The Wanderer

by Wilder, Cherry;

  “You must bring those who live the Cup!” Shivorn cried. “Bring them the blessing of the healing water!”

  There was a little room to squeeze by the edge of the spell, to reach the mouth of the sacred cavern. The blue fire that had kept the Aldmen out did not repulse Gael. She stumbled up the passage, lit so unfamiliar and bright by the blue green flames.

  The Cup was in its proper place, in the niche over the Mother’s altar. She filled it from the font, from the blessed spring, and brought it out to her mother beneath the stars. Shivorn knew the ritual; she went from one body to the next, giving each a short sip.

  Gael was there when the Cup was brought to Mev Arun. Mev had suffered a grievous cut the length of her arm, even down onto her hand. Gael could not tell if her friend would ever again have the strength to hold any tool, let alone a sword. But her eyes were quiet, did not show her pain, and her uninjured hand, raised to steady the sacred Kelch, did not waver. “Thank you, mother,” said Mev Arun, swallowing deeply of the holy water, and Gael saw that the fate the Ruith Nighean had spoken was true, though nothing so unhappy as any of them had feared: Mev Arun would stay by the Holywell; she and Bress would have a child—perhaps even love, be married. Mev would become Shivorn Maddoc’s daughter, would give her the first grandchild. A precious gift had been granted, even as the Maddocs had suffered great loss.

  Gael squeezed closed her eyes, for a moment could not look upon the scene. She had only glimpsed her father’s face: the thin kind features, his curling hair, now set forever in stone. She could not look again. Later, when the spell had faded, she would look again, and see that the Goddess had blessed those features in their final moment with an appearance of calm and peace, but she could never come to believe it; in this piece of her life, she would never live to feel anything other than regret.

  Another of those they tended had received a different sort of gift. Merrin Treyes had been struck across the face with one of the whitethorn branches. Its imprint remained across his cheek, an almost pretty, seared pattern of leaves. When Shivorn brought him Taran’s holy cup, he deeply drank. Gael saw he was a handsome man. His manners reminded her a little of Auric Barry, something in the politesse of the way he wiped his mouth and looked past Shivorn and into the Wanderer’s eyes. Gael knew she was looking on a man intimate with the inner circles of the Lienish court.

  Like all those who had fallen within the Stillstand, he was still weak. Gael pushed him back against the turf, opened the clothes at his neck. Yes, here was the brass wheat ear, partner to the one she had taken from Steward Nevil at Thornlee gardens. She tore it free, and watched as fresh waves of nausea swept across the man’s features.

  “You have come from the Brown Brothers,” she said, accusing.

  His eyes went to her mother. Shivorn was already moving on to the next man, raising his head to the Cup. “If that is true,” he said in a faint voice, “you are the one who called us here.” His tone was almost mocking. Perhaps he still thought she would kill him, and wished to die unbowed.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It was the Tuannan who were in Athron, was it not? Did you think one such as Sebald would rest, before he found his vengeance?”

  “Sebald is in Blackwater Keep,” replied Gael, a little confused. “Or so goes the rumor.”

  Merrin Treyes’s gaze fixed upon the center of the Stillstand, which had not yet diminished, on the clustered figures of Oweyn Murrin and his bravos. “A convenient rumor,” he said. “While Sebald discovered the home of the one who had deprived him of his quarry.”

  Then Gael truly understood, and fresh sorrow swept her. In naming the Tuannan, she had sought to protect her winter home in Lort, sought to divert attention from her involvement with the Shee. Coombe—little Coombe had always seemed so far out of the wide world of the Wanderer. Now—she was the one who had drawn this bane down upon them.

  “What else has Sebald planned?” She did not believe the Brown Brother she had so briefly glimpsed in Athron, the priest with the warrior’s face, would stop at anything so simple as this punishment. “What else is that terrible man plotting?”

  Merrin Treyes closed his mouth, but Gael shook her head, would not accept his silence. “If you know, you must tell me. I have lost much this night, and committed acts such as I have never in my life desired. What does Sebald plan? Why would he risk a raid so deep into Mel’Nir? What can be his hidden purpose?”

  “What has started will not be held back,” the Aldman officer told her.

