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Nessa closed her eyes as she remembered riding through the forest of the OtherWorld, sharing Artimour’s saddle. She remembered the pungent resin rising from the dark green pines, the slow flutter of gold leaves, the feeling of his velvety hose against the backs of her legs as they dangled awkwardly off the horse, the solidity of his chest against her back, the smooth satiny feeling of the saddle between her thighs. A part of her understood that Molly had imparted knowledge of much importance—that had something to do with why the wicce-women were said to be had for a silver coin and what they did to make the fields fertile and the corn grow—but all that really seemed to matter right now was that she somehow make peace with Artimour.
“Granny Molly? Nessa?” Uwen’s voice sounded so different, that for a moment, Nessa wasn’t sure who stood starkly silhouetted at the threshold. It was Uwen’s familiar bony form, but it was hardly Uwen’s voice, for it fell hollow and flat, totally devoid of his usual light, teasing lilt. “There may be a change in plans. A band of Cecily’s clansmen from Mochmorna came in just now. They took refuge last night in an abandoned dovecote somewhere in the hills. But they’d a druid with them who’d an idea of what to do and he summoned up the dead. Seems Donnor’s ghost was seen among them.”
The Duke of Gar was dead, the castle was in shambles, and Cecily, his widow, did not feel at all the way she imagined a widow was supposed to feel. If Donnor was dead, it was his own fault. She’d tried to warn him not to trust Cadwyr, his nephew and his heir, begged him to wait until at least half his Company could be assembled. But no, he insisted on riding out on some trumped-up excuse a blind mule could see through. She had thought, at first, that only she and Kian had seen Donnor’s gray ghost as it picked its way across the carcass-littered field, fading into the blessed Samhain dawn. But everyone on the walls had seen it, and rumor ran rampant as a ram in rut through every level of the castle, leaving even the most hardened of the warriors looking stricken as an orphaned lamb.
Now she picked her way across what yesterday had been the outermost ward, flanked on one side by Kestrel, the ArchDruid of Gar, and at least six of his highest-ranking fellows, and on the other by Mag, the chief still-wife, and as many wicce-women as could be coaxed away from the nursing and the grieving. They would never survive another night if the goblins came back. But if there was a way to prevent them, both druids and corn grannies were conspicuously silent. Her thoughts chased each other like a dog its tail.
A silence as leaden as the lowering sky hung heavy over all, deadening the slap of her boots, muffling the sobs of those few strong-stomached souls who came forward to press a kiss on her hand as they searched amidst the rubble for possessions abandoned and befouled. On the walls, the engineers and stonemasons directed teams in the critical repairs of the curtain wall. On command, the men bent and with a mighty heave, lifted the great stone block on a huge wooden lever as another team swung it into position. The dull thud of stone, punctuated by the creak of timber and the shouted directions of the men echoed flatly across the yard, as if the sounds were swallowed by the huge holes the goblins had torn in the walls, soaked up by the deep gashes of bloodied earth. She pressed the linen square soaked in peppermint oil more tightly to her nostrils and swallowed hard as she realized she had nearly stepped on a foot. “Be careful.”
She held out an arm to prevent anyone else from stepping on the remains, and signaled to a team of stable hands who, with linen kerchiefs wrapped across the lower half of their faces, armed with a shovel, a pick and a wheelbarrow, gathered up remains as carefully as they could.
Smoke from the midden-fires stung her eyes, and on the high tor behind the castle, a slow procession wound up the steps carved into the hill, carrying the bodies to the funeral pyre the druids of lower degree were building. Swarming on the standing stones, others set up the iron frames to hold the plates of glass that, when properly positioned, would focus the rays of the setting sun so as to bring about the spontaneous combustion of the bodies. At least, it was supposed to bring about the spontaneous combustion of the bodies. Kestrel and the other druids had emerged from their hiding place in the wine cellars and announced that all who’d died on Samhain would be given nothing less than a full druid funeral. As if that would bring the dead back. As if that would protect the living when the goblins returned.
