The Forest King

by Alex Faure

  As the procession drew nearer, Darius recognized Fionn. He didn’t know why he hadn’t know immediately that it was him—who else would be carried to the nochtefeast in state? Perhaps it was that Darius was still unused to thinking of Fionn as a king. The image of him running wild through the forest, or spreading wide his feathered wings in the moonlight, were too deeply burned into his memory. It was difficult to associate him with any form of human society.

  The starlight seemed to crown Fionn in splendor, to illuminate a part of him that Darius had only glimpsed. The revellers seemed to recognize it too. They parted to allow the procession to pass, their faces filled with awe. Darius found himself wondering why Fionn had even bothered with the circlet or the wolfskin cloak. No one who lay eyes upon him could doubt his kingly lineage. He was both beautiful and fearsome, with a weight to his presence that Darius had only seen in two men: Agricola and the Emperor Domitian.

  Fionn didn’t glance at him as he passed, nor at anyone else. His gaze was abstracted, as if he was alone in his chambers, lost in thought, rather than borne aloft beneath the stars before his entire tribe.

  They lowered Fionn to the ground in the banquet hall. He clapped the lead platform-bearer on the shoulder and, spying Bedwyr waiting within, wrapped an arm around him. They disappeared into the torchlight and merriment of the hall.

  Darius didn’t know whether a lanachai was expected to attend the king at such events, or whether his presence would be an imposition, so he remained on the lakeshore. With the spectacle of the procession past, the Celts with young children in tow were beginning to retire, and the gathering thinned slightly. Darius wondered how late a nochtefeast typically went. With a hard day’s riding behind him, not to mention all that had preceded it, he wouldn’t have minded retiring to his guarded roundhouse himself. But again, he didn’t know if doing so would be considered appropriate or give offense, so he stayed where he was.

  Darius sighed. He missed many things about Roman society, but he particularly missed knowing what the rules were. He was completely adrift in this strange world. Even if he wasn’t constrained physically, he was imprisoned by his own lack of understanding.

  Kealan, at his side, stumbled and caught himself. Darius stared at him, noting for the first time the greyish tinge of his skin, the dark shadows beneath his eyes. Kealan was exhausted. Darius felt a stab of guilt for not recognizing it sooner. Not only had Kealan lived through the same terrible events Darius had, but he had been translating for two or three hours now, which added mental to physical strain.

  “Kealan,” Darius said, “go to bed.”

  Kealan blinked at him. “What?”

  “You’re overtired,” Darius said. “Go. I can get by with thank you and a smile for the rest of the evening.”

  Kealan shook his head. “I’ve been commanded to serve you tonight.”

  “Sedd will understand,” Darius said. “Besides, I’ll still need a translator tomorrow, unless my Hibernian undergoes a miraculous improvement, and you’ll be no good to me exhausted. Go.”

  Kealan paused, irresolute. “All right,” he said. Then, grudgingly, “Irinorr.”

  Darius watched him go. Then he stood and wandered along the lakeshore. At the edge of the light cast by the torches of the banquet hall, he removed his boots and waded into the shallows. The chill was startling. He knelt and cupped the water in his hand, splashing some onto his face. His skin tingled as if electrified, but it chased away some of his fatigue.

  “Commander Darius Lucilius,” a musical voice murmured behind him. Darius turned, and found himself face to face with Brigit.

  Darius greeted her respectfully in Hibernian, and she smiled. She had shed her wolfskin cloak, though she was far from diminished by its absence—the slender lines of her body were framed against the torchlight, which lit golden embers in her hair. Darius found himself admiring her not as the sister of a king, but as he would any beautiful woman, and stopped himself.

  Brigit’s smile grew, as if she’d guessed his mind. Then she said, “I understand my brother has become fond of you.”

  Darius felt as if she’d struck him. For a moment, he simply stared at her. Between them was only the slow song played by the musicians and the distant clamour of voices.

