Day 13 of Midwinter, Sunrise

Caisleán Saighead, Gorias

Annwn

“Where am I?” I asked to a dark room.

“You are in the House of Elrond,” a husky, yet familiar voice replied. “And it is ten in the morning on July the thirteenth if you wanted to know.”

“What?” I asked, still groggy.

“You and me both are lucky to be here. If only a few more hours had passed, you would have been beyond the aid of Lord Elrond.”

I picked up my pillow and threw it at the large man sitting next to my bed. My fuzzy brain was slowly focusing on the room around me. I had gleaned, based on the decor, that I was in my old room in Castle Arrow. My whole body hurt.

I scowled at Morias. “Didn’t one of your poet friends say something about absinthe making the heart grow fonder?”

“That’s ‘absence,’ my dear Fíadan… Though I would imagine absinthe might also do the trick.” His eyes danced as he tried to hold in a chuckle.

“Sage,” I began, continuing to test the mobility of my stiff joints. “My fondness for you hasn’t quite reached “stupid literary quote” level. You haven’t been absent that long.”

“Aye, but you have.” Morias hefted his sizable body up to stand, then leaned in to gently raise my aching body into a seated position. “That particular quote is fairly accurate for the situation that we find ourselves in.”

A sharp pain rippled down the right side of my back. I grimaced and reached back with my left hand, groping for the injury I knew must be in my right wing. Morias rested his hand gently on my shoulder, pausing my search. I froze at the expression on his face.

“We did everything we could…” Morias trailed off, not meeting my eyes.

I twisted to look over my shoulder. The top half of my wing was…missing, severed, and bandaged at what should have been the midway point.

I growled under my breath. Why hadn’t Morias, or someone, anyone else, fixed it? I staggered to a standing position on my bed, glaring and daring him to continue.

He cleared his throat. “The vault and the medical stores were sacked when the Fomorians invaded. Most of the survivors have since been rounded up or killed, but it will take time to find and organize all of our supplies.”

“What about your magic rings? The Dagda…” I trailed off, dizzy at having exerted myself too quickly.

“When they found you, I was still in rough shape,” he said, sitting heavily in his chair. I looked more closely and realized he seemed thinner than usual. I could see a black eye and several cuts in and around his beard.

“The Queen’s Guard found you beneath a pile of dead Fomorians at the gate. They told me…they said had they not found you when they did, you would surely have drowned in the lake of Fomorian blood you lay in.”

I swayed again and eased myself back down to my bed. My mind swirled with all the things I didn’t know. “Swish and Stick?”

“They are here.” Morias pointed to the nightstand next to my bed. A knot of tension I hadn’t realized I felt eased when I saw the Silverwhite blades.

“Where is Bren? What happened to Nemain and The Dagda?”

“Slow down, Ellyllon. There is much to tell you. But you need your rest first.” The big man paused and chuckled to himself. “They counted twenty-one dead Fomorians around the gate that you cut yourself through.”

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I kicked feebly at the bed covers and scoffed. “Wasn’t quick enough, apparently…” In all of my years of service, I had never had my wings this badly damaged. Even so, past experience told me the wing would grow back, but it would take a farthing long time to do it. There would be no flight in my foreseeable future.

“So have you just been sitting here waiting for me to wake up?”

“No.” Morias stood and made his way over to a folded set of clothing and equipment. “I have only recently been released from medical care myself. You’ve had excellent care, I am told. It seems Erelith has barely left your side these last two days.”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“Erelith is the new lead Queen’s Guard here at Castle Arrow. It is an honor that she watched over you personally.” I rolled my eyes, remembering the Ellyllon we had met on the pier many days earlier.

The sage brought the clothes over to my now disheveled bed, setting them in front of me. I immediately recognized them as Bren’s…his léine, trews, cloak, meshmail, and dagger. A simple seashell and a tri-part ring sat atop the stack.

I felt myself flush with emotion, realizing what Morias must be trying to tell me. No, not Bren, I thought. My heart pounded and I heard a rushing in my ears.

