The Raven Queen

by Jules Watson

  Cúchulainn’s scowl softened and gave way to a sigh. He scrubbed his wet face on his shoulder.

  As they unpacked, the rain blew away. The dark was soon pushed back by glowing flames, a grove of oaks cocooning the two men. On the road, Ferdia did not have to share the Hound with the king, the Red Branch, the adoring crowds—or Emer, Cúchulainn’s wife.

  “Who did kill Aed’s nephew, then?” Head down, Cúchulainn unrolled his bed of furs. “They all say Connacht raiders, but Naisi was their main target.”

  “Raiders from Connacht would spear the nearest man,” Ferdia agreed, tugging a dry tunic over his head and ruffling his dark hair to dry it. Better they expunged this now, so neither betrayed themselves in other company.

  “Hmm.” Cúchulainn gulped from a flask of ale.

  He didn’t offer it to Ferdia, and Ferdia didn’t reach for it. Name someone the supreme warrior and every man with a sword wanted to take you down, so by habit Ferdia stayed clear-headed to cover Cú’s back.

  The Hound swallowed, watching steam rising from their wet mantles. “Do you think the king …?”

  “You saw his distress when he found out about the attack on Naisi.” The Red Branch must not falter. Ferdia had been repeating that to himself every day. Doubts must never come between Red Branch warriors, rumors must not spread. “Conor wouldn’t break the honor vows by killing his own fighters.”

  “But Conor is no warrior.” The Hound picked at the wax cap of the flask. “He never took our oaths. And … how can we forget the rest?” Cúchulainn jumped to pace around the fire. The flames turned his hair red and reflected in his eyes, so he looked like the hound after which he was named. “At her birth, yes, the druids spoke a prophecy over Deirdre that ‘Erin’s greatest beauty would bring Erin’s greatest woe.’ But it was not the ruin only of the Ulaid they foretold, Fer. It is the ruin of the Red Branch itself.”

  A night breeze scraped the branches against each other, and Ferdia brushed his neck with irritation. Uttering such words made of them a spell, summoning the mischievous sídhe who roamed the dark woods. “We fight that by keeping our sense, brother.”

  “Tell that to Conor, who can halt this unraveling with one deed—by letting the girl go.”

  “You tell him; you’re his bloody champion. And his kin.”

  Cúchulainn cast a withering glance at Ferdia. “I have. I may as well be talking to a rock.”

  Ferdia picked a stick from the pile, cracked it and threw it on the flames. “The fairest thing I can say about Conor is that he is clever. Clever men would not risk ruin by stooping to such a betrayal.”

  “Women make men lose their wits.”

  Cúchulainn would know; he had Emer. If the Champion of the Ulaid had a fabled sword-arm, in all good bard tales he had to have a fabled love as well. Ferdia looked down, his lip curling at the hollow drop in his breast. “Lugh’s balls, Cú. Conor would not know love if it threw him to the ground, sat on him, and beat him about the head!” He flung a shard of wood at his friend.

  It hit Cú’s back and the Hound grinned, planting himself on his bedroll. He dug out some dried deer meat. “We need to find those boys and hammer sense back into them and into the king. Make it all fit together again.”

  Ferdia watched the Hound’s battle-scarred fingers tearing the meat into shreds. Cú could forge anything he wanted with those hands.

  They could bind or destroy with equal fervor.

  Ruán wheeled through a great darkness. At its heart was a tiny flame, and his awareness was tied to it by a thread. He was exhausted by his endeavors to snap the thread so the flame could go out and he could be set free.

  The light guttered. It was nearly gone.

  He was nearly gone.

  At once he was surrounded by an urgent whirl of others, vast and leaping flares of light, radiating white fire in all directions. These flames twisted themselves into intricate patterns, unwinding and then coiling up again, their movements too fast to follow. Living stars.

  Their dance caught Ruán up and spun him away. And he forgot the little fire he had been trying to extinguish.

  Then he was sinking through the lake again, the water now a luminous green.

  A single star still hovered over him. It was formed of colored rays, as when sunlight shines through a crystal. Ruán stared into the water-star, and the star gazed back. For a moment it shimmered into an elongated face: ears, chin, eyes, head, and limbs formed of streaming fire.