A couple of the corn grannies paused and spat thick greenish wads of cud-wort on the ground, aiming expertly between two stones. Cecily hoped her lip hadn’t curled automatically. Cud-wort was considered a low habit, but many of the corn grannies were addicted to it. It was said to give one clearer dreams.
She looked around the ruined ward. All her dreams were nightmares. Now they stood vulnerable, not just to goblins, but to Cadwyr. Cadwyr, who’d murdered Donnor. Cadwyr, who was in league with the sidhe. Before Samhain, she and Kian had told Kestrel their suspicions, but the druid had listened skeptically, clearly unconvinced that either goblins or sidhe existed, except in the mind of a moon-mazed girl. She hoped that last night had made believers of everyone.
But she was even more afraid of Cadwyr, if that were possible, than the goblins, for Cadwyr had made it clear before he left with Donnor that he considered Cecily part of Donnor’s bequest. And for all she knew, she thought with weary realization, maybe she had been. Maybe that’s how Donnor had rationalized taking her for himself, if he had in fact done as Cadwyr charged, and offered himself to her parents rather than Cadwyr as a suitor for her hand. Maybe he considered her as much a part of the holdings of Gar as Cadwyr did. What would they all say if they knew she was too angry at Donnor to care that he was dead?
She caught sight of Kian, Donnor’s First Knight, working with the other men on the walls, stripped down to his shirt despite the cold wind. The strip of linen bound around his face could not disguise his flaxen braids, nor the familiar lines of his body beneath the sweaty, dirty clothes. As she watched, Kian squatted down and gripped one end of the long wooden pole, and, at a signal, pressed down on it with all his weight. His arms and back bulged with the knotted cords of his muscles. At the other end of the lever, a team grabbed the ropes around the block and wrestled it into place. Kian set the lever down, stripped his mask off and used it to mop his face. As exhausted and as frightened as she was, her own body stirred in response.
For Kian was the man she loved. She loved his strength, she loved his smile, she loved the way the other knights loved him. He had the gift of making people like him, for he led with smiles and faultless courtesy. Donnor had loved him, too, until last Beltane, when the goddess had led her to choose Kian to take her to his Beltane bower. From that day, Donnor had been deaf to all but the angry mutterings of his thwarted heart. But Donnor was dead.
“We’ll measure the angles from the top of the tor itself—take them at sunset and dawn, as well,” Kestrel was saying. The ornately embroidered lining of his wide sleeve flashed a startling green against the outer white as he pointed first at the sun, then at the tor, the vivid color at stark odds to the stained gray drab and homespun everyone else, even Cecily, wore.
“We’ll need measurements from the towers, too, won’t we?” put in another.
“But what about the goblins?” Cecily asked. All the druids wanted to talk about were the funeral plans, which would have been understandable, even expected, perhaps, under any other sort of circumstances. “Can any of you tell me if they’ll come back tonight? Or if there’s a way to stop them? If the dead will rise and fight?”
The wicce-women exchanged surreptitious glances with each other and looked pointedly at the druids. Kestrel cleared his throat and the others flapped their robes and shifted from foot to foot. They’d all failed miserably last night, and they knew it. Shouts from above momentarily distracted her, and she peered through one of the huge holes in the outer curtain wall to see a speck of dust emerge from the eastern road leading out of the forest. A rider, she thought, coming fast. Someone else had survived Samhain. She saw that Kian noticed as well, but he went on with the task at hand. There were not many hours of daylight left. So she too turned back to Kestrel. “Well?”
Kestrel linked his hands together beneath his capacious white sleeves and cleared his throat again before he answered. “The bards are studying the druidic verses, my lady, and the elder brethren have been in the groves since early this morning, interpreting the trees. To be sure, however, these are arcane matters, the learning encoded so as not to be easily understood by the uninitiated.”
“I’m not asking to understand, Master Druid. I just want to know how to protect us. Can we count on the dead?” But the only answer was the flap of the mourning banners from the towers. Someone—probably Mag, or maybe even Kian—had seen to that.
