by Grace Draven
Niamh’s affectionate smile reminded Imogen of better days. “You were always a squeamish one when it came to insects and worms.”
“It’s the crawly little legs I don’t like. I always have the urge to scratch, like now.” She smoothed the blankets over Niamh’s thin legs and was relieved to see the small blood spots had not spread. “Continue with your tale.”
“It’s no tale, girl, but the truth. Tineroth is real as is her king. His people once called him Cededa the Fair, then Cededa the Butcher, and then they called him no more. Only the carvings on Tineroth’s gates remember him and not by name. He drank the Waters and became the Undying King.”
Chills spread across Imogen’s body despite the room’s stifling heat. She knew the story of the Undying King, an emperor desperate to retain his throne and his power who drank the Waters of Eternal Life. That which should have been a blessing had become a curse.
His true name had been lost in the passage of time and the births and deaths of generations. The idea that a man so old still lived and lingered in an ancient city seen only by ensorcelled eyes raised goose flesh on her arms. That Niamh knew his true name and wanted to send her daughter to him made her shiver.
“He is a great warrior, but most importantly, a great mage,” Niamh continued, ignoring her daughter’s growing unease. She reached for Imogen who clasped her hand. “He can break your curse, Imogen. I know it!” The fervor in her voice was reflected in the glitter of her eyes. “When I am gone, you must find Tineroth and Cededa. Tell him you’ve come to call in a debt owed. The Waters have cursed him with long life and blessed him with great power. He can do for you what I never could, no matter how hard I tried.”
The strength with which Niamh squeezed her hand surprised Imogen and alarmed her. “Peace, Mother.” She bathed the woman’s sweating brow, feeling the dampness soak into her glove and wishing she might comfort her with a bare hand instead of one covered in protective shrouding. “Be still. That’s enough excitement for now.”
But Niamh refused to quiet. “Don’t patronize me, girl,” she wheezed. “I’m not dead yet.” Her dark stare threatened to burn holes in Imogen. “Do you understand what I’m saying? Cededa can give you the life you should have had. No more gloves or isolation.” Her voice faded, and her eyelids drooped as the tea’s mild narcotic effects finally took hold. “A life no longer held prisoner by death.” She said the last on a sigh and fell asleep.
Imogen held vigil for a moment before rising to dump the rest of the cup’s contents into the fire. The flame sizzled and hissed, reminding her of the enchanted pendant in the box. Her thoughts whirled in a soup of confusion and burgeoning hope. She ruthlessly crushed the second, consigning it to the deep recesses of her mind where other false dreams and dead hopes resided. No one—not even an immortal king—could rid her of this malevolence lurking beneath her skin. Imogen doubted she’d receive either aid or mercy from a man whose own people christened him The Butcher.
But Niamh believed in Cededa of Tineroth, and Imogen believed in Niamh. The hope she’d driven back into the shadows refused to go quietly and rose up to float beneath the surface of her more mundane thoughts, lingering there as she brewed a cup of tea for herself and sat at the table admiring daffodils in the guttering firelight. Could an immortal king truly help a woman who’d been born as Death’s handmaiden?
Niamh’s steady, if frail, breathing comforted her, lulling her into a waking daze where the pop of burning wood and the shifting creak of tree branches outside played a lyrical tune. In the loft, her bed lay empty, the sheets stale and cold. Imogen hadn’t slept there the past four days and her back was beginning to feel the strain of sleeping in her hard chair, but she refused to leave Niamh’s side. She yawned, folded her arms on the table and rested her head on their makeshift pillow. She was asleep in moments and dreamed of silver serpents twining about her legs and arms in a cool, metallic caress. Their scales were slippery smooth and glided over her skin in whispers, like sands shifting on an ancient shore.
A rattling gasp awakened her just as the first red streaks of dawn painted the window. She jerked upright, befuddled with sleep. Her gaze settled on the bed where Niamh’s entire body convulsed and arched beneath blankets soaked in gore from waist to knee.
Imogen raced to the bedside. “Oh gods; oh gods,” she chanted, as she gripped Niamh’s thin shoulders to hold her still. Her mother heaved under her hands, eyes rolled back into her head, mouth wet with blood-flecked spittle.
