The Iron Sword (The Fae War Chronicles Book 1) (26 page)

“You should take a rest,” Forsythe said, breaking the silence, “in case we are not able to find shelter and must ride through the night.”

I almost protested that I wasn’t tired, but it occurred to me that it didn’t matter whether I was tired or not. It was a matter of practicality. The sun was riding low in the eastern sky. Within a few hours, the sun would set, and we would be riding through darkness.

“How far do you think we’ve come?” I asked Wisp, who alighted on one corner of my cloak and unrolled his miniature maps with a flourish.

“Never fear,” he said as he scrutinized the maps, “we are making good time. Soon we shall find out the fate of your sword-master and your Knight.”

“He’s not my Knight,” I said.

“But you wish him to be,” replied Wisp impishly.

I rolled my eyes even as a warm glow suffused my belly at the thought of Finnead. “There’s nothing to it. It’s just a silly crush,” I muttered.

“But what if it is not?” Wisp asked. “The daughter of Gwyneth and a Named Knight…I have heard of worse matches between mortals and Fae.”

“First of all, I’m not Gwyneth’s daughter,” I said. “My mother’s name is Colleen.”

“A strong Fae-Friend name,” said Wisp approvingly.

I shot him a dry look and he laughed, his musical voice filling the clear air, providing some much-needed relief of tension.

“In any case,” I continued, “I’m not under any illusions. I know I don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell with him.”

“And why not?” Wisp demanded indignantly. I smiled a little at his defensiveness—it was as if I was his sister, and someone had told him I wasn’t pretty enough to be homecoming queen.

I shrugged. “He hasn’t ever shown much interest in me anyway.”

“He has never shown
more
interest in any maiden,” Flora contributed. “He has a sorrow-blighted past, the Vaelanbrigh, but he has a good heart.”

I remembered the feel of his gentle hands as he carried me, the urgency in his voice as he told me to stay awake after the battle with the
garrelnost
. “I know,” I said softly. I spread my hands out in a gesture of helpless ignorance. “But I just don’t see how I can even compete with any of the Sidhe maidens.”

“You are beautiful,” said Wisp.

“You are powerful,” added Flora.

“And you are mortal,” finished Forsythe.

“Three things,” said Flora mischievously, “that Sidhe men have a very hard time resisting.”

For some reason, the conversation planted a prickle of irritation that spread through my chest. “I’m hardly as beautiful as Guinna or Bren,” I replied, “and I’ve just discovered my power. There was no way for him to know I’d turn out like this, and if my being mortal is the only reason he wants to be with me, then that’s not the kind of man I want.” I thought of the Vaelanmavar’s leering face as I said the words, the greedy expression on his face as he cornered me in the dark hallway.
But you do want Finnead,
a small voice in my head reminded me, showing me a flashing memory of his intense blue eyes to drive the point home.

I opened one of the saddlebags and took out one of the packets of food, eating a piece of bread even though I wasn’t particularly hungry after the conversation with the Glasidhe.

“You mortals have an annoying way of selling yourselves short,” Flora said under her breath, but still loud enough for me to hear clearly.

I had to chuckle a little at that. Trust Flora to let me know exactly what she thought, even when it wasn’t particularly what I wanted to hear. Then I sobered a little, thinking about what Flora had said earlier. “What do you mean, the Vaelanbrigh has had a sorrow-blighted past?” I asked her quietly, wrapping the food back up and taking one last swallow from the water-skin before capping it and tying it to my belt again.

“We will continue this conversation after you have slept a bit,” Flora said.

“Promise?” I said, stifling a yawn. I lay down on my cloak. The ground was surprisingly soft.

“I promise,” replied Flora.

“Wisp,” I murmured.

“You will not Walk,” said Wisp, “although I doubt anyone could force you to go anywhere, now that you have discovered how to call upon the
taebramh
yourself.”

“True,” I said. I closed my eyes and let my tired body drag me into sleep.

It seemed like only moments later that small hands shook me awake.

“Tess,” Flora said, “Tess, we must go.”

I sat up stiffly, rubbing my eyes. “Why?” I yawned.

“Please, just get up,” she said. “Something is not right.”

