Three Wells of the Sea- The Complete Trilogy

by Terry Madden

  “The greenmen won’t decide my fate,” Ava said. “That I do for myself.”

  “Guard your heart. They are not fools.”

  “I have nothing to hide. Now leave me to my rest.”

  Irjan bowed and left. But Ava found no sleep, tracing silver spears of light that pierced the ragged thatch as the moon crossed the night, convincing herself she had nothing to hide.

  In the morning, Ava found three greenmen ahorse as if they’d waited since moonrise, their moss-green hoods pulled close against the morning damp, the plumes of their breath hanging with the mist. They spoke no word, nor did Ava. It was their way.

  Her guards mounted up as if they intended to ride with her, but she knew better.

  “You’ll wait for me here.”

  Gwylym, her captain, showed his palms and tipped a grizzled chin. “As you command, lady.”

  She was tempted to trust Gwylym. For it wasn’t Nechtan who came to her the night she awoke bloody and screaming, clawing through her bed to find her dead child in a mass of afterbirth. It was Gwylym who calmed her and reminded her that Nechtan was away. She wondered at Gwylym’s allegiance to her now, but saw nothing in his eyes but devotion.

  A squire held her palfrey.

  “She’s feeling the cool air, my lady,” the boy said. “Keep a close rein.”

  She tied the leather satchel and eel spear to the saddle, mounted and dug in her heels. The horse leapt to the bit and she started up the trail in no particular direction.

  “The morning grows old, good druada,” she called back to the greenmen. “If you won’t lead, I shall.” She pushed her horse into a trot.

  Instantly, they came beside her. Without a word, one of them sidled close and took hold of her reins. She smiled at him as he dropped a grain sack over her head. Knotting her fingers in the horse’s mane to steady herself, she bobbed blindly in tow toward the sacred grove.

  Past her nose, she could see nothing but her horse’s black shoulders and a trail of deep scree at its feet. She let the rhythm of the horse ease her into a dull calm. Guard your heart, Irjan had told her. What was it she feared the greenmen would see there? She was a foreigner, yes, and fathered by a reaver who had ravaged the coasts of the Five Kingdoms for thirty years, but Ava had had no part in it. She bore her father’s blood, but she trusted the greenmen to see there was none of his black soul in her.

  By midday, the path became a bed of pine needles and fallen oak leaves. Branches whipped at her chest and arms and the air felt cooler, but she could smell nothing but forest and oat dust from the sack on her head.

  They halted.

  She heard the men dismount to soft ground, then the sound of birds and wind in the trees.

  The grain sack came off.

  A ring of nine ancient trees watched like mourners round a clearing, each trunk as broad as a cottage. They were of all kinds— oak, ash, hazel. A rowan still bore clusters of red berries high in the canopy and autumn leaves sailed down in silent drifts.

  At the center of the grove sat nine greenmen on low stones arranged to reflect the ring of trees. Ava wondered if each druí spoke with the voice of one tree. Her own people, Northmen or ice-born, believed that oracles tended the great world tree, Yggdrasil. Perhaps these Ildana were not so unlike Ava’s people after all.

  She swung her leg over the horse and slid to the soft ground, untied the sack and spear and clutched them close as she approached the circle.

  She had imagined these nine judges would be as ancient as the trees, but only two men were past middle age. The others were men and women of different ages, and one was a dark-haired girl whose breasts had not yet budded. This one gazed into Ava with a disquieting stare.

  Stepping into their midst, she tipped her chin in respect.

  “What justice do you seek of us, Lady Ava?” the girl asked.

  “I stand before you as the chosen of the land, for the green gods have named me High King of the Five Quarters.”

  “We have indeed heard that the queen has slain a guardian,” one of the old men said.

  “An impossible task,” Ava said, “unless the guardian herself bared her breast to my spear. And so it was. I travelled to the dream well called Mogg’s Eye seeking solace after Nechtan’s death. Peace find him in the Fair Lands.”

  “Peace find him in the Fair Lands,” all replied.

  She fumbled with the sign of tribute to the dead.

