The Raven Queen

by Jules Watson

  One day Ruán was bathing Maeve, peeling back the covers a little at a time to bare small spans of naked skin to the cool air. It took him a moment to realize Orla was watching.

  “I will do it.” Her hand fell upon his shoulder.

  “You do not have to.”

  “I have birthed many babes, and buried some,” she muttered. “I will do it.” She plucked the sponge of moss from his hand.

  Just then Maeve arched her back, her arm knocking the bowl of water from Ruán’s lap. As he leaned to stop it spilling, Maeve plucked at his tunic, dragging him off balance. “They cannot think me dead,” she fretted, delirious. “The queen must rise … or they will all die at Conor’s hand! Die!”

  Orla gasped.

  Ruán unhooked Maeve’s nails from his tunic and pressed her down into the mat of dried bracken. “Hush, ceara.” He had been focusing so hard on saving her, he had not even thought of her people. Was it possible they did not know she was alive? Where had she been fighting to make this so? He pushed those thoughts away. “I will get a message to them. Don’t be afraid. Sleep now, and get well.”

  Maeve sighed, and beneath his hand he felt her fingers curl up in the hollow of her throat. A memory jolted him: her chin lifting as he lapped that little dip in her flesh, his hands at the small of her back.

  Ruán left the campfire on unsteady legs, seeking the fresh air that blew in over the water. Why did he do this, knitting together flesh torn by an iron blade? They rent bodies, these warriors. He pressed his fingers into the blindfold, over his empty eyes. Maeve kept choosing a path of destruction—and he had now poured his light into her. Why?

  His mind tried to answer. Her bravery surely earned her a chance, even if it was not the life he sought for himself. But his heart spoke without words.

  I cannot bear this flame to go out. His world would grow cold.

  Orla startled him. “Queen?”

  “Yes.” Ruán swung toward her. “Orla, I must get a message to Cruachan.” He felt his way to Maeve’s saddle-pack, plucking out a finger-ring and an iron pin from her cloak. “Send the herder’s boy to the chief druid to report that Queen Maeve is alive and will soon return. The ring is a token of proof for the druids. The child will only have the pin when he has delivered the message.”

  “Ru … Queen Maeve?” Orla squeaked. “You and me, we’re humble folk. We have no business with the likes of her.”

  “Don’t be so foolish.”

  “But it’s dangerous! Have you learned nothing?”

  Ruán turned back toward the murmuring lake, the little waves being nudged onto the sand. “She brought strength to her kingdom—at least she did that.” His own fierceness caught him by surprise. “But to lose that now, her people weakened, prey to their enemies … Letting them down that way would kill her.”

  “It is not your concern!”

  He faced Orla. “If you are my friend, then take these and do as I say.”

  The air prickled, Orla’s flame spiking around the edges. At last she snatched the ring from his hand.

  She did not return until the next morning.

  The herbs had done their work, and Maeve had now fallen into a true sleep. For an endless time Ruán listened to her deep, even breaths, feeling her brow over and over. At last he felt safe enough to go and check his snares in the marshes.

  Orla found him there. She pushed through the reeds and squatted on a dry patch of earth beneath a scrubby alder bush. “It is done.”

  Ruán gently laid down the pair of dabchicks he had snared, brushing the crests of feathers on their heads. “You do not know the truth of her.”

  “And what do you know?” Orla’s toes cracked twigs as she leaned forward. “The reed-cutters told me everything. She killed her own brother. He was helpless on the ground and she stabbed her sword in him until he died!”

  The chill from Ruán’s wet clothes ran up his neck. That was who she had fought—her own blood?

  “She did the same with a lord who challenged her—tied him up and slashed him in the neck in front of his son. And she ruts with all the men at Cruachan, hundreds of them,” Orla breathed, “to make them do her will.”

  Ruán’s body remembered Maeve’s weight bearing him to the sand, her frantic thighs and clawing hands. He wiped a sour taste from his mouth. “Such rumors are borne of jealousy.”

  “Really? You know none of this?”

