Chapter Thirty-Nine Fia
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Fia
The dungeons were dark and poorly lit, but at least they didn’t smell like death.
I paced like a dog at the end of its leash, prowling along the heavy stone walls until the hem of my dress was heavy with moisture and discolored with dirt.
Irian sat with his back to the opposite wall and his long legs sprawled in front of him.
Moonlight spilled from a high barred window over his closed eyelids.
“How can you rest at a time like this?” I asked peevishly.
“There is not enough room for both of us to pace, mo chroí,” he pointed out, without opening his eyes. “We should be constantly crashing into each other, which would ruin the effect.”
I huffed a laugh and conceded the point. “At least tell me you’re dreaming of a compelling escape plan.”
“Escape?” Irian cracked one brilliant eye to look at me. “If that is the plan, why did you not tell me? You are aware I possess a sword that cuts through anything.”
I turned a skeptical eye to the thick bars and even thicker walls. “Metal? Stone?”
“Must I define anything for you?” A note of humor touched Irian’s tone. “The bars would be quick work. The walls might take longer. But unless you are deeply committed to your new pastime of pacing like an affronted wildcat, then we do not have much else to occupy us.”
“Surely Eala knows we’ll try to escape,” I said, half to myself. “What if it’s a trap?”
“It almost certainly is.” His eyelashes slanted, long and black, along his cut-glass cheekbones. “I suppose we shall have to fight our way out.”
A brisk but quiet knock on the dungeon door silenced my response.
Irian was on his feet in an instant, the Sky-Sword a gash of night in his hands.
I waved him back as I stepped up to the bars and the shadow-masked figure beyond.
Fear breathed a chill along my spine as I peered out, expecting grinning teeth and a hollowed-out face.
Instead, I saw tangled dark hair spilling over sallow brown skin, wretched amber eyes.
“Chandi?” Her name punched out of me, tight with lingering betrayal. “What in Donn’s black hell are you doing here?”
She wrapped her long fingers around the bars and pressed her face close. The moonlight fractured her expression and turned the tears welling in her eyes to cold silver.
Alarm mixed with my resentment. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt? Are you—”
Chandi cried harder, her spine bowing as a gasping sob racked her.
“Oh, Fia. You don’t know how horrible it’s been.
” I could hardly understand her words, garbled as they were by tears.
“I thought we would die that night—that silver metal was everywhere! But Eala—she—the barge she made saved us, but it was so awful—so unbelievably awful—”
“Chandi.” Impulses warred inside me, those of hurt and care.
Chandi’s betrayal had deeply wounded me—I’d thought we were friends, allies.
I’d thought I had earned her loyalty. But to see her like this also hurt me.
Despite all she’d done, I still cared about her.
“Chandi, slow down. Take a deep breath.”
Chandi obeyed, inhaling shakily. Her words, when they finally came, were cramped and crowded, worn thin by sustained horror.
“We escaped that night on a barge of the living dead. Eala wove them together like reeds—legs and arms twisted in an impenetrable mass. We almost didn’t make it—the city nearly sucked us down with it.
But we did—me, Eala, and Rogan. We struggled toward land—the legs of the dead churning beneath us like paddles, the wind howling over their open mouths like pipes.
” Chandi bowed her head, as if the memory of that night was too heavy a burden to bear.
“There were wild horses upon the cliffs, but Eala was never a great rider, so Rogan, he—”
Again, she broke off, pressing a trembling hand to her mouth.
“They were easier to control once she resurrected them, Eala said. She said she could feel you—both of you. But you had a head start. For weeks we rode after you, but when we reached the mountains, the magic there shielded you, hid you. Protected you.”
I shared a loaded glance with Irian. He had told me how they’d battled the dead at Mag Tuired—but he had not known how close Eala had come in her pursuit of me. I reminded myself to thank Laoise again for the protection of her sanctuary—and to apologize again for destroying it.
“We returned to the lands of the bardaí, seeking the aid and support of those who had become loyal to Eala beneath the Ember Moon. But they recoiled from what the princess had become—yes, even those who had meddled with warped wild magic were disgusted by her. They shunned her in much the same way as you shunned her tonight, shaming and berating her for her misuse of power. And she—Rogan—” Again, Chandi choked, as if the words she wished to speak were barbed and bloodied.
