Shards of a Broken Sword

by W. R. Gingell

  Dion shared an identical grimace with her, and tried to give the shard back.

  “No thanks,” said Aerwn, and added frankly: “I’ve had enough of that thing. It’s yours now: I’m not special enough, remember?”

  The camp was an uncomfortable place that night. Barric called a halt a little after darkness fell, and though they had a fire it didn’t quite take the chill from the air. Padraig didn’t try to sit with Dion, much to her relief: he threw himself down beneath a tree beside Aerwn, his eyes glittering in the firelight. Neither of them talked, but they both seemed to prefer it. It occurred to Dion that they may have been quarrelling about her, and she found that she could still feel guilty about it. She herself sat down beside Barric, warming herself against his huge side while he cleaned his throwing knives. The human woman who had come with Carmine—her name was Fancy, though her plain, sensible face didn’t suit it—was cleaning her own blades, long and curved and deadly in the firelight. Both of them were not only preparing for, but expecting, a fight.

  Across the fire she felt Padraig’s eyes on her more often than not, and tried to ignore it by asking Barric: “Why is Carmine on first watch?” She saw his eyes flick up briefly to her face, and flushed. “We can’t trust the Fae.”

  Barric nodded, observing the edge of one of his knives closely. “And all humans are for humankind.”

  “They–” Dion bit her lip. She knew, and Barric knew, that Dion couldn’t help but think of her parents. She said grittily: “They should be.”

  There was a steady, thoughtful silence while Barric buffed another knife clean and put it down carefully on the grass. Then he said: “Coinnach was Fae: Padraig’s Unseelie bloodline was named in prophecy.”

  Dion turned one of his knives between her fingers. “Why does the prophecy call for Fae help to defeat Faery? Why would they help?”

  “Why do you help?”

  “I’m human, of course,” said Dion, very much surprised.

  “And Alawn’s daughter,” Barric reminded her. “You weren’t loyal to your family.”

  “Because my family was wrong.”

  “Ah,” said Barric again. “You think Fae have no consciences. Do you think Padraig has no conscience?”

  “He– yes. Yes, he does.” Dion knew he did. She would have sworn that his anger at the Fae in Bithywis was entirely real. Once again, all that she knew to be true and right was swinging wildly.

  “Do you doubt that he will reforge the Sword?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, leaning into his side tiredly. “Barric, I don’t know anything anymore. Everything I thought I knew was wrong and now I don’t know what to believe.”

  Barric shifted until one of his arms was comfortably around her and used Dion’s hands to polish the knife she was still holding. “Do you believe me?”

  “You’re the only one I do still believe,” said Dion, her eyes falling on Aerwn. Her sister would be leaving tomorrow and Dion still had no idea what to say to her. “How is it that I couldn’t tell Padraig was Fae? He looked—he looks—human.”

  “Padraig has grown up knowing his place in the prophecy: he sublimated his magic to serve it.”

  “It’s all in the hammer and anvil,” said Dion, closing her eyes briefly. She was gallingly annoyed with herself for not having realised as much. The magic in the hammer and anvil was, as she had said to Padraig at the time, Fae. If she had looked closer at the tiny spark of magic that remained within him– but it was just one more thing to add to the list of Things Dion Was Too Blind and Ignorant To See.

  Barric said: “Mind the edge, Dion. There: your finger is bleeding.” He took the knife from her, wiping the trickle of blood onto the grass, and brushed over her thumb with his own much larger one, smoothing a gleam of golden magic into it. “You’ll know that sort of magic again by the destiny-thread.”

  Interested in spite of herself, Dion said: “It was a destiny thread! I thought so!”

  Barric nodded. “Your own will be used in the binding of the sword.”

  “I know.”

  “You’re not so different.” Dion opened her mouth to reply but caught Barric’s eye and found that she couldn’t. “He’s as much a part of this as you are.”

  “He’s Fae.” It was sickening how often it came back to that one point: that one, impossible point.

  “As am I,” he said. “Will you hate me, too?”

