A river enchanted, p.2
A River Enchanted, page 2
“It wasn’t long until the peace was hanging on by a fragile thread and Joan realized Fingal had no intention of uniting the isle. He said one thing but enacted another behind her back, and the Breccans began to raid the east, stealing from the Tamerlaines. Joan, longing for home and to be rid of Fingal, soon departed, but she made it only as far as the center of the isle before Fingal caught up with her.
“They quarreled, they fought. Joan drew her dirk and cut herself loose from him—name, vow, spirit, and body, but not her heart, because it was never his. She bestowed a tiny nick upon his throat, the very place where she had once kissed him in the night, when she dreamt of the east. The small wound swiftly drained him, and Fingal felt his life ebb away. When he fell, he took her with him, forcing his own dagger into her chest, to pierce the heart he could never earn.
“They cursed each other and their clans, and they died entwined, stained in each other’s blood, in the place where the east meets the west. The spirits felt the rift as the clan line was drawn, and the earth drank the mortals’ blood, strife, and violent end. Peace became a distant dream, and that is why the Breccans continue to raid and steal, hungry to have what is not theirs, and why the Tamerlaines continue to defend themselves, cutting throats and piercing hearts with blades.”
The fisherman, leaning toward the tale, had ceased rowing. When Jack fell silent, the man shook himself and frowned, returning to his oars. The sickle moon continued its arc across the sky, the stars dimmed their fires, and the wind began to howl now that the story was over.
The ocean resumed its billowing tide as Jack set his eyes on the distant isle, his first glimpse of it in ten long years.
Cadence was darker than night, a shadow against the ocean and the starry sky. Long and rugged, it stretched before them like a sprawled dragon sleeping on the waves. Jack’s heart stirred at the sight, traitor that it was. Soon, he would be walking the ground he had grown up on, and he didn’t know if he would be welcomed or not.
He hadn’t written to his mother in three years.
“You’re a deranged lot, that’s what I think,” the fisherman muttered. “All this nonsense and talk of spirits.”
“You don’t revere the folk?” Jack asked, but he knew the answer. There were no faerie spirits on the mainland. Only the patina of gods and saints, carved into the sanctuaries of kirks.
The fisherman snorted. “Have you ever seen a spirit, lad?”
“I’ve seen evidence of them,” Jack replied carefully. “They don’t often reveal themselves to mortal eyes.” He inevitably recalled the countless hours he had spent roaming the hills as a boy, eager to snare a spirit amid the heather. Of course, he never had.
“Sounds like a bucket of chum to me.”
Jack made no reply as the vessel glided closer.
He could see the golden lichens on the eastern rocks, luminescent. They marked the Tamerlaine coastline, and Jack’s memories surged. He remembered how things that grew on the isle were peculiar, bent to enchantment. He had explored the coast countless times, to Mirin’s great frustration and worry. But every girl and boy of the isle had been drawn to the whirlpools and eddies and secret caves of the coast. In the day and in the night, when the lichen glowed, golden as leftover sunlight on the rocks.
He noticed they were drifting. The fisherman was rowing, but they were angled away from the lichen, as if the boat was hooked to the dark stretch of western coast.
“We’re sailing into Breccan waters,” Jack said, a knot of alarm in his throat. “Here, row us to the east.”
The fisherman heaved, directing the boat the way Jack instructed, but their progress was painfully slow. Something was wrong, Jack realized, and the moment he acknowledged there was trouble, the wind abated and the ocean turned glassy, smooth like a mirror. It was quiet, a roaring silence that raised his hackles.
Tap.
The fisherman ceased rowing, his eyes wide as full moons. “Did you hear that?”
Jack lifted his hand. Be quiet, he wanted to say but held his tongue, waiting for the warning to come again.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
He felt it in the soles of his shoes. Something was in the water, clicking its long nails on the underside of the hull. Testing for a weak spot.
“Mother of gods,” the fisherman whispered, sweat shining on his face. “What is making that racket?”
