The Dawn Stag: Book Two of the Dalriada Trilogy Read online

  The Dawn Stag is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental

  Published by Juality Ltd

  Copyright © 2012 by Juality Ltd

  All rights reserved

  Watson, Jules

  ISBN 978-0-9572714-3-2 (ebook)

  ISBN 9780752856872 (hardback) - ISBN 9780752868707 (trade paperback) - ISBN 9780752877617 (mass market paperback)

  PROLOGUE

  Linnet

  My powers of seeing were strong in my youth, but I could never have foretold the path Rhiann’s life would take in the years of the Romans in Alba.

  For the Great Goddess is a weaver, and though to us in Thisworld the patterns of our lives seem chaotic, with threads twisting and breaking, colours stopping and starting, She sees the greater design on the loom. I feel like Her now, for though I am an old woman, my eyes dimmed, my fingers gnarled, I can see Rhiann’s life unspooling before my eyes. I see it because I have memories and no longer need to rely on visions.

  And they are light and dark, just like the threads in the cloth, which together make a complete whole. See how it works: my sister’s life was taken as she birthed Rhiann – surely a great darkness. Yet I had recently lost my own child, and so Rhiann became that daughter to me, the great light of my heart, a brilliant child with a precocious will. I raised her from baby to girl, before she went to the Sacred Isle for her priestess training.

  And then at the age of eighteen, just as she was initiated, Rhiann’s fate turned suddenly, shockingly. For the Sacred Isle was raided, Rhiann’s foster-family killed – those whom she had loved as blood kin – and Rhiann’s body was violated by those raiders, and left for dead. It was not her body that died, however, but her soul.

  She limped back to Dunadd, the seat of her tribe, the Epidii, feeling abandoned by her Goddess, blaming herself for her family’s deaths, turning her back on the Sisters she so loved, with words of rage born of grief. Yet her destiny would not let her sink into numbness, the refuge of the broken-minded. Rhiann had more to fulfil than that.

  A year later, as she had barely begun to heal, her uncle the king also died, leaving Rhiann as the only bearer of her mother’s – his sister’s – royal blood. And at the very moment of his funeral, an exiled prince from the isle of Erin arrived on our shores: Eremon, son of Ferdiad.

  After betrayal by his kin, the prince sought power and influence in Alba to win back his father’s Hall – and our tribe needed a noble husband for their princess. So the chief druid Gelert offered Eremon the match with Rhiann. Yet though the old priest schemed for this union with evil in his heart, seeking to hurt Rhiann and further his own power, such dark motives only serve the Mother’s great design.

  Rhiann hated Eremon at first, because of the forced marriage. Yet respect did eventually dawn, and then friendship, and finally – so slowly! – some wary affection. And all the while things continued to evolve in the outer worlds as well as the inner. For the Mother had drawn these two together for a cause beyond themselves – to forge the warring tribes of Alba into a single people, to shield their land from the Romans who encroached from the south. Agricola, the Roman commander, had just received orders from his emperor to crush Alba under the empire’s heel.

  For two years Rhiann and Eremon travelled Alba side by side, in a partnership of minds if not bodies, and Eremon proved himself as the tribe’s war leader. And though the other Alban kings and chiefs baulked at the idea of an alliance, Rhiann and Eremon did gain the favour of the great king of the Caledonii, Calgacus the Sword. It was a strong beginning.

  And then … the dark threads surfaced once more, as an evil conspiracy created by Maelchon, king of the Orcades islands in the far north, sank Rhiann and Eremon’s boat in a storm. For Rhiann had unwittingly earned this man’s enmity long ago, when his suit for her hand was refused. He hated Eremon for possessing what he coveted.

  Amidst even that chaos, though, the Great Mother’s light still glimmered. She drew the sinking boat safely shorewards to a place Rhiann knew well, yet dreaded to return to – the Sacred Isle, the place of her greatest joy and her greatest pain; where she had found her true self and lost it again. And though Rhiann quailed to face the Sisters, whom she felt she had wronged, the Sisterhood had kept their hearts and arms open, waiting until she was ready to come home.

