“Usgar-laoch, where are you going?” Mairen asked, rushing to keep up with him.
“Brayth was killed and taken,” he answered, never slowing—and indeed, increasing his pace, “by the demon fossa.”
Mairen paused for a moment, digesting the information, then gasped and rushed to catch Tay Aillig, joining him just as he went under the flap of Seonagh’s tent.
There sat Aoleyn, sobbing, cradling Seonagh in her arms. The older woman didn’t move; were it not for the occasional whimpers coming from her, the two newcomers would have thought her dead.
Tay Aillig moved over and pulled her away from Aoleyn, who tried to resist only briefly. He rolled Seonagh onto her back and used his thumb to lift her eyelid.
Mairen was there by then, shaking her head.
“What is it?” Aoleyn begged.
“You tell us,” the Usgar-righinn prompted. “What happened here, child?”
“Brayth,” Aoleyn breathed. “He was fighting the sidhe, when … when it … when the creature came onto the field.”
“The demon fossa,” Tay Aillig confirmed.
“We tried to get away,” Aoleyn recounted, her voice breaking with a sob every few words. “I flew him. I flew Brayth up into the air, above the demon. But he fell—I failed!”
“You did not fail, child,” Mairen said.
“The fossa caught him,” Aoleyn stammered. “The fossa … caught me! The demon reached through, right through Brayth, and found me, and caught me! And Seonagh came to me … I … it…” She shook her head, thoroughly flustered, unable to put the experience into words.
For a long while, Mairen prompted her gently, while Tay Aillig stood there, towering over Seonagh’s still form, his eyes clearly judging Aoleyn.
She felt that burn, intimately.
“What did Seonagh do?” the Usgar-righinn said suddenly, her tone sharp, demanding a response.
“She pushed me out of the way,” Aoleyn blurted. “She jumped … her spirit pushed me away, she took my place with Brayth. To block the fossa.”
Mairen held up her hand, bidding the girl to silence, for there was no more to say. Mairen and Tay Aillig had seen this before, after all, and now they knew the truth of Seonagh’s malady.
Mairen nodded to Tay Aillig, who lifted the limp woman into his arms.
“Help her!” Aoleyn pleaded as Mairen and Tay Aillig went for the tent flap. Tay Aillig didn’t respond, just kept walking, but Mairen turned back and stared at Aoleyn for a moment, a flash of sympathy crossing her eyes as she shook her head.
Aoleyn slumped back as they left, and alone and in the dark, she cried. For all the traumas of that horrible night—Brayth taking her forcefully, Brayth dying before her, facing the dark reality of the fossa—this last one, the loss of Seonagh, stung most profoundly.
All the rest of the night, Aoleyn cried, and felt more alone than she ever had in all her life, because she knew.
She knew.
Seonagh wasn’t coming back to her.
26
THE BITE OF MONSTERS
“Ah, Brayth,” Aghmor said, shaking his head and taking a deep breath to try to steady himself.
He sat on a large stone with Ralid, the great-grandson of Chieftain Raibert, just to the side of the high plateau, taking a break as the women and uamhas went about their work of setting up the winter camp.
“A good man and fine warrior, by all the tales,” said Ralid, who was several years younger than Aghmor and had just seen his second battle in the fight with the sidhe.
“The tales are not enough,” said Aghmor with a little laugh. “He almost killed me once.”
“You fought him?”
Aghmor shook his head and recounted the story of his and Brayth’s first raid, when he had taken a brutal fall and Brayth had stood over him, ready to plunge his spear through Aghmor’s chest.
“Ah, but he was just being tested then by Tay Aillig,” Ralid said with a chuckle, and he added slyly, “Too bad, that. I’d be a rung closer to becoming Usgar-laoch without the likes of Aghmor standing ahead of me!”
The two shared a laugh at that, and Aghmor nodded in praise of the joke—but stopped short when he glanced past his companion, over to the camp, to see a short and dark young woman going about her chores with energy and enthusiasm, her long black hair flipping about as she bent and rose and hustled a log or tent pole over to a desired spot.
