CORVUS
By the time we left the Gap, arriving a couple of miles out from Knock Ma, the clouds had returned. Mist had even begun collecting in the low areas. All of this would work in our favor.
Corvus’s balloon vented and the Sea Aster released gas, and both vessels descended into an open field. I kept only enough men onboard to load the larboard guns. Then, with a roar of the burner, Corvus lifted off again.
We used the navigator device to return to the Gap—my plan was to cross the rest of the distance and then appear without warning in the sky over Knock Ma. It would require precise navigation, but if the Morrigan couldn’t do it, no one could.
When we slipped out of the Gap high above the eastern wall, frightened shouts went up from the battlements. Just as I was about to relay the command to my crew, two of our guns fired. The southwest tower, where Koli’s bedchamber had been—and where Doro had hidden—took a direct hit.
The goddess is having her revenge. The round shot took out part of the turret and also blasted a hole through the tower wall.
I quickly scanned the forest to the east and found Isolde’s soldiers on a ridge just below the castle. They were waiting on Corvus’s cannons—and the ones we’d left behind in the field—to breach the walls. There was the moat to contend with as well, but that could come later.
“Fire!” I shouted, for all the good it might do. My men were loading the shot and readying the powder, yet clearly the Morrigan was in control.
Two more of Corvus’s guns fired—two more direct hits to the tower. What was left of it collapsed outward, spilling stones over the western wall into the moat below.
“The east wall!” I shouted at the ship in frustration. The elves had spells powerful enough to disable both rifles and cannon—we were running out of time.
Then came a blast from the cannons in the field—which were firing from a much greater distance—and a slice of the eastern wall collapsed.
Movement directly below us caught my eye—an enormous elven warrior had climbed to the top of the turret above the prison tower. A bright orange ball spun in the air above him.
The Elf King.
“Fire on him!” I shouted.
The air felt strange, as if the sky around us was hollowing out. I recognized it as a gathering of magic. I had felt it at the battle of Ben Bulben, where, with my ancestor’s help, I had called the wind to aid Queen Isolde’s becalmed fleet.
“Fire the guns!” I shouted again. What was she waiting for? The Elf King’s fireball was the size of a hay bale, and still growing.
I heard shouting below, and then my man on deck relayed, “The powder has stopped lighting, Your Majesty!”
Bollocks! The Elf King’s spell was gobbling up fire. How long could the Morrigan’s burner hold out?
I heard the distant cannons fire, but the Elf King held up his hand, and I watched three balls stop dead in the air beyond the wall before dropping into the trees below.
“Into the Gap!” I bellowed. “Before he blasts us out right out of the sky!”
I grabbed the railing, bracing for the rough passage, but nothing happened. No window opened in the sky, and Corvus maintained her position.
The fireball was now a bright sun hanging over the turret atop the prison tower.
I felt frozen in time, and utterly powerless, as the staggering spell continued to grow. One desperate thought presented itself: Where is Koli? It broke my heart as it dawned on me I wouldn’t see her again. I would have given anything to touch her one more time.
Koli
Doro reached toward the back of the lock mechanism on the cell door, quickly scratching a symbol on the metal with the inch-long nail of his smallest finger. The fingernail began blackening from the tip, and the lock transformed from a rusty, blood red color to a tinny silver. Then he punched his fist through the lock, pushing open the door. He’d somehow changed the strong metal to a weaker one. Alchemy.
Treig and I rushed out of the cell as the guards moved to challenge us.
“Release the others!” I shouted back at Doro.
Suddenly Ulf gave a loud grunt of exertion, and one of the bars he was tied to broke away from the frame at the top of the cell. Outside, cannon fire sounded and another part of the castle was hit. Our guards froze, unsure which threat to contain—I swung a fist at Eld. She easily dodged the blow, but Treig was waiting with a punch to the big warrior’s throat. Eld fell to her knees, holding her neck and gasping.
Grimm lunged for Treig, but Finvara’s father, now free of his cell, ploughed into the captain from behind. Ulf too was free, and wielded the bar from his cell like a pike against the other two guards.
Together we herded and battered all the guards into an empty cell. While Ulf eyed them with menace, I took the brisingr from Treig and used it along with my own to bind the guards to each other as well as the bars.
With the guards contained, I forced my mind to consider strategy—it was all I could do not to run up the stairs and look for Finvara.
“Did you have any success with your people?” I asked Treig.
“I spoke to as many as I could,” she replied, “until I was caught. I think some will help us.”
Touched by her loyalty, I laid my hand on her arm. “The drawbridge will have been raised,” I said. “We need it lowered, and we need to drive the elves out onto the grounds west of the castle. Into the trees. Do you think there’s any way to do that with only a small number of helpers?”
