by Shean Pao
She arrived at her collection room, where she had first laid eyes upon him—the place he loved so dearly. Dim light from the starflurry lanterns set in alcoves illuminated the strange items within, casting ominous shadows.
“Barbarus?” Her slippered feet crossed the marble floor.
His voice sounded stricken when he extracted himself from the dark. “Forgive me, Anarra.”
He had clothed himself not as the figure of the young man with which she had become so familiar, but with his true form. His vertical pupils glowed with terrible amber light. Both hands hung at his sides, claws moving as if by their own volition. But his face startled her the most, constricted in a rictus of pain and rage. He sprang at her.
Surprised, she pulled a towering lamp strung with rectangular crystals into his path. It knocked him off balance, but she cried out as his claws caught her arm and hip. Blood welled where his nails tore into her flesh through her gown.
She realized Rash’na’Kul’s plan, Barbarus’s final task, in a heartbeat. Barbarus would not attack her on his own. He would not betray her.
Anarra braced her shoulders against the wall. She drew her hands up, palms facing inward as she crossed them over her chest, then swept them upward toward Barbarus, uncrossing her wrists.
Blue fire knocked him back as he tried to climb over the lamp to get to her. He crushed and scattered numerous items when he fell into them.
Anarra drew her hands upward from her hips, palms facing the ceiling, and lifted them overhead. An azure cloud enveloped her, shielding her body. Bands of light and dark energy twisted in a spiral, keeping her safe.
Barbarus leaped to his feet. He strangled a cry, his eyes rolling up. She saw how fiercely he struggled against the Compelling.
“Barbarus, can you fight it?”
His expression grew tortured. “No. Rash’na’Kul gave me his last command.” He grimaced, his whole body shuddering. “I have no choice.” He lurched forward.
“Barbarus,” she warned, “I will kill you.”
His smile became hideous, and her heart tore, knowing now why he loathed his own face. He was a monster. Though his heart wished otherwise, his actions had always been directed by someone evil.
“Yes, kill me,” he insisted. “Save yourself. Stop him, milady. Avenge my death.” For a single moment their eyes met, and in that tiny exchange, he said good-bye.
With stunning swiftness he charged, dragging his withered leg. Claws rose to slash at the barrier between them. He crashed into it and was thrust backward, but the shield weakened. There was no time to strengthen it with lengthy spells. The field would not hold that long.
Anarra bowed her head in sadness. She knelt and reached deep into herself. “Tóg an chumhacht ó laistigh dom, múnla sé isteach tine!” As she chanted, she wove the energy of star and moon together.
Anarra swiftly stood, dropping the shield and shooting a wall of blue flames from her hands. It hit Barbarus, blasting him backward into the room while enveloping him with electrical snaps of light. He continued to claw forward, a wraith of luminance.
Barbarus cried out when he fell against a tapestry. His claws sliced through the fabric as his spine snapped rigid in pain. The light continued to writhe about him. He spun around and smashed into the coral ship. Tiny pieces rained down as he dropped to the floor, unmoving. Smoke coiled from his still body.
Anarra ran to him and sank to his side. Her wounds bled, soaking her gown. A writhing fire wove through her arm and torso. Her arm was stiffening from pain. She needed to tend to it, but her first concern was her friend.
“Barbarus?” Her throat clenched as she put her hands on his chest and forehead. A small sob escaped her. He lay near death, his body too damaged for her to heal.
Anarra lowered her head in grief. So much they had hoped for and worked toward. She had wanted to see his face as he celebrated his freedom. Wanted to share that triumph with him. Another terrible failure on the heels of losing the minstrel.
She took a sharp breath. She could still save him! If she put Barbarus’s soul into the form she had created for the minstrel, he would live.
She pulled her hands across his body, coaxing his life-essence into her grasp. It lifted out eagerly, and she marveled at the swirling golden-red glow of light in her palms. A soul could not stay outside of a shell for long. She had only moments.
“Odhran!” she cried, rising to her feet and rushing up the stairs. “Odhran!”
