3.3.3 – Vadelok

A tenuous order reigned in the Healing-Hall. My wish for Dermot’s presence had been presumptive; we found him just inside the Viisp-akad storehouse with a loose tunic around his shoulders and a stormy expression on his face.  

Astrid Fuller joined us at a run, having completed a circuit through the Beast-Hall. She nodded to Dermot with a winded half-smile. Raven Lake was quiet at this hour, and there were not even any druids in the corridor to see us; the place seemed ours alone.  

“Found him,” she said, and put a hand on the wall, stooping forward. “Don’t wait for me.”  

During our time here, Aidan had exchanged sword-belt and brigandine for the loose clothing of a druid, with nothing but a leather cord to bind his hair. Without his trappings and his armor I could see more strongly than ever the boy who had haunted my lessons, watched me at archery, and persisted in following me even into the deepest glades of our father’s forest. He wore an expression which for others might have betokened stillness, but for Aidan was the sign of discontent.  

Healer Brix was stooped before him, passing a stitch through the widest point of a deep gash in his forehead. There were bruises and small scrapes up his arms, and more marks upon his face. On a stool beside his, Healer Brix had placed three bowls and a handful of bright copper implements; in one of these bowls was a soft cloth turning pink with blood. He did not move even when I called his name.   

“Aidan.” The Healer’s supplies and the Healer herself barred our way, and so I contented myself by drawing as near as possible. “What happened? Are you all right?”   

“Nothing’s happened.” Healer Brix cut the end of her suture with a pair of copper shears, and Aidan at last turned to look at me, though he did not quite meet my eyes. “Everything’s fine.”  

“Astrid?” I looked back to her. She shrugged, still breathless, flushed from her quick circuit of the Hold.  

“Don’t know, M—Mariead. Found him like this on his way here. He could hardly walk.”  

“I had a fall,” Aidan said. “It will be fine. Please–” The latter part of his request was cut off by a sharp inhalation as the healer dabbed some oil or unguent over his freshly-stitched forehead.  

“Tollel iv,” she told him, and applied another fractional daub of the material.  

I wavered, my haste brought to a sudden and jarring halt.  

“Is there anything we can do to help?”  

“Nothing, no.”  

The glut of strange, apprehensive sweetness in my stomach—thoughts of Eris and Rina, of Grannine—even of Saric—this writhing sense of apprehension flashed to life like burning sugar, sharp and so cloying that I fancied I could almost smell its smoke in my nostrils.  

“Aidan–” Conscious of our audience, I restrained myself from stronger language. “I’ve far more interesting things to do than extract the truth from you.”  

This at last earned me a direct glare.  

“By all means, please do attend to them and stop wasting your time with me.”  

“Small chance there, boy,” Dermot broke his silence now. “You look like you were worked over by a Flintshire scarlet.”  

“Thank you, Dermot, a penetrating insight as usual.” The curl in his lip lessened when he looked to me, but far less than I would have liked. “Sister, I am fine. Go away and minister to things of more interest.”  

I felt anger drawing me out like the weight of a spindle, sinking into my stomach, raising me up.  

“I of all people living will not be dismissed by you, Aidan Valraven.”  

He looked, for a brief and gratifying moment, taken aback. Then his face hardened once again.  

“I won’t be interrogated.”  

“Looks like that’s already wrong,” Eris said, trying to lighten the tone.  

Healer Brix withdrew, her ministrations at last done, and she carried off the tray of implements with her. 

“Aidan, in God’s name, what’s happened? Are we in danger? Is there a threat in the Hold? We have women and children here.” I started forward, but Eris laid her hand on my shoulder, arresting my advance. When I looked to her, she offered only the most minute shake of her head. 

“They’ll be fine. It’s only–” he stopped short. 

Strange to see my brother calm himself just as I did; he closed his eyes, breathed deeply. When he spoke again, it was calmer, but the rasp in his voice remained, some deep-seated emotion. “It’s only me they have a quarrel with.”  

Dermot, Eris and myself all spoke at once, and in the wash of sound I could hardly recall what I had even intended to ask. I deferred to Eris, and she paused for me to speak. Dermot repeated himself during our silence.  

