Riona

by Linda Windsor

  Drawing a breath, he knew he could not give in to this agonizing remorse and undermining panic. He needed to listen with the ear of a warrior—and the soul of a saint—that God might help him form a plan.

  He closed his eyes, and a fervent prayer leaped from his heart. Father, grant me a cool head and a whole body … just one more time.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  As Kieran listened—not only with his ears, but with his spirit as well—the clearer and more damning the situation became. The image of the new servant, Nis—his shaven head, crevassed and scarred … those burning coals of his eyes peering from beneath a pronounced brow—gave way to Mebh’s face. He saw again her stringy, strawlike hair hiding all but her ugly fury and her determination to impale him with a hay fork.

  Nis and Mebh … they were one and the same, vicious and bitter. She must have been the one to smuggle Maille into the rath.

  Colga seized his arm, only now catching on to the treachery.

  Kieran whispered, “ ’Twas no man that soaked you in wine earlier, ’twas Mebh.”

  Kieran shoved it away, trapped in his own agonizing revelation. Now he knew what had been wrong earlier that evening, why he hadn’t felt quite as at home and at peace as he’d wanted. Even his burning wound had tried to warn him of the presence of the one who’d dealt it, but he’d been too distracted with Bran and his company to take issue with a servant’s harsh glare.

  Sins of the father … visited upon his children.

  The haunting words impaled his heart to his soul with nails as cruel as those that had pierced Christ’s own hands. Except Kieran was not the innocent Christ had been. Cold perspiration seeped through Kieran’s pores till he trembled with it. God, forgive me. God, help me.

  “He has the eldest of your boys, I think.”

  Fynn. Kieran’s hand went instinctively to his waist where he usually carried at least a dining knife. Only then did he realize he wore nothing but his leine. He’d even left his sword by Leila’s bed, where he’d knelt to pray.

  Colga drew his own blade. A second, more deadly one he pulled from the top laces of his sandal and handed it to Kieran. “What’ll we do?”

  Kieran took it with a grateful nod, a plan forming in his mind even as he spoke. “Have you heard anything from your uncle?”

  Colga shook his head. “I was coming to see him when …”

  Maille spoke again inside, silencing them both. “What’s this? Bring me that lamp, woman.”

  “If I bring ye the lamp—” Mebh’s tone was testy—“I’ll have to let the lad go—” She gave a small shriek. It cut through Kieran’s disgust, straight to his heart with its infectious terror. He had to do something, but charging into a blind situation was a poor tactic. Perhaps by listening he might judge the whereabouts of the players in this macabre play.

  “Saints be with us, it looks like blood!”

  Something crashed to the stone floor.

  His plan still coming together in bits and pieces from a fog of alarm, Kieran drew back to charge the door if he so much as heard a whimper out of Fynn. Instead, it was Maille who spoke.

  “What manner of trickery is this, lad?” the man demanded.

  Maille, Mebh, and Fynn—theirs were the only voices Kieran had heard, which meant Cromyn was either bound and gagged or dead. Heavenly Father, spare us that! As hastily as the soulful prayer shot from his preoccupied mind, Kieran’s hard-hewn warrior discipline resumed. He poised, sense and soul shoulder-to-shoulder, ready to receive the sign to go into action.

  “If we have to charge in blind, I’ll go first. You cover my back,” Kieran whispered to his companion.

  Colga nodded.

  “Where are my jewels?” The Ulster lord’s voice rose to a feverish pitch inside. “Where, curse your thieving hide?”

  Kieran scowled, glancing at Colga in bewilderment.

  “What jewels?” Fynn answered, echoing Kieran’s thoughts, in fierce rebellion. “I thought the bloomin’ vial was filled with holy water. I took it for good luck.”

  The vial again … and the lad had had it.

  “From a dead man’s possessions?” Maille’s cryptic remark only accentuated Kieran’s disappointment. “A lad after my own heart.”

  “You have no heart,” Fynn protested. “I knew I’d done wrong and tried to put it back but couldn’t get the chance.”

  “After you took my diamonds, you impudent little thief. What is this, cow’s blood?”

  “ ’Tis blood money turned ta blood,” Mebh wailed at a spine-raking pitch. “God’s vengeance, God’s vengeance!”

