by Terry Madden
“How shall I grow this scaly armor?” she asked.
Irjan tied a plain ribbon in Ava’s braid, and coiled it into a knot.
“You must surrender to the ways of these people as you’ve surrendered to their gods,” Irjan told her. “Learn to command them.”
“Command by surrendering? Your riddles are no less vexing than the greenmen’s.”
“They will bind you to your solás. You must surrender every action, every thought to this man. Through him, you will learn to rule.”
“Then Nechtan learned from Lyleth to be such a fool.” Ava smiled.
Nechtan had surrendered not only his thoughts but his soul to Lyleth. Ava would make no such mistake.
The binding of the solás to the king was a strange custom indeed. The word solás literally meant ‘light’ in the tongue of the Old Blood, that ancient race who ruled these lands long before the Ildana drove them through the third well. Ava knew the ritual she was about to experience was as old as the Old Blood, that she would wed the land in the form of her solás, for the fertility of the kingdom depended on the king’s mating with the forces that bestowed fecundity. Those forces were embodied in a druí who had proven herself, or himself, in the arts of the old race. Any half-wit could see it was simply a means by which the greenmen controlled the throne. It was a clever scheme, and Ava admired their ingenuity, if little else.
In the days of the Old Blood, the king actually bedded his solás in a ceremonial mating. The Ildana had removed that aspect of the ritual after a jealous queen murdered her husband’s solás. After that, the judges forbade the physical coupling of king and solás, claiming to do so would curse the land.
It made Ava smile to think that when Lyleth received Nechtan’s spiritual seed, she’d given birth to nothing but death and war.
Beneath no roof and upon no floor. Let the future be conceived.
Below the city of Caer Ys, a rocky cove had been carved out of the steep cliffs by the sea. This place, where water kissed land, met the requirements of the greenmen, and before the sky opened its eyes to dawn, a small retinue of druada led Ava from the fortress walls to the cliffs of the ragged shore. They lit the way with bundles of rushlights and Ava followed, feeling her way down the jagged rocks until she stood ankle-deep in black sand.
Traditionally, kings were men and so their solada were women. In keeping with this, the greenmen would choose a man as Ava’s solás.
The chosen one pushed back his hood.
Ava could just make out his features in the swelling light, austere and cold-eyed with a narrow face and hair as fair as hers. Perhaps the judges expected her to see this man as a brother, revealing their incompetence entirely, for Ava’s brother had been as much a beast as her father. This man was not much older than Ava, but had the look of one who deprived himself of the pleasures of this world, and Ava feared he would expect the same of her.
He showed his palms in respect, and Ava returned the gesture. He would be the only man before whom she would bow, for the king and his solás were equals.
“I am Jeven,” he told her.
“So you are. What is required of us, Jeven?”
“You know as much as I.”
His smile was mouse-like. It made her thankful there would be no coupling of the she-king with her counterpart. No, the Ildana were not of the same barbaric stock as Ava’s people. In Sandkaldr, her father had mated with a white reindeer hind, which he then slaughtered and ate its heart, or so the skalds told it.
“Come,” Jeven said, and held out a cold hand to her.
Beside a fire, two druada heated cups of woad mixed with lard. They threaded needles with linen and soaked these in the woad.
An old woman handed Ava a cup, which she drank down—henbane and poppy in sweet wine to kill the pain. “You’ll lie here, my lady.”
“Lie down?”
The old woman’s chin bounced with her nod.
The sand’s dampness reached through Ava’s linen shift and chilled her back and buttocks. Jeven lay down beside her, his feet to the south as hers were to the north, like the points of a geomancer’s earth needle.
The poppy worked quickly. A needle pierced the skin of her wrist, but it felt as though it belonged to someone else. She watched the thread pull through and leave a line of dark blue woad under her skin.
The riot of a dawn sky rolled over her and Ava had to close her eyes. When she opened them, clouds raged like horses across the pastures of the sky. They beckoned her to leave her body behind, leave the dull pull of thread stitching her future into the tender skin of her wrist.
