Icefall (42 page)

Kate flailed wildly, screaming, but Conal made not a sound, and neither did Seth: Conal because he clearly had no working voice box, Seth because his last scraps of energy were focused on dragging the queen behind as she kicked and punched and shrieked.

The black horse jolted to a halt, and Conal swung round to grip Kate's other arm. He yanked her easily onto the horse, dumping her backwards across its withers, but it seemed he'd lost interest immediately, because he was smiling at the blue roan. It was galloping back now and drawing alongside his black, grazing its teeth fondly against its neck.

Seth hauled himself painfully from the black to his own horse, and wound his fingers into its mane. He sagged low on its neck for a moment, drawing agonised breaths, but with an effort he straightened. His eye fixed on Kate, slung upside-down and squealing across the withers of his brother's horse.

Conal was surveying the chaos as if it was a social occasion and he didn't quite want to leave yet. I couldn't tear my gaze off him. His eyeballs had sunk in his skull and the flesh was wasting from his face. His torn shirt hung on his bones, and the fingers of his free hand, tapping lightly on his thigh, were decaying with the rest of him: bone showed at his fingertips as the flesh withered and fell away.

I scrambled over to Finn and grabbed her arm as the two brothers rode calmly back to us, Kate flopping helplessly in front of my father. Conal smiled at Finn as if to reassure her, and made a wild try at a wink, but the effect of it, without much eyelid left, was pretty unsettling. Seth's fingers were white where they were knotted through the blue roan's mane. His lips parted but he couldn't seem to get any words out. Finn was frozen, shaking in my hold.

The black kelpie shifted restlessly and sidestepped, yearning towards the gash in the Veil, but Conal nudged it back towards me. He raised what was left of his eyebrow at his brother.

‘Currac-sagairt,' croaked Seth. ‘Touch her.'

I bit my lip. Kate was still slung backwards over Conal's horse, sobbing and raging, and her amber eyes were locked helplessly upside-down on mine. The last thing I wanted was to touch her.

All the same, it didn't occur to me to disobey Seth. I reached out my palm and pressed it to her forehead.

Kate stopped screaming, just like that. Instantly. Her mouth was still wide in a howl of mortal terror—and it wasn't her best look—but no sound was coming out of it.

Strangest thing I've ever felt, my body sucking the power out of her. Mostly I felt it in my eyes. They sparked and crackled so much they hurt, and I could barely see, but I gritted my teeth and held my fingers against her clammy skin. I didn't take my hand off Kate till she went limp, empty of magic and gibbering with fear.

Conal turned the black horse lightly on the forehand so that it trod a delicate half-circle and my great-great grandmother no longer hung gabbling between us. Smiling that skull-smile, he leaned down and brushed my cheek with his rotting fingers. The air stank of death but I didn't care.

Seth had collapsed forward on the roan's neck now, but his head was twisted towards Finn so that he could see her out of his remaining eye.

‘Finn,' he whispered hoarsely. ‘I have to go. I'm sorry. So sorry.'

‘No,' she moaned, but already Conal was turning his horse, and he beckoned to Seth, and smiled.

‘Oh, I'm coming,' said Seth. ‘You and me.' And he actually grinned.

Conal nodded happily, then urged the kelpie into a gallop; Seth dug his heels into the roan's flanks and rode after him. The pair of them were twenty metres away and heading hard for the Veil before Finn got her senses back.

She tore away from me and ran, screaming her panicked anger.

‘Conal!
Don't you dare! Don't you dare!
' She stumbled to a halt as Seth craned to look back, his ruined face tormented. I knew what struggle was going on.
Claim, Binding. Binding, Claim.
I gulped, wanting to cry.

Binding, please trump Claim.

Finn straightened. Hair whipped around her face and she tightened her jaw. And I heard what she called to him; I think the whole battlefield heard it.

~
Go if you must!

The black horse slowed to a canter, then a flying trot. Its cadaver of a rider hesitated. Seth reined back the blue roan.

~
It isn't time,
Finn cried. ~
But go if you must!

