by Terry Madden
Connor wondered why Tiernmas had not raised them all, used all of the Sunless souls he had trapped in these walls. But that would have left him too weak. It required something of himself to raise them. This, at least, might work to their advantage.
The Sunless sprites would not fly near the stinking dead, fearful, no doubt, that they would be trapped inside them. This left Connor to find his way to the drain without light. Tripping on bodies and bones, he imagined the dream Celeste must be experiencing now. A nightmare, surely.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
He found the drainage channel easily, but had forgotten it was covered with an iron grate.
He wasted time looking for something with which to pry it open, but Celeste wasn’t as strong as he’d assessed her to be. It required several tries to lift the grate with a stave, so he could drag it aside.
There was nothing but darkness and filth in the hole. He felt the edges to gauge the diameter. If he had been wearing his own body, climbing through this drainage channel would be next to impossible. As it was, Celeste barely fit. He eased into the algae-slickened channel head first, and then shimmied her body through the foul stench. The other end would open beyond the wall which used to be nothing but a broad cavern. Dish said a lake had filled it now. If Connor was lucky, the water level would still be below the curtain wall’s footing.
The labrys should be lying close by.
Halfway through, he began to panic, thinking there may be a grating like the other one covering the exit to the channel. He was relieved to find that it had rusted so thoroughly, he could push it out easily. But the exit was half-covered with water now.
He kicked off Celeste’s pumps inside the channel, then slid into the water like a seal.
If Lyleth was right, she and Ragnhast would have fought the Sunless with the labrys about thirty meters south of the gate. As he moved through the water with a silent dog paddle, he saw the torches of the gate house—the immense barbican of masonry and gilded oak, fully restored. The symbols of the sun and moon, inlaid with opalescent shell and sunstone, caught all available light. Seeing them reminded him of the hope he’d once felt in this place. It surged into him now like a breath of cold air. Connor had placed the bait here so long ago; it was a siren’s song.
Connor’s old headmaster at St. Thom’s, Father Owens, believed eternal life was the reward for serving Jesus, the prize won by atoning for a lifetime of sin. Connor had to wonder if Jesus had a fortress like Caer Sidi hidden somewhere.
Connor dove repeatedly, feeling about blindly in the murky water for anything that might resemble an axe. He was running out of time.
Then, a flash of silver caught the torchlight from the wall above. He filled Celeste’s lungs with air and made a dive. It was deeper than he thought, and required multiple dives to finally feel the haft. The labrys was heavy, even in the water.
He struggled to swim with the weapon, but when he finally reached the drainage channel, he knew he was running out of time. By the stars’ turning, he’d been searching for almost an hour.
He was cold to the bone and shivering violently as he retraced his path through the filthy drain, pushing the labrys ahead of him. Suddenly, he couldn’t breathe. It was his true body, back in the tent. He must be strangling. He felt the bowstring tightening around his true body’s neck. It subsided. But he realized his time was swiftly slipping away.
The way he saw it, he had a decision to make. He could try to leave Caer Sidi with the labrys and hope to make it across the plain to Nechtan and Lyleth. But dawn was less than two hours away, by the stars. The armies would march soon. If he succeeded in reaching them, hundreds would die trying to breach these walls in order to bring the labrys back inside.
The labrys was already inside. And so was Connor.
“I’m sorry,” he told Celeste again. His other option required putting her in danger. The last thing he wanted. But no matter how he weighed it, it was the only option that made sense.
He would leave it to Brixia. Whatever direction she led, he would go.
He centered his mind, relaxed the body he’d left behind, and pulled himself out of the drainage channel.
Back in the outer ward, he searched for a body wearing a cloak. Removing Celeste’s bra, which was truly the most uncomfortable thing he’d ever worn, he made it into a sling for the labrys. He hooked the bra around his waist and concealed it beneath the cloak.
He looked for trousers but decided that removing them would take too much time.
