Section 2

It is quiet outside now. The blood is cooling. It will clot soon. This takes longer than I had thought. I am still breathing; you show me that. A mote of gold. Darkness. A crimson meteor. Darkness. An orange prickle, fading to ember red. Darkness. A royal, raging dart of fire. Flame-heart. Firel.

There were women in those years, surely. For me, who had lost rule and regained it, Geber was mistress enough. Thorstang has always been my game. Tirs to Stiriand, Hasselian to Hethria, I matched Huesh with Holym and used outlanders to reconcile them. When they grew bumptious I found brigands to chasten both. I sent their dreams, I turned their minds, I watched their councils and laid their plans, moving them as I chose. In five years, my shadow covered Geber. Not for nothing was I born a Maerheage.

It was then I returned to Har Geber. Not a ragged exile; an aedric master, lord of the assembled folk; men drew away as my shadow passed. She did not. She shot between my stallion’s shoes out of a soothsayer’s alley and hallooed at me. "Hold up there! Are you an aedr or not?"

She was from Meldene. Slief Salond. Mine land. The copper had got into her hair. Her manners. Her voice. Being in fair humour, I chose to reply.

"I am a Maerheage," I said. "Maerdrigg is my name."

"Never mind your name! Are you aedric or not?"

I did not remove her. Perhaps I was amused. Few people believe I can be. I said, "And if I am?"

"Then come down off that trundling bonebag and be some use for once. Three days I scour this heap of sheep stink for an aedr, never a Meldener but’d know he was wanted and move about it, but not you! Judgment! That’s what you’re here for, and that’s what I want!"

It is true. The aedryx of Meldene feel themselves behoven to deal justice to such louts. She had come with her husband’s family. A pomegranate orchard beyond Penluxyl. Another handless westerner, the granddad bankrupted it, the husband took river fever; now his father denied she had ever had a share. "When it’s my ore the old mullock-heap bought it with, and not a copper kettle will he let me take! So get off your bonebag and do a time-search and give me proof!"

I see all Geber staring still. Not a few in mirth. Maerdrigg, their dreaded Cold Shadow, roped in mid-market by a western hoyden half my size and twice my voice. I looked down at her; arms akimbo, cornelian hair rampant, skin transparent with rage, eyes starting from her face. Black eyes; a black maerian, midnight shot with molten sparks.

I said, "You have asked."

However hurtful, phare is quick. She put a hand to her head. I told the old man to his straggling beard, "’Aye then, girl, it’s your metal, you’ve a right to shares’." Easy enough to quote what you have heard in the selfsame voice. All the dolts muttered, the ancient wished to curse. But they know the aedric arts.

She took him by the beard, never a glance at me, to begin extracting her copper on the spot. From his pony at my elbow, Maerond said, "Eygjafell will want for peace with her."

He had my eyes. His mother’s quiet. I let the crowd go. Then I said, "You have the Sight."

He blushed. His mother’s skin, but not her calm. I said, "How long have you known?"

I ought to have wondered already. To have looked. The other sights are art, which may be learnt. Yxphare, as for human seers, is a gift.

He told the ground, "The night you showed us … the maerian. I saw … this."

Darven was eeling his pony between us. Hazel eyes, a crystal sparkle, a saeveryr’s teasing mirth. "What a stepmother!" he cried. "Father, you might have done better by us than that!"

I had seen others in her bed. Never in her place. I said, "Be silent." They did not dare to speak again.

It was a freak, I told myself. The boy was unproven. It could never happen. Refusing to recall that yxphare may be irrational, ludicrous, impossible. But never a lie.

#

However, there were diversions. No longer merely solvent, I now had wealth. Among gifts from Bryfalas, on our southern strand, I saw fengsoth for the first time. A whim took me, to set you no longer in red gold, but amid lesser gems, a moon dimming stars. I gave orders. The divers of Tir Osgas died by scores to fulfill them. Yet it seemed insufficient. Then, passage-toll from Elond, I saw fenghend. Moon-white, blind stones, dug only in Meldene. Next summer, when all the folk of Geber and Meldene went down to the western market at the Granite River’s delta, the Maerheage went too.

