The blood drained from David’s face. “Will it be over soon?”
“I am of the Old Magic,” said the Fomorian, grimacing. “These abominations cannot kill me. But they can torment me. I did not know man could make such things.”
The giant said nothing more, as though resigned to this Promethean fate. But his body shivered from the unimaginable horrors taking place within.
“What if we take you to your island?” said Max. “It’s where you’re strong—”
“I cannot return,” interrupted the giant dispassionately. “That was the price of leaving.”
Max was aghast. “But it’s your home.”
Closing his eyes, the Fomorian shifted his weight slightly. “This must be home.”
“I didn’t know you wouldn’t be able to go back,” said Max. “I’m so sorry—”
The giant furrowed his brow. “Do not be sorry. Be just. Rowan has won a war, but it must share this world. Even with wild things. Swear this to me, both of you.”
Once they did so, David cleared his throat. “I have another oath to fulfill. It is time Elathan’s son had a truename.”
The Fomorian did not stir. “I saw no Book.”
“I do not have the Book of Thoth,” said David. “But this cane contains one of its pages. Prusias used most of its power, but I’ve saved what remains.”
At this, the Fomorian gave a shuddering exhale. His bloodied, ramlike features adopted a hopeful, almost childlike expression. “Can you truly do this for me?”
By way of reply, David unscrewed the cane’s bejeweled top and drew forth a tissue-thin parchment that was rolled within its interior. Sheltering the page from the wind, David came very close to the giant, almost standing beneath his plaited beard. As David unfurled the yellowed parchment, Max saw that its surface was swimming with silvery words and letters, all truenames. They rose and fell, glided smoothly past, or sank out of sight as though the page had depth. Some of the truenames were written in hieroglyphs, others in runes and alphabets whose origins Max did not recognize. Within several seconds, untold thousands had churned within view. He could not imagine how many a single page must contain. And yet, there was room for only one more.
The words faded at David’s command so that the parchment appeared blank. Touching the giant, David whispered something so softly that Max could not catch its syllables. A word appeared on the page, very long and comprised of Ogham runes, which Max had learned in the Sidh. Among the marks and slashes, Max recognized the word for grandfather but this was the only portion he understood.
Whatever its full meaning, the name’s appearance brought a sudden, sharp intake of breath from the Fomorian. A shiver ran from his curling horns down to his cloven hooves. Hard, tawny eyes cracked open to gaze down at David.
“You kept your promise. I honor that, and you.”
As David bowed, the runes sank into the parchment and disappeared. Rolling the page back up, David placed it inside the cane and set it within the giant’s hand. Clutching the cane, the Fomorian closed his eyes.
“You may go.”
“No,” said Max. “I’m not going to leave you here in this agony.”
“You can do nothing for me.”
“I can end your suffering.”
David turned abruptly. “Max—”
But Max kept his attention fixed on the Fomorian, whose face betrayed a war of conflicting emotions. Eyes screwed tight, the giant shook his shaggy head and clutched the cane tightly. “Be careful what you ask, kinsman. I will answer true.”
Standing on tiptoe, Max embraced the giant’s head and felt his warm tears upon his skin. “But I am asking,” he whispered. “You have your name at last. There’s no need to suffer any longer. Not when I have the means to give you peace.”
With a shudder, the broken giant clutched him tight.
“Do you wish it?” Max whispered.
When his kinsman nodded, Max kissed his cheek and withdrew two paces. Head bowed, the giant began a lilting, dirge-like song in a voice so deep that the earth trembled. The words were in a tongue that Max did not know. But their meaning was plain enough. The Fomorian was saying farewell to earth and stone, wind and sky, and the seas that were dearest of all.
And as he sang, a dryad slipped out from one of the cypress trees, a lithe young woman with deep green skin, tangled brown hair, and silvery eyes. Stepping lightly over the snow, she came to kneel near the giant.
Others arrived to hear the giant’s song. From the nearest woods came five slender fauns, three goat-legged satyrs, and an ancient centaur wearing a crown of twisted holly. Creeping close to the ring of trees, they bowed their heads and listened in reverent silence. From the sea came water sprites, childlike figures riding wisps of mist whose bodies were all of swirling seawater.