Treig lifted her eyebrows. “Fire?”
“Fire,” I agreed. “Burn everything. Finvara’s men are laying siege from the east and will discourage them from fleeing in that direction.” I looked at Ulf. “Will you help her?”
The two exchanged an unfriendly glance, and I recalled that Ulf had given her the lump on her forehead. Yet he replied, “Já.”
“If you trust him, Your Majesty,” said Treig.
“With my life.”
“We’ll go with them,” said the earl. He and his eldest son had joined us. Elinor and his daughter-in-law clung to each other just outside their cell. Lady Mayo looked terrified, but in Elinor’s eyes I thought I caught a glimmer of excitement. The earl continued, “Duncan needs my help.”
“He does, my lord.”
“Is there anywhere Elinor and Margaret will be safe?” he asked.
I had very little patience left for remaining here—I looked for Doro. He was standing outside our circle, watching us closely. I shivered.
“I know you cannot leave Knock Ma unaccompanied,” I said to him, “but you may pass into Faery?”
“I may, Your Majesty,” he said icily.
“Take the earl’s kinswomen to Faery. Leave them someplace safe and return to me at once.”
“Faery!” said Lady Margaret, eyeing me fearfully.
“You will be safer there than here,” I replied.
“Can the creature be trusted?” asked the earl, giving Doro a wary glance.
Not generally. “He is magically bound to me and must obey.” I turned to Doro. “Go now.”
He moved close to the ladies and lightly touched Elinor’s back. All three of them vanished.
“What will happen in the forest?” asked Ulf.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I have reason to believe the trees will help us. You must all keep clear of it if you can.”
“What will you do, hrafn?”
“Find my husband,” I replied, starting for the stairway.
The others followed me up. Outside, they ran down the stairs to the parapet while I stopped to look up at Corvus—and the carriage-sized fireball that my father had conjured on the turret above me.
Return to the Gap! I used my thoughts to scream at the Morrigan.
The ship did not respond, and I tried again. Please save my husband!
Everything had gone impossibly still. Alfakonung’s men were silent, waiting and watching from the battlements. My father shifted his position so the fireball hung in the air over both of his outstretched hands.
Doro reappeared beside me, and I grabbed his arm. “I need a soft landing for Finvara!” I told him in Irish, so there would be no possibility of misunderstanding. “I don’t care what spell you cast, but cast it now!”
My father intended to destroy his enemy in a single stroke. Did he know it was the Morrigan he faced, or had anger driven him to use all his power to destroy one Irishman?
I waited feverishly for Doro’s answer, my fingernails digging into his flesh. What if it wasn’t in his power? How much elemental magic had been spent already? Yet he was the only one who could help me—everything the Morrigan had done for us was in exchange for her chance at punishing Doro. Her revenge was more important than our lives, and that was what my husband had been trying to tell me all along. If he died because of her, I would never forgive myself.
My father let out a roar that vibrated the stone beneath my feet, and he hurled the fireball at Corvus.
“Doro!” I screamed.
He had closed his eyes and begun to chant. I ran up the stairs to the top of the prison tower, and I climbed into a crenellation in the battlement.
Then I leapt from the castle.
This time my wings were ready and caught the air quickly. I conjured my furies.
They are of earth magic, I realized, the most ancient of the elements. My father’s fire magic had not diminished them. I recalled what had happened with Ulf in the forest and I sang to them as we flew, binding them close to me.
Finvara’s gaze met mine the moment the fireball struck Corvus. Liquid fire—hot as the volcanic blood that had once spewed from the Laki craters—splattered over hull, balloon, and sails. The slack sails immediately caught fire, and a dozen men emerged on the deck—my stomach twisted as one of them jumped from the railing, choosing to fall to his death rather than be burned alive.
By myself, I could only save one of these men—if that.
“Finvara!” I shouted as I approached the burning wreck.
My heart lurched as he rose from beneath the railing, where he had fallen on impact. Smoke rose from holes in his clothing—he had been burned. He glanced at the deck behind him—the rest of the crew had followed the first.
There was a whoosh of hot air as liquid fire finally penetrated the balloon, and the ship began to plunge, her wings digging frantically at the air. Finvara too climbed onto the rail and jumped.
I swooped down and met him in the air, throwing my arms around him. Like Ulf, he was too heavy for me to carry. I managed to raise my wings a few times but was soon unbalanced by his weight, and we began to tumble, my furies swarming around us. We had so far to fall—we could not possibly survive it.
“Save yourself!” Finvara shouted. “Let me go!”
We stopped rolling for a precious split-second, and I glimpsed something miraculous. A circular ribbon of water hung in the sky just below us. I could not make sense of it, and there was no time to question. On our current path we would shoot through the open middle of it.