With grief I admit it: Meldene’s wealth is more profuse, more varied than ours. If Har Geber is a cauldron, Har Berfalas is a world.

I met aedryx, amid those miles of wonder. Vaerheage from the land’s end, Findheage south from the snow eaves under the Histhiras, aedryx of Salond and Manuighend and of Ker Aedryx, so old a house that they name no family line. They are not builders, but tenants alone.

Also an aedr of Slief Berfylghja, where they mine the fenghend. A thin carroty man with pale grey eyes. Talking over a parcel of uncut stones, I mentioned you.

His eyes glistened. "A maerian? A white maerian? A big one? How big now, would it be?"

Pride outruns all wisdom. I cupped my palm. He whistled. Then he turned the talk. He sold me fifteen fenghend for a hundred cattle and five trained fighting stallions. When my sons were sated with Har Berfalas, we went home.

#

No need of far-sight to show me Ker Eygjafell now. The doors were broken then. The gate-keepers lay half-eaten. Wolves, stray dogs. The house was gutted, the people murdered or fled, the very horses slain. He must have found blacksmith’s tools, brought the forge up into the ilam. It was there I found the coffer, fire-blackened, twisted, chiseled through.

Perranor, a gay, trusting child, grasped Darven’s leg and began to cry. Darven stood dumb. Maerond was very white, huge black pupils in his gold-shot eyes. He did not touch me. Perhaps we both had that from Thilliansar.

He said, "It’s all right, father. You will get it back."

I had never sought to use his gift. I pressed him then. "Where?" I said. "When? How?"

It is cruelty to demand a time, a place, of yxpharyn. They see only the images. He said, "A beach. Perfalas?" Neither of us knew the name. "Sea-raiders. Their boat is red. Black, painted eyes. An aedr with red hair. He has something under his cloak. The sea is grey. Big waves. They are quarrelling.."

He shut his eyes. I held him up by the arm. "When?" I said. "Sunrise? Sunset? That is all I need to know."

Presently he answered, "It is sunrise."

#

Perfalas is in Meldene. Close to Granite River’s mouth. I watched there in pharaone, and the third sunrise, they came. I showed the chief corsair what his passenger carried with him.

He fought well, that Berfylghjan. All ten pirates he slew, and would have launched the boat himself, so I had to use wrevurx. He went inland from the storm. At Maer Manuighend, at Kerwash, at Bregnor, I whispered folk his secret, so greed and murder snapped behind his heels; yet still he made for home.

He too was aedric. He could break my human snares. But he was the weaker, eye to eye. I let him up into Slief Berfylghja. We fought above a cliff, and in defeat I made him leap over. I did not fear the greed of crows.

No other could be trusted to retrieve you. So, leaving Maerond to mend the household, I went back to Meldene alone.

#

Slief Berfylghja is hard country. He had gone up the Vurgil valley; thick mountain timber, grey, vertical cliffs, roofed in everlasting rain. I left my provisions, my horse, my patience, even my bow, before I won to those stark, lemon-pale ridgebacks rising to a cold hyacinth sky. The massif’s chine above Los Perraval.

I skirted the village, to goatbells and a falcon’s mew. Southward the spine of the watershed stepped up to Brenxvur’s grey, canted, eyetooth cusp. The country was empty. Fine red riengjer grass, thickets of dwarfed, writhen black ensal trees, sweeps and bastions and moraines of hindering stone. And cold. Thurvallyn flew from the cliff caves, untowardly disturbed by day. Among the fallen blocks of sandstone, I trod warily.

There was very little left. Shreds of grey cloak, a ring I remembered. Cracked, scattered bones. I sifted it all thrice, before I would admit you were not there.

