by Terry Madden
Lyleth would string it once again.
She prepared to leave Dunla’s meadstead at dawn, filling a rucksack with bread and cheese. It was important that the old woman know nothing of her destination.
“What you seek, lass, is unnatural,” Dunla said. “For you. For your lord. Perhaps you should let this she-king burn bright and sputter out.” She handed Lyleth an old cloak and some threadbare trousers.
Lyleth added the clothes to her sack and fetched her bow. “I’ll do what I must.”
Dunla took Lyleth’s face between warm, doughy palms and cooed through missing teeth, her breath spiced with nuts and mead. “They’ll ask a price, they will. The green gods are not so free with their gifts.”
“I’ll pay.”
“Though you know not the sum?”
Tears welled in Dunla’s eyes and she gripped Lyleth’s shoulders as if to plant her in the ground.
“Tell me true,” Dunla said. “Do you seek to mend your heart?”
“Some would say I have no heart.”
“I know better, lass. Heal your heart and that of your lord, and the harp’s work will be true.”
Lyleth slung the satchel over her shoulder.
“You’ve been more than a friend.” She touched the old woman’s cheek. “I must be gone. Will you help me find a flask of mead worthy of a king?”
Dunla’s mead was known not only in the Five Quarters, but even in the vinelands of the south. A fermentation of honey of the finest flowering, it was fed by the elements of an ancient soil, watered by rain and snow that blew off the Western Sea, secreted by the bodies of insects that passed freely between this world and the other.
Lyleth believed there had never been a husband for Dunla. Her story of the widowed bride who inherited this vast swath of hillside and valley from her fine man was all a fancy tale. At this moment, it seemed she had been here for decades, eons perhaps, for there were tales that said a handful of Old Blood had escaped the exile. When the third well was opened, they fled to the northern wilds and there lived on in secret. Children’s tales.
Lyleth’s goshawk, Wren, perched atop the sod-covered undercroft where Dunla aged her brew. The hawk had followed Lyleth the day she rode from Caer Ys. He was one of Nechtan’s hunting birds, and Lyleth had always felt that in this bird, a part of Nechtan followed her.
The air in the undercroft was ancient, cool as winter. Barrels were stacked on plank shelves that bowed with the weight.
“It mustn’t be just any vintage,” Dunla muttered, working her way through the shelves in the dim light of the doorway. “I have one… ’Twas a year of late winter. The bees fed on the last of the cat’s ear lily and fire chalice… ah, here.”
The barrel was covered with dust and traced with cobwebs. Dunla produced a decanter from the recesses of the room. Even in near darkness the flask reflected spears of colored light on the stone walls. It was like no flask Lyleth had ever seen.
“Found it buried in here when I put up the shelves,” Dunla said. “Fancy that, eh? Such a fine piece left behind. Hold it for me, lass.”
Lyleth held the flask while Dunla racked off the pure sweet mead from the dregs, then dragged her finger across the spigot and licked it.
“Aye. ‘Tis the one for Nechtan.” Dunla gave a short whistle. “My lord won’t have tasted any better in the Otherworld.”
Grave robbers carry talismans to guard against the bane of the dead they desecrate. Lyleth had no such talisman. Nechtan had cursed her in life, what more could he do in death?
His grave wasn’t far now, but which way? The wood grew thick here.
She set Wren to flight above the canopy of oak and beech. The goshawk labored upward, his jesses whipped with the eddy of his wings. He had glided through the ceiling of golden leaves and was out of sight when a long piping cry told Lyleth he moved south and east. She followed, and soon the long barrow that held Nechtan and his ancestors rose from the forest floor.
The Barrow of the Kings tunneled deep beneath a greenwood, the base stones just visible under the heap of earth. A silver hazel tree crowned the mound, embracing it in a knot of roots and fallen leaves.
Wren perched on a bare branch overhead and preened his breast feathers.
“Go get us a rabbit,” she told him.
The bird turned a golden eye down on her and shat.
“A fine hunter you are.” She knew she would miss the hawk when all was done.
