The rain smattering against his face brought him quickly back to the present.
The flames that had taken hold of the abbey had been extinguished in the deluge. Not a single wisp of smoke remained.
Fillan felt a penetrating, visceral fatigue. Every muscle, every joint, every bit of his body screamed for rest, to give in. In a flash, an unspeakable weariness overwhelmed him and he contemplated abandoning everything to disappear into the nothingness of the Sidh.
Less than a yard away, Ailéas watched him with pleading eyes. Her scar was dripping with rain and stood out from the white of her skin. She held out a hand that he seized for an embrace with the tips of his fingers, with as much strength as he could muster.
He felt dizzy, like he had just woken up from an endless nightmare. It cost him terribly to escape the harmful influence diffused by the Stone of Fal. He gripped his sword and stood, staring at Cornavii who was still in front of the artifact, haloed with light.
“How can you get up?!” the Lann Fala asked, annoyed.
He extended his hand to project a new wave of energy.
Around the rock, the light trembled, hesitant, before obeying and spreading, unleashed.
Fillan saw succeeding fragments of scenes that were neither memories nor dreams, just horrific projections. He anchored himself in reality, the present, but above all, in his emotions. Every step he took drove away his childlike guilt, for he was accomplishing what he had been unable to accomplish years before.
“You are not worthy of the Stone,” he said in a low, broken voice.
The words had mysteriously sprung from his mouth, and he had no idea how they came to him. Cornavii watched the energy flowing from the rock with an unhappy air.
Fillan charged forward, brandishing the sword of Fal with all his strength. The Lann Fala was forced to wield his broadsword with one hand to block, the other hand too concentrated on the artifact.
“You don’t stand a chance, kid.”
The gigantic sword swung in a brutal arc, hissing in the air as it whipped through the rain. The tip of the blade brushed Fillan’s throat, who almost fell backwards. He retaliated with a series of short sequences and realized that, as he harassed his opponent, Cornavii had been forced to release his control over the Stone and the glow surrounding it was shrinking.
Lying on the floor, Moira stopped screaming.
Ailéas woke and stared at the cloudy sky. The visions of horror that had invaded her mind at first matched the nightmares that had plagued her dreams for years, until exploding to become even more terrible, making her relive perpetual massacres.
She took a deep breath to calm her racing heart and heard the clang of metal. Her brother was no longer beside her. Ignoring the dizziness that assailed her, she stood to join him. He was dodging a side attack from Cornavii.
Upon seeing her, Fillan’s heart lightened. He was glad that she stood at his side to face the one who had made them orphans, twice.
Cornavii blocked a dexterous attack from the teenager by leaning his blade into his back and used the opportunity to deliver a powerful kick to Fillan, which made him double over. After this reprise, he approached the Stone of Fal, which he placed his hand on again.
The golden flow hesitated once more, longer this time, before increasing its power.
The surge of energy left the twins staggering and dazed, and the Lann Fala tried to take advantage of this by thrusting the sword in a devastating downward attack.
Ailéas felt the blade brush against her shirt and whoosh past her neck. Her brother blocked the resulting sweep to protect her and heaved a muffled curse. Under the power of the blow, the pain in his shoulder returned and restricted some of his movements. She in turn moved forward, aiming for Cornavii’s side without success.
She took advantage of the movement of his weapon’s backswing to modify the angle of her arm. The blade thrust up, slashed the Lann Fala’s breastplate, and hit the helm on its way, snapping one of its antlers clean off.
“You filthy bitch!” he growled, his ghostly voice becoming more snake-like than ever.
He returned the attack, furious.
The confrontation persisted as the rain continued to pour, and the thunder and lightning still shook the ground. The twins had coordinated well to stand up to Cornavii, using tricks and ingenuity, but he was talented and clever. He used the power of the Stone of Fal to create openings in their defense or to dodge fatal blows, making the energy that surrounded it explode to form a blinding shield.
This advantage made him unbeatable.
