The Phantom Queen Awakes (12 page)

Her father found her as she finished lining
the crates with straw.

“You wanted to speak with the holy men about a
sacrifice?”

Lys stood and laid a hand on his arm. “Yes,
Vater. I need to talk to them before something else bad
happens.”

“They have sent an escort. They already await
you.” He turned away from her with a forlorn expression.

****

She staggered out of her session with the holy
men in the deep forest, stunned but sure of her decision to tell
them of Cathubodua and her oath. A priest guided her to his
dwelling set into the base of the mountain. He prepared the potion
she had requested and shut her in after she quaffed the
Trank
. Before long, the room darkened to a small pool of
light that surrounded her as she knelt on the rough wooden
floor.

Cathubodua stood before her wearing a blood
red tunic under a coal black leather corset, her head held proud
and hair streaming out to her sides like black birds in flight.
“Why are you here?” she demanded.

“I offer myself to rid my children of their
bond,” Lys replied.

“I accept your offer, but will not release
your children. You have sworn them to me.”

“What do you mean?”

She pulled iron from her scabbard, a long and
cruel looking blade that shone metallic red in the pale light. “You
bound them with your oath. They must honor this. In return, my
gifts remain.”

“What will you do with them?”

“They must travel to
Ande-dubnos
as you
have done. And perform their duties as the need arises.” She laid
the tip of the knife at Lys’ neck and drew a tiny ribbon of blood.
It dripped onto her hands as she knelt and her fingers
trembled.

Lys kept herself still. “And after I am
gone?”

She nodded once. “They will be called to me
when their time arises to serve.”

“This I cannot change. So I must accept
it.”

The young warrior scored a second red line on
the other side of Lys’ neck. Her voice became treacherously low. “I
am aggrieved by the breaking of your bond to me.”

“I offer my life in exchange.”

She spat to the side in fury. “That is not
enough.”

Lys’ head shot up in fear. She felt the skin
on her neck tear and more blood drip down. “What more do you
want?”

Cathubodua placed her sword across her bent
knee as she knelt to cup Lys’ chin in her hand. “Hear me well and
tell them. I lay a geis upon you, Lys ab Gysell, and your ancestors
from this day forward.”

Lys’ breath rasped sharply. “Forever? Nothing
is forever.”

“No. You have the right there. Nine times nine
generations will sacrifice as you do now. Then I am
appeased.”

Nine times nine ― forever in deed if not in
name. “How will you extract it?”

“The women and men in your family, both Iaun’s
and Gwened’s children, are now bound to love one another to keep
the blood pure. That will be the way. All who breed true will
retain the power. And the responsibility.”

Lys exhaled a breath. “A merciful geis. My
children will be bound to love each other. And to serve the
goddess.”

Her fierce smile with lips drawn back more
resembled a dead man’s than a living woman’s. “They will love only
blood of their blood and that is not all.” She rose and cleaned her
blade on her pants. “The women will carry their children to term.
And then they will die. All those who breed true. Nine times nine
it must be, in unbroken succession before the geis is
lifted.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Cathubodua said as she rammed her
sword through Lys’ heart. “The breaking of a blood price needs to
be paid in kind.”

Lys woke before the dawn, surprised that she
still drew breath but realized that such a death would have been
far too easy to appease the raven queen. The door of the priest’s
hut had already been opened. She wandered into the village and
heard the stirrings of life. A few minutes later her father
approached her. His pallor as he held tight onto the hands of
Gwened’s children confirmed that he had learned her fate. She
hugged them to her one last time before she sent them back to their
hut.

“Tochter, I do not understand why you do this
thing,” he told her. “Do not throw away your life for nothing. It’s
not too late.”

She laid her hands on his shoulders as she
looked up to him. “Before Gwened died the hero’s death, I would
have agreed. But my duty is to my children and my people now. I
have already doomed them to much suffering.”

He shook his head. “What do you
mean?”

She told him the tale of her pact with the
warrior goddess all those years ago. “I was greedy and vain. I
should have heeded my heart instead of my lust for
power.”

“Make another bargain with her.” Her father’s
face reminded Lys of a crazed animal trying to free itself from a
trap. “A father should not have to see his children cross over
before him.”

“And now you understand the reason for my
choice.” Lys smiled sadly. “She has placed a geis on the
children.”

He paled even further. “The children? Which
ones?”

“All of my children, Vater. Her sword has two
edges. The Raven has cursed them, but they will also be blessed
with prosperity.”

His jaws clenched as he fought back tears, and
his look of hurt broke her heart. She sent him away before she
prepared for her final journey.

****

The wind blew cold across the
Hohes
Venn
. Lys faced the sunrise as she waited for the ritual to be
completed and thought back on her life. She smiled at the good
fortune she had been blessed with in spite of her folly. The
priests tied her hands and feet together behind her back and laid
the mesh of wood that would weigh her down next to her. One priest
darted forward, intending to strike her with a club of stone, a
ritual that honored the old gods, but the others held him back. She
hobbled into the sediment-choked bog on her own.

Lys lay on her back as they attached the wood
to her and tried to force back the panic that urged her to
struggle. Once the wood became soaked it would hold her down in her
watery grave. They pushed her into the thick muck and left her to
sink into the abyss.

Eyes closed. The popping sound of earth
saturated with water filled her ears. She heard someone calling her
name. Lys opened her eyes. Her father stood over her with a
Trank
in his hand. She smiled at him and opened her mouth.
He held her head up as she drank and when she had finished, he
disappeared.

