Summer (22 page)

“Oh, I don’t know.” I wanted to ask her for a light, but felt stupid, a little kid afraid of the dark. “Nasty place like this, they’re probably rats the size of elephants. No offense. What’s that new smell, anyway?”

I couldn’t place it at first because I’d been expecting more shit stink and damp. But the space around us was ripe with garden scents, leaves and roots and something spicy like Indian takeout gone old.

“Kitchen.” Gabby said. “Kitchen midden?”

“Ugh,” I said, thinking again of mutant rats. I relented. “Light?”

It might have been my imagination but Gabby’s starlight seemed less bright than usual even as she sent it circling overhead and back and forth. I looked quickly at her face before I took in our surroundings. The corners of her mouth were pulling in a worried frown and she’d wrinkled up her nose again.

“No more blood,” I warned, knowing she was thinking of it. “I don’t care if this place is doing a number on us. You may be
aes si
but you’re no Mender. I’ll not lose you too.”

She stared at me without speaking. I thought maybe she was tallying up all the people I had recently lost against the risk in opening her veins again. I tried my best to look firm, glaring until she nodded.

“Aye, as you wish.”

I missed being able to read her mind. It made me feel off balance, not knowing what she was feeling. I’d hated it for so long, the barrage of multitudes against my brain, but now that I was the only one in my head I…didn’t miss it, not that, but I recognized the advantages.

“Ah, I was correct,” she continued, distracting me. “Kitchen heap. That would explain the threadwort in the river, wouldn’t it? Discarded leaf and seed washed out of the mountain and transplanted below. Oh, and see. Journey-root. That tuber grows only in the
Gairdin Mhuire
.
They came prepared, then. They must have had some warning, as we did.” Her frown grew deeper.

I’d been right about the feel of the space. We stood alone in a large chamber, a large square chamber, less perfectly formed than the sewer tunnel but the right angles were pretty impressive. Shallow trenches ran perpendicular and parallel to the walls, entering the room through multiple basketball-sized holes spaced throughout. Each smaller trench joined a larger trough that ran straight center through the floor, gently downhill, and out the tunnel we’d used to breach the mountain.

“Well done,” I said. “If you like fourth century Roman engineering.”

Most of the aqueduct was long dry. A shallow stream ran through the main trench, dammed in places with fallen rock and rotting vegetation and bits of what I thought was bone. The kitchen midden was mostly mold. I had no idea how Gabby recognized any sort of actual plant matter in the small gray pile.

I walked forward, side-stepping trenches, turning this way and that, trying to keep under the glow of Gabby’s starlight so I didn’t trip and fall onto something disgusting. The pockets of sickly light in the ceiling interested me; some sort of Cant, I thought, but grown stale and old. There were many more dead black patches where the magic had gone out than there were remaining blue lamps.

Gabby’s drifting globe found the way out before I did: a narrow stone stair, five steps up along the side of the west wall to a door. I leaped up the stairs, one hand on the wall for balance. The wall was unusually tepid against my palm, the door made of tarnished bronze. There was no obvious latch but it swung open easily enough when I kicked it, outwards and away. A swirl of warmer air washed past my cheeks, making me shudder in surprise.

I stuck my head cautiously through the opening and glimpsed more thin blue light.

“Right,” I said. Gabby had climbed the steps behind me and was trying to get a look past my arm. “Shall we?”

There were
sluagh
skeletons in the walls. I didn’t notice them at first, because as we walked farther into the mountain the old lighting spells died completely. Gabby’s Gathered starlight kept us from stumbling into walls or turning in circles in our haste, but I did almost as well with my eyes closed and my hand on the wall. The
sluagh
had gone very zen with their mountain. It wasn’t at all what I expected. I knew from my father’s stories that the original fay tended toward excess and dramatics in everything they did; even after centuries living among mortals the exiles were still more burlesque than Buddha. Summer has a bit of that in her. I like to think I’ve bypassed the gene, myself.

