by Terry Madden
“Fedelma.” Connor spoke her name. That was the name he’d been searching for. Celeste’s name, back when he’d taught her so many years ago.
Why hadn’t he been able to remember that? She’d been quiet, reverential and secretive. He’d barely known her name then, and yet had shared some of his deepest wisdom with her. She was his responsibility.
Saeth’s hand on his shoulder brought him back to this crossroads of time and space. She was saying something to him. The embers of her eyes burned with a new fire now. No longer stone, her will was wholly her own now.
“Stay behind us,” she repeated, and waited until Connor nodded in agreement.
Saeth led the charge with Fiach and Dylan flanking. The two swords flashed before her and Dylan fired shot after shot into the five creatures who were guarding the landing. Beyond it was the Chamber of the Sun.
“Help us with the king.” The voice belonged to Elowen who was now standing right beside Connor.
“Yes. Yes.”
Lyleth had been trying to drag Dish up the stairs, it seemed. The look Lyl gave Connor said that she trusted him completely, something he’d never thought to see in those icy blue eyes. She said, “Carry him.”
Lyleth joined the others who were fighting in the corridor above.
Elowen made to take one of Dish’s arms, but Connor stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.
“I’ve got him,” he told her.
Connor hefted Dish onto his back. It seemed like decades ago that he’d carried Dish around Merryn’s farm like this. Perhaps it had been decades ago in the otherworld where time pours from a different pitcher.
“You’re going to throw me,” Dish whispered.
“What?”
“You heard me. Throw me at him.”
“Dish…let me handle this. You’ll know when it’s time to do what you’ve come to do.”
Connor mounted the steps, feeling a new power course through his body as he balanced Dish on his stooped back. Not the strength of muscle and tendon, but one of light and will. He could only hope it would be enough for this last conjuring.
As he reached the landing, the last head hit the floor, a victim of Saeth’s blades. Fiach was on the floor, holding his sword arm and Lyleth was seeing to him.
Beyond the blood-slickened flagstones waited the gilded doors of the Chamber of the Sun. Scenes in relief covered them depicting the first rising of Caer Sidi when Arianrhod had called it forth from the Void. The doors, inlaid with cabochons of jet and moonstone, were just as Connor remembered.
“How do you know he’s in there?” whispered Iris. She’d been carrying their satchels and came up the stairs out of breath. The air between her and Connor was thick with Sunless sprites. Connor had convinced them that he was there to free them. He wanted it to be true.
“Oh, he’s there, all right,” Connor replied.
He eased Dish to the floor.
“I need to go alone first,” Connor said. He realized the others had gathered around him as if awaiting instruction.
“Why alone?” The question was Lyl’s.
Dish answered for him. “He hopes to appeal to the man he once knew. But, Connor, that man no longer exists. I watched him butcher Merryn without hesitation.”
Connor was staring at a pool of blood, unconsciously measuring the power available from it. He could dip his fingers into this blood and gather the greenflow of the fallen creatures that littered the floor. From their sprites, now liberated and buzzing about with the others…he could redirect them and mark Dish with the runes of regeneration. He would walk again. He would fight again. And if Connor failed, Dish could finish what he started.
But when he looked up from the blood, he met Dish’s eyes. The shake of his head was subtle, but clear.
No. The word was a silent shape on his lips.
“I will not become one of them,” Dish whispered.
It was too late for Connor. He was the first one of them. He took a step backwards, feeling a gulf open between him and the man who had saved him from himself in a small high school in Malibu. There was no saving Connor from the lifetime Tiernmas owned.
Connor said softly, “Maker and made are one.”
As if in response, he felt Tiernmas turn away from the balcony and glance over his shoulder at the closed, golden doors. The buds circling his head burst open.
A surge of emotion flowed from Connor—it felt like weeping, like lovemaking. He sent it forth. It flowed through the door and found its mark. Tiernmas knew. He felt Connor standing there at the door, and answered in kind.
