The Well of Shades

by Juliet Marillier

  Ten years had passed. Not Dáire, who would be over thirty by now; not Líobhan with her big brown eyes. His heart reeling, his head spinning, Faolan fought to guard his expression and failed. The Widow’s small features grew pinched with strain; her eyes narrowed.

  “Why did you come back?” she asked him. “All that time, all that endless time of waiting, and now you come, and the only gift you bring me is your contempt. If you can’t manage a show of relief that I am, after all, alive and well, you might at least try to conceal your disgust.”

  The lights danced before his eyes. It was hard to draw breath. “You married him,” he whispered, the flood of horror drowning his ability to choose his words, to soften the blow. “Echen. The man who destroyed our family. You married him. After he took you, after he…”

  “I see you haven’t been home yet.” She began to pace, arms tightly folded, head down. The longer he watched her, the more he saw it: it was in the delicate hands, the shape of the brow, the way she held her head. It was Áine; Áine, his youngest sister, taken by Echen and his men on that terrible night. Áine, whom his father had believed beyond rescue.

  “What do you know of the story?” she asked him.

  A torrent of words fought to spill, and he choked them back. I would have come for you, I wanted to, but Father made me flee Laigin. He ordered me to go away and not return. If I had known… I was only seventeen… There was no point in saying this; it was ten years too late. His beloved little sister, his sweet, lovely Áine, had become a hard-faced, cruel autocrat. To his shame, he recognized that it had been easier to accept her death than this hideous reversal of what should be. Between them, all of them, it seemed they had turned her into another Echen.

  “I don’t know any of the story,” he croaked. “I never went back. Your husband’s kinsmen threw me into Breakstone Hollow. I escaped. I left my home shore. I came back only to bring Eile her news. But I was going to Fiddler’s Crossing. I was taking her there. What…?” Behind the word lay an unknown world of possibilities: their father and mother, their two sisters, their grandfather, all those who had survived that night. If the others had come out of it with wounds as deep as his own, with scars as ugly as Áine’s, he did not think he wanted to know.

  “Your eyes are so cold, Faolan,” Áine said. “Your face is so harsh. You think I should have done as the girl Eile did, and knifed my assailant in the heart? You’d have felt better about the blood on your own hands, maybe, if I had shared it, even if it led to my own swift demise? You don’t need to say it. You’d rather I was dead.”

  “I—”

  “I don’t want to hear your answer. You know, I never saw what you did that night. Echen told me later. He respected you for it, did you know that? Admired your capacity to carry out his order, even as he knew he’d succeeded in destroying you. I never saw our brother lying on the floor with the blood pumping from his throat. I only saw you and Father standing there staring; standing still while I was dragged away by strangers. Nobody coming after me. Nobody saying a word. You just let me go.”

  There was no possible comment to make. There was no point in telling her she had misremembered, though he knew he had screamed abuse; he recalled hurling himself after her, and a blow to the head turning it all to darkness. She had her own particular set of memories, and before them his heart trembled like grain under the thresher’s flailing.

  “The only one to show any compassion that night was the one you’ve dubbed the archenemy. Echen took pity on me. He liked me. So I kept my maidenhood and my life, and instead of using me and sharing me, he sent me away. I didn’t know where I was going. I didn’t know why. An escort took me to Echen’s mother in Tirconnell. Two years I spent there, learning how to be a suitable wife for a chieftain of the Uí Néill. She made sure I learned quickly. She punished me if I made mistakes. I had never dreamed I could be so alone. Every night, for two years, I begged the gods to let you find me. Every night I dreamed of the day when you or Father would come for me. But you never did come.”

  “I thought you were dead. I was gone from this shore; far away.”

