Chapter Forty-Six Fia
Chapter Forty-Six
Fia
Preparations for war began immediately.
More encampments were pitched on the fields of the Summerlands, until the rolling plains looked like a cloth of gold studded with thousands of jewels: garnets and sapphires and peridots. The shouts of fénnidi and the clang of weaponry embroidered the air; smoke tooled the blue sky with charcoal.
I spent long hours with the bardaí, who bickered like ill-mannered children, unable to agree to a dinner menu much less a battle plan.
When the drawn-out, maddening councils were finished, I repaired to Wayland’s cramped forge, checking on the designs I’d already commissioned from him and helping him brainstorm new weapons and contraptions that might give us an edge against the living dead.
I told him of Cathair’s Eternal Fire, which I had sadly spent the night of my escape from Eala, and saw an answering fire spark in his eyes as his mind began to whir.
“That gives me an idea.” His smile broadened. “Although I doubt it will be green.”
What followed was a series of experiments, largely consisting of the draiglings spitting sparks into bottles of various liquids—culminating in at least one of Wayland’s eyebrows being singed clean off.
Then I sat late into the night, poring over battle plans until I could barely keep my eyes open.
Irian came to me one of these nights. It had been about three weeks since we’d returned from Fódla—less than a week before the full moon.
“Fia.” It was late—the waxing moon hammered the plain of the Summerlands to a silver shield.
Everyone was sleeping—well, everyone save we four heirs.
Wayland was almost certainly in his workshop; Laoise liked to keep watch over Chandi and Sinéad and her draiglings, who slept curled like puppies in a circular bed in one of the rounded bolls. “May I speak with you?”
I put down my sheaf of paper, scrubbed at my tired eyes.
Irian knelt beside where I crouched like a goblin upon the low divan, bringing our faces on a level.
I had not seen much of him these past weeks—though he stood behind my chair at council meetings and shadowed me through the tree city, we had exchanged little beyond cursory words.
My secret lay between us like a widening chasm, turning every unspoken word into a rift neither of us dared to cross.
It pained me to feel so distant from him, but I feared even more the hurt of recognizing my own looming death in his silver eyes—a mirror for the fate I feared I could not escape.
But I had never meant to keep it concealed for so long. It wasn’t fair to me, and it certainly wasn’t fair to him.
“Me first.” I still kept Cathair’s prophecy folded in my bodice—as if by its proximity to the yearning of my beating heart, I might change its message. I drew it out, skin-warmed and creased by folding, and offered it to Irian. “There is something I need to tell you.”
“You must think me a dimwit, mo chroí.” Though Irian gazed at the folded parchment, he made no move to take it. “To imagine I do not have an inkling of what you are planning for the full moon.”
My fingertips cut divots into the ragged vellum. “Look at it, Irian.”
“I do not wish to know, Fia.” His words were both blade and balm—the stinging cut its own sweet relief.
“I remember the Ember Moon. I saw what Talah did to you on the Silver Isle. I heard your old teacher speak the beginnings of a prophecy. And I heard Marban’s cruel tale.
This Bealtaine moon will exact a high price from all of us.
I fear if I know what it is, I will find myself unwilling to pay. ”
“You do know,” I said softly. “Our willing hearts.”
“You are my heart. And I have sworn never to let you go.” Despite his unwillingness to look at Cathair’s prophecy, the weight of his gaze made me think he had already intuited its contents.
“Though I have not always understood it, I have come to admire how deeply you care for both the realm of your mother and the realm of your father. I believe that you will do what is right, no matter the cost. Even if I wished to, I cannot stop you. So I will simply ask of you what you asked of me, before the Longest Night: Find a way to live for us all, instead of trying to die for us. Live, and no matter where you go or what you do, my love will find you.”
I swallowed a sudden hot mass in my throat. “Is that a threat?”
His smile was slim and sharp as a trip wire. “It is a promise.”
I took a deep, shivering breath, then tucked the parchment back into my bodice. “What did you wish to ask me?”
“I wish for a day.”
The words didn’t make sense. “What?”
“I know you are busy. But I wish for one of your days. And, if you are generous, perhaps a night. Of the few we have left before we go to war.”
“A day you shall have.” I untied the noose of dread strangling my heart and forced a smile. “What shall we do? Where will we go?”
