The Broken God (Legends of Fyrsta Book 3)

by Sabrina Flynn

  Other ghost-like forms began to drift out into the open, and then one stalked across the ruins towards the nymph. “Isiilde.” It was not a kind voice, but it was not an unkind one either—the sharpness that it usually possessed was absent.

  Isiilde turned towards the rail-thin woman. Thira was covered in blood and dust, and her shoulders were hunched. A dozen things seem to flicker across the woman’s face at once. For a flash, emotion softened the flint in her eyes, but as fast as it appeared, it fled. “I suppose you had something to do with this.”

  Acacia blinked at the woman’s accusation.

  Isiilde looked Thira straight in the eye. “I did. And I am not sorry in the least.”

  A gleam of pride entered Thira’s cold gaze. “Finally,” she said. “You’ve grown a backbone.”

  “If this is how it feels, then you have my pity.” Isiilde turned on her heel and walked towards the gatehouse, back to Marsais. He was alive. The nymph held onto that thought, and she held on to him, laying her ear over his heart, listening to each comforting beat.

  Sometime in that numb haze, a cloak was draped over her shoulders. Barking orders echoed in the bailey, and the humans began to move with purpose.

  A gentle hand gripped her shoulder. “Isiilde.” Exhaustion and grief strained Acacia’s voice. “They’ve set up a makeshift infirmary. They’re going to move Marsais.”

  The nymph stared blankly at the captain. It took a moment for the words to work through her emptiness. Two paladins of the Blessed Order stood behind their captain. A stretcher lay on the ground. But Isiilde barely glanced at the men; her gaze strayed beyond, over their shoulders.

  A line of chalk appeared on the rough stone. Acacia followed her gaze.

  “Witman,” both women said together.

  Isiilde stood, and watched as the circle grew. It stopped halfway, disappeared, and started over again. The next circle was larger.

  The stone wavered and a bespectacled dwarf stepped out of his workshop. Witman hooked his thumbs under his waistcoat, surveying the mess. When he saw the vast empty space where the Spine had once stood, he whistled. “As fine a destruction as I’ve ever seen. And who in the Void released that dragon?” The dwarf squinted at the nymph.

  “Pyrderi did it,” she said automatically. Some habits died hard.

  The dwarf shook his head with a cluck of his tongue. “Iilenshar’s gonna piss its divine pants.” Witman began chortling, and when he finally stopped wheezing, he wiped the laughter from his eyes, and looked to the two women frowning at him. He cleared his throat. “Oh, look there, the laddie’s fine. I told you, didn’t I?”

  “He nearly died,” Isiilde said tightly. She wanted to turn the dwarf into a crispy shell. The thought sparked flame, and fire smoldered in her eyes.

  “I uhm...” Witman shifted, taking a nervous step away. “Have come for my payment there.” He pointed at the stave thrust through Acacia’s belt.

  “It didn’t work,” Isiilde growled. “That was our agreement.”

  Witman’s eyes widened. “It was not.”

  “It was too,” she argued. “I hired you to fix the stave.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  Fire burst to life around her hands and her cloak began to smoke.

  “Wait now, no fire, lass.” Witman hastily reached under his waistcoat and yanked out a battered scroll. He opened it with a flick, and held it out to her. Puzzled, Isiilde let the flame fall and bent to the read the scrawl.

  It was a long contract, written in tiny print with a sloppy hand. Her own hand decorated the very bottom. Tired and impatient, she directed a burst of fire at the thing. The parchment flared and snuffed her flame. Isiilde’s ears twitched. “I didn’t sign anything.”

  “Your word bound the contract, lass. There’s no escaping it.” He held out a hand.

  “Fine, all right.” There was no use in arguing. It wouldn’t bring her father back.

  Acacia handed over the stave.

  Pleased, Witman tucked the stave through his belt. “Next time, lass, be more specific.”

  Her ears twitched. “I was.”

  He jabbed a stubby finger at a paragraph. “See, right here, it says, and I quote, ‘If you help me help my friends then you can keep the artifact.’” Satisfied, Witman rolled up the scroll and tucked it under his waistcoat. With a twinkle in his eye, he snapped his fingers. The stone wavered, and Witman the Wondrous delivered his end of the bargain.

