The Dawn Stag: Book Two of the Dalriada Trilogy

by Jules Watson

  No one marked Rhiann’s leaving, for all were lost in their own exhaustion. Yet as she left the valley, Rhiann’s own deep tiredness suddenly began to fall from her. She raised her chin, and stepped more strongly. For she could do no less for this special child, but to match its strength with her own.

  The path eventually petered out, giving way to great sweeps of heather slope, and then there was only sky, and Rhiann felt as if she was walking directly up into a land of clouds and blue air. Yet her feet were still affixed to Thisworld, and slowly, carefully, she edged her way along the ridge-top to a place that would be sheltered from the winds, looking west. There was Alba’s heart, and far, far out across the waves, the Isles of the Blessed, the land of the ever young. Rhiann would not face her child east, not to Rome and the pain it had brought.

  Rhiann sat on a rock there, the babe wrapped in her cloak. As the sun slowly rose, the stones around her warmed, the sky coming alive with nesting kites and, far off, a great eagle. The chill burned off, and the air began to stir with a breeze that ruffled Rhiann’s skirt and her hair, which she had unbound to make a shelter for her child.

  To Rhiann’s people, the passing of a soul at dawn or dusk was fitting, for it was a subdued time when light and dark mingle, when the veils between the worlds were thin. Yet, as in all things, this child was different. When the sun was at its highest, beating bright and insistent on Rhiann’s eyelids, and the wind had risen to an impatient, exuberant pitch that tugged on the edges of her cloak, so then the child opened her eyes for the first and last time.

  Rhiann stared down as the transparent eyelids flickered, her priestess senses seeking to touch the baby’s soul. But just as the light of it flared in those milky eyes, so it softened, and then faded, and the eyelids sank closed again. The tiny chest beneath Rhiann’s palm gave a few flutterings, and then there was a sigh, and Rhiann’s hand moved no more, no matter how she fixed her eyes on it.

  She had waited for this – for days she had watched and waited for it – but such a thing could never be truly felt until the time was here.

  A terrible, wrenching gasp took Rhiann by surprise, bursting from her own clenched throat, and suddenly she was on her feet, the wrapped bundle tumbling to the ground. And one of the baby’s arms fell free of her cloak, the tiny hand unfurling like a pale, moonlit flower, and Rhiann’s world went dark around her.

  The darkness was a storm, but greater and blacker than any storm front she had seen, and the pressure of its coming beat on her temples.

  The darkness was the wings of that storm, a wind wilder and stronger than any she had felt, scouring the flesh from her bones, until her heart lay exposed and shivering.

  The darkness was fury.

  CHAPTER 78

  Rhiann came back to herself hunched over the child’s body, and she realized she had been screaming, for her voice was cracked and empty. The stained folds of the cloak were clenched in both fists, her forehead resting on the babe’s still chest, and she could only taste one word on her lips; the word that had formed there in the shadow of the storm, and that she thought would be carved there all her life: Why?

  Her face jerked up to the bright, mocking sun that blinded her, and she thrust at it with the word, sending it outwards like a flailing fist. ‘Why?’ She screamed it hoarsely, launching it at the sky as if she could shatter its pale, impassive beauty, make it answer her. ‘Why have you done this, Mother? Why have you forsaken me?’

  Rhiann struggled to her knees, her eyes clenched against the flood of light. ‘What else could I have done?’ she cried. ‘I fought for you, toiled for you, endured for you … held people and healed them and wiped their tears and bore their anger. Yet more than anything, I loved for you!’ Anguished, Rhiann struck at her chest as if she could prove what lay there. ‘I did what you asked, loved him, loved them all, and you made me take them to defeat and then I opened to her, and you took her … you took her when I had done all you asked. I loved her and you took her away! Why? Why?’

  With a strangled gasp, choked by the tears of that dark storm, Rhiann ground dirt into her cheeks as if it were ashes. I surrendered to love! I did it and I let her in, let him in. I loved them and I am worthy of them, don’t you see? How can you not see what I am? I love and I am worthy, I am!’

  I am. I am. I am.

  I am worthy.

  Those words, flung out at the world, echoed in the shining, upturned bowl of the sky, its smooth sides curving to the horizon. And back they came, as if Rhiann was answered at last, though she had screamed that answer herself.

