The Well of Shades

  The rest of the men were talking. Two conversations: she could hear bits of both as she sat huddled in her cloak, with Saraid leaning up against her and the dog at her feet. One of them was about her.

  “I’m sure it’s her.”

  “But he said…”

  “Take a look. You can see what he is: wealthy, highborn, speaks like he owns the place. She’s a scrawny bit of nothing; roadside rubbish. Wife? I hardly think so.”

  Eile tried to scrunch up on herself; to make herself beneath any kind of notice. She prayed. Let us get away. Please, oh, please. She fought the urge to jump up, grab Saraid and run. His plan; his rules. She’d probably been stupid to trust even for a moment.

  The second conversation was about Faolan, and made her wonder.

  “You know what he did, don’t you?”

  “Doesn’t bear thinking about. Bet his father never thought he’d come home.”

  “Don’t know how the fellow can live with himself.”

  “Looks normal enough.”

  “You reckon?”

  “Wonder where he went, all those years.”

  For all the difficulty, the bridge was serviceable before morning was well advanced, and the men on the far side invited Faolan to be first across, since he had helped them while under no obligation to do so. The mounted party had tethered their horses and waited at a distance while the work was done. Now they moved up, and Eile could see a cloaked and hooded figure among them, someone who seemed to be giving all the orders.

  At last they could go. She put Saraid in the sling and lifted the child onto her back. Faolan came over to them, his hands bleeding, his good tunic somewhat the worse for wear.

  “Ready?” he asked, as if this were an everyday sort of journey, and the three of them a small family going to market or to visit kinsfolk. Those were the sorts of things ordinary families did together. Maybe she had done them with Father and Mother, long ago when she was little. She wished she could remember.

  The rope remained as a handhold, but now the planks made a secure, though narrow, purchase for feet. Below, the river coursed in frothy white around the bridge supports. Faolan stepped onto the timbers and turned back to face her, extending his hand. “One hand in mine, the other on the rope,” he said. “One step at a time.”

  “Shut your eyes, Squirrel,” Eile said, pitching her voice above the noise of the rushing water. “Count up to ten, as slowly as you can, and then again, and we’ll be on the other side.” Clenching her teeth, she took the first step.

  “You know,” Faolan observed, walking backward, “that child is the best behaved I’ve ever encountered. You’ve done a wonderful job with her. Where I come from, there are several little boys, and they seem to run about yelling quite a bit of the time. I think Squirrel there would be quite taken aback by it…” He kept on talking, and leading her forward without once looking where he was going, and before he had finished they were on the other side. She had not once thought of falling.

  Eile stepped down off the bridge and heard him say quietly, “Well done.” A moment later a sharp voice snapped out, “That is the man!” and, before Faolan could so much as turn around, a pair of the blue-and-black-clad fellows had his arms pinned behind his back and were marching him away from her.

  He fought. He fought quite well, in Eile’s estimation; the two men were joined by two more, and then by another, before they got him trussed up, a gag over his mouth, and threw him across one of the packhorses. One man’s nose was pouring blood; another was groaning, a hand to his head. A third lay sprawled on the ground, clutching his knee. Saraid had started to cry. Eile could feel it. The child wept soundlessly, a skill she had learned from her mother.

  My plan; my rules. The plan had gone wrong now and the rules had to be broken.

  “Let him go!” Eile shouted. “He hasn’t done anything!” But there was so much noise, what with the blue and black people cursing and shouting orders, and horses everywhere, and the voice of the river, that nobody seemed to hear her. She was standing in the middle of someone else’s place, someone else’s business, and it seemed she was invisible at last, just when she didn’t want to be. “Listen to me!” she yelled. “You! Listen! He’s innocent, he didn’t do anything!”

  Someone lifted a hand, and there was a sudden stillness. Voices hushed; animals were quieted. A horse moved up beside Eile, a big horse with silver on its harness. The cloaked rider looked down.

