by Jules Watson
She tried to curve around the light, but she found she could not move; her wings of flame were attached, bound to her by fear. And then she knew, in the way that instant understanding came in this place, that to shelter him, she could not be contained, by anything.
She must let go of the last boundaries of her heart.
CHAPTER 56
Rhiann’s eyelids were stuck together, the edges heavy. There was, too, a leaden stiffness in her limbs, and from these sensations, Rhiann’s mind grasped that she had been lying like this for some time.
It took an immense effort to move her throat enough to swallow, to coax some moistness from her dry mouth and tongue. And then, the lashes trembling, she tried to open her eyes. Yet just as the merest thread of light parted the darkness behind them, she was struck by the awful thought that she might wake alone.
Her eyelids clamped full shut again, but her breaths had grown harsher, and she felt the ache of unused muscles expanding across her chest as she tried to contain them. She didn’t know where Eremon was, but if he wasn’t here, she did not want to open her eyes. That was it. She would slide away again, back into that strange dream world where people sang with silvery voices, pulling her back from her endless search.
Lying perfectly still, Rhiann closed off those memories and tried to send her senses outwards, delaying the inevitable moment when she would have to face the world, whatever world it was.
She sensed soft furs brushing her chin.
The snap of a fire.
The whuffling squeak of what, she could swear, was a hound lost in sleep.
And someone’s warm breath, so close it stirred the fine hair at her temples.
Immediately, Rhiann’s eyes flew open and looked straight into Eremon’s face, and for a long moment, that was all she could see. The orbits of his eyes were bruised with shadow, yet beyond the red-veined signs of fatigue the irises were a deep hazel in the rosy light of the fire, keen and fully aware. Regarding her, in fact, as someone looked at a new baby when they held it, as if she might break at any moment.
Rhiann found she could say nothing, and was dimly surprised when a tear suddenly welled up and trickled down one cheek. Eremon reached out a finger and scooped up the salty drop, his eyes clouded with profound relief.
Blinking, Rhiann’s gaze ranged lower. One of her arms, as white as the linen sleeve that encased it, lay along the fur covers of her own sickbed. At the end of the arm, Cù’s dark eyes now regarded her, the tip of his tail waving uncertainly over his head, and as she watched, his pink tongue came out and touched her hand. Then Eremon muttered a firm command she didn’t catch, and Cù’s snout and tail subsided out of view.
Rhiann’s eyes returned to her husband. He was lying alongside her, propped up on pillows. His other arm, she saw now, was in a sling to stop it moving. He wore a tunic, loose and untucked, and under it was the lumpy suggestion of the other bindings around his torso. Rhiann struggled to focus on his face. Yes, it was fuller and rosy, and her groggy mind clutched at the realization that some time must have passed since she took the spores that desperate night.
The relief that she was home, and Eremon by her side, was a tide sufficient to exhaust her meagre energy, and already she felt her eyes grow inexorably heavy with fatigue.
As darkness closed around her, she sensed the warm, moist imprint of Eremon’s lips on her brow. ‘Sleep, a stór,’ he whispered. ‘I will watch over you now.’ And in a voice suffused with gladness, ‘Lady Linnet?’
The next time Rhiann swam slowly upwards towards the light, Eremon was sitting on the stool by the bed, his chin on one hand, the other holding her outstretched fingers. His cheeks were clean-shaven, and the lines of sickness that had marred his face had now unwound. His dark hair was brushed and braided back from his temples, and there was a look of thorough wholeness about him that Rhiann could almost scent.
At the rapid, gasping rise of her breathing, Eremon leaned close and brushed her cheek. ‘Do not fear, love,’ he murmured. ‘We are together now, and the dark time is past.’
Rhiann swallowed the thickening in her throat. ‘I sat by this bed for days, just as you do now,’ she wheezed. ‘I was afraid you would not return.’
Eremon bowed his head over her fingers and kissed them. ‘I … don’t think I knew how, but then you came for me.’ He glanced up at her suddenly, and she saw the dazed awe lingering in his eyes, as he sought to grasp what was beyond understanding.
