by L. K. Rigel
Igraine tried one last time. With her hand on the doorframe, she glanced back over her shoulder. “Sir Yestin, your daughter will likely die, but I believe I can save the child.”
“They’ll both likely die, witch.” Prior Quinn recovered his cold superiority. “The child is in extremis. He must be baptized immediately when born.”
Brother Marrek stepped between them. “Igraine, I’ll walk you down.” He nudged her over the threshold and closed the door behind them.
“Marrek, tell them,” Igraine said. “You know I can help.”
The monk took her elbow and guided her to the stairs, giving no answer until they reached the ground floor. The chair before the fire in the great room was empty. Old Mrs. Thresher must have been sent to her room.
“This is my fault,” he said. “Prior Quinn would have left for Sarumos—for London—hours ago if I’d kept my mouth shut.”
“What did you say?”
“Since he arrived, he’s hounded me about Tintagos, people who might have influence with the baron.” Marrek worked his rosary through his fingers. “Somehow I have no will to refuse the answers. He asked if the baron supports unification with England. That I didn’t answer.” Marrek shrugged his shoulders. “But only because I know nothing of politics.”
“I wouldn’t know either,” Igraine said. At least she wouldn’t know the politics of Lord Tintagos or of his son.
But a true Dumnosian would keep the country intact—allied with England, not her subject—though it seemed less and less possible. Though the Conqueror had died a generation ago, the power and presence of House Normandum had grown. Henry was the second of William’s sons to hold the throne, and his son, William Aethelos, would inherit the crown when the time came. Norman rule was stable in the east and had seeped into the western lands.
Resistance was folly.
“I had just introduced him to Sir Yestin when Mrs. Thresher came with the news about Rozenwyn. She said you were here at the farmhouse, and Prior Quinn became exceedingly agitated.”
“But I’ve never seen the man before today.”
“Not you in particular. Mrs. Thresher said a wyrding woman. That’s what set him off. He insisted on accompanying Sir Yestin, and here we are. I don’t like that man, Igraine. Even if he is a man of God. There’s something… dark inside him.”
Marrek was Igraine’s age. She’d known him since she first came to live with Kaelyn. He was a sweet soul, had always seen the best in people, and he turned away from Igraine now as if sick at heart.
“What is it, Marrek? Tell me.”
“Prior Quinn said… Oh, Igraine, those London orders are greedy. They want… everything. They want…”
“They want Dumnos to become an English vassal, I know,” Igraine said. “To people like us, what does it matter who rules?”
“Not that—well, yes. That,” said the monk. “But more than Dumnos. They want dominion over the spiritual realm… all the spiritual realm. They mean to wipe out the wyrd forever.”
Igraine gasped. She was friendly with the clergy of Dumnos. She’d traded techniques with their healers and shown them how to avoid fairy circles and troop trails. Prior Quinn was a different sort altogether. Political. Willful. Dangerous.
“And I’m almost convinced they mean to harm the fae. He asked…” Brother Marrek glanced at the stairs then lowered his voice. “He knew about the faewood. He asked me did I know where to find a portal.”
“He must know how dangerous that is.”
“I don’t know how it happened,” Marrek said. “Words… spilled out of me, against my will. I told him.”
“Marrek, you astonish me,” Igraine said. “You know?”
“Everyone in Tintagos knows about the faewood. It’s why we avoid it. It’s hard to say where the veil parts between here and the fae realm, but part it does. People have gone into the faewood and come out again ten, twenty years later wearing the same clothes and not aged a day.”
“Stories.”
“Truth. It happened to my aunt’s brother’s cousin’s friend.”
“Why would the prior risk an encounter with the fae?” Igraine said. “It makes no sense. You must have misunderstood. Maybe he wanted to avoid the fae.”
Rozenwyn’s door opened, and Igraine and Marrek stepped away from each other as if they’d been caught conspiring against the natural order.
“Forgive me, wyrding woman!” Mrs. Thresher came down the stairs. “I thought I’d done right to bring you here. Wait there.” She disappeared into the back of the house and returned with a servant hurrying behind her. “Take a glass of wine before you go, and I have fresh bread for Kaelyn.”
