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He wanted to wake up early, before Fionnuala slipped into his room, and head out into Gynhaeaf before she dominated his entire day. He had the distinct impression the Festival would mean little to her, that it would be no excuse to put off his practice when he was already so far behind and making little to no progress.
But he woke not from the halflight of predawn but the full light of morning washing over his face. Stretching long, his muscles strained and tight from trying to drag something that didn’t exist into reality, past the veil between worlds. Only after blinking a few times did he sit up in bed.
There’d be no escaping before she or anyone else noticed. He turned from the window to the corner he always found her in but it was empty. This perplexed him most of all and then he smiled to himself, laughed.
Even Fionnuala wanted to celebrate.
He took his time getting out of bed. The fire in his room burned out in the night but he opened the window anyway, inviting the autumnal air inside. Already, singing filled the day. Leaning out his window, he saw the colors in the distance. Reds and yellows and oranges and groups of people wandering north of his father’s longhouse. The Festival, as always, filled the empty space between laird and the barrow where his mother and so many others were housed in death.
He took a breath. The smell of roasting sweet corn. Of sheep. Even pig from the south. Fried bread and sweet cakes.
Would be the perfect time to abandon this life. To leave Matauc behind while the entire clan, and even the surrounding clans, celebrated their harvest. By all he’d heard, was a good year. Or at least good enough that none despaired or feared the long winter. The next three days would occupy the clan so fully that none would even think to look for him until he was well on his way to the University.
Though he woke late, it was still morning. Would be no harm in him at least walking through the Festival grounds. Might even be some news from Morrigan University or some books he’d want. He may as well eat, too, before he was on his way.
He dressed in a yellow tunic and a black cloak in his room’s wardrobe that smelled stale and long stored. The fabric stiff and coarse. Made him miss his own cloak, now long lost in Chalon Forest. It would do, though. Warm enough, anyway, and he’d need that warmth while he trekked cross country to the sea.
As soon as he left his room, a pack of serving girls giggled past dressed all in red to match their hair, dyed for Gynhaeaf. Made them bright in the candlelit hall. He followed them, enjoying the sound of people without worry or care.
“Think he’ll be there?”
“Where else? Ya act like he didn’t call your name all autumn.”
“Likely he’s waitin at the entrance just for ya.”
They giggled, teasing the shortest girl who walked in the middle. Though Emrys only saw their backs, he imagined she was pretty the way all women were. They smelled of soap and flowers, of clean and fresh fabric.
He wondered when they had the time and then wondered at how little he thought of the serving people who kept the clan afloat. Bastard that he was, the only thing that kept him from a fate of serving some noble family or working the fields was Owain’s affection for his mother.
Seeing the easy friendship, he wondered if this was the source of his alienation, his loneliness. Had he grown among the serving class—
He followed them through the halls and into the day where they collided and congealed with other groups of young women. Like an army of women marshaling their forces before they braved the fairgrounds where they’d mix with similar groups of young men.
As they laughed and talked, Emrys listened and fell into the rhythm of their talk, of their easy laughter. A life of toil that burst into such glee when no work was demanded. He imagined this was the rhythm of their lives. Not only on festival days but every day. The work was not their life but instead a grand interruption to their lives.
This was their life. Not one of work, but the joyful grasping of freedom in the short stretches of evening when their duties were complete.
Emrys considered his own life and felt as if he spent every moment of every day working towards something. Rather than cleaning rooms or preparing meals, he learned the work of leadership. Swordplay, hunting, land management. And when that was finished, he studied. Always reading. Always pushing himself towards something new.
His father gave him all that. The education of a lord even though he was a bastard. That made it sting all the worse. All that he learned were skills he’d never use for he would never be a lord. Not without land or family. And so he devoted himself to knowledge. Always grasping for it, clinging to it, delving deep and wide, consuming any bit of knowledge he could from any possible source.
And yet always he felt behind where he wanted and needed to be.
How much simpler to have clear and defined tasks with specific stretches of freedom.
“Oh, Emy, you look so miserable.”
He raised his eyes to Aeronwen smiling, shaking her head. “Never seen someone look so sad as they walked towards a party.”
“Marching to the hangman’s noose.” He smiled. “Lost in thought.”
She snorted. “One day you’ll learn to shut your thoughts out for a moment.” She hooked her arm through his and dragged him to the Festival.
Hundreds walked with them, all of them dressed in yellows and reds and oranges. Clouds of smoke puffed and plumed into the air before them, promising juicy meats, sweet cakes, and charred sweet corn smothered in Traveler’s sauce, which tasted creamy and tangy and savory all at once.
“Come on, Birdie,” Aeronwen said, smiling wide as they walked through the flagpoles that marked the entrance to Gynhaeaf’s fairgrounds. A sea of people bobbing back and forth between stalls, washed autumnal, but for the Travelers themselves who wore bright green. Their voices barked out into the air over the din of the crowd calling for players, for drinkers, for eaters, while others sawed at their fiddles or banged on their drums.
Only then did he remember he brought no money with him. He told Aeronwen who snorted and waved it away.
Emrys let it wash over him. Let the tide of humanity push and pull him through it all. And Aeronwen guided him through this bobbing mass of humanity.
“Oi, sweetness, want a drink?”
Aeronwen laughed, “What if this is my man?” She tugged on him and only then did he pay attention.
She spoke to a young Traveler. Tall and thin, he sat on his counter and leaned into the crowd while holding onto the wooden pillar holding up the sign above. The apple of his neck bobbing as he laughed. He stretched out his other hand and shook it. “No offence, lad, but you look like a girl’s sad pup more than this beauty’s man.”
