by Terry Madden
“What of the marquisette?” Lyleth asked. “If there’s enough of it, we could wrap every helm in it.”
She picked up the gossamer cloth and held it over her eyes. She could see well enough. As she turned to gaze across the camp, she saw Fiach standing several paces away, arms still crossed.
Turning away from him, she placed the fabric back on the table. “What if it rips?”
Nechtan shrugged. “Don’t let it rip.”
“What of the men without helms?” Fiach asked, keeping his distance.
“We’ll make hoods of it,” Nechtan answered. “How much of this can be found in the markets in Emlyn?”
“I don’t know,” Fiach said.
“I’ll send Dylan to find out,” Nechtan said, nodding to Dylan, “and bring every stitch of it here.”
“We wouldn’t need a hood entirely of the fine cloth,” Lyleth said, thinking aloud. “We could use more abundant cloth for the back, and only use the marquisette for the front.”
Dylan said, “I’ll see what we can find.” He and Iris left immediately.
“What of the horses?” Saeth asked. “And the dogs?”
“We haven’t enough helmets for every man as it is,” Fiach said, drawing closer, “nor do we know if these—these Sunless can cut through whatever we build.”
Saeth said, “Fabric will work better on the horses, but the dogs…”
“The dogs must have the wire mesh,” Lyleth added. “They can’t bite through it.”
“What good is a dog if it can’t bite?” Fiach asked. He glared at Nechtan. Lyleth got the barb of his jest, and hoped no one else did.
“Fair point,” Nechtan was oblivious to Fiach’s petty attack. “We’ll have to leave the war dogs behind. Take them back to Caer Emlyn. Let’s get as many wire cages made as possible, and start wrapping helms.”
Saeth showed her palms in respect and gathered up the marquisette.
Nechtan sat in a rolling chair Dylan had constructed. He could turn the wheels himself and move a short distance on his own. He turned it now and squinted against the sun at Lyleth and Fiach who stood beside her.
“How much has it risen today?”
“The gates are almost clear of the Earth,” Fiach said.
“Then we must march on those walls tomorrow.”
Fiach nodded, his mouth set in a firm line.
“What is it, Fiach?” Nechtan asked him. “What do you propose?”
“I have nothing more to add. I’ll tell the others.” With one last narrowed glance at Lyleth, Fiach strode away.
Lyleth knelt beside the rolling chair and took Nechtan’s hand. She knew exactly what his hand should feel like—the width of his fingers, the roughness of his palms, the knuckles sliding under the skin. This hand was not his, and yet it was. It was as much his hand as that of the body he had worn when she brought him back from the grave, fashioned from a bird.
He locked his fingers with hers and met her eyes. “I must find a way to ride,” he said.
Saeth accepted this challenge. With her knights, she constructed a system of straps and belts that would lash Nechtan to a saddle. Getting him in and out was a significant challenge, but once in, he was able to ride, and strike well with a spear and axes. He rode against Glaw with sparring weapons. He did not lack for strength in the arms and torso, for he’d been dragging his legs for six years. Lyleth began to believe as he did, that he could fight, as long as his horse survived.
For the rest of the day, they worked at constructing face shields for as many men as they could out of whatever they could. When Dylan and Iris returned with more fabric, Iris proved herself very capable at designing masks for both horses and men. When she ran out of marquisette, she used canvas, cutting rectangles for the eyes which she covered with small pieces of wire mesh, thus conserving the precious material.
The loss of the dogs would hurt them. War dogs often meant the difference between winning and losing the field. But to Lyleth’s surprise, Glaw, who commanded the bulk of the dog masters, understood that risen dogs turned against them could end the battle swiftly in favor of Tiernmas.
With their meager supper completed, the council would be gathering soon to settle the last details of the attack.
Inside the meeting tent, Lyleth fed more wood to the dying fire, and then sat down beside Nechtan. Iris was sitting close to him on the other side, talking in that language of the dead. The girl gave Nechtan a jab with her elbow as Lyleth had approached. She said something in Anglish, smiled, then left them alone.
“If your horse is struck down, you will die,” she told him.
