"Nay, lass. Ye were there for young MacDougal's first battle, nine months ago. A braw lad, a bonnie fighter, as ye taught him to be. Rory is proud that his aulder brother died a warrior's death. As should ye be. And the MacCrimmon's were seasoned warriors; they kent well the danger surrounding the Black fury."
"Nine well trained warriors... so many. And who led them into the Land o' Light?" Ailill asked uneasily, her gaze trained on the table before her.
"Twas MacDuff, Himself, as the auldest Gentry in the feud. They were taken to Tir na N'Og'ere their flesh turned cold."
"How many wounded?"
"Of our own, nay more than a dozen. Tiernan commanded the wounded Rogues be treated and released."
Ailill's head shot up, her tear-stung eyes blinking in disbelief at that. "Are you quite certain? That is not our way, and Tiernan is the least likely one to keep enemy forces alive for another battle. You know how he despises their constant treachery, and the Rogue commanders, being in league with so many nasty men, steal our own wee lassies and sell them to deviants for high profit. It fair sickens him."
"Aye, Ailill, but when he saw Rafferty MacDougal fall at the hands o' the Black's youngest bastard, Tiernan lost all semblance o' himself; he went fair crazy wi' grief and well... ye of all people ken what it means to be o'ertaken wi' the battle frenzy." Shaking her head at the knowledge of just how well Ailill knew that particular meaning, Fallon frowned.
"He killed an entire battalion, but it wasna just him. The MacKenzie's, and a many from Heartfire, were struck in the same fashion... 'ere they knew it, half the Rogue army gathered that day lay dead about their bloodied feet, and a good hundred more lay mortally wounded. 'Twas an all-out bloodbath. Those not too badly wounded were stitched back together, sent back at the head o' the train of their dead and dying, as a warning to all in league wi' the Black Druid."
Admiration for Tiernan's handling of the situation welled up, overflowed into Ailill's saddened features, shined in her eyes, darkened to cobalt with a rush of feeling. When she finally remembered that Micah and Jacob were still sitting there, had heard everything, she turned a wary eye in that direction. She saw absolute bewilderment on the two handsome faces; curiosity was a bright flame in the dark eyes, there was no mistaking that gleam, and still yet a look she knew was alight in her own eyes when each met her silent gaze. In spite of the fact that so much had been said, in spite of her tears shed for another, for her dead kindred, and despite the obvious fact that they knew nothing at all of whom or exactly what her grandmother had been talking about, Ailill saw a flicker of recognition in those dark blue depths, a sense that they should know full well what was going on. It heartened her to see such; and the fact that both had been highly impressed with her first love's bold warning actually brought a slight smile to her lips, however tremulous it was. She glanced briefly at her parents, silent as death throughout the small scene; they were almost as out of the loop as the twins. And well they should be, she thought disparagingly. Serves them both right. She met her grandmother's tense gaze with reluctance.
"I cannot preside o'er the ceremonies, can I? I cannot lead the Druids' fasting, nor the mourner's feast..." She sighed loudly, unhappily, almost a growl of frustration. "It isn't right, this. They were my friends, my kindred. My brothers in arms! I cannot say goodbye, nor even help to build the funeral pyres. It has already been done."
For once the ancient Queen understood exactly what her young heir was going through, how hard it had been to stay away from all that she knew and loved for so many long months; for years, when all was said and done. Sadly, there was nothing she could offer that would ease the girl. Nothing at all.
"I am sorry, Granddaughter. It was all done last night. Naught else can be done now."
"So then this is why I was awakened this morning with demands rather than the smiles and welcome I have grown accustomed to, right?" Ailill looked at her father, more than simply displeased. "I got my own battle, isn't that right? And more than merely a call to duty and honor. It isn't my people I must serve everafter, is it? No, don't answer. I ken the meanin' o' hoor. 'Tis my grandsire's legacy, after all."
She stood suddenly, turned away, head bowed. "You cannot know how such actions have wounded me," she said, barely above a whisper. "Now I truly feel I am naught but the changeling, and you are no more than surrogates, the chosen o' the Tribal Clans. I believe I must be alone for a bit, for if I continue in the presence o' any more pathetic humans, nor yet you wickedknaves who dare to call themselves my kin!I shall be compelled to call up all that I've learned in my years away and you would know how very much I hate and despise you."
