by E. E. Holmes
I shook my head in wonder. It still boggled my mind sometimes, even after all these years, what the power, influence, and great wealth of the Durupinen could accomplish.
At last, the road upon which we had been traveling narrowed to nothing more than a rutted path overgrown with weeds and then disappeared altogether into the tall grass. Finn threw the car into park and killed the engine. “This is where we get out,” he announced.
“How do you know?” I asked him, blinking around into the gathering darkness.
In answer, Finn pointed to a nearby tree. About five feet up on the trunk, carved deeply into the wood, was a large, distinct triskele. “Now, that is meant for us,” he said, smiling slightly. “A symbol to allow for fellow Durupinen and Caomhnóir to continue on the path toward the castle unimpeded. We’ll reach the outpost soon—it’s about a mile further along. That’s where we’ll declare ourselves and make our formal request for an audience with the High Priestess.”
“You mean we need to walk from here?” Catriona asked, a shrill edge to her voice. It was clear she didn’t like the idea at all.
“It’s the only way in,” Finn said. “Unless you’re here on official business for your clans, and then you get the red carpet treatment—chopper, direct castle access, the lot.”
“You’ve never been here before?” I asked Catriona in surprise. “I thought surely, as a Council member…”
She shook her head. “I’ve never had cause, thank God. There’s never been a full gathering of the Councils in my tenure as a member. Even after the Prophecy came to pass, only the High Priestesses of the various regions were summoned to Havre de Gardiennes.” She took a couple of steps closer to Finn and lowered her voice, though not quietly enough that I couldn’t still make out her words. “Finn, I don’t like this one jot. Do you really think we ought to be on foot, in the dark, knowing the Necromancers are on the hunt for us?”
“I don’t like it either, much,” Finn said. “But you’ve been monitoring things as closely as I have. Have you yet to discover a hint that we’re being tracked?”
“No,” Catriona admitted grudgingly.
“Nor have I,” Finn said. “It seems, at this moment anyway, that we’re ahead of them. But if we wait things out in the car until it’s light, it’s likely they’ll have caught up with us, and then we’ll be without cover.”
Catriona chewed the inside of her cheek, but she didn’t argue.
“I think our best bet is to make for the safety of Havre de Gardiennes as quickly as possible. Once we’re at the gates, we’re home free.”
Catriona crossed her arms, brows furrowed, clearly trying to come up with a counterargument. When she came up empty, she simply nodded and waved for the rest of us to follow.
Annabelle gave a long sigh. “I think I’ve had enough walking through dodgy forests to last me the rest of my life,” she said, with just a twitch of a smile.
“Me, too,” I agreed.
We trudged along in silence after that, everyone too tense and too intent on not tripping in the dark to have any energy left for conversation. Finn paused every once in a while to consult his compass, just to double-check that we were on the right path. Luckily for all of us, the route through this particular forest was far easier to traverse than the others we’d ventured down in recent days. A wide dirt path wound gently through the trees, free from rocks, tree roots, and low growing shrubbery and ground cover that would surely have tripped us up. The mile’s walk, all things considered, was an easy one. Before I’d even thought to ask how much further we had to go, a small wooden building, rather like a shed or an oversized outhouse, appeared out of the gloom ahead of us. A dull orange glow shone out from one large, square window.
“There it is,” Finn said, and I could hear the clear relief in his voice. “There’s the Guardian outpost.”
“Thank God,” Catriona said.
Lucida smirked at her. “There you are then. All that doom and gloom for nothing.”
When we had come within about twenty yards of the building, Finn held up a hand for all of us to stop. He cleared his throat and called out, “Finn Carey, Caomhnóir for the Northern Clans, declaring his presence and requesting to approach the outpost.”
There was no reply. No face peered out from the window. The door remained closed.
Finn shifted restlessly from one foot to the other. “Hello? We wish to make a petition for entrance.”
Still no answer. Ileana cleared her throat. Annabelle’s breathing had quickened. The quiet of the woods suddenly felt oppressive—unnatural.
“What’s going on?” I asked at last, as the tension became unbearable.
“I don’t know,” Finn replied, and his voice was sharp. “This outpost is meant to be manned at all times.”
“Something’s wrong,” Catriona said. “Let’s get back to the car.”
“But you said this is the only way in,” I said. “How the hell are we supposed to get in if not through here?”
“Can’t we just keep going?” Annabelle asked. “I mean, if there’s no one here…”
“Not unless you want to be killed or arrested on the spot by the first patrol to spy you approaching the gates,” Catriona snapped at her. “They brook no trespass here.”
“So, what do we do now, then?” Lucida asked. “Do you reckon we should wait a bit, see if someone comes back?”
“I’m going to check the outpost building itself,” Finn said. “Wait here.”
“Wait here?! Finn, we’re not going to let you just—”
“Wait here,” Finn repeated, more forcefully this time, and began to walk toward the outpost building, continuing to loudly announce his presence as he did so. He walked slowly around the entire outside of the building first, peering in the window and examining the door handle carefully before knocking upon the door. He knocked three times before, at last, trying the knob. The building was locked. He turned back to us, shaking his head.
