Chapter Forty-Five
Forty-five
Faolan
I’ve never been much for horseback riding, but the dunes of Ashen Flame feel enough like the sea that I can squint my eyes and pretend.
At least until Kiara clicks her tongue, and the clopping of hooves signals that her mare’s catching up.
I lean forward in the saddle, ready to dig my heels in, when a pinch lands on my side. “Not so fast.”
“Ow!”
“Are you ready to tell me yet?”
“Feck’s sake, Kiara!” I barely bite back worse as the horses fall into a steady line, grasslands sweeping like a flaxen ocean around us. “Tell you what?”
“Tell me what you know about splitting the soulstones,” Kiara says, scratching her horse’s neck. “I’m not convinced you haven’t heard something.”
Well, no, she wouldn’t be, because I wasn’t particularly good at covering it up yesterday.
“You won’t like what I have,” I say, adjusting in the saddle so it pinches my thighs less. “Guaranteed to piss you off.”
“Try me.”
“It’s a song. Well, a scrap of song.”
Immediately, she groans. “Skies of fire.”
“See? This is why I didn’t tell you. You have no scope for imagina—”
“All right, quit your whingeing. Just tell me.”
I cast her a look, then heave a sigh. “It’s…a song. A reckoning, really.”
“From the Gan—”
“Yes.” I cut my eyes over my shoulder, but no one’s near enough to hear.
Saoirse’s toward the back with Brona and Nessa, Aisling just ahead of her, though the heir to Bridled Stag spends most of her time turned in the saddle to talk with the rest. Callen hangs farther back, eyes focused on the landscape, Aidan riding sullenly by their side.
Swatting away a fly, I face the front again, shutting my eyes. “It was one of their warnings. An omen against the abuse of power, and what brought about the fall of the gods.”
“Shame they don’t venture out into the Crescent more,” Kiara says, her voice dry.
I smirk. “Exactly. Anyway, it goes on about breaking vows and oaths, you know—‘to slake their endless hunger, they’ll damn us all to die. Cast the world to ruin, bathed in crimson brine’—followed by some other shite.”
“You don’t remember it?”
“I—” The gelding misses a step, sending me lurching in the saddle until it rights itself with a blow of its lips. “Winds o’ fury. Give me a ship over a horse any day.”
“Faolan.”
“Sorry—no, I don’t remember all of it, but I know someone who might. Someone who recognized the broken soulstone and gave Saoirse a warning.” Sliding my eyes her way, I can’t help a slight smile at the sour look on my cousin’s face. “Someone who it would make your lover very happy to retrieve.”
“Etain. I know.”
I tap my nose. “Clever, aren’t you?”
“Careful.”
“Always am.”
We ride in blessed silence for a minute, the girls’ laughter drifting up from the back of the line, before I see Kiara tense up out of the corner of my eye. Even before she asks, I have to bite back a groan.
“What if you just—”
“No.”
“Who else could find their way in to ask them about—”
“No.”
Kiara snorts, the sound a dead ringer for the horse beneath her. “Would you at least tell me why?”
“Because they’re a bunch of merciless, yellow-bellied, coldhearted fish who only take visits from other seanchaí to pass their stories on, and who are the sole reason I currently live a life of petty crime.”
Kiara casts me a sidelong look. “You’re a king consort, you pain in the arse.”
“I’m a feckin’ pirate. Will be ’til the day I die.”
“Gods, you’re stubborn.”
“Thank you for the lovely compliment.”
Kiara tightens up her reins, quiet for another heartbeat. Then: “What if going meant you could save Saoirse?”
“What if we got Etain back and she miraculously knew the last verse?”
“I’m being serious.”
I open my mouth to retort, then glance over my shoulder again.
Saoirse is laughing—the sound warm and light as the sun hits her face. She’s looked so pale and strained the last few months on the Isle of Lost Souls, losing herself only when we were in the cave wrapped together at night.
Another swell of pride fills my chest as I think of how she confronted Kiara—refusing to live in one more cage.
But then it pops, scattering when I think about Maccus and the poison he gave her. The way he’ll hunt her relentlessly until he gets what he wants.