  And so that circle was at last joined and peace was made in Rhiann’s heart. For in the sacred Stones, on the eve of the Beltaine rite, Eremon was sent by the priestesses as the Stag to Rhiann’s Maiden. And though Rhiann was full of fear, for the first time they joined that night not just in body, but truly in soul.

  With what fierce joy they and their friends left the Isle, after the uncertainty of their arrival! They had found each other, Rhiann had rejoined the priestesses, and Eremon had forged new alliances with the Caereni and Carnonacae tribes, who proclaimed him their Stag, their war leader, by giving him the sacred tattoos.

  And yet. The weaving of Rhiann’s fate was not complete, and the years of the Romans not over: greater dangers were still to be faced, greater evils to be overcome. This I wish I had known then, but one can only watch the spinning of the Mother’s shuttle, the twisting of the wool, and wait for Her design to emerge.

  And now the rest is clear, and no more marvellous pattern of intricate, subtle hues have I ever witnessed in all my years in Thisworld, and may so not again, until the Goddess calls me home.

  BOOK ONE

  Leaf-bud, AD 81

  CHAPTER 1

  These days at sea were the most peaceful she had enjoyed in years, Rhiann realized, her cheek pillowed on the bow. It felt as if their little, open boat floated between the shining water and pale sky, its white sail a wing, suspending it in a void of blue.

  As the journey unfolded, the drowsy sea rocked her into a trance, as it gathered itself every now and then for a listless roll against the hull, only to subside into a dark mirror all around, laced with drifting weed. The breeze had stayed westerly, a sea-wind to bring them home to Dunadd, but it barely roused the water to waves, or billowed the sail that rose from the centre of the hide curragh.

  Rhiann loved this type of boat, for it sat close to the water, and yet skimmed like a gull over the swells, and when the side dipped, she could trail her hand in the cold sea, feeling its pull on her fingers. For now she lay, still aware of little beyond the tang of salt and tar, the creak of oars and the sun on her eyelids.

  ‘Beast! I’ll get you … there, hah! Cold, isn’t it!’ Caitlin’s defiant words, floating over Rhiann’s shoulder, were followed by an even louder screech, and Rhiann didn’t have to turn to guess that Conaire, who had much bigger hands, had dashed another palmful of seawater over his wife. Either Rhiann’s tansy brew had softened Caitlin’s nausea or, true to character, she was gamely ignoring it. A rumble of laughter lifted from the others at the oar benches, those of Eremon’s men who had come to the Sacred Isle with them, and the islanders who crewed the boat.

  Rhiann’s knees were numb, and she shifted on the willow ribs of the hull to ease them. As she did, she half opened her eyes. Beyond the glitter of the sun on the water, the nearest island was sliding past in a fine weave of black cliffs thronged with sea-pinks, its green hills sprinkled with yellow gorse, the white surf edging bays of pale water. At the end of one spill of rocks a seal watched their passage, its head and tail curved into a bow, its eyes as dark and liquid as the sea itself.

  ‘Hello.’ Rhiann saluted to it with one finger.

  Below the se
al’s perch the sea was being sucked between rocks in a turmoil of white foam. And as she stared at the roiling water, Rhiann made the connection, suddenly realizing what she had been sensing from afar for the past day: a deep thrumming on the edge of her hearing, resonating through the air. The whirlpool.

  The whirlpool’s spinning waters churned the narrow strait between the islands close to Dunadd, making a boundary between Thisworld and the Otherworld. And Rhiann knew, with the refinement of her priestess senses, that she was hearing it because it was a sign for her. So she did what any sensible person would do: bit her lip, and futilely clamped her eyes shut again.

  The sun prickled her forearms where she’d pushed up the sleeves of her wool dress, yet inside Rhiann had gone cold. For the whirlpool was telling her she must wake from the sea dreams in which she’d been floating. It meant that her span of days must resume, that they were nearly home and must face all that lay there. And by the Goddess, Rhiann didn’t want to.

  Instead, she wanted to hold on to the deep thrill of joy, the thread of gold wound through her now that she had returned to the fold of the Sisters, and had been filled by the Goddess light once more, in the stone circle. Now that …

  ‘Ah, my sea-sprite.’ There was a creak of the hull, as a tentative hand brushed Rhiann’s cheek. ‘And have you returned to me at last from the faery deep?’

