The Exile (17 page)

"And there was a time when you would have lis... Who am I trying to kid? There has never been a time when you listened to anything I had to say. Just don't ask me to lie for you, I can't do that, not anymore."

"Like I said, things have changed."

Sláine checked the knotted rope for the third time. It was secure. He cast one last look over his shoulder towards Murias, knowing even as he turned his back on the wattle and daub houses that he was turning his back on the only life he had ever known. The moment he launched himself into the water he knew there could be no turning back. Still, well aware of the consequences, he dived, submerging beneath the awesome crush of the white-tipped rapids.

The sudden shock of cold slammed the breath out of his lungs and left him gasping and swallowing water.

He was in trouble in seconds.

He floundered, trying desperately to claw his way to the surface but the undertow dragged him down. He flailed and splashed, coughed and spat, and swallowed water as he opened his mouth to scream and the river came rushing in to suffocate him.

He was drowning.

He lashed out at the water, clawing at the riverbank even as the undertow relinquished its hold on him and the river sent his body tumbling end over end through the rushing water, playing with him. It bounced him off protruding rocks even as he choked on the air and water in his lungs, sucked him back under the surface and bullied him deeper, down and down and down. The mud had turned the water black, blinding him so thoroughly that it was impossible for him to tell if his eyes were open or closed. Sláine felt himself spinning and tumbling. He couldn't tell if he was upside down or the right way up. He had no idea where the air was, which way to strive for. He groped out trying to catch something - anything - of substance but the river had him.

It wasn't about to let him go.

Instead of fighting it, he surrendered to it, accepting death's cold kiss.

Instead of those icy lips he felt something else brush against his skin, something solid, fleshlike - a leg? A hand? It was impossible to tell what through the muddied waters. He flailed out for it blindly, suddenly desperate not to die.

He felt it again, whatever it was, like hands guiding his back, pulling him around.

He rolled with it, helpless to resist as he felt a delicate hand slip into his. His eyes stung as he opened them. Suddenly, through the muddy darkness a wide-eyed alabaster pale face swam into view. A face quite unlike any he had ever seen before. The eyes were bright with a sickly greenish luminosity; and the skin hideously translucent - he could see the blood in the veins beneath the surface, pumping. It had a mouth, but beside the mouth were three short slits, cut horizontal to each other: gills. The creature bared its teeth, sharpened fangs like jagged rusty nails hammered into its jaw. Its gills flared.

Sláine struggled to pull away but the delicacy of the creature's fine-boned hand belied its vice-like grip.

The thing had him and it wasn't letting him go.

He twisted and kicked, but the creature refused to relinquish its hold on him. Instead, it grinned a raffish grin, and leaned in as if to kiss the young warrior.

He swallowed more water as he screamed into the river.

Its lips closed around his but there was nothing erotic in the gesture. Sláine was powerless as the creature breathed him in, sucking the water up from his lungs and taking it into itself before expelling it through its gills. His body shuddered violently beneath the punishing kiss. He felt the strength drain out of his limbs. He tried to turn his head away and break free of the kiss but he couldn't.

The creature had him.

The creature kicked back against the current, dragging him easily with it. It was a thing of the water. He had heard talk of such creatures, mermen and selkies. Half man, half fish, and seal like creatures of the deep capable of shedding their skin and walking beside men in the air. Tall Iesin spun wondrous tales about them. They had lured Grymm Wavestrider to his death with their siren call; he remembered that suddenly, a brilliant hallucinatory fragment of memory. The pirate's ship had floundered on the sound, lured into the shallow waters by the selkies' seductive crooning.

Then suddenly he was choking on air - beautiful fresh air - as the creature dragged him out of the river and up on to the riverbank.

"Not your time. No no. The mistress will not let you leave her, little manling." The selkie's voice was a sibilant hiss as it drew out the "s" of mistress, the word rushing with all the melody of the river itself.

Sláine collapsed onto his back and sucked in huge gulping gasps of air as the creature slipped beneath the white water and disappeared with virtually no splash.