  “I came to rely on Echen’s visits, more frequent as I grew older. He brought gifts: a pony, a gold ring, a little dog. He was kind to me. I even came to like his mother, once she thawed toward me. On my fourteenth birthday, Echen married me and we came back to Blackthorn Rise. I gave him a son within the year, another a year later. I had no need to knife him; no compulsion to slip poison in his drink. He always treated me well. I learned to help him; I learned the knack of ruling folk, of wielding power. Well, he’s gone now. And I’m repaying the favor by raising our sons and governing his territories until the boys are old enough to assume control in their own right. I see from the naked distaste on your face that this tale sickens you. Your head is still in Father’s world of lofty ideals, notions of justice and selflessness and compassion. That world is not real, Faolan. It’s a phantom. In the real world, power is the only key to survival. I’ve survived. I’ve made something of my existence. I’ve stepped out of the nightmare Dubhán created for us and achieved wealth, family, position. You should not despise me for that. You should learn from me. What is your life?”

  For a moment he could not speak. Somewhere, deep within him, there was still love: love for the old Áine, the one who existed in his memory, his baby sister, a sweet, rosy-cheeked innocent. At this moment, facing her excoriating stare, he could not find it.

  “I went on,” he said simply. “Some time I wasted, some I used well. I remained my own master, after Breakstone. I have no desire for wealth or power. Only for freedom. The freedom to make my choices, for good or ill.”

  Her smile was grim. “You have lost your freedom here at Blackthorn Rise. You’ve lost your friend’s daughter as well. A poor job you’ve done of protecting her. You never were very practical, were you, Faolan? Once a bard, always a bard. Giving a girl a pretty name doesn’t go far toward keeping her safe.”

  So she did not know what he was now; not unless she was still playing with him. “True freedom lies, not in being outside walls, but in the heart and the spirit,” he said. He felt numb, bruised; as if he had received a beating. “You said Dubhán created our nightmare; you laid the blame on him. What Dubhán did was speak out for the oppressed, those who have no power. He was a voice for those too frightened to open their mouths. His resistance to your husband’s cruel practices was a shout of freedom, a song of defiance. Dubhán did not die because Echen ordered me to cut his throat, Áine. I performed that act because, at the last, our brother bid me do it. He gave his life willingly to save his family. Only once, since that night, have I seen such a shining act of courage. It was Dubhán I obeyed. Maybe Echen was kind to you, to the extent that such a man is capable of kindness, and I can only be glad of that for your sake. But I do not know how you can reconcile being his wife with the foul acts he perpetrated that night, and in the time before. Echen was evil. He set a darkness not only on our family, but on the whole community at Fiddler’s Crossing. I don’t understand how you can live your life as you do, knowing that.” Some part of him was struggling to say what he knew he should: I am so glad you are alive, I am happy to see you, I missed you so much. My sister; my little sister. But he looked at her, and all he could see was Echen Uí Néill.

  “I suppose, then,” said Áine, her voice clear as tinkling ice, “that fifty days’ confinement was not long enough. I have been too kind; perhaps, after all, I was not entirely successful in forgetting what our father taught us as children.” She raised her voice. “Seamus!”

  “Please,” Faolan said, “let me go. Let me find Eile and the child. I made a promise. I’ll stay away after that. You need never see me again. Just let me out.”

  “Your urgency for this quest baffles me,” said Áine as the big guard, Seamus, came back into the chamber. “This Eile is not your blood kin. She’s a pitiful thing born to poverty and has a nasty streak of aggression to boot. She’s murdered a man and she’s run away fro
m just punishment. Yet you’re all on fire to race off and save her. Why her, Faolan? Why can you do this for her, when you couldn’t for me, your own sister?”

  “I cannot answer you.”

  “Cannot or will not? You feel shame? Or would that be too much to expect?”

  “I feel… confusion. All I can tell you is that the man who stands before you now is not the same man who stood in the brithem’s house in Fiddler’s Crossing and drew a knife across his brother’s throat. If that night changed you, Áine, it surely changed me. I’ve spent every moment of these ten years trying to understand it.”

  “Until you know what I felt, the terror, the helplessness, the sense of being utterly alone, you can have no insight into what that night meant. Fortunately, I can help you. I plan to keep you here until that insight comes to you. It is no less than you deserve. Lock him up again,” she ordered Seamus. “Leave his wrists bound, he’s not to be trusted.”

