by Lisa Rector
Catrin smiled. His accent was completely different from King Sieffre’s people. This time was so far in the past that Sieffre and his people had yet to sail from beyond the sea and claim this land. The early dwellers’ language must have filtered out. “From the lowlands. I’m traveling southeast, to the great lake and have run out of supplies. I can work for food.”
“Is that so?” Mercher asked. “You look liken you can nary lift a spade.”
“I’m strong. I’ve worked hard in my life.” That was partly true. Catrin had a lot of combat training. Not as much farm work.
The man turned to the woman. “Afanen, what think ye?”
“Oh, look at the poor gurl. We can spare her a bit o’ stew.”
They seemed so overworked that their old bones could use the help.
“’Ere ye go.” Mercher gestured to another forked spade at the side of the field. “Think ye’re strong e’nuff to break the clods.”
Catrin dropped her pack and picked up the spade. “Yes, sir.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
WORLDS APART
Are you all right, my love?” Mara touched Meuric’s forehead. “Come, so I can feed you. You must be hungry. I’m overjoyed the campaign is done.” She rubbed her belly. “This little one isn’t staying in here much longer. She needs her father to take care of her mother.”
What in all of Morvith? “Mara, I shouldn’t be here.”
“Shh. Sit. Rest.” She led him to a chair and sat on his lap, stroking his spiky locks.
“I miss your long hair,” Mara said.
Meuric rubbed his scalp. Wasn’t he in the middle of something…? He had to get to someone… save her… before…
Mara was regarding him with raised eyebrows, so he sheepishly answered her. “Yes, it’s easier to take care of when I’m on the road for long stretches.”
No, he was at battle. Which one? Which battle was right before Mara gave birth?
He touched his dragon stone. Derog? What day is this? Are we at war? How do you fare?
Silence. Derog? Why can’t you hear me? After weeks of not hearing his dragon, he shouldn’t have been disappointed he didn’t hear him now. If Meuric was with Mara, in his past, his current stone must connect only with his real dragon. None of this made sense. Was any of this real?
Meuric scratched his jaw. Mara had scooped a cloying salve from a squatty jar and was dabbing the concoction on his other hand.
“You don’t have to do that. My hands will heal by morning.”
“Is that so?” She lifted his hand and kissed his wrist. “Now, they’ll heal by morning.”
Meuric laughed and kissed her. She was lovely. So tempting, even completely round with child. An ache raced through him as he traced his fingers down her neck and around the opening of her dress.
She smacked his arm then grabbed it and wrapped his palm in a cloth. “Nay, my lord. Not tonight. You’ll bring the babe.”
Mara might have said one thing, but her emotions said otherwise. Meuric yearned for her as much as she yearned for him.
“Then let’s bring the babe. She’s been stewing in there long enough,” Meuric boomed.
Mara giggled as he carried her into their bedroom. Forget his meal. He’d been without her for too long.
Weeks of campaign indeed.
“Be gentle, my love,” she whispered.
***
Mara cried out in the middle of the night. Meuric rolled out of bed, avoiding a puddle seeping toward him. Curse his luck. The labor had started.
Meuric opened the door to the corridor and yelled. “Send for a midwife!”
A servant peered around the corner. “Aye, my lord.” He scurried off.
Mara groaned and panted. Meuric held her, swiping hair out of her eyes.
When the midwife arrived, she said, “My lord, you should leave now. Leave this to me.”
“I won’t leave her.”
Hours passed. Timid housemaids passed in and out of the room, changing linens and bringing fresh water. Meuric mopped at Mara’s forehead, allowing only the midwife to touch her.
All the while, Meuric had the strange sense this had happened before. As he looked at Mara, he swore he remembered just how her lips curled from the pain, remembered how her belly tightened under his touch. The way she whimpered and cried was all too familiar.
A sensation of being far away from something else also nagged at him. Meuric was tied to another… person? Or event? Unsure, he rooted himself in the present. He was here with his wife, and she was about to bring his child into this world.
