There had been no cairn dancer for a generation and more: no woman or man to take flight from mortal senses and guide the dead beyond their earthly flesh. They had waited patiently; they knew nothing of time or restlessness. The fever growing in Mairaed was a thing of her own, a need to discharge a duty that had gnawed at her since childhood. Her steps came quicker, her hair sticking to her cheeks as sweat dampened her against the cold night, and her chest ached with the icy air she drew in through her mouth, too hungry for it to warm in her nose.
When the dance ended, it ripped the sky asunder.
Starlight spilled from the darkness, and moonlight made shadows and shapes in scattered clouds. A black-haired woman with ravens on her shoulders stepped forth, with her two sisters identical in all ways only a breath behind her. They wore gowns of spun midnight, their seams glittering with light as white as the sun, and they gathered the eager dead in their arms. The lament was ended, replaced instead by warbling coughs and curious hollow pops from the ravens, who left their mistresses’ shoulders to herd souls along the starlight path.
Only when they were gone, ravens and souls alike, did one sister turn away from the others, and come down amongst the cairns to tilt Mairaed’s chin up with a fingertip. She studied her with bright black eyes, then pressed a soft, cool kiss to Mairaed’s lips. Mairaed made a sound in her throat, as curious and startled as the ravens. The woman paused as she withdrew, then smiled a bladed smile that named her no friend to the living, and drew Mairaed close again.
The kiss this time was deeper, hungry mouth parting to explore and taste and claim. Mairaed’s woolen shift was no barrier to the icy hand creeping within, curving the weight of her breast in its palm and closing scalding cold fingers over her nipple. It burned straight to her heart, faltering its steady rhythm, and the heat that spilled between her thighs had nothing to do with the blood that had come that night.
The woman withdrew again, her sharp smile filled now with possessive certainty. She turned and walked away, joining her sisters, and starlight folded up to leave darkness behind.
Mairaed, without looking, without ever wanting to look, knew a handprint red and strong as a birthmark lay on her breast.
****
That night had passed a dozen years ago, and never once in the years since had the transition been so intense, so intimate, so sweet. Reasons upon reasons answered as to why: the dead she had given passage to that night had been strangers to her, nearly all of them, with no recent loss or sorrow to temper the power of the dance. There had been so many of them, too: a generation of villagers all at once, and the worst loss Mairaed had danced since then had been four children struck down together by illness.
The Morrigan had come that night, for the first time since her first dance. They were called by a feast of souls or untimely death, were the three-fold goddess of death and war and blood, and the small cairns offered both. Mairaed had stood frozen, captivated by their presence, but none of the sisters had looked at the woman one of them had marked as a girl. Disappointment and relief had twinned inside her: even a dancer for the dead didn’t want the goddess’ gaze on her too often, and yet to be ignored left a space around her heart.
Those things came back to her now, in the dark of a night she didn’t want to face. Before dawn, she would know — they would all know — the Morrigan’s cool touch again, but it would be Mairaed herself who bore the weight of it.
“Mairaed.” A man pushed open the door to her rough stone house, letting moonlight make a bright path across the floor. The only light had been banked coals: Mairaed closed her eyes against silver brilliance, then came to her feet as Sion ducked his head and stepped across her threshold.
He was handsome, was Sion O’Connail, with light eyes and a broad face beneath hair dark with moonlight. He’d worn the druid’s white before Mairaed came to it herself, and had been a solemn child who kept his robes clean. She’d been an adult before she realized the robes were themselves a test: it wasn’t easy to keep clean in a life of farming and digging and animal husbandry. A child determined enough to keep wool pristine was a steady soul, likely to age into a calm mind capable of holding clear thoughts: ideal for the wise folk of the village.
Mairaed’s robe was, even now, rarely clean. But then, she played a different role, and on her, the white meant a transition to another world.
