Shapeshifter (11 page)

But first he must help her to tell her tale.

“How did this happen to you, my lady?”

“Sive.” She blinked back the tears and straightened. “My name is Sive.”

The story took a long time to tell, and when it was done, Finn knew he would do anything for this woman. He understood now why the poets spoke of love as an enchantment, for he had fallen under Sive’s spell and had no wish to be freed of it.

Sive Remembers

I used to wonder at the women I heard of, women of the Sidhe, who gave their love to mortal men. Our own men, any number of them, are more handsome, more gracious, more accomplished. What would draw a woman to a son of the Gael?

That was before Finn looked at me. Has any man of the Sidhe ever looked at a woman that way? It is a look of wonder, adoration nearly, mingled with such naked, yearning desire…

But it was not Finn’s desire that brought me to his bed that night. Yes, I slept with him. Not, as the Dark Man assumed, in payment for his protection. That was given freely. He did not hesitate for one moment when I told him my plight, but said only, “You are welcome here for as long as you wish to stay, and will be safe as long as I draw breath to defend you.”

No, it was the urging of my own heart that led me to him. He was a handsome man, strong, open-handed and kind. His eyes told me that I was his most precious dream. And I was lonely, lonely near to madness. The weight of it, the crushing, utter exile that I carried without rest—I longed to put it down.

Finn opened his heart and his arms to me. And I laid down my loneliness and came home to him.

THIRTEEN

I
t was a joyful reunion, sure enough. Derg had never really felt right in his skin since he and his wife had parted, and he could not pretend to be unhappy at Grian’s return. He lingered in that happiness through most of the bright afternoon before allowing his fears to intrude.

“You mustn’t stay here, Grian. You know it’s not safe for you. What if Far Doirche decides you are easier prey than poor Sive?”

She shot him a sly smile. “Oh, I think it will be safe enough now. My father has finally tired of my moping and is sending messengers to the Dark Man as we speak, to inform him what will happen should he so much as waggle his hazel rod in my direction.”

At last. Would the Dark Man risk the direct enmity of Manannan? He must know the other old ones would join with their brother against him. Derg’s heart lifted. The sorcerer was too cautious for that. He would not bring it to head-on war against such powerful enemies.

“And Sive? Does he give the same protection to his granddaughter?”

Her face fell. “I’m sorry, husband. I tried, countless times I tried. It is like trying to soften rock.” She shook her head, avoiding his gaze. “He says he did not approve our match; therefore, he has no responsibility for its issue.”

Issue.
Derg’s mouth tightened at the cold word, a word to match precisely the cold correctness of Manannan’s reasoning.

“In that case,” he said, not bothering to mask the anger that seeped into his voice, “perhaps he should look to the protection of his
approved
grandchild.”

“Daireann? Why do you say that?” asked Grian sharply.

Daireann was her daughter, Derg reminded himself, as beloved as Sive. He should not have spoken so carelessly. He softened his manner, though there was no softening the words.

“Far Doirche has set his hooks into her and landed her in his net. He says they are to be married.”

Now Grian was on her feet, the soft bed and warm embrace forgotten. She paced, indignant, incredulous, flinging out questions and looking ready to scratch out the eyes of the next person in her path.

“What does he want with her, for the love of Danu? And how could she be so stupid? And where is Bodb! Is she not under his roof?” She turned, finally, and faced him head-on. “What is he doing, Derg? Why Daireann?”

“I think,” he said slowly, trying to steady her by example, “that he is hoping she will somehow lead him to Sive. Which,” he added, “she could inadvertently do.”

Grian’s puzzled look reminded him she knew nothing of Sive’s new hope, and he shook his head apologetically. “I’ll explain that part later. Right now, let’s decide what to do about this match.”

“There’s nothing to decide,” Grian said briskly. “I’m returning to Underwave, as soon as I’ve eaten, to tell my father. He’ll send messages to Bobd, who will listen to him better than to me.”

“I’ll travel with you,” said Derg. He opened the door of their chamber and called their attendants. He wondered if Grian’s women had even finished unpacking. Perhaps Grian would take pity on them and allow them to remain behind this time. He and Grian would travel faster with just a couple of guards.

