by R. Cooper
The famous shrine was housed by a small, round building of stone, with a sloped roof. It had one doorway, also rounded, and short enough that most had to duck to enter. Latticework beneath the awning of the roof served as windows, although the doorway was never blocked. On the ground outside, in the spaces supposed to be left bare for the ebb and flow of the spring inside, flowers nearly always grew. No one planted them, or admitted to it, but even in the autumn, the spaces were overflowing with hemlock and foxglove, dark hollyhocks, and something that smelled of mint although it had not overgrown the other plants.
Delf only knew those names because of Brennus. She thought of them, and bowed her head to their memory as she swept through the doorway.
She stopped just beyond the threshold.
“I never really questioned your plan, if you had one,” she began, thinking of her borrowed clothes and her wet hair and how Prityal would disapprove of both of those things. She shivered. “Jokingly, but never truly until now.”
It was no way to begin, yet Delf did not call it back. They were allowing Prityal to die. The one who meant so much to the country that claimed Them. The one who might have saved that country.
Delf inhaled deeply and raised a hand. “I will be honest. I care about Ainle, but not nearly as much as I care about her. Just her. Is that too selfish?” Delf pushed up the hood of the cloak. “Although, what do you know of it? You gave us our vices and our virtues, but you are not like us.”
She scraped her hair back, disliking that it was loose, absently thinking of shaving her head again only to then fret over what Prityal might think. Delf was not a spirit. She was not wise. She was human, weak and worried. The Three would have to allow for that, and for her thoughts that refused to be orderly.
Her hands would not stop shaking. Delf stared at them before looking beyond them to the rest of the room. At the center, at the exact center, Delf had no doubt, was a simple fountain, no higher than her knees. It was cracked and crooked, but remained standing despite the rumbling ground and rushing stream beneath it.
Leading out from the fountain were fissures in the stone floor, dozens of them, a few uneven enough to trip anyone not paying attention. The ceiling was low. Delf could stand to full height, and Ange might have been able to as well, but the space made Delf aware of her size, for reasons she could not have explained.
This shrine, loved and visited often, had offerings behind the quietly bubbling fountain; sewing, and a child’s poppet. Some bones. A small knife. Feathers. Four vials with bright contents. A bowl of distilled wine from Resk, distinctively brown.
Someone slipped past her. Delf belatedly realized that someone had been in the shrine when she’d arrived, and her loud, rude questions must have driven them out.
“Another would-be chevetein?” Delf didn’t glance after whoever it was. She came farther into the shrine, stopping well short of the fountain.
“Fuck,” she swore, after some time waiting. “You’re worse than the priests with your secrets, expecting busy people to take the time to look for signs. I do not expect to be rewarded, but if anyone should be, it should be her.”
Delf raised her arms to gesture and felt another tug at her stitches. “Instead you convince Rosset, or allow him to convince himself, that this was necessary. To what? To get her to the Seat? She would have returned on her own. Did you want her to ask again? Because she’s not set on it, and after this, I don’t think you have the right to ask her for anything else.”
It echoed when the rest of her words had not, as if the Three wanted to remind Delf of what she said and who she said it to.
Delf had loved Prityal from afar and been content with it. The Three had shown her, given her, more. They had brought this on Themselves, as well as on her.
But she paused to catch her breath.
“If we are all heading toward a return to magic-users, and legends, and chaos, then we will need more than ambiguous signs and vague priests. We will need studies of the old ways, and more knights, and something,” Delf fumbled, “new. Compared to that ruin, broken though it was, we are a hobbled together collection of scraps. There are so many things we do without knowing the meaning. So many knights with no faith in magic. All of us afraid of what is outside Ainle. We don’t… we don’t even know what is in the rest of the wilderness, if there are creatures there.”
She did not have wine, but she could still think, if not with absolute calm.
