The Boar Stone: Book Three of the Dalriada Trilogy (27 page)

Wait for me
! she cried. Despite the snow, she was conscious of a more distant sensation of burning and dampness, and a searing pain in her throat. Her nose and eyes were clogged, and she couldn’t clearly see the outline of the person darting between the trees far ahead.

Her clumsy feet kept sinking into the snow and mud, tangling in fallen branches, and she sobbed with frustration. She felt heavy, confined, when she wanted to fly like a bird.

The figure ahead danced faster, faster, tantalizing and ethereal in the moonlight.
Wait
! Minna screamed again, her throat raw.

An answer floated back, urging her on.
No. You must come to me.

Chapter 24

M
inna woke to a freezing wind on her cheeks. She burrowed away from it into the furs in which she was swaddled.

Under her cheek, something firm rose and fell in a rhythm. Then she became conscious of a heartbeat, thumping in her ear. ‘This cursed wind is getting stronger!’ a voice rumbled from the same place.

Another answered, more faintly, ‘I don’t think we can make it by tonight after all, Cahir.’

‘But she can’t be out in this weather any longer – she’s weak as it is. We must push on.’

Vaguely, Minna recognized the sound of a horse snorting, and something large heaved beneath her. ‘Peace, boy,’ Cahir muttered.

‘If we push the horses direct into this gale, Cahir, they’ll get tired and stuck in the drifts. We will be in a worse position then.’

Minna’s throat convulsed and she coughed. She was too tightly bound and exhausted to raise her head, but grey light seeped between her eyelids.

‘Are you awake, Minna?’ Warm breath blew over her temple, and she made some faint sound of assent. It was soft there in his arms, and she relaxed against him, knowing his smell, his voice, his shape as something familiar and safe. Safe … when he had forced her dreams from her, raised his voice … that was strange …

Cahir held her tighter. ‘I don’t know if you’ll understand, but you are very ill and there was no one to help you. You were getting worse and I thought to get you back to Brónach.’ He paused. ‘And the gods take me if I’ve killed you instead.’ He raised his voice. ‘Does anyone know where we are? There must be shelter nearby.’

Another pause. ‘I can just make out the Maiden Hill there. There’s a hut we used to use for hunting, a few years back. It will be some shelter, at least.’

Cahir expelled a breath. ‘Let’s go.’

The stallion lurched, and there was no more talking. Sleet stung Minna’s cheeks. She needed to rest again … sink into sleep …

‘This time,’ Cahir muttered, shaking her, ‘you must stay awake. Don’t slip away now; it’s too cold.’

At last they halted, and she was lowered into someone else’s arms. ‘Look!’ one of the men exclaimed. ‘There is smoke on the roof!’

‘Swords out then, two each side of the door.’

Minna heard a thump on wood, and after a silence another thump, more insistently. There was a shuffle inside, and the door scraped open. Cahir grunted. ‘What, by the gods, are
you
doing here?’

Minna opened her eyes a slit. In the doorway stood Brónach, face white with shock. ‘Nephew,’ she murmured, dazed.

‘I’m your king,’ Cahir growled, ‘and you were not there when we needed you – and now I find you hiding here instead!’

‘The storm came—’

‘I have no time for this. The girl is ill, from helping those who were
your
charge. Move aside.’

Despite the crackling fire, the inside of the hut was musty, with a bitter odour. No lamps were lit, and the glow of the hearth filled the room with bloody light. Minna was carefully placed on one of the small cots against the wall, as the men found shelter for the horses. The sheets smelled of mould, but Minna was shivering so hard now her teeth were chattering. Even though her senses were dulled, as she lay there she saw the change in Brónach.

The old woman’s eyes were glassy, her unbound hair a wild tangle. She drew her woollen shawl around her shrunken chest. ‘What happened?’

Cahir shot Brónach an angry glance. ‘Many babies were sick at the Dun of the Rock, and she’s gone too long without sleep and care. She must have caught the same fever.’ When his aunt merely nodded, Cahir turned on her. ‘You should have been there yourself, lady. And instead you are here …’ his eyes took in the room, ‘hiding away while people die.’

The old woman flinched. ‘I had other duties to attend to,’ she muttered, swaying on her feet. ‘Duties in the Otherworld, reaching to the gods—’

‘Nothing more important than children! I make one demand of you, the only thing expected of you as a royal woman—’

‘The only thing left to me, you mean!’

Cahir’s eyes flashed. He towered over her, though she was tall for a woman. ‘This girl fell ill fulfilling your duty, and you will make her well.
Do you understand
?’

Brónach’s breath rattled in her chest. ‘Of course,’ she muttered, knotting her fingers in her shawl. ‘I would do no less.’

‘I would expect no less.’

While Brónach moved stiffly around the fire, the warmth of the furs sent Minna back into sleep. It was only much later she surfaced, as a bitter concoction was forced down her throat. She spluttered, and Brónach murmured, ‘Take it, girl, it will help the fever.’ The stale scent of her papery skin enveloped Minna.

Snatches of conversation filtered through her delirium. ‘What did she do for them, the children?’

‘She saved them. Had the women make tents … and steam to help them breathe.’

‘Steam?’

‘Yes. But let her sleep now.’

The voices disintegrated, and Minna was back in the wood, only this time she was closer to the shape flitting between the trees; so close she glimpsed hair beneath a hood, and saw the prints of dainty feet in the snow. A woman.

I’m coming
! she cried.
Wait
!

She slept for most of the next two days, caught between fever and exhaustion. The king took his men back to Dunadd, but when she at last roused properly from that peculiar dream state the door was open and he was back.

