Voada watched, ready to snatch Magaidh away herself if she needed to do so—and wondering what would happen if she did—but she saw Magaidh’s anamacha suddenly vanish, and she released her own at the same time. The storm-riddled world of the dead draoi fell away from her, and she was back in the temple in Muras, seeing Magaidh sway and nearly fall. Voada caught the young woman and lowered her to sit on the bed alongside her.
“Ceanndraoi, I never thought … How do you manage … ?”
Voada smiled and patted Magaidh’s hand. “I was exhausted and overwhelmed too the first time I did that. I promise that you’ll get used to it, and you’ll learn how to use what’s there. I’ll teach you.”
Voada closed her eyes for a moment, taking in a long breath, then rose to her feet again. “And now,” she said, “I have to find the ceannàrd. We’re done with Muras. We need to move on while we still have surprise on our side.”
“The capital of Trusa is open to us. The entire south is open.” Maol grinned at Voada, clapping his hands together in satisfaction. The ceannàrd had taken the Voice of Muras’ villa on the bluff above the Meadham as his temporary residence. Beyond the balcony on which Voada and Maol stood, she could see the Voice and the Voice-wife’s bodies, hung splayed, bloody, and naked on either side of the villa’s gates: a warning to the Mundoa.
Inside, in the grand dining room of the villa, dishes clattered and voices were raised as Hùisdean—Maol’s driver—and several of the clan àrds, among them Comhnall Mac Tsagairt, availed themselves of the best dishes of the Voice’s estate, as well as the rich plunder of his larder and wine cellar. Magaidh had accompanied Voada here and was also inside, having joined her husband. Through the open doors, Voada could see the two of them embracing and kissing, Magaidh’s anamacha standing alongside her. Magaidh seemed to feel Voada’s gaze on her; she looked over and smiled. Voada remembered similar times she’d had with Meir and how she’d hoped to see Orla just as happily married, and though she smiled back at the young woman, the grief of her loss surged through her again, as sharp as ever. Meir was already gone, but would she ever see Orla and Hakan again?
She turned away before Magaidh could notice the tears that threatened.
“We’ll sweep into the capital like a gale from the Storm Sea. We’ll roust the Great-Voice himself from his throne and send his head back to Rumeli as a gift for Emperor Pashtuk,” Maol continued, a little too loudly. Voada could smell the wine on his breath. He gestured southward with a golden cup, and scarlet liquid sloshed over the rim. His steps toward her were stumbling.
“No,” Voada told him flatly. She sniffed away the remnants of the moment with Magaidh. “First we’re going to Pencraig.”
“Pencraig?” Maol laughed, the dry sound echoing in the courtyard below. “Voada, I understand why you want to go there, but Trusa is the prize we need to capture. We can’t let it slip out of our hands because we delayed. Pencraig can wait until after Trusa. Strategically, Pencraig has no value at all.”
Voada was already shaking her head long before he’d finished. “Trusa is your prize, not mine,” she told him. As she spoke, her hand went involuntarily to the silver oak leaf pendant on its chain, the twin of the one she and Meir had given to Orla. Maol’s gaze followed the movement of her hand. “I told you from the very beginning what I want. I want my children back, and they were in Pencraig when I last saw them, and it is Voice Kadir who let them be taken and who nearly cost me my own life. I am going to Pencraig, Ceannàrd. If you like, I will tell our army that they need to choose who they follow: you or me. You can take those who will go with you to Trusa, and I’ll take those who wish to follow me to Pencraig.”
Even Voada could tell that her own voice had changed. Her declaration sounded like a faint echo of the god-voice the Moonshadow had lent her. The thought troubled her, though she allowed none of it to show on the stern face she turned toward Maol. Is it truly her I hear? Have I somehow brought her out of the anamacha? Has she already taken a part of me? But no, the anamacha was standing well to her right, and she couldn’t hear their voices at all.
