by Adam Golden
The sarcophagus stood in the center of the room and, even amidst all of the splendor piled in this place, it stood out. It was noteworthy not just for its great size or the elaborate nature of its construction, but also because it was in pieces. The massive black marble box must have stood a dozen long strides on a side when it was whole and pieces of its wreckage stood as tall as Rhiannon herself. There was enough marble, gilt, gold and ivory in evidence in the ruins to have constructed a small palace. She bent and picked up a twisted, half-melted golden ornament of a swooping winged drake and felt outrage building inside her. That this place had been desecrated so callously made her blood boil. She knew it was the shame she felt at her treatment of Dewi playing on her emotions, but in her heart, it became another mark on the bill owed by the Bwgan. A bill she meant to see him pay with his life.
‘If I can find a way to kill him.’
The Pyski waded into the wreckage of the great drake’s coffin and found the massive outer structure was a shell. Inside was a great hollow, and inside that a much smaller second sarcophagus. Like the larger one, the second was made of black marble run through with swirling veins of ivory and flecked with gold, and like its larger counterpart, a section of it was smashed. The lid of the inner sarcophagus had been dragged away carelessly and dropped. The finely carved marble lay in three distinct pieces, and Rhiannon felt the tooth biting into her flesh as she clinched her fists in fury.
The Elder Drake’s corpse was a shock. No great winged reptile, no fearsome megalith of ancient fury, just a small collection of moldering man-shaped bones amidst a cocoon of silk and satin. Rhiannon wondered whether Dewi would have been pleased or infuriated to know that the god he revered so hadn’t really been all that different than he himself. She wasn’t sure, but she found herself offering a silent prayer for the little drake she’d known and his ancient ancestor before she bent to give the bones a more critical examination. They were denser than humans’, heavier. This drake, small as he was, must have been an incredibly sturdy, powerful creature. She knew very little of Drake anatomy, but it was obvious there was something missing, a hole in the armored cage of ribs that had protected the drake king’s vital organs.
Bwgan had taken a rib and fled.
‘But to where?’
The Pyski Guardian reached into the coffin gingerly and put her hand in the bony skeletal paw of the primordial drake. “I’m sorry Kur,” she said, “for the indignity visited on your tomb, for my offense against your servant Dewi, who was true, and for what I must do to avenge us both.”
Rhiannon closed her eyes, let out a slow breath, and jerked. The finger bone came free with the stale snap of a dried twig breaking, and with it resting in her palm, Rhiannon felt the ancient bone humming with a trace of energy. Just a trace, but it was unlike anything else she’d ever felt. It felt old. Not old in the way of mortals, or even Fae, but old the way that stars were old, unfathomable and alien in the span of time they’d seen.
“Thank you, Kur,” she whispered. “Thank you, Dewi. Now if only I knew where to go next.”
“Seems ol’ Caoin comes t’ yer rescue again, Gruaidh, ye great lump,” Caoin cackled from beyond the wreckage of the sarcophagus.
“You’ve got something?” Rhiannon asked, biting down on her irritation at the caustic old crone’s smug mockery.
“Oh aye,” the banshee replied, pointing.
Rhiannon crouched painfully and squinted into the debris and dust that was everywhere where the crypt had been broken. Something glinted faintly in the light, something filmy, a thin bit of beaten gold. The air swirled around Rhiannon as Caoin moved around her. “I don’t understand,” Rhiannon said. “A flake of gold leaf, there must be enough of that littering the floor to wrap a horse cart. The crypt was probably filled with the stuff.”
“Yer a pretty lass, I’ll not say yer not,” Caoin laughed. “But not the sharpest tine on the hay fork. Tis no ornament, an’ no mortal hand made that. Tis leaf, though nae the sort ye mean, look close. Look at the shape, th’ ridged edges. That there is th’ leaf of an apple.”
Rhiannon looked at the crushed bit of gold again. It was torn, and a bit of it was broken, but the pointed ovoid shape was right. “What sort of apple has golden leaves?”
“No sort on this plane,” Caoin said. “Sure ‘an this one comes from Cerridwyn’s own orchard.”
