Chapter Eleven
Eleven
Faolan
I lied to Saoirse—but only by half.
As the council settles into their places, cloaks and dresses sagging with jewels, I try for the thousandth time since sunrise to remember a song I swore to forget.
Drink the bones dry, oh, drink the bones dry
’Til the earth cries out in madness,
’Til the ceasing of the…time?
It’s a useless fight, driving into my flesh like dull teeth—which means that technically, I didn’t lie. So far as the world is concerned, soulstones are impenetrable.
Just like soul bargains are pure myth.
“Blessed is the harvest, Bandia Saoirse!”
A noble girl—one of Tadgh’s daughters from the look of her—bows before my wife and lays a buttercup at her feet. It’s a pitiful thing, stem already broken, but Saoirse smiles like it’s spun of pure gold.
“Blessed is the harvest,” she says, and waits for the girl to sit behind her father before nudging the flower aside, where it joins the other offerings: fat heads of cabbage, honey cakes, candles rolled in flowering thyme.
It’s an embarrassment of riches—one the other rí and ríona have noticed, exactly as Kiara planned.
I lay a hand at Saoirse’s hip and look over her shoulder, out the open panels to the shining, mocking sea.
A thousand years it gave us, by blood and sigil, tied
’Til…
The words slip through my mind like flukes—hideous wee parasites doing not a damned bit of good. But even those flee when Maccus strides through the entrance, casting shadows across the both of us with his massive frame.
“Bandia Saoirse. Faolan.”
The bastard has the nerve to bow.
My shoulders crack as I force myself to nod back, burying my fingers in the folds of Saoirse’s skirt.
Tadgh enters next, looking strangely…spry.
Clear-eyed and humming as he navigates the room.
It’s not until he’s settled in his seat that I spy Aidan just behind him, body tense and face drawn. Gray.
Gray like those ugly, shapeless sacks those people used to have us wear.
’Til mortal gods grow flirty—no, thirsty.
Flirty was the bit I added to make the other lads laugh.
’Til mortal gods grow thirsty, and drink the bones dry.
Then watch the…
Harr? Star?
Damn it to the shade’s realm. If the Gan Ainm had crafted better tunes, maybe I’d have half a chance of actually remembering them.
The base story goes, in an age of chaos and utter carnage, the gods devised a punishment for the cruelest of blasphemers—a handful of mortals who sought to usurp even death.
It was said the gods drank their essence, consuming their eternities until there was nothing of the mortals left. Just a handful of empty soulstones.
The song was theatrical. Disturbing, really.
It was also one of hundreds warning against sacrilege, and I’ve never paid much attention to cautionary tales.
Saoirse slips free of my grasp as Kiara walks in, the last of the royals to arrive.
Her cloak’s absolutely enormous, dyed a dark crimson—same as the wide smile she flashes my way.
If I had a ship at my disposal (and if she wouldn’t gut me for it), I might try my hand at stealing the fine silken thing.
“Rí and ríona of the Crescent,” Kiara says, “children and consorts alike, we welcome you to our first council of thirteen. The equinox is upon us, and we have much to discuss.”
Kiara takes a seat between Tadgh and Etain in order of their islands as the rest clear their throats or give nods in response.
Aidan, skin clearly crawling, glances across the room and then sits between Tadgh and Saoirse as the rest of them take note—likely putting it together just now that any vote for the Crescent will be skewed.
Again, exactly as Kiara wanted.
I sink back into the shadows with the other consorts and families and shake off the sting.
Then watch the stars lie, oh, watch the stars lie.
Trait’rous cunny—
Feckin’ hell.
The real trouble is, only the eldest of the Gan Ainm ever sang this bloody song, and always in the dead of winter. I can hardly be faulted for not remembering details when my bollocks were sure to freeze off.
That, and their voices croaked like hoary frogs—not a shred of musical talent among them.
Trait’rous, cunning creatures
With…something something eyes.
Honestly, if it were one of the daily prayers, I could rattle it off while balancing naked on my head and holding—
A staff cracks against the ground, slender wood held fast by Ríona Etain as she stands. When Aisling tries to aid her, she glares until the girl sits back down.
“Sixty years I’ve led my people. Sat in these councils. Watched as rí and ríona rose and decayed and their children rose after them through war, disease, famine, and fire.”
Slowly, she turns to Kiara, whose face has gone pale.
“And you expect me to sit here and entertain a pathetic grasp for power by a creature who’s barely left her girlhood behind?”
