Haunting Warrior (28 page)

The king stared at her long and hard, his gaze a glowing force in the darkness. It moved over the fall of her dark hair that had escaped its loose bind and now danced about her shoulders in the cool breeze. Her tattered wedding gown whispered against her ankles and fluttered in a sudden gust. Most certainly she was not dressed for a royal visitor, but he had chosen the time and place and would have to be satisfied with what he saw. He scrutinized her face, staring at each feature with a look of loss in his expression that bewildered her. It seemed that he knew her and she felt the first brush of recognition.

“Come,” the man said before she could dwell on it.

He reached out his hand and reluctantly Saraid took it. She couldn’t feel his fingers wrapped around her own, but the strange king managed to pull her forward, tromping over the undergrowth of the forest floor with little care, keeping ahead of her so that she couldn’t see his face, couldn’t place why he looked familiar. As the king led her deeper into the darkness it began to feel as if she merely skimmed the surface. She couldn’t see where they were going, and then the world tipped and it felt like they flew for a time, like birds soaring through the Otherworld. She clenched her eyes and fought back her fear.

At last the king slowed. She felt her feet touch ground and she could see again. They stood before a corridor made of twisted vines and gnarled roots that wove together in a living tunnel that beckoned them forward. She didn’t want to go in there.

The king tugged on her hand and, ducking low, he stepped into the long passage. The need to keep his head down slowed him, and Saraid was able to follow without stumbling over the uneven tangle. It seemed the tunnel went on, unending, and panic minced her fear. Were they going down, deeper into the Otherworld where she would never escape?

She pulled at his hand, trying to stop him, but he moved steadily forward, hauling her like a cantankerous goat on a rope. And then she felt fresh air and they were stepping out on the other side.

Saraid sucked in a deep breath as she looked around. Here the moon shone bright as the sun and banished the darkness with its odd radiance. The strange and eerie passage had opened onto a cove surrounded by a wall of ancient trees. They seemed to sprout from the mossy rocks that hunkered on the other side of the still pool of water. Branches grew like mangled limbs sprouting from gnarled trunks. Some kind of nut grew in clusters between the shivering leaves, but they were unfamiliar to Saraid.

Her sense that she’d crossed over into the Otherworld grew into terrifying proportions. The king watched her, his face still obscured but for the glittering gaze. Again she felt recognition in his look and remorse in his study but couldn’t fathom the source of either.

“Who are y’?” she whispered, her voice uncanny in this nowhere land.

He didn’t answer; she hadn’t really expected him to. Instead he moved to the soft bank beside the water. He knelt. Saraid did as well.

One of the trees released a nut and it plopped into the pool. In a shiny flash, an enormous fish arced from the water and caught the bobbing nut in its gaping mouth. Saraid realized she’d begun to make a small, whimpering sound deep in her throat. She clenched her teeth and silenced it.

This wasn’t like the visitations she’d had before. There’d always been a set purpose to the other visits. They came to her for one reason—to show her the death that would soon be theirs and then leave her with their terrible secret. Terrifying though that was, she’d known what to expect. But first Colleen had broken that mold, and now this king seemed determined to fashion a new one. He’d taken her beyond her boundaries of knowledge.

He set his palm against the ripples in the pool left by the jumping fish and pushed away, creating a small wave that rolled with a glow emanating from his touch. It rose as it crossed the water, spreading out like magic across the surface. The trees shuddered when the wave crashed against the mossy stones and more nuts fell, plunking into the pool like hail. Hundreds of fish bounded from below, churning the water into a tempest. The man nodded with satisfaction and then he pointed at the choppy surface and Saraid was compelled to look.

The stars and moon glinted in the water, their shimmer and sparkle seeming to suck her down, below the surface where everything was dark and murky. Then the sparkling glimmer drew in tight, creating a white reflection on which a scene gathered and began to play out. Saraid gasped as she plunged forward, no longer inside herself, no longer crouched on the soft bank of the pool. She was floating through the swirling current. She was falling through to the other side.

