The Falconer (Elizabeth May) (36 page)

‘Go,’ I command.

The horse takes off so fast, I can barely keep hold of its mane. It pounds across the Queen’s Park, through grass so wet water splashes high enough to soak my trousers. Beneath me, its hooves thump as loud and fast as its heart. Thump
thump
thump
thump
thump
thump
. I lean my body closer to the creature’s back, until we move together.

I don’t dare look back. I’m afraid I’ll turn and find Kiaran dead. I have to trust that our connection through the armour will let me know if that happens.

The galloping hooves behind me only worry me more, but I try to remain focused, tightening my grip on the horse’s mane. I urge it faster, faster. Power snaps around me, blindingly bright.

A bolt of energy strikes the grass close by and the horse screams in protest. It rears up and I almost lose my seat. I channel Kiaran’s power to soothe the beast, to coax it back to running.

The horse’s front hooves hit the ground again and we’re moving with even greater speed, crashing along the dirt path that leads to St Anthony’s Chapel. I feel the buzzing of the device before we reach the archway. Then I’m out of the saddle and racing to the stones. I drop to the dirt and dig to uncover the device again.

I look up. There are more horsemen behind me,
sluagh
in the sky above me. No sign of Kiaran, but I can’t think about that now.

My digging grows more frantic, the buzzing just as loud as before. Finally, the gold gleams through the mud.

I press my fingers into the indentations along the side of the metal plate, and light explodes from the device just in time.

A
sluagh
crashes into the light shield. I’ve never heard a scream like that before in my life, so full of agony. I watch in shock as the
sluagh
bursts into blue-white flames and erupts in a burst of ice and mist. Then . . . nothing. There’s only frost on the ground to show the creature ever existed.

The faeries on horseback pursuing me come to a hard stop at the edge of the illuminated shield. They circle me eagerly, mist swirling around their feet. There’s still no sign of Kiaran beyond the fae surrounding me.

Lonnrach approaches and regards the light shield calmly. ‘That won’t save you.’

He holds out his hand and gold power bursts from his palm. It hits the light, and ripples across its surface like water. The other fae join in, their powers mixing together to strike the shield. Soon, it will weaken and fall.

I brace my hands in the mud, on either side of the
iuchair
. The inner rings have changed positions, just as Kiaran said they would. I remember their correct arrangement from my drawing. I turn the inner circles of the compass and align the symbols with the clock. The etchings shine as they line up and click into place.

Now for the rest. The missing piece of the puzzle. My eyes rove over the symbols I’ve connected, searching for a pattern. Still nothing. What do the bloody things mean?

The clang of metal distracts me. I look up. Kiaran! He must have fought through the wall of riders. His clothes are torn and there are open cuts along his arms.

Kiaran thrusts his blade into a
daoine sìth
’s chest and glances at me. ‘Hurry!’ he says.

Lonnrach’s power slams into the shield again as I return my attention to the
iuchair
. But the symbols still don’t appear to be sequential. They’re random. Just errant carvings in no particular order, like stars in the—

Can you name them, Aileana? Here now, repeat after me . . .

Crimson suits you best.

I shake my head against the memories. Images of my mother lying dead. A beautiful corpse of the person I once knew.

Can you name them?

Crimson suits you best.

I grit my teeth and thrust the memory of my mother’s death back where it belongs. I open that deep crevasse within me and shove my pain inside. Those images of my mother’s dead body are buried in a coffin to be sealed in my heart.

Can you name them, Aileana?

Polaris, the centre ring. I draw a finger to the arrow pointing south and turn the next one in relation to that in the device. Capella. The symbols that represent Pegasus. Orion.

North. I recognise the shape of Cassiopeia. The Plough.

I rotate the rings until they match, the way they would on a star map. How could I not have seen this before? So many old monuments correspond to celestial alignments. They are constant, like the moon.

Last ring. The eastern alignment of stars and the fae will be trapped again—

And Kiaran will be trapped with them.

I look for him and watch as he slices effortlessly through a
daoine sìth
’s armour. When he fights, he’s pure grace. Movement that any warrior would envy. I’ll never see it again.

