by Scott Duff
We waited a moment, watching everyone. Shrank bounced around the room from person to person, playing. “No one appears to be exploding,” I said to Cahill, grinning. “I think it’s safe to go now.”
“Wait, Mr. McClure,” called Calhoun.
“Ooh, too slow,” muttered Cahill under his breath, turning back to the group.
“We do have to talk to you about something else,” he said, standing up from where Harris was just regaining consciousness, leaving him to another.
“Well, you’ll have to wait,” I said. “My brother and I have more than enough to do today. I’ll see if Ethan and Peter have time for you today. If not, wait in Dublin and we will contact you at our discretion, but do not infringe on Mr. Cahill’s hospitality or mine again. You’re getting by with it today only because I was already going to do what you wanted at Mr. Cahill’s request.”
We turned as a unit and strode to the door with Shrank buzzing in the air happily in front of us. We were almost to the door when the man with the third curse caught up to us.
“Seth,” he called, almost in a whisper, reaching for my shoulder then thinking twice about it. The Day Sword hummed a warning in my head, but my awareness still permeated the room and I felt him coming. “I, uh, just wanted to say thank you for doing this.”
“You’re welcome,” I said, smiling at him. At least one of his men has some manners. We continued out the door, leaving the Americans to their own devices. Once we’d turned down the second hall, Shrank burst out laughing.
”You should have seen Harris’ face when he saw Master Seth!” he squealed to Cahill, his peals of laughter making us both wince a little. Cahill turned to me with a questioning look.
“He’d asked one of his men to practice pushing the magic out of the room,” I explained. “They hadn’t seen me in the doorway yet and his man was doing a poor job of it, so I sorta helped him out. That’s what you walked into.”
“A Faraday cage,” Cahill said softly.
“That’s what Ethan called it,” I said with a little surprise. “Yeah, effectively, that’s what it is. He thinks he can fight elves with it. I was explaining to him why I thought that was a bad idea when you came in.” He led us past the stairs that led to our rooms to another doorway to another stairway, a much narrower set of stairs leading down. He took the lead since we couldn’t walk abreast here.
“You do know I didn’t ask you to remove their marks, right?” he said, almost jovially as he bounced down the steps.
“Yeah, but Harris already owes us several times over,” I answered. “It won’t hurt to have him owe you for this one.”
Cahill burst out laughing as he hit the landing at the next level.
Chapter 33
The dungeons of the castle looked nothing like what I expected. No medieval torture instruments, no suits of armor lined the walls, no smell of mildew or urine from prisoners. It looked any other part of the castle, just more stonework and less paint. We were underground now. The only wooden doors with tiny windows and bars were those to the practice rooms.
I found Peter and Ethan in a practice room. They were tossing small flash-bangs around the room and watching where the excess energy drained. When I stepped into the room, I felt the oppressive atmosphere immediately. Looking for the source of the feeling, I was drawn to the walls of the small stone cavern. There were hundreds of spirals carved into the walls and ceiling, interspersed with arcane symbols. Each spiral swooped around another until ending onto bars of iron, copper, and other metals I didn’t recognize immediately. The floor was similarly covered in swoops and spirals inlayed in the rock with thick metals. From what I could tell, the whole room was a huge sink designed to draw errant magic to the metal and ground it to the earth.
I left my brothers to their workout after mentioning Harris’ presence upstairs, and stepped into the hall again where Gordon waited for me. He led me through the back of the dungeon, up a narrow staircase, and into the house again. I still didn’t recognize any of the halls until we turned into the one for the infirmary. Braelyn, one of Mom’s healers, greeted us as we entered and directed us back to my mother’s room. They left me at the door.
She looked so small, lying on the bed. According to Braelyn, she’s been fading through sleep cycles without awakening since our meeting on the steps. I couldn’t tell how they were keeping her fed. I sat beside her bed, stroking her hand and head, and talking about anything I could think of. Twenty minutes passed before I couldn’t stand the helplessness anymore. For all that I managed to do for Kieran and Peter, there was nothing I could do for my own mother.