But it was the faeries Max was happiest to see. They came by the dozens, luminous little figures that descended from the skies or skimmed over the snowy countryside to settle atop the giant’s shoulders or nestle in his beard and listen. When at last his song was ended, the Fomorian raised his head and gazed with clear eyes at the gray waves.
When Max pierced the Fomorian’s heart with the gae bolga, the giant did not cry out. He merely gave a great exhale, like an emptying bellows, and leaned heavily against the cypress tree. Withdrawing the spear, Max backed away and came to stand by David.
Blood ran freely from the giant’s chest while steam rose off his body, melting the snow and ice about him. Where the snows melted, the earth came to life, sprouting grass and gorse, sea campion and corn marigolds that fluttered in the wind. Extending a hand, the giant touched them, patting them lightly before bowing his head and closing his eyes. The faeries left him then, taking to the air as the Fomorian’s body hardened into rough, weathered stone.
Wiping the gae bolga clean, Max turned and walked slowly back to the sledge. David remained to gather up the furs, dragging them over the snow and tossing them onto the sledge where Max sat gazing solemnly at the sea.
“Why did you do that?” David asked quietly.
“He was in pain,” said Max. “I couldn’t let him suffer like that. Not when I could help him.”
David’s voice was thick with emotion. “But your geis.”
“Is broken,” said Max indifferently. “It’s for the best, David. You don’t know what I’m capable of now. I don’t either.”
“You will grow into your power,” David assured him.
“Never invite a god into this world.”
Max removed his hand from beneath his mail shirt, where he’d been clutching the wound made by the Atropos knife. He had been clutching it since the giant turned to stone, since he’d felt it tear apart beneath its sash. Gazing down, he saw the hand was red.
Within half an hour, Max was back at Rowan.
The moment he’d seen Max’s bloody hand, David had summoned air elementals to transport them—horses and all—in a swift, frigid flight to his command tent. Racing past the bewildered guards, David flung open his battered trunk and levitated a half-conscious Max down its staircase and pulled the lid shut. When they reached the bottom of the stairs, David spoke a password and Max felt a powerful tugging as the wormhole activated.
An instant later, Max lay sprawled atop a bed, staring up at the stars and constellations winking beyond the glass dome in the Observatory, the dormitory room he and David had shared since they were twelve. Nearly a year had passed since Max had been here, and the faint smells of wood smoke and old books were comforting. Less comforting was the fact that something was wriggling beneath him.
“David,” Max murmured. “I’m on top of something.”
“Of course you are,” said David distractedly. He was standing by the bedside table, trying to slide the gae bolga’s scabbard over the blade without actually touching the weapon. “Sheets, pillows. Maybe a bolster.” Nudging the sheathed spear aside, he pulled up Max’s mail shirt to delicately touch the area of his wound. “Does that hurt?”
“No
,” replied Max dreamily. And it was true. The flesh around the wound was cold, but it did not hurt in the slightest. The problem wasn’t pain, but the steady trickling of warm blood down his midsection. Max’s extremities were growing numb and he felt increasingly dizzy, like his head was a helium balloon bobbing on a string. The sensation was not unpleasant and might have bordered on euphoric if a cat-sized creature hadn’t suddenly writhed out from beneath him with a shrill, insectlike chittering. Max gave a startled cry as a pair of antennae brushed his chin.
“Don’t worry,” said David. “It’s only Chester.”
“Get it off me!” Max yelled, pushing feebly against the pinlegs’ segmented forelegs. Issuing an ear-piercing ululation, Chester promptly jumped onto his face, mandibles clicking as it turned about in apparent confusion. Scolding his pet, David tossed the flailing pinlegs aside before pressing a bath towel against Max’s stomach.
“Keep pressure on it,” said David sternly. “I’m going to get the healers.”
