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“The cattle are dying.” She said the words slowly, deliberately and he frowned. The great herds of milk-white cattle which roamed the hills and pastures of her mother’s mountain province provided the ultimate source from which so many Faerie delights were concocted. The herd had roamed for as long as anyone could remember over the rolling meadows, sheltered by the high mountain peaks, fed by the lush green acres of thyme and clover, and watered by the clear streams which ran down from the heights. The care and tending of this herd had passed in an unbroken line from mother to daughter for as long as anyone could remember. “The first time it happened—a few springs ago—our people came to my mother and asked her to come and see the body of a calf they’d found in one of the pastures. This calf—” She shuddered and turned her face away, as though from the memory. “It did not die a natural death, for I had never seen anything like it. The body was marked all over by a pox that oozed some greenish, foul-smelling pus. It was as if something ate it from the inside out. Then it didn’t happen again for a while, and we hoped that perhaps it was simply some odd incident. But then, just before Alemandine’s pregnancy was announced, last Midsummer Eve, there was a spate of such bodies and not just within the cattle herds. Birds, fish, the great cats that roam the highest peaks—we found these and more. One stream was fouled by the bodies, so thick did they lie. And then, my mother’s foals began to die. I came here for Alemandine’s help, never suspecting to find her so—so weakened.”
Timias stared into her face, which was no less lovely for the worry that creased her forehead. “And you’ve no idea of the cause?”
“Well…” She turned back to the window and crossed her arms, as though bracing herself. “I do. But everyone—including my mother—considers it so outlandish, no one will listen.”
“A position I’ve found myself in more than once recently, my lady, as you saw this morning.” Timias bent toward her, gesturing with one hand in the general direction of the Council room. “You just heard me advocate the leading of a Faerie host into the Shadowlands, and you were kind enough to encourage the others to listen to me. How could I not do likewise?”
The half smile that quirked across her lips was displaced immediately by a look of such gravity, Timias leaned forward as if to offer comfort. But Delphinea only spoke with that same simplicity that this time chilled his bones. “I think it’s the Caul—the Caul made of silver that’s poisoning the land, the cattle—” She broke off. “I think the Caul must be removed.”
Despite his resolve to listen to her with as fair a hearing as she had given him, he shook his head vehemently. “Lady, surely not. I was there when the Caul was forged—every precaution was taken, only the mortal handled it—”
“But think of it, my lord—” She raised her chin, refusing to back down. “All these turning years, it’s lain, untouched, unlooked at—no one goes near it—and there it just sits on that green globe. The most poisonous thing in all of Faerie. What if—what if it’s the Caul that’s poisoning the land? If it’s the Caul that’s weakening Alemandine? Is that not possible?”
Timias backed away, her words tumbling in his mind as a new vision occurred to him—one so monstrous it defied comprehension. Could it be that the Caul—deemed so necessary, so perfect a solution to the problem of both silver and goblin—was in reality slowly leaching poison into the fabric of Faerie over the years? Alemandine had indeed appeared sickly, even to his untrained eye. The Queen was bound to the land more intimately than the Caul to the Globe. Could it be that her growing weakness was due to the very thing they thought protected them all? Could it be that they had erred? He shook his head. It was difficult to even wrap his mind around the idea. It was too terrible to consider, but he was forced to confront the possibility of truth in Delphinea’s words. He sank down onto a chair, and even as the plush cushioning relieved the ache in his back, he felt the enormity of the potential problem as a physical pang in his chest. He must simply find a way to prove Delphinea wrong. For the first time he actually feared he might not make it into the West. If he weren’t careful, a true death might yet claim him.
For Delphinea was continuing, pressing her point on with a passion almost mortal in intensity. “I know you based the making of the Caul in that most elementary of magic—the law of Similiars. But the amount used in such undertakings is critical—the amount that determines whether it heals or kills—”
“Do not lecture me, my lady!” He raised one gnarled hand to his forehead, feeling every one of his thirteen hundred mortal years. They stared at each other in a shocked silence, and then he said: “Forgive me, my lady. I should not have spoken to you in that tone. The tension of the times affects us all. Soon we will all be squabbling like mortals.”
“My lord Timias,” she replied, her eyes dark with pity. “I don’t mean to imply you and Gloriana and the mortal deliberately did wrong. It was made with the best of intentions—surely that’s why the Caul’s magic has prevailed for so long. But what if too much silver was used in its making? This was something no one ever tried before—how could you or anyone else have been sure what was too much?”
