Resistance: The Umbra Chronicles Book 3 Read online

  Resistance

  The Umbra Chronicles

  Book 3

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  A Note from Grace

  EXCERPT

  About the Author

  Other works by Grace Martin

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  I hurtled out of the Portal and stumbled down the steps. I was still holding Sparrow’s hand. I tried to let her go, but I wasn’t quick enough and she ended up sprawled on the stairs, Rhiannon pulled along behind her. They struggled to rise. Sparrow was bleeding, badly hurt, dying. There was nothing Rhiannon, nor I, could do for her. I’d dragged her into the Portal moments after Aoife had stabbed her.

  When I gained my feet again, I ran to the door. I shoved at it uselessly before I remembered the magic of these doors. I took a step back and held out my hand, palm open. The doors shifted smoothly outwards, gliding on rollers on a track in the floor. I’d thought that the doors opened for me because my magic was in my bones and my blood. Maldwyn, the man who had been both my Guardian and my abuser, the father of my son, had been unable to open the doors on his own. He’d been able to use magic, but he’d needed to use the power of a wand to do it. Even with a wand, he’d been unable to open the doors.

  Now, I wondered if it was because I was descended from Umbra, the famous hero who had set not only these doors in place, but the Portal they protected, which would send a person speeding through the river of Time.

  We’d fled Aoife, the White Queen and Thief of the Throne. I’d held on tightly to Sparrow, my cousin, who had been raised as my sister, whom I had believed to be my twin because we looked so alike. It turned out that all Umbra’s heirs looked alike, thanks to an ancient curse. I called her Sparrow. To everyone else, she was known as Elisabeth. At least, that was her name this year.

  Rhiannon was with us, too. My relationship with Rhiannon was… well, complicated. She was actually my sister, but we hadn’t met until recently. We weren’t enemies, but we weren’t exactly friends, either. I may not be the nice one, but I was trying to be better.

  The doors moved smoothly, but slowly. I stumbled through as soon as I could squeeze through sideways and cannoned right into a guard. I knocked him halfway across the hall. The Library was damaged, so we’d definitely arrived after the Fall of Cairnagorn. The Librarians didn’t live here anymore because the White Queen had started slaughtering every mage in Meistria straight after her ascension to the throne. There could only be one reason why guards were here.

  Dragon Guards.

  They were here for me.

  There was nothing I could do about it, anyway. I was done. I collapsed onto my hands and knees and when they lifted me to drag me away I didn’t even protest. All I did was lift my arm to point to the Portal Chamber where Sparrow lay bleeding.

  The guards grabbed me under my arms and hurried me back into the Chamber so they could apprehend all of us at once. They called for reinforcements when they saw there was three of us. Perhaps not monsters, they also called for stretchers.

  As I waited to be thrown into prison, I shook with exhaustion. I couldn’t even make it back to the stairs where Sparrow and Rhiannon waited. I tried to take a few rough steps towards them but I stumbled. I fell to my knees and stayed there, because while I could just about muster enough strength to go forward, I certainly didn’t have the strength to get back up. I leaned forward, resting my forehead against the cool, stone floor.

  And I must have passed out, because I woke up.

  ‘I knew you weren’t dead.’

  Really? I thought. From where I was standing – no, lying ‒ it was an each-way bet as to whether I was dead or not. I grunted, neither assent nor argument, which is unusual for me.

  ‘I knew you’d come back. You never could resist the limelight.’

  Well, whoever he was, however he thought he knew me, he had no idea about me at all. It was only Aoife who was obsessed with the idea of me stealing her sunshine.

  I fought to get my eyes open. It took a disproportionate amount of effort. Kiaran sat in a deep armchair across from where I lay on the floor. Actually, no, not Kiaran, I realised as my vision cleared. Kiaran, but not Kiaran. This was the Kiaran who’d been thrown a hundred years into the past. He’d become a Librarian, a Master on the Council of Cairnagorn, just as he’d always dreamed. He had power, prestige, luxury.

  The look in his eyes had made me nervous before, when I was alone with him under this very mountain. I hadn’t been able to identify the cause of my unease, but I could see it now.

  He looked hungry.

  I didn’t know what he hungered for, but it wasn’t going to be good. He didn’t desire me physically. He’d liked me at first, but that had quickly turned to hate when he realised that I was the orphan his adoptive father had been supervising all his life.

  Was his hunger for power? He’d always been ambitious. Kiaran had lusted after power even more than he’d lusted after sex, which was saying something.

  Was it hunger for… and my skin crawled to think of it… life? He was well over a hundred years old, as I recalled, but he looked like a man in his prime. Some magi could extend their lives by siphoning life from others, taking the life from the body and leaving the soul trapped inside some physical object like a crystal or a tree. There had even been rumours that a river rang with the songs of the dead, and each drop of water carried with it a soul sundered from their body.

  I looked Kiaran directly in the eye. ‘What do you want, Kiaran?’

  He smiled and leaned back in his chair. ‘I’m only concerned for your welfare. We were always friends, Emer.’

