Shadow's End (Light & Shadow) (27 page)

Epilogue

We waited for three long days, in near total silence. The beach was a windswept spit of land, smooth pebbles slick and treacherous underfoot; waves lapped at the shore, hidden by the thick mist, their sound carrying strangely. The sea seemed to be all around me, the smells of salt and seaweed heavy in the air. When the mists parted, the Isles shone in the sunlight, shimmering green and grey, a mirage that seemed to flicker in and out. When the fog rolled in, the world itself disappeared, and there was only the ocean, and the lonely crying of the gulls.

It was a good place to mourn
, and Miriel and I sat together without speaking, both of us lost to memory. I thought of Roine’s smile, the reddish sheen of her hair, the warmth of her arms around me. It was all I could do to remember her last words and the hatred in her eyes, but I could not leave that memory alone. I found that I grieved for Garad, who had died too young, and without the love he had sought. I grieved for Donnett, whose face I would never see again, and I even grieved, curiously, for the Duke—such a figure of legend could not be gone, surely.

What Miriel thought of, I did not know. Sometimes she cried, and sometimes she walked slowly along the beach, stooping to look at the smooth pebbles or looking up at the sky. Even in her grief, she was at ease here; she lik
ed to walk barefoot with the waves lapping at her feet, and she slept outside, looking up at the stars.

When
, on the fourth morning. we heard the scrape of a boat grounding, I motioned Miriel to stay where she was, silently, and I began to pick my way over the slick ground, peering into the mist. I stopped when the figure emerged ahead of me—a young man, perhaps twenty years old, with his dark hair drawn back from his face. He looked at me strangely, and I found myself frowning at him. He looked so familiar that I was certain I must have met him before, but I could not think where.

“Where is your companion?” he asked me, startling me with the sound of common. “In my dream, there were two of you—you, and a girl with hair as black as night.”

“Who are you?” I asked, rather than answer, and he smiled, white teeth flashing in a grin. He held out his hand to me.

“I am Fidach. Come—you are to meet the Queen, both of you.”

“Queen?” I asked, and he smiled once more.

“She knows you have come,” he said seriously. “And she knows why, although she has not told me. Will you come with me, you and your sister?” I looked him over, unsettled. Familiar as he was, he was standing easily, no hint of a fighters’ crouch, no sign of weapons concealed beneath his clothing. His gaze was open and honest, and at last I called over my shoulder, into the mist,

“Miriel.” She appeared like a little ghost. In her grey gown, with her pale skin and black hair, she seemed almost a creature of the mist herself until she looked up; then the deep blue of her eyes was piercing. She, too, frowned to see Fidach, although she curtsied prettily enough to him.

“We’re to meet the Queen,” I told her simply, and she accepted this without comment, handing me my pack and stepping, daintily, into the little boat Fidach had drawn up on the beach. I followed her and we sat together, both staring covertly at Fidach as he shoved the boat into the water and leapt in gracefully. He cast us a curious smile, his gaze lingering on Miriel, and then he took up an oar.

The boat cut through the water almost silently, only the faintest splash coming from the paddle. Spires of rock appeared suddenly out of the mist and faded away in our wake, and more than once we saw broken masts standing forlornly, the wood rotting with age, the ship lost to the currents. On clear days, I had seen rough waves, white-capped, but where our little boat passed, the water was eerily calm. We passed a few gulls, floating contentedly on the waves, and once, a shoal of fish broke the surface in a ripple of silver. In the near silence, colors drained and muted, it was like a dream world.

We leaned against each other, lulled by the rocking of the boat, and I gave myself up to sleep. When I woke, stretching lazily, Fidach was still in the prow of the boat, his oar cutting through the water quietly, his back unbowed. I was wondering how long we had slept when I
saw an island looming before us, and I shook Miriel awake at once. We watched, wide-eyed, as the shape of it grew and changed. Even cloaked in mist as it was, we could see hills and cliffs, dark stone and verdant green. As we drew closer still, we saw that our arrival was expected: there were two figures standing on the rocky beach before us.