Igraine accepted the pewter goblet filled with wine and the loaves, wrapped in another dyed green cloth. “I wish I could have helped poor Rozenwyn.” She dropped the bread into her potions bag.
“You did,” Mrs. Thresher said. “More than the man with her now. Here, Marrek.” Mrs. Thresher slapped a winesack against the monk’s chest. “That Prior Quinn you brought into my house wants you. Take this and go to him.”
“Yes, Aunt Margaret.”
Mrs. Thresher watched her nephew ascend the stairs then said, “Rozenwyn is a sweet girl, but no brighter than her father.” The bedroom door closed. “What was she thinking, giving herself to a man before he took her to church? And now in the poor girl’s hour of need, Ross is off seeking glory with—what is this now?”
Heavy steps sounded on the stairs. An ashen-faced Sir Yestin came down followed by the two clergymen.
“The child is dead. A girl,” the knight said dismissively. As if its sex rendered the death less tragic.
“At least you were able to baptize your grandchild.” Igraine was a true pagan and honored all spiritual ritual. “That must give you comfort.”
“No. No baptism,” Prior Quinn said. “The infant was stillborn. It never took its first breath.”
“Oh, no.” Mrs. Thresher let out a sob.
“But surely—”
“Formavit igitur Dominus Deus hominem de limo terræ.” The prior’s ferocity commanded them all. Even Igraine felt compelled to listen. “Et inspiravit in faciem ejus spiraculum vitæ, et factus est homo in animam viventem.”
Quinn sneered at their incomprehension.
“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.”
Igraine merely stared. She heard the words, but his meaning was incomprehensible.
“There was no breath, witch. No living soul. Nothing to commend to God’s care.”
“But my daughter.” Sir Yestin pressed Igraine’s arm, then pulled away as if he’d touched anathema. “Rozenwyn yet lives, wyrding woman.” A shade better than witch. “Can you save her?”
“I fear the worst.” What he asked was beyond her power. “It was a miracle she held on so long, and now she’s lost what she was fighting for.”
“Then if you can’t save her, ease her passing.” He stared at the floor. The bluster was gone. He spoke not as a knight, not as an ambitious man, but as a father. “And if you would say a word to the high gods?”
“Of course.” Never judge, Igraine. You can’t know someone else’s heart.
“Blasphemy!” Prior Quinn spat the word. “Your daughter is in the Highest God’s hands now.”
Sir Yestin ignored the monk and walked with Igraine to the stairs. Quietly, so that only she could hear, he said, “Take the infant when you go. Bury it in sacred ground.” He pressed a coin into her palm. “For a winding sheet.”
Mrs. Thresher sobbed. “The poor soul.” She glanced at the London priest as if she partly feared offending him and partly wished to.
“A mercy,” Quinn continued. “There’s no decent place in this world for bastard daughters of unchaste women.” Malevolent words. Uncalled for. Unkind. The contents of his heart were plain to the world.
Any deference Sir Yestin had held for Prior Quinn now fell away. “It�
�s time you were on the road, monk. You’ll be wanted—in Sarumos.”
“But it’s nearly twilight.” Prior Quinn tilted his head in surprise.
“Then you’d do well to avoid the faewood.”
Igraine shared a look with Brother Marrek.
“Or…,” Sir Yestin continued, with a nod to Igraine, his expression as impenetrable as Dumnos steel. “Or you could beg the wyrding woman for a protective charm to keep you safe on your journey.”
“Superstition,” Prior Quinn growled and fingered his rosary. “Blasphemy.”
“No, then?” Igraine returned his hatefulness with a false smile, though her nerves churned.
Quinn’s gaze penetrated her to her core. Lust flowed from the man, reaching toward her in invisible—but palpable—tendrils. He wanted her. Wanted to consume her as a spider consumes a fly.
She returned his gaze, intensity for intensity. For a brief moment, she considered throwing a wyrd at him. Something to make him itch all over. The thought made her smile rather inappropriately—but then the hate in his eyes made her blood run cold.