Kaleth raised his head as I stood. He made his way leisurely over to me, as if to reinforce the fact that he was a very intelligent being and was just obeying me out of courtesy.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, stifling another yawn. “And you promised to continue our conversation from…before.”

Flora considered, and she began to say something, but Forsythe said suddenly and briskly, “We should get moving again.”

“Flora was about to tell me something,” I said, my voice just this side of complaining. Nonetheless I stood and brushed off my legs, rolling up my cloak again. Forsythe hovered above me, turning slowly in circles, surveying the land as far as he could see. I tipped my face up to him. “What’s the matter?”

“No worry,” he replied, far too quickly, as he dropped down to shoulder-height again. “I just think it would be smart to camp somewhere sheltered tonight, not out in the open.”

“Makes sense,” I said in a nonchalant voice, but I knew that something had caught Forsythe’s attention, and not in a good way.

I stowed my cloak as best I could behind the saddle—to my despair, my cloak roll looked lumpy and misshapen, not smooth and cylindrical as it had been beneath Bren’s capable fingers. Swallowing a growl of frustration, I decided that I wouldn’t make Kaleth kneel for me to mount, and I told him as much. The blue-roan horse turned his head, snorted at me, and then went back to cropping grass as if to say,
Suit yourself
.

“Grab his mane, if you insist upon being stubborn,” Wisp suggested. “Otherwise we’ll have to dust you off again.”

“Your confidence in me is so encouraging,” I told the Glasidhe dryly. I heard Flora suppress a chuckle. Forsythe remained silent, observing our surroundings again. His seriousness made me turn back to the saddle, eager to be moving. I hooked my left toe in the stirrup and, after arranging my scabbard so that it wasn’t digging uncomfortably into my left thigh, I reached up and grabbed two generous handfuls of Kaleth’s course mane. He gave no indication that he even noticed my weight as I hauled myself up into the saddle. I grinned in triumph as I slid my right toe into the stirrup.

“There,” I said, slightly breathless. “That wasn’t so hard.”

I didn’t even bother to pick up the reins, instead just tucking the excess under my knee so that it wouldn’t get all tangled.

“Let’s go then,” I said to Kaleth, adding after a moment, “if you’re ready, that is.”

Kaleth turned his head, fixed me with one of his knowing gray eyes, and then turned his head forward again. He shook his mane, swished his tail, and then promptly set off at a fast trot.

“How exactly like a male,” I said to myself, but I couldn’t help but be a little amused at the horse’s prideful streak. He was, after all, the equivalent of a war-charger, I reminded myself, used to carrying Sidhe knights into battle; and here he was carrying a mortal girl across the country-side on a likely ill-fated rescue mission. Even though he was a volunteer, I supposed he could be forgiven for needing a little time to adjust.

We followed the road over winding green hills. Occasionally we would pass expanses of flatter land, patch-worked with gold and green, furrows wrinkling the earth. I saw what looked like wheat, golden and heavy-headed; but that was the only plant that I really recognized. There were tall blue stalks with pale ears that looked a bit like corn, and vibrant green vines that covered some patches, producing bright gourds and melons. But even though the crops looked like they were ready for harvest, there was still not a soul in sight. My skin began to prickle at the emptiness of the land: there was an unnatural feel to it. The Glasidhe must have felt it, too, because all three of them abandoned their various perches in favor of flying ever-broadening circles about my path, circling in the air like brightly bejeweled dragonflies. I saw small silver flashes through Flora’s glow, and after a moment I realized that she had a throwing knife in each hand, spinning them restlessly like a college student twirls a pencil mindlessly about her finger. I sat up straighter in the saddle, twisting to look at the road behind us.

“The danger is not behind, but ahead,” Forsythe said grimly, flying by me on a low pass.

I clenched my teeth to stop a shiver and forced myself to look straight ahead. The rolling hills gradually flattened, and the ground became rockier as the farmland faded. The air gradually grew cooler, and I smelled the forest on the breeze, if I closed my eyes when the slight wind caressed my face. I couldn’t decide whether the change was because it was growing late in the afternoon, or if it was because we were traveling northward. I had no knowledge of the weather in Faeortalam. Was it influenced by the whims of the Queens, or was it independent and natural, like in the mortal world?

