The Defiler (28 page)

Now, in death, she remembered.

She did not know if it was a trick of her mind, or the truth, it did not matter.

She ran on, fighting through the detritus and the choking veil of glass-dust in the air. Minute fragments cut at her lungs as she inhaled them, shredding through the soft flesh of her insides. She stumbled into the wall again, a fire burning inside her, reaching out blindly as somewhere above the entire weight of the Glass House shifted. Leanan came away from the wall, spinning blindly, calling out into the chaos of the collapse, but there was no answer. She staggered on as the groans became cries and then, with malicious glee the passageway transformed into a tomb, the Glass House reduced to a tomb of tombs. Leanan shielded her head from the debris, coughing and lurching from side to side as the lights in the walls dimmed and finally went out, the facets of the glass suddenly opaque with all of the fractures. She turned her ankle on a spar of blood-red glass that jutted from the wall of the passage, and hit the floor hard, barely avoiding another lethal spear of crystal that thrust out through the brittle wall precisely where her head had been a moment before. Leanan lay there for a second, struggling for breath, all of her four hundred years weighing on her bones now, returned. She felt beyond old: ancient. All around her the Glass House collapsed in on itself one floor at a time, one spire twisting and crumbling, crashing down to the grey earth, a billion shards of glass blowing out over the maze monsters, shearing away the sides of their leafy forms with savage cruelty, out across the lake and into the mist itself, shredding the wisps of white.

And somewhere in the heart of this chaos her king, Finvarra, lay dying.

The collapse had torn a hole in the centre of the passage, the stresses of destruction peeling the roof away. Through it, Leanan could see one of the great spires buckling, huge facets of its construction breaking away and falling free, end over end on its way down. The spire turned with hideous grace as the inevitable momentum of the fall gripped it, tearing the hole in the ceiling wider even as huge slabs of glass came down like deadly rain. She felt the force of the collapsed building, the weight of death pressing down as time wormed its way between every crack and crevice, working them wider until it appeared as though the black cracks were the talons of some crazy bird tearing into the flesh of the building.

Leanan found the Wounded King in the corridor outside his chamber. He had tried to flee but had been snared by his home, the Glass House refusing to surrender its master as it died. And now they were inextricably joined. Finvarra lay unmoving on the floor. The door behind him had buckled and splintered, tearing free of its hinges. A part of it had broken free and pierced Finvarra's side, spearing him to the floor even as his life leaked out across it, his blood feeding the glass. The old king's legs were crushed beneath great chunks of masonry, smashed beyond repair. For all the horror of the sight, the worst was to come as Leanan knelt beside him. He was still awake, fear plain in his eyes. There was nothing noble in this death. Nothing heroic. He saw her, but didn't recognise her, blind with pain. For a moment she thought she saw the ghost of hope flicker across his eyes, but it was nothing more than a brittle illusion crushed beneath the debris.

The old man was dying.

She cradled his head in her lap, stroking back his hair, soothing him into the long dark night of death.

"He unmade us..." Finvarra managed, his words barely a whisper, falling away beneath the chorus of collapse all around them.

"Shhh, my sweet king, save your breath," Leanan said gently, placing a kiss on each of the blind king's eyelids.

"He broke... the... geas," wheezed Finvarra. "He has brought death into this realm and now everything is undone. Our sanctuary is collapsing. I am lost, sister. I cannot feel... anything. My body is gone. It is only what little residue of power remains that tethers me to this life. I am undone... is this death?"

"Speak not so, my king."

"I will not lie in the face of my mortality, sweet child. I am many things but I am not afraid. I have waited a long time to die. I have had longer than most to come to terms with my death," the bitterness in the old man's voice was harsh, "but I would not perish in this place, beneath the weight of the stones. I would die with the sun on my face, free."

"I don't know if I can move you," Leanan confessed, her hand lingering on Finvarra's cheek.

"Do it, sister. Once, so long ago now, the druid appeared to rob me of my glorious death, promising a greater destiny, and now he has returned to steal that destiny. This anonymous death, crushed beneath the weight of my prison, is all that remains. I will not die here. I would taste the air on my face one last time. Do that for me, sister. Take me down to the water. Let me die on my own terms."

