The Greener Shore (44 page)

From time to time I turned to smile at Briga. She smiled back at me. A man could wrap himself up in that smile and stay warm for all of his life.

My Briga. Princess and healer and mother…my questing head seized on the concept of motherhood. How incredible the diversity that was born of woman!

Was a creature such as Caesar born in the natural way? Or was he an unnatural alloy of the vile, the vicious, and the avaricious? For years my head had sought new ways to express my loathing for the man. It had reached a point where my hatred was a greater burden than its cause. “How long can one hate a dead man?” I did not realize I had spoken aloud until Briga asked, “Are you talking about Caesar?”

“I suppose I was.”

“I never hated Caesar,” she said. “I pitied him.”

“Pity!”
I was outraged.

Briga fixed her blue eyes on mine. Deep wells, those eyes. Briga herself was a deep well, walled with mystery. “I used to hate the druids, Ainvar, until I realized that the threads connecting you with them made you what you are, a man I could trust and love. So I stopped hating them. In fact, I stopped hating altogether and I feel much better for it. Hatred is a poison and should be expelled from the body.”

She held my gaze until I understood that pity was exactly what I should feel for Caesar. I, who would be content with honey on my bread and the gleam of firelight on Briga’s hair and the laughter of my children, must pity a man of such unappeasable appetites that he was driven to annihilate multitudes in a vain effort to assuage them.

All this I discovered while Briga looked at me with infinite love shining out of her eyes.

We walked on.

The journey seemed endless. Sometimes we talked among ourselves; more often, we were silent.

I was thankful to be left alone in my head.

But my thoughts kept returning to Caesar. Whom I must no longer hate. Caesar, who had been such a large part of my personal Pattern. Why? For what purpose had his life been entangled with mine? If life was a lesson, what lesson was I meant to take from him?

In his wake Caesar had left hundreds of thousands of dead Gauls. Mountains of bloated, blackened, decomposing bodies had lain rotting beneath the sky. Men, women, even tiny children, liquefying and seeping into the soil. I had furiously blamed the Source for allowing such things to happen. Perhaps that was when the loss of my faith began, like rot setting into damp wood.

But then…think, head. Think back. Step by step.

The living Carnutes had possessed courageous hearts and skillful hands; they had hopes and dreams and memories. Yet their dead bodies had been disgusting. Shapechanged by Caesar into horrors.

As we walked on, my eyes reported the first signs that winter was dying. Tiny blades of new grass were peeping up through the old. Hard green buds were forming on otherwise bare branches. Holding life locked inside…

And the answer came to me.

The missing component in those dead bodies was
spirit.

A body could be slain but even Caesar had no weapons for destroying the spirit. Spirits were sparks of the Great Fire of Life, born of the immortal Source. The fact of their existence was proved by the fact of their departure.

I had blamed the Source for permitting horrors.

A simplistic assertion, and totally wrong.

The Source had not failed us. The bodies that died and disintegrated would have done so anyway, sooner or later, returning to the earth to nourish other bodies. Nature feeds on that which perishes.

But that which lives, lives forever. Sparks of the Great Fire.

When Rix and I lay on our backs on summer nights all those years ago and gazed at the sky, we had been observing the Infinite that is part of us all.

My lips formed a silent song of thanksgiving. Not because Cormiac and Labraid were alive, and not because Caesar was dead.

But because the Source Is.

We Are.

chapter
XXXI

N
OTHING HAPPENS ON THE PLAIN OF BROAD SPEARS WITHOUT
everyone soon knowing. As we approached our clanhold, we discovered a large number had gathered there to greet us. In the forefront were my children: Dara and Eoin and Ongus and Gobnat, Cairbre and Senta and Niav, waving in wild excitement.

I signaled a brief halt to savor the moment. What I had lost was only a shadow in the sunshine of what I had gained.

Probus said, “How are they going to react to me, Ainvar?”

“Don’t worry about it. Most of them haven’t the slightest idea who or what a Roman is. Besides, you’re our friend.”

And he was.

Friends and family crowded around us. Perched atop the gray horse as if on a pedestal, Labraid began to relate, with extravagant gestures, his own version of the last two years.

“Grannus,” Briga said urgently, “take him off that horse at once and carry him into our lodge. He’s in no condition for this.”

Before Grannus could comply he was shouldered aside. “My son!” Fíachu exclaimed as he reached up for Labraid.

The chief of the tribe gave the rest of us a pleasant though perfunctory greeting; it was obvious he could not wait to carry Labraid in triumph to his own stronghold. He looked askance at Probus, however. “Where I go, this man goes,” Labraid insisted. “He saved my life.”

“Then he shall be honored among us for as long as he lives,” Fíachu promised. Facing Probus, he solemnly intoned, “I am Fíachu, chief of the Slea Leathan, the tribe of Broad Spears in the kingdom of the Laigin. I am a direct descendant of Éremon, who, as everyone knows, was the most gracious and the most noble of all the sons of Milesios.”

The Roman was a match for him. “I am Probus Seggo, son of Justinius, magistrate of Genova, and formerly an officer in the legion of…”

I left them to it and entered my lodge.

Lakutu was waiting for me with her face scrubbed and shining, and the belt Glas had made for her firmly fastened around her waist.