  “You needn’t look so surprised,” she said. “You didn’t guess my brother had shared his gift with me? It comes in handy sometimes to be able to speak with the wild creatures of the forest. And my brother and I share many things.”

  Darius recovered from his initial shock. “Forgive me,” he said. “I suppose I should have guessed. Has he…shared this with anyone else?”

  “Are you jealous?” As he opened and closed his mouth, she added smoothly, “No, no, of course not. Bedwyr would wet himself. He knows what Fionn is, of course, but that’s as far as he wishes to venture into his world.”

  “His world.” Darius repeated. “Is not this his world?”

  She laughed. The sound was so lovely and pure that it wove seamlessly into the musicians’ song. “Darius,” she said. “You’ve seen him.”

  “Seeing isn’t everything.” There was something in her eyes that made him want to back up a step, but he held his ground. He found himself unsurprised that Fionn’s sister should be as formidable as him, in her own way. “We are not all what we appear to be.”

  “You speak the truth, Roman,” she said. Then, suddenly, she was pressing against him.

  Darius stumbled back into the shallows of the lake, the shock of cold nothing compared to the feeling of Brigit’s lips against his. She tasted like sugar and wine and smelled like the forest, like Fionn. Yet where with Fionn there was a wildness that imbued his every word and gesture, so that holding him was a little like holding a fallen star, Brigit was warm-blooded and earthly, soft and lithe as any woman. Darius’s body responded immediately, but the moment her mouth met his, he felt a chill, as if a ghost had brushed against him. He took hold of her shoulders and pushed her gently away.

  “I can’t,” he said. “I’m sorry, Brigit. You are as lovely as the dawn, but I can’t. I would tell you the reason, if I could. Please rest assured it isn’t due to a lack of admiration for you.”

  She stared at him, her eyes dark. Then she burst out laughing.

  “Oh, my,” she said, once she had calmed. “How kind of you to attend to my hurt feelings. Are all Romans so tender in rejecting lovers?”

  Darius realized abruptly that it had been a test—that this entire encounter had been a test, and that he had passed. He felt embarrassment, then anger. Fionn moved him about like a chess piece, and now his sister held him up for inspection like a bit of gemstone she’d found under her boot. These people were all maddening.

  “You’re a dangerous man,” Brigit said. The teasing note was gone from her voice, though a smile hovered around her eyes. “Too handsome for your own good. How many hearts have you left battered and bruised in your wake?”

  Darius’s pulse thundered. “I don’t see what concern that is of yours.”

  “Everything you do, Darius, is now my concern,” Brigit said. “My brother loves you. He is everything to me. I have no husband, no children, no parents. I will do anything for him. If you become his enemy, if you treat him as you have your other lovers, you will make an enemy of me as well. And you will find that, while Fionn may have greater skill when it comes to killing men, I am much more imaginative.”

  Darius felt as if he had walked into a wall. Brigit knew about him and Fionn. Fionn had told her, trusted her with his secret. Brigit smiled at the look on his face.

  “My brother and I keep nothing from each other,” she said, and there was a trace of sadness in her voice. Her hair was almost as pale as Fionn’s, bleached by the starlight. She seemed as remote as a star, and as forbidding.

  “And you…” Darius stopped. “You don’t despise his feelings?”

  She laughed at him again. “Darius, Darius. You think us all the same. Unfeeling barbarians hungry for the civilizing influence o
f your empire. I look forward to watching your eyes open.”

  She gave him one last, sweet smile, and left him there in the lake shallows.

  Chapter Nine

  After the nochtefeast, Darius was led outside by two servants. Still reeling from his encounter with Brigit, he expected to be escorted back to his roundhouse, and was surprised when they turned on the path that led up the mountainside.

  They passed several grand-looking roundhouses, broad with high roofs and sheds large enough to hold several dozen animals. Darius wondered where on earth they were going. Then they reached the palace, and the women ascended the short flight of stairs to the massive door.

