The Queens of Innis Lear

Overwhelmed with affection, with fear and longing—and anger—Elia picked up his hand and clasped it in hers. He was so ruined, so wracked by madness and guilt, she shouldn’t be angry. She did not have the luxury, though she wished, for a fleeting moment, that she could rage and hate him, as Ban had done.

  Struggling for peace, Elia simply closed her eyes and whispered to the nearby ash tree. I’m listening.

  So are we, the ash tree said, shaking a little so that three oval leaves drifted down to kiss the rushing creek beside them.

  Elia remembered another ash tree, at the heart of her mother’s garden at Dondubhan. It had been the queen’s sanctuary against the harsh winters of the far north. Cherry trees had bloomed a blushing pink, and juniper had always been green, with tiny pale blue berries in the fall. But the ash itself had leaned over the queen’s favorite bench. The morning Dalat had died, the first black buds had peeked out from the pale branches, later to bloom into deep purple flowers. Roses hugged the keep wall, the barren vines hooked against the huge gray stones. Elia, only eight years old, fled from her sisters to the garden, going first to the rose vines. She grasped one in her hand, squeezing the copper thorns until they hurt, until the curved spikes bit into her skin. The pain had focused Elia away from her churning stomach, and away from her uncertain but swollen grief.

  A cold wind had blown gently through the evergreen fingers of the juniper, shaking its voice in sad little gasps to mirror her own muffled panting.

  Elia Elia Elia, the wind seemed to whisper.

  Her face had crumpled. She’d let free a wail, small as a kitten’s cry, and closed her eyes. That morning, it had felt the only way: releasing the hurt a bit at a time, through soft cries and the pricks on her palm. Would pain melt out of her along with her blood?

  “Elia,” someone said.

  It was no tree voice, or the wind, but a woman. Elia let go of the rose vine, but the thorns stuck in her flesh and she stopped.

  Someone spoke in the language of trees. Elia could only understand, then, two words: rose and you. She did not move except to glance sideways.

  A boy had stood there, not the woman who’d spoken before. He was her size, with ruddy cheeks and a thicket of black hair in tangles like a wild thing. His eyes were mud-gray and chipped with green. He repeated himself.

  “I don’t understand,” Elia had said, tears in her eyes. “My sister only teaches me words that my mother wants to hear.”

  Behind them both, the woman spoke again. “He said the roses don’t want to let you go.”

  Elia had choked on a cry, nodding and shaking. “My mother is dead.”

  The words themselves became the ocean of grief in her chest, and so Elia did not breathe for a long moment.

  “I know,” the woman said. She stepped to Elia, touching the princess’s thin shoulder. It was Brona, the queen’s friend, and witch of the White Forest. “This is my son, Ban. Do you remember him?”

  Elia did not think she’d met the boy before, and she glanced at him more curiously. He did not smile or frown, only studied her with those large muddy eyes.

  “I will ask them to let you go,” he’d said finally, then whispered to the roses.

  The vine shuddered and sighed, and the wind teased Elia’s loose cloud of hair, without touching Ban’s or his mother’s.

  And with a little extra shiver, the rose thorns released Elia’s flesh. She’d pulled her hand back, and Ban snatched her wrist instead in his small, dry hand. Before she could speak, he had touched the smears of blood in her palm and drew three marks on the skin. “Thank you,” he said, and then, Thank you, this time in the language of trees.

  Thank you, Elia had repeated.

  Ban tugged her hand and then pressed her palm against the bark of the nearby cherry tree. Elia Lear, he’d whispered.

  Then the door to Elia’s bedroom had crashed open, echoing through the empty garden, and her father, the king, called her name.

  “Your mother loved you,” Brona the witch had said as Elia pulled herself free of Ban. Elia backed away, shaking her head. There had been too much inside her, too many unnamed winds and currents still lifting, growing, pushing out and out to overwhelm her heart.

  The boy Ban had vanished in a scatter of grass and fallen leaves, rushing away, and Brona had smiled sadly at Elia, then bent to pick something out of the roots of a cherry tree. She tucked whatever it was into her skirts and left, too.

  Elia had turned to face her father, who strode blindly toward her, kicking his nightrobe and long blue coat in his hurry. His feet were bare. He’d picked her up under her arms and hugged her too tightly.

