by Terry Madden
The woman is soaking wet and blood seeps through her ragged shirt. A long dark braid snakes over one shoulder and her eyes are as wide and blue as the sky and teeming with as many secrets.
The sound of feet sinking in wet gravel draws Connor’s attention to a man. He wears a heavy cloak like the woman’s. His hair is long and darker than Dish’s, but his eyes are green and so familiar. This man has no lithe runner’s body, but one of a warrior, dense and calloused with a face that has watched others die at his hands, graceful and yet confused, regal yet dressed in rags. But as Connor looks into his eyes, all doubt vanishes.
“Dish? Dish, it’s me!”
Waist-deep in the water, the man sweeps his arms in the air before him. He can’t see Connor.
Connor’s heart pumps faster. “I’m right here!”
He laughs and it sounds like birdsong. He reaches out, but his hand passes through Dish, through bone and tendon and deafening rush of blood. Dish’s eyes lock on his, and for a moment, Connor is certain Dish sees him.
“Hey!” he calls. “Can’t you hear me?”
The woman wades in, her hand on Dish’s shoulder like she’s known him forever. They talk in the same language as the flame. Dish points and the woman’s gaze follows. She holds the fire out over the water, and it’s then Connor sees the tattoo on her wrist. A horse with a fish’s tail.
“Dish! It’s me! Connor!”
The woman is very close, her pretty face just inches from Connor’s, her eyes blindly looking through him. But words move from her mind to his. Give him time, her mind says, I beg you.
Voices echo from somewhere behind Connor, but none of them are his own.
The woman drops her light in the pool and the cave goes black. A familiar terror overtakes him, a blind weightless panic that assures him there are things below the water waiting to devour him.
“Dish!”
Only Connor’s echo chimes in answer.
“Dish! Please!”
A vice-like grip hooks under his arms and Connor’s body cuts through the water as if he plows through syrup. It takes him down. And the vision of the man who must be Dish and the beautiful woman recedes like heaven in a rearview mirror.
Chapter 9
Nechtan and Lyleth followed the pony over smooth boulders, skirting the fall of the underground stream. They could go no faster, and neither could the men who pursued them. Lyl said there were at least three of them, a mile or maybe more behind them. Nechtan had never known her to be wrong in such things, but he wasn’t as willing to trust the greenwood babe, Elowen. If they found themselves trapped in this cavern, Nechtan’s men would meet their dead king face to face. He almost hoped for such an outcome.
The water tumbled down into utter darkness, but Brixia didn’t hesitate. The pony was forced to sit on her haunches in places and slide down the steep path. Nechtan followed, one step after the other, Lyleth behind him. If she slipped he would catch her, and maybe Brixia would catch them both at the bottom.
Clenching the rushlight in his teeth sent embers up to scorch his hair, but he needed both hands. The torrent beside them killed all sound and its cool breath threatened to blow out the light altogether. He reached up for Lyl and helped her along. Her trembling had grown more violent. She was fevered and had lost much blood, and Nechtan half-carried her to move quickly.
They reached a level passage at last and followed the stream for what seemed like miles, though in this darkness it was hard to determine. Here, the water quieted to a murmur, which allowed them to talk. Lyl made him recite the Battle of Cynvarra, all five hundred lines. He doubted he could have recited the whole thing even before he died, but she helped. He passed the test in bawdy songs and had Lyl laughing with I Have a Pretty Thing to Give My Lady.
He sang drinking songs, love songs, epics, and he remembered. He remembered the first woman he bedded, the first man he killed, his first hunt, his first battle, his first swim in the sea. His life came flooding back. But an enormous void loomed over the last span of days. It was silent, empty, and as cold as Lyleth.
“What do you plan to tell Marchlew when we reach Cedewain?” he asked. “That you found me curled in a log like a woodsprite?”
“Probably not the truth. You have no mark.”
“You expect him to hand over command of his armies to a dead man because I was so well-loved? Or because I have magical powers you’ve failed to tell me about? I do have magical powers, don’t I, Lyl?”