“They came because it was Samhain and they could,” whispered a corn granny. “We can’t count on them again, til next Samhain.”
Cecily immediately looked at the women, but it was impossible to know who had spoken. “Will they come back?”
The painful silence was broken by Kestrel’s snort. “They don’t know any more than anyone else.”
“What about the goblins?” Cecily asked again. “Will they come back tonight?”
“At Imbolc,” blurted Mag this time.
“The blood of the new lambs will bring them. Our magic can hold them back til then, but come Imbolc, ’tis druid magic that’s needed.” Another granny spoke up, from somewhere behind Mag. The words were followed by a hawking cough, and a green gob shot through the air, landing with a loud smack right in front of Kestrel. He startled back, and Cecily caught the flash of red Lacquilean leather under his heavy woolen robes. Serves him right, she thought. What sort of fool would wear such finery in a mess like this? An answer ran through her mind unbidden: One who thought it easily replaced. But they’re not likely to be readily replaced, thought Cecily, even as she dismissed all thoughts of Kestrel and his boots.
Kestrel’s lips quirked down as his eyebrows arched up. “There you are, ask the wicce-women,” Kestrel sniffed. “They seem to know all about it.” He turned away, waving a hand back and forth in front of his face, as if the very smell of them offended him. Cecily looked down at the bubbled green slime glistening in the sunlight and felt nauseous herself.
But she couldn’t let that deter her. “Please tell me what you can. Anyone. Please.”
It was the women’s turn to exchange glances, to shuffle restlessly beneath shawls and skirts, like a motley flock of roosting broody hens. They ranged in age from women who looked no older than the oldest of her foster sisters, to the most wizened of crones.
“Please,” Cecily said again. “Whatever you think might help.”
Kestrel coughed.
It was the druids, Cecily knew. The druids looked down on the wicce-women, and their magic was considered something less, because, as the grannies said, they carried their magic in their hearts and not their heads, and certainly not in arcane verses in half-forgotten languages, or obscure symbols slashed on the limbs of trees.
“They’re laughing at us, Your Grace,” Mag sniffed back and folded her arms across her ample bosom. Kestrel claimed that she had sabotaged a Mid-Winter ritual one year by deliberately adding dream-bane to the required mix of herbs. Unable to achieve the necessary trance, the druids had stormed off in a huff, and the rite itself disintegrated into a riotous festival, which culminated in a fight in which several of Donnor’s knights had nearly died. This alone was not so unusual, but the druids were expected to help keep the order, and so Donnor had blamed the druids. And thus the druids, never among the most favored of the inhabitants of Gar, for even the lowest considered himself the equal of the Duke, fell a few more points in Donnor’s grace.
But Donnor was dead. “I don’t think there’s much to laugh about,” replied Cecily.
The speck on the horizon had resolved itself into a rider, who entered the ruined gates with a look of glazed exhaustion. He barely cleared the wrecked gatehouse when he slid to the ground, even as his horse collapsed. Cecily saw guards and two women scavenging amidst the rubble run to his side, even as Kian leaped off the walls and hurried over, calling for water. Let it be from Donnor himself, she thought. Let that shade have been nothing but a trick of the light. Let us all have been wrong.
But she knew in her heart such hope was only futile. She saw Kian glance at her over his shoulder as he swung the rider up into his arms, and understood he’d seek her out as soon as he could. Followed by the women, he took off in the direction of the summer kitchens.
“Please,” she said again.
There was a long silence and another gust of wind brought a blast of reek. “They come three times a year,” said a low, hoarse voice. “Three times…three times…three times, the gates between the worlds swing wide.” The voice quivered, as if some tremendous amount of energy was being repressed. The women parted, and a small, pudgy granny with hair like dandelion wisps stood rocking on her feet, as her hands twitched up and down before her. “Three nights…three times…three nights…our magic cannot hold. Three times our magic cannot hold.”
