by Morgan Smith
It was as I’d expected. For the most part, the spidery script shaped no letters I recognized, and there were odd diagrams and designs that meant nothing, less than nothing to me.
Until I got to the last few pages. Much of what was there was still in that strange writing, but interspersed with that were words I could read.
I wished, afterwards, that I hadn’t done this. I wished that Eardith had chosen some other place to hide her secrets. I wished that Ilona had not insisted I learn to read at all. But you can’t forget the things you know, just for wishing , can you?
Chapter Twenty-Four
Why did we come? I came for Ilona’s sake, or so I say now…but what Ilona wanted, I still am not sure of…power, aye, and maybe just the thrill of it, the risk, the danger…That was Mall as well, too young to think of danger as aught but a spice, and too vain to think of the damage she could do. Or mayhap she did think, and liked it - she was always fey and dark, despite the pretty looks and the silvery laughter…
The men, well, they came because Ilona willed it. Eoghan could not allow Ilona to have more power than he, that would have changed it all. And because he was strong in the craft: we needed him, we thought. And Kevern came because he was besotted with Mall. What she felt - well, who knows? They were bound close by dark things afterwards, and much woe for them in store. If he had not been there, would things have turned out differently? But in the end, it was Ilona who moved us. Left to our own devices, would we have gone so far along that road? I no longer remember.
It matters not. We came and we did the things we did. Things that cannot be undone.
I wish I had never found those scraps of parchment. I wish, having found them, I had burned them, or taken them back to Braide and given them to Reverend Mother. But I was like Ilona then, stubborn and arrogant, the pair of us, thinking only of ourselves and what we could do if we could harness the power in that place, perform the rituals of Gathering and take hold of wider knowledge than the fat, middle-aged teachers we served would allow us access to. And then bringing Mall into it - what were we thinking? Of ourselves, still: the ritual works best with threes…
We took precautions. We were prudent. We did not go near the Well, we stayed in the ruins of the little temple below, thinking the bonds that held the evil would not let that power loose so far. We were fools.
It isn’t that he took hold of our pathetic little crafting and twisted it. It isn’t that he saw the easy darkness in Mall and took her - as I said, the ritual works best with threes…Eoghan and I, for all he was married to Ilona and her already three months gone with child, and Kevern with her - rage manifest as passion as he watched another mounting Mall and she for all to see not shy about it, so beautifully loathsome as that creature was…And then the quarrel with Eoghan and the flash of the sword, the blood, the blood, and then the long years of secrecy and silence in exchange for the power we’d gained - this was the very least of our wickedness.
We loosed the bonds. Oh, with the power that filled me I closed the circle once more, quenched the fire with words of power, willed every ounce of Goddess-good within me into every additional binding spell I could think of, and he was contained.
But he had seen that he might almost be free. Free enough to work his will on others: we showed him that much, and more besides: He saw the crack in his prison walls and it gave him hope…
And so I stayed. First I said it was to be sure the bindings would hold, and made it seem as if a few days or weeks would suffice, but I knew better. Ilona was too intent on using what she’d gained, she didn’t think past that, happy enough, in the end, to be a grieving widow holding lands in charge for her unborn babe and ruling as Lady of Gorsedd and priestess together. She didn’t think then, as I did, that I would need to stay always, to watch over Rhwyn Vale, and be sure that he never slipped those bonds again.
Now I fear even more. I grow older, and I feel the power draining away. What will happen when I die? Will the spells I wrought die too? Will he lure others into his evil? He has managed, I think, to snare some others over the years, even before we came, but those were little evils, petty, malicious things. And the year Reverend Mother summoned me back to Braide, something happened then, I’m sure of it. I could feel something was wrong, but then, it was a good harvest, and no ill winds…
***
It’s her, I’m sure of it, as sure as I can be. Tall, pale, straight as a reed, with her mother’s green eyes, always careful, always watchful, and yet so hard and hollow, as if she had never in her life given way to sadness or passion before, and knew not what it was that ailed her.
And yet more strangely, I feel no evil in her, not but what she speaks aright when she says that there is blood on her hands.
Yet she is that thing’s spawn - how can there be no sign of it? How can it not scream to me like the demon’s own mother in the darkness?
***
Too much death.
Was it caution or cowardice that stopped my lips?
Or my arrogance, perhaps, even now? It blinded me, convinced me the hand of the Goddess moved these things, persuaded me that I could keep her here and run no risks. That I might learn more and so prevent a greater tragedy.
Like calls to like, or so the ancients said. Is he calling her? Why, then, does she not hear him?
With every death, I feel him grow stronger. It has to stop.
***
Well, and I am a bigger fool than I ever thought.
He saw her. Why did I risk it? He has seen her, and doubtless he knows now what she is.
She seems unchanged, which is odd. But he did not truly reveal himself to her…
The lore says nothing on this. Nothing to the point, at least, only that it is blood he needs, and the right blood at the right time, but no more than that.
Did he get wind of her, somehow, and draw her to him without her awareness? Used her somehow, to gain some power and stray so far afield?
