The Last Light of the Sun Read online

  “I followed you.”

  Not his answer. He looked at her. “I know. I know that. Why?”

  She said, “Because you put away … your iron when you came up the slope to me? Before?”

  A question in it. She was asking him if this was good enough, as an answer. She spoke Cyngael in the old fashion, the way his grandfather had talked. It frightened him to think how old she might be. He didn’t want to think of that, or ask. How long did faeries live? He felt light-headed. It was difficult to breathe. He said, a little desperately, “Will you do me harm?”

  Her laughter then, first time, rippling. “What harm could I do?”

  She lifted her arms, as if to show him how delicate she was, slender, her fingers very long. He could not have named the colour of the tunic she wore, could see the pale, sleek curve of her below it. She extended a hand towards him. He closed his eyes just before she touched his face with her fingers for the second time.

  He was lost, knew he was, whatever the tales might say in warning. He had been lost when he left the chapel to come out from behind mortal walls and enter this wood where men did not go.

  He took her fingers in his hand, and brought them to his mouth and kissed them, then turned her palm to his lips. Felt her trembling, as leaves did in wind. Heard her say, very faintly, music, “Will you do me harm?”

  Alun opened his eyes. She was a silver shining in the wood, beyond imagining. He saw the trees around them and the summer grass.

  “Not for all the light in all the worlds,” he said, and took her in his arms.

  There was very little light in the great hall now: amber pools spilling from the two fires, or where a cluster of men continued to throw dice at one end of the room, and another pair of lamps at the head table where two men remained awake and talking and a third listened quietly, A fourth figure slept there, snoring softly, his head on the board among the last uncleared platters.

  Aeldred of the Anglcyn looked at the sleeping cleric from Ferrieres and then turned the other way, smiling a little.

  “We have exhausted him,” he said.

  The cleric on his other side set down his cup. “It is late.”

  “Is it? Sometimes sleep feels wrong. A surrendering of opportunity.” The king sipped his own wine. “He quoted Cingalus at you. You were very kind, then.”

  “No need to embarrass him.”

  Aeldred snorted. “While he was citing you to yourself?”

  Ceinion of Llywerth shrugged. “I was flattered.”

  “He didn’t know you wrote it. He was patronizing you.”

  “That wouldn’t have mattered if he’d been right in what he argued.”

  A small sound at that, from the third man. Both turned to him, both smiling.

  “Not weary of us yet, my heart?” Aeldred asked.

  His younger son shook his head. “Weary, but not of this.” Gareth cleared his throat. “Father’s right. He … didn’t even have the quotation properly.”

  “True enough, my lord prince.” Ceinion was still smiling, still cradling his wine. “I’m honoured that you knew it. He was doing it from memory, in fairness.”

  “But he turned the meaning. He argued against you with your own thought turned backwards. You wrote the Patriarch that there was no error in images unless they were made to be worshipped, and he—”

  “He cited me as saying images would be worshipped.”

  “So he was wrong.”

  “I suppose, if you agree with what I wrote.” Ceinion’s expression was wry. “It could have been worse. He might have cited me as saying clerics should live chaste and unmarried.”

  The king laughed aloud. Young Gareth’s brow remained furrowed. “Why didn’t he know it was you who wrote it?”

  The subject of their conversation remained where he’d slumped, asleep with most of the men in the darkened hall. Ceinion glanced from the son to the father. He shrugged again.

  “Ferrieres tends to look down on the Cyngael. Much of the world does, my lord. Even here, if we are being honest. You call us horse thieves and eaters of oats, don’t you?” His tone was mild, unoffended. “He would find it alarming that a scholar cited and endorsed by the Patriarch was from a place so … marginal. They used a Rhodian name for me, after all, when they put my phrases in the Pronouncement. An easy error for him to make, not knowing.”

  “You didn’t sign it as Cingalus?”

  “I sign everything I write,” said the other man gravely, “as Ceinion of Llywerth, cleric of the Cyngael.”

  There was a little silence.

