Chapter 45 #3
From somewhere deep within the embattled mass of bodies, overpowering the cacophony of shields clashing and voices screaming, an unearthly howl erupted, and at the sound of it ringing through the battle-torn air, the soldiers’ steps faltered, weapons lowering ever so slightly – a costly hesitation, because Locke lunged, so swift that his sword was a mere blur as it slashed and swooped, one down, two, almost a third, but by then they had recovered from their momentary distracted fear, and Rory watched, as though from a vast distance, as a blue-and-gold clad soldier raised his sharp mace, iron spikes glinting in the sun, prepared to bring it down upon Locke’s unsuspecting head as he battled two swordsmen at once –
A vicious growl, a blur of black-and-blue, and the soldier screamed, keening and wild, as his arm was ripped from his body by a pair of savage teeth, and Failinis shook the bloodied limb from his jowls as he whirled to stand at Locke’s side, hair bristling along his gargantuan spine, whip-thin tail hanging rigid and low behind him, fangs bared in a feral snarl as the Albions fell backwards, shouting in terror.
Locke steadied himself, wiping at his brow, before readjusting his sword.
“Good dog,” she heard him say, and then with the briefest possible glance over his shoulder, he looked back at where she still stood, rooted to the ground, wreathed in ice and shadow.
“Go,” he said. “I’ll be right behind you. ”
Still perched on her shoulder, braving the tempest surging all around her, Murph nuzzled at her neck. “Finn,” she managed to say through the rigidity of her frozen lips. “Find Finn.”
Finn would help Locke, she thought vaguely as the kestrel pushed off into the sky, brown wings a flash of brown vanishing beyond the impenetrable veil of fog which refused to dissipate, wrapping closer and closer around her as she stumbled to her knees, fingers digging into the grass as she half-crawled up the steep hill towards the rock she knew awaited her at the top.
Finn would come, and would help Locke, save Locke –
But who will save you, a venomous voice whispered in her ear, penetrating her implacable shield of shadows and ice. Soon you will die, a pheata, and there will be none who can save you.
“I can save me,” she said aloud, still crawling up the hill, half-sobbing as she lurched forward, up and up, higher and higher, the screams of the past and the cries of the present and the low coaxing call of the future she never knew she wanted, all of them muffling the broken sound of her own voice.
Then she felt, a leveling in the ground beneath her bruised knees, and she forced herself to raise her aching and throbbing head, striving to pierce the frigid darkness swathing her from the light, but all she saw was an unending abyss of shadow and mist.
The irony, she thought dully. All her life she had seen that which others could not, had been blessed with a sight most mortals would have sacrificed their very souls to possess, and here she was, on her hands and knees, able to see everything except that which was right in front of her.
“I can’t see,” she sobbed, as the shrieking and the screaming both of her unwanted visions and the battlefield far below rose to a crescendo. “I can’t see –”
Two warm hands, free of their gloves, wrapped around her elbows, pulling her forward. The witch, she thought, then panicked, lashing out wildly, her control over her shadows and her ice so far lost that she didn’t even bother trying to reach for that dark power that rumbled within her.
“It’s me,” she heard him say, so far away and yet so close to her. “Almost there.”
“Finn,” Rory whispered, and the hands tightened.
“No, my lady,” he said. “It’s Locke. Finn is down below, holding them off – him and the hound.” His grip eased, an echo of a soothing caress against her cold, cold arm. “He’s all right, Rory. Everything will be all right.”
Then his hands were on her wrists, pressing them against something hard and rough and warm from the sun, and her ice-bitten palms shivered at the feel of its heat against her brittle skin.
“Place your foot –” He began, but Rory pulled free of his grip, and wrapped her shuddering, shaking arms around the rock.
It trembled beneath her, whatever magic that slumbered within its granite heart coming to life at the feel of her half-frozen pulse thrumming against its surface, and she clutched it closer, tighter, an anchor of hope in a raging sea of despair and darkness.
Her ears were ringing, deafened by a distant bellowing – Locke maybe, she wondered, as the ground beneath her shook and shuddered, could that be Locke who was roaring with agony, was he hurt, was he dying – and then it exploded, a maelstrom of power, an ethereal entity of thunder and lightning and rain slicing through her chest and her heart and her head, torment and agony and excruciating strength like she had never before known scorching her veins and blazing through her, an endless chasm of fire and pain.
She could feel the solidness of the earth beneath her as her body writhed in agony, a twisted mass of tortured limbs – could sense every blade of grass, every kernel of dirt, could hear the whisper and crawl of the creatures that lived deep within the dirt, the chirp of the ants and the hiss of the beetles and the languid slide of the worms through the mud, could hear and feel and taste and smell every element ever born into existence, the living and the dead and the undying all alike.
She just couldn’t see.
“Help me,” she screamed as the thunderbolts of power and pain and knowing continued to course through her, relentless and cruel, as she begged and pleaded for someone, anyone, any kind of being, divine or mortal alike, that might come now to her aid, in her hour of direst need. “Help me, help me –”
Her spasming fingers brushed against the rock of destiny, the Lia Fáil, and through the haze of unendurable pain surging through her, she placed her palm flat against its rough shale surface and spoke again.
“Help me.”
Very well, something cold and cruel and ancient as the moon whispered. So be it.
Not something, Rory realized wearily. Someone – someone who had been waiting a long, long time for her to grow so desperate, as to ask for aid.
A violent splintering shook the air, rolling its way through the earth, up and up and up the sloping side of the hill, rending the grass from its roots, until it reached the Lia Fáil, and with a deafening crack, the rock of destiny shuddered once, then split into two, its magic broken, lying in useless gray pieces on the ground.
The storm in her head fell eerily, unnaturally silent.
The shadows vanished.
The fog lifted.
The ice in her fingertips though – that began to sing, feral and famished after so long of slumbering in this half-life it had endured, confined and locked away in a mortal heart, only allowed to exist in pieces when the girl who had harbored it allowed it to shine, ever too briefly.
No longer.
A terrible sort of calm descended on Rory as she rose to her feet on untrembling legs, staring down at the lifeless gray rock as an inhuman awareness awakened within her. “Rory,” she heard Locke say, over and over, pleading and terrified. “Rory –”
“Lord Locke,” she said, in that terrible voice that was not of this world. “You should not be here.”
“Holy gods,” he said, voice cracking, but she turned away, serene and cool and indifferent.
The woman who had once been Rory ó Conchúir stood at the very top of Cnoc na Teamhrach, raised her arms high above her head as the storm swelled and gathered itself with her as its center, and after three-and-thirty years of fighting it, of surviving it, at last let the darkness consume her.