Even as he fought the blackness threatening him from the expenditure of magic, an invisible line wrapped about the elychher’s hind leg, anchored to the room—just as the fey beast attempted to bound to safety. Taken by surprise, the elychher fought the magical lasso that had caught it, fighting to flee. It kicked out to no avail. Flipping over, looking back into the room, and mewling in fearful panic.
As the wall closed upon its body.
Bones snapped as the beast roared pain, blood bursting from its broken chest, shoulders. and back. The wall ground to a sudden halt, but it was too late. The elychher lay jammed between two rooms, dying, crushed.
“Is it dead?” Snedeker asked, hovering high in the ceiling.
Richard took a steadying breath. He approached the elychher, the Dark Thorn held protectively before him.
He would not need it. The beast died with every slowing gulp of air.
“Your watchdog is dead, wizard!” the Heliwr yelled, euphoria replacing the weakness that gripped his being. “What do you have to say about that?!”
No answer came. He gripped the magical tendril that still roped about the elychher and pulled, to remove the beast and leave the room through the opening. Eyes of alien shape stared at the knight. With rage. Malevolence. But first of all, fear. As its life faded, Richard realized he saw more—an all too human and terrible intelligence.
“What now, Rick?” the fairy asked, landing on his shoulder. “Find the wizard and end his sorrowful existence?”
Before Richard could reply, the elychher began to change following its final breath. Fur gave way to skin; paws melted into hands. Even the bones that jutted out of the fey beast shrank and transformed, no less splintered but eerily recognizable.
Where the elychher had been, a naked man lay.
“Goatsack,” Snedeker cursed. “A shapeshifter.”
“You are as observant as ever,” Richard snorted, barely able to comprehend what had just happened. “It is Moreau. We were wrong. He never caught an elychher. He merely took on its form.” The knight looked around at the walls that slowly began to shift back to their natural state. “Damn wizards. And especially damn this wizard.”
“We need to get you a healer,” Snedeker observed, picking past the knight’s shredded clothing to examine his wounds.
“No. Not yet.” Richard looked down on the dead wizard even as he fought to bring what magic remained his to the fore. “Time to find this wizard’s vault before it falls into the wrong hands.”
Richard sent the butt of the Dark Thorn into the stone. The staff born of Glastonbury Abbey’s Holy Thorn entered the building easily, becoming one with it through his magic. Richard focused, drawing on reserves he did not know he had. He sent his senses outward, seeking the room containing the most power. His magic snaked into the building, twisting and turning, finding its way out of the now dead labyrinth.
Results returned immediately. Richard knew the location of the wizard’s most treasured possessions, the path seen by the fairy as well.
“Do you know your way, Snedeker?”
“Already gone.”
The room’s true door now revealed, Snedeker flew beyond, guiding the Heliwr, both companions still wary despite the death of Moreau. Wizards were notorious for their traps remaining active long after they had left a place or passed on. They encountered no danger though. Still bleeding from several major wounds, Richard was thankful he didn’t need to call on his depleted magic again. After twists, turns, and staircases, he came to a wall that was no wall.
“How will you get in?” Snedeker asked, hovering over the knight’s shoulder.
Richard gathered his will. “I hope with Moreau’s death his vault is no longer sealed with traps.”
The knight placed his hands upon the cool stone. He first sought any wards that were placed to prevent this very sort of attempt. There were none. Christophe Moreau had been arrogant to his very last, believing his labyrinth protection enough. Richard called upon the earth beneath the building, the magic inherent in the world bolstering his ability to dissolve stone. A glow spread from his fingertips as he concentrated. Then without a sound, part of the wall vanished in a flash, revealing a circular door as tall as a man.
Richard gestured to Snedeker. The fairy flew inside, seeking danger.
Not sensing any, the Heliwr followed.
