Page 6 of Through the Veil (Endangered Fae #2)

Chapter five

Challenge

F inn lay on a round cushion filled with eiderdown, wonderfully soft for his aching body and just the right size to curl up comfortably. Eithne stayed with him, worry etched around her amber eyes.

“I am feeling much improved, truly,” he tried to reassure her, but another fit of coughing ruined it.

She stroked his hair and waited until he quieted. “How did you come back through the Veil, Fionnachd?”

“I have told you.”

“Mm, yes. In part.”

She knows me too well, damn the luck. He gazed up into eyes with vertical pupils. She had loved him long ago, though with a comfortable, now-and-then sort of love. It was her compassion he needed to appeal to instead—the very core of her nature.

“I will tell you a thing, but you must not tell your father. Lives may be at stake.” He let his rasping voice waver. “Eithne, I have done a terrible thing.”

Her ears dropped flat against her skull. “What have you done? If you hurt my family…”

“No, no, it was in the outer world. Before I came here.”

“Who is Diego?” she asked abruptly.

“Pardon?”

“The name you called out when you woke. You cried out ‘Diego!’ Such anguish in a single word.”

Of course she had heard, despite all the noise in the cavern.

Ah, well, best simply to plunge in. “He is my Taliesin. The goddesses of storm and tide brought me across the ocean to find him when I woke from the Dreaming. I did not know it then, but there he was. His name is Diego in this life.” He reached out to take her hand.

“Was there a human found nearby? Where I crossed?”

Eithne’s brows drew together. “There was human scent, but it was on you. So we thought.”

He told her about the argument and Diego’s seizures, which released the lightning. “He is more powerful in this life than ever before. Though he has no skill to use it. It must have been his own storm which ripped through the Veil.”

She took her bottom lip between her teeth. “There was no sign of anyone near the tear but you. Fionnachd—”

“No! He must be there. We must look for him!”

“There was no one. The trackers would have found him had he lain anywhere nearby.” Her voice dropped to a tender murmur. “His storm was so powerful, and if he had no control, he most likely destroyed himself.”

“It cannot be! I would have felt him die!”

“You were unconscious.”

“But I would know! Eithne!” Crushed beneath the terrible realization, he curled into a ball and wailed. “No, no, no, no, no! ”

“Fionnachd, he was human. They have such brief lives, as it is.” She held out her arms to him and he shifted into wildcat form to crawl into her lap, where he howled pitiably. “Hush, hush, my poor dear.” She held him close, her rough tongue washing his face and ears to comfort him.

“But we were to have years together this time!” He sent his frantic thoughts to her. “ The witch hunts were over, and he found a house for us in the woods, and I made him promises! I told him not to go to the poisoned city. Oh, gods, why did he go?”

“Time does not stop even for us, dearheart,” she murmured. “A day, a week, a year—if you have a human lover, you must accept the time you are granted.”

Finn mewled and cried, kneading at her arm with both paws in his distress. It was too soon, too bloody soon, and to have his Taliesin ripped away so violently again, in a moment of pain and anguish, was too much.

With an ear-splitting howl, he shifted back to his bipedal form so he could bury his head in her lap and weep. “Oh, my heart, my light, my hero…how can this be? Mother of us all, I cannot bear it…not again…”

She held him and rocked him, sending the flows of her magic over him in waves, pressing him down into sleep.

When Finn woke again, his heart still felt as if someone had torn into it with rusted shears, but he steeled himself against the pain, determined not to give into despair this time.

A possibility occurred to him that Eithne had not considered.

Diego might still be in the outer world.

The opening of the Veil did not mean both of them had been hurled through.

He had to believe Diego still lived. He would know if his love, his light, had died, wouldn’t he? Though he would be hurt and ill after his seizure, Diego would have his little speaking machine with him, the cell phone , and he would summon help. Finn simply needed to find a way back to him.

Yes, simplicity itself, you idiot. First get out from under Balor’s watchful eye, then find a way to break back through the Veil, which has since closed, then find where Diego has gone and beg his understanding and forgiveness…

Oh, yes, simple as swimming upstream in a spring flood with boulders tied to your feet.

Not that he truly needed forgiveness. Blast it all, he hadn’t done anything wrong. It had only appeared so.

He sighed into his cushion. He must take one gnarled problem at a time.

