“Kaetha?”
She turned, relieved, expecting to see Gwyn but the woman before her was not like the woman she’d left behind. Kaetha was speechless. It was her aunt but not. As a butterfly is not the caterpillar it once was. Gone was the fiercely adhered to Dalrathan style. Hide leggings and a short tunic replaced the demure, ankle-length gown. Hair that used to be neatly tied back and covered now tumbled freely over her shoulders, greyer and wirier than she’d remembered. The tattoos emblazoning her arms were bared rather than shamefully concealed, their Edonian symbols echoed in her jewellery and clothing, even in blue woad painting on her face. She looked even more Edonian than Morwena had ever done.
Gwyn looked as shocked as Kaetha felt, her eyes glittering with tears. She flung her arms around Kaetha. “It is you.”
“Hello,” said Kaetha, not knowing what else to say.
Gwyn stroked her hair. “I knew you’d come back.” She held her face in her hands, just for a moment. “I knew it.”
“This is Donnan and Mairi,” she said. “She’s Aedan’s wife. And this is Tam.”
“My home is yours,” said Gwyn, “such as it is.” Her gaze lingered longest on Tam. “We have much to acquaint one another with.”
Mairi fell to her knees then, letting out a stifled groan. Gwyn swept over to her. “Come,” she said, helping her up. “Tam, help me with her.”
“What’s the matter, Mairi?” asked Kaetha.
“Poor thing,” said Gwyn. “She must be exhausted. Come. We’ll take her to my hearthside.”
Kaetha just stood there. Why was her aunt not heading towards the hall?
“Kaetha?” prompted Donnan.
Gwyn guided them through the wood, their path descending into a trench. A mound loomed ahead. “You two wait out here,” said Gwyn, as she and Tam took Mairi through an entrance into the mound, partly concealed by branches. Gwyn drew back a hanging for them to pass through and Kaetha glimpsed firelight before the curtain swung back again.
“What do you think’s wrong with her?” asked Donnan.
“I don’t know.”
Kaetha paced until her legs grew tired. Then she sat, chewing her lip and peeling the bark from a stick. She got up when Gwyn reappeared. “What’s the matter with her?”
“She’ll be alright. She’s resting now and Tam is watching over her. Come.” She ushered them both along a winding path. “We have much to talk about.”
“Please, Gwyn, just tell us what’s wrong with her. I thought she was only tired. Have I made her ill, bringing her all this way? Can’t we just see how she is?”
“Not now. She’s asleep. Truth be told, I gave her a cadalus potion.”
“Cadalus? Why?”
“She would have kept herself awake with her sorrow. But she really needs rest.” “What sorrow? You mean about Pa?”
Gwyn hesitated. “I’m afraid she lost the bairn.”
“The bairn?” asked Kaetha, thinking of Mairi’s dog in Braddon. How would Gwyn know about the dog?
“You did know she was with child?”
Kaetha froze, feeling as if the air had been punched out of her lungs. Donnan looked equally dumbfounded and his face drained of colour.
“So . . . she carried this secret alone?” asked Gwyn.
“I didn’t know. I didn’t pay attention. I should have realised.” Kaetha shook her head. “Will she be alright?”
“Physically, aye, she seems strong. Emotionally,” she shrugged, “you know her better than I do. But it’s hit her hard. I could see in her eyes how much she wants to be a mother.”
They sat and talked for some time. Kaetha told Gwyn about their lives in Braddon and what had happened to drive them away and Gwyn reassured her that she’d heard about Aedan’s arrest and assumed he was still alive in the dungeons below the Citadel of Ciadrath. The execution of a traitor was bound to be a big, crowd-drawing affair, she told her, and there had not been one of those since the hanging of the three earls whom Gwyn referred to as ‘the Oath-keepers’, men who had supported Rhona’s claim to the throne. The name sounded familiar to Kaetha.
“And how did you become friends with a Baukan and gain his loyalty?” asked Gwyn. “Aye, I’d have to be a fool not to see that he’s not a human.”