The others huddled around Dish in a protective circle as Connor reached once more into his pocket, and assured himself the salamander was still there. He swiftly dripped three drops of his tincture into each eye.
“Here,” Lyleth said, and placed a pouch in his hands. “They were Angharad’s.”
He pulled the leather drawstrings open. Inside were seeds from a rowan tree. He took one and offered it to his salamander. The little creature snapped it up. Then he handed the pouch back to Lyl. “Keep it. Plant them when this is all over.”
Connor lay his palms against the embossed images of the past.
“How will we know when to enter?” The question came from Dish.
“You’ll know,” Connor said.
The door, knowing him, opened.
Chapter 30
His call came as a whisper, a gentle caress of warm breath in Tiernmas’s ear. So close…though the man bearing Caradoc’s soul had yet to step through the shuttered doors into the Chamber of the Sun.
Friend. Let us embrace and finish our work.
Caradoc had come, freely. For maker and made are one.
The assault of the northern chieftains had ended with the blinding renewal of Caer Sidi. The fortress had repaired itself, and all inside. The walls that Pyrs of Arvon had so laboriously breached were now as whole and strong as the first day they were built.
The mangonels had fallen silent. The archers’ bows, unbent.
The dragon, healed of its wounds stood guard at the gate.
Pyrs would be in retreat by nightfall.
Tiernmas stood at the edge of a new world, an immortal world, a place he and Caradoc had both dreamt of as young men so many centuries before. No disease, no deformities. Death had no power here, for together, they would free all from the bondage of the green gods and the curse that had been placed on the living.
Tiernmas drew a ragged breath.
He felt the rushing of his blood anew, as if it had stopped all those centuries ago.
“What if he’s come to kill you?” Idwylc asked from the shadows. “Like Merryn.”
“Merryn? Caradoc is not Merryn. He’d sooner stab himself in the heart.”
“He could do just that.”
Tiernmas’s suspicions paled before the blinding love he felt. It emanated from behind that closed door like a pure note from a harp string.
Tiernmas gave a signal to his two guards to prepare to kill any who entered the chamber after Caradoc. For his friend had indeed made it past the guards on the stairs, and he certainly was not alone.
Silently, Tiernmas summoned the dragon from its watch on the wall. The doors to the balcony might be large enough to allow it entrance; if not, then its fire and fangs certainly could find a way in.
As the doors to the chamber swung slowly open, he beheld a vision he’d longed for more deeply than life itself. His friend. His brother in blood. Alone.
With a gesture, Tiernmas stayed the weapons of his guards.
Caradoc wore a short, hooded garment of black.
The flesh that harbored him was that of the tall young man with sandy hair and a sparse beard—the one the fool druí had captured and tried to barter for her little daughter. Tiernmas had known all along that Caradoc would free himself of the druí’s chains and come back to him. As for the daughter, she had freed Tiernmas. Even Caradoc must accept that Arianrhod’s hand had brought them together at last.
/> “You’ve come at last.” The words caught in the knot of emotion that tightened Tiernmas’s throat. A tear threatened to spill. He let a smile replace it. “The Spear of Lugh freed you, surely, and brought you back to me as it remakes us all.”
Caradoc lay prostrate, his arms stretched out in a crux and his lips kissing the marble floor.
“My lord, king,” were the only words he spoke. “I come to make us whole.”
“Who is this, my lord?” The question came from Nesta. She came in from the balcony where the dragon had come to roost. Its golden eye watched them warily, ready for a command to kill.
“Rise, brother,” Tiernmas said to Caradoc. “Let me embrace you.”
Caradoc did as bidden.
He stood eye to eye with Tiernmas, opening his soul to him as Tiernmas did the same. Those copper eyes held pupils so open, Tiernmas thought he could step through. A drug? Perhaps Caradoc had needed it for fortitude. For all his slavery to the will of Arianrhod, Caradoc’s weakness for such things had not changed.
“Your kingdom is close at hand,” Caradoc said. “I am filled with shame that I ever doubted you.”
