Elizabeth English - The Borderlands 02 (3 page)

S
he was a witch.

Brodie Maxwell sat on one corner
of the bed and watched blearily as his wife approached, a cup held carefully
before her. A witch. It explained everything.

"Drink it," he ordered.

Deirdre Maxwell glanced from the cup in her hand to
her husband's face. "Sure, I didn't get it for myself. 'Tis the mulled ale
you asked for."

"You've put something in it," Brodie said
with drunken certainty as he rose unsteadily to his feet, one hand moving to
the dagger at his belt.

"Of course I haven't!"

Her eyes met his, dark brows
slightly raised, the very picture of innocent surprise. Clever witch. That's
what she was. What she'd been from the first, when she enspelled him on the
windswept cliffs of Donegal four years ago.

She had made him promises. Oh, not in words, for she
had barely spoken to him during their brief courtship. But her eyes—so blue, so
clear and yet so distant—her eyes had held depth upon depth of mystery and
promise. Her mouth had curved in a secret smile that hinted of ecstasy to come.

Lies, it had been, all lies. She had given him nothing
but her body, unwillingly at that. From their joyless mating he'd gotten but
one puling girl-child and nothing since.

Who knew what black arts she had used to win him. Had
been using since to shrivel his manhood. What potions she'd been slipping into
his ale.

The dagger flashed and the point just touched the
white skin of her throat.

"Brodie, whatever are you doing? What's come over
you tonight?"

"Drink it," he snarled.

One shoulder moved in the slightest of shrugs. And
there it was again, the elusive quality that had once entranced him and now
drove him to helpless rage. In a single gesture she dismissed him, as though
she was so far above him that nothing he said or did could ever truly touch her.
He didn't take his eyes from her as she finished every drop and lowered the cup.
Then he stepped back and sheathed the dagger.

"All right, then."

"Are you well,
husband?"  Her voice held just the right touch of concern. Oh, she played
her part ably enough when it suited her, but he wasn't taken in. 'Twas well
known a true witch could not feel love. But even a witch could bear a son, and
by God, he'd have that much from her.

He grabbed her arm and pulled her hard against him. Ah,
he'd finally reached her. The fear springing to her eyes sent a thrill of
excitement racing through his veins.

"Oh, I'm well,
wife
," he said.

Her slender body stiffened, as
though she braced herself against a blow. She'd had blows from him before—well
earned, every one of them—but tonight he had other plans.

He released her and walked to the flagon—one he'd
fetched himself—and poured, draining the mazer in thirsty gulps. When it was
finished, he poured himself another. God knew a man needed something to warm
his blood if he was to take this bony, whey-faced witch to bed.

But take her to his bed he would. Tonight was Beltane
Eve, and even if Brodie was in name a Christian, he was still half pagan in his
heart. Tonight he would beget a son. And then he would rid himself of the witch
he'd married, lest she taint the boy who would one day be his heir.

Deirdre Maxwell watched her husband drain the second
mazer, then bent her head to hide the relief in her eyes. Brodie thought
himself so clever, but he was truly a great fool. What she had brought him was
just ale, nothing more or less.

It was the flagon she had drugged.

A
listair stood, arms crossed, a cynical smile curling
his lips as Fergus put one gnarled hand on the bull's head and chanted softly.
First
he has me reiving cattle, now he's singing to the livestock. And isn't that
just my luck? I've left it too late and he's lost what wits he had.

Fergus glanced over at him, frowning. "This is no
game," he said. "Listen well and remember what ye hear."

Alistair bent his head. Let the man sing, then. But as
he began to concentrate on the words, his skepticism faded into a dreamlike
wonder. The chant, a blessing and a prayer, wound through the still spring air,
swelling as the sun moved slowly to the west. By the time the shadows touched
the blossom-studded meadow, Alistair had become part of the song. Moving as if
in a dream, he took his dagger and laid it against the animal's throat. Its
life's blood pulsed through the steel and up his arm, mingling with his own
heartbeat.

The chant rose and held, then stopped abruptly. Alistair
drew the blade in a quick, sharp motion. The beast started, tried to run, and
Alistair felt its panic in his breast. Then the melody began again, gently now,
a song of sunlight and green meadows. The animal snorted, lay down, and
twitched feebly as its blood sank into the thirsty earth.

When it lay still Alistair drew one sleeve across his
face, smeared with blood and tears.

"Now what?" he asked hoarsely.

"Skin it," Fergus answered. "Skin it
whole. Then bring its hide to me."

Alistair obeyed without question. It was a long job
and by the time he dragged the hide to the cave's entrance, he was spattered
head to foot in blood. Fergus was waiting there, seated on the flat stone, a
goblet set beside him.

Fergus looked at the hide and then at Alistair. "Good,"
he said briefly, picking up the goblet. "Now drink this."

