by Terry Madden
The Sunless glowed with cyanic light, pulsed with greenflow that Tiernmas absorbed as he reached his arms into the swarm. Those that alighted pierced his skin, and emptied themselves of their greenflow, and then dissolved into ash. He felt the race of his blood, the quickening of his breath, the strength in his body surge.
The inner ward had become a stagnant pool, with a cavern for sky. Tiernmas walked among the dead, those who had fallen over the centuries in the many battles that had raged in the Red Bog above. The dead were arranged in rows against the curtain wall like bundles of green staves cut from a wood, ready to be shaped into spears. Tiernmas would shape them. Soon.
The woman he had raised walked beside him, the light in her eyes like the trembling of leaves in a summer breeze. Because of his bumbling ineptitude, she had a tree’s soul now, milked from the roots of the forest. Like a dreamer. Seeing but not acting. Hearing but not singing.
He must fix that.
After all, she was Nesta, druí of the Ildana and worshipper of the old ways. She had bled over the stone and freed Tiernmas. He imagined her fire and passion, her laughter. But her features were as formless as clay now, without expression.
He was feeling stronger, at last. He’d been feasting for a day upon the riches his followers had gleaned from the land above. He’d even slept, letting his mind search for Caradoc on the dim shores of death.
He glanced at the buzzing swarm like a halo around his head. He could give her one of these. But he owed her more. No, Nesta needed her own soul, not a borrowed one. Not a tree.
“Come,” he said and took her hand. It was cold and as stiff as a branch.
Behind her eyes, he saw the placid watchfulness of the forest, the indifference of the green gods matched with the passionless regard of the dead.
Tiernmas would not be an indifferent god.
The well had opened in the earth beneath Tiernmas’s prison of stone. With repeated convulsions, the earth was lifting it from the depths with the rest of Caer Sidi. What had once been a puddle, deep under the castle, was now a clear fountain that trickled into a large basin cut from translucent quartz. Tiernmas had always imagined that the well had graced a garden, back when the gods lived here. He imagined what it would look like when the sun struck it—the water refracting perfect light that bounced and magnified through facets of clear stone.
He found it amusing. The well, a creation of the green gods, should be trapped by their own architecture that had been built to house their own gods. The gods of the gods must be demons, Caradoc used to say.
“Come,” he said to the sleepwalking woman.
He let his robe fall and stepped into the crystal basin, leading Nesta by the hand.
The cool touch of water sent a thrill through his new flesh. When Nesta stood beside him, Tiernmas called to the high brehon for his blade.
The brehon (whose name was Idwylc, Tiernmas had to remind himself) responded, placing a soothblade in his hand. With this, Tiernmas made a small cut to his forearm. He was careful to avoid the tattoo that marked this body as king of the Ildana, the water horse. After all, it had belonged to Talan first. Tiernmas didn’t want to deface his claim to both the Ildana and the Old Blood.
Tiernmas was somehow relieved to see red blood well where he’d cut his skin. He’d half-expected maggots and foulness, the essence of destruction.
How many times had he witnessed Caradoc as he exuded part of his own soul? Tiernmas knew the runes well enough, but placing his soul elsewhere, shaping it with will alone—once he’d been able to do such rudimentary things as Caradoc’s disciple. Now, his soul was a patchwork of those who had spilled into him, a thousand souls just like Nesta’s who pumped with his blood through Talan’s flesh. They cried out in his mind with all their longings and imperfections. He struggled to silence them as he drew the rune on her forehead, and then placed a drop of his blood on her tongue.
“Nesta,” he whispered to the glassy-eyed woman, “take into your flesh the soul you gave to me, that you might so worship me in these halls of life.”
He felt a bolt of energy flow out of him, weakening him, as her eyes fluttered and rolled and then focused on him with a knowing mind. Her lips parted as if in astonishment. Her eyes took in the view of his face, then moved to his body, lingering on his arms and the mark of the water horse that was now streaked with his blood.
“My lord king,” she said with quavering voice.
Her hands were on his face, her lips on his. He had forgotten what it was to feel a woman in his arms.
