Chapter Twenty-Seven Fia
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Fia
We made little conversation as we tromped through the dimming Barrens.
After a while, a waxing moon sailed over the range.
A hazy veil of color—unusual pinks and greens—wafted across the stars from the north, tremulous and fantastic.
But below the splendor of the heavens, the Barrens were black and bleak.
The night grew cold—I could not feel it, but Sinéad began to shiver despite the mantle she’d worn from the Cnoc.
Irian said nothing, only unclasped his own cloak and layered it over her shoulders.
She hesitated, then nestled gratefully in the warm fabric.
Warmth of a different kind surged along my spine, even as shadows of regret coiled in my darkest spaces.
How many belongings had been lost in the Cnoc?
All those tomes and scrolls in the library—burned to ash.
The gardens I’d glimpsed—swallowed by flames.
The stores of grain and wine carefully hoarded over the years—fuel for the conflagration.
The vast array of weapons and armor stored in the Armory—now molten metal.
At least Irian had the Sky-Sword. Sinéad had her daggers. Balor had his colossal fists. The aughiskies had their shark teeth.
I glanced back at Wayland walking beside Idris in terrible silence and noticed a polished haft protruding from above the collar of his mantle, as if he had a weapon strapped to his back.
I hadn’t noticed before, but it was good he was armed. We were going to need all the fighters—and weapons—we could get.
An hour later, Balor spotted something. His whole demeanor lit up—he pointed with a fist the size of a wine barrel toward the shadows of a distant ridge.
“Fire, lady!” he rumbled, with a large smile for me.
I saw it. A streak of blood-red embossed with gold, arcing across the sky. Distant but unmistakable.
Draig fire.
“Laoise,” Irian said.
Hope and lingering horror burned through me in quick succession. Had Laoise survived the trials of the afternoon intact? Had her draiglings? “It has to be.”
“Dragan Mother is giving us a signal,” Balor agreed, his booming voice chattering the pebbles beneath my feet. “She wishes for us to meet her.”
“Or she has encountered new enemies and is warning us away,” Irian said, encouragingly. “Let me scout.”
His silver eyes flew far. His thumb ghosted over the hilt of the Sky-Sword, belted at his waist. And I knew he had flown away, in mind if not in body. I counted my heartbeats.
Ten. Twenty.
His metal eyes flicked back into focus. He smiled—or perhaps it was a grimace.
“It is indeed Laoise,” he confirmed obliquely.
“The draiglings,” Idris asked. “Are they all well?”
“They are all well.” Irian abruptly sank onto the ground. “We should rest.”
“The flames appear no more than a few leagues away,” Wayland said, after a moment. “If we continue walking, we shall surely reach her by morning.”
Irian settled his spine against a rocky outcropping, rested the sheathed Sky-Sword across his knees, and closed his eyes. “For once, time is not of the essence.”
“She is my sister,” Idris said, a little hotly. “She may need our help—”
“She needs time.” Irian’s expression was strange—neither amusement nor understanding nor even sympathy, but somehow all of them at once. “That flare was meant neither as warning nor beacon. I am not sure we were meant to see it at all.”
“Then what?” Idris demanded.
“Laoise is very, very angry.” Irian cracked one eye open. “In my admittedly limited experience, angry fire-breathing draigs should be left to work out their feelings in peace.”
Irian was, as usual, correct.
We all slept badly, if we slept at all. Balor snacked upon a few quartz outcroppings, then stretched out on his back and snored thunderously at the sky.
In perfect counterpoint, Irian kept a still, silent vigil, his eyes closed and his palms resting on his sword, although I knew he did not sleep.
Sinéad huddled a few feet away beneath her cloak; Wayland and Idris leaned together, but uneasily, as if their frames did not fit close enough for comfort. I was too restless for sleep.
Dawn came with frigid fog and a palpable wave of hopelessness wafting over the group. Hunger descended on me with swift and unexpected force, hollowing out my stomach and twisting my insides. I glanced with sympathy at Idris, Sinéad.
If I was hungry, they had to be famished.
The sky turned pale and glossy as a pearl as we walked south. Soon, the sun rode higher; mist burned off and warmth blossomed. Sinéad threw off Irian’s extra cloak; Wayland gratefully turned his face—paler now than when I’d first met him—toward the warm blue expanse.
We smelled smoke before we glimpsed the fire. A plume the color of charcoal bloomed from a narrow valley, unfurling like a greedy, glowering rose. It stank of incinerated things—wood and scorched earth and broken rock.