  Dion froze in shock, her eyes flying up to meet Barric’s. “I don’t– I wouldn’t! I know you. I love you. But how can you be Fae? Your magic is all wrong. You have an iron greatsword!”

  “I’m a Guardian,” he said. “Fae stock with a different strain of magic. Iron has no power over us.”

  “Why didn’t–” Dion began, and then flushed. “I wouldn’t have listened to you if you’d told me you were a Guardian. I’d have called the Fae in. Oh, Barric, this is such a mess!”

  Barric tapped one knife against his boot and abandoned it on the grass, unpolished. “There’s nothing messy about it,” he said. “I’m Fae. Padraig’s Fae. Our kind is just as likely to be bad or good as your kind. You’ll accept it or you won’t.”

  Dion let her gaze linger on Padraig. In Bithywis, she had liked him. There was a kind of honesty about him that appealed to her despite the fact that it disconcerted her to the point of blushing and stuttering. She never quite knew what he would say or do next. As they travelled on to Harlech it had occurred to her more than once that Padraig was someone she could even love, given enough time to get to know him. Padraig didn’t seem to understand the concept of slow and steady, and Dion had been as often frightened back into her shell as charmed out of it, but she’d been surprised at how happy she was to see him again that morning. Barric, as unpleasant as it was to consider it, was right. Padraig hadn’t changed: he was as he had ever been. It was Dion’s own perception that had changed. In mulling it over, she gazed at Padraig just an instant too long; and he turned his head and caught her at it. He gave her a warm, brilliant smile with no reserve to it at all, and Dion found a smile tugging at her own lips. She saw him shift his hands as if to push himself up and dropped her eyes at once. She wanted to sleep on her thoughts and she knew she wouldn’t be able to think clearly if Padraig was sitting beside her and whispering in her ear. She let her eyes flutter up again briefly and found that he had settled back down beneath his tree. He was still smiling, and his eyes glowed like sapphires. He held her eyes for a moment longer, then closed his own and appeared to go to sleep.

  Dion looked up at Barric, who was methodically sliding his knives back into their sheaths within his clothes, and felt a light, dizzying relief. “Barric,” she said. “I said before that I love you.”

  Barric’s hands grew still, a knife half-sheathed. “Yes?”

  “Well, it’s not true,” she said, wrapping her arms as far as they would go around his massive torso. “I love you very much.”

  The knife snicked home, and one large arm enfolded her briefly, obscuring the light-speckled darkness of the sky with the softer darkness of Barric’s ebony skin. She felt him drop a kiss on the top of her head and tilted her head to smile up at him.

  He smiled back at her, his scar ruching his cheek, and said: “Your sister wants to talk to you.” He rose silently, vacating his seat for Aerwn, and crossed the camp softly to speak with Fancy.

  “Oh, good!” said Aerwn, throwing herself down beside Dion. “You’ve finished thinking it through. I told Padraig it wouldn’t take you long; he’s been out of sorts and annoying all day. Now that that’s over, can we talk about something else?”

  “You’re the one who started talking about him!” protested Dion, laughing.

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Aerwn, wriggling into a more comfortable position with much elbowing and shoving. “Here, snuggle under my cloak. We’re going to talk all night.”

  Dion woke early or late, she wasn’t sure which. Despite Aerwn’s threat, they hadn’t talked all night; or even half the
night. They had fallen asleep in each other’s arms for the first time in years, from which position Dion extricated herself with great difficulty and a sore neck. She stretched and tried to massage the pinch from her neck, finding herself refreshed and unwilling to lie back down. It was a beautiful night: there was no sign of either sunrise or sunset, and the moon was bright in the sky. Carmine was standing—or rather, sitting—guard; stretched out beneath the tree whose roots curled around the slumbering Fancy, his arms folded and his booted feet crossed at the ankle. One of his hands rested on Fancy’s head. He nodded at Dion as she rose and left camp, quietly making her way across the leaf-strewn forest floor. Perhaps he thought she was visiting the latrine Aerwn had dug behind one of the trees.