  “He wouldn’t even have expected you to be able to write in Trakesian, I imagine,” Aeldred murmured. “Or you to read it, for that matter, Gareth.”

  “The prince reads Trakesian? Wonderful,” Ceinion said.

  “I’m beginning, only,” Gareth remonstrated.

  “There’s no ‘only’ in that,” the cleric said. “Perhaps we shall read together while I am here?”

  “I’d be honoured,” Gareth said. His mouth quirked. “It’ll keep you from our horses.”

  A startled silence, then Ceinion burst out laughing and so did the king. The cleric mimed a blow at the prince.

  “My children are a great trial,” Aeldred said, shaking his head. “All four of them, but Gareth reminds me, I have new texts to show you.”

  Ceinion turned to him. “Indeed?”

  Aeldred allowed himself a satisfied smile. “Indeed. In the morning after prayers we shall go see what is being copied.”

  “And it is?” Ceinion was unable to mask eagerness.

  “Nothing so very much,” said the king, with a show of indifference. “Only a physician’s tract. One Rustem of Esperaña, on the eye.”

  “Collating Galinus and adding his own remedies? Oh, glorious! My lord, how in the god’s name did you—?”

  “A ship from Al-Rassan stopped at Drengest earlier this summer on its way back from trading with the Erlings at Rabady. They know I am buying manuscripts.”

  “Rustem? That’s three hundred years old. A treasure!” Ceinion exclaimed, though softly among the sleepers. “In Trakesian?”

  Aeldred smiled again. “In two languages, friend. Trakesian … and his original Bassanid.”

  “Holy Jad! But who reads Bassanid? The language is gone, since the Asharites.”

  “No one yet, but with both texts now we will soon be able to. I have someone working on that. The Trakesian text unlocks the other one.”

  “This is a glory and a wonder,” Ceinion said. He made the sign of the disk.

  “I know it is. You’ll see it in the morning.”

  “It will give me great joy.”

  There was another silence. “That opens a doorway for me, actually,” the king said; his tone remained light. “The question I’ve been waiting to ask.”

  The cleric looked at him, an exchange of glances in the island of light. Far down the room someone laughed as dice rolled and stopped and fortune smiled, however briefly.

  “My lord, I cannot stay,” Ceinion said quietly.

  “Ah. And thus the door closes,” Aeldred murmured.

  Ceinion held his gaze in the lamplight. “You know I cannot, my lord. There are people who need me. We were speaking of them, remember? The oat-eaters no one respects? At the edge of the world?”

  “We’re as much at the edge, ourselves,” Aeldred said.

  “No. You aren’t. Not at this court, my lord. All praise to you for that.”

  “But you won’t help me take it further?”

  “I am here now,” Ceinion said simply.

  “And you will come back?”

  “As often as I may.” Another small, rueful smile. “For the nourishing of my own spirit. Unworthy as that might be. You know what I think of this court. You are a light to us all, my lord.”

  The king did not move. “You would make us brighter, Ceinion.”

  The cleric sipped from his cup before answering. “It would nourish my own desires to do so, to sit here an
d share learning as old age comes. Do not think I am not tempted. But I have tasks in the west. We Cyngael live where the farthest light of Jad falls. The last light of the sun. It needs attending to, my lord, lest it fail.”

  The king shook his head. “It is all … marginal, here in the northlands,” Aeldred said. “How do we build anything to last, when it might come down at any time?”

  “That is true of all men, my lord. Of everything we do, anywhere.”

  “And not more so here? Truly?”

  Ceinion inclined his head. “You know I agree with you. I merely—”

  “Cite text and doctrine. Yes. But if you refrain from doing that? If you answer honestly? What happens here if the harvest fails in a year the Erlings decide to come back in numbers, not just raiding? Do you think I have forgotten the marshes? Do you think any of us who were there lie down at night, any night, without remembering?”

  Ceinion said nothing.

  Aeldred went on, “What happens to us if Carloman or his sons in Ferrieres quell the Karchites, as they likely will, and decide they want more land for themselves?” He looked at the sleeping man on his other side.

