25. The Rider
25
THE RIDER
B oann may not have noticed much of a different in weight once the majority of Saffron’s luggage was removed and replaced with Aodhán. The fey gentle wasn’t much broader than Saffron once they were pressed so closely together, he realized, wondering if it was simply their imposing energy that made them feel so large . He could have sworn they were at least as tall, as broad as Cylvan, though perhaps only because they shared so many other features. And not just physically, as their temperament grew more and more bitter and sour as they continued on. Annoyed with how Saffron held Boann’s reins, annoyed with how people looked at them as they passed on the road, even annoyed at how Copper trotted silently alongside them. When rain began sprinkling the road, it was as if they’d been insulted straight to their face.
“I think he’s actually stuck like that,” Saffron attempted to explain at one point, but Aodhán just scoffed. He almost turned to look, sure it was actually Cylvan seated behind him in the saddle. They sounded exactly the same.
“Your doing, witch?” they muttered, and Saffron really did throw them a look.
“Excuse me?”
They mumbled something else, but didn’t repeat it. Saffron wasn’t sure if the heat in his face was from anger or annoyance, but he made sure to elbow the other rider in the stomach while adjusting Boann’s reins.
“I think because he shifted despite being ashen,” he explained anyway. “He couldn’t change before, but somehow shifted despite that, but—is still ashen. So he can’t change back.”
“The veil must have quite the sense of humor. Are we sure it isn’t punishment for how his brothers acted at the satyr party?”
Even Copper glanced over his shoulder with narrow eyes in warning to Aodhán, and Saffron felt the resentful, electric buzzing between the two of them. He almost asked if Aodhán and Copper had met before, but decided against it. He was already getting too many skeptical looks from his unwelcome riding companion, not to mention the comments under their breath. Saffron didn’t actually care to know anything more about them.
When Saffron wasn’t keeping an eye on the fox, his attention drifted toward the edge of the trees on the side of the road, where a familiar black wolf stalked just out of sight. Saffron had tried to convince Taran he didn’t need to wander out in the world if Aodhán would be joining them, not to mention Copper, but the wolf had insisted. Saffron knew it was because he personally considered every member of that tiny traveling party to be idiots—but a part of him wanted to think it was because he genuinely wished to keep Saffron out of harm’s way. Whether or not he had any choice.
Copper constantly lifted his head to look, too, either to see if the wolf still followed, or like a part of him was tempted to trot a little closer. Perhaps a shared animal instinct—perhaps because it was only the second time he’d seen Taran out in the open like that, and was curious to see what his old friend was like after so many years.
Saffron adjusted his grasp on Boann’s reins again, wondering, if Aodhán knew of Copper’s fox form—how much did they know of Taran, too? Seeing as they were clearly aware of Saffron’s arid tendencies, his biggest secrets, likely shared by Saoirse so they knew what they were getting into. But had they also been around long enough to have known all of Cylvan’s friends as children as Saoirse had? He almost wanted to ask. But he wouldn’t. At least not yet.
They passed from the Fall Court into the Spring without any fanfare, except the little flutter of excited anticipation in Saffron’s stomach. Riding until the sun lazily sank toward the horizon, the darkness deepened the rainy chill in the air and made Saffron shiver, though seemingly had no effect on the passenger behind him. Who only huffed and constantly adjusted their hood with a small curse every time.
Passing through Connacht just as the light fully dipped into night, Saffron’s stomach growled, and he pulled Boann to the side of the main street outside a bakery. Aodhán hissed complaints as he did, exclaiming that the roads would only get more dangerous in the dark, but Saffron just rolled his eyes.
“There’s nothing that could surprise me in the Agate Wood,” he said. “Never was. Just wait here.”
Aodhán scoffed—again, exactly how Cylvan would have—and kicked their feet over the saddle to stomp into the bakery behind him. Saffron said nothing, just greeted the attendant inside and went about his business. He ordered a box of warm pastries, a mix of both sweet and savory, before hesitating—then requesting an extra, of all the same things.
He hoped Baba Yaga would be in Wicklow Cottage once they arrived. He hoped she would be awake. He hoped the other beantighes wouldn’t mind receiving a little gift of Connacht treats from someone they assumed to be a stranger—the reminder, too, which made his heart sink.
His mood quieted while finishing the transaction with the attendant, having to clear his throat before handing over the handful of chaplets to pay. Aodhán watched in curious silence the whole time.
“You’re taking pastries to someone on campus?” they figured on their own while stepping back out onto to street, newly illuminated with lanterns that flickered against the darkening sky. “Who, the headmistress?”
“No,” Saffron muttered, ignoring the question a moment longer as he reached into their personal box to dig out a honeyed bacon and salt croissant, which he tossed to Copper waiting patiently next to Boann. His friend caught it mid-air with a squeal of delight, tearing into it like a prey rabbit. Handing the boxes to Aodhán to hold, when Saffron did respond, it was in hardly more than a whisper. “They’re for my henmother. And the people who used to live in my cottage in Beantighe Village.”
