I could feel the power in the place, too. A hauntingly familiar but different feel. Asi had been here. The Masked Lords spearhead had been their ritual team.
Their god-killers.
If the great hall was the entryway to Tír fo Thuinn and the primary eating space, the main annex was the throne room. I didn’t know the layout of the fortress, but I knew that it would be where Ankaris would hold court.
And very clearly, the attackers had known the layout of the fortress. Delacroix led me through a set of large double doors and then stopped dead in her tracks.
I stepped past her and studied the space. The main annex had been a beautiful space. The ancient stones had been worn smooth by thousands of years’ worth of feet, with statues and tapestries added over time to smooth whatever harsh edges remained.
Murals covered the walls, depicting scenes lost to even fae myth. Even the furniture was artifacts of another time. A single piece from this room would have made any human archeologist’s career—or fortune, if they were willing to sell it.
And it had been smashed to pieces. Ankaris was not a Power, but he was a member of the High Court, filled with the energy and strength of his role and bearing artifacts easily as powerful as the spear I carried.
He had fought with all of his power, but the Masked Lords had come with Asi and a spell written to kill gods. I could feel the tear where they’d entered Between when they were done…but their bloody work had been done before they left.
A raised stone dais led up to an ancient throne, both carved from the island’s living stone. Ankaris was sprawled across the lower steps, his emerald armor cracked and burned. The horned helm of the Horned King was in his lap, his head bare and showing that his armor had survived better than he had.
“My lord!”
I’d crossed the room to him before I even saw someone was kneeling next to him. The green-armored woman with the massive two-handed sword was unfamiliar to me, but she was cradling Ankaris’s hand.
“It’s too late,” she told me softly. “They…they broke his soul. He’s dying.”
I knelt by my cousin and took his other hand in mine.
“Ankaris, can you hear me?” I asked.
“Jason,” he croaked. “Good. I needed…someone. Someone to stand witness.”
“We can save you,” I told him. I wasn’t sure how, but I suspected if anything could…it would be Esras.
“No, you can’t,” he told me with a cough. “My energy…my power is fleeing me. I don’t even know why I’m not dead yet…the spell should have killed me instantly. But it gives us time.”
“What do you need?” I asked. I didn’t truly know Ankaris, not well. We were cousins and he’d declared me a Noble of his Hunt, but we’d only had six months to learn about each other.
“Stand witness,” he told me firmly. “Pull me up.”
I helped him sit up, then held him up as he coughed blood. Fae blood looked much the same as human blood normally…but right now, Ankaris’s blood was black.
He gripped the helm in his hands and gestured the woman to him.
“Grainne.” He indicated her. “First Guardian of Tír fo Thuinn. My second. My strong right hand.”
He coughed up more blood.
“Bend your head, Grainne Silverstar,” he told her. “It’ll be for the last time, I promise.”
She knelt beside us and bent her head. Without further ceremony, Ankaris shoved the green helmet with its ancient antlers onto her head.
“I declare you my heir, the new Horned King,” he said weakly. “Witness this, Jason Calebrantson!”
“I witness,” I said quietly. “With eyes and ears and heart, I stand witness. Thrice it is witnessed…and it is done.”
“So…it had to be,” Ankaris coughed. “I’m sorry, Jason…in the end, I guess I wasn’t very good fam…”
And in mid-word, Ankaris the Horned King died.
33
Dawn rose over the North Sea with a chilly wind that managed to cut down into the artificial bowl that housed Tír fo Thuinn. It had been a busy and heart-wrenching night.
Bodies were lined up on the grass outside the fortress. Hunters and Companions alike were covered in white sheets as we prepared to commit them to the catacombs beneath the ancient fortress.
A massive pyre burned in the northwest corner of the island, the Masked Lords’ soldiers and mercenaries given the most cursory of rites before we cleared their bodies away.
Damh Coleman was kneeling in the weakly growing light, looking out over the field of bodies, when I joined him.
“Damh,” I greeted him, making sure he knew I was there. I was tired—everyone there was—but it was more for him.
He gestured at the dead.
“I knew every one of them,” he said quietly. “The Hunt was never very large, Jason. A few dozen troop captains reporting to fourteen Nobles and three Guardians. I didn’t just know my fellow officers. I knew every Hunter and most of the Companions.”
“I figured,” I told him. “I only really knew Ankaris. Which was bad enough. I’m sorry.”
I shook my head and laid my hand on his shoulder.
“Our troop?” I asked.
“Fine,” he said with a shake of his own head. “Everyone’s fine. We came to the end of the party, when the Masked Lords had already left and their minions were retreating. Too late to make a difference.”
“We couldn’t stay in Malta,” I reminded him. “The Titaness’s patience was limited, as was our ability to avoid the local police. We had to leave…and once we were Between, there was nothing we could do to change what happened here.”
“I know.” He sighed. “I don’t know if the Hunt will recover from this. Half or more of us are dead on this field, Jason. We are broken.”
And with the Hunt, much of High Court’s power. The Masked Lords had spent money and blood like water on this attack, and it had won half their war for them in a single swoop.
