34

Ancestry and Inferno

Candle moved closer to Jotham as she stared up the beach, squinting through the half-light, as the waves dashed themselves to pieces on the shore below. She managed to pick out three figures walking down the sands towards them. Where they Wights? They didn't move in that shambling, menacing way with which she was so familiar. She felt a familiar note of panic rise in her belly. Whatever they were, she was in trouble. Locryn was still asleep, and while she didn't fully understand Jotham's capabilities, she wasn't sure if he would help her either.

The figures came closer, moving with alarming speed across the beach. She could now see they were Lochlanach or had once been Lochlanach. They were dressed in feathers and silver but something about them looked ...wrong. They moved wrong, their limbs hung wrong, and now they were closer Candle could see one of them had his head on crooked.

"Skinwalkers," she breathed, feeling the hair on the back of her neck rise.

"What now?" said Jotham, dusting the sand off his haunches as he got up off the sand. Candle's heart sank as she felt her pockets, and her fingers closed on a lonely packet of salt. She had no iron, no blade with which to cut out their hearts. Unless Jotham had a blade, they were toast. "Do you have a dagger?" she asked, urgently, "or a sword? Something made of iron?"

"No, I don't carry iron," he said, "filthy stuff gives me a headache."

Candle could see the vivid blue of Skinwalkers' eyes now. She scrambled back inside the circle, realising with a sickening feeling that she was now trapped within it for the foreseeable future. The protective magic was weak but still functional, however, there would be no escape unless she could come up with a plan.

"Why do you want iron?" asked Jotham, who had not moved. He was leaning casually on the outside edge of the largest stone. She told him what she knew of Skinwalkers, keeping one eye on the dead men as they approached. They were unnervingly quick. Jotham listened, then flicked a shell off the ogham stone. He watched it plunk onto the sand below. "Sounds unnecessarily complicated," he said. "The purpose is to burn their hearts?" Candle nodded, her throat dry. The Walkers were now only a few feet away. She could smell them, the putrid scent of rotting flesh mixing with the salt breeze. Jotham's feet were still on the beach. She glared at him, her nails cutting into her palm. "Then I shall burn their hearts," he said, "since they seem to be causing you some distress."

He turned to face them and waved his hand in the air. She caught a flash of the symbol he traced before it vanished into the Night. Energy streamed into him, too quickly for her to gauge, flowing from the beach, from the waves, from the very air around them. His body glowed with it, every part of him incandescent. She fell back, afraid as he gestured again. The power he had held beneath his skin was released - exploding out of him in a violent burst. It consumed the three Skinwalkers in a column of flame, searing the flesh from their bones in moments and roaring high into the sky like a beacon of death.

Candle leaned back from the inferno in shock, watching the tower of flames burn through the night sky. Then she remembered herself and quickly muttered the prayer for the dead that Jory had taught her at Dawn Watch - a prayer to send the tortured spirits through the Highway of Souls and peacefully home to the Night. Briefly, she wondered if it was appropriate to send Lochlanach to the Night Nation but then decided that it didn't matter. The most important thing was that they went peacefully.

"I wonder what their rituals are," she said to Jotham when she was finished, "the barbarians, I mean."

"Well, they are not burning their dead," said Jotham, disapprovingly, "if they are roaming around like this. Someone needs to take care of it." He flicked a piece of ash off his shirt. He sounded like a fussy neighbour who didn't approve of the way someone kept their garden, Candle thought.

Out on the beach, the bodies had been turned into three piles of blackened ashes. The sand around them had been scorched an acrid black. Candle went to look at it cautiously, dropping out of the circle and onto the sand. She couldn't imagine anything would have survived the inferno of Jotham's flames, but she had to make sure.

They were. They were utterly destroyed.

"How do you do that?" she asked Jotham, waving her hand in the air in imitation of his inferno creating spell.

"I could teach you," he said, eyes sparkling, "but then you would be in my debt."