The water! I screamed at my birds. I shook my wings free and began to pump them, my fists knotted in Finvara’s coat. A thousand feathered bodies pressed close against him, their wings whacking at him and the air and each other, helping to support his weight.
With the smack of flesh on a surface more yielding than earth or rock, we plunged into icy water, dark as a subterranean lake. I stopped fighting and let my exhausted body float. Finvara, too, went still, and his hands came to my waist. My heart jumped as an enormous silvery fish with a huge gaping mouth went streaking past us. Finvara tugged me to his chest, and I felt a bubble of laughter escape his lips. It was the happiest sound I had ever heard.
Finvara
To laugh in that moment was a ridiculous thing, but I had learned from my mother that if you can laugh, not only are you still alive, but life is still worth living.
Koli had come for me, and the fact that we were somehow swimming in Knock Ma’s moat at least a hundred feet from the ground—along with pike that were large enough to swallow us—was not going to steal the joy of this moment.
Running out of air would indeed steal the joy, however, so I grasped Koli’s arm and we began to kick for the surface.
Our heads burst from the water. Before we had caught our breath enough to speak, we were suddenly falling again—I threw my arms around Koli’s waist.
“Doro’s spell!” she sputtered.
So Doro had raised the moat—and now it was returning to the castle.
“Kick!” I said. “Don’t slip down below the water line!”
Our descent was slower than if we’d been tossed from a bucket, but still we landed with a sloppy splash, and I lost my grip on her. I flailed around for a moment, confused about which end was up.
The lighted end, idiot.
I felt a hand on my back, and together we swam for the side of the moat. Much of the water had been lost in the splash, and it was not at all apparent how we were going to scale the slimy walls.
While I was looking for a vine or rope, Koli shouted, “Corvus!”
She was engulfed in flames and falling out of the sky like a ship of souls bound for hell. Even aflame, her wings continued to rake through the air. At the last, there was an explosion and the ship lurched violently—the fire must have found the black powder. Koli gave a cry of surprise as the burning wreckage slammed right into the turret where her father had stood.
Spell-borne fire splattered out from the ship and across the courtyard. Shouts of alarm and confusion filled the air. Elf warriors and panicking horses pounded over the drawbridge and fled down the hillside into the forest. Flames licked at holes in the castle walls.
“Come with me,” I said.
We swam under the drawbridge, and from there were able to climb an abutment and haul ourselves out. Then we ran for the gatehouse.
There was no one inside, and we climbed the stairs to the top, where we would have a good view of the forest and the castle.
With the collapse of the prison tower, the wreckage of the ship rested partly on the east wall. Several other sections of wall had been taken out by cannon fire. Dark smoke curled from the burning bailey, and even from the windows of the keep.
Suddenly Koli threw her arms around me. Warmth spread out from my heart, filling my chest.
“I thought I had killed you,” she said, her voice thick with emotion. “I should never have left you like that. You were right about the Morrigan.”
I pulled her close. “You did what you thought was best, and who can say that it wasn’t? But can you now tell me why, acushla?”
She drew back to look at me, but before she could answer, we heard the distinct call of a crow—about a hundred times louder and more shrill than any crow I had ever heard . . . save one.
Looking out, we saw the enormous bird circling above the burning rubble.
“She’s survived,” I said.
Koli shook her head slowly. “How can that be?”
I shrugged. “She’s a goddess.”
Koli stared at me. “She must not have known. If she had known she could become her old self simply by destroying her new self, she would not have needed us.”
I smiled, thinking how Lady Meath would appreciate the situation—the Morrigan, goddess of death, decay, and renewal.
“Her revenge might not have been so spectacular, though,” I said. “It was a good thing for us, because we needed her, as much as it pains me to say so.”
The great crow suddenly dived into the rubble. A few moments later she emerged with something draped across her back.
“Doro,” Koli said with such certainty I looked at her. “He was standing outside the prison tower with me when my father threw the fireball.”
I frowned. “Can he have survived?”
“I wouldn’t have thought so. I wonder what she’ll do with him.”
Shuddering, I said, “I hate to think.”
The Morrigan left the sky above the castle, flying off north with her prize. I sighed. “And now she abandons us with the battle half fought.”
We watched her fade into the backdrop of cloud.
Koli turned. “At least we no longer have my father to contend with.”
I studied her. “How do you feel about that?”
She moved in close, pressing her cheek to my chest, and I put my arms around her.
“I don’t think I really feel anything yet.”
I stroked her hair, and I kissed the top of her head. “I suppose we should—”
Suddenly I felt a trembling through the floor, and I glanced at the castle. The rubble against the east wall began to shift and slide.
“Father!” cried Koli.