A scattering of freckles stood out against the paleness of the red-haired mage’s skin. “I think I know what the wall is. We’re all on the far side of a timeslip. And going by what Rhoann said and what I saw under Purgatory, I think it’s around all the—”
“Maelduin… if you can hear me…”
Maelduin turned away from the others and clapped his hands over his ears, the better to focus on the new memory of Terry’s voice.
“I was wrong. We’re connected…”
Terry didn’t seem frightened. Not like he had been a few minutes before, at any rate.
“There’s a hell of a lot I don’t understand, and…”
Someone laid a hand on Maelduin’s arm. He shook it off roughly. “Let me concentrate!”
“… keeping the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen out of the wellsprings. It’s your enemy, Coinneach says. And the connection between us, you and me, makes the barrier weaker. I’m not going to let that monster get to you.”
Terry’s voice was unsteady. Maelduin hated the fear he heard.
“So I’m letting Coinneach and his darag send me away until they can figure out a better way to keep the wellsprings secure. I’ll come back. I will. Don’t try to come after me, it’s not safe. I’ll come back—”
Silence, broken only by the whispering of wind.
The hand touched his arm again. It was Tiernan’s, the hand warm living Stone. “What is it? What’s happened?”
“He’s gone. He told me not to follow, that it’s not safe.” Maelduin turned to study the barrier. “My scair-anam has a great deal to learn about Fae.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Terry landed hard, on his hands and knees. Given what it had felt like the last time Coinneach and his darag had messed with his reality, staying down was probably a good idea, at least until he figured out what was going on.
This is ice.
Solid ice. With blue-white fire dancing in it, sometimes flaring brightly, sometimes almost invisible. It looked like the same kind of pattern he’d seen on the floor. He thought he could see water through it in places, too.
And holy Christ, it was cold. It seemed like some warmth was coming up through the floor—arriving the same way he had, maybe—but it didn’t stand a chance against the biting air. Most of the warm air turned to mist, ghosting off in little eddies and arabesques.
This, um, may not be much of a long-term solution. Was Coinneach even going to be able to hear him? Shit, they probably should have worked that out before whisking him away to wherever-this-was.
What is the problem?
Whew. I’m not sure where I am, but it’s made of ice. And it’s hella cold. His fingers white and numb already, Terry sat back on his heels and started trying to rub some warmth back into his hands.
Almost immediately, warmer air started rising out of the floor. Which meant more mist—a lot more, enough to make the air feel heavy—but mist was better than air cold enough to take his breath and freeze the inside of his nose.
Is that better?
It’ll do. I’m still not dressed for this, though. That was an understatement. His light khaki jacket had been fine for November in D.C., but it might as well have been a paper bag against the chill radiating up and out from the floor and the walls.
My darag will continue to send warmer air through the wellspring. And we will hurry. My darag is already consulting with the other daragin.
Thanks.
Terry’s gaze traveled up the icy blue walls surrounding him, up to where a layer of swirling magick, identical to the walls and ceiling of the prison he’d just left, capped the pit of ice. His kinetic sense, finely honed by years of dancing, told him the floor was rocking under him, ever so slightly.
Where the hell am I?
* * *
The monster woke up too quickly for Janek to have any chance of putting up a fight. One second he was staring past his toes at the faintly glowing circle in the ice, his stomach trying to turn over the way it always did when his human eyeball looked too long at magick—and the next, he was looking down at the bitch’s red flowing gown, and couldn’t feel a fucking thing.
Shit.
“That was… unpleasant.” The female’s voice might as well have been a toad’s. A dried-up roadkill toad’s.
I thought you got off on that kind of thing. The male was as much of a wiseass as ever, though he wasn’t as quick with his comeback as he usually was. The more unpleasant, the better.
“Your wit is misplaced.” The female’s heels slipped and scraped against the ice as she tried to push herself up. “And this is ridiculous.”
Save your strength. We’re going to need it to Fade.
Fuck no. Fading’s not going to do you any more good than trying to suck down that magick did.
Oh, good, the expert.
Janek wasn’t sure who rolled their shared eyes. He didn’t give a shit. If you try to Fade us, my human body isn’t going to be able to take it. And that body is all the meat you have.
The female finally staggered to her feet. Where she had been lying—where Janek had been lying, before the rest of them woke up—there was a brown smear of what passed for Janek’s blood, and a few smallish chunks of skin, still frozen to the ice.
Doesn’t look like you’re in such great shape now, Meat. Janek could feel the male smiling, the kind of smile that would make babies scream. Besides, you were dead for a while after we broke through the kill-ward the mage put up around Purgatory. We did just fine pushing the meat wagon around without you.
I wasn’t dead, asshole. But you just go on thinking that a little longer.
“Squabbling is useless.” The bitch took a couple of steps toward the lid covering the hole, then stopped. “There is nothing there for us. There is nothing here for us. If you die, you die.” She shrugged. “We must go. Now.”
Yes.
NOW.
Janek was never going to forget the way his guts wrenched, and caught fire, when the monster started to Fade. Not as long as he lived. Which was only going to be a couple of seconds. Not even time for any last words. Well, fuck that.
