Chapter 50 #2
She didn’t look away, didn’t blink, as Rory watched Aoife stumble to her knees, the blade of her brother’s sword protruding from her skull, mouth convulsing as foam bubbled up from her throat, her hand reaching out towards where Rory stood, clawing at the empty air.
One prolonged shudder tore through her body, and then the cailleach collapsed into the dirt, her oceanic gaze glassy and vacant, staring up at the cloudless blue sky.
Something shattered within her as the onlookers gasped, then let out a simultaneous, disbelieving roar of savage joy, of celebration.
Her vengeance was complete – her brother’s, her motherland’s éraic – paid in full.
Rory staggered backwards, bile rising in her throat, a stark contrast to her many imaginings of this moment.
Where was her jubilation, her exultation – where was the peace which she had promised herself she would feel once it was done, once she saw her enemies broken and bleeding before her?
She felt no sorrow nor grief for their deaths, but neither did she feel joy, not when the cost of such a vengeance began its assault on her heretofore dulled senses, when she could see the other mutilated bodies which lay strewn across the battlefield, the scent of blood and sweat and death flooding her nostrils, the sound of agonized groans and shrieks of pain ringing in her ears.
The sights and smells and sounds of all the ones she did not save.
The ones that she sacrificed.
The ones she had killed, and let die.
Locke, she thought, through the roaring in her ears, the haze of horror, of grief swirling before her eyes. She needed Locke, and his hazel eyes, steady and calm, the strength of his hand in hers.
She stumbled to her knees beside him, pressing her hands to his bleeding chest. “Are you –”
“Fine,” he grunted, pushing aside her worrying fingers. “Only my shoulder. I’ve had worse.”
“I’m sorry – I’m so sorry, I don’t know what happened, I did not mean to abandon you, to leave you to face her alone –”
“I knew you’d come back.” Locke winced as he sat up, slow and painful, rubbing a trembling hand over his too-pale, sweat-and-blood soaked face. “I knew you’d come back for him.”
“You idiot,” she said. “It was not for him that I came back at all,” and she reached out to brush her fingers over his cheek – then pulled away abruptly when he flinched at the feel of her touch against his skin. “Locke –”
“My lady,” he said, looking away from her pained gaze. “You’d better see to Finn.”
For a moment, she didn’t move, staring at his remote expression, his tight lips, then stood up, too fast, spinning away from him on shaky legs, blinking back something that felt horribly like tears as she searched for Finn among the bloodied, weary faces, when a kneeling figure in the background, familiar yet strange, broad shoulders unnaturally stooped, caught her eye.
It was an old man, a thick shock of snow-white hair, translucent hands splayed out across the ground as he braced himself on trembling arms, struggling to stand, and instinctively, Rory was moving forward, to extend her hand and help him rise, when, as though he sensed her approach, he raised his white head and looked at her.
Those deep moss-green eyes, still so beautiful, staring back at her from a deeply lined and wrinkled face.
Finn.
She sank down next to him, cradling his withered cheeks in her trembling palms. “What happened,” she managed to say. “Finn – what has happened to you?”
He drew a ragged breath before answering, his sonorous voice faded and thin when he spoke. “It was always but a gift, a bhréone – my eternal youth – and all gifts come with a price.”
The hair on the back of her arms prickled, and she knew what she would see before she heard the rustling of feathers. She looked anyway, and there it was – a glossy black raven, perched expectantly on the crumbling stone wall behind them.
“Finn,” she whispered, heart breaking anew, and his wrinkled hand squeezed hers once, gently, feebly.
“All things must die,” he said, an unconscious echo of Niall’s own words.
“Mine arrives far later than I ever expected it to be.” Even as she looked at him, drinking in the remnants of his beloved features – the shape of his nose, the moss-green of his eyes, the cut of his jaw – they grew more and more ashen right before her eyes, his complexion turning waxy and paper-thin, the bones of his hands translucent through his skin.
“Do not weep for me, a bhréone. After all, I have died as I once longed to live – as a hero.”
“You were always a hero.”
“I am proud of you,” he whispered, and his face seemed to soften as she watched, as ice thawing on a windowpane under the warmth of the late morning sun, his once fine-honed features dissolving like a thousand grains of sand pouring ceaselessly through her cupped fingers. “Mo bhanríon.”
He shuddered once before his eyes fluttered shut, and the weight of his hand in hers slipped away, his face crumpling into the nothingness of the air.
The raven cawed, low and hoarse, and when she bowed her head, it was only ash and dust that lay clutched in her hand, floating away in the wind, and Finn –
Finn was gone.
She sat back on her heels, chest heaving, nails digging into the palms of her hand as she bit back her screams.
She understood now why the goddess of war was so cold, encased in ice and shrouded in snow. She had to be cold and unfeeling and remote, to survive the horrors, the griefs that went hand in hand with war.
A shadow fell over her, and she looked up to find Locke standing over her, bronze hair slick with sweat, sword in hand with a makeshift bandage strapped to his shoulder.
