“Well, young sir,” Caer glared at Yidrith before continuing, “No man owns a woman just as no woman owns a man.”
“But my brother said—ow!” the boy prattled on, despite another clout to his head. “He says men need to find a woman to cook for them and stuff because the men have to hunt and go to war and defend the city.”
“Really?” Caer stood and glared at Yidrith.
“Mm-hmm,” Dunstan nodded.
“Well, good sir,” she said to Yidrith, who blushed beneath his blonde hair and seemed to think he might be the next facing an existence as a toad, “perhaps you will find a woman, if you can find a cow still living in the land who would be your wife.”
“I am sorry, milady. ‘Tis not what I meant, and my brother speaks too much.”
And for good measure he rewarded Dunstan with another slap to the back of the head.
“Besides,” Dunstan went on, unfazed. “Who wants to have girls around anyway? They don’t know anything about blood and golems and werewolves, and they don’t like to play good games either. Girls are no fun.”
“Well, my good child, one day you will find girls are fun in other ways,” Caer said, deciding to forget Yidrith’s ignorant comments rather than let herself fester in anger. “If you enjoy my company half so much as I enjoy yours, so you will find it with other girls.”
“I am sure such things would be well with him,” Yidrith said, and she laughed.
“Would you like to see the city, milady?” Dunstan asked.
Caer smiled. “I’ve never seen a city so big.” She took his arm. “What else may we see?”
“Well, we’re in the south quarter and almost all the people in the city live here. All the markets and the healers are in the east quarter, and people live there too.”
“People used to live throughout the city, milady,” Yidrith informed her. “It no longer seemed wise to populate the entire city when so few remained. Still, people are free to live where they choose, even if it’s far from the main residences and beyond our defenses.”
“Yeah, but if you want fun we should go to the west quarter. Almost no one lives there,” Dunstan led her through the arch to the empty streets of the west quarter. She thought she saw unsavory characters, and many of the houses appeared empty.
They passed the old guard dwellings, from before the passing of Queen Beren when the city remained filled with throngs of people. Yidrith explained to her that he and Headred both lived here as children and showed her the barracks. And she thought of this as they walked. She wondered what the West Quarter looked like before this part of the city emptied.
Yidrith pointed to a house as they passed. “We dwelled there, before. Your father, King Gareth, dwelled here as well.”
Caer looked at him.
“You and I are cousins,” Yidrith explained. “Your father and my mother are brother and sister, from a family of noble blood. Gareth served as a guard of the tower before he caught the fancy of the Queen, and she him.”
Caer couldn’t think of what to say, to discover cousins and family she never knew, to hear others speak of a father she never knew.
He showed her a hut, where a strange old lady, her father’s aunt, told fortunes. The old woman’s eyes looked haunted, and when she looked at Caer, Yidrith shrank back.
“The runes said you would come today,” the cracked voice of the fortuneteller slithered over Caer as their eyes met.
“Did they tell you anything else?” Caer asked her, stepping forward. She stopped as the woman began to cackle.
“Aye, they did,” the woman answered. Her eyes seemed to menace. “They foretold a death even you cannot stop. And do not fear for Headred; his time does not yet come to pass into the abyss. No, child, the runes say death surrounds you.”
The old woman made Caer nervous. Yidrith, who seemed to have regained himself, guided Caer away.
“Go back into your house, Arda,” he told the fortune teller, “and foretell death omens to those who care.”
Dunstan lingered for a moment, before Yidrith grabbed his collar with a free hand and tore his brother away from the fortuneteller’s gaze.
“Geroffme!” Dunstan told Yidrith. Yidrith let the boy go when they stood a safe distance away. “Maybe Arda could read my fortune!”
“The runes would have said you die tomorrow, choking on pea soup,” Yidrith told his brother with no small amount of irritation. “Mother told you never to come here for a reason.”
“Rune-calling, its bad enough,” Yidrith whispered to Caer. “‘Tis well known to us Arda summons spirits, and such practices are dangerous. She practices what we call the Coventer Arts. The law forbids this among those who are not born with the gift of magic the Dark Arts.”
