by Jules Watson
Levarcham did not sound as if she truly believed Deirdre lived on. The pain was too deep for belief, no matter how long this druid had trained. For her, Deirdre was gone.
Maeve knew.
She tented her trembling fingers under her chin. “So you balked at killing Conor, and would not take your own life. Yet you came to me instead of disappearing into the woods. This tells me, Lady Levarcham, that you do want revenge.”
Levarcham started. “Perhaps you are right, mistress.” Her back lifted with its old haughtiness. “As you know, I was Conor’s talking-woman. I understand him better than anyone. However, I will not be responsible for the deaths of my people.”
Fergus’s words. Maeve exhaled through her nose. Everyone thought her soulless, indeed. “I have no intention of slaughtering your people.”
Maeve tapped her fingers together. Levarcham had treated her with cold disregard the entire time she was Queen of the Ulaid. And yet … they were now the two women who most hated Conor mac Nessa. Who knew where that might lead? The druid needed to abandon some of that pride, though. “Your counsel might be in question, lady, if you bade Deirdre flee with her lover, and so bring about his death.”
Levarcham turned from Maeve, gazing into the reaches of the lodge beyond the fire, where the indistinct shapes of looms, piled baskets, and blankets disappeared into darkness. The air seemed to ripple around her, and her mouth curved. “Before the end, Deirdre told me she had lived a lifetime with Naisi in two years; that she would give her pulse a thousand times over for such love—give up kin, warmth, safety, and Erin’s very air to stay with him.”
Maeve’s eyes flickered at that, her hand pressing below her ribs. She managed to get to her feet.
Gazing down, she glimpsed the pitiful woman beneath the film of ash, her thin face haggard. “Then I offer you a place here, give you time to mourn and bind yourself back together.” Her voice was strained. “You cannot serve me otherwise—and you will render a service to me, Lady Levarcham.”
The druid nodded. “So be it,” she whispered, as if it was a spell.
Outside the lodge, Maeve turned her steps from the king’s hall and climbed the ramparts around the mound. She strode well away from the guards and the watch-towers, curling her fingers about the stakes of the palisade until they cut her palms.
Smoke billowed from the campfires of the gathering warriors below on the river meadow. A waft caught her throat, blotting out the washed blue sky and wet grass.
For a moment she thought she was falling into mist, with no solid place to land. Her belly heaved, and she retched into the hollow where the posts were dug into the earth. Wiping her mouth, she sank down with her back against the stockade.
Only then did she realize what burned in her the entire time she sat with Levarcham.
Envy.
The druid had torn open her own heart, taken that agony and smeared it all over her body as ash and ground it into her hair. Thereby did she cry to the world, I have lost! I am broken!
Maeve put her hands over her face, craving that stink of burning and soil; hungering to mark herself so someone would understand. But she was a queen, and must give strength, not show weakness.
And there was no grave for her to delve, only a cold hearth by a lake, spattered with rain.
Maeve made Levarcham accompany her all over the dun, consulting with her on endless matters—how many days away was Samhain, and what could they do then to gain the favor of the gods on their endeavors? What was a good blessing for the calves as they were weaned? Did she know better herbs to keep ewe-cheese from turning rancid? How many boars should they salt over the long dark? How many did Conor serve his warriors?
Levarcham’s mind had all but seized up, rusted by tears. But she still knew when she was being played—Maeve could get any druid to help her with this. And yet, shock had melted and Levarcham was no longer numb. Maeve’s powerful presence had become a lifeline, stopping her from drowning in the flood.
This windy day, as she limped beside Maeve, Levarcham’s more vital conversation carried on inside her. If the gods had beckoned her to death, she would not have survived thus far. Instead of dying of cold in the forest, or rotting into the soil, she was still here, like a weathered old stick. Is it revenge you want, Deirdre-chick? You lost your voice, but if Conor dies in your name then all of Erin will remember you. Is that what you need?
Deirdre, as usual, did not answer.
