The Queens of Innis Lear

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Here he smelled late summer roses and dry grass, salty sea and the tinge of fishy decay. Stone and earth, his own sweat. Maybe his memories of being a boy-witch here were thin; maybe the island always had spoken so tightly.

But no: Ban was certain. Lear had done this. The fool king had weakened the ancient voice of the island when he forbade the rootwaters from flowing. Both earth and stars were needed for magic: roots and blood for power, the stars to align them. Without both, everything was wild, or everything was dead. Here, it was dying.

Ban couldn’t—he wouldn’t let it happen. Not to the trees and wind. Not to this hungry island that birthed him. The only thing in his life to never let him go, to never choose someone else.

Kneeling, Ban drew off his thin jacket and then untucked his linen shirt and removed it, too. Dropped both in a pile beside him.

From a small folded pouch on his belt, he drew a sharp flint triangle and pressed the edge to his chest, over his heart. Blood, he whispered in the language of trees, slicing fast. Blood welled as the sting flared. It dripped a thin, dark line down his chest. Ban allowed it, but caught the stream upon his finger just before it reached the waist of his trousers. There, against his skin, he smeared it into the jagged language of trees, writing Innis Lear with marks like naked winter twigs.

His chest ached with every breath, a low fire heating his skin and heart. Ban pressed his palm to the wound, caught trickling blood, and then clasped his hands together until both palms glinted scarlet.

Here I am, he said to the wind, and leaned forward onto his hands and knees, giving the bloody prints to the earth. My power, and your power.

Ban Errigal, the island trees hissed. Ban the Fox, the Fox, the Fox.

The slice over his heart bled onto the ground, a dull dripping, a narrow thread of life between him and the island.

The puddle shaped itself into a crescent, tips reaching away.

Ban opened his eyes and looked into the crimson pool. He saw a word marked there, something close to promise.

I promise, he whispered tenderly. I swear to you.

Wind flew off the island, a cry of trees, rushing past him, dragging at his hair, and tears pricked suddenly in his eyes. The wind snatched his tears and shrieked off the cliff, crashing down, down, down to the rocks and sea foam.

WELCOME!

Ban smiled.

He leaned back onto his heels, holding his bloody, dusty hands before him. Light, he said.

Five tiny silver baubles of moonlight blossomed over his palms.

He laughed, delighted.

A soft noise echoed in response.

Then a human voice: “You’ve become a wizard.”

Ban lifted his head. Elia Lear stood across from him, part of the violet shadows. He wondered how long she’d been watching. Did she still understand the language of trees?

The moon washed out her eyes and dress and found the reddish glints in her dark chainmail curls. It turned her face into a gold mask like the kind an earth saint would wear: black eyes, slash of mouth, wild ribbons and scraggly moss and vines for hair.

Balancing the tiny stars still in his hands, he stood up slowly, his heart somehow lighter. That had always been her gift to him: she cut through all the angles of his anger and need, to a hidden spark of peace. “Elia,” he said, then, “Princess.”

Elia’s face crumpled, becoming human again, in painful motion. “No more,” she whispered. Her fingers pulled lines into the front of her gown.

Ban went to her and caught up her elbows, leaning in to offer her comfort. The balls of light dropped slow as bubbles, fading just before they hit the earth again. Elia clung to him, despite the blood and dust on his chest and hands. He put his arms full around her, his heart gasping between beats.

“Ban Errigal,” she whispered, her cheek pressed to his shoulder. “I never knew if I’d see you again. I hoped, but no more than hope. It is so good, so very good, to be held by you now.”

“Like the last time,” he said, low in his throat, forcing the words out, “your father made a terrible decision.”

She shuddered against him. Her hair teased his chin and jaw, smelling of spicy flowers still. Elia pulled away, though slid her hands down to his. She lifted one, touching the blood.

“Wormwork,” he said.

“It was beautiful.” She raised her eyes to his.

“The earth has its own constellations.”

Elia touched his chest, and Ban’s entire body stilled. Her finger skimmed above the heart-wound.

He said, “Your father makes wormwork filthy, severs himself and all of you from the island’s heart for nothing but the sake of pure stars and insincere loyalties. It’s hurting the magic. And the island.”

She pushed away from him, going to the nearest standing stone. Elia scratched her fingers down it, hard enough to flake off tiny edges of silver moon lichen. “There have been more poor harvests than good these past years, since you left. I’ve heard of sickness, too, in the forests, and fish dying. Fish! I thought—I thought when Gaela was queen it all would revive. That there was nothing to do but wait. The island does not love him, but we can all survive without love, for a time. All places have bad years, hard seasons. Especially an island like ours.”

“Does Gaela speak to the wind?” Ban called softly.