Maol’s mood darkened, and his intoxication seemed to vanish in an instant. He threw his goblet angrily to the side; wine splashed over the white marble rail of the balcony, and metal rang. “You asked me to lead this army, Voada. What you’re proposing is a mistake. News of the fall of Muras will reach Great-Voice Vadim in Trusa in less than a hand of days. No more. As soon as he hears it, he’s going to send his fastest riders to Commander Savas and order him to bring the army home. If we march directly on Trusa now, immediately, then we’ll arrive before the Great-Voice learns about Muras or at nearly the same time—certainly before he has any chance to respond or pull more troops to the city. We’ll be in Trusa before they have a chance to prepare. If we take the days to go to Pencraig instead, we’ll lose that chance. They’ll know we’re coming. Voada, you need to listen to me as the ceannàrd.”
Perhaps it was the exhaustion of the day and the use of her anamacha, but a matching anger flared in her at the man’s insistence. Voada put her hands on her hips, glaring at him. “You aren’t listening to me, Maol. I asked you to lead our warriors into battle, but no more than that. This is my war, and it was my story that brought the clans together. I don’t care whether Savas learns about us a few days before he might otherwise. Trusa can wait until I have my children with me again. And as for Savas … no matter how quickly he abandons the attack on Onglse—if he does that at all—he still won’t reach Trusa before we do.”
“You can’t be certain of that.”
“Perhaps not. But I know that I and those who wish to follow me will be going to Pencraig first. So I ask you, Ceannàrd, will you go there with me or not?”
“Voada …”
She waited, holding his gaze. Finally, Maol sighed. He blinked. “As you wish, Ceanndraoi.” He put heavy emphasis on the title. “I know who the army would follow if you made them choose. I’ll go with you to Pencraig. But it’s still a mistake.”
“I hear you, but I disagree,” Voada told him. “In any case, the decision’s made. Let’s join Magaidh, Àrd Mac Tsagairt, Hùisdean, and the others. We’ll give them the news: we’ll leave tomorrow at dawn. In the meantime, I’m famished, and we have a long march ahead of us.”
As they moved toward their companions, Voada stepped close to her anamacha, feeling the cold brush against her skin, and in that moment she heard its multiple voices, the Moonshadow’s tones dominant among them.
Voada didn’t answer her.
23
Returning Home
“THAT’S ENOUGH FOR NOW,” Voada said to Magaidh. “You’re doing well. Better than I did, truthfully, and learning faster.”
Magaidh smiled and sat down next to Voada at a small campfire on the edge of the army’s encampment. They’d gone there in order to continue Magaidh’s lessons; Voada had watched Magaidh pull the flowing water from a creek bordering the field where they’d halted for the night, reversing the flow and sending it upstream as a tumbling, roaring wave before letting it crash down on its rocky bed once more. Her anamacha seemed particularly adept at manipulating water.
“You’re being very kind, Ceanndraoi,” Magaidh said, “but I find that hard to believe. After all, my anamacha isn’t yours. I can’t imagine being able to handle the Moonshadow. Even those inside my anamacha whisper about it.”
“Do they?” Voada asked, and Magaidh nodded, her hair glistening in the firelight. Voada could see the weariness in the young woman’s face from opening herself to her anamacha without Voada’s aid and using it, but she’d done well. She’d bonded easily with the shade of Tormod, and if there were deeper, more powerful, and dangerous shades within that anamacha, Tormod was shielding Magaidh from them.
Not like her own anamacha. Neither the shadow of Iomhar nor any of the other dead draoi inside could hold back Leagsaidh Moonshadow if she wanted to step forw
ard. Nor could Voada, it seemed.
“They say that the Moonshadow is too powerful, that she’s fey and wild,” Magaidh was saying, as if echoing Voada’s own thoughts. “They say that it’s her will that drives you, that you won’t be able to control her power or go against her.” Magaidh’s shoulders lifted and fell. “I’m sorry, Ceanndraoi, if that offends you. I … it’s only that I worry about you. I owe you so much.”
“You’ve been a good friend to me, Magaidh,” Voada told her. And you remind me of what Orla could have been—no, no, I can’t think that way. Of what Orla will be once I find her. “And you shouldn’t worry. I can contain the Moonshadow. I promise you.” Or maybe I should have stayed longer with Ceanndraoi Greum. Perhaps he knew how to hold back the Moonshadow. But it’s too late for that …
Her anamacha was standing just behind her. Voada glanced over her shoulder at it, at the fleeting faces of the draoi it contained. One face—a woman’s, with hair fiery in the storm-light and eyes of piercing blue—stared at her, staying fixed on the anamacha’s face for a breath longer than the others and regarding her almost with sadness. The Moonshadow … But then it was gone again, lost in the next face and the next, all the draoi who were part of this specter.