“You aren’t going to get that sort of vision from just anyone. Not her, either. Prityal of Ters.” Delf smiled around the name. “She is solidly from somewhere, with family and history. Soft, though she belongs in a time of legend. They would fly banners in her name.” They might, although Prityal would try to prevent it. “Things are not terrible now. But they could change. They will change, I believe is what you mean. And so no ordinary chevetein would do. That’s why you need her? Only a legend can find a legend?”
“How is she supposed to do that if she cannot move from a bed without collapsing?” Delf shouted it, and the shrine caught the words and kept them. “How can she, if tonight she….”
That was not the right question, though it was a just question.
Delf made an irritated noise and paced, half-circling the fountain until her trembling legs demanded she stop.
“Better questions,” she said aloud as she mused. The chevetein was not her immediate concern, although the issue was obviously related. All of this had begun with that, then led them to Rosset. “Was he correct?” Delf asked, then tossed her head. “No, that’s vague as well.”
She had to narrow her questions down for clearer answers. She was a human addressing what was not human.
“How do we save her?” She turned to the fountain and counted eleven separate cracks along its bottom curve without receiving anything that could be interpreted as an answer.
She was in no mood to wait, even if there had been time.
She made an animal noise and tried again. “How do I save her?”
“I am aware there are better choices of heroes,” she added quickly. “But I am here, and you showed me all of this for a reason.” Or so it seemed. Delf bit her lip. Her chest was cold. All of her was cold except for the heat around her stitches. Her voice was a whisper. “Or was that to bind me deeper to her? My heart was already given.” She looked over the sad, smiling poppet and the small carving knife. “Did it bother you that I gave it in two places? I thought it would please you.”
She wondered how the long the distilled wine had been sitting there and if it was safe to drink.
“It’s just like you to remain silent now. I jokingly throw the bones about the future or the fate of my friends, and you speak to me of hearts, and warn me of betrayals, and call me—I was sent a fox.” Delf could still hear the chattering laugh. She went on, slowly, and with more care. “And a stag, and then a crow. I thought I knew the meaning of the first and the last. The stag, however… that has no meaning except dinner, or a good hunt. In the old days, it might have meant a quest, but we were already on one.” It had been a beautiful creature, full of dignity despite the rut it should have been in, pausing to be seen by Delf during its search for a mate.
Delf frowned, then put a hand to her chest for the sudden, bright bloom of agony there. “Is Prityal to be beloved by the chevetein?” For several moments, Delf could not take in air. She bowed her head. “Kind of you to warn me. Too late, but you knew that. Yet it is something to know, to prepare for.” The fountain babbled quietly. “Am I to find them, and bring them to her?” Delf was fond of pain, but this was asking a lot. “Is it some priest attending to her sickbed? If it will save her life, then you have only to show me where to find them.”
She laughed a little, surprising herself, but her sense of humor had always been lacking.
“Poor Prityal. Was I her practice? That’s a bit cruel of you, although it is more than I expected to receive.” Delf raised her eyes to the fountain, where the waters continued to flow up and t
hen return to the stream below. She considered it, a future of watching, from a distance once more but with the knowledge she had now. After a while, she could breathe again.
She nodded.
“I will put myself forward, as she requested of me, and move my chair to sit with the high circle when they plan. Will that do, do you think? I will help as I did before. Support her and the chevetein. As long as they love her.”
Delf exhaled heavily. “That is selfish of me again, I suppose, to add that? Prityal would say I was not selfish enough. That I should ask why it wasn’t me, but… that is obvious, surely. So, I will be in the high circle. I will serve them both, and therefore Ainle, well, and no longer unknowingly shirk my duty by being too humble.” Even Rosset believed Delf should be in the high circle… once he had noticed her. The Wise had warned her, even answered her. Ange thought Delf was a thinker like Jareth. And Prityal… Delf had protected her, bled for her, to keep her innocent of the crime Rosset had wanted.
Delf had stopped her, also as Rosset had wanted. Not how he had expected, likely, but she had.