  ‘You pretended to be friends with me,’ I corrected. ‘Maybe for a moment it was real. What I know for sure is that when you learned that my mother was the Dark Queen Aine, you betrayed me in the worst way possible. You sent me back into captivity and called it protection. You let me go into the clutches of the man who abused me when I was a little girl and you let him threaten my four-year-old son to force me to go quietly.’

  There ‒ I saw that. He hadn’t known that Maldwyn abused me. I saw the shock, swiftly covered, in his face. And then, when I told him about David… it was clear he hadn’t known that at the age of nineteen I already had a four-year-old son.

  ‘You did that,’ I pressed. I thought I might reach him.

  I thought wrong. The disgust, the pity that crossed his face, passed from it and I was left with the ancient, hungry Librarian once more.

  ‘I was only trying to do what was best for you, Emer. I didn’t know, truly.’

  ‘I believe you didn’t know.’ I wasn’t going to accept that he wanted to do what was best for me, though. Kiaran was a complicated bundle of ambition, but he’d never suffered overmuch with altruism.

  ‘Where is your sister?’ he asked.r />
  ‘Shouldn’t I be asking that?’

  He raised his arms and I thought he was going to embrace me.

  I wasn’t ready for the blast of magic that pushed me back into the sofa cushions, pushed the sofa itself across the stone floor until it slammed into the wall built of the solid rock of the mountain. I gasped, the air driven from my lungs by the impact, then fell forward out of the sofa. I looked up. He was standing over me. ‘Kiaran?’

  He opened his hand again and another blast hit me. I was flattened against the stone as agony streaked through me.

  I probably should have asked gently, tried to diffuse his anger, but I didn’t. I wasn’t the nice one. As soon as the blast lessened enough for me to peel myself off the floor, I cried, ‘What did I ever do to you?’

  ‘What did you do?’ he spat, his face a mask of anger I’d never seen him wear before. ‘Not everything is about you, Emer! Now, where is your sister?’

  I put my head down, trying to ease the throbbing pain. ‘I don’t know. Your guards had her.’

  ‘Elisabeth?’ he sneered. ‘As if I would want a featherskin for anything. No. I mean your other sister. Umbra.’

  The door opened. A woman came through, middle-aged but still handsome, dressed all in white, her dark hair bound with silver. The White Queen. The Thief of the Throne. Aoife.

  She held my little silver wand. The violet crystal sparkled at the tip, but it only reflected the light in the room, it didn’t shine from within as it had when it held Umbra’s spirit.

  The wand had no extra power anymore. Umbra’s spirit had left the wand while we were in the Portal. I couldn’t tell them where she’d gone, no matter how much they hurt me. If they found out where Umbra went, they’d kill me.

  ‘Looks like you’ve found her,’ I murmured. Aoife slapped me across the face for my troubles.

  ‘This wand is dead and you know it!’ She threw it to the ground and crushed the little crystal under her heel. ‘Now, where is Umbra?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Aoife put her face very close to mine. ‘Tell me the truth now, Emer, or you’ll regret it.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said again.

  The next few hours were not pretty. I was hurt bad. Eventually, they left me, even taking the candles with them so I had to lay in the dark. The sound of my rasping breath seemed very loud in the dark.

  Other guards came, eventually, and took me away. They put me into a cell with Sparrow and Rhiannon. Light came through a tiny crack in the ceiling, illuminating their features as they knelt over me. Rhiannon’s face, branded with spiral sorrow signs and illustrated with blue ink, was a study in light and shade.

  Sparrow smoothed her hand over my brow, gently pushing the hair away from my face. ‘It’s okay, Emer,’ she said, her voice as gentle as her hand. ‘I’m here. You’ll get well, I promise. Rhiannon has no magic at the moment, because she spent it all healing me, but if moonlight comes through our little skylight, one of us will gain enough strength to heal you.’

  I shook my head and instantly regretted it. Pain ricocheted through my skull.

  Rhiannon reached for my hand. I thought the gesture a little odd, since if anything, I’d thought I was closer with Kiaran. Then she pressed deftly into a space between the bones of my hand and blessed relief from the headache swept through me. It was followed by darkness, but without the pain. I could bear the dark.

  My last glance before the dark overwhelmed me was Sparrow, smiling gratefully at Rhiannon.

  Sparrow and Rhiannon sat up all night, waiting for moonlight to slip through the tiny crack in the ceiling. Unfortunately, the Librarians knew their own mountain. The sky brightened; the stars dimmed; the moon sailed past unseen.

  In the morning, we were all still alive, although some of us wished we weren’t. The guards came back and left food, but when they went away, they took me with them.

  Aoife and Kiaran were waiting for me again. They didn’t look any more rested and refreshed than I felt. The thought was cold comfort.

  ‘Where is Umbra?’ Aoife asked.

  I closed my eyes. ‘I don’t know.’

  She crossed the room in a heartbeat and pulled my head up by my hair. ‘Tell me where she is!’ she gritted. ‘I will have her power! Even as we speak, my younger self marches on Umbra’s ancient fortress of Ce’deira to claim the power of the forestmaids and take Umbra’s throne before you do. The death of Master Darragh has left the fortress open to occupation by any brave enough to take it and my younger self shall be the one to breach the wards.’ Her voice grew sly. ‘You should know this, Emer. The young Queen has a prisoner who is valuable to you. Caradoc, the rebel.’