  Ruán sank to his haunches. Nearby, the lake showed up in his mind as glittering jewels scattered over a dark veil. The sparks did not trace frantic messages of danger. They danced, beckoning … hinting at so much he did not understand.

  The intricate threads that wove people’s fates together.

  Ruán was not ruled by stiff-necked pride anymore; he acknowledged he could not see the greater pattern. All he knew was that raw pull to Maeve—and the push away. So why did he now feel sick? The scent of blood was still upon her.

  But he did not possess her. If he longed to live as a wild creature, then she also lived free.

  She was a wild creature.

  Ruán had looped his hair back with buckhide. Now Orla touched the sunburned nape of his neck, her sturdy hand still rough with calluses. “Leave the nobles to their swords and blood—that is the world that took your eyes. Now you have a chance to be with your own folk. You will be honored, set at the very heart of our people.” Her ardent gaze was the light of a lamp spilling over his face. “I saw how you healed her. Bring that light back to us. We need you.”

  Ruán barely heard the temptations Orla dangled of food, warmth, and honor. He only remembered what he said to Maeve the night she let out her pain in his arms.

  You can only forgive yourself when you make amends.

  He leaped up, flinging off his damp tunic. Boots and all, he bounded down the broken bank and into a channel of water, sloshing a few steps to where it opened out into the lake before throwing himself in.

  Down he dived, away from air, voices, and colliding thoughts of Maeve.

  He sought the sídhe in the depths of the lake since they would not come to him on land. The water closed around him, seeping into his skin. Tell me what to do! Bubbles streamed all around him, water rushing into his throat as he cried to the sídhe.

  I will not lose you.

  His lungs began to burn, and still he sank, until all that was dark turned silver and he dived through clouds of stars. He would drown if he did not get an answer from them.

  The sparks behind his eyes whirled faster, and just before he was going to lose consciousness, he heard the sídhe-maid.

  Little brother fool, you cannot lose us. We are not bound to the lake. We are everywhere.

  At Emain Macha in the Ulaid, the druid Levarcham lingered in the yard outside the shrine to the Father God, the Dagda. It was set on a mound across a low valley from King Conor’s royal fort.

  She rarely prayed at this little shrine, for the greatest temple was that to the goddess Macha behind her, with its many circles of oak posts holding up a vast thatch roof. Levarcham wanted to see which stars rose first this night, though, and the Dagda’s yard faced east and had a clear view of the sky.

  Levarcham bent back her head, hoping to glimpse a pattern that could help Deirdre. The red sunset had cooled into a deep indigo. The air was thick with that after-dark dampness of sun-season. It brought to her nostrils the scent of earth, the fields churned by the feet of the harvest teams. There was grit in it, too: chaff drifting from the threshing sheds. So the year kept turning.

  Where are you, my child? What distant grove witnessed the same star-rise, shining in Deirdre’s beloved face? Levarcham sent out every sense she could muster, sifting the dark world about her for any clue. Desperation strained her heart.

  But an answer came not from the skies.

  Instead, the clear air carried a sound to her ears from the nearby hut that was the Dagda’s shrine. Someone begging for help.

  Levarcham would never disturb someone’s prayers, but that hoarse voice wa
s familiar, and the crack in it caught at her druid senses. She limped to the little entrance at the rear of the shrine that the druids used to reach the altar unobserved, and lifted the heavy cowhides across the doorway.

  The Dagda’s temple was lit by one beeswax candle in a bronze dish. The altar was an unhewn oak trunk, a symbol of the spirit-tree that anchored the worlds.

  Kneeling before it was King Conor mac Nessa.

  Levarcham fought down revulsion. Since Cúchulainn challenged him over the Connacht raid, Conor had been in hiding. A woman in his household who served Levarcham swore she had heard him sobbing during a drunken argument with his mother, Nessa.

  Levarcham hoarded each scrap of insight into the king’s mind, in case she could use it to aid Deirdre.

  Conor spoke again, and Levarcham made out hissed entreaties to the gods Manannán, Lugh, and the Dagda. “I am beaten. You have seen fit to set the vixen of Connacht as an Erin queen. A cruel lesson you teach me!” His anguish flared and he panted and dropped his voice again. “Only you can show me a way out now. Please … help me.”

