Prophet of Moonshae

8

The High Queen lay still, her face a pallid white, so pale it seemed that no blood lay behind the skin, no vitality could ever again grace those closed, unseeing eyes. Only the slow rise and fall of the sheets indicated that the woman lived and breathed.

Deirdre stood over her mother, looking down at the queen and wondering why she found it so difficult to feel sorrow or pity. She knew that these would be proper reactions, yet when she was purely honest with herself, she admitted that she did not feel them. Instead, it was an emotion more like scorn that she felt for Robyn as she beheld her mother's weakened condition and understood her helplessness.

This scorn was coupled with a private but very fierce sense of delight that pulsed through her body. For the first time in her life, she was mistress of the castle! Now that joy thrilled her, threatening to break out upon her face, in her posture and words. Quickly she left the room, not wanting to give the nurses cause to whisper.

The princess hastened to the library, where she could unshackle her emotions without fear of interruption or discovery. Barring the door behind her, Deirdre crossed to the window, staring into the darkness.

Would he come to her tonight? With a shiver of delight, she knew that he would. She no longer questioned her certainty. The truth came like a vision of the future to her, and she accepted it as the gift that it was.

And it was he who had shown her that truth and that gift! Now Deirdre paced restlessly around the library, cursing the need for silence. It would not do for the servants to hear the king's younger daughter about at this hour!

She wondered again why he would not come to her chambers, but instead insisted upon meeting her here, in this room of dusty tomes and potent, arcane scrolls. Yet of that he had been adamant, claiming that his powers could only bring him to the place where he had first seen her. Although the explanation made a certain kind of sense, something suggested to Deirdre that there must be another reason, but she couldn't guess what it might be.

Then the familiar shape floated in the air, and in the next instant, he stood before her, his hood thrown back, his blond hair gleaming like spun gold in the light of the lone candle.

"My love!" she cried, mindless of the excitement in her voice. His smile was like a soothing fire on a cold night; it warmed and cheered her and seemed to bring a kind of flame to her heart.

"Hsst!" he warned, his tone reproving. "I cannot be discovered here, or it would be my-our-ruin!"

"Oh, I know!" she conceded, mindful to keep her tone low. "But it seems so wrong!"

"Come, my princess, my kitten. We must take our lives as we have them now. Soon-perhaps sooner than you believe-our happiness will be full!" He placed his strong yet gentle hands on her shoulders, and she thought that her heart must melt from the surging heat there.

"Yes. . I'll be patient." In this, however, she did not have so much conviction. She thought of tonight, how she had known beyond any shadow of doubt that he would come to her.

Yet when it came to the more distant future, all was a blur. At times a face or an event would crystallize before her, and as often as not these were horrifying, or dark and sinister. No, she could not fully accept his admonishment that soon all would be light in her life.

"Have you attended the passages I bade you to read?" asked her golden-haired lover.

"Indeed. They frightened me in places." She shivered at the memory of dark powers, described in their dwelling places on the lower planes, together with tales of those who had mastered them and of others, far more numerous, who had failed and had perished in pursuit of that dangerous task.

"As they should," he said. He spoke a word and she gasped as light sprang up in the library, a pale glow that emanated from the chandelier. Deirdre did not have to look up to know that no flame burned in the crystal light. It was the power of his sorcery at work.

His. Another of her nagging doubts returned, and she went to his side as he perused the scrolls that lay along a high shelf-scrolls that had come from the ancient vaults of Caer Allisynn. She took his arm and leaned her head against his shoulder, clinging lightly to him.

"My love, I have need to call you more than that. Can you not now tell me your name?" She spoke softly, feeling him grow tense at her side.

He stepped away and turned to face her again. She saw sorrow and much love in those deep, impossibly blue eyes. "I am sorry, my own love, but you know that I cannot. She who gains my name gains the secret of my soul, and that is a thing I must guard for all time."

"But… I must have a word, a name to call you, to know and remember you by."

"Then that is a thing that you must give me." He bowed slightly, a gallant nod of his head.

Did he mock her? She couldn't know and dared not ask him. "I shall call you Malawar," she said, unknowing from where the word came into her head.

"As Malawar I shall hear you," he said, again with that little bow, a smile tugging gently at the corners of his mouth. He proceeded to remove several scrolls from the shelf and place them before Deirdre. "These, now, you must begin. You have learned an awareness of the powers that will serve such as you and I. Now you must attempt to begin their mastery."

