by L. K. Rigel
“Now you’re just teasing me.”
“They weren’t always ugly,” Zoelyn continued. “It is said that once upon a time, the goblins were the most beautiful of the fae. Though, contemplating Prince Dandelion, I doubt it.”
A faraway look came over the abbess. Her features softened, and she seemed young again.
“Zoelyn, you didn’t,” Igraine said, scandalized.
“It was wonderful. And fun,” Zoelyn said.
“You… consorted with a fairy?”
“As I said, it was fun. And wonderful. It meant nothing—just as your visits with Velyn every third full moon don’t mean a thing.”
Igraine let her hair fall forward and stole a look at the boat on the lake. She should have known she couldn’t keep her trysts with Velyn from Zoelyn. “Well, they don’t.”
“That’s what I said.” Zoelyn grinned. “You’re a grown woman, Igraine. You have needs, the same as anyone. The wyrd celebrate life’s pleasures. And I’ve had no complaints from Velyn.”
“Abbess.” Igraine had an idea, and she wanted to change the subject. “If the fae are such a danger to us, shouldn’t we consult Elyse?” Igraine said. “They say she’s half fae, immortal—and she wears the oracle’s ring.”
“The wyrding woman of Glimmer Cottage?” Zoelyn spat out the words. “A chimera. A mere legend.”
“Mere legend. Then why are we forbidden to seek out what is only a tale?” Igraine said.
The abbess stared at the lake, her eyebrows knitted together.
“I knew it! Don’t look away from me. Elyse is real. Vain to deny it; I see the truth on your face.”
“You must never search for her, Igraine. Promise me. Yes. Elyse lives. And yes, the oracle’s ring was never lost. She wears it to this day.”
“But… that’s wonderful! What an ally she’d be. A faeling and of the wyrd.”
“No, Igraine. Elyse is diseased, dangerous. She should be both wyrd and fae, but she’s neither. She’s lost in a liminal hell.”
“Then we have to help her.”
“Impossible. Her prison is of her own making and can only be of her own breaking.”
“But—”
“A soul sickness infuses the boundary she’s set around Glimmer Cottage. And it’s a strong boundary too; no glimmer glass can confound it.”
“Then you’ve seen it—seen her?”
“Never her, and not even the cottage, not really. For as long as I’ve been abbess, from time to time I cast a locater spell for the ring. As did the abbesses before me back to the time of King Jowan and the tragic fall. It’s imperative that ring not fall to the Dark. The locater spells always swarm over the same place at the edge of the faewood and send back sickening feelings, overwhelming sorrow and rage. I’ve had to break the connection every time. She’s terrifyingly powerful.”
“Sun and moon,” Igraine said. “She must be overcome with guilt.” At the abbess’s raised eyebrow, she added, “Because she couldn’t save Galen and Diantha. They do still tell the story in Tintagos.”
“Grainie! Auntie! Look at me!” Wennie was feeding the swans from the rowboat, with Velyn’s arm around her waist to ensure she didn’t fall out.
Igraine sighed. In another life, she could have been happy with Velyn. Handsome, thoughtful, sexy, good with the magics. Loved children and animals. Why wasn’t that enough?
What made people go over cliffs for each other? Risk their families’ punishment and the gods’ wrath to be together?
“I don’t love Velyn,” she said. “But I would like to love someone one day.”
“You will,” Zoelyn said, but with a note of sadness. She spread Igraine’s combed hair over her shoulders. “You’re so pretty today, dear one. Your hair is as white as apple blossoms… and that gives me an idea.”
The abbess crooked a hand toward the orchard.
Wind gusted through the trees and carried a handful of intact blossoms over and dropped them on the carpet. Zoelyn tossed up a swirling, sparkling wyrd of silver and gold light, and the blossoms were caught up inside. One by one, they fell out of the wyrd and settled into Igraine’s long tresses.
Igraine held up a lock of hair with two blossoms clinging side by side. “How lovely!” The petals of one were rimmed in silver, the other in gold. When the light struck just right, they glimmered.