Emrys floundered for a moment, feeling as if he missed the introduction to this interaction, but Aeronwen laughed again. “My cousin.” She unhooked her arm from his and came right up to the counter, close enough to the man that he could have dropped right on top of her. She said, “What you got?”
He dropped behind the counter and spoke in his own tongue to the others behind the counter, shrouded in the darkness of the tent. A barrel-chested man with a great sphere of a belly stretching an apron tight filled a glass with amber liquid and handed it to the tall man who stretched it towards Aeronwen.
When she reached for it, he pulled it back. “Three hooves.”
She tossed six on the counter where the copper coins printed with ram heads clinked. “My cousin too.”
“He old enough?” His free hand slid over the coins as he handed the glass to Aeronwen. Not waiting for either to respond, he spoke to the back again and the big man poured another glass, which was passed along to Emrys. The tall man reached beneath the counter and pulled out his own glass, half empty, and raised it in the air between them. “Cheers, aye?”
Aeronwen and Emrys took a sip and she said, “It’s good,” even though it wasn’t.
The tall man smiled and leaned over the counter. “What’s yer name?”
“Aeronwen ney Goronwyn.”
“Oi, he the laird’s brother?”
She smiled, sipped her drink. “And you?”
“Ealar.”
“Who’re your people?”
He gestured all round them. “You’re among them. Bunch of Leafers, my beauty.”
Aeronwen took another sip, her cheeks catching color.
Emrys set down the bitter brew and meant to leave Aeronwen to her flirting but Ealar said, “And you? Who’s your daddy?”
“Got none. Emrys mip Neb.”
“Ah,” he smiled. “A brother then!” He turned and language flowed out of him in a rapid yet musical way.
The big man smiled and approached, stretching out a hand over the counter. Emrys took it and the big man squeezed hard and Emrys squeezed back to keep from getting crushed. The big man loosened his grip and clapped Emrys on the shoulder with his free hand. “Welcome, brother.” He spoke in a heavy accent. When he let go, he reached beneath his shirt and pulled out a necklace of silver with a leaf at the end. Lifting it over his head, he held it up between them.
Ealar said, “Wants to give it to ya.”
Emrys bowed his head forward and the big man put it over his head. Straightening up, he thanked the big man and lifted the leaf in his palm. “It’s so delicate.”
Ealar said, “You hold onto that. You ever in need and you see one of us Leafers around, you call to them as a brother and they’ll help.”
Emrys thanked the big man again and said, “But why?”
Aeronwen said, “Don’t be rude, Birdie. It’s a gift.”
“You think we don’t know what it’s like to live in these lands without a name?” Ealar’s smile disappeared and he pulled out his own silver necklace with the delicate leaf at the end. “This is likely the only silver I’ll ever know and times like this are the only times I’m not despised. A brotherhood of bastards, Emrys. That’s who we are.”
Emrys thanked the big man again who seemed to understand but he only smiled back at him, nodding with each expression of gratitude.
Ealar said, “He don’t understand ya but he knows what ya mean all the same.”
“Won’t he need this?” He swallowed. “It’s his necklace.”
Ealar sighed. “How bout this? You come back round midnight. If I’m sober enough ta stand, I’ll answer all you want to know.” He turned to Aeronwen. “Ya got a curious pup, my beauty.”
She giggled, sipped at her bitter drink. “You ever been to Matauc before?”
Emrys fingered the silver leaf for a moment. He wanted to ask more, to promise to be there at midnight, but Aeronwen’s flirting dominated Ealar’s attention. He left them to their temporary attraction and plunged back into the crowd.
Children with hands linked like a chain wove through the crowd laughing. Music flowed and Emrys followed it deeper into the fairgrounds. The hard shaggy men of the highlands dressed in red and yellow plaid danced round the Travelers playing their flutes, their fiddles, as they beat their own chests in rhythm with the drums.
The Traveler women wore flowing dresses of emerald green that they swished back and forth as they spun round the highlanders who responded by leaping into some complicated footwork. Lots of stomping that all the hard men did in time while those not dancing clapped loud as they could, loud enough to snap inside everyone’s ears.
While these men blustered and showed force, the Traveler women became lighter. They, too, kicked but there was a slow and meaningful elegance to each moment. Where the men danced with their backs straight, the women’s bodies became like willowy trees, bending and swaying in the music’s gale.
The men continued to stomp and kick, to clap and beat their chests, but the women surrounded them, penned them in like herding dogs. By the looks of it, the highlanders had never known such fun or pleasure. Their smiles popped through their shaggy beards tumbling down their chests and the curly hair falling down to their shoulders.
In contrast, the women appeared so clean and organized. Their long hair plaited in a complex weave while their bold and singular green stood out like a beacon among the autumnal colors of the clans.
When the song ended, the women had surrounded and separated the men into five groups of two. They bowed to the men and the men knelt and each of them took a hand from a different woman in each of theirs and kissed the fingers lightly, smiling.
The flute led the way, piping the next song into the air and the circle cleared for dancing filled with men and women all dressed in green performing their own rapid footwork. Their feet moving so fast they blurred as they moved and then, from the middle, a woman kicked so high that her body seemed to simply follow momentum up into the air. Her leap seemed so accidental yet she rose so high and fell so slowly, like she was an adept with some control of the air itself. Her skirt kicked up so high flashed her thigh for a moment and promised a view of more and the men watching stood mouths agape at this beauty. When she landed, the dance revolved round her, with bodies flying across the circle as if blown by some wind.