Rhiannon stared, silent and expectant at Caoin’s ghostly face.
The banshee sighed expansively. “Did they teach ye naught but punchin’ in that fancy white city o’ yours? Eamhna, the Plane of Apples, one o’ the planes o’ the Tuatha De.”
“The Tuatha De?” Rhiannon spat. “They’re a myth, silly superstition invented by drunken mortals ‘round their hearths.”
“Aye,” Caoin said rolling her eyes, “an’ them same mortals would be sayin’ just the same ‘bout you an’ I. They were never gods, the Tuatha De, but strong they were and real as you, or so they were. Most have moved beyond th’ planes now, but that they made endures. Eamhna and its golden apples be as solid as the prissy pout o’ yer scowlin’ lips. An’ no fer nothin’, the orchard be famous fer it’s healin’, or so it’s said. Myself, I could think o’ many a worse place for yer battered carcass to end up just now.”
The Pyski stiffened with outrage, winced at the shock of pain that shot down her spine, and leaned against a bit of broken crypt to steady herself. “Oh fine,” she said after a moment, rubbing Kur’s sharp claw with her thumb. “Show me the way, Caoin. Let’s see about this magic orchard.”
“Bloody magnanimous of you,” the ghostly washerwoman grumbled as she set her spectral form around the warrior like a shroud. “Fool,” she muttered as the pair shimmered and left Kur’s Grotto behind.
Chapter 15
“The draught will revitalize the body’s energy and speed the healing process, but its effects can be . . . jarring for some,” the gray-robed healer said to Rhiannon as she pressed a wooden cup into her palm. “It is best to open yourself completely to whatever you experience. Do not try to fight it, that wastes energy and can be quite unpleasant.”
Rhiannon lifted the cup to her lips and sniffed the rich yellow liquid inside. Apples, cinnamon, and something sharper, something she couldn’t identify. Her arm shook from the effort of holding the little cup aloft. The Transit from Kur’s grotto to Eamhna had been too much, even with Caoin’s shielding and guidance. The Pyski was well past drained and her body and mind were lagging badly.
“Drink,” the physician said with an encouraging smile. You’re quite safe here.”
“Ach! Ya bull-stubborn . . .” Caoin barked in counterpoint to the other woman’s friendly urging. “Drink, or by all th’ Gods, I swear I’ll pour it in ye—”
Rhiannon let out a long slow breath and poured the thick spicy liquid into her mouth.
“. . . n’er could do anything ‘lest she were pushed,” she heard Caoin telling the bemused looking healer.
The air in the airy open structure that the Sisters used as an infirmary shimmered around Rhiannon. She felt the warm cider-like draught coating her insides as it slid down her throat and a fuzzy warmth radiated from her middle encompassing her completely. There was a dull thud as the wooden cup rolled out of her limp hand, but by the time it sounded Rhiannon had slumped back into the mound of cushions behind her head and consciousness was far behind her.
“Run!”
The screams were drowned out by the great groaning crack as the Telesin spire broke free of the palace it topped, swayed drunkenly, and collapsed into the street below. A legion of rampaging shadows filled the sky and everywhere he looked Raiu Malvyn saw Pyski fleeing for their lives. The impossible had happened. The Dark Court had come to Aos Si. The elder shuddered. He wasn’t old enough to remember Maeve when she’d still walked the corridors of power in the white city, but he’d come up during the last days of the Rending, he’d seen what the Unsaelig could and would do to their enemies. To see it here . . .
The old Pyski pulled
himself away from the teardrop-shaped window and bustled through the packed corridor. The Court was called, though what good it would do . . .
The Barbican was down, the Home Guard was mired by waves of Boggarts and Redcaps in the outer districts and, though no one had seen them yet, those amorphous jellyfish-like shadow things could only mean there were Fear Dorcha in the city’s core. Malvyn didn’t see what good another meeting would do, they should be fleeing. That thought raked at him, the idea that they should abandon Aos Si was . . . unthinkable, and yet, he supposed he should be thinking of defending the ancestral home with his last breath. Going down bravely and in honor with his armor bloody and his sword wet? No, that wasn’t Malyvn, never had been. He was a builder of things, and while it pained him to think it, the Pyski could remake a city, but they had to live to do that.
