I slept late the next day. Dyannu was already shining bright on a early spring day when I arose from my bed covers. My Ys girl had my bath ready. She had made the water extra hot with just a little almond oil. It made my muscles feel really good. She always knew just what I needed. I soaked while she tsked, tsked over my hair, oiling it and brushing it and cutting the ends; all the travel had caused them to split. Then she soaped me up all over and scrubbed me down with a rough sponge. After, she gave me a deep massage and rubbed me down with a light oil. I chose a spring-green high-waisted dress to wear and wore my hair down with only a slim gold headband to hold it out of my face. I was feeling lazy.
I went down to the kitchen passing through the garden hall with the large bay windows with the northern exposure along the way. I was famished. When I got there cook was just taking some muffins from the oven. He smiled when he saw me. He knew I liked to eat. He would tease me that I ate more than my older brother Sileres.
“Would you like some eggs today, Gwynlambth daughter?”
“Yes please,” I said.
He sliced open two muffins and laid the halves in a large buttered skillet with three eggs and put it over the kitchen fire. I helped myself to a large glass of goat-milk from the pitcher in the ice-box and some early strawberries from the fruit bowl while I waited.
“Have you seen my mother this morning, cook?” I asked as he set the skillet in front of me. I had decided to eat in the warm kitchen rather then move to the dining room. The eggs were still a little runny, just the way I like them. I broke the yolks and started mopping them up with the muffins.
“Yes, she left early to go to the warehouse to check on the cargo you brought in yesterday."
I had hoped she was out in the fields where I knew the Ys men would be preparing for the spring planting. I had had my fill of rivers and cargo. After I finished my eggs and muffins I grabbed another handful of strawberries and went back to the garden hall. I stood in the middle of the book lined room and looked out the large bay window. The six panes reached up four men high to the ceiling. They had been put in when my mother was still a little girl. She had told me her grandmother had objected strongly, but that her mother had decided to value aesthetics over defensibility.
“What are they going to do? Shoot the books?” Arian had asked, pointing to the shelves lining the walls. “A northern exposure lets in the light.”
“I’d of rather kept the arrow slits and spent the money on fixing the west tower. Peace can’t last forever,” had been grandmáthair Neidria's estimation, but peace had outlived both her and her daughter and showed no signs of ending. With the Queen’s court the old feuds were being settled by law instead of blood. Some said the days of the house swords were over. If we didn’t have house swords anymore what would the men do with their time, I wondered. It made me think about my conversation with Dianna in Tuirn and her belief that there was a need for a counter to the Church’s power.
I sat down on the window bench and looked out over the north garden awakening to the new spring. I was in a mood to be cared for, not for thinking about politics. I wanted someone to ask me if I was alright and did I want some tea and would I enjoy a game of cards. I was in a very me mood. I stared at my reflection in the window. My lips had become pressed in a thin, bloodless, straight line below my long slender nose. I pushed them out in a little pout letting the color back in. They reminded me of Maisha’s lips and the way she’d pout just enough to make you feel sorry for her without her actually whining. Unfortunately that made me remember everything else about the trip to Tuirn: the seeress, Beibhann, the history of the Kelti, Dianna and the Silver Circle, and Dyr-Lugh. My mind doesn’t let me forget things. It just chews on them like a cow with its cud; over and over and over again.
I had a choice: I could go up to the library and get to work on finding clues as to where Nuadhu's book might be or . . . or maybe I could find a distraction in the gardens I thought.
I called to my Ys girl to bring me my wool cape. It wasn’t really cold outside, but I wanted to be warm. The dark brown wool cape hung down just past my hips. It was a twill of Lusitanian weave. It had been one of my father’s that I had borrowed some years ago for a picnic blanket and never given back. Along one edge was a large faded blueberry stain from a long ago slice of pie. I liked to wear it when I went looking in the gardens and woods for herbs, roots, or berries.
“My father is from Lusitania,” said the man-girl to the Khazadii. “Me and Sileres visited our family there once. Its far to the south just past the mouth of the Bealtine sea at the edge of the arid southlands at the feet of the Alentea mountains. They have excellent fruits and wines for being so far south. The ocean currents bring in warm air which climbs into the foothills dropping gentle rains as it cools. Have you ever been there, dwarf? Try blinking once for yes or two for no.”
Amak tried it and was so surprised that his eyelids still worked he blinked them about five or six times.
The man-girl leaned over so he could see her upside down face with the gray-green eyes.
He blinked once.
He had captained a company of spearmen for the Lusitanii many hundreds of years ago in their constant fight with the Bulgari across the Rift Sea. Amak couldn't remember if the spears had been iron or bronze tipped back then, but he did remember that the Lusitanii were very formal. All social interactions being conducted according to strict rules defined by each person’s rank and standing. They had treated Amak with much respect. They had never called him 'dwarf', but he had still been a mercenary; the hired help.
I went out the hall door to the north garden. Here was where my mother kept her strawberry plants under glass-paned frames to catch Dyannu's weak spring light. I opened the top of one and helped myself to some more berries. They were still a little green. Most of the other shrubs and flowers in the garden had just come to leaf. The early bulbs along the walk were just raising their heads from their winter sleep.
