The Boar Stone: Book Three of the Dalriada Trilogy (63 page)

Blinking in the musty smoke of burning herbs, Cahir had no difficulty accepting that. When he remembered Gede’s cold eyes, the bastard could easily have planned that little duel weeks ago. He had been lucky.

As he lay there he thought of those who had not been lucky, and he grieved terribly for Ruarc through the dark hours, mourning the loss of his bright valour. But he had saved his king’s life, Cahir comforted himself: he would be feasting at the gods’ table in the Otherworld this night, fêted as a hero.

A fifth dawn came, and Cahir was still clinging to the pallet of smoky furs, aching and cold, every muscle spasming. He tried to rise, as Mellan and Fergal endeavoured to keep him back in bed.

‘No,’ Cahir barked, ordering them aside with every shred of power he had left. ‘It is not safe yet. I must be on my feet.’ He could not slip away into exhausted sleep, the delirium of weariness and recovery – he had to force his mind back into awareness.

As Mellan and Fergal watched grimly, Cahir gritted his teeth and levered himself upright unaided, then donned his sword and tunic, holding his arm to his side when he eventually slumped in a chair in the command quarters.

He had to show his men he was alive, for reports had just come in from the scouts that in the army’s absence Luguvalium had been retaken by the Romans behind his back – and his son was with them.

Chapter 59

T
he battered Roman garrison holding Luguvalium simply fled as the entire Dalriadan army flooded back north, covering the land once more. The sea routes were blocked by the warriors left in charge of the Alban ships, and so townspeople struggled on foot across the marshes to the south-west instead.

The royal family were tracked down at the shore. Cahir did not bother setting eyes on Maeve or Eldon, simply ordering that they be marched onto an Attacotti-manned ship to be unceremoniously dumped with their kin in Kernow. He did not want a blood feud with Eldon’s kin, for such feuds never ended. He wanted peace, and freedom from fear, for that is what Ruarc had died for, what it had all been for.

His son was held in Eldon’s hall, awaiting his father.

Garvan’s plumpness had been stripped away by his cross-country dash to his mother’s side, an escapade which Cahir could not help but admire, even though it hurt and infuriated him. The boy’s face was harder, too, his eyes colder, as he raised his chin and stared unflinchingly at his father.

Ah, the arrogance
, Cahir thought. The Romans bred it in, and he only realized then, with a sinking heart, that this son was lost to Rome on the day he was born.

‘I understand why you did this.’ Cahir suppressed a cough, the remains of his fever. ‘These matters are confusing. But though you disobeyed me, we will deal with this at Dunadd, in private.’

Garvan’s green eyes flashed. ‘I want to go with Mother. Send me after her at once!’

The rest of that interview drained the dregs of Cahir’s meagre strength, and soon he understood that Garvan would escape again, and he could not keep his heir, the future king, locked up under guard.

But any hopes were finally dashed when Garvan looked at his father with contempt. ‘I would rather be a Roman exile than any mud-grubbing,
barbarian
king,’ he hissed, and that blow took Cahir in the breast, as sharp as any blade.

And so he let Garvan board the ship with Maeve, to be a Roman prince with all its trappings. He watched the sails fade away over the grey horizon, and felt utterly bereft. He had done this – all of this – to leave Dunadd free in the hands of his blood, who would stay loyal and true to his ancestors, and protect Alba for ever.

That night, Cahir’s fever returned with a vengeance, and he slumped at the table with his men, ignoring the sweat on his brow and his quaking limbs.

Warriors were constantly clattering in and out of the cobbled courtyard of Eldon’s old royal hall – Cahir’s new command quarters.

Messengers rode in from the forts further east, and scouts reported from the north, where the outpost garrisons so hated by the Albans had been destroyed and the
areani
routed. Confirmation came from his rearguard that no Pict army was advancing on them, for it had indeed continued on south, despite Gede’s death. Fergus had decided to return to Erin after all. And a constant stream of news was passed on from the warbands scouring the land for fugitive Roman soldiers.

Cahir gave orders and received reports from Eldon’s old chair beneath a circle of hanging oil lamps, his feet on a floor of fine mosaics. And all the while the Roman hall swam around him, and he dug his nails into the chair to keep himself alert.

Every evening, he shut the door to Eldon’s bedroom – which he had stripped of Roman fripperies – and sat on the bed, grimly staying upright until he must go down again and make some pretence of eating.

The druids tutted and bade he rest, a charge he refused until, after driving himself into the ground, from grey morning to torchlit night, his strength gave, and one day he did not rise.

Instead, he lay on the bed among his familiar sleeping hides, and stared at the window of fine Roman glass, contemplating his true wounds: Gede’s betrayal; Ruarc’s death; his son’s defection. Together, they seemed to have snatched the triumph from his soul; they were scars of the heart that made him sicker than any fever.

When a horn blew up on the walls, and a rush of horseman spilled into the courtyard late that afternoon, he gave it no thought. When the door downstairs was thrown back, and heavy feet thundered into the hall below, he continued staring grimly out the window to the grey, weeping sky.

But when all the shouting and thudding went quiet, and he distinctly heard a faint, light tread coming up the stairs, he raised his head, suddenly alert. That footstep was no warrior. He sensed the air change even before she was there … for he knew.

It was
Minna
filling the doorway – but she was so thin and seemed so small when he’d been surrounded by ruddy, noisy men for weeks. Her white face was pinched, her eyes bruised. She hovered in the doorway as if she could not push her legs forward, and Cahir was already up, his trembling hands gripping the posts of the bed.

