Chapter 15 #3
“Then we will kill Bansys and pass judgment on the two raised to believe they had the right to rule the Ninth Realm.” Mathison forged onward, taking the path that veered to the left and rose at a sharper incline.
“Come, my friends. It is time for our meeting in the Great Hall.” He was tempted to will his clothing and weapons into a nearby dimension and shift to his wolf form.
There was no question that the clan would recognize Dubh because a larger or blacker wolf did not exist. In the past, the curse had locked him in his human form, that of the Wraith, whenever he’d dared visit Shadowmist Keep.
But now, with the curse broken, he could do as he willed.
“No,” Dubh said. “Ye’ve earned the right to walk proudly into yer own hall in the form of a man. Yer clan will know ye and welcome ye—and any who don’t, will be dealt with. Legion has gone ahead to greet ye and render any aid we might need.”
“Calia wishes to lay them to rest and honor them as heroes, but I’m nay so sure they wish to rest.” Mathison paused at the juncture of three tunnels, eyeing each passage with interest. This was not right.
Neither the scrolls from Grandsire’s cave nor his memory knew of such an interchange with three choices.
Whenever potential routes or snares were offered, those offerings always came in pairs.
“Kannis, Giddrie, what say ye? There should not be three, and this trap is not of my grandsire’s making. ”
Giddrie grunted as he shoved around his older brother. “Mind yer girth, Kannis. Fewer fish from the loch might serve ye better, ye ken? One of these days, we’ll find ye wedged in one of these tunnels.”
“Shut it, Giddrie. Ye’re merely jealous of my magnificence.”
Mathison turned sideways to make more room for Giddrie, who wasn’t all that small himself. “Focus, lads.”
“Aye,” replied both brothers in unison. “Forgive us.”
Giddrie gave each of the three routes a slow up and down look, then stretched out his long neck and sniffed them as much as he dared. He nodded at the center one. “This one stinks of witch and death.” He turned to Mathison. “Shall I cleanse it?”
While Mathison wasn’t entirely sure about what the young dragon intended, he trusted him. “By all means.”
Giddrie looked back at his brother. “Shove up here and help, Kannis. Yer bluest flame always reaches much farther than mine. With both of us, there is no hope for this poorly contrived trap.”
As Kannis squeezed closer, he twitched his folded wing at Mathison. “Shield yer eyes, grand chieftain. We dinna wish to blind ye.”
Mathison turned toward the wall and bowed his head. “Proceed, my fiery warriors.”
“It may become a bit warm,” Giddrie warned, then a roaring blast shook the tunnel.
Covering his ears and squinting his eyes tighter shut, Mathison hugged closer to the wall, trying to soak in as much of its cool dampness as it was willing to spare.
A bit warm, my feckin’ arse. He broke out in a heavy sweat and swore he smelled the acrid scent of his hair burning, but he refused to tell them to stop.
The trap needed to be destroyed or cleansed, as Giddrie had put it.
If the brothers’ inferno didn’t accomplish that goal, then nothing would.
When quiet and stillness reigned once more, he turned. The fake tunnel was completely gone. It was as though it had never existed. He recognized the way now. It wasn’t much farther to the Great Hall. “Well done, lads.”
The brothers stepped back and waited for him to take the lead.
The closer they drew to the arch at the end of the tunnel, the brighter and more vibrant his sword glowed.
Its blade hummed with the ancient song of steel hungering for vengeance and blood.
Mathison hungered for it as well. This moment was the culmination of over three centuries of exile and suffering, but that exile and suffering mattered little now.
Now, he wanted vengeance for the pain Bansys had foisted upon Calia.
He paused in front of the large oak door with its blackened reinforcements, bands of hammered iron, and massive bolts.
“We are with ye, mighty Shadowmist,” Kannis said.
“To the righting of the Ninth Realm and all the wrongs done to it and those within it because of greed,” Giddrie added.
