Page 44 of Shadow Master
An opposition force? “You want to stop them from attacking the mist?”
He frowned. “Of course we do. The fomorians are allies of the mortal realm.”
I was so confused.
He studied me for a long beat. “You didn’t know?”
This made no sense. “The fomorians have been trying to infiltrate the mist for decades. You attacked our world.”
He sat back and shook his head slowly. “I suppose it’s only natural for history to become twisted … rewritten. But the truth is much more complex than that.”
“Tell me.”
He opened his mouth to speak, but I cut him off with a raised hand.
“Wait, can you give my friend here the ability to understand you?”
Brown eyes studied Harmon. “I would think he already could.”
“Harmon? How much can you understand of what he’s been saying?”
Harmon blinked in surprise. “I … I understood it all.”
A while back, he’d been able to gauge intention only. “Maybe being here has unlocked something inside you?”
He nodded. “I do feel … different.”
Was he changing? Was he becoming more fomorian? Would I be able to take him back with me? I swallowed the panic. No point worrying about that now. Right now, we needed to understand the truth of what we were up against.
I looked to brown eyes. “My name is Indigo, this is Harmon, and this is Athos, and we’d like to know the original history of what happened.”
He smiled, kind crinkles bracketing his eyes. “My name is Balan, and I’m the leader of this regiment. I’ll be happy to educate you.” He raised a hand to one of his companions. “Can we have some tea for our guests, please?”
A slender young man came over with a couple of tin mugs. I took one, and he passed the other to Harmon.
“Herbal. It will rejuvenate you,” Balan explained.
We sipped, and he began to speak.
“A long time ago, the Tuatha and the fomorians lived in peace. We’d had our skirmishes over the centuries, but we’d come to an alliance. We lived in harmony, our worlds coexisting side by side. Then an enemy came to our shores, a breed called the fir bolg. They were huge, hulking creatures, ambitious and bloodthirsty conquerors of worlds.
“They set their sights on Fomoria. The Tuatha joined us, and together, we fought and slayed them. We won, and over the decades, the fir bolg that remained integrated into fomorian society. They bred with our women and men, and they became fomorian. But hunger for power doesn’t die so easily. A faction rose alongside a man named Laramir, who called himself pure fir bolg. He claimed not to have any fomorian genes.”
I sat up straighter. “Yes, the fir bolg who held us captive mentioned him.”
“He is their general. He built a movement, an army of fomorians who believed themselves to be special, to be a higher race. They set their sights on the mortal world that lay at the cusp of the fomorian and Tuatha realms.”
“The war with our world …”
“Not right away. We held them back at first. The fey were allied with us against the fir bolg’s descendants. The Tuatha enjoyed having the mortal realm to themselves; they thought themselves protectors of humanity, and their presence was an effective deterrent to the fir bolg fomorians. But then the fey presence started to wane due to problems in Faerie.”
Was that why the Tuatha sealed their world off from ours?
Balan continued. “We knew it was only a matter of time before Laramir breached our defenses and made his way into your world, and so, with the permission of the Nightwatch Council, we sowed our seed on the mortal side in a bid to strengthen your forces.”
“Wait! The Nightwatch knew?”
He nodded. “As far as our history states, the decision was made during an alliance meeting.”
