The Shadow of the High King

by Frank Dorrian

  A swift kick snatched the Bodah Duhn’s standing leg from under it, the butt of a spear slamming into the side of its head as it fell. A lithe figure stood over Harlin, moving like liquid, its long spear driving back a circle of advancing shadows. They ringed them like skulking shades, their violet eyes hanging like glowing amethysts, the light from them casting their forms in dismal gloom.

  One stepped forth from behind, wielding sword and shield, dark shroud rippling as it leapt silently, thrusting. Spear haft turned aside sword blade with instinctive grace, the swordsman retreating with a grunt, dropping its weapon as the pirouetting spearhead scored a deep cut along its forearm. A looming shape behind the spearman fell as soon as it appeared, a backhand blow across the stomach leaving it writhing at their feet.

  ‘He is mine,’ the spearman spoke, their high voice carrying irresistible weight. They spun, bringing the haft of their spear crashing down between the neck and shoulder of another Bodah Duhn that dared to try them. ‘He is mine!’

  ‘Enough!’ Corrom Duhn’s voice shook the very courtroom itself, floor, wall, pillar – even the stalactites above. All had fallen to fearful silence, fallen to repentant knees, while those who had fallen before the lithe spearman groaned quietly where they lay, nursing injuries.

  ‘You shame yourselves, children,’ spoke the cripple-king, ‘for even now do you let this creature drive you to bloodshed, bound and helpless as he is – he makes our people bleed by his very presence alone. The hand that lays low shall be mine.’

  ‘Great Father!’ The lithe spearman with the high voice leapt to their feet, a multitude of shocked, disgusted voices muttering at her disrespect for their malformed sovereign.

  ‘Speak, child,’ the cripple-king had said, broken voice more interested than insulted.

  ‘It was I who bested him once he slew Gidhri,’ said the spearman, ‘I who stopped him before he could kill more of us, and it was I who brought him here before you for judgement, our Most Exalted Father, when others of our number would have killed him where he stood. I do not question your rightful decree, that he deserves nothing but death, but if you would see fit to grant me the honour of letting me keep him as the spoils of my victory in your name, I would make sure that the life he leads from now on is one of nothing but misery and toil.’

  They threw back their hood, shaking out long, supple hair, pale as bone and cold ash, tied artfully in places with slender braids. A grey hand removed the mask they wore, revealing the lean, female features beneath, and violet eyes regarded Harlin with peculiar intensity.

  ‘For we all know their lives are brief,’ the Bodah Duhn said, ‘and his I would have spent as my slave, for what is left of it. If our Most Exalted Father would deem it to be a fitting fate that is, of course.’ She fell to her knees humbly, head bowed submissively.

  The cripple-king’s pained grumbling shook the court once more for what had felt like the longest time as Harlin lay there, the bass rumble of it threatening to tear his whole body apart from within, waiting to hear his judgement be passed once again.

  ‘So be it,’ Corrom Duhn gasped, the reverberations of his groaning fading, dust tumbling from darkness above in thin streams. ‘Make good your word, Duana, and do not disappoint me in this. None will take kindly to having one of these creatures roam the halls of our home, let alone one so violent and implacable. He makes us all vulnerable while he remains here, he cannot be allowed to slip your attentions.’

  ‘I will not fail you, Great Father,’ said Duana as she rose. ‘You have my word as your loyal child, I swear it on the blood of my kin, on all I hold dear, and on the blood of the earth itself.’

  She had turned then, and knelt before Harlin, so close that her lean, grey face, with its high cheekbones and sharp lines, dominated his vision. Her eyes were burning purple stones in encroaching murk, looking into his own with an open feral hunger. ‘You belong to me now, Harlin,’ she said, with a cruel smile turning the corner of her mouth.

  Harlin opened his eyes and gave a start, finding Duana’s face an inch from his own, eyes still aglow in the dark. He blinked hard and groaned loudly, thinking himself still dreaming, or still in the Corrom Duhn’s court, till she shushed him and cupped his face in her slender hands. Callouses from spearwork covered her cool palms, rough against the short beard along his jawline.

