Dark Lord of Geeragh

by Veronica Geoghegan Sweeney

  “Go, I say!” He moved forward to the Mirror, his hungry gaze upon the images.

  “Your last hope of finding the Princess died with Ryin, Bress.”

  “Do you think I don’t know that? Leave me alone, I tell you!” He leaned against the Mirror, and flinched a little; when he moved, there was a smear of blood upon the glass where his hand had rested; it blurred the image…

  “Keep an eye on that road, boy!” Crorliss snapped at me.

  I did so - and there! A small cloud of dust… Even at this distance I could see it was a great caravan, far away, so far away. I turned back into the room to speak.

  “Stop searching outside yourself! If you faced up to the truth you may yet find her!” Crorliss cried.

  Do you think I haven’t tried, you fool?” Bress turned and to my consternation, picked up the hapless Crorliss by the front of his gown. “Thundering stars, you idiot - do you think I wouldn’t give up my own life - trade places with her - if I could bring her back?”

  “Boy -” Crorliss gasped with a kind of desperation, “Come here!”

  What now?

  But I came, unwillingly yet fascinated, and with that same, terrible hope that I had known before. Someone had a secret - did it mean I could be cured? Would I walk as straight and as tall as my father? I must. I must.

  Crorliss wrestled his gown out of Bress’s grasp. “Why are you so angry? You know I’m right! I’ve taken credit - and blame - time and again, because you can’t face up to what you are! But here’s an end to it! Stop the lying - to me and to yourself! I refuse to pretend to cure this boy with some tincture of blackberry or angelica ointment -” He grabbed me and thrust me towards Bress. “Cure him! If you want him to walk, cure him!”

  The Dark Lord seemed enraged. At me? At Crorliss? At the rather wanton Princess there in the Mirror, who had given him love and then disappeared? All I knew was that I would rather be on the highest, most snowy peak of the Southern Mountains than here with Lord Bress grasping me by the shoulders and holding me in a hard grip while he shouted, “Thunderous stars, boy, your leg is healed! Do you understand? You can bend your knee! Do it! And walk straight, dammit! Walk straight for your father’s sake! Walk straight for my sake!”

  In my terror I was tingling all over, but once again, as on that first day in the castle, in another turret room, surrounded by Crorliss’s cats, I felt the pins and needles, pricking at my stiff and swollen kneecap, the tingling burnt into a pain, and then subsided into warmth. All I could see before me was Lord Bress’s face, those dark eyes boring into mine, willing me, willing me, to be well.

  “Bend your knee.” He still held one shoulder, but stepped back a little. “Bend it!”

  “I can’t, My Lord!”

  “Bend it!”

  “I can’t!”

  “He can’t!” Lord Bress shouted with an anguished kind of triumph towards Crorliss.

  And Crorliss did a spiteful thing. Standing behind me, he walked forward quickly and struck me in the back of the knee. Not hard - but I was off-balance, and despite Lord Bress’s hand, I went down onto both knees.

  I glared up at Crorliss with hatred. What a horrible old man he was to be sure! I knelt there and looked at him with loathing.

  I knelt there.

  I was only vaguely aware of the voices in the room -

  Lord Bress running to the Mirror, “Damn you, Crorliss! She’s gone! She’s gone!”

  “An image? You’ll be satisfied with her image, for the rest of your life?”

  “Go away, Crorliss. Take the boy to the kitchen and feed him - just go.”

  “My Lord, it was a wonderful and terrible gift that you were born with. You try to pretend it doesn’t exist, blame it on all manner of things - including myself - but… when you want…”

  “I never wanted it… I never wanted it.”

  “You’re of the Race of Heroes - but you’re human for all that,” Crorliss persisted. “You took advantage of your gift, despite yourself.”

  In the silence that followed, it was Crorliss who helped me to my feet, and he almost smiled down at me. Lord Bress stood there, against the bloodied Mirror that showed his back, and Crorliss in profile, and a boy in dark livery, flexing a knee that bent for the first time in twelve years.

  Lord Bress looked tired as he gazed at me. I wondered how to thank him - what words could possibly be enough? - but he had turned away and now leaned both hands on the frame of the Mirror, his head lowered. “The army followed me because I wanted them to? King Ryin left High Geeragh because I wanted him to?”

  Crorliss looked at the broad back with pity, but did not speak.

  Bress said, “I told her to…” He gritted his teeth, and studied his own reflection there in the Mirror, as if he hated it. “I told her to go to hell - and she did.”

  “Perhaps it’s not too late, Bress,” Crorliss said, and moved to him.

  “How do you know?”

  “I… I have faith in your powers, My Lord.”

  And Lord Bress laughed. He laughed, and it was a terrible sound. Finally, he said, “You’re a fool, Crorliss. You’re all fools, all of you. Someone - one of you - should have had the wit, the courage, to kill me years ago.”

  “My Lord -”

  “Leave me!”

