Uncertain Magic

  “Faelan,” she panted, grabbing his arm. “I have to speak to you. I know—” She stopped, looking toward Maurice, choking back the words that wanted to tumble off her tongue.

  Their host smiled indulgently as he walked into the hall and waved back toward the study. “Please. We can finish our discussion after dinner.”

  Roddy preceded Faelan inside without ceremony. The door shut behind Maurice. She managed to control herself until she was sure he was out of earshot, and then turned to Faelan. “I know who did it!” she blurted. “I know who informed on Geoffrey and Earnest!”

  He’d been looking toward her, frowning at her feet. At that, he raised his head. His face went suddenly and utterly neutral.

  “It wasn’t you, Faelan. It wasn’t. It was Rupert Mullane.”

  His shoulders stiffened. “How do you know that?”

  She opened her mouth, and found herself without excuse. In her anxiety to tell him, she had not stopped to think. Hastily she said, “He told me.”

  Faelan’s glance was too penetrating. She looked away, fingering her skirt.

  “Told you what?”

  The question was like a lance. Roddy sought madly for a plausible answer.

  “He said he did it. For the reward. It was a thousand pounds sterling. I’d been thinking—you know I had. I figured it out, and when I saw him in the yard just now I asked him, and he said I was right.”

  The last came out fast and breathlessly, and ended on a swallow as Faelan gripped her shoulders. “He admitted it?”

  This time it was she who could not meet his eyes. “Yes.”

  “You’re lying.” He pushed her away. “God, don’t do this to me.”

  “I’m not lying!” she cried to his back. “Mullane did it. I swear.”

  He put both fists behind his head. “I don’t remember.” His harsh sound rang in the room. “I can’t remember.”

  “I’m telling you—you didn’t do it!”

  “You’re lying, damn you.” He turned on her savagely. “Mullane never told you that.”

  “You saw him! Faelan, think of it. Try to think of it. You must have seen him on the road that day.”

  He looked at her, met her eyes. The wall cracked—one instant of desperation, of fury and raw fear. The face that broke from his memory was not Mullane’s. It was older, and younger—female and male, impossible and inhuman. It faded into her own: her eyes and chin and cheekbones. Faelan recoiled. “No,” he shouted. “No, damn you, God damn you—Leave me alone.”

  Roddy raised her hands uselessly, too late and too little to hold him. The wall had slammed down. The study door slammed behind him with the same furious rejection, leaving her alone.

  Unwanted. Fearsome.

  Sidhe.

  Chapter 25

  The black ruin of the great house sprang out of a hillside of purple and gold—of heather and gorse that blazed in the late-spring sun. Where Roddy had worked to tame a garden, the wild Kerry flowers waved glorious ridicule, mocking any civilized plant to match their form and color.

  She walked along the forecourt where weeds already pierced through the cracks, and watched as MacLassar rooted beneath the crowded, untrimmed shrubs.

  Faelan moved beside her in silence. He was not even looking at the house; he was staring at the weeds, his hands in his pockets and his mouth set.

  “It’s not too late to begin planting again, is it?” She gave her voice a deliberately optimistic air. “Perhaps you’ll plow me a garden this time.”

  He looked out at the sea. “You don’t have to stay here, Roddy. You don’t have to spend all your money on this.”

  Roddy pursed her lips. For her the lowest moment had come when she’d seen the stable, roofless, with a few weak new stalks of grass among the scorched walls where their bed of sweet straw had been.

  She reached to take his hand, but he moved away. He picked up a loose stone and sent it skipping across the pavement with a quick, savage move.

  “Go home with my mother,” he said. “She seems eager enough to have you.”

  And you’re not.

  Roddy said nothing aloud. Her chest hurt. It was a worse hurting—a duller, deeper pain than the piercing doubt of those days after the arrests. She had cried then, but this pain was beyond tears.

  He did not want her anymore.

  She recognized the signs. It took no talent to read the way he avoided her; the way he cut his answers short and found excuses to leave a room when she entered. She had touched him with her gift, and now she was exiled, as she had been all her life.

