Where Light Meets Shadow

by Shawna Reppert

  He had found a small purse that Alban had tucked into his saddle bags when he wasn’t looking, a purse containing a generous handful of coin and a sprig of heart’s solace that made him smile even as it made his heart ache. Clearly Alban meant the gift to prevent privation on the journey, and yet Kieran felt reluctant to part with any of the Leas-stamped gold that, with the new harp, was the only tangible reminder he had of his time with Alban.

  Yet the pull of the queen’s call was insistent. Maybe when he returned to familiar surroundings, he would no longer miss so much the twining of Alban’s mind and soul with his. Maybe Alban’s absence would feel less like a lost limb.

  He declined the innkeeper’s offer and accepted with gratitude a small bundle of cheese and some of the morning’s baking. Then he dragged himself back on his mare, who had been kept fit by the Leas grooms during his convalescence and so did not suffer as he did. In fact, she was depressingly fresh and danced beneath him on the soft spring turf in a way that made his poor aching muscles protest.

  The second day was worse than the first. The third day, Kieran felt a little better. The following days passed more easily, and by the time he approached the brass-ornamented iron gates to his people’s underground city, he was exhausted but no longer hurting with every stride. The sun shone high in the bright blue sky and the brass gleamed bright. The bits of quartz in the black granite sparkled here and there, and the budding mountain ash on either side of the entrance swayed gently in the spring breeze.

  Yes, the Leas’s white towers were fair, but there was strength here, and beauty too. This was where he was raised, where he belonged.

  He swung down from his mare and hailed the sentries, who he could barely make out in the shadows of the gate.

  “Well, look who it is,” called one sentry to the other on the opposite side of the gate. “Bard Kieran, whom we never thought to see again in this world.”

  Though the words were faintly mocking, they carried underneath a tone of respect that would not have been there before he left.

  He’d know that voice anywhere—Dermot, who used to tease him when they were boys. Kieran had bloodied his nose once and been exiled to his room for his troubles, but they had come to a truce in later years and he had played at Dermot’s wedding. Sweet Grace, he hadn’t realized until now how he had missed the man.

  “Is it true that you are the one who woke the queen?”

  And that was Cuin, who had pulled him out of the stream when he had fallen through the ice when they were boys. In his joy at the familiar voices, it took a moment for the question to register.

  In his urgency to answer his queen’s call, he hadn’t questioned what she might have told people about her waking. Dimly, yes, he had hoped for some sort of eventual recognition, but somehow he’d expected first to be able to slip back into his old life. Kieran the bard, the dreamer, not nearly so wise nor so impressive as his father had been. Kieran, easy enough to forget about until one wanted a little music to brighten an evening.

  Now he was Kieran, bard who had awakened the queen, and he might never be that other Kieran again. Grace help him.

  “Yes, I—” He stumbled over words, most embarrassing for a bard. “I suppose I did.”

  With the help of the Leas prince. But that was not something to be announced casually to old friends at the gate. The story would have to be built slowly, carefully over a banquet table, with full embellishment, to be understood for what it was. Still, he remembered Alban’s soul melded with his, the power rising between them, one talent and will and self undistinguishable from the other, and regretted the slight to his friend. His lover, for that’s what he had truly been, though they had shared only one night’s pleasure.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so quiet,” Dermot laughed. “You must be exhausted, indeed. Come, I will call for someone to take your horse, and send a servant to lay a fire and bring hot water and food to your rooms. The steward hadn’t gotten around to giving them away yet, you know.”

  Once, Kieran would have been expected to fend for himself, but he was too tired and too overwhelmed to ponder much the change.

  Yet he had one question he must ask. “How does the queen?”

  Was that a shadow that passed over Dermot’s face? “Well enough. You’ll see for yourself. I’m sure you shall have an audience with her once you have rested and eaten.”

  Nineteen

  One of the royal servants brought ewers of hot water and scented soap, and along with those a selection of fine clothes that seemed above his station. The servant bowed out after being assured that, no, Kieran most assuredly did not need help bathing and dressing.

  He took longer than strictly necessary with the water and soap, but it felt so good to get clean after his long ride. The last inn had been two nights past, and the water had been barely tepid. The previous night he had spent in a farmer’s barn.

  He studied the clothes, rich cloth and fine, soft doeskin, all dyed in dark, expensive colors. All were elaborately embroidered. He had seen some of the courtiers surrounding Brona garbed so, and Brona had gowns equally elaborate when her handmaids and her mother’s counselors overruled her preference for plain stuff she could go adventuring in without worrying overmuch about tears and grass stains.

  In Kieran’s dim childhood memories, his father would sometimes wear such clothes to play at important feasts, but Kieran himself had never owned such outfits. He reached out to finger a tunic of deep red velvet trimmed in black and stiff with gold embroidery and beadwork.

  He’d feel like a child playing dress-up. On the other hand, he had been offered these clothes, and didn’t want to offend, especially if Dermot was right and he was to be called before the queen.