  “You’ll beat them back,” Ceinion said, “or your sons will. I do believe there is that here which will endure. I am … less certain of my people, still fighting each other, still seduced by pagan heresies.” He paused, looked away again, and then back. He shrugged. “You spoke of the marsh. Tell me of your fevers, my lord.”

  Aeldred made an impatient gesture, one that served as a reminder—if one were needed—that this was a king. “I have physicians, Ceinion.”

  “Who have done little enough to ease them. Osbert tells me—”

  “Osbert tells you too much.”

  “And that, you know well, is untrue. I brought something with me. Do I give it to you, or to him, or whichever physician you trust?”

  “I trust none of them.” This time it was the king who shrugged. “Give it to Osbert, if you must. Jad will ease my affliction when it pleases him to do so. I am reconciled to that.”

  “Does that mean we who love you must be?” Ceinion’s voice carried just enough amusement to make Aeldred look closely at him, and then shake his head.

  “I am made to feel like a child sometimes, by these fevers.”

  “And why not? We are all still children in some fashion. I can remember skipping stones into the sea as a boy. Then learning my letters. My wedding day … there is no shame in that, my lord.”

  “There is in helplessness.”

  That stopped him. In the silence, young Gareth rose, took the flask—there were no servants near them now—and poured for the cleric and his father.

  Ceinion sipped at the wine. Changed the subject, again. “Tell me of the wedding, my lord.”

  “Judit’s?”

  “Unless there is another in the offing.” The cleric smiled.

  “The ceremonies will be there during the midwinter rites. She goes north to Rheden to make babies and bind two peoples again, the way her mother did, marrying me.”

  “What do we know of the prince?”

  “Calum? He’s young. Younger than she is.”

  Ceinion looked down the hall, back to the king. “It is a good union.”

  “An obvious one.” Aeldred hesitated. His turn to look away. “Her mother has asked me to let her go, after the wedding.”

  It was news. A confiding. “To Jad’s house?”

  Aeldred nodded. Took up his wine cup again. He was looking at his younger son, and Ceinion realized this would be news for the prince, as well. A time chosen for the telling, late night, by lamplight. “She has wanted this for a long time.”

  Ceinion said, “And you have agreed now. Or you wouldn’t be telling me.”

  Aeldred nodded again.

  It was not uncommon for men or women, nearing their mortal ending, to seek out the god, pulling back and away from the tumult of the world. It was rare for royalty. The world not so easily left behind, for many reasons.

  “Where will she go?” the cleric asked.

  “Retherly, in the valley. Where our infants are buried. She’s been endowing the Daughters of Jad there for years.”

  “A well-known house.”

  “Will be better known, with a queen, I imagine.”

  Ceinion listened for, but did not hear, bitterness. He was thinking about the prince on his other side, didn’t look that way, giving Gareth time.

  “After the wedding?” he said.

  “So she intends.”

  Carefully, Ceinion said, “We are not supposed to grieve, if someone finds her way, or his, to the god.”

  “I know that.”

  Gareth suddenly cleared his throat. “Do … the others know of this?” His voice was rough.

  His father, who had chosen his moment, said, “Athelbert? No. Your sisters might. I’m not certain. You may tell them, if you like.”

  Ceinion looked from one to the other. Aeldred, it occurred to him, would not necessarily be an easy man to have for a father. Not for a son, at any rate.

  He’d had a good deal of wine, but his thinking was still clear, and the name had now been spoken. A doorway of his own. Perhaps. They were as much alone as they were likely to be, and the younger son, listening, had a thoughtful nature. He drew breath and spoke. “I have,” he said, “another wedding thought, if you might entertain it.”

  “You want a wife again?” The king’s smile was gentle.

  So was the cleric’s, responding. “Not this woman. I am too old, and unworthy.” He paused again, then said it: “I have in mind someone for Prince Athelbert.”

  Aeldred grew still. The smile faded. “This is the heir of the Anglcyn, friend.”

