by Jocelyn Fox
“Think I’m that easy to keep down?” she taunted it, crouching into a fighting stance, her golden eyes challenging and wild.
The creature snarled, air rattling through its ruined throat. It started for Vell, moving fast as thought, arms extended and claws ready to tear into her flesh.
Somehow, I was faster. I leapt forward and lunged, aiming the tip of the Sword at the creature’s left shoulder blade, hoping, not for the first time, that Sidhe hearts were placed the same as mortals. I drove the Sword home with all my strength, putting all my weight behind the thrust, and in an instant that seemed as long as a day, I watched the blade slide into the creature’s rock-hard dead flesh with agonizing slowness. For another instant that could have lasted no more than a blink of an eye but felt like an hour, I thought I had missed. I thought wildly that perhaps its heart was on the other side, or in the center, or not in the chest at all—and then the Sword blazed, a pulse of pure light shooting down its length and into the creature.
The creature that had been Allene shrieked, writhing on the blade as its heart burned. I held on with desperate strength, my arms screaming in pain as the creature jerked in its death throes. The green fire ate a hole in its chest, and I watched in horrified fascination as the immolated heart appeared, twisting like a separate living creature in the flames. I wrenched the Sword free and the heart fell to the floor, squirming and writhing. The creature’s shriek continued until the heart disintegrated into a pile of ash. The sound stopped as if cut by scissors. The charred blackened creature toppled to the floor, and it became less tall, and less thin, and less white, until it was Allene’s corpse, burnt and blackened and charred but unmistakably Allene, a dagger through her throat and a gaping hole torn from her chest.
I stared at the corpse, all the fire fading from the Sword. I sheathed it numbly, more out of habit than conscious thought. The smell of burnt flesh became overpowering. My stomach heaved, and I lunged past Merrick, who was staring at Allene. I ran from the room, desperate for cooler air and another sight other than the corpse of a Sidhe who had once been my healer and perhaps my friend.
Chapter 6
I stumbled into the afternoon sunlight, blinded by the brightness and the bold green of the grass, the brazen blue of the sky, taking huge heaving breaths of the forest-scented air. Leaning against one of the few trees in the clearing, pressing my palm hard against its rough bark, I fought against the image of Allene’s mutilated body, pushing down the roiling nausea in my stomach. Finally I gave up and retched, the Sword sliding awkwardly across my back as I put my hands on my knees, trembling. The sunlight passed through the green panes of the leaves above me, dappling my skin with green-gold. I felt hollow when the nausea finally subsided, leaving a bleak sick feeling in my chest. Spitting to one side, I cleaned myself up as best I could and stood shakily, stitches still tracing fire down the left side of my face as I turned back toward the barracks.
Merrick stood by the door, staring up into the sky, his eyes distant yet haunted. Pain etched age into his youthful face. For the first time since I had met him, he did not look like a youth thrust into the responsibilities of maturity. I wondered if I looked older, after all I had seen, if my eyes were that haunted. He blinked and focused his gaze on me as I approached. I stopped.
“The runes on the walls didn’t stop it,” he said to me hoarsely. “It used her to get inside and then…” His voice trailed off as he let both our minds finish his sentence silently. His eyes bored into mine. “It could have been any one of us on the battlefield.”
I suddenly wondered sickeningly whether my marks of blue fire had reached inside the barracks. The realization shoved itself into my mind with cold clarity. What if I was, in part, to blame for the creature taking hold of Allene? What if I could have protected her with my taebramh, as I had marked all the warriors on the battlefield? I swallowed and composed myself. “It’s no use now, thinking about what could have been,” I said to Merrick, and I wasn’t entirely sure whether the gentleness in my voice was for him or me.
Someone, probably Eamon, had tucked a blanket around Allene’s body. There was a brazier of sweet herbs smoldering above the now-blazing fire, but the smell of charred flesh still lurked in the air. The smell of it brought bile back into my throat. I straightened my shoulders. I couldn’t afford to balk at every grisly sight.
