Errigal used his greater weight, leveraging it to shove the duke back, but her husband was faster, younger, and he bounced free, turning hard with a new attack that the earl barely blocked.
Each steel strike rang in Regan’s bones, vibrating with its own frenzied song. All around the hall men and women of the Keep had gathered, clutching one another and watching, too. The storm blew, and Regan whispered “Destroy him”; in reply the freezing wet wind shrieked in through the open great doors, slamming them back. It rushed at Errigal, spinning around him to disorient. He cried out, and Connley smiled viciously.
“This is no fair fight!” called out a rough voice. Curan the iron wizard, with his wife Sella holding his huge muscled arm in a vice grip. Curan’s mouth moved again, with a hissing command, and the fire in the hearth flared.
Regan pointed at him. “I will flay your skin from your bones if you aid this traitor.” The wind whipped away from Errigal, pulling his hair, and blasted Curan. The ironsmith stood like a wall and whispered something so that the wind fluttered and skirted softly around him.
Lightning struck and, two paces behind, thunder roared.
The duke and the old earl panted in the wake of the storm’s anger, then the earl growled and renewed his attack. They battled hard, all striking steel and grunts. Errigal caught Connley’s sword with his hilt, twisted, and hit Connley in the face. Connley fell to one knee, but turned, upright again even as Regan cried out, carving space with a good, desperate swing of the sword.
A pause as the two men faced each other again.
Regan said, “You would have done better to be ours, as your less loved son, Ban the Fox, has been. He will inherit this Keep, and be honored by us, by the queen myself and the king my sister. But swear yourself to me now, Errigal, and we will show you mercy.”
“Mercy like you gave your father?” the old earl snarled. “You’re an ungrateful, dry bitch, just as he said, all the better to have not been allowed to breed!”
Regan screamed, throwing herself forward, just as Connley drove his sword through Errigal’s lower chest.
The earl flung his weapon wildly, slamming the flat of the blade against Connley’s ribs. Connley fell to one knee and let go of his sword, which stuck in Errigal’s chest: blood poured from the wound and spattered Errigal’s chin as he stumbled back.
Regan rushed to the old earl, commanding another gust of cold wind to keep any retainers far back. The earl hit the wooden floor with a massive thud, and Regan leapt upon him, straddling his waist. Her skirts ballooned around them, and she leaned forward to grasp the hilt of the sword. She twisted it. The earl choked on a scream: it sounded exactly like the shriek of the ghost owl. Regan released the sword. Crawling up his body, she put her hands on the earl’s face, hardly breathing—or perhaps breathing too hard, nearly out of her body. She curled her fingers. Sharp nails cut into the soft skin under Errigal’s eyes. Regan said, “I should take these, old man, and prove how sightless you are, how useless and stupid, how extreme a fool.”
The earl’s handsome eyes brightened with tears before they spilled from the corners, and Regan, too, was crying suddenly, thinking of her father and this weak man’s complicity in her persecution, and thinking of that lovely heart-faced owl she’d killed for nothing. With a scream, she tore her fingers down Errigal’s face, scouring his cheeks.
Errigal twitched and his shoulders shrugged, caught in a jerky death dance.
“Go to those cold stars,” Regan whispered. “Wait you there for my father!”
He died with her crouched over him like a spirit of vengeance.
Regan slid off, awkward suddenly and empty inside. The earl’s blind eyes stared up at the ceiling, and Regan looked where they would have: nothing but air and limewash and the dark wooden beams. She shook with weeping.
“Lady!” cried Sella Ironwife.
The iron wizard and his wife knelt at Connley’s side: the duke bent over his own knee, hands on his ribs. He coughed, his face contorting in pain. Blood spots flecked his lips.
Regan ran to him. “Connley!”
Curan carefully supported her husband, lowering him to the ground, then tore the duke’s tunic and pulled up the bloody linen shirt. Connley’s entire right side was billowing black and vibrant red with a massive bruise; a bloody gash stretched over at least the bottom two of his ribs, broken open from the weight of Errigal’s sword. When Connley breathed, the shape of his ribs was not right.
Terror froze Regan, a cold panic that blinded her and stole her breath. “Connley,” she whispered.
“Regan,” her husband said, bloody and harsh. His left hand reached for her, and she grasped it with both of hers, dragging herself nearer to his heart.
“Bind him,” she ordered. “Bind it well and—and ready a wagon, now.” A flash of insight hung in her imagination: Connley submerged in rootwater, at the oak altar in the heart of Connley Castle. Sleeping, calm, healing.
Kissing his knuckles, she whispered, The island and I will make you well again, beloved, in the language of trees. Outside, the storm howled its disagreement.
ELEVEN YEARS AGO, DONDUBHAN CASTLE
BEFORE HE WAS Connley, he was Tear, son of Berra Connley and Devon Glennadoer. He’d been born when his parents were old, both of them in their fifth decade, because his mother, Berra, had been previously determined to marry the king of Innis Lear. She’d been wed to Lear’s middle brother, without issue, and thus widowed when the man died. In desperate hope she put off all other suitors, even after Lear had married Dalat of Taria Queen, and for the four years after, while they failed produce an heir, and thereby legitimize the crown of the foreign usurper.
But Gaela had been born, and all the island knew the prophecy was real: Dalat was fated to be their queen for at least sixteen more years.
Berra had raged for three full months, then married the second son of the Earl Glennadoer and, after some struggle, got herself with child.
Tear was born eight months after Regan Lear. He did not meet her until the year memorial for her mother’s death.
The great hall of the Lear’s winter castle at Dondubhan was built of cold gray stone that vaulted higher overhead than any room Tear had been inside before. He could not help but be aware that to preside over this fortress had been his mother’s lifelong goal. Massive hearths burned at either end, and a long stone channel ran down the center length, filled with hot coals. Servants replaced them regularly, scattering small chunks of incense that melted and released spice into the air. Candles dangled from chains along the walls and off the arched ceiling, though the highest were not lit. Berra told her son as they entered that the king had forbidden their lighting—because despite how the high candle flames would imitate stars hovering over their feast, lighting them required magic. And there was to be no more of that in the king’s house.
She’d said it with no expression, but Tear knew his mother well enough to recognize the disquiet in her blue-green eyes.
At fourteen, Tear Connley was tall and slightly awkward, having not yet grown into his height. But none who looked upon him would doubt the regal lines of his jaw and cheeks and brow, nor the strength of his family nose. He was colored exactly as his mother: straight blond hair that tended toward red-gold, lovely blue-green eyes, and unblemished skin as smooth and light as cream. His lips were pink and sometimes the tips of his cheeks, too. If he smiled, he would be beautiful. But Tear rarely did.