by R. K. Hart
She coughed, hoping fervently that her shield had held. ‘It’s not my story to tell.’ She felt her face heat further as he considered her, taking in every blink and every slight twitch of her lips.
‘Tiernan,’ he said.
She stared at him, horrified, and he laughed again.
‘I will not say anything, Lida. I care for Tiernan as if he were my father.’
‘But how did you know?’ she demanded.
‘Easy. If you know who it is, it has to be someone at the Illarum - or your own father, which we will discount given what Maya said about your neighbour. Katrin has seen more than thirty summers, which makes her older than most of the apprentices. She is very careful, non? I think it unlikely she would approach anyone much younger than herself, which leaves a handful of Illarus, and the other mentors.
‘Of the Illarus, there is Jakob, Mikal, James, Lan, and Lormac. We may discount Jakob and Mikal. Lan has been travelling through northern Eilan for the past six months; from Katrin’s symptoms, the pregnancy is unlikely to have progressed more than three. James is a possibility, but he grew up with Katrin and has pined after a Brinnican woman named Susa since childhood, so I think it unlikely; James is steadfastly loyal. Which leaves Lormac.’ He wrinkled his nose.
‘Lormac is one of Caradoc’s protégées, which means he is impressive in the training ring, and exceedingly unimpressive everywhere else. I cannot imagine Katrin condescending to notice him, let alone anything else. So. That leaves the mentors: Rikard, Caradoc, and Tiernan.
‘Rikard is as a brother to Katrin. He is many things, but careless is not one of them. He keeps to your green Eilin law and knows that his children must be born of marriage; he would not risk his child’s inheritance - or his favour with his uncle - by a liaison with Katrin. I doubt either of them would wish it in the first place.
‘And Caradoc … Caradoc is a warrior to the core and though he is not deliberately unkind or unfair, he is disinterested and unemotional. He dislikes complications. Like Rikard, he would weigh up the benefits of such a relationship; I do not believe they would outweigh the cost. And Katrin has no need for a protector - Caradoc has been a soldier for so long I do not know if he could be anything else.
‘On the face of it, Tiernan is unlikely, too. But it was Tiernan who tested Katrin and brought her to the Illarum. He then convinced her to stay and lead the healers, when she longed to return home to Brinnica. Given Katrin’s birthright, that is no small feat. And although he is older than her, he is handsome, non? Of course, I could not know for sure until I saw how you reacted.’
‘But Tiernan is …’ Lida tried to search for the right word; Tiernan seemed almost to defy explanation. ‘Tiernan is cold.’
Lorcan pushed his silver cuff up his arm. ‘Tiernan is more than he seems. And Katrin would be sure. It is different for you.’ He stared out into the trees. ‘You cannot reach out yet. For us - for you, when you learn - we can see people. See them properly. See them fully.’
‘See their insides,’ Lida said, thinking of Ava.
He flicked her a surprised glance. ‘Yes. We are sure, when we fall in love. And because we are sure, we rarely fall out of it.’
His hands were on his knees; Lida blinked at his long fingers, taking in the nails bitten almost down to the quick. She shook her head again. ‘I feel awful.’
‘It is not your fault. You said nothing.’
‘I don’t like secrets.’
His face closed. ‘So I gathered.’
Lida pushed aside the compulsion to know what he meant, and the silence lengthened. She cast about for something to say.
‘How is your arm?’ Lorcan asked at last.
She rolled up her sleeve. The bruises were almost gone. ‘They lasted longer than I thought,’ she said, frowning at her skin.
‘Can you tell me what happened?’ he said, twisting his cuff around his wrist. Lida told him haltingly about Alys’ dream, watching the silver catch the starlight as it filtered through the leaves above them.
‘And there were bruises on your ribs, too?’
Lida nodded. ‘They were the worst. It hurt so much that I was sure I’d broken something.’ She fidgeted, wanting to talk about something - anything - else. ‘The first time I saw Ava, I thought she was the fae queen.’
Lorcan chuckled. ‘Perhaps she is,’ he said. ‘She has almost everyone under her spell.’
‘I don’t think she needs a spell,’ Lida muttered.