“Wait, Fíadan! Please wait. Bren is alive and well.” I took a deep breath, my panic easing.

“But why do you have his stuff?” I staggered out of bed, reaching for my own nearby clothes. “I want to see him,” I demanded.

“Sit down, Fí.” Morias’ voice was sharp, and the rebuke surprised me enough that I complied without thinking.

I eyed him suspiciously. “You aren’t the boss of me, Sage.”

“Nor would I want to be… Now, listen. Please!”

I stayed seated but began pulling my clothes on as he talked. My head wasn’t quite as swirly-twirly as it was when I first woke up.

“While you were battling the Fomorians at the gate, Bren rescued me from Balor, but at a nearly fatal cost.”

“But he is alive?”

“Yes… He earned his domain just before he and Balor fell from the wall.”

My eyes must have registered my shock because Morias was quick to continue.

“We know that he earned his domain because…” he smothered a laugh before continuing. “Well, let’s just say that Nemain saw him up to his usual hijinks on the Old Orchard Trail north of the Heart-shaped Pool.”

I smiled at that. It was hard to tell what kind of trouble Bren was getting into out in the wide world. For all I knew, he could have been out wrestling with ogres! I was sad to have missed whatever it was.

“Nemain caught him wrestling with an ogre before getting arrested by Tadg’s men.”

A laugh burst out of me. “So Nemain and Bren made it. And you said the Queen’s Guard came to find me... which means The Dagda and the fiacha successfully rescued them. The fact that I was sleeping in my bed here in the castle also means that Aengus led the townspeople into the keep. So, what am I missing? Why is your face doing that thing it does when you are worried?”

“There are other…” Morias began, before stopping mid-sentence. “Wait. What face do you mean?”

“You wrinkle your face…like this.” I did my best impression of him, bringing my eyebrows as close together as I could and scrunching my face as if I’d eaten something sour.

Morias drew back. “Oh. Well…I didn’t realize my face looked quite like that.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I like not having to guess what mood you are in.”

“Anyway…” Morias said after a moment of awkward silence. “I was GOING to tell you that we have some other crucial business to attend to here in Gorias.”

“We?” I looked curiously at Morias. “Does the boss have something else for me to kill?”

Morias sighed. “Fíadan, when are you going to stop pretending that you are some simple tool to be wielded? We both know it isn’t true.”

He shook his head at my glare. “What we have done here in Gorias is just the beginning of something much, much larger.”

He opened the door to the hallway, before turning back to face me. “Erelith will be by shortly to give you a tour of the castle’s current setup. It has changed greatly since you were last here, and it is important for you to see the chess pieces in motion… and how fragile the board is presently.” He opened his mouth to say something else, then stopped. Thankfully, he knew how I felt about his long-winded speeches.

“And where are you going?” I asked.

“The Dagda gave me leave to explore the lab of the former Gorias Sage, Urias. It was ransacked by the Fomorians.”

I puzzled over this. The laboratory space had been abandoned since the Sages were killed, and Morias fled to Ériu. That was a long time ago, even by my standards.

Morias must have seen the look on my face. “I have… a theory about something Urias was working on when he was killed. I will join you in the council chamber when you have finished making the rounds with Erelith.”

With that, Morias left me alone to finish getting dressed. It was quiet and surreal being back in the room I had abandoned after Bres was deposed. It brought back feelings of a time that I wasn’t ready to face. It made me feel vulnerable, like prey.

I threw on my clothes and grabbed Swish and Stick, relishing the feel of the blades sliding into their sheathes. Just having the Silverwhite blades near me helped to shift the uncomfortable feeling. I wasn’t prey. No, I was the predator.

A knock sounded at my door. It was time to go. As I headed to where Erelith waited in the hallway, I eyed the seashell on my bed. Something from a past conversation between Bren and Ruadan came back to me, something I’d missed before.

Part of me knew the shell wasn’t just a token, but rather a tether between Fern and Bren, between Bren and me… and maybe, to something far more important than any of us.