“Are you ready?” Sion asked, and under his words came the sound of drums and pipes; the sound of blades scraping from sheathes and of leather armor tested by thumping fists. The air through the opened door carried the scent of peat fires and new-cut hay, rich and sweet while they lasted. Soon enough they’d be drowned by blood, and for a while not even her beloved river would be able to carry the sticky flat smell away.
“I am.” There was no other answer she could give, hadn’t been since the night her blood came; hadn’t been, in truth, since she was old enough to toddle to the water’s edge and listen to the voices that called her down the river.
Tempered sympathy darkened Sion’s eyes and he retreated into shadow, gesturing her out of her home with the respect due one far older than her years. They might have been a pair, once, gentle Sion and gods-touched Mairaed, but that, too, was a path closed to her in childhood.
The drumming stopped as she stepped outside. All the noise did, as though wool had been stuffed in her ears. Dozens of faces turned to her, alight with hope, with fear, with awe, and for a moment the river’s song swelled and threatened to take her away.
These were her people, and she went to dance them victory in battle.
Aine’s daughter had stories of such things, but nothing more: they had been at peace for generations, with no call to arms by a high lord. The wealthiest in the village, those who owned cattle and sheep and horses, sometimes took those horses to raid neighboring cattle; to steal fine bulls to cover their cows or to take the tenderest of new lambs when they needed their own to grow into breeding stock. That was sport, not war, and visited on them in return by others. Lives were sometimes lost, but mostly when a young man misjudged his horseman’s skill, or an old one misjudged his own fading strength. There had been no blood debts to settle in Mairaed’s lifetime and longer.
But then the dreams had come, first to the druids, then to Mairaed, and finally to the people themselves. Dreams of war: dreams of small warriors with black eyes and black hair; with olive skin and gleaming white teeth. Their swords were bright and sharp and their bodies glittered with impenetrable shells. Where those shells fell away, their legs were bared to the cold, as if they couldn’t feel it. Their backs were covered in cloaks of blood, red and flowing, and no one in the village imagined they were men. These were the Fir Bolg, black monsters from under the earth who had once driven away the old gods and faerie folk of the land, and who came now to take it from the mortals who had settled in their place.
Dreams, in far too little time, gave way to stories flowing up the river: warnings of the Fir Bolg’s attacks, and their ruthless prowess in battle. The dead were the lucky ones: survivors were chained and bound and taken away to serve in darkness, soft green shores and misty sunlight left behind. Those who bore the tales were those who had gathered children and elders and left, abandoning pride and home for a chance at life.
Most of Mairaed’s village had gone with them, escaping toward the midlands and the rocky, barren west. Those who were left behind stayed to take up weapons, to slow the Fir Bolg and sacrifice their own lives that the children might survive.
Standing amongst them, in awe of their bravery and determination, a tightness slipped away from Mairaed and rose toward the star-filled sky, carrying with it her breath. It took a film from her eyes and it became tears, not of sorrow, but of pride. If it was not her fear that rose into the night, it was some part of it, and some part of her reluctance, so she could be filled with a lightness that slipped beyond the mortal world and showed her the steps to a dance she had never done.
“We ask a terrible thing tonight.” Sion spoke fr
om behind her, his voice loud only because of the silence: had a bird thought to whistle, his words might have been drowned beneath its tune. “We ask a terrible thing from one of our own, because an ancient enemy has come among us, and no mortal army is enough to beat them down. It’s fortune that brings us a cairn dancer in our time of need, but the price to be paid is a mighty one. Mairaed O’Broin, will you dance this night for us?”
Silence fell again, words disappearing like weights in the river, without a ripple. What fear had remained transmuted within her, becoming frothy laughter that burst noiselessly in her throat and had more to do with release than delight.
“You think it’s my strength that I draw on, my destiny whose path I walk.” Mairaed closed her eyes, seeing the faces of the boys and girls she’d known in the image of the men and women burned into her mind. The earth still held her to the ground, her weight pressing against it, small stones round beneath her feet; she knew it, and yet felt as though she was carried upward, her chest filled with lightness that dragged her away, her soul no longer bound to her body. “You think it’s my own power, but you’re wrong. It’s yours, and I’ll dance that spirit and return it to you three-fold in the battle that you face.”
