Chapter 49
Chapter forty-nine
RORY
Somewhere, Rory knew, far away from wherever she was, a battle raged.
It was no matter.
At least, not to her.
She was safe. She was warm. She was happy, at long, cocooned in the downy warmth of her dreaming – a peaceful, quiet dreaming, the kind she had always longed for and never found.
What did it matter, then, if the world she had left behind – the world that had shown her so little kindness in her life – what did it matter if it was left to burn?
The only person she had cared to protect no longer lived there anyway.
She might as well let the nightmare loose, and let herself dream.
So she did.
She dreamed of early spring in the vale – the barely-blossoming cowslips; the sweet scent of a cool twilight rain; the sound of uncle Kieran reading stories by the fire; the gentle glide of her mother’s fingers through her loose hair.
She dreamed, too, of running wild along the riverbanks, singing snatches of old ballads and bawdy tunes at the top of her lungs, and of Niall’s joyous, youthful voice joining with hers, the music of their childhood, all that simple, achingly sweet love that had once existed between them echoing off the rocks and through the trees and forever in her heart.
She dreamed they were lying in the meadow, bees bumbling above them, chewing on stalks of meadowgrass and lavender, tracing shapes and faces into the clouds drifting idly by overhead.
“That one’s Cúchulainn,” Niall said. “See his horses, his chariot? And there – that one’s Oisín.”
“Too small to be Oisín,” said Rory sleepily. “He’s taller than any other man by a full head. That’s what the stories say.”
“You would know,” said Niall. “What’s he like?”
Rory laughed. “He certainly is tall,” she said. “Very grim, very scary, though I’d never admit that to him. Lovely singing voice though.”
“I should hope so.” Niall sighed, snuggling deeper into the grass, arms folded behind his head. “You shouldn’t be here, Ror. He needs you – they all do.”
“They don’t need me. They always wanted the nightmare, and they have that now.” She pointed to another cloud. “I think that’s Liath Luachra. See that cloud there, on the right? The way it falls to the side, like a braid? And that bump on the front of it there – that could be her nose.”
“It does look a bit like a nose,” said Niall, and then they were quiet for a long while, in that comforting way that they had, the contentedness of merely being with one another.
“I thought I would be able to handle it,” said Rory presently. “Being there, in that place, watching you die, over and over again –” She shrugged. “I suppose that I’m not as strong as I’d thought, after all.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works,” said Niall thoughtfully, bright blue eyes fixed on the sky above. “I don’t suppose that it’s ever meant to be something that can be handled. It wouldn’t be real, if it did.”
She pondered this for a moment, letting the song of the river and the cry of the falcon wash over her. “Well,” she said. “I don’t want to go back, so I won’t. Why would I want to return, when I could escape all of it and stay here with you, forever?”
“I don’t know,” said Niall, scratching at his chin. “But I still think you should.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s home,” he said, turning to look at her for the first time – and for a moment, he was not ethereal at all, but solid and whole and heartbreakingly real, exactly as she remembered him, down to the smattering of freckles along the bridge of his nose.
Her most powerful illusion yet, she thought.
The full scope of the magic of the Mórrígan was a fearsome thing indeed, it would seem.
“Your home, and mine, whether I am there or not.” He smiled, crooked and bright, and the illusion shuddered, and the shimmering haze of mortality fell over his face once more. “And besides. You promised.”
She had made promises, she thought, so many times, so many swearings – to Finn and to Dil, to Mac Duinn and Eóin ó Flannagáin; to the boy with monsters slumbering in his heart; and to all of éire, who had suffered for too greatly and too long, because of her.
To Locke, who still fought, who still bled for what he believed in, for what he loved, in spite of everything.
Still she hesitated, lying there in the soft grass, in this place of peace which she would never again know, once she left this dream-world that she had built and pieced together from that all-consuming wave of the Mórrígan’s power, brought to full strength by the roar of a gods-blessed rock.
It would be lost if she left, what with the Lia Fáil broken and bereft of power there atop the hill where it had stood for so many centuries.
He would be lost – this boy he had once been, innocent and bright and full of hope for heroes and honor and so many things that had long vanished.
“You saved me, you know,” she said. “Far more than I ever saved you. Perhaps I saved your life a few times, but you saved me from the worst parts of myself – the cold, the ruthless, the inhuman parts that could have made me into a nightmare the likes of which our world has never seen. You looked at me and saw something good, someone worth loving, and now – well.” She was quiet for a moment, considering.
“Perhaps I am still a nightmare,” she said, “but I could have been a worse nightmare.”
“I don’t think so,” Niall said thoughtfully, scratching at his nose with the tip of his finger. “But then again, I have never thought of you as a nightmare at all, you know.”
