None of them lifted their gaze to the DunBroch party as they passed.
Eventually, they found themselves outside on a great stone patio that overlooked the sea far below. It was nearly as large as the entire village of beehive houses, and was paved with beautifully painted tiles. An arching stone handrail protected occupants from the steep drop of the rocky cliffs. At the end of the patio, hundreds of precarious carved steps led down to a white shoreline. There, half-sunk merchant ships were visible in the sand, as well as a handful of old rowboats. Over all of it was the smell of the sea. Not the clean, saline smell Merida had picked up when they’d first approached the ocean, but the rotten, mouth-puckering odor of spoiled fish.
Hamish took in a sharp, uneven breath. He’d never seen the ocean before today.
Rory had stopped. He passed a hand slowly over his temple, eyes confused and vague. “I’m sorry, I misremembered where…”
“Boy,” Fergus said, his voice worried. He put his hand on Rory’s arm. “Don’t lose hope.”
There was something so touching in the way Fergus spoke that both Hamish and Merida stared at him. It had been so long since Merida had heard her father not being blustery and loud and big and overtly cheery that she had convinced herself that he had always been that way. But now she remembered that there used to be more to him. Not a softer side, exactly, but a more complex side, like what had been slowly unfolding as they took this journey.
Hamish made his way over to him as he continued to try to break through Rory’s stupor. He was so clearly fascinated by the change in his father that Merida tried to remember if Hamish was old enough to ever remember the Fergus of her youth.
But before she could ponder it too deeply, she realized they were no longer alone on the patio.
A figure had just climbed up the last step of the precarious staircase from the shore far below. The ocean wind tore at his cloak, his tunic, and his mane of light hair.
On his hands he wore gloves with oxblood-red stitching.
As Merida watched, he took one off and pressed his bare palm flat onto the stone railing.
MERIDA cried, “What are you doing here?”
Feradach’s face was shocked.
He tore his hand away from the stone railing as if it were burning hot, but they both could see that his work was done: there was a deep handprint in the stone. In a voice completely unlike any she’d heard him use before, he snarled, “Get out now!”
And then things started to go very wrong.
This was nothing like the destruction of Keithneil that Merida had seen when she pressed her hand against the stone there. The disease and famine had taken weeks to ruin the villagers.
This was immediate.
From somewhere deep in the castle, there was a scream. A fresh odor of smoke had already reached Merida. It smelled deeply wrong. It was not the appealing, cozy scent of firewood burning, but the acrid, strange odor of shingles and tapestries alight.
It smelled like violence.
Feradach hissed, “This place is doomed. Save yourself.”
“Quiet, merciless boggart!” Merida said as she leaned over the edge of the patio to see if there would be an escape by way of the sea. “Oh!”
Far below, the dark ocean was churned to madness and somehow, impossibly, the shore had disappeared. The ocean swirled right up to the cliffs, eating hungrily at the bottom of the steep staircase. A few hundred yards out, a strange circular tide had risen, a whirlpool that she could hear all the way up here. It was already devouring the half-submerged wrecks and the old rowboats, destroying all chance of leaving by sea.
“A rock shelf has collapsed just offshore, beneath the water,” Feradach said in a flat voice. She knew he was offended that she’d called him a merciless boggart; but wasn’t that just what he was? A feelingless god wearing a stolen human face. “Opening a cavern that had air in it, creating a whirlpool as it sucks water in. A rare occurrence; most men will not see it again in their lifetime.”
“We won’t be able to leave by sea, Merida!” Fergus called from farther down the patio; he had been doing the same calculations as Merida. “No one can get out that way.”
A great crash echoed across the patio as a tower roof collapsed. Flames torrented through the tower and its neighbor; the great ocean wind was spreading the flames quickly.
Merida shouted, “Can we go back through the inside?”
“I don’t know!” Fergus was still searching the shoreline for possibilities as the sound of chaos rose from the building.
Feradach continued, “A torch was left lit too close to a window tapestry and the wind turned. No one has refilled the bathing water in any of the towers. Laundry has been left hanging for weeks and is dry enough to catch. The queen had a penchant for potted palm trees from their southern trade routes and had hundreds inside the castle, but they were not taken care of, so they have died and dried. The walls are full of dry tinder of bird and rat nests.”
“What a perfect confluence of events,” Merida snarled.
Feradach said, “They glutted themselves with riches without asking where they came from and have been falling asleep after the drunken feast for years. You don’t know who has died for this luxury you stand on. They earned this fate.”
“And you didn’t hesitate to give it to them! I saw you take off your glove!”
“You know what I do,” Feradach said. “You know who I am. I told you.”
Merida whirled away from him.
“Dad, we have to go!” wailed Hamish.
“I know. Rory,” Fergus said, turning his attention to the prince who’d brought them to the patio in the first place. “You know this castle, you’ll have to lead us. Take Hamish’s pony.”
Rory looked slightly more vital, but only because the light from the flaming tower was putting color in his cheeks. He said, “I can’t remember how to ride.”
Merida couldn’t believe how passive he could remain in the face of this flickering disaster. She said, “Then lead us on foot!”
Rory said, “This isn’t real, though.”
“Boy,” Fergus said, “now is not the time for your mind to flit.”
For a brief moment, they went back and forth, Fergus trying to convey the urgency to Rory, and Rory failing to satisfy with his response. Then, with a mighty grunt, Fergus turned his attention from Rory. He raised his voice to be heard over the whirlpool, the wind, the crackling fire. “Father, take the horse, then, and come with us.”
It took Merida half a beat to understand he was talking to Feradach, who stood several yards off beside the patio railing, unmoving. Father? A priest, then.
Merida sneered at Feradach, daring him to accept her father’s kindness.
Feradach remained where he was. His voice was polite. “Thank you, but I will chance the sea.”
“Is everyone here mad? Your god might save you from many things,” Fergus said, “but he won’t save you from stupidity. I’ve no time to talk you out of it with my children here with me. Merida, on your horse!”
The horses were going mad where they were tied to the railing. As Merida untied the Midge, Fergus muttered, “Oh, I can’t just—” And he dismounted long enough to grapple Rory onto Humor. He situated himself on Sirist, keeping a good grasp of Humor’s reins as he did. Then he dragged Hamish up onto the saddle in front of him before springing off with a clatter of hooves on flagstone.
Merida pulled herself onto the Midge, and paused just long enough to level a dark look at Feradach.
“Go while you still can,” he told her. “This is not how I wish to win our bargain.”
The Midge whinnied, high and frightened; it mingled with the sound of human terror inside the castle.
Merida demanded, “How can you be so cruel?”
Feradach had no expression at all. “I am not cruel, Merida. I am nature.”