He did, a few paces behind, so as to keep from crowding her. She took quick, short strides through town, up the steep, snaking streets, and out of the cove. Some wooden stairs stained white by salt cut up off the main road, and she took them over and around jutting limestone capped with scraggly gray-green ocean grass. Wind blasted, shoving at Mars, but the woman seemed not to be affected; rather, the wind parted for her.
Mars concentrated on placing his boots carefully on the twenty or so stairs until they reached a plateau and a very narrow path, worn to limestone gravel against the grass and thin dirt. The woman climbed easily, mounting the bluff with a deep enough breath he could see her shoulders lift and fall. She waited, looking back, and when Mars joined her she began to walk again, meandering idly with her gaze directed out at the glittering sea.
Pale ribbons danced in the wind, loosening from her hair. It smelled of salt here, nothing more, because the wind scoured this place clean of all else.
After a quarter of a mile edging the cliff, the woman stopped and turned entirely to face the sea. “Can you feel the island’s fury, Morimaros of Aremoria?”
He frowned and folded his hands together behind his back. This promontory of cliff reached farther out than the rest of the south coast, thrusting them high enough over the ocean that the crash of waves on the white rocks below was only a dull rush of sound. The wind battered at his back, as if to throw him over. “I feel the wind.”
“Do you think it wants you here?”
To say what he truly thought—that it mattered not to him what the wind wanted—would cast this woman, and all of Innis Lear, against him. Mars only said, “I would like the opportunity to show I am an asset.”
“What do you want?”
“To give aid to Elia Lear.”
“Make her the queen?”
“If that is what she wishes.”
The woman smiled, broad and knowing. “Did you wish to be king of Aremoria?”
“There are too many differences between our situations. I was always made to be my father’s heir. Elia was not.”
“Wasn’t she?” the woman said sharply. “What do you know of how she was made?”
“Who are you?” Mars demanded. “That you speak to me this way?”
Her lovely black eyebrows lifted. “I thought you were only a soldier.”
He sighed in frustration, and the wind seemed to huff back, shoving at him, tugging at the sword at his hip. Mars stumbled and turned to gaze inland, toward the northern moors, dark and silvery despite the glaring sky. “I am a stranger to you, and you challenge me without knowing me, regardless of my rank or name.”
“You are no stranger to me; your name is on the wind, set there by many voices.”
“Then you are a stranger to me.”
“Why are you here, Morimaros?”
“To help.”
“We do not need Aremore might.”
“That is why I did not bring any.”
“Your name, your presence, is more than enough. You are a living threat, and you know it.”
“Then use me! Let Elia use me.”
“Tell me: why are you here?”
The wind slammed so hard the grass hissed and roared like its own ocean.
“I want to help Elia.”
“Why are you here?” Her voice lowered, and Mars felt it through the wind.
“I told you. Now give me your name, woman.” He put his hand on his sword to stop the wind from slapping it against his thigh; too late he realized the threat of the gesture.
“Shh,” the woman murmured, touching her lips and then holding her hand out flat toward the moors.
The wind settled.
That graceful gesture; her dark Ispanian flavor; the wary, powerful eyes: Mars saw her in double, then, one figure herself and the other his Fox. Ban was slighter, more desperate, but there was no doubt in Mars’s heart.
“You’re his mother,” he said, stunned. But he should have guessed right away. Brona Hartfare, the witch of the White Forest. Mars felt a pang of dismay for noticing her beauty, as if it would let Ban down. As if the Fox’s respect still concerned him.
She said, “And you’re his king.”
“Not by his word,” Mars snapped, his only defense. “He chose you. Your island.”
Brona studied him, not as pleased as she ought to be by the revelation. He thought of Ban, writing that note, sending it off, and could not help but wonder how easy a choice it might have been. Had Mars ever mattered to Ban the Fox?
The king turned swiftly away so she might not see the pain crawl over his face. Ah, stars, Fox, he thought, nothing but a name and a sorrowful curse.