Ailéas was the first to understand that she and Fillan would soon succumb, seeing how much their strength was weakening. On the verge of losing hope. As she pulled out of a dodge, she saw Moira who had knelt, trembling and trying to be heard over the din of the storm.
“Lia Fàil… Your swords…” said the druid with difficulty. “Strike… Stone…”
Ailéas stared at the blade she held in her hand.
She saw it glow faintly, as she had seen it do before when she fought alongside her brother at Dunstaffnage.
It didn’t take her long to understand.
“Fillan, keep him busy!” she yelled at her twin, who was trying to repel an attack by holding his weapon with both hands.
“I’m already doing that!” he yelled.
Sensing that she was up to something, Cornavii turned towards her, but she dove in the mud to duck his blow. Now in front of the Stone, she raised the sword of Fal above her head and struck with all her might.
The blade became covered with curious writings, and then Iona exploded in a myriad of lightning that set the sky ablaze. The artifact unleashed a wave of energy that knocked them all down and disintegrated the monastery, the stones of which flew away.
The island remained frozen for a few moments as the storm died down.
“What have you done?!” yelled Cornavii as he rose, leaning on his weapon, his eyes fixed on the Stone.
The blast had ripped off his helm, revealing an emaciated face covered with scars.
The twins, regaining their strength, were already charging at him.
Each performed a series of moves and attacks that managed to send the Templar’s broadsword flying into the air.
“It shouldn’t be like this!” cried Cornavii. “My destiny…”
Weapon in hand, Ailéas approached cautiously. She met the eyes of the Lann Fala, filled with excessive hatred, and read him like a book. Beyond the rage, she saw something else as she probed the warrior’s mind. First she discovered a mixed ambition of shame and ego, flouted by failure, experienced as an affront.
Delving deeper, she discovered a slump of inextricable emotions; he was oozing with envy and suffocating like a dog trained by suffering for the simple purpose of killing obsessively.
The demon from her nightmares stood before her, just as vulnerable as she had felt on the worst nights of her life.
She raised her sword.
“The Order,” he stammered. “The Order will find you…”
The blade struck across his neck.
He slid slowly to the floor.
Even after his body was no longer twitching, Fillan dealt another blow.
“I think he was already dead,” Ailéas said, raising an eyebrow.
“Just to be sure.”
They fell into each other’s arms but cut short their embrace to rush to Moira, who was struggling to get up.
“Sören…” she said. “Take me to Sören.”
The Norwegian slumped at the foot of the shattered monastery, breathing shallowly. The druid lay him in the mud as best she could with the help of the twins to remove his armor and assess his wounds.
“So?” Fillan asked impatiently.
“He will live.”
He sighed in relief.
“He has a long gash in his abdomen that will require some time to heal. He’s going to have to stay still for a while.”
“I’m sure he’ll love that,” he joked.
She smiled, then tended to the wound with what little she had to hand. Instinctively, Ailéas assisted her. She disappeared after a few moments into the abbey, only to return with the holy water font full of clear water that allowed them to clean the wound.
Fillan watched them while massaging his shoulder, exhausted. He had learned to fight, to kill, to see blood flow, but the sight of skin being sewn up, pulled by a thread, made him shiver.
“There,” Moira sighed after applying a dressing. “That’s all we can do for now.”
A few patches of blue sky started to appear between the dark clouds.
Feverish, the druid approached the Stone.
“Lia Fàil,” she whispered.
“How did you know to hit it?” asked Fillan.
She smiled weakly.
“Thanks to knowledge inherited from your circle?” ventured Ailéas.
“Partly, yes, but I wasn’t sure of anything. With such a precious but distant legacy, being sure of anything is difficult. Much has been lost and the fragments we have do not make it possible to fully understand everything. The breath of gods flows through Lia Fàil, there can be no doubt of it after what we just experienced. An identical breath travels in your weapons. It made me think of an old bas-relief that I visited during a trip to the north of Ireland.”
“How can the breath of the gods have such a … horrible effect? I feel like I’ve been through hell.”