What must have once been paradise had been reduced to fire and ash.
Towering skeletons of scorched trees twisted starkly against a smoky sky.
A curving river was a blackened scar, choked with charred debris.
Wisps of smoke curled from the ground, filtering muted, eerie stripes of sunlight.
Against a wall of black rock, Laoise’s anam cló curled amid her brood of draigs, the eight of them looking like the dying embers of an extinguished wildfire.
Hog squealed with glee as we approached, launching herself from the spikes on Laoise’s back.
But Laoise shifted back into Gentry form with one smooth, practiced motion and grabbed Hog from midair, unceremoniously plopping her between her siblings before turning on her heel and stalking toward our group.
Her hair was a flame; her eyes were bonfires; her expression could have destroyed worlds.
I heard Wayland take a sweeping step backward, heard Irian draw the Sky-Sword, heard Sinéad exhale a shaky “Laoise?”
But Laoise’s fury was reserved for me. I knew it without having to ask—understood it on a visceral level. The truth was, I blamed myself too.
For all of it. I had seen it—that tree at the center of everything. Every story, every legend, every myth. Every action, every reaction, every twist of fate. Every hero, every villain. Irian, Rogan, Wayland. Eala, Gavida, Talah.
Me.
With every step I had taken, every action I had made, every choice I had chosen, I had manipulated the stories of those around me.
I had dug my thorny fingers into fate’s tangled vines and pulled.
Some things had gone my way; others had decidedly not.
But after all I had learned in the Deep-Dream, I could no longer pretend to be a hapless pawn in my own destiny.
I was rooted deep in all our stories—no maple seed spinning on a breeze, but a taproot wedged firmly in dark soil.
I just was no longer sure whether I was the hero.
Or the villain.
Perhaps that was why I did not retreat as Laoise plunged toward me with violence and venom. Perhaps it was thoughtless bravery. Perhaps it was resignation.
Or perhaps I knew—a friend incinerating me on the spot was not the way my story ended.
“You!” she screamed, the word igniting like a match on her lips.
“This is your fault! Do you ever think about the consequences of your reckless, half-baked plans? No—you decide and then you drag everyone else into the mess you created! Emain Ablach is at the bottom of the ocean because of you. The Cnoc—my home—is nothing but smoke and ashes because of you!”
In the blink of an eye, she shifted back into her anam cló, her scaled form massive and sinuous.
Flames blossomed in her gorge. Maybe she wanted me to flee, to cower, to beg.
I did nothing, just held my ground and lifted my chin.
Her long neck swiveled; her eyes flickered like coals.
She hissed, spat. Then breathed fire a pace to my left.
Heat roared over me, crisping the hair on my arms and flushing my skin.
Irian stepped in front of me, shielding my form with his larger, taller figure.
“A little late, mo chroí,” I breathed at his back.
“Not really.” Over his shoulder, his mouth quirked with the tiniest smile. He pitched his voice loud enough for everyone to hear. “I am not trying to protect you from her. I am trying to protect her from you.”
I huffed, but amazingly, the jibe had its intended effect.
Wayland laughed; Sinéad made a sound of relief.
Laoise shifted back into her Gentry form, although she still vibrated—every muscle along her arms and shoulders clenched.
She glared at me around Irian’s forbidding figure but did not try to attack me again.
“You should not have bartered my draigs in your unholy bargain, tánaiste,” she snarled. “They were not yours to trade.”
“I was the one to suggest it,” Irian said. “If you wish to rage at anyone, Laoise, let it be me.”
This deflated Laoise, unleashing the last of her anger like ashes on the wind. She sank to her knees in the ruined ravine. Hog once more squeaked, lofted into the air, and bumbled across the ravine. Laoise gathered her into her arms.
“She turned them against me,” Laoise cried, so softly I could barely hear her.
Idris knelt beside his sister, nesting both woman and draig within the embrace of his larger frame.
Laoise bowed her head into the crook of his neck, the most vulnerable gesture I’d ever seen the Gentry woman make.
It shattered something inside me. Their home—their life—had imploded with a blaze, the years they’d lost glowing for a fleeting moment before fading to cold ash.
This was not a thing that could be mended. This was an end.
And I might not have been its sole cause. But I had certainly precipitated it.
I did not blame Laoise for her vitriol. All of this had happened because of me.
It was going to get worse before it got better.