“Will she get better? Is there anything you can do for her?”
“I can do nothing more. Her body is sound. Where the spirit goes, though, is another matter. I must think on this. Perhaps there is an answer I cannot see at this time.”
It was difficult to read Kira’athu’s high-boned, feline face, but Eolair did not think she sounded very hopeful. The count balled his fists and held them hard against his thighs. “And is there anything I can do?”
Something very much like pity showed in the Sitha’s eyes. “If she has hidden her spirit deep enough, only the woman Maegwin can lead herself back. You cannot do it for her.” She paused as though searching for words of solace. “Be kind. That is something.” She turned and glided from the hall.
After a long silence, Old Craobhan spoke. “Maegwin’s mad, Eolair.”
The count held up his hand. “Don’t.”
“You can’t change it by not listening. She grew worse while you were gone. I told you where we found her—up on Bradach Tor, raving and singing. She’d been sitting unprotected in the wind and snow for Mircha only knows how long. Said she’d seen the gods.”
“Perhaps she did see them,” Eolair said bitterly. “After all I have seen in this cursed twelve-month, who am I to doubt her? Perhaps it was too much for her....” He stood, rubbing his wet palms on his breeches. “I will go now and meet Jiriki.”
Craobhan nodded. His eyes were moist, but his mouth was set in a hard line. “Don’t ruin yourself, Eolair. Don’t give in. We need you even more than she does.”
“When Isorn and the others come back,” the count said, “tell them where I’ve gone. Ask them to wait up for me, if they would be so good—I don’t think I will be too long with the Sithi.” He looked out at the sky deepening toward twilight. “I want to talk to Isorn and Ule tonight.” He patted the old man’s shoulder before walking out of the Hall of Carvings.
“Eolair.”
He turned in the outer doorway to find Maegwin standing in the entrance hallway behind him. “My lady. How are you feeling?”
“Well,” she said lightly, but her eyes belied her. “Where are you going?”
“I am going to see ...” He caught himself. He had almost said “the gods.” Was madness contagious? “I am going to speak with Jiriki and his mother.”
“I do not know them,” she said. “But I would like to go with you in any case.”
“Go with me?” Somehow it seemed strange.
“Yes, Count Eolair. I would like to go with you. Is that so dreadful? We are not such dire enemies, surely?” There was a hollowness to her words, like a jest made on a gibbet’s top step.
“Of course you may, my lady,” he said hurriedly. “Maegwin. Of course.”
Although Eolair could not discern any new additions to the Sithi camp that stretched across the broad expanse of Hern’s Hill, still it seemed more intricate than it had just a few days before, more connected to the land. It looked as though, instead of the product of a few days’ work, it had stood here since the hill was young. There was a quality of peace and soft, natural movement: the multicolored tent houses shifted and swayed like plants in an eddying stream. The count felt a moment of irritation, an echo of Craobhan’s dissatisfaction. What right did the Sithi have to make themselves so comfortable here? Whose land was this, after all?
A moment later, he caught himself. It was just the nature of the Fair Ones. Despite their great cities, mere bat-haunted ruins now if Mezutu’a was any indication, they were people who were not rooted to a place. From the way Jiriki had talked about the Garden, their primordial home, it seemed clear that despite their eon-long tenancy in Osten Ard they still felt themselves to be little more than travelers in this land. They lived in their own heads, in their songs and memories. Hern’s Hill was only another place.
Maegwin walked silently beside him, her features set as though she hid troubled thoughts. He remembered a time many years before when she had brought him to watch one of her beloved pigs give birth. Something had gone wrong, and near the end of the birthing the sow had begun to squeal in pain. By the time the two dead piglets had been removed, one still wrapped in the bloody umbilicus that had strangled it, the sow in her panic had rolled on one of her other newborns.
All through that blood-spattered nightmare, Maegwin had worn a look much like the one she bore now. Only when the sow had been saved and the rest of the litter were nursing had she allowed herself to break down and cry. Remembering, Eolair realized suddenly that it had been the last time she had let him hold her. Even as he had sorrowed for her, trying to understand her grief over the deaths of what to him were only animals, he had felt her in his arms, her breasts against him, and had realized that she was a woman now, for all her youth. It had been a strange feeling.
