by Ann Marston
He picked up a twig and made abstract little designs in the earth between his feet. “Twyla might have been Celae,” he said. He looked up at me thoughtfully. “I never thought of it before, but she had the eyes. So do you.”
“And the magic?” I asked and shivered. “Did she have the magic?”
He shook his head. “I never saw her use it. The Healing, aye. She used it several times, but no other magic. And Leydon never once said anything about journeying to Celi. He spoke of travelling the continent, but never of Celi.”
“You told me you thought my mother was Saesnesi,” I said.
“I did think so,” he said. “Her hair was that pale, flaxen yellow you see in many Saesnesi, ye ken, not dark gold like Kerri’s hair. Or her father’s, either, for that matter. They look to be typical of the Celae who mixed with the Tyadda.”
“Kerri says she thinks I have magic,” I said. I shook my head. “But I’ve none. Only the Healing. And I hate magic.”
“Then I think it more likely she may be right in thinking that you may be able to lead her to the princeling because of the sword.” He shook his head again. “Who knows? I dinna ken what to think, to be truthful.”
“I don’t want to be a Celae prince,” I said vehemently. “It’s enough for me to be who I am. Just Kian dav Leydon ti’Cullin. It’s enough to be your foster-son.”
He laughed and tossed away his twig, getting to his feet. “You may have a job convincing Kerri of that,” he said. He put his hand on my shoulder. “I’ll relieve you in two hours.”
He went back into the cottage and I sat there, remembering the night we met, and remembering the night two years later when he’d offered me the highest honour a Tyr could give any man. That night was much like this one. Mountains close. Stars in a clear sky overhead. But there was a fire burning on the ground and a merchant train camped nearby then.
I had been standing guard duty. When relieved, I went back to the fire. Cullin was wrapped in his plaid but awake and waiting for me.
“A messenger came from Tyra,” he said quietly. “Gwynna has gifted me with another daughter.”
I grinned. He loved his two elder daughters, Elin and Wynn, to distraction. There was more than enough love and pride to enfold another daughter. “Ti’vati, my congratulations,” I said. “What will you call this one?”
“Gwynna says Maira.” He shrugged, then smiled. “It’s a good enough name.”
“Let’s hope this one looks like her mother, too, rather than her father.”
Cullin laughed. “Oh, aye. A fearful fate indeed, being a woman burdened with this face.” He looked at me. “I had been hoping for a son,” he said softly.
I said nothing. He didn’t often speak of his family, and when he did, the pride he took in his daughters gleamed in his eyes and rang in his voice. I had never once before heard him wish one of the girls to be a son.
He was quiet for a long time. I thought he’d gone to sleep, but finally, he spoke again. “Kian, a man has need of a son.” His voice sounded strained in the darkness. “I begin to doubt Gwynna will bear me one.”
“Three daughters are enough to keep a man content in his old age,” I said.
He chuckled. “Aye,” he agreed. “I shall say, Elin, fetch my robe. Wynn, fetch me ale. Maira, fetch me bread and meat. And they’ll scurry around more to keep me quiet than to serve me well.” His tone changed again. “Kian....”
Cullin very seldom showed his serious side. I had only once heard that tone in his voice, and that was when he spoke of the death of his grandfather. Sensing the importance of what he was about to say, I sat up and faced him. “Aye?”
“Kian, I’ve spent the last two years teaching you how to fight with that sword of yours, and you’ve learned well,” he said. He looked at me, eyes narrowed in the flickering light. “You grew much as I predicted you would. You’re no small man.” He smiled. “You might just as easily be my son as Leydon’s.” He paused again. “Everything a man does for his son, I’ve done for you. I would take you as foster-son, if you will. Make you my heir.”
It left me speechless. It was a long time before I found my voice to accept the honour. So when we had delivered the pack train safely to Honandun, we made the trip back to Tyra where I had undergone the adoption ceremony. Even Gwynna looked pleased, and made it clear she welcomed me as her son, and as a brother to the girls.