  “When I gazed into the depths of the well, I saw her there, a water worm. Her eyes held on to mine and she spoke without words.”

  “You came to the well for solace carrying a fishing spear?” The question came from a woman.

  “My slave returned to the inn where I stayed and fetched a spear. And the guardian waited.”

  Ava cast her spear into the center of the circle and it pierced the ground with a thud. Glancing at the faces of the judges, she chose to hand the sack to the dark-haired girl.

  “The guardian waited,” Ava repeated, “as if she’d waited for me since the first days.”

  The girl emptied the contents of the sack.

  The eel’s head had not completely dried. The eyes had shriveled and it smelled of brine and blood. But as it rolled in the deep leaves it took its true form. What came to rest at the center of the circle was no eel but the head of an immortal, a dark-haired girl, not unlike the girl who held the sack.

  These greenmen, the keepers of words, failed to speak, but traded glances. How could they question this? The guardians had slept in the wells long before the Old Blood came to this land. They had chosen the Old Blood to rule, and a thousand years later they chose the Ildana. And now, they chose the daughter of an ice-born reaver.

  One of the women crumbled to her knees, her hands raised and her eyes on the ground. “Not in our lifetime have we seen such as this.”

  “Nor your grandsires’ lifetime,” Ava said. “Not since Black Brac have the gods chosen your king.”

  Each in turn went to their knees.

  Ava met the trance-like stare of the dark-haired girl while, in unison, the nine rose and pressed so close she could smell the leafy fragrance of their skin. They placed their cool hands on her body, her head, her arms, her belly.

  A warm rush moved through her, a quickening. Behind closed eyes, a spinning sky opened before her, and clouds built and streamed and tumbled wildly.

  Their hands grew warmer while her heart raced.

  When she opened her eyes, the girl’s face was inches from her own, her hot palms on Ava’s cheeks, and she knew the girl had seen everything. And Ava had never felt so free.

  The ceremony was swift. Through a shower of meadowsweet, Ava rode into Caer Ys as the she-king of the Five Quarters. Irjan had fixed a padding of velvet inside Nechtan’s circlet, otherwise it would have slipped down to Ava’s nose. Still, the simple band of Finian silver pinched like a vice. She would have a new one crafted.

  Caer Ys sat on an island, its walls grown from the black stone so long ago it was part of the island now. Brilliant green turf crowned rocky scarps and seabirds rode the updrafts on the bay side. The tide was in and waves crawled up the low banks of the causeway to dampen them. They pushed their horses to a trot, racing the water, which would soon cover it.

  Ava was greeted by her seneschal, a narrow man with a slight hunch and balding pate. “I have a pressing matter, my lady.”

  “I have great need of a bath. What matter?” She dropped her cloak into her chambermaid’s hands.

  “The harp of the drowned maid.”

  “What of it?”

  “It’s gone missing, my lady.”

  Irjan’s skills at divination were no less impressive than her command of spirits. By evenfall, the old shaman had named Rhys the thief. And by morning, Nechtan’s bloodied chamberlain told Ava what he’d done with the harp. But the threat of the noose couldn’t wring any more truth from him. He had sent it to Lyleth at a meadmonger’s cottage in the Long Vale. What could Lyleth want with Nechtan’s harp?

>   Lyleth had been seen in the city on the day Ava proclaimed her anointing, but had slipped away like the thief she was.

  Who else in Ava’s household conspired with Lyleth?

  Ava ordered every man, woman and child in her employ to the outer ward. Rhys was brought from his cell, weeping and begging for mercy while his hysterical wife struggled in the arms of a guard. At the end of the rope, Rhys squirmed for far longer than Ava thought he could. Her father had always said it took careful aim or great force to kill a man. It must be so.

  Finally, the twitching stopped and Rhys’ piss traced a dark stain down the wall.

  Chapter 6

  Glass fell with rain. The man tried to shield the boy from impact, but his legs were trapped in a tangle of steel and plastic and the deflating airbag. A blanket of darkness dampened the boy’s screams until pain bore the man away.

  His body was a kite, and the chaff of his flesh streamed away with the wind to leave bones and then marrow and then nothing but a pulse, the core of a bright, blue star.

