Aftershock (Rise of the Unseelie urban fantasy series)

Aftershock

by

S. Ravynheart and S. A. Archer

Ravynheart Publishing

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Aftershock

Copyright 2011 by S. Ravynheart and S. A. Archer

Cover Art Copyrighted 2011 by Ravynheart Publishing

http://www.sidhetouch.com

Kindle Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form without permission, except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Law. Printed and bound in the United States of America.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Chapter One

Jhaer dodged through the local fey crowding the market street of the village built up around the Seelie castle, thankful that his plain, loose-fitting clothing disguised him. Brightly colored streamers from the celebration draped from tree limbs and windows to flutter festively about the revelry. The ale flowed and the music played. Seelie fey of every race danced and sang ancient victory songs, obliviously ignorant that in conquering the Unseelie, they ensured the downfall of all fey.

Stealth carried Jhaer as far as the courtyard wall and then he unsheathed his fury and magic. With a rage that rent a boulder from the ground, Jhaer’s magic burst forth. His power over the element of earth belonged to him alone, so the boulder that splintered the teak courtyard gate with the explosion of cannon fire announced with certainty the Unseelie Elite who wielded it.

Anticipating a final assault while the captive Unseelie monarchs imprisoned within succumbed to the pressure to surrender their authority, the Seelie forces lined the top of the inner castle wall beyond the courtyard. Archers drew back at the sight of him, even as the Seelie Champion on the parapet called out to Jhaer. The corona of sun magic flared around Lugh, as if determined to prove his nickname as the Shining One. The golden boy of the Seelie Court in his sculpted armor vaulted down into the courtyard with a dramatic flair. If the demonstration of grace and courage aimed to impress, it missed the mark with Jhaer.

“Lugh! Have you been staring at your own magic so long you've blinded yourself?” Jhaer rushed into the courtyard. As the archers launched their first volley, Jhaer summoned a shield of stone from the very ground before him. The rock wall preceded him, the last couple feet at the top tilted back over his head, in case any clever archers aimed with a high trajectory. After the arrows in the initial strike splintered on his shield, Jhaer jerked up his hands, his magic heaving skyward the ground in front of the castle wall to block off the archers. His personal rock shield fragmented into dust that defused to the ground he’d drawn it from. He snarled at Lugh, the sole obstacle between Jhaer and the castle proper. “This must stop! Before it’s too late!”

“One Court, Sidhe!” Lugh proclaimed. “We can be brothers, you know. This feud can end. It should end!” Yet the Seelie ignited a barrier of fire, disproving his claim of brotherly love.

Jhaer shielded his face against the fire between them, an all too familiar tactic from the Sidhe with the magical aspect of the sun. “Light and dark cannot merge. One will always consume the other. You know this! Yet the arrogant Seelie’s hunger for power would rather destroy everything than have balance!” With that, Jhaer sank into the ground, closing it up over him.

Moving swiftly through the earth in a self-contained cavern like an air bubble rising through a viscous liquid that parted the ground before him and resealed it behind him, Jhaer detoured beneath the flames. He felt the vibration from the footsteps of the Seelie above, rushing to pursue him.

An unexpected tremor charged though the earth and slammed into him, lancing a dread dead into his heart. The Unseelie warrior gripped his chest, breath stolen from him by a horrendous shift in the magic surrounding him. Stunned to the point of panic, Jhaer surfaced once more, the Seelie not but a few quick strides from him. Before a cry of dismay could escape his lips, a shockwave of magic knocked him off balance. A crack climbed up the outer wall like a growing vine, reaching ever higher.

“Trying to bring down the entire castle?” The Seelie snarled. “Danu is in there!”

Jhaer stumbled backward before catching himself, his eyes wide as he stared at the fractures creeping up the courtyard walls. “Would I knock myself off balance? Open your eyes, Lugh! Something is wrong!”

Thunder rumbled like a landslide and then the sky flickered. Or rather the magic that gave the ceiling of the Mounds the appearance of a sky. Both Sidhe warriors relinquished their aggression to witness the cascade of destruction rupturing the fabric of their world. Cracks like a spider’s web shattered the illusion until the great bowl of rock overhead became visible for the first time in as long as any Sidhe could remember.

Jhaer kept his balance better the next time the ground shifted, although the horror that stabbed through him threatened to drive him to his knees. The thunderous sounds of earth ripping from earth filled the cavern that housed the magical realm of the Mounds. As the ground above them shifted ominously, Jhaer’s hands snapped upward, fingers curled as if gripping something heavy. Trembling from the strain, his mastery over the earth alone supported the bowl of rock overhead.

