Unshapely Things (30 page)

"I was halfway here."

I took her hand and sat next to her. She looked much better than the last time I saw her. Placing her hands on my head, she looked directly into my face. I felt the usual pressure. As she released me, her brow creased for just a moment, and she touched me once more briefly.

"What is it?"

She shook her head. "I thought I sensed something, but it's gone now. The darkness felt, I don't know, smoother."

"I did the sun invocation with Joe yesterday. It made the headache go away for a while."

"Yes, he told me."

I raised an eyebrow. "And what else did he tell you?"

"That you're investigating blood rituals and won't listen to reason."

I took a deep breath and released it slowly. "I didn't come here for a lecture."

"You're not getting one."

"Oh. Good. Then maybe you can help me. What do you know about The Brown Book of Cenchos?"

She wrinkled her nose. "Not that old thing."

"Why would macDuin be interested in it?"

"I don't know. Why do people collect clown figurines?"

"Briallen, I'm serious."

She shrugged. "Connor, it's apocryphal. It makes no sense. There are spells in it that claim to do things they would never do."

"Like maybe something that looks like a meditation ritual can actually send someone on a murderous rampage?"

"Well... not that clear-cut. It's more like explaining gravity by denying its existence."

I thought about it. "I don't get it."

She nodded. "Exactly."

"Okay, let me take it from a different angle. How could a simple meditation ritual have the opposite effect?"

"I don't know. Maybe you need to see something." She twisted slightly on the edge of the fountain and waved her hand gently above the water as though she were caressing it.

"Briallen, scrying splits my head open."

"Yes, yes, I know. I'll take care of it."

She held her other hand up toward me and began to chant. My body shields activated, not from an instinctual response to danger but merely from her command. I shivered. No one had ever done that to me before. With an ache of remembrance, I felt my fragmentary shields pulse with life again as their edges flowed out to meet each other. Seamlessly, they joined over the entire surface of my body as they once had, an invisible layer of armor to defend against unwarranted intrusions. It caused me no pain since it was not of my doing. Except for the small part of my own essence in the fragments, the protections were all of Briallen's power.

All the while, Briallen continued setting up the scry. Even when you were fey and could do things humans couldn't, watching Briallen work was both awe-inspiring and humbling. She needed no accoutrements, only the raw power of her concentration and her knowledge of invocations. Even as she worked my shields, her hand smoothed the water of the fountain to an unnatural stillness. Once I was fully warded, the cadence of her chant shifted into an older Gaelic, its rough sounds oddly soothing from her lips.

She spread both hands over the water. The surface reflected the dull haze of the sky. The image shimmered jarringly as though someone had tapped the edge of the fountain. A curling wisp of gray smoke rippled on the edge, eating at the reflection of the sky until the entire visual surface pulsed with shadows of mists just beneath the still water's surface. With hands spread wide, Briallen did not move at all, her taut form leaning forward. Her eyes shone whitely as she increased the urgency of the chant. Something seemed to roll sensuously beneath the surface, pale green, then silver and white.

I let my gaze flicker to Briallen. Beads of sweat clung to her face. She was pushing hard at the invocation. Even someone with rudimentary ability would have lifted the veil of smoke by then and caught a glimpse of the future. The real skill came in the clarity of the vision. Some could only get the most obscure hints and symbols, while someone like Briallen could see events almost like watching a movie. But after over twenty minutes of intense chanting, still nothing happened. Something was seriously wrong.

A thick unsettling blot of darkness formed in the middle of the fountain. It deepened and spread outward like a giant pupil. Nothing appeared in the inky depths. The blackness enveloped the whole of the fountain, a darkness so deep and complete that not even our reflections marred its surface.

With a gasp of frustration, Briallen pulled herself up and away. She stood with her head bowed, one hand to her face, the other hovering over me like a benediction.

"Briallen..."

She lifted her head. "Go inside. I need to close it."