  Levarcham’s hackles rose. By the feeble glow of the candle, she could just glimpse Conor’s gray head buried in his hands.

  “At this harvest, there should be a woman at my side, belly swelling with my seed. I can be a true king then—strong enough for any Connacht queen! But I lost Deirdre for the Ulaid. I failed you. Help me right this now. Help me to be free …”

  Levarcham’s blood began racing out of control of her mind. He had the gall to whine and weep, scrabbling before the gods as if they would forgive him? She wanted to strike him, fling at him all the pain she had suffered since Deirdre was torn from her. Sharpening her tongue, Levarcham prepared to step out of the shadows.

  Only she could not move.

  The air around the altar had grown even more dense. Levarcham was caught by it, as if she waded suddenly through water. She trembled, heart pounding, until a calmness began to flow through her. It blurred the sensation of her own shape, loosening her awareness of her limbs, muscles, and bones. A humming all around made her light-headed.

  Levarcham knew this sensation. The gods were here.

  Her body filled with something Greater, a presence not of Thisworld. She surrendered to it as she was trained to do, her own soul shrinking to a tiny spark that hovered on the fringes of her body.

  The Other luminescence welled up and took her over.

  From the darkness behind the altar, Levarcham looked at the king. Her eyes were now cloaked in a different sight that saw only hues of flame and shadow.

  A blackness writhed at Conor’s heart.

  The candle-flame at last caught the powdered incense in the dish and flared, sending a plume of smoke to obscure Levarcham’s body. “You have come for salvation. Ask what you will.” They were not her words or her voice. The sonorous murmur echoed off the walls and low roof, colliding and multiplying until it surrounded the king.

  Conor clenched his eyes shut, dropping his chin upon his chest. “I have lost my way.”

  “The gods see all. For your relief, they need utter truth.”

  Conor gasped, and it tumbled out. “I craved the maiden’s sweet flesh in my bed, yes I did, to bury my body in hers. I wanted to possess her—and have men bow to me for commanding such a woman!”

  From afar, Levarcham’s spirit flickered with disgust. But the greater flame possessing her was lighting up the caverns of Conor’s heart. Words flowed forth. “There is more: a man, cloaked in your hate.”

  Levarcham saw floating before her the fair face of a young warrior. Naisi, Deirdre’s lover.

  “I am withered,” Conor croaked, huddled on his knees. “And …” It all rushed out. “I hated that the women loved him so, with his skin, and his black hair … yes, I did.”

  “That is not all.” The breath of the gods was soft. “Let thy burden go.”

  The king moaned. “And the warriors … they loved him.”

  His impotent fury battered at Levarcham’s heart. All the young ones looked to Naisi … even my sons, Conor silently railed. They wanted to be as strong as him. They wanted to be him.

  Levarcham watched that thread unspool, winding back into the past and all its hoarded bitterness. Conor had always been a weak child, his mind his only weapon. He had to scorn what he could not have, what he hungered for—to win his kingship with a sword. Instead, his mother bought it for him by opening her thighs to Fergus mac Roy. Conor longed for his men’s eyes to glow when they looked at him—but they only looked that way to Cúchulainn, and Ferdia.

  And Naisi.

  “Yes,” the gods said through Levarcham. “Feel it all.”

  Conor’s body was raging now, the agony making him clutch his belly. At that moment something poured through Levarcham from the godly presence that she did not expect.

  Compassion.

  “That is truth, our son, at last,” the gods sighed.

  It was their pity that finally undid Conor. He curled up on the earthen floor, his mouth twisting to hold down pain that never reached his eyes as tears.

  Levarcham’s spark of spirit was fluttering. Could his heart truly change …? Set Deirdre free. It was a fervent prayer, as if Conor could hear her. Bring her home. The strength of this human yearning at last sucked her back into her body, and she swayed on the spot as if waking.

  The divine presence swiftly faded.

  Levarcham staggered back against the wall, her hand out. She became aware then of someone else approaching the main entrance to the shrine behind the king. Levarcham limped through the shadows toward the rear doorway, slipping under the layers of hides.

