Innis Lear could destroy this man, as it destroyed all things.
Elia looked for her sisters. They were not to be seen, nor Brona Hartfare.
She frowned, but Morimaros said, “It is dawn. Are you prepared, Ban Errigal?”
“Where are my sisters?” Elia asked, seeking all around.
“Regan went to find Gaela two hours ago,” Ban said softly.
“Gaela was with Brona,” added Kayo.
Because this was Innis Lear, a star priest stepped out of the crowd. “A blessing for the dawn, Princess?”
She looked at Aefa, then at the duelists.
The two men stood opposite each other, facing across gravelly flat moor. La Far held a round buckler for Morimaros to use as a shield. Across from him a haggard Rory had moved to Ban’s side, speaking softly to his brother and offering him the same weapon.
The traditional dawn star blessing was an ululating prayer to the invisible daytime stars.
Oh hidden stars, the invocation went, unseen as luck is unseen, as the wills of the saints are unseen, as love and honor and hope are unseen, be with us though we cannot mark your place with our mortal eyes.
“No,” Elia said softly.
“My lady?” the priest asked. It was one she was familiar with, a younger priest grown up entirely under the reign of King Lear. His surprise widened his eyes, caused the white tattoos dotted like constellations down his cheeks to shift and twist.
“I will offer the blessing,” she called, then said, in the language of trees, Hail the roots of Innis Lear.
Her voice did not shake, but the earth below her feet did; it trembled beneath all of them, rattling stones, brushing grass together, shivering the pebbles and shaking tiny beetles and crickets up into the air. Wind kissed everyone: lips, eyes, cheeks, hands, whatever piece of skin waited open and free to the sky. “Hail the stars in the sky,” she called, repeating it in the tree tongue. “And hail our hearts in between.”
And hail our hearts in between.
“My heart is broken.”
Everyone turned toward Regan Lear as she appeared.
She walked through the crowd, her dress dragging behind, the hem tattered. It was her underdress, and a robe over it, not a gown. Hair fell loose in tangled brown waves, curling around her jaw. Regan blinked; a sheen of tears made those dark eyes as large as navel wells. Red lines were painted down her cheeks like bloody tears.
“Sister,” said Elia.
Brona Hartfare came behind, gaze steady on Regan’s back, as if the witch’s willpower alone held Regan upright.
“Begin this duel,” Regan commanded, raising a hand to point at Ban and then Morimaros. “Fight for the crown of this island, fight for betrayal and hearts and the roots and stars. Fight!” She screamed the last word, and it rang up and up into the air.
Something was wrong, and Elia could hardly breathe. “Where is Gaela?” she asked.
“She is beyond witnessing this now. Fight!” In the language of trees, Regan added, If you do not fight now, Fox, it will all be for nothing. Fight!
Ban Errigal drew his whispering sword. Morimaros did the same.
Heart pounding, Elia stared.
Regan came to one side of her, Brona Hartfare the other. Regan touched Elia’s shoulder, gripping it hard as an eagle’s talon. “This is how my heart broke, little sister. So too will yours now, one way or the other.”
“Why do you relish it so, Regan?” Elia whispered.
Her sister did not reply.
Brona touched Elia’s other hand, offering comfort. Elia took it, glancing at the witch. The washed morning light showed Brona’s age in fine wrinkles, in some strands of silver winding through her lush curls; they reminded Elia of the Elder Queen Calepia who wore her white age like an elegant crown. One of those mothers would lose a son.
Elia clutched Brona’s hand. “I am so sorry.”
“For my son?” Brona asked lightly. “I have always known his blood would spill here, to water this island.”
“Where he belongs,” Elia whispered.
Brona put her free hand over her own heart, as if to say, Here is where my son belongs.
To Elia’s amazement, her sister, too, put a hand to her heart, and tears slipped down her cheeks.
Then Morimaros lifted a white-gloved hand. “Esperance!” he roared, and attacked.
THE FOX
THE ABRUPT ATTACK made Ban throw up his buckler to desperately catch the charge: it rattled through his bones, the jar of Morimaros’s greater mass and strength. Ban leapt back, turned, and sliced with his hissing, giggling blade.
