Yearwood Read online

  I. The Winter Brood

  1.

  MY MOTHER AND HER WOMEN ARE OF THE BITTER lineage of the Selchie, the spawn of sealmen and shore folk. In their blood the memory of the undersea kingdoms still rages. In their dreams they still lust for the whiskered and webfooted men who mounted their long dead grandmothers on the shores around Hren and at Weeds in the broad days at the world’s beginning. Or so it was whispered in kitchens and halls, a song to keep time with the churning, the pitchers upended, the sour loaves rising like summer mold in the pans. The words floated up to the bedlofts. The eager girls listened and gazed remotely at shapes in the straw.

  I thought it foolishness. But there were women enough in those years, crones with their crows’ looks, maids with wet eyes, who against hope and all reason still set out from our hill kingdoms and made the hard journey to the coast. There they sat on the shore; the black waves rolled in on them. But if the sealmen ever returned, I had not heard of it. Yet Yllvere-my mother as the servants tell it-settled down at first more readily than Urien’s other women. Urien-who was not my father-took her to his bed when she had barely begun her courses.

  At the start he was pleased with her and her proud looks, her hair yellow as beer. He married her the next year on the Eve of Teimhne, defying the auguries.

  Teimhne, according to the old Kell reckoning, was the first night of winter and, with the last loss of light, a time of dread. But Urien hated the women’s gods. He scoffed at their mysteries. He had spent his youth in the South, where a man’s word was foremost and kings held the law.

  He had only scorn for the Northmen. When even his housethralls complained to him, huddling before the hall fire on his wedding night, sulking and afraid behind their shields, he laughed at them. They begged him to reconsider.

  He puffed his hairy cheeks and swore. Though a soldier, he was not unlearned. He had kept watch of the stars and understood the progress of seasons. The Kell cannot count, he said. He would have left it at that had they let him.

  Yllvere was his third wife and his last. The others had died soon after their weddings though the wise Kell had held those days to be blessed. The first wife collapsed from fever, the second from a fit which came upon her soon after the birth of the one true heir of the house.

  The boy was a winter child and sickly, with a birthmark the shape of a horn on his shoulder. The women howled when they saw it and scattered like geese to the hall.

  In the evening his mother strangled him. When the servants came to the chamber, her eyes showed only the whites and her mouth foamed. Urien sent the corpse back to her people without guard or ceremony. He had her driven in a plain farmer’s cart down to the coast. He refused to pay the price of the burial. Little else was talked of that winter. When Yllvere entered the house, she feared him. She did what he asked and bore him three daughters in as many years. Quickly and silently she bore them, as the aurochs calve in their stalls, her arms folded and nothing in her eyes. But, by iill accounts, the wildness in her was merely waiting.

  Our house was Morrigan, a seat between the twin peaks of Gear Finn-the highest point in the West. To the east one could look down on a broad plain scattered with river towns and, if one’s eyes were keen, to the place where rivers met. There the High King raised Tinkern, the last of godshrines, and Ormkill, the great hall from which, in better days, he ruled. That was a gentle country, worn smooth by its rivers. There the yews grew thick and the furze bloomed golden in April. There, at the river’s edge, it was said, every field swelled ripe with barley.

  On those hillsides the bees were no longer wild but lived, content, in wicker houses set out by men whose dogs, both winter and summer, slept indoors and underfoot.

  When I was young, such tales seemed strange to me.

  Ours was a harder, more ancient land-its rough peaks broken by storms. Our roads, such as they were, had come down from kingdoms now vanished. They were old and narrow. The passes cut through the hills were treacherous, for the stonework was crude and rockslides frequent.

  Since their making they had never been mended.

  The guard towers that lined the cliffs had not been manned in the memory of our people. Even Urien’s books despaired of true knowledge of them. They spoke of their builders as giants and their fashioning as sorcery. But to my mind such talk was foolishness. Magicians would have built better roads.