Outside it was no longer stormy. The afternoon was unclouded, and shafts of sun slanted ruddy on the scraps of melting snow across the threshold. A raven cawed from the oak tree in the yard.

‘I tell you it is madness.’ Cahir was speaking in a low, angry voice, just out of Minna’s sight.

‘The evening is fine, and she will be in furs—’

‘You cannot be serious!’

Minna turned her head on the pillow, and winced. Cahir and Brónach were standing before the fire. The old woman’s imperious nose was outlined by the flames. ‘It is a sacred pool of the Goddess, nephew, an old doorway to the Otherworld. The blessing of the waters on her forehead will heal her.’

‘The cold will kill her!’

‘It will not. She needs the blessing of the Mother – she will be safe, I swear it.’

Cahir hesitated, folding his arms.

‘Trust me in this, nephew. Let me bless her at the pool, and then we can move her to Dunadd. I’ve run out of herbs now, anyway.’

Cahir gazed around the room. ‘And yet there are jars and baskets everywhere, I see. What is it that you
do
here?’

Brónach stiffened. ‘Surely that is my business.’

‘Is it?’ He cocked his head. ‘It wouldn’t be spells, would it, aunt? Trying to turn me into a salamander as a pet for my beloved wife?’

Brónach drew herself up. ‘I would not betray my blood so; my work is on behalf of the people, whatever you choose to think. And there are no herbs of healing here beyond those I’ve used. It is the water that will cure her.’

‘Bah!’ Cahir held up his hands. ‘She must be well wrapped, and stay out for a few moments only. I will carry her.’

As soon as Cahir went to stable his horse, Brónach’s stillness fell from her like a discarded cloak. She sank on Minna’s bed, twisting the purple ring on her finger in agitation. ‘You seem past the worst, then. It must be youth.’

‘I … thank you …’ Minna faltered.

Brónach ignored her. ‘What you did was clever – and I never told you to do it. You know more than I thought.’ Her eyes were cold but watchful, like a snake.

Minna’s breath laboured in her tight chest. ‘It just … came to me … when I asked.’

‘It just came to you,’ Brónach repeated slowly. ‘Came from where?’

When Minna only shook her head Brónach crouched towards her, her tangled grey mane falling about her withered face. ‘
From where
?’

Minna shrank back. ‘A voice in my head … no, a picture of what to do.’ She forced herself to speak, for Brónach was the only one who might know what was happening, and why.

‘
They
speak to you?
They
help you?’ Brónach pushed herself up, pacing in swift strides to the fire and back. ‘Can it be true? A slave, not even of the blood?’ She paused, looking down at Minna. ‘Then for everyone’s sake you must indeed be touched by the Lady’s pool. It is the only thing that can help you.’

Minna’s heart leaped and then just as swiftly fell, confused at what she wanted. ‘Will it stop me hearing things and … and … dreaming things?’

Brónach turned away, one finger tapping her crossed arms. ‘Of course. The pool is where the Lady answers all questions, after all.’ She approached the shelves against the wall. ‘But first, have this draught for your chest, child. It will protect you in the cold.’

The pool had once stood in a clearing, but the crescent of dead birches around it was now overgrown with hazel scrub, feathered with catkins and tangles of ivy. A narrow path had been hacked through to the lip of a spring dammed by rocks.

Cahir placed Minna on the ground cushioned on hides, their breath misting the damp, freezing air. When he stepped back Brónach shouldered between them, resting her hand on Minna’s head. ‘Nephew, this is a woman’s place – a goddess place. You must leave here or I cannot give her the blessing.’

An impulse to keep Cahir close seized Minna, but when she tried to form words they spun away into dizziness. She held her hand up. The outline of her fingers blurred and she blinked, trying to shake off the invading stupor.
What had Brónach done to her?

The pang of fear that came then was dulled, and slipped away into the depths of the water.
The pool.
Minna’s thoughts turned sluggishly.
This pool once received offerings of gold rings, and shimmered with sacred oil and drifted with flowers …
Her fingers gripped the rocks, the only solid thing. Everything else was fluid: ground, water, sky.

Cahir was arguing with his aunt, though Minna barely heard him beyond the roaring of her blood, and she could not look away from the pool. In the late sun it was a shield of copper etched with a tracery of bare birches, and in the centre, the pale moon of her face swam through the dark cloud of her hair. It called her. She heard little else now but the crystal singing of the water.

At last Cahir left and Brónach immediately leaned over Minna. ‘Look hard into the pool of seeing then, Roman girl,’ she hissed, ‘and tell me what comes! I know there must be something, I smelled something in you all along. Hurry!’ She forced Minna’s head down, her bony chest against her back. Minna struggled as her nose hovered above the shining water. ‘Go on!’ Brónach urged. ‘If they speak to you then they can make you see as well! Ask them.
Ask them and show me
!’

Minna whimpered, trying to force her head back. But the light on the water wavered and began to suck her in, and the black wells of her reflected eyes merged into one. Instead of the sky and clouds above there was only a swirling tunnel. A door opening, and she must pass through it.
I … don’ t… I can’t
!

Brónach crushed her against the rock lip as her mind fought, holding her on the threshold. But the singing was rising, high and clear.
Come
!

She wavered there for an age, but she had nothing to lose any more, nothing to keep her here. The voice beckoned, and finally, with a silent cry of surrender, Minna let go. Then there was no longer anything but that tunnel of song, of light, pulling her down into its depths.

Chapter 25