Chapter 26
The Shadehounds Know
Flora
S
cant light pierces the canopy of white-trunked birch trees that stand like wraiths in the darkness.
Chyr creates a small, round scoutlight that illuminates the ground in front of us.
It’s enough for me to give Eira her head, and the mare picks her way through the moss, roots, and fallen branches along the slope.
Rain patters on the loch and drums on the leaves above us.
I’m glad of the excuse not to talk, because if I say anything more to Chyr, I will regret it.
I let myself behave recklessly with him, and despite his warnings, I believed in the wounded Rider who was trying to save my world. I failed to see he was only claiming it for himself.
He gave me his true name, Cóirneach, and he told me his friends call him Chyr. I should have known then that something was wrong. True names have too much power. Why would an Ever give one away so willingly?
Unless he needed it to hide behind.
Chyr is the rebel king. Teàrlach Solas, the man his supporters call the Bonnie King.
The man to whom I gave my body is the son of the Ever who took everything from us, from my family, from women, from Alba Scoria. Our lives, our gods, our right to rule, our magic, our self-respect. He ripped what was left of our bloodline from our islands and drove us into the hills.
I believed Chyr when he spoke so earnestly of oaths and promises. If those meant anything, his father would have been banished the moment he broke the Compact—but Tirnaeve did nothing. For four centuries, the Sun King lorded over us from his stolen throne.
It took Vheara killing Fionn for Tirnaeve to send Chyr and the Anvar’thaine—not to save us. To take the kingdom back. To the Evers, we have never mattered.
The Raven Queen should never have been our war. We shouldn’t have to spill our blood to stop her or die to put an Ever—any Ever—on the throne of Alba Scoria.
The beat of the horses’ hooves through the birch woods is a war cry to my anger. Rain soaks through the plaid I’ve wrapped around myself as a cloak, and water streams down my face. With Chyr behind me, I feel even more alone.
As though they sense my mood much in the way Rab would, the two Shadehounds who followed us from the village stay close, like sentries keeping to the edge of the soft light Chyr is casting on the ground.
The trees thin eventually, opening onto an old drovers’ track.
I push Eira into a canter while we have the opportunity, until we come to a burn swollen by rain and snowmelt.
The water is a dark strip, its depth a mystery, but there’s no going around.
I give Eira a long rein and pat her neck as she plunges in.
Water churns above her knees. She moves cautiously, stopping to test her footing until she scrambles up the opposite bank. Chyr is faster on Bramble, and he stops ahead of me on the track.
“We could eat here,” he says. “You’ve had nothing since the rabbit last night, and the horses need to drink.”
He’s right, though I don’t want to acknowledge it. I want to grieve what I felt for Chyr, what I believed about him. What I was starting to believe about myself.
I search for somewhere to sit out of the rain and far away from Chyr’s brooding silence. The wool of our plaids grows warmer when it’s wet, but tonight, there’s ice building in my chest, and the chill seeps into my bones.
There’s nowhere to shelter, so I huddle on a narrow rock along the riverbank, with my knees pulled up as I watch Eira and Bramble drink.
Chyr unwraps one of the oilcloth bundles, puts half away again for later, and hands me more than my share of the rest. I refuse to argue with him.
I take it, and hunger makes the cold mutton, cheese, and bannocks taste like the best meal of my life.
Chyr stands with his back and one foot braced against a tree behind me. I can feel him waiting for an opportunity to talk.
“Don’t,” I say. “Whatever you’re going to say, I don’t want to hear it. Leave me to settle what’s happened in my mind without making the situation any worse.”
“Tell me how I can make it right between us.”
“Asking me how to mend your betrayal is another betrayal.” I tear off two morsels of the mutton and offer them to the Shadehounds.
The hounds show no interest in the meat, so I offer them bannocks and cheese instead.
They’ve no interest in those either, edging over shyly to let me pet them.
It’s like touching silk through water, their substance shifting beneath my fingers, their grey fur dripping shadows that blur their outlines.
They smell cool and misty, like the moors and braes at twilight.
Watching me intently through dark eyes ringed in a pale gold that glows like the moon, the smaller female whines softly and thumps her tail. The male divides his attention between me, Chyr, and the woods around us.
They make me miss Rab. I miss home, my family, my people. My place.
I wonder if Chyr understands how important place is to us in the Highlands, the earth beneath our feet that’s been tilled and tended down the centuries by those who share our blood.
We’re a people of place: Domhnall of Dunhaelic, Domhnall of Gleanngaradh, Domhnall of Ceapaich, Domhnall of Gleannadail.
Chyr’s father stole our places from us, and in doing so, he forced us to become something other than who we were born to be. Chyr made me believe in him, believe in myself. He changed me, and now he’s stolen that new beginning and taken my self-respect.
Chyr and I finish eating, and I wash the meal down with enough water to make me forget my stomach’s been empty too long.
Then we ride on with the Shadehounds padding beside us through a misery of driving rain.
Bogs at the edge of the loch force us to detour upland or risk skirting the dangerous edges where false ground can kill in an instant.
Eira dances too close for comfort several times as she veers off to snatch bites of heather or grass.
With no moonlight, it’s hard to gauge how long we’ve been riding. Finally, the sloping woods give way to gentler hills covered in blooming furze. We traverse three or four of these, and then the Shadehounds shoot forward at a run.
Chyr and I glance at each other. He extinguishes the scoutlight, and as we crest the next low rise, we’re hit with the smell of smoke.