“Laoise and Sinéad saw the swath of destruction she left in her wake. But once we passed through the Gate… the destruction only intensified.”
She leaned her head on the cool, damp stone, anguish plain on her features. She had calmed, but her demeanor now was one of utter despair. “And now you are here. You, who she has sought bitterly. You, who she desires almost above all else. Fia, you should not have come.”
That ship had sailed. “Tell me. How did M—how did the high queen, Eithne Uí Mainnín, come to bend the knee to her wayward daughter?”
“Perhaps I can shed light on that.” Cathair stepped from the shadows and joined Chandi at the bars to our cell.
My old teacher looked mostly the same, save for his hair, which had gone fully gray, and the weight of exhaustion that clung to him like a dead hand.
I still had not forgiven the man who’d raised me for all his torment and humiliation. Yet I was inexplicably glad to see him.
“The guard detail on this dungeon leaves something to be desired.”
“I think you’ll find it is exactly what I desire,” said Cathair. “The dead make for terrible guards. They barely seem to notice birds; much less are they able to identify starlings. And there are many in this keep who are still loyal to your mother.”
I fought the urge to snap, She’s not my mother.
Instead, I focused on what Cathair was hinting at.
He had been Eithne’s spymaster for as long as I’d been at Rath na Mara—his network of informants more extensive than I was ever allowed to know.
His witch-birds—speckle-winged starlings—carried information through Fódla and beyond.
“Then Eithne’s abdication was an act to save her own hide,” I guessed. “And you and the queen have been plotting against Eala from the shadows.”
“My clever little witch.” Cathair’s words prompted a menacing noise of displeasure from Irian’s throat.
The older man looked up at his superior height, apparently unfazed by the glowering Gentry warrior.
“And her Gentry consort.” He clucked his tongue on his teeth.
“I suppose war makes strange bedfellows of us all.”
“Well, go on, then,” I demanded. “What is your plan?”
“I forgot what an impatient little thing you are.” This earned another growl from Irian. Cathair fished in his pocket until he retrieved a rough-hewn key. “I must speak with you in my workshop. Alone.”
“If you think—” Irian began, chillingly.
“It’s all right. He won’t harm me,” I said. “Though I don’t know how you plan to keep the guards, however negligent, from noticing I am gone.”
“Chandi will act as decoy,” Cathair said. “We will return long before dawn.”
I hesitated, glancing between Irian and Chandi.
“He won’t harm me,” Chandi said, echoing my words with a ghost of a smile. “Will you?”
Irian returned to his vigil in the corner. “You know I will not.”
I had not forgotten the druid’s sprawling, low-ceilinged chambers, where I’d wasted so many sunlit days of my youth.
I wrinkled my nose against the stench of black walnut tincture and cheap mead and starling droppings.
Manuscripts and grisly souvenirs stolen from Tír na nóg during the Gate War stared at me from the cluttered shelves, unpleasantly familiar now: broken ollphéist fangs, a draig’s red-gold scute, a shard said to be chipped from a fallen star.
My gaze lingered on this last object, a small hunk of shiny jet-black stone striated with pale veins.
“Did this truly fall from the stars?” I heard myself ask.
Cathair glanced over from lighting tapers upon a workbench. “So they say.”
I dragged my eyes from it. “Dawn cannot be far off. Speak.”
“All the under-kings of Fódla, like Eithne, have bent the knee to Eala to spare their lands and their peoples,” Cathair told me.
“All of them, also like Eithne, are loath to witness their already ravaged kingdoms fall prey to the death and destruction Eala carries in her wake. Her ascension to the high throne of Fódla has created an unprecedented alliance between the ever-warring provinces.”
“They have all agreed to stand against Eala?”
“To a man.”
My eyes returned to the starstone as I considered his words.
I dared to touch it, gently pressing my thumb into a rough divot.
Immediately, all the radiance from my finger was yanked into the shard with a sucking sensation.
I jerked my hand away; the rock glowed briefly before winking out.
I stared, even as an idea coiled inside me.
“May I have this?”
Cathair shrugged. “I have never found a use for it, little witch.”
I wrapped the shard in a piece of rough sacking and shoved it into my bodice.
“But how can they hope to defeat her army?” I returned my focus to the matter at hand. “I saw them, encamped outside the fort. There are thousands—perhaps more. Not to mention Eala will likely resurrect for herself any who die on either side.”