SIVE STEPPED FROM the house into the silky air of late spring. You could get drunk just from the smell on the breeze, she thought, gazing down the slope of the Hill of Almhuin to the green waves of land beyond.

The hill itself was carpeted in bluebells, pools and rivers of deepest blue flowing through the forest. Finn had walked with her there yesterday while she gathered armfuls of them, three of his men flanking them at a distance with swords at the ready. The bluebells didn’t last though, here in the mortal lands. The flowers adorning her chamber were already starting to droop.

Dear Finn. He had done everything he could to make her happy in his home—and she was. She was. Only it was the confinement that was hard. She had always loved to roam the woods, and nearly three years of being unable to escape them had, it seemed, failed to destroy that love. In weather like this—surely no spring day in Tir na nOg could be more lovely—she longed to open the gate of the great wall that surrounded Finn’s dun and simply walk, alone, unguarded and uncaring.

It could not be, and she knew it. Perhaps Finn would suggest a walk later—a short walk, too short for the Dark Man to take her bearing. But she would not pester him for it. She had overheard more than one muttered comment from his men, after an evening’s drinking when they were louder than they imagined. They could not fathom why, after two months’ marriage, he still played the homebody, more interested in listening to her songs with his head in her lap than getting on with the season’s hunts. The time would come when she would have to gently urge him to take up his duties as the leader of the Fianna—but not quite yet. She had waited a long time herself to find such a love.

Meantime she had the back garden behind the cookhouse. The cook’s daughter kept it, for food and potherbs rather than beauty, but all young growing things are beautiful, and Sive found pleasure in the quiet promise of life springing from the dark soil. The peas were high and flowering already, she noticed, twining and thrusting their pale green stems round the sticks set in for them to climb, tiny pea pods emerging from the spent blossoms.

Sive found her favorite corner: the herb garden, where the smells of bergamot and lavender and sage all mixed on the breeze. Finn had set out a bench for her there, and she settled into it now and tipped her face to the sun.

She sat forward again before her back muscles had time to relax against the bench. Something had caught her eye, a flash of white and black winging down from the sky to perch on the wattle fence.

Sive shaded her eyes, hoping against hope that
this
magpie would be the one. She had watched for her father these long weeks, wondering why he did not come to check on her. But there was something purposeful in this one’s flight that—yes—here he came, winging down to the herb garden and landing on her bench.

“Is it you, then?” she asked, and in the time it took to say it, he was there, sitting big as life in front of her and for once no need to hold back or hurry.

When they were done with their laughing and crying, and he had apologized for her long wait (saying only, and rather mysteriously, that he was delayed by “complications at home”), Derg cast his eyes around the grounds and said, “I would have expected something grander for a man of such repute.”

Sive shrugged. “It is grand enough for these parts.” She bristled a little inside, for it was
her
home he criticized, though he did not know it.

Derg glanced at her quickly, perhaps sensing the offence. “Well, he has taken you in, and that is the grandest thing of all,” he said quietly. “I hope I will be able to express my gratitude in person.”

“I’m sure he would love to meet you.” Sive made as if to rise, but Derg reached out a hand to stop her.

“In a while, daughter. It is long since we could talk at our leisure. I find I am loath to share your company, even with the man who has made it possible.”

Sive dimpled at him, the glint in her eye very like to her mother’s.

“You will like him, Father. I do.”

“Any man who…,” Derg began. Then he looked more closely at his daughter’s expression.

“Sive. Are you saying…are you telling me that you love him?”

She nodded, her smile open and luminous now. “I am. I do. And he feels the same. We were married nearly two moons ago.”

And only a few days after their first meeting. No wonder Derg looked so stunned! Well, if it was a rash act, then he and Grian had only themselves to blame, having started the family habit, so to speak.

“Oh, my dear.” To Sive’s surprise Derg’s voice held not the concern she expected, or even gladness, but a kind of quiet sorrow. “You have married a mortal?”

She nodded. “He is a good man, Da. He is well worthy of it.”

