Veins of Magic

by Emma Hamm

  “I won't let him.”

  “By controlling him?” Ethniu leaned back and squeezed her hands. Vibrant eyes stared into hers with more knowledge than any person should hold. “You’ve already controlled him once, Sorcha. He knows what you are capable of and that is why he is so frightened.”

  “If he truly knew what I was capable of, then he would not be afraid. I will not hurt anyone.”

  “Throw the sword off the cliffs of the castle, and I will hide it in a place where it will not surface again.”

  “Where?”

  “I will give it back to my husband. The Tuatha dé Danann have no desire to change the course of this story. We’re enjoying watching you. Druids are unpredictable in their choices, and you far more than the rest.”

  “There are others?” Sorcha blinked, her heart squeezing as hope lifted her chin. “Are there are other druids who live?”

  “Yes, although you are all spread out. I do not know if you have ever met another, but I feel as though you may some time in your life.”

  “Will you take me to them?”

  “That would meddle with the story, and unlike your Unseelie friend, I dislike meddling.”

  Ethniu stood, the furs on her shoulders touching Sorcha’s hands. They were impossibly soft, smooth, like that of a rabbit rather than a sheep. But Sorcha had never seen a rabbit large enough to create a seamless shoulder piece.

  Where was this giant woman from?

  “Thank you, granddaughter, for sparing a relic of the Tuatha dé Danann. For that, I will look after you in the coming days.”

  “What is coming?” she asked.

  “War. Violence. Death. All the things you have feared, they follow your lover’s footsteps like a loyal dog.”

  “Is there any way to shake him free from that grasp?”

  “Not that I know of,” Ethniu breathed. “But I believe you may find a way.”

  Sorcha closed her eyes as sorrow coursed through her veins. She wanted this to end. Everything. Every bit of hatred and anger that spread through the Fae like wildfire through a dry forest. They deserved happiness.

  She deserved happiness, and it wasn’t fair they weren’t allowed to have it. After all she had been through, after all she had given up, she was still stuck here waiting for the moment when her life would begin again.

  “Ethniu,” she called out, “I need your guidance. He is so much like his grandfather, warlord more than politician, that I do not know what his next step will be.”

  Silence was her answer. Sorcha opened her eyes and glanced around the grove which had fallen so quiet. Ethniu had disappeared.

  A cricket strummed a tentative tune, growing louder when it realized nothing would speak again. It was as if the meeting had never occurred.

  Cold air brushed across her skin, lifting the tiny hairs until Sorcha rubbed at her arms. The Fomorian had been far more unsettling than the Tuatha dé Danann.

  What did that mean? Was she so unsettled by her own people?

  “Yes.” She let the word fly into the wind, in case Ethniu was listening to her thoughts. “I am.”

  All she knew was there was now a step to take. A beginning to the end in the form of a sword and a cliff.

  She had to find it.

  “I’m not telling you, girl. Off with you!”

  “I healed you, Cian! You must pay with something.”

  He blew air at her, flabs of skin turning bright red in anger. “If I had known the payment for healing would betray my master, then I would have gone elsewhere!”

  “You’re not betraying him! Stop being dramatic.”

  “I am! You don’t want that sword for just anything, I know you girl.” He waggled a finger at her. “You’re up to something.”

  “I am not.”

  “Yes you are.”

  “I’m sorry, did you somehow learn to read minds while you were off on your adventure? If I tell you I’m not up to anything, then I’m not!”

  Oona opened the door to the kitchen with a loud crash. Her arms were full of carrots, so large they piled nearly above her head. “Are you two arguing again?”

  “Bartering,” Sorcha corrected. “Do you need help?”

  “No, dearie, I’m just dropping these off before I go back out. Those dwarves grow the most impressive vegetables!”

  She dumped her armload in the corner of the room with a loud bang. Dusting her hands on her skirts, she turned back to them and shrugged.

  “Do they?” Sorcha asked. “Strange, I thought gnomes were renowned for gardening.”

  Cian hopped up to smack her shoulder. “We are!”

  “You made nothing so impressive. I wonder if size difference matters?”

  “Excuse me?”

  She’d never seen the gnome look so angry. His face turned tomato red, and every roll jiggled as he held himself in check.

  Peals of laughter filled the room. Oona leaned against the table and wiped tears from her eyes. “Do you think it’s because he’s so small, dearie?”

  “Well the height difference certainly makes me consider that the dwarves, with a few extra inches, may have a significant advantage.”

  “It’s a good thing to be closer to the earth!” Cian shouted. “That’s where all the plants are!”

  “I’ll stop teasing if you tell me where it is.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Oona? Have you ever heard the joke about the gnome and the dwarf who met the same lovely elven lady? She said she would only sleep with one, but that it all depended on how large the faeries was. So, both men turned and pulled down their trousers—”

  “Enough!” Cian shouted.

  Oona looked as though she might burst. Giggles shook her form until her wings rattled. “What is it that he’s hiding from you, dearie?”

  “I want to know where Eamonn is keeping the Sword of Light.”

  “In the treasury, love. It’s the safest place for it.”

