A swift, distinguished, avenging host!
—“The Hosts of Faery,” translated by Kuno Meyer
Chapter Forty-One
Fia
The unlit forest swallowed me, a strange and somber mouth studded with cracked wooden teeth and whispering with fell voices. I ran as fast as my deer legs could go, bounding and leaping with abandon, irreverent of any path.
I was grateful for a form besides my own. Even as I fled Eala, I hid from myself, and from the grief and rage threatening to flay the skin from my bones. The doe was fast and frightened, but the determined drum of her delicate hooves on the earth was focused on one thing alone: survival. She was made for flight, and she met our purpose with an agile kind of peace that soothed me.
Time lost meaning. There was just me, the trees, and all the shadows between. After what I thought must be an hour, something began to pace me in the dark. An arched, elegant neck. Russet fur ridged with the faintest impression of pale dots. A white signal flag of a tail. Eyes fathomless as the night sky.
Another deer. Another doe.
But when I turned my head to look at her head-on, I saw the fog had grown heavy, and it was but my own shadow.
At last I wove between stone monsters punctuating the earth like guideposts—my fiann from last Samhain, returned to their eternal slumber. Beyond, the path flashed golden as coins. The rushing of a stream filled my ears. A stone bridge arched beside a bent willow.
Irian stood at its peak, carved silent as stone and deadly as a nightmare. I shifted with some difficulty back into my human form, my shorter limbs dense and stocky after the effortless grace of the doe. Profound relief tangled with renewed worry on Irian’s perfect features.
“What happened?”
“They’re dead.” The words came out flat, as if my voice was determined to mask all the emotions roiling beneath my flesh. “The high queen… Cathair. The people who raised me in the human realms—she killed them all.”
Irian rocked toward me, his closeness the only balm he could offer. I could tell from the hardness of his features that he did not sorrow for them, only for me—for how their passing would affect me.
In another life, under other circumstances, I thought, he would have gladly killed them all himself.
I clenched my fists, although I longed to wrap my arms around his chest and bury my face in his shoulder and scream until my insides were abraded clean.
“She will not be far behind,” I said. “Let’s go home.”
We crossed the bridge side by side. The Gate rippled a silver whisper over our skin as we crossed back into Tír na nÓg. I exhaled as the full extent of my Treasure came rushing back, twining vines of gladness and green glory around the ecstatic thunder of my Heart. And there was something else—something new and unfamiliar. A third melody joining the chord of my Treasure’s near-silent humming, an atonal harmony to the Sky-Sword’s louder tune. A song of embers stirred into a bonfire, a symphony of distant blood-red skies.
A surge of power erupted through the night toward us—a wildblaze roaring over the horizon, consuming the stillness and leaving behind a trail of heat that pulsed like the heartbeat of a distant star.
“Do you feel that?” I asked Irian, wonder in my voice.
“I do, colleen.” His voice held an echo of my awe. “I believe Laoise has reforged the Flaming Shield.”
I brought my attention back to the Willow Gate, dredging the shadows until I spied Chandi. She sat huddled in Irian’s—Rogan’s—cloak with her back to a rough-hewn boulder. She did not look well. But she was conscious, at least.
Her eyes flicked to mine, then away, the air tangling with a thousand unspoken words. I set my jaw. I hummed with violence and felt numbed by confusing grief. Perhaps there would be time for forgiveness later.
I turned, ignoring Irian’s questioning look, and knelt in front of the Gate. I plunged my hands into the dirt and called on the full force of my magic with all the wrath and grief roaring through my veins. The earth answered with a thunderous rumble. Tree roots punched from the earth, knotted like clubs ready to strike at my enemies. Vines twined them, curved with thorns like deadly scythes. Flowers burst to life as the structure growled higher, red as blood and black as night and white as stars. The wall grew tall as Irian, then taller, until it towered high into the dark.
It was not enough. I had seen Eala’s ghouls scale Rath na Mara’s palisades as if they were playthings. If she tried to pursue me here—as I believed she would—I needed more assurance that she could not cross into Tír na nÓg with her army. Not yet. Not until I was ready for her.
With all the strength left in my limbs, I curved the top of my wall of trees and vines and flowers. It bent with a groan of protest right into the shimmering, wavering outline of the Gate. The barrier between the realms pushed back—nothing but Treasures was meant to pass. I shoved harder, threading the power of my Heart with Talah’s curse. Starlight rushed along bent boughs and blew from the pollen of flowers and limned huge thorns in silver.My botanical wall pushed through the Gate, curving over into the other realm. I anchored it there with ropes of starlight, fused deep between tangled roots where the bones of the earth hummed.
I reeled back on my heels, brushed dirt from my palms, and looked up at the monstrosity I had created. It curved around and above the gate, an impenetrable barrier of magical foliage.
“Mo chroí,” Irian murmured, a note of wonder rasping along his voice. “What is that for?”
“Eala will chase me. She will open the Gate for her revenants. But I will not let her in.” I stood. Swayed. Irian reached for me, but I regained my balance on my own. “Let them cut themselves to ribbons on that. Let them try to chop it with axes or burn it with fire. It will last until we return with all the troops we can muster. Then I will bury my sister in the grave she has dug herself.”
We stayed that night at Irian’s crumbling fortress, though only Chandi slept. Irian made a fire in the hearth, waiting quietly until I began to talk. Then he listened in silence, letting the jumbled events of that night flow from me in a torrent. I told him everything—the archive in the tower, Corra’s confusing words about Marban, the high queen speaking against her daughter… and Eala killing her for it.
