The Dawn Stag: Book Two of the Dalriada Trilogy (86 page)

‘It’s done.’ They were the first words that Eremon had spoken since the battle, and his voice wheezed with strain. Rhiann joined him on his knees, placing her cloak on the ground and then slowly unwrapping what lay within. Then the baby was laid out there, sleeping, it seemed; the fading dusk soft and forgiving on her raw skin, outlining her perfect features in gold. Rhiann took one of Eremon’s hands, the nails now grimed with earth, and placed it on the child’s head. But Eremon drew back as if stung, and so Rhiann let him be, murmuring the ritual words of death over the small, still form.

It was only when she went to gather up the body from her cloak that Eremon’s hand shot out, trembling. ‘Don’t put her naked in the soil.’ His voice was so soft Rhiann hardly heard him, but suddenly he was stripping off his blood-stained tunic, and from a place under the left arm that was still vaguely blue he cut a long strip with his dagger. Then Eremon handed the cloth to Rhiann, and Rhiann gently wrapped the body in its new shroud, folding carefully as if it were a swaddling cloth. For a moment she sat looking down at her hands, remembering the feel of the child’s feather wings on her cheek, the dancing fire that said there was no need for the grief of separation. Only for a time, perhaps.

Slowly, Rhiann twisted off her gold priestess ring, and drawing out the baby’s hand from where it curled up under her chin, placed the ring in her tiny palm, and folded her fingers back over. ‘This is for the love I bear you,’ Rhiann murmured, ‘and for what I am in my own soul – a Goddess-daughter like you.’

Through all this Eremon made no sound, or movement, even though Rhiann could feel the trembling, fragile eggshell of control around his pain. Yet as she began to gather up the bundle once more, Eremon suddenly said, ‘Wait,’ and with a quick movement shrugged off the leather thong around his neck.

The dark boar stone gleamed in the soft light, the low sun picking out the engraving of Calgacus’s eagle. ‘She can have it,’ Eremon whispered now. ‘I don’t need it; the stone and what it meant dies with her.’ As he spoke those words, his voice darkened with something Rhiann recognized well – deep and unrelenting shame. ‘I don’t need it,’ Eremon repeated again, his hands shaking, the stone swinging on its thong. But what Rhiann heard behind the words was
I don’t deserve to wear it
.

She held the child out to him. ‘Then put it on her,
cariad
.’ The wind ruffled the tiny wisps of hair on the exposed curve of the baby’s skull, and though Eremon’s eyes widened, Rhiann gave him no chance to protest, but merely laid the child in his arms.

The small, limp body teetered, and instinct made Eremon curl his arms about his daughter for the first time. As she came to rest against his heart he let out a strangled whimper, and then his struggling breaths ceased for one, long moment. Rhiann reached for him as he crumpled over the baby, and the sounds that came from him then were those of a wounded animal. Rhiann rocked him, as he wept for the child and for Conaire and for Alba, as the light slowly died in the west.

Yet as Rhiann gazed down at her fingers buried in Eremon’s dark curls, she suddenly realized he was not yet ready to hear what she had to tell him – of the dream, of the light beyond the pain.

First Eremon had to cry his pain free, and that Rhiann understood, for she had done it herself here this day, and only then received the grace.
We will stand in a place with stars above and sand beneath
, Fola had said. Perhaps if Rhiann could just get them all to that place Fola had seen, safe and alive, perhaps then Eremon’s ears would be opened to receive her gift.

‘Rhiann,’ Eremon groped for her hand, his sobs shaking his shoulders, ‘all is dark, and I cannot remember … I cannot see what the light once was.’

In answer, Rhiann pulled him closer to her breast, holding both her loves for the first and last time together. ‘I hold the light,’ she murmured, ‘and I have it safe here for you. Come to me, love, and let me keep you warm.’

Rhiann’s tears fell on the nape of Eremon’s neck as his own fell on the child, but hers were soft and not bitter. So anointed, the baby was laid to rest for her long sleep, as the last light left the sky.

CHAPTER 79

F
or the long days that followed, it was Rhiann who walked at the head of the party, and neither Lorn nor Nectan tried to take her place, not after seeing her face when she came down from the mountain.

It was a silent trek, but not in Rhiann’s mind. For as she passed every place in her land where the spirits dwelt and the Source drew close, so she said its name in her thoughts, to mark its passing from her life:
the Place of the Wind; the Pool of Willows; the Ford of the Boar; the Moor of Fire; Roe Deer Ridge; the Headland of Arrows; the Hill of Mist; Yew Tree Rock; the Playful Water
. So she released them with every step, with sorrow as well as acceptance.