I looked up at the stars glittering in the dark sky above the ruined cottage. “I couldna be a Celae prince,” I said aloud. “I do not want to be a Celae prince.” And I couldn’t have any magic. Save the Healing, which I had inherited from my mother, I couldn’t have any magic. Not and feel the way I did about it. Surely Kerri was mistaken. She was allowing her need to find this princeling of hers to lead her to see him in me simply because I had accidentally come into possession of what she thought was a Celae Rune Blade.
Wasn’t she?
***
The Watcher on the Hill stood, quiet and still, amid the circle of stones, looking down at me. The breeze that riffled my hair and stirred my plaid did not touch him. My feet planted wide in the white-starred velvet grass, I looked up at him, trying to see what lay under the shadows cloaking his face.
At the sound of a footstep behind me, I turned and drew my sword. The runes along the blade glittered and flashed, sending their own eerie light into the strange, distinctive glow of the sunless sky. A word sparked out at me. Strength. It was just the one word out of many, but a deep satisfaction welled up in my chest and I smiled as I raised my sword to confront him.
“We meet again,” my opponent said. He raised his dark sword in a mocking salute. “You can’t defeat me, you know.”
“Your magic has no life here,” I said. “Not against the power of the Dance.”
He laughed. “We shall see who is stronger,” he said, then leapt forward, wrists snapping the sword into a swift, deadly stroke.
Again, I found myself fighting for my life against that sword. It sprayed its own darkness around itself as he swung it. Not only darkness, but cold, too—the deep, dank chill of the grave. He moved lightly, tirelessly, effortlessly, the muscles of his arms and shoulders rippling beneath his bronzed skin. And all the time, his lips drew up into a small, derisive smile that never faltered.
Back and forth across the small arena we fought each other, first one attacking, then the other. If he had weaknesses, I failed to find them, but neither could he find mine. The air rang to the strident bell-sound of steel against tempered steel. The clash and slither of thrust meeting parry echoed off the mountains behind us. Beneath our feet, the crushed grass bled its fresh perfume into the ringing air.
As it had happened before, I became aware that I was tiring faster than he. Time after time, I fell back before his attacks, forced to give ground. And again, there was no hidden well of vitality and stamina, no reserve resources I could find to draw the strength I needed. Remembering the last time we met, I lunged forward, stabbing out at him with the point of my sword. But he laughed and swayed gracefully away.
“It won’t work twice, you know,” he said. “You can’t fool me like that again.”
He spun away from my next thrust, then his sword came in under my guard, straight for my belly. I twisted desperately, barely managed to get my blade down to deflect his. It was almost enough. Instead of ripping through my belly, the tip of the blade sliced cleanly through the fabric of my sleeve and into the muscle of my right arm. My blood splashed to the ground, vivid red against the green of the crushed and trampled grass. The pain lanced like a blast of frigid cold up my arm, into my shoulder.
I stumbled under his renewed attack and fell to my knees. Shifting the hilt to my left hand, I swung backhanded at his ankles. He leapt nimbly up and out of the way, but the tip of my sword caught the heel of his boot. He lost his balance, fell, and came down heavily on hip and elbow. The sword went spinning from his loosened grip and sailed off, vanishing into its own darkness.
Instantly, my oppone
nt was on his feet. He waited until I staggered erect, then gave me an ironic bow.
“For a big man, you’re more agile than I gave you credit,” he said. “Next time, then.” He stepped away and faded into the same darkness that took his sword.
Chest heaving, I turned to the Watcher on the Hill. Safe within the circle of the stone Dance, he looked down at me. Finally, he moved. He raised one hand, but whether it was in benediction or resignation, I couldn’t tell. I put my hand to the wound on my arm and watched as the bleeding slowed, then stopped, watched as the skin drew closed until nothing was left but a thin, white scar.
***
Dawn streaked the sky with pink and yellow against pale azure. Carrying my sheathed sword, I left Cullin asleep by the fire and stepped out into the chill outside the ruined cottage. Kerri looked up at me from where she sat on the moss-covered rock by the wall as I came out, but said nothing. I walked past her down to the water, then followed the small burn upstream until I found a place where a gravel strand had made a clear crescent in the thicket of trees.