  ‘I am curious,’ she whispered, holding his gaze intently, their noses almost touching. Harlin felt something slip inside him through her hands, like when Ceatha had first touched him. He couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t think. Duana raced through his mind, speeding like an arrow loosed and ricocheting from a steel-bound shield. She burst through every wall in her path, the tingle of her Weaving stirring memory, feeling, emotion, desire and fear in its wake, fleeting afterimages of things immaterial, intangible, gone as soon as they appeared.

  Duana withdrew from him, releasing his face, hands hovering before her breast uncertainly, her softly glowing eyes round and unblinking. ‘I thought so,’ she muttered to herself, looking distracted. She shook her head. ‘Back to sleep slave boy, you need rest.’ She touched him again, and sleep came dreamlessly.

  Harlin woke again from a painful kick to his leg. ‘Up, slave!’ Duana’s voice snapped. ‘Up! It’s morning!’

  ‘How can you tell,’ Harlin groaned irritably, stiff all over from sleeping propped against the wall, ‘you live in a hole in the ground, like a rat.’

  ‘I know when it is morning and when it is not, slave, so don’t think me stupid, you great big prick. There are things to be done – up!’ She booted him sharply in the leg again.

  Deciding against ignoring her, Harlin rose to his feet unsteadily, pain flaring in his ankle. He grumbled to himself and found her standing about an inch from him again, looking him up and down with open scrutiny. It shocked him how tall she was, just short of being of a height with him. Tall and willowy, her grey flesh was exposed beneath a strapless, roughspun top that barely covered her small breasts, her long, solidly-muscled legs bare beneath a short skirt of the same drab material.

  Duana coughed and pointed to her table against the far wall, dragging Harlin’s attention away from her attire and lack of modesty. ‘Food,’ she commanded, ‘eat with me.’ She quickly grabbed his crotch again and strode off sniggering to herself.

  Harlin sat with her, finding a wooden platter of dark bread and suspicious-looking cuts of meat before him. He wrinkled his nose distrustfully at it. ‘Eat.’ Duana kicked him in the shin beneath the table. ‘It’s bat. Cave-meat, its good for you, makes you strong. Eat it, you have a busy day ahead of you, slave.’

  Revolting as the idea was to him, Harlin was too hungry to refuse. It tasted a bit like chicken, he found, though thinking too hard on what it was sent a shudder through his guts. Duana watched him as he ate. ‘When you’re done we’re heading outside,’ she said.

  ‘What for,’ Harlin asked distrustfully.

  ‘I need firewood, there are cold days coming. You can cut it for me while I watch, because you’re my slave and that’s what slaves do – hard, boring work. And I want to show you something, too. Something I think you will find interesting.’ She would say no more on the subject, her Weaving forcing Harlin to numb silence when he pressed her.

  When they were finished and Harlin had dressed, Duana led him from her room. Harlin followed her reluctantly, through long, curving stone tunnels, their arching walls studded in places with carved, torch lit doorways that opened onto other tunnels of identical crafting. Harlin was reminded of the concentric rings of a fallen tree somehow.

  They passed by Bodah Duhn from time to time, some masked and cloaked, bearing arms, others dressed plainly in similar fashion to Duana, their grey skin was dark even when caught by torch light. Their mottled, violet-hued eyes glared at him silently, some glowing softly, and Duana would warn them off with threats in the clan tongue if they showed too much interest in Harlin. It was disturbing, the more he thought on it, that the Bodah Duhn spoke it with one ano
ther so fluently, so consistently.

  For an hour they walked down those dim, torch-lit tunnels. Harlin’s eyes followed the patterns carved into the walls either side of them, noting how they echoed those of Duana’s countless tattoos. She was mostly silent as they made their way, her lack of niggling comments and remarks chafed like rough wool, setting Harlin’s mind wondering to what she could possibly have waiting for him. Nothing pleasant, most likely. He thought briefly of punching her in the back of the head and making a run for it, but he had no idea where he was, or how to leave this place. The other Bodah Duhn would be sure to take advantage of Duana’s absence and his attempted escape to end his life too, no doubt, and he was weaponless. Outside, he resolved, would present the better opportunity. He would have to wait.