Alistair drained the goblet. It tasted of herbs and
honey and something bitter underneath. As he swallowed the last of it, he was
dimly aware that his fingers had gone numb and a peaceful languor was moving
through his limbs.

When he set the goblet back on the flat stone, the sunlight
struck its surface in a shower of golden sparks. He stared at it, transfixed,
and an image formed before his eyes, a slender, dark-haired lass—or no, he
thought dizzily, no ordinary lass, but a queen—gliding quickly through a
forest.

"What do ye see?" Fergus asked softly.

The scene before Alistair's eyes blurred and changed. "Death,"
he whispered. "Eight men lying on the moor, lying in their blood. And
Ian..."

With a cry of horror, he struck the cup aside.

"It was meant to be me that day, not him!"
he burst out angrily. "God—or the devil—made a mistake. It was all wrong,
I knew it then...and I know it now. 'Tis as though—as though I
did
die
that day—and all that's happened since is nothing but a dream."

He had said it at last, the thing he had sworn never
to tell another living soul. But now that it was said, he felt no fear, just
relief that it was out. Fergus didn't seem at all perturbed. The old man didn't
look at him as though he had no business walking free. He simply nodded as if
what Alistair had said was the most natural thing in the world.

"Is there more or is that the end of it?"

Alistair laughed, the first time he could remember
doing so in many months. "More? I'm a walking dead man, Fergus, in every
way that matters. Isn't that enough?"

D
eirdre Maxwell walked swiftly to the pool, looking
neither right nor left. Her hair hung loose down her back, falling well below her
waist, and the last rays of the setting sun struck blue lights in its raven
depths. Hurry, hurry, her mind said in rhythm to her steps. But she should have
a little time yet. Her daughter, Maeve, was sleeping, and Brodie snored soundly
in his bed, helped along by the draught she'd tipped into his ale.

Stupid man, she thought with rising anger as she
glided noiselessly through the wood. He blamed her for his impotence when it
was none of her doing. True, she'd never wanted him and had never once pretended
that she did, but if a woman's will could strike a man's rod lifeless, there
would be few children born into this sorry world.

When she thought of what he would do if he discovered
she was gone, she hesitated, a brief spasm of terror shaking her from head to
foot. Then she squared her shoulders and hurried on. It was only for an hour. Was
that so much to ask? She quickened her steps and ran headlong through the dusk,
arriving breathless at the pool.

There she stopped, growing calmer, growing stronger, as
she always did when she came to this place. The last rays of the sun fell
through the new green leaves to light the tiny clearing. In the center stood a
round pool, its surface calm and still. Deirdre sat down on a rock and gazed
into its depths, a world of flickering light and shadow. It reminded her
suddenly and sharply of the tide pools beneath the cliffs of Donegal.

She raised her eyes to the setting sun. "You sink
down into the perilous ocean, without harm and without hurt," she sang in
her pure, clear voice, "You rise on the quiet wave like a young queen in
flower."

Even now they would be singing that in Donegal, with
the bonfire piled high at their backs and the endless sea before them. Deirdre's
father would be there, her sister, Siobhan...and Ronan. She thought of her
childhood friend with a stab of longing, then pushed the image aside.

"Dear Brighid, give me courage," she prayed.
"Give me strength and wisdom—"

Deirdre did not dare light a fire here tonight, even a
small one. Since the first year of their marriage, Brodie had banned the
ancient springtime ritual from his lands. He said it was a pagan thing, not
pleasing to his god, but Deirdre did not believe him for a moment. Brodie's
beliefs were easily twisted to suit his own design, and taking this from
Deirdre pleased him.

She sighed, the familiar weight descending on her
shoulders. It was such weary work to live with Brodie, always watching, always
waiting, using all her wits to anticipate the moment when his mood would sour,
keeping their daughter Maeve from sight when he descended into sudden rage. After
four years, she was exhausted. If not for Maeve, there would be no point in
going on at all...

How did I ever end up in this place? she wondered. Once
the future had stretched before her, bright and filled with promise. Fool that
she had been, she actually believed there was a man, one man and no other,
whose heart beat in rhythm with her own, whose soul had come to earth in search
of hers.

But as Deirdre grew to womanhood and he did not appear,
she put away her hopes of a lover spun of dreams and moonlight. She would be
mature, she thought. Dutiful. Responsible. If she would not marry for love, she
must do so for her family. And so she had accepted Sir Brodie Maxwell, who had
come to Donegal to trade for horses.

A good match, everyone had said; extraordinary,
really, for a dowerless lass like Deirdre. She had thought so herself, had been
grateful to Brodie, and though she told him from the first she did not love
him, he only laughed and said that didn't matter. Love often came after
marriage, she had told herself, a belief that lasted right up to the moment he
backhanded her across the face, knocked her stunned and bleeding to the floor,
saying she had been careless in polishing his boots.