Deirdre took the scrolls and seated herself at the great table. She would do as he asked, as she had done before. Gradually the keys to power had been revealed to her, and in this, he showed her the path. Dutifully, knowing that he stood behind her, she began to read.

She felt the words of might wash over her, pulling her upward like a leaf borne on a powerful gust of wind, carrying her above the land, toward the very stars and moon themselves. The power was there, and she would wield it-soon, now, she could see.

For hours she read, and each new scroll took her to a higher flight across the land. Her mind was a hungry thing, driven by instinct deeper than thought to consume the feast he had laid before her. He… Malawar.

When she finally settled back to the world and the castle and the library, dawn had begun to color the eastern sky. And as she had known he would be, Malawar was gone.

The Earl of Fairheight paced restlessly through his Great Hall. He could not sleep nor even sit still, such was the tension that had gnawed at him throughout this long night.

At times he quailed from the course he had set, a route that might lead him to the mastery of all the Ffolk, to power he had never before imagined. But all too many branches of that path led him toward one end: a traitor's honorless death.

These were the possibilities that tore at his insides, denying him rest and comfort. Did the princess live? Had the mage worked his dark magic? Would his own involvement be discovered, suspected?

For a moment, he regretted the need to have the golem rampage through his own holdings, but he quickly realized the necessity of that tactic. Otherwise, it might prove all too obvious whose hand had orchestrated the death of the High Princess.

A sound disturbed the brooding lord, and he looked up from his pacing. The Great Hall was empty, its row of beastly heads staring down impassively on the great, black-bearded earl.

"She shall be reborn!"

The voice, a hysterically pitched shriek that was nonetheless projected with resounding power, echoed through the great room, driving through Blackstone like the slash of an ice-bladed knife.

"Where-where are you? Who speaks?" he demanded, spinning in a great circle. Impulsively he ran to the hearth, seizing the great battle-axe mounted above the mantel. He heard commotion throughout the great house as he ground his teeth together, staring around the shadow-cloaked hall.

"Traitor!" The voice came again, but this time a body materialized behind it, moving forward from the high alcove at the door. "Know ye of the earth's vengeance!"

"Where did you come from?" demanded the earl, gaping in shock at the ragged-robed figure who shambled toward him. "How did you get in here? Guards!"

The intruder's hair and beard flowed in snowy cascades across his shoulders, down his chest. The top of his head gleamed, a cap of baldness, and he hobbled as he walked like a very old man.

But it was the eyes that captivated the Earl of Fairheight, for they were the widely staring orbs of a madman, and they seemed to penetrate into the darkest depths of the earl's soul.

"Repent of your evil! It is not too late-or ye shall know the wrath of she who comes again!"

Other doors burst open as several men-at-arms stumbled into the hall, swords drawn or crossbows at the ready. They paused, looking at the intruder with surprise and at their earl with questioning eyes.

"Now. . answer my questions!" growled Blackstone, raising the axe menacingly and advancing. "Who sent you? How did you get in here?"

"Hah!" The man threw back his head and cast the mocking shout to the ceiling. "She sends me, who sends hope of the future to us all! I go where I please, and it pleased me to come to you now!"

In the pit of his stomach, Blackstone felt a growing sense of menace from this outwardly frail old man. He remembered the raving lunatic slain by his firstborn son, Currag, and then of Currag's own death, bare hours later. That lunatic, too, had been white-bearded, with a bald circlet atop his pate.

Yet the man had been slain and burned!

"Take him-I want him alive!" the earl shouted, his voice uncharacteristically shrill.

His men lunged forward, sheathing their swords and putting up their bows to grasp at the intruder with their gauntleted hands. But somehow the madman slipped away, darting toward Blackstone with such speed that the earl shrieked aloud. His hands lifted the battle-axe over his head, then brought the keen blade slicing downward in a desperate attempt to drive away this apparition of doom.

He felt the metal edge slice into flesh and bone. Only dimly did he sense the blood spray through the air and see the shocked expressions on the faces of his men as they watched their lord succumb to a berserk frenzy.

When the madness finally passed from him, there was not enough left on the floor to prove that the body had ever been that of a man.

Alicia awakened to the soothing caress of a gentle hand across her brow-no, it was the breeze, washing across her skin. She heard the soft noise of water lapping beside her.

Dimly, then, she remembered her broken arm and the stunning kick that had nearly killed her, and she sat up in wonder. Her arm, her shoulder… all her body was whole! Or had she dreamed the entire episode, the horror that had stalked them? In truth, there was no sign of a great iron giant, though she sat very near the place where it had fallen into the pool, where the twisted form had jutted upward from the shallow water.

