Celtic Fire

by Joy Nash

  Edmyg grabbed Rhiannon by the arm and hauled her aside. “What of Cormac?” he said in a low voice. “Has he brought the Roman to the circle?”

  Rhiannon let out a gasp. “Ye knew. Ye bade me lie with another man.”

  “Of course I did, woman. ’Twas our best hope of capturing the dog alive. Madog said—”

  “Madog consented?”

  “ ’Twas Madog’s plan. Where is the Roman?”

  “I dinna ken. I escaped the fort on my own.” She wrenched her arm from his grasp. She caught one glimpse of his stunned expression before she turned to the assembled warriors and lifted her arms. “Brothers! Hear me!”

  Silence fell over the crowd like a rippling shroud, as one by one the warriors realized who it was that stood in their midst. When the last man’s voice was still, she spoke.

  “Kynan speaks the truth! If Vindolanda is taken, do you imagine Rome will not send her Legions to recapture it? For every man you succeed in killing, two more will march from the south.”

  “Nay.” Edmyg practically snarled the word. “In my father’s day even the highlands far to the north crawled with Roman vermin. Now they’ve abandoned their forts there. Rome’s tide retreats. We have but to hasten it.”

  “ ’Twill not last. Like the tide, the Romans will return,” Rhiannon said. “The clans must unite, ’tis true, but not for war. We can survive best as an ally of Rome.”

  Edmyg snorted. “The Romans have no allies. Only slaves.”

  Kynan stepped forward. “Nay. Rhiannon has the right of it. I can no longer count how many kinsmen I’ve lost to Roman swords. Shall our children go fatherless? They deserve a chance for peace.”

  Rhiannon laid her hand on the old warrior’s arm. “Kynan, ye’ve the wisdom of a true king,” she said, but it was Edmyg’s face that she watched. “Before the witness of my kin, I choose you as my consort and king. Will ye have me to wife?”

  The color drained from Edmyg’s face, then returned as a dark rush of crimson. His knuckles went white on the hilt of his sword. Beside her, Rhiannon felt Kynan shift, drawing his own weapon. The older warrior moved swiftly, inserting his body between Rhiannon and Edmyg.

  “ ’Tis my place to be king in Niall’s stead.” Edmyg’s voice shook. “Ye canna deny me.”

  Rhiannon squared her shoulders. “The Old Law gives me the right to choose the man worthy to be king. Ye are not that man, Edmyg. Ye fathered a bastard on Glynis.”

  “Aye, I did. A son murdered by yer foul brother.”

  “Nay! Owein has not that power.”

  “If ye truly believe that, yer a fool.” His attention sliced to Kynan. “Step away from my woman, old man. I willna give her up.”

  Kynan stood his ground. “I accept Rhiannon’s offer. I am her consort now by right of law.”

  Edmyg swore. “In one thing, at least, the Romans are wise. They keep their women locked away awaiting their pleasure.” He looked at Rhiannon. “Is that not true?”

  “You swine,” Rhiannon whispered.

  Edmyg’s voice rose, mocking her. “A woman is nay a fit ruler. If Cartimandua had submitted to her consort and king, the Brigantes would rule their land to this day. Instead she opened her thighs to any who would enter. As her granddaughter has done.”

  Kynan’s sword lifted. “Shut yer foul mouth, Edmyg.”

  Edmyg raised his own weapon. “Will ye fight for yer whore’s honor, old man?”

  Kynan shifted into a battle stance. “I will fight for my queen.”

  “Nay!” Rhiannon cried, but the two men paid her no heed. She lunged forward, but her kinsman Bryan restrained her. She twisted about. “Stop them.”

  “I willna,” Bryan replied. “And nay will any of the others. They must resolve this feud with blood.”

  Edmyg’s sword flashed. Kynan’s answered. The older warrior’s skill was keen, but Edmyg’s prowess in battle had earned him the right to be called king. It took but a few strokes before Kynan lay sprawled in the dirt, the tip of Edmyg’s sword pressing into the hollow of his throat.

  A thin smile played about Edmyg’s lips. “Ye might have picked a more worthy champion, my queen.”

  “Spare him, Edmyg. I beg ye.”

  “And let him be claiming a place by yer side? Nay.” Kynan’s eyes bulged as Edmyg pressed his sword deeper.

