Tiny blue-winged creatures fluttered in the curling smoke around Bron. He batted at them with annoyance. She squinted, trying to determine whether they be fairy folk or butterflies. ’Twas the scent he’d dabbed on himself which drew them. If they were fairy folk, he must share his bounty.
He looked up at her. His expression was pleasant and warming. So warming, that it dispersed the threat of a storm gathering in the dark clouded sky above them and the chill of the cold water beading upon her bare skin. She bent to pick up her chemise, slipped it over her head, and then laced herself into her starflower embroidered over gown.
“We have guests for dinner,” he said. Her head snapped around quickly under his sea green gaze. He was canny about everything she realized…maybe even about her. His eyes left hers and followed the opalescent shimmer of the blue-winged fairy folk.
A feminine voice sounded out of nowhere, “Mayhap we should invite them to help themselves.” Eithne looked around with puzzlement, first to the winged fairy folk, then over her shoulder to the surrounding woods.
Staring straight at her, Bron replied, “Do you think it? What if they make gobblers of themselves? They’ll naught be enough for you and me.”
Eithne glowered. Who was he talking to?
The mysterious voice came again, “I’ll not want a fairy curse upon me because I could not share. I have enough troubles with my father’s evil magics.”
Her mouth dropped open. The devil! He could throw his voice!
She watched a triumphant mischief mark his strong features. With his knife tip he expertly procured a tasty morsel of fish from the fire and offered it to her. “Milady.”
Her lips tightened, her emotions a slow boil. She did not like to be teased nor did she like someone else putting words into her mouth…even though she put none there herself.
“Arrah, milord. You partake first. I will feast upon your leavings.” She heard his mimicking sweet mew.
That was beyond the beyond.
Enough! her mind shouted at him.
His features winced. She knew her message was received. Once she used her powers to project her thoughts, her meaning could not be misconstrued.
Fully opening to him she went on, If you are to speak for me at least speak true…not toady words of a pudding-mouthed maid who has no spittle.
“And have you spittle?” was his laconic answer as he put the refused morsel of fish to his own lips.
Beway, I do! And a tongue of fire that goes with it! You pandering excuse for a sea clansman.
“Then use it!” he said emphatically, his eyes now sharp with challenge. “That I might be gone and away from this misfortunate place. Or do you receive perverse pleasure in seeing heads roll at your unhuman feet?”
Eithne looked down at her feet. She straightened, her chin tilted just so with haughty affront. My unhuman feet? At least I have two hands. Can you boast as much? I do not persecute your own deformity. Instead, the first night I invited you to my chambers…you are the one who refused. Am I not good enough for the likes of a one-handed man?
By now they were within inches of each other. The closure of space between had just happened. Eithne was not aware of moving. She was only aware of his heat, his scent, and the deep throttle of his voice.
“Arrah! You are more than good enough. But I’m not a man to lose his head over a lass.”
Then flee! You can. We are outside the cashel walls of Rath Morna. You are no longer a prisoner. Why do you stay?
“I stay because I do not go,” he said cryptically.
Her eyes narrowed. Then you are a victim of enchantment like the rest of us.
“Nay, not I.”
She curled her lip in a delicate sneer. Then why do you stay?
His white straight teeth flashed challengingly. “You are a snoop of a lass, like your little bog wart troll.”
Eithne’s features slipped to a pout. Do not compare me to the likes of him.
“Then you are not kith or kin?”
She shook her head emphatically. Nay, we are not. Why would you think it? Do I look like him?
“By no means. At least not in your present form. But in a place such as Rath Morna seeing is not believing.”
You are a canny one…and the first to be so.
“Only as long as I keep my head,” he said ruefully.
She did not smile. The thought of him losing so pleasing a face hurt her heart.
His gaze held her full attention, breath after breath. What arresting eyes he had. What faraway shores and sights had they beheld? It would be too, too wicked for those sea clan eyes to end up buzzard bait. And those sea clan lips…only a wisp of scar marred their perfect form. So close to him and so drawn, she could not help but reach out and lightly touch that place upon his mouth. It was a faint reminder that the world was never safe.