  Now that Eremon was hers. Rhiann completed the thought and allowed herself a smile, for although everyone else had known somehow to leave her alone, Eremon hadn’t, nor had she wanted him to. ‘Just now,’ she replied, although she couldn’t stifle a sigh as she stretched, blinking her eyes fully open in the bright, leaf-bud light.

  Rhiann’s seat, a pile of leather packs and wrapped weapons, squeaked as Eremon flopped onto them. ‘And were you pining for me from the depths of your watery abode?’

  Rhiann squinted up at him from one eye, though in the glare she could only see a pale grin against a tanned face. ‘Keep spouting such words, husband, and it won’t be me in that watery abode, I can tell you.’ Yet her hand crept out and laid itself on his warm, bare foot. Just to remind her he was really there, and laughing down at her.

  ‘If I kept talking like that, I wouldn’t blame you, wife.’ Eremon grinned and hooked his arms around his knees, his green eyes catching the light off the waves. The narrow braids holding back his dark hair framed a face painted with sunburn across clear, brown skin. He had rolled his trousers up and cut the sleeves off his linen tunic, and even in this short time the sun had turned his bare arms as dark as oiled oak. ‘Poetry makes my head ache, and it has only just cleared after all those Sacred Isle feasts!’

  Rhiann rested her chin on Eremon’s knees and toyed with one of his braids. ‘I did wonder at the island chiefs …’ She cocked one eyebrow at him. ‘Going to all the trouble of proclaiming you their war leader, and then trying to kill you with ale …’

  ‘Ah! As King Stag I must be able to do everything well, apparently – including drinking.’

  ‘Well, I think your practice with Conaire stood you in good stead there.’

  A shout drew both their heads around, and they saw their friends gesticulating wildly at each other in what passed for them as conversation. Fiery Fergus was daring to provoke the much larger Conaire by twisting the end of his oar, spraying all of them with water. With another squeal, Caitlin cupped a handful from the sea and this time flung it at Fergus, as Conaire folded his huge, sunburned arms over his oar and rocked with laughter. With a long-suffering grimace, Colum wiped his dripping grey hair, even as the web of lines around his eyes crinkled.

  As they were thus occupied, Eremon slid his lean frame down the pile of packs until he was pressed against Rhiann’s knees in the bow, his broad shoulders blocking them from the view of the others. The clean lines of his face were still as hard as when Rhiann had first seen him two years ago, his slanted eyes still sharp, and yet nevertheless some tense hunger in him had softened this last week, his defences lowering. And with their faces close together Eremon smiled now, his true smile that Rhiann had rarely seen, for before the Sacred Isle one side of it was always lifted with bitterness. Being on the receiving end of its full power was still a new experience for Rhiann, and she found her breath tripping in her throat again, which was most disconcerting.

  ‘Rhiann,’ Eremon breathed, as if tasting her name on his tongue. And, more confident now, he brushed back the tendrils of hair at her nape, his thumb moving in circles over her skin.

  Somewhat shakily, Rhiann returned his smile. These last days, every time this look of secret wonder stole across Eremon’s face – the look that said I can’t believe I touch you – something fluttered at the base of Rhiann’s belly, no, lower, like warm fingers, brushing between her legs. And with it, not surprisingly, came fear.

  For ever since those raiders on the island, desire had always been mingled with fear in her. Every reach and expanse of her flesh had preserved the moment when those rough men threw her down and took her, with the blood of her family still on their hands, sparing her life, but not her soul.

  In the stone circle on the Sacred Isle – the first time she and Eremon ever lay together – the Goddess energy and the flaming stars and the saor herbs had swept Rhiann to some place of surrender. What would happen now it was just she and he alone in their marriage bed? What if the old memories crippled her again? What if she couldn’t help shrinking from him, despite her love, and he turned away?

  No. Rhiann endeavoured to take her racing thoughts in hand. Surely everything had changed now. The Goddess had at last returned to her, the connection she had always felt before the raid. Rhiann’s spirit had touched the Mother in the stone circle; she had filled with light in the old way. And Eremon was hers.

