by Terry Madden
“You were whole before Caradoc straightened your spine,” she wistfully. “Every word you spoke to me then was a revelation. He changed more than your body with his blood magic.” Her words had barbs.
She left him standing on the balcony and went back to the bed to retrieve her gown.
Had she come only to force his hand to surrender? Had she bedded him only to mold him like clay? The fire of his rage fanned hot.
She’d almost reached the door when he caught her arm and spun her to face him. His hand met her beautiful face with a loud slap. She was not his kind any longer. No river of greenflow sustained her, no nectar from the flowers of the gods. She was piteously human.
A thousand years had changed the land Tiernmas and Merryn had once ruled. Reavers from Sandkaldr had made slaves of the Ildana, who traded with the tribes of the southern marches and beyond, Cadurques and even Tartessa. The Ildana had taken the traditions of the Old Blood, and perverted them. The kings of the Ildana now chose a member of the druada and bound her to themselves as solás. A random choice. A binding that was incomplete, the union sterile. The Ildana were like children, mouthing the words to a song they did not understand. Usurpers. Not only of the land itself, but of the ways of the Old Blood. And Merryn would have Tiernmas make peace with such usurpers?
“My servants will find a gown fit for the solás of a god,” he told her. “You shall dine with me tonight.”
The great hall had been restored to its former glory by the magic of Arianrhod and Caradoc. Chandeliers, hot with burning candles, competed with the setting sun, captured by a multitude of crystal lenses that hung like ice from the ceiling. Beams of warm sunlight shot through the halls, igniting the gilding on the pillars and rib vaults. As Caer Sidi rose, the hall grew as brilliant as a crystal vase.
The radiant souls of those Tiernmas owned flitted through the shafts of sunlight like children through a waterfall.
The servants had scrubbed every stone to a brilliant sheen, cleaned away the dust and spiders and replaced the rotting linens on the long trestle tables. They had prepared a meal worthy of a god. Roast swan, hazelnuts and sloe wine, wild onions in cream and honey-soaked oatcakes with poached apples.
Merryn sat across from Tiernmas at a table so long it disappeared into darkness. At one time, it had been crowded with courtiers that had come to Caer Sidi to lick his feet like starving dogs. He preferred it as it was now, emptied of all the sycophants and flatterers, whores of war, and traders of all. None but the green sister, Nesta, and the high brehon sat with them. And these he excused as soon as their food was gone. Merryn had said no words at all, had only stared into her plate, he cheek red from the blow.
“Our old splendor returns,” he said.
What would it take to lighten her brooding? Merryn was dressed in a scarlet gown, her hair plaited simply, tied up with flowers that matched those that grew in Tiernmas’s crown. She picked at the food before her.
Tiernmas swept his arms wide to indicated the beauty of the hall, saying, “Is this not proof of the favor of your gods? My hall, lit by the tears of the sun?”
“It is proof only that magic cast ages ago does not diminish with time.” Merryn leaned back in her chair, her head tipped quizzically. She said, “This hall is Arianrhod’s work, not yours, my love. You walk its halls because your release from that stone was a necessary part of it its rebirth. Your presence here is no more meaningful than a fly that rides from one kingdom to another on the back of a horse.”
Was she really defying him so?
He forced a laugh, and drank deeply from his crystal cup. “You think my head, wrapped in stone, was like a bung in the wine barrel of the gods?”
Merryn smiled impishly. “Exactly. And your freedom is an occasion to be rejoiced, in spite of it being a necessary consequence of something greater. It is an opportunity for you to examine your soul, and where it will lead you next. It is that very endeavor I wish to help you with.”
“Oh, I’ve spent a thousand years in that examination. It leads me to battle. It leads me to reclaim the land that is mine.”
“What if Arianrhod intends to claim this land? What if the green gods intend to take the Five Quarters, not only from the Ildana, but from you? From the Old Blood. What if the green gods are the ones coming home at last?”