Timias stared up at her. Backlit by the window, she stood poised before him like a harbinger of doom made more terrible by its beauty. “Have you told anyone this?”
“I’ve tried. They think it’s nonsense. I can’t get into the Caul Chamber alone, but I can’t convince any of the lords or the knights to come with me. Even that sot Berillian—he fawns all over my bosom in a manner most unseemly, but can’t bestir himself to help me open the doors.”
He rubbed his head. In Faerie, where the progression of years was experienced as a never-ending circle rather than a linear march into some indeterminate future, shifting accepted thought was as difficult as shifting the calendar in the mortal world. The sidhe understood that what was materialized around them was an expression of their collective thought. An idea such as the Caul, which had worked for mortal centuries, would not easily be abandoned. “And is that what you suggest we should do, my lady?”
She smiled, and knelt at his feet, covering his spotted hands with her own like new-milked cream. “My mother said I should come to you. All I ask is that you come with me—we can go through the mirrors and no one need see us. How could it hurt to look? Maybe these are only the fancies everyone says they are. After all, when was the last time the doors were even opened?”
He shook his head, gazing past her face at some spot outside the window. She was right about one thing. There could be no harm in looking at the Caul. The spell which held the doors of the Caul Chamber was a relatively easy one to overcome—it required a simultaneous touch of the combined polarity of male and female energy. “To my knowledge—never. For once it was done, it has never seemed that there was a need—” He broke off and took a deep breath. “That’s not to say that no one has ever gone to look.”
She gave him a reproving look and he was forced to admit to himself she was correct about that. Once done, the sidhe would not return to it, because they would not expect it to change. It was the fundamental difference between the mortals and the sidhe. It would simply not occur to anyone in Faerie to enter the Caul Chamber. He lowered his eyes to the bubbling fountain, where the finches hopped from rim to ground to shrub, reminding him of the courtiers who leapt so lightly through the days, as if the gravest danger they’d faced in ages was not at hand.
He remembered the night the Caul was forged, the ring of the hammer as it slammed down on the soft metal, fixing it with that raw energy that had crackled through the air like bolts of lightning. What if that energy had not been sufficient to bind forever the relentless poison of the silver? He turned to face her and held out his hand. “Come. You must lead me, lady—’tis an age or more since I have used the mirror magic.”
With a look of gratitude, she took his hand and he led her to stand before another mirror. He placed one hand on her shoulder, the other clutched his staff. For a moment they stood poised, reflected in the polished surface of the glass, and Timias felt his heart contract when he stared at the perfect beauty of her face. It was the color of her eyes, he decided, that gave her appearance such a compelling quality, one that was as fascinating as it was apparent. Or was it? he mused, murmuring aloud to cover for his moment of hesitation, “When I look at you, my lady, I see how foolish I am to waste any time at all in Shadow.”
Despite the cast of worry in her dark blue eyes, a delicate pink stained her cheeks, and her lips quirked up in a fleeting smile. “I’m glad you came back when you did, my lord Timias.” Despite the guileless innocence of her reply, he felt a fleeting throb of warning. There was more to this girl-sidhe than met the eye. Far more. She pressed his hand against her shoulder, then stepped into the glass. Together they walked through the weirdly refracted world behind the mirrors, through twisting corridors and winding staircases lit by intermittent shards of splintered light, until at last they stood behind the mirror which hung opposite the chamber deep within the very heart of the palace.
As she attempted to step through glass, for the first time that Timias had ever experienced, the surface of the mirror seemed to impede her progress, as though it were covered in some sticky, translucent film. She backed away, fine strands of some sticky white fiber clinging to her hand. “What is this?” she murmured.
She pushed through the film with more determination and it gave way with a slight puff. She forced her way through it. As they stepped into the vestibule, they looked back and Timias saw the surface of the mirror was covered with a fine sheen of what he recognized at once as dust. “What is this stuff?” she whispered, more to herself than to him.
Dust, he realized. But did she even know the word? Dust did not exist in Faerie. “It’s dust,” he said aloud.
“Dust,” she echoed, shaking out her skirts. “It’s all over the place.” But there was no more time to wonder about its presence, for she gripped his hand, and pointed at the floor. It was covered with the same sheen of fine white dust as the mirror. And clearly, just as their outlines were visible in the dust of the mirror, the outline of a single set of footsteps led from the set of doors in the left wall, directly to the high bronze doors opposite the mirror.
