“Are you certain? We will bury your father with all proper rites. If you wish to stay for … ”
“No. Give him to us,” Brand said, assertive for the first time. “He entrusted his soul to Ingavin, before we fought. This is truth.”
Brynn’s mood seemed to change again. Sorrow in his face, anger spent. The Cyngael, it was said, were never far from sadness. Rain and mist, dark valleys, music in their voices.
Ap Hywll nodded his head. “That seems fitting, I have to say. Very well. Take him with you. You will do him honour?”
“We will do him honour,” Brand said, with dignity. “He was the Volgan’s shipmate once.”
HER OWN ANGER, Rhiannon realized, had also gone. It was more than a little unsettling: how one could be consumed, defined by rage, the desire—the need—to kill, and then have it simply disappear, drift away, leaving such a different feeling behind. She hadn’t cried earlier; she was weeping now for a treacherous Erling servant of her mother’s. She shouldn’t be doing this, she thought. She shouldn’t.
Her mother put an arm about her shoulders. Enid was calm again, thoughtful, holding her child.
It is over, Rhiannon told herself. At least it is over now.
IN THE SAGAS, Bern thought, when the hero died, to the monster’s claws and teeth or the assembled might of deceitful foes, he always lay alive for some last moments so those who loved him could come and say that, and hear the last words he would speak, and carry them away.
Siferth had died that way, years after killing Ingeld on the ice, and so had Hargest in his brother’s arms, speaking the words at the heart of all the sagas:
Cattle die kinsmen die.
Every man born must die.
Fierce hearth fires end in ash.
Fame once won endures ever.
It made for good verse. It might even be true. But not all of us are granted final words with those we are losing, not all of us are equal to the task of the last, memorable thing to say, or allowed it even if we are.
You were supposed to have that moment, Bern thought bitterly. In the Jaddite songs, too, there were such exchanges. The king speaking to his servant words to be remembered, to echo down the ages. The dying high cleric telling a wavering acolyte that which confirms him in faith and mission and changes his life—and the lives of others, after.
It wasn’t right that there was nothing here but this … kneeling beside a death among so many strangers, enemies, in a distant land far from the sea. It wasn’t right that your own last encounter had been so harsh. His father had saved him there, too, carrying him out of Esferth to his horse, sending him away, with instructions not to come to Brynnfell.
If they’d listened, if they’d gone home, this wouldn’t have …
It wasn’t his fault. Not his doing. He’d taken heed. A good son. Ivarr Ragnarson was dead because Bern had exposed him, as his father had wanted. He’d done what he’d been told. He’d … he’d honoured his father’s words.
His father had killed two men, been exiled, cost his family home and freedom, the shape and pattern of their lives.
Had given one life back, here, bought with his own.
They were speaking above him of needing an Erling to ride to the ships with the Cyngael. Bern looked up, hoping they couldn’t see how blurred and unmoored he felt, and said he’d go.
He heard Brand say, quietly, that Thorkell had chosen Ingavin for his soul at the end. He wasn’t surprised. How could that be a surprise? But it did give him a thought. He slipped the hammer from about his neck and lifted his father’s head, still warm in the late-day sunlight, and he gave Thorkell back his gift to carry up to the god’s halls, where mead was surely (surely) being poured for him now, with Siggur Volganson there to lead the cries of welcome after waiting for so long.
He stood up carefully. Looked down at his father. It had been dark in the river the last time, nothing clearly to be discerned. It was bright here now. Some grey in the hair and beard, but really very little for a man of his years. Red Thorkell, still, at the end.
He looked over, met the gaze of Brynn ap Hywll. Hadn’t expected what he saw there. They’d come to kill this man. Neither of them spoke. It crossed Bern’s mind to say that he was sorry, but an Erling didn’t say that to a Cyngael. He just nodded his head. The other man did the same. Bern turned away and went down the slope, to get Gyllir and ride. It was over.