  “And who are you?” The voice was a woman’s, sharp, impatient. It was the same voice that had been giving the orders.

  Eile drew a deep breath and looked up. The woman was straight-backed and proud, as she imagined a great queen might be. Her hair was entirely covered by a veil and neck-piece of deep blue, like the evening sky, in some gossamer-fine stuff. Rich people’s clothing. The eyes were grayish blue and hard as iron below the elegant brows. The woman did not look angry; she looked as if she was in a hurry and couldn’t be bothered listening.

  “Please,” Eile said, forcing her voice steady as her heart raced. “He hasn’t done anything wrong, he’s just a traveler. Please let him go.”

  “What concern is this of yours, girl?” The tone was crisp. “Conal, deal with this person, will you?” The woman began to turn her horse away.

  “Please! You’re in charge, make them release him! This isn’t fair—”

  The poised head turned back a little. “What are you to him?” the woman asked.

  I’m his wife. No, not that; Faolan’s plan was for the other side of the river. “I’m his friend,” she said, wondering what it was that had made her stay and speak, when it seemed she could have simply walked away amid the chaos and been free. “Where are you taking him?” She could see Faolan’s face, upside down over a horse’s back; she could glimpse his furious eyes, see the labored movement as he continued to struggle while tied at wrists and ankles. Then a man with a club came up and hit him on the head, and the eyes closed. “Stop hurting him!” Eile screamed.

  A hand clapped itself over her mouth and a large arm came around her waist. She felt Saraid stiffen with fright. Eile used her teeth. The hand let go. A moment later a searing pain went through her ear as the man cuffed her. Tears sprang to her eyes, tears of pain and of outrage, tears of sheer terror. No pitchfork; no knife; nothing but her bare hands.

  “Gently, Conal,” the veiled woman said. “There’s a child there.” Her voice held not a trace of softness. It was more the tone of someone who sees the wisdom of safeguarding a new possession until its value is properly assessed. “Girl! Where were you headed?”

  “Fiddler’s Crossing.”

  “Oh? For what purpose?”

  None of your business. “Visiting kin, my lady.” Torn between fear and fury, she forced the title out.

  “And what kin would that be?”

  What now? An outright lie? Or tell the truth, the truth that had for some strange reason got them away from those first pursuers? “His kin, my lady. The family of the lawman in that settlement. My friend is his son.”

  The woman regarded her. The air seemed to go chill. “And your name is…?”

  Eile bobbed a curtsy, hating herself. “Aoife, my lady.”

  “Aoife, I see. Like the fairy woman in the ballad. How inappropriate.” The cold blue eyes raked Eile up and down; she saw herself reflected there, from lank hair to bitten nails, from grimy face to worn boots. Her too-large clothing, a man’s garments; the child’s small hands clutching her.

  Eile squared her shoulders. “I suppose my mother and father thought me fair, as an infant,” she heard herself say. “We can’t all choose what we become.” Wrong, all wrong; she sent a mute apology to the unconscious Faolan. Silent and submissive, he’d said. With those sharp eyes on her, she couldn’t manage that.

  “This girl is of no interest to us,” the lady said. “Leave her; ride on.”

  “No!” They were ignoring her; moving off, one man leading the packhorse with Faolan limp over the saddle. “No! You can’t
take him!” This wasn’t right. Someone had to make them understand.

  “My lady?” A man spoke from behind her.

  “What now?” The woman halted her mount once more.

  “I’ve had a word with those fellows on the other side. This girl—she’s under suspicion for an unlawful death. A man stabbed: her uncle, not two days since. They want to take her back to Cloud Hill, deal with it properly.”

  “Then give her to them and let us be on our way. I’ve no time for this.”

  “The only thing is,” said the man, “the story the girl gave, and the fellow,” he nodded toward Faolan, “is that she’s his wife and the child his daughter. If not for that, they’d have taken her back straightaway. I thought you’d want to know, my lady.”