“You know I would do it, if that’s really what it took.”
Kiara relaxes a touch in the saddle, lowering her reins.
“But I’d rather gut Maccus with a dull knife or find the Knowing Sea before taking that option.”
“Right, because those would be so much easier.”
The wind picks up as we pass over a hill, hooves clattering on loose stones. The trails cut through the dunes here are sprawling, hidden by the tall grasses and tucked between clusters of brush. But as we get farther into them, a couple of hours’ ride from the eastern shore, I frown.
Bruidin trees line almost every hillside now, clustered tight at the bottoms, where water ought to pool in streams.
“…They’re spreading.”
“Aye.” Kiara’s sigh cuts over the swish of her horse’s tail as it swats away flies. “We’ve tried just about everything now. Burning in the wet season used to contain them—but there’s hardly a wet season these last few years. This spring, we could barely get a bucket of rain.”
“That’s problematic.”
“In more ways than one.” She rubs at her neck, then pushes back the short swath of fiery red hair so it sticks up like the feathers of one of the birds on Painted Claw. In a sheer act of heroism, I manage to curb my tongue.
Instead, I turn my eyes on the line of pale yellow wildflowers scattered down a hillside nearby, the sort that grow closest to Kiara’s keep, at the foot of the mountains where fireflies hang thick most summer nights. “Do you know where to find it yet? The relic?”
“I’ve been thinking.”
“Think faster.”
“I swear, Faolan—”
“Just giving you a taste of what it’s like.” I toy with the reins, braided leather snagging under the callus of my thumb. “Tell me what you have so far.”
Kiara’s nose wrinkles like she’s smelled something foul, but I’ve lived with her long enough to know it’s just her way. She’s a strategist, taking in all the information and waiting to act until it’s certain—except for those rare occasions when I can persuade her to take a leap of faith.
But this is a massive feckin’ leap, with a lot more at stake than we’ve dealt with before.
“My father hated Maira,” she finally says, setting her reins on one thigh so she can twist toward me.
“You know that. But his own mother revered her, and hers before. They blamed our ancestor for slaughtering the goddess—said he was the reason for the wildfires, the droughts. By the time I was twelve, every statue was dust, every tapestry burned. I never heard of any relic Maira left behind.”
“You wouldn’t have, would you?” I shift higher in the saddle, knees aching where they press into cured leather. “If he’d known about it, or destroyed it, he would have told everyone he possibly could that he’d finally bested the goddess.”
“Maybe.” Kiara brushes a fly off her arm, wincing at the tiny red welt left behind. “But that’s not much to go on.”
“No, it’s not.” Over my shoulder, horses spill out in a long trail, the last of them hauling carts with the injured, thanks to Kiara’s stable in the seaside port town.
Ahead, a few of her remaining crew ride at the front to look for any trouble, one of them riding side by side with Tavin, whose leg still hasn’t fully recovered from its encounter with a shard of wood. “What about your seanchaí?”
“Useless.”
“Doubtful.”
“Ask her yourself.” Kiara nods to the figure beside Tavin.
“I did, the second we caught wind of all the relics, and she told me the exact same information you or Maccus or anyone else possessed. When the Daonnaí slaughtered the gods, they stole their prized possessions and agreed to destroy them—but no one did.”
“Because they wanted a fail-safe. They didn’t trust one another even then.”
Kiara frowns at me. “And look where that got us.”
“I’m not arguing.” I show my hands, soul stain wrapped in leather again. “I’m only saying I wonder if it’s because the relics couldn’t be destroyed, or if it’s because they didn’t want to.”
Her frown turns to a downright scowl. “What about Saoirse’s ring?”
“Even that survived a fire, broken in pieces as it was.”
“And the others?”
Right. I still haven’t told her about the apothecary’s attempts, even with his satchel tucked in my saddlebag. “It’s been over two centuries. I’m sure someone’s attempted at least once.”
“Say they did. And say they were unsuccessful. What then?”
I glance toward the sky, and the hard, heavy sunset swelling just on the horizon.
“I’d bet they’d want to protect it. Maybe even forget it.
