"Kieron, do not go alone on this journey. Don't follow them down the Crone's road. Wait for Scatha and Bran to return from Erin, I beg you," He could barely bring himself to look at her as she pleaded.
"The Bocan will not wait for me, my Lady. I must go now, or my mother will perish," His black eyes glowed a moment, echoing the rage he felt in his heart. He uttered a soft charm against the course of wild magic the rage sent through his veins, running his hands through his blue-black curls as he did. Then he gathered his courage to look at Lady Hazel properly. The soft scatter of shining silver dust that blushed across her pale golden skin shimmered softly in the moonlight. It was the trail of Stardust that had been left on her skin when she had flown on the Eagle Lord's back to his nest in the moon, when she had rode to save his life yet again. Here eyes caught the moonlight that was scattered by the trees around them, the play of it making her blue eyes into pools of fathomless depth. The ripple of her golden tresses fell to her waist, she had no tied it in her haste to speak to him before he left, and he felt that familiar longing to run his fingers through them. It pained him to realise he might never now feel them. Swallowing that ache, he spoke the words that had been whirling about inside his head as he prepared himself for the eventuality of facing her before he left.
"It might well be that I never see you again, my Lady. I feel my doom hanging heavily about my shoulders tonight. I know not what lies ahead of me on this road, but of all that I must leave behind, it is in leaving you that my heart breaks. All the love I have felt, I leave you with. You have known that unspoken truth that I have harboured. You have known it all these years," No battle he had fought in his 21 summers and no enemy that he had faced had taken more courage to face than it had taken him to speak those words. Scatha's dark warning still rang in his ears, even after all of these years.
Hazel let Starlight go and came to stand at Mist's flank. She laid a had on the large animal's nose and looked up again at Kieron. She was staring deep into his heart, he could feel it. Measuring him and his words with her Art. She reached up and laid her fingertips to his ashen cheek. He slid from his saddle then, taking her hand in his and fighting to contain himself.
"My heart tells me we will meet again Kieron," she told him, stepping close and guiding his face close to hers, "Come what may," she added in a soft whisper, still looking far into his eyes. Her lips brushed his, softly, briefly but meaningfully, then she stepped away lightly and caught Starlight by the bridle again and turned away. Bleakness welled up inside the hole in his heart that her departure left him with.
He passed out of the Glen of the Heart, Mist's steps heavy with the dual burden of the rider and the rider's grief. At length he came to the farm of his mother's husband and looked upon the devastation that the Bocan had wrought. The door hung on it's hinge, stones were knocked loose from the walls. The peat roof had been burned, leaving scorch marks in black swathes across the building's remains. Pullets lay broken, cleaved and crushed all around the yard, one fluttering still and squawking, even though it's back was broken. The kine lay gutted in the outer field, a flock of crows were already tearing at the flesh of the bull.
Inside someone had set the farmer and his two daughters at the table. Their throats were cut and their blood spilled across the food set there and was being swarmed upon by flies. Scrawled upon a wall in blood that had dried to a filthy brown, was a message left by the Bocan.
Little Crow, use the wings that Dana gave you and meet us on the Crone's road. She will not live beyond the Gate.
The villagers had already recounted that message to him, but it was clear that they had touched nothing, for fear of the curse of the Bocan. Kieron took it upon himself to make a pyre in the field for his step father and his his sisters. He whispered the blessings of Dana for their souls and offered a prayer to the Goddess for his mother.
"I am not your child, Dana, but you have offered me protection before. I ask that you extend your protection to her. At least, I beg of you, bring her spirit to rest in your Summerlands,"
He built a second pyre for the kine and the pullets, to keep the scavengers at bay. Last he set a blaze in the house to cleanse it of the murder. Through it all he shed not a single tear, his heart was grim and his head was bent to the task.
Finally, he took to his horse once more. He paused a moment and looked back to the west where the Glen lay.
"Let my heart rest there, for I shall not return," he whispered to the westering wind, to carry his words back to Hazel. He would battle the will of his fate or he would die in the attempt. He would not give in, but he could not see, in truth, that there was a way for him to win. He turned to follow the trail of the Bocan, the stain of their Dark Magic was plain to see, like a river of black smoke across the land.
