Into the Fire (26 page)

She did her best to appear humble, to flatter those with influence, to listen to their ideas and their complaints, and to make sure they knew that she only wanted to use her ability for the good of her beloved people. She was no threat to anyone; she was just a
beautiful woman who offered wisdom, hope, and a peaceful return to the land they had once claimed as their own.

Her promises about the druids were not false. While Rohan and Riona and their friends had tried to blend in with human society, Nuala had used her time on Ériu to find as many of the expelled druids as she could. Rohan had been unaware, and for good reason—he would have expressly forbidden it, out of fear that one of them would report back to Lorcan. But Nuala knew better. The druids hated Lorcan, who viewed all creatures who were not Tuatha Dé Danann as inferior. But she was different. As soon as she realized that humans were not as wonderful as she’d been led to expect, she had started finding and befriending the druids—except for Maeve, the mother of the whelp who had stolen Finn from her. She had long respected—even envied—the power of the druids, and she knew they’d be invaluable allies somedays.

She smiled again at Sorcha and accepted another glass of wine. “I am so glad that you are on the Council,” Nuala told her. “I just hate to think of what would happen to our people if sentiment won out over reason.”

Sorcha nodded. “I know exactly what you mean,” she said. “Brogan was loved by many, and in some ways he was a great king. But in my opinion he was too soft. He cared nothing for the advancement of our people. If he were still king I’m sure he would do nothing to ease our suffering, not if it meant taking up arms against his precious humans.”

If he were still king, the land probably wouldn’t be suffering,
Nuala mused, but she kept that thought to herself. Some blamed Tír na nÓg’s decline on Brogan, saying that he was responsible for the land’s decay because he’d started the war with Lorcan. Nuala encouraged this belief as much as she could, but it was because it suited her, not because she believed it.

Sorcha leaned forward again. “I heard that Brogan took a human as his lover,” she whispered. “And that Cedar is the result of
their union, and that she’s not Kier’s daughter after all. They say that Cedar’s real mother killed Kier and her baby so she could pass off her own child as one of us. Of course, others say that she
must
be one of us since she returned to life after Lorcan’s death, but I wonder if she was truly dead. Maybe she killed Lorcan by some dark druidic curse she learned from her mother.”

Nuala made a noncommittal sound and tried to look concerned. She knew very well that Cedar was indeed the child of Brogan and Kier, but the more confusion and doubt there was about Cedar’s parentage, the better. “I wouldn’t be surprised, but with both Brogan and Kier dead, it is impossible to know for sure,” Nuala said. Cedar’s return to life—and to Tír na nÓg—had been unexpected. Cedar had more fire in her than Nuala had realized.

Sorcha was prattling on about how wonderful it would be to have the druids with them once again. Nuala kept silent, resisting the urge to tell Sorcha that she had promised the druids full equality. They would no longer be the servants that Sorcha remembered. But she would deal with that when she was queen. In the meantime, her faithful druids were doing everything they could to make that happen.

CHAPTER 13

A
re you sure this is the right place?” Jane asked. They were standing in the middle of a lush green field. The sun was shining brightly even though it was late afternoon, and the sky was a vast expanse of blue. It was a rare cloudless day in Northern Ireland, and for once the sidh that shimmered in the air behind them didn’t seem out of place. Cedar stepped away from it and soaked in the surroundings. A green-gabled farmhouse stood sentry in the distance, and a scattered herd of bulls wandered aimlessly through the surrounding fields. There was no breeze. The world around them was still and quiet, as though they had entered the inner sanctuary of a cathedral.

“I suppose that’s it,” Cedar said, pointing. In the middle of the field was a solitary hawthorn tree, raising its leafy arms toward the late summer sun. It grew out of a circle of red mud that was exactly the same diameter as the tree above it. No grass grew beneath the tree. In the mud lay the three stones that were called Slaghtaverty Dolmen—or, as Brighid had said, the Giant’s Grave. The dolmen was made up of a large stone and two smaller stones. They weren’t in any particular order now, but it seemed as though the larger stone had once rested on top of the smaller ones, a mini-Stonehenge in the middle of nowhere. Cedar took a step toward it.