“Eolair?” There was just a hint of a tremor in Maegwin’s voice. “May I ask you a question?”
“Certainly, Lady.” He could not lose the memory of himself as he had held her, blood on their hands and clothes as they kneeled in the straw. He had not felt half so helpless then as he did now.
“How ... how did you die?”
At first he thought he had misheard her. “I am sorry, Maegwin. How did I what?”
“How did you die? I am ashamed I have not asked you before. Was it the sort of death you deserved, a noble one? Oh, I hope it was not painful. I don’t think I could bear that.” She looked at him quickly, then broke into a shaky smile. “But of course that doesn’t matter, for here you are! It is all behind us.”
“How did I die?” The unreality of it struck him like a blow. He pulled at her arm and stopped. They were standing in an open stretch of grass with Likimeya’s enclosure only a stone’s throw away before them. “Maegwin, I am not dead. Feel me!” He extended his hand and took her cool fingers. “I am alive! So are you!”
“I was struck down just as the gods came,” she said dreamily. “I think it was Skali—at least his ax being raised is the last thing I remember before I woke up here.” She laughed shakily. “That’s funny. Can you wake up in Heaven? Sometimes, since I have been here, it feels as though I sleep for a little while.”
“Maegwin.” He squeezed her hand. “Listen to me. We are not dead.” Eolair felt himself about to weep and shook his head angrily. “You are still in Hernystir, the place where you were born.”
Maegwin looked at him with a curious gleam in her eyes. For a moment the count thought he might have finally reached her. “Do you know, Eolair,” she said slowly, “when I was alive, I was always frightened. Frightened that I would lose the things I cared about. I was even frightened to talk to you, the closest friend I ever had.” She shook her head. Her hair streamed in the breeze moving across the hill, exposing her long pale neck. “I could not even tell you that I loved you, Eolair—loved you until it burned inside me. I was frightened that if I told you, you would push me away and I would not even have your friendship.”
Eolair’s heart felt as though it would crack right through, like a flawed stone struck by a hammer. “Maegwin, I ... I didn’t know.” Did he love her, too? Would it help her to tell her he did, whether it was true or not? “I was ... I was blind,” he stammered. “I didn’t know.”
She smiled sadly. “It is no matter now,” she said with terrible certainty. “It’s too late to worry about such things.” She clutched his hand and led him forward once more.
He took the last few steps toward the blue and purple of Likimeya’s compound like a man arrow-shot in the dark, so surprised that he walks on without realizing he has been murdered.
Jiriki and his mother were in quiet but intense conversation when Eolair and Maegwin stepped through the ring of cloth. Likimeya still wore her armor; her son was attired in softer clothing.
Jiriki looked up. “Count Eolair. We are happy you could come. We have things to show you and tell you.” His eyes lit on Eolair’s companion. “Lady Maegwin. Welcome.”
Eolair felt Maegwin tense, but she made a curtsy. “My Lord,”
she said. The count could not help wondering what she saw. If Jiriki was the sky-god Brynioch, what did she make of his mother? What did she see when she looked at the rippling cloth all around them, the fruit trees and the dying afternoon light, at the alien faces of the other Sithi?
“Please sit.” It was strange how musical Likimeya’s voice was, for all its roughness. “Will you have refreshment?”
“Not for me, thank you.” Eolair turned to Maegwin. She shook her head, but her eyes were distant, as though she were somehow pulling away from what lay before her.
“Then let us not wait,” Likimeya said. “We have something to show you.” She looked over to the brown-haired messenger who had earlier visited the Taig. This one stepped forward, lowering the sack that he held in his hands. With a deft movement, he unlaced the drawstring and turned it upside-down. Something dark rolled out onto the grass.
“Tears of Rhynn!” Eolair choked.
