Fairy Dark

by Adam Golden

  He’ll find another way. That certainty was the last thought she had before pain and exhaustion swelled and took away the light.

  * * *

  There was a strange warbling trill. A high sort of screeching that pulled Rhiannon from the darkness with a jerking gasp that brought a wave of pain. Not the burning agony she recalled but a tamer sort of dull ache that reached all over. Her eyes opened, and she groaned at the shocking brightness of wherever she was. Sunlight. Birds. Where . . . ? She tried to move and found that she couldn’t. It was more than just the pain, there was resistance at her wrists and ankles. Bonds. Someone had taken her from the cavern beneath the Strief, treated her, and bound her to this bed.

  “Why?” The word scraped out of her like the sound of a blade against a file.

  “Because you’re dangerous. You’re a bloody menace.”

  Rhiannon tried to look about for the speaker, but her field of vision was limited to the ceiling of wherever she was being kept.

  “Please, I . . .” she gasped, trying to work some moisture from a tongue that felt like old leather. “You don’t understand, I need . . .”

  A high peel of bitter laughter rang out. “Oh, I don’t? Don’t I?”

  There was movement and then a face slid into her view and, looking down at the Pyski.

  “Who understands better than I?” a young woman asked, staring down fiercely at Rhiannon from inside a halo of yellow orange light.

  “Caoin? I mean . . .” the Pyski asked, shocked. The former banshee, the girl . . . she was alive? “How?”

  “Hervor,” the young woman said. “My name is Hervor. And it was Hervor that saved us, showed me how, shared with me. I took her name to honor her, to remember.”

  “Hervor,” Rhiannon said in wonder. She flashed back to the crazed swirl of magics in the cavern. Perhaps the dying Norsewoman’s essence had blended with Lugh’s Samildánach to imprint itself on the girl. Silently, Rhiannon thanked the memory of the dead Tuatha De for their mercy and then she recalled . . .

  “The sword,” she gasped, trying to rise again and groaning with the effort.

  A disgusted sneer twisted the young Hervor’s pretty features. “The same,” she said with a shake of her head, “you’ve not changed an inch, have you?”

  Rhiannon heard the quiet shhick of a knife being drawn from its sheath. The bonds at her right wrist snapped and the rest followed quickly. Rhiannon wrenched herself upward awkwardly. No assistance was offered.

  “There,” the new Hervor said, her voice sharp. “There is your precious sword.”

  Driven into the center of the bed’s wooden foot rail was a longsword with a long straight double-edged blade and a plain cruciform hilt. A strange, dull-looking blade that the light seemed not to touch. Blade of Dun.

  “Claíomh Glomadh,” she whispered reverently. The Twilight Sword. It was not a beautiful weapon, plain in the extreme really, without a hint of ornamentation or flourish. It was a workman-like tool. Rhiannon found that fitting. The cost had been too terrible for it to be anything pretty or desirable.

  Another rude expulsion of sound brought Rhiannon’s eyes from the weapon back to the girl, Hervor. Rhiannon started as she really took in the person standing beside her cot. The girl Caoin had become couldn’t have been more than ten or twelve years old, a gangly creature, more limbs than anything else. The person before her now was a woman grown, and a hard-looking woman at that. The glowing nimbus of flame-colored light that surrounded her radiated off of the weapon strapped to her back, the hilt of which rose above her right shoulder.

  “Nuada’s sword,” Rhiannon started.

  “My sword,” Hervor corrected. “Tyrfing.”

  Rhiannon stared at the young woman for a moment and then nodded.

  “You did not even look about you,” the girl spat.

  She stepped out of the way and Rhiannon saw a shriveled form buried under heavy blankets on a cot beside her.

  “Who?” the Pyski asked.

  “Guardian . . .” a voice like gravel on steel groaned from under the coverings.

  Rhiannon gasped. “No, it can’t be . . . Aphra?”

  She looked to Hervor for confirmation, and the young woman nodded curtly. “What’s left of her after what you did. Even after fifteen years of intensive treatment she remains the husk you made her.”

