Chapter Twenty-Eight Fia
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Fia
The unnaturally warm, verdant afternoon faded into a pleasant dusk.
The valley felt primeval now, ancient as the earth itself—dense, lush, heavy with life.
We gathered beside the stream, which Wayland had managed to coax from a trickle to a laughing brook.
A few of the trees grew fruit—pear-shaped clusters hanging from branches.
I bit into the violet skin of one, despite Irian’s protests—the soft, marbled flesh was savory, like figs and roast chestnuts.
“Not poison,” I confirmed to the group. “Although it would be tastier with bread and cheese.”
“Everything’s tastier with cheese,” Wayland said sadly.
Idris found mushrooms and declared at least half of them edible.
We spitted them on bendy twigs and had the draiglings roast them with uneven bursts of flame.
Everyone was famished—we ate the strange fruits and tender mushrooms until our tongues were stained violet and our fingertips tingled from pulling apart the flame-seared caps.
Stars wheeled overhead as we relaxed, sated, upon pillows of lime-green moss draped with blankets of woven vines.
Irian—never one for pleasantries or patience—asked the question we were all pondering.
“What now?”
The question chafed me like a badly forged shackle. The Cnoc was dust and ashes. We had no shelter, little food, barely any clothes, no more books, no weapons, and no forge to make new ones. We had no allies and no plans, save for the one still echoing through my mind, spoken in my father’s voice.
Find your sister. Find your sister. Find your sister.
“We could throw ourselves upon the mercy of the Ellyllon and quit Tír na nóg for good.” Laoise’s fury toward me had burned lower, but I feared it had a long wick. “Or we throw our lot in with the Summer Twins and anyone else who stands against Eala, and join the fight that is surely coming.”
“There’s a third option: join Eala’s dread army.” Wayland inspected his fingernails, his expression deadly serious. “I hear the retirement plan is to die for.”
Sinéad silently walloped him on top of the head.
I waited for someone else to chime in, before realizing everyone was waiting for me to speak.
“From the madness Eala spoke to me on Emain Ablach, I believe she wishes to unite the Folk and human realms into one. Through conquest, for I cannot believe she desires peace.” Under my guidance, both realms could be better, stronger, more powerful than either stands alone.
“If she has indeed returned home, then she will conquer the human realms first. Wrest Rath na Mara from M—the high queen—and crown herself in her stead. Only then will she march back upon Tír na nóg and bring it to heel.”
“What does she want with you?” Sinéad asked, her voice faintly hoarse from smoke inhalation.
“She believes Fia completes her,” Irian growled from beside me. He had heard Eala’s dire philosophy on the Longest Night. “And wishes for her to swear obeisance—to stand beside her in conquest. Their power joined in balance.”
“Clearly that’s not going to happen,” Wayland said. “But it means we have a little time, does it not? Surely the human realms cannot be conquered in a handful of months. We can consolidate our power, reforge the lost Treasures—”
“With what forge?” Laoise words were so hot she might as well have breathed fire. “What magical volumes and rare grimoires collected over a decade of searching?”
“To be fair,” Wayland muttered, looking only slightly chagrined, “we weren’t getting on particularly well with any of those things before, either.”
“You’re both right.” This earned me surprised looks. “And you’re both wrong. We must plan to stand against Eala… but we do not have time to spare. And we must reforge the Treasures… but I doubt we will find the answers in books or scrolls.”
I had been thinking about the Treasures since Wayland and I had discussed my starshine.
In the Deep-Dream, the Bright One had told me how the magic of the Treasures had begun to dwindle with time, despite heirs’ regular tithes to the nemeta.
But Irian, Wayland, Laoise, and I had just worked together to regenerate the valley, even without two Treasures.
“What if the Treasures were always supposed to be used together?” I earned myself blank stares.
I backtracked. “On the Longest Night, Eala surprised me by naming nine dúile—nine elements of magic. I knew only of the four contained within the Treasures—earth, water, air, fire. Why did the original chieftains—and Gavida, presumably—choose those four to focus their power? Perhaps they were simply the most common or the easiest to manipulate. Or perhaps it’s because in nature, those elements are designed to operate in balance.
” Somehow the looks I got were even blanker.
“A tree cannot grow without air, sunlight, or water, no matter how fertile the earth may be. Rain clouds cannot gather or move without heat and wind. Fire cannot spread without air, is bound by water, is fed by organic matter. Our four elements are the building blocks of nature. Each element is both nourished by and bound by the others. Counterpoise.”
