Flame of Sevenwaters (37 page)

Finbar turned his big eyes on me.

“I’m not especially good at looking after myself out here. I can’t even put my shoes on without help. I’m certainly not the best person to look after you or execute a rescue mission.”

“You said you came to find me. So it
is
a rescue mission.”

Against the odds, I felt a smile creep onto my lips. “Then help me finish it well, Finbar. We must go home. There is no geis on
you, or on me, or on Bear or Badger or Swift, unless it exists completely unknown to any of us, and if that’s the case, I don’t see how it makes any difference to our decisions. Mother will be distraught with worry. Father has Cruinn and his war band rampaging all over the forest hunting for the missing men. You and I are faced with a very simple choice and, because I’m older, I’m making it for us. We’re going home, and you’re not going to spend the whole day telling me I’m wrong.”

My brother got up, and when I, too, had risen, he folded the blanket precisely and put it under his arm, while I struggled into the cloak. I put Caisin’s flask in my pouch; Finbar picked up the waterskin. He said not a word, but his mouth was set tight and his eyes were full of trouble. We crept out of our hiding place and set our steps toward home.

DRUID’S JOURNEY: SOUTH

H e follows a winding pathway through birch woods, his sandaled feet soft on the damp earth. Fox and badger watch him pass. His progress is the subject of ravens’ gossip; larks sing his journey into the morning sky. As the wintry sun reaches its peak the druid sees the elms ahead, and the cottage tucked against a little rise, with a neat garden of winter vegetables to one side. There is the well, as he expected, and there is a young woman drawing up water. A creature is crouched in the long grass by her feet. A big cat or a terrier, he thinks as he approaches, and then, no: a hare. It lifts its long ears, examines the visitor with mild eyes. The woman hefts the bucket to her shoulder and turns to face him.

“My respects to you, wise woman.”

She gives him a thorough look up and down. Her features are handsome, her body strong; her clothing is that of a hardworking country wife. Her eyes are a curious shade, neither quite green nor gold nor brown, and their gaze goes deep. “And to you, druid. I’m about to make a brew; I have good herbs for weary travelers. Will you come in awhile?”

“Thank you. I have some honey cakes to share. And I would speak with you.”

Inside, she busies herself with the brew while he brings out his supplies and sets them on the table. The hare retreats to a basket, from which it watches him unblinking.

“I’d be surprised by any visitor who did not want to speak,” the woman observes after a long silence. “Mostly, it’s talk they want, with the brew coming second.”

“I’ll take what you have to give. I’m come from your sisters in the north and the east, and I seek your share of a rhyme. I expect you know which one it is.”

“Ah,” is all she says.

While she is chopping her herbs, watching the pot, fetching the cups, the druid takes the bucket and goes back out to the well, drawing more water to save her the trouble later. Under a gnarled apple tree he spots some windfalls and collects the least damaged. Back indoors, he cuts an apple into neat slices and offers it to the hare, piece by piece. The creature eats with some delicacy, as if doing the giver a favor with its acceptance.

“Well, then,” the wise woman says when they are seated at the table enjoying their meal, and the hare has settled to rest in its basket—its eyes are still open to slits; it will not relax until the stranger is gone. “This rhyme. A geis, yes? And not pronounced over you, but another. That was many, many years ago. What makes you believe this is the time for it?”

The druid wraps his fingers around his cup as if to warm them. “A change in the manner of things. An urgency about his deeds, as if he sensed time running out. It seemed to me…” He hesitates. “It seemed he might have seen something, heard something to suggest the conditions of a geis would soon be met. Perhaps he saw his own death coming.”

“What would he do then? Try to prevent those conditions from coming about? A geis is a geis. Sooner or later, it will be fulfilled. He is a prince of the Otherworld. He knows this.”

The druid frowns. “He might strive to ensure his chosen successor was ready to take his place.”

She ponders this awhile. “That much I understand, for he has long desired to entice this precious son of his back to his side for just that purpose. What I do not understand is how your knowledge of this rhyme can make a jot of difference. That which the geis has set down will in its own time come to pass. You cannot halt it. You cannot change it. You might perhaps delay it, as he no doubt has attempted to do, but what would be the purpose in that?”

There is a darkness in the druid’s face, a shadow in his eyes. “Change is coming,” he says. “Great change. You are right. I have no power to prevent it. But with the right knowledge, I can alter the manner of that change. My blood demands it of me. My training sets the tools in my hands. I am the son of a fey mother. And I am a son of Sevenwaters, with a bone-deep loyalty to clan, kin and hearthstone. How can I not act?”

She looks at him long. “There’s a heavy price to be paid,” she says.

“I have paid heavier and lived with the burden.”

A silence then. After a while she says, “My share of the knowledge you seek is this:
Evil’s defeat demands the price of a brother’s sacrifice. As the age begins to turn, that is when the oak will burn.
This would come at the end of the rhyme, I believe, since it deals with the demise of a certain person. As for brothers, I cannot imagine what brothers they mean. Lord Sean has only one son. And you walk alone. I see you no longer have that raven who used to shadow your every move.”

The druid gives her one of his rare smiles. “He moved on to warmer climes.” His meal finished, he rises to his feet. “I thank you for your hospitality and for your wisdom.”

“And you know, I imagine, that the rhyme is yet incomplete. If you would have the last piece in your puzzle you must seek out my sister the storyteller, who lives in the west. You must come full circle. Make haste, for a long journey still lies before you.”