A figure passed behind me silently from the room across the hall as I left. The woman spoke softly to my mother about us, about what fine and great men we were. It added to my depression, so I didn’t go back to listen more. When I entered the infirmary office, Gordon and Braelyn were talking quietly in a language I didn’t know. I approached slowly, not wanting to intrude and lost in my own thoughts. I stopped when I realized I began to understand them.
“I’m afraid for her recovery if we cannot break this hidden magic,” Braelyn said seriously. “And I’m afraid to try anything more without harming her.”
“Maybe when her husband is found, he will know something,” Gordon said softly. “But do not tell her son that yet. He has enough to worry about right now.” That’s when Braelyn noticed me standing behind Gordon. I suppose the look on my face told him more than he wanted to know. His eyes widened in concern.
“Don’t tell her son?” I asked loudly. “What the hell, Gordon? Keeping secrets from me about my own mother?” Gordon whirled around, surprised and guilty.
“Seth,” Gordon started, “it’s not what you think, Seth.”
“What could I possibly mistake here, Gordon?” I asked angrily. “Speaking in a language I’m not supposed to understand? Whispering so I wouldn’t hear? What could possibly be wrong with that?” I paused in frustration and watched Gordon attempt to formulate something soothing to say. “Just… go to hell, Gordon.” Then I stormed out the door, intent on getting away from them. Gordon followed me quickly.
“Seth, please,” Gordon called, racing after me. “It’s not what you think. We’re just trying to protect you and your mother.”
“Leave me alone, Gordon,” I shouted and turned down the hall that led to the dungeon. “I don’t want to talk to you.” Then I called the Stone to erect a shield wall behind me. He crashed into the invisible barrier with a satisfying crunch. After that, I turned again and ignored the faint cries for my attention. When I found Kieran again, I was livid. “Your son is an asshole!” I shouted at Cahill. “I want to pound him into the ground.”
“Seth, what’s wrong?” Cahill asked in concern and confusion. “Slow down and talk to me.”
“What language are you speaking?” asked Kieran in confusion. “I can’t understand you.” That stopped me dead in my tracks. As far as I knew, I was speaking English.
“It’s Gaelic,” Cahill answered. “I didn’t know he knew the language.”
“I… don’t,” I said, confused.
Cahill laughed abruptly. “You’re sure doing a fine job at it. Now what happened? And in English, please.”
I paused, concentrating on my native language. “Gordon and Braelyn were whispering to each other in that language. Gordon told him that he shouldn’t tell me things about my mother.”
“I’m sorry, Seth,” Cahill said understandingly. “I’ll talk to them, make them understand. Where is he?”
“Taking the long way round,” I answered, still angry.
“Well, let’s avoid any further confrontations right now,” Kieran said. “Let some anger fade before you see him again.” Kieran looked to Cahill questioningly. Cahill directed us through another path so we’d be unlikely to encounter Gordon along the way. We came out of the house on the mountain side. Thankfully, he let me stew in my anger, giving me silence rather than offering any over used cliché to placate me. Once out of the s
hadow of the house, Kieran stopped and positioned us by the sun, getting his bearings. Then he turned east and strode purposefully into the woods.
“Where are we going, exactly?” I asked finally.
“To Underhill,” he answered, distractedly. “To the Crossroads.”
Confused by his answer, I followed silently for a few minutes. “Where is this place? I didn’t see any crossroads on the map of the grounds.”
Kieran chuckled. “It’s in Faery,” he said quietly and stopped, looking about the small clearing we just entered. “Technically, you can’t get there from here.” Okay, I decided my brother is an idiot. He walked to the far side of the small clearing and turned to face me. “There are a number of ways to get there. I’m going to show you the classic way first. Watch carefully.” He strode purposefully toward me, gathering power with each step. Then, after ten steps, he loosed his magic sharply to his left. A yard out from him, the air began to shimmer like heat from asphalt. I saw the magic work, but I couldn’t tell what was happening with it. I stepped closer and peered at the swirling air. Kieran watched me examine the air, proud of his trick apparently.
