Chapter Forty-Four Fia
Chapter Forty-Four
Fia
It was dusk when we crossed into the Dúluachair.
There was no change in the flora—the towering trees verdant with new leaves and the thick, tangled vines blurring with new flowers.
But there was a disruption in the energy—a strange feeling of unease, like a shadow sweeping over us, although the light did not darken nor the air chill.
“Is this place truly the gateway to the underworld?” I asked Irian.
“How should I know?” he said mildly. “Do I look like a god of the dead to you?”
I squinted at his stark beauty, black garb, and towering height. “A little.”
“I shall take that as a compliment.” His lip curled over one sharp canine, and he relented. “Nearby lies a strange cave system they call Oweynagat. There are stories about Folk who ventured in but never came out. And creatures that came out… and refused to go back in.”
“Oweynagat.” I quelled a shudder at the name. There were similar places in the human realms—places said to lead to Donn’s dark realm. The few I had explored had been musty, dusty cracks in the ground. But this was Tír na nóg. “Doesn’t that mean Cave of the Cats?”
“It does.”
“Why?”
His expression twisted. “You should hope not to find out.”
Moments later, I heard them—near-silent footsteps in the dense underbrush. Low growls vibrating the dim. I peered into the shadows, which rippled as though alive. I swore I glimpsed eyes, glowing like molten gold. Fur dark as liquid shadows, sheeny in the faint light.
I pawed at my hips, where my skeans usually sat, but Irian motioned for me to be still.
“Bog cats,” he muttered. “They do not feed on flesh—be not alarmed.”
Easier said than done. Their huge, lithe bodies crouched low, ready to pounce. Each step the cats took was unnervingly quiet, their claws gliding over the forest floor without disturbing so much as a fallen leaf.
“What do they feed on?”
“No one knows. Some say they feast on secrets, lapping truths like spilled cream. Others say they devour regrets, savoring the bitterness of what might have been.” Irian glanced over his shoulder. “I do not believe they will chase us, so long as we do not run.”
“Are you sure about that?” The bog cats drew steadily closer in the shadows, all sleek limbs and dark fur and glowing eyes. Fear trellised my spine like midnight roses, cloyingly dark and spiked with sharp wishes.
I wanted a blade. Preferably two. Armor. Another set of eyes mounted on the back of my head.
Dusk thickened toward night. The cats slunk ahead of us, spine-chillingly fast, then crouched low, their muscles coiling.
Their slit pupils yawned as their tails lashed back and forth.
A guttural snarl erupted from one of them; the others took up the sound in a chorus of menace.
They bared their fangs—long and curved, glistening like ivory daggers.
Their breath oozed like mist between their paws.
Irian drew his sword, which sang out an eager note.
My pulse ratcheted as my starshine kindled awake.
Light and heat spilled from me in radiant pulses, discharging outward in a brilliant burst. I saw Irian shade his eyes in the moment before the world went blindingly white.
My vision returned slowly—little more than bright blotches dancing over blackness before I began to register shapes once more.
The bog cats had disappeared. And where they had crouched, snarling and staring, was a path, cloistered with silver-branched trees. Beyond them, I glimpsed a glen ringed in jewel-bright flowers. Flaxen leaves crowned trees swaying like sheaves of wheat.
“I have been here before.” My experiences in the Deep-Dream painted the inside of my mind. “I know this place.”
Irian wiped his eyes but did not sheathe his sword. If anything, his demeanor grew even more defensive: his jaw tightening, his mouth thinning, his shoulders bunching.
“Lead the way.”
We strode forward, caught between familiarity and strangeness.
The glen was not quite the same as my dreams. In the waning light, the wildflowers were sparse, more weeds than wonder.
The sky was no diorama of visions; stars pricked in the east as a half-moon lowered.
The dilapidated house seated cantankerously in the center of the clearing was indeed thatched with birds’ wings—a thousand different shapes and hues.
But instead of shimmering and lustrous, a cascade of colors spun from rainbows, the feathers were dingy, ragged, faded.
I swallowed something like disappointment.