“Master Kilkenny,” someone called. I turned to see one of the walking wounded—a Companion who’d taken a cold iron round in an extremity and lived—walking toward me.
“What is it?” I asked.
“King Grainne has called a meeting of the Nobles and captains,” she told me. “To see where we go from here, I guess. In thirty minutes in the great hall.”
“We’ll be there,” I promised. “Nowhere else to be right now.”
The courier nodded and continued on, looking for the other survivors of the Hunt’s command structure.
“You going to be okay, Damh?” I asked.
“Ask me in a week. I don’t know yet,” he admitted. “Once we’ve got them laid to rest in the catacombs and we know more about what we’re going to do, I might know.”
“What about Ankaris?”
“He goes in the catacombs, too. The deepest levels, the ones only magic keeps dry.” Damh snorted. “Next to your father, now that I think about it.”
I hadn’t really had time to register much of Grainne Silverstar before, what with my cousin and commanding officer dying in front of me. Now, as the last survivors of the Hunt’s officers gathered in the great hall, I took a moment to assess the new Horned King.
She was a tall woman even for a fae, towering at least six inches over six feet. She had copper-red hair cropped short against her scalp in what might have been called a pixie cut on a less intimidating woman.
Her shoulders were broad and heavily muscled, a clear result of the massive two-handed sword she now had strapped to her back. She’d shed the green armor of the previous night in favor of a dark green suit, and she looked over her new subordinates with hollow eyes.
Including myself, there were four remaining Nobles of the Wild Hunt. With Silverstar’s promotion, Delacroix was the last remaining Guardian. Fourteen troop captains, including Damh Coleman, sat with us.
Twenty fae, all Hunters.
“How many?” Silverstar finally asked, looking at us. “How many are left?”
Quiet numbers came f
rom each of the troop captains, reporting how many of their Hunters and Companions survived. It was a sobering picture. The remaining troops had absorbed the survivors who’d reported to dead troop captains, but Coleman’s troop—already short people from the fight in Malta—was the most intact.
A troop was supposed to be sixteen fae, plus the troop captain themselves. All told, including everyone in this room, the remaining Wild Hunt was under two hundred people.
“Recruiting doesn’t really help us much,” Silverstar said bluntly. “There aren’t very many Hunters outside our ranks to begin with. Even if we could somehow draft them all, that would only allow us to assemble another troop at most.
“The Wild Hunt is going to be a weaker force than we have been, but that is the world we now live in,” she continued. “I am attempting to make contact with the rest of the High Court, but I have had no luck. I believe I would know if they were dead, but they are not responding to any form of communication available to me.
“We now have no choice but to prepare for war.” She sighed. “In fact, I see no choice but to abandon Tír fo Thuinn, at least for now. Our sanctuary has become a target. I now have the power to seal the defenses so no one except the Horned King can open them. Our home and our honored dead will be safe, but we must turn our focus to the outside world.”
No one looked happy with that, but she wasn’t wrong. With only a fraction of our original strength, if we were to fulfill our duty and protect the High Court, we had to leave the fortress.
“I need you all to speak with the Vassals among us,” she ordered. “Their links to their lieges will be our best tool for tracing the people we are supposed to protect. Something has gone wrong, beyond what we can see, and I fear for the safety of the entire High Court.”
She made a dismissive gesture.
“Get to it,” she snapped. “Kilkenny, remain. We need to speak in private.”
Coleman hesitated as the rest left, but I gestured for him to follow. Whatever Silverstar had to say, I didn’t have much choice but to listen. Even if the woman had just held a “meeting” that had consisted of her snapping orders at everyone.
After a minute, we were alone in the great hall and I found myself looking up at the new Horned King, one of the largest women I’d ever met.
Fae titles were odd to someone who’d grown up in the mortal world. It didn’t matter what gender the Horned King was. They were always the Horned King. Same with the Queen of the Fae, the Ladies of the seasons and the rest.
The Puck was, from what Mabona had told me, a shapeshifter who refused to let anyone hang a gender on them. Or, well, anything else.
“Ankaris is dead,” Silverstar said calmly. “Remember that, Kilkenny.”
That was…not what I’d been expecting.
“I don’t think I’m likely to forget,” I replied slowly.
“I am not Ankaris,” she continued. “I am not blinded by some strange concept of familial loyalty or hanging on to the last scraps of a favorite uncle’s legacy. Your place here is from his weakness, not mine.”
Ah. Okay, that I could follow, I suppose. I was a Noble of the Wild Hunt by Ankaris’s word, but I remained a changeling, a quarter-human. That didn’t sit well with many fae.
Apparently, the new Horned King was one of those fae.
“Perhaps,” I allowed. “But my place is what it is now, isn’t it? And we have a job to do.”
“And no time for the trials and tribulations needed to remove you or replace you,” she admitted. “But we have at least one issue we can clear up.”
She held out her hand.
“Give me the spear.”
I hesitated.
“I’m sorry, what?” I asked.
“I warned you once,” she snapped. “I am not Ankaris. Do not defy me or I will strike you down. The Spear of Lugh is not yours. It belongs in the hands of the heir of Lugh, the Horned King. It is part of my regalia, not yours to claim by your father’s mistake or your weak blood link.