Slowly, Irian nodded. “Together, we are balance.”
“Eternal, but not immutable,” added Wayland. “It does make a kind of sense, Thorn Girl.”
A glow of pride ignited in my chest, and my starshine responded. But then I remembered the theory I’d spoken to Wayland—How do you know it’s not?—and dimmed once more.
“The balance was broken a long time ago—the moment the Treasures were forged,” I continued.
“The magic should never have been parceled up and hidden away—it was always meant to work together. But it was broken again—and more deeply—when the Treasures were destroyed by the bardaí during the Gate War. Wild magic cannot exist outside the regenerative cycles of nature. To restore balance, we must first reforge the Treasures. Then, and only then, can the Treasures be safely unmade and the elements returned to their natural state.”
“We reforge the lost Treasures,” Wayland repeated. “Then… unforge them?”
“Yes.” My hand found the Heart of the Forest as a sudden wave of anticipated loss surged through me.
I could not fathom losing it—this thing that had entwined with my very being.
It did not just live within me; I, somehow, lived within it.
A world, vast yet intimate, both within and around me.
My heart. “After we use them together to defeat Eala.”
“But how?” Laoise said this slowly and clearly, as if talking to a particularly dim-witted child. “We do not know how to reforge the Treasures. Much less how to safely unforge them, once this hazy defeat has been accomplished.”
“I have some ideas.”
“You’re full of them today,” Laoise muttered.
“Hush,” Irian growled. “Let her speak.”
I shot him a tiny smile before returning my focus to Wayland and Laoise. The heir of fire was the one I was going to have to convince of this plan.
“The Treasures are composed of three components. The source of the magic—the Bright One, an elemental entity.” I grabbed a nearby mushroom and placed it on the ground before me.
“The conduit—a resonant object forged by Gavida.” I plucked a blade of grass and placed it near the mushroom.
“And the vessel—a tánaiste. A living heir powerful enough to channel the magic.” I placed a rock next to the grass and the mushroom, creating a triangle.
“For a thousand years, the source and the conduit were fixed, while the vessel was tithed anew every twelve or thirteen years.” I plucked up the rock and replaced it with one of approximately the same size.
Then I swiped the blade of grass, leaving only the rock and the mushroom.
“Now we have two warped sources. Two willing, powerful vessels. But no conduits.”
Wayland stared at my little diorama, his eyes narrowed. Laoise looked like she was restraining an eye roll.
“Resonance exists between the source and the vessel, because of the innate power they wield. I glimpsed ínne, my Treasure’s Bright One, long before I bound myself to the Heart of the Forest.” I drew a line between the stone and the mushroom, then extended another at a perpendicular angle.
“If we could harness the existing resonance between source and vessel, could we not create a conduit—completing the natural circuit?” I returned the blade of grass, forming the missing point of the triangle.
“Create? No.” Wayland stood, manic light dancing in his eyes.
He looked briefly—and terrifyingly—like Gavida.
A shiver of fear, laced with excitement, coursed through me.
“Echo? Yes.” He plucked up another mushroom, another blade of grass, another stone.
Placed them directly atop mine. “Nature is a great mimic, is it not? Tides rise and fall so precisely, so regularly, that they can be tracked and predicted.”
Irian’s silver eyes gleamed. “Migratory birds follow ancient inherited routes, journeying across vast distances they have never seen yet somehow know.”
“Trees root and leaf in the same fractal sequences, although they cannot see what their neighbors are doing,” I added.
“Yes, yes. The fucking pattern!” Laoise threw up her hands. “But how?”
“We have everything we need.” Wayland was alight with excitement. “We just need to arrange it in the right order. Irian, Fia—your Treasures.”
The Sky-Sword hummed an eager chord as Irian drew it. I pulled the chain holding the Heart of the Forest over my head.
“Just hold on to them,” Wayland said. “Now, Laoise.” Wayland faced the redheaded Gentry maiden, who seemed perilously close to exhausting her patience. “Is there anything physical—an object or keepsake—that matters a great deal to you and might somehow connect to the element of fire?”
“In case you weren’t paying attention,” Laoise said acidly, “my home of the past decade just burnt to the ground. So no, I don’t have any keepsakes.”