Reckoning of Fallen Gods Read online

  “Come, then!” he yelled at the stalking demon, who glared back with those fiendish orbs, part cat-like, part fire. The fossa moved in a perimeter about him slowly and deliberately.

  I will kill it, Fionlagh silently assured Elara. I’m no’ afraid to die, but the demon fossa’s to be destroyed, and you’ll not be shamed. And then, aloud, he declared to the fossa, “My daughter will’no be shamed!”

  The creature paused in its stalk and stared at him, mocking him.

  Its malevolence overwhelmed Aoleyn.

  “Come on!” Fionlagh cried at it.

  The demon creature sat down, watching, waiting.

  Fionlagh’s spirit heard Elara’s wail.

  She knew, and he knew, too, then, for his lifeblood poured from his shorn ankles, and, the moment of surprise passed, he felt the fiery pain, felt the stabbing of the tendons rolling up at the backs of his legs.

  He brought the speartip in close, silently calling to Elara, and she responded, giving him the strength to excite the healing magic within the blessed weapon. They had to stem the bleeding.

  The warmth of magic filled him, taking the pain, restoring his hope. He closed his eyes, basking, centering, but only for a moment.

  For the demon fossa was gone.

  Fionlagh strained to peer deeper into the darkness, glanced left and right. It was just there—it couldn’t have moved far.

  “Under the bushes,” he decided.

  But no, the demon fossa slammed Fionlagh in the back, its fangs closing on the back of his neck. He started to swing about, wanted to turn, but suddenly, his body would not answer his demands.

  Aoleyn, too, felt nothing, felt as she had when had first awakened on the chasm floor, far below this tunnel. Numb. Helpless.

  Fionlagh and Aoleyn didn’t feel it when the fossa let him go, didn’t feel himself falling, even, until his face crashed through the branches of a chokeberry bush, tearing bloody lines. He had to get up! He had to lift his spear! Did he even still have the spear? For surely he couldn’t feel it!

  He wanted to roll.

  He couldn’t.

  Aoleyn knew.

  * * *

  Aoleyn awoke with a start, and climbed to her feet before she was even aware of the movement. It wasn’t until she got there, standing in the tunnels fanning off the deep shaft, that she realized her legs would not work, would not support her.

  Down she tumbled, painfully.

  “Where are you?” she cried out helplessly as she floundered about on the floor. “You are here! You are in my mind! Help me!”

  Nothing. She felt no presence about, spiritual or physical. She heard the song of Usgar beyond the gems she now wore, but it remained distant and of a melody she had not before heard.

  This whole situation didn’t make sense to her, though. If that was Elara, or Seonagh, or both, then why would they waste time imparting a long-ago memory to her, when they could be helping her with the great physical healing she still needed? And these memories, or dreams, or whatever they were, remained cryptic and elusive.

  “Mother!” she called. “Elara of the Usgar. Come to me if you are near. I need you!”

  She waited, letting the echoes of her call filter along the passageways until the halls went silent once more. Silent, still. She fell into her wedstone only briefly, only to attune herself more fully to the spirit world.

  But there was nothing. Aoleyn had encountered many of these ghosts when she had come down here in her test for the Coven. And she knew the two who had saved her in her fall. She had no doubt that the spirits of Elara and Seonagh had caught her descent with the magic of Usgar, and had flowed the healing magic through her for all the time—days?—she had been unconscious. There could be no other explanation, for certainly she should now be dead.

  Or maybe she was dead. Perhaps she was drifting through the confusion of the first moments of the afterlife, seeing time out of sequence, hearing the echoes of memories she should not have.

  How could she have such a memory as the one she had just witnessed? She had not been there …

  An image flashed in her thoughts, that of a young mother with an infant girl lying beside her.

  That thought rocked the poor and battered young woman. She leaned back to consider the implications and possibilities, and fell deep into her thoughts, until the coldness about her began to sting her fingers and her toes—her toes! She could feel her toes! The sensation of pain brought her back to her senses, to the here and now, and Aoleyn immediately fell into her gemstone magic, first creating another fiery cloak to warm her and the stones about her, then into the wedstone with renewed determination.

