The Waking Land

  Ingram Knoll smiles and holds out his hand. I clasp it. His grip is warm and strong.

  “Tell this to the council, Caveadear,” he says. “We convene in three days, when the lords should arrive from the Western Isles. Bring your fire, and you’ll convince them.”

  I smile back, but his warm grip can’t erase my lingering doubt. What if I can’t? What if Finn’s already dead?

  When the song ends and we gather ourselves to leave, Granya approaches me. Like her brother, she stretches out both hands to grasp mine. “Lady. Caveadear. You heard my niece call me the memory-keeper of Dalriada.”

  “I did.” It’s hard to look her in the eyes; my anger that she predicted Finn’s death won’t let me go. But maybe she’s wrong. Voices in your head don’t necessarily speak the truth. And I remind myself that I’ve come here to learn, as well as persuade the mountain lords to fight with us. “What is a memory-keeper?”

  “Ah, you wouldn’t know.” She pats my hand. I suppose it’s her nature to be motherly. “We are the ones who keep the memories of the old ways alive. Not only the stories and rituals of the gods, but the histories and traditions of Caer-Ys. Each clan has their own memory-keeper—not in the lowlands, though, not since the conquest.”

  “So you know the stories about the stewards of the land?”

  Her eyes crinkle. “More than that. The Dalriada memory-keepers have always had the honor of teaching others; this place used to be a school of great learning. Students came here from the world over to learn magic—many of the books still remain—and we trained many sorcerers.” She leans closer. “By tradition, the stewards of the land came here to learn some of their craft from us, too, except for those secrets only the other Caveadears knew. It would be my honor to teach you what has been preserved.”

  “Hugh—the Ollam—told me you still possess much of the ancient knowledge.”

  “We do—though we haven’t trained a Caveadear in two centuries! And you’ve already wed the land. But there are other traditions that have been passed down, and we can explore them together.” She pauses. “And there are secrets you must learn—King Ossian’s secrets.”

  I take a deep breath. “I’m ready to learn.”

  —

  GRANYA AND I agree to meet in the morning, since, she says, Rhia and I must both be tired from our journey. But, despite my weariness, I hardly sleep. I keep thinking about Finn, about the bell ringing danger. Does Jahan think I abandoned him? Do they think I’m dead?

  I get up early. There’s no point in trying to sleep longer. Part of me wants to pack my things and run—back to Taich-na-Ivaugh, back to keep Finn alive, back to take my part as steward of the land.

  But I have to stay here. I’ve got to convince the mountain lords to help, or what’s the point in me abandoning everyone again?

  My room is lovely, hung with tapestries of unicorns and commanding a view over the mountains and the rushing stream, but my nerves are still too tight-strung to relax. I’ll go out instead.

  The long hallways sit quiet. I let myself out into the main courtyard, shivering at the shock of the cold near-winter air. The golden pine rises in magnificent silhouette against the pale sky.

  Somewhere nearby, someone is singing. I pause, staring about. No singer appears. I listen again, more closely, and I realize it’s coming from the tree.

  I look again at the golden pine, old and ridged and tough as any of the mountain lords. It’s difficult to imagine these trees growing across all of Caeris. Why would my ancestors let them be cut? The song drifts from it, not quite humming, not quite words, but a melody nevertheless, pooling around the tree’s great roots. As I stand there, I feel the tree moving—the lines of sap running up through it, the inching growth of its wood. The movement mimics the song. The song is its movement.

  It is not quite a melody, yet it reminds me of the song my mother wrote for me. The land’s song.

  A flash of white catches the corner of my eye. A woman walks past me around the tree, her stride purposeful, her white hood billowing around her head, though there is no wind. She glances over her shoulder at me, and I glimpse the markings on her face—spirals of green and yellow.

  It must be Granya. She tilts her head toward me—an invitation to follow.

  My feet begin to move even before my mind has decided on it. I have to jog to catch sight of Granya, out at the edge of the courtyard. She must be running herself: she is already winding halfway up a hill above the city. She pauses on a rock to look back. The just-woken sun makes wings of her white garment. Fog clings to the hillside, not yet burned away.

