Chapter 5
Chapter five
The Storm
It was two weeks before the company reached their final roost: a grand castle saddled across dark cliffs.
Rhyd-hal.
It rose from the earth like a sword, piercing the grey sky. A fortress of stone built to house flame. And for the druid… his fated prison.
The grass-laden cape upon which Rhyd-hal sat jutted out boldly into the tide.
The white-capped waves battered the stone like a smith against ancient ore.
The wind was full of salt, and it lashed against them, gathering tears in his tired eyes.
But through his haze, he saw it: the endless black sea and the unsettling churn of that great storm across the horizon.
The druid had never met the sea in all his life, but he had seen that storm roiling his mind in the nighttime. He, like all Cullain, knew its name.
The Quell.
It had come to that land ages ago, never dispersing, but looming steadily over the water. The castle lingered beneath a pale cloud, but at its back, the Quell raged eternally.
Rhyd-hal itself was an impressive feat, one that nearly awed the druid to the ingenuity of man.
Its curtain walls were stern but smooth, high enough to rival giants.
Their earthen eyes might have sentenced the boldest foes, and as their convoy passed beneath the city gates, he felt as if he, too, had come before judgement.
The fortress made no qualms about its brutality. It was built by warriors, and its imposing presence across the landscape was nothing short of an intimidation.
The city at its feet—built of the same thick stone—clambered in its shadow as if beggars gripping the skirts of their king.
Narrow houses crawled upon the mount, half-built into the rising castle walls.
Its crooked streets were busy with merchant carts and littered with hay.
Sellers and tradesmen mingled beneath wooden signs as plump fowls clucked underfoot.
The roads were pooled with rainwater, and smelled of petrichor blended with raw odors of the body.
As the convoy ascended, an audience of curious citizens gathered, but the druid was well-hidden behind the horses. They reached the citadel gate where a worn portcullis was heaved up by a cumbersome rope. Once within, the bannermen circled the bailey in neat formation.
The druid’s mind worked to make sense of it. The size and scale of a single structure rivaling even the towering pines of the Fáoth. He could smell it upon the air; the heft of its age.
Its dominance.
The old rider said, “Does it bewitch you, druid?”
“My kin denounce the industry of men.”
“You are man, too.”
“We bleed of the same earth, but the treads we leave could not be more different. The land will remember your incursion. It should not remember mine.”
“How one could delight in being forgotten… that is some cockshit I’ll never understand.”
“Our differences are plenty.”
The rider scoffed, nodding towards the castle. “There is the great seat of Cúil Cullach, home of the Aarden Vaich.”
The Sun King.
“And you have brought me to kneel before this king?”
“By divine law, he is your king, whether you treefolk believe it or not.”
“My gods do not speak law,” said the druid. “They do not speak.”
“Your gods are dead. All Cullain will answer to AEon’Righ, and the Vaich will decide what is done with you.”
The druid did not enter the fortress of Rhyd-hal in tethers, and yet, he knew upon his passage beyond its darkened maw that he was no longer a free man.
He paused at the threshold, gazing over his shoulder as the doors heaved shut, sealing him away from the wind and sky. His eyes were slow to adjust to the firelit halls. Bolted brackets on the wall held hissing torches—not of wood, but iron.
This place was filled with dead things.
His grasp tensed around his staff. His feet felt nothing beneath them. Not the vibrations of voices, or the hum of the earth. Everything was silent.
Medhin stepped forwards, her dark irises radiant in the light of the braziers.
“You will be brought before His Majesty. As you are an… outsider, it is my duty to make you presentable.” Her lip curled in disgust. “I do not know for what purpose your name was spoken. The High Nytherí’s prophecies have never needed questioning.
But I ask myself what the divine would want of creatures like you. ”
“Whatever your god spoke was folly,” said the druid. “And I have no interest in humoring the whims of zealots.”