  His hair smelled of Dalat’s bergamot oil, and Elia had wrapped her arms around him, burying her face in his neck.

  “Oh, Elia,” the king had murmured, “Oh, my baby, my little star. You won’t leave me. Never.”

  “No, Father,” she’d whispered.

  Hitching her onto his hip, though she was eight and wild and gangly, he’d carried her to Dalat’s bench. They sat, Lear cradling Elia and crying, too. She’d gripped the edge of his coat, crusted as it was with embroidered stars. Dalat had let Elia sew three of them, up near the collar, and she touched one with her finger. The king shook, and Elia smeared her tears onto his chest.

  “The stars promised this day would be as it is,” the king had whispered, his nose in Elia’s hair. His breath hissed through the curls to warm her scalp. “We can only give in to them, my star. They see all, and know what will become of all of us. You, you were born under Calpurlugh, the loyal and constant Child Star. My heart, my star princess.”

  Elia held tightly to him. The cherry trees bent around them, sheltering the princess and the king in their grief.

  Thank you, she whispered in the language of trees.

  “No.” Her father sat up straight. A certain fire lit his eyes. “None of that.”

  Elia touched his cheek. The lines of his face pulled harder this morning, heavy with grief and age, and through her watery vision she saw a shimmer of gray in his short beard, just beside his ear. Like a spray of late starlight.

  “No tree tongue?” she asked, confused. It had been the natural language of Innis Lear since the island rose from the sea.

  “Nothing but stars now,” the king vowed.

  He took her chin in long white hands.

  “The stars are all for Innis Lear.”

  * * *

  THE STARS ARE not all, a much older Elia whispered now, in the language of her island.

  She studied her palms for scars, as if their memory could repair the scars grown over her heart.

  The king shivered and woke. He grumbled to himself, “The wind is not listening.”

  “It is,” Elia said. “Especially while the stars are hidden by the light of day.”

  “They still watch us, always guiding our path,” he argued, but without any heat.

  Elia tilted her head back to search the sky. The sun had lowered beyond the western trees, and overhead all was creamy pink and sheer violet.

  The girl is returning, and more. Family, said the ash tree.

  Elia kissed her father’s sagging fingers and stood. There, at the southeast edge of the meadow, they appeared: seven or eight folk from Hartfare, as well as all those promised by the trees. She waved, lifting onto her tiptoes. Aefa waved back.

  A large fur was spread on the soft ground, and several woolen blankets. Elia got her father atop them, and gave him some wine. He nodded regally, as if the drooping hemlock crown he still wore was made of gold, as if his tattered robe were imported silk. Aefa pressed bread into Elia’s hand, stuffed with sliced apples and pieces of cheese, and then after, a cup of wine, too. Dizzy and oddly at peace, Elia devoured it all, then went wandering along the creek, against the current. The water seemed to call her, babbling just under its breath. This way, this way, it seemed to say, though the words were not in any language she knew. More a tug at her heart, a rightness in her feet.

  The sky dimmed, spreading violet and c
ream across the meadow, to the song of evening birds and laughter.

  “Elia,” the king called.

  She went to him, kneeling.

  “What will we see first?” he asked, tilting his head back. He reclined on his elbows and years seemed to melt away.

  Elia lay beside him, so he could toy with her curls. As a child, she’d move her eyes as she searched for a star, certain that whichever was first sighted contained a message just for her.

  Now, Elia knew from study and habit where stars would appear, their secrets predictable and universal. The Star of First Birds would be to the northwest, higher than the last time she’d watched for it. To the true north, Calpurlugh would appear, though it was autumn and so it would be the Eye of the Lion, not Elia’s Child Star. If she looked east the Autumn Throne would rise, and the Tree of Sorrow, with its long roots. The trees in the west were too high for her to see the Hound, but she knew it would arc there soon.

  The evening breathed cool air across their noses, and the king sipped his wine. Elia’s cheeks were warm from hers already. She drifted, thinking of stars, and asked the wind, Which direction shall I look? It said, We blow from the north.

  Elia turned her face with it and watched the southern sky through half-closed eyes.

  “Ah, there is Lasural!” her father said, pointing to a single glint of light. “The tip of the Thorn. What do you see?”

