“Why did you hit me?” she asked, mainly as a way to keep from thinking. Thinking was not a good thing right now. Thinking would lead to uncontrollable weeping, and she refused to have Brendan’s last image of her be tear-streaked and blubbery. No. Not his last image of her. That meant he was dying. That there was no hope left. That Máelodor had won.
“The mage would have sensed your conscious mind and attacked it as he did with Rogan,” Killer explained. “I let him believe I was the shooter. Magic does not work on me in quite the same way.”
Before ducking beneath the toppled broken slab that served as entrance to Arthur’s tomb, Killer sought her eyes with his. “Do you come?”
She returned his questioning look with a determined glare.
“Then take hold of Brendan’s hand and do not let go. That should keep you safe in the between of worlds.”
She’d no time to ask for an elaboration before he stepped into the wash of white light, the color blanched
from his face and body, replaced by a strange blue-silver glow that crackled over his skin and clothes. Quickly she grabbed Brendan’s right hand, squeezing it as if she were stepping out onto a narrow cliff ledge above a raging sea. A roar filled her ears, her body buffeted in rip currents of air and water, leaping flames and grinding earth. And together they crossed the threshold and entered the cave.
From the outside, it was no more than a granite slab lying at a crooked slant against a shorter, stouter stone, barely large enough for a full-grown man to stand upright.
Inside, the narrow mouth opened into an immense cavern, the walls rising around her glimmering with an opalescent fire. Water ran over folds and ridges in the rock before being channeled into a marble bowl at the base of the opposite wall. In the center of the cavern stood what looked like an altar or a sarcophagus. Long. Narrow. Its side separated into intricately rendered panels depicting the lost king’s life from birth within a Cornish fortress to defeat at the hands of his traitorous son. Carved into its lid, a dragon coiled round a sword protruding from a rock. The details wrought so well one almost saw the twitch of a tail, the gleam of steel.
Arthur’s tomb. The resting place of the last great king of
Other
. Fantasy come to life.
She’d no time to be awestruck before shadows surfaced within the cave’s strange shimmering mother-of-pearl walls. They moved within the rock like figures seen through thick, wavy glass or beneath murky water. As she watched, they took on definition and then form as one by one they stepped from the walls to ring the chamber. Nine gray-robed women, silver diadems upon their brows, each one so beautiful she was almost painful to look upon. Elisabeth
gazed on them only in quick snatches and only through downcast lashes.
Killer didn’t seem to have the same reaction to the faery women. He looked upon each one of them in turn as if searching their expressions for the slightest hint of sympathy. But none weakened or spoke or moved to assist them. They were still and white as marble, gazing as though staring into eternity.
Killer stepped forward, laying Brendan down at the foot of the tomb, Elisabeth kneeling beside him with a clamped hold of his hand, willing her life into him.
Standing tall, the shape-changer scanned each woman in turn. “You can feel its call or you would not have shown yourselves. Douglas bears a token of
Ynys Avalenn
. He is known to one among yours.”
It seemed as if minutes ticked away with no one moving, Brendan’s grip upon her hand weakened, his eyes growing opaque, breathing becoming shallow, so that his chest barely rose and fell. “Help him!” she shouted to the women, her patience snapping.
They looked through her, remote in their apathy.
“You’re
Fey
. You can save him!” Frustration and fear burned through her like lava. She’d never been so angry in her life as she was at these stone-faced women. “What’s the good of being immortal and all-powerful if you won’t use your power to save a life? You’re a bunch of cowards. Deceitful, false-hearted, conniving, hypocritical—”
“Not helping . . .” Brendan whispered while Killer muttered, “Why don’t you tell them how you really feel?”
“—treacherous scum!”
“Enough.” The smooth, vivid voice echoed through the chamber before rattling around in Elisabeth’s skull. The
throbbing in her temples moved down into her neck and shoulders.
Two figures stepped out from behind the phalanx of silent attendants to approach Elisabeth and Brendan.
A woman with long blue-black hair, but for a thick streak of silver. A face unlined with years yet shrewd with ancient, immeasurable wisdom. She wore a gown of deepest azure blue beneath a surcoat of beaten silver scales. From a wide leather girdle at her waist, a sword hung ominously.
