Ban’s heart raced, loud enough to make a language of its own.
The fire blew out, though there was no wind remaining.
And Regan suddenly rose, threw out her arms like wings, and screamed at the bright morning sky.
Connley broke then, rushing to his wife. “Regan, Regan,” he said, and dragged her off the stone altar, holding her about the waist as she twisted and cried. Tears pink with blood marred her cheeks, and she gouged her temples with her nails. Blood colored her bottom lip.
Waiting, impatient, Ban clenched his jaw.
Connley held her as she wept, as she curled in upon herself, and then finally, Regan spoke. “My insides are covered in scars like dark roots, andI cannot see past them, to mend myself! I need another.” She whipped her head around and stared at Ban. “Another guide, one with stronger, better eyes.”
Fear slithered coldly down his spine. He glanced to Connley, then shook his head. “Rest now.”
“Come, my love,” Connley said, embracing her. He kissed her jaw.
Regan clawed at him—but not to push him away. She clutched his neck, pulling him all against her, shoving their foreheads together. Her voice was raw as she begged, ordered, and kissed him with her bloody mouth. And the duke of Connley held her tighter, nodding, promising nothing, everything.
Ban turned his back, shaking with weariness and sorrow. Regan deserved better. He was a scout and a spy, a wizard who knew how to seek and see. But he couldn’t help her more, not without seeking his own mother, or some other witch who knew more of the putting together than taking apart. He started down the promontory alone, toward the deep morning shadows of the White Forest. Thirst drew Ban toward a spring he knew, and behind it, sleep called his name in the voice of wind and roots.
He would have let himself be pulled underground, to be revived as always by the embrace of the trees. But before he could reach them, the earth beneath his feet trembled. Dry golden grass bent awake, shifting and whispering; the White Forest fluttered, bowing toward the sunrise and the southeast.
Raising his face toward the morning sky, Ban heard a longed-for name on the wind, bright as a star, as if all the island gave it welcome.
Elia,said Innis Lear.Elia has come home.
THE FOX
BAN HAD NEVERdone magic quite like this.
The air was still and quiet over the rocky moorland, here where the hill pushed out of the White Forest like a cresting whale. Silver clouds stretched over the dark sky, brightened by the soon-coming sun and by the moon that hung still in the west, off-center and almost full. Regan Connley, clad in a thin linen shift, sat along an arrow of exposed granite as sleek as she and exactly her size. Her back to the east, she cupped a shallow bowl in her lap and bowed her head over it. She whispered in the language of trees, the words blowing tiny ripples against the surface of pooled blood.
Ban snapped his fingers and called fire to hand, setting the flame down fast against the patch of pine, thistle, rose, and thick paper tinder here at the south end of the granite. The fire caught and crackled, flaring white-orange before settling in to curl the long stems and petals. Moving eastward himself, Ban sang a low song to the wind and trees, hissing a word or two for the fire. He trailed a line of mixed sand and oak charcoal behind him as he went to the north and then the west. When he reached the southern point again, Ban paused to call fire again, drawing it along the entire circle.
“Now,” he said quietly. Connley heard him and stepped inside the circle.
Only the three of them attended this predawn witchery, and Connley solely because he’d insisted:I am as involved as you, and I am your other heart. Without me not all of your spirit will be there.
Ban found it unbearably sentimental, until he saw the mutual intensity in the eyes of husband and wife, and realized they both believed, completely.
What would such a partnership be like,he wondered, and then caught a fleeting memory—Elia’s hands holding his own, tiny moonlights dancing between and around their fingers.
Glancing up at the fading stars, the wizard knew it was time. Ban stripped himself of clothes and shoes before stepping into the circle. Wafts of thistle smoke and rose teased his shoulders as he crouched at a pan of orange mud from the iron marsh and drew words onto his chest and stomach, and his power rune at his forehead, heart, and genitals. He coated his forearms with the mud, and when he saidShield me,the mud dried in a quick snap, to near ceramic hardness and hot against his skin.
At a tearing sound, Ban looked up to see Regan reclined against the granite, and her husband kneeling beside her, using a small dagger to cut into the front of her shift. He sliced it open from the center of her breasts to the low mound at her groin. Parting the pale linen, Connley kissed his wife’s soft belly, then left his hand there as he kissed her between the breasts and again on her mouth.
Ban joined them at Regan’s feet while Connley moved to her head, and he handed the lady the bowl of her womb blood. She set it on her belly, fingers curled around the rim. Her chest rose and fell slowly and evenly.
The duke met Ban’s gaze, asking silently again his earlier question.Will this hurt her?
Two hours ago, when they left the Keep, Ban had answered, “I don’t know. It is not designed to cause harm, but there is wildness in the roots of Innis Lear, and the spirits we call will not be concerned with safety.”
“If it hurts Regan, I will hurt you,” Connley had promised, simple and calm.
Ban then replied, “If it hurts her, I will already be hurt.”
That had seemed to console the duke, though he watched Regan now with a hovering possessiveness.
Overhead, the stars had gone pale in the cool purple sky, and the moon hung behind Ban, its pregnant lower edge just kissing the horizon. Exactly right for beginning.
