Reckoning of Fallen Gods Read online

  “I am sorry, though,” she added, reaching a hand to grab Bahdlahn’s forearm. “I could do nothing for Innevah.”

  He looked at her incredulously. “What? What of her?”

  Aoleyn turned to Aghmor again, and he was shaking his head emphatically.

  “You do’no know?” Aoleyn asked her uamhas friend. “Your mother…”

  “It was Innevah who cried out?” Bahdlahn balked, the words catching against the lump in his throat. “My ma?”

  He began to rock and Aoleyn was quick to him, catching him, steadying him, and now it was her turn to give him a needed hug.

  “She wasn’t afraid,” Aoleyn said to him, though of course, she had no way of knowing any such thing. She pulled Bahdlahn out to arm’s length and stared into his blue eyes. “Innevah struck out at them. She killed one of the Coven, one who deserved to die. Her courage … remarkable. She loved you, Bahdlahn, above all else. She would have fought back years ago, except that she understood that you would suffer the consequences. She was a warrior in her heart.”

  The words weren’t helping much, she knew, so she went back to the hug and just held her friend close and let him have his moment of grief. She knew he’d come through this, and quickly. Bahdlahn and his mother had been slaves of the brutal Usgar for all of Bahdlahn’s life—almost two decades. Innevah had known freedom before that, down at a lake village in the shadow of Fireach Speuer.

  The Usgar spoke of the lakemen as weak, cowardly, and simple, but to Aoleyn, Innevah stood as one of the strongest, bravest, and cleverest people she had ever known. Bahdlahn understood that, too, and knew the many sacrifices his mother had made to give him a chance at life. As far as Aoleyn knew, he was the only male slave ever to have been allowed to live past his transition to adulthood. That had been Innevah’s doing, with her strict instructions to him that he would be stupid as far as anyone else would know. Feigning the part of the simpleton had made Bahdlahn less of a threat—enough so that he was still alive.

  Alive, and out here, for some reason, Aoleyn reminded herself. She pulled back and turned to Aghmor.

  “I would greet you with a hug,” he said. “My heart’s full at seeing you, for sure that I thought you’d been murdered. But I fear I can’no stand.” He guided her gaze down to his leg, pulling the furs off it, to show his calf bent halfway down, in a manner that no human leg should ever bend.

  Aoleyn rushed to his side, inspecting the garishly broken leg.

  “It aches, but not so bad, unless I try to stand,” Aghmor explained. “I fell early in the winter and broke it.”

  “You’ve spent the whole season out here with Bahdlahn?” Aoleyn looked from one to the other.

  “We couldn’t get back,” both said at the same time.

  “But why are you out…” Aoleyn bit back the question, for she could figure it out, regarding Bahdlahn, at least. Tay Aillig had promised to kill him, and if Bahdlahn believed that she had been killed, he would know that he had no defense against the merciless Usgar warrior. Why Aghmor might be here, though, she could not begin to imagine.

  “I’m weary now,” she told the Usgar. “In the morning, I’ll tend your wound. Might that we’ll be able to fix your leg.”

  He grabbed her by the forearm with surprising familiarity. “I trust you will,” he said, too intensely, she thought.

  She wasn’t sure what that meant, but was sure that she needed some sleep.

  Bahdlahn moved to the skins and blankets and pulled some aside, preparing a bed for her. Gladly, she accepted, and collapsed into them, falling fast asleep.

  * * *

  Tay Aillig pushed to the forefront of the gathering in the winter encampment, nearly the whole tribe out on the northern end of the plateau, staring into the sacred trees, where something strange seemed to be happening.

  That array of puzzled expressions only grew more confused when the witches came filtering through the trees, most wearing nothing but their simple, sheer smocks, two of them fully naked. All seemed disheveled and out of sorts, some leaning on each other, with wisps of smoke coming from their smocks or hair.

  A pair were helping Mairen, but when she saw the gathering, she tugged free of them and came forward determinedly, though on legs that were far from steady.

  She started to speak, but stopped when Tay Aillig couldn’t stifle his laugh.

  “What?” she demanded.

  Tay Aillig brushed her hair back from her face, trying to control his snort. “Your eyebrows,” he said. “They’re gone. Your face is red. What … what?”

  She glowered at him. “Aoleyn lives.”