  “Wait!” Faolan said. “Just tell me, what of the family, Mother and Father, Dáire and Líobhan? How have they fared? Are they well?”

  “Hah!” The sound was an explosion of scorn. “Now you ask, as an afterthought. Perhaps that is apt, since the last thing the family would wish is for you to return to Fiddler’s Crossing. Your name is not spoken in that household. Since that night, it is as if you had never existed. All trace of you was wiped away; all thought of you forbidden. Your deed caused a widening ripple of destruction for your kin. Mother is long dead; she never recovered. Father is a shell of himself, barely able to put two thoughts together. Dáire fled to the Christian sisters; she never knew the fulfilment of husband and children, but lives in silence and sorrow there. Líobhan is full of bitterness at her lot, obliged to remain at home to keep house for her shattered, incapable father. Grandfather has not long to live; he was never strong. That is what you have done. Do you regret asking, now? If you expected to walk home to some kind of forgiveness, Faolan, you were a fool. Some acts can never be forgiven.”

  He found himself unable to speak. The guard, Seamus, was staring at the floor.

  “Farewell, now,” said Áine. “I intend to be generous and give you plenty of thinking time. Perhaps you could make up some songs while you’re in my custody. Oh, and don’t concern yourself with Eile. That girl’s a survivor. She’s like me. She doesn’t need you.”

  Faolan’s voice returned. “Oh, no,” he said as Seamus took him by the arm to lead him out. He saw the frail figure of Eile stepping onto the rope bridge over that surging wash of water, her straight back, her terrified eyes. He saw the tenderness in the soft mouth, the gentleness in the work-roughened hands as she laid a cloak over her sleeping child. “She’s not like you at all.”

  DERELEI HAD TAKEN to sitting at the very edge of the pond. The nursemaid fussed, fearing he would catch cold or topple in and drown. Tuala, observing from a distance, knew her son was not seeking out fish or dreaming of sailing boats under Broichan’s watchful eye. The water called him; he was drawn to look. Watching him, she felt the same compulsion.

  She had anticipated that the seer’s gift would be as strong in her son as it was in her. She had hoped it would not develop so early, before Derelei had much facility with words. It could be a frightening phenomenon even when one was adult and had some understanding of its nature. For a child of two, it might prove overwhelming.

  There was no point in wishing Broichan home. She had done that often enough, and he showed no sign of appearing, either in the flesh or in the visions of the scrying bowl. Nobody knew where he was; nobody knew where his journey had taken him. He had not been seen at Pitnochie, nor at Banmerren, nor at any other place Tharan’s messenger had visited on his search. Perhaps he had slipped away to join the druids of the forest, who were only found when they chose to be. Tuala hoped he was with them, for in their remote dwellings there would be food, shelter from cold and storm, folk to tend to him if he took ill. There was guidance, too; perhaps he needed that most of all.

  She and Bridei had discussed asking Drustan to perform a search in his hawk form, and had discarded the idea. It was unfair to expect it of Drustan. His ability was such that, all too easily, he might find himself in constant demand as messenger, tracker, or spy. In autumn, at some personal risk, he had flown the length of the Great Glen to save Bridei from an assassin. They could not ask him again. He and Ana should be left to enjoy their season of peace at Pitnochie.

  “Broichan may be perfectly well,” Bridei had said, “and simply tired of court. We must give him time.”

  “He was always such an assiduous teacher, for you, at least,” Tuala had said, remembering the endless times of waiting for Bridei to finish his lessons. “It is so unlike him to leave Derelei right in the middle of everything. It’s as if he rowed a boat halfway to an island, then dived overboard, leaving his passenger stranded.”

  “I suppose you must pick up the oars,” Bridei had said with a smile.

  That afternoon Tuala dismissed the nursemaid and went to sit by her son in the garden. All was quiet. Under the rosemary bushes, Ban was fossicking in the muddy soil; today he was not so much a white dog as a creature patched in various shades of brown. Garth was on watch, discreetly, down beyond the archway. The old scholar, Wid, sat at the other end of the garden, a shawl around his shoulders, enjoying the rare winter sun. Tuala had asked him to cough loudly if anyone came out, but she didn’t think they would; Aniel had promised to ensure mother and son were undisturbed.

