Sevenwaters [06] Flame of Sevenwaters

by Juliet Marillier

  I was not completely surprised, therefore, when on a day when Luachan and Finbar were closeted together studying and Rhian had made a rare trip to the keep for supplies, I heard hoofbeats approaching as I stood in the field with Swift. I looked up to see three men riding along the track toward me: my father, Cruinn and Cruinn’s bodyguard, a hard-faced man of about five-and-twenty.

  I had Swift circling the field, altering his pace at my spoken instructions. Bear and Badger were hunkered down at the foot of the stone wall, keeping an eye on the proceedings. In a corner, Pearl was making her way through a heap of vegetable scraps. The dogs scrambled up at the sound of the horses approaching, but we had been working hard on obedience, and when I bade them be silent, they both obeyed. Bear stayed on his feet, ready to protect me.

  I did not imagine the men had come to the nemetons to visit me, and the exercise Swift and I were engaged in was best not interrupted, so I kept working, bidding the yearling in turn to walk, trot, canter and then to halt and stand. I was aware that the three men had ridden up to the other side of the wall and dismounted from their horses; I saw the unease in Swift’s eye, the nervous tremor in his movements, the old urge to sail over the wall and away strong in him. But he held still. I’d worked with him every day since Cruinn’s arrival, save for those rare times when Emrys could escape his other duties and come to take him out onto the tracks. The yearling’s ability to stand in the presence of strangers and strange horses was pleasing evidence that my work had done some good.

  “Easy, Swift.” I gave him the soft touch he had earned, stroking his neck, resting my cheek against his, murmuring words of praise. He was tired. He needed a rubdown, but that would have to wait until the young druid came later. “Good boy. All done.”

  I turned and walked over to the wall. “Father, how good to see you. Welcome to the nemetons, Lord Cruinn.” I was dusty and sweaty, the hem of my gown was very much the worse for wear, and my hair was pulled back into a single plait. I wore no kerchief; it was easier to dispense with it when Rhian was not there to tie and untie it for me. That meant my facial scarring was on full display.

  The bodyguard avoided looking at me. Father greeted me, then opened the gate so I need not leave the field the way I had entered it, by setting a foot between the stones and rolling up over the wall on my stomach. Badger followed me through. Bear took the wall in an enthusiastic leap and ran a few circles around the three men and their horses before coming to sit beside me in a manner that pleased me greatly. I had not forgotten Cruinn’s remark about ill-trained dogs.

  I glanced at the Tirconnell chieftain now, wondering if he’d come here to perform a search. He looked five years older than he had the day he rode into our courtyard and was greeted by my baying duo. His loss weighed him down. Yet at this moment there was a brightness in his eye. This had nothing to do with me. His attention was all on Swift.

  “That is a very, very fine young animal, Lady Maeve,” he observed after a while.

  “He is, yes.” Had Father told him why Swift had been brought to Sevenwaters? I’d best not speak of that until I knew one way or the other. “Bred in my uncle’s stables at Harrowfield, in Britain. Swift is very like his dam, who has the same silvery color, the same conformation and the same rather difficult temperament.” That was perhaps a little too honest. “His sire was a fine riding horse, also a gray, belonging to the chieftain of Northwoods, my uncle’s neighbor. Father will have told you, I expect, that we have Swift here in the nemetons so he can recover fully from the sea voyage, and to allow more training before—before he moves on. I regret that I was too involved in that training to offer a greeting when you arrived, my lord.”

  “Not at all,” said Cruinn absently, his eyes still on the yearling. “I saw that you were working. You have a remarkable gift, Lady Maeve. Difficult temperament? There was no sign of it just now. Where did you learn to train a horse that way, using only your voice?”

  “I have no other way to do it. I taught myself, I suppose.” I laid my hand on Bear’s head. “I can’t take all the credit for Swift’s training. The two grooms who came over with us from Harrowfield have done a great deal of the work. Emrys, in particular, has an excellent touch with the horse.”

  “I see you have taken my advice to heart,” Cruinn said, tearing his gaze away from Swift to look directly at me for the first time. “Your dogs did not try to kill me today.”