"I don't think you could," said Candle, "I can't do any magic." She pressed her lips together, annoyed that she could not say why. As always, the geis threatened to choke her if she tried to explain where exactly her magic was going and to whom. She looked up at her strange companion and wondered why he kept seeking her out. What was his interest in her? He seemed bored, mostly, but she was not that naive. He wanted something. Everyone always wanted something. To her abject embarrassment, she found Jotham, in turn, was surveying her intently. She found his gaze unsettling; with his head cocked and his golden eyes gleaming it felt as if he was looking into the very depths of her soul.

She wondered, suddenly, if she had been smart to admit to him quite how defenceless she was. Although she didn't think many humans would stand a chance against a beast who could produce an inferno of flame hot enough to disintegrate bones with a casual wave of their hand. Being able to light a candle would not help her. So what did it matter if he knew she couldn't work magic? She stared back at him defiantly.

"A child of your heritage should be bursting with magic," he said, after a long pause.

"My heritage?"

"You are the descendant of at least two mighty bloodlines," he said frowning. "You must be aware that one of your parents shares blood with these barbarians you call the Lochlanach."

Candle felt the world shift a little beneath her feet. She reached out a hand to steady herself on the rock. She had known it really, known it ever since she saw those blue-eyed men at Sterlester, those blue-eyed men without demons. Her mother... her mother who always glamoured her eyes. It explained why her mother's family from the "north" who did not care for her marriage to Lord Enys. It explained why no one knew her mother in Gelliwic. It all came together. Her mother's family were Lochlanach.

"I am a barbarian," she whispered, falling to her knees in the sand.

"Part barbarian," corrected Jotham with characteristic ease. He didn't seem to think it mattered much. He was looking up at the mountain towards Sterlester, towards the Old Man. Candle followed his gaze. At the top of the gorge, a small string of lights was bobbing downwards, in single file. "As fascinating as I am finding this chat," he said, "I believe it might be prudent for you and your friend to find somewhere less exposed to hide. Unless you wish to converse with your fellow countrymen?" He grinned, canines flashing white against the dark brown of his skin.

Candle swore and ran for the bothy. Of course, the barbarians would have seen the towering flames that Jotham had let loose on the beach. The plume of flame had been high enough to scorch the cloud tops. How long would it take them to make the descent? Half an hour? An hour?

"Consider the water," yelled Jotham after her. "A swim would do you good."

She cursed him under her breath and knelt next to Locryn's sleeping form, shaking his shoulder. Jotham sent a witch light in to illuminate the little room, it hovered over her head, and she batted it away in irritation. Outside on the beach, she heard the Revenant laugh, deep and low. Or was it the sea?

"Locryn," she said, shaking him. "Locryn are you alright? We need to leave. Can you get up?" He sat up, groggily.

"Where are we?" he asked, shaking his head. He rubbed his eyes and stared at Candle as if he couldn't remember who she was. "What's going on?" He looked down at his side in confusion and then pressed his fingers to his side in wonder. His eyes narrowed, and suddenly, he looked more like his usual self. "Candle? What happened? Did someone heal me? Did you heal me?"

"There's no time," said Candle, wondering how in the Night she was going to explain. Now wasn't the time; she had to get him moving. "Can you get up? The barbarians are coming. We're in the bothy under Sterlester, down by the beach at Holan Bay."

"I'm fine," said Locryn, getting up. He looked again in confusion at the blood on his clothing and his exposed skin where there was no evidence of a wound. Candle grabbed his hand impatiently and pulled him out to the beach, which, to her intense relief, was empty. The sand was dimly lit only by the rising moon. The fresh air seemed to revive Locryn further.

"Look," she hissed in Locryn's ear, pointing up the gorge where the string of descending lights was making its way relentlessly downward. "We need to get off the sand and hide in the fell. Let's go!"

They raced over the cool sands, Candle taking care to avoid the massive scorched circle Jotham had left in the sand.

By the time the torchbearers' feet touched the beach, Candle and Locryn had long since disappeared into the trees like a pair of ghosts.