Hidden Jewel (Heartfire Series)

by Strong, Jennifer

  Two inches wide, the stakes were slick with blood; it was hard to find purchase in the smooth wetness, the muscles swollen tight around an alien object; tiny bits of bone shifted each time she touched one. Micah screamed as she drew them out, his sense of pain only one of many things he shared with his twin. It was his own hands that throbbed, that were smashed to bits beneath the skin by the butt of Jacob's own rifle. He screamed and howled and wept his heartache, his twin beaten so close to death that his own life was in jeopardy. James had to bodily remove him, to carry him to the opposite side of the cabin; Ailill instantly recognized the sound as James' palm met Micah's cheek, the startling slap of flesh on flesh; her own cheek blazed, red-hot with the shared sensation. She breathed a sigh of relief at the silence that suddenly filled the room, her mouth clamped at once against the invasive odour of merciless torture, of ultimate death. Loosed muscles voiced a most humiliating last word. Naught could be done, naught but heal him and reveal everything. One look screamed that it had to be done; she'd never seen a man so brutalized, so absolutely broken; physically; mentally. Placing her hands carefully, delicately, one to the blackened brow, one to the punctured groin, she leaned over Jacob's still body, lips hovering an inch above his own battered mouth, breathing his foetid air; giving back her own healthful scent.

  Oh Brid, please give me strength, it will take all that I am to heal them.

  Jacob dozed fitfully, his body awaiting the words, the plea to a goddess of another time; a signal that the nightmare was peaking, whispered in his own ancestral tongue. When it came, his eyes opened, the fathomless depths black as night; his lips moved against her neck, citing a prayer as ancient as the fallow fields of Erin, the craggy slopes of Alba. He shivered, an archaic image floating unbidden behind his eyes, a circle of stones, megaliths the size of giants atop a dun, ablaze in the fire of a rising sun. Cloaked figures moved as one, swayed, back and forth through the stones, weaving an infinite triskelion, casting formless shadows upon the forbidding menhir, dark blots against the darker xenoliths. Druids, all; not one visible to the naked eye. Yet he knew that each enchanted being proved as beautiful as the next beneath the pale cloth, their forms sheer perfection, the progeny of the woman leading the fluid dance; Ailill. Her face was always revealed, her hair a flaming nimbus amongst the darkness, within the light. She was the earth, her children borne of an everlasting lunar union, each gracefully paying homage to the sun in a timeless age.

  She sighed softly, sweetly, the tautness of her limbs gone slack, boneless, heavy against him as she fell away into dreams more tranquil. Watching the rise and fall of her chest slow, her eyes moving to and fro beneath the pale lids, Jacob sighed as well. He owed his life to her, his gratitude. He'd watched as she took his pain away, seen her push herself to limits so far beyond reason that it had all seemed surreal. Even as his body healed, Ailill remained; one soft hand on his brow, the other pressed to his groin through the discomfort of a growing fire in her palms, her face inches above his own, eyes reflecting the horror she tried so desperately to erase from his own memory. And then she was gone, falling away from him in a swoon of utter exhaustion, her limp body caught without injury by Micah's quick, steady hands, carried away by James, whose intense blue gaze softened when he met Jacob's sad eyes.

  Thirteen days; she had not awakened once, her body recovering from invisible wounds, repairing itself in sleep. Or so Fallon had explained the seeming lack of consciousness, her pale eyes boring through the girl as if looking through an opaque window. Jacob had never seen someone sleep so long, so deeply. It was a bit frightening, until he learned how to read the aura about her, the colorful mist. The old woman had explained it away, disregarded Jacob's insistence that it was there, and declared that Ailill would sleep for days in a comatose state, her inherited abilities taxed beyond all reason. She'd said that Ailill was too weak to dream. Jacob knew differently. He'd kept vigil at her side from day one; had watched her walk through her dreams; and when she slipped closer to that state of awareness, he talked to her, told her everything, anything that came to mind, his voice a whisper beside her tiny pink ear. Anything to keep the sense of horror at bay; to quell memories of darkness so encompassing he was sure he'd die after all.

