Fireshaper's Doom (43 page)

Morwyn’s mouth twitched, but all that issued forth was a slow, dry crackling.

Fionna’s nostrils flared. “You have something to say, Fireshaper? Well, say it then!” She moved a finger.

“He once had a son name Fionchadd!” Morwyn spat. “He—”

A glare; a click of nail on nail; and Morwyn once again fell silent.

“You will be the first,” Fionna continued. “I thought it only fair to tell you that.” And with that she thumbed down the opal and once more raised the Horn of Annwyn—then hesitated, the instrument a finger’s width from her mouth, her eyes never leaving Morwyn’s.

Damn her!
Liz thought, as Fionna continued to toy with her victim.

She
had
to do something. If she did not, and soon, she very much feared she would burst apart from sheer frustrated rage long before the Fionna got around to whatever she had planned.

Godfuckingdamn her!

The warmth flared suddenly against Liz’s hip, as if in response to that anger. It had become truly hot, and was getting hotter by the second. And as she focused her attention directly on that pain for the first time, Liz felt the slightest relaxation of the force that numbed her limbs.

She blinked.

Power! That was what David had called it: Power—the force of belief manifested in reality; the active principle of the spirit world, bearing the same relationship to spirit as energy bore to matter. And this was her world, she realized; her magic—if she had any—was strongest here. She turned her thought inside herself, oblivious to the burning on her hip, seeking those secret places where her own Power lay.

“I wonder what it is like to die?” Fionna was saying as she paced a small circle around the stationary Morwyn. “I would ask you to send word, but I doubt you will be able—not with the tatters of your soul writhing in the guts of the Hounds of Annwyn.”

Once more she smiled her cruel-sweet smile.

Liz had taken shelter deep inside herself, hoping to find there some hidden place of calm where Power was and pain was not. The ring had long since transcended mere discomfort and was a raw burning agony, a devouring, gnawing torture that drove away fear, anger—all emotion but the desire for escape.

And she was winning, finding relief in the blessed silent coolness of her soul. She reveled in it, let it wash over her, filling her. All the world became her soul and her soul was all the world—the pain of the ring was as the stirring of a breeze against a single pale hair on her arm.

Cooler and stiller, stiller and cooler, further and further in, so that she collapsed in upon
herself…

…
and expanded again to fill the universe.

Liz opened her eyes. She was free.

But could she act? What could she alone do against a sorceress?

Fionna’s lips brushed the ivory.

Morwyn’s eyes grew large.

It’s on my head, now,
Liz
thought.
Got to do it soon. But what will I do? And the timing must be perfect, must be exactly right.
She glanced at Ailill and was relieved to see that he was still intent on maintaining the binding. If she
was
going to do something, she must do it before he could interfere.

*

“Gotta find Davy, gotta find Davy, gotta find
Davy…”
Little Billy’s gasps had become a chant as he thumped along the tunnel beneath the trees. He didn’t dare look anywhere but straight ahead, because the dark woods scared him. He leapt across a fallen limb (he
hoped
it was a limb, and not a boa constrictor, or an—an
arm,
or something), and resumed his alternate litany: “Slowpoke Mama, slowpoke
Mama…”

He twisted around, danced backward for a step or two. Boy, Mama
was
slow. He didn’t know where she was—back there somewhere, just trudging along with Katie like there wasn’t any hurry.

But there was.

Back around, and running again.

“Gotta find Davy, gotta find
Davy…”

There was light up ahead, there where the trees thinned out. Daylight, almost. And he could hear funny voices, like he’d heard once or twice before. Those voices scared him, too, but at least it wasn’t dark where they were.

He slowed, began to creep forward.

Something made a clicking noise at his waist. He gritted his teeth and reached down, undid the chain he had got from the old lady and threaded partway round there so he would look like Davy.
Gotta be quiet.

He backed into the shadows and began to edge sideways, peered cautiously around a tree.

Somebody was sitting on a rock right up there ahead of him: somebody with his back to him—a man with long black hair and a funny-looking robe.

