All's Fair (Fair Folk Chronicles Book 4) (9 page)

Chapter 17: Tarnished Silver

They passed numerous more slaves and dodged two more patrols. Thankfully, these didn't have one of the monsters with them. Progress was slow, especially when they neared the forge building, which had slaves coming and going from it steadily.

Finally, they approached what Ashling assured them was one of the armories. A couple of slaves moved past their hiding spot, bringing a few more spear heads wrapped in cloth, with the redcap slave keeping the iron wrapped in the cloth to make sure it didn't touch his skin—which bore signs of several iron burns already. The human needed less care, but had numerous other scars, in addition to looking even closer to dead and desiccated.

After the pair of slaves left, Ashling confirmed no others were approaching. The group carefully snuck into the room to start searching the spears, only to realize they weren't alone.

A scrawny figure hunched over the table at the far end, cleaning a set of wrought-iron knives. She delicately clutched rags around each end as she laid them out, then carefully pressed one rag-covered handle as she ran the other rag along the relatively dull blade as if it were fire itself.

Megan couldn't stop looking at the woman. The eyes were like tinted glass, but the hair looked a little like tarnished silver if it were very, very tarnished indeed, and between the black lines on her face were stripes that shimmered like mother-of-pearl.

"Do you suppose that's Sorcha?" Though she'd tried to whisper it to Lani, the figure looked up anyway.

For a moment, there almost appeared to be a glint in the black eyes, a silvery light.

“Sorcha was little. She played with dolls,” Lani said, watching the slave carefully for any sign she was about to call out an alarm.

“One thousand years ago. Who knows how growing up worked in the lake?” Megan said.

“If that's her, then her mother may have been right about death never coming, but calling her living was kind of a stretch,” Justin said.

“I always thought the tarnished hair and pearl-stains were physical reactions to her grief, not genetic,” Lani said.

“A thousand years in kindasorta Hell probably makes you grieve, too,” Megan said. “Maybe the type of reaction was genetic. Or something. Blood calls to blood.”

The woman sat still, head tilted, her black-glass eyes blank. But Megan still thought she'd seen the glint before. "Guys, going to try something," She looked at the woman, talking quietly. "Is your name Sorcha?"

There was no immediate verbal response, or even obvious sign of recognition of the name, but this time, she was sure. There was a faint hint of light behind the eyes, even if they remained nearly opaque. The slave turned slightly on the edge of the bench to face Megan. She tensed, as if uncertain what to do, watching every move Megan made—but she still didn't call out.

Moving slowly, Megan took off her pack, reaching in and pulling out the carefully wrapped doll, offering it over to the sidhe slave and crouching next to where she sat.

The woman's eyes turned slowly down to regard the thing in Megan's hands. At first there was nothing, but when Megan started unwrapping it from the small towel, that faint light appeared again, more sustained. Pale hands, shaking slightly, reached for the doll. Megan gently placed it into the almost-skeletal fingers. When she first started to let go, the doll almost fell from the weak grip, so Megan continued to help support its weight.

The light grew just slightly brighter behind the black-glass eyes, and the black-veined fingers closed tighter. Just in case, Megan continued to help, feeling the bone through the stretched skin.

The head tilted further down, eyes narrowing as the woman seemed to try to make more sense of this thing she was holding. Then she spoke, or attempted to. Megan couldn't make anything out of the brief, harsh whisper.

Even so, she tried to sound encouraging. "Is this yours?"

With Megan continuing to help, hands underneath the slave's, the woman drew the doll in closer, tucking an arm under it. The gaze tilted further forward. Then the other arm came up, supporting the doll better. Megan shifted her grip, letting the woman cradle the toy, just making sure she didn't drop it.

The light in the eyes grew brighter, and the whispers came again. She started to rock the doll gently. The disconnected whisper became syllables, more and more strung together. Then the syllables became words, in Gaelic. Megan was about to ask Ashling to translate when she caught on.

The woman paused, repeating the same words she had a moment ago. Then another pause. The eyes grew a little darker, as hints of an expression of confusion crossed over her face.

Megan whispered the next song lyrics to the lullaby, the part of the song that wasn't coming.

The eyes lit up brighter. She lifted her head, looking Megan in the eye, the first tears coming, streaming over the mother-of-pearl patches on the skin. She whispered, a little more in tune, the lyrics Megan just sang.

Megan joined her for a couple of minutes, quietly helping the song along as the woman rocked her doll and sang along, listening to Megan each time she nearly stumbled over lyrics. When the song ended, the eyes were no longer black, but a dark, tarnished silver, with faint black veins running through them. Tucking the doll in one arm, she leaned forward, her other arm coming up to hug Megan tightly, letting the tears stream freely.