“I freed him,” said Kaetha. “He was cursed. Trapped in rock.”
Gwyn drew closer to them. “You freed him? How?”
“I have Fire magic.”
“You—?” Gwyn’s eyebrows were raised.
“And Air magic.”
Gwyn’s mouth fell open. “Like she had.”
“My Air magic. It came from her.”
Gwyn held Kaetha’s hand in hers, seeming unable to speak.
“Kit was brilliant,” said Donnan. “Determined to help Tam even before she knew anything about him. Willing to risk her safety for his freedom. I’ll never forget that fire, white like lightning.”
Gwyn gazed at her with a look of pride and Kaetha felt warmth rise to her cheeks. She coughed. “But tell us what’s happened here. Why are you not living in the hall?”
“King Svelrik stripped me of my title and lands because I’m Edonian. He gave it all to Laird Alistair MacWallace instead. But, fortunately, in Alistair I found a man who was secretly loyal to Rhona and, together, we’ve worked to gather intelligence, create a web of contacts, find out who might be called upon to support the old king’s daughter.
“And you’ve done all this whilst managing to survive alone in the woods?” asked Kaetha.
Gwyn started carving patterns into a piece of wood with her knife. “I can hunt and Alistair doesn’t object if his vegetable garden looks more depleted than it should. But I’m careful not to let the servants see me. It’s best if people think I’ve left the clanland.”
“Why did you stay?”
Gwyn stopped carving but did not look up from the piece of wood. “She would have wanted me to. To keep support for Rhona’s claim alive.” She looked up. “And to wait for you.”
A quietness descended.
“Did you find her?” said Kaetha in barely a whisper. In the pause that followed, Kaetha sensed the whispered shapes of memories that came into Gwyn’s mind but she stopped herself intruding any further.
“Come.” Gwyn led Kaetha and Donnan further into the wood. Emerging from a hazel thicket, Kaetha saw the oak, it’s branches spread out like welcoming arms, and below it, a cairn. She knelt beside her mother’s burial place, stones rough and cold against her hands, and tasted salt as her tears fell.
Lines furrowed Gwyn’s brow. “I saw no sign of how she died. I still do not know. I carried her to this wood and laid her down under the shelter of an oak. I planted rosemary around her and snowdrops. They’ll return in the spring.”
Gwyn knelt beside her. “I made a promise to our parents that I would do everything I could to protect her. I brought us here, escaping war. I made a life for us. I thought that serving a Dalrathan king and adopting Dalrathan ways would keep us safe. We thrived. But only for a time. I’d thought my promise was fulfilled yet I failed. I failed her. And I failed you, Kaetha. There is much I regret.”
The old ache pressed down on Kaetha’s chest. She gazed in silence at the assembled stones.
“Come, Donnan,” said Gwyn. “You can help me find dinner.”
Kaetha was aware of them leaving, though her mind was filled with the presence of her mother’s memory. The stones below her were darkening with her tears.
“Why couldn’t you have stayed with me that day?” she said. “Why did you go to Ciadrath?” A gentle breeze in the branches above her was the only reply. “And why couldn’t you and Pa have shared a life together? We could have been a family.” She laid her head down, her cheek cold against stone. “Why did you leave me?”
She lost sense of the passage of time as she knelt there, dwelling on the dream of a past that never happened, listening to the wind rustling through the leaves. Finally, she sat up. She kissed her fingertips and pressed the kiss onto a st
one. Then an idea came to her. She searched for the power of the Earth stone, it hummed softly against her arm and soon she felt its strength flowing through her. She rested her hands on the stones before her and closed her eyes. She felt stone scratching against her palms as she thought of all the markings of Morwena’s tattoos and the symbols in her jewellery, her embroideries and paintings. Opening her eyes, she saw how her memory of these images had etched their way across all the stones of the cairn. She lifted her hands. On the stone beneath them, she saw the heron in flight and caressed its wings with her fingertips.
“I will find him, Ma,” she promised. “I will find him.”
Alone, she made her way back to Gwyn’s underground home.
