Chapter 20
Hounds and Blades
Chyr
T
he baying of Ravenhounds jerks me awake—a low, broken curse of a sound I’ve heard too often. My sword is where I always leave it, and by the time the familiar weight of it is in my hand, I’ve oriented myself again in the gloomy herder’s hut.
Flora rolls to her feet beside me. “What is it?”
“Some of Vheara’s less pleasant pets have come to play. Stay here.”
By now, I should know better. Flora follows me out the door. She doesn’t bother arguing.
I squint against the rain that drives sideways against the slope.
The Ravenhounds rush me—black shadow bodies and molten teeth.
Ember-red eyes that burn with rage and hunger.
I meet the first mid-leap, steel biting into its ribs.
A second knocks me to the ground. I hit hard and roll through a puddle, slashing the creature’s throat, then I shift to avoid the corrosive spill of blood.
The mud is slick and treacherous as I climb to my feet.
My magic is still too depleted. I reach for the Veilstones, draw what I can, and scrape the last dregs from within myself to hurl a stream of fire at several of the hounds. They howl as they ignite.
A new snarl cuts crosswise through the storm, closer than it should be. Flora jumps in front of me, her braid flying like a whip.
Her dagger is masked as a sword again—the same illusion she used before. More brave than sane, she circles, searching for the beast as though she can’t find it either. My heart stutters as the snarl comes again from her left. She spins to the right.
The beast leaps at her, and I throw myself between them. Teeth rake fire down my leg, and I twist and drive my blade through the monster’s skull. It goes still, but my leg collapses beneath me.
Another Ravenhound drives me to the ground. Fetid breath and drips of spittle hit my face, and I’ve no strength left to raise my blade. But even as I brace for the attack, the monster yelps and falls away in a splatter of blood.
Rain sluices down my face, muddy loam cold against the fire that burns the back of my thigh. Moss slicks under my palm as I reach for purchase.
“Don’t move.” Flora’s voice shakes, and she pushes hard against the wound. My flesh heats, burns. The rest of me is too cold with my magic gone.
“Are they all dead?” I struggle to ask.
“All of them.”
The fire of her hands dulls the pain in my leg. My breath comes easier. And it’s only my thigh that feels the heat of the healing she’s pouring into me this time, not my entire body.
She’s learning. Growing stronger and more precise.
That’s my first lucid thought, even as she shifts me onto my back. Her hair has escaped the thick braid, the copper and moonlight strands darkened by the rain. Water runs through streaks of blood along her cheeks, but I don’t see any injury beneath them.
Her eyes are closed in concentration. Then her hands press against the soaked linen shirt and bandaging over my wound, and her magic rises again—a surge pushing into me and sucking away the agony that spiked while I swung my sword. Her skin begins to smoke.
I’ve grown to expect that, having seen it twice now. But the smoke comes quicker this time, thicker and darker. The pain in my chest becomes a low throb instead of an insistent scream.
“Flora, save your energy.” She’s worked too long already.
She releases me and sits back on her haunches.
I push up to my feet. Using my muscles like that is a force of habit, and it’s only after I’m standing that I realise I shouldn’t have the strength to do it.
Flora’s eyes meet mine. They’re alive, so alive, and a small smile hovers on her lips, as if she’s proud of herself.
I’m gripped by an insane impulse to kiss her, to hold her. It wouldn’t be fair, though. Or right. Which doesn’t make me want it any less.
She breaks the contact first. “What were those things?”
I turn away to wipe the blade of my sword on a clump of moss. “They’re called Ravenhounds, and there may be more of them. We need to go.” I catch her hand in mine and kiss her palm. “Thank you. You keep saving me.”
“You keep doing your best to die. Please stop.”
The laugh that spills up my throat sounds rusty. How long has it been since I laughed? But then I spot the beast she killed.
