Chapter 22 #2
At least some of it was going according to plan, she thought as she crouched on her hands and knees under the table, listening to rising shrieks and screams of the feast-goers as the conjured warriors ran amok among them – the feast of Imbolc, Finn had told her in that dimly lit prison cell, the celebration of new life, of rebirth, the night when the song of the bárds held the most power, the most strength than any other day of the year.
But they would not last long, those shadow-warriors, not without her own power feeding into his, extending the life and force of his song, granting them corporeality, as only the gods-given power could do.
Her power vanished – gone, without a trace.
She reached out again for it, searching for any sign of that ice-laden storm, that rolling fog, that flash of diamond-bright knowing that allowed her to peel back the very fabric and making of time itself and peek beneath the veil of mysteries to see the truth of things, things long gone and things unfurling about her even now and things yet to come to pass.
The back of her hand stung, where the tip of the knife had accidentally sliced into her skin, and just like that, her rage returned to her in a rush, drowning out her fear.
It didn’t matter, she decided as she stared at the thin trail of blood, dripping down onto the shining silver blade. With or without her magic, she would make them pay.
She took a deep breath and rolled out from under the table, back out into the chaos of screaming mortals and silent swooping ghosts with phantom swords and spectral spears, squinting through the gloom in search of her targets, their names a drumroll of doom thundering through her – MacMurchada, the traitor-king; Ironstring, the bloodthirsty general; Aoife, The Bright One –
Rory froze, knife-half raised, her heart seizing in her chest.
Locke stood in front of her, sword drawn, face tight with fear, with fury. “Put it down,” he said. “It’d be best, for both of us, if you came without a fight. I don’t want to have to hurt you, my lady.”
“No,” she said. “You don’t have the stomach for that, do you now? You’d rather leave it to the witch to do your dirty work for you.”
“Oh, believe you me,” he said, moving closer, silver blade glinting.
“I’ll do what’s needed.” She saw the flash of his teeth as he smiled, not at all charming, not at all suave, not the smile she had grown used to over the past fortnight, but something grim and full of despair.
“I was glad to see how much you enjoyed your dandelion wine, my lady – are you enjoying its effects as much, I wonder?”
The taste of the wine, that strange, faint acerbity seeping into her tongue, shrouded beneath the usual honeyed sweetness. She bit back a curse. Poisoned – they had poisoned her, drugged her, stolen her magic from her, those bastards –
“The cailleach’s concoction,” said Locke, as he circled her. “Nettles and rowan berries, I believe, with a few of her unique brand of hexes mixed in for good measure. A temporary solution, I was told, but it won’t matter. A few moments are all we need.”
“Why?” She asked, as the ghost of Ferdiad swooped past them, shadowy battle-ax swiping through the air, hot in pursuit of a screaming Albion lord.
From the corner of her eye, she could see Aoife, still snarling curses, besieged on all sides by Cúchulainn and Bodhmall, deflecting their almost-corporeal spear-strikes as she chanted, guttural and growling.
She could barely hear Finn’s sonorous voice through the raucous din of shrieks and shouts, far below them from the base of the coronation hill.
He would not be able to hold them much longer, these ghostly allies.
Soon it would fade, this surge of power, of strength granted to him on this most sacred of nights to the wielders of poetry and song, and they would vanish with it, leaving the two of them defenseless and alone.
She was supposed to have had her magic, her vengeance taken as her victims bled out in mangled and muddied pieces on the ground at her feet.
“Why?” She demanded again when he remained silent, watching her with those keen hazel eyes.
“This is our motherland, our home, yours as much as mine – why have you chosen to betray her, to betray us? Do you enjoy seeing her brutalized, her riches pillaged and her people ruined, all for the sake of your own ambition?”
“There’s no fighting them, Rory,” he said. “You have not been here, these past few years. You have not seen what I have seen.”
“Yes, I have,” she said, edging away from the sharp glint of his sword as he closed in on her. “We saw it together, did we not?”
“You only saw the echoes of horrors long past. The truth is – the more we fight, the more they die, the more the innocents suffer. The defenseless, whom we swore to defend.” His shuttered expression flickered for a moment, sorrow bleeding through the steely-eyed determination.
“It’s better this way, to yield and save what is left, than to watch it all burn. ”
“I felt regret,” she said, tightening her grip on the knife, “for killing you, but no longer. You are weak, Lord Locke, and your name and your line a stain upon our motherland. I will enjoy it, watching you die.”
“Best get to it then,” he said, and lunged, his sword swinging in a bright silver arc, aimed right at her neck.
So much for not wanting to hurt her.
The thought barely had time to register before she was whirling away, all those long ago years of daily sparring and dueling with toy swords in the courtyard with her brother lending an innate sense to her movements.
A dull thud as his sword bit deep into the edge of the wooden table behind her, and before he had time to yank it free, she was upon him, one arm locked around his throat, her other hand bringing her knife down straight into his chest.
There was a hollow clang and she felt the tip of the blade bend, yielding to the superior strength of the mail plate hidden beneath his doublet.
“A valiant effort,” he said, then lurched forward, sending her careening across the table, head over heels, slamming down hard on her back amidst the scattered plates of half-eaten food and spilled wine.
Rory yelped once, then rolled, just as the blade of his freed sword slammed down with a vicious swipe in the exact spot she had been lying, her ribs shrieking with pain.
She stumbled to her feet, fumbling to regain her grip on the bent knife, then was knocked to the ground by one of the still-terrified Albion lords, sprinting away from the ghost of Celtchar, his phantom spear shimmering in the torchlight, raised to strike.
He paused in his pursuit, staring down at her with ghostly gray eyes, lowering his spear for a moment as he studied her where she lay sprawled on the ground, panting for breath.
