The Boar Stone: Book Three of the Dalriada Trilogy (41 page)

His song branded on his throat.

Calgacus’s death. For a moment Minna was transported back to the Water of Seeing.

‘I am not supposed to know,’ Darine whispered, conspiratorially. ‘The priests keep it to themselves. But I have lived long, so long that when I was small the memory of the battle was sharper. I heard the druids then, as I crawled into the groves at night when they whispered their secrets. I gleaned many things that women weren’t supposed to know. Slowly, I gathered them and kept them here.’ She tapped her head.

Minna blinked the steam away. ‘Then you must know much about plants. About … voices. And visions.’

Darine rocked, nodding. ‘I am the oldest, child, the last to remember anything. The plants have voices, too, did you know? They sing to me of their life, snatches of chants, things to hum over the fevered babe, the dying man.’ She sighed. ‘But it all leaks away from me year by year, and soon I will lie down and let the long dark take me.’

The cup burned Minna’s fingers. The knowledge could not just
leach away
into nothing. ‘But … but there were shepherds of the Source,’ she murmured, the knowing flooding her. ‘There were …
women …
who held and nurtured it, sang it alive, sang it to sleep through the long dark. Many women together, chanting, holding the vision as one—’

Darine cried out and clamped her hands over her ears, scuttling back. ‘How can you speak of this pain? Now they cry out to me. They fill my head and make it burn.’

Minna stared, alarmed, until the wise-woman raised her face, tears welling in her eyes. ‘You make me ache for them,‘ she whispered.

Minna placed the cup down. ‘Ache for who?’ But she knew.

The old woman’s breath laboured. ‘The Sisters. The priestesses. The Order of the Goddess that once was.’

Sister
, the whisper came again.

‘Darine, what happened to them? Where are they?’ Her words spilled out, sharp with grief. ‘
Why do they speak to me
?’

‘They … they reach to
you
?’

She nodded, and Darine stared into the fire, rocking. ‘It is … hard to speak. I … cannot … it hurts too much … I cannot speak.’

Minna shuffled closer on her knees. ‘One who walks in the Otherworld used to come to me in vision,’ she said urgently. ‘But now she has fallen silent, and I don’t know everything she was trying to tell me. I need to reach her.’

The room was still, as Darine curled up like a mouse in the nest of her white hair. ‘There used to be a way,’ the old woman forced out eventually, ‘to journey among the visions, to step into the Otherworld at will.’

‘What way?’ She was leaning forward.

Darine shook her head. ‘I know only a memory of long ago, my grandmother.
Saor
, it is called. It frees the spirit.’

Saor
. The word rang through Minna. ‘But
what
is it?’

Darine gasped in pain, her fingers pressed over her ears. ‘No … it hurts …’

Minna firmly took both her elbows and drew them down, held her forearms. Their eyes locked. ‘You are not alone any more.’ That grief was terrible to see, and almost instinctively the healer in Minna surrendered and allowed Darine’s pain to flow through her own heart, to ease her.
A grief of ages. A mountain of loneliness bearing down, squeezing the life out of old flesh, the fire out of a weary soul. An unbearable loss that should have been shared by many, not one alone.

Instantly, Minna found Darine’s unshed tears flowing down her own face, and the old woman stared in wonder, touching them with her finger. Her wrinkled lips moved, her throat at last released. ‘The herbs, they have plant-souls …
Saor
is six mingled … just the right amounts … They help the spirit and body part, so that the spirit can journey far.’

Minna could hardly breathe, tasting the tears on her lips. She sat back on her heels, releasing Darine.

‘But
saor
is very dangerous,’ Darine whispered, her eyes huge and glazed with memory. ‘There must be skill, training, to ensure the silver cord of the spirit does not break and the body die. You must breathe life into the cord … breathe, and never let it break.’

She was absorbing this when the old woman suddenly twisted, pointing up at the roof. ‘There, the one with the little blue flowers, like teardrops, and the woody stem there, with no flowers, the leaves grey and shiny.’