  “No, my lord.” He was smiling. That seemed a minor miracle. “They are good dogs. They needed time and love, that was all.”

  “I see your Swift is somewhat weary and could do with a rub-down, which I imagine would be difficult for you to manage without some help. I’d be happy to perform the task, since I’d like to inspect the animal at closer quarters, but only if that is acceptable to you, of course.”

  With an effort, I managed not to gape at him. “Of course. Thank you. But I’ll need to be in the field with you. Swift is unpredictable with folk he doesn’t know.” I glanced at Father, who was looking as surprised as I felt. The bodyguard was staring off into the distance, disapproval written all over his face. “There are some cloths up there by the door of my cottage,” I added. “Perhaps your man would fetch them for us.”

  Father cleared his throat. “I want to visit my son,” he said. “I might walk over to the druids’ quarters now and come back after I’ve spoken to Finbar, if that suits you, Cruinn.”

  “Take your time,” Cruinn said.

  The bodyguard brought the cloths. Clearly, he was staying in case I attempted some act of violence against his employer. I had wondered if his instructions were to shadow Cruinn closely at all times, but when the chieftain and I went back into the field, the guard stayed outside the gate. The three horses had dropped their heads and were cropping the grass by the track. Badger stayed by them, as watchful as the man. Bear came with me.

  When Cruinn had first appeared at Sevenwaters, I had thought him formidable. He had seemed a figure of power, the kind of man who would not bend. Now I was obliged to reassess my judgment. Perhaps it was that he knew and loved horses. Perhaps it was that, for some odd reason, he had decided he liked talking to me. Perhaps it was being away from other folk, doing a simple job with his hands, surrounded by the green quiet of the nemetons. He went about the rubdown with the strong, gentle touch of the most expert horseman. He listened to all my warnings about Swift and heeded them. I stood at the yearling’s head and murmured to him, and Cruinn worked on until Swift’s coat was dry and glossy and his eyes were dreamily quiet.

  “We haven’t found a trace of them.” Cruinn spoke into a long silence, making my skin prickle.

  “Your sons?” I asked quietly.

  “I’ve only the two boys, Lady Maeve. We’ve had our disputes and disagreements over the years. Those petty squabbles, a fight over the use of a piece of land, a falling-out over an unsuitable friendship—they faded to nothing when I lost them. I would give my life to get them back.”

  “What are their names, my lord?”

  “My heir, Tiernan. My younger son, Artagan.” His voice cracked. “There,” he murmured, laying his hand against Swift’s back and turning his head away from me. “I’m an old fool. I can hardly bear to speak their names.”

  I gave him some time to compose himself. Then I said, “Nobody would think less of you for that, Lord Cruinn.”

  “There’s a third lad still missing. I remind myself that he, too, has grieving parents. Tiernan’s friend Daigh, the son of my chief councilor. I refused to bring his father with me on this journey. That man has a wife, and she needs him by her side. My wife died before this sorrow overtook us. I never thought I would see that as a good thing, Maeve, but this would have been too heavy a burden for her. She was a woman like a meadow flower; she was never strong.” He straightened his shoulders, stiffened his spine, lifted his head. “There, my lovely boy,” he said, addressing Swift. “All done.”

  “Your sons are strong and resourceful, I’m sure.” I searched for words
that might comfort him. “You must hold on to hope, Lord Cruinn. That you have not yet found them may not mean the worst. It may be that they are…on a journey. They may be in a place where ordinary searchers cannot find them.” I hesitated, not sure how much it was safe to say. “In time, perhaps they will make their own way home.”