Rory smiled briefly. “Do you ever wonder, how things might have been different? What might have been, had our father never ridden to the vale that day and taken me away from my mother and my home? What do you think you would have become, without me?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t care to. I am content with what I was given.”
“You would never have met the witch,” she said.
“Never would have gone to seek out her help, never would have ridden to your own death with such foolish, foolish hope in your heart.” She was silent for a moment, staring up at the clouds.
“Do you know what else I wonder? I wonder if perhaps you were always meant to die that day in the river, and when I saved you, I thwarted fate, and this – all this suffering, all this death – has been the cost of that. Do you think that’s true? ”
Niall rolled over on his side, the unnatural gravity of his shadow-ridden blue eyes belying the youthful curves of his face.
“No, Ror – I think that, for my whole life, I made my own choices, as you made yours,” he said.
“I chose to go down to the river that day, and you chose to save me. You chose to take me to see the witch, and then you chose to save me from her. We both did the best we could with what we had, and no one can do more.” He sighed.
“But I cannot make this choice for you. I cannot tell you what is worth saving, and what is worth sacrificing.”
“If I go back, then I will have to kill her.” She blew out a long breath. “Three times I’ve tried, Niall. Three times I’ve failed. I don’t know if it’s even possible.”
“It has to be,” said Niall – who was, she realized with a sinking jolt, slowly growing more insubstantial with every word, as though her power could sense her resolution wavering, inexorably calling her back to the reality she so desperately wished to forever forget.
“It’s the only way to stop her. She’s already fed Meiche two hearts already – Da’s and mine –”
“Please don’t,” said Rory, stomach twisting. “I can’t – I can’t bear it, Niall.”
A flash of pain on his boyishly ethereal face.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter.
I swear, it truly doesn’t.” His phantom fingers slid into hers, squeezing with the lightest of touches.
“You were right, you know, when we were young – when you said it doesn’t matter how one dies.
Dead’s dead, you said, that day in Da’s courtyard, when we were sparring.
” A shrug of his shoulders. “Here I am, and all of that, everything that came before this, it’s all so hazy and unreal, like it never even happened.
” Niall tipped his head back, surveying the yawning stretch of blue sky, then sighed a little.
“Anyway,” he said. “If she feeds another heart to the destroyer, there’ll be no stopping her.
She needs the third heart, a heart with my father’s blood in its veins, to complete the transformation.
If she gets it…well, it will be the end of everything good in our world, Ror.
” Their eyes met, fathomless silver and dwindled blue. “Our home.”
“I don’t want to go back,” she said again, but it felt hollow, this time, an empty denial. “It doesn’t feel like home, not like it used to, now that you have died.”
“Everything dies,” he said, and it was a bolt of shock along her spine, hearing those words, lisped and lilting, from his boyish lips.
“And yet nothing does – not truly. Not forever.” He laid again on his back, contented and still, staring up at the endless blue of a perfect summer sky, and she was quiet, savoring these last few moments of peace, of joy, before it shattered forever.
“You made promises,” he said, very quietly. “To me, yes – but not only to me.”
“I remember.”
“Do you also remember,” Niall continued, “you once told me that if you make a promise, you should keep it – no matter how pretty the person is trying to make you break it.” He paused. “I was very pretty, wasn’t I?”
In spite of everything, Rory laughed, breathless and sad.
“The prettiest donkey I ever did see,” she said, and for some reason, it made her think of Locke, cunning hazel eyes and teasing smile, that frigid late winter morning when he’d first stood before her, their hands bound and their hearts full of hate.
Almost as though she’d summoned him, she heard it – faint and faraway, the sound of his voice, calling her name, desperate and urgent and frightened.
Rory, he said. Come home.
She stood up, a young girl in too-small breeches and flowers in her hair and a woman’s shattered heart.
“I will find a way to save him,” she said, staring at her brother’s hazy face, memorizing the shape of his eyes, the curve of his boyish jaw.
“Your son. Somehow, Niall, I will find a way to save him from his fate.”
“I know you will,” he said. “Just as you saved me.”
“I didn’t, though.”
He smiled, simple and sweet. “You did, Ror. Every day, you did.”
Her eyes stung with the prick of hot tears. “I suppose,” she said, “that this is farewell, then.”
“Only for now,” he said with another yawn, nothing but eternal, endless peace stretching out in an undying dawn before him, and Rory felt a stab of envy deep in her gut at the thought of it. “I will see you again, you know.”
“I do know,” she said. “Goodbye until then, Niall.”
“Goodbye, Ror,” he said dreamily, drifting into sleep under the golden summer sky.
Rory took a deep breath and closed her eyes to the last glimpse of her brother she would ever know in this world, and woke to blood.