How had he expected her to stop Prityal? Delf froze at the question, which she had not had a moment to consider since it had happened.
Who could have possibly broken through Rosset’s spell? He had known Delf as a failed priest, certainly not a user of magic. Yet Delf had been expected to stop the force that was Prityal with something other than reason and their shared memories. What else was she supposed to have done—called down the power of the Three? Had Rosset thought her priest training had extended farther than it had? He should have known better. Even a good priest of the Three might not have been answered.
“Rosset thought I could demand your attention,” Delf said it to make herself believe it. “Me. Delf. Why should you favor me beyond my service to Ainle and Prityal? I would have chosen you, if I had been fit, but that was not how I could show my devotion. I’ve never been one for vagaries when I could use my hands.”
Delf continued to frown, though not at anything in particular.
“He thought it was Prityal until we went to your house. Where I pricked you and asked foolish questions. Where he changed his mind, and so did she.” Delf had returned there to find out why but had gotten distracted. Always distracted. A foolish, loving human with human worries. Yet They had answered those, too.
Delf’s heart beat faster. “But first.” Her throat locked, suddenly dry. “But first, you answered my other question. I didn’t notice. But the others did.”
Delf had turned into the beam of golden sunlight and been unable to see. Then Prityal had said her name with wonder.
Because Delf was ridiculous, she had been distracted by that, too. She was a creature of wine, and worry, and messy tumbles with friends, and pining for someone far out of her reach who…had reached for her and asked why Delf had not come closer.
The wind outside was growing stronger, louder, or Delf had only just noticed it. It would blow the rain clouds away, or bring in more.
She noted all of that distantly, while water trickled below her feet.
She had to unstick her tongue. “Did I cause this?”
That did not deserve an answer. She should not even have asked. But there was a sliver of honesty in it. Because it pleased Delf to help others, her friends, and she had not done it. She had not offered, thinking it was useless.
No one ever spoke of her value. She had known herself competent, reliable, from their actions. Known herself desired, on occasion, and befriended. But she had not, except for Brennus, ever had someone take the time to answer her as though she mattered. And she had never thought to ask for it once it was gone. Had not even thought of it until today.
“I cannot look at those in the barracks, or at her, and say I am one of them, that I have done everything I could do, if I have not done this. Is that it? I must do it even though the answer will be no?” There might have been easier ways to teach that lesson. “It’s ridiculous that I’m here. What am I? Not even a cheve. Certainly not a chevetein of legend.”
The shivers had never left her. Her hands ached with the cold and how tightly she clenched them. “I would serve one,” she offered. “I could take on the search for our chevetein in her place. Would that exchange do?” Prityal thought Delf was capable of it.
“She believes in me. That I represent the Seat. I’m not sure that the others don’t agree with her. She also believes that I am meant to be here.”
Delf twisted around just enough to peer out the doorway at the darkening sky and the patch of clouds still lit by the sun behind them. She turned back to the fountain and the steadily falling waters. She whispered. “Do you also think that?”
She was a little dizzy, which was probably her exhaustion. But the ripple in the distilled wine was not a trick of Delf’s mind. The ripple spread outward, then started again.
Delf reached out, but there was nothing to hold to.
“If,” and what a fool she was to use the word ‘if’ with spirits, but she did not take it back. “If I offer myself, will you prove her wrong?” Delf did not want Prityal to be wrong. But neither did she want to know what the Three thought by pushing her toward this moment.
“This is not a good reason to do this. It’s not pure. There is goodness in it, and I know what I would gladly do for those I care about, but it is not selfless. Because I would ask it with the wish that it would help her.” A little selfishness was not bad. Maybe even good. Enough to keep the Hope alive. To keep Prityal near.