  Then that fire moved closer and engulfed Ruán, as if he was falling into the sun.

  So the last of the darkness receded.

  Ruán solidified again to bones and flesh. Feather-light touches bathed his ruined eyes. Those fingers were insubstantial, somewhere between warmth and breath. A band settled over his brow and a familiar scent tugged at him. Crushed herbs.

  Waves of sound passed through him. Singing?

  A sweetness dribbled onto his tongue. Herbs, petals, honey … the essence of earth soaking into his body. Its vitality spread through his wasted flesh like water through tree-roots.

  Life coursed through him.

  Ruán gasped, and drew in a deep breath of his own will.

  Time passed, the days growing warmer. Ruán was comforted by the cool weight of the poultice over his eyes. The nectar changed to berries, pressed between his cracked lips, followed by offerings of bread crumbs and dabs of milk.

  And then came a day unlike any other.

  Light filtered into Ruán’s deadened mind. The poultice was gone. There were blurs of green and white that moved with the rustling above his head. He kept drifting through his haze, because he knew he must be dreaming. And in this dream, he seemed to have eyes again.

  The rippling shapes slowly resolved into pale blobs with dark spots. Faces. Eyes.

  People.

  Ruán’s druid mind stirred from slumber, for he was trained to seek meaning in dreams. The strangers were small and slight, and wore deerskins. Dark hair fell to their shoulders, framing narrow faces with eyes the brown of fallen leaves. Unintelligible sounds swirled about them, an echo of the music that had wound through his sleep for so long.

  The brine of the lake prickled his nostrils, and Ruán shuddered. He did not smell in dreams. He sent his awareness along his limbs. He distinctly felt the uneven clumps of bracken under his back and thighs, and the furs brushing his naked chest. He was awake.

  Awake.

  Ruán’s blood roared in his ears.

  And he could see.

  CHAPTER 3

  LEAF-FALL

  At Cruachan, Maeve stood beside her dead father, chin down. From the corners of her lowered eyes, Eochaid’s death-rites were a blur.

  Lamplight flickered on damp mud walls. The king’s bier was a scarlet pool of cloth in the dim hut, the ghostly figures of druids in pale robes chanting around it.

  Maeve’s gaze was on the floor-rushes, but her attention was elsewhere. On the other side of her father’s body was a hole in the world that swallowed all light. Beneath the singsong voices and hiss of water on flame, she suffered its throb.

  Innel.

  For this past year her father had indeed kept her safe from her brother. She had stayed by Eochaid’s bedside through the long dark, while Innel and his drunken men sprawled about the warriors’ hall. Conor of the Ulaid never demanded her back, but as news traveled slowly, it was only when the leaves budded that she discovered why.

  As soon as she left, Conor had turned his attentions to the maid, Deirdre, to whom he had been betrothed since she was a babe. The bards recited with relish that the girl had just reached breeding age and, hot for young blood, the old bull had been chasing after her instead all through the long dark. Maeve thought she understood. If this girl was the glory the druids had foretold, then Conor would want her at his side to shore up his power before he took any revenge.

  Amid the last storms of leaf-bud, Maeve had thanked the unknown Deirdre fervently for this respite.

  But her relief proved f
leeting.

  In sun-season, Maeve’s father took a turn for the worse. As the sun waxed, Eochaid waned, and his words returned to haunt Maeve. You have no allies. You are nothing.

  After all she had endured, Maeve would not bow down to that. Without any clear idea of what to do, she began to escape her father’s bedside. As the barley sprouted, she rode from dun to dun scattering seeds of her own. She had not lived at Cruachan much since she was twelve, but as the days grew longer she sought out the noble lords and their wives, the druids, the young warriors, and little by little began to win their favor. She must find a way to be safe, somehow.

  At last leaf-fall had wheeled about again.

  Beside her father’s dead body, in the cold of the funeral lodge, Maeve wondered if Innel knew what she’d been up to. Her eyes rose.

  Innel’s gaze bored into her, unblinking. He knew.