It had been a fair winter that year. Caldon had been at His farthest from Dyannu, apohelene in the old-tongue, but Nysia had wintered on the near side receiving Dyannu's warmth, unlike the year of my birth when Nysia had been on Caldon’s far side and the snows had reached over eight eels high and at the height of the season, just when Kepheria had gone into labor, there had been two days of darkness as Nysia had passed into Caldon’s shadow. The coming spring would prove to be cool though, for as Caldon neared Dyannu, Nysia would be swinging away to the giant planet’s far side and there were frosts that spring when the korn was young.
I bent down to clear the sticks and debris of winter away from the flower beds, but soon grew bored so I went around to the sword-tower where the men lived. Maybe there would be someone there to talk with. There used to be men on watch at all times on the towers. I remembered looking down on Ys from the King's mountains. The land below had been crisscrossed with crumbling walls and dotted with abandoned towers reminding me of the bloody House feuds of the past.
"There goes my mind again," I had thought. "Is there no getting away from it?"
I hoped one of the men were around. They told wonderful stories and sometimes I could talk them into a game of chess. They wouldn't play against me very often anymore because I almost always won. It wasn't my fault I told them; it was Rowan who had taught me.
The lower door of the round stone tower was unbarred. I opened it and walked in. The room was empty except for a high table to one side with four stools around it. The fire was almost completely out. There were just some ash covered embers in the pan. The men's towers are always cooler then the houses as their body temperatures are higher than those of us women. Having lived outside in the mountains for many years after Darmougne Ford the men’s bodies had adapted by burning hotter. A true Keltii man is known for his body heat. Keltii women love them in the winter, but in the summer it is impossible to sleep with them. Many of the men retreat to the cooler mountains at the height of Llamas to find relief.
On the wall opposite the stove was a plaster-stone form of Cernunnos-of-the-Wood with His curling horns and heavy gold torc. When the torc was lifted water from the aquifer below the tower would pour out of His mouth into a deep stone basin. It was for that water supply that House Gwynlambth had been built on this site. Surrounded by the Miserere de' cild swamp and the Beren hills to the south and west and the Bight Point salt-marsh to the north, House Gwynlambth seems poorly located. Indeed arable land for crops or grazing are not easily in reach or defendable, but our water supply is secure from any enemy and has only failed once in the history of the House which is some two-hundred years long.
Máthair Fiona had chosen this spot for its defensibility and its spring after the Coming of the First Keltii. We had been feuding with Houses Beoi and Vexelli and their allies, clan Mollohae, for a number of years in the hills and mountains. When the Keltii came and the Fomor were defeated Fiona knew that she needed to stake out a secure position in the Ys lands or our enemies would wipe us out. This scrap of land between marsh, swamp, and the thickly wooded hills was ideal. Over the centuries the máthairs of our house have used it as a staging area for many attacks against our enemies. We learned the ways into and out of the swamp and how to cross the marsh without leaving a trace and became accomplished sailors so as to be able to land men all along the coasts of the Ys lands.
"Anyone home?" I called up the stairs.
"Who goes there!" shouted a voice in faux seriousness. I recognized it as Rowan's. The tall hazel-eyed blade was one of my favorite house-swords. His youthful looks belayed his true age which I guess was over forty. Only he and Baylin were older then my mother and father.
"Its me, Rowan. I'm bored. Do you want to play with me?" I finished the last as he came around the bottom of the spiral stairs. There was something different in his eyes. The playful gleam that was always in the corner of his eye wasn't quite as clownish as usual. It was subtly different as was the smile beneath it.
I realized he definitely wanted to play with me, but it wasn't chess he was interested in. I wondered if our days of stories and playing tag or chess were at an end? I don't think the seeress had prepared me for that.
"Have you always looked at me that way, Rowan?" I asked.
"Sorry, but you're no child anymore. You've grown in the last few weeks. You are ready to be a lady of the house.”
"I’m not quite a woman yet, you lech. I haven't been to the church to sacrifice my hair," I said as I ran my fingers through it; twirling it around and around. I found myself having fun adjusting to the new circumstances of our relationship.
"You’ve been to the seeress that’s what counts, not the Queen of that damn church.”
"I'm to be an acolyte of 'that damn church'. Perhaps even high priestess there someday."
"It's a waste if anyone were to ask me, not that anyone has." He said while those famous eyes of his traveled all over me.
That stopped me short. If it wasn't for my silé training I would have stopped playing with my hair and given myself away completely. I could sense a deep resentment in Rowan. Maybe deeper then he realized. No one had asked him about my future and somehow he thought they should have. Why? He wasn't my father, but to tell the truth I'm not sure Mezjio had been consulted about my future either. It has been the women who have ordered our society ever since Darmougne Fords. Men in Keltii society are for fucking and fighting and they do both extremely well. Some say they don't know the difference between one and the other.
"They just want you for your visions."
That reminded me of Brigit. "I saw Her, Rowan. The little girl from the garden."
