The Queens of Innis Lear

ELEVEN YEARS AGO,

INNIS LEAR

THE QUEEN WAS dead.

And dead a whole year tonight.

Kayo had not slept in three days, determined to arrive at the memorial ground for the anniversary. He’d traveled nearly four months from the craggy, stubbled mountains beyond the far eastern steppe, over rushing rivers to the flat desert and inland sea of the Third Kingdom, past lush forests and billowing farmland, through the bright expanse of Aremoria, across the salty channel, and finally returned to this island Lear. The coat on his back, the worn leather shoes, the headscarf and tunic, woolen pants, wide sack of food, his knife, and the rolled blanket were all he had come with, but for a small clay jar of oil. This last he would burn for the granddaughter of the empress.

Dalat.

Her name was strong in his mind as he pushed aside branches and shoved through the terrible shadows of the White Forest of Innis Lear, but her voice … that he could not remember. He’d not heard it in five years, since he left to join his father’s cousins on a trade route that spanned east as far as the Kingdom knew. Dalat had been his favorite sister, who’d raised him from a boy, and he’d promised to come back to her when he finished his travels.

He’d kept his promise, but Dalat would never know it.

Wind blew, shaking pine needles down upon him; each breath was crisp and evergreen in his throat. Every step ached; the line of muscles between his shoulders ached; his thighs and cracking knees ached; his temples and burning eyes, too. He was so tired, but he was nearly there. To the Star Field, they called it, the royal memorial ground of Innis Lear, in the north of the island near the king’s winter residence.

First Kayo had to get through the forest. God bless the fat, holy moon, nearly full and bright enough to pierce the nightly canopy and show him the way.

It seemed he had stumbled onto a wild path: wide enough for a mounted rider, and Kayo recalled the deer of the island being sturdier than the scrawny, fast desert breeds. He’d hunted them, riding with a young earl named Errigal and an unpleasant old man named Connley. They’d used dogs. His sister had loved the dogs here.

Dalat, he thought again, picturing her slow smile, her spiky eyelashes. She’d been the center of his world when Kayo was here, adrift in this land where the people were as pale as their sky. Dalat had made him belong, or made him feel so at least, when their mother sent him here because she had no use for boys, especially ones planted by a second husband. Dalat had smelled like oranges, the bergamot kind. He always bought orange-flower liqueur when he found it now, to drink in her honor.

His sister was dead!

And dead an entire year. He’d laughed and sung around bright fires; he’d slept curled in camp beside his cousins during the hottest hours of the day, when the sun colored the sky with sheer, rippling illusions. His heart had been satisfied, if not quite full, even though she’d been dead already, buried on this faraway rock.

Kayo stopped walking. The edge of the forest was near, making its presence known by a bluish glow: moonlight on the rocky moor beyond. Behind and around him the forest sighed, swelling with a warm, wet breeze that nudged the trees into whispered conversation.

“Who are you?” a high voice asked.

A boy stood just out of his reach, but Kayo already had his curved knife drawn, a leg thrown back to brace for attack. In the dark, shadows shifted and danced, and the boy stood near a wide oak tree, against its dark side, hidden from stray moonlight.

“Kayo of Taria Queen,” he said, sheathing his knife back in the sash where it belonged. He pulled his scarf off his head, letting it pool around his neck and shoulders. This made his gray eyes clearer, and he hoped friendly to the boy, even with his foreign clothes and skin.

“I don’t know you.” The boy said it with finality, despite being very small, no older than ten years, skinny, and with a snarl of dark hair. He was not pale, though his features were narrow like those of the islanders. Except the strong nose and gremlin-round eyes. Southern Ispanian, Kayo thought: those refugee tribes roaming and homeless, pushed out by the Second Kingdom’s wars.

Kayo nodded his head in a polite bow. “You know of me, boy. My sister was the queen, and I’ve come for the year memorial.”

“The princess is there already.”

This information was useful, though strangely offered. Lear had three princesses, after all, though the youngest must be this boy’s age. Perhaps the boy only cared about the child he knew best. Such was the way of youth. “Do you know how the queen died?” Kayo asked. He’d heard rumors of misdeeds, of suspicion, of mystery, and perhaps the child could give him the unvarnished truth to point him the way of revenge.

The boy tilted his face up to put narrowed eyes on the sky. “The stars.”

“The stars killed her?” What nonsense was this?

“She died when the stars said she would.” The boy shrugged, a jolting, angry gesture. “They control everything here.”

The prophecy. Kayo felt a worm of discomfort in his stomach. “What’s your name?”

The boy startled and glanced past Kayo as if hearing something Kayo was not attuned to. But Kayo trusted it, and turned to look behind himself.

A woman appeared out of the trees. She said in a honeyed tone, “Ban, leave me to speak with this man.”

The boy dashed off.

Kayo waited, oddly reeling, his instincts rumbling trouble.

The woman stepped silently, dressed in island clothes: a cinched tunic over a woolen shirt and layered skirts, hard boots. Her hair fell in heavy black curls around her lovely tan face: a woodwoman, a spirit of this White Forest. When she gestured for him to join her on the final part of the path, so they would come out at the edge of the woods together, Kayo found himself unable to resist.

