by Jules Watson
Cruachan itself was built on an undefended plain—a sacred place where hundreds of barrows of the sídhe and the ancestors were scattered over the turf. The ancient mounds were hallowed, and avoided by the living.
Tonight they were an ocean of darkness.
But around them blazed life. Her people’s lives.
Fires picked out the temples, king’s hall, and warrior mound, each surrounded by a ditch and bank with stakes marching along the top. The crafters and herders, however, lived in exposed huts dotting the plain. Now Maeve yearned for a great fort on a hill like Conor had at Emain Macha.
A place that was strong and high.
She strained north toward the Ulaid. The wind brought down a flutter of dried leaves, rasping along the oak planks beneath her. The long dark would soon scour Erin down to bare trees and hills. There would be nowhere to hide.
A complex web of alliances bound the four kingdoms, spun from fear and mistrust. Though the young warriors boasted their bravery with cattle-raids, there had been no great wars for many years. Conor’s gold attracted the greatest warriors, but he knew that if Mumu, Laigin, and Connacht ever banded together, even the Ulaid would fall. Of course, the others would not risk that, for fear one of them would then become all-powerful.
Such fragile alliances … and Maeve had just snapped one. It was either that or break in two herself.
She jumped at a querulous mew as something curled about her legs. Her breath rushed out. “So you are still here, my beauty.” At first sight Maeve had been entranced by this odd striped creature aboard a ship from the Middle Sea. Unlike hounds, Miu was aloof and utterly uncontrollable.
The cat had to be hers.
“At least you are happy to see me.” Maeve caught the creature to her chest, savoring the rare sense of a heartbeat next to her own. When Miu stiffened and twisted free, Maeve also tensed. Belatedly, she recognized one of her father’s warriors, Garvan, weaving along the rampart.
“Heard you were back.” Garvan hunkered down and propped a jug between his feet. Grasping Maeve’s head, he smacked their lips together.
Kissing him back, Maeve reached out and clouted him in the belly.
“Lugh’s balls!” He rubbed his stomach. “Do that again and I’ll empty my guts on your feet.”
“Charming.” Maeve left her hand on his chest. Beneath a thatch of black hair, Garvan had a blunt, kind face, with a snub nose—broken like that of most warriors—and a mouth always ready to laugh. Below that he was far more interesting. At twenty-three, his muscles were carved by swordplay, not slack like Conor’s.
Maeve was older than Garvan, but as a royal lady she had bathed in milk, and plumped her skin with honey and Greek oils. The lines about her eyes were not deep, and her limbs were still lithe from riding. “I have not seen you for two years, and you think you can bed me just like that?” She prodded his chest.
“We’ve never shared soft words, spitfire.” Garvan belched, his thumb drawing unsteady circles on her neck. “So living among the Ulaid has weakened you, eh?”
“Balls to that!” She smacked him again. Men always took from her: Conor, Ros Ruadh, Diarmait. Her father. Now she would take, because pleasure could burn even this darkness away.
She spread her fist into soft fingers, stroking up Garvan’s neck. Encouraged, his hands dived inside her tunic and there paused. Maeve had always bound her breasts with linen to make it easy to ride and throw a spear.
Garvan snorted. “Still a battle to reach you, then, spitfire.”
“I told you the Ulaid haven’t weakened me.”
Garvan clumsily unwound the strap, wafting freezing air across her chest. Over his shoulder, Maeve faced the night, eyes wide open. “Tell me which lords are circling, and what the men say of my brother and father. Tell me everything.”
CHAPTER 2
LEAF-BUD
Ruán stumbled into the hollow and fell in the mud. He crooked his chin over his shoulder; he could no longer feel the presence of the farm-lad who had led him here. His throat cramped in panic.
That sense of another’s spirit was all he had, now that he was blind.
Ruán had felt the lad’s fear like a throb in the darkness ahead of him, all the way along the fringes of the marsh. At last it got the better of the child, and he fled from this ragged druid with the blood-soaked cloth over his eyes. Far away …
Ruán groped the pebbles, his mind wandering.