Hazel knelt above the surface of the bright silvery pool. She dipped her finger into the water and stirred it, scattering the reflections of the flames of the many candles around her.
"Scatha, hear my voice. Kieron hunts the Bocan along the Crone's road. I see it in his heart he means not to return, for they have his mother and she cannot survive the journey. Scatha, hear my voice,"
the waters stilled but no longer was the reflection that of the candle flames, or of Hazel's own face. The face in the water was Scatha's, pillowed in her long black hair, eyes closed as she slept. A shadowy presence to her left was Bran's, as he slept by his Lady.
"You hear my voice, now heed my words. Kieron rides to his doom. I cannot see where his path ends for there is a great shadow cast over it," Hazel whispered over the water, her face almost touching it, but the breath escaping her lips not stirring the surface at all. Scatha stirred from her sleep though, her green eyes opening wide and staring up. as if she could see the reflection of hazel's face above her in the air.
"We will return in haste from Erin. We will see you before the sun is set 3 times," Scatha told her.
"Scatha, I think they are trying to claim him, although I cannot forsee that with my Art,"
Scatha made no response to this, for already her image was fading as wakefulness took hold on the warrior-woman. Perhaps she would have heard Hazel's last words as a distant whisper from her dreams.
He rode hard along the road, sparing Mist little. Inside he burned with grief and anger. As night came on he rode still, the trails of the Bocan leading him on through dusk. Under the shade of the stunted trees, tumbled rock and cliffs of the Crone's road and the onset of night he was soon no longer able to see the smoke the Bocan left behind, but he could still feel it's foul taint. When full dark fell, he caught glimpses of things that twisted and mingled into the darkness, and the listless breeze carried whispers of mutterings and murmurings on the night air. For a long time he felt no fear of these things, dismissing them as the fruits of tiredness and as a trick of the trail of dark magic he was pursuing. When at first he heard his name whispered he sat up a little straighter in his saddle and looked warily around. With the sound came an unearthly chilling of the air around him. Calling on his Art, his senses grew sharper and he felt the prickle of Wild Magic in the frigid air. His heart at last began to quicken with fear.
"Kieron," the tongues of the night moaned softly, reverberating around the rocks on every side of him.
"Spirits be gone, trouble me no more," he shouted at the night, and for a time it was silent save for the trickle of a distant burn and the soft sigh of the unbewitched breeze.
When the moon had set and all the light he had to guide himself was the starlight and the faintest sickly glow of the smoke the Bocan left behind, he heard again the voices on the wind calling to him.
"Kieron Mac Lachlan," echoed in the crannies of stone and gnarled tree root.
"I bid you once be gone, now do as you are bid and do not trifle with me," he told the night, his voice leaded with weariness. Laughter echoed all around him, then the night was wrent with a woman's scream. Kieron reigned Mist in sharply and leapt from the saddle with his sword drawn. The Dannan runes on the blade glowed icily in the darkness, but seemed unable to pierce the gloom at all.
"Show yourselves, foul spirits!" he cried, challenging the shadows. A misty face loomed at him, a grin of malice twisted it's transparent features, and his heart skipped as he recognised the face. It was his own.
"Do not try and trick me with your Dark Arts! Bring my mother here to me, or you shall feel my wrath!" He spat, refusing to let his courage quail.
"What wrath have you that we should fear?" the ghostly countenance re-shaped itself as it spoke, coming to resemble some unknown warrior, long since dead. It mocked him and laughed. All around many other voices joined in, so that the night became filled with fell, ghostly mirth. In his anger, Kieron slashed his sword at the Ghost, but the blade passed though and laughter rang out again.
"Your wrath, it seems, does not feel me!"the Ghost taunted.
"By the Art of Dana and the bright hand of Lugh, I command you bring my mother to me!" Kieron roared. Before him the Ghost evaporated into the night and Kieron felt himself to be alone again.