Anarra reached the banquet room, but it was empty.
Several thumps sounded from above. The Star Chamber? Why was he up there? She heard a terrible sound of glass shattering. Was he destroying the Moon Well body? “No. Odhran, no!”
She rushed upward. The stairs wrapped around and opened to the floor above, so her head and shoulders appeared first in the chamber.
The room’s dome remained in place. Curved stone walls rose to a peak high overhead, intersecting its two wide pillars on the north and south. A soft illumination emanated from the surface of the walls. They glowed, semitransparent, enabling her to see faint starlight. The ocean’s pulse sounded distant from outside the tower.
She climbed higher into the room. Her wave pedestal lay shattered across the floor in the center of the chamber, large, iced chunks amongst a thousand tiny pieces. Beyond the destruction, the moon-sea body stood impassive and untouched.
“Anarra!” Odhran’s voice warned behind her, “Get out!”
She spun around. Odhran and Rash’na’Kul struggled, locked in battle. Pools of fire and electrical light danced in their palms, but they each blocked the other’s releasing of power.
Anarra thrust Barbarus’s spirit toward the moon well body. No time! No time to meld spirit and flesh to make him whole. He was lost to her.
A dagger flashed in Rash’na’Kul’s grip. A high-pitched whine drowned Anarra’s warning cry. The Nepha Lord’s blade sank into Odhran’s back. Rash’na’Kul yanked it free, and Odhran sank to his knees, one hand pressed against the floor.
Rash’na’Kul stood over Odhran with a sardonic smile and licked the blood from his weapon.
“Odhran!” Anarra screamed. She drew her palms together, light building in a fiery arc between them, and directed it toward Rash’na’Kul. The blast struck him. He grunted in pain, doubling over and gripping his abdomen, then straightened with a growl of fury.
“Anarra, run!” Odhran tried to raise his other arm to warn her, but he crumpled to the floor with a groan of anguish. Blood soaked his garments and pooled around him.
Why had Odhran collapsed? she wondered in horror. What sort of knife had the power to hurt the Tuatha Dé Danann?
“But you wouldn’t want to leave without this.” Rash’na’Kul revealed the paper-thin pearl bowl in his hand as he stepped forward, boots crunching on the shattered remains of the pedestal. A pale red glow of energy surrounded the bowl, protecting the fragile item.
Anarra’s face contorted with rage.
Rash’na’Kul slipped the delicate bowl into his robes with a cruel smile. “Did you think you could demand anything from me? Barbarus was not negotiable.”
“You sent him to me to die!”
“Yes, he deserved that. Disloyal worm,” Rash’na’Kul said. “His life was forfeit the moment he sought to change his allegiance. As is yours, for intruding in things beyond you.”
“I spared your life last night.”
“Your mistake.” The Nepha Lord lifted his hands, his fingers twining in a complicated weave to build power within his palms.
He shot a ball of electrical red light toward her. With an aggravated cry, Anarra threw her hand up, raising a weak spell shield. The thrumming, crimson-colored lightning cascaded over the shimmering dome and took shape around her, illuminating the room in a bright glow. The shield nearly crumbled under his onslaught.
Rash’na’Kul smiled while he worked his hands, building the energy again.
Anarra had only seconds to act. She wished she had crafted a trap within h
er own tower as she had in the hut. But the Star Chamber had always been her refuge.
Rising to her feet, she pulled strands of moon and starlight together. It would not be enough to kill the Nepha Lord. There wasn’t time to structure a blast that powerful, and unlike Barbarus, Rash’na’Kul had not given her a token. She held no control over him. He would have to be thrown out.
Anarra released a woven bolt of starforce toward Rash’na’Kul. At that instant, she lowered the dome of the Star Chamber. The room plunged into darkness, illuminated only by the stars overhead. The roar of the ocean intruded.
Rash’na’Kul grunted with surprise and pain as her power swept him backward over the floor. It disrupted his spell.
Hope surged within her. He would go over the edge. He had to!
