Legend of the Lakes

by Clara O'Connor

  I rewarded her stalwart effort with a smile. Putting her down on the floor, I showed her the triskelion tattoo that had been placed on the inside of my wrist during my trip to Avalon.

  “That’s right.” I took her finger and traced the three legs that curled towards each other. “You see, Marina represents the present because she is from here in Londinium and her magic appeared just when it was needed the most. I represent the past because I am the Lady of the Lake, an ancient title handed down since the dawn of time to the caretaker of the land.”

  “And am I this one?” Féile asked, looking up at me. This, this was why my mother had brought me with her. To heal this line would take the power of three; she had hoped I would be that third. And now I would be, except that I would do it as the lady, not as the child.

  “You are,” I said. “You are the future, the future of the land and the city. Because you are special. You are the child of the only two people who have lived with both magic and technology.”

  “But Dada hasn’t lived here.” Féile frowned.

  “No,” I agreed with her. How to explain this to her now…? I could feel the impatience of the others. We didn’t have time for this, but I had to know that she understood what was going on, and why, before we did this.

  “Oh, the daddy who died?” she asked, realising.

  I nodded wordlessly. The tear inside me threatened to split me in two. How to tell her now that both her fathers were gone?

  “Dada told me about him,” she said with an air of a child patiently explaining to an adult the obvious source of her knowledge. Gideon had spoken to her of Devyn? A lump formed in my throat.

  “He lived here for many years,” I explained, “and he was very good at tech.”

  “So am I,” Féile said proudly.

  “Catriona,” Rion urged from behind me.

  “Are you, poppet?” I said. “You must get that from him.”

  There was a flicker from the open door, the electric power in the stairwell attempting to ignite.

  A slight sweat broke out on my forehead. Fear. Once the tech entangled itself in the line again I had no idea how to free it from whatever Calchas had engineered.

  “Féile, darling.” I steadied myself, ensuring no trace of my fear could be heard in my voice. “I’m going to try to fix the song. Can you hear it?”

  She nodded.

  “I need you to sit with Marina and me around the symbol, you see.” I sat on one side of the triangle as Marina placed herself to my left and I sat Féile to my right. “We’re going to hold hands together. You need to hold Marina’s hand very tight, no matter what happens.”

  Marina flicked a narrow-eyed gaze at me.

  “If I don’t come back up, you need to release me,” I told her in a steady voice.

  Bronwyn’s gasp was the loudest thing in the room as she realised what I was telling them. I wasn’t sure if I could come back from this. Wasn’t sure I wanted to.

  I held Marina’s gaze. “It’s deep, so much deeper than Keswick, and in a far worse state than the May line. I’m not sure, but I need to know that you will hold Féile, or we don’t do this.”

  “No,” Rion said in the tone he used to convey utter finality. “If you’re not strong enough, it could kill you. You can’t do this.”

  “We’ll never have another chance like this,” I said. “It’s me or everything you’ve worked so hard to protect – the land, the people.”

  “They were all I had left…” His eyes begged me not to do this. My brother, who had me back after a lifetime of being alone.

  “You still have Féile,” I reminded him. “You are all she has now. I will try to…”

  But I couldn’t promise. The faultline was severely tainted; the surge from here that had hit Keswick had almost killed me, had nearly consumed me on my previous attempt and on the last descent I had still had plenty of power from Avalon. And this time I needed to go deeper.

  “I’ll take her place.” Fidelma had recovered some from the stupor she had been in since the axe fell.

  I turned to take in the face of the woman I had once trusted.

  “That’s not possible,” I said.

  I took in my brother’s stoic face and Bronwyn’s stricken one.

  “All I ever wanted was a home, a family of my own.” I breathed shallowly over the shards in my throat that were threatening to cut off my voice. “Thank you.”

  I took the hands held out to me, Marina’s steady grip and Féile’s softer one.

  “Ready?” I asked, and they nodded back.

  I was alone so quickly, descending deeper and deeper to where I had sensed the fissure before, Code-like tendrils spooling down beside me in the dark. There was something still other too, some binary claws sweeping through the line despite the blackout.

  Down, down, the panic and fear on the surface dripped like a toxin down the path I travelled. The faint warped notes of the songline guided me further and further.

  The ley line itself was flowing, somewhat healed from our previous efforts. There it was, the murky contamination, the tendril leaching streams powered by blood, released by sacrifice, trailing under the city between the two power nodes of the circles. This time I could see them, cauterise them, keep them from merging with the line. A scent of lavender and summer lit up the tangle of Code and it melted away. Somehow, the binary claws held the line no longer.

  I drifted further down.

  The corruption twined around the flow, causing it to warp and skew, twisting it apart. I pulled and tugged, working to free them.

  Harmony and energy washed through me, the white light clearing away the pain, the worry, the anguish of the last months: Féile’s empty bed; Gideon’s blood on the sand.

  The pain faded until I could no longer recall what had bothered me. The new song lilted and blended with the second but I had to hold it open longer, I had to allow it more time.

  I descended again. Just a little bit further.

  It was time I didn’t have. Never enough time.

  Devyn gone. Gideon gone.

