by Terry Madden
The sound of laughter drifted in from the camp, belches and clattering bowls, steel on whetstone. Firelight made ghosts of passing men. Was this the price she paid for raising Nechtan? To die bound to his castoff flesh?
If someone came in and found his boot in her hands, it would be over.
With fingers sticky with drying blood, she finally pinched the hilt between her fore and middle finger and slowly slid the blade out.
When she had the hilt clutched in her fist, she knocked the boot away with her elbow, and repositioned her body to cover it.
She placed the blade between the rope and the body’s neck and worked her fists in a sawing motion. She couldn’t shut out the sound of it cutting the cartilage and muscle of his neck. It made her gorge rise, and if she’d had anything in her stomach, she would have lost it.
She was almost through the rope when a commotion erupted outside. Boots moved by quickly and the sound of rhythmic footfalls could only mean guards.
The knife slipped easily beneath the mail collar at Nechtan’s throat. Covering the hilt with her bloody fists, she pretended to sleep, but her eyes were open enough to see Ava step into the tent.
Chapter 25
Weary from the day’s ride, Ava wrapped herself in a spearman’s cloak and pulled the hood low over her face. It wouldn’t do for her men to know about this meeting with Lyleth. Fiach led her through camp, bustling with activity as they prepared to move north. She longed to give the command, to march into Cedewain and rend the walls of Marchlew’s fortress and remove Nechtan like the meat from a nut. But armies moved as quickly as the glaciers of her homeland.
“I’ve awaited your command before dealing with her.”
Fiach meant Lyleth, of course. He must have shared a tender reunion with his lover, tender enough that he saw fit to tie her to a stinking corpse. Since she left Caer Ys, Ava had been nursing a dark fantasy—she would command Fiach to strangle his lover while she watched, but realized with dismay that she needed him far too badly to test his loyalties in such a way.
“My command,” Ava reminded him, “was to capture Lyleth and Nechtan. Without him, she’s worthless to me.”
“He’ll bargain for her.”
“He’ll do no such thing, and suggesting it tells me you know nothing of Nechtan, nor do you know this druí you’ve bedded.”
He bristled predictably. Trusting him was sheer folly.
“Wait outside.” Ava took his lantern and entered the tent, pinching her nose with a cloth soaked in lavender oil.
Motionless, Lyleth lay pressed to Nechtan’s corpse as if spooning with her love, her eyes flitting beneath the lids. She pretended at sleep. Ava sat on a box of nails and clucked in mock disappointment.
“You can raise the dead, but you can’t sever a simple rope.”
“’Tis the simplest of ropes that bind us the fastest.” Lyleth’s dry croak resounded with a familiar contempt.
Ava held out the lamp to get a better look at Nechtan’s love. Shadows circled her eyes and she was pale as the moon, her wrists bloody and raw, but the self-righteousness Ava had known so well burned in Lyleth hotter than ever. Death would cure that.
“Tell me how you took the life of a guardian,” Lyleth demanded, meeting Ava’s eyes at last.
“With a spear.” Ava smiled. “Is it so hard to believe your green gods would choose me to lead your land?”
“Your soulstalker had a hand in the guardian’s death.”
“Irjan? She left me at the well called Mogg’s Eye with a spear and a net, for I saw the well in a dream, saw the guardian herself call to me. Shall I tell you a bedtime tale?”
“Tale indeed.”
“Irjan said my dream was a prophecy. So, I waited at the well, alone. As dawn came, so did the beast. A ‘water worm,’ your people call it, with a head as big as a wolfhound’s. It rose from the water, its eye meeting mine, and it waited. It never tried to flee, but gave itself to my spear, Lyleth. Irjan did nothing more than help me cleave its head from its body.
“You can feel the truth in me, druí,” Ava said. “I can hide nothing from you in my touch, at least, so Nechtan believed.”
Ava knelt down on the stinking ground and placed both palms on Lyleth’s face. The truth stained those sallow cheeks, burned away Lyleth’s defiance and left the color of despair.
