by Jules Watson
She clambered out of the lake. The force of the fall had plucked a brooch free, dragging her dress off one shoulder and unraveling the clout at her loins. The sodden folds of the undergarment clung to her legs, and she kicked it away as she emerged. At the sound of her broken steps, Ruán’s smile faded.
All of Maeve’s remaining sense bled out into blinding white.
She craved anything that could release her—anyone. Winding her elbows about Ruán’s head, she pressed her mouth to his wind-chapped lips. For a moment Ruán froze.
And then that cold statue came to life in Maeve’s arms.
She caught a noise of surrender in the back of his throat, and his mouth opened beneath hers. Cold, rough skin gave way to heat and sweetness.
Maeve drank in his lips and tongue, pulling his groin in to wrap a thigh around his hip. She buried her hands in his tangled hair, grinding his mouth to hers.
Her urgency toppled them to the sand, and Ruán thudded onto his back.
Maeve straddled him, lifting his neck again to claim his lips. Her dripping cloak and hair enveloped them, as if she were a goddess of death drinking life from a fallen warrior. Her fingers dug under his tunic to brush the ridges of the spiral scar, then slid beneath his arm to where the flesh softened.
She pressed herself into the hardness he could not hide, however unwilling the rest of him. He hesitated again, and then something gave way in Ruán and his hands were tangling with hers to unlace his trews and crumple up her dress.
Maeve rammed herself onto him, and after that became nothing more than a wrathful ocean battering its rage on a rock in a storm. She did not have to look into a man’s eyes or hear a harsh voice. Her hands dug into faceless flesh as her desperation grew.
The friction of bodies was so violent that was all it took to ignite her. And when Ruán growled, that thunder of the storm broke the remnants of her shattered control. Maeve threw back her head to fling away her agony, and the pressure poured out and up into the impassive sky.
With one cry, she soared.
When the fall came, it was like plunging from a great height, and it jarred her back to cold awareness.
Wet sand.
Panting breath.
A man’s ribs pushing against her hand.
Maeve unclenched her fists and crawled off the body beneath her. The world tilted, her hips aching. Nausea swamped her—that she would lose control with him, that he would see inside her. She dragged herself to the bushes and after a moment of swaying on hands and knees retched into the dead leaves.
A bird took wing among the reeds, making the stems grate together. Maeve unsteadily got to her feet, smoothing down the wet folds of her dress in a daze.
There was no sound behind as she wove her way to Meallán, quietly grazing on the turf. She fumbled for the horse’s reins. She would not look.
Maeve put one shaky foot before the other, pulling Meallán behind her. Far away.
She did not glance back.
At the healing lodge, the young druid Erna was at an oak table, boiling bitter-scented leaves and roots over a brazier. Her dark, solemn eyes took in Maeve’s bedraggled state.
The ride had dried the brine on Maeve’s skin, stiffening her hair. The Aegyptian paint must be trailing down her cheeks in runnels of black now. She tried to summon her authority, but she had shredded her voice.
The scream, into the sky.
“I never thanked you for speaking for me after the fight,” Maeve croaked. “Now I need someone I can trust. Keep your silence, and you will be rewarded.”
Erna shifted the bubbling pot off the coals with tongs. “I can only do as my conscience allows, lady.”
Maeve folded her arms. The trembling in them would not subside, though the day was nearly over—this day she must blot from her memory. “I am not asking you to poison someone. I need a potion for myself.”
Erna’s frown cleared. “Certainly, lady.”
“To stop a child in the belly.”
The druid’s calmness did not falter. She wiped her hands on a cloth in her belt and smoothed her dark hair back. “To prevent a seed taking root, or to rid yourself of a seedling already grown? That causes great sickness in the body.”
“To prevent one.” Maeve was glad to find someone who spoke crisply. She could never have feelings for such things again, lest they weaken her enough for the wolves to bring down.
Among the Ulaid, she had found her own source for the women’s herbs, which had now run out. In recent moons she had not needed more. “Children must come at the right time, you understand,” she added.
