Cage of Thorn (The Blackthorn Cycle Book 2)

by L. M. Hawke

  She kept on running, kept fighting through the heavy undergrowth and the cold, dark thickets, until she was too exhausted run. When she could no longer run, Una walked as quickly as she could manage, shoving her way through groves and scrambling up steep earthen banks. Her breath was ragged and painful in her throat. The muscles of her legs quaked with exhaustion and cramped with every step. She needed a rest—but did she dare stop now? What if the soldiers were right behind her?

  The thought of the Seelie gliding stealthily through the woodland kept Una moving, even as her body cried out for a break. She pressed on for what seemed another hour—though who could say how much time had truly passed? Time had no meaning for a human in the Otherworld. The only sense, the only concrete reality Una could wring from the strange, shadowy realm was the terrible pain that wracked her stressed, scratched, and bruised body… and the fear and determination of her headlong flight.

  Finally, she broke through a stand of silvery-white birches and found herself in a small, grassy meadow. A pool of clear water lay at its center; the banks of the pool were thick with soft moss. Groaning as much as her harsh, panting breath would allow, Una sank down on the moss. At first she crouched on her haunches, staring wildly about at the surrounding woods. But then, as exhaustion took its inevitable toll, she surrendered to her need for rest and flopped over on her side, sprawling out on the cushion of moss. For a long time, Una remained there, lying on the forest floor, panting wretchedly with her eyes half-closed while the throb of fear and exertion ebbed slowly from her limbs.

  When she felt strong enough, Una sat up slowly and looked around. The Otherworld forest was peaceful and still, with no trace of Seelie pursuers in its low, motionless thickets. Hung with draperies of violet-blue shadows, touched here and there by silver highlights among the leaves and ferns, the realm revealed itself fully to Una as a place of ethereal beauty. Peace and quiet reigned over the Otherworld. Una held herself perfectly still, counting out a hundred heartbeats. She watched the forest keenly, strained to listen for any faint sounds of movement or whispers in the trees. But there was nothing to see, nothing to hear—not even distant shouts, or the clashing of weapons against shields from the Seelie palace. As far as she could tell, the two guards had remained within the stone circle, ready to defend the Court from the Leanan’s attack.

  Una wondered if the palace was under full attack now—how the Court was faring, and whether Dax had any real hope of bringing his people and his palace unscathed through the Leanan’s assault.

  No doubt, as soon as they beat back the Leanan, they’ll come out in full force to find me. She probably didn’t have long to make a plan and see the thing done.

  Una bit her lip, scowling down at the moss below her as if she might find a fully formed Leanan-battling agenda sprouting up among the green fronds. If only she had some way to find the damned creature’s lair… and some plausible way to confront Etain once she found where the Leanan hid.

  Then, with a start, Una realized that she could make a plan after all. The pool.

  She crawled on hands and knees to the edge of the pond and leaned over the surface, gazed at herself in the water. A gentle breeze sent a multitude of tiny ripples dancing over the surface, breaking up Una’s reflection—which was just as well, for she didn’t want to see how haggard and fearful and scratched-up she looked in that moment. She stared into the shadowy places that reflected her eyes and concentrated on Kathleen.

  It didn’t take long for Kathleen to appear, just below the water’s surface. She stared back at Una with a fierce determination in her eyes, and Una nearly wept with relief and gratitude at sight of her.

  “What’s the matter?” Kathleen said anxiously. “Your face is scratched, and your hair looks a fright. Has something gone wrong?”

  “What in bloody hell hasn’t gone wrong?” Una said. “I’m not with the Seelie anymore, Kathleen… and I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”

  As quickly as she could, Una explained about the Leanan’s assault on the magical perimeter of the Seelie Court… and, reluctantly, what she suspected Etain’s sudden surge of power might mean for Ailill.

  “And so I ran,” Una concluded. “What else was I to do? They’d never have let me go if they got me back to my room. But here I am, alone in the Otherworld, without the prince’s protection. It’s now or never, Kathleen. You’ve got to help me, somehow… Help me find this creature and stop her.”

