The Tears of the Sun tc-5

by S. M. Stirling

  “I was thinking that I should never have let Dennis at my Gaelic dictionary and Myths and Customs of the Ancient Celts; the illustrated one, at that. The glee the man had in him when he persuaded people to take up some bit of Victorian-fantasy folderol that drove me wild, back in the early years! In the end the only way to stop him tormenting me with it was to go along, so… and I couldn’t bear to quash folk when they needed something to catch their fancy when all else was so bleak. And he thought it the cream of the jest that he was nine-tenths English by blood himself, and the rest everything under the sun but Irish, or even Scots. Whereas I had my mother speaking the Gaelic to me in my cradle.”

  “Ah, well, old girl, remember the definition of an Anglo-Saxon: a German who’s forgotten his grandmother was Welsh. Back in the old days I did always note that it wasn’t the people from the Gaeltacht who went barking mad for the Celtic-Twilight, Deirdre-of-the-Sorrows bit.”

  “No,” Juniper said shortly. “They were too poor and too sensible, both. What my mother would think of this festival of deranged romanticism run amuck I shudder to imagine. It was hard enough on her when I went over to the Old Religion.”

  “She might note that it was an Englishman by the name of Rawlinson who invented the kilt.”

  “He probably just stole the credit for it,” she said loftily, and saw the glint of amusement in his rather watery blue eyes-they’d been injured in some distant land in battle before the Change.

  Oman, it was called, she recalled. Odd, to remember a time when places halfway around the world were more than distant rumor, when it really mattered what happened there. Nigel isn’t the only one who’s old. I’m spending more and more time remembering, and less than I should focusing on the future. It’s well that Rudi is High King now, a Changeling King for the Changeling world. Time for oldsters to take another step back.

  They’d had practice talking quietly for each other’s ears only, but Juniper thought that Fiorbhinn caught a little of it. The girl had inherited the music from her side of the family along with a very keen set of ears, and her mother’s bright leaf-green eyes, though her hair was white-blond with summer. The eyes sparkled now, and she carried the case with her small harp proudly, with the gravity only eleven years was capable of.

  Maude was fifteen, coltish and slim and slightly awkward with it, brown-haired and grave. She was also swallowing a little now and then behind her calm face. Maude had always been the good one, steady and sensible and clever and kindhearted but not foolishly so, without the tang of wildwood magic that rang in Fiorbhinn’s blood and out through her music. This wasn’t something she had anticipated.

  Which just goes to show the limits of being sensible, my girl, Juniper thought sympathetically. For this is a matter of the Chieftainship, and truly that has something beyond the schemes and thoughts and reasons of humankind. There is a true magic to it, a thing that lifts us beyond the veils of the everyday. There always was.

  Rudi stood waiting for her; he removed his bonnet and bowed, smiling. Their eyes met as if in complicity, sharers in some solemn game, and her heart twisted with love and the sorrow that was its shadow.

  I loved him so as a baby, and a child, and now a man. I protected him from all I could, but in the end love means letting them go.

  The procession led to the edge of a slight rise; the valley fell away downslope and southward from there. It was packed now, a sea of upturned painted faces that stretched into a firelit darkness where clumps of leaves glittered amid the rising sparks of the torches. A rolling cheer started as she stopped and raised her hands; it built rapidly into a war-yell, the racking banshee shriek surging back and forth as blades and bows were thrust into the air. Juniper shivered a little. Mackenzies weren’t exactly warlike; at least, they didn’t go out and start wars as a group. On the other hand, when someone provoked them…

  O Powers, she thought, not for the first time. What have we brought back, to run wild once more upon the ridge of the world?

  Quiet fell as she brought her staff up to make the Invocation, the silver Triple Moon on its top glittering. The throng raised their hands as she spoke, her strong trained voice ringing out: “I am Juniper, the Mackenzie of the Clan Mackenzie, Chief and Bard and Ollam, trained and consecrated to this my task. I am called here, by you and the Gods to hear, to judge, and to speak. Does any deny my right or my calling? Speak now or hold your tongue thereafter, for this place and time is consecrated by our gathering. All we do here is holy.”

