Fairy Dark

by Adam Golden

  The armored formation around the Prioress reached the cavern floor and shuffled forward cautiously. Aife felt something strange here. The whole place made the young warrior’s skin crawl. The feeling of eyes on her back hadn’t left her for an instant since they’d entered the Edgewood, but there was something else down here, something worse, dark . . . unnatural.

  What was this place?

  An orb of soft white light the size of Aife’s fist shimmered into existence and rose to float above the knot of armed and armored women. She looked right and saw Aideen glancing toward her from the corner of her eye. Aife bit down on a smile and offered a surreptitious nod of thanks to her more senior bunkmate for enacting the enchantment.

  “What in the bloody . . . ?” the Prioress barked, pushing her way through the ring of armored bodies meant to protect her. “What is going on here? Get those braziers lit. I need to see . . . !”

  A few of her squad looked to Aife to confirm the order. Command was hers this week, whether she wanted it or not. The young Maiden sighed and nodded.

  “Fan out. Defensive perimeter. Keep yerselves sharp,” she barked. “Aideen, Enid, get some lights burning.”

  Aphra barged past Aife in a swirl of heavy robes, her crozier clicking on the uneven ground. The holy mother was shockingly agitated, which Aife supposed made sense given what was happening above . . . but what are we doing here? The young soldier couldn’t ask, so instead set about making sure the floor of the cavern was as secure as she could make it with her eight-woman squad. A dozen fist-sized orbs of light sprang into being around Enid and Aideen and fanned out to provide a wide arch of pale-white light. Aife looked over her shoulder and offered Aideen a warm smile and an appreciative thumbs up. The older Maiden hefted her spear and jogged to where her temporary commander stood peering into the dark.

  “The braziers won’t light,” she muttered when she closed to a discreet distance. “Something’s inhibiting the charm, even getting the orbs up was a challenge.”

  Aife looked back to where Aphra was blustering at Enid, gesticulating wildly as she yelled.

  “She’s quite insistent,” Aideen said.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Aife wondered out loud. “What is happening?”

  “Not our place t’ question her, love,” Aideen said with a gentle smile and a quick brush of fingertips on Aife’s cheek.

  “Ye need t’ get yer girls out o’ here.”

  Both Maidens spun about, shocked to find a young girl, no more than twelve or so summers old, barefoot and wrapped in torn silver, suddenly standing beside them.

  “Here now—” Aideen started.

  The girl motioned quickly for her to lower her voice. “Quiet! That is nae Aphra an’ ye are nae safe,” the girl hissed.

  Aife looked to Aideen and found the more senior Maiden looking back at her with the same questions reflected in her pretty amber eyes.

  “Hurry!” the strange girl in rags whispered. “Ye must—”

  “What do you mean it’s not Aphra?” Aife demanded.

  A pair of the floating light orbs winked out and Aideen spun, looking to the others.

  Aife felt a tug at her belt and was nearly dragged down by the girl’s insistent pulling.

  “Dunnae be a fool! Run, live!” the girl pleaded.

  More of the magical light orbs winked out and the dark pressed around Aife’s eight-woman squad.

  “Prioress!” Aife called.

  “Form up!” the old woman roared. “Kill anything that moves!”

  “Holy Mother . . . ?” Enid asked

  The old woman whirled on the slim, tawny haired Maiden, delivering a savage backhand to the girl’s jaw.

  “Prioress!” Aife exclaimed, stepping forward.

  “I’ll not be questioned!” the old woman roared, spraying spittle. “Form up!”

  The last of the lights went out.

  “Shields! Shields on the Mother!” Aife roared urgently as she raced toward the last place the old woman had been standing. “Aideen! Get the lights up!”

  The clashing, grinding sounds of armored women trying to get into formation in pitch black filled the cavern for a moment, and Aire jostled some of her unseen sisters to take what she hoped was the point position.

  “Aideen!” she called but came up short as a bar of flaming white-orange brilliance ignited, lighting the dark high over their heads, among the tangle of roots above them.

  “Rhiannon, no!”

  The high juvenile shriek rang through the cavern and brought Aife’s head around to stare at the strange rag-clothed girl. She was looking up toward the strange light too. The young squad leader looked from the girl’s crying face back to the light and started to call out an order. It was lost among the first cries of alarm.