Lys relaxed her senses and let her mind escape
the fen. After a time she felt nothingness come upon her. She rose
and walked in search of Ankou. She found him sitting a short
distance away, as if waiting for her. He stood and held out his
hand as she approached.

“Come,” he said. “I have prepared a place for
you.”

“And my children?”

Ankou bent to face her fully, his expression
grave. “Those who must suffer will be guided as you have been. I
will bring them.”

Satisfied, she followed him into the depths of
the
Anderwelt
to await the arrival of her sons and
daughters, one after the other.

****

Afterword

‘The Raven’s Curse’ was initially inspired by
several visits to Brittany and an appreciation for the unique
culture that the Breton people are striving to maintain. Those
experiences, in turn, sparked an intense fascination with the
Continental Celts. The story idea grew out of a natural desire to
flesh out the back-story for the Schattenreich fantasy series. The
completed story provided an unexpected, but vital, facet to the
series itself. And it was a terrific chance to write some
historical fantasy. More such tales are planned.

Biography

Sharon Kae Reamer is an American seismologist
working at the University of Cologne, Germany. Sharon writes
speculative fiction and has recently finished her third (as yet
unpublished) novel in the
Schattenreich
fantasy series
(www.sharonreamer.com). In her spare time, she also works as an
assistant editor for the e-zine
Allegory
. She lives with her
husband, son and Ramses the cat, on the outskirts of
Cologne.

****

Katharine
Kerr

The Lass From Far Away

Eldidd,
1060

“You ask me if the
gods truly exist. Consider this: human hands make a glass vessel,
then fill it with mead. Does the bit of Rhwmani glass have power in
itself? Of course not! Yet the mead will make many a strong man
drunk.”

~ The Secret Book of Cadwallon the
Druid

On a summer morning she walked out of the sea
onto the beach near the town of Cannobaen. Water trickled down her
pale brown face and oozed from her straight dark hair. Her thin
linen shift stuck to her body, all skin and bone except for her
swollen stomach. For a long time she stood, merely stood on the hot
sand and looked at the cliffs with bewildered hazel eyes. With a
sigh she sat down and continued studying the cliffs as if they
might tell her what to do.

Some yards down the beach, black rocks jutted
from the ebbing tide. With their long blue skirts tied half-way up
their thighs, a woman and a half-grown lass were clambering over
them to harvest the bright green seaweed, as fine and sleek as a
horse’s mane, that grew below the water line. The younger paused,
straightened up to rest her back, and looked idly around
her.

“Mam,” Olwen said, “there’s a castaway come
out of the water.”

The older woman balanced her basket of laver
weed on one hip and looked where the younger pointed.

“By the gods!” Cobylla, the soapmaker’s wife,
said. “You’re right enough. I’d not heard of any ships going down.
Let’s go see what we can do for the poor thing.”

When they gained the dry beach they paused to
untie their skirts, then slogged across the hot soft sand. Although
they called out greetings, the lass never turned her head, not even
when they reached her.

“Look at her!” Cobylla said. “Starved and
exhausted, poor thing.” She handed her basket to Olwen, then knelt
in front of the lass. “Here now, lass. Let’s get you to
safety.”

The lass raised her head and looked at her.
Flies were crawling across her cheek. Cobylla reached out and
flicked them away.

“From the look of her,” Olwen said, “she
doesn’t understand a word you’re saying. Here, her skin’s brown.
She must be from Bardek.”

“You’re right enough, and I’ll wager she only
speaks that nasty strange tongue of theirs. You’ve got the water
bottle. Hand it over.”

The bottle, made of leather boiled in wax,
hung from a thong at Olwen’s kirtle. She untied it, shaking it to
judge how full it might be. At the sound of sloshing water the lass
jerked her head around to stare, her cracked lips
half-parted.

“Now she understood that sound well enough,”
Olwen said. “She must be near dead from thirst.”

Cobylla took out the stopper and handed the
bottle to the lass, whose hands shook so badly that she nearly
dropped and spilled it. Cobylla grabbed it, then helped her hold it
to her mouth. The lass drank in long gulps, pausing only to gasp
for air, until the bottle ran dry. When she let go of the bottle,
she whispered a few words. Although Olwen knew no Bardekian, she
could guess that they added up to “my thanks”.

“Well, now.” Cobylla got up, shaking her head.
“We can’t leave her here.” She held out a hand.

The lass hesitated, then slowly reached out
and took the proffered hand. Cobylla pulled her up only to have her
stagger and nearly fall. When Cobylla put an arm around her waist,
the lass leaned against her.

“She’s trembling, poor little thing,” Cobylla
said. “She’ll never be able to reach the town.”

“I’ll run on ahead and fetch one of the men,”
Olwen said. “She’ll be easy to carry, I wager. She’s so
thin.”

Olwen, however, found help nearer to hand than
back in Cannobaen. She crossed the beach, climbed the decrepit
wooden stairway that snaked up the cliff, then at the top paused to
catch her breath. A wild meadow crowned the cliffs with tall grass,
stretching a good half a mile inland. A dirt road meandered through
the meadow, and some yards along it Olwen saw a mule, tethered and
grazing next to a big pile of canvas packs.

“The herbman!” she sang out. “Now this is a
bit of luck!”

At the sound of her voice the herbman himself
appeared, rising from the waist-high grass where he’d been
kneeling. In one hand he held a trowel made of silvery metal and in
the other, a clump of little green plants trailing muddy roots. He
was a tall man with ice-blue eyes, an untidy thatch of white hair,
and frog spots thick on his face and hands.