The first thing to discover would be whether he was ailing guest or prisoner.

The former was unlikely, since Balor would have ordered him placed in a pool or stream if he truly had been concerned about Finn’s health. How much freedom did he have?

Moving silently, he slid from his cushion and poked his head out of his little cavern niche. Nothing to the left. He turned his head right and jerked back when he encountered a pair of golden, reptilian eyes.

“Nathair.” Yes, that was the scaled one’s name. He had little scent, or he would not have been such a surprise.

“Fionnachd.” The forked tongued flickered out, tasting the air.

“You haven’t come for my tongue, have you?” Finn smiled and leaned against the wall, carefully nonchalant.

“Not today. I have been charged with your safekeeping while you are with us.” A soft, repeated hiss escaped him that could have been a laugh. “To keep you from your usual mischief, Balor says. Where do you wish to go?”

Home, to Diego and my forest and our house. “I am hungry, and find neither rocks nor feathers agree with me.”

Yes, the little hisses were laughter. Amusement rolled off Nathair in little wavelets. More of a guardian than a jailer. Or what is that word? A babysitter.

“It seems a mite quiet today,” Finn began, to try to get his escort talking.

“Oh, yes. Everyone is in the Great Hall.”

“Some celebration?”

Nathair turned his scaled head to give him a long look, tongue flicking. “Eithne has told you nothing?”

“What should she have told me?”

They walked in silence a few yards, down a narrow hallway of gleaming black rock, carved in complicated designs that made the eye dizzy.

When he finally spoke, Nathair’s voice was hesitant and contemplative. “Balor has sent an ultimatum to Herself. He has had enough of negotiations. They await Her answer.”

“What question is she to answer?”

“The one he has asked her since she closed the Veil. Balor wants the outer world back. He will either have the way opened and make war with the humans to take it back, or he will have war here with the sidhe .”

Finn shivered. War with humans had evolved in terrifying ways since the days of swords and crossbows. Balor had no idea…and yet, if he meant to force a way back, perhaps there was a way to Diego in it as well, terrible as it sounded.

“You are not pleased with the thought of battle?”

“I am no warrior.” Nathair’s nostrils shut tight, then opened on a soft exhalation. “Leave me to my flowers and my herbs. We have had enough bloodshed over the centuries. I do not relish more.”

They turned a corner, and Finn’s breath caught.

The tunnel suddenly opened before them into a massive cavern, the sun streaming in through its uncapped roof.

Flowering trees grew here, surrounded by patches of golden wheat and rye, fields of scarlet poppies and delicate feverfew, fennel, kale, beans and root vegetables, all in neatly ordered rows.

The scent of lilac and apple blossoms drifted to him on the breeze.

“Your garden?” Finn murmured in wonder.

Nathair nodded. “Eat as you will, but have a care that you don’t trample the plants.”

With an offended sniff, Finn shifted to raven and flew straight for the apple tree with the plumpest fruit.

He landed, shifted back, and settled comfortably in the crook of a branch to munch on his prize.

Nathair sat down amidst the tree’s roots to wait for him, seemingly content to bask in the sun, his face turned up toward the light, green scales gleaming.

“Nathair?”

“Hmm?”

“Why would Balor wish to war with the humans? If he wishes to return, why not live as we always did?”

Golden eyes blinked up at him, puzzled and solemn. “Did you not just return from the outer world, Fionnachd?”

“Yes.”

“And did you not say it was poisoned?”

“Yes, though some places more than others.” Finn considered the line of questioning for a moment. “How long ago did Danu close the Veil?”

Nathair stretched out in the sun, hands behind his head, the position showing the sleek muscles of his arms and torso off to good advantage.

Goddesses, he is lovely…

“A little more than a hundred years ago.” Nathair let out a soft hiss.

“The humans began to build these horrible boxes that belched foul smoke into the air. The skies grew dark. Some of the féileacán fell to the ground, ill and unable to fly. Danu called us all home. She said the humans were too numerous and multiplied more every year, and that the outer world would soon be the death of us all. Balor did not like it, but she gave him little choice. She closed the way, and did so in such a manner that she claimed it could not be undone.”

“And yet I am here.”

“So you are.”

“And Balor thinks if he slays all the humans, the world might be clean again?”

“Not immediately, but someday, yes.”