“She’s awake and has asked for you,” said Gwyn. “I’ll leave you to talk.”
She stepped into the warm, bright cave. The strangeness of the place was at odds with the familiarity of the things within it. The comforting fragrances of herbs hanging from lines of string across the room did not mask the damp, earthy smell of the floor and walls of earth, root and rock. The painted linen screens and fur hangings were the same but Gwyn had decorated the walls with an explosion of paintings and carvings. As well as the usual Edonian symbols, there was a face replicated over and over again. Morwena’s face.
“Mairi?” She pushed back a fur hanging and there was her stepmother, sitting up on a straw mattress. Her eyes were rimmed with red, her face pale. Kaetha knelt beside her and took her hand.
“Are you alright?” Mairi asked.
“Me? I came to see how you are.”
Mairi stared at the floor. “Your aunt told you?”
She nodded. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea.” She knew she still had no idea, not really. She could only imagine what Mairi must be going through right now. “If I hadn’t led you on this journey in the first place—”
“That was my choice, not yours. Besides, this would have happened anyway.”
Kaetha wondered whether or not that was true. “I . . . You will tell me if there’s anything I can do, won’t you?”
“There is something,” Mairi whispered.
“What? What do you need?”
A shadow passed over Mairi’s face and she cupped Kaetha’s cheek with her hand. “Don’t go off to rescue your father. Stay where you’re safe. I couldn’t bear to lose you.”
She understood. Mairi wanted to protect her. She needed to. But she knew she was not willing to abandon her father, not whilst she still had a grain of hope. She’d promised. But she couldn’t cause Mairi more anxiety after all she’d been through – and was still going through. She didn’t want to lie but her words formed almost involuntarily. “You won’t lose me, Mairi. I won’t go.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
THIRTY THREE
Oathbreaker
Kaetha ducked, edging along the low wall that bordered the vegetable gardens. She had left Mairi to rest and wanted to take advantage of having a snatch of time to herself whilst Donnan and Gwyn were hunting. Beathag and Maura were chatting as they worked, their familiar voices taking Kaetha back to the time when she talked with them every day. She longed to jump over the wall and hug them but knew she could not. She couldn’t afford to draw attention to herself or lead them to suspect that Gwyn still lived nearby. Though she smiled to herself, considering that they probably guessed at that anyway.
Through a crack in the wall, she glimpsed the younger maids working in the poultry yard. Creeping along to the stables, she heard Stroud lecturing the stable boys. She couldn’t see the laird’s white horse. He must be out and the hall should be empty. She scanned the area, took a deep breath, then made a dash for the front door. Opening it a crack, she peered inside, then slipped in.
The familiar smells of woodsmoke, fruit, beeswax candles and rosemary made her smile. On the far wall was the old tapestry map she’d studied as a child, its threads shining in a beam of dusty sunlight. The smoke smudges on the walls, the criss-crossings of beams and rafters, the oddly sized windows, she knew all these shapes and lines as though they were old friends. But the place had a strangeness about it. There were new, dark furs and no painted screens. Less familiar fragrances drifted towards her. The tang of strong cheeses and the rich, berry and oak aroma of Angaulish red wine. She lifted a horn cup from the table. The base and handle were solid silver, as was a spoon which rested by a bowl of raspberries. Silver would work, she thought. Then her eye was caught by a strange tapestry on the wall behind the long table. It took her a minute to work out what it depicted. One of the stones tingled on her arm, though she did not know why.
“Do you like it?”
She jumped. A large man stood behind her. His face was framed with wavy hair and his beard was neatly trimmed. The eyes that studied her face looked intelligent but not unkind. His tunic was of the finest wool, dyed a rich green, and his cloak was fastened with a finely wrought gold clasp.
“Laird MacWallace,” she said with a bow.
“And you are?” A smile pulled at one side of his mouth.
Gwyn trusted him. Was that enough for her to do so too? Tam would say she shouldn’t be so trusting. She felt the awkwardness of her hesitation but, at that moment, his thoughts whispered into her mind and she knew that he’d just been talking with someone from the village, assuring them that he’d had no poachers in the woods behind the hall. He’d been protecting Gwyn, she realised.
