The Dark Thorn

by Shawn Speakman

  “You would be a king before a father?” Deirdre asked pointedly.

  “A good king must be,” he said. “No matter how much it pains him to say it.”

  Despite the panic growing inside her, the hurt that Deirdre caused her father stabbed at her heart. This was not his doing. It didn’t matter though. She saw no way out of the situation that did not involve ruining either her life or those living in Mochdrev Reach.

  “Regardless, Lord Hugo may not be seeking what rumors have brought here,” Lord Gerallt continued. “Out of respect for you, he asked to see you where you wish. I understand why you chose the Rosemere. This place…it has power for you. You came here as a little girl; you seek guidance here still. If there is a place in Mochdrev Reach that may protect you, this is it. Hopefully the respect he has shown bodes well. Or…”

  “Or what, Father?”

  “I would rather not think on it.”

  Deirdre nodded, sadly understanding. So much depended on her. She knew it. She was Lord Gerallt’s oldest child. At twenty-three years old and unwilling to embrace the duties other women of the Reach preferred, she was unmarried—not because she wanted to be alone but because she had not met the right man. She preferred to spend her time in study, on the practice field with men twice her age, or tracking in the south plains.

  It was a good life, one of her devising. Now that life was being drastically altered without her leave.

  Just like when her mother died.

  At that moment, a man dressed in black robes bearing the silver lion crest of Caer Llion strode into Merthyr Garden, two Templar Knights in white trailing him. Deirdre had not yet met John Lewis Hugo, but she knew him instantly. First advisor to Philip Plantagenet, the outworlder walked with a commanding arrogance that set Deirdre’s teeth on edge. The right side of his face was a ruined black mask, burned traumatically, melted like wax. People said it had happened while fighting one of the most powerful fey lords, when he and his High King had first entered Annwn centuries earlier.

  Deirdre knew she hated him immediately.

  With a word to his Red Crosses to remain behind, John Lewis Hugo approached like he had already won a great prize.

  “Lord Gerallt, your garden is beautiful,” John Lewis Hugo greeted, smiling as best he could, the charred right side of his face making it difficult. “I trust you have had sufficient time to speak to your daughter?”

  “I have, your lordship.”

  “Thank you for the welcome. Your household is not lacking when it comes to pleasantries.” John Lewis Hugo bowed but he did so shallowly. He then turned his eye on Deirdre. “I would imagine that has a great deal to do with you, my lady. It has been far too long. You have grown into the beauty I knew you would.”

  “We’ve met, my lord?” Deirdre asked, confused.

  “When you were quite young,” John Lewis Hugo said. He turned to Lord Gerallt. “Please leave us. I will speak to Lady Deirdre alone.”

  Lord Gerallt gave his daughter a quick warning look before leaving the garden, making his way back to the castle.

  “You know the reason for my coming?” John Lewis Hugo asked.

  “I do.”

  John Lewis Hugo turned his gaze upon the Rosemere, hands behind his back. She didn’t like the way he looked at the resting place of her mother, a mixture of interest and irritation. It was a long time before he spoke.

  “I understand you communicate with your mother here,” he said finally.

  “I come to be near her sometimes, yes.”

  “Then you don’t speak to her as we are speaking now?”

  Deirdre tried to keep calm. Philip and his advisor had invaded Annwn with one intention: destroy the Tuatha de Dannan with sword and flame, and bring their one god to fill the void. To display interest in fey, magic, or anything associated with the Celtic religions of old would be a death penalty. That included speaking to witches long dead.

  “Pay no mind,” he said simply, noticing her apprehension. “The High King may wish to see his father’s crusade fulfilled and his Templar Knights spread to all corners of Annwn, but I am far more pragmatic. How you choose to spend your time in worship is your affair. If that includes speaking to your mother here in this magical pool, so be it.”

  Deirdre knew she could not trust him. Like a snake, he was capable of striking without a moment’s notice.

