Chapter Forty Fia #2
“Are you telling me there is no way to escape this fate?” Now I did crumple the parchment, folding it unevenly and shoving it back in my bodice to rest uneasy between the small vial of Eternal Fire and Cathair’s starstone. “Am I truly bound to a destiny I never asked for?”
“The stars may weave, the gods may smite,” Corra sang, dancing on half-seen carvings somewhere near the ceiling. “But cunning hands may twist the light. Through deepest dreaming, Marban broke free. But were his bonds gone… or just harder to see?”
“Marban. Yes—Marban.” I scraped away the last of my traitor tears and returned to my purpose for coming here.
According to Wayland, Marban was a master of bindings—and unbindings.
Perhaps he could tell me how to break free from this awful fate.
“Please—I think he’s important. Tell me how to find him. ”
Across the archive, a journal sidled off its ledge and flopped open on the floor. I flung myself toward it, my knees scuffing painfully over the rough flagstones. The open page was curlicued with my ancient warrior’s familiar looping script; it took all my concentration to read it.
Marban… and Fionnuala. Two hearts entwined in a place where not even time can follow. Long after we are dust, they will speak of our love, weaving our story into the breath of both worlds.
My fingertips skimmed the words, the ink brown as dried blood beneath my touch.
“A story,” I breathed. “Corra, is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
Silence greeted my words.
“Corra!” I pleaded. “Is there a story about Marban and the woman he bent worlds to follow?”
But Corra had apparently divulged as much as they could.
Or would. I cursed, gathering up the journal before flinging it down in frustration.
I nearly fell down the curving stairs in my haste to quit the archives; I ran through Dún Darragh at a dead sprint, praying I’d left myself enough time to catch up with Irian and Chandi at the Willow Gate.
The huge carven doors of the fort yawned open, spilling me into the leaden hush of fallen night.
Revenants oozed like specters through the dank fog creeping off the lough.
They climbed the rise toward Dún Darragh in their hundreds, not bothering to keep to the lane but marching over the fields and scrabbling over the hedges and slurping through the reeds.
Fast—too fast. They were falling apart—the long day’s forced march over rough terrain taking its toll on their already damaged bodies.
Eyes hung from sockets; limbs sagged as spines dislocated.
Fear rose in me, hot and lurid. I glanced at the sky and tried to gauge how much time had passed since Irian disappeared into the forest with Chandi.
But there was no moon in the sky tonight.
A few stars stared at me, but their light seemed distant and very, very cold.
I slanted my eyes toward the edge of the keep.
But my escape route—the narrow path to my grotto and the forest beyond—was blocked by revenants stacked six rows deep.
Live, Fia. Live.
I feared that was no longer a promise I was likely to be able to keep.
Either now. Or later.
I was moments away from shifting into my anam cló and throwing fate to the wind when I saw her.
Eala rode primly upon a fine gray palfrey bedecked in silken regalia and embroidered raiment.
She herself was clad in a silver breastplate over white trousers and pale suede boots.
I almost scoffed. My sister was no warrior—the only time I had seen her wield a blade had been to carve out her maidens’ hearts.
But this was no joke. Behind her, riding two abreast along the narrow lane climbing toward Dún Darragh, a living cavalry marched between the flanked rows of the seething dead half visible in the ghostly mist seeping from the lough.
Beside her rode Rogan, armed and armored, and her mother, albeit hidden beneath a deep hood.
“Your pageantry is fooling no one, Sister.” I laced my tone with poison before I drove the blade of my words home. “No matter how you dress the part, everyone knows you are no more a general than you are a queen.”
Eala’s luminous eyes flickered, but unlike last night, she kept a tight leash on her composure. “A position I am to understand you covet.”
“You’ve blundered the role so badly, even a fool off the street could do better,” I snarled, even as I glanced at Eithne’s hooded countenance.
In his last moments, Cathair had told me Eala had caught him with the high queen’s scroll.
Had she also intercepted his missives to the under-kings regarding our offensive?
Did she know about the Eternal Fire? Did she know I planned to rally the Folk against her?
“Are you that fool, Sister?” Eala asked mildly. One of her suede-gloved hands made a vague circle in the air. “Where is your rabid hound, ready to snap off any hand that dares touch you? I confess myself shocked—I expected him to be at your side, slavering for violence.”
“You ought to work on your metaphors, Sister.” I matched my easy tone to hers. “If I am not mistaken, you have compared Irian, Rogan, and myself to rabid hounds at one point or another. We cannot all be dogs.”
“No,” she agreed. “Dogs are loyal. And know their place.”
A thorn of fury prickled my spine. I shook the sensation away—I would not let her needle me. “What is my place?”
“Beside me. Beneath me.” Her eyes had become night skies with a bare glimmer of blue fire. “Bend the knee to me, Sister. Swear you will help me dismantle the Gates. And there need not be any more violence.”
“That is enough!” Eithne shoved her hood back from her silvering hair.
I searched her regal mien for grief—for evidence that the murder of her lover had affected her.
But she just glared at her daughter as if she were a wayward child of seven instead of a rotten, power-mad queen.
“You have taken this far enough. We have all witnessed your might. But even the sharpest blade is useless if wielded without purpose.”
“Yes, let us speak of blades.” Eala turned toward her mother with cold, careful menace.
“Tell me, Mother, did you know who my sister was when she came to you? Did you know she was my father’s half-blood get?
