The Iron Sword (The Fae War Chronicles Book 1) (7 page)

“Molly,” I said to Finnead.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “she has the sigil-circle and iron of her own, and Kirby. We’ll be quick. When we get to the Court—” a more urgent tone entered his voice at these words—“you must not tell anyone that you know of the curse of cold iron. That would make your life forfeit at best.” He settled onto the motorcycle, and I managed to throw one leg over, my arm cradled to my chest. “Do you understand?”

I frowned through the haze of pain, not even able to feel shock at his casual mention of possible death at the Court. “No…but I won’t…”

“Good,” he said. I could feel his warm breath against my ear, and the electric brush of his skin upon mine as he settled close behind me.

As if from far away I heard the engine of the motorcycle roar to life, and my eyes closed as we started down the path to the Unseelie Court.

Chapter 7

D
imly I heard an argument. The voices belonged to men, but they were faint and I couldn’t make out the words. It felt as though heavy weights had been tied to every one of my limbs, and one on my chest for good measure. I tried to open my eyes as sensation slowly returned to my body and I began piecing together my surroundings.

The memory of the
garrelnost
returned in a rush, making me gasp a little. I felt a sickening pressure in my right forearm and as feeling returned to my legs, I surmised that I was still astride the motorcycle. I felt the solid warmth of Finnead behind me, and the vibrations of his voice as he spoke. My head rested to the side of his, on his shoulder.

“I understand perfectly that she is mortal,” he said, his voice containing a slight edge. I hadn’t heard him sound angry at all before, I realized dimly. And though I could feel my limbs now, I was pretty certain that I couldn’t move them under my own power, so I kept my eyes closed and listened. It wasn’t like I was eavesdropping—they both knew I was there.

“You were instructed to bring back the half-blood, not a mortal,” replied a deeper, authoritative voice.

“It is not your place to rebuke me,” said Finnead icily. “A debt of honor must be paid.”

The owner of the deeper voice laughed a slow, rolling laugh that made my skin crawl. I felt Finnead’s arm tighten slightly around my waist, and then the nauseating pressure in my arm increased. I started to shiver involuntarily. Were we still in Texas? Why was it so cold?

Finnead shifted slightly, gently sliding his arm further around me and taking my left wrist in two fingers. After a concentrated moment, he said, “She’s going into shock, Corrigan, so if you would, make up your mind.”

A series of shivers rippled through my body. I made a small involuntary noise as the movement jarred my right arm. The pressure started to resolve into a prickling sensation. I clenched my teeth and took as deep a breath as I could manage, willing myself not to make any more sounds. I felt my heartbeat in my throat, racing as though I had just finished a hard run. It was getting hard to breathe.

“And what will you do if I choose not to let you through the gate?” Corrigan asked.

Finnead shrugged languidly. “Then I suppose I would have to take the matter up with our Lady, and make my own way with the Brighbranr.”

“You would not create a Gate for the sake of a mortal,” said Corrigan, his deep voice rising in surprise and irritation.

“She has a brave heart,” Finnead said, “one that might even outmatch yours. There is something more about her than an ordinary mortal. And you know the code of honor.”

“You would do well to respect the Gatekeeper, Knight,” Corrigan said stiffly.

My shivers turned into tremors, spasms of my muscles that I couldn’t control. Despite my efforts, my teeth started to chatter. A sudden wave of pain crashed into me and I arched my back against it. I was willing to bet that my arm wasn’t the only thing broken, that Finnead hadn’t told me the full extent of my injuries.

“I give respect where it is due,” Finnead said, his voice truly angry now. If I hadn’t already been shivering, I would have felt a chill at the strength in his voice. “And I promise you, if you do not let me pass and she loses her life because of it, it will not go well for you.”

I felt a small prick of surprise. I was really hurt badly enough for Finnead to think that I might die? But then, I considered the size of the beastly
garrelnost,
and the hideous strength in its misshapen body, the muscles I had felt beneath its rank coat.

“You may be sure the Vaelanmavar will hear of this,” Corrigan said, clearly aware that he had lost the argument with Finnead.

“By all means, inform the Vaelanmavar after you have let me pass,” Finnead said coolly. And then he leaned in close and said into my ear, “Tess, can you hear me?”

I managed a soft and somewhat strangled sound of affirmation through the wracking shivers. It was a struggle, but I opened my eyes blearily, the dusky colors of the world blending into each other and refusing to resolve into a coherent picture. After a moment, Finnead draped his jacket gently over my shoulders, mindful of my arm, which I now noticed was in a crude sling, made from strips of some torn dark cloth.

