Icefall (5 page)

‘It's what I'm built for. But if I take my clann home, I could get every one of
them
killed, and I'm
afraid
. So let me fight here! You want me to rot?' he spat. ‘
I'm rotting already!'

‘No!' she yelled. ‘No! I know it hurts,
I know.
But you can't give it to her. You
can't.
'

‘Who says I have a choice?'

‘Kate can't take your soul, not even now, not ever. Not unless you
give it up.
'

‘And
fighting
is my bloody soul! It's what I've always done!'

‘You won't survive. Not this time.'

‘I'll adapt!'

‘You'll die!' she shouted. ‘You can't throw your life away on somebody else's war.'

‘I'm a lucky bastard, Finn. I'll live. But I
need
to fight. It's all I can
do!'

‘That's not true! You think death would be better than what you're going through now? Easier?'

‘Than losing my soul?
Yes.
'

‘You can't risk your neck, you're our Captain!'

‘Not here, I'm not.'

‘Yes!
And you're Rory's father! You're Hannah's uncle!'

‘And a fine role model I make,' he sneered, ‘doing work I hate in a place I hate for people I despise.'

‘And you're my lover,' she said. ‘Murlainn. You're the love of my heart. Don't go.'

The silence fell again and this time it wasn't broken. The hostility dissipated like a mist in hot sun, and Rory backed away from the door, half embarrassed and half touched. And scared, now, of being detected.

Forget this idea. Hannah would be fine, and she probably wouldn't thank him for waking her up. He was being irrational, and there was more than enough of that around here already. Turning, he crept back towards his own room. He'd see Hannah in the morning. She'd be fine.
Fine.

He'd got as far as the head of the stairs when he heard Finn scream.

Racing back, he flung open the door but by that time she was curled in his father's arms, rigid, her eyes febrile. Footsteps thudded along the corridor, doors were crashing open, sleep-blurred voices yelled questions.

‘It burns,' Finn howled suddenly, striking at Seth with her arms. ‘
It burns.'

Seth ignored the blows, clutching her and stroking her hair. Rory was shoved aside by Grian, and was caught in Fearna's grip as he stumbled. Braon burst into the room behind them, her blade bared. The raven on the headboard flexed its black wings and shrieked harshly at the intruders, and Seth's head jerked up to glare at them.

‘What?' As the rest of them came to a halt, breathing hard, Grian took a step forward and stared at Finn. ‘What happened?'

‘Carraig's dead,' said Seth, and then again, with a note of disbelief: ‘Carraig's dead.'

‘He what?' Something like a cold fist constricted Rory's throat. Finn was shaking uncontrollably now, and his stomach twisted with pity.

Eyes wide and horrified, Braon sheathed her sword. ‘She didn't—Seth, she didn't…'

Seth wasn't listening; his lips were at Finn's ear, murmuring something.

‘Shit. Did she see him?' whispered Rory. ‘A fetch? Can't we … is there time to…'

‘Felt him.
Felt it
.' Shaking his head, Seth didn't even look up. ‘He's dead already.'

A stranger, thought Rory, walking in on one of their endless scraps, might have thought Seth and Finn couldn't stand each other. A stranger might think they were incompatible souls who regretted their impetuous binding more than three years ago. Then there were times like this, when it was clear how it really was. Their jagged pride and quarrelsomeness would be shucked off, like a scratchy but comfortable old coat that had grown too warm, so you could almost see their souls slide and fit together like two halves of a complex puzzle.

‘This isn't right,' whispered Grian. He couldn't take his eyes off Finn.

Ignoring him, Seth kissed his lover's hair, stroking it back from her temples.

‘Seth,' said Grian more loudly. ‘This isn't—'

‘Get out,' Seth murmured.

‘Dad, is she—'

His eyes blazed silver. ‘All of you.
Get out
.'

Grian gripped Rory's shoulder and pulled him with him, the rest backing out behind them. Reaching for the door handle, he hesitated.

‘This conversation isn't over, Murlainn.'

Seth did not answer. Softly, regretfully, Grian clicked the door shut.

 

Kate

She did not like to see the sky. The crisp frostbitten blue pierced her with slivers like shattered glass. She felt that deep inside her, where there should be no way for her to feel anything but the ever-gnawing hunger. What was the sky after all but an atmospheric trick? There was no sky. There was a film of reflected light, and beyond it only darkness, black matter stretching to infinity.

The thought reassured her. Thin-lipped, she smiled at the illusion of sky.

You're nothing to the darkness,
she thought.
A delusional skin for those who can't face the endless night.

All the same, she put her heels to her mare's flanks to hurry it. Dusk could not come fast enough for her, not even in this fast-approaching winter, and the precipice was close. Already she could make out wheeling birds, and the cliff-edge fringed with pink and yellow flowers, with stiffly rustling sea-grass; the edge that looked like the furthest tip of the world itself.

But you're not the limit of my world or any other. There are worlds beyond you, and you can't contain me.

The mare halted, and Kate slipped from its back, pricking her bare soles on stunted whin. Far below her the sea boomed against black rock, shattering into spray. For a fanciful moment she imagined falling, leaping into space and that eternity that was hers by right, only to break on the stones. They said that heights like these could bewitch a man, compel him to take the last step.

But she was no man, and she was more than woman.

~
And more than queen. Do they know it yet?

She smiled at the voice of the darkness. ~
Ah. Still here, then?

~
Where else would I go?
Laughter inside her skull. ~
How well do you climb, Nameless Queen?

Very well indeed, was the answer, and she took a perverse joy in descending without the aid of her mind's strength. The towering basalt columns jutted sheer from the sea like the instrument of a god, but they offered her handholds and paths that she wouldn't have expected. She'd never have climbed in this way if her clann had been with her, but the indignity of it amused her: the only person who could inflict this on her was herself. And it gave her a new insight into Murlainn, if ever she needed one. To delight in this fragility and peril: it was so prosaic, so oddly pathetic, so … human.

