Dark Lord of Geeragh

by Veronica Geoghegan Sweeney

  Ahead of me, Lord Bress, his sword half-drawn, his horse plunging and rearing, had four men with their swords already pressed against his chest, his side, his back.

  There was an odd moment of calm. From somewhere above us I heard the roll of thunder. One of the men, in my sight line but off to the side of the track, looked up, and as his hood came back I saw his hair, a matted mane the colour of orange peel…

  Rough hands had pulled the reins from my hands, had pulled the lead of the packhorse out of my grasp, and my little mare was led forward to stand beside Lord Bress’s mount. We were both, then, hauled from our saddles. I struggled, not only against them, but to relieve myself of my gloves. I managed to get one off, but it was my left…

  “Are you alright?” Lord Bress managed. Two swords were pressed to his throat, but they had, feeling perhaps that they now held the upper hand, taken the dagger from my neck. I was still held roughly from behind, a heavy arm looped through my elbows.

  “Yes, sir…” I managed.

  I could hear men behind us, exclaiming and squabbling over the contents of our packs. I said to Lord Bress, “I… I know them. These were the men in the Forest of Lirr…”

  Pilfeen must have heard my words. He moved closer, and addressed Lord Bress. “You are him, aren’t you? We’ve met before…In them plain clothes, with that beard and long hair, I hardly would have known you. The Dark Lord of Geeragh himself.”

  His men, behind us, stopped their quarrelling.

  Pilfeen seemed confident, he bounced on the balls of his feet, and grinned at one of his men. “Was I right, or was I right, Dodti? We’ll have access to the treasures of the kingdom.”

  “Aye,” growled the cowled figure of Dodti, “If this is the Dark Lord of Geeragh.”

  Pilfeen’s expression changed; he moved quickly, pushing his men out of the way to reach Lord Bress and to press his knife blade at Lord Bress’s throat. “Admit it. You are Lord Bress, are you not?”

  “No, he’s not…!” I cried, alarmed and very afraid.

  Bress said, coldly, his eyes not leaving those of Pilfeen, “What if I am?”

  “But he’s not!” Was Lord Bress mad? Could he not read murder in a man’s eyes even from that distance?

  There was another rumble of thunder. The man called Dodti said, “Pilfeen, I don’t like the sound of that…”

  One of the men holding me said, “If he is, we should hang him, right now.”

  “But he’s not!”

  “Shut up, Fen.”

  “It has to be him. Strangers - a man and a boy - travelling the breadth of the land, asking for some old man called Ryin? You were the talk of the taverns.”

  So they had been tracking us, all these miles.

  There was a horrid pause, Pilfeen changed the grip on his knife, in such a way that I was not instilled with any confidence, and continued, in a calm, detached voice that was at odds with his stance, leaning murderously up against Lord Bress, “Nothing I like better than killing gentry. I found with my very first that your blood’s no different from any peasant. Not blue at all, at all. Just red. And it’ll be a pleasure to see yours - though a quick end is almost too good for you.” His voice suddenly lowered, he said, “Geeragh used to be a peaceful place, a fine place, my grandfather tells me. His grandfather was a farmer, quite wealthy. And I - and my brother, here - are thieves. Because of the pestilence on the land. Because of you. Everything changed, because of you.”

  “They can change again. Things can be better,” Lord Bress said.

  “Will you listen to the man?” Pilfeen turned to his fellow brigands with delight. “Talking like an elected official now.” His voice as hard as gravel, he said into Lord Bress’s face, “You had three hundred years to make things change. You had five men’s lifetimes to make things better! You had your chance!”

  “Yes,” said Lord Bress, calmly, “I had my chance.”

  I think it was that calm acceptance in the face of Pilfeen’s dagger and despair that pushed Pilfeen beyond endurance. Perhaps he saw Bress’s placid fatalism as further arrogance, for he turned away, abruptly, saying over his shoulder to his men, “yes, you’re right. To hell with the ransom. Who’d want him back? Hang him.”

