"The king is dead!" Megrim shouted, and again: "The king is dead! He has taken his own life! The coward has fallen on his own sword! My husband the Coward King!"
Her cries brought people running. Kilian Ragall crawled forwards towards the warriors emerging from the long house, drawn by the woman's cries. Ukko didn't move, didn't say a word. Something was happening here that he didn't understand. All he needed to know was what he had seen - the woman, Megrim, had murdered the king of the Sessair with one brutal thrust of the king's own blade.
The fallen king reached out, imploring, his mouth working over and over, but only forming gurgles, no words. He did not decry his murderer. In the eyes of his people gathered around to watch his last breaths, he was what she claimed, the Coward King who had taken his own life. No one moved to help him.
As the blood flowed out of the dying man, Cathbad stepped forwards, his shadow looming over Ragall. "The blood! The blood is a sign!" And for a heartbeat, no more, Ukko believed by some arcane chicanery the druid knew of the woman's treachery. He didn't. With the next breath Cathbad declared: "It flows towards the true successor of the coward!"
Weeping, men and women followed the blood from where Megrim had plunged the sword into her husband's gut all the way back to the dying man. The idiocy of them amazed Ukko; surely it didn't take a genius to fathom it out. The blood was no omen, it was damning evidence of her betrayal.
"No," a red-headed warrior gasped. "It cannot be so! A woman has never led the Sessair!"
"And yet you worship one," Megrim said confidently. "Let me make amends for my husband's shame! Let me bring honour back to our people! Let me be your queen!"
But before the druid could declare it so, the shadow-wreathed figure of a powerful warrior emerged from the long house, a crippled man hobbling on a crutch at his side. An awed hush fell over the crowd as Sláine stepped out of the shadows.
"Why is no one helping him?" Sláine bellowed, striding to the fallen king's side. He knelt, gathering Ragall's limp body into his arms and cradling the man in his lap as he took his final breaths.
"The blood!" Someone cried, pointing. The trail of Kilian Ragall's lifeblood had curled away from the woman who would be queen soaking into the stone as it gathered at the knees of Sláine Mac Roth.
"It is as the druid claimed! A sign from the earth Goddess!"
"The king is dead!" Another cried.
And the last voice: "Long live the king!" declared Cathbad.
Ukko looked from face to face, Sláine to Megrim, amused by their mutual expressions of abject and absolute horror as the reality of what was happening to them sank in. There was something wonderfully perverse and capricious about the whims of deities.
"I am done, Sláine."
"You are, Kilian," Sláine agreed.
"I have failed my people."
"You have."
"But you came back."
"I did."
"They need you. You must... make... the sun shine... again."
"I will."
"She-" but Kilian Ragall's eyes rolled back in his skull before he could finish and then the death rattle escaped the old king's lips and his body fell limp in Sláine's arms. The warrior set him gently aside. The woman was gone; there had been something naggingly familiar about her but he put it out of his mind. The time for understanding would come and with it whatever truths needed to be understood. But now it was the time for mourning.
Sláine turned to the druid.
"The king is dead."
And the cry went up again: "Long live the king!"
THIRTEEN
Come dawn the new king was crowned.
"Water heat and water boil," Cathbad intoned, stirring the mighty Cú Roi with a wand of ash, "make the wheel of heaven toil! Fire flame and fire burn! Make the wheel of heaven turn!"
Sláine's hair had been dyed three colours, brown at the roots using the dung of a white horse, yellow with lime to spike it until it resembled the rays of the sun, and red on the tips, in blood. His body was covered blue with woad, the tattoos depicting the sacred symbols of his people, inked in by Ukko's painstaking brush strokes: the winged birds of the Morrigan rose up each muscular leg, the life tree dominated his chest, and beneath it the bestial face of Lug, burning like the sun. And all around these huge icons, smaller, more intricate patterns, endless knots scaled the ripples of his abdominals like a serpent's scales, and on his rear a chuckling Ukko rendered his enemies so that he might defecate on them.