“I’m Kaetha.” She couldn’t mistake the look of recognition in his face. “Perhaps you’ve heard my name from – a mutual friend of ours.”
He rested his hands on her shoulders and smiled, then, seeming to think he’d been too familiar, put his hands behind his back. “Indeed I have,” he said, rocking back and forth on his heels. “You returned. I apologise that things are . . . not as you expected.”
“That doesn’t matter,” she said.
A short laugh betrayed his awkwardness. “I often feel like little more than a trespasser.”
She turned to the tapestry.
“So you do like it?” he said.
“Aye. It’s a picture of the Citadel of Ciadrath, isn’t it?”
“That it is.” He stood beside her. “It was completed only last month.”
Kaetha studied the depictions of the many defences, the great walls with their gatehouses, the positions of the barracks, outbuildings, the hall and the king’s tower.
“It reminds me of my roots,” said MacWallace.
“How so?”
“Well, my ancestors helped build it, you know. Hundreds of years ago. The family were all builders and stone masons then. I often wonder what they’d think if they could see a descendant of theirs dining in the great hall they toiled, ached and sweated to create.” While he talked, his gaze fixed on the tapestry, her fingertips felt the grooves of the table, surreptitiously sliding until they met the cold of the silver spoon. “It makes me think that the future must hold such possibility. We might be shaped by our past but who knows what the future holds, eh?”
She dropped the spoon into the pocket of her cloak. “Can you show me . . . where are the dungeons?”
He turned to her and there was unmistakable sympathy in his expression. Taking a broom, he pointed out a place on the tapestry with its handle.
“The entrance is in the side of the hill,” he said.
Near the barracks and what looks like a forge, she noted.
“I’m sorry about your father. But I think that both he and Gwyn would discourage you from remaining too long here, due to your . . . associations.”
“Is the entrance guarded?”
MacWallace followed her gaze back to the tapestry. “Usually, I believe, though the locked iron gate in the hillside makes guarding it unnecessary in my opinion, as do all the other citadel defences. Look,” he rested a hand on her shoulder again, “I have family in the west. The Laird of Rivermarch is my cousin. I could secure you safe dwelling in his lands, should you wish it.”
“Thank you. You are kind.” She grew hot, as if the silver spoon in her pocket were molten metal, its heat radiating through her skin.
“They aren’t empty words,” he said solemnly. “I assure you, if there is anything I can do for you and your family, I will. I’ll even let you have one of my silver spoons.”
She gaped at him. “I—”
“Ha!” He clapped his hand on her back. “Don’t trouble yourself. I’ve more than I need and it seems your need it greater.”
Water tumbled over rocks beside the drooping leaves of a willow and she sat on the bank, staring at her shifting reflection in the water. She felt the power of the Air stone as if it were a mind whose thoughts were just out of hearing, as if it whispered in a language she did not fully understand. It sent trails of goosebumps up her arm as she focussed on it to the exclusion of the other two.
She remembered, all that time ago, Gaoth appearing to her from mere air and disappearing the same way. Yet she had been sure he was there before she saw him, hidden in the air. What if she could do the same? Become invisible? She felt a thrill of excitement as her reflection seemed to be fading. Then her hopes were dashed. Rippling water scattered her reflection away and revealed a face with black eyes staring at her from under the water. Ice grazed the skin of her neck, streaking down her spine.
Hello old friend, she thought. Lanngorm, she added, the name of the Fuathan coming to her now for the first time.
Lanngorm’s thoughts hissed through Kaetha’s mind – splashes as fish are snatched from the loch; the muffled chatter of fishermen; the silent depths of the loch where giant, sharp-toothed pike lurk, waiting to strike.
You’ve learned sly Annisith tricks, mind reader. Why did you return?
To rescue my father.
River weeds trailed in the water as Lanngorm’s face tilted. And to find your mother.
My mother’s dead, Kaetha informed her. I found her burial cairn.
Chosen by Fire Page 27