On a grass-bedded block, I sat down. Berfylghja’s grey crest and leonine flanks stretched forever. Not the greatest aedr can look everywhere, even in farsight. I had left Maerond at home.

Beside me, a pebble fell. A woman said, "What do you seek?"

The grave-bay’s northern flank had a flying buttress, a planed, water-fluted shaft of freestanding stone. Halfway up was a natural balcony. All I could see was matt white skin, rampant cornelian hair. Black gold-shot eyes. Her smile. And her hand, upheld in airy sunlight, full of milky, gold-shot fire.

The great swordsmen fight without moving a muscle. Each thrust is pre-empted by its perfect riposte. Pharaone showed me the crevice under her. Not a hand wide, clear to earth’s heart for all I knew. Strike you from her with axynbrarve, kill her with asparre? She was prepared, she would drop you in the moment of death. Fengthir? At first sign of it, the same. Command? Ha. Illusion? An angry, deadly poisonous darre writhing round her?

She laughed. I ransacked my aedr’s armoury, and to each weapon that she-devil answered, <No good.>

An eygnor had sung his song twice when I conceded the vantage. I unbuckled my sword-belt and threw it away.

<But you’re an aedr,> she said. She was smiling still. Vixen-wise. <A Maerheage. Maerdrigg is my name.>

I conceded the fight as well as the vantage. I said, <Name your price.>

She was still smiling. It did not deceive me. She said, <You never asked, Why?>

<What need?> Never, since my grandfather scorned me, had I known such rage. <I saw those eyes at Har Berfalas. You are of the Vaerheage. Illegitimate. Untrained. I met you in Har Geber, and did not notice it. You remembered. You learnt the arts, and studied how to pay me best. No matter if he was a tool, an accomplice, a gift of luck. Whatever the price, you know I will pay it. Name your price.>

Her voice was thoughtful. "You are not over-praised." She weighed you in her hand. "It was hard work. But your pride was worth it." She giggled. "Tell me, if this were your sighted son and his soothseeing mother I held here, would you go so high?"

I decided it would be over-clever to show my rage. Mere displays can get out of hand. I said, "Is this the price?"

"How if I said, a kiss?"

The mind is harder to mask. I had come unguarded, she had established perfect rapport. She laughed, and threw the thought back in my own voice. "If I get near you, it will be more than kiss."

"They’re right, in Geber," she said, head tilted. "When you’re killing mad, your eyes look just like the maerian."

She turned you about, not looking away. "I’ve had time to know it, these few days. I understand you. How if I said, There is no price?"

I said, "All I ask is time."

She shivered. I do not think it was intent. Wind mewed in the rockface. Thurvallyn whistled, a key higher, in the neighbouring cave.

She said, "I could tell you, Die."

I smiled.

Her eyes seemed a little blacker. I had not thought that skin could show more white. I spoke in mind-speech, for the speed of it.

<Whatever price I pay, whether I win or lose it, time does not stop. The aedric dead, the Asthyn. They can come back. You hold me now, but it will end. Sooner or later, you must come down. And I shall be waiting. Alive – or dead.>

She shivered again. I said, <A shortsighted revenge.>

She blushed. Fiery, furnace red.

You coruscated in the quiver of her hand. Our minds met in the vision of foes that is clearer than perfect amity. I said, "So there was more to Why than that."

"Take your precious rock!" she screamed, and flung you. "And take these as well!"

They were big as fists. She had a good throwing mind. I shielded myself with axynbrarve. She never really forgave me for picking you up, and putting on my swordbelt, before I looked up at the eyrie that held only the sound of violent, enraged weeping, and said, "Come down."

#

That was Firel. By day a tempest, by night either white-hot passion or red-hot hostility; you could never forecast which. Never tranquil. Never wearisome either. There were other things she never forgave me. That even after Werhveth, and Delthiros, and Vorn himself, I never married her. Most of all, that she never took your place.