There was no discussion in her voice. I hurried into the kitchen, uneasiness creeping into my gut. As I stepped inside, I could feel her release the protections on me. I flinched at the sudden stab of pain in my forehead and moved away from the door. The pain lessened, but not much. Scrying had the worst effect of anything on me. I kept moving back into the house until I was in the foyer. I could still feel a hot needle-like pinging, but I refused to go out into the street. I sat on the bottom step of the stairs and held my head, trying to will away the pain. After an eternity, it subsided, and I looked up to see Briallen standing over me. She had a solemn, yet wild, look on her face. Her skin was very pale and damp, and her short hair hung in wet strands.

"You're soaked."

"It was necessary. Let's go up." She passed me smoothly onto the stairs, and I followed her into the sitting room on the second floor. She stood before the small blue flames on the hearth, her back straight and arms at her sides. "It's been like that for days," she said without turning.

"What is it?"

She moved to an armchair and sat. "That's the million-dollar question. The Queen asked me to answer it."

"Maeve?" I couldn't help the surprise in my voice.

"Of course, Maeve. She called me this morning."

"She called you? On the phone?"

She frowned. "Yes, on the phone. What's wrong with you?"

I laughed. "I just find it incredibly funny that the High Queen of Tara called you on the phone."

"What did you want her to do, send smoke signals? We've known each other for years. She's calling everyone she can."

I lowered myself into the armchair opposite her. "What's wrong?"

She shifted the damp folds of her dress away from her knees. "The future is closed. No one's been able to pierce the veil. A turning point in time. What we do not know, what we cannot see, we cannot try to change. It must play itself out the way it will."

I'd never heard of the future being "closed" before. "It's a bad thing?"

Briallen looked down into the flames. "That's not the question. It's a question of understanding. We have to prepare, if we can, for what may come. The last time something like this occurred, Convergence happened."

I fell back in the chair, too stunned to say anything. "Are you kidding me? How long has this been going on?"

"I've been hearing rumor of strange happenings for weeks. It's why I haven't been as helpful to you as I could have been."

I leaned forward in the chair. "Don't be ridiculous, Briallen. I'm not that self-involved. I may be bitching about the lack of attention the Guild is giving these murders, but I think you might be a little better recognizing priorities than they are. What do you need me to do?"

She moved her hand from beneath her robe and held out a dagger in an old leather sheath bound with thongs of leather. "I need you to stay alive."

I took the dagger from her. Finely wrought silver wound about the pommel, and the handguards were plated in gold. The whole of it was encrusted with fine rubies and crystals and a large emerald at the base of the hilt. I slid the blade slightly from the sheath. It was double-edged, inscribed with tiny runes, and shone with new silver brightness. The sheath itself was stamped with more runes and symbols and blotched with stains that I just knew were blood. It weighed more than I would have guessed, but still had a nice balance in the hand. And the damned little thing hummed with power.

"I can't accept this, Briallen."

"You must. What's coming is cataclysmic, Connor. I won't have you unprotected."

"But this must be worth a fortune!"

She shrugged. "What's a fortune weighed against a life? It's old, I'll grant you. Several people have possessed it. Now you will."

"I'll take it on one condition."

I meant it conversationally, just as a preface, really, but Briallen sat very still, like she was considering whether she would accept a condition. "What?"

"That you'll take it back when I don't need it anymore."

A mysterious look passed over her face, at once surprised and resigned. "I'll accept that. Put it on."

I gave her an odd look as I removed my right boot. Briallen can be downright pushy sometimes, but it never paid to disobey. I lashed the sheath around my ankle and put the boot back on. After a few wiggling adjustments, I felt I could live with it. I had to take my regular knife out of its boot sheath, though, and slip it bare into my left boot. Not the safest position, but I would figure it out later.

"Use it with care," she said. "It has some powerful wards, and I've put a few of my own niceties on it, too."

"I will. So what exactly does Maeve want you to do?"

"Learn what I can. Scrying obviously isn't working. I'm going to try some dream prophecy."

Not surprised, I nodded. Imbas forosnai. The ancient ritual of dream and prophecy was the only logical course when scrying didn't work. Now I knew why Briallen had summoned me. She would be in a deep trance for days. And she would be vulnerable. "You want me to stand guard while you sleep."

