Chapter Thirty-One Fia
Chapter Thirty-One
Fia
The Willow Gate shivered silver around us. The stones beneath our boots flashed golden, slanted, crumbled. The stream reversed directions. The willow’s branches became roots as the world upended.
We stumbled into the human realms. Irian cried out and fell to one knee, his hands fisting in the dirt. I reached for him, stopping myself in the instant before my hand collided with his shoulder.
“This place,” he ground out between clenched teeth. “Feels like… a tomb.”
I knew what he meant. After so long in Tír na nóg, returning to Fódla felt like trying to remember a story I had all but forgotten.
My thoughts swam, disjointed. My limbs ached, all gnarled branches and twisted roots.
The beginnings of a headache throbbed at my temples.
I could only imagine how much worse it must be for Irian.
He had never set foot outside Tír na nóg.
He was full-blooded Folk Gentry, born of a powerful lineage and raised to inherit immense power.
Magic coursed through his veins and soldered his bones.
He did not belong here.
“My blade.” He jerked the Sky-Sword from its scabbard. It came free with the sound of steel slithering against leather. No curious hum, no bloodthirsty croon. “It does not sing.”
I remembered everything I had learned from Cathair, all those years ago, and layered it atop all I now knew about the Solasóirí, the nemeta, and the Treasures.
“When the Folk forged the Treasures and cloistered them in Tír na nóg, they removed something vital from the human realms,” I reminded him.
“Wild magic declines in Tír na nóg; in Fódla, it has nearly died out. There is no ambient magic for your Treasure to draw on. But it is still connected to its source.”
Irian levered himself heavily to his feet. “How can you be sure?”
“Experience.” I touched a fingertip to the Heart of the Forest, hidden beneath my outer mantle. “Even without a vessel to channel its power, the Heart of the Forest found me across realms. ínne found me and stayed close. And when I truly needed their magic, they were waiting for me to claim it.”
Irian nodded, scraping back the hair that had flopped over his brow.
I couldn’t help but stare. In Tír na nóg, Irian of the Sept of Feathers was devastatingly beautiful.
But he was an extension of his environment—bewitching, alluring, a little eerie.
Here, crowned by a cool bright morning and silhouetted by blackthorn and wild cherry, he looked downright eldritch.
His smooth pale skin glowed, inhuman; his black hair shone, lustrous as a raven’s plumage; his blue-gold eyes glittered disconcertingly.
Against Fódla’s drab backdrop, Irian was etched dark and uncanny as the blade at his waist; sharp and cruel as the incisors cutting divots in his plush lips.
I blinked, and he was just Irian again. My Irian. But I was reminded of nights long ago in Rath na Mara, poring over The Book of Beotach and its terrifying chapters detailing the fickle, treacherous Folk Gentry. Callow killers. Nightmare predators.
Strange to think I had not only bound my destiny to one… but become one myself.
“Come.” I dared to lightly brush Irian’s gloved hand. “The fort is a bit of a hike.”
Irian soon shook off his dolor and began inspecting our surroundings with interest. He asked me the names of the birds trilling airily in the trees and the vines spilling new blossoms in the undergrowth and the woodland creatures ducking behind hollow logs.
He seemed especially fascinated with a family of common hares playing beneath a rocky scarp.
“Those things,” he said with abhorrent glee, “are adorable.”
I glanced askance at their tufted white tails, smooth brown coats, and black-tipped ears. Cute, but utterly ordinary. “Don’t you have hares in Tír na nóg?”
“We do. But ours have gemstones for eyes. And they fly.”
We reached Dún Darragh near noon. The morning had grown warm, and we threw off our outer mantles.
Although I knew we had no time to waste in reaching Rath na Mara, I allowed myself a short detour to my greenhouse, threading along the cobbled pathways, now grown weedy and uneven, past the spring in its grotto, burbling merrily beyond its screen of blackthorns, until the brass and glass structure loomed into view.
Winter had been kind to it—no branches had shattered its ceiling; the errant vines of climbing ivy and wisteria had not yet grown strong enough to warp its beams. I creaked open the door and stepped inside.
Irian followed, ducking his head to clear the lintel.
I spun in a tight circle, nostalgia making my throat tight.
The pitted worktable, cluttered with trowels and spades and dibblers.
The pots, empty save for a few stubborn seedlings.
The trellises, festooned with little save for dried-out weeds.
