by Dave Freer
They were woken in the morning by cockle pickers. Fionn had time, barely, thanks to Díleas’s warning growl, to assume a human form. By the reaction of the cockle pickers he might have been wiser to let them confront a just-awakened dragon. It didn’t help that one of the cockle pickers threatened to beat Fionn for poaching and trespassing, so Díleas bit him. Matters only went downhill from there, as there was a small army of cockle pickers arriving. And the terrain of low-sand hills and marrams did not lend itself to running away.
“Look, I’ll go along with you to your lord. Just don’t lay a hand on my dog.” It was usually easier to talk his way out of situations than to fight or to run.
“He bit me,” said the aggrieved cockle picker, carefully not coming close enough for Díleas to have a second try. “He’ll have to be killed.”
“No,” said Fionn, patting Díleas, who was working on giving the cockle pickers the intimidating eye, as he had seen the other sheepdogs do to the sheep. It seemed to be working on cockle pickers too. “He should be fine,” said Fionn. “I don’t think he ate enough of you to poison him. Dogs have tough constitutions.”
Fortunately—in a way—for both parties, an overseer came riding along to see why they weren’t at work. He defused the riot by escorting Fionn and Díleas back to the lord’s manor and promising his master’s retribution.
Their overlord was faintly puzzled at the demands for summary justice. “How many bags of cockles did you catch the varlet with, Velas?”
“None, milord. He was trespassing in the bay, though,” said the overseer.
The lordling turned to Fionn. “Well? Don’t pretend you didn’t know that it’s my land and my rights. Where are you from?”
“Well, my ship was from Dun Arros, but it’s sunk now. So I am from nowhere, I’d reckon,” said Fionn slowly, as if this much speech was a chore.
“Your ship?” asked the local lord.
“Aye. She ran onto the sands last night. The dog mostly hauled me ashore, led me out. Was not my idea to trespass, milord. Just to stay afloat.”
“You mean you were shipwrecked?” The local lord was sharp for an aristocrat, Fionn had to admit. Only had to be told twice, and not the usual three or four times.
“Aye, look at my clothes, all salt-stained,” said Fionn, doing it for the third time anyway, just in case. “We ran onto the sand and tore her keel off. Lost her masts . . . She was heavy laden, poor old thing.”
“Where?” demanded the local lord, a predatory light in his porky eye.
“Out in the bay. I reckon that bunch of corpse ravens are all over her by now. Fine woolens she was carrying. That’s why they wanted to be rid of you,” he said, jerking a thumb at the overseer, who had been unwise enough to hurry Fionn along with his whip.
“Wreck rights are a lord’s rights!” said the noble, his jowls quivering at the indignity of it all.
“You had better go and claim them then,” said Fionn laconically, and sat down and put his head between his knees.
“Velas! Get what men you can. Damn this levy for the war. We need to get down there before they steal me blind. What’s wrong with this man?”
“I’d guess he’s half-drowned, milord. I think he’s faint,” said the overseer, shaking Fionn. Díleas snarled at him.
“Well, leave him. Let’s get down to the beach.”
And in a flurry of shouting and yelling, they did. Before the dust had settled, Fionn got up, walked to the kitchen. “Your master said to feed the dog and me,” he cheerfully told the cook.
Well breakfasted, they were on their way a short while later. Fionn wished the cockle pickers and their masters the best of a miserable morning, and walked really fast. It would take the local lordling a few hours to establish he’d been gulled, but he was not going to be very pleased when he failed to find the wreck, or the sailor.
