by Natalie Grey
“I wasn’t here, remember?” The man’s voice carried more than a hint of amusement. “But of course, I’m happy to believe the one who was voted out when they say it was all smoke and daggers. I’m sure you’re an unbiased source.”
“None of us are unbiased sources,” the woman rejoined. “And the rest of the druids—”
“Will follow their best interests, I’m sure.”
My shoulders hunched instinctively. I knew that tone. That was the tone gangsters used in movies, all faux friendliness. It was the tone of threats made in elegant parlors between suited ambassadors. It was a tone I had used many times before.
Should I go back to the room? Should I stay here? I was paralyzed.
“I should hope that the council of druids is willing to consider more than their immediate self-interest.” Whether the woman had heard the threat, I wasn’t sure. Her voice was sure of itself, at any rate.
“And surely peace and stability are guiding principles they will follow,” the man said confidently. “What more could we want than a leader who will give us that?”
“What more, indeed.” Now there was a sardonic lilt to her voice. “And to achieve that, you’d willingly overturn the order of things.”
I frowned. Now I wasn’t sure what was going on. I had first thought the woman to be one of the ones suggesting this new conclave, but after that last statement….
“Times change,” the man said. He sounded almost careless. “We must as well. Think where your interests lie. Think what the druids need.”
There was a long silence then, so long that I feared they would come around the corner and see me.
But no one came. Steeling myself, I peeked around the corner just in time to see a man with dark hair and green robes vanish at the far end of the hall.
The woman was still there, though she was looking after him rather than watching for eavesdroppers. Her expression, at least as much of it as I could see, was thoughtful. Hair of a rich honey-blonde was gathered back in an elaborate braid, and her hands were tucked into the sleeves of her brown robes.
After a time, she set off in the same direction, head down and steps sure, as if she walked these halls every day.
I gave it a few minutes, and then followed her. Hearing speeches in progress, I slipped into the hall and scanned it for Daiman, hurrying to join him.
“Did you get lost?” he asked, his voice low.
I opened my mouth to tell him about what I had heard, and then closed it again.
I wasn’t here to meddle. I had told myself I had to be a new person now, and only my actions would make that statement true.
“Just trying to make myself look presentable.” I hastily lifted my goblet as a cheer rang out, and drank deeply. I coughed and choked. “Good God, what was that?”
“Whiskey,” Daiman said, amused. “It’s … probably better in sips.”
I pounded on my chest with one fist and bit back an oath. “Right. And what were we cheering about?”
“Oh, the usual.” Daiman shrugged.
I cast a look to where Taliesen was just finishing a sip of whiskey and sitting down, and then raised an eyebrow at Daiman.
“His toast before the conclave that might vote him out, and all you can say is, ‘the usual’?” I queried.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he really did need help noticing the undercurrents here.
“Well, what’s he going to say?” Daiman asked. “He can’t tell people to vote any particular way, he has to appear impartial. If he knows of any reason they’d want him out, he also isn’t going to mention that—and he can’t exactly say this is a sham of a conclave. So.” He lifted his shoulders. “All very mild, traditional blessings and how good it is to be gathered here, blah blah.” He waved a hand.
I laughed and cast another glance at the dais, only to narrow my eyes in consternation.
Sitting at Taliesen’s right hand was a woman with honey-blonde hair and brown robes, and to his left … a man with dark hair and green robes.
“What is it?” Daiman frowned, his gaze following mine.
Nothing, I should have said. It’s nothing.
But I was still me, and I told myself that a little bit of curiosity wasn’t a bad thing. “Who are the two people sitting beside Taliesen?”
“Ah. To the left is Farbod.”
“He doesn’t look very Irish.”
“He’s Persian.” Daiman studied him. “They call their practitioners magi instead of druids, but many of the same concepts hold true. He and Taliesen met at your conclave, I believe.”
“It wasn’t my conclave.”
“You know what I mean.” His gaze was intent on Farbod. “His training has been very useful. Different schools of druids have many of the same basics, but some very different strands of their practice. What’s fascinating is how deeply it’s tied to the mythology of the place.” He looked back at me. “You’ll study with him if you stay. He taught me nearly everything I know about wind—I guess there’s rather a different level of appreciation for it in a place where it can cause sandstorms.”
“Mmm.” I tried to tell myself that Daiman was a good judge of character. If he thought well of Farbod, then perhaps I had misunderstood what I heard in the hall. “And the woman?”
“That’s Morgana.”
“The former Chief Druid?” I looked at her with new eyes. Her features were strong, cheekbones set high under grey eyes, and a wide-lipped mouth that was set in a half smile as she looked over the hall. As I looked, she exchanged an easy smile with Farbod.
Curioser and curioser, as Alice would say.
“And she was the one who once sent you off in the rain, wasn’t she?” I grinned at Daiman.
“Yes.” He took a sip of whiskey. “Yes, that’s Morgana. D’you remember her at all? She was at the conclave where you presented.”
“She looks … familiar enough, I guess.” I shrugged. “Should I know who she is? Is she famous?”
