“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 e
nclosure; 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?”
Miriamele lifted her cup solemnly. “To your birth-day, Simon.”
“And to yours, Princess Miriamele.”
They sat and drank for a while in silence. The wind pressed the grass sideways, flattening it in changing patterns as though some great invisible beast rolled in restless sleep. “The Raed is beginning tomorrow,” he said. “But I think that Josua has already decided what he wants to do.”
“He will go to Nabban.” There was quiet bitterness in her voice.
“What’s wrong with that?” Simon motioned for her cup, which was empty. “It’s a start.”
“It’s the wrong start.” She stared at his hand as she took the cup. The scrutiny made him uneasy. “I’m sorry, Simon. I am just unhappy with things. With lots of things.”
“I will listen if you want to talk. I’ve gotten to be a good listener, Princess.”
“Don’t call me ‘Princess’!” When she spoke again, her tone was softer. “Please, Simon, not you, too. We were friends once, when you didn’t know who I was. I need that now.”
“Certainly … Miriamele.” He took a breath. “Aren’t we friends now?”
“That’s not what I meant.” She sighed. “It’s the same problem as I have with Josua’s decision. I don’t agree with him. I think we should move directly to Erkynland. This is not a war like my grandfather fought—it’s much worse, much darker. I am afraid we will be too late if we try to conquer Nabban first.”
“Too late for what?”
“I don’t know. I have these feelings, these ideas, but I have nothing that I can use to prove they are real. That’s bad enough, but because I am a princess—because I am the High King’s daughter—they listen to me anyway. Then they all try to find a polite way to ignore me. It would almost be better if they just told me to be quiet!”
“What does that have to do with me?” Simon asked quietly. Miriamele had closed her eyes, as though she looked at something inside herself. The red-gold of her eyelashes, the minute fineness of them, made him feel as though he were coming apart.
“Even you, Simon, who met me as a serving-girl—no, a serving-boy!” She laughed, but her eyes remained shut. “Even you, Simon, when you look at me, you are not just looking at me. You are seeing my father’s name, the castle I grew up in, the costly dresses. You are looking at a … a princess.” She said the word as though it meant something terrible and false.
Simon stared at her for a long time, watching her wind-shifted hair, the downy line of her cheek. He burned to tell her what he really saw, but knew he could never find the proper words; it would all come out as a mooncalf babble. “You are what you are,” he said at last. “Isn’t it just as false to try and be something else as it is for others to pretend they’re talking to you when they’re only talking to some … princess?”
Her eyes opened suddenly. They were so clear, so searching! He suddenly had an idea of what it must have been like to stand before her grandfather, Prester John. It reminded him, too, of what he himself was: a servant’s awkward child, a knight only by virtue of circumstance. At this moment she seemed closer than she had ever been, but at the same time the gulf between them also seemed as wide as the ocean.
Miriamele was staring at him intently. After a few moments, he looked away, abashed. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Her voice was brisk, but it somehow did not match the fretful expression on her face. “Don’t be, Simon. And let’s talk of something else.” She turned to look across the swaying grass of the hilltop. The strange, fierce moment passed.
They finished the wine and shared bread and cheese. For a treat, Simon produced a leaf-wrapped package of sweetmeats that he had bought from one of the peddlers at New Gadrinsett’s
small market, little balls made of honey and roasted grain. The talk turned to other things, of the places and strange things they had both seen. Miriamele tried to tell Simon of the Niskie Gan Itai and her singing, of the way she had used her music to stitch sky and sea together. In his turn, Simon tried to explain something of what it had been like to be in Jiriki’s house by the river, and to see the Yásira, the living tent of butterflies. He tried to describe gentle, frightening Amerasu, but faltered. There was still a great deal of pain in that memory.
“And what about that other Sitha-woman?” Miriamele asked. “The one who is here. Aditu.”
“What do you mean?”
“What do you think of her?” She frowned. “I think she has no manners.”
Simon snorted softly. “She has her own manners, is more like it. They’re not like us, Miriamele.”
“Well, then I think little of the Sithi. She dresses and acts like a tavern harlot.”
He had to suppress another smile. Aditu’s current style of dress was almost bogglingly reserved in comparison to the garb she had worn in Jao é-Tinukai’i. It was true that she still often exhibited more of her tawny flesh than the citizens of New Gadrinsett found comfortable, but Aditu was obviously doing her best not to outrage her mortal companions. As for her behavior … “I don’t think she’s so bad,” he said.
“Well, you wouldn’t.” Miriamele was definitely cross. “You moon after her like a puppy.”
“I do not!” he said, stung. “She is my friend.”
“That’s a nice word. I have heard my father’s knights use that word also, to describe women who would not be allowed across the threshold of a church.” Miriamele sat up straight. She was not just teasing. The anger he had sensed earlier was there, too. “I do not blame you—it is the nature of men. She is very fetching, in her strange way.”
Simon’s laugh was sharp. “I will never understand,” he said.
“What? Understand what?”
“No matter.” He shook his head. It would be good to move the conversation back to safer ground, he decided. “Ah, I almost forgot.” He turned and reached for the drawstring bag which he had leaned against the weather-polished wall. “This is a celebration of our birth-days. It is time for the giving of gifts.”