3.1.6 – Share

When I emerged from the depths of the Healing-Hall, I found its antechamber clean and empty, with crates stacked and bundles neatly piled upon each shelf.  The men from Caer Lunan had retreated back out of the Hall, into the corridor that joined to the Ix-Akad and the Hall of Beasts. There, I found a crowd broken apart into loose circles, the better to talk without blocking the way.  

More had joined the men to wait. Blake Bauldry, Tyler Pace, Freya Tucker, Lyn Dorsey, and half a dozen others of Caer Lunan looked at me expectantly. Somewhat to my surprise, there were more than a few druids among them, faces I was beginning to recognize; Huntress Urakad, a craftsman named Anat, and a young girl I had seen more than once keeping company with Biddy Callend.  

“She all right, m’lady?” Blake called.  

“She’s fine,” I said, too loud. My answer carried more than I liked. “The baby is healthy. She’s sleeping now, but I’m sure gifts and blessings will be welcome soon.”  

More than one prayer was uttered in response. The druids, too, were beaming. 

At the far side of the corridor, one man pushed off the stone and cut forward to meet me. Tall and dark, with a face that seemed built for scowling, he stood more than a head over the crowd. He had a mane of hair and the beginnings of a stern grey beard, and wore a druid mantle that was far shorter on him, falling only to the waist.  

“Dermot.”  

“Mari.” He spoke in a low growl, almost stooping when he looked at me. “How are we?”  

“All’s well. Busy, but—”  

“–but managing.” He grinned. “See, you said that yesterday. Remember we spoke yesterday?” 

Under his mantle Dermot wore long, loose sleeves, with tassels of hide on the inner edge. The ensemble covered his forearm, concealed that his skin was as black as coal from elbow to fingertip, as though he had been fire-hardened like an oaken beam. In one such hand he carried a small, dense book bound in black leather that nearly matched his fingers. Time had worn the letters from its face until all that remained were subtle patterns chased with flecks of silver. 

Rather than dignify his teasing with a response, I held out a hand.  

“May I?”  

“Your wish is my command, wee suuna’strea,” he said sardonically, and presented me with the book. I made a face. He snickered.  
“I wish you’d announce yourself,” I tucked the book carefully under my arm. “At least then I wouldn’t be the only one.”  

His grin widened, and he shook his head.  

“Not a chance in Hell, Sister. That’s all for you, thanks very much.”  

“Reprehensible man,” I said, which only made him laugh. I reached out with my right hand to draw Her close.  

Grannine. I need you.  

“I’m here,” Grannine chuckled in my ear. This close to Dermot, I could hear his rough accent in the purr of Her voice. “Speak up, then.”  

For a fortnight I’ve asked, and for a fortnight you’ve refused. Why?  

“I’d rather not be known, Mariead,” Dermot answered. His voice was low, a perfect mimicry conveyed at the back of my mind. He looked away from me, over the crowd. “Best to keep something up our sleeve.”  

Is there danger here? He shook his head a fraction.  

“Not for you.”  

“Comforting,” I said aloud. Grannine giggled.  

“You’re a better symbol. One’s a stronger number.”  

“Well, if it’s a stronger number, I concede all arguments.”  

Dermot laughed, a sharp bark of amusement.  

“No danger,” he said through Grannine. His dark eyes had a habit of roaming away to seek features of the room, the passersby. He looked at everything, and nothing, wary like a wild animal. “But there are druids and druids.”  

Don’t I know it. I tapped the book absently against my thigh. Have you learnt anything new? 

“Not since you asked yesterday.” He paused in his survey of the room to land an amused look on me. “Takes time to find these things out. In a hurry to leave again, Sister?”  

A memory came quick and furtive, stealing through the snow. Words exchanged with Rina in the lee of icicle-hung pines.  