  “Oona!” Cian shouted. “The girl is up to something! Don’t tell her where it is!”

  “Thank you, Pixie.” Sorcha dropped a kiss to her cheek as she passed. “That’s exactly what I wanted. Cian, if you follow me I will drop you in a bin you won’t be able to climb out of.”

  “You wouldn’t dare!”

  “Try me. I’m all too happy to see what happens when you stuff an angry gnome in a barrel.”

  “Fine then! You can handle Eamonn when he finds you.”

  She absolutely would. The man might be intimidating, but he knew what she was like when she wanted something. Sorcha didn’t know how to stop.

  She left the kitchen with a smile on her face. One step closer to her next goal. Life was turning around.

  In the cold quiet of the hall, she took a deep breath and reached deep into the well of power inside her. It still felt unnatural. Almost as though there was something else inside her, a woman she didn’t quite know yet but could feel.

  “Ancestors?” she asked. “I need to know where the treasury is.”

  They didn’t answer her immediately. The longer she remained in the castle, the more they saw fit to leave her alone. Sometimes she went days without feeling their hands on her skirts.

  The ghosts were kind, but odd. They didn’t react to things the way normal people did. A tea kettle shrieked, and they flew out of the room in a panic. Swords striking against each other would invigorate them to beg Sorcha to train. Horses pawing the ground almost made the ancestors visible.

  She had yet to discover the key to what frightened them and what they liked.

  The halls were quiet this time of day. Every dwarf in the area dedicated their attention to finishing the castle as soon as possible. Eamonn was in the training yard with those who were working and Bran, who had shown up again.

  Sorcha grinned. The Unseelie continued to say he didn’t like them all that much, and that they were more work than they were worth. Yet, here he was. This time training with the dwarves and teaching them all the ways to fight dirty.


  A voice whispered in her ear, “The Unseelie throws them to the dirt and laughs.”

  “He’s teaching them how to fight his way.”

  “The Seelie are honorable in their battles. This dark newcomer is not.”

  “Is war honorable?” Sorcha turned down a dark hallway. She picked her way over the cracks and craters left by a battle long ago. “I have never seen a battle where the soldiers took the time to be polite.”

  “There is an etiquette to fighting.”

  “And I’m supposed to place a napkin in my lap before eating, yet I rarely do.”

  Sorcha didn’t have time for the druids to whisper their opinions in her ear. She didn’t want to be distracted while wandering the castle. The Sword of Light was far more important than debating the properties of war.

  “Is the treasury this way?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “How far?”

  “To the right and down the stairs.”

  “It’s in the dungeon?” She had only seen the dark underbelly of the castle once. The memories of screaming victims left imprints. She had left when their screams became too much for her.

  “It is beneath the dungeon.”

  “There’s further to go?”

  The voice chuckled. “The castle stretches deep into the heart of the mountain. You will find much within its belly.”

  “Well that’s not ominous at all,” she muttered.

  The ragged edges of ripped vines hung in front of the dungeon. Plants were already taking back the areas where Eamonn and his men had slipped through. Moss covered the footprints they left behind, only the faintest hint of a divot revealing she was still in the same doorway.

  Mist curled out of the opening. Sluggish and thick, it was more magic and ghostly essence than water.

  A blast of cold air rushed from the bowels of the dungeons, bringing with it the echoing call of screams.

  “I don’t want to go down there,” she said.

  “It’s the only way.”

  “Why would Eamonn put the sword in the most terrifying place?”

  “No one goes into the dungeons.”

  “No one but foolish women who want to help,” Sorcha corrected. “After all, why else would any sane person walk through this haunted place?”

  “You traveled through the Unseelie court.”

  She shuddered. “Yes, I did. And it was eerily similar to this place.”

  “The Unseelie gather souls like gemstones. They let them wander through their dark castle hallways so they never truly die. They like to watch the specters relive their death over and over again.”

  “Of course they do. That fits with all the things I remember,” she said as she brushed aside a vine and started down the long stairwell.

  Each step squelched underneath her booted feet. The moss covered steps were dangerously slippery, but no railing guided her way. Instead, Sorcha placed her hands on the walls and made her way while holding her breath.

  Slipping and falling would end poorly. No one would know where she was, other than Cian and Oona. She didn’t see them often enough for them to raise the alarm.

  She repeated all the ways she could help a head injury to herself. “Check the pupils to ensure they are not dilated. If they are, keep the patient awake for as long as possible. Wrap the wound with white fabric so the bleeding will stem, and to create an easy way to monitor any potential wound. Pack with yarrow and mugwort to stem the bleeding and prevent internal bleeding.”

  She recited another directive on how to help injured people with each step. It calmed her. She remembered how to heal, and that meant she had not changed. Druid blood ran through her veins, faeries worked around her, but Sorcha was still the same person.

  She could say it over and over again, but she wasn’t certain how true the thought was.

  Reaching the bottom, she pressed a hand against her chest in relief.

  “There. Now where do we go?”

  A druid soul wrapped around her bicep. “Past the cells.”

  “Really?” Sorcha groaned. “I don’t want to go all the way back there.”