The wisewomen on the islands used to whisper he was a stag, not a man. They traced their fingers over his lithe flanks, tangled his hair. Russet as a deer, they sang. The lords thought this fine form of his echoed a noble mind. They listened to him.
Ruán smiled, tasting fever-sweat. Now he made children run away.
Now the world was forever dark, the ground plunging with every step. Thorns and branches always grasping at him from that blackness, scoring his face and arms. Rocks striking his bones.
Ruán hung his head, water pooling between his fingers.
These are the mere-lands, the frightened lad had stammered. Folk get lost here and don’t come back.
Swamps, lakes … yes, the heart of Connacht was wet. There is water to sink into here. Ruán was aflame, the wounds in his eyes burning.
He made himself crawl on, groping through the sludge, nose thrust out to try and pierce the darkness. Yet every time he got his feet under him, he staggered and fell, until he gave up and could only belly his way over the mud. At last a vast quietness opened ahead.
Lake-water glinted in his mind.
There was no sound but the rustling of reeds. Ruán parted them and fell to a sandy shore. There he stripped off his ragged tunic, the sweat running from his skin. He groped along until he found some posts that arched a little jetty over the water.
His druid memories flared. People came here to give offerings to the lake.
Now he would be an offering.
When he reached the end of the jetty, the burning moved from his eyes into Ruán’s heart, and on his hands and knees he gagged on bile. He spat it out, but the gnawing remained. Why could he not retch up guilt before he died?
I killed Lord Mulach’s boy. I killed him.
The gods did not take him, though, when the burning poker seared his eyes, so he knew their punishment must have been for him to live. Could he force their hands now? The fire … his head …
His training could no longer control the pain.
Drawing himself up, Ruán wondered in a daze whether to say a prayer. But a gust of wind hit him, and he toppled. He plunged into the blessed water.
He was flying, at last.
Turning in darkness, he imagined sunlight shafting down and cradling him in gold. He curled up like a babe, letting go of life, the relief pulling him deeper. Surrender. Salvation …
Something touched him.
Fingers knotted his swirling hair, clasping his arms and legs. They dragged Ruán back as he feebly struggled against them. At last he broke into air and collapsed on the ground.
The world spun as Ruán retched up gouts of brackish water. The rest of his senses turned black as well, and then the void claimed him.
In the northern lands of the Ulaid, Levarcham hovered in the shadows of King Conor’s hall.
As the king’s druid, she sat by him when he feasted chieftains and traders. Tonight, though, the hall at Emain Macha had been given over to the Red Branch, the most highly skilled warriors in the Ulaid war-bands.
All young fighters coveted a place in their sacred brotherhood, and the Red Branch had gathered from all over the Ulaid now for a feast to initiate the new recruits. Elite they might be, but Red Branch bellowed, reeled about, and stunk of sweat and sword-grease like any other man. And still Levarcham couldn’t seem to leave.
A foreboding kept her here in the darkness beyond firelight.
No one approached her. Her strange mingling of smooth, watchful face and prematurely gray hair unsettled people, though it was her limp they looked away from, this mark of th
e gods. At forty, her hip deformity was paining her more each day, and that’s what scared these brawny warriors.
The hall doors creaked open with a gust of icy air. There was something familiar about the man shouldering his way through the throng, with a plump woman behind him. Huddled into himself, bowed head—he was no warrior. As the firelight caught them, Levarcham came to attention. It was Fintan and Aiveen, Deirdre’s guardians.
Deirdre. An orphan maid betrothed to Conor since her birth, when the druids foretold that the girl would blossom into a rare beauty.
Conor’s great desire. Conor’s prisoner.
The king had taken the babe and hidden her in the woods to be groomed as his bride, with only Fintan and Aiveen to raise her—and Levarcham to teach her. She was nearly eighteen, but late-blooming, and Conor had not plucked her yet. No one was meant to ever leave her alone.
My chick. Levarcham flew around the shadows to Conor’s carved chair. Fintan was stammering an explanation to the king, and Aiveen’s eyes were terrified. Deirdre must be dead. Levarcham groped for the back of Conor’s chair, winded.
“She has disappeared, my lord,” Fintan babbled. “Run away.” He wrung scarred fingers together.