  He chose breeches of black doeskin, wondering as he pulled them on how a tanner made leather so soft. He considered the red tunic, the finest of all that had been brought for him to choose from, but he would feel utterly ridiculous. The black with silver thread might make him look more sober, older—and more like he was going to a funeral.

  He wished Alban were here. Surely he had some experience in such things. Though the Leas were far less formal, Kieran had seen a painting in the halls of the Leas castle of Alban dressed in white and gold finery, and so he knew it happened on occasion. If nothing else, they could laugh together at the absurdity of a simple fool dressing up like a peacock.

  Except Alban would not be welcomed here, would not even be safe.

  He chose a tunic of deep forest green that seemed like a midpoint between the extravagant red and the somber black, and braided back his hair in the way that Brona said made him look older.

  Odd. He had been less nervous of audiences with Toryn than he was his own queen. Was it because he cared less what Toryn thought of him?

  The central bell that called the clock in the Shadowed Lands had just finished striking the first bell of the afternoon when one of the royal maidservants came in bearing a tray of fruits and cheeses, bread and cold meat. He knew her, for she sometimes waited upon Brona, but couldn’t for the life of him remember her name. Which didn’t much matter, as she’d never had more than two words to say to him, and those generally not friendly.

  Except this time, she looked him up and down and smiled as though she liked what she saw. “Her majesty will see you on the next bell, as it please you, sir.”

  The last was just a courtesy; all Scathlan were subject to her majesty’s pleasure. But it was a courtesy she wouldn’t have bothered with before.

  “Should you have need of anything else, sir, just send for me and I would be more than happy to oblige.”

  The words could carry more than one meaning; her smile told him she intended both of them.

  He returned the smile. “I shall keep that in mind.”

  “Do.” She gave a saucy twitch of her hips on the way out of the door.

  Alban was lost to him. The Leas prince would, please Grace, find someone suitable to his station that would love him as he deserved. I
n the meantime, he had to get on with his own life.

  Soon. Not tonight, but soon.

  Kieran ate with a restored appetite, but could not do justice to all that had been given him. The clock struck quarter to the hour, and he stood to go. Should he bring his harp? It had not been requested, so he left it behind, though he would have liked to have something to do with his hands. He knew his role as a bard, it was comfortable. This audience with the queen put him on unfamiliar footing.

  As soon as he stepped into the antechamber, Brona pounced on him in a flurry of words and hugs. “Oh, Kieran, it’s so good to see you! I’m glad you’re home. But Mother, oh it’s so wonderful. And so terrible. You must do something. You’re a bard, surely you can, you must do something.”

  So terrible? What? And what did she mean him to do?

  But Riagan, the queen’s chief counselor, opened the door to the throne room, and bid him enter, so there was no time. Riagan, counselor by title, had ruled in the queen’s name since she had fallen into her long sleep. Though Brona had reached her majority in the last year, she had made no move to challenge him, and indeed the matter of rule would have been difficult enough to resolve with the queen neither dead nor truly alive.

  None of that mattered now that the queen had awakened.

  Except when he stepped across the mosaic tiles of the chamber floor, his feet echoing in the stillness, it felt so like those visits with Brona to the sleeping queen that he wondered for a moment if he had imagined all that had gone before.

  The room was still dark, the only illumination the four braziers set around the queen’s dais, making shadows flicker at the edges of the hall and causing the illusion of movement at the corner of his eye. It made him want to turn his head to be sure the carved stone figures had not come to life. On the throne on the dais in the center of the room, the queen still sat, unmoving, skin so pale against her severely braided raven locks.

  Then she smiled—she was awake! But the smile chilled his blood for reasons he could not say.

  It was only that he had never seen her move before, surely that must be it.

  “Come, my bard, my champion. Come into the light and let me look upon you.”

  He approached the dais and knelt, some dimly remembered etiquette coming to the fore, court manners unneeded for so long in a nation with a slumbering queen.

  “You are the very image of your father, young man. Has anyone told you that?”

  Mutely, he shook his head as all his bard’s skill with words fled.

  “They should have. He would be very proud of you, I am sure. He served me well, though he had the temerity to disagree with me from time to time. You would never disagree with me, would you, my young bard?”

  He shook his head automatically, although he heard his teacher’s voice in his memory, telling him that a bard’s duty is to bring truth to light. We may flatter, to make truth more palatable, we may spin stories, telling lies in service of a greater truth, but ultimately it is to the truth that we owe allegiance.

  “You will serve me then, as he did, and have a place of even greater honor in my court. You awakened me from my dark dreams. You came when I called. And now you will aid me in crushing my foes!”

  “Your foes?” he dared to ask, blood running cold in his veins.

  “The Oathbreaker and all his kind, who were responsible for my long sleep.”

  “Your majesty, the Leas prince is the one who helped me to wake you. Without him—”

  “You will not contradict me!” the queen shrieked. She took a few deep breaths, as though mastering herself. “You are young, I know, and naive, and the Leas are capable of seeming friendship.”

  “But, your majesty, Prince Alban—”

  “I will not hold your mistake against you. There will be plenty of time for you to see reason while we prepare for the war that is to come. Go now. We will have a feast in your honor tonight.”

