by Jocelyn Fox
“Well, there you go,” I said.
“Make him swear on it,” Vell interjected suddenly, her golden eyes narrowing in distrust. An equal amount of suspicion clouded Murtagh’s handsome young face as he looked at her. Then he turned back to me.
“I will swear whatever oath you deem fit, my lady,” he said.
“First of all, enough with the formality. My name is Tess.” I tilted my head slightly, considering. “Would you swear on the Sword?”
He looked at me resolutely. “Yes.”
I reached over my head and gripped the pommel of the Sword, drawing its power into me, feeling it fill the spaces between my ribs with emerald fire, the diamond-white well of my own taebramh burning brightly beneath the green sheen. Taking a breath, I pulled even more of its power into me until my chest ached with the fierce fire. Silently I asked the Sword to dampen what power still remained in its blade, and it obediently extinguished its aura. I drew it from its sheath with one long, smooth motion. Murtagh’s slow sigh of wonder mingled with the silver hiss of the blade sliding out of the sheath. “Swear on the Sword, then,” I said, my voice layered with power.
Murtagh looked at my face and went down on one knee, bowing his head. After a moment, he raised his eyes enough to see the Sword. He extended one half-substantial hand slowly, laying it on the blade reverently. “I swear fealty to you, Bearer,” he whispered in a voice thick with pain and awe. The outline of his hand shone with a bright white light, and the Sword accepted his oath with a low, tight hum, the sound rising through the green of the forest, vibrating through Murtagh’s half-substantial form and caressing my skin like the touch of a long-lost love.
I quickly sheathed the Sword, its power rushing out of me so suddenly that I staggered. Vell grabbed my arm and Beryk pressed against the back of my legs, steadying me. When my vision cleared, I looked down at Murtagh. He stared at his hand, a glowing spark embedded in his palm. It looked much like the markings that I had bestowed on all the Sidhe fighters during the battle, saving them from the wrath of the Sword’s power. After a moment, the spark faded, and Murtagh rubbed his palm in slow circles, still on his knees.
“I’d like to see him wriggle out of that oath,” Vell murmured to me in satisfaction.
“I can hear you,” Murtagh said in irritation.
Vell smiled at him sweetly. “I know.”
Murtagh looked at Vell with a mixture of suspicion and fascination on his face, an expression that I had a feeling he would be wearing much of the time in the future. I hid my smile behind my hand and cleared my throat. Kavoryk shook his head.
“You civilized ones handle the rest of the talk,” he rumbled to me, his dark eyes glinting with amusement as he turned and made his way back to the ring of iron. I grinned at him and thought I saw an answering glimmer of white teeth in the depths of his unruly black beard, but I wasn’t entirely sure.
Vell observed Murtagh with her honey-hued gaze, eyes hooded slightly, one hand resting on her hip. Beryk lounged by her side, feigning disinterest. He yawned, pink tongue rolling out over his sharp white teeth. Murtagh tilted his head slightly, his eyes focused not on Vell but on the black wolf. He stood slowly.
“He is certainly a North-wolf prince,” he said to Vell after a moment of study. “Forgive me, I forget the name of it in your tongue.” He addressed his apology to Beryk, who observed him with steady, uncannily intelligent golden eyes.
“Herravaldyr,” Vell said. “How is it that you know anything at all about North-wolves, Walker?”
“My name is Murtagh,” the Sidhe said patiently, “and not all of us at Court are so ignorant or so painfully civilized as you might think.”
Vell snorted. “I doubt it. Just because you took a guess on Beryk and were right doesn’t mean anything at all.”
The handsome young Sidhe shrugged elegantly. “Think what you will, lady.”
“I’m not a lady,” Vell retorted with indignation. “My name is Vell…Murtagh.”
Murtagh bowed slightly. “Very well, Vell.”
I cleared my throat. “Sorry to interrupt this…scintillating…conversation, but we really should get back to work. We have to finish taking all the iron out before we…before we leave,” I finished. Murtagh had taken an oath on the Sword, but I thought that perhaps erring on the side of caution for once might be better. The less Mab knew about our plans, the better. I motioned to camp. “You can slip through this hole, I think, and find Finn—the Vaelanbrigh,” I corrected myself hastily, “if you’d like to know all the details of the battle.”