“Someone else has been here. Not that long ago.” Her voice was flat in the stillness.
“And we cannot ask the guards on the other side of that door, can we?”
“Why would something that cannot be touched need a guard?” Her lips quirked up for a moment in a satirical little smile.
The footsteps led directly to the door, and both Delphinea and Timias were careful not to disturb them. “I wonder who it was.”
“A single person alone could not open the door.”
Whoever had come in had paused before the door, then reversed himself, and exited the vestibule through the set of doors in the right wall. Whoever it was had not wanted to leave by the same way he’d entered.
“Could these be your footsteps, Delphinea?”
“No. I’ve only looked through the mirror. I didn’t even know about that—that dust.”
All around them, Timias had a sense of enormous age, as if something heavy beat through the atmosphere, like the throb of a great drum, more felt than heard. He had fled this chamber, thinking then he would never come back, shuddering in the wake of the magic they had raised. Now nothing of that awful midnight echoed in the chamber. A vague sense of dread descended on him. This was one place he had never hoped to revisit.
Delphinea placed one palm flat on the right hand side of the golden panel set on each of the bronze double doors. The metal glowed and hummed at her touch, and the great hinges groaned, as if rousing themselves from an age asleep. Timias placed his left palm on the left panel, and gripped Delphinea’s left hand with his right. The doors themselves shivered, and with a harsh screech, the great doors swung inward, to reveal a small chamber where the ceiling soared fifty feet or more, all the way to a round window of faceted glass, where the morning sun streamed down in long prisms of color. The colors formed a shifting pattern that shimmered in long shafts all around the moonstone, which stood on a simple pillar of white marble in the middle of the room. Timias clutched at the door, and Delphinea stifled a cry. “Timias, whoever it was got in.” The single set of footsteps led directly to the marble pillar.
In the bright light, the moonstone shone a pale, milky green, its surface polished to a high shine. It sat upon its marble base, seemingly as pure and pristine as the night it had been placed there, bare and round and naked as the rump of a newborn child. The Silver Caul was gone.
4
The low moans of the wounded and the dying rose and fell from the floor of the great hall of Castle Gar, the sullen light of flickering fires and fretful rushlights glowing red on blood-crusted bandages and pain-ravaged faces. A small army of women roamed between the crowded rows, their skirts rustling over the blanketed forms, voices low, as they offered water, changed bandages, spooned gruel, and oversaw the removal of the dead to the stables, which had been hastily set up as a temporary morgue.
Donnor, Duke of Gar, standing on the balcony which in happier times served as a musicians’ gallery, folded his arms across his chest and his lips into a thin, tight line as he surveyed the scene below. Despite the unseasonable late-autumn heat, low fires burned in the great hearths along the walls, numerous iron pots steaming on tripods over the banked flames. The stench of mud and sweat, blood and fear, was thick in the heavy, humid air, but there was no escaping it. More wounded crowded the corridors leading into the hall, and even more of the less wretched, those who’d escaped the battle with only minor injuries, such as a severed finger, were being tended out in the courtyard. Thank the Great Mother that the blasted rain had ended at last. The carnage on the battlefield was far worse than this, if such a thing were possible, and the heavy rain made the retrieval of the dead impossible.
An image of his last glance at the battlefield as his captains had urged his retreat flashed before his eyes: the dead in contorted heaps of arms and legs and torsos; discarded spears and swords and broken arrows sticking up at crazy angles like twisted, tortured trees out of a nightmare forest; the red flare of fires; white smoke, which stung his arid eyes, drifting like ghosts above the corpses, even as lightning forked across the sky, thunder rolled down the valley, and the enemy poured across the hills like the sudden onslaught of rain that enabled his own escape.
Neither side could claim victory, but time was of the essence. If the warchiefs of the North did not respond to his call for assistance immediately, his cause could very quickly be crushed beneath the weight of the foreign army the Queen Consort was surely summoning from her homeland of Humbria across the Morhevnian Sea. He had sent a messenger north nearly three weeks ago, and so far, there had been no reply from any quarter. But the usual late-autumn storms in the higher mountain passes may have delayed both the messenger and any response, he tried to reassure himself.
