Suddenly, Macha was there. She threw the other female off him, reached down, and picked him up by the ruff, her huge jaws snapping in his face. “I know you. Tetzu.”
“Great Queen.” In any language at all, the words were the same. Timias crouched, tucking his tail under, rolling up his ruff. He felt her stare on him, even as the forked tip of her tongue touched his head, his ruff, his bowed spine.
She snarled softly as her eyes flared red in the shadows. He could smell the fluid spilling from her egg sacs. If she climbed on top of him, he thought, he would die. “Great Queen,” he rasped. “The way to Ardagh—the way to Ardagh is free of egg-eaters.” He hoped the khouri-keen had kept their word. They were about to be well rewarded if they had. And if not…He closed his claws around the pouch. “Ardagh—where the druids gather to find a way to yoke our flesh.”
He had her attention. She shifted her position, snarled again and the goblins quietened infinitesimally. She reached out her long forked tongue and licked his head. “You have been to Ardagh…I smell Shadow on you…Taste it, too…”
“If there is power in living flesh,” he stammered, “imagine the power in magic living flesh.”
Her eyes flared red and in one swift blur of movement she was on him, pushing him back, splaying him wide, riding him like something from a nightmare. Her burning, oozing flesh closed over his, her foul breath blasted in his face as she rocked above him, forcing his seed up and out and into her egg sacs, draining him dry. He tightened his tail around the khouri-crystals and hoped he was right. ARDAGH, he thought with every ounce of intention he could summon, even as Macha drew him in, and he felt the churning in his belly start to burn. AR-DAGH, he thought again, wrapping his tail as tightly as possible around the pouch as if he would draw it up and into himself. ARR-DAAGH.
“Ar-Dagh!” screamed Macha as she pumped the dregs of his seed from his belly. “AR-DAGH!”
She straightened enough to allow him to roll, then crawl, then stagger out of the way. At last he allowed himself to collapse against the wall, his head churning, his body feeling flayed. The queen began to dance, jumping across the goblins, between the teetering piles of eggs, rousing the goblins out of their sun-and-blood-induced stupor. As the goblin horde took up the chant, and the drums began to beat, Timias saw his chance to escape.
12
“Catrione? Catrione?”
Catrione opened her eyes into Niona’s, her mind still too meshed with Snake’s to speak. She darted the tip of her tongue along her lower lip, her eyes from side to side, desperately seeking to maintain the connection to that other consciousness.
“Catrione?” Niona slapped her cheek lightly. “Come out of it, Catrione. Come back.” Niona snapped her fingers. “Hand me that piece of white-sage.” She waved the burning leaf under Catrione’s nose and this time Catrione heard voices babbling outside her room. She was lying in her bed in the dormitory and from the slant of the sun, it appeared to be the middle of the day.
Catrione stared up at her. “What’s happening? How long was I—” Wherever I was. Her tongue felt short and thick in her mouth, not sinuous and slender as it had just a moment or two ago. She tried to sit up, but the room spun, and she fell back heavily onto her pillows.
Baeve pressed forward, a steaming goblet in her hand. “Here, dear, have a sip of this first. Don’t try to sit up just yet.” She gently smoothed Catrione’s hair off her face, even as she glanced at Niona over her shoulder. “I told you we shouldn’t wake her.”
“She is cailleach, isn’t she?” snapped Niona.
“What’s happened?” asked Catrione. “Deirdre—did you find her? Did you find the young man?” Catrione fumbled for the words as Baeve wrapped her fingers around the goblet and helped her guide it to her lips. The warm spiced milk and honey, whipped into a foam, spilled down her throat and filled her mouth with satisfying sweetness. It helped her anchor her consciousness back into her body and her human mind. Speech returned, but language for all that she’d seen eluded her. She felt as if she’d been ripped out of the middle of a dream.
“Deirdre’s been found, child.” Baeve wrapped a shawl around Catrione’s shoulders as she helped her upright.
“I hope you got some wisdom, Catrione.” Niona turned on her heel and stalked out of the hall, followed by most of the others.