In the great stories there were last words from the dying, and for them from those left behind. In life, it seemed, you galloped away, and the dead were borne after you towards a burning by the sea.
IT IS OVER, Bern thought, riding away, and Rhiannon mer Brynn had told herself the same thing, a little higher up the hill. Both were wrong, though young enough to be forgiven for it.
It does not end. A story finishes—or does for some, not for others—and there are other tales, intersecting, parallel, or sharing nothing but the time. There is always something more.
Alun ab Owyn, so pale that it was noted by all who looked at him, walked over towards Brynn. He was breathing carefully, holding himself very still.
“Lad. What is it?” Brynn’s gaze narrowed.
“I need … I must ask something of you.”
“After coming through that wood for us? Jad’s blood, there is nothing you could ask that—”
“Don’t say it. This is large.”
The older man stared at him. “Let us walk away, then, and you will ask me, and I will say if I can do what you need.”
They walked away, and Alun asked. Only the dog, Cafall, whom both of them had called theirs, was near to them, following. There was a breeze from the north, sliding the clouds away. A clear night coming, late-summer stars soon, no moons.
“It is very large,” Brynn agreed, when Alun had done. He, too, was pale now. “And this is from … ”
“This is from the half-world. The one that we … both know.”
“Are you certain you understand … ?”
“No. No, I’m not. But I think … I have been caused to see something. And I am being … besought to do this.”
“From when you were in the godwood?”
“Before. It began here.”
Brynn looked at him. He wished Ceinion were with them. He wished he were a wiser, better, holier man. The sun was low. The Erlings, he saw, glancing down the slope, had taken the body of the dead man. Siawn had detailed men to go with them, escorts. Brynn didn’t think there would be trouble. Something had changed with Einarson’s death. He was still trying to sort that through, if he’d have done the same thing to save his own son, or daughters.
He thought so, but didn’t know. He honestly didn’t know.
Owyn’s son was waiting, staring at him, his mouth pinched, clearly in great distress. He was the musician, Brynn remembered. Had sung for them the night the Erlings came. His brother had died here. This one had come through the spirit wood to warn them, and sent a faerie ahead to Brynn. Three nights she had waited above the yard for him to come to her. Failing that, the farm would have burned tonight. And Enid, Rhiannon …
He nodded his head. “I’ll take you to Siggur Volganson’s sword, where I buried it. Jad defend us both from whatever may befall.”
It does not end. There is always more.
SHE IS WATCHING. Of course she is watching. How could she not have followed here? She is trying, from a distance, away from all the iron, to understand movements, gestures. She is not skilled at this (how could she be?). She sees him walk away with the other one, with whom she’d spoken on the slope, who is afraid of her, of what she is.
They do not see her. She is in the trees, muted, trying to understand, but distracted by the aura of other presences gathering as sundown nears: the Ride is close by, of course, and spruaugh, many of them, whom she has always disliked. One of those, she thinks, will have flitted to tell the queen already: about what she’s done, what she is doing now.
There was one dead man, taken up by the others now. Only one. She has seen th
is before, years ago and years ago. It is … a game men play at war, though something more than that, perhaps. They die so swiftly.
She sees the two of them turn and go to their horses and start back east, alone. She follows. Of course she follows, among the trees. But just then, watching the two of them, she feels—inexplicably strange, at first, then not so—something she has never felt before, in all the years since wakening. And then she realizes what it is. She is feeling sorrow, seeing him take horse and ride. A gift. Never before.
She enters the small wood above Brynnfell with the two of them and the grey dog. The Ride is waiting by the pool. She feels the queen’s summons and goes to her, as she must.
IT GREW DARKER as they rode, both carrying torches now. The first stars out, clouds chased south by the wind. Cafall loped beside the horses. No one else was with them. Alun looked at the sky.
“No moons tonight?”
Brynn simply shook his head. The big man had been silent on the ride. Alun was aware that this particular journey would be laden with memory for him, like a weight. This is very large, he had said. It was.
