Keeper Of The Light (27 page)

A group of Cahir Cullen’s warriors sat outside together near the rear wall of the fortress, talking, laughing and drinking as they so often did in the evenings. On this windy, misty night, a small fire burned in the stone-lined pit and they all gathered close against the bone-chilling damp.

“I’m surprised to see you out here alone tonight, Beolagh,” said Irial. “For each of the last four nights you’ve had a different woman in your house.”

“Why, that’s because none wished to return for a second course!” said Lorcan, and all of the other warriors laughed.

Beolagh scowled briefly, but then shrugged. “I do not see any of you with so many women you can barely keep track of them. And it seems to have escaped your notice that Dowan and Flann have suddenly become quite popular, too.”

“So they have, now that you speak of it,” agreed Lorcan. “But it seems that only the same few women are dividing their time among you all. Serving girls, young and foolish.”

“Pity Coiteann is occupied, or you would be getting even less sleep.” Irial laughed.

“Coiteann!” Donaill, who’d been sitting quietly by the fire, leaped to his feet. “Do not speak ill of the woman I will marry. She is everything to me. I will not have any of you mocking her here at this fireside!” He placed his hand on the hilt of his sword and glared at the gathering of men.

“Then I apologize to you,” Irial said to his brother. “Though I admit I do not understand your choice, it is your choice to make, and none of us will interfere.”

Beolagh smiled. “Some of us are quite happy with your choice, Donaill, for it allowed us to finally gain something that should have been ours all along.”

Donaill merely stood quietly, but Lorcan raised his head, astonished. “Did you take it?”

“Take what?” Beolagh asked, fingering the frayed edge of his cloak.

“The gold. The Sidhe gold.”

“We took nothing,” Beolagh answered, grinning now. “They gave it to us!”

“Gave it to you?”

“They did! They were so impressed with the sight of us that no sooner did we ride up than they brought out their gold and bronze and crystal to us!”

“How many of the Sidhe were hurt?” asked Irial, his eyes narrowing.

“None of them. Not one! Nothing has changed for them except that their useless gold is gone from them, and given to someone who does indeed have a use for it!”

“So you do,” Irial said, nodding slowly. “Buying the favors of foolish servant girls.”

“It is ours to do with as we wish,” Beolagh said in a growl. “No one has been harmed. Not the Sidhe, not the servant girls, and certainly not you.”

“I thought my brother ordered you to leave the Sidhe and their gold alone, or else face a hearing by the king,” said Lorcan.

Beolagh grinned, and glanced at Donaill. “Your brother no longer has any interest in the Sidhe, or in the midwife who lives among them. It is a man’s privilege to change his mind, is it not? As I said, we did not harm them. We simply took what they had no need for.”

Irial and Lorcan both turned to face their brother. “This is still true for you? The Sidhe no longer have your protection, even though Beolagh and his men have taken their gold?”

Donaill only shook his head slightly. “I have no thought to protect any but the king and the people of this fortress, especially Coiteann, to whom I am bound.”

“Not even Rioghan, the healer of Sion?”

Donaill hesitated. “I have no thought for any woman but Coiteann.”

His brothers looked doubtful, but could only shake their heads. “The choice is yours,” Lorcan said. “Coiteann does not hold you at swordpoint. You are a free man and can certainly choose the woman you want, no matter what others might think of it.”

Donaill smiled faintly. “I thank you. And if all of you are agreeable”—he pulled his heavy red cloak closer around him against the cold, misting rain— “I will retire to my home. Coiteann will be there very soon.”

Beolagh laughed. “Go, Donaill. There was a time when I would have envied you, but that was before the Sidhe so kindly gave us all their gold.”

There was a silence, broken only by the dripping water from the trees beyond the wall and the snapping of the little smoky fire as the mist soaked into it. Donaill nodded to his brothers and turned to go, walking along the rear wall until he was out of sight of the men.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, it seemed he should be concerned about the Sidhe and their gold…but already the thoughts were fading. Far stronger was the image of Coiteann that was always with him, like a heavy weight against his back pushing him ever closer to her.

Suddenly he stopped. Someone was following him; he could feel it. They were following quietly, but making no effort to hide the sounds of their breathing—

He whirled around. And there behind him were two enormous dogs, two wolfhounds, one black with a gold collar and the other dark gray with a bronze collar.

They seemed familiar. They were not from Cahir Cullen, but he had seen them before. And then slowly, as though from very far away, the memory came back to him.

These two dogs were from Sion. They were two of the many that belonged to the midwife there. The healer. Rioghan, who always dressed in black. Or nearly always.

He began to recall that she was younger than he had thought, with fair, flushed skin and shining black hair and green eyes that sparkled even in the soft light of the hearthfire inside the cave where she lived.

The dogs came to him with lowered heads and wagging tails, standing close to him and pressing their noses into his hands. He stroked their great shaggy heads, his fingers running over their gold and bronze collars—and then he noticed something else around their necks.

Each of the animals had some kind of sphere hanging from a leather cord around its neck—a small golden ball, he saw, with a hole bored in each end. The surfaces were dotted with a fine pattern of tiny holes.

They were far too pretty and delicate to be used on the collars of dogs. Yet they were strangely heavy for all their delicacy, he thought as he lifted them up to look at them. And he knew for certain he had seen them before—seen them not on a pair of dogs, but on shining braids of smooth black hair.

Rioghan’s hair. The same long black hair that was knotted through each one of the delicate spheres.

The dogs broke away from him and frisked for a few steps, as though inviting him to play…or to join them in the chase. And with the feel of the fine gold spheres still on his fingers and the picture of Rioghan’s green eyes remaining in his mind, he followed the two great dogs across the dark and windy grounds…followed them toward the fortress gates.