“I can’t make sense of it. Perhaps we ought to head back and—”
“Finn on your left!” Catriona screamed out.
A dark shape came running out from behind a tree at Finn and hurled itself at him, but Finn was quicker. He caught the figure by the arm, swinging him over his back and slamming him to the ground. I started forward, determined to help him, but other figures were detaching themselves from the shadows now, men in black hooded cloaks, faces masked. Before I could so much as cry out, one of them was bearing down on me, a flash of silver in one hand, the other hand reaching out toward me.
Someone barreled into my shoulder, shoving me out of the man’s path. I hit the ground hard and tried to roll away but the two figures, locked in a struggle now, became tangled up in my legs and fell on top of me. All the breath knocked from my body, I struck out hard with my arms and feet, hearing a grunt as my elbow connected with something that made a crunching sound. My attacker and whoever was fighting with him rolled away, and I scrambled to my feet just in time to run smack into Annabelle who screamed and flailed her fists at me until she realized who I was and then gripped my arm, pulling me down to the ground again and dragging me around the back side of a tree just as another attacker shot past us. Suddenly the path was full of renewed shouting. More voices had joined the fray, and with a thrill of relief, I saw that the newcomers were Caomhnóir, bearing the crest of Havre De Gardiennes on their chests.
Flashlight beams were swinging wildly. It was impossible to make sense of the chaos around me. One of the beams of light hit Annabelle and me full in the face, and a voice cried out. “She’s there!” Annabelle and I made a mad scramble to our feet, but before the man had taken two steps, one of the Caomhnóir had tackled him to the ground. A thump and a crack, and the man moved no more. His flashlight lay in the dirt, still flooding our hiding place with light.
Annabelle looked at me and horror broke over her face. “Jess, you’re hurt!”
“What? No, I’m not!” I said.
“Jess, yes you are! You
’re covered in blood!”
I looked down and saw that she was quite right. The entire front of my sweater was smeared in blood. I groped my chest and abdomen with frantic hands, but could find no wound.
“It’s okay,” I gasped. “It’s okay, I… I don’t think it’s mine.”
The various scrabbles and fights had been fought out. Bodies lay slumped all over the ground, and figures were running from one to the other, bending over them, binding hands, removing weapons. Heart in my throat, I stared around for Finn and the others.
“Jess!” His voice rang out and I saw him sprinting toward me, leaping over bodies, his face terrified.
“It’s okay, Finn! I’m not hurt!” I cried, realizing he, too, must be panicking over the sight of the blood. “The blood’s not mine.”
“Oh, thank you, God,” he breathed, a hitch in his voice as he folded me into his arms.
“Are you okay?” I asked him, searching his face and body for any signs of injury.
He seemed scarcely to know, as though it had not occurred to him to make that kind of assessment. He stared down at himself in a kind of surprise and said, “I… yes, I am.” Then he pulled back from me, looking around for the rest of our group. “Annabelle?”
“I’m all right,” she said dazedly, wrapping her arms around herself to stop the shaking. “And I can see Ileana over there.”
The Traveler High Priestess sat with her back pressed to a tree, slapping away the attentions of a Caomhnóir who was trying to examine a long, jagged cut on her forearm. A great purple bruise was already rising on her cheekbone just below her right eye.
“What about the others, Finn?” I asked breathlessly.
“I don’t—”
But a gut-wrenching cry pierced the night, cutting off his words with the sheer force of its pain. We all turned toward the source of the sound and saw Catriona crouched on the ground, head bent, shoulders shaking.
I don’t remember walking—my legs felt numb—and yet I moved forward, drawn to the place where she knelt, at once needing to know and wishing never to know what had elicited such a sound from Catriona Harrington, the woman who was always all right.
Catriona had Lucida cradled in her arms, rocking back and forth, sobbing with a ferocity that surely hallowed the ground beneath them. Lucida’s eyes stared up into the starry night, wide and empty, the hilt of a dagger protruding from her scarlet-drenched chest. It was with a detached kind of shock that my eyes traveled from the blood on her body to the blood on my own, and the realization felt like a second stab of a knife.
I was covered in Lucida’s blood. She was the one who had thrown herself between me and my attacker.
She had died to save me.
It was too much. Too much to feel. Too much to absorb. The scene around me flickered, blurred, and went out.
18
An Audience
I AWOKE SECONDS LATER to a cacophony of angry shouting.
“What the bloody hell were Necromancers doing undetected so close to your gates?”
“We may well ask you the same question!”
“It’s not our responsibility to patrol these woods!”
“And yet it seems likely you unwittingly drew them here!”
“They were lying in wait! It was an ambush! Where in the world were your guards? Why was your outpost empty?”
My head swam, and I was surprised to see that I was on my feet, though unsteadily. Finn was beside me on one side, Annabelle on the other, and they seemed to be trying to support me while Finn continued to argue furiously with the Caomhnóir. Catriona still knelt on the ground nearby, oblivious to everything but the absence of Lucida and the weight of her own grief.