“Adornment for a glimmering girl,” Zoelyn said. “These blossoms will never fade.”
Velyn helped Wennie out of the boat and watched from the lakeshore until she reached the carpet on the grass. With a friendly nod to Igraine and an admiring nod at the flowers in her hair, he pushed off and rowed away, his muscles flexing in the sun.
“I might stay here at Avalos a few days, until Bishop Quinn returns to London.”
The abbess smiled the knowing smile Igraine hated.
“What? What aren’t you telling me?”
“You might stay. You might not.” Zoelyn shrugged. “Aeolios is blowing winds of change over all of Dumnos. We’re as powerless against those winds as the apple blossoms.”
“Grainie! Be a goose again,” Wennie said.
“Oh, a goose was too frightening for me. How about a falcon?” Igraine said. For Zoelyn’s benefit she added, “And this will be the last time.”
For her own benefit, she silently added the last time today.
Wennie cried hurray and ran in a circle, flapping her arms like wings, and Igraine once again pulled off her tunic and dropped it on the rug. She closed her eyes and willed the change. No model was necessary. She’d transmogrified into a peregrine falcon so often the animal was imprinted in her muscle memory.
“Yeeeaah!” she screamed out of her falcon beak as she soared up into the sky. This was the best feeling!
Wennie danced on the grass below, and Igraine swooped down, careful not to dip too low. In peregrine, she retained a strong awareness of her human self, but as Zoelyn had warned, the bird’s animus was strong. Wennie was small and so enticing. It would be easy to reach out and clasp that shiny red hair with a talon… No!
Igraine lifted higher and circled. She sensed Zoelyn’s discomfort, and their eyes met. The depth of the abbess’s emotion came through. Zoelyn wasn’t angry. She was truly afraid, and Igraine felt her fear.
That’s it, she decided. This would be the last time.
So she’d make the flight worth it.
« Chapter 10 »
The Iron of Dumnos
A full month after the White Lady disaster, Ross at last reached home. Bishop Quinn brought a retinue of bodyguards and servants, and the usual itinerant followers added to the train along the way.
At twilight the procession turned onto the Ring road, and Ross glimpsed the mist-cloaked towers of Tintagos Castle. Years of struggle and homesickness fell away, and tears of gratitude filled his eyes.
Quinn sent a servant ahead to announce their arrival, but it was unnecessary. The conspicuous party arrived to find an open gate at the castle keep and Lord Tintagos waiting to greet them.
“My son, my son!”
Ross flew off his mount and into his father’s welcoming embrace. But when he pulled back and really saw the man, Ross’s spirits dropped. In four years, Lord Tintagos had aged twenty.
“You’ve changed, Ross.” Father clasped son again in a great bear hug. “You’ve become a man.”
“I believe I have, sir.” Ross’s heart was full. It was as if the rift between them had never been, thank Sun and Moon.
“I must speak with you, Tintagos. Privately.” Bishop Quinn’s thin, entitled voice cut through the reunion’s joy. “And immediately.”
“Yes, yes. I’m sure it’s important,” the baron said. “I’ve ordered rooms prepared for you. Have a bath and a meal and a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow I’ll hear all you have to say.”
“But my lord—”
“Tomorrow.” With the word, the baron’s congeniality faded. “Tonight I would spend time with my son, just home after four years in harm’s way.”
Tintagos led Ross into the castle proper, his tone now somber. “Son, come with me. I would speak with you.”
“Privately and immediately?”
Lord Tintagos didn’t take up Ross’s joking manner, and they ascended the long-missed stone stairs in silence. His room in the topmost tower was unchanged. Servants were still fussing with bed linens and fresh curtains, but the baron dismissed them.
“Very good, very good,” he said. “Go now, all of you. Out. I would speak with my son.”
Standing beside the table in front of a welcoming fire, someone Ross was very relieved to see was laying out a meal of bread and meat and wine.
“Braedon.” He clasped his squire’s shoulders.