It took him what felt like forever to master his breathing, longer still before he felt strong enough to look around and see where the current had dragged him. He was disorientated, dizzy. He rolled over and was violently sick. After another minute of retching up brackish water he drew his knees underneath him and forced himself up into a crab-like crouch. As he looked up and saw the wattle and daub walls of Grudnew's roundhouse a single thought passed through his mind: Niamh.

Vengeance and lust were both passionate aspects of the Goddess.

The selkie had dragged him out of the river less than fifty feet from the king's home, behind the barricades and the guards.

Niamh: heaven.

She had only ever said four words to him but still she had placed her claim on his heart. Sláine remembered his promise to Brighid and knew, even as he did, that there was no way he could keep it. He had to see her again.

Niamh, heaven, Grudnew's chosen bride - the girl who would be Queen of the Sessair when she finally came of age and the king took her.

Surely this was why the Goddess had sent her selkie to save him? Danu herself had brought him to Niamh's door.

"It would be rude not to go in," he said to himself as he stood, and what was worse, he believed it. His body ached where the river had battered it. Sláine moved tenderly, favouring his right side. He felt out his ribs. A dart of white-hot agony lanced through his side as his fingers pushed at a splinter of broken rib. He pulled his hand away quickly. "Just to say hello."

He crept up to the side of the roundhouse, crouching beneath the shutters. He listened at the window for a full five minutes, trying to make out any sounds of movement from inside.

He knew what he was doing, of course, at least in part. He was angry at Grudnew for robbing him of his revenge, angry at himself for being beaten by the river, angry at the world for his mother's death. He wanted to hurt the world, the king, and most of all himself.

He couldn't hurt the skull-swords any more. Instead he wanted to hurt the king in the same way that Grudnew had hurt him, by denying him the right to something that was his.

He cracked open the shutter and clambered through. He dropped to the floor silently, looked around the empty room and called, "Hello, gorgeous. Guess who?"

She knew who he was even before the clumsy oaf was halfway through the window.

No one else had ever dared invade her prison.

It was Sláine Mac Roth.

Niamh had heard her betrothed talk of him often. According to Grudnew the warped one was the future of the tribe, although watching the brute spill into the bedroom it was hard to see exactly why. There was something special about the young man, it was in his ice-blue eyes and reflected in his smile. He had a dangerous smile. It was the kind of smile that could get a young woman into trouble, and a young man for that matter.

He looked up, as if sensing her scrutiny and flashed her that roguish grin of his. He was attractive in his own way. His skin was dark with a weather-beaten tan, his cheeks shadowed with two days' worth of stubble, and his eyes, oh but his eyes were something else, the penetrating ice blue of a bird of prey. They were ruthless and paradoxically swollen with a world of hurt. She felt as if they stripped back every layer of her flesh to get to her soul as he looked at her. He was, she knew suddenly, more than he seemed to be.

"Ah, no fair, Niamh, you're cheating."

"You're a fool, Sláine." She couldn't help herself; she smiled. "He'll kill you if he knows you've been here."

"I'm sure, but between you and me, how could he ever find out it? I mean, I am certainly not about to tell him, and I can't imagine you'd want to confess to my clandestine visits, would you?"

He moved towards her, and winced, his hand cupping his side protectively.

She saw that he had taken a battering from the river.

"You risk a lot being here, Sláine," she said softly, enjoying the truth of her words. He risked more than a lot; he risked everything. And why? For her? How could it be? He had barely set eyes on her. She had no idea how she was supposed to fathom the inner workings of a man's mind. They were unpredictable, vain and violent creatures given to extremes, brooding introspection and cock-like strutting and preening.