Echoes of the dream swirled through my head like wisps of mist. Pushing back the sleeve of my shirt, I looked at the thin, white scar on my arm for a long moment, then drew the sword and held it up to the first rays of the morning sun. The runes flashed and glittered, sparking and blazing in the light. I thought I could make out the word Strength on one side of the blade. The skin along my spine quivered slightly. What sort of dreams leave a man with a scar on his arm, and the ability to read something he never before could read?
“I dinna ken what kind of magic you have,” I said, holding the sword up before my eyes. “But I want you to show me now. Now, while I can still fight you.” The sword remained quiescent in my hands. I felt nothing. “If you’re supposed to belong to this lost princeling of Kerri’s, show me where he is. Start leading. By the seven gods and goddesses, start leading now, or I’ll toss you into the burn and leave you there to rust.”
Nothing happened. I had not really expected anything. It was the height of idiocy, standing in the light of the rising sun, speaking to a sword as if it understood, as if it were alive. But I shook the sword in anger and frustration. “I mean it. If you have magic of your own, show me now. Now, or Hellas take you...”
The sword began to resonate in my hands. Softly at first, then faster and faster until it felt alive. I became aware of a high, clear, sweet tone singing in the air around me, like a note plucked from a harp string in the highest register. At the same time, the blade began to shimmer, then to glow. At first, like the musical note, softly and gently. My hands on the hilt tingled and stung, and my whole body quivered like the air just before a lightning strike as the vibration travelled from the sword into me.
The musical note increased in pitch and volume, wild and keen, sharp, distinct and crystalline around me, transmitting itself along the blade, through the hilt into my flesh, my sinews, my blood, until every nerve was alive to the music, thrumming in harmony with it. Overtones of triumphant jubilation sang in the note with shades and subtle nuances of burgeoning power. As the harmonic tone increased in pitch and intensity, so did the gleam of the blade. It moved swiftly through red to orange, then to yellow until it was incandescent white, burning with a radiance to rival the rising sun, too painful to look at directly. The whole spectrum of the rainbow swirled and spun in wild patterns around me, edging the trees, the water, the gravel strand beneath my feet, with flashing patterns of coruscating colour. The joyous chord rang wildly in the air. I had the distinct impression of something awakening and stretching after a long sleep.
The runes blazed brightly and clearly, flashing silver fire back to the rising sun. Words I could not read ran like liquid flame along the length of the blade with a life of their own, searing my eyes with their brilliance.
I yelled in terror. Sweat trickled coldly down my back, from beneath my arms, poured into my eyes, stinging. I tried to throw the sword down. But my hands felt welded to the leather of the hilt. I didn’t know if I could not let it go, or it would not let me go, but I could not hurl it from me. I had awakened it, and now it bound me to it. I could not loosen my grip. I could not drop the sword.
Slowly, inexorably, it began to pull, stretching my arms to their fullest extent. The tip quivered amid the brilliance, drawing me around with it to face northwest. The musical note moved into a minor key and a yearning that was not mine suffused my body. Home was in that direction. Home where I belonged.
The note changed. Something akin to firm resolution quivered through the bond connecting us, and the sword began to turn me, drawing me implacably around with it until we faced northeast. Determination and certainty filled me, a conviction of purpose. That way lay the goal. Northeast toward the far corner of Isgard, toward the border of Maedun.
The pull became stronger—irresistible, inexorable, overwhelming. My feet dragged in the gravel strand but they moved. I had to move with the sword, or have my arms pulled out of their sockets, torn from my body. I yelled again, but still could not loosen my grip on the sword.
Suddenly, Kerri was there, her sword drawn. She leapt in front of me and her blade came up to meet mine. I had the impression of a great explosion of light and noise like a hundred-hundred crystal goblets shattering. Shards of brilliance fell like crystalline motes, flashing and sparking in the air around us. The bell and harp tone rose to a crescendo and splintered into fragments that glittered for an instant before vanishing. Then abrupt, ringing silence.
Kerri sheathed her sword and watched me anxiously, her eyes wide and startled. For a moment, I thought I could feel her fear, taste it as distinctly as I knew my own. I discovered I could pry my hands from the hilt of the sword. I rammed it home into the sheath and looked at the palms of my hands. They were reddened and blistered, dripping sweat. I rubbed them along the thighs of my breeks and slumped in combined relief and exhaustion.
