by Jules Watson
The stream of Source they summoned spread, gilding the ferns, the dormant leaves and trailing stalks. It seeped into the ground, curling around the grains of soil and seeds, making them glow. It rushed up the trees and down to their roots, washed over the forest beyond.
Ruán saw it all.
The maiden breathed in his ear. Life comes from Source. We bear it from the worlds of spirit to this world of yours … strengthening, summoning, and warding it. For you humans possess will and choice, but the wild things have no guardians but us!
All the sidhe leaped up, and their dance became frenzied. Faster they spun, and to Ruán’s dazed eyes they were each growing smaller as the trees and rocks loomed larger. Finally the sídhe were just tiny sparks, reams of them. They shot off in different directions, plunging into the stream, the trees, and the earth.
Now you will be sídhe, the maiden cried, and yanking Ruán’s arm, drew him with her, the air rushing past.
The tree in front of them grew enormous, for Ruán and the sídhe appeared to be shrinking as they flew closer. And then what Ruán thought was solid trunk and bark disintegrated into a cloud of sparkling dust.
He plunged in. Nothing was solid.
Streams of tiny motes made up the substance of the tree. The rafts of sparks were denser where they formed wood, and raced more swiftly where water ran through the tree-veins. Now Ruán was no more than a minute star diving through these clouds of tree-sparks, and also a swirl of other stars—the sídhe.
Their singing grew louder, the harmonies ringing out.
Their song shimmered through the motes of tree-bark, wood, and sap, making each spark dance faster, glowing more brightly. So the sídhe drew more Source from the veils of spirit to fill the tree.
Bridge between Worlds.
The next thing he knew, Ruán was flung out. He came back to himself sprawling on the wet grass, in his own body. He rolled on his side and pushed up on his arms, gulping air. “Everything is … made of … sparks!”
The maiden leaned her palms on his ribs, her hair a black tangle. All the sparks of Source stream together. There are no boundaries. There are no veils, no death, no end. There is no before, or to come, no here and there, for all moments and places are but threads woven through each other.
Ruán struggled to absorb that. The maiden appeared on the shore of his world, but with a wave of her hand he was on the same shore in her world. They made his past with Orla flower around him. The worlds lay close. Moments lay close, wound together.
She jumped up, cocking her head. And if you can shape the sparks of Source, Ruán of the lake, what might you do?
He sat up, swaying. “What …” he panted, “do you do?”
The maiden pulled him to his feet, swinging him around. I make eyes for you to see, she cried, tickling her fingers across his eyelids. She cupped her face, sticking out her tongue. And a girl-shape, so a sick man is not scared all the way to death.
The night in the standing stones filled him. “You burn away what rots a man.”
Not unless the man lets it free. She thumped his belly. So now, do it again. And she grabbed his hand and began to run across the frosted grass. The air roared past and he could hardly feel his feet. At the lip of the ridge she did not slow, flinging him by the wrist out into night.
Ruán plunged through blackness, flailing. The world reeled. He was nothing, no one—only a spirit soaring through a void.
At last he landed with a crash in peaty water, sodden marsh beneath.
Sounds rushed over him. Another life, as another man.
Shouts and screams rolled over him. He heard the clang of iron. Water splashed his face as feet thudded past his head. Memory returned.
Fool! He tripped—him, the champion of his people! He heard a swish as his opponent lunged in, and with a roar he forced himself up and skewered the man on his sword. He stared at his quivering arm, ridged with tendons. Blood spattered his wrist. He looked into his enemy’s fading eyes. “Honor me to Her,” he muttered. The other warrior fell into the reddened stream, and the victor thrust his blade into the sun. “Great Mother of All!” he screamed, and leaped toward the rest of the enemy, clustered beneath a torn, stained banner that cracked in the wind.
A savage face swam before him and he hammered his hilt in and crunched bone. As his sword-brothers fought on either side, he threw back his head with a howl of life, of freedom. There was nothing in that moment but the marsh-water on his lips, the sting of sweat and fire of sunlight on iron and bronze. The battle-rage flowed up his body and out his blade, burning him with ecstasy.