  “The Sisters,” she whispered. “All five pushing out there in the south.”

  “Yes. So. Hmm. I suppose that is—is sacrifice for mine, a surprise of it, and for yours…”

  “The wind blows from the north, so we should consider Lasural leading toward the Sisters.”

  The king of Innis Lear grunted. “The wind is—”

  “Of the island, Father, it…”

  Elia’s answer trailed away as she heard a vast, sudden noise, a gathering noise, like the ocean’s roar. She sat up, turning toward it: southeast.

  A tempest of air and screams surged toward them, bending around and through the White Forest, tossing birds into the sky. It blew hard enough that Elia grabbed both the nearly empty bottle of wine and her father’s wrist, squeezing closed her eyes, worried about which might do more damage if released into the shocking squall. Her hair tore and pulled; her skirts slapped hard.

  Then the wind was gone.

  Vanished, as if it had never been.

  In the empty silence, birds struggled against the purple sky. Trees shivered, leaves tossing wildly, but slowly, slowly settling.

  Elia let go her breath in a long sigh and put down the wine.

  “Oh, Father, that was … that was too strange. Do you think the stars felt it, even?”

  The old king said nothing.

  She looked over to him, searching. Through the dim purple light, she saw her father reclined fully, lips parted, eyes still open. His hair was a wild tangle, twisted together with the half-torn crown of hemlock. His wrist was limp in her hand.

  “Father?”

  Leaning over him, she shook his shoulders.

  Nothing.

  He did not move. He did not breathe.

  “Father!” she yelled. “Aefa! Kayo!” Elia grabbed her father’s chin and looked into his faded blue eyes. But Lear did not return the gaze: his eyes were empty.

  Elia gasped, and then did so again, knives stabbing her lungs. She held her breath and swallowed her terror. She put her cheek over his mouth. Waited to feel anything, for his tender breath to reach her.

  She heard the pounding of feet as her uncle thundered closer, followed by all who’d camped nearby.

  But there was nothing for them to do. Nothing could be done at all.

  The king of Innis Lear was dead.

  Part

  FIVE

  To Elia, daughter of Innis Lear,

  I can no longer sit by, knowing what I have done. I have planted a canker in the heart of your island, and having heard from him a final word I must

  To Elia, daughter of Innis Lear,

  I hope you have found your father and are making progress toward your goals. I must tell you that Ban is—Ban has

  To Elia, daughter of Innis Lear,

  Ban has betrayed me. He sent a message, his final message, and he has chosen the island. Or you. I hope it is you, because that, at least, I understand. No, I

  To Elia, daughter of Innis Lear,

  Last night I went onto my balcony and listened to the Aremore wind. It tugged my attention toward the river, smelling of fire and crisp red leaves. Do you know that smell? I do not know what causes it, for there are no flowers now, but there is a shift in the taste of the air in this month. I have held a dead, curling leaf to my nose and smelled nothing. Yet, I associate it with this season, when the trees in Lionis burn red and orange. This season. Tomorrow is my birth anniversary, when we hold a grand festival in honor of Aremore. Some years it coincides with the autumnal equinox, though not this year. There will be a parade that lasts hours in the morning, throughout my city, and in the afternoon we open the palace to all, entertaining ourselves with players and song, with applicants from my state library, hoping to impress me with their ideas. I wish

  Elia, daughter of Innis Lear,

  Elia,

  Oak Earl,

  I hope this finds you, unhoused as you are.

  I have received word from Innis Lear and find myself determined to join you on your island. I must see through what I have begun. For not knowing whose eyes might see this dispatch, I hesitate to reveal details, except to say I will arrive at Port Comlack at the beginning of the dark moon week.

  —M

  RORY

  RORY COULD RECALL, if he cast his memory back far enough, his youthful attendance at festivals on Innis Lear. The Longest Night was always a solemn occasion for vigils and for honoring ancestors and planting iron stakes at the front door if there were young children in the house. To keep away the hungriest earth saints. The summer solstice festival had been alive with laughter and dancing, costumes of feathers and wild fires; there’d been a harvest festival as well, when the hardest work of summer ended and everything was slaughtered for the winter. He’d celebrated that at the Keep with his parents, by burning sharp incense in all the rooms so the ghostly hounds of the earth saints could not smell properly to hunt anyone down, dragging them into the sky forever. In the spring there’d been a festival for all babes born that year, to name them and cast birth charts and share prophecies. That one Rory had the clearest memory of, for it had continued the most intact throughout his life.