It was only an initial spar: striking, blocking, their grunts and wrenching movements the focus of these hundred folk. They parted quickly and stared. Mars breathed evenly. This was not at all like those fights in Aremoria, the autumn Mars and Novanos had mentored Ban. This was so different: the look in the king’s eyes was not encouraging, but hot and deadly.
Mars darted out with his sword. Ban parried, they turned, engaging too dangerously for Ban; unbreakable though the blade might be, he’d lose his sword if they crossed. Ban kicked, stomping the heel of his boot to Mars’s thigh. The king cursed and staggered back. Then he feinted, drawing Ban out, but the Fox was ready and stuck with buckler instead of sword, knocking Mars’s off center. They clashed, and Ban’s feet slid in the gravel. He did not dig his sword under as he’d been taught: that was a killing blow.
Instead he swung with the pommel, hitting Mars’s face. The king smiled grimly and spat blood. “You make those death strikes, Ban. Fight me like you betrayed me: with no thought of my heart.”
The Fox opened his mouth to speak, but Mars dove at Ban, who barely escaped. He turned and slammed his buckler into Mars’s sword, but Mars’s buckler skimmed his gut just as he spun away. The blade of the king’s sword cut along Ban’s arm, dragging at the mail shirt. Ban tucked in, slicing back.
Another flurry of strikes and blocks, Ban giving ground under the strong onslaught, until he fell to one knee. He gasped for air and struck back with his sword. His buckler was gone, his left hand numb. Ban needed another shield, or hammer, or even a knife, but there was nothing. This was single combat, not melee.
He got up, bruises screaming.
Mars threw away his buckler, too, in a fit of fairness that had Ban sneering.
“Was it kind or sporting, what I did to you, Mars?”
“I am not like you,” the king answered.
Ban laughed wildly, choking on it. “You could never be!” His vision swam; he staggered and barely caught himself. He’d taken a knock to the temple; he couldn’t recount when, but the throbbing, the blood sticking down his jaw, was proof.
Both men fell silent and still, but for their heaving shoulders. A crow called, laughing as only crows laugh.
“I loved you,” Mars finally said, bleakly.
“And I you,” Ban answered.
The king scoffed. Tears or sweat streaked his bare, handsome cheeks.
“It was not you that I meant…” Ban shook his head. It did not matter; Ban could not defend his heart. There was nothing to say, no value in it or truth, anyway. “Again?” he offered instead, raising his whispering sword.
It would be the end, he knew; shieldless, he did not stand a chance.
“Surrender, Ban,” Elia called from the edge of the spectator circle. “Give in. Please.”
Ban did not even glance at her; he couldn’t. He attacked once more, with a cry.
He was finished, hurt, and so there was no surprise when Mars batted him away easily. Ban kicked, grabbed at Mars’s sword arm, then spun and shoved his shoulder into the king’s back. Mars went down, caught himself and rolled, and Ban chased after, sword raised. Mars lifted his legs in order to kick Ban away with hard boot strikes. Ban dodged, and stabbed, but shifted at the last moment, penetrating mail, but only to skim Mars’s ribs.
Blood flowed, and Ban couldn’t see through his sudden wash of furious tears.
He lurched away.
He should surrender. He could stop. Especially if he refused to win this fight! If Ban couldn’t bring himself to take the kill strike, he should give in.
But no. No. He was Ban the Fox, soldier, spy, and little else. He would die here, on this battlefield.
With a terrible groan, Ban attacked again. They engaged, and Mars threw Ban back, slicing his sword in a glorious arc that caught Ban’s arm.
The limb shocked into hot pain, then numbness.
Ban tried to clutch at it, but his fingers stuck too tight around his sword, melded in pain to his aching arm. The Fox swung again, but it was slow, so slow. His sword hissed furiously.
Amazement, and something like peace, blossomed in Ban’s heart when, at last, Mars’s sword found its mark.
The blade slid into Ban’s flesh over his heart and just below his left shoulder, a rod of lightning through his body. Blood burst down his chest, soaking even his back. Mars jumped forward, dropped his sword, and grabbed his Fox against him.
They fell together to their knees; Ban’s name on the king’s bloody lips.