  “Yer favor has doomed him,” Edmyg declared. He plunged his sword into Kynan’s neck with a quick, deep thrust, nearly severing the old warrior’s head with his ferocity. Blood spurted from the gash and sprayed onto Rhiannon’s skirt.

  She sank to her knees, struggling to draw breath into her stunned lungs. Kynan’s spirit tore from his body with a violence that caused stars to burst in her vision. Pain pounded in her head. Tremors wracked her body, made worse by the knowledge that she alone was to blame for the honest warrior’s death.

  Edmyg lifted his bloodied blade to the sky. “Does anyone else dare challenge a king?”

  When no answer came, he sheathed his sword and hauled Rhiannon to her feet. She grasped his shoulder for balance and fought the urge to vomit.

  “Our queen has been defiled by the Roman dog who commands Vindolanda,” Edmyg shouted.

  “Nay,” Rhiannon said, but a roar of outrage shattered her weak protest. Nausea surged and darkness swirled into her vision. She heard Edmyg’s faraway voice as her consciousness faded.

  “Who will join me in vengeance?”

  Chapter Twenty

  “Drink this.”

  Rhiannon grasped the wooden cup and brought it to her lips. A hand held the back of her head, supporting her as she drank a bitter potion. The light of a low fire cast flickering shadows over wattle-and-mud walls. Madog’s forest hut.

  “Owein,” she said weakly.

  “Hush. Dinna try to speak. Ye’ve suffered much today.”

  She nodded, closing her eyes against the memory of Kynan’s slaughter. She drank again, swallowing deeply. Owein shifted on the pallet, drawing her against him in the reverse of an embrace she’d given him so often as a small lad. When had he grown so tall as to offer her the same comfort?

  She laid her empty cup on the dirt floor. “Where is Madog?”

  “Preparing the summer fires. This eve, your hand will spark the flames.”

  “Nay.” Rhiannon sought Owein’s gaze, but his eyes were shadowed and she could not make out his expression.

  “ ’Tis folly to attack the Romans. I’ll not be part of it, Owein. Would ye join Edmyg in dooming the clan?”

  He laughed, an unpleasant sound more suited to a man than a lad. “For once, Edmyg and I are of one mind. The Roman commander soiled ye. He must pay.”

  “He did naught but what I allowed him,” Rhiannon whispered.

  Owein swore. “Edmyg said as much, but I nay believed him. How could I, when I saw plain enough what he did? I heard your grief.”

  Rhiannon looked at him in confusion. “Ye saw, Owein? But how?”

  “Ye know I have the Sight.”

  “Ye see shadows of the future.”

  “Aye, and those of the past and the present. I saw ye with him, Rhiannon. In his bed. Sobbing as if yer heart would break.” His arms tensed around her. “I’ll kill him for it.”

  “Nay,” Rhiannon whispered, her mind reeling with the thought of Owein’s unseen presence in the chamber she’d shared with Lucius. “He never harmed me. I went to him willingly.”

  “Willingly.” He jerked to his feet. “I am ashamed of ye.”

  Rhiannon’s temper flared. “ ’Tis nay your place to approve of my union with Lucius.”

  “He will die for it. I promise ye that.”

  “Nay, Owein. Ye willna harm him.”

  He regarded her steadily. “The Roman fort will fall. Its commander will die. I have Seen it.”

  Cold dread seeped into Rhiannon’s gut. “If Vindolanda falls, ’twill seal the Brigantes’ doom. The Romans will not rest until we are all dead or enslaved. Can ye not See the truth?”

  “The beasts killed our
father. They slaughtered the Druids on Mona, raped their women. How can we forget?”

  “Drawing blood from a wound will nay heal it! As queen I can negotiate peace. The Brigantes will once again be a free people within Rome, as we were under Cartimandua.”

  “A free people? Ye are mad to think it. Our grandmother believed Rome thought her an equal. Her trust cost her the throne.”

  Rhiannon closed her eyes as a swell of lightheadedness assaulted her. Owein spoke the truth. She’d little reason to believe the Roman governor would grant autonomy to the Brigantes. Still, she longed for the opportunity to intervene on her people’s behalf. Perhaps with Lucius’s help …

  Nay. It was a dream that would never come true. Another wave of vertigo struck. She leaned forward and braced her palm on the floor.

