Aoife and Scathach, Shadow Twins Read online

  “By your costume, I thought you might be a myth singer.”

  “I am many things,” Moriath repeated, continuing to examine the paste. She rolled the thick salve between her fingers and then carefully applied it in slow circular motions to the dark bruise on Scathach’s shoulder. “This ointment is a little thick,” she murmured. “There should be more oil.”

  “I make it from a recipe my sister taught me when we were children,” Scathach answered.

  “Ah, you do have family, then.”

  “We have not spoken recently. We had an argument.”

  Moriath concentrated on easing the salve into Scathach’s bruise. “Hmm, it is fading beneath my fingers. You have excellent healing skin.” She paused, and then asked, “Was this argument a long time ago?”

  “Too long.”

  “And would you argue today over the same subject?”

  “We fought over a boy, and no, we would not!” Scathach grinned. “I have no idea why I am telling you this. It must be some of the moor pod in my system, making me talkative.”

  “Perhaps you are not telling me. Perhaps you are admitting it to yourself. Does your sister have a name?”

  “Aoife. Are you a witch, Moriath, as well as a healer? A Truthfinder, perhaps? I have heard they are common in the Eastern courts,” Scathach said quickly, desperately trying to change the subject. She was surprised she’d even mentioned Aoife’s name; she never spoke to anyone about her twin.

  “I am many things,” Moriath said again. She leaned forward to examine Scathach’s arm. “Remarkable. The bruise is almost entirely gone. This must be a miraculous salve. Though I do think you should add a little more oil to make it easier to spread.” She took the warrior’s hands in hers and turned them over to examine the scratches and scrapes. They were completely healed. “You are not humani,” she said softly, stepping back to look Scathach up and down.

  “I am not,” the Shadow admitted. She opened her mouth, revealing her pointed incisors. “I am vampyre. Not a blood drinker,” she added. Unable to read the other woman’s expression, she asked, “Is this going to be a problem?”

  “Not here,” Moriath said simply. She held out her hand and Scathach took it and rose slowly to her feet, swaying as the room shifted and spun around her. Moriath caught her wrist, holding her up with an iron grip, until everything settled. “You do not flinch from our appearance,” she remarked, “and yet I understand we are hideous to you.”

  “As I must be to you.”

  Moriath’s smile was savage. “You are not pretty,” she agreed. “Though the red hair is common among my people.”

  “I spent two seasons sailing with the Island Bolg. I never found them hideous. They loved my hair. They would cut locks of it to make into amulets. I had a Bolg…companion for a while,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “More than a companion, Rua was my friend. Bravest warrior I ever fought alongside.”

  “You speak of him in the past tense.”

  “Oh, he is still alive, I hope. He sailed into the Western Seas in search of the mythical homeland of the Fir clans.”

  “My people are kin to the Fir Bolg and the Fir Dearg,” Moriath said, turning away. “You did not accompany him?”

  “I wanted to…but I was in search of a different legend. We parted as friends and made a promise that we would look for one another when we had found our myth or given up on the attempt.” Scathach followed Moriath to the door.

  “You might want to close your eyes for a moment,” Moriath advised. “Your pupils are still dilated from the drug.”

  Scathach squeezed her eyes shut, but even through the lids, she felt the blast of light, red and pink, against her flesh. Her eyes watered, and tears ran down her cheeks. She brushed them away quickly. Even though she was not a blood drinker, the vampyre shed crimson tears, and they could be alarming for others to see.

  Standing in the doorway of the hut, Scathach opened her eyes and looked out across a neat village of twenty huts straddling either side of the fast-flowing stream the stream she had heard earlier. The village was enclosed behind a palisade of spiked furze. Children’s squeals made her turn toward the water. Four children were splashing on the bank. Two were almost pure Fir Bolg, with armored skin and snaking tails; another was hunched like one of the underground Dwarves; and the fourth had the flaming red hair, bright green eyes and copper-colored skin of the Dearg tribe. The red-haired boy spotted the two women and came running up, moving around to stand behind Moriath, clutching her gown, peering at Scathach.