“I knew you’d make it, sir,” Braedon said. “I opened a cask of the Bordeaux wine for your homecoming.” He nodded at the flagon on the table and took his leave.
Ross stabbed a piece of venison and greedily bit into a mouthful. “Ah… I’ve dreamed of this,” he said. “So much better than the tough-as-leather stuff at Windsor.”
He stepped up to the window casement and drank in the view with his eyes. Home. There was Igdrasil in the distance, as enduring as he remembered, stark black in the darkening night. Beyond, the Severn Sea lay blanketed in swirling mist. Taking in the view, savoring the well-roasted Dumnos venison, he began to believe he was really home.
“I detest that man,” the baron said.
“You can’t mean my poor squire.” Ross came away from the window. The fire’s warmth was welcome, and he took off his cloak before sitting down with his father.
“No, no. Not Braedon. Prior Quinn—Bishop Quinn now, I see. Full of importance.” The baron filled two pewter goblets and nodded with satisfaction after his first taste of the wine. “Why does he need to speak to me privately?”
“No honest reason I know of,” Ross said. “Aethelos is dead, and the king wants to stop any speculation about his new heir. Henry sent Quinn to secure your oath of fealty to Mathilde as his successor, but that oath must be signed openly and witnessed.”
“An oath which I will give. What do I care who sits on the English throne? One spawn of House Normandum is no different than another. As long as they leave us in peace.”
“Perhaps the church has something else in mind,” Ross said. “I heard grumblings at Windsor. Many in the church are against Mathilde.”
“They fear a queen will be weak,” the baron said. “Therefore the oath, to bind them. I’ll sign it tomorrow night at a banquet before my knights and be done with it.”
“I believe it’s the opposite, my lord. They fear Mathilde will be strong and she’ll continue Henry’s secularization of the government. Henry has shifted power to the barons’ hands at the church’s expense. Authority over markets and land use. He’s transferred jurisdiction over temporal matters to the assizes—”
“All that, I agree with. The local lord should settle disputes over men’s pigs and sheep. Leave Rome to the care and judgment of men’s souls.”
“But Stephen is the church’s creature. Quinn didn’t spell it out on the road to Tintagos, but in Windsor it’s widely believed that Stephen would restore Rome’s authority. I think Quinn means to ask for your secret promise to support Stephen when the time comes.”
“Preposterous. It would mean civil war. What’s to be gained?”
“In chaos, the righteous don’t prevail by their goodness. Victory goes to the powerful,” Ross said. “I saw it in the holy land. The church wants civil war precisely because it will weaken the monarchy, no matter whose head the crown sits on.”
“House Normandum is strong,” the baron said. “Their vassals are everywhere.”
“All great houses rise and fall. The church is forever.”
His father finished his wine and replenished both goblets. He ran a frustrated hand through his hair, as he always did when confronted by a choice with two bad solutions. “Then you would side with Stephen?” he said.
Ross’s heart swelled. “You ask me?”
“As I said, Ross, you’ve come home a man. I see experience—and a little wisdom—on your face.”
“Then I’ll tell you. In a perfect world, I’d prefer Mathilde,” Ross said. “Church and state should be separate. Render unto Caesar and all that. But if it comes to a conflict, there will be chaos and brute power will win. That brute power is the church, and the church has chosen Stephen.”
“You speak like a lord, son. I don’t argue with your logic. You may well be right on the politics of the matter—but not the honor. I won’t dishonor Tintagos by betraying my king. If Henry begs my fealty, he will have it.
“Stephen will win.”
“Then let’s pray Henry gets another heir and lives twenty more years to see the boy crowned.”
The baron attacked his meat, finished with the subject. His position was understandable, honorable, and wrong, but this wasn’t the time to argue.
“You wanted to tell me something, father?”
“About Sir Yestin’s daughter…” The baron put down his goblet.
“I know what you’re going to say,” Ross stopped his father. “The journey from London was a long one, made longer by Bishop Quinn’s running commentary on how to improve Dumnos and Tintagos in particular. He was incensed to learn on his last visit here that a wyrding woman was called to attend a knight’s daughter during childbirth.”