  * * *

  Careful to hold her weapon out and away from her own limbs, Rhiannon flipped over on herself and dropped in amongst the tightly packed group of fighters. The girl’s shrieking plea tore at the Pyski’s battered heart. There was no choice, she had to. They wouldn’t surrender, they’d fight to the last, it was who they were. It was who she was, and she understood them better than the girl who’d been Caoin ever would. If she didn’t get the jump on them, press her advantage suddenly and decisively, they’d overwhelm her. A long shuddering breath leaked out of her and Rhiannon retreated from herself.

  There is no choice. She wrapped herself deep in her battle sense. No choice, I seem to be saying that a lot lately.

  The Pyski champion crashed into the center of the armed formation like a catapult stone and spun, pulling the sword around her body in an arcing crosscut of destruction that made her want to empty her stomach.

  Cut, dodge, thrust, feint, slash . . . reverse and turn. Focus on the how, not the what.

  Wood and steel might as well have been wicker and wax before the incredible shearing power of the Claimh Solais. Armor, weapons, flesh, bone, none of it offered the slightest resistance.

  She worked the blade as fast as she was able. Their mundane weapons were nothing, but their sorcery was another matter, she had to put them down quickly before . . .

  A dark-skinned girl with wide terrified eyes was hurriedly making the gestures for some sort of hex. She was stumbling through it.

  She’s probably never done it outside of practice.

  The blade reversed in Rhiannon’s grip as though of its own accord, and she stepped backward, driving the blazing tip through the bridge of the dusky skinned girl’s nose and into her brain. Her victim slumped. The weight of her falling body pulled the blade through the skull, shearing the dead sorceress’s head in two. The sound of blood sizzling on the blade and the smell of burnt gore reached Rhiannon even deep inside the cocoon of her battle sense.

  Focus! Airmed, where is . . . ?

  A wall of naked force slammed into Rhiannon from behind and the Pyski warrior was thrown forward a dozen feet. She twisted in the air, hit the ground in a somersault, and came to her feet with Nuada’s sword before her in a two-handed guard. The air shimmered amid the shattered phalanx of Maidens, and Aphra’s slight motherly form emerged from the pocket of nothingness where she’d hidden herself. A thin wrinkled hand worked into a claw, shot forward, and another blast of raw power shot toward the Pyski.

  “You dare?” Airmed blared using the old woman’s voice as she stalked forward, the Prioress’s crozier clicking on the roots and stone as she walked. “I was generous. He begged me to let you live, to witness, and I acquiesced! Is this how I am repaid?”

  Rhiannon could see something building around the mad Tuatha sorceress, something black and caustic being pulled from the void and slowly taking form. The feeling of it pressed against her mind and drew the breath from her lungs. Rhiannon lashed out with pure instinct, desperate to stop whatever that was before it was fully formed. A shockwave of pure power rippled out from her. Light and Dark answered in unison, blending as though they’d always done so. A wave of shimmering gloom rippled out from the Pyski, shearing roots, sco
ring stone and driving the possessed old woman backward.

  Aphra’s form hunched forward as though before a gale force wind, rooted in place by her grip on the Prioress’s iron-capped staff of office.

  “What?” Airmed asked through the old woman. “How?”

  Rhiannon’s power batted away the Tuatha’s attempted attack, scattering the energies back into the Void, even as it closed around Aphra’s form. A surge like lightning blasted the Pyski in the chest, clawing for her heart but finding only gnarled timber strong as aged oak. The old woman’s eyes went wide as the ghost that ruled them felt shock.

  “You’ve lost your mind, Airmed,” Rhiannon said stepping forward. “You let grief consume you and the Dark wormed its way inside.”

  The Prioress lashed out with her power again and Rhiannon threw up a shield of hazy gray energy to absorb it, never halting her slow progress toward the other woman.

  “You’ve lost your way,” the Pyski said, “made alliances with the Dark, plotted to destroy everything. You are lost.” Rhiannon continued her advance as blasts of energy struck her shield again and again. She snapped her fingers and the chamber’s braziers burst alight, bathing the cavern in light.

