Silver's Lure

by Anne Kelleher

  The hall was crowded with Meeve’s warriors and neighboring chiefs. No one was ever turned away from Meeve’s table, no matter how high or low, rich or poor. Her bounty was part of her power. The humid air reeked of sweaty men and greasy meat, but Connla ignored everything, even as she was jostled nearly off her feet by a servant scurrying by with a basket piled high with rounds of cheese. The bard’s voice rose in a mournful wail, and Connla silenced him with one ferocious stare. “Well? Do you mean to answer me, sister? Or must I wait by the gatehouse, like a beggar after crusts of news?”

  Meeve lowered her jeweled goblet, tossed back her fabled, though slightly faded, red mane beneath her thin circlet of braided gold and copper, and licked her fingers. “Depends on what you’ve heard. I’m having a hard time believing what I’ve just heard, I know that much.”

  Pain shot up and down Connla’s arm, from her shoulder to her wrist, but Meeve’s blatant insolence only fueled her resolve not to show weakness. “Is it true your knights have taken the silver from Hawthorn Grove at Garn?”

  “They haven’t stolen it, you old crow. That druid-house was abandoned to blight so long ago the roof was caving it. Would you have preferred they’d left it there?” Meeve held out her goblet to her cup-bearer and nodded at the end of the table. “We’ve all had news today, it seems. I had a few messages myself, thanks to Ronalbain and Fahrwyr.” She raised her brimming goblet again in the direction of two mud-splattered men who crouched over the long board, hunks of stringy meat clutched in both hands. There was a look on Meeve’s face Connla couldn’t quite read as she stared harder at her sister, deliberately opening her druid Sight. A gray veil of mist appeared between them, and Connla realized Meeve was hiding something.

  Connla glanced around the table at the reddened, grease-stained faces, and spoke beneath the raucous laughter that followed some half-witted remark. “May I speak to you alone?”

  Meeve only belched and waved an airy hand. “Why don’t you come eat? Come, sit…you, Turnoch, and you, Dougal, move aside, make room for Callie Connla.” Even before the sentence was completely out of her mouth, the men began to shift, benches began to scrape across the wooden planks of the raised dais. Meeve nodded. “There you are—go sit. Let’s eat and drink like civilized people, and then we’ll talk.”

  “You’ll be too drunk to talk soon.” The silver chalice and blade of her office clanked against Connla’s thigh as she hoisted her robes above her knees and hauled herself onto the dais, waving away hands that would’ve helped her. She leaned as far over the board as the piled platters would permit and stared directly into her younger sister’s eyes. Another peal of thunder rolled through the room, echoing in the high rafters. The storm was moving closer. “I need to talk to you now. Alone.”

  “Now?”

  Connla glanced at the warriors leaning on either side of Meeve, at the guards lined up along the wall. Sweat began to gather under her armpits as a sense of spiraling disaster, of something very dangerous coming closer, almost riding on the edge of the storm, began to grow. She shoved the feeling away and concentrated on Meeve. “Yes, now. Unless you’d like to discuss this in front of everyone?”

  Meeve belched again. “You’re not the only one with something to say, sister. If I were you, I’d take the time to fortify myself first.”

  “Am I to understand that as a threat?” Connla narrowed her eyes. “You don’t know what you’re doing, sister. You don’t know what balances you’re upsetting—no one would dare to touch that silver but those Lacquilean robbers you’ve let loose upon the land.”

  “Well, now, sister. That’s hardly diplomatic of you, considering I’m expecting a delegation from this person or persons who call themselves the Voice of the city, whatever that means. I thought to do you a favor—”

  “A favor? You take our silver to appease foreigners, bargain it away and call it a favor?”

  “Is silver all you’re worried about, Connla?” Meeve put her goblet down with a thump and leaned forward with a clink of twisted gold and copper bracelets.

  “Of course silver isn’t all I’m worried about. That silver was guarded by the khouri-keen—your knights should not have been able to find that silver, let alone take it away. There’s far more at stake—”

  “Then I should think you’d better be off to Ardagh, don’t you? If there is some sort of problem with those creatures, the silver’s safer with the Fiachna than it was in that burned-out grove.”

  “Will it be here when I return? Or will robbers have somehow snatched it away from the Fiachna, or will pirates have managed to sail all the way into Lake Killcarrick and raid the druid-house at Killcairn?”

