The Last Days of Magic (24 page)

Below, shapes rose silhouetted against the last sparkle of a sunset sea and moved cautiously up the stone stairs to the garden, where torchlight glinted from their leader’s single oversize eye. Jordan wondered if it was the same Fomorian king who had assisted them at Great Skellig. The answer came as a pair of female Fomorians unwrapped an oilskin package and draped the sable cloak over the king’s shoulders.

“Richard’s greatest victory begins at this castle,” said Najia. “As will his ultimate downfall.”

“Prophesying without entrails now, witch,” Jordan snapped.

Najia laughed. “I learned to draw upon Ardor through study and practice. You were born with the gift, though you didn’t know it. You thought you were just lucky. Then you discovered enchantments, enchantments that always worked the first time you tried them, and your success increased.” She ran her hand down his bare chest. “Not a single scar from all your fights. Not one. Yes, I’m a witch, but what are you?”

Jordan pulled away from her touch. That was becoming too nagging a question. He grabbed his tunic off the bedpost and put it on, hurriedly adding the rest of his ensemble.

“What are you going to do when all the bad luck you pushed aside comes back to you? What will you do when there’s not enough Ardor left to draw upon?” Najia asked, plopping down on the bed and watching him dress. “What will you be then?”

“My position will be secure. I’ve an agreement to become grand marshal, bound with the legate,” said Jordan, pulling on his boots. “It’ll restore my family name.”

“Fine compensation for ensuring that the only magic left in this world will be that of dark witches and corrupt exorcists!” Najia exclaimed. “A splendid strategy.”

Jordan regarded her sternly, then left the chamber heading for the war council.

By the time he reached the table, negotiations with the Fomorians were already well advanced. Jordan knew what Kellach had offered: if they joined the invasion, they would receive the seaward half of the Irish kingdom of Connacht.

13

Outside Tara, Ireland

That Night

A
isling awoke to hell. She was bound to a dead tree in the center of a clearing, her hands tied with a crude rope looped over a branch above her head, her feet tied at the base. Her bruised, naked body throbbed with pain. The waning moon cast its harsh monochromatic light, revealing Conor staked out on the ground, struggling against his ropes. Several dozen Woodwose danced around a fire, chanting and shaking. A high rock face established one side of the clearing, the large black mouth of a cave at its base.

A Woodwose wearing the hollowed-out head of a boar as a mask stepped away from the dancers, pointed to Aisling, and gave a cry. The dancing intensified.

The shaman,
Aisling thought. She forced a swallow down her burning throat, then croaked out an enchantment. The only result was a waver in the mouth of the cave, as if black velvet curtains had caught a breeze, but there was no breeze. The ropes holding her remained intact.

A squat figure emerged from the cave mouth. Three feet tall with a chubby, hairless body and pointed ears, he gave a high-pitched, squeaky giggle, revealing sharp teeth. The fear that Aisling had been fighting off overwhelmed her—it was an Imp, a demon familiar.

The Imp climbed onto a long stone slab set before the cave. One end of the slab rested on a rock, causing it to slope. Shallow troughs had been carved at an angle down the face of the slab, joining into one deep trough down the center, which led off the low edge.

The shaman turned back to the dancing Woodwose and placed his hand on the shoulder of one, a young woman. All dancing and chanting stopped. Four men walked her, unresisting, to the slab. The
shaman pulled off her loincloth to the laughter of the Imp, who thrust his hips forward to show off his tiny erection, barely visible under his sagging belly. He scurried to the high end of the slab as the men placed the young woman on it, head down.

The Imp squeaked some words Aisling did not understand, and vines crept up across the young woman’s body, binding her to the slab. The watching Woodwose restarted their chant, their bodies waving with the rhythm. Laughter trickled from the Imp as he broke into a mocking dance on his perch.

The shaman selected a skull from a pile beside the slab and picked up the stone-headed ax lying next to it. He inverted the skull and placed it under the trough at the low edge of the slab. Aisling’s eyes locked onto the eyes of the young woman, where she saw only acceptance, until the shaman’s ax severed the woman’s head.