Rhiann’s fingers tightened on his, and Eremon’s eyes shifted to the wall behind her, glazed with memory. ‘I remember only darkness and loneliness and cold, and feeling trapped, and then …’ He looked at her, wondering. ‘And then I thought I heard you. I heard you calling me. And there was a warmth, a … a … taste or sense of your eyes and smile holding me, just a feeling, no touch, just … you.’
‘Eremon.’ Rhiann rolled her head to one side, incoherent words pouring from her lips. ‘I had to let it go, and I did … I breathed fear out and … the flame, the fire, it spilled over … I’m sorry—’
‘Sorry?’ Eremon cupped her face. ‘You brought me back.’
‘No.’ Rhiann shook her head to clear it. ‘I am so sorry I did not before; that I let you slip away.’ Desperately, she gripped his hand on her face. ‘So today, now, it is in Thisworld that I truly pledge myself to you, and in Thisworld you will know my love, I swear it.’
The old, crooked smile spread over Eremon’s face, yet his eyes glowed with an intensity that did not match its wryness. ‘I already know it,’ he said quietly, and then there was no more need for words, for as Rhiann stared into his eyes it was as if they stood naked before each other in the void all over again.
After a long moment Eremon sat back on the stool, stroking her hand. ‘Just get well for me now, a stór, that is all I ask.’
‘And I,’ came another voice, from the opposite side of the bedscreen. Linnet was standing over Eremon’s shoulder, a bowl in her hands, wreathed with curls of steam. ‘Come, child, it is time you took in some more earthly nourishment.’
With an effort, Eremon levered himself stiffly to his feet. He smiled gently down at Rhiann. ‘I will only be gone a short time, love – I’ll be back before you’ve missed me.’
Rhiann’s eyes remained glued to his back until it disappeared, and then her gaze shifted apprehensively to Linnet, who had drawn the stool closer to the bed, settling herself on it.
‘Eat this now,’ her aunt ordered brusquely, a spoon of hot broth held to Rhiann’s mouth.
Rhiann dutifully swallowed, all the while absorbing the lines of despair engraved on Linnet’s face, the film of shock over her eyes. Rhiann’s own heart grew hot with guilt. ‘I had no choice,’ she whispered. ‘As you would reach out for me, so I had to reach out for him. You must understand.’
The length of Linnet’s spine stiffened with suppressed emotion, as her eyes rose to Rhiann’s face. ‘I should be furious with you,’ she murmured. ‘But all my fury has been long burned away, daughter, in the nights I sat by you, absorbing every breath because I was sure it was going to be your last.’
Rhiann winced. ‘How many nights?’
‘It is five days since Eremon woke to us.’ Linnet sighed heavily. ‘It was a fight to bring him to the health you see there before you, for he would barely move nor eat as you lay near death. I have never seen such grief assail anyone.’ Her eyes darkened as she stared up at the wall hanging over Rhiann’s head. Then a ghost of a smile touched her mouth. ‘In the end, I asked him how he’d feel if you woke after all your pains only to see him dead of starvation and exhaustion. Then he listened, by the Goddess he did, and with sheer effort made himself well.’
‘Aunt, I’m so sorry.’ Rhiann’s voice was low. ‘You brought me back from that place, didn’t you?’
After a hesitation Linnet nodded, her cheek tilted away. Then, abruptly, she rose and turned to the chest at the foot of the bed, groping for the bronze water jug.
‘I do know what I put you through.
’ Rhiann strained to see Linnet’s face. ‘Yet I couldn’t let him go. There’s been too much letting go.’
After a time, Linnet began to speak, her back turned. ‘When you were small, you drove me mad with your stubbornness – Goddess, the battles of will we waged! And yet, if you could have heard the pride with which I spoke of you, laughing to the women about how strong you were, how wilful. I nurtured this in you, child, sure it would make you a great Ban Cré, a leader. So how can I rail at this, when I loved you for it so deeply?’ Linnet paused, then swept back to the stool. ‘However, I have never heard of the spores being used in such a way before, with no support, no preparation!’ Her nostrils flared as she raised the cup to Rhiann’s lips. ‘You must promise me never to do it again, daughter. Promise me!’
‘I promise.’ Rhiann coughed, splattering water down the front of her shift. Her head fell back against the pillow. ‘I do not think, aunt, that I will be permitted to return from such a journey again.’