Finn finished his second apple before he leaped down to the ground. “I think I must have a long, earnest talk with Balor about the nature and number of modern humans.”

Nathair rose and stretched in one graceful, sinuous motion. “Come. I have someone else I must see to.” He plucked two ripe peaches from a tree and a wheat stalk from the patch as they passed, and led Finn from the garden.

They wound their way back through the maze of passages. Without the sky above him, Finn’s sense of direction soon went awry. If he tried to get out of the caverns on his own, he would wander forever. Nathair stopped at a sleeping niche larger than the one Finn had been given.

The dim light afforded by phosphorescent stones provided more than enough for nocturnal eyes to make out the room’s occupant.

A wolf-headed Fomorian lay sprawled on a nest of blankets.

His large frame could have rivaled Balor’s, had it not been for his wasted state—his arms and legs resembled long sticks, and ribs were painfully visible.

“Faolchú?” Finn whispered in horror. “Oh, sweet Mother, what has happened to you?”

“Our champion fell ill some months ago,” Nathair explained. “He grows worse each day. Yesterday, I could not even force water between his teeth.”

The clamor of a hundred voices shouting reached them from farther along the passageways in what could only have been the direction of the Great Hall.

“What would you wager—?”

Nathair shook his head. “I can’t take time to guess now. Come. Help me with him.” He leaned down to speak into a gray-furred ear. “Faolchú, you must wake now. Fionnachd is here. He has come back to us.”

A weak growl rumbled in a chest Finn recalled as broad and finely chiseled in better days. Sharp teeth showed as Faolchú whispered, “You lie, little serpent. The pooka is dead.”

Finn knelt by his bed and ran a hand over the soft fur of his muzzle. “Truly, then, I do wish someone would tell me these things. I had no inkling I was dead.”

“Is it you?” Fevered eyes opened to search his face, eyes that had been the color of a winter sky, now yellowed and rheumy. A trembling hand with broken claws came to rest on Finn’s arm. “Fionnachd?”

“It seems to do him good when you touch him,” Nathair said, a speculative expression on his face. He stripped his wheat stalk and broke it at both ends to make a straw that he stabbed into one of the peaches. “This is more than he has moved for days. Sit behind him for me, prop him up against you.”

“My poor friend, what have you done to yourself?” Finn murmured as he moved behind Faolchú and took him in his arms.

“You feel…different,” Faolchú whispered. “Stronger.” He nuzzled under Finn’s chin, a subservient gesture the wolf champion would never have lowered himself to when he was whole and well.

“Here, take it.” Nathair handed over the straw-pierced peach. “See if he will drink for you.”

Faolchú’s muzzle wrinkled in distaste and he turned his head away.

“Come now, braveheart.” Finn bent to kiss his nose. “It’s not deer’s blood, but you need aught to keep you with us, eh?”

The lupine eyes closed, and Finn felt a sting of defeat.

For a long moment, Faolchú lay still, his breathing ragged and weak.

Then he drew a deep, shuddering sigh, and another.

His hand closed over Finn’s wrist, broken claws digging into his skin.

He turned his head and fastened his lips around the straw to drink, little growls of satisfaction rumbling in his chest.

Voices sounded in the passageway outside.

“How would she know, Father? She would not do such a thing!” Eithne shouted.

“Of course she knows! Why else send such an answer?” Balor roared.

They rounded the corner and stopped short in the niche’s archway with identical expressions of shock.

“He woke for Fionnachd. Reached for him. Drinks for him,” Nathair explained calmly. He cocked his head. “What has happened?”

Balor recovered first, gnashing his tusks. “She sends an answer and it is no answer at all. I demand that she choose one thing or the other and instead she issues challenge! She must know my champion lies near death, or she would not have done so!”

“I still hear well enough, Heart of the Earth,” Faolchú said in an unhappy whisper.

“He speaks.” Balor’s one visible eye blinked. “He looks at me and knows me. How is this when this morning he could only growl in pain?”

“As I said, it is Fionnachd,” Nathair repeated in his even, soothing way. “Some magic I have not seen. A strength I have not encountered.”

A wicked gleam entered Balor’s eyes, and his smile made Finn’s stomach lurch.

“Good, then,” the Fomorian King said on a throaty laugh. “I think we have found a new champion.”