“You set him here to pull the island apart—for your benefit. For Aremoria.”
“I did.” Mars barely managed to keep his voice from diving to a whisper. Not from guilt—he would not apologize for acting as a king, not to any but Elia herself. Yet this was Ban’s mother, and speaking with her made him feel strangely closer to his Fox.
“Did you know how he would excel at it?” She seemed curious now, more than anything.
“I hoped he would. Lear was not a good king.”
“You expect me to believe that was your motivation? The good of our island?”
Mars turned back to her. “It was a part of my motivation, and if you do not believe me, there is no point discussing further. All I have is my word, here on your island.”
Brona Hartfare nodded. “I believe you. But what I’ve heard of Morimaros of Aremoria is that he is an excellent general, a liberal king, invested in the betterment of his people. It seems a king like that might have predicted my son’s actions.”
“I thought all his choices would point in my favor, because Ban would always be loyal to me.”
Now Brona slanted him a look. Almost pitying. She said, “All Ban has ever wanted was for someone to be loyal to him. So while everyone allowed the stars to make these paths for us, for him—Ban became his own star.”
Mars stared at her, understanding there was something in her words older than he could possibly come to terms with, more mysterious and strange than any man of Aremoria could fathom. But he felt the truth in them.
“What—Will you tell me what he’s done? He’s not here—with Elia. Where is he?”
The Fox’s mother sighed. “With Regan certainly, and Gaela, too, most likely. Beyond that, you could say more surely than I what he is responsible for.”
Mars heard the implication there perfectly: the witch meant Mars should know what he himself was responsible for. “I would have him at Elia’s side,” he said. “For that is where I intend to be, if she allows it.”
“How unfortunate it is, King, that we cannot control the path of a storm.”
There were a hundred things Mars could have said to defend Ban Errigal: that he was not chaos, that he had meant so much to Mars, that she should have cared better for her son, if she was so concerned with his behavior now. That the Fox had been determined and wounded, afraid and jealous and desperate for a friend, or a leader, or at least for a decent man to appreciate everything that Ban could offer, which was exactly what the king had been.
In the end, Mars said nothing.
Brona asked, “Do you love my son?”
“That doesn’t matter anymore,” Mars answered, harshly, for he had, indeed, loved the man. Trained him personally, lifted him up, trusted him! Simply enjoyed his thorny company. And missed him when he was gone.
She tilted her head and said, with the first lilt of maternal tenderness he had noted in her: “It matters to me.”
That hurt the king, and he struggled not to show it. Instead he only nodded, and said, “I did. But I can no longer.”
The ocean crashed below them, and the wind rushed past, twisting and tossing up dry grass in tiny whirlwinds. There came a moaning, a sorry cry, and Mars somehow knew it was the voice of Innis Lear.
FIVE YEARS AGO, EASTERN BORDER OF AREMORIA
BAN ERRIGAL WAS alone, and dyin
g.
He gripped the tear in his gambeson, wishing he knew any words to whisper that might stop this gush of hot blood through his fingers. Words to knit flesh together, words to slow his heartbeat, or words at least to dull the pain until he could find a healer. But then, what did it matter if he knelt here to die; none would even notice.
He’d not even been given mail or breast plate, only this foot soldier’s leather armor, buckled cheaply across his chest, and a quilted shirt. Nothing better for the bastard cousin from Innis Lear, foisted upon the Alsax though they’d rather have had his half brother Rory, the legitimate heir. Ban had not been given a choice, either.
A quarter mile behind him the sounds of battle continued: a constant rush of noise like the crashing of ocean waves or autumn winds through the White Forest’s canopy.
This wound had come from a Diotan soldier, bigger than Ban—though everyone was bigger than Ban—who knocked Ban off his feet and tore away his buckler. As Ban had rolled against churned mud, reaching desperately for the small shield, the soldier had kicked him, then stomped down on his shield arm. The pain of a cracking wrist bone was enough to whiten Ban’s vision and give the soldier an opening for a fatal stab.