He leapt back into his saddle, shaken by the unearthly encounter. Dawn was yet many miles off, yet he had no time to waste in thought, the Crones Road lay ahead, and the Gate which his mother must not pass. He must be there before them by dawn, the time of their greatest weakness and his own greatest strength.
He had come only a little way further along the road when a gnarled black tree bent far over his path and caught his hair as he rode beneath it. A low root knocked Mist's hoofs from under him and Kieron was left dangling from the tree by his hair, struggling and cursing while Mist lay screaming below him. He drew his sword and tried in vain to hack at the tree, but it's trunk was beyond his reach and every movement seemed set to tear his scalp from his skull. Furious beyond reason he lashed at the tree with Wild Magic. The raw energy arched from him like a line of blue fire and burned the tree with frozen flames. They leapt up within the branches, shattering every twig and branch in their path and the tree dropped him from it's grasp, it's evil spirit screeching in torment. Kieron fell to the ground and passed from consciousness.
Hazel knelt above the scrying pool, her eyes aching from staring into the waters, looking for a sign of Kieron. she felt sick in heart and stomach, for she knew that nothing could have gone well for him on this journey, and yet the pool would grant no sight of him to her.
"My Lady, go to sleep, rest. The Maidens will scry and send word to you should they find him," Behind her the Mistress of the Pool was losing her patience and wringing her hands with worry. She had asked many times that Hazel leave and give the scrying pool to others in her stead.
"Your Maidens will not have the sight to find Kieron. He walks the Crone's Road! the only rest I need is rest from your pleading!" she heard herself say coldly, not lifting her eyes from the pool. She could feel the Mistress's anger and frustration, and heard her call imperiously to her Maidens. They left the grotto of the scrying pool in a rush of flowing skirts and scuttling feet.
"Kieron, hear my voice. Let me guide you through this darkness," she breathed across the water.
She held her breath as the waters rippled and the flames reflected on it danced, then used all her Art to reach out to him. Somewhere deep in the pool a single brief light flickered, then dimmed again. She waited, her pulse seeming to slow with each beat. The water stilled so that it was ripple-less and black. A candle spluttered, hissed softly and died. There was no-one ow to replace it, so the light within the grotto grew a little dimmer. One by one, all the flames died, and finally she was in darkness as profound as the surface of the pool. After a time she saw the brief glimmer of starlight in the water. Hope and hopelessness were at war within her, she pushed them both aside and gathered her strength again.
"Kieron Mac Lachlan, prince of my heart, hear me," she whispered, adding the power of unspoken truth to her plea. She reached out to him with all the strength her heart had to offer. Slowly, a plae light was kindled deep beneath the surface. It rose, becoming at last his face, as pale as the face of the moon. His black hair was stark against that skin, the rivulets of blood trickling from his hairline livid. He seemed not to breathe at all, yet she was sure he could not be dead if his visage could be seen in the pool. She knew, in fact, that she would have felt his passing. Even so, words failed her. He could not be far from death and that knowledge seemed to cripple her. Then, as an echo from her own long distant past, she heard the hoarse croak of the banshee and the pain of wind and lashing rain. The strength that was within her to survive that was a strength long forgotten inside her. She gave it all to the man within the reflection of the pool. As his eyes snapped open, as he gasped back into life, Hazel saw it swimming away from her already into the darkness and she tumbled in behind it, knowing nothing more.
He was aware first of the grunting and harsh breathing of Mist, then like the softest caress of the breeze, he felt Hazel's presence, gone the moment he was aware of it. It left him bereft and made him recall his anger. Unsteadily he rose, using his sword to drag himself upwards. His thick fur cloak felt heavy with water and clung wetly to him. His head was light. He staggered to Mist, saw with a pang in his heart how the stallion's legs were broken, and how he shuddered all over with agony as he struggled to rise. Mist's hide was slick with sweat, his eyes rolled so the whites were showing and froth foamed about his nose and mouth. he would carry his master no further and Kieron owed him a more merciful death than the one his agony was dragging him down in to. he put the edge of his blade to the Stallion's throat and the great creature stilled.
