Haunting Warrior (34 page)

When they saw Saraid, the three went down on bended knee, and the black man touched his forehead to the ground. Behind them, Tiarnan and Eamonn stood with weapons sheathed but wariness in their eyes.

“Who are y’?” she asked the three men, her voice echoing her surprise.

“I am Leary,” said the short man, looking at her from the corner of his eye as if anticipating a signal. It occurred to her only then that they were waiting for her to give them leave. Flustered, she raised her hand.

“Please, stand,” she said.

The men did as she’d asked, but they remained stiffly formal in her presence. “I am Leary,” the short man said again. “This is Mahon Snakeface and Red Amir. We have come to serve you.”

“Me?” she exclaimed.

“And the Marked One.”

Baffled, Saraid looked to Tiarnan, who gave a slight shake of his head and shrugged.

“We have come to join with you, to fight with you against the man who would see our ways destroyed.”

“Cathán Half-Beard?” she asked warily.

Leary spat on the ground. “That would be right.”

Mahon, the man with the blue snake tattoo, looked past her. “Is that him?” he said, pointing at Ruairi. “Is that the one who defies his father?”

“How do y’ know that?” she asked.

“It is written,” Red Amir said softly. “Can you not read it yourself ?”

“Does he have the mark?” Leary asked, putting a hand over his heart.

Michael moved to Saraid’s side and nodded. “He does.”

Tiarnan and Eamonn both started at that. “What mark?” Tiarnan demanded.

“The mark of the Book of Fennore,” Leary said, eyeing Tiarnan suspiciously. “In a hundred years only one man has been marked by Fennore. Legend tells us that the man who wears this mark will bring us together and deliver us to a world beyond its power.”

“How is it that we’ve never heard that legend?” Eamonn said.

Mahon looked at him coolly. “You were born under the rule of Cathán Half-Beard. We were not.”

“But that man is Cathán’s son,” Tiarnan said sharply. “How can the Bloodletter deliver anything but death?”

“Tiarnan,” Saraid said. “He is not the Bloodletter. Not anymore.”

Tiarnan threw his hands in the air. “And what the fook does that mean? First he’s marked and now he’s another man?”

“Yes to both,” Saraid answered calmly. “I saw him change with my own eyes.”

This struck each of them silent for a moment and then they all began to talk at once.

“Quiet,” Tiarnan shouted. When the last rumbling faded, he looked at Saraid. “Explain.”

And so she did, though it was hard forming the words, describing what had been unbelievable even to she who had witnessed it. She told them how she’d felt two men in one even as she and Ruairi had spoken their vows. When she told of Stephen and his attempt to murder Ruairi, Eamonn cursed and took a few steps away. At last she came to those moments when they’d watched the Bloodletter fade to a child and disappear and Ruairi had become whole and solid beside her.

“How is this possible?” Tiarnan demanded, glaring at the prone form on the floor.

“It is not for us to know how such things happen,” Leary said. “He has been marked, and we are here to serve him.”

Tiarnan held up his hand. “He is the enemy.”

“No, Tiarnan,” Saraid said, moving to his side, feeling a surge of emotion as she spoke her next words. “He is not the enemy. Not the Bloodletter. Not anyone we know.”

“But he is still yer husband?” Tiarnan said, his tone thick with sarcasm.

Saraid’s cheeks grew hot but she lifted her chin, staring her brother in the eye. “Yes, he is still my husband.”

The words felt hot and heavy and filled with purpose she didn’t understand. To Saraid,
husband
meant home and hearth and family and future. Was Ruairi any of those things? Could he be all of them?

She looked at where he lay in the shadowed cave. Even now she wanted to be by his side.

“Your husband, yes.” Red Amir said. “This is good. This is how it should be.”

Tiarnan did not know how to react. He looked to Michael, who only shook his head. Liam stood and said, “He did fight Cathán’s men to save us.”

Eamonn spun at that. “Which only makes him a traitor.”

“A traitor to the man who tried to kill him,” Saraid said.