  A long silence and she continued, face raised: “Let us be blessed!”

  “Let us be blessed!” the great crowd murmured, following her line by line.

  “Manawyddan-Restless Sea, wash over me.”

  A green branch sprinkled seawater, and she tasted the salt on her lips like tears.

  “Manawyddan-Restless Sea, wash over me. ”

  “Cleanse and purify me! That I may make of myself a vessel; to listen and to hear.”

  “Cleans and purify me! That I may make of myself a vessel; to listen and to hear.”

  “Rhiannon-White Mare, stand by me, run with me, carry me that the land and I can be one, with Earth’s wisdom.”

  She bent and took a clod of the dry friable earth, touching it to her lips. There was a long ripple as the Mackenzies did the same.

  “Rhiannon-White Mare, stand by me, run with me, carry me that the land and I can be one, with Earth’s wisdom.”

  “Arianrhod-Star-tressed Lady; as you light the firmament above us, dance in the light of this world of ours, dance through our hearts and through our eyes, bring Your light to our minds.”

  She took a torch from her daughter Maud and lit it; the resinous wood flared up, and more lit all across the valley as her people called the response. The chanting rolled on: “Sea and Land and Sky, I call on you:

  Hear and hold and witness thus,

  All that we say

  All that we agree

  All that we together do.

  Honor to our Gods! May they hold

  Our oaths

  Our truths.”

  Then she spoke formally: “Let all here act with truth, with honor and with duty, that justice, safety and protection all be served for this our Clan, and may Ogma of the Honey Tongue lend us His eloquence in pursuit of Truth,” she said. “This Oenach Mor is begun! By what we decide, we are bound, each soul and our people together.”

  A tension went out of the air in a long sigh. She put aside something of the ritual voice and went on: “I yield to my son, Rudi Mackenzie, called Artos in the craft, and tanist of this Clan.”

  She stepped back. Rudi stood tall for a moment, his arms crossed over his plaid and the tall raven feathers in the clasp of his bonnet flickering slightly, like a wing of shadow. When he spoke it seemed almost quiet, yet rolled out through the sough of night wind and the slight tearing ripple of flame: “My people, what were the words spoken by my mother over the altar at my Wiccaning? That day in the first year of the Change, in the depths of the winter when the Sun turned towards the light once more?”

  A long moment of rustling silence, and then many thousand voices took it up, Juniper’s among them. It was almost as if that voice spoke through her again, as the babe stirred in her arms and reached out one chubby hand to grasp the ritual sword in the nemed, the sacred wood above her home. But this time it was not through her alone; through many and many, as if some great rough beast spoke as its moment came at last: “Sad Winter’s child in this leafless shaw-

  Yet be Son, and Lover, and Horned Lord!

  Guardian of My sacred Wood, and Law-”

  His people’s strength-and the Lady’s sword!

  Rudi was silent again when the voices died away. Then he put his left hand to the hilt of the Sword and drew it slowly, raising it above his head.

  There was a gasp. Juniper felt the same slight involuntary huh! escape her own lips. She wasn’t sure that she saw anything at all, save a gleam of starlight and moonlight and firelight, but it seemed to bl
aze until all her eyes were filled with it.

  “Artos!” someone called; and that name had been given him by her on the same day.

  Then the name over and over again, until he suddenly sheathed the Sword. That cut it off, as he had swung that supernal edge against the sound.

  “My people,” he said into the silence. “A Mackenzie I was born, and among the very first begotten and born in this new time after the Change. A Mackenzie I shall be until I die. But Chief of the Clan, the Mackenzie Himself, I can never be.”

  Another roar, this one of protest. Rudi waited it out.

  “I am the Lady’s sword!”