Beneath his touch, she warmed from wood to flesh, alive, alive, alive.
He hungered and she fed him.
He spilled himself into the woman, into the water, into the world. His seed would bring forth eternal paradise.
That night, he took Nesta to his bed in the royal quarters. The chambers had once been lit by the motion of stars and moon through crystals set in the dome of the ceiling; now, they were lit by the spiraling swarms of the Sunless, their bodies a phosphorescent dream.
Tiernmas wanted only two things now. Food and fucking.
Nesta provided both, feeding him sweetmeats and fruits of the fall forest. Sloes in honey and cheese with currents, roast pigeon and poached salmon.
Tiernmas was asleep when an insistent knocking woke him. It was Idwylc.
“My lord,” he begged. “We have…found someone.”
“Someone? Who?”
“Let me bring her in. I think she will be of interest to you.”
“Come, then,” Tiernmas commanded, rolling to the edge of the bed. He smoothed his beard and drank water. Then he stood and pulled on a linen robe.
The door opened, and there she stood.
He’d lost her to Lyleth. He’d lost her that day when he stood before the copper gate. He’d had no strength to go after her. But she came to him. He felt his breath quicken. He had to know if his guards found her, or she came of her own free will.
“Merryn.” His voice was hardly more than an exhalation. “You’ve come back to me.”
The elegance of her face was unchanged, but he couldn’t read it. Was it horror or longing he saw there? The dark veil of her hair fell to her waist, covering a tattered cloak she’d pulled tightly around her. Her cheeks were flushed, and her dark eyes danced with the soul he had bound to his own so long ago. A wild fear had gathered there. Built upon a thousand years of longing.
“Who is she?” The voice was Nesta’s coming from the bed behind him.
Tiernmas was crossing the room to Merryn, the polished flagstones cold on his feet.
“I knew you’d come.”
Merryn took two steps backward. She was afraid of him. How could she be afraid?
“My men found her on the battlements,” Idwylc said, his voice disturbing the air between them.
“She was alone?” Tiernmas asked.
“Yes, my lord.”
“Leave us,” Tiernmas ordered the brehon and his guards.
Merryn had chosen to return to him, to leave Lyleth and come to him.
“Where is Lyleth?” he asked gently.
He reached out to her as gently as he would to a wild horse, taking her left hand and turning the palm up. Though she was trembling, she did not pull away. He felt her need for him as his own, as a fire that could not be quenched by changing loyalties, or by mistakes made in lifetimes long passed.
There, on her wrist, was the mark of the king’s solás. Her soul bound to his. The tattoo of the last king of the Old Blood. It was not the water horse of the Ildana, but the mark of the oak, Tiernmas’s sigil. The branches interlaced beneath a sun and moon, and the roots reached between the worlds. Soon, Tiernmas would wear that mark above the water horse.
“Who is she, Lord?” Nesta’s voice broke the spell. Had he not required her to leave as well?
“I am his solás,” Merryn stated boldly. “Returned.”
Merryn glared at the woman in Tiernmas’s bed, then turned her gaze back to him. The fear in her e
yes had gone, replaced by something much more useful. Envy.
The earth, as if feeling the charge between them, bucked in another quake. Tiernmas pulled Merryn into his arms. She did not pull away, did not fight him, but lay her warm palms on his bare chest.
Fallen masonry that had littered the chamber, rose from their ruined heaps. Mortar dust and stone amassed before their eyes. From the dust, the walls of the well chamber took on the freshly made look of the first day. After the masons’ hammers were set aside, the faces of the six looked upon them with without mar or blemish. The chiseled garlands were no longer made of eroded stone, but of vine and leaf, and the walls were shaped of blocks of stone embraced in a tangle of branches.
“The garden,” Tiernmas said. “It wasn’t a dream.”
Merryn wore a mischievous smile, as if she knew what garden he meant.
He breathed into her ear, “We shall rule again, my love.”
