Rowan’s ears roared with an ocean—not an ocean, the ocean, the one dividing his island from this land, and he heard it then, a scream of his name, an ancient echo.
He yelled wordlessly and spilled the cup of rootwaters onto the grass. It was not for him to drink, but for the world to drink.
Light flared directly above him, silver and blue, pressing through the sky as the gray clouds parted, faded, diminished into nothing, and Rowan saw stars! Though it was daylight, drawn in blues and purples, the stars glared so hot he saw them.
With every ounce of his voice and all the power he’d ever held, he reached for Innis Lear. He cried for the trees and roots, for the bones of his ancestors: Elia the Dreamer whose voice he’d known since he was nine years old, and Lear herself, Lear itself, the wizard bones that became the bones of an entire people.
wake up!
His heart beat slowly, slower—
The stars blurred into a silver road, and Rowan reached up to grasp it.
PRINCE HAL
Liresfane, early summer
THE ARMIES HAD broken, scattered toward the southwest in fighting pockets. Under the trees that surrounded the stream and its curlicue pools at the base of the tor, soldiers paused, clutching each other or ducking beneath hanging branches before charging again at their enemies. Celedrix had sent a call for regrouping at the base of her side’s slope, and Hal made her way in that direction, exhausted at Vatta’s side. She wished it were over, that Vindomata’s death had ended it, but neither her mother nor Banna Mora had sounded a retreat.
They wouldn’t, Hal knew, until there could be no dispute over winning or losing. Over the Blood and the Sea.
Mata Blunt was dead, and Lady Danika, while both Davos Westmore and Lady Ianta were injured badly. With Hal besides Vatta was Nova, who had certainly earned her knighthood today. Hal had no other word of her Lady Knights.
Blood dripped from Hal’s lip, and more that was not her own streaked her breastplate. She needed to get back to her mother, to rally the remaining troops for fresh attack. Or she needed to find Mora and make sure she went down.
Before Celedrix fell instead.
Nausea burned up Hal’s throat, and as she opened her mouth to point Nova at a body in Aremore orange whose legs had just moved, her name struck loud across the narrow stream.
“Hal, Prince Hal.”
It was Hotspur’s hoarse voice, and Hal closed her eyes for the slightest moment before pushing off Vatta to turn and face her lover.
But Nova growled and thrust forward first.
Hotspur put her sword up for defense just as Hal commanded, “Stop.”
Nova did, knees bent and ready.
Hal picked up a buckler half drowned in the blood-darkened stream. “This is my fight, Nova. Get Vatta back to the queen, protect them, and take your orders.”
Though Nova argued, Hal ignored it, stepping through the water, eyes locked on Hotspur’s. Blood coated the Wolf’s left brow, making the fire-blue of her eyes burn like the very first day they’d met.
“And this the last time,” Hal murmured. Louder she said, “We should have found a way to stop this, Hotspur.”
“Give in, Hal. Let us have Aremoria.” Hotspur flung her sword arm out at the field.
Hal used her fist to wipe a tear from her cheek; the blade of the Heir’s Score caught the sunlight for a flash. “It’s too late. Aremoria drinks the blood of her people this afternoon.”
“It’s not too late for everyone left.”
“Your aunt is dead, your mother sided with mine—you don’t have to keep fighting.”
“My family is part of Innis Lear now,” Hotspur answered tearfully. “I already chose.”
Nodding, Hal ran at Hotspur, before they changed their minds.
Their swords rang together, and Hal growled with effort as she pressed her strength into Hotspur. They parted, and Hal attacked again, immediately, the way Hotspur would: she patterned her attacks after Hotspur’s tendencies: hard, fast, engage and withdraw, giving no quarter.
Hotspur met her, strength for strength; she turned, leaned away, welcomed Hal’s thrusting, her punching blade, like this was good sex. They were too good together, when it mattered.
Tears melted Hal’s vision and her nose clogged with grief or blood. She spat. “This was always how it would end between us,” she said. “Two champions, battling under a glorious Aremore sun. One filled with smiles to hide her fear and sorrow; one a living statue of fire with nothing but passion and drive to fuel her. The world isn’t large enough for both of us.”