  “I know it, my lord, believe me. You want peace west of the Wall, and I want my people drawn into the world, from their feuds and solitude.”

  “It can’t be done.” Aeldred shook his greying head decisively. “If I choose a princess from any of your provinces, I declare war on the other two, destroy the purpose of a union.”

  The other man smiled. “You have been thinking about this.”

  “Of course I have! It is what I do. But what answer is there, then?”

  And so Ceinion of Llywerth said softly, with the voicemusic the Cyngael carried with them through the world, “There is this one answer, lord. Brynn ap Hywll, who slew the Volgan by the sea and might have been our king had he wanted it, has a daughter of an age to be wed. Her name is Rhiannon, and she is the jewel of all women I know. Unless that be her mother. The father is known to you, I dare say.”

  Aeldred stared at him without speaking for a long time. The Ferrieres cleric snored, cheek to the wooden board. They heard laughter again and a muffled curse from down the room. A sleepy servant prodded the nearer fire with an iron rod.

  A door opened before the king spoke.

  Doors opened and closed all the time, without consequence or weight. This one was behind them, not the double doors at the far end of the hall. A small door, an exit for the king and his family, should they wish one. A tall man had to stoop to go through. A passage to inner quarters, privacy, the sleep one would have assumed to be coming soon tonight.

  Not so, in the event, for it is not given to men and women to know with any surety what is to come.

  The doorways of our lives take many shapes, and the arrivals that change us are not always announced by thunderous pounding or horns at the gates. We may be walking a known laneway, at prayer in a familiar chapel, entering a new one and simply looking up, or we may be deep in quiet talk late of a summer’s night, and a door will open behind us.

  Ceinion turned. Saw Osbert, son of Cuthwulf, Aeldred’s lifelong companion, and his chamberlain. Cuthwulf, as it happened, had been a name cursed in the Cyngael lands, a cattle-raider and worse than that, in more violent days. Another reason (if more were needed) the Anglcyn were hated and feared west of the Wall.

  The Erlings had killed Cuthwulf by Raedhill, with his king.

  The s
on, Osbert, was a man Ceinion had come to admire without stint or reservation after two sojourns here. Fidelity and courage, judicious counsel, quiet faith and manifest love: these held their message for those who could see.

  Osbert moved forward with the limp he had carried away from a battlefield twenty years ago. He came into the lamplight. Ceinion saw his face. And even by that muted illumination he knew that something had come upon them through that door. He set down his wine, carefully.

  Peace, ease, leisure to build and teach, to plant and harvest, time to read ancient texts and consider them … these were not the coinage of the north. In other lands they might be, to the south, east in Sarantium, or perhaps in the god’s other worlds.

  Not here.

  “What is it?” Aeldred said. His voice had altered. He stood, his chair scraping back. “Osbert, tell me.”

  Ceinion would remember that voice, and the fact that the king had been on his feet before he’d heard anything. Knowing already.

  And so Osbert told them: of signal flares lit on hills towards the south by the sea, running in their chain of telling fire along the ridges with a message. Not a new tale, Ceinion thought, hearing it. Nothing new here at all, only the old dark legacy of these northlands, which was blood.

  CHAPTER IX

  “Will my own world be there when I leave you?”

  “I don’t know what you mean. This is the world we have.”

  She was beside him, very near. The glade would have been dark were it not for the light she cast. Her hair was all around him, copper-coloured now, thick and warm; he could touch it, had been doing so, in a wood on a summer night. They lay in deep grass, edge of a clearing. Sounds of the forest around them, murmurous. These woods had been shunned for generations by his people and the Anglcyn, both. His fear was beside him, however, not among the trees.

  “We have stories. Those who went with faeries, and came home … a hundred years later.” Spirit wood, they named this forest. One of the names. Was this what it meant?

  Her voice was lazy, a slow music. She said, “I might enjoy lying here that long.”

  He laughed softly, startled. Felt himself suspended, precariously, between too many feelings, almost afraid to move, as if that might break something.