With a simple twist, he grasped one of the two great pillars, stopping himself. His ice-blue eyes blazed upon her in triumph.
With a gasp, Anarra brought up her shield. Too late. Light exploded as Rash’na’Kul’s power struck her ward of protection while it was still forming, not yet solid.
Agony spread through Anarra’s shoulder and radiated down her arm through her wounds. Her veins branched in black and red tendrils beneath her skin.
She fell to her knees. She had no choice; she had to take the time to heal herself instead of attacking. She pressed her hands against her side, whispering a quick spell of mending. The relief she was granted from the pain was small but welcome. At least she had staunched the flow of blood. It would take more time for the spell to completely heal her—time she didn’t have.
His next attack would crumple the shield and kill her. Desperation filled her thoughts. He was too powerful. She had no time weave the Threads. No time!
From the corner of her eye she saw movement, a flash of moonlight and water—the glimmering form of her minstrel. Life flowed into its shuddering limbs. Barbarus’s life, she knew.
Moon-water skin became the color of human flesh, and its eyes changed from white to blue.
Barbarus sprang at Rash’na’Kul, who was only five feet away. He released a roar when their bodies impacted—a shout that Anarra knew encompassed all the pain, rage, and hatred he harbored within.
The Nepha Lord lost his grip on the pillar as his fingers were ripped free. The two men struggled at the lip of the tower, arms entangled, before they both fell over the edge.
“Barbarus!” Anarra’s hands flew to her face. Then she brought the wards up, using the rest of her strength before collapsing. The dome instantly appeared over the chamber, dampening the sound of the sea to a distant pulse of the tide.
She crawled to Odhran and pulled him into her lap.
“Anarra,” he murmured, and he tried to touch her cheek. The floor was clotted with his blood. She took his hand, cupped it to her lips.
“Odhran, I am here.” His life force flickered like a candle, sputtering.
He gazed up. “Promise me you will fix this, Anarra.” His voice rasped. She bent forward to hear him.
“Yes, I promise. You will help me.” Tears flooded her eyes.
He fell silent.
“Odhran?” she whispered.
His words came with a faint breath. “It will be all right.” His eyes closed, and his head lolled against her arm.
Surprise and grief swelled in her, lifting on an overwhelming wave. He couldn’t be dead. He was a Tuatha Dé Danann! They were nearly immortal!
“Odhran!” she cried.
Suddenly it was all too much. The shattered crystal on the floor, Odhran’s blood, the Moon Well body…
Anarra struggled to her feet and fled the Star Chamber.
She descended the stairs to her painting room and roughly dragged a large canvas onto her easel. She would paint it all away. Her minstrel, Barbarus’s and Odhran’s deaths, everything would be blotted out—all her memories of them, all the crippling pain.
She began to sketch the scene with charcoal. But as Odhran’s body took shape, broken and bleeding on the floor, she collapsed against the canvas with a chest-wracking sob. All of this was her fault. Their deaths, her failure to save her minstrel. All her fault.
She stepped back and looked around her at the hundreds of paintings stacked against the walls.
Odhran’s voice rang deep in her mind—their conversation in the banquet room, Odhran’s condemnation, his concern over giving Rash’na’Kul the spell scroll, their arguments. He had warned her. Now they were all dead.
How many of her crimes had she painted away from her memories, from her conscience?
But she was Aes Sidhe. She had a right to do as she wished.
Look what it gained you, Anarra.
All she had wanted was Odhran’s love and her freedom from the tower. Barbarus’s freedom from his master. Her minstrel’s freedom from death. The Feather.
Pain struck hard within her chest. It stopped her breath, and she pressed her hand against her heart. How could she still want the Feather after all that had happened?
But she realized she did want it, now more than ever. The Feather was all she had left to hope for.
If Rash’na’Kul had died in the fall from her tower, that was gone too.
I never should have tried to love any of them—Odhran, minstrel, or Barbarus. All it had brought her was misery. The Moon Well had shown her.