  All gone, and now I was gone too.

  Too far.

  Fading and darkness.

  Endless down.

  “Come back.”

  Dark eyes. Demanding, always wanting something.

  No. No more.

  I had done what was asked. I had given up the things I wanted, the future I wanted, in order to do this, to be here, to make it all well.

  I had to finish this.

  He didn’t get to ask for more.

  The dark was soft and clean, and there were no more demands.

  “Don’t leave me.”

  A tug. A halt.

  No. I needed to go deeper. The fracture was extensive but the notes were pulling it together. I needed to go further down.

  I still had Féile, a life that could have been.

  The notes, the harmony wrapped around me, softly inviting.

  So tired. So cold.

  I needed to let them go. It wasn’t safe for those lights to be here in the darkness with me anymore.

  The lights floated upward, like air in water, bubbling to the surface.

  Then there was a thread of light.

  I closed my eyes. I didn’t need it.

  “I came for you,”

  Dark curls.

  I held on for one moment more.

  Amber eyes.

  “I swore.”

  The light was stronger and my thread was a rope, amber strands twining with black, lighter strands, lavender and red, pale gold, violet, rich blue, looping around each other, creating a tether, an anchor I could follow back.

  I grasped it, allowing myself to fall deeper into the dark.

  The fracture pulled tighter, closer, but the last healing note needed to be formed. I couldn’t reach, it needed more…

  I couldn’t hold the anchor and finish it too.

  I had to finish it.

  Fading voices. Calling me. Needing me.

 
So many would be protected if I loosened my grip on the anchor, reached a little further.

  “No.” A tug.

  An offer, a pulse of sorrow.

  And then one of the threads was free, gold unfurling from the grouped tether, floating down, wrapping itself around that last fracture.

  Who?

  It was done.

  “Come back.”

  I held the tether as it pulled me to the surface. It was done.

  They held me.

  I took a shuddering breath.

  There was strength behind me. Small hands on my face.

  I opened my eyes and blinked in the brightness of the room, lit by torches after the obsidian depths.

  Féile was there, flinging herself into my arms. I braced myself for a fall but was held by the muscular chest at my back.

  I felt floaty, disconnected, not emotionally burnt out but struggling to focus, struggling to make sense of what was in front of me.

  My circle of three had expanded: Bronwyn, Rion, and Marcus all sat in the circle with me.

  Fidelma.

  Her body lay limp on the floor.

  Marcus hurried to help her but her eyes were empty. She had finally done what she had spent her life trying to achieve, had manifested the desire that Calchas had identified and manipulated. The ley line was healed. It was whole once more.

  I looked up from her body to the others. They had joined the circle; they could have been killed. There was magic in their blood, yes, but they were untrained in tending the line, little more than latents.

  “It was his idea,” Rion said, lifting his chin to the person behind me.

  “Three sided, four sided, the strength is in the unity.” A hand came about my waist, pulling me back into the hard, muscled body. I twisted in his arms, the dark shadow outlined by the light of the torches as he bent his head to mine.

  Pressed his lips to mine.

  “I told you it doesn’t end like this.” His deep voice vibrated through me.

  I pulled back and looked into amber eyes that glowed bright with an eagle’s sight and a lion’s pride.

  Gideon.

  “How?” I asked. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, my eyes still seeing the blood on the sand.

  “How did I have the idea?” he repeated. “It was your idea; many individuals are stronger when they come together as one.”

  He was here. I raised my hands to his face, needing to touch it, to know that he was real.

  “You’re not dead,” I observed, dumbfounded.

  His mouth slanted to the side. “Nothing gets past you, lady.”

  It definitely was him. Only Gideon would choose to mock me at a time like this.

  “How did you do this?” I asked.

  “Marcus. He knew that the praetor planned to close down the arena and that since he likes to keep his theatrical flourishes to himself, there was a chance that his guards would not know that what they saw on camera was not playing out as Calchas wanted it too until it was too late,” Gideon explained. “All Marcus needed was someone who would trade their life for mine.”

  “Your father.” Richard Mortimer, who had struggled to show his love for his son in life, had not failed to do so in death. The steward hadn’t tended Ginevra’s wound; the glamoured Dr Courtenay had. Which meant the man I had exchanged vows with was my amber eyed Griffin.

  Gideon’s head was bowed and he closed his eyes briefly, the lines of his face taut in grief.

  I looked at him numbly, unsure what to say, or what words of comfort to offer. Richard Mortimer had not been the most likeable man, and had never been the most caring of fathers, but he had sacrificed his life for his youngest son.

  And his mother had given her life for mine.

  I looked around at the grey faces around me; they had risked their lives by joining in as they had. For nothing. The fracture was repaired but there was no sign of the souls as there had at Avebury.

  “I couldn’t free them.” I had been so sure that I could.

  “You healed the line. The song is pure,” Marina chided me.

  “No, I think the tech held them there. I thought that once whatever Calchas had done was resolved, they would be free.”

  “The nasty claws are gone,” came a small voice from the child still holding tight to my waist. My brows tugged together as I tried to comprehend what she was saying.