  Kieran turned and stumbled out of the room.

  Brona clung to him in the antechamber. “You see?”

  He did see. He saw war ahead, fields of broken bodies, Scathlan and Leas alike. Saw warriors like Trodaire turned from sense and honor by the bitterness of loss, saw another generation like his own growing up orphaned and angry and hating.

  And he would be responsible.

  He let Brona lead him over to a padded bench that stood against one wall, and they sat down together.

  Waking the queen was supposed to make things better for Brona and for his people. Was supposed to make it possible for old wounds to heal.

  Brona leaned into him. “It’s like, for her, the last battle was yesterday, not years ago.”

  He put an arm around her shoulder. “Surely Riagan and the rest of the council will make her see sense.”

  Brona let out a choked sound that might have been a laugh or a sob. “The council either encourages her or panders to her. None of them are brave enough to stand against her. And Riagan is the worst of the lot.”

  Kieran looked around to see if Riagan was still in earshot, but the chief counselor was nowhere to be seen. “What profit can he see in another war?”

  “His own, most likely. Riagan, I fear, has become used to ruling, albeit in my mother’s name. If he can keep her distracted with thoughts of revenge, he can continue on pretty much as he has been.”

  “I have a hard time believing he would let another kinslaying war happen just to maintain power.”

  The Leas had always accused his people of being cold and unfeeling, and he had always denied it.

  “It’s no worse a reason than a broken engagement.”

  Startled, he sat back. For all the long, lazy conversations he and Brona had shared, he realized he had never really known her opinion of the last war. He only assumed it was the same as his, the same as the rest of Scathlan society.

  For that matter, he had only assumed that all his people felt the same, though any who disagreed would have been wise to keep quiet about it.

  At the moment, he could not say that Brona’s comparison had been unfair.

  “Can’t you talk to her?” he asked. “You’re her daughter. Surely she’ll listen to you.”

  Brona shook her head. “Her eyes may see me as grown, but in her mind I am still a child. She pays no more heed to my words than if I were still prattling on about my dollies.”

  “I tried to tell her that Alban was the one who helped—”

  “Alban?”

  He hadn’t even had a chance yet to tell her about his adventures. “Oh, Brona, so much has happened to me since I went away. I barely know where to start.”

  He told her about his fall and the broken harp, about being healed by the Leas lord and his son, about the book and the mind-link and friendship with Alban, and finally about how they worked together to heal the queen.

  “Oh, Kieran,” she sighed when he was done. “Trust you to fall in love in the most difficult, troublesome manner possible.”

  “What?” He hadn’t used the word “love,” and he certainly hadn’t told her about that night in the crystal spring. “I never said—”

  “You didn’t have to. Does he love you as well?”

  He took a deep breath, trying to stem the tide of memories that swelled at that one simple question. “Yes.”

  “Why ever did you leave him to come back here?”

  “The queen called. It was my duty to obey.”

  “You chose duty over your love?”

  How could she be so surprised, and more, disappointed? “I am a loyal subject, as my father was before.”

  “And if war comes?” Brona pressed.

  He closed his eyes against the thought. “Maybe it won’t.”

  “But if it does?” she asked in that tone that told him that she would not let the matter drop.

  The thought cut him like a dagger. “If it does, then my place is with my own people.”

  “Are you so sure?”

  Why must she make him question things that should not be ques
tioned? “Yes.” No.

  Twenty

  Light from the torches gleamed on the gilded statues and glinted off the golden tableware. Though the season was early, garlands of spring flowers looped along the walls, perfuming the air with their sweetness.

  Being the guest of honor at a formal feast made Kieran far more uncomfortable than he had imagined. He could not perform, for one, and sitting silent while another, lesser musician played made his hands crave his harp. He thought to use his position, seated at the head table with Brona and the council, just two seats down from the queen, to make his story known to those who should hear it. Surely if they understood how gracious and generous the Leas had been, how he could not have wakened the queen without their help, that war could be averted.

  But every time he tried to speak of his time with the Leas, Riagan or the queen diverted the conversation. He thought that, since he was the guest of honor, the others at the table might show some interest in his travels, but they confined their questions to his time with the mortals, when they addressed him at all. Brona tried to help by asking about the Leas, but the others talked over her as though they had not heard the royal princess asking a question.

  He had hoped that he might have a chance to regale the assembly with the story of his journey—he was, after all a bard, telling stories was part of what he did—but apparently his role as guest of honor did not allow him to perform.

  For all that it was supposed to be a celebration, there was little laughter and even less merriment, and Kieran remembered with longing the informal gatherings with Alban’s cousins.

  Pleading exhaustion, he excused himself as early as he could and returned to his room, where he lay awake, staring into the shadows of the ceiling and missing Alban.

  #

  “Alban, there is news that might interest you.”

  Alban, leaning on the balcony that overlooked the road to Scathlan lands, turned at his father’s words. He made an effort to appear interested. Kieran was gone forever; brooding about it did no one any good. It had been months since he’d bid Kieran farewell. Past time he acted like the prince he was.