“Do y’ trust him, Saraid?” Tiarnan asked. His eyes were still dark with bewilderment, and Saraid’s heart broke for the pain she saw within them. Was it just yesterday that she’d thought him brash and arrogant? It would seem she was not the only one changed by the events of the last day and night.

“Yes, brother. I do trust him.”

To Michael, he said, “Will he die?” But it was Red Amir with his ebony eyes who answered.

“No. He will not die. Not today.”

The declaration sent a rush of feeling through Saraid that was negated by the doubt that came with “not today.” Certainly everyone died, but there was an implied portent to the tone and phrasing Red Amir used.

Tiarnan faced the three newcomers once more, but it was Michael who spoke, pushing forward, his gesture protective and hostile at once.

“So y’ mean to fight with us?” he said. “Against Cathán?”

As one, the three men nodded. “To the death if we must,” Red Amir said.

“To the death,” the other two echoed.

“They could be Cathán’s spies,” Eamonn said, but no one acknowledged him.

“Are there others who would fight against him?” Michael went on.

The bull-like Leary smiled. “Oh yes. They will come.”

A startled look passed between Michael and Tiarnan. At last, her oldest brother spoke. “How many?” he asked.

“Like the fish in the ocean,” Red Amir said.

“Why now?” Eamonn wanted to know. It was clear he did not believe a word of this, and his simmering anger at Tiarnan had now become a blaze directed at the entire situation. “And where have they been while Cathán has tromped over our lands and our people?”

“It was not the right time to move against him,” Mahon said, his eyes narrowed when he looked at Saraid’s second brother, the snake image more real for the cold shimmer in them. “We needed a leader.”

Saraid saw how that cut Tiarnan, but to his credit, he didn’t show it. If she were not his twin, even she might not have seen the small wince, the pain in his eyes.

“And why are y’ so sure that the Blood—that Ruairi is this leader?” Tiarnan asked.

“He is here to find the Book of Fennore. And he will, because it wishes him to find it. It wishes him to open its covers, ask for its gifts. Only then will it be appeased for that which it wants but cannot have.”

“That which it wants . . .” Tiarnan shook his head. “What is that?”

For a moment, no one answered and a chill wind whispered into the cave, toying with the tension, taunting the fine hairs at the back of Saraid’s neck. Her skin felt suddenly hot and clammy, and her stomach clenched with a feeling of foreboding so strong it weakened her knees.

Slowly, as if moving through a vat of mud, the three men turned their faces to her.

“It is said,” Mahon began, his snake-face flickering in the firelight, “that the Book of Fennore is a vessel that holds a curse—a curse that prays on the greed and corruption in men’s hearts. It draws to it those who would use it for their own gain and it takes from them a piece of their humanity until they are forever changed by the use.”

“It’s still a book—cursed or not,” Michael said.

“No. It is more than that. It’s a being.”

“A powerful being,” Leary said. “Who is trapped inside.”

Mahon nodded. “It seeks a way out, but for all of its power, it can only control that which is given freely. It must have a conduit to use and it never tires in its search for one. This is how it came to be in Cathán Half-Beard’s hands.”

Uneasy, Saraid looked back at Ruairi. He’d told her that Cathán had possessed the Book in another time, another place. That it had pulled Ruairi into the great dark, along with his father.

Leary picked up where Mahon left off. “It is said that no man can resist the call of the Book once it has decided to tempt him. It speaks to the mind, to the heart. It comes in a time of desperation, when you would give anything for its power. It promises to fulfill every dream, every wish. But first you must ask, and in doing so, you must give.”

“What does that mean?” Eamonn snapped. “Other than the whole lot of y’ are crazy. It’s a book. A thing. Not flesh. Not blood.”

“Not yet,” Red Amir said. “But this is exactly what it wants. To walk among us. To have all the power within and the freedom to go and do whatever is its will.”

“Do y’ know why Cathán thinks we have it?” Saraid asked softly, afraid of the answer.

“I do,” Red Amir said.

His pause stretched long, and Saraid began to think he wouldn’t explain. Began to wish she could call back her words, unask the question. Somewhere deep inside, her dread began to stretch and grow. Red Amir’s answer would bare its teeth and make it bite. She knew this with shivering certainty.