“And who the fuck are they?”  

Aidan cast a wary look to one side—but not to me; to Healer Brix. It was an eloquent enough expression. 

“Aidan.” What have you done were the uncharitable words which came to me, but I did not speak them. Eris still had her hand on my shoulder; Grannine’s hand was on the other. They restrained me; I restrained my temper. They had the easier task.  

“Suuna’astrea-dae,” Healer Brix said. With Grannine so close, the Grey Speech came to me naturally. “The hurt of his body is not deep. He is young. He will heal soon.”  

I inclined my head to her.  

“We thank you, Brix-healer.”  

“My calling is to heal.” She bowed to me, patted Aidan’s shoulder. He looked at her without expression. “I heal. This room is yours to speak.” With a softer bow to Dermot and Eris, she retreated into the greater part of the Healing-Hall at a brisk pace, leaving us behind.  

“Should I fetch Rina?” Astrid shifted in the doorway.  

“No,” I said, quickly. “Not yet. I’d like to know what it is that’s happened first.”  

“He’s as good as told us. Some bunch of druids caught him unawares.” Dermot’s boot scraped on the wall as he came forward. I heard him settle behind me, could almost imagine him folding his arms again. “Oh, you’ll be giving dirty looks to me, now? Don’t bother, my man. You didn’t fight them when they beat your head in, don’t tell me you’re thinking of fighting me now.”  

Aidan had perfected a natural, impassive kind of stare. I tried to arrange my thoughts. Difficult, when Grannine’s hand on my right shoulder kept bringing back memories of Rina, when Eris upon my left was recalling to mind the exchange Aidan had interrupted. This would have been a difficult enough conversation with a clear head.  

I should have been closer to him. I should have known something was amiss.  

“Why?” I asked. He only looked at me with that blank expression. I could project upon his impassive face whatever I liked; apathy, petulance, obstinance. I chose ignorance. “Why you?”  

“You know why.”  

“Do I? If so, I’ve not heard it from you.” Still I struggled to rein in my temper. “I hope you gave better reports as a knight.”  

“I hadn’t thought you might need direct instruction to consider that some of us might not be as welcome at Raven Lake.” He might have sounded calm, but I knew I had nettled him. It showed in the way he worked his hands, covered with patches of the same unguent that adorned his forehead.  

“How long have you been aware of this? I’d like to take this news to the Elders.”  

“I don’t think we’ll need the Elders,” Dermot said, behind Our back.  

“There’s no need for that,” Aidan added, at just the same time. He flexed his hands, closing his fingers, spreading them again. “Matters simply came to a head today. They should be content with their victory.” 

“That why you let them batter you?” Dermot asked. Aidan’s glare shifted past me. “You and I both know they’d need at least a spear if you were going to be fighting back.” 

“Thought about it, have you?”  

“Me? I’d use a crossbow.” His grin widened. “Templar don’t seem to like crossbows. Church keeps them locked up very safe, don’t they? Shame we don’t make them here at Gim-Alarmeca—”  

“How long has this been happening?” I raised my voice to cut through their bickering, and in my own speech I heard Her weaving in and out. “Since we came here?”  

My brother only looked at me. “Aidan!”  

At last this pried an answer from him, slow and grudging.  

“They made themselves known to me after the first Hunt.”  

I felt my fingers curling up again into fists, balling up the slack of my skirt. Our first Hunt, before the death of Arran Scour. The first Tec of Winter.  

Weeks ago!  

Stern, stifling anger was building up in my chest. I sought for words, some thought or phrase that might compel Aidan to speak plainly. I arrived at nothing.  

“Four of them,” Astrid said. “Aye? I’ve seen them. Following Sir Aidan about.” I did not miss her use of his title.  

“You remember their faces, lass?” Dermot growled, over my shoulder. 

“I don’t, afraid to say—I only saw them in passing.”  

“I do.”  

“Good.”  

“Beg pardon?”  

“Dermot–” Eris started. I did not take my eyes off Aidan, who was watching all four of us with a sullen air the cause of which I could not divine. “This is something Madi should take to the Elders.”  