  The warrior crouched and looked into the boy’s bright green eyes. They were almost the same color as hers. She smiled, keeping her mouth closed. “Hello. My name is Scathach.”

  “Mountain lady,” the boy said, pointing to her, and ran off.

  Scathach straightened. “A fine boy.”

  “My son,” Moriath said.

  Scathach was unable to keep the look of surprise off her face. Moriath was related to the Fir Bolg, and the red-haired boy’s father must be Fir Dearg. Scathach had never known the tribes to mix. The Fir Dearg had never forgiven the Bolg betrayal at the Second Battle of the Bridge, even though it had taken place a thousand years ago.

  “Look around.” Moriath walked away from the hut, forcing Scathach to follow her. “What do you see? You may be honest with me.”

  The warrior turned in a slow circle. “I see a dozen races, creatures who should not live easily together, were-boars and were-dogs, representatives of all the Fir clans, mixtures the like of which I’ve never seen before,” she answered honestly.

  “We are…” Moriath hesitated, ragged tusks biting her lip as she sought for the proper word. “Well, you might say that we are experiments.”

  Scathach felt a chill settle along the length of her spine. Such experiments had been outlawed since the time of the Beast Wars.

  “We are not freaks,” Moriath said. “Well, perhaps we are,” she added with a grin. “But think: in a generation, or two or three, if we can prove that the myriad native and magical races of the Tír fo Thuinn can mix and live together, then much of the cause for conflict will have been removed.”

  Scathach’s laugh was a harsh bark.

  Moriath rounded on her, then abruptly stepped back, gaze fixed over the woman’s left shoulder.

  Scathach turned smoothly, hand falling to the knife in her belt. A figure had appeared behind her. He was tall and thin, with a heavily muscled, deeply tanned human body, but with the head of a jackal. A mane of snow-white hair flowed down his back. He was wearing an alligator breastplate, studded alligator-skin trousers, and a battered kopesh. A sickle sword hung from his belt.

  “Anpu,” Scathach breathed. She had fought the jackal-headed warriors across a dozen Shadowrealms, and on more than one occasion, she had come close to losing her immortal life.

  “Our guest is a warrior,” the Anpu said quietly, his accent almost identical to Moriath’s. “She is experienced in the ways of death and men. She knows that outsiders will find it difficult to accept our way of life. They will use it as an excuse to kill us.”

  “In my experience, people need little excuse for killing,” Scathach said.

  “True. But here”—he spread his arms wide—“here we are trying to give them one less reason. Living in scattered clans makes us fearful. Here we can see that many races, clans, even individuals and their offspring can live in peace together.”

  “Attacking travelers is not very peaceful,” Scathach remarked.

  “Aaah yes. There is a reason, but that does not excuse the action. I apologize. I am Ophois.”

  Scathach brought both hands together, thumbs to lips, forefingers touching the center of her forehead.

  Ophois’s smile was brilliant, revealing a mouthful of savage fangs. “You know my race and customs.”

  “I spent four summers as bodyguard
to the Boy King.”

  Ophois’s smile hardened. He stepped closer to examine her scarred leather armor inset with metal rings and plates designed to turn a blade. Moving to one side, he looked at the triple-spiral tattoo high on the warrior’s right arm and nodded slightly. “I know of you: you are Scathach the Pitiless.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “Once.” The warrior answered, staring into the creature’s golden eyes. “No more. Now I am just Scathach, sometimes called the Shadow.”

  Ophois nodded almost imperceptibly. “We all change. And how fares the Boy King?”

  “He was assassinated three days after I left his employ.”

  “Aaah.” There was a world of pain in the single word. “He had such promise.”

