As they drew closer to the standing stones, Seren caught sight of something that stopped her dead in her tracks. Just beyond the monoliths, three monstrosities sat patiently in the middle of the road. Physically, the beasts resembled dogs about the size of Brenn’s wolfhounds, having four legs and a head with a long snout. That was where the similarities ended. The skin that clung tightly to their bones appeared black in the moonlight, but Seren guessed it more closely matched mummified animal flesh; dark brown and glossy. Great patches of grizzled fur clung to the rotten hide in odd chunks, and their faces were nothing more than skulls covered in gore. They sat on their haunches, their long bone-thin legs splayed before them to keep their bodies upright. Seren figured they were faelah, for they matched the description Rori had given her, but they were much larger than she expected.
Brenn came to a stop in front of the stones, a good ten feet away from the three huge faelah on the other side. Seren couldn’t help but notice how Rori pressed close to his uncle, his free hand clutching at the man’s cloak in fear. Brenn set the bowl he’d been carrying down on a flat-topped rock nearby and gently took the torch from Rori.
As Seren watched from an even farther distance, one of the grotesque creatures opened its mouth and began to pant. Its throat glowed like a furnace and as it exhaled, as if a fire burned low in the animal’s chest. Brennon’s wolfhounds grew restless again, pacing back and forth behind their master. They fixed their eyes on the monsters, their hackles raised as they growled low in their throats.
“Seren?” Brenn called softly.
Seren jumped then glanced up to him. He held his hand out, beckoning her to move closer.
Swallowing back her own fear and disgust, she took a few small, uncertain steps before swiftly moving to his side. These faelah were different from the rest, and as far as she knew they might bolt past the stone barrier at any second and attack her.
Brenn held out his torch, and Seren realized he was asking her to hold it for him.
“What are those things?” she hissed quietly, as she complied with his request, nearly dropping the torch in her anxious state.
“Cumorrig,” he answered shortly, turning around and standing over the bowl, his hands held out to it as if a warm fire burned within. “The Morrigan’s hounds. Every year, they arrive on this night to bear witness.”
Seren opened her mouth to ask Brenn what they were supposed to be bearing witness to, but the words never came as a soft indigo glow began to grow around his fingertips. He murmured something under his breath, and then the glow dissipated. Brennon stepped away from the rock and brought his nephew over, placing his big hands on the boy’s small ones and guiding them over the bowl. Both of them repeated the same, strange words. If Rori produced any glamour at all, it was too close in color to his uncle’s for Seren to distinguish.
The three Cumorrig continued to sit in silence, watching the scene with the same sort of morbid fascination as Seren. She shook her head. What a ridiculous thought. She should have been asking Brenn why they were out in the dark on Samhain Eve with faelah running amok, instead of locked away inside beside a warm fire, trusting in the turnip spooks to keep out the bad spirits like every other Faelorehn being in Eile. What was the point of all this? Why did he and Rori have to seal the stone barrier with a blood oath? And most vexing of all, what did the Morrigan have to do with it? But every time she opened her mouth to ask Brenn these questions, Seren found her throat was too tight to produce any sound.
“Now,” Brennon said, his voice gruff and his face hidden in the shadows of the cowl of his cloak, “we walk the perimeter.”
He picked up the bowl and approached the first stone. In a clear, loud voice that crackled through the icy air, he said, “By the blood of the child and the blood of the guardian, we strengthen the mother’s vow.”
He dipped the tip of his little finger into the blood mixture and touched it to the surface of the monolith, drawing a small symbol that Seren didn’t recognize: a semi-circle with an arrow just beneath it, the point touching the half-circle’s base. The symbol reminded Seren of the horseshoes she had cooled in the stream water when working in the forge. Brenn finished his drawing by dragging his finger vertically through both marks, then adding two short lines extending from each side of the horseshoe shape. The blood looked black in the moonlight, and as Brenn lifted his finger away from the crude sketch, the mark began to burn and glow a brilliant red.