  She resumes her climb.

  I hurry after her. She must be tougher than me: the steep hill puts me out of breath fast, even after days of walking, and she’s already disappeared over the top.

  My legs and lungs are burning by the time I stumble onto level ground. The fog is dying into scraps of cloud, and through it, shining under the new sun, rises a circle of standing stones.

  I stop short, panting. I ought to have expected this. It is just like Barrody—just like Cerid Aven and Laon—a hill rising over the city, crowned with a stone circle. The histories said that most towns in Eren and Caeris were built beneath the monuments, but they never explained why.

  The stones jut toward the sky, slender and sculpted only by weather. Even from a short distance I can see veins of white quartz shining in them. They seem to hover, though moored in the earth, at once in the land and outside of it, part of time and beyond time.

  A figure moves in the circle.

  Granya. I walk forward. The stones appear delicate, almost ethereal, though they tower over my head, almost twice my height, like unearthly giants. Heat pulses off them. A radiance of light seems to shine through their cores. This is not like any other stone circle I have seen. All the others have a certain heaviness. This is pure light.

  I step to the edge of the circle and gasp.

  Two figures occupy the center of the stones. One, a man, kneels on the ground before the altar stone. With his thick red-gold hair, for a moment I think he is Finn.

  But he’s not. He’s older, for one thing—lines feather from his eyes—and for another, he wears a beard. Its color is bright against his pale, drawn skin. His hands rest, palms up, on his thighs, and he holds himself canted forward, as if he’s in pain. Beneath his cloak, I glimpse bandages wrapping his stomach, stained dark with blood. But he has Finn’s eyes, blue and clear. He looks beyond me, as if I’m not even there, toward the place where the tops of the stones meet the sky.

  A woman stands at his side, a silver dagger in her hand. Even from here, I can tell she’s been crying; her eyes are swollen, red, her lips ready to crumple. Though her hair is black as the Knolls’, knotted in an untidy braid over her shoulder, this is not the woman I saw in the palace just now; it is not the woman I followed up the hill. Her garment is blue—a deep indigo, woven with a border of orange—and her face clear of the lines and spirals I saw on the other woman’s forehead and cheeks.

  “I’m ready,” the man says.

  I startle at the sound of his voice, deep and resonant. It seems to echo off the stones. He’s speaking Caerisian, but with an Ereni accent. Like me.

  The woman turns the dagger over in her hands. “This is wrong.” I can’t place her accent at all.

  “I’ve made my peace.” His voice hitches; it must hurt to speak. A dark trickle of blood has soaked down the length of his thigh. “I’m ready. Mo cri, mo tire, mo fiel.”

  She starts to cry again, and moves back behind him so he can’t see it. As she wipes her eyes with her sleeve, I think she notices me. Her gaze flickers toward where I stand, then away.

  “We cannot undo this,” she says.

  He closes his eyes. “You tell me the soul does not die. And a part of me will continue to live on, here, in these stones.”

  “You, and every other Caveadear. Every other king, every other warden.” Her voice gentles. “But it will not be you. You will travel on.”
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  “I am not afraid. And I am going to die from this wound anyway.” But the veins stand out in his neck. “Let me have the drink.”

  She hands him a cup from the ground. He drinks quickly, then resumes his position, open-handed before the altar stone. We all wait. I want to move forward, I want to question them, but some powerful instinct holds me where I am. I watch his eyelids droop shut. “I can’t feel my feet,” he mumbles. The woman drops down beside him, wrapping an arm around his waist, supporting him against her chest. She kisses his forehead. As he sags against her, she lifts her hand, holding the dagger. Just as he falls, she makes a quick gesture.

  The man tumbles onto the altar stone. Blood pools, crimson, beneath him. The woman stands, holding the dagger with its bloody blade.

  “No,” I exclaim.

  The earth cries out at the same time, echoing through me—a deep, inhuman bellow. It aches with grief.

  The woman hears it. She flinches and cowers.

