12. THE PRINCE OF FLAME AND SHADOW
Chapter twelve
THE PRINCE OF FLAME AND SHADOW
Rian
I jolted upright in my bed, my heart racing with a strange urgency that made it difficult to breathe. It felt as if I had awoken in the midst of battle, my blood raging, my limbs humming with readiness.
I ripped the covers off my naked body and reached for the clothing I’d left on the trunk, dressing quickly before summoning my armour. I felt the phantom of the suit covering my moving body first, molding to me perfectly, before my armour manifested physically with my helm attached to my belt.
éadrom remained on his bed at the bottom of my cot, but his ears had perked up. I thought that maybe he might finally show some interest in leaving my tent, but then his ears flattened again. Still defeated by the soul-crushing melancholy that I would not allow myself to feel.
“Stay here,” I bid him gently.
Carrick sat up from the couch where he had clearly been sleeping when I emerged from the bedchamber in my tent. I could see right away that he had tried to tidy my ravaged home, a scene that I had not been willing for him to see, but he insisted on staying with me.
“You are awake sooner than—” Carrick began.
“I must go,” I said on my way to the wall of weapons across the large tent. “Stay if you must. I won’t be long.”
“Where are you going? Rian! Is everything alright?” Carrick demanded as he threw off his blanket and rose to watch me retrieve my broadsword and several daggers. Sheathing them with practiced efficiency.
“Everyone is fine, I must retrieve a Seer,” I explained once I was finished.
“A Seer?” Carrick repeated, following me again when I moved toward the open middle of my tent which was large enough to form a portal. “You dreamed of them?”
“She is a fire witch, and she is in danger, so I need to go right away,” I clarified impatiently over my shoulder.
“A fire—” he broke off and grabbed my arm to yank me to a stop. “Rian, what if it is a trap?” he pointed out.
“It is not a trap. I know these dreams, Carrick!”
“Then I will come with you,” he declared, and his tone left no room for debate.
“No, it is too dangerous,” I dismissed and tried to turn back to where I intended to form my portal.
“Then you should not be alone,” Carrick insisted.
I ignored him, closing my eyes to focus on the faint wisps of essence from my dream. The brief connection that the Tithriall had woven between us would direct me to the fire witch. I could no longer travel the way that Aodhan did through the Tithriall directly, but my portal would still get me close if I could focus on her location.
“At least take Darragh with you!” Carrick suggested.
“Darragh needs to be with the army, and Ciaran and Sage have their hands full. I can contend with witches on my own, Carrick, and this feels… personal,” I muttered. Not information that I would have usually let slip, but I was a little distracted locating the witch.
“What do you mean?” he asked suspiciously.
“Carrick, I cannot explain it, and I don’t have time to try and make sense of it. All I know is that I need to act.”
Carrick was quiet for a moment behind me, and I was finally able to focus. I was losing her scent fast and would need to move quickly if I was going to track her.
“I am going with you,” Carrick declared once more, completely unwilling to let it go. “You cannot go alone.”
“Fine!” I snapped in aggravation as I turned to glare at my uncle in exasperation. “But Sage is not to hear of this, is that completely understood?”
“Understood. Where… are we going exactly?”
“We are going to Uile Breithà,” I answered sharply. “Now please be quiet so I can focus on her.”
“The mother world,” he murmured with anticipation, and then he was blessedly silent as I closed my eyes and began to form my portal.
It was not as easy as usual, typically such a wormhole through time and space was easy to establish as long as I had a good sense of where I was going. But this time was different. There was magic around Nuala that repulsed my attempts to get close, so I had to keep shifting my portal away until I could establish a good connection. And then I reached for Carrick, keeping my eyes closed and my focus on the witch to maintain the link, before I yanked my uncle through the portal with me.
We emerged onto a grassy plain that was dusted with snow and ice. We had startled a herd of massive creatures that were not unlike the anuk my people had domesticated to make milk and wool. The shaggy beasts were heavy, causing the ground to tremble as they thundered away with rumbling grunts, bellows, and bleats.
My perception of the witch had sharpened now that we were in her world, but she was still far away. I closed my eyes again, my hand still on my uncle as I quickly formed another portal. Now that I was much closer, my precision with my portalling was much easier.
