The room grew quiet, save their rasping sighs.
“This is my world,” whispered the Vaich. Fragile though they were, the words burned against the druid’s skin. “And you have been thrust within it. They did not speak my death, but your name. Why should I believe they are not one and the same?”
There it was again. The fear. Twisted in the Vaich’s hatred was his sorrow. His pain. And the druid was the wound from which it poured.
“You could let me go,” the druid said more softly. “That is your power. You could release me from here and I would go deep into the wood and never return. I have no army and can take nothing from you.”
The Vaich shook his head. “You dinnae understand.”
“No.”
The Vaich straightened, his eyes closing as he kneaded his temple. He seemed at war within his mind. A battle that the druid could never be privy to.
“It is notmypower. It is His. And I am but his vessel,” said the Vaich.
“There is no truth to this Sun God, and accepting that would set you free. It is a grand delusion. It does not command you—”
“It is heresy!” The Vaich’s hand swept out, knocking the tableware to the floor. Wine spilled over the stone in crimson ribbons. “They warned me of your deceit. Of your heathen harboring of the olden ways.”
Whatever thin thread that had momentarily aligned them frayed at its taut center.
“You will not return to your forests. You will be taken to the Augeri, where you will prepare for the Luin Cáronach. That is your duty as my bride. And beside me you will remain. So long as it pleases thetruegods.”
The druid’s heart shuddered, but no amount of pleading would alter his fate. It had been bound up in this unfathomable spool—a cage of fire but no light.
“Then allow me my chambermaid—”
“It is forbidden,” muttered the Vaich. “No one but Nytherí may enter. You are the first… and only exception.”
Again, it was soundless. The quiet after war. Then, the Vaich nodded to the door. The smaller man rose, his chair silent upon the stone. As he turned, the king called out one final time.
“Druid.”
He stopped. Waiting. But the Vaich’s words did not come, leaving both with absence.
Chapter nineteen
The Pipewhistle
“Isee things in the night.”
The druid’s caretakers would look at him oddly. “All children are imaginative,” they’d say. “You are no different.”
But he was.
The druid did not know when it began. If it had “begun” at all, or if his recollection was younger than the illusions. From the time they were old enough to crawl and babble, all children of the Fáoth were put to a test. They were offered a set of five toys and left to play while their caretakers watched.
Of the five, there was a woven doll, a wood figurine of a tawny fawn, a miniature cairn piled with river pebbles, and a gourd rattle filled with seeds. Children who picked the first were said to be givers—born with a generous soul. The tawny fawn signified natural hunters, stewards and providers for all. The cairn symbolized wisdom; the rattle, curiosity, and their choosers would become leaders and sages.
But the last of the five was different, and rarely would the children prefer it. Even more rare that one might use it.
It was a small reed pipewhistle, not intuitive to those so young. On the few occasions it would catch their fancy, a simple suckling might suggest their choice. But he was told, much later in life, that he had made his first sounds upon the flute, long before he could talk.
The whistle represented spirituality; a Listener attuned to the song. And he, however accidentally—however brief—had made his own.
It was the beginning of many strange years. The druid, who had begun his life with sound, grew quiet, and his ears and eyes grew full. Many times he would awaken, having seen odd things while he slept. For most hislife, he believed it normal, though wondered why no one spoke of the visions that came in the night.
And so, he asked, “Do they not keep you up in the dark?” He was still a child, and his keepers would have answers, or so he had thought.
