"It"s what you are, here," said Finn, winking at her.
That was enough to make her smile. He was up to his Finn tricks again! "Lady Branwen, you and your retainers are welcome here," said Meb. "This is our war band, and we are dealing with those who come in by the Ways. But that is a fair number of armies. I"ll discuss it with Finn and see what we can do for the South."
"It is a part of Lyonesse, and very loyal to your mother," said the woman, looking relieved.
Her mother. They all seemed to know a great deal more about her than Meb ever had. "I will see what can be done," she repeated. "Now if you will forgive us, I"d like to finish dealing with Finn"s injury."
The woman curtseyed, as did the little girl. The boy bowed. "Is Dileas all right?" he blurted, having not said a word earlier.
"We hope so," said Finn.
"You"ll deal with whoever hurt him?" asked the boy, hand on his dagger. Plain that he would, if she wasn"t going to.
"Oh yes," said Meb, "of that you may be sure. Even if it takes the rest of my life."
"Tell me," said Meb, once they had privacy and s.p.a.ce again. "What brought you here, Finn? I mean I love you..."
"Oh, mostly my feet," said Fionn, trying for insouciance. Scared of saying the wrong thing. "But then I got Dileas to stay in a basket while I flew. He knew precisely where to go, and took me to Ways between planes that I did not know of."
"You know perfectly well what I mean,"said Meb, sternly. "You knew-because I asked the Sea and Groblek to tell you-what I had seen in the fireball of the creatures of smokeless flame. You knew I did this for you, Finn. To keep you alive. I saw what I saw. And I love you, and one of us will have to go away."
Fionn took her in his arms. Held her for a bit, and said, carefully, and as calmly as he could. "The being of energy probably did not lie. But the truth is complex, and they leave things out to suit themselves. Or they tell the truth in ways so that we can deceive ourselves. It seems probable that my being with you will result in my death..."
"Then, Finn, I must go. Or you must."
"Wait," said the dragon. "Let me say what I must say, and then you can decide what we must do. You made a great and loving brave choice last time. But you did not ask me what I would choose. And this is my choice: I would rather die loving and loved, than live forever without you."
She held him very tight.
"It"s very hard...knowing someone you love is going to die," she said quietly.
"But my dearest," said Fionn, lifting her chin and kissing her, "I have always known that you will. In the normal course of things, dragons live far longer than humans. And humans cope with humans dying before they do, all the time. You...we love Dileas even though we will outlive him. And, there is an anchor of hope. The First have been trying to kill both of us. They just tried again, in a way that must have hurt them."
"That"s...hope?" said Meb doubtfully.
"Yes. Great hope. Because if our meeting was going to cause instant death, why bother? They"d simply facilitate our getting together."
"Oh. Um, that"s true enough," she said, brightening.
"And besides, there is this prophecy of yours."
"I don"t think I am this marvelous Defender of theirs. I just have some dvergar help with my magic. I"ve been playing along a bit, Finn. They needed to believe or they"d never have had the courage."
"Maybe. But it did say that only you could hold the sons of the Dragon."
She looked at him with very wide eyes. "How is your hand?" she asked.
"Healing slowly. Not as painful as it was. Gold is good for dragons."
"Maybe we need to go for a very long, private walk," she said, with a look that was love, mischief, magic and desire all in one. "There are things that Hallgerd warned me about, that I need to find out about, firsthand."
"It looks like we have visitors," said Fionn, simply because Dileas was barking, which distracted him from kissing her, and planning an immediate departure.
"Noisy cat," said Groblek.
"But our son likes him," said the Sea.
And they bowed to each other.
"We thought we would fulfil your prophecy and wish you very happy."
"And if you have a need of a quiet place in the mountains..."
"Or a noisy one by the sea..." said the two of them.
Fionn looked at his Sc.r.a.p, and she at him, blushing. "Um. Tonight?"
There is a place somewhere under a warm sun where the jagged mountains meet the limpid turquoise sea in perfect scalloped bays of white sand. A week there is a day in Lyonesse. It is a place of exceptional beauty. But the two transported thence really didn"t notice.
The girl kissed the dragon, and the dragon, considerably more nervous than any dragon had a right to be, carried her out of the water to the huge golden cushion that their generous host had provided. It was real cloth-of-gold, and more comfortable than a bed of coin and other treasures might have been to the girl.
