Chapter Twenty-Five Fia #2
“Do you think she meant it?” The words bloomed dark with all my unspoken fears. “When she threatened the lives of Chandi and Rogan?”
Sinéad’s eyes yawned dark as hollow graves. “Not only did she mean it, Fia, but she meant it as a… benediction. She believes what she’s doing is holy. I dread the toll Eala’s magic will take. I only hope those I once called friends will survive her reign of death.”
We wove through the labyrinth of the Cnoc in search of Laoise.
“You slept a long time,” Irian said, from a step ahead of me. “I had begun to worry.”
I glanced at the changeless rocks. “How late?”
“Well into the afternoon, I fear.” Irian paced in silence before adding, “It was good of you to speak to Sinéad. She has been troubled.”
“It was good of you to train her,” I responded. “If not speak to her about her troubles.”
“Mo chroí.” The glance Irian threw over his shoulder was faintly amused. “You should know talking is not my greatest talent.”
“Your greatest talent?” I laughed. “No, I daresay it is not.”
He turned on his heel, walking backward as he lowered his gaze to mine. He opened his mouth, but whatever he might have said was drowned out by the sudden sound of arguing.
“… Are you mad?” Wayland’s usually merry tenor was tight with irritation. The hair on the back of my neck lifted—I was not used to audible aggression from the prionsa of Emain Ablach. “That is the last thing we should wish to do!”
The response was quiet, but I thought it must be Laoise’s cool, accented voice. I widened my eyes at Irian; we both walked a little faster.
Unlike the rest of the Cnoc, the forge was still rough-hewn.
The stone bore the divots of chisels and hammers, and scorch marks where draig fire had smoothed the masonry.
Wayland and Laoise faced off over a workbench.
Behind Laoise, a large red draig hovered, her pellucid wings glowing faintly in the silver glow permeating the walls; between them on the table, a fat little baby draig rolled around, her soft tummy a strange counterpoint to whatever conflict was winging between them.
“Nothing has changed!” Laoise was arguing. “Unless you simply do not know how?”
“My knowledge is irrelevant. I am not my father.”
“Oy!” My voice’s harmony joined their discord. Both turned toward me, faintly guilty. “What’s the problem?”
“Why have we built this forge, if not to forge things?” Laoise swept her arms broadly. “We all agreed it was the best path.”
“That was two months ago.” Wayland pointed to one of the veins of silvery mineral threading through the dark rock. “Now she is here. It changes things.”
“How?” Laoise’s screech of frustration rattled the draig at her back. The creature stretched its wings, the hard ridges nearly touching the roof of the cave.
“Because I am not my father!” The repeated words scraped abrasively. “He kept her enslaved for a thousand years. Now that she is here, I will not use her in the same way!”
“It is metal, Wayland. This is a forge. You, presumably, are a smith. Albeit an inept one.”
Wayland glowered. “Do not try to shame me into abandoning my values.”
“A convenient value indeed. For I have not heard you voice it before.”
“That’s enough.” I wasn’t sure I understood the argument, but it was clear Laoise and Wayland were going around in circles, and both were likely to hurt themselves on the barbs they were slinging. “Surely there is a way to resolve this without shouting at each other.”
“There is,” Laoise said, with sharp impatience. She turned to the draig at her back—bigger than a horse, with fiery red-gold scales and wings scraping the sides of the forge—and pointed at a dense vein of silver-gold metal bisecting a wall. “Blodwen, melt!”
Wayland lunged around the table. “Blodwen, don’t—!”
The draig—Blodwen, I gathered—had already reared onto her hind legs, fanning out her wings as she inhaled deeply into her barrel chest. A blaze sparked deep in her gorge, shining between her rufous scales like light through chinks of armor, then rose swiftly along her sinuous neck.
She opened her delicate muzzle, studded with distinctly undelicate teeth. Snaked her neck. And breathed fire.
I instinctively jumped back from the white-hot conflagration roaring from Blodwen’s mouth, nearly colliding with Irian at my back.
Immediately the broad vein of metal began to smoke, then melt, droplets of gold-streaked silver beading the black rock below.
Wayland turned away in dismay, scooping the much smaller baby draig off the worktable and clasping her to his chest. I was so surprised by his easy familiarity with the draigling that I almost missed Blodwen’s head shudder.
Her flame stuttered. Her wings flared wider, as if she was trying to lift off inside the cavern.
There wasn’t room—the unfinished forge was narrow, the ceiling barely taller than Irian’s dark head.
Slowly, as if fighting some resistance, Blodwen turned her head, still breathing a ragged sheet of flame. The fire scorched along the wall, scathed the floor. Laoise cried out, jumping back and beating the edge of her tunic where tiny cinders alighted on her clothes.
“Blodwen!” she scolded, her voice touched with the barest note of alarm. “That’s not funny.”
But the juvenile draig was not engaged in caprice. The conflagration blazing over the forge workbench ignited my own alarm. I stumbled back another step. Both Wayland and Irian retreated with me.
“Blodwen!” Laoise cried out again.
But the draig didn’t seem to hear her—her graceful legs moving ponderously but purposefully across the floor, her neck coiling as she belched great gasps of sizzling red and gold throughout the forge.
Heat blossomed, unbearable in the closeness of the room.
Through the curling skeins of black smoke clouding the cavern, Blodwen’s eyes stared, glossy yet somehow unfocused.
Eyes suddenly gleaming silver. Silver… veined with filaments of gold.
Fear stampeded my heart, and I almost dropped to my knees, coughing as black fumes invaded my lungs.
I squinted through the sheeting flames and opaque smog as another hulking serpentine creature with scales of shimmering red-gold joined Blodwen, screening us from the conflagration with broad, membranous wings.
Irian threw his heavy black cloak over my shoulders and wrapped his arms around my torso. The world stretched thin as silk before snapping inside out, yanking us away from the rampant wildfire.