Chapter 40 #2
“But,” he said, voice hardening, “it was not the éire that I knew to which I had returned.” The burial mounds of his father, his brothers-in-arms, the Fianna themselves dead and half-forgotten, save in snatches of old songs bandied about by careless boys and gray-haired men at hearth-fires.
“Three hundred years. That’s how long I discovered that I had been gone.
I sat on my lover’s mare, and I listened as a young boy on the beach with a shirt full of clams told me that I was three hundred years too late with my return.
” His jaw trembled. “I asked for the Fianna, the most feared warrior-tribe in all of éire, and he stared at me with blank, confused eyes, and I knew that they were all long, long dead – had been slaughtered in that very same battle in which I was meant to fight, and instead fled, abandoning them to their fates, to their doom.”
Locke ran a shaky hand down his face, and Finn waited patiently for the question he knew would come next.
“And then?” Locke asked, rubbing at his forehead.
“The legend of how you dismounted to help the laborers lift a stone, and turned to dust as soon as you touched the earth of éire? How did that come to be?”
Finn did smile at that, sad and soft. “I am a bárd, Locke MacMurchada,” he said.
“A poet, before all else. I never miss the chance to give a tale its proper ending, even if it’s a false one.
” His smile faded. “But I had no wish to remain in éire, tormented by the knowledge, the guilt of knowing to what fate I had abandoned my father and my companions, and drowning in memories of what my motherland had once been when I first knew her, loved her – of all the ways that I had failed her. So I left, an eternally youthful wanderer, until one day in a crowded tavern in a small town in Cymru – I felt it. The old magic of the éire that I had known, come alive once more.”
“Rory,” said Locke, his hazel eyes darting to hers, and Finn nodded, watching the way that they looked at one another, his queen and her husband, how they seemed to speak to one another without words, and he turned his gaze to the floor, feeling as though he had witnessed something secret and private and solely theirs.
“Yes,” he said. “I found Rory, and knew that it was not all lost, everything that I had once loved. Some of that magic yet lived in her.”
“There will always be magic in éire,” Rory said, without looking away from Locke, “for those who know where to find it.”
Finn wondered if she was remembering those final, bitter words they’d spoken to one another, that long ago morning, when he had first told her the truth of his tale – her, heartbroken and grieving, and him, raging and guilt-ridden over the horrors his homeland was even now enduring while he sat idly by.
The magic of éire has died along with your brother, he’d said, heartless and cruel – the warrior-bárd, lashing out with his words as weapons.
You were right to refuse to use that magic of yours, Rory. You don’t deserve it. You never have.
He had not waited for an answer, but turned on his heel and walked away, abandoning to her grief, and had not laid eyes on her again until seven years later, when he saw her in the shadows of that Albion prison-cell, a firebrand waiting to be ignited, to blaze and to burn, inexorable and bright, no matter how dark and cold she believed herself to be.
Before this was over, he thought to himself now, he would see her burn bright, as she always was meant to do – would see her be the light in the darkness that their homeland needed her to be, to bring back the magic that had made it the gorgeous, unbreakable wonder that it once was.
No matter what it cost him. He would not be making that same mistake again.
From outside the tower, a low howl arose. The hair along the back of Finn’s neck prickled in response, his hand reaching for the sword strapped to his side on instinct. “Failinis,” said Rory, moving to stand next to him. “Someone is here.”
“He hasn’t attacked.” Finn strode to the doorway, pressing his ear against the heavy wood, listening intently. “No screaming.”
“Not yet,” said Locke darkly. “Give him and his brothers a moment or two and that’ll change.”
“Or,” said Finn, “he is clever enough to know whoever it is poses no threat.”
“Expecting someone, are you?” Locke settled back down against the edge of the table, plucking another slab of venison in his fingers and taking a hearty bite. “Either way, I’ll leave the two of you to deal with whomever it is. I’m still half-starved.”
“You know,” Finn said, drawing his sword in one fluid motion. “Men did not prioritize their stomachs over their honor, back in my day.”
Locke barked out a hoarse laugh. “‘Back in your day’? That was half a millennia ago.”
Rory let out an irritated hiss. “By the harp, will both of you shut it? Someone is out there.”
“And Failinis will rip them to shreds if they so much as look at us the wrong way.” Locke smacked his lips and reached for the soda bread. “Let the beast do what he does, and let’s eat.”
Before Finn could answer, a low, two-toned whistle sounded from outside, followed by the sound of Failinis’ snarls, more urgent and vicious this time. Finn swore, sheathing his sword and lunging for the door. “It’s Dil. I told her this was the rendezvous point.”
“Too bad you didn’t mention the hellhound that is likely to rip her face off,” said Locke through a mouthful of bread, but Finn ignored him and threw open the door, searching the midnight gloom for any sign of her.
