AllFreeNovel
Share Us
A low thrum pulses through my body, waking the Veil Sprites. “Give me the chainmail.”
He grunts in the all too familiar sound I never wanted to be directed at me again and smacks the metal rings into my hand. His gruffness feels like a dismissal.
The chainmail is warm from being in his pocket. I close my fingers around it, climb over the ruins, and cross the short expanse to MacMurrough’s grave marker. No grass covers the large, flat gray surface. In the center, a rectangular stone sits on its end atop a granite slab. There are Celtic markings on the gravestone. As I stand on the edge of the grassy fringe, the rings grow hotter in my hand, but when I move next to the marker itself, they cool.
Sion parks himself on a broken headstone not far away, watching. Huge oak trees loom along the west side of the graveyard, hurrying the darkness that begins a Celtic day.
I close my eyes and wander over gray slate. The chainmail changes temperature like it’s playing a kid’s game of warmer or colder to find a hidden object. When I turn to the west, a faint blue line inside my closed eyelids etches the outline of a gravestone lying on its side. 20 April 1176 hovers above the image instead of being carved into the stone. The chainmail suddenly burns my hand, and I drop it into the grass with a cry.
Sion is by my side before the pain ebbs, eyes stretched wide. “What happened to you?”
I croak an answer. “He is here. Strongbow.” Sometimes rumors can trace their roots to truth. “His grave is a stone on its side. I—I could picture it. The top corners are chipped away, and moss covers most of the markings.”
Sion’s eyes flare even larger, and he crosses himself. “Faix! Faith, love, you’ve had a seeing.”
I walk toward a copse of trees in the far corner of the graveyard, calling to him over my shoulder. “I dropped the chainmail. Find it, then help me look for that stone.”
He drops onto the grass, skimming it with his hands. “Got it.”
Racing the dwindling light, I tear between graves, hunting for the one from my vision. Headstones rise from the grass, some straight others leaning, but none is a match for the one I seek.
I don’t check on Sion until I’ve reached the edge of the markers, hoping to find him waving arms in triumph. He stares back at me with the same hope. Over the dead, we both wither with defeat.
I turn away, unable to face the mirror image of my failure. The wind sings its shrill whistle through the trees. Branches sway and leaves flutter, adding a dusting of sound to the air. Below the closest oak, the wind’s symphony parts a wild tangle of grass, and I see it. The surface of a stone the size of a suitcase juts out of the greenery in a nondescript lump.
I run toward it, shouting Sion’s name. When I reach the grave, I drop to my knees in the soggy ground. My fingernails claw at the moss that obscures its carvings. They’re unreadable. I close my eyes and trace the grooves with my fingers. 20 April 1176 shines behind my eyelids.
A whistling through my head might be the wind or the whine of my thoughts. I rip up handfuls of grass and dig into the moist dirt, deeper and deeper until I catch the lowest edge of the buried stone. When I slide my hand underneath, a shock runs through me.
My sight blurs into an image of the soulfall tower. In the high window stands a familiar silhouette, one I believed to be the hunched figure of an old man, waiting for us to supplant his sin with virtue. Now I recognize the form as a young man swathed in robes similar to the ones worn by the effigy in the church. His garment is in tatters, waving and tangling around his body. The soulfall readies itself as the Celtic Day is set to arrive.
My hands burrow deeper into the soil, and the figure in my vision stands straighter. Knowing burns in my heart.
Strongbow sleeps beneath my fingertips.
As my touch grows closer, so does redemption for the squire who fractured his soul with the guilt and shame of betraying the man he pledged to serve.
I lie on my stomach, arm in the earth nearly to my shoulder.
Sion’s voice is frantic. “Eala, is it a seeing?” He tries to pull me away.
I resist. “Give me the chainmail.” My outstretched arm wears a sleeve of earth.
He presses the three rings into my palm, closes my fingers around them, and kisses my gritty knuckles.
I plunge the chainmail into the earth, sliding it deep beneath the stone. As soon as my fingers no longer touch the metal rings, silence snaps around me. I slump, resting my head on the gravestone.
Sion gently frees my arm from the grave. He gathers me to his chest, stroking my hair.
I’m completely at peace for a few brief moments until a need to be sure I’ve succeeded squeezes my chest. I barely breathe the words, “Soulfall tower. Can we travel from here?”
“From anywhere.” He scans the graveyard to see if anyone is watching, then cocoons himself around me. There’s a waver in the air and then the violent tug of the Veil. Traveling with my body encased by Sion’s is like rolling together down a grassy hill instead of being slivered and reassembled.
We arrive near the base of the tower. The river hisses and spits from the opposite side of the boulder we lean against. Saffron flickers of light from the tower window dance across stone. The uppermost curve of the full moon peers over clouds. Keening from the soulfall thickens the air around me. My lungs ache with the effort to breathe.
I force myself to look at the window, but the squire from my mindscape doesn’t stand on the ledge. The silhouette of a portly man dressed in a suit steps out into the night only to be destroyed by the river’s teeth. We’ve missed the beginning of the soulfall.
I burrow into Sion’s chest. “Can you tell? Did we free the squire?” The glow from the tower window slides through the mist, creating a pool of illumination around us on the riverbank. I leave muddy handprints along Sion’s sleeve.
