Haunting Warrior (49 page)

She was bent over Liam.

“The boats,” Saraid said, tugging his arm. “Hurry before they come back.”

Slowly, as if emerging from a dark cave into sunshine, Rory watched the others scurry from the shadow of the cliff. They moved swiftly to the bodies scattered on the shore, checking for life among friend and enemy alike. More of Leary’s soldiers had survived, but none of Cathán’s drew breath. Tiarnan stood staring up at the cliff where Cathán had evaded them again. The look in his eye spoke of hatred that would last long after both he and Cathán were dead and buried.

In the sudden silence, the rolling ocean sounded loud and fierce, reminding them all that they still had one more challenge ahead.

Rory strode onto the shore, watching the monstrous tide crash at his feet. He stared out at the Isle of Fennore, feeling his destiny curl and splash with the fierce waves. It was still out of reach, unattainable. Dangerous beyond anything they’d faced so far.

But now Rory knew what to do. He knew how to part the seas.

S
ARAID was thankful for the numbing insulator of the Book. It kept her from breaking down, from shrieking at the horror she’d witnessed. Cathán had come very close to killing everyone she loved right here, on this very beach. With all of them dead, he would have rifled their sparse belongings and found the Book of Fennore, conveniently bundled and waiting for him. She’d always known that Cathán was a dangerous and cruel man, but just how deadly Cathán could be had not been clear until she’d used the Book herself.

Liam lay in the boat beside her. He was dying, and yet another part of Saraid died with him. Michael had looked at the long, deep gash in his chest and cried out, trying futilely to slow the flow of blood. He hadn’t needed to say what they all knew. Without a miracle, Liam would die.

While the others loaded the
curraghs
, she held her youngest brother in her arms and tried to tap into that music that soared before, when she’d called the dead. But the song was as faint as a distant memory. What she’d done earlier had left her drained, weakened. She’d be no help to Liam . . . unless . . . she glanced at the satchel with the Book inside . . . it was foolish to even consider using it again. It was foolish not to consider it.

She looked at Ruairi, knowing she would have to be quick if she really meant to do this. Knowing he would be watching her once they reached the island. He would never agree to her using the Book again, of course. She would have to slip away without his seeing.

And afterwards . . . she would follow her mother’s footsteps and put an end to the half-life of her existence. End whatever was left of her when the Book had taken its toll.

Ruairi stood in the frothing surf like a god of air and sea, staring out at the island he was determined to reach. Around her the others eyed him with awe, daunted by the power they’d witnessed. No man could control the birds in the sky, and so to them, Ruairi must be more than a man. They watched him with adoration and reverence that Saraid shared. She could see confidence gleaming in the impossible blue of his eyes. Acceptance of the mantle of leadership that was now so solidly on his shoulders.

It was exactly what Colleen had prophesized. Ruairi had saved her people. But he would not win against the Book of Fennore. As powerful as this beautiful man had become, she knew he could not do what he set out to do, but if she was successful, if she could get away long enough to beg for Liam’s life and then end her own, it wouldn’t matter. She lowered her lashes to hide her thoughts, wishing that grief had gone with her other emotions, keeping her from feeling the weight of what she planned. Ruairi would not understand why she did it, just as her father hadn’t understood when Oma had taken her life. There was no way to explain, though. No way to make him believe that she had no other choices.

Ruairi turned to face the men and women who stood pale and stunned behind him. He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could utter a word, Leary, Mahon Snakeface, and Red Amir went down on one knee before him. Without hesitation the others followed until only Saraid, Ruairi, and Tiarnan remained erect. And then with a long look, Tiarnan lowered himself as well.

She could feel the surprise rolling off Ruairi, the confusion and embarrassment, the uncertainty, the doubt. Like the others, she waited to see what he would do.

After a long moment, he finally spoke.

“Get up, please. Please.”

Surprised, they did as he asked.