The kelpies had both drawn up now, snorting and pawing the peat. The brothers exchanged a look. I never imagined a corpse could look so rueful and amused. Then Conal's arm, all bone and sinew and bloody ragged cloth, reached out for Seth.

‘Conal. Don't,' whispered Finn, but she didn't call out again.

Conal seemed to pause, torn in more ways than one. Then he slipped his rotted arm round his brother, and pulled him close in a fierce, fond hug. And then he lowered him awkwardly to the ground.

Seth swayed, found his balance and stepped back. Finn was already running to him, and she threw her arms round his shoulders, holding him determinedly in the world of the living. The blue roan, riderless and confused and blowing, was backing away from the Veil-gash now. Conal simply shrugged, lifted the wild-eyed queen from the black's withers, and tucked her under one arm.

By now his friendly grin was altogether a death's head rictus, but I still wasn't afraid. I wanted to run after him and hug him, torn belly and all, but it was too late to ask. With a last regretful smile, he snuggled his pathetic wriggling burden tighter under his arm, and spurred the black horse back through the ragged split in the Veil.

All of them were riding back now at a canter, all the ghoulish fighters. Some of them had jumped their horses through already, and the rest were galloping hard as if they feared the Veil might close, but I couldn't see that happening. If anything, it looked as if it was ripping wider.

The blond with what had been burnt-sugar eyes flew past me so fast he almost knocked me over, but I dodged and caught myself from falling, and searched desperately for my father again. ~
Don't be gone, don't be—

He wasn't gone. He'd halted his horse just on the other side of the Veil, Kate still tucked under his arm. I blinked. He was whole and beautiful again. There wasn't a wound on his body, despite the torn shirt. He looked just as Finn had described him when she was dying of the Wolf's sword-thrust. My father was beautiful, and unharmed, and he was grinning.

Not, I thought, the nicest grin I'd ever seen. Even when his face wasn't melting.

Something small and black fell from Kate's clothing and Conal caught it in his fist. Creasing his brow, he turned the thing in his palm, shrugged, then tossed it back through the Veil. It bounced once on peat and Finn darted forward to catch it. Then she crouched on the heather, and stared wide-eyed through the Veil-gash as it sagged towards her.

Playfully Conal tossed Kate skywards, caught her by her glossy hair and dangled her like a child's toy. She hung limp and shrunken in Conal's grip, eyes glassy with terror, as he jiggled her. As I watched my great-great-grandmother's frantic furious face, she began, quite gently, to dissolve.

It was a slight translucency at first, that was all, as if she was starting to stop existing, starting to be a ghost. Her body shrank as she hung there, brittle and desiccated, her flesh shrivelled and dried on her bones, but she was still
there.
I could see her, as clearly as I'd seen Conal when he rode across the Veil to get her. But Kate must have been on the wrong side too long now, because the decay didn't stop. Her flesh wasted and her face hollowed to a skull, and grey putrefaction crept across her like the light of a gruesome sunset.

There came a point when only Kate's eyes were alive, but the last thing to go was her mind: I knew that, I could see it. The strongest part of her, of course. There was something peculiarly horrible about that, and if it had been anyone else I might have felt sorry for her.

But then her mind went too, like a thrown switch, and the lights went out in the eyes of a would-be-god.

 

Rory

Kate's awful end was going to be theirs now. Hannah's, Seth's, Finn's, his own. It didn't bother him half as much as he'd expected. Almost happily, Rory watched the gap in the Veil swell. Finn was backing away from it now, reaching desperately for Seth's good hand.

The gash was going to go on growing, inexorable, as the other side swallowed them all, ate their world. Oh, and the otherworld too, Rory guessed, as soon as that other Veil died: the one he'd known and loved all his life. It made perfect sense, now. Thing was, thought Rory, something of them would be left, some remnant of every Sithe and every full-mortal. Maybe it would be a better remnant anyway. At least there would be
something
.

Of Kate there was nothing, nothing at all. She was scattered bone and ash and dried flesh below Conal's upraised hand, and all that was left in his grip was a hank of silken copper hair. He shook that contemptuously onto Kate's remains, then turned a gaze like cold fire on Rory.

Rory shivered. ~
I can't close it.

Conal tilted his head and frowned his disapproval.