  That brought ringing silence, and he went on: “I am called by the Powers to be Ard Ri in Montival. The High King must be King of all his peoples and give good lordship and fair judgment to all; yes, and be seen to do that. I see men and women of our Clan from Sutterdown here, which is under the patronage of Apollo, the God who loves above all justice and due proportion in men and realms. Nor, by the Mare and the Raven and the Moon, does Rhiannon love it less.”

  He shook his head. “Your Chief I cannot be. And therefore I cannot be tanist, the successor. You must chose another, while my mother can yet train your choice”

  He stepped back, and ostentatiously crossed his arms again. Juniper quirked a smile as she took up the words: “Long ago, at our first Oenach Mor -and it’s considerably smaller that was!-”

  That produced a startled laugh.

  “I swore that I would be Chief only of a free folk. You may choose the Chief you will, and you may chose the Chief’s tanist.”

  A low murmuring went through the throng, and then Oak Barstow stepped forward into the semicircle of firelight before the natural dais. His voice was more of a battle-shout than a bard’s, but it carried well enough. “I say that we should have none but the blood of Lady Juniper to be Chief of the Clan; this by our free choice. Who says aye?”

  A roar, one loud enough to make her almost take a step backward; it took a moment for quiet to fall again, and she felt a prickle of tears. Partly of joy-that love and offered devotion made all the years of work and worry seem less hard. And partly a mother’s love of her children, for they would bear that burden after her.

  “Lady Eilir has pledges to the Dunedain,” Oak went on, in a fine carrying roar; bards with the outer Duns relayed his words. “The Rangers are our friends and kindred, but they are another folk with their own laws and ways. Lady Fiorbhinn is too young-”

  “And would be better suited to run crowing through the treetops and fly to the Moon, than to be Chief of three children in a bathtub, let alone a great roynish Clan!”

  Her clear young voice cut through effortlessly. There was a swelling ripple of laughter out to the edges of the great assembly. Oak’s booming laugh was loudest of all. The smile was still in his voice as he went on:

  “That leaves only one of Lady Juniper’s children; and well she is suited to the task, as we all know. I call on the Oenach Mor to hail Maude Loring Mackenzie as Tanist of the Clan, to follow the Chief and learn from her and to be the Mackenzie in her turn. All for?”

  “AYE!”

  Juniper could see her daughter blink, as the force of the giant shout hit like a huge padded club at her chest.

  “All against?”

  There was a long silence; a few individuals stirred, began to rise, looked around the circle of those from their own Duns and sank down again. Oak’s laughter was loud again. “Well, that’s a first, just as this is the first Great Assembly not in the duthchas of the Clan! But we should start the counting now, or it’s very tired we’ll be by tomorrow!”

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHARTERED CITY OF GOLDENDALE COUNTY OF AUREA PORTLAND PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION (FORMERLY CENTRAL WASHINGTON) HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL (FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA) AUGUST 5, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD

  M athilda Arminger, now High Queen of Montival save for a few details concerning coronation ceremonies, groaned slightly as the ladies-in-waiting and the maids started to remove surcote and the long tight dress and the not-quite-crown with its silk veil. She’d been slightly daring, going back to the books-which was where the Association’s fashions had come from in the first place, really, before they took on a life of their own-and was wearing a formfitting kirtle of fourteenth-century style. The buttoned sleeves were normal, but these buttons were a full two inches apart, carved from golden tiger eyes into the Lidless Eye sigil of her house, leaving the cloth to stretch and show inch-wide medallions of her own flesh all the way up to three fingers below the shoulder, where her chemise started. The fabric was a peacock-patterned green silk, a precious rarity available only since a little trade with East Asia started up again in the last few years.

  It was low cut from the very edge of her shoulders down to the middle of her breastbone, covering all but the very highest beginning swell of her breasts. There were drawbacks; she couldn’t lift her elbows above breast level, and it had required tight lacing, but there was less sheer bulk of fabric than with most court cote-hardies, which meant something in this weather. The overrobe was a very loose surcote, open at the sides from under her arms to hip level, of chocolate jacquard brocade with silver and gold flames broidered along the edges.

