Icefall (24 page)

His smile died. ‘And talk to my son.'

We walked slowly back to the house, just us two and our familiars, the wolf at Seth's side and the raven strutting beside me. When the going got too tough, Faramach flapped clumsily up onto Branndair's back. Ignoring the wolf's offended growl, he stayed for the ride.

Seth's hand found mine, and he lifted it to kiss the back of my fingers. ‘It's the end, whichever way it turns out.'

‘I know.'

‘She won't let us live. I can't stretch this existence any more, Finn. She has to die or we do.'

‘I know all that.' I gave him a sidelong grin. ‘Am I allowed to be scared?'

‘I hope so. I am.'

‘Please don't be hard on Lauren. She couldn't have fought Kate. You know that as well as anyone.'

‘I don't blame her,' he said. ‘I was angry. I wasn't myself and there's a reason for that. Lauren's done me a favour, Finn.'

‘What?' I shoved hair out of my face.

‘She's kicked me off the fence. What she's done, it forces me to go back. Because I
have to
. Not just for Hannah. I have to cross the Veil, Finn, and if Hannah and Sionnach were at home waiting for us now, I'd still have to go.' He stopped, his fingers tightening on my hand.

A cold fist clenched on my heart. Somehow I knew what was coming—what kind of a bound lover would I be if I hadn't known something was badly wrong?—but I didn't want to hear. Even now, I didn't.

‘My soul, Finn.' He pulled me close on the windswept grass and whispered it to me, his voice breaking. ‘My soul's dying. Almost gone.'

I tried to say
No
and I couldn't get the word out.

‘You thought Kate was gangrene.' His lips curved in a melancholy smile against my ear. ‘She was … more like a blood clot.'

His face was wet but he wasn't crying. And then I realised the tears were mine.

‘It's not your fault.' He pushed me gently away and his finger stroked my cheek.

‘Yes,' I whispered, ‘it is.'
Oh, my arrogance. Oh, the arrogance of a witch. Child of the Darkfall.

‘I don't know why,' he whispered, his hand stroking the back of my head relentlessly. ‘She was inside me, playing with me, stopping it. Without her, I bleed. Faster every day. It comes and it goes, have you noticed? But there's less of it every time.'

The wail of remorse started low in my belly, and I thought it would split the sky. Instead it came out of my mouth as a pathetic, helpless whimper. He pulled my head into his shoulder.

‘Can't lose it, Finn. Can't lose it before I die.' He kissed my wet face, again and again. ‘Have to die first. Christ, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.'

‘Kill it,' I screamed at the top of my voice, yet only a hoarse croak came out of my throat. ‘I'll kill it, destroy it, wipe it off the earth—'

‘It?' he said softly, and tilted my chin so I had to meet his eyes.

I swallowed, or tried to.

‘Her,' I whispered brokenly.

‘Her,' he repeated, and shook me gently. ‘Kill
her
. Feel very free to do that.' He laced his fingers through my hair, and held my head rigidly still. ‘It's this watergate, isn't it? That's where you used to go. On your long, long walks.'

I managed to nod, muted by despair and fury.

‘But I still don't know where you went on the other side, and I still don't want to.' He released my head, and hugged me again. ‘There are things you can't kill, Finn, and you mustn't ever try. Please.'

‘But.' I pushed him away, gripped his shirt, tightened my fingers till my knuckles were white. His soul: was that the one that was bleeding? I thought my own was going to die, right there. ‘But you can keep your soul and live, Murlainn. If you kill her instead. If we can stop her—'

‘But,' he said. ‘Too many buts. Let's just go home.'

*   *   *

The drive was busy with cars, and when we opened the door we could hear the buzz of talk, an occasional shout of glee. Friends had appeared who I hadn't seen in months. I wished I could be happier to greet them.

‘See?' Seth squeezed my hand. ‘No worries. Everybody wants it over. Nobody likes being picked off one by one.'

I still couldn't speak. I cleared my throat and tried to smile at Orach. Her brow furrowed, and she looked from me to Seth.

‘Finn,' he murmured in my ear. ‘Act like we're going to live to see winter, will you?'

I gave a hoarse, difficult laugh. And smiled, properly, at Orach.