Then she looked around, her amazement growing to a sense of wonder that swiftly became awe.

The vale of the Moonwell had come alive around her! Dewy lilies lined the shore of the pool, with their padded leaves floating on the surface, forming a gentle fringe dividing the placid heart of the pond from the suddenly verdant land. Lush grasses grew away from the water, surrounding cedars that had somehow become tall and stately.

She touched her hand to the water and noticed with surprise that it didn't seem the slightest bit cool to her now, though she recalled a feeling of deep, numbing shock from the icy chill when she had struck the water during the fight.

"Tavish? Keane?" she called, suddenly alarmed.

"Ho, Princess! What say you to this?" She saw Tavish, her face widened by that familiar smile. The bard sat among the rocks nearby, her harp still slung carelessly across her shoulder, and gestured to the soft green flora surrounding them.

"A miracle?" Alicia guessed, hesitant.

"Aye. But look." Ruefully the bard pulled her harp from her back and showed it to the younger woman. Alicia saw that the strings twisted in every direction, broken and bent. The wooden brace of the instrument and the soundboard as well were cracked and splintered.

"The strings went when I summoned that overgrown suit of plate mail to follow me around the pond," Tavish explained. "Then I fell and smashed the frame. It's beyond hope, I'm afraid."

"I'm sorry," said Alicia, feeling sudden melancholy. "Where's Keane?"

"That 'failed apprentice' of a magic-user?" inquired the bard, gesturing to a nearby patch of smooth ground. "He's over there. I tried to make him as comfortable as I could, as I did with you."

A groan from a pile of rocks nearby told them both where Keane lay, and that he lived. The tall man raised himself from the ground stiffly, kneeling for a moment and blinking while he looked around, as if he sought to restore his equilibrium. Though he must have landed very roughly indeed, his skin was unmarked by bruises or abrasions.

For the first time, Alicia noticed that it was daylight. The sun even broke through the eternal clouds for several seconds, casting warmth and brightness on the sacred well before the familiar overcast closed in again.

"That thing-the monster," Alicia wondered, climbing to her feet and walking over to her friends. "What was it? Where did it come from?"

"A golem," Keane supplied. "Of iron-the most difficult type to create. Whoever sent it after us is a sorcerer or priest of great might."

"Speaking of that," Alicia said, diverting attention for a moment away from the question of the identity of their attacker's maker. "Why have you kept your own ability such a secret? Your magic saved our lives last night. Never would I have believed you could wield such power!"

"In truth," Tavish agreed. "That was a display the like of which I've not seen in twenty years-not since the Black Wizards fought to place their own puppet on the throne of the High King."

"My predecessors." There was no humor in Keane's laugh. "It is at the High King's own request," said the young magic-user. "He would not have it known that his own advisers are wizards of any notable power."

" 'Tis true the Ffolk have always had an aversion to magic," Tavish noted.

"And with the trouble brought upon the realm by the Black Wizards, King Tristan preferred to keep my role a secret."

"And all those years you taught me," Alicia said, wonderingly. "I never had any clue, any suspicion that you could do more than light an oilless lantern, or put the dogs to sleep if they barked overmuch!"

"It would seem that your father saw you placed in very good care," observed Tavish to Alicia. "And thank you, mage, for our lives."

Keane blushed, obviously embarrassed. Then he shook his head. "We all took risks, and we all fought for each other. Lady bard, your diversion, leading the creature around the pond, was one of the bravest-and most foolhardy! — acts I have even been witness to. But that's just it. You and I didn't kill that thing! It was when the princess struck it with the staff," he told them.

"No-it was when the staff touched the water," Alicia disagreed, and then turned to Tavish. "Where did you get it, anyway? I've never known you to carry a stave before."

Tavish looked at them both, her face awestruck, her voice unusually somber. "It was your mother's-the ashen staff of the Great Druid. She gave it to me … said that I would know when to use it. No, actually she told me I'd know who would use it, and use it well."

"Me?" Alicia wondered. She looked around the shore, saw the smooth shaft of blond wood, and went to retrieve it. "A druid's staff? But how? All my life I've studied as a warrior!"

"Still, you are your mother's daughter," Tavish reminded her.