Only the sudden arrival of another Aremore foot soldier saved Ban’s life. The sword had skewed sideways, catching the quilted edge of Ban’s shirt. It tore through the gambeson and into Ban’s side, instead of his heart.
He’d scrambled away, leaving buckler and his own dropped sword behind, toward the edge of the battle. Ignored or unseen, Ban had made it free of the melee, head pounding and blood hot, with a roar in his ears that drove him to his feet again. Dazed, he’d stood, panting through clenched teeth, and stared at the slope of the battlefield. Aremore soldiers cleaved through the forces from Diota, winning. Cavalry to the southeast, foot soldiers pressing hard, all wearing the bright orange of their young king.
Ban wore it, too, under the leather chest piece. The long gambeson, thinly quilted, was dyed that sunrise orange, now streaked a brilliant scarlet.
He felt strength draining out of him along with the blood, and tucked his broken wrist against his chest.
What am I doing here, he wondered then, hazy from pain and weariness.
He took a step away from the battle, away from Aremoria itself. Pain surged from his sword wound; this would kill him. Hissing with every careful movement, Ban made his way toward … peace, he supposed dully. Shade and quiet.
If this were Innis Lear, the wind would tell him where to go, the trees beckon him with teasing secrets and the promise of help.
Ban walked too slowly. His boots crushed thick summer grass as the sun beat down, hotter than ever it did at home.
He had no home.
Blood soaked through the hip of his pants, sticking the wool to his skin. It trailed along his thigh, until Ban’s entire right side darkened with thick, crusting blood. He was only fifteen years old, but he would die here, and nobody would care.
His mother, perhaps, for a moment might think sadly on Ban’s fate, but then she’d turn her attention again to the people of Hartfare, her other strays and homeless witches, the lost and found of the island to whom Brona devoted herself even before her own son.
His father would cry false tears, wail with the singular passion for which he was known, and tell stories of Ban’s young wildness: stories that always would deteriorate into a reluctant condemnation of his bastard stars.
Rory might miss his brother, but only long enough to play at avenging his death here against Diota.
And King Lear—
Ban stumbled, grunting as he caught himself on a sore knee, jarring his broken wrist. His skull throbbed. A blessed numbness had spread along his wounded side.
Ahead was a low, grassy valley beside the dark towers of a forest. Three cranky-looking hawthorn trees clutched the north, windblown slope. It was a good place to die. Small, sheltered on two sides by the roll of hills and one by the forest, and the other faced only the sky. Ban’s vision blurred.
The king of Innis Lear would be glad he was dead.
And perhaps never tell Elia.
Ban drew a long, slow breath—it grew more difficult to breathe deeply. He walked toward the hawthorn trees.
A year ago, he’d have stayed alive for her. A year ago, when Elia loved him, and he returned it with a thrilling joy unlike anything he’d known before. Almost like balancing in the center of the land bridge to the Summer Seat, terrible cliffs dropping a hundred feet on either side to those tearing, wicked ocean waves. Almost like fire coming to life at the tips of his fingers, starlight and root magic joined in a singular spark of magic. Almost like that kiss.
Tears brushed off his eyelashes, and Ban realized he was crying. He slid a few paces down the slope to the dappled shade of the cranky hawthorns. Touching the hard wrinkles of bark, Ban left a bloody handprint. Hello, hawthorn, he whispered in the language of trees. Would trees in Aremoria know the words? Or did only trees of Innis Lear understand? Would they listen to a bastard if they did, even if he was also the son of a witch?
It hardly mattered. He was so very tired.
Ban sank to his knees, his shoulder against the trunk of the first hawthorn. Its roots curled through the sloping earth, hard gray snakes. Blood dripped from his wound, plopping against the roots and dusty ground in perfect tiny splatters. Ban blinked, and his tears fell, too. He sighed. This was the place.
The hawthorn shook its leaves, a long sighing response.
Hello, little brother, the tree whispered.