  “It’s all right, Squirrel,” muttered Eile. “Don’t cry; it’ll be all right.” She had promised a new home; a nice one, if only Saraid crossed the river. She had lied to her own daughter.

  “Are you his wife?” The words were like drops of ice; Eile could not tell if the woman was angry or amused or playing some strange game beyond other people’s understanding.

  “We’re traveling together. The three of us. Please don’t lock him up. We need him.” Let this proud creature make what she wanted of that.

  “They’re being quite insistent,” the blue-and-black-clad man said. “They want their own people to handle it. Shall I take her back over, my lady?”

  No, please, no. Let him go and let us go. Somewhere far away. We will never trouble you again.

  “I’ve changed my mind, Seamus. These travelers are on my land now, and under different jurisdiction. Tell those fellows we will deal with the matter under due process of law. Tell them to go home. Conal! Find this girl a mount. If she won’t keep her mouth shut, gag her. We’ve delayed long enough here; let us ride for home.”

  “My lady, the child—and there’s a dog—”

  “For pity’s sake, Conal, do you need step-by-step instructions? Put the girl and the child on the other packhorse and forget about the dog. If it wants to follow us, it will.”

  A horse was found. A man tried to help Eile up, but she snarled at him when he put his hands on Saraid. She untied the sling, lifted the shivering child to the creature’s back, then allowed the fellow to cup his hands for her foot. Every part of her was strung tight. She wasn’t going to say she’d never been on a horse before. She had to keep up. She had to watch out for Faolan, since there was nobody else to do it.

  The lady rode over to him now and got down from her horse. As Eile watched, she took hold of Faolan’s hair and pulled his head up so she could gaze into his white, unconscious face. Her eyes were strange; Eile thought for a moment that this fine lady was about to spit, or slap the stricken man, or scream a curse. Instead, the ring-decked fingers let go the dark hair abruptly, and the woman turned away to mount her horse once more.

  “To Blackthorn Rise,” she called. It was a command. The group rode forward, away from the bridge. Balancing Saraid in front of her and gritting her teeth, Eile rode with them.

  THE GREAT GLEN was in Bone Mother’s grip. It was close to Midwinter and the pines spread dark under a sky of slate. The waters of Serpent Lake lay sullen and dangerous from shore to shore, crisscrossed by changeable currents. Beneath the surface, unseen presences lurked close in the hungry season.

  I will be a swallow, Broichan thought, winging to warmer climes on the breath of the storm. He walked on, regretting his decision to test himself by leaving the horse at a local farm and continuing to Pitnochie on foot. His sandals were heavy in the saturated mosses, his robe damply clinging. And he thought, I will be a deer, running swifter than the sunlight, sheltering in the birch thickets. Here the lake shore was broken by a number of sharp indentations. The water swirled in sudden small bays, cut deep in the thickly wooded hillside. There had been rock falls, earth falls. The serpent had swallowed chunks of the land. Here and there the path disappeared entirely. Broichan sought new ways, climbing until there was a fiery ache in his thighs. I will be a salmon, he thought, and swim the length of this great water in powerful surges; my scales will throw back the silver gleam of the Shining One like a melody of bright notes. I will be a bee, a snake, a moth…

  When night fell he sought the hollow of an ancient oak well known to him and sheltered within, folded in his cloak. A druid has many techniques for slowing the body’s workings the better to endure privations. Of these skills he still had the mastery, even if the power to travel in forms other than that of man had left him as he fought the long illness for control of his body. The wondrous changes, the creature shapes, were now no more than vivid memories, a level of the craft of magic that would never more be within his grasp. His legs ached. His back hurt. His joints were stiff in the damp cold of the season. He was not such an old man in years, but tonight he felt old.

  Rain came. The Shining One was veiled by clouds; the night was dark. Broichan made himself breathe in a steady pattern; his heartbeat slowed, his blood ran less swiftly, his body stilled within the swathing cloak, within the sheltering tree. He was a whisper of breath in the night; a pair of dark eyes amid the great shadow of winter. He prayed without a sound. I seek wisdom. I need a path. What is required of me?