She wanted to confess to him her loneliness and her knowingness that he was different from the others…that she knew he was not a conjured vision of her father’s black arts. But dare she? She could not give away her own secrets. What if he was in league with her father? Yes, he might have a soul, but so did her father…and this sea clansman seemed more than knowledgeable about magic. After last night she realized he was a sorcerer himself. He proved immune to her kiss. She could not trust a man who was immune to the very essence of her power. She made to step away.
“No.” His voice was huskily halting. He caught her fingers within his own and drew them to the rough sand of his cheek. “Feel me. I’m no illusion of your father’s court. I am a man of bone and flesh.”
Frightened, she tried to retract her fingertips, but he held them fast. On all levels she wished he were an illusion. Illusions could be walked through and dissolved like vapor into the air. Illusions could be ignored, laughed at, or re-created in a less threatening form.
And what was threatening about Bron mac Llyr? All and everything! Unlike the others, when he touched her, her unaccustomed senses blazed. Unlike the others when she met his eye, she saw depth and soul. Unlike the others he was alive and passionately so. Vibrancy marked his every stride and leaped from the sculpted features of his emboldened face.
“You wanted me well enough the past two nights.”
’Tis only your conceit that tells you so, she sent clearly in the flat emotion of a slug, just squashed. She knew that now the full moon was past so would be her yearnings…or were they?
He relinquished her hand and brought his own to tilt her face, his broad palm cushioning her chin. “Nevertheless, ’tis my turn to kiss you.”
She did not like this maneuver much, because something was happening to her that was beyond her control…and Eithne did not like being out of control. It had been her only defense against the magics of Rath Morna and now it should be her defense against the charms of Bron mac Llyr.
She forced herself to meet his gaze and she would, with a mere thought, catapult her rejection like a quiver of icicles aimed straight to his heart. But before she gathered herself, his lips came down upon her own.
His were moist and warm, hers were dry and cold.
I will not feel, she vowed inwardly…but feel she did…soaringly. Strands of her hair laced between their lips and she pushed them away with an out thrust of her tongue. A mistake. His tongue emerged to brush and taunt the soft slick of her own. She could not resist and her fingers splayed over the hard muscle of his chest.
His hand dropped from cupping her chin and slipped down to tighten about her waist. Like so many bats leaving a cave of safe haven at sundown, her senses took wild flight in every direction.
Their lips clung together, breaking, seeking, meeting, parting. Sweet goddess! What power was in his kiss. Before she’d done the kissing…the bewitching. She was a stranger to an honest kiss…a kiss free of illusion and magic…a kiss without a full moon’s spell. A kiss that did not send her to heaven but kept her rooted to earth. Something pure and crystalline was in this kissing, not the cloying, overwhelming, drugging daze of enchantmen
t. She felt as free and alive as the warming rays of sun upon a moor and suddenly as frightened as a fox fleeing the hounds.
Fear gripped her stomach. It was a fear of Bron mac Llyr. And then she knew…it was because he was real and not illusion. All encounters in her life had been with illusions…she had learned early on never to fully trust her eyes, her ears, or her heart. And now, before her was a man who would not disappear into the mists of magic. It was all too powerful for her and much too frightening.
She dared not love this man for he was of the same ilk as her father. She had learned that love could not long abide in a sorcerer’s heart for there only the false charades and distortions of enchantment resided. She ripped herself from his arms and began moving away, shaking her head, fighting the gathering tears. Her breast heaved as she choked back the near articulation of her realization.
Beway! Beway! Bron mac Llyr. Leave now, while you can! Her mind and heart clamored.
“Milady?” Bron took a step forward. The vivacious light of his eyes registered concern and tenderness. “What is wrong? You seem afraid?”