  “I never meant . . .” Rhiannon said shaking her head sadly. “I didn’t want—”

  Hervor’s words slammed into her fractured mind and the Pyski exclaimed. “Fifteen years! Fifteen years since . . .”

  “Since you murdered us all in your mad quest for . . . what? Vengeance? Justice?” The last word dripped with malice and sarcasm. “Yes. For fifteen years we have cared for you, restored you so that I could see, and I was right. You’re the same blind, selfish—”

  “Enough,” Aphra wheezed from beneath her mound of draperies.

  Hervor looked from one cot to the other for a moment and then nodded to herself. “More than enough,” she agreed. “I’ll find you some clothing, and when the Prioress has had her word you’ll be escorted to the Thinning. If the Pattern is merciful, we’ll never see you again.” The angry warrior turned on her heel and stalked from the room.

  Rhiannon raised a hand but let it fall without calling out. Hervor had a right to her anger.

  “Forgive her,” the decimated Prioress said from her cot.

  “She’s right,” Rhiannon said.

  “She is.” the old woman groaned. “And she is not. Life is more complicated than that, as we both know. Listen now, I have held on for a long while in hopes that I might tell you . . .” The old woman let out a sustained moan that sounded tortured to Rhiannon’s ear. “When you killed Airmed and burned the tree, I saw . . .You weakened them. He was relying on their combined strength but—”

  “But there is another way,” Rhiannon said. “The children.”

  “Yes,” the old woman said, “but not alone, there aren’t enough . . . your elders, they saw to that with their Purge. She gave him…” A barrage of hacking coughs clutched the old woman for a long few moments. “She,” Aphra struggled, “she gave him . . . a cutting . . . Strief . . . with enough time to grow . . . and enough Focus children . . .”

  “And he’s had fifteen years to find them while the damned tree readied itself,” Rhiannon gasped.

  Slowly, and with incredible effort, the Pyski dragged herself from the cot and forced her body upright. She was nude, and her torso looked as though it had been fashioned from gnarled driftwood. The Strief beneath Eamhna might be dead, but it lived on inside her obviously enough. Rhiannon leaned heavily on the cot as she pulled herself around it and put her hands on the hilt of the Twilight Sword. Her sword. She worked the blade free of the post over a long few minutes and leaned heavily on its hilt.

  “Hervor is right. It’s time for me to go. I’m sorry Aphra,” she said and then turned and hobbled out of the infirmary.

  Behind her, Aphra let out a long last shuttering exhalation and was finally still. Her years long torment was over, just as she had always foreseen.

  Chapter 27

  The rotted door fell inward and the Bwgan staggered into the dank, musty chamber. Dim dirty light sprang up from candles of rough rendered animal fat as their greasy, poorly twisted wicks burst alight. A spattering of black blood sprayed the confusion of pages and objects that littered the table the wounded creature collapsed against, panting as his power struggled to close his wounds.

  The Pyski golem had grown strong! That sword . . . it had been hungry. He’d felt it when the cursed thing violated his flesh. Something about that weapon resisted his power, fighting against his body’s efforts to heal itself, but there was something more; that sword had a faint sort of will, it liked cutting him. The Bwgan shuddered with something akin to fear.

  How long since you’ve known actual fear?

  The dark creature levered himself up, making himself stand under his own power, and worked the shoulder of his left arm.
The joint was tight, the arm a jerking, twitching stub, and the whole blasted thing itched like damnation as it slowly regenerated itself.

  “Your monster grows strong,” he muttered as his long fingers scrambled over notes he’d committed to memory long since. The Bwgan slammed his remaining hand down on the table and heard the heavy wood splinter beneath his riot of scribblings.