Ramel stood by the long covered form, sword in hand and eyes wary. He massaged his throat with his free hand for a moment, and then stopped as he saw me. I strode over and inspected his neck, touching the livid bruised flesh lightly. “Invisible hands can do a lot of damage,” I remarked softly.
“Dark sorcery,” Ramel replied hoarsely.
We stood together and contemplated the form beneath the gray blanket, its shape so familiar and yet so alien because of its absolute stillness.
“Finnead and Vell are in the other room with Eamon,” Ramel told me quietly. I nodded, and left him staring down at the covered corpse, blade gleaming in the firelight through the haze of smoke.
“Stay still,” Vell said gently as I entered the healing room. She had Beryk stretched out on the floor, running her pale long-fingered hands over his gleaming black sides and down his legs, carefully feeling for any damage. Beryk looked up at me with molten golden eyes, raising his head slightly. Vell spared a quick glance over her shoulder, nodded to me and went back to her examination.
“Is he hurt?” I asked quietly.
“That’s what I’m trying to find out,” she replied briskly, her voice taut. She bent over the wolf, strands of dark hair escaping her braid and sticking to the blood still smeared across her cheek. A trickle gleamed wetly as it slid down over her upper lip. I couldn’t tell whether her blood was blue or red. Vell wiped it away roughly with the back of her hand.
I reached out to touch Vell’s shoulder, but paused. Instead, I said softly, “Let me know if I can help.”
She saw my hand, still outstretched but motionless; and she nodded. I dropped to one knee and smoothed back Beryk’s ears with one gentle hand. He grinned at me, tongue lolling over his sharp white teeth. Vell murmured something to him in the Northern tongue as she carefully flexed his foreleg, and he whined low in his throat. I stood and turned to the rest of the room.
“That was quite a fight I missed, from the sound of it,” said a familiar voice from a bed to my left. Emery smiled wryly at me. “And from the look of it.”
I shook my head. “It wasn’t something you wanted to see.”
The spark of humor faded from Emery’s eyes. “I know.”
“How are you?” I asked.
He shrugged with his good shoulder and motioned to the swathe of white bandages about his chest. “As well as can be expected, for someone who ought to be dead.”
“What do you mean?”
Emery pushed himself up to a sitting position, a slight grimace passing over his face, really no more than a darkening of his eyes and a hardening of his mouth. He looked at me silently. I held his gaze calmly. Finally he said, “There is a fine line, Tess, between healing and necromancy.”
A cold slither of shock slid down my spine, but I refused to look away from him.
“You called me,” he continued, his voice low and intense, “and I came, I came because I did not want to die. I wanted to live.” His eyes took on a different cast. For a moment I thought it was the play of the firelight upon his face, but he looked at me in silence and I realized that there were ghosts hovering behind his eyes, something unworldly—not even of Faeortalam—in the darkness of his pupils. It was like watching moonlight on dark water: for a moment it surfaced, and then it was gone, like a ripple.
“I wanted to live, so I came,” Emery told me. His eyes rippled again. My hand twitched for the hilt of the Sword, but I willed myself to stand calmly. “But even if I had not wanted to live, I would have had to come.” His mouth hardened. “I had no choice.”
I blinked. “Are you…are you reprimanding me for saving your life, Emery?” I asked sof
tly, unable to hide the note of incredulity in my voice.
He shifted. “You make it sound as though I am ungrateful.” His words were hollow. There was the flash of ghosts again, in his eyes, spreading in whorls across his pale face. When he raised his gaze to me again, he was just Emery. His eyes were tired, and haunted, but not filled with otherworldly spirits for which I had no name. And which, I understood in a flash of clarity, terrified me. “I thank you, Lady Bearer, for saving my life,” he said, his words stiffly formal. His shoulders slumped forward a fraction of an inch, one of those minute Sidhe movements that I would not have noticed when I first came to Faortalam. “But I hope, for your sake, that you brought all of me back.”
I reached out and covered his hand with my own, half expecting it to be icy cold, like the flesh of a corpse. But his skin was warm, and living, flexing under my palm. I paused and then pressed his hand with mine. “Was it…a gray cliff, for you?”
