The Last Light of the Sun

It gave her, in truth, a measure of satisfaction. She knew that she ought properly to atone for that, in chapel. She had no intention of doing so. There were two gashes on her throat and neck from an Erling axe. There was blood on her body, and on her green gown. She had been expecting to die in her own chambers tonight. Had told Siawn and his men to let the Erling kill her. She could still hear herself speaking those words. Resolute then, she’d had to conceal shaking hands after.

Had, accordingly, little sympathy to spare for Erling raiders when they were slain, and that applied to the five her father ordered executed when it became evident they were not going to bring any ransom.

They were dispatched where they stood in the torch-lit yard. No words spoken, no ceremony, pause for prayer. Five living men, five dead men. In the time one might lift and drink a cup of wine. Brynn’s men began walking around the yard with torches, killing those Erlings who lay on the ground, wounded, not yet dead. They had come to raid, take slaves, rape and kill, the way they always came.

A message needed to be sent, endlessly: the Cyngael might not worship gods of storm and sword, or believe in an afterworld of endless battle, but they could be— some of them could be—as bloody and as ruthless as an Erling when need was.

She was still outside when her father spoke to the older, red-bearded raider. Brynn walked up to the man, held again between two of their people, more tightly than before. He had broken free once—and saved Brynn from an arrow. Her father, Rhiannon realized, was dealing with a great anger because of that.

“How many of you were here?” Brynn bit off the words, speaking quietly. He was never quiet, she thought.

“Thirty, a few more.” No hesitation. The man was almost as big as her father, Rhiannon saw. And of an age.

“As many left behind?”

“Forty, to guard the ships. Take them off the coast, if necessary.”

“Two ships?”

“Three. We had some horses, to come inland.”

Brynn had dressed by now, was holding his own sword, though there was no need for it. He began to pace as they spoke. The red-bearded Erling watched his movements, standing between two men. They were gripping his arms tightly, Rhiannon saw. She was certain her father was going to kill him.

“You rode straight for this farmhouse?”

“Yes, that was the idea. If we could find it.”

“How did you find it?”

“Captured a shepherd.”

“And he is?”

“Dead,” said the Erling. “I can take you to him, if you want.”

“You expected this house to be undefended?”

The man smiled a little, then, and shook his head. “Not defended by your warband, certainly. Young leaders. They made a mistake.”

“You weren’t one of them?”

The other man shook his head.

“The one who held me brought you here? Of the line of the Volgan?”

The Erling nodded.

“Elder grandson?” Brynn had stopped in front of him again.

“Younger. Ivarr’s the elder.”

“But he didn’t lead.”

The man shook his head. “Yes and no. It was his idea. But Ivarr’s … different.”

Brynn was stabbing his blade into the earth now.

“You came to burn this farm?”

“And kill you, and any of your family here, yes.”

He was so calm, Rhiannon thought. Had he made his peace with dying? She didn’t think that was it. He’d surrendered, said he didn’t want to be killed, back in her chamber.

“Because of the grandfather?”

The man nodded. “Your killing him. Taking the sword. These two decided they were of an age to avenge it, since their father had not. They were wrong.”

“And why are you here? You’re as old as I am.”

First hesitation. In the silence Rhiannon could hear the horses and the crackle of torches. “Nothing to keep me in Vinmark. I made a mistake, too.”

Part of an answer, Rhiannon thought, listening closely.

Brynn was staring at him. “Coming, or before you came?”

Another pause. “Both.”

“There’s no ransom for you, is there.”

“No,” the man said frankly. “Once there might have been.”

Brynn’s gaze was steady. “Maybe. Were you ransomed last time you were taken here, or did you escape?”

Again, a silence. “Escaped,” the Erling admitted.

He had decided, Rhiannon realized, that there was no hope in anything but honesty.

Brynn was nodding. “I thought so. I believe I remember you. The red hair. You did raid with Volganson, didn’t you? You escaped east, twenty-five years ago, after he died. Through the hills. All the way to the Erling settlements on the east coast. They chased you, didn’t they? You used a cleric as hostage, if I remember.”

A murmur, from those listening.

“I did. I released him. He was a decent enough man.” Brynn’s voice altered slightly.