The carcass of the hound lies a few feet away with a wound where Flora split its abdomen, and Flora’s sword rests discarded on the ground beside it. The blade is covered in the black, treacly gore that lives between the bones and shadows of Vheara’s Ravenhounds, and it’s a sword—not a dagger.
Illusions disappear when they’re no longer fed with magic. Seeing the sword lying on the ground makes my chest go tight.
“Your sword isn’t an illusion. It’s real,” I say, the words coming out more like an accusation than I intend. I soften my voice before continuing. “How did you manage to transform the metal in the dagger? And make the weapon strong enough to use?”
She tilts her head. “What’s the point of a sword that can’t be used? Anyway, I told you it wasn’t an illusion. Not believing me was your choice, not mine.”
I close my eyes at her innocence and my own blindness, and I shake my head as I hurry back inside the hut to strap on the rest of my weapons and gather our things so we can leave.
Flora did tell me the sword wasn’t an illusion, but I assumed that she was bluffing because she’s human. Few Siorai are powerful enough to create something from nothing. Even now, I don’t think she grasps what she’s done. What she is or might become.
Few Siorai can call tremors from the earth. Or heal as Flora heals.
None of it should be possible for her, but Flora excels at impossibilities.
The two of us each pull an extra plaid around us for warmth and fold the remaining plaids into the packs, then we saddle the horses quickly. Flora’s movements are sluggish, and she tries to pretend that her hands aren’t shaking.
The magic she poured into me—magic I can still feel coursing through my veins—came at the expense of her strength.
I should be grateful to her, but I’m terrified for her instead.
Flora’s only beginning to touch her magic. Whether that’s Siorai magic that the Veilstones or I have woken, or it comes from the ancient Cailleach magic, or some combination of the two, she doesn’t understand it. She can’t control it yet, and that makes her doubly dangerous.
What wouldn’t Vheara do to have that sort of power? What would Flora become if Vheara turned her?
The questions slide through me like ice.
Vheara can never learn that Flora exists, and yet I’m about to drag her into territory that will be crawling with Vheara’s eyes and ears. Flora’s magic could make the difference in reaching Muilean on time, but my oaths—No, I refuse to think like that.
I give her a leg up into the saddle, and she looks at me with her brows creased.
Another Ravenhound bays somewhere in the distance.
I think of the way she threw herself into the fight to save me, and something thickens in my throat and slips down into my chest, making it hard to speak. It’s impossible to miss the shadows beneath those clear grey eyes, the way she clutches the reins to keep her hands steady.
I wish I could let her rest. It’s still hours before nightfall, and travelling through the day is riskier. But we can’t stay here.
Where there are Ravenhounds, Vheara’s Greys may not be far away. The hounds not only serve as scouts—the Greys also use them to drive prey to slaughter.
After tying Bramble to Eira’s saddle, I mount behind Flora, and we both adjust our plaids to cover our heads against the rain.
I settle my arms around her to keep her steady.
She sits determinedly upright as we first set out on the long traverse across the slope, then the effort becomes too much. She slumps back against me.
The icy rain stiffens my cheeks and turns Flora’s hands red on the reins. Her soft warmth feels good in my arms, and the floral hint of bog myrtle that clings to her is bright and heady.
Her curves are maddeningly close.
My body responds without permission. She must feel it, because her breath hitches. The tension between us becomes a torment as she guides the mare along a faint trail heading west and uphill through gorse and bare boughs of heather.
Both of us watch the slopes for signs of Ravenhounds or Greys. We can hear the baying now and then, and we’re careful to say nothing in case our voices carry. Then, finally, we have some cover among the trees. The rain slows beneath the branches, but water streams off the leaves overhead.
Keeping her voice low, Flora turns her head slightly towards me. “Did Vheara create the Ravenhounds the same way she made the Greys?” she asks. “Or were they always like that?”
“They were Shadehounds before she turned them, yes. But Vheara and the Greys are far more dangerous because they retain all their Siorai abilities, and their strength is only limited by the amount of suffering they can inflict and absorb.”