Maeve had stopped beside one of the storehouses, talking to a red-cheeked woman curing bacons and hams in salt. Food was being gathered, as leaf-fall came upon them again.
You will die by the hand of Woman.
Levarcham’s glance slid sidelong to Maeve. The queen’s cloak blew out in a green flurry, her hair blood-red.
Macha. Battle raven.
For the first time in weeks Levarcham’s heart quickened. When Maeve turned and asked her about hams and sausages, the druid’s hoarse voice strengthened. “There was a way we made blood pudding in the Ulaid, with herbs and a scalding of the blood that keeps it for longer. I will show you.” Levarcham forced her bowed shoulders back, rolling her sleeves and gesturing briskly to the servant.
I will show you, fledgling.
That night, for once Levarcham did not flail awake, searching for Deirdre in her nightmares. She surfaced slowly, almost peacefully, with the sense that she was beckoned upward by a soft glow.
She opened her eyes. Maeve had bade the servants clear a little storage alcove at the back of the women’s lodge for her, screening it with hurdles of hazel and willow. The tatty furs at her chin smelled comfortingly of wood-smoke and the bog myrtle scattered among the bracken of the bed.
The glow was the last light from the hearth-coals.
Levarcham’s fingers were around something at her neck. She strained to remember. It was the little pouch in which she kept her rowan carving of the Mother Goddess. But that was from before. On Deirdre’s grave, she had flung that amulet away, crying that she did not know her goddess anymore. Forgive me, she said again.
The pouch was still lumpy in Levarcham’s fingers.
She fumbled it open. The dim glow picked out the sheen of a tiny antler figurine. Someone had shaped the eyes and graceful head of an enchanted deer-maiden. The curve of the neck captured the hind pausing, torn between the man who beckoned to her and the song of the wild. Would she spring away … or turn and be his forever?
Naisi had made it for Deirdre before they left Alba, his love capturing her spirit. Deirdre had worn it bound to the pulse in her wrist.
She only took it off once—to press it into Levarcham’s hands the last night they were alone before Deirdre was sent away with Naisi’s killer. The night before …
Trapping a moan, Levarcham caressed the little deer. When Deirdre gave it to her, its surface was still warm from her skin. The night before her blood stopped flowing, and her flesh grew cold.
Levarcham scrabbled from the bed, wild-eyed. A shudder took her. She had to banish that terrible cold. She could look into the dark no more.
She stumbled to the hearth, on the opposite side from the snoring servants on their pallets. Prodding back the banked turves, she fed the coals with tinder and a few pieces of kindling. As the little flame spat into life, Levarcham rested her chin on her bony knees.
The shivers wracked her, but as the heat grew they slowed. Staring into that flame, a different memory now flowered in Levarcham, one her grief had crushed. It had been too agonizing to relive Deirdre’s pain for Naisi that last night together.
Deirdre’s grief for Naisi …
Levarcham straightened. Through a crack in her soul, Deirdre’s words drifted once more. I know he is not gone, Mother, he is just on the Other side. And … I found something in Alba, a way to reach him, to do many things. Look, I can show you in the fire.
With a gasp, Levarcham was on her knees, palms on the hearthstone as she leaned close to the little flame. What did Deirdre tell her?
What seemed
solid and hard was not at all. Everything was made of tiny specks of glowing dust that streamed together in patterns. The patterns wove the physical shapes of people, trees, rocks, and water. The light that made them glow, that drew them together and filled them with life, was Source.
Quivering, Levarcham gazed hungrily into the fire. She had taught Deirdre how to shrink her spirit into a tiny star and send it into the body of a bird. It was a sacred druid skill, though no one knew how it worked.
A gift from the gods.
Deirdre had trained herself to see more than a druid, however. More than her teacher. She had spun herself into one of those tiny, bright motes, and then dived into the whole dance of sparks and stardust around her.
Mother, I can melt into water, and earth. Sink into trees and flowers. Fly with the birds.
Levarcham blinked, and a tear dropped onto her hand.