Eerily, I had my answer scant moments after my questioning thought.

“The danger may be ahead, but there are other unpleasant things behind,” said Flora suddenly, pointing with one dagger over my shoulder. I twisted in the saddle and Kaleth slowed to a walk so that I could keep my balance while I gazed back at our path. Just at the horizon, oily black storm-clouds reared up in the sky, boiling higher with every second, split now and again with the forked flash of lightning-tongues.

“That’s no ordinary storm,” I said, my voice quiet with awe and a little fear. The slight wind stilled, and the air hung heavily about us, but the storm-clouds surged forward, gaining ground every moment.

“Mab has found out you slipped her net,” Forsythe said grimly.

“And I’m guessing she’s angry,” I whispered. The rumble of thunder reached my ears, even though the storm-clouds were barely past the horizon. If it was Mab’s doing, this was one storm we definitely didn’t want to catch us. I imagined her beautiful, imperious face frozen in cold fury, and I shuddered.

“Mab does not like to be bested,” Wisp said, his wings quivering.

Kaleth turned his head and observed the storm. The thunderheads were already closer. He blinked, and then pulled at the reins, pawing the dirt. Flora slipped into my boot, her tiny beautiful head poking up over the leather. Wisp settled behind my ear, taking a careful handful of my hair, and Forsythe appointed himself the rearguard, situating himself between the edge of the saddle and my cloak-roll.

“Damn Mab and her pride,” I said between gritted teeth. My heart quickened and my head spun with a rush of adrenaline as I shook the reins loose, looping them around one palm before taking two generous handfuls of Kaleth’s mane. I dug my toes hard into the stirrups, leaned forward and said to Kaleth’s pricked ears, “Let’s see if you can outrun this storm, then.”

In answer, Kaleth bolted forward, his great body surging as he stretched his legs, hooves pounding the earth even faster than when we had made our escape from Darkhill. Now, we were running from Mab herself—and I had a feeling that it was a race for our lives.

Chapter 24

T
he wind whipped tears into my eyes as Kaleth galloped down the beaten-dirt path, kicking up dust behind us that hung like a plume in the heavy air. Over the rushing of the wind, I still heard growling and rumbling of thunder behind us, and my heart beat faster. I imagined a gale imbued with the force of Mab’s fury, and then I blinked and tried to stop imagining, because it was too frightening.

In the back of my mind, I hoped that Bren hadn’t suffered from helping me slip out of Darkhill. And the guards…I hadn’t seen them, but I knew that the Ancient probably lulled them to sleep with silky threads of
taebramh
stroking their minds. They were probably young knights or guards, like Ramel and Emery. I hoped they hadn’t gotten in trouble either.

The air rushing past me slowly changed until it felt like autumn. I clutched Kaleth’s mane with numbing fingers, and I felt Wisp press closer behind my ear, his small body beginning to shiver. Flora ducked her head below the edge of my boot, wriggling down to nestle in the tender curve above my heel. I leaned forward, urging Kaleth on, trying to shift my weight to help him. I felt his muscles surging beneath me, but when I stole a glance over my shoulder, I knew with sinking dread that we weren’t going to outrun the storm. The storm-clouds had devoured half the distance between us, looming black, more intimidating than any storm I had ever seen in my life. Sickly green, dark purple and blue mottled the underbelly of the clouds, reminiscent of the strange colors staining the sky before a tornado. Kaleth strained forward, his ears laid back against his skull as he struggled to wrench more speed from his laboring body. I knew he sensed the danger, and I also knew, from the way he’d looked at me in the stables, that he considered it his duty to keep me safe while I was his rider.

