The Well of Shades (16 page)

“We’re traveling together. The three of us. Please don’t lock him up. We need him.” Let this proud creature make what she wanted of that.

“They’re being quite insistent,”
the blue-and-black-clad man said. “They want their own people to handle it. Shall I take her back over, my lady?”

No, please, no. Let him go and let us go. Somewhere far away. We will never trouble you again.

“I’ve changed my mind, Seamus. These travelers are on my land now, and under different jurisdiction. Tell those fellows we will deal with the matter under due process of law. Tell them
to go home. Conal! Find this girl a mount. If she won’t keep her mouth shut, gag her. We’ve delayed long enough here; let us ride for home.”

“My lady, the child—and there’s a dog—”

“For pity’s sake, Conal, do you need step-by-step instructions? Put the girl and the child on the other packhorse and forget about the dog. If it wants to follow us, it will.”

A horse was found. A man tried to help
Eile up, but she snarled at him when he put his hands on Saraid. She untied the sling, lifted the shivering child to the creature’s back, then allowed the fellow to cup his hands for her foot. Every part of her was strung tight. She wasn’t going to say she’d never been on a horse before. She had to keep up. She had to watch out for Faolan, since there was nobody else to do it.

The lady rode over
to him now and got down from her horse. As Eile watched, she took hold of Faolan’s hair and pulled his head up so she could gaze into his white, unconscious face. Her eyes were strange; Eile thought for a moment that this fine lady was about to spit, or slap the stricken man, or scream a curse. Instead, the ring-decked fingers let go the dark hair abruptly, and the woman turned away to mount her
horse once more.

“To Blackthorn Rise,” she called. It was a command. The group rode forward, away from the bridge. Balancing Saraid in front of her and gritting her teeth, Eile rode with them.

T
HE
G
REAT
G
LEN
was in Bone Mother’s grip. It was close to Midwinter and the pines spread dark under a sky of slate. The waters of Serpent Lake lay sullen and dangerous from
shore to shore, crisscrossed by changeable currents. Beneath the surface, unseen presences lurked close in the hungry season.

I will be a swallow
, Broichan thought,
winging to warmer climes on the breath of the storm.
He walked on, regretting his decision to test himself by leaving the
horse at a local farm and continuing to Pitnochie on foot. His sandals were heavy in the saturated mosses, his
robe damply clinging. And he thought,
I will be a deer, running swifter than the sunlight, sheltering in the birch thickets.
Here the lake shore was broken by a number of sharp indentations. The water swirled in sudden small bays, cut deep in the thickly wooded hillside. There had been rock falls, earth falls. The serpent had swallowed chunks of the land. Here and there the path disappeared entirely.
Broichan sought new ways, climbing until there was a fiery ache in his thighs.
I will be a salmon
, he thought,
and swim the length of this great water in powerful surges; my scales will throw back the silver gleam of the Shining One like a melody of bright notes. I will be a bee, a snake, a moth…

When night fell he sought the hollow of an ancient oak well known to him and sheltered within, folded
in his cloak. A druid has many techniques for slowing the body’s workings the better to endure privations. Of these skills he still had the mastery, even if the power to travel in forms other than that of man had left him as he fought the long illness for control of his body. The wondrous changes, the creature shapes, were now no more than vivid memories, a level of the craft of magic that would
never more be within his grasp. His legs ached. His back hurt. His joints were stiff in the damp cold of the season. He was not such an old man in years, but tonight he felt old.

Rain came. The Shining One was veiled by clouds; the night was dark. Broichan made himself breathe in a steady pattern; his heartbeat slowed, his blood ran less swiftly, his body stilled within the swathing cloak, within
the sheltering tree. He was a whisper of breath in the night; a pair of dark eyes amid the great shadow of winter. He prayed without a sound.
I seek wisdom. I need a path. What is required of me?

And it seemed to him, after an endless time, that the
answer was there in the wash of the lake waters against the shore, and in the sigh of the wind in the pines:
Acknowledge your weakness. Learn acceptance.
Open your heart to love.

But when he asked:
Is it true? Is she my daughter?
the voice was silent. The only answer was the slow beating of his own heart.

T
HERE WAS WORRYING
news. Not long after Bridei’s return to White Hill, Carnach had sent a messenger to say that he was going home to his holdings at Thorn Bend over the winter, and was as yet uncertain when he might
come back to Caer Pridne and to his duties as the king’s chief war leader. The forces in the northern fortress being much reduced already, he had left things in the hands of his deputies for the time being. The message was of concern not for this statement, but for what it did not say. Carnach had made his bitter disappointment at Bridei’s decision quite plain when they had met at Caer Pridne.
Now, in effect, he was withdrawing his support as a result.

In the judgment of Bridei and his councillors, Carnach had not been serious about contesting the kingship of Circinn himself, although he was qualified by blood to do so, since his mother had been a woman of the royal line. But it seemed clear that, in deciding to let the opportunity pass him by this time, Bridei had lost a powerful
ally and a friend. Carnach’s lands were strategically situated on the border between Fortriu and Circinn. Six years ago, his decision to support Bridei’s bid for the kingship of Fortriu had been critical; as an ongoing ally, he was invaluable. He would make a formidable enemy. Steps must be taken to win back his trust.