"Sorcha..." she whispered. Megan could understand the name, and a couple of other words, but outside of the songs she'd memorized, her Gaelic was still lacking, and the woman was repeating words over and over.

“Okay, Ashling,” said Megan. “I can follow a little of this, but you should translate. And... um... on the subject of originality in translation, Ashling...”

“There won't be. An adventure story grows with every telling. A tragedy is inevitably itself, front to back. Word for word: 'Sorcha... my name is Sorcha. You... you... you brought me my name back.'"

Megan decided to take Ashling at her word, talking slowly. "Your mother told us you were alive."

At the translation, Sorcha's eyes opened wider. There was a long pause before she spoke, and Ashling translated. "My mother is still alive?"

Megan nodded. "She is. And she misses you very much."

Sorcha started crying, keeping the sound down, but unable to hide the tears. They had to leave her to that and hide while slaves came through again, but quickly returned to her side after they left. By then, Sorcha was ready with her next question. "She wants to know if we're going to kill her."

Megan shook her head, trying to make it clear even before translation that that was definitely not the plan. "We could use her help, though."

Sorcha continued sounding more and more lucid, the more she had a chance to talk, and the back and forth with the pixie sped up. "She doesn't think she's going to be very much help, but she'll try," Ashling said. "As long as we take her with us."

Megan glanced between her friends and Sorcha. "She's obviously been through a lot. Can she handle what we need to do? This won't be easy."

Ashling translated that, and Sorcha stood, easing herself up from the table as she spoke. "If she dies, then she dies," Ashling said. "She says that the only thing she can't handle is losing her name again."

Chapter 18: To Arms

“So. Spears.” Megan tried to remember the word. “Sleá?”

Sorcha walked with them to one side of the small warehouse of weapons.

“Has she seen anything that..." Megan trailed off, searching her memory of the spear's appearance, rather than precisely how it had killed Balor.

“Here,” Lani said, pulling out the book and pressing it into Megan's hands.

“Ooh, good idea.” Megan opened to one of the bookmarked pages about the spear. “Silver. Leaf-bladed. Probably really distinctive.”

Sorcha shook her head, but did pass on that there were a lot of spears there, even aside from those the Fomoire had made. They spent far too long, from Megan's perspective, searching through the stacks of weapons.

"Wherever it is, they sure hid it well. Which I guess is good, but..." Megan said.

"If it's even here," Lani said. "This was a hunch, after all. It's possible Lugh took it with him."

"Or the Fomoire already found it," Megan said.

"I wasn't going to add that part, but yeah, it's possible. I kind of doubt that, though."

"Why's that?" Megan asked, feeling more hopeful.

"Kind of like the fae can't use the Claiomh Solais, and I bet the Fomoire couldn't either. It's meant to turn the tide of these kinds of wars, and Lugh had no problem throwing it around a battlefield. He probably wasn't chancing that some enemy could pick up the unstoppable weapon."

Megan smiled, going back to digging through the piles of weapons where weapon racks had rotted away. "That makes sense. So if Lugh didn't take it with him, it's still probably here somewhere. So where the heck is it?"

"We'll keep looking," Lani said, checking the walls for signs of hidden doors, while Megan shifted her focus, moving from the few metal-hafted weapons to the numerous spears mounted on rotted wood. They had to pause again to hide from the next arrival, while Sorcha moved back to the table.

Megan didn't like the fact that she'd could identify the guy as one of the minor Fomoire. She didn't like that 'minor' still meant ten feet tall with a distorted face and what was with this guy's leg. Just above the twisted leg, a whip was curled. Even from her hiding place, she could see the bits of iron tangled and tied in it.

The little giant looked around, his gaze landing on the small stack of clean knives. He uncoiled the whip slightly and snapped the leather between his hands. He spoke one word. Megan didn't need a translation: she knew 'faster.'

Sorcha whimpered an affirming sound as the Fomoire left. Then the girls and Justin came out again.

"They have humans and plenty of work to do. Why do they have a sidhe cleaning and prepping cold iron weapons, anyway?" Megan asked, sifting carefully. Over the past two years, the feel of cold iron had grown from the sickening medicated feel in her fingertips to a sting to, after her inheritance, a burn only slightly less than that a full-blooded sidhe would feel.

Ashling passed the question on, and Sorcha lowered her head before answering. "Something about how she 'smells like a pest.'” The pixie frowned. “Her mother did fight at Mag Tuired.”