“Hal, stop,” Hotspur begged.
“These champions could not be happy—the world doesn’t let women like us be happy! Instead of making love, we die. That is always the story. Our destiny, our doom!”
“Bullshit, Hal! This is not a story. It’s our life.”
“It will be a story!” Hal cried.
“That won’t make it easier.”
Hal screamed and attacked again, knocking aside Hotspur’s shield, and with a hooked motion caught the whispering Errigal blade with the crossguard of the Heir’s Score and tore the sword free of Hotspur’s grip.
Hotspur was weaponless.
The prince of Aremoria stood there, panting, and threw her own sword down. It thudded hard on the muddy bank, tip kissed by the lapping stream. “If it’s not a story, it’s worthless. If it’s not for something—to drive the world in the direction we need it to go—why bother at all? People will tell of this, Hotspur, of us. They will have to, in order to understand it.”
“I don’t understand it!” Hotspur bent down for Hal’s sword, lifting the Heir’s Score from the earth. “What does it matter that I came home a wizard, if all I know how to do is fight? I am the Wolf of Aremoria, and that has never changed, I don’t know how to change. But the whole world is whispering to me, Aremoria itself is whispering to me, Hal, and I don’t understand what more it wants.”
“If you want to understand, find the story. Make the story. Is there a thread running through?” Hal whispered. “A good plot? A rhythm of one choice leading to another? Something that will make a song to last a thousand years?”
Hotspur clenched her eyes tightly shut, and a shudder shook her body. “My eyes are open, Hal. Every way I see ends here. I’m going to die here, lion, because I don’t know how to kill you.”
Hal shook her head, no. She held out her hand, then seeing the bloody leather brought it to her mouth and used teeth to tear the gauntlet free. It was her bare hand she offered now, reaching for her best friend—her heart.
Hotspur stared at it, as if Hal’s hand alone could save her life.
“I’m the Wolf of Aremoria,” she whispered. “That’s who I am and what I want to be. I’m awake and have magic in my bones, either from how I was born or from a promise I made to a tree, or because I planted my name in Innis Lear. If this is a story, Hal …”
Wind roared suddenly, far distant like a coming storm: like thunder on the other side of a mountain.
Hotspur tightened her grip on the Heir’s Score, lifting it. Her eyes found Hal’s again, alive in a steely face. “If this is a story, you have to win.”
“Hotspur,” Hal whispered. Her lover glared.
“You have to bring your heart home, Lion Prince.”
Numb and surrounded by the distant roar, as if she existed inside the beating blood and rumbling tide of a nautilus shell, Hal stumbled to Hotspur’s fallen sword. She picked it up, and nearly dropped it again at the zing of lightning from her palm to the base of her skull: the harsh whisper, the gleeful burning of the Errigal steel.
“What is that?” called a soldier from downfield through the growing noise of wind.
Hal did not turn her gaze off of Hotspur.
“Hotspur!” It was her husband’s voice this time. Connley.
But Hal and Hotspur charged each other again, having traded swords, and caught together close enough to kiss, hips pressed, swords locked, shoulders heaving with shared
gasps. “You have to stop this, Hal. Kill me, and win.”
Wind fluttered the red tendrils of hair peeking from Hotspur’s mail hood, and her eyes widened. The trees bent over them, dropping baby leaves, spring-green all around like rain.
“I can’t,” Hal cried.
The light changed.
Hotspur lifted her face to the bursting blue sky. “The star road.”
Hal looked up. The air streaked, not with clouds, but wind and threads of silvery light: a wound torn from west to east, spreading wider. It parted the blue and inside was deeper blue, rich and scattered with stars.
It was broad afternoon, but the stars peered down at them, blazing with power.
Connley was beside them. He put his hand on Hotspur’s shoulder, face tilted up, too.
Wolf! screamed the wind.
Wolf! sang a familiar voice.
A beautiful voice layering over itself, again and again, a cacophony of bells—this was not wind, it was singing.
