Firebirds Soaring (3 page)

Then I went down to dine with my father and my cousin.

I found them in the best of spirits.

“Wren!” My father stood up, tall and kingly, his bronze beard shining in the torchlight, to greet me with a kiss.

“Cousin,” declared Korbye, rising also, with equal courtesy if less enthusiasm. A comely lout accustomed to having his way with any maiden he fancied, he took it ill that his gallantries could not deceive me. Nevertheless, he held my chair and saw me seated at the small table on the dais, apart from the long ones down below where castle folk ate by the dozen. All could see the high king and his family, but none could hear what we said.

While the three of us ate mutton soup, pork in currant sauce, and oat scones with gooseberry jam, Korbye and Father told me of hawking, how well the ger-eagle had flown, and how Korbye’s goshawk had taken a brace of hares. Not until the cheese and biscuits were served did Father ask me, “And what heard you today in the court of justice?”

“Little enough. A matter of swine.”

A matter of a nose ring that had, I suspected, empowered an old sow mottled like a black moon to destroy an entire field of barley.

In other words, to do what would otherwise have been impossible.

Facing the high king across the table, I drew a deep breath, looked into his eyes, and spoke: “Father, if your only living child were a son instead of a daughter, would he be your heir?”

And even as he opened his mouth to reply, my heart began to beat like a war drum, hard and fierce and triumphant, for yes, yes, it was true, the ancient ring thing hidden under my sleeve endowed me with a new kind of power: not just power to know truth, but also power to impose my will.

This I knew because my father, High King Gwal Wredkyte, answered me like a servant, whereas he should have rebuked me most angrily for asking such an impudent question at such an ill-chosen time. He should have risen and roared and ordered me to leave the table. But instead, without so much as lifting his eyebrows, he replied, “It is the custom that the king’s sister’s son should be his heir.”

Indeed, such was the very old tradition, a reminder of the time when kinship was reckoned through the woman. But now that men also laid claim to their children, this ancient way of thinking no longer held force of law.

I demanded of my father, “And to this custom you cleave?”

“Yes.”

He lied.

My sooth-sense told me: if I were a boy instead of a girl, I would be the next high king.

But letting no emotion show in my face, I nodded and turned to my cousin, the sister-son, the chosen one. “Korbye,” I asked him, “when you are king, will you think more of the clansfolks’ well-being or of your own pleasure?”

And quite tamely, as if I sat in judgment and he stood before me, he answered, “Of course I will consider always first and foremost the needs of my clans, my people.”

He lied.

He would consider always first and foremost his own greed.

Why, then, should he be high king after my father?

Why not I? With this ring of power on my arm, I could make my father do as I pleased. I could claim the throne. I could be the first high queen, Vranwen Alarra of Wredkyte, earthly avatar of the moon, and no one would ever again dare to cry at me, “Wren
this
” and “Wren
that
.” Embodiment of the goddess, I would rule my people for their own good. I would rid the clans of brigands and thieves, lying snakes such as Korbye—

Kill him?

Yes.

How best to have it done? Behead him?

Too noble.

Hang him?

Too gentle.

Torture first. The thumbscrews, the rack. Next, burn him at the stake or rend him limb from limb with horses—

And then such horror shook me that I am sure it showed on my face, for never before had such fancies manifested in me.

Enormities.

Cold as the moon.

My own thoughts unnerved me so that I leapt up from my unfinished dinner. Gasping, “Excuse me,” I fled.

 

Through the dark-timbered doorway to the shadowy courtyard I ran, across the cobbles to the postern gate, out of my father’s stronghold and away across the moors to the same place I had visited so sunnily earlier that same day, at the edge of the sea cliff.

There I halted, panting.

Not far away stood the tower of stone with the huge boulder rocking as gently as a cradle atop it.

Overhead a full moon swam like a swan amid scudding clouds. The sea wind blew strong, lifting my gown’s wide sleeves as if I might take flight. Below, the breakers roared, gleaming silver-green in the moonbeams.

I snatched from my arm the ring of that same sheen, the color of the moonlit sea. I lifted that circle of mystery metal in both hands, presenting it to the goddess in the sky. Surrounding her, it shone like her dark and hollow sister.

It called to me.

My horror had passed, seeming of no account. More than ever, I yearned to cherish my treasure and be powerful. Destiny had given this ring to me to make me a queen.

“Wren? ”

A man’s voice, behind me. Turning, lowering my arms, I knew who it was.

“Father.”

He strode forward to stand beside me, shining golden even in the silver moonlight. Quite gently he asked, “What is that you held up to the sky?”

I gripped the ring with both hands. Instead of answering my father’s question, I said harshly, “Korbye should not be king.”

“Why so?”

“He lied. He cares only for himself.”

“Granted, he is a greedy young boar hog now, but do you not think he will change as he grows older?”

“Think you so?”

If he had said yes, he would have spoken untruth, and he did not dare. He did not know any longer what I would do, whether I might call him liar to his face. He knew only that something had vastly changed, and he guessed why.