“I’m already dead, Lyl. My visit here is purely a gift from the green gods. And if it’s their will I be here, then it’s their will that I fight. And if they smile upon me, perhaps…perhaps I’ll meet my daughter before I go.”
She felt the truth of it. Her own thoughts were not far from Angharad. If she was who others claimed her to be, Lyleth hoped she could intervene in some way.
“What changed your mind?” she asked.
“About what?”
“You’ve accepted that you are who you’ve always been,” she said obliquely. “Why?”
He pointed out the tent flap to the encampment, to the sound of songs, banter, hammering and laughter. She knew what he meant.
“Glaw has no experience at leading a battle,” Nechtan said. “Fiach is a hot head, and Cyr—Cyr would be perfect but he speaks no Ildana.”
“It’s for them.” She followed his gaze out of the tent, and reached for his hand. She nodded pensively. “Aye. Of course.”
“In reality, it probably doesn’t matter who leads. We might prevent the Sunless from entering our flesh, but getting these men into the fortress is another thing altogether.”
“Ragnhast and I saw the labrys,” she said. “We know it fell outside the walls, into the water. I can fetch it.”
“And then what? Slip into Tiernmas’s bedchamber and—” He made a motion of chopping with a k-thunk. “Why is it only the labrys that will do the job? Why not a sword or a wood ax?”
“The labrys was shaped of his own crown,” she explained. “The metals were melted down and mixed with steel and his blood.”
“More blood magic,” Nechtan said.
“It was you who ordered it made,” she said, “And . . it was you who struck off his head with it.”
“I’d be happy to do so again.”
“Good. I say we find the labrys. It is lying in the mud outside the eastern curtain wall. As the fortress rises, so should the mud that surrounds it.”
The others arrived, arguing about the direction of attack. Cyr took his place beside Lyleth to facilitate her translations. Fiach sat across from her, his long arms crossed again.
“The scouts say the hole is filling with water,” Nechtan announced to them. “As the fortress rises, so does the sinkhole of the bog. It will reform into a lake. Reaching the gate may be more difficult than we have planned for.”
“We must be prepared to cross water?” Glaw scowled. “With everything else we have to think of?”
Lyleth nodded.
“Do we build boats now in addition to our masks?” Fiach sniffed, and smoothed his glistening red beard.
“If we must,” Lyleth said. “But the fortress walls continue to grow toward the causeway. Most has fallen into the hole, but not all. We can get close to the walls on the causeway.”
“Ladders? Hooks?” Cyr suggested, after a short translation.
“My Lord.” Saeth’s ghostly form stood just at the edge of the firelight. “There’s one here who says he serves you. And another who says she serves Lyleth.”
Saeth stepped aside to reveal two figures, partially hidden in the darkness that seeped into the tent from outside. One of them stepped forward, a tall, lanky man with a ragged beard, long hair, and…eyes the color of hammered copper. He wore a shiny dark band on his head with two oval discs, like eyes on top of his head. His thick shirt looked like the one Iris
wore. It had a drawing on the chest—a square with four jagged lightning bolts round it. His hands were tucked in the little pouch in the front. Lyleth almost didn’t recognize him without the gray skin of a corpse. It was Connor—the blood scribe. And Elowen was with him.
Connor was fit and flushed with life. He stooped and took Nechtan into a firm embrace.
Lyleth stood and gave Elowen a hug. The girl had walked the land of the dead since Lugnasadh. Judging by the looks she shot his way, things were more than they appeared between her and Connor.
“I believe you had plans to kill me last time we met, Lyl,” Connor said. “I’ve come to give you that chance.”
Connor told his story. He made no attempt to hide who he was, nor his part in the making of the Crooked One. Lyleth watched Fiach’s fist tighten on the hilt of his sword as he listened. He’d been as ready as Lyleth to kill Connor on his last visit. But Lyleth sensed that Connor was laying his soul before them; that he would accept whatever fate these chieftains would impose upon him, and death must be his most desired outcome. The reality of what they faced in Caer Sidi was bigger than all of them, bigger than Connor’s past atrocities. But if anyone could get them inside, it was Connor.