“Three times? And when—what three times are those?” Cecily prodded. She glanced at Kestrel and the other druids, hoping they had the sense to hold their tongues. They appeared to be paying close attention. The druids were all trained to remember. Many of them could repeat, word for word, conversations that had taken place before them decades past.
But the granny shook her head with closed eyes.
“At Samhain, Imbolc and Lughnasa.” It was another voice, softer this time. A woman with the face of a turtledove and a shawl the color of a robin’s breast eased around Mag. She was chewing a wad of cud-wort that she shifted from cheek to cheek as she spoke. “At Beltane, the sun’s too strong and the light holds them back. But at the other three—only druid magic can hold them back.”
Cecily glanced at the druids. That was the problem. The druids didn’t seem to know what exactly their magic was. “What about the other times? The rest of the year?” The granny visibly quailed, and even Mag wouldn’t meet Cecily’s eyes. “Mag, please.”
Mag huffed. “Do you have any idea what they say about us?”
Cecily drew a deep breath. She looked at the women’s worn, guarded faces, their shoulders broadened and bent, their hands rough and callused. She knew what was said about the wicce-women—that they wanted men for only one thing, that at the dark of the moon, they did unspeakable things to make the corn grow. “You don’t have to reveal anything. Just tell me if you think there’s something you can do.”
Mag nodded shortly. “We think there is.”
“Can you be sure?”
“Our hearts tell us to be sure.” She met Cecily’s eyes steadily.
“Do you really think it will work?”
“We believe that it will.”
“They don’t have any idea it will work at all,” interrupted Kestrel. “Whatever ‘it’ is. That’s the whole point, my lady, and that’s what makes corn magic such a lot of nonsense. They don’t know—they base their knowing, such as it is, on no authority. No verse or rune guides them, no teacher even teaches. It all just comes to them in a flight of fancy. Or in a puddle of that weed they chew.” He sniffed, and immediately pressed his own oil-soaked wad of linen to his nostrils. “The corn grows. The sun shines, and the rain falls. There’s nothing to say their rituals work.”
Cecily drew a deep breath. This was an old, old argument and one that she had largely been able to ignore her entire life, for what the druids, the masters of ancient wisdom, poetry and law, thought of the wicce-women, the healers, the corn grannies who worked the corn magic in the fields, and vice versa, had never affected her in any meaningful way. As the daughter of two of the greatest Houses in Brynhyvar, with a potential role to play in the governing of the land, it was a forgone conclusion that she would study with the druids. And as a woman, her duties required her to have a knowledge of herbs and simples, and that brought her in close contact with Mag, a corn granny longer than Cecily had been at Gar. Both necessary, both separate. But now…
She rubbed her forehead, as if to clear away the flinty edge of desperation and exhaustion that threatened to cloud her mind completely. “There’s nothing to say that it doesn’t. We have to try anything. We can’t waste time arguing who has the greater magic and the truer understanding, for the goblins surely won’t wait for us to decide.”
“Grannies’ll have us all tuppin’ in the fields tonight, you wait,” said a druid from the depths of his hood. A snicker went through the druids like wind through wheat. The women exchanged glances.
Cecily raised her chin. “I’d rather tup out there than die in here.” She met their eyes and tossed her hair back in a gesture she was quite sure was the last one a widow was expected to make, and winked. She turned back to the women, and met the eyes of each in turn. “Say what you will.”
“We’ve no wish to be laughed at.”
“No one will laugh,” said Cecily. She held up her hand. “And if anyone thinks he might,” she paused and looked over the druids. “Think on this first. In five hundred years, since these walls were built, no enemy’s stood where we’re standing now. The walls have never been breached. But the goblins tore these walls apart like they were made of sticks.” She looked Kestrel square in the eyes. “I’ll tup in the fields myself if that’s what it takes.” And expect you there alongside me, she nearly said, but that thought was nearly as horrifying as another goblin attack.