Mixed with the woad were other tribal intoxicants meant to ease the pain of the boiling water on his skin. He felt their hallucinogenic touch as they seeped beneath his skin to fill his blood. His vision swam. Sláine stood straight backed, proudly naked before his people. Kilian's death played over and over in his mind, remembering the look of abhorrence in the woman, Megrim's eyes as he emerged from the long house. The capricious ribbon of blood that had fated him from falling on the mercy of the Spiral Council to presiding over them as liege had been used to dye his hair. The druid, Cathbad, had explained that by doing so his blood might absorb the qualities of the dead man, blood to blood.
The people of the tribe gathered, hundreds of them carrying blazing torches despite the burgeoning sunlight. Like so much of the ceremony it was symbolic. He saw friends in the crowd, faces he hadn't seen since childhood, men now, but so familiar: Dian, Núada, thickset and muscled now, and the brothers Cormac and Niall. And for a moment, bathed in a blue haze, he fancied he saw another face, so much younger, starting with open dislike, jealousy in his eyes: Cullen of the Wide Mouth, but then the haze shivered and it was just another wide-eyed boy watching his new king.
Cathbad raised a cadaverous hand, urging quiet. A reverent hush descended, its silence contagious.
"Oh Goddess of the Earth Maiden, woman and hag, be with us here in your fullness of limb, as green as the Daughter of Spring, the fair Blodeuwedd who brings joy and new life to the Land of the Young," the druid intoned, his eyes closed, hands outstretched over the broiling Cú Roi. "Earth Goddess and Sun King, we are gathered here that through earthly union the cows will give milk, the corn will grow high and the fish fill the rivers once more. That you will lighten our darkness, banish the sour from our land and free us from the yoke of fear, from the encroaching Winter of Death."
The waters of the Cauldron roiled, far more than the mere heat of flame could have inspired. As the curls of steam rose the shape of beauty itself began to gather substance and form within them, coalescing into the ethereal face of the Goddess, Danu. The steam swirled about her form, clothing her in wisps of translucent pearl. She wore blossoms in her hair. As Blodeuwedd emerged from the waters, reaching out a hand for Sláine to help her down, the men of the Sessair fell to their knees, their eyes averted from the glory of the divine feminine.
"Sláine Mac Roth, do you as Sun King of the Sessair, pledge yourself as consort to the maiden, to love, know and serve for the span of seven years?"
Sláine looked into the face of the Goddess, recalling with vivid clarity the first time he had seen her, at the funeral of Calum mac Cathair, leading the spirit of the old king by the hand into the depths of the forest, and through the trees into the Summerland. Of all things, he remembered the sensation of the rain running down his neck in the silence of the ceremony. That simplest of things had proved he was alive. Now, as her fingers twined with his, another simple sensation, of skin on skin, validated that simple proof. She wore the same garlands in her hair now that she had then. He breathed in deeply of their scent, losing himself in her eyes.
She smiled at him, her lips moving silently to say into his heart:
it was you, it was always you.
And in that smile she was more than beautiful; she was once again the innocent daughter of spring that had swept away his childhood heart.
"I do and shall," he said, and meant it with all his being.
Cathbad held a wand of mistletoe between them, in his other hand he held a golden torc, the ends gathered into the trinity of symbols; crow, skull and blossom, representing each aspect of the living Goddess. "With this torc I seal your union, you are husband to the stars, to the earth below, to the stones and like the mistletoe you are suspended between them," the old druid smiled. "And as time passes remember, like a star your love should be constant, like the mountain should your love be strong, like the river should your love be relentless, carrying you forwards into tomorrow."
The fragrance of the flowers was heady, overpowering. Sláine felt it swimming through his thoughts, the druid's voice seeming to drift further and further away even as he stepped near to fasten the marriage torc about his throat.
His sense of self shifted. He soared within himself, releasing his totem, his spirit creature, the phoenix, the golden eagle of the sun. It flew, chasing the white horse until at last his totem plunged into the heart of the sun and erupted into flame and he heard music, singing, and he felt himself being reborn from its ashes. The light filled his mind and he knew the ceremony was no mere ritual, but a recognition that life was the ultimate of treasures, a way of ensuring that the Sun King, no matter what wars his tribal duty forged, would never harm his wife, the earth. And somewhere in the distance of his swimming conscious, he could hear the druid Cathbad chanting over and over: "Sun King and Earth Mother merry meet and merry part."