Murtagh bowed slightly to me, and as he straightened he touched two fingers to his forehead, saying, “To the True Bearer.”
I still didn’t know how to respond to this gesture of respect, so I just nodded. Murtagh rubbed his palm and smiled brilliantly at me, his face suddenly seeming much younger. He gave a little nod to both Vell and Beryk. Vell folded her arms across her chest and watched him unflinchingly as he turned and walked toward the barracks.
Brushing some of the dirt from my hands, I said, “Well, at least now we have a pair of eyes in Darkhill.”
“If Mab doesn’t tear him apart for hiding something from her,” Vell muttered.
I shrugged, picking my way through the undergrowth back toward the iron ring. “He seemed to think he could handle it.”
“He also seemed to think he was very adept at being invisible,” the Northerner pointed out drily. Beryk gave a little yip of amusement. “That was nice, with the dagger,” she continued. “Good throw. I can tell you’ve been practicing.”
I let myself smile a little. “That was pretty good,” I admitted. I twirled the dagger a few times in one hand, a move that I’d perfected only after many long hours of practice and a number of self-inflicted cuts. The last time I’d cut myself badly enough to need a bandage, I’d dripped blood on Gwyneth’s iron pendant, sending it into a forge-hot frenzy of revelation. It had been the pendant that had shown me the Sword in the river-tree, burning away the doubts in my own mind and confirming that, despite what the Prophecy read and despite Molly’s Fae lineage, I was the True Bearer of the Iron Sword. I shifted the sheath on my back, the Sword silent now but still connected to me. I felt the slow thrum of its power in my blood, like a second heartbeat.
“Come on, then,” Vell said, interrupting my thoughts. “If we want to be away before noon, we’d best pick up the pace.”
“And you accuse me of being a hard taskmaster,” I retorted as we picked our way between the shadows, looking for more markers. Vell chuckled, and then we were silent, applying ourselves with a hard focus to the task at hand. After another hour’s work, I had to tie off my bundle of shards. I slipped back into camp and found Allene, the healer who had nursed me back to health after my harrowing entry into Faortalam from the mortal world.
“Do you have any spare cloths lying around? They don’t have to be clean or anything,” I asked her quickly.
She nodded. “Yes. Let me go fetch them for you.” As she turned away, she wrinkled her nose slightly, and I glanced down at my earth-stained hands. Was Allene, so prim and proper back in Darkhill, truly not used to the rather dirty ways of living on the road? Or could she smell the iron on me, I wondered.
“Here,” she said, offering me a few large and stained cloths. “They are clean, but I would prefer to see them as scraps in any case.”
There it was, the slight wrinkle in her perfectly formed nose altering her aloof expression to a well-bred distaste. “Is something wrong, Allene?” I asked.
She looked at me sharply with her luminous grey eyes and then smiled slightly. “Your ability to read Sidhe faces has much improved since your first day here, Lady Bearer.”
I waved the title away in irritation. “It’s just Tess. For goodness’ sake, is everyone going to be pulling this ‘Lady Bearer’ nonsense on me now?”
Tilting her head slightly to the side, Allene replied, “I fail to see how it is nonsense if it is the truth.”
“Have i
t your way, then,” I said with half a sigh. “But you didn’t answer my earlier question.”
Allene watched me intently. “I can smell the iron on you, and also the ghaunt-crows that handled it, and before them the fell-trolls.”
I raised my eyebrows in surprise. “You make it sound like you can smell almost as well as a wolf, Allene.”
The Sidhe healer shook her head. “No. It is not so much smell…that is the word we use to describe it, because there is really no word for it in your tongue.” She paused, considering. “Sense, I think, would be a better word. Some of us are very attuned to the feel of things.”
“Does that help you when you’re healing?” I asked.
“Yes. Most of the more skilled master healers have the same ability.”
“Interesting,” I said.