  When he could get away from the frantic, search for Kiah, seemingly vanished from the face of the earth, Micah did the same, his own voice low, tinged with despair when he thought Jacob asleep. At night they slept beside her, held her through the darkest hours in strong arms, soothing themselves; sharing Ailill without recognizing the significance of their actions. It felt as natural as breathing.

  Into the Shadows

  She came to slowly, eyes glittering, the rainbow hue of a thousand prisms in the dusky blue of twilight. Her body felt heavy with disuse, the muscles too flaccid for comfort; weighted down with slack bonds, too thick, too leaden to be anything but limbs, living flesh. Her fingers trailed slowly over the warm restraints, paused briefly over the pulsebeats beneath knobbed wrists, a matching rhythm in both men, as if their very lives were singular, their slow, steady breaths in unison near her ears. She wondered how long she'd slept, the moments of lucidity seemed to overlap in the mists of memory. The nightmare had worn itself out at some point, a numbness descending upon her mind, her heart, with the ghastly images, her dreams returning to the usual mix of sub-reality and ghostly beings, those folk long past who'd kept up a running dialogue through every night of her young life. It seemed they had missed her, the robed ancestors, the kilted warriors, for she felt much less rested than she would have expected. It had not been them, the ghosts of her dreams, who'd pulled her through, who'd comforted her. No, in truth, it seemed that they had wished her to stay longer in the land of Nod, and she had not resisted the familiarity of them, the sense of normalcy in those auld folks after the tormenting dreams before. But it had been different this time. Awake or not, she'd been aware of Jacob, her constant companion throughout the long days, the hours of darkness. She'd done the right thing in healing the lad, in drawing his meticulously meted hell into her own mind. He'd suffered more than his share at the hands of a maniac; both of the brothers had; it was all either had ever known. What more could she do but lessen such pain as she found buried deep inside the lad.

  There was much to be said about sharing oneself, both physically and mentally. In lying with Micah, giving her sense of self completely into his own capable hands, a connection had been made. He'd unwittingly shared everything, all his memories. In healing Jacob, taking away nearly all vestiges of pain, she had taken his past as well; or very nearly so. Their minds, the memories that occasionally plagued them both, were still intact, as they should be. Ailill had basically made a sort of photocopy, drawn it into her own mind. Neither knew it, nor would she tell them... not yet. They'd not been trained, raised up to know themselves, of all they were capable. She had. Very little of herself had been given up, merely a seed planted in the fecund soil of the two men's brains. It would be a slower process; each would realize things about her without truly noticing anything amiss. That was what had taken so much out of her. Controlling her own abilities in an alien land, a war-torn land of utter disenchantment.

  Oh, how I long to go home, she silently lamented. From the dregs of memory arose images- majestic purple mountains, their snow-capped peaks winking above a blanket of shimmering mist; emerald glens shaded with darker evergreens; mossy moors dotted with varying shades of heather, the golden brilliance of gorse beneath lazuline skies; the chill North Sea, cobalt waters crested white with foam, iridescent, as dazzling as a peacock's tail where it raced along the headlands flanking the Moray Firth; a most beauteous sight, her homeland in all its glory.

  Alba.

  She missed her kin most desperately; the shimmering faces of lads and lasses, eyes of every shade of gemstone known to man, so much like her own. A feeling of utter loneliness nearly made her cry out, her chest too constricted even to breathe beneath the leaden arms of the twins. She had to get away, to find solace with
in herself; an impossible feat, removing her weakened self from the grasp of these men who'd selflessly assumed the role they had been born to, their plight accepted ere either knew what it would be.