Even as statuesque as she was, her companion dwarfed her. His head crowned in hair that glowed burnished red and gold. His face set in bleak and battle-hardened lines. His sword, he clenched still in a scarred fist, black stains splashed up and down the blade.
A prickling shiver ran over Elisabeth’s skin before settling low in her stomach. This might be Arthur’s tomb, but if she wasn’t mistaken, this was Arthur in the flesh and very much alive.
Killer stepped forward, his expression respectful but not submissive. “I have brought you Brendan Douglas of the House of Kilronan. He carries a talisman of the
Fey
. One you cannot ignore.”
The woman’s gaze was like a bolt of lightning. “The ring allowed you to pass into the between separating our worlds, but do not presume, shape-changer. We owe this one nothing.”
Meanwhile, Arthur knelt down beside Elisabeth, laying a hand upon Brendan’s shoulder. “He is dying.”
As if she didn’t know that already, she wanted to snap, but didn’t. After all, one didn’t snarl at dead myths come to life. And there was real sorrow in his solemn voice for all that he stated the obvious.
“There is nothing we can do,” the woman replied, her voice cold as the first breath of winter frost.
Arthur shifted to meet her eye. “There is a way, Scathach.”
Scathach? This was the warrior-queen and head of the
Amhas-draoi
? Elisabeth held her breath. Brendan was under a death order. If this woman so chose, she could fulfill it with one fierce hack of her sword. There was no one to stop her.
“Impossible,” the woman said, dismissing Arthur as if he were a child.
A sly smile curved Arthur’s lips. Despite the centuries that had passed since he’d lived among men, his humanity remained. No
Fey
could match that look of boyish mischief. “I am proof it’s not impossible.”
“There is a difference. You are a man conceived in magic. Your life among us was fated as soon as you drew your first breath in the circle of your mother’s arms. Douglas is fully human. To bear him to the summer kingdom is not wise.”
“He will die otherwise.”
“Then he will die. That is the way of mortals. And as he is the last of the Nine, it is right that his death should signal the end.”
Elisabeth glanced at Killer, but he remained placidly awaiting the outcome of this back-and-forth, his dark eyes unfathomable. Come to think on it, between the two of them, Arthur seemed the more human. Perhaps he was. She didn’t know anything about the
Imnada
other than the tiny bits she’d gleaned in the last few hours.
She decided to address Arthur, as he seemed the one most likely to be swayed by emotion. “Please. He may have been a part of them once, but he risked his life in the fight
to stop Máelodor. To prevent a war that would destroy the
Other—
your blood kin. Doesn’t that count for anything?”
The three of them stared back at her with varying degrees of surprise, but no one had any answer for that.
Brendan had never been so cold in his life. Miserable Irish weather. He blinked. No, not the weather. He needed to keep his wits. At least a little longer, but it was difficult. He wanted to close his eyes. Wanted to sleep, but something screamed at him that sleeping right now would be very bad. Why? He tried concentrating, but he couldn’t remember. Not why he should stay awake. Not why he seemed to be in a room with candles blazing and all these people staring at him. Not why Elisabeth looked so sad.
“Stay with me, Brendan,” she called from down a long tunnel.
Was he going somewhere? He didn’t think so. He couldn’t even move. Not to touch her face. Not to caress skin he knew would be soft and warm. Lifting his arm was too much trouble, and his left hand felt as if someone had shoved a stake through the center of it and twisted.
“Fate decrees our path and our end.”
The voice. Those words. Both in his ears and in his mind as if spoken and thought simultaneously. The memories and the pain flooded back. A shame. He liked not knowing and not feeling a lot better.
“And this is the fate of the heir of Kilronan.”
Not him. Aidan. It was his brother who had been fated to die here. As one of thousands. It had been Brendan’s intervention that had kept that from occurring. His fate had thus been to change fate. He would have argued that point, but he’d no energy to talk.
A man’s face loomed over him, a face carved in solemn lines. His hair shone as red as Elisabeth’s, and his eyes glimmered like pools of silver light. “I would bear him company as he passes. As I would any warrior of my circle who fought so bravely.”
Elisabeth held one hand while Arthur took the other. Even numb as he was, Brendan felt the warmth of the king’s touch flood through him. The pressure of his grip digging Brendan’s ring painfully into the side of his finger.