"I release you, faithful friend," he murmured, then let lose Mist's lifeblood onto the ground between them. He turned, wiped his blade upon the grass, sheathed his sword and lurched into a limping run, banishing all thought but revenge from his mind.
Hour after hour he ran on, heedless of pain or tiredness. The sun came up, dawn and his hour of strength came and went, but he did not notice. No spirits troubled him in the daylight, such as it was on the Crone's Road, and perhaps he could have slept, but he did not think of it. He still had to reach the Gate before the Bocan. He still had to try and save his mother's soul. The Crone's Road stretch long before him, leading him inexorably to the Gate and beyond that, the Land of Death. As the watery sun rose to noon, his strength failed him and his legs buckled beneath him. He fell into a dark, black sleep that stole away the daylight from him.
When he woke again, full of fury at his weakness, the early winter dark was seeping into the pale sky and the sun burned red in the east. He staggered again to his feet and moved off like one of the walking dead.
Night returned, and he heard again the whisperings in the trees and rocks. Without stopping, he drew both sword and dirk, preparing himself for attack. He caught himself in a waking dream in which he became a swift and tireless hare. Shaking the fancy away, he found it was followed swiftly by a desire to take to wings like a bird and fly.
"Do it," the trees sighed in the breeze. The sound shocked him and he stopped dead in his tracks, turning his head about to listen. Everywhere around him he could feel and even see the mocking taint of Wild Magic. It would be too dangerous to wield, and yet it called to him and murmured promises to him of power that would help him overcome his enemies. He had fought this temptation before, he had even wielded it in his direst need on this road, but it spoke of what he could do to the Bocan should he wield it through will, not desperation. They could not defy such power, he knew that, and yet a memory stirred inside. He recalled how he had stood, clutching Hazel close to his chest amid a field of utter devastation. Power at such a cost. He must deny it's lure.
A scream so agonised that it was impossible to tell if it were human, fey or animal ripped through the darkness. He tensed, listening, then moved slowly in the direction from which it had come. The runes of the sword flamed in their icy fire, predicting a danger that Kieron no longer cared for.
"Do not hide from me or you shall regret it!" he growled.
laughter rippled back to him, and he heard among it the sound of weeping. That sound was one that time would not let him forget. His mother's tears.
"Bring her tom me!" he shouted, his voice shattering the night and stirring the Wild Magic around him into uproar. His Art boiled up inside him in reply and suddenly he was no mere mortal man, but a towering god of fury. His blade shone like the light of the sun and darkness fell away from him in fear. But the Bocan bow only to the Crone and even when faced with this storm of Art and Wild Magic, they still laughed.
"We do not fear you, little crow. Our mistress knows your heart and your fate. Soon you will ride with the Lord of the Hunt as your destiny intended," the Captain of the Bocan spoke, risking the circle of Kieron's light.
"I will die before that happens!" Kieron spat at him.
"Death cannot change your destiny, our mistress marks your soul so if it should pass into her hands she will give you up to the Lord. Every path you can take, Kieron Mac Lachlan, will lead you to the Wild Hunt in the end. The night knows it, so should you,"
"My fate is my own!" Kieron snarled, then he leapt at the captain with his burning blade. The Ghost leapt back and stared down at the score upon his ghostly jerkin. He let out a wild, haunting cry and drew his own sword. From every corner of the night the Bocan flowed into view, surrounding Kieron with their swords drawn and their shields thrust forward to make a cage about him.
"No, Kieron Mac Lachlan, you are like every mortal man in this. Your fate has never been your own and never will you be allowed to take it into your own hands. Bring forth the mother!"
The walls of the cage parted and a small bundle of cloak and cloth was thrust into the light. The sound of ragged breath came from deep within the rotting folds. It did not seem possible that there was anything human inside that bundle, and Kieron stared down, unwilling to touch it and see what it might contain. A sneering ghost whose face appeared to have been cleaved in two, reached down and yanked aside the cloak. Another scream shattered the night, as if the ghost's touch had contained some mortal pain, but Kieron barely heard it as the sight revealed to his eyes assaulted him. Her face looked to be weeks beyond death, twisted with the gauntness of mortal starvation and framed by a few lank wisps of hair so white that only great age or great horror could have bleached it so. Even so, it was the eyes that were the greatest horror, for there was no doubt that they were his mother's eyes, two dark coals of burning pain that looked at him from within the rotting shell of this living corpse.