  The mocking grin disappeared from the Usgar-triath’s face. “She survived the sacrifice? No.”

  “Yes.”

  “How many could have done so? What does this mean for the favor of Usgar?”

  “None, ever,” Mairen replied. “Yet she did. She is alive. She attacked us on the plateau.”

  “You are sure?”

  “Of course I am sure!” Mairen growled back at him. She looked around at her sisters. “Aoleyn,” they all confirmed, one after another.

  “And she is powerful with…” Connebragh started to add.

  “Shut up,” Mairen told her.

  “Where is she now?” Tay Aillig asked. He looked back and called, “Warriors!”

  “She fled, down the mountain.”

  Tay Aillig nodded, unsure of his next move.

  Mairen pushed right up to him and whispered in his ear. “She is out there, and with great magic. She is a danger to you, to us.”

  The man nodded as Mairen stepped back. Suddenly this all seemed more serious. “How fared your ritual? Was it ruined?”

  “Sure that it was cut short,” Connebragh answered him.

  “It went far enough,” Mairen snapped. “We are thirteen once more. The Coven is completed.”

  A murmur went up through the witches behind, some voicing their disagreement with that assessment, but Tay Aillig ended the debate simply, forcefully saying, “Good.”

  “Aoleyn must be caught,” Mairen declared.

  Tay Aillig rocked back on his heels. “Must?” he asked, his voice calm.

  “We are all in danger.”

  “Or she’ll not return,” said Tay Aillig.

  “A risk we can’no take, any of us,” Mairen insisted. “She has found some power beyond the sacred crystals. In her blasphemy, she has twisted the magic to her own evil ends. Usgar is not with her, but she has found a way, a demon way, to be sure. I do’no know how she survived Craos’a’diad, but she has, and her continued existence marks us in the eyes of our god. Usgar will not be content until she is given to him.”

  “All out and about the camp,” Tay Aillig ordered his warriors. “Look for signs. Find her trail, but do’no venture far, and ne’er alone!”

  As the gathering began to disperse, forming into hunting groups, Tay Aillig pulled Mairen aside.

  “You wear your fear upon your face,” he said to her quietly.

  “One spell,” Mairen answered. “We were surprised, aye, and that is no small thing, but one spell, just one, sent us all bouncing and burning. I’ve ne’er seen…” She paused and took a deep breath.

  “We have to find her. We have to catch her. We have to kill her,” she said to her husband.

  Tay Aillig glanced around at the first spring night, the snows still formidable this high on the mountain, the wind’s bite still lethal. “How?” he asked, an all-encompassing question. Aoleyn had been given to Craos’a’diad an entire season ago. How could she have possibly survived? Where had she gone?

  “How?” he asked again.

  “It was Aoleyn” was all that Mairen could reply.

  * * *

  Aoleyn would have slept the day through, except that anxious Aghmor would not wait. He stirred her, and when she tried to roll over away from him, he grabbed her more forcefully and called her name, shaking her until she pushed his hands away and sat up, rubbing her bleary eyes.

  �
��My leg,” the man pleaded. He was sitting on the floor beside her, and he grabbed that injured limb and pulled it around before him.

  “Get the crystals,” he told Bahdlahn.

  “No,” said Aoleyn. “I do’no need them.” When Aghmor started to protest, she stared into his eyes and held her hand up, bidding him to trust her.

  Aoleyn brought one hand to her own hip, to the wedstone pendant hanging from her chain belt, and placed the other upon the wrongly bent section of Aghmor’s calf. She knew immediately as she began casting her spell that the bone of shattered leg had long ago healed, but had healed wrongly. She went in with the magical warmth, casting a powerful spell of healing, but there was little to actually repair at that time. The bones had mended, the skin and muscles about them had reset, but in this new and unwieldy manner, and at such an angle that Aghmor could not walk without great discomfort.

  She heard Aghmor sigh with pleasure and relief as he felt the soothing magic, but when she stopped and he opened his eyes, he looked to his leg and gasped, for nothing appeared different.

  “It’s to be more difficult than I was thinking,” Aoleyn admitted. “Your bone’s solid. There’s naught to heal.”

  “I can’no walk!” Aghmor cried, seeming on the edge of an explosion here. “I need…”

  “There is a way,” Aoleyn said calmly and forcefully. “But you be sure that it’s going to hurt.”

