Son of the Shadows

  The piper was packing his instrument away neatly in a goatskin bag. He was a thin man, dark bearded, with a little gold ring in his ear. His assistant, taller, hooded, held the bag open for him. The piper gave me a polite nod.

  “I wanted to thank you,” I said. “I don’t know who invited you to play here, but it was a good choice. Your music comes from the heart.”

  “Thank you, my lady. A great teller of tales such as your mother deserves a fitting farewell.”

  He had stowed the pipes and now lifted the bag onto his shoulder.

  “You’re welcome to return to the house for food and ale,” I told him. “Have you far to travel home?”

  The man gave a crooked grin. “A tidy old step,” he said. “The ale wouldn’t go amiss. But—” He glanced at his silent companion. It was only then that I noticed, in the near darkness, the large, black bird perched on this man’s shoulder, claws gripping tight, small, sharp eye fixed on me, appraising. A raven. “Seems to me,” said the piper, setting off in the direction of the house as if something had been decided between the two of them without the need for words, “a drink or two wouldn’t hurt. And I have to catch up with the old auntie. Can’t very well visit these parts without doing that. She’d never forgive me.”

  “Auntie?” I queried, having to move briskly to keep up with him, for he set a fair pace. Behind us, the hooded man walked in silence. I realized, as we made our way back through the forest, that the piper was one of Janis’s tribe of farflung connections. A traveling man, Danny Walker they called him It was a little odd. Hadn’t she once said Dan was from Kerry? That surely was a long way to come, even for this.

  We reached the path that led up to the main door of the keep. From within, there was a sound of voices, and lanterns burned outside to light the way.

  “Your friend is welcome, too,” I said to the piper, and I looked over my shoulder. The hooded man, dark bird on shoulder, had halted a few paces away. Clearly, he did not intend to follow us inside. “Will you come in?” I asked him politely.

  “I think not.”

  I froze where I stood. Surely I had heard this voice before. Yet if it were so, it was terribly changed. Before, it had been young, passionate, and full of hurt. Now it seemed a far older man’s voice and cold with restraint.

  He spoke again. “Go in, Dan. Take this night to visit your kinfolk and rest yourself. I’ll speak with the lady in the morning.”

  And with that, he turned and disappeared down the path beyond the hedge.

  “He’ll not come in,” said Dan flatly.

  I blinked. Perhaps I had imagined the whole thing. “Does he mean me?” I asked hesitantly. “The lady, he said. Myself?”

  “As to that,” said Dan, “you’d need to ask him. I’d be down early in the morning if I were you. He won’t stay here long. Doesn’t like to leave her, you understand?”

  There was no chance to ask him any more. I had duties as the lady of the house; I must offer support to all those who grieved, and share in the songs and tales with which we sent my mother on her way with honor and love. There was ale and mead and spiced cakes; music and talk and fellowship. There were smiles and tears. At length I made my way to bed, thinking the hooded stranger would be gone in the morning, and the whole thing might simply be blamed on the Sight leading me astray.

  Still, I was up early and out in the herb garden, knowing it would be hard, this first day without my mother; aware I must come here and be among her special things, in the midst of her quiet domain, if I were to teach myself that life would go on without her loving presence, her gentle guiding hand. I had left Johnny with the nursemaid; it was too cold for him to be out of doors. I walked along the path, plucking a small weed here and a smaller one there, knowing I was waiting. It was barely dawn.

  I sensed him just before I saw him. A cold feeling went up my spine, and I turned toward the archway. He stood immobile in the shadows, a tall figure, still cloaked and hooded in black. The bird sat on his shoulder like some creature carven in dark stone.

  “Will you come in?” I asked him, still doubting the accuracy of my memory. Then he stepped forward, and slipped the hood back, revealing a pale, intense face, and the darkest of eyes, and a head of hair the deep color at the heart of a winter sunset.

  “Ciarán,” I breathed, “it is you. Why did you not show yourself? Conor is here; he would want to see you—will you not come inside and speak to him?”

