The first sign of spring in Caer Lunan had always been flowers. Violets and lilies, spring beauties and wake-robins, all crowded in the hollows and at the feet of trees whose branches were still bare, sprung from the snow as if by the passing of a conjurer’s hand.
Sulphurstars were always among them. Hardy, round-faced, and brighter than buttercups, they sprang up in bunches, often the first hosts for drowsy bees and butterflies. They grew beside the irascible pads of druid’s sandal that dappled our hills, and lurked in the sunny places near my father’s manor. Our house-staff had called them shepherd’s freckles, and gathered them to brew with the coneflowers and dandelions.
For the twelve years of my stay in the Abbey of Dawnfire, my chamber had always been home to a spray of yellow flowers. Their scent mingled with the smell of woodsmoke and damp stone, winter air, fresh water and dry herbs. The smell of home.
God lives in the dawn, and in the light on high mountains. But God also lives in the flowers.
“Mariead,” Grannine whispered.
My cheek bloomed with heat. I opened my eyes.
In the Forest, in our flight from the Church, Grannine had been something otherworldly. A bleak and hunted power like the light of revelation. She had spoken to me in tongues, commanded with many names and many voices.
Now She was alive, blazing with glory. She was a woman in the shape of a naked flame. She was a holy Writ graven upon precious stones. She was at once as red as blood, as black as coal, as white as broken bone. She was velvet and crystal. So exquisite and multivariate were Her many splendors it was almost a relief when a single form again began to preponderate, more solid, more real, no less elysian in appearance.
That She was beautiful was nearly all I could discern with any clarity. That She was beautiful, and that She was broken. And that, at least at the moment, She was far more eloquent than I.
“Come back to me, Mariead,” She said fondly.
The feeling of Her fingers trailed down the line of my jaw, and in a jolt like waking from a dream, She was a woman at my side. A perfect mimicry, flawless down to the smallest shifts and adjustments of her palm, the gentle flutter of her fingers.
The stems of flowers prickled in my right hand.
“Grannine.” Her name escaped me like a prayer. I blinked in a vain attempt to gather my thoughts. “I…”
The cold Abbey of Saint Isaac fell away into memory once again. No more for me borrowed coats and stolen armor, no more the ruined vestments of a Sister of God. I wore a druid’s garment, a long piece of tasseled deerskin like a kirtle, with matched shoes of the same material. It was warm, supple, and quite loose in the shoulders; a woolen shawl with a long silver pin both suited my modesty and concealed the otherworldly cabochon buried in my chest.
Hand-hewn wooden walls abutted the sleek cavern around us, concealing for an instant the reality of this sanctum. The true nature of our surroundings was only hinted at by the ceiling overhead—above, at a height of seven or eight feet, where the wooden walls ended and gave way to the vaulted roof of a granite cavern.
There were furnishings. Shelves, tables, chairs, the makings of a stock-room. A soft illumination shone from amber-paned lamps on the northern wall, joined by the light of rushlight and candle.
“You’ve gone away again, my firebrand,” Grannine chided me. Her eyes twinkled, their corners chased with fine laugh-lines that no lapidarist could have captured in crystal. Her voice hummed in my chest, baring the raw edges of an accent that was not mine. “See, you’ve lost count as well.”
“Blast.” I still felt flushed—but quickly, warily, I glanced to the doorway. No one new had entered to witness my discursion with empty air. I lowered my voice. “Do we have enough?”
“Just a bit short, by my reckoning.” Her attention flashed over my shoulder, searching the room.
She did not move. There was no shift in the precarious configuration of tatters and tears in her white vestment. Instead, with the swiftness of some flitting and ethereal dream, She stood abruptly at my side.
I took Her offered hand. She lifted me to my feet and pressed the satchel into my arms. “I do not know where more are kept.”
Healer Aribrix, a wide and wonderfully patient woman with a mane of gray ringlets, hunted for something particular among a row of shelves at the far end of the room. I frowned.
“Blast,” I repeated. “What was the word. Prax? Velos?” We need sulphurstar flowers to send with Nash and the others. How do I say ‘Need?’
“Shall I help you?” Grannine brushed Her shoulder against mine. I felt Her skin sear against me like a brand, Her touch piercing my shawl as though it were mist. I shooed Her with my right hand in mute disagreement. No.
