The Immortal Realm (24 page)

“Then let us not keep Faerie waiting,” said Rathina, linking arms with Tania and with Connor. “Let us be gone.”

They walked together out of the drowned graveyard of ruined Caer Fior and began the long climb that would take them out of the sea and onto the dry land of the Earldom of Weir.

And then?

A ship—a ship to take them across the Western Ocean to journey's end.

The slender white-hulled sloop crested the waves, skimming like a flat stone, running fast before the strong east wind. The triangular sails belled, straining against the single mast; the fine rigging hummed.

Rathina was at the tiller, singing lustily, her hair whipping about her face, her cheeks red and her eyes bright.

Connor was sitting up against the mast, coiling rope and practicing knots.

Tania stood at the prow, their speed driving her hair like fire into her eyes, the spray spangling her face, the morning sun already hot on her back.

She stared out over the fretful sea, away and away to the clear blue horizon. She thought sadly of her Mortal mother and father, lost to her for all time behind impenetrable barriers. And she thought also of the King and Queen and her other sisters in Veraglad Palace, struggling against the dark tide of a disease that threatened utterly to overwhelm them.

I will save them! I will! Nothing is going to stop me! I won't rest until Nargostrond's plague is driven from Faerie forever!

At her back the dark coast of Weir was falling away. Ahead of her lay new lands where lay the answers to all riddles: a cure for the plague.

Over the shimmering horizon…

She recalled her mother's words, spoken to her long ago and far away. She had not realized at the time how those words would resound in her mind and in her heart.

Beyond the flaxen coasts and heathered glens of Alba, beyond the emerald hills of Erin of the enchanted waters, beyond even dragon-haunted Hy Brassail, far, far away to the land of Tirnanog, where the Divine Harper spins his songs at the absolute end of the world.

And now she was in a ship, racing headlong toward those half-remembered islands of Faerie lore. In her hands she held the fate of every soul who dwelled in the Immortal Realm.

She would not fail them!