Her back grew smaller, disappeared around the doorway; within moments the front screen door slammed with deafening force and Ailill could be seen through the open kitchen windows, her arms full with a large set of bagpipes, headed toward the meadows above the house at a dead run. For the first time in what had seemed like hours, Micah found his voice. "Where is she going?" His expression was troubled as he watched the tiny woman grow smaller through the windows behind him.
"She goes to grieve, Micah," Annie answered quietly, standing beside the sash with a frown. Sensing the eyes of the two young men boring into her back, she explained, "As is customary, Ailill will perch atop the highest tower, usually it would be one of the turrets at Heartfire; she will play melancholy notes and she will sing the caithristo honor each of the lads lost in battle. In the Highlands, it would be her right to lead the ceremony, but she is here now and therefore unable to grieve, or to rejoice, later, with the families of the fallen." She turned, meeting the eyes of each. For the first time since they had met her, Annie Mackintosh looked unhappy.
"Because she will lament each one with a full ceremony, and because there were nine dead, it will take her a long time. If you've other plans for the day, you're free to go; if not, well, that's up to you."
"Will she leave? She talked about going back to Scotland..." Jacob shrugged, at a loss. There had been no air travel for at least twenty-five years, nor phone service, nor regulated electricity either; he could not imagine how long it would take to get across oceans. With a jolt, he realized he had never heard Ailill say how she came to be at Jewel Mountain; not to mention the fact that these people spoke of the place as if it were a simple day trip to get there; a completely different country, and they talk as if they are in constant communication with the people there, which would obviously be impossible. And hadn't Micah said she looked as if she'd been in a battle when he saw her the first time, weeks ago? Jacob fought a growing sense of unreality as the delicate-looking redhead gazed at him in unfeigned sympathy.
"My daughter will not leave this place. Ailill has given her word... Herself would not go back on a vow for any reason. No, Jacob, when she comes back from the summit, she'll likely set up a bonfire, to mark the funeral pyres burning on the Highland moor, ken?" The woman's expression was grim, her eyes the same darkened shade as Ailill's when she met the lad's worried gaze; though he found it strange, hearing Annie refer to her young daughter as Herself, the emphasis unmistakable, he said nothing. He wanted nothing more than to follow the beautiful girl; to watch and listen; her ways seemed rather eccentric, antiquated; downright pagan, truth be told. Funeral pyres?And now there was a slight accent rearing its head in the Mackintosh's speech. What next?Jacob could not help wondering.
"Aye, and then she'll get drunk as a bee in a beer bottle, toasting the dead." James flashed them a ghost of a smile, his teeth gleaming for the barest instant as he stood. "Come on, boys. You can help. I know you don't want to leave. Curiosity killed the cat, but that rule don't apply to us wolves, now does it?"
Glancing with hooded eyes between the two women, Ailill's maternal line as far as they knew though her talk of surrogates had certainly left a marked question ringing in the air, seeing the silent grimness of them both, the strained tautness of feminine bearing, Micah and Jacob both stood and followed James out of the kitchen, out of the massive house they'd
once thought was the finest they would ever set eyes on; each understood that, somehow, that first impression would ultimately be proven dead wrong.
Sad Fury
The sad notes of the pibroch's wail were carried to their sharp ears on an unseasonably warm breeze; heads cocked to one side, listening as the eerie music rang down over the hills, into the lowest valleys below from the very tip of the mountain, a sense of the fiery little woman's cutting sadness hit them both as one. Side by side, the brothers stood gazing at the minuscule form far above, dark with the sun at her back, facing the direction of her own homeland. The feeling of displacement they had struggled against for more than half their lives struck hard with the sight, with the sound that held a disconcerting familiarity; the odd knowing that this was not, had never been, their world... not fully.
