Bright Ruin

by Vic James

  ‘This door leads only to memories. Other doors you step through with your whole self. Still others exist in the mind. Real and unreal. Then and now. Here and there. All of these things are one, if you look at them correctly.’

  ‘It’s not just you who has Skill,’ said Silyen. He had been studying the king’s bench. ‘Your mother. Those three men there. That old man – and her.’

  He was pointing at Ædla. Rædwald had to look away.

  ‘You know how rare this gift is,’ he told them. ‘Few possess it, in your time, among such a large population. So think how very few we Searugléaw are in this little kingdom, this quarterling of Britain, fifteen centuries ago. You have found us all.’

  They watched as the celebrations continued. As King Tytila rose to his feet, called for his cup, and began the speech that would change everything.

  ‘My mother was a Bavarian princess, a widow, and I was her only child,’ Rædwald told them. ‘King Tytila wanted a Searugléaw bride to give him status, and my mother’s brother wanted British jewels. So, when I was two years old, we were traded. In time, I had three brothers – there they are – but none, of course, were Skilled. I watched over them as they grew, taught them all I knew, and loved them with my whole heart.

  ‘There were two Skilled families within my new father’s domain, who served as his advisers and trusted counsel. Good, wise men. Or so I thought. What my father is saying now, I believed he said with their blessing. This is my twentieth birthday, and he is naming me his successor and the girl Ædla as my bride.’

  ‘I can see it in their eyes,’ said Luke. The boy gave a low moan. ‘Oh.’

  Rædwald put a hand on the boy’s shoulder.

  ‘Then you have seen more than I did.’

  He walked them through the hall and out, away from the king-stead. Here was the burial field, the humped mounds where warriors and their families rested with honour. It was a freezing night. The stars were sprinkled white across the black sky like flour on a kneading-board.

  They’d persuaded him to come and make an offering to the ancestors, to seal his confirmation as heir.

  Rædwald saw himself throw back his fine new robe and kneel on the frosty grass, his friends in a circle around him. They were his dearest and nearest: his three brothers; the Skilled father and sons who were the king’s advisers; Ædla and her father; his shield-brother Hryth. With Luke and Silyen alongside him, Rædwald watched himself sip from the silver cup, then pour the remaining wine into the earth to honour his people.

  Which was when the eldest of his brothers seized him by the hair as the middle one cut his throat.

  His brother’s hand shook. He was the cleverest of the three, but only fifteen. Often, afterwards, Rædwald wondered if it had been his idea, and if he had wanted their father’s throne for himself. Ædla, too. They had all wanted Ædla – though none of them had loved her like Rædwald did.

  This wasn’t the first time he had watched this moment. Each time the knife to his heart was worse than the memory of the one that opened his throat like a hog’s.

  He glanced at the two young men at his side. Luke looked stricken; Silyen, watchful.

  That wavering hand meant the slash hadn’t killed him, and now his Skillful reflexes were on guard against his brother’s attack. Rædwald watched himself wrench away from his brother’s grip, even as the red lips of his wound pursed together. Ædla stepped back, a look of horror on her face, as he clawed the ground for support.

  ‘Hryth!’

  He called his shield-brother and the man pushed through the others to his side. Rædwald looked up into the face of the one he trusted above all others – and so never saw or suspected the hand that drove a blade into his side.

  Another groan came from Luke; Silyen was ghostly pale. Neither of them looked away as blow after blow, blade after blade, rained down on Rædwald where he lay. For every attack his Skill could repel, there were three more waiting behind.

  At last, his new robe slashed to tatters and re-dyed scarlet, Rædwald was rolled onto his back like a butchered sow. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t speak, he couldn’t breathe. He could only look out of eyes that swam in blood. The injuries he’d sustained were too catastrophic for his Skill to repair.

  The men around him fell back into a circle, and Ædla crept forward to crouch at his side. Rædwald remembered how that had been his final sadness, that he could not speak to tell her how much he loved her, and that he was sorry she would belong to one of these butcher-men now.