“Are you saying that Vheara is like the Greys? But I thought…They say she’s beautiful.”
“That’s vanity. Illusion. Beneath the mask, she looks like any other Grey. Corrupting magic will always exact a penalty.”
I can almost feel the way her mind spins as she considers what I’ve said.
“Maybe it’s more than vanity,” she says after a bit. “No one in Alba Scoria would have supported her against your rebel king if they’d seen what she is.”
“Never underestimate what people are willing to overlook if it means they get what they want.”
“People like my father. Is that what you’re implying?” Flora sighs. “I doubt he tried very hard to see the truth beneath her mask.”
Her voice is full of pain, and I know how much she loved her family, how much she loves everyone in her life. I tighten my arms around her as Eira picks her way across a shallow stream.
“Don’t judge him too harshly. It’s hard for people who aren’t naturally cruel or self-serving to see those qualities in others, and Vheara has always been careful to hide the evil at her core.
She flatters others into believing in her.
Even Chulainn—the High King. He didn’t see what she was doing until she threatened him directly.
Then he ordered Fionn to banish her. That’s what set the chain of events in motion. ”
“I don’t understand.”
“Vheara wanted a position at court, and when Chulainn denied her, she tried to dethrone him. That’s when he sent Fionn and the Anvar’thaine to hunt her.”
Flora goes rigid in my arms. “The same Fionn who became the Sun King?”
“Yes, Chulainn’s brother. He was Master of the Anvar’thaine, and Chulainn trusted him,” I say, fighting through the ice and fire that the oathbands send through me.
Flora’s tension passes to Eira. The mare snorts and throws her head. “Is that why the Sun King was never punished? He murdered women and childrenbabies—and your High King did nothing for four centuries because Fionn was his brother?”
Pain shoots through me and forms a vice around my skull. My mouth goes dry.
The cursed oathbands pick up what I’m thinking before I even form the thought.
I try to go around them from another direction.
“I’m not defending Fionn,” I say, balancing on a dagger’s edge, “but there’s more to it than I can explain.
The main point is the timing. Fionn banished Vheara before the Compact was created, and no one had ever escaped from there before.
The Gloaming has no magic, and magic is as essential to Siorai as breathing air or seeing light.
Most Siorai go mad within a century or two of being sent there. ”
“But that’s cruel—” Flora begins, then stops herself.
Eira’s hooves slip on the boggy hill track that’s so faint I can barely make it out. The rain has stopped, but water still sheets off the yellow-blooming gorse, and the slope rises steeply ahead. The sky glowers as more storm clouds gather.
“By your standards, maybe it is, but punishment has to be cruel to ensure that oaths and laws have meaning when you live as long as we do. Until Vheara, no one had ever escaped the Gloaming, but she had learned more about runes and magic than almost any Siorai in our history. She found a way to drain the remnants of magic from the Siorai and Shadelings she found there, and she turned the Gloaming into her personal hunting ground.”
“Why would you banish Shadelings?” Flora twists in the saddle, distracting me beyond patience as her backside shifts against me.
“Stay still, please.” My voice is strained.
“No, we don’t banish them. Shadelings are creatures of the betweens, and the Gloaming is a place of shadows, a world between worlds.
It’s full of small doors and shortcuts the Shadelings used before Vheara began to capture them and force them to feed on suffering.
Terror, anguish, panic, hate, and rage—this war is a feast for all the creatures she corrupted. ”
Flora’s gone silent, her every muscle tense. At first, I believe she’s reacting to the shock of what I’ve said. Then I realise her attention has shifted elsewhere. The wind is rising, and it carries the stench of smoke.
My throat tightens as if it’s already choked with soot. I’m afraid I already know the answer, but I don’t know the countryside enough to be certain.
“Whose land is that?” I ask.
Tears strangle Flora’s voice. “Camhrain of Locharn. He and his clan rose for the king from the beginning, and they’ve given him more than almost any other clan. Now they’ll pay the price.”