~
I've tried and I can't. It doesn't matter.

For the first time Conal looked angry. The black kelpie took a pace towards the gash, pawed the earth and snorted.

~
Even if it does matter, I can't—

Conal's eyes closed, then blinked open again. He leaned forward on the horse's back, stretched a hand back through the yawning Veil, and tilted it palm-upwards as the flesh greyed and shrivelled. Clenching it into a fist, he yanked it back.

~
It must close, Rory MacSeth MacGregor MacLorcan MacLuthais. NOW
.

God and gods and wannabe gods: what was he thinking? As if he'd snapped from a dream into a waking nightmare, blackness surged through Rory's veins and his brain and heart contracted with terror. Lunging, he grabbed a handful of the dark Veil in both hands. He pulled it, tugged and dragged.
Nothing.
He pressed it to his face. Cajoled it.
Flirted.

And he forced it, or tried to. But it wouldn't listen.

It wanted to stay open, that was the thing. It wanted to swallow everything. That was how it was. Like a snake was a snake, or a wolf was a wolf, it was the Veil.
The
Veil, the
Sgath Dubh
. Endlessly hungry, that was all, and there was no changing it.

The dead riders watched him in silent anticipation, but he tried not to see their eyes. He tried to think they might live, all of them: him and Hannah, Seth and Finn. Sionnach and Orach and Grian. By some miracle they might even fight their way back to the fortress and save Iolaire and Branndair. Miracles happened. Maybe.

But that Veil still wouldn't seal.

~
You'll close!
he told it, furiously.

Sweat prickled on Rory's temples. If there was magic he could work he'd do it, witchcraft or not. For a magic word, he thought, he'd go to hell and back right now.

It was strange that as he thought that very thing, he felt Finn behind him. Her hand pressed the back of his skull and the icy torrent from her fingers chilled his blood, his bones, his brain, and he could think again.

Think
was the wrong word, perhaps. See and feel and hear everything that had ever happened to him, more like it. His whole life coalesced into the instant. He heard the wail of a baby and the despairing shriek of its mother and every word he'd heard since, and one of them was magic, the gods knew, because even his father, who didn't believe in magic, never shut up about one magic word, and Rory heard it echo in his head as if it was every time Seth had drilled it into him, all in one moment. It was the only one Rory knew.

~
PLEASE
.

He didn't scream it to the strange Veil in his fists; he screamed it to the one he knew, the one he'd known all his life. He needed it now like it had always needed him, he needed the flesh and the skin and the substance of it, and it yielded, stretching, melding, sealing; and he knew with a hideous certainty what the foremothers had felt when they twisted the damned thing to protect their homes and their fortresses, and remorse went through him like a knife.

The world swung on its axis and the two Veils wrapped him like matching shrouds and his mind was one with them both. His whole consciousness expanded and contracted, he felt death and life and everything in between, and then he was falling back, a handful of Veil in each fist, crushing the gap together as his mind came back together too. The last thing he saw, as the gash shrank and coalesced and vanished, was Conal's satisfied wink.

*   *   *

Rory came back to himself, realising how stupid he must look, on his arse on the ground. Half-sitting up, he stared in stupefaction at the empty air. At a sound he started, but it was Seth, falling to his knees beside him. Rory scrambled round into his embrace, felt Finn's arms around them both.

‘It's not over,' said Seth through gritted teeth. ‘It's not over, Rory, but you did your job. Listen, I love you.'

‘Oh, it's over.' Gealach slid, trembling and blood-spattered, from her limping horse. ‘Kate's dead. My unit's dead. Every man and woman of them. I don't want any Veil gone. Let ours survive or rot as it will. It's over.' She grabbed Sionnach by the shoulder and fumbled to unlock his manacles. ‘Over. So help me.
Leave us alone.
'

Finn started to get to her feet. Seth, though, stayed on his knees, holding Rory as if he knew for the first time that there was a time limit to his life.

‘I have a last right!'
A cold voice cut the air, bitter and hateful.

Kilrevin stood up, chest heaving, his sword in two hands. Maybe he knew he was done for now, but there must be someone he wanted to take with him.