Out of habit, he cursed the ill-fated day that he and the other members of the King’s Council had granted approval to Hoell’s marriage to Merle, the young princess of Humbria. He remembered the eager, earnest look on the younger man’s face as he pled with the Councilors to allow him to marry Merle. A match to seal an alliance, a friendship between the two nations forever, Hoell had argued. The princess was young, healthy, and being from a family of seven brothers and six sisters, surely fertile. And Hoell himself—approaching thirty and free of fits for nearly ten years—surely it was past time he married and produced his own heir? Not that he was in a hurry to disinherit his dear kinsman, Donnor. He’d added that last so charmingly, so disarmingly that Donnor and the other members of the Council—old men all—looked at each other and in the young King’s words felt the tug of their own faded vigor. How could they deny the King the chance to father his own legitimate heir, after all? And so, beguiled by their own deepest regrets, fears, and wishes, they failed to see the trap they’d fallen in. The shrugs and nods had gone around the table, from Councilor to Councilor, from old man to old man. We were seduced by our memories, not convinced by fact, Donnor thought bitterly.
But a seed of foreboding had been sown that day in the back of Donnor’s mind—a nameless fear he steadfastly, and in retrospect foolishly, ignored through all the days of Hoell’s official engagement. As the wedding approached, misgiving repeatedly raised its face and danced an ugly jig; each time a cousin, a younger sister, a nephew-by-marriage of the new Queen was granted some post or title at the Court. But for a year after the wedding, nothing of consequence happened; Hoell seemed content and the newlyweds held court in a style that reflected the new Queen’s Humbrian preferences. The new courtiers made no secret of the fact that they thought the customs of Brynhyvar rude and uncouth if not downright barbaric compared to their own, and Hoell, eager to please his bride, allowed their influence to grow to the point where even the chiefs of the Outermost March spoke openly at the Beltane Gathering that foreigners were taking over the Court.
Donnor retired to Gar and hoped the new King’s infatuation would run its natural course. Then, within a few months of the marriage’s first anniversary, three of the Council members either died or reached an age where it was impossible for them to continue in their duties. They were replaced, as was customary, by three members of the same clans, although of these, two were recently married to Humbrian wives, and held Humbrian titles, and the other was a cousin of the Queen’s, a member of the clan in question only by virtue of the fact that he had married into it.
Cadwyr, Duke of Allovale, Donnor’s nephew and heir, demanded that they raise their standards then. But Donnor insisted on waiting, torn by loyalty to the oaths he had sworn both to Hoell and to his father.
And then, on the second anniversary of the marriage, just as it was announced that the Queen was pregnant, the youngest brother of the Queen, Renvahr, the sixth in line to the throne of Humbria, was named the Duke of Longborth, one of a series of titles normally reserved for the heir to the throne of Brynhyvar, a title that should have been bestowed on Donnor himself long before this.
Almost immediately it was clear that Donnor’s reluctance may have cost them the rebellion. For in the same year that Hoell’s baby son died of a lung infection, Hoell’s fits returned, leaving him docile, innocent as a child, and utterly unfit to rule.
Too late Donnor recognized the strategy of the King of Humbria—overburdened with children, he ranged far and wide, brazenly gobbling as many thrones and titles as possible through strategic marriages and their resulting alliances. The Duke of Longborth’s appointment as Protector of the Realm in his own stead was the final slap to his honor. For he, Donnor, both by blood and marriage, was the rightful heir to the throne of Brynhyvar—not the foreign upstart Renvahr, whose only claim was his relationship to the Queen Consort and a title he had no business receiving. It should have been Donnor’s place to rule the country while the King was incapacitated, rampant rumor blaming the fit on a chance encounter with one of the Shining Ones.
Privately Donnor disbelieved the theory. There was madness in Hoell’s family—but dynastic necessity demanded his brother marry the lovely Elissade. Lovely she was, but dangerous, too, a woman given to fits of anger so fierce she was finally locked away in a tower for her own good. She died by leaping out the window in the midst of a fit, dashing her brains on the paving below. Fortunately Hoell had not inherited his mother’s rages. Instead he became meek as a newborn lamb, easy to care for, but wholly unable to deal with the fractious, brawling chiefs and lords who comprised the nobility of Brynhyvar, let alone the insinuations of his foreign bride and her relatives.