The hint of a smile lifted Mag’s mouth, but she still sounded hesitant. “We must…we’ll begin at sunset, isn’t that right, Granny Lyss? When the sun slips below the trees, below the tor, beside the river, the oldest granny, Granny Lyss, here—” she stepped back and indicated a tiny, wizened, birdlike woman, who was working on such an enormous piece of cud-wort, it slipped in and out between her lips with the motion of her jaw “—will work the rite. We need a volunteer, of course. A man. In his prime, or near approaching it.”
“Nah, the younger the better—fourteen, fifteen.” The old woman spoke in a quavering voice and tapped Mag’s arm with a curved finger that ended in a thick yellowed nail.
“That’s disgusting,” muttered Kestrel. “Completely and totally disgusting.”
“Can you think of anything else?” asked Cecily. The greasy smoke made her eyes burn. Fire, she thought. Perhaps a ring of fire would deter them. She made a mental note to suggest that to Kian.
“Would be better magic if one of them would do it,” said the old woman, and Cecily saw she had no teeth and her lips were drawn into her mouth, like those of the corpses who’d gone with Herne. What lad would volunteer? she wondered. And she wondered if even Kian could be induced to lie with such a woman.
“I’ll do it.” The voice resonated like a born bard’s, but the tall boy who pushed through the druids was slight of build, his skin pimpled patchy red.
“What are you doing here?” demanded Kestrel. “I thought you were gathering up the dead—”
“I was,” he answered. “I overheard.” He gestured to his stained white robes. “What do you need me to do?”
“What’s your name, young druid?” asked Cecily, bemused.
“He’s not a druid.” Kestrel rolled his eyes. “He’s naught but a third-degree bard and he’s always where he’s not needed and never where he is.”
“Well, then, young third-degree bard, what’s your name?” Cecily motioned to Granny Lyss to stop cackling.
“I’m Jammor, Your Grace. Jammor of the Rill, they call me.” He bowed and handed Kestrel his shovel with such a flourish, she nearly laughed aloud despite the situation.
“Oh, indeed, he’ll do right fine,” cackled Granny Lyss. “Come over here, boy, and let me feel your arm.”
“Tell him, first, what he’s in for, and see if he’s still interested.” Kestrel stepped forward and pushed the shovel back into Jammor’s hands. “Get back to work.”
“Now, just you wait, young man,” cried Granny Lyss. “I want a look at you—”
The boy hesitated, even as Kestrel opened his mouth to protest, and the impasse was broken by Kian, who came striding over the rubble, picking his way with the grace of a mountain cat, despite his size. But his expression was grim. At once Cecily asked, “What word, Sir Kian?”
“A sad word, that we expected,” answered Kian. He paused on the periphery of the group and sought her eyes with his. “It’s just as we feared, my lady. Great Gar is dead.” He glanced at Kestrel, then at Mag. “If you’d be so kind as to step aside a moment with me, my lord druid? Still-wife? Your Grace?”
“Shall we talk about the funeral?” Kestrel asked as Kian shepherded the three of them behind a pile of rubble. Blood stained the stones, and goblin gore clung here and there to the ruined wall, but at least the worst had been removed, thought Cecily as she carefully stepped over a suspicious pile of cloth.
“Funeral?” said Kian. He had removed his mask, and his face was furrowed with worry and exhaustion, and grime and sweat streaked his skin. “There’s no time to talk of funerals, my lord. Donnor’s death isn’t the only news the scout brought. Cadwyr of Allovale has raised his colors over Ardagh, and ten thousand mercenaries from Lacquilea are marching up from the south, led by one of Cadwyr’s foster brothers.”
They all gasped. Kestrel glanced around, white robes bluish in the shadows, so that his garments seemed to blend in with the stone. “Surely the messenger’s mistaken? What about the King? What about the Court?”
Kian shook his head, grim-faced. “He never got that close. He was sent back ahead of the rest. He did flank Cadwyr’s army. There’s at least two thousand horse, four thousand foot. Between them and the mercenaries, Cadwyr’s got nearly three times what we could muster ourselves.”
“Where did he get all those men?”