Neither were aware of the silence which inevitably descended upon the ranch. The few hands, unused to the Ceol Mor, so natural to Ailill, had paused in their duties, slipped quietly out into the yard to stand behind the twin men, listening; tanned faces expressed a plethora of emotions, the whole range from grinning admiration to poignant sorrow; the latter was a feeling which Micah and Jacob, the stolen sons of a great man, shared in wholeheartedly, though neither yet knew the truth of their birth. It seemed right, fitting, when the single great pipes were joined by a second, and then a third, each farther down the mountain, the players hidden beneath the heavy shadows of Wilderdeep, the more welcoming shade of the Oak Wood. It was the most moving display of musical talent any of them had ever heard; even Joe MacLeod, at thirty-two the oldest of the farmhands and a superb musician himself, had been born after the downfall of the great American nation, some hundreds of years after his ancestors had fought, and died, for love of the country of his own origins; Ailill's own beloved Scotland.
She played a variety of sorrowful tunes, including 'The Mackintosh's Lament', which she had learned from two of those she now mourned; she ended, surprisingly, with 'Amazing Grace', sung in a full, rich, absolutely beautiful contralto that carried as well as the single pipe accompanying her from somewhere inside Wilderdeep. As the sun lowered in the western sky, Ailill sang a handful of other songs, each as resounding as the first, as heartfelt, the Gaelic words in the last sounding sad and sweet, different from the previous songs of the caithristranslated to what appeared to be a recounting of each man's lineage. The change in timbre was clear; this was a song of love lost, unfamiliar to the men who had since, with great reluctance, gone back to their work.
Micah paused once more to listen, sensed Jacob do the same without having to turn around. James had ordered that nine small piles of wood be constructed in an out of the way spot in the low meadow, just inside a circular arrangement of large flat stones as high as a man's knee; the piles were meant to duplicate the funerary pyres of Ailill's lost friends; the brothers stood one on either side, a faggot clutched in each filthy fist. Their eyes were trained on the summit, on Ailill's flaming tresses, fanned out about her in a fiery nimbus with the last lowering rays of the sun.
"Tis her own amhranshe sings just now. Nay the usual one, 'Mo Gealbhan', for her naming ceremonial. This song Ailill composed by herself at thirteen, after she learned the truth o' her birth, as sheknows it." The ancient woman with the diamond eyes stepped up to the outer edge of the would-be bonfire, her features sharpened with the shadows creeping dusky-blue fingers over the hills and valleys. She looked like a cat, a wizened feline with a white mantle, eyes swirling in the pale depths with an iridescent hue. Jacob stared at her hard, attempted, without success, to place her unnaturally young face because something deeply buried tingled just at the surface, a knowing that he had seen this old woman before ever setting foot on the mount. Unblinking, she stared back, into his dark, beautiful, unutterably sad eyes.
"Fair as the glens, hearts golden and true," she translated, "dark as the wood, where first I saw you; Eyes, like midnight on a cold, moonless moor, love through the ages do I see in those depths; a vow writ in stone, in blood, in bone; of fealty, of love; I stand alone; awaiting a tierce, my Princes of auld, to stand with me, to see me through. Everlasting, everafter, my lifeblood for you. Three Sons for three Sons, as three Princes before, guardians of Sidhe, the gift of Danaan, avowed of Riada, in unity, eternal, one Queen for three Kings, now; evermore."
The notes died away, Ailill's voice silent for long moments though she did not move as the sun set at last; the ancient queen turned an opaque gaze toward her young heir. Uncertain what to say to the rather poetic lyrics, what to think, Jacob and Micah looked at one another. It seemed as if this Fallon character expected them to know the meaning behind the words, to understand the reason for the composition, but the truth was that, however beautiful the song, it was as alien to them as the taste of freedom they had only known since coming to this place, this land of plenty. Jewel Mountain was, for them, a veritable utopia to which they'd only just become accustomed. The presence of the odd old woman, the seeming change in James and Annie over the past few weeks, people they had come to care for, as well as the addition of Ailill, with all her mysterious ways, her abnormal strength and vast degrees of knowledge- she was a child prodigy in every sense of the word- sadly, each of these people threatened to destroy the dream-state in which the brothers moved through their life, their only true escape from a tyrannical father-figure, from painful memories far too deeply buried to recount.