  To the west were the sea lands which were so often on the tongues of the women. But they were many days’ journey from Morrigan. From the battlements, looking out between the teeth of stone or higher up in the house from Urien’s walk, where-an old man in the years I knew him-he read in good light and bad from the books of the wars, one could never see the rolling ocean nor the islands off the coast. But from Gear Finn, from the dark wood on the mountainside, Grieve, my sister, said one might truly see them and the ruined towers at the river’s mouth and, if the day were clear, the masts of dragon ships that floated in the harbor. I never doubted this, though I knew soon enough that her thin legs had never carried her into the wood nor that she had ever seen such sights with her own eyes.

  ·

  “Tell me how you know this?” I asked her. But she would only watch me blankly.

  But if I asked, “What is it like there?” Then she would smile, her eyes removed as though they haunted that far place. “In the broad world,” she would say to me, “there is nothing to compare with it unless it were the fair realm undersea. There the Selchie first came to land. And, though they are gone, their magic still clings to it. For where they walked, the very sand is emerald and the sea that thunders on the headlands blazes green as fire.” Her voice would quiver then and she would go off into herself.

  But it was the ships I thought of-the bright ships and the bold men who rode them, free of the land, out in the whirling gulf where only stars watched. There would be silence then, long and unchallenged in the hall.

  In those years there were none to argue it. So the years followed, one upon another, much as the Kell had counted them, each one chasing round the next as hawks drive sparrows and are driven forth by eagles in their turn.

  I had by then grown tall and could, I judged, compete in matters of strength and cunning with many older than myself. Though I was shy a winter of my fourteenth year, the servants were already wary of me. Lately even my aunts and sisters had begun to treat me with caution.

  There are advantages to being born the only son and a bastard in a bouse of women-but not many. Still, for good or ill, in most things I had my way. By then the bousethralls, the bearded men with their battle gear strapped to their horses-they who had come in the years Urien had covered himself with glory-now in his disgrace deserted him. He was too old and plagued with sores. Two servants were needed to lift him from his bed.

  He could not keep me in rein. The women, being witchfolk, kept their own counsel and left me much to mine.

  Nonetheless, I did not tell Yllvere my mind was fixed on climbing to the mountain wood, to the high place where Grieve had promised I could look out on the sea.

  Yllvere would have forbidden that, if nothing else. She would have set her grim servant to lock me in the stable and kept him there to stand guard by the door. Though I suspected it was little more than a nesting place for crows, the wood was holy to the Kell. For the Kell, who believed their grandfathers were sealmen, swore as well that not a few of their grandmothers had been changed into trees.

  No matter what I thought of that, I was of no mind to court unneeded trouble and for the sake of prudence determined to go armed.

  Before dawn I rose and dressed. Stealthily I crept down the dim backstairs and passed the upper kitchen. Neither the cook nor any of her women was as yet about. If I surprised, as I must have, a gray mouse on the stone, I met with nothing else alive.
>
  The armory ran parallel to the guest hall, along the length of the inner wall. In those years the armory had a gray and empty look. It had had, ever since the thralls rode off. Much of the battle gear was gone, the books that held it empty. What little remained was rusted for want of use. Tabak, my mother’s servant and the one man under sixty in the bouse, kept his arms apart, even to the point of sleeping with his ax. But it was none of his I wanted.

  The longroom twisted toward the back. In its farthest corner, too removed to be of service if need came suddenly, hung Urien’s sword. It was a thick two-handed blade. With it be had killed twelve men. My eyes went to it. Even in the bad light its pommel gleamed. Time had barely touched the metal. But the belt and scabbard were rotted. When I pulled it out, the leather parted, giving off a stench like vile old flesh. My lip curled. I thought, just such a ruin has Urien come to. But I did not much care to dwell on him. The sword settled in my belt, I turned quickly, hastening my steps to get out once more into the air.

  In the yard I breathed again. The hens fluttered from my path. I threw a stone at the cook’s red dog, who carne poking out to bark, and drove him back. I might have used the gate. Instead I climbed the palisade. It was more trouble, but it was nearer the mountain. Perhaps I thought myself a thief and meant to act like one. I found the handholds in the stone with ease. With no great effort I made the ledge. A moment later I was bounding up the mountain.