  She looked at him deeply. “That is not for you to decide; besides, I hold it for an untruth. Now—you will tell me what you know, or I swear by the Goddess, I will drag you back within that stone circle and leave you there.”

  Merrin Treyes was a brave man, but he looked within the circle, at the figures that lay there, so hunched and still, and Gael could see he did not wish to join them.

  “Certainly, I was given a trust when they elected me to come here,” he said, speaking carefully, choosing his words. “How else could I effect that which they desired? But I am not so far into their secrets that I can in truth tell you their greater plans or purpose.”

  “How were you to carry the Cup home?” Gael asked. “Across the land, or through the water? Who would have aided you on this retreat?”

  Merrin Treyes made a blessing sign and shook his head. “We were sent to destroy the Cup,” he said, “not flee with it.”

  Gael almost choked, but she could not disbelieve him, and she understood at last the great anger of the Ruith Nighean. She looked worriedly to her mother, still busy among the fallen men, and wished the Kelch was already safely back inside the cave. “Now you have seen the Cup,” she said to Treyes. “Can you tell me in truth you believe its destruction would be a blessing? To Hylor—to Lien—to anyone?”

  Merrin Treyes lowered his eyes. “I am not a fit judge,” he said, though she saw by his reaction that the Kelch’s magic had indeed touched his heart. When he looked again at Gael, his eyes were steady. “This, however, I do know: Kelen, King of Lien, does not have another moon of life left to him. Until Prince Matten reaches his majority, there will be a regency government. But Matten’s birthday is not far away, and the Brown Brothers do not trust him. It is whispered throughout the ranks that among the Brother-Advocates, there are hopes for a war, a war that will prolong the regency—for it is not fit that a new King be crowned while a Kingdom is embroiled in battle.”

  “Who will Lien attack?” Gael cried. “The Land of the Two Queens?”

  “You might think so,” Treyes said, almost grinning, though not happily. “But you would be wrong. No, here lies their madness: it is whispered among the fighting men, those who would be sent to face battle, that the good brothers are planning an attack on Mel’Nir. There have been plaints from King’s Bank, you see; a matter of some estates that were divided when Mel’Nir ceded Lien those lands. There are those in Lien who make claim that, in the south, Lien’s Kingdom has yet to find its proper border …”

  CHAPTER XVII

  IN THE BORDERLANDS

  Gael stood on a large uneven plot of ground—some of it paved with ancient stone, some of it green and fresh. The sky was dark, tinged only on its eastern rim with the pale light of predawn. Here on the High Plateau, the chill of autumn was in the air.

  She looked to Druda Strawn—her sole companion, save for Tomas and the dog Bran. He nodded—the time had come—Gale raised her lance, uttering the words of the spell, the last magic Luran and the Shee had passed to her.

  This time there came no sound, no crackling in the upper air: only a gentle shimmering in the predawn sky, a darkening, a thickening of shapes. There came the tall familiar double aisle of elms, the rough walls, ancient and half-corroded, that marked the outer boundary of Tulach’s gardens. Within, Gael saw the plantings of the Shee, all in silence, mysteriously making their place: pushing, or setting aside, the rougher grasses of the high ground.

  At the end of the avenue between the tal
l elms, there stood Tulach’s portal: two great wooden doors surrounded by a frame of ancient stone—the house itself, the yard, did not follow the gardens and the wall through to the land of the dark folk. Beyond, all that was to be seen was the ground of the High Plateau, stretching empty into the distance. As Gael uttered the final words that fixed the portal and gardens in this dark dimension, in the world of mortals, she felt a great weight lifting from her shoulders. This was all as Luran and the last of the Shee had desired.

  “I never thought to see this place,” breathed Tomas in a low, reverent voice, breaking at length the silence. A whisper of wind struck the avenue of elms, delicately moving their branches. Their tops were touched gold by the early morning light; all else yet remained in darkness.

  There was a movement at Tulach’s portal, half the great door opened: the old steward, Hurlas, the tiring woman, Widow Menn, others, half-Shee and dark alike, all those who had been called to people the house in the Eilif lords’ last days. They were waiting for Gael Maddoc, had somehow known of her approach. Hurlas held a great ring of keys, ready to lay them in the new chatelaine’s hands. Gael looked at Tomas. “I had not expected this honor,” she said shyly. The path, the avenue between the elms, loomed before her.

