It had helped that things at Todenangst had been so frantic. Her father had been quietly and wisely sympathetic to her desire to escape, which had been wonderful but less comfort than she’d expected.
Even if your Da is wise and strong and King, he can’t make everything better. I must be getting older, she thought.
There hadn’t been much time to talk with the Rangers, apart from the Alyssa and Cole send their greetings and the youngest is doing fine level. She didn’t know whether to be happy or depressed about that.
They all lay sprawled about the fire, with sparks drifting upward towards the shimmering roof of the oak’s new leaves. Skewers of boar loin dressed with wild garlic were sizzling, and iron Dutch ovens of biscuits stood in a raked-down section of the coals, and a pot of wild greens was bubbling—amole leaves, with another of mashed dock. The smell made her mouth water despite it all; there was nothing like a long day in the saddle to work up an appetite.
Da said that getting tired and using my body would help. Hard work keeps sorrow at bay until you’re strong enough to deal with it. He was right . . . again.
Maccon laid his huge gruesome head in her lap and rolled his eyes up at her, and she rubbed his graying chops. He was getting old . . . she had that on the brain right now.
“Yes, you’ll all get even more,” she said, leaning back against her saddle; two of his latest crop of puppies were a little farther from the fire, tall lanky shaggy young beasts named the MacMaccons. “Like you haven’t been gorging on guts.”
She was in a kilt and plaid again, which was a relief—the long deathbed wait in Castle Todenangst had all been in Associate formal women’s dress, for which at thirteen she was now just old enough. She hadn’t complained under the circumstances, but enough was enough.
She sighed. You could travel a thousand miles, but you couldn’t run away from your thoughts; her father had told her that, too. She turned to Ingolf instead.
“It’s good to see you again, Unc’,” she said. Then, peering closer: “Are you going bald? I can see firelight on your scalp.”
There was a roar of laughter around the fire, which surprised her; Mary Vogeler was laughing harder than any. Ingolf ran one big battered hand over his head, which was indeed getting a bit thinly thatched, though there wasn’t much gray in it.
“Male-pattern baldness runs in my family,” he said ruefully. “Dad, my older brother . . . damned if I’m going to grow a middle-aged Vogeler beer gut, though.”
Heuradys nudged her with the toe of her boot; she was looking quite dashing in her squire’s hunting outfit, with a Montero hat sporting a peacock feather tilted back on her bobbed mahogany hair; she had the knack of doing that even after hard travel through the wilderness. Unfairly, she’d shot up and filled out over the last couple of years, while Órlaith still had the build of a tall gawky plank. The two years between them still made a lot of difference.
“Ah, the comfort there’s to be had in the voices of the young!” Edain said, grinning and taking a swig from a jug covered in straw that was doing the rounds. “Fair makes a man spring about like a goat, his youth renewed, it does not.”
“Edain, you’re ten years younger than me,” Ingolf said, and smiled himself in a mock-nasty way. “Just you wait.”
“What brings you down this way?” Ian said.
“Oh . . . I wanted to get out of . . . of the places I’m usually in,” she said. Then she blurted: “Nona died. My . . . the Queen Mother,” she said in a rush.
There were exclamations, but nobody among the Dúnedain knew her Nona Sandra the way she did. Sandra Arminger had been feared, and hated, and widely respected; she’d also been loved, but that mainly by people she was closer to.
“We’d heard that she was ill, of course,” Ritva said.
A slightly awkward silence fell, and Órlaith continued doggedly. “We . . . there was some warning, but it came on fast and the end. I was there. . . .”
Memory took her back. The smell of incense, the murmur of chanted prayer in the background. John crying silently, tears trickling down his face from still brown eyes; Maria and Lorcan had said their good-byes and then been ushered out, they were too young yet to understand. Sandra had smiled and managed to squeeze Órlaith’s hand. They were all waiting as the gaslamps flickered, watching the slow rise and fall of the sheet over her breast, and the glisten of the holy oil on her eyelids.