  I run toward her, across the open ground between the stones, but I can already feel the circle changing, closing in. The light has gone out of the stones. They are heavy now and their grief tastes thick as blood.

  This time, she sees me. Her eyes are huge and green, her lips red with grief.

  “You,” she says. “Set him free.”

  The earth quakes. I stumble backward. The stones turn from light to thick blackness. The shaking knocks me to the ground; I give up fighting it and lie there till, at last, it ceases.

  I crawl upright. The man and woman are gone. The circle lies empty.

  Except for the slight silver shape of the dagger, fallen beside the altar stone. Its blade is clean.

  I pick up the dagger, study the hilt: bone, with a pattern of running deer. It is identical to the one I still have from the Hill of the Imperishable. Old-fashioned, needle-sharp, and untarnished. What will happen if I let my blood fall?

  I lower the dagger, drawing a thin line down my palm. The blade is wicked. It cuts without any pressure from my hand. I make a fist and squeeze.

  Two drops of blood fall to the altar stone.

  I take one step back. Two. I am ready to run.

  Because the stone has turned black—black as old blood, where my blood fell, running in cracking lines. As I stare, a bitter taste in my mouth, a man unfolds from the stone. Or maybe he was always there, just out of sight.

  He looks like Finn, with a beard. His eyes are heavy and tired. Heavy as the weight of the stones on this hill.

  “Mo cri, mo tire, mo fiel,” he says.

  —

  I RUN OUT of the circle.

  Is this what I must do, then—sacrifice myself, my life, my soul, for Caeris? How can I do that? How can I become like that man, tied to the stones forever, even in death?

  “Caveadear?”

  At the sound of someone calling out my title, I freeze.

  Granya puffs to the top of the ridge, her cheeks pink with exertion. She smiles to see me. “Aengus saw you come up here. I thought I’d come after and show you—”

  “No!” I blurt out. I won’t go back to those stones. Not to any stones, now that I’m beginning to have a glimmer of what they mean.

  Sacrifice. Blood. Death.

  Granya looks at me, surprised, her brows drawing together. “You’re pale as snow. Let’s sit for a moment. Sometimes the past peeks through up here, and it can be unsettling, especially for those who are sensitive to it.”

  I shake my head and push past her, breaking again into a run. The path down the hill is rocky, treacherous, but I’m more afraid of what’s behind me than I am of falling. I run until I reach level ground. The land pulses within me. Is this what it’s wanted all along—my life, my blood?

  Mo cri, mo tire, mo fiel. My heart, my land, my blood.

  It must be.

  I’m on a high bank over the river. For a moment I actually consider throwing myself in, just to drown the terror beating through me.

  “What are you doing, Caveadear?”

  I startle. It’s Aengus, bouncing over a rock. I must look strange, because he halts and stands there, his face solemn, as Granya approaches from the hillside.

  She puts an arm around my shoulders. “Aengus, go tell the maids to make up a pot of tea and a hot-water flask. Lady Elanna’s just a bit shaken. It can happen to anyone, up at those old stones.”

  The breath shudders through my open mouth. I feel as though everything certain has shattered. The stones that seemed to shelter me all my life don’t mean safety, but sacrifice. I want to run. Only there’s nowhere left to run to.

  I let Granya guide me back to the palace.

  —

  SHE TAKES ME to her library, a vast, high-ceilinged room with a view onto the mountains, and sits me down in front of the fireplace. Soon, with the fire roaring, the hot-water flask wrapped in cloth by my feet, and a cup of tea between my hands, I feel more human. The earth’s angry pulse has died to a dull throb.

  I’m afraid to tell Granya what happened in the stones, but I find myself babbling the whole story to her anyway—partly because she asks no questions, and partly because I don’t want to keep silent. Sometimes horror is lessened if it is shared.

  She listens closely, her head cocked down, and sighs when I finish.

  “Rhia says time is thin here,” I say.

  Granya gives a slow nod. “It can be. Though not often quite as thin as you found it to be today.” She looks at me. “How well do you know the history of the invasion? Do you know who it is you saw today?”