He dared to curl a fluttering strand of my short silver-threaded hair around one of his large calloused fingers. “Somewhere you promised to visit with me, when we were back on Emain Ablach. If you still have the inclination.”
“I do.” This time, my smile wasn’t forced. “We will leave with the dawn. Shall we fly?”
“No.” He smiled back, although the angle of his mouth held a twist of pain that unsettled me. “Let us ride. The weather will be pleasant. And I do not wish you to meet my mother with vomit on your shoes.”
We rode out with the aughiskies at dawn.
Irian was right—it was pleasant. Dew jeweled the waving grasses, and the air was cool and fragrant with loam and flowers. We cut through the heart of the Summerlands until we reached the shore, a glassy sea pounding black sand. We rode until the beach became bluffs, the bluffs became cliffs.
A strange apprehension gripped me as we dismounted—leaving Linn and Abyss to cavort in the warm, glassy shallows below the bluffs—and began to climb.
The path was little better than a goat track, narrow and uneven and steep.
Irian led the way, his steps sure as he set a brisk pace.
How many times had he traversed these cliffs?
How familiar were they to him still, after so many years away from his mother’s house?
Did he, too, grapple with unnameable dread as he made his way toward a home that could never be his again?
We paused atop the cliffs. Far below, the ocean clashed and clamored, flinging salt spray to kiss our faces.
The wind ruffled Irian’s hair, longer now than I had ever seen it, fluffing it like an affectionate relative might a favorite nephew.
It gave him a rumpled, boyish look that softened my inexplicable nerves.
“We are nearly there.” His eyes were as brilliant as the ocean, as golden as the sun. Eagerness spilled over his features, making me ache.
There was so little softness or gentleness to Irian.
It was not his fault—such things had been forced out of him at a young age.
He was steel sharpened to a killing point, marble carved flat and featureless.
But not with me—not always. His unguarded expressions were more precious to me than gold; his tenderness, a better balm than any tincture or healing salve.
Beyond a rocky bluff between the cliffs and the undulating moor, tucked within a fetching garden with a hawthorn fence edged in fruit trees, was a cottage.
Smoke streamed from the chimney, although the day was warm.
A few garden plots ridged the rocky yard.
Bent over them, with a shawl over her hair and her hands covered in dirt, was Irian’s mother.
“Do you think she’ll like me?” I asked, with a touch of plaintiveness.
His smile was a ray of sunlight breaking from behind a cloud. “I know she will, mo chroí.”
If she did, I couldn’t tell.
She abandoned her gardening as we crossed the gorge, standing sentry over her garden gate.
Despite her humble abode and isolated lifestyle, she was Folk Gentry—she had not been raised to shrink or simper.
She stood nearly a head taller than me, her figure powerful.
She wore no visible weapons, although I caught a glimpse of a dagger outlined beneath her kirtle.
Her features were striking—she shared her son’s sharp cheekbones and questing, distinctive eyebrows.
Her eyes were gray as a stormy sea, piercing and intelligent.
Her hair was so black it gleamed blue in the glancing sunlight.
“M—Moira!” Irian called as we approached, me a wary half step behind. “Well met!”
Like her son, Moira did not appear to enjoy the presence of strangers, but her expression eased as she realized who had come to visit.
She unlatched the gate and clasped Irian in a friendly but dispassionate embrace.
I remembered with a pang what he had told me on Emain Ablach: She thinks of me only as a somewhat inconstant friend.
“Irian, my old friend. It has been too long.” Her voice was rich and warm as brewed tea. Her gaze scanned over me, curious. “Who is this?”
Irian ushered me forward, and I bobbed an awkward curtsy.
“My name is Fia.” Her eyes were too canny. I abruptly felt two feet tall and ugly as a rock. I wasn’t good with parents. “Madam.”
“Madam?” Moira tilted her head and quirked one eyebrow in an expression so Irian that it unhinged something inside me. I fought the urge to laugh. Or cry. “Pray, what does it mean?”
“My… friend… does not hail from these parts.” Irian shot me a glance that bubbled with mirth and seared with heat. I flushed a little. “But where Fia comes from, I believe it is an honorific.”
“Well.” Moira wiped her hands on her apron and gestured for us to follow her into the cottage. “No honorifics necessary. Moira will do. I was about to make lunch. Will you join me for a meal?”
“We would love to,” I managed. “Can I bring anything in from the garden?”