CHAPTER 57
Long dark AD 82
Ouch!’
Rhiann’s fingers paused over Eremon’s raised, red scar. ‘The skin has knitted well; it can’t possibly hurt that much.’ She cocked an eyebrow at him. ‘Shall I stop, great warrior?’
Eremon grinned. ‘Your fingers are cold, wife, that is all.’
Rhiann wiped the offending digits on a rag and put the pot on the stump table. ‘Well, the comfrey is doing its job, so don’t complain.’ After a last peer at the healing wound, Rhiann wound another bandage around Eremon’s torso, ducking his kisses, both of them chuckling.
‘Brother!’ There was a thump on the wall outside the door, announcing Conaire’s arrival. He swept in with Caitlin, Gabran in her arms, and an icy wind that blew in under the door-hide. Rhiann’s recovery was proving even slower than Eremon’s, and during their illness the cold season had arrived.
‘Why don’t you come in?’ Eremon asked wryly, pressing Rhiann to the bed and drawing a fur around her legs. Though she had no wound, the spores and the depletion of her spirit had taken a toll, leaving her with strange headaches and a debilitating exhaustion.
With a smile, Caitlin gave Gabran to Rhiann’s outstretched arms, brushing raindrops from his blond curls and drawing off her own wet cloak. Conaire remained standing, his eyes searching Eremon’s face as if still unable to believe in his brother’s recovery. ‘The scouts have returned from the east,’ he reported, giving Eremon’s shoulder a squeeze before drawing up a stool.
‘And?’ Eremon perched on the bed beside Rhiann, as Caitlin dropped onto the other side.
Conaire folded his arms with a tired smile. ‘And the Romans have already retreated to their long dark quarters.’ Rhiann glanced at him over Gabran’s head. The shadow that had slipped from her and Eremon’s shoulders was still lurking in Conaire’s gaze, and all the boyishness in his face had bled away these last weeks. ‘There will be no more attempts made on Dunadd this season.’
Rhiann, helping Gabran to roll his wooden lion over the covers, heard the outrush of Eremon’s breath in her ear.
‘Thank you, brother.’ Eremon shifted to ease his side. ‘Though I would still give my left leg to get another message to the Creones and Boresti.’ He had been fretting over this ever since Conaire told him the two riders had returned to their duns before the snows. ‘I need them to know I have evaded a more permanent visit to the Otherworld!’
‘I told them that, brother, do not fear. They will come back with the thaw, as I asked them to.’
Conaire held Eremon’s eye with an intensity that was new to him, and Rhiann realized that she and Eremon were not the only ones who had been changed by the chance blow of a sword.
‘Well, I can only hope that the tales of our success are being told around fires this very night.’ Eremon sighed. ‘Perhaps the Alban alliance we have so yearned for may finally be within our grasp.’
Those words should have been a joy to Rhiann. After all, for what else had she traipsed the length and breadth of Alba? Yet instead, a chill curled into the pit of her belly. She had been too near death, too recently, to draw it closer. ‘Do you think an alliance will be needed any more?’ Her voice sounded too faint, and she cleared her throat.
Caitlin broke in. ‘Perhaps Agricola will take his men and leave Alba now, knowing he can never win. It has been three victories for us, after all.’
Eremon grew perfectly still, and Rhiann saw the fleeting look he gave Conaire. ‘Perhaps,’ he said.
When Rhiann took her first steps outside in the freezing wind, supported by Caitlin, she could discern that the sun was much lower in the sky, its feeble glow nearly obscured by snow-swollen clouds. In the weeks of her illness the world had been transformed, from the blazing flame of leaf-fall into a stark landscape of thin, cracked snow and frosted roofs, bare branches, and grey shadows creeping over the humps and dips on the marsh. Outside each doorway and on the paths the pale slush had been pounded back into bare mud, and all the house beams and posts, the unhitched carts and water barrels, were dark and slick with moisture, black against the frost.
Rhiann’s women friends were bursting with some secret, exchanging smiles over Rhiann’s head, which they thought she missed. And then Caitlin looked up from winding wool one day to announce that it was time at last for Rhiann and Eremon to visit the men in the Hall. To boost their morale, she said.