Ring? He’d no ring. Yet, there it was, in place of Daz’s bit of dirty string. A narrow twisting band of pearl and silver. It shone against his waxen skin. Glowed in the milky dancing light of the cavern.
His vision narrowed as darkness rushed toward him. Voices rose and fell. Questioning. Quick. Sharp. He couldn’t hear what they said, but he understood the surprise and the confusion underlying the speech.
And then there was another.
Someone he felt he knew. Familiar. Beautiful and sensual and smoky-smooth. A narrow face. Long, shimmering corn-silk hair. A gown of purest white. Eyes vast and endless as stars. He knew her. Somehow in some part of him, she was extremely important.
A hand cupped his face, the fingers cool against his skin. “He will come to
Ynys Avalenn
as my guest and my charge.”
“Are you certain, Sedani?” Scathach sounded troubled by this decision.
“He bears my gift and my blood. I will honor the pledge I made. I can do no less.”
Arms lifted him. Hands gentled him.
“Wait!” Something was placed round his neck. Lips
touched his in a kiss of farewell. “You promised you’d not leave me again. I’m going to hold you to that.”
Light filled him, banishing the shadows crowding his vision.
“I love you, Brendan” wrapped him in a peace he never thought to feel again. The sound of bells became the rush of water became silence. He drew a final breath of soft earthy air as the portal closed behind him.
The world he left already no more than a hazy memory.
“It was the only way. He would have died had he stayed behind,” Killer said as the last of the gray-gowned attendants faded into the cavern walls. One minute there was a coterie of beautiful crowned women and the air was alive with liquid silver and the dance of a million flickering stars; the next, there were no figures and the rock hardened dull and gray and empty.
“My brain knows. My heart isn’t convinced,” Elisabeth replied, hugging her arms to her body to ease the tight, breath-stealing pain beneath her ribs.
Arthur shifted awkwardly, as if he wanted to offer reassurance of some kind while Killer loomed protectively, his presence—strange as it was—comforting.
“I didn’t even get a chance to say good-bye,” she said weakly.
“You spoke it in your heart.”
She gave Killer a curious glance, eliciting a self-conscious dropping of his head. “I’m able to read minds—a telepath of sorts. Sometimes I can act as a conduit between two others, but only if the two sending are strong. Your thought was sent as clearly as if you’d spoken it. I simply . . . helped it along.”
Instantly she felt herself redden. “You can hear everything I’m thinking?”
“No,” he hastened to assure her. “Only when I concentrate and only then if the thought is clearly pathed.”
Her stomach unclenched. Imagining Killer seeing her thoughts as he’d seen every other part of her would have tipped her over the edge. She was barely hanging on now.
She placed her hand upon the cold marble of Arthur’s sarcophagus, tracing the sword as it entered the chunk of rock. It helped to feel the solidity of it when everything else about this place and her life remained pure fantasy. “Do you know how often I heard the story of Sir Archibald Douglas and his faery lover? I can’t wait to see the look on Aidan’s face when I tell him I’ve met her in person.” She giggled, slightly hysterical.
“Sedani’s honor will compel her to do all she can for one of her line, no matter the generations between.” Arthur’s gaze followed the track of her hand, though whether his mind was on her or the oddity of staring at his own tomb was impossible to tell. Those strange silver eyes gave nothing away.
“And Scathach? She didn’t approve of Brendan accompanying her to
Ynys Avalenn
.”
It was Killer who answered this time. “Scathach may have her reservations, but she knows what is owed to Douglas. The
Amhas-draoi
have been shamed. Máelodor came too close to succeeding in opening the gates to the abyss. Had the Dark Court been freed to hunt on the mortal plane, it would have been disastrous not only for your world but the
Fey
as well.”
That future didn’t bear thinking of, so she didn’t. Instead, Elisabeth turned her attention to Arthur. “Will you
return as well? Or are you”—she scanned the cavern with dismay—“trapped in our world?”
When Arthur smiled, it was like the sun breaking through the clouds. He seemed to beat with a light all his own. A majestic charisma that made one want to be near him just to bask in that aura. It was clear how such a man could grow to be a legend. And how the legend could forever inspire. Immediately the shoulder-crushing weight of her grief lifted. She wouldn’t say she was happy, but she wasn’t as close to smashing her fists against the stone in desolation either.