The Queens of Innis Lear

The ground shivered, shifted so slightly no one on their feet above would notice, and slowly—ever so slowly—roots squeezed, channels were formed, and a thin trickle of water dribbled against his mouth.

  Ban drank.

  Overhead, the noise of soldiers settled. Night had arrived, Ban was certain.

  He moved the fingers of his injured left hand. They did not protest, though they were stiff. The cracked wrist ached, but he would be careful. Slowly taking a deep breath, he tried to feel through the gash on his side. It hurt, crusted over with blood and scab. If he was careful, very careful, he could emerge and walk back to the Aremore camp. The trees would help hide him, and the earth. Warn him of danger.

  Do they sleep? he whispered.

  Not yet.

  Not yet.

  Now.

  Ban smiled. Please lift me up, he said. Carefully, slowly, silently as you can.

  The hawthorns agreed.

  He was birthed from the grassy Aremore hill under cover of dappled, deep shadows. Earth rolled away, roots pulling back, other roots pushing him up and up.

  Night was deep, the moon a useless crescent in the west.

  Ban rubbed his eyes, leaving dirt on his face to cast him darker, a shadow of the land itself. He looked, and all around was a vast army, camped here in this protected valley. Firelight blinked between peaked tents, though banked low except in one or two places where soldiers sat awake to watch for danger. Ban crouched and asked the trees and wind to gently blow, not enough to alarm anyone, but just to cover the sounds of his escape.

  Through aches and weariness, he stood. The three hawthorns hid him from most of the camp, though right here beside him, a tent had been built. At the top a pennant hung, limp but for the fluttering tip thanks to Ban’s quiet wind. He recognized the bright white line of a Diotan commander’s shield.

  He should leave straightaway. He should make his careful way back to the Aremore army. His side hurt, and his wrist was broken. He needed to be cautious.

  Or—

  Or he might take advantage of his situation and find something valuable to bring back with him. Valuable enough that nobody would judge why he’d left the battlefield. Evidence of Ban’s very specific value. He should count horses and men, find maps, or overhear a battle plan. Prove to the Alsax Ban Errigal was no useless bastard, but worth something. Matter to the Aremore army. Make a name for himself. And then prove it to his father, and even the king of Innis Lear. Ban was not to be ignored. He had power. Look what he already had survived with nothing but his words and blood.

  The wind hissed, tossing hawthorn leaves together like applause. Ban smiled, this time hungrily, and stepped toward the enemy commander’s tent.

  GAELA

  GAELA STRODE JUST behind the gray-robed star priest, eager and nearly stepping on his old heels. It had taken several days to discover and summon this man, the same priest who had served at Dondubhan three decades ago, and once led a similar procession when Lear had come to take up the mantle of reluctant kingship. Unlike her father, Gaela was prepared. Her heart beat hard and steady, and every breath filled her from top to toe with vitality.

  Tucked like a secret against the northeastern edge of the Tarinnish, the holy navel well connected to the black lake by a thin stream of water. The trickle only barely revealed itself, sliding around sharp pebbles and beneath ferns and long grass. At night, all was black, ethereal gray, and a deep, blunt, resounding green. Overhead, the wind dragged clouds across the stars in a sheer layer of silver, and so the sky seemed to ripple with emotion as their procession made its way around the lake.

  Behind Gaela followed her graceful sister, who though still full of impossible sadness, was just as eager to be queen. They were accompanied, too, by that dark slip of a wizard, and Osli, with three more star priests and a dozen retainers for witnesses.

  The star priest leading their party slowed as they entered the well’s grove. He stepped aside for Gaela so that she might face the entrance. Massive, moss-covered boulders surrounded the grove, encircling it and creating a mouth of rocks and soft earth, damp and darkly green. Some trees grew here, lean as bone and gray as the moon. Few leaves remained, shivering in the omnipresent wind.

  At the center, smaller blue stones created a pit as black as anything she’d ever seen. At the fore was a flat boulder, like a ledge, and another made a roof across two of the largest boulders to shelter this most ancient well.