“That island you see over there. That’s the Isle of Fennore,” he said, his voice ringing out as he pointed to the island across the churning sea. “In a few hundred years—maybe a thousand, I don’t know—but sometime in the future, my people will live there.” He looked down at Saraid and smiled that crooked grin. “Our people will live there.”

They all looked from one to another, as if to confirm they’d heard him correctly, but no one questioned him until Michael spoke up.

“How in the fook are we going to get
there
?” he exclaimed.

Ruairi’s smile broadened. “Well that’s going to be a little complicated,” he answered. “All I can ask is that you trust me.”

Those words seemed to come hard for him. Ruairi was not a man who liked to ask for anything. Certainly not a man who used the word
trust
lightly.

He looked at Leary. “Let’s get those boats in the water before Cathán comes back.”

Saraid left Liam’s side to help the fearful people who clustered around the boats, hoping they didn’t see what Ruairi did in her eyes when she smiled at them. Trying to look as if there was nothing to worry over. They trusted her as she trusted Ruairi and they settled at her calm front. Little did they know that inside, she was terrified. Little did they know the Book of Fennore had taken a part of her that would never be given back and that soon she would give it more. Maybe after that, Ruairi would succeed in destroying it. Maybe he would simply hide it away for all of eternity. She couldn’t know.

Leary’s men held the boats still while the women, children, and elderly were loaded in. Saraid did her part, wondering how this could possibly end in anything less than disaster.

“Don’t worry, princess,” Ruairi said, sensing her fear. “I’ll keep you safe.”

Not from the Book
, she wanted to say.
Nothing can keep me safe from that. Not even Ruairi of Fennore.

When everyone but those anchoring the boats was seated, Ruairi climbed into the strange vessel beside Saraid and her brothers and looked out to the sea. She imagined she could see him casting his net, this time down, down into the cold dark waters, almost feel the frigid depths he plundered. No one in the boats spoke, not even the children. Then Ruairi looked out at the waiting
curraghs
and the expectant faces watching him.

“Hold on,” he said, and the waters began to writhe and boil beneath the vessels, lifting them buoyantly, making the sea shimmer like gray green silk in a blustery wind. Leary’s men exclaimed and the elderly prayed, while the children shifted to see better.

“Salmon,” Michael said, his voice hushed as he looked over the side of the
curragh
. In his hands, he held the small pup. The dog yipped with fear. “It’s fookin’ salmon.”

The salmon were everywhere, surrounding, circling, bursting from the turbulence, and flying over the
curraghs
. They hoisted the oblong boats so that they skimmed the surface of the swells, propelling them by the sheer force of their numbers for there were thousands—millions perhaps. Slowly they moved their cargo forward, past the breaking tide, across the treacherous sea while the passengers watched with an equal mix of astonishment and terror.

“Look,” someone shouted, and they turned around to see Cathán and the remainder of his army standing on the beach. He sent another round of arrows at the
curraghs
, but they were too far away and the arrows fell harmlessly into the surf. The men and women cheered and jeered at him as he faded in the distance. He wouldn’t give up, but unless he could call on the seas to aid him as Ruairi did, Cathán would not be able to hurt them again.

It didn’t take long to reach the island. In fact, it seemed as if they flew across the waves, safe as babes in arms. But as the first
curragh
bumped the rocky beach, Saraid saw the wreckage of countless ships that had not been so lucky. Their splintered hulls littered a cove sheltered by sheer crags and a forbidding tide. The skeletal remains brought home in a way nothing else could how miraculous was their deliverance.

Leary’s men pulled the
curraghs
to dry land as the people spread out. They had only the clothes on their backs and what they’d managed to carry with them through all the arduous flights from Cathán’s terrorizing, but for the first time in as long as many could remember, they were safe.

Tears clogged Saraid’s throat as she realized it. Turning, she wrapped her arms around Ruairi and held tight.

“Hey now,” he said. “No waterworks, princess. We’re not done yet.”

Leary appeared at his side, like a general waiting for orders, and Ruairi surveyed the coastline like the commander he’d become. “There’s a valley just to the east and woods with deer and game beyond it. Take them up. Get them settled.”

