The Well of Shades

by Juliet Marillier

  There had been small bands of armed men on the roads, traveling here and there. From those who were not too tight-lipped to talk, and from cottagers and traders, Faolan had learned that Garnet was now king of Circinn, and that Carnach had passed this way some time ago, heading for the new king’s court. To do so openly was uncharacteristic, for Fortriu’s chief war leader was a subtle man. Something did not add up.

  Faolan stared into his untouched ale, watching the patterns as he turned the cup between his palms. He needed more. Another day, he’d stay here one more day, and if nothing conclusive came in he was going to have to cross the border and head into Circinn himself. There was a dark possibility in the rumors, and if it proved to have foundation, he must make certain of it before he took it to Bridei.

  Faolan shivered, pushing the ale cup away. A rebellion; perhaps another war. If it happened, it would not be like last time, when the king had sent him away as escort to Ana so he would not have to fight. That journey had proved so dark and dangerous both he and Ana had emerged as different people. And then Bridei had sent him home. Home. Another adventure, strange, terrifying, full of surprises. He found himself smiling. Eile and her pitchfork; Eile on that wretched bridge, clinging. The smile faded. Eile all over blood. Saraid flushed with fever, her breath harsh in her small chest. Eile asking him… No, he would not think of that. It had haunted his dreams for more restless nights than he cared to remember and he wanted rid of it. She’d be gone when he got back to White Hill; nothing was surer with this mission carrying him so far south and the information so slow to come. She’d be gone and so would Ana. That was what he wanted. That was best for everyone. If there was war again, this time between Fortriu and Circinn, there could be no possible reason for Faolan not to stand at his patron’s side to protect him. He could use his skills with the best of them. If he went, this time, Garth might yet again stay behind and survive; Garth who had a wife and children who needed him. Nobody needed Faolan. He could be a perfect warrior, with no reason at all to fear death.

  For a moment he allowed himself to imagine it: dying heroically as Deord had done, surrounded by fallen enemies. Then something made him look up, and he saw Deord seated opposite him at the rough inn table, muscular arms folded, serene eyes fixed on Faolan in question. Have you forgotten? the spectral warrior whispered. You owe me. You know the payment. Live your life. Live it for all those who never left Breakstone. And, as the figure faded, he heard Eile’s voice in his head, raised in a scream: Faolan! We’ve come to get you! Tears pricked his eyes. If there had once been a hero hidden somewhere in him, that man was surely gone. He did not want to go to war.

  “I’ve done poorly thus far, friend,” he whispered to the vanished Deord. “I broke a promise. Two promises.” He’d told Eile he would be waiting when she and Saraid reached White Hill. Then he’d left her on her own yet again. What was it he’d told her back in Erin, I’ll be there as long as you need me?

  Still, they would be safe with Ana and Drustan. Eile would be happier, with a surer chance of making something of herself. What else was he supposed to do? He was Bridei’s man; this was his life, one mission after another, an existence of journeying, of risk, of sudden death and perilous chances. It was what he did. It was the only thing he did, and he was good at it. Bridei needed him. He could not let Bridei down.

  Faolan sat awhile longer, staring blankly across the dim expanse of the drinking hall, which was empty save for the hostelry’s proprietor sweeping. He tried to stop his mind from turning in unproductive circles. Right now, the only important thing was Bridei’s mission. He’d made his choice back at Pitnochie when he spoke to Ana and Drustan. He’d made it again when he couldn’t summon up the will to leave Eile a message at White Hill. Such a simple thing. I’ve been sent away; I’m sorry I was not here as I promised. And perhaps, I hope you will be happy at Dreaming Glen. He’d had it in his head, all ready. But who could he tell? Faolan, the king’s assassin and spy, the man so secret and private folk thought him incapable of human feelings, suddenly acquiring a young woman and a little girl as traveling companions? Leaving personal messages for them? He could imagine the raised brows, the knowing smiles, the conjecture. Even Bridei, he could not bring himself to tell, Bridei who had long tried to convince him that he was not that hard-shelled, impervious professional. To go on, to do what his job required of him, he must be that man. To do the things he had to do, he must put away all notion of a different kind of life. Softer feelings made a man vulnerable. They gave him weak spots that could be exploited. A man whose trade was all in plots and subterfuge, in trickery and sudden death must, in the end, walk on alone. To attempt otherwise was to put those he loved at terrible risk. If he had not known this, perhaps he would have stayed at Fiddler’s Crossing. Eile had been happy there.