This time we emerged onto barren rock partway up a mountain. I knew instantly why a coven of fire witches would settle in this place when I sensed the deep veins of fire, a dormant volcano, sleeping deep in the mountain. Even Carrick drew in a deep breath, sensing the inferno below that beckoned our magic.
I had to work harder to narrow my focus despite our proximity to the witch. Her scent was growing faint and the nearness of so much fire power was overwhelming.
“She is in the mountain. Deep,” I advised my uncle, releasing his arm so I could brace myself to draw on all that heat under my boots. The earth trembled in response, awakening readily and yielding itself gladly to me, but I had to be careful not to awaken the volcano.
I channelled, directing all that energy into an endless stream of fire as tall as I was which drilled relentlessly through rock and stone. It was so hot that it made even our aes sídhe flesh uncomfortable, and Carrick had to step back with an arm raised over his eyes.
Within moments, I had delved deep into the earth and felt my magic slam up against the wards below that had prevented me from portalling straight into Nuala’s prison. I inhaled deeply of the air that was wavering around me from the heat and drew even more power. The earth quaked now under the strain, dislodging rocks around us that tumbled down the mountain side. Some hit a shield that Carrick erected quickly around us to protect us from the onslaught. Birds cried out as they took flight.
I focused my fire even harder until it finally punctured the ward with a resounding pop that made the mountain shake even harder. Larger stones bounded toward us and collided with Carrick’s shield, bouncing harmlessly aside.
My shadow magic was already seeping out of my pores in a heavy mist that rolled down the shaft. It was ravenous after Sage’s theft the night before and quickly absorbed all the residual magic that was bleeding from the ruptured ward. I drank it down until my joints ached from the excess of it in my veins.
Once I had consumed the last of the magic, it was all too easy to thrust my fire power through the final metres of stone and into the cavern below.
I took a moment to allow the heat to cool in my veins, and my shadows to return to me. Then I summoned a cold burst of Darragh’s wind magic down the tunnel which sucked out all the heat until I could comfortably step into the shaft. The walls were all so precisely cut that they appeared almost glassy.
“Impressive,” remarked Carrick, clapping me once on the shoulder after he followed me into the tunnel.
The incline was steep and a little treacherous because of the smoothness of the tunnel under our boots, but we soon reached the bottom. I found myself standing once again in that underground hallway that was roughly hewn from rock. It had been damp and cold before, but now it was humid from the heat of my fire evaporating the water. Some of the iron brackets supporting lanterns had melted, and the torches lay on the ground as I stepped into the hallway. Thankfully, the oppressive magic that had dulled my power in the dream was gone after I consumed it.
I turned to my right and saw the familiar wall of dark at the end of the corridor just like in my dream.
“Stay close,” I ordered my uncle and grabbed one of the torches off the wall with my gloved hand.
I strode down the hall, my steps heavier and echoing more loudly now that I was fully dressed in my armour. Every clink of my sword, every creak of leather bindings, and every rasp of bone plating grated on my nerves.
I reached the stairwell as I had before and raised the light in my hand to see the steps as I descended this time without hesitation. The blackness was still dense as if my power had not dissuaded whatever ancient magic guarded this chamber. I heard again the steady drip of water along with the new rhythm of Carrick’s steps behind me as we reached the small room at the bottom.
My attention had not lingered before, but now my head was jerked aside by the pungent scents here. I held up my light to the right and saw a table in the middle of the room with five iron brackets meant for restraint. They glinted in the firelight, covered in blood, and the worn wood around them was stained with both old and new bodily fluids. Blood. Urine. Feces. And semen.
“Sweet Elements,” hissed Carrick, his voice muffled in his hand, but I did not reply. My eyes had strayed up to the walls and the vast array of primitive devices there that were all meant for some form of torture or another.
It felt like the fire reignited quietly in my blood before I turned forward and faced the stone archway with heavy iron bars. My light still would not pierce the darkness beyond where I knew Nuala would be waiting.
“Nuala?” I called, and my voice seemed to offend the inexorable silence. It screamed back at me with an eerily voiceless bellow that reverberated against my eardrums.
There was no other reply from the dark.
“Nuala!” I shouted in defiance of the silence that felt like it wanted to smother me.
Still nothing.
“It smells of such pain… and lust,” Carrick remarked, his voice catching as if he wanted to be sick.