“Wouldn’t worry about it.” Dermot carried some locus of wrath with him as he departed, but my fury was expanding to fill the room in his absence.  

“Eris,” I said, as carefully as I could. “Astrid. Could you please stop Dermot from doing anything overtly rash? Aidan and I ought to have words.”  

Perhaps Eris had discerned my intentions. She squeezed my shoulder as if in question. I spared her the softest look I could muster. She nodded.  

Later.  

“I’ll find you later,” she said.  

“M’Lady,” Astrid said. “You’re sure I can’t be of help?” 

“That’s all right, thank you.” 

“Godspeed,” she said, and I heard her depart with Eris.  

“Watch the door,” I said.  

“Already watching, my Mariead.”  

Aidan was watching me. Without further fuel, the edge of his temper was fading, as was mine. Dimly I could hear Healer Brix shuffling in the deeper heart of the Viisp-akad, a faint, faraway rummaging.  

At last, Aidan broke the silence. He sounded once again dispassionate, detached.  

“You’re happy here.”  

“I am,” I said at once, and I marveled at how true that was. For all my fears and all the mysteries, for all that the injustice of the world still gnawed at my heart, still it was true. “Are you not?”  

“Would it matter?” Now his smile was bleaker.  

“It would to me.”  

“I don’t know why.”  

I looked over my shoulder. Grannine stood in the doorway, a sentinel crowned in fire. I pulled the abandoned second stool to me and sat upon it, not beside Aidan, but no longer quite confronting him.  

“It isn’t only that you were attacked, Aidan, although there is more than enough in that circumstance for me to dislike. But…I can’t understand why you would keep this from us for so long. From me.”  

He looked away. 

“You were happy,” he reiterated. “And the others are, as well. This is a good place for us.”  

“You are one of us, Aidan. You’re my brother.” 

“Am I?” Aidan tilted his head, a hint of a smirk passing over his face, bitter and cold. “A poor brother I.”  

“Is that a flaw you wish to rectify? Or are you confined wholly to incisive riddles?”  

“I owe you no allegiance, Mariead.” 

He looked at me again, and it was a hollow, heartless look. I saw an Inquisitor’s dead glare in his eyes.   

“Are these the words of a knight?” With Grannine’s help, I held my voice steady. “Are these the words of a leader of men?”  

“I am not a leader of men.” Aidan closed his right hand tight into a fist, tighter, until one of the wounds across his knuckles began to bleed. Only when scarlet welled up in droplets did he slacken his grip. “I am the weapon of the Church. I am a knight of the Third Circle. I have killed druids. I have helped to kill towns like ours. The people here look upon me and see that death in my face.”  

The breath escaped him in a long, low rattle. “I cannot fault them for hating what they see in me. I find I am less than fond of it myself.” He shook his head. “You are happy here. These people have saved us. If they wish to harm me…they have the right. I will not raise a hand to them again.” 

I understand.  

I knew the bitter tone in his voice. The bleak and fathomless lack of conviction in his voice, even as he gave voice to the phrases of honor. I felt in him in that instant the sense of being out of place, uncivilized, brutish and unfit for the peace we made here. I did not know for the life of me how to reach out to him.  

Yet in him there was something hunting for the same thing I sought. A light to lead the way in this uncertainty, an Amae, a north star. In that, too, was a relief.  

At least there is still the guise of some honor. How embattled that honor must be! I did not realize how long I had been silent until I spoke.  

“Aidan,” I said. Rina might have touched his shoulder, or his arm. I did not.  

He turned his grey eyes on me, wan and without curiosity, simply awaiting whatever might happen next. “There is something you need to know, and I…don’t know how to tell it to you.” That’s not true. “I am afraid to tell it to you. I don’t know the kind of man that you are any more.”  

“Neither do I.”  

I nodded. Grannine?  

“There’s no one near, my firebrand.”  

“Papa told me who you are.”  

Aidan looked at me. Not content merely to turn his head, he turned to me. When this too seemed not to suffice, he withdrew from me—from his seat entirely, with a convulsive gesture not unlike the withdrawal of a furious lynx, grey eyes glaring.  

“When,” he said.  

