Fairy Dark

by Adam Golden

  “The Silver Bough,” Rhiannon said, putting it together for herself. “A cutting from the Crann Bethadh itself. That was the genesis of your order.”

  “You do know how to ruin a telling missy,” the old woman said with a sour laugh. “But you are perceptive. Yes, the messenger was Arianrhiod, who would be the first Prioress of what would become the convent of Cerridwyn. It was she who performed the enchantment that gave our cauldron its abilities, and for near a thousand years we have tended the Pattern . . .”

  The door to the study opened smoothly, almost silently, but Rhiannon turned toward it, stifling a curse at the interruption. We were finally getting somewhere! The strange young novice, Airmed, bustled in, toting a double armful of heavy leather-bound codices.

  “Ah! Good, good,” Aphra said. “Put them here on the desk, child.” The two nuns bent about the books and the old Prioress started instructing the younger as texts were opened and specific entries located.

  As the two postulants buzzed about their texts, Caoin rose up out of the rug and floated to Rhiannon’s side. The ghost leaned forward as if to whisper but was waved off. “Later,” Rhiannon hissed as Aphra’s head came up.

  “Here, Rhiannon, see here,” the Prioress said, beckoning her forward.

  The Guardian approached the desk as Aphra turned a text and pushed it toward her. “This verse was recorded in Donella’s third year in the convent,” she explained.

  Rhiannon read:

  “Limb of argent

  Blade of dun

  Blood on fire

  make it one.”

  “Blade of Dun” she said, “the lusterless sword from my vision.”

  The Prioress nodded. “Forged from the Silver Bough itself,” she said. “If any weapon could slay one who cannot die, it would be that one. One made from the very engine of life and death.”

  “What does that last part mean?” Rhiannon asked. “Blood on fire?”

  The old woman and her young aide both looked up, smirking at the Guardian. “That is Donella,” Aphra said. “Perhaps she was speaking about the forging of the weapon? Or . . . I don’t know, her meanings can be opaque.”

  “Are there more? About the sword? Does she say more?” Rhiannon asked.

  “We think so.” That came from the assistant, Airmed, as she fussed about with the pile of texts. “As the Prioress says, knowing Donella’s mind can be . . . difficult. At times her meaning can be as clear as good glass, other times . . . well, she was quite mad. Look, here.” The girl turned another text and pointed Rhiannon craned forward and read:

  “Tangles above

  knots below

  bloody tears

  mix in seolfor flow.”

  “What is that supposed to . . . ?” Rhiannon started.

  “Donella,” Aphra said gently. “We’ve been studying her for centuries. Every answer we think we uncover generates a hundred new questions.”

  The Guardian rapped her knuckles on the page in frustration. “Why does it matter?” she said after a moment. “Why do we need the prophecies? We know I need the sword, we know the sword is made of the Silver Bough, go and fetch it.”

  The two Silver Maidens looked to each other again and something soured in Rhiannon’s stomach.

  More bad news.

  She’d hardly begun the thought before Aphra said, “We cannot. You see child, we don’t have it.”

  Chapter 19

  “Stolen?” Rhiannon asked. “Stolen.” She said the word as though testing out an unfamiliar sound. “Your sacred charge handed down by a mythical god figure and passed from generation to generation . . . the whole purpose of your Order. Stolen?”

  Aphra’s lips compressed to a tight disapproving line, but she nodded.

  “Well, that’s bloody wonderful!” The Guardian exploded, pounding on the Prioress’s writing table with a fist.

  “Rhiannon . . .” Caoin warned, mindful of the suddenly tense postures of the two warrior priestesses who stood together on the other side of the narrow desk.

  “For nine-hundred-and-twenty-two years, sisters of this order fought and died to uphold our sworn trust,” Aphra said tightly. “We maintained the Balance, and we protected the Bough.”

  “And then one day you fell asleep on watch and someone nicked it?” Rhiannon spat caustically.

  “No.” The response came from Airmed, the young Silver Maiden’s fair skin turning red with poorly suppressed anger. “And then one day your people started a war that threatened to unravel existence at every turn. Your civil war, your Rending, stretched us thinner than at any other time in our history. Our Annals record more than a hundred significant shifts in the flow of the Pattern brought on by your foolish squabble.”