“That was a long way to go.”

“By Ingavin’s blind eye, I wouldn’t want to do it again,” the Erling said dryly.

Another silence. Brynn resumed his pacing. “There’s no ransom for you. What can you offer me?”

“A hammer, sworn loyalty.”

“Until you escape again?”

“I said I wouldn’t do it again, that journey. I was young then.” He looked down and away for the first time, then back up. “I have nothing to go home to, and this place is as good as any for me to end my days. You can make me a slave, to dig ditches or carry water, or use me more wisely, but I will not escape again.”

“You will take the oath and come to the faith of Jad?”

Another slight smile, torchlight upon him. “I did that last time.”

Brynn didn’t return the smile. “And recanted?”

“Last time. I was young. I’m not any more. Neither Ingavin nor your sun god are worth dying for, in my judgement. I suppose I am a heretic to two faiths. Kill me?”

Brynn was standing still again, in front of him.

“Where are the ships? You will guide us to them.”

The Erling shook his head. “Not that.”

Rhiannon saw her father’s expression. He wasn’t normally someone she feared.

“Yes that, Erling.”

“This is the price of being allowed to live?”

“It is. You spoke of loyalty. Prove it.”

The Erling was still a moment, considering. Torches moved in the yard around them. Men were being carried inside, or helped if they could walk.

“Best kill me then,” the red-bearded man said.

“If I must,” said Brynn.

“No,” said someone else, stepping forward. “I will take him as a man of mine. My own guard.”

Rhiannon turned, her mouth falling open.

“Let me be clear on this,” her mother went on, coming to stand beside her husband, looking at the Erling. Rhiannon hadn’t realized she was even with them. “I believe I understand. You would fight an Erling band that came upon us now, but will not reveal where your fellows are?”

The Erling looked at her. “Thank you, my lady,” he said. “Certain things done for life make the life unworthy. You become sick with them. They poison you, your thoughts.” He turned back to Brynn. “They were shipmates,” he said.

Brynn’s gaze held that of the Erling another moment, then he looked to his wife. “You trust him?”

Enid nodded her head.

He was still frowning. “He can easily be killed. I will do it myself.”

“I know you will. You want to. Leave him to me. Let us get to our work. There are wounded men here. Erling, what is your name?”

“Whatever name you give me,” the man said.

The Lady Enid swore. It was startling. “What is your name?” she repeated.

A last hesitation, then that wry expression again. “Forgive me. My mother named me Thorkell. I answer to it.”

RHIANNON WATCHED the Erling go with her mother. He’d said before, in her rooms, that he could be ransomed. A lie, it now emerged. From the look of him—an old man still raiding—Helda had said she doubted it. Helda was older, knew more about these things. She was the calmest of them, too, had helped Rhiannon simply by being that way. They had almost died. They could have died tonight. The one named Thorkell had saved her father and herself, both.

Rhiannon, hands steady as she gathered linens and carried heated water with Helda for the wounded in the hall, remembered the wind of that hammer flying past her face. Realized—already—that she would likely do so all her life, carrying the memory like the two scars on her throat.

Tonight the world had altered, very greatly, because there was also the other thing, which ought to have been pushed away or buried deep or lost in all the bloodshed, but wasn’t. Alun ab Owyn had ridden an Erling horse out of the yard, pursuing the archer who’d shot at her father. He hadn’t yet come back.

Brynn ordered a pit to be dug in the morning, beyond the cattle pen, and the bodies of the slain raiders shovelled in. Their own dead—nine so far, including Dai ab Owyn—had been taken into the room attached to the chapel, to be cleansed and clothed, laid out for the rituals of burial. Woman’s work after battle, when it could be done. Rhiannon had never performed these rites before. They had never been attacked at home before. Not in her lifetime. They didn’t live near the sea.

They tended the wounded in the banquet hall, the dead in the room by the chapel, lights burning through Brynnfell. Her mother stopped by her once, long enough to look at her neck and then lay a salve—briskly, expressionlessly—and wrap the two wounds with a linen cloth.

“You won’t die,” she said, and moved on. Rhiannon knew that. She would never now be sung for a pure white, swan-like neck, either. No matter. No matter at all. She carried on, following her mother. Enid knew what to do here, as in so many things.