  Crorliss gazed at his ruler for a moment, then turned to the door. He then seemed to remember me, but checked himself from actually calling me to follow him out the door.

  When he left, he left alone.

  Lord Bress remained, leaning on the Great Mirror, his forehead against the glass, his eyes shut.

  A distant shouting of many voices came to my ears, and the faint, bright sounds of trumpets. Nervously standing there, flexing my new knee, I noted, softly, “My Lord, King Tiarn has entered the city gates.”

  Lord Bress looked around. “Are you still here? Go kick a ball or ride your pony - you have two good legs now, lad, go do whatever boys do. Just leave me.”

  “King Tiarn is here.”

  “I know.”

  “Shouldn’t you bring the Princess back? He’ll want to see his daughter, My Lord.”

  “Bring her back…” he repeated, moving to the window and looking out, though I doubt he saw anything. “Bring her back…”

  With slow steps he returned to stand before the Great Mirror. He looked like a beaten man. “Boy, I’ve tried and tried to bring her back. I think of her, there amongst the flames and the demons and the tortured souls -”

  “No… no!” I was appalled and wanted only for him to stop.

  He continued in that dead voice, as if he had not heard me, “I can’t see her there. My mind rejects it. I lose her image, knowing she’s in a place of horror - I can’t bear to see her, in order to call her back from there.”

  “Horrors… and demons… Must that be hell, My Lord?” I spoke from my own ignorance of religion. “I mean - who has come back to tell?”

  Lord Bress’s reflection half-smiled at me.

  I persisted, “Is that what you thought of, when you told her to go to hell? Did you want to send her to a place where -”

  “No! I wasn’t thinking at all! I was angry! I thought she only wanted me in order to find her way into the Garden! I was hurt! I wanted to hurt her as she had hurt me! And now to know… of what I could have done - should have done - all my miserable life -” His voice broke, “Do you know what hell is, boy? Hell is here. It’s here! I live in it!”

  His head was in his hands and he broke down, “Aninn!” he cried, and flung himself at the Mirror, as if he could disappear into it, reach for her through its shattered and glimmering shards. “Aninn…” he murmured. “Aninn…”

  A whirling shape appeared that glittered darkly, there in the Mirror, there at his side, and he did not see. His face was buried in his arm against the glass, and he did not see Aninn, there in the dark dress and green cloak in which I had last seen her. It was a vision, not only within the glass but without it, spun of the Great Mirror’s dark magic, and
I felt my heart would break at the trickery, that it could be so cruel. Yet I gazed and gazed; colour came into her cheeks; the dark gems that trimmed her dress caught the light; she became real, so real, standing there so close to him that if he had moved even an inch they would have touched.

  Her gaze was upon him, one hand went out to touch the dark hair…

  No illusion, not at all, and I went to move forward to her, to wrap my arms around her, so overjoyed was I to see her there, there before me at last.

  But she looked over at me, and gave me that brief, quick smile, and shook her head. I stopped. I stood there and watched as she touched his hair, his face, and said, “Bress,” very softly.

  He looked down at her, stared at her, then with a cry he dropped to his knees. He wrapped his arms about her body and and buried his face into her belly and he wept.

  She bent her head over his. “I never left you,” she murmured, her hands in his hair. “I never left you.”

  I fled.

  For all I had suffered, for all I had done to try to save her, that was all I merited, a brief smile and a shake of the head; a silent plea not to approach her, but to leave her alone. With him, who had caused all this heartache in the first place.

  At the foot of the small staircase I saw Crorliss hurrying along the corridor. He would find out soon enough that the Princess was back; as for myself, I just wanted to get away. I knew the castle so well, by now, and dodged down another corridor that led to the stairs to the Great Hall.

  But here, too, there was no escape. I was running down the Great Staircase and stopped abruptly, in alarm, almost falling - for they were there below me, the courts of Geeragh and Foyrr mingling, knights and princes and princesses and ladies and gentlemen and, of course, the centre of all the fuss, the richly-dressed, upright and elderly King Tiarn.

  “Where are they?” he was demanding of Poli and Burdock, impatiently, “Making an entrance?”

  “Your Majesty, we must explain -”

  And then Burdock, who had looked up in desperation, changed his expression. Then they all looking up - towards me, poised on the stairs, as if I had been hurrying, rushing towards them.

  Forgetting herself, “You have news?” Poli demanded.

  “News?” King Tiarn might be old, but he was quick. “Why should there be news?”

  “I…I…” I was trapped, there on the stairs, with the great personages of two countries, already suspicious of each other in this new and fragile truce, looking up at me expectantly. Where was their lord? Where was their princess?

  I swallowed hard, and announced in the loudest voice I could, “My Lord Bress of Geeragh, and Her Highness Aninn, Princess Royal of Foyrr!”