Catrione took another long drink. The milk and honey, strengthened with the druid’s brew of distilled silver, was flowing into her veins now. Her vision was clearing, but the sense of being in more than one place was still strong. She tipped the goblet back and the contents spilled, running down her chin. She felt clumsy and weak as she handed Baeve the goblet, mopping up the mess with her shawl. Baeve scurried to help and Catrione said, “What else?”
“The ravens have returned, though not with any answers. Connla left Eaven Morna at least four or five nights ago. And according to the answer from Ardagh, she’s not yet arrived.”
“Maybe she’s stopping here?”
Baeve shrugged. “Maybe. You should know, Catrione, the grove’s dividing into two camps. There’s one side that wants to wait for Connla and the other that believes we should act on whatever you may have learned.”
“And Niona’s on the wait-for-Connla side, no doubt?”
“No doubt.” Baeve shut her mouth with a snap and a sniff.
She had to help Catrione dress, for Catrione’s limbs felt fused and wooden, as if she’d forgotten how they moved. She also seemed to have forgotten how to think, for her thoughts felt clumsy, as if she couldn’t connect them to words.
When Catrione was dressed, she had to cling to Baeve’s arm. The courtyard was even more crowded than ever, it seemed, but people stopped and smiled when they saw her, pressed her hand and wished her well. “Where are the brothers and the sisters?” she asked, seeing no druids at all.
“Up there.” Baeve pointed to the Tor, where it seemed every brother and sister in the grove was clustered around what looked like a gaping wound in the side.
“What’re they doing up there?”
“That’s another argument. Come, you’d better see for yourself.”
Gripping Baeve’s arm, Catrione started up the hill, the site triggering even more acute flashbacks of Deirdre in the Tor—Deirdre and that thing she’d birthed. As other hands reached for her, helping her, guiding her, gently encouraging her, she stumbled, not seeing the ground, only that dark, dank chamber. When at last she peered inside the tomblike entrance of the SunBirth Chamber, she understood why Baeve had side-stepped all her specific questions. Nothing, not even the memory of having witnessed it, could’ve prepared Catrione for the horror that lay beneath the shrouds. The honeyed milk boiled in her belly as Catrione pressed her hand against her mouth and nose. Baeve handed her a cloth soaked in peppermint oil. “Here,” she said.
Silently, Athair Emnoch helped her down and into the chamber, sliding across mud and rocks and rubble. The thing that lay in the center of the floor looked more like a husk than anything that had once been a living human body. Deirdre’s face had already crumbled against her skull, and her hair was flaked and dry. Her body had split from throat to groin, and what was left lay sprawled obscenely, straw-colored, flocked with rusty stains that Catrione realized were dried blood.
“Cailleach,” the brother murmured. He touched her arm gently. “You must see this.” He bent and gingerly pulled back the corner of a small hide that lay a few lengths from Deirdre. Something long and dark, like a shriveled snake, protruded from it, like a tail. As the druid lifted the hide, Catrione realized what the leathery thing was. It was the infant’s umbilical cord.
Catrione clapped both hands across her mouth and the oil-soaked cloth stifled her gasp as she stared at the thing Deirdre’d birthed. The infant’s body was a series of white segments, topped by an all too human-looking head. From just below its ears, two hands protruded from its shoulders. The bottom half divided into a double tail, each ending in a perfect little foot.
She turned asi
de, in search of fresh air, as the lines from the bark scrolls came back to her. The child who can’t be slain by the hand of woman, or of man…Well, it hadn’t been. The Great Mother had somehow conspired to send someone equipped with a hook for a hand.
“It’s clear, don’t you think, Catrione?” That was Niona, speaking over Baeve, who hovered about, wiping her face. Snake’s memories tumbled around in her mind, visions that unfolded like the petals of a flower, overlapping on each other. She was there, and she was here. Nothing, not even crossing in and out of TirNa’lugh gave her such a feeling of being in two places and two times at once. It made her brain ache and swell.