He smoothed Celeste’s damp, algae-flavored hair back into its original ponytail, and tied it with the sparkly hair tie. He practiced walking like a woman, rehearsing what he would say if he got close enough. He could just be Celeste, trainee of Caradoc who had returned from the dead. But no, that would draw too much attention.
No matter what story he chose, he knew that Tiernmas would see his soul looking out of these angelic blue eyes.
Once inside the stairwell, Brixia led the way. She was not taking him to the underground gate that would lead him out, but up, to the king’s chamber.
Guards stopped him twice. He explained he carried a message for the king from the guards at the gate.
“What message?” It was a woman who responded to the guards knock on the chamber door. A woman Connor recognized. The woman with one blue eye and one brown. The one Talan had sacrificed that day at the crom cruach.
The druí. Shit.
He pulled the cloak close to cover his clothes.
“I carry a message from the gate,” Connor said, trying to calm Celeste’s voice. “I’m to relay it only to the king.”
The druí was taller than him, which he found unsettling. He thought her name was Nesta. She was eyeing the oversized archer’s boots that he’d taken from a dead man. Celeste must look like a child playing dress-up, the thought. This was a big mistake.
The labrys holster/bra was cutting into his waist.
“I can report the message to the chamberlain,” Connor said, showing his palms in deference, and backing away.
“He bids you enter,” Nesta said.
The druí let him in.
The antechamber was just as Connor remembered it. On one wall, a fresco of a balcony opened above a rolling sea. The seagulls almost moved, they were so realistic. Connor’s spells to renew the fortress had succeeded far beyond his imagining. He’d always admired the tall cabinets of starwood inlaid with shell and precious stone, the chairs of carved oak draped in furs, and the tapestries woven in threads spun in the halls of the green gods.
Connor fought the feeling that he had come home. He feared he might prostrate himself before his creation and finish the task Arianrhod had set him to so long ago—to rebuild her kingdom. But she’d given him a new task. An impossible task.
Tiernmas appeared from the great door leading to his bedchamber, looking as one does when awakened.
“Speak,” he croaked.
There was nothing weak about Tiernmas. The snake around his neck, the one that had mended his throat and joined it to Talan’s body, had turned to white alabaster with garnets for eyes. The weakened body that had once belonged to Talan was now muscled and sleek as a forest cat, cloaked loosely in a robe of white silk and freshwater pearls. His iron-red hair was crowned with a wreath of hellebore in countless colors that bloomed and seeded and bloomed as he stood there.
Where was Merryn? If she had returned to him, then she would be in his bed.
Connor worried for a moment that the mad king had killed her. No, Tiernmas could never kill Merryn, no matter what she’d done. Merryn had a power over him that no one else could hope to wield.
None but Connor.
The nearness of Tiernmas brought a wave of memories, and as much as he would like to deny it—love. Allowing such things to surface would show in Connor’s eyes. Tiernmas would smell these feelings on him. Connor had already discovered that his control over his emotions were pathetically weak, and now he’d done exactly what Tiernm
as would have hoped for. He’d walked right into the king’s chamber.
Connor had to be done with this quickly—one way or another.
With a sick feeling, Connor understood—it wasn’t he himself who’d set this trap, it was Tiernmas. And Connor had taken the bait like a hungry fish.
But Tiernmas was still half-asleep. As soon as his head cleared, he would know who was standing in front of him wearing a woman’s body.
Connor shored up his defenses with a mantra, repeating a Yeats poem, over and over in his head…Upon the brimming water among the stones are nine-and-fifty swans…
Connor’s knees threatened to drop him. He showed his palms and bowed deeply, and then stared at the flagstones, avoiding Tiernmas’s eyes.
“My lord,” he began, as his hand slipped under the stinking cloak, reaching for the haft of the labrys. “An army at least five hundred strong marches south.”
“South?” Tiernmas snuffed. “The northern chieftains are roused?”