“I cannot ride into Darkhill, so I must carry you,” he said. “And passing through the Gate may not be easy.” He was still holding the motorcycle up, but he swung his leg over and moved so that I could see his face. His dark blue eyes were sincere, and as I blinked at him, his mouth thinned and turned down slightly. Was he regretting his decision to bring me here? His face kept sliding in and out of focus, so I couldn’t concentrate properly on his subtle expressions.

“Darkhill?” I croaked.

“The place of the Hall of the Dark Lady,” Finnead explained, carefully leaning the motorcycle on its kickstand.

“Queen…Mab?”

“Yes,” he said. He helped me swing my leg over the motorcycle, and slid his hand under my knees, his other arm about my shoulders. “Are you ready?”

“As I’ll…ever be,” I said, taking a breath between the words. My heart was pounding in my ears and my arm began pulsing with pain. Beneath the bright hurt of my arm, I felt aches in my ribs and back. When Finnead lifted me, the world dissolved into a whirl of agony. I tried to fight it, reaching out with my good hand, feeling something solid and warm, grasping at it and clutching almost involuntarily as shock waves crashed through my body.

Finnead walked quickly, and I could tell through the haze of pain that he took care to make his long strides as smooth as possible, but every small movement sent ripples of blazing agony through my arm, up into my shoulder, through my head and back. I felt my eyes begin to roll back, and Finnead speaking to me urgently.

“Tess, listen to me, you must stay awake for the journey through the Gate,” he said into my ear, increasing his pace.

I gritted my teeth together and realized I held a generous fistful of his shirt in my left hand, clenching it against the pain. “Trying,” was all I could manage.

“Hold on,” he said. “I’m here with you, remember that.”

Why would he say such a thing? I wondered briefly, before I glanced up and saw a glimmer against the darkness of the Texas night, and a dark shape standing by the glimmer that I guessed was the unhappy Corrigan. The slice of silvery light was about the height of a man, and Finnead walked toward it.

“I’m right here with you,” he said again as we neared the Gate.

I opened my mouth to try a sarcastic reply between my shallow, panting breaths, but then Finnead walked through the gate and the silvery light swallowed us whole. The pain of my body disappeared but it was replaced by such a riot of sensation and sound that I wanted to scream—I tried and no sound came out, I couldn’t feel Finnead carrying me, all I knew was that the silver light was eating me alive, stinging like acid against my skin, burning through to my bones, accompanied by sounds that would have been beautiful if they didn’t reverberate through my teeth, overwhelming my ears.

After what seemed like an eternity, the sensation changed—the silver light was still there, but it became even stranger, because I felt as though there was a cord wrapped about my chest, and there were people with the strength of the
garrelnost
on opposite ends of the cord, pulling and tugging, stretching the cord so taut around my body that I felt as though I would tear in two. And then with a great wrench, the force pulling me forward won out, and the light receded abruptly along with the feeling of the cord, leaving me gasping and nauseous. All physical sensations returned at once, slamming me back into my body. My stomach, already nauseous from the pain of my arm, rebelled. I barely had time to turn my head to the side before I retched, and the instant after that I realized that I was indeed still in Finnead’s arms. But he had anticipated the sickness, dropping to one knee and propping my shoulders against his leg so that he had two hands free. I almost fell onto my injured arm, but his hands steadied me gently.

After there was nothing left in my stomach, I weakly wiped my mouth with the back of my good hand. The aching tremors returned full force and my words came out wobbly from between chattering teeth. “What…the hell…was that?” I rasped.

“That was your first time going through the Gate,” said Finnead, as if that explained everything. “You did admirably. It kills some mortals.”

“Great,” I wheezed as the weight on my chest returned. “Good to know…you aren’t taking…any chances…”

“I think it would be best if you stopped talking,” Finnead suggested.

I took his advice and concentrated on breathing, taking advantage of the silence to push down the pain and glance around. I was half-laying on cool green grass, and the land around us swelled gently in rolling hills. A copse of slender trees stood not far away, pulsating softly with an inner glow that made them seem wrought from silver. I knew at once that this was a different world—every part of my being knew it, even through the pain. There was something lovely and alien about the landscape, something wild and sweet in the cool night air. A part of my soul ached at the foreign feel, but another part reveled in the beauty of this new world suddenly spread out before me.

“I’m going to lift you again,” Finnead warned me.

“How…far…do we have to go?” I asked.

“I thought I told you not to talk,” he reprimanded me—teasingly? Was a Knight of the Unseelie Court
teasing
me? “It is about…a ten minute walk.”

I couldn’t help but groan a little. I didn’t know if I could hold onto consciousness for that long…and what scared me more was that I didn’t know if I wanted to. Cold, bottomless fear washed over me. I clutched at Finnead’s shirt again and felt tears squeezing themselves from the corners of my eyes. Frustrated, I clenched my teeth and willed myself not to cry.

“One more thing, Tess,” said Finnead, a new urgency in his voice. “When we are at the Court, remember, it would be best if you did not mention you know about iron.”