  Ædla tugged at a pin and let down her hair. Those chestnut waves he had loved to twist around a finger brushed softly against his cheek like a parting kiss.

  ‘Foreign filth. You’ll never have me,’ she whispered.

  Then she slammed the pin down into his eye.

  Luke jerked backwards in shock. ‘Why is he showing us this?’ Rædwald heard the boy hiss to his companion, but Silyen shook his head.

  As the pin point entered Rædwald’s brain, he died.

  His body lay on the frost-edged ground, blood leaking slowly now that the heart no longer beat to pump it out. The circle of his murderers stayed in place, waiting to be certain of his demise.

  When they were satisfied, the wolf pack moved back towards the hall. No effort was made to cover or destroy the body. They wanted his corpse to be seen – a claim and a warning.

  Ædla went down first, with a shriek.

  ‘Watch,’ Rædwald urged the boys.

  Bright threads of Skill arced from her mouth to the cooling corpse, spilling across the body in a wash of gold. The gaping wounds greedily drank it down.

  One of the counsellor’s sons went to Ædla’s side – and how had Rædwald not seen that, he wondered, even now. But as the young man stooped to support her, he cried out as his own Skill burst from his chest and twined with the faltering flame of his sweetheart’s draining power.

  ‘You too,’ Silyen breathed, turning to Rædwald. ‘You can take it, too.’

  He nodded. ‘I never knew till then.’

  Coils of fire writhed from the other three Skilled, twisting and spiralling up from their screaming mouths. But no flame raced towards him from the hall, from his mother, which was how Rædwald had known that she was already dead. She and her royal husband slain by their treacherous retainers.

  ‘But you were dead,’ Luke said. ‘They made sure of it before they walked away.’

  ‘Nothing can reverse death,’ said Silyen. ‘I’ve tried. I used to experiment in the woods at Kyneston – his sister caught me once. Trees. Animals. Nothing worked. My ancestor Cadmus tried it, too, when his wife was dying in childbirth. Skill can’t bring things back to life.’

  Rædwald gestured around them, at the curves of the grave-barrows and the distant trail of smoke from the king-stead.

  ‘It’s not a question of things, and doing. It’s about yourself, and being. How would you define this place and your presence here? This is my memory, but it is also a real experience for you, in this moment. You feel cold. You see the stars. You smell our furs and leather. You taste my blood in the air. By every measure, you are here. Yet you are also there.’

  He indicated the open doorway that led back to the beach at Far Carr, where their three bodies slumbered around the fire.

  ‘Here and there are one. Most crossings between are easy. But some are hard – and death is the hardest of all. It requires more Skill than any person has ever been born with.

  ‘Through the centuries, I have watched and laughed as scholars tried to classify our gifts. Some of us master elements; others, objects; others, people. Some become strong, or cause pain; heal or destroy. Sometimes one of these things is done powerfully; sometimes several are done briefly, or weakly.’

  Silyen was nodding.

  ‘And once or twice over the centuries,’ Rædwald told the boy, looking into his dark eyes to be sure that he understood, ‘there is one whose gift is to take more.’

  He pointed back towards his cold, grey body. Sk
ill-fire was lancing into it like lightning strikes from the sky.

  ‘I emptied the five who tried to kill me. But the more I took, the more I was able to take. I never knew the women and men it came from, but my need drew it from all of Britain’s quarterlings. Until not even that hardest crossing was too difficult any more.’

  As they watched, Rædwald’s body sat up. He pulled the pin from his eye and wiped it on the frosty ground, then threaded it into his tattered robe as a fastening.

  He caught Ædla first, to spare her the pain of watching the others die, because he had loved her. He shattered her ribcage and speared her heart with one stroke of his sword. Next, her lover. Then her elderly father. Her lover’s brother. His father. All five of the Searugléaw he killed.

  Then he went after his brothers. Their father’s line ended in the frozen mud, begging for mercy.

  His shield-brother, Hryth, was the only one to fight back, and Rædwald was glad of it. He had lain in furs with this man since their boyhood, and beyond. It was a hot, dark joy to open him from throat to belly.