It was a large square room, as ornate as the mansion but unlike any of the rooms Richard had been in thus far, the crystal chandelier overhead beginning to glow with their entrance. Magic thrummed in the air, power so palpable that the knight could feel it in his very bones. That was not what staggered him though. Items of various intent and design lay upon hundreds of pedestals throughout the room, each bearing a unique artifact from centuries past. A sword here. A helmet there. A scroll encased in glass or a bone from an unknown creature. Pieces of jewelry, leather books, and clothing. Relics filled the room, Christophe Moreau building a collection that rivaled even the Pope’s secret vault in St. Peter’s. There was no way the Heliwr could take it all with him. Instead, he would have to request help from Merle to gather it.
“We have done our job,” Richard said, still gazing about the room with its marvelous collection. “The elychher is dead. Moreau is no more. I will seal the room. No one will enter. And Merle can decide how to best handle this.”
Snedeker nodded absently, ignoring him as he flew throughout the room as if casting what to steal.
Just as the Heliwr was about to seal the annoying fairy within the room to prove yet another point, Richard’s gaze fell on a crystal object larger than a Faberge egg but shaped similarly.
“Holy shit,” he murmured.
“What is it?” Snedeker asked, now suddenly interested.
Richard limped toward the center of the room. The egg-shaped item sat on a pedestal of granite, higher than the rest. The crystal was not clear but ash-colored like black topaz. The Heliwr gained the item and stared into its depths. Within, an orange and purplish light danced, alive. Snedeker hovered before the relic and a look of greed Richard had observed in the fairy multiple times overtook him.
None of that mattered though. Richard could not believe what he beheld.
“Well?” the fairy whispered. “What is it, Rick?”
The knight couldn’t bring himself to touch it. “It is one of the rarest items this world or Annwn has ever seen.”
Snedeker couldn’t take his eyes off of it.
“So?! What is it?”
Richard touched it then, even though it felt blasphemous to do so. The crystal was alive, warm to the touch. A soft whisper entered his mind, one of rising rebirth and fire, of desire to live once more after many centuries of not.
The knight took a deep breath.
And wondered what the hell he had just gotten himself into.
“It, my dear Snedeker, is a phoenix egg.”
“This is not only an unrisen phoenix, McAllister,” Aengus Doughal said, the ancient Arch Druid running his hand over the crystal facets of the beautiful egg that now sat upon his desk. “It is the last known phoenix egg in either world.”
Richard watched the tiny dancing flame within the egg, wondering at its history. He had taken it from Christophe Moreau’s home, the only item removed because it demanded immediate answers. He now sat in the highest tower of Caer Dathal the New, the northern home to the Druid order, mostly recovered from his ordeal in Paris. The sounds of rebuilding were faint, construction on the damaged castle keep beginning once the Everwinter had thawed and spring become renewed. The vault the two men sat within had not fallen to the machinations of witch and wraith, its contents secured and saved, even as the majority of the castle had been severely broken. The Druid keep would be rebuilt as it had before in the order’s history, and life would return to eventual educational and magical normalcy.
Richard marveled at the strength of people. Evil took no root in ground that was not fertile for it.
And if it did, it could be overcome.
“Myrddin Emrys does not know everything, Heliwr. And neither do I,” Aengus answered, tugging at his thick russet beard. “I know little concerning this particular past. The phoenix has long been extinct. Although some of the Druids who came before me marked that passing, and with written sadness.”
Richard nodded. “We now know it not to be extinct.”
“No. It is not,” Aengus said, nodding. “Very interesting.”
Richard leaned back in his chair, thinking. “How did this egg survive then?”
The Arch Druid went to the wall behind his desk and spoke a combination of words Richard could not hear. He watched as the wall vanished to reveal a hidden cache of preserved histories. Aengus grabbed a tome larger than the others, its metal bindings more ancient and its leather more aged, cradling it as a mother would an infant. He set it on his desk. Once the Arch Druid read a book it became a part of him; he was possessed of an ability to recall exactly where he had learned something new. Richard liked Aengus a great deal. He had an impeccably organized mind and a scholarly nature; he also had a stubbornness that rivaled Richard’s own, a talent that had seen him through the hardest of lives.
