The Phantom Queen Awakes (7 page)

The Morrigan had come that night, for the
first time since her first dance. They were called by a feast of
souls or untimely death, were the three-fold goddess of death and
war and blood, and the small cairns offered both. Mairaed had stood
frozen, captivated by their presence, but none of the sisters had
looked at the woman one of them had marked as a girl.
Disappointment and relief had twinned inside her: even a dancer for
the dead didn’t want the goddess’ gaze on her too often, and yet to
be ignored left a space around her heart.

Those things came back to her now, in the dark
of a night she didn’t want to face. Before dawn, she would know —
they would all know — the Morrigan’s cool touch again, but it would
be Mairaed herself who bore the weight of it.

“Mairaed.” A man pushed open the door to her
rough stone house, letting moonlight make a bright path across the
floor. The only light had been banked coals: Mairaed closed her
eyes against silver brilliance, then came to her feet as Sion
ducked his head and stepped across her threshold.

He was handsome, was Sion O’Connail, with
light eyes and a broad face beneath hair dark with moonlight. He’d
worn the druid’s white before Mairaed came to it herself, and had
been a solemn child who kept his robes clean. She’d been an adult
before she realized the robes were themselves a test: it wasn’t
easy to keep clean in a life of farming and digging and animal
husbandry. A child determined enough to keep wool pristine was a
steady soul, likely to age into a calm mind capable of holding
clear thoughts: ideal for the wise folk of the village.

Mairaed’s robe was, even now, rarely clean.
But then, she played a different role, and on her, the white meant
a transition to another world.

“Are you ready?” Sion asked, and under his
words came the sound of drums and pipes; the sound of blades
scraping from sheathes and of leather armor tested by thumping
fists. The air through the opened door carried the scent of peat
fires and new-cut hay, rich and sweet while they lasted. Soon
enough they’d be drowned by blood, and for a while not even her
beloved river would be able to carry the sticky flat smell
away.

“I am.” There was no other answer she could
give, hadn’t been since the night her blood came; hadn’t been, in
truth, since she was old enough to toddle to the water’s edge and
listen to the voices that called her down the river.

Tempered sympathy darkened Sion’s eyes and he
retreated into shadow, gesturing her out of her home with the
respect due one far older than her years. They might have been a
pair, once, gentle Sion and gods-touched Mairaed, but that, too,
was a path closed to her in childhood.

The drumming stopped as she stepped outside.
All the noise did, as though wool had been stuffed in her ears.
Dozens of faces turned to her, alight with hope, with fear, with
awe, and for a moment the river’s song swelled and threatened to
take her away.

These were her people, and she went to dance
them victory in battle.

Aine’s daughter had stories of such things,
but nothing more: they had been at peace for generations, with no
call to arms by a high lord. The wealthiest in the village, those
who owned cattle and sheep and horses, sometimes took those horses
to raid neighboring cattle; to steal fine bulls to cover their cows
or to take the tenderest of new lambs when they needed their own to
grow into breeding stock. That was sport, not war, and visited on
them in return by others. Lives were sometimes lost, but mostly
when a young man misjudged his horseman’s skill, or an old one
misjudged his own fading strength. There had been no blood debts to
settle in Mairaed’s lifetime and longer.

But then the dreams had come, first to the
druids, then to Mairaed, and finally to the people themselves.
Dreams of war: dreams of small warriors with black eyes and black
hair; with olive skin and gleaming white teeth. Their swords were
bright and sharp and their bodies glittered with impenetrable
shells. Where those shells fell away, their legs were bared to the
cold, as if they couldn’t feel it. Their backs were covered in
cloaks of blood, red and flowing, and no one in the village
imagined they were men. These were the
Fir Bolg
, black
monsters from under the earth who had once driven away the old gods
and faerie folk of the land, and who came now to take it from the
mortals who had settled in their place.

Dreams, in far too little time, gave way to
stories flowing up the river: warnings of the
Fir Bolg’s
attacks, and their ruthless prowess in battle. The dead were the
lucky ones: survivors were chained and bound and taken away to
serve in darkness, soft green shores and misty sunlight left
behind. Those who bore the tales were those who had gathered
children and elders and left, abandoning pride and home for a
chance at life.

Most of Mairaed’s village had gone with them,
escaping toward the midlands and the rocky, barren west. Those who
were left behind stayed to take up weapons, to slow the
Fir
Bolg
and sacrifice their own lives that the children might
survive.

Standing amongst them, in awe of their bravery
and determination, a tightness slipped away from Mairaed and rose
toward the star-filled sky, carrying with it her breath. It took a
film from her eyes and it became tears, not of sorrow, but of
pride. If it was not her fear that rose into the night, it was some
part of it, and some part of her reluctance, so she could be filled
with a lightness that slipped beyond the mortal world and showed
her the steps to a dance she had never done.

“We ask a terrible thing tonight.” Sion spoke
from behind her, his voice loud only because of the silence: had a
bird thought to whistle, his words might have been drowned beneath
its tune. “We ask a terrible thing from one of our own, because an
ancient enemy has come among us, and no mortal army is enough to
beat them down. It’s fortune that brings us a cairn dancer in our
time of need, but the price to be paid is a mighty one. Mairaed
O’Broin, will you dance this night for us?”

Silence fell again, words disappearing like
weights in the river, without a ripple. What fear had remained
transmuted within her, becoming frothy laughter that burst
noiselessly in her throat and had more to do with release than
delight.

“You think it’s my strength that I draw on, my
destiny whose path I walk.” Mairaed closed her eyes, seeing the
faces of the boys and girls she’d known in the image of the men and
women burned into her mind. The earth still held her to the ground,
her weight pressing against it, small stones round beneath her
feet; she knew it, and yet felt as though she was carried upward,
her chest filled with lightness that dragged her away, her soul no
longer bound to her body. “You think it’s my own power, but you’re
wrong. It’s yours, and I’ll dance that spirit and return it to you
three-fold in the battle that you face.”