  Aghmor stared at her, mouth open, clearly at a loss.

  “Lie down,” Aoleyn instructed, smoothing the furs beside him.

  He stared at her, his face full of suspicion.

  “Do you want to walk?” she asked calmly.

  The man rolled down to his back and Aoleyn motioned Bahdlahn over.

  “Hold him down,” Aoleyn instructed.

  “No!” Aghmor started to protest, but Bahdlahn caught his arms even as he started to flail, and pinned him easily, having all the leverage, and possessing superior strength.

  The Usgar began cursing then, but only for a brief time, as Aoleyn stuffed a wad of cloth into his mouth.

  “You bite it, and with all your strength,” she said. “I’ll get you walking, not to doubt, but it’s not to be easy. If you’re wanting me to stop, then nod now and so I will, but you’ll be crawling about for the rest of your days.”

  Aghmor settled and finally shook his head.

  “Bite it with all your strength,” Aoleyn told him, and to Bahdlahn, she said, “And hold him as best you can.”

  Aghmor’s eyes went wide and he began making strange mewling sounds as Aoleyn grabbed his misshapen calf above and below the badly healed break. She fell into her wedstone then, and sent her spirit searching, searching, while settling back and lifting one bare foot to place it between her hands against Aghmor’s leg.

  “You think you’re strong enough to break it?” Bahdlahn asked, or started to ask, for even as the words left his mouth, there came a sharp crackle, a blast of lightning from Aoleyn’s foot, shooting into Aghmor’s leg.

  The man howled, the scream muffled by the wad of cloth in his mouth. He began thrashing and Bahdlahn struggled to hold him as Aoleyn tugged hard with her hands, and pushed hard the other way with her foot.

  Aghmor’s other leg came across to kick at her, but Aoleyn accepted the blow and answered with a second lightning bolt, and with it came a sickening crack of the bone as she forced the broken leg to straighten.

  Immediately, the woman shifted her magic, falling back to the wedstone, taking another couple of kicks from the frantic, agonized Aghmor.

  He calmed almost immediately when the first wave of warm healing magic washed through him.

  Aoleyn went at the leg with all of her magical strength, mending the bone, sealing the veins.

  She fell back soon after, gasping for the effort. She managed to motion to Bahdlahn to let Aghmor go, for the man, covered in sweat, had stopped struggling.

  Bahdlahn removed the wad of cloth.

  “Are you okay, then?” Aoleyn asked, and the breathless Aghmor nodded.

  “Do’no try to sit up, and do’no you dare try to stand,” Aoleyn told him. “We’ve not near finished here.”

  “No more lightning,” he whispered.

  “No more,” Aoleyn confirmed. “Just the healing now, and you’ll be walking again. Might be a day, might be three, but you’ll be walking.”

  Aghmor flashed her the warmest of smiles, his eyes boring into hers with such intensity that it rocked her back a bit.

  “Sleep now,” she bade him, and she collected herself and gathered up some more clothes, moving aside and suddenly feeling very exposed.

  * * *

  “I do’no like it,” said Sorcha, the oldest witch in the Coven, one who had been considering her journey into the p’utherai, the sisterhood of those retired from actively acting as witches. “There is too much turmoil, too much disturbance.”

  That declaration from the venerable witch brought a collective hush from the five witches around her, the oldest of the Coven’s dancers with the exception of the Usgar-righinn, who was not there, and of Connebragh, who was there and was still quite young, barely into her thirties. They were back at the sacred lea, ostensibly to begin planning the breakdown of the winter encampment and the move back down the mountain, a conversation that had seemed quite trite in light of the recent events.

  “Aoleyn will join, Aoleyn will not,” Sorcha spat. “She battles the demon fossa on a field of sidhe, and Seonagh is lost to us! Oh, fey!”

  Connebragh nodded, knowing that old Sorcha and Seonagh had danced together for many seasons before Seonagh had retired to a quieter existence. Connebragh, too, profoundly felt the loss of Seonagh, who had been her teacher.

  “Seonagh is given to Craos’a’diad, following her sister,” Sorcha said.

  “We do not speak of that,” said Annagh, the second-youngest there besides Connebragh, but one who looked much older, for her hair had turned white at a very young age.