“Bah!” Quinn reeled around and stormed out the front door with Brother Marrek hurrying after him.
Igraine turned and continued up the stairs, forcing each step up to the dead and the dying. She held fast to the railing, flooded with misgivings. Stupid, stupid mistake!
She never should have provoked the wrath of such a man.
« Chapter 2 »
Daughter of the High Gods
THERE WERE TWO kinds of death.
With the bad kind, a soul-sickening emptiness would often hang in the air, the remains like nothing human, a lifeless carcass abandoned by its animating demon. Perhaps that’s what Prior Quinn had sensed in Rozenwyn’s baby.
But as Igraine opened the door, she sensed the good kind of death. The air in the room was charged with the mystic. A soul had come to play on the material plane, however briefly, and returned to heaven.
Kaelyn had taught her: A good death is no death at all, but the moving on of life everlasting.
Still Igraine’s heart broke for the infant, for what might have been. There would be no connection with another human being—life to life, spirit to spirit—in this life. This child would never feel her spirit singing with the joy of simply being alive.
Mercifully, Rozenwyn had fallen asleep, her knees spread at awkward angles and blood staining the bed between her legs. Rest was the thing for her now; better to let her sleep awhile before trying to clean her up.
The infant’s tiny body lay wrapped in a blanket on a high table near the window. Outside, Quinn and Marrek pulled away from the farmhouse in a cart drawn by a single horse, and in the courtyard Sir Yestin conversed with his squire, a scowl on his face as he watched the monks depart.
Igraine inhaled the cold but fresh, mist-tinged air and exhaled with a sigh. Weary and sad, she moved away from the window. Despite Prior Quinn’s Roman certainty, she would offer a prayer for the child’s soul. She withdrew the blanket covering the tiny face—and gasped.
Alive!
The baby lay there, still, eyes closed, but her skin had good color… and she was warm. Igraine pressed her ear against the tiny chest. A heartbeat. Breath sounds.
But that meant… Igraine moved to the bed for a better look. “Oh, Rozenwyn.”
Death had missed the child but taken the mother. Rozenwyn’s open hazel eyes had no spark. They stared at nothing. Igraine closed them. Brother Sun and Sister Moon, have mercy. Please receive poor Rozenwyn into heaven.
She returned to the window. Sir Yestin would like to know the baby lived. He’d mounted his horse and was speaking with Mr. Thresher, home from the fields. Easily within earshot. But something stopped her.
Would this be joyful news?
A girl. Prior Quinn was right about one thing. An illegitimate granddaughter had no value to a man like Sir Yestin. She wouldn’t grow up to wield a sword. She’d be no use in forming an alliance through marriage. He owned no farmlands where she could serve as a beast of burden. She’d be a daily reminder of what he’d lost, and a lifelong embarrassment.
The knight spotted Igraine in the window. His questioning look confused her, and then she remembered: he wanted news of his daughter.
She shook her head to indicate Rozenwyn was gone and said nothing about the baby. Sir Yestin hesitated, as if he might dismount and come up, but then his face hardened.
“Send my daughter to Brother Marrek for burial.” His instructions to Mr. Thresher carried up to the window. “I’ll pay for the winding sheet.” He rode away.
Igraine’s blood raced as she closed the shutter and let the curtain drop. She caressed the infant’s soft cheek, and the urge within her took hold like a call from the high gods. She swaddled the baby, then flicked her wrists. “Quiet.”
She placed the bundle on top of the bread loaves in her potion bag and gestured in a circle to set a boundary around herself.
“Obscure.” The wyrd wouldn’t make her exactly invisible. It would render her unseen, like a servant in the background.
Going home to Kaelyn could wait one more day. Igraine reached the bottom of the stairs unseen and halfway to the front door.
“There’s a fairy in the house!” Mrs. Thresher the elder called out from her chair by the fire. “Bring me holy cakes! A fairy!”
Igraine kept moving. No one noticed her but an old woman whom everyone knew was daft—and even that lady had it wrong. Igraine was no fairy. She crossed the threshold with her bag and its silent contents, walked past the farmer’s wife and through the front door with no qualms about her intentions.