  Plowing on at the end of a slender string, he was buoyed by his desperation to remember the boy’s name, but he couldn’t even remember his own and both grew dimmer until he was aware of nothing but this blue pulse of light in a sea as vast as night.

  Perhaps he slept. He must have.

  He swam a sea of stars until a fire roused his icy limbs, replacing numbness with searing pain, and though his eyes were open, he saw only the inside of his own skull. He tasted mead and blood and fought to breathe, but the sea spilled into his lungs.

  He fumbled for something to hang on to. Choking reminded him to breathe. But he was going under. Kick to stay afloat.

  “Help me!”

  The voice belonged to someone else, surely. His skin pricked with countless needles of returning sensation; his mind was leaden, his tongue thick and foreign, but his flesh struggled to contain an energy that burst from his pores and filled his head with the smell of lightning-seared air.

  He tried to rise from this water and fly, but his body was tangled in a new gravity. Blind, he reached for anything solid until his hands found another body and he held on.

  “I can’t see!”

  Fingernails clawed him and, oh god, he was strangling someone. He dragged the person to the surface and the blindness began to clear. Weak firelight revealed a woman. He had her by the throat and she battled him in a pool of black water.

  Crying out, she struggled free and lunged for a rock that protruded into the water. Where was this place?

  He tried to speak, but his mouth refused to form words, so he took hold of her again and held her tight, afraid she would run and leave him.

  “Nechtan!” she cried.

  His name was an offering. Nechtan.

  She beat on him with balled fists. He wanted to say he didn’t mean to hurt her, that she was part of his dream, and they’d both wake soon. The sand of each moment slipped through his fingers, and still he was here, not waking in a warm bed, not squinting into day. He had hold of her bare arms and realized she was as naked as he. Her touch seeped into him like hot honey on bread, and with it, a flood of memories. Were they his or hers?

  His name was Nechtan.

  The image of the woman sharpened. She stopped struggling and met his eyes. Her hair was as dark as the water, braided and falling over her left shoulder. He knew her well. He ran a finger over her cheek to her lips, and for a fleeting second, he thought they were lovers, then his memory corrected him.

  His solás. They thought with one mind, spoke with one voice.

  “You’re bleeding,” he said.

  Her terror bloomed into a smile and she took his face in both hands. “You remember me?”

  He was drowning in her, the memories coming so fast he tried to drink them down. “As much as I try to forget you, Lyl, I can’t.”

  She spilled a nervous laugh, maybe it was exhaustion, but her look was guarded, changed.

  Feathers covered the water, clung to his skin, her hair.

  “What is this? Why are we naked in a pool, Lyl, and how is it I don’t remember why?”

  She climbed out of the pool, shivering, her arms laced around her long-limbed, pale form. She pulled on a waiting tunic and it clung to her wet skin.

  He couldn’t take his eyes off her.

  Feeling like he weighed thirty stone, he stepped from the water into the cold night air where a breeze caressed his skin and fanned a flame inside.

  “You can still talk in this dream, can’t you?” he asked her.

  “Warm yourself.” She threw a pair of thin woolen trews at him and set to stoking the fire. A spray of embers danced starward. Without meeting his eyes, she said, “We have much to say between us.”

  “Don’t we always?”

  Stepping into the trousers, he wondered if he had ever felt any modesty before her, and it worried him that he couldn’t remember.

  She draped a moth-eaten cloak around him, hitched up her own trews and buckled a belt around her waist. Blood was seeping through the linen of her tunic.

  “Are you going to tell me why you’re bleeding? Why you and I were bobbing naked in an icy pool?” He sniffed at the cloak. “And where are my clothes?”

  “These are your clothes.”

  The details of this dreamworld grew clearer. Snowy peaks surrounded them, just visible in what seemed to be the end of twilight. A clootie tree hung over the water, marking this pool as a holy well. But by the looks of it, they’d been ambushed by a flock of pigeons.

  He caught Lyl’s wrist and examined her wounds. The gashes were deep, as were those below her collarbone.

