Fairy Dark

by Adam Golden

  The Pyski Guardian hefted a pair of Dewi’s scrolls in her hand, walking casually away from the desk. “Hmm?” she asked as she reached over and put the ends of the scrolls into one of the torches in its bracket between the banks of shelves.

  “No!” the drake’s roar boomed off of the walls and shook the library. Several texts tumbled from their places and Rhiannon was forced to step sideways to brace herself.

  “Enough games, Dewi,” the Pyski woman said, more calmly than she thought she’d be able to. A roused drake was no small thing after all. “You never could lie worth a damn. Now you’re going to tell me the truth about this Dragon god of yours and how the Bwgan is using it to travel the planes.”

  “It’s a myth!” Dewi shrieked desperately. “A story. It never happened. Please Rhiannon . . .”

  The hunter clucked her tongue in irritation and ran the flaming end of her scroll brand across the spines of several books on the closest shelf. A collection of ancient cloth-bound codices burst alight as though made of dried kindling, and Dewi’s cry of panicked rage boomed.

  “STOP!” A wave of pure will slammed into the Pyski like a fist. Rhiannon staggered backward, but the flames were already spreading hungrily to consume the entire shelf. The rotund little drake muttered something urgently in a sibilant hiss, and a cloud of steam exploded into existence from nowhere as the flames extinguished.

  “Why you great graspin’ bitch!” Dewi roared, whirling on the stunned Guardian, small gouts of flame and smoke on his breath as he spoke. “Always with the threats, with yer damned smug superiority. There was Drakes here for millennia before the first o’ yer lot ever even dreamed there was life outside yer damned jungle. We was the gods here, the protectors, the Guardians.”

  “You’re hiding something,” Rhiannon said, squaring herself up for the fight that was coming. “I need you to tell me. I have to find him Dewi. I won’t let you, or anything else, stand in the way of that.”

  “Not so different from them ya despise, are ya then?” Dewi mused darkly. “Burstin’ into my home, destroyin’ my things, all for your own purposes. For yer revenge.”

  “Justice,” Rhiannon shrilled. “For Justice. To protect . . .”

  “Who?” Dewi asked “Me? My kind?”

  “Everyone,” Rhiannon said heatedly. “The Bwgan’s a monster, Dewi. He’s killed, looted, burned, and maimed.”

  “So he has, an’ so have you,” Dewi said. “Left a wake o’ bodies and broken lives behind ya as well as him, haven’t ya? If Bwgan’s a monster, he’s a Pyski monster, and not near the only one.”

  Rhiannon’s mouth worked silently for a moment. She was stunned. How could anyone compare her to that . . . thing? “It’s not the same,” she said weakly. “Sometimes we have to do things we would rather not, but it’s for the greater good.”

  Dewi stepped aside and gestured to his ruined shelf. “Was that for the greater good? Centuries o’ knowledge lost . . . gone, mayhap forever, an’ for what? What was served?”

  “You’re going to tell me what I need to know Dewi, or by the Light I swear . . .” As she spoke, Rhiannon drew a long slightly curbed dagger from the sleeve for her leather tunic.

  “The Light,” Dewi sneered. “The Dark, two sides o’ the same misguided coin. Do yer worst, Guardian, an’ remember this when you start t’ feelin’ righteous about yer justice. Remember Dewi, who never hurt nobody an’ what you were willin’ to do.”

  * * *

  The Transit through into the dim red stone cavern was like being pulled through a keyhole. Rhiannon passed through the Thinning with an anguished scream and collapsed onto her knees, a quivering, sobbing mess. Her knife, thick with gelatinous green blood, clattered to the stone floor, forgotten as she tried in vain to scrub the salty mix of tears, snot, and Drake blood from her face. Her leathers were scorched in several places, and across the chest they were torn through where one diamond-hard claw had found purchase. Her left arm hung limp and useless, the toughened leather of her jerkin and the soft Pyski flesh below both charred and blistered. But none of it hurt as much as the sight of that sticky green blood on her hands and clothing. He’d fought so hard. He’d known he was no match for her, but he fought anyway. Not for the Bwgan or the Dark. Not because he was evil, he wasn’t. Dewi fought, Dewi died, trying to protect this place, the spiritual center of his people, from invaders.

  ‘Invaders like me.’