“Here is the first passage I read about the phoenixes of old,” Aengus said, flipping to a specific page and showing Richard. The knight stood over the desk to look.
It was a simple message, scrawled in a beautiful but older script:
Ash upon the Mountain bed, Fire birthed beneath,
What has Fallen shall Rise from whence it came.
“That sounds like prophecy,” Richard mused.
“I have learned to not put much stock in prophecy. It is merely a plot device for poor fairy tales,” Aengus said, giving Richard a dark gaze. “This book, however, is a history that recounts many of Annwn’s magical elements. In this case, the phoenix belongs to neither the Seelie nor the Unseelie. It is a creature born of fire, earth, and wind. The passage I read does give insight into the life and death of the phoenix before its supposed extinction and a set of directions about its rebirth. We have no way of knowing if this was written before or after the last known phoenix perished.”
“Ashes. But no mention of an egg,” Richard said. “Although I suppose a bed means something must lie upon it.”
“All too true. But which mountain?” The Druid read on, his eyes flitting over the page. Then he turned another. And another. Richard waited. The scholarly part of his past wished to help, but he knew the Arch Druid understood more about the craft of hunting information than the Heliwr ever would.
Without looking up, Aengus growled low and guttural.
“Call upon Druid Aderyn Hier, Paetyn and Kehndyl. I request her presence.”
Before Richard could ask to whom Aengus was speaking, bits of shadow separated from the room’s area of darkness, ink stains that coalesced into catlike forms possessing more spines and teeth than seemed physically possible for any fey creature.
“Unseelie. Vorrels, if I’m not mistaken,” Richard observed, watching the shadows dart from the private tower room. “You keep strange company, Arch Druid.”
“Present company included?” Aengus smiled. “They are friends. Like you.”
The men waited, comfortable in silence. Snedeker contemplated the phoenix egg, the fairy hypnotized by it. Richard watched it as well, considering, while the Arch Druid continued to peruse the book. There were answers to be had with the use of scholarly work. Richard understood all too well, though, that ancient knowledge tended to be fragmented—and usually useless. He hoped that would not be the case here. But he couldn’t shake the feeling he had missed something. And that something was important.
After fifteen minutes, the tower door opened and a woman like a switchblade entered. The two Vorrels were not in evidence, although Richard knew they were likely hiding in their shadows. Instead, he observed the Druid. She possessed sharp features and wrinkles. But while older than those in the room, she stood with a steely confidence and strength that belied her lean frame. Gray eyes met his, two people of power assessing the other, before she looked upon the egg.
Recognition and the surprise that followed became anger.
“Where did you find it, Aengus?” the old woman hissed, unmoving.
“Calm yourself, Aderyn,” the Arch Druid said. “You are here to ascert—”
“No!” The woman growled, already moving toward the desk. Richard gripped his seat, watching, ready to intervene if needed. “You would see it destroy Caer Dathal, Arch Druid. We must take this egg fro—”
“Silence!” Aengus thundered, leaning over his desk to prevent her from touching the egg. The other Druid went quiet, but the fire in her eyes matched that of the Arch Druid. Richard doubted it was the first time the two had butted heads.
“What is wrong?” the Heliwr asked, trying to cut the tension in the room.
“Speak with care, Aderyn,” Aengus ordered. “This is Heliwr Richard McAllister of the Yn Saith. And I will not suffer extreme emotion in this office, no matter how warranted, during his visit.”
The old woman nodded to Richard, but it held little respect, her eyes back to the egg. All the while her hands wrenched at one another. “We must leave at once with it, Arch Druid,” Aderyn Hier said more evenly now. The Druid moved to the desk but did not touch the crystal. “This egg brings great peril here. As you undoubtedly already know, it is a phoenix egg. A treasure. A curse. I thought them extinct.” She paused, her fear now mingling with something else. Wonder? “You have brought it here, Heliwr? From the world of the Misty Isles?” Richard nodded. “But you did not realize the moment you entered Annwn, the Erlqueen of the Unseelie Court became aware of its entrance as well. In this history, my studies have been clear.