Or maybe, if it was your grandmother or even great-grandmother, they’d want to revere it.
Return it to somewhere that felt sacred to them, like a burial marker. ”
Kiara’s face pales. “You’re talking about the Ardor.”
I shrug, stomach spasming at the thought. “It’s where I’d go first.”
“Of course you would, because it’s a death trap.”
“It’s safe from lurkers or prying eyes. No one would bother risking their hide to search it—”
“Because the moment they broke a branch, fires would engulf them!”
“Keep your voice down, would you?” Kiara glares at me, but I wave her off. “Feel free to come up with another plan, but the spot where Maira was slaughtered makes the most sense to me.”
She looks ahead, stone-faced and silent for a long moment.
I crane my neck back to look at the sky.
Ashen Flame’s known for its sunsets.
Known for its scarlet fields too.
Once, the island produced the fiercest warriors of the Crescent: unbelievably strong, devoted to their kin, legs nearly as fast as a horse’s, and bodies able to bleed without breaking—longer than any other mortal could bear, anyway.
It started with Bandia Maira, who’d grant them blessings, lighting a fire in their hearts.
She was courageous and beautiful but had a weakness for those warring men.
On the night she was slaughtered, she’d sat in her Ardor—what her people took to calling the grove of golden trees and ever-burning flames she called her home. Three men attended her, bronze swords gleaming, eyes darker than night. They asked for her blessing. Promised their bodies.
And slaughtered her right where she lay.
It’s said that the first Bruidin tree grew out of her stomach, drinking her spilled blood before it was yet cold.
An entire grove unfolded before the warriors’ eyes, replacing the red flowers and sweet-smelling herbs that had been there before.
At first it was a victory—a blessing—having access to flame in the tree’s sap that none others could bear.
But that was before it shifted into the leaves. Before the wind could break them in winter and set an entire field aflame.
Now the Ardor is spoken of as a curse: birthplace of those wicked trees, clustered so thick with them, no one would dare enter their woods.
No one, save for a desperate wolf and his equally desperate queen.
“If we attempted it,” Kiara says slowly, “it would have to be a small party. No more than five.”
“Of course.”
“We’d need hide from Unbound Earth.” The kind they fashion their blacksmith’s gloves from. “I have a supply, but it’s not new, and there aren’t many.”
“We’ll make the best of it.”
“Gods, this is—beyond foolish.”
I can’t help a grin. “Only if it doesn’t work.”
Kiara looks at me, but she doesn’t quite smile—not this time. The sunset catches in her eyes, turning the green almost catlike in its glow. “…And if it doesn’t?”
I can’t let that possibility sink in.
“If it doesn’t, then we run like a bean sídhe’s after us, and try again.”
“But Maccus—”
“Doesn’t know where we are.” Yet. “Sure, he could guess, but I doubt he would. You haven’t sent a reply to his request yet, have you?”
Kiara shakes her head.
“Good. We’ll wait until we have Maira’s relic, and then we’ll invite him to Ashen Flame, where you’ll play politics while I figure out how to get Clodagh’s vessel from his grubby old fingers.”
Kiara’s eyes stray back to where Aisling sits almost backward in the saddle, used to riding with Kiara by now. She’s handing Saoirse something—white and long-tipped, my wife’s smile falling when she takes it.
“And Ríona Etain?”
“She’s a battle-axe. She’ll be grand.” I hope. “We’ll negotiate her out from under him, or steal her away if it comes to a fight, and she’ll be so grateful, she’ll tell us all we need to know about the Knowing Sea and the relics, and how to keep this from ever happening again.”
The words are rotting in my mouth faster than they can come out—but I have to believe it, at least in part.
Have to, because the alternative is dangerous.
The alternative is something I’ve sworn off for good.
I promised on that rock, starving and sunburned and sick, that I would venture into the shade’s realm before I’d ever set foot among the Gan Ainm again.
Kiara watches Aisling, and I watch the horizon, releasing a hard breath when we see the first thatched roof.
“Tomorrow,” she finally says. “We’ll set out in the morning, and—”
“Saoirse!”
The gelding startles as I turn in my saddle just in time to see my wife tumble toward the ground.