  “You still blame me for that?” Meeve hiccupped softly, her golden brown eyes hollow in the torchlight. Lightning flashed, accompanied by a sharp crackle and a sudden blast of cold wet air. Torches whipped out in long plumes of white smoke, casting shadows on Meeve’s face. Buffeted on all sides as warriors and servants scattered to bolt the shutters against the rising winds, Connla could only stare in disbelief at the undeniable ring of tiny white flames wreathing Meeve’s face.

  “What’re you about, Meeve—” Connla began, but her question faltered and died on her lips as rain splattered on the roof, then settled into a fast, steady drumming. So that’s what Meeve doesn’t want us to see, she thought. That’s what Meeve doesn’t want me to know. “Why didn’t you tell me you were dying?”

  Meeve knocked over her goblet, spilling purple wine across her white linen and cloth of gold. With a curse coarse enough for the stable, Meeve pushed back her chair and rose. “You come with me. Sister.” The last word was a snarl that sounded anything but sisterly.

  Perhaps it was the hard pounding of the rain that contributed to Connla’s sense of ripping through some layer of reality as she followed Meeve across the crowded floor, eyes riveted on Meeve’s rigid back as if she were the only other person in the room. The only person who mattered, Connla thought, and out of the corner of her eye, against the kaleidoscopic background, Briecru, Meeve’s chief Cowherd, stood out, his rich gold chains and red mustaches vivid against the shifting shadows forming around him like a cloak, so that it seemed he stood in a pool of black. The idea that Briecru could betray Meeve bolted through her mind, just as Meeve pulled her into the small antechamber to one side of the hall, her fingers clamped like a vise around Connla’s upper arm.

  Meeve slammed the door, then wiped her hand ostentatiously on the thigh of her trews and made a face. “Faugh, Connla, must you wear all that wool? You not only sound like a crow, you reek like a dead one.”

  “Better like a dead crow than a living thrall.” Connla met the wall of Meeve’s anger. She was still partially in that hazy state between the two worlds where she could see the flames flickering around Meeve’s face, but she was too angry not to retaliate. “Is that what you need my silver for, sister? For the perfume you’ve taken to wearing?”

  “I should slap you for that.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were dying, Meeve?”

  Meeve snorted and shook her head. “You druids tell us we’re all dying, some of us sooner than others is all. I don’t want your pity, Connla, and I don’t want your help.” Black anger surged around Meeve like a cloak, cutting off Connla’s Sight.

  Stung, Connla could only blink. “But I—I don’t understand. Surely, sister, there’s something that can be done—”

  “Oh, spare me.” Meeve sank down in the wide chair on one side of the fire and leaned back against the linen-covered cushions, then held out a scroll. “It’s what killed Mother. I’ve all the same symptoms—the rashes that come and go, the aches, the sweats, the flesh falling off my bones. There was nothing to be done for her and I know there’s nothing to be done for me. If you were really concerned, you’d mind your own affairs so I wouldn’t have to. Do you have any idea who sent the message Ronalbain brought? He’s the one who brought the most distressing news, I think.”

  “And what’s that?” Connla ra
ised her chin. Meeve’s words pelted her like windblown acorns.

  “He brought me a message from Deirdre, who—though I find it hard to believe—is yet still with child. Can you explain that, as well as why my daughter’s begging me to rescue her?”

  “Rescue her? From what?” Connla faltered a little and tightened her hand on her staff. Deirdre, one of Meeve’s twin daughters, was a gifted druid who had been under Connla’s guardianship since her arrival at the White Birch Grove at the age of seven.

  “Maybe if you’d paid more attention to your duty, this disgraceful situation would never have occurred. But when it did, I told you to take care of it. Now it seems that not only did you not address it when it could’ve been easily eliminated, Deirdre’s now in such a state she thinks her sisters are trying to kill her. Are they?”

  Connla tried to breathe through the grip of the palsy that shook her arm. “No one would kill Deirdre.”

  “What about the child?”

  “The child’s an unnatural—”

  “Then it should’ve been taken care of long ago,” Meeve replied. She tapped her finger on the arm of her chair. “I had a message from Morla. They need a druid desperately there, for it seems there’s blight in Dalraida and no druids.”