  The smile came back as he remembered her at the table, her red hair freshly washed and shining in the sunlight from the big window; he pictured her in the blue gown Líobhan had given her, the bright color emphasizing her pallor. “Eat slowly, Saraid,” he heard her saying, and saw the child, large eyes solemn, breaking her bread into tiny, even pieces.

  Faolan got to his feet and walked over to the doorway, suddenly unable to be still. Logic had no place in this argument. Logic could not account for the aching emptiness inside him. It could not explain the dreams.

  WHEN ANOTHER NIGHT had passed and no fresh news had come in, Faolan left Thorn Bridge and headed for Circinn. He did not take the road, but went by covert ways, sometimes walking, sometimes getting a lift on a cart, always traveling roughly southeastward. The news by the way was full of contradictions. He hoped he would not have to infiltrate the southern court itself; this was taking too long, with the influential Christian, Colm, expected at White Hill before midsummer and the king’s druid still absent from court. Faolan wanted this matter of a rebellion out in the open before that new challenge must be faced. If Carnach planned a revolt, let him declare it. If he was in league with Circinn now, having decided to throw in his lot with this new king, let them announce that for all to hear. If there was to be war again, let these plotters at least have the decency to allow Fortriu to draw breath before the first blow.

  He put Eile away in a corner of his mind, and Saraid with her. He found he could not banish them completely; they had a habit of reappearing from time to time in a small, intense image or a snatch of words. He let those moments pass and tried not to think too much of them. Nights were the worst. He dreamed. Often he awoke, uncomfortably, with his body hot and hard with desire, requiring a sudden dip in a cold stream or a bout of furious physical activity to quell it. There had been a time when the image of Ana had tormented him thus, a time when his golden-haired princess had walked regularly through his sleep, as lovely and untouchable as a fairy woman of ancient story. To his astonishment, that had changed from the moment he saw her at Pitnochie, saddened by her recent loss but profoundly content in the choices she had made. What had once been a passion that threatened to possess his very soul had become, without his being aware of it, a quieter, less dangerous feeling: a lifelong bond of deepest friendship.

  The dreams persisted, full of sensual delight and tormenting choices. But Ana no longer had a place in them. On this journey, the woman who lay with him by night was younger, slighter, with hair like dark fire and pale skin dotted with freckles; her touch was sweetly hesitant, her body a wonder to explore, lithe, fresh, giving. Sometimes he got it right, and pleased her, and heard her little sound of satisfaction; felt her move above or beneath him, sighing; saw her smile in surprised delight. Sometimes he got it wrong, and sent her back into the nightmare of Dalach, the pain, the powerlessness. Waking from those dreams was a tumult of guilt and sorrow, tempered by profound relief. Thank the gods that he had refused her offer.

  Once inside the borders of Circinn, Faolan took a more cautious approach to his task. He could not afford to be apprehended; he must get back to White Hill as soon as he had what he needed. For two more days he traveled,
stopping here and there for directions, chatting casually to farmers who gave him lifts, visiting a dwelling of Christian monks, where he was offered bread and parsnip wine and the advice that he should go carefully, as the roads in the district were not considered safe at the present time. He asked why this was so; the cleric whispered that there had been talk of parties of armed men on the move, of ambushes and general unrest. Faolan did not think he could ask any more questions, so he bid the fellow farewell and went on his way.

  He had never been much of a sleeper; the nature of his work meant his nights were often spent on watch, listening for sounds in the darkness. It was his practice to make do with brief or broken rest, taken only when all was safe. Now his dreams were coaxing him out of that long-held discipline. At day’s end he found himself sinking into a well of sleep from which he did not emerge until near dawn. The dreams enmeshed him; sometimes they felt more real than the daily world of crossing ground, finding cover, gleaning the scant harvest of news. When it was the good dream, often enough he would half wake, then dive again into the secret, tender world of his imagining. A man on a covert mission cannot afford such indulgence. Such a slipping of standards can only lead to disaster.