  Soon after, she stood back up, and this time, Aoleyn did not wobble. The pain was gone, cured by the power of Usgar.

  Except for the pain in her growling belly.

  She thought to go back the few strides to the chasm, to call to the green-striped malachite to help lift and climb out to the world above. She shook her head, doubting that she had the strength to manage that at this time, with so much of her magical energy already spent in the heating and healing.

  “Not this time,” she told herself, putting her hand over her belly to try to settle the growling.

  Standing strong and sure, Aoleyn called upon a different gem, the most minor of enchantments, and enacted the magic of the cat’s-eye that was set in the turquoise of her ear cap. Now she could see, and off she walked down the tunnel, following the music of Usgar’s magic.

  The turquoise on her ear, too, offered her some unexpected insights, alerting her of other creatures in her area.

  Fish.

  There were fish.

  Aoleyn followed the call and noticed the tunnel growing warmer—so much so that she dismissed her cloak of flames. She heard rushing water and continued tentatively, as thirsty as famished as she was. She didn’t know of any rivers in this part of Fireach Speuer.

  It was no river, she learned soon after, but a waterfall, cascading down the rocky wall, kicking and spraying wide as it hit the jags of stone, but forming a wide pool in the middle of a large, warm cavern. Aoleyn moved to it, trying to sort out the riddle. Why was water running fast from above?

  She moved to the pool, using the turquoise to sense the fish, and saw, too, all about the place, various mushrooms she knew to be edible. She dipped her hand in the water, to find that it was very warm, and grew warmer as she moved closer to the waterfall. With a thought, she brightened the light from the diamond on her belly ring, and fell deeper into the turquoise to better scour the various living things in the crystal-clear pool.

  Just fish, some as large as her forearm, but nothing menacing. And some lizards, she noted, small and harmless, scampering about the back wall bordering the pool.

  She focused on the fish—so many! Fish that would come to her call. Fish she could catch, and cook with her ruby. Water she could drink.

  Nothing had ever tasted better to poor Aoleyn.

  She ate her fill, drank more than that, then, on a thought, pulled off her smock and slipped into the warm water. It wasn’t deep here near the ledge, but Aoleyn played it safe, since she had never learned to swim. She called on the striped malachite, though, and found herself floating effortlessly. The warm water felt good on her cold and bruised body. She went toward the waterfall, where it was warmer, and kept following the heat until she was standing right under the cascading flow, which was so warm, hot even, that it tingled when it kissed her skin.

  And there, too, Aoleyn understood. This was no river, but snow melt. She was directly under Dail Usgar, she realized, directly beneath the warmth of the crystal god that was melting the snow falling on the winter plateau and the sacred grove. The water was flowing down from there, to this place, and likely out of this place and down the mountainside, perhaps underground, to feed Loch Beag. She felt truly blessed in that moment, as if she was bathing in the glory of Usgar, and so she remained in the shower for a long while.

  She had barely climbed back out of the p
ool before curling up on a mossy bed, and didn’t even consider, as she closed her eyes, that her dream was still there, waiting for her.

  * * *

  She was within the mind of another again, but no longer her father. For a heartbeat, she feared him gone, a notion only reinforced by the sniffling and tears she noted rolling from the eyes of her host, Elara.

  But Elara had not given up. Aoleyn felt her mother tighten her resolve and redouble her efforts through the gemstone flecks encased in Fionlagh’s crystalline spear tip, which the man had fallen atop, fortunately.

  Elara fully gave herself to the gray wedstone, falling wholly into the melody of Usgar’s most beautiful song, transporting her life essence across the mountainside, to these gray flecks in this magical crystal, to this man she so dearly loved.

  Elara jolted, spiritually and physically, when the demon fossa rushed back in, slamming Fionlagh and sending him spinning and tumbling away from the spear. Elara tried to reach out, thinking the creature would go and finish her beloved husband.