It appeared the Wild Host had a different set of aesthetics, at least when it came to mountain raising. As far as I could tell they’d just cut a wide curving path from bottom to upper levels, the opened rooms in regimented rows on either side. The room thing was a guess, because we didn’t bother opening any of the bronze doors off our path, but I can tell you the doors, at least, were laid out in impressive mathematical precision, marching mirror images of each other all along the incline.

“Do you suppose it’s like this the entire way up?” I whispered. It was deadly quiet all around, and the scuff of my feet and the hiss of Gabby’s breathing seemed very loud. I was pretty sure we were the only ones for at least a mile in any direction, and that was really creepy. I’m a city kid. I like bustle.

Gabby didn’t answer. She was busy working her starlight back and forth along the path. I let my fingers trail along the wall, thinking that once these halls must have been full of feathers and ichor and tentacles. The realization made me shiver, and that’s when my hand brushed the skeleton in the dirt. At first the texture of bone in the wall didn’t compute, so I stopped and looked. In the flicker of Gabby’s light I got the impression of a bone, pinions and a yellowing clavicle, and, just a little above, a grinning, sharp-toothed skull.

I’ll admit I jumped and cursed. Gabby whirled, took a closer look, and then sent starlight up and down the wall.

It was a graveyard. There were skeletons everywhere. Many were fully formed, as if they’d been laid to rest vertically in the stone, while many more appeared to be bits and extra pieces, lonely segments sealed away. At first I tried counting skulls but once I hit fifty-seven I decided I just didn’t want to know.

I couldn’t help it; the bones in the wall made me think of Aine that first morning, literally trapped in the Metro tunnel. Surely it couldn’t be a coincidence.

“What happened to them?”

“Sacrifice,” Gabby replied. She’d wrapped her arms about herself in a tight embrace. “Or accident. I’m not certain. Mayhap it’s a tomb of some sort.”

“They’re
everywhere.”

“Aye,” said Gabby sadly. “They are.”

After that we walked quickly and quietly, our eyes on the ground. I think neither of us knew what to do with the horror of the bone
sluagh
. In my experience the creatures always went up in flame and ash and goo when they died. I’d assumed they were just ichor and hatred packaged in tooth and claw. The skeletons in the wall made me revise everything I thought I knew. I don’t like being wrong.

The air grew warmer. We were moving at a good clip. We didn’t say it out loud but we were both afraid of what we might find at the top of the mountain. And neither of us were going to be able to jog uphill in the dark indefinitely.

The same guys who sang about prophets and subway walls also wrote a ditty about God’s sense of humor. It goes: blessed are the sat upon, spat upon, ratted upon. I used to wish I could listen to it again, after Siobahn took my ears. Most of the time I don’t believe in God, but if I did I think He’d have a wicked sense of mischief.

Because just as Gabby and I were running on our last reserves, and pretty much ready to fall on the floor and weep in frustration, we heard voices. Angry voices, shouts and growls.
Sluagh
voices, raised in disagreement, up ahead and not far off from the sound of the echoes.

Gabby snuffed out her small light and we froze, barely daring to breathe, thinking we were done for. But the shouting only grew more heated and it occurred to me slowly that maybe we’d somehow snuck under the radar. Whatever was going on  up the corridor it was enough of a distraction that our muffled tread and our patch of Gathered starlight had gone unnoticed.

“Now what?”
I pushed the thought into Gabby’s head. And then,
“I’m not turning around.”

“Nay,”
she agreed.
“Walk on. Carefully. I hear two, I think. I smell three. Come, child. Quietly.”

I don’t know how she could pick out three separate bodies from a cloud of
sluagh
stink, but she was
aes si
so I didn’t argue. We snuck forward, pressed hard against one wall, eyes wide to catch any light or movement. I’ll admit I might have said a prayer or six to the God I don’t believe in.