Ruby eyes and hair chased with fleeting embers broke upon my field of vision again, close enough that I would have felt Her breath, if She had need to breathe. Her expression of mischief evoked the faintest dimple in Her cheek, a lopsided and lascivious smile. “See, Mari, would you like a hint?”
“No.” I presented as forbidding a glare as I could muster without raising my voice enough to be heard at the far end of the room. “If you give me all the answers, I shan’t learn. I nearly have it—it’s…Sulex. Ux sulex.”
“It isn’t,” Grannine said.
“I said not to help me.”
“I didn’t. You were wrong.” Her eyes twinkled. Deep in the irises there was a steady, faceted movement. I kept my eyes off Her pursed and smiling lips. “You’re not any righter yet, so I haven’t helped.”
“God help me,” I muttered. “How did Dermot survive alone with you for half a year?”
Grannine burst out into a laugh. It was still more intoxicating a sound than Her voice, full, rich, and utterly without self-consciousness. By virtue of this laugh, I did not hear the steps approach behind us. The woman who hailed me was not Healer Aribrix.
“Toli, suuna’strea Mariead Lady-dae,” the newcomer said, joining my one-sided conversation with the demon that had made Her home in my heart.
A thrill of fear went down my spine before I fully understood the greeting.
God help me, I thought. I had already half-composed an excuse before I turned, hoping to find Faith, or Lena Cooper, or one of the other women of Caer Lunan who I thought regarded me more kindly—for all the good that would do if I were seen consorting with spirits of fire and darkness.
It was not Faith Arquet.
Small and round-featured, Larix of Starfurrow Hold had a head of short black curls and a brisk, good-natured manner. She wore a druid Hunter’s traveling greys with her hood drawn back, and a single silver piercing shone from her right ear. She was smiling. Around her neck was slung a set of goggles, horn or bone, with narrow slits to shield her eyes from the snow.
“You are right not to listen to your astrea,” she continued cheerfully. “Better to learn. I can help you?” She stepped closer. “Mariead Lady-dae, you look afraid.”
“No, I—Olem, Larix-dae.” I pressed a hand to my chest, hoping I could still my heartbeat by force, but all I felt was the smooth-faced red crystal sealed beneath my palm. No inspiration struck, and I did not recall the word. Carefully, I ventured into the unfamiliar straits of the Grey Speech. “Ax velos Sedec-tan. Ax…sulex simlan–” The word for flower danced at the edge of recollection. Mutely, I lifted one of the dried blossoms from the pack to indicate. “Sulex simlan–” How does one say ‘quickly?’
“Tollel iv, ix frelex. Be calm, I understand. You are seeking more alariiprix—the flowers, yes? For Sedec? Good, good. You say for this, ax sulmiir alariiprix.”
“Sulmiir. Ax sulmiir—no, ix sulmiir.” I mimicked her pronunciation as best I could, the halt-voiced ii still unwieldy. I frowned. “Ix sulmiir?”
“Ax sulmiir,” Larix corrected. “You both seek, yes? You and your power?”
“My–” I glanced at Grannine, still smiling at my side.
Larix followed my eyes. She touched a hand to the sigil she wore, the rusted iron moon-and-star of the druids, and she inclined her head to my demon, sight unseen, in the echo of a bow.
“Ax for both,” she said firmly, to Grannine, and looked back to me. “Ix for you alone.”
My pulse was still sharp in my ears. I nodded. I found my voice again.
“Ax for both,” I agreed. Larix beamed. She squeezed my hand warmly.
“Very good, you understand. Now, ax sulmiir, all three together. Come. Brix-dis!”
Larix released my hand, advancing to call out to Healer Aribrix. They exchanged a quick salutation, followed by an exchange too swift to decipher. Larix bowed, and Aribrix returned to her work.
Larix indicated a shelf further back from the entrance, pointing with her hand outstretched like the blade of a knife. “There. You see?”
“I see,” Grannine said. A fleeting halo of red light lanced across my vision, settled upon a small bundle of dried flowers. Only a few golden buds were visible beneath an empty sack. “There.”
“Ix frelex,” I said, and Larix smiled again. “Thank you, Larix-dae.”