‘Non,’ he agreed. He stretched his fingers out before him. ‘Do you know the story of how the fae queen came to be?’
She frowned and shook her head. ‘I know the fae were sent by Fiou; I didn’t know there was any more to the story.’
‘Ah. You know the Eilin version. The wrong version. Eilins always get the words wrong.’
Lida bit the inside of her cheek, refusing to rise to the bait.
Lorcan raised an eyebrow and gave his lazy half-smile, waiting.
‘Fine,’ Lida snapped. ‘Tell me the Erbidan version, and then I’ll decide which I like best.’
‘I do not think it works that way.’
‘I doubt Fiou or the fae will mind,’ she said. ‘Just tell me, Lor.’
He settled back against the tree, his shoulder and arm pressed against hers. Lida shivered, and pulled her scarf tighter around her neck.
‘We believe that the fae, along with the other elemental spirits, were living in the four lands well before the first star people and their old gods ever stepped foot on Eilin soil. Once, the fae lived above the ground, ruling over the land, but when the first star woman gave birth, and that baby shone bright with illae, the fae fled beneath the ground, never to see the sun again.
‘They were still strong, though, with magic of their own, quite different to the golden power gifted by the stars. And as they were earth spirits, they had ancient knowledge of Eilan itself, of its seasons and its lifeblood and of what lay beneath its fertile soil. Their underground court prospered, watched over carefully by their goddess-queen.
‘As even soft green Eilins know, Fiou was a trickster god.’ Lida nudged him sharply in the side with her elbow, and he grinned. ‘He was also greedy, and he coveted the beautiful gems and precious metals that only the fae could find and harvest from the earth. And though he was a cheat and a fraud, Fiou was handsome and charming. He journeyed to the Seelie-Court and seduced the fae goddess-queen, thinking that she would give up her secrets if she fell in love with him.
‘She did not give up her secrets, nor her heart, but she did give him a daughter. And her daughter was more powerful and beautiful and terrible than both her mother and her father, for she held in her blood the magics of both people. When she came of age, her mother stepped aside, and Fiou’s daughter rose to rule the Seelie-Court. Her mixed blood and the illae running through it is why she can walk amongst us, in the sun, at any time she chooses. All the other fae must wait for the equinox and solstice nights, when the land aligns with the moons and their magic is at its strongest. Then they leave their court and journey above the ground.’
Lida was still as she mulled over the story. ‘Elemental spirits?’ she said at last. ‘What are the other ones?’
Lorcan gave a smug smile. ‘See? Our version is better.’ He ticked them off his fingers. ‘There are the salamanders that live in the Gulf of Fire, craving the heat of the volcanoes that sunk into the sea a thousand years ago. The baint-fae and the sluah are spirits of the air; they use the wind to send their shrieks across the land. The seelie-fae are earth spirits, living deep underground in their everlasting court. There are also the dryads,’ he said with a smirk, reaching to twist one of Lida’s curls around his finger with a disdainful shake of his head, tugging the lock gently before letting it go. ‘They are the cousins of the seelie-fae, living in woods and copses. There are the merrows that live in the deep ocean, swimming with the dolphins and singing with the whales.
‘And,’ he said, after a slight pause, ‘there are the selkies that l
ive in the shallower seas off the coast of Erbide.’
‘What is a selkie?’
‘They are water spirits, cousins to the merrows. Unlike merrows, they can take human form and walk upon the islands. They are beautiful and wild, and they steal men’s souls to keep in shells in their sea-bed gardens.’
Lida laughed. ‘What do they do with them?’
‘Nothing. They keep them until the owner of the soul dies with longing. My uncle told me that they wove the shell onto a necklace once its owner died as a kind of trophy, and the soul was in thrall to his selkie forever, but I hope that is not true.’
‘It doesn’t sound ideal,’ she agreed.
‘Mmm. But if a selkie falls in love, they make excellent wives, for they are fearless and fierce and strong. Presumably she may let her husband keep his soul, if he asks nicely enough.’
‘Did you search for selkies, when you were watching for whales?’
He gave a slight smile. ‘My uncle said that I must never search for my selkie. He said they like to do the finding.’