Chapter 13
From his seat in the pony cart, Dish watched the green hills of Ys wane behind them. They’d soon be back to the wasteland—or the wasteland would overtake Ys. Much of the land that had been green and alive when they’d arrived here had been stripped by the swarms in the past few days.
The ragtag men of Ys that marched behind the cart were carrying as much food and weapons as possible. Dish watched their faces as they left healthy forest and entered lifeless desolation.
Three men tried to turn back, but were beaten and forced back into the ranks by one of Glaw’s men.
In spite of Lyleth’s mighty protestations, Dish had placed Glaw at the head of the army of Ys. The fact that Dish had the power to do so was disturbing enough, but it seemed the fealty of the Knights of the Stoney Ring carried some weight, even with Lyl.
Saeth hadn’t been in her flesh long enough to accurately weigh who was the greater idiot, Glaw or Dish. Dish knew she’d figure it out sooner than later. But in spite of that, all twelve of the knights had lain their weapons at Dish’s unmoving feet. It was a spectacle that guaranteed his authority, at least over these twelve.
Lyl had fallen silent since Dish had ceded his forces to Glaw. Her behavior confirmed that not much had changed with her motivations in six years. Her bondage to the land still held her captive, sealed by the tattoo that marked her wrist. She seemed more troubled by Dish’s loss of authority, than the loss of her own child.
Dish felt like a child himself, tucked away in a nest of furs and pillows. Loaves of bread, dried fish, and sacks of grain made for a heavy load. They’d harnessed a second pony to the cart, and they both strained under Saeth’s whip. The smell of bread yeast mixed with horse sweat created an unpleasant perfume. It was trapped with Dish under the canvas that covered the cart.
He was lulled by the rhythm of the horses’ footfalls and the slow amble of the sun which looked like a garnet ball through the red tenting over the cart.
He caught Saeth’s green-flame eyes glancing at him every now and then over her spiked spaulder.
Her shifty glances finally gave way to words. “You must counsel him, my lord.” It was as if she’d broken a vow with herself not to mention it.
He knew she meant Glaw.
“What did you expect me to do?” he asked with no attempt to hide his frustration. “He is the most able to lead.”
Her mouth opened as if to speak, but presumably changed her mind.
“Go on,” he goaded her, “say it.”
Her only reply was a snap of the reins, and a forward lurch as the horses moved to a faster pace.
“I can do nothing, Saeth,” he went on. “I cannot ride, I cannot fight. How could I lead these men?”
“You can ride,” she said. She glanced again over her shoulder, jostling with the motion of the cart. Hatch marks of old scars had begun to appear on her face, ancient wounds that had softened as her flesh replaced stone, he concluded. But her eyes had taken on a defiant glower.
“Then why did you come, my lord?”
It was a fair question, and she wasn’t the first to ask it.
He slumped back in the cushion of sacks, feeling rage quicken his breath, constructing retorts about duty, about Angharad, about Celeste and her band of Sunless. But it was all self-deluding. Hugh Cavendish could no longer be the bookish teacher who spent summers in his native Cornwall. The knowing would not allow it. Knowing who he had been, who he was…that’s what had caused him to dive into the well. He was chasing the past.
“Because I’m a selfish ass,” he finally said. “I thought somehow I would crawl out of that well as Nechtan. Whole.”
“You are whole.”
Dish made no reply. He couldn’t. Saeth turned back to the road before her, and snapped the reins again.
For six years he’d longed for nothing more than to wake to a sunrise over the Five Quarters, to laugh with Lyleth again, to meet the child they’d made with their love. But now…
He finally said, “Maybe in a perfect world I would agree with you.”
“We shall make a perfect world, my lord king.” Saeth smiled over her shoulder.
“No world is perfect. Not even the world of immortal gods that Tiernmas thinks he is building.”
“Because he defies the balance,” Saeth said. “You are part of that balance. Your body, such as it is, provides the prison your soul needs.”
“It is a prison, I’ll give you that.”
“There’s a way out of every cage, Lord. I am proof.”
He couldn’t argue with that. They both fell silent.