"Yes and no. I don't know what may happen, but I doubt you're strong enough to stop it. There are very few people who could protect me better than myself, and they're all busy working on this right now. I need you to awaken me."

"So I'm useful because I'm powerless."

She rolled her eyes. "You're useful because no one would expect I would use you. Unexpectedness has its own power. No one must know about you. I haven't even told Maeve."

Maeve, the Bitch of Tara, Ice Queen and Iron Ruler. Just as many people fear her as love her. Enclosed in a girdle of mist on the hill of Tara in Ireland, no one passes into her keep—or her presence—without consent. And she just phones up friends of mine when she needs help. "What's she like?"

Briallen steepled her hands at her lips. "Strong. Of all the queens, I think she's probably the most beautiful, but I'm sure others would have their own opinion. Her hair is like ebony, and her skin is alabaster. She can be as cold as drawn steel and never lets her guard down. People curse her, but the fey are lucky she was the ascendant queen when Convergence happened. This world would have descended into chaos without her leadership. She may be harsh, but she's kept things from falling apart."

"If only she cared about all the fey as much as the monarchy," I said.

Briallen shrugged. "That's a matter of opinion. If she can finally defuse the German situation and end the Teutonic-Seelie stalemate, the entire world will be better off. Humans may fear nuclear weapons, but I'm more worried about an all-out fey war. Suffice it to say she's got a lot on her plate."

In her usual manner, she stood and walked out of the room. In the outer hall, I found her going upstairs. I followed her firm tread to the third floor, where the guest bedrooms were located. Surprisingly, she led me up to the fourth floor. I knew she slept up there, but had never seen it. When I was a kid and came to the house for lessons, I would sneak away to explore when she was distracted by conversation with someone. The staircase beyond the third floor was blocked by wards, and I couldn't pass. It didn't stop me from trying, but I never got through. Here I was just sailing right along. The fourth floor landing had four closed doors. To my astonishment, Briallen kept going up to the fifth floor. She waited for me on the landing.

The top floor of the house had wooden doors at either end, both closed. Incongruously, a great stone door set in a stone arch stood in the center of the landing. Briallen laid her hand on the door. "You're about to see something I rarely show anyone."

She pushed, and the door opened soundlessly. A dim white glow came from within. Inside was an oval room, its walls paved with slate and curving inward toward the center of the ceiling. Where the tiles met, stones of all kinds glittered in the crevices. Onyx jammed in next to crystals of pink and yellow and blue. Bloodstones lined the baseboards, along with quartz of all kinds mixed in with opals and fire-stones. Even the floor had a fortune in precious stones, including what could only be true rubies, emeralds, and diamonds. I couldn't possibly catalog them all. The dominant stones were selenite, other moonstones, and sapphire for invoking the powers of the night, only fitting for a druid daughter of the Moon. In the center of the room stood the lone piece of furniture, a white granite slab of a table just the right length for Briallen to stretch out on if she chose. A preternatural light glowed from various places, reflecting back and forth in a myriad of color.

Druids are notoriously guarded about their private sanctums. The one I had before I lost my abilities was much simpler, but I had still shown it to only a handful of people. "I'm honored," I said.

"I've already keyed the door to your essence. Once I close it, only you can open it from the outside. If I'm not out in three days, come get me. With any luck, I'll have figured this all out."

She reached out and hugged me. As I held her, she gripped hard before releasing me. The seriousness of the situation was sinking in. Briallen was always physically and emotionally demonstrative. But that one hard squeeze told me she was scared. She stepped back into the room with a grim smile on her face. The door closed, meeting the jamb with a soft thump that sounded like the sealing of a tomb.

I tried calling Gillen Yor several times the next morning but kept getting his answering service. Finally, by midafternoon, I got a real person on the line who informed me that Gillen was unavailable until further notice. As I turned off my phone, I glanced up at the ceiling as though I could see through it to where Briallen lay in deep meditation. I knew she would have helped the queen with just about anything if asked. But if Maeve had gotten Gillen to investigate as well, and he had agreed, it truly was serious.