But as Irian followed Laoise into the bowels of the mountain, the image of the Fomorian cradling Fia’s slack body brought him no comfort. He wanted to get this meager council over with.
“Brother.” Wayland approached across the curved belly of the sinkhole, trailed by roly-poly Nidhoggur blundering through the cut-glass sunshine. A few paces behind, Idris followed, his face half hidden behind a fall of dark red hair. Irian had met the slender young man briefly before Laoise dispatched him to seek out Wayland, characteristically sleeping in while the rest of the world went to war. Even now, Irian’s erstwhile foster brother seemed unconcerned by the conventions of clothing, sauntering boldly bare-chested through the ice-chased morning.
“Wayland.” Irian greeted him with a tone he hoped was rough enough to convey his growing annoyance. “Were you having sweet dreams?”
“The sweetest,” Wayland said. “For I was dreaming of you.”
Irian growled, deep in his chest, but that only made Wayland smile. Irian forced himself not to react further. Wayland had done nothing truly wrong to earn Irian’s recent short temper. Yes, Irian’s oldest friend and foster brother had kissed his bride—but the geas binding them together had been forged long before Irian had wed her. Yes, Wayland sometimes looked at Fia too long when he thought Irian wasn’t watching—but they were all concerned for her well-being. Yes, Wayland had been the one able to remove Fia’s collar when Irian could not—but it had needed to be done.
Fia had chosen Irian. He was not jealous of Wayland.
He did not knowwhathe was.
“Shall we?” he said, tightly, to Laoise. “Provided the conditions are at last favorable?”
She stalked between the harmonic circle of flaming trees. “We shall.”
Irian followed, trailed by Sinéad, then Wayland, then Idris and Hog. At their feet, the dark volcanic rock was pocked with divots approximately the size of Irian’s fists. He could only assume this was where they’d found the clutch of draig eggs. Above, a few of Laoise’s draigs swooped and swirled, their red-gold scales shifting and flaring in counterpoint to the guttering trees.
“Here is all I have discovered.” Laoise’s voice held the same resonant gravity with which she’d relayed the tale of her dragain and their upbringing. “Sacred groves are scattered throughout the realms of the Fair Folk. Tír na nÓg. Emain Ablach. Annwyn. They are usually assembled of trees—though not always—but beyond that I can find no pattern. Some groves contain many trees; others only a few.” She glanced at Irian. “If Sinéad’s stories of your Heartwood are true, some contain only one.”
Irian remembered a ribbon of green vines and a ribbon of black feathers, and a much smaller hand clasped in his own. He remembered all that tree had taken from him. And all it had given back.
“The only constant is the magic flowing through and around the nemeta,” Laoise continued. “Even then, the magic is variable. I had never encountered anything like the wishing apples of Wayland’s Grove of Gold. But nor have I encountered other trees like these. They certainly grant no wishes.”
They all gazed at the shadow-flame boughs.
“This is what I have come to believe: The groves are the nodes where magic gathers and flows. Anchors, in a sense, rooting magic into the land even as their branches radiate it through the ether. They are all connected—by lines carrying power and life across our world.”
“Like hearts pumping blood through veins,” Wayland murmured.
“Where did they come from?” Irian’s jaw tilted as he considered this. “Have they always been here?Willthey always be here?”
“So impatient, tánaiste.” Laoise clucked her tongue. “The theory I find most plausible is that the groves are where Solasóirí—Bright Ones—landed when they fell from the stars. Which means they have notalwaysbeen here, but are unknowably ancient. The magic they create, consume, and connect is bound by the same laws as nature—it may even bethelaw of nature. They can consume too much or too little. They can be warped or corrupted or even destroyed. And… they can simply die.”
Laoise had alluded to thisdyingbefore. Irian saw what she meant—though the brightly colored foliage burned like a bonfire, veins of darkness ascended the glittering trunks from the black rocks beneath their roots. The shadows pulsed spasmodically; the sword belted at Irian’s waist hummed in protest with every sick syncopation. The minerals gleaming from the walls seemed to darken.
Irian did not know by what rules magic governed this grove, nor this mountain. But he believed Laoise when she said the nemeton was dying.
“Why?” Wayland sounded both bemused and intrigued. Irian was astonished he had not yet made some quip or double entendre—his foster brother had never enjoyed a philosophical puzzle so much as a dirty joke. “You said the grove began to die when Hog—when the last draig—was hatched. Why would that have… triggered… this slow decay? It has been years, has it not?”
“Several.” Irian had not yet heard Idris speak, and he was surprised by how deep the quiet young man’s voice was. “There are legends among our mother’s people—the Ellyllon—that these mountain ranges were once home to Y Ddraig Goch. The Red Dragan. Huge beyond imagining. Powerful and ancient as the stars. Laoise and I have come to believe that this legendary draig existed in truth and was a Bright One. This nemeton was its home—its landing place, its node, its source of cosmic power.”
“Where is she—it—now?” Wayland demanded, and Irian knew without having to ask that his foster brother was thinking of theYear.Talah.Fia had told him what they had discovered, deep in that tomb where Gavida kept his captive Bright One.
“The Red Dragan has passed beyond these realms. Whether that means death, or some other ending, I cannot begin to say. But they no longer exist in a sense that we understand. They passed the last of their life force into that clutch of eggs.” Laoise gestured at the divots hollowed into the dark rock. “We have no earthly idea how long those eggs were here. Millennia, most likely—the ruby passed down through my mother’s family was ancient beyond memory. But we believe their existence put the grove into a kind of stasis. Without the Bright One feeding and regenerating its magic, the grove relied on the eggs—which contained some essence of the entity—even as the eggs relied upon the nemeton. A self-sustaining system.”
“But when Nidhoggur hatched,” Idris finished, “the system terminated. Without the source of its magic—the Bright One or their offspring—the grove is now dying. And all the magic contained in this mountain with it.”
Irian glanced at the dying trees, then toward the juvenile draigs shrieking and tumbling through the air near the top of the sinkhole. Their glowing scales chimed like glass bells. “Why are the living draigs not performing the same role? Does the magic not flow from and through them?”
“Apparently not.” Laoise gave a complicated shrug. “We know not why.”
“Then this tells us nothing.” The anger and desperation simmering in the pit of Irian’s stomach gnawed at his self-control. His voice rasped ragged between his teeth. “We are exactly where we began. Knowing nothing. Having no path to save Fia’s life.”
“There is another aspect we have not considered.” Wayland spoke up, unexpectedly. “My father did not speak of the Treasures often. When he did, I rarely cared to listen. But I do remember this—he forged the Treasures as conduits between sources and vessels. We now know the sources are Bright Ones. The vessels,Gentry heirs with affinities toward elemental magic. And the conduits, resonant objects thatmustbe regularly renewed lest the cycle of regeneration end and the magic become corrupted.”
Irian’s thumb skated over the hilt of the Sky-Sword, its metal warm as his own flesh and humming with his own voice.