Minna swiped at her cheek and staggered up, touching each plant as the wise-woman named it. She had seen many of these at Dunadd, yet never felt they were anything but medicinal.
Freedom
, something sang in her veins, sweeping away grief.
Saor.

‘And the one with the leaves like a cow’s ear, but not all of it … just the seeds … and … and …’ Darine’s voice faded. ‘There is more, but I don’t know them.’ She slapped her cheek in frustration. ‘I don’t know them all!’

‘It doesn’t matter; it is a start.’ Minna pressed the leaves to her nose, and folded each one in the hide pouch at her waist. Three, of six. The doorway beckoned. She knelt before the wise-woman. ‘You have done me the greatest honour. I didn’t know there was such a thing as
saor
, but now—’ She stopped herself.
Now I remember.

Darine’s wrinkled cheeks were wet. She dragged herself up and, moving stiffly now, traced the branches of the herbs on the rafters, lingering over the designs carved in the posts. Minna’s gaze followed her fingers and paused. There in the wood was the same design as on Rhiann’s priestess ring: the three faces of the Mother.

‘If your heart knows, then it is only fitting, they are telling me, that you also know the story of the Sisters.’ She glanced at Minna, her eyes bleak. ‘For it is not only the druids who have their secrets. There is another story. Many may have told it once, but under kings like Gede women were no longer welcome as holders of the Source, and gradually the knowledge was lost. Almost lost.’ Her voice was so faint Minna strained to hear her. ‘My great-grandmother knew, and her daughter, my grandmother. And me.’ She turned away. ‘I will tell you how the Sisters met their end.’

Chapter 38

M
inna walked back along the darkening beach at dusk, all feeling scoured from her. Darine’s tale had burned her heart to cold ash.

Three hundred years ago, the elders of the priestess order lived together on an isle in the western sea, the Attacotti homeland. The Sisters warded the Source that ran through the earth; the male druids the power that fired the sun and stars. Earth was for women, because of its tides and cycles. Sun and sky were for men, for the rain that seeded the soil, the sun that energized all growth. That was balance, but it was gone now.

The Roman general Agricola grew afraid of the reverence in which the Sisters were held by the Alban people. He resolved to attack the island and kill them.

But the elder sisters had foreseen the Roman attack. They knew that only a great outrage would bring together all the warring tribes of Alba in alliance, and so they stood with compassion in their hearts and let the Romans destroy them, because that sacrifice would lead the tribes to become one. All came to pass, and because of that slaughter, Eremon and Calgacus were able to bring the tribes together at the Hill of a Thousand Spears.

But the Albans were defeated, Minna had cried.

Even that was foreseen by the Sisters, Darine replied. They knew that Roman strength and greed would need to come to its zenith and be on the wane for them to be banished, and it was the gradual strengthening of the tribes into one people over many centuries that mattered most, not one battle. After all, she said, it is many threads that make a cloth; many lives that make a fate for a nation. But the story of the Sisters and the Source was not over yet.

They knew their order in its ancient form would not long remain intact. It would be crushed by the great battle, and lost during the dark years afterwards. The priestesses would die out, and, in time, women would forget what they held buried in their souls.

Here Darine’s voice dropped to a whisper.

So the wisest ones took all the knowledge of the Source – the memories of other lives, the rites and songs, the knowledge of plants and of people’s hearts, the ways to journey between worlds, the skills of vision and prophecy built up since the dawn of time – and they kept it safe in the only vessel that would survive time itself.

Darine did not know what that was. It could be a secret pool that held the images of times gone by. It could be an object made of gold or crystal. It could be an old story remembered by some distant bard. Was Minna supposed to find that, too? It was too daunting to contemplate.

‘So,’ Darine finished, ‘the Alban tribes became the Pictish nation. The land made way also for the Dalriadans who came from Erin, linked by blood to Dunadd. Now the warriors of Alba are strong again, but riven by enmity and suspicion. Athough they do not know it, they are waiting for the one to unite them once more, take them forth again with a vision of the gods on their banners. And this time, the Romans will be vanquished from Alba, and Alba will be freed.’

