I stomped my imaginary foot on the imaginary earth and muttered,
“There must be something I can do that the spell can’t wave away.”
My gaze raked the trees, the ground, the fake home of the fear dearg, and the burbling stream beneath.
A disturbing idea clawed its way to the surface of my mind. I gulped, the copper tang of my saliva sending a wave of nausea rippling through my gut.
“This is a dream,” I said to the fear dearg who were warily peeking at me from within the holes in their logs, “so I can’t really die. But if I commit an act that would lead to my death in the real world, the spell will have to mimic a realistic death.
Which it can’t do, because that would involve my soul detaching from my body and then traveling through the void to my designated afterlife.
“The spell would have to construct an entirely different false world in the blink of an eye, and that world would have to feel natural to the perceptions of a dead person’s soul. Which the Morrígan has never personally experienced, as she is not herself dead.”
The Morrígan did spend a lot of time with ghosts though, particularly those who suffered violent deaths. So there was a chance her spellwork could compensate for such a brazen act.
Then again, “acting brazen” might have been the whole point.
Maybe the test was to see if I was willing to put myself through the unpleasant experience of dying in order to achieve my goals.
That sounded like something a war goddess might do, right?
Either way, I thought miserably, I have no better ideas.
Letting out an exasperated breath, I padded over to the stream and peered down at my reflection in the rippling water. Drowning was not an easy death, but I didn’t have many viable options.
If I tried to hang myself or bash my head in or slit a major blood vessel, I was more likely to end up temporarily disabled than “dead.” And any option beyond those would involve a lot more self-mutilation than I was comfortable with.
It seemed that drowning was the best choice.
But I knew damn well I was going to panic once I ran out of air and reflexively try to pull myself out of the water. I had to stage this fake suicide in a way that would inhibit my ability to chicken out before I reached the point of no return.
I focused once more on the pile of rotten logs, and the part of the stream that ran beneath it.
“Oh man, this is going to suck big time,” I grumbled.
Over the next few minutes, I set up my fake death using something akin to a morbid Rube Goldberg Machine. I bound my wrists and ankles with vines knotted in a manner that would tighten their hold if I attempted to tug my appendages free. Then I went and stood in front of the dream home of the fear dearg, positioned so that, no matter which way I fell, the stream’s current would carry me underneath the logs and wedge me between the streambed and the bottom of the log pile.
Lastly, using that telekinesis spell I hadn’t quite mastered, I lifted a substantial stone from the streambed with my mind, pumped it full of so much energy that it frosted over and began to vibrate, and then flung it at the speed of a professional baseball pitcher’s best throw. When it reached a distance of a hundred yards from my position, it slowed as if it was caught by a large rubber band and abruptly rebounded, sailing back toward me at the same speed at which I’d slung it.
I closed my eyes before it reached me to stop myself from flinching out of the way. But that didn’t prevent me from tensing up at the whirring sound of uneven stone cutting through the air.
This is stupid. This is so stupid. You’re somehow going to injure yourself for real, and then—
The stone hit me square in the middle of my forehead, imploding the front of my skull. My vision cut to gray static. My hearing shut down entirely. My thoughts melted into a puddle of mush. And my body did a little pirouette, like a dainty ballerina, before it went totally limp and dropped like a bag of rocks into the water.
As planned, the stream dragged my body underneath the log pile. I got stuck about halfway across, with my bloody head fully submerged and no room to maneuver my arms and legs. I was so dazed from the blow of the stone—though frustratingly still awake, something I attributed to the dream spell—that I didn’t even notice myself running out of air until I instinctively inhaled in an attempt to soothe my burning lungs. That, of course, resulted in stream water filling my mouth and nostrils.
Panic flooded my veins, but the effect was blunted by the head injury. So my thrashing was nothing but a weak wiggling of my bound limbs. And my scared screams were nothing but gargles trapped in tiny bubbles. And my thoughts were less mortal terror and more a deluge of confused questions, as my rattled brain struggled to make heads or tails of what was happening.
Eventually, the water found its mark and filled my lungs. A pain the likes of which I’d never experienced seared my chest as my lungs popped like balloons. My brain, badly battered and starved for oxygen, desperately tried to cling to consciousness for another minute or so, before it blessedly gave up and began to shut everything down.
My vision cut to black. My taste and smell lost the overbearing tinge of blood and replaced it with the essence of nothing at all. My sense of touch faded to tingling, then numbness, then the utter absence of anything.
For a moment that seemed to stretch on toward eternity, I was reduced to a scrambled consciousness floating aimlessly in oblivion.
Then I sensed it. The dream spell. A faint, buzzing pulse of power skirting the edge of my disembodied being, that grew stronger and stronger and stronger until it seemed as if my dark reality lay within the heart of a thunderbolt. That was the sign that some part of the spell’s construction was overloading and about to…
The spell collapsed.
The void blipped out of existence, and my mind snapped back to the waking world.
Ghosts of pain from my false suicide resonated through my head and chest, but they grew faint in less than a second, the way the memory of a normal dream began to wither the moment you woke.