  Rædwald felt no joy, seeing it now. Given enough time, both love and hatred died.

  The three of them watched as, back in the hall, Rædwald stood over the body of the man who had bought him, but whom he had nonetheless been proud to call Father. He pulled off the murdered king’s golden circlet, inlaid with garnet, and settled it on his own brow. Then he cut down any in the hall who were left alive, even the servants and the dogs.

  He pulled the torches from the walls and tossed them onto the tables and benches, and the rush-strewn floor. Then he pushed open the great double doors and walked away.

  Wide-eyed, the boys watched him go.

  ‘What happened next?’ Luke asked.

  19

  Rædwald

  ‘Next, I ruled harshly over my traitorous kingdom. I forget for how long, but for many more years than a man should live. I healed and slew, and performed feats of Skill that were accounted miracles: foul water ran clean, crops flourished, storms failed, and boats returned safe to harbour. I have told you the names they gave me: Cealdcyning. Cwiccyning. Gastcyning. Cold King. Living King. Terrible King. Then when the raiders came, the North-men, I laid my crown on the seat of my father and walked away. This kingdom hadn’t saved me. Let it save itself, if it could.

  ‘It couldn’t, of course. Up and down the coast, the little kingdoms burned and fell. I no longer cared. By then I had discovered that there were other places than this.’

  ‘Innocent people died,’ Luke said. ‘With that much power you could have saved them.’

  ‘Innocent people always die, Luke. It’s usually the guilty that live.’

  The boy had thought he was talking to the hero of this story. He was mistaken.

  ‘I roamed for years through this world and others, and at last my anger ended. Mostly I was alone, but sometimes I showed myself to men and women and they opened their doors and beds to me, or walked alongside me a while, and I allowed myself to be happy. I worked wonders and marvels, and was given my final name, the Wundorcyning.

  ‘But wherever I went, people needed me. To find a stolen child, to make a blighted crop whole again, to discover lost treasure, to drive away demons, to cure a barren woman or a maddened man. And great though my power was, I realized that the needs of men and women would always be greater, and that I could never satisfy them, even in all of my lifetimes.’

  He led Silyen and Luke away from the ruined king-stead and down to the shore. He’d always loved these liminal places the most, where land ended and sea began, and you could cross from one to the other with no more than a boat. Not even that – simply in your naked skin.

  Rædwald halted on the shingle bank, before it shelved into sand.

  ‘I resolved to walk away for a second time, and this time for good. I began on the shore of my father Tytila’s land, and walked and wove until I ended back there again.’

  He pointed away along the beach, where his other self came into view. This Rædwald was slowly following the water margin, trailing a thick fiery rope of Skill. His hands worked in the air, knotting together his power and his intentions into an enduring act.

  ‘Like you and the Far Carr boundary,’ Luke breathed to his companion. ‘Incredible.’

  ‘I’ve always thought so,’ the other replied, a smile in his voice. But there was awe, too.

  As the man by the water came level with them, he halted. The bright cable he held in one hand fizzed and dripped with Skill. His free hand reached to pull the other end of it out of the darkness. Carefully, he drew the two together.

  Rædwald remembered how that had felt. The momentary hesitation before he took himself out of the minds of men and women forever. The feeling of relief and release once he had done so.

  Some things, some people, were better forgotten.

  The golden cord flared – Luke gasped as it lit up the length of the coast in both directions, as far as the eye could see – and faded. There was nothing left but a ghostly afterimage girdling the sea. Then nothing at all.

  Empty-handed, the man reached out again and a doorway limned in light appeared at the water’s edge. As he pulled it open, a gentle bronze radiance bathed his weary body and something that sounded like – but was not – birdsong drifted up to the onlookers’ ears. Exhausted, sorry and glad, Rædwald’s memory-self stepped out of the world.

  The doorway closed, and it was just the three of them standing on the beach.

  ‘You went,’ said Silyen, ‘and the memory of you went too. Objects survived, though. The Chancellor’s Chair – that used to be a throne. The carvings on it are of you, aren’t they?’