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Fingers brushed his forehead. That was the first thing he felt. He swam in a haze, and that idle, caressing touch pulled him to the surface. Oenghus cracked open an eye. A dark-haired woman sat by his bed. Her lips curved.

  He wanted to hold her, and kiss those lips; to caress the face of the woman he loved. And in his mind, he reached, but nothing moved. His arm hurt, and his fingers burned. He stirred and looked at what was left of that arm—a bloodied, bandaged stub above the elbow.

  Oenghus blew out a quick breath of shock.

  “You’ve still got your cock and bollocks,” said Morigan.

  The familiar voice tore him from a flash of memory. “Aye,” he rasped. “There is that.” He looked around the small stone room. It was cold and stark. “Isiilde?”

  “She’s fine,” Morigan assured. “And Marsais is recovering, too. Isiilde has been running herself ragged, bouncing from your room to Marsais’, waiting for you both to snap out of a fever.”

  He tried to rise, but his whole body was wrong. He felt like half a man. With his remaining hand, he pushed himself to a sitting position, but the struggle stole what little energy he had. Oenghus slumped against the stone wall. “Where is she?”

  “I convinced her that Marsais needed a bedwarmer.”

  “Gods, don’t remind me,” he groaned.

  “I can’t think of a better man for that nymph. And neither can you.” Morigan gave him a knowing look as she reached for a mug on a nearby table. It was plain that the movement pained her. He looked down at her leg, the one that had been impaled.

  “Can you walk?” he asked softly.

  “With effort,” she said, handing him the mug. “I’m told a Portal from Iilenshar opened a few hours after Witman hauled us out of his workshop. There are Wraith Guards and Clerics of Chaim all over the castle. What’s left of it, at any rate. I had good care—we all did.”

  He sniffed at the mug and wrinkled his nose. It was water.

  “I’ve got your grog. And no, you can’t have it.”

  He muttered something rude, and drank. His head cleared and Morigan’s words finally settled in. Oenghus looked up, startled. “Witman?”

  “The Wondrous.” She poured him another helping from a pitcher. “Isiilde hired the enchanter to help her friends. He pulled you out of that hole.”

  “How?”

  Morigan lifted a shoulder. “In a wondrous way?”

  Oenghus snorted at the woman. He set his mug down in favor of the pitcher, drinking it dry. When he set it down, he reached across his body and took her hand. She squeezed it back. Morigan was pale and there was a strain around her eyes that worried him to no end. “Blood and ashes, Woman, you look no better than I feel and it’s frigid out. Get over here.”

  “You haven’t seen yourself.”

  “I need a bedwarmer.”

  “Says the man who has kicked off my blankets for a good hundred years.”

  “A hundred and fifty.”

  “Not counting the time between.” Morigan eyed the bed. “I don’t think that bed will hold us both.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first bed we broke.”

  “You brute.”

  “Shrew,” he returned, baring his teeth.

  Morigan removed the blanket from her legs, and set it on the bed. She put weight on her good leg, and with clenched teeth shifted from chair to bed. The wood creaked, but held, and after she scooted over to his right side, Oenghus slid the hem of her nightgown up her leg, revealing angry bruises and a heavily bandaged thigh
. He sniffed at the poultice. “What did those clerical bastards slather on you?”

  “I don’t know,” she sighed.

  Oenghus looked at her sharply. “You’re the most gifted herbalist in the realm—what do you mean, you don’t know?”

  “I haven’t bothered checking.”

  Oenghus frowned. After a moment, he gave her knee a soft squeeze and tugged on the blanket until she was under it with him. They sat with their backs to the stone.

  “Brinehilde’s dead,” she said at last. “She died on her feet.”

  “Piss and wind,” Oenghus sighed. She told him everything then. All that had happened since he had been chased from the Isle. When she fell silent, Oenghus wrapped his good arm around her, and she leaned in close.

  “I’m sorry, Mori. I should have been here,” he whispered against her hair.

  “You had your own problems,” she said. “If it weren’t for the Fey, we’d have stopped Tharios ourselves.”

