Chapter 30 #2
Rory eased a pin from the braid coiled around her head, and a loose tendril of hair tumbled down across her shoulder as she handed it over.
Locke bent over, eyes intent as he worked, and Rory turned her attention to the boy, who still cowered away from them, his brilliant blue eyes shining unnaturally in the darkness.
So thin, she thought. So small. “What’s your name?
” She asked, and those bright eyes flickered in her direction and then away again.
“éalú croí,” he said, and Locke’s hands faltered even as Rory’s breath caught, unbearably painful, in her chest.
Heart-eater.
Rory fought back a shudder as Locke threw her a worried glance.
“Well,” she said, as gently as she knew how.
“That’s hardly a fitting name for a strapping lad like you.
We’ll have to think of something better.
” She forced a smile. “Are you hungry?” The boy shook his head, then hesitated, peeking at her warily, and Rory’s smile shifted into something genuine and warm.
Look, she thought. Look how much he looks like Niall.
“I think you might be,” she said. “Perhaps a bit of dried mutton and soda bread? How does that sound?”
The boy shifted nervously as the chains that had bound his ankles clattered to the ground, and Locke moved his attention to his wrists. “Water,” the boy said after a moment. “Can I have water?”
“Sure now.” Rory fumbled for the flagon strapped to the belt at her side. “Here now – drink it slow. Small sips, there you go.”
The final lock clattered open, and he pushed to his feet, wiping his hands on his trousers. “Come along then. If we’re not going to kill the creature, at least let’s see him fed. The lad is nothing but skin and bones.”
Suddenly, the boy went rigid, nostrils flaring, a wounded animal caught in the hunter’s snare. “She’s coming.”
Rory shot to her feet next to Locke, who slid his sword out of its scabbard, scanning the fog-laden night all around them. A trap, that faint, feeble voice whispered inside her. Beware the fool of the fort and the song in the trees –
“Rory.” Locke’s voice was fraught with tension. “Stay behind me.”
“Her friend,” said the boy, shrinking away behind Rory, slipping his cold hand back into hers. “Her friend is here.”
“What friend?” Locke shifted on his feet, repositioning himself more fully in front of Rory, sword at the ready. “The general? Ironstring?”
A trap, a trap. The whisper inside her rose to a strident wail, and Rory fought back a wave of dread. Something terrible was coming, a terrible happening, stalking towards them like a dark-clad assassin thirsting for blood. “We need to run,” she said. “We need to run right now. Locke –”
“No,” said the boy. “I know this one. She calls him the Dark Fool.”
From somewhere in the shadows, the lilting, lovely sound of a pipe began to sing, enticing and low, and a cold rush of fear flooded through her as understanding struck. Beware the fool of the fort, the voice inside her whispered. Beware the song in the trees.
Rory grabbed Locke’s elbow, digging her fingers into his arm. “Locke,” she said again urgently. “He means the amadán dubh, the fairy who brings incurable madness to any he touches. We have to run, right now.”
“It’s impossible,” said Locke, even though his face was far paler than it had been a few moments ago. “His kind have been locked away in the sídhe for centuries. She can’t have set him free – you said so yourself.”
The song warbling from the trees – beware the song of the pipe, the dance in the night, that too-sluggish voice whispered, for that way madness lies – rose to a fever-pitch, a lyrical, haunting summons, and Rory felt the stirrings of something unfathomable and cruelly warped swirling within her, a haze of half-blurred horrors beginning to come to life within her.
“Somehow,” she said, her panic rising, “she has. That is no mortal song, Locke. We need to get out of here right now or we shall soon suffer a fate far worse than death. Do you know what the Dark Fool does with those he has driven to madness?”
The grim set of his mouth told her that he had indeed. “Take the boy,” he said. “Run for the horses. I’ll follow, and keep watch for the witch and her fool.”
“Who will keep watch for you, Locke?” She willed herself to take a single step before her suddenly weak and weary legs refused to move, her limbs strangely heavy and sluggish.
She sucked in a ragged breath, fighting the sudden wave of exhaustion that swept over her. “You are no match for the two of them.”
“I am expendable,” he said, jaw tight, as the fairy’s song continued to trill through the night air, inescapable and lethally gorgeous. “As the two of you are not.”
“Locke –”
“Take the boy,” he said again although he himself made no move to flee, seemingly rooted to the ground, as paralyzed as she by the sound of the song wafting in from the trees.
“Start running, because I swear by Oisín’s beard, another minute of listening to this gods-damned song is going to send me screaming to my knees.
” He clutched at his hair with his free hand, sword trembling in the other.
“Rory,” he said, tight and taut with pain.
“I can’t – I can’t move. What the hell is this sorcery –”
Rory inhaled deeply, fighting to resist the dullness in her limbs, and far beneath it, a feeling of wildness, of sanity untethered that threatened to rise up and consume her.
“We need to run,” she said yet again, but it felt dull and lackluster even to her own ears.
Too late, that tired voice whispered. Too late, you have lingered too long.
That glimpse of rain-gray rocks, besplattered with blood.
That silver knife, slicing through the dark.
The feather in the wind.
Murph.
Suddenly, the wordless roaring in her eyes ceased, and she shook her head before realizing that all had fallen silent here before the dread cave of cats.
No pipe played, no enchantment of song held them captive and pinned to the ground by an invisible hand.
But the threat of madness still lingered there at the edge of her consciousness, lurking and lounging, waiting for its chance to strike.
“He’s still here,” she said to Locke. “But so is she.”
A rustle to her left, and there she was, golden hair gleaming in the darkness, lips curved in a hungry smile.
“A pheata,” she said. “There you are.”
Locke stepped in front of her, sword raised, but Rory couldn’t tear her gaze away from the sea-glass eyes of the witch who had killed her brother.
“A pheata,” she said again. “Let me have your heart.”