Kushiel's Justice (34 page)

T
HIRTY-THREE

O
N THE DAY OF THE
Feast of the Dead, we fasted.

Oh, to be sure, the kitchens were hard at work all day long; in Clunderry Castle and in every crofter’s thatched hut. They turned out tarts and pies, all manner of puddings and oatcakes by the score, while soups simmered, roasts sizzled in their own juices, and capons grew crisp-skinned and tender. But none of it was meant to be eaten, not yet.

Outside the castle walls, the foundation for a great bonfire was laid with care, a tall cone reaching toward the steely grey sky. Despite the cold weather and the hunger, everyone was in good spirits.

Although I understood the protocol of the celebration, I had no idea what to expect. I’d felt the presence of the dead unleashed among the living in Lucca and it hadn’t been pleasant. The prospect of courting them deliberately had me nervous and on edge. I couldn’t help thinking about the way Gallus Tadius had taken possession of Lucius. Dorelei assured it me it was nothing like what I’d witnessed in Lucca. Betimes the dead appeared to one, but often they didn’t. She claimed to have seen a spirit once; the spirit of her aunt Moiread, who had died in the battle of Bryn Gorrydum.

“How did you know it was her?” I asked.

“I didn’t,” she said. “She looked a lot like my mother, only younger, and there was a brightness about her. And she was carrying a bow. She smiled at me. When I told my parents about it, they said it was her.”

“What did it mean?”

Dorelei shrugged. “ ’Twas a sign that she was happy in the underworld. That she died well, with courage and honor, and that her death had been properly avenged.”

“What about the unhappy dead?” I asked.

“They’re not happy,” Dorelei said. “And they don’t smile.”

When the invisible sun began to sink below the western horizon, all the lamps, torches, and candles in Clunderry were extinguished and the cooking fires were banked. A portion of all the food prepared that day was carried outside the castle walls and set on a long trestle table erected for the purpose. We bundled ourselves into warm clothing and thick woolen cloaks and gathered outside around the looming pile of brush and firewood, taking up unlit torches prepared for the occasion.

Darkness seemed to rise upward from the cold, barren ground. The
ollamh
Firdha lifted her hands and invoked the gods of death and the underworld, inviting them to open their gates that the dead might visit the living and be honored. She invoked the gods of fire and light to illuminate their paths and welcome them with brightness and warmth, and invoked the
diadh-anam
of the Cullach Gorrym to guide us.

When the
ollamh
’s invocation was finished, Alais presented her with a flint striker. The Daughter of the Grove knelt and kindled the fire, the sparks bright and vivid against the gloaming.

It caught quickly, pitch-soaked twists of straw roaring to life. Within minutes, the bonfire was a roaring blaze, a tower of flame licking at the sky. Drustan stepped forward to light the first torch, and cheers echoed throughout Clunderry.

The procession began.

Firdha led it, flanked by a pair of the Cruarch’s men, holding their torches high to light her way. One by one, we all came forward, dipping our torches into the bonfire, then proceeding past the trestle table, where we retrieved an item of food. I picked up a small mincemeat pie. The smell made my empty stomach rumble.

The procession crossed a stretch of darkened field, heading toward the
taisgaidh
woods. As I had promised Drustan, the paths had been cleared, although I’d not travelled them myself. I’d not ventured into the woods since the night of the cattle-raid.

As Firdha entered the darker shadow of the trees, I turned back to glance behind me. We were at the forefront of the procession. It snaked behind us, hundreds of people long, torches flickering all the way across Clunderry. The sight made me shiver with a mix of awe and apprehension.

“Are you all right?” Dorelei asked.

“Fine.” I smiled at her. “Hungry.”

The woods were dense, but the path was wide and clear. It had to be, else we’d set fire to the place. Even so, it made me nervous. Dry branches reached down toward us like brittle fingers, eager to touch the crackling flames.

The Cruithne do this every year, I reminded myself.

I set my fear aside and concentrated on the dead, trying to honor them in my memory. To be sure, I had enough of them. I thought about all who had died in Daršanga, all the victims and martyrs and valiant fighters.
Remember this
. I thought about my comrades in Lucca, and the soldiers I’d killed with my own hand, praying for their forgiveness. I thought about Gilot, who had died a hero after all; and Canis, who’d given his life for mine.