There was a thud as the Imp laughed so hard he fell off the slab. He ran around, grabbed the head, and scurried back up to his high perch, where he stood studying the dead face. He giggled, kissed the dead lips, giggled again, and began to suckle blood from the neck, red running down his chin and pudgy chest. The Woodwose resumed their dance.

“Conor!” screamed Aisling. “My enchantments aren’t working! There must be a demon in the cave countering them!”

“Keep trying!” Conor called back, pulling futilely at the ropes holding him.

Aisling closed her eyes and tried to focus her energy, but it immediately drained away from her. The chanting of the Woodwose filled her head. When she opened her eyes, the shaman was retrieving the inverted skull, now full of the young woman’s blood. He held it up to the cave in a salute. With one hand he removed his boar-head mask, dropped it on the ground, and took a long drink, and then he hurled the rest of the blood into the cave. The blackness covering the opening erupted into a boil.

With a loud screech, the Imp tossed the severed head of the young
woman at Conor, hitting him in the stomach. Men pulled the young woman’s body off the slab as the vines released her. Others cut Conor loose and dragged him, struggling and cursing, to the slab. Pinned by the returning vines, his head at the high end of the slab, Conor shouted to Aisling, “Whatever they do to me, stay strong, try to protect yourself!”

The shaman again placed the inverted skull under the trough at the low end of the slab. Aisling desperately projected an enchantment of comfort and pain relief but could tell immediately that it did not work.

The Imp’s erection returned. He crawled down and sat on Conor’s chest, watching as the shaman grabbed Conor’s testicles with one hand and raised a flint knife with the other. The Woodwose roared their approval. The Imp giggled and began to masturbate. The shaman slowly brought the knife down.

An arrow exploded from the shaman’s throat, and he collapsed before the knife could castrate Conor. Tadg stepped from the edge of the clearing, loosing arrows as fast as he could draw them. Woodwose near the slab fell. Tadg advanced as Liam sprinted from the trees toward Aisling.

Woodwose rushed Liam with abandon. Liam cut through them, sword in one hand, dagger in the other. Bodies piled at his feet, and he stumbled, forcing him to step back to keep his footing.

Tadg was almost to the slab when he drew and loosed an arrow at the Imp. There was a flash, and the arrow became ash in midflight, the iron arrowhead falling to earth. Tadg tried to draw another. His bowstring vaporized. Dropping the bow, he reached for his dagger but was knocked to the ground by charging Woodwose. The Imp jumped down, pulled the dagger from Tadg’s belt, and sliced across the back of one of Tadg’s legs, then the other, severing his hamstrings. Tadg cried out in pain.

Liam retreated a few feet from the line of Woodwose between him and Aisling, his sword held in a high guard, his dagger low. He
looked toward Tadg and Conor and spotted the Imp approaching cautiously from his right. Liam started to loop left, giving him an angle past the mound of dead and dying Woodwose for his charge to Aisling.

“Liam! The cave! There’s a demon!” screamed Aisling.

Liam risked a glance over his shoulder to the cave, now behind him. A wave of blackness was flowing out along the ground toward him. He quickly surveyed the clearing, noting the Woodwose between him and Aisling and the Imp creeping closer. Even with his half-Sidhe ability to anticipate the moves of an attacker within blade reach, there were too many adversaries about to rush him at the same time. He looked straight at Aisling, raised and threw his dagger, severing the rope binding her hands. The blackness crawled up Liam’s legs and enveloped his struggling body.

Aisling wrenched the dagger loose from the tree, cut her feet free, and stepped forward. Tendrils of black flew through the air from the cave and slammed her back against the trunk, binding her there once again.

Lord Maolan rode his horse into the clearing. A hush descended on the Woodwose. He looked around. The bodies of Woodwose lay strewn about. A shape smothered in black stood fixed where Liam once was. Tadg had dragged himself onto the slab, where he was pulling ineffectively at the vines binding Conor.