  “Tulach is a house of retreat,” he replied. “After what has passed in Coombe … far safer that the Wanderer at least should make her home here, even if Gael Maddoc choose to dwell in other hearths.”

  There was inescapable wisdom in this. Gael turned to the Druda. “Will you lead the way?”

  She could not read her old master’s face, could not tell if he was happy or sad. He made the Mother’s sign, nodded, and took the first step forward.

  Tomas held the horses for them, and they all went down the quiet avenue together. Through the portal, they caught their first glimpse of the yard beyond, the massive walls of the inner keep, the rambling outbuildings. Dawn opened, and the sun caught them just as they passed in through the great doors. To Gael’s astonishment, the light that was on the elms was there also in the yard of New Tulach, as if the same sun were in the sky in both places. Beneath this pale morning light, everything within Tulach’s yard appeared pale and unnaturally clean, even scrubbed on its dark stony walls. Gael did not doubt that this was a last working of the Shee, before the hall, or at least its entrance portal, was tied to the dark folk’s world.

  Druda Strawn stood tall before the people of the house, raised his strong voice, and spoke a blessing:

  “Let us all give thanks to the Shee, the Bright Folk, who graced our land of Mel’Nir in Hylor with their presence for so long! Let us walk in, with respect, remembering those lost ones who have sailed into the sunset, following a golden thread.”

  The vast hall was much brighter than Gael had ever seen it, with lights and fires upon two hearths and all the casements and unglazed openings in the fabric open to the sun. So they went slowly, in company with all the mass of Tulach’s people, exclaiming sometimes in wonder, through all the grand staircases and the secret stairs, the galleries and the chambers and the workrooms, the rooms containing books and other treasures. Bran the dog kept close by them and was strange and sad. He understood that the Shee had gone—Gael would have said he missed Luran his former master a little; he often came to her and Tomas for reassurance.

  After a time, she and Tomas wandered alone down to the rooms deep under the Great Hall. They admired the fine, clean storerooms full of grain, winter vegetables, parsnips, carrots, turnips, and so on. There was a wine cellar next door and great tuns of ale; there were exotic foods, earth-apples or potatoes from the Lands Below the World and sacks of rice from the wet fields in Rift Kyrie.

  “In any other keep,” said Tomas, “some of these rooms might have been prison cells, part of a dungeon.”

  “It is too much,” said Gael, looking around at the vast riches, the plenty. “I have called Gwil Cluny—he has agreed to come, with members of his family, to help keep all this ordered.”

  “A fine plan,” Tomas said. “Folk of the half-Shee will perhaps best understand the ways of keeping Tulach’s heritage fresh.”

  Seeing all this food, hunger seized upon them. They made their way out of the cellars to a certain room, up the stairs from the Great Hall. It was one of the rooms she would claim for her own in New Tulach; it was Little Hearth. A small brazier had been lit for the beginning of autumn, and there was Bran, lying on the hearthrug, perfectly at home, waving his tail when Gael and Tomas came in. There was a tray of cold food, covered, upon the table where she had seen so many things appear by magic.

  After a time, the door opened, and in came Druda Strawn; he had a look that Gael remembered—concentrated but not solemn. He carried a wide band of golden brocade, woven with Chyrian symbols.

  “To crown the day,” he said, “let us please the Goddess and the Gods of the Farfaring and the Shee who have moved on …”

  There was some rearrangement. The Druda stood with his back to the hearth, with Tomas on his right and Gael on his left. Then he spoke to them, softly and privately; he bound their wrists loosely with the golden band, and so they were married. The two silver rings with which they had plighted their troth in the tower of the Swan lay on the tabletop, and, when the band was loosed, they exchanged the rings a second time, and so the ceremony was complete. Tomas strode round the table and kissed his bride. Gael was crying and laughing together, trying not to let herself wish that her mother was here, not to think on how her father might have felt … Bran, catching at least the happy part of their mood, bounced for joy, leapt up to lick her hands and face.

  When they had got Bran settled, Tomas drew a package from the deep pocket within his scholar’s robe. “Your family could not be with us today,” he said seriously, “but look, see what they have sent along, in honor of our wedding!”