She could not respond, her attention riveted to the storm brewing in the skies above. A sudden roll and clash of thunder pronounced the coming deluge of rain. It was as if the low rumble and rip of lightning were a foreboding message resounding, You cannot love…you cannot trust.
She threw up her arms to cover her head and ears, protecting herself as the voices of illusion echoed in reverberating thunder around her. The first drops of rain glanced off her shoulder and then mingled with her own breaking tears.
“Quickly,” urged Bron, encircling her beneath his arm and hurrying her into the circle of dolmens. By the time he guided her to shelter beneath a spreading capstone she was sobbing, letting out years of long suppressed disillusionment and grief. His arms were an enfolding presence as she wept her desolation onto the leathers of his chest.
He pulled back, his hands upon the curve of her shoulders, and spoke ever so gently. “The night past we began a dance, milady…and I promise we shall dance and dance until the last ring of cymbal and the final clap of drum. Don’t fear it. There is dark and light in us all. ’Tis about loving more than fearing. When you can do that you’ve won the fray.”
He kissed her cheek. A kiss of honesty. And all she could think was, Do not love…do not love him. In the end he will die. But she surrendered to his embrace, she surrendered to his warmth, and she surrendered to his promise.
Chapter 6
Eyes narrowed, Sheelin glared through a casement window as Eithne and Bron mac Llyr walked below in the cashel yard. He’d seen them cross into the kitchen and later, come out again and disappear for long hours. Now, in late afternoon they reappeared more harmonious than before. On the outset, the other suitors had not been so well received by her. But then the others had been trows and tinkers…fools in the main.
He felt uneasy about the presence of Bron mac Llyr in his domain. That Mac Llyr was of the Tuatha de Danann, there was no doubt, and in him the powers of that formidable race had been channeled. He was a warrior and harper. But for his hand, there was no need to dress this wayfarer in the veil of illusion. Fortunately, like the others, he could not resist Eithne’s beauty. Still Sheelin knew he must prepare himself to be wary and watchful. Bron mac Llyr knew of Ketha and that in itself was a danger. If he knew of Ketha then he might know something of the swan maidens of Myr. Could he be in league with them? Did he come for more than a healer? Many questions plagued Sheelin.
By the hour he was becoming more impatient to be on with his well-laid plans. Yet, it was no matter whether the harper fell in love with Eithne, only that Eithne fall in love with the harper. With the harper’s head on the chopping block she would surely speak aloud to save him.
Sheelin’s eyes continued to follow his daughter’s movements.
In her hand, Eithne swung a basket flaring with wildflowers. Upon her head she wore a flaming garland of scarlet gila. Her silky red-gold strands tangled as wild as a briar bush. Tidiness and discipline had never been her allies. She was more comfortable with her skirts hitched up lazing on the stone stoop with the turnspits and scullions than making an appearance in the hall.
Since childhood her main pastime consisted of mucking around in the bogs or swimming in the moat. He understood her penchant for water, a trait inherited from her mother’s kith. What he didn’t understand was her indomitability. Her very stride sowed defiance. Why couldn’t he have had an obedient daughter?
He turned away.
How long would it take? How long would she thwart him?
She was like her mother, unreasonable, with the ability to provoke beyond endurance. He had learned the hard way that swan maidens were by nature independent.
When he’d first glimpsed Ketha the sorcery of her beauty had bewitched him. Nothing filled his mind but to possess her. As time wore on, he found himself more a slave to love than he could have imagined. Even now, he felt weakened by her presence and vulnerable to her slightest demand. He did not relish a woman having that much power over him. She called forth parts of him best kept hidden. Even after all the years he’d kept her imprisoned in the tower of Woad Bog, she could still ignite in him feelings he strived to suppress. He found her strange blend of aloofness and fire irresistibly exciting, and he never tired of the challenge of conquest she represented.
At the thought of her, his desire flamed. He reached for a decanter of wine and poured a gobletful.
He’d not visited Ketha since he’d revealed his scheme of beheading Eithne’s suitors as long as she refused to speak.