“I saw her,” Connor was telling them. “Angharad. She spoke to me with the voice of the goddess, the voice I knew from my past. She brought Brixia to me and opened a well to let us pass. But she made her demands clear.”
Cyr was anxious for a translation. As Lyleth began to give it, Connor repeated it all in the tongue of the Old Blood.
“And those demands were?” Glaw asked, his hound-like face bunched up in disbelief.
“She bids me to unmake him.”
“Tiernmas?” Cyr scoffed. He, most of all, knew what that truly meant.
“Maker and made are one,” Connor said.
“Does that mean,” Fiach asked tentatively, “if I kill you here and now, I kill that monster you made?”
“Kill me now, and he gets stronger,” Connor explained calmly. “My greenflow would join his. We are bound. Like Nechtan and Lyl.” He shot them both a glance. “Kill me properly. Kill me after the runes have been drawn upon us. Then…then I can take him with me.”
“Take him where?” Fiach demanded.
“Back to the beginning,” Connor explained. “To the land of the dead. To the womb of a mother. Just like all of us.”
“I hope that’s not our only plan,” Nechtan said.
“No, but it’s our best plan,” Connor said.
“It requires that we get close to Tiernmas,” Glaw repeated, “close enough for this man to draw marks on him, and then we kill them both. It seems our task is no easier with this blood scribe, than without him.”
Cyr spoke up, and others tried to talk over him. Everyone talked at once. “If Connor changes his mind, and takes us to his creature—”
“He would not betray us,” Nechtan argued.
“He has before,” Fiach shouted, “why not again, why not now? Why not secure the Five Kingdoms for Tiernmas and his Sunless by leading us straight to him?”
Connor stood unmoving, his fingers laced together calmly, his eyes focused on Elowen who stood behind the ring of men, just at the edge of the firelight.
“We need the labrys still,” Cyr said. “In case this plan of his fails, we must have it.”
“Where is it?” Connor asked.
Lyleth explained its location.
“I can get it,” Connor said evenly. “I left someone inside Caer Sidi. You have a map?”
Lyleth fetched the parchment and unrolled it on the small table before Connor. As he bent over it, the two dark insect eyes on top of his head stared at her. She pointed to the spot where the labrys fell over the wall.
“I’ll get it,” he whispered to her in a reassuring tone. His real eyes met hers, and she saw no guile in them, nothing but a deep sorrow. “I need your help, though, Lyl.”
“Do you remember the red crow that followed you and Nechtan?”
“Of course. What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, I have a tethered soul. I need to open her eyes and go fetch the labrys. But I need the right herbs. And I need you to keep me alive.”
“I know which herbs,” she said, stiffening. He was talking about the tincture Ava had used in her eyes to see as the red crow, the concoction Irjan had taught her to use. “It will take me a bit of time to mix.”
Connor nodded, and took a deep breath. “Let’s do it.”
Lyleth had the herbs—they were nothing exotic. Common herbs used to kill pain and induce sleep. She steeped them, and cooled the liquid. They used her tent. It had a cot and bed furs that smelled of sweat and mold. He’d need no cot. He had to be on the ground.
Connor took his second eyes from the top of his head and handed them to her. “Hold these for me, please.”
“What are they?” She was afraid to touch them.
“Sun glasses.”
She’d never heard of such things, but she set the shiny things aside.
“I can’t believe they made it across with me,” he said. “Just lucky, I guess.” He laughed at his own joke.
She found a bowstring from the armory to tie around his neck. The other end of the string looped around his wrists, which were bound behind his back. She would watch over him. It was not uncommon for one who was “flying” to strangle themselves. She looked forward to killing him, but not until the runes were drawn.
When he was properly tied, she administered the tincture. Three drops in each eye, as he instructed.
He convulsed, cried out for Elowen, and then went still. His breathing was a vague fluttering.
Chapter 18
The black liquid Lyl had put in his eyes burned like acid. Connor swallowed against the bowstring noose, and the tincture slid down his nasal passages to his throat.
Then he was gone.