  The chief druid, Tiernan, leaned across the body, his sleeves falling back from bony wrists as he sprinkled sacred water over the king’s covered head. The gold beads in his gray hair flared in the lamplight, blotting out Innel’s scowl.

  The king had died close to Samhain, a dangerous time. At Samhain the veils drew aside and the dead and the sídhe flew back and forth from the Otherworld in chaos. If set adrift now, the king’s spirit might lose its way. The druids would therefore hold vigil over his body, their songs binding his spirit until he was laid to rest.

  People had already begun gathering for the Samhain fair. The warlords were riding from their forts across Connacht in milling streams of gold and furs, sharp eyes and the gleam of bared teeth. Maeve knew she had work to do with them—with the living.

  “We will leave him now,” Tiernan intoned.

  Released, Maeve spun on her heel. She wanted to feel, but her muscles were coiled so tight that nothing could move. The neck-torc of twisted gold pressed on her collarbones, and the armrings, chiming anklets, and girdle of bronze encased her in a hard shell. She was only hung with these garlands of metal because she was Eochaid’s daughter, and that was why Innel looked at her like he would kill her.

  They could be nothing but cold and heavy.

  Father.

  “Damn that gray!” a voice roared. “Move your rump!”

  The crowd bayed as the horses flew around the racetrack.

  “Not fast enough,” someone else crowed. “Who’ll bet this on Daíre’s bay instead?”

  The glittering nobles sprawled on piles of cushions in painted chariots, high above the rest of the spectators. The cold, fine day was nearing dusk, and the mead and ale had been flowing since high-sun.

  The thrill of Samhain and the uncertainty over the king’s death had heightened the atmosphere. It would not be seemly to mourn, for the king was setting forth on a glorious journey to the Blessed Isles, to rest among the gods before he was born again. Sadness—if anyone felt it—would only keep Eochaid’s spirit tied to Cruachan.

  And they don’t want that. Maeve glanced at the cattle-lords from beneath her lashes. For the real race was only just beginning—who would rule now? The lords decided, choosing a man from among the derbfine—the royal kin—just as they backed these horses.

  A strong, fine, young new king. Maeve bit her lip as her brother’s sneer filled her mind. Surely not.

  Among the nobles the betting was furious. The fading sun flashed on finger-rings and armbands as warlords and their women tossed jewels between the piles whenever horses pulled ahead. The noblemen squinted as the racers thundered past, shouting in glee or disappointment, reaching for earthen jugs of foaming ale.

  Maeve remained straight-backed, her hands in her lap. Her bets were not laid upon horses.

  On one side of her a lord in a mangy wolf-fur cursed as his horse faltered, shaking his mead-horn in frustration and spilling liquid all over his trews. Maeve was surprised he had anything to bet, for his barley crop had been hit by blight in sun-season. She had taken cartloads of grain and food to his people—in her father’s name, of course.

  The chief’s nose was webbed with spider-veins. “Lady Maeve!” He bellowed fumes over her. “Let me wager this ring for you—Ach! Blast my boy, he’s broken stride again!”

  Maeve’s smile was bright. “It is a shame he does not have his master’s grace.”

  The gaggle of nobles around her laughed, for the chief was squat with stumpy limbs, and the worst rider for leagues about. He grinned ruefully, patting his belly.

  The lord on Maeve’s other side plucked a pin of gold from his cloak. “Five-to-one Daíre’s stallion wins—and the prize to the Lady Maeve in my name!” His wife elbowed her husband, muttering to him. He tore out a matching pin from his other shoulder. “Double the stake!” he slurred. The nobles exclaimed, shouting out new bets.

  Maeve smiled at the chieftain, touching his arm. His fort had been struck by a terrible coughing sickness among the children. Maeve summoned healers and rode there herself in a bitter storm, working alongside the lord’s wife for three days to tend the sick. “You are making me dizzy,” she laughed. “I don’t have enough limbs for all these jewels.”

  “Then borrow mine,” someone crowed at the back. “Or just the one between my legs!”

  “You’ll have to pay me for that,” Maeve returned, cocking her chin. The men dissolved in a wave of mirth. Maeve held her smile, her jaw aching from many moons of such banter.

  “What about that black, Lady Maeve? I’ll triple my stake if you back him.”

