The Dawn Stag: Book Two of the Dalriada Trilogy (34 page)

The transformation was instant. In one movement Agricola sat straight on the bench, the cup gripped so hard it tilted, spilling that fine wine over his tunic. ‘
What?
’

‘She knows no more,’ Samana added, gratified to see the anger etched around Agricola’s eyes as he slowly placed his cup down. She abandoned her calmness, and moved on her knees to his side. ‘They understand their own power, now. They will try again this season, I know it. When you are in the field.’

Agricola’s breath came quickly now. ‘Can it be?’ he muttered, staring up into the shadows, his eyes glazing over with some memory. Then his head swivelled towards her. ‘Where is this Sacred Isle?’

Samana raised her finger to gesture towards the west, but when she opened her mouth, no sound came out. Then she watched with horror as her finger trembled before her …
and in slipped a memory of laughter around a dawn fire, warm barley bread on her tongue, her legs cold and tired from standing all night in the Stones
… With a strangled gasp Samana buried the offending finger in her fist. Curse the Sisters! Always trying to subdue her will, worming their way into her … Abruptly, she cleared her throat. ‘The Sacred Isle is in the sea to the west of Alba – not on any of your maps.’

‘No matter.’ Agricola was again staring at the walls, but he was no longer at ease, no longer yawning. Instead, he leaned forward, rubbing the dark, wet patch on his tunic with rhythmic rolls of his knuckles. ‘There is more than one way to hunt down a pack of she-wolves. Hound, horse, or man?’ He paused, and at last she caught a glimpse of a tight smile. ‘Hound, I think. Definitely hound.’

A cold surge rippled through Samana’s belly, for Agricola seemed to have forgotten her now, and that was not the reason she had come so far, at such great cost.

Her hand crept to his muscled thigh, and she wiped the wine from the hair and skin beneath, touching it to her lips, seeking for his eyes. Then his gaze did fix on her, and the hot anger and tension there wavered, drawn back into something more indulgent. ‘You did well to bring this to my attention, my dark witch.’

Samana licked the last taste of wine from her lips, hiding the rush of relief. And she resolutely replaced the image of the Stones and the dawn fire with a more satisfying one: Samana in the marble hall of a Roman palace, dressed in cloth-of-gold, rubies and lapis dripping from fingers and ears, black hair arrayed around her. Yes, she would be the very image, from what she’d heard, of the great Egyptian queen Cleopatra. A woman who had captured the heart of an emperor.

Samana kneeled between Agricola’s legs and edged the hem of his tunic up his thighs, a smile playing about her lips. Tilting his head, Agricola opened his legs wider and drew her close, one callused hand grasping her chin while he explored her mouth with his tongue. From the hardness pressing into her belly, she knew she had won again.

Eremon’s public farewell was no easier for Rhiann than the private one.

Huddled in her fleece cloak, she stood outside the village gate beneath a leaden sky, as Eremon mounted Dórn at the head of his warband. Yet in front of all these people she could not repeat the words that she had whispered as a litany over his sleeping body in the night:
I love you. Come back to me. I’m sorry
.

So many times Rhiann had seen him ride out with sunshine glittering on his armour and weapons, and that glorious spectacle was always a reassurance of triumph and invincibility. Yet today the silent, drifting rain dulled his boar helmet and bright sword and mailshirt. Rori was sitting straight in his saddle, proudly bearing aloft the new scarlet and white standard, but it hung wet and limp, the fierce Boar obscured in its folds.

All around Rhiann, the fleece and fur trimming the warriors’ cloaks and hoods was sodden with water. Hair was plastered to foreheads, moustaches dripped, and rain pattered on leather capes and saddle packs. It was a thoroughly miserable day to be outside, and though it hadn’t stopped the women from farewelling their men, the cheering crowds were absent.

Eremon was taking only 400 warriors himself, which didn’t seem nearly enough to Rhiann, yet as he had pointed out to her, he must leave sufficient forces behind to guard Dunadd’s land and sea approaches. And Calgacus had many warriors: that was the reason the alliance with him had been so valued, after all.

Her throat aching, Rhiann now gazed up at Eremon, and the mist that rose from the river to merge with the drizzle seemed suddenly to wreath about him, like the cold breath of the Otherworld. Her fingers tightened on Dórn’s bridle.