  There was something about Duana too, he hated to admit to himself. Some fascination gripped him, some unyielding, driving curiosity about her pulled Harlin onward, kept him placated. He could not explain it. He wanted to know why she had spared him, wanted to see where she would lead him, as much as he dreaded whatever miserable tasks she was thinking up to punish him with. Perhaps it was some trick, born of her foul Weaving. More than likely it was, he thought, but something compelled him to follow her, however reluctantly his feet moved.

  They emerged into the dull, tired-looking day that hung over Hathad Camoraigh from a towering, elaborate archway set in the rock. Harlin was surprised to see they were partway up the gnarled face of Morbha, many hundreds of feet above the ground, having exited onto a pathway carved by skilled hands long ago atop a broad, steep ledge. Before them loomed the grim form of Moírdhan, with its distinctive, cleft summit like a pair of small horns. It was the smaller of the Sisters, easily recognised, and was speckled in places with black marks in its already dark stone. Twinkling torchlight marked them as archways like the one they had just emerged from, too far to see clearly, but no doubt carved into the rock in similar fashion.

  From so high up, Harlin could see clear over the Tiar Valley that lay between the mountains, the bog sheltered in the fold of its foothills, to the distant shelf of land he had tumbled down, and beyond, where hills and woods rose tall and strong and Bráodhaír hid from sight. The island was blanketed in its usual daytime grey haze, shrouded by lingering mist. The very land itself looked… exhausted, if that was possible. Worn out and sorrowful, like it had given up.

  A cold wind snapped at them, flinging Harlin’s hair across his face, its icy fingers crawling across his skin, making his bones rattle inside him. Harlin shuddered, trying to take his mind off the bleakness of it all. It was a depressing place. ‘You live in the Sisters?’ he asked.

  ‘Mhm,’ came the answer from his side. Duana seemed inexplicably sullen. ‘They were our only home, for the longest time. Though now the island is ours to roam freely, as it should be. But still, we cling to them and what they mean to us. We do not forget.’

  Harlin frowned doubtfully at her, uncertain of what she meant, and looked around them quickly. Aside from the majestic, and utterly bleak, view before them, there was nothing at all on the mountainside other than barren stone, grit and scree.

  ‘Didn’t you bring me here to cut firewood?’ he said. ‘We seem a little high up for that.’

  ‘Oh,’ Duana said vaguely, unconvincingly, staring off at the obscure horizon. ‘I forgot about that. And I left my hatchet behind, too. Oh well. You can do it another time. Anyway, shut up.’ She pressed a finger to her lips. ‘Look.’ She pointed down to the valley floor, where the bog waited lazily beneath a diseased-looking sheen of mist. A chilly breeze carried a faint scent of its stench up to his nostrils.

  As he watched small shapes began to move, rising from the black waters like staggering, drunken ants. They began to lurch and stumble toward one another, lunging violently when they came within hitting distance. The dead men of the Tiar Valley fought once more. Harlin frowned, shook his head – it was a disturbing thing to watch, even from a distance. The dead should remain dead, there was no other place for them – no other possibility. To see them dragged back to some form of vile, half-life of endless war from the peace of death… it made him think of his own family – if they had ever suffered such a fate as this… no. It did not bare thinking about, was stupid, illogical. He shook himself briskly.

  ‘What is this,’ Harlin said coolly, masking his discomfort and forcing himself to watch the scene below with passive interest. ‘Do you mean to scare me? I faced those same dead men myself before you captured me and found them lacking.’

  Duana didn’t answer. He looked at her and recoiled. She Weaved intensely, teeth clenched and bared, her eyes burned like twin suns, searing vapour rising from them into the sky, rippling violet flames.

  Below, the tiny figures swarmed one another, the sound of clashing metal faint and tinny. ‘What purpose does this serve you, Bodah Duhn,’ Harlin said. ‘Enlighten me.’ Beside him Duana gasped and staggered, flames receding as she broke off her Weaving, swaying on the spot briefly.

  ‘None,’ she breathed, a hand to her heaving breast, ‘it is a punishment, nothing more.’

  ‘A punishment? What for?’