“My army will take their flesh and wear it,” Tiernmas said. “And I will then have an army of gods.”
“Where are the Old Blood?” Merryn asked pointedly. “They crossed the well, certainly. Have they not returned to fill your halls?” She indicated the expanse of empty tables. Then she motioned to the swarms of sprites that clouded the rafters. “Your followers are but these? The sacrificed? The Sunless?”
Did she know that the Old Blood had sided with the Ildana? Cyr, commander of those forces, had left Tiernmas with little more than a hundred living followers, most of them Ildana themselves.
“The Ildana assemble beyond the shores of the bog,” he explained. “When the gates rise clear of the Earth, we shall attack. Their numbers are small, for they killed each other before capturing their king, Talan.” He indicated the body he now wore, swathed in a green silken tunic from the southern lands. “This is not a hopeless battle, my love. Far from it.”
“Then perhaps,” she said, leaning upon the table so the soft white mounds of her breasts crested above the bodice of her gown. “Perhaps there are some cants that might be of use to us in the Annals of the Sun.”
“The Annals of the Sun?” The writings of the green gods meant nothing to him now. “What might I need of their wisdom?”
“They have provided all, thus far,” she said. “Perhaps there is more.”
He had forgotten that Merryn had some understanding of the runes of the green gods. Perhaps she was right. Or, she was distracting him from the battle at hand. She’d come back. She wanted him to believe she’d come back for him. He wanted to believe it. What else could she have come for, but his love and his vision?
“Come.” He stood. His servants scurried to his side.
Merryn stood and took his hand.
Together, they found the stairs that spiraled up the highest tower of Caer Sidi. The Spire of the Sun.
The sun, now skimming the hills to the west, left a golden ray of light on the eastern wall of the round chamber. It was not a large room. From the domed ceiling hung the pendulous spear of naturally faceted sunstone. According to legend, it was mined from the Felgarths long before the Old Blood came to these shores, and set in place by Arianrhod herself. The amber-green stone was of such clarity, that the sunlight it gathered above the roof was refracted and focused into a beam of green-gold light that warmed the air with its brilliance.
Yet, as Tiernmas stepped around it, there appeared a dark spot at the core of the stone. He didn’t remember seeing such a blemish. It looked like an insect, or leaf, that got trapped in amber, though there was no distinct image, just darkness.
“What’s in there?” he asked Merryn.
She’d seen it, too, and was staring at it with a furrowed brow.
“Maybe it’s just a shadow—cast by something in the chamber.” She swept her gaze around the circle, then shrugged.
The stone walls were incised with countless rows of once-unreadable runes. It was beautiful beyond belief, lit as it was by the sunstone. The green gods stored their histories and lore here, not scratched on parchments, but etched into the walls. Every day, the sun touched different passages. When the year was complete, so was the reading of the lore.
None of the Old Blood could read the runes—not until Caradoc fell in battle and was given the eyes of Arianrhod. Afterward, Caradoc taught Tiernmas and others to read the runes. He unlocked the secrets of blood magic hidden there among the epics and philosophies. Reading the runes was one thing, wielding them was another.
“The verses of the green gods are like honey, and I am a bee lapping at the comb,” Merryn said, running her fingers over the runes lit up by the sun-spear.
He pulled h
er to him, saying, “You are like honey.”
“Such a wealth is hidden here,” she sighed, her cheek to his chest. “Such knowledge as the Ildana have never dreamt.”
What knowledge was she after? She’d led him here for a reason, and that reason was surely not what Tiernmas was hoping it would be. Merryn wouldn’t give up her argument this easily. She hadn’t come here to read him a bit of poesy.
“You had a favorite?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, breaking free of his embrace to circle the room. She found the runes of her favored verse in a low ribbon on the western wall. He had never thought he could be jealous of words, but as he watched her—her lips parted as if for a kiss; her eyes tracing the meaning hidden in the runes—he wanted to take her then, beneath the eye of the great sunstone.