  “No.” The chilling finality of his tone silenced me. The great bird reached down with a beak like a butcher’s knife to adjust its plumage. Its eye was feral. “I am not come for that. No show of family spirit. I am not fool enough to believe that chasm can be bridged. I’m here to bring a message.”

  “What message?” I asked quietly.

  “For her mother,” he said. “Niamh wanted to say, I love you, forgive me. But I am come too late.”

  I could not speak.

  “It will grieve her that I was not here in time,” said Ciarán softly.

  “Mother would know. It doesn’t matter that it is now—after—she would still know. Is Niamh—is she well? Is she better, and safe—how did you—”

  “She is well enough. Much changed.” His tone was calm, but I sensed beneath it the deepest of sorrows, a burden such as no young man should have to bear. I could not read what was in his eyes. “The laughing girl who dazzled us at Imbolc is gone. She has not yet found her way. But she is safe.”

  “Where? Where safe? How did you—”

  “Safe. Where is unimportant.”

  He had a druid’s way with answers. “With you?” I asked.

  Ciarán gave a sort of nod. “She needs protection. I failed her once, but that at least I can provide.”

  We fell silent for a while. Small birds were starting to call, harbingers of a new dawn and a new season.

  “I am Niamh’s sister,” I said finally. “I would like to know, at least, where she is and whether she might return when the truth is known. I told my father. He understands now what an error they made when they chose a husband for her. It might be possible—could you not bring her back here and—”

  His laugh startled me. The sound was dark with bitterness.

  “Bring her back? How could that be?”

  I said nothing, wondering at his response. Was there not some hope that things might at length be well? I did not want to believe my efforts, and Bran’s, had been quite futile.

  “They never told you?” asked Ciarán bleakly.

  “Never told me what?” That feeling seized me again, a terror, a chill in the core of the body like a touch of darkness past or evil to come.

  “The truth. Why they forbade me to wed Niamh and sent the two of us away. Why we can never return and will never wish to. How we are cursed, doubly cursed, by the keeping of secrets. They did not tell you. I suppose that is why you helped us when nobody else would. If you had known the truth, you would have spurned us.”

  I shrank from the cynical tone of his voice, so changed from the ardent, glowing hope with which he had once told his tale of love.

  “You’d better tell me everything,” I said. “My friends put themselves in great danger to help her. Tell me the truth, Ciarán. There’s talk of an old evil awake, of things stirring that can harm us all. What is it? Tell me.”

  I went to sit on the old stone bench that stood between feathery clumps of wormwood and chamomile, and he moved closer. The bird cawed and flew up into the lilac tree, where it perched rather precariously on a slender branch.

  “It was cruel,” said Ciarán quietly. In the early morning light his face was ghost white. “Cruel that they kept the truth from her. No wonder she thought herself abandoned, for she did not know why I’d fled; what drove me away. She did not understand that our union was—cursed.”

  “Cursed?” I echoed stupidly, not knowing what he might mean.

  “Forbidden. Forbidden by blood. It was not until that night, when I came to Sevenwaters with my heart beating high,
prepared to do battle for my lady if it came to it, that Conor deigned to tell me, at last, who I was. All those years he’d kept it from me, a long secret never to be told. I thought myself a foundling, an infant lucky enough to be fostered by the wise ones and brought up in the haven of the forest. I dreamed of nothing more than to follow in Conor’s footsteps, to dedicate myself to the ways of the brotherhood. Then I met Niamh. And it was time for the secret to be told.”

  In the back of my mind, somewhere, things began to make a sort of sense. A terrible, twisted, inevitable sense.

  “Conor told you who you were?”

  “He did. That I could never wed Niamh. That what we had done was shameful and wrong, a breaking of natural laws, an abhorrence, though it was done in innocence. Our union could never be sanctioned. For I am the son of Colum of Sevenwaters by his second wife, the Lady Oonagh. I am half brother to Conor and to Liam. Half-brother to Niamh’s mother and yours. The woman who gave me birth was the Sorceress who near destroyed this family and all it held dear. So, in one blow, Conor stripped from me my love, my future, my hope of joy, and my life’s purpose. Not only was I forbidden Niamh, I was as well cast out of the brotherhood, cut adrift with no star to guide me. All were quenched, every one.”