“The phoenix, the dragons, and the dark fey have ever been enemies,” she continued. “The Erlqueen will hunt this egg now that it has returned to Annwn. And by doing so, you have endangered us all.”
“She can sense it?” the Heliwr asked. “How can that be?”
“The Erlqueen can sense power that matches her own,” Aderyn stated. “After all, the darkness senses the fire that can end it.”
“I know the Erlqueen. She would not do this.”
“The young woman you knew is largely gone, moved by the higher purposes of her new kin now,” Aderyn disagreed. “She has already sent the ashterbach—a creature created for one purpose—and it is already heading toward Caer Dathal from Mrenin Rath even while we sit here and waste time.”
Richard and Aengus exchanged worried glances. Because every shadow in the room had suddenly become an enemy.
“What would you have me do?” Richard questioned.
“Aderyn has studied this ancient history. It is in her past. It is why I asked her here,” Aengus offered, closing the book he had been looking over. “She has a great deal of information. I am hoping she will know. If she’s right, we will need to move quickly. If she is wrong about the Erlqueen, your quest will be simple.”
“I’d prefer simple,” Richard said.
“There is a small mountain range, to the north and east, within the Forest of Rhos,” Aderyn began, choosing her words with care as if remembering them from a long-lost book. “The phoenixes of old lived there. Far removed from the rest of Annwn and those who hated them. The wood there is quite forbidding, a natural barrier. When they died, they were reborn there, with the aid of the Anfarwol, a small sect created by those who wanted to save the rare creature.” She paused, recovered from her earlier anger. “I do not know if that sect remains. It has been several centuries since I left my home.”
Richard nodded, thinking. “You grew up there?”
“I did,” she said, looking back to the egg.
&n
bsp; “Is this even advisable?” Richard asked Aengus. “If we bring this egg to the Forest of Rhos, what does that mean? Will it be even more endangered? Can it protect itself once reborn?”
“I believe some events are random, some events are meant. We have no control over that.” The Arch Druid folded his hands before him. “If the dragons discover this egg, it will not survive. If the Unseelie Court discovers it, the line of the phoenix will end again, possibly forever. It could be taken back through the portal where it would be safe. But I believe it has resurfaced now because it is time for it to do so.” He paused. “Make no mistake though, McAllister. Anyone and anything in its presence will be hunted. Perhaps killed. That means you and your fairy guide. It will be a difficult road for you.”
Richard wanted to laugh darkly. “That road I have traveled many times.”
“Then I wish you both safe travels,” Aengus said.
“You will not join us?”
The Arch Druid gave a grave look. “I would see these creatures restored. Extinction from prejudice is not natural. Yet the egg’s presence within Caer Dathal has likely already drawn unwanted attention, attention that is all too powerful. I must remain to protect my charge as Arch Druid.”
“I don’t envy your role,” Richard admitted.
The two men shook upon their parting. Richard saw understanding and empathy in the other. Aderyn stood nearby as if carved from stone.
“I would join you, Heliwr,” she said.
“I cannot ask that of you, Aderyn Hier,” Richard said, shaking his head. “I have been in these situations before. It will be dangerous. Likely more than you know.”
“I am not a waif, knight.”
Richard deferred to the Arch Druid. “Aderyn will accompany you,” Aengus said, looking into the egg’s interior. The purple-orange glow illuminated his rugged features. Richard wondered what he saw within those depths. “She is tougher than the winter’s hardest leather, and she knows the area and the history.”
Richard nodded. “It is settled then.” The Heliwr retrieved the egg from the desk and gently returned it to a large knapsack. Snedeker watched, the fairy wilting when the egg vanished from sight.
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