Irjan had taught her to fly, so she did, and left this pain behind.
When next she opened her eyes, she turned to look at Jeven, his face dusted with black sand. The sun had scalded his face for it was near mid-morning.
“It’s done,” he said.
He held out his left arm, and she raised her right. Beneath beads of blood, the image of an eel coiled around their wrists, as if this alone could bind them.
Another day passed without word from Gwylym. In that day, Ava had learned that Jeven was a druí of some recognition, though she suspected he’d been chosen for his sharp eyes and ears. If he was an informer for the greenmen, as she suspected, she would make sure he sent the right information.
Jeven had presented her with a list of pressing matters. As expected, Marchlew and Pyrs would resist her claim to the throne and had called up their retainers, preparing for battle.
Ava was breaking her fast with boiled eggs and oatcakes when Jeven arrived at her chamber, his branch of silver bells giving him away long before he reached the door. She thought milk goats had been turned loose in the keep when she first heard him coming. He showed his palms, the binding mark on his left wrist still pink and probably as painful as her own.
“Sit.” She motioned to a chair by the fire. “You have news for me?”
“I do, lady.” Jeven’s manner was one of constipated serenity, a quiet sponge that soaks up information and squeezes it out only when the proper pressure is applied.
He removed his grey cloak and sat, elbows on his knees. He leaned toward her as if eager to divulge a tidbit.
“Well?”
“Fiach left the keep last evening and I thought it wise to follow. I need not explain why.” Jeven had the senses of a hunting hound, it would seem. Fiach, the chieftain of Emlyn, had arrived in Caer Ys just yesterday, the first of the chieftains to come to pledge fealty to their new she-king.
“Go on,” she said.
“He went to a smithy, I suppose to make some repairs.”
“This is your urgent news? He repairs his greaves?”
“When he left the blacksmith’s shop an old woman accosted him, pleaded with him to listen. He stepped into an alleyway and I presume he heard her out.”
It was Ava who leaned forward now. “And what did the old woman say to him?”
“I couldn’t hear. But Fiach laughed and walked away with the woman hanging on his cloak. The only words I heard were, ‘she calls him back.’”
“She calls him? Who?”
“I fear she was a messenger from Lyleth,” Jeven said.
“Bring Fiach to me.”
Jeven stood, showed his palms, and left the room. If Lyleth sought to aid Marchlew with his rebellion, she would try to enlist help from Fiach, of course. He’d been Lyleth’s lover, had he not?
Fiach came in and crossed her chamber in long fluid strides. His eyes never left Ava’s while he showed his palms, suspicion playing in his look. There was much to like in this lord of Emlyn, primarily, the largest mounted force in the Five Quarters. But knowing he bore a certain fondness for Lyleth… Ava must tread carefully.
“Fiach, thank you for leaving your meal. Please, sit.”
“My lady.” Fiach settled into a chair with feline grace. At least Lyleth had some taste. He was long of limb, big-shouldered and wore a wary expression that reminded Ava she must win this man’s allegiance. She wagged h
er fingers at Jeven to bring ale and a waiting platter of cold meat and cheese.
“As you know,” Ava said, “my guards search for Lyleth in the highlands as we speak.” She measured his response.
His eyes flitted to hers, then away. He cut a chunk of cold goose. “So I understand.” Fiach bit into the meat.
“It is my belief that she works to divide this land, set quarter against quarter, and, if you can forgive my bluntness, I fear she may try to draw you into this rebellion that brews in the north.”
He chewed slowly, no doubt hoping it would give him time to think of an answer. “I’ve not seen Lyleth since before Nechtan’s death.”
“You’ve received no messages from her?”
The look he gave said he understood completely that he’d been followed.
“If you mean the old woman,” Fiach said, “she’s as mad as a boar in rut. It was nonsense.”