  “You want to go to the treasury?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want to climb the cliffs?”

  “I don’t think I know how to do that.”

  “Then you go forward.”

  Sighing, she started forward with her shoulders set. If she had to walk by all those deranged souls, she would. But she refused to look as if she was afraid.

  A clanging started up as soon as she moved. The souls liked to throw stones, rattled their cages, anything they could do to get her to look at them.

  Sorcha wasn’t sure if the others could see them. Eamonn hadn’t reacted when a faerie soul who’s jaw hung limp from its socket billowed through him. She had seen it, gasping in shock and horror.

  He had looked at her as if she had gone insane. Sorcha knew what she had seen, the green glowing light of the dead man hadn’t been magic. It was the fiber of what made him live.

  Souls shouldn’t pass through solid bodies.

  She told herself not to look. The cells weren’t filled with real people, these were the last remaining pieces of souls that replayed over and over again. She could do nothing to help them.

  But she looked. Sorcha glanced over at the nearest cell and immediately regretted her decision. A dryad, masculine and covered in bark, grinned at her. There was a gaping hole where his heart should be and sap oozed down his skin in tiny rivers.

  “Hello, pretty girl,” he said, the muscles on his face twitching. “Want to help a man out?”

  “You’re dead,” she told him. “You have no place in the land of the living.”

  “It is my job to remind people like you what waits for them at the end of the dying light. Join me. Share your beauty and I will save you from the darkness.”

  “Be gone.”

  A druid pressed its ghostly against her spine, smelling like pine and earth. “Weaver, use your magic.”

  Could she? She looked over at the spirit of the faerie and wondered just how far her power stretched. She could compel him to keep his mouth shut.

  But there were better things to do.

  The ghostly guidance of her ancestors helped pull thread from her flaxen magic. She spun it in her mind and wove it around the thread of the dryad spirit. Tugging lightly, her fingers danced in the air.

  His eyes widened. “What are you doing?”

  Sorcha didn’t know. Her magic and everything she was capable of felt new and shiny. Fingers gracefully swaying in the air, she mimicked sewing a thread through a tapestry.

  “I release you from this realm,” she said. The magic needle between her fingers dipped. “Go home to your ancestors and family. Tell them of your journey and adventures, feel peace in the comfort of their arms.”

  “How?” The spirit looked down at his arms which were slowly losing form. “This is impossible.”

  “You have earned the right to death, warrior. Find your eternity.”

  “What have you done?” He looked her in the eye, horror and fear glimmering in their depths.

  “I have released you.”

  “Thank you.”

  He dissolved into thin air. She felt the pull of his soul disappearing even as the energy left her own body. Every time she controlled a faerie, she felt it deep in her gut.

  “You did well,” the druid whispered in her ear. “Far better than expected.”

  Sorcha didn’t respond. Controlling even the remnants of a soul felt wrong. It was the reason she was in this dungeon. Preventing others from controlling the free will and mind of faeries meant more to her than life itself.

  And then she used such power herself.

  The floor grew slick with moss and algae. The souls shook the bars of their prisons, screaming their rage and anger into the air until Sorcha’s headache blossomed again. She did not stop and help any of the others.

  “There,” the voice proclaimed. “The trea
sure room is ahead.”

  She saw the door now. Gemstone encrusted hinges fairly glowed in the dim light. A sweeping movement had recently disturbed the dust on the floor.

  The door handle was molded into the shape of a snake. It reared up with an open mouth, waiting for her to place a hand upon its metal surface. Gritting her teeth, Sorcha tentatively grasped the silver metal and pulled the door open.

  Faint light filtered through slits on the walls which let salty air stir the room beyond. Roots hung from the ceiling, tangled and gnarled. Bats squeaked above her. Sorcha could just barely make out their small, fuzzy forms.

  Graceful archways were carved with legends and myths, Tuatha dé Danann battling back beasts. Hallways split off from the main chamber, suggesting rooms upon rooms of ancient knowledge and treasure.

  She was not here for the riches.

  “Where is it?” she asked the druid souls.

  “Clasped in the hands of the most ancient king.”

  “Which king?”

  “Walk towards the center.”

  Movement in the shadows caught her eye. She glanced over to see the ghostly specter of her grandfather. Beads embellished his full beard and a sparkle in his eye made her worried.

  “Grandfather,” she acknowledged.

  “Are you certain this is the path you wish to take?”

  “There are many ways to alter the future. I wish to walk the path with the least death.”

  “Then you have chosen correctly. Towards the back of the room is my own tomb. You will find the sword in my corpse’s hands.”

  “You really are dead?” Balor seemed like he was impossible to kill.

  “Even the most ancient of beings must die, my dear child.”

  A stiff breeze passed through him, and he faded away into green light. Sorcha took a deep steadying breath and made her way across the wide antechamber.

  The tomb was relatively simple for a god who had made such an impact. A rectangular stone with a plain cover. No carvings marked him as anything other than one of many soldiers who had died in this land.

  For that, Sorcha felt her heart soften towards Balor the great. She ran her hand over the top, noting the crumbled stone at her feet.

  “You chose a plain coffin?” she asked.