“But this.” Derg waved his hand to encompass Finn’s round house—little more than a huge whitewashed mud and wattle hut—the clutch of dark guest houses, stables and outbuildings scattered around it, the garden where they sat, a drear and graceless shadow of the lush, colorful gardens of home. “You will bind yourself to this? When the day comes that Far Doirche is defeated and you are set free, will you not long for your own lands and people?”

“When.” Sive’s voice was flat and hard. “You should be after saying
if.
It’s many seasons I have been longing for my own lands and people already, and no return in sight. Finn could be dead in the grave by the time the Dark Man is defeated. In the meantime, what prettier place would you have me choose?”

She should not have spoken like that, out of her anger. He did not understand how differently she saw things now. How could he? And now he thought she had wed Finn out of despair.

She laid her long fingers on Derg’s arm. “I am sorry, Da. That was just prickleburr talk.” An expression from her childhood, one Derg used from time to time to soften Grian’s sharp tongue. “It is no fault of yours that the Dark Man still hunts me, and it is because of you that I am safe here. But because of Finn, I am more than safe—I am happy.

“I know,” she said, holding up her hand to forestall his reply. “I know how this place looks to you. And your eyes see true. My clothes are plainly woven, the food is coarse, the house dim and clumsy. But Da”—and now she held his eye, needing him to feel the truth of her words—“none it matters. I am warm and sheltered and well-fed, and now I understand the value of these things. And I am loved.”

There was no need to say more. There were, after all, few men of the Sidhe who loved with a devotion as steady as Derg’s.

Sive Remembers

Did I not yearn for my homeland? On a clear day I could stand on Finn’s lookout and see the very hill that, in another world, was crowned with the beautiful buildings of Sidhe Ochta Cleitigh. On a summer’s night, I could almost imagine I saw the glow of a hundred candles and lamps, and heard sweet music drifting across the still air.

Yet most of the time that world was far away, like a dream that fades upon waking. This world—Finn’s world—was so solid, so immediate. Even when it was unpleasant, it demanded my full attention.

And then there was my Finn. How I loved the man! It was a marvel and a sorrow to me, that a man so full of life could be destined to die. He had a great booming laugh and a smile that spread beyond his face into the very air. His hands were big enough to circle right around my waist and gentle enough, despite their calluses, to make me sigh with pleasure. And somehow his mind was the same—capable of large impulses and subtle distinctions, of childlike wonder and wisdom beyond his short life’s experience.

I did not lower myself to marry Finn, whatever my father thought. I was proud to be his wife, and prouder still when I learned that I carried his child. I was happy. And so I cast thoughts of the Dark Man from my mind. I would not allow his shadow to cloud my happiness.

FOURTEEN

D
aireann was white-faced with shock.

“What do you mean, leave off ? We are to be married!”

Far shook his head. His eyes were tender and sad.

“No longer, I fear. Your father and grandfather have set themselves against us.”

“Oh, and what of it?” She tossed her hair back with a sniff. “They were against my mother’s match as well, but she made her own decision and is the happier for it. Do we need their approval to live our lives?”

“Daireann, stop.” The voice, still gentle, held a hint of the cold iron will at its core. “I will not show our great ones such disrespect as to defy their wishes for their family. And I will not cut you off from your own people.”

Daireann flung herself at him, clinging to the blue silk of his tunic, stroking his chest, trying desperately to spark in him the love she thought they shared.

“I don’t care about that! I don’t care about
them!
Far, I love you and you love me. The rest doesn’t matter.”

But he was prying her away from him, holding her back with a stiff, locked arm. His expression cold, the iron unsheathed.

“Leave me.” The words were flung at her like a blade, and she flinched as if they could actually cut. The green eyes bored into her, held her like a vice. “I do not love you. I will not marry you. You will leave my sight and never approach me again, or I will take up my rod and compel you.”

She backed away slowly. Now she saw the sorcerer that others feared, and yes, she was afraid, so afraid her legs drained of their strength and could hardly hold her. But she was also, more than ever, attracted to his power. She had been his chosen one, his love, and now he cast her off as carelessly as a cloak.