"Soon we will come to the Gate, and we need a mortal's life to let it open for us. You can extend her suffering, because if we take her she will come to serve the Crone as we do. Perhaps she will become a handmaid to our Dark Lady. Otherwise, you can take her place, send her soul to the Summerlands and submit to fate.
Kieron looked up at the Ghost Captain, meeting him eye to eye.
"Trickery! This is some foul glamour you cast upon me and not my mother," He made his challenge clear and spat at the Captain's spectral feet.
"So you would choose to fight us all? Against all sense and caution? That is not bravery, nor is it heroism. It is foolhardy and suicidal," The mockery in the Ghost's voice was dripping from very word. How could one mortal, however powerful, hope to best the Bocan of the Crone?
"If all paths lead to my doom, then why should I not choose the path that leads by way of vengeance?" He cried at them all, opening himself to the Wild Magic all around. It flooded him, filling all his senses, giving him all the strength of the Storm and power untamed and untamable. Every vein in him throbbed with it, and where it met with his Art the two powers merged, swelling each beyond what it could ever be alone. The circle of ghosts stepped back, increasing the size of Kieron's cage.
"Never shall I willingly serve the Lord of the Wild Hunt, never shall I submit to such a fate. Never will I set myself against those I love,"
He looked down again at the living corpse at his feet, and with all the power in his veins he saw that there was no glamour. His heart seemed to stop beating, while his blood turned to thunder. He could see the tendrils of her life being sucked from her and into the Bocan, feeding them the power to fight him. He knelt and pressed the point of his dirk to her heart.
"Dana save you from this evil fate. Pass swiftly into the Summerlands and into my father's arms once more," no cry came from her as the blade pierced her heart, not a sound as death stole her away. Slowly he took to his feet again, slowly while letting the bright fire of Wild Magic fill his eyes.
"Now I shall teach you all what it means to suffer,"
The ground shook and exploded beneath their feet, lightning arced through their ranks, striking each through the heart and twisting each face into a mask of agony. A howling wind sprang up, so powerful that with spectral hands it lifted up the Bocan and tossed them about in the air, writhing and shrieking. In the heart of it, Kieron stood wielding his blades like forks of lightening, he despatched the Bocan one by one back to their Mistress. Those that somehow had kept their feet took flight, but the wind snatched them back to face Kieron and his blades.
His eyes blazed, his pale skin glowed with eldritch light. He had become a vessel of this blended power and a machine to vanquish all foes. Only the Lord himself had ever wielded so much untamed magic. It surged through him and he was drunk with it. Nothing could stand between him and what he desired. The Crone could appear before him and be sent flying in fear. The Lord himself might be sorely tested. The sky cracked and thunder peeled, and Kieron commanded it to do his bidding. Thick winter clouds parted and the sliver of the moon shone through.
"Death take and keep you all! Never again will you defy me!" he howled, snatching up all of the Bocan that remained in the clutches of his power. Lightening charged his blade with it's forked tongue and with it he cut down a great swathe of Bocan, then another and another. More power flooded his veins with each stroke and his joy at his boundless strength began to give way to pain. Pain like ground glass in hs blood, then pain like sharpened blades, then pain like wrenching hooks. He screamed and blood came through his mouth, but still the Wild Magic poured through him. It seemed like it was tearing him apart from within. The wind died, the earth quietened and the lightneing ceased. His foes were vanquished, but he fell to his knees, locked in a deadlier battle to force the Wild Magic from his body. Finally at the moment he felt sure that death would take him, he was released and he fell forward to kiss the ground. His heart slowed to a normal beat, his breath became his own again. His mind reeled still with the torture and the thrill of that power, but it was also filled the fear he had seen reflected in the ghostly eyes of the Bocan. Then out of the madness came the corrupted face of his mother, then the pain of grief on the face of the woman he loved, and then a stream of a thousand faces and things from the life that was behind him, all the regrets and pains from the past. Wracked in the torment of it all, he saw how he had broken every promise and oath he had taken by allowing the Wild Magic to consume him so. He realised al too late it's cost.