Tears streaked the soot and glass-dust on her cheeks as she dug frantically through the rubble trying to free Finvarra's legs.

Above her and all around her, the Glass House succumbed to the stresses of entropy, every sound amplified now to the point of a scream within the crystalline structure. She cut her hand badly, slicing it on an edge of glass, deep to the bone, and barely noticed as she discarded it, reaching in again for the heaviest of the debris. She couldn't lift it off him. Sobbing, she did all she could, dragging Finvarra out from beneath the crush. He didn't make a sound despite the agony it must have been.

She couldn't see through her tears, and didn't
want
to see. Everything she had known for years beyond counting was collapsing in on itself; even her own body. The weakness permeated her bones, making them brittle. She felt her heart in her chest, straining, her lungs withering with each diminished breath.

She was dying the death she should have died so long ago.

"Not yet," she pleaded, making a bargain with her bones, her heart.

Leanan gathered the Wounded King into her arms and carried him out through the collapse. She wept, blind through the tears, as she staggered out into the light. The doorframe splintered, the arch supporting it shearing in two.

"Soon," she promised, though whether it was to herself, death, or to the old man in her arms even she didn't know. She carried Finvarra down to the water's edge. "We're here," she told him, but it was too late, the life had left the old man. She looked down at him, knowing she had failed him at the last, at his blood on her hands, mingling with hers, at his ruined legs and crushed chest, and knew he had been dead even before she had dragged him out of the rubble.

Leanan looked over her shoulder, for one last look at the Glass House before it became unrecognisable, then towards the last vestiges of the mist Myrrdin had opened into the Annfwyn, and took the first step into the water, and a second, until it came up to her waist. She cradled Finvarra close to her chest as the water rose up over his head to swallow him.

And still she walked deeper, until the water rose up over her breast, to her throat.

She took another step so that the water came up over her mouth and nose, giving herself and the body of her king to the black water.

Modron was lost in the mist.

She had fled the destruction of the Glass House, reaching the water before the gateway between today, tomorrow and yesterday had closed, and followed the Defiler and her beloved into the Annfwyn. For a moment she had seen the light of life blazing on the other side, and moved towards it only for it to flicker and fail, the light burning out and leaving her in grey darkness. She stumbled blindly through it, knowing even as she did that Myrrdin had closed the gateway, that she was trapped in this limbo between the El Worlds.

She told herself she could bear it, trading one eternity for another, one curse for another. But it was a lie. She was not alone now. Their child grew inside her, little Mabon.

For him she had to find a way out of the mists. She would not condemn the child to being born inside this hell.

If that happened, Modron swore, she would never forgive Myrrdin.

ELEVEN

The Knucker streaked through the sky, the Land of the Young laid out like a blanket of patchwork colours stitched together and thrown over the hills and valleys. The great drake cast its shadow over the villages below, banking, huge wings unfurled, savouring the vitality of the world, revelling in the vibrancy of its colours, its pulse. The Knucker roared, a red lick of flame tonguing out of its snout as it swooped low enough for its talons to rake through the treetops.

"CRONE!" Sláine bellowed from the back of the dragon, "CRONE!"

But the witch did not manifest. Not one of her ever-present black birds joined them in the sky, even as they tried to shake them from the trees.

"CRONE!"

The air streamed through their hair buffeting and bullying the three riders as they clung to the back of the giant winged wyrm.

Ukko hung on to Sláine's waist for grim life, his ugly little face contorting to the whims of the wind as the dynamics of the air pressure shifted around them, remaking it into a hundred different masks as they rose and plummeted from the sky.

"I really don't like this!" the dwarf shouted over the wind as another barrage nearly lifted him out of the saddle. He dug his heels in.

"CRONE!"

The power of the earth flowed through Sláine with a heady vengeance, driving rationality from his mind. It sang in his veins. It surged through his heart. He was alive. He was one with the earth and sky, after so long cut off from it he was rapidly growing drunk on the love of his Goddess. This was his land. His home.