  Owein’s hand pressed her shoulder. “Lie down, sister,” he said. “The spinning will soon pass, leaving ye stronger than before. Ye’ll be linked to Madog’s spirit as I am.”

  Rhiannon stared up at him. “Have ye drugged me, Owein?”

  Guilt flickered in his eyes, then hardened into hate. Dear Briga. She’d been gone from him for less time than it took the moon to wax. Yet in that short span, Owein had passed from lad to man.

  He crouched by her side, steadying her as the walls of the hut spun wildly. “ ’Tis best this way. Ye’ll light the fires of Beltane. Madog and I will call Kernunnos. The foreign swine will soon be gone from the lands of the Brigantes.”

  She struggled to refute him, even as she felt the potion drain her resistance. “The Romans are not beasts, Owein. They are men like any others.”

  He eased her down on the pallet. “They will bleed and die just as well, then.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Rhiannon floated as if in a dream. She wore a checkered tunic and a mantle of blue and gold fastened at her shoulder with a gold pin worked like a leaf, but she had no memory of dressing herself in such garments. A sea of bodies surrounded her, most half hidden behind the tall stones, but a few men—Madog and Owein among them—stood within. Madog’s high, thin voice chanted a numbing path through her mind. Owein’s low tone wove across and around his mentor’s call. Ancient syllables, pulsing, urging.

  Compelling.

  She gripped a taper lit by the strike of iron on stone. Its flame leaped against the night, straining to break free. Two cold pyres lay within the Druid circle, great mounds of oak and fir. They wanted but the touch of her hand to send the wood into flame, but some instinct told Rhiannon to hold back. Though she couldn’t remember the reason, she knew that lighting the summer fire would be a grave mistake.

  But the Druid song rose, sapping her resistance until it was as faint as a childhood memory. She stepped between the pyres and touched the taper to the tinder at the base of each. The tiny flames flickered, faded, then burst anew, snaking through the sacred wood. They lapped higher, caressing one of the white shanks that mingled with the logs and branches. Rhiannon frowned at the pale shafts, her horror rising.

  Bones. Roman bones.

  She watched with revulsion as flames consumed the human kindling, dancing merrily, darting into black hollows and emerging with renewed strength. The spent taper dropped from her fingers.

  She was dimly aware of a man at her side. Edmyg. He wore a fur-trimmed cloak and the gold torc that marked him a king. That, too, was wrong. He was no longer her consort. He’d abandoned that right when he spilled his seed in the womb of another woman.

  The flames leapt, reaching into the night sky. The throng assembled beyond the stones shifted. The chieftains approached first, offering allegiance. As they passed between the fires, she heard her own voice, accepting their troth.

  Their warriors followed, then the elders, and finally the clanswomen and the children. The flames galloped to the twin peaks of the pyres and reached for each other across the heart of the circle. A sound like whipping wind drove back the night cries of the forest. The shadows of the stones flickered. Wood smoke assaulted Rhiannon’s nostrils and stung her eyes.

  The Druid chant quickened, Owein’s young voice blending with Madog’s quivering tones. The full moon, pregnant with promise, broke the edge of the hills and rode into the sky. Rhiannon felt the veil between the land of mortals and the shores of Annwyn grow gossamer-thin, as it did when death neared.

  The last old woman hobbled between the fires, leaning heavily on the arm of a young lass. Madog paced behind, marking his steps with his staff. The skull perched upon it stared balefully at Rhiannon, drawing a flicker of recognition. Who had met such a gruesome fate? It was important that she remember, but she couldn’t seem to snatch the answer from the fog in her brain.

  Madog halted at Rhiannon’s left. With Edmyg’s presence crowding her on the right and the dread skull hovering above, she found she could scarcely breathe.

  Only Owein hadn’t yet passed between the flames. He approached now, still chanting, a low, mournful sound that seemed to be absorbed into the flames. He strode forward, halting barely more than an arm’s length away from Rhiannon, at the very center of the circle. Madog’s Druid sword hung in a scabbard at his side.

  Owein stood as still as death for a heartbeat, then his head snapped back with such a force that Rhiannon was sure his neck had broken. He collapsed on the ground, keening, his hands tearing at his hair. A deep groan tore from his throat.

  Rhiannon gave a cry and lurched toward him, only to be hauled back by Edmyg’s grip. She tore at his fingers as Owein writhed at her feet. “Let me go!”