‘I hope,' said Seth, and paused in the hallway. ‘Finn, we don't know how long she's had Hannah and Sionnach. Do we? The time might have warped.'

I wrinkled my nose, cleared my throat. ‘I don't think so. She's aware of the warps, isn't she? This seems so terribly well-planned. And Seth? I don't think she'll hurt Hannah.'

‘Please be right.' His mouth twisted with doubt. ‘And Sionnach…'

‘Yes,' I said. ‘Let's be quick, shall we?'

‘Finn?' He scratched at his temple.

‘Uh-huh?'

‘Speaking of quickness, there's no point having Rory take us through the Veil. It's too far from here to there. We need the watergate to close the distance.'

‘Yes. I know.'

‘But Rory has to come. I'm not going to stop him.'

‘I know that too.' I put my hands against his face.

‘Yeah. Course you do.' He closed his eyes and leaned his head into my hold. ‘Am I wrong?'

I hesitated. ‘He won't stay behind. You know he shouldn't. You'd be wasting your time. And talking him out of being your son.'

He smiled. ‘That's kind of what I thought.'

‘We live or die together. Or we die apart.'

‘I know,' he said. ‘But it's what makes me scared.'

‘You think you're scared now?' I kissed him. ‘You haven't broken the news to Jed yet.'

Just as I expected, Jed lost the plot. He fumed, and spat, and yelled at Rory, and swore violently at Seth, and made a hideous scene in front of forty-odd fighters. Even Branndair whimpered unhappily.

Still, it didn't last as long as it might have. He fell at last into silence, breathing hard, his every objection turned aside or just ignored. He ran out of fight because he was wrong. He knew what we knew: that he couldn't talk Rory out of coming, and what was more, he shouldn't. And the hunger on his own face betrayed him. He couldn't deny Rory what he wanted so much for himself.

Anyway, the tide below the cliffs was withdrawing.

No-one wanted to wait for the next one, and we all lived ready to move at a moment's notice, so only three hours later I was leading them to the hidden cliff path. Seth stopped on the brink, and watched the first of his clann climb down. He laughed hoarsely.

‘What?' Jed walked back towards him, hitching his pack higher.

Seth didn't look at him; he looked at me, and grinned mirthlessly.

‘I'm afraid of the height,' he said. ‘The bitch. The bitch. She sucked it from me.'

‘Look at me,' said Jed. ‘Look at me when you talk at me, Murlainn.'

His voice was hard, but when Seth did turn to him, Jed's mouth quirked. ‘I know how far it's drained, Murlainn. I know what she's taken from you. How did you think I wouldn't?'

Seth licked his lips. Made a rueful face. ‘Right.'

Jed brandished the palm that was marked by his blood-brother scar. ‘You really don't think ahead, do you? But you're not going to lose your soul.' He gave Seth a sudden genuine grin. ‘Because we're going to kill her.'

Seth laughed. I squeezed his hand.

So he was afraid of the height, now, but he climbed anyway.

Some twenty feet down, I paused to glance back. On the lip of the precipice, Lauren stood watching us. Her fists clenched and unclenched at her sides, her fingers twitching. She didn't shout to stop us, she didn't call a goodbye. She didn't look disbelieving: just stunned, and lost, her face smudged into emptiness by experience. I wondered what would become of her, and yet I couldn't afford to wonder too much or too long.

Out in the free air Faramach swooped lower, taunting Branndair, who clearly hated the descent even more than Seth did. Light backpacks held all we needed of our otherworld lives, and the only other things we carried were our weapons, retrieved and polished and honed for war.

Seth overtook me at the foot of the cliff, then turned to lift me down beside him. I almost laughed at the uncharacteristic chivalry, but when he set me down he wrapped his arms round me. My hair blew in the breeze, tangling with his.

‘This gate,' he murmured in my ear. ‘It comes out…?'

‘Sea to sea. East to west.'

Behind him his fighters jumped one by one to the shingled beach. Some of them had already started a sand-fight. Bunch of big kids.

‘East to west,' he echoed softly. ‘And the sea. And the basalt caverns.'

‘Not inside them. A mile or more away. And you know,' I whispered, ‘why I never told you.'