Ecstatic—I did not want to recall that pain with any clarity—I wrenched my eyes open and examined the world around me. The true face of the old forests. Which was, as I had suspected, not nearly as lifeless and quiet and safe as the dream had tricked me into believing.
My body had been nestled between the humongous roots of a tree that bordered a clearing occupied by several tall mounds of dried mud. Each mound was covered in skittering black ants that were as long as my forearm, each bearing a pair of pincers three times the size of my thumbs. The bright-red markings on the ants’ backs suggested that these huge pincers could inject some sort of venom that would either kill me in a very painful way or paralyze me so that the ants could eat me alive.
I remained perfectly still, my heart thudding in my chest. None of the ants appeared to have noticed my intrusion into their colony, but it was possible I hadn’t been here long enough for any of them to get annoyed by my presence. Rarely did dream time run parallel to real time. That half hour I spent wandering around in my own head could’ve been thirty seconds out here.
Subtly, I tilted my head up. The trunk of the tree was crawling with ants as well, numerous organized lines of marching black figures winding through the gaps in the bark. No matter which way I tried to run, even up, I would risk coming into contact with several ants.
Some species of regular Earth ants were capable of defending their homes with coordinated strategies. There was no telling
what a species of Tír na nÓg ants living in the old forests could do. And I wasn’t keen to find out.
Should I try a veil? I asked myself, then immediately discarded the idea. Practically everything in Tír na nÓg had a magic sense, so even if the ants couldn’t see me with their bulbous eyes, a pulse of magic energy might alert them to my position, and they could swarm that position before I was able to escape.
I could probably fight my way through a horde of huge venomous ants, but I really didn’t
want to.
No, a quick escape is the better option. I’ll use an air spell or a force spell to throw myself a good distance and land in a safer location so I can get my bearings…
A black head peeked over the top of the root to my left, its long antennae wiggling to and fro. One of them almost poked me in the eye, its tip raking my cheek hard enough to break skin. A thin line of blood welled up and ran down to my chin, pooling into a single droplet that plopped onto my coat.
The ant paused, assessing the situation. Then it did something that caused the other ants, all two thousand of them, to turn their heads toward me.
Now would be a very good time to leave.
Mumbling the activation word for one of my shield bracelets, I gathered energy in my palms and the soles of my feet. As the ant who’d stumbled upon me lunged and bounced off my shield, I slammed my palms against the ground and discharged the energy, shooting my body upward at a shallow angle.
The lines of ants crawling up and down the tree trunk quickly locked together and formed several chains. These chains partially detached from the tree and whipped toward me. But because I’d flown more forward than up, they couldn’t extend quite far enough to reach me.
The same couldn’t be said of the ants on the ground. When I was halfway across the clearing, my feet skimming the mounds, a giant wall of ants lurched into position ahead of me, the top row all pointing their pincers my way.
This was where the energy in my feet came in. I invoked an air spell that abruptly shifted my trajectory, took me up and over the wall before the ants could build it any higher, and carried me the rest of the way across the clearing, depositing me on the ground.
The instant my toes touched down, I took off at full speed, hyperaware of the cacophony of skittering legs rising to a crescendo behind me.
The ants were quick bastards. Several times I checked over my shoulder to see an apocalyptic wave of black, hissing monstrosities racing through the brush and tearing down anything that got in their way. Including a few fluffy woodland creatures, which were rendered nothing but bloody smears soaking into the soil.
Eventually, however, I outpaced them with my half-sídhe speed.
They fell farther and farther behind until I could no longer see or hear them. I kept running anyway, because I didn’t know how sharp their senses were, and only slowed to a jog when my iron wound started weeping a fresh stream of blood from both sides.
A few minutes after that, my abdomen cramped up something awful.
I staggered to a stop on the edge of another small clearing.
Doubled over, I gulped in air until my lungs were satisfied, and then slumped against a tree to take the weight off my trembling legs.
As my body slowly shook off the strain of a hard run while in poor condition, I took stock of my current location. A few colorful songbirds were perched on the branches above me. A trio of snails were sliming their way along a gnarled root to my left.
Something that resembled a squirrel was chomping down on a handful of nuts in a distinctly human fashion, like a cartoon character, while lounging inside a small hollow in a tree on the other side of the clearing.
In the clearing itself was a circular patch of tall green grass, with a single white flower in full bloom in the exact center.
The scene was so pretty and peaceful, I was sure it was some sort of trap.
Almost as if the white flower heard my thoughts, it detached from the top of its stem and floated on a light breeze toward me. I prepared to raise my shield again, but the flower didn’t do anything to hurt me. Instead, it just bobbed in the air in front of me until I hesitantly lifted my hand.
The flower landed on my open palm, and I didn’t die.
Huh. I wonder what that’s all about.
An examination of the flower didn’t reveal anything extraordinary. It was a plain white flower with a yellow stamen that smelled somewhat similar to a lily. It didn’t appear to be excreting any sort of poison, and it gave off no magic signature of any kind. It also didn’t do anything that suggested it possessed any more intelligence than a regular flower—other than the whole “flying into my hand” exercise.