Fury spun her around to face the paintings. She snatched up a brush, broke off the sable bristles, and slashed the canvases. Thick cloth, heavy with layers of pigments, tore under her onslaught. Ornate frames snapped. She destroyed one painting after another. The debris of her anger littered the room—splinters of shattered wood, spattered paint, shredded memories, hopes, and dreams.
Events she had long forgotten loomed like images in her Moon Well. They ripped through her with all of their pain.
Beneath her torment, she felt something tug at her senses—something familiar and yet different. Someone was trying to find the tower.
She dropped the brush and collapsed into a chair. Anarra forced her emotions down, calmed her trembling breath and raging spirit. She concentrated.
A tendril of something familiar … Barbarus!
Elation and hope propelled her down the stairs to the entrance. She lowered the wards and rushed outside.
The form of her minstrel clung to the black rocks of the tower.
There was no sign of Rash’na’Kul. The sea gently pushed Barbarus a little closer with each wave. Anarra ran to him.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Letting Go
Barbarus laid the last bough of myrtle beside Odhran’s body and gave the floating pyre a push. A gentle wave came, drawing the raft away. Barbarus waded up from the water to join Anarra on the shore.
Odhran’s hands lay clasped upon his chest, and a lock of black hair curled over his temples. Regal finery edged in gold dressed his form. A wreath of poppies kissed his brow.
Anarra blinked back tears as she read aloud a lament she had composed at dawn.
“Odhran, my memory of you lingers like smoke above water. That incandescent moment, forever suspended within a pearl bowl, waits for me to enter once again.
“I saw the fragile Veil of your coming and risked tearing the weave knotting us together. I will carry that sorrow with me always.
“Odhran, I am more than I seem—and less. I am becoming and dissolving, a flowing ocean, all changing and yet constant. I am being born, changed by your love. Upon my final creation, the Maker’s infinite gaze will rest as judge.
“Until we embrace once again, I remain your Anarra.”
She held the parchment out, teasing the wind. With her heart penned on paper, she let go. The wind snatched the prize, twisting it up in a wild fury as if to shred the pain she had inscribed. Then, with a soft breeze, the letter fluttered to Odhran’s pyre.
Tendrils of silver smoke rose like loosed spirits. Fire licked, began to consume, and then traveled across the branches with ravenous speed. The sea drew his funeral bed into its grip and carried the f
laming grave into the distance.
Anarra wiped her eyes dry as she watched. Enough tears had been shed.
Barbarus put his hand on her shoulder, a light touch. “I am sorry he is gone, Anarra.”
She squeezed his fingers and took a long breath. “I am too.”
Silence lengthened between them. The waves whispered their own thoughts, lost in a language as old as the stars.
Her life would be different now. Her memories had returned. She no longer desired to paint them into oblivion. A new purpose fueled her. She needed to mend what she had set in motion by giving the Nepha Lord the spell scroll. She would destroy him, subvert his works, and bring peace to the land. It would be a way to redeem herself and condone what she still craved in her heart.
She touched Barbarus’s arm, gazing up into his face. How well she knew these features. She studied his eyes, noting that the light within them gleamed very differently than the man she had molded this body for.
Nothing had happened as planned. How could she view this face and not mourn her minstrel or long for his song? How could she see this body and not think of Odhran when he told her it was forbidden?
But Barbarus was here. He was a blessing.
She touched his cheek. A ripple of moonlight and water trailed after her fingertips across his skin, and then it returned to natural flesh tones.
“You saved my life, you know,” she said. “Entering the minstrel’s body and attacking Rash’na’Kul changed everything. How did you do that? I had no time to meld your spirit to the flesh.”
Barbarus was silent for a moment, then said, “I almost failed. When I first entered this body, it wouldn’t move. It felt like wading in water. I had to make it mine.”
Anarra shook her head, still confused.
“There was no choice, I had to find a way,” he said intently then tilted his head. “Did you create this body for me?”
She hid her surprise with a smile. “You did ask for a new body.”