“Are you thinking the same thing I am?” Niall asked Maeve.

  “Finn!” she said. “You and I take anything coming down the far staircase. Niall and Fergal will clear a path up this staircase.”

  Niall smiled and nodded in approval.

  The doorway between the front and back of the cellar was a courtesy; the dividing wall consisted more of beams and pillars than it was stone. Maeve knelt in a spot with a clear sightline to the front staircase, an arrow against her bow and two more in the free fingers of her right hand. Finn stood behind her, his eyes struggling to prevent the torch-lit walls of the back cellar room from washing out his vision of the front room.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  “One moment,” he said. He looked behind him at the arrangement of torches in the back room. There were two wall-mounted torches on either side of the rear stairwell. He eyed the distance and then looked back to the darkened front room.

  “Lía?rit teine!”

  The stone floor and wooden ceiling reflected the fireball’s light as it flew across the darkened room. The fiery projectile struck the left wall near the staircase, close enough to ignite a nearby torch. Finn hurled another fireball at the unlit torch on the other side of the stairs.

  “Ready,” he said.

  “Cheater,” she said.

  “Teach me how to see in the dark like you or shut your gob,” he said, unable to hide his smirk.

  “Sure look, the latter’s never going to happen,” she said.

  The legs of a bánánach appeared around the bend of the stairs. Maeve planted her first arrow in its upper right thigh. The creature shrieked as it fell down the stairs.

  “So we’ll have to see what we can do about the former,” she said.

  “Now you’re talking.”

  “They’re here!” Fergal said. He stepped in front of Niall and swung his axe in a wide arc. It sliced two bánánach and clanked against the staircase wall.

  “Let them reach the bottom stair, lad,” Niall said. “More room for us to work without losing the choke point.”

  Fergal backed down onto the stone floor.

  “Get on my left,” Niall said. “You’ll get better swings from your dominant side.

  The two wounded creatures hunched over but did not advance until several more undead came down from behind and pushed against them. "I might be mistaken, but there were not this many on the floor above when we stepped through it,” Niall said.

  Maeve put another arrow into the bánánach she had injured. It staggered from the impact but continued to advance. “I saw eight, maybe nine, when we were upstairs,” she said. She loosed another arrow. “Dammit. Finn, help me out with my arsenal, would ya?”

  Finn pulled his hands back and grabbed both the quiver on her waist and the case of extras on her back. “Cuma?tae díadae.” The arrows at her waist glowed blue, as did the inside of the case. She pulled another arrow from her waist and dropped the creature with the next shot.

  “You’re welcome,” Finn said as he lit another torch from afar.

  “It already had three in it,” she said. “Calm yourself.”

  Two more bánánach sped down the stairs. They both fell with just one arrow wound apiece.

  She shook her head but didn’t look back. “Thank you.”

  “Finn!” Fergal said. “Give us some of that magic you gave her.”

  Finn drew Fragarach from its scabbard and crossed it with Fergal’s poleaxe and Niall’s sword. The blue glow from Finn’s spell spread down his blade to where it met his comrades’ weapons. The magic bathed Fergal’s axe in faint blue light. It spread down Niall’s sword until the glow leaked from the opening in his right glove.

  “Fergal, handle the stairs for a moment,” Finn said. “Niall, take your glove off. Now.”

  Niall removed his right glove in time to catch the blue light fading from his silver hand.

  Niall twisted his hand. “Does this mean—”

  “—Only one way to find out for sure,” Finn said.

  Niall switched the sword to his other hand and reached for the closest creature descending the stairs and grabbed it by the throat. The bánánach hissed as smoke rose from the area touching Niall’s new hand. He picked up his foe and slammed it against the floor. He brought his hand back up and felled the undead with one punch to the head. Niall looked at Finn and nodded. “This will do fine.”

  “More are coming down the front stairs,” Maeve said over her shoulder. “Get yourselves moving and clear us a path upward.”

  Finn looked back to the front of the cellar. The remains of four creatures lay at the bottom of the stairs. Two had stepped over the pile and shambled towards Maeve. Five more approached the bottom of the staircase.

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  “Beir teine ar an éilned so!” Finn yelled.

  A pale yellow flame ignited on the remains of one bánánach. Within seconds it had spread to the other three fallen creatures. The undead on the stairs recoiled from the flames, offering Maeve enough time to drop the two nearing the doorway.

  “Follow Niall,” she told Finn. “I’ve got our rear.”

  Niall led Fergal near the first bend of the rear staircase. “Hook their legs with your axe and pull them past me,” he told Fergal. “Finn, you finish off the ones he can’t get to.”

  “I’m behind you two,” Finn said. “How is that going to work?”

  Niall slashed at a bánánach. While it shrank from his attack he grabbed a second and threw it behind him with a twist of his body. “Like that,” he said, turning back to pierce the torso of the first creature with his sword.

  Finn ended the minion before it could climb to its hands and knees. “Hai, I can do that.”

  Fergal brought his axe down upon his second fallen foe and scanned the stairs. “Watch yourself coming up, O’Connor,” he said. “We left you little room to place your feet.”

  “I should say so,” she said, “seein’ how you’re taking your precious time going up.”

  “Niall’s near the top,” Finn said, “so we’re just grand. Ready yourself to come up soon; I’ll use these beasts on the stairs as kindling to cover our backs.”

  Fergal cursed as his head cleared the floor of the main level. “Where did they all come from?”

