The Boar Stone: Book Three of the Dalriada Trilogy (65 page)

They stood looking far out to the west across the peaks, marching in ever fainter bastions to the islands in the sea. The sunset was a bonfire raging across the clouded sky, turning the ocean to molten copper and the lakes to bronze.

Cahir looked out across this beauty and his face was grave, the gold reflected in his irises, the copper in his hair. She thought of Lugh now, not Apollo, the god of the Alban sun. He caught her staring at him and his eyes grew hazy with a most human desire, and he tilted her chin to kiss the pulse in the hollow of her throat. His palms were warm on the back of her thighs, bare under her long dress.

He paused and drew back to look down at her. ‘Will it hurt the baby?’ he said softly.

She smiled, then laughed at the concerned frown on his brow. ‘Not that I’ve ever heard.’

‘And you
are
the healer,’ he murmured, cupping a palm around her breast, which already sat more rounded and heavy in his hand. He went to the horse and untied the saddle hide, rolling it out in the heather. Then, resting her down as reverently as an offering to the gods, he loved her.

With her fingers spread across his flowing back, Minna felt as if she held a living flame in her arms, consumed by the power running through him so she hardly felt her body at all. The ecstasy surged but did not crash, soaring free as if it had no end. It was not sharp and earthy this time but an incandescence – spirits merging, heart, soul, body consumed by the same fire. Their soul-flames overflowed and spilled across the land until they ran together as one Source. And taken by that wildfire, Cahir loved Minna again and again until the light was exhausted.

Still he would not leave her body, rocking them slowly as a chill crept across the darkening hill, and tears were drawn from them both. She held him to her, raised her eyes to the purple sky and gave herself up to the lift and dip of that softer sea.

As she drifted slowly back to the earth around her – the scent of damp soil, the sharp tang of smoke on the air, the cold creeping under the hide – the final words came to her lips from the Goddess.

It was a blessing from the stars that littered the heavens, brought down for him alone.
Your ancestors smile upon you, Cahir son of Conor. You have done what you were born to do
.

Chapter 62

T
hree weeks after leaving the Wall, they returned to Dunadd. The warmth of the sunseason afternoon was gathered in the bowl of purple hills, perfumed with heather and thyme.

The army had gathered on the marsh and river meadow, with the chiefs who had not gone to war from the far islands and most remote duns, as well as Kinet the Attacotti king and his chieftains. All had come as Cahir asked, to renew their oaths now to him alone and to a free Alba, ridding their sacred bond of the taint of Rome.

Cahir paused before the walls of his dun as the crowd that lined them cheered and struck the timbers, their feet thundering along the walkway as they ran to see him. Minna, riding by his side, saw the slight compression of his mouth, whether with emotion or pain, she could not tell. But he was sitting slightly lower in his saddle. She
knew
he was exhausted and now it had hit. But at least he was back home, and could put aside his war helmet.

Then she glanced up at the screaming crowd, chanting their praise, their thanks to the gods, their joy like a wild storm in spring. No, he would not lay it aside yet. There would be no rest for the king until all was done.

Banners draped the walls and were waved over the gates. swords and spears raised; horns pealed in a discordant song as drums were beaten in no pattern at all but to make a joyous noise. At last Cahir smiled, with a proud lift of his chin. ‘I have done what I was born to do,’ he repeated softly, and only she heard him, as the men close by laughed and waved up at the people.

She longed to touch his hand on the rein, but before she could lean over he had moved off to enter the gates alone, and the other horses surged after him with Minna in the midst.

Once inside, she immediately lost him to the chaos, and instead was jubilantly greeted by Orla and Finola, with a long-legged Lia yapping at her ankles. To Minna’s surprise, Clíona took one look at her and the king and buried sudden tears in her skirt, flapping away Keeva’s amused consternation.

Later, Minna stood with Orla and Finola by their father’s chair in his hall, as, one by one, every chief and headman in Dalriada and the Attacotti islands came before him and knelt with their swords across their hands. There they were blessed, taking the oath on their own iron, and raised up by their king.