Her kindling axe made a fair wedge, and after some sweat, the portal stone moved a finger’s breadth. She shimmed it with sticks of increasing size until a fallen branch would do as a lever. When the huge stone finally rolled, it did so quickly.
A dark corridor beckoned.
She reached into the pouch at her belt to find her store of waxed rushlights. She uncorked a phial of hartshorn, dipped the rushlight and struck it on a rock. A sputtering flame cast sparks of gold down the passage of fitted stones that met and kissed just above her head, leaning at drunken angles, disturbed as they were by the roots of the hazel tree above.
A thousand years of kings lay sleeping in this dark corridor, but Lyleth had come for but one.
She found Nechtan’s father in the first recess, and to the right, his brother. In the next, a slab of granite held nothing but bones crowned by a circlet that had slipped over the eye sockets.
A watchstone marked with runes of red ochre guarded Nechtan’s body. On the day of his grieving fresh birch branches had been woven over him. Now, the leaves had dried and fallen to cover his body in a brittle drift.
Lyleth brushed them aside.
“My duty demands this of me—and you.” She heard the desperation in her voice and hoped he would, too.
She pulled the branches aside. His form had sunken away, traced by his cloak of farandine pulled close around him, hiding his hands.
The last time she’d seen Nechtan alive, he’d turned his back on her. “Our paths part here,” he had said.
Their paths had indeed parted. But he would face the consequences of their mistakes, as surely as Lyleth. She traced his cold lips with her fingers. How cruel of her to remind him of his duty in this world. She leaned close to his ear, whispering, “I am such a fool, my lord.”
With her dirk she severed his warrior’s braid. The silver bells tied to it rang out like an alarm, but the dead were deaf to her thievery. She tucked the braid in her pouch, pressed her lips to his forehead, and was gone.
The fire Lyleth had built at the barrow’s mouth had fallen to coals. Wren napped on his perch in the hazel tree while she twisted bundles of Nechtan’s hair, roping three to three to form a string thick enough to pluck. She dipped the ends in a cup of hot beeswax that sat warming at the edge of the coals. By the time she knotted and tightened each string in place on the tuning pegs at the harp’s neck, the moon had risen well overhead.
Touching the strings of his hair the harp sang a lethargic dirge, out of tune and muted. She turned the pegs and worked for the notes. The tension on the hair strings slackened quickly and required constant adjusting, but soon she gave it a full trill. At last, the strings trembled like wind in the woods, like Nechtan’s laughter.
She drowned in the sound; an old wound bled again.
Beside the fire, the flask of Dunla’s mead sat on a flat stone. Cut from a single shard of rock crystal, the flask was big-bellied like a milk pitcher. Veins of imperfections traced rainbow webs in the crystal, brought to life by fingers of fire and moonlight, gold and silver. The mead inside gathered the light into a vibrant chorus of existence.
Lyleth put her ear to the mouth of the flask to hear the light sing.
From a pouch around her neck, she withdrew a pearl. Nechtan had found it while he and Lyleth shucked oysters on the Isle of Glass, their punishment for swimming in the sea rather than working at their recitations. So many summers ago.
“Open your mouth,” he’d said.
“It’s not even cooked.”
“We eat them raw all the time in
Caer Ys. Best oysters in the Five Quarters. They’re a little better with black vinegar. Open.”
She hadn’t wanted him to think she was just a shepherd’s get who was new to the sea, so she let him cradle her chin with his cold hand. He opened her mouth gently. It slid onto her tongue, briny and sweet, but it wasn’t all soft. Something like a rock clacked against her teeth and she spit out a pearl the size of a plover egg.
“Will you have a look at that,” Nechtan had said.
Lyleth built up the fire—rowan and ash, oak and poplar, hazel and pine. When it snapped high, she added green salts of calanis, orris root, and moonflower. When she held the pearl to the light, it trembled with its own materiality.
Tonight, the green gods would hear her beg.