“I was certain you had magical powers when last you lived.”
He had to look at her to measure her meaning. There it was. The teasing smile he knew long ago.
He returned her smile. “In truth, Lyl, you’d best have an argument for Marchlew. He might be half a fool, but he’s a grasping fool.”
“The truth, my lord, is that Marchlew is vastly outnumbered. Fiach’s men alone could take Marchlew down.”
“Do I bring an army of the dead with me? How is it I’m to improve Marchlew’s chances? Tell me that.”
“You must win back the men of Ys, Emlyn and IsAeron.”
He stopped and faced her, her words echoing through the vaults of the cavern. “You’re mad. They’ll think me a ghost, nothing more.”
“The men of the Five Quarters will gut each other, Nechtan.” She snatched the rushlight from him, pushed past him, and kept walking after the little horse. “If I tell Marchlew the truth,” she said, “and he sees your wrist… we’re done before we begin. The Bear will come.”
“How is it you’re so certain of that?”
“It was you who asked me to serve as your solás. I recall you trusted my instincts at one time.”
His voice carried into the dark miles of cavern before them. “I recall your instincts led me to marry Ava. Your instincts led me to trust in this peace you built.”
“We built.” The rushlight had burned to Lyleth’s fingers. She cursed and dropped it, then fumbled in her satchel for another.
“You’d best have something more substantial than instinct when you talk to Marchlew,” he said.
She lit the next rushlight. He took it and followed the little horse.
“I think you’re wrong about Ava,” he said. “She’s still young. She can produce a son with some bullish chieftain, and stand up to her father.”
“Then you’re a bigger fool now than when last you breathed,” she said. “Why do you think she never bore you a child?”
“The gods want no ice-born princelings? Ava bore me no love? Take your pick.”
She stopped walking and faced him. “Irjan was sent to kill your babes in the womb. To kill you. Ava’s father will come. And the tribes of the north cannot hope to hold out against both the Bear and Ava.”
“Ava despises the old bastard. She’d never give over something she’s won to the Bear of Sandkaldr. That I remember.” He kept walking. “I’m worthless to you, Lyl. I’m nothing but a dead king without a mark. Maybe less than that, maybe a conjuring of your own failings.”
She seized his arm. It wasn’t just anger he saw in her eyes, but an outright reproach. “Tell me, my lord,” she said. “What do you remember of my failings? Are they as grievous as your own?”
He had banished her, but he couldn’t remember why. How long had it been? Feelings stirred that he thought were sealed tight. She was not always such a creature of duty, not always the stern voice of truth who led the Ildana as Nechtan had never wanted to. No, he remembered the girl he had known on the Isle of Glass, the summers they spent together as they grew into their bodies and their burdens, a girl more reckless and rebellious than he, a girl who showed him the secrets hidden in the flight of a damselfly, a girl who led him to swim naked in the sea.
It was he who had changed her. How he wished it was the other way round.
A sphere of light pulsed from the waxed rush between them.
“Perhaps it’s best,” she said. “Memories mean nothing now.”
The last thing he remembered of this world was that he op
ened his eyes from a fevered sleep and looked up into Ava’s eyes, red and raining tears. In that instant, when he knew those eyes were not Lyleth’s, he had let go. Of everything.
“I well remember Nuala’s lamb stew,” he said, and kept walking.
Nechtan followed the rhythmic chatter of the pony’s hooves on stone. His thoughts turned to the start of all this, Lyleth’s proposal of an alliance with the man who had, for the last thirty summers, beached his longships on the northern shores of the Five Quarters, taking what he wanted and burning the rest.
Lyleth had sent greenmen to negotiate Nechtan’s safe passage to Rotomagos, for she had met the Bear on a tiny island far north of the Bloody Spear and negotiated an alliance with this man, Saerlabrand, the Bear of Sandkaldr. The man who had taken the head of Nechtan’s father and hoisted it on the point of his sword like a banner while Nechtan watched from the bottom of a pile of dead men.
Three summers of death followed until Lyleth convinced Nechtan to make this peace.