“It would seem, my lord.” His hand tightened around the axe haft. If he could just pull it free from the sling…One swift strike might be enough. But could he mark Tiernmas with the rune before the guards killed him?
“Why are your legs bare, woman?” Tiernmas asked him.
In bowing, he’d revealed Celeste’s legs. “My, my skirts were torn,” Connor said. Why had he not taken some trousers?
“You are to be dressed properly. Nesta,” Tiernmas ordered the druí, “see to it. Tell, me, who sent you with this message?”
Who, indeed?
Tiernmas took a step closer; his hand was moving forward to touch Connor’s chin—Celeste’s chin, to lift her eyes to meet his. Connor recognized this assessing look. He’d seen it countless times as Tiernmas measured the pleasure-to-cost ratio of so many serving girls, many of whom had ended up at the bottom of the lake.
Connor was a fool. Celeste would be dead in a moment, and Connor’s greenflow would stream into Tiernmas. The maker and the made would be one.
Connor closed his eyes. The mad king’s gaze felt like the sun on his skin, like the scorching heat of a Beltane fire, like the flush of deep shame. He could feel the echo of their shared past bloom to near recognition—the memory of a fluttering eyelash, his mannerisms and his laugh, the undisguised aura of purity Tiernmas had once possessed. Their souls moved closer, like planets on the same orbit, like the opposing poles of magnets.
…And scatter wheeling in great broken rings, Upon their clamorous wings…
He felt Celeste stir, felt her reaching for her lord king. He had to either do what he’d come to do, or get out of there.
If he let Tiernmas have the labrys now, all would be lost.
Beneath his cloak, he released his hold on the haft, saying, “Do you send a reply to your captain, my lord?”
“My captain?” The suspicion was audible in Tiernmas’s voice.
“I’ve forgotten his name, my lord,” Connor replied. “I’ve only just arrived.”
Nesta was at Tiernmas’s side, clinging to him. “Come to bed, my lord. This news can wait till dawn.”
“Tell my captain,” Tiernmas said, “to choose a hundred more. I shall raise them at dawn.”
Connor was backing toward the door, his palms open, until he was outside the door.
He turned and fled down the corridor at a fast walk, knowing he could never drop an axe on that neck, no matter how close he got to Tiernmas. Connor was a fool. He’d almost allowed Tiernmas to call him back to the darkness of his own making, to that safe place where some part of himself still dwelled. No, someone else would have to do it.
He was not sure if he could make it back to the drainage channel before his hold on his true body began to weaken. The last thing he needed was to be trapped here in Celeste’s body while Lyl buried his own.
Connor tossed the labrys inside the drainage channel. He sat down among the dead, with his back against the wall. Celeste would be just one more body amongst many, sleeping the sleep of the salamander until he woke her again, or set her free.
His body convulsed. Lyleth’s voice demanded he wake, demanded he let go of Celeste and come back. The sudden release of the noose allowed a deep intake of sweet air. Coughing, he opened his eyes through stinging tears to see Elowen’s face break into a broad smile. At that moment, nothing else mattered.
The first gray light of dawn pushed through the flap of the tent, and Connor heard the sound of the armies as they prepared for the march—the calls of captains, the whinnying of horses, the clatter of steel and the curses of men.
“They go,” he croaked and tried to sit up. His eyes refused to focus.
“Aye,” Lyl said, her face close, her pale forehead knotted. “But what of Merryn? And the labrys?”
Connor ignored her question, wiping sweat from his face and saying, “I must talk to Nechtan.”
“What of the labrys?” she insisted.
“I found it. It’s hidden.”
“And Merryn?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
He stumbled to his feet, and Elowen caught his arm. He left the tent, but his legs gave way and he collapsed. He couldn’t just lie here, waiting to rebuild his energy. He searched what was left of the meager greenflow that remained in the roots of some trampled heather. He touched the dying plants lightly, drawing up a trickle of greenflow through his fingers. He searched for more, but the land was nearly dead, and he—he was as lifeless as a rag. He had to talk to Dish.