She glanced back once and matched stares with the man, her black eyes flashing.
“Oh, but what he lost,” Aghmor whispered, rising to get a better view of the woman.
Ralid glanced over his shoulder and stood up, noting the target of the man’s words.
“Aoleyn,” he said. “Full of the fire, is that one. She’d be a ride!”
“A ride I mean to take.”
Ralid started and looked at Aghmor curiously. Brayth was barely cold in the ground, and the man was already ogling his wife!
Aghmor just shrugged at the look. “Why not?” he said. “She’s years younger, so I’m the right age. She was betrothed to my dearest friend and now he’s no more, so it’s only fitting and proper that I serve in his stead.”
“Serve?”
“It will be a sacrifice,” Aghmor replied, barely able to keep a straight face. “But for Brayth, I’ll suffer.”
“You will suffer indeed,” came a third voice, and both young warriors turned to witness the approach of Tay Aillig.
Aghmor sucked in his breath and leaned back defensively, and Ralid began hopping from foot to foot with obvious panic.
“She is powerful and possesses a great … allure,” Tay Aillig said quietly, moving up to the two, and glancing back to watch Aoleyn going about her chores. He turned back to look Aghmor in the eye. “You’ll not have her, young warrior,” he said, though not in a threatening or commanding way.
Aghmor didn’t quite know how to take the statement, or warning, if that’s what it was. He was off-balance, sitting before this man, the most powerful and physically intimidating man among the Usgar.
“The witch Seonagh was broken by the fossa,” Tay Aillig explained.
Aghmor and Ralid both nodded, for it was common knowledge about the camp, of course.
“Aoleyn, too, was touched by the demon,” the Usgar-laoch continued. “We’re not for knowing how bad, but there are no chances to be taken. She might yet be following the witch into Craos’a’diad. But even if not, there’ll be no talk of her pledging to any until we know.”
“How long?” Ralid asked before Aghmor could.
Tay Aillig shrugged.
Aghmor and Ralid exchanged glances.
“Back to work,” Tay Aillig commanded, and the two brushed themselves off and scurried away.
Tay Aillig grinned, watching them go, thinking himself quite clever. The Usgar-righinn was fairly certain that Aoleyn had suffered no permanent consequences from her brief encounter with the spirit of the demon fossa—nearly as certain as she was that Seonagh would never come out of her stupor. And given that they were only waiting for the first full moon of Calember, the tenth month, to sacrifice Seonagh into Craos’a’diad, it seemed as if Mairen was pretty confident!
Tay Aillig’s grin became an open snicker as he considered Aghmor, remembering the inept fool’s first raid, when Aghmor had fallen and nearly killed himself long before any hint of battle had begun. No, that one would not have Aoleyn.
Tay Aillig was fifteen years Aoleyn’s senior, already into his thirties. He had not yet taken a wife. But he knew.
That one was for him.
If she continued with the promise she had shown, that is. He had seen the magical display by Brayth against the sidhe. He had witnessed the unharnessed power of Aoleyn flowing through the man and through his enchanted weapon, throwing fire and lightning. He had watched Aoleyn’s magic launch Brayth up into the air, above the battle, above the leaping fossa. With Aoleyn’s magical prowess supporting him, Tay Aillig would have the tribe. All of it.
He was
Usgar-laoch now, because Raibert was old and infirm. Soon enough, Raibert would be gone, and Tay Aillig would claim it all, would become Usgar-triath. Still young and strong, Tay Aillig would fill both roles, as Raibert had once done, and so there would be no need for any Usgar-laoch. It would all be his.
* * *
“They’re whispering terrible things,” Aoleyn said to the woman.
Seonagh lay on her cot, her eyes wide open but unfocused, darting to and fro. Aoleyn could only guess what she was seeing in her mind, but the girl was certain it had nothing to do with her actual surroundings. Every so often, indiscriminately, Seonagh would issue a gasp, or a soft mewling sound, and even those reactions seemed unrelated to anything going on about her in the tent.