His implication made a hot sensation prickle over my scalp and tingle down my spine.
I lifted my torch and slotted it in the iron bracket next to the barred entrance. Then I removed both gauntlets and dismissed them back to where my armour usually stayed before wrapping my hands around the bars. The iron burned my fey skin, and I could sense the fire magic in them before it heated hot enough to sear human hands, but mine were impervious to it.
I fed them a little of my own magic, ignoring the pain of the iron as I overloaded the bars until the metal began to melt and trickle over my fingers. I repeated this with the next two bars to make an opening large enough for me to get through them.
“Rian! You don’t know what kind of magic has been cast upon this place! You might not be able to get out!” Carrick objected, but I had already slipped into the cell.
I hesitated, overwhelmed by the stench of excrement, rotting hay, blood, and unwashed body. I tried to summon my magic to my palm and illuminate my surroundings, but whatever darkness thrived in this place made using my magic feel like trying to lift a boulder. I could have overpowered it, but I had the feeling it would cost more energy than I wanted to use. Especially since I may need it to defend us before this rescue mission was over. But it was highly disconcerting to be blinded. My fey eyes had rarely ever failed me, and whenever they did, I was always able to summon light and warmth.
But not here.
I could feel it now that I had stepped right into its lair. It breathed slow and deep, seeping out of the cracks between the stones and gathering into a sentient mass that I could feel hovering before me. An ancient magic which had not been practiced in Uile Breithà in millennia.
Child of fire and light. A voiceless caress in my mind made me shudder against my best efforts to be calm.
“I am not afraid of the dark,” I assured it, unflinching before the facelessness. “You have no power over me.”
A hiss, the whisper of night moving so densely that it was given physical form.
You may believe you can embrace the dark. Hide in it. But you are still a child of the light, and you too will be smothered. Flames dimmed and shadows all swallowed. Consumed by that which awaits the end of all things.
And then it was gone, slithering back into the cracks of the stones around me, leaving me with a chill. I still could not breathe deeply; the air was heavy as if the coils of the darkness were slowly tightening around me.
“Nuala?” I called, unable to help from speaking softly for fear of offending the dark again. I realized I’d need to use my other senses to find her and crouched, closing my eyes to listen until I heard her shallow, wheezing breath.
Bracing one hand on the cold, stone floor and raising the other in front of my face, I began to follow her sound and the scent of blood.
“Nuala, I’m here to take you away,” I said, repeating it over and over as I neared her in case she was asleep and woke suddenly to find a male with her in the dark.
The scent of her was an assault upon all of my senses, but none made my blood boil more than the smell of so many males on her. The mere thought of the female from my dream, feeble but indomitable, becoming the source of such sick and cruel entertainment made me reconsider incinerating the mountain above us. I would awaken the volcano and allow it to purge the monsters away.
I finally found her frail body. She whimpered and tried to move away from me.
“Shh, it’s okay, I am here. I have come for you as you asked me to,” I tried to reassure her, but I was not sure she could hear or comprehend. I reached up to stroke her hair but found it was wet, and the fresh scent of blood and semen perfumed the air again.
Fire rumbled within me, a dangerous rage that I had to repress quickly before it boiled over into devastation.
I picked her up as gently as I could, horrified by how light and fragile she felt in my arms, and carried her back toward the light. She protested, pushing against my chest and trying to twist away in weak objection.
“It is alright, little witch. I am here,” I tried again to console her, but she was unable to comprehend.
I saw Carrick waiting outside the bars of her cell with his head tilted in the direction of the hallway. I was sure to put my foot through the bars first to be sure there was no magic that would attempt to restrain me.
“Someone is coming,” he warned, but then his eyes fell upon the creature in my arms, and his face drained of all its colour. “Blessed Tithriall,” he breathed in horror.
I did not reply. I did not feel as though I could without unleashing the fury gathering in me.
The scrap of cotton I thought might once have been white was now grey and wretchedly stained. She was all gangly limbs and knobby joints with sunken eyes and matted dark hair. I saw again the hands of someone who had been methodically tortured resting on her concave stomach. The bruises I’d noted in my dream had been yellowed with age, but there were new ones on top of them that were so fresh they were still forming. Her nose was split anew as was her lower lip that was dry and cracked from dehydration. One eye was swollen closed.
