Challenge of the clans (19 page)

"So am I, " Finn said. "It means there's only one way left to me. I have to speak to her."

"Speak to her?" Caoilte repeated, aghast. "Have you seen the warriors he has guarding her? Why, they won't even let you get close to that upper level of the keep."

Finn gazed up speculatively toward the structure. Its seaward side rose directly at the cliffs edge, the outer wall seeming to grow directly upward from the sheer rock face beneath. In its upper level, two small windows faced the ocean. He could picture her up there, standing at one of them right now, watching the blazing sunset as they were.

Caoilte followed the young man's meditative gaze and guessed at what he was thinking. He took Finn's shoulder and pulled him around to catch his eye with a threatening look.

"See here, my lad," he said sharply, "you forget about that woman. If you make one of your rash moves here, there'll be no one to save you. Do you understand? No one!"

"I understand," Finn told him. But the strange impulse that had claimed him immediately drew his longing gaze back toward the grim stone tower.

The loose stone gave way under the pressure of his foot, crashing down the cliff face in its long fall to the

sea. Finn dropped abruptly, his weight nearly jerking him from his precarious handhold upon two other projecting bits of wall.

He tried not to panic, hanging still, then cautiously feeling about first with his left foot and then his right until he found another toehold that seemed firm.

The great trick, he reminded himself again, was not to look down. He had tried that once, and the sight of those waves crashing against the cliff base so far below had caused an unpleasant vertigo. Now he looked only at the wall before his eyes, with an occasional glance upward to gauge the distance to his goal: a small window in the top level of the keep.

This was, in any event, the only way he could get to Nuadats wife. The cliflF-side wall of the keep was considered inaccessible and went unguarded. It was also invisible to anyone within the dun. Finn had considered and planned his move for days, while the terrible impulse in him had grown steadily stronger, tightening upon his insides like a fist. Finally, when the chieftain had ridden out with a party of men on some errand of state, leaving his wife alone in her high sanctuary, the young man had decided to act.

The sea wind hauled at him as he went higher, the chill, damp sting of it driving through him. He felt very exposed here, stripped to just his linen tunic for the climb, his cloak, his weapons, and his sandals hidden in the rocks at the keep's base. But as his toes, scraped raw by the rough stone, worked their way into another small gap in the blocks, he felt very glad he'd brought no encumbrances.

The window was finally in reach. His hands gripped its stone still and he pulled himself slowly up to peep over it's edge int6 the room beyond.

He lowered himself quickly back. Not far away, the very woman he had come to see paced the floor with a restless stride.

He considered quickly. The rest of the room had been empty. She was alone. There was no reason to hesitate. He took a deep breath to overcome the violent

pounding of his heart, pulled himself up again, and climbed through the window.

Her back was to him, and his entrance made no sound, but something warned her, for she spun suddenly around, her expression startled as she saw him.

"It's all right, my lady," he said soothingly, raising a hand in a gesture of friendship. "I mean no harm to you. I only want to talk."

He had rather expected that this feeble explanation would be ignored by her and that she would run screaming for the guards. But instead, her look of alarm faded, replaced by an expression of growing wonder as she stared at him fixedly.

"What do you want?" she asked in bewilderment.

The voice was one that he knew well, one that he had known would be hers. It was the voice that had haunted his dreams.

"I know you," he said earnestly. "At least, I feel I must know you. I've heard your voice before. iVe seen your face. But that is impossible! Please listen. Some force that I don't understand has drawn me to you. If I don't discover why, I'll not have peace."

"This cannot be," she said with distress, shaking her head. "No! This is some awful dream. You cannot be . . . Demna!"

Hearing the name he had not used since leaving Sheve Bladhma was a shock to Finn.

"How did you know?" he blurted out.

A sigh welled up from deep within her and seemed to draw away her strength. Her eyes closed and she swayed forward in a faint. He swooped forward and caught her, scooping up the slender form in his arms easily. She was so frail to him! He carried her to a couch and laid her gently down, sitting beside her, watching her apprehensively. In a few moments she sighed again and the eyes fluttered open. The pale, bright eyes fixed searchingly on his.