“At home.” Unexpected, to find tears clamping down upon my throat. I had thought the challenge here to be purely external—not my own. Yet to speak these words and with them sever our connection forever… 

A royal shame to spend all this time, and run all this way, just to do things the same. What sway these ideals held over us! I felt as though I could see them all around us, the moldering chains of the Church that bound its strangling grip even to my heart and mind.  

Here among the druids all law and reason seemed in abeyance, slaved to an order older than our kingdom. Here I could learn philosophy and swordplay, heal body and mind, and dare to dream of what more Rina or Eris might teach me.  

Here perhaps my brother and I might find a way.  

“Aidan—please, God, take my hand first.”  

He clutched at my hand, and I clung to his.  

God have mercy, I hope I do not do wrong here.  

“Please,” he said. 

“My brother.” Had I ever touched his hand since the convent had claimed me? I reached for the names my father had spoken, and Grannine brought them to me. “You are my brother, and my ward, by our father’s wish, Aidan, son of Selene, daughter of Idris, daughter of Saba, one hundred and nineteenth heir of the name of Tarqual.”  

He stared at me, drinking in each word, eyes growing wide and wild.  

“This is some trick, to break my spirits. Or to—to…” his voice faltered. “Or to compel me to speak.”  

“It is not.”  

“You have…proof of this?”  

“Our father says there are records in Bridgeport which will bear him out. That and more; he mentioned a cache of genealogies in Flintshire, a book of names in Eastmarsh.”  

“But none here.” His hand fell from mine.  

“None here.”  

“Even if this is true,” he said, in the voice of a man grasping for the edge of a precipice. “If I am a prince, I am a prince of the air…or of nothing.” He shook his head, and blinked, and with a shock I realized there were tears in his grey eyes. “Why have you told me this? Why now?”  

“Because we are overdue for this reckoning.” Because I lacked the courage for it. “You and I are subjects of the Church no longer. But you are still my brother, and my only family yet living.” I paused to swallow my emotions, lest they stop me in midword. “I don’t know what comes next, but these old ways, the Church’s ways, will not serve us. We must trust one another. And that means–” I was not sure if the expression on my face was a smile; it did not feel like one. “I must trust you with all that I have held back.” I took a deep, final breath. “I am a sorceress, Aidan, and a heretic. I am a witch of the druids who…consorts with women. I’ve lived in fear of my own brother for too long because of who I am, and what I have done. No more.”  

I was seized by the urge to pull aside my shawl, to bare Her cabochon, to truly be done with all deception. But Aidan’s face held me back—he looked like a man who knew not what to do with himself. Fresh rivulets of blood were tracking down his fingers—his own.  

“Mariead,” he said, with some difficulty, as though his thoughts were far afield. “I’m…” He fell still. Some animate force seemed to slip from him, and his shoulders sank. “I have much to consider. If you would be kind enough to permit me time with…my thoughts.”  

“We have time.” I nodded, and I rose from the stool. Impulsively, I reached out and took his bloody hand, and he winced as I grasped broken skin. “You were always my brother, Aidan.”  

He nodded, but he drew his hand away from mine.  

I turned my back on him, though not without the faintest prickle of foolish apprehension. I felt Grannine watching him, Her eyes glowing where she crouched in a shadow at the far end of the Healing-Hall. For an instant I caught a glimpse of him illuminated by the scant candleglow, shadows flung out to either side of him like the webs of an enormous bat.  

No sooner had I crossed the threshold than the rest of the evening came flashing back. I put my head in my hands, and Grannine’s hands landed upon my shoulders, Her strong fingers seeking out knots of tension from skull to spine. I sighed, and sagged back against Her.  

I’ve yet to apologize to Rina. I shook my head into my hands. Grannine, I cannot face her again. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, I pray God, I will have the strength.   

“Dermot’s done nothing rash in the meantime,” She purred, and I felt Her press a hand to my back just as Rina had on occasion, pressing me onward. “Come, then, my firebrand. Let us find rest for you.”  

We sighed, and departed for the upper reaches of the Hold…while ever in my heart I prayed that my faith in Aidan would not be misplaced.  

*

3.3.2 – Suppression