  “The technology that bound them to… That was you?” I recalled the summer light unhooking them.

  “I told you I was good,” Féile piped up, affronted that I had so quickly forgotten, before her face twisted as she admitted, “but it was my daddy who died, he was the one who showed me, and then it was easy.”

  “The black energy.” Marina let out a heavy breath. “It was Devyn.”

  “He came.” I met Gideon’s gaze. “He promised. And he came.”

  I smiled down at Féile, at my little girl for a job well done, and allowed Gideon to pull me up. We made our way back up the stairs and out into the mayhem of the city. I could feel the exhaustion pulling me down.

  But it was not over yet.

  “We have to secure the city,” I said, turning to Gideon, drinking in the sight of him once more. He was alive. “You need to go and fetch the army.”

  A growl conveyed his disagreement.

  “She’s right. You need to go and bring the troops; they are waiting for a signal. They can take the city and subdue the legions,” Rion commanded Gideon.

  “The walls are down,” I informed them. In my rage, I had made dust of them. “You need to do this.”

  Gideon’s jaw locked, his eyes showing he was conflicted. He had never been one to take an order he didn’t agree with.

  “As my lady commands,” he said, inclining his head.

  I nodded, and there was a sudden shimmer before an eagle took flight in front of us, circled above us once, and dipped low before it burst upwards and was gone.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  I woke in darkness, candlelight illuminating a familiar canopy and the stone walls of my room in the Tower.

  I jolted upright.

  What was real? Was I still trapped in this damned room?

  Images came tumbling in: Gideon dead, the wall falling, Britons in the streets. Real or dream?

  I felt confused and startled, and then warm hands pulled me down and wrapped around me, and a low voice murmured words assuring me that all was well. And I slept.

  “…Don’t know what to do. We must restore order.”

  “They can wait. She’s exhausted.” It was Gideon’s voice.

  Blood on the sand.

  His father’s.

  I pushed my eyes open and drank in the tall figure standing in front of the diamond-paned windows, his hair loose and his frame relaxed as he leaned against the wall. And his head was firmly on his shoulders.

  I exhaled, alerting them to my newly wakened state.

  Gideon came over and, lifting my hand from the covers, bowed to press his lips to it.

  “Good day, my little apple drop,” he greeted me with one of the daft endearments he had started using since our arrival in the city.

  My heart flipped. I had thought him gone. Had felt the pain of it.

  Marcus had made it right.

  The touch of his kiss tingled on the back of my fingers. He often hid his true feelings behind a shield of indifference, the worse the hit the stronger the mask. I had chosen people I didn’t know over him. He had been let down by all those he had loved and I had proven no different. I couldn’t meet his eyes. Flustered, I looked beyond him to my brother.

  “The city is secured?”

  “Yes, and Calchas was taken,” Rion answered me.

  “How long have I been asleep?” I asked.

  “Three days.” Marcus came forward as he handed me a glass of water. I frowned a little at it. “Hydrate.”

  “Thank you.” I meant for more than just his care of me. He had betrayed me again, but because of him Gideon lived. His g
reen eyes were hollow, remorse still evident as he met mine, nodding briefly in acknowledgment before his face twisted. I may be on the road to forgiving him but it would take longer for him to forget all that had passed.

  I had vague memories of a drip in my arm. I looked down there was nothing there now. Marcus leaned in and pressed the glass to my lips in a manner that spoke to habit. I waved him away, sitting up.

  “Féile?” I asked him. Was she well? Had the ley line impacted her as much as it had me? She was so little and she should never have had to be part of the healing of the line.

  “She’s fine and she has been reunited with Snuffles so all is well in her world,” Gideon reassured me from his resumed spot by the window, his tone oddly flat.

  “What happened?” I again directed my question to Rion. I didn’t know how to face Gideon. His mother and father were both dead because of me.

  “You healed the ley line and now the druids have arrived, and they believe that the fracture has been resolved. With a little maintenance, the line will be fine,” Rion offered.

  I raised my eyebrows, smiling at him. “Ah, that’s the one part I already know.”

  “Right.” Rion smiled back ruefully. “Well, while you were busy healing the ley line below ground, things got interesting up here. With the blackout, the city’s defences were pretty much non-existent. Gideon fetched the army, and as you apparently were already aware, the walls are no more.”

  “Once they were here, it was pretty much all over,” Bronwyn added, strolling in eating some toast and perching on my bed.

  “Are there many injured?” I asked. I was tired but they were glossing over events. Surely it couldn’t have been that easy.

  “The fighting at what was left of the gates was largely man to man. We had few weapons, and theirs didn’t work,” Rion said, looking over to Bronwyn.

  “Calchas and his men went to some control room to try and bring the tech back up but Linus and his hackers stopped him.” Bronwyn paused. “They arrested Calchas, though it would have been better for everyone if they had killed him there and then.”

  “No,” I said. “He doesn’t get off that easily.”

  “Mama,” cried a little voice, and then Féile was there, jumping on the bed, accompanied by her less than well behaved furry companion. I pulled her to me and hugged her fiercely, resting back in the pillows and wrapping my arms around her. She was safe.