No moons. That, Alun thought, but did not say—for Brynn was carrying enough—was the other reason time had altered for the three of them in the spirit wood, coming here.
Allowed to come here. He was remembering Thorkell’s hammer, laid upon the grass where they’d heard the creature roaring. An offering, and perhaps not the only thing offered. He, too, had ended up lying on grass.
This was a different wood. The insistent images, painfully imposed, coming from an Anglcyn princess in Esferth, were green and shining still, as they entered among the trees carrying their flames.
He’d chased Ivarr Ragnarson here, and his Erling horse had entered the pool and been frozen there, and he’d seen faeries, heard their music, seen Dai with the queen.
Never found Ivarr. That one was dead, it seemed. Not by Alun’s hand. Not his revenge. Something else, a larger thing, to be done now. He was afraid.
The images in his mind had stopped. They were gone, as if the girl had been worn out sending them—or wasn’t needed any more, now that he was here. He was supposed to know, by now, why he was in this wood. He was almost certain he did. That sense of something pushing into awareness was replaced by something else, more difficult to name.
He dismounted when Brynn did, and he followed him through the darkness; a twisting path through high summer trees (a small wood, this, but an old one, surely so, with faeries here). They were cautious with the torches. A forest could burn.
He saw the pool. His heart was beating fast. He glanced at Brynn, who had stopped, saw that the other man’s face was rigid with strain. Brynn looked around, aligning himself. The sky was clear above the pool, they could see stars. The water was still, a mirror. No wind here. No sound in the leaves.
Brynn turned to him. “Hold this,” he said, handing Alun his torch.
He set off around the edge of the pool, towards the south. Long-striding, almost hurrying, now that they were here. He would be tangled in memories, Alun thought. He followed, carrying light. Again Brynn stopped, again took his bearings. Then he turned his back on the water and walked over to a tree, a large ash. He touched it and went past. Three more trees, then he turned to his left.
There was a boulder, moss-covered (green), massive. Here, too, Brynn rested his hand a moment. He looked back at Alun. It was too hard to read his thoughts by torchlight. Alun could guess, though.
“Why didn’t you destroy it?” he asked softly, his first words in the wood.
“I don’t know,” the other man said. “I felt as if it should stay with us. Lie here. It was … very beautiful.”
He stayed that way a moment, then he turned his back on Alun, drew a breath, put a shoulder to that huge rock, and pushed, an enormously strong man. Nothing happened. Brynn straightened, wiped at his face with one hand.
“I can—” Alun began.
“No,” said the other. “I did it myself, then.”
Twenty-five years ago. A young man in his glory, a life ahead of him, the greatest deed of his days already done. What he’d be remembered for. He’d taken that fight for his own, over those whose rank should have made it theirs. Today, he had let a man take another combat, for him.
This was a proud man. Alun stood with the torches, Cafall beside him, and watched as Brynn turned back to the rock, spat on both his hands, and put them and his shoulder to it again, driving with body and legs, churning, grunting with exertion, then crying aloud Jad’s name, the god, even here.
And the boulder rolled with that cry, just enough to reveal, by the light of Alun’s torches, a hollow beneath where it had been, and something wrapped in cloth, lying there.
Brynn straightened, wiped at his dripping face again with one sleeve then the other. He swore, though softly, without force. Alun remained where he was, waiting. His heart was still pounding. The other man knelt, claimed the cloth, and what lay inside it. He stood up and carried it back before him the few steps out of those trees, past the ash to the grassy space by the starlit pool.
He cried aloud, raised a quick, warding hand. Alun, following, looked past him. They were here. Waiting. Not the faeries. The green, hovering figures he’d seen with the others in the spirit wood.
They were here, and they were the reason he was here. He knew what these were now, finally, and what they needed from him.
Besought. He was being pleaded with. To intervene. A mortal who could see the half-world, who had been in the Ride’s pool here, had lain with a faerie in the northern reaches of the spirit wood. They would know this. When he’d entered the wood again with Thorkell and then Athelbert, they had come for him.
