Aoleyn began to piece the bits together. She thought of the chasm, this dark and deep gorge, and of the many spirits she had encountered when she had been exploring the crystal caverns in her trial for the Coven. She couldn’t sense those many spirits now, not at all, beyond these two, her mother and her aunt, the woman who had birthed her and the woman who had raised her.
“Help?” she asked, and then, only then, did Aoleyn fully grasp their pleas.
She had fallen, mortally. She was fast dying, and would be dead, but for these two spirits, Elara and Seonagh. They were singing the song of Usgar within her, catching the magic of the wedstones caught in the many crystals in this most magical complex of caverns and tunnels. They were healing her—no, they weren’t strong enough to do that. They had been sustaining her tiny thread of life.
We are leaving. We can’no stay, Seonagh’s spirit said yet again.
And they were, Aoleyn realized. Already their thoughts were thinner, more distant, less substantial. Through those thoughts, Aoleyn heard the music of Usgar, and she grabbed at it, how she grabbed at it!
She brought the warmth to fight the coldness, and it did seem to diminish—nay, the cold began to spread.
But that was a good thing, Aoleyn suddenly realized, for she could feel the cold stone on her shoulder now, and down one arm, which was awkwardly angled beneath her back. Hardly even thinking of why that might be, she yanked the arm out wide and brought it across to begin touching the rest of her body, to ensure that it was all still there. She reached down as low as she could manage, but yes, her legs seemed to be there, intact.
Why couldn’t she feel them?
She reached for the music again and again, but to less effect. Much less. Elara and Seonagh were also singing Usgar’s song, but their voices grew more distant, and the song became a hum and nothing more, and ineffective against Aoleyn’s maladies.
Aoleyn knew that she was alone again. She sent her thoughts out to the cavern, calling for her mother, for her aunt, for the magic of Usgar. Her renewed hopes quickly turned to desperation, for there was nothing upon which she could hold. The warmth was gone. The spirits were gone. She had no idea of the extent of her remaining injuries, other than the growing pain in her forearm, for she couldn’t feel anything beyond that limb and her uppermost body. Those wounds would kill her, though, she was certain, or the coldness would.
She lay there for a moment, trying to compose herself, trying to find some solution. There was just the hard floor beneath, one she could only feel on the back of her head, her neck, and her right side to her fingers. She brought that hand in to touch her face and felt the wrist tie hanging from it, and could smell the burning rope.
The lightning crackle? Had the dead witches freed her hands with a jolt of lightning?
She whispered her thanks, but then recanted, for this seemed the cruelest trick of all. To let her awaken, to tease her with the spirits of her mother and aunt, and to leave her, helpless, in a deep, deep, and black hole, too far from the magical gem-filled caverns above for her to hear the song, or at least, to hear it enough to access the magic. For it was there, far in the distance, and that seemed crueler still.
She walked her fingers back toward her side, bending her arm, and with great effort, pushed off the floor to lift her head and one shoulder, just a bit. She tried to look around, but no, there was just blackness.
Aoleyn felt tears welling in her eyes. She didn’t want to die like this. It would be slow, she feared, and now she was feeling pain in her unnumbed shoulder and arm, and she had to ease the limb back down, realizing that her arm was almost certainly broken.
She called out, but so weakly that her voice carried not at all.
Who would hear her, anyway?
So she lay back and waited to die.
The cold emptiness began to creep in once more. She called for her mother, both with her voice and with her thoughts. But no, the spirits were gone, diminished to nothingness or flown away—she could not know.
It was the demon that had trapped them here, they had said. She had freed them, then, by destroying the fossa. She had freed them and thus, had unwittingly doomed herself.
She thought of the fossa’s cave, where she had battled the beast. She had felt the ghosts there, too, and it was not far from this place, though higher up, she sensed. Much higher up than this pit.
The cold crept in. She wore only a slight, almost sheer, short shift, one torn in many places, and hardly protection against the winter’s bite.
Panic grabbed the broken young woman. She could not die like this! She reached for the song.
But no, it was too far.
She swung her broken arm with all her strength, somehow managing to turn somewhat on her side. Then she reached out into the darkness, clawing at the floor, looking for something to hold on to. She found a slight lip in the stone, and she pulled. With all her desperation and all her anger, Aoleyn crept.
She understood that she had moved barely a finger’s breadth, and that she had turned herself more than she had actually moved from the spot, but it didn’t matter. There was no point, but there had to be!
She reached again and pulled again. Pain shot through her arm, burning and awful, but she gasped against it and reached farther into the nothingness around her.
And her hand touched upon something, at first startling and frightening. But then it seemed familiar, and Aoleyn grasped the small item and brought it in.
An earring, her earring, with a red garnet gemstone, and more critically, with a strand wound of wedstone. She clasped it tightly in her hand and listened for the music, focusing on the gray strand, the magic that would bring her healing.
With all her strength and willpower, Aoleyn washed that healing through her broken and battered body. Over and over again, she called upon it, and by the time she had to lay back in exhaustion, the feeling had begun returning to her other arm.
She attached the earring to her ear, healing the wound around the wedstone wire, making it, as it had been, a part of her.