“Be careful, okay?” Jane said, consulting the tablet that Brighid had given her. Her delight at being reunited with technology was palpable. They each carried a small backpack of food and supplies that Brighid had insisted on giving them, and Cedar and Jane had
changed out of their sundresses into what Jane called “normal clothes,” aka jeans and T-shirts. “It says here that they tried to chop the tree down a few years ago, and all three of the chainsaws broke even though they were brand-new. Oh, gross, one of the saws actually chopped off someone’s hand. And later, a researcher came here and almost broke his neck.”

Cedar gave Jane an uneasy look and then glanced up at the sky, which was darkening rapidly under a layer of thick clouds that seemed to have sprung up out of nowhere. Finn and Felix also had their eyes trained on the sky, their faces grim. The formerly picturesque setting was growing more ominous by the second. She felt the hair rise on her arms, and wondered if she should send Eden back through the sidh. But when she turned around, it was no longer there. Where once there’d been a doorway back to Brighid’s house, there was now only grass, and beyond that, a long fence. “Where’d the sidh go?” she asked.

“Oops,” Eden said, looking sheepish. “I kinda closed it. I thought we were always supposed to do that so no one could follow us. Is that bad?”

Cedar’s heartbeat quickened slightly. “It’s okay,” she said, but she didn’t like it. Liam’s warnings about Abhartach had seemed less threatening back in the opulence of Brighid’s sunny home. The silence here was too unnatural, and now they had no sidh to escape through if it turned out that he was right. She glanced at the farmhouse in the distance. Their closest exit wouldn’t be close enough if Abhartach chose to attack them.

Cedar started walking toward the tree. Finn was beside her, carrying a spade he had borrowed from Brighid. Eden followed them, flanked by Felix and Jane. The wind had picked up, and it was unusually chilly for late August—Cedar thought she could actually smell winter on the air. She shivered. She was starting to feel strangely unwelcome in this haunted field.

When they reached the tree, they discovered that they were no longer alone. Three bulls had wandered over and were standing on the other side of it, gazing at them with baleful eyes. Two of the bulls were black, and their eyes were as dark as opals. The other was pure white, with no spots or markings anywhere on its expansive hide. Its eyes were a reddish-brown, the color of the mud beneath the tree, and the three of looked at Cedar without blinking.

“Shoo,” she said to them, but they just stood there, watching. “Do you think they’re dangerous?” she asked Finn.

“Nah, they’re just regular bulls,” he said. “Felix, give me a hand with these stones, will you?”

As Felix and Finn heaved the stones off the ground and set them outside the dirt circle, Cedar put her hand on the tree’s trunk, feeling the rough bark beneath her fingers. Suddenly, she felt a sharp pain lace through her palm. “Ouch!” she cried, yanking her hand away from the tree. Immediately, Finn was at her side, examining the bleeding palm.

“It’s like… it bit me,” she said. Blood seeped out of a jagged wound that ran across her palm like a knife slash. A smear of blood marked the spot where her hand had been resting on the tree. As they watched, it disappeared, seeping into the bark like water poured on a sponge. Cedar clenched the fist tightly.

“Let Felix look at that,” Finn said, but Cedar shook her head.

“It’s fine,” she said. “We can take care of it later.”

“You two might want to back up,” Felix said. He was standing a few feet away, on the grass where they’d moved the three stones. They hadn’t even started to dig beneath the tree yet, but the ground was trembling. She could feel it through the soles of her feet, a deep rumble in the earth that reminded her of the quakes she had occasionally felt while living on the west coast. But she knew this was no earthquake. Tiny pebbles on the ground began to shake, making the ground beneath the tree look like it was vibrating. The
bulls snorted and stamped their feet and then turned and stampeded toward the other end of the field. The other bulls who had been grazing nearby followed them, tearing up the ground beneath their hooves as they thundered away.

Cedar and Finn stepped back to join the others, and Cedar held on tight to Eden with her uninjured hand. As they watched, the tree began to sway violently, its branches snapping through the air like a whip. And then, with a sharp crack that rang through the air, it broke in two, as though a giant had snapped it over his knee. The ground stopped shaking, and a swirl of dust arose from the ground—a small, self-contained tornado of red dirt and pebbles. And then, as suddenly as it had started, it was over, and a man stood before them.