They must not come at all, for then they can be taken. Maeve fixed her gaze on the bubbling pot and without thinking tucked one strand of hair behind her ear.
She saw Erna’s brows rise.
Maeve understood. The herders bore children to mind cattle, and no one cared much how they were sired. But perhaps Erna, young as she was, did not know that the wife of a lord must be more careful. She had to guard her husband’s pride in his virility, for that was bound up with the strength of his sword-arm and how many men would follow him.
The first time Conor saw her after the marriage oaths, he murmured in her ear that if she dallied with other men, he would kill her and any child she carried. She believed him, and risked it only with warriors she hoped might give her information to sway her father to bring her home.
The herbs did not always work, though, and for a few weeks she had suspected that she was with child. The day after she overheard Conor hint he would use a son to gain Connacht, she began bleeding. Soon after that she fled the Ulaid.
“A tea is best,” Erna at last ventured. “Drunk in the morning.”
Maeve nodded, her thoughts colliding as she clutched the back of Mahon’s chair. “You saw me fight my brother. I believe a mother of the tribe will protect our people better than a boastful man ever could. I might need you again.”
Erna came around the table and leaned on her folded hands. “I am sworn to serve the people and the gods. When you asked us to heal the babies from the seal cough, I saw you also serve them. And I believe what you said the day of the fight, and …” At last she betrayed her youth, a stain creeping up her cheeks. “I know what it is like to struggle to be heard.”
“By men, you mean.”
Erna bit her lip, and Maeve nodded and forced her unsteady legs toward the door. “Prepare the tea for me so I can travel with it. And one more thing. I know you are not brethim, but I want you to verse yourself in the laws for me.” She paused. “Marriage laws.”
Before Erna could reply, Maeve swung beneath the doorskin. She halted in the porch and sank against the wall, her mouth crumpling. She had lost her mind. The lake druid would hate her now, any hope of his help destroyed. She had lost her chance.
So she had to find another one.
She dug her knuckles under her hollow ribs, where Fraech’s words still echoed.
You are not strong enough on your own.
Alone by her bed, Maeve filled a basin and washed the paint and the male scent from her body. She was drying her hair by the fire when Garvan burst in.
“Riders have come,” he panted. “Being taken to Tiernan in the king’s hall. The messenger wore a wolfskin, and the guards bore red pennants on their spears.”
The linen towel fell to Maeve’s lap. Wolves were mountain creatures, numerous in the Ulaid. And red was Conor’s color.
On her feet, she cast a glance down at her old tunic and trews. She dashed back and dug her sealskin mantle from her dresser, tying it around her throat as she and Garvan hastened to the king’s mound.
People were milling about the hearth-fire in the great hall, servants bustling past crafters and warriors who had come to see Tiernan for judgments or advice. Tiernan was standing near Eochaid’s great chair, frowning at strangers before him—two spearmen flanking a third man in the wolfskin.
Maeve shouldered through the throng. Tiernan glanced up and waved everyone back. “Lady Maeve,” the druid sai
d when she reached him. “You may want to hear this.”
She did not recognize the dark-haired messenger, though he started when he heard her name. He rearranged his wolfskin, flinging back his shoulders. “I am sent by Conor mac Nessa, King of the Ulaid, who demands that he receives his due under the terms of the marriage contract with Maeve, daughter of Eochaid, King of Connacht.”
Maeve’s thoughts deserted her. “I … I left Conor,” she blurted.
The man’s brows arched. “Which is why he demands what he was promised.”
Maeve’s hackles rose, as if Conor himself was taking hold of her. She remembered the shackle of his hand, his thumb pressing her windpipe while he smiled at her. She licked her lips. “What does he want?”
The messenger’s smile was haughty. “He claims Finnbennach, fabled bull of Connacht.”
The people nearby gasped, and Tiernan’s eyes narrowed beneath his domed brow. The royal bull was an enormous beast, white of hide and therefore sacred—the greatest of all Erin’s cattle.
Maeve turned on the Ulaid man. “He cannot claim that!”