Seren felt her mouth drop open in surprise. Was this Brennon’s glamour at work, or something much, much deeper and older?
Before she could reflect further upon it, Rori stepped forward and placed the index finger of his right hand into the bowl. With Brennon’s help, he found the point where his uncle’s symbol ended and added his own mark, a simple spiral attached to the base of the vertical line he must have learned to draw from touch alone. As soon as Rori stepped away, his spiral began to glow as well, flaring up brightly and then cooling down to match the deeper red color.
“Now,” Brenn said, on the release of a deep breath, “only twenty-four more to go.”
Chapter Eleven
Procession
Seren had never thought a night could last as long as that Samhain Eve did. After marking the first stone, the trio headed east along the boundary, a boundary Brenn and Rori, and the Cumorrig for that matter, clearly knew by heart. Brennon led the way, carrying the weighty bowl in his hands, with Rori close behind holding up the torch. The wolfhounds had split up once more, the pack alpha, Brogan, striding several feet in front of the group. His ears were trained forward as he listened for danger. The rest loped along the slope above the trail, the occasional piercing squeal of a creature in distress and crunch of dry bones indicating they’d found and eliminated a faelah. Instead of reassuring her, this only unnerved Seren more.
The landscape didn’t change much as they traveled through the moon-silvered night. Large, broken boulders protruding above the dead grass at crooked angles brought to mind the rotten teeth of some giant monster of old. The longer the night dragged on, the more the cold air burned Seren’s lungs and nipped at her fingers and toes. The three corpse-hounds, the Cumorrig, kept a steady pace not ten yards away from them, staying close to the same invisible fence line Rori and his uncle followed. Every so often, they would glance in Seren’s direction, their glowing violet eyes and furnace-like throats causing the doe inside of her to quiver and pull against her control. She had always feared the bullies growing up in her Fahndi tribe, but their unkindness and malice was nothing compared to what radiated off of these demonic creatures.
Even with the light of the bright moon and the torch to banish the darkness, Seren felt vulnerable and completely alone. Not for the first time since fleeing the shelter of her forest, Seren thought of her mother. Daniela had always taught her not to trust others, and she had kept to that advice most of her life. Of course, most of her life, she had been given plenty of reasons not to trust others, with or without her mother’s help. When she’d fled from her peers, her would-be murderers, she had only been focused on escaping, of surviving their attack. Stumbling blindly through the dolmarehn and being deposited in the middle of the wilderness far to the east of the Weald had been the only thing to save her. She had believed she’d escaped death, at least until Brennon’s arrow pierced her shoulder. In that life-altering moment, she’d realized she would become some woodsman’s dinner, forgotten by all those she had ever known.
Instead, she’d woken up wrapped in warm blankets, finding herself in a great big house with a small boy hovering over her, and the hunter watching her with a reluctant curiosity. And then, they had been so kind to her, so very kind, that the cage she’d built around herself began to rust, the bars withering away. Seren had been ready to call them her friends. Until tonight. Brennon had warned her about this evening, and although she hadn’t known what he meant at the time, she knew it now. She had stretched her hand through the bars of her broken-down cage and taken his, only to find that
his touch burned her skin like acid. Now, she wished her prison was as strong as it had always been, a safe, impenetrable place this strange, haunted man could not reach.
A harsh, grating yelp followed by the snapping of teeth startled Seren from her black thoughts. She gasped out loud and nearly dropped the torch. To her right, some of the gathering faelah had moved too close to the Cumorrig. Clearly, the grotesque hounds had little tolerance for the lesser monsters infiltrating the night.
Seren gathered her skirts and made to jog forward, but tripped over a stone jutting from the ground. She would have fallen, had Brenn not been there to catch her by the elbow. She swung wide with her other arm, the torch fire streaking through the air like a comet, but she managed to hold onto it and frighten away a few faelah in the process. She hadn’t noticed how close they’d come.