"Oh, Demna," she said, "I have hoped so long for this. I thought it would never come. I thought that I would never see you again. "

"What do you mean?" he asked beseechingly. "Please tell me who you are."

For answer she first drew down the long plait of his hair, laying it against her own unbound flow. The fair, fine strands mingled, were lost amongst one another, became a single stream of white-gold.

"This is the symbol of our link," she said. "This is the proof of the blood of my body that flows in you. The name Demna is the one that I gave you, son of Cumhal. I am your mother."

Mogh Nuadat galloped into the yard of his fortress at the head of his company. Caoilte, crossing the yard toward the quarters of the household troops, paused as they went by then continued on. But he stopped again as he saw the Little Nut hurrying toward him fi*om the keep.

"What's wrong?" he asked, noting an anxious expression on the harper's face.

"The chieftain is back early," Cnu Deireoil replied. "It made me start to thinking. Finn was asking me about his going away only this morning. I've seen nothing of him since. Have you?"

"No," the other told him. "I was looking for him myself. It's very strange the way he disappeared. I wondered—"

And then the realization struck him. His gaze flew to the upper windows of the keep.

"My very own thoughts," the little man said. "What shall we do?"

"There's very little we can do now," Caoilte answered regretfully. For the chieftain and his guard were already moving toward the keep. "But I did warn him that there'd be no help this time!"

"You did that!" Cnu Deireoil agreed. "And very right you were too." Then, after a pause, he added, "So, how shall we go about it?"

"You see if you can delay Nuadat," Caoilte said, sighing. "I'll find some way to warn Finn."

Up in the keep, meantime, Finn was in deep conversation with his mother, unaware of his danger.

"Do you understand tha. there seemed to be no choice for me if you were to survive?" Muime was asking in an imploring way. "It has been my greatest fear that you would hate me for leaving you. You must believe that I would never have done so if there had been a way to act freely."

"Yes, Mother," he said soothingly, laying a hand upon hers. "As strange as this is to me, I think that I always knew somehow that you were here, that something of you was in me. I know who it was who came to me and sang to me those years ago. Your love came to me in that song, and I've no question of it now."

Tears of rehef and joy filled her eyes. "My son!" she said, sitting up to throw her arms about him and hug him close. "My Demna! iVe waited so long to hold you, to talk to you, to hear your voice."

"I want to know everything that's happened, Mother. All those years—"

"I know," she said. "And I want to know about your life, and how you've come to be here. There is so much to speak of

A loud sound startled them both. Finn jerked about to see a fist-sized stone rebound from the inner wall of the apartment and drop onto the floor.

He looked around for the source of the missile and saw a second sail in through a window, strike the wall, and drop down beside the first.

"What's happening?" he asked, running to the window. He was looking down from one side of the keep onto the storage sheds within the wall. Atop one now stood Caoilte, fitting a stone into the pouch of a thong sling.

With it ready for firing again, he swung his arm back for the ,throw, glanced up toward the window to set his aim, then stopped, seeing Finn. Then he began pointing in a rather emphatic way toward the front of the keep.

Finn wasted no time in shift:ing to a window on that side. He peered down and then quickly pulled

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back out of sight. Directly below him, Nuadat himself stood with his guard, listening to a tune from Cnu Deireoil.

"It is Mogh Nuadat," he told his mother. "He's come back earlier than Fd supposed."

"My husband?" she said in alarm. "But he mustn't discover you. I've kept your secret all these years. No one must find out now. You have to leave!"

"I can't just leave," he protested. "We have to talk again!"

"Yes, yes!" she urgently agreed. "I'll find some way that no one will suspect. But for now, please go, for your own sake!"

He obeyed her, leaving the way he had come in.

"Will you be safe?" she asked in concern as he slipped over the sill.

"Don't worry," he assured her. "I made it up, didn't I?" Then he was gone.

