The White Mare: The Dalraida Trilogy, Book One Page 2

  Rhiann’s legs gave out, and she sank on to the hearth-bench, her cloak in her lap. ‘I thought you would heal him when I could not. I was sure. I was so sure!’

  Linnet sighed, her grey eyes grown darker with shadows. ‘I can give one more dose of mistletoe, and we will see if his heart slows.’

  ‘Then I will go to him now … I’ll try everything …’

  ‘No.’ Linnet shook her head. ‘I will return to him. I just came to see if you were back.’

  Rhiann leaped up, the cloak falling to the earth floor. ‘I will come with you. If we both reach out to the Mother …’

  ‘No,’ Linnet said again, and rose, glancing at the bronze scales hanging from the rafter. Behind, glazed jars and baskets gleamed against the curved wall. ‘Stay here and brew more meadowsweet for me.’

  ‘You try to distract me.’ Rhiann was breathing hard.

  Linnet managed a tired smile. ‘Then you have found me out. But nevertheless, I will go. I am the senior priestess.’

  ‘But I am the Ban Cré! It is my duty to be by the King’s side!’

  ‘Brude is my brother.’

  ‘And you loved him as little as I!’ Rhiann bit her lip, for the words had flown from her heart before she could stop them. As they often did.

  Linnet put a hand on Rhiann’s cheek, and looked deep in her eyes. ‘That is true, as the Goddess knows. But let me spare you this. Soon such choices will be in my hands no longer.’

  The denial trembled on Rhiann’s lips. Part of her wanted to run away from the King’s sickbed; part yearned to fight for his life. And no, it was not for love, the Goddess forgive her. It was to stave off what was coming. When, as Linnet said, all choices would be gone.

  Eventually, in exhaustion, she gave in, for Linnet’s soothing voice and measured speech hid a backbone of iron. This was something they shared, along with their fine bones, but one of them must always back down, and this time it would be Rhiann.

  After Linnet had gone, Rhiann crept to the stool and sat before her fire, watching the throbbing of blood under the pale skin of her wrist. The same blood had run in those veins all her life. How could a single man’s death make it greater, more valuable?

  Special blood.

  The words were bitter on her tongue. For in Alba, the king’s line did not run from father to son. His female kin, his sisters and nieces, carried his blood. His heir was his nephew. But of the royal clan, which had ruled for six generations, no heirs now remained, leaving it vulnerable to those other clans who desired the kingship. And now only Rhiann could bear a male of the King’s blood, for Linnet took her vow of retreat long ago, and was past her time.

  While her uncle stayed hale, Rhiann kept at bay the dread that one day she would be forced to mate. But as the King’s death drew closer, so did her own day of reckoning. There was no heir left alive. There was only her womb.

  Her special blood.

  Linnet returned with the dusk. ‘Another draught, and still his heart skips. I dare not give him more.’ She rubbed her eyes wearily. ‘I have done all I can, daughter.’

  Rhiann pressed trembling fingers into her cheeks. ‘But surely he can fight this, aunt. He is strong – Goddess! Fighting, eating, drinking! They were his life!’

  Linnet shrugged in defeat. ‘Perhaps all that eating and fighting harmed his heart. Sometimes the soul blazes too bright for the body, and burns it from within. I’ve seen it before.’

  The birch fire snapped and sent up a spray of sparks, which drifted to ash against the thatch roof. Rhiann turned to face it, wrapping her arms around her thin chest. Did death follow her? Was she one of those unfortunates who were stalked by marsh-sprites, which sucked human life dry? Her own birth took her mother into the Otherworld; her father followed only five years later. And then … and then came that other loss, those other deaths, a year ago on the Sacred Isle …

  The force of Linnet’s gaze drew her back into the room. In the way it was between priestesses, Rhiann sensed the weight of her aunt’s concern on her skin. She knew why. She knew what Linnet saw.

