The bloody entity sputtered like a boiling teakettle. “She’d be ripping yer head off’n yer shoulders and shiting down yer neck, she would.”
With a chilling cackle, the bogie with the glowing gray bones, the violent Dian, rattled his swords even louder. “Certainly, we can tell him, my brothers. After all, he can never hope to reach her. If he goes where she is, he will never get out alive. Mum’s spells are a damn sight stronger than any Bansys could ever hope to craft.”
Mairwen reached for Mathison, holding something in her outstretched hand and patiently waiting for him to take it. Without a word, she locked eyes with him, willing him to not only trust her but to follow through on every oath he had ever made to the Weavers as a Defender of the Highland Veil.
He took what she offered, then clenched it in his fist. He would crumble the damned thing if he could. It was the feckin’ wolfstone. The amulet she had insisted they fetch from Seven Cairns. He glared at her, seething with anger. “And what of her book? The one from her child that she holds so dear?”
“I have it in safekeeping,” Mairwen said. “All her things are waiting for her. Once ye have her safe again, I will deliver them as I should have done when ye requested. Then ye would have had time to teach her all she needed to know to battle this Realm’s evil.” She bowed her head. “Forgive me for insisting the two of ye risk yer lives and travel to Seven Cairns rather than me deliver the amulet to ye. But I swear upon the stars in the heavens that the cards always know the best course. That is why I refused to cross them. It had to be done this way. We must trust this destiny, as it has been laid out by the stars.”
“Aww…now, ain’t that special?” said Carman’s slimy toad of a son, Dub. “If’n I had a heart, that surely would have touched it.”
“Mum sends her best, Mairwen.” Dother, the one coated in blood, gave a saucy nod. “By the way, yer son squealed like a blubbering coward when we shredded his soul, bit by bit.”
“I will avenge my son,” Mairwen said as calmly as if discussing the weather. “But not today. Today, Lady Calia is my concern.” The glow of Mairwen’s orb increased to a blinding brightness, as did the rest of the Weavers of Light.
The three foul beings turned aside and shielded their empty eyes while backing farther away. “Ye can never reach her. Not in the Pit of Pinnacles.” They gurgled and cackled with maniacal glee. “She’s down there with Legion, those pompous arses once foolish enough to give their fealty to the grand chieftain.”
Mathison clenched his teeth, remaining stoic, refusing to give the demons the satisfaction of a reaction. But his heart dropped like a stone into the pit of his stomach. His loyal advisors deserved better than such a cruel fate. And now Calia had been condemned to the same. No one escaped the Pit of Pinnacles. Not ever. He lifted his sword, then stretched and pointed the long blade at Dother. The weapon took on a deadly reddish glow, as if just pulled from a fiery forge. “No power exists that can keep me from my fated mate. The three of ye will pay. As will yer wicked mother, along with Bansys, and if need be, my sons.”
“Yer sons?” Dian barked a taunting laugh while rattling his weapons harder against his pale bones. “Ye be a greater fool than we thought.”
Blood-soaked Dother backhanded him. “Shut yer gob. Mum will shatter yer every bone.”
“We go now.” Dub cast a greasy streak of oily blackness across the ground between them and Mathison. As it bubbled, sizzled, and ate up the earth, the three devil brothers disappeared.
Mairwen countered the demon’s poisoning of the soil and healed the forest floor. Casting a worried glance Mathison’s way, she remained silent. Waiting.
As he stared at the Divine Weaver, it came to him that she had known the truth all along and kept it to herself. “Why did ye not warn me of Aluwyn and Bansys’s treachery?”
“It was not my story to tell.”
“The hell it wasn’t. Is yer loyalty to the Defenders so fickle?” The Weavers and the Defenders had sworn an oath long ago to provide a united front in the protection of the Highland Veil—that meant a loyalty, one to the other. Or at least in Mathison’s mind, that’s what it meant.
Her crystal orb’s brightness dimmed and fluctuated as she appeared to take in a deep breath and blow it out. “At the time, the Council of Weavers saw no harm in the deception.” She pursed her lips in a hard, flat line. “Bansys’s machinations were unknown to us then, and neither did the goddesses raise any alarms.” She gave a sad shake of her head. “Aluwyn paid with her life. Bansys has yet to pay for her part in the farce.”
“Who is the father?”
“That, we do not know for certain. All we have come to discover is that the twins’ magic is laughable. The shifter who sired them canna be from a powerful bloodline.”
“How long did ye intend to go along with the lie?” Had she any idea how difficult this made it for him to trust her? He nudged Horse forward, skirting the part of the ground still healing from the demon brothers’ defilement.
“As I said, it was not my story to tell, and for now, yer Calia was my concern.” She floated alongside him, passing through the trees as if they were made from mist or fog. “How do ye plan to save her from the Pit of Pinnacles?”
He had no idea. His grandsire and the clan’s master sorcerer had blended their powers to create that unholy abyss deep in the bowels of Shadowmist Keep, and both had gone to their graves with the secrets of their creation after a disagreement caused them to destroy one another. “No one has ever escaped the Pit.”
“So ye mean to give up then?” She eyed him with an incredulous look.
It took every ounce of self-control he possessed to keep from drawing his sword and shattering her crystal orb. “Did I say I was giving up?”
“There has to be a way. Did yer grandsire not plan on using it as a temporary holding place for uncooperative prisoners?”
Mathison tried to recall, but that had been so very long ago, longer than his existence, and his father had never been one to speak about Grandsire overmuch. Grandsire’s inability to control both his drinking and his temper had been an embarrassment to the family. “I dinna ken what the old wolf or the sorcerer planned. After they were laid to rest, Father ordered their texts destroyed. He feared what else they might have created.”
“Yer father allowed his fears to kill him.” Mairwen made a disgruntled clicking of her tongue. “After yer mother died, ’twas a wonder he survived as long as he did.”
“Enough, Mairwen. Stirring old ghosts and useless memories does nothing to aid our cause.” An ever-growing urgency within made him nudge Horse into a harder gallop. “If I get in there, I will find a way out.”
“Getting in there will be easy,” Mairwen observed, sarcasm shading her tone. “’Tis the getting out which will be yer issue.”