For the Goddess.
She cushioned his feet, watered his tongue, filled his belly. He would not let Her be overrun by these cowardly bastards from Alba. His glee tipped over into madness as he swung his sword. He was filled with the hunger to tear the world apart just to know his own strength; shatter himself into pieces so he could be wind and water, sun and blood, mud and rock …
A blow caught his side. He stumbled and fell.
It seemed distant, that pain. Dazed, he turned his head so the peaty water could flow into his mouth and bring him the taste of mud and salt, crushing shreds of grass to his nose with a bloody hand.
He sank in the mire, and it cradled him.
Ruán surfaced with a gasp.
The sídhe sat in a circle, beating little skin drums. Stars spun above. The fire was moving up his body as it did before, from belly, to heart, to throat.
The maiden’s cool hand was upon his brow. You are not here to fight anymore, so let the swordsman go. But remember how life was sweet to him and cherish his joy in his body. Find the wild in you!
Only then did Ruán realize the heat was shame, for abandoning himself to desire with Maeve. It was an old folly. On the island, he had also cut himself off from that flood of earth-sense, to seek the gods. And that is what made him fail, and that is why the boy died …
The fire kept roaring, rising up through Ruán. At last he shouted a battle-cry of release, the shame burning away.
As the flame burst from his crown, Ruán saw Maeve as if with his own eyes.
A mane of red hair framed a face that was not hard, but lit with yearning, her eyes seeking for something she longed for … beyond it all. He saw she stood in a battle line, bracing a shield before her. But just as the sídhe said, her body was swaying with the beat of a wild and lonely heart, her soul lost to feeling.
Not a maid of iron after all.
So the priest is gone, the warrior is gone, the maiden whispered. Perhaps now you can find another way to be a man.
Ruán’s lips were numb, body spent. “Tell me.”
She laughed, throwing a piece of wood on what he realized was his own fire. You have to be it, not hear it! She poked a finger between his eyes, and the lights went out.
Ruán woke to a blind world in the morning.
But the wood was fragrant as he fed the fire, and he drank in the loamy scents of the swamp and realized that the quiet of the lake had crept into his heart again. He traced the scar on his chest, baffled at what was dream and what was real. If he was nothing that he had been before, what was he now?
There was no answer from the lake but the chuckle of the birds as they woke.
CHAPTER 11
The darkness in the abandoned hay-store was thick with the must of straw and the rustle of field mice. Maeve crouched in the loft, not for the first time questioning her sanity. Crossing Erin in the depths of the cold, deep into enemy territory … many would think it mad.
Coward, she said to herself, huddling into her cloak. Laigin and Connacht were not true enemies, though their fragile peace was rooted only in fear. Both bordered the Ulaid, and if they weakened each other, Conor could march through and take all of Erin, just as he craved.
The air nipped Maeve’s nose, and she cupped her hands over it. Her father had severed her marriage to Ros Ruadh, Laigin’s king, so many years ago that she prayed with everything in her that he was not still bitt
er. When she was sixteen he threw her out, enraged at her father’s actions—and here she was, thirteen years later, creeping back into his fort near Dun Ailinne.
Another shiver overcame her, rising from those mists of memory. She would not give in to them.
For it was not Ros Ruadh she had come to see.
Maeve had left Garvan and her guards at the Laigin border. There were some advantages to being an unarmed woman, it seemed. No one challenged a lady, hooded for the cold, traveling alone with a female druid. A flirtatious smile, some banter, and the bored guards at the ramparts around Ros Ruadh’s stronghold—too young to know who she was—let her send Erna inside with a message. Soon after, they let Maeve in herself.
Up in the hayloft, she uncurled her frozen hand and spanned a hole hewn in the wall. Her fingers broke the moonlight into rays. Her pulse skipped. She remembered this. She jumped at the scrape of the door, and smoothing all fear from her face, she turned.
The loft creaked as a man swung up. “By the gods, Maeve. Is this a new game of yours?”
Maeve took a breath. “Ailill.”