Rioghan waited anxiously in the deep darkness of the holly grove, straining to see any sign of activity from the misty, smoke-shrouded fortress. The smoke from the torches and the mist in the air glowed with the light of the flames, leaving the place with a shining, unearthly look. But she was watching the gates most closely, hoping against hope that somehow they would open and she would see—

Donaill.

There he was, walking down the road in the direction of Sion, walking past her but not seeing her.

It seemed that the pair of golden spheres, the same ones she had worn in her hair for him on the night of the feast, had done their work. Yet she knew it had not been the spheres alone that had drawn him out. It had been the ritual she had performed over them, the darkest of any ritual that Rioghan had ever done.

For three days and three nights, the two delicate golden spheres had been buried beneath the earthen floor of the cave that was her home…buried atop the bones of the frightened hare that had died only after long agony from the broken iron blade embedded within it.

On one side of the spheres she had placed the stone that had never seen the light of day, a stone that had existed always in darkness and been pulled from the earth at the dark of the moon. On the other side of them had rested the piece of root cut violently from the tree. Sprinkled over it all were a few drops of her own blood, drawn with the same broken blade that had so painfully taken the life of the hare.

She did not like having to use such methods. But it seemed she had been right to try them, for this alone had been able to get through to Donaill. Like a shadow she stepped from the forest and stood on the grassy area of land between the holly trees and the road.

“Donaill,” she said softly, holding very still.

He stopped, looking in the direction of Scath and Cogar as they trotted over to meet her. For a long time he seemed to study her, as though he had seen her only once, long ago, and was trying to place her in his memory.

“Do you remember me?” she asked, taking a step toward him. “For I do remember you.”

“Rioghan.” He nodded slowly. “I know you. Beautiful, solitary lady…the midwife and healer who lives alone in the cave of Sion.”

She smiled, and took another step. “Would you like to see that cave again? Would you like to come with me to Sion, and stand once more atop the mound and see the beauty of the land beneath the mist and the night?”

He seemed to consider this for a time; then he began to smile. “I would like that,” he said. “I would like to see Sion again.”

“Then come with me now. We will walk down the road together,” she said, reaching for his arm. “It is waiting for you; it is—”

“
Donaill!
”

The cry tore through the quiet night. Rioghan jumped and whirled around, even as Donaill slowly turned and the dogs set up a fierce barking just in front of him. “Donaill! Where are you going?”

Coiteann ran down the road just as the gate closed behind her. She was breathless and agitated—angry, though she tried not to show it. “Donaill, I was so worried about you! I searched everywhere for you! Why have you come out here?”

Rioghan’s heart went cold as Donaill walked away from her, pulling his arm away from her hand as he moved. He walked straight to Coiteann, steadily and methodically, as if his feet knew what to do even if the rest of him did not.

“You must come home at once!” scolded Coiteann, taking tight hold of his arm. “It is late. It is dark. It is raining, and it is cold. And there are all sorts of creatures prowling about.” She cast a murderous glare at Rioghan and her dogs, and then turned back to Donaill.

“Come home with me, my lord,” she said sweetly, stroking his arm as they walked. “Come to our home, where a good fire and hot wine await you, where we can hold each other close in the warm furs and—”

“Donaill.”

It was only a single word, but it carried all of Rioghan’s hopes…and as her heart threatened to race right out of her chest, he stopped, and then turned around.

Coiteann clung to him, trying to pull him back toward the fortress, but he ignored her and began walking toward Rioghan. The blond woman dragging at his arm might as well have been a fly trying to stop a magnificent bull.

“Come with me to Sion, and leave this evil that you have found,” whispered Rioghan. “Come with me; come with me now—”

“Stop! Wait!” cried Coiteann, but Donaill kept walking steadily toward Rioghan.

Coiteann ran to him and slapped her hand down hard on his back, holding it there, pressing it hard against him. He stopped instantly, staring straight ahead.

Rioghan knew that the woman was pressing the cursed amulet hard into his back with all the strength and anger she possessed, forcing its dark power to envelop him even more strongly. “Now, Donaill,” she said, through clenched teeth. “Now you will turn and go back with me.”

Slowly—very slowly—he began to turn to go with her.

Quickly Rioghan reached down to the two dogs at her side. She caught hold of the cords holding the golden hair ornaments, the ones that she had hoped Donaill would recognize, and pulled them over the dogs’ heads. Both of the ornaments felt heavier than they should, weighed down as they were with the ritual of binding that she had performed on them.

Thinking fast, she pulled off her own black leather belt, slipped it through the loops of cord holding each golden sphere, and retied the belt. Then, before Coiteann could force him around, Rioghan ran to Donaill and threw her belt over his head so that the two golden spheres hung down over his heart.

Coiteann grabbed at the belt. She intended to pull it off, but Donaill extended his arm and swept her aside. He began to walk toward Rioghan, and she could see something like clarity, like recognition, beginning to return to his eyes.

So her use of the dark power was justified after all! The two gleaming spheres, these delicate ornaments that she had worn in her own hair, would never have had the power to overcome the
luaidhe
stone on their own. But with the touches of darkness, of heaviness, of binding, that she had placed upon them, Donaill had found the strength to turn away from Coiteann and walk toward Rioghan.

But the blond woman followed him, closing in behind him and reaching to the front of his belt. She drew his own jet-handled dagger from its sheath, and as she pulled it she allowed the sharp iron blade to gash his arm.

Donaill hardly seemed to notice the bite of the dagger, but Rioghan flinched in horror at the sight of the dark, wet stain that suddenly shone on the blade. Coiteann held it up, glaring at Rioghan once again, and Rioghan saw her throw Donaill’s red cloak aside. Then came the ripping of woolen fabric as the blade tore his tunic wide open and exposed the cursed
luaidhe
stone.