“In the alliance with your father, King Conor paid a bride-price of iron, gold, furs, and grain, and in return was promised a tie to Connacht’s royal bloodline, and binding kinship thereafter, support from Connacht war-bands if he was attacked, and, of course … you, Lady Maeve.”
The scorn in his eyes was like a slap.
The man spread his hands. “My generous king is willing to abandon all these claims, in light of your … difficulties. But only if Connacht gives him Finnbennach.”
Maeve’s head reared. The Ulaid already possessed the Donn Cuailgne, the other great bull of Erin. With their glossy haunches, fiery loins, and abundant offspring, such sacred beasts boasted a king’s potency across his kingdom and far beyond.
Coveting both could be seen as the act of a madman, or …
Fury drove out the last of Maeve’s sense, and before Tiernan could reply, she whipped her sword from its sheath and held it upright. “How many times have Conor’s raiders slain our people? He respects an alliance only as long as it suits him, then tosses it away to spear us where we stand. Finnbennach belongs to Connacht. Tell Conor he will never have him, never rule us! The West will stand against him, free and defiant, for as long as we breathe!”
The Ulaid messenger gaped at the sword waving before his face.
Tiernan stepped in with a flurry of white robes. “That is the essence of our reply …” He spoke through gritted teeth. “However, we have bards here who will couch it to King Conor in more polite terms.” He beckoned to other druids behind him, nudged the Ulaid man’s shoulder. “Pray, go aside with them, take a cup of our finest mead, and rest.”
Red-faced, the Ulaid rider was still looking at Maeve in astonishment as he was led away.
Tiernan pulled up his hood and stalked out of the hall. Maeve sheathed her blade and followed, her blood high. Along an empty pathway he turned, the shadows of dusk mercifully veiling his face.
“I know what you are going to say.” Maeve glanced over her shoulder.
“That you have no authority to deal with royal messengers since you are not, yourself, yet queen?”
“Yes, yes.” Maeve waved that away. “But don’t you see what this means? Conor did not believe we would hand over Finnbennach. This was a message, but not what it appears to be.” She stepped closer, shivering. “The man who possesses both the Donn Cuailgne and Finnbennach will command the greatest herd in Erin—a sacred herd. He will become the greatest cattle-lord. Every kingdom in Erin, Alba, and Britain will see him as blessed by the gods, a supreme ruler. Conor wants to be ard-rí!”
A high king of all Erin. No one had claimed that title since the ancient days of the Tuatha dé Danaan.
Tiernan was no longer angry, his pale eyes piercing the red haze of sunset behind her.
Maeve cut her hand across her palm. “This is but the first spear thrown over our heads. With all this business of his betrothed, Conor has been weakened before his men.” She couldn’t help herself, clutching the druid’s pale sleeve. “I lived with him. He is ruled by such a pride! Perhaps he cannot rally all of the Ulaid right now, but he will look for other ways to make himself powerful in their eyes.”
Tiernan bent his head to look at her hand.
She released his robe. “Chief druid, I strongly advise that we conceal Finnbennach.” She was struck by inspiration. “His white hide makes him stand out from afar. We must quarter him in hidden valleys, not the river pastures, and move him from place to place. And the herdsmen should rub charcoal and mud into his hide.”
Tiernan blinked, and she thought that in the blurring of dusk his long, enigmatic face held respect.
She stood back, drawing straight. “I think like a queen.” The cold was invading her even beneath the sealskin. Idath, Felim … now Conor. The aches in her body, from loins to shoulders … it was like they had attacked her already.
It was coming. Maeve tried not to shudder as she held Tiernan’s eyes.
At last he nodded.
Maeve’s anger must have been a poison, for it grew in Ruán until he could feel nothing but that. She had scored a victory over him at last. She had stolen his peace.
He had vowed to protect the lake and its wonders, but she made him forget himself, forced him inside her so they were joined. She made him know her, so he was savage and desperate like her …
Ruán paced around the fire, scrubbing his palms to rid himself of her touch. But the afterburn of her flame was inside him, and that he could not expel. Just as he discovered this great truth of the sídhe, would he lose it again?