“Birdie,” a voice called out and before Emrys could turn to see who, a hand clapped on his shoulder. And there was Ulric’s wide face and behind him Flur’s narrow one, her black hair braided tight to her head.
“Cousins.”
“Falling in love?” Flur smiled, prodded his side as her eyes flashed to the dancing Traveling woman.
The jab sent him twisting away into people who gave him a not so gentle push back.
“Come on, let’s get a drink.” Ulric looped an arm round his neck and pulled him through the crowd.
Laughter and shouting, the sound of clay smashing, the sudden cheer of the crowds circling the games. The scent of roasting pig made Emrys ravenous but Ulric kept dragging him along, even after he freed his head. And Flur and then Wynne walked on either side of him, as if leading him towards some terrible fate.
Through the breaks in the crowds, he saw Alwyn and Rhian at some game stall.
She smiled.
Emrys wasn’t sure if he’d seen her smile and he was struck by her beauty, even from so far away. Alwyn smiled down at her, his face lit by joy. He tossed the ball in the air and then began juggling while she laughed.
Though nothing could be more normal for a young couple in love, it struck Emrys as one of the strangest sights since he left Chalon though he could not explain why to himself. The crowd closed round them and Ulric deposited Emrys at another drink counter.
He turned to Ulric, “Got no money, cousin.’
Ulric scowled, “You serious?”
Wynne laughed and leaned into Emrys. “I’ll buy for our sweet Birdie.”
And she did. A round of mead that they drank together while Ulric wanted to know where Emrys had been.
“The laird has me about a task that takes up most of my days.”
“The laird?” Ulric sat up straighter. “What is it?”
Flur yawned. “Who cares? Just start finding time. Makes us miss you, Birdie.”
“Not such a bad thing, to be missed.” Emrys took a sip of his mead.
Flur smiled, rubbed his knee, and Wynne said, “You hear about Al and his Lyr girl?”
He listened to them. Though they brought him to talk, conversation flowed round him and he became an observer, only tasked with speaking when their own words ran dry for a moment. A simple comment from Emrys restoked the flame of their own words and stories.
His attention split between them and the highlanders standing around them drinking the bitter brew the Travelers favored. The highlands to the east were a rocky, mountainous area full of valleys and peaks where they raised thousands of goats and sheep, living among their animals for much of the year. Though the men often had families and homes of their own spread across the north, it wasn’t uncommon for them to take mountain wives and carry on with multiple women at once. Some of the subsequent children they sent to the lairds to be raised as soldiers or maids. Owing allegiance to no clan, they followed the rhythms of the herds and wandered the vast rocky highlands stretching from Chalon Forest to the great cities of the south where kings and queens held sway.
A bald man with a beard tucked into his belt said, “Old Islay threw the bones, Duncan. She threw the bones and we all numbered them.”
Duncan shrugged. He was an old man but unbent by age. His white hair cropped short but his beard bushing out in all directions as if refusing to fall down his chest. “Aye, was there meself. Young Fyona augured the stars and the moons as well and found the same, but I tell ya it doesnae matter.”
“How can ya say that, Duncan? How can ya say that skies catching fire doesnae matter?”
“Duncan’s got his own mind, Len. What’s gained by badgering him so? He said his piece and that’s enough, yeah? Question is, what’s to be done bout it?”
“Oi, that’s all well and good for you to say but some of us don’t have their own mountain of stone—”
“Called a keep.”
“Just so and so I say that the sky catching fire sounds fearsome bad. Fearsome bad, I say, and I’d sacrifice my best to hold off the end of days.”
“Not the end of days, Hugh. Don’t be so dramatic.”
“Might be end of more than a few of our days. Think the fires in the sky will become just a show by the gods for us here below? Not likely, my friend. Not bloody likely.”
“The old gods are the problem! I been saying it day after day. The druids even turn to the one god of these longhousers. And why would they not? You see what they have here while we scrabble in the dirt and stone? We pull riches from the earth’s own bones but how rich have we become?”
“Then stop mining.”
“Broader point I’m making. The problem isn’t mining or shepherding. It’s who owns the mines and the sheep. Our grandfathers and their grandfathers lived free and clear. Went where they went and though many despised their wandering ways, they were respected. Needed. Now we’re all bodies for rent by these men in their fancy garb and homes of wood and stone and brick. We may live as if time has not changed but our grandfathers lived on land no man owned, and now that land belongs to somebody. And it ain’t us, my friends.”
“Even assuming that’s true—and that’s a big assumption—they would never press a claim on us. They’d never face our steel willingly.”
“They don’t have to! That’s my point. Listen, I’ll say it so even the goats can understand.”
“Just hold your tongue or bite it off.”
“We all know of Old Gael, yeah? Good, right. Well, as you know, Old Gael spent time in the south with the lords and ladies. His mother, Lady Mourning, was once a southern lady herself.”
“We know the story.”
“Right, right, right. Well, Old Gael went, as you know, as we all know, because he saw war was coming. Didnae take throwing bones or bleeding goats to tell that. He went to learn and use what he learned to keep us all free.”
“And he won!”
“Right, right, right. He won and so much of what he learned became obscured. Thank every god in every hollow and holler that he wrote it down and that some of us still bother to read.”
“We can all read, brother.”
“I can’t.”
“We can all read but Len.”
“Right, right, right. But how many of you have read what Old Gael wrote down? Huh? Not a one? Our wisest and brightest men all gathered here among the lairds and those who believe the land can be owned and tamed haven’t even bothered to open the most important book we have in all the highlands? Do ya think none here have read it? You, boy. Yes, you listening.”