Besides, Sir Yestin had asked her to take the infant to sacred ground. Perhaps the high gods had been speaking through him even then.
She would take the baby to Avalos.
Igraine crossed through the Threshers’ field to the road and on, retracing her steps from the morning until she came once again to Igdrasil at the cliffs, high above the bay.
The great oak tree was a source of great power—and the scene of the country’s greatest tragedy. When Igraine was little and still living on the island, she’d begged to hear the story over and over again. Here King Jowan’s only son fell to his death along with his bride to be, a princess of Sarumos.
If only the young couple had lived! Dumnos might yet have a king and be better equipped to resist England’s efforts at annexation. In the time since the tragic fall, Sarumos—London—had grown stronger, and Dumnos had not.
The sky was darkening and the mist rolled in over the bay.
“Help me, Igdrasil.” Igraine laid the bundle between two thick roots and opened the blanket, exposing the child’s chest to the cold November air. With one palm on Igdrasil’s trunk and the other on the baby’s skin, she prayed.
“Brother Sun and Sister Moon, hear me! Igdrasil, use me! Let the living power which flows through all things flow through me to this child. Give her strength to thrive.”
The baby began to cry, weak mewling sounds which then rose to a vigorous wail. Pure loving energy coursed from the tree through Igraine to the child.
“Thank you, Igdrasil.” Relief and joy and wonder filled Igraine’s heart. “Brother Sun and Sister Moon, thank you.”
Charged and renewed by communion with the world tree, Igraine stretched forth her hands toward the Severn Sea and cast a spell to call Velyn. The mist began to part where it met the water’s surface. Igraine slung her potion bag over her shoulder and gathered the baby into her arms.
She took the hidden passage down to the rocky shore and from the water’s edge looked up over her shoulder. The cliff’s height seemed so much greater from below. The fall must have been terrifying. Igraine pictured the prince and princess on their stallions, true black and snow white, racing away from the wyrding woman who’d been jealous of their love.
The lovers had ridden fast and hard in the dark night. Diantha, unfamiliar with the landscape, hadn’t known that Igdrasil grew at the edge of a cliff. Whe
n her horse plummeted over the side, Galen had followed, unable to bear the thought of living without her.
Igraine smiled at her naïveté. It had once seemed the most romantic thing ever. “What do you think, little one?” she murmured to the baby. “Will you or I ever know such love?”
Clearly poor Rozenwyn hadn’t. Perhaps she’d loved her Ross, but her love had not been returned. A man who truly loved didn’t put his beloved at such risk. He didn’t abandon her for another species of romance, a quest for glory in an unknown country.
Sir Ross of Tintagos had jumped off a cliff, all right—but for himself.
The boat emerged from the mist rowed by its muscled female crew and steered by its fierce-looking, tattooed boatman. “Here’s Velyn,” she said to the infant. “You’ll be home soon.”
The boatman strode to the bow of the craft and extended his hand. Igraine steadied herself on his strong forearm and settled in with the baby on the centermost bench. The boat set out to the open Severn Sea and into the mist.
Igraine had never loved, but she’d spent the past summer in an extended tryst with Velyn. He’d awakened her to the promise of love’s delights, and she liked him still, but their desire for each other had abruptly died with the bonfires of Nos Kalan Gwav, the eve of the first day of winter.
Silent, he stood behind her and guided the boat through the mist. She remembered his muscle and sweat and hands and tongue and the shimmering heat they’d made together. All wonderful and exciting and somehow necessary, but the passion of it was over. She would likely seek his touch again, just for the pleasure and release of it, no romantic notions involved. But Velyn would never ride off a cliff for her—and neither would she for him.
The baby fussed, and Igraine rocked her. “We’ll have a wet nurse for you soon, dear one.” Perhaps one day she’d tell the baron’s son he had a daughter alive in the world. Perhaps not. At all events, it was likely that Sir Ross would never return to Dumnos.
“You are a daughter of the high gods, and your name is Lowenwyn,” Igraine said. And she would ensure the girl’s life embodied the name’s meaning—shining joy.