Ava refilled his cup herself. “What kind of nonsense?”
“She was raving. Said that Lyleth would raise Nechtan from the dead, that he would lead an army against you. Not the kind of talk one takes seriously, my lady.”
Ava gave a mirthless laugh. “Raise the dead? And I suppose the hag wanted you to throw in your lot with the dead king?”
“My lady…” He leaned close and wet his lips before going on. “You know better than anyone that I would choose death before following Nechtan, even if the First Mother raised him.”
Ava leaned even closer, her eyes locked on his. “Forgive me,” she whispered, “but I am ice-born and must tread carefully in this land. Know that I trust you completely, Fiach.”
She reached out and placed her hand on his. His eyes flashed with secrets and she vowed silently to know them.
When Fiach had gone, Ava held a cup of mead out to Jeven. “Tell me,” she said. “Do the druada teach their students to raise the dead?”
A smile broadened his narrow face. “To call a soul back, aye, to be reborn, not to return to the flesh they left behind. Only the Old Blood were said to have done such a thing.”
“A babe at the breast could scarce lead an army,” she said. “What’s required to accomplish this conjuring?”
“It’s not my place to speak of it.”
“It’s your place to serve me. If our rule is so threatened, it’s your duty to tell me of it.”
His eyes went to the fire and he pursed his mousey lips.
“You’re sworn to me as I am to you, Jeven.”
“It’s only vaguely known,” he said at last.
“What would Lyleth know of it?”
“More than I, I should think, but she would never try it.” He shook his head.
“Why not?”
“She’s taken the same vow as I. We serve stars and stones; the seasons of life and death are not subject to our desire—”
“Then I see you’ve never met this sister greenleaf. Lyleth would sell her own soul to stop me. Tell me what she knows of this spell.”
Jeven sighed and leaned heavily on his knees. “The only reference to it is a fragment of an epic found carved into a foundation stone in the ruins of a fortress built by the Old Blood. It’s far from complete.”
“Come, come. I am no necromancer, you can tell me.”
“It must be cast on Winter’s Eve.”
“Which passed just days ago. Samhain Eve.” Winter was the night of the year as summer was the day. The Ildana didn’t bother themselves with spring or fall.
“It’s the threshold of night, the dusk of the year,” he said. “The veil between the worlds thins.”
“Tell me, what does this fragment say?”
“A solás breathes, or implants—the translation is unclear— the memories of her lord into a living vessel of some kind. That also is unclear. But she must have an object of his, something favored, and she must be submerged in a life well.”
“An object? Like a harp?”
Jeven moved to set his cup on the table, but it fell to the floor and rolled away.
“Like a harp.”
Chapter 11
Water thick as honey dissolved the rough edges of Connor’s panic. Something or someone was hauling him toward the sky like a hooked fish, leaving Dish and the dark-haired woman far behind. Surreally calm, Connor surfaced in the fishpond behind the deserted mansion. It was still dusk, though it seemed he’d been gone for hours. He coughed up water and breathed the inert air of a world he could have so easily forgotten.
“What the fuck…”
“What the fuck is right, dude.” A man sat perched at the edge of the fishpond, shaking his mane like a dog. “You got no business here.”
Connor clung to the rock coping, coughed some more, and focused on the owner of the hands that had pulled him back. A pair of too-short shorts with holes in the wrong places puddled on the flagstones and a faded wet camouflage shirt barely buttoned over a beer gut. The goatee was classic Shaggy.
The guy picked up a pair of cast-off sunglasses that looked like he’d stolen them from a teenage girl in some mosh pit. It was almost dark, but he put them on.
“Make me save your sorry ass from drowning in my Jacuz,” the guy said. “What the hell?”
“Jacuz? I mean, sorry, or… uh, I don’t know what I mean.”
Connor thought he’d just slipped from one wild dream into another. He started to shiver. Failing to find any steps out of the water, he vaulted out and flopped onto the deck. His collarbone screamed in pain, so he rolled to his butt and sat up.