  “I do think I can help,” Kathleen said, “with a little luck. I don’t know how much time has passed for you in the Otherworld, but here it’s been two weeks since I last saw you. I’ve been staying close beside the pool the whole time, except when I’m off to do more research, and then it’s Angus who stays here, in case you try to get through to us.”

  “That’s good,” Una said, trying to hold back her impatience.

  “Anyhow, I’ve been diving deep into the local legends, all the old writings about the Fair Folk and the Dark Ones in particular. My Da has a few books that collect the stories of old-timers who’ve been around Kylebeg for generations.

  “Most of the stories didn’t seem terribly helpful, if they mentioned Leanan at all. But I did come across one bit that we might be able to use.”

  “What is it? Tell me quick; I don’t know how much time I have left to do… whatever needs doing.”

  “Right. The old tales say the way to stop a Leanan is to find her resting place… her cavern, her lair. You see, they make portals for themselves, doorways through the veil so they can come and go from the human realm with ease.”

  “So I need to find out where this magical doorway is? And what do I do when I find it?”

  “You? Nothing. It’s me who’ll handle it, from this side of the veil. Once we know where her portal lies, I’ll build a cairn over the exit here in the human world. The cairn will seal off Etain’s only doorway, so she’s locked forever in the Otherworld. Without access to the humans she feeds on, she’ll be starved of creative energy and blood. In short order, she’ll die off, and then we’ll all be free of her.”

  “Just a pile of stones?” Una said. “That’s all? It seems too easy.”

  And too impossible, at the same time… for how was she to find Etain’s lair? And if even she could find it, how would she know where the portal let out in the human realm?

  “It’s the best idea we’ve got,” Kathleen said. “Especially now that you’ve gone and angered the Seelie. But we must work quickly, Una. Samhain is almost here. On Samhain Night, the veil between our world and the Otherworld is at its thinnest. And I’m afraid that the thinner the veil grows, the easier it will be for Etain to pass from her realm to ours. If what you think is true, and her power is growing in leaps and bounds, then Samhain will make it all the easier for her to cross over into our world… to make more victims, and draw even more power from her human prey. For all we know, her strength might grow so great that we’ll have missed our chance to stop her.”

  Una swallowed hard. “You’re right,” she said, though her voice was barely more than a hoarse whisper.

  “We’ve got to find that portal… seal it with a cairn… before Samhain,” Kathleen said.

  Una nodded bleakly. With effort, she said, “Did your reading uncover any information—anything at all—that might help me find Etain’s lair in the Otherworld? I don’t know how or where to start. I’ve no idea what I should be looking for.”

  Kathleen chewed thoughtfully at her thumbnail. Then she said, “I don’t know for sure, but the Unseelie are still Sidhe, even if they’re… unpleasant. All the Sidhe have an affinity for natural places—especially places that are unique or striking, that have some unusual aspect. A really old, gnarled tree, for example. Or a huge boulder. I guess you could look for some natural feature that stands out from the landscape somehow—that seems significantly different from whatever is around it.”

  “That’s all well and good,” Una said, “but I could search the Otherworld for a hundred y
ears and never see anything like what you describe, just because I’m not looking in the right place.”

  “True.” Kathleen nibbled on her thumb again. “Well, you might track Etain back to her lair, assuming she left any signs of her presence.”

  “Left? You mean at the Seelie palace?”

  Kathleen’s helpless shrug said she understood Una’s hesitation. “It is the last place anybody saw the Leanan,” she said apologetically.

  “Bollocks,” Una muttered. “You know the Seelie want to capture me. If they take me again, they’ll make damn sure I never have a second chance to get away.”

  “I don’t like it, either, Una. But what choice do we have now?”

  “None,” Una said sourly. “None at all.”

  “You’ll just have to be careful.”

  Una laughed bitterly. “Careful! That’s like telling a mouse it has to be careful around a whole city of cats. But you’re right, Kathleen. It’s the most sensible plan we’ve got.”