She bowed to them without looking again, and let the aching draw in her heart lead her to the river, to the moonlight, and to the cairns.
****
Blood spattered, purple in the moonlight. A thin line of pain opened on Mairaed’s cheek, burning higher with each moment that passed. The sword came again, pitted metal flecked with viscera that sprayed a vile arc. She countered this time, clumsy: she had never learned the steps to this dance, and no wellspring of unsought memory brought it to life in her as the cairns once had. Her hand, unused to the weight of a weapon, ached, but she lifted her sword again: again: again, each blow uncertain and each hit cleaving less deeply into the enemy than she might hope.
They were men after all, the little dark creatures she fought. Men, or the Fir Bolg had thrown off their monstrous forms to take on something more familiar, and were perhaps all the more frightening for it. Their shells were armor, better-made than the heavy leather plates her own people wore, but nothing more magical than that. It heartened her and she raised her voice, hurried her steps, made the news that the enemy were nothing more than men part of her dance.
Men, yes, but men who fought as one, in a way she had never imagined. Men who, when one fell, stepped forward to close ranks, so they seemed never-ending. There were simply too many, and that, too, she put into her dance, demanding everything from the cairns, from the dead, from the goddess who had marked her.
She was not alone. Her people fought with her, bright shadows amongst the cairns, as if they carried sunlight with them even while she fought beneath the moon. They had not followed her down the river, nor had they come to sing a song for the dead, and when she staggered back beneath an onslaught, she fell into Sion, whose robes were black and stiff with blood and whose oaken staff was matted with flesh and bits of hair.
Fell into, and through, as though he was a wraith.
Then, and only then, did battle turn to stillness around her. Only then did she see how the river ran red; how the very earth was thick and sticky with blood around the cairns ― in her sacred place where the dead were meant to be honored and set free, not multiplied. Only then did understanding come to her: that she had danced to the edge of time to see what lay beyond it, and that come the morning, her people would die.
Rage boiled up inside her and spilled out, turning her vision to crimson and the moon to a bloody smear across the sky. Fury and hurt poured from her, a wall of dark emotion strong enough to fight the moonlight. Step by step it quailed and fell back, and step by step Mairaed advanced, red sword gripped in one hand, heartbeat surging black in her eyes, and a demand screamed through bared teeth. The scar on her breast burned, cold fire pouring into her body from that remembered touch, and she stalked onward, leaving the world behind.
Halfway to the moon, the stars split apart. Ravens poured out, glittering black in the night as they made a path of wings for the Morrigan. One sister walked with a hand curled to her chest, fingers working against her palm as her wrathful gaze found Mairaed and held her where she stood.
Triumph colder than even the Morrigan’s eyes blazed in Mairaed, palm-print on her breast turning to ice: turning so cold that as she’d once known a red mark lay on her body, she now knew it burned silver, as bright and hard as the river in winter. Oh, there was a price, there would be a dear price to pay indeed, but now, and in this moment, it meant nothing.
Because not even a goddess can mark a woman and not be marked somewhat in return.
“I am your vessel,” Mairaed whispered to the three-fold goddess’s black gaze. “Fill me.”
“You cannot command—” Three women spoke as one, the Morrigan’s voice becoming the winter wind, cutting and sharp, driving ice into bone and stripping skin from flesh.
Mairaed spat, a hawk of sound from deep in her throat that cast away terror as much as it dismissed the idea that she was forbidden to command those she served. “There will be death. There will be blood. There will be war. These are your domains, Morrigan. Give me what I need to help my people survive and it will all be done in your name.”
The sister who held her hand curled to her chest came forward, leaving the other two as black slashes against the night. “And if we do not?” Alone, her voice was a serrated thing, still full of power but shy of the implacability when they spoke together.