“Bees were swarming me… I think.” He pointed at the trail. “I’m really sorry.”
“It’s cool, man. It’s cool. Good thing I was here, or phfft, you’d be a goner.”
A goner. Then why did Connor feel so crushed by the very act of breathing again? He felt like he was still underwater, like every movement was in slo-mo, his voice distorted in pitch and rhythm. His heart was a landed fish.
He wiped at the water that ran out of his nose. “How long was I under?”
“Eh, no more than a few minutes, I’d say. I heard splashin’, come out and found you face down.”
Connor glanced at the pool. Black and still. Wasn’t it a fishpond? He heard the hum of a pool filter from somewhere. He glanced at the walls of the mansion, lit by some kind of tiki torch. The windows were covered with plywood and the walls so thickly tagged it looked like an inner city cave painting.
He looked back at the guy and tried to see past the sunglasses.
“Kinda hard to drown in a hot tub,” Connor said.
“Truth be told, happens all the time. A little noggin bump or too much booze, whatever, all it takes. A human can drown in six inches of water, ya know.”
“Well thanks. For pulling me out I mean.”
“CPR certified, dude.”
Connor struggled to his feet and started to walk off, water squishing from his Nikes, his legs trembling so much he thought he’d collapse.
“Bees, ya say?” the man called after him.
Connor turned.
“Yeah, I was running the trail and they swarmed me.” He could feel the ache of the stingers in his scalp and the small of his back. The sound of wet buzzing came from his shorts. He did a little dance, opened his pocket and a bee flew out.
“Hey, you didn’t see anyone else out here, did you?” Connor asked.
“Like who?”
The world started tumbling and Connor staggered into some shrubs. Then the guy appeared at his side and had hold of him.
“Maybe you should chill for a minute. You’re gonna fall on your ass.”
“I’m cool. Just don’t like bees much.”
“African killer bees maybe. They interbreed with our honeybees. Fuck ‘em all up.” The dude pulled a plastic chair over and Connor slid into it. Reaching behind an overgrown shrub, the guy flipped a switch. “You could be allergic to the venom.”
The hot tub frothed and steamed in the cold air. Just a few minutes ago it was icy cold, and now it was hot? Not possib
le. Maybe the guy was right; maybe Connor was having some weird allergic reaction that made him see shit that wasn’t there.
“I gotta get back. Thanks for…” Connor waved at the water and tried to stand, but his legs wouldn’t let him.
“Back to what? School?” The old guy coughed, or maybe that was a laugh, and lit a cigarette.
“Well, yeah.”
“You know the kids from your school come around here all the time, leaving beer cans and rubbers all over like it was Woodstock or something. I get kinda tired of it, truth be told.”
“Sorry. I’ll tell them.” Connor succeeded in standing and started away. “My phone.”
He scanned the deck. The very thought of a cell phone seemed ridiculous to him right now.
“Hey, you were in that accident,” the guy said in the high-pitched voice of recognition. He wagged a finger at Connor. “I’m sorry about your teacher.”
Connor froze. “What?”
“I was there, man. Just coming up from the beach with my board and wham, it was all over.” The old guy pulled his shades to the end of his nose and looked over them, saying, “You were driving. You hydroplaned. Fuckin’ scary shit.”
The scene came back in full detail, like someone had hit rewind in Connor’s brain. He swallowed hard. “Yeah.”
“That’s tough, losing somebody that way.”
“Lose? No. He’s in a coma.” But all Connor could see in his head was Dish in that cave, alive and awake and reaching for Connor’s hand.
“No shit?”
The dude handed Connor his cell phone and replanted himself in the plastic chair, water dripping from his shorts. He crossed one skinny leg over the other and spewed a stream of smoke.
“Name’s Ned, by the way.”
“Connor.” He thought about making up a fake last name, but wasn’t fast enough. “Connor.”