  “What is this?” Darius said stupidly. He’d consumed little alcohol at the feast, but suddenly it felt like too much. Had Fionn commanded that Darius be brought before him? Why? Darius wondered with a stab of fear how much Fionn had drunk that night. Surely not enough to think it wise to escort Darius, an enemy soldier, to his bedroom late at night?

  One of the women opened the door and motioned him inside. Darius followed apprehensively. The door opened onto a grand room paved in white-washed stone, in contrast to the floors of earth or rushes in most Celtic houses. Lanterns hung from wooden pillars that marched along the centre of the room until they reached a dais at the far end, upon which there was a throne. Darius couldn’t make it out well, for only the lanterns closest to the door were lit. The ceiling was high and lost in shadow.

  The servants led him to the left, through a wide door. The throne room occupied an entire, massive roundhouse, but now they seemed to be in another that had been built up against the main one. This was furnished with a huge table and about twenty chairs. Several smaller tables lined the walls that seemed to hold cups and jars and flagons of what might have been wine. At the back of this room there was a door that led to another hallway. Darius could sense the mountainside pressed close to the wall on his right; on his left there was a large oak door that the servants passed by. A little beyond this, near the edge of what must have been the final roundhouse of the complex, was another, smaller door.

  The servant pushed this door open and gestured Darius inside. Then the women bowed to him and left, pulling the door closed behind them.

  The room was empty. It was small but comfortably furnished with a bed, a table and chair, and a wooden trunk. The room was tiled with the same tidy white stones, and there was an actual rug that covered half the floor made of woven sheepskin. An oil lantern burned on the table beside a spare candle and a bit of flint, and there was also a wash basin and a pitcher of water in one corner of the room. The bed looked exceptionally comfortable by Celtic standards, the mattress packed with feathers rather than straw. The room had a window that was presently shuttered, which in the daylight would likely provide an impressive view over the village and lake below.

  Darius sat heavily on the bed. He poured himself a cup of water from the pitcher that occupied another small table beside the bed, and sat without drinking it. He noticed that there was another door near the foot of the bed, which would open onto the room he had passed with the servants.

  The door off the hallway opened, and Fionn stepped in. He had shed his cloak of kingship, but he still wore the golden circlet nestled in his pale hair. The firelight danced across the lovely planes of his face and gleamed in his silver eyes.

  Darius didn’t prevaricate. “What is this?”

  “Your bedroom,” Fionn said. He lay the circlet on the table and came to sit beside him. “It adjoins mine, in case that wasn’t clear.”

  He began to put his arms around Darius’s neck. Darius pulled free and stood.

  “No. That’s not what I meant, and you know it. Gods, I’m just—” He rubbed his hands through his hair. “I’ve had enough of this, Fionn. I’ve had enough of not knowing what my purpose in all this is.”

  “You think I mean to use you for a purpose?” Fionn examined him. “Darius, I want you. I want you in my bed. I want you at my side. That’s why I went to the trouble of arranging all this—so that we could talk openly. Isn’t that what you wanted? You are always harping on my mysteriousness.”

  “Yes.” Darius felt weary all of a sudden. He was so tired—tired of trying to understand these bizarre people with their alien customs, tired of feeling at war with himself whenever he was around Fionn. “I just wish that I didn’t feel like a dog dragged hither and thither by its master.”

  “Let me help you with that.” Fionn leaned back against the wall, drawing one leg up. Darius sat, somewhat warily, on the chair across from him. “Let us speak freely, you and I. I think the time has come for it.”

  Darius gave him a sharp look of disbelief. Fionn said, “I mean what I say. You want to know why you’re now housed in the king’s palace rather than a storage shed?”

  “Kealan said I was the lanachai,” Darius said. “That’s why they honoured me. They all…they all looked at me as if…” He couldn’t finish. The memory of the nochtefeast was too strange. He wondered briefly if he should tell Fionn that his sister had attempted to seduce him.