He said, “Give me that thing you are holding.”

“No.” I stepped away from him so that he could not seize the ring.

Never in my life had I defied him so.

Always in his kiss on my face I had felt approval for my obedience.

Which did not necessarily mean that he loved me.

Or that he would not kill me if I threatened his power.

He scowled fit to darken the moonlight. With perilous softness he addressed me. “Wren—”

“Vranwen,” I ordered, clutching the ring, feeling its chill metal awake and puissant in my grasp. “I am Vranwen Alarra.”

I think he tried to stride toward me but could not move. He gasped as if something strangled him. Three times he drew choking breath before he whispered in a ragged voice, “Vranwen Alarra, guard that ring well if you wish to keep your life.”

“Seize it!” shouted another voice. Korbye’s. He lunged from where he had been hiding, listening, in the shadow of the stone tower.

And because I had not known he was there, because I had not turned the force of my will upon him, he could have done as he said. Before I could face him he leapt toward me—

Then without making a sound as it left its perch, as silently as an owl in flight, the giant boulder stooped from atop the tower of rock.

Fell.

Thudded down upon him.

Flattened him within an eyeblink. Took him. No part of him to be seen ever again.

For all mortal purposes, Korbye was no more.

Father stood as if he himself had turned into a tower of stone. And I heard a sound like the harsh cry of a sea hawk. Maybe from him. Maybe also from me.

I know not how long we stood like wood before Father whispered, “Daughter, did you wish this?”

“No.”

“Did you—power of that ring—”

“It acted of its own will.” And in that moment I knew what it might make of me.

An avatar of the moon goddess, yes. One of whose forms was that of a black sow who devoured her own newborn babies.

Trembling, I flung the ring away. Off the cliff. Into the roaring, all-grasping breakers of the sea.

There I knew it would be safe. The sea needed no more power than it already possessed. Indifferent, it would drop the ring somewhere and forget it.

I turned, once more only a stubby dun-skinned girl named Wren.

Standing at the cliff’s edge, I said to my father, “Kill me if you will.”

He faced me for a long moment before he said softly, “Daughter, I could never do you harm.”

I breathed out.

“But there is a fate on you that may kill you yet,” he said, his voice as taut as a war drum’s stretched dry pigskin. “What is it, my daughter? You wish to rule after I am gone?”

I shook my head. “Should I attempt it, some clan chief will slay me and take the throne.” Just as someone might well have slain me for the sake of the ring.

“What then? What is this destiny that mantles you?”

I closed my eyes and let my mind search the night for the invisible sooth. And I found it.

Indeed, I thought as I opened my eyes, I should have known it before.

Slowly, gazing upon my father’s sober face, I told him, “I am to be your kingmaker.”

On the moonlit heather a shadow moved. I looked up: low over my head an owl flew. Just an ordinary brown owl, most likely. I barely glimpsed it before it disappeared.

At the same time something invisible winged between my father and me, some understanding beyond words but not beyond awe.

And fear. Great fear.

But I loved my father. I whispered, “Somewhere, growing pure like a golden rose in some hidden place, there is a true chosen one who should rule after you. I will quest for him. And I will find him for you.”

And also for myself, for he would be my prince, my true love, and I would wed him even though I knew that thereby death awaited me. As clearly as if I saw it in a mirror of polished silver, I knew that on the day they placed the golden torc of the high king on his neck, I would die. In childbirth. Of a daughter, who would someday be high queen.

Yet this was what I knew I must do. I told my father, “I will find him even if it means the oaken staff and the crown of mistletoe.”

But Gwal Wredkyte did not, after all, completely understand, for he protested, “Some sacrifice, you mean, Wren? But already you have sacrificed—”

I took his arm, clinging to the warmth of his love, yet turning him away from the cliff’s edge, guiding him past the boulder hunkering nearby like a mountainous dark sow wallowing in the night. “Bah. Nonsense,” I told him. “I have sacrificed nothing. That thing I threw away was best worthy to adorn the gruntle of a pig.”

Given my Celtic bias, in “Kingmaker,” the setting is sort of Welsh, almost Tintagel, with the crashing sea, the cliffs, the huge rocks left behind by playful giants, the logan stone balanced and rocking atop its pillar. I can’t think of any detail in the story, including the sister-son as heir or the moon mythology of the old sow who eats her farrow, that did not come straight out of some nonfiction book I’d read sometime in the past, um, forty years. The legend of the wren is straight out of—somewhere; it’s beyond me at this point to give credit where credit is due.

I can credit myself only with naming my youthful protagonist Wren, giving her the gift to know sooth, placing her in the judgment chair of her father the high king, and staying out of the story’s way. In other words, don’t ask me, I just live here. Now reading up on boiled peanuts, blue-tailed skinks, Catahoula curs, bromeliads, cottonmouth moccasins. Whatever.

A TICKET TO RIDE