The undamming of Eremon’s own grief, however, did not mean the healing of it, and he still stumbled along like one in a dream. Rori and Fergus watched his steps as if they were their own, and Rhiann let them be, for she could see it eased their own hearts.

She herself turned back from the lead only when Caitlin needed her, and the warmth Rhiann could impart to her sister’s heart when the pain became too much to bear. In this, Rhiann was aided by Aedan, who fought to draw Caitlin from her despair as he had once fought to draw her from birth pain. Though the songs he sang into the soft light of the long evenings were slow and full of grief, the tears that he wrung from all of them were pure, and eased them so that the next morning they could rise again and go on.

At long last they came around the bare shoulders of the sacred mount Cruachan, the rushing streams that cut the wide valleys on its flanks no more than shining threads amid an immensity of rearing peaks. Slowly they picked their way along the streams until they reached the tree line once more, and stood above the long, shining Loch of the Waters, stretching south-west for all the leagues to the ancestor valley, and their own lands.

They were cold and damp and hungry, their bones showing through their flesh, their skin grimed with dirt. Yet the loch lay like a path of silver, drawing them towards some hope, and they knew now that the bleak rocks, cold and mist of the highest mountains were behind them.

‘Now we need only follow the loch to Dunadd,’ Lorn said, leaning on his spear. The forested slopes on which they had halted were still steep, knee-deep in bracken and thorny brambles that had crept from the lower ground.

‘We will not go to Dunadd,’ Rhiann replied quietly, shading her eyes from the silver flare of the loch surface. ‘If they have discovered that Eremon is alive, then he is the most wanted fugitive in the land. We cannot risk drawing the Romans to Dunadd.’

‘The people are still living in the hills,’ Lorn argued, all boldness stripped from his voice by grief. ‘We can hide there until we know what the Romans intend.’

‘No.’ Rhiann turned and smiled at him to take any sting from her words. ‘It is your realm now, Lorn, and for you to order as you wish. But an end must come for Eremon on the shores of Alba. If he is forced to keep running, and hide who he is, then his heart will truly be lost, and nothing at all will be salvaged from this battle.’

As Lorn stared at Rhiann in utter bewilderment, Nectan spoke up. ‘Come north to my lands,’ the Caereni chieftain offered.

Rhiann smiled again and placed her hand on his shoulder. ‘No, friend. Those lands are a haven for you, but not for us.’ Her face swung back to the long bank of shining water, merging with the misty haze in the west. ‘It is to Erin we must go.’

The two men were silent, and this time no one argued with her.

Without waiting for an answer, she pointed with the staff of rowan Nectan had cut for her. ‘My friends, make camp down there on the loch shore, in the shelter of those pines.’ Then she turned and gazed higher up, to where the shoulders of Cruachan shook themselves bare of trees. ‘There is a shrine somewhere not far, a little pool built long ago for travellers. I must go to it now, for I have a call to make.’

They came down towards the Bay of the Otters three days later, as the dusk was drawing in. From the last of the high hills they had seen the western horizon over the sea aflame from end to end, and all its calm waters pooling like molten gold around the dark peaks of islands.

Yet Rhiann did not let them stop there for the night, and drank in that view while her feet kept moving. The sky was clear, and there would be stars, and she knew that under starlight they would leave, for Fola had seen it.

By the time they reached the little hollow outside Eithne’s old, deserted house, just north of Crinan, the shore was steeped in twilight, the flame in the sky cooled to dark blue embers. The slight breeze stirred the dried strips of seaweed on the sagging fence, and the hissing of the waves over the shingle drifted up from where the hollow opened out on the shore.

Beneath the first pinpricks of stars, Rhiann saw immediately that her call had been answered, as the weary travellers around her crunched their way onto the pale shell beach. Eithne’s father’s fishing
curragh
was already drawn up on the sands, and by it stood three dark figures, one holding a bundle that squirmed and fussed, and one a hound that raced up the beach towards them, yelping.

With a wounded cry, Caitlin dropped her pack to the ground and ran to Eithne to sweep Gabran up in her arms, and for a moment no one moved, as she buried her sobs in her son’s hair. Gabran went quiet and still, and his soft whimper of ‘Muh?’ was the only human sound on that starlit beach beside the hiss of the restless waves.

Then Linnet and Fola were hastening to Rhiann’s side, and Fola reached her first, enfolding Rhiann in her arms. ‘I told you,’ Fola whispered, her voice trembling. ‘I told you I would see you here.’

