Into the Fire (31 page)

“Kill her!”

Liam stood on top of the Mound of Hostages, a crude wooden sword pressed against Abhartach’s throat. Yew, she suspected. He had known that they were planning to free Abhartach and wouldn’t have come unprepared.

“Eden,” Cedar said calmly as the druids slowly began to surround her, their black cloaks rustling in the now silent air. “Get your father into the mound.” She hoped the strength her daughter had shown in lifting the stone would serve her well. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Finn raise himself to his knees and start moving, Eden half-dragging him toward the passage.

She turned in a circle on top of the Lia Fáil and stared down her opponents. She could still feel the fire burning inside her and knew what it meant. She took a deep breath, and then she slowly lifted her arms out from her sides, her fists still clenched. She felt the fire course through her veins and opened her hands.

White-hot flames erupted from her palms, shooting six feet into the air. She felt no heat, only the release of energy that had been restrained for far too long. The flames roared like blowtorches, and the druids who had been closing in on her took a step back. She pointed her palms toward the ground and created a ring of flames around her. The flames continued to burn in their protective circle even when she lowered her arms. Then she turned back to face Liam, who was still pressing the yew sword to Abhartach’s neck. She narrowed her eyes slightly and focused on the wooden handle of his weapon. It burst into flame, and Liam dropped it with a shout. Abhartach immediately swiveled around and advanced on his opponent.

Cedar turned away. Let Abhartach deal with Liam; she had a dozen other druids to fight. She felt the ground shake violently beneath her; they were trying to knock her off the stone, and she jumped down before she could fall. Still, her circle of flames held, and none of the druids could breach it. She remembered how quickly they had scattered when Finn unleashed his dragon fire at the castle. She tried to see the faces shadowed by their dark hoods. Who were these nameless enemies who had hunted her and tormented her child? Were they just pawns in Nuala’s game, embittered by centuries of servitude? They were shifting around nervously, staying clear of the flames, seemingly unsure how to proceed without the direction of their leader, who was still engaged in vicious combat with the dwarf. She opened her arms again, spreading them wide, and sent fire sweeping around the druids in a circle, drawing them into a tight huddle.

She started to shout for Eden, but then she stopped.
I should be able to do this
, she thought, wondering if she would need a door… or anything at all. She stared at the empty air behind the druids’ prison of white flames. They were screaming from the heat, though the flames had yet to touch them. Cedar concentrated with all of her might. Then suddenly she saw it happen, feeling a sudden rush of power. The air glimmered behind them like a spiderweb thick with dew. She opened the ring of fire so that the sidh she had created was their only exit, and then, moving her hands slowly together, she started to shrink the circle. One by one, the druids were forced through the sidh. When the last one disappeared through the shimmering air, she concentrated hard again, and the sidh closed. Cedar lowered her arms and let out a deep breath, and the fire extinguished in a puff of white smoke. Another wave of her arms, and the ring of fire around her also vanished.

In the sudden silence she heard a victorious growl. Abhartach was standing over Liam’s limp body on top of the mound. Then
she lowered her eyes to the mound’s entrance, where Finn, Eden, Jane, Felix, and Brighid were standing motionless, their faces perfect masks of relief and sheer incredulity.

“What?” she asked them, a small smile playing at the corner of her lips. “You didn’t think I could do it?”

She heard a loud guffaw from the top of the mound. Abhartach jogged down the side of the hill on his short legs and pounded Cedar on the back, a broad grin stretching across his face. He turned his head and yelled something to Felix and Brighid, who were the only ones who could understand him.

Felix closed his mouth, which had been hanging open. “He says that you were spectacular,” he translated in a hushed voice. “He’s right.”

And then Eden rushed toward her, and Cedar caught her up in a spin. “You’ve grown lighter!” Cedar cried.

“You’ve grown stronger,” came Finn’s voice from beside her. She set Eden down and took his face in her hands.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“I am. Brighid is a damn good healer. Way better than you,” he said with a wink to Felix.

“I have never claimed to be better than Brighid at anything,” Felix said, hugging Cedar.

Cedar looked at Brighid and Abhartach, who were standing slightly off to the side. “Thank you,” she said. “Your timing was perfect.” Brighid smiled graciously, but she didn’t quite look Cedar in the eye. “What convinced you to come?” Cedar asked. “I thought you didn’t want to get involved?”