And there was a woman there, who looked just like the man, and another woman who didn’t and Liz and Alec and Gary—and Uncle Dale; and a good-looking boy with no shirt on. None of the ones he knew were moving; they looked like those plastic people you saw in department stores. He frowned. That redheaded woman wasn’t moving either. What was the matter with ’em all?

He’d better take a look.

Closer.

The black-haired woman was doing something with some kind of Horn he didn’t much like, dragging it along that strange boy’s jaw—
cutting
him! His lips puckered.
Yecch!

The closer man shifted his head a little sideways, and Little Billy could see more of his face.

His heart flip-flopped. Memories he’d tried to forget leapt out at him: awful memories. That man had kidnapped him, changed him into a horse, whipped him and hurt him.

He was a booger.

And he didn’t like iron, Little Billy remembered, as he fingered the chain.

“I’ll kill you!”
he screamed, as he launched himself forward.

*

“I’ll kill you!”

Liz’s eyes widened, darted sideways.

“I’ll kill you, bad man!” a childish voice shrieked as a small, blond form erupted from the trees behind Ailill and threw itself atop the faery’s unguarded back. Something glittered hard-bright in its hands, arcing sideways to wrap around Ailill’s neck like a striking serpent.

“No!”
Liz’s scream cut the air so suddenly she hardly recognized it as her own.

“You hurt me! Hurt my brother! You die!” Little Billy squealed, as he tangled one small hand with the dark Faery’s hair and tugged the chain free, then sent it whipping around again, this time into Ailill’s face. Steaming red welts erupted across the fair skin where the shining metal struck Faery flesh. Blood streamed from the Faery lord’s nose.

Not Little Billy! Oh God, no!

Fionna spun around.

Now or never…

Liz lurched forward, her body unexpectedly numb and awkward. She grabbed for the Horn—missed—lost her balance and staggered into Fionna. Her arms flailed, brushed Cormac’s head, and closed on something hard and knobby. It jerked, she jerked back—and pushed.

Fionna stumbled backward onto the ground, her mouth agape in outraged astonishment.

Liz looked down, found herself holding the Horn, and paused in midstride, staring at it foolishly. Maybe she should—

“Liiiiizz!”
Little Billy screamed from Ailill’s back as the Faery lord leapt up, fingers scrabbling behind him for the child’s throat.

She snapped her head up, saw Little Billy swing the chain again, right around Ailill’s neck. Saw him catch the other end, let go and slide down the Faery’s back, hanging on for dear life, the chain a garrote around his enemy’s throat.

Ailill gasped, raised both hands toward the smoking metal as Liz continued to stare.

“Liz, help!”

She started forward, but a hand like steel enfolded hers, dragging her back—a hand with a red velvet sleeve attached. Something jolted her wrist, numbing her hand, calmly prying the Horn from her grasp.

Morwyn! Ailill had relaxed his vigilance and the spell had failed, freeing the Fireshaper—which meant Liz’s friends should be free shortly if it worked like she thought it did—

“Curse you girl, let go!” Morwyn was shrieking in her ears.

“Liiiiiizzzz!”

That did it. Let her have the bloody Horn; Little Billy was more important. If Ailill hurt him, she’d kill the bastard.

Liz flung herself away from the Fireshaper, felt at her waist for her dagger. Two quick strides and she had reached Ailill. A jerk at the hilt freed the weapon; a turn of her wrist jabbed it clumsily toward Ailill’s unprotected belly.

The Faery lord shouted his surprise, but one hand flashed down to stop her, grabbing her wrist and twisting. Agony coursed through her arm.

She dropped the dagger.

“Don’t you hurt my baby!” JoAnne Sullivan suddenly appeared at the edge of the clearing, her blonde hair wild as her face was fierce.

“Mama!” Little Billy shrieked.

“Don’t move! Nobody move,” JoAnne hollered. She halted then, looking puzzled as she tried to assess a situation that was far beyond her.

“And what will
you
do, mortal?” Ailill shot back.

“Miz Sullivan, help!” Liz kicked at the knife, saw it go sailing in JoAnne’s direction.

