The rain was so heavy that the entire landscape of Iona disappeared beneath sheaths of gray. In the distance, the clouds looked like they were falling from the heavens, like the claws of giants eager to grab the earth.
Cornavii leaned his huge blood-covered sword on his shoulder and stared at each of the new arrivals. Facing Fillan, the deer-antler helm stilled for a long time. The warrior’s eyes were barely visible but stared at him intently.
“I have hunted you for eight years, Lowlands to Highlands, but in the end it’s you who’s come to me!” he sneered. “You are not a Child of Fal for no reason.”
“Shut up and get away from the Stone!” spat Fillan, putting up his guard.
He felt an inconceivable rage boiling inside him that ignited his entire being. The fear that once paralyzed him had definitively dissipated in favor of anger and a desire for revenge that made his head spin.
“You’ve learned to bark since we met in Scone. We’ll soon find out if you also learned to bite.”
Fillan gripped his sword tighter.
“Is that the Claidheamh Fal you’re holding in your hands there? So, you’ve become a filthy Brotherhood pig? That would explain why we had such a hard time flushing you out. No matter, it won’t protect you.”
“He told you to shut up!” roared Ailéas, stepping forward to stand at her brother’s side.
The Lann Fala barely turned his head to look at her.
“You… To think you were right under my nose all this time!” He burst into laughter that sounded demented and terrifying. “Oh, how the gods do like to play their little games,” he said, raising an arm towards the clouds like a madman. “I suspected that old codger Bradley Dacre would be a problem, but I never imagined he’d be so quick to betray England. He got the death he deserved, skewered like a pig. Did you kill him, kid? After he helped you hide all this time?”
Fillan pursed his lips, a gesture that the Templar did not fail to notice, which evoked a new tirade of ghostly sounding giggles.
“Oh, I see! Surely you acted on behalf of the Assassins, eager to rouse this pathetic rebellion, imagining that we would see nothing but the fire. You’re no more than a puppet swept along by the winds of fate and the will of the Brotherhood. Pathetic. Perfectly shabby. Tell me one thing, kid: was it really your decision, or was it just that the Brotherhood knew how to use you at the right time?”
The words cut deep, sharp as a blade. Fillan had asked himself this question dozens of times since Lanark, resonating with Sören’s advice.
“That’s enough!” Deorsa called out. “Let’s get this over with!”
Out of the corner of her eye, Ailéas glimpsed a movement among the rainfall pounding the heights of Iona Monastery. She forced herself to act as though nothing had happened, because she was the only one who could see it from where she stood. Her heart began pounding; she had to buy some time.
“Why hunt us down?” she asked.
“There’s no point arguing with him!” said the spy.
“Ah, why not, after all?” retorted the Lann Fala. “These ignorant kids are going to die, anyway. I am a merciful man. In any case, I am much more so than the gods who pull their strings to lead them more quickly to their deaths.”
Assured of his victory, Cornavii became talkative. It couldn’t have worked out better, thought Ailéas, risking another look upwards.
“Understand one thing,” said the warrior to the twins. “In the beginning, it was nothing personal. The Children of Fal are an error, a degeneracy engendered by a god who allowed himself to be misled by the Gaels. Your existence is an insult, an aberration. Your destiny is to join the Assassins; mine, as well as that of the Lann Fala, is to eradicate you.”
Ailéas caught a glimmer on the building tiles in the pouring rain.
“I failed to kill you eight years ago. Can you imagine the affront? I, the leader of the Lann Fala, unable to flush out and kill two filthy brats?”
“You failed eight years ago. You will fail again,” she said confidently.
“Oh, I don’t think so. Not now that I have this in my possession.”
He put one knee on the ground and moved his hand towards the Stone of Destiny.
“Lia Fàil,” he whispered.
Seeing him do this, Moira was about to scream, but at the same time a shadow leapt from the roofs of the monastery, illuminated by the lightning that spread across the sky in a long tear.
With the exception of the Templar, everyone saw what Ailéas had barely been able to make out. Sören swooped down on Cornavii, the blade drawn from his leather armband.
“My Lord, behind you!” shouted a voice at the top of their lungs, trying to be heard over the rumbling thunder.
There was another flash, and chaos erupted.