“What is this?” I asked, still trying to decipher what I was seeing.
“An entrance to Faery,” he answered. “A very simple and slow entrance to Underhill.” He waved at the swirling heat pattern, extracting his control from the structure. It dissipated faster than it appeared. “You walk to the setting sun—west—and turn left. There are faster ways there. The fastest is a portal through space, but that requires knowing the endpoint very clearly. The Crossroads tend to wander with the Queens’ attention, so we’re going to use a form of that.” Kieran gathered power again and thrust his spell into reality. I saw the invocation clearly and, this time, understood exactly what happened. He ripped into the fabric of reality and sliced it open. The magic pushed through this hole in the world and grabbed onto the neighboring dimension. I watched the two dimensions fold together at the edge of his spell, forming a five foot circle in space. This, I could do.
“Come on,” Kieran said, taking my arm. “This will close quickly.” Then he jumped at the hole, hauling me with him. My perceptions went wonky when I hit the hole. Suddenly we were in the clouds, looking down on a new landscape. I felt weightless, flying almost, not yet fully realized into this dimension. Kieran pointed down at the landscape, showing me the thin line that existed between the two lands below us. He tugged my arm and moved us quickly along that line at amazing speed. He pointed again ahead of us at a point along that line that another land started, forming a crossroad.
“There used to be a cairn here at some time,” Kieran said. Suddenly we were standing on the ground, a transition so fast I barely recognized we weren’t flying anymore. We were on a small mound, roughly thirty feet around, in the grass of a huge field. The place felt weird, like we were standing on the edge of three different atmospheres. Behind us felt normal, but on my right, it felt like the middle of summer, and on my left, it felt like in middle of winter. It was an odd feeling, totally lacking a real temperature difference. Kieran turned to me and said, “That weirdness you’re feeling is a factor of the Crossroads. You have Earth behind you, the Seelie Court on your right and the Unseelie Court on your left.”
“I understand why they’re called Winter and Summer now,” I said, feeling uneasy about this place. “Sort of.”
Kieran grinned, nodding with understanding. Then he moved to the center of the mound and straddled the imaginary line between the two lands. At least, I think it was supposed to be imaginary. To me, there was a slight color variation between them, a slight blueness to Winter and redness to Summer, but only at the join between the two lands. Further out on either side, everything looked like perfectly normal grassland.
Kieran raised his voice and shouted to the winds, “I am Ehran McClure and I’ve come to meet with the Queens of the Courts of Faery as requested by them. My brother Seth and I wait at your convenience, Ladies.” I looked around suspiciously, but there was no one there for him to shout at. Kieran met my quizzical look with a chuckle. “They’ll be here shortly, trust me.”
Within a minute, I heard something from both sides, a faint and distant rumble. Clouds began forming in the distance on both sides and moving toward us. The horizon started to seethe with movement, dust rising skyward in opposite directions. I stared at the movement on one side, trying to see what was coming at us. The clouds overhead began darkening in the sky. I recognized a form in the distance: horses, thousands of them from the sound of it. After a few moments, I could see more clearly. The horses all had a blue sheen to them. Then I turned to the other side and saw the other stampeding herd. Red, those horses were bright red, like they were made of fire. I swept back and forth between the two opposing forces. Fire and ice, the horses were made of solid fire and moving ice, both graceful and unnaturally fast. And there were figures atop the beasts, one for each herd, dancing across their backs from horse to horse, never stopping for too long to burden one horse over another.
It was a very strange sight to see.
