Or if I’m bad at doing it?”

Xau laid his hand briefly on Tiarnan’s arm.

“For what it’s worth, we think—I think—

you will be a good king, Tiarnan.”

Tiarnan ducked his head,

said nothing,

but he remembered Xau’s words.

Tried to live up to them later.

DREAM

He looses Rose’s long brown hair from its braid, runs his hands through it, but she pulls away saying, “Rourk,” and Donal, frantic, must rebraid her hair to rescue Rourk. His hands entangle: Rourk’s body broken, buried. “Hush, be easy,” says Rose in a voice that is not her own. Donal turns on his side, reaching in sleep for that voice, for Fian his wife. Fian speaks with Rose’s face, says, “Go to the tombs. My words are air. Going, gone.” And Donal lets go of Rose, slides far from fret or thought.

SWORDS

Under the castle,

delved in earth and rock,

a burial ground.

Donal, King of Innis,

walked down to the tombs

of the kings who came before him

with Xau, King of Meqing,

lately an enemy,

now a friend.

With them came Connol, Donal’s brother,

and Xau’s guard, shadowing his king.

At Donal’s side hung his longsword, Raid,

the sword with which his father

slew foes, wolves, whores, wretches:

a brutal man, a brutal king,

and Donal, the Red King,

red-haired, red-handed in war,

had fought all his years

to hold that selfsame rage in check.

Donal stopped in the passage

by a bare earthen mound:

he’d ordered his father buried

without even a namestone.

Donal spat on the mound,

his fingers curling round Raid’s hilt,

the hilt his father once smashed

against Connol’s head,

knocking his young son to his knees,

and bringing Donal at a run

to hurl himself upon his father.

He would have died that day,

but that his uncle deflected

Raid’s heavy blade.

His uncle lost three fingers

and Donal lost the last of his affection

for his sire.

∗

Connol walked past Donal and Xau,

wasting neither spit nor glance

upon their father’s mound.

Torches burned on the walls,

the damp air smelling of oil and smoke,

and Connol wondered what servant

lit torches underground

for dead men.

The passage widened into a cavern.

Water dripped from rock above

onto a circle of seven stone tombs.

A stain darkened the dank dirt at Connol’s feet.

He followed the stain behind a tomb:

a woman’s spread-eagled corpse,

dagger in her chest.

He yelled, drew his sword

in the moment before he recognized her—

Eirdre, Queen Fian’s sister—

a moment in which he saw

neither Eirdre’s body,

nor the sword in his hand,

but a vision of his wife, Mei,

a baby suckling at her breast,

a vision he’d had a dozen times before,

though no child had yet been born.

Connol came back to himself

as the others caught up to him.

Beneath his boots, a trembling,

then a rending din

as the tombs split wide.

Bones rose from out the gaping tombs.

Dirt rushed in streams toward the bones,