Ever since Rhiann’s awakening, her door-hide had been continually lifting and flapping back into place, as Rori appeared with armfuls of wood, working out his distress by stoking the room to a blazing heat, and the rest of Eremon’s men drifted in to mend harness and polish weapons on the floor. They only gathered in Rhiann’s little house to be close to their lord, and he in turn to Rhiann, yet despite the nature of the heart-warming scene, Eithne had eventually reached her limit and herded them all back to the King’s Hall.
From her rush chair by the fire, Rhiann now peered over Gabran’s head at Caitlin. ‘Morale, is it, sister?’ Eithne was stirring the cauldron of barley porridge a little too vigorously, and there was a distinct twist to Fola’s smile as she pounded herbs at the bench. ‘Well, whatever prank you plan to play on me, I will be grateful to be free of my bondage, at least, and eat something more solid than porridge and broth.’
‘Duh!’ Gabran demanded, wriggling for more of his horse game, and Rhiann smiled down at him and gripped his hands, bucking him on her outstretched leg.
Caitlin deftly tied off the skein of wool around its wooden peg. ‘I see your tongue has quite recovered then, so we will expect you tomorrow night. Eithne’s going to help you dress.’
Rhiann’s suspicions were washed away by her bath the next night, the warm water infused with Linnet’s last packet of imported lavender. As Eithne laid out her clothes, chattering away, Rhiann found herself growing excited by the simple prospect of leaving the house. Despite her lingering tiredness, and the soporific effect of the bath, she practically leaped from the water and sat bouncing up and down on the bed as Eithne dried her hair with a towel, and helped her into a fresh undershift.
Just then Eremon appeared, for he had dressed in the King’s Hall. Eithne, falling silent, swiftly collected up the damp towels and excused herself, as Rhiann turned and looked up at her husband. She could not help but catch her breath.
His arm was still bound in a length of snowy linen, to immobilize his left side, but he had also donned his betrothal tunic, which was the exact colour of his eyes, embroidered around the hem with gold thread that drew the light into his braided hair. He wore a scarlet cloak, and blue and green check trousers, laced up the calf by ochre-dyed boots. Apart from his neck torc, the boar tusk gleamed among the folds of his right sleeve, while around the other arm was Rhiann’s stag. And for the first time in many moons, he wore the green jewel of his father’s, bound on the brow by a gold circlet.
Rhiann feasted her eyes on him until a faint blush stole across his cheeks. Then her gaze fell on his empty sword belt.
‘I thought it
well,’ he said, ‘for us to have one night that is not darkened by the shadow of the Romans. We have many more moons to think of fighting.’ As if to make his point, he looped the thong of the boar stone over his neck and laid it on the stump table.
Her vision blurring, Rhiann rose and laid the back of her hand along Eremon’s cheek. ‘The waves were blessed, prince of Erin, that brought you to me. Without you, I would be living in a place far more barren than that in which I found you.’
‘And I.’ Eremon’s thumb caressed her ear, brushing her hair back from her temples.
Rhiann sighed, and in that moment something shifted imperceptibly between them. In their convalescence they had shared only brief kisses, both conscious of avoiding bodily hurt. And perhaps also an irrational fear lingered, that something had been lost, not gained; that something had changed in them.
Yet now, falling into Eremon’s charged gaze, Rhiann was aware that her chest was tightening from something other than shock. With no will of her own she swayed towards him, their bodies touching along their lengths. And while her heart hammered out its own song, Eremon bent his head and kissed her.
His lips were warm, his breath as sweet as she remembered. Yet he only pressed his mouth to hers once, brushing her lips as lightly as a moth, and it was she who groaned and pulled him closer, grasping him around his hips. Eremon responded eagerly, but not with lust. Instead, he cupped her face once more, holding her so he could explore her mouth with his tongue, swirling and lingering, and it was silk and honey melting through her, until she lost all sense of where she was.
At last they broke apart, breathless and trembling. ‘My love,’ Eremon said in a thickened voice, ‘we must go, before I kiss you like that until dawn comes.’
Rhiann stared at his swollen mouth, surprised at the strength of her desire. ‘And what of it?’ she murmured, brushing his lower lip with her thumb.