“What’s clear?” Catrione managed to ask. The sequence, at least, was coming back to her now. Sitting this close to Deirdre’s remains, she could feel the echo of her last moments. Images and impressions, now coiled and stored somewhere in her Snake’s awareness, flashed through her mind. The impression of a young man with a hook was the only one she had that made any sense at all. He’s the man you are to marry.
“That this was the child who can’t be killed by hand of woman or of man?” Niona crossed her arms over her chest.
Catrione sank down onto a rock. Was that what was clear? She wrinkled her brow, staring off into the distance.
“The khouri-keen and their crystals have disappeared.” Athair Emnoch was speaking, even as the world reeled around her.
Tiermuid has them. “The young man…has no one tried to reach him?” Catrione asked.
“We should wait for the ArchDruid, don’t you think, Cailleach?” asked Athair Emnoch. “If you don’t mind my saying, you don’t look well at all.”
“I’m all right,” she said automatically, even as she knew that wasn’t quite the truth. “I don’t—”
“What if he’s druid?” cut in Niona, her voice sharp and shrill. “Do you really want to risk another thing like that?” With a sound that could’ve been a curse, she stalked down the hill, leaving Catrione’s face burning as the wind blew harder out of the west.
Sunlight tickled the back of Morla’s eyelids, and a soft breeze brushed across her face. She opened her eyes to a wide window filled with the upper branches of a leafy tree, white-washed walls and burning pain up and down her right leg. She heard a soft snore and looked over the edge of the bed to see Lochlan slumped on the floor underneath the window, his head propped on his arm. A dark haze of beard shadowed his chin and mud splattered his boots. She blinked and looked around, wincing as she shifted.
The linen beneath her head smelled of sun and thyme, the blanket that covered her well-woven and clean. Reed baskets, filled with folded towels and bandages, lined one wall. The walls were stone, the roof was low but white-washed. From the open casement, the tinkle of bells, a dog’s sharp bark and shepherds’ shouts as bleating animals were led to pasture filtered into the room. She tried to sit up, but a red-hot poker of pain shot up her entire leg. And then she remembered the goblins coming up and out of the water and something big and black swooping down and out of the trees, grabbing Bran away.
She fell back against her pillow as the door opened, and a dark-haired woman about the same age as Morla, though heavily pregnant, stepped into the room. She wore a tunic dyed a rich blue, and the plaid over it as well as the large copper brooch on her shoulder proclaimed her status as a chief. “You’re awake,” she said with a quick smile. “I’m Grania MaNessa. Welcome to my house. How’d you feel?”
“My leg hurts,” Morla answered, grimacing as Grania eased the coverlets off, exposing her thigh.
“Let’s have a look.” Grania’s mouth turned down as she gingerly peeled the top layer of linen away, and her brow furrowed. She glanced at Morla, and her eyes were grim. “I’ve a still-wife here—I’ll get her now that you’re awake.”
“How long have I been asleep?”
“The better part of two days. Your husband—” Grania nodded at the sleeping Lochlan “—came in riding like the Great Hag of the Mountain herself was after you.”
He said we were married? Morla’s surprised hiss was swallowed by a gasp of real pain as Grania gently replaced the bandage. “I wish I had a druid, but they’ve all gone to Ardagh. Your knight—” she flashed another quick smile in Lochlan’s direction “—Herne bless him—your knight’s been scouring the countryside for the better part of two days. I think the only place you’re likely to find a druid is at one of the bigger groves. The closest is the White Birch, but that’s at least, three, maybe four days away.”
Morla glanced at Lochlan as Grania continued, “I’ll be right back.” She shut the door behind her, and the latch’s firm click startled him awake.
He opened his eyes and looked at her. A broad smile spread across his face. “Thank the goddess.” He rose to his feet with an audible creak from his knees. He dusted off his trews, his fleeting grin fading into an expression of concern. “How’s your leg?”
“It hurts,” she replied. There was something in the way he was looking at her, in the way his hands hovered just above the edge of the bed that unsettled her, even as she became aware of a burning sensation, like tiny needles of fire, burrowing deep into her flesh. “It hurts a lot.” She closed her eyes and tried to gather her thoughts. “What about Bran? Did we—Is he—”
“I’m not sure what happened to him.”