I thought about Dorelei’s dead; my family, now. Her grandmother, her father, her young aunt. I prayed that they would smile upon her.

We entered the oak grove. They were ancient trees with vast, spreading crowns and gnarled trunks, twisting roots thicker than a strong man’s arm emerging from the soil. My skin prickled and my bindings itched. This was a sacred place.

In the center of the grove, Firdha pointed. One of the men escorting her knelt and planted his torch in the soil, then rose and kindled a second torch from it. Firdha raised her hands and gave another invocation.

“Mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, sons and daughters, feast and be welcome among us this night!”

There, we left our offerings of food, a steady pile growing around the burning torch. And then the
ollamh
led us onward, the path twisting and winding as it led out of the grove and deeper into the woods.

How long we walked, I could not say. I never grew tired and the time passed as if in a dream; it could have been hours or merely minutes. At last the woods opened onto a clearing and the ring of standing stones was before us.

I’d heard tell there were larger ones elsewhere in Alba, and I daresay it was true; but this was large enough. There were nine stones, all standing on end, all solid granite, and none less than half again as tall as I was. I touched one as we entered, following Firdha. It was rough and cool to the touch.

“Here.” Firdha pointed to a half-buried boulder that marked the center. Her other escort knelt and planted his torch beside it. Drustan mab Necthana beckoned into the torch-streaked darkness behind us, and two of his men came forward, carrying a cask of
uisghe
between them. They placed it atop the boulder, and Drustan pulled out the cork bung.

Uisghe
flowed, pouring over stone and seeping into the earth. I could smell the tang of it.

There was another odor, too; darker and deeper. It was mixed in with the scent of loam and night and fermented grain. Blood. Old blood.

Firdha raised her face to the dark sky and opened her arms. “Crom, Cailleach, Macha, Balor! We bring tribute and thanks! May Alba’s dead rest gentle in your keeping, and receive the honor of the living this night!”

I shuddered.

Nothing happened, though. Firdha lowered her arms and led the procession around the interior of the circle of stones. Well and so, I thought as we completed the circle and the procession began to double back on itself; that is that. What did you expect, Imriel? This is Alba, where you’ve no dead of your own.

The horse beside me tossed its head and snorted in agreement.

Name of Elua! I nearly jumped out of my skin.

“What is it?” Dorelei asked quietly.

I pointed at the horse and rider pacing alongside us on the path, pale and spectral, as though they were wrought out of mist. I could see torch-bearing figures walking on the other side of the path clear through them, still proceeding toward the standing stones. “There. Him. Them. Do you see?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Who is it?”

I lifted my gaze to meet the rider’s eyes. I knew him; I knew his face. He was D’Angeline. An old man, grave and sorrowful. His face was wrinkled, but I knew it. I knew the strong, firm line of his brows, the angle of his jaw visible beneath the sagging skin. I’d seen it in the Hall of Portraits in the Palace in the City of Elua. I’d seen it in the mirror.

“Father?”
I whispered.

The rider lifted one hand; whether in acknowledgment, benediction, or apology, I could not say. Mayhap it was all three. I’d thought Berlik of the Maghuin Dhonn had the saddest face I’d ever seen on a man. I was wrong. My father’s face was sadder. I reached out to him unthinking, and he vanished. There was only the path and the woods and the long, winding line of processionists passing us in the opposite direction.

“Oh!” I blinked. “Dorelei, he’s gone.”

“It’s all right.” She took my arm and pressed it against her warm, living flesh. “They can’t stay long, Imriel. They never do.” She smiled up at me. “Mayhap he wanted to behold his grandchild in the womb.”

You will wonder about your father . . .

My father had spent his life in exile for the sake of political gain, and hated it. Bitterness had poisoned him. He had come to despise his own half-Caerdicci children. My mother had known it. She had exploited it. And I had followed in his footsteps in a way, though I’d never thought on it. But it wasn’t the same, not at all. Although I missed Terre d’Ange, I’d learned to love Alba. I’d learned to love my wife, who had taught me to be a better person. Would my father love this half-Cruithne grandchild of his?

I hoped so. I hoped death had brought wisdom to him.

“Mayhap,” I said to Dorelei. “I hope so.”

Still, I wished he hadn’t looked so sad.