‘What do they look like?’
He tilted his head. ‘In the water, they are like merrows, with skin of blue and green and eyes as black as night. But when they walk on land …’ he trailed off. Lida thought he might have been a merrow himself, his eyes were so dark; they flickered up to fix on hers, his voice very deep and very soft. ‘When they leave the sea, they take the form that their love most desires.’
Lida’s breath caught, and she stared back at him as the same feeling of panic she’d had in his dream rose from her stomach and closed her throat. She pulled away and stood abruptly, taking several steps back, trembling in the sudden cold.
‘Thank you for asking Jakob,’ she said, far more formally than she’d intended. ‘And for the story.’ She rose to her toes and turned, fleeing breathlessly back to the campsite, leaving him alone in the growing dark.
Lorcan looked up at the sky through the vault of oak leaves and twisted his cuff around. It was a long time before he went back to the campfire, and an even longer time again before he fell asleep.
***
‘You know, then.’
‘Yes.’
‘How?’
Lida hung her head. ‘I was worried about you. I thought you were ill. I asked Lorcan to ask Jakob. I didn’t mean to … I didn’t mean to give away your secret. I am so sorry, Katrin.’
They looked out over the Lake of Kali. There was a chill breeze, and the water rippled with tiny waves, reflecting the cloudy grey sky.
Katrin lifted one shoulder in a shrug. ‘How long could I hide it? Already it is almost three months. A month or so more and it will begin to show. A month or so more, and I will feel her move.’ She put her hands over her stomach with a faint smile.
‘Katrin,’ Lida said tentatively, ‘does Tiernan know?’
Katrin glanced at her, her face impassive. ‘No.’
‘Are you going to tell him?’
‘Not yet.’
Lida wasn’t sure how to answer that, so she didn’t. ‘Is there anything I can do?’
Katrin shook her head. ‘Soon I will be home, and I will have everything I need.’
She looked back across the lake as the wind began to howl down from the mountains. Lida shivered.
***
They reached the Yoss River a week later. There was a tangible lifting of spirits as Katrin agreed to spend the night at a tavern. Lida was desperate for a proper bath and badly needed to wash her hair, conscious of the layer of grime that had accumulated on her scalp.
Like the ferry crossing on the Little Lifeblood, a small town had grown up on either side of the Yoss River. Unlike southern Eilan, where most of the buildings were made of stone, the houses and shops in the town were of wooden frames overlain with locally made red tiles. The little scarlet buildings that resulted were very different to the ordered, square structures Lida knew. She thought it made the town look rather like something from a storybook, though like most children’s stories, there was something dark about it. Yoss River Town had been the site of the last wave of illae-burnings, and it was all too easy to imagine something of that time lingering, a heaviness to the air, almost as if the smoke still drifted from the embers of the fires.
Unlike the smaller buildings, the three-storey tavern was red-tiled only on the roof and windowsills. Its walls were whitewashed and covered in Eilin ivy. Pots of winter flowers sat outside its main doors, blossoming slightly early in the chill air.
‘Oh, it’s lovely,’ Alys sighed as she dismounted.
‘I hope they have cider,’ muttered Dylan.
Katrin disappeared inside to find the owner, and they watered the horses while they waited. Sacred looked fit after all the travel, but her coat was getting longer in the cold, and she badly needed a thorough brush.
‘You and me both, hey beauty?’ Lida murmured to her, scratching her neck.
‘Northern horses mat in winter,’ Ella said. ‘It falls away when they shed in spring. I don’t think you should try the same trick, though.’ She eyed Lida’s wild mass of hair. ‘You would need to shave your head to be rid of it.’
‘My father used to threaten that, when I was younger,’ Lida said. ‘I told him I’d run away if he did.’
‘Myrae sailors all used to do it,’ Lorcan said absently, staring down the town’s main street towards the river. ‘Eve said it was to stop pirates using their hair against them in a fight. When the Myrae joined with my mother’s great-grandmother to clear the seas of them, the Myrae began braiding instead.’
‘I’m -’
‘You’re Eilin, not Myrae,’ Dylan said, rolling his eyes. ‘We know, we know.’
