the witch, and his own foolish, simple trust of Sidhe promises.
Nuallan was free, he supposed. The key that opens all locks, m’ lord had called it, and never told him that he still had it, and that the witch had been searching high and low for it.
Dubhain had not told him, and Dubhain should have known ... if geas would let him speak, if Dubhain was still free at all, now, and not dragged down to hell.
He waited, in the dark, looking out toward the water. “Dubhain,” he said, thinking that, if the beast could swim that water, so could a pooka-shape. The water-gate was up. Whatever was in the loch had free access.
But he had no answer.
He wished he had never come back at all. Let the bright Sidhe languish in the witch’s bed. Let him spend a hundred years in thrall. What was that to him, after all, or to the dead the witch had claimed, or to the world outside Gleann Fiain?
Could faery not spare the bright lord a century or so, and teach the damned fool what it was to suffer?
Most likely the world could not endure that. Most likely the world would miss mac Sliabhin far less, and the Sidhe cared only to have Nuallan back. What matter a mortal, or a whole troop of mortals, in those balances?
Nuallan would not be coming back for him, not here. A troop of faery would not come to his rescue. He waited, in the dark, looking toward the water that lapped this hidden beach, with fading hope of any rescue.
But, by the Badbh, he thought, if the beast could swim those waters, and if a pooka could, then so could a man. Given his choice, he had rather not deal with the beast in this narrow space. He had to get outside the walls again, had to get out to Dubhain. If Dubhain could not come to him, then—
He moved, unthinking. He took the ninth step.
Three times three.
He stood not on the beach, but on stone pavings, in the light of torches and a wide blazing fire pit, face to face with Moragacht, and surrounded by her men, in the inner Great Hall of Dun Glas.
The witch screamed an or
der, her face contorted out of all loveliness, and her men closed in on him from every side. He cut a few, then used the hilt for the bludgeon it could be at close quarters. He fought with that, with left-handed fist and knees, whatever he could bring to bear,jumped the edge of the fire pit, using that to clear the attackers from his right hand, but the sheer weight of them overbore him from behind.
He came crashing down sidelong with the sword still in his grasp. They tried to pry it loose, and when they could not, began to force his arm toward the fire pit. The thunder was in his skull, now, and the witch shouted orders to take him alive, for hell and for her gods.
“Mine!” she kept screaming. “Him and the Sidhe!”
A man’s arm across his throat cut off his wind, and the room faded as hands wrenched him about. He fought the oncoming darkness, found himself face to the floor, his right hand wrenched up behind his back, the sword being pried from his grasp.
A hand in his hair hauled his head up.
Coals burned just beyond his face, searing his skin.
Coals.
Coals, by the Badbh! A gift left in his hand at the seaside. A gift from a grief-stricken Sidhe who left her vengeance in his keeping.
He thrust his free hand under him, pulled the bit of charred wood from inside his belt, and flung it amongst the coals—
Nothing.
Well, he thought, in grim, grim humor, that effort was for naught. A foot pinned his outstretched arm. His hand came down in the coals, scattering them as he flinched to escape the heat, but they held him there. He looked up at Moragacht and the sharp-edged knife she had, through eyes blurred with pain as the witch’s men dragged him to his feet.
He forced his head up, to face Moragacht, even while his knees had gone to water. But Moragacht’s eyes had slid past him to the fire, fury vanishing into wide-eyed horror.
The very air shrieked. The light of that fire went dark.
The men let him go. He fell to his knees, his ears filled with an uncanny shrieking. He twisted about to look, found blue light running over the coals, as logs turned to ash on the instant. Black was the heart of the fire, and a tall, white-haired wraith rose up out of the smoke.
Faery Moon Page 37
