Page 49 of Arise the Queen
“What song is that?” Gwendolyn inquired of Amergin.
“The oldest,” he said, chuckling. “And yet, ageless—the prayer of every man, do you not agree?”
Gwendolyn shrugged. She knew nothing about that, but she feared there was an aspect of it that rang true—every man needed heirs.
So did Pretania, and so it seemed she would bear none.
Shivering, Gwendolyn drew up the cowl of Arachne’s cloak, dismayed to have so thoroughly misjudged the weather. The temperatures dropped, and the fog grew thicker the further north they journeyed until Gwendolyn rued having abandoned her father’s cloak. This one could never warm her so well.
The persistent fog was turning her mood as grey as those infernalfogous, sending a chill through her bones, hovering like a brume, coloring the landscape to match her mood. Somehow, it muffled all sounds, creating an eerie silence thatrevealed only the faintest rustle of leaves beneath their hooves, and Gwendolyn suspected it wasn’t natural. Cool and clammy against her skin, it left her testy, making her long for the warmth of a fire… and Málik.
By now, her clothes were damp and dirty, and her curls were matted with leaves and twigs from sleeping on a leaf-strewn ground, but at least it concealed her army, and the cold wasn’t so brisk as it was in theunderlands. There, she’d had no cloak at all until the end of her journey, and if she could weather that, she could weather this.
Resolved to endure the discomfort, knowing there were worse things than to shiver against a bit of cold, she marveled how changed she was—how differently she viewed such things as adversity and misadventure. Before her sojourn into theunderlands, she would have suffered this cold like a petulant child, and no doubt, she had harried Málik for every moment of their journey to Chysauster.
Smiling ruefully over that bittersweet memory, she yearned for those days when the worst of her troubles had seemed only the question of a mester’s death. Alas, all but for the yearning for Málik’s affections, those days were long gone. Whilst Lir, Amergin and Emrys rode at her side—Amergin either singing or arguing with Emrys, he and Bryn had ridden at the back of their cavalcade and the repeat of it all, day in, day out, grew wearisome.
Meanwhile, thoughts of Málik grew like brambles in her mind, ensnaring all other thoughts, until, after a while, even the Druids’ conversation held no interest for her. Málik’s absence by her side was like a gaping wound, raw and excruciating. She missed the way his silver hair rippled at his back with the breeze… how his pale-blue eyes twinkled with mischief. Every passing moment without him felt like an eternity. And yet, everytime she thought about riding back to speak to him, something kept her from going—perhaps fear of rejection?
Or perhaps simply pride.
Whatever the case, Gwendolyn found herself rooted in her saddle, staring wistfully at the path ahead in a trance-like stupor. When the brothers fell away to discuss something in private, leaving Amergin to ride at her side, alone, she seized the opportunity for conversation. Giving her reins a tug, she sidled closer to Amergin, giving him a nod, and the old Druid returned it, smiling companionably.
She nudged her horse forward, curiosity piquing amidst the eerie quietude that surrounded them. “You say you knew my grandfather?”
He nodded, but so much as he’d had to say to his Druid brothers, he appeared little inclined to expound.
“Won’t you tell me about him,” she urged gently, with an unmistakable longing in her voice, a yearning to know more about the man she knew only through Demelza’s tales, and her father’s complaints.
“He is stubborn.”
As was her mother.
“Fierce.”
As was her mother.
The cloak about her shoulders was drenched from the persistent mist, and she shivered again, but it no longer mattered so much. Her grandfather’s image in her mind gave her a strange sense of solace against the biting cold. “He sounds like my mother,” she said. “Did you know her as well?”
Amergin shook his head. “Your mother came long after my time,banríon na bhfear.I’ve not stepped foot upon these lands in quite some time.”
Gwendolyn wondered how long, but didn’t ask. It seemed far more important to knowwhyhe had come, so that was what she asked.
Amergin slowed his gait, gazing at her thoughtfully. “To fulfill an old promise,” he explained after a moment, and Gwendolyn studied the old man, who must be quite some older than Emrys, although this, too, was the least of what she wished to know.
“An old promise?”
Again, he nodded, and this time, a tinge of sadness colored his eyes. “One I made to a dear old friend.”
“My grandfather?”
He shook his head, keeping his silence, and Gwendolyn wanted to ask him what help he thought he could be if he had so little to say.
It wasn’t as though he could wield a sword—nor rid them of this fog.
“How ambiguous,” she said, growing frustrated.
For days now, these two old men had prattled on and on like two old women at a knucklebones wager, and now he had nothing to say. Every word she pulled from his lips came reluctantly, as though from a desolate well.