The dragon would have shared even that with her. No. He would have given it all to her.
"Finn," she said, looking up at him.
"What, my dearest Sc.r.a.p?"
"Nothing," she said contentedly, trailing her fingers down his chest. "Nothing more. Just Finn."
The dog, being more intelligent than most dogs, found it a good time and place to chase seagulls.
The Mountain and the Sea gave them some time-they were never sure just how long-in their secret place, which is beautiful, but not beautiful beyond human conception.
"The tricky part is not dealing with the invasions, or frightening them off. It"s getting to them. Knowing where they are," said Meb, still touching him. She just liked to have a hand on him. "We head east towards Dun Telas, and they pop up in the northwest on the coast-we had ships of Blessed Isles beach themselves there. It"s too many enemies at once."
"You need better communications at least," said Fionn thoughtfully. "And to pa.s.s the word among the muryan and piskies that hara.s.sment is good. Have you tried asking the knockers to pa.s.s the word along? They have extensive tunnels and a system of using their little crowdicrawn drums to talk across the length of them. They need it for the spreading of gossip and warnings and calling for help when they have ground-falls."
"No. No one tells me. They all a.s.sume I know everything," said Meb. "And what I wanted to ask, that you and half of the country seems to know, is just who my mother was?"
"Queen Gwenhywfach, the last queen of Lyonesse."
"Who was supposed to have fallen or dived or been pushed out of the sea-window at Dun Tagoll with her son."
"Yes. But she fell trying to hold you. And as for the son: she hadn"t quite got around to admitting to the king or to anyone else, that the longed-for heir...was a girl. They"re patrilineal here. Girl-children don"t count much, except as trading counters in dynastic marriages. Only you"ve proved them wrong."
Meb pursued her line of thought relentlessly though. "So: is my mother some kind of ghost? Is this what Shadow Hall is? A place of ghosts?"
"No, she"s very much alive. Has been waging and orchestrating war on the House of Lyon and every other imagined enemy in Lyonesse who stole and killed her baby. She seems to have a particular hate for Mage Aberinn."
As Meb stared at him, he said: "I hope Dileas and I put a stop to it. But I couldn"t actually kill her. And she is the kind that it would take death to really stop. Shadow Hall is a real place, though. She just uses her art to hide in shadow illusions and moves it with her muryan slaves."
"You have to tell me the whole story," said Meb, snuggling up to him.
Fionn did, using his precise recall to fill in as much as he could.
At the end of it Meb sighed. "I always wanted my real mother. Dreamed she"d be everything Hallgerd wasn"t when I was being lectured. Being told to concentrate, work harder, find a nice fisherman who could support me. I think...when I had to leave you, I dreamed that my mother would be here waiting. I never thought she might be...like that."
"Environment and our society shapes us. Some more than others, I suppose. You"re my Sc.r.a.p. The person you chose to be, that I love. Who, if I have daughters by, I would love as much as sons. You would be Sc.r.a.p, not your mother."
"So my father was King Geoph, who thought I was his son."
"It"s possible," said Fionn warily.
She didn"t notice. "I don"t feel like a princess. I"m just me."
Fionn shrugged. "What"s the difference between a princess and someone else, beside politics? And sometimes money?"
"But I thought only their n.o.bility had magical power," said Meb, puzzled.
Fionn laughed. And laughed. And eventually stopped laughing to explain. "It"s a myth, Meb, to justify them being "n.o.bles." At one time it must have been a rare genetic condition. That means, before you ask me, something like the color of your eyes or the tilt of your nose, that you get from your mother or father"s bloodline. It gave those who had it an advantage, so they ended up as the n.o.bility. And it might have stayed that way, if the n.o.bility had only bedded n.o.bility. But the n.o.bility spread it around by exercising droit du seigneur. By now I doubt if there is a single human in Lyonesse without some of the ability. Unfortunately most of it is weak, and needs ritual and training to use. Your maid, Neve, for example, has some. I can tell. She"s even managed occasional small workings. But she"s never been taught, and thus doesn"t know she"s as much one of the overlords by blood as they are."
The First knew fear. And worse, knew uncertainty. They retreated into their councils. It would take some time to decide just what they would...or could do next. There were plenty of p.a.w.ns...But their source of fears had allied themselves with powerful allies, and were hard to find or harm. And the future was uncertain.
CHAPTER 26.
