by Jocelyn Fox
“If it’s my birthright, then why do I feel so uncertain?” I murmured, watching Vell slip off into the shadows of the forest and Merrick head back toward the barracks with a determined stride. Kavoryk, gathering up his arrows, looked up at me, but remained silent. He held the straight stripped arrow-shafts in one huge fist and gave me a grave nod before turning his attention to the glowing remnants of our cook-fire.
Even the stars doubt their light from time to time, the Sword replied, the words shimmering through my thoughts.
“You’re not being very helpful,” I muttered. “If all you’re going to give me is riddles, we may as well not speak.”
The Caedbranr chuckled, sending goose-bumps skittering down my arms, and fell silent; but it left its reassuring power pulsing softly in my chest like a second heartbeat.
When it became clear that the Sword had effectively taken my advice, I smiled wryly and turned back to the barracks. My plain sword had been sheared in two during the battle by the monstrous bone-crowned Shadow rider, and I would need a new blade before we set off on the trail to the Seelie Court. I touched its hilt idly—there was enough left of the sheared-off blade for me to slide the sword back into the sheath, so at a glance it looked as though I still bore a whole sword. I felt a twinge of guilt: I hadn’t even bothered to look for the charred remnants of my faithful plain blade. Though to be fair, I amended mentally, I’d had a lot on my mind in the chaotic moments after the battle, not least among them helping Ramel to save Emery’s life. Perhaps someone else had picked up the shard of my blade, I thought hopefully as I neared the barracks. I carefully shielded the Sword with my taebramh, layering my own white fire around the emerald-green of the Sword. Gwyneth’s blue fire had faded from my taebramh, though sometimes I saw a flash of pale silvery blue as though out of the corner of my eye.
I stepped cautiously through the door to the barracks, watching the Sidhe moving through the room for any signs of the siren temptation of the Sword’s power. When they all continued working at their various tasks, I breathed a small sigh of relief and considered. Who should I ask for a sword? I spied Ramel across the room, standing by the table with Donovan at his side. They were both poring over a map, and as I watched Ramel traced a route with his finger, looking questioningly at Donovan. I strode over to them.
“Planning the route back to Court?” I asked. I tried to sound cheerful but my voice sounded too high. I was going to miss Ramel and Donovan as much as the Glasidhe.
Ramel looked up at me, his eyes flashing with mischief. “We’re trying to find the fastest trail, so that we may linger as long as you stay here, pretty one.”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t you ever tire of flirting?”
“Not with beautiful mortals.”
I scowled at him. “Don’t try to flatter me.”
He raised one eyebrow. “Tisn’t flattery if it’s the truth.”
“Are you going to tell me where you’re going or not?” I said, spreading my hands on the table.
“Perhaps if you stop scowling so fiercely,” Ramel teased. “Wipe the worry from your pretty forehead and then I’ll tell you.”
I glanced at Donovan in mute supplication, but he looked at me across the table and raised his eyebrows, as if to say, I can’t control him any more than you can.
“I need a sword,” I said instead.
“Ah, but you already have such a lovely, powerful ancient Sword,” Ramel replied.
“You know, Ramel, you make me want to throttle you and hug you both at the same time.” I shook my head, allowing a smile to spill across my lips.
He shrugged. “It’s a gift.”
Donovan made a noise that sounded halfway between a cough and a laugh.
“Only you would call that particular talent a gift,” I said, grinning. Then I sobered. “We’re leaving at noon. I need a sword.” I drew my plain blade from its sheath, its weight pitifully unbalanced in my hand, the jagged edge gleaming like a raw wound in the firelight.
Ramel sighed. “And I believe that was my second-best sword.”
“Be glad it was your second-best, and not your finest,” Donovan advised wryly.
“Be glad that the Shadow-rider sheared the blade in two instead of shearing me in two,” I added.
“Both very valid points,” Ramel agreed. He glanced down at the map, eyes pensive as he thought.
I cleared my throat a little, loathe to voice the idea in my mind, but how would I know if I didn’t ask? “Ramel…the honored dead, would any of their weapons…?”
