Chapter 34
Chapter thirty-four
Neither Below the Earth Nor Above It, Not Then Nor Now
RORY
As soon as Rory crossed the threshold of the cave of cats, the smoke and the fire and the screams were gone, and she was enveloped in a blanket of unending cold that felt unnervingly familiar – familiar to those times when the ice would spread through her veins and across her skin, when she would open her mouth and feel the frost form along the curves of her lips as she spoke in a language not of this earth.
Rory tipped her head back to study t the yew trees blanketed in snow and ice, the velvet-dark sky bedazzled by thousands of pure white stars, gleaming frozen and bright far above them, the utter silence of it all, a solemn, grave quietude, the snow falling so soft and secret around them, the glossy-winged ravens perched in the trees, still and unmoving as statues carved from obsidian rock.
This was the Mórrígan’s home, and she recognized the feel and shape of it, like slipping on a long lost, perfectly tailored glove over her fingertips, and deep down inside her, the power that slumbered still under the influence of Aoife’s lingering spell stirred, lifting its ice-kissed head to blink sleepily at its new surroundings.
She flexed her fingers impulsively, and it was there, almost instantly – that diamond-bright knowing, that rising fog, that familiar feel of the ice coagulating in her veins – but stronger, wilder, than she had ever felt before, a power capable of felling kingdoms and toppling realms with a mere whisper, that could raise its voice in song and prophesy the ending of all things and live to see it all come undone, and then disappear into the ether.
This – this was magic, the gods’ own, raw and pure and breathtakingly powerful, the kind of strength sprung from the very roots of the mountains buried deep within the earth.
With this kind of power, she was matchless, peerless, and none would be able to stand before her, not even the witch –
She could save Locke.
Rory whirled, ready to race back out of the cave, to rain down death and destruction on that damned cailleach, to extract the vengeance due to her, sure, but to save him, to save Locke, to save him as she could not before, when the boy reached out and grabbed her wrist. “You can’t,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” she said, yanking free of his icy fingers. “I promised – I made a promise to him, that I would –”
The sword in your hand, the shield at your back.
She swallowed. “I have to help him.”
“You can’t leave,” he repeated, more insistently. “You can’t go back.”
“Unfortunately,” an unfamiliar voice said, soft and bell-like.
“I must insist on that.” Rory spun around to find herself facing a woman with snow-pale skin and blood-red lips and hair as black as the ravens’ wings who sat silent and watching in the trees all around them.
“Or at least,” the lady continued, her strange, unworldly eyes – bright and burning as pure golden fire – fixed on the boy’s thin face, “he must, for I cannot allow him to stay here.”
Rory stepped forward, between the woman and the boy, bracing herself to fight. “No. It is too dangerous for him, out there.”
“It’s too dangerous for all of us for him to remain here.” The lady swept a graceful hand towards the snowy surroundings, the ice-laden trees, the bright, beady eyes of dozens of sleek black ravens keeping vigil above them. “Do you know where you are, child?”
Rory straightened her shoulders. “We wouldn’t have come here if we had any other choice. It was a matter of life and death.”
“And yet here you are,” the lady said mildly, even though her golden eyes flared even brighter, a ceaseless blaze. “Seeking life, in the birthplace of death itself. Not the most logical of choices.”
Rory drew in a deep, steadying breath. “Please,” she said. “Whoever you are, you clearly have sway here in this realm. Let the boy stay for a time, while I return and –”
“There is no such thing as time here.” The lady cut off her pleading with a careless swipe of her hand.
“A moment here might be an hour, or a day, or a year in the land of mortals, or what seems to be a fortnight spent here under the stars and the snow passes as but a breath or two among the living. It is ever-varying, ever-changing.” Her gaze returned, slow and inexorable, to the boy still huddled behind Rory.
“But even so, he cannot linger. I cannot allow it.”
“It is his right.” Rory nudged the boy backwards, away from the deathless stare of this strange woman, and stepped forward.
From the corner of her eye, she saw the boy sink down into the snow, burrowing into the ice-covered roots of a black-trunked yew tree, blinking his wide blue eyes up at the two women as they faced off.