My chest tightens, and a sick feeling turns my stomach. But the smell isn’t the harsh, greasy smoke of destruction. It’s pine sap and iron, a watchfire built outdoors to withstand the rain.
Chyr slides silently from Bramble’s saddle and tosses me her reins. “Take the horses off the track,” he whispers. “I’ll go have a look.”
Eira dances sideways, but Chyr is already moving, his footsteps silent. I dismount and lead the horses into the thin pines and rowan scrub. My heart is thudding, and I’m relieved when the Shadehounds return. But I don’t give a damn about Chyr’s order.
“If you two can understand me, stay with the horses. Stay.” I hold out my hand in the palm-down gesture I use for Rab. “Stay. Guard.”
They tilt their heads, then drop to their haunches and wait as I tie Eira and Bramble to a twisted pine. I move quietly through the brush in the direction that Chyr took, and when I look back, the Shadehounds are still where I left them, which fills me with both relief and wonder.
Seeing no sign of Chyr, I follow the smoke. I round a bend and spot the soft orange glow of a fire flickering in a hollow between the hills.
The glow vanishes behind trees and brush as I move closer, until I crest another moss-covered hillock.
Then it’s suddenly right ahead. Crouched behind a narrow birch, I peer into a gully where a lookout post has been dug in.
Three lean-tos covered in oilcloth stand in a row, swords and equipment scattered in front of them.
Within each one, two men in scarlet uniforms sleep on cots, and a seventh man stands by the fire, watching the slope below.
My fingers curl into my palms, nails digging into my skin. The vantage point gives a clear view of Loch Seil and the Domhnall territory beyond it. It also overlooks the drovers’ track where Chyr and I would have passed if we hadn’t smelled the smoke.
As if I’ve conjured him by thinking his name, Chyr appears behind the sentry. Clamping his hand over the sentry’s mouth, he makes a clean slice over the man’s throat and lowers him to the ground, where he lies unmoving.
My heart twists. There’s a pang of loss similar to what I felt with the rabbit’s death, a faint echo of the sense of loss at Aknacaery.
But instantly, Chyr pivots towards one of the tents, and I know what he’s going to do.
It’s necessary, I can acknowledge that. Eliminating the watchpost will reduce our risk and the danger for everyone in Ehrugael, but the men are sleeping, and that’s an ugly kill.
As angry as I am, I know Chyr enough to know he’ll carry that guilt with him. And he shouldn’t have to shoulder it alone.
I run to the camp, moving as silently as I can.
Chyr is inside the first shelter when he sees me, and he shakes his head, warning me away. Ignoring him, I tiptoe to the lean-to farthest from him.
He kills again. I feel the loss of the life he’s taken just as I reach the structure.
Forcing myself to set that aside, I crouch beside the first of the red-coated soldiers.
But I can’t kill him in his sleep—I can’t.
With my dagger poised at his throat, I cover his mouth with my other hand and wait for him to wake.
Confusion dulls his senses when his eyes first open. The delay is long enough for me to carve a deep slice across his throat. The wound wells red, blending into his coat, and blood pumps with the last beats of his heart. He stills.
The death isn’t a pang in my heart this time. It’s a rip in my soul, swift and raw. Trying to ignore it for the moment, I move on to the second man. My hands shake as I kill him, and by the time I emerge, Chyr is in the third shelter already. He scowls when he sees me.
I don’t know which of us makes some small sound.
Perhaps neither of us does, and it’s sheer ill luck.
Across the shelter from Chyr, the second man bolts up from the cot and darts outside, fumbling for something at his throat—a stone of some sort on a leather cord.
Yanking the necklace free, he flings it into the fire and screams a word I don’t recognise.
The fire hisses and flares, and the smell of pine pitch cuts through the scent of rain.
Flames erupt on the ridge above us, a long beacon ripping through the darkness. Chyr dives at the man, but the soldier grins as if he’s already won.
That smile makes me ignite with rage.
Vheara’s soldiers are using our own hilltop signal fires against us. They kill our warriors, torch and spoil our fields, slaughter our animals, rape our women, and burn our children. And all the while, they smile.
Magic comes before I call it, roiling in the air around me as if the fury I feel is echoed by the earth and sky.
I search for a way to use the magic I know, but it isn’t the air, fire, and water of Tirnaeve’s magic that comes to me.
It’s the ancient powers that whisper to me: the Cailleach’s gifts of land and sun, of rain and fertility and wind, and the cool nights when the moon’s silver eye provides a respite.
I reach for rain the same way I would reach for earth.
Face lifted towards the swollen clouds above the hill, I sift through the water’s magic the way I did back at the pool.
The cloud is cool and patient. Tiny droplets turn to fat drops, gather and hesitate, then give way—first a mist, then rain, then the hard downpour that drowns the flame.
The signal fire snuffs out.
I search for Chyr. He has the soldier by the collar of his unbuttoned uniform coat. With a flick of his dirk, he makes a clean slice through the jugular, and he strides to me before the corpse even hits the ground.
“Are you hurt?” he asks, his eyes scanning over me.
“No.” I’m surprised that it’s the truth. My shoulder burns as though a stray spark hit it, but the magic came without the usual rake of pain. It never even touched the ember of Siorai magic that lives inside me.
Breath returns slowly to fill my lungs.
“We should leave,” I say. “The beacon will bring someone.”
The air grows chill, and the darkness thickens. The hair rises on my arms as if it wants to crawl away.
“It’s too late to escape already,” a low voice growls.
A Grey appears behind Chyr, holding back a Ravenhound that strains against its leash. The dark blade of a sword hisses as the Grey thrusts it towards Chyr’s back.