“To the righting of the Ninth Realm.” With a mighty heave, Mathison swung the door open into the Great Hall.
Utter silence greeted him. The meeting place appeared as abandoned as a long-forgotten tomb.
He eased across the threshold, his hackles tingling with such a sting that the back of his neck burned with leeriness.
The scent of many filled the cavernous room, strong and fresh as if they stood in front of him.
His clansmen were here. The witch had thought to hide them with a cloaking spell.
“Revelare,” he commanded, the order echoing through the spacious, high-ceilinged room.
Those cowering on the benches of the long trestle tables and beside the wide columns shimmered into view like red wine poured into a crystal goblet. Men. Women. Children. Some he recognized. Many he didn’t. They stared back at him, wide-eyed and pale. None of them spoke. None of them moved.
Quiet rustling to his left made him turn.
There on the dais, on double thrones, sat the two men he had once thought of as his sons.
Or maybe not. These two were far different from the twins he’d watched from a distance over the past three hundred years.
What had happened to them? Terror shimmered in this pair’s oddly pale green eyes.
Those pale green eyes—almost the same shade as the sea.
Both of them had hair so dark it was nearly blue, and their skin was all but opalescent.
He had a fair idea which clan had sired these two.
The Na Fir Ghorm, the Blue Men of the Minch.
His wife, Aluwyn, had apparently come to him carrying the spawn of merfolk.
“How the bloody hell did I not notice yer traits when yer mother bore ye?”
“A simple glamour, fool,” Bansys said as she stepped out from behind the column closest to the steps that led up to the dual thrones.
“’Twas no difficult task to make one babe look like another, and as long as the curse held, as they matured, they appeared as pureblood wolf clan to one and all.
” She patted her chest with her thin, gnarled fist. “Complete power over the Ninth Realm was mine. Mine to seek justice and make those pay who had ever crossed me.” With a chilling smile, she jutted her sharp chin in the direction of her grandsons.
“Those two will do anything to have their tethers lengthened enough so they might visit the sea. They are no better than their whore of a mother and fish-tailed father.” She bared her teeth, revealing her lengthening fangs.
“I hid yer mate’s soul for centuries, dribbling crumbs of false hints and clues across the ages for the Weavers to find.
” She swaggered closer, rapping the tip of her tall, black staff hard against the stone of the floor.
“And I am not done yet. Harm me, and yer fated mate dies. My life’s blood is all that reins in the toxins poised to flood her body and extinguish her light. ”
Mathison resettled his grip on his sword as Kannis and Giddrie stepped up and took their places on either side of him.
“I smell a lie, witch.” Bansys was not nearly powerful enough to wield a spell that would do as she suggested.
“The very act of immobilizing the clan is draining ye, and yet ye expect me to believe ye’re strong enough to cast a blood spell?
Yer way with the energies is laughable.”
The darkness of the witch’s eyes flashed with a glinting beadiness, and her knuckles whitened with her tightening grip on her staff. “Carman will return soon to put yer head on a pike for what ye did to her sons.”
“I look forward to it.” He nodded at those of the wolf clan frozen by the witch’s spell. “Free them, Giddrie. Legion will sort the allies from the enemies.”
Giddrie snapped his claws, then offered a polite nod. “It is done, Shadowmist.”
“Legion?” Bansys cut loose a nervous, high-pitched cackle. “They be dead and nothing more than bones and ash at the bottom of yer grandsire’s pit. Their souls canna escape that hell.”
“Yet here we are, still serving our grand chieftain,” Legion said in a multitude of powerful voices that thundered through the room. “Ridiculous witch. When a soul is invited to come forth, it is given the trail of light and strength to do so.”
“And I invited each and every one of them to come forth and stay as long as they like.” The witch’s increasing pallor made Mathison smile. The pungent aroma of her terror hung heavy in the air.
She shook a trembling finger at him. “Even if ye destroy me. Carman will come for ye. This is not over.”