Waiting for someone.
The sea-wind brushed over Minna’s cold cheek, and she shivered as she ploughed through the sand, pulling her cloak closed.

Cahir.

The dun was flaming with torches. As Minna passed the king’s hall she saw servants dashing back and forth with bowls and baskets, harried.

Nessa was waiting for her in the women’s house. ‘Hurry!’ she cried, when Minna came in with the sea-wind in her hair, her eyes far away. ‘Gede has called a feast and we are meant to attend him.’

‘Why?’ She whirled to Nessa. ‘Is there news about the alliance?’

‘I have no news. They tell me nothing besides the fact we have to attend Gede. And we are late!’

Making no mention of Darine, Nessa made Minna sit so the serving maids could brush her hair, threading gold braid through the black plaits and pinning it around her head. They dressed her in another of Nessa’s robes, deep-blue wool bound by a gilded leather belt, and both she and the queen hastened to the hall.

Inside, Minna barely heard King Gede murmur a rebuke to his wife, for she could not look away from Cahir standing at his side.

Someone had lent him clothes fit for a king. His green tunic was ornately embroidered around the hem and sleeves, elegantly framing his broad shoulders. His trousers were of close-fitting leather, outlining his long thighs, and his dark hair was gleaming, braided at the sides to reveal his sun-browned, lean face that bore a new strength, a certainty. Most of all, when his golden eyes met Minna’s they were euphoric.

Nessa scuttled behind Gede’s chair, drawing Minna to the women’s side of the hall. They sat on a bench half in the shadows. Ale cups were being filled by maids hurrying about with stone jugs, and others bore platters of oysters, mussels, fried fish and roast pig from the beast spitted over the fire. Fat dripped from its flanks, sizzling in the flames.

Ruarc, Ardal and Mellan were with a group of young Picts to one side, dicing and drinking, with some fierce boasting thrown in, which neither side could understand. Donal, Gobán and Fergal kept to themselves, watching Cahir’s back with sharp eyes.

At last King Gede gestured for silence. ‘By the glory of Taranis Thunder God and Lugh of the Sun, we drink to an alliance made this day between the people of Gede son of Urp and the people of Cahir son of Conor.’

Cahir’s eyes burned into Minna’s. Gede had agreed.

‘The Dalriadan king bears a token of an old pledge between our peoples. Now we pledge to join again, to set aside old enmities to attack the enemy of all Alba.’ He paused. ‘And that enemy is Rome!’ An enormous drunken cheer went up.

The noise assaulted Minna’s senses. She gripped the bench, and in her mind another vast army marched over the land, spear-tips waving, feet drumming.
Mother, pray we do the right thing, that I have seen true.
But when she focused on Cahir she could not regret anything, for through this he had found himself. And found her.

‘Our alliance will draw together the four peoples of the north,’ Gede was saying. ‘Pict, Dalriadan in Alba and Erin, Attacotti and Saxon. Such a force can be forged into a blade of iron that pierces the heart of Rome!’

More cheering and foot-stamping ensued among the young, drunken Picts, though others glowered, the big man who always guarded Gede one of them. The Pict king shouted a toast, his smile a savage baring of teeth, and through the noise, Minna tried to send tendrils of her new sight towards him. But as she probed, searching for cracks in his mask, her seeing suddenly hit a wall; inside, Gede was an impenetrable tangle of feelings and thoughts. He glanced around the room, his eyes passing over Minna like a shadow, then moving on.

Cahir replied to the toast, and before their warriors the two kings joined hands once more. Then all the Picts were on their feet, men stumbling for more ale, the bard tuning his harp. With a timid smile Nessa told Minna she must go to her son, and Minna watched her retreat, concerned at her paleness. She had no time to think, though, for Cahir was there before her, holding out his hand.