“We have to get up to the castle. There could be more of them. The grounds must be searched and secured,” one of the Caomhnóir said, stepping in and raising a hand to signal an end to the argument. His face was badly scarred, and his vest was torn and blood-stained. “You will follow us there, without delay. Once inside, we will inform the High Priestess of what has transpired, and of your arrival.”
Finn gave every indication of objecting, but he swallowed his anger and gave one curt nod. “I agree. We should get under cover as quickly as possible.”
But Catriona wouldn’t stand. She just continued to cry stormily, rocking back and forth, her face now buried in Lucida’s mass of dark curls. Softly, Annabelle began to talk to her as I, trying desperately not to look at Lucida, worked to gently pry her fingers, one by one, from her cousin’s body. At last, her hands came free, and she flung them up over her face in despair, smearing blood across her cheeks, her tears cutting crooked pink tracks though it. We pulled her unsteadily to her feet and began to shuffle her slowly toward the group of Caomhnóir. Suddenly she stopped, raised her face from her hands and glared at the men so fiercely that she looked quite terrifying.
“You will not leave her here alone,” she said, and it wasn’t a question. She said it again, and this time each word was a threat. “You. Will. Not. Leave. Her. Here. Alone.”
A Caomhnóir stepped forward from the group. He looked to be barely older than a Novitiate, but his voice when he spoke was deep and sincere.
“I give you my word. She will not be left alone.”
Catriona’s face spasmed, and she managed to nod in acknowledgment of the man’s gesture before finally moving her feet of her own free will. Taking her steps as a signal that we were, in fact, ready to leave, the Caomhnóir fanned out, forming a protective barrier around our group as we left the clearing.
The sight of Havre de Gardiennes, tucked like a dragon-guarded figment of a fairytale amongst the rocky peaks of the mountain with the moon hanging in the sky above it, ought to have taken my breath away. Instead, I barely registered any emotion at all, except perhaps a weary frustration at how many steps were would be forced to climb before we could finally enter the place and sit down to rest. The gates were set into a long stone wall that seemed to stretch for miles, beyond which the castle rose, pearly white against the verdant green and stormy grey of the mountain itself.
The room into which we were ushered was little more than a huge, round high-ceilinged stone tower, bare but for a wooden bench that ran around the entire perimeter of the space. The walls rose up into shadowed obscurity, crisscrossed with heavy beams, arcing away into echoing darkness. We were stripped of everything we carried—our Casting bags, our supplies, Finn’s weapons, everything we had brought along for the journey. Then we were roughly patted down in a humiliating fashion and told to sit.
“Wait here,” the scarred Caomhnóir said curtly and, without another word, disappeared through the door at the opposite end of the room from where we had entered.
Catriona had been comparably quiet on the walk to the castle, but now, with every mental and physical resource depleted, she sank to the ground, sobbing inconsolably. Annabelle, who had been helping to support Catriona as she staggered into the fortress, sank to the ground with her, looking slightly bewildered to find herself beneath a hysterical woman and yet fell naturally into the role of comforter, stroking her back and whispering consoling platitudes into the golden tangles of her hair. Both of them were now spattered with Lucida’s blood.
“What are they going to do with her?” Catriona kept sobbing. “What have they done with her? Where will they take her?”
“The Caomhnóir are protectors,” Annabelle was murmuring. “They will protect her still, you’ll see. They won’t leave her. You heard them, they gave you their word.”
Ileana was clearly deeply shaken as well. Her arm was bleeding, but she wouldn’t let anyone touch it or look at it. She simply swaddled it like a baby in her many shawls and scarves and cradled it gingerly against her chest. Her expression was one of shock, as though she simply couldn’t believe that a woman of her stature and position within her own clans could be so casually abandoned to wait and bleed like some kind of criminal. But it became clear as we all waited—shaken, injured, devastated—that we were bei
ng quarantined like animals so that our threat could be assessed, our story checked out, our value weighed against any risk we might pose.
“What’s happening?” Annabelle asked after what felt like an eternity. “What’s taking so long?”
“The Caomhnóir will be conducting a sweep of the area,” Finn said, pacing in frustration. “They’ll have to be sure the Necromancers have retreated, and they’ll need to send men after them to ensure they don’t escape. They’ll have to be captured and contained. Then the International High Council will have to decide if we are more trouble than we’re worth.”
“What do you mean, more trouble than we’re worth?” I cried. “We’ve done nothing but been victimized on the very grounds they were supposed to be protecting!”
“Yes, but as we are the clear targets, that means we’ve drawn the danger toward them. That makes us a liability, and that must be weighed against our worth if they are to protect us.”
“Our worth?” Ileana spat, looking frankly dangerous. “Our worth? How dare they!”
“They shouldn’t have been able to get so close,” Catriona mumbled, her words barely distinguishable through her tears. “What the hell were Necromancers doing unchecked so close to the fortress? Why was the outpost deserted when it ought to have been manned?”
“Maybe the Necromancers got to the guards and attacked them as well?” I suggested.
Catriona shook her head. “That whole border area ought to have been impenetrable. We should have been safe if we’d made it that far.”
“She’s right,” Finn muttered, so quietly that only I could hear him. “Something very strange happened out there.”