What exactly could the
taebramh
do? I thought suddenly. It was the stuff of dreams in my world, but here in Faeortalam it was the very fabric of their existence, the essence of reality. I could control that, I thought, crouching closer to Kaleth’s neck. I closed my eyes, my arms trembling from my death-grip on his mane, fighting the urge to be sick from the rolling motion of his gallop with my eyes clenched shut. My body protested at the dizzy feeling of disorientation, but I clenched my teeth and found the pulsing white point beneath my breastbone. I thought of speed as I touched it: wind, wings, breathlessness, fire leaping through dry grass. And very gently I drew a small, thin thread out of the well inside me, so fine it was like a piece of invisible silk from a spider’s web. I pushed the thread down through my right arm, and thought of the thread slipping into Kaleth, flowing down to his hooves and lessening the labor of his lungs. I felt the thread hesitate at the tip of my finger, clinging to the warmth of my skin, and then I pressed it against Kaleth’s smooth, warm neck.

I opened my eyes just in time to sit back in the saddle, saving my face a hard bruising: Kaleth reared his head back, still galloping, a sound of surprise somewhere between a snort and a whinny escaping him. And for a moment time seemed to slow as I looked back at the surging storm, the horrific black clouds blotting out the horizon. Then Wisp wrapped his hands in my hair and shouted, “Hold on!”

Kaleth’s ears pricked forward as he felt the power of the
taebramh
. He gave a challenging bugle, as if daring Mab’s storm-clouds to race him. I had barely enough time to get a better grip, tucking my elbows close to my body and leaning forward in the saddle.

And then Kaleth flew.

The change in speed was so sudden that my stomach lurched. I heard Flora scream in wild delight, glimpsed her looking out from the top of my boot, her aura streaming out behind her like the tail of a comet. Forsythe was yelling something from behind me, a poem or a chant in the Glasidhe tongue, which sounded much like the Sidhe language, but more musical, with softer shorter words. His voice rose fiercely, loud and powerful despite his small frame and the rushing wind. Gooseflesh rose on my arms at the sound of his defiant voice, and I realized that I, too, wore an expression of passionate defiance and triumph, my lips stretched in a humorless smile as I watched the storm-clouds cease to gain ground.

“Catch me if you can, Mab!” I shouted on wild impulse. Kaleth and I were one being, the road falling away beneath our fleet hooves, our hearts swelling with the feeling of pure unnatural speed. Kaleth knew that what I had given him was temporary, but he exulted in it. I exulted in it. I threw one fist wildly into the air, feeling my hair ripped loose from its braid, streaming out behind me like a golden banner. I looked behind us, and the storm-clouds were a fraction farther back toward the horizon. I let loose another wild yell, my voice heavy with triumph, and then I settled down along Kaleth’s neck, my sore muscles forgotten as we rode the swell of the
taebramh
-given speed over the beaten-dirt road.

Kaleth ran for a long time, and I had to close my eyes after a while against the cold whipping wind. My fingers went numb, so that I opened my eyes for a few seconds every so often to make sure my grip was still secure, though I knew that Kaleth wouldn’t let me fall. When Kaleth slowed, I looked behind us and saw that the storm-clouds were still on the horizon, but they lacked the dreadful sickly tones of color that had denoted Mab’s influence.

“The Dark Queen has let go of the storm,” Wisp said. “’Tis a storm, still, but just a storm.”

Kaleth switched from a trot to a walk, his ears swiveling animatedly and his step jaunty as if we had just left Darkhill a quarter hour ago. I laughed a little and he shook his head, stamping and snorting like a colt.

“That was a ride,” Flora said, slipping from my boot and pirouetting giddily.

“Not bad, for an untaught mortal,” commented Forsythe, emerging from his perch on my cloak to fly beside Kaleth again.

“I could take offense to that,” I told him, “but I won’t.” And I didn’t, because the cold dread at the roiling storm-clouds had receded, leaving an empty space in my belly that filled now with a happy satisfaction. But then I sobered a bit. “I’ve escaped her twice now,” I mused. “I guess that’s going to make her very angry when she does eventually catch up to me.”

“But by then, we will have done something that even the Dark Lady will not scoff at!” said Wisp with a gallant air, springing from my shoulder with a flourish.