Memories of what I’d seen in the Deep-Dream layered over me—my father, sliding inside and barring the door behind him as Talah hammered at my defenses.
Little deer, little deer. Finally, I managed to gird my courage and stride to the house.
Irian loomed at my shoulder, clearly unwilling to stand farther away.
I lifted my fist.
The door opened of its own accord. The cottage’s occupant was not a faceless shadow, but a man.
A human man. Neither young nor old, but somewhere in between.
Tall, but not towering. Handsome, in the grand, distant way of statues carved of kings, tempered by a tired kind of ordinariness that made him too human to be truly legendary.
Dirty blond hair, gray at the temples, fell over his shoulders; piercing eyes an indeterminate shade between green and brown fixed on me.
“You are late, daughter of the forest.” His accent was strange—lilting and archaic. I glanced at Irian, unnerved. He was frowning, his stark brows slashing to shadow his silvering eyes. “What kept you?”
“Those were your bog cats, I presume?”
He snorted. “Feeding strays with what I produce in excess does not signify ownership.”
I remembered what Irian had said about secrets and regrets. I quashed sympathy for the stranger before me and said, “You have a familiarity with me I do not pretend to share. Who are you?”
He seemed as put off by my language as I was by his. His gaze slid to Irian looming at my shoulder. His eyes narrowed with deep distaste. “Go away, heir of feathers.”
If we had been anywhere else, with anyone else, Irian would have probably pierced the man’s throat with the Sky-Sword and never given him a second thought. Instead, with incredible restraint, Irian satisfied himself by folding sinewed, tattooed arms over his sculpted chest and saying, “No.”
The man pursed his lips, exhaled, then swung the door wide, wordlessly inviting us in.
Inside, the walls were not plaster and whitewash, but a maze of parchment and vellum.
Each scrap bore scrawled notes, sketched maps, and cryptic symbols.
Thin cords of twine crisscrossed the room like the web of a maddened spider, pinning together faded letters, charred fragments of books, and smudged charcoal illustrations.
In the rafters, birds roosted noisily—owls and crows and pigeons and nightingales, their feathers rustling like leaves in the dark.
The floor was littered with their waste, and the place stank of a henhouse.
I made no move to step inside. Irian was a statue at my shoulder.
“My name is Marban.” The man faded into the shadows of the cottage. “And I have been expecting you.”
I glanced again at Irian, eagerness and dread twin pulses in my throat. He lifted one shoulder in an eloquent shrug, as if to say, We came all this way.
I stepped hesitantly into the cottage, Irian ducking under the lintel behind me.
Marban fussed over a low-burning fire, stirring the coals and setting a kettle to boil.
On the mantelpiece sat stacks and stacks of notebooks, hand bound and stuffed with more notes and scraps of parchment.
The sight of them stirred a nauseated sensation of knowing within me.
“What is all this?” I asked softly.
“The pattern,” snarled Marban. “A tapestry woven by hands whose perfect skill seems haphazard—each thread pulled taut to form a picture you only recognize once it’s too late to change!”
I shrank back from his fierceness, and he mastered himself.
“Forgive me.” His tone dropped, though bitterness coiled his voice. “I have had no company in a very, very long time. My manners are rusty.”
Standing sentinel before the door, Irian made a noise somewhere between a growl and a laugh. His frame loomed hilariously large in the small cottage.
“You know who I am.” I gingerly took the spare seat beside the fire. “You know why I’m here.”
Marban stared into the shifting layer of coals for a long minute before speaking.
“A new Treasure degrades the delicate balance already upset by the original Treasures. Magic teeters on the brink as the worlds once more prepare to go to war. And you wish to know how to unbind the greatest bindings that have ever been wrought. So the Solasóirí bound to the Treasures may go free without destroying the vessels.”
“That’s… about it.” I blinked. “Gavida implied that you were a scholar of bindings. Do you know how it may be done?”
“Perhaps.” His strange eyes—green and brown glowing gold in the firelight—lifted to mine. “But first I have a tale to spin. Will you listen?”
Did I have a choice?