The marble under the rushing Pyski’s slippered feet shuddered as another great BOOM shook the city. The explosions started shortly after the first wave of invaders breached the Barbican, and so far, no one had been able to confirm what was causing them, or where they were directed. The concussions were being felt all over the city and had already collapsed a dozen structures. A beaver-kin Wild trundled past Melvyn, rattling and scraping in a full Guard armor, including a spiked sheath for its great flat spade of a tail. The rushing elder cursed at being interrupted, veered right, stepped in front of a knot of cowering juniors and cut down a side corridor to the chamber where the Court sat.
* * *
Raiu Gwenyver sat ramrod straight, her face as cool a mask of calm attentiveness as she could manage. Inside, the youngest of the elders present seethed with worry and an anxious, skittish dread that made her want to bound up from the her place in the Outer Court and flee, but she remained, taut as a drawn bow, cross-legged on the floor, pretending she wasn’t driving the sharp nails on her fingers deeper and deeper into her palms. The Eldest and the Inner Court had been whispering sharply with heads together for more than a quarter of an hour, with the world ending outside. And all the while Gewn and her fellows were left sitting, cooling their heels while the oldsters squabbled about who knew what.
“Enough.” That was Niamh. “I’ll not listen to you bicker while the city is crumbling around us.” The words were said in the quavering soft voice she’d taken on since the damage done to her years before. The Eldest was a shadow of the Pyski Gwenyver remembered from her apprenticeship, but the steel, the will that was Niamh was as focused and well-honed as ever.
“I call a question before the Court,” the Eldest called loudly enough to signal that whatever it was that was about to be discussed was meant for the entire court. “A full Grand Court of twelve Elders has not be called in nearly fifteen years. Not since the last time the creature now called Bwgan was in the city. When the East Rotunda was destroyed and so many of us were hurt or lost. He was one of us then, a lost brother brought back into the fold. A brother who, it was discovered, was too damaged, too hurt by the things done to him to be whole again. He fled us then. Today he returns as an invader, leading a host like nothing seen since the Rending, if even then. The city is in chaos, the Home Guard is splintered and . . . the Central Archive is under assault.”
There were gasps floating around both Courts. The Central Archive, the collective knowledge, history and lore of the Pyski Court. Everything. If it were to be lost . . . Gwenyver swallowed the rising acidic burn in her throat.
“I tell you these things,” Niamh said, coming haltingly to her feet, “because you all must understand how dire the situation is. The city may fall. The Pyski may fall today.”
The air hummed with tension, and several of those she saw as she looked around the circles looked to Gwenyver to be hunched under a great weight. She felt it pressing herself.
“We must consider a desperate option,” Niamh said after a long pause, her voice pricking the bubble of silence. Both Courts exploded into a buzz of exclamations and frantic questions.
“Madness Niamh! It’s madness.” That was Raiu Gawan, red-faced and slick with sweat, he looked near to panic and mad with furious energy. Gwen had never seen anything like it.
“It’s blasphemy!” Rion Kyna, the delicate little High was wild-eyed, singed, and covered in soot. The hair on her left side was gone completely burnt away and she seemed to be trying to hide behind the long silver tresses that remained to her.
“Enough!” Niamh snapped. “A question is before the Court. Elders, we have at our disposal a weapon of incredible power, a conjuration which our most knowledgeable and skilled adepts have been designing for nearly a decade. The work began at my urging and with my support. It is my motion that this conjuration be enacted immediately.”
“We cannot,” Gawan burst to his feet, and Niamh turned to meet him as he bulled forward.
“We must!” the old woman’s voice cracked like a whip. “Be silent or be gone.”
Gwen felt a slack-mouthed and decidedly undignified shock at the outbursts from each of Aos Si’s greatest Elders. The Master Meddyg’s jowls vibrated as he shook in silent, red-faced indignation.
“The course I ask you to consider is not something to be done lightly. The cost will be . . . terrible.”
“She wants to kill us all!” Gawan roared.
The room gasped.