Above us, lightning danced from cloud to cloud, following the stampedes. In the distance, funnel clouds formed, dark against the darkening sky, dropping lower and lower, yet never daring to touch the ground. Very soon, individual horses were discernible. Indeed, each was made from solidified fire and fluidly moving ice. Huge beasts of rapidly moving sinew, the two herds sped toward us at breakneck speed. And they weren’t slowing down either. I turned my head back and forth between them quickly, knowing that we were about to be overrun. I began to panic in our impending doom, but Kieran appeared relaxed and unworried. That worried me more.
Then, just as the two herds converged on us, between the turn of my head from one side to the other… silence. It was deafening.
“Greetings, Ehran McClure,” the Seelie Queen said, her voice deep and husky.
“And to you, Seth McClure,” the Unseelie Queen said, sleekly and silkily. “Thank you for coming so swiftly.”
“Greetings, Queens of the Fae,” Kieran said, bowing deeply at the waist but rising quickly. “We came as soon as we could, Ladies. When two such as you request an audience soon, we move quickly.”
“And time has taught you some diplomacy, young Ehran,” Seelie said, smiling, her scarlet dress providing scant cover for her ample bosom. She wore her fiery red hair in loose curls, framing her lovely face softly and cascading over her shoulders. It accentuated her femininity, but we’d already seen the darkly sexual power writhing just below the surface at the Games. She sat, spreading her arms to rest on the divan suddenly under her.
“Thank you,” Kieran responded politely, giving her a small smile. “And to what do we owe this honor?”
Thunder boomed from the sky.
“We wonder where you have been, sweet Ehran,” Seelie asked, smiling demurely.
“You disappeared so long ago,” Unseelie added, suddenly seated on a similar divan, midnight blue to Seelie’s gold. “We thought you lost to the universe in your sorrow.”
“I almost was, Lady,” Kieran said to Unseelie. “But I found someone who showed me the joy of life and renewed that simple pleasure for me.”
“And taught you much,” Seelie said archly. “We’ve not seen such magic as you employed at the Games.”
“Yes, my teacher taught me well,” answered Kieran. “Hopefully, I will be capable of teaching my brother.”
“And add this magic to your clan as well?” Unseelie asked.
Kieran smiled cautiously. “I plan on only teaching my brother.”
“Then what of your family, dear boy?” Unseelie asked coyly.
“Our family has its own magic,” Kieran answered. “As I’m sure you well know. You are acquainted with our father, after all.”
“Yes, we know your father well enough,” Seelie said with a touch of dislike tingeing her voice. “But he, too, has disappeared from beyond our reckoning. Will he return with similar abilities?”
; “Doubtful,” Kieran said simply, offering no explanation.
Unseelie arched an eyebrow at his single word answer. “What of the secrets your family held? Is the ninth son of the rogue privy to them?”
Kieran chuckled and raised a finger to his nose. “Ladies, that would be a secret.”
Lightning once again danced across the sky, from cloud to cloud and, finally from cloud to ground. The Crossroads was a single shaft of sunlight as all around us the weather churned and damaged the now-stony landscape. More tornadoes sprouted down from the clouds in the distance, barely visible except when the lightning flashed. It was a terrifying environment to stand in.
“Do not jest with us, human,” one of them said, I couldn’t tell which. “You will not appreciate our sense of humor.”
“Probably not,” Kieran answered, looking out over the land as the tornadoes closed in on us. “So you believe that the Prophecy of the Geas is verging on fruition. You spoke to my father about this, then?” Obviously I missed something while watching the weather.
“Yes,” they spoke in unison.
“And he agreed with you?” Kieran asked with disbelief.
“He agreed with the possibility,” Winter said.
“Humans are so hard to convince on matters of prophecy,” said Summer.
Kieran sighed heavily, then asked, “Where did he go, then?”
“In search of the Architect’s son presumably,” answered Summer, standing from the divan that wasn’t there anymore.
Kieran let out a guffaw. “One impossible feat after another. The Architect is gone. He had no children.”
“And yet, still he took that leap,” said Winter.
“We are not the soul of cooperation, McClure,” Summer said, “But over the period of time that Robert McClure began missing members of his clan, we too noticed a slight lessening of our power.”