Another image flashed through Donnor’s mind: the bewildered look in the King’s sad, slack eyes when Donnor had thrown down the ritual gauntlet on the floor beside Hoell’s chair at the head of the Council table, where Hoell sat, a forlorn figurehead, King in name only. Queen Merle shrieked a curse in her native tongue, her black eyes blazing like jet in her white face. The other Councilors, all foreigners like Renvahr and the Queen now, gasped as one body.
But Hoell only picked up the glove, and stroked the much-creased leather. “You dropped this, Uncle,” the King said, a hesitant smile lifting the full, soft mouth as plump and red as a woman’s. Donnor closed his eyes, remembering the pain of betrayal that lanced through his chest.
Renvahr rose to his feet, hand fumbling for the hilt of his sword, while the two Councilors sitting on either side of him struggled to hold him back. “You want war, Gar?” he shouted. “Then, by the goddess, you shall have it!” Renvahr’s eyes had flicked over to Cadwyr, where he stood beside the door, waiting to follow Donnor out of the room. “And what about you, Allovale?” he’d barked. “Will you betray your blood?”
“You are no blood of mine, Renvahr,” had been Cadwyr’s terse reply. They had stalked out of the Council chamber together, shoulder to shoulder, the only two native-born members left, for not even Renvahr had dared to remove them. Yet. Donnor allowed himself one last look at Hoell’s face, and felt another stab of guilt that he should so betray his brother’s son, even as the Queen screamed obscenities, Renvahr cried for order, and Hoell dissolved into a slow stream of tears.
Below, a low, keening wail erupted from one of the women as she recognized a father, a brother, a lover, or a son, and Donnor braced his shoulders against the nameless woman’s grief. A familiar form crossed his line of sight—the slim, blond shape of Cecily, his Duchess—as she hurried to the grieving woman’s side. Was she even five-and-twenty yet, he wondered? Surely she’d been no more than sixteen when her parents had agreed to the match. It was a wildly advantageous marriage for him, for it linked two rival septs of the Clan Garannon, but it did not prevent tongues across the breadth and length of Brynhyvar from whispering about the forty-year difference in their ages. But he’d learned long ago that such a plum ripened only rarely, and he hastened to seize it while he could. In all the eight years she’d been his wife, she’d failed him in only one respect—she had never carried a living child to term. Now the front of her apron and her gown was stained with blood and dirt and worse, while worry creased her forehead and sleeplessness smudged dark shadows beneath her eyes. She looked nothing like the innocent girl she’d been when they’d danced at their wedding. How happy he’d been that day, how sure that at last, he’d found his heart’s own yearning. How much he’d looked forward to settling down into the rosy glow of the late afternoon of his life, beget an heir, or two or more. A sadness, a regret swept over him at how differently it had all worked out.
If only they’d had a child, he thought. Surely things would be far different, if only they’d had a child.
With a sudden screech, a black shape plunged from a ledge high above and as Donnor startled back, a raven swept low over the hall. It wheeled and dipped over the long rows of wounded, gave a shrill caw and flew out an open window. There was a general stir throughout the hall, and Donnor shuddered involuntarily. There was no mistaking that omen, for the raven was a harbinger of the Marrihugh, the warrior goddess. He could almost feel her striding across the land in her crow-feathered boots, crying out for foreign blood. But how many of his own men must die? he wondered, as he watched the stretcher-bearers carry away the corpse, while Cecily folded the grieving woman in her arms, rocking her gently as if she held a child. How many more must die, he wondered, before her thirst was slaked?
He noticed that Cecily looked up, following the raven’s flight, as she hugged the woman close. Then his eye was caught by the familiar gleam of hair so pale it was nearly white, and he saw that Kian, the First Knight of his household, and thus the captain of his personal guard, had slipped into the hall, and was making his way across the crowded floor to Cecily. From this height, he could not see Kian’s expression, but Donnor had no doubt of the eager light burning in Kian’s eyes. Since Beltane, Donnor saw it every time his captain looked into his Duchess’s face.
In only a few quick steps, Kian was beside her, the thick strands of his long hair clinging damply to the green and blue plaid he wore flung over one shoulder. Donnor stared, rooted in place by a hard anger made even hotter by shame. It had been a year—no, closer to two, really—since he had last shared Cecily’s bed. After the last hope of an heir had bled itself away, he had excused himself, murmuring that he could not bear to hear her weep over yet another unborn babe.