“I’m sorry, Ross. It was a cruel way to learn of the girl’s death.”
“Quinn took pleasure in recounting the details. I don’t know how many times he called her a whore before he recalled that she’d named me as her child’s father. If it weren’t a mortal sin to kill a priest, I would have run a sword through him.” If I’d had a sword.
“You wouldn’t have had the chance. Sir Yestin would have already done the deed—if, as you say, it were not a mortal sin.”
Ross shook his head. Such was the paradox of Dumnos. Men begged for a wyrd, and in the next moment they feared eternal damnation by the One True God. On the Vengeance, he’d watched a crewman from Penzance pray to Aeolios for a good wind, then kiss the cross hanging from his neck.
“Still,” the baron went on, “she had no business spreading her legs without first being taken to church.”
“I didn’t know about the child, or I would have married her.”
“And I would have forbidden it. You’re duty bound to make a better alliance.” Lord Tintagos squinted. “Great gods, son. Did you love her?”
“I did not.”
“Well, then. At least there’s that.” The baron again filled their goblets. “It’s a terrible thing to know the great love of your life is gone forever.”
“Still, you should have married again,” Ross said. “One son hardly ensures the dynasty, as Henry has sadly proven. And you deserve companionship if not love.”
“When they told me your mother was dead, I went to Igdrasil and prayed to Brother Sun and Sister Moon to take me right then and there. If Elaine was in heaven, then that was the only place for me. I couldn’t face life—even the idea of life—without her. I wanted to throw myself off the cliffs. But then God would separate me from my Elaine through all eternity for my sin.”
Again the paradox. The baron believed simultaneously in the wrath of God and the love of Brother Sun and Sister Moon—and could speak of them both in the same breath. Ross envied his certainty.
“The gods do work in mysterious ways,” Tintagos continued. “They close off one path and show another. I resolved to live on, to be a good lord, and to serve my people. One day I would see her again. In the moment of my resolution, they brought you to me, a sweet and holy consolation. Elaine’s son. My son. Our joy. My delight. In that moment I knew what the gods want from us: Above all, do not despair. Though sorrow comes, look for good in the world.”
Tears filled the man’s eyes; Ross saw them through his own. The baron grunted and Ross cleared his throat. They both bit into more meat and washed it down with gulps of wine.
After some silence, Ross said, “Quinn is dangerous. I’ve seen other cruel and vindictive men, but this one takes pleasure in cruelty. He refused to pray over the infant’s body and enjoyed telling me as much.”
“Aye, the sooner he leaves Tintagos, the better,” the baron said. “But let’s not dwell on the dead, not when my heart is so full of gratitude for your return. It will ease your mind to know Sir Yestin prevailed upon the wyrding woman to secretly bury the tiny body in sacred ground. Your little daughter is with Brother Sun and Sister Moon now.”
“It does, father. It does ease my mind.”
Little daughter.
Ross let out a sigh and tucked the loss away into a corner of his heart. He must get on with the business of living lest he be consumed by the fire burning in his head.
That fire had crept into his soul during the crusade, a low-burning flame of desolation and woe and hopelessness. It was a fire of infinite longing, and while it burned there was no room in his world for joy.
“Ha!” Lord Tintagos let out a sudden, boisterous laugh and rubbed his chin. “I have just the thing. I’ll order the Great Wyrding moved to the dining hall. Hang the tapestry right opposite the head table, in Quinn’s direct sight.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Won’t he be amazed to hear the story of King Jowan’s wyrding woman, Frona? The greatest wyrder of all time, how she transformed our iron ore and made possible the Dumnos steel coveted by every cook, smithy, and warrior.”
As Ross laughed with his father, the thought of Dumnos steel again reminded him of being manipulated to give his sword to Henry. A sickening insight grabbed him and fed the fire in his head.
There was more to it than the mere gifting of a sword.
Sarumen was a brilliant tactician, always several steps ahead of the game. If civil war came to England, both sides would be evenly matched, with no advantage in the number of men or fortified castles.