  The star priests moved to stand at each corner of the small grove, cupping the clay bowls of fire carefully before them. All looked to the oldest; a cragged and drooping old man with pale brown eyes and a spotted white face, who had stationed himself beside the well and now pointed at the clusters of tall spindled plants growing in the damp soil beside the well. “There is no ritual but this,” he said. “Eat a handful of the blossoms, and dip your hands into the well to drink. Then, in the light of the stars, by the power of the rootwaters, you will be recognized as the rightful monarch of Innis Lear.”

  Gaela waited for the rest of her people to filter in around her, studying the flowers. The green stalks reached higher than her waist, spreading like fingers or thin, miniature trees. The leaves were feathery and green, and tiny white blossoms made starbursts and swaying baubles. She wondered why they seemed so strange, so out of place in this grove, when they were no more than a common weed, and weeds abounded in these northern reaches of Innis Lear.

  “They should be blooming in the late spring,” Regan murmured. “Not now. Now they should be dried seed heads. Might we, too, have blossomed here, my Connley?”

  Gaela frowned, concerned for her grieving sister’s state of mind.

  “Death rattles,” Regan’s wizard, her Fox, murmured. Then, louder, his voice like ice, “It’s hemlock.”

  “You would poison me?” Gaela turned with careful, coiled control to the old star priest.

  Led by Osli, her retainers drew their swords, aiming furious blades at the four priests.

  The old priest inclined his head and held her gaze. “It is the only way to gain the crown of Innis Lear, Princess.”

  Wind hissed across the tops of the low trees, tossing thin yellow-and-brown leaves toward them. It shivered the pines at the north of the grove. Gaela stared at the old man, wondering if this could be true.

  “My father ate such poison?” Regan asked, strangely calm to Gaela’s ears. Curious, almost wondering.

  “Yes.”

  Ban the Fox stepped up to the edge of the well. “I believe it,” he said in a taut voice. “The roots of the island and the blood of the king become united, sacrificing for each other. So one who would take the crown must take the poison, and then let the rootwater cleanse them, transforming death of the self into rebirth as the king. This is the way of wormwork.”

  “It is safer on the Longest Night, when the roots are strongest and waters blessed by the brightest, boldest stars. If fear pauses you now,” said the old priest.

  Gaela’s skin chilled, and slowly began to tighten against her own flesh. Surely this was not fear, but fury.

  Regan knelt by the star-bright weeds and brushed her fingers against the flowers. “So beautiful,” she whispered.

  “Put your swords down,” Gaela ordered her retainers. She glanced to see it done, catching the gross tension on Osli’s face. Her captain did not trust this magic, either, and she was loath to leave her lord so unprotected.

  The rootwaters had never done anything for Gaela. Why should they keep her alive now? Gaela had rejected them again and again. Had rejected everything of magic, of star prophecy and the island. She intended her power for herself and her sister, not to share it with fickle wind, stubborn earth, prideful stars. Why should she put her life into—

  The thought hit her like a ballista’s bolt: Dalat had been poisoned this way.

  Gaela had always suspected poison. She would never have been able to prove it had been her father’s own hand, not just his fault—his requirement—his prophecy. Gaela had guessed, between the wag
ging tongues at court and her own ears, but never, until exactly now, had she known how. If this priest told it true, Lear had known of the hemlock here, as well as he knew his own stars.

  Lear had poisoned Dalat to bring about the prophecy that she would die on her eldest daughter’s sixteenth birthday.

  The night before, the queen had been healthy, with an appetite and shining eyes. No fever or illness, nothing to claim her in the night so suddenly.

  By dawn, Dalat simply had ceased to breathe.

  Or so Lear had claimed. But he was alone with her during that night, and alone with her first thing in the morning.

  If this hemlock grew so near Dondubhan, how easy would it have been to make certain she partook?

  Gaela’s shoulders heaved as she thought it all through, as she stared at the weedy hemlock, at the way the flowers looked like constellations. Of course it was such a star shape he would use; of course it was such a thing that he preferred.