By the time she knew what Brodie was, it was too late.
She was trapped in Scotland, shackled to the brute who was her husband for all
time. Her fault. Her own damnably stupid fault! 

A mirthless smile twisted her lips as she thought of
the man she had wished for, the one she'd waited for in vain. Even if she met
him now, she probably would not know him. Certain it was he would not recognize
her!

She looked into the pool again but saw only her own
reflection on the surface. Huge eyes stared back at her from a pale strained
face, surrounded by dark hair hanging straight down to the water.

The clearing grew hushed, as though the forest had
drawn in its breath. Then a breeze rushed past, rippling the surface of the
water. A smile of startled delight curved Deirdre's lips as she tasted the
unmistakable flavor of the sea.

Tonight was Beltane and the veil between this world
and the next was very thin. "I am the flow, I am the ebb," she
chanted softly. "I am the weaver and I am the web."

There was magic in the air tonight, Deirdre could feel
it all around her. A flutter of hope stirred deep within her breast. Maybe he
existed after all, the one she'd dreamed of as a child. Maybe he was out there
somewhere, looking for her, not knowing he had left it far too late.

"Just a glimpse of him," she whispered. "Is
that so much to ask?  Just to know if he was ever real?"

She bent her head to the pool and waited.

A
listair climbed the steep rocks to the top of the
gushing waterfall. By the time he gained the crest he was soaked to the skin
and his shoulders ached from the weight of the hide slung across his back. He
splashed through the cataract to the small cave behind, then slipped the ropes
from his shoulders and rolled his arms with a sigh of relief.

The evening sunlight struck the water and the breath
caught in his throat. He was inside a crystal, gazing through a prism of
endless living color. Then the sun moved, the illusion vanished, and he was
back in the small cave, cold and shivering, looking at an impenetrable curtain
of water.

Well, I've gone mad, he thought. This is it, I've hit
the bottom. Or not quite, he reflected, looking at the hide rolled at his feet.
In a moment I will have reached the depths.

Shivering, he stripped and untied the hide, wrapping
it around him. It was stiff with blood and globules of fat glistened on its
surface. For a moment he was close to vomiting with revulsion, then he relaxed
as its warmth began to spread across his skin.

The water was leaden against the fading light. The
cave was chill, but inside the bullock's hide, sweat began to trickle down
Alistair's chest and back. What did he think he was doing here? Did he honestly
expect he would be granted a vision? Such things were for saints and wise men,
not for him.

But he'd said he'd stay a night and damned if he would
fail. The water rushed by, soothing the thoughts from his mind, beckoning him
into its depths...

He began to dream without any sense of falling into
sleep. One moment he lay inside the cave, the next he was watching himself, a
boy of eleven, run through the forest with Ian. They burst through the treeline
and into a small clearing where several boys were laughing as they threw rocks
at a dark-haired lad who was straining against the ropes about his wrists.

Yes, Alistair thought with one part of his mind, I
remember this. The tinker lads we found that day. Ian's younger brother, Jemmy,
had disturbed them in some game and they'd tied him to a tree.

Now he watched Ian glance at him—the younger Alistair—with
a hard grin. Five tinker boys, that grin said, every one of them older than the
two of us. No contest at all. Alistair had joined the fight readily—no one
trifled with a Kirallen as these boys were doing. He'd been too angry, too
excited, to feel much fear, even when he found their opponents were armed and
eager for a fight. It could have gone badly, but it didn't. Because he and Ian
found the way to win.

For the first time they took the position that was to
become so natural, back to back with daggers drawn. And with the click of a key
turning in a lock they were freed and joined, soul-bound into a fighting force
that would one day surpass any on the borderlands. Soon enough he tinker boys
were running off with Ian at their heels.

"Take care of Jemmy!" he called, then vanished
down the path.

Alistair remembered well enough what had happened
after that. He'd sliced through Jemmy's bonds and taken the boy to the stream. Jemmy
had been cut quite badly, once across the brow and once across the hand. Alistair
had washed the blood away and clumsily bound up the injuries with strips torn
from his tunic. Then he'd sent Ian's brother home again.

But that wasn't what happened in the dream. All at
once, as Ian ran off, Alistair wasn't watching anymore. He was inside the
dream, a man now, and a terrible foreboding gripped him.

"Ian, wait!" he shouted. "Don't go,
it's a trap! Darnley's waiting for you!"

He ran down the path after Ian, calling for him to
stop, to wait for him, just as he had done on that terrible morning when Ian
rode off to his death. His lungs were bursting and the muscles of his legs felt
as though they were on fire. Small branches slapped his face as he went on,
from time to time glimpsing Ian just ahead.

The forest grew darker, the undergrowth more twisted,
but he forced his way through with a strength born of desperation. Then the
forest was behind him and he was looking over a dark plain toward a tower
rising black against a bloodred sky.