Chapter Forty Fia
Chapter Forty
Fia
We ran.
With Chandi on Finan and Irian as a swan and me, unexpectedly, as a doe, we were faster than the undead horde pursuing us from Rath na Mara.
But barely. Chandi was not much of a horsewoman—she hung on to Finan’s reins and bounced in his saddle.
We cleared the woods and rejoined the high road, then had to rest, letting the stallion slurp from a nearby brook.
Only moments later we heard them—the unsteady tromp of thousands of feet crashing through undergrowth and rushing along the road.
We kept going.
As morning bore into afternoon, time lost all meaning.
My doe’s senses were strange, fleeting—depthless calm giving way to wild alarm.
I was agile as a dancer and fleet as a fox, yet there was a fragility to my body I was not prepared for.
As Fia, I knew how to fight, how to defend myself.
As a doe, all I knew how to do was run. I was defenseless—vulnerable, in a way that made me uneasy.
As we paused beside another rambling brook, I became transfixed by the sight of an oak leaf swirling gently downstream, gilded gold by the lowering rays of afternoon.
The water was like glass. The grass so green it didn’t seem real.
And when I gazed into the copse of trees, I saw antlers lofting toward a dimming sky.
I knew I had to follow them. I splashed through the stream, eagerness flicking my tail as I leapt—
Strong arms caught me. Fear pummeled me, and I fought instinctively, struggling against the broad strength pinning me in place.
“Come back, mo chroí.” The deep voice was familiar yet unrelentingly strange. I stilled. “Fia. Do not get lost.”
Fia. The name unfurled in me like a forgotten memory, and I clung to it as it brought me back to myself. My normal form embraced me. Relief unspooled like honeysuckle along my veins, tinged with the bitter tang of lingering fear.
Irian instantly released me, and I rose from where I crouched on all fours.
“What happened?” I asked, my voice rusty in my throat. “I felt—”
“The soul form has its own senses—its own will,” Irian explained gently. “You must remember who you are or it can overtake you. You can become lost to your anam cló, especially if it is a predator. But prey animals pose their own challenges.”
I shivered and glanced at Chandi and Finan. The girl was slumped over in a pose of utter exhaustion; sweat darkened the stallion’s hide.
“We lead them by half a league.” Irian intuited my question. “We have earned a little respite.”
I squinted at the sky. It wasn’t enough. We might reach Dún Darragh by sundown. But with an indefatigable army on our heels, we could not stop until we cleared the Gate into Tír na nóg. We had far to go.
“We may rest a few more minutes,” I allowed. “Here—a mulberry bush. Chandi ought to eat.”
I picked the maiden handfuls of the slightly unripe fruits, which I ripened with my Greenmark. She gratefully devoured them. Then, though it pained me, I commanded, “Mount up. We have to keep moving.”
No one complained. We all knew it was a matter of life or death.
We ran.
The sun slanted low, and a chilly breeze winnowed the spring grass. Finan’s fine canter became little more than a plod; Chandi practically lay upon his withers with the reins hanging.
We were no longer moving faster than the horde. My doe’s prey senses recognized the rumble of boots on packed earth, the hissing of weapons dragged through long grasses.
When Dún Darragh’s stark outline brittled the fading sky, Chandi simply slid from Finan’s saddle to thump ungainly in the dirt. The stallion stood there, spittle dribbling from his lips as he hung his head. I knew we had not yet reached salvation.
The doe furled away as I raced on two legs to Chandi. She was breathing and at least semiconscious—she moaned as Irian eased her onto her back in the dirt.
“She’s exhausted,” Irian said. “She will not make it to the Gate. Perhaps we can barricade ourselves in Dún Darragh until she recovers.”
“They will surround us by nightfall.” Dún Darragh. In all the death and despair of the last few hours, I’d nearly forgotten the queen’s offhand words to me in Cathair’s workshop about Marban. “You take her to the Gate—carry her if you must. I must go inside the fort. I must speak to Corra.”
Irian’s gaze was like iron. “If you stay, I stay with you.”
“Then Chandi will die.” I softened my tone, fought the urge to lay a palm on his arm. “I will get what I need, then I will run to the Gate in my anam cló. I promise I will come to no harm.”
“That is not a promise you can keep.” Anticipated pain warped his face, stark in the slanting shards of fading sunlight. “Do not make me agree to this. I swore I would never let you go.”