“Read to me,” he demanded, his hands on her shoulders. He would know what information she’d come in search of.
A cloud of the glowing sprites circled her head like a wreath of greenflow, drawn to her as moths are to a flame. In that moment, he might have given her everything she wanted of him. Surrender, peace…just to have her back.
She had shaped Tiernmas as much as Caradoc had.
“Do you remember the passage?” Merryn was asking him, her finger tracing the band of etched runes. He wanted more than anything to remember, to show her how much their past meant to him.
“You read it to me,” she said, when he failed to answer, “the first day you brought me here.”
That young man with the crooked spine was not Tiernmas. He was the mold into which Caradoc poured a king’s soul. He was an imperfect shadow of the man he was now. If Tiernmas was to be a god, he must finish what he started.
Stifling his fury, he said evenly, “Sing the words, love.”
She did, without hesitation. Her voice like an instrument of creation.
“Four tokens they won,
The nobles of the green gods.
A star, a stone, a seed and
A cup of crystal,
Brimming with the tears
of the unsetting Sun.
From these tokens,
Arianrhod summoned the
Ramparts of Caer Sidi,
The Halls of the Sun,
And the Gate of the Moon,
And the well of the Silver Sea.
When the halls are lost,
And the waters of the well run dry,
The Halls of the Sun shall be
The realm of the Sunless,
And those who yearn for light.”
“I don’t recall this passage,” he said. “Perhaps you…err.”
“I do not err,” she said, placing her palms on his cheeks. “Where is that boy I loved so well?” she begged him. “The boy who spooned soup into his grandfather’s mouth because he was blind and had no teeth? The boy who opened his ears to Caradoc when he returned from his walk between the worlds?”
He moved to kiss her, but she evaded his lips. Like a tease. “Caradoc will follow me here,” she whispered. There was spite in her voice.
“Is that a threat? Or a promise?”
“He will serve you if you choose the right path,” she implored him. “If you choose peace. I’ve come to you to stir the embers of what was, to remind you of who you really are.”
“You want a twisted hulk of a man, a worthless body prone to death?”
“I want the one who dreamed of the perfect kingdom. The one who wept at my binding to the monster that was your brother. This is the king we need in this new world you seek to build.”
“You betrayed me, love,” he reminded her, working to keep his voice even. “I saved you from the brutal hands of my brother, took his life myself, took his blood on my hands to deliver you from him. Then you betrayed me. So, the way I see it, you’ve come back either to kill me, or you’ve had a change of heart. I was hoping it was the later, but perhaps I’m wrong.”
“I’ve come,” she said with a voice edged with fear, “because I want you back. The man I once knew. You’ve slept a thousand years, and in those years, I have lived. Over and over, in the colorless lands of the half-sleeping dead. But I learned much in those years. I’ve learned that no one can ever set aside their true self completely. I want you to see the future that I see.”
“Caradoc’s future?” he scoffed. “The green gods’ future?”
“This land has no king,” she explained. “Nechtan has no offspring, save the child who opened the well. You know who she is, this child who freed you. She is older than these halls and she’s ready to come home.” She motioned at the living stone that watched them from the dome of the great chamber, the glow of Sunless swarms high above them. “You’ve seen her? Haven’t you?”
Tiernmas had told no one of his visions.
When he did not answer, she pursued him. “What did you see there?”
Merryn held no allegiance to either Tiernmas or Caradoc. She was the handmaid of the green gods.
Merryn drew herself up defiantly, her hands clasped in front of her. She said, “The king of the Ildana fathered the Child of Death, she who seeks her lands. You are nothing more than a log fallen across her road. She will remove you.”
Tiernmas understood her place in this story at last. “It was you who helped spawn the child.”
“And set you free,” she added. Her fists clenched at her side.
He raised his hand to strike her, but she just set her jaw and stood taller. The cloud of Sunless creatures created a veil between them, as if trying to protect her.
“Her execution is required, my lord.” The voice belonged to Idwylc, the brehon.