Rory brushed past him, crooning wordlessly, and a pair of ice-blue eyes and a rangy, black-furred body materialized from the shadows, whip-thin tail wagging as the hound of Lugh trotted towards her, nuzzling her hand with his nose.
A rustling sound to their left, and Finn spun to see Dil peering down at them from the branch of a nearby oak tree. “What the hell is that thing?” She demanded unceremoniously. “It almost ate me.”
Finn relaxed at the sight of Dil, unharmed, as she swung herself down to the ground with her usual grace. “Dil,” Rory said. “Meet Failinis, the hound of Lugh – and my new pet, apparently.”
“Looks to be handy in a fight, at least.” Dil wrapped her arms around Rory’s shoulders, pulling her in tight. “Which we’ll be needing, if the rumors I’ve heard are true.”
Behind them, Finn was aware of Locke ambling out of the doorway to join them, a chunk of roast hare in one hand and a flagon full of whiskey in the other. “Dil,” he drawled. “Lovely to see you again.”
“Go to hell, you arrogant –”
“Again.” Rory broke in as she stepped away from Dil to stand next to Locke, linking her elbow with his, and Finn watched as Dil’s scowl deepened. “I would remind you both that we are all friends here now, and it would be in our best interest to get along.”
Finn cleared his throat. “What rumors, Dil? You said you’d heard something – something that does not bode well for us, I presume.”
Dil huffed out a sour laugh. “You could say that.” She collapsed on the ground before them, tugging off her boots as she sighed wearily, and Finn could see in the torchlight leaking through the tower windows the exhaustion lining her face. “Aoife has returned to reunite with Ironstring.”
Rory frowned. “What do you mean, returned? Where has she been?”
Dil shrugged. “No one knows. Our spies have seen neither hide nor hair of her in well night three months, until a few days ago, when she suddenly reappeared in the general’s camp, as beautifully evil as ever.”
Finn glanced at Rory, expecting to see her eyes already on him, waiting for his reaction, only to realize that she was instead staring at Locke, who looked back at her, their faces etched in twin expressions of concern, of fear.
Interesting, he thought. Somewhat concerning, as he still did not fully trust that the traitor-prince had her best interests at heart, but also – interesting, that he should mirror her so well, after so short of a time.
He refocused on Dil, who was proceeding to tug off her sweat-soaked doublet and toss it aside, rolling her shoulders underneath the cool caress of the summer breeze and the crescent moon glimmering far above.
“Anyway,” she said. “That’s all they were able to glean about it, my spies – that Aoife had found the weapon. ”
Finn went preternaturally still and tense. “What weapon?”
Dil glanced at him, frowning. “I have no idea. They weren’t able to figure that out – only that rumor had it that she’d been gone seeking some kind of weapon to wield against the armies of Connacht when Ironstring decided to invade, and that she had returned because she’d found it, whatever it was. ”
Rory gasped, and Locke dropped the remaining bit of hare and whiskey on the ground to wrap his arms around her, pulling her in close to his chest, but Finn merely drew in a long breath. “She did it,” he said, very quietly. “She really did it – I begged her, I pleaded with her –”
“What do you mean?” Rory asked, fingers tight around Locke’s, and Finn shook his head.
“Niamh,” he said. “When I went to Tech Duinn, trying to cross the sea to Magh Meall, I was denied passage by the fairy-queen. She knew that I had come, wanting to return, and refused to allow me to do so. I was unworthy, she said.” He thought fleetingly of her brutal, cold anger, her renunciation of him – and her warning.
“But we were interrupted. She sensed something amiss on her shores, that something dark and unholy had arrived in her realm.” He shook his head.
“I knew it must be the boy, that you must have found a way to hide him there.”
“Through the cave of cats, yes,” Rory whispered.
Finn nodded. “So I told her that she must grant him harbor there, that she must keep him hidden, that if she did not, if she sent him back, all of éire would die. I thought –” He broke off, lips pressed tightly together. “I thought she would grant me this last boon.”
Locke groaned. “Finn,” he said. “Oisín, whatever you wish to be called – please tell me that we are not all about to die at the hands of a monster because you were foolish enough to jilt the fairy-queen herself.”
“She wants to punish me,” said Finn, fingers curling into fists at his sides.
“She wishes to make me pay, to suffer, for not returning to her all those years ago, as I promised.” He closed his eyes.
Niamh, he thought. That beautiful, brutal queen.
“She has sent Meiche back into the world of mortals as vengeance for my slighting of her.”
“Oisín’s b – the gods damn it,” Locke amended. “The weapon. That must mean –”
“She has him,” Rory finished, outwardly calm but, Finn knew, inwardly blazing with fury, with fear. “Aoife has found Meiche.”
Finn nodded, as seemingly cool and composed as Rory herself, but his heart shuddered at the thought of what the cailleach might soon do – the ruination of all that he loved and had vowed to protect. “Then there’s no stopping it,” he said. “It is time to go to war.”