  “Mochdrev Reach is a great city, an important castle,” John Lewis Hugo said, his eyes—one blue and the other milky white but alive—staring up at the tall towers. “Once, the Reach did not exist—this was just a lone hill with a single oak at its pinnacle lording over these lands. A battle found its way to the plains south of here, as they have everywhere in Annwn, elves against humans. These elves fought valiantly but were continuously pushed through the plains to these hills. Here they stood, through trickery. To create a diversion and save their people, two elven brothers lured the human army up a southern draw while their brethren fled. The brothers fought side by side at the top of this very hill, unyielding. They slew hundreds, alone, buying the time their nation needed, before a sea of cowardly arrows cut them down.

  “It is said the hillside wept at their courage and sacrifice. This spring is the result of that day, their blood the origin of the ancient rose bush.”

  “I know the history of my own people,” Deirdre said.

  “You know your people killed those brothers then,” John Lewis Hugo said, turning toward her with a coldness she had not seen in another before. “Outright. And settled these hills to form the Reach?” He paused, the darkness suddenly gone. “We share a great deal in common, my lady. We both have fought the fey. We hail from the same shores. True, your ancestors were the first to Annwn, and settled here long before the High King and I arrived centuries ago. You are part of a proud history here in Annwn, and a member of a prouder family. It is the High King’s wish to meld our two peoples into one, uniting against the common enemy.”

  There it was. Deirdre didn’t know what to say. John Lewis Hugo had worked in the marriage proposal so smoothly she hadn’t seen it coming.

  “You mean marriage,” she said. “To drag us into war.”

  John Lewis Hugo stood stoic. “You must consider that. Although I sincerely doubt the High King would bring his might against fellow kinsmen.”

  “I simply do not understand why anyone must war with another.”

  “It is in the very heart of man to wage war, Lady Deirdre,” John Lewis Hugo said. “It is unchangeable. While I do not care for the deities those of Annwn pray to, I do care about the overall outcome of Annwn’s future. That future has Caer Llion as the capital of the whole continent, with the High King’s Lord at its head.”

  “He isn’t my Lord,” she pointed out.

  “Indeed,” John Lewis Hugo said. “Your people fled the Misty Isles before the Christian God drove the gods of old from those shores. Still, it is time for the High King to marry, to have a family, to produce an heir. It is a great honor that he looks upon you with favor—and it would be folly for Mochdrev Reach to ignore him.”

  The veiled threat shot dread directly into Deirdre’s heart.

  “There are many more worthy women,” she countered. “Women who would be better matches for Philip Plantagenet.”

  John Lewis Hugo smiled. “Do not be so quick to dismiss yourself, Lady Deirdre. There is a strength that shines within you like the summer sun. Redheads are powerful creatures, always have been. They command respect from men and women alike. It has ever been so with the Celtic people. Even the Tuatha de Dannan respect a redheaded human. That makes you unique.” The charred face came closer to her own. “Desirable even. To some.”

  With his hot breath on her cheek, madness filled Deirdre. The High King’s advisor did not stop there. John Lewis Hugo traced a long, cool finger down the side of her cheek, his touch alien. The desire to flee, to fight, to do anything that removed the inappropriate caress overcame Deirdre, but she was rooted in place, unable to move. Panic set in. Deep
in his eyes, madness flickered. He did not want her, not in a sexual way. He enjoyed making her fear; he enjoyed watching that fear manifest and seeing how she reacted to it. Deirdre understood immediately that John Lewis Hugo was far darker and more evil than anyone she had ever encountered.

  Just when she thought she would break the spell and lash out, the High King’s advisor withdrew.

  “Indeed, you are powerful,” he said smoothly as if nothing had happened. “In one month you will present yourself to the court at Caer Llion. Bring whatever retinue you deem fit for a queen of Annwn. I am pleased we understand one another and I hope to serve you further. I wish you a good day, Lady Deirdre.”

  At that, John Lewis Hugo turned on his heels and left Merthyr Garden, the two Templar Knights following him back to the castle keep and likely returning to Caer Llion.