“Give. Me. The. Spear.”
Her power flared out around her, a green-tinted shadow seeming to fill the immense room as she glared at me and ground out her command.
Even so, for a moment I was tempted to defy her. It was in Silverstar’s power to command me, yes, but I also answered to the Queen. As Mabona’s Vassal, I could defy the new Horned King.
It would probably see me expelled from the Wild Hunt, but she could not kill me without angering Mabona. And Silverstar, like Ankaris before her, was not a full Power.
Mabona was.
That would trigger another civil war, one we could ill afford as the Masked Lords hammered on our gates. I slowly nodded, lifting Esras from the ground and offering it to her.
The moment she yanked the spear from my grip, I knew it wouldn’t work. The blood bond between myself and the weapon remained, even as it was in her hand. Its power didn’t answer to her.
Even as she held it with both hands and focused her energy on it, I knew the spear wasn’t going to change its mind.
“What have you done?” she demanded.
“Nothing,” I told her. “The blood bond remains.”
“Then remove it,” Silverstar ordered.
“I can’t,” I admitted. “Calebrant forged it. I can’t undo the work of a Power, King Silverstar. I can hand you the spear, but I can’t make it so someone who isn’t of Calebrant’s blood can wield it.”
“And if I lock the spear in the armory here with the rest of the artifacts that go unused and seal the fortress behind me, what will you do?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I told her. I wasn’t sure what her game was, but I knew I wasn’t going to argue with her. “You’re right. The spear belongs to the Horned King. If you wish me to wield in your service, I will. If you wish to lock it away forever so it can’t be used against the High Court again, that is your right.”
She shifted her grip on the spear, and I was reminded that there was one way to break the blood bond. If she killed me with Esras, that would definitely release the spear so she could wield it.
For a few seconds, it looked like she was considering that as an option, then she swore.
“Fine.” She hurled the spear at me.
Esras itself told me where to move and I sidestepped easily, catching the spear from the air with the Gift of Force and bringing it back to my hand. I bowed to the Horned King.
“I am sworn to the service of the Hunt and the Horned King. I will follow where you lead.”
“I don’t want you anywhere near me,” she snarled. “Get out of my fortress, Kilkenny. I can’t strip you of your status, but I will not pretend that you are worthy to fight with my Hunt. Go back to your pathetic house in your pathetic city. The true Hunt will end this war, don’t worry.”
There…wasn’t much I could say to that. With a stiff bow, I withdrew from the great hall of Tír fo Thuinn.
34
I ended up wandering the halls of the ancient fortress in a daze until I found myself at the entrance to the catacombs. They were normally sealed with a pair of iron gates, but those were open as we were slowly moving our dead into their permanent resting places.
Runes arced over the doorway, starting at the floor on the left and running all the way to the floor on the other side. The script was ancient, the language even older. The runes pre-dated the flood that had drowned Doggerland.
I couldn’t read them but I knew roughly what they said: Here lie our honored dead. Let them rest and never be forgotten.
In a moment of sudden decision, I stepped through the archway and into the tunnels. Strangely, I knew where to go. I wasn’t sure if that was Esras…or me.
Whatever the strange sense of direction came from, it allowed me to make my way through dark corridors with ease. The catacombs were carved from bedrock that should resist the water outside for a million years—and had been reinforced with magic regardless.
At some point recently, strings of dim LED lights had been laid throughout
the underground part of the complex. They weren’t bright, but they required almost no power and were more than enough for fae to see by.
The sconces that had once held torches were empty now, but they grew scarcer as I descended deep under the ancient fae fortress into the heart of the earth.
At the bottom, at least twenty meters deeper than the island itself, I suddenly stepped into an open space with no electric lights. I paused on the edge next to the last flight of evenly carved steps and let my eyes adjust.
There was still light in there. Not the LED of mortal artifice, but ancient sparks of power. An entire wall was natural crystal. Once, it had drawn light down from the surface, but now that light had to pass through water to even reach the crystal formation.
It was enough. After a moment, I could see that much of the crystal formation had been carved by fae hands and powers over the years. A row of statues of forbidding-looking men and women occupied half of the crystal wall, each wearing the same antlered helm.
The murky light from that crystal wall scattered gently across the barrow mounds that filled the cavern. Neat rows of mounds laid over the centuries—the millennia.
This was where dead gods were laid to rest. A rough cairn had been begun at the end of the row closest to the entrance. Stones had been brought from the surface to form the dome, and once Ankaris was laid to rest, dirt would be laid over that frame.
A new statue would eventually be added to the crystal wall, and another statue would sit at the front of the burial mound. Every mound here had a statue in front of it. Magic sustained them against time, and yet, the oldest statues were still indistinct.
The one next to what would be Ankaris’s grave mound was perfectly intact, though. Magic had carved the stone into a perfect image of the man buried beneath the grave behind it.
A man I had never met and yet whose influence continued to shape my life.
There were no names on these statues or graves. No one would come down there who didn’t know who the Horned Kings had been. Even I, who had come to the world of the fae as an adult, could recite the names of all forty-three fae in this cavern.
Noble's Honor (Changeling Blood Book 3) Page 18