Emrys cleared his throat. “Yes?”
This pulled Flur and Wynne from their conversation that Emrys had lost track of.
Ulric cocked his head. “What you want, old man?”
The old highlander ignored Ulric. “You know of Gael mip Mourning?”
Ulric said, “Kind of name’s Mourning?” Scorn dripped from his words.
“His mother’s,” Emrys said. “I know him. Or of him.”
“Read his book?”
“Yes.”
The old highlander nodded and turned back to his companions. “Even the young here read the book that is the beating heart of highland politics and who keeps track for us? The druids? The ones now preaching the stories of the one god that these Matauc follow? Any of you even curious to know what Old Gael wrote about?” He turned back to Emrys. “Tell them, boy.”
Ulric said, “Ignore them, Birdie.”
But Emrys couldn’t ignore them. “He called the druids the first spear thrust into the highlands.”
The old man bowed his head and turned to his companions. “Do ya see? Are ya so blind to what’s happening all round us? They don’t have to fight us—”
“They’d lose,” said Hugh.
Ulric laughed and the highlanders turned towards him. Ten hard men scowling with thick arms crossed over their chests. Len, thick as a bull and with a plaited red beard, stepped forward. “You wish to make your case, boy?”
Ulric was not a small man but he seemed so in the face of Len. Ulric reached down to his hip where a sword would have been had it not been Gynhaeaf and his hand balled into a fist. Emrys wanted to hold him back, tell him to give it up, but he knew that would only stoke Ulric further towards bluster and bravado, especially with Flur and Wynne watching.
Ulric squared his shoulders. “Your savagery’s made for single combat but that’s also why you’ll always lose.”
“Suppose,” said Duncan who was smaller than Ulric but covered in scars like he’d lived his life in battle, “that’s why your lairds hire us to fight for them.” The highlanders around him laughed, filling with pride.
“Because your lives are cheapest, savage.” Ulric shook his head, disbelieving their stupidity. “The lairds hire you lot to fight one another on our behalf. Even the loser gains by thinning your herd.”
Len took a quick step forward and Ulric flinched away, stumbling backwards into the counter, upsetting the drinks of some of those nearby. Many had already turned to watch the argument but none leaned in to offer Ulric protection.
Not against a dozen hardened highlanders, now laughing at the man wet with spilled mead and beer. Ulric turned to Flur and Wynne, who stood petrified of the potential violence that would destroy their Gynhaeaf.
Emrys helped haul him to his feet and pushed him away into the crowd. Flur and Wynne hurried after and Ulric turned, told him to come on, but Emrys turned back to the highlanders and grabbed his mead.
The old man responded to something Emrys didn’t hear. “Not the point, Hugh. They won’t face us in battle until they know they’ve won. And the way they win isn’t through your thick skull but through the beliefs and habits of your children. When all the highlands sing the songs of their one god, how much easier to convince them that there’s no need for battle or discord? We’ll begin sending our brightest to their villages and cities to learn from their druids who will take the stone out of our boys and girls. That fool was right too. They pay us to fight one another while they sit back and watch and wait. They don’t have to face us in battle because our love for glory does the hard work for them. We are losing a war that most don’t even realize we’re fighting.”
One of the other men sighed heavily and poured out his half-full glass of beer into the grass.
“What’s that for?”
“Come all this way for a bit of fun with the lowlanders and the Leafers and all I hear bout is the end of my people, the conversion of my sons, the ruin of my daughters. Drink’s piss and so’s the conversation.” With that he shoved his empty glass into the old man’s hands and walked away.
“He’s not wrong.”
The old man sighed and then began singing in a shockingly high voice.
“Better savor every moment as it flies by
Every minute, boy, better live it, boy.
Maybe someday you’ll be happy for me,
Every minute, boy, steady rhythm joy.”
The rest of the highlanders joined his song. Some falling into harmony across the octaves while others hummed depth into the song. All gathered there turned and watched and fell into the song.
“Never knew she was my home till the king cried
Lost inside the forest, but it feels fine.”
In the distance, he locked eyes with Big Teddy standing beside Little Teddy and something about the determined glare Big Teddy gave him told Emrys it would be best not to be found by his cousins.
“Every minute, boy, better live it, boy.
Let your tears erode my shoulder like a cliffside.
Heavy minutes, boy, steady rhythm joy.”
Emrys slipped away ducking through the crowd to avoid his cousins. Problem was the multitude of cousins he had. The clan knit together hundreds of families turning everyone into some distant relation to everyone. While Aeronwen and Alwyn were close enough to share blood, some like Ulric and Wynne were so distantly related to him that they may as well be from a different clan.
Hunger gnawed at Emrys and the mead and bitter Leafer brew sloshed through his head as he wove between the crowd following another chain of children slicing this way and that, arcing through the crowd, tripping adults and laughing the whole time. Brought him back to days when he had been one of those children, when his mother still lived, when his father smiled down at him and saw a future for him.
It felt like a promise then.
Ash and dust, now, in his mouth.
A hand on his chest stopped him. Delicate and fine. He followed the bare arm to Berit, the druid. She stood taller than him with a wide mouth and strangely colorless eyes, arresting against her dark leathery skin from a lifetime spent in the wilds with the god. Straight black hair framed her face, unplaited and undecorated. Draped in the white robes of her station, she stood out even more than the Travelers in their green.
“Emrys,” she said. Her voice rich and low. It always surprised him how deep her voice was. “How do you find the fair?” She held two cups in her other hand and pushed them towards Emrys, who took one.