  “Who did this?”

  She took back her arm and handed him a shirt.

  “What do you remember?” she asked.

  “About a fight? Nothing. I was dreaming. I still am… There was a boy—”

  “Who am I?” She asked with a seriousness that made him laugh.

  “My solás. And at one point, you used to be my friend—what’s going on?”

  She fumbled in the satchel for some cheesecloth and started to wrap it around her damaged arm.

  “That needs stitching.” He tried to help, but she pulled away.

  “I’ll see to it.”

  “What’s the matter, Lyl?”

  “I can take care of it,” she said. Her eyes were filled with the defiance of a wounded wild thing. She feared him. And that alone made him hope this was indeed a dream.

  “Here,” he said. “Take this.” He pulled off the shirt and handed it back to her. “This rag’ll do me no good against the cold anyway.”

  She tore a strip from it and fumbled to bind it across her chest and under an arm, and this time, he made no move to help.

  His feet were going numb and when he reached down to cover them with his cloak, he found two long leather straps digging into his ankles.

  “What’s this?” He pulled them off and held them out to her with a quizzical smile. “You tried to tie me up?”

  “If I could keep you bound with those, you’d not be worth the waking,” she said. “Now, what else do you remember?”

  He rubbed at his temples. Even his brain was cold. Images flashed, then faded, memories he wanted no part of. They were like the dead, to be remembered only when they must.

  “I remember a meal of Nuala’s fine lamb stew and…” He measured her, saw disbelief, so he looked at the fire. “Tell me what happened here.”

  She offered a flask of mead and it warmed his belly and mind.

  “Ava.” Lyl spoke the name like a command.

  He could hear Ava’s throaty laugh in his head. “Do you think I forget my wife? The knock surely wasn’t that hard.” He felt his skull for a sore spot.

  “Irjan.”

  He could smell Irjan, her salves of rendered whale fat, smudges of herbs that clouded his bedchamber. But why was Irjan tending him? When was he ill?

  “Enough quizzing.”

  “There were no attackers,” Lyl said f
latly. “I called you back, my lord.”

  “From where? I must’ve been drunk for a year.”

  She leaned close, her teeth chattering, and trapped his eyes, just as she would a poor sot. “Drunk with death.”

  “What?”

  “I called you back from the dead, my lord.”

  He could only laugh, but she didn’t.

  “You’re the drunk, Lyl,” he said. “Let’s wake up now, eh? I’ve seen enough of this dream.”

  “Oh, you’re wide awake, my lord.” She couldn’t hide the satisfaction in her tone. “It’s a summoning only a solás can speak. The Words of Waking Stone. They’ve not been spoken since the days of the Old Blood.”

  She knelt beside him, cradled his face in her palms, kneaded his cheeks like a sick patient, and pulled at his lower eyelids.

  “You were dead, Nechtan.”

  “Dead.” Repeating it didn’t help him believe it.

  “Dead and in your barrow.”

  Her hands travelled down his shoulders, his arms, then she took his right hand and turned it palm up. She ran her fingers over his wrist.

  “Your mark,” she said. She took his other hand and turned both his palms to the fire. “It can’t be.”

  He should have a binding mark on his right wrist, one that matched the one on Lyl’s left. A tattoo of a water horse. He brought his wrist closer to the firelight. His skin was pink with cold, but not even a scar showed where the mark had been.

  He felt a sudden need to join her in this inspection of his body. He tossed off the cloak and ran his fingers over his scars—a large one ran from under his ribs to his hip where Gwylym had stitched his guts back in, and there was the arrow in his thigh, his forearms were hatched with cuts, and one thick, fresh scar lay where his neck met his shoulder. He had no memory of taking that wound. Completing his inspection, he found his other parts thankfully intact.

  “What game are you playing with me, Lyl?”

  “How could I remove your mark?” She huddled beside the fire, her arms wrapped around her knees. For a heartbeat he saw a little girl in a hide coracle, sunburned and laughing with the sea all around, and he knew he had driven that girl far away from him. Now she feared him. Perhaps not fear exactly, but distrust, and something far more bitter.