Levarcham could only see the gray braids snaking over Conor’s shoulders. He had frozen. The silence drew out, the air stretched thin. “What?”
All the boisterous warriors turned at the slice of the king’s voice. Levarcham’s mind hissed that this must not be revealed before the fighting men and nobles. Deirdre had run away from Conor, and after his wife Queen Maeve ran from him, too. But it was too late to stall Fintan’s tongue. “She has been acting strangely for moons. And now she’s just … gone.”
No one noticed Aiveen scuttle to Levarcham in the shadows and press something into her palm. Aiveen’s hand was icy.
“Where is that wife of yours?” The king’s roar slammed into the rafters. “I want an account of this now!”
Levarcham could only squeeze Aiveen’s arm. One of them was gray, lean and severe, one plump and plain, but both were Deirdre’s mothers. The druid managed to slink out the door as the uproar grew behind her. The king’s wrath turned into demands for horses, chariots, and weapons, and servants and warriors began scurrying around.
Levarcham let the ruckus fade as she hobbled to her own lodge and crouched by her fireside. She smoothed out the scrap of kidskin Aiveen had just given her. Deirdre had drawn upon it with charcoal.
It was a line of three blackbirds with a fourth hovering behind, wings spread. Levarcham had taught Deirdre to fashion birds with great skill, and these could not be mistaken for ravens or crows. They were blackbirds. Three singers with dark plumage … dark hair. Someone had ventured into the barren hills around Deirdre’s hiding place and helped her escape from King Conor. But who? Someone who could face down cold, storms, and wolves. Warriors. Three black-haired warriors. Famed singers.
There was only one family that fitted that description: Naisi, Ardan, and Ainnle, the three sons of Usnech. The fourth following of her own will. Deirdre had broken from Conor’s cage after all.
She had run away with Naisi and his brothers.
Levarcham’s sight clouded and her thumb caressed the charcoal, smearing it. Sense compelled her to throw the kidskin into the fire, but as she did, her heart reached to snatch it back. It was the last thing Deirdre had touched …
Sense won. No one must know how the girl had fled Conor.
Levarcham knew him better than anyone. Last leaf-fall, after Queen Maeve ran from him, Conor had stormed to the little steading in the woods to see Deirdre, seeking a balm for his wrath. The blossoming beauty performed a swan dance for the broken king, and that night Levarcham had watched Conor’s mask at last slip.
All these moons she had not been willing to face what she saw behind it, for it was primitive … savage.
An obsession so intense it turned his mind away from Maeve of Connacht altogether and fixed it upon Deirdre, as if the possession of her—nay, her utter consumption—would right every wrong and make him stronger than ever.
Now Levarcham saw his hungry face in the flames of her fire, and clenched her fists in her lap. Deirdre must remain free, and never fall into Conor’s hands again.
A few days later King Conor summoned Levarcham.
With leaden legs she climbed the stairs of his hall to his chamber, an alcove sheltered by wicker screens. The chamber was almost in shadow, a single lamp waving a feeble flame. The light was enough, though, to root Levarcham to the spot.
Conor possessed a proud, bony face, with arched cheekbones and an elegant nose above thin lips. But his jowls and mouth were now haggard, his rigid back slumped. “The girl has taken refuge at Aed’s dun, to sever a betrothal she says was not of her own consent. She wishes to be released from her childhood betrothal to me. So what do you think, Oh learned one, of such a claim? You know the laws.” Conor swung to her with feral eyes. “Did you put her up to this?”
Levarcham tried moistening her lips, but her tongue was stuck. “You know I had no forewarning.”
“Damn all that. Is what she says true?”
Levarcham was struggling to keep her wits afloat. Deirdre was alive. A darker rush followed. Foolish maid! You wound such a king and think no blows will be returned?
“Woman,” Conor hissed, “answer me!”
Breathlessly, Levarcham relaxed her expression. “Given her unique birth, it’s possible. Of course, it is the elder druids you must consult.”
Her voice was calm, but Conor struck without warning. He crossed the room and gripped her jaw, forcing back her head. “Did you know,” he whispered, “that she was stolen away by that black pup Naisi? Did you?”