“This is his mother’s realm. He is allowed to take shelter here. ”
“I know who he is,” she said, still so calm, even as ice pricked at Rory’s fingertips and her fog rolled in, billowing around her ankles.
“And you, Rory ó Conchúir – I know you as well. The girl born with ice in her veins and shadows in her eyes.” She studied Rory, head to toe, cool and unperturbed.
“You, too, should be wary of what might befall you, wandering into the realm of Ráth Cruachan as you have, with your stolen drop of the Mórrígan’s own gifts.
” A faint smile tugged at the corners of her rose-red lips.
“She is not the most forgiving of creatures, our ancestor.”
Rory choked back a gasp as understanding struck her. “I know who you are,” she whispered, her arms falling limp to her sides. “Riona.”
The woman’s golden-fire eyes gleamed. “Once I was,” she said. ”Before I came to rule these lands, but here – here you may simply refer to me as the lady of death.”
The lady of death. She was here, at Ráth Cruachan – had come in response to some silent summons, an irresistible call to collect –
No.
Locke.
The cry burst out of her, unconsciously, a sharp, keening wail of loss. ”Please,” Rory managed to say, stumbling forward, hands clasped. “My husband – please. If you are the lady of death, please. You cannot – you cannot –”
“I have no concern,” she answered, flat and unyielding, “for the world of the living. Their fates are not of my choosing.”
Rory’s heart twisted in that most terrible of emotions – hope. “He is alive, then?”
For the briefest moment, something almost human flickered in those deathless golden eyes. “His harvest has not yet come. Although for how much longer, I cannot say.”
“Then I need to go.” Rory turned, that tell-tale prickle of ice already burning at the tips of her fingers, that swell of fog and smoke rising within her.
“I can still save him.” Even as she spoke, it occurred to her, how odd, that it was not the desire for revenge both bitter and sweet, that propelled her back towards the mortal realm and the witch wielding fire within it, but the almost-overwhelming urge to protect him, to save him, this unwanted and unworthy husband of hers.
She swallowed, fighting back the lump in her throat. “I need to go,” she said again, quieter this time, but before she could breach the opening to the cave, the sound of that bell-like voice halted her in her tracks.
“No.”
Rory turned around, eyes narrowing. “He will die,” she said. “She will kill him, even though he risked his life for the saving of mine. I owe him this debt.”
“That is not, as I have said, my concern.” The lady of death met Rory’s gaze unwaveringly, unmoved by whatever preternatural horror swirled around her.
“You have breached my borders, and now you will answer for your trespass, or you will find that your husband’s fate shall indeed become the very least of your worries.
So.” She folded her white-gloved hands in front of her, and smiled – rather gently, a far more unnerving sight than a snarl would have been.
“Let us move on to more pressing matters – this boy whom you have unlawfully brought here.” Her golden-fire gaze moved to the boy, who had nestled himself into a tight ball, half-buried in the snow, blue eyes growing hazy with exhaustion.
The cold apparently was as of little concern to him as it was to her, Rory thought with a shiver of unease, as though the ice and the night were soothing him, a welcoming embrace rather than the den of terror most would see it as.
A homecoming, of sorts.
“So,” the lady of death said again, seemingly following a similar train of thought as Rory herself. “This is who is responsible for stealing away so many of my pets.”
Rory’s eyes darted towards where the boy dozed in the snow, straw-blonde hair tumbling over his freckled forehead.
“That is how she released the amadán dubh,” Rory realized.
“She cannot enter the sídhe since she herself is not bound by the blood of the Tuatha Dé Danann, but she can use him to open its hidden doors, to allow whatever beasts lurk nearby to prowl forth.”
“Yes.” The lady of death huffed out an irritated sigh. “It has been most troublesome, his meddling with the workings of my realm.”
“He didn’t do it on purpose,” Rory said swiftly, moving on instinct to stand again in front of the sleeping boy. “The cailleach used him – forced him. It’s not his fault.”
The lady of death raised her hands. “I bear the boy no ill-will.” She cocked her head as she studied him. “But something will have to be done with him, regardless. I can’t be having my beloved yet very deadly charges frolicking unchecked in the world of mortals.”
“Can’t you call them back?”