The thrashing seemed to go on forever. Niamh finally calmed, her sunken eyes still closed in a face made cadaverous and paler than marble. Her breath rattled, pausing in spaces of silence so long Imogen wondered if she had finally slipped the bonds that held her spirit to earth. But Niamh held on—long enough to open her eyes and gaze at her daughter with a pleading expression that made Imogen flinch. “Forgive me, my darling girl,” she rasped.
Imogen stared into those dark, dark eyes with all their memories and secrets and saw surrender. Death was a shadow on the doorstep, one foot already across the threshold, held at bay only by the pain that gripped her mother. Tears spilled down Imogen’s cheeks, dripping on to their entwined fingers. “Oh Mother, there’s nothing to forgive.”
“Help me, Imogen. I am so very tired.”
Imogen gasped out a sob. She released Niamh long enough to remove her gloves. Ivory hands, smooth and unblemished by scars or the sun lifted and meshed slowly with Niamh’s own wrinkled ones, their clasp as lethal as it was merciful.
The older woman smiled gently. For a moment her gaze sharpened, grew clear with wonder. Imogen, caught in that same wonder and bittersweet sorrow of touching her mother’s skin for the first time without gloves, leaned forward and kissed Niamh’s cool forehead. When she straightened, Niamh still wore the smile, but her eyes were blank.
Heedless of the bloody linens, Imogen gathered the limp, fragile body into her arms and greeted the dawn with quiet sobs.
CHAPTER TWO
The descending sun lacquered the Adal harbor in crimson and orange light. From his place at one of the high windows in his library, Prince Hayden watched ships sail slowly into the harbor, accompanied by playful dolphins that rode the slow-treading bow waves. Dwellings clung to the cliff walls on either side of the harbor, their walking paths snaking down the worn rock like ribbons in a woman’s hair. The white-washed walls of houses gleamed in the dying light, and lanterns flickered to life amidst the rise of shadows.
The young prince ignored the picturesque scene before him. He’d viewed it a thousand times, and its glory was lost on him. Instead, he looked beyond the harbor, to the vast sea that swelled with the rising tide and the coming of nightfall. There, past the horizon and out of his reach, were the shipping lanes that provided wealth and riches untold to the neighboring kingdom of Berberi. Hayden’s hands clenched into fists. Those shipping lanes rightfully belonged to the kingdom of Castagher, and if she had the martial power Berberi did, Hayden would wrest them from Berberi by force.
His hands relaxed. There were other ways to gain back what was lost, ways that didn’t require war and bloodshed. He had no wish to be the king his father had been, bankrupting his country to finance wars that only weakened Castagher in the end.
A polite knock at the door signaled his awaited visitor had arrived. “Enter,” he called.
Dradus, Castagher’s highest ranking mage and Hayden’s most trusted advisor, bowed briefly. His sly gaze lit on the prince before passing over the new texts he’d sent from the library of a mage condemned for heresy.
“I see you received my gifts, Sire.”
Hayden turned away from the window to face him. “I did. They are fine indeed. I’ve only had a chance to browse through one of them so far.” He waved his hand as if to brush off the topic. “That is unimportant. What have you discovered?”
Dradus rubbed his palms together. “It is as the servant said. Old Varn’s mistress didn’t disappear. She simply moved to the Borders. Folks from t
hree of the nearby towns said a red-haired witch named Niamh traded with them at market day. The older ones remember her carrying a baby, always swaddled, that she let no one touch or see.”
“Varn’s daughter.”
“I’m almost sure of it.”
Hayden scowled. “You need to be absolutely certain, Dradus. I want the girl found and brought back here. If she’s Varn’s offspring, then I will have rightful access to those shipping lanes.”
Dradus hesitated in delivering his next bit of news. “My scouts think they’ve found the home where the witch lives. A hovel away from the main road and even the cattle path. The villagers say two women live there, but both are old.”
“Sounds like the wrong hovel then.”
The mage shook his head. “Not necessarily. Niamh possessed strong magic and could manipulate illusion. She might have magicked the girl to look like a crone. It’s said one of them always wore gloves and refused to touch anything offered to her in the market.”