“Put Chester in his case,” Max pleaded. “Lock him—”
But David was off, dashing around the walkway and out the door. The next five minutes seemed an eternity as Max listened in rapt horror for any hint of the pinlegs’ location. At last, David returned with five moomenhovens bringing a stretcher and several medical bags. The matronly, cow-legged healers worked quickly, assessing Max’s injury with gentle, probing fingers. They applied several different ointments at its fringes, studied the wound’s reaction to them, and exchanged nervous glances.
“Max,” said David. “What do you know about the weapon that did this?”
“It was the knife that belonged to Set,” said Max, his dizziness returning. “Prusias gave it to the clones. The Fomorian said it’s killed a god before.”
“Osiris,” David muttered gravely. “It must be the blade he used to murder Osiris on the Nile.” He turned to the moomenhovens. “Is anything working?”
They shook their heads, shooing David aside. Cutting away the Fomorian’s sash, they smeared a pungent ointment into the wound along with three slips of papyrus inked with spells. The papers began to smoke and curl like dying slugs. Frowning, the moomenhovens removed them, making gestures in sign language for David to apply a tourniquet.
“Where are we going?” Max murmured as they slid him onto the stretcher.
“Túr an Ghrian,” David said.
Max felt buoyant, as though the canvas stretcher were a magic carpet. David and the moomenhovens trotted beside it, guiding it out the door and down the dormitory corridor past a few stunned or curious faces peering out from their rooms.
By the time they reached the Manse’s foyer, Max could stay awake no longer. As they rushed out the double doors, he glimpsed only a starless night before his eyes closed and a wolfhound padded through his dreams.
Max dreamed of a wolfhound but awoke to a dragon.
The eyes staring into Max’s were larger than serving platters, the pupils mere pinpricks within the pearly irises. They were set on either side of a horned head whose sleek, elongated planes resembled those of a pike. While the jaws were shut, a number of dagger-sized teeth protruded like a crocodile’s. A foreclaw was spread across Max’s reclining chest with fully articulated claws and an opposable thumb whose curving talon rested right near his jugular. Max felt like a mouse that had been pinned by a large and watchful cat.
With a sibilant hiss, one of Ember’s coils slid past Max’s neck, grazing his bare skin. While the golden scales were smooth as glass, they were as hot as a baking stone. Max recoiled and felt a heavy, unyielding resistance against his legs. He gazed down to see that he was enveloped in a shimmering coil thicker than a tree trunk. With a grunt he tried to free himself, only to find that his arms were pinned helpless to his sides. He could not move, or even see what else was around him; the dragon filled his entire field of vision.
“Let me go,” he gasped. The coils about him were so hot it was like being buried in scorching sands. Max struggled vainly against their hold. “Let me go!” he yelled.
Ember’s pupils lengthened into vertical slits.
The dragon had been asleep. No longer, however. His eyes focused squarely upon Max while smoke trickled from his nostrils. The massive head eased forward, his jaws parting slightly to saturate the air with a smell like smelting ore and charred flesh. Max turned aside as whiplike tendrils along the dragon’s snout flicked and touched his face with surprising delicacy. A sound issued from Ember’s throat like the strumming of huge metal harp strings. As the head brushed past Max, he felt the massive coils loosen and ease him down upon a warm stone floor. Once he was free, the dragon slid away like a golden serpent.
Rising slowly to his feet, Max found he was dressed in a simple white robe. His hand strayed to his abdomen, where his wound had been tightly bandaged. It no longer seemed to be bleeding, and his head was considerably clearer than when he had returned to Rowan. Had Ember healed him?
Turning slowly about, he saw that he was in a circular chamber some thirty meters across. Already, the dragon was stretching out and settling its massive body onto a long bed of glowing coals. Seven megaliths were spaced evenly around the room’s perimeter, ancient stones crusted with lichen and cracked with age. Max saw the gae bolga had been propped against the nearest. He glanced up to the domed ceiling whose frescoes seemed to ripple from the light of an illuminated pool in the room’s center.