In a rare show of anger, Ketha had slapped him across the face, accusing, “You have no soul!”
In retrospect, he thought, Perhaps I don’t. But it matters not to me.
He lowered himself into a deep chair and stared fixedly into a blown glass sphere balanced on a silver tower pedestal, a crystal orb of sight. The visions inside were as changeable as opals, each a miniature mirage of Myr. For now it was the nearest he could ever be to its ancient forest-cloaked hills, its meadows carpeted in wildflowers, and its transparent lakes in whose depths dwelled kingdoms beyond imagining.
Myr was an enchanted land without illusion—a realm of peace, tranquillity, and abundance. In Myr dew mysteriously digested sunlight and made it into gold. Above Myr wheeled the glimmering, star-fretted heavens, so lucid and close that the moon herself seemed to rest upon the tangled branches of great oaks. Magical beasts roamed free in Myr. White roebuck, unicorns, and rare birds with iridescent feathers gleaming with every color seen in flame. There was power in that land. Power enough to fashion whatever one needed; to bring forth mountains if one wished or call up forests if that pleased one.
He put the goblet to his lips taking a deep draught of the bloodred wine. Then he waved a dismissing hand over the glass orb—the images dissolved.
His heavy-lidded eyes slit just a trifle and a slow, quicksilver grin spread over the sharp line of his mouth. Myr was the prize he sought above all. Over the years he plotted and schemed to gather into himself various powers to serve one purpose: the ruling of this last great kingdom of old earth. No one or nothing could thwart him, not Ketha, not Eithne, nor even the swan maidens themselves.
Ketha the healer sat before the single window of her tower prison that overlooked the vast distance of the cold and lonely wild marshes. Fingers of fog reached in from the sea as the rising wind waved the tall grasses of this desolate and dreary domain. Her only companions were migrating fowl, frogs, snakes, and foraging wolves whose howls could set her shivering in the long winter nights. But for Sheelin, in all the years she’d not seen a single soul cross the shifting quagmires.
Sheelin had calculated it so. “I will give you but one window that you may anticipate my comings and mourn my goings. At last you will give me the obedience that is my due as your lord and master.”
There she sat and there she would stay, a captive in the spell of Sheelin’s evil. She was a prisoner i
n a world of sadness and shadow that mocked any longing for light and joy.
Long ago she had ceased asking, “Will he come today or will he not?” The hours, the months, and years of waiting, agonizing, had left her pale and heartsick. He came when he chose to come and she had no alternative but to accept it. She still loved Sheelin as she had always loved him, without condition, without judgment, without restraint. But how he had changed from the man she’d first met on that enchanted midsummer’s eve long ago.
In those times, before he devoted his powers to the service of darkness, he sang things into being, spoke with eagles, summoned the elements. He sang songs that made the bleak heath bloom and the spirits of any who listened soar.
But no more.
He was now one of the most powerful lords of darkness in the land, and at what a price…he could no longer sing. He had exchanged his singer’s voice for the discordant clamor of his Unseelie Court. He called forth not beauty, but evil, illusion, and devildom.
Tears collected in the corners of Ketha’s eyes at the thought. Many a night as she lay alone in her tower bed, she yearned to hear once again the soul-stirring strains of Sheelin’s sweet-voiced song. Yet, all she heard were the ghoulish cries of his demons rising through the marsh mists. Now, he sought to replace his own lost voice with that of Eithne’s. In using the power of her swan song, he intended to invade Myr and there rule with his Unseelie Court.
Her lips pursed. She squinted and peered through the small casement window. A dark cloaked rider on a black steed carefully wended his way through the marsh.
He was coming.
After all this time Sheelin was coming to her. What had transpired at Rath Morna? Would he tell her any news? And would it be the truth? No, it would not be the truth, he rarely spoke the truth. One had to delve beneath his words. One must listen to the subtle tones of his silken voice to discover the truth.
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