Now
Choose
Now
Choose
Now!
Hal felt overwhelmed, frozen in time by the sheer musicality.
A great wave of wind scoured over the tor, and Hal couldn’t even hear her own breath. It blasted toward them, and for a moment she was magic. She saw it, felt it, every piece of her was power and connection: it was roots, wind, stars, beating hearts, and the flutter of wings.
(Everyone felt it, there at Liresfane, even Banna Mora as she faced Celeda Bolinbroke, two queens in shared understanding for a single, pure moment: death and life, the same; ruling and service, the same; land and people, the same. To Ianta Oldcastle it was an edifying prayer, to Connley Errigal a new marriage, to Charm of Kurake Queen it was the numinous face of God.)
(To the wizard it was an answer. He stepped into a shadow and stepped out where he needed to be.)
Hotspur smiled, tears painting starlight down her cheeks, and she looked at Hal.
“I understand, I hear you!” Hotspur yelled. “It’s thrumming in my bones! This is the story, Hal. I anchor that—the star road!—here, now. Not Rowan. He opened it, but I have to plant it here! I was made for this. I am the lion’s heart! I have to go home. To be Aremoria’s heart—the queen’s heart, your heart, lion! Or—I—everything has brought us here. You and me, to remake Aremoria. You will be what Morimaros said—the greatest king! That’s your story, Hal. It will last a thousand years.” Hotspur was laughing, and tears spilled down her cheeks.
“No,” Hal said, backing away.
Connley gripped Hotspur’s shoulder tighter, blood on his face like tears, too. “Rowan,” he said.
Hotspur glanced between the two of them. “Anchor me to Aremore earth—use that magical sword in your hand, now.”
“No.”
“Like on Innis Lear when I put this sword and my magic into the ground. Remember, Conn? Put me in the ground! Settle me, the way Ashling was settled. I’m so sorry—I never meant for you to be alone.”
Hal said, “You can’t leave me.”
“I won’t be gone—I’ll be everywhere.”
Hal backed away. But Connley did not. He stared at his wife, urgently.
Then the wizard was there, too, behind Hotspur: a patient statue, and nothing had terrified Hal more in all her life.
When the star roads blaze, bring the lion’s heart home.
“No! Get away from her!” Hal cried at the wizard.
In the weird light Hotspur trembled, waving the wizard nearer. “Hal, this is the story you’ve always been telling about us. Make Aremoria strong with me! It has to be this way. Rowan opened the road, but it won’t work if there’s no heart anchored here. This is the end, the right one!”
Connley said, “Like the wizard Lear anchored herself to the island.”
“Yes!” Hotspur’s face broke in grief.
“No.” Hal lowered her sword arm and let the blade slide from her bare, bloody fingers. “No. Hotspur, to make Aremoria strong I need you to live.”
“There’s no time, Hal!” Hotspur yelled, slapping tears from her own cheek. “Can’t you hear it? The saints are singing! Be the lion—bring me home and shape Aremoria to your will!”
“Stand at my side and help me do it.”
Connley said, almost too gently to hear, “There’s not time. You’ll lose the magic.”
Hotspur looked at him, releasing Hal from her desperate gaze. She touched his mouth, and Connley nodded.
Hal hated the understanding they shared. She stepped between them and said, “I don’t need magic, Hotspur. I don’t need power. I need you. Aremoria is enough as it is, and we can be strong queens—I can do it, with you. Your death is not in my story, Hotspur. I don’t care if that’s what they’ve always intended—earth saints or wizards or I don’t care who. You’re not going to die, and I’m not going to die, we’re both going to live. I will not participate in a story where the woman I love dies. That has always been the end for women like us—but not anymore. Not today.”
“Hal,” the Wolf whispered, “it will be too late for the star road, too late for us to change Aremoria.”
Hal leapt forward and kissed her. She grabbed Hotspur’s face and kissed her bloody mouth, just as she’d wished to do on that other battlefield, the very first battlefield.
(Maybe, Hal thought wildly, I died the moment I saw her.)