Rhiannon helped, as best she could. Bathing and wrapping wounds, speaking comfort and praise, fetching ale with the servant girls for the thirsty. One man died on a table in their hall, as they watched. A sword had taken off most of one leg, at the thigh, they couldn’t stop the bleeding. His name was Bregon. He’d liked fishing, teasing the girls, had freckles on his nose and cheeks in summer. Rhiannon found herself weeping, which she didn’t want but couldn’t seem to do much about. Not very long ago, when tonight had begun, there had been a feast, and music. If Jad had shaped the world differently, time could run backwards and make it so the Erlings had never come. She kept moving a hand, touching the cloth around her neck. She wanted to stop doing that, too, but couldn’t.

Four men carried Bregon ap Moran from the hall on a table board, out the doors and across the yard to the room by the chapel where the dead men were. She looked at Helda and they followed. He used to make jokes about her hair, Rhiannon remembered, called her Crow when she was younger. Brynn’s men had not been shy with his children, though that had changed when she came into womanhood, as did much else.

She would lay him out for burial—with Helda’s help, for she didn’t know what to do. There were half a dozen women in the room, working among the dead by lantern light. The cleric, Cefan, was kneeling with a sun disk between his hands, unsteadily intoning the ritual words of the Night Passage. He was young, visibly shaken. How could he not be, Rhiannon thought.

They set Bregon’s board down on the floor. The tables were covered with other bodies already. There was water, and linen clothing. They had to wash the dead first, everywhere, comb out their hair and beards, clean their fingernails, that they might go to Jad fit to enter his halls if the god, in mercy, allowed. She knew every man lying here.

Helda began removing Bregon’s tunic. It was stiff with blood. Rhiannon went to get a knife to help her cut it away, but then she saw that there was no one by Dai ab Owyn, and she went and stood over the Cadyri prince where he lay.

Time didn’t run backwards in the world they had. Rhiannon looked down at him, and she knew it would be a lie to pretend she hadn’t seen him staring at her when she’d walked into the hall, and another lie to say it was the first time something of that sort had happened. And a third one (a failing of the Cyngael, threes all the time?) to deny that she’d enjoyed having that effect on men. The passage from girl to woman being negotiated in pleasure, an awareness of growing power.

No pleasure now, no power that meant anything at all. She knelt beside him on the stone floor and reached out and brushed his brown hair back. A handsome, clever man. Needful as night’s end, he had said. No ending to night now, unless the god allowed it for his soul. She looked at the wound in him, the dark blood clotted there. It occurred to her that it was proper that Brynn’s daughter be the one to attend to a prince of Cadyr, their guest. Cefan, not far away, was still chanting, his eyes closed, his voice wavering away from him like the smoke from the candles, rising up. The women whispered or were silent, moving back and forth, doing their tasks. Rhiannon swallowed hard, and began to undress the dead man.

“What are you doing?”

She’d thought, actually, that she would know if he came into a room; that already she would know when that happened. She turned and looked up.

“My lord prince,” she said. Rose and stood before him. Saw the cousin, Gryffeth, and the high priest behind, his face grave, uneasy.

“What are you doing?” Alun ab Owyn repeated. His expression was rigid, walled off.

“I am … attending to his body, my lord. For … laying out?” She heard herself stammering. She never did that.

“Not you,” he said flatly. “Someone else.”

She swallowed. Had never lacked courage, even as a child. “Why so?” she said.

“You dare ask?” Behind, Ceinion made a small sound and a gesture, then stood still.

“I must ask,” Rhiannon said. “I know of nothing I might ever have done to Owyn’s house to cause this to be said. I grieve for our people, and for your sorrow.”

He stared at her. It was difficult, in this light, to see his eyes, but she had seen them in the hall, before.

“Do you?” he said finally, blunt as a hammer. She couldn’t stop thinking of hammers. “Do you even begin to grieve? My brother went outside alone and unarmed because of you. He died hating me because of you. I will live with that the rest of my days. Do you realize this? At all?”

There was something hot, like a fever, coming off him now. She said, desperately, “I believe I understand what you are saying. It is unjust. I didn’t make him feel—”

“A lie! You wanted to make every man love you, to play at it. A game.”