One of Ros Ruadh’s sons, a prince of Laigin. She had last seen him when they were both sixteen. Maeve scrutinized Ailill in the ray of moonlight. He’d developed a brawny build, with bull shoulders. His hair was still a lush brown mane, the lime he stiffened it with speckling the ends.
Ailill peered at her. “Why did you not announce yourself to my father? Where are your guards?”
She painted an inviting smile on her lips. “You are the only one I came to see, Ailill, and it had to be in secret.” She brushed her loose hair over her shoulder. “Don’t be afraid.”
Ailill stiffened. She’d always said just that when urging their horses over precarious jumps, or sneaking with him over the ramparts at night. Nevertheless, he crouched beside her.
Maeve raised her chin, baring the length of her neck to the light. “Do you remember when you did this?”
Ailill shuffled over and prodded the cleft in the wood with thick fingers. “Gods, I forgot this …” He chuckled. “I can still feel the mark of my axe! No wonder it’s always so damn wet in here. We gave it up for grain years ago.”
Maeve glanced at him sidelong. His forearm looked like a bundle of ropes, and his thighs strained against his trews. His belly pouched over his belt, though, and his cheeks were heavy, with mottling around the nose. Apart from the torc of twisted gold, he wore no other adornments. He still reveled in base pleasures, then—fighting, food, and ale. Her desperate gamble was strengthening.
She let down her guard, her smile wry. “We lay in this moonlight once, drinking it in. Things were simple then.”
Ailill studied her. “The years have treated you well, firebrand, but you’ve never been simple. You are tangled as a thorn-brake.” He cocked a brow. “You have been Mumu princess and Ulaid queen since last you were here. So who are you now?”
“That you may be interested in.” She patted the hay.
Hesitating, Ailill dug a knuckle in his ear and skewed it around. At last he folded up and sat down. “I’m too old for this,” he grumbled.
Maeve placed a hand on his forearm. “You have aged well. I see you still fight.”
“My appetites are great for all things, as I’m sure you remember.” His lazy eyes glinted. “Except flattery. Spit it out.”
Maeve summoned her childhood smile, full of secrets. “I have seen more of Erin now, and I found myself thinking of you. I mean, with your father living to such an age it must be frustrating to wait, unable to indulge your desires—to live freely—wondering when you get your chance to be king.”
A frown had lowered over his brow. “I do what I want, mostly.”
“Except you are subject to your father’s will.” She traced the coarse hairs over his battle-swollen hand. “You love women and food, and Laigin enjoys trade with the Middle Sea. But you do not get the pick of Greek wine, do you, Ailill? Your own herds are not enough to gain you all the slave-girls you want, the rich cloth on your limbs.”
Ailill crossed his burly arms into a barrier between them. “What are you up to, Maeve? Trying to trap me into betraying my father?”
In one movement she was on her knees, her belly crushed against his arms, her hands on his thick shoulders. The moonlight cut Ailill’s face into craggy lines, axe-hewn. She blinked as the light shimmered into someone else.
A jaw carved by a finer blade. Streams of ruddy hair caught in her fingers. A swollen mouth bruised by her teeth.
“I have come to offer you marriage,” she barely managed. “With me.” She had no choice.
The prince of Laigin gaped.
“You will be king, Ailill, not a prince-in-waiting. You can rule now, with me.”
His eyes glazed over and his arms broke apart. Maeve wriggled into his body, leaning on his knee. She forced it out, past the heaviness in her heart. All the wealth he craved, the power, the ease and beautiful things—now.
At last he focused on her. “I lost two wives in birthing, but I have one left. I doubt she’d enjoy being second to you.”
“Then give her back her dowry … unless you love her.”
“I am content with her.”
“Oh!” Maeve made herself smile. “Content, lazy, bored.” She poked him in the chest. “I bet you have been slowly falling asleep for years, Ailill. Don’t you want to wake up?”
Something began to light in his face, but then his mouth pursed, eyes slitting. “What do you get out of this? If you really wanted me, you could have come years ago.”