She dropped the pearl. It tumbled through the thick mead to the bottom of the flask, leaving a wake of jewel-like bubbles as it sank. Then, like a breath from a fish, it rose up again until it floated at the center of the flask.
Starlight doesn’t exist until it meets your eye. Only then is it real. Only then are you real.
She took up the harp and played. Sound and light met and mated in the flask, a tune that would rouse one who lay cradled in the arms of earth.
When dawn finally came, she had sung a lifetime into this mead, memories that shaped a man, both searing and sweet.
For Nechtan must remember everything.
The well was a day’s ride deep into the Felgarths. Lyleth pushed the plow horse to exhaustion. She must reach the well by nightfall, for this must be done on the threshold of night when the doors between worlds open.
The narrow trail finally widened, topped a ridge, then dropped down into a hidden meadow. The Well of the Salmon swelled from the lap of three rocky meadows that met and joined as one. Sheer granite faces wept water in black sheets.
Lyleth reined up the spent horse and dismounted, her breath fuming in warm clouds.
The plow horse steamed, and set to cropping grass in the shadows. Darkness was coming, the doors would be opening.
The well was roughly circular, edged with immense gritstone slabs fitted long ago by forgotten men. A standing stone of blue granite stood at due west, marking it as a life well. It was covered with sticky traces of mead, honey, wine and blood, offerings to guardians who guide the dead. A hawthorn grew at the water’s edge, its trunk and branches twisted by the scarcity of soil. Scraps of fabric were tied to its branches, prayers left for the green gods.
She picked up a cup that was bound to the hawthorn tree by a rusted iron chain, then hailed the hero who had left it behind: “Peace find you in the Fair Lands, good sir.” The cup was fashioned from the casing of a man’s brain, gilded so long ago that the gilding had worn away in some places to reveal the yellow bone of the hero’s skull beneath.
She broke the still surface of the well with the cup, and drank deeply.
It was time.
Dead branches and dry moss made a fast fire. When it snapped happily, she took the flask from the saddle. Circling the standing stone three times, she poured a small offering, then placed the flask at the edge of the well on a stone that jutted out into the dark water. She unburdened herself of her bow and quiver, her leggings and boots, and everything else. Naked, she called Wren to her.
He came after some moments, for he was soaring on the updrafts that struck the mountain face just at dusk. At her whistle, he plummeted toward her and landed on the standing stone with a ruffle of his feathers. She had wrapped her arm with leather so she might offer her fist as a perch. The hawk gently grasped her forearm and she took firm hold of the leather jesses that dangled from his legs. Allowing herself to smooth the feathers on his breast one last time, she cooed to him softly.
Submerged stones made easy steps into the icy well. Her feet went numb instantly. Wren flapped and fought against the jesses, but she held them fast. In an instant she was up to her waist, then treading water.
The well was bottomless and she seemed to float in empty space. The hawk fought and tore at the leather on her arm.
She kicked her way to the flask that sat on the edge of the pool and took one swallow. She filled her mouth again and pursed her lips tightly. In one swift motion, she wrapped her free arm around the hawk and submerged him.
Trying to fly, Wren’s talons ripped at her chest. She brought the mass of beating wings back to the surface, then caught his head and covered his beak with her mouth. The knife-sharp beak sliced her lip, but she would not let go. She emptied the sweet mead into the bird’s mouth and held him. The old words spilled from her. She swallowed the blood in her mouth. She mustn’t rush; let the words move into the goshawk.
A fury of feather, beak and talon tore at her. The bird grew heavy, feathers shed and floated, and wings became arms.
Try as she might, she could no longer hold him—then in a heartbeat, he held her.
He cried out in some strange language and took her by the throat. She looked in his eyes and saw only panic. She tried to scream but nothing came out. He plunged her under. Water filled her lungs. He would drown her and all would be for naught. She clawed at the hands around her throat until he dragged her back up.
She coughed up water and sucked in air.
He froze. When his grip slackened, she gasped and made for the edge of the pool.
“It’s me,” she croaked, swimming away from him.
He took hold of her again.