Rowan had been the first person I had ever told about my ability to see and talk to the Aillil without the ceremonies and Forms that priests and sorcerers needed to use to call Them. We had been in the west garden near the old tower that had been partly destroy in some long ago battle and was now home to my father's conjuring room and private quarters. I’d been chasing butterflies and looking for buggies while Rowan posted guard when I had been visited by a little red-headed girl. She never spoke a word, but we ran through the garden giggling and playing for hours. No one else had seen the girl. All Rowan had seen was me running through the flower beds and talking to someone not there. I told him about the little girl later. He had told me not to tell anyone about my visions, but eventually, like all secrets, it had gotten out.
"Where? Here? Today?" Rowan asked.
"No. In the highlands at House Gwynlambth. I know who She was or is now. She's Brigit. She was there with Arawn and Beibhann, my great-great-grandmother. She was as a vision within a vision. She recognized me."
"I told you not to tell anyone of them."
"I didn't think they were unusual. I thought everyone could see the Aillil."
"Not like you do," said Rowan. His eyes were now more serious.
"You have visions too. Don’t you.” Why had that never occurred to me before. “That’s why you know to be careful about them.”
"Used to. When I was a boy, before I was bladed."
"What were they?"
"I don't remember,” he said a little too quickly.
"You're a terrible liar, blade Rowan."
"Aye and I don’t care to practice."
"You care about me don't you, Rowan?" That was why he was angry about not having any say in my life and why he had told me not to tell people about seeing the little girl. It was like part of him was my father or rather my mother. It occurred to me then that every man has a part of the woman within him and for women the same. Else men couldn't love or women be true friends.
"I'm charged with your security and the security of House Gwynlambth," he said, then added, "As is every sword here."
"No! Don't do that, Rowan! I can see it. I'm not just a charge for you; a house-daughter to look after. You told me stories and played with me in the gardens. You taught me chess! You didn't have to do that to guard me."
"I haven't won a game against you in over two years. Time you found a bigger board to play on."
"I have to go, don’t I, Rowan. There's something I should be doing, isn’t there. Something I've been trying to put off and not think about. Something you’ve seen in your visions. No, don’t try to deny it,” I said waving off his protestations. “But before I go.” I moved a little closer to the hazel-eyed swordsman, barely able to resist pressing my hands against his chest. "Could you do something for me? Something Dyr-Lugh wouldn't do."
"That's a short list. There's not much that scoundrel won't do."
"He wouldn't kiss me. Will you? It'll be my first. My first as a woman."
"Then I guess my list is one shorter than his."
Rowan picked me up by the arms, lifting me up ‘til my toes barely touched the floor, pressing me hard against him. His lips burnt like flames and his chest was a furnace against my breasts. Rowan’s kiss had all the passion a woman could want and all the sweetness a young girl needed. It was all I could do not to wrap my thighs around him.
"Thank you," I said when my feet touched the stone floor again.
"Happy to oblige." He said.
I was so happy Dyr-Lugh had turned me down on the ship.
So much had changed for me in just a couple of days. Outwardly everything seemed the same, but now the way I looked at my life and my society was completely different. The certitude that I had had in my past and future were gone. Instead I had a past of lies, a present of intrigue, and a future consisting of a seeress’ unclear vision and a secret society’s shadowy plans. I’d become involved in something, a game, sort of like chess, and I needed to find out who were the players and what were the rules.
Obviously one of the objectives of this game was to control me and use my visions. The visions were a liability, but also my advantage. Beibhann had told me a lot, more than anyone would have wanted me to know I suspected. If I could also find Nuadhu’s book I could start moving some pieces of my own. I could become a player instead of a pawn. It never occurred to me not to play the game, to just go about my predetermined life’s plan oblivious to the currents around me. That’s not the way of a Kelti Lady of the House, especially a silé. Politics is our life’s blood.
I went back to the garden reading room walking past the tall bay windows to the spiral staircase in the back of the room just past Mezjio’s observation table. I went up the twisting staircase, ascending into the dark; my hand gently gliding along the dark polished banister. It had been made in one piece from the heart of a fallen giant oak from the barrow-lands. The hardwood had been steamed and bowed over and over into a spiral and carved into the form of a scaly, multi-legged dragon. At the top of the stairs I took a small lantern from the between the sharp inset ivory teeth of the head and light the wick with a Quick Flame making.
We kept the histories, biographies, and chronologies of the women and men of House Gwynlambth in the second floor library out of the direct sunlight. Many of the earliest were written on stretched, beaten sheep skins or woven tree bark. There were even engraved tablets hurriedly chiseled out from the sides of the mountains from when we left and went down to the Ys lands. Books of every size, shape, and color with covers from plain cloth to tooled leather to gold filled the curved walls from floor to ceiling. There were two rolling ladders to reach the upper rows.
Life-size portraits of past máthairs of our house were interspersed along the book lined walls. A smaller one of Kepheria was on a table. When she died a larger one would be commissioned and hung with the others and mine would replace hers in turn. There were nine including Beibhann and Brigit. Following them in order were Beauloius, Fiona, Lyssa, Demarch, Eiryn, Neidria, and Arian. There had also been many other daughters of the house who had gone on to found Houses of their own or pursue other lives outside of the Kelti House social order. One of them, Ceilwen, a daughter of Fiona, had gone south to join the Keltii hill-clans. They are a strange mix of tribes with different customs not just from us but each other as well. Some are headed by men, others by women, most are cattle rustlers, some are tinkers and traders, and two that I know of are esthetic priesthoods.