“The question is, Díleas, where we should go now? And don’t suggest ‘back.’ I think ‘back’ is going to be a bad idea for some years,” said Fionn as they stopped to take a breather at the top of a hill a few miles from the bay. “You appear to have an instinctive idea, which I’ve been following. But I am reaching a few conclusions after a bit of thought about this. If she went back to where she once came from . . . well, that would fit with the Celtic cycle. Anghared was her name, and that could be from anywhere, with Annvn, Carmarthen, Abalach, and possibly Lyonesse being the more likely places. And she has the ability to stir things up around her, and to be in the very center of all sorts of trouble, and yet she’s shifted from place to place. So right now my bet—if I was a gambler, which I am not, as I only bet on certainties, except where I am wrong about innate sheep-herding ability—is Lyonesse. On the other hand, your sense of direction indicates that either she is moving, or her world is, and as the latter is impossible, perhaps she is with an army that is moving? Or maybe some more of those travelers are with her.”
He prodded Díleas with his toe. “Of course, I am open to your canine guidance.”
The dog yawned, rolled onto his back, and exposed his belly.
“That’s either a statement of trust or an invitation to scratch you. I think I should have investigated those travelers more closely. At least they would have been able to answer my questions,” said Fionn, obliging Díleas with a scratch.
Chapter 14
The one positive thing was that Neve, now that she’d started eating, recovered very rapidly indeed. It wasn’t her body that had needed to heal. The other advantage was that Meb, having decided that she was going to leave Dun Tagoll, knew now that her purgatory was temporary. She smiled mechanically at the jibes and ignored them. She found there were several women in the bower who were mere general servants and she took one with her to visit Neve, or to take some air in the courtyard. They didn’t like going with her, of course. But they didn’t have to like it. Just be there. Ideally, Meb decided, between her and any cover an archer could shoot from. She did discover one odd thing. They all skirted the rock basin and its little weedy patch of wall. It was obviously a local shrine or something.
She had more important things to do than worry about that. She had to work out a way to escape from the castle for the two of them. And that was proving difficult, especially as she couldn’t discuss it with anyone.
Vivien, in the meantime, kept pressing her to show the bower her magical power. Somehow Meb felt that would be a very poor idea. “It comes when I need it. Not when I want it,” she explained. And that was partially true too.
* * *
Lady Cardun folded her hands in her lap and shook her head. “I don’t know. She just does not say much, Medraut. And she’s either a very good mimic or she was leading her maid on. She makes faux pas, she hobnobs with the servants, she wanders about without any chaperonage. Yet . . . she does some things in a manner well-bred. I’d suspect she was raised in a noble household. The daughter of a favored woman, maybe.”
Medraut tugged his beard. “I think she may be cleverer than we suspected. Look, it turned out that she could ride. To ride that well . . . she must have had a great deal of practice. I know you said she was stiff and sore the next day, but that is still possible, if she had not ridden for some time. She claimed never to have ridden a horse. And she’s been very close to Vivien. We know she reports to the mage.” He sucked his teeth. “Having her fall from a horse or become sick and die would remove her from the situation. That was my thinking. Yet Aberinn appeared genuinely angry and distrustful of her. And she’s immensely popular with the men-at-arms for some reason. To act openly to get rid of her would be foolish until I have more information, I think.
“There are those who believe she made the queen’s window reappear. But the more I think of it, the more certain I become that the entire scene with Alois was contrived. It was Aberinn’s doing. They may have fallen out since. I have spies in the south, still. We may hear something.”
“Her maid is recovering. She has returned to work. She will tell us what we need to know,” said L
ady Cardun confidently.
“It would seem to me that she’s guessed that the maid is a spy.” The prince pursed his lips. “I may have to trump something up, to at least put her to the question.”
* * *
“You cannot deceive me, Vivien.”
The eyes bored into her. She wished the mage was wrong, just this once. “I’ve told you,” she said, wringing her hands. “She did the embroidery as no mortal could. It’s sídhe work. It’s some kind of glamor. Some kind of deception, but I don’t think she knows she’s doing it. It’s not like our magic at all.”