The female shrieked as Janek tipped their body toward the magick, as her feet skidded on the ice. And in her panic, she let go control over their body.
Janek could have had some last words after all. But as he fell forward into the magick, burning alive from the inside, all he could do was laugh.
Fate was almost as big a bitch as the one he’d been carrying around inside his head.
* * *
Conall was the first to react as Maelduin headed for the barrier; he gestured as if to channel magic, cursed, and let his hand fall, shaking it as if something had burned or bitten him. “Wait…”
“Why?” Maelduin decided not to glance back over his shoulder at the red-haired mage; he had managed to reach the barrier without tripping over anything, and wanted his good fortune to continue. “Would you wait, if it were your scair-anam on the other side?”
“Of course not. But—”
Maelduin did not listen—had no intention of listening, really. He rested his hand open-palmed, on the barrier. It was a strange sensation, or lack thereof; there was no solid surface under his hand, no warmth or coolness or smoothness or hardness. Only a place where his hand would not go.
But it would, because he wished it to. Because Terry was on the other side.
Our connection makes the barrier weaker? Good. Maelduin closed his eyes and pushed.
The nothingness resisted. Maelduin leaned against it with both hands, straining.
The nothingness vanished. Maelduin fell forward, stumbled, and landed on his face in the sparking, hissing net of the wellspring, in front of a pair of dark-skinned bare feet.
Fool! roared a lightning-lashed gale in his mind. Why did you not listen to your human?
* * *
Maybe it’s safe to stand up. Terry eyed the ice beneath him suspiciously, hoping the hints of moving water he thought he could see throug
h it meant that there was a lot of very clear ice under him, and not a couple of inches of dirty murky ice.
Something popped, soundlessly, like eardrums on an airplane.
Terry couldn’t see through the floor anymore; the ice, and the fire inside it, were covered with the same magick that had formed the walls of his old prison and the lid of his new one.
He was hit with a blast of ice-laden air so cold it made him gasp and arch back.
And when he looked up, it was into the laughing face of hell itself, as the monster from his vision, half its head made of glowing red crystal and muscles visible under flapping rags of dead inked flesh, fell spread-eagled toward him, with nothing between him and it but the frigid air.
Terry screamed.
The monster’s laughter changed to a ragged shriek.
The monster… vanished.
Terry stared at where it had been, shaking uncontrollably, the air burning in his lungs. “Holy shit, Santa madre de Dio, sweet fucking bleeding Christ…”
Where had it gone? He didn’t care, as long as it wasn’t falling on him. It was gone. It was definitely gone. Which meant the timeslip wasn’t needed any more, and the darag could bring him back to warmth and safety. And—maybe—Maelduin.
Coinneach!
No answer. Not even an echo.
Oh, Jesus. The language of the Gille Dubh couldn’t penetrate the timeslip barrier. And neither could their magick.
All of a sudden, the roaring wind sounded a lot like the monster’s laughter. Only colder.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The apparent source of the wind and the fury, a handsome naked dark-skinned man, stood over Maelduin, hands balled into fists… and his toes turning into roots, which sank into the floor and made the wood groan. No man, then. And not friendly.
And not Terry.
“Where is my scair-anam?” Maelduin scrambled to his feet, hand on his sword-hilt. His awareness of his surroundings, preternatural even for a Fae, had not deserted him along with his coordination; Terry was nowhere to be seen, heard, or scented, which meant he had been gone for some time. Longer, surely, than the few moments that had passed for Maelduin since hearing his farewell.
He is where we sent him to keep him, and the timeslip, safe from what you have just done. The male’s voice was strange, formed from a wind heard but not felt and the play of moonlight on leaves—though ‘play’ was the wrong word for the anger glinting off every word. You have broken the timeslip; it takes all our strength to hold one small piece of it now against the creature you call the Marfach.
Maelduin knew he should care about the barrier against the Marfach. The very name somehow managed to stir up ancient racial nightmares, a faceless, formless being, madness, twisted darkness. But the timeslip was the problem of those who understood it and controlled it. “Send me to him. Send me where you sent him.”
Impossible.
“Maelduin!” Conall was all but jumping up and down, trying to get his attention. “Can you understand what Coinneach is saying?”
It had not occurred to Maelduin to wonder at his understanding of the language of wind and light. “Yes. Can you?”
“No such luck. I’m Demesne of Air, and a commoner—I can understand every language carried by the air, but the Gille Dubh and the daragin speak mind to mind, and use light besides. What is he—”
“He is saying that he cannot send me where Terry has gone.” Maelduin glared at the Gille Dubh. “Perhaps he forgets I do not need his help.”
“If you’re thinking of Fading, stop thinking.” The mage’s voice was sharp. “Using living magick wasn’t safe around any of the wellsprings even before tonight, much less so now—especially this close to the great nexus.”
Something about Conall’s expression cut off Maelduin’s intended retort before it reached his lips. Amazing, how one so youthful in appearance could look so severe.
I cannot use the wellsprings to send you to your human because the last piece of the timeslip is in the way. It lies between the Marfach and the wellspring closest to it. Once that piece comes down, the daragin tell me there is no replacing it, and no way to keep the Marfach from the wellsprings.