But that was not the real reason. If he went not to her bed, it was because he could not, and if ever Cecily bore a child, he would have to know it was not his. As her husband, he would be bound to acknowledge the child or cry her out for adultery, and see her burned at the stake. As Kian bent over her, his mouth close to her ear, Donnor broke free of the spell, turned on his heel, and fled, unable to watch any longer.
Cecily heard the crow’s harsh cry, and looked up from the desperate clutch of Rowena’s arms. Beside her, she could feel the comforting bulk of old Mag, chief still-wife, who could always be counted upon as much for a broad shoulder and an open ear as a soothing brew in times of trouble and distress. So many dead, she thought, as Rowena’s warm, wet weight pressed against her neck. She had known the moment she had seen the long procession of wounded carted through the gates that the slaughter begun on the battlefield wasn’t over. As the stretcher-bearers lifted the corpse, she whispered the ancient words to speed the newly-dead to the Summerlands, and hugged Rowena closer:
“These three things I bid thee keep—
The memory of merry days and quiet nights
Of quiet days and merry nights,
Honor unstained by word or deed
And all the love I bear for thee.”
Rowena’s thin shoulders shook with sobs as the body was borne away. “He was my whole heart,” she choked, while old Mag crooned a gentle hush.
Cecily glanced up at the balcony, where Donnor still stood, staring fixedly at the door as if he could will the messenger to arrive. She wondered if he even saw the men dying here below. She could not imagine weeping so hard for Donnor, if it were his body on the bier. Would she feel anything but a nebulous sense of regret, if the old lion, as most of the inhabitants of the castle lovingly referred to their Duke, were to die? As she rocked Rowena back and forth, she imagined herself a widow, and recognized it felt as odd to imagine herself a widow as it did to remind herself that she was Donnor’s wife. Lately she’d been plagued more and more by the constant vague feeling that there was something else she should be doing, some other role she was meant to play. Whatever it was, it continued to escape her.
Easy for him to stand above, removed, and watch, she thought, suddenly angry, leaving her to deal with this river of death; leaving Kian to deal with what defenses they could muster until the clan chiefs answered Donnor’s summons. She sighed to herself as she thought of Kian—at just past thirty, he was tall and strong and courageous, well-liked by all for the uplander’s courtesy he extended to even the meanest of the castle scullions. Although he had been a member of Donnor’s house for at least three years now, their duties kept them separate and apart much of the time and she had never even noticed him except in briefest passing. It was only this past Beltane their eyes had met and she had noticed a look in his she attributed to the nature of the rite, a look that had made her knees weak as a wave of longing and desire swept over and through her. That night, after the feast, as was her right, she had turned to him to lead her out into the forest. She closed her eyes against the memory of how gently he had kissed her before they were swept up by the goddess and the god into a maelstrom of passion that left her wondrously replete as a foggy sun rose over the low hills, and changed, changed completely. As the last shadows faded to gray, he had covered her body with his once more, and tenderly, tiredly, made love with her a final time—all sense of god or goddess long vanished. That was when I fell in love with him, she thought, and tears sprang into her eyes as loss and need closed like a fist around her heart and for a moment she shared Rowena’s grief utterly. But the marriage contract was exacting, explicit, and under the current circumstances, divorce was not to be thought of. But since that Beltane night, neither she, nor Kian, nor Donnor had been the same.
“My lady Duchess?”
Kian’s low voice startled her, so that she pulled away entirely from Rowena’s stranglehold grasp, and stared up, feeling that he must have appeared in response to her thoughts. His dark brows were knit over his intense dark eyes, his mouth drawn down and grim. As he leaned down to speak into her ear, his hair, the color of sun-bleached seashells, brushed against her cheek. It was damp from the rain, and on his blue and green plaid, tiny droplets of water gleamed like pink-tinted pearls in the reddish light. “If you will, my lady, I need a word with you at once.”
Cecily took another step back. In Kian’s presence she felt herself young, and ripe and ready as a peach to fall into his hand—the opposite of everything Donnor made her feel. But she heard a new timbre in Kian’s voice that she had never heard before—an urgency that bordered on fear. She saw him glance above, and following his eyes, saw that Donnor no longer stood like a sentinel at the watch. “What’s wrong?”
Kian shook his head, his mouth barely moving. “I—I cannot say here. Please, come with me, my lady.”