He sipped at it. Hot cider with a bite of some spicy pepper that tickled the inside of his nose.
Berit laughed at the expression he made. “Sip it slow, Emrys.”
“Festival’s fine, Berit. Excited to eat some of this pig.”
Her nostrils flared. “Unclean meat. The Travelers are good and kind but they have disgusting habits.”
“Suppose they’d say the same about us.”
Berit folded her arms and leaned back. “Why do you avoid Owain?” Though they stood in the midst of the crowd, everyone parted round them. For the first time since entering the Festival, he was not jostled by bodies passing close together.
Emrys sipped at the spicy drink once more and sneezed at the burn in his nose. He wiped his watering eyes and said, “What is this?”
“The Travelers go far afield.”
“Suppose it comes with the name.”
Berit wasn’t amused though she smiled. A cold, calculating smile. “Have you heard of the Ryuka? Most this far north haven’t but they’re one of the great empires to the south across the seas and across thousands of miles of land.” She unfolded her hands and took him by the elbow, began leading him through the crowd. “It was their hope to unite all humanity under a single figure. An emperor. Like a laird overseeing thousands of lairds, if you can imagine.”
Emrys took the condescension in silence. He knew of the Ryuka. Had even read a multivolume history of the empire’s first through third dynasties. She spoke to distract him. He understood that. And he knew where she wanted to lead him while she spoke on and on about the Ryuka. After a few more paces, he interrupted her. “I’m sorry, Berit, but I really must eat.”
Not waiting for a response, he yanked his arm out of her grip and stumbled back through the crowd.
His father hunted him here. Turning Gynhaeaf into a trap. The fairgrounds into a noose to close round him and force their long postponed meeting.
Emrys couldn’t believe it had taken him this long to force Emrys before him. He lived in his longhouse. His father could’ve sent men to gather him up from his room at any time and drag him to heel.
But that was his father. He wanted always compliance without force. A gentle embrace or a charismatic call to arms, but he would not shy away from violently grasping whatever he desired.
And he desired Emrys’ presence.
Demanded it.
It was petty and small, he knew, but it gave him a sense of power and control over his own life. Something that he rarely had.
“Let go of her!” The shrieked words pierced through the Gynhaeaf din and Emrys was not alone in turning to see a young boy launch himself into a standing figure turned away from him, with a another lying on the ground. The boy threw himself with enough force to knock the standing one off balance, send him stumbling over the person on the ground. From the left, another young boy threw himself at the first, but the first turned in time to catch him and twist him violently to the ground.
The boy who hit the ground rolled away and shot back to his feet and Emrys saw the face of his own half-brother, Folant. Furious, his hair disheveled, he threw himself back at the older boy who was helping a young woman up from the ground. Folant took the boy down and then Bleddyn was back to his feet but so was the girl. Her lip split and bleeding.
“Don’t touch me,” she said, pulling a knife from her hip and pointing it at Bleddyn.
Bleddyn smiled and cocked his head. “Put it down.”
Folant hurried back to his brother’s side while the other boy got to his feet and the four of them stared at one another.
All eyes turned to watch the laird’s heirs threaten some other children. Emrys didn’t recognize them but assumed they were cousins of some kind to be bold enough to fight with the heirs. Either that or strangers or serfs or servants so far beneath Bleddyn and Folant that they’d never have seen them.
The girl with the knife didn’t wipe the blood from her mouth or move at all even when Bleddyn took a step forward, but the other boy—her brother, by the look of them—darted forward. He meant to tackle Bleddyn but he was younger, smaller and untrained in combat. Bleddyn stepped aside, grabbed his hair, and shoved his face into the dirt. With his other hand, he grabbed the boy’s arm and wrenched it behind his back. Bleddyn turned back to the girl. “Drop the knife, Eisha.”
“Come on,” Folant’s little voice piped. “Leave them.”
Before Bleddyn could respond, Emrys stepped in and grabbed his half-brother by the collar, yanking him off the boy. Bleddyn yelped and writhed but Emrys held tight, dragging him into the crowd, though all eyes followed him, as he knew they would.
Couldn’t be helped. He’d have to humiliate his half-brother in front of a crowd.
“Let go of me, bastard!” Bleddyn clawed at his hand but Emrys didn’t let go until his thrashing elbow glanced against Emrys’ hip. Though the wound had closed and no longer ached, the echo of the lord of bone remained within him. He gasped and let Bleddyn fall to the ground but masked the pain and surprise from his face.
Folant caught up and pushed at Emrys but he was a small child. Emrys rounded on him and said in his harshest voice, “Enough.” The fury on his face caused Folant to take a step back and look to Bleddyn, now standing, wiping the dirt from his clothes.
Bleddyn said, “Father’ll kill you.”
“Won’t,” said Emrys. “But he’ll be ashamed of the spectacle you’ve drawn down upon him. Look around you, fool.”
Bleddyn’s eyes darted from side to side but rather than shrink in shame, he raised his head. “She offended me.”
Emrys raised his hand to strike his half-brother, but Bleddyn cowered away. It made Emrys miserable to bully the boy. He was still a child, really. Only ten years old or so. He let his hand fall to his side “You’re the heir, Bleddyn mip Owain, not some kitchen boy. Your every word and action will be remembered and noted, weighed against your station. One day you’ll lead all the clan, both at home and at war.” He was being unfair and he knew it. He was only a boy and none would hold minor childhood grudges against him.
Bleddyn’s brow came down and the hatred in his eyes was obvious. “You can’t talk to me—”
“Can,” said Emrys. “Will. Your father commanded me as much. Surprised by that, yeah? Consider why a bastard should have any say over the heir and then ask yourself why I’m Emrys mip Neb.”