The female from my dream was neglected and abused, but she was still full of fire. This one was… broken.
“She was not hurt this badly in my dream, and I came for her immediately,” I said in confusion.
“Time moves faster here, Rian. Moments for you may have been hours to her which is why we must get back to Ahnnaòin quickly,” Carrick advised me.
I was about to walk after him, but I heard a wheezing inhale and felt the frail body in my arms tremble.
“You…” Nuala whispered in her strange inflection of Sìth Gaeilge that I could just barely understand.
I stopped and looked down to find her amber eye was cracked open, and she was looking up at me.
“You are safe,” I asserted, trying and failing to keep a tremble of anger out of my voice.
Tears formed at the corners of her eyes but did not fall as her jaw clenched hard enough to make her teeth creak. There was the fire and rage I remembered.
“Burn. Them. Make it hurt ,” she snarled through her clenched teeth, her voice hoarse from screaming, her frail body shaking in her fury.
“I will give you retribution, little witch, but you are going to be the one to make them hurt.”
As much as I wanted the satisfaction of delivering her justice, to appease her righteous craving for fire and blood and to inflict pain upon the beasts that could do this to another living creature…
This retribution belonged to her alone.
So while we walked, I committed to memory each of the distinctive scents lingering on her bruised and abraded skin for when I returned with her to seek her justice.
She did not speak again, but I could hear her thin chest rattling with every laboured breath as I carried her up the steps to where I’d cut through the stone.
There were three witches, all of them male, standing at the opening of the shaft having a heated debate. I found them difficult to understand when they spoke so quickly.
“Behind me,” I ordered Carrick quietly, and he did as he was asked without question for once.
“I will take her—” he tried to offer.
“You there!” shouted one of the witches suddenly. “What do you think you are doing down here?”
I felt Nuala tense in my arms at the sound of their loud voices, so I brushed a soothing caress down her arm but did not slow my gait toward the witches.
“I have come for what is mine,” I replied, and they all stopped short as they realized I was not some member of their coven who was wandering where I shouldn’t.
“He’s got the girl!” one of them hissed, and three sets of hands ignited into flame.
“That is unwise,” I warned them, still coming swiftly closer to them. I wanted to kill all of them, but I would let Nuala decide who lived and died later.
“Stop! You cannot take her!” objected the youngest of the three males.
“I was not asking permission,” I growled, using a gust of Darragh’s wind magic to shove all of them out of my way so they slumped against the wall.
I would have walked by them, left them unmolested, except that one of their scents caught my attention.
I stopped, a flurry of rage rampaging through me as that offending smell assaulted my nostrils.
“It’s a fey,” I heard one of them whispering as I turned back in their direction. “It has to be him! She swore that he would come, and they would burn the coven—”
“Rian, not now,” insisted Carrick who would have also recognized the scent of one of Nuala’s assailants, but I could not seem to stop myself.
“Quiet! You snivelling little fools,” snarled the older of the three males as he shoved his way back to his feet and faced me. “You are not taking the little wench out of here. I do not know who you are, but that is Thomas Kelley’s mad little lass, and he will not take kindly to you—”
“Silence,” I interrupted him, making him blink as if in complete shock. I supposed he was not used to being spoken to in such a disrespectful manner by someone he probably perceived to be much younger than himself.
“You little snot-nosed—”
“I said silence ,” I growled, my shadows spilling out of my pores and out of my armour to rush toward his feet.
The old man tried to step back with a rather undignified shriek, but the shadows seized his ankles and climbed quickly up his legs. He tried to use his fire magic, a feeble excuse for power which I easily stifled and drank down. My shadows flickered purple and convulsed as I drained his power until he collapsed to his knees gasping for air, devoid of his magic reserves.
“I told you it was him!” screamed one of the other two younger witches who huddled together against the wall. “It’s the Prince of Flame and Shadow like she said!”
Another nickname, although I rather liked this one.
“I have come for what is mine, and I do not require permission to take her. You are nothing, and your coven will soon be naught but ash and dust. I only allow you to live now so that Nuala may be the one to unleash her fury upon you. Death is certain for all, but for some ,” I said, my eyes falling directly upon the male with short red hair who appeared the most terrified, “death will be slow .”
I turned again and strode up the tunnel with my uncle in tow and my new Seer in hand.