"And my father's, too!" the princess snapped, more fiercely than she intended. She felt something vaguely threatening about the long staff in her hands and quickly put it down. "Besides," she continued, tempering her tone, "the faith of the goddess has passed from the Moonshaes. The druids have no might, no power."

"Ahem," Keane cleared his throat. He nodded at the thick, lush verdure around them. Wild flowers, brilliant blossoms that they knew had not been there when they had awakened minutes earlier, danced among the trees, brushed by the light morning breeze. "Perhaps your last statement is no longer the obvious truth it has been for so long."

"Indeed, this is nothing short of miraculous," agreed the bard. "It is a Moonwell as I remember, in the age before the New Gods ruled the land."

"Wait." Alicia shook her head, stubbornly refusing to accept her companion's arguments. "That iron thing, the golem. You said that it was made by powerful sorcery. Well, now it's gone. All that power must have gone somewhere. Maybe that's what wanned the water and brought life to this place!"

Keane smiled with a smugness that inflamed the young woman's temper. He spoke with a patronizing kindness. "It really doesn't work that-"

"How can we know?" she demanded. "Tavish called this a miracle. Doesn't that mean we don't have a good explanation?"

"Well, yes …"

"And how do you know what an iron golem can do? Have you ever made one?" She regretted her tone as soon as she saw the hurt look on his face.

"No," he said stiffly.

"Speaking of that," Tavish interjected, "where did that thing come from?"

They both looked at Keane, who seemed ready to snap back a reply. Instead, he sighed and pondered for a moment. "I have to admit I don't know. I don't know of a sorcerer in all the isles who could do such a thing."

"It had a helm," Alicia remembered. "Horned, like a north-man's."

"In truth," Tavish agreed thoughtfully. "It looked like a northman warrior."

"But there's not a one of them with that kind of knowledge," objected Keane. "The northmen value brawn and courage far above sorcery!"

"And another thing," the princess realized with a sudden stab of fear. "How did it know we were here? Was it random, or directed at us specifically?"

"At you," Keane said softly. Suddenly Alicia was very glad he was here. "The High Princess of Moonshae."

"An assassin?" Tavish asked, gaping at the two of them. Very swiftly she, too, saw the likelihood. "That leads us to the next question: Who would send such a one?"

They looked back and forth, not wishing to follow their speculations. It was Alicia who broke the silence.

"I think we had better go see the Earl of Fairheight."

The crew of the Vulture wasted no time in carrying out their orders. The morning following their departure, they made their first landfall, a raid against a small farming cantrev near the southern shoulder of Whitefish Bay's long shoreline.

"Put them all to the sword," ordered Kaffa, without a moment's hesitation. His men leaped ashore, wading through the shallow surf to rush onto the beach. Already the peasants fled their homes, but they would be too slow.

"Spare the comeliest wenches!" Kaffa amended, catching sight of a blond-haired girl who stumbled and fell in her efforts to escape. "We'll bring them aboard ship for the pleasure of the crew!"

Eagerly, like bloodthirsty savages, the outlaws of Kaffa's band raced among the wooden houses and small, neat corrals. Men and women, even children, fell before the slashing bite of their steel. Firebrands were tossed to the roofs, animals seized and butchered, crops trampled in the fields where they had barely begun to sprout.

"No gold, Captain. Nothing much of any value," groused his mate, a mustachioed Calishite named Akwarth, who clutched a screaming red-haired woman around the waist.

"A little souvenir, in any event," chuckled Kaffa, with a nod at the terrified captive. He himself had failed to catch the woman he had spied earlier, but no matter. As captain, he had pick of the booty. Several of his men, he observed, had been more fortunate, or faster runners, than their captain.

Finally all the houses and barns had been put to the torch. Supplies of fresh meat and wine had been loaded aboard. The entire raid had taken less than an hour, yet an entire community had been obliterated.

All in all, Kaffa thought, it seemed like a promising start to the voyage.

From the Log of Sinioth:

My child. , my slave. . my creation!

She has destroyed it-ruined my years of effort! In this act, the Princess of Callidyrr becomes my mortal enemy. I must credit her and her companions with more resources than I was prepared to admit. Somehow they bested a creature that should have dispatched them with ease.

Too, there is the disturbing transformation of this Moonwell. I cannot understand its portent, but it is a thing that will bear watching. With some fortune, it is not a matter that Talos will need to attend. The ancient goddess of the Ffolk is anathema to all the New Gods. Perhaps some unwitting cleric of Chauntea or Helm will attend to that problem, leaving the way clear for me to address the young heir of the High King.