“Why?” Caer asked him. Yidrith glanced back toward Arda’s house, his features as stone.
“For one, the spirits of the dead cannot be controlled by non-witches, nor can the caller control which spirits are called,” Yidrith whispered. “For another thing, for a mortal to use magic, a sacrifice of a magic creature must be made, and to kill such creatures the law forbids. So in ancient times the practitioners of this magic made a pact with Moloch, to serve him in return for this power and knowledge. For this we call them coventers.”
Caer’s temper flared.
“There are servants of evil in Ull?” She questioned.
Yidrith shook his head and tried to calm her. “No milady, not so much as you think. The coventers no longer honor their pact, for Moloch died and so released them. But the death of a magical creature the law still forbids, and so their practices are kept a secret. They resent witches and the power given to them. But they do not serve Belial.”
“Nor could they be called ‘good’,” Caer remarked.
Yidrith shrugged and seemed unwilling to discuss it further.
“Your grandfather Raed served as the chief guard of the tower,” Caer changed the subject. “What became of him?”
“He passed,” Yidrith said, almost choking when he said it. “‘Twas a few years after your mother left the city, to rest in Vingólf. As he hunted in the woods, a golem’s poisoned arrow struck him down.”
“The golems wouldn’t get me,” Dunstan declared to no one in particular, his chest swelling with pride. He seemed recovered from his momentary desire to have his fortune told. “I’ve been practicing my sword fighting and archery. Mother says I’ll be as good as grandpa one day.”
Caer laughed. “And you chose the guard because of him?” She asked Yidrith
“No, ‘tis not. My father also served the guard. He defended this city with his life. Nine years ago wolves came from the forest and attacked a guard who went out of the city to scout, leaving the gate open. The wolves entered the city and would have killed all they could, but my father and his men stopped them.”
“They killed him,” she realized.
“I looked like a man, but inside I knew myself to be a boy of seventeen. I learned my father’s weapons so we would not starve, and I joined the guard to keep my family in a home.”
So much suffering, she thought. All because of…
She started to blame herself when she realized it not to be the case. Enyd perhaps, and the blame belonged to Belial, and perhaps even her mother. If Enyd or Beren possessed the courage to stop this evil, none of this would have happened.
“Milady, milady, look!” Dunstan’s gleeful shout rang out.
“Yes, my good sir?” she asked, seeing a wall of stone. As Dunstan’s small hand traced a squared groove before touching a handle, she saw the small, rectangular door hidden in the wall.
“It’s the secret door,” Yidrith said. “No outsiders are supposed to know where it lies. ‘Tis used to ambush the enemy by going from the city and attacking from behind. No one now knows where it comes out of the city, for it lies hidden in the mountainside, and we have not cause to use it anymore, or in many generations, even before the reign of Enyd. Perhaps it now goes nowhere.”
Caer gazed at the door. ?
??What else have you to show me, young master?” she asked as they walked back.
The boy scrunched his nose. “Nothing except the door to the north quarter, but it’s pretty boring.”
“How could an unopened door be boring? Any adventure could lay beyond an unopened door.”
“It can’t be interesting, cause no one can get in.” Dunstan rolled his eyes with boredom at the very thought of the door. But behind his eyes she saw a glow, one desiring to see beyond the locked door. “Upon departing the city, your mother locked he central quarter. No one goes in there; it’s forbidden, and no one but the Queen knows the key to open the door.”
“What’s in there?” she asked Yidrith.
He covered his brother’s ears and struggled as the boy tried to get free. “Idalir, the Castle of the Sun. ‘Tis meant for the Queen and her children alone to dwell in. And they say your mother’s spirit comes and walks there when she grows tired of the wild lands.”
They crossed the threshold into the city’s south quarter, and into the west quarter, in her opinion, too empty to dwell in for too long. And not far away, in an area the crowd seemed to avoid, stood a door with an ornate, arched gate, carved with runes, and, on its edges, an intricate, knotted pattern.
