Chapter 22
Chapter twenty-two
Luin Cáronach
It felt like dying.
Long before his feet touched the water, the druid’s body had already been purged.
On the first day he was bedridden, unable to tame the waves of pain that rolled through him.
The fever made him delusional, his mind filled with shifting shadows, and when he had emptied all his stomach, the blood followed.
Hirí stayed with him. He knew not how much time had passed until the second evening when awoken by the burning of incense beneath his nose. The pain had lessened to a dull ache, but his bones felt like stone.
“You are valiant,” Hirí told him. “By now, most would already be dead.”
He watched her beneath heavy lids. “This ritual…”
She smiled. “Indeed, the victors are terribly few. The Moon keeps only the true.”
“Then… the mere…?”
“Oh, no! It is rare anyone makes it so far. Not to worry. The worst is yet to come.”
The druid tried to turn over, but his body had grown feeble. Hirí guided him with her hands upon his hips.
“She… tricked me,” he muttered.
The priestess paused. “She?”
“A spell… that magick… doesn’t belong to you.” His head pulsed. He thanked the pain for ridding him of all his thoughts, lest they be devoured by the ever-watching eye now branded in his mind.
Hirí smiled, but it was sharp. “The Oracle does what she thinks is best. Curious, she is, to know of you. After all, it is you who have made her a fool.”
“Fool?” he asked, brows knitting.
“She’s never had to explain herself till now. Her sight was impeccable. Unquestioned. But you are our little pale thorn, hm?”
He shook his head and fell unconscious.
On the third day, he finally rose. The temple had become more somber. The moon priestesses mulled about as they usually did, though, even in silence, he could sense their anticipation.
Before fall of dark, Hirí brought him to an altar chamber. “The riders from Rhyd-hal will soon arrive with the Vaich. They will bear witness to your birth.”
Should he survive, surely, the king would be most disappointed.
In the chamber, he was stripped bare, and the priestesses began the tedious process of painting his skin in strokes of silver.
Too weak was he to protest, and so, they darkened his eyes and lips, and made sigils on the palms of his hands.
His feet and arms were covered, and when the dye had dried, he was anointed with scented oils.
Then came the adornments.
He was fitted from head to toe in ornament.
Rings were stacked upon his fingers, fit with glittering jewels; his wrists and ankles bound in bangles, an electrum circlet wreathed his head.
But none were so grand, nor more ornate, than the woven torc settled around his collar.
The thick metal coiled together, and from it hung beads of pearl.
The druid’s aching body was heavy with its fittings, and he knew that to be by design. He said, “It is no wonder so few survive when you do all in your power to ensure it.”
Hirí giggled. “But of course! Only an act of God will allow your passage. If you shall sink, then it was meant to be.”
He could not discern from her words if she believed it or not. The more he considered, the more certain he was this could only end one way. He had been foolish to believe he would find answers; to wonder what, if not man, had brought him there.
He had merely walked into a trap.
It was all so familiar…
By the time they arrived at the dock, night had settled. The shore was dotted with torches—the men from Rhyd-hal. He did not care to find the Vaich amongst the crowd, but sensed his presence like a fearsome fire.
The druid was led to the end of the dock, where the High Nytherí waited.
“So comes the hour,” she said with a smile. “Luin fírth, oíléag hír.” He could still feel her battering the window of his mind’s eye. “May we find more than darkness.”
His wrists were taken and bound with bronze cuffs. He was boarded onto a small wooden skiff, upon which stood two men, one to steer and the other…
“Do not touch him idly,” warned Hirí. “He is still of the Moon; he is not to be mishandled.”
It was a great irony, but the druid did not speak that.
The skiff was untethered, and out into the lake they went.
As the shore grew smaller, his heart tremored.
Slowly, at first, as if unsettled by the dark.
It was not death he rued, but the tragedy of having stumbled into such tangled brambles.
He supposed, if he was to die, at least he was returned to the wild.
Though even a druid would quiver before their watery grave. And he did.
It was cold.
Soundless.
The wind raked his skin raw.