  And it seemed to him, after an endless time, that the answer was there in the wash of the lake waters against the shore, and in the sigh of the wind in the pines: Acknowledge your weakness. Learn acceptance. Open your heart to love.

  But when he asked: Is it true? Is she my daughter? the voice was silent. The only answer was the slow beating of his own heart.

  THERE WAS WORRYING news. Not long after Bridei’s return to White Hill, Carnach had sent a messenger to say that he was going home to his holdings at Thorn Bend over the winter, and was as yet uncertain when he might come back to Caer Pridne and to his duties as the king’s chief war leader. The forces in the northern fortress being much reduced already, he had left things in the hands of his deputies for the time being. The message was of concern not for this statement, but for what it did not say. Carnach had made his bitter disappointment at Bridei’s decision quite plain when they had met at Caer Pridne. Now, in effect, he was withdrawing his support as a result.

  In the judgment of Bridei and his councillors, Carnach had not been serious about contesting the kingship of Circinn himself, although he was qualified by blood to do so, since his mother had been a woman of the royal line. But it seemed clear that, in deciding to let the opportunity pass him by this time, Bridei had lost a powerful ally and a friend. Carnach’s lands were strategically situated on the border between Fortriu and Circinn. Six years ago, his decision to support Bridei’s bid for the kingship of Fortriu had been critical; as an ongoing ally, he was invaluable. He would make a formidable enemy. Steps must be taken to win back his trust.

  As for Broichan, Bridei wondered if he had misjudged his foster father. He missed him; he feared for him out in the wet and cold, on foot, alone and in precarious health. On the other hand, Broichan possessed an iron discipline, a core of strength Bridei understood all too well.

  It had been a shock to find the druid gone from White Hill, and to know he had lost the opportunity to break the news of his decision to Broichan before announcing it to the court. That had filled him with misgivings. It had seemed a betrayal. Now, on the eve of the assembly at which he must make public the news of Drust’s death and his own intentions, what he wanted most of all was his foster father’s wise counsel.

  Bridei had learned early that getting a man like Broichan to accept unwelcome news was a matter of presenting it in a certain way, clearly and honestly, with logical arguments to support it. If his foster father were here now, he would explain his reasons: the desire for peace, the need to heal his wounded country after the time of war, the urge to build alliances and strengthen borders. The inner conviction that, although it was the will of the gods to see Fortriu and Circinn reunited in the ancient patterns of faith, now was not the time for it.

&nb
sp; Bridei sat alone in his small council chamber, pondering these things and considering the fact that leadership in time of fragile peace might be still more challenging than it was in time of war. Conflict drew folk together; it tended to make them follow willingly, provided they believed in the cause. It was when the danger was past that folk began to question. When not united against a common enemy, they invented their own disputes and disagreements. He would have welcomed his foster father’s observations on this. He would have enjoyed debating it with Faolan.

  Bridei sighed. The longer his right-hand man was away, the more he seemed to need him. Faolan could have sought out Broichan. He could have gone after Carnach and assessed the risk in that quarter. Most of all, he could have served at White Hill as the king’s protector and sounding board. Faolan was as unlike Broichan as anyone could be, but the man had a particular wisdom that cut through irrelevancies like a knife through soft butter. Nobody knew what lay in Faolan’s past. He never talked about it. No, that was not quite true; it seemed that, in their long and arduous journey across the north last autumn, Faolan had unburdened himself to Ana and to Drustan, but neither would betray his confidence, and that was as it should be. Whatever the man’s history, it had made him strong. By the time Faolan returned to Fortriu in spring, Bridei judged, he’d have recovered from his broken heart—that had been a startling development—and be ready to resume his duties at White Hill once more. Meanwhile, the one who must receive Bridei’s confidences and help him through his quandaries was Tuala.