  I am worthy.

  Like an arrow of light the words pierced her breast, and because it was time, soared easily through the layers encasing her – the cold and the numbness, the fear and the fury, the things that had hurt her and made her despair – straight to the core that had been entrapped for years, caged by what lay around it.

  The glowing point cleaved the core like a red-hot knife through ice, and all the vibrancy and brightness, hoarded, sleeping, was suddenly released in one explosion of light. And Rhiann saw instantly all that had been, and some of what would be, and knew that what she had searched for was a place she had never left.

  I am worthy, and I always was.

  The voice was right there beside her. Her name, said like a song, the first syllable lifting and high, the second low and gentle.

  Ree-ann.

  Ree-ann.

  Come, daughter, and see.

  Rhiann looked up, dazed, and saw that the air itself was now made of light, and she could see nothing of mountain or sky or ground or rock. Yet the light near her was thicker somehow, stirring and shimmering with a real presence of spirit that was familiar to her.

  The voice was Nerida’s, and behind and through it chimed the chords of Setana and other more ancient whispers of woman and mother and sister. The child is with us; feel her.

  ‘I can feel her,’ Rhiann said, for there was no bitterness now to stop the soft touch of the child’s spirit from reaching her heart. Rhiann felt it brush her cheek, and the small, glowing flame that fluttered around her was also familiar, for she had seen it on the night the child was conceived.

  She chose to leave Thisworld now, for her time of full growth is not yet. She will return when the need is greater.

  ‘Then why did she come to me at all?’ Rhiann whispered, and if there was grief in those words it was a pure and clean pain, and there was now no shame in it.

  Why indeed? the voice echoed, and the answer came as a memory. She saw again the night glade on the Sacred Isle; Nerida and Setana circling her, singing. Through your body she had to pass, to take up what we gave you, to hold it in her soul.

  And then Rhiann finally understood the gift, which she had carried in her body along with the child.

  ‘But … she is not the only one gone. There is … more.’

  There is more. There was a smile in the ether around her; a flickering of the myriad, shifting hues. Though you have already understood much, and that had to come before the rest. So, Goddess-daughter, seer of the Sisters, beloved aspect of the Many-in-All – speak to us first of the truth you have found, and then we will share with you the other.

  Taking a deep breath, Rhiann closed her eyes. Yet even behind the darkness of her lids, she felt as if a cup of light was again spilling into the top of her head and running down her body, and she was caught there between earth and spirit, the connection to both a flowing, free stream of the Source, just as it had always been. She began to speak aloud then; her voice at first only a cracked whisper, then growing in strength. ‘I was never forsaken; only by myself. I faltered not because I was unworthy … but because I thought myself so.’ Rhiann opened her eyes. I thought myself so … but in the end I freed myself with rage, and won …

  The voice came again, many-layered no longer, but Nerida’s alone. You clouded your own light with shame, and turned your own face away, and so you lost what you loved so much. The surrender we spoke of so many times was not only
for love of others, but for the greater love of yourself. Take up this love now, for grace is here surrounding you, to help you to accept.

  And an echo of Linnet’s last words floated up from Rhiann’s own memory: On the mountain, it is acceptance you must find above all things.

  So Rhiann’s last surrender came, like a sigh that settles the heart into rest, and the pulse of Nerida’s joy shimmered in the air.

  Then as you have opened your eyes to the light of your soul, so you can become a beacon for others. After all, this is what you were shown, long ago. Come, see what you have waited to know all your life.

  And this time, Rhiann saw, at long last, the truth behind her dream, and how her thread on the Mother’s loom was woven into the greater pattern of Alba for all time to come.

  The last light of the sun was slipping behind the western hills when Rhiann came down from the mountain.

  To Caitlin, raising her head from where it rested across Conaire’s sword, the sky’s glow seemed to have come to rest in Rhiann’s face. Yet her cheeks ran with tears as well, and she looked all the more tranquil and beautiful for that.

  Rhiann came straight to Caitlin, and gently lifted her to her feet, setting the sword aside. ‘Sister,’ she said softly, looking down with a calmness that somehow curled itself around Caitlin’s shattered heart and cradled it, ‘though you have doubted it, the veils between the worlds are thin, for this day I have touched the other side. Conaire is gone only as far as the other shore, across the great sea.’