  “Be still,” he hissed. “He calls Kernunnos.”

  Rhiannon stared dumbly at Madog. When the Druid nodded, her hands began to shake.

  Owein’s back arched and his arms flung wide. Words long forgotten by all save those sworn to guard them poured from his lips. Their power caused Rhiannon’s soul to tremble.

  The wind rose, howling like a wolf, and the ground beneath her feet shook. The Roman’s skull grinned as the flames consumed the bones that had once carried his flesh. The forest shrieked with a voice not of the earth.

  Owein chanted louder, faster. Flames shot from the pyres to form an arch over Rhiannon’s head. The face of the skull rocked toward her. Its hollow eyes, washed by flames, seemed to mark her with their gaze.

  A presence touched her soul. Despairing. Desperate. Pleading. The breath squeezed from her lungs. She’d felt this soul before—where? When? It was vital that she recall. What had it asked of her?

  Owein’s chant rose, then fell, in cadence with the wind. His face had gone pale. Sweat dripped from his brow. His body, crouched on the ground, shook.

  As if sliced by an unseen blade, the wind died. Owein’s chant stopped at precisely the same instant. He lifted his head. “ ’Tis finished.”

  Unbearable dread coiled in Rhiannon’s stomach. Dark power rose, consuming the night, blanketing the stars. The forest went black, still. The clan was silent save for the muffled cries of babes at their mothers’ breasts.

  Those closest to the womb always knew when death was abroad.

  Then, as suddenly as the wind had stopped, it returned with a vengeance in a gale so powerful Rhiannon thought the stones would fly from their ancient resting places. She clutched at her mantle as her hair worked its way from its braids and flew in wild strands into her eyes. A distant rumble sounded, then strengthened. A hundred—nay, a thousand—hooves pounded. Unearthly shrieks burst in the sky like spikes of lightning.

  The skull pivoted on Madog’s staff. “The Wild Hunt is upon us,” the Druid cried. “Kernunnos rides at its fore. Our warriors canna fail.”

  Edmyg unsheathed his sword and thrust it overhead. “In the name of Rhiannon, queen of the Brigantes, death to Rome!”

  The cry echoed through the crowd. “Death to Rome!”

  And Rhiannon remembered.

  The night was far too quiet.

  The silence pricked the back of Lucius’s neck like a swarm of ghost bees, driving him from his bed. He flung the shutters wide and frow
ned through the darkness at the torches on the battlements. He watched until he saw the night sentry pass by the first, then the second, flickering light.

  Then he heard it.

  Howling wind, like a pack of hounds. Or wolves. Thunder like a stampede of hooves. He leaned out over the sill and squinted up at the sky. A dark line of clouds advanced from the north, blotting the stars as it went, though the night was stiller than death.

  The edge of his unease sharpened. He turned and squinted through the dim chamber at Aulus. His brother lay stretched on a cushioned bench. Asleep. His frown deepened. Did ghosts sleep? Aulus had never done so before.

  He crossed the room and looked closer. Aulus’s bruised face was slack. His bloodied hands were clasped across his stomach. Lucius’s gut twisted. It was like looking at a dead man.

  A dead man. A wild laugh escaped him, the sound of it echoing off the tiled floor and painted walls. Lucius braced one hand on the wall above Aulus and let the crazed mirth overtake him until it turned to something emptier. Tears burned his eyes. They fell, passing through Aulus to dampen the cushions beneath. His savage laughter swelled anew.

  He’d gone well and truly insane. But with Rhiannon gone, he could no longer summon the energy to care.

  The shutter banged against the wall. Lucius shook himself and went again to the window. A steady wind had begun to blow out of the north. The blanket of clouds swept overhead. The shriek of the wind rushed the gates.

  Something was coming. A storm? Or something more?

  Rhiannon’s voice sounded in his memory. Go back to Rome. You are in danger here.

  And before, on the morning after her capture. My people will come.

  Lucius froze, the truth rising above the chaos in his mind like an eagle atop a standard. The Celts were attacking, and Rhiannon had known of it. No wonder she’d been so desperate to leave the fort.

  His senses cleared, leaving only the sharp sanity that had saved his life on the battlefield more times than he cared to count. He shrugged into his armor and belted on his sword and dagger even as he strode for the door.