  “Fortunately for us, they’re easy to topple,” Niall said. “Time for you to get in front and let that axe fly.”

  “Gladly,” Fergal said. Niall slid to the right and let Fergal advance past him. The innkeeper swung his poleaxe with wide, cleaving motions.

  “Finn, stop waiting for Maeve,” Niall said. “We’re going to need you after all.”

  Finn reached the top of the stairs at the moment he heard the first clang of metal on metal. Fergal stood over the remains of a half-dozen bánánach, his axe blade pressed against a shield held by a walking skeleton. The former guards’ room hosted over a dozen more of such creatures, which lined up behind the last few bánánach for a chance to fight the mortals in the room.

  “Where did those come from?” Finn asked.

  “Ah here, we tried asking them,” Niall said as he downed another bánánach, “but they got no tongues or lips with which to tell us.”

  The skeleton raised a sword. Fergal used the opening as a chance to shove the undead away with a foot to its ribcage.

  “Likely it’s on account of the weaponry,” Fergal said, “but these are a hair tougher to fight than the skinny little demons we’ve been fighting.”

  “Fine,” Finn said. “I have an idea, but first—” he turned his head to the staircase and yelled, “Maeve, need you out of the stairwell now, if you please.”

  She emerged from below, scowling at Finn. “Dya’think I was going to make camp down there?”

  “You were gone long enough,” Finn said as he approached the top of the stairs. “It had crossed my mind.”

  Her eyebrows raised and a smile of shock turned her mouth upward. “The mouth on you,” she said. “Light your bleedin’ fires.”

  “Yes, boss,” he said, moving his arms in a fishhook pattern. He set three separate fires of ancient magic until the stairwell itself was a light source. “That should give our flank a wee lock of cover.”

  Finn returned to the fight as Maeve’s first arrow struck the head of a skeleton charging at Fergal.

  “Since you've got that,” Finn said to Maeve, “I’m going to check this staircase behind us.”

  Maeve scoffed. “Since when did you like being on fire?”

  “Not that way,” Finn said. “No one’s coming down this staircase behind us. I’m going to find out why.”

  “Not by yourself, lad,” Niall said.

  “I’m not running up there screaming the MacLaughlin name and charging headlong into the hordes,” Finn said. “Just a glimpse. I would have already been back from it but for the time it took to answer your questions.”

  Maeve waved him away with the back of her hand and turned to face the gathering in front of them.

  “Grand,” Finn said. He shielded his eyes from the firelight leading downward and followed the rear staircase upward. His answers came as quickly as he could round the spiral: stone steps from the floors above had collapsed on stairs in front of him. He could hear movement and other noises through the second-floor doorway but he’d never reach it, nor could anything descend the stairs and reach the main level. He leaped over the bottom four steps as he rejoined his friends.

  “Great news,” he said. “No one’s coming down to surprise us from behind.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Fergal asked as he separated a skeleton’s shield arm from the rest of its body.

  “Because nothing can go up or down that stairway from the main level,” Finn said.

  “Including us,” Maeve said. “We have a few dozen moving barriers between ourselves and the stairs up front.”

  Only a handful of bánánach stood between the group and two dozen skeletal warriors. Finn saw the firelight from the staircase glinting in the swords and shields carried by the undead.

  What was the invocation Ciara used? Finn asked himself. He turned to Maeve. “I have an idea for our bony friends, but you’ll have to clear out these remaining demons.”

  Maeve eyes narrowed but never strayed from her target. “How is that different from what we’ve been doing?”

  Finn stammered and shifted backwards onto heels.

  “Lighten up, MacLaughlin,” she said. “We’ll do it your way. Be sure to tell us what it is, though.”

  Finn smiled and hurled a fireball at an unengaged bánánach emerging from their right side. He paused after the creature fell and caught a glimpse inside the wing opposite the armory. Streaks of dust and the speckled footprints of bony feet led from inside the room to the doorway. Shadow-covered stacks of rounded and elongated shapes lined the far walls.

  The sound of Maeve’s arrow piercing the chest of the final demon shook him from his study. Finn stepped up to Fergal and rested a hand on his shoulder to delay any further attacks.

  “When I say ‘swing,’ you step up and give your widest and fastest swing,” Finn said. “Please don’t stomp me as you do it.”

  Fergal knitted his brow. “Those two sentences don’t fit together.”

  “They will in a moment,” Finn said. He stepped in front of Fergal and started the fishhook motion with his arms. I hope I heard Ciara right.

  “Gealáin sínid!” he yelled. Lightning arced between his fingers, causing the muscles in his hand to spasm. In less than a second they connected in front of his palm and formed a blue light which immediately burst forward at the skeleton in front of him. The light traveled from the metal center of its buckler through its body until it reached the sword in its other hand. The lightning fanned out in a wave away from the group, stunning most of the creatures in front of them.

  The jagged dance of blue light hypnotized Finn for an extra moment. Move your arse. “Now, Fergal!” he said. Finn hopped an inch off the ground, enough to kick his legs backward. His chest hit the floor. His stomach landed on the legs of a fallen bánánach.

  Fergal’s left foot brushed Finn’s cloak as the innkeeper stepped over him and into his swing. Finn covered his head out of reflex. He faced the armory, now barren of shield and sword.

  “And that’s more bad news,” he said as he pushed himself to his hands and knees behind Fergal.

  “What now?” Niall asked.

  Finn looked once more to the other wing of the castle. “The big fella surely knows we’re here.”