Worlds apart. I am worlds apart from… This is a dream.
“It’s time to push. The babe has dropped. You’re ready.”
Mara nodded and squeezed Meuric’s hand.
After two dozen pushes Meuric asked, “Why’s it taking so long? Is the babe almost out?”
Meuric’s terror multiplied. Anxiety crept under his skin. Something was going to be wrong, and he couldn’t watch his wife in agony any longer. “Can’t you help her?”
“Look, my lord, the head’s crowning.”
Mara grunted, and the baby’s head emerged.
“Stop! Don’t push,” the midwife cried. “The cord is around the neck. I cannot slip it free. I must cut it.”
After a tense moment in which the midwife deftly handled the knife while maneuvering her fingers carefully between the babe’s neck and cord and after Mara gave a final push, the infant slid out onto the bed.
Mara had been right. The babe was a girl—
And she wasn’t crying.
She was a frightful, ashy color.
“What’s wrong with her? Make her cry,” Meuric yelled.
The midwife grabbed the baby and smacked her hard on the back. She vigorously rubbed the baby and worked on her for long minutes.
This can’t be happening.
Mara screamed and cried, and Meuric could only hold her.
The breath of life couldn’t be restored to his daughter.
The midwife whispered that the babe had strangled during the descent in the birth canal. Dead before she was born. Nothing could’ve been done.
The midwife passed the baby to Mara, and she cradled her to her naked chest, weeping and kissing her and caressing her head. Even with the pains of the afterbirth, Mara clutched her, refusing to let go. She lay for hours, curled around her precious gray bundle.
“Please, Mara,” Meuric crooned. Please, I need to take her away. I cannot bear this. He tried to pry the baby out of Mara’s arms to no avail.
When Mara was numb from crying and too limp to hold on, Meuric lovingly lifted his daughter out of her arms and took the babe away to bury her.
It was his first most dreadful undertaking.
When he dropped the shovel with a thunk, a sudden realization of what would happen hit Meuric.
Mara would die. No. This cannot be. How did he know? How did he know she wouldn’t eat or drink and would starve herself to death from sorrow? How did he know he could do nothing to save her? Because hadn’t he seen this before?
He had.
Rushing back to Mara, he lifted her head and stared into vacant eyes. “You’re not doing this to me. To us. Your life is not wasting away.” Meuric placed his hands on her head and over her heart as he dove with his inner sight into Mara. Her pain was unequal to his own, the torment greater.
Gut wrenching.
Total.
Mara had given up.
“We can have other babes. This is not the end. You will eat!” Meuric couldn’t understand. He begged. He attacked her pain with his healing light. Nothing worked. He couldn’t make the light enter her and stay in her mind and wield its magic.
“Fetch my mother, immediately.” If anyone could heal his wife from a pain this extreme, his mother could—the only pure emrys in Morvith.
***
Siana arrived in the dark of night and slipped into the room where Meuric huddled over his wife’s immobile form.
Meuric didn’t glance up, only stroked Mara’s forehead. “She hasn’t moved since the delivery over twelve hours ago. She’s planning to starve herself. She hasn’t taken any water.”
Siana slid beside Mara on the mattress and touched Meuric’s hand. She loved her daughter-in-law—this Meuric knew. “I’ll take a look.”
Meuric nodded. What would he do if his mother couldn’t heal her, if she couldn’t take away Mara’s pain and give her the will to live?
Siana worked silently for a long time, feeling Mara, holding her in a loving embrace, and whispering words to her Meuric couldn’t hear. All the while, he was dying inside.
Mara remained a statue.
Siana touched Meuric’s hand, and his eyes briefly met hers. “Her heart-center is hollow. I give her my light, and it seeps away. She doesn’t desire to heal or else my light would remain and console her spirit. I cannot free her from this anguish. My pleas fall on a broken heart so cracked no light can cement the fragments together.”
Meuric buried his head into Mara’s hair and sobbed, not caring if he racked her withering body. Maybe his sorrow would be enough to stir Mara’s soul.