He gave a small shrug, and stepped back. He stroked my windblown hair behind my ear. ‘So now,' he said, ‘just show me.'

The withdrawing waves smashed foam against the rocks, but the way through at low tide was easy. The fighters fell silent, sobering, spitting out sand, brushing it off their clothes as they followed me. I led them the way I'd gone before, the way I'd picked out when I found the gate, the only way there was through sea and rock and cliff. I'd known from the day the estate agent brought me here that this house was calling to me, that it had a drag on my soul. I'd known that if I looked long enough, I'd find the source of that drag. I'd sensed the watergate then and I could sense it now, tugging on my spine and my blood.

Well. Not so much the watergate, I suppose. The force that had pulled me then, that pulled me now, was no innocuous portal, but for the moment the call of home was the only call I wanted to hear.

A low scramble into the exposed cave and I blinked, adjusting my eyes to green dimness, and wet salty air, and the pool the tide had left behind.

Carefully I skirted it as Seth and the others ducked into the cave behind me. A murmur went round the assembled fighters, forty or more of them, a yellow-eyed hound and one grinning wolf. It was the sound of happiness, of a long wait almost over. I smiled. I couldn't help it.

‘Well, Lost Boys and Girls,' I said, and stepped to the deep pool's glassy rim. ‘Shall I be Mother?'

And I stepped into the water, and went home.

 

PART TWO

 

Finn

It was the same, the same as always, but it felt so inevitably different. True, the landscape was as I remembered and loved it. Rock and hill, scree and loch: they don't change. We went as far as we could from the watergate exit, heading north, and as we passed the cove of the basalt rocks, I didn't even pause to smell the air.

I did not let myself think about my lover's suppurating soul. Not even once. And as far as I could, I didn't let him think about it either.

Coming home had helped, there was no doubt about that. Returning had in itself bought him time. I lay at his side that night in the open air,
our
air, and as he fixed his stare on the Milky Way, I stroked his scarred face and smiled. He was no lorry driver any more, he was no roustabout working the rigs, he was no unemployed forestry worker or occasional mercenary. He was a Sithe warlord and the Captain of his clann. Not to mention of me.

He lolled his head to face me. He was outlined in low firelight and I couldn't quite read his expression. ‘Didn't really suit me, did it?'

I gave him as much shrug as I could manage while lying on my side, then leaned in to lick his chin with the tip of my tongue. ‘It suited you at the time.'

‘Not.'

He gazed back at the stars, so I could enjoy a further close study of his slightly dented profile. ‘Honey, you looked great in hi-vis gear. It was so your colour.'

‘I look great in
anything.
'

‘You look great in
nothing.
'

He spluttered a laugh. ‘Quit it. You're not seducing me in the open air in front of my entire clann. I said you're
not.
' Firmly he removed my hand.

‘There's a beach,' I told him, wickedly.

‘Jed and Iolaire are on the beach. I'm not hunting for a free sun lounger like some tourist.'

‘One, Toto, we're not in Antigua any more. Two, Jed and Iolaire are on guard,' I whispered as I tickled his ear. ‘On the headland. And three, if you want an excuse for the clann, we need to call the horses. Best place to do it.'

‘True.' He shut one eye thoughtfully and trickled my hair through his fingers. ‘Sand gets everywhere.'

‘Not if you go in the sea afterwards.'

He cocked an eyebrow at me. ‘Why am I even arguing?'

‘I wondered that.'

‘It's your woman's wisdom that makes me love you.' His teeth flashed. ‘So, d'you fancy a swim?'

*   *   *

He was dead right about the sand. It chafed and gritted absolutely everywhere as I ran naked towards the waves with Seth at my heels. I was giggling, because I was faster than he was and I knew it annoyed him; and he wasn't helped by the fact that he was out of breath with laughter too. I hit the Atlantic's edge three strides ahead of him and as a massive swell rolled towards me I dived headfirst and swam under.

Shit, it was cold. If my body hadn't been alive before, every nerve in it would have jolted into action now.

But hey, it had been perfectly alive anyway.

I surfaced, swept my hair off my face, gasped for breath. If anything the air felt colder than the water, but I was growing numb to the temperature already. I swam a couple of strokes, then twisted and trod water.