Bleddyn didn’t care to listen or learn. He spat at Emrys’ feet and said with surprising calm and steadiness, “Touch me again and I’ll kill you.” He turned to Folant. “Come on.” The crowd parted for the heirs and then swallowed them up.
Emrys sighed and looked at all those watching him and shrugged. “Kids, eh?”
Some laughed but most didn’t. They’d tell of this for days, he knew, but better that than the heirs terrorizing some children or getting stabbed by those children. Maybe even they’d forget after enough mead and beer and fun at the Festival.
Still hungry, he saw the cooking smoke and began moving in that direction but someone took his hand. He turned and saw the young boy his half-brothers had been fighting. Behind him, the girl with the bleeding lip.
The boy had the most intent expression on his face. “Thank you, sir, for protecting my sister.”
“What’s your name?”
“Loran.” He turned to his sister. “Gladys.”
“Who’s your daddy?”
“He died,” said Gladys. “Our mother’s Nerys ney Alwyn.”
“Goronwyn your uncle?”
“Who’s that?”
“Thought we might be cousins.” He didn’t know whose children they were. Alwyn was too common a name, both high and low, for him to even know if they were servants, serfs, or freeholders or even those with family backing.
Gladys nodded. “Didn’t mean to get you killed.”
“Won’t kill me.”
Loran and Gladys exchanged a pensive look. Not believing him. Loran said, “We heard you call that boy the heir to the clan. If his daddy don’t kill you, he will once he’s of age.”
“Well, that’s likely true, assuming he never changes. If he remains the boy he is today, he’ll remember this day for the rest of his life and nurse his grudge until I’m dead and buried. But he may change and when he grows up he might even thank me.”
Loran looked like he wanted to reach out and comfort Emrys, as if he spoke to a fool. “Thanks all the same. But I recommend you get out of here. If the laird finds out…”
Emrys smiled and crouched to meet them at their level. “Thank you, Loran, Gladys. Think I will. You two run off now before the heirs find you again.”
They did and Emrys didn’t watch them go.
The tension of the moment sobered him a bit but he needed to eat. He followed the smoke rising from the cooking pits. Get enough food to fill him up for the rest of the day, get a bit more to begin his journey west, and then leave the Festival, leave the clan behind.
His father would hunt for him but not until after Gynhaeaf. By then, he’d be well on his way. Especially if he took a horse. The image of the map of Morfil and all the way south to Buffel, the seat of the southern king and queen. If he went south instead of west, he would eventually run across one of the steam engines he read about. The great mechanical monstrosity bellowing steam into the air. Faster than a horse and far more comfortable, he could get to the coast in a day by train.
The pork stall came into view and his stomach growled, weakness trembling through him. He swallowed, nearly tasting it already. The scent filled him and all other thought fled from him.
So lost in thought about the journey to the University and the meal so close at hand, he didn’t notice Big Teddy and Little Teddy flanking either side of him to the counter.
The Traveler woman behind the counter was short and round and beautiful, with perfectly arced eyebrows and eyes as green as her dress. “What ye havin?”
Emrys smiled. “Anything. But I’ve no money.”
She rolled her eyes.
Big Teddy said, “We’ll be back with some coin.” His big hand smacked against Emrys’ back.
His heart sank and his stomach growled. He turned to Big Teddy. “Cousin.” He turned the other way and saw Little Teddy smirking at him. “Cousin.”
Little Teddy said, “Come on, Birdie. Don’t make us drag you.”
He could’ve been gone already. Could’ve escaped before anyone thought to look for him outside the fairgrounds. He cursed himself and turned to the pretty round woman behind the counter. “If you don’t see me again, know that you’re the prettiest girl I’ve seen today.”
She blinked, flushed, and smiled. “Talk like that’ll get you a meal.” She hooted a laugh and an older woman behind her spoke in their own private tongue, which made everyone within the stall laugh and the woman at the counter said, “She said if ye sing and dance we’ll feed you for the rest of yer life.”
Emrys smiled back at the old woman who winked at him.
“Come on.” Big Teddy grabbed him by the arm.
Little Teddy grabbed him the same way and even though Emrys walked willingly, they still kept him close, kept a hand tight on him.
As they marched him north to where his father waited, he saw Alwyn and Rhian through the crowd. She wore a crown of green grass with tendrils of green draping her narrow shoulders. Alwyn wore a horned wooden mask with a snarling, vicious face. The horns didn’t curl but twisted high and straight above his head. The Travelers danced around them waving garlands of yellow and red. Before Emrys could even begin to make sense of it, Berit approached and the crowd closed between him and his cousin, the daughter of Lyr.
“You found me,” Emrys said.
Little Teddy slapped the back of his head. “Show some respect, Birdie. Sorry, druid.” He bowed but they didn’t break their gait.
Berit’s gentle eyes roamed his face. “What joy do you get in doing this to your father?”
“Is it true you fear Fionnuala?”
Berit stiffened for a moment and then relaxed back into her bemused expression, her bouncing steps alongside the Teddys and Emrys. “A laird must make use of every tool at hand. Fionnuala is a powerful ally, even if cursed and damned.”
“Never understood damnation, Berit.”
Big Teddy smacked him this time. “Respect, cousin.”
Berit waved this away. “Emrys, unbeliever. Emrys heretic. Is that what you want to be known as?”
“Shadow son seems a worse title. Less imposing and all that. Emrys the unbeliever makes me sound fearsome, yeah?”