“Morgan Le Fay?” Daiman grinned. “Famous enough.”
“That’s Morgan Le Fay?” I jerked my head back around to look. “She looks, uh….”
“Less like a wicked witch than the stories led you to expect?” He was laughing. “Yes. There were some inaccuracies.”
But inaccuracies, I thought, started somewhere.
“So what did happen with Arthur, then? And all the rest of them?”
“Arthur and his court … well, it’s a very long story. If we go over it tonight, we’ll never do anything else. And Merlin … disappeared.” Daiman lifted his shoulders. “Anyway, you should eat.”
“Wait, so Merlin was real?”
“Of course he was real. They were all real.” Daiman was laughing at me.
“And all you know is that Merlin disappeared?”
“That’s all anyone knows.” He shrugged again. “There was a story that another druid trapped him in a cave, but … he was Merlin. How was that going to stop him?”
“Mmm, right.” I stole another glance at Morgana and then looked back to my plate. Did she know where Merlin had gone, I wondered? What lurked behind that half-smile?
And what lay behind Farbod’s?
For both of them were laughing and joking with Taliesen, easy in one another’s company, and if I had not seen the altercation in the hallway, I would never have thought to look for any undercurrents between them.
But they were there, divisions I was beginning to see as I looked around the hall. It was in the way some people’s eyes lingered on Morgana, and some on Farbod. It was in the way either one of Taliesen’s advisors might single out a face in the crowd and give a slight nod.
I reminded myself that I had come here to get away from all of this nonsense, and turned determinedly back to my plate. I needed a distraction.
“As soon as you’ve eaten,” Daiman murmured in my ear, “we can slip away. I know a place—very secluded.”
That would do for a distraction.
Chapter Seven
We snuck away like teenagers, giggling and running out into the night air. I held tight to Daiman’s hand as we made our way up a nearby hill and collapsed under a tree, still laughing.
From here the hall was situated like a perfect little jewel. Warm lantern light glimmered at the high windows, and the sounds of music and cheering carried in the still night air. We could smell the food still, though I had eaten far too much to be remotely tempted by anything more.
I pressed my hand over my stomach and flopped onto my back.
The stars twinkled merrily, perhaps not so clear as they would be in a desert, but clear enough—far more so than we would be in a city.
Daiman must have been thinking along similar lines, for he pillowed his head on his hands and said contemplatively,
“I often wonder if we do ourselves a disservice, living like this.”
“Like what?” I propped myself up on my elbows to look at him curiously.
“In the domhan fior.” His gaze was faraway. “When I was first here, it wasn’t so different to be here as it was in the world I’d grown up in. Less people, but otherwise—just a hiding space, just a place for us to escape the church and learn what we could in seclusion.”
“And now?”
He gave me a troubled look. “Now, I don’t know. People were already forgetting the old ways when I was born. It used to be that the common folk knew how to come here, that magic wasn’t just for druids and sorcerers here. But they forgot, and we let them forget. Now they have their cities and their cars and electricity and we have … exactly what we’ve always had.”
I rested my head on one hand as I thought.
“What use do we have for that, though?”
“The same as anyone else.” He frowned. “You saw the plumbing in the Acadamh. They’re clever, humans. We solve our problems with magic, and they solve theirs with metal, with gears and computers.”
“And?”
“Don’t you see? The worlds didn’t used to be so far apart.” He mirrored my pose, facing me, head on one hand. “Our magic helped them when their own ways wouldn’t suffice, and in return we had carts and lanterns and all sorts of things. Now we have none of what they have.”
There was a silence, and then:
“How are we supposed to make the world whole if we don’t even know what’s wrong with it anymore?” He swallowed. “What are we doing? We’re looking backwards, to the age of Merlin. But Merlin’s gone. It’s been centuries. We aren’t getting new recruits anymore, they don’t know druids are real, they don’t know how to find the hall to beg for entry.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” I admitted. “I suppose there are always new sorcerers being born.”
“It was one of the things I loved about the Acadamh,” Daiman told me. “From the start. New people all the time, new perspectives. They all came young, so they didn’t know much about the world, but they were still new. They had seen new things. It was good to have the ranks growing and changing. Druids don’t have that.”
Something clicked in my mind. “Is that why they’re trying to have Taliesen removed?” I asked him. “To make way for something new?”
He looked intrigued at that suggestion. “I hadn’t thought of that. It’s possible, I guess. But I still don’t even know who sponsored the motion. No one seems to know.”
I thought again of Morgana and Farbod in the corridor, and bit my lip on the words. I didn’t know enough to know what I’d heard. That was the truth.
“So….” I picked at a piece of grass.
“So I don’t know which way to vote tomorrow.” Daiman shook his head. “I keep thinking there’s more to this, and wondering how they want me to vote—whoever did this. And then I think I’m being paranoid. But it’s just this feeling that something is wrong and I don’t know how.”
It sounded much the same as when he’d first described Taliesen: something wrong, but what?
And I didn’t know enough to know whether he was being paranoid. All I knew was that I had seen the sort of fault lines in the druidic council that I had never expected to see there, of all places.
