Page 147 of The Shadow Path
“Who, me?” Carys walked forward, spotting Cadell in the distance. “I’m just hitching a ride with a dragon.”
A moment later, Cadell landed, dropping a narrow war coracle that rocked for a moment before the door flipped down and it braced.
Duncan popped out from the open door and held his hand out. “Get in here!”
Carys ran.
As soon as she was in the coracle, Duncan cranked the door closed and waved his arms over his head. “Go!” A moment after that, they were in the air again, Cadell plucking them from the ground and swooping up to the sky.
“I never thought I’d be so grateful to be back in the air.” Carys pulled out her bow as Cadell flew over the battle below. Maybe if they could take out some Fomorians, then the human battle could be prevented.
A grim dread settled in her belly, but the adrenaline coursing through her system quickly overrode everything other thought. She nocked an arrow and peered out of the arrowslit at the chaos in the middle of the plain.
“Fomorians,” Duncan said grimly. “I’ve only ever seen pictures, and they’re so much worse than I thought.”
“Your sword isn’t going to do much against them.”
“Lucky I brought this.” Duncan picked up a bow and quiver and walked to the arrowslit across from hers. “I’m not as good a shot as you, but I can try.”
When Carys imagined the mythical race of superhumans, she had always imagined giants, but what she saw when she peeked through the arrowslit was so much worse.
There was a massive creature with claws like a badger ripping through the white chalk soil and tearing open the plain, grabbing fae from the battlefield and tossing them into his cavernous maw.
There was a three-headed wolf as big as an elephant, its claws ripping up the ground as it plowed through Dru’s lines.
Dru was fighting back, his followers defending their leader as he planted his hands in the soil and pulled water from the ground beneath the surface.
As Fomorian giants ripped up the ground, the water came swiftly behind them, pulling the giants back under the earth and flooding the fissures they left behind.
“Is Dru bigger somehow?” Carys asked. “Is that just a trick of the light or?—”
“No,” Duncan said. “He’s almost as big as they are.”
The fae prince is the son of the sea god,Cadell said in her mind.If anyone can defeat these monsters, he has the power. He has only been reluctant to use it until now.
“Cadell says Dru can win.” Carys nocked an arrow and pointed it at a Fomorian monster with the head of a goat and the body of a giant.
As dragons circled overhead, Carys saw arrows raining down and knew that other nêr ddraig had the same idea she did. Theymight not be able to strafe the plain with fire without harming Dru’s people, but they could rain down arrows from the sky.
Cadell began to send positions to her as he flew over the battle.Position four, one sixty degrees.
Her first shot at a giant goat-man bounced off his curled horns, but her second hit him square in the eye. He reeled back, grasping for the arrow in his eye, and while he was distracted, one of the tree-fae rose up, shooting a branch from his arm through the belly of the Fomorian, then wrapping that same branch around the goat’s body and squeezing until the monster was pulled to bloody pieces.
Alafair picked up a massive leg and kicked the head of the goat-monster away from the battle.
“Cadell, go burn that head!” Carys shouted.
Yes, Nêrys.
“Why?” Duncan yelled.
“I don’t know for sure, but if he has elemental magic, he might be able to regenerate.”
But there was no regenerating from ash. The dragon bellowed a stream of fire at the rolling goat head, scarring the plain with blackened grass and turning the Fomorian’s remains to nothing more than a pile of ashes.
Carys heard Dru shouting.
“Turn back!” she said.