Sláine opened his eyes and saw the Goddess dissipating, her flesh returned to the steam that gave it substance. She held out a hand for him to follow her into the boiling waters of the Cú Roi.
Sláine followed her into the Cauldron.
He felt nothing as its searing waters closed around him.
"Do you swear as the sun is above the clouds of the earth so your soul shall be above the clouds of fear?"
"I swear fear shall roll dark beneath me."
"Do you swear to nurture the land, to care for her crop and feed your people?"
"I so swear," Sláine said, reaching into the water and raising his hand again, his fist clenched around a succulent slab of broiled meat. "Come to me, my people, eat the flesh of the Goddess so that her strength may be your strength! Eat!"
And one by one his people came to pay homage at the Cauldron's rim, as the heat boiled the Sun King's flesh raw, each receiving, chewing and swallowing a mouthful of the meat Sláine offered them. When the last had taken their fill, he sank beneath the rim into the still-boiling water. The heat brought out the internal engravings on the Cú Roi's walls. He had thought to see Avagddu or the faces of the Goddess; he had not thought to see the leering antlered visage of Carnun surrounded by his menagerie of animals. The sight of the Lord of the Beasts did not fill him with dread or foreboding, rather it reassured him for Carnun held in one hand the Earth Serpent, and no more potent symbol of the Goddess was there.
And her voice came to him:
only when you have overcome your fears will you be ready for what lies beyond them, my love, my husband, my king. I will be waiting for you beyond the water, but for now your people need you. Arise my love, arise.
Coming up from beneath the water, Sláine knew with a certainty that just because his enemies worshipped the Horned God, their benediction did not make Carnun evil. There was an important distinction between the deity and his followers.
Sláine opened his eyes, hot water rolling down his cheeks and into his mouth as he gasped for breath.
"Arise," Cathbad echoed, holding out the feathered cloak of beams for Sláine to step into. The scolding water had cleansed his body of the woad tattoos. He held his arms wide, like wings as the druid laid the cloak about the warrior's shoulders, and with it a geas: "You are forbidden to listen to the swallows of Loch Swilly when the sun sets, drink the waters of Bo Nemridh between dawn and dark, eat the flesh of a hound or wear a cloak of many colours on the Heath of Lonrad; should any of these come to pass your geas will break and disaster will befall those you are sworn to protect, mark well your geas, Sun King of the Sessair!"
And his people greeted him with rapture: "Behold the raging storm! Behold the crimson blade! Behold the king!"
Above them the Morrigan's crows circled, thousands of black winged birds gathering to dispel the lowering clouds to reveal the sun in all of its glory, their caws louder than ten thousand men.
"He has brought the sun back to us!"
FOURTEEN
"Sun King, eh? And there was me thinking they were going to boil you alive, gut you like a fish and stick your head on a spike. If I'd known they were going to fall at your feet and
worship
you I'd have insisted we came up here years ago."
"What do you want, dwarf?" Sláine sighed wearily. Already the events of the ritual had become a distant blur, buried beneath the fug of the tribal intoxicants and their heady narcotic rush. His brain throbbed. He lay on the bed he had once shared with Niamh, wondering where in the world she was now; and how he could bring her home to Murias, if she would even come. It felt like a betrayal, thinking of his earthly yearnings, but he knew somehow that it wasn't, that a man could love both spiritually and physically.
"We need to talk."
"Do we have to? Really?"
"It's important."
And so Sláine listened as Ukko confessed everything from his wanderings; what he overheard from outside the latrine pits; Megrim's killing of the old king; and his flight from the disquieting blind Balor with his twin blades so sharp they seemed to cut through both sun and shadow alike.
"But I just want to say it isn't as though I deliberately went looking for trouble, like you said I was quite happily keeping myself to myself, and then I saw the woman. It wasn't like I went looking for a traitor, oh no, not Ukko. You can rely on old Ukko to keep his head down, keep out of trouble."
"What
are
you blathering on about, dwarf?"
"It's her, Sláine, I saw her."