"SHOW YOURSELF, CRONE!"

The Knucker rose again, carrying them higher. Sláine saw the familiar outline of Murias, the amazing physicality of the town and its surrounds laid out on the green. The fast-flowing River Dôn was little more than a slash through the perfect emerald.

Sláine was assailed by memories of Fionn and Dian and Núada and Niall and Cullen and Cormac, childhood lost.

He could just make out the conical shaped tor and the rise of Lugh's Spike looming imperiously, a steely grey finger accusing the heavens, and found himself remembering the day of the Choosing. Now, with the gift of hindsight, it seemed as though all their fates had been cast that day despite the fact that they were only thirteen years old. He thought of Cullen. He didn't like remembering Wide Mouth. Guilt made him uncomfortable. No matter how fierce their rivalry had seemed, it had been little more than the petty jealousies of children in reality. It should never have been allowed to spiral out of control, to cost Wide Mouth his life. That forfeit was a harsh one for a child to pay, no matter that it had been meted out by another child. And it didn't matter that they had enacted some rite of passage, they had been children.

The memory was a bitter one; friendship torn through lost innocence. It had never mattered who claimed the Daughter of Danu's devotion first, or who threw the javelin farthest, who ran the fastest or leapt highest, but it had felt so important back then when all it had ever been was just another way of goading Wide Mouth. No more, no less.

Sláine could smell the mountains, the sudden rush of fragrances, the lavender and the oak, the pollen and the oast. He could hear the dead voices of his parents, Macha and Roth, ghosts on the wind.

His gaze followed the dark slash of the river through the tufts of long grasses and brambles, drovers' paths and dry-stone walls, the barrows and the cromlechs, hints of grey stone exposed by the savage slashes in the wild turf, past the nemeton to the straw roof and wattle walls of Grudnew's roundhouse. Sláine had forgotten just how truly breathtaking his home was. Before he could dwell upon memories of Niamh, the Knucker soared, the thermals carrying the beast away from the comfort of the home hearth, banking towards the forest where Sláine had first encountered the Crone, where he had chased the Maiden so full of lust and hope, and where ultimately he had learned the hardest lesson of his young life, watching the women of Murias put to the sword.

For the first time in years he allowed himself to miss his friends, such was the weight of his homecoming. He took no joy from the memories. Remembering got in the way of what he had to do.

"CRONE!" he called again, summoning the Morrigan. The wind ripped away his words. She did not answer him, not that he had expected her to come running at his beck and call. Sláine pounded the saddle horn in frustration. "YOU OWE ME, WOMAN!"

"There is a place," Myrrdin said, his words strained as he struggled to maintain his grip in the saddle. The druid's face was troubled, and not merely by the wild flight of the drake. Something weighed heavily on his mind. "It is not far from here. They call it Magh Tuiredh, the plain of pillars."

"I do not know it," Sláine said, knuckles a bloodless white as he clutched the saddle horn.

"I will guide you, if you wish a confrontation with the Crone. She cannot resist you there. The power of the Earth Mother is at its strongest within the circle of stones. Blood was spilled there. Heroes's blood stains the earth there still, soaked deep. The blood is a mortal tie between you and the heroes of another age, Sláine. It is where Llew Silverhand lost his hand in battle against the creatures of the Fir Bolg, and near where Weyland the Smith forged its replacement. Like you, Llew was a champion of Danu. The Morrigan will come when you call. She will have no choice; she will be answering the blood call. Blood magic is strong. As champion of her sister you have a right of redress, she cannot ignore that."

"Take me there."

From above Magh Tuiredh looked like a field of teeth chomping out of the belly of the earth; diseased yellow and brown teeth.

Sláine was struck by how similar it was to the dolmen of Carnac - but so much closer to home. He felt the draw of the stones in his blood as they banked and circled, spiralling lower. Slough Feg had gathered hundreds upon hundreds of dolmens to the sacred burial grounds of Carnac, souring the land as they leeched the vitality from it. That such a place could exist so close to Murias sent a chill bone-deep.