Jack swallowed. He could feel his own perspiration beading his brow, the tension within him taut as a harp string as the claws beneath continued tapping.
The mainlander’s scorn had caused this. He had offended the folk of the water, who must have gathered in the foam of the sea to hear Jack’s legend. And now both men would pay for it with a sinking boat and a watery grave.
“Do you revere the spirits?” Jack asked in a low tone, staring at the fisherman.
The man only gaped, and then a flicker of fear crossed over his face. He began to turn the boat around, rowing with great heaves back to Woe.
“What are you doing?” Jack cried.
“I go no further,” the fisherman said. “I want nothing to do with your isle and whatever haunts these waters.”
Jack narrowed his eyes. “We had an agreement.”
“Either jump overboard and swim your way to shore, or you’ll be coming back with me.”
“Then I suppose I’ll have your dirks forged three-quarters of the way. How would you like that?”
“Keep your dirks.”
Jack was speechless. The fisherman had almost hauled them out of the isle’s waters, and Jack couldn’t go back to the mainland. Not when he was so close to home, when he could see the lichen and taste the cold sweetness of the mountains.
He stood and turned in the boat, carelessly rocking it. He could swim the distance if he left his cloak and leather satchel of clothes behind. He could swim to the shore, but he would be in enemy waters.
And he needed his harp. Laird Alastair had requested it.
He quickly opened his satchel and found his harp within, hiding in a sleeve of oilskin. The saltwater would ruin the instrument, and Jack was struck by an idea. He dug deeper into his bag and found the square of Tamerlaine plaid, which he hadn’t worn since the day he left the isle.
His mother had woven it for him when he was eight, when he had started to get into fistfights at the isle school. She had enchanted it by weaving a secret into the pattern, and he had been delighted when his nemesis was rewarded with a broken hand the next time he tried to punch Jack in the stomach.
Jack stared at the scrap of seemingly innocent plaid now. It was soft when draped on the floor but strong as steel when it was put to use guarding something like a heart or a pair of lungs. Or in this desperate case, a harp about to be submerged.
Jack wrapped his instrument in the checkered wool and slid it back into its sleeve. He needed to swim to shore before the fisherman dragged him farther away from it.
He shed his cloak, embraced his harp, and jumped overboard.
The water was bitterly cold. The shock of it stole his breath as the ocean swallowed him whole. He broke the surface with a gasp, hair plastered to his face, chapped lips stinging from the salt. The fisherman continued to row farther and farther away, leaving a ripple of fear on the surface.
Jack spat in the mainlander’s wake before turning to the isle. He prayed the spirits of the water would be benevolent to him as he began to swim to Cadence. He set his eyes on the glow of the lichen, trying to pull himself to the safety of the Tamerlaine shore. But the moment he treaded the ocean, the waves rolled and the tide returned with a laugh. He was drawn under, jerked by the current.
Fear coursed through him, pounding in his veins until he realized that he broke the surface every time he reached for it. By the third lungful of air, Jack sensed the spirits were toying with him. If they wanted to drown him, they would have done it by now.
Of course, he thought, struggling to swim as the tide pulled him under again. Of course, his return wouldn’t be effortless. He should have expected this sort of homecoming.
He scraped his palm on the reef. His left shoe was ripped from his foot. He cradled his harp with one hand and stretched out the other, hoping to find the surface. Only water greeted him this time, rippling through his fingers. In the dark, he opened his eyes and was startled when he saw a woman, darting past him in the water with gleaming scales, her long hair tickling his face.
He shivered and nearly forgot to swim.
The waves eventually had enough of him and coughed him out on a sandy stretch of beach. That was the only mercy they gave him. On the sand, he spluttered and crawled. He knew instantly that he was on Breccan soil, and the thought made his bones melt like wax. It took Jack a moment to rise and gain his bearings.
He could see the clan line. It was marked by rocks that sat in a row like teeth on the beach, running all the way into the ocean, where their tops eventually descended into the depths. It was roughly a kilometer away, and the distant glow of the lichen beckoned him to hurry, hurry.