‘Are you a ghost?’ were the first, terrible words out of his mouth, for his eyes could not take her in.

‘No.’ She was gazing at him with the same dazed disbelief, when the mind cannot drink in what it has longed to see for many hard, dark days.

But she was so changed! His eyes roamed over her hungrily, past the matted hair that hung in lank skeins over her shoulders, and the stained, torn dress and cloak. Instead he absorbed that more solemn face, and a straightness and stillness in her body, as if she had come far in it and knew it well now. Then all light was drawn to her eyes, and he could not look away.

In one stride he crossed the space between them, and the force of his embrace lifted her off her feet so their faces were level. At last he found his voice, croaking, ‘By Manannán’s breath, what are you doing here?’

‘I came to find you,’ Minna gasped.

‘Ah, gods.’ And he set her down only to crush her to him, kissing her fiercely as if he could drink in her essence and wash away all pain. He buried his face in her neck to smell her, his fingers shaping the ridge of her back to remember how he cradled her hips once in his hands. But when his thumbs moved over her cheeks she winced, and he drew back and saw now what he had missed: the fading bruises and scratches on her face and neck; the scab in the hollow of her throat.

Frowning, he took her hands and stared down at the broken nails and swollen joints, and the long, thin cut along one forearm. When he slowly raised his head, she drew back her hands. ‘Who did this?’ he demanded, with quiet fury.

She shook her head, searching his face instead as if her hurts meant nothing. ‘It does not matter, it is you I feared for. I feared that Gede would betray you … that he would …’ She could not continue, clutched his tunic, her hands running over the flesh beneath as if making sure of him. ‘And Nessa was wrong –
you are here
.’

Cahir shifted his eyes to the shadows of Eldon’s room, trying not to flinch as she embraced him. She must not know how ill he had been, for he could not bear to burden her with it yet.

But she went still in his arms. ‘What?’ She pulled free, her fists curling over her heart. ‘What has happened? Ah!’ Her fingers traced his hollowed cheeks. ‘You are so pale, and your skin is clammy. Something did happen.’ Her face fell. ‘I wasn’t wrong, was I? Gede hurt you.’

He broke away, his breathing shallow. ‘It’s just a scratch,
a stór
.’ As if to make a lie of this, the wound cramped and a small cry escaped him. The overwork compounded with his shock of seeing her now brought a tide of dizziness that infuriated him, even as it closed about his sight.

But
she
was there, strong despite her thinness, catching his weight and guiding him to the bed, throwing the door open and calling for water and wood for the braziers.

When she came back and gazed down at him with darkened eyes, he murmured, ‘You are a gift of the gods, my Minna.’

It was not herbs of healing that Minna had to give to Cahir as night and day blurred into one – for the druids had done that work.

It was light
.

As if he allowed himself the weakness now she was here, his dizziness swiftly descended into a swoon of delirium. And when she was able to lay quiet hands on him, she at last perceived that the wound was in his soul.

He murmured, tossing feverishly, and from this she gleaned the hopelessness that had invaded him, leaching away his success and triumph. He cried out, wondering what he had truly fought for, fretting if he had made his people safe, now that no king of his blood would sit at Dunadd.

Minna gave him draughts for sleep, bathed his face, and closed the door on all others. Then she sat and, with her eyes closed, summoned the presence of the Sisters as they had been there for her before. Gradually, their shimmering warmth filled the room, and she moved to place her hands in the air just above Cahir’s burning skin.

Despite her own exhaustion, the flow came through her so easily. She understood, as it whispered to her, that Cian’s blessing and the Source at Beltaine had only been a prelude to
this
– the healing with a love so great it broke the bounds of her body with no need for
saor
.

As Cahir murmured and tossed in sleep, she stared wide-eyed into the lamp-flame and beheld a marvel. As if floating far above the earth, she saw the Source being summoned to aid him, to heal him, drawn by her hands and her singing; the cascade of unknown yet familiar words under her breath. But the Source surprised her, for it was not one light, but many.

It flowed in from Cahir’s men as they held vigil for him in their thousands on the plain. It spiralled in an iridescent thread from the druids downstairs, who chanted words of pride in Cahir’s ancestors, and the songs already being composed of his deeds. And it poured down from the hills and in from the sea, the waves glowing as they rolled over the marshes. For he was born of this land, and his essence drew Alba’s power towards him because it still needed him whole for his people.

Most of all, it was summoned by Minna’s love. For the role of the Goddess did not end at Beltaine. She might have been the Maiden then, but now she was the Mother, and the Mother brought forth life.

As she held her vigil, breathing love into him, she watched in wonder as the Source was gathered like streams pouring into a bowl in the mountains, forming a lake of fire. As the life flowed into Cahir from her hands and the glow strengthened around his head, she passed some of her own life-force to him, her own Source, and was renewed by the lake around her.

It grew in force, in grandeur, until it felt as if her skin were stretched over an immense, pulsing light that might burst out of her because a human body could not contain it all. Its pressure was almost uncomfortable in its power, its otherworldliness; pushing her to open, and then open again until she was a bridge between heaven and earth.

She surrendered to it gladly. He was a king, and had the care of many – she would care only for their child.

As if hearing her, the tiny glimmer of the baby pulsed amid the greater light, like a heartbeat, and in his sleep Cahir smiled.

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