  He’d failed. She’d carved it out of him, inch by sickening inch. Now she was here, Kur’s Grotto, the crypt of the Elder Drake Himself, and she wished with every fiber of her being to be anywhere else. “Do yer worst, Guardian . . .” The round little drake’s scornful snarling face floated in her memory, and Rhiannon wanted to wail.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered into the dim vastness of the red stone cavern.

  “That you are, lass.” A deep, easy voice laughed in the dark. “As sorry a sight as I’ve ever seen.”

  The gore-spattered knife came to her hand faster than thought. In a fluid, blink-quick movement Rhiannon spun on her knees, launched her weapon and threw herself after it, flying toward the voice. His voice. The gloom of the cave thickened, the shadows grew heavy and her streaking blade wavered, struggling as though it were flying through thick sap. The needle-tipped spike froze, shivering in mid-air less than a finger’s width from the horrid waxen mask of his face. Rhiannon saw the satisfied curl of his monstrously wide maw sour a split second before she struck the Shadow King like a hardshot missile. Her shoulder took the Bwgan low in the abdomen, and his startled exhalation was completely buried by the feral scream that tore from Rhiannon’s throat as she drove them both to the ground.

  The Spriggan’s pasty white head bounced off of the stone floor as they landed, and again as Rhiannon’s first wild punch landed. Black blood spurted from his lips as Rhiannon drove her working fist down into the flat expanse of flesh where a nose should have been in a flurry of mindless, rabid, rage-fueled blows. She couldn’t see through the fog of tears in her eyes, couldn’t think through the haze of pain and rage and horror that wrapped her mind, but she could punch. She could end it now, pound this monster into a wet smear on the stone and it would be over.

  ‘Over. I’ll be free. Free to . . . what?’ It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered more than this.

  Her one strong arm fell like a hammer, beating out a harmony with her panting, snarling breaths. The thin delicate bones of the eye sockets and jaw broke, cartilage snapped. With every blow the landings grew softer and more squelching. A long shivering moan leaked out of the ruin of her nemesis’s face.

  “J . . . just like . . . old times, eh Mistress?”

  Mistress. The word struck her like a stunning hammer between the eyes and Rhiannon reeled. Reality twisted and writhed around her. Another cavern, smaller, darker and more cramped, packed with a clutter of things, a riot of smells. There was hard stone under her back, something tight around her throat, growing tighter. She was looking up, up into . . . eyes.

  A pair of black eyes, wide as chasms and hungry. Bwgan’s eyes. He was straddling her, grinding himself against her “Die,” he hissed, rocking painfully against her pelvic bone. “Die!”

  She tried to cough but his grip wouldn’t let it out. She tried to writhe, to twist, but his weight pressed too hard. Her power wouldn’t come, her panicked mind was too fractured. She tried but there was nothing. Nothing. The weak light fled, it was growing dark. Hot breath on her face. “I wish I had a knife.”

  Rhiannon threw herself backward, away from the battered form of the Bwgan. Maeve. That was Maeve, the Spriggan Queen. She remembered being Maeve, she remembered dying as Maeve. How?

  A ram of coalescing dark struck the shaken Pyski and sent her sprawling to the stone. “You really have gone soft, my lady.” The first few words came as a slurred groan, but the voice grew in strength and clarity with every syllable. “Or my ladies, or . . . How many of them are shoved in there exactly?” the Bwgan mocked. “Do you even know?”

&nb
sp; Chains of shadow held her to the stone floor; she couldn’t see him, but she felt him moving, coming closer.

  “And you called me a monster, Niamh. Look at this thing you wrought. At least I have a soul all my own. Do you? Or are you just the cobbled leavings of ghosts and madmen?”

  The heavy fetters of nothingness that held her yanked Rhiannon upward, stretched her limbs tight and left her hanging spread eagle in the empty air.

  “You tried the Light at Aos Si,” that smooth mocking voice said. “You tried your fists here today.” He stepped close and Rhiannon gasped. The broken, pummeled mass of his featureless white egg of a head twisted and reshaped itself as though a nest of snakes writhed beneath the pasty flesh. Blood slithered back inside and torn flesh mended before her eyes. “You made me too well, Mistress,” he sneered. “I was the best of you, Mentor.” The dark bindings that held her grew tighter at a flick of the shadow-thing’s gnarled white talon and the long, ragged tears in his cheeks that were his face’s only features seemed to pulse with a glittering black as Rhiannon’s joints popped and she screamed. “Neither of you had the tools to destroy me while you lived, and neither does your pathetic golem.”