  Conor’s final entreaty floated out after her. “If I am led astray by lust and envy, then I must return to what a king should be.”

  Levarcham stumbled into the night, dragging cold air into her lungs. A dream … no, she was awake. She shook her head to clear it of the incense.

  At the bottom of the temple mound she stopped amid the birch trees. They lifted pale branches to the stars, as slender as Deirdre’s white arms. Yet Levarcham did not need to seek their patterns now.

  She trembled with something she thought she had lost.

  Hope.

  Conor would bring Deirdre home, and Levarcham would hold her child—and this time never let her go.

  Maeve’s croak was as faint as a branch rubbing in the wind. “Did you tell them?”

  Ruán dropped the spoon into the mutton broth and crouched beside her on the furs at the entrance to his tent. He had tucked her up there to let the sun bathe her sleeping face.

  By habit, he felt her brow. “Yes.”

  Maeve sighed, and when Ruán went to withdraw his hand, she turned her cheek into his palm. “Thank you.”

  “You should not have ridden here in that state.”

  “I didn’t. I was bleeding, and the men were fighting … and Lassar …” Her voice cracked and a droplet fell upon his wrist. “Lassar must have lifted me onto Meallán and strapped me down before he was attacked again. I think … I saw him …” She could not go on, her breath labored. “But not Garvan. Garvan lives.”

  Her throat moved against Ruán’s wrist, and with shaking hand she touched her heart and brow in a silent prayer. “Meallán wandered, though I was barely aware of it, except for drinking rain when it fell on me. But the lake was closer than Cruachan, and I suppose he … he feels safe here.” She paused. “His heart is here.”

  There was silence from them both.

  At last Ruán peeled his fingers from her cheek. “Smart horse.”

  He fetched water for her and helped her drink, and she groped for his hand again, tucking it beneath her chin. “The shadows still hover close. Stay with me.”

  She had never pleaded with him.

  Though Áedán and Orla had refused to give up and return to the island, at least Orla would not come anywhere near the lake now that Maeve was awake. Ruán had asked Áedán to also stay away; perhaps, Ruán thought, because he did not wan
t to hear the druid speak his own thoughts—that he was mad, and had been since first he kissed Maeve back.

  Right now there was nothing but a fire and the two of them, as if they were simple people after all, with simple lives. The pool of warmth and the hushed air pushed all that was real away.

  Ruán settled into the deerskins. Maeve put her head on his chest, and all the breath went out of her. She was asleep immediately, nestling into his arms like a child.

  CHAPTER 22

  SUN-SEASON

  Ruán was picking raspberries along the edge of a sun-bathed clearing, pleased to find something sweet now that the honey had run out. Early sun-season was unfolding with a rush, the dusks growing long and hazy, the days still.

  He recognized Maeve’s step behind him. She squatted, the smell of sheep-fat and horse wafting over him from the saddle blanket around her shoulders.

  “You should not be walking this far,” he said.

  Maeve took a raspberry from the birch basket and munched it. “I should have gone home days ago.”

  “Just because you can hobble does not mean you can ride.” He eased another berry from its stalk.

  “You know very well I’m not hobbling. You hear my every step.”

  The wound above her hip bone was knitting swiftly. It was not deep; it must have been shock that sent her into a swoon on her horse, the fever then taking hold. “I didn’t let you retch all over me just to break your neck halfway home.” Ruán turned to the bushes to pluck more berries.

  Maeve rose and flicked his hair, leaving a tingling trail on his neck. “Now you’ve made me feel sick again.” She crawled into the hollow, spreading her blanket among the ferns and sprawling on her back. There she let out a sigh from deep inside her. “I cannot see anything but the sky … there is nothing at all. Nothing.” The yearning in her voice bore a darker thread.

  Sorrow.

  Pulling up the deerskins while she slept, Ruán sometimes brushed her cheeks and still found them wet—tears she did not shed when awake. He suddenly wondered why someone so robust had taken so long to surface from this fever. As if she did not want to come back …