The Summer King (34 page)

And Laurel drove on, face wet with tears, already mourning her friend whose cry rang out behind her.

Death is not the enemy. Light the fire!

aurel urged the horses up the mountain. There was little time left. The last rays of sunset were fading in the sky. Soon dusk would fall. She knew which way to go. She had only to follow the trail of broken birds.

Ian gazed at them with horror.

“What have I done?”

“It wasn’t you,” she insisted. “It was the king.”

“I am he. I carry his darkness.”

“Then we’re all guilty,” she said grimly. “We all carry darkness.”

Despite her words, she couldn’t look at him. In her mind burned images of the Summer King killing Ruarc and the birds; trying to kill her. And he looked exactly like Ian. The truth was a stone inside her. She would never feel the same about him again.

The road circled the mountain, winding ever upward. As they neared the summit, the air grew sharper and colder: rare air, almost too pure for human lungs. She felt dizzy and her body tingled as if immersed in icy water. The higher they went, the more she could see with an enhanced clarity of vision. Below her lay the island of Hy Brasil. Despite the roiling nightmare at its heart, she could see green hills beyond, untouched by war. Across the water she spied Grace’s stronghold at the tip of Clare Island. And to the north, secreted in its crevice on the precipice of Croaghaun, Laheen’s eyrie stood sentinel over the ocean. Gazing westward into the distance, she even caught sight of the pale shores of her homeland.

At last they reached the top of Purple Mountain. It was a level grassy space, strangely still and quiet. At its center stood a tall mound of wood. The brave songbirds did not die in vain.

Laurel led Ian to the pyre. The sun was sinking below the horizon. The waters encircling Hy Brasil glimmered gold. Beyond lay the living map of Ireland with its seawashed coasts shadowed with mist. On every peak girding the land were the pyres raised up by Faerie as well as those made by humans who followed the old ways. And there on the sacred Hill of Tara rose the sister-pyre to that of Hy Brasil’s.

Laurel looked upon the bonfires waiting to be lit. How fragile was the hope that held all together!

“Untie me,” Ian said quietly.

Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. But what choice did she have? She kept the feather ready as she freed his hands.

His rage flared in an instant. The Summer King had returned. He moved so swiftly, she hadn’t time to react. The jeweled dagger, hidden in his clothes, flashed in the air. Cut her hand. With a cry she dropped the feather.

As he dragged her away from it, Laurel looked around wildly. Her weapons were in the chariot. There was no one who could help.

“Ian!” she cried desperately.

He laughed, an ominously carefree laugh. Almost affectionate.

“What sport this has been. And now you have lost your feather. You know I will kill you before I let you near it. But I do not want to kill you.” He laughed again. The mildness of his tone was chilling. “I would rather make you wish for death.”

Though she struggled with all her might, she couldn’t escape. His grip was hard and cruel. There was a pettiness to his malice, to the delight he took in hurting her.

“Ian,” she gasped.

The blue eyes were cold.

“That will not work again. Not ever. Do you not know yet? Ian and I are one. Though he resists me, his efforts are futile and will soon cease as I draw him deeper inside me. It is not as difficult as you may think. He shares much of my nature. Though you hate to see it, you know how alike we are.”

“He’s not like you!” she cried furiously. “He can be good and kind. He suffers for the things you’ve done.”

That led to a laugh which froze Laurel’s blood.

“The things
we
have done, you mean. Would you like to see what we have done?”

“I don’t need to see it. I know already. You murdered the Queen of Clan Egli. An act of pure evil.”

That laugh again. She wanted to cover her ears to block it out.

Ian’s voice broke through.

“No! Please don’t. I’ll stop fighting you! Laurel, get away from him. You must get away!”

When the king’s voice returned, it was remorseless.

“Look upon our crimes, dear Laurel. See what we did!”

Still holding her tightly, he fixed his gaze upon her and she could feel his will bearing down like a mallet. She tried to look away, but couldn’t. She was drowning in the cold sea of his eyes.

And then she was surfacing, in a strange dreamlike manner, and found herself somewhere else entirely.

It took her a moment to grasp what was happening. She was scaling the precipice of Croaghaun, high above the Atlantic. Waves crashed on the rocks below. The sun was setting in the sky. A fiery red glow lit up the water and the crags around her. Though she had no control of her body, it was moving swiftly and effortlessly up the cliff.