  It was very cold beneath the trees. Dion thought she sensed an alien brittleness to the night, and wondered for the first time if the Fae had brought more than death and destruction with them when they left Faery for the human world. Here in Llassar where the Seelie Fae were more prevalent, the days had lengthened and the nights seemed brighter, if less alive. Did Illisr, with its huge population of Unseelie, find its days shorter and darker to suit the night Fae? And if so, what other physical changes had the Fae brought with them? She didn’t dare wander too far, fearful of losing the camp even in the bright moonshine, but there was a pleasant rock overlooking a silvery, moon-bathed gully nearby, and Dion settled herself quietly there. Something was niggling at the back of her mind, and it wasn’t until she was able to sit down and think about it that she realised it was the shard. It was in her pocket, prickling at her consciousness with the knowledge that somewhere out there in the general direction of Shinpo, a shard just like it was moving closer to her. Or, thought Dion, frowning in confusion, was it? First the other shard seemed to tug at her mind from Shinpo, then she seemed to feel a tug from the south-east, on the Llassarian side of the border. Which was it? North-east, beyond the border, or south-east and within?

  “You should be sleeping, cherry,” said Padraig’s voice. Dion jumped and nearly lost her shard in the darkness of the night. While she was fumbling for it, Padraig leapt lightly up on the rock and sat down beside her, close enough to feel his warmth without quite touching her. “We’re in for a hard march tomorrow, sure. Aerwn and ap Rees will buy some time, but not enough for us to dawdle about our business.”

  “I’ll go back soon,” said Dion. She added quietly, without quite meaning to: “You should have told me yourself.”

  “Aye,” said Padraig. “Aye, and so I knew.”

  “Then why–”

  “Pure self-interest,” he said. “I didn’t wish for you to think badly of me. And how could I blame you for it? There’s barely a man of the Fae that I’d trust, myself.”

  When Dion had time to think it over later, she would come to realise that this very moment was the moment she fell in love with Padraig, in all his honest dishonesty. She had no time to think about it at that point, however, because exactly at that moment, Aerwn screamed. Padraig was up from the rock in an instant, catching Dion around the waist as she tried to dash headlong through the trees and back to camp.

  “Can you fight, cherry?”

  “Yes,” said Dion; and then, as she heard the unmistakable sound of metal battering metal in the clash of swords: “No. Not that kind.”

  “Then stay behind me and use whatever magic springs to mind. Quietly now: we’ll likely need all the advantage we can get.”

  Dion, used to subduing her own wishes to the greater good, had never found it so hard to concede. Their swift, silent passage back to camp seemed to stretch into an eternity– an eternity where she didn’t hear another sound from Aerwn, only the ugly striking of sword against sword. Dion wasn’t quite sure if she was panting or sobbing by the time they were within sight of the camp. In the low firelight she could see a tableau stained red: Fancy, a dancing, beautiful creature of sharp edges and deadly curves, her blades singing through the air too quickly to follow; Barric, a wall of certain death, his greatsword cutting through the knot of Fae that surrounded him as he forged his way slowly forward to Aerwn, who was pinned beneath three other Fae and still struggling furiously. Carmine had vanished from sight.

  Dion, unpleasantly weak at the knees and already shaking, would have started into the battle in spite of all if Padraig hadn’t said, still more insistently: “Wait, cherry. They’re not trying to kill us; they’re trying to capture us. See how they try to herd the big man? They’ve laid a snare somewhere for him. Stay here and don’t give yourself away: I’ll try to swing the tide for us. We can’t afford to lose you by accident.”

  “We can’t afford to lose you, either,” protested Dion, but Padraig was already gone. She turned her fearful attention back to the shifting fight and saw Padraig join it, his hammer beating a path through Fae. She sent a simple spell or two slithering into the melee, hoping to slow down the mob around Barric, but each of them sank into static as they met armour laced with the same kind of sloughing spell she had made for Aerwn. Dion tried again with an even simpler spell to make the grass catch at enemy feet, but after Padraig twice stumbled as well she didn’t dare to attempt another.

