“And I will find a star prophecy claiming only I can rule, else Innis Lear will fall to ruin. Something even my baby sister cannot disprove. Is that not how it’s done by kings on Innis Lear? Besides, what else could be done with me? Kill me? I think not. The island needs me. Worry not, Brona. I will rule, and Elia will make your son happy enough. Both of them at my side, for what other choice will they have?”
For a long moment Brona studied Gaela, and the warrior queen held the witch’s flickering gaze.
Then Brona lowered her eyes. “What choice, indeed?” she murmured, then turned to the narrow table pushed against the wall.
Gaela watched as Brona chose folded paper pouches and a stoppered vial, adding a pinch of this and drops of that into two clay cups. She brought them to Gaela and handed both to her. Gaela sniffed: sweet and soft, with a hint of spice.
The witch fetched a bottle of wine and poured some into both cups. She took one and raised it. “To the queen of Innis Lear, then.”
“Those past and future,” Gaela agreed. She drank the wine. The spices filled her nose, making the flavor strong and bright. “This is good.”
The witch smiled softly, licking a drop of wine from the rim of her own cup. “My own recipe. It is even better warm.”
“Have you no warming pot? Our next cup should be so.”
“You might set the cup against those embers: it is strong enough not to crack with the heat.”
Gaela downed the wine, then poured more, settling her cup just inside the dark stone of the hearth, tucked where the embers might heat it more quickly.
Brona held her own cup between her palms, nestled in her lap. They both were quiet, listening to their shared breathing, to the tender shifts and cracks of the red-hot embers. Gaela wondered if Dalat had shared such wine with Brona, long ago. And she wondered if she would remember the color of her mother’s hands at all, if she herself did not share it.
“Gaela, do you understand at all what your mother sacrificed for?” Brona asked, as tenderly as the fire.
When Gaela went to speak, she became strangely unsettled, for her words arrived reluctantly. Gaela had never been reluctant in all her life. “Us. Family. Her life and… future.”
“Dalat changed the entire island, with only a small vial of poison.”
Something in the witch’s voice caught Gaela’s heart; it skipped and started again. “She—she…” Gaela’s tongue felt heavy. It was very late, and she needed her sleep. She blinked slowly.
“It was the act of an earth saint,” Brona whispered. “A choice worthy of worship. This island has never forgotten Dalat of Taria Queen. Nor will it forget you.”
“No… it… will…” Gaela rubbed her face. She sighed. She was so sleepy. “Not.”
She tilted toward the hearth, but Brona caught her, an arm about her royal shoulders, and drew Gaela against her.
Brona gently helped her fall, whispering quietly to the fire and the wind, a blessing for Dalat’s eldest daughter.
TWELVE YEARS AGO, DONDUBHAN
IT WAS NOTunusual for the queen of Innis Lear to be seen wandering the halls of the winter seat well before dawn. The guards and castle folk had accustomed themselves to it, and assumed their foreign mistress slept poorly, or still followed the Third Kingdom tradition of rising early to be blessed by their luminous God. None minded, for insomnia was not so strange, and she was kind to them, and thoughtful, though often distant, as if her thoughts preferred to reside with her daughters, or drift with the wind, or perhaps keep themselves to memories of a sun so hot none of this island could quite imagine it.
This morning, the queen seemed more present, right there with them in the dark Dondubhan corridors, touching the stone walls, dragging her fingers along the seams. She watched her bare toes curl against the newly laid rushes: evergreen juniper and the first long-leafed sea grasses of spring. She breathed deeply, as if relishing the cold, damp northern air, the thin scent of low hearth fires, and the first hint of fresh rye seeping up from the kitchens.
This morning, the queen also seemed melancholy.
In an hour, the dawn would break on her eldest daughter’s sixteenth birthday.
The past week had been tense: less laughter, and the music forced in the hall. Gaela had stomped in her soldier’s boots and Regan pulled too hard when she separated locks of Elia’s hair to braid. The king held their youngest daughter too tightly, and watched Dalat as if she might fall without warning into the deep black waters of the Tarinnish. Elia had asked her softly, twice,Mother, what is wrong with everyone?And both times Dalat cupped her daughter’s warm brown face in a hand as black as night, smiled, and replied only,Tomorrow is your sister’s sixteenth birthday.
The queen could bring herself to say no more.
For my birthday this year,Elia had said,I would like my own set of holy bones. Like Regan’s, and Brona’s. There are nine holy bones, and Father saysnine is the exact number of stars in the Lion of War, which is the constellation surrounding my birth star. And I will be nine years old.
Our Calpurlugh,Dalat had murmured, gently pinching Elia’s cheek. The queen had recalled her youngest daughter’s last birthday, when all she’d asked for was magic. Brona had braided tiny white flowers into Elia’s hair—starweed, as dangerous as any prophecy—and with a whispered word in the language of trees, the flowers burst into silver-white fire, exactly like a crown of stars. Elia had been pleased, but this terrible idea had blossomed in Dalat’s heart.
This morning, the queen chose an indirect path for her wandering, to mimic her usual ramble though the castle, but she knew her goal. Finally, when she reached Gaela’s chamber—not so far from her own as she’d made it seem—Dalat touched her hand to the smooth wooden door. A castle guard noted her from several paces down the hall where he was posted, and she smiled. His eyes politely flicked away.
Entering quietly, Dalat shut the door again behind her. Her first child maintained a sparse outer room, to discourage entertaining or comfort of any kind. Still smiling, the queen walked past the simple chairs at the cold hearth, a pile of leather armor, a stool stained from boot polish. Gaela did so prefer caring for her own tools. Pride lifted Dalat’s smile wider.