The breach of protocol was unprecedented and the accusation . . . Gwen was breathless, and she felt blood to her palms.
“The weapon is a modification of the process that occurs when a Focus creates the material vessel for a Pyski consciousness.” The tension and agitation in the chamber was such that even a declaration as mind-bendingly incredible as the one Niamh had just uttered did little to change the fever pitch in the room. The Eldest and her secret cabal of sorcerers had done something monumental. The precision needed to construct the glyphs to even see a Focus weave a Binding must have been incredible.
Gwen started considering the calculations and sigil clouds that would be needed in such a warding. The glyph geometry must be a beautiful piece of work.
* * *
“Tell them everything,” Gawan said, trying to make his voice measured. Calm. “Tell them the source of their salvation, Niamh.” She stiffened as though he’d struck her. Part of the chief healer felt regret, but there was also a small part that thrilled. Niamh was a great Pyski, her legend well deserved. But legends were hard to live with, and her hand could be heavy. But this . . . “Niamh . . . Rion,” he started.
She raised her hand to the attendant standing beside a small discreet door. The attendant knocked once, and the small portal opened immediately.
Gawan felt gooseflesh shoot down his arms. The porters were armed and armoured Home Guard. Gawan had argued that this duty should be carried out by Guardians, but he’d been told there were no guardians to spare. They looked capable enough but . . . the Master Meddyg looked at the blanket-wrapped form of the woman on the stretcher they carried and shuddered again.
“After the first altercation with Bwgan,” Niamh orated, “Pyski were sent through the various Thinnings for scouting purposes. On one such excursion, one of our teams discovered a lone female on a desolate, empty world in a remote plane. She was badly hurt, near death and lying near the gnawed bones of several dogs. Rions and Raius, our people have found and captured Maeve.”
Gawan looked around the chamber, desperate to see his people react with the revulsion and alarm that had him near jabbering. Maeve. The first Spriggan. The instigator of the Rending. And Niamh was listening. She was using that woman, or thought she was. In truth, it was Niamh being used. “You brought that . . . woman here,” he grated. “Without any sort of consensus. You designed and executed a working of that filthy . . . power.”
“What choice did I have?” Niamh asked quietly. She was bent over the cane she carried everywhere since the injuries. He’d worked so hard to bring her back after the Rotunda. Dawn to midnight every day for weeks, and still he’d barely been able to pull her back. The Eldest was fading fast.
“
We’ve lost every engagement, you know the numbers as well as I do, Gawan. How many teams? How many Files of Guard? None of the Guardians who went after him returned. Now he’s here, in the heart of our power, and we are losing. The Champion will give us the chance to DO something. To preserve something.”
“It won’t!” Gawan roared, desperate. “It’s a lie! A last gambit. Niamh please! It’s Dark Court trickery. For a hundred and fifty years we’ve guarded against her plots and schemes and tried to remake the world she broke, and you’re going to do for her what she couldn’t do herself! You’re going to destroy us for her.”
“It’s not—”
The heavy doors crashed against the walls as Roderic burst through them carried on the back of a huge tiger-kin Wild named Llyr. The captain general was slumped forward, barely keeping his seat, and Gawan saw bloody rents in the soldier’s armor that did not look promising. “The outer squares have fallen. They’re in the compound and coming hard. Redcaps and goblins mostly, hundreds of them. We’ve only got minutes.”
“The debate is over Gawan,” Niamh said. “In a matter of moments, they’ll be through those doors and the killing will start. We twelve are the strongest, most knowledgeable warriors and practitioners among the Elders who survive. We could fight this battle and maybe win it, but we will be diminished, and in every fight that follows we will be diminished a little more. Whittled down until nothing remains. We cannot withstand a protracted fight. Instead, let us gather everything we have and deliver one swift decisive blow. The cost will be enormous. We, all of us here, will have to give everything to this Making. Your strength, your experience and outlook, your skills, your very dreams will shape our Champion. We, perhaps the last Grand Court of the Pyski, will leave a legacy that can continue. Or we can wile away our strength while the enemy grows stronger.” She signaled, and several of the attendants around the room began producing scrolls.