“I think it might be what you feel with the Sword’s power,” Allene added suddenly, her moon-shining eyes fixed on the sheath across my back. The Sword gave a soft thrum of warning, its voice caressing my mind as softly as it was able, the equivalent of a warning whisper. I realized that though the Sword’s power was like poison to the Sidhe, it could also call to them. They were not immune to the siren-song of its power. I took a step backward, and Allene took a step forward at the same time, matching my movement. Stop it, I told the Sword as sharply as I could, sending it more of a thought than words. But it gave me the equivalent of innocently raised hands—it wasn’t calling to Allene. And I felt the truth of its protest, because all its power curled like a sleeping cat beneath my ribs and in the closed eye of the emerald in the Sword’s pommel.
“Allene,” I said slowly and clearly, “take a step back, please.”
Instead, the Sidhe healer slid forward, gliding over the ground with eerie boneless grace, the lines of her tall body tensing. I knew that look and my hand went to my dagger even as my own blue-white taebramh flared beneath my collarbone. The Sword kept its power carefully away from mine, dutifully letting me handle the situation. I glanced around and my heart sank. There was no-one else in sight on this side of camp. I was on my own.
“Allene.” I pronounced the healer’s name firmly, with as much authority as I could muster. “Step back.” I put a warning into the command.
Allene leaned forward, a strange glazed look in her gray eyes as she reached toward me with one slender hand. I let loose my eagerly pulsing taebramh, and white fire filled my vision. I heard Allene gasp, and with a bit of difficulty I pulled my power back—it was like hauling on the leash of a huge, excited dog. But I gripped it firmly and drew it back into myself, panting with the effort. When had my own power become so difficult to control? I wondered dizzily as I clenched my jaw. Finally the haze of bright white receded from my eyes and I saw Allene, gazing up at me from the ground. Her expressive eyes held awe and a little fear, but her beautiful face was carefully composed as she slowly stood, exuding grace even with dirt clinging to the cloth of her dress. She lowered her eyes and bowed her head.
“I apologize, Lady Bearer,” she said quietly.
I felt the familiar frustration at the sudden stiff courtesy building in my chest, but I swallowed thickly and said, “Apology accepted. Sorry I knocked you down.” And clutching the extra cloths tightly, I turned on my heel and walked quickly back to the fringe of forest, immensely grateful that I didn’t encounter anyone else.
“Here,” I said, tossing a cloth at Vell. She caught it deftly. “I still don’t know what we’ll do with all this iron when we’re done.”
“We should figure that out soon,” the Northerner replied, her golden eyes scanning the ground of the forest. “We’re almost done. I’d say near three-quarters finished.”
I found the next marker and silently plunged my dagger into the earth. I didn’t really feel like talking, after what had happened with Allene. Did all the Sidhe feel such a siren call from the Sword, a voice that tempted them to their doom like moths to the flame? I knew with a sudden chilling certainty that the Sword unleashed, unrestrained by my power and my guidance, would decimate the Sidhe world. It would be an Armageddon, no different than the havoc that Malravenar had unleashed on Titania’s kingdom already—but magnified, spread throughout their entire world.
“Tess?” Vell said.
“What?” I said asked shortly.
The dark-haired Northerner sank down onto her haunches in front of me with the lithe grace of a hunter, peering at my face intently with her golden gaze. “Are you all right?” Beryk paused long enough to drop another piece of iron by Vell’s side. The wolf glanced at Vell, then at me, and seemed to decide that he didn’t want to be a part of this particular discussion. He trotted off to find the next marker.
I scratched at the earth with my dagger unhappily.
“Tess,” Vell said again, her voice firmer.
“Of course I’m not all right,” I snapped. “I just had to knock out Allene because apparently the Sword calls to some of the Sidhe. She looked at it like it was crack and she was an addict who hadn’t had a hit in days.”
“I assume crack is a substance from your world,” Vell replied.
“It is. People die from it. Sometimes the very first time they use it—it stops their heart or they have a seizure and they die.” I met Vell’s eyes. “Sounds kind of similar to what the Sword would do to a Sidhe if I didn’t have it on a leash.”
The blade in its sheath hummed softly. I couldn’t understand if it was reproaching me or agreeing with me.