Levarcham kept still. She had never seen Conor lose his wits and lay hands upon a druid. The force of his wrath loosed strands of graying hair that fell across his sunken cheek, and the sense in his pale eyes had been shattered by something she now recognized as humiliation—a force greater than anger. “You forget yourself,” she gasped. He released her, and Levarcham rubbed her windpipe.
Conor spun about, gripping the edge of a low table. “You told me she would be pliant. Even if you were not there when the theft occurred, still you bear the blame for this!”
Hiding her wrath, Levarcham decided to divert him. As his druid and talking-woman, she was meant to skewer the king’s follies, remind him of generosity and wisdom. “You say ‘theft’ and ‘steal,’ though everything points to Deirdre leaving of her own will.” Even as she said it, Levarcham realized that Maeve of Connacht had chosen the same thing. Two women had left Conor mac Nessa now, the most powerful king in Erin. And all his warriors knew it, and all the other kingdoms soon would, too.
At that moment the lamp-wick burned through and the reed fell in the oil, sending out a bright flare. Only then did Levarcham see what lay at Conor’s feet.
An Aegyptian chair of cedar had been torn apart. The legs were ripped off, the cushions shredded, feathers speckling the wood like lichen. The pieces that were left had been stamped on until they splintered.
Levarcham’s skin went cold.
The Red Branch warrior Ferdia glanced at his friend Cúchulainn’s back.
The fort of the Ulaid chieftain Aed had fallen away behind the green haze of budding trees, and Ferdia and his sword-brother were alone on the muddy track. They were in the Ulaid borderlands near Connacht to the west, and these dangerous hills were almost deserted.
Clouds bore down on their heads, needling them with rain. Ferdia squinted through it, nudging his horse to catch up. Cúchulainn’s own stallion was bound to his soul, and it was skittish now, picking up his master’s tension and tossing his head.
Cúchulainn had not said anything since they left Aed’s stronghold. Naisi, his two brothers, and King Conor’s betrothed—the girl Deirdre—had all been sheltering with the old cattle-lord. Then someone tried to kill them on a deer-hunt, and one of Aed’s nephews had died instead. Naisi and his brothers had fled with the
girl before Cúchulainn and Ferdia could reach them.
Now Ferdia could see that Cúchulainn was chewing his cheek. Ferdia waited, walking his horse beside his friend.
Cúchulainn expelled a breath and struck his leather breastplate. “We were too late. We must get to Naisi and the boys before anyone else does. All these lies about their so-called betrayal—it’s madness!”
Ferdia grimaced. It was Conor’s greed in imprisoning the girl that started all this. And his long-standing—and unreasonable—jealousy of the three brothers that made them run as if guilty.
“We will not go home until we find them,” Cúchulainn muttered, wiping rain from his face. “I will not sleep in a bed when they are lying on the ground, cold and afraid!”
His gray startled into a canter, and Ferdia kicked his own horse up, casting an eye about to see if there was anyone to overhear. There were no woods, only brown fields that spread toward the hills, the crops still slumbering beneath the wet soil.
It was vital that Cú gain his temper before facing the rest of the Red Branch. Not all the warriors loved the three brothers as Ferdia and Cúchulainn did. As for Conor … There was something strange about this whole thing, black and twisted.
At that moment, Cúchulainn bellowed and streaked ahead, his fair hair streaming out from his leather helmet. Ferdia forgot everything else, desperately heeling his horse. He and Cú had trained together, fought across Erin and Alba, and shared food, beds, and women. So Ferdia alone could feel the rise of Cúchulainn’s sacred battle-rage as if it surged through his own body.
Cúchulainn was the Champion of the Ulaid, the Hound of Cullen, the greatest warrior in Erin. Most of the time his blue eyes were a calm sea, his bright, boyish face belying his twenty-five years. It was easy then to forget the divine rage he could summon, the violent storm he unleashed in battle.
And that when he was exhausted like this, his control of that frenzy could falter.
Ferdia caught up, hauling his horse before Cú to make him stop. “We don’t know which way they went!” Ferdia panted. “We’ve been two days without sleep, and darkness falls. Let us camp. We can track them better in the morning.”
