Chapter Twenty-Nine Fia
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Fia
As Wayland and Laoise touched the objects they hoped to forge into Treasures, their psyches flickered to life in the endless depths of the Deep-Dream like tremulous candles in the dead of night.
Wayland was cool and deep as a midnight tide, with a ripple of humor frothing like foam.
Laoise was a sharp red flame, staunch but brittle enough to extinguish.
Against the undulating mass of the corrupted Solasóirí, the two Gentry heirs looked small. Fragile, even. Fear clutched me. How could they possibly face such odious, overwhelming power? They would be consumed. Devoured. Unmade.
“I don’t think—” I almost snatched my hand away from the glossy, clinging surface of the Heart of the Forest.
Stay the course, child. It was ínne’s voice, strong as an oak and ancient as a stone. We are all the same. We are all different. By the circles we are bound.
I fought my instinct to stop this before one of my friends got hurt. They had both already lost their homes because of me; I did not wish to be the architect of any more pain. “I’m afraid.”
I was speaking to ínne, but it was Irian who responded.
Together, mo chroí. He did not speak out loud. In the endless dark and blinding light of the Deep-Dream, his voice rang steady and true as the Sky-Sword’s song. As the wailing wind. As the drumming stars. We go forward together. And not in a thousand lifetimes will I ever let you go.
Together. We reached toward the blighted wild magic.
Touching it was like biting on something rotten—bitter and cloying, the metal taste of decay sharp as rust on my tongue while the dense residue of rot seemed to cling to my skin.
I wrapped tendrils of the wild magic around my hand like the reins of some terrible beast, then yanked.
I shoved all that wrongness along the tether of my physical senses, pouring it into the Heart of the Forest and beyond.
It thrummed like a blight along the vines my magic had grown over Fáilsceim and the draig egg.
Veins of black embossed over the Treasures, releasing bursts of toxic spores.
A nauseated heartbeat of terrible magic throbbed outward.
Around us, the creation we had wrought abruptly reversed, life dying away in an instant as the soil was poisoned, the air clogged, the spring ran dry, and the fire died in a puff of sour smoke.
A dull ache reverberated through me as I forced my hand to lift from the Heart of the Forest; the once-emerald vines binding the Treasures together sifted away to gray ash.
“It’s done,” I whispered.
“I know.” Laoise wept as she brought the fragment of draig egg to her chest, great gulping sobs warping her usually pristine features. “I can see them. I can feel them. I did not know they were so… so broken.”
Wayland was not crying, but his motionlessness was somehow even worse—beyond anguish, toward numbness.
“So can I,” Wayland said, almost swallowing his words. “I can feel their pain. Yet also their hunger. For more. More power, more decay, more deterioration. Like a rabid animal chewing on its own limbs, they are ravenous for that which destroys them.”
“Wild magic.” Irian’s tone was taut with old shame. “It is a hunger that feeds as it devours. Darkness disguised as pleasure. Depravity and delight.”
I shivered, remembering the shadows that had once wreathed my husband like great black wings; the corruption above Murias, slicking danger along my bones even as it beckoned me close.
I looked at my glowing hands and thought of what I’d guessed about the nature of my starshine.
Could it truly somehow be the counterpoint to the warped wild magic?
“Depravity and delight?” Wayland said, with a ghost of his usual insouciance. “Just an average weekday for me.”
Idris made a sound in his throat, but I laughed. “If anyone can overcome this trial armed with nothing but wit, I have no doubt it will be you, Wayland.”
“High praise, Thorn Girl.” Wayland smiled but quickly sobered. “But you’re the only one who has actually reforged a Treasure. How did you do it? If we are to succeed, we need to know what you know.”
Laoise had stopped crying, but her eyes glowed like lit coals in the darkness.
“The nemeta are key. The blight is tied to where the Treasures were destroyed, but the Solasóirí are tied to their nemeta. The groves are like homes to them.” I glided a thumb over the Heart of the Forest, thinking of all I’d learned from ínne. “And there will be a… sacrifice demanded.”
“Surely you mean a death?” Laoise asked harshly. “We have heard the stories, Fia.”
I flinched, glancing at my palms: the tracery of green veins embossed over faintly glowing skin.
I thought of that shard of my own soul entombed within a tree within a glade within a dream.
I thought of all that my friends had already lost, all they would yet be forced to sacrifice.
And I thought I finally understood why Irian had wanted so badly to unforge the Treasures on Emain Ablach—to divest ourselves of this destiny before the great burden of it destroyed us.
I met my husband’s silver eyes in the dark. It had been months since the Ember Moon, but tatters of Irian’s grief still clung to him like cobwebs. Yet his fingers twitched closer to mine on the soft green moss, and I saw my own determination reflected in his gaze.
Together.
“I may have been, ah, overzealous.”
Sinéad gave an indelicate snort. “You? Shocking.”
“Death is not the key. Life is,” I clarified. “Although you will be promising both. The next thirteen years of your life. And the tithe of your death at the end. In truth, it is a balance paid twice.”
Everyone was grimly silent.
“If we have our way, you will not be bound long. Nor will you need to tithe the Treasure in thirteen years.” I clenched my glowing palms and hoped that was true. “We will find a way to unforge the Treasures, set the magic of our Bright Ones free… and set ourselves free in the doing.”
Irian’s hand ghosted over the Sky-Sword, laid across his lap. “I hope it will be that simple.”
Blindingly, I remembered his blackened palms, his face contorted by pain, his roar of agony.
So did I. So did I.
“Murias lies to the west. Findias to the south,” Laoise pointed out.