Only, he was not quite a man. He stood only a few inches taller than Eden. His beard fell to his knees in a tangle of gray hair and clumps of dirt, with a few bits of tree root sticking out at haphazard angles. He was wearing what appeared to be animal hides, roughly sewn together by thick strands of leather. His skin was the most remarkable thing of all. Through the dirt, Cedar could see that every inch of it was covered in dark markings, like tattoos. They stood there staring at him for a moment, and he at them.

Then he spoke words Cedar did not understand in a deep, grating voice. Felix took at step forward, and addressed the man in the same strange language. “What are they saying?” she whispered to Finn.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “I haven’t learned this language.”

They stood still and listened to Felix and the dwarf rally back and forth with their words. They spoke rapidly, and occasionally one of their voices would grow loud and angry. After a few moments they stopped speaking entirely, and stood glaring at each other. Felix was breathing heavily, but the dwarf looked untroubled, though his eyes were dark.

Felix stepped to the side so that he could speak with the others without turning his back on the dwarf. “This is Abhartach,” he said. “He is grateful that we have freed him from the curse of the druids.”

“Will he help us?” Cedar asked, stepping forward. Felix flung his hand out to stop her.

“Don’t get too close,” he said. “I told him about Liam’s concerns and the stories about his cruelty and his death. He is unimpressed, to say the least. Before he decides whether to help us, he wants to tell you his story, so that the world can know the truth about him.”

“Can’t it wait?” Cedar asked. “Ask him if he’ll come to Tara with us and show us where the Lia Fáil is… then we can hear his story.”

“Already tried that,” Felix said, shaking his head. “He’s quite insistent. I had no idea he was a dwarf. They’re even more stubborn than you are.”

Cedar made a face at him and said, “Okay, fine, let’s hear the story. But then we
really
have to go.” She looked around nervously, wondering if an army of druids would suddenly appear around them.

Felix said a few words to Abhartach, who was still standing remarkably still. Cedar supposed it was a skill he’d had occasion to learn over the last several centuries. “I’ll translate as best as I can,” Felix said. Abhartach started speaking in the same strange, guttural language, pausing every few seconds so that Felix could translate.

“I was a simple peddler with a wife and two sons,” Felix began. “The dwarves were a proud and ancient race, but we kept to ourselves. Most of them, that is, but not I. Ever since I was a young child I had longed to see other parts of the world. Being a peddler was not the noblest of professions, but I had little skill in craftsmanship, and it allowed me to travel as far as my feet could take me, and to meet other races and beings. I sold fine carvings and tools made by my fellow dwarves, plus whatever interesting trinkets I picked up along the way. Whenever I entered a new village, I always found myself drawn to whatever magic could be found there. Sometimes it was the local druid, sometimes a sacred tree or the place where sacrifices were made. Wherever there was magic,
I would find it. I could go into crowded markets and point out magic wielders or selkies in their human disguise. As I traveled, I could identify the sidhe of the Tuatha Dé Danann in what looked like ordinary hills and trees to other people. I had always been fascinated with magic, but it was rare for a dwarf to have any gifts in that area, and even then it was usually limited to the shaping of stone and wood.

“And so I began testing myself. I found that I had some rudimentary skills, but I needed a teacher. So I approached the chief druid near my home and offered myself as his apprentice. He merely laughed, saying that dwarves did not possess the necessary intelligence and skill to master the druidic arts. But I did not give up. There were many other beings that were skilled in magic, and I was able to find them all. They were not as haughty as the old druid was and were glad to share their knowledge with me. In return, they sent me on quests to find ancient magical artifacts or to determine the best place to perform certain rituals. I traveled far—across the sea and into strange lands—to learn all I could from every creature I could find. Every day, my power grew.

“But it was not enough. I wanted more. I tried various substances to enhance my powers and my affinity with the magical world. Mushrooms, herbs, potions of my own creation… human blood.”

At this, Felix stopped translating and said a few harsh words to Abhartach, who shrugged and kept talking. When he paused, waiting for his words to be translated, Felix exhaled loudly and then turned back to the others.