  Rhiannon let her head sag and her body go as limp as the invisible rack she hung on would allow. Her breathing was shallow, almost non-existent. Let him think she’d lost consciousness. Let him rage and declaim and vent his spleen on the long dead. She needed the time, just a few more seconds.

  “I could kill it, I suppose,” he muttered to himself as he paced before her. “End your little grotesque here and save myself the trouble . . . But no. I want you all to see.”

  A bone-hard finger scraped down her jawline, parting the flesh as it went. Rhiannon felt the cut in a far-off way, but her focus was too solidly on its task. Her body stayed limp. Just another moment.

  “What is that?” the Spriggan king said, voice uneasy for the first time. What are you . . . ?”

  Rhiannon’s head came up sharply and a shaft of Light as thick as her forearm blasted out from between her open lips, smashing the shadow-creature dead center in the chest.

  The Bwgan was lifted off of his feet and carried back into the chasm’s far wall.

  Rhiannon’s shackles evaporated, and she fell into a heap of dislocated limbs. Her energy was gone, the pain was incredible, and worse, her sense of self was shattered. Who was she? What was she?

  Something moved in the dark, slithering on halting feet. Bwgan. Hurt, but still alive, despite all she could do. “See you on the road, little monster.” His voice grated through the dark and she felt him receding deeper into the grotto. Escaping. Again.

  The tears welled up again and she choked them back, reaching out with her will instead, searching, pleading. “Help me. Oh, please . . . help,” she sent, and swooned with relief when she heard a spectral sigh.

  “Fool. Sure’an I’m comin’ Gruaidh.”

  Chapter 14

  “Be still ye foolish git!” Caoin snarled as she braced her temporarily solid form and heaved on Rhiannon’s right leg. The Pyski’s scream reverberated through the cave and was followed immediately by the Banshee’s long-suffering sigh.

  “My, but don’t we carry on some?” she asked, coming to her feet with some difficulty now that the last of the Pyski’s limbs were firmly back in their sockets. “Ach! Stay still, or were ye thinkin’ to snarl yerself up yet worse?” the old harbinger spat as Rhiannon tried to twist onto her side.

  “There’s . . . no time. He’s getting away,” the Guardian grated, her voice thick with pain.

  “Aye, an’ I should hope so!” Caoin spat angrily. “Or were ye hopin’ t’ hobble on after ‘im and get yer fool head taken off fer yer trouble? Ye were always foolish, Gruaidh, but by my word ye’ve surpassed yerself for pigheaded stupidity these last few years.”

  “Enough Caoin,” Rhiannon groaned.

  “Oh, enough is it?” the old ghost spat acidly. “Was it ‘enough’ when I found ye blubberin’ on yon floor? With nary the spark left to speak never mind restore yer form, I could add.”

  Rhiannon opened her mouth to respond and closed it again. What could she say? Caoin was right. She’d rushed in, too full of rage and shame to think straight, and she’d paid the price, nearly paid the ultimate price. She’d been outmatched from the very beginning and hadn’t even had the sense to know it. If it wasn’t for the old ghost’s assistance, who knew how long Rhiannon would have laid crippled in this cave, waiting to rebuild enough strength to change her form.

  “Thank you Caoin,” the Guardian said after a moment. “And you’re right, I’ve been a fool. I’m sorry.”

  “Course I’m right,” the old woman groused. “Though it be a pleasant surprise that fer once ye’ve taken note.” She smiled a toothless smile down at Rhiannon and reached down. “Now, are we goin’ t’ have a look about or did ye mean t’ lie about all day?”

  The guardian sputtered with a mixture of indignation and pain as she reached up to grasp the gnarled and surprisingly strong hand of Caoin’s solid form.

  The antechamber of Kur’s Grotto was huge, a score of yards wide and even longer front to back, but completely empty. The walls, floor, and Rhiannon imagined the ceiling were completely smooth, pale-red stone, but unlike anything she’d seen anywhere else. Every surface sparkled and shimmered like glass in the chamber’s dim light. The light was another mystery. Jets of white blue flame dotted the walls at regular intervals and ringed the entire chamber. The flame seemed to come from the living rock and had no source that Rhiannon could detect.