Morla struggled to sit up despite the fire that shot down her thigh. Pain boiled in her bones, wormed like needles into her hip. “I don’t really remember much about what happened. I remember sitting on the rock—I remember running back—” She broke off, trying to make sense of the scrambled images swirling through her mind. Bran had been there, and then he hadn’t. But the goblins had been behind them—Bran was ahead of her. “What did you see?”
“I don’t want to give you false hope…I saw him with you, running up the path. He was ahead of you, pulling you. He ran beneath an oak tree, and then he disappeared.” Lochlan spread his hands. “There was no time to make sure, though. You and I got away with nothing but the clothes on our backs. But I’ll swear on my own mother’s grave, I saw Bran disappear before the goblins reached either of you.”
“What about the others—the other Fiach—?”
Lochlan shook his head, dropped his eyes, and a shadow crossed his face. “There was no time.”
The door opened, and a very tall woman with a rawboned face and graying braids wound around her head stepped into the room. She had a tray of salves in one hand and a basket in the other, and she was followed by Grania.
“Good morning, Sir Aidan.” Grania smiled almost girlishly as she looked at Lochlan. “This is our still-wife, Nuala.”
Morla glanced at Lochlan, her question in her eyes. He glanced at her sideways and shook his head ever so slightly, even as he bowed to Grania. Morla understood she wasn’t to say who she was. There were plots within plots in this world and she wondered for a moment why she’d not thanked her mother kindly and returned to Dalraida. Because they’re all starving and she promised to send corn, thought Morla, and hoped Meeve had kept her word.
Lochlan turned his back, as the still-wife pushed the sheet off Morla’s nearly naked body. But she forgot all about modesty, or any pretext of it, as the still-wife peeled back the bandages, and the pain that flamed through her leg went all the way to the roots of her hair and the soles of her feet. Tears came to her eyes, and she tasted blood as she bit her lip.
“I told you this is beyond me. It’s got worse since she’s lain here,” Nuala said, shaking her head.
Morla dared a peek. Tiny pustules of contamination bubbled on her skin, streaking out from the deep center of the wound.
“She needs a druid and she needs the uisce-argoid, the silver water.” The two women exchanged glances, and Morla felt a pang of real dread. This could kill her, she thought, and she looked at Lochlan, even as the still-wife addressed him. “She needs a druid as fast as you can get her to one, Sir Aidan. By the time you ride to the White Birch Grove and bring one here, she’ll lose the
leg. If you can take her there yourself, I say there’s still a chance.”
“To save my leg?” asked Morla.
“To save your life,” Nuala answered flatly.
“But—” began Grania.
“I can’t stop the poison.” Nuala shook her head, then looked at Morla. “This may sting.”
Stars exploded in front of Morla’s eyes the moment the grassy-smelling liquid touched the suppurating flesh. Her spine went rigid, and her hands splayed and flexed. She gripped the sheets and felt a smooth, strong palm slide into hers, encouraging her with firm pressure. She gripped it reflexively, clung to it as the dark pain snaked through her, as the wound was cleaned and the bandages were changed. She opened her eyes and realized she’d been holding Lochlan’s hand. The still-wife daubed at the beads of sweat pearled across Morla’s forehead and upper lip, even as the ointment dulled the stinging pain.
“There, now, lass, just rest. I’ll bring up some broth,” said Nuala. “Are you hungry, lady?”
Morla stared at the ceiling. The pain throbbed through her in waves, dulling her appetite. “No,” she answered after considering whether she was hungry or not. “I’m…I’m thirsty.”
She saw Nuala exchange another significant look with Grania, who said, “I’ll see about a wagon, Sir Aidan.” She picked up the basket of soiled bandages and left.
Nuala lingered, fussing over her ointments. Lochlan asked, “Why’s she not hungry?”
“That’s what happens.” Nuala shook her head grimly. “There’s poison in goblin bites. It wastes you, even as it burns away your appetite. It’s important you drink, lady.” She picked up her tray. “I’ll fetch the broth.”
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