  Duana was silent for a moment, standing with her dark lips pursed, catching her breath and breathing hard, as though she had just sprinted up the mountainside to where she stood. She gazed out to somewhere in the south and east, mottled eyes squinting spitefully.

  ‘That red-haired cunt,’ she eventually said with a smirk, breath coming slower. ‘The bitch across the sea, the one whose brother you killed. She told you of the battle that took place here, I think.’

  ‘She did,’ Harlin said. ‘How do you –’

  ‘The Earthbond – the Weaving,’ Duana cut in, silencing him. ‘Whatever you want to call it. The earth knows many things and shares much with those who are sworn to it. Did that scheming, red-haired bitch tell you what caused that battle? Or what created the bog below?’

  He thought on that. Had she?

  ‘Some kind of invasion force from Caermark, I think she said.’ Duana smiled, her eyes were almost gentle, their wolfishness gone.

  ‘I thought as much,’ she said solemnly. ‘Almost, but not quite. She bends the truth to suit her purpose. You need a history lesson, slave boy.’

  ‘What?’

  Duana turned from him too look down at the swampland below. The tiny figures were slouching away, returning to the mire sluggishly, movements gradually slowing until they were still and the waters reclaimed them lazily.

  ‘Your ancestors came here from somewhere beyond the waves,’ Duana muttered.

  ‘So you say, but you show me no proof.’

  ‘They were simple folk. They worked the land, fished the sea, fought amongst themselves in their little groups, their clans. They have always been so fierce and divided when it came to their clans, we never understood it properly, and I don’t think they ever did themselves – or ever will. They were ignorant, and knew nothing of the power of the land, of the fabric that binds all things on this earth until they met us – the Earthbond, the Weaving, as you call it.’

  Duana turned to face him, her grey features stricken. ‘We were friends once,’ she said. ‘Your people and mine. The best of friends, for a long time. We came to you, after we had watched you expand over our land steadily, and rather than fight you we offered friendship and knowledge.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ Harlin scoffed. ‘My folk spin no tales of you, save the ones where you snatch children from their beds at night to place upon your cripple-king’s lap.’

  Duana scowled. ‘Your leaders spread those lies so that your kinfolk would grow to hate and fear us. We came to you as friends, as teachers, but most of all as equals – we wanted to share our ways with you, raise you up, show you what you could be if you seized your potential. Who do you think taught your ancestors to fight, taught you the words you all speak to this day?’ She laughed hard. ‘When you came to us you spoke a very different tongue to ours, and worshipped very different gods to th
e true ones we taught you of, the gods you still revere as your own. You are thieves, scavengers of those greater than yourselves.’

  ‘You lie,’ Harlin snarled, taking a step toward her, her Weaving halting him like walking face first into a stone wall. Duana shook her head. A finger traced the pattern of ink on her shoulder where it formed a circular knot.

  ‘This is Cu Náith’s shield,’ she said, extending her right arm. ‘And here –’ she traced a slender shape on her forearm ‘– is the spear of Luw the Hunter, as he drove it through Ancu’s skull and prevailed over death.’ The spear-like shape ran through something that could indeed have been Ancu’s blank, leering face. Harlin shivered, remembering the dream he had suffered where Ancu had touched him, crushed him, rather, atop the Durestone in Easthold.

  ‘Surely you know the story of Cu Náith the Warrior and Luw the Hunter,’ Duana went on, head tilting at his blank stare. ‘Of their endless rivalry? Of how neither could beat the other, and so they dared one another to challenge Ancu, challenge death itself? The stories say both fought and cut down Ancu, one after the other, for Ancu can never truly die, he is death made flesh. When they defeated him, they both ripped off Ancu’s face, and wore it as their own – to show they had bested death, that they had become death. Or perhaps death had become them – for the stories say that they were yet even more deadly once they took Ancu’s face for their own, and death moves in unseen ways sometimes, after all.

  ‘Even in victory, though, death won, for they both became an aspect of Ancu, an aspect of death – a smaller fragment of another, greater god. War and the hunt both end in death, do they not? Why do you think your people hold Cu Náith in such high regard, yet still wear the face of Ancu when they go to war? You do it for the same reason we do – you share our gods, our beliefs, our ways – everything. Because we gave it to you.’