Phantoms pawed at me with long slender fingers. Dragons roared and flew past, their scales ripping my skin. A fire-breathing Caorthannach ran screaming around me, and my torment was never going to end. The room was too small for all of my torturers. Flames licked the walls, stars fell from the sky, arrachtaigh of every shape and size squeezed through the front door and joined in. Imps handed out hammers and knives and, soon, every beast found a place on my flesh to torment.
I moaned and writhed.
“Hold still,” a young girl said. “We need to stop the bleeding. Put the spider webs here, Da?”
“Yes,” Cara Maith answered. “The poultice is almost ready.”
“Brooklime, oatmeal, and milk,” the girl said, as if she was trying to memorize the formulas.
“Buttermilk,” he corrected her.
She began to apply the poultice.
“Now, drink this,” Cara Maith commanded me as he held a cup to my lips.
I could not fight. I drank. The hot liquid burned my throat. It was as if I stood in the blacksmith’s shop and he was pouring molten bronze down my gullet.
“You will perish.”
My tormentor was the only constant thing in all of this.
That and the frightened whimpers of my white-furred children. They slept at my feet or curled at my side. Their rough tongues brushed my cheek. Their cold noses pressed into my palms.
“Wake up, wake up, wake up,” they pleaded.
Just like back in the cave, I was dimly aware of the passing of days. Sunlight came and went, long hours of darkness prevailed, and always I was cold, alone, and terrified. Then a man’s voice began to slowly pull me back from the Long Night of Poison, a familiar voice. ‘Twas Cara Maith himself and none other. This was the one who had spoken to me as a friend while I slept the enchanted sleep in the cave. He never told me his name then and I never saw his face, but I remembered him telling me stories about their crops and the weather, things he hoped would help me understand this world when I woke up.
He always believed I would wake up during his lifetime. It was something he and his daughter prayed for every night.
Kellen. Cara Maith.
I knew him. He was a friend and one of my Guardians.
This was the Duine that made me wish I was a Duine too.
“Isleen, go dig up some more devil’s-bit root. I need to make another healing elixir for Eire,” Kellen said then. “Take the lantern and a blade with you, just in case.” He was somewhere close by and the room was warm, filled with the fragrance of lavender and herbs.
“Beidh mé, Da,” a young girl answered in Gaelic.
She was a good daughter. She hadn’t been allowed to visit me in the cave—she wouldn’t have understood why her father cut himself every time he came to the cave, or why his blood then dripped into my mouth—but Kellen told me about her often. Her name was Isleen and I knew her so well it was almost like she was my own child. I knew how she had grieved the loss of her mother, how she loved to visit the sea, how her favorite stories were of the Fair Folk.
“Wear a cloak,” Kellen told his daughter then. “The winds have shifted and snow is falling again.”
My eyes flickered open, glad to discover my horde of arrachtaigh demons was truly gone. I lay on a bed of sheepskins, covered with soft, clean linen and woolen blankets. The quaint one-room cottage was spare of furniture, with only two small windows on either side of the house. Copper pots hung from the timbered rafters, along with a fragrant assortment of herbs and flowers.
Folk medicine was usually handed down from mother to daughter, but Kellen was obviously the gifted one in this home. Perhaps by necessity.
The little girl’s dark hair hung in long, neat braids, though her dress had several rips and a long strip of fabric had been added at the hem to lengthen the garment. She’d outgrown it, but there was nobody here to sew her a new one.
She nodded to her father as she grabbed a cloak and headed out the door, a basket and knife in her other hand.
I sat up, sensing something wrong.
“How long have I slept?” I asked, rubbing my brow.
“Days, years. We’ve lost count,” Kellen said with a grin. He stared down into a cauldron that cooked over the hearth. His beard had grown longer and was a bit unkempt.
I hadn’t noticed how large he was before, how tall he stood or how broad his shoulders. Nor had I paid attention to his dark hair and beard, how they contrasted with his pale Irish complexion.
But I recognized the gentleness in his voice, the lilting mountain cadence that revealed his smile, even before I could see it. When he turned to study me, I saw the shining blue of his eyes.
Kellen was a handsome Duine, that much was certain.
“My children?” I asked.
“Asleep by the fire, like good little puppies.”
I wasn’t quite sure if he understood that they were my sons or not. For now, keeping their identity a secret seemed like a good idea—because something wasn’t right. It wasn’t just my headache or the weariness I felt from battling nightmarish creatures during my fever. The poison had left its mark on me, sure enough, and I longed to stay in bed. But I couldn’t.
The voice that had been tormenting me for days, maybe weeks, had vanished. I should have been happy. Instead, my heart filled with dread.
The only time demons are quiet is when they are busy doing dark deeds.
I turned around, surveying the cottage.
“Where is my sword?” I asked. “My cloak?”
“The sword is there.” Kellen pointed toward a far corner and I hurried across the room to pick up the blade, testing its weight, its balance, and its sharp cutting edge. ‘Twas a good weapon, even if I didn’t recognize the metal.
“But if I recall, you had no cloak when you came here. You wore no clothes but my own,” he said, one eyebrow raised, a teasing lilt to his words.
Another memory came back swiftly, me changing from a bear to my own skin back in the forest. How he had taken off his cloak to cover me and then later gave me his tunic.
No other man saw my nakedness on that day. No one, but him.
For a moment I remembered how it had felt, leaning back into his arms as we rode here on a tall white horse. I knew now was not the right time to dwell on such things.
But it was hard to stop thinking about it.
Just then something caught my attention, something outside. It wasn’t quite a sound, more like a shifting shadow creeping past the window. The skin on my arms chilled and I gripped the hilt of my sword tighter. I tilted my head, thinking, listening.
“Did you hear that?” I asked, walking to the window and staring outside. All I could see was the snow, falling swift and thick, a white shroud that covered everything near and far. It was so quiet.
Only magic could make everything so silent.
It was as quiet as death.
Fourteen
“The cloak your daughter took. Was it yours?” I asked.