Chapter 27 Pictish Stories #3
“Everything falls. War always wins. I have seen it over and over.” I knew the savagery of it, the inevitability of humanity’s self-immolation. It was like my mind had been raised to a godlike perspective, dispassionate, staring down, judging…
“You are not hearing yourself,” he cried. “Would you make me choose between England and you?”
“There is no choice! England is lost. You are here.”
“I can go south. Buy a horse. Buy a ship. Walk.”
“Do not joke.”
“Do I look like I am joking?” He shouted it, his face ashen, cheeks flushed, eyes glittering, but when he resumed, his voice was deadly soft.
“You lied at Pemberley because you knew my answer. No, I will not hide. I will find a way south and then I will heal the song, with or without the flute. If that fails, I will battle the blight. If that fails, I will don a uniform, shoulder a musket, and fight. But I will not hide. And the woman I love would not hide, either.”
“That is fantasy. If you even reached the south, Fènnù would sense our binding…” The rest faded from my lips. At the word Fènnù, the anger in me had twisted into malevolent, raw fury…
“Then I will die,” Darcy said.
“Stop,” I whispered. A darkness folded, wrapping my soul. A voice caressed my mind, wyfe of war, arise.
“I will not stop—”
I reached out blindly, palm skidding over his vest buttons. “Stop!” I gasped, and this time he did. “Something is wrong… something is coming…” My vision dimmed like ink had spilled across the sky.
A well-dressed man walked around the ragged wall into the castle. Three husky roughs with wooden cudgels followed, dragging the beaten guard.
“What hae ye done?” Mistress MacLeod cried.
The well-dressed man touched his hat in recognition. “Mistress MacLeod.” He noticed her husband. “And mister.”
“What madness is this?” Darcy said, striding toward them.
The well-dressed man squinted at him. “Who’re you?”
“Mr. Darcy.” He spoke it as a threat.
“I’m Patrick Sellar,” the man responded, “factor for this land. Ye best be keepin’ accusations of ‘madness’ to yerself. We’re arresting the MacLeods. They’re troublemakers, and now they’ve overstepped to thievery.”
“Och! I’m not a thief, ye thief!” Mr. MacLeod exclaimed.
Sellar laughed. “Ye poached a half-dozen sheep. Says so on my warrant.” He patted his pocket.
“They did not poach your sheep,” Darcy said contemptuously. He faced the men holding the guard. “Release him!”
One man actually let go. Another sneered and gave the half-conscious guard a shake for good measure.
Two new men from the village ran into view around the corner. When they saw Sellar, one raised a heavy belaying pin. Every hand reached for a cudgel or knife.
“Stop it, ye fools!” Mistress MacLeod shouted. “Do ye nae see she carries—”
The villagers charged, screaming. Mr. MacLeod attacked the men holding the beaten guard, swinging hunger-thinned arms still tough with sinewy muscle. He punched one man in the eye, who swore and staggered.
Darcy was shouting explanations. “They did not take your sheep—”
A crazed laugh skidded through my throat. As if facts mattered. As if the law were not just another weapon.
Sellar strode to Mistress MacLeod and shoved his wooden cudgel crosswise, banging her shoulder and jaw. She fell back a step and spat blood. Mr. MacLeod, grappling with one of the men, went berserk trying to reach her.
A voice caressed my mind, wyfe of war, arise.
Like a loosed hound, I was on Sellar. My skirts whipped as I dragged his cudgel behind his back, ripping it from his fingers. The cudgel came free, and I swung. His shin crunched and buckled, but I had already discarded that feeble weapon, wheeling gleefully to the real fight—
Darcy towered in my path, blocking me. He grabbed for my arms. Endless defensive drills reacted quicker than thought. I caught his weaker, left hand in both of mine and twisted. His elbow jammed into his side. Bone grated as the joint locked.
I had not cranked hard enough to break anything, but pitiless instructors had demonstrated this hold on me, and it hurt. Darcy, though, barely grunted. His other hand grabbed my upper arm and, with typical stubbornness, held like a vice when I tried to yank away.
Mr. MacLeod, the villagers, and the other toughs had descended into furious battle. That was what I wanted. Not this delicate dance.
“Let me fight,” I snapped.
Darcy was struggling to free himself. Warily, I shifted stance as he thrashed.
He was stronger and twice my weight, but this was not fencing, and he did not know how to break the hold.
He reared up, trying to use his height, a bad choice.
That wrenched his arm, and he cried out.
An answering cry spilled from my lungs, and I let go.
Then I stared stupidly at my empty palms—why let go?
—before he lunged and wrapped me in his arms, lifting me up on my toes, trapping my hands at my sides.
“Do not fight,” he shouted. “Do not give in!”
I feigned falling to one side, stretched the other way when he shifted his balance, and drew the dagger.
“Let me fight,” I whispered and pricked the tip into his thigh.
“Fighting achieves nothing. When we pay for the sheep—”
I laughed. “You think the sheep matter?” I leaned back as if to see him. He lowered his head, and I drove my forehead into his jaw. He staggered, and I was free.
The mad voice came again—Fènnù crooning, My wyfe of war…
The gloomy gray clouds swirled and tore asunder, replaced by sky-spanning black wings. My emotions tore with them and fell away, reduced to exaltation.
I threw my arms high and screamed a joyous cry of welcome. Wind blasted, snapping my hair back, flattening grass and kicking grit from the stone walls, drowning the terrified cries.