  Every festival on Innis Lear, when he contemplated them now, seemed purposed to bring light or laughter or togetherness like a shield over some darker, more dangerous promise. The earth saints will steal your children if you don’t celebrate them! Watch out for the howling dogs riding the wind or they’ll snatch you into oblivion! This summer we wear feathers and drink sweet nectar to become the birds of the sky, to balance in careful, ecstatic joy between the wind and worms—but beware leaning too far into the fire, or straying toward the darkest shadows! If you do not remember your name, you might never return to your body! And the star prophecies always, always worked to offer a path of hope against inevitable doom and death.

  How strange it felt, then, for this Aremore celebration to be, as far as Rory could tell, nothing but pageantry and fun.

  It was the king’s birthday, and everyone in the country—certainly everyone in Lionis—was happy. Streamers colored rainbows across the sky, and petals fell like snow; whistles and tambourines played raucous music; the squares were filled with players and spiral dances and vendors with grilled meat and apple cider; the king himself had begun the day with a dawn parade that stretched from the outer gates of the city through the vibrant white streets, winding and cutting back on itself, until after hours and hours Morimaros had visited every neighborhood. He had smiled, laughed, waved, with his sister and nephew riding at his flanks. Behind came bright clowns and acrobats, then men and women in massive, glitteri
ng masks turning their faces into crystal moons like the beautiful earth saints of old; next giant puppets of paper and plaster, decorated with voluminous robes and crowns made of glass. These were the line of Aremore kings, stretching a thousand years. Behind rode any person with a horse who’d turned twenty-two in the year before, the age Morimaros had been when he inherited the throne. Some were noble, others merchants or those in a trade, or students from the great library of Aremore; some were even from the poorer neighborhoods, having banded together to hire a horse, or won the chance from one of the Elder Queen Calepia’s charity funds. Even some foreigners joined in the parade: young men and women in the vibrant, striped scarves of the Third Kingdom; others in the ruffles of Ispania with their hair parted by jeweled fans at the tops of their heads; the furred and steel-gleaming folk from the Rusrike.

  Rory’s eyes still blurred from the glitter and spectacle.

  He hovered now in the broad open front court of Lionis Palace, one of hundreds crowding the space. Near the arched double doors leading into the palace a dais had been erected, hung with brilliant orange banners. The king of Aremoria sat upon a white throne, resplendent in orange velvet and pristine linen. A crown of gold gleamed at his brow. Cup of cider in hand, Morimaros spoke with whomever approached—it was a long, winding line—for a moment or two, focused and engaged. Gifts accumulated behind him on the dais, accepted by the Twice-Princess Ianta and passed into the hands of lion-liveried attendants.

  The cider flowed freely, dipped into cups from great barrels and cauldrons, and edging the yard were tables laden with all manner of bread and fruit, and cheeses molded into lions, as well as tiny candies and lion-shaped fondants. Folk pressed and laughed, waved at friends, and gathered around the pockets of musicians. There would be performers later: more players and puppeteers, clowns, and even a series of eager students who’d been granted the opportunity to present their king with new inventions or ideas he might implement.

  Rory should’ve been perfectly at ease.

  In Aremoria, when he roused himself to his habitual charm and natural—though now somewhat strained—affability, Rory was popular. He smiled at the servants and carried water for the girls bringing him a bath, then shrugged so casually at the shocked footmen that they couldn’t bring themselves to judge him for not knowing his place. The captain of the palace guard, La Far, welcomed Rory to join him in morning exercise, and therefore Rory was accepted by the rest of the Aremore soldiers. At evening meals, Rory was solicitous of the noble ladies, earning their sympathy; what lords and husbands might initially direct suspicion upon him were mostly caught out by Rory’s earnest engagement. He was simply one of those men for whom relationships and society came easy, as he was handsome, loving, and expected the best of all those he encountered. It all sprung from the confidence of place, from knowing exactly what status he held in the world, and the never-before-undercut assumption that nothing would change: he would always be safe, well-liked, and respected by his kin, his people, and his peers and betters.