Or does he only suspect? Perhaps he does not yet know for certain.
But how could he not?
***
I can feel the darkness, closing in. He is working his will somehow here, and yet I cannot see how this can be. Not through her, I am certain of that now, or he would have moved against me long since. Night upon night, darkness upon darkness, and no sign at all.
And that babe of a priestess they sent me, what good can she be? Knowledgeable enough, I grant you, but as frail and fragile as an unbaked clay jar. The first tumble and she’ll break, I warrant. Or go running back to Braide to let us amend things here if we can.
***
How can he be gaining so much strength now?
Have I kept the bonds, performed the rites, sought out all the learning I could, only to fail at the end?
There must be a way to keep us safe. There are Workings, I know, dark things, so Ilona says, that might contain him. Rites could be performed. Words could be said, that could give us the strength to overcome him.
She knows less than she thinks, though. I know of even darker paths…
But I keep thinking there must be another way. A way not so perilous, not so fraught with risk for all of us, if we should fail.
***
Now I know how stupid I’ve been. I did not see it, would not see it, I let myself be blinded by friendship and guilt, and shared secrets. How long has she been hugging these evils to herself? How long since she gave herself up to the darkness?
I see the truth now, too late: she will not rest, no, not until every ounce of power belongs to her, she would risk anything, sacrifice anything, pay any cost for this.
As must I, to stop her.
Mother forgive me.
***
This is the lore and the history we were taught, listening since babyhood to singers and storytellers in every hall, at every hearth, all across the land.
Long ago, we had been the Kingdom of Averraine, a great and powerful empire, and our ancestors had been mighty in Craft. But they had been less
mighty in wisdom, it seemed, and so the Mother had destroyed their world, and started anew, building us up in righteousness on the ruins the ancients had left behind. There was still potential, but it flowed not in those great rivers of Power to places where any adept might partake of it, but through one’s devotion to Her, in rituals and prayers and invocations, and only to those She chose to Gift with it. It was never so strong again, nor as easy to hold or shape, because she loved us too well to ever allow us such dangerous powers again.
And she had cursed the ones who had led to our undoing.
Late at night, the tales were told: shivery, chilling descriptions of how their strongest practitioners had been chained to places that had once been the sites of their greatest achievements. How they lived in shadowy half-worlds, gnawing on the bones of their faded glory, hating Her, hating us, and longing to be free to wreak some horrible vengeance and drown the world in blood and evil.
Or so the holy ones and the bards say. I think it had been a long time since I’d put any stock into the myth of old Averraine’s greatness, at least. People like to imagine a past filled with heroes, ever ready and eager to set things aright.
I thought it might be an uncomfortable way to live.
But the darker things…
Incarnates. Dark shadows of nightmares and madness, sucking out the life from anyone unwary enough to be caught in their web? Creatures that neither lived nor died? Those things?
I believed in them. I knew they were real. I had always known. And now I knew why.
Chapter Twenty-Five
It was dark up there in the loft; my little candle had guttered out long since. I kept having to remind myself to breathe, and I was trying, periodically, not to be noisily sick.
Once, I thought, there had been a time when I had dreamed I was not Kevern’s child. Once, I had been young enough to imagine that my true father would suddenly appear to claim me, to carry me off in glory, far away from all that misery. Children love those ancient, hopeful tales.
I hadn’t been a child for a long, long time, but in this moment I would have given everything I had ever had and more, to have claimed Kevern as my father still.
The Mother loves her little jokes.
Every creak of a roof beam, every rustle of wind in the eaves, every far-off jangle of muffled sound seemed as loud as a shout in my ear.
And all I could think of was how the Penliath folk had feared and hated me, and made the warding signs, how unfair it had always seemed, and how right they had been to fear me, after all.
Gradually, I recognized that it was growing late in the day, and that my absence was sure to be noticed by someone eventually. I couldn’t think anymore.
I had considered a thousand plans and schemes, a thousand fantasies and theories, and one by one I had discarded them all. I had tried to find something solid to cling to, some reason to believe I was not the very essence of an abomination, and I had failed.
It no longer seemed to matter. Nothing did. I had arrived at a state of numbness and complete uncaring.
Be a rock. Be a stone wall. Be no living thing.
And after a while, I shoved the little book into a corner, into the dimness of the eaves. There was still, at the far end, a kind of makeshift set of footholds Gair and I had used, and I used them again, and walked out the little side door into the long end of the courtyard and back up into the hall, just in time for the evening meal.
I passed Cowell, who was standing close to one side of the doors. He frowned at me, puzzled, and then looked away. I ought to have felt something then, at least, and it seemed odd that I did not, but all I did was mark that, yes, it was me he was spying on, and set that knowledge away beside all the other horrible, unfathomable, furtive things I now needed to be aware of.
I skipped the more honoured place I’d been allotted near the king’s table and found a couple of my soldier friends from the bath house. I ate the plainer fare that was served down there. Even had I ever been the sort to care, it wouldn’t have mattered. Nothing tasted like more than sawdust, and the ale might as well have been brackish water for all I knew of it. My companions joked and laughed and I heard my own voice and my own laughter and I could not, ever afterward, remember a single word of any of it.