  “Lanachai means ‘saviour,’” Fionn said. “It means ‘stranger,’ too. A long time ago, there was a king called Erechorr. He rode out to battle with his best warriors, but they were outnumbered, and their enemy was treacherous. The story usually says that their enemy was the Darini or the Robogdi, depending on the biases of the storyteller, or the sea-raiders from the lands beyond the north sea. It doesn’t matter. The king was forced to the ground during a battle with his enemy’s greatest warrior. He would have been killed if not for the appearance of the lanachai.”

  Darius frowned. “Who was this man?”

  “In some of the tellings, he was a fairy. In others, a tribeless wanderer. Either way, he was a man blessed by the gods. The king had never seen him before—they were strangers to each other. Yet he saved Erechorr’s life—he stepped in and slayed the enemy warrior just as his sword bent towards Erechorr’s neck.”

  Darius sat back. A story. A foolish folk tale. He was honoured by the Volundi for that? “I don’t understand.”

  “No? You saved my life. You are the lanachai. After Erechorr’s lanachai saved him, he was blessed as the lanachai was. He went on to achieve great victories, to expand our territory until it stretched nearly from sea to sea. He kept this man close to him as much as possible.” Fionn smiled, and gestured at the room. “As I am doing with you. The lanachai appeared once more—to a queen named Kellspaedd. She had similar successes, expanding our trade networks and making us wealthy. She built this palace.” Fionn waved his hand. “Do you understand?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Darius.” Fionn leaned forward. “The people believe you are the lanachai because they want to believe it. We haven’t been the strongest tribe in Araiah for generations. If the Robogdi decide to attack us in force, we will have difficulty defending ourselves. Our territory is larger than theirs, but this is part of the problem. It’s rugged. We’re too spread out. People are afraid; they were afraid long before the Romans came. They want to believe that your presence will bless us and keep us safe.”

  “Even though I’m Roman.”

  “It makes no difference. The fairies are not our friends, but people still accepted the first lanachai.”

  Darius watched him. Fionn’s face was open, unusually so. He felt true realization dawning upon him—he was in a Celtic palace, in Fionn’s palace, in a living arrangement that more closely resembled that of a husband and wife than anything else. “And you don’t think that anyone will be suspicious of your reasons for housing me next to your bedroom?”

  “You mean, will they guess we’re fucking?” Fionn’s smile was tinged with weariness. “It won’t enter their minds. Such a thing is not exactly commonplace among our people. It isn’t seen as separate from other forms of spirit possession, but of a kind with various unnatural acts, like blood-drinking and self-mutilation. Provided I refrain from carving my skin into interesting patterns or feas
ting upon my followers…”

  Darius was disgusted. That anyone could liken his feelings for Fionn, which were natural and wholesome, to such barbarity was difficult to accept. And yet, he told himself, he shouldn’t be surprised, given what he had seen in Britannia.

  “The room I’ve given you was designed for a royal servant,” Fionn went on. “My grandmother was ill during her last few months of life. She had this room connected to hers so that she could easily summon assistance during the night. My councillors are pleased I’ve put my lanachai here—the closer I am to you, the better.”

  “And do you…” Darius paused. “Do you think I’m some sort of holy saviour?”

  Fionn laughed. “Oh, yes. In fact, I find myself desiring your blessed presence this very moment.” He stretched his foot out and stroked Darius’s bare calf.

  Darius gave him a look. “You mean what you say, do you?”

  Fionn rolled his eyes. “Of course I don’t believe it. For one thing, you didn’t save me from anything—not that I don’t appreciate the effort,” he added. “You put yourself in grave danger—what you thought was grave danger—to protect me. I was—” He stopped abruptly, and stood. “Let me tell you,” he said. “Let me tell you everything. Sit back down, my love. You are not going to like this.”

  “Gods,” Darius muttered. He sat, wishing he’d drunk more at the feast.

  Fionn gazed at him thoughtfully for a moment. “Perhaps I should start at the beginning. It was always my plan to convince my people that you were my lanachai. I knew it was the only way for us to have this. I’ve…taken lovers before. But it has never been more than that. I’m tired—” Fionn drew in a sharp breath. “I’m tired of wanting what I can’t have.”