“We do not plunder the dead like carrion crows,” Ramel replied with the Fae-spark blazing across his face. I stumbled back from the table, his words so fierce that I felt as though I’d been slapped. Donovan leapt up from his chair and gripped Ramel’s arm, speaking quickly into my sword-teacher’s ear, the words soft and soothing as the sound of rain. I understood none of it, so I stood stiffly and waited until the fierce blazing anger faded from Ramel’s face. He looked older, and wearier, when it was gone.
“I’m sorry,” I said softly. “I didn’t know.”
He nodded heavily. “You could not have known. I offer my apologies.” Ramel, usually so carefree and roguish, leaned over the map-table and lowered his head, the firelight glinting copper on his dark curls. I placed the hilt and sheared blade carefully on the table and closed the distance between us in one long stride.
Touching his shoulder gently, I said, “How is your wound?”
Donovan glanced at me and then glanced at the door, clearly inquiring if I wanted him to stay. A fist of frustration clenched in my chest. Did the whole goddamn barracks think that Ramel and I were more than good friends, more than sword-master and student? Ramel had kissed me once, true, but he had sworn to tell no-one and as far as I knew he had been true to his word. Finnead had made the same pig-headed assumption, but clarifying the bounds of my friendship with Ramel with Finnead had obviously not spilled over into the rest of the camp. I straightened my shoulders. Let them think what they may, I thought fiercely. Ramel was one of my truest, most loyal friends among the Sidhe. He didn’t play games with me—other than his harmless flirtations—and he’d been fierce as a lion when the Vaelanmavar had threatened me. He’d taught me the basics of swordsmanship, a skill that had served me the best of all my newly acquired talents. So let them think what they may, I told myself resolutely, my hand still resting on Ramel’s shoulder. Donovan, for his part, slipped quietly past the table and out the door, closing it behind him.
Ramel stood silently, staring blankly at the map.
“Ramel,” I tried again, “are you all right?”
He gave a slight start. “Oh. Yes, of course. Of course I am.”
I watched him silently, waiting. Finally he sighed. I motioned to the two chairs sitting by the fire, and he nodded wearily. We sat and stared into the flickering flames. I moved my chair to face Ramel, balancing my elbows on my knees and my chin in my hands, waiting silently. Ramel sat back in his chair, rotating his right shoulder carefully and grimacing.
“May I take a look?” I asked softly.
He shrugged nonchalantly but then couldn’t hide his slight wince at the movement.
“Come on, then. To the healing room.” I stood and waited, making sure he was following. In the back of my mind, I knew I was wasting precious time, and I should have been seeking a new blade for the journey, but there was something about the greyness of Ramel’s face that concerned me.
The healing room was empty of any conscious occupants. I recognized Emery, asleep on one of the low beds that lined the walls, a white strip of bandages around his chest visible above the blanket.
“How is Emery healing?” I asked quietly, motioning Ramel to sit down on one of the beds. I pulled up a stool and helped him shrug his right arm out of his shirt.
“As well as can be expected, I suppose,” Ramel replied, his voice tight with pain.
“I’ve been spending more time in here with my hands bloody than I ever want to agai
n,” I murmured, more to myself than to him, but he made a small sound of commiseration. The cut on the side of my cheek itched vaguely and I had to remind myself not to touch it as my hand went to my face out of reflex. “Where have Eamon and Allene gotten to, anyway?”
“Probably gathering silverwood bark or hogsfoot, or something of the like. There are some plants that grow in this forest that don’t grow in the forests nearer to Darkhill.”
I nodded, leaning in close to examine the line of stitches meandering across Ramel’s pale skin. The wound was deepest at the shoulder, and trailed off to a shallower angle all the way down to his wrist. “You managed to get a lovely one, here.” The edges of the wound, especially near the top, had been jagged, as if the weapon that had inflicted it had had barbed edges or something of that sort. I shuddered at the thought.
“Just a scratch,” Ramel replied, trying for his usual roguish tone and almost succeeding, but I looked up at him and saw the fine sheen of sweat on his brow. And where Finnead’s wound had been knitting together quite nicely, Ramel’s wound still looked as though it had been stitched an hour ago, red and angry and bloody.