Leary smiled and gave Ruairi a swift nod before moving off to do as he was told, but there were others, all needing Ruairi to tell them what to do, and Saraid knew a better opportunity would not arise. Wishing she could say good-bye, feeling her heart break with every step, Saraid took the satchel from the
curragh
and moved away before Ruairi noticed. It didn’t take her long to find the cavern—Ruairi had described the jutting cliff where the castle would stand some day and she used it as a landmark, following the coast to its point. But even if he hadn’t told her where, she would have felt it, the call of the place wanting its own back.

Squaring her shoulders, Saraid answered.

R
ORY didn’t know how long Saraid had been gone. He only knew that when he turned to find her, she was nowhere in sight. None of her brothers had seen her since they came ashore. Liam wavered on the brink of death, and it was when he looked at the kid’s face that he knew.

The satchel with the Book was gone and so was Saraid.

He didn’t waste time asking other questions. He ran.

The cavern was exactly where Rory had remembered, of course. Caverns didn’t move. But somehow he’d feared it wouldn’t be there. Perhaps in this time, it was sealed in by stones or underwater or nonexistent. He’d never known if the cave had been blasted by ancestors or formed by the hands of God and the rolling tide.

The castle was not built yet, though he could picture it in his mind, jutting out over the sea like a lord. Beneath it, the cavern was dark and cold inside, dank with the smell of dead fish and seaweed, mildew and brine. A chunk of driftwood surged with the tide inside the cavern and thumped against the massive rocks.

The cool quiet encompassed him as he moved forward, toward the back where only the surging light from the low sun streamed through. As the tide rolled in and then out, the cave brightened and dimmed disconcertingly. Still, he didn’t see Saraid.

Rory looked at the walls and ceiling of the cavern as he moved deeper. In his time, spirals marked every surface like the brand over his heart, seared into solid rock by a force unimaginable. But the spirals that scarred the walls the day of his grandmother’s funeral were noticeably absent now.

A movement caught his eyes, and he saw Saraid at last, kneeling next to the inky tide pool. Her eyes were glazed over, the pupils so large they absorbed the irises with their blackness. Her breath came in short, jerky bursts that seemed to scratch and burn as she released them.

“Saraid?” he said, hurrying to her side. “What are you doing here?”

But of course he knew.
Liam.
She’d come to plead for his life as she had for Rory’s. She didn’t even look at him when he spoke, and he knew the voice she heard wasn’t coming from him—it was coming from inside those black covers, those pale pages.

He shouldn’t have brought the Book with them to this island, he realized all at once. But he’d been so sure he could save Saraid and then destroy the Book, so certain that he had the power to accomplish the impossible that he hadn’t considered the risk.

He’d been too rash, too cocky after the birds, the beasts, the fish rising to his command. He’d begun to believe his own press—that he was superhuman. That he could do what no man had done before.

He’d wanted her to see its destruction. To know that she need not fear it again because he, Rory—
Ruairi of Fennore—
had slain the dragon. He’d been so full of himself, so fucking convinced of his greatness that he’d condemned her without even knowing it. He’d brought her to the enemy. Delivered her to its lair.

He stood, intending to scoop her up into his arms and run from this evil place. He would come back, later, and do what he’d set out to do—destroy the malignant creation. But now, he needed to get Saraid someplace safe.

The voice boomed in his head, staggering him before he’d taken the first step. He felt it in every pore, every nerve ending, each ragged breath. The bundle hummed and moaned in a seesawing rhythm that felt like electricity zapping his nerves, trilling against his eardrums.

I am not a
thing
that has a beginning and an end. That can cease. Stupid, pathetic man, I am earth and sky. I am sun and moon. I am more than your weak mind can conceive.

The voice was fingernails dragging slowly across a chalkboard, metal screeching and grinding, glass shattering into millions and millions of sharp, piercing shards. It was all of that and none of it. It filled him with dread and hopelessness, terror and panic. It made him want to drop to his knees and give up, give in—give
anything
to unhear its hideous message.