JoAnne scrambled after it. Ailill yanked Liz completely off the ground and pushed her toward the startled woman.

JoAnne tried to intercept Liz as she stumbled forward, but both women went down in a tangle. The breath thumped from Liz’s lungs; her eyes spun wildly. She saw Fionna, still on the ground beside Morwyn. The sorceress was trying to rise, but Morwyn was making motions in the air above her. To her left she could see her comrades’ bodies straining against their unseen bindings.
Maybe if we can delay a little longer, they’ll be free.

Little Billy lost his grip and slid to the ground behind Ailill. The dark Faery was on him in an instant. The fingers of one hand locked around the boy’s throat, even as he sought with his other hand to reinforce the failing binding spell.

“You goddam bastard, leave my boy along!” JoAnne shrieked as she found the dagger and dived toward Ailill.

“No! He is mine, mortal!” Morwyn shouted, holding the Horn of Annwyn aloft while a newly frozen Fionna glared in silent fury beside her. Already the Fireshaper’s free fingers were expanding their spell toward Ailill.

JoAnne skidded to a confused halt.

“Put the boy down, Ailill,” Morwyn snapped, as her fingers continued to work automatically. “I have the Horn.”

“Do you indeed?” Ailill cried—and with one smooth movement he ripped the dagger from JoAnne’s startled fingers and hurled it straight toward the Fireshaper.

Morwyn’s spell was at a critical juncture, her fingers moving just
so…

The dagger struck her upraised wrist.

The Horn went flying.

She grabbed at it, screaming, even as her spell collapsed. She wrenched the weapon from her wrist, flung it smoking to the ground—

—As another hand curled about the Horn of Annwyn.

A second only it took Fionna to raise the Horn to her lips. A second for breath to set wind to it.

Around her—behind her—all movement ceased on Lookout Rock.

A deadly silence fell upon the mountain. The waterfall’s hiss was stilled. The ragged breaths of the assembled host issued into air that was suddenly too thin to sustain their volume, Little Billy slipped out of Ailill’s grasp and came to stand beside his mother. Liz too stood, moved sideways into JoAnne’s dubious comfort.

Liz found herself gazing toward the Lookout again, at the pearl-blue sky of morning, the curls of fog among the mountains, the green of the leaves, the brownish gray of the rocks, the red of Morwyn’s gown.

And the gut-wrenching, alien awfulness of the
not
-color that marked a rift in the air at the edge of the precipice.

Suddenly they were there: the Hounds of Annwyn: tall, slender dogs, their feathery coats the white of snow in a place that had never been warm; the cold color of death and fear and ultimate futility. And their ears were as red as blood.

One by one those Hounds leapt from the rift: ten, eleven, twelve of them. Thirteen, and the rift was closed.

Sound returned to the world; the falls resumed its roar.

But all upon the rock were frozen, not by magic, but by fear. The Master Hound had drawn back his lips the merest fraction, showing the tiniest gleam of fangs. But that sight alone was enough to send Liz’s mind reeling. It was as if that one glistening point embodied every image of devouring that had ever haunted her dreams. The shark’s maw from
Jaws
was as nothing beside it. She shivered uncontrollably.

The pack approached Fionna soundlessly. One by one they encircled her, the Master standing aside as the others arrayed themselves around her, then sank as one to icy haunches.

The circle completed, the Master came to stand directly before the sorceress, front legs braced wide, his elbow fringes brushing the ground beneath him. He raised expectant green eyes.

Liz felt JoAnne’s grip tighten on her arm.

Fionna smiled, her gaze skipping quickly across the crowd.

“Hear me, o Hounds,” she whispered. “Once a mortal matched wits against my brother, and by cheating, thought to make a fool of him. Once a mortal caused the death of my brother’s son. Once a mortal dared lay hands on
me.
It is therefore my duty to redress my wrongs, and thus do I offer you a feasting. I had thought to offer you Morwyn first, but I think instead it will
be…
a human.” Her eyes searched the crowd as she held the moment, drinking in the smell of fear as though it were the bouquet of fine wine.