“You must wake up,” she whispered insistently into Seonagh’s ear. “Seonagh, you can’t leave me. I need you. They whisper of Craos’a’diad!”
Aoleyn sat back, studying the woman carefully, hoping her last remark would shock Seonagh back to her sensibilities. They were running out of time, she knew, and she was running out of options!
She rolled a small crystal over in her hand. She could hear the distant magical song of the wedstone flakes within that pellucid cylinder, but she didn’t connect to it. Not yet.
She wanted to call to it, to use it to send her spirit into Seonagh to help the woman fight her battle, but she hadn’t yet managed to do that.
For Aoleyn was afraid.
She had felt the cold darkness of the fossa, an absence of life more profound than death. A simple, inescapable void, unwalled, endless, a trap formed of the shadowy stuff of despair.
“Seonagh, please,” she whispered, and she took the woman’s hand in her own, brought it to her lips, and kissed it. It had surprised Aoleyn how much she loved this woman. Seonagh had become a mother to her, she now understood. A stern mother, perhaps, but now Seonagh’s love for her shone so clearly to Aoleyn. Seonagh had leaped in front of the fossa’s darkness. She had pulled Aoleyn out of that place, leaving herself behind to cover the retreat. And she had known—of course, she had known! No skilled witch could enter such a profound darkness and not understand the truth of the mortal danger.
Still, she had come for Aoleyn. Seonagh had come to save this girl, a sacrifice no less heroic than if she had leaped in the way of a spear flying for Aoleyn’s heart.
And that spear had struck home, so it appeared.
Aoleyn took a deep breath, steadying herself, steeling herself. She looked down at the crystal in her hands, Seonagh’s own wedstone, and rolled it about, letting its vibrations permeate her form and find her living core. The crystal sang to her and she silently sang back. Hearing the song, emulating the song, strengthening the song.
She felt her spirit unmooring from her corporeal form and felt the unwitting invitation of Seonagh. She thought only briefly of the first time she had experienced this, and reminded herself that she had to be strong here, to know her boundaries and to fight as if her very life depended on her victory.
She started out of her body.
“Child, no!” came a shout, and Aoleyn felt her form jostled hard, felt fingers grabbing and tearing at her hands, tugging the crystal—and because she was unmoored, she couldn’t respond fast enough to hold on.
She cried out and staggered, nearly falling over as she tried to reorient herself to the shocking reversion.
She stuttered and stammered and looked to the side, just in time to catch a punch in her face, one that laid her low. From the floor, she looked up at two forms, women, Connebragh and the Usgar-righinn herself, Mairen!
“What are you doing, silly girl?” Mairen demanded, shaking and rubbing her fist.
“It is a wedstone,” Connebragh said, holding up the crystal. “Our fool Aoleyn thought to enter the spirit of Seonagh and do battle.”
“Idiot!” Mairen snapped at poor Aoleyn. “Seonagh is lost to darkness and if you wander into the black, you will never find your way back!”
“I have to try!” Aoleyn pleaded.
“You have to do as you are told, and nothing more,” said the Usgar-righinn.
“We can’t just let her die!” Aoleyn leaped up to her feet, ignoring the line of blood running from her nose, even though she was spitting red with every word.
And then she got hit again, not physically, but more profoundly, as a wave of stunning energy rolled forth from Connebragh, from the very wedstone crystal she had taken from Aoleyn. The girl’s thoughts chased shadows down a hundred side paths, and nothing from her consciousness seemed remotely connected to any limb or muscle. Her eyelids flickered, her words came out as jumbled nonsense, and she staggered and tumbled again, overwhelmed.
She had barely hit the floor when Connebragh was atop her, sitting on her chest and pressing the wedstone crystal across her throat, cutting off her air. Aoleyn tried to fight back, but she noted the uncanny strength in Connebragh’s arms, and understood the woman’s muscles to be magically enhanced!
“I should kill you now and save us the lingering grief of your idiocy!” Connebragh said down at her. Aoleyn slapped futilely and felt as if her throat was crushing under the pressure. She saw Mairen looming over Connebragh’s shoulder and the Usgar-righinn seemed in no hurry to stop the murder!