  Why did I say it? For I had not thought it through clearly myself, but, “The country was corrupt before Lord Bress came to power! The country was drained dry with corruption! He’s been doing his best!”

  Absolute stillness. Every set of eyes turned to me, and none more surprised than Lord Bress.

  And then he made his move. Bress ducked - for a big man he was very fast, and perhaps there was still some element of awe in that motley group, for their first instinct as he whirled away, throwing back his cloak, was to stumble back a step, as if mightily wary. It took a mere second, then they were on him again with fury, but it had been time enough - Bress’s sword was in his hands.

  One of my captors let me go and ran to join the fight…

  One man was down. It probably took only a few seconds but it will stay with me for the rest of my life - the sight of a man falling, his cloak billowing at the back with the force of Lord Bress’s sword through him - through him - and another falling backwards with a gurgle, spraying scarlet over the snow and clutching at his throat -

  Pilfeen gave a cry, “Dodteee!” a despairing wail of grief and anger - the very heavens seemed to answer with a bellow of rage, and to my terror the very ground shook.

  The man who fell had bright red hair…

  And I knew, then, that the brother of Pilfeen had been slain. Pilfeen half-moved towards the fallen man, but then, all caution forgotten, with another wail of grief, he rushed at Lord Bress, whose back was turned, fighting off three others -

  I am right-handed, but I hooked my left hand back and found the dagger, and pulled from the grasp of the man who held me - and I ran. Under the flying swords, with all the force of my weight and the dagger before me…

  He looked so surprised. That is my memory of that moment, and the roar that the heavens gave, and my feet pulled from beneath me, the world shifting, and the earth shuddering and sliding as if, for my actions, I was about to be swept to hell. And through it and part of it came the cracking of ice and trees and the world was filled with the roaring - there was nothing beyond it. I saw men sweep past me, their mouths open and no sound ensuing, and then I was being lifted away, away from them all, with the pain and a pressing weight and darkness around me and within me. And the roaring, going on, and on, and on…

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  A tiny glimmer of yellow light, far, far away.

  And I slept. And closer, now, the light - was it the same one? No, this one was blue, and it danced.

  “Most times…” a silvery voice said, “I think matters should be allowed to take their course.”

  Something brushed my face, and I started. It was cold, and almost slimy, as if a slug had walked on my nose. I tried to move, but could not. All I could do was watch the blue light hovering before me, and listen to the voice and the bells. “But…” and a sigh, “if I once become intrigued, I can’t prevent myself from taking an interest. You may think the life of an immortal could become dull - and you’d be right. You have become a hobby, of sorts.”

  The light retreated. I could see it clearer, now, a small and silvery-blue creature who danced on the snow and ice, but never seemed to touch its surface. It was speaking to a dark shape and I had to blink several times to make it out. It was Lord Bress, or at least his head and shoulders and one arm, and he lay very still. It was dusk - or was it dawn? - and so dim was the illumination from the pale sky and the little, lit creature that I could not see if Lord Bress’s eyes were open or closed.

  And then the pale blue, lissom thing leaned close to his face, and in its glow I saw Lord Bress’s eyes open, and try to focus on the creature before him. It said, “If you die, the Princess Aninn will become one of us. Halfway between mortal and angel, she will be one of my people. I’d like her for a friend. If I had an
y sense at all I’d let you die.”

  I blinked again, for I saw once more - was it close or far - a dancing yellow light. And then another. I closed my eyes, dizzy, confused. I head Lord Bress say, “No…”, heard the word, faint across the snow between us.

  “No?” The Shee leaned closer to him. “Perhaps not. There’s the boy, after all. He’d be cross with me.”

  This was really puzzling; the Shee were not known for giving any thought to the feelings of mortals.

  “I must… save them… I will…”

  “Oh, will you?” the Shee said with soft sarcasm. “And how will you do that? Your powers are not infinite, My Lord. As that unwashed rustic put it a few hours ago, you had your chance.”