  “That’s not what Conor said—”

  “Huh! A sorceress’s son can never be a druid. I carry the blood of a cursed line. Such as one as I can never aspire to the highest arts of the wise ones, the realm of light, the inspiration of pure spirit. It is beyond me and always would have been. I know that now. If I am her son, then I am a son of the shadows, condemned to walk in darkness. How he could raise me all those years and keep this from me, that I will never understand. That lie I will never forgive him.”

  “The Lady Oonagh’s child,” I breathed. “He was never accounted for in the story. Simply, he vanished from Sevenwaters when she did. When the enchantment was undone.”

  “Convenient.” Ciarán’s tone was bitter. “My father found me and brought me back. I lived in the nemetons for eighteen years, Liadan. I thought myself in every way a druid. Imagine, then, the blow the revelations of that night dealt me. And I compounded my own shame. I ran away. I abandoned Niamh to despair and abuse. The burden of that I live with every day. No matter how carefully I guard her, no matter how strong a shield I place around her, I cannot shut out what was done that night, for its legacy is lodged deep within us both.”

  A shield, a guard. I said carefully, “Where did you go when you left Sevenwaters that night? Conor said you went to find your past. Was it—was it your mother you sought out? Is she—?” I stopped myself. Some things, it seemed to me, were too dangerous to be spoken aloud.

  “I told him.” There was a darkness in Ciarán’s voice. “I told Conor. I said, a man cannot escape the blood that runs in his veins. No matter whether he discovers as a child or much later, when he thinks himself a different sort of creature entirely, one perhaps who might aspire to nobility of mind, to great goodness. It matters not, for sooner or later the seed that is in us comes to fruition, that heritage we bear begins to rule us. Perhaps, if they had not told me, I might have grown old before the foul blood I bear made itself known in me and forced me to turn my back on the light. Now I do know, I told him, and I will find out just what powers this inheritance brings and how I may wield them. You may not be so ready, then, to call me brother. Then I went away, farther in spirit than in body. A perilous journey. My mother knows well the art of concealment. She did not wish to be found, not yet. But I found her. I have learned to cross the margin to that realm where she now hides herself, where she waits.”

  “How? How could you do such a thing?”

  “It is part of the druid training, to learn to walk over and to return. A test by fire and water, by earth and air. I had endured it before, but this was different.” His voice trembled. At that moment, I was able to remember he was not, after all, an old, embittered man, but a young one not so much older than myself.

  “You say she waits. Waits—for what?”

  Ciarán folded his arms and stared away from me up into the cold, morning sky.

  “You have many questions,” he said.

  “It has been a long time with no news,” I said quietly. “I, too, have a message. Or rather, I have something to return to my sister. I have it here. She’ll be needing this, I think.” I reached into the pouch at my belt and took out the necklace I had made for Niamh, the cord into which the love of her family was woven, a talisman of unbreakable strength. Ciarán took it in his hand, and his long, bony fingers touched the small white stone that still hung threaded there. For the most fleeting instant, he smiled; and I saw again the youth of Imbolc, whose look of joy and pride had shone from his intense features as he lit the fires of spring.

  “She thought this lost,” he said. “You have kept it well. I thank you.”

  “We love her.” I was very close to weeping. “You don’t seem to understand that. Do you have to take her away, wall her up like some princess in a tale, too precious to be seen by ordinary folk? Are we never to see her again? Never to see her child, save in visions?”

  It was as if time ceased, as if breath ceased, for one still moment, and then went on.

  “Child?”

  There was something in that word that clutched my heart as nothing yet had done.