Conaire huddled in the shelter of the gatetower, his bulk shielding Caitlin and the baby from the rain. Eremon’s eyes strayed to them now, and beneath the dripping browguard of his helmet Rhiann saw a glint of regret. Yet this was what men like Eremon and Conaire did; this was what they gave their lives to.

‘You will be with Calgacus in two weeks,’ she repeated, more for herself than for him.

Eremon nodded, wiping rain from his cheek with the back of his hand. ‘With so many men, it will take much longer than our last trip. But at least we don’t have to look over our shoulders for Romans.’ The Great Glen along which they would travel was separated from the Roman frontier by the highest, most impassable mountains of Alba.

‘But where will you go then?’ She needed to be able to picture him somewhere, even though all roads they were likely to take led him towards the Roman lines.

Eremon shrugged, and rivulets of rain ran down his wolf cloak, clumping the surface of the fur. ‘I won’t know any details until I speak to Calgacus. It doesn’t matter how we do it, anyway, so long as we launch an uprising that draws the Romans from their bases.’ He grinned suddenly in private amusement. ‘Imagine: Ferdiad’s son, a common rebel!’

‘Hardly common.’ Rhiann blinked away drifting drizzle, desperately trying to commit every curve of his cheeks and jaw to memory, as if it would keep him nearer over the coming moons. He was freshly bathed and shaved, and after a season of good food, as strong in body as he could ever be. Yet as she gazed up at him, another image was suddenly overlaid on this one, just as she had once seen Gabran’s features shift from babe to king. Eremon’s same dear-loved face looked back at her, but for a moment it was pale and blood-streaked, sheened with sweat, and so hollow-cheeked he looked like a death-wraith.

Rhiann started, stifling a cry, and Eremon’s hand closed over her own on the bridle. ‘It will be well,
a stór
,’ he murmured. ‘I will see you again.’

She bit her lip, not meeting his eyes. ‘Yes,’ she forced out, cupping her elbows with her hands. ‘I will see you again.’

He smiled with relief, but there was a tightness around his mouth that had not been there before. ‘Well, priestess wife, I am glad you think so.’

Yet she couldn’t smile back, and despite the men murmuring among themselves, the clanking of armour and impatient stamping of horses, Eremon leaned down to stroke her cheek. ‘
Cariad
,’ he murmured, his voice thick with concern. And so Rhiann raised her face, straightening her shoulders, forcing strength and boldness into her eyes. The dream called them both: he had his role to fulfil, and she had hers. That’s all there was.

‘The Goddess bless your sword arm, husband.’ She smiled. ‘I will be watching over you, and sending you all my strength.’

A war horn suddenly blew from the gate above, answered by another at the head of the warband, and only the warmth of Eremon’s fingers stayed with Rhiann then as the horsemen and foot warriors marched over the causeway, to be swallowed by the curtain of drizzle and mist, their shouts echoing faintly back along the palisade.

Rhiann remained still, her fingers pressed to her mouth. She was the Ban Cré, and as she’d told the women that there was no need to fear, so then she must show no fear. A tiny fist batted her arm, breaking into her thoughts, and she caught Gabran’s hand in her own. Holding him, Caitlin pressed her cheek into the back of her son’s head and met Rhiann’s eyes.

‘Come.’ Rhiann drew a determined breath. ‘It is time to plan my own leave-taking.’

CHAPTER 31

A
sudden rash of leaf-bud fevers kept Rhiann and Eithne busy, and Rhiann’s sailing was delayed further when Linnet herself took a chill that settled in her chest, and proved difficult to shift.

‘I tell you I do not wish you to go to the Sacred Isle without me! There is danger around … and a dread in me, daughter, a sickness …’ Linnet’s head tossed restlessly on her pillow, her unbound hair lank and damp from sweat.

‘The poppy brings such dreams, aunt, and the sickness in the belly.’ Holding a bowl of bruised coltsfoot leaves and cup of linseed tea, Rhiann drew a stool to the bed with her foot. ‘And you cannot go; it is too risky for your chest.’

Linnet swallowed with difficulty, her breathing shallow, as Rhiann peeled back her shift and began smearing the coltsfoot poultice over her breastbone. ‘If I can’t go,’ Linnet whispered, ‘then you must not. I feel a … a
wrongness
…’

Just then the door-hide was flung up as Eithne entered with another armful of floor rushes from the saddles of the pack ponies. The morning sun spilled over the bare floor, laying a bright slice across the fading blue blanket on Linnet’s bed.