Aisling starts to rise. “Nana—”
Etain raises a wrinkled hand, cutting her granddaughter off. “Bridled Stag may be choking on its own people, but we have the means to feed them. What you propose is—”
“Balance.” Kiara stands firm, but behind that grand cloak, I see her fingers shake.
“And a safeguard against magic that is constantly failing us. We could ask for volunteers to populate the suffering islands like Frozen Hearth and Unbound Earth. Draw a proper exchange of goods and send portions of your harvest out beyond who can pay for it. The people of Reborn Stalk are starving. A daughter of the island can attest to it.”
“What, our newest queen?” Etain turns a narrowed gaze on Saoirse. “One who allegedly deposed her father in an attempt to escape that same isle you’re so concerned with? Now, I’ve no love lost for Dermot, but I will hardly take the word of that child as testament to the state of their island.”
Saoirse’s back goes arrow straight as all eyes turn on her.
But Kiara’s not quite done.
“Ask the son, then.” She nods to Aidan. “Ask myself, or my court of the state of Ashen Flame. Ask Rí Tadgh of the polluted springs on Frozen Hearth. The magic there has gone all wrong. It’s depleted, and it’s—”
“Dying.”
Etain spreads her arms, her face cracked with something like pity.
“Magic has always been dying. That was the price we paid when we overthrew the gods. Or haven’t you paid attention to the great story every Dahmsa?”
Kiara’s nostrils flare. “I have. But I don’t believe it.”
Etain sighs. “Believing doesn’t matter. Survival—”
“That’s just it.” Kiara’s voice steadies, her chin jutting forward. “I don’t think survival is all we have left. Especially not when the problems are only getting worse. If the magic is unreliable, we must find a way to cultivate life beyond it. To not only survive, but thrive.”
Her words are met with a damning silence.
But that’s always been Kiara’s problem: plenty of passion, and not nearly enough stagecraft. She’s a gifted force of command, and even a fair strategist, but this is the sort of crowd that needs a fair bit of wooing.
As Etain shakes her head, lowering slowly back into her seat, I start forward, ready to spare Kiara any further humiliation. It’s Saoirse’s hand that stops me, just before a graveled voice pelts the room.
“Ríona Kiara is right.”
Maccus doesn’t bother standing. With four meager words, he’s captured the whole tent.
I add it to the long list of reasons to hate him.
“For generations, we have told the story of the Slaughtered Ones, venerating our ancestors even as our people suffered from their actions. Most of us have forsaken the gods. A few have tried to absolve them, holding worship as a shield to consequence. And all the while, magic’s drained our lands to the dregs. ”
Confusion flashes across Kiara’s face as Maccus turns to Etain, and Saoirse runs her fingers down my arm—a gesture she means as soothing but my blood takes as a warning.
“I was born to such a land, as were we all. At twenty, my family was lost to hunger. At thirty, my wife and child lost to blight. I’d resigned myself to a slow starvation—watching my people die while our mines split and the mountains crumbled to dust. I, too, believed this was all that was possible.
Surviving as best we could until the world collapsed under our feet. ”
Saoirse’s hand makes one more gentle pass, then stops as Maccus’s eyes land on us.
Not us.
On her.
“I was arrogant,” he says. “Angry.”
Her touch drops away as Maccus inclines his head.
“And I was wrong.”
Saoirse stands like a viper’s paralyzed her, the way she does when she’s deep in thought. But all I can do is stare Maccus down while the son of a bitch smiles.
“With the resurrection of this island—the proof that magic can be made again—I turned to the tales of my father and the seanchaí of our lands.”
How anyone’s buying this is beyond me. His words aren’t clever. They don’t even rhyme.
“I sought out the heart of Mount Iolair, tracing the roots from the highest peak, and it was there, at last, that I called upon Dia Eamon for his blessing and answers.”
Maccus beckons to a gray-cloaked servant, his eyes never leaving my wife. Every muscle down my back coils as the servant passes over an object wrapped in something like a funeral shroud.
“The solution is not a world without magic, my friends.”
Maccus waits until every breath is held.
“The solution is to forge magic anew.”
He tears the cloth away, unearthing a hammer that looks carved from time itself.
As cold as frostbite, and pitted with centuries of use, the head matches my forearm for length and width.
Patterns mark the metal edges, leather cracked and crumbling down the ash-wood handle.
But that’s not what causes the stillness—no.
It’s the mark of Eamon beaten into its side.
