Chronicles of Kells and Temra
Chapter Nine
Deirdre stared at the dagger and back at Kiaran. "You can't be serious!" Her tongue tangled in knots as she tried to think of the right words to talk him out of this madness. She should have known better: being honourable isn't always a good thing. An honourable knight, one who always follows the will of his master even when the master has gone mad, can be a terrible thing to behold. She could only hope that there was some amount of reason left in him, some place she could reach him. Or at least stall him until her comrades showed up to rescue her.
She had always tried to downplay her femininity. She knew she had come into the world during a time when Kells needed a male heir rather than a female, so she had always strived not to seem feminine and weak, but now, she knew she had to play the helpless damsel card for all it was worth. "Please don't…don't do this…" To her surprise, she felt tears come down her cheeks. "Where's the honour in killing a bound prisoner?"
He frowned. "You're right; there isn't any honour in this." He shoved the dagger into the dirt beside him and paused.
Deirdre lifted her head. "So are you going to let me go?"
"My men will soon return; they can only stall yours for so long." He wasn't talking to her; he was talking to himself, ruminating, trying to figure out to do next. "But there is no honour in killing you with your hands bound." He took up the dagger again and Deirdre felt her heart clench. But to her surprise, he cut the ropes that bound her wrists and ankles. Deirdre breathed a sigh of relief, grateful to feel the circulation returning to her hands. "So now what?" she asked.
"We fight." He held out her crossbow to her. "I'll tell Nemain that your knights overpowered my men and bought enough time for you to slip through my fingers. I say you overpowered me if she asks. Now take your weapon."
Deirdre took her crossbow and fired, throwing him against the tree. She did not need to be told what to do next: she was free, free to return to Kells.
"We shall meet again, princess," she heard Kiaran say, "and when we meet, it shall be in battle."
Rohan ducked before launching more flames at the Temrans. The soldiers were getting bolder; they were losing their superstitious fear of the knights. Kiaran had trained them well.
They had barely sent the soldiers off, when Deirdre came to them, her body bruised from a rough ride and her wrists swollen. "Hey," she said casually, as though her sudden reappearance was no big deal.
"Your highness," Ivar said as he ran to examine her.
"I'm fine," she said. "Just please take me home."
Maeve stirred from her sleep. She had dreamed of him again. Dareon… O Gods, why was it that man still had power over her. Her body still hungered for his touch, his voice still lingered in her ears, and she still remembered that smile of his.
He had been the one man she could never match in battle. He too, was one of Nemain's students—Nemain collected pupils based on how much they interested her—and while she had been able through years of study and hard training, hold her on against most of Nemain's pupils, she could never beat him. He was clever, too clever; that was why she killed him.
Their relationship had deteriorated with the birth of their son. It had been a condition Nemain had forced her to agree on before she would take her on as a student, that she would pledge her firstborn to her service. It seemed a reasonable proposition: she could always have more children and children seldom did well in harsh Temra. At the time of the arrangement with Nemain, she had envisioned herself claiming the Temran throne, conquering Kells, and having a long reign as Queen before passing her legacy onto her children. If she had to sacrifice a child to Nemain's service in order for this to happen, then so be it.
Truthfully when she discovered, shortly after her father's death, that she was with child, she was a little frightened. Her father had left a poisonous legacy with women: his first wife died in childbed before she was ever born, her own mother had lived only two years before dying in childbed, and her father's third wife had disappeared. She had never had a mother and her father ignored her for the most part, so she had been raised by servants and tutors sent by nobles who were concerned about the education and deportment of the future heir. She hadn't expected to become pregnant so soon—she had planned on waiting until she conquered Kells so she could deliver a united kingdom to her future children—but when she did, she threw herself wholeheartedly, vowing that she would be a far better parent to her child than her father was to her.
But the birth of her child proved to be the beginning of the end of her and Dareon's relationship. She didn't know why. She tried, honestly she did, but she couldn't stop everything from changing. She didn't know why Dareon had been so opposed to her sending their child to be raised by Nemain; they had both been raised by Nemain and it had made them strong. But he was opposed. She never knew why; now that she was growing old, rotting in the King's dungeon, she wished she did. Nevertheless when one day she awoke, found her babe missing from his cradle and her husband gone, well, no one had to draw her a diagram: she knew very well what had happened.
She sent out her men to comb the countryside. They found Dareon just a few miles from the border and dragged him back in irons. But her baby was nowhere to be found. They searched every inch of Temra, but none of her men found her baby.
She questioned Dareon personally for hours, in tears most of the time, because deep down, she still believed their relationship could be salvaged if he would just tell her where her baby was. But he would just laugh and say, "I don't know."