Rina said there were like-minded druids here. I followed Dermot’s example and cast a wandering gaze over the room.  Druids who might have knowledge of the Church. I don’t know if there are answers for us here; I believe it’s the Church that knows what we are and what She is. 

“Answers,” Dermot repeated, and he chuckled. “See, what is it we’re planning to do with these answers when we find them? I thought you and Eris were going to stay here always.”  
We are, I thought, defensive. Even the thought felt unconvinced. That had ever been our aim—to escape, to find peace. It was the promise we had made to one another.  

Yet somewhere along the way I had made another promise. Or one had been made for me, buried in my heart like a lurid splinter.  

They were hunted. We are warm here. Safe here. The winter and the Church are far away. But it was not so for others. And winters end.  

“Your people?” I heard my own voice, but not as I recalled it. Thinner, higher, raw and timorous with cold. “The druids. Would they fight?” 

The silence that answered me had Rina’s face.  

“I do not know,” She had answered.  

My voice spoke again. But not to Rina. Not to the memory. To me.  

“Would you?” 

“We are,” I repeated aloud.  

“Whatever you say, Mari.” He was grinning. His eyes flicked over my shoulder, and he nodded in that direction. “Look sharp.”  

I frowned.  

“Look–”  

A firm hand pressed into the small of my back, and I started.  

“Mariead-dae,” Rina ducked in close against my arm, putting a hand on Dermot’s shoulder. “You were right to leave, your priest’s blessing took two hundred and forty-three years.”  

“How are we?” Dermot had a devilish expression on his face as though he were trying not to laugh.  

Wretched man, I said to him through Grannine. His grin widened.  
“The child is small, but he’s had a blessing of Five. None could ask for better.” Rina cast a curious look over me, drumming her fingers on my back. Her eyes twinkled. “Am I unwelcome here?”  

“On the contrary. I’d rather hoped to catch you before you left,” I held out the book. “Dermot and I found this—I thought you might make better use of it than we.”  

“Soi? A gift?” Rina nudged Dermot, amused. “I have taught her only the first Thought of Aratus Thiir and she presents me with…” She opened the book idly, her fingers gliding through the first few pages.  

It fell open to a page that was nearly empty, but hardly blank—its face dominated by a black, unilluminated symbol, stark and cruciform. Her voice trailed off. She turned the page.  

The script beyond therein was jagged, alien, arranged in precise, sharp-toothed lines that marched the length of the page. Her brow furrowed. She traced a sentence, fingertip hovering over the page as though afraid to touch it. Her hand jerked as though stung, and she looked up at me in wonderment.  “Mariead, this is–ve berem…How has this come to you? The letters are so strange.”  

“It was in my father’s library. We thought it might offer some clue to…my astrea.” I frowned. The letters are strange? “Dermot says it’s a copy of your Scrolls.”  

“He called it Moxviir,” Dermot shook his head. “Too late to ask when I realized what he meant.”  

The letters are strange! Rina held the book open in her hands, and I understood in a flash of insight. The words upon the page had been the Grey Speech, the druids’ molok.  

But they had not been written. They had been printed. 

“Moxviir?” Rina blinked, looking down again. “That name I have not heard.”  

She sprang into action quicker than I had expected. With one arm she embraced me, her arm and the book pinned between us. Her cheek pressed to mine for almost too long.  

“Thank you,” she whispered.  

“I helped,” Dermot said. Rina laughed, soft and close to my ear.  

“Thank you, also, Dermot-kae,” she said, and withdrew to embrace him.  

“Is that unusual? To print a book?” Grannine drew up against my back, Her hands on my shoulders. I felt Her touch sifting through my memories just as Rina’s hands had sought across the pages of the Moxviir.  

Not so unusual. When the Scripture needs revision, or the Church History wants a new chapter, they print a new one.  

“Mariead-dae?”   

Old books I had seen. Texts printed soon after the Fall, or during the reign of some bygone Saint. Books so old that we were forbidden to touch them, lest our fingers further wither their illumination.  