His voice rang out with an almost feverish energy that caught everyone in its excitement. Councils had already been held, with plans settled for a stronger cordon of defences to be thrown around Dalriada by land and sea. More men from all the duns had been pledged to the borders to hold them against any Pictish or Roman reprisals.

The toasts and oaths were concluded when Davin came out into the centre of the hall, and sang a new lay of the great battles of the Wall, in which Ruarc featured prominently as saviour of the king.

Orla gabbled at Minna’s side, excited by the din of the music and the ceaseless cheering outside, but Finola was quiet. Minna went down on one knee and gently turned her around, and only then saw that the child’s small face was transfigured with awe and joy. ‘He is bright!’ she whispered, trembling as she gazed up at her father. ‘Like a light, like a fire.’

Minna smiled at her, and touched her face. ‘He is, my little dreamer.’

Finola’s blue eyes gradually focused on her. ‘And is it the Otherworld, Minna, like the druids say? Is it the Otherworld light?’

Though she knew this, the answer died on her tongue and she found herself looking at Cahir again. Yes, it was the Otherworld light, only she had not put it into such words in her own heart. Now she could not see his features at all, for, as Finola saw, there was only the fire of the king.

‘Minna.’ It was Keeva, who had squeezed through the crowd to pluck at her elbow. ‘Someone has found me to give a message to you. The Lady Riona has been brought to her birthing bed.’

She turned with an exclamation of pleasure, for she had not yet seen her friend in the crowd. But Keeva was frowning, shaking her head. ‘No, Minna, she is a moon early, and was visiting some kin at the Dun of the Cliffs when she was suddenly taken with the pangs. It has been hours already, and they think she is in trouble. When she found out you were back, she asked for you.’

Minna glanced at Cahir, and the throngs of warriors spilling over the dun outside the doors. She would not be missed, and a difficult birth could be dangerous. She kissed Finola’s head. ‘Clíona, would you take the girls, and Keeva, will you come with me?’ Both maids nodded.

‘Then get us horses while I gather what I need from Brónach’s house,’ she said to Keeva. ‘I will meet you at the stables.’

Three days that birth lasted, and Riona was in great travail and pain. Minna tried everything she could think of, and many more things that came to her like soft touches on her brow amid the screams and the bloodied towels, the rocking and chanting of the old women, and Riona’s clawing of her hand.

The baby was turned, its shoulder jammed into the wrong angle of the womb, and it took much gentle encouragement and long hours to turn it again. Riona’s pain could not be eased too much for fear she would swoon and not be able to push, so she bit down on sticks, and sweated, and crushed the bones of Keeva’s hands in her own, and cried out to the goddesses when she could not hold it in.

There were herbs to ease the gripes of the womb, though, so Minna could turn the child in stages, and others to start them up again in the exhausted mother when he was head down at last. After three nights with no sleep, existing in a kind of focused dream, she pulled from Riona’s womb a tiny, squalling man-child whose lusty strength was the only thing that kept him alive.

Minna stitched up Riona and dosed her with healing brews, and, after assuring herself for another two days that both mother and child were well, she took leave of her tearful, exhausted friend with promises that she would return every day until Riona was recovered.

Utterly exhausted, nevertheless Minna wanted to hurry back. For when she left the smoky confines of the birthing hut, she saw that all the chieftains’ ships were leaving the bay and heading north and west, their banners flying.

Cahir had received his oaths, and now could be hers again.

When Minna and Keeva rode back under Dunadd’s gate, Clíona was waiting for them like a pale wraith on the ramparts.

Instinctively, Minna’s heart swooped in a great plunge before she even slipped from the horse. Clíona came down the stairs, her face as white as bone in the shadows of the gate. ‘What?’ Minna whispered, but a terrible knowing was already descending on her in a dark storm.