That was Dareon's way. He was a trickster, one who played the handsome fool, who allowed others to laugh at him behind his back. Of course, only those who had never done battle with him could laugh at him. She couldn't laugh at him then, not with the future of her kingdom at stake. After a few fruitless hours of questioning, she turned him over to Rafe, her head gaoler.
Head gaoler…head torturer was more like it. He was one of the few of her father's appointees that survived his reign, partly because both her father and he shared a deep cruel streak. She knew what Rafe was capable of—she had witnessed him at work many times—yet she turned the one man she had ever loved to him.
Rafe did his work, depriving Dareon of food and sleep, blistering him, beating him, working him over with all manner of implements, yet no matter what, Dareon, bruised and bleeding would only say, "I don't know," when asked again where the Queen's child was. Eventually, Maeve realized she would never break him. She could bury him alive, torture him for thousands of years, but he would always say, "I don't know." Nothing she could do would break him.
She wasn't sure why; she still isn't. Towards the end of Rafe's session, Dareon's body had been reduced to mostly blood and pulp, yet he still smiled. She used to love that smile, but now she couldn't stand it any longer.
She went to a device her father had ordered his mechanics to build. His father had considered himself the Dragon King come again, and as the Dragon King, felt the only deserving fate for his enemies was fire. So he had a great furnace built in order to burn his enemies alive in.
She utilized the furnace, stoking the fires as high as they would go, and she showed Dareon the flames, yet still he would not confess. He went into the furnace still smiling and the last thing she saw, as the flames consumed him, was his smile. It haunted her still.
There was so much she regretted. She regretted not marching her troops across the border in search of her son, but if she had done that, the king would have interpreted it as an act of war, and she was not yet prepared to face the Kellsmen in battle. But she should have done it anyway: he was her son and worth the sacrifice.
She also regretted that she never named her child before he was taken from her. Life in Temra was hard—babies seldom survived to their first birthday—so she had followed custom and not given her baby a name. She wasn't sure what name she would have given him. Originally she had planned to name him after the first human king to rule over the island, King Ragnvald, but now she was unable to see him as anything but Rohan.
She cursed herself for her soft-heartedness. Rohan, the blood of her blood, was her enemy. She would do well to remember it. He would never help her take back Temra and reunite the island under her rule; she needed to let go of that idea. Whatever the future held for her, she could only rely on herself to get herself back on the throne.
Deirdre had left before she had finished telling her story about her father. King Ruarc, referred to as the Mad King of Temra by both Kellsmen and Temrans alike, had never had much use for her. She was a daughter, not the strong son he craved; women hadn't ruled Temra in generations. So he paid her little mind, letting her run around in rags and eat scraps from the trash like a vagrant rather than feasting like an heir. She seldom saw her father, and therefore could not really be said to love him, which was fine with her. He frightened her with his bright, gleaming eyes and love of fire, and he hated her, both because of her sex but also for the mark on her arm.
That mark…King Ragnvald, who had rode onto the island atop a great black dragon, and took the land from the fairy folk, had born the mark and for generations until the war first broke out, descendants of his line bore the mark as well. It disappeared after the first civil war, when most of the family was destroyed by those bastard royals who called themselves Kellsmen, only to reemerge when she was born. Yet another mystery she didn't understand, but it angered her father; the common folk trusted in signs and marks and if they knew she had the mark but he didn't, it might cast doubts on his legitimacy as a ruler. It was the kind of logic that only made sense of a madman but then again, her father wasn't called the Mad King for nothing.
She still remembered the day he broke her arm. She was five or six, running around the castle chasing after one of the stray cats, when she stumbled into the throne room. Without saying a word, her father bent down, picked up the cat, and wrapped his round fingers around its neck. She ran at him, fought with him, but he did not let go until the cat was dead. Then without saying a word, he grabbed her arm and broke it.
She doesn't remember much about the pain. She had heard somewhere that the mind does not remember pain, and for that she is grateful. But it must have hurt. But as the healer was setting her bone, she realized something: she could not count on her father to give her the throne as his father had given him. Nor could she count on the Kellsmen to finally recognize her as their true ruler as she had hoped. No, if she wanted it, she was going to have to become strong and fight for it and ever since, she has spent her life fighting.
She reached for the marble that Mider had given her and peered into. Right now, Deirdre was before the court, telling of her ordeal at the hands of the Knight of Shadows. Idly Maeve wondered if she would mention the part where she tried to kill her; she didn't count on it.
She turned away. Right now, looking at her son was too painful; he was so much like his father, more than he knew.
She was tired, tired of looking at the King's warm and lovely hall while she was stuck in a cold dungeon, but most of all, she was tired of fighting, but she knew she must keep fighting. Her leg was healing up; the druid said in a few days, she could start putting weight on it, though she would always walk with a limp. She should be thankful for small favours.
She laid back on her bed of straw and fell into a dreamless sleep.