  Rhiannon stepped forward angrily, as though she meant to go over the desk at the other woman, but Airmed pressed on. “That is an astronomical number, unheard of! We could barely keep up. The thief, or thieves, capitalized on the opportunity your people created. They attacked when Eamhna was all but deserted, and still four of our sisters gave their lives trying to fulfill their vows. How dare you question us!”

  “That is enough, from both of you,” Aphra said tiredly. “The Pattern flows and shifts according to forces far beyond our petty wants or needs. When she brought the Bough, Arianrhod said that it would be needed, and that we must protect it. She did not say that we would succeed. Perhaps we were never meant to. Fate is an animal which cannot be tamed. It courses as it will, no matter how hard we hold the leash.”

  Rhiannon let out a long, frustrated breath, and forced her fists open on the tabletop. The young Maiden was still glowering at her, but the Pyski warrior ignored her and focused on the Prioress. “Fine. How do we find it?” she asked the old woman.

  Aphra tapped the open books in front of her. “Donella,” she said. “She was fixated on what she called Claíomh Glomadh, the Gloaming Sword, or the Sword of Twilight. Her predictions mention it often, both directly and in more tangential ways. Like . . .” Aphra flipped through several pages in the book before her and then grabbed for another and started scanning it. Her fingers moved on the pages, anxiously tracing lines of text as she read. “Ah, here:

  “Sword of Twilight

  buried dark and deep

  find the well

  seek Balor’s Keep.”

  Rhiannon mouthed the words again once the old woman’s voice had faded away, rolling them about in her head, trying and retrying them like puzzle pieces that just wouldn’t fit together. What did all of this mean? Where could she look? Was she really relegated to chasing the rantings of a mad seer who’d been dead for centuries before any of this even began?

  “Aphra, if you would, gather your sisters. Any you think might be able to shed some light, either on Donella’s riddles or on what the Bwgan might be attempting to do. I need answers. We all need answers, and quickly.”

  “Answers quickly come by are rarely worth a lick,” the old woman pronounced. “But it will be done.” The old seer took up a quill from her writing desk and scribbled for a moment on a scrap of paper pulled out from under one of the precious texts that littered the top. “Airmed, would you be so kind as to collect these Sisters, please?” she said, handing the younger woman the paper. “And would you conduct our guest to a cell where she might rest while we work?”

  Rhiannon opened her mouth to argue, but the old woman turned a stern face toward her and raised a hand for silence. “My sisters and I will do as you have asked. You will sleep, and when you wake you will eat. You are strong, but still flesh. Your injuries were serious, and their mending complicated. Rest. Recover. You will need your strength.”

  Rhiannon made to speak again, and the Prioress rode over her unspoken objection once more. “That is the price I demand for the aid you seek.” The old priestess’s tone was one of finality, the voice of a woman used to being obeyed absolutely. There would be no convincing her otherwise, Rhiannon knew, and besides, she did feel worn. Finally, she bowed her head a fraction in ascent and turned
to follow Airmed out, choosing to ignore the satisfied curl of the young Maiden’s lips as they went.

  * * *

  The chamber was a stark white plaster cube no more than three paces square. The small room’s only contents were a cot, a rough-cut wooden chest at its foot, and a wash stand in the corner complete with a chipped basin, mismatched pitcher, and a rough looking bit of gray toweling.

  “It’s surely not what you’re used to, Rion,” Airmed said acidly as she stood aside after pushing the door open. “We’ve no suites here. Even the famed huntress will have to sleep rough here.”

  “I’ve spent more time under hedges and in ditches than under roofs these last five years,” Rhiannon replied with a tight smile for the sour-faced Maiden. “This is a palace compared to some of the places I’ve been forced to bunk.”

  “While you were out killing your own kind?” Airmed asked.

  “While I was tracking murderers and worse,” Rhiannon shot back, turning to face the girl. “Creatures guilty of crimes you can’t fathom.”