  “Not saying much, is it?” Kathleen said with a rueful half-smile.

  Una couldn’t help but laugh weakly. “No, not much.”

  “I’ll stay right here beside the pond, and wait for you to talk to me again.”

  “Right. I’ll find you again, as soon as I have a spare moment and the least bit of standing water.”

  A puddle would do; even the dew collected in the curve of a leaf. Hadn’t Dax said that water-readers could use virtually any still, reflective liquid? Una was no Seelie water-reader, but she was desperate and determined… and occasionally, those traits paid off just as well as genuine skill.

  “Well… best get to work, then,” Kathleen said reluctantly. “I’ve got a lot of rocks to collect if I’m to make a solid cairn. Be well, Una.”

  Una smiled. “Be well, Kathleen.”

  As Kathleen’s face faded in the water, Una could tell that her friend was every bit as frightened as she was herself.

  11

  Una rose from beside the pond, brushing bits of moss and soil from her palms and knees. She had no idea where she was in relation to the palace, or how to find her way back. When she’d fled from the Seelie, she had run in pure desperation, without any thought for direction. Now she somehow had to find her way back again… back through the jungle of the Otherworld.

  Counseling herself not to panic, Una searched carefully through the fringe of forest at the edge of the meadow. Her impatience rose, threatening to rip from her throat in a wordless shriek of frustration, but at last she located her own path, a trail of broken branches and crushed ferns that led away from the meadow. She set out at once, backtracking through the shadowy wood, hoping the journey wouldn’t take too long.

  Now and then, when her path had crossed open ground, Una was forced to sacrifice yet more time as she searched methodically for signs of the trail. Here and there, trampled flowers with bruised petals revealed where she’d run before, or a patch of mud held a single print of one of her slippers, filled with a bit of shining water. She found threads from her blue silk dress snagged on brambles, or strands of her dark hair clinging to bushes. Scuff marks from her leather slippers, raked down the sides of steep banks, indicated where Una had climbed and slid precariously down those steep faces to the faint trail below.

  She felt trapped in a terrible, numbing eternity as she floundered through the forest. The whole while, Una shoved down the brimming fear that she was hopelessly lost and did her best to ignore the panic that quivered in her chest. She would find her way back to the palace. She must. Everything depended on it—and on picking up some trace of the Leanan’s passing, some clue she could pass along to Kathleen. Una would just have to trust that a pile of stones would be enough to stop the vampire from wielding any more of her dark power.

  At last, just as tears of hopeless fury had begun to cloud her vision, Una saw the distant spires of the Seelie palace rising above the treetops. The pale stone and golden peaked roofs of those high, slender towers were like a beacon of hope to her. She knew she must still move as stealthily as she could manage, for the Seelie were no doubt on the alert for Una’s presence. But at least she knew now where she was.

  Una slunk carefully through the underbrush, a few hesitant steps at a time. It wasn’t only the Seelie guards who concerned her now; for all Una knew, the Leanan herself might even now lurk somewhere around the outer ring of stones.

  Una strained to listen for any signs of conflict, any hint of distress from beyond the stones—from within the Seelie Court. But forest and palace alike remained eerily silent. Una couldn’t begin to guess what the silence might signify. Had the Seelie Court fallen to their enemy? If so, what fate awaited Una?

  Nothing, she told herself firmly. Not a damned thing.

  Her only mission in the Otherworld was to rescue Ailill—not to interfere with the fates of her distant cousins.

  But no matter how stoic she tried to remain, no matter how detached she wanted to be, Una couldn’t help but feel a pang of distress on the Seelie’s behalf. They were strange, different… almost unknowable. But in their odd way, they had been kind to her, once she’d made them see how wrong it had been to try to abduct her. Dax and his people had welcomed her, and some of them, like young Forget-me-not, had even been friendly. Now that she’d begun to understand them more, to learn some of their ways and appreciate their history, Una hoped desperately that no harm would come to them—not even to Bracken, that cold, detached creature who had been the first to trick and beguile her.