Ban heard nothing else, only his name, again and again. He opened his mouth to say—nothing.
There was nothing.
He thought,
here I am at last.
REGAN
REGAN LEAR TURNED away from the battle and walked north toward the White Forest.
Always, always she had been the second daughter of Lear. Gaela’s younger sister. The middle, the princess, not the heir, because her glorious older sister would rule. Regan was the pillar for Gaela’s wounded, raging heart, a web of iron roots dug deep into the earth of Innis Lear to hold Gaela high.
Regan did not know what to be, without her elder sister.
But Gaela was dead.
So Regan walked, and walked. The wind gusted hard at her back, pushing her along the way. Good, yes, Regan was glad the wind agreed this was the way to go.
Back to the earth, to the heart of the island. To a spring, or a grove of ash trees. Always ashes had been her favorite: slender and gray, at first, but spreading and gorgeous as they grew strong. The whisper of their leaves was always a delicate song.
Why did she feel so cold? She shivered hard, as if ill.
All Regan could hope for now was a bed of roots, a cool, damp nest in which to close her eyes and simply stop. Fade into the earth as if she’d always been a part of it. Where Gaela would be soon, and Connley already waited.
Regan was a worm of decay, twining about the forest roots, always between death and new life, but never quite alive. Everyone around her died; perhaps it was the reason she could bear no child. There was not enough life in her.
Her sister’s cheek had been so cold.
Regan shuddered again, and the wind trailed sharp fingers down her spine.
“She asked for the poison your mother used,” the witch had said softly. “I did not expect her to drink it.”
It had not seemed a thing to believe, and yet, there was the proof of it before Regan’s eyes: Gaela laid out by the hearth in Brona Hartfare’s room, sleeping, dead.
Regan had clawed her skin until blood dripped like hot tears down her face, and pulled Gaela’s dagger free of the sheath at her thigh. Brona had leaned away, but Regan did not strike. She’d touched the cold blade to her palm, then the back of her hand, dragging the tip up her wrist and over her sleeve, leveling it at her own heart.
But the sun had nearly risen, and Ban the Fox waited for her in the Refuge of Thorns. Regan had kissed her cold sister and gone out onto the moor to find her other sister, dull and alone. The dagger loose in her hand.
Shouldn’t she feel more?
Now the duel was over, too, and Regan walked. For a few minutes or an hour, or a day or a year, she lost the scale of time. There was such emptiness inside her.
Regan, pretty Regan, whispered the wind.
She replied not at all. The wind had given her nothing. The roots had given her nothing. She’d never had any reason to ask the stars. Only Gaela had loved her, and then Connley.
Ban the Fox might have, but he was dead. So was her mother. Her father, Lear, dead. All her enemies were dead, but all her family, too.
“Regan!”
The witch ignored the sound of her name, even from her baby sister’s voice, and walked on, her pace the same, toward the edge of the forest. Her slippers skidded on the rocky slope, and Regan crested it, stumbling down into the forest valley. Blue sky shone down on the black and gray and white forest, scratched here and there by scarlet and orange because it was so late in the year. Beautiful, the brilliant colors of death. On Innis Lear they wore white for the dead, but death was so vibrant. It was a sun of colors. Gaela was bold, and now she was dead. Regan had always been cool and shaded. She was still alive.
Not for long.
The shadows of the White Forest overcame her, and Regan lifted her gaze to the trees. Where the ash? she murmured in their language, and the wind pushed her forward.
“Regan!”
The second daughter of Lear entered the slip of ash trees and brandished Gaela’s knife.
“No!” Elia caught her arm, jerking her around. “Regan!”
Blood and tears striped Regan’s face; her loose hair crackled with wind and energy. “My sister is dead,” she said in a hollow voice.
“… Gaela is dead?” Elia breathed.
“I was not so strong as her, nor so glorious.”
The girl, the little princess, moved carefully closer, staring at the dagger in Regan’s hand. “How?”
Regan shut her eyes. “Gaela drank Dalat’s poison.”
Elia swayed, struggling to remain on her feet. “No.”
Dry, cracking grief shook Regan’s bones, and she showed her teeth in an anguished grimace. “I will not live without her!”