  He’d lost the charms! Years of hunting, of carefully shaping his victims to his will. Decades of work, gone. Undone in an instant by that . . . thing. He seethed a snarling bestial growl rumbling up from his chest. No, he had to be calm . . . had to think. He forced the snarl into a long slow breath and bent low, studying the characters he’d written and rewritten so many times, adjusting the placement of some bits of parchment and hide here and there. All wasn’t lost yet. Adjustments would be needed, amendments could be forced, perhaps. Yes, of course they could. He’d come too far to be halted now.

  He studied the faded image of the crimson-cloaked wizard that dominated the center of the table and felt the familiar surge of resentment. Damned selfish fool! If not for you none of this would be necessary. Had he had to wallow around in the dregs, cobbling together powers from any sources he could find? No, not him, he’d had a spark of Creation Itself to work with, and he’d still made a hash of it!

  The Bwgan slammed his hand down on the table again, this time over the worn faded bit of canvas, and this time the table’s wood buckled. The dark creature wrenched his fist free of the ragged hole in the table’s center and watched as the bloody tears in the flesh sealed themselves as they should.

  “I’ll make it right,” he swore to the decimated bit of canvas. “I’ll do what you hadn’t the will to.”

  He slapped some of the papers on the table out of the way and uncovered a glyph burnt into the tabletop. Dragging the pasty white flesh of his elongated hand across the rough splintery surface, he hissed as flesh tore and blood ran. The glyph drank his black blood thirstily. The fetid stale air thickened, rushing in on him like an animal fleeing a coming storm. A shriek filled the room, coming from nowhere and everywhere as his power pulverized the barriers between places. A rift like a bolt of obsidian lightning shredded reality, opening into a yawning crack in existence. The tower swayed like an injured animal as the crack’s essence weakened the bonds that held it firm. Stone creaked and grated against stone as mortar already corroded by long decades of neglect started to give way. Floorboards, already half-consumed by rot and mold, turned to a mush of pulp as the air took on the sickly sweet scent of decay. The Bwgan breathed in the decimation like a connoisseur wafting at the bouquet of a fine wine before the first sip, and then he ducked, pulling in his long gangly limbs and near folding himself double to slide into the rift he’d made. There was no more time to waste. The moment was finally at hand.

  The rift pulsed and undulated, fighting to maintain itself once its master had passed through. Reality reasserted itself desperately, pressing on the void space from all sides. The trembling in the chamber grew more violent. The tower swayed like a storm-tossed ship. Stones cracked and masonry rained down as the rent in the pattern fought to spread itself.

  * * *

  Rhiannon put her hands down to steady herself as the ground trembled again. She staggered and caught herself on a fallen log jutting from the edge of what had once been a carefully tended grove. She thought the bleached ruins of trees might have been cedar, but the great rotted hulks of timber were almost entirely obscured by a briar patch of finger-long thorns that stretched for a quarter of a mile in every direction. A new Edgewood. The Strief’s bastard offspring. She’d felt it before she saw it; a burning surge in her chest froze her with agony and sent her tumbling from the sky.

  Now she crouched on its margins, rubbing distractedly at the spot between her breasts and wondering if she could make herself venture deeper into that nightmare of tangles. She saw herself spitted on that damned root and buried under a snarl just like the one she looked upon now . . . and he’s in there somewhere, weakened but desperate, dangerous, and capable of anything.

  The Twilight Sword sang as it came free of its sheath. Rhiannon reflexively spun the blade in her fist as the surge that always accompanied the draw filled her. The sword did not doubt. The sword cut. It knew that it would cut. That it must cut. It was inevitable. Rhiannon’s personality slid backward, and her battle sense moved to blend with the sword’s uncompromising certainty of itself.

  Rhiannon straightened her body, flexed her limbs, and tested the pain radiating in her abdomen. Her breath came more steadily as she looked out at an ocean of fibrous tendrils as thick as her leg. They stretched and coiled wherever she looked, gripping a landscape that she remembered as a sprawling Eden of rolling hills, verdant woodlands, and slow burbling brooks. The ground trembled under her feet, but she held her balance. She took a deep breath and started moving along a long length of thorny bramble, making her way toward the middle.