Aoleyn knew that she was about to die.
* * *
“Too cold,” Talmadge said, shivering by the house entrance even though he was bathed in morning sunlight.
“Oh, that wind,” Khotai agreed as she neared, when the first gust of the wind blowing straight across the lake tickled her naked body. She moved closer to Talmadge, who lifted his arm to let her under his blanket beside him.
“It is wonderful here,” Khotai said.
“Because of the company, I hope.”
The woman laughed and kissed him on the cheek. “All the company,” she said. “I’ve not slept so quiet in many years. I feel as if I am among friends—friends who would protect me.”
Talmadge nodded, understanding every word. This mountain plateau was a wild place, full of monsters and hungry carnivores, thick with sidhe and with a notable demon rumored to be roaming the great mountain. And yet, for all of that, he, too, felt safer here than at Matinee, or in the Wilderlands, and surely more than in the Kingdom of Honce-the-Bear. Because here he was among a simpler folk, an honest and honorable folk. None here would try to steal his pearls or other goods, or even cheat him in a deal.
For the tribes of Loch Beag, life was a simple pleasure. The work was hard, certainly, the challenges ever present … but maybe it was just that, the need to cooperate and work together, the need to depend upon your neighbor in order to survive, that so appealed to him and Khotai. The tribes of the lake did fight against each other, but those battles were strictly coded. Seldom did anyone ever get killed, few even hurt. Most of the time it was just a matter of fishing boats vying for a favored spot.
“If a boat flips out there, every other boat about, from any tribe, will sail and paddle hard to the rescue,” Talmadge said aloud, letting his thoughts carry him to that truth for Khotai’s benefit.
She looked at him curiously.
“Community,” he explained. “Even in their arguing, they’re knowing the order of things for the best of them all. The tribes are neighbors, not just folk living near each other.”
“And might that letting men and women die’s not in their hearts?” Khotai said.
Talmadge nodded emphatically. “Whene’er I think of those people I know from Matinee, I remind myself that there are people like this.”
Khotai wasn’t about to argue that point.
“All the tribes are like that?” Khotai asked, snuggling closer.
“Yes.”
“Even the one on the mountain?”
Talmadge pushed her back to arm’s length and stared at her as if she had slapped him. “Usgar? No!” he said emphatically, shaking his head for a long while.
“The villagers call them deamhain,” Khotai said. “Are they really that
awful?”
“When they raid the villages, they kill any man they encounter, and take the women they find up the mountain with them,” Talmadge explained. “Sometimes they kill them or take them as slaves. Sometimes they let them go to return home. But all are raped. The Usgar warriors would spread their seed to the villages in the most violent of ways.”
“So, among the people here, there are some with Usgar blood?”
Talmadge shrugged. “Likely not here. Sellad Tulach is rarely hunted by Usgar. It’s too far afield, with no easy way to get here other than the lake, and the Usgar won’t go out on Loch Beag. But in some of the villages, yes, there are folk with Usgar blood.”
“And they are treated no differently than those without,” Khotai stated more than asked, obviously confident in her reasoning, and smiling widely when Talmadge confirmed it with a nod.
“And us?” Khotai asked. “How would they treat us if we stayed?”
“Perhaps someday we’ll know.”
Khotai pouted.
“I thought you were anxious to get the pearls to Redshanks,” Talmadge said.
The woman heaved a great, exaggerated sigh. “Someday,” she echoed, pulling away and out from under the blanket.
She only got a few steps from Talmadge before glancing back over her shoulder. “Will you let me return with you again next year?”
Talmadge just grinned wickedly as his eyes roamed up and down Khotai, admiring the view.
* * *
The room darkened around her. She felt herself falling back into herself, as if the essence of her consciousness, her very life, was diminishing within her dying body.
Her throat ached no more; she was beyond that sensation, drifting away into a realm of the spirit.
Dying.
She heard Usgar calling to her, to take her to Corsaleug, and so she followed the sound, hoping she would be found worthy of the god’s halls.