Their eyes met, and while her spine stiffened against her body’s involuntary response to his closeness, she realized that there was nothing of the lover in the man who stood beside her, tense as a stallion poised to bolt. With a brief murmur to Mag, and a final squeeze on Rowena’s shoulder, she allowed Kian to lead her to a seldom-used retiring room off to one side of the hall, now stocked with barrels and baskets of every description and size, in which were piled high everything from candles and the season’s first apples to bandages and twine. “What is it? What’s wrong?” She wiped her hands on her apron, and watched, puzzled as he led her into the center of the room, then shut the door behind them. He filched an apple from a large basket beside the hearth and turned to face her. His expression was as grim as she had ever seen it, but it was colored by that new element, an element that looked very much like fear and tinged by doubt and disbelief. He looked, she decided, like a man who’d seen a ghost. Or a sidhe.
He hesitated, clearly gathering his thoughts. “In truth, I scarce know how to begin. I would have showed it to you before I had it burned, but I would not inflict such a curse upon your memory.” He ran the apple under his nose. “Faugh—the stink of it is still on me, and I’ve washed my hands three times.” He threw the apple into the empty hearth, where it landed with a bounce and a roll.
Show me what? she wanted to interrupt, but he went on, his words tumbling over themselves like stones falling downhill. “It was just past three—” she startled at his words, realizing that the day was much farther advanced than she had realized “—just past three, just as I had come to stand my turn upon the watch—you know that every able-bodied man over fourteen is taking a turn?”
When she nodded, he continued. “Within the first hour, two men came in. The first was from Tuirnach of Pentland. Donnor’s own messenger hadn’t arrived yet, not by the time this messenger left, which was only two days ago, which is troubling enough in and of itself, but it’s the second one that has unsettled me, to the point where I stand before you now like a moon-mazed calf.” He paused and shook his head as if to clear it. When he spoke again, his voice was so low, she had to strain to hear it in the quiet room. “The second messenger—though he’s no more a messenger than I am a cook—came from a little village, in the uplands, just above Killcarrick Keep. Donnor knows it—it’s the village where Dougal lives—Dougal the smith who forged the sword Donnor wears in battle. You know the smith I mean?”
She nodded mutely, listening intently, trying to discern the source of his disquiet.
“Donnor’s messenger isn’t the only one missing. For Dougal himself is missing—he disappeared four or five nights ago.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know what happened. I do know that the piece of carcass this man showed me was part of nothing ever spawned in this world.” His eyes sought hers and held them, as if gauging her reaction. “For you see, in the same hour that it was realized Dougal the smith was missing, the villagers found a goblin—a dead goblin, thank the goddess—floating in Killcarrick Lake.” He took a deep breath and in the gloomy light that filtered through the translucent sheets of yellowish horn which filmed the windows, she saw that he absolutely believed the truth of what he said. “I saw it—smelled it—touched it—” He shut his eyes and grimaced. “I told my squire to burn it behind the midden, lest the stench of it alone cause a panic.”
Cecily’s mind raced. A thousand years or more had passed since the days of Bran Brownbeard, and the only time one heard talk of goblins was in the legends told around the winter fires, in the histories chanted through the annual cycle of ritual and ceremony. “But—but that isn’t—that’s not possible.”
Kian gave a soft snort of derision. “Believe me, if what that man had in that sack wasn’t goblin flesh, I don’t know what would be. The claws—they were exactly as the old tales describe, and the way it reeked—” He shuddered. “There’s no doubt in my mind at all. But beside the problem it presents all its own—which is how a goblin got here in the first place—there’s the effect it could—it will—have on the outcome of our rebellion. For after yesterday, we hang on by not much more than a few threads here. The Humbrians are loading up their warships even as we speak. If the men desert our cause to return to protect their homes from goblins, we shall not stand.”
For a long moment, she was silent. “But—but,” Cecily began, frowning. “If this is true, at the news of a goblin in Brynhyvar, the druids will step in—surely there will be a halt to the hostilities—the druids will insist—”
“Indeed, and the Humbrian army will continue to grow on the other side of the water and we will not be able to mobilize or maneuver while the druids wrangle amongst themselves.” He looked at her, and she knew he expected her to understand the greater meaning contained in his words, beyond the obvious. “If that happens, Donnor will be forced to call in old alliances across the Sea and beyond the mountains. And the war will spread across our borders, like a fire raging out of control.”