“Why?” I wheezed, confused. I remembered, with the vagueness of a dream, that he had said something to me about iron, before the silver light. I remembered the cool curve of the horseshoe in my hand, and the sudden heat of it as I stabbed it into the beast’s eye.

“It does not go well for mortals who know the Fae’s weaknesses,” replied Finnead. “It’s for your own safety.”

I couldn’t find the breath to make words, so I just nodded weakly, which set my head swimming. Finnead lifted me again and set off at his long, loping walk, which I was sure would be equivalent to a brisk jog for me. I kept my eyes shut, shivers ripping through me now and again despite Finnead’s jacket wrapped about me. A different kind of pain was settling into my chest. I felt myself breathing faster, heart pounding in my ears.

“Tess,” said Finnead, “you have to relax. We’re almost there.”

As much as I wanted to obey his words, I couldn’t. My body had finally had enough, and I felt myself sliding into unconsciousness, Finnead’s urgent words echoing in my mind as I succumbed to the darkness.

At some point, I awoke, and there were voices around me that I didn’t recognize, blurs of faces that I couldn’t make out. There were a few moments of blinding pain, and soothing hands, and then comforting warmth. Softness. Sleep.

I dreamed of strange things, in the disjointed way of fever-dreams or hallucinations. I saw Molly crowned with blue fire, holding aloft a shimmering gray sword. I glimpsed Finnead on his motorcycle, Molly behind him, her hands crusted with dirt and her eyes red from tears. And then the dreams brought me the image of a beautiful woman—one of the Sidhe, I had no doubt—clad in a white robe, standing straight and tall before a congregation of the Fae with a white-gold circlet on her brow. She raised her hand and spoke but I couldn’t hear her words, and then the image dissolved as if washed away by water, replaced by a glimpse of the same woman. But now she knelt in a dark and gloomy space, her white robe bedraggled and her crown gone. She looked wild and desperate and fragile. Then my dreams turned again to Finnead, and the picture of him as he had looked battling the
garrelnost
, except this time, the beast wrenched the sword from his hand and swiped at Finnead, knocking him aside as it had Kirby. I put out its eye with the horseshoe, and then ran to where the knight lay, unmoving. This time, deep gashes marred his chest, visible through the great rents in his shirt and jacket. His inscrutable eyes gazed up at me and he said, “You must kill it yourself.”

“But,” I said desperately in my dream, “I’ve never held a sword before…I don’t know
how.
”

Suddenly Liam was standing beside me, looking down at Finnead and then back at me. “I always have to protect you,” Liam said. “You’ve never been able to take care of yourself, Tess.”

And Liam took Finnead’s sword and stood against the beast. The
garrelnost
caught him again with his claws and I watched helplessly as the creature dragged my brother toward him—

“Wake up,
mae saell
doendhine
, wake up.”

My eyes flew open and I gasped. I blinked and turned my head to the side.

“You were dreaming,” the woman by my bedside said.

I gripped the bed-sheets reflexively. “Who are you?” I croaked. I looked around the small room.

“If you are looking for the knight who brought you, he’s not here,” the woman said calmly. She sat with her pale hands folded in her lap. “I am Allene. Do not be afraid. You are in the Court of the Dark Lady as her….guest.”

Something about the way Allene said “guest” made me think she really meant “prisoner.”

“In Darkhill?” I coughed a little, my throat dry from sleeping for so long. “How long have I been asleep?”

“Two days.” Allene stood and poured a cup of water from a pitcher on the bedside table. She made as if to hold it to my lips, but I shook my head. “I can drink by myself.” Then I paused, remembering some snatch of a myth. “If I drink this…” I said slowly, voice rasping.

“You won’t be bound here just by this drink, or eating something to sustain you,” Allene reassured me. “Only certain special foods fall under that law, and it’s antiquated anyway.”

I believed her. Something in her words made it impossible not to think she was telling the truth. I took the cup clumsily in my left hand—my right was splinted and wrapped in white bandages—and managed to drink, spilling a little down my chin. The sweet sting of the liquid made me cough a little. I realized belatedly that I wasn’t drinking water. I finished and gave the cup back to Allene. “What was that?” I asked, swallowing a few times.

“We call it
laetniss
,” Allene replied. “Light-water.”

“Where’s Molly?” I asked, feeling a prickle of unease that I was alone, in the Unseelie Court, without Molly or even Finnead. Then I remembered my dream. Liam’s words bit into my mind again.
You’ve never been able to take care of yourself, Tess.

I wished suddenly that I hadn’t asked about Molly.

“If you mean the half-blood, then she is in the room just over,” said Allene. Then she checked herself and looked at me. “I apologize,” she said. “It was rude of me to use our words for your friend.”