Tiernmas opened his arms and Caradoc folded him in a brotherly embrace. Their blood beat with the same heart, their laughter made the same music. How he had missed this man!
Caradoc’s whiskered cheek was pressed against Tiernmas’s as he whispered, “Maker and made are one, friend. The rebirth of the Five Quarters awaits our actions.”
“What actions are required?” Tiernmas asked him.
“You and I are two arms of the same man. We must become one man.”
Nesta cried, “One man? My lord king is stronger than any man who has walked this Earth and needs no other—”
“Quiet, bitch,” Tiernmas demanded. “Leave my chamber.”
With his attention still on Nesta, Tiernmas felt something cold against the skin of his cheek, like a stream of spittle he had neglected to wipe away. He brushed at his cheek, yet felt nothing wet. He swallowed, and had the feeling of swallowing a spider in his sleep. He took a waiting cup from the table and drank it down.
“I have not truly lived these centuries.” Caradoc slurred his words. “I expect no forgiveness. Just completion.”
They would be one. He and Caradoc.
“I am ready, lord.” Caradoc had bowed his head, his hands clasped before him.
When Caradoc moved to draw a blade from his belt, he was stopped by the guards who pressed their drawn weapons to his back.
“My soothblade,” Caradoc said. “You must use this.”
Tiernmas knew what he meant. Knew that for the two to become one, he must consume Caradoc as he had all the others. The drug Caradoc had taken must be to quell his fear, but it did nothing for Tiernmas’s fear. It was weakness, not fear. Caradoc’s soul would not provide him merely with greenflow, and life force. He would impart his magic. All the gifts of Arianrhod would be his and the land would be covered with an army of dragons. The Ildana would be drowned in the sea, the memory of their race stricken from every monument, their children sacrificed to Tiernmas until not one remained.
And yet…Caradoc was his oldest friend.
“You shan’t be killing me.” It was as if Caradoc had read his thoughts. He presented the stone blade’s handle to Tiernmas upon an open palm. “But joined. You and I.”
The sad smile Tiernmas knew so well bloomed across Caradoc’s face.
Chapter 31
Connor drew slowly away from Tiernmas’s embrace and the smell of the blooming hellebore that circled his head. It mixed overwhelmingly with the smell of the stinking herbs he’d dropped into his eyes before he’d entered the room. He fought hard not to vomit. His will was fragmented. The soul-mirror he had constructed between him and Tiernmas was as fragile as his resolve. Could he maintain conscious command of his own body long enough?
The drug was working faster than he’d calculated.
Connor released the breath he’d been holding ever since he’d reached the top of the endless stairs, ever since Saeth and Fiach had killed the last guard who had stood between him and the golden doors.
He hoped they would do as asked—wait until Connor’d had a chance at Tiernmas before they burst in. He hoped Saeth could put down these guards and get hold of Tiernmas long enough for Dish to use the labrys.
With thoughts like that, he knew he was on the way to giving up before he’d even started.
Connor rallied command of his consciousness.
As Tiernmas embraced him, Connor watched streamers like solar flares looping from Tiernmas, a forcefield of greenflow that burned him as Tiernmas held him tightly.
The room spun.
The dragon’s eye, watching from the balcony, opened like a bottomless well, and Connor had to force himself to center on what he had to do—focus on the cornflowers that were Tiernmas’s eyes.
He had to maintain the ward. He could not let Tiernmas see what hid in his heart. But the drug spun him out of control. The regrets and loathing he felt for himself and Tiernmas both boiled like rendered fat between them.
From the depths of his hood, the salamander had slipped out onto Connor’s shoulder, then onto Tiernmas’s cheek as he gave him a brotherly kiss. Now its tail vanished between those full, perfect lips, and Connor felt it slip down the throat of this god-beast to seek out the soul of the young twisted man Tiernmas had once been. The man who would have ruled with justice and peace if given the chance. A man who would honor the old gods rather than declare himself their usurper. A man who would have made peace with the Ildana, and welcomed a shared future for the Five Quarters.