She came to a sudden stop that snatched the breath from her lungs. Shaken, she looked up and found the pool of water suspended over her head, giving her a warped vision of the cove above, of herself bent over and staring back.

“What have y’ done?” she asked the king, who was once again beside her.

Without answering, he stepped into a round lodge that appeared in their path. Saraid had no choice but to follow. Inside was a large circular room with a roaring fire in a brazier at its center. She felt the heat coming off it in waves, smelled the scent of roasted meat that hung heavy in the air. A man sat on a dais in a chair built for a leader, a chieftain, a king. There’d once been such a chair in the
rath
where her people had lived.

She stared at the chair, knowing suddenly that it was the same chair, the same round lodge where her people had once brought their grievances to be arbitrated by the chieftain. Now a younger version of the king standing beside her paced the floor in front of the chair. Suddenly the glimmering tendrils of recognition slammed into Saraid and she gasped, looking from the younger version of the king on his throne to the elder version at her side.

“Bain,” she whispered. This man—both of them—was her father. She’d been only eleven when he’d been murdered, and his beloved face had faded in her memory, but she knew now, it was Bain beside her.

There were others in the room. Some stood off to the side or sat at the long tables arranged in the center. The younger Bain wore a tunic of dark blue and red, more simple than the one the older king wore now, but bright in comparison to the gray and yellow tunics the others wore. It wasn’t just the colors that told her he was a man of power, it was the air about him, the presence of authority in his stance.

An old woman entered the lodge. She had long gray hair caught back in a neat braid then twisted around her head. Her skin looked thin and withered, but her eyes were bright and sharp. She moved quickly, for one so bent with age, and approached the younger king who’d turned to face her.

“Is it over?” he asked her in a low voice. “Is the babe come?”

The woman looked uncomfortable as she shook her head. “There will be more than one, Laird. I fear the worst is yet to come.”

Saraid watched the young king absorb this information. His brows drew in concern, his eyes narrowed. “More than one. Twins, is it?”

“Perhaps.”

“She will bear through it well, though?”

“Perhaps,” the woman said.

“Will she or will she not?” he demanded impatiently. “Doona speak in circles to me.”

“She is having a time with her trials, Laird Bain,” the old woman said. “More than that is not for me to know.”

Though she’d made the connection herself, hearing her father addressed so, hearing the confirmation that he was, in fact, Bain the Good, stole her breath. She stared at him in silent awe. Her father. She shifted her gaze to the older king standing silently beside her and she saw pain in his eyes. Deep, scarring pain. He said nothing.

The old woman hesitated, as if there was more she wanted to say, but then turned and left as silently and quickly as she’d come.

Saraid frowned, looking at the older king, the older version of her father. “Why do y’ show me this?” she asked, but he didn’t answer.

Time passed in a strange blur, and she didn’t know how much, how long they’d waited. They were still in the room with her young father—though he was alone now, pacing the room, pausing every few steps to look to the door. At last the old woman returned. It was plain from her drawn expression, from her shadowed eyes that she had news she didn’t want to tell.

“What has happened?” he asked, the color draining from his face.

“Yer wife has refused my help. One babe has come, but he was born cursed and died with his first breath.”

“What lies do you tell? Born cursed?”

“His arms were but stubs, his head not fully grown. He had naught but one eye and legs so cruelly twisted, never would they hold him. There was nothing to be done for the wee thing.”

Her father stared at the woman in horror. His face tightened and he nodded once, the motion short and jerky. “And my wife?”

The woman looked down, but not before Saraid could see the tears in her eyes and the fear on her face.

“There are two more coming, and she struggles to bring them. Y’ need to brace yourself for the worst.”

Beside Saraid, the king took a deep, shaking breath, and she saw there were tears in his eyes as well.

The old woman led the way out of the lodge into pouring rain. It came in a deluge that made everything blurry and dark. It drenched their clothes and turned the ground to slippery mud.