  Her words drew Caitlin’s breath from her body, as tears stung her eyes. ‘But I … I am here and I … cannot see him …’

  Rhiann kissed the tears from her, one by one, then pressed her lips to Caitlin’s forehead. ‘Yet you share my blood, and so we can show you, Linnet and Fola and I, how to sense him, and speak to him.’

  A wild hope fluttered in Caitlin’s breast. ‘Truly?’ she whispered, searching Rhiann’s face. ‘I can reach him?’

  ‘I swear it. For the love that bound you in Thisworld binds you still.’ Gently, Rhiann placed a hand on Caitlin’s chest. ‘Feel it in your heart.’

  As Rhiann held her, a warmth began to spread into Caitlin’s breast, and though the pain of the severing sharpened, making her gasp, so the icy numbness that had slowly been invading her also melted. Instead, it was held at bay by the strength of Rhiann’s love, and so the same strength flowed into Caitlin’s weakened body, and for the first time in days she saw Gabran’s beloved face in her mind.

  Rhiann kissed her again, and even though her sister turned away, her lips left a warmth that spread itself down inside Caitlin’s heart, so that when she wept again later in the dark something was there alongside the pain, holding her through the night.

  Rhiann stepped to Eremon now, and held out her hand. ‘Come, husband, for the babe has gone, and we must lay her to rest in a place of her own.’

  Caitlin saw Eremon’s face transfigure, its cold emptiness spasming for a moment into terrible pain, and she swallowed hard, hanging her head again in sorrow. Yet as Rhiann led an unresisting Eremon towards the mountain path, Caitlin sensed someone hovering near her, and she raised her puffy face, her mind hazy with grief. Lorn was holding out a bone cup of something that steamed. ‘Here,’ he said gently. ‘You must be hungry.’

  Caitlin wavered, unsure, her thoughts still groping for firm ground. Somewhere nearby Conaire waited for her, perhaps calling her onwards through the veils towards him. Yet Gabran too waited, there by the sea. For a single moment, Caitlin’s heart turned its back on the thought of returning to life and pain, for perhaps if she hurried, if she just lay down and let the cold take her, Conaire would be there on the shore of light, holding out his arms to her.

  Yet then Caitlin’s eyelids clenched shut. For she also remembered how she fought for Gabran, and how Conaire himself had been fighting for him when he died. We made something of our love in Thisworld. So she owed Conaire more than memories, she owed him his son, full grown and master of his own Hall.

  Caitlin took a deep, shuddering breath, and held out her hands for the cup.

  Rhiann took up the wrapped bundle from where she had left it, on a rock at the first bend of the track. Eremon was silent, but she heard his footsteps following as she moved further around the hill horizontally this time, along a thin, winding sheep trail, out of the shadows that were creeping up the valley with the cold of approaching night.

  Eventually, they came to a cluster of rocks that curved around a shallow ledge still lit with the last sun. Sheltered by the rocks, a tiny, gnarled rowan tree had grown, the thin, feathered leaves fluttering in the wind as the baby’s breath had fluttered.

  Rhiann stopped and pointed. ‘I wanted her to face west. It doesn’t need to be a large hole.’

  In silence, Eremon fell to his knees, and with the hilt and tip of his fine, jewelled sword, began to scour out a shallow grave from the sun-warmed earth. Rhiann watched him with calm eyes, holding the bundle to her breast. Though she still floated with the light, she could also clearly feel the tide of Eremon’s pain, running as deep as an underground river beneath icy stones. It was there, but he could not feel the dark tug of its current.

  Rhiann wondered how to reach him, and then realized she must trust. Trust had flowed through her when she opened her heart to the Goddess, and as the Mother cradled Eremon’s heart, too, She would know how to reach him.

  ‘It’s done.’ They were the first words that Eremon had spoken since the battle, and his voice wheezed with strain. Rhiann joined him on his knees, placing her cloak on the ground and then slowly unwrapping what lay within. Then the baby was laid out there, sleeping, it seemed; the fading dusk soft and forgiving on her raw skin, outlining her perfect features in gold. Rhiann took one of Eremon’s hands, the nails now grimed with earth, and placed it on the child’s head. But Eremon drew back as if stung, and so Rhiann let him be, murmuring the ritual words of death over the small, still form.