Relieved, exhausted, Ban laid himself down between the trees, head cradled in the crook of two roots. He kissed it, closed his eyes, and gave himself over to death.
He woke suddenly, from a dream of yellow flowers that floated in the air like bobbing butterflies, and gasped at a resurgence of pain. Blackness surrounded him, and not the blackness of a starless sky, but of closed doors and deep well water. He smelled roots and dank earth; a healthy, fertile smell. And blood, too, but fainter. His ears were muffled, his entire body cushioned by mud and roots cupped gently and perfectly around him.
As he slept, the hawthorns had made him a nest.
Or a grave.
He shifted but was caught by the heavy embrace of earth. A root hugged his left forearm against his chest, keeping the wrist secure. Another pair of roots circled Ban’s ribs, pinching shut the leather vest and pressing together his yawning wound.
Sleep, son, little brother.
The words shivered through the ground, passed between the hawthorns.
We hold you, they whispered, shaping the language of trees rounder, louder and more tender both, to Ban’s ears. Like a different dialect from the slick, intense whispering of Innis Lear.
Thank you, he said, attempting the same shapes.
Ban drifted, thirsty but whole. He thought of the starflower hollows in the White Forest, and Elia humming to the flowers, her black eyes bright with magic. The wind teased her to laugh, pushed her toward him. He thought of the garden behind his mother’s cottage in Hartfare, of coaxing the sweet peas to curl and braid together along the trellis lines. Sweet peas spoke in staccato half words. Like night moths and cherry trees.
His dreams looped slowly: Elia here, a girl pulling herself out of the hollow of an oak tree, crowned with stars and beetles; King Lear next, towering like a column of cold fire, his touch withering the earth and stones of the island; Earl Errigal laughing so hard his cheeks pinked, pushing Ban toward Brona his mother, her hair tousled and her jaw mud-streaked because they’d been chasing each other though the White Forest, singing a whispered song to the trees. Elia again, always, and the shivering roots, chuckling wind, and rushing tide that grasped against the rocky beach. Innis Lear.
Memories, all, a tale for the Aremore roots, whispered through thin, cracking lips as he dreamed. And this land’s story in return: bright green summer and the shuffle of red wheat, shaved from the ground for harvest; horses in an easy canter beneath shining soldiers and
knights; the glorious sun colored the same as the royal flag tied to the top of a strong sapling oak; Aremoria’s new king; winter snow a careful white blanket, and cozy fire that crackled but did not spark; caves beneath elegant old cities, stone mouths like natural wells, and lazy rivers braiding it all together in knots.
The magic was slow, the trees peaceful and reluctant to speak. Aremoria was not hungry like the roots of Innis Lear. Stars fell, forgotten here but as distant signals and pretty lights.
It was a comforting story. Ban would rest content if he slipped into death here in this cradle of earth and roots.
Don’t die, wizard, the trees whispered. They nudged him awake with root fingers.
Ban opened his eyes.
Dirt fell into them and he blinked fast, tears welling protectively.
He listened.
Through the earth came the sounds of men. A stifled rhythm of talking, footsteps over Ban’s resting place.
All the valley trembled with the presence of an army.
Ban whispered in the language of trees, Yours or an enemy? for he knew not any word for Aremoria or Diota that trees would understand.
Enemy, the trees told him, passing the word down and down.
A tiny insect crossed Ban’s bottom lip, a beetle by the feel of it. He opened his mouth and caught it with his tongue. It crunched and he swallowed, unthinking. He was starving, and his tongue was sticky with sleep and thirst. So much so, he knew it had been days. Two at least, maybe three, since the battle he’d fled, desperate and despairing.
He’d urinated at some point. And now he needed water. That was his priority.
Ban was not going to die.
The realization surprised him, but only for a moment; then it felt right. This was not where his memories would end. Not here, away from the hungry island of Innis Lear. Not without seeing Elia again. There was too much to say. Too much to prove.
Ban turned his head carefully, and put his mouth against a root. Water, I need water.