She bowed to them without looking again, and
let the aching draw in her heart lead her to the river, to the
moonlight, and to the cairns.

****

Blood spattered, purple in the moonlight. A
thin line of pain opened on Mairaed’s cheek, burning higher with
each moment that passed. The sword came again, pitted metal flecked
with viscera that sprayed a vile arc. She countered this time,
clumsy: she had never learned the steps to this dance, and no
wellspring of unsought memory brought it to life in her as the
cairns once had. Her hand, unused to the weight of a weapon, ached,
but she lifted her sword again: again: again, each blow uncertain
and each hit cleaving less deeply into the enemy than she might
hope.

They were men after all, the little dark
creatures she fought. Men, or the
Fir Bolg
had thrown off
their monstrous forms to take on something more familiar, and were
perhaps all the more frightening for it. Their shells were armor,
better-made than the heavy leather plates her own people wore, but
nothing more magical than that. It heartened her and she raised her
voice, hurried her steps, made the news that the enemy were nothing
more than men part of her dance.

Men, yes, but men who fought as one, in a way
she had never imagined. Men who, when one fell, stepped forward to
close ranks, so they seemed never-ending. There were simply too
many, and that, too, she put into her dance, demanding everything
from the cairns, from the dead, from the goddess who had marked
her.

She was not alone. Her people fought with her,
bright shadows amongst the cairns, as if they carried sunlight with
them even while she fought beneath the moon. They had not followed
her down the river, nor had they come to sing a song for the dead,
and when she staggered back beneath an onslaught, she fell into
Sion, whose robes were black and stiff with blood and whose oaken
staff was matted with flesh and bits of hair.

Fell into, and through, as though he was a
wraith.

Then, and only then, did battle turn to
stillness around her. Only then did she see how the river ran red;
how the very earth was thick and sticky with blood around the
cairns ― in her sacred place where the dead were meant to be
honored and set free, not multiplied. Only then did understanding
come to her: that she had danced to the edge of time to see what
lay beyond it, and that come the morning, her people would
die.

Rage boiled up inside her and spilled out,
turning her vision to crimson and the moon to a bloody smear across
the sky. Fury and hurt poured from her, a wall of dark emotion
strong enough to fight the moonlight. Step by step it quailed and
fell back, and step by step Mairaed advanced, red sword gripped in
one hand, heartbeat surging black in her eyes, and a demand
screamed through bared teeth. The scar on her breast burned, cold
fire pouring into her body from that remembered touch, and she
stalked onward, leaving the world behind.

Halfway to the moon, the stars split apart.
Ravens poured out, glittering black in the night as they made a
path of wings for the Morrigan. One sister walked with a hand
curled to her chest, fingers working against her palm as her
wrathful gaze found Mairaed and held her where she
stood.

Triumph colder than even the Morrigan’s eyes
blazed in Mairaed, palm-print on her breast turning to ice: turning
so cold that as she’d once known a red mark lay on her body, she
now knew it burned silver, as bright and hard as the river in
winter. Oh, there was a price, there would be a dear price to pay
indeed, but now, and in this moment, it meant nothing.

Because not even a goddess can mark a woman
and not be marked somewhat in return.

“I am your vessel,” Mairaed whispered to the
three-fold goddess’s black gaze. “Fill me.”

“You cannot command—” Three women spoke as
one, the Morrigan’s voice becoming the winter wind, cutting and
sharp, driving ice into bone and stripping skin from
flesh.

Mairaed spat, a hawk of sound from deep in her
throat that cast away terror as much as it dismissed the idea that
she was forbidden to command those she served. “There will be
death. There will be blood. There will be war. These are your
domains, Morrigan. Give me what I need to help my people survive
and it will all be done in your name.”

The sister who held her hand curled to her
chest came forward, leaving the other two as black slashes against
the night. “And if we do not?” Alone, her voice was a serrated
thing, still full of power but shy of the implacability when they
spoke together.

Mairaed’s grip tightened on her sword as
though her body thought she might fling herself into battle against
the gods. The Morrigan smiled, showing teeth as pointed as her
voice, the very expression inviting Mairaed to try, but words were
the dancer’s weapon now. “The
Fir Bolg
invade our land. Who
will dance for you, Morrigan, if they take these green hills from
us? Who will call on you in battle if godless monsters rule this
island? Who will honor you, if we are gone?”

Thin lightning crackled between the three,
starlight turned to a cutting edge, hissing with vindictive sound.
Ravens warbled above that sharp song, their calls almost words, and
between it all Mairaed knew she listened to how the Morrigan spoke
among herself; how her thoughts were shared three to one and one to
three.

“You are mortal,” the one closest to Mairaed
finally said aloud. “Fragile.”

“All life is fragile. Even a goddess can bend
to the whim of time.”

“Not this goddess,” the Morrigan said as one.
“Not this time. Release your weapons. You will have no use for them
when I am done with you. Come to me. Come to us.”

Mairaed opened her hand, felt her sword’s hilt
roll free; felt the marks it left in her palm suddenly turn rigid
and strong, as if tenderness had passed to calluses without
blistering in between. She stepped forward, and the nearest
Morrigan opened her curled palm to show a mark as red as the one on
Mairaed’s breast. Redder: blood oozed from it, thick and discolored
in the moonlight, and pain shot through Mairaed’s heart, stabbing
deep enough to steal her breath. She faltered and the Morrigan
caught her: all the Morrigan, three-fold goddess suddenly
surrounding her, hands cool as ice and burning with fire as they
lay on her skin.