As my eyes adjusted I realized it wasn’t quite as pitch black ahead as I’d assumed. Blue light flickered sadly, just enough to make out a blockage in the path. The
sluagh
were howling now, shouting in the Gaelic, and mostly I picked out filthy curse words and imprecations. Also, the thump of flesh upon flesh and then screams of pain.

“They’re fighting,”
I told Gabby, fascinated.
“I think they’re fighting.”
We crept close, quiet as two mice, and I saw that I was right. They were battling; great hulking
sluagh
princes, the third already dead on the path, throat torn open, wings spread, a distorted fallen angel.

The two still standing were at it tooth and claw, tangled in each other’s limbs and wings, struggling over a single gleaming prize pressed between them. Their eyes were wild, their breath coming in great, furious gasps, and already both were bleeding ichor and missing chunks of flesh.

“Póg mo thóin,”
I said, and I said it out loud, not quietly. “Is that the Horn?”

“Aye,” my mentor replied, rapt. She didn’t bother with silence, either. The
sluagh
were too wrapped up in their contest to pay us the slightest attention.

“Danu take us and shake us, you’re right, they’ve got Finvarra’s Horn.”

Gabby widened her eyes at me and tugged on my sleeve, encouraging me to step back away along the wall, out of sight. I shook her gently off. The
sluagh
were snapping and snarling, completely oblivious. For the moment we were safe. And besides, I wanted a better look at the legendary Horn.

I don’t know what I’d imagined. Maybe something like a silver trumpet or a small French horn. I expected it to look as beautiful as it sounded, bright and shining, something worth coveting.

The Horn wasn’t that at all. It hung between the two remaining
sluagh
on a leather cord, caught in the middle of a vicious tug-of-war. It was narrow tube, like a flute, but long as my arm and curved just south of a U-shape. And Finvarra’s Horn certainly wasn’t shining silver; it was badly tarnished, blackened by time or use.

It looked innocuous but I remembered its clarion call in my skull, a Summoning I couldn’t have ignored to save my life. I knew all the stories by heart. Finvarra’s Horn was meant to lead armies.

That the
sluagh
had the Horn here in their prison was impossible. But there it was. And, really, it was too powerful a prize to pass up. With Finvarra’s Horn in my hand I’d have a fantastic advantage over the
sluagh
and even Gloriana, if we ever managed find our way to
Tir na Nog
. Two birds with one stone. Siobahn would have to sing my praises.

“Nay, Winter,” Gabby hissed. I’d been edging forward without realizing it. She grabbed at my sleeve again. “Foolish idea. We haven’t got a weapon between us.”

“Screw that,” I hissed back. “There’s no way I’m letting Finvarra’s
fucking
Horn slip through our fingers.”

Gabby winced. The
sluagh
paused mid-snarl and swiveled as one in our direction. The hair on the back of my neck immediately stood at horrified attention.

Up until we crossed through my Gate into
sluagh
-world I’d lived my life as hearing impaired. Diction, tone, and volume were as much a mystery to me as blood magic is to your average mortal. Gabby and I had been walking beneath the white moon for a relatively short period of time, certainly not enough time for me to relearn sound. The small scratch of gravel beneath my boots had jangled my nerves while the roar of the river had been the equivalent of an auditory valium.

My head and my ears were all mixed up, my wires crossed. It was an honest mistake and hardly my fault that the words I’d meant to whisper bounced down the passage as an ill-timed and overly enthusiastic shout.

The two
sluagh
stared, the Horn spread on its taut leather cord between them. Gabby made a sound like a squeak. I held my breath, hands curling defensively at my side. We’d never escape at a run.
Sluagh
are deadly fast and anyway all one of them had to do was blow a little melody on that tarnished Horn and I’d be a willing slave. Gabby probably wouldn’t resist its call much longer than I, not with her magics fading.

We were doomed. We were going to die and the bastards would probably make us dance like puppets on a string before they grew bored and snacked on our bones.