Maeve realized she had to share the truth with him, for them to be able to trust each other. An equal bargain. “Your father’s bride price, and the power of an alliance with Laigin, will drown the last ambitions of my cousin’s kin. Then I will be named queen, and can protect my people from warrior-lords that will bleed them dry.”
And no one can ever threaten me again.
He laughed at her bluntness, and rubbed his jaw. “Life with you would not be boring, firebrand.”
“It would be powerful. And rich, and satisfying.”
Their gazes locked. “If you want gold, Maeve, my father would have to agree. What are you offering him?”
“His son on our throne, and a new alliance with Connacht.” She lifted her chin to breathe. “For I heard that Conor tricked Ros Ruadh out of valuable land as part of the Ulaid’s so-called treaty with Laigin. I heard that Conor treated you badly.” She prayed he would not remember her own father’s treachery. So many years had passed.
Ailill looked up to the spill of moonlight, torn. Maeve was overcome by pure survival; she had no other safe harbor to seek but this. Innel might be dead, but Idath’s and Felim’s wrath would be brewing even now, ready to fall upon her in earnest. “So we must forge an alliance now to keep us both strong against the Ulaid.” Desperate, she pressed her parted lips to Ailill’s wrist. It tasted of the wool-grease from his sword.
Instead, she drank lake-water from a man’s clear skin, the mist rising from his pores.
She squeezed her eyes shut. “And a final thing. Though you will be our king, when your father dies I will use Connacht’s power to also win Laigin’s throne for you.”
Ailill betrayed himself with an exclamation. He was so close to saying yes.
Maeve knelt once more, burying her fingers in his hair. She had to. “You enjoy many women, Ailill, but I was the first to make you feel this.” She touched her lips to his, her breath hot upon them. “And this …” She reached down to stroke him, bringing old memories to life.
Again, they were two youngsters creeping away from the king’s hall, their blood catching alight for the first time. It had become the only defiance left to Maeve, the only thing that was hers after Ros Ruadh took her child. And Ailill had looked at her as if he actually saw her, and adored her. His touch had been gentle … young, soft skin against hers …
Now, as they shared that caress once more, Ailill moaned.
Maeve braced herself, t
his time willing her muscles and mind to harden. She stared into the moonlight so it blinded her. And still she felt the heat of the red stag, as she buried him within her.
Her voice was strangled. “Give me my freedom, and I’ll give you yours.”
Ros Ruadh told her bluntly the next day that he was much happier without her than he would have been with her all these years. All things considered, Maeve accepted that with good grace.
Nestled on cushions close to his hall-fire, the old king banished his son and servants out of earshot. He was white-haired and mottle-skinned now, though still wiry from swordplay. His blue eyes were also just as shrewd.
Trying not to look at his veined hands, Maeve set out what she was giving Laigin: a valuable alliance, and if she bore Ailill’s child, a blood tie with Connacht’s rulers.
“We had an alliance with you.” Ros Ruadh’s tone was bone-dry. “It was severed, I believe.”
Maeve’s cheeks grew warm. “That was with my father.” She held his eyes. “I keep my oaths. You will see me prove more honorable than any man of my kin.”
The king’s white brows rose.
She sat forward, dangling the bait she had been keeping just for him. If he agreed to the marriage, for the first time in generations Laigin’s druids would be allowed to worship at the sacred Hill of Uisneach—land won by Connacht in a battle long ago.
Ros Ruadh’s expression gave nothing away, but she was not fooled. He was old. Soon his priests must sacrifice to the gods for an easy journey for him through the veils. A chance for them to do this at the most sacred place in Erin, the heart of the four kingdoms, was too tempting to reject.
He surprised her, clearing his throat. “And what else do you want as part of this bargain?” He tapped a ringed finger on his chair, staring at it.
In that quiet, the invisible presence rose between them. Her own words were still echoing in her heart. A blood-tie to Connacht’s rulers. There was a blood-tie, once.
A question trembled on Maeve’s tongue, but at the last moment she swallowed it. He did not speak of their child because she was gone. Long gone. If he would not set the ghost free, she would not—it would only give him power over her.