“I know, sister! I know!”
Regan bit her lip, turning it gray then breaking the skin. Blood leaked free.
“Listen to the wind, Regan, to the island and these roots, please. They love you, this island loves you, I love you—you are not lost, we are not lost!” Listen, Elia begged, ash friends, speak to my sister, this is Regan Connley of Lear.
The grove of ashes shook and shivered, whispering Regan’s name.
She closed her eyes. I know, she said to them. I am roots, I am the roots of this island, I am born of you, and formed of nothing else. Nothing is born from me but wormwork!
Elia knelt before her sister. “We have each other, we can still … we can still be better … a family.”
“A family! Our family is dead. All poisoned, with flowers or magic or stars. My Connley, dead. Gaela, dead. Our mother, too. Ban the Fox, dead—and you should be glad of that, sister.” Regan grasped Elia’s chin and took aim. “Our father’s murderer, slain now by your valiant king of Aremoria.”
“What?” Elia wrenched herself away.
“Ban Errigal killed his enemy, our father.”
“No, Father was old, and in despair! I was there: his heart simply stopped!”
“By magic. A wizard with the ear of the wind and the love of the roots, and the hatred of our father.” Regan laughed wildly, recalling the panicked, terrible moment when Connley was dead and Ban had glowed, incandescent with rage. He had dropped a nut from his pocket and crushed it, and all the wind of the island had begun to scream.
Elia shook her head. Tears clung to her short lashes, and she flailed at Regan, trying again to steal the dagger. “It isn’t true. Give that to me, Regan!”
But her sister pushed her back. “You tried to save him, last night. You love him, still.” She laughed more, but it was weak now, almost sympathetic. She knew what it was like to love too much and yet never be able to change a thing. Regan pressed the bloody scratches on her cheek again until they seeped, like the tears of Saint Halir, the spirit of hunters. Then she put one bloody hand against Elia’s and said, You will be alone, and for that I am sorry.
“Regan,” Elia whispered back.
“I w
ill not miss you,” the witch said, lifting the small jeweled knife, “but you must remember us to your children.”
“Please, sister. Regan.”
Regan turned the knife upon herself. The point found her skin, just over the collar of her ruined gown. “I will take my mother’s way, too,” she said with a small, hysterical laugh. “The rootwater cannot save me from this! Soon, Gaela, soon, Husband, soon, Mother, soon, all my poor babies!”
Stop her, Elia begged of the island. She grasped Regan’s wrist, clinging to it. Wind, stop her. Be my ally. Ash friends, trees, stop her. Love her!
Regan lashed out at Elia’s face; pain burst in Regan’s hand and Elia folded quite suddenly. Regan took a deep breath and repositioned the knife.
The witch no longer listened as Elia begged the world, groggy, dragging herself up against a tree. Save her, please. Please.
The earth shivered.
Around Regan, roots pressed up, rolling the ground like ocean waves. Fingers of mud reached, worms of earth grasped Regan’s skirt, tugging at her. Regan looked down in surprise, blinking tears and blood.
Regan, queen, witch, lover, shuddered the whole of Innis Lear, opening its arms.
The ash trees bent toward her, their roots lifting, churning, walking the trees up out of the earth and nearer to Regan Lear.
Yes, she murmured.
Gaela’s knife fell from Regan’s hands.
An ash shoved Elia out of its way as the youngest daughter of Lear tried to hold on to her sister.
Seven ash trees gathered close to Regan, wrapping her up. Queen, love, Regan, they whispered as she slumped and wept, as she dug her hands into their golden leaves and their roots wound about her ankles. The trees twined themselves together, a braided tower of ashlings, closing Regan off from everything but their cool, dark center. They wanted her, and refused to give her up.
Then she was gone, leaving her last sister behind.
Wind ruffled the last autumn-yellow leaves, tossing them down onto Elia Lear like a benediction.
TWENTY YEARS AGO, THE SUMMER SEAT
GAELA CROUCHED ON her hands and knees in the center of her bed chamber. Her arms shook and her shoulders heaved. She squeezed her eyes so tightly shut it pulled at her scalp.