Vell rubbed a bit of dirt between her fingers thoughtfully. Then she looked at me and said, “Well, you just have to keep it under control, then, don’t you?”
“That’s the problem. It called to Allene even when it didn’t mean to. I had it completely dampened, all wrapped up in my own taebramh, and she still went into this zombie trance.” I pulled the shard of iron out of the earth vengefully. “Am I just supposed to knock out any Sidhe that hears it?”
“You might have to, if that’s what it takes,” Vell replied neutrally. She brushed off her hands. “I’m not going to patronize you and stroke your ego, if that’s what you’re looking for.”
I blinked and raised one eyebrow slightly. “What?”
“Well, at this point in the conversation, any one of the Court-breds would launch into a sermon on how you are our last and best hope to defeat Malravenar. But I’m not going to do that.” Her golden eyes boring into me, she continued, “I know what it’s like to be a leader when you don’t know the first thing about what you’re doing. When you don’t even really know yourself. So I’m going to keep your feet on the ground, Tess. No Lady Bearer bowing and scraping from me.” She grinned briefly, and I couldn’t help but grin back, despite all the sudden doubts and questions crowding the back of my head, spawned by my encounter with Allene.
“Can I ask…does it call to you?” I said as we stood and moved to the final stretch of the iron circle.
Vell tilted her head, considering the question. “I can feel it, I know it’s there and it’s powerful, but…” She shook her head. “I don’t want it, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Beryk deposited another slimy piece of iron directly into my hand, his dirt-stained tongue lolling in satisfaction.
“Ugh. Wolf slobber,” I said in disgust, wrapping the shard in the cloth and wiping my hand on the edge of my shirt. Beryk looked at me reproachfully and then, mischief dancing in his amber eyes, he dragged his pink tongue over my entire hand. I squeaked in surprise and he gave a yip of laughter, grinning for a second before leaping off into the trees. “That was deliberate!” I yelled after him indignantly, grimacing as I dried off my hand again.
Vell chuckled. “You’re only encouraging him.”
“And you say he’s so well behaved,” I retorted.
“Tess-mortal!” piped Wisp from above us. “There are only three more pieces left! The trap is almost gone!”
I glanced up through the green of the forest and made out Wisp’s neon trail as he turned loops of excitement.
&nb
sp; “I didn’t know you were still up there keeping track of us,” I said with a grin.
“Always!” the Glasidhe replied. “I am always keeping track of you, Tess-mortal!”
Vell raised her eyebrows at me. “Looks to me that you have more than one spy, Tess.”
“Or more than one babysitter,” I muttered.
Beryk barely paused in his industrious digging as we passed. Vell found the next marker past Beryk, and Kavoryk’s huge hulk was already crouched over the last marker. So I stood and watched, hefting the bundle of iron shards in my hand.
“We can’t just bury it,” I said, partly to myself and partly to the forest at large.
“It would poison the forest around it, and the water passing through this ground,” Vell said.
“Bad for the living land,” Kavoryk added in his deep rumble.
I frowned, thinking. I couldn’t bury the iron. I couldn’t put it anywhere else for safekeeping, for that matter, because the Sidhe couldn’t even stand to be within an arm’s length of it. After a moment, I sent out a thought to the Sword. I felt its power uncoil sleepily, stretching beneath my bones as it awoke to consider my question. I waited, still thinking about the iron shards weighing heavily in my hand, and then the Sword answered me, latching onto my mental image of the iron and sending me a very clear feeling of hunger.
“The Sword,” I said out loud, surprised.
“What?” Vell looked up from her hole.
“I know what to do with the iron,” I told her.
“Then why do you sound so confused?” She hissed in triumph as she pulled her shard out of the earth.
I blinked and reached over my head with my free hand, touching the hilt of the Sword. It confirmed its earlier answer. My own stomach rumbled, too, after its hunger washed through me again. “Because I didn’t expect the Sword to…well, it wants to eat them. Or something. I don’t know.”
“Let’s see it, then.” Vell retrieved Beryk’s piece and added her own to my hand as well. Kavoryk dropped the last shard into the open cloth.