Ceilwen had never sacrificed her hair to the Queen. Once she had visited the seeress she had come back to House Gwynlambth, changed into trousers, grabbed a sword, bow, armor and had headed south. Three years later she had sent a note to one of the house-swords asking him to join her as her husband and leader of her tribe. He had left with even less hesitation then she had. Apparently they had cultivated a romantic interest when she was quite young and Fiona hadn’t approved.
Another ancestor, Venuia, daughter of Eiryn, had pursued a quieter life as a silé traveling through the highlands as a midwife and healer. She had had visions such as mine when she was young it was said. She was the eldest daughter, but the eldest daughter didn’t always become máthair. When Eiryn died her surviving sister and daughters called Venuia back from the hills to head the house, but the men wouldn’t hear of it. Apparently she had acquired a reputation of being asexual and the men weren’t going to have a máthair who couldn’t or wouldn’t take care of their needs. So the rather young seventeen year-old Neidria had been chosen instead of either of her two older sisters.
Other times sisters had bitterly vied to become the lady of the house. Sometimes to the death. Two daughters of Lyssa were continually feuding to the point were the house-swords were split into two camps. This only stopped when the second daughter got the first to be chosen as The Dagda’s corn-wife at Samhain. Well I think you know what happens to corn-wives at the end of the year when the corn-king goes to His sidhe under the hills. Lyssa was upset though some say she was secretly glad to be rid of one of them anyway, but she kept careful watch on Demarch from then on.
There were also histories of the other Keltii Houses and their máthairs with extensive genealogies and books full of tales and exploits of kings, druids, máthairs, silé, sea captains, and other noteworthy men and women. Shelves of compendiums of the kings for every glen, grove, and grazing ground in the Ys-lands since the Fir Bolg first came down from the mountains and complete biographies of each of the holders of the office of High or Ard-King and the Four minor Kingships, the Tetrarchs: the Kings of the Watch, the Wood, the Wind, and the Barrows.
The Barrow King is most often called the Wren King for the diminutive birds that live amongst the tombs and oaks of the dead kings which are his charge. He is the only king who can veto the Ard-King and can challenge him directly. The King of the Watch sees to the borders of the Ys lands and is the sword of the Ard-King. The King of the Wood sees to the health of the lands and especially the cattle and stands with the High Druid when he judges in court. The King of the Wind sees to the fleet and the security of the shores and ships that do commerce with the Ys lands. It is the only Kingship once held by a woman captain Deirdre of the Magdalene.
I took down one the histories of the kings and started leafing through it. Parts of Keltii society I had never questioned before now showed themselves as ill fitting puzzle pieces. Why in a matriarchal society did we place such a premium on kingship? Every copse of trees, every standing stone, shrine or altar to an Aillil, every well, spring, crossroad, and open field had a ‘king’ to look over it. Even if it had a queen or female Aillil, an Aillil-HE, as its primary protector, as most of the rivers and springs did, it also had a Kelti-blade as king, or consort, standing in as the male Aillil-VAU.
The Keltii blades contest over these kingships, often to the death, for no apparent gain beyond a couple head of cattle, the sexual favors of a pretty woman they could have had anyway, and some notoriety. I had always known this, but now I asked: why? Piecing this together with a cult of Gödel that had been overlooked by the silé and máthairs I perceived a deep-seated need by the men to have a patrimonial hierarchy within the loose mathairarchy of the Keltii of the Ys-lands. How deep was that need and was it conscious or unconscious? What did the men do at their lodges far from our women’s eyes? Just drink and fight or was there more?
That line of thought brought me to another question: Why, after three hundred years of rule did we still call ourselves the Keltii of the Ys-lands? That is, why was it still called the Ys-lands? Shouldn’t we simply be the Keltii and the land be Keltica or some such? Was it simply the conservativeness by the druids who resisted any change or was there another reason? Did we rule here or did the Ys? Why did we still consider the land to be theirs?
True the Ys-men did all the work in the fields and the Ys-girls and mae-mae’s took care of the house chores. They tilled the land, planted and harvested the crops, herded the sheep and goats, cleaned, cooked, and cared for us. Why? We had never forced them to. We had no whips or chains to beat or hold them. Other societies had slaves. Half the population of Tuirn were slaves. If anyone ever told us the Ys were our slaves we would be aghast.
“They’re free,” my mother would argue if she even thought the point worth arguing. “They come and go as they please. They like caring for us and the land. Its their land and we freed them from the Fomor. It’s the way things are.”
What if what we were seeing wasn’t the way things were? Like a man skating out over what appears to be a frozen lake falling through thin ice, or a star disappearing into the Broken Sky, we could sink below the surface in an instant with little warning. What if the Ys were free and did come and go as they pleased and we were the ones who were the slaves? That sent chills up and down my spine.
“Oh, Uillceal,” I said to myself. “Actual intrigues aren’t enough for you that you have to go think up some more?” I chided myself, but I also remembered that there is a silé rule that what causes you the most discomfort must be closest to the truth.