"They're still..." Megan started, before sighing. "Of course they still are." She went back to digging.

Sorcha spoke again, trying to carefully help sift through some of the rotted wood. "She says it could be worse," Ashling said. "She can still work. The ones who are too weak for that go to the ritual rooms."

Megan paused again. "What ritual?"

There was a little back and forth before the pixie explained. "Cethlenn is their most powerful sorceress, but she's staying here instead of going to the battle. She's in charge right now. Since Indech left, she's been doing the ritual more often. When he was here, it was mostly the ritual that keeps the slaves alive, and a little power going... she says somewhere else. She's not sure where, but she doesn't think Indech knew. Now, she's been letting a few slaves die, she drains them so much, and more power is going to the somewhere else place."

"Balor," Lani said. "Cethlenn is Balor's widow. She's trying to finish what O'Neill started and bring him back to life."

"Why wouldn't Indech want that?" Megan asked. "Didn't Balor fight for Indech?"

"As a mercenary," Justin said. "And we don't know how difficult the negotiations were. He doesn't think he needs him badly enough to negotiate, or maybe he thinks Balor would cite Indech going under the ice as a reason he should be in charge. Dying in battle with Lugh would get him some support. Or, it may just be that Indech is still trying to stay beneath the notice of the Gods, and thinks Balor might be of particular interest to Lugh. There's a lot we don't know, but there's plenty of reasons he might want to not have Balor back. At least not yet."

"All right, so that makes sense. And she's bringing him back anyway?"

"Once Balor is back, I'm not sure she's going to be terribly afraid of punishment from Indech," Lani said.

"All right, then I was wrong before. We definitely need to sabotage that," Megan said.

“You weren't wrong,” Lani said. “You said we needed more information. Now that we have more information, we need to sabotage it.”

"As soon as we have the spear," Justin said. "She'll definitely notice when we mess with her spell. We need to be ready to go."

"So you really think it's here? I mean, even if it's not, we can still accomplish something important here," Megan said.

"I trust your instincts. Your inspirations have served us well so far," Justin said.

"Are there any more spears? I mean, there's plenty here, but in case, are any stored anywhere else?"

"She says that the spears are all brought here," Ashling said.

"I'm not seeing anything like it," Megan said, "And I think we're pretty well into the older stuff."

"I think they took most of what they could that was ready to go," Lani said. “These spear-shafts are all wooden. Some rotted, some barely-stripped branches shoved in place.”

Sorcha spoke. “Not wasting Iron,” Ashling translated.

Justin, after looking thoughtful for a minute, turned to Sorcha. “Where are you supposed to store the knives?” he asked.

Sorcha gestured

"Knives? We're not looking for a knife," Megan said.

"I have a hunch, regarding weaponry," Justin said.

"You've trusted me this far," Megan said, straightening from her sorting.

Justin crossed through the warehouse to the indicated section, moving straight to the racks and storage trunks for blades that needed repair, or had not been given a hilt yet. With great care, he lifted a leaf-shaped silvery blade out of the stores. While definitely silver, and very ornate, once a lot of dust and smudging had been cleaned, it did, at first, look very much like an ornamental knife blade. Closer examination verified that it was a spear head.

Even closer examination involved Ashling's pressing her hands to it in a series of what was either pressure-point exercises or the most bizarre game of patty-cake Megan had ever seen.

"Where do you hide a spear?" Megan asked, looking to Ashling.

"In an armory," Ashling said, cheerfully. "Full of knives. Wonder if it was intentional."

"Bigger question," Megan said. "Is this the right thing? It could be a decoy or something. I'd hate to think I found the unstoppable secret weapon, and the last thing I see is the Gaelic equivalent of 'Made in Hong Kong, #13 of 50.'"

"No, no, trust me. That's the real thing," Ashling said. “I did a full divine-artifact diagnostic.”

"And you're absolutely positive?"

"Pixies are always positive. Sprites have a negative charge, and will o' wisps just depend on what emotion they've been eating. Anger has a lot of protons. Science!" She paused at Megan narrowing her eyes. "Okay, yes. I'm also sure."

"Either way, we need to find a decent shaft for this, and then get out of here," Lani said, appraising the weapon.

Megan paused, looking to Sorcha. "So if we take down Cethlenn, what happens to the prisoners?"

Sorcha spoke. Ashling translated. "The humans... it will be finally over for the humans. Those of our folk... I don't know."

"Well, here's hoping you'll make it."

Sorcha paused as she heard the translation, blinking for a moment, before she gave Ashling anything to translate back. "Why should we hope that?"