“Me, too. I believe Fillan was correct when he said to Cornavii that he was not worthy of the power of the Stone. The Lann Fala was blinded; he thought he controlled the Stone, but this was just an illusion.”
“I got the feeling it was resisting him.”
“And it was, my boy. It would have ended up annihilating him, and us with it.”
“Did we destroy it?” stammered Fillan as he approached the Stone of Fal.
“If you had, it would be broken. I get the feeling you’ve just disabled it. But truth be told, I don’t really know. Despite everything I read, I didn’t know how to use it.”
“It would seem that the Order outstripped the druids and Assassins on this subject.”
“What are we going to do with it?”
“The Stone was not brought to Iona by accident. Help me to get it up into the monastery.”
They complied and moved towards the entrance of the building. They passed the body of James on the way.
“I still can’t believe it,” Fillan murmured. “I was so convinced that Deorsa was a traitor, and I didn’t see James coming.”
“Deorsa?” asked the druid in surprise. “No. If he had wanted to betray the Brotherhood, he would have taken the path a long time ago.”
“Why would James do it?”
“Would knowing why ease your pain?”
He shrugged.
“Insatiable ambition is more than enough to tip the balance one way or the other. He didn’t show it, but James was full of it.”
They entered the remnants of the monastery and, clinging to their arms, the druid led them to a hidden staircase.
“If I remember correctly, it must be that way. Ailéas, grab that torch.”
At the end of the steps, they discovered a maze of narrow corridors. Without Moira, they would have both lost their way, and there were many dead ends. At the bend of a corridor more endless than the others, the walls became dark.
He squinted.
“You recognize that smooth, black stone, don’t you, Fillan?”
He nodded his head. The same material was in the depths of Scone.
“What is that?” whispered Ailéas.
“A creation of the gods.”
Moira grumbled in agreement.
In the light of the flame, a dead end appeared. The twins observed the druid without understanding.
“Lia Fàil would have been safe here, no matter what,” she explained, placing her hand on the smooth wall. “But the Brotherhood is far from stupid… They must have known.”
“What do you suspect?”
“That something is beyond this wall. They were probably hoping to figure out how to open it, as is the case beneath Scone Abbey.”
Ailéas noticed symbols similar to those she had seen gleaming on her sword and touched the smooth coldness. With a rumble, the wall split into two parts that slid away.
“What did you break?” Fillan asked.
“Nothing, I just put my hand there!”
They looked at Moira again with wide, interrogative eyes.
“Stop staring at me like that! I don’t know everything about everything!”
“You still know a lot about it,” retorted the teenager. “More than anyone.”
The druid observed the gaping opening before looking at them alternately.
“It must have something to do with the fact that you are Children of Fal.”
“How can a rock realize that?” wondered Fillan.
“I haven’t the faintest idea, but that’s the only explanation that I can see.”
“We truly are their heirs…” whispered Ailéas, as if she were only now aware of this reality.
“As well as those of the Gaels,” added Moira. “Cornavii did not lie about that.”
Beyond the passage, a room like that in Scone was plunged in darkness, invaded by mist.
“We should take advantage of it to lay the Stone here,” said Moira. “And when I say ‘we’, I of course mean you. If I try too hard, I’ll pass out, and you will have to carry me.”
They accepted with enthusiasm, happy to be able to bring the artifact to safety, but became disillusioned when they had to carry the rock that weighed the same as them up the stairs.
They placed it in the center of the room while Moira illuminated the way at arm’s length. When they emerged, the walls slowly slid back down into place.
“And so the true Lia Fàil disappears from the eyes of the world,” said the druid in a solemn voice.
“Will it be safe here?” asked Ailéas.
“I hope so, but it is impossible to be sure. We all have our own destinies, but so does the Brotherhood and the Order. Only the gods know if their conflict will drive them to pull Lia Fàil out of these depths, for better or for worse.”
They turned on their heels and the noise of the dark rock that came together to reform the wall behind them echoed loudly.