“Did I summon you?” Tiernmas fumed.
The man showed his hands like the Ildana that he was, saying, “No, Lord. May I suggest—”
“You may not.”
“Send me to the Ildana,” Merryn begged. “I can negotiate a peace. As your solás.”
“Perhaps you can negotiate from a cell in the labyrinth,” he said.
“Will you kill me for speaking the truth?” She was almost laughing.
If Caradoc was coming…If Merryn meant as much to Caradoc as Tiernmas believed, she might still be a useful chit in this game. “Not yet, my love. I may have need of you.”
Tiernmas called the guards.
She left him with a long look that could only be described as compassion, as if she were trying to see beneath his skin.
The fire of desire that had illuminated her not so long ago had waxed to fierce determination. As they took her through the door, the flowers fell from her hair to be trampled by the guards. When she was gone, Tiernmas bent and picked up one of the blooms. He devoured the greenflow leaving nothing but ash that blew from between his fingers. So it would be with Merryn when Caradoc came, he told himself. If Caradoc came.
He paced the circular chamber until the last ray of the setting sun dimmed, and the sunstone went dark with coming night.
Chapter 17
Fiach was heading toward the makeshift armory to oversee weapons distribution. Lyleth stayed right on his heels. He’d insisted that Hugh Cavendish be taken to the fortress of Emlyn for his own safety.
“You care nothing for his safety,” she said, working to keep up with his long strides.
“I care for the outcome of the battle before us. A crippled teacher from the otherworld is not the man to lead.”
“I am leading,” she demanded. “I want his thoughts—his ideas. We’re not marching against Tiernmas blindly.”
She’d struck a delicate balance among these chieftains, and she couldn’t risk losing any of them, especially Fiach. But they’d sooner kill one another than fight side by side. Lyleth had to do what she thought would give them the best chance in this battle.
“You want him dead?” Fiach asked.
It was a ridiculous question. Fiach certainly would be the first person to feed Cavendish to the risen monsters.
“Why not?” Lyleth said. “We’re all likely to be dead soon—our bodies ta
ken by the souls of the Sunless. Why not Nechtan?”
“Because he’s not Nechtan.”
“Whoever, or whatever, he is, he’s given us a chance against Tiernmas. At least listen to him. Come,” she said, taking his arm in a friendly manner, and urging him in the opposition direction.
He shook her off. “Leave me be, Lyleth. I’m not your play thing. I fight for my own people, my own land. Not for you, and certainly not for that cripple.”
“Look around.” She indicated the desolation created by the swarms. “Your land has already been taken, Fiach, laid waste. If we do not act as one, the rest of the Five Quarters will be as dead as yours. As solás, I am in command of this army. And I say he stays with us.”
She regretted it as soon as she’d said it. This kind of posturing never failed to divide rather than unite. She knew it better than anyone. “Come with me,” she urged him in a kinder tone. “He has good ideas. I ask only that you listen to them.”
He stopped walking and stood there, his arms crossed like a petulant child.
“Just listen, that’s all.” She walked away, leaving him to sulk.
She found Nechtan surrounded by Cyr, Dylan, Iris and Saeth. Arrayed on a table were samples of fabric—flour sacks, burlap, wire mesh, even a sample of delicate marquisette used for embroidery and veils. Where had they found that? Caer Emlyn?
Nechtan didn’t turn as she approached. He seemed to feel her behind him. “How big are these Sunless, Lyl?”
“No bigger than a dragonfly.”
He held up wire mesh shaped into a basket, and then slipped it over his head.
“This?” Nechtan’s green eyes flashed up at her from behind the mesh.
She poked at it and dented the metal fabric. “Can the smithies make enough for all our men?”
“We may have enough for fifty at the most.”
“Must it be metal?” Dylan asked. “What of the flour sack?”
“Here,” Nechtan said, “Put that over your head and try to fight with it.”
Dylan did as he was instructed, and pulled it off immediately. “I can’t see a thing.”