  A pleased sort of rumble vibrated from his chest. “I’d take two Nuthaanian women into battle over twenty men any day.” At this, he fell silent, thinking of Brinehilde. “Gods, I’ll miss that woman. She had a fine pair of breasts.”

  Morigan snorted. “You can raise a mug to her and the twins soon enough. I’m sure she’d be pleased.”

  “May she piss in the ol’River,” he agreed.

  “Without a doubt.”

  “Do you remember that time the three of us got soused during the Feast of Fools?”

  “Three? You’re forgetting Breeman.”

  His brows knitted together in thought.

  Morigan patted his broad chest. “I’ll remember Breeman, and you can keep forgetting he was there.”

  “Was he really?”

  “You were distracted, Oen.”

  “Oh... aye.” He grinned. And then a swell of emotion clutched his heart. Oenghus held her head against his chest and pressed his lips to her hair. “Gods, my girl, I thought I’d lost you.”

  “I’m as stubborn as you,” she said. Oenghus held on tighter, with his one good arm, aching to hold her with two. “The Sylph asked me to watch over your hide, I couldn’t very well go and die.”

  “Aye, well, I hold her to her word too. I may have told her to do the same for you.”

  Morigan pulled back, looking into his eyes. “The Sylph did and more. Yasimina’s ritual would have done me in. Besides, without me, there’d be no one to patch you up after you do something stupid.”

  He shook his head. “You just like me in bed.”

  “You make a fine furnace,” she agreed. Her eyes dropped to his throat and she toyed absently with his beard. “If Pyrderi hadn’t put that hot blade to my leg, I’d have bled to death.”

  “That Fey was a bastard, Mori.”

  “After what Isiilde told me, given the same cards in life, I think we’d all become him.”

  Oenghus touched her cheek. “Not you. You’d have stopped on that path, long before getting to where he did.”

  “And neither would you.”

  “That’s because I have you to knock sense into me now.”

  “It’s been a long road.”

  “Ulfhid—” Oenghus stopped, closing his eyes as a wash of ancient memories welled from another life. When he spoke again, it was of things never uttered. But it needed saying, and to her he would. “I regret taking sides with humans. If I had stayed out of that war, he and his might never have taken such a dark path. But at the time, I went where there was war; I was never one to much think on the end, or which side might be right.”

  “There’s never a right side in a war. It all leads to the same end: misery, suffering, and hate.” It was, he knew, precisely why she set her axe aside to walk the path of a healer.

  “I do love you in armor though. Gets me all hard.”

  “Everything gets you hard,” she said, patting his leg. The touch proved her point. “Your cock is always a reliable health gauge. It’s a sure sign you’re feeling better. You gave the healers a scare, you know. They were about to shave off your beard.”

  Oenghus growled. “I’d have—”

  “Slaughtered the lot of them and pissed on their graves,” she interrupted. “Yes, I told them that’s what you’d do. They wisely decided to let you die with it on your chin.”

  He grunted with satisfaction, and raised his hand to stroke his beard. Or tried too. The stub of an arm moved, and he looked at the ruin. “Void.” He closed his eyes and let his head hit stone. In his mind, those fingers moved, they curled as if they were still there. “How will I—” Heal. The word stuck in his throat. He couldn’t say it.

  “I’m sorry, Oen.” She brushed the hair from his brow.

  He forced his lips to move. “I can’t heal one-handed.” The words thudded in the room like a hammer’s blow.

  “You’ll manage.”

  He shook his head.

  “Can you plow one-handed?” she asked sternly.

  “Not you—takes two hands and all my energy for that.”

  She slapped his chest. “If you can plow, then you can heal.”

  He looked doubtful. “I don’t heal with my cock, Mori.”

  She buried her fingers in the thick hair on his chest—mostly grey where years ago it had been black. “It’s been my cure for many a night.”

  Oenghus did not rise to her bait. And when he said nothing—no suggestive phrase, no offer to try out that cure—worry entered her eyes. “All I’m saying,” she said. “Is that if the will is there, you’ll find a way. You’re a berserker who can heal and weave. Have some faith in yourself. I know you, and there isn’t a more blockheaded, stubborn skull than yours.”