Then her eyes fluttered open. They seemed to be seeing something. When she spoke, her voice was very quiet but clear, perfectly ordinary:
“Norman, we have to talk.”
Órlaith squeezed her eyes shut on the memory: “And then she died,” she whispered. “She was just gone, and I realized how alive she’d always been. There was always this crackle around her. Like somewhere thoughts were coming out like sparks from a burning pine log.”
When she opened her eyes again, the others were looking at her a little oddly: it was not the time you’d expect her to leave the family to go on a ramble. All those close to the fire were kin to her or the next thing to it, and old companions of her father on the Quest who’d helped raise her on and off.
“I wouldn’t go attend the funeral mass,” she blurted. “I mean, I wouldn’t take Communion at it. I won’t, anymore, I should never have been confirmed. I’ve decided I’m of the Old Religion. I know we’re allowed to see it as . . . as you know, another form of the same thing, so we can do the ceremonies if we need to, but I won’t. I won’t deceive Mom. John’s a good Catholic, but I’ll never be. We had a big fight about it—mostly me yelling and her being so quiet. So I had to, to get away.”
Edain reached over and put a hand on her back for a moment. “That’s hard, my Golden Princess. Matti your mother I’ve known all my life, and she’s a good Queen and an even better friend and a true comrade, but at seventh and last she’s cowan, and . . . that means there are things she does not ken.”
Órlaith nodded, scrubbing at her eyes.
“Oh, I don’t know, Órry,” Heuradys said, putting her arm around her shoulders. “My lady mother’s a witch and I’ve had some really awkward moments with her, too.”
“You have?” Órlaith asked.
“Yes, by the Gray-Eyed! Just a few months ago I had to sit her down and tell her something she really didn’t want to hear. She wasn’t happy about it, either, any more than your mother was.”
“You did?” Órlaith said; she couldn’t imagine the calmly cheerful Lady Delia de Stafford getting all coldly miserable the way her own mother had. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Sort of embarrassing, really. It was a family council at Montinore Manor back on Barony Ath, when I was back for the Twelve Days . . . Yule . . . and it was just me and her and Auntie Tiph—”
She stopped and glared at Ian, who was chortling. “What exactly is funny? I haven’t got to that part yet, unless you think my whole family is funny, Lord Ian?”
“Anyone calling Lady Death her auntie, that’s funny. Sorry, sorry.”
“Well, I don’t call her Lady Death, you know. And my lord my father Count Rigobert was there, he spends that season with us mostly,” she went on quellingly. “You see, my lady mother had been throwing nice girls from her coven my way since I turned fifteen, and I just had to tell her Mom, I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but I really like boys better.”
“What did she say?” Órlaith asked, startled into intense interest.
“She sort of looked at me . . . you know how mothers do, like you’re still about four . . . and put her hand on mine and said in this amazingly irritating calm voice: ‘Darling, isn’t it possible this is just a phase you’re going through?’”
Heuradys smiled ruefully at the ring of grins. “And my lord my father and Auntie Tiph didn’t help.”
“Did they get upset too?” Órlaith asked.
“No, they laughed. I mean, really laughed—I thought my lord my father was going to hurt himself. So Mom and I both got mad at them, which made them laugh even
harder. I’ve never seen Auntie Tiph break up that way, not even when she heard about Sir Boleslav trying to drink a whole bottle of vodka standing in a castle window and the moat had been drained, and my lord my father was staggering when he got up and left. I think he told Sir Julio because then I could hear him laughing after a while.”
Ingolf shook his head and grinned and seemed to be searching his memory.
Ritva frowned a little. “It’s sort of funny . . . I mean, most Associates are such strong Catholics and they’re really odd about things like that, so I can see, you know, some other mother doing things just like that if it were the other way ’round, or screaming and fainting . . . but why was it that funny?”
“I asked my lord my father and he just said I was far too young to understand—and so was my mother, a little too young. So it must be some pre-Change thing. You forget he’s not a Changeling sometimes because he’s so . . . not a fuddy-duddy. Even Auntie Tiph isn’t a Changeling, not all the way—she was as old at the Change as you are now, Órry. But my lady mother was just a kid, younger than my sister Yolande.”