Brighid tossed her sheet of her dark hair behind her shoulder and straightened her chin. “Well, it’s not like I hadn’t already done several things to help you, now, was it? The house seemed very empty after you all left. I wanted to make sure you could come back and visit. Which means I needed to make sure you stayed alive. And obviously, you needed me.”

Cedar laughed. Brighid’s self-centeredness never ceased to amaze her, but she was grateful that she had come, no matter what her reasons were. Abhartach looked up at Brighid and said something, waving his hands and gesturing in the air. “What’s he saying?” Cedar asked.

Brighid rolled her eyes. “He is insisting I tell you that he persuaded me to help you. He had a change of heart after he left you by the Giant’s Grave. He thought being a hero might help repair his damaged reputation, and he figured that I might like to join him. We knew each other many years ago, you see. And since I
am
the most magical being in the world, it was fairly easy for him to find me. Of course, once I realized how easy it was for him to breach my home’s regular defenses, I had to increase security, which is why you were unable to return.”

“Well, please tell him that I am very grateful for his assistance. And for yours,” Cedar said.

“So… can someone please explain to me what just happened?” Jane asked. “I knew the stone was supposed to roar, but what was with the crazy white fire? You’re like the freaking Human Torch. How did you do that?”

Cedar stared at the stone, which rested innocently in the grass. It seemed completely unremarkable, and yet she had experienced its overwhelming power for herself. “Remember how some of the legends we read claimed that the stone had the power to ‘rejuvenate the king’? And how the stone revealed Utain’s true self? I think that’s what happened. I think it restored me to how I was meant to be. Maybe it was the only thing that could break the spell that Kier and Maeve used to give me the gift of humanity.”

“I can hear you now,” Finn said. “Your Lýra. It’s beautiful.” Cedar paused, and realized that she could hear his too. A faint musical signature emanated from Eden, Finn, Felix, and Brighid. It sounded so natural that she wondered how she’d never heard it before.

“Well, I think it’s dreadful,” Jane said with a smile that belied her words. “Now I’m
really
the only human here.” She nudged Felix in the ribs with her elbow. “Can’t you bite me or something and turn me into a Tuatha Dé Danann?”

Cedar laughed. “I don’t think it works that way. But tell me, what happened to
you
guys? When we went into the passage everything was fine, and then we came out, and… it wasn’t.”

“That’s a mild understatement,” Finn muttered.

“It happened quickly,” Felix said, staring at the ground. “They were already here, waiting for us—we just couldn’t see them. Finn had already been weakened by the leannán sí, so he couldn’t fight back or transform. And they were targeting Jane, so I had to stay close to her.”

“They were targeting me for that very reason,” Jane said. “You’d have been able to defend yourself otherwise.”

“It wasn’t enough,” Felix said, his eyes haunted. “You could have died.” The way he looked at Jane made Cedar blush. She felt as though she were intruding on a very private exchange.

“Oh, stop with the dramatics,” Brighid said. “You saved her life. She couldn’t possibly have survived the force of the spells you absorbed. They nearly killed
you
. Apparently the druids have lost none of their power during their exile on Ériu.”

“Where did the druids go, Mummy?” Eden asked. “And how did you make a sidh without a door?”

“I… I don’t know how I did it, baby,” Cedar said. “I just knew that I could. Maybe it’s because I’m older. But I think your father is right, and that you don’t need the doors either. As for where the druids went… well, all I can say is that I hope it worked.”

“What worked?” Finn asked.

“I remembered something Liam told me the first day I met him, when I was trying to get into Maeve’s workshop. He said that even if I somehow got in, I’d never be able to get out. So… that’s where I sent them.”

Jane looked slightly sickened. “So they’re stuck in there… forever?”

“I don’t think so,” Cedar said. “I was able to make a sidh to get them in there, so I’m sure we’ll be able to get them out once we’ve decided what to do with them.”

Under the light of the moon Cedar could make out the body lying on top of the Mound of Hostages. She climbed up the hill and crouched down beside it. She knew she should be glad he was dead, but she felt her eyes prick with tears and an uncomfortable tightness in her throat. She felt Finn’s hand on her shoulder.