  “Oh yes, I’m sure,” Airmed replied. “Crimes such as hunting intelligent creatures to near extinction, perhaps? Or caging innocents without their consent or knowledge? What of the wholesale slaughter of children? Hundreds of them. Are those the crimes you mean, Huntress?”

  Rhiannon felt a cold chill at both the words and the quiet vitriol in the girl’s voice. “Have I done you some wrong, girl?” the Pyski asked. “What is the root of this spite you hurl at me?”

  “I am well acquainted with the folly of the self-righteous,” Airmed said primly, “and the damage it can do. Rest well, Huntress.” The girl was gone, the cell’s heavy door closing behind her.

  When she was alone Rhiannon let out a long breath as she lowered herself gingerly to the cot. Light, but everything was so stiff. “Alright Caoin,” she grunted as the ghost bled up out of the floor. “Tell me about that one.”

  “Aside from havin’ a tongue sharp as a dirk?” the ghost asked. “She’s a curator in their Annals, a librarian. An’ not well thought o’ by her fellows, or so it seemed t’me.”

  “Surely you jest,” Rhiannon grated as she settled down on the straw pillow at the end of the cot. “That warm and friendly soul?”

  “Ye be th’ soul o’ wit Gruaidh, now kindly shut yer yapper an’ listen,” Caoin said with a glower.

  Rhiannon waved for her friend to continue and let her eyes drift closed as the ghost gave her report. The other woman’s familiar brogue rolled over Rhiannon’s mind like a balm, soothing like a lullaby, and the Guardian found herself missing the plot of the words being spoken. She scrambled back to recall what had been said and her eyes popped open.

  “She went where?” Rhiannon demanded, pulling herself up urgently.

  “Ye make so many friends wherever ye roam, Gruaidh.” The ghost woman chuckled. “Is’t so surprisin’ t’ ye that they should congregate?” The long cackle that followed made the Pyski wince. “Ye be th’ soul o’ wit,” she said in a heavy drawl, earning a reproachful glare from her spectral friend. “But your gifts are wasted here.”

  “Watch.”

  Caoin sighed dramatically. “An’ dunnae be seen. Sure ‘an I knew ye would be sayin’ so.”

  Rhiannon grunted as she laid herself flat again and covered her eyes with one arm. “Goodbye Caoin.”

  The ghost grumbled as she sank slowly into the stone floor of the room. “Thank ye, Caoin. Wha’ever would me worthless bones do without ye, Caoin?”

  Rhiannon smirked as the spectral voice faded, a long yawn forced its way out from between her teeth and in seconds the battered Pyski was asleep.

  * * *

  Caoin sifted through the swirls and eddies of the material, searching for the pattern that was the girl, Airmed. The ghost looked backward through the static haze that indicated walls, floors, and the other so-called barriers of the fleshy world, and saw the prone brightness that was Gruaidh’s sleeping form. Gruaidh, how that boy had changed in recent years; of course, the living were always changing, shifting from this to that and back again in a blink. But this shifting had been so abrupt, so radical, his flow and colors altering and blending in new ways, as though he were more than simply him. He was like a different person, more stubborn, more reckless, but also braver, more concerned with right, and he was prettier.

  Caoin didn’t understand the Gruaidh/Rhiannon puzzle, but there was a great deal in the world these days that Caoin didn’t understand. What she did understand, what she knew, was that the binding remained. The tether that connected Caoin to her charge was as certain and strong as ever, and that was that. The living might flit around higgledy-piggledy, uncertain of who and what they were, but not she. She was herself, one of the Caoineag, a protector, a herald, and she had her duty. The banshee shrugged mentally and turned back to her task. The living made no sense, and trying to decipher them made even less. She had a job to be about. Best to see to it.