It had taken Queen Gwenhwyfach a day to get out of the now lidless adamantine box. The black dragon had left it open, and she had at least some of the tools for symbolic magic with her. True, if it failed, she would be out of water. But she hadn"t. She had flooded the trap instead and swum to the lip.
It had taken her a while to think of this, and she"d also had a period of reflection on what the black dragon had said about her daughter.
So her first reaction was not in fact to pursue revenge, but to use her seeing-basin to scan across Lyonesse. She still could not see inside Dun Tagoll, but the rest of the country was hers to overlook.
She had expected a fair proportion of it in flames by now. It did not take her long to find that this was not so. It took her a great deal longer to find the "girl-child" that Baelzeboul had tried to pa.s.s off as an irrelevant someone they wanted killed.
Gwenhwyfach followed and studied her with great care for nearly an entire day, although it had taken the queen seconds to decide the dragon was probably right and, moreover, that the child was a many-times-more-powerful magic worker than she was.
The Cauldron of Gwalar had almost finished producing the new crop with the material she had been provided with by the creatures of smokeless flame. As soon as they were ready, she set them to work. There were eight of them, and she"d made them so large that, once they emerged from the cauldron, she had to a.s.semble them with her muryan slaves.
While this was under way, she sent orders to all of her other minions.
"What I don"t understand," said Meb, "is why you came on foot through the Southern Marches at all. I mean, why didn"t you fly? You were telling me you flew with Dileas in the basket."
"Because, my dearest Sc.r.a.p, we couldn"t. Someone," he said kissing the top of her head, "has bespelled all the birds of the air to attack dragons. I wanted to fly to you as fast as I possibly could, but it was still wonderful to be attacked, because your magic has a distinct signature to it. I finally knew I had found you. Still, now I think it would be useful if you took it off."
"Of course," she gave him a squeeze. "I just did it for Aberinn"s mechanical gilded crows. I made them walk back to him. I suppose they would be able to fly again."
"Possibly. But even if this mage wishes to find you, what he sees with the crows will probably discourage him," said Fionn. "I plan to discourage him. Permanently. Him and this Medraut. I think I already put any ideas of killing you firmly out of Alois"s head. Not, to be fair, that he wanted to kill you once he had decided you were this promised Defender. But it would be nice if I could fly again at need."
"Yes. How do you think I undo something I don"t even know how I did?" asked Meb, seriously.
"I"d start with calling a bird and telling it. And telling it to tell others."
So she did.
They moved against the men of Erith that afternoon-to get news that they were already fleeing. So Meb"s army set up camp in a gentle valley just outside the fortress of Dun Telas.
Neve, blushing and wringing her hands, came to Meb. "M"lady, I"d like to ask leave...to go into the town. I"ve got family here."
Meb seemed to recall a "better not ask" zone around this. "Of course."
Neve smiled a tight little smile. "They said I"d end up a castle s.l.u.t. They, they were very...unpleasant. I"m...I"m going back to rub a few noses in things."
Fionn smiled. Dug in his pouch. Handed her some silver-by the look on her face, more coined money than she"d ever seen in her life before, let alone held. "I"ll bet she"s never paid you either. Go and be generous. Nothing hurts more. My dearest, can you spare Neve an escort of men-at-arms? Say half a dozen of those stout fellows from Dun Calathar. Show them how important she is to you."
"Oh, Finn. You make me feel so guilty. I should have paid you, Neve...only I forget you aren"t just my friend. And, uh, I didn"t have any money. Never thought of getting any."
Little tears started on Neve"s cheeks. "That is the greatest thing you could have done for me. But...I couldn"t take your money, my lady. I want to serve you."
"It"s not hers, it"s mine," said Fionn. "And I have lots more, and your being lady bountiful to your kin is a small thank you from me for looking after my lady."
"And you"ll have an honor guard and a fine horse to ride. I can escort you myself."
Neve shook her head. "I"d rather you didn"t see me doing this, m"lady. It"s...its not very nice. But they need to learn."
Neve had not been gone for more than an hour when Fionn wished Sc.r.a.p had gone with her.
He could defend her and the camp against one dragon easily enough. Two, possibly.
But the eight-flying in a rigid formation, and thus very undragonlike-were six too many. And they were carrying something beneath them in a spider web of lines. Had the creatures of smokeless flame gone into alliance with some of the dragons who were less than pleased about the opening up of Tasmarin?