  Concentrate, Una commanded herself. Stay focused. Time is running out. You can worry about the Seelie later… and help them later, too, if there’s any help to offer.

  Una pressed on, creeping through the forest, hunched and sly. All the while, she kept her eyes and ears alert for any trace the Leanan may have left behind. True, Una had no idea what traces a vampiric fairy might leave—drops of blood, perhaps? But surely the creature would have left some kind of trail.

  Unless Etain can fly, was Una’s unwelcome thought. She’d seen no evidence so far that any of the Sidhe could fly, but if the Leanan sprouted wings and took to the air, it wouldn’t have surprised Una one bit. That was exactly the sort of rotten turn her luck would take.

  As she searched for traces of the Leanan, Una kept one eye on the Seelie palace. How close did she dare to come? She mustn’t make it easy for the Seelie to recapture her, but the farther she was from the ring of stones, the longer grew the odds that Una would find the Leanan’s trail.

  She allowed herself to move a few yards nearer to the palace, watching its spires above the treetops with a suspicious eye, half expecting some Seelie with a telescope to be peering at her from the ramparts, tracking her every move.

  “Stay in your castle, you bloody bastards,” Una muttered.

  She slipped into a grove of thick, hazel-like bushes that screened her from sight and paused, pressing a hand to her forehead, trying to calm her racing thoughts. She thought back to what the dark-haired guard had told Prince Dax.

  He hadn’t heard yet from the farthest sentries, Una mused. He must have meant guards on the far side of the palace grounds—on the other end from the big courtyard.

  That meant Etain’s assaults must have been concentrated on this end of the palace grounds. It was a comforting thought; Una wouldn’t have to sneak all around the perimeter of the vast palace as she searched for the Leanan’s trail.

  She pressed on, searching the branches that crowded in around her, scanning the forest floor. Still there was no sign of Etain. But as she hunted through the woods, Una became conscious of a faint murmur, a distant whisper… almost undetectable at first, as it blended with the natural rustle of forest leaves. But as she paused, straining to listen more closely, she realized with a chill that she was hearing the distant sounds of a search party. Seelie voices drifted to her, so softly that she thought she was imagining them, until they grew a bit louder, a bit more forceful… as they came ever closer.

  They’re looking for
someone, she thought. But are they searching for me, or Etain? Whoever they looked for, it was certainly a group of Seelie—most likely the armed guards—out beyond the safety of the perimeter stones.

  It could only mean the Court had survived the Leanan’s attack. Una felt a wave of relief at that knowledge, but relief quickly turned to curdled anxiety. If there were Seelie guards beyond the stone ring, then the odds were good that they were hunting for Una.

  A twinge of guilt plagued her. She didn’t like knowing that she was causing the Seelie to risk the lives of their best fighters out here in the Otherworld, beyond the circle of their magical protection, where they were vulnerable to Unseelie attack. Clearly, Una’s importance to their plans could not be overstated. They were prepared to risk life and limb to protect Una’s precious blood—to preserve the line of magic they believed flowed through her veins. Una hoped gravely that she wouldn’t get any of them killed.

  If I come through this, she silently promised them, if I can find Ailill and get him home safely, I will find some way to help you. I swear it.

  Una turned away from the faint sounds of the Seelie search party and headed off through the woods. She moved with all the stealth she could muster, painfully aware that her human body was woefully inefficient. The Seelie could move with cat-like near-silence, while the best Una could do was to tip-toe about, snapping twigs under her clumsy feet and blundering into crackly bushes. She had no idea how keen the pointed ears of the Seelie might be, either. Exactly how well could they hear? Could they detect her quietest movements at a distance? Una suspected grimly that they could. She had to find the right balance between urgent speed and stealth.

  She rounded a great, craggy boulder and leaned against it for a moment, catching her breath, listening to the sounds of pursuit, which seemed to come closer by the moment. “Bollocks,” she growled, clenching her fists in desperation, looking around wildly, searching for her next logical move. But as her gaze swept over a gap in the trees, Una paused, staring. Something was pressed into the moss that carpeted that gap.