“Why have you come to me?” Her voice quivered, for his presence unsettled her. She clasped her hands before her, to steady them. Too easily he stirred up feelings she thought firmly suppressed. And why did he always make her feel as if there was something about her that he knew and she did not, as if he could see some aspect of herself she could not? In the hazy light, his pale hair glowed with a pearly luminescence and not for the first time, she thought he looked like a lord of the Shining Ones.
“Where’s Donnor?” he asked abruptly.
“Gone to rest at last, I imagine. He was up on the balcony until just now—hoping some word would come, I think. He will be glad to hear from Tuirnach at least.”
“I sent the messenger to eat—he’s ridden without stopping through two nights to reach us as quickly as he did.”
She took a single step closer, and fancied she could see the beating of his heart through the thin linen shirt. “You didn’t answer me.”
His dark eyes bored into hers, and the room was so quiet, she could hear her pulse pounding in her ears. In two quick steps he was beside her, and for a moment, she thought he might sweep her up into his arms. But he only spoke in a whisper that seared her to the bone. “I come to you, my lady, because I remember who you are, even if you choose not to.”
She stared up at him, taken aback. “If I ever forget that I am the wife of the Duke of Gar, I am always reminded soon enough.” Tears welled in her eyes. “Kian, I wish we could leave all this behind us. This is Donnor’s war—Cadwyr’s war—it doesn’t have to be ours. We could go somewhere, anywhere—south, perhaps, to Lacquilea—leave this whole dangerous mess—” she broke off, as sobs of frustration and fatigue choked her.
“Ah, Cecily.” With a sigh, he pulled her into the circle of his arms, cradling her head against his rain-damp chest. She relaxed against him, savoring the blend of horses and damp wool beneath the acrid tang of his sweat-stained linen. He pressed his cheek against the top of her head, and she heard him draw a deep breath. When he spoke, his voice was low with regret. “You know we cannot do that. Would you have us be outlaws, exiles, unwelcome at every hearth? We must just be patient a little while longer, until—”
“Until what?” she asked, as the tears spilled down her cheeks and she twined her fingers in the rough wool of his plaid. His dagger’s leather hilt dug into her waist, but she pressed closer uncaring. “Until our cause is lost?”
“Hush now, don’t say that. We will prevail. It’s just the northern chiefs are somewhat slow to rouse themselves—”
She pulled back and met his gaze with a stubborn chin. “Don’t pretend to me, Kian. I see the look on your face—on Donnor’s. I see the number lying here and I see how many didn’t come back at all. And now you say they’ve found a goblin of all things. What difference does it make if we stay or go?”
“You have but to say the word, lady, and ten thousand men of Garannon and Garleugh both would march beneath a standard of your raising. It is you should reign in Brynhyvar, not that old lion run to fat. And Cadwyr crowds close behind—think you the throne will pass to you, should Donnor fall?”
“Cadwyr is loyal to Donnor,” she choked out.
“Aye, to Donnor for he is Donnor’s heir, but what if Donnor falls in battle? I do not trust Cadwyr—his eyes are slippery and he unpockets his smile at will. And Donnor will not listen to me. Oh, he trusts me to preserve his life, for he knows I shall stand upon my word. But ever since Beltane, he hates me, Cecily, and all I say to him falls on deaf ears.”
She lowered her eyes against the pain she read in Kian’s face. They had not, either of them, in fact betrayed the vows they had sworn to Donnor. Beltane was sacred—it was not unheard of for husbands and wives to choose others—although it was usually by preagreement.
But the goddess was on me, she thought, I could not help myself. There was no dishonor, no shame in what they had done. Honor was all, but the goddess and the god must be answered as well. And honor was cold comfort on winter nights, and honor was a lonely partner when memory made the blood run hot. With effort she ignored the recollection of his hands on her breasts, and asked, “So, you want me to go to Donnor…?”
“No.” The force with which he answered took her aback. “Cadwyr, curse him, was right. We should have thrown down the gauntlet long ere this. But we did not, and thus we must play the hand we’ve dealt ourselves. The carcass is burned and I’ve ordered the man who brought it not to speak of it, and thank the goddess he seems to understand the reason not to cause a general panic. But I promised I’d go back with him—back to the village where they found the goblin and organize a search for the smith and possibly the messenger, and make sure nothing else is amiss. And I will see to the gathering of the clans myself. I’ll take a small troop with me—a couple dozen or so. They can fan out across the upcountry, while I attend to this other business.”