“You are not letting me go, Irian. You are trusting me. Please.”
On the ground, Chandi moaned again. Sweat beaded on her forehead—she was feverish. Terrible indecision gripped Irian. At last he knelt, scooped the suffering human maiden into his arms, and fixed me with eyes going silver as the horizon.
“Live, Fia. Live.”
He slid away through the dusk, dark as a specter and sharp as a blade. I followed him with my eyes until the trees beyond the fort swallowed them.
I reached for Finan’s dragging reins and briskly untacked him, tossing his fine saddle and bridle into the tall grass edging the path. The horse bobbed his head and flicked his tail, as if in thanks. I slapped his rump, not ungently.
“Go on, old boy. This is no place for you now.” He shook out his mane, then ambled away into the falling dark.
The distant, grotesque sounds of a thousand feet marching upon the country road shoved me toward the forbidding stones of Dún Darragh.
I raced across the courtyard, my changeling feet heavy on the cobbles after my anam cló’s light, slender hooves.
The heavy carven doors fell open before me.
I let a little of my starshine slip as I dashed through the great hall, illuminating the four arching pillars, the curving staircase, the carvings etched in stone.
“Corra!” I shouted, as I took the steps to the second level two at a time. “I know you’re here!”
There was a time when I knew these hallways better than the lines on my palm.
Now I struggled to recall the exact route to the hidden archive I’d found over a year ago.
There—past the annex with the windows shaped like eyes, through the hall draped in dusty tapestries, behind the crumbling mantelpiece carved with rosettes.
I didn’t bother with candles or torches as I slammed up the tight staircase—my starshine cast enough light to see by.
Beyond, the library was as I’d left it: a narrow worktable stacked with handwritten journals; statues veiled with dust; shelves choked with volumes. I labored beneath the weight of countless hours deciphering ancient murky texts as I grabbed a tome at random and began riffling through it.
“Corra!” I shouted again. “I need you!”
“Need or want? Do be clear,” sing-songed a voice from one of the veiled statues. “Either way, we’re already here.”
“Thank the gods,” I breathed, slamming another stack of journals on the table and hurriedly paging through them. “It’s your help I need. I know better than to expect straight answers from you… but can you tell me whether the man who wrote these was truly named Marban?”
“Marban, you ask?” A few knots in the table shaped faintly like a mouth and two eyes winked to life, making me jump. “Well, that depends. On where we should begin… and how the story ends.”
How the story ends. Morrigan, in the day’s mad dash I had nearly forgotten about the paper Cathair had shoved at me in his final moments.
Perhaps part of me had wanted to forget.
But now it niggled at me, like a rotten tooth in a painful gum.
I fished the crumpled parchment from my bodice, recoiling instinctively from the feeling of it—like papery skin strung with human hair.
I smoothed it onto the table before me, pinning its edges with my hands.
The page depicted a white swan sailing upon an expanse of black water beneath an even blacker sky, ringed with a thousand branching trees.
Stars fell from the sky, pricking out the swan’s black shadow on the mirror of the lough.
Heavily illuminated words caressed the edges of the page.
I skimmed them, unable at first to decipher their meaning.
Then Corra began to sing, and I knew their meaning.
A feather so black will rise from pain,
A crown so silver will rise to reign.
A heart so green must bleed once more,
For light and dark to one restore.
The last love lost, the price now paid—
Through sacrifice, the balance laid.
So white and black, the swans must die,
For stars to weave their fate on high.
I read through it once. Then again, even as panic choked me with brambles and the thorns in my chest grew into a thicket that scratched at my ribs with foreboding.
“No.” I fought the urge to crumple the paper and shove it back into my bodice. As if that might reverse the death sentence it preordained. A hot tear slid down my nose and splashed onto the page, cutting ripples into the midnight lake. “No. This cannot be true.”
“Some tales ring true, and some deceive.” I swore I detected a note of regret in Corra’s voice. “But all endings are real, chiardhubh. Both to those who must die… and those who must grieve.”
“No!” I scrubbed at my burning eyes with my filthy black sleeves. Had I not already sacrificed myself? Once, to the Heart of the Forest. Twice, to Talah. Why must the gods-damned patterns demand my death yet again? “I’ll find another way. I will not let this happen.”
“The path is laid, the stars decree… And still we walk, both bound and free.”