Chapter 9
Chapter nine
ESSENCE OF THE TITHRIALL
Ornella
We emerged from Ciaran’s portal in front of a yurt that was five times the size of any of the others in the camp with a double curtain at the entrance. Its roof also rose to a peak instead of a dome, and its canvas walls were made of a colourful woven fabric rather than animal hides.
But not even the grandeur of the yurt could captivate me when there were two míntír troll males standing guard in front of it.
Their kind were so elusive that I could not help admiring the pale flaxen colour of their complexion or the texture of their hair that looked like dried grass.
They were easily twice my height, even slightly hunched over with rounded shoulders and robust arms. Their broad faces were flat aside from two tusks that protruded from either side of their lower jaws.
“Come on!” Ciaran hissed impatiently, making me roll my eyes, but I tore my attention from the trolls.
I followed the aes sídhe male between the guardians and into the giant tent where Ciaran was stopped almost immediately for a debrief.
I took the opportunity to tip my head back and took in the peaked ceiling so high above before I glanced at the Spring fey.
The wide-open tent seemed to typically function as a mess hall, but the tables were pushed against the walls to make room for hundreds of refugees.
They huddled around dozens of fires as they were attended to by Autumn fey warriors, but many of them still looked half frozen.
I hissed in horror at the sight and immediately moved toward the nearest fey, which happened to be an Aigéan nymph and her offspring.
The mother was curled around her two infants, trying to preserve them, but the natural sapphire blue of their smooth scales had gone slate grey.
Frost clung to the mother’s hair and the delicate tips of her frilly, coral-like ears.
The thin webbing between her long spindly fingers was obviously frostbitten.
“Now you understand my urgency,” Ciaran grumbled as he knelt next to me while I hurriedly funnelled healing magic into the three fey.
My magic had almost been depleted after saving Rian the night before, but I was able to muster my strength for the nymphs.
It would not have been enough for all of the Spring fey in the tent, but luckily, the nymphs seemed to be the most sensitive to the Autumn cold.
The others were in slightly better spirits around them.
The mother sighed, shivering violently once my magic had thawed her, and then both of her tiny babies began to cry against her chest. I thought their shrill voices sounded eerily similar to the shrieking of gulls.
“This is not going to work,” I muttered to myself.
“What do you mean?” Ciaran asked, taking my arm to pull me away from the others so we were not overheard.
“They reek of the Autumn Court. Balor and Riordan’s hunters will quickly sense them once we get them to the Spring Quadrant in the Vale. They are too weak to flee.”
Ciaran hesitated and then turned back to the room with an expression of realization and dread as he eyed all the depleted Spring fey. The only emotions I had ever seen from the male before were anger and frustration, so it was rather uncanny to see him look so… real.
“What do you suggest?” he asked me distractedly.
“We should take them to the Summer Quadrant where they will not be expected. We get them warmed up, I can replenish my magic more quickly there, and they will not smell of Autumn when they cross into Spring.”
Ciaran began to nod even before he tilted his head to see around me and signalled impatiently for someone else behind me to join us.
I glanced back over my shoulder and saw a strikingly beautiful Autumn warrior moving toward us with a quick and confident gait.
She was tall and lithe with fair skin, gold-rimmed green eyes, and caramel hair.
I was unsure of what kind of fey she was with green tattoos above her brows and on her hands.
But she was so clearly relieved to be summoned over by Ciaran that I could not help a knowing smirk as she stopped too close beside him.
“Ciaran,” she greeted him by name even though I had distinctly noted all the other warriors were addressing him as Commander. And the purr in her voice was at such stark odds with the suspicious glance she shot my way that there was no way I could have held my tongue.
“Not in his wildest dreams,” I attempted to assure her, making Ciaran frown at me in confusion, but he was too focused on the refugees to bother asking for clarification. He was either oblivious to her misplaced jealousy or he simply was ignoring it.
“There has been a change of plan. We will portal to the Summer Quadrant first. Can you locate our contacts once we get there?” he asked her curtly.
“I can,” she acknowledged with another preoccupied glance between me and the aes sídhe male.
