“To the righting of the Ninth Realm.” With a mighty heave, Mathison swung the door open into the Great Hall. Utter silence greeted him. The meeting place appeared as abandoned as a long-forgotten tomb. He eased across the threshold, his hackles tingling with such a sting that the back of his neck burned with leeriness. The scent of many filled the cavernous room, strong and fresh as if they stood in front of him. His clansmen were here. The witch had thought to hide them with a cloaking spell.
“Revelare,” he commanded, the order echoing through the spacious, high-ceilinged room.
Those cowering on the benches of the long trestle tables and beside the wide columns shimmered into view like red wine poured into a crystal goblet. Men. Women. Children. Some he recognized. Many he didn’t. They stared back at him, wide-eyed and pale. None of them spoke. None of them moved.
Quiet rustling to his left made him turn. There on the dais, on double thrones, sat the two men he had once thought of as his sons. Or maybe not. These two were far different from the twins he’d watched from a distance over the past three hundred years. What had happened to them? Terror shimmered in this pair’s oddly pale green eyes. Those pale green eyes—almost the same shade as the sea. Both of them had hair so dark it was nearly blue, and their skin was all but opalescent. He had a fair idea which clan had sired these two. The Na Fir Ghorm, the Blue Men of the Minch. His wife, Aluwyn, had apparently come to him carrying the spawn of merfolk.
“How the bloody hell did I not notice yer traits when yer mother bore ye?”
“A simple glamour, fool,” Bansys said as she stepped out from behind the column closest to the steps that led up to the dual thrones. “’Twas no difficult task to make one babe look like another, and as long as the curse held, as they matured, they appeared as pureblood wolf clan to one and all.” She patted her chest with her thin, gnarled fist. “Complete power over the Ninth Realm was mine. Mine to seek justice and make those pay who had ever crossed me.” With a chilling smile, she jutted her sharp chin in the direction of her grandsons. “Those two will do anything to have their tethers lengthened enough so they might visit the sea. They are no better than their whore of a mother and fish-tailed father.” She bared her teeth, revealing her lengthening fangs. “I hid yer mate’s soul for centuries, dribbling crumbs of false hints and clues across the ages for the Weavers to find.” She swaggered closer, rapping the tip of her tall, black staff hard against the stone of the floor. “And I am not done yet. Harm me, and yer fated mate dies. My life’s blood is all that reins in the toxins poised to flood her body and extinguish her light.”
Mathison resettled his grip on his sword as Kannis and Giddrie stepped up and took their places on either side of him. “I smell a lie, witch.” Bansys was not nearly powerful enough to wield a spell that would do as she suggested. “The very act of immobilizing the clan is draining ye, and yet ye expect me to believe ye’re strong enough to cast a blood spell? Yer way with the energies is laughable.”
The darkness of the witch’s eyes flashed with a glinting beadiness, and her knuckles whitened with her tightening grip on her staff. “Carman will return soon to put yer head on a pike for what ye did to her sons.”
“I look forward to it.” He nodded at those of the wolf clan frozen by the witch’s spell. “Free them, Giddrie. Legion will sort the allies from the enemies.”
Giddrie snapped his claws, then offered a polite nod. “It is done, Shadowmist.”
“Legion?” Bansys cut loose a nervous, high-pitched cackle. “They be dead and nothing more than bones and ash at the bottom of yer grandsire’s pit. Their souls canna escape that hell.”
“Yet here we are, still serving our grand chieftain,” Legion said in a multitude of powerful voices that thundered through the room. “Ridiculous witch. When a soul is invited to come forth, it is given the trail of light and strength to do so.”
“And I invited each and every one of them to come forth and stay as long as they like.” The witch’s increasing pallor made Mathison smile. The pungent aroma of her terror hung heavy in the air.
She shook a trembling finger at him. “Even if ye destroy me. Carman will come for ye. This is not over.”
“Once she is no more, Giddrie, then neither are her curses, aye?” Mathison sheathed his sword. Toying with one’s prey was far more enjoyable than dealing the killing blow—especially when she had as much as confessed that no blood spell existed. Calia was safe and could be healed by the combined efforts of the dragons and the Weavers, even if the witch was dead.
“That is correct, mighty Shadowmist.” Giddrie released twin puffs of smoke from his nostrils.
“And we would be most honored to see to that task for ye,” Kannis said, swaggering forward enough to cause the clansmen to gasp and cower in their seats.
“I thought ye released them?” Mathison asked Giddrie, fully expecting the hall to empty itself by now.
“I did,” Giddrie said, then lowered his voice. “I believe their fear of dragons holds them in place. After all, our kind has caused the keep to tremble and quake on more than one occasion, and they are aware of that.”
“We made sure they knew it was us,” Kannis said with no small amount of pride.
“I dinna blame ye. One should always make one’s work known.” Mathison sauntered closer to the twins cowering on their thrones. A rare pang of mercy washed across him. Where the devil had that come from?
“When ye opened yer heart to Calia, ye opened it to much more,” Dubh said. “Even I dinna wish to rip out anyone’s throat other than Bansys’s and Carman’s…and that’s for the pain they caused my Litress.”
Food for thought. Mathison climbed the steps of the dais and slowly sauntered back and forth in front of the two, who now appeared to have been just as manipulated as he had been. “Which of ye is Talon?”
The one on the right lifted his hand. “I am firstborn of Aluwyn and Aegir.”
Mathison noted the young man’s defiant tone and a distinct scent of revulsion mixed with fear and dread. “Ye hate this clan for keeping ye from the sea.”
“My brother and I belong nowhere. Not in this clan. Nor among our father’s people beneath the waves. No one accepts us as kin. We should not have been born.”
Mathison could well relate to not belonging after the past three hundred years. But these two had received a life sentence that couldn’t be changed. He eyed the younger of the two, who appeared even more sullen. Before he could question them further, a nerve-splitting shriek filled the hall. He turned to find Kannis licking his lips, Giddrie shaking his head, and Bansys the witch nowhere to be found. Mathison didn’t say a word, just leveled a stern gaze on the eldest dragon brother, waiting for him to confess.
“I was hungry,” Kannis said without a shred of remorse. Then he belched and thumped his chest.
“Serves ye right,” Giddrie said. “Poisonous as she was, ye’re sure to have heartburn and the winds until the next full moon.”
Mathison scrubbed a hand across his eyes, wearied by the dragon brothers’ banter. “See to the people, aye? Give Legion any help where it might be needed.”