She passed a stone platform jutting out from the rock. With a start, she recognized the ledge from which she fell the time Laheen saved her. But the broken gorge wasn’t there, and the finely carved arch opened into a passage that tunneled through the mountain. Now she understood. She was in the past, before the destruction of the Temple of the Birds, reliving a memory of the Summer King.

A sick feeling came over her and with it, dread.

“No,” she begged. “I don’t want to see this.”

Her pleas were in vain. Inexorably, pitilessly, she was drawn up the cliffside. She was powerless against him, unable even to look away. She had reached the second platform that led into the eagle’s eyrie. It looked very different, with white pillars and intricate latticework trailing flowers and greenery; a lovely balcony overhanging the sea.

Now she scuttled sideways, over to one of the many niches that scarred the rock face. Here she waited in the shadows.

“No,” she moaned.

For there, flying toward the royal bower, was the Queen of Clan Egli. Ular’s beauty was breathtaking to behold. The great tawny feathers, so like Laheen’s, were tipped with gold. The splendid wingspan was that of an angel’s. The golden eyes were wise and joyous. Queen of the Eagles. Mother of the Birds.

Around her flew her raven guard with their silver-white eyes. In front flew Ruarc, her captain and champion. Alighting on the balcony, they shape-shifted to their wingless form. The golden-skinned queen was a tall, slender beauty in shining raiment. The first troop of the Fir-Fia-Caw were garbed in black battle-dress.

Ular spoke to the Captain of her guard, a light remark, and they laughed together. Laurel couldn’t take her eyes off Ruarc. He looked so youthful and passionate, so proud and noble. Her heart ached to see him before his downfall, before the Doom of Clan Egli cursed him with madness and despair.

In the shadows, Laurel felt the Summer King raise the great bow to his shoulders. Felt him nock the arrow. Though she knew it was only a memory, a deed long done and gone, she tried to scream a warning. But the only sound was the whine of the arrow as it shot through the air.

And the cruel laugh of the king as he struck at the heart of his enemy.

Then the cry of the Queen as the arrow pierced her heart, and she toppled from the ledge.

Her death cry was drowned in the wild shrieks of Ruarc as he leaped from the cliff after her, changing form in midair.

And his cry was echoed by Laheen inside the eyrie, who had felt his own heart stop and knew what it meant.

Laurel was devastated by the scene, yet the vision didn’t end.

The arrow was loosed so close to the Queen, and with such force and enmity, that it tore through her body and continued onward. Over land and sea it flew, across plains and mountains, penetrating a rend in time and space caused by the weakening of the fabric of Faerie. Now it began to drop, plummeting toward a rocky coast on the eastern seaboard.

Laurel could hardly breathe. She recognized the small mountain that fell into the sea and the ledge skirting the cliff face. The ledge on which stood a young woman with long blond hair, making her way carefully. Carefully and with confidence, for she expected no mishap.

Until the arrow struck her heart.

And she fell backward into the waters below.

A new voice joined the anguished cries of Clan Egli.

“Honor!”

aurel went limp in the Summer King’s arms. She had lost all will to oppose him. The truth was shredding everything she had come to believe in. Everything she was fighting for.

He released her, smiling cruelly as she backed away from him.

“Collateral damage. Isn’t that what your people call it? An innocent casualty of a war she knew nothing about. How ironic. If Faerie did not exist, your sister would still be alive.” His shrug was casual, pitiless. “Faerie is not the land of your dreams. It is the home of your nightmares.”

Laurel stared around her, dazed; at the pyre that stood waiting, heaped with wood, and the bodies of the birds who had died to build it. What was the point? Shattered wings, blood-soaked branches, broken dreams. Everywhere she looked, death wiped out life. Why keep trying? There was nothing at the end but the dark of night.

Ian’s voice called to her, as if from far away.

“Forgive me, Laurel. Please forgive me.”

She was drowning in despair, gulping for breath between her sobs. When he tried to reach out to her, she pushed him away, weeping for Honor, for Ular, for Ruarc and Laheen, weeping even for Ian and also for herself; and for a world where nothing was purely right or good, not even the land of hopes and dreams.

The Eve of Midsummer was passing. The last rays of sunset faded in the sky. The last shimmer of light sank beneath the waves. Dusk was falling over the land. The dark was rising.

The Summer King’s voice rang with triumph.

“Let us part now. You to your world and me to mine. The time to light the fire has passed.”

His voice was low, even charming. He almost sounded like Ian. “Give up your mission. Forget the world of Faerie, the cause of your sorrow.”

In all that he had said and done to her, this was his greatest mistake. His undoing.

“I have a mission,” she whispered.