“You’ve grown so bold and rude since she took you under her wing, though I’ve heard you’ve largely failed and remain ignorant of her arts. Most would be humbled, but you’ve grown arrogant, Emrys. Foolish.”
Emrys felt the heat rising in him, embarrassed. Rather than dig in deeper and risk being slapped by his cousins again, he collected himself to face his father.
The bright of the day began to fade as clouds rolled in from the east but it must have only been midday. It had taken Owain no time at all to gather up Emrys against his will and a part of him wondered if this was the purpose of the fair.
Absurd, of course, but likely no one had ever denied his father anything for so long. Most everyone in the clan begged to see his father. Even Emrys had never denied him this way.
After his mother died, Emrys wanted to see Owain. Begged, at times.
And five years went by without them speaking. It taught him the ruthlessness of his father. The callous indifference.
The crowd parted for Berit as she led them through the crowd with many smiling and greeting her or even asking for her blessing, which she gave to everyone. It slowed their progress. Felt intentional. A strange show of force that Emrys didn’t care to understand. Perhaps just a reminder that he was alone in his disbelief.
Men and women and children all dressed autumnal, laughing and talking and dancing. The Travelers bursting with song and dance. The scent of roasting meat. The stink of their bitter brew.
Owain appeared through the crowd and then was obscured once more. The passing of people kept revealing and hiding him once more. Was his last chance, though, to find a way to escape before he faced his father. But the Teddys had him. Beris had him.
His father had him.
Bald and skeletal thin, the yellow robes hung loose from him highlighting the knobs of his shoulders, the boniness of his hands. He sat there beside Saoirse, his wife, on a raised dais overlooking all the festivities. To his right stood the stage where the Queen of Autumn would be crowned by Berit on the evening of the following day. When night descended, the dance competition would begin in firelight.
Emrys ripped his arms free of the Teddys and they let him walk free to his father. Back straight, head high, no point in putting it off. He walked past Berit rather than let her announce him to his own father and came right to the foot of the dais where Owain laughed at something Saoirse said.
Beautiful. There was no denying her. Saoirse shined wherever she was but especially in laughter, when smiling. Something Emrys had never seen from her. Always she looked upon him with scorn, with anger, with frustration. Had it been her choice, Owain would have banished or killed Emrys before he came of age.
Her orange dress clung to her through the torso but her skirt appeared looser.
For love of his mother. That’s what Owain would say. The reason Emrys still lived. The reason he had a place with the clan. And every time, it twisted a knife in his young wife and her anger festered.
“Father,” Emrys said, “you called me.” He kept his eyes on Saoirse, who glanced at him before turning and looking out past him, as if he wasn’t there standing before her. She gripped the arms of her chair tighter for a moment before rising. Standing there above everyone, the dress clinging to her from hips to shoulder, revealing every curve of her body, before flaring out below her hips.
Owain rose with her and led her to the stairs where he gave her hand to Berit as she descended the three stairs. Without another glance at Emrys, she walked away with Berit into the festivities.
Big Teddy and Little Teddy remained at his side until Owain looked down at his son and flicked a hand. His cousins stepped away and maybe left to enjoy the fair, though Emrys didn’t look.
Owain said, “Enjoy the fair?” No heat or anger in his voice. Not even the familiar indifference but a question that seemed almost like genuine interest.
“Was.”
Owain nodded and then sat back down. He tapped the arm of the chair beside him. “Come on.”
Emrys swallowed. Prepared for hostility or at least frustration, he felt unbalanced. But his father was a stranger. No reason for him to expect anything of him. He climbed the few steps and sat beside his father and looked out into the crowd. Being above it allowed him to see the whole shape of it. The Travelers made a frame or wall for the entire fair and circles of dancing seemed strategically arranged to keep the mass of bodies flowing through the fair rather than bunch up in a single location.
Owain said, “This is what my sons need.”
“Fun?”
He snorted. “A higher view. A longer view.”
“They’re only boys.”
“For now. But boys become men. The lessons learned in childhood are bricks piled and mortared into a wall or a house or a road. I want them, when they’re of age, to become architects rather than those who stand beside a wall, walk a road, or lay about within a house. They must build their own roads.”
“Take them in hand.” It felt both strange and comfortable to talk to his father this way. Sitting side by side rather than face to face eased much of the tension. Without needing to stare into his father’s eyes or study the movement of his body, he could take the words. But there was also a different texture to Owain’s conversation. Absent scorn, it almost felt the way it had when his mother still lived.
The easy days he spent with Owain. Like a father and son.
Owain said, “I’ve but two hands. A child needs more than that.”
“Your wife then.”
He snorted. “Foreigner. If I let her define the shape of the next laird, we may as well discard the name Matauc.”
“I’m an outcast. Orphan.”
“You are my son.” His voice hit like a hammer though he didn’t raise his voice. Rather, he dropped his voice, gravel and stone filling his words. So much feeling in those words.
Emrys told himself he imagined it. That he added the depth of feeling in his own head. Words he longed for. Words he needed when he was a boy holding his mother’s body as it drained of blood. Hot tears rose behind his eyes but Emrys held them tight. Gripping the arms of the chair, he closed his eyes and breathed. Just breathed.
“You are my son, Emrys.” He said the words slowly, without passion this time. “You will never have my name but you carry my blood. The blood of your mother. Do you know the value of my blood? Few do. Too many here fear magic. Deviltry and all that, but the blood—my blood—holds great power. The ability for someone to gain power over me. Over your brothers. When Ariana lost her eye, do you know the magic that could have been done to destroy her? Or her arm. Ripped violently away, holding her blood in a battlerage.” He sighed. “It’s good Fionnuala was not here or with Ariana when that happened.”