Skali’s head lay before him, mouth open, eyes wide. The full yellow beard was now almost entirely crimson, stained by the gore that had wicked up from his severed neck.
“There is your enemy, Count Eolair,” said Likimeya. A cat who had killed a bird might drop it at her master’s feet with just such calm satisfaction. “He and a few dozen of his men turned at last, in the hills east of Grianspog.”
“Take it away, please.” Eolair felt his gorge rising. “I did not need to see him like this.” For a moment he looked worriedly to Maegwin, but she was not even watching: her pale face was turned toward the darkening sky beyond the walls of the compound.
Unlike her flame-red hair, Likimeya’s eyebrows were white, two streaks like narrow scars above her eyes. She raised one of them in a curiously human expression of mocking disbelief. “Your Prince Sinnach displayed his defeated enemies this way.”
“That was five hundred years past!” Eolair recovered a little of his usual calm. “I am sorry, Mistress, but we mortals change in such a length of time. Our ancestors were perhaps fiercer than we are.” He swallowed. “I have seen much death, but this was a surprise.”
“We meant no offense.” Likimeya gave Jiriki what appeared to be a significant glance. “We thought it would gladden your heart to see what came to the one who conquered and enslaved your people.”
Eolair took a breath. “I understand. And I mean no offense either. We are grateful for your help. Grateful past telling.” He could not help looking again at the blood-matted thing on the grass.
The messenger stooped and plucked Skali’s head up by the hair and dropped it back into the sack. Eolair had to restrain an urge to ask what had happened to the rest of Sharp-nose. Probably left for the vultures somewhere in those cold eastern hills.
“That is good,” replied Likimeya. “Because we wish your aid.”
Eolair steadied himself. “What can we do?”
Jiriki turned to him. His face was blandly indifferent, even more so than usual. Had he disapproved somehow of his mother’s gesture? Eolair pushed the thought aside. To try to understand the Sithi was to invite perplexity bordering on madness.
“Now that Skali is dead and the last of his troops scattered across the land, our purpose here is fulfilled,” Jiriki said. “But we have only set our feet to the path. Now the journey begins in earnest.”
As he spoke his mother reached behind her and drew out a jar, a squat but oddly graceful object glazed in dark blue. She reached two fingers into it and then withdrew them. The tips were stained gray-black.
“We told you that we cannot stop here,” Jiriki continued. “We must go on to Ujin e-d’a Sikhunae—the place you call Naglimund.”
Slowly, as if performing a ritual, Likimeya began to daub her face. She began by drawing dark lines down her cheeks and around her eyes.
“And ... and what can the Hernystiri do?” Eolair asked. He was having trouble tearing his gaze away from Jiriki’s mother.
The Sitha lowered his head for a moment, then raised it and held the count’s eye, compelling him to pay attention. “By the blood that our two peoples have spilled for each other, I ask you to send a troop of your countrymen to join us.”
“To join you?” Eolair thought of the shining, trumpeting charge of the Sithi. “What help could we possibly be?”
Jiriki smiled. “You underestimate yourselves—and you overestimate us. It is very important that we take the castle that once belonged to Josua, but it will be a fight like no other. Who knows what surprising part mortals may play when the Gardenborn fight? And there are things you can do that we cannot. We are few now. We need your folk, Eolair. We need you.”
Likimeya had drawn a mask around her eyes, on her forehead and cheeks, so that her amber gaze seemed to flame in the darkness like jewels in a rock crevice. She drew three lines down from her bottom lip to her chin.
“I cannot compel my people, Jiriki,” Eolair told him. “Especially after all that has happened to them. But if I go, I think that others would join me.” He considered the needs of honor and duty. Revenge against Skali had been taken from him, but it seemed the Rimmersman had only been a catspaw for Elias—and for an even more frightening enemy. Hernystir was free, but the war was by no means ended. The count also found a certain seductiveness in the idea of something as straightforward as battle. The tangle of reoccupying Hernysadharc and coping with Maegwin’s madness had already begun to overwhelm him.