At last he crawled back into his tent, and when a knife came to hand, he stabbed it through the hides Maeve had given him and shoved his arms behind his head, breath bouncing off the slope of leather above him.
Eventually, Ruán slipped away into a strange state between waking and slumber. Time spun about him and he lost track of how it flowed. One moment he was asleep and the next he was standing under the moon.
The Shining Ones had at last pulled him from his dark dreams.
The illumination in their faces returned his full sight to him, moonlight pouring from their skin. They surrounded him in a crescent, the five who sung around the campfire when he was ill, and held him with their voices in the stones. Dark hair, shining eyes.
The sídhe maiden said, “Why do you hide?”
“She made me into someone like her.”
“Perhaps you already are.”
He caught his breath, his head snapping toward her.
The maiden’s eye gleamed. “You are not angry, brother. It is shame that has you in its jaws.”
He went to deny it, but a wave of heat took his speech. It was one thing to remember the sweetness of Orla. After all, it was that tender memory in the stones that had coaxed him into this great unfurling—until now he soaked up tree-sounds and water-scents, the sun’s warmth, the taste of fish, with every moment of being.
But rutting with Maeve, he had entirely forgotten the sparks of light in the darkness.
The maiden tutted, and her teeth flashed as she shoved him in the chest. “It is about time you found the wild in you. Not some of it—all of it. Be abandoned!” She spun on her heel, braids flying. “Humans are such fools,” she cried to the others, who all laughed. “The sun swings north again. Tonight, we dance!”
Baffled, Ruán glanced between them. Their somber manner had disappeared, in its place fiery eyes and restless limbs. The air almost crackled.
As they went to go, surrounding him and pulling him with them, a man with an ageless face leaned in to Ruán. “You think her so black,” he whispered, “but even in battle a heart beats behind every shield.”
Ruán passed across Connacht in the train of the Shining Ones. They were soon joined by other beings of light who flowed to them like silver rivers from all over the dark land. The streams of sídhe fed into the burgeoning flood, until a glowing wave poured o
ver the hills.
Swept along with them, Ruán discovered it was Thisworld through which they journeyed. As in the stones, if he was within the aura of the sídhe he could see. Every now and then he glimpsed the far-off fires of his own people. On this night of frost and deep cold, they clustered around flames that were red and flickering, not silver.
The sídhe poured through gullies and leaped across ridges, ducking branches and bounding over rocks.
One moment Ruán thought he was with people, their long braids blowing in the wind, their deerskins flapping. Then, from the corner of his eye he would glimpse something different, vast plumes of fire forming elongated bodies and heads, their hair streamers of flame. Long dark eyes opened to rafts of stars.
What were they?
An eddy of the dance hurled Ruán free, and he staggered and fell to the wet ground. He was lying by a copse of leafless trees growing from a cleft of rock. Hidden water trickled through a carpet of ferns, their leaves brown and curled.
A group of sídhe left the dance with him, settling like a flock of glimmering birds. They twined along branches, curling into the hollows of rocks and molding themselves to the earth. He sensed their cascades of laughter as ripples on his skin.
We are the gatherers.
They were answering him in song.
We are the light-bearers.
His sídhe maiden was standing by the stream. She gazed at him with fathomless eyes. We are the Bridge between Worlds. Twirling, she circled him and he turned to follow, making him dizzy. The Otherworlds lie alongside your own, all of them woven through each other like threads. But we are the bridge. We bring the light-song of the Otherworlds into Thisworld.
“Light-song …?”
There is no word. It is the fire of all. Source of life. Spirit undying, which joins everything. We call it from the Otherworlds into this, make it flow freely, strongly. Look!
She swept her arms out and danced along the stream-bank. With a motion of her hand, the hidden spring ignited into fire and gushed from the ground as molten silver. It was not just water, but Source. The sidhe on the trees seemed to merge into the bark, until every branch and twig glowed. The rocks flared into light.