That is finite, definite. Here. After love. Her hair tangled round me. Long now, cornelian tendrils, riotous. She pulls at your pouch, which had never – has never – left my neck.

Unlike Delyn, she has to touch. You wake and die in the candlelight.

"This is us," she says. "Maerian. You’re shadow. I’m the fire." She sets a finger to your side. "This was her." In past-sight she is a jaybird; ruthless, unscrupulous. "Which am I?"

"Move your hand," I say, and touch that royal meteor. "That."

She grinds her elbow suddenly into my chest. "If it were this or me," she says fiercely, eyes an inch from mine. "Which?"

Silence, my only answer, is still a mistake. As her eyes change, I say, "You have been glad of it."

Then I Command her hand before she can hurl you. Muffle the explosion while I take you back. Half a night later, calmed, returned to passion, she still has a coldness, an indelible burn scar in her eyes.

#

Maerond saw it clearer. Naturally. We stand about her, he and Darven and Perranor, Werhveth and Delthiros and I, as she lies in the great bed; her cheeks are flushed, a glitter in the black eyes. "Your father and I named the others," she tells Maerond. "Let the future have this one. Foreseer," her mirth is not kindly, "will you give him a name?"

Maerond looks silently at the blurry face, the black birth hair, the eyes that will be black. At fourteen he is quiet, self-contained. No longer unsure with his gift. Having Delyn’s invulnerability, he does not use it willingly. But he is a Maerheage. Some challenges cannot be declined.

The fire crackles. The baby stirs and mewls. Maerond’s eyes film. Then he speaks with that unfamiliar, seer’s authority. "Vorn," he says. "Call him the Tooth."

Firel can never let well enough alone. "And why?" she asks.

He looks at her then, that cold, dangerous stare of the Maerheage provoked.

"Because," he says, "he will bite for himself alone. Because he was last, and will be first. But his last name will not be his first, and you will rue the way it is earned."

He walks out. For once, Firel finds nothing to say. But Darven laughs, taking up the aivrifel to sketch a cradle song. "It’s ill meddling with yxpharyn, stepmother. Surely you know that now?"

It was another thing she never forgave.

#

It is almost dark. The flames are sinking fast. I can hardly see your answer from my breast. Perhaps, after all, I shall need phathire to see you at the end.

Why should I blame Vorn? Youngest of six, all without right of wedlock. Bred by me, who had known what it is to be dispossessed, suckled by her, who could not brook such a future, raised a Maerheage, whose will is our only law. Mix fire with black-dust, and do not wonder if they burst the roof.

When she demanded to teach him herself, I was displeased, but not surprised. Nor wary. And when Darven died I was grieved, but neither suspicious nor surprised. He had always held his life as did Thilliansar, a stake to hazard, not to hoard. That he should stake it against Kemreswash in flood, and lose, was a natural grief.

But had I used phathire … past-sight would have shown me them on the mile-wide, thunderous, ponderous red brink: Darven laughing, poised, a saeveryr’s mockery, on the balls of his feet. Vorn – only twelve then – laughing too. White fire of teeth, black earth-fire of eyes under black curly hair. A mischief-making sprite. He wept when he told me; almost the truth. "I was only teasing, father. I said, Nobody could swim that. And he said, Did Maerond say so? And when I said, No, he said, Hold that. And gave me his hawk. And dived."

There is teasing in fun, and teasing in mortal earnest. And Darven was a Maerheage. Another challenge that could not be declined.

#

Perranor, no doubt, was both easier and harder. Harder because even I might suspect repetition. Easier because it was repetition. Because Vorn was older. Because of Perranor himself.

He was always trusting, a fault I could not erase. And careless. And in love with the hunt. Why should I doubt that a wild boar, a king of boar-kind, was too quick for him? As little as I thought a fourteen year old boy might know, let alone master, the high art of wreve-lanx, mastery of beasts. Besides, Maerond was hunting too.