  He drifted away from her, up the hill behind the house. She had a moment’s thought of following, and then of the welcome she was likely to receive, and stayed where she was in the forecourt.

  The wind blew in the gorse and through the empty windows. She sat down on the steps and held out her hand to MacLassar, who came and plopped down beside her—a small comfort, an animal, who had no hopes or vices or needs beyond the moment; nothing to hide, and nothing to fear from her.

  “Nothing to hide,” a soft voice echoed her thought, and Roddy looked up to find Senach leaning on a staff on the step below her.

  Once she would have fled, as Faelan was escaping her, but now in her misery even Senach’s uncanny company seemed better than the loneliness. She sat still on the steps and looked at him.

  “You’re changin’, Lassar. You’re learnin’, I do believe.”

  “Am I?” She lowered her eyes, staring listlessly at the dark, heavy wool of her skirt where it stretched across her knees. Learning what? That everything I wanted is impossible?

  Senach smiled. “Dreams,” he said. “What is it you want?” His voice had changed. The old man’s quaver, the thick brogue faded. “What is it you want, and what is it you fear?”

  “I want Faelan,” she whispered to her knees.

  “And your fear?”

  She bent her head and hugged her legs.

  “What do you fear?” Senach repeated softly.

  “I fear…” Faelan.

  What he might be.

  What I might be.

  “All your life,” Senach said, “you’ve been turning from this.”

  She looked up. For less than an instant, Senach shimmered in the wash of midday light, something far and different from a stooped old man. Then she blinked the glare away, and he was only Senach.

  Only Senach.

  “What do you want?” he asked again.

  Faelan.

  “He’s lost. ’Tis dark.”

  I have to help him.

  “He fears you, Lassar. He fears you as he fears himself.”

  I’d never hurt him. Never. How could I hurt him?

  “The truth is yours. You’ve touched him, and he sees you for what you are.”

  She stared at Senach in despair.

  “He doesn’t want me now,” she whispered.

  “No,” Senach said with gentle cruelty. “He doesn’t.”

  She closed her eyes against his words. “I love him.”

  “You do not know him.”

  “I know him.” She scrambled up and cried, “He isn’t what they say.”

  Senach shook his head. “You think so. You hope so. You do not know.”

  “He didn’t betray my brother and Geoffrey.”

  Senach moved his hand, a wave of dismissal. “’Tis darker than that. Far darker.”

  Roddy’s breath quickened. “He’s not mad. He never killed his father.” She backed a step. “He never did that.”

  The blind eyes looked through her, mocking her certainty.

  You think so. You hope so. You do not know.

  “He didn’t! I love him!”

  Senach stood before her, a weathered tree, brown and ancient and all-wise. “Not enough.”

  She cried, “What, then? What’s enough?”

  “The truth.”

  “But—” She stopped, the words lost in fright and sudden understanding. “No,” she said. “He’s forgotten it. He?
??s buried it. I won’t use my gift to plague him over what’s past and done.”

  “Your gift. Your curse. You’re afraid, Lassar. You make excuses.”

  She closed her eyes. “I won’t,” she moaned. “I won’t do it.”

  She felt Senach’s sightless gaze like cold burning on her skin. He said, in a voice of taunting lightness, “Why will you not, Lassar—if you think him innocent?”

  She looked down at her hands, twisted white before her. “Oh, God, let us stay as we are.” Faelan suffered her now, at least. He did not force her away. By her folly of trying to help, of finding a crack in the wall, she was reduced to this: that he tolerated her and held her at a distance. How much worse if she should do as Senach asked— “Let you,” he echoed. “You beg that of me? But the power is none of mine. ’Tis in your hands, this choice. On your head.”

  “I don’t want it. I don’t want it!”

  “Aye. As you don’t want the gift you have. But I will tell you, Lassar. ’Tis more than a gift. ’Tis what you are.”

  “But if he finds out…oh, please—if he should guess…” She remembered her mother, and the mark of a blow on a little girl’s cheek. Panic began to rise in her breast. “It can’t be the only way to help him.” Roddy drew a sobbing breath. “He’d hate me for it. Do you understand? He’ll hate me!”