  Swirling auroras of color and movement flowed everywhere she looked. Life. It teemed here. The animals kept penned on the grounds, the neat rows of apple trees that stretched for miles, the carefully ordered garden plantings, innumerable swarms of insects, and even the tiny creatures the living couldn’t see but which covered everything. They all combined to form constellations of vitality that pulsed before her eyes. And that was before you added in the brilliant vaguely man-shaped storms of colour and movement that were the residents of Eamhna. There were hundreds of them, mostly women, but some men, and even children, each differentiated by the colors and the subtle shifts and swirls in their patterns. It was a rich flurry of life that thrilled the spectre’s senses and made her curse the added complexity of the task. So many women and girls, so many alike in age, outlook, and vocation. Their shades complimented, their swirls all so alike, it was like standing before a bonfire made of green wood and trying to isolate a single wisp of smoke.

  She was no fleeting house spirit born and gone in a generation, she was Caoineag, a high order spirit, and nothing taught patience or dedication like innumerable eons of watching existence creak by. It was just a matter of time, and what was time to one such as—

  There! Beyond the grounds of the convent proper, out among the trees, was the moss-green smog that Caoin knew to be Airmed. It was so like many of others in this place, but there was something different, something strange about this girl’s aura. The threads that bound the girl to the force that the living called magic were many, she was a strong practitioner, maybe as strong as Rhiannon herself, which was unusual in and of itself, but there was something else.

  The ghost shifted down into the earth beneath the orchard, moving far faster than any living thing could have. She covered miles in a blink and made sure not to shift too fully back toward the material as she bled back up into the empty air. Very few of the living could see a ghost as powerful as a Caoineag in its immaterial form, and even fewer still would see her if she chose to go unseen, so Caoin had no worries as she rose out of the earth mere steps behind the thin, dark-haired young Maiden.

  They were well beyond the orchard proper. The orderly rows of carefully tended trees had given way to a tight-packed snarl of great, ancient trees, behemoths that had been left to run wild for long ages.

  Caoin thought it was still well into the daylight hours, though she was never entirely sure. Sunlight and moonlight looked much the same to her ghost eyes. Despite the hour, there was a gloom here, a perpetual twilight as the great spread of gnarled branches hid the light.

  The girl had come prepared. She carried a lantern before her as she went and seemed to know exactly where she was headed. Not her first visit then, Caoin surmised. As Airmed progressed through the tangle of gnarled trunks, thick coils of roots retreated, pulling back to form a flat smooth lane for her to tread. The pulse of life was strong here, maybe as strong as it was back near the convent, but here the life force was a wild, uncultivated, almost rabid thing. Here the trees ruled everything, there were no insects, no animals, no peo
ple, but there was something. Up ahead, on the line that the Maiden girl seemed to be walking, something pulled, like a whirlpool, something material and yet not. Whatever it was, it was between worlds, not unlike Caoin herself, and it pulled her like iron to a lodestone.

  The banshee’s invisible form shot past Airmed, caught by the irresistible gravity of whatever was up ahead. For the first time in ages Caoin felt genuine fear, not for her charge but for herself. What was ahead, and what would happen when she reached whatever it was?

  The press of the trees gave way to a small clearing in their center, but Caoin hardly noticed, instead, an all-encompassing buzz had filled her senses, drowning everything else. It was as though the droning of every insect that had ever been had been compressed into one place and one time and shoved inside her head. It was maddening. She couldn’t hear, could barely see. She wanted to wail. She twisted and writhed, searching for some way to break the pull.

  There was the human. Wait, was she seeing double? No, the second one was taller, and armed. She knew that one. They were arguing about something. What were they saying? The blare of buzzing drowned it all out. The banshee surged, calling on the total of her great strength, but she was like a leaf in a whirlwind being dragged further and further from the pair of conspiring nuns. The vortex of Other had her, and her hold on the material was slipping. Where was she going?

  Gruaidh help me! The banshee wailed inside herself. Gruaidh . . .

  * * *

  Caoin floated in a haze of tumultuous gray, as though she were trapped in the heart of a cyclone, and she looked terrified. Rhiannon was trying to reach her, but she was buffeted by violent winds and grasped by clinging nothings, there was no traction in the strange miasma that surrounded her. She couldn’t move forward. She reached for the ghostly woman’s outstretched hand but couldn’t catch it. She tried to yell to her friend to stretch, just a little more, but her voice was lost in a crackling hum that was every bit as pervasive as the stormy fog.