“You are learning well.” She bowed to me, briefly, and then bowed again, a fraction to my right. “Olem, astrea, power of suuna’astrea Mariead Lady-dae, be well.”
“Sweet of you to think of me, Larix,” Grannine answered, with a twinkle in Her crown of scarlet eyes. “I wish you well in turn.”
“I…” I cleared my throat. “My…She thanks you.”
“Bemespe?” Larix straightened up, a hand rising once again to touch the sigil she wore. A look of awe flashed across her face, and it fell upon me like moonlight. A chill ran down my spine at the way Larix looked at me, as though I were a graven monument, a saint wrought in colored glass. “I am blessed. Thank you, suuna’astrea.”
I did not have an answer. I bowed again. Larix bowed a third time and withdrew two paces as though reluctant to take her eyes off me. At last, she turned and sought deeper in the Healing-Hall, hailing the Healer once again.
Leaving me alone with Grannine.
When I turned, She had gone some paces away, picking Her path in bare feet across the stone to examine rows of dried and drying herbs. Her hands were tangled innocently behind Her back like some guileless farmer’s wife.
“I like it here,” She mused. She glanced at me. Her hair fell long from one side of her head, and Her eyes glowed faintly in the shadow of the shelves. “I’ve never spoken to so many people.”
Nor I.
“Is that true?” Grannine withdrew a bundle of sulphurstars tied with strings of nettle. She hummed deep in Her throat, scaling through a responsory I had not remembered forgetting.
She shivered back to me with wilted flowers in hand like a nymph in some lurid dream, and I obliged Her, opened the pack to receive them. She lingered overlong in the task, pausing at last with two of Her long fingers hooked through my open-mouthed satchel. “Not even at the abbey?”
There were hardly so many of us.
Her eyes raked over me like rubies, bright and clear, full of affection. I was growing accustomed to this look from Her, and I did not blush as much as I once had.
“Your heart is still going, my Mariead,” She frowned exquisitely. “She frightened you. No.” I felt Her stirring in my mind. “This frightens you.”
I feared she was…someone else. Lyn and Galia said they would return soon. If they found me talking to myself…
“You’re afraid they’d be less understanding.” Grannine closed the flap of my satchel, cupped my chin in Her perfect hand. Heat shimmered from Her fingertips. “I know.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don’t fear, my firebrand. Come with me.” She moved to the doorway in a whirl of scarlet. “Dermot says they are still packing food for the journey. We can approach at leisure.”
I followed Her. Healer Aribrix hailed me from some distance, and the unexpected shout made me start violently once again, nearly losing my hold on the satchel of flowers.
“Suuna’strea Mariead Lady-dae,” Aribrix called, and beamed, and bowed—once, twice—setting her mane of curls flying. I pressed a hand to my heart, where I wore no sigil.
“Brix-dis,” I bowed to her. “Thank you.” Impulsively, I bowed a second time on Grannine’s behalf. I felt Her hand on my back. “Sime’sala.”
“Sime’sala, suuna’astrea-dae,” Healer Brix answered.
“Ready, my firebrand?” Now Grannine laid both Her hands upon my shoulders. I felt Her lips burn against the back of my head.
Ready enough.
In youth, I had been a precocious girl, inclined to seek out the less canonical texts within my father’s library. Druids had been mentioned time and again in histories of Frydain, and I had thought myself less ignorant than most when I considered how these reclusive peoples might conceal themselves within our kingdom. They lived in the Forests by some art we did not possess, I thought, or perhaps they lived in thatch huts or grottos, hidden like bandits among the roots and trees.
When first we had laid eyes upon Raven Lake from afar, I had wondered at the vast and desolate face of granite overlooking this glacial tarn. Few plants seemed to grow upon this precipice, and the specimens which endured were hardy indeed—withered pines, gorse, or small clusters of druid’s sandal.
Little had I known that the secret behind that desolation.
We stepped forth into the Fire-Hall, the Ix-Akad. The blazing heart of Raven Lake, the stronghold which the druids called Gim-Alarmeca.
I felt Grannine pull close to me, and all breath left me in a sigh. My heart sang.
To call this a hall was to fall short of the truth. Before Us was a vast interior space, truly cavernous, greater than the courtyard of any fort or basilica I had ever seen. It could have readily accepted the entirety of my father’s mansion, with room left over for a handful of gardens.