As they picked their way through, Saraid saw other structures here, some built from wood, some of stone. They fanned out from the imposing round house at the center. Even through the curtain of rain, Saraid recognized everything now. It was where she and her brothers had grown up. Where they’d lived until Cathán Half-Beard and his men had driven them away and burned it to the ground.

A blacksmith stood over his fires, sheltered by his shop, watching the old woman and his leader pass with a dark look of foreboding. Saraid recognized him, too. He’d been cut down in battle three years ago. Others came out as their chieftain walked through their settlement, unmindful of the pouring rain. One by one, Saraid let her gaze linger on their faces. All of them were dead now.

Her father moved to the door of his home, of the home where Saraid had grown up, but the old woman stopped him. “Yer wife isna there,” she said.

“And where would she be, then?” he asked, surprise raising his voice.

She nodded to the small stone
clochán
off to the side. The beehive-shaped structure had been built of stone by monks in a time no one remembered. There’d been a hermit who’d lived in the
clochán
before the eldest of their people were born, but it had been empty for years upon years and no one could recall it ever being other wise.

“Why would she choose such a place to birth our child?” Bain asked, his voice crossing from confusion to fear.

The old woman clenched her jaw and didn’t answer. Rain streamed over her face, turning her hair into a stringy gray mess. He strode purposefully to the door, but Saraid saw the hesitation, the dread that made him tighten his fists before he finally reached for the latch. It was locked.

“Oma,” he said, his voice soft and gentle. “Oma, love. Let me in.”

As his words washed over Saraid, she felt the blood drain from her face and her racing heart slow to a dull and aching thud. Oma. Saraid’s mother had been named Oma. Was it possible that this was the night when Saraid and her brother were born? But she’d never known another child had arrived dead before she and Tiarnan had come into the world.

“Oma, let me in,” her father said again.

“No, husband. You must trust me and leave me now.” The voice coming from the
clochán
was strained. Saraid lifted a shaking hand to her mouth.

“She has forbidden me to enter as well,” the old woman said, shaking her head.

Her father tried the latch again, throwing his weight at the door as he did. “Do not make me break this door down,” he warned, even as he tried.

“If you love me, Bain, you will trust me now,” Oma said. “The gods are with me and they watch over our child.”

“Our child?” he repeated. “It is born?”

“Soon,” she answered. “I beg you, leave me to it. Women have been bearing their children alone since the times of yore, it isn’t so strange. Don’t listen to that virulent tongue that wags in your ear. She is the cursed. She brings the omen. I don’t want her near me. Now, please. Leave me to do what I must.”

“It is childbirth fever,” the old woman hissed. “She doesn’t know what she says.”

Bain looked at her with narrowed eyes, his lashes spiky with rain. Saraid saw his warring emotions. His fear for his wife. “If she will not have y’, find me another,” he said. “And not a word of this to anyone or I’ll have that tongue nailed to my door. Is that understood?”

The old woman blanched and nodded, but her eyes were hard and angry. “This is not my doing,” she spat. “The gods are angry and this is their punishment.”

Bain leaned in close until his face was only inches from hers. “Silence. Yer. Tongue.”

He needed to say no more. She snapped her mouth shut and hurried away. As he watched her, his gaze drifted to the small group of people that had gathered. Saraid saw indecision flicker in his eyes and then he steeled himself, shoulders back, head high. The gusting wind blew the red of his wet mane away from his face. “There is nothing to see here,” he said. “Go about yer business.”

Like children, their faces turned in guilt, and without a word they did as he said. Yet Saraid could hear their whispers. Word of the misshapen monster that Oma had already birthed spread, and the people were frightened of the portent it surely signified. Saraid heard their whispers. Oma wasn’t one of their own, they reminded one another. She was Saracen, a slave brought to Ireland by Vikings. Bain had bought her in the market, and within months of bringing her home, she’d bewitched not only freedom from him, but marriage as well. From slave to chieftain’s wife. Who but a fool wouldn’t worry about such a thing? Sure, Oma was beautiful, but who were her people? How could Bain know what catastrophe such a stranger might bring down upon them?