  As the sun crept closer to the horizon, the room ever darkening with the dusky-blue sky, Ailill eased the restraining arms from her warmth one at a time. She did not want to wake anyone, particularly Jacob and Micah; both slept the sleep of exhaustion, the deep, steady breaths clue enough that neither had taken much rest in many days; she knew Micah spent the better part of his days in a fruitless search for the fiend, so long-gone by now that even she would have a hard time of picking up his foul scent; and Jacob... well, she'd made the effort, given her all, but he was still healing. An emotional recovery; the days of sitting still and, mostly, quiet were exactly what she would have prescribed after his ordeal, but it would take yet more time, no matter that he lookedperfectly healthy on the outside. Slipping carefully down the length of the bed, inch by excruciating inch, her bare feet at last touched the cool wood of the foot board, the softness of the emerald green carpeting; how she longed for the rugs at Heartfire, the silken pelts of hundreds of rabbits sewn together with precision, laid out over soft padding which gave a wondrous impression that her small feet were floating on a cloud. Momentarily knock-kneed, her fingers clamped hard on the bedpost, her gaze sweeping the length of her body, taking in the small ruffle of the linen nightdress across her bosom, about her thighs, before settling for a very long moment on the men in her bed. In sleep they faced one another, hands touching across the residual warmth from her own body. Features relaxed in sleep, the hard, crisp planes softened, both looked very young; very beautiful. It pleased her to see nothing marring Jacob's chiseled face, his sculpted body; no sign that days ago, I think, he'd been a bloody mass of broken bones, torn flesh, the pink gleam of exposed muscle too vivid beneath that bronzed form. Nay, ye've done fine by him, she mentally congratulated herself. Her cheeks felt too fagged to support a smile, but that was alright. Best to wait until he smiled first; perhaps he had wanted to die, to take Micah away with him. To unwittingly tear her heart asunder, destroy all that she had worked toward in a single last breath... A sobering thought; she turned away, slowly made her way to the door, and left without a backward glance.

  It took but moments to brew a restorative drink, to quaff half and pour the rest in a small bottle, just in case; sunlight dropped below the Western ridge just as she stepped outside, and she hurried through the exercises, the ritual to greet the great fiery orb, though it was evening, her timing backwards, feeling breathless and weary before she was through. No walking this time, no hour-long trek down the mount to the Dead Wood at the bottom of the north face. She'd never make it without someone noticing her absence, picking up her trail, no matter that her parents seemed suspiciously absent this eve. Her mare was an intelligent beastie; letting out a rather flat sounding whistle, Ailill waited. Her hearing was as perfect as always, her ears, tuned toward the stable, easily caught the sound of her mount letting herself out of the stall, the clink of metal seconds later as strong horse teeth drew the latch that kept the outer doors secure.

  "Well... and what's amiss then, Epona?" she countered softly when the mare only stared at her from around the open door. "Aye, I've been ignorin' ye for days, I ken it... Ye think I'm a grotty master; a minging, worthless wee lump o' hairless flesh, aye? Alright, I'll give ye that, just this once." The mare continued to watch her, obviously expecting more. She blew softly, snorted and pawed the ground when Ailill took one, then two steps closer, reaching out to pat the velveteen snout. "Och, wheesht mo cridhe. Ye'll draw attention, and we dinna want that. Nay, ye're a cromulent wee cuddy, are ye no? Och, aye, now ye'll see me. Ye've missed yer master, I think. Weel, I'm back frae the darkness now. Pleased wi' that? Weel, no as pleased as I." Nudging her for another tart green apple, the mare stood still, chewing loudly, unconcerned as Ailill patted her, looked her over with a trained eye. After checking each shoe carefully, the woman mounted with only a bit less grace than usual, turned the gentle beast toward the tree line and set off at a trot. Sensing where they were headed as well the weakness in her master, Epona quickened the pace on her own, cantering gracefully along trails hidden from the human eye until the granite formation loomed ahead, the dark pines concealing from view the darker entrance into the bowels of the earth. As if she knew it was not yet time to return home, the horse lowered her head and whickered, hurrying Ailill into the darkness so that she would hurry back.