  Aoleyn, who had learned that the real hunger of the demon fossa was not man-flesh, but magic, recognized her mother’s error. Elara did, too, but too late!

  The beast attacked the spear, and while its fangs chomped against the crystal, its spirit flowed into the flecks within, into the connection between the witch and warrior. Elara felt as if something sharp slashed at her own life force when the fossa’s powerful maw closed on the crystal spear tip. She felt the crystal crumbling beneath the mighty crush of that bite, and felt, too, to her amazement and dismay, the beast consuming the gems within that crystal, consuming the magic.

  Elara should have left then—Aoleyn screamed for her to do so—but she could not. She called upon the gray graphite to spark, and took some fleeting hope in the howl from the demon fossa.

  But no, Aoleyn knew, again from her own experience, that this was no howl of pain. She recalled the battle with this creature and Brayth, when her own lightning bolts had struck at the beast from on high. The powerful strokes of crackling energy would have killed any known living creature, but no, not the fossa.

  Quite the opposite.

  Its shriek now was no cry of pain or fear, nay, it was a cry of joy.

  An epiphany came to Elara: Don’t fight the dark, embrace the light! Aoleyn, who was thinking of exactly that, wondered for a moment if she had somehow gotten the message to her mother from across the years. She dared hope for a moment that somehow this magical bond might be changing the course of events, that perhaps she had given Elara the key to defeating the fossa, and so Aoleyn would not grow up orphaned.

  But no, she realized as Elara’s thoughts worked through the problem. The witch had come to realize, all on her own, as Aoleyn would learn two decades later, the paradox of the demon creature. Elara had come to understand that she could not defeat it with destructive magic, for it was already wounded beyond life, almost an undead thing. You couldn’t break what was already broken.

  You had to fix it.

  Elara knew that now, and Aoleyn took hope, fleeting hope. She had not changed the course of events. This was playing out exactly as it had those years ago. Aoleyn was no more than a helpless witness to the death of her father and the shattering of her own mother’s mind.

  Elara embraced the light, and sang the internal magical harmonies with power that seemed so pure and akin to Aoleyn’s own, and Aoleyn knew then that she had come by her gifts with the stones because of this wonderful woman. It was too late for Elara, though, for so deep into the darkness of the fossa was she by then that there was no light to be found.

  And so the fossa ate.

  At the sound of another wail, this one human, Elara’s spirit reached for Fionlagh, carrying with her healing magic.

  But the magic was dissipating, surely, the vibrations, the song, drifting to nothingness. Both women could feel the struggle of Elara’s Usgar magic against the darkness of the demon, and could feel the power of Usgar falling further and further away, the conduit gemstones being absorbed by demonic darkness.

  Yet through sheer determination, Elara stayed with Fionlagh, whispering to him telepathically, promising her love, comforting him in his last living moments. She was with him when the fossa bit him by the scruff of the neck and so easily dragged him away, with him when the demon dragged him into the cave—Aoleyn knew that cave, and felt herself faltering when they all entered it—and to the narrow crawl space, tugging and sliding the groaning warrior across the angled stone.

  And Elara, and so Aoleyn, were with her doomed father when the fossa dragged him to the other side of the crawl space, where the mighty demon beast so easily took Fionlagh in its jaws and jumped down into the pit that was the heart of its den, the heart of darkness itself.

  Aoleyn cried for her father, and for her mother, for she knew that Elara could sense the dead here, could hear the bones rattling underfoot, could feel the edges of those bones under the skin of Fionlagh.

  Together, they had found Ifrinn. Together, they had found hell.

  Elara stayed with Fionlagh, all sensibility cast aside, when the fossa began to eat, lapping the blood, gnawing the bones. The demon took its time, expertly devouring the man so that he was alive and aware for a long, long time.

  And Fionlagh felt Elara, too, and was comforted, she knew. But then he grew horrified and mentally assaulted her, trying to push her away.