  “Hope, hope,” muttered Cruinn. “Sometimes it’s hard to believe in. I think it’s anger that keeps me going. Your father says his woods are full of uncanny beings, portals to the Otherworld, traps and tricks that make the very paths turn and twist, forming a new pattern each day. My searchers have found neither fey creatures nor eldritch doorways, but they tell me the story about the paths is true, so I suppose I must give some credence to what Sean says…If my boys have been abducted, if they have been taken into a realm beyond the human, how can I cling to hope? If I do not find them alive, I have failed my boys, and I have failed their mother.” He drew a ragged breath. “What is this adversary your father alludes to, Mac Dara? A prince, Sean said. What manner of prince steals fine young men from their fathers for no good reason? What manner of man kills them as a kind of joke? One seemed to think he could fly; one tried to commune with bees; one was imitating a fish or frog when he drowned. Young Niall, the man you were unfortunate enough to find, was strung up like a grub in a cocoon. Why? What fiendish imagination devises such hideous games?”

  From across the field, the bodyguard had his gaze fixed on us. Pearl had approached him and stretched out her neck across the wall. Any fool could have seen she wanted him to scratch between her ears, but the man did not seem to understand.

  “I know less about Mac Dara than my parents do, Lord Cruinn, since I have been away from Sevenwaters ten years. I don’t think he has acted out of any particular malice toward you or your men. His intention is to force my father into action.” I hesitated. It was not for me to tell Cruinn about Cathal, or mention Ciarán’s hope that Mac Dara’s son would return to Sevenwaters and challenge his father. “He abducted my little brother when he was a baby,” I said. “My sister and her husband went to the Otherworld to get Finbar back. It’s not talked about much; people find such stories hard to believe. But it proves that people do sometimes come home safely from that other place. Finbar was only an infant. And he is fine now.” Fine outwardly, at least.

  “If I knew,” Cruinn murmured, “if I knew where they were and how to find them, I would go to the ends of the earth to bring them back. The others were all killed. I’m forced to ask myself why these last three would be any different.”

  Since I had no good answer to that, I held my tongue.

  “You said, force your father into action. What action?”

  “My lord, you should speak to him about that. I don’t believe Father would want me to be the one to explain it to you. Though I am a daughter of the household, I am new here. In many ways I am more stranger than family.”

  Instead of replying, Cruinn offered me his arm, something men seldom did.

  “Thank you,” I said. “You love horses; I can see that.”

  “My wife used to say I should have been a groom, not a chieftain,” Cruinn said as we went out the gate. “I believe she was joking, but there was truth in the jest. My boys are fine riders. Our stables are something of a passion. Not that it means much now. Nothing seems important anymore. Only them. Only finding them.” He looked back at Swift. “Thank you for allowing me to do that,” he said very quietly, and if I had not known he was an Uí Néill chieftain, which meant he was second only to the High King in power, I would have thought him overtaken by a bout of shyness. “And for listening to me. You’re a kind girl.” Still awkward, he bent to stroke Bear rather than look me in the eye. “Who’s a fine boy?” he murmured. “Who’s a good boy, then?” Badger crowded in, uncharacteristically, making sure he got his share of attention. The two of them had been quick enough to recognize Cruinn’s affinity with animals, even if their initial greeting to him had looked more like an attack.

  “Lord Sean’s on his way back, my lord.” The bodyguard had spotted my father walking down from the druids’ dwelling house, with Luachan on one side and Finbar on the other. Luachan was holding forth, gesturing as he illustrated some point; Finbar and Father were both smiling.

  “A lucky man,” Cruinn said, straightening. “A man with a son who walks by his side, safe and well. I did not understand the worth of that when my boys were children.”

  “I often tell myself, there is no point in wishing certain things had not happened. We can’t change what has been, only do our best with what is to come.” After a moment I added, “I don’t mean any discourtesy, my lord. It is simply something I have often found helpful, since I have had some cause to feel sorry for myself over the years.”

  “Thank you, Maeve. I understand the wisdom in that, but find myself unable to be philosophical. Instead I am angry and bitter. Above all, I am overshadowed by the fear that I will find them as you found poor Niall: a moment too late.”

  “I wish I could have saved him.” I would never forget watching the light go out in his eyes. I would always remember that I had not managed to speak to him before he died.

  “You were there,” was all Cruinn said. “You witnessed his last breath. In death, he was not alone.”