I considered tossing it aside, as it might have been dangerous in a way I couldn’t yet perceive. But at the same time, it could’ve
also been part of the Morrígan’s test. Some sort of token, perhaps, given to me as a reward for escaping from the dream spell. Something I was supposed to present to her when we finally met in person, or something to be delivered as proof of our interaction to Mab, or something…
“Ugh, it’s pointless to speculate.” I dug around in my coat pockets until I located an empty leather bag. I gently tucked the flower inside and stowed the bag in the interior pocket over my chest.
With the mystic flower near and dear to my heart, I pushed off from the tree and staggered away from the clearing, searching for a sign of where to head next. I needed to regroup with the others before I came upon something I couldn’t handle on my own. A category in which sat roughly half the inhabitants of the old forests.
Depending on how far the Morrígan split us apart though, it could take me hours to find even one person. I might have to try and—
A blurred figure darted out from behind a tree to my right, and the glint of metal in the corner of my eye was all the warning I had before the blade of a swinging sword stopped a hairsbreadth short of my neck. I yelped, recoiled, and tripped over a root, falling flat on my ass. Just as Orlagh Maguire stumbled to a halt, a grimace on her dirt-streaked face, as she realized she’d almost decapitated one of her allies.
She lowered her sword and crudely swore. “I am deeply sorry, Whelan. I didn’t realize it was you. My magic sense was disturbed by a spell some minutes ago and hasn’t yet righted itself.” She offered me a hand. “Are you well?”
“My coccyx is bruised,” I replied, taking her hand and tugging myself upright, “but I have worse wounds in worse places, so I won’t hold it against you.”
She wiped a sheen of sweat off her forehead. “Again, I apologize.
Since the group was divided, I have been continually defending myself against some rather…unsettling things. Which I believe to be manifestations produced by a spell of the Morrígan.” She glanced from side to side. “Though I do not see any now.”
I had no idea what sort of “manifestations” would shake an Unseelie soldier—Orlagh looked genuinely disturbed, her usually tan skin washed out, her eyes darting rapidly, her teeth gnashing
—and quite frankly, I didn’t want to know. I had enough nightmare fuel of my own to deal with.
“The spell probably deactivated when you reached some predetermined proximity to me,” I said. “I think the Morrígan is testing each of us with personalized challenges based on some
observations about our personalities that she made before she split us up. Since you aren’t dead, I’m guessing you passed.”
Orlagh’s tense shoulders relaxed slightly, and she sheathed her sword. “And you passed as well?”
I absently rubbed my chest. “Oh yeah. I passed.”
“Dare I ask what you faced?” She tucked a few loose locks of her hair behind her ear in an attempt to make herself seem less frazzled.
“The question of how far I’m willing to go to achieve my goals.”
Orlagh tilted her head to the side. “What is the answer?”
A phantom ache filled my lungs as I said, “Far enough.”
Chapter Nine
Six Hours Till Dusk
Orlagh and I aimlessly wandered through the forest, searching for the rest of our posse, for several minutes before we decided to stop and attempt to track them down with magic. Just as Orlagh was about to invoke a scrying spell, however, we both noticed a faint blue glow off to the east. Cautiously approaching, we realized the glow was emanating from a tiny flicker of flame hovering in midair—a will-o’-the-wisp—and it was the first in a long line of blue lights that snaked through the trees, directing us
to an unknown destination.
“Think we should follow them?” I asked Orlagh.
Tapping on the hilt of her sword, she replied, “Will-o’-the-wisps never lead people directly into dangerous situations, so I doubt there is an ambush lying in wait at the end of the line. But that isn’t to say that we won’t come across more perils along the way, as there are threats around every bend this deep into the old forests.”
“I’m less concerned about bumping into threats and more concerned about failing to bump into our friends. Some of them might still be stuck under the thumb of the Morrígan’s magic, and even those who crawled out are probably still traversing the forest alone.
We need to find them before somebody ends up dead.”
“Indeed.” She unsheathed her sword a single inch. “Let us assume for the moment that the wisps have been laid out as a good faith gesture—or perhaps a reward for overcoming the Morrígan’s trials—
to help us locate the remainder of our party. If anything occurs that contradicts that assumption, we will deal with it in the typical Unseelie fashion.”
“Works for me.”
We set off along the winding path dictated by the wisps, each little blue light flickering out as we drew near. The path took us deeper and deeper into the forest, the sunlight growing dimmer as the canopy grew denser. Until the world around us took on the air of perpetual twilight, a world of long shadows and harsh contrast.
In this diminished light, the forest adopted a menacing atmosphere. The watching eyes in the darkness a touch more hostile. The pattering of hooves and paws a touch more predatory.
The calls of birds a touch more discordant.
On edge, I kept my magic pooled in my fingers, the tips of my gloves frosted white. Orlagh too kept her guard up, a faint mist rolling off the silver hilt of her sword.
At the bottom of a deep hill, we came across a beaten path for the first time since we’d been cast away from the crossroads, and the trail of will-o’-the-wisps turned sharply onto this path. We continued farther on for half a mile. There, the narrow path cut between two gnarled weeping willows whose canopies curtained off some sort of clearing paved with weathered white stones.
What Dusk Divides Page 11