  For Fionlagh saw what Elara could not. Fionlagh saw what the helpless, onlooking Aoleyn knew to be true.

  Elara was as caught as he. The fossa would devour him, would kill his mortal body and consume his spirit.

  And consume her spirit.

  Aoleyn could only watch.

  The couple shared tears. They shared wails, they sank together into darkness.

  Fionlagh died without hope.

  And in her tent in the Usgar encampment, Elara lay on her back without hope, and stared blankly, seeing only darkness, her magic consumed, her life force diminished, her mind shattered by the horror.

  * * *

  Aoleyn awakened in a cold sweat. She had hoped to change the course of events, to somehow go back in time and save her parents from that awful fate.

  She had failed.

  She screamed into the darkness of the cave around her, cursing Elara, or Seonagh, or whomever it had been who had foisted that horror upon her.

  “To what end?” she cried. “To what gain?”

  She rose and called upon the diamond to light the area. “No,” she said, her thoughts going in a different direction. “Did you think I could save you? Did you bring me back, hoping I’d be giving you the strength to win? How could you…”

  Aoleyn stopped, and stood there dumbfoundedly for a long while, replaying all three dreams in succession.

  Finally, she understood. Elara hadn’t pulled her back in time. Nor had Seonagh. No, she hadn’t gone back in time, nor was this a vivid tale imposed upon her by the dead witches.

  No, this was a memory, and not one caught within the cavern by some twist of Usgar’s magic, and no residual ghostly memory offered by Elara.

  But it was a memory—it was Aoleyn’s own memory.

  She had been there, she realized, in that very time and place, not only physically lying beside her mother, but within the song connecting Elara to Fionlagh. While not giving to her something extraneous, something—the echoing songs of magic in these caverns, the ghosts of Elara and Seonagh—was bringing Aoleyn’s adult sensibilities back to the reality she had witnessed on that distant, terrible day. She had seen it then, through the song, but with an infant’s mind, not capable of understanding any of it.

  That memory remained, though, somehow, and now she could see it again.

  Aoleyn sat there, thinking. She couldn’t be sure of any of this, of course, and perhaps it was just a dream.

  “No,” she decided, shaking her head. It was more than a dream. It was, or had been, real.

  A smile, one of gratitude, found its way to her horrified and h
eartbroken face. She hadn’t given the answer, the riddle to defeat the fossa, to Elara.

  Nay, Elara had given it to her. Elara had found out too late to save herself or Fionlagh, but in that last, desperate moment, Aoleyn had learned the truth, and would later use that truth to save herself and destroy the demon fossa that had haunted Fireach Speuer for time untold.

  Even as she sorted that information, it seemed impossible to Aoleyn.

  So many things seemed impossible, and she was learning every day that they were not.

  “Thank you, my mother,” she whispered.

  That was her decision regarding the dreams in the dark cave when she should have been dead but was not. And that decision, and its implications, would guide her now when relevant. She had no time to unravel any of this further.

  But she did have the time, and now had the strength as well, to explore these lower caverns and discern the source of that strange Usgar melody.

  15

  SHE WHO MADE HIM HUMAN

  He saw them, then, his tormentors, two boys, almost men, of the Usgar tribe, kicking him, punching him, taunting him.

  How he wanted to strike back. But he could not!

  How he wanted to run away. But he could not!

  He was helpless. He was nothing, just an uamhas. If he struck back, they’d kill him, without remorse and without recourse. If he tried to run, they’d catch him and torture him until he was dead.

  He was just an uamhas, unworthy of anything but this slave life, and he’d never escape, as his mother would never escape.

  So, they beat him, and he could do nothing but accept it, and the taunts, always the taunts!

  Even his name was a taunt.

  Thump.

  He saw the face of that particularly vicious one, Egard, fist raised, smile wide, and all the wider when that punch landed.

  But then that smile was gone, wiped away by a countering punch, and as Egard turned, he got a knee lifted into his groin, and as he doubled over, a left hook took him in the jaw and laid him low.