“Something isn’t right,” I muttered, using a small glowing ball of taebramh like a flashlight, positioning it just over Ramel’s shoulder. I ran light fingers down the skin on each side of the wound. It was hot to the touch, and Ramel shivered. “Did they check you for iron?”
Ramel nodded. “Of course. They knew to do that. Eamon removed one of the barbs from the axe.”
“Did he keep it?”
“Probably over there.” Ramel motioned with his uninjured hand to a small chest against the farthest wall of the room. When I opened it, I gave a little gasp at the gore-encrusted iron shards within it. Merely standing next to a shard of iron as big as my little finger made most Sidhe sick; I couldn’t imagine the feeling of such a potent poison being shoved inside a wound. I carefully looked over the jumble of iron until I saw a shard that looked like it could have been a wickedly curved barb. I carefully fished it out, forcing myself not to think too hard about the sticky blood coating my fingers as I rifled through the iron to get to it.
“Was this it?” I asked, holding it up so Ramel could see it across the room. He nodded, looking a bit paler even just from the sight of it.
I looked down at the shard in my hand. Iron couldn’t hurt me any more than another sharp edge, but if the Enemy had devised another way to hurt the Sidhe…As I turned the barb speculatively in my hand, I pricked the pad of my thumb with the tip of the barb, a bright little pinpoint of pain. I watched as a drop of blood welled from my skin, balancing on the curve of my thumb before sliding down to nestle in the crease of my palm. “Damn,” I muttered. Apparently being the Bearer of an ancient, powerful sword had not exonerated me from my habitual clumsiness. A burning sensation suddenly stabbed into my finger. My other fingers, where I had touched the barb, started to go numb, and I hurriedly snatched a bit of cloth from inside the chest, wrapped the barb in it and shut it.
“Poison,” I said to Ramel, and as I walked back across the room a sharp pain flared from my thumb all the way up to my shoulder, and the floor flexed beneath my feet. I stumbled and went to one knee. Vaguely, I heard Ramel call my name. How many times was I going to faint in one day? I thought disgustedly, groping blindly for Gwyneth’s pendant. The hand I had pricked was dead weight. A worm of panic wriggled up my throat. Then I caught Gwyneth’s pendant with one finger of my good hand, and I grasped it clumsily, gasping. The Sword vibrated in its sheath so violently that my jaw clattered—or was that because I was shivering? I felt Ramel’s hands on my shoulders and I forced myself to look up at him—I had somehow gone from one knee to my side without realizing it, trying to both cradle my useless arm and hang on to Gwyneth’s pendant at the same time.
“Tess,” Ramel was saying, real fear in his eyes, “stay awake, stay with me.”
I’m not going anywhere, I tried to say, but my jaws locked as a spasm of pain shot through my body. The Sword’s power thrashed within its cage, my taebramh still shielding it. I tried to rip away the layer of power holding it within me, but my taebramh was as locked as my jaws. I heard a small sound of pain and realized it was from me as my legs kicked of their own accord.
“Eamon!” Ramel bellowed in the loudest voice I’d ever heard him use. “Allene!”
Conscious thought was fast abandoning me. Agony flared again from my dead hand. My back arched and a scream spilled out from between my clenched teeth. The Sword beat at my taebramh like a battering ram, the impact jarring my chest with physical force. Ramel took me into his arms and the movement sent a thousand knives stabbing into my chest, my spine, my stomach. I wanted to beg him not to move me, not to lift me, but he stood with me in his arms and all I could do was whimper, unable to even lift my head as he carried me to one of the beds along the wall.
My vision began graying at the edges. My breath came faster with panic, and every breath I drew in a little less air than the last, iron bands constricting my chest beneath the thousand stabbing knives, squeezing relentlessly. Able only to stare up at the ceiling, I heard running footsteps, urgent voices. A warm hand covered mine—Ramel. I tried to close my fingers around his desperate grip but I couldn’t even twitch my pinky. Cool hands gently probed my jaw, and I heard Eamon speaking above me in a quick clipped voice.