  As I remember, it was April, already two months past the thaw and by chance the sign month of my birth. This was an oddity within the house, for ail the women were of the winter brood. But in those days I gave no thought to it. The high fields were green and steamed with rooming vapor. As I walked, the mist about me broke. Over the hillside there were flowers, their petals still folded in the raw light before sunrise. Many I knew-sorrel, mullein root, and asphodel-such as the aunts gathered, bent over and chanting beneath their breaths. Late and early I had seen them, moving speculatively across the fields. Now those fields were empty, and I ran. When, panting, I looked back, the house was still asleep below me. The day dawned cloudless, the air chilled. Even now I cannot remember a time when I felt more alone in all the world nor liked it better.

  In my eagerness I went straight for the wood, leaving a darkened track in the grass behind me like a wake. At the border of the upper meadow the ground rose steeply. Out of the grass, I clambered over gray outcroppings of stone.

  By then, had anyone wished to follow, my destination would have seemed plain enough. I gave no thought to that. I walked west along the rim of the house lands. Tall spires of ash and elm rose like a wall, dividing what was Urien’s-the order of orchards, fields and windrows where the sun, like clockwork, rose and set-from the deep

  wood of the Kell, where daylight dwindled under interwoven boughs, where morning and evening were scarcely set apart and had no meaning.

  At-the edge of the wood, like gateposts a dozen feet apart, stood two great trees. Their trunks were gray and and spidery, hung thick with moss. In truth they were no gate at all. Nothing entered here. No path penetrated the gloom, In this place woodcutters were forbidden. Even Yllvere and her sisters, though daughters of the Kell, did not visit here but held it in awe, a place apart from men.

  The wood was old beyond telling. Yet unlike the great forests-Anhornim in the North and Isenveld in the West, whose peoples are numbered in the books of the warsit had no name. The women, if they spoke of it at all, called it simply the wood upon the mountain.

  I was young. What was there to fear, I thought, of a place that is not even worthy of a name? So I brought upon myself the wound that ever since has marked me.

  But then I did not know it but thought only that presently I would look out on the sea.

  I pushed my way in through a screen of brambles. Even as I entered I did not forget the guest prayer. I spoke aloud although it sounded strangely in my ears. When I had done I added, “Dagda, Lord, I pray for you, if this is Anu’s wood, keep harm from me.” All else was silent. A gray dusk lay about me. I rubbed my eyes.

  I stood within an immense, shaded hall. The floor was carpeted with drifts of leaves, brown and blackened and smelling of mold. The ceiling high above my head was raftered all across with boughs. Between was emptiness.

  Nothing grew in that bad light. No wind stirred.

  I scaled the nearer limbs with both my eyes but found no place to climb. I would have done better with a good rope than a borrowed sword. But I had given no thought to that beforehand, only that the wood was ill rumored and that I had best go armed.

  Well, I thought, there is sure to be a good perch farther on. So I lumbered through the drifts of leaves, pleased at least that there was no small bracken to scratch my eyes.

  Yet, however long I looked, no limb drooped down for me. In all directions there were only the great gray trunks, pale and corpselike, as useless as greased poles. My heart sank. I had come seeking the sea and meant to look on it.

  Having come this far, I was of no mind to return unsatisfied to Morrigan, to meet, with nothing more to show for it, the questions of my sisters and my aunts. The house rose up again within my thoughts. Angrily, I looked back the way I had come.

  He stood there, huge in the tracks that I had made, his broad ax slung upon his shoulder. I gaped at him.

  “The boundaries of this place are clear,” he said. “You have two good eyes. Surely you have seen that none have walked here.”

