Twice Upon A Time (The Celtic Legends Series) (3 page)

The
Sídh
, always full of mischief, had toyed with her by giving her foxglove and then leading her to this man. A chain of fairy foxglove would not bind a human to do her bidding. But there might be a gift in this meeting after all. This was the first man she’d ever known, besides her brother, who could hold her gaze for more than one terrified moment.

“Who are you
?” she asked, huskier than before. “What are you doing here?”

He sheathed his sword. “I
t seems neither one of us is who we claim to be.”

“That’s not an answer
.”

Suddenly, she heard a voice in the forest. She started and
looked about, peering through the trees.

“I have been away too long.
My men search for me.” He thrust out his hand, wide-palmed and strong. “We are well met, Brigid. Come with me.”

She skittered back
to the protection of an oak. She’d face one man—she wouldn’t face a whole army. “I’ll go nowhere with you, not yet.”

“
This meeting in the mists was fated.” He beckoned her with a curl of his fingers. “I command you to come with me.”

“Speak to me lik
e that and I’ll have none of you.”

The
voice in the woods called out again, joined by others, louder, closer, and she heard distinctly the name of the man they summoned.

Conor
.

She froze.
She dug her fingers into the furrowed ridges of the bark. His braid of a torque captured the first golden rays of the sun, and suddenly she knew exactly who stood before her.

“
Conor of Ulster.” She stuttered the name. “You’ve come to claim Morna for the O’Neill.”

He smiled
. “So you do know my name.”

“A
nd a curse upon it!”

She swirled and raced into the dying mists, her feet slipping over the grass. She grasped her skirts in her hands, hiking them away from her scratched and muddy legs. The thunder of her heart pounded in her ears. She waited for the
sound of his boots hitting the ground behind her, and the clench of his powerful hand on her neck.

He shouted her name, once, twice
. The possessive sound lingered in her mind long after the echo faded into silence.

***

Steel clanged against steel. Conor roared with each swing of his sword, the bulk of his frame absorbing the impact of blade against blade before he pulled back, whirled the weighty weapon over his head anew. Sweat stained the wool of his tunic and dripped off his chin, but his legs stayed as firm and immobile as century-old oaks. His barrel-chested adversary staggered under each blow.

“Are you man or child?”
Conor swung again, and his opponent’s knees buckled. “Fight, damn you.”

Blades clashed. The warrior stumbled back. Mead sloshed onto
Conor’s sleeve as he barreled through the crowd of observers to drive his opponent against the rock wall of the ring-fort. Still Conor slashed, his teeth bared. The iron of his weapon shattered beneath a blow. His opponent slipped and skidded in the mud, ducking the splinters of metal. Conor thrust the edge of his broken sword against his opponent’s pale neck.

He demanded,
“Yield to your better.”

The fallen warrior huddled against the wall, his breathing harsh. He opened his hands in defeat, and his sword clattered to the ground. The people of the Clan Morna who had paused in their work to wa
tch the sparring of their new over-king now stood silently while Conor’s men cheered and sloshed their wooden cups of ale. Conor tossed his broken weapon aside and tested his opponent’s for weight and balance. A rivulet of something hot and wet slid down his face and pooled in the corner of his mouth.

“Who will spar with me next?” He
eyed the surrounding crowd, searching among the artisans, the cattlemen in their bright green woolen cloaks, and the dark Pict slaves in their rags and chains, for the sword-bearing warriors of the Clan Morna. Even the most powerful-looking among them averted their eyes like maidens on their first foray to the Lughnasa fires.

“You’ll not find
another to fight you, Conor of Ulster.” The King of Clan Morna spoke from a stump near the entrance to his hut, flanked by two black-robed priests. His white hair blazed like snow against his purple cloak, and his blue eyes glittered more harshly than the jeweled brooch lodged at his throat. “You’ve bested three of our finest warriors. It’s plain to see why the O’Neill chose such a strong champion. It’s no wonder Connacht and Leinster have lost so much land and cattle to that clan these past years.”

“Fat, your men are, as
lazy as autumn cows.” Conor wiped the new sword on his mud-bespattered tunic, and then hefted it to the ready. “Is there not one among you who is not as weak as a woman?”

“My men
value their swords too highly to challenge you.” The old man gripped the cross hanging around his neck as Conor fixed him with his wild-eyed glare. “You have lived up to your reputation, Conor
dochloíte
. It’s a small comfort to know that my son died fighting a man as invincible as his own legend.”

“Had I known
on that day when I fought for the O’Neill that your son would be the only worthy opponent in this tribe, I’d have spared his life, just so I’d have some sport when I came to claim Morna as my own.”

The
old man’s shoulders stiffened. “My son’s blood ran with the pride of generations of chieftains. He would not have allowed you to dishonor him in such a way.”

“Then I would have told the High King to grant me the over-lordship of some other tribe. Your clan was not the only
one to fall that day to the O’Neill.” He scanned the gathered warriors of Morna, all immobile but for lowered and thundering brows. There wasn’t one of them Conor feared on the battlefield. He sneered at their striped and checkered cloaks, their dyed eyebrows, and their oiled and frizzed hair. He and his men were as safe here as they were on Tara hill, or home among their own Ulster tribes.

He shoved his sword in its scabbard. “I rule nothing but a tribe full of women, children, and
cowards.”

He snatched his cloak from the pile of stones and whirled it over his shoulders as he headed out of the enclosure. His footsteps
pounded on the wooden bridge, then drove deep imprints into the muddied earth.

Conor
marched up the hill at a pace fast enough to match the thunder of his heart. By the Club of the Dagdá, was there no one in the whole province of Connacht to give him a fight worth the time? It was plain to see why the Clan Morna did not resist when he and his Ulstermen rode over the rise three days ago to claim the overlordship due to him. All the clan’s finest warriors had died proudly, on the battlefield. All that remained were timid girls draped in the torques and scabbards of men.