  Trembling with wrath, Deirdre watched them go. It was as she had feared. Philip Plantagenet wished for a bride, and for reasons she could not fathom, he had chosen her. It would not happen. Not if she had her way. Deirdre had never met the High King, but if he was anything like John Lewis Hugo, she wanted no part of him.

  The fire she had banked for her father’s benefit roared back to life, lending her strength. Deirdre needed advice from someone she could trust.

  She needed ages of wisdom.

  Deirdre stepped to the edge of the Rosemere, eyeing the ancient rose bush, and began to hum. It was a rich melody, one of the oldest, a call for the dead. She anchored herself to Annwn, drawing on its life as well as that within her. She grew weak, the life force she possessed being slowly drained to conduct the magic, but she stood resolute as she had so many times before.

  Her request did not take long to be answered. The Merthyr Garden fell away. So too did the azure of the sky and the crimson of the rose blooms, the world reduced to shades of gray.

  Instead the water of the Rosemere flickered and swirled, sluggish at first but picking up speed as it circled the dead tree at its center.

  Then the world sunk in on itself, absorbing the light of the day and inversing it until a shape as dark as midnight hovered on the surface of the water. It stood proud as it rose into the air, a true form coalescing into a woman draped in folds of a black cloak, floating as though in a breeze. A cowl tried to hold red locks of long hair from a white chiseled countenance, but strands of it flitted wildly across her mien. It was a beautiful face, one Deirdre knew well. As she breathed in the odor of rotting mulch and darkness, the gray eyes of the shade peered at her.

  —Child—

  The voice was inside her head, spectral, the sweetness Deirdre remembered replaced by dryness. Even now, after so long, a part of her yearned to step forward into the pool and embrace the woman, but she held her ground, knowing the danger.

  “I am here, Mother,” she said.

  —You have the stink of corruption on your flesh—Deirdre didn’t know what her mother meant, then remembered John Lewis Hugo touching her cheek and felt revulsion all over again.

  “Yes, I do.”

  —You have been kept alive to enact great harm—

  The shade’s emotionless voice penetrated deep into Deirdre.

  “What do you mean, Mother?”

  —What would you know of me, Child—

  Deirdre paused, unsure how to proceed. In death, there were events hidden from her mother, both past and future. Never had she pronounced such a dire prediction. The dead also rarely spoke linearly—a question could lead to a wholly different avenue of discussion—the riddles maddening to unravel.

  “Who wants me alive? What harm?” Deirdre pleaded anyway. “Mother, do you mean Philip Plantagenet? John Lewis Hugo? Who?”

  —A lord of shadows is in the world once more, stirring evil—

  “A lord? I don’t understand!”

  —I know not, Child. It is not for me to know. Or you—

  Deirdre frowned, thinking.

  “What am I to do about this marriage proposal?” she asked instead, hoping for the help she had come for.

  —You will love, Child. It will be the love of your life—

  She almost laughed. “With Philip Plantagenet?”

  —The lives of the Outworlder King and my Child are intertwined like vines, to be cut at the harvest—

  “No…that cannot be, Mother!”

  The Rosemere hissed at her vehemence. The dead did not like being angered once called. Deirdre stood her ground. They could not harm her, not unless she disengaged from the pool or stepped within its boundaries to enter their world.

  Deirdre took a deep breath.

  “I refuse to believe I will be with Plantagenet,” she said. “That is not my destiny.”

  —A destiny is dark until the present sheds light on it—

  “Mother, what am I to do?”

  —Nothing you desire will come to be. Only what you fear will come to pass—

  “You are saying I cannot prevent what comes?”

  —Look here. Death—

  In her mind’s eye, she saw a vision. Smoke blew across a battlefield littered with bodies of the dead and dying. The scene possessed no sound, but Deirdre imagined wailing on the air. Bloodied twisted creatures milled among bodies of men and Tuatha de Dannan alike, their limbs unnaturally angled by savage intention. She was in the battle, being pulled away from a fire that was being swallowed by darkness. Then an unknown man cradled her, but his attention was drawn to the sky where a brilliant fire burned the heavens.