They were
not warriors, as I had expected, or even a party of dignitaries, but instead a woman and a child, standing alone on a beach quite as desolate as the one we had left. The boat ran aground with a groan, wooden timbers scraping across stone, and Fidach and I leapt out together, grabbing the prow to pull the boat clear of the waves. Miriel took my hand to steady herself as she stepped out of the boat, and then we stared uncertainly at the woman and child.

She wore a grey gown and a green cloak, a heavy necklace of gold at her throat. Her dark hair was tinted with red, I saw, and it fell past her shoulders in waves. There were lines at her eyes and the corners of her mouth, but for all that, I could not have guessed her age. She held the child by the hand, a young boy with her high brow and—my heart seized—Temar’s dark, slanting eyes and high cheekbones. I cast another look at the woman and thought I saw a resemblance to the man I had loved: the shape of her mouth, the set of her jaw. She nodded at me, self-possessed, and I saw that this was
the queen Fidach had spoken of.

None of them spoke, and at last I knelt on the rocks and unrolled the tiny bundle I carried with me, at last uncovering the
jet urn, unmarked, stopped with wax. For a moment, I curled my fingers around it, my eyes closed, saying goodbye—then I held it out to the woman, and she let go of the child’s hand and came to take it from me. Her eyes were dark with grief, and I knew that Fidach had been correct: this woman knew why we had come.

“These are the ashes of Necthan,” I said, shaping my mouth around the unfamiliar name, and the woman bent her head in acknowledgement. “He wanted you to know that he kept his promise,” I said simply, my throat tight with grief. “And to tell you that he died keeping my country from war.” Something eased in the woman’s face, a fear I had not known to look for.

“And Eral?” she asked me at length, her accent twisting the name strangely. Her gaze was fixed on the jar she held, as if she did not dare meet my eyes; the words would have been cold but for the yearning in her voice.

“Eral Celys is dead,” I said, and at last she looked up at me, her brown eyes wide and stricken. I swallowed at the pain I saw there.

“You know this for certain?” she asked me, her voice low, and I nodded.

“It was I who killed him,” I admitted. I did not want to say it, not to this Queen who had spoken of him with such fearful hope, but I could not let her think that it was Temar who had killed the Duke. I darted a glance at the man, at the boy, and they stared back at me wordlessly. At last, I looked back to the woman, who was gazing at with an expression I could not fathom. She looked as if she would strike me down where I stood, and yet as if there were no words she had wanted to hear more than those I had spoken.

“I did it to set Temar free,” I said wretchedly. The excuse sounded feeble to my ears, but all three of them stirred at the sound of the name. “Necthan,” I corrected myself. “But I knew him as Temar.” The woman smiled at that, and a tear rolled down her cheek.

“He was both,” she said.
“Though I had not known he took that name.” She saw the incomprehension on my face, and the look of anger faded. “Did he not tell you who he was?” I shook my head, wordless, and she handed the urn to the young man and came forward, drawing me away from the others. “Come with me,” she said, and there was no anger in her voice.

For a time, we walked along the shore in silence, until our companions were lost in the mist.
I had no words to speak—it was Miriel who should be called away, to walk with Queens and Kings, not I. But the woman seemed content in her silence, sure of her purpose. The cold water lapped up onto shore and soaked into her gown, but the woman did not seem to notice. She was tall, taller than me, and she walked not as if she owned the land, but instead as if she were a part of it.

“The people of the mainland say that these isles are legend,” the Queen remarked finally. “The waters are perilous, and many who seek our shores are lost to the Gods. It is rare that any man finds his way through the rocks, but it has been known to happen.” She shot me a look, her brown eyes veiled with thick lashes. “Eral was one of those
men. He washed up on our shores of Priteni half-dead, and half-mad from his ordeal.”

We walked, her face serene but her hand clutching at my arm. She was struggling to find words, and at last I spoke, a guess:

“You loved him.”