  Once, Rhiann took after her mother’s beauty, so the bards sang. They shared the same hair and eyes: amber and violet to the bards, auburn and blue to Rhiann. But now her mother’s bronze mirror was buried deep in her carved trunk. Rhiann’s fingers had found the deep hollows in her own cheeks, and traced the prominent bones in wrist and neck. She did not need a mirror to tell her she no longer favoured her mother. That wide mouth would be a gash across her fine bones; the long nose a sharp prow. Linnet’s features were showing the strain of days; her own showed the strain of moons. Shame and grief could consume flesh, as all healers knew. So it was with her.

  There was a rustle of linen skirts, and then Linnet’s warm hands were smoothing back her hair. An ache sprung to Rhiann’s throat, an ache that she could not give in to, for fear the tears would never stop. She hunched her shoulders, struggling to swallow it. After a moment, Linnet sighed and dropped her hand.

  ‘There must be something we can do, aunt!’ Rhiann turned to her, fists by her sides. ‘Cold slows the blood … there will be ice on the peaks now …’

  Linnet shook her head, fingering the moonstone pendant at her throat. ‘I’ve considered everything. We must entrust him to the Goddess now, daughter. Only She knows the warp and weft of the loom.’

  Even though Linnet must know the fate that reached for Rhiann with those words, no other comfort came, as it had not since the King’s illness struck. The familiar hurt gave one great throb in Rhiann’s chest.

  It was then that they heard it. One piercing wail rose from the pinnacle of the crag; a soaring, lonely sound, plaintive as a curlew-call. It came from the King’s Hall. It was Brude’s wife. And as the rest of his women broke into their ululations, cry after cry arced down from the crest, sharp enough to pierce Rhiann’s breast.

  She met Linnet’s eyes. The King was dead.

  The hours passed in a blur of ritual wailing, and the pale, shocked faces of people crowding the King’s Hall, and the tears of his daughters wet on Rhiann’s neck. Eventually, Linnet ordered her to seek her bed. Under pale starlight she could barely put one foot in front of the other, and once in her house she warded off Brica’s attentions and crawled on to her bed pallet.

  There, face buried deep in deerskin, she sought the oblivion of sleep.

  Her mind would not rest, though. All eyes would be on her now. She bit her lip to stop herself from cursing the womb she carried. Without it, she would be no more than a man. Without it, the elders would not care who she was. If only she’d been born to a tribe in the south, in what the Roman invaders called Britannia. There, kings craved sons, and looked to their wives to breed. No one cared much about royal sisters or nieces there.

  She sighed and rolled on to her side, watching the sparks of the hearth through the wicker screen around her bedplace. If only she’d been born into a fisher family, or to farmers …

  Stop thinking, she told herself. Just sleep.

  Sleep would not bring peace, though, not on this night. As a healer, she should have known that this new grief would conjure the old; the pain that had stalked her this past year, wasting her flesh. She should have given herself a special draught to take away the visions in the night.

  But she forgot.

  And so, in the darkest hour before dawn, she began to dream. First came swirling visions of her uncle on his horse. She was hanging on his bridle, pleading with him to take her up before him. But his cold helm was over his eyes, and he kicked up his steed and raced away, the horse becoming a gull as it ran.

  She tried to follow him, for something was chasing her, bearing down on her … but her legs were caught as if in mud, and she stumbled, sobbing, in a marsh … Then there was Linnet before a fire, spinning, endlessly spinning, her wool a pool of scarlet at her feet … and the skein reached out tentacles to tangle around Rhiann’s legs …

  And then, with shocking suddenness, the confusion cleared. There was a doorway in the air, a
nd the taste of a salt breeze blew through it. It was the air of the Sacred Isle. She was back there.

  And part of her realized what lay on the other side of the door, and frantically tried to wake itself. Yet it was far too late. The memories took hold of her limbs and drew her through, eager to live again …

  … Her feet crunch on shells.

  Spray hangs thick on the shore, and through it swim red sails and sharp prows that are black against the sun. The acrid smell of smoke is on the wind.

  Sounds drift closer. A clang as sword bites sword. The hissing whine of spears. The thud of iron points in warm flesh …

  There stands her foster-father Kell, shield raised against a tide of north-men with fierce eyes. And there, his head rolls bloody in the spume, one eye cast back to its home.