  Thus it was with Faolan one morning on his journey farther across Circinn. He lay in the shelter of a straw stack, his cloak wrapped around him. A drystone wall kept the wind at bay. She was in his arms, not sighing and moving in an act of passion this time, but sleeping curled against him, her arm across his chest, her head in the hollow of his shoulder. He pulled the quilt up over her, his hand lingering on the long, silken strands of her hair. It was almost dawn. It seemed a miracle that she lay there thus, skin to skin, the soft touch of her breath against his body, the warmth of her filling him like a blessing, the depth of her slumber telling him that, against the odds, he had won her complete trust… A little voice spoke up, right next to the bed. Get up, Feeler. Sorry’s hungry.

  He opened his eyes. There was a spear point not far from his face, and an armed man behind it. “Can’t you understand a simple instruction?” asked the man with the spear. “Get up! Come on, step out where we can see you, and keep your hands open. Move!”

  He moved. There was not just one man but a whole group, seven or eight at least. No time to snatch his weapons; the small knife was on his person, but the assailants were too many. Getting himself killed was not going to help anyone. As they dragged him forward, pulling his hands behind his back and binding his wrists together, he observed that they were not a rabble of wayside thugs but a disciplined team, clearly sent on a mission to apprehend him. “Who are you? What am I supposed to have done?” he ventured, and was silenced immediately by a gag, slipped on from behind and promptly tightened. This wasn’t looking good. Never mind that; he would get information from this one way or another, and then he would give them the slip. He still had his knife.

  “Search him,” someone said. “Be quick. We’re too near the road here.”

  They took the knife, as well as his bag of traveler’s supplies. His other weapons and his silver, concealed in the straw, they did not find. Then he was marched along the edge of the field, through a gate, and into the darkness of a shadowy wood.

  THERE WAS ONLY one thought in the druid’s mind: Home. What it meant was hazy still: a house wrapped in oaks, a whisper-quiet chamber of stone, objects set out in orderly fashion… He ran, his bare feet knowing the changeable nature of the forest floor as part of himself, his breathing at long last strong and easy, his body bursting with the joy of freedom. I’m going home. The trees made a wondrous, changing tapestry as he passed, bright beech, silvery birch, dark pine, the soft fronds of ferns beneath, the spiky guardian hollies. His feet touched the crunching softness of fallen leaves; they trod on needles of pine, releasing a pungent aroma; they slid over gravel and splashed through streams, knowing each rolling pebble, each great lichen-crusted stone, each touch of sun or shade. From his high throne in the sky, the Flamekeeper smiled down on him.

  As he drew close to the margin of the great forest, his pace slowed. Memory stirred, seeping into the great bright spaces his winter journey had opened in his mind. One by one they came back: a child, his pupil, his dear one… brown curls, blue eyes, a tiny, solemn boy who spoke like a sage… his son… no, not his son, but dearer than any bond of kinship could make him. Bridei. But Bridei was a man now; a king. Yet still he saw the child… a different child, a boy of exceptional talent, of prodigious promise, an eldritch, precious child… the child of his own blood…

  “Derelei,” whispered the druid, his voice harsh and strange after a season’s silence. Once he had given a name to the image, others flowed after it: Bridei the man, strong and grave, and Tuala… Tuala, the daughter he had wronged, the daughter whom he must learn to know all over again, this time with love and trust and an open heart. He thought that he could do it; he thought that he could try.

  He halted in a clearing fringed by drooping willows and spreading elders: a place of the Shining One. Here the streamlet whose course he had been following flowed into a round, deep pool edged by moss-cloaked stones; small fish darted there, hiding in the fronds of underwater plants, and above the surface dragonflies made zigzag paths, their wings a wonder of transparent grace.

  The druid knelt on the rocks by the pool. Home. It had a wealth of meanings. Perhaps, after all, for him home was not a place, but a state of mind. Perhaps it was forgiveness; acceptance; belonging. Was that simple message the sum of his winter’s hard-won learning?