Fènnù’s huge feet landed on the thick walls of the castle keep, her claws piercing rock, her weight smashing the stone down inch-by-inch.
Rocks rained, thudding into the dirt. The keep swayed under her weight, dust streaming from crushed mortar and spinning in wild swirls as her wings worked, seeking balance on the shifting footing.
Frustrated and bellowing, she took to the air again, circling Helmsdale hill, faceted eyes fixed on me, then she twisted imperiously in the sky, wings taut.
A rumble built, climbed to the shriek of an infernal demon, then her jaws opened and the world turned to ear-splitting thunder.
Blackness darker than midnight streaked over our heads and pounded into the keep.
Thick walls blew apart. The foundation tore away.
The castle walls were dragged into the rush like mud in a torrent, stone blocks that weighed hundreds of pounds rolling and disintegrating to gravel.
The black breath blew through them and down to the valley below.
After an eternity, or seconds, it ended. My exposed skin, my lips, hands, eyes, all stung from the unnatural radiant cold, like a frozen sun had risen to destroy warmth.
“Control her!” Darcy screamed at me. Somehow, he had kept his footing in the maelstrom, but he sounded muffled and distant; I was half deafened. “You have the dagger! Use it!”
I looked at the dagger in my hand, an artifact built to summon the black dragon, to tempt her with humble offerings for her wrath. Through my eyes, Fènnù studied it also. Her amused mind twined around mine, drawing me deeper into her clutch.
“Nobody controls the black dragon,” I said.
His hands grasped my shoulders, shaking me. “No wyfe of war has been as strong as you. Use the dagger!”
I ducked away and ran across the frosted stones and dirt. Mistress MacLeod was shouting at her husband while she dragged Sellar, gibbering with terror, off the frozen, poisoned earth. I passed her and the rubble where the castle’s outer wall had stood.
Helmsdale came into view. Fènnù’s breath had missed the village, but the bay was a slurry of blocky ice and choppy seawater.
Gusts slammed as Fènnù returned, landing in the cleared ground that had held half the castle. Even then she had to jockey for position, careful not to crush me with her wings. She was a skilled predator. She understood the fragility of flesh.
I walked toward her, but Darcy caught up and grabbed my hand. “Elizabeth! Resist her!”
“Why?” I asked as Fènnù watched us, curious and waiting. “I am her.” I turned to her, riotous joy straining my lips. I reveled in her judgment, her fatal condemnation of upstart, unworthy humanity—
Then my joy faltered, interrupted by… music.
It was a few notes, not even heard—my ears rang too loudly to register such delicacy—but the draca senses, the old senses, responded. The certainty of purpose that had consumed my mind faded. Doubt slipped in.
The tune swelled, unthinkably beautiful, powerful and exquisitely performed. A woman’s voice, singing.
Fènnù’s head lifted to the south. Listening.
I had heard this song before, sung at the ball in London when Miss Rees read the melody embossed in Gramr’s blade and invoked its power to wake Fènnù.
But that had been an ordinary wyfe, ordinary singing.
This was ancestral tones rising from the earth.
Notes storming from the restless sea. Music shining from the countless dusks and dawns stacked beyond the horizons.
The forces that ruled the world of draca, forces rooted in nature, were being folded into melody.
Only one woman had that power. “Stop!” I shrieked. I turned toward Pemberley, hundreds of miles distant. “You cannot have her! She chose me. I am the wyfe of war!”
Fènnù’s wings spread, and she leaped into the sky. In seconds, she was shrinking into the south.
Like an iron chain stretched beyond its limits, the madness filling me groaned, bent, and shattered. The cold shroud erected to block my link with Yuánchi fell.
Trembling with shock, I fumbled the dagger into the sheath on my thigh. Its touch burned my skin. Ashamed and terrified, I looked up at Darcy.
He cradled my hands in his. “You did it. You commanded her.”
He had not heard the music. “No. Fènnù had taken my mind. I was lost. She was summoned by another…”
His head turned to watch her fading silhouette. “Who could summon Fènnù?”
“The wyfe of song. Georgiana is singing her melody. Calling her.”
He grabbed my arm. Hard. “Why?”
“I do not know, but we must stop her. She has the power to summon Fènnù, but the wyfe of song cannot hold the black dragon. Fènnù will break her, and consume her strength, and pour it into destruction.”
For the first time since I rose from the lake, the fears that had driven me, the fears that had led to indecision and hiding and running, were gone. Now the contest was clear. And even with Fènnù’s influence removed, I remembered my lifetimes of training. Wars were not won by running.
With the cold shroud gone, I reached my thoughts out to Yuánchi.
Your mind is clear, he answered in tremendous relief. I fell into his welcoming senses, sightless but rich with other awareness, the flows of air, the sound of waves cresting hundreds of feet below, the peculiar abstract imagery shared by the two firedrakes.
Fènnù found me, I thought. She hid her approach—hid herself from you and me until she was upon me. She is stronger than ever. Come. We must save the wyfe of song.
Below, stunned people congregated on the frozen shoreline of Helmsdale. Behind us, Mistress MacLeod and her husband, both bloodied, staggered out of the sprayed rubble of the castle. They were supporting Sellar, who was dragging one leg. He saw me and reeled back, wild-eyed and terrified.
I took Darcy’s hand—his left, which made him wince, but I forced that guilt aside. There was no time.
“We must fly,” I said as the scarlet of Yuánchi’s wings became visible, streaking above the gray sea. “Race south as we have never flown before. We must stop Fènnù before she breaks the wyfe of song.”