  Mist filled his eyes, and he nodded, blinking it away.

  Morigan stretched to kiss his lips. Some life returned to him, and he kissed her back, slow and savoring before pulling away to rest his forehead against hers. “What would I do without you?”

  “Bleed to death.” She smiled, and settled in the crook of his arm. And Morigan felt right, lying there, a part of the man he was now. They both had had lovers aplenty, and other Oathbounds besides, but it was each other’s arms they sought after hardship and terror. It was at her hearth where he laid his boots time and again.

  “Take an Oath with me, Mori?”

  She laughed at his rumbling proposal. “You’re fever mad.”

  “I’m serious.” His voice was grave.

  “Oen, I... there’s no reason to bind ourselves again. The Keening’s took my womb. I’m no good for child-bearing. Find a lusty young lass and sire another clan.”

  “I don’t want some mindless young thing. I want you.”

  “There’s always been room for you in my bed, and your bed has always been open to me. That won’t change. We come and go as we please. Besides, you asked me to take an Oath last time. It’s my turn to ask.”

  “Then ask, Woman. Come home with me.”

  “What of Isiilde?”

  “She’s grown now. I have to let her go—as hard as that will be.”

  “What will we do?” she asked. “Grow old together? We’ve shared our lives, our beds, had our children. Why do you wish to bind yourself to me?”

  He gripped her shoulder. “Because when I’m with you, I am Oenghus, and no bloody other, especially not some blasted god.”

  “You are who you are, Oen. All of you. Ulfhidhin, bound to the Sylph; a berserker, slayer of countless; a healer of many and a lover of even more. And when you put your mind to it, a bloody fine father.”

  “You forgot one,” he rumbled, pulling her near.

  “And what’s that?”

  “I’m yours.”

  Morigan paused at this. “And mine,” she agreed softly.

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  The nymph opened her eyes to an empty bed. For a moment, she feared she had dreamed the last days. That Marsais had not survived. Panic clutched her, and she hopped out of bed, eyes darting around the small room. But there were signs that another d
welt here: bandages and poultices. None of which she needed.

  How long had she slept? It felt like weeks.

  Disoriented, Isiilde tugged on her clothes. Worry whispered that he had died in his sleep, and the clerics had carted him off without telling her. She flew across the hallway and opened the door across. The nymph stopped. Oenghus still slept, and Morigan slept too, head on his broad chest.

  Careful not to disturb the pair, Isiilde backed out and softly closed the door. A smile warmed her heart. When Witman had had his enchanted constructs drag out her friends, she’d thought she would burst with delight.

  She made her way through the barracks, which were serving as the infirmary. Aside from the curtain walls and outer ramparts, it was one of the few buildings that still stood. The cots were nearly empty now, but a few patients lingered. A white-robed Cleric of Chaim drifted near. He did not know where Marsais was.

  “I’ll call for a search. Be at ease and rest,” he urged in hushed tones. But the nymph shook her head, and backed away from the man, turning to dart outside.

  The world was quiet with the grey before dawn. The camp was still asleep, and the few remaining fires smoldered in ash. As she wove through the tents that dotted the outer bailey, her teeth knocked together with cold.

  Sentries watched the nymph’s passing, but her eyes were on the vacant horizon. The grey sky looked naked without the Spine reaching towards the heavens. She felt as if she were in the wrong place. But the pile of stone told her otherwise. A mountain of wreckage, shrouded by a chill mist, remained.

  No one, not the Wraith Guards, the paladins, nor the Wise Ones, knew what to do about the lingering elemental. For now, the old one slumbered. It had not moved from the ruins. Perhaps it had found a new home. That thought warmed her heart.

  With the wards and rot gone from the Isle, the Portals of Iilenshar could come and go at will. She had watched a pair of the cowled and masked beings glide across the bailey. Mystery shrouded the Portals, and for that matter everyone from the Guardians’ floating Isle.

  She approached a grey-cloaked Wraith Guard. Two silver earrings adorned the woman’s left ear. Acacia had told her that the earrings signified rank among the Wraith Guards. One earring marked an initiate, and two, a soldier. The more earrings, the higher the rank.