  “The black is mine,” a smooth voice interrupted. A nobleman with slicked hair and oiled beard sauntered up, bowing to Maeve. His eyes swung toward her, brimming with heat. “I’d be honored to take you to see him once he’s won.” He smirked. “He loves a lady’s touch.”

  Did he actually waggle his brows? Maeve glanced over his shoulder with dismay. “He might rather need a kick in the rump,” she rejoined, “for he seems to be losing.”

  As the chieftain spun toward the horses, Maeve flipped her legs over the cart and leaped down. People were screaming and jumping about as the racers pounded down the last straight, and it was then Maeve made her escape.

  The crafters had set up carts to show their wares to the nobles: tooled leather and wood, woven baskets, jewelry and wool. Slipping around the bronze-smith’s stall, Maeve flopped against the yoke of his wagon, rolling her shoulders and letting her back slump.

  Two swordsmen were skulking nearby—hairy wolves that ran with Innel’s pack. One scowled at her. They’d been listening to her with the lords.

  Maeve’s hands tightened on her thighs, but all that came to hand was the flimsy green wool of her dress. The cold waft up her buttocks made her long for her trews, leather breastplate, and kilt. Her armor. She was supposed to look like a princess now, though.

  Well, at least appear marriageable once more …

  She caught a movement from the corner of her eye. The cart-box was draped with a tent of cowhides, and a small pair of eyes was shining at her from the shadows. At the other end, the smith’s wife, Eithne, had her jewelry spread on a little table to attract the noble ladies.

  Maeve held the child’s eye, pressing her finger to her lips, and crooking her leg over the cart-box, clambered inside, slipping away from her brother’s guards. “I am being chased by wolves, Líoch. Don’t let them get me.”

  The little girl grinned, sucking her fingers. She had been a babe on Eithne’s breast when Maeve left to marry Conor. It seemed hardly any longer since she herself had been the child, racing through wood and stream with Eithne and her siblings, piling at their mother’s hearth like one of her own cubs. Maeve was always happiest playing among the crafters, getting dirty and hot, or sneaking out to hunt with the king’s warriors, or following the herder-boys, swinging a switch and singing to the cattle as they did.

  The child stared at the gold torc at Maeve’s neck and put out a chubby hand to grasp it. Maeve hesitantly touched her soft hair. The crafters and farmers had never wanted anything of her but herself. She should have been born a
child like this.

  “Maeve!” Eithne was standing at the tent flap at the far end that faced the stall, her hands on her ample hips. Maeve scooted forward, waving Eithne to be quiet. A little peace, she needed, hidden from all those avid eyes.

  It was too late.

  “Lady Maeve …?” A richly dressed lord’s wife was browsing the jewelry. She stretched her neck to peer into the cart, a festive ruffle of feathers perched atop the gray coil of her braids.

  Maeve stared at Eithne in dismay. Lifting one shoulder, the smith’s wife returned a rueful smile.

  The noblewoman held up a string of amber beads. “Lady, you must try these on. Why, they match your hair!”

  Maeve sighed, and in a manner that was not at all ladylike, slid out of the cart. Brushing straw from her dress, she straightened her back and stepped around the stall.

  To make allies among the noblewomen, she had spun yards of lumpy thread, stabbed her fingers with embroidery needles, and hung cheeses in the dairy until her hands were milk-stung. She hoped it was worth it, for something.

  The older woman slung the beads about Maeve’s neck, fussing. Eithne held up a bronze mirror with a grin.

  Maeve arched a brow at her. “Hmm.” Instead of admiring the necklace, she fingered the frown between her brows. She needed to look better than that to keep the interest of men. This past year had hollowed her cheeks and pointed her narrow chin, and with her slanted blue eyes, she looked more than ever the vixen her father named her. Haunted.

  Her breath caught. “Thank you, lady, but I … have enough amber.” With a tight smile at Eithne, Maeve ducked out of the beads. The noblewoman was tutting behind her as she all but fled.

  The smell of grease pulled Maeve up, and a different pang came in her belly. She had let herself get light-headed with hunger, just when she needed her wits about her. She changed tack toward the cookfires.