Earth's Requiem(110)

“Fionn!” She shook him. Tears streamed down her face. She reached for him with her heart, laid her face next to his, and showered him with kisses while she ran her hands over his familiar body.

“Won’t work.” Rune stood next to her. “I’ve licked him, bit him, talked to him. I don’t understand what happened. One minute, we were leading a company. The next, we stumbled through something that felt like sticky spider’s webs. Fionn seemed to recognize what it was. He cursed and tried to backtrack, but he couldn’t seem to focus his magic on the wall that closed behind us.”

“Whatever this is doesn’t affect you?” Aislinn considered how she could leverage that if it were true.

“No.” Rune verified her suspicions. “Not me, but Bella’s just as far under as Fionn.”

“Bella!” Aislinn felt ashamed. She’d totally forgotten the bird. “Where is she?”

Rune trotted to a dark corner. Aislinn followed and scooped up the raven, who’d frozen into position, her head under one wing.

“Do you have any idea what happened to Gwydion and the others?”

“No.”

Cradling Bella against her, Aislinn tried to link with Fionn’s mind. It was closed to her. She tried again, pushing hard with her Mage gift. Then with her Seer gift. It was like running up against a castle wall. She took his hand. Thank God it was warm. Something he’d said slammed into her. She’d blithely told him she could Heal him, and he’d replied only if she found him in time. Then there’d been that part about his body being severed from his soul.



She rocked back on her heels. She needed Gwydion or Arawn or Bran. Someone who knew more than she did. Even Dewi. No, scratch that. She didn’t trust the dragon as far as she could see her.

Tara materialized by her side. “Och aye and ’tis thick in here. We need to drag him outside this enchantment.”

“Are you sure we won’t hurt him?” Aislinn locked gazes with her mother.

Tara cocked her head to one side in a gesture Aislinn remembered so well that it tore at her heart. “Nay. But we canna leave him in here. That will kill him for certain. Mayhap not kill,” she amended, “but he will sink so deep, ’twill no longer matter. Where did ye get the bird?”

“It’s Fionn’s bonded one.”

“Aye, then, and it must be the same one. A nasty piece, she was. I am certain time has not improved her temperament.” Tara Lenear chuckled coldly. “Mayhap we could be leavin’ that one asleep.”

Between her and her mother, they managed to drag Fionn outside the enchantment. Rune tried to help, but all they did was fall over one another. Aislinn had to make the hole bigger, but not all that much. She made a second trip for Bella and tucked the bird into a protected corner. Head spinning from weariness, Aislinn sank to the stone floor next to Fionn and caught her breath. He looked about the same. She watched the rise and fall of his chest and tried linking to his mind again.

Why can’t I get in? She rocked back on her heels and dredged through every magical possibility she knew, but nothing fit her needs. “Do you know what’s wrong?” Aislinn eyed her mother, floating a few inches above the floor.

“Aye.”

Aislinn waited, but Tara didn’t say anything else. “Are you going to tell me?”

The shade that had been her mother shrugged. “It willna matter. I doona think ye can fix it.”

“Tell me anyway.” Aislinn drew one of Fionn’s hands into her lap.

Rune whined. “I am sorry. The air did not feel that…tainted to me, or I would have warned him.”

“Not your fault.” Aislinn turned toward Tara. “Come on, Mom. Talk.”

“Hmph! Ye used to be more respectful.”

“Sure, when I still had a normal life and two parents.”

Her mother looked so sad that Aislinn wished she’d kept her mouth shut.



“The avenging one knew all of you were coming,” Tara said at last. “He had a scrying pool—”

“How do you know that?”

“And how else, Daughter? I spied on him. He were no friend to the likes o’ us. We had little enough left, and he would have been stealin’ even that if we would ha’ let him.”



All that is discarded… “Go on,” Aislinn said softly. Compassion for her mother thrummed through her. “I won’t interrupt again.”

“He knew the four Celts. I heard him cursin’ them roundly from that obscenity of a bedroom of his. Particularly Fionn. For some reason, Slototh hated him with a fury. He set traps for the Celts—breathed their names into them, he did. T’others, he just let wander, confused. I’m thinkin’ he dinna believe humans would be canny enough to find their own way out.”