But I have to do this. With my eyes closed, I click the last symbol into place. And wait. The clanging of metal and booms of power still echo through the park. I open my eyes and look down at the seal. Nothing happens. My God, is it broken? Did I do something wrong?

‘Two minutes.’ Kiaran fights his way into my line of sight, pausing only to run his blade through another
daoine sìth
. ‘I said two minutes, remember?’

‘Something’s wrong,’ I say, beginning to panic. ‘It’s not working.’

‘Then you didn’t position them right—’

Lonnrach swings his blades at Kiaran. Kiaran dodges. If he were anyone else, the movement would have looked smooth, easy. But I know better. Kiaran is tiring. He’s already used up so much of his power by lending half of it to me.

Kiaran recovers with a small smile at Lonnrach. ‘You’ve improved.’

‘The benefits of prison, Kadamach,’ Lonnrach says. ‘All I had was time.’

They leap at each other, blades raised. Power ignites around them, so brilliant I can barely see them through it, just shadows of their bodies as they strike and slash at each other. The energy crackles so thunderously, I can barely hear the sounds of their weapons clashing.

When the light fades, they’re both bleeding from various cuts. Kiaran has a serious injury on one arm, a deep gash that’s bleeding copiously through his shirt.

‘Don’t you want to help him, Falconer?’ Lonnrach asks. He finally takes his eyes off Kiaran and looks right at me. ‘If you imprison him with us, there will be no end to his torture.’

I hesitate. I glance at Kiaran again and all I can think about is that look of regret and vulnerability, the promise of what could have been between us.

Kiaran throws himself at Lonnrach. ‘Activate the damn seal, Kam!’

Power bursts around them and I focus again on the seal. Kiaran’s right. I can’t let myself be distracted. I have to do this.

I stare at the seal, wincing as another burst of fae power strikes the shield. It ripples around me, beginning to falter. I focus on the symbols. What am I missing?

‘
Aileana
,’ a voice whispers in my mind. I know that voice.

‘Mother?’ I whisper.

‘Aileana.’ I hear again. It sounds like her. That beautiful, calm voice. So tender, so familiar.

No. It can’t be her. I lift my eyes from the device. Sorcha is standing amid the dead bodies Kiaran has left in his wake, smiling her hellish grin.

Rage flares inside me. She doesn’t deserve to be trapped alive with the others. She deserves to feel my hand tearing through flesh and breaking bone so I can steal the beating heart from her body just like she did my mother’s.

No
. I need to activate the device. I
have
to.

Sorcha grins, as if sensing my struggle. I try to focus on Kiaran, on how I need to keep my rage coiled tight so he stays alive.

I think of our kiss, how his lips lingered against mine. His whispered pledge.
Aoram dhuit. I will worship thee
.

I drag my attention back to the seal again, the positioning of the symbols. I glance up. The clouds have begun to blow away, leaving behind a clear night sky bright with stars. I study the constellations.

Perhaps Kiaran
was
mistaken, like he suspected he might be. If his sister had to alter the seal for this purpose, maybe she changed the sequence. The key to the correct placement of the rings might not have anything to do with a fixed position on the seal. Maybe aligning them to their position in the sky
now
is what relocks it.

I click the symbols into new positions, this time corresponding with the placement of the constellations in the sky. Once the first ring is completed, the seal begins to hum. I almost smile. I got it.

I click the second ring into place and the hum increases.

Sorcha’s voice mimicking my mother’s resounds in my head again.
Falconer
. . .

I put my hands over my ears as if that could somehow muffle her. Now I know why Kiaran told me to focus on my memories of that night at the loch, to let them ground me. They cleanse me of my rage until I’m left only with my memories of us together. Us hunting together, running through the city in the night. Sparring until the early hours of the morning. Lying in the grass, Kiaran telling me that he wanted to stay with me until the end.

They all anchor me. I ignore the wavering shield around me and click the third and fourth rings into place. Then the fifth.