  “Bah!” Sorcha snorted, waving her hand. “And Gavina will join, but lo, she falls to her death? What witch would so fall with a sacred crystal in hand?”

  “But she was not a witch, was she?” Annagh retorted. “And she could not be, so it’s seen.”

  “Another dead,” Sorcha continued. “Seonagh, Gavina, then Aoleyn is fed to the god. Brayth is killed, then Ralid. Too much, I say! Too much disturbance. Elder Raibert falls.”

  “Brayth was killed on the field. All saw,” one of the others reminded them.

  “By the fossa, and when Seonagh was lost,” Annagh added.

  “Raibert was an old man,” said yet another.

  “Seven more lost to the sidhe,” Sorcha spat.

  “A large force,” Connebragh reasoned.

  “Aye, and who’s e’er seen so many sidhe together as that?” She sighed and sat back, quietly considering the litany of unusual and deadly events that had befallen the Usgar in the last few months.

  “All reasonable, aye,” she said, talking as much to herself as to the others. “But so many? All at once? And now this? Young and wild Aoleyn returns from the grave to throw us aside as if we are but children? Can it not be a sign from Usgar that he is not pleased?”

  “Moragh will be acceptable,” said Annagh, who was Moragh’s aunt. “She will grow strong in the magic of Usg…”

  “Compared to Aoleyn?” Sorcha scoffed.

  “That was no magic of our god,” Annagh insisted. “Demon magic. She fought the fossa on the night Ralid was killed, I have heard.”

  “She killed Ralid,” said one of the others.

  “Perhaps she fought the fossa before that,” Annagh reasoned. “Perhaps the demon beast overcame her and took her, and it was the fossa, not Aoleyn, who slew Ralid. And the fossa, not Aoleyn, who went into Craos’a’diad, and who came forth from Craos’a’diad to torment us.”

  The others were following her lead here, leaning in and nodding, except for Sorcha, who leaned away, arms crossed over her chest, shaking her head.
r />   And except for Connebragh, who knew better. “No!” she interrupted harshly. All eyes turned to her and she swallowed hard, her loyalties torn, her thoughts jumbled. “I was with the Usgar-righinn when Aoleyn returned, and before. Mairen believed that Aoleyn had destroyed the fossa—that was Aoleyn’s claim. It is possible.”

  “Then why give the girl to Craos’a’diad?” Sorcha demanded.

  “Heresy,” Connebragh admitted. “It was’no demon magic, but the gems Aoleyn wore, gems she took from the crystals in the caverns below Craos’a’diad.”

  That brought a few gasps around the small circle.

  “She claimed to have found a new…” Connebragh shook her head, for she was getting too far down a line of thought here that she could not begin to explain.

  “You do’no believe that Aoleyn should have been fed to the god,” Sorcha said.

  “She killed Ralid, they say,” Connebragh replied.

  “But for the rest?” Sorcha pressed.

  Connebragh shrugged and blew a long sigh. “The Usgar-righinn speaks for our god. I do not question her judgment.”

  “The Usgar-righinn, who was tossed like a child by the breath of Aoleyn,” Sorcha said.

  “Hush!” Annagh warned, and others joined in.

  “I do’no know,” Connebragh admitted, silencing them all. “There is much I do’no know. But Mairen is Usgar-righinn.”

  “Who is married to Usgar-triath, who was Usgar-laoch and who was Aoleyn’s husband,” said Sorcha.

  She left the implications hanging out there for the other five, and none could deny the convenience of the spectacular fall of the powerful young woman named Aoleyn.

  “Let us plan the journey to the lower camp,” said Sorcha. “And let us pray to Usgar that these next seasons will be less … eventful.”

  * * *

  The pain and exertion of the healing had Aghmor sleeping soon after, leaving Aoleyn and Bahdlahn to share stories of their winter adventures.

  “I’ve been staying in the caves under the mountain,” Aoleyn explained to him. “I found a place, a most marvelous…” She paused and sighed, shaking her head. She could describe the waterfall cavern, of course, but could she really explain to Bahdlahn the magical and mystical beauty of it, the song of the gems within the crystals, the kindness that cave had bestowed upon her? For that’s how she felt, truly, as if the cave itself had welcomed her and given to her that comfort which she most had needed.