In the end, he folded Mara into his chest while her life slipped away. The second most dreadful thing he had ever done.
For the first time, he wished his body was mortal so he could join her.
This torment turned over the memory of another, and Meuric remembered he had lived this before. This wasn’t his reality, even if this was real to him. Even if the outcome was still the same and he could do nothing to change it, the pain was real enough.
Meuric yelled into the heavens, to which Master he didn’t know. Is this what you want? Is this my punishment, to see this over and over again? Why not kill me and end my anguish?
Meuric pulled a sharp stone from his pocket and drew the edge across his wrist. He watched, halfhearted, as his blood pooled on the carpet. He didn’t feel this pain. What’s the point of my suffering?
He stared at his wrist until the edges pulled closed and all that was left was the dried crust of brown on his flesh.
This was supposed to show him something. Teach him a truth.
That the Masters are uncaring liars.
***
As Meuric lay on his bed, weary and dejected, a face came to his mind—a blonde, sulky lass with emerald green eyes. Whose angelic face was this? Minutes passed. Whose? He scrutinized his memories, trying to jog what might have been there.
Show me.
Like a book, the revelation opened to him. Finally, a mercy.
He knew her. Catrin. He remembered her. Catrin.
He had forgotten her. This past he was reliving had somehow scrambled his focus. Altered what was real and what was not. He should be with Catrin. As happy as he was to hold Mara once again and as miserable as it was to face her death, Meuric had hope.
He had promised her. Catrin, I won’t forsake you! I’m coming to you! Calling on his most endearing vision of Catrin, he pushed himself to her. The familiar pressure encircled him. Go to Catrin. Bring me to her. Take me away from this.
He should have known it wouldn’t be easy.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
DAMAGED
Catrin didn’t work all day every day. Some days she worked a morning and earned a bowl of stew or thin broth. Keen on finishing her journey, she moved through the highlands, not lingering long. For scrubbing out the laundry, one family gave her a small scoop of canned apples. They were mushy and sour, but Catrin hadn’t eaten fruit in ages. It’d be a while until fruit hung from trees and berries ripened on summer bushes. By then, Catrin hoped to be home in Gorlassar where fresh fruit was plentiful with the unnaturally long growing seasons.
Ten days in the highlands and not a sign of Meuric. Why hadn’t he come for her? At night, Catrin wished for his chest to lie on. She had become used to the feel of each of his breaths and the hardness of his muscles and his arms around her, even if he had hurt her. Habits were hard for her to break, and Meuric was a bad habit she wished she hadn’t quit. So Catrin spent nights on soft clumps of grass, curled in her blankets, lonely.
Sheep bleated into the night, and occasionally a howling wolf or hooting owl pierced the soberness. Wild animals didn’t scare Catrin, but with Meuric’s absence and his missing heartbeat accosting her ears, they kept her awake.
Trudging around and feeling conflicted over Meuric wore a canker in her gut, as did the unsettling voice that had trespassed in her thoughts. Catrin didn’t trust the voice’s tricky words, but she wanted to believe she could return home on her own. Meuric said his ability worked by harnessing the dark power. An Emrys of Light using dark power? The price would be her light. This was unheard of. No one in Gorlassar ever considered the possibly that an emrys could use darkness, never considered that to use Cysgod’s power, they’d have to forsake their light. How? For a half-emrys, building one or the other was simple. They already possessed both. How could Catrin introduce darkness into her body? Was she desperate enough to return home that she’d toy with the idea?
Curse you, Meuric! Where are you? She didn’t want to admit she needed him. I do need him.
She passed through a shallow gully, and on the other side, after long weeks on the road, Catrin glimpsed a glorious expanse of water—massive Dillon Sea. The other place she called home, outside Gorlassar.
She and Einion spent many hours on those shores, but she didn’t go down into that valley. Longing for home but daunted by the sight that would greet her, Catrin turned west toward the foreboding base of Mount Eirwen—the last nearly impassable stretch of her journey.