“You and Wayland should separate,” I agreed. “The sooner the Treasures are reforged, the better.”
“Who goes with whom?” Sinéad asked.
Some harrowing emotion passed swiftly over Wayland’s face before smoothing away.
“We’ll decide in the morning,” Irian said, with paternal certainty. “It has been a long few days. We should try to sleep.”
As life slowly crept back into the valley, we tried. Water trickled down the rise; mushrooms fruited in the dense moss between the roots of the trees. A warm breeze rustled the green leaves, and the fire sputtered back to life. But the memory of the warped wild magic lingered like a bad smell.
Balor finally began to snore, laid out on his back with his limbs lofted like mountains.
Sinéad nodded off in the shadow of his knee; Hog nested in the warmth of her cloaked body.
Idris rested his head in his sister’s lap.
The aughiskies stood guard atop the distant line of rocky hills, their belling cries restive and eerie in the gray of false dawn.
I did not sleep, restless for dawn’s rosy fingers reaching westward across the lightening sky. Time felt fleeting, slipping like words over hasty lips, unmeasured and misspent and impossible to recover.
Somewhere, a world away, Eala was raking her greedy fingers through the patterns etched in the stars. Manipulating, coercing, or killing her way to more power. And I was beginning to think I might know how to stop her.
As the sun edged over the lip of the valley, we gathered.
“Today, our paths divide.” I met everyone’s eyes in turn. “Wayland and Laoise, respectively, seek the sources of the Treasures they hope to reforge.”
“And you, lady?” boomed Balor.
I twined my glowing fingers together and opted for the simplest explanation. “I must heed my sister’s threat. I travel to a Gate in order to cross into Fódla.”
“Why?” Laoise asked bluntly. “Before the Treasures can be renewed? Without allies or draigs? You have no hope of defeating her alone.”
How could I explain what my father’s specter had told me in the Deep-Dream? Bring her to the light.
Those words were no coincidence—I had tasted enough of destiny to know that.
“Before I plunge both realms into all-out war, I must give my sister one last chance to set things right.”
Irian looked unconvinced by this reasoning but folded his arms over his chest. “I travel with Fia.”
“You don’t say,” muttered Wayland, who had a sleepy Hog slung around his neck like a court lady’s mink shawl.
Linn snaked out her long sea-foam neck and chattered her shark teeth while burning a brief sharp image of her diving after me into a seething sea.
I assumed that was her way of saying, Through hell or high water. I grinned—the mare and I hadn’t had much of a chance to reunite. I was glad to hear her complicated affection for me stood.
She snapped her teeth at Abyss’s mane, and the tall black stallion reluctantly pawed at the moss, as if to say, Where she goes, I go too.
The last two aughiskies, a rangy yearling and a white mare, flicked their tails and sent us all visions of distant lakes teeming with fish. This is where our paths diverge.
“I will accompany Laoise,” Sinéad said. “Someone’s got to hold the map and carry the rations.”
Laoise’s cheeks dimpled. “Not sure you’ll be able to carry enough food to keep Idris satisfied.”
We all chuckled. Except Wayland, who cast his eyes downward as he brusquely slung Fáilsceim over his broad back and fastened the straps across his chest.
“I’m not going with you, Laoise,” Idris said, clearly and simply. “I shall be accompanying Wayland.”
I couldn’t tell who looked more stunned—Wayland or Laoise.
“You can’t.” Fear surfaced in Laoise’s gaze, an unpredictable smolder that threatened to burn anything in its path. She yanked her brother close, conferring with him in rushed, hushed tones. I thought I heard the words ingrate and mistake and ill-suited before Idris recaptured his arm from hers.
“I can,” Idris said, with a sweeping flicker of his sister’s offhand bravery. “And I will.”
Relief rippled over Wayland’s features—a pebble tossed in still water. “Are you sure?”
“I am.” Idris smiled a little and held out his hand to Hog, who batted at his fist with a clawed paw. “Without adult supervision, you two are liable to bring the whole realm down around your ears.”
Laoise’s smoldering anger flashed into a conflagration. “If you think you’re taking one of my draiglings anywhere—”
Hog yawned broadly before poking one slim claw into Wayland’s dimpled cheek and cooing, “Mine.”
“And me?” Balor’s massive frame seemed to sag beneath its own weight. His barrel-sized hands fidgeted at his sides. “I wish to be of help to whoever needs it. But I would not like to follow where I am not wanted, lady.”
I hesitated, remembering his words to me on the Silver Isle: Every year for twenty years I come to this island. This was the first year I made a friend. But I wasn’t sure how to make him useful.
“I have a special task for you, Balor,” Irian interrupted. I glanced at him, surprised by the rogue sparkle in his gilt-blue eyes. “Should you choose to accept it.”
Balor’s vast shoulders straightened perceptibly, a spark lighting in his eyes. He grinned, revealing numerous teeth in a horrifying yet homely smile. “Gladly!”
“You will travel to the Summerlands as swiftly as you are able,” Irian commanded.
“You will declare yourself to the Summer Twins, Siobhán and Seaghán. If they still stand against Eala, you will tell them all we seek to accomplish. You will tell them we shall all join them there in one month hence, should the living gods allow it. And you will demand their hospitality in my name.”
“Verily, lord,” said Balor, in agreement. “I have but one question: What is your name, scary husband?”
We all laughed, Balor’s easy humor popping the formidable bubble of Irian’s words.
“Well then.” I smiled to mask the cold, creeping dread strangling my spine. “Let us all embark upon our springtime vacations.”
“Let’s,” Wayland agreed sardonically. “Nothing says a quick getaway like charging headlong into danger. Really clears the mind.”