Kian shook his head slowly. “The lad didn’t get close enough to see if they were men, my lady. And if they are—” He broke off and put his hands on his hips. “Who knows what promises Cadwyr has made to others?”
“Do you really think Cadwyr is leading an army of the sidhe?” Cecily asked.
“You can’t seriously believe—” began Kestrel.
“How can you have seen those monsters last night, and Great Herne, too, and not believe what we tell you?” interrupted Cecily. “None of us want to believe it, my lord. None of us wanted to believe it before.” Kestrel had refused from the first to believe Kian’s tale of the blacksmith’s daughter and the sidhe.
“But this was what Donnor meant when he told me an opportunity had arisen suddenly, one that wouldn’t wait. Donnor knew about Cadwyr’s plan to use the sidhe.”
“And now he’s marching on Gar,” said Kian.
“Well, did this scout see any sign of any—any Other?” asked Kestrel. “What other evidence is there, really?”
“Other than Cadwyr’s colors over a castle that’s built on a rock over a whirlpool? What other evidence do you need, you old goat?” asked Mag with such derision that Cecily raised her brow. Mag was, after all, but the still-wife.
“They came upon a squadron or so of archers, who looked to be butchered where they stood,” answered Kian. “Most of them didn’t even have time to draw their sidearms.”
“So no one’s actually seen any—” said Kestrel.
“We’ve a witness,” said Kian. “The blacksmith’s daughter from Killcairn. Don’t you recall?”
“Have you any better explanation, Lord Druid?” asked Mag.
“I don’t want to believe it, either, my lord,” Cecily repeated. “But for all we know, Cadwyr may have a bargain with the goblins as well. I don’t think we can discount any possibility.”
“Cadwyr would not dare—” exploded Kestrel.
“He’s already dared to make himself master of Ardagh. I think we may well believe Cadwyr’s capable of anything,” said Cecily. “How soon will he be here?”
“We must call for an Assembly at once, obviously,” said Kestrel. “Donnor’s funeral will give us our perfect—”
“Oh, will you stop blathering about funerals?” interrupted Mag. “Cadwyr’s loosed both sidhe and goblin on us—how soon will he be here?”
“But I’m the one he wants,” said Cecily, thinking fast. “With Donnor dead, he considers Gar already his. I doubt he’ll attack the castle. Especially if I’m not here.” She looked at Kian, and was grateful to see him nod.
“Not here? Your Grace, you can’t leave—” began Kestrel. “Think of your duty—think of the people—Where would you go?” The color drained from his face and suddenly he looked sick. “And besides, what makes you think Duke Cadwyr would harm you? It has ever been my observation that the Duke cherishes you—” He broke off and glanced away, refusing to meet Cecily’s eyes.
“Cecily has a better claim to the throne.” Despite the situation, Cecily looked up, for it was the first time Kian had used her name in public. Donnor’s dead, and I am free. “She has to leave, my lord,” Kian continued. “We don’t know what Cadwyr’s bringing with him. Obviously he must’ve used the sidhe against Ardagh. There was no damage to the castle, do you understand? Whatever he brought against Hoell was awful enough that they opened the doors and let him walk in. I’ve but a quarter of the men I had yesterday. And I had less than half a full garrison to begin with.”
He used my name, Cecily thought again, and a part of her that was so long buried she had nearly forgotten it ever existed within her stirred to new life. Her heart skipped a beat. Donnor is dead, she thought with a little burst of the most unseemly happiness. Donnor’s dead and I’m free. We are free.
“But you’ve no reason to think—”
“I have every reason to think that Cadwyr intends to force himself upon me, my lord druid,” Cecily snapped. He’d been like this before Samhain, too, insisting on questioning everything.
The druid shut his mouth with an audible pop as a shadow crossed his face, and bitter shrieks made Cecily turn her head to see a flock of ravens rise and wheel off the roof of the Great Hall. The ravens are the Marrihugh’s birds, she thought, and she is marching across this land in her crow-feathered boots. She must’ve been well pleased last night.