Werhveth died of fever. Were I not an aedr, I might think that natural. Who could doubt her grief, the breast-beating, the tearing of hair, when his mother whose fear had driven her to nurse him in person, gave him an overdose? Besides, he was their full blood-kin. But I forget. I was his sire.

Maerond must have troubled them. An yxpharyr, who might foresee his own death. Who, forewarned, would not move to avert that? They hesitated long and long. I recall nights Firel shook me with weeping in the midst of her most violent desire. I doubt he wavered, though. I see us in the high ilam, eye to eye.

"Assuredly at sixteen," I am saying. "Assuredly outside wedlock. Assuredly, it is the way of the house. But that I ever Commanded a girl by force? No. Assuredly not."

I could not see why he should need it. He was handsome enough already, without counting that fire, that quicksilver mischief, which must come from the Vaerheage. Or is it Thilliansar’s?

No. There was no malice in Thilliansar’s waywardness.

At my words he colours. A mottled, angry flush. Like my grandfather, I smile. Unlike me, he masks his mind.

"As you wish, father." That confiding, subtly warning smile. "I’ll do it your way, after this." But he did it his way. Or her way. A straightforward, all or nothing gamble. Poison in Maerond’s cup.

#

At midnight his concubine stormed my inner chamber. Tore open the bed hangings, tumbled me out, heedless of fear or respect or custom, tear-drenched, sobbing at Firel, "Not you, darre! He wants his father – come quick, quick!"

The convulsions were in a lull. The night lamp lit the shambles of bedclothes, the hawk bating upside-down, their love supper’s cups. The fetid basins, his drenched white face. Flinging myself down to shake him, I could only manage, "Why?"

So many questions in that one question. He answered them all, in his own way.

<In their blood.> He smiled at me with his eyes.<Don’t shake me. You have melted far enough.> He was thirty-one. In the prime of life. Gifted, gallant, comely, adept. My first-born son.

He closed his eyes. I waited. Now I saw, I felt the answer gathering in me. But there would be time.

He went on answering. <I knew. Yes. Even with Darven –>

I said, "You should have said."

The concubine almost forsook him. Yet I had not raised my voice. He looked at me and answered, <It was yxphare.>

What use in saying, Yes? There is no dispute. Yxphare’s visions may be incredible, impossible, ludicrous. But they are true.

I said, "I have not done well by you. Darven was right."

He smiled, and touched you at my throat. <You are you. That is that. What is, cannot be anything else.>

I drew you out, and stared. Cold, silent, baleful white fire. But that which is, is. The boy was right.

He was smiling again. More faintly yet, as the dead smile. Cradling his head, the girl wept. The tears glistened like fengsoth on her cheeks, yet she stifled the sobs in her throat.

<Father? Just one thing. Send her –> He pointed with his eyes, <away first.>

<She will not go,> I said.

<She’s pregnant,> he answered. <She must.>

What more was needed? I said, <You have my word.>

<More than my grandmother had.>

Already the smile was fading, more remote. I let go his hand. "I have something to do," I said. "But be easy. I will come back."

He shook his head. <Do what befits us. But you will not come back.>

So I went to avenge him, already knowing it would be my death.

#

Did Firel watch? Did she gamble on my love or my stupidity for survival, or face straight to death? I have not troubled to find out. I went back to the inner chamber and caught her will with a Command, and as she stood powerless I took her by the throat. "This time," I told her, "it will not be a kiss."

Then I went to find my son.

His lamp was lit. His back was to the door. Beyond him was my grandfather’s great wisdom-mirror, where he had looked on his farsight journeys to the stars. My son was laughing. Some natures only find true life in the hands of death.