  Scant comfort, I thought, if the dying man did not know I was by his side. But perhaps he had sensed it in the moment before his last breath left him. I hoped very much that this was so. I found myself possessed by a powerful, and entirely inappropriate, urge to rush off and find Tiernan, Artagan and Daigh all by myself, and ordered myself to stop being a complete fool. I was behaving as Bear or Badger might once have done, racing off the track at the first sniff of a scent. The conclusion to the sorry tale of the Disappearance must come through Mac Dara, Cathal, the Otherworld. It involved a sorcerous prince, a senior druid and a pair of chieftains. An impulsive girl with useless hands was not likely to make much of a difference.

  Some days had passed since Cruinn’s visit to the nemetons, when the chieftain of Tirconnell had surprised me with his openness. I was at the back of the cottage, watching as Bear and Badger chewed through a strip of linen Finbar had tied between two benches at my request.

  “They’re getting much better at it,” my brother commented.

  He was right; with rigorous training and daily practice, both Bear and Badger had learned to chew through bonds of linen, leather and woven straw in turn. It had been hard work, but necessary, since I’d never be able to untie knots on my own. With my mind on that man Niall and his hideous, suspended death, I’d resolved that since I could not rescue someone who was tied up, I’d make sure Bear and Badger could do it for me.

  “Maeve.”

  “Mm?”

  “If someone really was tied up, it would be much harder. How could Bear and Badger bite through the rope without biting the person?”

  “I’m not sure how we could teach them that,” I admitted. “Perhaps you can work out a way.”

  “I could tie you up,” Finbar suggested.

  “It might be better if you tied the rope around something else. Shall we try it now?”

  We did so. Bear and Badger obediently freed two turnips, a stool and a bag of flour from their bonds. I knew in my heart that it was most unlikely I would ever have to put their new skill to real use. There might be three men still missing, but the odds of my being the one to find them were slim indeed, and Mac Dara’s method of dealing with the lost men had been different in each case. Why had he devised such bizarre endings for them? Simply to entertain himself? I shuddered to imagine what the fey prince might try next.

  Later, we took the turnips over to Pearl, since they were no longer at their best. While the goat picked at them, we leaned on the wall watching Swift frisk around the field, as graceful as a swallow and perfectly at ease. He seemed a different creature from the nervous, fearful horse we had brought to Sevenwaters. I found myself hoping Father would give him to Cruinn after all. The journey might be hard for hi
m, but I knew Swift would be well loved in that stable.

  “Maeve,” said Finbar in a tone I knew well. A difficult question was coming.

  “Mm?”

  “Have you ever seen…When you go walking in the forest, do you ever…No, it doesn’t matter.”

  “Have I ever seen what?” I wasn’t going to let this go. His hesitancy troubled me. This was not the first time I had wondered if he was afraid. “Are you thinking of Mac Dara and his kind? You do know you’re safe here in the nemetons, don’t you? Luachan must have explained that.”

  “Not Mac Dara. The other ones, the good ones.”

  “Do you mean the Lady of the Forest? The Fair Folk? Aren’t they all gone now, Finbar? That’s what Uncle Ciarán told me, and it’s what most people believe. The way he said it, they sailed into the west, never to return.”

  “They might not be gone. Not all of them.” Finbar’s little face was fierce with the will to make it true. To banish the bad things and restore the good.

  I could not bring myself to explain that Ciarán had made it clear the good ones were all departed, and that if anyone knew about such things, it would be him. “I can’t say, Finbar. I suppose there are still all manner of folk living in the Sevenwaters forest, even though people don’t see them as often as they once did.” I was sure I could remember strange beings floating in sunbeams or dancing among cobwebs; I thought I recalled distant winged presences that were neither birds nor insects. But perhaps that had only been a child’s imagination.

  “You might meet one of them one day.” Finbar’s tone was grave as an old sage’s. “You might be walking down the path and there she would be, just like the old days. What would you do?”

  “Probably turn and run,” I said with a grimace. “What about you?”

  “Why would you run?”

  “I was joking,” I said. “I simply meant that with the search taking place all over the forest, I might not be inclined to trust anyone straightaway, even if that person appeared to be…a beautiful goddess. Or one of the Tuatha De, the good ones.” This was an odd conversation.