Elia shook her head and walked to the next stone, then the next, until she reached the center stone that he’d been crouched against. She wrapped her arms around it as far as they could go. “I can barely remember the language of trees.”

He nearly smiled but was too sad. “In Aremoria, the trees sing and laugh.”

“I thought they did not have magic there.”

“It is unused, uncultivated, but still present. A current under all.” No one he’d met in Aremoria spoke to the trees, which made it seem like they’d been waiting just for him.

Elia pressed her forehead to the stone. “My father …”

“Is wrong.”

“Let’s speak of something else.”

“Ah.” He thought hard for a neutral thing to say, stepping closer. The ocean wind streamed around him, and he felt the humming again, from the air, from the stones, from the moon. “If you stand here, and leap from one foot to the next”—he demonstrated, widening his stance comically—“back and forth, it looks like the moon herself is leaping.”

Seeming surprised, Elia joined him. She took his dirty hand and hopped, her eyes up on the hazy sky.

The moon bobbed as they did. It was like six years vanished between them, and they’d never been apart. Elia gripped his hand, and he smiled at her, watching her face when he could instead of the moon.

Slowly, slowly, he became aware of the feel of her cool hand in his, the sliding of her skin against his skin; the motion tingled and burned up along the soft side of his wrist, pooling in his elbow, tickled all the way to his heart with a thread of starlight. It was no imagined poetry that made him think it, but magic, tying them back together as he’d sought to tie himself again to Innis Lear. His blood between them, and this shared dance.

Ban thought about kissing her.

He stumbled, jerking at Elia’s arm, and she laughed. “I know what you were looking at, Ban Errigal.”

She could not, he hoped, know he’d had such a thought as he’d had, to take something from her she had not offered. “I enjoy making the moon move,” he said.

“Not very respectful,” she chided, but without much force behind it.

“I have no respect for this place.”

It killed their moment of pleasure, and Ban regretted that, though not what he’d said.

Elia went still. “Maybe your disdain can cancel out his worship,” she whispered.

“I’ll take you away from here,” he heard himself say, and knew he meant every word. He meant this more than any promise he’d ever made to Aremoria. “We could leave now. My horse is in the Sunton stables; we’ll go and be long away by dawn. From there to Aremoria and beyond, any place we like.”

The princess stared at his mouth, as if reading his next words there: “Two nobodies, just Ban and Elia. We could do anything. Come with me,” he said, almost frantic. This was the moment, the tilting, reaching moment that would change everything. Choose me, he thought.

But Elia turned away from him. Said, looking to the stars once more, “Everyone would blame you, say terrible things about you.”

“And so the sun rises every morning.” The bitterness staining his words stung even his own mouth. Did she know what it had been like for him as a boy? Did she ever notice her father’s jabs? No, he told himself, more likely Elia had loved him the way children love what they have, and forgot him the moment he was gone. Why else did she never write to him?

“I can’t, Ban. My father will regret this, I know. He must. He will see …” Her eyes closed, but her head was still tipped back to the sky. “He will see a new sign in the stars, and forgive me.”

“What kind of forgiveness is that, if he only does it for them?” Ban flung his hands at the stars.

Moonlight caught the tips of her short, curled lashes. “Forgiveness is its own point,” she insisted.

He stared at her, wondering if anyone could be so good. Wondering if she believed herself. “I can’t forgive him,” he said. “For what he’s done to you. To me. I don’t want to.”

She opened her eyes and faced him, revealing a vivid ache in her gaze. “I think … I used up my heart completely this afternoon. There is no space for any new feeling to take hold, Ban. Only for what already lived there, and rooted long ago.”

“I was there.”

Elia nodded. “As he has always been. And you are here now, and that is … it is such a balm to see you.”

“Just in time for you to leave, to trade places with me in Aremoria,” he said angrily, wanting to remind her sharply that Morimaros of Aremoria was not rooted in her heart. But he said no more, shocked at his conflicted loyalty. Morimaros deserved much better from him.

She shook her head sadly, disapproving of his anger. Then she asked, “Why did you come out here, to this place you dislike?”

“To escape our fathers,” he muttered.

“There are many ways to do that. Are you looking for a prophecy? It is what this place is for.”

“You should know better. I came to invite myself back to the roots of Innis Lear. To the voices of the trees and stones. Since there is no well from which to drink.” He stalked to the eastern stone, where the moon hung a handspan above it now, and the Star of First Birds sparkled just to the side. As he approached, the stone grew and grew against the darkening sky until it swallowed the moon whole. Ban put his hands flat against it and pushed. It did not budge, of course, but he ground his teeth and shoved, straining with all his strength. His boots slid roughly.