“Gods never choose the best path for their followers, but only the path that leads to self-destruction.” Was that Connor’s voice? Saying those words?
“The philosopher returns!” Tiernmas was clapping.
The dragon’s head filled the balcony doorway, its eye on Connor as if for instruction. Connor was having trouble giving his own body commands. His knees gave way and Tiernmas caught him.
Tiernmas was asking, perhaps for the second time, “How do I trust that my old master is not here to unmake me?”
“Is that what you see in these eyes?” Connor asked him. “Is that what you see in this weakened flesh?”
To steady himself, Connor grasped both of Tiernmas’s gold-braced forearms and stared into his eyes. He reached with his will for the salamander while his eyes remained focused on the violet-blue irises before him.
Sweat bloomed on Connor’s face. If he had any hope of succeeding, he had to maintain control of the salamander, see from behind Tiernmas’s eyes. Leave his own body behind. And yet, this was not Celeste. This was a creature that had grown stronger than he ever imagined possible.
From the balcony door, the dragon’s golden eye bored into him as deeply as Tiernmas’s. What was the dragon saying?
Connor closed his eyes for a moment to escape the gaze, feeling for the emotions he had spent a thousand years forgetting, the emotions that had rendered him empty from one life to the next. Images from a grand succession of failed lives assailed him.
No matter how he tried to focus on the indistinct form of the young, crippled prince whom he’d loved, he saw only Elowen. Saw her soften from stone to flesh, felt her lips on his and the gift of the moth. That flutter of guilt in his mouth. He had taken that which he did not deserve—her love and friendship. He’d failed to make her understand that he had traded his soul for secrets no one should know.
Why could he not shake these thoughts?
Arianrhod had traced the rune upon the head of the dragon. The rune of unmaking.
Yes, that was why he was here.
“Take it,” Connor managed to say weakly, proffering the hilt of his soothblade again to Tiernmas. This must happen quickly.
“There must be another way—” Tiernmas couldn’t finish the thought, the words choked in his throat, Connor squeezed with the body of the salamander, twisting around Tiernmas’s will like a dragon
about a spire.
“No,” Connor said. “This is the way we become one. My lord, you have fed upon countless souls through the ages. What is one more?”
Connor unzipped his hoodie and stood before his creation in jeans and a flannel shirt. He popped the bottoms off, exposing his throat.
“Here.” He took Tiernmas’s hand in his, closed the fingers tightly over the short hilt and, trembling, raised it with the blade to his throat.
The first flush of control came to him. He caught a flash, a view from behind Tiernmas’s eyes, the vision of himself standing there shaking. Sweating. He was gaining control, but it had to be complete. It had to be steady. The salamander must be his alone.
A scream came from the landing above the stairs. The sound of steel on steel. More guards had come. Saeth and the others were being attacked from behind. There was no time.
“Your friends?” Tiernmas asked with a grin.
Connor felt his opportunity passing. If Dish and the others died before they made it into the chamber…
“Come,” Connor begged him. “Let’s become who we were meant to be.”
But the words had not come from Connor’s mouth, but from Tiernmas’s.
Connor felt his fingers grasp the leather-bound hilt of the soothblade. He had it in his hand and his hand was Tiernmas’s hand. And his body, the flesh he’d carried through this last, meaningless life, waited for its destiny with closed eyes, tears streaking his pathetic face.
He’d thought he would hesitate. But no.
The blade sliced purposefully through skin and windpipe, just below his beard.
“No!” From the doorway came the chilling cry of Elowen’s keening.
He turned to see her fall to her knees, the battle frothing around her. He turned back to watch his own body’s blood pooling on the mosaic floor. He felt no more compassion for that wasted blood scribe than he had for anyone else he’d bled out.
With Tiernmas’s eyes, Connor watched his own soul-sprite form from the material of his last agonal breath. Not blue-green like the others, but blood red, the color of an eclipsed moon. It coalesced and fluttered before his eyes. It found Tiernmas’s open mouth and joined Connor inside with a shudder and blast of blinding energy.