Forsythe tensed and shot Wisp a look that would have melted the smile from my face, if it had been directed at me, and I heard Flora say something sharply in the Glasidhe tongue. I would have paid more attention, but the rush of triumph at outrunning Mab’s storm had ebbed away, leaving me decidedly sore, and more than a little tired. I thought bemusedly that giving away such a slim strand of
taebramh
had cost me much more energy that I would’ve guessed. I flexed my fingers, watching the tendons in my hands as they moved, oddly fascinated in the way of the deeply exhausted. I wondered how much
taebramh
my soul made per day, if I had a quota that couldn’t be breached…and what would happen if I just emptied myself of it? I had the nasty feeling that the consequences of completely using my stores of
taebramh
would have a very permanent, cold and lifeless theme.

“It would be really nice if we could find someplace to sleep,” I said.

“You’re tired,” Wisp said with an air of wisdom.

“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” I said dryly, rubbing my hands together.

Wisp chuckled a little in delight at my sarcasm.

“I don’t understand,” Flora said, perplexed. “Wisp is not a captain, since we have no formal militia anymore, and even if he was a captain, he would still have his own name. He would not be called Captain Obvious.”

“It is a mortal reference,” Wisp said proudly. “Tess was commenting on my tendency to state that which is already known, you see.”

“Ah,” said Flora, “so she was mocking you.”

Wisp looked slightly put out. “Well, yes, if you put it that way…”

Flora laughed. “In that case, I approve.”

“You spent too much time at Court anyway,” Wisp told her. “If you would’ve gotten out into the mortal world more, you would understand such references.” And with that, he settled on my shoulder again. I thought for a moment he was being sullen, but his irrepressible voice piped out again: “You know, Tess, you are very different than Gwyneth. Or what I’ve heard about her, anyway.”

“How so?” I said, trying to stifle a yawn. My exhaustion was quickly getting the better of me, and I hoped we found a place to stay the night soon.

“There are rules that are supposed to be followed, with the
taebramh
. Every mortal that has had the
taebramh
in their blood, they have had to learn words to unlock it, and symbols to draw, and even then sometimes it did not work.”

Through the haze of tiredness, comprehension dawned on me. “Like…spells?”

“Yes. I think that’s the word for them. But we don’t call it that here…it’s just as we do not have a word for sorcery, because in Faortalam it
is
. It is nothing strange. It
is
strange for a mortal to possess the power, in these times,” he clarified.

“Maybe that’s why I’m so tired after using so little of it,” I said. The rumble of thunder in the distance overshadowed my words.

“Come on then, over here,” Flora said, flying back to Kaleth after scouting.

I blinked blearily and looked up as Kaleth stepped off the path into the long grasses. The forest still crouched on the horizon, at least a few hours’ ride away. I didn’t think I would last that long, and the Glasidhe seemed to know that too. Kaleth headed toward a stand of trees. The center of the cluster was a tree that looked a little bit like a gingko tree, with low-spreading branches; but its leaves were a deep lustrous blue that I knew I would never see in the mortal world. Smaller, younger trees surrounded the large blue-leafed tree, creating a dense copse. A faint scent reached me on the breeze; it smelled like the coolness of rushing water, blended with the aroma of a darkly sweet flower, like jasmine.

“It is a river tree,” said Flora. “It smells like a river, and its leaves are blue, and its roots run deep into the earth to find the hidden waters, so it can survive far away from streams and such.”

The sweet smell of the river tree grew stronger as we neared the copse, but never became overpowering. I slid off Kaleth’s back gratefully, tugging at my cloak until it came free. Swells and dips indented the ground beneath the river tree’s spreading branches—from the roots of the tree, I supposed. I spread my cloak over a hollow that looked to be the perfect size for my body. Then I turned to Kaleth, but to my surprise Flora and Forsythe were in the midst of unbuckling his saddle already, their small fingers working on the buckles adroitly.

“Go to sleep,” Flora told me.

I saw the distant flash of lightning, and glanced up at the tightly woven foliage of the river tree. I might get a little wet, but it was good cover. I settled down into my little hollow, pulling off my boots and setting them in another root-niche. After another glance at the approaching storm, I laid my head down and slept, the sweet smell of the river tree surrounding me like a lullaby.