  “I sent a druid last Lughnas—”

  “One? You sent one, out of all who crowd us to the roof here, Connla?”

  Connla watched the spectral death lights dance around Meeve’s face. She had lost weight, Connla realized, her skin was jaundiced. She looks just like Mother, in the months before she died. Even the uisce-argoid, the silver-charged water the druids distilled as their most potent remedy, could only slow the disease’s inevitable progress, not cure it. “That’s not fair, Meeve,” Connla said, appalled. “The brothers and sisters are not mine to command—Dalraida’s sent no druids to the mother-groves…there’re few who’re willing to go that far. I had nothing—”

  “You have everything to do with it—you’re the Ard-Cailleach, the ArchDruid of all Brynhyvar, are you not? If you’ve nothing to do with it, all those titles mean nothing, too.” With a contemptuous glance over her shoulder, Meeve rose and swept to the window, where the rain spattered on the horn pane. “I won’t leave this land anything less than settled and at peace.”

  Feeling slapped, Connla opened her mouth, then shut it. She knew what Meeve implied. One’s status in the Summerlands was dependent upon how well one was regarded by those left behind, and Connla had no doubt Meeve intended to be remembered as the greatest queen who’d ever reigned. Meeve’s strategy had always been simple: she perceived every man in Brynhyvar as a suitor, every warrior a potential knight. No other queen in all of Brynhyvar had ever so identified herself as the love, as the wife, of the Land, and no other in all its history had ever roused such passions, inspired such loyalties and spawned such rivalries.

  Great Meeve, she was called, even by her enemies; Red Meeve, for the color of her hair; Glad Meeve, for the bounty of her thighs she spread so willingly; Gold Meeve, for the treasure she dispensed with a generous hand. But Connla had sometimes wondered what would happen when youth and vigor inevitably decayed. “You can’t buy your peace or your place in the Summerlands with druid silver, Meeve.” The dancing lights were back now as Meeve paced to the fire and stood over it, warming her bone-thin hands. Meeve’s face had a ghastly pallor, the color of a day-old corpse. She’s dying quickly, Connla realized. And Meeve was right about Deirdre, who was more than two months overdue. How could whoever was Ard-Cailleach of the grove not have taken matters in hand? Connla had been so concentrated on Meeve and her machinations she’d forgotten her responsibility to her own sisters, her own blood.

  An implacable sense of an impending presence filled her, but she shook it off, sure it was merely the sense of Meeve’s approaching death. Meeve would be dead by Imbolc—the energy she usually emanated had diminished alarmingly now that Connla had seen beyond Meeve’s own carefully constructed pretense. There was no point in continuing to antagonize her. She drew a deep breath. “I believe you want to leave the land at peace.”

  “Then go do your work, Connla. And leave me to finish mine.”

  At the door, Connla paused. There’d been no resolution about the silver. “I’ll expect the inventory of the Hawthorn Grove to match the inventory of that silver in the rolls at Ardagh.”

  Meeve cocked her head and pursed her lips. “You know, Connla, one might think you care more about your silver than you do for Deirdre or anything else. I’m starting to think that what people say is true.”

  Stung, Connla stiffened and tightened her grip on her staff until her knuckles turned white. “And what do they say, the people? And which people, exactly, do you mean?”

  “You need look for them no farther than these wards and halls, sister. They say that the druids care only for their dreams, for the pleasures of the sidhe, that they dally on the Tors while the Land grows cold and the trees die. They say the druids are losing their power. They say the druids are dying out, and as they go, the land dies with it.” Meeve shrugged and arched one brow. “And given that you’ve preferred to stay here and make trouble while there’s reports of blight and rumors of goblins and now my daughter—your own niece—believes her life to be in danger, I wonder if what they say might be true.”

  Connla bit back the hard retort that sprang to her lips. Have mercy, she told herself. Have mercy. Meeve’s dying and there’s more at stake than what anyone thinks of druidry. “All right, Meeve. I’ll do as you suggest. Doubtless your dying has had some affect upon the land. You should’ve told me sooner.” She turned to leave and then remembered the other piece of news she’d had that day. “I’ll plan on stopping to see Bran on my way through Pent—”

  “Don’t bother—I’ve already sent for him.”

  “He’s on his way here?”

