by Terry Madden
Brixia would not leave Connor’s side, but what that meant, Lyleth could not guess. The pony was a conjuring of the gods, but whose gods? Her mind was churning with the information Connor had brought her, truths certainly, for he’d known Angharad’s name, and told Lyleth things that only Nechtan would know.
Lyleth was Old Blood, he’d said. She’d cheated the curse of exile and found her way back to the land of the living through the roots of a tree. She considered it madness at first. But it explained far too many things to be untrue.
All these years, she had convinced herself that she was a pawn in the green gods’ game, but if Connor was right, she was the game master. She was acting out a part written by her deep mind. Maybe she wasn’t the only one. Maybe all people follow a path set before them by their eternal selves, that part of them that moves back and forth across the Void from one world to the next, that part that remembers everything and knows how much pain one can endure before change finally comes. The gods don’t goad one onward. People do that themselves.
The idea both empowered her and made her feel terribly selfish. She had used Nechtan. Maybe she’d made herself believe that she loved him, too. After all, what was love but the decision to open your soul completely to another? It was just that… a decision.
She drew the soothblade from her belt and watched the particles of firelight ignite the realm inside the clear, green stone. She imagined gentle valleys and jagged peaks, villages and fortresses and rivers threading through them. A world frozen in stone. How many lifetimes were locked inside? And who did they belong to?
It didn’t really matter. Connor had said the only way to retrieve the memories stored in these blades would be to wait until a full moon rose. That wouldn’t be for another ten days. She needed answers now.
Lyleth looked past the fire. Connor sat on a rock, staring out into the darkness with Brixia by his side. He must be as weary as she. He’d been dragging Dylan on that contraption for leagues.
She spoke softly, trying not to wake Dylan, “There was a reason the Ildana sealed the well.”
Connor turned, and the pony turned with him. He said, “They feared the Old Blood?” His accent was often hard to understand, but she was surprised he could speak Ildana at all.
Lyleth sat up and inserted the green blade into the fire, letting the flames lick the stone. Perhaps the view inside would change, reveal itself.
“Aye,” she said. “A fear so great they made certain an entire people would be lost to the land of the dead. The king of the Old Blood was a follower of the Sunless, and the battle fought on this plain was like none seen before.”
“What do you mean?” Connor asked. He came around the fire and sat down beside her, his copper eyes eager for a story.
“The Ildana wielded steel, while the Old Blood used weapons of stone and horn and bone. The battle should have been swift and easily won.” She held the soothblade to the sky, and let the waxing moonlight pass through it to her eye. Nothing but the same green landscape. She went on, “The Ildana attacked on horseback and chariot with shields and swords. They had archers skilled enough to kill from across a river. Tiernmas, king of the Old Blood, relied on his blood priests, magicians who disregarded the balance of existence and redirected the flow of life to change destiny. Like changing the course of a river.”
“But the river still finds its way to the sea,” Connor said.
“Aye. It just takes a different course.”
The thought came to her that she had done no less when she brought Nechtan back. She had diverted his path.
She went on, “The Sunless reshaped the essence of animals, trees, and men into weapons, and met the Ildana’s steel in battle. Had Black Brac not captured Tiernmas, few would have been left alive on either side. But with their king taken, the Old Blood, those who placed no faith in the dark workings of the blood priests, they made peace with Black Brac. They even accepted their exile, knowing the Ildana would never abide the Sunless in their land.”
“So the Old Blood were divided?”
“Aye, there were the Sunless, and there were those who opposed them and held true to the green gods of their people.”
“And if the well opens,” Connor said, “both will return?”
Lyleth nodded and turned the soothblade over in her hands, still warm from the fire. “But the Ildana turned the blood magic of the Sunless against them. They executed Tiernmas, and their own druada bound his soul to the well stone—the cromm cruach, the head of the Crooked One. They set twelve knights to guard him, warriors of the Ildana. Some say it’s their blood that made the pool on the island, for they were sacrificed, and their souls bound to the place no less than Tiernmas. As long as his soul is locked in that stone, the well will remain sealed. Your friend Merryn never told you that part of the tale, did she?”