Her heart was pounding now. “You are … unjust, my lord.” Repeating herself.

“Unjust? You tested that power every time you entered a room.”

“How do you know any such thing?” How did he know?

“Will you deny it?”

She was grieving, her heart twisting, because of who it was, saying these words to her. But she was also Brynn’s daughter, and Enid’s, and not raised to yield, or to cry.

“And you?” she asked, lifting her head. Her bandage chafed. “You, my lord? Never tested yourself? Never went on … cattle raids, son of Owyn? Into Arberth, perhaps? Never had someone hurt, or die, when you did that? You and your brother?”

She saw him check, breathing hard. She was aware that he was, amazingly, near to striking her. How had the world come to this? The cousin stepped forward, as if to stop him.

“It is wrong!” was all Alun could manage to say, fighting for self-control.

“No more than the things a boy does, becoming a man. I cannot steal cattle or swing a sword, ab Owyn!”

“Then go east to Sarantium!” he rasped, his voice altered. “If you want to deal in power like that. Learn … learn how to poison like their empresses, you’ll kill so many more men.”

She felt the colour leave her face. The others in the room had stopped moving, were looking at them. “Do you … hate me so much, my lord?”

He didn’t reply. She had thought, truly, he would say yes, had no idea what she’d have done if he did so. She swallowed hard. Needed her mother, suddenly. Enid was with the living, in the other room.

She said, “Would you wish the Erling hadn’t thrown his hammer to save my life?” Her voice was level, hands steady at her sides. Small blessings, he wouldn’t know how much this cost her. “Others died here, my lord prince. Nine of us now. Likely more, before sunrise. Men we knew and loved. Are you thinking only of your brother tonight? Like the Erling my father killed, who demanded one horse when he had men taken with him?”

His head snapped back, as from a blow. He opened his mouth, closed it without speaking. Their eyes locked. Then turning, blundering past the cleric and his cousin, he rushed from the room. Ceinion called his name. Alun never broke stride.

Rhiannon put a hand to her mouth. There was a need to weep, and a greater need not to do so. She saw the cousin, Gryffeth, take two steps towards the door, then stop and turn back. After a moment, he went and knelt beside the dead man. She saw him extend a hand and touch the place where the blade had gone in.

“Child,” whispered the high cleric, her father’s friend, her mother’s.

She didn’t look at him. She was staring, instead, at the open doorway. The emptiness of it, where someone had gone out. Had walked into the night, hating her—the way he’d said his brother had left him. A pattern? Set and sealed with iron and blood?

You can’t have what you want, Helda had said, even before everything else.

“How did this happen?” she asked, of the cleric, of the world.

Holy men usually spoke of the mysterious ways of the god.

“I do not know,” Ceinion of Llywerth murmured, instead.

“You’re supposed to know,” she said, turning to look at him. Heard her voice break. Hated that. He stepped forward, drew her into his arms. She let him, lowered her head. Didn’t weep, at first, and then she did. Heard the cousin praying over the body on the floor beside them.

Three things not well or wisely done, the triad went. Approaching a forest pool by night. Making wrathful a woman of spirit. Drinking unwatered wine alone.

They did things by threes in this land, Alun thought savagely. Obviously it was time for him to claim one of the wine jars and carry it off, drain it by himself until oblivion came down.

He wished in that moment, striding through the empty farmyard without the least idea where he meant to go, that the Erling arrow had killed him in the wood. The world was unassuageably awry. His heart had a hollow inside it where Dai had been. It was not going to fill; there was nothing to fill it with.

He saw a glimmering of light on the treed slope beyond the yard.

Not a torch. It was pale, motionless, no flickering.

He found himself breathing shallowly, as if he were hiding from searchers. He squeezed shut his eyes. The glow was still there when he opened them. There was no one else in the farmyard now. A spring night, the breeze mild, dawn a long way off still. The stars brilliant overhead, in patterns that told their stories of ancient glory and pain, figures from before the faith of Jad came north. Mortals and animals, gods and demigods. The night seemed heavy and endless, like something into which one fell.