  There was a pause; I saw Lord Bress’s arm move as he tried to rise, but he could not - like myself, I realised, we were blanketed in snow and ice so deep that we were more than half-buried. I, too, tried to rise, but in moving my head, the only part of me uncovered, a small avalanche of snow fell about my face. I shook it off, coughed it out of my mouth, but it lay about my head, my eyes, and now I could not see.

  “Boy, is that you? Fen?”

  My hoarse whisper did not carry.

  The Shee said, “There are so many places in the world I could be rather than here with you,” it was informing Lord Bress. “But there are people on the slope below, with lanterns and blankets and food.”

  “Where…” came Lord Bress’s voice. It seemed weaker.

  “First, an affirmation, please, My Lord, that you are not the centre of the universe. That you are not self-fulfilling. That you need others.”

  I could hear voices, now, calling at a distance.

  “Help me…” Bress murmured. “Help me…!”

  “A little louder,” the Shee encouraged.

  “Help me!”

  “Louder, please.”

  “Help me!”

  There was a faint cry from somewhere down the slope, at a great distance, perhaps it was only an echo.

  “Help me!” cried the Dark Lord of Geeragh, a sob in his voice.

  “Well,” said the fading voice of the Shee, as the gold lights and the voices came closer, “it’s a start.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Again, the Shee was brushing snow from my face; I was furious with it, turned my head away from its touch and, “Help him,” I insisted, “You… you… bastard!”

  “Tch,” a voice clucked. “Is this the language the boy learns under Lord Bress’s influence? I must speak with him - this will not do, it won’t do at all.”

  I must have been dreaming, thinking back over happier days, for there was the brown, shrivelled berry face of the kindly Zeequis bending over me, still shaking his head in concern and bathing my face with a warm, wet cloth. I tried to look about, behind Zeequis for the Shee, and for Lord Bress, but there was only darkness. It gathered in the corners of my vision, and tugged me this way and that, and then down…

  I was bounced, jerked, rolled and thrown about, and I cried out, feeling the snow and ice bearing me along, tumbling me over and over…

  “Fen… Fen, my dear…” My mother was there, in all that confusion, in a cloak with a hood trimmed with fur. She looked as if she were a great lady, and I told her so. “Arragh, Mam, you look like a great lady.” My voice sounded so strange, such a weak little voice, not like my own at all.

  I noticed, then, that I was still bouncing and rolling a little, but so was my mother. We were in a coach, a fine coach, warmed by the furs that covered us, travelling…

  “Where are we going, Mam? I have to find -”

  She was holding me, hushing me, the way she used to when I was a very small child. “Home, my dear one, we’re going home. Hush, now…”

  Against the jarring of the coach on the rutted roads, she held me against her, and the tears on her face were warm and wet against my own.

  But where is Lord Bress?

  Did I ask the question, as the darkness claimed me, or did I only think I did?

  It was all a dream, all, all a dream, for here was the little four-paned window with its view of two blues, blue sky above and blue sea below; and here were my clothes hanging where they had always hung, on the pegs along the wall, and here was the chest my father had made for me, and the toy ship he had carved for me, before I was born.

  And there was the sound of the sea on the black stones, and the cry of the gulls - and it had all been a dream, I thought, wonderingly. The Dark Lord, the Princess Aninn, Crorliss and Poli and Poli’s sons, the quest for the King and the Bishop and the Lord Chancellor, and the nightmare upon that mountain pass…

  “’Tis the lost rose of summer

  That blooms far from home,

  All her lovely companions

  Have faded and gone…”

  My mother was singing, there below the window.

  Carefully, feeling weak at first, and dizzy, I sat up, then clambered from my bed.

  And that’s when I saw them, hanging on the opposite wall, clean and mended - the jerkin and tights and tunic, black with the small silver falcon over the right breast: it caught the light and glowed as if it moved, just as my heart started a little in my chest. On the floor beneath the livery were my boots, cleaned and polished.

  I looked at them, and at my rustic tunic and trousers that hung on their pegs. What should I wear? Where did I belong?

  I reached for the livery of the Lord of Geeragh.