“No,” he said, seeming lost in thought. His fingers were laced together, and he worried at his knuckles. “What will happen if Talan succeeds in freeing the Crooked One?”
“Tiernmas will need flesh to reclaim the Five Quarters. What better flesh to take than that of the Ildana king?”
“Maybe you’re wrong about Angharad,” Connor said. “Maybe she’s trying to stop him, not help him.”
“We’ll find out soon enough. The tracks of Talan’s horses lead to Caer Emlyn. If I can get to Angharad…”
“You should sleep.” Connor looked like a bog monster himself. His gray skin absorbed the firelight, and his eyes radiated his soul. “Brixia and I will watch.”
**
The first birds of day woke Lyleth. The fire was nothing but gray ash, and Connor was nowhere to be seen. Dylan still slept, the rhythm of his breathing unchanged. In the grass beyond a small stream, she saw a herd of horses. They had circled, their tails swishing lazily.
“Connor?” Lyleth called.
“I’m here.” His voice came from the middle of the herd.
Lyleth jumped the stream and approached them, eased between the sleek warm bodies to find Connor and Brixia in their midst. He sat cross-legged in the grass as if he held court with the creatures, Brixia’s head draped over his shoulder. He wore a satisfied smile.
“I don’t think I’ll have to drag Dylan anymore,” he said.
As the sun rose above the bog, they mounted their horses and prepared to ride. Connor looked like he’d never ridden a horse before. His hands were knotted in the mane, and he dug his heels in to hold on so that the little chestnut mare he rode would pin her ears and trot off with him. After a few falls, he began to relax and let the horse carry him.
Lyleth rode a stout gelding, big enough to carry both her and Dylan. She was forced to balance him across the horse’s withers like a sack of grain, for he still hadn’t awoken. Without rope or saddle, they started for Caer Emlyn, led by Brixia with the entire herd following. Behind them, a wall of black swarming insects moved outward from the bog.
“Why do they call Tiernmas the Crooked One?” Connor had grown more comfortable with riding it seemed.
“Merryn really told you nothing, did she?”
“I’m finding some holes in her story,” he said.
“Tiernmas was born with a crooked spine, and though he was the first born, he could not be king.”
“A king must be unblemished,” Connor said, smiling as if he was proud of his wit, “just like the Celts in the Otherworld.”
“Who are Celts?” Lyleth asked.
“It doesn’t matter. Go on.”
“His brother became king,” Lyleth went on, “and Tiernmas studied blood magic with a man who came from an island in the north. Perhaps from Sandkaldr. It may be why Irjan, Ava’s soulstalker, knew blood magic.”
“And this magician straightened his spine?”
“You do know the story.”
“An easy guess. Maybe he was a healer, not a magician.”
“A decent healer is a magician, eh?” She smiled. “Anyway, Tiernmas killed his brother and became king, and every Lúnasa—”
“Aye, the harvest. Every Lúnasa, Tiernmas ordered the sacrifice of all the first-born children in the land. All strangled and given to the waters of the Red Bog where some say his gods reside. So it is that the land became cursed, home to the spirits of babes lost to the Void, their blood beating in Tiernmas to keep him strong and whole.”
“Shit…”
The word must have been some exclamation of surprise in the language of the dead. “Aye, shit,” she said.
**
Led by a pony festooned with faded ribbons, a herd of maybe fifty or more horses trailed behind Lyleth and Connor. The horses nipped at each other now and then with pinned ears. But in the distance, the black smudge of the swarms followed. As they approached the town that huddled at the foot of the fortress of Caer Emlyn, its people gathered at the gate to watch them.
Lyleth had intended to slip into the city unnoticed. That was clearly not to be.