“I did.” She stopped and looked over at me, her lips pressed together. “He was…like no one I had known.” She smiled faintly at the memory, and I tried to keep my face blank; I could not imagine the Duke, dour and grim, as t
he object of any woman’s desire, but there was no denying the longing on the Queen’s face. I tried to think of the intelligence in his eyes, and wondered if, once, it had been paired with wit and charm, instead of grim ambition. At my side, the Queen took a deep breath, as one steeling herself to speak an unpleasant truth.

“I found him on the beach, and we could understand enough of each other’s words to speak of our lives, and our dreams. He…shone. I was young and foolish, and although my mother the Queen warned me against him, I married him in secret. Her health was failing, and I did not think I could bear to rule alone.” Her eyes closed briefly. “
I wanted a companion, but Eral wanted, more than anything, to prove himself. He wanted to be King—but it was not enough for him to be the King of Priteni, of our tribe. He must show us to the world, make Priteni a power to contend with your…” She searched for the name.

“Heddred,” I supplied quietly, and she nodded.

“So. It is the Queen’s right, to ask any one of her husband—anything he can grant her, he must. And it is his right, as well, to ask any one thing of her.”

“Heddred.” My mouth was dry. “He wanted you to invade.” She nodded, and her eyes were bright with tears.

“I begged him not to ask it of me—we have been our own nation, sheltered from the world. We did not want to rule your country, and I did not want to send my warriors to die in a strange land, never again to see their families. But he would not bend.”

“And so Temar—Necthan—“ I broke off, and she nodded, white-faced.

“There is an old myth,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “Of a King who was trapped into a bargain with the Faerie Queen: she had sent him a gift, a cup of gold, and by accepting it, he had given her the power to ask somewhat of him in return. She wished to rule the mortal realms, and he would not have been able to refuse her—but for one of his warriors, a man named Temar, who swore his life to the service of the Faerie Queen if she would go back once more to her realm, and set his people free of her spells.” Her mouth was trembling at the memory.

“Necthan was only a boy,” she said softly, and she looked back down the beach to where the child waited. “Connor is the very image of him. So young, so proud.” She blinked back tears. “He was my little brother, and I would not have let him make the bargain if I had known—but he hid it from me. It was the priestesses who told me what he had done when he had already gone, he and Eral both. I never saw them again—and Eral never saw his son.”

She smiled at my surprise, and I looked into the mist as if I could see Fidach standing there: Fidach, with his blue eyes and his wide mouth. The resemblance was unmistakable now that I knew to look for it, but with his carefree smile, Fidach hardly seemed his father’s son. As if she knew what I was thinking, the Queen smiled sadly.

“I don’t think I could bear to know what you knew of Eral. Fidach is much like his father, when I knew him—but he has little taste for the throne. It is Connor who will take my place when I am gone. He is my sister’s son.
I could never bear to take another lover, not knowing if Eral was alive or dead. I had made an oath.”

I bit my lip.
In those last words, at last, I had the key to Miriel. As the Queen turned and beckoned me back along the beach, I tried to find words to tell her this one fact. The Duke, ruthless, had sought power above all else—I thought. I had thought that his search for advantage knew no bounds. And yet now I saw that the Duke had shown more loyalty, in this one way, than anyone I knew.

“He was true to you,” I said simply. She looked back at me, hardly believing what I had said. “He never married, even though he had a dukedom,” I said awkwardly. “Miriel—my companion—she was his heir.
She is his sister’s daughter.”

“Thank you.” It was quietly spoken, and her face had gone still; she had withdrawn behind the mask of Queenship. I saw her look up at her son as we approached, taking solace in the sight of him, and then her gaze slid past him to Miriel, standing quietly at his side. As I went to Miriel, the Queen spoke.

“Where will you go now, travellers?” We looked back at her, and then at each other.

“We hadn’t decided,” I said, thinking of Voltur, of the eerie whistle of the wind
; there was nothing for us there, any longer. There was so much of Heddred we had never seen: there were the Bone Wastes, and the Eastern mountains. We would be welcome in Mavlon, surely, or in the Norstrung Provinces, amongst the common people. But, having passed through the mists, and traveled across this stretch of sea, I could almost think that we had passed out of that world, entirely.