Dismounting, Maolan addressed the Imp. “Why are they not dead yet? There will be no coronation tomorrow without Aisling. With no king and no Goddess, your master and I will rise to rule the dual worlds. Stop playing around and finish them.”

The Imp gave an exaggerated bow, sweeping one hand to his feet. Rising, he giggled and pointed to Tadg. Two Woodwose grabbed Tadg’s useless legs and dragged him off the slab. Flipping him faceup, they tore off his clothing and pinned his arms and legs down.

Using Tadg’s dagger, the Imp carved a red arc across his stomach. Tadg gritted his teeth against the pain as small, glistening cavities
puckered open along the path of the dagger’s point. Blackness crept along the earth toward him. Tadg stared at it wide-eyed. Black tendrils reached out and tore the wound fully open, dragging out intestines, to Tadg’s screams. The Woodwose released his limbs and backed off as the blackness enveloped Tadg’s body. Tadg’s screams became muffled, then stopped suddenly.

The Imp rolled on the ground in uncontrolled laughter.

Maolan raised his arms and cried, “Consume them all!”

“Aisling.” A soft voice penetrated the fray. “Aisling, you must stop them.” Brigid was standing in the clearing.

“Brigid!” cried Aisling. “Send help, hurry!”

“There’s no one who can help here but you,” replied Brigid.

The Imp, his head cocked, studied Brigid. “That is not an apparition,” he squeaked. “She is really here.” He rushed at Brigid. She grabbed him by the ear and held him off to her side. He slashed at her arm, and a red line appeared. She twisted the ear, and the Imp cried in pain, dropping the dagger and falling to one knee.

“Aisling,” Brigid continued in her soft, level voice, “you must put a stop to this or we’ll all die.”

“I can’t,” sobbed Aisling. “Not by myself.”

“You will all die!” shouted Maolan. He took a step toward Brigid and gestured at the cave mouth. “Kill them!”

“Aisling, you have journeyed between this world and the Otherworld for fifteen hundred years. You have the knowledge. You must now find it within yourself if you are going to save us.”

A fresh wave of black flowed from the cave and washed around the base of the sacrificial slab. Tentacles reached for Conor. Aisling closed her eyes, tried to still her mind.

“Aghh!” cried Conor through clenched teeth as the first tentacle reached his skin. Aisling forced herself to ignore him and focus on Brigid’s teachings, remembering that even if she was not one with the Morrígna, she could still draw upon the Goddess for power and
knowledge. She stretched out her consciousness to the Otherworld and compelled herself to experience that connection to the exclusion of the chaos and pain surrounding her. She slipped deeper inward, past any thought, to her deepest memories, memories from before she was born, before her most recent birth. A second tentacle of black slid along Conor’s rib cage, smoke rising from the contact. Conor thrashed against his bonds, clamping his mouth shut. Aisling felt Anann, from the Otherworld, breathe into her.

“I know you, Semjâzâ,” said Aisling, opening her eyes, which had gone from gray to pale green. “I know your hidden, ineffable name.” A shudder rippled through Semjâzâ’s blackness, his tendrils drawing back from Conor. “I saw you slip out of heaven with your Grigori followers in your lust for mortal women. I watched as you were eventually rejected by mortals and your Nephilim offspring alike, as you descended into trespassing against birds and beasts and reptiles, into devouring men’s flesh and drinking their blood. I know your ineffable name—” Aisling made the sound of lightning striking seawater, a sound no human throat could make. The black tendrils that bound her to the dead tree fell away as small sparks danced within them. She stepped forward.

“No!” shouted Maolan. “Kill her!” With two long strides, he reached the closest Woodwose and pushed him toward Aisling.

Aisling looked over to the man who was her husband and realized she no longer needed him in her world at all. She silently called to his horse, who wheeled around and kicked out with its rear legs. Maolan’s head exploded in red and pink as the hooves connected, and his body crumpled. The remaining Woodwose broke and ran for the forest. The Imp twisted out of Brigid’s grip and fled into the cave.