Moonlight lit their path, revealing the unforgiving dark loch beneath them. As the moon dipped behind the clouds and the stars began to sparkle, no light came upon its black surface. To think, within moments, he would meet it.
The skiff halted.
Torches flickered in the distance, a ribbon of gold upon the shore. He had not expected to miss the warmth of fire so greatly. It was harrowing; The breath precious in his lungs. He realized, with regret, that he was sad to leave that world. And to have been undone by it…
The second man came forward, gripping the druid at the elbow. “… better off,” he muttered, his voice breaking the sanctity of the silence.
The druid glanced at him with tired eyes. Even this, they would not allow me.
He was propped upon the boat’s ledge, his weight tilting the skiff forwards. His toes gripped the wood in perhaps his last defiance. His shoulders wriggled, but the man’s hands tightened. And he heard it.
That voice…
Come to me.
The druid gazed into the water. He stilled, matching its unbroken veneer.
Come… to…
With a hard shove, he was propelled from his perch, and the water came up to meet him.
Upon breaking the surface, he gasped, and water poured into his throat.
It dug into him like hooks, threatening to drag him down.
The weight of the ornaments fought him, and even as his feet trawled slowly through the water, he could not keep his chin above the surface.
He struggled against the bonds on his wrists, but the cold sapped his strength at alarming pace.
The long, tangling strands of his hair soaked through, until every part of him was dragged, silently, into the black depths.
The druid had imagined his death often.
He dwelt on it fondly—the justice of returning his borrowed body to the land. He had thought, when the time came, he would welcome it warmly, but there in that moment, his fists clenched. His once gentle blood filled with violence, and his own desperate screaming ricocheted in his mind.
He did not want to die.
But the will and the work were quickly leaving him. The mere gripped him in its icy hand. He convulsed, but even that was muted. It was useless. He would never see his forests again. He would never walk free upon the green roads.
He sank… sank as if an anchor, weighted to the bottom of the world. Doomed to die in darkness.
Until…
The druid’s eyes opened to a radiant white light. He had stopped sinking, or so it felt. Around him, ghostly images rippled into being; an apparition of a thousand pale ships piercing the water.
Suddenly, he could see out over the land, as if a bird in flight, sweeping high over the moors.
And the seasons shifted from Baine to Mírach, till all the world was ice and cold.
The fields withered; the rivers strangled stiff beneath winter.
Out over the sea, the wind howled, and he was flung towards it, carried into the heart of a great storm.
Through and through he flew, until shapes appeared within the mist.
He gasped.
Water filled his lungs. The heart that had once slowed beat fast again.
Looming tall around him were figures moving through the fog.
Great-limbed creatures with eyes like frozen embers.
They carried swords, they carried spears.
His belly sickened with their hunger. Hunger for the taste of carnage.
Their longboats crested over surging waves.
As the first ship struck the shallows, the tide turned red, and in the carmine, he saw war.
The dead lay torn open in the mud. Fire clawed up stone and wood.
He could hear the clash of iron and screaming.
A chant hummed low across the night. The temple at Aghmuir burned, its columns falling to flame.
The battlefield raged from north to south, the land awash with slaughter until the soil drunk of its blood.
Bodies piled across sullied fields, arranged in strange patterns.
And at the center of it all, he saw him.
The Vaich.
Standing before a pyre, axe in hand, his body a ruin of blood. Behind him, the sun’s light guttered, and beside it, the moon hardened to cold stone. The light of the land was leaving, and so, too, did it flee the druid’s eyes as he sank deeper into the lake.
Why have you shown me this? he asked of the dark. Is this what the world shall become?
Even as his mind faded and his vision went black, he felt, with utter certainty…
He was not alone.
Skyre stood upon the shoreline.
The fire at his back did nothing to combat the bitter breeze biting his skin. He gazed out at the black lake. Anything that stepped within those waters would be dead within minutes.
“This damned frost,” muttered Greyv beside him. “If that doesn’t make a cock shrivel…”
“Quiet,” Skyre hissed, eyes unblinking upon the water.
He watched the little boat come out from the dock. Breath stumbled from his throat.