  Instead, she had to endure the sight of the skirmish turning against her friends, the taste of bile in her mouth. Dion sank to her knees, her breath too fast, and tried desperately to think of another form of attack. It was already too late, she knew: many Fae had fallen, but many more still were dogging Barric, Fancy, and Padraig. Aerwn was already out of it, and if she had to guess Dion would have said that the lumpy roll next to her sister was a bound and gagged Carmine. Barric was forced back inch by inch until something magical and sharp snapped, hoisting him above the fight in a bundle of tight, unbreakable cords. A shout went up from the Fae, and Padraig and Fancy disappeared beneath a surge of enemy Fae almost immediately. Dion, at first too terrified for Padraig even to weep, saw him appear again, bundled as tightly as Barric but alive, and let the tears fall thankfully down her cheeks. Padraig was right. These Fae wanted captives, not dead men.

  Dion expected that the Fae, having obtained their prey, would camp for the night. They did no such thing. Instead, they heaved their captives between them, two to a person—or in Barric’s case, four—and set out into the moonlit night with very little pause. It was perhaps natural: they were all Unseelie Fae, and darkness and moonlight were their delight. Dion, following along behind and wincing at every twig that broke beneath her feet, found that they were heading higher into the Caerphilly Ranges. At least, she thought, oddly amused amidst the sickness of dread that she felt; at least they were being taken in the right direction. Only Aerwn would be put out to have to travel so far back. She could still feel the other shard nearby, tugging at her own, and knew they were heading in the right direction.

  The Fae marched until dawn began to spill pink and orange light across their pale faces. During the night they had crested the mountain at its lowest point, the Llassarian forest giving way to rock and patches of rich green grass, and Dion had had to fall back in order not to be seen. Through the chill of first morning until the glimmering of dawn, she followed the Fae down the mountainside and into Shinpo, creeping from rock-face to rock-face. Further down the mountain she could see the patchy rock overgrown by jungle; gradually at first, in a riot of vines, and then in a crowding of lush foliage.

  At last, just as Dion began to think that the Fae would never stop, their leader looked around at the pinky-peach dawn in disfavour and called a halt. They swiftly set up camp, and she felt her heart sink a little more. The camp was so open that she would be seen by any watch they chose to set up before she got within a quarter mile of it. She had been hoping to sneak in while they slept, but with such bright dawn and sparseness of cover it was impossible. If only they had set up camp a little closer to the Shinpoan jungle! Dion tucked herself close to a cool rock-face with the grass soft beneath her, weary and beaten; and since she could do nothing else, followed the example of the Fae, and went to sleep.

  Sh
e woke to the unsatisfactory brightness of noon sunlight on her face. Despite its brightness it didn’t warm her, and she shivered as she sat up. To her relief, the Fae camp was still there when she popped her head around the rock-face to catch a glimpse of it. Her shard was almost burning against her leg through its pocket, surprising Dion at how much closer the other shard had gotten while she slept. There was no time to wonder about it, however: the closer to twilight it was before she made her move, the less likely it was that she would succeed. Approaching the camp herself was still out of the question: even if she hid herself with magic, it was unlikely that a Fae lookout wouldn’t be trained to see through it. And she already knew that any spells she threw at them would simply slide off.

  All right, thought Dion, ripping up grass as she mused; then suppose she thought like Ywain, with his strategically-placed piles of bricks. Only instead of confusing the eye with something that was arranged by magic but not technically a spell, she would attack the soldiers with something affected by magic but not inherently magic itself. Let their spells try to slough off grass that sank beneath them like quicksand, or rocks that hungrily seized their ankles– or even, thought Dion with a narrow-eyed look at the dense foliage that began further down the mountain, vines that constricted their arms to their sides and dragged them back into the darkness of Shinpoan jungle. She drew a deep breath, her fingers sinking into the grass beneath her, and brought the land around her to malicious life.

  Dion heard the screams from the Fae camp as if from a vast distance, and ignored them. She was in the vines and the rocks and the sinking earth beneath, desperately trying to make sure that there were pockets of safety around her companions while Fae screamed and ran. And somewhere overhead—whether in the camp or where Dion actually sat, she wasn’t quite sure—a dragon soared.