The sky overhead was dark blue, the color of Likimeya’s pot. Some of the Sithi produced globes of light which they set on wooden stands around the enclosure; the branches of the fruit trees, lit from below, burned golden.
“I will come with you to Naglimund, Jiriki,” he said at last. Craobhan could watch over the folk of Hernysadharc, he decided, and watch over Maegwin and Lluth’s wife Inahwen as well. Craobhan would continue the work of rebuilding the land—it was a task that would suit the old man perfectly. “I will bring as many of my fighting men as will come.”
“Thank you, Count Eolair. The world is changing, but some things are always true. The hearts of the Hernystiri are constant.”
Likimeya put down her pot, wiped her fingers on her boots—they left a broad smear—and stood up. By her face-painting, she had changed herself into something even more alien, more unsettling.
“Then it is agreed,” she said. “When the third morning from tonight comes, we will ride to Ujin e-d’a Sikhunae.” Her eyes seemed to spark in the light of the crystal globes.
Eolair could not brave her gaze for long, but neither could he still his curiosity. “Your pardon, Mistress,” he said. “I hope I am not being impolite. May I ask what you have put on your face?”
“Ashes. Mourning ashes.” She made a sound in the back of her throat, a thin exhalation that could have been a sigh or a huff of exasperation. “You cannot understand, mortal men, but I will tell you anyway. We go to war on the Hikeda’ya.”
After a moment’s pause, while Eolair tried to puzzle out what she meant, Jiriki spoke up. His voice was gentle, mournful. “Sithi and Norns are of a single blood, Count Eolair. Now we must fight them.” He lifted a hand and made a gesture like a candle flame being extinguished—a flutter, then stillness. “We must kill members of our own family.”
Maegwin was silent most of the way back. It was only when the Taig’s sloping roofs loomed before them that she spoke.
“I am going with you. I will go to see the gods make war.”
He shook his head violently. “You are going to stay here with Craobhan and the rest.”
“No. If you leave me behind, I will follow you.” Her voice was calm and certain. “And in any case, Eolair, what makes you sound so fearful? I cannot die twice, can I?” She laughed a little too loudly.
Eolair argued with her in vain. At last, just as he was on the verge of losing his temper, a thought came to him.
The healer said she must find her own way back. Perhaps this is part of it?
But the danger. Surely he could not think of letting her take such a risk. Not that he could stop
her from following if he left her behind—mad or no, there was no one in all of Hernysadharc half as stubborn as Lluth’s daughter. Gods, was he cursed? No wonder he almost longed for the brutal simplicity of battle.
“We will speak of this later,” he said. “I am tired, Maegwin.”
“No one should be tired in this place.” There was a subtle note of triumph in her voice. “I worry about you, Eolair.”
Simon had picked an open, unshaded spot near Sesuad’ra’s outer wall. The sun was actually shining today, although it was windy enough that both he and Miriamele wore their cloaks. Still, it was pleasant to have his hood down and to feel the sun on his neck. “I brought some wine.” Simon produced a skin bag and two cups from his sack. “Sangfugol said it’s good—I think it’s from Perdruin.” He laughed nervously. “Why would it be better from one place than another? Grapes are grapes.”
Miriamele smiled. She seemed tired: shadows lay beneath her green eyes. “I don’t know. Maybe they grow them differently.”
“It doesn’t really matter.” Simon carefully aimed a stream from the winesack into first one cup, then the other. “I’m still not sure I even like wine—Rachel would never let me drink it. ‘The Devil’s blood,’ she called it.”
“The Mistress of Chambermaids?” Miriamele made a face. “She was a nasty woman.”
Simon handed her a cup. “I used to think so. She certainly had a temper. But she tried to do her best for me, I suppose. I made it hard on her.” He lifted the wine to his lips, letting the sourness run over his tongue. “I wonder where she is now? Still at the Hayholt? I hope she’s well. I hope she hasn’t been hurt.” He grinned—to think of having such feelings for the Dragon!—then looked up suddenly. “Oh, no. I’ve already drunk some. Shouldn’t we say something—have a toast?”