  ‘Those carvings were made during my wandering years, as reports of my deeds reached Britain’s new rulers. With no Searugléaw – no Skilled – in the realm any more, I must have appeared even more of a marvel.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Luke. ‘No Skilled any more? You took it all?’

  ‘There are few enough in your time, Luke. When I lived, Britain was a threadbare place, and we Searugléaw were hardly any at all. The Northern raiders who seized this country were warriors. They despised the artifice of Skill, and brought none of its practitioners with them. It wasn’t until centuries after that a few of the gifted began to settle these shores again. And as you know, it took hundreds more years until the Skilled were numerous enough and bold enough to wrest back rule of this land from the giftless queens and kings that had ruled it in the meantime.’

  He could see the boys absorb it – their country’s history, made plain at last – as he led them back to the beach of their own time, and their bodies that still sat around the fire.

  ‘So why are you here?’ Silyen said, holding his hands to the flames to warm them once they had slipped back into their skins. ‘Now. With us. Are you repairing those cracks that let the memory of you leak back in, or is there . . . something else?’

  ‘Someone else?’ Luke added.

  Rædwald understood what they were saying: this knife-witted boy, who liked so much to know, and this shield-hearted boy, who lived to protect others. They were correct.

  ‘After I left this world, I returned from time to time to patch up my enchantment. And when I did, I would resume my wandering habit – occasionally showing myself to one or another who caught my eye.

  ‘The last time, there was a girl, in a castle. She was lonely and so lovely. Her mother wanted her to wed, and her brother wanted no man to have her but himself. All she wanted was to be free.’

  ‘Rhona.’

  Luke was leaning forward, his expression intent. And hearing that name spoken after all this time was like a blessing.

  ‘Rhona. She came to love me and we would lie down together on the heath. But she never knew who I was, and when she told me she was with child, I knew that any future with her was impossible. How could I stay here: never ageing, never dying? I could have taken her with me, but the paths between the worlds are not always easy – and often dangerous. And
if I am honest, I relish walking them alone. So, I made a selfish choice, and left once more.

  ‘I never stopped wondering about that child, though. And so I came looking for them both. But time and place are different, between here and there, and finding your way back is hard. When I searched in Skill, I sensed a gift resembling my own and thought it might be hers.’

  ‘But it was mine,’ said Silyen. The boy’s black eyes gleamed.

  ‘Yours,’ Rædwald agreed. ‘Look.’

  He lifted a hand and the Skill all around them sparkled into existence. It filled the night sky like stars, part of everything that was. But it also swirled thickly around Rædwald himself, and wrapped Silyen in brilliance. And there – he had seen it that first time they’d met – was the brightly glowing thread that connected the boy to Luke. He had bound this one to him, just as King Tytila would bestow the bord-gehat, the oath of protection, upon his favoured warriors.

  The two boys were transfixed by the eddying radiance as Rædwald concluded his story.

  ‘I found your Skill,’ he told Silyen, before turning to Luke, ‘and then through you I saw the place where you both sat, and recognized it as the castle of Rhona’s family. So close. But I could never sense our child, or Rhona herself. I’ve told myself that they must be dead.

  ‘And so you see me now, my latest repairs accomplished, ready to depart once more. But before I go, I thought what harm would it be, to ask you . . .’

  ‘Rhona’s dead,’ Luke said gently. ‘But your child, your daughter, she’s alive, and she’s amazing. Her name is Coira.’

  ‘Lord Crovan, Rhona’s brother, destroyed your daughter’s Skill when she was a baby,’ Silyen added. ‘That’s why you couldn’t sense her.’

  And Rædwald thought he was done with hurting and was through with pain, but Silyen’s words cut as deep as a brother’s blade. The one precious thing he had left to his abandoned child – ripped from her and ruined.

  ‘So, where is she?’ he asked. ‘My broken daughter.’

  ‘She’s not broken,’ Luke said fiercely. ‘And she’s not dead either, I’m sure of it, even though she went through that door.’