  Her heart burned with this new understanding. As if the island had collaborated in her mother’s death, Gaela lifted her foot and brought it down upon one of the hemlock plants.

  Regan gasped, and one of the priests grunted in protest.

  “This will not happen,” Gaela said. Her voice shook, from fury and a swelling panic. “I am changing the way this process works, changing ritual and the relationship between the crown and the land. I will not poison myself to suit dead ways of dead kings. I will be my own sacrament.”

  “It is supposed to be faith that guides the hand!” cried the oldest star priest. “To wear our crown, you must believe in the roots, in the island’s blood and the prophecies of the stars!

  “No.” Gaela crushed more of the hemlock. “I am here for my own blood, which is of this island, and my own will, which shall be my only prophecy.”

  She drew out her knife and sliced at the green stalks, ripping up others and tossing them against the mossy boulders. Some leaves and petals fluttered down into the black pit of the well; lonely, fallen stars.

  “Gaela.” Regan clutched at her wrist. “I’ll do it. I want to! Let me do this!”

  “No. I won’t allow you to be such a fool. And neither was our father, though he became one by the end. He would not have done this, hating the roots so, disdainful of all but the skies of his beloved stars. A coward, one who doomed his wife to save his own seat, but he’d never have wagered his own life. He lied, if he said he did.”

  The old priest shook his head frantically. “No, I was there. I saw it, then. He ate of the flowers, and drank of the waters, before he grew dizzy and collapsed. Lear went still for a long hour as the stars wheeled overhead, and then the king opened his eyes, and the stars shone upon his awakening.”

  “A pretty story.” Gaela did not care.

  Tears glittered on Regan’s cheeks, and she knelt beside the well. “I don’t mind if it kills me, Gaela,” she whispered. “The reward is greater, to be what we always wanted. What Connley wanted. I would be made full—new.”

  “How dare you offer to abandon me,” Gaela said, so low in her throat she could hardly believe it was her own voice. “Remember who you are, Regan, and who I am, and what we are to each other. What we will be to this land.”

  Silence fell all around, but for the constant pressing wind, and Regan’s hard breathing. Gaela put her hand on her sister’s neck. She was sympathetic; she hated for Regan to weep, to hurt so badly and desperately, but Gaela was angry, too, furious that Regan felt so bereft without Connley, when they still had each other. And Regan could still try for a babe, perhaps with the Fox, his seed surely more cunning than Regan’s dead husband’s, and enough power between them to spur life.

  No other love should be able to drag Regan away from Gaela! As if they could not be all to each other, beyond the ways of men, and their rules, and their stars. No.

  “Regan,” she said, resolute but not unkind.

  Her sister’s head nodded, wearily.

  “Ban,” Gaela ordered, “hold my sister up.”

  The young man took Regan’s elbow and leaned her against his chest. His eyes were bright, slightly too wide, and he murmured softly into Regan’s ear.

  Gaela then faced their enrapt audience and forged onward.

  “My sister and I will stay here for some time, and when we emerge, we will be crowned. You, men, you, priests, listen to me: I am the rightful king of Innis Lear because it is who and what I am, what I have built myself to be, what I should have been from birth. My father was the king, and his father, back two hundred years to the first king of a united Innis Lear. And my mother, so enamored of our roots and stars, was buried here, and she has become this island, anointing my own natal claim. This crown is my legacy. I have ingested the poison of life these last twelve years, and my sweat has watered these lands.” She leveled the old priest with her boldest gaze. “My blood is the island’s blood, do you understand me?”

  After a moment, Gaela swept her stare to encompass the entire company assembled in the holy grove. Regan, still against Ban the Fox, followed her sister’s gaze.

  Many nodded immediately: Osli and three other retainers, whose faces were firm and already lit in awe, knelt. Some thought hard, then glanced at one another, and back at her again, before going down on their knees, too. The shaking priests were cowed by the display, and followed the others’ example. Except for one.

  The old priest was stone, in body and in regard.

  Gaela said, “I will cut you down if you prefer.”