Rhiann lowered her voice, wondering how to impart what she herself felt in her belly; that Eremon was riding into true danger, and for Rhiann that outweighed all else, even Linnet’s fevered dreams. ‘The danger you sense is all around us,’ she murmured, binding linen over the poultice, ‘and I will not sit here and do nothing while it draws closer. The rites with the Sisters will strengthen our men, and thereby keep us
all
safer, and they need my connection to Eremon to direct the Source. As a priestess, you must understand.’

Linnet’s breathing rattled in her chest, and she coughed impatiently into both hands before resuming her agitated grip on the blanket. Behind Eithne, Dercca now appeared with a pile of washed linens she had been drying in the sunshine.

Rhiann used Linnet’s distraction to push her advantage. ‘Besides, Nerida herself sent a message back to my own, saying that she would look for me at Beltaine. Setana already knew that I was coming.’

Linnet frowned. ‘Did she?’

‘Most certainly.’ Rhiann moved to the edge of the bed and took Linnet’s hand. ‘I do not wish to grieve you, aunt, but I am going, and you must stay and get well, so you can care for Caitlin and Gabran.’

Linnet’s mouth pursed, then crumpled. Rhiann stroked her hot cheek, red and lined from the pillow. ‘Anyway, no one even knows the path I sail. I am nothing more than another priestess on her way to the Sacred Isle for Beltaine.’

Linnet’s fevered eyes were dark with pain, yet at last she managed to summon a blessing to her cracked lips. However, though she returned Rhiann’s embrace, she left warm tears on her niece’s neck.

A week later, Rhiann and Didius set sail from Crinan. Caitlin eventually sought shelter from the cold wind that blew in over the Bay of Isles, ducking into a nearby house to warm Gabran by the fire. But from far out on the choppy waves Rhiann kept her eyes on Linnet’s tall, straight figure standing alone on the edge of the rocks.

And she saw that Linnet did not move at all, until the distance and sea-mists took her from Rhiann’s sight.

The lamp-flame rose steadily against the cold walls of the vast underground tomb, sheening the moist stone.

Outside, a moaning storm swept across the flat Orcades lands, straight from the sea, heavily laden with salt rain. Yet the stone was so perfectly worked that not a single gust penetrated the heavy, silent air inside. At the farther reaches of the central chamber the light fell away into dark shadows that moved and whispered of their own accord, restless, and sometimes there came a glimpse of gleaming, aged bone.

The old man lay naked, spread-eagled on the earth floor, his white hair trailing around his head. The burning cold seeped up from under him, and with every breath he drew it in deeper, sensing the power like an underground stream, black with secrets. It pulsed in waves of oily darkness, curling into each of the symbols daubed on his wrinkled skin in black mud and ash, joining him to Arawn, lord of the underworld.

With every surge of the druid herbs he sensed his spirit contract, and the aches of his body dissolve into a cold, sinewy strength that turned within him.
Come, lord
, the Otherworld spirits were already calling.
Come and let us bow down to you! Speak, and let us serve!

You have no choice
, Gelert thought, and his spirit flexed and slithered free of the body, and down into the streams of power that ran beneath the land.

Free now, he writhed and spun among the tangled threads of dark and light that joined all times and all places into one web, unseen by the eyes of man. Some threads glowed silver, but he arched away from their harsh light and followed the others deeper into the dark. For they had the strength of that which bides its time, hoarding energy and warmth, coiled in darkness, wet and cold. And as he had so many times, he fixed Dunadd once more in his mind.

Spiralling through the deepest chambers, his spirit drew closer to its crag, to the bright glow of its inhabitants, the memories it held for him flaring with points of rage and pain. Up from the depths he swam, towards the surface – for he had found his rage could hold a part of himself there long enough to haunt the marsh pools and dark woods, gliding silently, cloaked as a grey man. There, he would stalk and trap the stray thoughts of men, using the ways of the spirit to give him vision, where he had no eyes.

CHAPTER 32

R
hiann! Rhiann!’

Fola’s shout floated over the calm loch to the Epidii boat, wending its way among the clutter of sea-craft in the bay below the Sisters’ settlement. Dragging her eyes away from her friend, Rhiann clasped the neck of the swan prow, staring around at the
curraghs
littering the weedy rocks, and the larger vessels tied up at the pier. Her call to all the priestesses of Alba had been answered.