I wanted to laugh, despite the agony twisting my body like a puppet. I had survived the Vaelanmavar’s accusation of treachery, escaping into the enemy-infested woods at night. I’d evaded the vicious, single-minded attack of a cadengriff. I’d communed with the spirit—ghost?—of my ancestress, summoning the Iron Sword from where it had slumbered in the trunk of the river-tree for centuries. Gwyneth had bound me to it in blood, and I’d brought it to the battlefield. I had even locked blades with the great bone-crowned rider who had been the leader of the enemy forces, and I had lived to see the dawn. Now I lay dying hours later, the Bearer of the Sword, wielder of such ancient power—killed by a prick to the finger. I struggled against the closing darkness, feeling my body jerk and writhe on the bed. I felt hands trying to be gentle, holding my wrists to still my thrashing. My breath came in short gasps. Soon the iron fist around my chest would close, and I would die.
The whirl of voices around me faded away slowly. All I could hear was my own slowing heartbeat, and the furious battering of the Sword’s power against the cage I had made for it. Stupid, I thought weakly. That was stupid, to put it under lock and key.
As the tremors wracking my body slowed, Eamon increased his pace with the grim determination of a healer who knows death is near. I wanted to tell them all that I was sorry, that I hadn’t fulfilled my duty as Bearer, that I hadn’t been able to help save them from the great Shadow stretching over their lands. All at once, my body went slack. I fought to hold on. Ramel held my head while Eamon trickled a draught of some medicine into my mouth. I tried to swallow, but I couldn’t, and I felt his hand stroking my throat with a practiced motion, coaxing my body to accept it.
The limpness was better than the agony, but it was harder to hold on. I still couldn’t move, I still couldn’t remove the taebramh from around the Sword’s power. There was no pain to anchor myself to my body. Something rattled in my throat. I began to drift.
“Move, all of you!”
The harsh command came from a familiar voice, but I couldn’t place it. I felt my eyes rolling back into my head. When my eyes closed, I saw a figure wreathed in drowning-blue fire, a bright sword against his hip. He leaned over me, pressed a hand to my chest and unsheathed his sword, the white blade streaming sapphire-blue fire.
Yes, end it, I wanted to tell the burning-blue stranger. A strange sense of calm settled over me, a stillness that I had never felt. I couldn’t hear their words anymore. I felt the hand of the stranger on my chest. In the blackness overtaking me, he burned with such brightness, such sapphire glory. As if awakening from a dream, I opened my eyes. I stood in the greyness on the edge of an abyss. I
stood at the edge, looking down into the dark depths below, and somehow was not afraid anymore. The blackness of the poison twined around my legs, caressing my arms, swirling like a living fog about me. There was no wind, no sun, no stars in the grayness. Nothing but the blue-burning stranger, and me, and the edge before my feet.
“Tess,” said the flame-wreathed stranger. His voice tugged at a memory. I half-turned against the tug of the twining darkness, looking at him over my shoulder.
He didn’t belong on the edge of the abyss. The blue flames outlined him brightly against the dimness all around us. He held out his hand. I stared at it. My mind worked slowly, thoughts moving only with effort. I couldn’t remember why he was important. I couldn’t remember why I was important. Something from deep within the abyss whispered to me: You are not. You are not important, and even if you were, lay your burdens down and sleep. Rest. Be weary no more.
“Be weary no more,” I murmured. The idea of sweet sleep, a respite from the terrible memories, the pain and the suffering and the feeling of hopelessness creeping into the soul like a deadly vine—to lay it all down and step into the comforting arms of the darkness tempted me.
“Tess,” said the handsome pale man with the sapphire flames wreathing his form, “remember the Sword.”
I frowned. The urgency in his voice touched some chord deep within my memory. The Sword. I blinked slowly. A tingle in my right palm traced a half-familiar pattern up my arm, a trail of memory over my skin. And the battle…those terrible memories…I had been fighting for something, hadn’t I? I had been fighting for something important.
“Tess, take my hand,” the sapphire stranger said steadily, his eyes bright as jewels, twin flames in his handsome face, sparks playing through his dark hair like lightning jumping between storm-clouds.