"And, of course, the Crone will never forgive you for how you have humbled her fearsome servants," it was the smooth voice of a man, following the train of the thoughts in his head. It was a voice rich with living warmth, speaking from close by. Kieron tried to sit up, so he could look around, but not one of his muscles seemed willing to obey. A hand was laid on his shoulder and he found himself being rolled onto his back. A dark form hovered above him.
"A single mortal man overcoming her band of Bocan? When tales are told of it she will quake with fury and curse your name," the voice continued, seeming to belong to that vague figure.
"I have no care for that now. My life is spent and I have failed all I loved. Leave me to die," he managed to snarl, unsure of where the strength had come from, but sure of the hate that drove it.
He heard laughter, a pleasant rolling laugh that seemed to indulge him.
"You will not die now, Kieron Mac Lachaln, you are not destined for death now, or at any time,"
"I am mortal, death is my prize. It is my right," he replied with impatience.
"No, there you are mistaken, but let us not stray far from the point. I come to offer you sanctuary from the Hag,"
"I do not need your sanctuary. If she has issue with me beyond the Veil, I will face it,"
"Who has already suffered in your stead? Who else might suffer to cause you harm? The Crone gains little from the torture of those already in her power," The stranger countered.
Kieron's mind swam with thoughts of Bran, of Scatha, of the Glen and of the things that had become of his mother,her husband and his sisters. He thought of Hazel, and of seeing the life drained from her as it had been from his mother.
"She is all you have lived for, and your love for her will draw the Hag's full ire on her. You could not go back to her even with your broken promises now, death would follow you," the stranger cautioned him.
"Who are you that speaks as if you know my heart?" Kieron demanded, unable to discern anything from the shadow or even to move still.
"If you allow me to give you a healing draft, you will know me for what I am," the stranger told him.
The awful ache in all his body nagged at him as much as his desire to know who it was that spoke to him. Normal caution he abandoned as being worthless to one as damned as he was, so he assented. A cup was pressed to his lips and he tasted sweet wine, a wine so sweet and fresh he was sure he had never tasted anything so fine. A calm began to take hold of his mind, and strength flowed again to his limbs. A note of alarm sparked inside his mind, this potion was powerful indeed, no ordinary healer would have such a potion to give him, but even as that occurred to him his mind began to drift from him. As in a dream he sat up, rubbing at his eyes and saw the Lord of the Hunt before him, cloaked in green and gold with a mocking smile upon his lips. His head grew lighter still, and he felt his memories begin to float away from him.
"Poisoned with your foul magic!" he spat at the Lord, struggling to hold on to himself, "You have tricked me!"
"Of course, Kieron Mac Lachlan, that was the wine from my table, the wine of forgetfulness I give as a gift to my hunters. Finally your destiny is on you, and your strength and blade will be mine. Soon you will do my bidding gratefully, "
Anger gripped Kieron, and he leapt to attack the Lord, only to find that he could not draw his sword against his foe.
"I am your master, you cannot harm me,"
"Curse you, by the Light of Lugh and the Art of Dana, may your plans for me be your doom!" Kieron cried out, falling back to his knees. His life behind him already seemed to be full of holes. Things which had made perfect sense before became meaningless fragments. All that he had learned melted away from him and soon it seemed that he knelt before a kindly stranger and the anger in him felt as if it was meant for others. The stranger looked on him and smiled, and Kieron Mac Lachlan felt his troubled mind soothed as the dark shadows of his unhappy past faded from him entirely. Last there was only the memory of the one he had loved left in him, her face was last in his mind and her name was on his lips.
"Hazel..." he sighed and a small dark shadow passed across his master's face.
"Perhaps you will have her one day, my Champion, but now it is time for us to return to the Hunt,"
"Yes my Lord, some day," he answered, half in a dream. Then he stood and followed his Master, taking the mount his Lord offered him and following him up into the darkling sky.