  How to begin? How to teach a child who combined a dazzling raw skill in magic with the limited vocabulary and volatile emotions of his two years? Already, under Broichan’s tuition, Derelei had begun to manipulate the weather, to perform small transformations, to play with light and shadow. Somehow, she must teach him to be cautious, to be covert, to limit his boundless abilities. He must learn to see the unthinkable and to hold on to his courage. The task was monumental. It was by no means certain to Tuala how far her own talents in the craft of magic extended. Only in the art of scrying had she ever given them full rein. Best start small and work gradually up.

  Not the pool; therein lay peril for the two of them. She could not afford to be pulled into a vision with the child by her side, for she might lose the awareness of him and so leave him in danger.

  “Derelei?” she asked him quietly. “Take my hand; that’s it. Look at Ban; doesn’t he love digging? Have you ever pretended you were a dog?”

  They worked hard. These were not bodily transformations such as Drustan performed with such apparent ease, but a lesser step, the melding of one’s own mind with that of creature or growing thing, gaining the awareness of its movements, its thoughts, its feelings, while one remained in one’s own form.

  Once or twice, as the afternoon wore on, Tuala felt her son’s mind pulling against hers, as if he wanted to do more than she was permitting. She saw that he wanted to be a dog, chasing sparrows across the grass, drinking from the pond, rolling in the leaves and mud. But he held back from changing his form. Whether her skill was enough to prevent him from taking that last step, or whether it was the child’s choice to obey his mother, Tuala could not tell. They tried beetle as well as dog, and Derelei wanted bird, but Tuala shook her head.

  “Not yet. That one’s too dangerous. When you are older.”

  Derelei gave an uncharacteristic squeal of complaint and lay down on the damp grass, rubbing his eyes.

  “Time to stop now,” said Tuala firmly. “Let’s take Ban to the kitchen. Maybe there’s cake.”

  The child squirmed away from her, protesting. He was overtired; she must make this shorter next time. He was at the rim of the pond again, his head almost in the water. Tuala moved to pick him up and bear him indoors, but her pregnancy made her slower than usual and by the time she reached him, Derelei was on his belly, staring at the still surface with a familiar intensity. “Bawta,” he said. “See Bawta.”

  She’d been unable to avoid a glimpse at the water, and there had been a vision forming there. Such
images came for her even when she didn’t want them. “Broichan’s gone, Derelei,” she said, kneeling beside him. “You know that.”

  “Bawta in there.” He was emphatic.

  She looked. There were trees and shadow: not a reflection of this orderly garden with its paved paths, its leafless plums and lilacs, but a forested place dark with pines and mazed with little twisting footways. A thick mat of decaying leaf matter covered the ground, and on the massive trunks of the trees mosses glowed eerily. In the crooks of bare oaks sprouted a multitude of little ferns and creepers, and Tuala could see something moving among them, perhaps birds, perhaps something a great deal stranger. The light that filtered here and there through the dense canopy was white and chill.

  Keep hold of his hand, she warned herself. Don’t let go. The power of this was strong; she might soon be oblivious to the here and now. It did not take long for a child to drown. It could happen in a heartbeat, silent from start to finish.

  “Bawta,” Derelei said again, and there the druid stood, a dark figure under the darker trees, obsidian eyes in marble face, his breath a cloud in the winter air. He did not open his mouth, but Tuala heard words nonetheless. A season of penitence. Guard him well.

  Questions trembled on her lips: Where are you? Are you all right? Can you see us?, but the edges of the vision were already breaking up, and she knew there was not sufficient time to ask. Only a moment; only an instant… No time to think. She touched the tip of her fingers to her lips, then held her hand out toward the image in the water. She thought maybe Broichan’s mouth twisted a little, its customary severity turning to a self-mocking smile. Then dark forest turned to still pond water, and the vision was gone.