Stepping aside, Cornavii dodged Sören’s attack, and he landed heavily in a puddle of water. He tried to get up but received a powerful kick to the face that sent him rolling to the ground.
Meanwhile, Fillan, Ailéas, and Moira watched Deorsa in horror.
Two bulging and amazed eyes sat above a half-open mouth from which a stream of blood poured out, diluted by drops of rain. James had just sliced him with a short blade across the throat, as if to silence him.
Yet he was the one who had alerted Cornavii to Sören’s attack a few seconds earlier, not the spy. The thunder rumbled loud enough to burst their eardrums.
“You?” Fillan exclaimed in a barely audible whisper.
“Kill them all!” Cornavii shouted, swinging down his immense sword onto Sören, who narrowly blocked the blow by brandishing his own blade.
James took advantage of the element of surprise and leapt up to cut the throat of the Highlander soldier who had been looking joyfully at the lifeless body of Deorsa slumped in the mud.
A second passed. There was a trickle of blood. And a hiccup.
Once his second victim hit the ground, he went up against Ailéas with a lightning-fast stabbing attack. His dagger bounced off her sword of Fal as she dodged with agility, not taken by surprise. He showered her with blows and forced her into defensive postures, which made her use all her flexibility and speed. She kept blocking and wouldn’t leave him any openings as she retreated without managing to strike a single blow.
Fillan could not believe his eyes; every word that James had spoken flooded his mind in a wave of lies and deceptions.
He shook himself to go rescue his sister but found himself up against another of Cornavii’s acolytes, armed with an extended spear. The other red-cloaked soldier rushed at Moira.
Every single one of them was battling as nature itself unleashed its savagery. After another roaring thunderbolt, hail pelted down for a few moments, forming a thin layer of slippery diamonds.
By turning about, Fillan dodged a blow from his opponent at the last second. He saw that his twin was losing ground. After a flurry of blows, James had used the unsuspected momentum to circumvent Ailéas and position himself behind her back. His blade was pressed against her pale throat. Ailéas, terrified, tremblingly spread her arms in surrender.
“Nooo!” yelled Fillan, awkwardly pushing away his own attacker.
“Kill her!” Cornavii bellowed. “Kill her if you want to keep your place at my side in the Order!”
Forced to turn in the wrong direction to avoid the sickle blade that brushed his arm, Fillan had to think fast.
“James!” he yelled. “Glory in death is no glory!”
He wasn’t sure where that phrase came from, but the apprentice who had seemed so sure of himself a second earlier hesitated and stopped moving.
“Ailéas, close your eyes!” cried Moira.
She threw a vial on the ground that produced a blinding flash as it broke. Disoriented, James released his grip on Ailéas as he flung up a hand to shield his eyes. He did not see her blow coming. Her Fal sword pierced his abdomen. The tip of the blade, beaded with red, poked out on the other side between his shoulder blades.
“Damn, what was that?!” she cried.
Too busy with her own fight, the druid did not answer.
Ailéas joined her brother in a few strides to lend him a hand against his assailant.
“I’m here!” she exclaimed.
“I’m doing just fine on my own!”
She stared at him blankly, hurt.
“Sorry… I…”
The Lann Fala made no allowances for such heart-to-hearts, and he slashed at Fillan’s shoulder, eliciting a scream. Ailéas charged, and the twins fought side by side, both trying not to get in the way of each other’s attacks.
Moira was struggling, too. She could be formidable, for she wielded her staff and her long, tapered dagger with incredible dexterity, but the Lann Fala she fought was a colossus. She used her blinding vials twice. The first one let her get in a slash to the side and the second, to the thigh. Her opponent did not flinch, however, and resumed the assault by bellowing, turning into a real maniac.
“You are tough little thing, my boy!” she said. “Why don’t you just give up before you get hurt?”
The man growled and spat.
“As you wish!”
She planted her stick in the ground and used it as a support to push the warrior back with a mighty kick. Utilizing the newfound distance between them, she aimed and threw her last vial, which shattered on the Lann Fala’s face. A blinding flash was followed by a howl of pain and a trail of blood that mingled with the water pooling on the ground. At the exact moment of the burst of light, the druid had thrown her dagger between the two eyes of the Lann Fala.