  Scathach nodded sadly. “He did. But those who usurped his throne did not live long enough to enjoy it,” she said, and turned away. “What brings an Anpu warrior to this place?”

  “I am Anpu, but I am not a bloodthirsty warrior like the rest of my race—just as you are not a bloodthirsty vampire.”

  Scathach turned to look around. “Tell me what is happening here?” she asked.

  “As Moriath said. This is a place where all the races can live in harmony. It used to be that way, you know. Before Danu Talis fell, in the Time Before Time, the One World was a paradise.”

  “I’ve heard the story. But I am not sure I believe it.”

  “I do. And I have done my best over the centuries to make this place in the image of the world as it was in the olden days.”

  “How long have you had this village?”

  “This is one of a hundred similar villages scattered throughout the Northlands. We’ve existed in secret for five hundred years. Few know of our existence. A nearby humani settlement considers us forest myths, but there is a Fir Dearg mining village we sometimes trade with. They know about us, though they do not approve. They consider us abominations.”

  “A hundred villages!” Scathach exclaimed. “Five hundred years is a long time to keep a secret of that magnitude….”

  “A secret not for much longer.” He reached for Scathach’s arm, but his hand fell away when he saw the expression on her face. “My people are dying,” he said simply.

  Ophois led her to a hut set apart from the others. He stopped before a white line etched into the ground and pulled a cloth from a bucket of pale white liquid. Pressing the square of cloth to his face, he stepped across the line. Scathach hesitated a moment before lifting a second cloth from the bucket, covering her nose and mouth and following him.

  The Anpu stopped outside the hut and stooped to peer inside. Scathach looked over his shoulder. There were six bodies in the hut. At first she thought they were lifeless; then she realized that the blankets were moving slightly. She saw fingers twitching, veins throbbing. Ophois stepped inside and knelt by the first body, carefully lifting the blanket off a young man. The medicinal square pressed to Scathach’s lips suddenly tasted sour: the man’s stunted Dearg body was covered in weeping sores.

  “It started about ten days ago,” Ophois said quietly, gently wiping the sores with a cloth. The man moaned in his fevered sleep. “The elderly went first. From this village alone, we lost twenty-four in one day. Then we lost five children in two days. So far the total is thirty-eight, and though the rate of infection seems to have slowed, we still lose one or two a day.” He tilted his head to look up at the warrior. “The young men on the mountain weren’t trying to attack you, They were trying to scare you off. When they didn’t see you running away, they were afraid you would come to investigate. That’s why they used the pods on you.” The Anpu’s smile turned bitter. “Because, you see, now that you are here, it means that you too might be infected. And I’m afraid that that means you can never leave this place.”

  3

  Scathach had always believed she would die in battle. She had been little more than a girl—twelve, maybe thirteen summers—when she had had her palm read by a wild-haired crone on the eve of the battle that would be remembered by history as Bloody Lake. “I see you as an old woman, white-haired, withered, with a sword in your hand and a mound of dead at your feet.” There had been other rubbish about a husband and sons and daughters and riches aplenty, but Scathach had believed none of that; she had wanted to believe that she would die an old woman.

  Now she wasn’t so sure.

  She was more or less a prisoner in the village, free to wander it but not free to leave. Thirty-eight of the villagers were dead, six were dying, and another eight or ten were obviously ill. The healthy remained in the village not only to care for the sick, but also to prevent the disease from spreading. Scathach recognized the look in their eyes, one she had seen in so many faces: they felt trapped, besieged, doomed. The villagers were simply waiting for death, and from what she’d been told, the situation was repeated in the hidden villages along the length of the river.

  * * *

  —

  After parting from Ophois, Scathach walked along the riverbank with Moriath. The sun was low over the horizon, touching the distant mountains with purple, and the air was chill enough for the women’s breaths to smoke and plume about their heads. Frosts sparkled in the deepest shadows.

  “You are a healer; have you ever encountered a disease like this before?” Scathach asked the other woman.