Aodhán clearly didn’t anticipate that, which meant they didn’t argue. They just looked at Saffron with the same curiosity mixed with frustration they always did, before shaking their head and pulling themself up into the saddle one-handed. Saffron followed, careful not to kick the boxes from their hand with his leg.
Returning to the road, they barely slipped through the town’s gates as they closed for the night, the guards giving Saffron a funny look as he smiled and nodded while passing. They were even more perplexed at the sight of Copper, the giant orange creature three times as big as any normal fox, clearly a wild thing on the heels of the very normal-looking fey folk on the back of a royal horse. Saffron tried not to think about it too much, how the sight would likely stay with them, how they would be able to easily identify them to any leanan sídhe princes who might pass through next, demanding if Saffron had been spotted.
“I thought you said there was nothing in the Agate Wood that could surprise you?” Aodhán muttered as Connacht’s gates disappeared behind them, only the dark road ahead.
“I did say that,” Saffron muttered, digging into the side-bag of the saddle to pull out the handheld lantern inside, striking a match and letting it fester before hanging it off a loop on his belt.
“Why did you stiffen the moment we left the town, then?”
Saffron scoffed, that time. “Not because of anything we might cross on the road.”
“Then what?”
Saffron scowled at Boann’s flicking ears, the tiniest puffs of steam emerging from the horse’s nose with the absence of the sun’s warmth. The chill of the rain gently pattered against Saffron’s hood where Fiachra also huddled, playing like a thousand plucked instrument strings on the earth and leaves in the trees.
“It’s nothing,” he mumbled, pausing before adding: “Cylvan is going to be so angry with me.”
The silence between them puckered with the relaxed clopping of Boann’s hooves, the pattering of Copper’s paws, crickets in the grassy gutters of the road and the sound of heavy, crunching feet a little further than that. Off in the distance, other wolves howled; owls hooted and made Fiachra stir under Saffron’s hood, poking her head out from where she’d drifted off to sleep.
“He most certainly will be,” the fey gentle finally answered. “But sometimes Prince Cylvan needs to be made angry, to remind him what he could lose. He’s quite spoiled in Avren.”
Saffron turned to look at them, never expecting such blatancy. But Aodhán just gazed down at the printed shop name on the top of the boxes they held, swirling letters drawn in ink and dusted with sparkling powder.
“Have you known him for a long time?”
“Oh,” Aodhán smirked like they had a secret, averting their eyes like they hadn’t meant to imply that. “A while yet, yes. He’s been a pain in the ass the entire time, too.”
“Yeah,” Saffron couldn’t help but chuckle. “I’ve heard that a lot.”
“You two met at Morrígan Academy. Where you were a beantighe.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes. He was a mean, bitter, brooding raven back then, too,” Saffron answered. Unable to keep a little smile off his face. His hand sank to his waist, where the dagger made from Cylvan’s horn hung from his belt. Absentmindedly cracking open the sheathe to rub his finger over the root of the glasslike blade. “I think he’s lightened up at least a little bit since then, though.”
“You may be right.”
Aodhán said nothing else, Saffron said nothing else. The brief exchange had quelled the smallest part of Saffron’s nerves, but the rest remained. Storming in his chest, terrified of whatever consequences he might have to face from what he’d done. Hoping Cylvan would understand. If not at first, then eventually. Hoping he would understand, Saffron only did it because he thought it was best. He just wanted to keep Cylvan safe. He just wanted to chase after any and all threads he could to save the people taken from then.
Even if oracles did manage to get back through the veil—even if they somehow managed to retrieve Asche and Saffron’s friends—that didn’t mean Ryder was going to stop. Saffron had to do everything in his power to learn. To know how to stop him, once and for all. He only needed Cylvan to understand that.
The familiarity of the Agate Wood didn’t fully strike him until, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the shimmer of pixies buzzing around the last blooms of an apple tree. Until he swore he heard voices calling out on the breeze, until Copper paused to lift his head and look. How even Taran emerged from the undergrowth to walk a little closer to Saffron’s side, like he could sense the growing energy of the wild woods, and the wilder things that lived there. Copper had said the Fall Court’s woods were the oldest, filled with the strangest things—but perhaps only because he’d never had to pass through that patch of the Spring Court once the sun went down.
Passing a sign pointing toward Morrígan Academy, everyone else seemed to breathe a quiet sigh of relief, while Saffron felt the opposite—a new sense of dread. Not sure if he wanted to go through campus, or head straight for Beantighe Village for the night. Eager to see his henmother, his old home, his friends—despite knowing they weren’t really his friends anymore. Not as much as they knew, at least; not since the royal oracles unthreaded him from their memories.