“Is that what brought Brennus here? To find out for themselves what you were after, only to discover the answer was Brennus themselves? You are sly, vexing spirits.” Delf did not think her ire disguised her fear, not that anything could be disguised from Them. “Time is running out. Which is Rosset’s fault but also mine, is it not? You spoke to me, and I refused to recognize the answers because they were to questions I dared not ask. But you knew what was in my mind.”
“She should see it happen, before…. If you will not spare her—no. No. If all of that was to bring me here then you will spare her, or I will destroy this shrine. That’s a vow, my ladylords. Prityal should know that she has fulfilled her promise.”
Again, Delf’s reckless words came back to her, hollow over stone.
“Or I am a fool,” Delf added, “and I will do this and nothing will happen. Or, I will do this, and she will still love another. But she will live?” Delf stopped to let this also hang in the air. “What a good reason, for me. And what a small reason to be chevetein. Because she is Ainle. The best of it. And that might be a part of why I will serve her unto my death, but it is not why I am here now. I am here now for Prityal, who snores, and worries over her experience in bed, and defends me when I’ve not earned it. A wise priest would likely tell me those are one and the same. You cannot have one without the other because that is who Prityal chose to be. I did not choose. I could choose this, though it is probably folly. I am…”
She did not voice what she thought she was. Prityal had told her to have faith in herself, believed Delf won all her battles. “I will…”
She did not kneel slowly. She meant to, but her knees buckled with terror and strain, and she landed on the cold stone with her hands out in front of her. I am Delf of Nowhere, she thought boldly, though the Wise were likely laughing at her. “Will you have me as your Hand? Me, Delflenor the Stubborn. A failed priest and lower-tier knight with some wisdom and a terrible sense of humor. Will you?”
Delf sat back to listen to the burble of the fountain and to stare at the one or two drops of water that had splashed onto the stone but not yet dried.
Her shoulder ached. Her legs were not ready for her to rise. She stayed where she was, breathing hard. She had been mistaken, and it was all for nothing. She could have tried this before, and faced the others with the knowledge. Delf could have been rejected and been on her way, but she would have known.
“Now what?” she panted to the Three, if They were even still listening.<
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She pushed against the stone and glared at the latticework. This had done nothing to affect the setting sun, or the lateness of the hour, or the pain Prityal had gone through.
“Who, then?” Delf’s voice cracked on the demand. “Who is good enough? Who could possibly be this chevetein of legend who may be loved by Ainle’s Champion?” If it was not Delf, and not Ange or Ran or Rosset or countless others, then who?
Delf turned to the fountain and the air and the cracks in the ground that grew darker. “Why not me?” She closed her eyes only to immediately open them again. “I’m strong and brave.” Prit had called her hero. “You know I am devoted.” She had carried her love for years. “I’m capable.” She could run a household, and give fighting lessons, and knew how to make friends. Delf the Humble, Prityal had named her, but then said she was remarkable. “Stubborn,” Delf said that name instead of merely thinking it. “That I am. Prityal will not die today, and whenever she does, it certainly won’t be for a fool’s errand!”
They should expect her anger as the miller’s son should have expected it when Delf had bruised her knuckles on his face for his cruelties. “Why not me?” she shouted. “I offer myself as chevetein. Is that what you wish to hear?”
The cracks beneath her split wide with a sound that shook Delf’s bones and made her cover her ears. Water rushed up through the gaps in the floor, icy cold, leaving her shaking and gasping and struggling to rise. The earth shook again, and the waters rose high enough to float the bowl of wine.
The fountain overflowed, streaming water out across the cracked stones to the open doorway. The flowers would drown and grow again when the waters receded. Delf stumbled backwards with the earth still quaking and the stone slippery under her feet.
Outside, the wind howled, pushing storm clouds back and forth, sending mists across the landscape and giving the sun nothing but a thin gray veil to hide behind.
Around her, everywhere, where she could see and leading to places she could not, were arcs of colors, scattering and vanishing and reappearing, bright and unmistakable streaks across Ainle’s sky.