A shining on the slope. Alun undid his belt, let fall his sword, walked through the gate of the yard and up the hill.

SHE SEES HIM drop the iron. Knows what that means. He can see her now. He has been in the pool with them. For some of them, after that, the faeries can be seen. Her impulse, very strong, is to flee. It is one thing to hover near, to watch them, unseen. This is something else.

She makes herself stay where she is, waiting. Has a sudden, fearful thought, scans with her mind’s eye: the spruaugh, who might tell of this, is curled asleep in the hollow of a tree.

The man comes through the gate, closes it behind him, begins to climb the slope. He can see her. She almost does fly away then, though they can’t really fly, not any more. She is trembling. Her hair shivers through its colours, again and again.

SHE WAS SMALLER than the queen, half a head smaller than he was. Alun stopped, just below where she stood. They were beside the thicket, on the mostly open slope. She’d been half hidden behind a sapling, came out when he stopped, but touching it. Utterly still, poised for flight. A faerie, standing before him in the world he’d thought he’d known.

She was slender, very long fingers, pale skin, wide-set eyes, a small face, though not a child’s. She was clad in something green that left her arms free and showed her legs to the knee. A belt made of flowers, he saw. Flowers in her hair—which kept changing colour as he looked, dizzyingly. The wonder of that, even under stars. He could only see clearly by the light she cast. That, as much as anything, telling him how far he’d come, walking up from the farmyard. The half-world, they named it in the tales. Where he was now. Men were lost here, in the stories. Never came back, or returned a hundred years after they’d walked or ridden away, everyone they knew long dead. He could see her small breasts through the thinness of what she wore. Did they feel the cold, faeries?

There was an ache in his throat.

“How … how am I seeing you?” He had no idea if she could even speak, use words. His words.

Her hair went pale, nearly white, came back towards gold but not all the way. She said, “You were in the pool. I … saved you there.” Her voice, simply speaking words, made him realize he had never, really, made music with his harp, or sung a song the way it should be sung. He felt that he would weep if he were not careful.

“How? Why?” He sounded harsh to his own ears, after her. A bruising of the starlit air.

“I stopped your horse, in the shallows. They would have killed you, had you come nearer the queen.”

She’d answered one question, not the other. “My brother was there.” It was difficult to speak.

“Your brother is dead. His soul is with the Ride.”

“Why?”

Reddened hair now, crimson in summer dark. Her shining let him see. “I took it for the queen. First dead of the battle tonight.”

Dai. No weapon, when he had gone out. First dead. Whatever that meant. But she was telling him. Alun knelt on the damp, cool grass. His legs were weak. “I should hate you,” he whispered.

“I do not know what that means,” she said. Music.

He thought about that, and then of the girl, Brynn’s daughter, in that room by the chapel, where his brother’s body lay. He wondered if he would ever play the harp again.

“What … why does the queen …?”

Saw her smile, first time, a flashing of small, white teeth. “She loves them. They excite her. Those who have been mortals. From your world.”

“Forever?”

The hair to violet. The slim, small body so white beneath the pale green garment. “What could be forever?”

That hollow, in his heart. “But after? What happens … to him?”

Grave as a cleric, as a wise child, as something so much older than he was. “They go from the Ride when she tires of them.”

“Go where?”

So sweet a music in this voice. “I am not wise. I do not know. I have never asked.”

“He’ll be a ghost,” Alun said then, with certainty, on his knees under stars. “A spirit, wandering alone, a soul lost.”

“I do not know. Would not your sun god take him?”

He placed his hands on the night grass beside him. The coolness, the needed ordinariness of it. Jad was beneath the world now, they were taught; doing battle with demons for his children’s sake. He echoed her, without her music. “I do not know. Tonight, I don’t know anything. Why did you … save me in the pool?” The question she hadn’t answered.

She moved her hands apart, a rippling, like water. “Why should you die?”

“But I am going to die.”

“Would you rush to the dark?” she asked.

He said nothing. After a moment, she took a step nearer to him. He remained motionless, kneeling, saw her hand reach out. He closed his eyes just before she touched his face. He felt, almost overwhelmingly, the presence of desire. A need: to be taken from himself, from the world. To never come back? She had the scent of flowers all about her, in the night.