The story seemed to break the awkwardness, and everyone pitched into dinner. Órlaith found her appetite was right back, and when you were sharp-set wild boar was absolutely scrumptious, rich but stronger-tasting than domestic pork. There wasn’t any butter for the biscuits, but the drippings did fine, and then her aunts Mary and Ritva got out their mandolin and flute.
Much later in the tent, she reached across to the other cot and squeezed Heuradys’ hand in the darkness, the calluses matching her own.
“Thanks, Herry. You’ve been a real brick.”
“Hey, I’m going to be your liege-sworn knight someday, Órry.”
“I know. But it’s even better to have a friend. ’night.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Dun Juniper, Dùthchas of the Clan Mackenzie
(formerly western Oregon)
High Kingdom of Montival
(Formerly western North America)
Beltane Eve, Change Year 42/2040 AD
Órlaith almost missed her step in the dance as she checked the bower she’d built out of the corner of her eye.
The nemed of Dun Juniper was a place whose name woke awe across the High Kingdom, the Sacred Wood. A circle of ancient oaks stood on a knee of land on the side of the mountain, many planted long ago with their successors in all stages of growth, a ring of smooth brown trunks like hundred-foot pillars and a continuous band of intermingled branches above bright-with-the-green new leaves. The path upward to the plateau was steep, winding back and forth through the dense green fir-woods, but it was filled tonight—not only with visitors from all over the Clan’s dùthchas, but others from across Montival and even a few from beyond it.
For this was the center of the Old Faith in the world the Change had made, and its mistress was Goddess-on-Earth.
Tonight the great trees of the circle were bound together with chains of woven flowers, budding roses, wood hyacinths and lilies of the valley, pansies and impatiens and larkspur. Torches burned in the wrought-iron holders at the four Quarters, and fire flickered before the shaped boulder that was the altar. They beckoned and glittered through the cool dampness and the thickness of the hillside firs. It was a gathering, a party really . . . but there was something of otherness about this place, even on a quiet day alone. Tonight that feeling was raw and strong, the focused belief of the multitude like a weight stretching thin the walls of the world.
Órlaith shivered a little in spite of the thick white wool robe she wore, feeling goose bumps against the fabric.
Old Sybil Leek said it: Let those who would dance through the woods skyclad. I have too much respect for my own skin!
Her feet swayed and moved to the rhythm that turned the dancer’s torches in the long line down the hillside. The ancient dancing style the Mackenzies practiced had various and sundry purposes; keeping you warm while on the trail to the nemed was certainly one of them. Another was the way the rhythm took you beyond yourself, until it seemed to settle into bone and breath and heartbeat.
Fiorbhinn Mackenzie was May Queen. She sang greeting to flute and bohdrán as she danced, her silver and crystal-embroidered robe like a glitter on dew-starred grass between the two balefires at the entrance to the plateau; the only other sound was the rippling of the fire as it ate the fir-wood, and the wind soughing in the tops of the trees. Her hands were upraised, and her great pale eyes full of the moonlight; long blond hair swept down past the shoulders of her robe mingled with wreaths of white meadowsweet and blue hyacinth.
The procession whirled by on either side, each dancer like notes of the song:
“Moon rise and star fall
Fire burn and night wind call
Drum beat the wild song
That heart sings at summer’s dawn!”
The robed procession wound its way into the clearing, a spiral around the great circle of the nemed. Juniper Mackenzie was present with her consort Nigel Loring, seated in a pair of carved chairs whose backs echoed the twin ravens at the top of her staff and the corvine beak of his mask, each wrapped in a thick cloak. Her lined face was smiling, but this time for the first Beltane since the Change she was not presiding over the celebrations. That was for her daughter and successor Maude who now had the Triple Moon on her brow, no longer tanist but the Mackenzie Herself. She’d said she didn’t intend to dodder into her grave as Chief, the time had come when the Clan needed a Changeling at its head, and Maude could always come to her parents for advice. . . .