  “I am granted a sight of these things from time to time,” I told him, thinking now I had no choice but to do so. “What will be or may be. I saw Niamh with a little child, an infant with dark, red curls such as your own and eyes like ripe berries. On the sand, in a cave. It seems to me there is a path forward for the two of you. Not the path my uncle or my father would have chosen for you; not the way Conor would have had you follow, for he wanted you to return to the nemetons, whatever you may think: I don’t want to believe I may never see my sister again or—”

  “There are dangers such as you could scarcely dream of.” His tone was hushed, edgy now. “A path I was—directed to follow. A path she—my mother—wishes me to take. She waits for my answer. She offered me much. Power such as a man can scarcely comprehend. Skills beyond the furthest art of archdruid, arts beyond the last page of the thickest grimoire of the oldest mage. I can learn from her, and I will. I will show my brother what I can do and what I can be.”

  “Is this a—a threat? To carry out what the Lady Oonagh could not achieve?” I was shivering and did not seem to be able to stop. In my mind was a little picture of my sister, fading and shrinking away from me.

  “As for that, it will be as it must be. Niamh and I—you must understand, the past cannot be remade, whatever our dreams whisper to us. Some ills cannot be undone. And yet, when I told her the truth of it, she opened her arms to me as if there were nothing to forgive. I spit on the laws of men that lay down what we may or may not feel for each other. In all this web of sorrow and darkness, the bond between us is a single bright thread, too strong to be severed. I will keep her safe; I will pledge all that is in me to protect her. That comes first, above all. More than that I cannot say, for beyond that my path is unknown, as yet unmade. As for her family and mine, I care nothing for them; they treated us with contempt. They lost their right to her when they cast her out of Sevenwaters. Still, to you we owe a debt. To you and to the man who got her away from that place and made sure word reached me. For this reason I bring you a gift.”

  “What gift—” I began, but as I spoke Ciarán gave the smallest of glances at the great bird where it perched in the tree above us, and with a slight lift of the wings and a brief, intense movement of air, the raven flew neatly down and settled on my shoulder, a not inconsiderable weight. Its beak was alarmingly close to my eye, and I felt its claws through cloak and shawl and gown.

  “Oh,” I said, and was then quite lost for words.

  “A messenger,” said Ciarán. “A loan more than a gift. You may have need of him. But remember. Such a creature must be called upon only at the last extreme. Only when all else has failed and you a
re without aid, and body and spirit reach the end of their strength, then send him. Such a messenger should not be employed lightly.”

  “I see,” I said, not seeing at all. What was this great creature, some sort of sorcerer’s familiar? I had so many questions to ask, too many.

  “It’s time to go.” Ciarán seemed suddenly restless, as if his mind already moved ahead of him to some distant place. “I cannot be away long.”

  “Still, it’s quite a journey to Kerry,” I said cautiously. “From one full moon to the next, and longer, would it not be?”

  “That’s the way Dan would prefer, by horseback or walking,” Ciarán said. “But there are other ways.”

  “I see,” I said again, my mind on old tales about druids and sorcerers. I wondered how much he had learned in those eighteen years, and how much more since last I had seen him.

  “Farewell, then,” he said gravely.

  “I would have, you know,” I blurted out, needing him to know, needing my sister to know that I was not as coldhearted as they believed me, “even if I had been told who you were and why it was forbidden. I would still have helped her. I love her. If she is with you, despite all, perhaps that is in some way right. Perhaps, in some way, that is what’s meant to be, law or no law.”

  Ciarán gave a nod. “One way or another, it will unfold,” he said, sounding like a druid again. And as if summoned, though there had been no summons that I could detect, Dan Walker appeared in the archway to the garden, whistling under his breath, the goatskin bag balanced neatly on his shoulder.

  “We’re away then?” he inquired matter-of-factly. And before I could utter another word, Ciarán moved like a shadow, and the two of them were gone. I followed, feeling the weight of the unexpected gift on my shoulder, and the clutch of its claws in my flesh. I came out onto the path and looked down beyond the hedges to the margin of the forest. But there was nobody to be seen.