Daragin, and Gille Dubh. Conall had mentioned them before, as had Terry. Maelduin had overlooked those words, in the barrage of others. He had no time to spare now for old legends or old disdains, and besides, the male standing before him looked nothing like a dumb half-wooden animal.
But there was something else, hidden in what the Gille Dubh, Coinneach, had told him.
A blade-dancer must know the ground like his own body.
The ground.
Maelduin shivered once, sharply. “The last piece of the barrier also lies between me and Terry.”
Yes. That is why we cannot send you to him. If the expressions of the Gille Dubh were like those of Fae, or humans, Coinneach regretted his words.
Then Terry is with the Marfach. Maelduin refused to speak the words aloud, to give them even that small measure of reality—yet in his mind, the words became the wind and moonlight of the Gille Dubh’s language.
And Coinneach heard. Yes… and no. We cannot see through the barrier, so we know very little for certain. However, if the monster were actually touching the barrier, we would know. Its magick is… not compatible with that of Mother Sun.
He is safe, then.
For the moment.
Your comfort is a cold thing. Maelduin turned to Conall, who was stepping into the circle of Josh’s arms. “Terry is in danger. Tell me how I can go to him safely.”
“You can’t do it from here. You have to get away from the wellspring—”
Josh shook his head. “Conall, d’orant, no. He can’t help.”
Maelduin’s eyes narrowed. “I thought you understood the SoulShare bond.”
“I do.” Josh appeared less than impressed by the most cutting look Maelduin could muster. “I’ve also seen you in action. If Terry’s in any kind of danger, and you try to rescue him, no offense, but you’re likely to get both of you killed.”
“Fuck.” Maelduin had heard the word often enough by now to be reasonably confident in his use of it. And it was appropriate. His grip tightened reflexively around the hilt of his sword—his accursed blood-bound sword. It would kill him—gladly, if truesilver took satisfaction in the fulfillment of its purpose—if he had to raise it against the Marfach before he killed his uncle with it. Or if, as was far more likely, he cut himself drawing it. Any blood other than Tiernan’s would be the ink on the warrant for his execution.
And, more to the point, he would be of no use to Terry if he were dead.
Maelduin was presented with an impossible situation. Which, to a scian-damhsa, meant only that the rules wanted changing. “What if we were to complete our Sharing?”
No one, not even the Gille Dubh, greeted this suggestion with anything that might be mistaken for approval, and Rhoann was the only one willing to look him in the eyes. “If Terry is in danger, circumstances are unlikely to allow dhábh-archann.”
Maelduin grimaced. No doubt the Water Fae was correct—though Maelduin couldn’t remember the last time he had heard any Fae use the archaic term two-become-one to refer to sex. “What other chance do I have?”
Conall chewed thoughtfully on his lower lip. “I wonder if there’s some way I could channel a Finding and go after him myself.”
“It’s a little late in the year for fireworks, this side of the Atlantic,” Tiernan drawled. “If Fading’s a bad idea around a wellspring, one of your channelings would be several orders of magnitude worse than bad.”
“You’re never more purely irritating than when you’re right.”
“I’d invite you to bite me, but I don’t need the distraction right now.” Tiernan’s crystal hand wrapped around the length of his hair and twisted, in what looked like a habitual gesture. One Maelduin recognized as his own. “No living magick because of the wellspring, no wellspring because of the timeslip, and the only Fae who can find
Terry can’t do anything to help him until he Shares with him and kills me.”
Kevin growled. “I hope you don’t think you’re funny, lanan, because you aren’t.”
Tiernan’s words stung. And Maelduin had no need of the extra lash. This must end. “Enough of this—Terry needs me now, not when you all finish debating what can be done without me.”
The room went silent; even the dragonet and the savac-dui stared at Maelduin. Maelduin was beyond caring who stared. “Clumsy I may be, but the blades are danced in the mind as well as the body, and I am neither dull nor incompetent.” Though I nearly forgot that. Love and worry were apparently near-cousins.
All the Fae in the room looked as if they had something to say; one by one, though, each subsided, under the intensity of Maelduin’s regard.
“Good.” Maelduin turned back to Coinneach, startling the Gille Dubh out of what he guessed was some inner communion with his darag. “Has there been any change with Terry? Is the Marfach any nearer?”
There has been no change.
Conall went as pale as a white doe’s milk. “The Marfach?”
Did I not say—no, I suppose I didn’t. Or I said it only to Coinneach. “Yes, the last piece of the timeslip is keeping the monster out of the wellsprings. But the darag can tell if the creature touches its magick, and so far it has not.”
“Somehow I’m not terribly reassured. And that’s only one of your problems. Or one of Terry’s, more like.” The grim, purposeful Conall was back, displacing the fresh-faced youth. “If Terry’s been sent to the same place I sent the Marfach, your scair-anam is in Antarctica.”
Maelduin’s gift of language showed him what Conall meant, with appalling clarity. An unprotected Fae could survive in such a place, for a while at least. But a human? His human?
And then there was the Marfach…
“I have to go to him. I have no choice. He will freeze, he will die.”
Stone Cold Page 21