Vivien hated this. Hated being in the tower. Hated being given orders. Hated reporting to the mage. Hated his touch. But she was trapped here. Trapped by chains of fear and her children. Trapped by the shreds of hope. Hope that had breathed in her when she’d seen that spatha-blade axe. She’d thought Aberinn would be pleased at the time. It would spell the end for Prince Medraut and his pretensions.
Aberinn rolled his eyes. “There is no secret magic. There is no unknown magic.”
“I’ve tried to get her to use her magic again, so you could trace it. So you could see,” said Vivien.
“She probably can’t. There are ways around the protection on Dun Tagoll. But it is self-healing. Such tricks will work only once.”
He toyed with the models on his workbench. The interior of the royal chambers, perfect in every detail. He was building a model bedchamber. The shape of the chest showed that to be that poor child’s room . . . she looked away, at anything else. A miniature of an Angevin crossbow, a tiny thread on the arrow, a trebuchet . . . she had been taught some of the theory behind symbolic magic and scalar spells. The magic of Lyonesse had, especially among the males, always been tied to mechanical symbols. But she had no idea of how the compulsion on her worked or how to break it. She stood, silently. Waiting for the orders. Finally, she could endure no longer. “Maybe she is the one you prophesied. Maybe she really is the Defender.”
Aberinn snorted. “That she cannot possibly be. She may even be less than human, as you suggest. But put one idea from your mind. She is not this ‘Defender.’”
“But how do you know?” asked Vivien.
He laughed. “She is the third fraud we’ve had. And soon she too will be dead. Now go.”
He walked away to the piece of bench with the symbols and careful patterning as she turned away. She knew, from her training as a child, what some of those symbols were. She wished she dared stay and make it permanent. But he would have his protections. And she had her children, hostages to fate.
The mage had cheated death for so long by being one with the dead for most of the day and night. She’d recognized the symbols, even before she’d seen him lying there, unbreathing.
Weeping to herself, she fled the tower.
From its cage the gilded crow watched her with a jewel eye.
* * *
Meb sat in her room as Neve brushed her long, wavy hair. Hair that at least was like the hair of the locals . . . she felt the dragon neckpiece of the dvergar gold, heavy, magical and yet invisible, its links cunning and perfect, full of what magic the dvergar had been able to bind into it, designed to enhance her own power, designed to draw on the magics of wood, fire, gold, earth . . . She must still have some of the courage of the centaurs’ windsack about her . . . centaurs? Maybe that was why the horse had liked her? What was it that the dvergar had said about the piece of magical enhancement she wore about her neck? It would help her to be what she wished to be. Well, at one stage she’d wished to be dead, and it had nearly helped her there! Only she’d changed her mind. It had helped her, and Fionn, to travel unseen and unsuspected into Albar, she was sure.
So could it help her to get out of here? Just how would her master have done it? Besides outrageously? Well, maybe that would have to work.
“Is it a full moon tonight?” she asked.
“Yes, m’lady.” Nothing Meb had done or said had ever been able to shake Neve from calling Meb that. Not even discussing gutting and gilling techniques.
“So tonight will be the night for the Changer?”
“Yes, m’lady. The Fomoire will have their ice melt under them,” said Neve with grim satisfaction. “Except those ones already ravaging the country. They kill just because they can.”
“I hope the next change is something better.”
“Can’t hardly be any worse, m’lady,” said Neve.
Finn would have said that that was a sure guarantee that it would be.
He would also have walked into the stables and demanded that they saddle a horse for him and Neve. Meb didn’t think she’d quite get away with that. But a little glamor . . . If the alvar could do it . . . “How do I look?” she asked, thinking of Hallgerd, dressed in her best go-to-market-in-Tarport clothes.
Neve dropped the brush. Backed away, fright on her face. “M’lady?” Her voice quivered tremulously.
“It’s just me,” said Meb, wondering if her appearance would stay like that. It didn’t, it appeared. Neve hugged her. “Oh, m’lady. I’m sorry. I . . . I just got such a fright. There was this wicked old crone here. An old fishwife . . .”