Saffron lost himself easily in those sinking feelings, especially wrapped in such encompassing darkness of the wood, the white noise of the rain, his muffled senses beneath the hood, the silence of the road. He only emerged again when Taran’s ears suddenly perked, and then Copper’s—and then Saffron saw what caught their attention, far ahead in the darkness.
Something floated over the middle of the road, bobbing lazily up and down, glowing from three holes on its front. Eyes, a mouth. Carved into a gnarled gourd that grinned an uneven little smile at them.
“That something you’re familiar with too, witch?” Aodhán asked, reaching around Saffron to tepidly grasp at Boann’s reins. Saffron didn’t answer, just scrutinized the unusual sight, swallowing against the growing uncertainty in the back of his throat. Was it a will o’ the wisp? A púca? A brownie? What else would play such a strange little trick?
Reaching to touch the scar on his arm, Taran twitched like he felt it, offering Saffron a brief glance. But Saffron didn’t give the wolf a command, instead focusing on the magic in his blood. Summoning it to his eyes, into his vision, wanting to see if the strange totem glowed red with arid magic, or white with opulence. When the object didn’t glow at all, he wasn’t sure if he should be relieved or even more suspicious. Even wild things usually had a halo, tinged pink in their natural mix of opulence and aridity—whatever it was floating in front of him, even his rowan magic couldn’t see it.
He nudged Boann forward, and the horse obeyed, though snapped her head back and forth a few times with snorts of protest. Saffron just patted the side of her neck with whispered words of reassurance, before speaking up a little louder and directing Taran to go ahead and get a closer look. Taran obeyed right away, ears flattening against his head as he darted forward. Copper followed suit, without having to be asked. Curious as any other fox like him.
Both beasts reached the floating object, and Saffron pulled back on Boann’s reins once more when the gourd immediately drifted away from the fox and the wolf observing it. First it bobbed up and down, then circled them, spinning on an invisible axis and even flipping over itself as if sentient and playing games. Only then did Saffron fully recognize its shape as a butternut squash, and he might have laughed if he wasn’t so confused.
“What in Cailleach’s name…” Aodhán muttered, nudging Saffron in the shoulder again. “What’s going on?”
“It must be a fairy trick,” Saffron chuckled. “Just a plaything?—”
The words caught in his throat when something else appeared further down the road, accompanied by loud, echoing clopping of horse hooves before slowing to a stop. A sight that made Saffron’s blood run cold in an instant, the hairs standing on the back of his neck. Boann sensed the same shift in the air, whipping her head back and forth once more and stomping backward. Ahead of them, Copper’s tail bushed out, claiming a feet steps back of his own, though Taran remained exactly where he stood. Head low, back flat and tail swishing in warning.
“What is it?” Aodhán demanded again in a hiss, but Saffron still didn’t know. He knew—but he didn’t. He’d read about dubhlachan in books; Baba Yaga used to tell stories of them as human-made horrors. He never thought one would stand face-to-face with one on an Alvish road. But the silhouette of it, with its dark cloak, massive black drafthorse, were enough to make his mind spin. It was too dark to tell if the creature really was as headless as all the myth claimed—but the glowing-faced gourd teasing his wolf was enough to make Saffron’s breath lock.
The distant rider’s horse pawed a broad hoof against the road a few times, before stamping its feet in agitation—and breaking into a bolt toward them. Saffron choked on a gasp, reeling back on Boann who threw her legs up in a panic. He barely threw his arms around her neck, but Aodhán wasn’t so lucky, tumbling off the back with a grunt to the road, the boxes of pastries on their lap crunching and skidding away. Saffron wasn’t far behind as Boann bucked one more time, throwing him and knocking Fiachra free of his hood as they hit the road. He scrambled to grab the bird before she could be trampled, pulling her into his chest and clambering backward. Boann clearly wished to bolt, herself—but clearly didn’t want to leave her riders behind.
Circling him in agitation, she jerked away once Saffron scrambled back to his feet and desperately chased her. Meanwhile, Fiachra wriggled free of his grasp, taking off into the sky just as Copper raced back to Saffron and skid to a halt in front of him. Up ahead, Taran remained where he stood, lowering into a striking hunch as the gourd continued spinning and taunting him. Only once the horseman approached at full-speed, the wolf lunged and slammed into the rider, attempting to knock him off. But even with the weight of the beast attacking him—the rider remained in the saddle, and Taran was flung back to the road with a yelp and a bounce.
“Taran—!” Saffron shouted on instinct, before fiery blood boiled up his veins, into his chest where it swirled like a torch. Moving, allowing his instincts to drive him, he threw back the edge of his cloak and pulled the obsidian knife from his belt. He cut the tip of his finger deep enough to bleed, grabbing the lantern hooked on his hip.