  There, little brother Talen stumbles, clutching his belly as pale guts spill between his fingers, his first sword fallen on the sands. And there, a screaming woman flings herself on the boy; her foster-mother Elavra, peal of anguish cut short by burly hands around her slim throat …

  And there … right there … her gentle sister Marda is splayed beneath a grunting man, copper hair tangled in seaweed …

  Then she sees no more, dear Goddess, no more. Nothing but her own hands, pale as dead fish on the dark rocks as she scrambles away, sobbing. Run, Rhiann! Away from the iron-hot smell of blood, and the crackling of flames, away from the harsh shout behind …

  In the bed, Rhiann’s eyelids fluttered as she tried to wrench herself out of the dream. That shout! She groped for consciousness, a cry on her lips, until at last her eyes opened and she desperately blinked away sleep.

  The dazzling brightness of the dream was gone, and in its place, shifting fire-shadows on a mud wall. She couldn’t move her legs, the sheet held her down, stifling her … she would be sick. A burning rose in her gullet, like it did that day on the beach.

  The day of the raid … yes … a year ago this night …

  She clapped a hand to her mouth, gagging. The wave of nausea surged and peaked, and then subsided, until at last she lay, gasping for breath. Her family … her beloved foster-family … was torn from her heart one year ago. By day, it felt like a lifetime; in her dreams, only yesterday.

  All noble children were fostered out young, to strengthen the kin bonds, and foster-kin were therefore held dearer than blood-kin. But as Rhiann only had Linnet, they had meant even more to her. Kell and Elavra had sheltered her as she began her Sacred Isle training, and taught her how to be a royal lady as well as priestess. But the entire family had died between the rising and sinking of one sun. Just one sun.

  After a few gulps of air she eased her legs free and curled into a ball, hands in fists. Against the rush of blood in her ears, she could just hear the whisper of Linnet’s breath from the next alcove: a tiny, innocent, ordinary sound.

  So alive.

  A tear trickled into Rhiann’s ear, and she dashed it away. No, she must not do this. If Linnet heard one sob, she would stroke Rhiann’s face and hold her hands and draw out the pain into the light. And as much as Rhiann yearned to bury herself in Linnet’s arms, as she had when a child, she could not face that agony. She could never let it free.

  Cold and numb was better. So she kept her silence. And Linnet kept hers.

  It took a long time for the drumming of her heart to fade, and tortured images continued to sweep across her mind in lurid swirls of light. She pushed them away and fixed on her breathing. In, out. In, out. Think slow. Think of nothing.

  She thought of nothing, for some time. But even so, the rushing was still there. Just at the edges of awareness. She raised her head.

  Since the raid, Rhiann’s abilities to see, to receive visions and feel the spirit world, had all but deserted her. The source of her power had ebbed away, along with her family’s blood on the sands. For a year, she had stumbled blindly, dead inside.

  But was she feeling something now? Some whisper from the Otherworld to comfort her?

  The whisper around her grew to a murmur. And then there was a far-off, swelling, reedy cry, and out of nowhere a fist of wind slammed into the house. Rhiann sank back into her furs, heartsick. It was only a storm, not a vision to help her, then. Storms like this came often this season, swift and furious, sweeping in from the sea and across the marsh to break over the lone crag.

  In three heartbeats it was skirling around the rock, beating its wings on Rhiann’s roof like some great, dying bird. Keening gusts clawed madly at the thatch, until the door cover slapped and cracked and bucked on its thongs.

  From a gap in her cocoon of furs, Rhiann stared at the roof. The sky could weep for the dead King Brude of the Epidii, for her people, for the land.

  Not for her. No one would weep for her.

  Chapter 2

  Far out on the dark sea off Alba’s coast, lightning struck with a sizzling crack. Its flame lit up a single boat that foundered in the storm’s fury, and the men within who clung desperately to life.

  ‘By the balls of the Boar!’ cried Eremon mac Ferdiad, their leader. ‘Brace yourselves … now, by all the gods, now!’

  His plea was drowned in a roaring rush as another wave broke over the boat’s bow, and he pushed his feet into the ribs of the hull. At last the seething foam cleared, and Eremon shook the spray from his eyes.