  “As we speak.” Meeve narrowed her eyes. “I sent Lochlan after him two nights ago. What’s this sudden interest in Bran? He’s none of your concern—he’s not druid.”

  “He very well could be. I had a message from Athair Eamus.”

  “Oh, come. He’s never shown even the least sign—”

  “According to Athair Eamus, Bran appears to be a very strong rogue.”

  Meeve stared at Connla, then snorted. “You expect me to believe that?”

  “Why should you not believe it?”

  “Because Bran was duller than Morla as a baby, if that’s possible. He was happy with his rocks and shells for hours, lining them all up in row after row. He didn’t even start to talk until well after he was weaned. No one’s ever—”

  “According to Athair Eamus, he’s showing signs. He’ll be here soon? I’ll wait.”

  “Oh, no, you won’t. Let me be clear.” Meeve advanced on her, bright eyes fixed in her flushed face. “I don’t want you here, Connla. I don’t want any of you here. I want you to pack up—all of you—and take yourselves off to Ardagh or TirNa’lugh or wherever you will. The blight, the goblins—these are your province. If you’d do something to ease my passing, you settle this land before I die.”

  Connla stared at Meeve, anger surging through her, blinding all vestiges of her druid-sight. Her whole arm twitched a frantic tattoo against her side, and she gritted her teeth, striving for control. “Watch your back, sister,” she blurted before she could stop herself. “Briecru—”

  “Oh, enough,” Meeve waved her hand in dismissal, a look of disgust on her face, and before Connla could continue, the door opened and a young page peered in.

  “Great Queen? Lord Lochlan’s been spotted on the causeway—at least, we think it’s Lord Lochlan—in this rain it’s hard to see.”

  “Lochlan?” said Meeve. “How could that be? Is he alone?” She glanced over her shoulder at Connla. “He must’ve turned back—”

  “He’s got someone with him—someone riding one of your own roans.”

  Connla limped forward. “Pentland’s a full three days’ ride from here, Meeve—even if he got there
by now, they could only have just left. You think it’s only coincidence they arrived here on the edge of a storm?”

  For a long moment Meeve stared at her, then turned to the page and said, “Set the watch for my son—Open the gates—have mead and blankets waiting. Tell them to draw hot baths and set fresh clothes warming. Go on now.” When the page had gone, she looked at Connla. “And you, too. I’ll order horses saddled and waiting. As soon as the weather breaks, I want you all on your way.”

  In disbelief Connla gripped Meeve’s arm. “I don’t think you understand what you could be dealing with, Meeve. This is all beyond your ken—it’s beyond mine, if that really is Lochlan and Bran. How’d they get here in less than half the time it should’ve taken?”

  Meeve stalked past her, and for a moment, Connla thought she might simply walk out of the room without replying. But with her hand on the latch, she said, “I’ll watch him and if he shows signs, as you say, I’ll send word.”

  Connla put a hand on Meeve’s shoulder and was struck by how thin it felt beneath the sumptuous silk tunic. “You send me the boy, Meeve. Promise me, or I won’t leave. That boy shows any sign at all of being druid, and you send him to me. To Ardagh, at once.”

  Meeve looked pointedly at Connla’s hand, then said, “Fine. Now allow me to go greet my son.”

  “I’ll see you at MidSummer, Meeve, and I’ll expect a full accounting of every dram of silver,” she managed to finish as Meeve shut the door with a hollow slam that reverberated through every one of Connla’s aching bones.

  She couldn’t just depart the castle, she thought. She couldn’t just leave Bran here, unguarded, untended. What to do, what to do, she wondered, gnawing on her lower lip, rubbing her right arm. Then she thought of the trixies in their hive under the Tor. She’d set them to mind him, she thought. That should divert their attention, and as long as he was here, they’d ground his magic so that he’d not slip into the OtherWorld by accident and be lost. Whether or not he’d be able to cope with them—well, they didn’t call them trixies for nothing. She’d set it as sort of a test for him, she thought as she limped out of the room, her old bones aching from the damp. If he wasn’t druid, he wouldn’t see them, wouldn’t be aware of them and, at best, would find their attentions a source of puzzlement and perplexity. On the other hand, a small voice cautioned, if he is druid, they can make his life a living torment. But that, she decided, was a risk she would have to take.