“I expected more,” she said, walking over.
“‘Tis why I do not come here, milady,” Dunstan said, bored with this game.
She held the handle. “Open.”
Yidrith jumped as the latch creaked open. The crowd in the square stopped and stared, and the murmuring started again. Caer saw their faces and knew her step into the castle told them a Queen walked again in Ull. She took another tentative step into the central quarter and Idalir.
“Milady, you do not enter the keep of Idalir while your mother still sleeps in Vingólf?” Yidrith asked her. “Beren herself forbid it before she left.”
“I’m going too!” Dunstan exclaimed.
Yidrith picked up the boy and held him like a sack under his arm.
“I’m going to look and see.” Caer glanced back at Yidrith, daring him to challenge her.
“I’ll take him home,” Yidrith replied. “After I will return and wait for you, lest you find trouble.”
“Thank you, Yidrith. How noble of you,” she said and felt her annoyance grow as he grinned. “I am sure if I sprain an ankle, Headred will not cut your head off right when he awakens.”
Yidrith chuckled, stopped, and grew serious.
“Sprain your ankle?” he worried, but she already shut the door.
“Come along, you runt,” Yidrith said to Dunstan. “I swear by the gods if she hurts herself, I’ll not be held accountable by Headred.”
“Don’t think on it. I’ll tell him you let her go, and she went in alone.”
“And you think your words will help?”
The boy stared. “Well, she said men do not own women. You can’t control her.”
“Sometimes my boy, you have to try,” Yidrith flipped the boy around and set him on the ground, leading him home and feeling his neck all the way.
Idalir, the Castle of the Sun, rose before Caer, its gleaming white turrets and towers snow-covered, its high walls and arched gates, beauty and splendor wrapped in the eternal cold of Belial.
Snow crunched beneath her feet as she walked through the ancient fortress and the gardens where Beren, and later Belial, played. Evil still lingered where the demon walked, where she waited for her chance to strike.
The doors loomed before Caer, doors Beoreth once carried her through, the night of her birth, the night she left the city with Beoreth. Her mother soon after sacrificed herself for the safety of one she believed would save them all.
Caer felt she knew this place, these halls. She knew the crests and the seals of her father and her mother, of their families, the banners hung on the ramparts, gold and white, silver and blue. She knew it all.
Caer stepped over the threshold from the gardens and terraces into the Keep of Idalir.
A cold draft blew through the castle. A thin layer of snow covered the floors, for Beren left the doors open, in the fateful night so long ago, when Beren fulfilled her pact with the gods and abandoned Idalir. The ceilings seemed to rise to the heavens.
A warm feeling came over Caer, as if she knew she returned home.
She passed endless rooms, all empty, and cold, ballrooms and banquet halls and kitchens; the dais where her mother sat upon the throne the ancient witches forged. Bedrooms of splendor lined with gold seemed devoid of life. Snow lay on the floors and the furniture; the statues of centaurs, fairies, nymphs, and gods, and the tapestries hung on the walls glistening with ice. But the portrait in the great hall of her father King Gareth grasping the hilt of Hünjjuerad, the tip of the blade resting on the floor below, painted before he fell to the wolves in the woods, weeks before her birth struck her most.
This place waited for her and beckoned her to come. It called to her, as Náströndir, the Heart of the World, called to her.
The closed door in the castle became visible as she climbed the stairs of the tallest tower. Caer recognized the place where her mother practiced her gift, where for many years she alone stood.
Caer touched the handle, and it opened.
Tears swam in her eyes. The wind from the open window rocked a bassinet, and next to it waited a crib, woven by fairy magic, of soft heather and fashioned like a nest, made by the pixies of the fairy sidhes. Caer paused at a wooden cabinet carved with runes and knots. She unlatched the doors to find herbs still stored there, as if time stood still, next to cauldrons and athames and a crystal-tipped ritual wand.
Magic lingered there.