She kissed Hotspur’s lips, her cheek, and she said, “Live for me, Hotspur Persy. I love you, and together we’ll be strong. If we love each other, choose to love each other, that alone will change Aremoria.”
The star roads rippled, singing, the sky a wavering brilliance.
wake up
now
now
CONNLEY
Liresfane, early summer
HE PICKED UP the iron Errigal blade and turned to the wizard.
He had always loved Rowan’s singing.
The strange daylight stars filtered shadows into silver and blue, and Connley said breathlessly, feeling young, “We only need a single heart to bind to Aremoria?”
After a slight hesitation, the wizard replied, “A heart burning with magic, from both Innis Lear and Aremoria, like hers. A heart bound to the rootworld and bargained to their dance, half theirs, like hers. Like mine.”
Connley looked at Prince Hal and Lady Hotspur, arguing still, clinging to each other. They needed each other so badly. He said, “They don’t understand. Innis Lear was torn apart by anger and betrayal, but we don’t have to remake it that way.” The sword tingled in his palm. “I’m part of Innis Lear already. A piece of magic. I have loved earth saints and broken things. I can do this.”
The wizard studied him. Ghost-lights shimmered in the depths of his pupils.
“I want to,” Connley added simply.
“The first Witch of the White Forest would be proud of you. So would Regan Lear.”
“Thank you, Uncle.”
The wizard grimaced, but with affection.
Connley held out the sword, and the wizard took it.
“I admire your sacrifice.”
Connley smiled, quietly luminous. “You don’t understand, either. It isn’t a sacrifice. This isn’t a tragedy, it’s transcendence.”
Behind the wizard, pale shadows appeared, faded light shaped like men and women, with eyes like cherry stones and eyes like seashells, like emeralds and cornflowers.
now
it must be now
“Wait!” Hotspur skidded toward them, shoving the wizard away. “Connley, what are you …” she stopped. She stared at him.
For once, he didn’t have to say anything to her.
The wizard stabbed the sword into Connley Errigal’s stomach. Shock at the pain made him gasp, and he couldn’t speak.
But Hotspur cried out his name, and then she and Hal were grasping his shoulders, even as Connley’s knees bent, even as the wizard pushed closer, pinning the sword through him, and the wizard held Connley’s gaze.
Take me hom
e, Connley whispered in the language of trees.
Together the witch and wizard fell into the earth and vanished.
THERE IS LIGHT inside shadows: silver-gray and even, without cracks or variation.
THIS IS HOW Aremoria is made:
Luminous power stretches across the ocean, blasting along ancient roads, through the pathways Rowan Lear tore open. His body scatters into nothing but starlight and poison, here in Aremoria, there on Innis Lear, and between. His voice is alive, singing a song all earth saints know.
The wizard pulls Connley into the shadowlands as he dies, into the root palaces, home, and the earth saints take him, remake him with this transformational force of power spilling through the star roads, and they plant him in pieces across their land. They weave him into the roots and rootwaters, his blood and his bones, his breath and cries and heartbeat, spinning again the web of magic to tie worm, water, tree, wind, stars into concert.
His voice is alive, too, but not singing: whispering.
Trees gasp fully awake.
Birds—crows and jays, doves, sparrows, owls, and great eagles—leap into the sky.
The wind stretches in every direction, pressing to the boundaries of the land, cliff and mountain, valley, river, wide-open field, and gnarled forest.
Everywhere eyes are open.
Mushrooms thrust up from the darkest earth in curves that follow the web: scattered pockets of bulbous joy where earth saints and their pets dart from shadow to shadow and spin circles, arms out, claws out, tiny teeth gnashing up at the gouged-open sky where stars shine in the middle of the day! What a show!
And flowers.
Trees past their springtime bloom in waves of white and pink, new blossoms bud-flourish-spread-crisp-wither-fall in moments; moors groan with rich violets and bluebells, and thorny-crowned thistles that ought not show their petals for months go suddenly, vividly purple.
AREMORIA IS MADE again in starlight and bold color.
The great heart of the land beats with a heart that belongs where it is planted.
Lady Hotspur Page 69