His heart was twisted, entangled, holding a weight that felt like centuries. He didn’t know how the girl in Esferth was part of this (didn’t know she’d been in the wood that same night) but she had given him the images they needed him to see. She had … a different kind of access to this.
And had brought him here, a second time.
“They will not harm us,” he said quietly to Brynn.
“You know what these are?”
“Yes,” said Alun. “I do now.”
Brynn didn’t ask the next question. Either he didn’t want to know or, more probably, he was leaving this, in courtesy, to Alun.
Alun said, “If you will give me the sword, I think you should take Cafall and go. You do not need to stay with me.”
“Yes I do,” said the other man.
Hugely proud, all his days. A man had died, taking his fight this afternoon. Brynn unwrapped the cloth from around what it had held for so many years and Alun, coming nearer with both torches, saw the Volgan’s small, jewel-hilted sword, taken from the raid on Champieres, and carried as a talisman until the day he died in Llywerth, by the sea.
The man who’d killed him held it out towards Alun. Alun handed him a torch, took the sword, gave Brynn the other flame. He unsheathed the blade, to look upon it. It was silver, Siggur Volganson’s sword. Not iron. He’d known it would be, from the girl.
There came a sound from the green shapes gathered there—twenty of them, or nearly so, he judged. A keening noise, wind in leaves but higher. Sorrow was in him. The way of the Cyngael.
“You are … certain you wish to stay?”
Brynn nodded. “You don’t want to be alone here.”
He didn’t. It was true. But still. “I don’t think I have … permission to do this. I don’t expect to live. Your wife asked you—”
“I know what she said. I will not leave you alone. Do what you must. We will bear witness, Cafall and I.”
Alun looked beyond him. One of the green shapes had come nearer. They were almost human, as if twisted by time and circumstance a little away. He knew what they were, now. What they had been.
Brynn stepped away, back towards the encircling trees, carrying the torches. The dog was silent when it might have growled. It had done so in the spirit wood, Alun remembered. Somethi
ng had changed. He set the scabbard down.
“You wish this, truly?” he said. Not to the other man this time. Brynn was behind him now. He was holding a silver sword and speaking to the green creatures that had come. They were in a clearing by the faerie queen’s pool under stars on a night when neither moon would rise. Souls walked on such nights, so the old tales told.
No reply, or none spoken aloud. He had no idea if they could speak any tongue he might know. But the figure before him came nearer yet (slowly, so as not to startle him or cause fear, was the thought that came) and it knelt upon the dark grass before him.
He heard Brynn make a sound (the beginning of a prayer) and then stop himself. The other man had just realized, Alun thought, what was about to happen, though he wouldn’t know why. Alun knew why.
He had not asked for this. He’d only ridden north from home one bright morning at the end of spring with his brother and favourite cousin and their friends on a cattle raid, as young men of the Cyngael had done since all songs began. He had ridden into a different, older story, it seemed.
Much older. These green things, and he still didn’t know what they were called, had been human once. Like Brynn, like Alun himself, like Dai.
Entirely like Dai. These, he understood, heart aching, were the souls of the faerie queen’s mortal lovers after she tired of them and sent them from her side. This is what became of them, after who could know how many years. And he was here (in a tale he had never known he was in) to set them free with silver, under stars.
His eyes were dry, his hand steady, holding the small sword. He touched the point and still-sharp edges. Not a warrior’s blade this one, a slender, ceremonial sword. This was a ceremony, as much as anything else.
He drew a breath. There was no reason to wait, or linger. He’d been brought here for this. He stepped forward.
“Let there be light for you,” he said. And thrust the Volgan’s blade into the kneeling, shimmering creature, below what would have been its collarbone, long ago.
He was ready this time for the sound that came, and so did not flinch or startle when he heard that cry of release, or the deeper sound that came from the others gathered here. No wind, the water utterly still. Stars would be reflected in it.