“Locke,” she said, reaching out for him, forgetting for a moment the hurt he had caused, the rejection that had sliced into her a few moments before, so desperate as she was for the comfort that only he could give her. “Locke –”
He stepped back, once more shying away from her touch, his expression shuttered. “Mo bhanríon,” he said, and she looked around to find them all watching her, the blood-soaked lords of éire and their soldiers, unsheathed swords and broken spears – waiting for her. “Victory is yours.”
She staggered to her feet, her hands still coated with the ashes of what had once been her dearest friend. “Locke,” she said again, so soft that he alone could hear. “What are you doing?”
His hazel eyes never left hers as he dropped to one knee and bowed his head, the hilt of his sword outstretched towards her.
“The sacred rock, the Lia Fáil,” he said, his voice echoing across the silent, corpse-strewn battlefield, “has named you the rightful ruler of all of éire. To you do I offer my sword and my spear. To you do I pledge the loyalty of Leinster, the realm of green and growing things, of rolling hills and white-sand beaches. In return I ask you to name me king, as my father and his father before him, to serve under your rule and your guidance, the steward of the realm.”
“Locke,” she whispered again, but he lowered his head, his eyes on the ground, neck bent, and somewhere deep within her bruised and embattled chest, what was left of her heart shattered at the sight.
This – this was for what he had fought, for what he had yearned.
Not for her.
Not, she thought dully, after what he had seen her become, the incarnation of night itself, and the unspeakable terrors that stalk within its shadows.
Beside him, Dermot ó Briain stepped forward and dropped to his knee, a mirror image of Locke.
“Mo bhanríon,” he said, rough and raw from hours of screaming.
“The realm of Munster swears its fidelity to you, High Queen of éire, and I, its king, pledge to you my sword and my spear, from this day forth, until the end of your reign, long may it be.”
The king of Ulaid, Mac Duinn, followed suit, his gruff voice breaking as he spoke his vows, his gloved hand quivering as he held out his sword, and Rory inhaled sharply as from the armies of Connacht, he stepped forth, hands wrapped around the shaft of his spear.
“I, Eóin, the bastard-born son of Pól ó Flannagáin, king of Connacht, and the rightful heir to the hall of Soghain –” His voice broke slightly. “Unless you, of course –”
“I don’t want it,” she said, terse and curt, trying to still the erratic pounding of her heart at the sight of this boy who would wear her brother’s crown. “It is yours. You have, by all accounts, been a good and just king during these times of woe.”
His head jerked downwards in a bow. “Mo bhanríon,” he said again, quavering with nerves. “I pledge to you my shield and my spear, the fidelity of Connacht, from this day to my last day.”
Rory forced herself to look away from the wrongness of this boy who was her brother but not enough, automatically seeking the comfort of Locke – her husband, her friend, the sword in her hand and the shield at her back, and gods, she ached for a shield right now, something, anything, behind which she could hide, to close her eyes and be, if only for a moment, at peace.
Their eyes met, hers pleading and desperate, but his were flat and distant, no shield here, no solace, but an unforgiving wall of locked doors and iron-barred windows.
“Lord Locke,” she said again, but without hope this time, sad and resigned, and he stared up at her from where he knelt in the blood-red mud, lips tight, jaw set.
“You have heard our oaths,” he said. “Do you accept them?”
Her heart trembled, even though her voice did not. “I do,” she said. “You have your kingdom.” His expression did not flicker, still so remote, still so unyielding. “Serve me well, King MacMurchada.”
He stood, hand on his sword, head bowed. “High Queen,” he said, and behind him, the wave of bruised and bloodied men rose as one, fists over their hearts, spears thudding against the ground. “High Queen,” they echoed, a rumbling roar of a salute, a promise made for a promise given.
Rory looked across the sea of faces, gathered under the many multi-colored banners of éire – gathered together, as one, made whole once more by the long-lost voice of the slumbering gods which she had awakened from the stones of the earth – and lifted her own fist to her lips, bowing at the waist towards what was left of her people.
“Gather your dead,” she said. “See to your wounded. Today we grieve, but tomorrow – tomorrow we feast, for our land, our mother, at last has been set free!”
The answering roar was like a thunderclap rolling over, reverberating in her ears, and through the din she risked a glance at Locke again, to find him still watching her, his expression as faraway and unattainable as the northern isles.
Come to me, she thought, an aching stab of longing slicing through her. Come to me, take your place at my side, look at me as though you were lost in the darkness and I were your light, as I dreamed you would.
For once, she wished to be a dream to someone, and not a nightmare.
But then his gaze fell to her lips, blue-tinged even now from the unearthly ice that still lingered in her veins, and then down to her hands, crusted with blood and coated with the ash of her lost friend.
Locke turned away, moving among his men, clapping shoulders and shaking hands, drawing Eamon and Tadhg into tight hugs.
And then she was, once more, alone.