Maccus lifts it high, so no one has a chance of missing it.
“My ancestors buried this at the heart of the mountain. They thought it dangerous—its magic spent—but I tell you now, the spirit of Eamon has awakened just as the Isle of Lost Souls has done, and with the might of his hammer, I vow to rebuild our world.”
That conniving wee fecker.
Saoirse sags against me as Maccus turns to the rest of the room, regarding the hammer with the same fondness a father would his son.
Etain’s skin’s gone ashen while Kiara flushes red, collarbones poking out from her shirt with every hard breath.
But when Aisling goes to take her hand, Kiara starts forward, fists balled at her sides.
“You’re lying,” she snaps. “The relics lost their magic with the fall of the gods—we all know that.”
“Do we?” Maccus faces her, slowly lowering his arm. “Or did they fear the objects’ power? What retribution might be rendered after slaughtering the gods? But the very land we stand on is proof enough that magic can—”
“Proof? Please.” Kiara’s voice loses all control as she scoffs, queenly presence betrayed by her own fury. “The only thing this proves is that you care more for power than for the good of the Crescent. Even if that’s Eamon’s hammer, what makes you think you could wield it?”
His smile is cool when it comes.
“I already have.”
Kiara falls back a step as Maccus swings the hammer once, catching it in his other hand. “Since the spring, I have made sacrifices to Eamon and restored veins of ore in Mount Iolair. Built channels in the old mines to redirect the blight—but that’s not all. Rí Tadgh?”
Maccus’s command carries over the others, hushing them up, but it’s not his voice that sets my guts to twisting.
It’s the barely contained mirth stretched across Rí Tadgh’s face.
“I have proof to lay before the council,” Tadgh says as he stands without the help of his retinue or a cane, already reaching for the gloves he wears to hide his rotting hands.
“Proof that was provided to me last night in the belly of a waterskin. What Rí Maccus claims is true, for it is not only Unbound Earth that’s benefited from its power.
As of last evening, he’s blessed Frozen Hearth and healed me as well. ”
Tadgh removes his glove, and a gasp shatters the room.
The hand that was yellowed and flaking away two months ago is perfectly healed.
Not better. Healed. Veins that had protruded between his knuckles for years are gone.
Age spots too. Even scars I know for a fact littered his smallest finger from a game of knives as a lad have been washed away, just like…
Saoirse and I look to each other, her lips parted, left hand balled up tight.
And I remember like an eejit what I saw last night.
Maccus whispering to Tadgh beside the fire.
That sick fervor in the eldest king’s face.
I’d meant to follow them from the tent—meant to find out just what was going on—but the grannies caught hold of me, and by the time I legged it, both men were out of sight.
Swearing, I bury my face briefly in Saoirse’s hair and reach furiously through my memory for that bloody song.
Then watch the stars lie, oh, watch the stars lie
Trait’rous, cunning creatures—
“When? How?!”
“I entrusted Maccus with access to the Spring of Leigheas over the summer,” Tadgh says, “after he told me of his success containing the blight of his lands.”
“And with Eamon’s hammer,” Maccus continues, “I have restored a portion of the rockbeds. Built walls and channels to divert and cleanse the flesh waste from the stream. Given time, I intend to restore the rest and, at last, right the wrongs my forefathers struck in times of war. However.” Maccus turns the great hammer over with care, revealing its weaknesses: aged wood splintered by cracks, the stone mass gone brittle at its seams. “There is a limit to what magic lingers in a relic as ancient as this. A limit to what blessings a dead god can bestow. And as you pointed out, Ríona Kiara, the land is yet even more depleted. I fear I almost broke the relic using it to achieve what little I’ve done, but I believe I have a solution.
One that requires all the cooperation, peace, and loyalty the Daonnaí first established to overthrow the gods. ”
His gaze cuts to Saoirse, and she takes my arm in a vise.
That settles it.
I’m going to rip his throat out.
“Bandia Saoirse, I have witnessed life pour back into this land by your doing, from your blood spilling upon the stones. Magic, created through sacrifice. Death begetting life.”
My heels dig into the earth as I lean forward, a fight already on the tip of my tongue.
Saoirse shakes her head and watches as Maccus drops to his knees, offering up his hammer like a firstborn child.
“What I propose is an alliance the likes of which our people have not known for five generations. No more secret dealings or thefts in the dark. No more bloodshed but yours. Bless this relic with your living gods’ blood, and together, we will carve the world anew.”