  It was almost too easy to find out at least a bit of what she'd missed; all she had to do was concentrate on a single image, a memory, and everything fell into place. Disharmony had remained in the Highlands; small disruptions, more along the lines of a clan feud, she guessed, seeing much plaid upon the makeshift battlefield, the lack of completely bare flesh clear even in darkness, a sure sign that would be seen in any major offensive. Her own kind usually shed their raiments, their beautiful bodies painted with woad as their ancestors had done so very long before; the tartans of the clans involved were clearly visible to her mind's eye, Imbas Forasni, the second sight, a worthwhile gift on few occasions, usually a bane, the dreams she had at times enough to terrify even her, and Ailill had been raised a dauntless warrior. Too much liquor seemed to make the dreams worse if she overindulged or drank too quickly for her body to keep up; she never drank the wine of grapes for the nightmares filled her waking hours for days after. She peered through the misty darkness, seeing a cousin off to the side, making his way through a gathered crowd; she could see the easy play of muscles beneath tanned, sweaty flesh. The scents of heather and blood mingled in her head, called her home; her cheek rested on the cold stone of the doorway, one foot poised to step out into the fray, the other set firmly on the stone floor of the dun on Jewel Mountain. She had been diligent on the trek here, made certain that no one followed, and yet she felt as if the twin brothers knew where she was, that she was torn between leaving or staying; she could leave now, if she wished, though a bit of explanation would be necessary as she had yet to lie with Jacob after lying her first time with Micah. Sighing heavily, Ailill set her mind to the task at hand, calling up the image of her former teacher, her foster father, Fergus MacDuff. His form larger than life, her gaze zeroed in on the exact spot where he was, right in the thick of it as always, the handsomely etched face spattered with sparkling droplets of blood, the velvet-black eyes gleaming with ferocious pride as they swept over the firelit field to where an almost exact mirror image of himself stood, swinging a claymoor as if it were a baseball bat, knocking three brawny men to their knees with one fell blow.

  Her breath caught.

  Tiernan MacDuff.

  As lovely as a man can be, particularly a man who is not exactly human. The sight of him, hale and hearty where she had expected him to be frail after a bout with a mortal disease, nearly made her step over the threshold; and then he turned, a sadness in his eyes as they moved quickly from his father's smiling face, seeking, a question on the breeze; meeting her own eyes across a vast distance, holding them with an ease that had always been his own. Sidestepping to miss the flailing limbs of a body flying through the air, the man's dark eyes remained, the connection made. Seeing what his son had stopped fighting to do, MacDuff moved to take his place, protecting his back with the beauty and strength of a true Highland warrior.

  Have ye done what ye left to do? Tiernan queried, the link strong enough that his rich, melodious voice sounded as if he was directly beside her, and not best pleased about it.

  "Nay. Half. I am only one. It takes time. There's been a bit o'... difficulty." Ailill's eyes held open appeal, underlaid with a touch of still raw anger that she could not completely conceal. Dark brows twisted, a well known expression of inquiry softening the sharp features..

  Tis no but lovin'. A natural thing, no? What is difficult about that?

  "Not a thing," she crisply replied. "Tis not the lovin' I speak of, now is it?" She frowned, face darkening wi
th fury. "Is that all that yer concerned with after all this time, Tiernan MacDuff? How I've used my body to better faerie-kind? For shame, laddie, and I say so myself."

  Dodging a spray of crimson, a head swiftly removed from its body, the man carefully sidestepped the mess, moved away from the small but still raging feud, his gaze never leaving her icy stare. That was no what I meant, and ye ken it, Ailill. What's amiss? himself from the fray forced a stronger sense of the man upon Ailill, his feelings open to her. A whole moil of feelings, all rolling about within his strong frame, weakening him. Her scowl faded, replaced by a well practiced mask; a veritable poker face.

  "Naught is amiss, except that the Eldest Son beat one o' yon twin lads near to death whilst I was lovin't'other, and now the fiend has gone missing. Naught is amiss, except that in healing the poor lad I lost a handful o' days nor more to the utter disenchantment o' this land. I awoke but an hour ago and your's was the first face I saw 'tween worlds." Miffed, Ailill allowed her feelings to show for one brief instant, a glimpse of just how disheartening recent events had been. Tiernan frowned, discouraged by the news.