With her abilities as an emrys, she might be able to climb this mountain. Mortal man couldn’t survive the extreme climate. Usually emrys bypassed the dangers with their dragons, who flew emrys directly to the entrance of Gorlassar. No cliffs, no unyielding snowdrifts, no limited supply of air. Only one graceful swoop and a glide on a beloved friend. Where was Cerys when she wanted her? Cerys…
She’d even settle for Trahaearn, Einion’s dragon.
This would be madness.
Catrin spent the whole day prior working and trading for supplies to reach the top. The journey might take six days, Catrin guessed. She carried a waterskin for each day and food enough for an emrys—she didn’t need much to sustain her immortal body, just enough for extra resilience to the elements and fatigue.
A river, which was an easy guide, ran between a cleft in the mountain, but by ascending the ridge now rather than following the gorge, Catrin would bypass a steeper climb later. The final cliff, where she’d spend many hours clinging to tiny toeholds in arctic conditions, was unavoidable.
The ledge at the top of the world, at Gorlassar’s entrance… Catrin had previously gazed over the edge before dropping into a chasm to find Trahaearn after a harrowing fall. Rhianu was at fault for this. She attacked and almost killed Trahaearn.
Meuric and Rhianu were the same. One in purpose, one in mind.
Fool me into believing your lies. Conceal the truth from me. Hide your deceit in well-meaning words and actions. Those beguiling eyes! Those accursed, mystical, deeply sunk-into eyes. How could I have been so blind? You were using me. I healed you over and over at the cost of my light!
You and Rhianu are identical scales on a dragon’s breast. Hard, unrelenting armor. Nothing could pierce Meuric’s wretched hide.
She was simpleminded to think he loved her.
Memory and rant aside, Catrin worried about facing the climb alone.
Conflicted, Catrin started up the mountain. No other option but to finish this. With or without Meuric.
The hiking wasn’t too difficult; Catrin could have been strolling through the woods… with a steep incline. Birds flitted through the trees at the low altitude, and chipmunks ran from under fallen logs. Catrin made great progress throughout the day. She just might be able to manage this.
As night fell, Catrin lit a merry fire, taking comfort in it as her companion, even if she didn’t nee
d the heat.
She had enough inner fire, but Meuric was right. Her strength waned. She knew it. Catrin placed her hand over her heart-center. A constant drip, drip, of light floated away from her into the night, lost in the campfire glow. The wound was not yet healed. She had been ignoring it, in denial about its origin. After recalling the battle when she damaged her heart-center, Catrin no longer wondered why she continually bled light.
She’d caught up to Rhianu in battle and dueled with her. Having won the upper hand, Catrin pressed a knife to Rhianu’s throat until a single drop leaked forth.
“Sorry, looks as though your master abandoned you,” Catrin said.
“Sorry, Catrin,” Rhianu hissed. “It looks as though the Dark Master has your Einion.”
Catrin forced the knife deeper, causing the blood to trickle down Rhianu’s olive skin. “You lie! Be quiet or I’ll kill you!”
Then Rhianu said the words that tore Catrin apart.
“Kill me, and you’ll kill Einion’s son with the same stroke.”
That’s when Catrin saw the bright spot of light that emrys carried in their wombs after conception. She wouldn’t have seen the telltale glow unless she was looking or someone pointed it out. Catrin refused to believe Rhianu’s words, or rather didn’t want to. But the evidence was undeniable. Rhianu wasn’t lying.
On a deeper level, Catrin couldn’t process what Rhianu’s words meant. She just knew it was wrong. So terribly wrong. With the battle roaring around her, it was impossible to staunch the blow when it finally hit.
Her head swirled as the intensity of her emotions took over. Einion, what did you do? Her chest constricted. Einion did not touch Rhianu. This can’t be happening.
But it did. He had given himself to another.
Without warning, shock ripped through Catrin.
Her body shook. An intense heat burned inside her, building from her core, threatening to incinerate her flesh. Catrin’s hands blazed red-hot, like coals. She couldn’t stop the reaction. Her heart-center—the core containing her light—split open.