A breeze topped the rise and thrust cool fingers through his hair. The wind swept away the stench of blacksmith’s fires and the fetid odor of livestock rising from
the ring-fort nestled below, near the shores of Lough Riach. He filled his lungs, and then exhaled to get the stink of other men’s fear out of his nostrils.

The whole green exp
anse of his new kingdom lay before him. Herds of plump cattle dotted the grassy valleys. Mirror-smooth lakes and trickling streams glimmered from behind clusters of apple trees. A herd of sleek, red deer grazed fearlessly near the woods. All this was conquered without a fight. All this was his. He scanned the bristling northern forest emerging from the next valley, the dense woods through which he and his men had traveled. Therein lay the true burn in his blood—therein hid his next conquest.

A woman with hair the color of burnished gold.
A woman whose chin tilted like that of a queen, and whose tongue could slice a bard’s wit into ribbons. A woman whose eyes knew all the secrets of the world. One brief encounter in the pre-dawn light, and her angular features, the reedy length of her body, the deep, husky timbre of her voice, all clung to his memory. His loins had burned for her for three days.

But she
had disappeared into the mists like some creature of the Otherworld.

A twig snapped behind him. The steel of his sword rang as he wrenched it from
its scabbard and whirled to face his pursuer. A wooden cup tumbled to the earth, spilling amber liquid into the ground.

“N
ow look what you’ve done.” Aidan, Conor’s second-in-command, grimaced at the waste. “Now there’s only one cup of heath mead, and you’ll want that, I’m sure!”

Conor
sheathed his sword. “You’ll lose your head one of these days sneaking up on me.”

“I
t’s not the sneaking that’s got you strung as tight as a lyre.”

Conor
grabbed the brimming cup of ale. He quaffed it in one gulp and thrust the empty vessel at Aidan’s chest. “That old king spread his arms for us as a whore would spread her legs. I trust him not—there’s a battle yet to come.”

“Wage it when it comes, then.” Aidan squinted into the cup,
and then tipped it upside down to gulp the remaining drops. “Here and now there’s ale a-plenty, and many a widowed Morna wench looking to share her pallet.”

“You
’ll grow soft in this place, foster-brother.”

“I’ll grow as fat as a bull, if I’ve my way of it. The old king’s free enough with his food and ale and women.”

Conor paced while the tip of his new sword traced thin furrows in the ground. “The women are probably diseased, the ale poisoned, the food rotting and wormed. You could choke to death on false kindness.”

“I don’t see you refusing the food or the ale,” Aidan remarked, “though there’s been a
powerful lot of wondering why you haven’t mounted any of the bondswomen. I lost a fine bit of cattle wagering that you’d be halfway through the tribe by now.”

“They’re
as dry as winter grass.”

“She
plagues you still, then.”

Conor
’s jaw tightened. His abstinence had not gone unnoticed, but he thought the reason for it might. He kept searching the bondswomen who served meals in the mead hall for one with red-gold hair and swirling green eyes.

“
Foster-brother, we searched for her until the sun was high.” Aidan’s cloak flapped as he threw up his arms. “We found nothing, not a thread, not a whisper of her passing—”

“She’s hiding in those woods.”

“A fairy can hide in many a place and drive a man mad with wanting.”

“She was no fairy
.” Conor seized Aidan’s flailing arm and dug his fingers into the wool. “She was made of flesh.”

“Dancing in the woods?
With no one but the
Sídh
?” Aidan gripped his wrist. “See sense, Conor. No man saw her nor heard her but you, not even the footsteps of her passing, and the ground as wet as a bog.”

Conor
frowned and let his brother go. He and Aidan had known each other since they were boys, had fought beside each other in a hundred battles, had made a thousand cattle raids, wenched and drank and sparred together. He trusted Aidan more than any other man—but in this his brother was wrong.

“She’s got you by the rod,
” Aidan said. “The people of the clan say she doesn’t exist.”

“She is of Morna—else she would not have run away when she heard my name.”
He peered down at the ring-fort, the fields extending beyond it like the spokes of a wheel, the scattering of tiny thatched huts. “They make the sign of the cross at the mention of her name. That’s proof she exists.”

“U
nless the old badger is hiding some of the women in the food caves, there’s no mortal woman here who looks like the wench you saw.” Aidan squinted at him. “If there were, I’d have found her by now. You know it’s I who can sniff out the fairest wench in any tribe—”

“If you value your head, walk a wide circle around her.”

“Listen to you threatening your own foster-brother over a woman.”  Aidan’s gaze drifted to the blood on Conor’s forehead. “Bewitched or not, I won’t fight a wounded man.”

Conor
sensed the blood running down his face, but he did not deign to touch the wound.

“Two-fingers’ width over, and that shard would have blinded you in one eye.” Aidan gr
inned, revealing a gap in his yellowed teeth beneath his drooping mustache. “The laws forbid a blind man from ruling. That would be the end of all those dreams of high kingship.”

“It
would be the last of your hopes of drinking wine in the mead hall of Tara hill, as well.”

“
Which is why I sent for a woman to tend you.” He jerked his head toward an old woman who labored her way up the slope. “I’ve a great thirst to spend my old age drinking on the hill of the high kings of all Erin. I’ve fought at your back for too long, Conor—I’ve no liking to see you defeated by a stray bit of sword . . . or by some fairy enchantment.”

Conor
’s cloak snapped behind him as he swirled away. He peered off toward the forest, willing it to bring forth the woman who haunted him both awake and asleep. He silently debated how much he should admit, how much he dared to admit.