  This was hard for Gael, for she knew that her parents had been long in planning for this moment, even if the Druda had not been able to carry along all the contents of the troth chest they had prepared for her. Now there was a bracelet for Gael and a set of ivory pens for Tomas, and with these fine things there was a sheet of parchment, in fact a broadsheet. The ballad was called THE WANDERER—Battlemaid of Destiny. The Druda glanced at it, smiling, and wondered if it might be sung to some air. Gael looked, too, and did not know whether to laugh or cry.

  “Who writes such stuff?” she cried.

  “Hush, wife,” said Tomas, grinning. “There’s great deal of knowledge in here.”

  So Tomas read out the first verses of the ballad:

  O Wanderer riding through the world,

  Tall Kedran, bold and free!

  With Chyrian banner wide unfurled,

  How great your destiny!

  Rulers of Hylor know her well,

  The Bright Shee know her worth,

  But it is for the common folk

  Our Wanderer roams the earth!

  By Wildrode and by Wennsford Town,

  By Silverlode she goes,

  The Wanderer heals ancient wounds

  Brings mercy to her foes …

  Then Gael indeed began to cry, for all she could think of was the battlefield that yet lay outside the Holywell, the frozen figures of stone, her father among them, who once had been men. Yet this must be Bress’s gift to her, Bress her brother who must think no more of battles, must take his father’s place to guard the Cup … Tomas did his best to comfort her, while the Druda stood back, a certain sadness in his expression.

  “There is one more chamber here you must visit,” said Coombe’s Guardian-priest, when Gael at length recovered herself. Then Gael saw upon her chatelaine’s chain a certain key, ancient in its appearance, that she had not previously beheld—a last, softly jangling tap of magic.

  “What is this room? Where is it?”

  They descended to the Great Hall; Hurlas the Steward was waiting for them. He bowed his head, pointed out a faded tapestry. Gael saw then that the cloth was a mere magic shade; a word, and it had vanis
hed, revealing a broad passageway beyond, deep cut into the earth, ancient. This time, Gael led the way, descending the wide, shallow steps. The walls were illuminated to either side with the bright light of magic, with beautiful swirling patterns. At the bottom of the steps was a beautifully carved door. The lock yielded to Gael’s key …

  This was the shrine of the Shee, the “tigh-Aoraidh,” a place of worship. There was no altar, only a place for kneeling and a simple wooden table beneath a high window, cased with precious colored glass, leaded in images of blue summer flowers and green leaves. Gael caught her breath: waiting on the table was a black lance, a black so fine it truly did absorb the light, bound round with cracked golden tape, and beneath it a sheet of parchment:

  This is the Krac’Duar, the sacred Hallow of Mel’Nir. It remains here that Gael Maddoc, the Wanderer, a woman whose blood balances the old magic of the Chyrian people with the new strength of Mel’Nir, shall come to hold it.

  Ghanor, the Duaring King, lost this sacred Hallow for his people through the matter of the foul slaying of Mel’Nir’s last true Champion, Simeon Red-Letter, called “the Fair, the Gracious,” son of Ethain of Clonagh, and Effan Swordmaster, a dark man of the Great Eastern Rift.

  This parchment was signed, in a firm straight hand:

  Lady Ethain of Clonagh, ever-in-mourning

  Gael settled her hand upon the weapon. The ring of Lady Annhad flared like a star, then died down. She read again the parchment: this Simeon Red-Letter would have been Lord Luran’s half-brother. The sad story was not known to her—perhaps Ghanor himself had suppressed it, along with the name even of the Duaring Kings’ great Lance, of Mel’Nir’s own Hallow.

  Grief overcame her. Her own loss, her father, was too fresh. Hot tears stung her cheeks, and she was filled with doubt and sorrow. One man’s death—was that the source of all these decades of doubt and sorrow for her land, all its hardships? War-leaders contending for power, kings who did not have the power to rule them? Yet she could not know, would never know, for the Shee had gone, and this was all the explanation left behind them. Could she have served the Shee any better? How could any dark ones, any mortals, have gained their understanding, their love? And what was the meaning of this, the weapon in her hand, their repayment for her service?