Never have I heard of a druid with a printing-press! The idea was absurd. And yet… 

“Mariead-dae.”  
I glanced down at the book in Rina’s hand. Black, battered, once chased with silver—yet the pages were straight, and the book was more whole than even the Scripture carried by Father Zachary.  

Either some sorcery is at work here, or that book was not printed so very long ago.   

“Mariead-dae,” Rina repeated, amused. I realized in a belated rush of memory that this was her third invocation of my name. I started. She was smiling. “Where have you gone?” 

“I was…thinking. Can you read it?” I gestured to the book. It would be a poor gift if… 

“I can try.” Rina grinned. “It may be the work of weeks, but I can try. When I have finished…” She cast a faintly conspiratorial look over her shoulder. “When I have finished, I will give it to the Elders.”  

Eris came into view at the entrance of the Fire-Hall, pausing to search for someone in the crowd. I stood up straighter, waved to catch her eye. She redoubled her pace.  

“Here comes trouble,” Dermot said in a carrying tone.   

“Fuck off,” Eris answered, and Dermot laughed. “I see smiling faces, so the news must be good.” She paused to clap the druid Anat on one shoulder, slipped past Tyler Pace, and joined our circle.  

“Eris…” Not for the first time, I wished I might communicate to her without words as I could with Grannine. “Have you ever seen a printing-press?”  

“I surely have,” she looked bemused, slipping into our circle between Dermot and Rina. “I was a pressman for a year before I came to Dawnfire. Nice man in East Carrig didn’t much care that I was a riverwoman, so long as I could pull a lever.” She laughed. “I remember, he talked just like our man here.” She clapped Dermot on the shoulder with a thump.  

“A man of intelligence, then,” Dermot retorted.  

“Not the word I’d have used—Mari, why d’you ask?”  

“I gave it to her.” I indicated Rina.  

“Did you?” Eris grinned. Dermot laughed, almost drowning out her comment. “In front of everyone?”  

“Eris, please–”  

“Focus, man,” Dermot admonished her, still grinning.  

“Sorry.” Eris did not look at repentant as one might have hoped. “You were saying?”  

“I don’t know.” I shook my head, frustrated. “All I have are questions for which I think there are no answers.”  

“Ask an answer of a druid,” Eris said, and I glared at her. She giggled. Incapable of defying the glee on her face, I folded my arms and looked away. 

“You knew of this?” Rina asked Eris.  

“I did. Was wondering when Mari would get around to giving it to you; none of us could read it.”  
“I didn’t say I couldn’t read it–”  

“It’s fine if you can’t read, Dermot. No one expects it of you.”  

“It is written in the old Imperial molok,” Rina cast another furtive look over her shoulder. The conspiratorial set of her shoulders spurred me now to curiosity.  

Grannine, are we being watched? I extended a hand to Her. She entwined Her fingers with mine.  

“No more than anyone else here.” Her attention swept the corridor. I felt flickers of information claw their way into my attention; the sheen of distant firelight on the walls. The sound of leather soles shifting and scraping on the stone. The crack of dry rush mats and the roar of faraway flame. The sound of Blake Bauldry relating some anecdote loudly enough to serve as camouflage for our discussion.   

“Rina, it’s…all right that I gave this to you, isn’t it? It’s not…forbidden?”  

“Ve berem!” To my surprise, Rina laughed. “No knowledge is forbidden to us here. We are the children of molok, and this is our birthright.” She tapped the book beneath her mantle. “But you are right, it will not be easy to read. This will be the work of some weeks.”  

“Longer, for Dermot,” Eris muttered. Dermot shoved his shoulder into hers.  

Inspiration dawned on her face, and she let out a laugh. “Ai! The fifteenth day. A child is born, and you give me this gift. See? An auspicious day, Mariead-dae.” 

Dermot snorted.  