Red Amir watched Saraid as he spoke. “Your mother was the last to call the Book of Fennore. She was very powerful and she did what no one has done before. It is, as your brother says, a physical thing. To use it, you must touch it. How else could it take? Men have searched for it in vain, never finding it, no matter that it
wants
to be found. But your mother . . . she called it. She brought it to her by will alone.”

“And in doing that,” Saraid said, “she brought Cathán and his son.”

“Yes.”

“Why did she want this cursed thing?” Liam asked, his voice young and quavering.

Red Amir’s eyes were steady, and it felt as if he could see into Saraid’s mind, see the vision her father had shown her of the night when she was born.

He said, “She asked for her children to be saved, restored. Made whole.”

“That’s enough,” Tiarnan said, striding forward. “I will not listen to yer lies. Y’ will not sully the memory of my mother.”

Red Amir went on as if Tiarnan had not spoken. “She gave birth to three babies, but only two survived.”

“And they were horribly misshapen,” Saraid breathed, remembering the old woman who had spoken to her father, hearing again the dire warning she’d given. The woman had called the births a curse, a bad omen that should not be ignored.

Tiarnan stared at her with a look of shock, but the three strangers standing before her only nodded.

“And she used the Book to save her children,” Leary said softly.

He didn’t need to go on. Saraid knew what came next. The children were saved, but her mother had been driven to madness and eventually she took her own life. No one had ever known why the healthy, loved young mother had become so deranged, but the whispers had always connected her sickness to the night Saraid and Tiarnan were born.

“The Book of Fennore drove her to her death,” Saraid said, angry, hurt, and afraid all at once.

“That is not all,” Mahon said. “Her power became the Book’s power, and it saw a way to have everything it desired.”

The silence that followed those words was deeper than the ocean. Saraid felt them lap against the walls of the cave and wash over the barriers in her heart. She didn’t want to know anymore, but the question came to her lips and she could not stop it.

“What does it desire?”

“Do not say it,” Tiarnan said angrily. “I will not hear another word of this lunacy.”

The look Mahon Snakeface gave Tiarnan was compassionate, but the words did not console. “Then walk away from the truth, Tiarnan, son of Bain. Because the truth must be told.”

Saraid waited, knowing what was to come. Feeling the power of it, the dreadful certainty in what had yet to be spoken. Red Amir’s eyes slowly swung to her face. His pause seemed to draw tight all of the tension inside her. The sense that what he would say next came with the weight of inevitability made her knees weak.

“When your mother called the Book and brought Cathán and his son, she gave it two boons—two gifts,” Red Amir said, still looking at Saraid, though he spoke to Tiarnan. “Her immense power and also that of the one you call Bloodletter. There is a reason why he was so twisted and torn. So violent and cruel.”

The four brothers looked from one to another. Saraid could see a reluctant understanding form. The Book had touched Ruairi as a child, stolen from him the very thing that made him human.

“But Ruairi’s sister,” Saraid said, “she pulled him back.”

Leary ignored the stunned gasps from her brothers, spoke over them when they would have demanded an explanation. “This is true. And since that day it has been searching to find that power again. It has turned its eye to you, Saraid.”

“Me?” she said, her voice high and strained.

“It sees that once again two boons are in its reach. It is you who has brought Ruairi back. It is you who can deliver him.”

“I don’t know where the Book of Fennore is. How many times must I say it?”

“But Ruairi does. And he will take you with him to find it.”

“Then I won’t go.”

“There will be no choice,” Leary said gently. “No path to follow but the one that is written.”

“If what y’ say is true, then what will it do if Ruairi finds it, if he takes me to it?”

Mahon paused, considering his words before he spoke.

“The entity inside will have what it has always wanted. It will take a part of you. It will feed on your power. It will tempt you to give more.”

Saraid silently stared at Leary. Her power? The idea was ridiculous—her entire life she’d been powerless, dependent on her father and then her brother. She wasn’t like Ruairi, who could cast his thoughts out and speak to animals, who had traveled from one world to another. Saraid had no power.

And yet Colleen’s voice floated back to her.
“ You do not know what you have.”