“It was me. I just took on a seeming.”
Neve shuddered.
“Tomorrow we will use it to leave,” said Meb. “Or as soon as some ordinary women walk out of here. They must, sometimes.”
“Once the troop rides out to clear out any last foes, m’lady. Could be a week or two. But the Fomoire will know something is wrong quick when their ice bridge goes. Then, usually after the men have gone, the kitchen women go out and collect rock samphire and birds’ eggs on the cliffs with a couple of guardsmen.”
“Excellent. Once we’re among the cliffs and rocks we can slip away.”
“Yes . . . but . . . those are the kitchen drabs,” said Neve. “And you’re . . .”
“A fishing village brat. Like you. How did you end up in the bower?”
Neve blushed. “My granny was a bower woman in the old king’s court. Not to say anything, but my mother was born something like seven months after the wedding, which happened soon enough after she left service with a fine gift. She must have taken the fancy of one of the lords here, because it was enough to buy a house and boat and a cow, and to keep a bit for spoiling us. The Lady Cardun, she remembered my gamma. Took me for the bower. Didn’t take her long to find out that I didn’t know much, though.”
“Well, at least you know who your mother was. Which is more than I do. Or my father,” said Meb. “Anyway. A seeming is easier with some props. Can we get some baskets?”
“Easy,” said Neve. “They’re hung in the corner of the kitchens. But, m’lady. I’m quite scared. And it won’t be safe for you out there . . .”
“I could probably look like a dragon, as easily as a fishwife.”
Neve squeaked at the thought.
* * *
It was hard to sleep that night, and then when she did finally get to sleep, Meb woke abruptly again. It was . . . different. The last time the air had held the smell she’d come to realize was Fomoire. This . . . this was a melange of new scents. Just hints of them, as if carried by errant breezes from faraway places. Some were of forest, mushroomy and moist, some of gorse flowers, and some of Tarport on a hot day.
It wasn’t all pleasant, but it was a lot sweeter than the Ways to the Fomoire had smelled. She slept well now, for the first time in weeks. She had such sweet dreams too, dreams that involved her kissing Fionn and didn’t, in a rather confused fashion, entirely stop there, so that being wakened was anything but welcome.
Neve was too full of the news to even wait until Meb’s eyes were properly open. “Oh, m’lady! The Changer. Something is wrong. It didn’t work properly. The mage is up and in a rage. The prince is going to ride out with his troop soon to try and work out which of the Ways are open.”
“And somehow it will all be my fault,” said Meb. “We’d better go, and quickly.”
She’d tried to think, last
night, just how she could take the axe with them. Could she tell it to look like a stick? Could she rely on summonsing it again? She rather wanted it with her. She tried making it look like something else. An old stick.
It seemed to work, at least while she was holding it. Put it down, and it reverted to being an axe.
“M’lady! You can’t take that!” said Neve, shocked, seeing her pick it up.
“But it’s just the thing for cutting rock samphire,” said Meb, swinging it about. “Anyway, it changes appearance with me. Look.”
They made their way down through the passages of the castle. No one questioned the old woman, with her stick and one of the castle maids. Collecting two baskets from outside the back of the kitchen where Neve had stashed them, they walked down to the great gate, to sit and wait in the sun on a mounting block.
“The other women will be along presently. They were talking about it last night,” said Neve.
“And best we got down here early. Mage Aberinn will be sending for me again,” said Meb. “And somehow it’s always someone else’s fault. I’ll be glad to be out of here.”
“But . . . m’lady. Just where are we going to go? What are we going to do?” asked Neve.
And then Prince Medraut and his troop rode up, and saved Meb from answering something she had no idea of the answer to. Because things went badly awry, just about immediately. Medraut didn’t recognize her. But he did recognize Neve. “You. Wench. Where’s that mistress of yours?” he demanded, jigging his horse up closer, reaching down and raising her chin with his whip.