Hayden closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. There was more conjecture in Dradus’s story than real information, but he couldn’t afford to take any chances and lose a scent. For almost thirty years, Niamh had managed to avoid capture by both Dradus and his father. That she hadn’t already slipped through his fingers surprised him. “Any of your scouts mages like you?”
“Only one and no match for a witch of Niamh’s skill.” Dradus executed a small bow. “With your permission, I can ride there with a small troop and bring the girl back to you if she proves to be Varn’s.”
Hayden arched a skeptical eyebrow. “It takes a troop of soldiers and a mage-adept to bring in an old woman and a girl?”
Dradus’s features smoothed into an expressionless mask. “Think of it more as a powerful witch and her trained apprentice, Sire.”
The mage had a point. “Fine. Take as many soldiers as you deem necessary. I want her captured and brought to me.”
“Sire, rumor has it she may be cursed or diseased.”
Hayden shrugged. “I don’t care if she’s half eaten with leprosy. I need only prove she’s Varn’s daughter and my betrothed and those shipping lanes are mine.”
Dradus bowed low and backed out of the room, leaving Hayden alone with his thoughts once more. A dying nursemaid who had sought to unburden her soul in hopes of redemption had been an unexpected boon for him. Varn’s daughter and his dead aunt’s child. He wondered briefly whom she might resemble then shrugged the thought away. It mattered little. She was a child of Berberi and Castagher, and the means by which Hayden intended to extract just due from his neighbor.
CHAPTER THREE
The ancient fir that stood sentinel over Niamh’s grave had borne silent witness to a few of the spring and autumnal rituals the witch performed when she lived. Imogen thought it fitting the tree watch over her mother’s body where it lay buried beneath black earth and a mound of stones.
Niamh had died a week earlier, and the daffodils she so admired spread across the forest floor in a vast white and yellow tapestry. Imogen set a spray of the flowers atop the grave and bowed her head.
“It’s very quiet now, Mother. I miss you.”
As if in answer, a zephyr wind smelling of rye and apple blossoms blew across her shoulders, fluttering the tendrils of dark hair that had escaped her plait. A fanciful indulgence it might be, but she liked to think Niamh’s spirit lingered where her body rested, if only to greet Imogen when she visited the grave each day.
Some might think it strange that she came each afternoon to sit by the grave and talk to a pile of rocks, but Imogen didn’t care. Niamh had been her only companion her entire life, the one person who shared conversation with her. Her grief was still too fresh to give that up now, even if Niamh never replied.
Imogen fished in her apron pocket and pulled out the journal her mother had given her the night of her death. She kept it with her these days, reading it, as promised, during spare moments between chores and in the evening just before bed. The journal revealed a Niamh Imogen had never known or imagined.
The ground beneath her was dry and sun-warmed as she sat down cross-legged next to the grave and removed her gloves. Imogen liked to read here best, with the spirit of her mother close by and her memories revealing themselves in a flowing scrawl of faded ink.
Recipes for elixirs occupied the pages alongside lists of spells and commentary on the politics of the Berberi court. The spells and recipes were familiar. After hours of lessons and singing repetitious songs with ingredients and chants as lyrics, she knew them by heart.
But it was her mother’s observations of the vagaries of the aristocrats that captured Imogen’s interest. Astute, observant Niamh; she’d been less than impressed with the shenanigans perpetrated by spoiled, entitled nobility.
Imogen had gone wide-eyed at the discovery that Niamh had once been the pampered mistress of King Varn, and she blushed as she read those entries. Niamh waxed poetic and graphically about Varn’s physical prowess.
He is a fine man, the king. Strong shoulders and hair like the sun at Solstice. I see the women of court eye him. He’s a prized stallion and not just for his wealth and power. If they only knew the man was hung as well as the biggest stud in the royal stables.
“Honestly, Mother, was it necessary to write it down?” Imogen had muttered to herself and quickly skimmed the pages containing Niamh’s descriptions of bed play. Her sharp, no-nonsense words echoed in Imogen’s mind.