  Kieran couldn’t help the shiver that raced up his back. Blood money turned to blood? Beside him, Colga crossed himself. Could Mebh be some kind of witch?

  Heavenly Father, give me a signal. An ill-timed assault, be it early or late, could jeopardize Fynn’s safety. And guide me straight and true, Father, for I’ve no concept of what I am about to charge into.

  “I know nothing of diamonds or blood, I swear!” Fynn shouted above Mebh’s hysteria.

  “Shut up, woman, and hold him still.” Something fell over, a table perhaps, landing with a hollow thud against the stone floor. “I will have my reward, be it in jewels or the blood of those who took them from me.”

  This was it. Kieran motioned his companion clear and kicked in the door, bellowing like the northern thunder god incarnate. In the blink of a trained eye, he assessed the situation. Straight ahead of him on the altar table, a polished, golden cross amplified the fragile flame of a small candle struggling against the night draft. A sinister figure, black against the glow, poised on one knee beside a bench, which he’d obviously knocked over. Maille. And in his frozen hand was a dagger. Beyond him, bound on a cot against the wall, was Father Cromyn.

  Kieran made straight for the female in man’s clothing. Snarling like a vengeful beast, he knocked her to the floor and away from Fynn. Leaving her in Colga’s custody, he charged like a fury that could not be stopped toward the perpetrator of all the evil that had vexed him these last weeks.

  Having had a second more warning than his cohort, Maille leapt away from the table to where a wide-eyed Cromyn lay. From the folds of his cloak, he brandished a short sword in the hand opposite the dagger. With the smaller blade pressed to Cromyn’s throat, he held the other ready for Kieran.

  In the closeness of the vaulted walls, where the break between wall and ceiling was barely discernible, black smoke from the lone fat candle gave the man a demonic appearance. It was as if the smoke came from his long, hawkish nose and curled about the fashioned fork of his beard. Yet, it was neither weapon nor the sinister aura that stopped Kieran short. It was blood dripping from his enemy’s hands. The priest was gagged and trussed like fowl, but he appeared to be unharmed.

  So who was bleeding?

  “Fynn, are you all right, lad?” Kieran called out, no longer trusting his senses.

  “Aye,” Fynn started, “but—”

  “You tell that boy of yours to hand over my reward,” Maille interrupted, “or I’ll slit the good father’s neck from ear to ear. Trust me, I had no qualm in helping Senan to the other side.”

  “A mad dog will turn on his own,” Colga remarked from where Mebh was huddled at his feet. Indeed Maille looked like one, what with his upper lip curled in threat as if he held the advantage.

  Kieran quirked a skeptical brow. “What makes you think I’ll let you leave here alive if you so much as scratch the priest, redhand?” Where had the blood come from? Kieran dared not take his eye off the Ulster lord to search for the victim—a hapless guard perhaps. “Whose blood drips now from your fingers?”

  “Blood money turned ta blood,” Mebh babbled. “I seen it meself, turned ta blood, right from the bottle. Blood money.”

  “It’s a trick, you hag!” Maille jerked the short sword to Fynn, who’d come to Kieran’s side. “This thief thinks to mock me.”

  “You ain’t worth mockin’,” Fynn challenged hatefully. “I’d as soon mock a bull’s—�
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  Kieran shushed Fynn with his free hand. “The cock that crows loudest oft lands in a cookpot before the next sunrise. Move away, boy, and hold your tongue,” he ordered sternly. God willing, the boy would heed his advice on humility rather than learn it the hard way—like at the bloody end of a hay fork wielded by a madwoman.

  “I’ll have my reward now, boy, or the priest dies.”

  Kieran shook off the haunting distraction for the challenge at hand. The exact circumstances of Maille’s appearance still confused him. “What reward?”

  Colga moved within the periphery of Kieran’s eye. “His reward for his part in the illfated plot to assassinate Aidan, King of Scotia Mi—”

  “I know who Aidan is,” Kieran cut him off sharply. “But what do you know of this conspiracy, Dromin?”

  Even as he asked, uneasiness dragged its tingling fingers along Kieran’s spine, lifting the hair on his neck. The villainous lineup of faces from his dream paraded across his mind—Maille, Senan, Tadgh, Mebh … and Colga.

