The Dark Thorn (29 page)

Before he got close enough to deliver a killing stroke, the thing leapt backward from the fire suddenly and, scrambling up the jagged granite, disappeared into the night with bits of flickering flame still burning its body.

“Where did it go?” Bran breathed.

No one replied. All eyes probed the Snowdon, searching. Connal calmed the horses while Kegan looked at the wounds Willowyn had sustained. Lugh fought to rise, his movements drunken. No sounds other than the snorting Rhedewyr and the heavy breathing of the Long Hand surrounded them.

Long moments passed. Nothing happened.

“Is it gone?” Kegan hissed.

Richard gripped Arondight tightly. “I don’t think so.”

The shadow dropped again—this time down the trail behind the clurichauns.

As the others rushed to aid them, Kegan jumped in front of his son, a long silver knife freed and a whip in his other hand. The bodach pounced. Even striking it with the whip, the monster flung Kegan aside like he was a puppet.

Ignoring Connal, the bodach came at Bran again.

The bodach struck the boy from behind, sending him to the ground. Warding himself from the creature with his arms raised, Bran roared defiance. It did not matter. The beast rose up, eyes flaming and a snout filled with teeth leering over him.

“Finalleeee,” the bodach snarled venomously.

It reared up, its claws extended and glinting. It was happening all too quickly. Richard could do nothing but watch. The digesting dead in the opaque body were clear to the knight, stark in relief and reality.

Bran would become a part of it; Richard had failed.

Just as the claws fell, a blur of silver screamed in front of the creature’s face.

The bodach swatted with both forelegs at the apparition but could not connect. With a flurry of flashing wings and chittering screams, it kept between the creature and Bran, blinding it from its prey.

“Snedeker!” Deirdre cried in surprise.

Gossamer wings a blur, zipping around so quickly Richard could barely distinguish it, the fairy flung dust at the bodach. The silver grit landed on the creature’s face and the fiery eyes dimmed. The beast shook its head back and forth, trying to dislodge whatever had been thrown upon it, snarls of anger now replaced by snorting and hissing.

“Run, you doltish idiot, run!” the fairy shouted at Bran.

As Bran gained his feet, one massive ghost paw swatted the unaware fairy.

Snedeker disappeared into the night like an insignificant insect.

It was enough. As the bodach bunched to attack Bran, Connal was there, the clurichaun swinging his war hammer broadly, his face livid. He gave no ground. The head of the hammer passed through the bodach as if it were smoke, the creature laughing with dark glee. It ignored the ineffective attack. In one swift motion it lifted Connal from the trail. The hammer dropped from his fingers and he yelled out in pain as the shadowy beast squeezed.

The flaming eyes sparked—and then tore the clurichaun apart at the waist.

“No!” Kegan roared.

The halves of Connal flew apart in a crimson mist, the clurichaun dead before he hit the ground.

Inhuman laughter ricocheted off the cliff.

Ignoring his growing weakness, Richard drove Lyrian straight toward the bodach. Not expecting the attack, the Unseelie creature had nowhere to go. Blue flames lit the night as Richard brought Arondight down in a raging arc. The bodach tried to evade it but was too slow; the sword cleaved one of its legs. The howl of the beast deafened the air. As it shrunk into an inky mass, it retreated toward the only area it could—the cliff edge and the open air beyond.

With as much will as he could muster, Richard sent his power into its chest. Fire exploded, a torrent of magic. The bodach fought for a moment, still cradling its lost leg, before the flames sent it flying off the cliff into the black abyss below.

All went still.

Arondight dissolving, Richard nearly blacked out atop Lyrian; he managed to remain horsed, if barely. Silence fell over the Snowdon. Deirdre aided Lugh. The remaining warriors of the Long Hand helped her as well and looked after their dead.

Kegan cradled the remains of Connal, weeping audibly.

“What was that thing?” Bran breathed.

“Part shadow, a death machine given life,” Richard mustered, wiping his sweaty brow and gulping the mountain air. “It is a pure hunter, one of the Unseelie Court. Given a scent, it will never stop…never stop until its prey is dead.”

“Whose scent did it have?”

“Yours, of course,” Richard snapped.

“Why me? How?”

“It could have been anything.” Richard shook his head. “Your coat. Some scrap of torn clothing. There are few bodachs left, those who exist are imprisoned and only released as assassins. Someone wants you dead—badly.”

“Did you kill it?”

“No,” Richard said, dismounting and barely keeping his feet. “But it will be gone for a few days.”

“How can that be? It can’t be more than a few hours behind us.”

“It landed on the other side of the river,” Richard said, pointing over the edge toward the ravine. “Bodachs can’t tolerate water. It will have to find some kind of bridge or fallen tree to cross for it to begin its pursuit again. That should take several days, unless…”

“Unless what?”

“Unless we are very unlucky.”

The knight turned to Kegan. The clurichaun sat with what remained of Connal in his arms, the tears cascading down into his beard. Richard didn’t know what to say.

Such grief had left him long ago.

“We will bury him here, my son. My son, my son,” he repeated in a whisper as he rocked back and forth.

With Snedeker returning, Willowyn, Lyrian, and the rest of the Rhedewyr surrounded Kegan and Connal. All of the horses lowered their heads, eyes closed.

Richard watched the homage to the horse caretakers.

It would be a long night of sorrow.

The first ghostly murmur dragged Bran from troubled sleep.

He raised his head up, fully alert, and listened to the night. The group had moved off the trail into a sparse copse of fir trees where they couldn’t be seen by possible mountain travelers. The insects had long since ended their song and the stars occasionally fought through the foggy film of the Nharth that had snuck in as true night fell. Whatever animals that were still living in the Snowdon ignored the travelers. The sleeping lumps surrounding the dying fire did not move, and the hellyll Bran knew to be on watch was not evident. Arrow Jack sat perched, unmoving, above, and Snedeker slept nearby on an island of moss, his wings fluttering with every breath he took.