“The coupling between a man and a woman is as natural as it gets, Imogen. There’s no shame to it, nor should it be whispered of furtively in the dark. That way lies ignorance and stupidity.” She had blithely ignored Imogen’s red face and proceeded to tell her in detail the mating rituals of man and woman.
It was years since that conversation, and Imogen still squirmed in embarrassment. Her mother explaining in her blunt fashion the way a lover should treat his mate was one thing, reading about such very personal experiences something else entirely. She fluttered those pages through her fingers until she reached the section she’d stopped at a day earlier. This entry was different and far more intriguing.
There is a man in my house. Or half a man at least. Poor creature. I stumbled upon him behind the bailey, hidden by the old rowan near the eastern wall. I thought him a half-rotten corpse, dug up from a shallow grave by an opportunistic scavenger. Then it spoke. Sweet gods, I nearly pissed myself.
Imogen worried her lower lip with two fingers, eyes glued to the page.
I almost left him there. My magic is of earth and seasons and growing things. I don’t truck with the black mages of Westerwall, and this deathless horror facing me is surely the creation of one of these mages.
Imogen paused in her reading. The irony of Niamh’s statements struck home. She wondered if the woman had ever reread these passages in her later years and thought to herself how strange it was that Death in another form resided in her house and had been raised at her knee.
She returned to her reading and Niamh’s account of bringing the man into her house and placing him in one the guest rooms where servants dared not visit. Planning and secrets and the need to keep down servant gossip made for good reading and Imogen was absorbed by her mother’s descriptions of her patient.
He rarely speaks. I think the suffering is so great, it’s too much effort to talk. I cannot help but watch as his body is slowly made whole by unseen hands. He must have been burned at some point, for it is ashes, still smelling of the fires, which swirl into the room and cast themselves upon him, becoming healthy flesh.
Imogen’s skin prickled at the imagery her descriptions evoked, and the hairs at her nape stood on end at the next entry.
I found a bone outside his door this morning, scorched black in spots. I don’t know how it got here without being noticed. I didn’t dare touch it, only opened the door and walked away. When I came to check on him in the afternoon, he had regained an arm.”
Another entry referenced the Tineroth pen
dant.
This magic is old. Old beyond the memory of our books and scribes, even beyond the knowledge of the Primus mages. A key and a map to vanished Tineroth. There is truth in every legend. I didn’t refuse the gift, though I have no desire to wear this strange bauble, nor any reason to seek this mad king’s help. He speaks little even now, but his eyes…I will be glad to see him go back to whatever so desperately calls him.”
Imogen rubbed her arms. She promised Niamh she would read her journal. She’d made no promise to seek out Cededa of Tineroth. Her hands, ungloved now, looked innocent enough, and she held them up, watching as sunbeams streamed between her fingers. Not until Niamh’s death had she ever touched another living person with her bare hands. Her affliction might have been easier to shoulder if it was limited to her hands, but death flowed in her veins. Could this king, immune to the very thing that cursed her, truly help?
The light had grown so weak, Imogen had to squint to see the writing. She closed the book and rose from her place. The flowers resting atop the grave waved their petals at her in the gentle breeze, as if to bid her farewell for the evening. Imogen lifted the book and gazed speculatively at the burial mound. “Who is this woman I’m reading about, Mother? She is a stranger to me.” Only the creak of the fir’s limbs and the growing chorus of frogs peeping answered her. She returned the book to her apron pocket and trudged back to the house.
Her dinner that night might well have been a bowl of mud for all the attention she paid to it. Niamh’s history, in the time before Imogen was born, read like the legends she’d filled her ears with in childhood. Lover of one man, savior to another. What had brought her so low in her later years?
Her gaze drifted to the box that still housed the Tineroth pendant. It rested back on its shelf undisturbed. Imogen had left the pendant alone, still unnerved by its odd abilities to come alive at unexpected moments. Her growing curiosity overrode her wariness, and she retrieved the box. Left unlocked by Niamh’s spell, the lid opened easily, revealing the pendant. A metallic wink greeted Imogen, and she carefully lifted the bauble by its delicate chain and held it aloft.