Ava leaned close and whispered in Lyleth’s ear, “Your gods chose me.”
It was a moment to be most humbly thankful for. But only Lyleth’s tears would give Ava the satisfaction she yearned for, and these, she knew, the druí would never give.
“The same green gods who gave Nechtan back to you, gave me the life of one of their own guardians,” Ava said. “What can this mean, oh wise druí? Tell me. What spectacle have they set in motion? They’ve armed us both, and now sit back to watch us bleed each other dry.”
“Nechtan will be reaching Marchlew—”
“He stands no chance against Fiach and me. You’re sending him to his death.”
“None of us stand a chance against the Bear,” Lyleth said. “You think he’ll sit on his frozen throne while his daughter takes the land he’s lusted for his whole life?”
Ava had heard this rant before.
“I should thank you, I suppose. You saved me, Lyleth. Wedding me to Nechtan. It was you who gave me the life of an Ildana. But it was also you who taught me the shame of jealousy.”
“You loved him. There is no shame in that.”
“Love? You should lecture me on love, druí. You who seduced him. You who made a fool of him, and me. And now you summon his ghost as if the shame I suffered at his hands wasn’t enough.”
Ava stood and paced the short distance to the tent flap and back, her eyes on Nechtan’s bloating body.
Lyleth struggled to her knees.
“So in your rage,” Lyleth said, “you will destroy the land that’s granted you refuge from your father’s brutality? I know what he did to you—”
“You walked into this camp believing you had your talons dug into Fiach, that you could turn him against me—”
“Oh, Fiach will turn. He’ll turn when he sees the Bear and his thegns beach their longships on the shores of his land. Irjan has made straight the Bear’s path to Cedewain. She’s murdered your husband, seen you crowned, and sent a message every fortnight to your father.
“Rhys saw Irjan in the pigeon house, saw her with the bird keeper. You believe Irjan murdered Nechtan in the name of honor? You are but a girl, aren’t you?” Lyleth’s sunken eyes blazed now. “When the Bear comes, Ava, who will you fight?”
Ava started out of the tent, but Lyleth’s voice followed.
“Irjan gave you the wings of the red crow… but you fail to see why.”
Ava glanced back.
Lyleth’s look said she’d untangled a puzzling knot; a revelation bloomed on her dirty face.
“You didn’t know that Irjan murdered your babes. Your father sent Irjan to you as a gift,” Lyleth cried, her voice quavering excitedly. “A slave who taught you to tether souls to your own, to fly on the wings of a red crow, to see with eyes that aren’t your own. Irjan seduced you with a power so great you couldn’t see what she was really doing.”
Ava hesitated, her hand frozen on the tent flap.
“The Bear sent Irjan to kill Nechtan,” Lyleth said. “To lead you to this very moment, to cleave this land in two so he can beach his ships and take what you’ve won for him.”
Rage clouded Ava’s vision. “We break camp at dawn,” she said as evenly as possibly. “I entrust you and your love to the wolves.”
Ava’s men must have erected her tent by torchlight, a pavilion of oilcloth dressed up in a fluttering eel standard and oriflammes of brilliant silk. Inside, Ava found Irjan laying out a fresh gown, those black eyes perhaps concealing a true purpose. Had Ava failed to see what was right before her? Irjan might have killed Nechtan to make way for the Bear, but she certainly had no power over the green gods. Had the gods chosen Ava solely
to hinder the Bear’s plan?
If Irjan had come to poison Ava’s womb… she made certain no son of Nechtan’s waited to assume his throne.
Ava’s heart raced. She tossed aside the spearman’s cloak and stepped beside the brazier, her eyes never leaving Irjan.
“Fetch me something to eat.”
“As you command.”
When Irjan was gone, Ava summoned Gwylym.
“Send a man to follow her,” Ava told him. “I want to know where she goes, what she does.”
“Your slave is untrustworthy?”
“Not as untrustworthy as you.” She smiled and gave his cheek a light brush with the back of her fingers. It wouldn’t do for Gwylym to know of Lyleth’s suspicions. The rock had started its long roll down the hill and neither Ava nor Lyleth could stop it now.