Nothing stirred. The camp was as silent as if the world had frozen and he alone could observe it.

The sound that had woken him was not clear.

With disappointment, Bran looked to the bedroll where Kegan should have been sleeping.

It was empty.

Bran laid back and stared up into the tree limbs, unsettled. The death of Connal was imprinted on his memory. Blame burned inside him like a fever. The clurichaun had tried to keep Bran safe—and had sacrificed his life for it.

There was no chance of removing the guilt.

While somewhere in the darkness, the bodach followed.

The whisper came again, more obvious now that he was awake, a tickling in the recesses of his mind. It was foreign but not intrusive, an offer rather than a command.

With sudden insight, Bran pulled the box containing the Paladr from his pocket, the silver knot scrollwork on its lid glimmering in the palm of his hand.

He ran his thumb over the lid of the box, about to open it.

“Think on this, boy. Don’t be rash.”

Bran stilled his hand. Richard stared at him from his bedroll, the knight lying on his side with eyes glittering in the midnight.

“What do you mean?”

“You have awakened the Paladr.”

“I don’t think so.”

Richard looked off into the darkness, half of his face lost to shadow. “It is aware, offering itself. Whenever you are in danger, it responds to the one who carries it. It did so in Dryvyd Wood and it is doing so now. I can feel its magic even from here.”

“I haven’t felt this before,” Bran countered.

“No, but I bet you were thinking about Connal just now.”

“How did you know that?”

“What happened when you were confronted in Dryvyd Wood? When you were attacked by the bodach tonight?”

“The Paladr became hot in my pocket, like my hip was on fire.”

“It responds to your need when you are in danger,” Richard answered. “It is offering the protection and power of the Heliwr.”

“Did you know?” Bran asked. “Know what Merle meant by protection, I mean?”

“I guessed. I know the old man far better than he gives me credit for,” Richard said. “And I’m telling you to think it over. For all the reasons we’ve discussed and thousands more.”

Bran looked back into his hand, lost in thought. Merle had thrust the box there during the fight in Seattle with the command to use it only when Bran
wanted
protection. He had thought it a talisman of some sort, used and eventually discarded. Instead, if what Richard said was true, using the Paladr would come with a lifetime of servitude as the Heliwr. Richard had cautioned Bran to not trust Merle. In so doing though, the knight advocated Bran turn away from the one thing that offered protection—and the ability to never let happen again the sacrifice Connal, the two hellyll, and the other Tuatha de Dannan in Dryvyd Wood had made on his behalf.

“What happened to you?” Bran asked. “How did you give up responsibility over your own life, over the faith in yourself to summon Arondight?”

“Why are you even interested?”

Bran withheld his acidic reply. An owl hooted a lonely cry nearby. Long moments passed. Like many of the damaged people he had met on the street, Bran knew the knight would eventually share his story.

“I had a wife once,” Richard began finally, haltingly. “She was… my world. And she was taken from me.”

“And?” Bran prompted.

“Elizabeth,” Richard went on, his voice barely a whisper. “Elizabeth Welles. We met after I left my graduate studies at the University of Washington, met one night as she passed the bookstore. She loved books. She had a smile that could level me. Loved to joke. She saw the brighter side of living life. When we met we both just knew. We were married and I moved out of the bookstore apartment to share one with her in Pioneer Square.

“I was already a knight when we met, watching over the Seattle portal and keeping the worst of Annwn from coming into our city. Back then I was only several years older than you are now, cocksure of myself but unsure of my place in the world. She came into my life and it forever changed. She gave me more meaning than anyone ever had before her and since.”

A wildcat growled ferociously nearby, interrupting the tale, followed by a frightened squeal cut short by whatever prey the cat had killed.

“Did she know you were a knight?”

“Leaving in the middle of the night with no explanation leads any spouse to become suspicious,” Richard said tightly. “I can still remember the night I told her—about Annwn, the fey of both Courts, King Arthur, and how I possessed a power few in history had ever known and fewer yet had carried. She laughed when I told her the identity of Merle—laughed until I called Arondight. She spent the next several months reading all she could about Celtic mythology, the history of Europe and the Vatican—as well as my place in all of it. The questions were endless for days and days.”

“If I told anyone about this, I think they’d have me committed,” Bran said.

“When Merle first told me, I considered it myself.”

“And John Lewis Hugo knew of her, used her against you.”

“He knew all of it. Somehow,” Richard said, darkening. “As Merle suspected in Seattle, Philip has one of the relic mirrors. It’s the only explanation.”

“How did she die?”

“A korrigan, a shapeshifter and illusionist of sorts, came through the portal,” Richard said quietly. “I did not stop it in time.”

Bran nodded. The knight appeared haunted, an inner hatred—a manic self-loathing—having entered his eyes.

“When she died, you changed.”

“I did,” Richard agreed. “My role led to her death. Yes, I had power, power to prevent it. But sometimes that is not enough. I was young and foolish and believed that power gave me right to live and enjoy life as I saw fit.” Richard paused. “I tell you this now not to share my pain—nothing else pains me more than speaking of Elizabeth—but to prevent your
own
pain. I do not wish on you what I’ve gone through. You still have a choice.”

“So do you,” Bran replied.

Richard laughed darkly. “No. This is all I am now.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Once I lorded over the portal because I enjoyed how special it made me feel in the much larger scheme of the world,” Richard added. “I was humbled in the worst way, by a God I know exists and yet does not care for me. Now I stand guard against Annwn, hoping to prevent other people from having to experience the pain I’ve lived with for years and years now.”

“God has nothing to do with this,” Bran asserted.