Emery drew in his breath sharply, his fingers tightening on my hand reflexively. Then the Fae-spark surfaced in his eyes and he drew himself up against the headboard of the bed. Expression fled from his pale face, leaving him with all the emotion of a beautiful marble statue; and he slid his hand out from beneath mine. It felt as though a door had been shut in my face. “Take care, Bearer,” Emery said, in a voice that was not wholly his own, “lest your powers draw you to the Dark. There is Dark and Light in every being. Steal too many from his domain, and Death might take you as his consort in payment.” An alien smile curved Emery’s lips. The Sword sent a seeking tendril out to him, but there was no black writhing poison, nor any lurking skeletal creature within him. It was Emery, but it was not the Emery who had ridden from Darkhill with the Vaelanbrigh’s company. That Emery, I realized, had died on the battlefield. I had brought him back, but he was changed. He was a different Emery. Then again, I reflected as I moved away from his bed, weren’t we all different, after the screams and smoke of the battle? The blood, our own and that of our enemy, baptized us all as new and changed beings, warriors versed in the worship of the blade and the chance of battle, the ring of steel upon steel our baptismal hymns, the watchful stars in the night sky our witnesses. I felt the change down to my bones, bones that no longer were completely my own but thrummed with the power of the great ancient weapon I bore. I was more than a whole person, yet my soul felt raw.
I pushed away my thoughts. Finnead stood by the fireplace at the end of the healing room, facing the fire. Eamon peeled away torn cloth from Finnead’s shoulder, where the skeletal creature had dug its claw-like fingers into his flesh. At Eamon’s direction, Finnead bared his shoulder, the firelight carving his strong arms and back from the shadows. He left his shirt loose about his neck, his other arm still in its sleeve; and it was such a casual gesture that I watched with fascination despite myself. The pearly white edges of scars laced the skin of his shoulder, rippling with his movements. Four puncture wounds stood out starkly near his shoulder blade. The fifth wound, I knew, would be near his collarbone, from the creature’s thumb.
“They will need to be cleansed by fire and sigil,” I heard Finnead say, his voice barely loud enough for me to hear over the soft crackling of the fire.
“And sooner rather than later,” agreed Eamon. “I’ll ready the blade.”
“And I shall ready the sigil,” said Finnead.
“The tree outside is oak?”
“It will serve,” replied Finnead, pulling his arm through his sleeve again. He turned and strode toward the door with his great loping gait, but paused when he saw me. I stood stupidly with my hands empty at my sides. My jaw seemed to lock of its own accord, even as my lips burned with the phantom feel of Finnead’s kiss. He reached out as if to take my arm but then let his hand drop. “Did that creature harm you in any way?” he asked, his blue eyes stormy enough to sink a ship in their tumultuous seas.
I shook my head and finally managed to croak, “No.” I tried for a jaunty smile and failed miserably. “At least, nothing but my pride.”
I saw the shadow of a grim smile touch his lips as he strode past me, close enough that the loose sleeve of his shirt brushed against my arm. The Sword pricked me on my right arm, right at the genesis of my war-marking. It brought me sharply out of the memory of Finnead’s lips upon mine. I rubbed the spot but muttered a grudging thanks to the Caedbranr. After all, he had no interest in me as anything more than a weapon against the Enemy in his all-consuming war. I walked to the fire and held out my hands, relishing the warmth of the flames on my skin. “Eamon,” I said, “what does it mean to cleanse by fire and sigil?”
“The wound was inflicted at the hands of a Dark creature,” Eamon said, bringing a polished wood box to the table by the fire. “Their flesh is poison to ours.” He flipped the latch on the box. I stepped closer. Runes flared into life on the box as Eamon opened it gently, shimmering silver across the gleaming wood. A long, thin blade lay inside, swaddled in black cloth, only its hilt visible. I felt a breath of its power along my skin, raising goose-bumps. “A blade blessed by the blood of a Queen,” Eamon said, “and inscribed with runes. The same runes,” he added darkly, “carved into the walls of the barracks that should have kept the creature from entering.”