  Colga, who was never far away when something suspicious had happened.

  Bran’s words from their journey to Kilmare came to Kieran: “ ’Tis that sniveling’s fault.” Colga had conspired against Aidan. The realization fell upon him like an anvil upon his chest.

  “Ach, Colga, tell me it isn’t so!” Kieran sounded as though his very breath bore the crush of the betrayal. Aye, it was a small matter in comparison to Leila’s bordering on the brink of death, but then a single thread was often the undoing of an entire garment.

  Now Kieran understood Maille’s assured demeanor. It was not Ulster who was surrounded by the enemy, but Kieran himself. Yet he held Colga’s weapon, an inner voice noted. Had the coward given it to him to lure him inside where he could be taken without being seen?

  “Go on, Dromin.” Maille was a veritable spring of cynicism. “Here is your chance to belatedly confess your conscience to a lot who will not get the chance to tell of it.”

  Colga toyed with the dining dagger, refusing to meet Kieran’s gaze. “I left Aidan’s flank guard exposed to the enemy. In gratitude, they saw that the Dromin needed a new chief.”

  A bilious taste assaulted the back of Kieran’s throat. “Your own cousin?”

  “Aye,” Dromin answered, refusing to meet his gaze.

  “Unfortunately, your friend Aidan has been harder to kill than the Dromin chief. Tell me, Gleannmara—” Maille struck a cocky pose—“have you seen angels protecting him, or is the fact that he’s still breathing simply a bad turn of fate for those of us who had seen his brother on the throne?”

  “He’s had many lives to be sure.” After his rescue on the racecourse and what Kieran saw in the privy the night of Aidan’s attempted assassination, he’d never scoff at the idea of angels again. But if they were real, then what had happened to Leila’s? Father, I want to believe.

  “Angels or nay,” Colga remarked, “the conspiracy failed. Those not dead have faded into the facade of acceptance in fear that Aidan is truly heaven’s choice. It’s over.”

  Those not dead …

  “Senan and Tadgh.” It was no guess on Kieran’s part.

  “As I said before, I helped the good bishop repent, and I believe you saw to Tadgh’s justice,” Maille taunted.

  “Taddy, yes, yes, Taddy’s gone. No angels for him, not a one.” Mebh’s singsong mumblings turned to a growl. “And now I’ve no husband and no hair … cut it off in me grief. Poor Nis has no one. Mebh has no one.” She spat in contempt. “And it’s all your fault … just like ’is lordship says.”

  “Of that, I’m truly sorry, Mebh.” Kieran’s apology did little to assuage his guilt. Leila suffered for his arrogant pride. It had been a lark to run the cowardly Tadgh into the water. Kieran had not only judged and executed him, but he’d enjoyed it. Now it sickened him. Father, take me, but please spare the child. ’Tis I who deserve death.

  “Maille,” Kieran managed, climbing up through the misery and regret that accosted him to face the present threat. “I will hand over my weapon to you if you simply take your vial and people and leave.”

  “Make the lad give me my diamonds first.”

  Kieran glanced at Fynn. “Well, lad?”

  Fynn shook his head stubbornly.

  “Fynn,” Kieran said impatiently, “blood begets blood. Sin begets sin, not just for ourselves, but for our loved ones. Your sister lies dying because of my sin. Yours has caused its share of travail for us all as well. Now where are the cursed diamonds?”

  “I don’t know!” Fynn declared. “I never looked in the vial. I thought it was holy water and kept it for luck and …”

  “And,” Kieran prompted as the boy dropped his gaze to the floor.

  “And I was going to sell the silver case if me’n’ the twins was left out on our own, like you wanted to start with.”

  Kieran cringed inside. Faith, was there no end to the heartache his thoughtless arrogance caused? “Ah, lad—”

  “You didn’t want us,” Fynn blurted out angrily. “You said it over and over. We were ragmullions, thieves, cut from the same bolt as our parents—” he caught his breath—“but you changed and … well, you just changed. I’m thinkin’ we all have.”

  “Touching as this is, I don’t believe the little thief.” Maille, enjoying his deranged mockery, eased up on the blade at Cromyn’s throat.