She stood beside him on the deck of the warship, sailing through ice floes loud with seals into the long firth of Rotomagos. They pulled their dories ashore to be met by an army of thegns… and Irjan.
“It was Irjan who met us on the strand that day,” he said. The cavern repeated his words.
“Aye, so she did,” Lyl said. “She’s been there from the start.”
“Perhaps she was the only ice-born at the Bear’s court who spoke Ildana.”
“Your wife learned more quickly than she should for one who had no lessons. Irjan was whispering to her even then.”
The memory was clear. Even at table, Saerlabrand wore a bear’s head fitted to his helm, the beast’s teeth strung from its shriveled lips like a solstice garland.
“Because you bade me,” Nechtan said, “I sat at table with the man who murdered my father and my brother, and the fathers and brothers of a thousand other Ildana. And I asked this reaver, as you schooled me to, I asked him for his daughter as my wife.”
“And so you know my sin, my lord.” She said it with a flourish of her hands.
Nechtan remembered the consuming urge he had felt to slit the Bear from groin to sternum. But Lyleth’s steady purpose had stayed his hand, that and the sight of the girl who served him.
“She serves you,” Lyl had whispered.
He looked up into Ava’s face just as she purposefully spilled ale down his chest, only to take her time at wiping him clean. A maid, not much past her flowering. How could any man fail to find happiness in one as fair as Ava?
That night, he and Lyl had talked until dawn. He remembered searching her eyes for something other than duty. He wanted to know the secrets of her heart as she knew his.
“What do the clouds tell you, Lyl?” he had asked her that night. “Am I to know any joy in this life my father left me?”
She set her fingers to his lips, saying, “Your mistress is old as time and young as spring, and she favors you with sovereignty. You have no other love but the land.”
“I didn’t choose it.”
“Ah, but she chose you.”
Nechtan followed the dim bounce of the pony. The path narrowed and became a slippery defile at the edge of the underground stream. At last, the water pooled and eddied as it waited to pass through a narrow channel into the earth.
He held the rushlight out to survey the chamber, a domed cavern hollowed by eons of rolling water. The stream must run through veins of the mountain and exit in the valley of Elfael to become the headwaters of the River Rampant. The left-hand trail they’d been following for what seemed like days ended at a weeping wall of sandstone.
Brixia didn’t pause. She waded into the water, her pony legs kicking like a dog, the current pushing her toward some unseen narrows, her creamy mane and tail spread like a cloak on the water.
“Get on my back,” Nechtan told Lyl.
She did as instructed, her legs locking around his waist and one arm over his chest.
“’Tis a good thing we learned how to fight a rough tide in the sea,” she said.
“I used to have to carry you then, too,” he said.
“You remember?”
“I remember.”
He shifted Lyl’s weight and stepped into the pool. The bottom fell away and he sprang forward, trying to extend his reach across the water. The current dragged at his legs and threatened to pull him under. The pony had almost reached the far shore, but her tail streamed behind her. He grabbed hold of it, and the little horse gave him the heave he needed to pass the churning torrent below.
Lyl hung on with one arm across his chest, her fingers digging into his ribs. For a moment, they were submerged. Nechtan clung to the pony’s tail and Lyl kicked behind him for some thrust. He finally felt gravel beneath his feet and fell forward. Taking hold of Lyl’s wrist, he dragged her from the water. The rushlight was out and his eyes fought the utter blackness. For the space of three deep breaths, Lyl gave in to his arms. He held her fevered body and she shivered violently.
His eyes fought for any stray glimmer of light as Lyl dug through her pouch for a rushlight.
“I might be able to light this. I need something to strike it on,” she said.
He helped her to her feet, his arm around her waist. His feet sunk deep into gravel as he reached out for a wall that must be close. Finally, his knuckles scraped stone. “Here.”
He took her hand and laid it on the cool stone and the light sputtered awake. Water beaded like worry on Lyl’s face and lashes. The light wavered in her trembling hand and the fabric of her linen shirt was soaked with fresh blood.