Did you know that if you hammered her hard enough, she might eventually ring true as steel?
Or was it enough that she simply wasn’t me?
That she didn’t question your inane rules and small-minded ideals?
Was it enough that she loved you, even though you could not return the favor? ”
I inhaled, sharp. Eithne raised her chin, staring down her daughter. In the dim light, the two women looked very much alike.
“I have loved you both exactly as you deserved.” Eithne spoke as if reciting a proclamation. “You speak of hammering as if it were punishment. But the proof stands before me, as abhorrent as I find it. I made you both strong. I only wish I had made you both sensible.”
Fury splintered Eala’s face into the mask of a monster.
She jerked a blade from the scabbard at her horse’s flank.
It was a ceremonial weapon—heavy with gilt and jewels.
But I could see the edge on it, gleaming in the dark.
She laid it across her forearm and presented it to Eithne with a grim, dramatic flourish.
“Ah, yes, sensible. Alas—the world has never been changed by playing it safe.” She smiled, her mouth like a cavern. “I wish for my sister to bend the knee. Go make her do it. If she does not, you may carve her loyalty from her flesh.”
Eithne’s mouth worked. “No.”
“Whyever not?”
“Because.” Her eyes found mine across the courtyard.
Even in the dim they seemed to glow—pale and hard and brilliant as gems. I looked for regret but I found only certainty.
She gave me a brief, hard nod, then said, “I said once I would not trade one daughter for another. But for Fódla’s sake, I will trade a mad queen for a sane one. ”
“Ugh.” Eala drew the sword slowly back. Pivoted in her saddle. Then, fast as a viper, drove the blade into her mother’s chest.
Eithne crumpled like a house made of parchment.
Her hands scrabbled at the steel blade splitting her in two.
Eala twisted the sword, almost lovingly, then yanked it out.
Blood spurted, red as ruin. Someone had begun to scream—I thought perhaps it was me.
Eithne’s mount sallied, ears swiveling. Slowly—impossibly slowly—the rightful high queen of Fódla slid from her saddle.
Struck the ground. And lay deathly still.
“That’s better,” Eala said. “They’re always so much more cooperative this way.
Now, Mother—rise.” The queen’s body twitched, rolled, then levered itself to its feet.
It had blood dark as wine on its face. Eala placed the sword she had used to kill her mother in the queen’s own hands.
“I said, go make my sister kneel. Or kill her where she stands.”
The dead queen charged at me. I felt nothing and everything at once, my body frozen while my mind churned with disjointed memories and fear thick as treacle. The world around me blurred. Sounds muffled, yet every beat of my heart felt like a hammer striking stone. I couldn’t breathe.
Eithne’s steps accelerated, devouring the cobbles between us like cakes laid out at a feast. The sword lowered, slick and steaming with still-warm blood.
I erected a barrier of thorns, but I was weak after the day; she cut through them easily.
My feet wavered—left, then right. I became a statue, carved from stories untold, lives unlived.
The blade arrowed toward my heart.
Muscle and memory overtook doubt, a lifetime of training drilled into my very bones.
I sidestepped the strike, angling my body as I wrapped one fist around the hand holding the sword and lifted the other to splay over the queen’s face.
My starshine spiked with the adrenaline turning my limbs to knotty wood.
White fire ignited deep inside her skull, spreading in searing tendrils that snaked along the contours of her cheeks and the angle of her jaw.
Light leaked from her staring eyes, coursed from her open mouth.
Then flashed eager over her frame, unraveling her from the inside out.
Her skin crisped and peeled like burning paper; her bones glowed molten before disintegrating into flaking cinders.
I swore she opened her mouth in the last moment before she collapsed in on herself, the words on her lips like a final, broken plea:
A stór.
The woman who’d raised me sifted away in a scattering of ash and bad memories.
My fingers tightened around the hilt of Eala’s ceremonial blade.
And though it seemed to be heavier than a mountain in my grip, I forced myself to coil back.
I twisted, then flung the sword as hard as I could at Eala, mounted upon her pretty pony.
She did not flinch. I did not miss. The blade sailed a half inch from her face, slicing her cheek, nicking her ear, and shearing a few long, floating locks of hair.
The blood that dripped down her face and stained her pale raiment was black as midnight.
“I’ll see you on the battlefield, you bitch!” I screamed, as her ghouls broke their stillness and began to claw for me.
“Get her!”
I dived bodily into the waiting horde, fighting toward the corner where the path to the grotto—and Roslea beyond—meandered.
The dead swarmed me like ants, burnt faces and rotting mouths and flesh-draped bones.
I waded through them, even as they dragged me, caught me, pulled me.
I touched a few errant limbs and leering faces, setting off glittering chain reactions among the affected revenants.
But there were so many of them. My free hand fought toward my bodice, delving between the last voluminous folds of the dress Eala had put me in.
My knees hit dirt. My fingers touched glass. The dead converged on me as I lifted Cathair’s small vial, yanked the cork out with my teeth, and lofted the bottle with what felt like the last of my strength.
I did not see where the Eternal Fire landed.
Green light flashed. Thunder cracked. The explosion rocked the courtyard, flattening me to the cobbles and throwing Eala’s ghouls off me like flotsam on the sea.
I did not wait for the dead to recover or for the flames flickering green in my periphery to spread—I shifted into my anam cló, legs lengthening, pelt rippling, and tail flicking.
And ran.