“See to the oatcakes, Faelia.”
“We can’t eat without Keirith,” Callie said.
“Your father and our guest need something in their bellies.”
“I could go to the Tree-Father’s and fetch him.”
Faelia gingerly plucked the oatcakes off the baking stone and dropped them into a reed basket. “I’d just as soon he stayed away. He’s been so difficult lately.”
“Should I go, Fa? I could go.”
“Fine. Go. Fetch him.”
Before Darak finished speaking, Callie was dashing out. Griane sighed. “Do you have children, Urkiat?”
“Nay.”
“Are you married?” Faelia asked.
“Nay.”
“Really? Oatcake?” She held out the basket, favoring him with a wild fluttering of her pale lashes.
From hunter to whining child to flirt. Griane couldn’t keep up with her daughter’s transformations. If she was this difficult at eleven, gods preserve them—and whatever quarry she sought—when she became a woman.
Since Faelia was in a helpful mood, Griane let her scoop the cheese into a bowl and pass it around. It was good to sit and sip her elderberry wine while the men regaled them with tales of the Gathering: the trader with the brightly-colored bird that could curse in three languages; the tribesman from the north who shot four arrows through a gourd resting on a rock one hundred paces away; the boy who could keep three apples in the air at the same time.
She had hoped to attend this year’s Gathering with Darak; they’d had such fun at the others, giggling like young lovers in their furs at night. After she weaned Callie, she’d expected to share more times like that, but there were always birthings to attend, bones to set, illnesses to monitor. Hard to believe the girl who had braved the First Forest had left her village only four times since she had returned.
Darak still went to the grove with the priests for the spring and fall rites of Balancing. Never at Midwinter or Midsummer; he couldn’t bear to witness the battle between the Oak and the Holly. As for her, she would never go there again. Although it was the place where they had found love, there were too many painful memories. The quest had left Darak’s spirit as badly scarred as his body. It was moons before he could sleep through the night without jolting awake, sweat-sheened and shaking. Longer still before the shadows left his face.
The shadows were there now, this time conjured by their son. Although Darak nodded his head and exclaimed over Faelia’s exhaustive description of every snare she’d set in his absence, his thumb continued its relentless tattoo.
Griane tested the stew, scowled, and laid out some smoked salmon. She was considering whether to send Faelia to a neighbor to augment their meager fare when Callie slipped back inside. To her surprise, Gortin followed.
Darak rose and bowed. “Tree-Father. Your presence honors us.”
Neither his words nor his manner betrayed the lie. Nor, to his credit, did Gortin’s. His square face had never been handsome, but as a young man, there had been a certain softness, an eager light—sweet and pitiful at the same time—that illuminated it. That disappeared after Struath died. Tonight, the scars around the shadowed eye socket gave him a particularly sinister look.
She chided herself for her silliness. Gortin couldn’t help the scars. The Tree-Father from the Holly Tribe had been too sick and too old to conduct the rite properly. All the poultices in the world couldn’t undo the damage that shaking dagger had inflicted. She still remembered Gortin’s screams.
Darak and Gortin were just staring uncomfortably at each other. “Please. Join us,” she said. “We were just about to have some supper.”
“Thank you. I’ve eaten.” Gortin hesitated, his gaze lingering on Urkiat. “There is a matter we need to discuss, but I fear this is not the best time.”
Urkiat turned to Faelia. “After hearing so much about the rabbits you snared, perhaps you’d show me the best spots. We might even have time to set some snares before the light goes. If Callum will help us.”
“Callie’s too little—”
“I am not. I helped the other day. I sprinkled dirt over the snare and everything.”
“Fa ...”
Before Darak could speak, Griane said, “It’s too late to be wandering about the lakeshore. Take Urkiat to Ennit’s. Both of you.”
Urkiat had eaten their food; he was honor-bound not to violate the laws of hospitality. And Darak must trust the man if he’d brought him home. Still, his angry outbursts made her reluctant to send the children off with him.