“If you say that I shouldn’t worry, Ceanndraoi,” she heard Magaidh say, “then I won’t, and I’m pleased that you would call me a friend. I hope to always be that for you.”
Voada could only smile again. She wanted to pull the woman close to her, to hug her as she would Orla. Instead, she placed her hand over Magaidh’s. “Thank you. I need your friendship more than you could possibly know. It’s not something I’ve experienced much of late.”
“Ceannàrd Iosa … he’s also your friend, isn’t he?” Magaidh’s voice was almost shy as she said it, and Voada could hear the unsubtle implication under the question.
“Ceannàrd Iosa and I share a common goal,” Voada answered. “But beyond that …” She shook her head. The last friend I had was Ceiteag, and I left her behind in Onglse. Only Elia knows if she is even still alive. And Maol is only interested in how he can use me as a weapon or how he can entice me into his bed.
“Ah,” Magaidh breathed. “I wondered. The two of you—well, Comhnall and I sometimes argue as I’ve heard the two of you do, and so I thought perhaps …” Magaidh caught her lip between her teeth, stopping the words. “You loved the Hand of Pencraig? Your husband?”
That brought images of Meir to her mind. His face, his touch, his laugh … I still remember. I’ll always remember. “Meir? Yes, I loved him. He was … well, he was everything I wanted in a husband and in the father of our children. I can’t imagine feeling that way about someone ever again.”
Voada blinked, feeling sudden and unbidden moisture run from her eyes and down her cheeks. Now it was Magaidh’s hand that covered Voada’s for a moment, warm against the evening chill before it left again.
Voada sighed and sniffed away Meir’s memory. She rose, Magaidh rising with her. “We should sleep,” she said. “I’ll ride with you while we’re traveling tomorrow so we can continue to practice, and when we reach Pencraig, you’ll be ready.”
Pencraig.
Voada’s breath caught as soon as she saw the mist-blue lump on the horizon that was Pencraig Bluff, rising high above the floodplain of the Yarrow. She wanted to be there already, but they were still a half day’s march away and had yet to ford the Yarrow. She wondered if someone on the bluff had already run to inform Voice Kadir, if he were already staring down from near the temple as Voada’s army moved inexorably toward the town. She wondered if he trembled at the sight.
She hoped so.
“I hope you’ve heard of Ceanndraoi Voada, and I hope hearing that name makes you piss yourself.”
“Voada?” Maol asked, looking over his shoulder at her.
“It’s nothing,” she told him. “I was just speaking my thoughts aloud.”
She was riding in Maol’s war chariot at the head of the army with Magaidh and Comhnall Mac Tsagairt’s chariot alongside them. Behind them, other chariots and riders were clustered, followed by legions of those on foot, and trailing the foot soldiers came the vanguard of supply wagons as well as the camp followers: wives, children, those too injured to walk, as well as untrained Cateni who had simply joined them along the way.
In the past hand of days, they’d swept largely unopposed through several small villages in the farmlands that comprised the lower floodplain of the Meadham as they moved east to the confluence of the Yarrow, where they finally turned south. Those Mundoa who chose to resist had been killed; most had simply fled southward, toward Trusa and the Mundoan cities of the lower half of Albann Deas. The Cateni army had swelled in size, and from necessity, they plundered the ripe fields and farms through which they moved in order to feed themselves.
Toward Pencraig. Toward the answers that Voada was seeking. Toward, hopefully, her reunion with Orla and Hakan.
“We’ll be at the ford before midday,” Maol told her. “You still believe we’ll encounter no resistance before then?”
Voada nodded. “I doubt we will. Pencraig sits on the other side of the Yarrow—there’s nothing but a few fisherfolks’ huts on this side. The Pencraig garrison has always been smaller than that of Muras; I don’t think they’ll be at all eager to meet us.” She scowled, remembering Sub-Commander Bakir and his treatment of Orla. I will pay you back for that tenfold. “I suspect their ranks have been thinned to join Savas at Onglse, just like all the rest, and they were never that impressive even before that. They may simply flee rather than fight. We’ll have the town before the sun sets. I’ll promise that.”