As for Broichan, Bridei wondered if he had misjudged his foster father. He
missed him; he feared for him out in the wet and cold, on foot, alone and in precarious health.
On the other hand, Broichan possessed an iron discipline, a core of strength Bridei understood all too well.

It had been a shock to find the druid gone from White Hill, and to know he had lost the opportunity to break the news of his decision to Broichan before announcing it to the court. That had
filled him with misgivings. It had seemed a betrayal. Now, on the eve of the assembly at which he must make public the news of Drust’s death and his own intentions, what he wanted most of all was his foster father’s wise counsel.

Bridei had learned early that getting a man like Broichan to accept unwelcome news was a matter of presenting it in a certain way, clearly and honestly, with logical
arguments to support it. If his foster father were here now, he would explain his reasons: the desire for peace, the need to heal his wounded country after the time of war, the urge to build alliances and strengthen borders. The inner conviction that, although it was the will of the gods to see Fortriu and Circinn reunited in the ancient patterns of faith, now was not the time for it.

Bridei
sat alone in his small council chamber, pondering these things and considering the fact that leadership in time of fragile peace might be still more challenging than it was in time of war. Conflict drew folk together; it tended to make them follow willingly, provided they believed in the cause. It was when the danger was past that folk began to question. When not united against a common enemy, they
invented their own disputes and disagreements. He would have welcomed his foster father’s observations on this. He would have enjoyed debating it with Faolan.

Bridei sighed. The longer his right-hand man was away, the more he seemed to need him. Faolan could have sought out Broichan. He could have gone after Carnach and assessed the risk in that quarter. Most of all, he could have served at White
Hill as the king’s protector and sounding board. Faolan was as unlike Broichan as anyone could be, but the man had a particular wisdom
that cut through irrelevancies like a knife through soft butter. Nobody knew what lay in Faolan’s past. He never talked about it. No, that was not quite true; it seemed that, in their long and arduous journey across the north last autumn, Faolan had unburdened
himself to Ana and to Drustan, but neither would betray his confidence, and that was as it should be. Whatever the man’s history, it had made him strong. By the time Faolan returned to Fortriu in spring, Bridei judged, he’d have recovered from his broken heart—that had been a startling development—and be ready to resume his duties at White Hill once more. Meanwhile, the one who must receive Bridei’s
confidences and help him through his quandaries was Tuala.

As if in answer to his thoughts, Bridei’s wife came in now, tapping gently on the door then slipping through. Although they had known each other since he was a child and she an infant, Bridei’s heart still turned over each time he saw her afresh. Tonight Tuala was wearing a tunic the hue of violets, cut wider to accommodate the growing
child in her belly, over a skirt of gray wool and soft kidskin slippers. Her dark hair was plaited down her back, but wisps escaped around her pale face to form a soft halo, and her ribbon was half untied. Her eyes, turned on his as he came across to embrace her, were troubled.

“Oh, Bridei,” Tuala said, “you’re sitting here in the dark again, worrying. I’m so sorry. If I’d known Broichan would
react this way I would have waited to confront him with it until after the crisis was over, Drust and the election, I mean—”

“Shh,” Bridei said, putting his fingers gently against her lips then bending to give her a kiss. Although her pregnancy was well advanced now, the swell of her belly was small; she had ever been a slight girl and this infant seemed likely to take after its mother in stature,
as Derelei did. “Don’t apologize. Who among us would have predicted that Broichan would take such drastic
action? He’s not known for being impetuous. I have been sitting in the dark, as you put it, planning exactly how I will explain my decision to him when he returns.” He detached himself and moved to light a lamp from the single candle on the table beside him. “I’m wondering if the future of
the Priteni kingdoms may pale into insignificance for my foster father beside the news that he may have fathered the queen of Fortriu. I still find it hard to comprehend that it never occurred to him before.”

The lamp’s glow spread across the small chamber, making Tuala’s large eyes shine like an owl’s. “I hope he is safe,” she said soberly. “It’s so cold out there.”

They both fell silent, remembering
a past winter, one in which Broichan’s determined efforts to shut Tuala out of his foster son’s life had seen her make her own desperate journey down the glen through the snow. If he were indeed her father, he had a great deal to come to terms with.

“You know—” began Tuala, then stopped herself.

Bridei waited.

She twisted her hands together, a small frown creasing her brow, then spoke again.
“You know when I ran away from Banmerren with those two?”

She meant the boy and girl of the Good Folk, Otherworld guides who had aided her flight and come close to coaxing her away from the human world forever. Bridei could not remember that night of fear and wonder and death without a shudder. “Mm,” he said.

“You remember what I told you, how I got down from the wall by believing I was an owl?
I must have changed, the way Drustan does, but only for a moment. I must have flown. But there was no spell, no incantation, nothing. I had no awareness of using magic. I did it without thinking. Bridei, I suppose I could do that again, or something like it, if I chose to.”

He was not sure where she was heading, only that she was deeply uneasy, pacing, fidgeting in a way quite unlike her. She
had ever been his still center, his anchor and
his repose. “I imagine you could,” he said. “And I understand why you have never attempted it since.”