Upon our return to Clunderry, the great bonfire was burning much, much lower. The fires were rekindled in the hearths, the oven-embers uncovered, the lamps and torches and candles were relit, and at last we feasted. Hungry though I was, I hovered over Dorelei first to ensure that the long walk hadn’t overtaxed her and she ate well. I’d tried to persuade her not to take part in the ritual, but she’d pointed out that she was perfectly fit, and there were women among the crofters further along in their pregnancies than she was walking in the procession.

We stayed awake until the small hours of the night, sharing memories of our dead, and tales of those glimpsed along the paths, our tongues loosened by
uisghe
and the strangeness of the night.

I learned a great deal about the members of my household that night, and I daresay they could say the same of me. D’Angeline politics were distant and of little interest to most Albans, especially here in the countryside. The history of my parentage came as somewhat of a novelty to them.

“I’d a brother was a traitor,” Urist offered unexpectedly. “Remember, my lord?”

Drustan nodded quietly. “I do.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“He chose to side with Maelcon the Usurper.” Urist gazed into the depths of his cup. “I killed him myself in the battle of Bryn Gorrydum. He’d been sore wounded, but I finished the job. I pray for his forgiveness every day.” He looked up. “I saw him on the paths, once. I think he wanted me to know he understood.”

“Mayhap he wanted
your
forgiveness,” I said.

“Do you think that’s what your father sought?” Urist asked shrewdly.

“I don’t know.” I frowned. “Mayhap.”

The memory stayed with me for many days, long after Drustan and his men had departed. The enormity of my mother’s crimes had always overshadowed my father’s; he’d never even been convicted of treason, having died before he could stand trial. And my mother’s living presence had always overshadowed his absence. Even having vanished, she remained a presence in my life. I’d felt it at the Palace, and I’d felt it in Caerdicca Unitas, where her man Canis had saved my life. Here in Alba, beyond the reach of the long arm of the Unseen Guild, ’twas the first time I’d truly felt free of it.

But my father . . . I’d never given him much consideration.

As the weeks passed and late autumn gave way to winter in Clunderry, I found myself thinking a great deal about the past, looking for clues to the future. My father’s children from his first marriage, Thérèse and Marie-Celeste, had turned their back on their D’Angeline heritage and flung themselves into marriage and intrigue in La Serenissima. I hoped that wouldn’t happen with Dorelei’s and my child.

Still, I thought, if it did, I would try to bear it with grace and understanding. I wouldn’t disdain him—or her—for the choice. I hoped our child would embrace both sides of its heritage, but I’d not shove any false notions of D’Angeline superiority down its throat.

I wondered if my father had done that with his half-Caerdicci children, making them feel inadequate. I suspected mayhap it was so. To be sure, Alais and Sidonie had experienced a measure of the same prejudice from many of the realm’s peers. Sidonie was capable of meeting it with withering contempt, but Alais . . . it had hurt her.

And even Sidonie . . .

I remembered the first time we’d made love. I’d told her, afterward, that I liked her black eyes, the way they didn’t match the rest of her. I remembered what she’d said.
You don’t mind?

And so I meditated on my father’s spectral visit and resolved, over the course of the winter, to take it as a warning and learn from his mistakes. If Dorelei’s and my child emerged with jet-black hair and eyes, toast-brown skin, dimpled cheeks, and a predilection for poetry, cattle-raids, and
uisghe
, I’d love it not a whit less.

I told her that one night as we lay in bed. I was rubbing flaxseed oil on her belly, which had acquired an impressive rondeur.

“I never thought you wouldn’t,” Dorelei said in surprise.

“No?” I smoothed more oil over her taut skin, watching it gleam. Dorelei said she could feel the babe moving, but I couldn’t, not yet. Another month, the older women assured me. “I worry, that’s all.”

“You shouldn’t.” She smiled at me. “You may be insufferably self-absorbed, but you
do
have a good heart, Imriel.”

I hoped it was true. I’d wondered before in my life what manner of person I’d have become if I’d grown up as the goatherding orphan I’d believed I was. But I’d never thought to wonder what I’d be like if I’d grown to manhood as the son of Melisande Shahrizai and Benedicte de la Courcel, shaped by my mother’s machinations and my father’s bitterness.