  To banish all thought, Rhiann reached out to Eremon instead, tracing one high, sharp cheekbone and then brushing his lips, fuller than those of the other Erin men. This was because Eremon had British blood, too, in his veins, giving him darker skin, a leaner build and those sea-coloured eyes.

  Eremon turned his head now to kiss her palm, and then held up the end of her braid so the sun lit it to flame, a flash of mischief crossing his features. ‘Did you know your hair is the exact colour of amber, Rhiann? The darkest amber, not the light.’

  Grateful for the distraction, Rhiann laughed. ‘Yes, husband. And my eyes are like violets, I believe – the bards have got there before you, I’m afraid.’

  Eremon ignored her, pressing her hair to his nose to inhale the scent of the honey soap in which she bathed. ‘You should always wear amber near your hair, against your throat …’

  Rhiann closed her eyes, as his fingers stroked the hollow below her ear. ‘Then you may have to sail to the northern seas yourself, my prince,’ she whispered, ‘for it is far too rare for that. Even the amber for the royal jewels was traded long ago.’

  ‘No.’ His voice also dropped. ‘Not the royal jewels. You shall have a necklace all of your own set with amber, so I can see it shine against your throat.’ He paused. ‘As a wedding gift.’

  Her eyes leaped open. ‘Wedding?’

  Eremon kissed her fingers. ‘What a terrible memory you have, priestess! Our marriage was not to the highest grade, remember, and after a year and a day of the betrothal you were required to choose whether to permanently bind with me … or not.’

  Rhiann’s confusion dissolved in a hot flush across her cheeks. ‘Oh, Goddess Mother! After all that has happened, I did forget!’

  ‘I will try not to take that as an insult.’

  Rhiann shook her head and laughed. Eremon, do you mean it, truly?’

  ‘Certainly.’ His brows knitted together in an exaggerated fashion. ‘But will you have me? Now that you know I no longer command any people, beyond these few grumpy warriors …’ He waved a vague hand over his shoulder. ‘And I have no wealth, no home… ‘

  ‘Eremon!’ She thumped his chest, none too gently, and he caught her hand there at the neck of his tunic. When Rhiann felt the thud
of his heart beneath her fingers she looked down, her cheeks flaming. ‘Besides, my home is where you are, and yours mine. You were born a prince of Erin, but you are also of my people now.’

  She glanced up to see him gazing at their entangled fingers, and the grim lines of old pain were back in his face. A few days of kisses could not erase these, even if she felt that everything inside her had shifted and settled into new curves and bends, like a river changing course.

  ‘That is true, a stór,’ Eremon murmured, ‘and because of that I fear our wedding feast may need to be a trifle hasty.’ A black-tipped gull passed over the mast, screeching as it spun. Eremon looked up and tracked it over the sky. ‘Sunseason is getting closer, and I feel sure Agricola will not have rested his soldiers while we rested on the Sacred Isle.’

  The day darkened for Rhiann as if a cloud had sailed across the sun. Without volition, her eyes drifted south, towards the distant whirlpool. There it was: the first mention in days of what waited for them at home. By unspoken agreement, each had sought to stretch out that interlude of peace on the island, knowing they weren’t like other couples, free to revel in new feelings. They were pretenders, acting as if they had no cares beyond those of lovers. Rhiann’s fingers pressed to the hollow of her throat, trying to loosen the sudden tightness. ‘What will we do?’

  Eremon was now staring east across the sea, where the Alban mainland was hidden by the long, blue islands, as if his gaze could penetrate the leagues that lay between the Epidii lands and those occupied by the Romans. ‘This new alliance with the Caereni and Carnonacae, added to that with Calgacus, makes us a force to be reckoned with, at last. I think it is time to take advantage of that, to strike a blow before the Romans do.’ His eyes came back and fixed on her face, dark with regret. ‘Soon I will have to leave my bride and take to the field.’

  ‘We knew that our partings would be frequent, cariad. Yet by the Goddess, if I’d wanted a quiet life, I would have married a cowherd, wouldn’t I?’