I went back to the stacks and started to look through them systematically, trying to keep in mind those facts I already knew without adding new elements. I was trying to find Nuadhu's book. Therefore I should find the man first and work back. Where was Nuadhu? Nuadhu had been the first Ard-King of Ys and had been buried in the barrow-lands some three hundred years ago. In The Keltii Kings of Ys tabulated by Tor of Cahill or was that Cahill of Tor, the old style of the script made it hard to tell, there was a chronicle of the burial and funeral games for Nuadhu and a pressing of a lithograph of the tomb where he was lain. It would have been easy enough to find the tomb except that the barrow-lands were now three hundred years overgrown since that time and there had been no Wren King to care and tend to the dead kings and their tombs for over a century; not since Ceilbone of Meath went mad and hung himself. Since then many of the stone tombs had been crushed or misshapen by the roots of the towering oaks and had become overgrown by ivy and undergrowth. Without a Wren King the spirits of the dead kings were said to rest uneasily if at all.
No one ventured very far into or stayed for very long in the barrow-lands these days. The last procession was eight years ago when the previous Ard-King, Nathan of Fenton had been laid to rest after being slain be the present holder of the office: Almout, a blade of House Gnarring of máthair Ellsinore, sired upon Lady Ailene of House Forsyth by her sword Haslen.
According to the account written by Tor, or was it Cahill, the burial party had walked no further then two chain along the twisting paths between the oaks before they interred him in the nearest open tomb prepared by the Ys. Nathan hadn't been a popular king and few people beyond those needed for officiating had joined the precession. Only three of his lodge brothers had came to see him off to the Blessed Lands. Mother had been there with grandma Airen to give the rite of Passing Through. I would have to ask her more about it, I thought.
I turned the pages back to the lithograph of Nuadhu’s tomb. I was going to have to go into the barrow-lands to see if the book was there. That would be my first step, but I had a feeling it wouldn't be that easy. No doubt others would have known the value of Nuadhu's chronicles, not the least of them Nuadhu himself, and of saved them from being destroyed or ruined. My thought was that if the book itself wasn’t there, there might be a clue as to where to look next, but when was I going to get a chance to go? The barrow-lands were over two days hike from House Gwynlambth and a lady of the house couldn’t just disappear for a few days without telling the máthair and taking a couple of swords. Even in those peaceful times House Gwynlambth had a few enemies that wouldn’t have minded inconveniencing Kepheria by holding hostage her daughter and heir. I was going to need a cover story to tell my mother and two trustworthy swords. Rowan was definitely one. Dyr-Lugh was not. Who else could I ask? Cean? He was quiet. Baylin? He was very steady and good in the woods.
I stayed in the library for the rest of the day reading tedious tomes until my eyes turned raw and my head nodded. I dragged myself to my rooms and after a small tea retired to my divan ‘til dinner. Cook had prepared the last of the aged beef from fall’s slaughter with a mustard sauce and pickled tomatoes.
“I heard you spent most of the day in the library,” said Kepheria. “Were you looking up anything in particular or just browsing.”
"Mostly browsing through the genealogies."
"Must be pretty dry stuff,” said Mezjio.
"Some of it was interesting. You can tell a lot about history by how people write about it. Sometimes how it is written tells you more then what is written."
"Well you must of found something interesting, you skipped your archery practice today. You don't often miss it."
So that's why she was asking about my time in the library. She was wondering what I had found so interesting or, more to the point, important enough, to miss bow practice. She knew I loved my archery and had just finished making a new bow for myself.
"I'll practice tomorrow," I said keeping the topic off the library.
"No. Tomorrow you'll be helping with the ewe's in the Beren. Several have dropped their lambs already and the rest are sure to follow in the next day or two. You need to be there as I'll be busy at Bight Point."
"Well, I'll bring my bow in case any wolves get too close."
"Just keep a watch on the ewes and help with the birthing. I like the bonders, but they have a tendency to breach. The dogs will watch for the wolves and I’ll send Dyr-Lugh to order the Ys-men.”
"So what was interesting in the genealogies?" asked my father. Leave it to a sorcerer not to leave better enough alone.
"You have to understand one thing about House Gwynlambth, unlike other Houses of the Máthairs, my mother is married to my father, Mezjio. This is unusual because most Keltii women aren't married at all in the sense that it is meant in other lands. Keltii-blades are bond by love, honor, and sex to the máthairs and daughters of a house. There are some women who have a particularly favorite sword and perform the rite of xxxxxxxxx to consecrate a special bond between them, but even that doesn't entail a monogamist relationship. Among the Houses of the Keltii monogamy is bad taste. Only the freemen and women who have forgone the right of the blade and house to become farmers, fishermen, and craftsmen have marriage in the western meaning.
"Ours is a society that grew out of Darmougne Fords and the feuds of the highlands before Lugh and the other First Keltii came. As the male population again reached parity with the women, the Houses started to attract swords to stay permanently instead of joining the patrols. Soon house-feuds over men, cattle, and grazing land became violent and bloody. Some even aligned themselves with the Fomor to destroy their Fir Bolg rivals.