“Then alert the other scouts. Be ready to move once we get the portal up,” Ciaran prompted, his tone betraying a hint of impatience with her.
“And let me know if any fey are really struggling with the cold so I can heal them,” I added before she left us.
She frowned slightly as she glanced up at Ciaran as if to confirm my directive with him, and I rolled my eyes.
“Ornella is a rider, Aurel. You will do everything she asks of you,” Ciaran told her sternly, making me smirk again when her pretty eyes widened at me. “Now, Aurel,” he insisted, and she jerked to attention with a quick bow before she walked away to do as she was asked.
“Everything I ask of her, hmm?” I verified as Ciaran turned to face me directly.
“I know the concept will be difficult for you to grasp, but we riders present a united front here,” he insisted.
“Ah! So we only hate each other in secret?” I guessed, and he gave a nod. “I see... So, you and Aurel, huh?”
Ciaran did not need to verbally confirm my suspicion. His immediate glower was telling. “She is very beautiful. Although she seems a little possessive—”
“Portal. Now!” he barked at me before turning away, and I snickered as I followed him to the open space at the front of the room.
“Sage said he never took lovers among the soldiers he commanded because it got messy for other riders—”
“When creating a portal, you need to have a sense of where you are going,” Ciaran interrupted, clearly intent on ignoring all of my attempts to dissect his relationship. “It feels a little like you are folding a cloth and bringing two points together in your mind.”
He continued to speak, but I had been thinking about this task since Rian asked me to make the portal and was actually eager to test my abilities. My healing magic had always been intuitive and versatile, which was likely the reason I was able to weave magic almost instinctively.
Ignoring the other rider, I knelt and placed my hands on the tramped ground to begin drawing power into me from the earth. It was sluggish at first, but eventually the magic was singing in my veins.
“Watch out,” I mumbled through my concentration, interrupting Ciaran’s instructions. Then I ignored all the gasps behind me as a sapling began sprouting unnaturally fast from the earthen tent floor.
Like all trees, this one had roots connected directly to the Tithriall, which would have allowed me to access the ley lines and travel between worlds.
I usually had to shed my corporeal body and use my most elemental form to access those pathways.
Which meant I needed to find a way to open the ley lines to the physical world.
I reached for the faint thrum inside me that was Sage and began channelling his portal magic into the sapling as it grew.
I gently wove a potent mixture of his power and mine with the very essence of the young tree until it felt like an extension of my consciousness.
Until I could feel its roots digging deep and its highest branches brushing the yurt ceiling.
I exerted myself over it a little more in order to encourage it to expand across the room rather than through the roof.
I could feel every awed breath of every fey in the room through hungry leaves and roots as the tree stretched above and below them.
Once the tree was mature, I rose from my squat with my eyes still closed and extended my arm into the trunk, shedding some of my physical body to touch the Tithriall.
The impulse to climb the rest of the way into the tree and delve into the ley lines, to become one with the heartbeat and lifeblood of our people was almost undeniable.
It was so tempting that I had to grow my own roots out of the soles of my feet to keep me firmly anchored in Ahnnaòin while I guided a tendril of the Tithriall toward me.
I vaguely heard Ciaran hiss a curse. A moment later, his hands seized my free shoulder to try and help me stay grounded just as the flowery scent of Summer Quadrant began to perfume the tree’s leaves.
I had finally managed to pull tendrils of the Tithriall to the surface right where they were needed.
But trying to make them breach the physical world felt too monumental, like trying to yank a person free from quicksand.
Ciaran’s hands tightened on me when I uttered a fierce growl of effort, and then all at once the portal was open, and I was pulling on nothing.
My feet were still rooted to the ground, so I fell back, too exhausted to stop myself before I collided hard with Ciaran’s chest. He grunted in pain at the impact, the breath knocked out of him, but he wrapped his arms around me to keep me upright.
“Are you alright?” he demanded and gave me a shake that roused my addled brain. I quickly extricated my feet from the earth by dissolving the roots I’d grown out of them and then stumbled away from him on shaky legs.
“You… did it,” he muttered behind me.