  All the eyes swept upwards, to the head of the staircase above me, and I came quickly down the stairs and began to push, as politely as one can push princes and princesses out of the way, through the crowd. I heard the King say to Poli, “They’re waiting to make an entrance and an announcement, that’s it, isn’t it?”

  I saw Poli give a dazed smile at the King’s enthusiasm, and I could bear no more. Through the crowd and out the doors I ran, and down the castle steps, wanting to escape, as I had been fleeing a vision so many months before, when I had found her.

  But now she was not there for me to run to, she was behind me, in his arms. And I heard the fanfare, then, and heard the ringing voice of the herald announcing their names as I had done. Linking them together. As I had done. As I had done.

  I don’t consciously remember heading for the Garden, nor why I felt I could try the little ring handle in the door and expect it to turn, but it did. Why, after all that had happened, was the gate to the Private Garden not locked?

  Was he afraid she might appear there, and find herself locked in? Or was he coming and going there so frequently - it being the last place he had seen her - that he no longer bothered to lock the door? Or perhaps, with her gone, he simply no longer cared.

  I flung myself down upon the dead grass and sobbed. The ground was very cold, but I did not care, I did not care about anything, and I never would, again. She had gone to him, touched him, embraced him, and had given me only a brief smile, and a rejection. She had not cared for the sacrifices I had made, the dangers I had faced. Her love was all for him. While I…

  I stiffened, and looked up, struck by a thought. I had followed Lord Bress into the madness of that long quest, not for him, but for Aninn, and not for Aninn, but for my love for her. That I could run, now, from the two people who meant the most to me, was a sure proof that I had done all this, not for Bress, or Aninn, nor for Geeragh, but for myself.

  Before me, the dry heads of the Freeflite were a silvery-grey. Still, they rang together, and every now and then one would explode with a dull pop and a sad little cloud of blue would trail upwards into the cold air, like smoke from a man’s pipe.

  What had I expected, that I would rescue her, and she would love me? That she, a Princess Royal, would wait another seven or ten years and be my bride? Had I been that foolish?

  The ground was very cold indeed. I sat up, and went to the tree where I had been hidden, the day that Aninn disappeared. It was a kind of evergreen, and when I climbed into its branches they closed around me, and I was, for a while, in my own, small, green world. I sat there for some time, swinging my legs, both my legs, and gradually my blood warmed a little, and my head cleared. I loved them. I loved them both. But I was not, I realised at last, as important to them as they were to each other.

  What would I do now? Go home to my father and mother? Yes, but not for a while, and not for long. Like Bress and Aninn, I knew they belonged together, Liardin and Fenvar, and I had a place in their lives, but already I had moved so far beyond that little cottage on the beach.

  Perhaps I would grow up to be a sea captain like my father. Would that be what he would want for me?

  But I already had my future mapped out for me - I was squire to Lord Bress, and he had said that when I was old enough and strong enough to bear arms, then I would be a knight of Geeragh.

  Would he let me go, if I chose to leave?

  And did I want to go?

  And to where?

  I had a sudden memory of the great, bright playroom at the manor house of Midor and Daira, of the warmth that had reached out towards me from every member of that family.

  I wanted to go back there. This is what I would ask of the Dark Lord of Geeragh - would I ever be able to cease thinking of him as this, deep within my mind? - I would request that I go to stay with the household of Mirdir, if they would have me, and study with Eenis and the other children, perhaps learn a little of the law, amongst other things, for it was a household where book learning was prized. And I would play in that nursery with all the other children, and when the spring came, I would like to run in the meadows with them, and race my little mare across the fields, with the other children and their ponies. I would like to be young.

  When I re-entered the castle, the gaily coloured crowds had dispersed to their apartments. Feeling lighter of heart than I had for some time, I took the stairs of the Great Staircase two at a time. Near the top, I passed Burdock and Groundsel and Speedwell coming down.

  “Ah, young Fen,” Groundsel growled, “hasn’t stopped running since his leg was fixed.”

  “Young Sir Fen,” Burdock clipped me over the ear good-naturedly in passing, “ How long do you stay with us before you’re off on another knightly errand?”

  From Speedwell, “And did you earn your spurs on your adventure with Lord Bress?”

  I glanced sharply at each face. In their laughing eyes I saw that they knew nothing of what had happened, and I was pleased. To them I was simply an upstart page boy, ripe for teasing. I grinned and tried to make my way around them on the stairs.

  “He’s off on another quest already - cream cakes in the kitchen, eh, Fen?”

  “Yes, a little closer to home, this time, lad,” From Speedwell. “And will you give us a little warning next time you go off to
save the kingdom?”

  “Oh, he doesn’t need us,” Burdock declared, “He’s only home to change his socks before heading off once more, the fate of Geeragh in his hands - isn’t that right, Sir Fen?”

  “Oh, one day,” I said. “Not just now. But one day, I might.”

  Their laughter followed me up the great staircase, and my own laughter joined theirs. It made the Great Hall ring.

  oooooOooooo