“I will.” He bows his head to her, then turns and makes the same courtesy to the hare. It observes him through its slitted eyes.

The wise woman walks to the door with her visitor. She stands
watching as he slings his bag over his shoulder and heads off up the path.

“A long journey,” she says again.

He turns; waits.

“But not such a lonely one, I think,” she adds, and her tone holds affection and sorrow and a farewell that stretches long into the future. “Our brother is close by and looking for you.”

The druid becomes very still. This, he has not expected. This is both gift and peril, the key to the mission and its possible undoing.

“You will find him five miles to the northwest, close to a circle of stones,” says the woman. “By dusk today you should be close to that place. He will be ready to meet you.” A long pause. “I wish you well, druid. You have great courage.”

“You think?” He smiles again, turns away, is gone.

“Make haste,” she whispers to the empty space. “Make haste, brave soul, for the dark is coming.”

CHAPTER 11

F inbar, keep up!”

We’d been walking a long time. We were both tired, and our pace had slowed as the morning passed. But Finbar was dawdling. He kept stopping to gaze along the pathways between the oaks, or to look up at a sky now filled with heavy gray clouds, their bellies swelling toward a thunderstorm. Spots of rain were starting to fall. I judged it was around midday, and we were less than halfway back to the bridge.

“Finbar!”

He’d stopped again and was staring off into the distance, perhaps watching something in the trees, perhaps lost in a daydream or vision. I regretted ordering him not to complain on the way home. This snail-slow progress was my punishment.

“Come on! Can’t you see it’s about to pour with rain?” I failed to keep the frustration from my voice. It didn’t help that my arm was throbbing; the splinter I’d picked up while climbing the spider tree had gone deep and the flesh around it had turned an angry red. I should have asked Finbar to dig it out with his little knife before it got so bad. The job would be beyond his skills now.
Besides, there was no time. “Come on! What are you looking at anyway?”

“I keep seeing them. Up in the trees. Those people, the ones all made of twigs and leaves.”

Despite myself, I halted and stared into the thinning canopy of the nearest oak. The wind was moving the branches and shivering through the last clinging leaves, but I did not see anything else up there.

“I saw him,” Finbar said. “That boy. The one Mac Dara left when he stole me. I’m sure it was him; he’s the same size as me. He was waving to me, giving me a signal. I think he wants to tell me something.”

I looked again. Dark branches clothed in tattered leaves, blood red, ochre yellow, sunset gold, all withering now, ready to admit defeat the moment the storm came. By tomorrow’s dawn these forest giants would be stripped bare. “I don’t see him,” I said.

“He was there a moment ago. Over there, where that path goes off under the trees—there! He’s coming out on that big branch, look—”

For a moment I saw the creature—a spindly, awkward being all fashioned of forest matter, a leaf here, a spray of autumn flowers there, a handful of grass, a cobweb…His eyes were unmatched pebbles in a face that had the general semblance of a human boy’s, with the correct complement of nose, mouth, ears, in the usual arrangement. Yet he was profoundly uncanny. He waved a long, twiggy arm and Finbar waved back.

“See?” my brother said, striding with confidence toward the tree where the being was perched on a perilously high limb. “He wants to tell me something.”

“Finbar, no—”

My words dried up on my lips. Over the rising wind came the sound of hoofbeats approaching, the jingle of harness, and—oh, blessed relief!—a voice that was unmistakably human calling, “Maeve! Finbar!” Luachan. Help had come at last.

In the moment before I turned I saw the twiggy boy go still, then dart back along his branch to vanish into the forest. Whether
he’d had something to say to Finbar we would never know; the opportunity was lost. Then Luachan rode up on his bay mare, Blaze, swung himself gracefully down next to me and opened his arms, a look of utter relief on his face.

“Maeve! Thank all the gods! Are you all right?”

I was tempted to throw myself into his embrace; that would have felt good. I held back, though his words warmed me. “I’m fine. Tired and dirty, but otherwise unharmed. Finbar, too. But Bear and Badger are gone, and we never found Swift.” I drew in an unsteady breath, telling myself I was not about to break all my own rules and collapse into tears of relief and exhaustion. “It’s so good to see you, Luachan,” I said shakily. “I don’t know how you found us. I was told—someone said that on this side of the bridge, we’re in the Otherworld.”

Luachan’s brows went up. “Then it’s just as well I have supplies,” he said with perfect calm, unfastening his saddlebag. “I imagine you’re hungry. Finbar, come over here—let me look at you.”

Finbar was still under the oak where the twiggy boy had perched, craning his neck in vain hope of catching another glimpse. He did not seem especially surprised by Luachan’s arrival.

“He’s not happy with me,” I murmured. “The dogs are lost. Someone took them. He wants to find them before we go home. I told him we must head straight back to our own side of the bridge.” My stomach was growling with hunger; my mouth was watering. “Who else is with you?” I asked. No other riders had come into sight. “My father? He must be desperately worried about Finbar.”

“And about you,” Luachan said quietly, giving me a sideways glance as he brought a cloth-wrapped package and a waterskin out of the saddlebag. “We were all worried. You can imagine what we thought. Lord Sean’s out searching for you along with men from his household. And Cruinn’s out, of course, with his armed band. But there’ll be time enough to discuss all this when you’ve eaten. You, too, Finbar. You both look exhausted. Sit down awhile; rest your legs and have some of this.”