  The flickering, smoking candle hissed and flared brighter, capturing the sadistic glimmer of his gaze for a fleeting moment. Seizing upon the distraction, Father Cromyn threw himself off the bed and into the back of Ulster’s knees, throwing the man off balance.

  “Run for help, lad!” Kieran shouted, lunging for the hilt of the short sword.

  He hoped the force of his charge would knock Maille over the bed. With luck, the surprise combined with the fall would knock the other blade from his hand. As they went down, he registered Colga just a shadow’s breath behind him. The table holding the candle crashed against the floor at the same time. The falling lamp sent shadows leaping wildly toward the ceiling as if dispossessed of their bodies, and suddenly darkness cloaked all.

  “Run for help, Fynn!” Kieran expected at any moment to feel the plunge of a blade, be it Colga’s, Maille’s—or perhaps both.

  Grunts and curses mingled so that he knew not which was his and which belonged to his enemies. He struggled like a demon for the precious seconds it took to wring the sword from Maille’s hand. As it came free, he rolled away and to his feet with long embedded training, ready for his nemesis to recover. Miraculously, Kieran was unscathed, save knocking his head upon the low slope of the ceiling over the bed.

  “Cromyn?” Kieran called out in the darkness.

  The answering “Here!” assured him that the priest had maneuvered out of harm’s way, at least for the moment. The decision remained, though, whether to take the offensive against the unseen or wait until his eyes adjusted to the new light admitted through the door left open by Fynn’s retreat for help. Prepared as he was, nothing happened. The scrambling he’d rolled away from stilled. The sounds of struggle silenced.

  Frozen, Kieran strained to hear anything above his own labored breathing. It filled his nostrils with the stony dankness of a place that saw little natural light, while his pounding heart played war upon his ears.

  Finally he heard Colga. “I … he’s dead, I think.”

  “Who?” Kieran demanded warily, crouching into a ready position lest the danger be postponed and not eliminated.

  “M … Maille.” The other man took a deep breath and coughed, choked. “Was the least … I could do.”

  Carefully, Kieran rose. He still could see nothing in the square of light cast from the door save Cromyn’s trussed form. Someone moved on the bed and struck the floor like a lifeless sack of grain.

  Kieran’s foot kicked a metal blade. In an instant, he had the short sword he’d wrested from Maille in his hand.

  The only rush that followed was Kieran’s own. He lit the extingui
shed candle from the puddle of fat still burning on the floor where it fell. Placing it high on the stone altar for the most light, he approached Cromyn to free him from the ropes that held his wrists and ankles. “Colga,” he called, his vision beginning to accept the shadows in the darkness.

  The Dromin chief answered with an anguished groan. “I … I think I’m … d … dying, too.”

  Kieran freed Cromyn and shot his attention to Colga. Blood soaked the Dromin’s chest, spreading from the impaled blade of Maille’s dagger. Colga had taken it in Kieran’s stead.

  Fynn returned then with men bearing weapons and torches. The light filled the room, robbing it of its macabre cloak of death and darkness.

  Cromyn lightened it even more. “You’re not dying, nephew,” he announced, crossing himself in gratitude. “It appears God is not finished with you yet, though only heaven knows why.”

  He glanced at Kieran, their gaze kindling in mutual agreement. Colga’s confession would remain between them, at least for now.

  Fynn sidled up beside Kieran, staring down at Colga.

  “He saved my life,” Kieran told the lad, stopping the accusation he feared would come from the lad’s lips. “ ’Tis time for prayer and forgiveness, not condemnation, wouldn’t you say?”

  Guilt flushed the boy’s face, followed by relief when Kieran squeezed his shoulder.

  Suddenly Fynn glanced around the room. “Where’s Mebh?”

  A quick scan sent a chill surging through Kieran’s blood. The woman was gone.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Leila looked like a tiny, bloodless doll lying on the clean bed Riona had made for her. Faint breath and a fainter pulse was all the life left in the child, but Riona refused to stop praying. God had made her a promise, and she would hold to it to the last. At a stirring in the open doorway of the guest lodge, she looked up from her prayerful posture, expecting to see Ina and Liex returning with fresh towels and clean water. Instead, what met her eyes was a dreadful apparition.