Emrys only listened, no longer trusting himself. He dangled in his father’s gale. Outmatched and outclassed. His father saw how Emrys wished this confrontation to go. Let the anger and resentment boil until the two of them shouted at one another, embarrassing Owain. And Owain met the tactic and neutered it before it took off.
“Fionnuala said you nearly killed yourself.” His father’s hand came and gripped him by the wrist. Not tightly, but firmly. The touch of a father. Part of Emrys wanted to rip it away. To respond with rage and all the festered resentment frothing inside him ever since his mother died, when Owain excised him from his life, from his affection.
But the touch was too much a comfort. Too much exactly what the hurt, lonely boy inside him always wanted.
Such a simple want.
Denied him so long.
“Listen to her,” Owain continued. “In all things. Hide nothing from her.”
“Is she my mother’s sister?”
“I don’t know. Truly. Neither she nor your mother ever spoke of their relationship. At the time, when she still lived, I didn’t care. It didn’t matter. Paid little attention to Fionnuala, though Berit always distrusted her. We didn’t know, then, what she was. What she was capable of. Lost track of her when your mother became my concubine until she became pregnant with you. Fionnuala reemerged and was always at your mother’s side. She midwifed your birth.
“And I had thought she left after I took your mother for my concubine. My love blinded me. Narrowed my sight. I risked everything then, though I didn’t realize it until after she died. Your mother softened me. And the clan, which I held uneasily still, began working silently against me. Goronwyn, for example, plotted my death.” He snorted, let his hand slide away from Emrys’.
“Why didn’t you retaliate?”
He snorted once more. “Did. And he responded by taking you in hand. I hamstrung his power and he showed the clan that my son belonged to him. He’s a dangerous man.”
Emrys turned to his father and saw he was smiling. Enjoying the political battle between him and his sister’s husband. “He’s your brother.”
“But not of my blood. That matters a great deal, Emrys. You are my blood. I have let you do as you want because I cannot allow anyone to know the power in your blood. They’d call me a heretic, yes, but much worse would be the understanding dawning over them. For the clan is full of ambitious men and women and their belief in the god would do nothing to keep them from seeking witches like Fionnuala.
“In the grief after your mother’s death, Fionnuala came to me. I hadn’t thought of her in years.” He turned to Emrys. “She claimed you.”
Emrys swallowed. “To teach me.”
Owain nodded, spat. “Perhaps I should have let her. You may have been happier. A better man would have let you go.” He smiled then, thinly. “You are my son, Emrys. I will not let you go. You may leave Morfil and spend years at that university but not until you know what I need you to know. You’ve been in Chalon and survived. Fionnuala says you’ve walked the shadows and found yourself through the labyrinth. You’re strong. But when I call you, I will need you here. Will need you to pass through another labyrinth to be at my side within a day, no matter how far you go.”
Emrys turned away to the fair, to all those gathered to welcome the harvest. Some pointed to the east and Emrys was about to turn, to follow their gaze, when his father said, “My sons need their brother. They need you as I needed Ariana. When I die, their hold on the clan will be insecure. Tenuous. They mistrust my wife, and though Bleddyn and Folant will have the backing of her blackshielded Eirish clan, that may be worse for them. Goronwyn and so many other men and women wait for my death. They pray for it. And I waste away as I sit before them.”
“You look terrible.”
He smiled. “Flesh pours off me. Even my hair fell out. Berit says the moons call me home but I know it’s the mud waiting to embrace me. Fionnuala suspects a subtle magic here. Perhaps that’s all prayer is. A different kind of magic. One blessed by the god. I need you to understand this, Emrys. I will not live to see them grow up. I will not be here to solidify their power for them. I need you.” His bony hand landed once more upon Emrys’ hand. Squeezed it.
Emrys swallowed and looked into the eyes of his father. Couldn’t believe it but nor could he deny the way he had aged. The gaunt skeletal man sitting beside him, a shadow of the man he had been in full bloom, when he walked the lands with Emrys, teaching him.
The din of the fair changed, rising louder and then higher. Emrys and Owain both turned to the crowd who pointed in the air to the east.
Emrys followed and saw the strangest thing.
A great black oval in the air with something written on the surface. Attached to its bottom was some kind of structure, like the diagram of a train car he’d seen. And there were more. Not one or two but a dozen. They moved slowly through the air. Perhaps pushed along by the breeze. Like whales drifting through the sky. Like legends come to life.
Eyeless, mouthless, finless whales. A strange horror that thrilled Emrys. An impossibility flying overhead.
Skywhales.
An entire herd of them flew in a V formation. He didn’t know enough about whales of the seas but assumed they, too, must journey in packs, in families.
Emrys smiled. The magic of the world kept revealing itself to him. Though he was stuck at the edge of the world, this was where magic and legends blossomed freely.
Becoming a witch, slowly, day by day. Magic flowed through him. The warmth of the fire within him circulated through his veins with his blood.
And while all of clan Matauc watched, the first skywhale erupted in flames. A percussive wave followed. They blasted out of her left side, forming a great ball of flame and another eruption tore out the top. The skywhale lurched to the right, away from the flames, plummeting to earth while the flames struck the next two in formation. The flames licked against their skin and then their body erupted just like the first.
Screams filled the air. And Emrys stood there, mouth agape, watching impossibilities mount atop one another. A world of magic, dying.
Screams swallowed him but none came from the skywhales falling or still flying. But all of them descended.