There was no turning back now… for either of them.
Why? Why did he feel the need to shout? To call out to them to turn around? He could still stop this. Couldn’t he? He was Vaich. He could alter any fate. Yet, he stood. Still as stone and just as cold.
The Oracle and her maids came round to meet them. She was bright behind her veils, her lips arched in delight. “My king,” she said with mock softness. To mask the eagerness, he thought.
“Does it please you to send another soul down to die?” he asked.
“If they die, it isn’t for naught. They become a feast for the Moon and her tide.”
One could barely make out the shapes in the dark. Even in the light of the moon, all was a silhouette. But one needn’t see, for the sound was haunting.
There came no scream. No shout. No cry of terror nor torment. Only the undressed crash of a body hitting the water. The splashing was short, followed by a swift drop into silence. The druid was small. He would sink fast. And in minutes… or moments… he would be…
Soundless.
Not even the nightbirds crooned in the treetops. The wind was utterly still. Only the wheeze of flickering torchlight and the sound of Skyre’s breath echoed in the shells of his ears.
Medhin stepped up beside him. Her presence, once a comforting rudder within his life, now aimless. “Then it was all intended,” she whispered. “The Moon spoke its tribute. And we have provided.”
Skyre turned to the Oracle, who observed the lake with a glowing gaze. “He is dead, then?” The words were rocks in his mouth.
“Not yet,” said she. “Though he doesn’t struggle. How profound…”
Skyre’s fists clenched.
“The life leaks out of him. But oh…” Her lips parted. A look of awe came over her face. “Oh! By the goddess…”
“What is it?” pressed Skyre. “What do you see?”
“Fog on a frozen sea… a mist… a mist… a—” She stopped, her brows tightening and raising. A look of terror. Of pain.
“Tell me,” demanded the king, “what is happening?”
But the woman had gone still, and then, violently, she reached for her face, her fingers clawing at the veil.
“My lady—!” cried Hirí.
The máraigh rushed to her side, but no one could help her as she thrashed and fought, pulling the silk down about her shoulders. Her white flesh flushed red. Her silver eyes pooled with blood.
“By all the Sun’s fire, what is this curse?” croaked Medhin.
Fear curled through the crowd, Skyre’s fists tightened enough to strain his bones.
The Oracle screams split the night as her eyes curdled, seeping from their fleshy caverns. With a final shriek, she collapsed upon the dirt.
“Take her to the temple!” ordered Rask. At once the men flanked her, breaking all protocol.
Skyre stood in stunned silence.
It was all coming undone.
“Skyre…”
He turned at the sound of his name—not to his friend who had spoken it, but to the mere. Across the water, he saw what Greyv was looking at: a pale body bobbing upon the surface.
The druid.
In that moment, Skyre thought nothing. He believed nothing. He spoke nothing as he went forwards, wading out into the shallows.
“Skyre!”
Whose voice had called to him, he didn’t know.
He moved as if possessed, marching through the frigid water till it came above his waist. And there he beheld him: lips blue, eyes closed, flaxen hair fanned around him as light bathed the curves of his body.
He seemed merely asleep, adrift in a hushed world.
It should have been impossible.
That disobedient… delicate little thing…
But there he lay.
They had given the gods an offering… and the gods had offered him back.
Skyre reached out, his hand cupping the druid’s head, the other leading his body closer.
The water held him gently, but he had gone too cold.
Holding the druid’s limp form between his arms, he carried him to the shore and laid him upon the frosted earth.
All who remained had gone quiet, speechless in wonder.
“Torches,” he commanded. Some men knelt down and held their fires near. Skyre looked up, finding Greyv’s puzzled expression. The king held out his hand. “Your mantle.”
Greyv hesitated before carefully unbuckling his mantle and sliding it off his shoulders. Skyre took it, wrapping it snugly around the druid.
Hirí brought her fingers to his neck, still smudged in silver paint. “He lives!”
Skyre did not take his eyes from that ashen creature.
“… all intended,” he muttered.
The druid did not wake. But Skyre knew the moment he did…
Everything would be different.