Mairaed’s grip tightened on her sword as though her body thought she might fling herself into battle against the gods. The Morrigan smiled, showing teeth as pointed as her voice, the very expression inviting Mairaed to try, but words were the dancer’s weapon now. “The Fir Bolg invade our land. Who will dance for you, Morrigan, if they take these green hills from us? Who will call on you in battle if godless monsters rule this island? Who will honor you, if we are gone?”
Thin lightning crackled between the three, starlight turned to a cutting edge, hissing with vindictive sound. Ravens warbled above that sharp song, their calls almost words, and between it all Mairaed knew she listened to how the Morrigan spoke among herself; how her thoughts were shared three to one and one to three.
“You are mortal,” the one closest to Mairaed finally said aloud. “Fragile.”
“All life is fragile. Even a goddess can bend to the whim of time.”
“Not this goddess,” the Morrigan said as one. “Not this time. Release your weapons. You will have no use for them when I am done with you. Come to me. Come to us.”
Mairaed opened her hand, felt her sword’s hilt roll free; felt the marks it left in her palm suddenly turn rigid and strong, as if tenderness had passed to calluses without blistering in between. She stepped forward, and the nearest Morrigan opened her curled palm to show a mark as red as the one on Mairaed’s breast. Redder: blood oozed from it, thick and discolored in the moonlight, and pain shot through Mairaed’s heart, stabbing deep enough to steal her breath. She faltered and the Morrigan caught her: all the Morrigan, three-fold goddess suddenly surrounding her, hands cool as ice and burning with fire as they lay on her skin.
“Lust,” the Morrigan whispered, and the word ran like knives through their touch. Two held Mairaed’s arms, and she ached where they grasped, pain rushing from her chest to her fingers until numbness was left behind. The third, the one who bled, slipped open Mairaed’s robes and put her hand against the scar she’d left a lifetime before. Sticky blood warmed against the mark, and the Morrigan brushed her mouth against Mairaed’s. “Lust for blood.”
“Lust for death,” her sisters murmured. “Lust for war.”
Mairaed, trembling, whispered, “Lust for life.”
The razor smile came again, this time more felt than seen. “Lust for us,” the Morrigan said. “Take us in to you, cairn dancer, and we will give you the dance you need.” Her lips turned hungry against Mairaed’s, her hands cold and q
uick and searching, and where they touched they left behind heat that brought Mairaed’s heartbeat to a roaring throb. Frantic for air, Mairaed threw her head back, and another sister covered her mouth with a deepening kiss. Lips and curious tongues tasted her breasts as knowing fingers parted her thighs and swept upward, inward, waking a need that had gone unanswered for a lifetime. Her heart would burst with it, would surely fail from the Morrigan’s all-encompassing touch; from the desire for the three-fold goddess who was all, all, all that Mairaed could ever want.
And then in the moment of ecstasy the goddess was gone, leaving Mairaed white and spent and numb on a starlight stair.
****
Ravens guided her to the earth, stood clattering and clacking on the cairns, and giving the blade that lay between them bright-eyed glances of avarice. Mairaed crouched and lifted it: not the same one she had dropped, but one of far finer make, light and deadly sharp. Even as she wished it might be a weapon she knew better, it became one: a bladed staff, fast and easy to manipulate in her hands.
Her hands: her hands, too, were her own and were not. A glimmer of unknown strength lay in them; lay in the shape of her arms and in the length of her stride when she saw dawn was near, and that war would be upon her village with daylight. Her clothes were not her own, and neither were they the Morrigan’s: she wore armor of silver and white, making her a banner in the coming light. It was the armor, the weapon, the stride of a hero; of a man out of legend, and not of a single young woman whose fate was bound to the river of death.
Bright-eyed corvids alighted on her shoulders, their wings half spread and black beaks open to cry go, go! Only when she began to run did they take wing again, the two who’d urged her on and an unkindness more besides, beating their way through winter air to keep promises, to meet destiny.
The Phantom Queen Awakes Page 5