So for most young woman it is unusual to have their father at the dinner table. The blades have their own kitchens.”
"Umm . . . The accounts of the Ard-Kings and their successions. Pretty graphic some of it. Especially recent history. Like Almout's execution of his last challenger."
"He had him pickled like a herring. It took three days for him to die," said my father.
"And after . . . " I said.
"Almout made the druid Galed eat of the flesh and then burnt him at the stake. Ghastly affair."
"Yes, well my question is: how did he get away with it?"
"What do you mean? He's the High-King."
"No other Ard-King in history has ever taken revenge against a druid sponsoring a challenger before. It has always been the responsibility of the druids to judge which candidates were worthy of challenging the Ard-King or any of the other Four-Kings of the Land. They neither encourage them or help them with makings or prayers nor do they favor the challenger or the incumbent in any manner. They are completely neutral judges and have been charged with their duties for hundreds of years before the Keltii or even the Fir Bolg came to being. Yet Almout was allowed to kill one and terrorize the rest to the point where none of the Tetrarchs have been challenged in over three years."
"There's been no challengers?"
"There's been no sponsors. The druids have been completely cowed."
"Uillceal, surely there’s another reason. Perhaps there have been no worthy candidates,” said my mother.
“Great Math himself petitioned druid Faust for sponsorship to challenge Baccau for King of the Woods.”
“What did he say?”
“Aside from no, he said ‘The office is already being adequately seen to.’”
“Well then, you see, no need for a new king if the current one is still strong.”
“But isn’t it the challenge which proves who is the stronger; who should be king?”
“Yes, but it is up to the druids to decide who should challenge the kings, like you said, or they’d have nothing to do but fight every day.”
“What else is there for the kings to do? But the question remains: who gave the king that much power? To kill a druid? The silé have grown weak; we have known this.”
“Should we have stopped Almout? We have no right--”
“We are the máthairs of the Keltii. The lands are ours. It is our responsibility to check the kings’ power. That power ultimately comes from us. The druids may judge the contests, but its the leading silé and máthairs who have been entrusted with the crown symbolizing the Ard-King’s right to rule the land. The same crown originally given to King Gödel by Iaonea when he crossed the loch.”
“Yes but we crowned Almout as Ard-King already. We can’t take the crown back.”
“If the Houses and the silé have lost confidence in Almout’s ability or right to rule then they can call for challengers to come forth.”
“But then the druids would still have to sponsor them. Which you said they won’t do.”
“With the silé prodding them on they would have to or they’d look the fool or you could refuse to renew Almout’s title at Samhain.”
“Oh I’m sure a challenger will come along without us having to resort to such distasteful maneuvers.”
“It is a silé axiom: levers of power do not long lie idle. Didn’t the Priestess of the Church crown the new King of the Watch, one of Almout’s lodge brothers, just last year when Fini was passed-on by his lodge. That function used to fall to the silé of coven Estden. And at the last Samhain ceremony didn’t She stand on the right-hand side of Almout across from you and help place the crown on his head.”
“Symbolizing the king’s returning dual powers over the land and spirit of the Keltii.”
“Symbolizing the Church’s creeping power over the silé. We never shared that responsibility before.”
“Uillceal!” My mother rose to her feet. Her face had turned red.
“Mother?” I remained sitting.
“Insolence!”
“Truth.”
“Well that is why you are to become an acolyte,” my mother said recovering her composure and sitting back down. “The church is growing in power. That is true.”
“Because we let it and it’s a power that may grow faster and bigger then you like. Sending me and my visions there may not be the right thing to do.”
“We’ve discussed this before. You agreed that it was the best way to protect the interests of the house.”
“When the knife stabs you in the heart we need to remember who gave them the blade . . . and the hand holding it.”
“Uillceal!”
“Mother.”
“Such interesting conversations around Keltii dinner tables,” interjected my father. “When I was growing up in Lusitania there was hardly any conversation at dinner. What there was of it was all about the weather and the currents and winds and would we call down a daemon or an Aillil that evening and did the eye of the cockatrice have a third pupil or only the two and how would we find out without looking. All horrid boorish drool compared to Keltii máthairs and daughters.”
Weird thing is I think he meant it, but if he thought the gaze of a cockatrice was perilous the look my mother gave him was truly deadly. It shut him up, but didn’t quite wipe the smile from his face. I reflected it was a smile similar to my brother Sileres’.
“Where is Sileres?” I asked. “I thought he’d be home by now.”
“Probably in the north tower with Rowan and the men. Why?”
“Oh, just wondering.”
I retired to my room after dinner. My Ys girl had my nightgown laid out; the one with the pink flowers. I changed and sat down at my mirrored vanity. I found myself playing with the pink shell buttons between my breasts while she brushed my hair. My mind was busy with so many thoughts I couldn’t keep still. As my girl went to braid my hair I shook her off.
“Not tonight,” I said.
She looked at me dumb founded. She had been braiding my hair every night for the last ten years of my life.
“Go. You are dismissed,” I said rather brusquely. She bowed and left.