  —Death—

  The vision changed.

  Darkness surrounded her, suffocating her, until she realized she was in the depths of a great mountain honeycombed with labyrinthine passageways. She was not alone, though. A creature stalked her, its baleful red eyes fixed on her but also not fixed on her, its body as insubstantial as smoke but deadlier than any beast Deirdre had encountered or read about. She ran but it chased, impossibly fast, until the very stone walls collapsed and true night suffocated her scream.

  —Death—

  It changed again.

  In warrens beneath a domed castle filled with art more ornate than any she had ever seen, caskets in walls housed the dead. The dank smell of ages mixed with the sweet odor of nearby water, where magic coated the air. Two old men wearing priestly robes wielded swords to defend all they knew. Whether they survived the Templar Knights attempting to kill them or if they failed, she knew it did not matter; the other world burned, and it spread into Annwn, consuming Mochdrev Reach, her people, and all she loved.

  Unbidden tears stung Deirdre’s eyes.

  The vision blackened to nothing. Deirdre opened her eyes and looked at her mother as she peered back. Her gray orbs seemed to be mirrors into Deirdre’s soul.

  “What does this all mean?” she asked, trembling.

  —My time has come. Follow your heart. No matter your choice, Child—

  “No, Mother. Don’t go.”

  Deirdre wanted to reach out. The apparition instead slipped back into the Rosemere, her figure disintegrating like ash in water. The pool stopped churning. The smell of decaying life dissipated. As the day brightened about her, the buzzing of bees and the songs of birds in the Merthyr Garden returned with stunning clarity.

  With sunshine warming her, Deirdre stood staring where the shade of her mother had vanished. It happened just that quickly. She already missed her. She also knew little from the meeting. The riddles her mother spoke rarely came to fruition the way Deirdre expected, even if there was a bit of truth in them. More questions swirled inside her than when she had called the shade. With whom would Deirdre fall in love? How did the false king play into the future of her life? And how would the visions she had been shown come—or not come—to pass?

  She had no answers.

  The one thing she did know was that the life she knew was drastically changing, and there was nothing she could do about it.

  “I thought you would be talking to her forever!”

  Deirdre spun.

  Sitting on th
e soft blossom petals of a nearby rose bush, Snedeker stared at her, stick arms crossed, a frown tugging at his wood and moss features, his gossamer wings irritably fluttering.

  “You should not be here!” Deirdre hissed, angry all over again. “I told you to stay out of sight until the sun set. If John Lewis Hugo caught you here—”

  “Yes, yes, your father would feed me to the cat,” Snedeker opined. “What he doesn’t know is I’d kill that cat with three quic—”

  “And kill the rest of us!”

  “Boghoggery, settle down, Red!” Snedeker grumped, launching from the rose blossom and flying toward her. “I won’t actually kill the cat.”

  “Wait right there,” Deirdre said, observing her fairy friend closer. “You are entirely too happy. And your little pack looks to be a burden. What do you have?”

  Guilt crossed the fairy’s wooden features.

  “Nothing!”

  “You lie,” she said. “I can always tell when you lie.”

  “Are you sure you aren’t a witch?”

  “Out with it!”

  Annoyance crossing his face, Snedeker pulled a ruby the size of a thumbnail from the sack on his back.

  “Where did you get that?!”

  “From the coach that brought that pompous burned ass! It was encrusted with them and other jewels.” He hefted the ruby. “This one was mostly loose anyway, Red. Mostly. Isn’t it beautiful, how the sun…”

  Deirdre ignored the rest of what the fairy said. It was the only way she kept from throttling him. If the High King knew a member of the Tuatha de Dannan was within the Reach, it would spell certain doom for them all. She might be bringing war to her father’s kingdom, but at least it would be on her terms and not that of a thieving fairy.

  “You must put it back. Now.”

  “I think not,” the fairy said quickly. “They are leaving. And besides, I have merely borrowed it.”

  “Knowing you, you’ve borrowed it until its owners are long dead and dust.”