  Dead trees creaked, groaned and crashed against each other all around her. Rhiannon’s power surged. Her already slight frame compressed and contracted. She made herself lighter, faster and pushed her power into the bones and muscles of her legs. She raced along, leaping and weaving through the snarl of vines as it tightened its grip.

  A crack like a clap of thunder sounded immediately over the Pyski’s head, and Rhiannon leapt away blindly in an attempt to dodge as a shower of desiccated branches rained down from above. Her right foot landed awkwardly on the vine she’d been seeking, and she slipped. She plummeted, rolling end over end among the thorns. Thorns like talons of black tore the flesh at her face and neck where it was unguarded by her armor.

  She flailed her weapon and a sharp gasp of agony tore from her lips as the blade touched the first thorn. The Strief convulsed inside her chest, its own tendrils tightening around her organs and sinews as the larger one coiled around this glade. The Pyski’s small compact form slammed into the ground beneath the tangle. She lay on her face with the Twilight Sword tucked beneath her and her eyes slid shut.

  She placed herself on the knife’s edge between the Void and the Aether and drew Light and Dark in great gaping draws. She filled herself with the competing tides’ raw forces. They knotted around themselves and around the invader that clutched her heart, coating and crystalizing. The pain ebbed and then leveled itself. Not gone, but of no consequence. She filled her lungs in anticipation and then threw herself into a roll. The sword of dun sheared through thorn and vine in a flurry as she cut a pocket in which she could crouch. Each impact was like a jab to her core, but with every blow she felt, she cut again.

  That’s what a sword does.

  When finished, she knelt in a dome-shaped pocket in the briar patch. Rhiannon flipped the sword in her fist and drove the cloudy, muted blade through dirt and root and stone, hilt deep into the bedrock beneath. She worked the blade back and forth and side to side like a prybar, opening a deep narrow crevice in the rock. Drawing the blade out, she inspected the fissure, and then slid her blade home in the sheath over her shoulder. From inside her left gauntlet, the Pyski sorceress drew out the tooth-studded thong she’d shoved there.

  She held it pinched between two fingers and away from herself as though it might strike out. She imagined that even through the thick leather of her gauntlet she could still feel its corruption. Still, she couldn’t help but lift the thin bit of knotted leather to study the macabre collection of undersized and yellowed human teeth it held.

  So much danger. So much pain and power tied up in this unassuming little thing.

  She dropped the grisly totem into the hole, unconsciously wiping the fingers of her gauntlets on her thigh, worked the pouch at her side open, and rooted about inside it. She inspected the girl’s tooth once she’d dug it out and wondered idly if that child would sleep that night. If there is a night tonight. She tossed the tooth in after the others with a sigh and pressed her will into the crevice after it.

  The Light streaming from the Aether focused into
a nearly solid bar of liquid heat. The gray, lifeless dirt around the hole smoked, singed and burst alight. The rock itself glowed orange and then red, and Rhiannon coaxed the Power on. She felt the skin on her cheeks blistering and her armor heating as though trying to cook her, but still she pressed more Light into the beam.

  A rumbling like an avalanche or a mountain toppling down on itself boomed in the distance, and Rhiannon spun, letting the beam dissipate. Her sword was back in her hand, though she didn’t recall drawing it. A screen of dust and grit dominated the sky in the distance, obscuring everything. The Pyski looked back at the smoking hole before her, scouring it with her senses, seeking any trace of power. She felt the all-encompassing dark that ruled this place, mindlessly hungry, endlessly angry, but wary of her after that display of power. Beyond that malignant presence there was nothing, just slagged stone and burnt grit. She nodded to herself, satisfied. The argent nimbus of magic rose around her as she let the twin Powers remold her husk, and an instant later Rhiannon’s flight form flitted toward the disturbance at the vine maze’s core.

  Where the O’Broin tower house had once stood, there was only a confusion of toppled and scattered stone. The ruins were still wreathed in a curtain of dust and debris, but what Rhiannon could make out looked like the neglected toys of a petulant giant carelessly strewn about.