  My heart thumped heavily. Caradoc. Oh, God.

  ‘Tell me where Umbra is and I will consider sending her a message to free your beloved.’

  Umbra was in my own head. I loved Caradoc, but I loved my own head, too. I wouldn’t be any use to him dead. So, I replied, ‘I don’t know,’ but my voice was thin and pained.

  Aoife’s breathing was ragged as she spent some time making me regret every decision I’d ever made. Kiaran watched, but didn’t participate this time. When I was barely conscious, Aoife leaned down to where I was a bloody mess on the floor and gripped my hair again. She bent to whisper in my ear.

  ‘I lied about Caradoc. I killed him and I enjoyed it. I killed him because I knew it would make you suffer.’

  She let my hair go and my head thumped back onto the flagstones. As she walked away, she said, ‘You should know that I killed Mother, too. Stabbed her while you were prancing around pretending to save Rheged from Master Darragh. She was your sister, Lynnevet, I believe, thrown far into the past when you failed to save her. She’s dead now, too. If you won’t tell me where Umbra is, I’ll kill everyone you love.’

  I was taken back to the little cell. My sisters held me and wept over me, as though their tears were magical and had the power to heal.

  I wept, too. Caradoc: lost! I thought my heart would break. And even worse: Lynnevet was dead.

  I couldn’t bear it. If I hadn’t been cradled in Sparrow’s arms, I couldn’t have. Lynnevet had only been fourteen when she was thrown into the past. And Aoife was right. It was my fault that it happened. I’d thought I’d be able to save her. I’d thought wrong.

  Lynnevet had gone three hundred years into the past. She’d become the Empress of the Thousand Counties. In her bitterness against me, and her loneliness because we were separated, she’d turned to evil. She’d harvested life from others, so that even at the age of three hundred years, she barely looked middle-aged. I was responsible for her death. I was responsible for her fall into the darkness, too.

  And my Sparrow had the same potential inside her. It seemed impossible, since she was the nice one, as the Master and Sparrow herself had always told me, and as I knew from facing my own darkness. I wasn’t the nice one. If I died here, would Sparrow go dark, as she had when she was called Lynnevet?

  My mind spun in circles, dizzied by grief and pain. I finally slept, and woke, late in the night.

  The guards were shouting outside our cell. ‘The Hound of Cairastel is harrying us!’ one cried. ‘We don’t have the troops to fight them here. We must flee! Gather the prisoners!’

  Then the pounding of feet as the first guard ran to spread the news, the rattling of keys, and the cell door opened.

  Chapter Two

  We were hurried along, but I was too badly injured to be able to move much. The guard moving us gripped my arm. The feeling was subtle, but I could have sworn that her hand was warmer than normal, as though healing power flowed through it. My steps grew stronger, until I could at least support myself. She stopped healing me when I was able to walk, but still didn’t have enough power to be a threat.

  Clever, this guard.

  As we left Cairnagorn, the three of us bundled into a caged cart, I caught a glimpse of the attacking troops. The Hound of Cairastel is harrying us, the guard had said. I knew who that was, who i
t had to be.

  Their horses’ hooves pounded right behind us as we rounded the curve of the mountain. The guard whipped the horses pulling the cart to greater fury. I stretched my arm outside the cart and let the moonlight wash over it. My eyes I kept glued to the curve of the road, ready for the moment when he appeared.

  And then – Cuchulainn. The Hound of Cairastel, my Caradoc, grown to premature old age, his white hair shining in the moonlight. He’d come back through the Portal with us, and I’d lost hold of him when Aoife tried to follow me. But here he was, still leading the Camiri rebels, trying desperately to save my life

  Our eyes met. I pulled on the bars, as though I could pull myself right through them, and cried, ‘Cuchulainn!’

  A moment later, a green blur, colour washed out in the moonlight, swept between us. I screamed and pulled on the bars. I thought I heard laughter. I craned my head to look up. Kiaran was mounted on the green dragon’s back. He’d been a Dragon Rider in my time, and he was using his deadly skill to keep Cuchulainn at bay.

  Cuchulainn’s Camiri were skilled warriors, but they were no match for a dragon. They were forced back, and the cart rattled on in the moonlight. I stuck my arms and legs out of it, to get as much of its magical power as I could.

  They took us to a cleft in the rocky hillside, an open bowl of stone. There was a cage already in the middle of the cleft and tents set up on the clifftops around it. It looked like the camp had been set up for a while.

  It made sense. Of course, they weren’t all staying in the ruins of the Library. Aoife would have set up her troops here, in this secluded spot, with a cage ready to receive me. Kiaran and Aoife joined us as soon as we descended into the broad crevasse. Kiaran’s expression was exhilarated. ‘Let’s see how much you got from the moonlight,’ he crooned.

  They took my magic. It was a violation worse than the beatings. By the time they were done, I was empty again. The guard who’d healed me earlier drew back her arm.

  I cringed, but instead of casting a blow or casting a spell, she cast a cloak of feathers over me. The feathers prickled as they embedded themselves into my skin.