A charge like invisible lightning bound all the motes together, even those far from each other. In a stream, Deirdre had been able to shape the water droplets with her hands to glimpse Naisi fighting many leagues away, and thereby know he was alive.
And there was time, too.
Somehow, moments were captured in the webs of Source like droplets of dew. Past moments, as well as things that were to come. Time was made of many threads of these droplets all woven together; what humans knew as before, now, and after all drifting close to each other, all alive at the same time. At a spring, Deirdre had discovered an echo of the past captured in the air and water. She felt the presence of priestesses who worshipped at the sacred place long ago, and their memories helped her to save Naisi’s life.
Deirdre said she also glimpsed things in fire.
Levarcham leaned closer to the hearth now, her hand out, fingers shaking. The craving in her heart reached for the fire, willing it to dissolve into tiny sparks so she could fly among them. Deirdre. Her mother-longing was the strongest force in all the worlds.
The little flame wavered, and bent toward her.
Maeve waited for Ailill and Fraech to return with the support of the other kings, for the sword to fall one way or another. The flesh melted from her, but she could not be still.
At night she cradled the little swelling between her hip bones, more prominent now that she was thinner. In her mind, it all became tangled. This babe was all the children—and the women with their weaving songs, and the men who tilled the earth in the rain.
In the dark, an instinct whispered that she must use her power to cradle this vulnerable womb-place. Not her womb, but the young ones who were Connacht’s future, the pastures that gave them life.
Mother of the land. It called to her, but did not feel like the cold of iron now, or the fierce flame. Instead she sometimes sensed a vast pool within her, a slow upwelling of brightness. She did not understand it.
It was the slowness of pregnancy trying to drag her down, that must be it.
Afraid she was faltering, Maeve flung her doors open each day to search for answers. There must be a key to beating Conor, more than just numbers of men. He was gathering more men.
There must be a way she could triumph in battle.
“You will teach my warriors the Ulaid war-feats,” she ordered Fergus, over one of their fidchell games. She gripped his arm, her fingers small and pale around his thick wrist. As the reality of war grew closer and his grief disintegrated, something was also weighing more heavily upon Fergus—fear of facing his own people in battle.
Maeve pinned him with her gaze. “And … you will also give my men at least some glimpse of the mystery, the secret, at the heart of the Red Branch.”
Fergus balked. Maeve got up, dashing the game-board to the floor. “We will not defeat Conor without that—and you will never rule the Ulaid again by cowering by this fire!”
Fergus glared at her, fists braced on his thighs. He said nothing, though, and the next day appeared fully armed on the meadow once more, sweeping through the fighters like a silver-crested wave.
Ferdia had also retreated since Conall’s arrival, hiding away to drink, and refusing to train at all.
“How dare you defy me?” Maeve demanded, holding up a lamp over his bed in the musty guest lodge.
Sprawled on the deerskin covers, Ferdia blinked at her, his narrow face flushed. “Kill me anytime you want.” He groped for the mead-jug, gulping from the spout. “Though you seem to need me alive for something.”
“Ask yourself why you want to be alive—for you will only reach it through me.”
He merely laughed, and Maeve slammed the lamp on a nearby table and stormed out. Someone must hold some secret about how to defeat Conor. His face stalked her dreams, a sheet of flame playing over it. She did not know whether she glimpsed future or past—only that his mind bent toward hers.
She came to a halt on the muddy path. The druid.
Levarcham had not appeared for many days. The servants said she was mired in sorrow, huddling in her bed and muttering, and they were too afraid to go near her. Busy with the men, Maeve had left her alone to grieve.
Now her steps turned for the women’s hall.
She strode to Levarcham’s chamber, shuttered by a willow screen. Peering through a crack, she saw the druid crouched on her bed cradling a stone lamp bowl, her gray hair hanging over her face. Maeve cleared her throat. “Lady.”
Levarcham’s ghostly face lifted. Her eyes showed only a reflection of fire, and Maeve could have sworn the little lamp-flame swayed toward her outstretched fingers. As Maeve stared, the unearthly light in the druid’s pupils turned from red to silver.