  Senach only waited, with something old and implacable in his face. There was no pity there. No sorrow for what might come of what he asked. He understood, well enough. And still he asked.

  She licked her lips, tasting tears. Below her the green land and the sea shimmered. A dark blot took shape on the road to the mansion, a rider—two riders: the dowager countess on a dainty gray, and another, bareback, on a seal-brown mount. It was Fionn who cantered ahead into the court and slid to the ground with her pale hair blowing and a laugh like distant bells.

  Though Senach’s presence drained Roddy’s talent, she saw the countess’ look of unease in the company she kept. At first, the older woman refused to dismount. “I only came to see the house—” she began, but Fionn tossed her hair back and laughed again.

  “Do stay,” she said, the mildest of invitations, and the dowager countess stiffened as if she’d been slapped. Senach moved forward and offered his wrinkled hands. The countess stared at them, and then slowly placed her palms on his shoulders.

  Her feet touched the ground. Fionn giggled and flicked her mount on the nose, playful, but both horses seemed to take exception. The gray barb skidded back, and the earth-brown steed with the liquid eyes pawed the courtyard slate, sending sparks. The day that was bright grew gloomy as clouds rolled off the mountains. In the greenish storm light, Fionn’s solid presence seemed to fade. The odd sunbeam broke through, lighting Fionn and skittering away across the pavement, making her seem cobwebby and transparent with her hair of gold and her mantle of moss and misty white.

  The air was still, brittle, with the waiting quality of thunder about to break.

  Roddy looked at the dowager countess. The older woman was staring up at the house. There was such a strange horror in her face that Roddy turned, too. But it was only the mansion…

  …the mansion, whole and unscarred, with a roof and sash bars and glazing at the windows, with a grand door and heavy draperies…

  …and then, on a blink, a ruin again, with only imagination and the blackened walls to hint at what it once had been.

  “Madame.” Faelan’s voice was chilly. He stood in the gaping doorway, a dark, insolent devil-figure leaning against the gray stone frame. “I never thought to see you here.”

  “Faelan,” the dowager countess said, and no more—breathless and uncommonly tongue-tied.

  He stood a moment. His glance rested on Roddy, on Senach, and then moved to Fionn. The scorn in his expression wavered, shadowed to something painful, and he looked away as a man might turn from a light too bright.

  “What do you want?” he asked hoarsely, in a tone no friend would use.

  Fionn smiled. It was a look without softness. Without humanity. She seemed to grow older before Roddy’s eyes. “Justice,” Fionn said. “Only that.”

  Fine, pale lines of tension gathered around Faelan’s mouth. He stared at the steps before him.

  “I must be going.” The dowager countess gathered, her skirts and stepped quickly toward her horse. “Senach,” she said imperatively. “Help me mount.”

  Senach made no move to do so. The countess reached for the gray’s reins, but the horse eluded her with a snort. She grabbed again, and missed. The barb danced just out of her reach, with arched neck and nostrils flaring.

  “Senach!” She stamped her foot. A note of hysteria quivered in her voice. “I want to go.”

  “Let her,” Faelan ordered, with a touch of his old imperative. “’Tis myself you want, if there’s justice to be done.”

  But Senach only stood, silent in a strange reversal that made it seem the master pleaded with the servant.

  Faelan said, louder, in a less steady voice, “The crimes are mine. You’ve no quarrel with the others.”

  The wind rose and howled through the blank windows, a sound like an eerie laugh.

  He glanced at Roddy. “Go with my mother. Now.”

  “No.” Fionn spoke before Roddy could gather her wits. “Never think we are so kind.”

  Faelan stood straight in the doorway, his hands gripping the frame. He had a cornered look, a wolf-look, his eyes bright blue and dangerous and wary. “I know what you are. Why you come. ’Tis late—years late for vengeance for my father’s murder.”

  “Is it? Call it years, then, if you please. The guilt grows greater with each passing.”

  “’Twas I who killed him. Seek your justice with me, and let these others go.”