“Sown are the new fields
With bright seed of harvest’s yield
Far down the roots bind
The heart’s joy to summer’s time!”
That glance aside at her bower meant she nearly tripped over Aunt Maude. The Chief laughed gently as she caught her spinning niece and righted her, her usually rather gravely handsome features alight with the festival. Nobody was drunk before the ceremony, but wine and the whirling ecstasy of the dance and drums were in many veins. Órlaith gripped Maude tightly for one short instant before a quick, light push sent her dancing up the path to rejoin the rest of the May Queen’s maidens, all dressed in white.
“Leave the fire and come with me
We’ll lie beneath the flowering tree
And feel the breathing of the earth
Rise and fall!”
As one of the Maidens, Órlaith had set many of the stitches in the May Queen’s robe, and the more hidden white ones on her own, matching the white rhododendron flowers confining her hair. Five maidens attended the Queen, for the Elements and the Quarters and the hidden thing that united them all.
Earth and Air and Fire and Water! And Spirit!
She was Air, a belt of pale blue sapphires and cloudy white opals set in silver around her waist to symbolize it. Fire was the daughter of fiosaiche Meadhbh Beauregard Mackenzie, all dark skin and tossing plaited hair, her white robes belted with ruby and carnelian and gold. Earth and Water were both younger, Earth the granddaughter of Cynthia Carson, Water Diana Trethgar’s eldest boy’s youngest daughter. Spirit was Heuradys d’Ath, grinning at her companions with an imp’s light in her amber eyes.
“The green time sings its song again
To wake the hill, to wake the glen
And raise in every living thing
An answering call!”
Órlaith smiled widely at Delia de Stafford as she danced by, her daughter Yolande laughing behind her, their black tossing hair the same shade of night with the white blossom in it like stars. Órlaith’s stitching had improved enormously in five weeks of tutoring Delia had given her and her robe reflected it. A Beltane robe was something you made with your own hands, as an offering.
“Leap o’er the May fire
Hold close your sweet desire
For life’s Wheel will grant soon
The heart’s wish for summer’s bloom!”
Which is what I want! Órlaith thought.
Suddenly she
was breathing quickly at the sound of horns lowing and dunting through the wood, as if the sound snatched her breath away. There was a music in that call too, low and hoarse and . . . hot somehow, like the sound of the bull elk’s call echoing across a mountainside.
And as Fiorbhinn danced through the ancient oaks’ arch, the men from Cernunnos’ court entered the sacred grove from all points, a leaping torrent of torches and wildness, bare skin and paint and tossing fire. Raghnall McClintock of Clan McClintock was the Horned One tonight. Years back his father had sent him to Dun Juniper to learn the trade of chief, for the head of a clan was intermediary with the Powers as much as ruler and battle-leader, his folk’s link to the land and ancestors. Now he returned from his southern hills to do honor to its mistress. He was a tall man, strong through the shoulders and with long brown hair drawn back in the McClintock queue through carved bone rings, his face half-hidden behind the tanned deer mask.
And his Fire Squire was Diarmuid Tinnart McClintock, whom she’d met days ago in the preparations for the ceremony. Their glances had crossed. . . .
“Green shoot and pale flower
Garland the Beltane bower
Circle with joined hands
For heart shines with summer’s dance!”
Órlaith felt the movement of her blood, from face and heart and loins out to the tips of fingers and toes, an unfolding like flowers beneath the sun, like waves beating on a beach, a sweet inevitable rightness. Diarmuid was wearing the horns and deer breechclout, his feet bare on the flowered turf and the muscles of a runner and bowman moving clear as liquid metal beneath white skin that glowed taut and clear. Though he was too young for a McClintock warrior’s tattoos, swirling blue patterns in woad showed where they would run on back and shoulders, legs and arms. From behind the bright red paint on his face, she could see his dark blue eyes cast about, seeking her among the maidens.
The Given Sacrifice Page 35