I started walking restlessly around my bedchamber. I had the feeling something was no quite right; an edgy dissatisfaction sat in my jawline. I caught my reflection in my silver ewer on the breakfront bureau. I looked very pretty in my nightgown, one of my favorites bought by my father on one of his rare trips. It was made of the whitest Old Kingdom linen with pink silk flowers sewn all over and with lace around the collar and cuffs. It was wispy and dreamlike and made me look every bit the little girl my mother, father, and Dyr-Lugh thought I was. I suddenly hated it.
I ripped the front open, exposing my breasts, sending the delicate shell buttons scattering across the floor. I shook the gown the rest of the way off and kicked it into a corner and stood naked in the middle of the room. I felt different. I remember thinking my rooms, all pink and dreamy, needed to be reappointed.
I grabbed a cloak from the armoire fastening it over my left shoulder; leaving the right bare. Beibhann’s sword was hanging on the door. I grabbed it and buckled it around my waist for a belt as I headed barefoot up the stone stairs to the top of my tower.
A sea breeze was coming from the northeast across Bight Point, bringing the smell of salt on the chilly air. Above was the thin waxing crescent of Caldon returning to the sky. I could hear a chorus of owls to the southwest in the Beren hills where I would be spending the next couple of days looking after the lambing ewes; whippoorwills were singing in the marshes to the east. To my immediate west was the men’s tower I had visited that morning. Rowan was there. Was that what was making me restless tonight? Had his kiss awakened something inside me? Was that what being a woman was about?
There was no denying the idea of seeing Rowan and feeling his lips on mine again was compelling, but I had a feeling that something else was calling to me that night. In the woods beyond the northern garden I could see the light of a camp fire. Voices, definitely male, rose up to my ears carried on the chill night air.
A voice I recognized as my brother’s friend Math’s baritone was letting out a string of profanities at some injury. There wasn’t an Aillil he failed to curse or call down upon the head of whoever had had the temerity to slight him. I expected the clash of swords to quickly follow on the heels of such a verboscious tirade. Instead I heard my brother laughing.
“Well if its true there’s no arguing it and an argument, even as well spoken as that, doesn’t make it less so,” said Sileres. “I’d only been trying to help a friend.”
“Some help. Some friend,” said some other voice I didn’t know.
“’tis good I don’t kill every man that slights me,” said a more contrite Math.
“Yeah you’d run out of people to drink with,” said the unknown voice. Which sent my brother to laughing again.
I wanted to go down there I realized. I wanted to sit by the fire and talk man-to-man and maybe even have an ale. And then make love? I was feeling kind of confused. I was becoming a woman and looked forward to embracing all that that entailed, but I also wanted to enjoy the company of men without sex becoming a problem. I envied men sometimes. Their lives are so much simpler then ours. Fight, fuck, drink, die. They didn’t have to contend with politics. That’s an over simplification of course; the Ard-King and the Tetrarchs do have duties and politics to tend to as do the druids, but overall it seemed a less complicated life.
I closed my eyes gently and started to call forth the form for a Far-Eye making. A very simple form. It was one of the first makings Kepheria had taught me. I pictured the circle first, making sure it was perfectly round and silver. Then I added the seven lines emanating from the center. Now I opened my eyes and beheld my vision floating before me. To the left of the circle I traced out the symbols for Caldon’s Eye, Dyannu’s Light, and, as it was night, an owl glyph. The silver flame flowed from my finger like a fountain pen writing in the air. Between the symbols and glyphs I added smaller notations to control and direct the current flow.
The form being completed and held perfectly suspended both within my thoughts and before my eyes I activated it: “G’ish!”
Power flowed along the lines from the center of the circle to the symbols along the left following the paths laid out by the notations then back to the circle. Now the circle became filled with a silver light which then dimmed leaving behind a clear lens floating in front of me like a pool of water.
It is a fallacy to think the form creates an eye that actually moves to the target. It is more accurate to say that it brings the target to you. The lens bends the light of a distant object or person and magnifies it. The only limit to the range is the necessity to change the focus so the image doesn’t become a big blur. Continuous adjustments need to be made to the form notations to keep the power flow correct.
I centered the lens on the camp fire in the woods and willed it to come forward. I could see Math, Great Math as he is called, sitting on a log by the fire. He looked every bit like the shaggy great-bear of the Beren Hills he was legendarily sired by. He had mounds of reddish blonde curls down to his massive shoulders and was a full two eels high when he stood. His strength was as well attested as his conception was legendary. Great Math knew no equal in feats of strength or endurance. It was said he would only be beaten in combat when he walked hand-in-hand with a snake in a garden. A strange geas uttered by his mother, a Ys-woman who had died on the couching bed.
Leaning on an ash tree to his left across the fire was my brother Sileres. At just a thumb taller then me at an eel and a half and slender of build, he and Great Math couldn’t be more different. We, on the other hand, shared very similar features; having slim long noses, green-eyes, and black wavy hair. My brother’s was cut short and lacked the hints of red I had gotten from our mother. He had grown a lot since he left home over three years ago. His face was fuller; growing to contain that smile of his. His chest was deep if not as broad as Rowan’s. He was wearing a tartan kilt of House Ghent where he had been fostering with socks and black shoes. The highlanders still wear kilts while most of the men in the Ys-lands proper wear trousers and boots. His calves showing beneath his kilt were well muscled as were his lower arms and wrists which are so necessary for swordsmanship. Sileres had also taken up the highland habit of an extra blade carried strapped to the lower left leg I noticed.