Rhiann kissed her on the forehead. ‘And so you have, dear friend. Yet it is not the last time so.’ She smiled directly into Fola’s dark eyes. ‘Throw off your grief, because I need you more than ever.’

Fola stared wide eyed into Rhiann’s face, and something in her own features relaxed, and her hand gripped Rhiann’s fingers only once before she released her.

Around them, the others had come to life: Rori and Eithne falling into an embrace, the men dropping their weapons with a relieved sigh and soft exchange of conversation. All except Eremon, who stood like a pillar of ice, ignoring the leap of Cù at his legs until Rori pulled the dog away.

Now Rhiann reached for Linnet, waiting tall and silent behind Fola, her hood drawn up in sorrow. ‘Your voice woke me and drew me to the pool,’ Linnet whispered. ‘I heard you, and saw you as clear in my vision as I do now. I am so sorry, so sorry …’ Her voice broke, and she held Rhiann at arm’s length, her eyes straying to her distended belly, and the shudder of pain that passed through her vibrated within Rhiann’s breast, too.

‘No, aunt,’ Rhiann murmured, easing back her hood. ‘As you have seen within me before without words, so see now. For I have touched the soul of that child, and I have walked the mountain with Nerida, and I found the acceptance, and I saw what must be done. There is grief for all, but beyond it is light.’

Like Fola, Linnet met Rhiann’s eyes in the starlight and searched them, and gradually a wonder dawned over her face, melting the lines of pain and fear into something that glowed as Rhiann herself glowed inside. ‘So shall it be,’ Linnet murmured at last, and bowed her head.

The others were silent, watching them: Eithne in the curve of Rori’s arm; Caitlin tucked into Fola’s side. Rhiann stepped into the centre of the sand. ‘This then is what I dreamed,’ she said, raising her voice to them all, ‘for each of you has a part in it, if you wish.’

As her steps drew closer to him, Eremon’s head swung around, his nostrils flaring with fear. And though Rhiann spoke to those around her, it was Eremon alone whom she held with her eyes, breathing a thread between them on the chill night air so that her words might travel along it and be heard, eventually, in his heart.

‘A woman was in a valley of light,’ Rhiann began, her voice filling the space around them, ‘with all the people of Alba. And though danger swept the air above, the woman cupped the cauldron of the goddess Ceridwen, gathering the Source so that it drove back the shadows. And by her side there stood a man of Erin, a leader such as this land has never seen.’

At those words, Eremon slowly sank to his knees on the damp sand. As Aedan and Fergus started towards him, Rhiann raised a warning hand to stop them. She moved closer to Eremon again. ‘This man held a sword that brought not death, but protection and truth. And he and she had come together again, as they had in many lives, to hold the Source against the darkness. But it was no battle this man had to fight, and it was not to wield power that this woman gathered it. For there is more than one way to save a people.’

Eremon gasped, his head sunk low on his breast, as Rhiann went down on her knees before him. ‘Don’t mock me,’ he whispered fiercely, his face in his hands. ‘I failed the dream. I drew them to war, and they died, and Alba is lost.’

Rhiann shook her head, and held Eremon by the shoulders. She could feel his trembling beneath her fingers. ‘Alba is not lost,’ she said gently, ‘not while we hold the Source in our hearts. The war was part of the Mother’s loom, and each man’s thread is woven by him and Her alone: it was not your will and choice that took the warriors there, only their own. But that wasn’t what the dream was about, Eremon!’ Rhiann stroked the damp hair back from his temples, though he wouldn’t raise his head. ‘There are other ways to lead, other ways to protect, and I will tell you.’

Rhiann drew a breath which misted in the cooling air. ‘Sometimes people must lose what they love in order to make them love it more; it is the heat of the fire which forges the strength of iron! And Alba’s people will need their strength, for I saw glimpses of what will come: Alba will be fought over for generations. Yet just as the dream foretold, we are part of what saves it from one of its greatest enemies.’ She gazed around at her friends. ‘Believe and trust that the Source in my dream
can
be protected and guarded all through those dark times, for it is all of what makes Alba free and fine and beautiful: the music and stories,’ she sought out Aedan’s face, ‘the lore of growing things and raising animals, and aye, the lore of men!’ Her eyes rested for a moment on Lorn and Fergus and Rori. ‘The chants and the ways of opening and closing, blessing and healing.’ She smiled at Fola and Linnet, then at Caitlin. ‘And the shepherding of the children, so that we may give the Source into their hands when we die, and they to their children, and so it is held safe until the time when war is passed for ever! Then will Alba still stand steady when the storm is passed, the hidden treasure beneath it only sleeping!’