Chapter 16
I was back on the Hill of Tara, fog everywhere, vegetation where there shouldn’t have been any.
The girl was here as well. It was foggy, and the fog moved, curling between me and the girl. The tendrils coalesced into the shape of a face. It was looking right at me, and then it opened its mouth and spoke.
Before, when one of you was anointed, they were sacred, not to be harmed. Their people dressed them in white linen and gold, and they would bleed to protect them.
I walked closer to where the fog was still coiling as if it were a living thing. Maybe it was.
“What…are you?”
The fog sighed. Now you ask. I am the land and the sky above the land, the water that runs through its bedrock like blood and breath. I am the earth that holds the bones of many ages, and the rain that washes those ages away like ash after a fire.
“Where are the others? My guys? I didn’t just die of a heart attack, did I?”
The fog shivered, and leaves shuddered. Laughter.
No, Rory. They are where they were, as are you.
But my memory is long, and I remember this well.
They found her in the end, although she fought.
She had no knights like you, and as you saw, they’d already taken her sister, her last remaining relative.
She was tired from running and hiding. They did to her what they would have done to your mage knight, the one held dear by our Lady Death.
As I was standing in what was apparently the land’s memory, I wondered how I had ended up here.
I also considered that I was not exactly the best person to be here, because clearly, the situation at hand demanded some first-class adulting skills and life skills in general, and I didn’t have any of those.
I lived for my cute cat socks and loved my big strong mate, but I’d never done taxes, never gone to a job interview, nor had I mastered anything more complicated than booking the trip to Ireland and arranging for the hotel, really.
And yet the land, if that was what the presence was, clearly wanted to tell me things, things I didn’t want to know.
I didn’t want to think about what the cola asshats would have done to Vergis, what the humans had done to the girl who’d had fire in those green eyes when I’d seen her, running and hiding and calling the fog.
I just…wanted to be background. Sweet shrubbery, swaying in imagined wind.
I wanted nothing to do with danger and murder and other horrible things.
Being pursued by bears was not for me, I’d recently learned.
“I don’t understand what any of this means.” I dug my fingers into my hair and almost screamed at the fog. “I don’t even know what all this anointing means.”
When one of you drinks from a sacred spring or bathes in it, when one of you touches a sacred stone or sleeps in a sacred clearing, that is anointing.
Though the clearings are gone now, and the springs are long since tainted.
There is only this now. The fog curled around the Stone.
Before you, I thought there’d never be another, not when the last of your bloodline left these shores.
“Right. Sorry Gran emigrated. Look, can I go back to the guys now? They were about to kill the cola asshat, but maybe I can get them to just kick him out, so uhm…” I gestured. At wibbly wobbly fog.
The presence sort of pushed into my mind like a migraine. It was frustrated, I realized. It was stalling.
They stole from your bloodline. They tried to make themselves better than they were. As if they could ever be anointed like the true bloodline. As if kingship were magic.
I sighed. “Okay, so people are assholes. What else is new?”
The presence was still agitated. It wanted me to see something.
Before, they clad your kind in white, but it was respect. It was not so you’d be used.
“You mean… Okay. You mean you don’t like the Koa Esher because…I don’t know. They use mages?”
The presence was displeased. One time in seventh grade, one of the actors had caught a stomach bug, and the teacher had put me in for rehearsals, because I was there and knew the lines.
She’d given me that same vibe of deep displeasure.
At the time, I’d hoped that maybe she’d caught the stomach bug as well, but no.
It had been me. When the actor had said he was good enough to go on stage for the opening, the teacher had been so relieved.
Hoofbeats rang out through the fog, and I spun around, scanning the wavering tendrils of fog for the riders who’d been hunting the girl and had captured her friend. Her sister.
Not respect. They used you.
“The—wait. Used me. You mean back two years ago? At the Stone? The humans?”
Yes. The presence was relieved I’d gotten there. You were just anointed, unsure. Untrained. They would have kept you if you hadn’t listened and run.
“Wait. Wait, are you saying you told me to run? I don’t remember most of that day.”
Yes, I made you run. The kennings of fear helped. Even under ideal circumstances when they were watched and helped and supported, the anointing could be confusing for those who came before you. Draining.