  “This is not the way, Your Highness,” he said. “You are right about everything in your history, and what you have earned, but still the island must know you, before giving its people and roots and breath over to your care. You must give it your blood; you must drink from its roots. You must face the stars above. It is not that you are less if you don’t, but that the wind, the water, the island will not—”

  “Choose, priest,” Gaela said. “The island might wait, but I won’t.”

  He slowly, painfully dropped to his knees. Frustration made his jaw hard and his wrinkled lips thin as he placed the bowl of oil and fire at her feet. “My queen.”

  Because she wanted to, she kicked out, catching the discarded sacred bowl with her boot. The oil splattered, and fire destroyed the rest of the hemlock.

  “Queen is my sister’s calling. Now, I am king.”

  * * *

  AS THE SUN rose, Gaela sat in the throne of Innis Lear, there in the great hall of Dondubhan. Regan held herself carefully beside the throne, resting in a narrow, tall-backed chair nearly as regal. Both women were dressed and decorated voluptuously, in the midnight blue of the line of Lear. White clay dotted their brows and red plumped their lips. Star tabards fell across both laps. Gaela wore a heavy silver coronet and held a sword across her thighs. Regan cupped a silver bowl of water from the Tarinnish, a thin diadem of intricate leaves upon her brow.

  Dawn slid gray-pink light through tall windows as men and women of Dondubhan and Astore offered vows and gifts to the new monarchs. Unease and hope mingled in a tense, airy soup, for most in the hall did not approve of the timing, yet they wanted nothing so much as for Innis Lear to prosper once again. And here, now, arrived a chance for restoration under their new queens.

  Ban the Fox had knelt first, in the winter blue of the Errigal earls, and sworn his loyalty to Gaela, then Regan. They had named him before everyone, not only as earl but as the first root wizard of Innis Lear’s new age.

  That had further spread out gossip and hope, like threads of lightning.

  Retainers and messengers were sent to the corners of the island, beckoning for the lords to come to their queens on the Longest Night, for the heads of towns and castle stewards to come. There to witness all three daughters of Innis Lear together: the rulers crowned and their priestly sister set to her place in the star towers.

  Gaela studied the face of every man, woman, and child who knelt before them, composing to herself the letter she would write to Elia. The defenses she
would mount against Aremoria immediately, the summons and plans for sea vessels, the enlisting of unlanded men and women, and the tithing of the landed. The urgent business of the western coastal road, adjustments for depleted grain to the south. Her father’s body would need to be brought to the Star Field. The star towers would be shuttered if they did not make prophecies to suit her needs, despite whatever choice Elia would come to make about her own future. All the wells might be opened if local folk so desired, but Gaela would first send a mission into the heart of the White Forest, perhaps led by the Fox himself. They would need to find the ruins of the ancient star cathedral where the navel of the island drove deepest, that inspiration of the old faith and the way of kings long dead. And that—that well Gaela would fill to the brim with sand and salt.

  The only power on Innis Lear would be her own.

  Hours ago, in the darkest moment of the night, just before they left that poisoned grove, Ban had spoken, holding Gaela’s sister carefully. His words were a warning, and a challenge:

  “Elia would swallow the hemlock, and the rootwaters would save her.”

  Regan had closed her eyes, lost to her selfish pain, but Gaela had smiled. “She will not, and they cannot. For I will stop her first.”

  To Elia of Lear, and any who would be her allies:

  We crown ourselves here at Dondubhan, where the kings of Lear have been crowned for seven generations. The island is ours: I who am Gaela King, and I who am Regan Queen, for the king who was our father named us his true heirs, and as we have made the necessary rituals of our people, so shall we rule.

  If you would meet us on this island, be it as subject to her king. We shall appear on the plains of Errigal on the Fourday of this month’s dark week. There you shall submit to our rule. If you choose otherwise, death or exile will be the only way forward. Copies of this letter fly to every corner of Innis Lear, so that all understand our first decree, even so that the very wind and roots understand.

  Your sisters and rulers,

  Gaela King of Lear

  Regan Connley of Lear