“You do not believe!” Rina laughed. “Not to worry.” She took a long, deep breath of Raven Lake, and I found myself following her example. I breathed in wood smoke, wet stone, and the smell of animals. She let her breath out with the look of serenity that I had often seen on her face of late. Her voice was calm, confident. “We have time.”  

We have time.  

Fifteen days. For fifteen days we had lived here in Raven Lake, and in that time I had never fought for my life, though I had feared for it. It seemed a lifetime.  

“The journey from Caer Lunan was only a day longer,” Grannine murmured. It seemed wrong. Sixteen days and nights in the cold. Longer spent in forests, dungeons, and cruel confinement. How scant seemed fifteen days in comparison!  

And yet how long. The fifteenth day in Raven Lake was a cavalcade of small emergencies, as had been every day before. As would be many days after.  

And yet it felt so very much like a beginning.  

I know why it has seemed so long, I thought dimly, and I felt Grannine’s hand press mine before I even finished the thought. I cannot any longer see how this life will end.  

Her arms enfolded me, and I closed my eyes, sank back into the warmth. 

I became aware of the deep and gnarled tension at the base of my neck only when it began to fade against Her.  

“We have time,” Grannine said, in Rina’s voice. 

I have time.  

Ever had time been my enemy; counting down the hours until I was discovered, executed, undone. Now it became a balm.  

Time indeed we had. 

Yet even time was different among the druids. They reckoned months in five and three; by their count we had come to them at the end of Winter’s first Tec.  

We forayed ever deeper into their month of Winter in the days that followed.  

Raven Lake was a sanctuary, a cave, the hollow chamber of a heart, and like a heart it had a rhythm all its own. In the day, scant rays of stray sun found their way into the Ix-akad, and people were active, as though that solar star yet exerted power over the schedule of their comings and goings.  

Days passed.  

The walls became familiar to me, each niche and nook among the faces of the Hall of Whispers and the Ix-Akad greeting me when I descended. Time among the druids became not linear but cyclical. I passed from slumber to waking in an endless cycle, learnt a thousand new things in the same places. Each night, people gathered in the Fire-Hall, and by the light of waning lamps and blazing hearths I heard stories like nothing I had ever imagined.  

Stories!  

The druids were a people of fable. The past clung to their skirts with every step. In those first weeks, I began to understand the quiet confidence of every man, woman, and child in Raven Lake—the surety that came from two thousand years. They spoke of wonders, of vast cities of gold and ships that traveled upon the sky, of sorcerers and ancient sages.   

Eris seemed as much nourished by those legends as by the druids’ preserves and flatcakes. We spoke—not as much or as openly as she might have liked, but more often than I would have. I shared with her the teachings Rina passed to me, and with each passing week our discussions on the Book of Life grew keener.  

I thrived in these days. The ethos and philosophy I learnt were wholly new to me, and I felt my mind coming to life in the face of this novelty.  

Life.  

Thiir. The word the druids used for Life, and the word they used for sunlight. The idea occupied my thoughts in a way it never had before. I had considered life as the process that pertained only to me, as a thing which had no meaning to others. The druids spoke of Life as a power in its own right, a motive force, indomitable, vital. In God I saw this light, this radiance—sunfire on the mountains even in the heart of winter, the glow and glory of wildflowers in bloom. In this light I saw God. In this divine light of life, I saw the face of God that the Church had denied me.  

I could hardly imagine surviving another such revelation, let alone four.  

Yet time passed, even as I learnt. Even as my hair grew longer, as my strength returned, as my old hurts and bruises faded at last into memory. As Faith’s newborn grew, as I felt Eris and I returning to closeness, with a shy and fumbling hesitance reminiscent of our earliest conversations.  

For the first time, time was given to us. Time passed.

It was the second Tec of Winter when we departed from the Book of Life. The same day young Hope Spencer destroyed something priceless.  

3.1.5 – Newborn

3.2.0 – Fragment