Gwylym ordered a waiting guard to follow Irjan, then helped Ava strip off the ceremonial sword, mail, quilted gambeson and coif that had pinched her head and torn at her hair. Playing the warrior was more uncomfortable than wearing a corset.
Finding a basin of warm water waiting, she splashed her face, washing the road grit from her eyes.
Her tent smelled of linseed oil and sweat, of peat fire and the fine dust of the harvested oat field beneath her boots. The smell brought an intense memory of Nechtan returning home to her after putting down a skirmish in the east. There was a deep sadness on him and, wordless, he had pulled her into his lap and held her, rocking her like a child, his eyes lost in the flames of the hearth beside them.
She splashed her face again, but the feeling wouldn’t go.
Knowing nothing of war but the waiting that plagued women, fear quickened in her. The things Nechtan had seen in his short life would empty anyone of hope. And now she would lead these men to meet their king in battle, and if Lyleth was right, to meet a force they hoped never to meet again, Saerlabrand, the Bear of Sandkaldr. Ava’s father.
Gwylym hung her armor on a stand with sticks for arms.
As if reading her thoughts, he sat down on a stool, pulled her into his lap and held her, tenderly, even fatherly.
“You’ll stay behind the lines,” he told her. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
She pushed him away and found the gown Irjan had left on her cot. “No king stays behind the lines. I’ll do what I must.”
“You must stay alive. Leave the rest to Fiach and Lloyd.”
“I am the king. Fiach and Lloyd act upon my command.”
“And you’ve led an army before, love?”
“I’ve watched Nechtan lead this land for the last five years.”
“Forgive me, but watching is not leading. You must take counsel from your chieftains and your solás—”
“I’ll take counsel from you,” she said. “You know better than anyone what Nechtan will do.”
She slid back onto his lap, dandled his hair and kissed him, but she could only see Nechtan behind her closed eyes.
“Aye, I know what Nechtan would do,” he said. “Not what Nechtan’s ghost’ll do.”
Gwylym was hard.
She unlaced his trousers, hiked her gown to her waist, and straddled him. He groaned and pushed into her, his mail adding a tuneless chime to their coupling. But she could only think of Nechtan… and the Bear, his longships dragging onto the eastern shore, his thegns moving silently through the forest. Why had she not seen them while on the wing? She was looking for Nechtan, not ice-born.
She struggled from Gwylym’s lap. He tried to pull her back, his grip more forceful than she liked.
Laughing, she drew the green stone blade from her boot, the one that had been the beewoman’s. She held it playfully to Gwylym’s unruly member.
“You’ll get your fill of me when we’ve taken Cedewain, love,” she said, forcing a smile. “Until then, a hard cock makes for a savage fighting man.”
He laughed. “Did Nechtan teach you that?” He stood and laced up his trousers.
“He taught me many things. He taught me jealousy. He taught me what wild, selfish desire does to a man. So, beware.”
“Did you love him?”
His question was like a blow.
She held the green blade to the firelight. “Do you know what a soothblade is?”
“Looks like the work of the Old Blood.”
“That it is. Jeven says the Old Blood used it to flay the truth from a man unwilling to give it. They would bleed him into a cup and their greenmen would read the truth there.”
She held the bone handle out to Gwylym.
“Perhaps if you cut me, you’ll know of my love.”
He smiled sadly, took the blade from her, and slipped it back into the sheath hidden in her boot.
“I already know the truth.”
Ava found no sleep. She woke long before dawn and stood at the foot of Irjan’s cot, but five paces from her own. Irjan’s breath came in a musical wheeze and Ava wondered if she dreamt of her reward. What had the Bear promised this slave?
Irjan had taught Ava much; she had taught her enough.
Ava found the green blade in her hand, warm from her boot. Killing Irjan would change nothing of what faced her in the glens of Cedewain, but she would know the truth.