As Gortin sat down, Darak said, “I take it Keirith’s not with you.”
“Nay.”
“Is there a problem? Has he been neglecting his lessons?”
“He hasn’t told you?”
Griane’s stomach lurched. Darak shot her a quick look and she shook her head, as puzzled as he was.
“Keirith assured me . . . I’m sorry. I should have told you myself.”
“Aye. Well.” Darak’s voice was calm enough, but she could hear the edge in it. “Suppose you tell us now.”
Chapter 3
BY THE TIME KEIRITH neared the village, the sun had disappeared behind Eagles Mount. He endured some good-natured chaffing from the returning peat cutters who marveled that he could have ripped his tunic during a vision, and silently blessed the women who herded the begrimed men and children toward the lake to wash.
He paused at the little stream that flowed into the lake to assess the damage the gorse bush had inflicted during his headlong flight down Eagles Mount. The dim light in the hut might hide the scratches on his bare legs, but his mam would surely spy the hole in the elbow of his tunic; her eyes were as sharp as the eagle’s. Maybe if he kept his arm straight . . .
Kneeling under the big willow, he splashed water in his face and smoothed his hair. Hoping his meager ablutions would suffice, he hurried toward the village.
A few children scampered past, heading home for supper. The usual group of old women sat outside Jurl’s hut, scraping hides and gossiping. Old Erca looked up as he walked by, and, in her penetrating screech, demanded to know if he’d been wrestling with a gorse bush.
“For shame. Scampering around the hills instead of welcoming your father home.”
“Darak’ll take his belt to him.”
“More likely Griane. She’ll have to mend the tunic.”
“Boys are so hard on their clothes. I could scarcely keep up with my two when they were that age.”
“My Jurl—thank the Maker he’s settled down now—but the scrapes that rascal used to get into! I still remember that Midsummer . . . oh, he couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven . . .”
Mercifully, they lost interest in him, chuckling and nodding over the oft-heard tales of their own children and grandchildren.
He’d have to find a way to get Callie and Faelia out of the hut. It would be bad enough to break the news to his parents without Faelia rolling her eyes and Callie interrupting with a hundred questions.
His footsteps slowed, stopped. He scuffed his big toe in the dirt.
Just get it over with, Keirith.
As he strode toward the hut, he heard his father shouting. When he recognized the Tree-Father’s voice, also raised in anger, the wave of nausea made sweat break out on his forehead. He took one step forward, then another, determined to ignore his pattering heart and churning stomach.
A hand lifted the bearskin. The Tree-Father ducked outside. His expression grew even grimmer when he saw him. “Callum came to my hut to fetch you.”
His parents knew. And because of his stupid, endless delays, they’d had to hear the truth from the Tree-Father.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I failed you.”
“Talk to them, Keirith.”
Expecting a stern reproof, the sympathy on the shaman’s face brought a thick clot to his throat. He swallowed it down as the Tree-Father walked away. All his life, he’d heard the slighting comments about Gortin, how he was a “good
man” but a far cry from Struath. That had only convinced him of their kinship; Keirith, too, knew what it was like to live in the shadow of a great man—the one who was waiting inside for him now.
As he reached for the bearskin, his father shouted, “Why didn’t you just get down on your knees and kiss his arse while you were at it?”
“You and your pride! You’d attack Gortin for—”
His mam broke off. Had she seen the bearskin move? Resisting the urge to slink away, Keirith slipped inside and found his father watching him with eyes as cold as storm clouds in winter.
He’d smacked their bottoms a few times when they were little. Occasionally, he raised his voice. But when he went quiet and cold like this, they knew he was really angry.
“I’m sorry.”
His father just stood there, watching and waiting. If he no longer hunted, he still possessed a hunter’s patience.
“I was going to tell you.”
“When?”
His mam tugged on his father’s arm. “I think we should sit.”
“When were you going to tell us?”