“Lugh!” Jhaer growled through clenched teeth, “Help Danu! NOW! I can't… hold it up… much longer!” All his concentration, his strength, focused solely on preventing the Mounds, home to hundreds of thousands of fey, from catastrophic collapse, for as long as he could.

Differences postponed in the face of imminent demise, the Seelie raced toward the castle as Jhaer bore the weight of the world. With muscles trembling from the effort, Jhaer waited for the dread to dissipate, anticipating the Creatrix to reach out and fortify the Mounds. But what he felt was life, the connection to Danu, fading away. The All-Mother, she who bound the Mounds together for centuries, was disappearing. She was dying.

All hope shattered, leaving only fatalistic determination. Through raw force of will, Jhaer held aloft the vast cavern ceiling, allowing as many fey as possible the chance to escape, the stronger ones via teleportation, the lesser fey certainly crowding the portals that might whisk them to the surface. Alone, Jhaer balanced each rock, each clump of dirt. For miles. Sweat ran in rivulets down the strained muscles of his body. Holding. Binding. Unyielding. And yet fissures snaked through the cavern under the oppression of tons upon tons of earth overhead. Fissures Jhaer could not mend. Fissures that sheared as chunks broke free and rained from the sky. Chunks that slipped through his shattering strength. Jhaer dropped to his knees, giving all his power to the failing magic. The edges of the cavern crumbled, creating a cascade as each lost rock freed those above it. Rockslides like waterfalls poured down in a roaring that could not completely annihilate the screams of terror. Down the ceiling fell in ever greater pieces until the entire cavern plummeted down like a mountain to entomb everything beneath, burying alive everyone who had not already escaped. Including Jhaer.

Chapter Two

Inhale… stale, dusty, moist. Blink… Pitch black. Try to move… Pinned.

Magic flowing.

Jhaer flexed his awareness. The disturbed earth overhead shifted with a groan, threatening to settle into the pocket that entombed him. Jhaer touched the unstable rubble with his magic, calming it.

Alone in the dark silence. The foul air, stale with use, choked him.

Reaching with his magic, Jhaer ignored the useless senses of his body. The earth… his element… embraced him. Merging with it, his will taking form, the ground became as yielding as liquid. The bed of rock beneath him rose as the arch of dirt above receded. Higher and higher. Faster as the surface drew nearer. Until, at last, Jhaer rolled onto the open ground beneath a sky full of stars. Not the façade that had been cast overhead for so many centuries, but the real night sky.

Deep breaths of the fresh air cleared his lungs. Exhausted in body and in magic, Jhaer rested on the bed of earth miles above what used to be the courtyard of the Seelie palace. Slowly, Jhaer rose to his knees. What his eyes beheld wrenched his heart. Where the Mounds once formed great hills above the majestic home of the Sidhe now lay only an enormous crater. A few bits of magic still flickered. The ground rumbled now and then as large chunks fell into their final resting places far below. His home, the home of all Sidhe… gone. Destroyed. He’d warned them of this and the end had indeed come. It had come crashing down hard.

And for what? The Seelie’s insatiable lust for power? His body numb. His heart, his very soul, defeated. Jhaer surveyed the crater around him and found what he expected. No one. No survivors. If not for his mastery over the element of earth, he too would be buried in this mass grave. Turning from the devastating sight, he limped away.

Chapter Three

Any other day he would have teleported. Not this day. Jhaer’s feet knew the path, fortunate for that since his senses barely registered the surroundings through the deafening layer of shock. Pastureland yielded to civilization as the early morning light glinted on east-facing windows in Kilkenny. Humans milled about, as humans are wont to do. Jhaer paid them no heed and they returned the courtesy.

From the outside the safe house appeared to be an unremarkable brick building in an unremarkable neighborhood of light industry and inexpensive apartments. The kind of place, if someone noticed it at all, one would assume was probably unoccupied and unworthy of interest, much less renovation. No mundane human eyes would notice the man in the dirt-smudged clothing turn down the alley and then slip through the Glamour that hid the only unbarred entrance.

Inside the long, two-story building, remnants of the former occupants remained by way of dusty and discarded industrial equipment and random cardboard boxes of broken junk and packing material. Through a grimy window, not a bit of this rubbish appeared worth the effort to steal. An intentional ploy.

