Through aches and weariness, he stood. The three hawthorns hid him from most of the camp, though right here beside him, a tent had been built. At the top a pennant hung, limp but for the fluttering tip thanks to Ban’s quiet wind. He recognized the bright white line of a Diotan commander’s shield.
He should leave straightaway. He should make his careful way back to the Aremore army. His side hurt, and his wrist was broken. He needed to be cautious.
Or—
Or he might take advantage of his situation and find something valuable to bring back with him. Valuable enough that nobody would judge why he’d left the battlefield. Evidence of Ban’s very specific value. He should count horses and men, find maps, or overhear a battle plan. Prove to the Alsax Ban Errigal was no useless bastard, but worth something. Matter to the Aremore army. Make a name for himself. And then prove it to his father, and even the king of Innis Lear. Ban was not to be ignored. He had power. Look what he already had survived with nothing but his words and blood.
The wind hissed, tossing hawthorn leaves together like applause. Ban smiled, this time hungrily, and stepped toward the enemy commander’s tent.
GAELA
GAELA STRODE JUST behind the gray-robed star priest, eager and nearly stepping on his old heels. It had taken several days to discover and summon this man, the same priest who had served at Dondubhan three decades ago, and once led a similar procession when Lear had come to take up the mantle of reluctant kingship. Unlike her father, Gaela was prepared. Her heart beat hard and steady, and every breath filled her from top to toe with vitality.
Tucked like a secret against the northeastern edge of the Tarinnish, the holy navel well connected to the black lake by a thin stream of water. The trickle only barely revealed itself, sliding around sharp pebbles and beneath ferns and long grass. At night, all was black, ethereal gray, and a deep, blunt, resounding green. Overhead, the wind dragged clouds across the stars in a sheer layer of silver, and so the sky seemed to ripple with emotion as their procession made its way around the lake.
Behind Gaela followed her graceful sister, who though still full of impossible sadness, was just as eager to be queen. They were accompanied, too, by that dark slip of a wizard, and Osli, with three more star priests and a dozen retainers for witnesses.
The star priest leading their party slowed as they entered the well’s grove. He stepped aside for Gaela so that she might face the entrance. Massive, moss-covered boulders surrounded the grove, encircling it and creating a mouth of rocks and soft earth, damp and darkly green. Some trees grew here, lean as bone and gray as the moon. Few leaves remained, shivering in the omnipresent wind.
At the center, smaller blue stones created a pit as black as anything she’d ever seen. At the fore was a flat boulder, like a ledge, and another made a roof across two of the largest boulders to shelter this most ancient well.
The star priests moved to stand at each corner of the small grove, cupping the clay bowls of fire carefully before them. All looked to the oldest; a cragged and drooping old man with pale brown eyes and a spotted white face, who had stationed himself beside the well and now pointed at the clusters of tall spindled plants growing in the damp soil beside the well. “There is no ritual but this,” he said. “Eat a handful of the blossoms, and dip your hands into the well to drink. Then, in the light of the stars, by the power of the rootwaters, you will be recognized as the rightful monarch of Innis Lear.”
Gaela waited for the rest of her people to filter in around her, studying the flowers. The green stalks reached higher than her waist, spreading like fingers or thin, miniature trees. The leaves were feathery and green, and tiny white blossoms made starbursts and swaying baubles. She wondered why they seemed so strange, so out of place in this grove, when they were no more than a common weed, and weeds abounded in these northern reaches of Innis Lear.
“They should be blooming in the late spring,” Regan murmured. “Not now. Now they should be dried seed heads. Might we, too, have blossomed here, my Connley?”
Gaela frowned, concerned for her grieving sister’s state of mind.
“Death rattles,” Regan’s wizard, her Fox, murmured. Then, louder, his voice like ice, “It’s hemlock.”
“You would poison me?” Gaela turned with careful, coiled control to the old star priest.
Led by Osli, her retainers drew their swords, aiming furious blades at the four priests.
The old priest inclined his head and held her gaze. “It is the only way to gain the crown of Innis Lear, Princess.”
Wind hissed across the tops of the low trees, tossing thin yellow-and-brown leaves toward them. It shivered the pines at the north of the grove. Gaela stared at the old man, wondering if this could be true.
“My father ate such poison?” Regan asked, strangely calm to Gaela’s ears. Curious, almost wondering.
“Yes.”
Ban the Fox stepped up to the edge of the well. “I believe it,” he said in a taut voice. “The roots of the island and the blood of the king become united, sacrificing for each other. So one who would take the crown must take the poison, and then let the rootwater cleanse them, transforming death of the self into rebirth as the king. This is the way of wormwork.”
“It is safer on the Longest Night, when the roots are strongest and waters blessed by the brightest, boldest stars. If fear pauses you now,” said the old priest.
Gaela’s skin chilled, and slowly began to tighten