“Nechtan!” she screamed. He pulled her close and held her flailing arms in a tight embrace. Running a trembling finger over her lips, he seemed to struggle for words.
At last, he spoke in the tongue of the Five Quarters, his voice rough as if from sleep.
“You’re bleeding…”
Chapter 5
Ava rode for a day to reach the rough track that climbed to the edge of the Wistwood, a forest so dense not even hunters foraged here. She had stopped for the night at a wayfarer’s hut, tucked into a shadow-cool vale. In the morning, the greenmen would come to lead her to the nemeton. Without them, she would never find her way, but fall prey to spirits of root and vine, fang and claw. Or so the greenmen, the druada, would have her believe.
The druada had crowned the kings of this land since the time of Black Brac and the people saw these greenmen as the keepers of earth’s secrets, exalters of star and stone. To Ava, they were nothing more than court magicians who used simple tricks to command the loyalty of the people and their king.
Lyleth had controlled Nechtan in such a way, but she had spared him none of her womanly wiles either.
While Ava’s guards made camp on the banks of a stream, she inspected the small log shelter. A broken chair, a bedshelf and a musty mattress greeted her.
Irjan waited at the door, her eyes like beetle shells in the dim light.
“The greenmen must be blinded by your radiance, my lady,” Irjan said. “The gods of this land have spilled their blood into your hands that you may lift them from their turmoil.”
“You think gods suffer?” Ava laughed at the thought.
“Without their suffering, we have no destiny.”
“I make my own destiny.”
Ava took a blanket from the bed and shook out a cloud of dust.
The brown mud of Irjan’s face folded into a scowl. Muttering, she knelt before the hearth and struck a spark to some dry moss. The bells on the corners of her embroidered cap chimed as she fed leaves to the spark and blew it to flame. Wrapped in the pelt of a reindeer, Irjan looked every bit like a man. Ava thought she might be both, one of those aberrations she’d heard tales of. For Irjan was born to a far northern tribe, a people who embrace frozen desolation and sunless winters, a people who feast on whale fat in winter, reindeer and salmon berries in summer. Irjan had never said why her people had left her to die on the open tundra as a child, perhaps she didn’t know herself; but Ava suspected they had discovered her imperfection.
“I was suckled by the dead,” Irjan had told her once, “and now I taste life with their tongue.
”
Ava’s father had been on his first salmon run when he netted a wild girl who clawed and scratched and left scars on his forearms from biting him. Incapable of words, the girl growled and squawked, and required a stick to the skull to slow her down. Ava’s father made Irjan his slave and saw to her training in healing from the best physicians in Sandkaldr. Irjan became a wedding gift to Ava from a father who had won his own kingdom by slaying any man who might have an honest claim to it, a father she grew up calling “the Bear.”
When Ava proved barren, Irjan tried to coax a child from her womb and failed. She needed no son now, for she was heir to two kingdoms. Unfortunately, her father had failed to do his part. Unlike Nechtan, the Bear still breathed.
Irjan stood from fanning the fire and took Ava’s shoulders in a firm hold.
“You are no longer a child of the north,” Irjan said. “No man’s sword protects you now. You are an iron lamb.”
“You think me weak?”
“You are the spawn of the Bear—”
“My father’s seed does not make me she-king in this land. I am anointed by their gods. My father can rot in his frozen hell.”
Irjan placed cold, leathery palms on Ava’s cheeks and looked into her. “You must not look over your shoulder.”
“The greenmen won’t decide my fate,” Ava said. “That I do for myself.”
“Guard your heart. They are not fools.”
“I have nothing to hide. Now leave me to my rest.”
Irjan bowed and left. But Ava found no sleep, tracing silver spears of light that pierced the ragged thatch as the moon crossed the night, convincing herself she had nothing to hide.
In the morning, Ava found three greenmen ahorse as if they’d waited since moonrise, their moss-green hoods pulled close against the morning damp, the plumes of their breath hanging with the mist. They spoke no word, nor did Ava. It was their way.
Her guards mounted up as if they intended to ride with her, but she knew better.