Keeper Of The Light (17 page)

“That is very kind of you, but I assure you that Cath will get the best of care and no wolf will ever get near him. And how would I get to Dun Orga, then?”

She let go of the reins. “You say this is the king’s request?”

“It is.” His voice became gentler. “Do not worry, Rioghan. Beolagh and his men will not disturb you again. I showed him his place in front of everyone at the feast, did I not?”

“You made him a joke. An object of ridicule. But that is all.”

“That is all? Why, short of killing him, there is no better way to defeat a man than to humiliate him. And that I did quite well!” Donaill looked convinced.

But Rioghan only clenched her fingers beneath the cloak. “If they are truly no danger to Sion, why did you have to ride all the way out here to warn me that you would be gone?”

His face grew serious, though she noted that his, blue eyes still sparkled. He leaned down alongside his horse’s neck so that his face was nearly level with hers. “I came for just one reason,” he said.

His voice was so soft that she had to lean forward to hear him over the dripping of the rain at the entrance to her cave. “I came because I wanted to,” he said. Then he stretched out to steal a quick kiss from her lips. Sitting up straight, not giving her time to react, he rode away again across the wet and muddy clearing.

Bowing her head against the cold and steady rain, Sabha walked with some determination across the wet grounds of Cahir Cullen. She threw the ends of her blue-and-green plaid cloak over her shoulder as the wind picked up. But she would not be out in the cold for very long, for she knew exactly where to find what she was looking for.

A fire burned low in the central pit of the great round hall. Servants worked at the boards along the rear section, grinding wheat in rotary querns and cleaning watercress and clover for boiling later on. A few men sat on cushions in the straw, playing at chance or at fidchell. The women, who often gathered in the hall to work together at their weaving or spinning or sewing, had already gone back to their homes to prepare the evening meal for their families. Sabha walked quietly across the straw until she stood over one of the men at the fidchell boards, and her shadow caused him to look up.

“Sabha!” Airt scrambled to his feet, jarring the game board so that some of its gold-capped pegs fell over. “Sabha, I am so glad to see you! Come over here; come sit with me by the fire where we can talk.”

He took her by the arm and hurried her over to the hearth. With a careful but deliberate move she withdrew her arm from his grip and stood quietly beside the stone wall of the firepit, folding her hands and taking a deep breath.

“This will not take long,” she said. “I know you must be returning home soon. Coiteann will be waiting for you.”

He seemed not to have heard. “It is good to see you,” he said, looking as happy as she had ever seen him. “I have missed you. I have been—”

“There is no need to tell me what you have been doing. You have spent your days and nights with
her
,
and that is enough.”

Her husband shrugged and looked down at the straw. “It’s true, I have, but—”

“Listen to me, please. I have come here to tell you…to tell you that I forgive you.”

“You forgive me?” He looked up again, and reached for her hand.

“I do. And I still love you.” She closed her eyes as he held tight to her hand, but did not move.

“Oh, Sabha, I have never stopped loving you…never, never…” Airt moved close, and she thought he would try to kiss her. Quickly she turned her face away.

“I have come to remind you that if you wish to return to our home—and do not require me to accept another woman there—then it can be your home once again.”

He pressed her hand gently between both of his own. “You would take me back again? You are saying you want me to come home?”

“I am saying that, if you love only me, and need no other woman in your life, then I would indeed take you back into my life and into my home.”

Airt paused, and though he still smiled down at her, Sabha could see the sudden faraway look in his dark eyes…and she knew very well who was foremost in his thoughts.

Even now, he could only think of Coiteann. Even now, he was still looking for some way of convincing his wife to allow another woman in their house. And she knew he would never give up hope that this would happen.

Sabha turned away. “This choice must be yours and yours alone,” she said, walking toward the door of the hall. “Please think on this, and do not make me wait much longer.”

“I will think on it,” he called from beside the fire. “I love you, Sabha! I love you!”

Sabha hurried out into the cold gray afternoon.

The end of the day approached. With increasing anxiety Rioghan and ten men of the Sidhe made their preparations for the night to come and for the invasion it would surely bring.

It was not yet the dark of the moon, but Rioghan was certain that with Donaill away, Beolagh and his men would not hesitate to return to Sion and demand that she hand over the gold—and destroy the stone circle if she refused.

Already she and the others had hidden away all of the gold and bronze and crystal treasures stored in Sion. Rioghan was exhausted from dragging in load after load of deadwood from the forest, so that they might keep the fire going in the pit and have torches burning all through the night. Five of the Sidhe stayed with her in her cave to stack the wood and prepare grease-soaked woolen rags to make the torches, while the other five collected stones for their slings and ran them up to the top of Sion to await whoever might intrude on them now that Donaill was away. Everywhere the dogs roved back and forth, watching and waiting, caught up in the tension as all of them were.

“Kieran,” Rioghan said, ripping up the last of an old wool cloth to make rags. “I want all of you to stay atop the mound when they get here.”

“Atop the mound? Sion? But why?” He walked toward her with an armload of heavy torch sticks. “It’s the circle they want. We should wait for them in the trees.”

Rioghan shook her head. “As much as I want to save the circle, I cannot have any of you lose your lives over it. Not even that ancient stone circle is worth your life.”

“But this is not only about the stone circle being threatened. If not the circle, it will be something else.”

The other Sidhe looked up at Kieran’s words. “These men are determined to have our gold.”

“They will destroy us all to get it if they must.”

“We must not give in to them!”

Rioghan knew they were right—yet she did not want to ask them to risk their lives. She could only hope that perhaps Donaill was right, that Beolagh and his men would think better than to bother them here again. But Donaill was gone—gone on a meaningless errand to impress some other king, some other champion, some other warriors—and she and the Sidhe were left here all alone to defend themselves as best they could from the outlaw warriors of Cahir Cullen.