‘Would that you might listen,’ muttered Lida.
‘As if you can talk about listening, Alida.’
‘Two rooms,’ Katrin said, reappearing before Lida could snipe back at Dylan. ‘The landlord was insistent that as none of us are handfasted or married, the men will have one room, and the women the other.’ She sniffed her disapproval at old-fashioned Eilin customs. ‘But there is hot food, and hot water, and I’ve ordered both. The stables are this way.’
Katrin led them around the side of the tavern. The stables were little more than stalls with locks, but the horses would be sheltered from the cold and there were large troughs full of chaff. Sacred whickered to Lida as she was unsaddled and quickly rubbed down, snorting when she buried her nose in the feed, and Lida took that as permission to leave.
The women’s room was large, with four single beds and a lounge large enough to sleep on, though it was completely bare of decoration and rather stark as a result. They each claimed a bed and Lida sank gratefully onto the soft mattress, ignoring the faint smell of dust. Katrin disappeared to find some food to tide them over until dinner.
Servers bustled into the room, bearing sizable jugs of hot water to fill up a tub sitting in one corner. Soon it was full, steam billowing into the chill air. There was an almost collective sigh as Lida, Alys and Ella stared at it.
‘If we all use it, the water will be like mud by the end,’ Ella said practically.
Lida nodded. ‘There are spare buckets. We can use those. We’ll leave the bath for Katrin?’
Alys groaned. ‘It’s like torture, just seeing it there.’
‘Just think, ma soer, in a few short weeks we will be swimming in the hot springs.’ Ella picked up a bucket, filled it with water from the tub, and disappeared behind a screen.
‘Oh,’ sighed Alys. ‘Yah. I had forgotten. That is worth waiting for.’
‘Hot springs?’ Lida said, curious.
‘Mmm, at the foot of the Glass Mountains. There is a whole collection of them. Some are like baths, but others are as big as your Eilin swimming pools. The water smells of sulphur, but it is always hot. We will take you.’
Katrin slipped quietly back into the room, bearing a tray of bread, cheese, and fruit.
‘Grapes!’ Lida exclaimed, jumping up.
Katrin smiled
. ‘The last of the year, sent up from the south. Expensive, but I could not resist.’ Alys and Lida descended, and Katrin wisely grabbed some food for Dylan and Lorcan before it all disappeared.
Ella emerged from behind the screen as they finished, looking cautiously out the window to check there was no one underneath before she emptied her dirty water out, standing well back from the windowsill. ‘Yours,’ she said, handing the bucket to Lida. Lida grabbed a cleaner pair of jodhpurs and a shirt from her pack, along with a bar of soap, dipped the bucket into the steaming tub, and headed behind the screen.
She undressed completely for the first time in over a fortnight, shivering as the chill breeze met freshly-scrubbed, tingling skin. She cleaned her fingernails and spent some time on her feet, which she tended to ignore when washing on the road. She scrubbed her neck and behind her ears, wrinkling her nose at how much grime had accumulated on her body. She thought for a moment about the best way to wash her hair, finally dunking her entire head in the bucket and rubbing the soap against her scalp until her hair was squeaky clean. She wrung the thick, coarse rope of it out, twisting it into a knot on the top of her head before dressing and copying Ella, tossing the water out the open window and onto the grass below, then handing the bucket to Alys. The Brinnican girl cast a longing glance at the tub.
‘The bath is yours,’ Lida said to Katrin, sitting down on her dusty bed to work some rose oil through her damp curls.
She expected an argument, but Katrin went meekly enough once Alys had washed, sighing as the hot water closed over her shoulders. She stayed in the tub for almost an hour, long enough for both Ella and Alys to fall asleep, and for Lida to finish an entire chapter of The Eilin Histories. A server brought a platter of hot food while Katrin was dressing, closing the door with a click behind her when she left.
Katrin rifled through her pack. ‘Do you have any peppermint tea, Lida?’ she asked, digging through her belongings. ‘I think I am out. The smell of that fish is making me queasy.’
‘I gave mine to Lorcan. Sorry, Katrin.’