And so very male,
she thought with an inward laugh. It was almost like a death wish.

Well, she'd indulge him.
I shall be your fairy god-mother, Murlainn. I shall grant you three death wishes.

~
Let's not get ahead of ourselves, shall we?
The voice was scolding.

~
Indeed not. I apologise for the presumption.
Not that she'd have to apologise to anyone or anything in the future. Not even to the thing in the dark.

Oh, her future: so close, she could smell it like ice on the north wind.

Swiping her hands to rid them of stone-dust, she gazed at the maw of the cavern. Salt spray hung in the air around her but the waves did not reach this part of the rock, hadn't for millennia. Something sighed from the cavern. Kate took a deep breath that tasted of night, and walked into the gap.

The passageway was short: who but she herself would ever dare come here? It wasn't as if the thing had to hide. The cave seemed blacker than she remembered, but she didn't fear that, and she didn't have to see; she felt the space open around her when she stepped into its vast inner chamber.

She waited.

The breath of the Darkfall was around her; Kate felt it whisper across her skin. Still she waited, not speaking, until at last a faint light sparked, and grew, and threw shadows that she wouldn't look at too directly.

The child had been dead for years. Centuries. The light was cupped in its hands. Cross-legged in its alcove in the cavern wall, the child lifted its head and gazed at her with eyeless sockets. It opened its mouth.

~
How does it feel?

Kate smiled. The voice was not that of the child; it was like the voice of the basalt, hell-deep notes wrung from the pipes of a prehistoric organ.

~
It doesn't feel,
she told it. ~
And nor do I.

Strange how that resonant echo in her head could still sound amused. ~
Good answer. But not true, not yet.

~
It will be true. I won't disappoint you.

~
I can't be disappointed. So no, you won't.

She laughed. Then she disliked how that sounded in the vastness of the cavern, so she stopped.

~
You've spared the boy,
it teased.

~
The boy needs his soul, for my purposes.
Kate clenched her jaw. ~
If I have to rip it from him at the end, that's how I'll do it.

~
You can't be sure little Rory will let you have it.
Again, the undercurrent of laughter. It scraped against her spine.

~
No.
Through gritted teeth. ~
So yes, Laochan can keep his soul. I have need of it.

~
That's not all that's kept the boy safe, is it? Go on, admit it.

~
No. Alistair never told me that drawback to the spell, but perhaps he never knew it.
Kate seethed inwardly.

~
No. He didn't.
There was smugness in the voice of the Darkfall. ~
A child's wound heals in the end. A parent's never does.

And how could I have known that? thought Kate irritably. ~
So Rory's soul is intact. It doesn't matter. It works for me.

~
Oh, but how it must rankle!
The thing chuckled in her head. ~
Is that why you toy so with Rory's father? Poor Murlainn!

Was it? Was that why she kept the charm with her always? Was that why she played endlessly with the spell, turning it on and off like a recalcitrant switch? She withdrew it from the pocket of her silk coat: the falcon that nestled in the palm of her hand was carved from obsidian, with a dry and faded strand of once-golden hair twisted round its neck. Oh, Alasdair's spell was a tricksy and a pretty one. She wanted Murlainn to last, and she liked to merge herself with him, take a moment here and a moment there; take a piece or two of his essence to amuse herself. The Darkfall was right about that. It salved the pain of having to leave Laochan his soul entire.

But for that small vanity of hers, Murlainn would have been soulless long since, and probably dead. He ought to be grateful. Kate released her grip on the charmed falcon, let it rise into the space above her hand; she made it turn in the air, then sent it smashing down. Just before it hit the rock, she jerked it to a hovering halt in mid-air.

She drew a breath, coming to her senses. The charm mustn't break. Tilting her palm, she brought it back to her, and her fingers closed around its smooth coolness.

~
That looked to me like passion.
The thing invaded her thoughts again. ~
Are you sure you're ready for what I have to give?

~
More than ready.
She felt her skin pale with the old anger. ~
The otherworld is ready for me. I've practiced till it hurts.

~
You mean till the otherworlders hurt.

~
Yes, yes.

~
You may not kill them. It's forbidden. You made a deal with me.

Could she hear a grin in that echo? ~
Silly of me. To think you made that condition out of benevolence.

~
Come now. You knew better when you made your vow; in the depths of what was left of your heart you did. And your contortions have pleased me these last centuries; you've showed some cleverness along with the ruthlessness. Who needs to kill when they can cajole others into it? Don't deny it's been amusing. For both of us. And my, you've had plenty of souls out of your cats-paws. As have I.

Resentment seethed inside Kate, and she knew the Darkfall knew it. ~
Well, I don't harm the otherworlders. Not physically. Stop playing with me, Soul-Eater. It's themselves they hurt in the end. And it won't always be so.

She had taken the souls of priests and charlatans, of artists and dreamers, of politicians and tyrants and warlords. Rarely could she use her witch's sucking touch on them as they died—even if they had powers worth the taking—but their souls she could take while they lived. She felt them, she warmed her innards on their souls' dying moments, she knew them better than they knew themselves. She knew what they desired, she knew how to make that godforsaken world of theirs perfect for them. Indeed, she knew how the godforsaken needed gods. They would not always hurt; at least, only a few of them.

Kate knew how to be loved. It was something she'd always known. ~
That fool Carraig might have discovered something worthwhile if he'd reached his destination, but he's dead now.

Something like invisible feathers touched her cheek, though the child didn't move and its gape-mouthed expression did not change. ~
Carraig's death was hardly necessary. Who'd have believed him, even if he had seen Merrydale and understood it?