“Seren!” Brenn hissed, pulling her unceremoniously to her feet. “You must keep up with us, or the faelah will pick at you like midges. The hounds can’t get them all.”
Gulping back her fear and embarrassment, she peered up at him. The hood still covered most of his face, but his eyes reflected the light of her torch. Tension poured off him like fog filling a low valley, but his touch, although firm, was gentle. Once again, Seren’s sentimental side begged her to forgive him of his actions this night, but her practical side won out in the end. Nodding her head vigorously, she regained her balance and adjusted her grip on the torch while at the same time putting a safe distance between herself and Brennon. Not ten feet in front of them, Rori held the bowl full of the magical blood potion, his thin arms wrapped tight around its curved sides. Brennon was holding the other torch in his free hand, and both of them had their attention trained on Seren.
“The Cumorrig startled me. I’m sorry,” she said pathetically, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
“The next standing stone isn’t all that far away, just a few more minutes worth of walking.”
Without waiting for her reply, Brenn reclaimed the bowl from Rori, then turned on his heel and strode silently down the path. Seren didn’t take the time to reflect any longer on the encounter. Instead, she hastily gathered her wits and chased after them.
The next stone loomed ahead like a lone sentry keeping watch over the harvested fields. Seren imagined it coming to life and speaking with the moon hanging far overhead. It was rather lonely out here, after all. The three Cumorrig came to an easy stop and sat in a row just outside the barrier, watching Brenn and Rori recite the words of their spell while marking the stone. Just as before, the strange symbol flared and glowed red. It continued to glow as they moved on to the next stone, their macabre entourage in tow.
The silence between the three companions grew vast enough to fill the deepness of the night. Unable to stand the lack of conversation any longer, Seren drew in a breath and asked, “Why do they follow us? The Cumorrig, I mean. Why not attack us like the other faelah?”
She had pitched her voice low, so the creatures in question would not hear her, but they twitched their rotten ears in her direction nonetheless. Seren was tempted to press herself up against Brennon’s side, but she still couldn’t shake the image of him slicing his blade down Rori’s arm.
“As I said before, they are only here to observe. Once we visit all the stones, they will leave.”
That didn’t quite answer her question, and Seren meant to ask more, but they arrived at the third standing stone, and Brenn was already murmuring the words of his incantation as he gathered up a fingertip full of thick liquid from the bowl. As soon as Rori’s own fingertip left the stone, Brenn was moving on, his nephew using the hand not clutching the torch to hold onto his uncle’s cloak. They repeated this ritual at each of the next several monoliths, and when they approached one of the small stone bridges that crossed the wide creek, Seren paused for a split second. On the other side loomed Dorcha Forest with all its shadows and night creatures. The wolfhounds had already darted ahead, disappearing into the gloom. The Cumorrig, Seren noticed with fascinated horror, had scrambled atop a fallen tree and were crossing the water that way. She thought they resembled giant rats seeking high ground during a flood.
Brennon stepped onto the bridge and crossed it in several long strides. Rori followed close behind but had let go of his uncle’s cloak. He held the torch high and used the hand of his other arm to trail along the short wall on one side of the path. Not wanting to be left behind, Seren quickly followed them, the swift rush of the water below overriding any sounds of faelah on the other side.
Seren stuck close to Rori and Brennon as they made their way deeper into the forest. The path ahead of them was wide and clear, but there were areas where the brambles and forest shrubs grew thick on either side of them. Seren could have sworn she spotted the glowing eyes of faelah within their depths. Every snap or crack of a twig underfoot made her jump, and any cry of some animal in the distance set her heart racing. She was a child of the woods, and such a place should not unnerve her, but she could not wait to leave this deeply shadowed wood behind. Control your fear, Seren, she chastised herself.
