Chapter Twenty-Eight Fia #2
“Actually.” Idris—who, like Sinéad and Balor, had been silent during the past few minutes of increasingly impenetrable dialogue—leaned back.
We all glanced at him in surprise as he fished in his pockets, then drew out a craggy jewel.
It glinted in the firelight, ruby red and opaque as spilled blood.
Laoise blinked. “Is that—”
“Part of Blodwen’s egg.” Idris flushed, pink blooming on his brown cheeks. “I kept fragments from all the draiglings’ eggs, over the years. But this piece always stays with me. It’s become something of a… talisman.”
“The fucking pattern,” Laoise repeated, but this time there was a note of wonder in her tone. “But, Idris—that’s yours.”
“It was always yours.” He slid the draig egg fragment into Laoise’s hand. “I was just keeping it for you.”
Laoise gazed at it before bowing her head and clasping it to her chest.
“And you, Way?” Irian asked, his voice low but curious. “You, too, have been divested of your home and most of your belongings. What is your emblem?”
Slowly, Wayland drew the weapon I’d glimpsed earlier, poking above the collar of his cloak.
A massive trident slid free from its binding on his back, carving an arc in the air that gleamed with iridescence—like the shifting hues of an iris or a rainbow.
I gasped. Irian raised an eyebrow. Confused recognition flickered in Idris’s eyes while fresh anger darkened Laoise’s.
“That’s—that’s Fáilsceim!” she hissed, enraged. “Did you take that from the Armory?”
“Should I have left it to melt?” Wayland returned. “I found I could not leave it as I fled the flames.”
“But it’s not yours,” Laoise protested.
“Whose is it, then?” Irian’s cutting voice was its own weapon.
“Fáilsceim was said to be forged so hot its metal could only be quenched in the deepest, darkest seas. It was wielded by Mannanán Mac Lir, first chieftain of the Sept of Fins, until he was betrayed by his kin and it fell into the hands of the Sept of Scales. The trident already chose Wayland. He simply was not ready to accept it.”
Laoise blinked but subsided. Wayland could not hide a flush of pride.
“Then it is decided,” Irian said. “It appears one enchanted weapon between us was not enough.”
“I have never been known for my moderation, Ree.” Wayland smiled, then sharpened his focus back onto our group.
“I have handled both the Sky-Sword and the Heart of the Forest—one was like touching a storm, the other like being kissed by a forest. Although my innate magic is tied to the element of water, I could sense the elements Irian and Fia wield—high winds and distant skies; damp earth and twisted roots.
The conduits must be constantly channeling the energy of the source, even when the heir is not wielding it.
“What if we can layer the resonances of the existing Treasures atop these new objects?” Wayland continued. “Show them how to connect to our sources?”
“What’s the worst that can happen?” I was fairly certain that was what I’d said before inviting Talah inside me, but now didn’t seem the best time to bring up that particular mistake. “Let’s try.”
Wayland set Fáilsceim gently onto the ground at the center of the circle and motioned for Irian to set the Sky-Sword parallel to the other weapon.
I lowered the Heart of the Forest between them so that the smooth blue-green stone touched both the haft of Fáilsceim and the cutting edge of the Sky-Sword.
Laoise lowered her shard of draig egg opposite the Heart of the Forest.
The Sky-Sword began to keen, a wordless melody of exultation… lamentation. A flurry of emotions blew across Irian’s usually stoic expression. Surprise… scorn… heartache.
Nestled beside the blade, the Heart of the Forest beamed cool radiance.
My own body responded, my blood throbbing eagerly along the inside of my skin as my starshine slipped, glancing in rays from my skin.
The hairs on the back of my neck lifted as my flesh pebbled.
Thorn-studded vines slithered from my Treasure and embroidered outward over the Sky-Sword and Fáilsceim, embossing the pale trident and dark blade with filaments of bright green, then threaded over the glossy, uneven edges of the ruby shard.
Flowers grew, tiny and delicate, with petals sharp as daggers. White as glittering stars. And black as the night sky between them.
“I think you should touch your Treasure, Fia,” Wayland said, his tone wondering. “You too, Irian. Think of your Bright Ones. Complete the circuit—source, conduit, vessel. Perhaps it will show the new conduits how to link to Laoise and me… and our sources.”
I laid my palm on the Heart of the Forest. At the same time, Irian touched the hilt of the Sky-Sword.
The Deep-Dream lingered, near as my own shadow.
ínne was there, waiting for me. Their imposing figure now brought me nothing but comfort.
The burnished fur slicking their shoulder blades was leaf mulch on a forest path; the planes of their golden torso were the smooth bark of an ancient oak; their face was the dimming closeness of a shaded wood.
Antlers pierced the sky and smeared blood upon the blue.
In that blue, I saw another figure. This one was not so well known to me, though I had glimpsed them before. In a faded memory, a dream I’d forgotten, a story I’d heard long ago. They resounded inside me, not in my human veins or even my Folk heart, but in the starry marrow lining my bones.
The Bright One of Irian’s Treasure was colossal as a cyclone, thunderous as a tempest. Their eyes were dark as burned-out stars and bright as struck lightning.
They were the endless night and a clear cold morning.
They raged, in the space where all the skies of the world met, yet they were also perfectly calm.
They were the wilds of the weather and the silence between the notes of a song.
Their name rippled through me, ineffable and inexhaustible and irate: Geth.
The wordless sound of it tangled with ínne’s name and somehow, distantly, with Talah’s.
And there were other sounds, too—other names, syllables and contours I had never heard, never imagined.
They were the whispers of the universe carrying eternal secrets: the endless song of starlight, the deep groan of continents shifting, the murmur of seas unfurling, the susurrus of stories unraveling.
As foreign as a stranger’s dreams, yet as familiar as my own name spoken by someone who loved me.
And two of them were rotten.
Not a vow but a curse. Not a blessing but a blight.
Not a memory but a haunting—beauty and bounty, now twisted and defiled.
The syllables of their names came to me in the same way that ínne’s and Geth’s had, but they floundered slick as slugs between my teeth.
If I tried to speak them, they would come out wrong—guttural and gluttonous and warped.
And the figures lurking beyond were just as corrupted.
Bloated, shrunken. A sucking tide, a smoking ruin.
Wrongness clung to them like a dead hand.
Solasóirí corrupted by violence and greed and destruction. Wild magic turned in on itself. The sources of the two lost Treasures.
“They’re here,” I breathed. “I can… sense them.”
“As can I,” Irian said, his low tone touched both by awe and misgiving. I suddenly remembered the first time he had showed me the blighted wild magic billowing above an abandoned Folk city. What had he told me, that night on the moor? I might not mind oblivion, if you were the one to deliver it.
Perhaps Irian had known exactly what he spoke of. Oblivion suddenly seemed very close by—terrifying yet tempting.
“Try to maintain the connection.” Wayland’s voice—so real, so warm, so physical—was like a shock. The sensation dragged me back from the edge of the beckoning corruption. “Laoise? Are you ready?”
I heard her reedy inhale. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”