“It’s okay to be upset,” he said.

She shook her head. “It was all a lie,” she said. “I was so foolish.
You
didn’t trust him. I should have listened to you. He almost killed you.”

“He fooled all of us,” Finn said. “Don’t blame yourself. You’ve always wanted a father, and he pretended to be one.”

Cedar looked at Liam’s face, which was softer and kinder in death. Maybe he would have been different if Maeve had returned his love. Maybe he really would have been the gentle, wise man she’d thought him to be. She touched the bracelet on her wrist and wondered if it had really belonged to her adoptive mother, or if that, too, had been a lie. She took it off and was about to toss it onto the ground, but instead she tucked it into her pocket. Perhaps someday she would find the truth.

“What are we going to do with the body?” Jane asked. She had come up the hill and was standing beside them, while Felix had stayed below with Eden and was talking with Brighid and Abhartach.

“Well, we are standing on top of a tomb,” Finn pointed out. He lifted Liam’s body and carried it down the hill. “Cedar, do you think you could give us a little light? Without burning us to a crisp, that is?”

Cedar opened one of her hands, and a tower of white fire shot up from her palm. Her companions jumped back, and Cedar snapped her hand shut. “So cool,” Eden whispered, opening her own hand and scowling at it in disappointment.

“Sorry,” Cedar said. “Let me try again.” Slowly, she opened her fist again, and a small ball of white fire rose up from her palm. She walked into the passage ahead of Finn and led him all the way to the back. There he laid Liam’s body down. He called out to Felix, who translated his request to Abhartach, and then several melon-sized rocks floated through the entrance of the passage. Finn plucked them from the air and placed them over Liam’s body. “There,” he said when the body was completely covered. “A cairn inside one of the world’s oldest tombs. A better burial than he deserves.”

They walked out and Cedar propped the gate back up against the entrance. “I suppose this is where we say good-bye for now,” she said to Brighid and Abhartach. “We need to take the Lia Fáil back to Tír na nÓg.”

“You don’t seem to be in any hurry,” Brighid said with a sly smile. “You’re the queen now, Cedar. Time to start acting like it.”

Cedar laughed nervously. “I think you’d be better suited to be queen than I am, dear Brighid. But… we still have Nuala to deal with, so yes, I suppose I need to go and claim my throne.”

“That sounds so weird,” Jane said. “So listen… I know I’m not one of you guys, but… can I come? To Tír na nÓg? I have the rest of the week off from work anyway, since, you know, you made me miss my geek convention.”

“Of course!” Cedar said at once, before swiveling around to look at Finn and Felix. “I mean… she can, can’t she?”

“You make the decisions now,” Felix said with a grin. “But yes, it should be fine. We’ve had humans in Tír na nÓg before. Of course, it’s been a few centuries, but they all seemed to have a good time.”

“I’ll be able to come back to Earth, though, right?” Jane asked, eyeing him with suspicion. “I’m not going to age a hundred years while I’m there or anything? ’Cause I do have a life to come back to and all.”

Felix laughed. “You’ll only age a hundred years if you stay for a hundred years,” he said. “Brid, Abe, you coming too?”

“Tempting,” Brighid said. “But I think I’ll wait until you get things sorted out. Abhartach and I have a lot of catching up to do.”

“Don’t take too long to visit,” Cedar said. “Okay, let’s go. But first, I think the three of us should have a drink of this.” She rummaged in the backpack and pulled out the bottle Brighid had given her, filled with the potion that would protect them against Nuala’s power.

Brighid nodded in agreement. “A small sip should do it,” she said. “There may be others who will need it before this is finished.” Cedar tilted the bottle to her lips and felt the sweet, honey-like substance trickle down her throat, then passed the bottle to Felix, who took a sip and then passed it to Jane.

“Okay,” she said, slipping the vial into her pocket. “
Now
we’re ready.”

She picked up the Lia Fáil, which now seemed light in her arms. “Eden, do you want to try opening the sidh without a door? Let’s go right to the Council room in the Great Hall.”

Eden scrunched up her nose in concentration. She focused her eyes on the air in front of her, as though staring down some invisible person. And then it happened. The air in front of her started to shimmer and dance, and through the veil Cedar could see the Council members seated in their circle of white chairs.