Using his blood, with only mere moments allotted to him, Saffron drew a sloppy arid stele for fire, burst on the glass exterior—and lobbed it against the earth, just as the rider came within reach of him. An explosion of light and flame erupted from the seed of the candle inside, hot and blinding enough that even the dubhlachan reeled back on his horse.
The rider indeed still had a head, clearly illuminated in the light. And while the bottom half of his face was covered with a cloth mask—Saffron swore he recognized the person’s eyes. No one he could name—but someone he was sure he’d seen before. The feeling was mutual, it seemed, as the rider’s own eyes widened before pulling back on the reins.
The massive horse stumbled back to the road, stomping back and forth in irritation, both from the flames and the sudden forced halt. The rider never took his eyes from Saffron—until his gloved hand lifted, and he pulled down the bottom of his mask, calling out:
“Have you heard the music of the moon’s harp?”
Saffron’s mind reeled as he tried to make sense of the words. The rider just watched him, still holding the edge of his mask, like he wasn’t certain. Perhaps because of Saffron’s glamour, perhaps because his own recognition was barely a pinch, as much as Saffron felt. But the only place such a thing could have been possible there in the Spring Court—was at Morrígan Academy.
It struck Saffron in an instant, mortification churning in his gut at how obvious it was.
“P-Professor Dullahan?” he called back. Behind him, Aodhán made a noise like ‘ seriously?’ at the irony of the name.
The rider cocked an eyebrow, pulling back on his horse’s reins with a little more strength. Saffron scrambled for the amethyst pendant down the front of his tunic, yanking it off to reveal his human face. Thankfully, the rider seemed to finally understand, and he yanked more firmly on his horse to calm its stomping agitation.
“You’re Adelard’s student,” Dullahan stated, rather than a question. Saffron nodded. During the two months he spent waiting for Cylvan’s call from Avren after Ostara, Saffron had spent as much fleeting time as possible with Professor Adelard as he did wandering alone in the woods. Learning every little thing he could squeeze out of the man, mainly focusing on his Gaeilge spell-vocabulary as Adelard was hesitant as ever to dive any deeper. Occasionally, Saffron had brushed past Professor Dullahan on his way in or out of Adelard’s office, though the man’s handsome face never met his eyes a single time.
“We’re trying to get to Morrígan,” Saffron said, putting his hands up slightly as a sign of peace. As he did, the flames of his spell began to putter under the rain, making it harder to see Dullahan’s expression. “We’re not here to cause any trouble.”
“This is a professor of yours?” Aodhán growled, re-emerging from their own pocket of darkness to grab Saffron’s shoulder.
“Who is this?” Professor Dullahan asked in the same tone.
“A royal guard traveling with me,” Saffron answered. “Gentle Aodhán.”
Aodhán’s hand on his shoulder tightened in protest, and he shoved them away.
“That fox there is my friend, too. He’s stuck like that because of Avren’s ashen state. And that wolf—he’s my familiar. I have an owl somewhere nearby, too, but—ah, there she— Fiachra, no!” Saffron choked as the bird’s ghostly-white form suddenly dove from the dark sky, talons flared and tearing into Dullahan’s dark hair. But the professor didn’t snarl or attack her in return—his hand swept out with precision, grappling Fiachra’s middle with the same ease of grabbing a cat off the fireplace mantle. Fiachra screeched, flapping her wings and flailing her feet, biting relentlessly all over the man’s gloved hand.
“Easy, a bhobain, ” he said in a low, calming tone. Fiachra wriggled free again as he loosed his grasp, flapping away and landing on Saffron’s head, instead. Dullahan’s attention returned to him as Fiachra did, reaching out to pat his horse’s neck before tilting his head down the road. “Come, then. Adelard will be wanting to see you.”
Saffron finally released the lungfuls of air he’d been holding, nodding and turning to search for Boann, who stood nervously at the edge of the trees. Dullahan said nothing else as Saffron worked to regain control of his skittish horse, barely casting extra glances down to Copper, then Taran, as they slinked past him with skeptical looks. Even Aodhán was less-than-thrilled to continue down the path on the heels of someone who’d nearly attacked them, especially after muttering curses beneath their breath while gathering the dented, but still intact pastry boxes from the road. But Saffron felt only relief, despite the still-racing of his heart.
Boann wanted nothing to do with the dark rider who’d rushed them, complaining each time Saffron attempted to nudge her closer so that he might ask the professor what, exactly, he was doing on the road, and with so much theatricality. Especially as they passed the hovering, carved butternut-squash, which just bobbed and twirled in place as if wishing them goodbye. It didn’t follow, even as its master rode away. Keeping watch for any and all who wished to approach Morrígan Academy. Saffron was both eager to ask—but afraid to know what must have happened to earn it.