Another phantom-warrior appeared soundlessly at his side, as though summoned by some wordless command known only to them – Bodhmall, she realized, her shadow-braids falling loose and thick over her translucent shoulders – and then one by one, the rest of the great ghosts of éire, Ferdiad and Fráech, the Connacht-born heroes, their heads bowing as they appeared before her, Liath Luachra and Fergus, and at last, striding into their midst, glimmering with an unearthly light – Cúchulainn, the Hound of Culan.
Even through the throbbing pain in her limbs, the panic coursing through her, her heart ached at the sight of him, of all of them, these legends of the past, the heroes from her girlhood.
How Niall would have loved to have seen them.
Cúchulainn stared into her eyes, wordless and calm, an unnatural stillness settling over all their ghostly forms, and she knew – their time was up.
“Go,” she said, hoarse and raw. “Take your rest upon the plains of Magh Meall. It has been well-earned in death even as in life.” She raised her trembling fingers to her lips, an unspoken sign of respect. “éire honors you.”
They shivered once as heard Finn’s voice grew tremulous and thin, the fading of his strength, his magic, and she did not wait to watch them disappear into the night before she was on her feet, fleeing into the darkness as the Albion lords still screamed and cowered on the ground, their arms over their heads.
A shape moved in front of her, a glinting flash of steel, and she skidded to a stop, raising her blunted knife in desperation. “Do not try me, Locke,” she snarled, then stopped.
Dáithí MacMurchada stood before her, chest heaving, twin cutlasses bared and sharp in each of his hands. “You,” he said. “You are coming with me, girl.”
Something flashed through her memory, a remembered glimpse of a knowing she had never sought to see – the distant and blurred image of those same cutlasses flashing through the crisp morning air, an unholy spurting of blood, a slight, straw-haired frame slumping to the ground –
That years-old fury and grief roared to life within her again, drowning out her panic and her fear, and she lunged at him, reckless and half-feral with rage.
He barely had time to react, both blades coming up in an automatic defense, and she dipped low at the same instant, coming up underneath the crossed sword-hilts to bury the dented blade of her knife deep within his belly.
MacMurchada screamed, as blood coursed over her hands and her face, hot and heavy and iron-bitter, and she twisted the blade hard to the left, digging its sharp and distorted edge deep into his gut.
She stumbled backwards as his scream cut off sharply, transforming into a guttural, spine-racking cough, red foam bubbling up around his lips.
His cutlasses clattered to the ground at her feet as he tumbled forward, hands pressed to his gut, tugging feebly at the hilt still buried deep in his gut.
Rory leaned down and picked up one of the cutlasses.
“Did you smile, MacMurchada,” she asked, pressing the tip of the blade against his cheek, a pinprick of blood appearing to dribble down into his beard.
“Did you laugh, as you slaughtered him, my brother, as you massacred my people?” She dug the cutlass deeper into his face, and he gagged again, retching onto the ground at her feet.
She didn’t move away, merely watched with a bottomless well of hunger, drinking in the signs of his suffering, his pain.
Vengeance, at long last.
It was as glorious as she had imagined it would be.
“Look at me, MacMurchada,” she said, and his dull and shattered gaze met her own as she loomed above him. “See if I smile, when I watch you die at my feet.”
He exhaled, rattling and thick with blood, and then slumped to the ground, his blank eyes still fixed on her face.
Rory stood still as a stone for a long moment, savoring it, the sound of that death-rattle, the feel of his blood, sticky and warm, on her face and her hands.
She wanted more.
She would have it, too, all of it, all the blood that she was owed, every last drop – but first she needed her magic back, needed to find Finn and regroup.
She turned and fled down the hill, swift and silent as a wolf in the night, skirting around the edges of the encampment set a-roar with confusion and fear, soldiers running amok through the tents, shouting orders and calling for their general under siege.
He was alive, no doubt – not even the phantom spears of the great warriors of old could kill a man without being granted corporeality.
That had been her job, her contribution to the terror of Finn’s song.
He was to call them forth, these heroes of yore, and she was meant to make them whole once more, to transform their shadow into steel, and she – she had failed.
It was better this way, Rory assured herself as she ran, better that they all be living still, so that she might taste her vengeance in full, to drink in their deaths just as she had savored her father-in-law’s.
Ironstring, of course, and Aoife too, she thought, heart thudding with fury, with exhilaration – and Locke.
Doubts and misgivings no longer – she could not wait to kill that treacherous, lying husband of hers, and take a long, long time in doing so.
She ran for a long time, slipping through the lowlands, a shadow herself, so quiet and swift she moved, making her way north towards Cnoc Alúine, the ancestral home of Fionn mac Cumhaill and the legendary Fianna.
She knew Finn would be waiting for her there, and then, they would decide, together, how and when to strike again.
Because she had failed.
Tears burned in her eyes as she ran through a dense grove of trees, the thin, still-barren branches lashing at her cheeks, her ankles.
Her vengeance was not complete, her éraic left unfulfilled.
She had not atoned for her many, many sins.
But gods – gods, she missed her brother.
Rory slowed to a halt, shoulders shaking, heart pounding, and placed her hand against the smooth trunk of an oak tree, head bowed as she fought for her composure, seeking desperately for any sign of her magic returning, calling out wordlessly for that familiar, too-bright knowing, the whisper of the fog and the unforgiving bite of the ice.
Nothing.
Suddenly, out of the shadows, something cold and smooth and sharp pressed against her throat, and she froze, breath stuttering in her chest.
“Take one more step,” said Locke, hazel eyes gleaming in the darkness. “And I’ll cut your throat.”