"I didn't have a lot of choice," he said. "The river brought me here. I was hell bent on pursuing your husband-"

"He's not my husband," Niamh interrupted, more forcefully than she intended. She couldn't help it. Grudnew was a powerful man, but in the years she had been the king's "prisoner" she had come to despise her gaoler. She hated being beholden so completely to him for her existence. She hated the fact that her life had been lived so removed from the rest of the tribe. Calum had picked her out when she was eight, and had her taken away from her parents so that she might be pure and unsullied when the new king claimed her. She had no friends. She hadn't seen her mother or father for nine years. She remembered the last time she saw her mother, Brighid. She had knelt, cupping Niamh's face in her hands and placed a tender kiss on her forehead.

It is a great honour our king is giving you, dear heart.
That's what she had said, and she had meant it. Her mother never would have lied, not knowingly, but it was hard not to resent that "great honour" as it had turned her into just as much a prisoner as any common criminal - more so in that she never came into contact with other people apart from her husband-to-be.

That was until this clumsy warrior had stumbled into her prison.

She felt something then: a rush of blood to the head as he smiled at her. Niamh couldn't help but return it. For the first time in years she felt like someone, a living breathing young woman, vital and full of life, not simply a ghost trapped inside her shell living a non-life like one of the half-dead.

She went to him, closing her hand around his and drawing it away from his wounded side so that she might see. He was bruised, the skin mottled purple where blood had leaked out of his veins.

Even with this brief contact the young Sessair warrior made her feel alive. It was a dangerous sensation.

The frisson of her touch stirred something inside Sláine.

He didn't recognise it at first. He simply enjoyed the sudden charge he felt shivering through his body.

"What in the name of Danu have you been doing to yourself?"

That was considerably more difficult to answer than it should have been. He grinned sheepishly, hoping it said everything even though it said nothing. "I got into a fight with the river." He spread his hands wide, wincing even as he did so. "As you can see, the river won."

Her fingers probed at his side, lingering over the swelling that had risen to protect his damaged rib. He tried not to show how much it hurt.

"Stop being such a man. You're allowed to actually breathe you know."

He hadn't realised he had been holding his breath. He laughed at himself, the wind coming out of him in a sharp hiss as her fingers caught the sharp edge of broken bone.

"Mother, maiden and bloody crone!" he gasped, pulling back from her touch.

Her laugh was joyous.

"What's so damned funny?"

"You," she said, "big bairn. All huff and puff but you're nothing but an overgrown child when it comes down to a bit of pain. Come on, let's get your wound dressed and bound. That'll give you an excuse for being here should one of my beloved's soldiers find you." There was something about the way she said beloved that didn't ring true to Sláine's ears.

As she bathed and tended to his wounded side Sláine grew more and more certain what that first frisson he had felt at her touch meant. It was a silent agreement between them: a secret pact.

Niamh pressed a poultice against the bruise. It stung but he wasn't about to make a sound. He bit down on his lower lip and stared straight ahead at the wall. He was Red Branch. He would not allow himself to be mocked by a woman, no matter how enchanting she was.

He caught her hand as she wound the bandage around his chest.

She looked up at him.

She was a delicate thing. He remembered at first mistaking her for one of the Sidhe. It was not an unreasonable misconception. Her features were so fine, sharp even, giving her the haughty aspect of one of the fey folk. He tangled his fingers in her hair and savoured the way her lips parted in a slight surprised sigh as he tilted her head back. Her tongue flickered across her lips nervously.

"Don't worry," he said reassuringly. "I've done this before."

She laughed at that, leaving him no option but to kiss her to shut her up.

Sláine gave himself to the kiss, tasting her on his tongue.

She was different to Brighid. He hadn't really expected her to be the same, but her tongue was more urgent, more desperate and far less assured than the Daughter of Danu's but for all that it was more intoxicating.

The difference, he knew, would be his downfall.

At first it had been lust, pure and simple, and glorious.

They were like animals, reduced to the most primal level of action and reaction. They touched, probed, explored and satisfied each other in ways neither had imagined. He found himself drawn to her again and again, knowing that any night the warlord and the king might return from their mission but he didn't care. For now he came to Niamh with impunity. He sought her company to satisfy the aching need inside him that had been there ever since the skull-swords came to Murias.