I dreamed the vivid peculiar dreams of deeply exhausted sleep. Finnead roared up to the river tree on his motorcycle, wearing his black t-shirt and deliciously snug dark jeans. He invited me to ride with him, one eyebrow arched enigmatically over his magnetic gaze. When I looked down, I was dressed in a deep blue silk gown that matched his eyes. I knew that if I rode the motorcycle, I would tear the gown, so I demurely declined. Then it started to rain—I think raindrops fell on my sleeping body, blending dream and reality—and I could feel the silk of the gown clinging to my breasts, the contours of my hips and the long lines of my legs. The rain wet Finnead’s hair, plastering it against his forehead in dark curls. I wanted to trace the curls with my fingertips, and press a kiss where the rain slipped over his lips. He left his motorcycle on the road and walked toward me, striding gracefully through the long grass, reminding me of a cat. His eyes remained fixed on me and in my dream my breath caught in my throat, my face burning as I watched his eyes trace the outline of my body, the silk pressing wetly against my skin in the pouring rain.

It was a dream without words. We needed no words, the air between us stretching so tightly with tension that I thought I would be cut when it broke, cut by a flash of cold air against my skin. Finnead walked slowly. It took him an age to reach me. His eyes traveled down my body again, and the blue gown was gone, leaving only the thin white slip between his gaze and my naked skin. I shivered a little in the rain and he peeled off his black shirt. I reached for him, my heart beating hard with a rush of want, but he caught my wrist gently, shaking his head. And then he turned away from me, showing me his bare back, patterned with a latticework of thick white scars. He looked over his shoulder at me, his eyes carrying a terrible pain. I reached out again, to touch his scars, my chest aching with sorrow for him. He shook his head again, and then he was gone.

I stood alone in my white shift, in the rain. After a while I picked a few flowers, and made a crown for myself, and then took Finnead’s motorcycle and rode away from the river-tree.

I had other dreams after that, but when I awoke all I remembered was the web of scars across Finnead’s back. I blinked and shifted from where I had curled in the hollow, dislodging a sleepy Flora from the crook of my knee. Water drizzled down onto me through the leaves of the river-tree, and while my cloak had kept me relatively dry, my hair was hopelessly bedraggled, tangled and windblown after the wild ride yesterday, now sopping wet with the rain. I grumbled in frustration as I tried to finger-comb the mess, wincing as I worked through a particularly nasty knot.

“Tess,” said Forsythe, his light shining through the interwoven branches of the smaller trees, “there is someone coming to see you. A rider, from the direction of the forest.”

I sat up a little straighter, a surge of hope burning away the vestiges of sleep. Maybe it was Ramel or Finnead, or one of the other men. My heart leapt at the thought.

“It is a woman,” Forsythe reported, “and she is riding a mount from the Dark Queen’s stables. And there is…another animal with her. I think it is a dog of some sort.”

Giving up on untangling my hair, I twisted it into the semblance of a bun and secured it with a few hair-pins. I located my boots and shook the water out of them, taking a deep breath to combat the rush of disappointment. I heard Kaleth neigh a greeting to the stranger’s mount. So it was an Unseelie rider; it just wasn’t anyone that I knew. I had pulled on my boots and gathered up my cloak when I heard the slight sound of branches moving aside.

A Sidhe woman slipped gracefully into the space below the river tree’s branches. To my surprise, she was just as tall as me, a rare feat among the Fae women. If Forsythe hadn’t told me she was female, I would have mistaken her for a boy at first glance, and even as it was my mind worked hard to reconcile the tall, slim Sidhe before me with the image of a woman like Guinna, small and delicate and feminine. The stranger wore her dark hair pulled tightly back from her face, pinned in a practical braid. Then I saw she wore a sword at her waist, and I knew she was probably a Guard or a Knight. We looked at each other for a moment, with the stranger plainly sizing me up just as I had quickly evaluated her.

“Well, you look like a drowned cat,” she said, breaking the silence. “Not exactly what I was expecting.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” I replied in the same dry tone. We stared at each other for a moment more, and I marveled at her strangely colored eyes: they were the closest to golden I had ever seen, a marvelous honey color that gave the unsettling impression that she saw right through your skin with her gaze. Her face, while not stunningly beautiful, had a strong handsomeness to it—another reason why I mistook her for a boy, at first. Her features—pert nose, broad cheekbones and sharp chin, along with her large golden eyes—possessed a strangely alluring, androgynous charm.