  Behind the mask of Aphra’s face, Airmed gasped. The Tuatha prisoners were gathered in a loose arc behind the Pyski warrior. They were weak, barely upright, a cavalcade of torn flesh and pulped limbs, of gouged eyes and tongues ripped from mouths. Creidhne’s huge limbless torso was propped up against a thick root, and the big smith glared sadly at his niece.

  “Ye tortured an’ murdered yer own family, girl,” the giant rumbled. “Yer cousins, your uncles . . .” The limbless behemoth jerked his head toward the spot where Dian Cecht huddled in on himself, weeping desolately. “Yer father.”

  “No!” Airmed shrieked. “Not . . .”

  “Yes,” Rhiannon said moving forward again. “Your father, Miach’s father. Look what you’ve done to him.”

  “They killed him!” the old woman wailed, launching a blast of power outward that staggered Rhiannon and nearly shattered her shield. “They used and discarded him!” she screamed, and her rage fed her power. “They threw him away like trash. Abandoned him! But I can save him, I can make it right. I’ll remake it all, I’ll remake my Miach!”

  Rhiannon gasped, hunched beneath the force of the Tuatha woman’s anger-fueled assault. All of this—all of this pain, this effort—she thinks she’s going to save him! Rhiannon made herself shake off the pity welling inside her for this poor broken creature. Stay focused! Gods but she’s strong! The Guardian knew she couldn’t maintain this much longer. The twin powers screamed inside her.

  “Miach died,” Rhiannon started, forcing a step forward, “to protect the Pattern from those who would destroy it.” She carefully worked slim tendrils of her power around the possessed old woman as she spoke. “He gave his life to stop the Fomori and their ilk. He was a hero. He thwarted the Bwgans of the world. He didn’t ally himself with them, as you have. He died to protect us from people like you.”

  The old woman stumbled backward as though struck. “NOOOOOOO!” she screamed. Her Tuatha-captured body went rigid as though suddenly straining to lift a great weight.

  Here it comes.

  Rhiannon braced herself, pulling all the power she dared from both the Void and the Aether, shoring up her shield for what was coming. She felt the ruined Tuatha De gathered behind her tense—they could feel what was building as well as she could.

  Aphra’s mouth opened too widely, and a terrible alien scream tore free of her. It wasn’t a single voice, it was a pair, a blending of gut-wrenching agony and terror and raw animal fury. The old woman’s wrinkled cheeks cracked and bled, the tight iron-gray curls atop her head smoked, burning away under the assault of the power that Airmed directed through her. The flesh flaked off of her thin clawed hand’s like ash in the breeze, and crimson droplets pooled in the corners of her eyes.

  “Do it, lass!” Creidhne called. “Do it now!”

  Rhiannon raised the blazing sword above her head with both hands and launched it with all the strength of her power-enhanced muscles. The blade spun end over end, slicing the air and sending riots of strange and terrible shadows streaking through the subterranean chamber. For an instant it looked as though it might work, as though the blade might find its mark, and then the spinning spike of gleaming destruction froze in mid-air and hung a fraction of an inch from the old woman’s face. Rhiannon stepped forward and pushed outward with both hands. A thousand needle-thin tendrils of her blended powers slammed into the old woman’s body and lifted her off of the floor. Barbed hooks of elemental magic dug into flesh and bone, grasping, parting, tearing at the old woman’s animated corpse.

  The girl cried out again, but Rhiannon didn’t hear. She didn’t let herself hear. The connection between the old woman and Airmed had to be at its strongest. She had to call all of her power. Which meant she needed to be angry, hurt, confused. Emotion was the key.

  “Limb of argent

  Blade of dun

  Blood on fire

  make it one.”

  The words came in a sort of hushed whisper as Rhiannon watched her thorny twists of power vivisect the old woman. She’d known Airmed wouldn’t come in the flesh, but it was the flesh, the Tuatha girl’s fiery elemental blood, that she needed. Her digging, ripping probes latched onto something. Something pulsing deep at the old woman’s core.

  There!

  That was the tether that connected Aphra to her tormentor. To one of us anyway. The Pyski’s power latched onto the humming cord that joined the two women, and Rhiannon braced herself, yanking backward as though pulling a physical rope with all the strength she could muster.