“Gods,” I muttered. “Gods, what in Hellas was that?”
“You awakened the sword,” she said quietly. “You aroused it to its purpose.”
I shuddered. But the magic the sword invoked was beautiful—the colour and the wild, clear music. It left no taint in the air, no curl of nausea in my belly. It merely frightened me into cold, shivering immobility.
I looked at the sword, quiescent now in its scabbard, then turned and drew my hand back to hurl the Hellas-born thing into the water. But I couldn’t. My arm froze and something akin to pain slammed through me.
“You can’t get rid of it now, Kian,” Kerri said. “No more than you can get rid of your arm or your heart.”
I turned on her furiously. “I don’t want it,” I shouted. “I don’t want the accursed thing.”
She smiled. “You’re stuck with it,” she said. “Just as surely as you’re stuck with me.”
I couldn’t throw the sword away, so I slipped the harness around me and settled it onto my back. “Tcha,” I said in disgust. Residual terror still caused tremors to quiver in my guts. “Tcha...”
“What did it show you?” she asked.
“Show me?” I repeated.
She smiled patiently, irritatingly.
I made an exasperated noise, then pointed northeast. “That way,” I said. “It wanted to go that way. It pointed first northwest, then northeast.”
“Toward Celi first,” she said. She looked away, over the trees. “Home.”
Home. I shivered again, remembering the longing and desire that swept through me as the sword drew me. Not my home. Never my home.
“What lies northeast then?” I asked.
She laughed softly. “Kyffen’s grandson,” she said. “You told it to lead. It’s leading now, Kian, and we have to follow.”
I stood there a moment, staring at her, aware my expression was anything but pleasant. It didn’t make it any easier to realize that the whole debacle with the sword was my own fault. It was I, not Kerri, who had challenged the perverse thing to show me. I could hardly blame Kerri because it had. But t
hat didn’t prevent me being angry with her, as well as being annoyed with myself. It made for an unpleasant combination of emotions. When I tried to sort it out, I found frustration predominant. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to howl and snarl like a wolf, hit something, or simply stomp off in disgust. In the end, I did none of those things. I merely said, “Does that mean you’re going to forget that ridiculous notion that I’m your lost prince?”
She turned away and walked upstream toward the ruined cottage. “Mayhap,” she called back over her shoulder. “We shall see what the sword tells us.”
***
It took less effort than I anticipated for Kerri to persuade Cullin to go northeast toward Maedun. All he did was glance from her to me a few times, then smiled and shook his head like an indulgent father, amused by the antics of his offspring. I was about to snarl when I realized it would only heighten the image, so I wisely kept my mouth shut and went to saddle the horses.
Part Three — The Search
XIV
The countryside of Isgard was rife with rumour. Isgard had long stood uneasy with Maedun to its east, but reasonably secure with the sea to the west and Tyra to the north, neutral, but benevolently so. Falinor and Isgard had never been allies, but maintained warily peaceful relations because both were equally strong and war would have been mutually disastrous. Internal strife, coupled with a strong nudge from Maedun, had toppled Falinor. Faced suddenly with Maeduni on two borders, Isgard hastily set about tidying its own backyard. It had always been easier for the noble houses of Isgard to hire mercenaries rather than take men from farms, or merchants from business, all of whom provided the Houses with sufficient income to support extravagant lifestyles. Most of those mercenaries were Maeduni, and the lords of the houses wasted little time in ridding themselves of what abruptly reared up as an immediate menace.
Every small village, every town, every roadside inn, was filled with men called to their lord’s service. We heard stories of fighting between hastily trained local troops and mercenaries still in the service of lords who refused to relinquish them. There were more stories about the Ephir sending emissaries to Tyra and Saesnes to contract for an alliance in the event Maedun invaded Isgard. One innkeeper told us emphatically that Maedun had no wish to quarrel with Isgard mainly because Isgard was so much stronger than Maedun. An Isgardian officer who had been sitting quietly with his meal and ale at a table in the corner laughed at him.