“This will not happen,” Gaela said. Her voice shook, from fury and a swelling panic. “I am changing the way this process works, changing ritual and the relationship between the crown and the land. I will not poison myself to suit dead ways of dead kings. I will be my own sacrament.”
“It is supposed to be faith that guides the hand!” cried the oldest star priest. “To wear our crown, you must believe in the roots, in the island’s blood and the prophecies of the stars!
“No.” Gaela crushed more of the hemlock. “I am here for my own blood, which is of this island, and my own will, which shall be my only prophecy.”
She drew out her knife and sliced at the green stalks, ripping up others and tossing them against the mossy boulders. Some leaves and petals fluttered down into the black pit of the well; lonely, fallen stars.
“Gaela.” Regan clutched at her wrist. “I’ll do it. I want to! Let me do this!”
“No. I won’t allow you to be such a fool. And neither was our father, though he became one by the end. He would not have done this, hating the roots so, disdainful of all but the skies of his beloved stars. A coward, one who doomed his wife to save his own seat, but he’d never have wagered his own life. He lied, if he said he did.”
The old priest shook his head frantically. “No, I was there. I saw it, then. He ate of the flowers, and drank of the waters, before he grew dizzy and collapsed. Lear went still for a long hour as the stars wheeled overhead, and then the king opened his eyes, and the stars shone upon his awakening.”
“A pretty story.” Gaela did not care.
Tears glittered on Regan’s cheeks, and she knelt beside the well. “I don’t mind if it kills me, Gaela,” she whispered. “The reward is greater, to be what we always wanted. What Connley wanted. I would be made full—new.”
“How dare you offer to abandon me,” Gaela said, so low in her throat she could hardly believe it was her own voice. “Remember who you are, Regan, and who I am, and what we are to each other. What we will be to this land.”
Silence fell all around, but for the constant pressing wind, and Regan’s hard breathing. Gaela put her hand on her sister’s neck. She was sympathetic; she hated for Regan to weep, to hurt so badly and desperately, but Gaela was angry, too, furious that Regan felt so bereft without Connley, when they still had each other. And Regan could still try for a babe, perhaps with the Fox, his seed surely more cunning than Regan’s dead husband’s, and enough power between them to spur life.
No other love should be able to drag Regan away from Gaela! As if they could not be all to each other, beyond the ways of men, and their rules, and their stars. No.
“Regan,” she said, resolute but not unkind.
Her sister’s head nodded, wearily.
“Ban,” Gaela ordered, “hold my sister up.”
The young man took Regan’s elbow and leaned her against his chest. His eyes were bright, slightly too wide, and he murmured softly into Regan’s ear.
Gaela then faced their enrapt audience and forged onward.
“My sister and I will stay here for some time, and when we emerge, we will be crowned. You, men, you, priests, listen to me: I am the rightful king of Innis Lear because it is who and what I am, what I have built myself to be, what I should have been from birth. My father was the king, and his father, back two hundred years to the first king of a united Innis Lear. And my mother, so enamored of our roots and stars, was buried here, and she has become this island, anointing my own natal claim. This crown is my legacy. I have ingested the poison of life these last twelve years, and my sweat has watered these lands.” She leveled the old priest with her boldest gaze. “My bloodisthe island’s blood, do you understand me?”
After a moment, Gaela swept her stare to encompass the entire company assembled in the holy grove. Regan, still against Ban the Fox, followed her sister’s gaze.
Many nodded immediately: Osli and three other retainers, whose faces were firm and already lit in awe, knelt. Some thought hard, then glanced at one another, and back at her again, before going down on their knees, too. The shaking priests were cowed by the display, and followed the others’ example. Except for one.
The old priest was stone, in body and in regard.
Gaela said, “I will cut you down if you prefer.”
“This is not the way, Your Highness,” he said. “You are right about everything in your history, and what you have earned, but still the island must know you, before giving its people and roots and breath over to your care. You must give it your blood; you must drink from its roots. You must face the stars above. It is not that you are less if you don’t, but that the wind, the water, the island will not—”
“Choose, priest,” Gaela said. “The island might wait, but I won’t.”
He slowly, painfully dropped to his knees. Frustration made his jaw hard and his wrinkled lips thin as he placed the bowl of oil and fire at her feet. “My queen.”
Because she wanted to, she kicked out, catching the discarded sacred bowl with her boot. The oil splattered, and fire destroyed the rest of the hemlock.
“Queen is my sister’s calling. Now, I am king.”
***
AS THE SUNrose, Gaela sat in the throne of Innis Lear, there in the great hall of Dondubhan. Regan held herself carefully beside the throne, resting in a narrow, tall-backed chair nearly as regal. Both women were dressed and decorated voluptuously, in the midnight blue of the line of Lear. Whiteclay dotted their brows and red plumped their lips. Star tabards fell across both laps. Gaela wore a heavy silver coronet and held a sword across her thighs. Regan cupped a silver bowl of water from the Tarinnish, a thin diadem of intricate leaves upon her brow.
Dawn slid gray-pink light through tall windows as men and women of Dondubhan and Astore offered vows and gifts to the new monarchs. Unease and hope mingled in a tense, airy soup, for most in the hall did not approve of the timing, yet they wanted nothing so much as for Innis Lear to prosper once again. And here, now, arrived a chance for restoration under their new queens.