  The Claimh Solais streaked through the air and slammed into a far cavern wall to its hilt. Wild currents of power washed through the chamber and bodies of dead Maidens were tossed about like refuse in a storm. Roots as thick as a large man’s thigh snapped as easily as dry kindling, joining the maelstrom as Airmed’s power broke its leash and lashed out wildly to protect its mistress. Rhiannon’s shield compressed around her, the weight against it driving her back as she yanked at the anchor inside Aphra’s ruined body.

  The air around her felt as though it were made of living flame. There was a wail that seemed to come from all around, as though reality itself were screaming. They were all screaming, not just those few Maidens who’d survived, not just the girl or the Tuatha. There were others, a chorus of voices, not just around her but inside her as well. Dozens of them, the souls of those that made her buffeted against the inside of her skull. Rhiannon gritted her teeth and yanked again, and this time, something tore inside the old woman, coming free. The wailing grew to a fever pitch. Rhiannon’s skin blistered, buffeted by competing storm winds of scalding magics. The stone beneath her feet felt soft, gummy, roots as thick as her midsection, roots that had never seen the light of day burst alight like dried leaves, adding noxious smoke and even more intense heat to the crucible she stood in the midst of. Rhiannon yanked again and felt Reality part before her power. She felt Airmed dragged from where she’d watched, secure in the convent and deposited into the chaos of destruction they’d wrought together.

  The girlish Tuatha De screamed as their combined power scoured her flesh and grated at her soul. Rhiannon reached back behind her, searching blindly as she maintained her hold on Airmed’s bucking, twisting soul. A hand of burning metal slid into hers and she looked back over her shoulder. Nadua nodded once. His face a mix of horror, agony, and resolve.

  “Do it!” he screamed over the clamor that filled the cavern. “End it!”

  The last of the Tuatha De huddled close around their king, clasping hands and grasping shoulders. She could feel them, all of them! Lugh’s power, the Samildánach, that had to be what it was. But this was more than just their knowledge and skills, the avalanche of power suffusing the cavern must have augmented Lugh’s gift. What she felt was no more or less than the essence of them, their hearts,
their thoughts, everything. The souls of a half-dozen demi-gods pulsed through her.

  Rhiannon didn’t realize that she was screaming until she’d exhausted the breath in her lungs and the sound stopped so that she could pull in more. Her power lashed at Airmed’s, stoking it, driving it to greater and greater extremes. Her shield compressed further. Tightening around her in an effort to protect her from the madness of molten fury that swirled around her. She felt them die. Each of them, as though in some agreed upon sequence. She smiled at their surrender as each finally set down their burden and wailed at the agony she exacted as the price of that release. Nuada’s silver arm came free haltingly as the last of his flesh and bone was immolated. Rhiannon was forced to pull it free of his still-burning torso, to wrench it loose. When it finally gave and came loose Rhiannon thrust the grizzly appendage over her head, punching it through the shield and into the raging furnace around her.

  The flesh of her hand was scoured away instantly, but the Pyski held on for dear life. Carefully she drew on Creidhne’s power and skill, blending the smith-god’s ability and understanding with her own raw strength. She battered and cajoled, bullied and pleaded, slowly coaxing the last vestige of the legendary Tree of Life into the form she needed, the form it had always been meant to take. Magic swirled about the molten mystical limb, Light, Dark, and other forces that were neither, bonding to it, changing it, making it something new. Crimson droplets hung suspended before Rhiannon’s wondering eyes. They drew slowly toward the superheated metal, fastening themselves to it, adding their strength even as they corrupted its purity. She saw this, Rhiannon realized. Donella saw this moment.

  Tangles above

  knots below

  bloody tears

  mix in seolfor flow.

  The hurricane of mystical force evaporated. The universe spun end over end and Rhiannon slowly became aware of the sound of panting. All else was silent but for the frantic desperate sound of heaving, as though from someone who couldn’t draw enough air. She was lying on her face. The rock was scaldingly hot. The desperate tattoo of sharp intakes was coming from her. She tried to move and winced; everything hurt. It all rushed back to her. The pain, the torment, the feeling of them all dying. A great gasping sob bubbled out of her and the Pyski warrior flailed like an upended turtle trying to right itself. After what seemed like an age, she managed to roll onto her back and gasped at what she saw. The great snarl of roots was blackened and burning. Embers glared red everywhere she looked. The chamber was thick with smoke. The Strief was dying.