Clíona took one step forward, clutching at the folds of her dress. ‘We all saw how ill the king was when he came back, but you seemed unafraid … and so I thought he was recovering from his wound, but now …’

Minna watched her lips move in patterns that made no sense, as all sound seemed to die, and the light around her.

The maid was holding her arms now, nails digging into her flesh to bring her back. ‘… but since the chiefs left he has fallen back into a fever, and would not let us call you, for Riona’s sake …’

Then Clíona’s words faded behind her because she was already running up the path, with only her grating breath filling her ears, caught by a moan that might be rising inside.

When she stumbled up the stairs to the gallery, both Finbar and Fergal were by Cahir’s bed, leaning over him as they spoke in low, urgent tones. With one look at Minna’s face they melted away down the stairs, but she did not even notice them go. Step by step she moved closer to the fur-strewn bed, and the man lit there by a single lamp. Despite the warm light, she was engulfed by darkness.

How could he be so changed in five days? The godly light was entirely quenched, and his face was not blooming but deeply lined at brow and mouth, with hollowed cheeks and sallow skin. There was a blue tinge now about the lips she had kissed, and under the furs he seemed diminished, his chest fluttering with shallow breaths. The eyes he raised to her were glazed. ‘
A stór
,’ he whispered hoarsely.

She could only stifle a moan, as horror dawned over her.

She had been named a priestess by Rhiann, and ever since had been walking half in the Otherworld, drifting between the veils. And so all this time she had been looking at Cahir with
her sight
, not her eyes. The flame that so dazzled her at Luguvalium was not his returning strength at all but his soul, flaring so bright it spilled over and through his body, and that was all she had seen and felt – an Otherworld light that erased all human frailty.

Finola had spoken a child’s truth, where Minna’s love had made her blind.

A shudder took her, and she fell on her knees by the bed. She groped for Cahir’s hand, clammy and cold, and cried furiously, ‘Tell me the truth of the wound!’

His pained eyes flickered, almost dark now in his white face. ‘It seems … that Gede’s blade was poisoned … after all.’ His breathing was laboured. ‘If it had gone in as he wanted … I would not be here …’ Another rattling breath. ‘So when the bout of illness faded I thought …I was lucky …’ His words ended in a hacking cough.

If before he was on fire, now he was grey. All that radiated now from him was pain. Minna forced out an agonized whisper. ‘You are suffering?’

Slowly, he nodded. ‘Ever since the wound my heart has pounded … and it’s getting … harder to breathe.’ His trembling hand covered his chest, then dropped away. ‘But it was only when the chiefs left and I could stop … I felt something go from me in a rush … the bright strength … and then a great pain felled me, gripping me like teeth …’ He sank into the bed. ‘And now … so tired.’

Minna grabbed wildly for something to feel, and found the easiest thing, clinging to it as she drowned. Anger. ‘You should have let me take you home! I could have done something …
given you something
…’ She staggered to her feet.

Cahir drew a broken breath. ‘No … it was done then,
a stór
… no going back. I had to hold the people as one … or they might splinter … fall prey to Rome …’ His head rocked back and forth on the pillow. ‘And all that we strained for … all that Ruarc and the others died for, would be lost.’ His fervour took the dregs of his strength, and he sank back on the pillow.

Minna felt the blood drain from her face. ‘No.’ She clenched her fists. ‘
No
.’

His eyes were grave. ‘I had to be a king … Minna.’

Suddenly she was stumbling down the stairs, unable to see the steps or the fire, the white faces of all the silent people in the hall a blur.

At Brónach’s house, she flung herself at the shelves, taking down jars, bottles and bowls and piling them on the table if they made sense to her.
His blood races … heart pain …
Then her breath caught on panicked sobs, and she began raking at containers instead, pulling them down around her ears. Pots rolled on the floor, baskets spilled out their powders. She tore at the bunches of herbs on the rafters, shredding them, until she sank on her knees in a cloud of dust and musty, crushed leaves. Then she grabbed at the first things that came to hand, staggered up and lurched back to him.