So sharp was the blade that Irjan never stirred while her veins spilled the venom of a thousand snakes, spurting over Ava’s hands, sticky with deceit. Her eyes flew open, and Ava gazed into them, saying, “If I can tether your soul, traitor, I shall.”
Chapter 26
Dr. Adelman’s office looked more like a tea parlor than a shrink’s place. There were little lace doilies under the lamps, a bookcase full of thrift store novels, and fluorescent lights covered with plastic photo panels of a perfect blue sky with puffy white clouds. But the light tubes behind the clouds still hummed with electricity.
Dr. Adelman flipped through Connor’s file.
“The events that have confronted you in the past few years are more burdensome than most face in a lifetime.” He set the file on his lap and churned the air with his hands. “Tell me, Connor, how are you feeling right now?”
When he locked his fingers over his stomach, he looked even more like Big Bird.
“Fine. I feel fine.”
“Still having nightmares?”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
The laundry list continued: Hallucinations? A craving for drugs or alcohol? Sex? Who doesn’t crave sex? Rage that’s uncontrollable? An urge to hurt yourself or others?
“How is the Risperdol working for you?” Adelman asked.
“Great.”
“No nausea?”
Connor thought about the days he’d missed class due to the side effects of the drug he wasn’t taking.
“Some,” he said.
“Good, good. Let’s try a lower dose for now. And I think an antidepressant is warranted as well.” He scribbled out a prescription and handed it to Connor.
“Now, where were we?” Adelman crossed his legs, pen poised over his legal pad. “Mr. Cavendish is responsible for the school retaining you as a student. He negotiated another chance for you after,” he glanced back at previous notes, “a situation in which you were acting out and admittedly seeking expulsion.”
“That’s about it.”
Connor couldn’t look at Big Bird and talk at the same time. So, he worked at a doodle he’d started on a handout outlining the side effects of Risperdol. A water horse. It looked like the cover art on a Megadeth album.
He kicked back in the recliner and worked at the shading on the water horse, delivering a moving monologue about how Dish was important because he grounded Connor in the real world, a place he didn’t like much, how Dish had helped him through some really rough times right after his brother’s funeral, yadda yadda, all the stuff they like to hear.
“Dish was a safe harbor for you,” Adelman said. “With your feelings of guilt over your brother’s death, he offered an objective, non-familial mooring.”
Connor was feeling seasick.
&nb
sp; He didn’t want to talk about this for the thousandth time, and he certainly wouldn’t tell Adelman about seeing Dish in the well water. After relating the story of falling into the hot tub and seeing Dish with the woman who looked something like Lyla Bendbow Adelman had put Connor on an antipsychotic drug. To admit that he was seeing shit in globes of water would up the ante, and the next step could only be a psych ward and a straight jacket. Maybe he really was nuts. He had held Merryn’s well water to every light source possible—candles, stars, sunlight, even a laser pointer, but it was clearly a one time show, just like the trip through the well, a teaser, making Connor believe he could change a future that had already been written.
Adelman droned on about dream therapy and the need for Connor to start a dream journal.
He let his head fall back on the pillow of the recliner and watched the photo clouds move across the fluorescent light panels. They went from left to right and Connor could swear they curled and evaporated and reformed.
“Okay, so right now I see those clouds moving like they’re real.”
“Everyone does, Connor. Your brain sees what it expects to see, not what actually is.”
Connor digested this bit of double talk for a minute.
“So, my brain’s been programmed to expect clouds to move in the sky, so the fake ones do, too?”
“That’s about it.”
“So, how can we be sure anything we see is real?”
“I suppose, on some level, we can’t.”
“Then why are you so sure that what I saw in that well, or hot tub, or whatever, wasn’t real?”
“Okaaaaay. You saw a man you concluded was Dish, though physically he looked very different than Dish. He was with a strange woman, wearing strange clothing, and they seemed to be in some kind of danger.”
“She was bleeding, yeah.”
“Tell me,” Adelman said, “what could have pre-determined that your brain would choose to see Dish in this situation? Why did you need to see him aiding a woman in distress? Acting chivalrous and honorable?”