  It was only when she went to gather up the body from her cloak that Eremon’s hand shot out, trembling. ‘Don’t put her naked in the soil.’ His voice was so soft Rhiann hardly heard him, but suddenly he was stripping off his blood-stained tunic, and from a place under the left arm that was still vaguely blue he cut a long strip with his dagger. Then Eremon handed the cloth to Rhiann, and Rhiann gently wrapped the body in its new shroud, folding carefully as if it were a swaddling cloth. For a moment she sat looking down at her hands, remembering the feel of the child’s feather wings on her cheek, the dancing fire that said there was no need for the grief of separation. Only for a time, perhaps.

  Slowly, Rhiann twisted off her gold priestess ring, and drawing out the baby’s hand from where it curled up under her chin, placed the ring in her tiny palm, and folded her fingers back over. ‘This is for the love I bear you,’ Rhiann murmured, ‘and for what I am in my own soul – a Goddess-daughter like you.’

  Through all this Eremon made no sound, or movement, even though Rhiann could feel the trembling, fragile eggshell of control around his pain. Yet as she began to gather up the bundle once more, Eremon suddenly said, ‘Wait,’ and with a quick movement shrugged off the leather thong around his neck.

  The dark boar stone gleamed in the soft light, the low sun picking out the engraving of Calgacus’s eagle. ‘She can have it,’ Eremon whispered now. ‘I don’t need it; the stone and what it meant dies with her.’ As he spoke those words, his voice darkened with something Rhiann recognized well – deep and unrelenting shame. ‘I don’t need it,’ Eremon repeated again, his hands shaking, the stone swinging on its thong. But what Rhiann heard behind the words was I don’t deserve to wear it.

  She held the child out to him. ‘Then put it on her, cariad.’ The wind ruffled the tiny wisps of hair on the exposed curve of the baby’s skull, and though Eremon’s eyes widened, Rhiann gave him no chance to protest, but merely laid the child in his arms.

  The small, limp body teetered, and instinct made Eremon curl his arms about his dau
ghter for the first time. As she came to rest against his heart he let out a strangled whimper, and then his struggling breaths ceased for one, long moment. Rhiann reached for him as he crumpled over the baby, and the sounds that came from him then were those of a wounded animal. Rhiann rocked him, as he wept for the child and for Conaire and for Alba, as the light slowly died in the west.

  Yet as Rhiann gazed down at her fingers buried in Eremon’s dark curls, she suddenly realized he was not yet ready to hear what she had to tell him – of the dream, of the light beyond the pain.

  First Eremon had to cry his pain free, and that Rhiann understood, for she had done it herself here this day, and only then received the grace. We will stand in a place with stars above and sand beneath, Fola had said. Perhaps if Rhiann could just get them all to that place Fola had seen, safe and alive, perhaps then Eremon’s ears would be opened to receive her gift.

  ‘Rhiann,’ Eremon groped for her hand, his sobs shaking his shoulders, ‘all is dark, and I cannot remember … I cannot see what the light once was.’

  In answer, Rhiann pulled him closer to her breast, holding both her loves for the first and last time together. ‘I hold the light,’ she murmured, ‘and I have it safe here for you. Come to me, love, and let me keep you warm.’

  Rhiann’s tears fell on the nape of Eremon’s neck as his own fell on the child, but hers were soft and not bitter. So anointed, the baby was laid to rest for her long sleep, as the last light left the sky.

  CHAPTER 79

  For the long days that followed, it was Rhiann who walked at the head of the party, and neither Lorn nor Nectan tried to take her place, not after seeing her face when she came down from the mountain.

  It was a silent trek, but not in Rhiann’s mind. For as she passed every place in her land where the spirits dwelt and the Source drew close, so she said its name in her thoughts, to mark its passing from her life: the Place of the Wind; the Pool of Willows; the Ford of the Boar; the Moor of Fire; Roe Deer Ridge; the Headland of Arrows; the Hill of Mist; Yew Tree Rock; the Playful Water. So she released them with every step, with sorrow as well as acceptance.