I made to spin him round. He foiled my Command. <Come, father,> he said. <Eye to eye, between us? It is not fit.>

<No,> he said, her perfect enmity matching my unvoiced thought. <I did not expect you to be stupid. Any more than Maerond. I knew he would see the poison. I did not look for him to drain the cup.>

<You would have settled in the hall?> I said. <A clean, fair fight?>

<And winner take all,> he answered. <Yes.>

<You are right.> I could see my eyes in the mirror. She was right too. They did look like you. <Eye to eye between us two is not fit.> With axynbrarve I lifted his dagger from the wall-stand.<You may have the sword. You merit some handicap.>

He did look startled then.

<We are aedryx,> I said, <and kinsmen. Our arts will cancel. Only the men are left.>

<Father,> he said. <Wait – if you took the maerian – if we agreed – >

<Come,> I said, moving forward. <Maerond dared the poison. Do you fear to gamble on the knife?>

"Father!" he cried, hands to the mirror, "I never meant, I didn’t -!" I mind-snatched to turn him and he struck me, axynbrarve, with the dagger into the side of my throat.

#

It is almost dark. And so very quiet. Is it will, or nature, that keeps me alive? Or his mercy? Or his wits? Fear at the end to rob me, or does he eschew the cost?

That last past-sight is blurred. He dodges, I follow. Blood tracked through the house, the people roused, horror, dissension, war. My partisans drag me upstairs, a last stand in the ilam door. The girl jerks me through, snibs the bars. Death-cries, a half-hearted battering outside. Then the swelling clamour of the sack.

Her eyes are close above me. Grey as fenghend, but not blind. I say, "You must go."

"Why?" In rage, she is colder than I.

When I do not answer, she goes on. "He bade me open a vein for him. Why should I not open mine?"

"You." I can whisper still. "You are with child."

She starts to ask, How do you know? And stops. If she is not aedric, she is worthy of the blood.

"How?"

"Behind the bed." Speech is thickening, but I cannot use the mind. "Secret. Passage. Postern. Thought-lock." I have just strength for it. "Open. Now."

She straightens. Stops. Bend suddenly, taking my face between her hands. Odd, that a mere woman of Geber, however beautiful, can study me without fear.

"Cold Shadow," she says. Her voice breathes music, still. "But you loved him too."

"My son… Why not?" My hand closes upon you. "Only … always… this first."

She gives you the stilled fear we show serpents. Then she sinks onto her heels beside me and puts out her hand. "Show me." Very softly. "No, not for itself. I am an ystanor."

Why did I do it? For his, her, my, Delyn’s sake? She cupped you in her palms. Her voice was blurred too, mingled in the fire’s roar.

I cannot remember it all. Vorn, and his line the Vyrnes. Named from his nickname, as Maerond saw. Vyrne. The Last. A son of his, mated with a daughter of some new western line. Heagian. I saw that image for myself. A tree, leafed and flowered in fire. Something about east and west united, broken, the Vyrnes destroyed. The fall of Ker Eygjafell. Of Ker Aedryx. Of east, of west, of every aedric line, wiped out, blood obliterated, under a field of sand.

An offshoot, concealed in the north. A new line rising, grafted upon visions of the fire. Lore guarded by her children, shards hoarded from the past. "My grandson foresees it." I hear her voice quite clearly, an aivrifel’s last, receding chords. "He will be the greatest yxpharyr of all. And he will see the one who brings it back."

She lays you down again. Upon my chest, in my cupped hands. Then she looks into my eyes, and smiles.

"Back to you," she says. The aivrifel’s ending. "Because he knows its name." She bends forward. Her hair trails across me, black silk, scent of jasmine. Understanding. Absolution. Farewell.

It has darkened altogether. But I shall not need past-sight after all. I can feel my eyes closed, but simple memory paints you on my eyelids. White, profound depths, an ocean of white, drifts of prickling golden fire. I understand now. No future can give that past an absolution. Yet I cannot hate you, despite it all. What is, is. As we are. Shadow, fire. Flesh, stone. Bound together. Not to be divided. Maerdrigg’s maerian.

THE END

Copyright © 2009 by Sylvia Kelso