Jack ran, one foot bare and frigid, the other squishing in a wet shoe. He wove around tangles of driftwood and a small eddy that gleamed like a dream about to break. He crawled under a rock arch, slipped over another boulder that was crinkled with moss, and finally reached the clan line.
He hefted himself over the rocks damp from sea mist. With a gasp, he stumbled onto Tamerlaine territory. But he could finally breathe, and he stood on the sand and made himself inhale, deep and slow. One moment, it was quiet and peaceful, save for the rush of the tide. The next? Jack was knocked off his feet. He hit the ground, harp flying. His teeth went through his lip, and he struggled beneath the weight of someone manhandling him.
He had forgotten all about the East Guard in his desperation to reach Tamerlaine land.
“I have him!” called out his attacker, who actually sounded more like a zealous lad.
Jack wheezed but couldn’t find his voice. The weight on his chest lifted, and he felt two hands, hard like iron manacles, latch themselves to his ankles and drag him across the beach. Desperate, he reached out to recover his harp. He had no doubt that he would need to show Mirin’s plaid to prove who he was, since the laird’s letter had been in his cloak, now abandoned in the rowboat. But his arms were too heavy. Fuming, he relented to being toted.
“Can I kill him, captain?” the lad who was dragging Jack asked, all too eager.
“Maybe. Bring him yonder.”
That voice. Deep as a ravine with a trace of mirth. Terribly familiar, even after all these years away.
Just my fortune, Jack thought, closing his eyes as sand stung his face.
At last, the dragging ceased, and he lay on his back, exhausted.
“Is he alone?”
“Yes, captain.”
“Armed?”
“No, sir.”
Silence. And then Jack heard the crunch of boots on the sand and sensed someone looming over him. Carefully, he opened his eyes. Even in the dark with nothing but starlight to limn the guard’s face, Jack recognized him.
The constellations crowned Torin Tamerlaine as he stared down at Jack.
“Hand me your dirk, Roban,” said Torin, to which Jack’s shock morphed into terror.
Torin didn’t recognize him. But why should he? The last time Torin had seen and spoken to him, Jack had been ten years old, wailing, with thirteen thistle needles embedded in his face.
“Torin,” Jack wheezed.
Torin paused, but the dirk was in his grip now. “What did you say?”
Jack held up his hands, sputtering. “It’s me … Jack Tam … erlaine.”
Torin seemed to turn into rock. He didn’t move, blade poised above Jack, like an omen about to fall. And then he barked, “Bring me a lantern, Roban.”
The lad Roban scampered away, then returned with a lantern swinging in his hand. Torin took it and lowered the light, so it would spill across Jack’s face.
Jack squinted against the brightness. He tasted blood on his tongue, his lip swelling almost as much as his mortification, as he waited.
“By the spirits,” Torin said. The light finally receded, leaving splotches in Jack’s sight. “I don’t believe it.”
And he must have seen a trace of who Jack had been ten years ago. A malcontent, dark-eyed boy. Because Torin Tamerlaine threw his head back and laughed.
“Don’t just lie there. Stand up and let me get a better look at you, lad.”
Jack reluctantly obeyed Torin’s request. He stood and brushed the sand from his drenched clothes, wincing as his palm burned.
He delayed the inevitable, afraid to look at the guard he had once aspired to be. Jack studied his mismatched feet, the cut on his hand. All the while, he felt Torin’s gaze bore into him, and eventually he had to answer it.
He was surprised to discover they were now the same great height. But that was where their similarity ended.
Torin was built for the isle: broad shouldered and thick waisted, with sturdy, slightly bowed legs and arms corded with muscle. His hands were huge, his right one still casually holding the dirk’s hilt, and his face was cut square and anchored with a trim beard. His blue eyes were set wide, and one too many spars had left his nose crooked. His hair was long and bound back by two plaits, blond as a wheat field, even at midnight. He wore the same garments Jack remembered him by: a dark woolen tunic that reached his knees, a leather jerkin studded with silver, a hunting plaid of brown and red draped across his chest, held fast by a brooch set with the Tamerlaine crest. No trousers, but not many men of the isle bothered with them. Torin sported the customary knee-high boots made from untanned hide, shaped to his legs and held in place by leather thongs.