  Fionn shrugged and stroked the nose of the seal-brown steed. “Easily said. Easy to call down our curse on your self. Have you considered? He was our friend, your father. Do you know what we ask in return for his life?”

  “I can guess,” Faelan said roughly. “Let my wife go.”

  Fionn smiled, her sly smile, bright and somehow terrible to look upon. “Ah. You think to bargain. Your wife. Do you care for her so much?”

  He wet his lips. He seemed about to speak, and then did not.

  Fionn laughed, merry and cruel, and the wind blew hard and the clouds grew low and dark and roiling green. Faelan stood like a man in chains, as if his hands were bound to the stone that framed the door. Fionn’s voice came again, soft now, and chill as falling snow. “How much does she mean to you?”

  Faelan looked at Roddy, and suddenly in the force of that look she knew his mind—felt his love that was almost desperation, a tangled, driving, aching need. Everything. The thought came clear…his thought. He closed his eyes on it and turned his face away, leaving her weak with the knowledge.

  “That is what we ask, then,” Fionn said, “in payment for this guilt. Everything.”

  “No.” The word broke from him. He opened his eyes and looked at Roddy again with new fear.

  “She always belonged to us.” Fionn’s words were gentler than before. “You knew that.”

  Roddy blinked, not understanding. Faelan took a step toward her. She saw him stumble, and felt the weakness in his limbs that drove him to his knees. He cursed and looked wildly in her direction.

  She frowned at him, finding mist in her eyes, a slow fading of the hill and the house and her husband into white light, as if the mist claimed them. “Damn you!” Faelan’s despairing roar came from a distance. Fionn and Senach and the brown horse grew more real and solid as the others dimmed. “Don’t take her!”

  She looked wide-eyed at Senach, saw him changing: ancient eyes in a young man’s face, the twisted hawthorn staff leafing and exploding into green. It was like a dream—like a nightmare—as the brown horse took on wolf-shape, and seal-shape, and horse-shape again, and Fionn grew in brightness until Roddy could not bear to look.

  “Faelan,” she said, confused and frightened. “Faelan
.”

  She saw herself through his eyes, the day turning night around her, the wind strengthening, a ground mist flowing in the fading light. She lost way to the wind, staggered back, and the paleness began to rise around her.

  Mad, he thought, watching her go to wavering light. This is a dream.

  And she felt the heart-deep fear that grew in him, that he would awaken from this with nothing, not even the memory of her face, but only the echo of light and laughter that had plagued him all his life. He had been afraid of that since the day he’d first seen her—strange and lovely under a lad’s cap, with that fall of sun-gold hair. To find luck and love so suddenly, so easily— But he had known it for what it was. In his heart, he’d known. She was a dream, and he was waking now…

  She raised her eyes. “No,” she cried. “Don’t let them make you believe that.”

  “Roddy—”

  “I love you.” She moved toward him, but the wind rose and moaned, and her skirt billowed, plastered against her. She fought a step, and another. “I love you. Help me. Faelan…Faelan…help me. Believe me.”

  She strained, trying to reach. But there was no anchor, nothing but a hazy outline that appeared and then faded. She felt herself slipping, losing even that contact in spite of all her strength. She cried out in dismay, but there was nothing to hold, nothing to cling to but his thoughts— “I love you.” He heard her voice, thin and distant. Desperate. “Faelan!”

  She loves me.

  He did not believe it. He had never believed it. How could she love him? Murderer, blackmailer, cheat. Lunatic. He’d held her with his passion, pleasured her and burned for her, worked the land until he ached to his bones to build something that would hold her. And it all turned to mist before his eyes. To nothing.

  She loves me.

  Is this a dream? Was it all a dream? Little girl…

  Will I forget you?

  He fought to stand against the weight and weakness in his knees. That one thing he refused to yield…mad or sane, dream or lost reality—he would not forget her.

  He tried to see her image in his mind—her face and eyes—but they seemed to shimmer and flow, at one with the strange light and the blowing wind. It was the memory of her smile that came clearer.