He watched the red ghost of the sun through the gauzy covering over his head. As they travelled, Saeth asked for a summary of the history of the land since the day she’d been turned to stone. Dish did his best. He explained the invasion of the ice-born, the succession of kings both good and bad, and the opening of trade routes to the south.
“Do you know the tribes of Cadurques often eat the hearts of their enemies?” he asked.
“I heard it said when I lived,” Saeth confirmed stoically. “Though if we trade with them, they likely would not eat ours.”
Dish had to laugh at that, and Saeth gave him the barest glimmer of her smiling eyes.
“We’ve moved no closer to a perfect world, to ‘heaven,’” he said, using the English word, for there was no such concept for the Ildana. They were realists, and they knew there could never be such a thing as Tiernmas strove to create. If there were, it’d be bloody game over, and a sated, eternal apathy would take the place of everyday pain and struggle. That was what Tiernmas was trying to build, Dish realized. A world without death, without end.
The gods from neither world would allow such a place.
“We can shall do the will of the green gods,” Saeth declared, “and restore balance.” Wasn’t that what Lyl had always told him?
Can we?
“I am not Nechtan,” he told Saeth, “nor am I Black Brac. I am Hugh Cavendish, a crippled teacher from the otherworld. I wrote my dissertation on the paradigmatic relationships of the mythological symbols in the ancient Welsh poem The Battle of the Trees. The only weapon I have ever handled was a foil when I took fencing lessons in university. I happened to have memories of a life as a king, a terrible king, at that. A king who traded our safety for an imagined peace. I trusted, because my solás trusted. I ruled because I was the only left to do so. But not now. Glaw has a son. He’s of the line of Black Brac. They don’t need me, Saeth.”
“What is a ‘foil?’” she asked.
Saeth’s eyes moved to a rider who had apparently come alongside the cart.
He knew without looking who it was, and what she’d heard.
It was late in the day when Lyl pealed open the canvas cover so she could glare at Dish. Her eyes held all the venom he’d known her to possess. They’d stopped for a rest, and now she climbed over sacks of flour, barrels of smoked salmon and dried apples to find a small open spot at Dish’s side. Her skin shone with sweat.
He couldn’t get used to her cropped hair, but he was
thankful it had saved her. Iris had done as she’d promised and evened the jaggedness with a pair of scissors.
The conspiratorial smile Saeth gave Lyl alerted Dish. What were they up to?
Saeth left them alone.
“Where are we?” he asked Lyl, feeling the pressure of her body against his arm. He’d longed for this for six years—and now that it was real, he felt like a teenager who’d been pining over that girl in class. He couldn’t be anything but awkward now that he was finally alone with her.
“Nearing the pass into Emlyn. We’ll make camp soon,” she said. “But I need to talk to you.”
“Yes,” he said vacantly, thinking she would make another argument about Glaw.
“I saw Angharad last night.”
“What?”
He saw hope flash in the cornflower blue of her eyes.
He urged her to say more. “Where? Is she with us now?”
The story she unfolded involved farseeing, across the Void to the land of the dead.
“I saw her through Connor’s eyes.” She wrung her hands. “Nechtan…the last I saw of Angharad, she vanished into a cloud of bees. I felt that my eyes had deceived me, but maybe…I don’t know where to start.”
“Just start,” he said.
She outlined a list of reasons she had assembled for believing that Angharad was not a human child.
“Lyl,” he started, and then didn’t know what to say. “You and I—or some other I—we brought Angharad into being. You gave birth to her. How could you say she’s not human?”
“How can we say the gods are not human?” she replied sharply. “The green gods built Caer Sidi just as humans built Caer Ys. Maybe they are human. Maybe they have found a way to immortality.”
“You mean, like Tiernmas seeks immortality,” he said.
“He doesn’t seek it. He’s found it. Or so it would appear.”
“Do you call him human or a god?”
She took a deep breath and lay back on her crossed arms, her eyes on the tenting over their heads. She finally said, “He’s a blood beast, shaped by Connor. Immortal, but in servitude to his maker, like all blood beasts. And yet now, I would say he has the power of a god.”