His father’s voice was flint grating on bone. Keirith told himself it was the smell of the stew that made his gorge rise, but he knew it was fear. “I tried. I did.” Gods, he sounded like a whining child. “Right after the Tree-Father dismissed me from my apprenticeship.”
“Damn your apprenticeship.”
“Darak . . .”
“I’m talking about the other. This . . . power . . . to communicate with the eagle.”
“Oh. That.”
“Aye. That.”
The savagery of those two words made him wince. Perhaps his mam saw; she clutched his father’s arm with both hands. “Enough.”
He yanked his arm free without deigning to look at her. “How long have you had it?”
He could lie. Tell them only the part about flying with the eagle and hide the rest. But sooner or later his father would realize the truth. “The wood pigeon,” he whispered.
His father went very still. His mam’s gaze darted back and forth between them. “What wood pigeon?”
For some reason, his father refused to look at her. “Keirith brought the bird down with his sling. When he went to finish it off, it . . . he said it screamed.”
“Screamed?”
“Aye.”
“When was this?”
His father hesitated. “Seven years ago.”
“Seven years?” his mam echoed.
“Griane . . .”
“And you never told me?”
“I thought—”
“I had a right to know, Darak!”
“You’d just lost the babe!” In a much softer voice, he added, “I didn’t want to worry you.”
The same day he had heard the wood pigeon scream, he and his father had returned from the forest to discover Ennit waiting for them. Faelia was too young to understand, but his father’s stark expression told Keirith something was terribly wrong. He’d waited and waited in Memory-Keeper Sanok’s hut until the tension became unbearable. Then he ran to the birthing hut.
He saw his father pacing in the moonlight. Heard his mother’s anguished cry, as terrible and shrill as the wood pigeon’s. His father caught him up in his arms, held him so tight the breath was squeezed out of him. Then the Grain-Mother came out of the birthing hut and told them the babe was dead.
Ennit tried to stop his father from going inside. That was the first time Keirith had seen that cold rage on his face. He waited with Ennit, listening to his mother’s sobs and the low murmur of his father’s voice.
Later, after his father had tucked Faelia under her wolfskins, he asked if it was his fault, if the gods were angry because of what had happened in the forest. His father grabbed his shoulders, the thumbs digging in so hard it made tears come to his eyes, and said his little brother had come into the world too soon. Too small to live, his spirit would fly to the Forever Isles to be reborn in its proper time.
Two moons later, when he heard the rabbit scream, he had offered prayers and sacrifices to avert another death. Later, he realized his ability to feel an animal’s pain did not foretell a death in the village, but he still couldn’t bring himself to speak of his power; in his mind, it would always be linked with the death of his baby brother.
He wished he could explain that now, but his parents seemed to have forgotten him. His mother was staring at the rushes. His father kept reaching for her, then letting his hand drop to his side.
“And later?” she finally asked.
“I thought he imagined it. I was wrong. I’m sorry, girl.”
She held his gaze a long while. Then, as if they exchanged some signal he couldn’t see, they both turned to him.
“I thought it would stop. If I didn’t hunt. And it wasn’t always bad. Sometimes I could make things better.”
“How?” his father demanded.
“The ewe. Three springs ago. It was her first lambing and she was having trouble. And I helped her.”
“So it’s not just birds.”
He shook his head.
“But you didn’t tell Gortin that.”
“I couldn’t. Not the way he was looking at me. Like I was . . . something awful.”
He waited for one of them to tell him he wasn’t awful, that he’d done nothing wrong, but his mam only said, “And you use this power to touch their spirits.”
“I don’t hurt them. I would never hurt them. I’m not like Morgath.”
His father’s breath hissed in. “Do not speak that name in my home.”
“That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it? That I’m like him. An abomination.”
“If I thought you were anything like him—”
With an effort, his father choked back his next words, but Keirith knew what they were: “I would kill you as surely as I killed him.”