The landscape shifted to a bright and sunny day, and I saw the Stone on the wide-open Hill like a three-dimensional photograph. There, just like I remembered, was what was left of a class of school children in their uniforms running past the Stone in a flurry.
What I hadn’t seen then—or didn’t remember seeing—were three broad-shouldered guys, their jaws set firmly, their eyes focused…on me.
I was on the other side of the students, looking pale and wide-eyed. I barely recognized myself. I was staring at where Cat and Jacob had been.
“You used the students to get between me and…those men?”
Yes.
“Okay. Okay. Thanks, I guess.” I swallowed, the visible reminder of that day making my stomach roil. “Can you get me back to my guys now?”
The pressure in my skull came back, and the scene shifted. We were in the fog again.
They want to use you still.
I turned, looking around. “The humans? Oh, you mean those people from back at the Stone? The ones that—” It hit me. “The cola ash people were teaming up with humans. Back in Esaka.”
That place is far away, but they shook hands here. Back home. It is difficult yet for me to know what happens where your mate was born, but the blood is bound. The more it mingles, the easier it will become to see there.
“You’re trying to tell me that the humans who want me are in cahoots with the cola ash people, and they want me now too? Or me and Vergis?”
In a way. They would cut you down your middle and each keep a piece of you, if they could.
Well, that was…not comforting.
“That means…if this Koa Esher isn’t lying, we want to talk to him, right?”
Since I wasn’t getting poked with a migraine, I was guessing the presence thought that was a halfway decent idea.
Humans do many things, and time stretches, makes grand efforts matter little.
But when one of your kind is anointed, time is precious just as they are precious.
It is good your mate binds life with life so both extend and grow more solid.
Not as precious as a human life is for its brevity, but special.
The fogscape vanished, and I was back in the sunny garden. Fellisse was carrying me back toward the house. He’d gone maybe three steps. I could still see the raspberry bushes. I jerked in his arms as I came to.
“Hey, wait!”
Nokim and Fellisse clicked at me. Fellisse never let go, but he stopped and looked at me, startled. Behind his back, I heard Kinnek’s voice, low and threatening, speaking whatever language the Koa Esher spoke.
“Inki will be fine, you need not worry,” Nokim said with a smile.
“No. Kinnek! Wait! I think… I don’t know. I think the cola ash people and the humans who made me do the things back at the Stone two years ago are working together. Or something. The land said so.”
I couldn’t really see much, because there were still enough bagua between me and the Koa Esher to make me feel like a small, helpless human. Which I totally was. Or wanted to be. Kinnek was no longer talking though.
“The land said so?” That was Charles. It occurred to me now to wonder whether he’d been gardening while carrying a gun on him. That was an odd way to garden, but maybe they had really big slugs here in Canada.
“Well, kinda?”
Charles cleared his throat. “Kinnek, baby, trust me, I’d be the first to shoot any of them between the eyes if they ever come near you or Vergis, but getting what intel we can while we can might be worth letting him breathe for a little while longer.”
The silence after that was tense. I heard the Koa Esher whisper something, even if I couldn’t see him. He sounded desperate.
Lissir’s voice was soft, soothing. “Kinnek, there is only one of him and seven of us. We can watch him.”
Fellisse let me down but kept a hand on my back. Kinnek’s face was set in anger, and everyone was watching, alert. The tension in the air didn’t ease, not even a bit. In the end, Vergis sighed, and I saw him relax some and cock his hip.
“Dad, you said this weird Death thing everyone’s favorite twink gave me is a gift.
Well, no one here is marked for death, so by your own logic, you should at least go for delayed gratification here.
On the plus side, being here with all of us will keep the guy in constant fear since he can’t be sure we aren’t discussing how to butcher him slowly right now. ”
My mouth was dry, but I said, “I’m sure he already peed himself a little.”
I could see emotions run over Kinnek’s face much too fast for me to recognize. He bared his teeth and stepped back. “Fine. We will not judge him for all the crimes his people have committed, nor will we do to him any of the things his people would do to us.”
I heard the Koa Esher yelp, and then Kinnek pushed past the others and strode off toward the house, bubbling with…not just fury, I was pretty sure.
“Do you have handcuffs, or do I go find the zip ties?” Vergis asked.