“Once she is no more, Giddrie, then neither are her curses, aye?” Mathison sheathed his sword.
Toying with one’s prey was far more enjoyable than dealing the killing blow—especially when she had as much as confessed that no blood spell existed.
Calia was safe and could be healed by the combined efforts of the dragons and the Weavers, even if the witch was dead.
“That is correct, mighty Shadowmist.” Giddrie released twin puffs of smoke from his nostrils.
“And we would be most honored to see to that task for ye,” Kannis said, swaggering forward enough to cause the clansmen to gasp and cower in their seats.
“I thought ye released them?” Mathison asked Giddrie, fully expecting the hall to empty itself by now.
“I did,” Giddrie said, then lowered his voice. “I believe their fear of dragons holds them in place. After all, our kind has caused the keep to tremble and quake on more than one occasion, and they are aware of that.”
“We made sure they knew it was us,” Kannis said with no small amount of pride.
“I dinna blame ye. One should always make one’s work known.” Mathison sauntered closer to the twins cowering on their thrones. A rare pang of mercy washed across him. Where the devil had that come from?
“When ye opened yer heart to Calia, ye opened it to much more,” Dubh said. “Even I dinna wish to rip out anyone’s throat other than Bansys’s and Carman’s…and that’s for the pain they caused my Litress.”
Food for thought. Mathison climbed the steps of the dais and slowly sauntered back and forth in front of the two, who now appeared to have been just as manipulated as he had been. “Which of ye is Talon?”
The one on the right lifted his hand. “I am firstborn of Aluwyn and Aegir.”
Mathison noted the young man’s defiant tone and a distinct scent of revulsion mixed with fear and dread. “Ye hate this clan for keeping ye from the sea.”
“My brother and I belong nowhere. Not in this clan. Nor among our father’s people beneath the waves. No one accepts us as kin. We should not have been born.”
Mathison could well relate to not belonging after the past three hundred years.
But these two had received a life sentence that couldn’t be changed.
He eyed the younger of the two, who appeared even more sullen.
Before he could question them further, a nerve-splitting shriek filled the hall.
He turned to find Kannis licking his lips, Giddrie shaking his head, and Bansys the witch nowhere to be found.
Mathison didn’t say a word, just leveled a stern gaze on the eldest dragon brother, waiting for him to confess.
“I was hungry,” Kannis said without a shred of remorse. Then he belched and thumped his chest.
“Serves ye right,” Giddrie said. “Poisonous as she was, ye’re sure to have heartburn and the winds until the next full moon.”
Mathison scrubbed a hand across his eyes, wearied by the dragon brothers’ banter. “See to the people, aye? Give Legion any help where it might be needed.”
Both dragons agreed with regal nods, then started meandering between the rows of tables with amazing grace and finesse.
Turning back to the brothers, he allowed himself a heavy sigh.
They were harmless and lost, and he didn’t have the heart to foist any further suffering upon them.
“What do the two of ye wish to do with yerselves? Ye are welcome to stay with Clan Shadowmist, or ye may go to the sea. The choice is yers.”
“Bansys said we would be beheaded were we ever discovered to be halflings,” Talon said.
“Bansys became dragon fodder. Her words, spells, and curses are no more.” Mathison resettled his stance.
He needed to get back to Calia. The task here was done.
“And dinna call yerselves halflings. Ye’re not the first to be born of the mixing of far different clans.
As I said, if ye wish, ye may stay here.
Yer mother left Silvercord Clan and became Shadowmist when we wed—and I do know that she loved ye both.
She said so before she died. I canna say what yer father would do if ye wish to go to the Na Fir Ghorm. Only the two of ye know that.”
“Why do ye speak with such fairness?” Tanner’s eyes narrowed, distrust shouting from him.
“Because that is what a wise chieftain does. Ruling by fear foments hatred and rebellion. Ruling with fairness creates loyalty.”