Read Online The Phantom Queen Awakes by Mark S. Deniz - Free Book Online
Authors: Mark S. Deniz
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for air,
Mairaed threw her head back, and another sister covered her mouth
with a deepening kiss. Lips and curious tongues tasted her breasts
as knowing fingers parted her thighs and swept upward, inward,
waking a need that had gone unanswered for a lifetime. Her heart
would burst with it, would surely fail from the Morrigan’s
all-encompassing touch; from the desire for the three-fold goddess
who was all, all, all that Mairaed could ever want.
And then in the moment of ecstasy the goddess
was gone, leaving Mairaed white and spent and numb on a starlight
stair.
****
Ravens guided her to the earth, stood
clattering and clacking on the cairns, and giving the blade that
lay between them bright-eyed glances of avarice. Mairaed crouched
and lifted it: not the same one she had dropped, but one of far
finer make, light and deadly sharp. Even as she wished it might be
a weapon she knew better, it became one: a bladed staff, fast and
easy to manipulate in her hands.
Her hands: her hands, too, were her own and
were not. A glimmer of unknown strength lay in them; lay in the
shape of her arms and in the length of her stride when she saw dawn
was near, and that war would be upon her village with daylight. Her
clothes were not her own, and neither were they the Morrigan’s: she
wore armor of silver and white, making her a banner in the coming
light. It was the armor, the weapon, the stride of a hero; of a man
out of legend, and not of a single young woman whose fate was bound
to the river of death.
Bright-eyed corvids alighted on her shoulders,
their wings half spread and black beaks open to cry go, go! Only
when she began to run did they take wing again, the two who’d urged
her on and an unkindness more besides, beating their way through
winter air to keep promises, to meet destiny.
To make battle at the river’s edge.
Blood spattered, crimson in the dawn’s light.
A thin line opened on Mairaed’s cheek, but no pain rose with it.
The sword came again, metal dull with viscera that mocked the
rising sun. She countered this time, elegant: she had never learned
the steps to this dance, but she knew them from within, as she had
once known the cairn dances as though they’d been imprinted on her
soul. Her hands were easy with her bladed staff’s weight, swinging
it, twisting it, smashing men aside with it, and each blow felling
her enemy with more certainty than she might have hoped.
Each time one of the Fir Bolg fell, she
crowed triumph, and her ravens spun in the sky around her,
black-winged harbingers of death.
All around her — behind her, following her
lead — came the people of her village; came Sion O’Connail, came
Aine’s daughter, came faces she knew and had once loved; faces for
whom she had called the goddess Morrigan, so that they might live
and fight another day. She saw in their eyes how they needed what
she was, and so she plunged deeper into battle, turning the Fir
Bolg’s red cloaks to ribbons; breaking their small dark forms
in half on her staff, cutting them to pieces with her blade. Her
heart screamed with joy, every beat a thing of pain: no mortal form
was meant to hold such battle lust, and the goddess of war hungered
for more.
She was bloodless, unmarked amongst the
soldiers, a slim creature of white and silver at the heart of the
enemy, and even when their blades scored they drew no cry, drew no
streak of red anger across her skin. Only their blood marred her
armor, streaks and spatters that steamed in the cold morning light,
and blackened as the day wore on.
Her people were weary: she could feel that in
them as a remote and meaningless detail. They followed her still,
but their strength waned, and she could not hold the field alone.
Not alone, not even with the ravens, whom her people had feared
until they saw the birds fed only on the eyes of the Fir
Bolg .
“Hold!” Her voice was not her own: it was the
serrated thing the Morrigan spoke with, but tempered by a mortal
throat. “Hold
Mairaed threw her head back, and another sister covered her mouth
with a deepening kiss. Lips and curious tongues tasted her breasts
as knowing fingers parted her thighs and swept upward, inward,
waking a need that had gone unanswered for a lifetime. Her heart
would burst with it, would surely fail from the Morrigan’s
all-encompassing touch; from the desire for the three-fold goddess
who was all, all, all that Mairaed could ever want.
And then in the moment of ecstasy the goddess
was gone, leaving Mairaed white and spent and numb on a starlight
stair.
****
Ravens guided her to the earth, stood
clattering and clacking on the cairns, and giving the blade that
lay between them bright-eyed glances of avarice. Mairaed crouched
and lifted it: not the same one she had dropped, but one of far
finer make, light and deadly sharp. Even as she wished it might be
a weapon she knew better, it became one: a bladed staff, fast and
easy to manipulate in her hands.
Her hands: her hands, too, were her own and
were not. A glimmer of unknown strength lay in them; lay in the
shape of her arms and in the length of her stride when she saw dawn
was near, and that war would be upon her village with daylight. Her
clothes were not her own, and neither were they the Morrigan’s: she
wore armor of silver and white, making her a banner in the coming
light. It was the armor, the weapon, the stride of a hero; of a man
out of legend, and not of a single young woman whose fate was bound
to the river of death.
Bright-eyed corvids alighted on her shoulders,
their wings half spread and black beaks open to cry go, go! Only
when she began to run did they take wing again, the two who’d urged
her on and an unkindness more besides, beating their way through
winter air to keep promises, to meet destiny.
To make battle at the river’s edge.
Blood spattered, crimson in the dawn’s light.
A thin line opened on Mairaed’s cheek, but no pain rose with it.
The sword came again, metal dull with viscera that mocked the
rising sun. She countered this time, elegant: she had never learned
the steps to this dance, but she knew them from within, as she had
once known the cairn dances as though they’d been imprinted on her
soul. Her hands were easy with her bladed staff’s weight, swinging
it, twisting it, smashing men aside with it, and each blow felling
her enemy with more certainty than she might have hoped.
Each time one of the Fir Bolg fell, she
crowed triumph, and her ravens spun in the sky around her,
black-winged harbingers of death.
All around her — behind her, following her
lead — came the people of her village; came Sion O’Connail, came
Aine’s daughter, came faces she knew and had once loved; faces for
whom she had called the goddess Morrigan, so that they might live
and fight another day. She saw in their eyes how they needed what
she was, and so she plunged deeper into battle, turning the Fir
Bolg’s red cloaks to ribbons; breaking their small dark forms
in half on her staff, cutting them to pieces with her blade. Her
heart screamed with joy, every beat a thing of pain: no mortal form
was meant to hold such battle lust, and the goddess of war hungered
for more.
She was bloodless, unmarked amongst the
soldiers, a slim creature of white and silver at the heart of the
enemy, and even when their blades scored they drew no cry, drew no
streak of red anger across her skin. Only their blood marred her
armor, streaks and spatters that steamed in the cold morning light,
and blackened as the day wore on.
Her people were weary: she could feel that in
them as a remote and meaningless detail. They followed her still,
but their strength waned, and she could not hold the field alone.
Not alone, not even with the ravens, whom her people had feared
until they saw the birds fed only on the eyes of the Fir
Bolg .
“Hold!” Her voice was not her own: it was the
serrated thing the Morrigan spoke with, but tempered by a mortal
throat. “Hold
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