Eventually, they came upon the standing stone Rori had showed her that morning. The monolith stood tall and cold in the meadow now bathed in white moonlight. It might have been her imagination, but Seren felt they lingered in this spot longer than the ones before it. The Cumorrig sat patiently on the other side of the stone, their burning throats glowing as they panted and waited for the party to move on. Seren had grown somewhat used to them by now, but they still made her skin crawl whenever they moved. When they were still and draped in the shadows cast by the ancient trees surrounding them, it was easy to think of the corpse-hounds as part of Brenn’s own pack.
After visiting two more stones in the forest, Brennon, Rori and Seren came to the creek once again. This time, they were much farther downstream. The bridge they took back to the other side was constructed of a stone base and a railing composed of living branches woven together. It was difficult to see anything in the dark, but when Seren held up her torch, the light reflected off something wide and flat to the right of them.
“What is that?” she mused quietly, more to herself than anyone in particular.
“The Shallows,” Rori whispered, his voice warming a little. “We’ve reached the Shallows.”
He turned and gave Seren a slight grin. “I can tell by the way the water falls here.” He wrinkled his nose. “It sounds ... different.”
Seren blinked down at him and then returned her attention to the black expanse of what she now recognized as water stretching ahead of them.
“The twentieth standing stone is on the other end of the Shallows,” Brennon was saying, stepping down onto the trail to lead them onward.
From the light cast by the two torches, and the shards of moonlight filtering through the nearby trees, Seren could make out a few of the details of this new place. The creek flowed into a series of small ponds set into the side of the sloping land like wide steps. On the far end, a few dozen yards or more away, the stream continued on its westward path. Despite herself, Seren felt a small smile tug at her mouth. She imagined this place was a paradise in the spring and summer months. Now, the water sat cold and black, waiting for winter’s frost to freeze it in place.
The stone beside the pond wasn’t as tall as the ones they had visited earlier, but Brenn and Rori dutifully performed their ritual while the diligent Cumorrig watched on. Afterward, their path curved back toward the house, and soon, the scattered trees gave way to the rolling farmland once again. For the first time that night, Seren succumbed to a wide yawn and resisted the urge to rub her eyes. In the distance and to their left, she could make out the rise of the hill and the dark shape of the house awaiting their return. She hoped the faelah had stayed away while they were gone, having been too distracted by the people out wandering the countryside at night to bother with an empty farmhouse. The moon was closer to the western edge of the sky now, and Seren thought the long reaching shadows it cast towar
d the house looked like the claws of some dark demon.
Shaking that thought from her head, she peered straight ahead and noted the remaining standing stones. Five more. Only five more. She felt like she might collapse at any moment, but she could make it through five more stops.
Brennon must have felt the same way as she did, because he picked up his pace, like a horse catching sight of its stable after a long ride.
Despite his obvious desire to return to the warmth and safety of the manor house, Brenn was careful to take his time with the ritual at each of the remaining stones. Finally, they reached the last monolith, the one so very close to the one they started with. To Seren’s astonishment, the symbols they had drawn earlier in the night still glowed like hot coals upon the surface of the rock. She found herself wondering how long the effect would last.
“Until the sun rises in the morning,” Brenn said wearily, when she asked.
Seren took a spare moment to study the Faelorehn man in the weak torchlight. His determined reserve had been whittled down to weary acceptance, and she imagined he was barely keeping control of whatever haunted him. All throughout the evening, she had wanted to bolt from him, to put distance between herself and this man who had proven to be nothing more than a monster, after all. But was he, really? He had done something monstrous, to be sure, yet he took absolutely no pleasure in it. Seren had been avoiding him because she was afraid, or maybe more so because, despite the heinous ritual, she still wanted to trust him. To like him. Even now, she wished to move in close, to lay her hands upon his bare skin and send her healing glamour into him. To comfort a soul who was clearly suffering.
Ack! No, Seren. Nothing but heartache lies waiting along that path.
Instead, she curled the fingers of one hand into a fist and clenched her teeth.
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