Another memory interrupts, flashing violently in my mind. Sorcha ripping through my mother’s throat. Sorcha clawing open my mother’s chest. Sorcha’s wide smile as she holds my mother’s bleeding heart aloft.
Crimson suits you best crimson suits you best crimson suits you best crimson suits you
—

‘Stop it,’ I say. ‘Stop it stop it
stop it
!’

Make me
, her voice whispers in my mind.

I try to rouse my memories of Kiaran again, but every time I think I’ve succeeded, I feel Sorcha in my mind. She drags me out of the calm space I want to be in and shoves me back into the body of the girl I used to be, weak and trembling and numb. She forces me to sit next to my mother’s dead body again, and feel the slick, heavy weight of her blood all over me.

‘
Stop!
’ I open my eyes again to meet Sorcha’s.

Sorcha speaks again with my mother’s voice, the voice that used to soothe and laugh and comfort me. ‘Then take my heart in return, Falconer,’ she taunts. ‘If you can.’

My memories of Kiaran cease to matter. There is only rising anger and the single image of one hundred and eighty-six crimson ribbons attached to pins on a map. All those people she killed. That’s all it takes to silence the rational part of me.

I stand with my blades in hand, about to stride out of that light shield to kill Sorcha.

‘Kam,
don’t
! The Seer’s vision!’

I look over. Kiaran’s eyes catch mine as he blocks another blow from Lonnrach. I stop at the edge of the light, my foot poised to take that last fateful step.

And I can see everything so clearly, perhaps the way Gavin did. I see myself stepping through the shield. Maybe I kill Sorcha and Kiaran dies. Or maybe she kills me. In both versions of that reality, the city falls. The buildings are reduced to rubble and ash. Everyone I love dies. That’s how the vision ends.

Sorcha would try to convince me that vengeance is worth risking everything for. But the dead don’t come back. I know that better than anyone.

‘No,’ I tell Sorcha. I make the decision I hope will change the vision. I step back towards the seal and think of the words Derrick said to me after I destroyed the map. ‘I won’t ever let you break me.’

I ignore her efforts to scratch her way into my mind, to expose every memory, every nightmare, every rage-fuelled fight I’ve ever had. She tries to draw me back into that vengeful part of me again, into the irrational creature who would abandon the most important thing of all just to kill her.

I won’t be that person for her. I click the sixth ring into place and listen to the pleasant hum of the device intensify again.

Glancing up, I look at Kiaran one last time before I align the final ring. The position of the blood moon. He and Lonnrach are still fighting, their power beginning to scorch the earth black around them.

‘Goodbye,’ I whisper to him.

Before I click that last ring into place, Lonnrach grabs Kiaran by the shirt and throws him into the shield.

The shield snaps and breaks with a tremendous clap, gold light cracking around me. Kiaran crashes into me and I end up sprawled on the ground beneath his heavy body.

‘Kiaran?’

I manage to push him off me. Part of his face is scorched from the shield, skin blackened, bone showing through. His eyes are closed and he isn’t moving. I frantically search for his pulse. My fingers touch the blackened, withering skin at his throat and it nearly breaks me. Tears fall from my eyes.

‘
Kiaran
.’ I shake him. ‘Kiaran, wake up.’ He still isn’t moving, not even breathing. I shake him harder. I hit his chest. I scream at him. ‘
Wake up! Kiaran!
’

Boots crunch through the dirt in front of me and I look up to meet Lonnrach’s hard, crystalline gaze. ‘He’s alive, Falconer. Even a shield as strong as that isn’t powerful enough to destroy him.’

My brief moment of relief is crushed by the dawning horror of what I’ve done. The seal.
Oh, God
.

I push to my feet, lurching back to the device so I can align the last circle and save us all, but Lonnrach seizes me. The bite of his blade is sharp under my chin and I feel a trickle of blood slide down my throat.

‘You really believe me to be your worst enemy.’ He glances over at Kiaran, an emotion in his gaze that I can’t comprehend. Then he says something I’ll never forget. ‘You’ll wish you had killed Kadamach when you had the chance.’

Bestiary

Aileana Kameron’s Notes and Observations of the Fae

With some comments from Kiaran MacKay.

Not to be removed from the dressing room trunk by a certain pixie in residence . . .