She clenched her jaw as she finished. Already she could see the white speck that was the temple at the top of Pencraig Bluff. I’ll take Pashtuk’s bust and throw it from the bluff. Then I’ll dig up Elia’s statue and put Her back on that altar myself. It’s time She sat where she belongs once more … Long past time …
She could feel Maol’s regard on her as she started toward the place that had once been her home. If he thought otherwise than she, he said nothing.
They marched on, a storm ready to break upon the town.
As promised, they reached the banks of Yarrow Ford, just upstream from Pencraig, as the sun stood high in the sky. Across the river, several hands of Mundoan archers and soldiers were arrayed, most of them beardless youngsters with frightened faces. They were directed by an officer Voada didn’t recognize: an old graybeard who seemed to sit uneasily on his horse and whose krug—the Mundoan armor—seemed to have been fashioned for a man half his girth, the straps gaping and straining at the sides. She wondered where Sub-Commander Bakir might be, and sudden worry gnawed at her stomach.
Yarrow Ford was wide but shallow, with grass growing here and there where there were tiny islets when the river ran low, as it did now. Maol halted their advance force several strides from the water. The Mundoan archers, at the barked orders of their officer, brought their bows up, aimed them toward the sky, and unleashed a barrage of arrows, nearly all of which were misaimed and fell into the river or onto the muddy bank, where they stuck upright in a mockery of the water grass of the ford.
Maol laughed. He gestured to Voada. “Old men and half-children … If this is the best they can do, you’re right: we’ll make short work of Pencraig. Talk to the fool, Ceanndraoi.”
Stepping down from the chariot, Voada approached the river, wearing the dark red robe she’d adopted as ceanndraoi, the torc—now wrapped in silver wire—polished and bright around her neck and the silver oak leaf glittering beneath it. She wondered if the Mundoa would even recognize her or the symbols she bore. Stopping where the furthest arrow had pierced the mud, she called across the river. “I am Ceanndraoi Voada. I was once Voada Paorach, Hand-wife of Pencraig, and I have returned.”
The aged officer didn’t seem to react, but some of the men with him did. She saw them turn to each other, speaking and pointing at her. The officer shouted at them—“Quiet! Get back int
o your ranks!”—then turned toward her. “I am Sub-Commander Adem Nabi of the Pencraig garrison.” So Bakir was no longer sub-commander? Worry grew inside Voada at that news; could it mean that Orla was also gone? Where was she? “Your name means nothing to me, Ceanndraoi Voada. You and your filthy Cateni are not permitted to pass here.”
Now it was Voada who laughed, and Maol and the Cateni warriors within earshot gave voice to their amusement as well. “I and this group of ‘filthy Cateni’ have taken Muras and burned her to the ground. We intend to do the same to every Mundoan city in Albann Deas. You don’t have enough arrows for all of us or enough soldiers. You’re as bothersome to us as a slow, fat summer fly, and we’ll smash you as easily. Listen to me, Sub-Commander. I’m giving you a chance to save your life and those of your men. Leave the ford, and leave Pencraig. I have business with Voice Kadir, and I won’t be stopped here. Or, if you prefer, we’ll simply walk over your dead bodies as we pass.”
Again she could see the soldiers breaking rank and whispering, and again Nabi snapped at them. His horse was restless under him. “I have my orders from Voice Kadir,” he called across the river to Voada. “I am here to protect Pencraig, and I will do so.”
“There is no protecting Pencraig from us, Sub-Commander. Use your old eyes. This is an army at my back, and with me are the greatest warriors of the northern clans. With me are draoi who can call the elements to do their bidding. I’m giving you a chance to live long enough to return to Rumeli and the near-children you’re commanding the opportunity to live long enough to have families of their own.”
Nabi didn’t respond immediately. Once more, the soldiers with him broke rank. Some of the ones in the rear turned and began to run back toward Pencraig, tossing their weapons aside. This time Nabi said nothing to them. “I have my orders,” he said again, his voice barely audible over the rustling of the willows on the riverbank and the rippling waters of the Yarrow.
A Fading Sun Page 23