  He looked into the water. For a man long practiced in the arts of divination, augury, and prophecy, to do so was instinctive. If the Shining One had some final wisdom for him before this journey was ended, she might reveal it to him here in this still place, his last resting place before he walked out of the wildwood and returned to the realms of men.

  A face looked up at him. At first he thought it a vision, an image from beyond death, for surely this was his old friend Uist, a solitary druid of the forest, who had long been considered half-crazed; the hair was wild, its long strands thick with scraps of foliage, twigs, and mosses; the eyes were mad, seeing and unseeing; the figure was smeared with filth, and underneath, completely naked. The druid lifted a hand, and the madman in the pond lifted his own as if in ironic greeting.

  He made himself look again; struggled to analyze. The unkempt hair was of every shade between black and white; it was not Uist’s, but that of a younger man. The eyes were dark as polished obsidian; they had not the pale clarity of the ancient sage’s. The body… He did not want to look down, to recognize that wrinkled, pallid, scrawny nudity as his own. But I feel young, he thought. I feel sound. I feel more alive than I have ever been. I want to run, to shout, to sing, to work marvels. And heard an inner voice reply: So did he. It was true; Uist had been rich in both a young man’s vision and an old man’s wisdom even to the moment he slipped away from this world.

  The druid did not look down. He laid a hand on his ribs, feeling the prominence of the bones and how the flesh had shrunk away during his time of privation. He touched his elbow, his knee; he touched his neck and cheek and looked again into the water. He tried to see the image as a child might, or a woman, or a shepherd grazing his flock at the forest’s edge, glancing up to see a figure walking out under the oaks.

  “Is this the sum of my learning?” he whispered. “That in the space of one season, I am shrunk to a shadow of myself?” The figure in the water looked up, eyes bright with madness, hair like a rat’s nest, body exposed in all its gaunt and filthy wretchedness. The druid stepped back from the forest pool, retreating into the shadows under the sheltering trees. “What are you telling me?” he asked the Shining One, and sat down on a mossy rock to reflect on the answers already beginning to unfold in his thoughts. He reminded himself that outward appearances did not necessarily signify truth; that oftentimes the meanings of things lay deep within. Perhaps the journey must be slower; perhaps he must walk, not run.

  “I am reborn,”
he murmured, not sure if the words were his own or those of another voice. “An infant. I must learn it all again; how to walk, how to speak, how to listen.” He saw himself back at Pitnochie, long ago, with a small, grave boy by his side, and a lesson to teach. Step with care upon the path, that younger man said. Let your feet be part of the earth they tread. Know the thoughts of owl and otter, beetle and salmon. Speak the truths of the heart. It came to him that he had lost touch with the simple wisdom he had imparted to the child Bridei. There was another child to teach now, a perilously able child who needed him still more than that fledgling king had done. So, he would go on, but slowly. He would walk each step of the way with the love of the Shining One in his heart and his senses awake to the winter’s great lesson. That lesson was a beacon to show him the way forward. He thought its name was love.

  “I WANT… SAY a thing, Eile,” Ana said in her halting Gaelic. The wedding would be tomorrow. Despite the tragic death of Breda’s handmaid, it had been decided not to delay the ceremony. Eile was helping the bride with some final adjustments to the outfit she would wear, a plain tunic and skirt in fine cream wool with little birds embroidered in a band around the hem. “The handfasting… I wish you… with me… not sister. Sounds bad, but true. You… at ritual… for Faolan. We… very fond…”

  Eile did not reply; there seemed no right response. Very probably she had misunderstood, though if Ana did indeed mean she would prefer that Breda not attend the ceremony, she thought she knew why. Breda’s behavior was decidedly odd at times, and one could never be sure what outrageous statement she would come out with next. The young noblewoman had sought Eile out on many occasions since their first meeting, as if to make a special friend of her, but Eile had not been able to warm to her. Breda could be amusing in an edgy, barbed sort of way but, beyond their age, they had nothing at all in common. Yet Ana was such a good person, so wise and gentle; it seemed possible she had not meant the words in the way Eile understood them.