  I found my mother downstairs in the main room of the cottage, standing by the window. She wore one of her warmest shawls, and the fire in the hearth was glowing merrily, so the room was heated and comfortable, but she held herself as if she were cold.

  I came to stand beside her. She looked down at me and smiled, and touched my hair. “I heard you moving about above,” she said. “It was good to hear your tread in this house once more. I’ve missed you, Fen.”

  “I missed you, too.”

  “There’s another.” Just as I was about to question her, she had frowned out the window, her gaze out to sea. I saw what she saw, then, a ship, moving steadily up the coast, south to north. “It’s not the White Cloud.” She turned back to me.

  “You were about to ask me about the Dark Lord - he was hurt, but he insisted on bringing you home to me. And since then there’s been news from the Castle - a peace has been declared between Foyrr and Geeragh. The soldiers are returning - there was an amnesty, that was the reason no one came home from the Wars.”

  She looked at me with a numb expression. “They spared every man of Geeragh who gave his Word of Honour not to rise up against Foyrr again. And they were told the War would soon be over… They stayed, Fen, the soldiers, the sailors, rather than risk death by coming home and being hanged as deserters for refusing to fight. They settled in Foyrr, and were welcomed, and there they waited.”

  And I remembered Aninn’s words in the garden, as she gazed at Lord Bress with love and pity, There is no War.

  My mother was saying, almost dreamily, “I used to wonder… we all did… how some families - the woman, the children, aged parents - would sometimes vanish from their homes overnight, leaving everything behind. The rumours grew that the Dark Lord had kidnapped them, tortured and killed them…

  “But they’d received messages, these families - I’m sure of it, now - and they’d packed and left and travelled over the Southern Mountains, and were met by their menfolk at the borders, and began a new life, in a free country that wasn’t impoverished by war.” Her voice was very low, her gaze still upon the sea and the ship, now disappearing to the north, “But no message ever came for us, did it?”

  She looked at me, suddenly earnest, “Fen, I have been a bad mother. Can you forgive me?”

  “You were not a bad mother,” I exclaimed, startled.

  “I loved your father so much - we’d been married only two years when he went away. He filled my thoughts, Fen, to the exclusion of everything else. It wasn’t that I resented you for not being him - it was that he cast s
uch a long shadow that I couldn’t see you, Fen. I couldn’t see you.”

  “Mam… it’s alright…”

  “In these months alone, without you for the first time in twelve years - I saw what I’d become, saw how little I’d given you…”

  “Mam, you taught me everything.”

  “I held back my love and affection, Fen. I was saving it for Fenvar, hoarding it for Fenvar. Will you forgive me?”

  I could not think of the right words to make her feel better, so I said, “Yes,” and put my arms about her.

  We stood for a long time, watching the ships pass, then my mother seemed to come to herself, and almost laughed, and talked of breakfast - a subject very welcome to me - and we cooked oatmeal and made tea, and ate it together by the fire, as we used to do, all my life. But it was better, now, somehow, and despite her grieving anew for my father with this recent news of the War, she was easier to talk to. She told me, as we ate, of how she had come to High Geeragh to see me, to tell me how wrong she had been to burden me with that terrible demand.

  “it was odd,” she said, “what happened. The chatelaine, Polly? Poli? She welcomed me, and said she’d been worried at the length of time you and the Lord Bress had been away; she called the knights together, and they decided to go in search of you both. I asked to go too, and two of the knights - who were there on the beach that day and took you away, and feeling bad about it now, I’m thinking - they agreed I could come, and even arranged for a carriage. Poli was kindness itself, and gave me one of her own cloaks.

  “It took such a long time, Fen! We found the Bishop of Geeragh,” and there was no disguising the awe in her voice, “and he was so concerned for you both that he joined our search, and several of his parishioners left their farms - at harvest time! - and joined the search.

  “Sir Burdock, he kept sending messages to High Geeragh, but when they returned they all said that there had been no news of Lord Bress or yourelf in the capital. So we searched on.