Hot rage flashed in her gaze. “You are offered some leniency by sheer right of circumstance, but I caution you to tread carefully. If, in fact, it is reasoned that this was naught but a prophetic fluke… that leniency will be quickly revoked.
“As it is, you are in no condition to meet a king. You will be washed and clothed and arrangements made for the morrow.” A simple glance towards the men at his flank preceded her next order. “His staff.”
The druid’s eyes widened, his fingers tightening instinctively against the gnarled wood.
“Don’t—!” he gasped as one grabbed the staff sharply, overpowering the druid with the ease of a great animal, tearing him from that which he had held since setting out in the world. He could feel the priestess’ heavy smirk.
“You’ve no need for such things here. And I could not allow you to come before our king with a heretic’s wand.”
“It is no danger to you. Return it to me!”
Her laughter filled the hall. “Why, it is just a stick! Would you unravel yourself for that?” She snapped her fingers and the man beside him broke the branch across his knee. The druid’s body jolted, feeling something inside him sever.
It was the first thing that had ever been his. His only companion. And they had splintered it as if a twig underfoot. Try as he might, he could not silence the war in his heart.
How easy it was for them to destroy things.
How little it mattered.
They were children breaking toys, caring nothing for their meaning. And they would do the same to him.
“Take him,” said Medhin gesturing towards a clutch of maids.
His knees dared to surrender, but before he could buckle, his arms were grabbed, and he was herded through the corridor like an unruly sheep.
The maids in their white aprons and veils of linen became blurred ghosts.
His vision streaked with flame and dust. The sound of his breath rose in his ears, beating in time with his blood.
A door opened. He was thrust inside a room with a wooden basin at the center.
He mumbled words… lost them amongst the commotion as his robes were peeled away.
Layer by layer, he was stripped, till everything he had once carried lay strewn upon the floor.
A thick hand between his shoulder blades pushed him forwards.
Steam wafted, mingling with a peppery incense that clotted his senses.
Hands gripped his wrists, forcing him down onto a stool, and diligently, they began their work.
The maids wiped at him with sponges and rags, pouring water over his head till his pallid strands were dark and soaked.
They dug under his nails, picking at the dirt.
His feet were placed in the basin and scrubbed.
The hard skin ached as it was filed down, till they were pink and raw, and all the years of earth beneath them had been washed away.
Urgency polluted the air. His mouth parted and closed, but nothing escaped, even as his mind begged. The women did not speak. Only toiled till every inch of him was burnished clean.
His lips shivered, not of cold, but chaos, and his breath came slow and unsteady. He was rubbed with scented oils like a midwinter pig, and he felt his shoulders curling in on themselves.
How had he come to this? This place so far from all he’d known?
What did it want from him?
A buzzing grew in his chest. He felt a reverberation in the stone—heavy footsteps echoed in the corridor. The druid perked his head up as a growling voice sounded beyond the door.
“Where is she?”
The maids trembled, rushing to stow the soiled rags. One wrapped the druid in dry wool. His fingers clenched within, watching the door through the curtain of his matted hair.
His heart shuddered.
The door burst open with animalistic force, cracking against the stone.
A figure ducked beneath the lintel. He was a man only in name.
Broad shoulders, and a tapered waist… he commanded the air about him.
His eyes were like molten gold, fierce enough to sear flesh, and his raven hair poured over his shoulders, down his sun-branded chest, gathering in silken tendrils amongst the fur of his mantle.
All the land the druid had walked, and never had he felt as if he stood on more perilous ground.
He was small beneath that radiant gaze, but armored himself in the soundless sea of his own thought, watching the stranger watch him with palpable fury. They exchanged no words, and yet the druid was utterly sure every fiber in the man’s body wished him harm.
The stranger let slip one near-silent snarl, before turning on his heel and leaving as recklessly as he’d come.
Quiet returned.
The maids released their caged breaths. No one spoke, but the druid need not have their words, for the truth was sure as the seasons’ turn.
That man held fate in his hands.