“What do you know?” Lyleth pressed him.
“Merryn is not with him,” Connor said flatly. “Now, please take me to Nechtan.”
Elowen helped him to stand again. The cool, predawn air was a cleansing elixir. But even this pale light blasted his dilated eyes.
“Lyl, you have my sunglasses.”
“Sun glass? Oh, aye.”
She retrieved them, and he pulled them on. Something about polarized lenses in the land of the living allowed Connor to see greenflow—where it pooled, where it moved. The army, assembling on the great field, glowed brighter than the dawn.
“Come,” Lyl said, taking his arm.
Dish sat a horse. The butt of Connor’s Glock peeked from his belt, along with two axes. He wore simple leather armor and a helmet with a shroud made of thin fabric—Iris’s anti-Sunless mesh. It was anchored so that he could simply drop it over his face when needed.
Connor blurted, “You’re marching into an army of endless flesh, rising and rising. The outer ward is stacked with bodies. He’s raising a hundred this morning. He’ll raise a hundred more tomorrow.”
“Where’s the labrys?” Dish asked. “And Merryn?”
Connor told him what he’d told Lyl. “We’ll never get inside that fortress,” Connor said as calmly as possible, “without blood magic.”
“What do you mean?” Dish asked warily.
Glaw, decked out in mail and a helmet set with carnelian, had dismounted. He strode toward them as if he would not be left out of the discussion.
“You will throw sticks against the walls of a fortress built by the green gods,” Connor explained. “You will die, and you will rise in service of that ‘monster,’ as you call him, unless…unless we use what we have at hand. I would not suggest this, Dish, I swear to you, unless I thought it was the only way.”
“Suggest what?” Glaw asked, his hands on his hips.
Connor asked Dylan to help him. He saw the hesitation and the fear. He was right to be afraid, Connor thought. But he said to Dylan, “It will be just like the rabbit. Nothing too scary.”
“Stars and stones, Connor. I remember yer rabbit, all right.” Dylan traced the sign against evil over his breast. His leather jerken was shot through with holes, probably taken from a corpse not long after the battle on the island had ended.
“I need two horses,” Connor stated. “And four, five dogs.”
“We have no dogs, they’ve all been taken back to Caer Emlyn.”
“Then make i
t three horses.”
From the row of tents, Iris and Elowen were watching. This was the last thing he wanted either of them to see. He took a deep breath. Why not? Why not let Elowen see who he really was? He’d prove to her that her fear was warranted. It would drive her back into Dylan’s arms where she belonged.
Connor chose a hefty draught horse as the host. The feed would be an aging war horse too lame for battle, and a cart horse. Without a human soul inside, it might prove more difficult to control, but Connor would deal with that as it came.
As Dylan and Connor led the horses to a broad clearing, hundreds of men followed. They formed a circle around Connor and Dylan like they were part of some kind of flash mob. Glaw must have spread the word. Let them watch. Let them know what it would really take to bring down the walls of Caer Sidi.
“You may want to give me lots of room,” he cautioned them.
They backed up.
Dish sat his horse at the edge of the circle. His eyes met Connor’s. He was just as afraid as Dylan.
Dylan held the horses as Connor reopened the wound on his arm with his soothblade. But as he dipped his fingers into his blood, a feeling of déjà vu gripped him. It was a flash of memory, of his shaping of a particular blood beast.
“Brixia,” he whispered her name. He glanced around the gathered crowd, looking for her. She must be here. He felt her.
He had made Brixia on a day like today, but in secret, in a grove in the woods. His blood had dripped from his fingers then, just as it was dripping now. His hand had been on the warm neck of a little pony, and his other hand had been on the head of a serving girl named Brixia. She’d had rough treatment at Tiernmas’s court. She was a favorite of the captain of the guard, taken against her will. She had no one to fight for her, except Connor.