My companions had plans. They invited me along. I could see, in my present state, no reason to refuse, and so I floated along on a little tide of soldiers, out the door, right past where Cowell still stood watching, still not even trying to hide it, across the yard and out to the gates, down the lane to Rhwyn village, where the innkeep was preparing to enjoy a windfall business that she would likely not see again in a seven-year.
It was crowded with people sporting the red and gold of the House of Machyll, and Rhwyn’s best ale was flowing freely. I recognized the captain who had lost so many copper coins to Guerin the night before, but few of the others made more than the mildest of impressions on me.
The raucous greetings and soldiers’ catchphrases rang out around me, well-worn insults and jests so old that even my grandfather would have groaned in boredom to hear them repeated. I sat on a bench with my back to the wall, mechanically swallowing tasteless mouthfuls of ale on cue every few minutes, and let the heat and the noise wash over me, letting it all dull my senses.
It got easier. Somewhere along the way, the last scraps of my horror and revulsion had receded, leaving only the drumming refrain of a single question echoing through me.
Why was I still here?
All my life, I now saw, I had been manipulated, pushed and driven by others’ needs and desires. Everything I was, everything I’d done up till now, there was none of it that I could confidently claim as my own, or be sure that any of it had ever been under my control. My very conception had served someone else’s ends and I was, when I got right down to it, more furious than frightened.
I should have run, three years ago. I should have run, that very first morning, and kept running, as far from Rhwyn as it was humanly possible to go. I should still run, because whatever evil was in me, it surely could do less harm the further I was from its maker. Something or someone wanted me here, and every grain of the glass longer that I stayed was probably a mistake.
The room seemed smokier than usual, stinging my eyes. I blinked away a moment’s blurriness, and took a sip from my mug. Running, I thought, but where?
Right now, I thought, there’s ale, and the safety of a crowd. How much harm could I do in all this? I saw that Lannach was here, too. I considered waving to him, but he wasn’t looking my way, and I was so tired. I saw that my mug was full again and managed another swallow.
I tried to think where I might run to, but I couldn’t recall, just then, why the where might be important, and thought, instead, tomorrow. Tomorrow would be time enough to think it all out. The girl beside me had brought out the dice and I was watching the bone cubes flipping through the air and clattering onto the table, over and over, and the bets were piling up…
I could vaguely remember, later, heading out back to the latrines on unsteady legs. I remember only hazily seeing Cowell walking towards me, and I remember beginning to ask him why in all the nine hells he was following me around like an orphaned puppy after the kennel-keeper, when he punched me, quite hard, in the gut.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Someone was pressing something to my lips, urging me to drink. There was a buzzing in my ears, and a sound like drumming, and my heart hurt, and then a trembling, and a light so bright it forced my eyes to close…
The voices were coming from far, far away, but they were getting closer.
Someone was hurt? Or ill? Yes, that seemed to be the gist of it. I wondered who. It seemed pretty bad, they were groaning faintly, quite near to me. I tried to focus, but my head was still swimming and the voices got closer still.
I turned my face towards the voices and promptly threw up.
That cleared my head a little, enough so that I could hear the words more plainly.
“Drunk.”
That was Lannach, his voice laced with contempt.
“Not her. Not like this.”
“Sure it is.”
Guerin’s face swam into focus.
“Caoimhe.” He looked concerned. I thought he ought to worry about the person whose groans seemed so close, though. They didn’t sound good.
“Let her sleep it off.”
“This isn’t how she is when she drinks.” He was pulling me into a sitting position and there was the clink of pottery against my teeth and the sweet taste of clear, pure well water on my lips. “This is something else.”
That was about the point when I realized the groans had been my own. My head was thick and aching, and my stomach hurt. I could see, though, that I was back in Rhwyn Keep, with no idea how I had gotten there.
I drank the water. My vision was clearing, and I saw that in addition to Lannach and Guerin, Arlais was here, too.
And Cowell. Memory returned in a rush. I sat bolt upright and said, incredulously, “You hit me!”
“Aye. Couldn’t think of another way.”
I fell back against the pillows again. No one else seemed to find his answer strange. Well, maybe Lannach. Yes, definitely Lannach. He had his aggrieved warrior face on.
“Don’t even think about it,” I said to him. “In a dozen years, I swear I only ever succeeded in landing a clean shot on him three times.”
“Twice,” said Cowell. “That first was a giveaway.”
“Oh, thanks a lot.”
“Well, why?” Lannach asked.
That was a good question. I was glad he’d asked it. I was fairly sure he wasn’t going to get an answer, though. Or at least, not a good one.
“We needed to get her out of there.” That was Arlais.
“And lucky you were there, too, lad. I’d have had a job dragging her back up here by myself.”
I had closed my eyes, but at this, I opened them again, wide. I didn’t think I’d ever heard Cowell admit to needing anything from anyone at all, much less to offer, however obliquely, something like a thank you.