Had I thought, for some reason, that druids would be above petty politics?
“I understand why they do it,” Daiman said finally.
“Hmm?” I frowned.
“Look back.” Daiman shook his head. “It’s easy to forget how things were back then—and even if you don’t, it’s natural to be nostalgic.”
“D’you miss your family?” I asked him curiously. I had never gotten the sense that he had been thrown out of his family as I had been thrown out of mine.
“Sometimes. It’s more regret than actually missing them.” He stood and dusted himself off, then pulled me up.
I strolled alongside him in silence, curious but unsure if I should pry.
“I was eight when I left,” he said. “My grandmother said I always knew I wanted to be a druid. Since I was little, I would ask about it. My mother cried when I left, and my grandmother said it was my destiny to go—and that if I went, and trained, I would never die.”
“She knew that much?” I was surprised. “Did your mother believe her?”
“I don’t know. And the worst of it is….” He sank his head for a moment. “I was eight. I didn’t care. Children can be so cruel. I didn’t care that I’d left her, I was annoyed that she was crying about it because it was my destiny and why couldn’t she see that?” He shook his head. “I was such a fool.”
“And now you wish you’d known her.” I didn’t mean to twist the knife with my words, but I wanted to taste them on my tongue.
I wanted to know what it would be like to miss my family.
Luckily, he understood. He reached out to take my hand. “You … are probably glad to be free of yours.”
I had been until he said that. Suddenly, though, there was a raging inferno of jealousy in my chest, and regret, and all of the stupid things I’d taught myself to stop thinking over the years: that if I’d only gone home when I was older, they would have been glad to see me; that if I’d hidden my magic, it would have been okay and they would have kept me; that if I’d been a better daughter, they never would have thrown me out in the first place.
I had been alive for a millennium at this point, and part of me still couldn’t banish the wish that I could have been born without magic.
Then, they would have kept me.
“Nicky.” Daiman took me by the shoulders. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
I wiped at my eyes. “I brought it up, actually. My fault. I just … don’t know what it’s like to miss family that way, the way where it just hurts because they’re not there.”
He pulled me close and held me, and his presence steadied me.
“I tried to keep track of mine,” he said. “But I lost them after a few trips. Whole generations would go by while I was in Europe. I’ve always wondered what happened—if they fled somewhere, where the line lives on from the daughters, all of that.”
I pulled away. I’d never thought of my bloodline living on. Somewhere, right now, there was almost certainly someone who was related to me.
The thought was unutterably bizarre. They had absolutely no idea I was still alive, or who I was, or that one of their ancestors had done what I did. What would it be like for them to find out? How would I even try?
I didn’t even remember my last name. It might have been Beaumont, or that might have been a nearby lord, or some flight of fancy from my childhood. I no longer remembered at all.
“D’you remember what it was like to be human?” I asked quietly. “For you, you really were. For me, I just thought I was. But I don’t remember it all that well. I remember being scared a lot. It must be different for druids.”
I stepped back and rubbed at my temples.
“Am I making a mistake, being here? I’ll be different from all of them. Half of them won’t think I’m a druid at all—if I’m lucky. If I’m unlucky, it’ll be all of them.”
“Al
l but one.” His gaze never wavered from mine.
I couldn’t help but smile. His faith warmed a part of me I had thought was dead long, long ago.
“You don’t have to play it their way, you know.” He held out his hands for me to take them. “I can train you. We can leave tomorrow—hell, we can leave tonight. I don’t want anything to do with this conclave. Come away with me. The world’s gone crazy.”
I laughed. For the first time, I felt human—really human. “I think everyone says that at some point or other.” I stepped close to smile up at him.
“But I mean it.” His hand crept up to the back of my neck, warm and comforting. “You’re right, some of them will never want to see you succeed, and they’ll never accept it. Why chase their favor? You don’t need their permission to save the world.”
“We,” I corrected him with a smile.
I considered his offer, out there under the stars. I considered it, and wanted to take him up on it—wanted it more than anything.
And I knew I couldn’t.
“I have to do this,” I told him. “I have to learn from all of them, the way you did. I can’t just run from people who don’t like me, or there won’t be a place in the world for me to stay. You brought me back here for a purpose.”
“Tradition is not always useful.” He lifted a shoulder. “Maybe I was doing what I accused them of. Maybe I was just looking backwards.”
My blood was swimming with whiskey and mead, and I stepped close to tug his head down to mine.
“No, you did the right thing,” I murmured. I melted against him at the touch of his lips. I pulled away for just a moment, enough to regain enough sense for full sentences. “We’ll do this the right way, Daiman. I knew doing this would be hard. I’m not afraid.”
What a damned fool I was.
Chapter Eight
I woke up with my head pillowed on Daiman’s chest. When I stirred, his arm tightened slightly around me—an instinctive gesture, as I could tell from his breathing that he hadn’t quite woken up yet. I settled back against him with a smile. The air was cold above us, mist stinging gently on our cheeks, and I didn’t want to leave his warmth.