Jack wondered what Torin thought of him in return. Perhaps that he was too skinny, or looked weak and scrawny. That he was too pale from sitting indoors. That his clothes were drab and terrible, and his eyes jaded.
But Torin nodded his approval. “You’ve grown, lad. How old are you now?”
“I’ll be twenty-two this autumn,” said Jack.
“Good, good.” Torin glanced at Roban, who stood nearby, scrutinizing Jack. “It’s all right, Roban. He’s one of us. Mirin’s boy, in fact.”
That seemed to shock Roban. He couldn’t have been older than fifteen, and his voice cracked when he cried, “You’re Mirin’s son? She speaks of you often. You’re a bard!”
Jack nodded, wary.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a bard,” Roban continued.
“Yes, well,” Jack said, with a twinge of annoyance, “I hope you didn’t break my harp at the clan line.”
Roban’s lopsided smile dimmed. He stood frozen until Torin ordered him to recover the instrument. While Roban was gone, humbly searching, Jack followed Torin to a small campfire in the maw of a sea cave.
“Sit, Jack,” Torin said. He unbuckled his plaid and tossed it across the fire to Jack. “Dry yourself.”
Jack caught it awkwardly. He knew the moment he touched the plaid that this was one of Mirin’s enchanted weavings. What secret of Torin’s had she woven into it, Jack wondered with irritation, but he was too cold and wet to resist it. He draped the checkered wool around himself and stretched his hands out to the fire.
“Are you hungry?” Torin asked.
“No, I’m fine.” Jack’s stomach was still roiling from the voyage across the water, from the horror of being on Breccan soil, from nearly having every tooth knocked loose by Roban. He realized his hands were shaking. Torin noticed as well and extended a flask to Jack before he settled across the fire from him.
“I noticed you arrived from the west,” Torin said with a hint of suspicion.
“Unfortunately, yes,” Jack replied. “The mainlander rowing me to the isle turned coward. I had no choice but to swim, and the current brought me to the west.”
He took a bracing sip from the flask. The heather ale was refreshing, stirring his blood. He took a second swallow and felt steadier, stronger—owing, he knew, to consuming something that had been brewed on the isle. Food and drink here boasted flavor tenfold over mainland fare.
He glanced at Torin. Now that they were in the light, he could see the captain’s crest on his brooch. A leaping stag with a ruby in its eye. He also noticed the scar on Torin’s left palm.
“You’ve been promoted to captain,” said Jack. Although that was no surprise. Torin had been the most favored of guards from a very young age.
“Three years ago,” Torin replied. His face softened, as if his old recollections were as close as yesterday. “The last time I saw you, Jack, you were yea high, and you had—”
“Thirteen thistle needles in my face,” Jack finished drolly. “Does the East Guard still hold that challenge?”
“Every third spring equinox. I have yet to see another injury like yours, however.”
Jack stared at the fire. “You know, I always wanted to be one of the guard. I thought I could prove myself worthy of the east that night.”
“By falling on an armful of thistles?”
“I didn’t fall on them. They were shoved into my face.”
Torin scoffed. “By whom?”
By your lovely cousin, Jack wanted to reply, but he remembered that Torin was fiercely devoted to Adaira and most likely thought she was incapable of being so fiendish.
“No one important,” Jack replied, despite the glaring truth that Adaira was the Heiress of the East.
He almost asked Torin about her, but thought better of it. Jack hadn’t envisioned his childhood rival in years, but he now imagined Adaira as wed, maybe with a few bairns of her own. He imagined she was even more beloved than she had been as a youth.
Dwelling on her reminded Jack there was a gap in his knowledge. He didn’t know what had been happening on the isle while he was away, steeped in music. He didn’t know why Laird Alastair had summoned him. He didn’t know how many raids had occurred, if the Breccans were still a looming threat when the ice came.