He made his way back down and across the wall, Muime watching anxiously from above until he had safely reached the cliff edge. There he found Caoilte MacRonan waiting, frowning in disapproval.

"Don't scold me, Caoilte," Finn said as the other opened his mouth. "It's not what you're thinking. It's my own mother up there."

"Your mother?" the warrior echoed in surprise. "But how?"

"I'll explain it to you later," Finn answered, retrieving his clothes and weapons from a hollow in the rocks and quickly donning them. "We'd best be away from here now!"

TTiey went back around the keep, reaching the front in time to see Mogh Nuadat wave the Little Nut away and stride into the building.

Cnu Deireoil looked afi:er him in dismay, but when Caoilte called to him and he turned to see the two, his expression turned to one of great relief

"Thank Danu!" he exclaimed. "I could only hold him for so long. He's a very strong-willed man, he is!"

"You've done well enough, " Caoilte told him. "We've managed to save our lad again. " He looked at

Finn. "And you come right along with us. YouVe got some explaining to do!"

The three went off seeking a private spot to talk. They were unaware of a searching gaze upon them. None realized that Caoilte's peculiar antics to warn Finn had attracted the notice of the captain of the household companies. That efficient and suspicious personage had followed the dark warrior, and from a vantage point along the cliff he had observed the young man's rapid descent from the high window of the keep.

He knew well enough whose apartments lay behind that opening, and he knew—like it or not—that it was his duty to carry his discovery to his chieftain.

He was certainly glad that he would not be wearing the cloak of Finn or his two friends after Nuadat knew of this. No man before who had even dared to smile upon the beautiful Muirne had ever survived.

Chapter Eighteen

REVELATION

A ship cut smoothly across the harbor under the powerftil urgings of two-score long oars. It was a slender, graceful craft with a gilded figurehead of a serpent sweeping up at its prow and rows of bright shields hung along its sides.

"Lochlanders," Muirne commented. "Off on another raid, or heading back to their frozen home."

From the end of the inner battlements she and Finn watched the ship approaching the harbor mouth. The rest of her escorting guards—always with her when

she left the keep, were waiting at a discreet distance, at her command.

"iVe seen many ships sail away from here in these past years," she said wistfully. "Often I've imagined myself sailing away with them, seeing far lands, free to go anywhere I wished."

"I hate to think of your being a prisoner here all of this time," he said.

"There was httle choice," she said, "and it was my own. I knew the sons of Moma would scour Ireland for me. This seemed the safest place to come, as it was for you. I lived always with the fear that they might yet find me and somehow discover that you were still alive!"

"It's for me you had to make that sacrifice. Mother," he said regretfully. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be!" she told him, putting her hand upon his arm. "It was something I did for my love of you and of Cumhal. There's nothing to be regretted in that. And it's not a bad life I've had here."

"Are you happy then with Mogh Nuadat? ' he asked, feeling a special need for assurance in this.

"Oh yes," she said emphatically. "He may seem a hard man, but he has been loving to me and he has kept me safe. He's asked no questions of me, knowing only that I wanted to be hidden. In return I have been a faithful wife to him, and I have learned to feel very deeply for him. So we are content."

He nodded, not certain what else he should say. It was as if this story of her life— her hardships escaping alone across Ireland so long before, her meeting with the chieftain Mogh Nuadat—^was a tale told of legendary folk. He felt a strong sense of attachment for his mother, but as strong a sense of detachment from her life.

The Lochlander ship was through the narrow gap now, onto the high sea. It raised a great square sail of red and white stripes and glided away, like a swan, across the waves. Finn and his mother turned away and started walking along the wall, back toward the waiting guards.

"I'm glad to find that you were raised well, " she

told him. "I've often wondered if, when I saw you again, you would be Hke Bodhmall: lean and hard and grim."

He smiled. "She did try to make me so. But Liath managed to save me from her a bit."

"Ah, dear Liath," she said, smihng, too, but with some sadness, as she thought of the woman. "But, if it could only have been my own hands guiding you."

"I think your spirit was there with me, too," he said in a comforting way.