“So why did you come back here, Sileres? Shouldn’t you have pledged to a house by now or do you miss your mommy?” asked Math.
“Talk about insulting your friends. If this goes on surely only one of us will be left drinking the rest of this half-barrel alone. Well it wasn’t for your pretty face, Math,” said Sileres. “And yes I do wish to see my mother, Lady Kepheria, and my father, Mezjio.”
“Mazgi? What kind of a name is that? Is he Volceii?” asked the unknown man. I switched my focus to him. I didn’t like his face. It was too round with a stupid looking red stripe on the chin that I supposed was meant to be a beard. His dress was stylish and expensive which made him look worse; like a sow in a gown.
“It’s Mezjio,” said Sileres. “He’s Lusitanii.”
“So your not Keltii?” asked the man. Sileres almost imperceptibly stiffened.
“The Lusitanii are distant cousins of the Gaels and Gedes and Mezjio has lived in the Ys lands for many years and holds a kingship of the land given to him and his father by Ard-King Foysthe for building the waterway to Loch Gödel.”
“Oh. So women can buy pretty dresses in Tuirn. Smart bit of work that for a foreigner.”
“And sell wool and goods to support your lazy arse, Dalion.”
“My arse is no lazier then yours, Sileres.”
“Your brains are.”
“Sword isn’t.” The round faced stranger pulled his long slim sword from his scabbard and lunged at my brother.
Sileres was having trouble clearing his sword of its scabbard. I gasped almost losing my spell. Math wasn’t even moving.
As Dalion stepped forward and thrust, Sileres crouched down to the left. Dalion recovered and went to slash at him. Sileres raised his still sheathed sword to block the blow. Dalion went to a two handed overhead grip and went to slash down at my prone brother, but suddenly stopped and slowly fell to his knees. What had happened, I wondered. Then as Dalion finished falling face down I could see my brother’s left hand pulling his dirk from Dalion’s right-side. He had thrust it through the ribs under the arm piercing the lung and heart. Math was still sitting on the log.
“I see you’ve perfected your little trick,” he said. He glanced toward the dead man. “Pity, I was just beginning to like him.”
“You would.”
“Is he mendable? Your mother is just a chain away.”
“If we rushed. You’d have to get up and help me carry him.”
“Such a shame and him so young.” Math reached for his mug.
“You’re all heart, Math. You didn’t even get up to help me.” Sileres turned the body over.
“Well if he killed you I would have avenged your death. Then your prophecy would have come true.”
“Well, unless you’ve already drunk all the ale pass me a mug.”
Math poured a heavy measure of the ale into a stein and handed it to my brother.
Sileres took a big mouthful of the foamy drink and stood over the body and spat it out in three directions, east, west, and finally north. “I commend this man, Dalion of Fiona of House Belhord, lodge brother of Lugh the Artful, to The Dagda of the sidhe and his zelem to Caldon the Father. May his mug be ever full and his--” Sileres stopped then squatted down and placed his head cautiously to the prone man’s chest. “I missed the heart,” he said, kneeling up. “Come on, Math lets get him to the house.”
“Oh good, maybe Kepheria can see about this wart I got on my elbow.”
“Stop playing in the dirt I told you. Now help me pick him up. Gently, I think one of the ribs snapped.”
“Shouldn’t we just kill him?” asked Math slowly rising from the fire.
“No. He’s not too bad a man and besides, he’s one of my lodge brothers.”
“Lodge brother, eh. So why did you come back anyway?” asked Math picking Dalion up from the ground, eschewing Sileres’ help.
“Can’t a boy see his mother? I want her advice before I chose a house. I value her insight in this matter. She taught me a lot about women.”
“Wouldn’t mind learning a bit about women from your old mom myself,” said Math with a smile.
“Nice. She’s treated you like a second son for years. You want to make your own mother?” asked Sileres. “I also wanted to see my father. I’ve been having a recurring dream that I hope he can help with. I’d also like to learn some more forms. They can be useful in a fight.”
“What is the dream about?” asked Math. He found all types of dreams and prophecies of interest due to his geas.
“I’m falling upside down into the sky, but the weird part is that it isn’t my dream. I’m in someone else’s dream. Who’s I don’t know.”
They started out of the woods toward the house. I lost concentration on the form as my own thoughts began to fill my mind. I had had things to do that day and I feared I had let it go to waste and tomorrow I’d be away in Beren Hills. I had found nothing in the library pertaining to Nuadhu’s book. Just dry histories and a lithograph of questionable worth and I was no closer to knowing what Dianna and the Silver Circle were really up to or what my vision at the seeress meant.
I looked to the southwest where the Garden tower stood in dark outline against the night. A glimmer of light shinning through one of the ivy covered windows of the tower went dark and the chill of a Wind-Travel making passed by me towards my mother’s rooms. Mezjio was going to bed early. It was too late to do anything that night, I realized. I think it always was.