The fortress stood on an outcropping at the edge of a wood, with the village huddled between its walls and the bend of a small river. Its steep heights of golden sandstone were a welcome sight. It had been many years since Lyleth had tarried here, always longer than her mission of diplomacy required. It was on one such visit that Fiach became more to her than a liegeman of Nechtan’s. She’d known some happiness in this place. Dread seized her as she thought of returning here after all that had happened since.
The herd stopped short of the bridge, frightened of the crowd of people who had gathered to line both sides to see the strangers pass by. Though she had wrapped Connor in her cloak and warned him that he must keep the hood pulled low over his face, he still drew attention.
The crowd pressed close as they passed through the city gate, all trying to get a look at him. She could feel the rumors starting already. If anyone saw those bright copper eyes burning from the gray mud of his face… well, they’d charge Connor with the pestilence and throw him back into the bog in an instant.
The first three inns refused them. Lyleth considered bartering the horses that had carried them here, but that would be a betrayal of the creatures who might have been sent by the gods. She finally found an inn where the need for paying clients was more pressing than their fear of the hooded man. The alewife offered them a room in the back of her shop. One bed and a grass-stuffed mat on the floor for a silver salmon. The problem was Lyleth had no silver. She had given the last of it to the woodsman as payment to carry her message north. She had only a few coppers which she would need to buy herbs in the market and bread to feed them.
Connor lay Dylan on the single cot and now stood beside her.
“You’d best seal your oats and barley away,” Lyleth told the alewife, a big-bosomed woman, red-faced with spidering veins over her nose and cheeks. Too much of her own product, Lyleth thought.
“Seal me grain? Why’s ‘at?”
“Bugs will eat it. They’ll eat everything.”
“What bugs?”
“Send someone out to the bog and see for yourself,” Lyleth said, knowing that information can be worth as much as silver. “Swarms are coming from the Red Bog. The fields will be stripped. What they don’t eat, they’ll taint. Any fruit you’ve got—same thing.”
“Swarms from the Red Bog ye say?” Her arms were crossed over her dirty apron. “Where’s your coin?”
“I have an injured man here.” Lyleth pointed to Dylan. “Near death. I place myself at your feet and invoke the burden of hospitality upon you.” Lyleth got on her knees and showed her palms in supplication. To deny one a bed and food when such a request has been made is to summon the wrath of the green gods. Denying hospitality would bring nothing but ill luck to all under the roof.
The woman let out a cry of exasperation. “I’m a pig’s arse! No better woman am I, and the green gods knows it.”
“Certainly so,” Lyleth agreed.
The alewife paced the room and finally said, “Then ye’ll work for yer food, ye will.”
“I can read runes,” Lyleth said. “Clouds too, if you wish. For you and your customers. And my companion…” She motioned for Connor to come forward, his hood still hiding his face. “He has a bit of magic to share with you and your customers.”
“I do?” came a voice from under the hood.
“Where is that likeness square you showed me?”
“The what?” Connor asked.
“The square. With the likeness of you and your woman.”
“She’s not my woman—”
“Just give it here.”
Connor fumbled under the cloak to the pocket in his trousers and withdrew the oddly folded leather case. From it, he removed the image from a transparent sleeve. Back in the bog, he had pulled everything out of this leather case to dry. When Lyleth had reached for this tiny likeness of Connor and a young woman, he’d snatched it away. Its value, at least to him, was clear.
It was made in perfect color. It wasn’t painted, and it wasn’t gray like everything else he carried. It was as if two people had been shrunk and made flat. Smiling there forever. Connor was younger and dressed all in black and white with a black bow around his throat, the perfect likeness of the boy Lyleth had seen following Nechtan years earlier. The girl Connor called his friend was dressed as oddly as he in a gown that looked like bedclothes and she wore flowers on her wrist. Lyleth had been told there was no magic on the other side. But she was clearly wrong, and now she had a thousand questions she hoped to ask Connor.