“Kieran, we should bring more water inside. We may have to defend this place for a long while. And perhaps one of you should run back to your homes and bring more cloaks and furs; it will be very cold tonight—”

“Too late,” said a breathless voice at the entrance to the cave.

All of them turned to look. Luath pushed back the hangings and stepped inside, staring back at them with wide but determined eyes. “They’re coming.”

Chapter Thirteen

Instantly the Sidhe inside the cave bolted outside to race up to the top of the mound. “Did you see them?” cried Rioghan, as Luath followed the others.

“I did!” he called over his shoulder. “Two groups of riders—one on the road, one on the forest path!” And he disappeared around the back of the mound, leaving Rioghan alone with her dogs at the entrance to her home.

Two groups. Two groups of riders! Beolagh must mean to surround them this time, to distract and confuse and overwhelm them. Rioghan pulled her crystal wand from its case at her wrist and stood in the fading light to await the enemy. She tried to focus on the battle to come, but foremost in her thoughts was Donaill—Donaill and her rising anger toward him.

She had asked him for his protection, not just for herself but for the Sidhe and their stone circle. Asked him for protection from his own people, and he had promised to give it to her. Yet while the threat was at its greatest—just three nights after the two of them had publicly humiliated the man who was her enemy—Donaill had ridden away to do nothing more important than prove his status to another king’s champion, leaving her and the Sidhe alone to face the threat that his own people brought them.

Her dogs turned as one to face the main road where it ended at the clearing. But before they could charge, Rioghan ordered them back. “
Madra. Madra!
”
she said in a hiss, and reluctantly the pack returned to surround her, still facing the road and growling with their hackles raised.

She held tight to Scath’s collar with her left hand and raised the crystal wand in her right, remembering the slashing swords of the men who had already taken two of her dogs. In the silence, she looked back and forth from the road to the strip of forest surrounding the stone circle.

Luath had seen two groups of riders coming. He’d said there was one on the road and one in the forest. Two groups—but the dogs looked only to the road.

The pounding hoofbeats grew closer.

And then both groups of riders burst out into the clearing and charged toward each other. The dogs erupted in a frenzy of barking and tore back and forth at Rioghan’s feet, desperate to charge the intruders but held back by their mistress’s command.

Rioghan forced the dogs to stay with her and braced herself for the attack to come, confused by what she was seeing. She had expected Beolagh’s men to come late in the night, but Sion had been invaded by two bands of marauders, and they had come so early that the western sky still glowed gray with daylight.

Had Beolagh brought more men this time, in hopes of surrounding and crushing them once and for all while Donaill was gone? Why did they not turn toward the cave and try to take the gold they had come for? Or go to the stone circle and destroy it as they’d threatened? What were they waiting for? Why did they regroup in the clearing and charge and shout at each other, instead of heading toward the cave?

Chaos reigned in the clearing, which had now become a battlefield. It became apparent that if the two groups did not charge Sion, it was because they were fighting each other. Or perhaps they were just fighting for control of their horses, which were leaping and bucking and slipping on the muddy ground in their frantic efforts to escape the rain of stones falling down on them from high atop the mound.

Rioghan saw the dark flash of iron swords in the twilight—and then she saw—and heard—something else.

One man wrestled his great black horse away from the mob and sent it galloping toward her—a man with broad shoulders and upraised sword and flying red cloak.

“Rioghan! Call off the stone throwers and go inside! Go inside the cave and be safe. We will make short work of this!” And Donaill turned and galloped off again, swinging his sword and roaring in rage at those who had dared to invade her home.

Rioghan let go of Scath’s collar and lowered her crystal wand. “Kieran,” she said to Scath, and the dog raced away. For a moment she could only stand and watch as the unexpected battle raged in her normally quiet clearing—and she realized, now, that she was watching a clash between Donaill’s ten men and Beolagh’s five—and that Beolagh, caught by surprise and overconfident to start with, was definitely getting the worst of it.

No more stones flew down from the top of the mound. As Rioghan watched, Donaill’s men teamed up to pull each of Beolagh’s from his horse and slap him down hard with the flat of an iron sword. Rioghan found herself wishing they would use something more than just the flat so that this lot would never again trouble the peace of Sion—but stopped herself from entertaining such bloodthirsty thoughts.

As Donaill had said, they must follow the laws even if others did not. But if Donaill could not or would not put a stop to this once and for all, then Rioghan—and the Sidhe—would have no choice but to find another way.

It was not long before Donaill once again had Beolagh and all his men on the ground at swordpoint while their horses galloped riderless down the road for Cahir Cullen. There had surprisingly been no deaths, but all six of the invading men were on their hands and knees, if they could struggle to get up that far, for this time Donaill and his men had left them unable to stand on their feet.

As darkness descended, Rioghan lit one of the torches she and the Sidhe had prepared and walked out to the battlefield with her dogs. She was not ashamed to feel some degree of satisfaction at the sight of Donaill’s captives, with their faces bruised and swollen, and all of them covered in mud and filth. They cowered from her dogs as she approached, blinking and squinting and trying to shield their eyes from the glare of her torch.

Donaill slid down from Cath as she came to stand beside him. “Lady Rioghan. I have again brought to their knees those who would try to trouble you, just as I promised you I would. And I say this to you now”—he pointed his sword at his captives—“if ever again these men dare set foot within this clearing, or your stone circle, or indeed come anywhere near you or your dogs or any of the Sidhe, I will have them dragged before the king as criminals. After the king’s justice they can look forward to lives as slaves…or exiles.”