  She was inspecting one of the dancing finger long flames when Caoin cleared her throat. “Ye should see this, lass,” the washerwoman, now returned to her floating spectral form, said, pointing.

  Rhiannon, one hand on the wall to help steady her struggling form, dragged herself to where the specter hovered, and felt a grim satisfaction at what she found. High up on the wall a black spatter a pace wide marred the pale crimson. Blood. That was where the Bwgan hit after her final attack. A long streak of gore ran to the floor like a tail; he’d survived, but he was hurt.

  Rhiannon’s eyes swept the floor urgently, seeking more signs. “There, more blood,” she said, pointing. There was a trail going deeper into the grotto.

  “Aye, but wait, patience this time perhaps?” the ghost asked with a pointed glance that heated Rhiannon’s cheeks. “Gruaidh, what think ye is that?” the spirit asked, pointing again.

  Rhiannon exhaled a shuddering breath and gritted her teeth as she slid down the wall to inspect the spot where the grisly streak of gore met the floor. There was something there, something small, almost lost under the sticky blood, but the light caught it, and whatever it was Rhiannon wiped away the coating of sticky black ichor and dug the tiny lump off of the floor.

  “What in the world . . . ?” she muttered. The Pyski warrior spat into her palm and rubbed the little object into the leg of her trousers, trying to clean it, and then she hobbled closer to one of the jets of flame to inspect what she’d found. A tooth, a small slightly yellowed tooth, complete with the root.

  “One o’ yer monster’s mayhap?” Caoin asked, breezing up to look. “By the looks o’ things there, ye gave him quite a wallop.”

  Rhiannon thought back to the fight with the creature, to that wide smiling maw of jagged razor teeth. “No. This isn’t one of his. It’s too small.” She held it up closer to the light. “It looks human . . . but too small. A child?”

  A sound like a storm wind whistling through the cracks of a drafty cottage sounded as the banshee sucked in a startled breath. “Powerful,” the crone said. “Old magic. Nae surprisin’ that ye got yerself walloped if’n he’s got charms like these.”

  “What are you on about Caoin? A single human tooth, a powerful charm?”

  “Nae just any tooth I’d wager. The last baby tooth. Tis primordial magic, blood and bone magic. Darkest dark and older than old. Witches and the like have been dealing in it since long before yer sort found the Thinni
n’, since b’fore th’ Red man made ‘em in th’ first place, but that’s nae important here. A human’s last baby tooth is a kind o’ waypoint between their past an’ future, a marker ‘tween life and death. A powerful practitioner could wreak a mess o’ havoc with one o’ those.”

  Rhiannon looked down at the gruesome talisman for a long moment and a shiver of apprehension rose in her as the wheels turned in her mind. “Caoin . . .” she started slowly as the idea took shape. “What about a Focus? If you had one of these baby teeth of a Focus child?” Rhiannon let the question trail off as she saw the ghost woman’s ephemeral face go wide with shock.

  “Them wee bairns are some o’ the strongest latent practitioners I know of,” Caoin said after a moment. “If he could harness that power . . . I dunnae know lass . . . anything.”

  “And if he had more than one?” Rhiannon asked. She didn’t need an answer, and her ghostly companion offered none. “That’s what he’s doing,” the Guardian said, suddenly certain. “That’s what he’s been doing since the attack on Aos Si, why he’s been hiding for all these years. But why? For what?” Rhiannon closed her fist around the little tooth and spun, turning her attention to the blood on the floor, the trail that led deeper into Kur’s last domain.

  * * *

  Where the outer chamber was massive, dim, and plain, the inner sanctum was smaller but festooned with elaborate decoration and bright light. The same strange sourceless flames that illuminated the antechamber lit this one as well. The flames were stronger here, the light danced on a thousand gold and silver decorations and sparkled off of a sea of gems, adding to the brilliant splendor of Kur’s resting place. Carvings and statues of dragons of every description littered the space. The walls were painted with brilliant murals that showed great winged reptilians filling the skies, or rampant atop towers that looked out over oceans of prostrate man-shaped beings.