  “Never.” Moriath shook her bald head. “The clan are remarkably healthy. Disease is relatively unknown here. We grow our own vegetables and drink only from the stream. If I knew the cause, I might be able to formulate a cure.” She lowered her voice and glanced over her shoulder. “Some of the people believe that we have been cursed, spell cast, by the Fir Dearg. The young men are recommending a sudden raid against the Dearg, taking hostages and forcing them to lift the spell.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “I know enough about Fir Dearg medicine and magic to know that this is not a Dearg curse.”

  “Do you know if the disease has struck the Dearg settlement?”

  “No, it has not, which is why my people think it comes from there.”

  “I’ve traveled the length and breadth of this land, and I’ve never seen anything like it,” Scathach admitted. “And I most definitely do not want to die from it,” she added.

  “It is unfortunate that you were on the road.”

  “I am older than I look,” Scathach said, “and I have come to believe that we are usually exactly where we need to be.”

  The two women continued along the stream, Scathach’s sharp eyes darting left and right, reading animal tracks as they approached and left the water’s edge.

  “What put you on the road?” Moriath asked.

  “Three days ago, a merchant paid me double my usual fee to bring a small package to a one-eyed Dwarf in a village to the north of here. Timing was tight, because the Dwarf uses a lunar-powered leygate to come through to this realm from another world, and would only be in Tír fo Thuinn for two days while the gate recharged. If he missed the two-day window, then it would be another month before he could head back to his own Shadowrealm, and that would make him angry. And apparently, this was not someone you wanted to anger. The day I’ve spent here is a day lost.”

  “You do not strike me as someone who would be fearful of a Dwarf’s anger,” Moriath said with a smile.

  “The only reason I took the commission was because the merchant paid me—in advance—with a fragment of a map. I’ve been promised another piece of the map when I deliver the package to the Dwarf.”

  “Nor do you strike me as someone who puts much credence in a treasure map,” Moriath said.

  “I don’t,” Scathach answered. “Every abandoned mine on every Shadowrealm I’ve visited supposedly contains hidden treasure, a monster, or a dragon, and sometimes all three. I’ve never come across any treasure. This is different, though. The map is reputed to show the location
of an ancient Archon library, a place piled high with crystals of all shapes and sizes, including some crystal skulls.”

  Moriath’s face twisted in disgust. “Foul things. I would not have taken you for a collector of such abominations.”

  “Oh, I don’t collect them,” Scathach added quickly. “I destroy them. Forty years ago—yes, I am older than I look—I came across the first rumors of a complete Archon library, a relic of the Time Before Time. The library was supposed to exist in a cave system in the heart of the Great Chasm in the far west.”

  “There was once a great city there,” Moriath said. “Destroyed when the sky rained fire. And then the very earth itself ripped apart into what became known as the Great Chasm.”

  Scathach nodded. “Well, over the centuries, ancient artifacts have been found in the warren of caves that riddle the sides of the chasm. And one of these caves was reputed to hold the Archon library. But it’s a vast cave system, which is why I need the map.”

  “Odd that your search for the crystal-filled Archon library should have led you here.”

  “Everything has a reason,” Scathach said quietly.

  “Even the bad things?”

  “Especially the bad things.”

  Scathach knelt by the water’s edge, brushing the long grass with her fingertips. She idly ran her fingers through the water, then rubbed her hand dry against her legs. “I would not go up against the Fir Dearg,” she said absently. “They are a formidable foe. And even if you were victorious, they have long memories. Sooner or later—probably later—they would take their revenge.” She straightened, and looked up and down the river. “The people who first fell ill, where did they live?”

  Moriath crouched beside the Shadow and drew a waving line in the mud. “This is the river.” She added pebbles to either side of the line. “And here are the villages….”

  “Where are we?” Scathach asked.

  Moriath dropped a sprig of wildflower onto the mud. “Just here….”

  4