If she had, we were all dead. Of that, I had no doubt.
I was not alone in my fear—Idris crouched, as if proximity to stone would protect him from an attacking draig; Wayland angled his body so Hog was protected behind the curve of his chest. Balor stared upward, his massive palm shading his eyes, his fearsome features slack with resigned terror. Only Irian did not cower before the advancing draig, planting his singed boots on the slope and drawing his glittering blade with a song of warning. Sinéad hesitated, then stomped over to stand beside him, drawing her own twin daggers in dauntless solidarity.
I loved them both for it. I wished I had my skeans so I could stand beside them.
In lieu of that, I simply tried not to flee in fear.
Laoise rocketed down the crumbling side of the mountain. Moments before colliding with our trembling group, she opened her mouth. I expected fire to gather in her gorge, as it had in Blodwen’s. Instead, her voice—strangely guttural and unbelievably loud—poured over us on the force of her violent exhale.
“Up!” she roared, the word echoing through the gorge in fading triplicate. “Up!”
She banked sharply around the ridge of the mountain as, high above, a half dozen draig shapes in various sizes spilled from the hole she’d made. Laoise performed a complicated barrel roll in midair, snapped her wings wide, then climbed vertically. Wind buffeted us, flinging my hair across my face, stinging my eyes, and dragging the breath from my lips. When I looked back up, I saw the draiglings had all spun to follow her, their forms disappearing in the boundless blue.
All… except Hog.
The rotund baby draig was still struggling with Wayland, scrabbling at her swaddle as she hissed and spat with venom. When she flung her head to and fro, her eyes gleamed as deadly silver as the new streaks laddering my hair, and the circle of metal fused to my finger where Wayland’s mother’s ring had once sat.
I stared at the sky, where the draigs were little more than miniatures. Heard Laoise’s strange command echoing in my ears.Up.
“Up,” I cried, lunging toward Wayland and ripping the bundle containing Hog from his arms. Laoise was trying to lure her draig children outside the sphere of Talah’s influence. The Bright One might be able to control them while they were inside the mountain that was her new home. But she had no control over the air, the winds, the sky. “She needs to fly!”
But the little draigling, upon being freed from her bonds, simply flung herself with renewed vigor at her captor. Wayland threw up his hands as she bashed his head with her stumpy wings, clawing at his face and spitting sparks into his hair. I whirled on my heel, searching for Irian amid the chaos.
“Mo chroí,” I screamed. “Wind!”
A stiff breeze smelling of late frost and split stone shrieked to life, whipping my hair around my ears. The draigling—possessed as she might be—squeaked in alarm, digging her claws into Wayland’s flesh. Stared at us with vexed silver eyes as the updraft caught her squarely beneath her outstretched wings and launched her vertically. Hog keened as she soared unwillingly after her siblings and Laoise, the noise slowly fading as the clouds swallowed her.
We all watched in silence as the eight tiny dots that were Laoise and the draigs circled, their paths erratic. At last, the largest shape—Laoise—banked her vast wings, scooped the smallest dot to her body, and took off toward the west, flying toward the setting sun. One by one, the other draiglings fell in line, following their mother.
We watched until they were specks on the horizon.
Behind us, the ruined mountain belched skeins of black smoke. Rumbled in horrible agitation. Then exploded, soot and rock and gemstones arcing upward in a disastrous plume before billowing down. We dashed for what cover we could find, sliding into crevices and sheltering behind boulders as we shielded our heads from the smoldering detritus.
At last, it was over. We slowly crawled from our hiding places.
“Well,” drawled Wayland, brushing flakes of snow-white ash from his sleeves and hair. “I don’t think the Year appreciated being rehomed. And now I daresay she has returned the favor.”
I glanced over my shoulder. The red sun slipping behind the ragged teeth of distant mountains summoned sudden regret. Not for myself—it hadn’t been my home destroyed by the Bright One’s fury. But for Laoise, who had opened her haven to us when she knew danger dogged us like a curse. And for Idris, who was staring at the ravaged Cnoc in silent devastation.
I had never had a home I would have minded seeing reduced to a pile of rubble. Except, perhaps, Dún Darragh.
“We should follow Laoise,” Sinéad suggested.
Wayland made a face. “Are we sure she wants to be followed?”
After a long, fraught moment, Irian sheathed the Sky-Sword in a liquid motion. “Better start walking. The nights here get cold.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Fia
We made little conversation as we tromped through the dimming Barrens. After a while, a waxing moon sailed over the range. A hazy veil of color—unusual pinks and greens—wafted across the stars from the north, tremulous and fantastic. But below the splendor of the heavens, the Barrens were black and bleak.
The night grew cold—I could not feel it, but Sinéad began to shiver despite the mantle she’d worn from the Cnoc. Irian said nothing, only unclasped his own cloak and layered it over her shoulders. She hesitated, then nestled gratefully in the warm fabric. Warmth of a different kind surged along my spine, even as shadows of regret coiled in my darkest spaces.
How many belongings had been lost in the Cnoc? All those tomes and scrolls in the library—burned to ash. The gardens I’d glimpsed—swallowed by flames. The stores of grain and wine carefully hoarded over the years—fuel for the conflagration. The vast array of weapons and armor stored in the Armory—now molten metal.
At least Irian had the Sky-Sword. Sinéad had her daggers. Balor had his colossal fists. The aughiskies had their shark teeth.