“You have spoken of this place before, colleen.” Irian did not call me that nickname so much anymore.
Yet here it seemed fitting, for the girl who had tended these plants and mended this greenhouse had indeed been the one Irian called colleen.
“I think it must be precious to you. Will you tell me of the time you spent here?”
“Perhaps.” When I looked at this place, I saw Rogan throwing wooden boards into fragile pots, heard Corra teasing me from wood knots, felt indecision over slaying the Folk lord I was developing feelings for.
Perhaps someday I would discover how to carve this time of my life into a narrative that made sense—to file away its rough edges and smooth out its confusions.
“When we are old and gray and tired, I shall tell you of all the tedious mornings I spent weeding in this greenhouse. Then you shall be sorry you ever asked.”
The slanting sunlight reminded me I was wasting time. But as I followed Irian out into the early afternoon, I sent a tiny tendril of magic seeking the sleeping bulbs, the desiccated seeds, the straggling seedlings. In an instant, flowers bloomed, berries plumped, saplings grew.
A little hello, and a swift goodbye. From one old friend to another.
Dún Darragh was shadowed, chilly despite the warmth mounting outside. The torches and hearths were cold and unlit, the high vaulted ceilings echoing with silence. My eyes grazed the massive carven pillars to where their arching buttresses disappeared into the gloom, searching for—
“Corra!” The word multiplied, sprinting along crumbling corridors and curving stairways. “Come out at once, fiend! There’s someone I wish you to meet!”
Irian seemed taken aback by my tone. “I have never heard you speak in such a way to anyone, mo chroí. Save mortal enemies.”
I grinned a little. “You have never met Corra.”
A flurry of motion grazed the far wall of the great hall. A beaver thrashed their tail behind the stairs; an elk tossed great antlers upon the ceiling.
“O what a sight, such strength that towers! We’d steal a kiss if he were ours,” sang Corra saucily, from behind the chandelier. “But Gentry hearts cost dear, they say… for a face like that what a price we’d pay!”
Irian flushed, the pink tinge startling on his impassive warrior’s visage. “Is it—” he spluttered, nonplussed. “Is it threatening me? Or propositioning me?”
“One never can tell,” I muttered ominously, before calling, “He’s mine! But you can come and say a polite hello… if you even know how.”
I waited for Corra to burst into the outraged face of a nut-starved squirrel and begin cursing my ancestors in inventive language, but the sprite had apparently said all they wished to say.
“Oh well.” I shrugged. “Just be glad they didn’t call you porridge face.”
Irian gave his head a helpless shake. “I have never met a Folk beastie quite like that.”
Swiftly, I dashed upstairs to my old garret bedroom, trading the dirty, smoky dress I’d worn from the Cnoc for the only garments left in the wardrobe.
Corra’s creations were all outlandish; I chose the most demure of the lot, a silken gown the color of a violet dusk.
I hesitated, then strapped some old leather armor that needed repairing over top.
When I descended the stairs, Irian raised an eyebrow at my attire but said nothing.
The stables were warm and dry and scented pleasantly with hay and oiled leather.
Finan drowsed lazily in his stall but roused when he heard footsteps, poking his large dark head over the barrier.
He whickered in recognition when he saw me, then startled, pinning his ears to his skull with a piercing whinny.
He shied, nearly slamming his head into the beams overhead as panic whited his rolling eyes.
“You’d better not come any closer, mo chroí.” I held up my hands in placation as Irian stilled, intimidating and uncanny in the warm, slanting sunlight. “Easy, boy.”
Irian stepped sideways into the blue shadow cast by the door and leaned on the wall as I rummaged in the tack room for a pair of thick riding gloves.
I didn’t think my touch would harm Finan, but I saw no point in taking the risk.
I slipped inside the stall, calming the still-restive stallion with nonsense words and soothing strokes on his neck and muzzle.
“He is a fine, handsome animal,” Irian remarked. “But tell me, mo chroí—why can he not speak?”
“Speak?” I choked on a laugh. “Oh, my heart—horses cannot communicate in the human realms. Not like the aughiskies. In fact, all beasts here are mute.”
“How strange. Is he yours?”
“Not mine.” With a distant pang I thought of Eimar, the horse I had accidentally Greenmarked over a year ago. “He was—is—Rogan’s.”
“Ah.” Irian’s tone went dry. “Then I suppose I must be grateful he cannot talk, for I warrant he would have many a sordid tale to impart.”