Glamour again disguised the back hallway to the office space beyond with the illusion of a wall. Behind these multiple layers of protection, Jhaer opened an office door.

The Unseelie slumped at last in the leather chair behind the desk. Just bonelessly surrendering to the postponed fatigue, staring at nothing in particular. After an unmeasured amount of time, Jhaer opened one of the deep desk drawers. Nudging aside fake IDs and papers of random variety and usefulness in the paper-obsessed culture of the earth realm, he selected one of a handful of cell phone devices he’d procured.

He found the compatible cord and linked the phone to it and then to the power outlet in the wall until the device lit up, announcing it was charging. Not waiting for it to satisfy its hunger for the power it required to function while disconnected, Jhaer slid his finger across the touch screen.

The contacts symbol appeared on the first screen. He tapped it, then selected the first name of a Sidhe he scrolled to. The device chirped several times before the fake voice asked him to leave a message. Probably this particular Sidhe had been in the Mounds.

Jhaer rubbed at his face with his hand, as if this might wipe away the memories. Might prevent the thought of her as the crushing weight of failed magic snuffed out the light of her spirit without even the echo of her scream surviving to mark her passing.

They could not all be dead. They couldn’t be. Even though at the moment he felt utterly alone and disconnected from all he’d known and held dear. Jhaer slid his finger over the device to scroll the list again. Hunting… Searching for a name… Any name… Of someone who would not have been in the Mounds that day.

And found one.

Tiernan Kilgrave.

Jhaer held the device to his ear. Each hollow chirp like a knock on an empty house. A summons to someone who was not there and could not hear.

“Hey, Jhaer. What’re you doin’ up here? On another mission?” Tiernan’s Irish accent lilted with informal familiarity uncommon among the Sidhe of the Mounds. “Where are you? Your office? I’ll pop over.”

Without waiting for the invitation, the young Unseelie appeared sitting on the corner of Jhaer’s desk. Though only a century or so old, Tiernan’s cocky attitude didn’t soften for even the head of the Unseelie Elite. Then again, most exiles “didn’t give a shite” about customs in the Mounds. Tiernan swept Jhaer with his light, nearly colorless eyes.

“Been in a scrap? You look wrecked. Did the other bloke survive?”

“I doubt it,” Jhaer said seriously. “They’re gone. Everyone. The Mounds. Just gone.”

Tiernan lifted a brow, the grin disappearing. “Gone? What do you mean gone?”

“The Mounds collapsed. Nothing but a crater left. The Seelie crushed our home to pieces!” Jhaer pounded his fist on his desk, wishing it had connected with Lugh’s proud chin instead. Why couldn’t those arrogant Seelie have just listened to him? Not even just him, but all the Sidhe whose warnings and predictions fell on deaf ears?

“Ain’t that a kick in the bollocks?” Tiernan’s attention slid around the office, taking mental inventory of the equipment on the open shelves, his composure not even mildly ruffled by the devastating news. “Surprised it took this long, really.”

Jhaer glared at his fellow Sidhe. “How can you be so casual? We’re all going to Fade! The Mounds are gone! We have no source of magic to keep us alive!”

Tiernan actually chuckled. “No,
you
have no source. I never was bound to the Mounds.” He shrugged. “It’s not pure Fey, but hey, I don’t have to worry about Fading.”

Jhaer’s eyes widened as he stared at Tiernan. “You’re connected to this realm? But how? This place isn’t magical. I mean, look at them. Humans have no magical abilities.” His hand swept out in front of him, indicating the general populace.

Tiernan grinned crookedly. “Humans can’t link to the magic, but that doesn’t mean the earth realm doesn’t have any magic. You need to get yourself connected to this realm’s ley lines, that’s what you really need to do.” He hopped off the desk. “Mounds are gone, my friend. Let ’em go. Get yourself a crew and establish yourself. Earth realm’s your home now. Better to embrace it than die fighting it.”

Tiernan ripped a sheet from a note pad on the desk and started jotting on it. “I’ll give you a start. Couple of earthborns. Early twenties. One’s got himself locked up by humans, of all things. Bonehead, I kid you not. Other one’s a corner boy, bashing around the streets. Trouble both of them, but you know how to straighten ’em up. Mostly untrained, but you’re good at that, too.” He left the note. “If they work out, you can owe me one.”

Tiernan clicked closed the ink pen with finality. “And while you’re reinventing yourself, you ought to think about a name change. Something Irish that’ll blend in.”