Caer turned and jumped to see Beren, rocking in the chair, cuddling the babe who suckled at her breast. Bright red hair seemed pale in the pale light, and an ethereal fire crackled in the hearth.
I do not know what fate I send you into, my daughter, Beren said, yet I know I have done all I can. Sleep in peace now, Caer, my child, sleep in dreams of peace and warmth.
“Mother,” Caer cried, but the woman did not look up from her sleeping baby. Caer sank to her knees and curled up and laid her head on the cold stone floor.
There she dreamed of peace and warmth.
*****
Caer awakened, cold and sore from lying on the stone floor. She shook her head as she walked toward the healing house. She could not have stayed; it wearied her too much for one day to find her heritage and be cast into a magical sleep.
Caer walked through the narrow streets of Ull, her heart filled with muddled thoughts, after her uncomfortable sleep in dreams of peace in Idalir.
The arch with its ancient wooden door waited before her. She hesitated before stepping into the house of healing. Could she do anything to help the man she loved?
The door opened.
“Come,” the healer, a young maiden, beckoned. “The mother expects you.”
The halls looked colorless. Caer wondered if all of the homes in the city looked the same, endless corridors of white, with stone floors instead of earth, high ceilings adorned with golden chandeliers and the candlesticks glimmering within them, casting soft light.
The healers carried ivory linen blankets and sheets through the halls. Some bore steaming goblets of herb brews for the sick. All of them glanced at her, curiosity getting the better of them.
“Some of these have heard of witches and never seen one,” the healer remarked. “When your mother sent you into the world, when your mother passed from us, most of the women here stood knee high to a grasshopper.”
“These are wise women?” Caer asked.
The healer chuckled. “Course they are, dear. The line of Dana alone bears the blood of the witches. The daughters of Dana’s heir carried the blood, though the firstborn daughter of the Witches will share her mother’s power and become Queen.”
“How do you still possess magic?” Caer asked
“Beoreth told you nothing? So unlike her,” the healer muttered, and Caer f
elt some small resentment at her boldness. “Over time the blood of Dana’s heir diluted and now runs in women throughout the land. We are called to serve, as the healers, the priestesses and keepers of the old ways, the oracles. But our magic flows little. Soon the healers will have no power save to brew herbs and do what they can with them.”
Caer thought about it.
The healer looked at her and frowned. “Don’t fret m’dear. Herbs can cure all manner of illnesses. You just think about fighting the wench in the dark towers, and we’ll all be just fine.”
Caer laughed, and the healer joined in. Still, in the back of her mind, Caer wondered if her own magic could help to heal Headred.
“I’ve never heard anyone speak of Belial in such a way,” Caer said, trying to catch her breath.
“Oh, posh. Beoreth’s me cousin, twice removed. Me mother waited on Enyd there the night she gave birth to the wench. Could see the demon in her, me mother said. Should’ve ended there, but it didn’t. Always seemed a nasty child, I’m told, and I don’t fear no evil when she wants us to fear.”
Caer smiled, though her heart still feared for the fate of Headred.
If Beren knew her daughter would need help, perhaps she bound her to Headred to link their magic, their power together.
She didn’t have much time to think about it. Athellind breezed toward them.
“Go to the ward,” Athellind instructed the healer with an edge to her tone. “Freana bears her child.”
The healer clapped her hands over her mouth and gasped before running off, leaving Caer alone with Athellind.
The older woman stared at Caer. “I remember the night your mother bore you, you know.” Athellind took her by the shoulder and led her through the halls. “I went out into the woods, and when I returned your mother knew what I saw. I served as a priestess, and I followed Waermund into the woods and discovered his treachery.”
“Yes, Headred told me about you.” Caer imagined Athellind’s ancient form running, hunted by wolves, to warn the Queen.
Athellind’s eyes peered into Caer’s soul. “‘Twas a wee mite younger, I suppose. But I still remember. I remember the child, ye riding off on the back of the centaur, and I remember Belial being held at bay by the sacrifice of the good Queen.”