Their life had been harder than was necessary, they knew; lonely from day one. Without each other, neither could have come to this point, this almosthappiness. And neither, not once in their young lives, had ever felt so complete as they had since Ailill came along. Her talk of leaving had been hard to hear without arguing against it; her tears, devastating. As one, they wanted nothing more than to stick by her, to comfort her in what was obviously a terrible grief. And yet, there was still that small, selfish voice... the one that wished to remind them both that Ailill's first tears had been shed, not for her dead friends, but for a man she had never mentioned throughout weeks of nattering just to pass the time, through one hell of a long, talk-filled night. She had slept between them last night, innocent though that proved to be- in the middle of recounting the tale of the Tuatha DeDanaan, an ancient race who had crossed the Western sky in great ships, searching for a beautiful new homeland in which to settle, Ailill had fallen asleep. She'd slipped away so quickly, pulled down into dreams in which she whispered a constant, night-long, ancient tongue. An eerie thing, that, listening to her talk to the ghosts of her dreams as if they were truly there; they'd not the heart to tell her they knew the story, Ireland's own tale, when she awoke this morning, clear-eyed and smiling, only to be set upon by her own father, forced into a verbal battle of wits and worth that had infuriated the girl; humiliated her. And now this. The sadness of her grief, her beautiful music a last goodbye to friends, comrades; soldiers fallen in a battle that, apparently, raged ever on. Ailill did not look the part of a seasoned warrior, but she played the part as well as any man; too well, in fact. That was why it was so startling when a flicker of motion on the periphery of the meadow caught the dark eyes of both young men.
It seemed she had suddenly appeared there, when a moment before Ailill had been standing atop the highest peak, the summit of Jewel Mountain. Same as that first day, when Micah had followed her up the mountain trail, her flesh was painted blue; her fiery hair remained loose this time, flowing down her back like a flaming bridal veil, but her clothing was gone, her naked body marked with intricate designs, symbols of ancient origin; over her muscular arm flowed folds of a robe or cloak, the same deep blue of her tear-reddened eyes when they met first Micah's, then Jacob's sympathetic gaze.
Without a word, Ailill stepped up to the mini pyres, yet to be lit, and raised her face to the heavens, eyes closed. A half-whispered chant took up the next few minutes, her face blank, as if she were in some sort of trance as she walked deiseilabout the outer edges of the circle of stones; the repetitions of both chant and march had a
soothing effect, a surprising occurrence given the overt paganism of the ritual. She stopped suddenly, right hand raised as if about to salute, then her thumb and forefinger met, made a small circle through which she peered hard at the brothers for long moments. They peered back, ignoring the slight gasp of surprise from somewhere behind them; apparently Ailill was not supposed to have seen them, or perhaps it was the fact that she had unintentionally seen them first thing that had caused such a noticeable stir of unease to ripple through the Mackintoshes of Jewel Mountain?
"The Histories prove correct; 'tis one face that I see throughout aeons," she muttered softly, turning away. When she donned the robe, all but disappearing beneath the shapeless folds, Ailill turned back, her gaze trained on the two men who would now and everafter be a part of her life.
"Teine Sith," she fairly hissed, and the piles of dry wood erupted in flames as high as her hooded crown.
"Och then lass, ye've truly done right by the fallen lads. Do ye close yon wee door and sober up a bit now, aye?" Ailill's grandmother, whom she had rudely taken to calling Fallon as the night wore on, when she deigned to acknowledge the woman at all, cast a censorious stare in the direction of her granddaughter who was, apparently, already deeply in her cups.
Shooting the woman a baleful glare, a look that clearly stated 'bugger off', shrugged, swallowed down the last of the spirit in her mug, and threw her head back, spewing a tight stream of melodic Gaelic to the sky. Roughly translated, her oath seemingly meant nothing; the true meaning behind "Oh! Sweet Brigit of the Timeless Age, your own progeny cares naught for those whose lives are lost in her stead. The time for change slips ever closer, most ancient of queens, and yet, the changeling of old rues the day sovereignty is passed on, for what a mess it shall be to clear away", was, in its own way, crystal clear. Jacob nearly laughed aloud at the way Fallon's attractive features hardened with the insult. He felt badly for Ailill but wondered if it was wise, the way she had chosen to lash out at these demanding elders, her family; if he had taken the cutting tone with which she spoke to her own grandmother, if he'd even attempted it for a moment on Kiah he would surely have been knocked for a loop first thing... probably far worse.
Hidden Jewel (Heartfire Series) Page 12