Its walls and roof were raw granite, grey stone painted smooth with many words in the Grey Speech. The ceiling of the chamber was so high that its walls gave way to the upper chambers of the Hold, with almost thirty feet of space above our heads. A maze of ladders and ramps adorned the outer perimeter, a twisting network of paths, by means of which even the most frail of the Elders could gain the upper level.
It smelled like fire. Fifteen vast clay ovens burned in this central chamber, equidistant and hemispherical. So fierce was their heat that the druids laid down rush mats throughout the chamber to protect our bare feet from the stone. Bread baked in these ovens fed us all alike, day after day, and warmth from these many conflagrations rolled up through the Fire-Hall and suffused the caves beyond.
There were druids.
Druids, everywhere. People, everywhere.
Not druids as I had known them—not the solemn, grey-clad hunters, with their flint knives and their grim, battle-scarred iron sigils.
People. A throng of dozens, of hundreds. Clothes of soft deerskin and bright-dyed cotton. Some among their number were as fair and slight as the folk of Caer Lunan, while others were graced with skin like ivory, jet, or walnut—a host of physiognomies I could not have imagined in a thousand years of contemplation. They had hair of red, and gold, and brown, and raven-black.
As though the infinite variety of their countenances were not enough, gold and silver twinkled on the bodies of these druids like flint in a riverbed. Delicate spurs of gold were clasped through holes in their ears, in their noses, in their cheeks. Gossamer-thin chains of silver were draped about their necks, and the braids and rings of their hair were tied or clasped or pinned with precious metals. Bands of gold, of silver, of solid lapidary adorned their wrists, their necks, their ankles, their ears, their temples, their hair—some plain, some set with jewels of their own. Here among the red agate and emerald, the jasper and jet, here was a jewel I had never before heard of nor imagined, an eerie blue-green rock like a robin’s egg speckled with veins of black. This gem was everpresent above all others, worn on bracelets or pendants or in bright beads among locks of hair. In the dark or in the damp its color could be cold and venomous, but here in the Fire-Hall it was bright and friendly as a summer sky. All mingled together, laughing, talking, or working among the clamor.
The depth and breadth of this host was such that I felt barbarous and ill-kept, hesitant and stuttering in their speech like a savage. Here among the druids, I was outcast, just as much as I had ever been in the Church.
And yet, not.
“Toli, suuna’astrea,” a man said to me, passing. The first to recognize me. I did not know him. Yet he looked to me kindly, raised his hand to me in greeting, touched his palm to the carved-horn sigil around his neck.
“Olem,” I answered, too late; he had gone into the crowd. Another druid noticed me and lifted his hand in greeting, caught in the midst of weaving a basket of rushes. I bowed to him.
“Tollel iv, suuna’astrea,” he said. I bowed again.
“Olem,” I answered. I ducked forward, leaving him behind. I lowered my head as though I might thus evade their attention. As though I might pass among them unseen.
To no avail.
“Olem, suuna’astrea,” they said to me kindly, or in awe, or in passing.
“Tollel iv, suuna’astrea,” they said. I answered as many as I could, best I could, and I bowed as quickly as my shoulders would permit, until my head ached and my vision swam from the motion. Hands steadied me if I stumbled, guided me as I negotiated the multitude with an unsure step. The chorus of their voices followed me with every step.
We had found Raven Lake at last. We had found a home among the druids.
Like the Church, like the Inquisitors, they knew what I was. A sorceress. A woman possessed. A blasphemy. A revenant.
What had Larix said?
A blessing.
Each druid hailed me lovingly. They paid heed to my words with patient zeal, and they called me by that name. A word full of weight, expectation, awe, an honor I had never earned and did not yet fully understand. As though I were something divine. An omen of hope.
Suuna’astrea. A sorceress. Their sorceress.
A scant two weeks of healing had eased my sore knees, had wiped away my cuts and bruises. But two weeks had not been enough to soften the strangeness of this greeting, blunt the unease I felt at their title.
I doubted any length of time would be. Each honored salutation laid upon me yet another kink in the knot of feelings I had not yet managed to untangle, a writhing kind of heat in the core of my chest.
I held my satchel of dried flowers close. I endured.
I fought my way onward in the hope of catching Saric in the Arming-Hall before she departed.
*
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