He opened his eyes to see a horse’s gray muzzle—close and out of focus. Brixia blew warm breath over his face, blessing him. He reached up to her with trembling hands, and as he did, he pushed his mind into Celeste’s muscles and nervous system—reaching up, reaching up.
His palm met the warm neck of the horse. She loved him. One of the few.
“Thank you,” Connor croaked, then louder as he gained control of Celeste’s voice. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
Tears welled in his eyes, her eyes. A fit of laughter battled with tears—uncontrollable. Brixia had come back to him. His sides hurt; Celeste’s sides hurt. He dove head first down this steep slope of sensory overload. Brixia had come for him, not for Angharad. He wept and laughed until he’d wrung out the shame and bitterness, the envy and loss, the guilt and regret. Brixia knew his darkness, and she’d still come back.
His sobs gave way to humming as he forced his will once more upon this body. He breathed deeply, rhythmically, like in yoga class, and whispered to Brixia the words of a Beatles song, over and over.
Ah, look at all the lonely people…
He didn’t know how much time had passed with him weeping, but he knew he didn’t have much to spare. The herbs would wear off within a few hours.
With one hand on Brixia, he got to his knees, then steadied the spinning of the circular room.
The well head itself was a fountain that sprang from a high garden on the uppermost levels of Caer Sidi. From there, it trickled through conduits to the deepest chamber, here, where Brixia had deposited him with Elowen and Celeste.
He looked up at the carved greenstone image of Arianrhod. He’d left Celeste here purposely, sleeping beneath the icon’s watchful eyes. The silver maiden of the stars, weaver of destiny and timekeeper to the universe. The figure wept honey from some hidden hive in the cracked masonry above. A cloud of the Sunless lit the darkness, for the night sky was just visible through the hole in the domed roof.
The glowing sprites swarmed Connor, the sound of their wings like the rustle of dragonflies.
“Celeste,” he spoke her name with her voic
e. “You’re here, in Caer Sidi. I’m sorry about what I have to do. I’m sorry about everything, actually.”
She could hear him—the way a sleeper hears noises around them and weaves them into their dreams.
“It’s because of me that you’re here, and I’m sorry for that. But if I’m going to set things right, I need you. I swear to you Celeste, I will let you go, and I’ll keep you as safe as I can until then.”
He didn’t expect a response. He was using her just like he’d used everyone else in his previous lives. He was responsible, not only for her body, but for her soul. He’d made her as surely as he’d made Tiernmas, or Brixia.
He looked at Celeste’s hands. Manicured, blood red nails tipped dirty fingers. Her clothes had mostly dried from the trip through the well. He stood and tugged at her skirt, which had hiked up a bit. He felt small, and light. He could feel Celeste’s yearning for Tiernmas like a burning brand inside this body, and he understood. We are not free from our desires even when we sleep. They just crowd our dreams.
Walking was difficult in heels.
He could find his way out of here blindfolded, but the sprites followed, providing light. And Brixia came along, too. The Sunless were drawn to him, sensing who he was, no doubt. Their maker. He wondered if they would, or could, take that information to Tiernmas.
He’d know soon enough.
From the well, he followed the canal for what seemed like three long city blocks until he guessed he was beneath the outer ward. He took stairs to reach the vast training yard, now completely above ground.
The night sky blazed with stars. The Sunless looked like stars themselves. Brixia stayed in the stairwell, stopped by the sight before them. The outer ward was filled with the bodies of the dead. Connor took a step back into the shadows of the stairwell, and lay a hand on Brixia’s back.
“Stay asleep, Celeste,” he urged.
The stench made him sick.
He found a scarf around Celeste’s neck and tied it over his nose and mouth, then slowly picked his way out into the yard. Many of the dead were too old to have fallen in the recent battle between Ys and Emlyn. In many cases, the flesh had fallen from the bones like stewed pork, leaving gleaming skeletons. Not all were human. There were horses, dogs and even the darkened skeletons of the great deer which had died in the bog tens of thousands of years before the coming of the green gods. All of them had been gathered by Tiernmas’s living servants, who’d arranged the corpses in ranks like soldiers. They exuded a uniquely organic perfume, the smell of tissue that had lost its greenflow.