I spent the rest of the day happily crowded into my lodge with both of my wives, all of our children, and Cormiac Ru. Briga put the Red Wolf to bed almost at once. I had thought I wanted nothing so much as to lie down on my own bed and rest, but I was wrong. Time may be fluid, but on rare occasions you can trap it in your heart and extract every drop of pleasure. One should never sleep through those moments.

Shortly before sunset Probus appeared at our door. He entered almost shyly; accepted the basin of water for washing; greeted us each in turn. Niav last.

He could not seem to look at her.

Briga whispered to me from behind her hand, “The Roman was smitten with Lakutu’s daughter the moment he saw her.”

I had not noticed, but if Briga and I always made identical observations there would be no need for two of us.

My wives pressed hospitality upon Probus. He was given a loaf of bread for his right hand and a hunk of cheese for his left, and a pitcher of mead was set beside him. To my surprise, he began to devour the food like a starving man.

“Didn’t Fíachu prepare a feast for you?”

“He did, Ainvar,” Probus replied around a mouthful of cheese. “Labraid is probably still enjoying it, but I lost my appetite. Fíachu threw some of his cousins out of their lodge in order to give it to Labraid until a new lodge can be built for him. The dispossessed family is very unhappy, and I am not comfortable with the arrangement myself.”

“You’re welcome to stay with us for as long as you like,” my senior wife assured him.

“That is most kind, but you appear to be very crowded here already.” Probus swept the room with his eyes—looking at everyone but Niav.

She, on the other hand, kept her eyes fixed on him.

A gentle dew formed on the Roman’s forehead.

Niav smiled the tiny smile of a woman with a delicious new secret.

I told Probus, “Normally there are not so many people in this lodge. There are several other lodges in the clanhold as well; I’m sure we can make you comfortable. We owe you a great debt and are eager to repay it any way we can.”

“There is one way….” He hesitated.

“Tell me.”

“Work magic for me, Ainvar.”

Only once before had I heard the request so baldly put. On that occasion I had been unable to oblige Duach Dalta. There was no reason to believe my gift had returned since then, and the last thing I wanted was to be humiliated in front of my family. “You already saw magic on Mona, Probus; greater magic than anything I might show you.”

“I know what I thought I saw, but I need to be convinced it was possible.”

“If your mind is closed, nothing can convince you,” I told him. As I spoke, my gaze accidentally fell on Briga. Her eyes widened at my words.

“Please, Ainvar,” Probus urged. “Work magic for me. I trust you.”

A Roman trusted me, and I liked him. The world is rarely what we expect.

Taking Probus by the hand, I led him over to Niav. “Let’s begin by having the two of you get to know each other. Sit down here, Probus, and talk with my daughter for a while.”

Probus obediently seated himself next to Niav, who blushed furiously and smiled that tiny, delicious smile. The Roman forgot his cheese and bread; even his cup of mead. He forgot everything but the huge dark eyes of Lakutu’s daughter.

There is more than one kind of magic.

The following day I told Keryth about the strange stars in the Black Pool.

“Have you ever seen anything like that before, Ainvar?”

I rummaged among my memories. “When the Great Grove of the Carnutes was burning…it’s hard to describe this adequately…I saw the blazing oaks turn into pillars of stone. Above them rose a spire like the tallest pine tree in the world.”

“Aaahh.” The parchment-thin skin on Keryth’s face folded into pleats, so that for a heartbeat she looked her age. “I believe you’ve seen a vision of the future, my friend. In fact, you have twice glimpsed the future.”

“I’m no seer.”

“The future is not the sole possession of prognosticators, any more than only the bards can compose poems or only the healers can heal. We simply have a more highly developed gift.”

“But what I saw doesn’t make any sense, Keryth.”

“That’s because the future is beyond current comprehension. We won’t understand it until we’re there.”

I prefer mysteries I can solve in Thislife. One all-important mystery remained for me. In time I intended to learn the answer.

chapter
XXXII

C
ORMIAC HAD SURVIVED THE JOURNEY IN BETTER SHAPE THAN
anyone expected. Ensconced in comfort in my lodge, with both of my wives to fuss over him, he gained strength rapidly. By Lughnasa, Briga assured me, he would be whole again except for his scars.

We all have scars of one sort or another.

Mine were deep inside.

Just as I had made a conscious decision to stop hating Caesar—at which I succeeded sporadically—my head informed me I should stop agonizing over the loss of my gift. Knowing what one should do and being able to do it are not the same thing, however. The more I tried not to think about magic the more the subject haunted me.

Although I never shared these thoughts with her, my Briga knew. She—who had never acknowledged druid magic—selected a branch from an ash tree and took it to the Goban Saor. At her instruction he fashioned a staff perfectly suited to my height. On one side she had him carve a most singular face: ageless, mysterious, wise. When Briga presented the staff to me I looked at it twice before recognizing the visage as my own.

At the next change of the moon Fíachu announced the creation of a new title for Labraid. The Speaker Who Sails the Seas—a title he no longer used, to my amusement—was to be known in future as the tanaiste, the chief-in-waiting.

Dian Cet and Morand devised an elaborate ceremony of conferring for the new tanaiste; one almost but not quite the equal of a chieftain’s inauguration. Before the ceremony began the tribe was served a splendid feast. After gorging themselves on Fíachu’s food and drink the Slea Leathan could hardly refuse to accept his chosen successor.