Hope did not return to poor Aoleyn, though. Not yet. Even if she could somehow manage to heal the rest of her shattered body, how might she fend off the cold? She couldn’t maintain the healing magic forever, after all, and if she slept now without the spirits of Elara and Seonagh feeding her the magic of Usgar, she would surely freeze to death.
She rested as long as she could manage, until her ears and fingers began to sting, then she fell back into the magic of her earring, but this time into the garnet, the stone that would let her sense and see any nearby magic.
She glanced about. The more energy she was able to pour into the stone, the wider her net was cast.
She saw! Two other pieces of her jewelry, and nearest lay her ring.
She had to crawl, but now she had use of both her hands and so she could manage it. She got to the ring, and fell over it, hugging it close and letting go of the earring’s magic. She pushed herself against a wall, propped herself to a sitting position, then took a deep breath, trying to find her calm, her center, her balance.
She gathered her mental strength, then called upon the white stone of the ring to create a magical glowing barrier about her. Into the other stone she sent her thoughts, building its magical energy. She found some loose stones about her as she did, and she pulled them in close.
“Please work,” she whispered, and she released the energy of the ruby, creating a fireball around her of considerable power. It only lasted a heartbeat, but as the flames wisped away, the glow of the stones lit the area, giving her a good view.
A good view of very little, for all about her was dark stone, and not like the fabulous crystals in the caverns up above her. She saw upward for quite a distance, and noted that the shaft turned and twisted, which was probably why no daylight could find its way this far down. She saw, too, her legs, sticking out of the bottom of her shift, and her feet were there and all her toes.
She tried to wriggle them. She could not.
It felt good indeed, but it wouldn’t last, and she would have a hard time keeping up with the bitter cold using fireballs, which greatly taxed her magical energy. She called upon the ruby again, to see if there was something else she might manifest from the gem’s magic. She did hear a different path for the song, but wasn’t sure of what it might be, and alas, she couldn’t seem to access it.
She had to get out of here. There was no other way. But how?
She took a deep breath again and settled back, curling as tightly as she could against the heated stones, even putting a couple of rocks atop her, grasped in her hands as she tried to keep the feel of her fingers.
She started for the ring’s power again, to enact the shield, but changed her mind and went instead to the earring and the magic-seeing garnet. After some time, she heard the whisper of a song to her right, but far away. With no choice, with time moving against her, Aoleyn crawled hand-over-hand into the darkness. She jammed one finger, cut another, and was sure she was tearing the skin of her legs and lower torso even as she was further tearing the light fabric of her smock, but she knew that she couldn’t afford the time to stop and try to cast some healing spells.
No, she kept her focus and she found, first, her anklet, and heard the song of her belly ring further along in the darkness.
The anklet was stronger in the wedstone than either her earring or her ring, though, so she clutched it close and felt the songs within. It could cast lightning, she knew, and had a myriad of uses that produced cold and frost, even an icy field. Perhaps that coldness could be reversed.
When she searched the magic within the gem, she didn’t find that, though. She couldn’t reverse the flow of the song, and using that bluish stone of the anklet, the zircon, would only make it colder around her.
Something else intrigued her, though, for on that anklet, in addition to the wedstone band, the zircon, and the graphite bar, were also some chips of a purplish gem. Searching through so many riddles of how she might survive, Aoleyn got the sense that she could shape the magic of the other gems differently with those specks of sapphire. She went again at the zircon.
No, she still could not revere its effects, but on a sudden thought, she went instead to the ruby in her ring.
The alternate songs of the ruby seemed far clearer then, various bars playing parallel to each other. She followed one and found the magical notes, then nearly screamed in surprise and fear as flames erupted all over her body.
She batted at them reflexively, and they stung her hands a bit. But they didn’t burn her body. They weren’t consuming her or her smock. It was as if she was wearing a cloak of fire, one that warmed her, but did not burn her. And it took only minimal magical energy to maintain it.
She allowed herself to rest there, happy that she could see the area around her in the light of her flaming cloak, and could see her own body, bruised and bloody though it was.
For now, she just pulled herself to the wall, sat back, and basked in the warmth, allowing herself a much-needed reprieve.
A short while later, the cloak of flames disappeared. Still enjoying the warmth of the heated stones, Aoleyn pulled herself over her legs and worked the anklet back into the skin of her left ankle. Now, with the ring, the anklet, and the earring, she could access much more of the wedstone.
But she was exhausted.
Instead, when she started getting cold again, Aoleyn called up a second cloak of flames, for that enchantment cost precious little energy. She could do this for a long time, she understood, and while recuperating from her efforts. She even managed to nap for a short while. Only after, feeling determined and refreshed, did Aoleyn call upon the wedstones, bringing their collective song to a growing chorus and harmony. She was afraid, truly, for what if she could not heal these greater wounds?
She didn’t want to die down here.
With a growl, she pushed through the song and called upon the wedstones, and felt a great wash of warm and comfort coursing through her, and she held it as long as she could, casting repeatedly.