His unspoken thought echoed in my head: If the runes had not stopped the creature from entering the barracks, who was to say the rune-inscribed blade would purge the creature’s poison from Finnead’s flesh? I shuddered a little. I had expended too much power in one day already, I knew; I could not help any more or I’d risk sending myself back to that gray cliff, with no-one to coax me back from the edge this time.
“The blood of a Queen?” I said. “That seems a bit dark in itself.”
“Blood-magic is a double-edged blade,” Eamon agreed, closing the box just as gently as he had opened it and carefully securing the latch. He gave me a considering look. “As with most power, intention is everything. If the blood is given willingly, with pure intention—like this blade, intended for healing—then it is a powerful force for good.”
“And if the blood isn’t given willingly?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Dark blood-magic is much more complicated than the ancient healing rites. But it is also much more powerful. Just as blood gives life, it can also bring death.”
A chill slipped down my back. Emery’s words echoed in my head: There is a fine line, Tess, between healing and necromancy. “There are many double-edged blades,” I murmured, mostly to myself. Eamon paused as he picked up the rune-inscribed box. He glanced at me but then wordlessly slipped the strap of his satchel over his shoulder and strode toward the door to the main room. I followed. As I passed Emery’s bed, he lifted a hand at me.
“Wait,” he said. I stopped. Emery leaned to the side and grasped his sword-belt, drawing it onto the bed. He held it across his lap, unsheathing the blade a little so that it gleamed in the firelight. “I’ve always favored a lighter blade,” he said quietly. “And since I’m in no shape to do any fighting for a while…I thought it might be of use to you.”
I drew back half a step in surprise. Was this the same Emery who had all but accused me of necromancy with echoes of ghosts in his eyes? “I don’t understand.”
The barest hint of a smile passed over his lips. “I must confess that I don’t entirely understand either.” His old acerbic tone laced his words, enough that I knew it was really Emery talking. He slid a hand down the blade fondly. “But I do understand that you, my Lady Bearer, need a blade that you can draw without worrying about unleashing a tide of ancient power.” He raised his eyebrows slightly, daring me to contradict him. I looked at him silently and then unbuckled my sword-belt, sliding off the scabbard of my still-sheathed broken blade. I laid my well-worn belt on the bed and drew the shard of my sword, the edge gleaming jaggedly in the firelight.
“It was Ramel’s second-best blade,” I said ruefully.
“It served you well,” Emery replied. “I will take it back to Darkhill with me, and mayhap
I can find a smith with enough skill to reforge the blade.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Or I suppose Ramel will thank you.”
Emery chuckled dryly. “Oh, this sword ceased belonging to Ramel the moment you picked it up, I’m sure.”
I mockingly punched his good shoulder, my touch as gentle as if I were handling a child. He stiffened slightly but then took the teasing gracefully. After a moment, he pushed his sword toward me. I slid my hands beneath it and carefully picked it up. Even the scabbard was lovely, dark grey leather with silver clasps and a graceful design worked into the leather down the center. I stood, holding the scabbard in my left hand. I drew Emery’s sword in a glimmering sheen of silver. The grip felt different than Ramel’s sword. It had been made for a smaller hand, crafted for a wielder with speed rather than strength. I hefted the blade and smiled. “It has lovely balance,” I said to Emery.
“Of course it does,” he replied. “And it has a lovely edge too, so I’d appreciate it if it came back to me without any notches or missing half the blade.”
I glanced at the bed and the shard of Ramel’s sword. “Given my history, I don’t think that’s a promise I can make.” Laying down the scabbard on the bed, I stepped away and then leapt into a series of drills, arcs and feints and jabs at an imaginary foe that made the blade sing through the air. The line of stitches in my cheek pulled painfully as I grinned, but I didn’t suppress my smile as I turned back to Emery. “This is the best sword I’ve laid my hands on.” The Caedbranr gave a sharp vibrating tone in protest. I chuckled. “The best plain blade that I’ve laid hands on,” I amended. The Sword subsided with a sort of mutter, mollified. I sheathed Emery’s blade. “Are you sure?” I asked him. He looked at me with steely gray eyes, no trace of the wandering ghost-like light.