  Heart in mouth, he counted the men again. Under a clouded moon he couldn’t tell who was who with any certainty. Except his foster-brother Conaire, of course, whose bulk was unmistakable. But twenty, yes, there were twenty still aboard, and the fisherman they brought to be their guide. And Eremon’s wolfhound Cù still crouched at his feet, shivering. The dog hadn’t even whimpered.

  As Eremon’s pulse slowed, he felt the now-familiar gorge rising into his throat. Not again …

  He leaned over the side and retched what was left of his guts into the heaving sea. Around him his men did the same, most not bothering to lift their heads from the oar benches. Young Rori seemed to have a bigger belly than he, despite his small size, and managed to vomit an enormous slick that just missed Eremon’s feet.

  So much for princely dignity. Eremon wiped his mouth. The stink of piss and the sight of blood he could take, for these were part of a battlefield, part of being a warrior. He could hold his drink, too. But this? This was another world entirely. For once, his hard will could not bring his body into line, no matter how he fought.

  Another wave was bearing down, and Eremon ordered the men back to bailing and rowing. He was no mariner, indeed he’d hardly set foot on a boat before. Yet common sense told him that they must keep head-on to this swell, or be lost.

  In the ridiculous way of crises, at this very moment a scrap of old lore from his father’s druid tumbled through his mind: The gods’ smiles bring the sun, the thrust of their swords a king’s death, their frowns the thunder and wind that split the sky.

  Ha! Gods!

  As the foam rushed around him, sucking at his feet, Eremon frantically shook hair back from his eyes. If the old druid was right, then he knew what he now faced, for surely only a god’s wrath could conjure this storm from a calm sea!

  Even the fisherman could barely cling to the tiller, his eyes glassy with terror. Eremon fought down a rush of guilt. The man had only ever sailed curraghs, and those little hide boats could skim lightly over such waves. This craft was a larger trading vessel: planked instead of hide hull, ten oars each side and the square-rigged sail. Not only that, but the fisherman was the most reluctant of guides, for he’d been stolen as well as the boat.

  If Eremon had known the danger they were sailing into, he might have spared the man. But the day they fled Erin in a hail of arrows had been calm and bright. It wasn’t until the second day that the sky darkened and the wind rose, and the fisherman began to mutter at the threatening bank of cloud that loomed up in the south.

  The storm front attacked with stark ferocity, the wind, waves and rain rolling together into a grizzled beast that sprang on them, gripping and shaking
the boat in its jaws. They hardly noticed as day fled into night, and they could see no more in the darkness. Their world narrowed to sound and touch and taste: wind roars and cold lash of rain; spume on their tongues; the creaking of rigging; the breaking of blisters on the oar.

  Now the star wheel must have swung well towards morning. The whole sky was heavy with cloud, yellow where the moon was sinking. Like an eye, that baleful glow seemed to Eremon, the merciless eye of a god. Was it Hawen the Great Boar, totem of his tribe? Dagda the Sky God? No, more likely it was Manannán, Lord of the Sea, protector of Erin. Maybe Manannán was angry that Eremon had abandoned his own land.

  Then just take me! he silently cried to the eye. Spare my men!

  He received no answer, no slackening of the wind or softening of the sea. The next wave hit, and a great gout of water slapped into Eremon’s mouth and filled his nose, and he snorted and spat and held tight until it set the boat free again in fickle disgust.

  Cù was cringing as low as he could, belly and chin flat, rangy legs spreadeagled as if to grip the hull. Eremon spared a moment to pat the shaggy head, and felt the dog’s tongue on his hand where a sword callous had been torn away by the damp, splintered oar. In the lull, Eremon cast a glance back to Conaire. He was rowing strongly, his thick, sinewed arms and immense back pulling with as much strength as when he was fresh two days before. True to form, Conaire was the only one not struck by the sea sickness.

  Eremon managed a grin, and although Conaire’s teeth flashed in the dimness, the feeble light that caught his eyes showed something else. With a shock, Eremon realized his foster-brother was afraid.