“Always listen to a druid,” she muttered, retrieving her blade with a spongy noise.
Fillan and Ailéas also reached the end of their fight. After the first few minutes of their dual clash, they had synchronized their movements. Their swords moved with such fluidity that they seemed to fly on their own through the air, giving the impression that they were wielding the twins and not the other way around.
The Order soldier collapsed with his skull split open.
Fillan felt like giving a shout of victory, but the most dangerous of them all was still alive.
Near the Stone of Fal, Cornavii and Sören were fighting fiercely. The mercenary used all his talent and exhausted all his techniques to try and defeat the Templar. He moved swiftly through the mud and rain, leapt and arched back with a flurry of various attacks. His usual dance of death was more terrifying than ever; there were moments when he almost felled the helmeted warrior, brushing him with the edge of his blade or narrowly failing to unbalance him.
The leader of the Lann Fala was as steadfast as a mountain and returned blow for blow with disproportionate brutality. It was as if he read and anticipated each of the Norwegian’s movements. By evading a close-range attack, he was able to land a violent punch to the mercenary’s face before propelling him back with the edge of his blade against the wall of the monastery, squirting blood into the air.
“Sören!” Moira and the twins cried.
He fell to his knees and, just before collapsing completely, they distinctly saw the blood flooding down the front of his leather armor.
Cornavii looked around at the inert bodies of his warriors and made a show of stretching and cracking his neck.
“This little game has gone on long enough,” he said.
He knelt before the Stone of Fal, removed one of his gloves, and put his hand on the soaked rock.
“Lia Fàil!” Moira groaned, clutching her staff in panic.
They saw the Lann Fala’s lips move but could hear nothing through the storm. A new flash, which seemed as supernatural as it was bright, fell on the monastery and set fire to its frame. Sunken into the ground softened by downpours, the Stone of Fal gave off a faint glow. Droplets of water that rained down hovered inches away from the rock, beating against an invisible barrier.
Mysterious arabesques began to glow on the block of sandstone and a stream of golden energy emanated from it to surround Cornavii’s hand.
“Oh no!” Moira continued to moan.
“What is that?” Ailéas wondered.
“The power of the gods.”
“What can we do?”
The druid reached for the pouches attached to her waist, but she had no more vials. She went on the attack alone, uttering a cry of rage under the bewildered eyes of the twins.
“What are you thinking, poor puppet?” laughed the Lann Fala in his horrible voice.
He stood up, drawing the energy of the Stone towards him and extending his hand. Moira staggered in the middle of her run, as if hit by an invisible force. She fell to her knees, dropped her staff and dagger, and put her head in her hands.
“Look upon my power, vile creature!” sneered Cornavii, whose eyes shone a fiery yellow.
She began to scream, louder and louder, drowning out the cacophony of the storm.
“You see! I told you I wouldn’t fail! Not with the Stone of Fal under my control. I will kill you, avenge the affront of your escape, and regain my honor with the Order.”
Driven by the increasingly abominable cries of the druid, the twins charged into battle, but Cornavii sent a new wave of energy that knocked them down.
They collapsed to the ground like puppets.
Fillan felt like his head was exploding. Visions of horror invaded his mind, and terror paralyzed his body. He saw himself destroying familiar members of the Brotherhood in order to establish his dominance within the organization. In this nightmarish dream, he massacred, conquered, and plundered to get what he had always dreamed of: fame and wealth.
Overtaken by the influence of the Stone of Fal, he was only rage and envy, before being swept away in another flood of emotions.
A new scene unfolded in his mind, in which he stabbed Ailéas in the middle of the night without an ounce of hesitation, and rejoiced after killing Sören. Thus, he became the only Child of Fal, the only descendant of the Gaels and heir to the gods.
Fillan opened his eyes, trying to fight against those thoughts that weren’t really his.
Less than a yard from him, he met the emerald green eyes of his sister, filled with tears.
She had the pleading look of a little girl whose only hope was to wake up from the nightmare she was living.
He stared intently at her face, clinging to it like an anchor to remain grounded and extricate himself from the harmful influence of the artifact.
Ailéas grimaced, moaned, and Fillan felt a barricade give way in his mind, as if he had already experienced this before.
A memory surged.