“Lyl, we need to see to those wounds.”
“I’ve no herbs, no dressings.”
“We’ve got to be close to the way out. Come. Rest for a bit.” He found a ledge of gravel along one wall and sat down. He took her hand and tried to convince her to sit.
“We have but one more rushlight,” she said. “We must find the way out.”
A bowl of smooth, flesh-colored walls bloomed with light. “Have a look here,” she said.
The rushlight exposed a subtle symbol. Three interlocking spirals trickled down the wall, carved into the stone and painted red. They flowed one into the other, like water making its way to the sea. Around it, black handprints of long-dead men were scattered like dark stars.
The image was as clear as a vivid dream.
“I’ve been here before,” he said. “I remember, things I shouldn’t remember…” He laid his palms on Lyl’s cheeks and looked into her eyes. “You.” He turned back to the pool. “And a boy. There, in the water.” He knelt beside it, trying to see into its depths, but saw only the rushlight dancing on its surface.
He waded into the swirling blackness. “I feel him here.”
Lyl’s hand was on his shoulder as her rushlight sent infinite ripples of light into the blackness. It spewed embers that dropped falling stars on the water.
Nechtan reached out like a blind man, believing he could touch the boy, willing his eyes to see him.
He pointed to a gentle eddy that disturbed the smooth surface, and in that moment, he saw him. The rushlight danced over the image of a boy, a distorted reflection in the watery mirror.
“I see him,” Nechtan said. A boy with copper eyes and a desperate defiance reached out and tried to take Nechtan’s hand. Nechtan reached to meet him, but his fingers dragged the water and broke the reflection.
Lyl’s hand squeezed his shoulder.
“I put out the light,” Nechtan said. “I left him in the dark.” But the truth was even clearer. “I left him.”
As if in answer, Nechtan looked across the pool and saw vague motes of torchlight coming from the depths of the cavern, and with them, the echo of voices.
Lyl dropped the rush in the pool, and darkness took them.
Chapter 10
It was well before dawn when the judges of the greenwood arrived in Caer Ys. From the battlements, Ava watched them stream across the causeway, unmindful
of the storm that sent waves over the land bridge. Even their torches burned with a wind-troubled green glow that brought fireflies to mind, gnats of the night, stealing into her city. The last ceremony to consummate her marriage to this land would be done in secret, at dawn, “beneath no roof and upon no floor.”
Irjan helped Ava into a plain linen shift, fixing a simple brooch at her shoulder. The greenmen had been clear: she was to wear no adornment, to dress as a pilgrim in search of the blessings of sovereignty. She should be reflective, preparing a tranquil exterior to present to the gods of this land. But while Irjan adjusted a belt around her waist, Ava could think of little else but Gwylym’s search for Lyleth. Yesterday, she had sent her captain of the guard with enough men to comb every village and holding from Caer Ys to the moorland of IsAeron.
Irjan’s thick fingers worked at the knots in Ava’s hair.
“What can Lyleth want with Nechtan’s harp?” Ava caught the distorted reflection of the old shaman in her silver mirror.
“A sentimental token perhaps,” Irjan said, “for the woman that sleeps inside Lyleth.”
“She needs no keepsake of Nechtan’s devotion. She already owns his soul.” No, there was some other reason Lyleth had contrived for Rhys to steal the harp. “You really think there’s a soft woman inside that cold armor of Lyleth’s?”
“Lyleth has grown scales because she must,” Irjan said. “So must you.”
“What did Nechtan see that he found so desirable in that druí?” Ava gave up the mirror and turned to give Irjan a challenging look, as if it was the first time she’d asked such a question of the old witch.
A faint shrug was all Irjan offered, as usual.
“You know,” Ava said, “Nechtan once told me that he would have given himself over to blind rage, bled out on some battlefield if not for Lyleth. He said that Lyleth knew him. What did he mean, Irjan?”
“The throne was his burden, not his prize. He didn’t choose it as you have, my Iron Lamb. When we see ourself as a slave, death is our only savior, be we king or thrall.”