She handed the likeness to the alewife. “In trade for our lodging, food, and a messenger.”
“My picture?” Connor protested from under the cowl.
“Perhaps you can charge a silver to see it,” Lyleth said to the stunned woman.
“Strange, indeed,” she said, holding it close to her face and squinting. “They don’t move. They’re froze, eh?”
“No,” said Connor.
“Aye,” said Lyleth. “Have you seen anything such as this?”
“Nay.”
“My friend’s magic is quite rare, wouldn’t you say?” Lyleth snatched the image from the alewife and made to hand it back to Connor.
The alewife finally sighed heavily saying, “The room and what you need to keep body and soul together in exchange for this talisman and your rune readings for my customers.”
“Right now, I need a messenger. And my friends need whatever you’re cooking in there.” She nodded toward the kitchen.
“So ‘tis. I’ll send someone. Stew’ll be ready by and by.” She reached for the image.
“I need some remedies for my injured friend. A silver will do to purchase what I need in the market.”
“A silver?” the alewife snorted.
“You’ll easily earn ten silvers tonight with that image. But you must swear not to reveal where you got such a token, or I’ll lay a curse upon you that you’ll regret.”
“No one will know of its source.”
Lyleth held the little square out to the woman again. “You’ll thank me for that.”
“A silver ‘tis.” The alewife snatched the image from Lyleth’s hand and disappeared into the smoky common room.
“How can you be certain,” Connor asked, “that she’ll tell no one about where she got such a thing?”
“I can’t.”
“I thought you didn’t want to draw attention.”
“I think it’s too late for that. Besides, fear is better than attention. Fear can help us.”
“Help us do what? You’ve not even told me what you’re planning.”
Lyleth didn’t respond, but went to Dylan, curled up and shivering on the sagging bed. It would be better if Connor knew as little as possible about what Lyleth planned.
“He’s fevered,” Connor said. “Like carrying a hot coal.”
Lyleth stripped Dylan and placed wet cloths over his chest. “Some black alder would help.”
“Where can I find some?” Connor said
.
“You aren’t going anywhere looking like that. You’ll stay with him.”
A knock came at the door, and a young man stood with his hands clasped behind his back. His resemblance to the alewife marked him as a son. He handed Lyleth a silver salmon, saying, “From me mum. I’m ‘ere to carry a message,” His closely set eyes grew wide either from fright or anticipation.
Lyleth glanced over her shoulder to see Connor’s back turned. He had some sense after all.
“Has the king come to Caer Emlyn?” Lyleth asked the young man.
“Aye. So he has. Just yesterday.”
She glanced at Connor, who scowled over his shoulder in return, his copper eyes looking like a wolf’s from the shadow of his hood.
“I need you to take a message to your lord, Fiach.”
**
After a short trip to the market square, Lyleth returned to the inn with a linsey tunic, trousers and a used cloak of roughspun for Connor. She’d bought black alder and silver powder from an herbmonger, and brick dust. It should do the trick to make Connor look like a living man rather than a corpse.
When she returned to the alehouse, she found Dylan awake, his cheeks flushed with fever. Connor was spooning some stew into him. It appeared the two had been in deep conversation by the strained looks between them.
She brewed some tea for Dylan and cleaned his wound once more, flushing the foulness from it with some of the tea and packing it with silver powder and black alder. Then she set to work on Connor.
Sitting knee to knee across from him, she spread a layer of egg white over his face, neck and eyelids. From his mouth came a string of words that could only be profanity in his tongue.
“I must be quick,” she said curtly. “Keep your eyes closed and don’t breathe.”
The fine powder flew from her cupped hand as she blew upon it as evenly as possible. Brick dust mixed with flour stuck to his face in blotchy gobs. By the time she’d patted more into the thin areas, he was beginning to take on the tones of a man who’s labored long under a hot sun. Something between ruddy and scabrous.
A weak laugh came from Dylan. “You looked better gray.”