He must have made some sound, for his mam stopped chewing her upper lip and said, “Struath always claimed magic was neither good nor evil. It was what people did with it. And Morgath—aye, I will say his name if only to curse it and condemn him to Chaos for all time—he used his power for evil. I know . . . we both know . . . you’re not like that.”
She paused, glancing at his father, waiting for him to speak. But he didn’t. He hesitated. And finally nodded. And in that terrifying pause—only the space between one heartbeat and the next—something inside Keirith died.
“You should have come to us,” his mam said.
His father refused to look at him.
“You should have told us the truth.”
His father loathed him. His father thought he was as evil as the man who had tortured and mutilated him.
“I thought . . . I hoped it would go away.”
Finally, his father looked up. “And when it didn’t?” His voice was hoarse, as if it hurt him to speak to the abomination he had spawned.
“I don’t know. I just . . .”
“You lied.”
“Darak . . .”
“You lied to the Tree-Father when you told him that you’d only flown with the eagle a few times. You lied to us every day you sneaked out of this house and pretended to go to your lessons.”
“I tried—”
“Gortin dismissed you a fortnight ago. You could have told us then. You could have told us years ago. Instead, you hid this power. Because you knew it was wrong.”
“It’s not wrong. It can’t be.”
“So now you know more than Gortin,” his father said, his voice heavy with sarcasm.
“Maybe he’s just jealous. He can only fly with his spirit guide, and half the time it doesn’t come to him. Besides, he hates you.” Keirith overrode his mam’s vehement denial. “That’s what you say. I’ve heard you. Both of you.”
“Gortin does not hate your father. What happened with Struath . . . that was a long time ago. And whatever flaws Gortin may have, he would never punish you because of his . . . differences with your father.”
Again
his mam’s eyes sought his father’s for confirmation.
“We’re talking about your behavior,” he said, “not the Tree-Father’s. You think we’ll shrug this off because you’re too young to know better? When you heard the wood pigeon, aye. Even when you helped the ewe. But you’re supposed to be a man now.”
He was a man. It was his father who insisted on treating him like a child, who stubbornly refused to understand. “You think I asked for this power? That I want it?”
“Don’t you?” his father shot back. “It’s one thing to help with the birthing of a lamb. It’s another to fly with an eagle. That you did for your own pleasure.”
And because he knew it was true, Keirith lashed out. “At least the eagle welcomes me! He wants me. Which is more than you do.”
His father’s head snapped back. “Stop talking nonsense.”
“Do you know what it’s like? Everyone watching you, tallying every mistake, every failure. Shaking their heads and thinking ‘He’ll never measure up to his father.’ ”
“That’s not . . . no one says that.”
“You think I don’t see the way they look at me? The way you look at me? Your firstborn son who can’t make a kill without puking up his guts. Who can’t keep his apprenticeship with the Tree-Father. Who’s as evil as Morgath!”
He felt the power roaring through him. Not the gentle unfurling that came when he sought the eagle’s spirit, but a wild, uncontrollable current that left him breathless. He spun around, but before he could reach the doorway, his father caught his arm. Even with only three fingers, it hurt.
He didn’t mean to do it. He only wanted to free himself from that punishing grip, to escape his father and his accusations. He only wanted to get away.
The energy poured out of him, a raging torrent that slammed into his father’s spirit and sent him reeling backward. Too late, Keirith pulled it back, gasping as the unleashed power crashed into him, gasping again as he careened into the wall of the hut. From a great distance, he heard his mam cry out. There was a brilliant burst of light—red, orange, gold—that faded into shimmering black dots. Had he done that, too? Or was it because he’d hit his head against the wall?
His legs folded under him, and he slid to the ground. Something glinted among the rushes. Callie’s quartz charm, the one he had mislaid a sennight ago. He’d snapped at Callie for going on and on about it and felt awful when tears welled up in his brother’s eyes. He reached for the charm, but his hand was shaking so badly that he dropped it. The charm lay there, mocking him. Even this one simple act he couldn’t do right.
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