Chapter Thirty-Five
Fia
We were met by a platoon of castle guards—these men alive, bristling with weaponry and festooned with armor. One fénnid grabbed a snorting Finan by his bridle; I gave the stallion an encouraging pat on the neck as they led him away, and hoped it wouldn’t be the last time I saw him. Another reached as if to wrest the Sky-Sword in its scabbard from Irian’s hip; he growled, low and reverberant, and the man lifted his hands away with such speed I nearly laughed. The armed escort tightened like a noose, leading us deeper into the fort.
It was midafternoon in the high queen’s capital—Rath na Mara would normally be buzzing with activity. Soldiers sparring and practicing in the courtyard, the clatter of steel ringing in the air. Stable hands and farriers bustling near the stables, blacksmiths’ hammers clanging relentlessly off the stone walls. Servants and chambermaids slinking to and fro, stoking fires and sweeping floors and polishing silver, their barely audible chatter mingling with the scrape of brooms and the rustling of fabric. Visiting dignitaries and vassals dining in the great hall or arguing in the library or readying for a hunt.
Instead, Rath na Mara yawned with the sinister hush of a mausoleum. Flocks of sharp-winged crows circled high overhead and lined the palisades, watching our progress across the bailey with beady black eyes. As we plunged into the chilly dim of the great hall, our booted steps desecrated the cold silence within. Few torches were lit; no dogs napped beneath the long tables; no off-duty fénnidi threw dice or drank ale. It was as if Donn’s dark underworld had opened its jaws and swallowed Rath na Mara whole, its occupants sleeping as in ancient legend.
My pulse spiked when I realized where we were inevitably headed—the high queen’s throne room. The guards did not knock before shoving through the massive double doors leading into the chamber from which my foster mother had once ruled.
Eithne Uí Mainnín had despised ostentation, mistrusted it with the same terrible, all-consuming fury with which she had mistrusted Folk glamours and spells. Eala Ní Mainnín, her daughter, had an altogether different aesthetic.
The throne room was festooned in a thousand pale white flowers—snowdrop and anemone and lily and moonflower. In place of Mother’s simple candelabras and torches, Eala had installed a massive intricate chandelier crafted entirely from bone and crystal, suspended from the vaulted ceiling. Each burning candle protruded from the eyehole or gaping mouth of a skull—human, animal, and Folk—so that they glowed from within as if lit with the lingering souls of the dead. Below hunched a huge, heavy throne sculpted from pale marble veined through with obsidian and interwoven with the bleached remains of what appeared to be Folk creatures—the armrests fashioned from a gruagach’s curled claws and the back curving upward with the ribs of leipreacháin.
Seated upon it was my sister. At first glance, Eala seemed as poised and perfect as she ever was. But the longer I gazed at her, the more I saw the cracks in both her appearance and her composure. Her chest rose and fell too quickly, as though she had recently run far or fast. Her white skin seemed stretched too tightly over her exquisite bonestructure, giving her the look of a porcelain doll before its cheeks and lips had been painted red. The only color on her face at all was her eyes, blazing blue as glass from beneath the pale frills of her eyelashes.
Fringing the room, half hidden in the strange, glancing shadows cast by the awful chandelier, courtiers sat or stood, still and silent. I briefly searched their impassive expressions for any familiar faces but saw only staring eyes and grim-set mouths.
I fought back dread as I feigned nonchalance and cut a mocking bow to my sister.
“Queen Eala.” Derision seeped along my voice. “You have built your throne on the backs of the dead. How fitting, since the living can no longer bear the weight of you.”
The temperature in the room seemed to drop, the air growing chilly and fraught. But Eala merely smiled, painstakingly, her bloodless lips curling over her gleaming teeth. Her fingers drummed a feverish rhythm on the arm of her throne.
“Always the sense of humor, Sister.” Eala’s voice was like the moment death calls—soft, yet utterly inescapable. “But as usual, you have it wrong—I am no burden. I am this kingdom’s salvation.”
She rose in a sharp sudden movement. Her white robes fluttered around her—not feathers as I had originally assumed, but tattered clothing. Strips of ripped dresses, scraps of lace, shreds of silk, all cobbled together in ragged, hovering gossamer. She slowly descended the steps of her throne and came to stand two paces before me, ignoring Irian’s growl of displeasure. Our heights were a perfect match—her eyes stared straight into mine. This close, her porcelain perfection was flawed. Tiny hairline cracks fissured over Eala’s skin, and despite the radiance suffusing her, what peeked from beneath was not light, but dark. Dark as rot, as grave dirt, sliding along the contours of her skull and creeping beneath her skin, streaking her white-blond hair and threading her crystal-blue eyes.
“Eala,” I breathed, horror and nausea rising in me, along with a treacherous kind of concern I hardly had a name for. “I don’t think you’re well.”
“I have never been better.” Despite her words, I swore a sudden dart of doubt pierced her gaze. “I am all that was before and all that will be after. I am beginning and end. I am everything.”
Terrible wrongness slicked my veins like black oil. My gloved hand twitched at my side, a weapon at the ready.
“But you, Sister.” Eala leaned close and sniffed audibly. “You seem somewhat the worse for wear. Wherehaveyou been hiding out all these months? This is a sorry state in which to appear before your queen.”
“You are not”—I ground the words between my teeth like gravel—“my queen.”
“And I suppose you have come all this way to tell me why?” Her smile turned radiant, chasing away whatever uncertainty I thought I’d glimpsed. “Let it not be said I am not a generous ruler. I shall allow you to have a bath before you cast aspersions upon my reign. Guards!”
The guards had not gone anywhere—merely shadowed the doorway, bristling with weapons and silent aggression.
“Take our honored guests to the finest guest chamber on the main floor, and ensure all their needs are met with haste and honor,” Eala said archly. “Am I understood?”
If the guards were surprised by the request, they did not betray it. The rígfénnid simply cut a nod, then waved us back the way we’d come. The fiann did not try to lay hands on either me or Irian—I supposed they’d learned that lesson already. So I simply stood my ground, refusing to turn away from my sister until I’d said my piece.
“Your hospitality is appreciated, Grave Mother.” I laced my tone with irony and was rewarded with a faceless gasp from the edge of the room. Eala’s smile slipped; the filaments of black darkening her eyes seemed to swallow the crystal blue of her irises. “But we have come to treat with you, not bathe in perfumed waters and sleep on feather beds. I am as fit for diplomacy in stained clothes as I am in silks and satins. Will you not talk peace? Or have you already set your mind to death and war?”
“You have always loved to insult what you do not understand, Sister.” Eala’s voice was little more than a hiss between her teeth. “But I shall not let you bait me. We will gather tonight at a feast, like civilized people. We will drink and make merry, and yes, perhaps we will even find time to speak of my peace. Does that suit, or must we quarrel here in public like common folk?”
I gave an ironic laugh. “Far better to destroy each other over the rims of jeweled goblets, with proper decorum.”
“Then it is decided. I shall await you both at tonight’s feast.”
Eala turned back toward her throne, her garments fluttering around her like pale wings. And in the moment before I turned on my own heel toward Irian and the waiting guards, I couldn’t help but let my gaze drift to the people seated and standing all around Eala’s throne, masked by the fractured shadows cast by the gruesome chandelier. But my eyes had adjusted to the dim now.
They were all there. Rogan, tall and broad-shouldered, standing a pace behind the throne with his hair faintly gleaming in the candlelight. Chandi, seated upon a chair by the wall with her hands tightly folded in her lap. Cathair, his hair gone fully gray, the charms braided in his beard tarnished in the dim.