They stopped at the opening of the trees, looking down upon the Star Field. It was a shallow valley of rugged grass, covered with towers of stones and columns of seashells stacked by human hands to waist- or knee-height. Long slabs of gray rock rested as altars, etched with the uncivilized scratches of the language of trees. Candles were stuck to the stone piles, to the slabs, some fat and well made, some skinny and poor, others in clusters and still more lonely and reaching. As Kayo watched, two priests in white clothes walked through with long torches, lighting each and every candle.

Behind the two priests came a silent procession.

“It is the king,” the woman said. “Lear and his court, his daughters, and some foreign guests, come to light a new year-candle at the fallen queen’s celestial bed.”

Kayo’s brow pinched and his jaw tightened with grief. Every candle flame was a star, wavering and flickering across the valley. Though other memorial fields dotted Innis Lear, this was the grandest. The loved ones of the dead needed only supply a candle, and the star priests would light it every night. King Lear provided gifts of candles for any who asked, Kayo had heard, so that the Star Field was always aglow, always twinkling its own heaven back to the sky. A fitting memorial for a woman like Dalat.

“Come,” the woman said.

“Who are you?” he asked, voice rough with sorrow.

“Brona Hartfare, and I was a friend to your sister the queen. I remember you, when you were more of a boy, solemn and secure at her side, far south of here at the Summer Seat.”

“Brona,” he said. It was a name that expanded to fit every nook of his mouth.

They walked carefully down into the Star Field, circling wide so as to join the rear of the congregation as it wove through the candles and standing stones to a broad slab of limestone that shone under the full moon. Brona took Kayo’s hand, holding him apart from the crowd.

King Lear looked as Kayo remembered, though perhaps with more wrinkles at his pink mouth. Maybe that was the result of so many separate candles pressing together with their competing lights. His hair was brown and thick, woven into a single braid and pinned in an infinity loop. A white robe hung from his tall frame, over white trousers and a white shirt and white boots. All the royalty and many of the rest wore white, too, or unbleached wool and linen. Very little jewelry adorned them, but for simple pearls or silver chains. Moon- and candlelight turned all their eyes dark against pink and cream and sometimes sandy skins.

The king held the hand of a small girl whose curls were big around her head, some copper-brown strands flaring in the candlelight. Her focus was on her father and the monument slab they approached. Behind her came the two older sisters, arms around each other, leaning together as if a single body: one barely a woman, soft and graceful; one strong and dark as Dalat. Kayo caught his breath at her—the eldest, Gaela—whose face was so like her mother’s had been. He remembered Gaela as a whip-strong child, competing with the sons of retainers and lords in races and strength, wearing pants and her hair cut short to flare exactly like his own had done. He’d enjoyed teaching her wrestling holds and a better grip for her dagger, but the girl had taken it all seriously, no games or teasing allowed. Now her hair was longer and braided into a grand crown, and though she wore white, her clothes were a warrior’s white gambeson and pants and boots, and a long coat decorated with plates of steel too far apart to be useful. Her sister Regan dressed like a fine lady, despite being only a slender slip of womanhood. Kayo’s memories of her were so much gentler; Regan had been ten years old when he left, though already reading and writing as well as a scholar. She had the least of Dalat in her, outwardly: the palest brown of the girls, with brown hair thick and smoothly waved.

And the little one, whom Kayo had hardly known: her small round face pulled into sadness, her tiny fingers caught in Lear’s as the king knelt at the memorial slab, tears obvious on his cheeks and chin, glittering in his dark beard.

Kayo felt tears pinch his own throat, crawling up into his nose. He clenched his jaw, and Brona leaned into him, her shoulder against his chest. She smelled like fire and rich moss. What a comfort to breathe her in, her hair brushing his mouth, though how weak of him to let her feel his trembling.

A star priest with a flickering torch lifted his arms and called out a prayer. Kayo could only just hear the sounds, not comprehend the words: he was unpracticed these days. The rhythm, though, was familiar, the crying, sharp intonation the priests of the island used to speak with the stars. All the gathered company murmured and mouthed along with the priest, except for one young man several steps back from the king’s daughters. This was a prince in the burnt orange of the kingdom of Aremoria, the coat sleeves wrapped with white in deference to the mourning traditions of Innis Lear. He wore a solemn expression and a heavy, jeweled sword, a simple band of gold at his brow. No older than Gaela Lear.

As the prayer lifted, Kayo pictured Dalat, imagined her here in a dress of the finest red cloth, spiked through with orange thread and a brilliant turquoise like the surf of the inland sea. Red and black paint on her eyes and mouth, streaked into her hair. Her eyes were stars, and the hundreds of candles here glowed only to reflect her glory.

Kayo looked to see the king bow his head and clutch at his youngest daughter’s hand. The little girl’s brow furrowed in pain. Her fingers were squeezed too hard, but she said nothing, and did not pull away.