When she was done, exhausted once more, she wore a wide smile, for she could feel her torso again, and the hard floor against her buttocks. She still couldn’t feel her legs, but she would again, she was confident. Still, after her next period of rest, and another short nap, Aoleyn didn’t immediately go back to her healing. Instead, she called up a cloak of flames, reached into the garnet for guidance, and, with the better mobility provided by a warmed and awakened body, she moved off along the chasm.
She hadn’t gone far when she saw that she was not alone, and after the shock wore off, she scrabbled her way to a body, crushed and broken in the fall.
“Innevah,” she breathed, and she fell over her friend and cried. The spirits had saved Aoleyn. Why had they let Innevah die?
Desperately, Aoleyn fell into her wedstone, hoping there was some life to be found here.
But no, she realized before she even cast the spell, and only then did she come to understand that not only was Innevah already dead, but she had been for a long time. Her body was frozen and fully discolored and bloated, and in this profound cold, that process would have taken many days.
How long had Aoleyn been down here? Why hadn’t she starved?
Aoleyn gave thanks to the magic of Usgar. She kissed Innevah on the cheek, and forced herself to crawl on. Her other ear jewelry, the turquoise cap set with a cat’s eye, was not far away, and putting it on gave to Aoleyn the vision of a hunting feline, and the darkness seemed not so deep. Finally, she found her greatest treasure, her belly ring, and in that moment, Aoleyn knew she would survive this ordeal.
For it was intact, thick wedstone bands holding a thicker gray lightning bar that created four strands. One held a diamond, which could bring light. A second held a beautiful purple stone that enhanced her health and toughness. The third was striped in varying green hues, and with this powerful stone Aoleyn could eliminate her own weight and could climb these walls.
She wouldn’t even have to, though, she knew, for the fourth strand held a soft blue, cloudy moonstone, and with that one, Aoleyn could fly.
She decided not to wait, for it was too cold down here. She called to the moonstone, bringing it to its full power, then willed herself into the air, climbing fast near to a wall, her dead legs dangling below her. To her surprise, though, as she ascended, it grew colder.
She came around a bend, a second, then a third, and saw light far, far above, and saw, too, snow on the small shelf of the winding chimney. There, Aoleyn paused. Winter had come to Fireach Speuer.
How long had she been down here?
Her belly growled. She felt light-headed. She needed food and water. Up she went, flying, then, as she tired, using the striped malachite to free her of her own weight, that she could physically scale the wall, hand-over-hand. She thought to go to the caverns below Craos’a’diad, where she had explored as her test for the Coven, but she found a lower level of tunnels, and glancing down with the cat’s eye enchantment, then with the magic-sensing garnet, she heard a different Usgar song, but one quite strong.
She settled just inside a corridor off the deep shaft, wrapped herself in her cloak of flames, and closed her eyes. Physically and magically exhausted, she was soon fast asleep.
* * *
The hand went up before her, feeling the way from tree to tree. No, it wasn’t her hand. It was his hand. The moment of confusion passed as she sorted it out. She was one with him. She was in his thoughts, seeing through his eyes, feeling what he was feeling. Like with Brayth in that battle with the sidhe, then the fossa, on the field, when she had joined with him spiritually, and worked through the magic to heal him, to enhance his battle prowess, even to make him fly.
But that had been planned, prepared, undertaken through a magical ceremony. This wasn’t Brayth. It wasn’t a memory—not her memory, at least.
> She didn’t know this man.
That thought lingered, stuck with her, prodded her and teased her.
She could feel the physical strength of this man, an Usgar warrior. She could see his hands and forearms as he reached out to move from tree to tree, and the easy way he handled his heavy spear.
He was afraid, particularly so right now, because he knew that he was in a precarious and disadvantageous situation. He had to get through the tangled copse quickly and back out under the red moon that hung full in the sky.
The red moon. The Blood Moon!
Its light could not get through these thick boughs—Aoleyn could feel the conflict within him over that fact, the emotional against the practical. He was glad of the concealment on a purely human level, but the trained warrior understood that such darkness was not his ally, and truly favored the demon.
His name was Fionlagh, she somehow understood.
Fionlagh!
Her father!
She felt his fear and understood it. The reputation of the fossa was not ambiguous on the matter of concealment: the demon’s victims rarely if ever saw its approach in time to react. She was in his thoughts as he tried to bolster himself, seeing the ceremonies, hearing the compliments offered to him by the leaders of Usgar. He reminded himself that he had been among the most highly heralded warriors in the tribe, that the whispers said he might one day be Usgar-laoch, even.
“Because you are with me,” he whispered, and only then did Aoleyn realize that she was not alone with him in his thoughts. Fionlagh clutched his crystal-tipped spear tightly, feeling the magic and the spiritual connection to his beloved.
“My love, my life, Elara,” Aoleyn’s ghostly host whispered.
Aoleyn knew that name, of course. Elara and Fionlagh? Her parents, but it could not be. Was she dead? She tried to reach out to them, to contact these spirits, but no, there came no response and their magical melding continued on around her, as if she wasn’t there—because to them, she sensed, she wasn’t.
“I’m needing you,” Fionlagh quietly whispered as he neared the open and rocky mountainside once more.
Reckoning of Fallen Gods Page 22