  He could see the anger in my face. The frown he was used to. He knew it at least as well as I knew his own. We were familiar enemies. Though it could not always have been so, it seemed that Tabak had always been about the house. The first of my memories are of him. I was not quite three when a great storm had wrapped itself about the house. Shaken from my bed and blubbering, I had run the dark length of the hall to Yllvere’s chamber. He it was who met me outside her door. Each night she would set him there like some tethered animal. His shoulders filled the door frame. He barred the way to her. I remember even his words before he sent me back. “No, my lordling,” he had said, “you will find no comfort here.”

  The house shook in the wind. It was as though the thunder itself had spoken. That memory was with me when I answered him.

  “Has she called you from your den to haul me back?” I said. Like a stick thrown to her hound, I thought, and swore. “You know I will not gladly go with you.”

  His eyes were steady. But though his voice was low, yet something of that remembered storm had darkened it.

  “It serves little to quarrel with you, lord,” he answered evenly. “Whether you come or stay, it is on your head, not on mine.”

  Still I could not believe that I would be let go so easily.

  “Has she not sent you?” I demanded.

  He shook his head. “I saw you climb the wall, bearing a sword that was none of yours. That was enough.” He remained where he was, too far away to take hold of me.

  I watched him carefully and yet I did not want to meet his eyes.

  “And when you do not bring me back?” I said. “And when she turns her icy stare on you, how will you answer?”

  The long, still look of his did not alter. “Lord, it is no more than you are heir to. She knows it. Like any of the Kell, it is the sea you long for.” His voice was soft but like a curse he uttered it. Of all the household he was the only one who called me lord. I always thought it mockery. But no smile broke his lips. He simply stood and spoke. And yet the words were like a hiss, like a sea wave sucked back upon itself. The sound unnerved me.

  I would not listen. “Begone!” I cried and ran myself.

  I fled him through the aisles of trees. Panting, I drank the dark air down in gulps. The trees grew thicker. Still I ran. Winded, when at last I turned to see how near he came, I found him gone.

  Good riddance to that goblin then, I thought. For so I thought of him-a goblin or some great winter bear, a thing that drags its huge shape through ice caves in the dark. Though, in truth, I was alon
e in that. To the women he was a handsome man, though it seemed they never liked him better for it. For all their craft there was something deep and old in him they could not manage or outwit.

  It troubled me to think he had followed me, more so if Yllvere had not sent him searching. My mother’s servant, he had no leave for actions of his own. He was Yllvere’s alone. Whether Urien’s sword was gone or not should have made no difference to him. But more it troubled me how easily, for all his dark looks and his warning, he had let me go. Still I could make little of it and, though puzzled, I drove his cold eyes from my mind.

  Thereafter I went more slowly. The black leaves whispered above my head, though now I rarely saw them.

  A grayness smothered everything so that I felt rather than saw the trees’ far summits. Yet, it seemed, they frowned on me. Cautiously, I climbed into a ravine and up the rock face at its northern edge. Even above the rock there was no break in the trees. The air felt heavy. I strained my eyes to see. Away to the left the slope mounted up again.

  I went on. It was the wood then that beckoned me. I wandered. In time I forgot to look for a low branch I might climb. Almost idly I walked beneath the trees. The grayness filled my sight. Like cool deep water it flowed over me.

  My feet were well along the road before I noticed it.

  As long as the road ran straight, the drifting leaves had masked it. But when the slope grew steep, much like a stair, the road climbed an_d then the heavy blocks of polished stone shone through. It was an ancient road and yet no rents or breaches tore it. The seams, where they were visible beneath the leaves, were fitted with skill and in a manner now long out of use. I knew it was not the broken work of the quarriers of our old kingdoms but a craft far older. The pride and art that fashioned such stone had faded.

  Mournfully, I thought of the great age of the world. I was young then and unaccustomed to such thoughts. In the years that came the filidh would say of me that I walked deftly in time, at ease in it as man might ford a river. For as the long years passed I came to know its deep currents and its sandy places. In truth, it started there. Much that would befall me, both the blessing and the curse, began in that deep wood as I gazed upon a road shaped in another age, of which neither we nor the Kell had memory nor so much as one whispered name.