It drew her in.
Maeve saw a great expanse of water under a twilit sky.
She flew across the lake on swan wings, endlessly calling to the emptiness below … He was gone.
Maeve’s shins hit something, and she came back to herself to find she was standing beside Levarcham’s box-bed.
“I have not seen my child,” the druid whispered. Her hand turned over, uncurling toward Maeve’s belly. “But I have seen yours.”
Maeve drew a sharp breath. Levarcham lunged for her wrist, pulling her onto the bed, enmeshing her in that spell and the glow of the lamp. “This child is made of light. This child was sired in light.” The druid’s torn nails curved over Maeve’s belly.
A gentle touch. Maeve’s mouth crumpled.
“Shh,” Levarcham crooned. “The Shining Ones themselves sang the babe through the veils. Close they hovered, weaving Source into a cradle and beckoning the child to take root.”
Maeve groped for the mattress beneath her. “But … all children come from the Source.”
Levarcham’s eyes were dreamy, radiant. “No, this babe was sired between the veils. It is an Otherworld child. The sídhe gathered so close at its seeding the babe is theirs, too.”
Cold washed over her as Maeve scrambled up. She did not part the veils—but he did.
He lied to me. The glow of twilight in her drained away.
Levarcham’s smile faded as she sensed what now roared up in Maeve. “Ah, so black …” the druid hissed, covering her heart and bending her face away. “The pain rots, it gnaws, held in check for too long. You must lance it, or it will fell you, queen of ravens.”
The shadows closed in, spinning. Maeve’s hand flew to her lips. The druid groped for a bowl beside her and shoved it at Maeve, a film of water glinting in the bottom. Maeve retched, fouling the water of seeing. Shaking, she wiped her mouth.
“Rid yourself of the darkness,” Levarcham whispered, rocking on the bed, “or you will fall.”
She and he had been walking among the Shining Ones all along. Loving amid that light.
Maeve hobbled out of the lodge like an old woman. A squall had blown up, sending everyone scurrying inside and emptying the paths. The drops hammered her bare head.
She had sent a tracker to find him, of course, sniffing along a trail of rumors and whispers. A young druid and a woman had come to the shining lake. He had left with them and headed west. The Sto
ne Islands.
Maeve knew where he was, but pride had caged her. He didn’t want her, so he left her.
Hidden behind the dairy-shed, she let her legs buckle. She groped for the slope of thatch roof and bent her brow upon it. Stifled sounds were caught in her throat, choking her. She turned her cheek so the rain needled her face and filled her open mouth. Ruán. Ruán. She let his name storm through her heart at last, let it be washed from her lips.
Eventually, Maeve pushed herself back up on unsteady legs and wiped her face and nose.
When the men of Mumu, Laigin, and Connacht mustered, she must be here to lead them. She had vowed she would be Macha to them, and call down upon them the blessings of the gods. She must become a strong blade, proudly raised.
So she had a little time left to take these shattered pieces of herself and hammer them back into something that was whole. To lance the poison in her heart.
The swiftest horse in Erin could reach the western shore in days.
He lied.
CHAPTER 28
Maeve hobbled along the stormy shore of the Western Sea. The coast opposite the Stone Islands was a bleak landscape of exposed rock, lichen, and dark pools. Her back cramped and she halted.
She did not want anyone knowing of this madness, and so had kept it from Garvan, taking three young warriors from her guard with her and swearing them to secrecy. They had endured four hard days of riding over mud, gravel, and the wooden trackways her people built across bogs.
Few women could hold a child in the womb through that. She should be bleeding, but still it held on. Maeve moved her hand to her stomach and drew in her lips, too exhausted to make sense of the stirring in her heart.
In the dawn, the fishermen’s huts looked like sea-wrack cast up by storms, turf roofs rattling with strips of dried seaweed and crusted nets. The clink of bronze in her palm soon had the fishermen scurrying to launch a curragh, and the women stabling their horses in the byre.