Max walked toward the pool, stepping over intricate hexagrams, sundials, and moon charts inscribed upon the malachite floor. Like the scrying pool in the Fomorian’s caverns, the water’s surface was alive with various scenes gliding past and through one another. Central among these was an aerial view of Blys. The city was no longer burning, but illuminated by thousands of tiny torches set along its broken ramparts and avenues. It looked like a crowded, elegant ruin placed within a colossal snow globe.
A deep, lilting voice spoke behind him. “Admiring your handiwork?”
Max turned to find Elias Bram sitting twenty feet away in a niche along the wall. Despite the room’s heat, the man wore black robes and a heavy cloak whose hood was pulled up over his tangled gray mane of hair. His eyes gave off a peculiar, almost sinister gleam—like the eyeshine of a wolf in a thicket.
Laying aside a scroll, the Archmage rose and pushed back his hood. He was as tall as, if not taller than, Max and exuded a rawboned physicality that contrasted sharply with his grandson.
“What are you doing here?” asked Max.
Bram spread his hands. “The same as you, Hound. Convalescing.”
As the Archmage approached, it was clear he was not only unwell but also not entirely human. The man’s eyes were like a wolf’s, yellow-rimmed and feral, while falcon feathers dotted his temple along his hairline or poked from his steel-gray beard. His hands, Max noticed, were slightly scaled, the fingers ending in talons.
Bram smiled grimly and turned them over. “Magic always has a price. You see what happens from shape-shifting too often. The body forgets what it is supposed to be. You know of what I speak.”
“I’m no shape-shifter.”
“Are you not?” said Bram pleasantly. “I’ve heard tales about a black-eyed god who appeared like a thunderbolt in Prusias’s throne room. Did David exaggerate?”
“Where is David?” said Max, ignoring the man’s question.
“In Blys. Wars get far more complicated when the fighting stops.”
“Where’s Mina, then?” said Max, walking away from the Archmage to look out one of the room’s many windows. Through the glass, he saw the milky, mist-covered sea a thousand feet below. The water looked almost placid at these heights, but Max soon realized that was because it wasn’t moving. The entire shoreline had frozen.
“Mina is at Rose Chapel,” answered Bram. “People are learning who has been lost during the siege. She is comforting the mourners.”
Max turned to face the Archmage. “Did Ember heal me?”
“The dragon’s done what he can
,” said Bram. “So has Mina. None of us can truly mend that wound. But we have done our best to hold it at bay. My own spells are upon the bandages.”
Max almost laughed. “Spells or curses, Archmage?”
A long silence ensued before Bram spoke. “Should I apologize for being wary of you? You frighten me. I daresay you frighten yourself. My grandson told me you willingly broke your geis and took the Fomorian’s life. I’d like to know why.”
Max turned back to the window. “No one else could end his suffering.”
“Very noble. But are you so determined to die?”
“I don’t know,” said Max truthfully. “I didn’t really care what happened. But I don’t understand how I’m still alive. My geis is broken.”
“Violating a geis doesn’t result in instant annihilation,” said Bram. “But you’ll die within the year. Of that I have no doubt.”
“That must please you.”
“Please me? No. But I will not mourn when you have departed this world. You did the right thing, Hound. And since you’re still capable of service—”
Before Bram finished, one of the floor’s sundials slid open to reveal Mina climbing a spiral staircase. Eight months had passed since Max had seen Mina. Her face was leaner, her body more coltish. No more pigtails for Mina; her shining black hair was worn long and loose and framed a face whose preoccupied expression was more knowing and worldly than most ten-year-olds’. Max gave an inward sigh. An Ascendant’s responsibilities were considerable and they were chipping Mina’s childhood away. Soon it would be gone entirely.
“Max!”
She bounded up the last two steps in a swishing flurry of white robes and a golden, hooded cape. Catching her up, he embraced her and mussed her hair like he used to when she’d follow him around the farmhouse in Blys when he did his chores. She laughed and promptly wriggled free to peer at his bandaged side.
“No blood,” she exclaimed. “That’s good. Maybe my baby’s cured you.”
Max glanced at the dozing dragon. “That’s quite a baby.”
The Red Winter Page 49