  The ladies lifted off the surcote, unlaced the kirtle down her back and unbuttoned the arms, which felt as if she’d suddenly been released from a set of prisoner’s irons. Then they coaxed the three inches of tight sleeve down her arms and swept the whole affair away, which left her with the chemise-cotton thickened to double layers in places to make sure sweat didn’t stain the silk. Nimble fingers took care of the buttons and hooks and removed the fabric, and she felt almost cool as the air hit her skin.

  Thankfully the day’s heat was fading anyway now that the stars were out and she could escape the interminable banquet in the Great Hall below.

  Where eyes bugged at this outfit, for various reasons. I suspect a lot of the women were taking careful notes!

  The solar of Castle Goldendale was most of the way up the dojon tower of the keep and four sets of high arched windows marked the center of each wall, all open now and letting in a very pleasant cooling breeze. One corner of the big square room had a fireplace, empty and swept and garnished with bouquets of roses and dahlias and geraniums now; the other held the spiral staircase. The walls were pale plaster carved in spiderwork Gothic low-relief patterns and the floor was mosaic tile, light blue with a border of green and yellow flowering vines. A few colorful modern rugs were scattered across it.

  Westward the new-risen moon shone on distant snow peaks, like a dream of cool peace in the purple night. Below the lights of the little town were coming on, the warm glow of lanterns and candles, the evening bells from the cathedral and the other churches-there were six, in a town of four thousand, plus a chapel that the other varieties of Christian used in rotation, a small synagogue and a once-clandestine and now merely inconspicuous covenstead.

  Outside the walls with their pacing sentries were the tented camps of the gathering armies. They were there to protect the town, of course, but she couldn’t blame the citizens and the local fief-holders from feeling nervous at having so many armed men around, and right in the middle of harvest at that.

  “Hose and houppelande, please, mesdames,” she said, when they’d gotten her down to her underwear.

  Another chemise, plain this time, then the tight hose of bias-cut linen; she’d gotten used to pants on the Quest, and she’d always been able to get away with practical dress more than most noblewomen, because of her birth and training. Right now she had a reasonable excuse, too. A plain set of shirt, jerkin and loose houppelande coat was a lot more comfortable than anything else respectable for someone of her rank, and she would be on campaign soon.

  Though an arming doublet and suit of plate is actually more uncomfortable than a cote-hardie, hard though that would be to believe if I hadn’t experienced both. Which is something not many people have done.

  At least she di
dn’t have to feel morally uncomfortable about kicking someone out of their quarters. County Aurea was Crown demesne land, and Castle Goldendale was held by an appointed seneschal rather than as an autonomous fief; it had been built as a headquarters and strongpoint during the wars against the Free Cities of the Yakima League to the north.

  A man-at-arms of the Protector’s Guard came trotting and clanking up the stairs, thumped his fist to his breastplate and bowed as the staff set out a collation and left.

  “Grand Constable d’Ath, Your Highness.”

  “Admit her, thank you,” Mathilda said.

  Good old Tiph, she thought warmly, as the familiar light quick steps sounded on the stone risers.

  Then: And there are probably tens of thousands of people who wouldn’t believe that anyone could think of Lady Death that way.

  They hadn’t had her around all their lives, of course; hadn’t been her pupil in matters warlike. And those were also people who hadn’t realized at about the age of eleven that quite a lot of people wanted to kill everyone named Arminger, and that a major reason they couldn’t was that Tiphaine d’Ath induced extremely well-merited soiled-breeches fear in the enemies of her family and House.

  In theory I don’t really approve of Tiph, Mathilda thought, as she smiled in greeting. She’s an unrepentant sinner in a lot of ways. In practice I’m extremely glad to have her around and besides that I like her and Delia. I hope my children will have the chance to be glad of it as well; a dynasty can’t have too many loyal, able supporters. Or friends. Swords about a throne.