  “It must have been the last king of Caeris,” I say. “Ossian.”

  Ossian, who fled mortally wounded to the mountains. Who began the blood rituals to protect Caeris once he died.

  By giving his own life. My father didn’t tell me that. Did he even know?

  “Ossian was both king and Caveadear, as you know,” Granya says. “He wedded the earth, and he ruled it.” She pauses and then, with a practical gesture, refills my teacup.

  I drink.

  Granya sighs. “You’ve stumbled on the truth of Ossian’s death. He sacrificed himself for Caer-Ys. His blood created the magic that protects us, that has bound our ancestors to the stone circles. It’s one of the great secrets we’ve kept, along with the traditions surrounding the Caveadear. That is one reason why we needed you to come here, so that you can learn the truth of it.”

  So Rhia knew the secret—at least in part. I think of the woman’s grief, her certainty when she said, This is wrong.

  “She was the sorceress, wasn’t she?” I ask. “The one Rhia told me about.”

  “Tuah,” says Granya. “They say she still lives, somewhere beyond the mountains—but that is a story more far-fetched than the ones we tell.”

  “But…” I think of the scene I just witnessed in the circle. “How did she do it? And how do you even know? They looked alone, up there, just the two of them.”

  Granya looks grim. “Tuah was never one for explaining her methods. Most sorcerers of her caliber left records, treatises, or journals at the very least. She left nothing. The story goes that they went up to the circle at dawn, just the two of them, slipping away under cover of her sorcery, and by the time others discovered what had happened, the king was already dead. The people confronted her—some of them wanted to accuse her of murder. But she insisted that she and Ossian had done the only thing that could possibly preserve the Caveadear’s magic and protect Caer-Ys against the Ereni conquerors.”

  “It doesn’t seem to me she did anything,” I burst out, “except kill Ossian and bind our ancestors to the stones for no good reason.”

  “Ah, but there must be a reason. You understand that she only bound ancestral Caveadears, wardens, and monarchs, do you not?”

  I blink. This has never occurred to me.

  “More than that,” Granya goes on, “she bound the land to the stones. Why do you think the circle above Cerid Aven weeps and keens its grief? Somehow, Tuah harnessed the power of the earth, too, because
it is as if we feel the full force of the land’s sorrow.”

  “So she bound the land and some of our ancestors…but not all of our ancestors?”

  Granya shakes her head. “The old ways tell us that the souls living in the otherworld will be reborn in this one, and die here to be reborn there—an endless cycle of rejoicing on one side and grief on the other. Yet somehow she cut these ancestors off from their natural path.”

  “But why?” I say. “How does that protect Caeris?” I pause. “And Eren, too? At the Hill of the Imperishable, above Laon, I’ve also woken ancestors in those stones.”

  “Have you indeed?” She looks surprised, then thoughtful. “It must have to do with the partition of lands—before Rionach and Tierne established Eren and Caeris as separate nations. The stones don’t know political boundaries. The binding must have affected the whole land.”

  I nod slowly; that, at least, makes a kind of sense. “I still don’t see what good the binding does.”

  “Don’t you?” She looks keenly at me. “The power of all those ancestors—the power of the land itself—is gathered into those stones. And it can be used…by the right person.”

  The right person. Me. The first Caveadear to wed the land in two centuries.

  “Must I,” I begin, but my voice trembles so much I have to start again. “Must I be sacrificed, then, like Ossian?”

  Granya meets my eyes, and then she looks away. The line of her mouth is long and troubled. “What Tuah did, sacrificing Ossian,” she says slowly, “that’s not a custom of Caer-Ys. It was an aberration—an act of desperation in the face of the Ereni invasion. You know how brutally the Ereni had slaughtered Ossian’s family, and so many others; they would never have allowed a Caveadear to survive, much less the man who was both Caveadear and king. But I think”—she looks at me—“his sacrifice was not what the land wanted. Maybe it has kept us safe this long, and kept the border spell working. But it has also kept the past alive in ways it should not be. It has made the power of our earth a thin trickle instead of a flowing river. I think the land grieves for his death.”