It was the same amulet, the charm of binding, that Rioghan had made for her.
Below the ledge where Donaill lay, half asleep and half drugged into unconsciousness, his sword belt had fallen into the straw. Coiteann reached down to it, found the leather sheath that held his dagger, and pulled the weapon out.
She stood over him for a moment, speaking in a low voice. Now you will become mine, and not hers. Never hers. Then she moved toward him and crouched down beside the ledge, pulling his hand over the edge so that it hung out over the straw. With his own dagger she made a cut in the small finger of his hand and pressed it so that the drops of blood fell directly onto the amulet. Donaill flinched at the cut, but remained otherwise unmoving on the ledge.
Coiteann took the blood-coated amulet back to the hearth and placed it on the surrounding stone wall. Now, from a large leather sack in the straw, she lifted up an aged, fat, and nearly blind lapdog, too asthmatic to bark and too feeble to defend itself.
From the same sack she took a length of strong cord and looped it around the old dog’s neck. Placing the animal’s nose against the amulet, Coiteann tightened the cord and held it firmly.
In the span of a few moments, the helpless creature breathed its last terrified breath directly onto the charm of binding.
Coiteann placed the body of the dog back into the sack and then picked up a smaller leather bag. This one she emptied into a dark corner of the hearth, for these were cold ashes newly swept from Donaill’s own hearth, a substance that had once been untouchable with bright heat but that was now cold and dead and dark—and entirely controllable. She rolled the amulet in these ashes and then held it up for one final look by the faint firelight.
The luaidhe stone had now been subjected to blood, and cruelty, and control, and would be an extremely dark and powerful charm of binding. Rioghan had placed only a gentle enchantment on it, one meant to be completed by a kiss between lovers, but after Coiteann’s ritual it would carry an irresistible compulsion.
Coiteann took the charm to Donaill’s side. Leaning over him, she slid her hand beneath his head and lifted him up just enough to get the amulet’s chain around his neck. Then, with a great effort, she managed to raise up one of his shoulders and arrange the amulet so that it hung down his back instead of resting over his heart. The wearer would thus be pushed and compelled toward his enchantress, instead of lovingly and willingly drawn. It would bind him to the woman who had stopped at nothing to get him and would stop at nothing to keep him.
Rioghan dropped her crystal of seeing, letting it fall back against her breast. She let go of Donaill’s arm and got to her feet, though her body shook and she feared her knees would give way. As quickly as she could she fled the cold, dark house, stumbling across the yard of Cahir Cullen with her dogs by her side, crying out to the watchman to open the gate and let her out, knowing she could never run far enough to escape the horror she had discovered.
Somehow Rioghan found her way home in the darkness, though anger and despair all but blinded her to the sight of the moonlit path. She was desperate to get home, but when she arrived at Sion she hurried past the opening of the cave and its welcoming warmth and light and ignored the dogs who tried to greet her. Instead she ran up the side of the mound until she stood in the ashes at the very top.
Alone save for Scath and Cogar, Rioghan threw back her head and sang out, a single rising note that floated out through the cold and misty forest. Though she knew that a few of the Sidhe always moved with her unseen in the forest whenever she left Sion, her wailing cry would bring them all immediately to her side.
It was not long before the gray figures began to appear at the rim of the mound, rising into sight as they climbed lightly up the side of the hill. Exhausted, Rioghan sat down on her black wool cloak and breathed deeply of the cold night air.
Gentle hands stroked her hair, her shoulders, her face.
“We are here with you.”
“Take time and calm yourself before you try to speak.”
“Look up at the beauty that surrounds you, and let it help to ease your heart.”
Breathing slowly, deeply, Rioghan raised her head and looked out at the land around her. The endless pine trees reached up to meet the moon, their branches black in the deep night and glowing faintly in the mist and moonlight. It was peaceful and beautiful, as it always was…but now she knew that to the north, where the fortress of Cahir Cullen lay within the holly grove, there was a darkness that even the brightest moon and most shining starlit sky could never banish.
At last she turned toward the waiting Sidhe. It was difficult to see them, for their faces were hidden by colorless cloaks pulled up high over their heads. They were all moonlit silhouettes against the starry night sky, occasionally bright with reflected starlight on their gold and bronze and polished jet brooches. Yet she knew they were there to listen to her, and comfort her, and give her what help they could.
“I have learned the truth,” she began, “and it is dark and tortured and cruel. And I do not know how I can fight it without being just as ruthless and just as evil.”
In silence, the Sidhe turned to glance at one another.
“Evil can never be used to fight evil.”
“Both evil things would be destroyed, should that be tried.”
“It is not your nature, nor is it ours, to use such methods, my lady.”
“Then I will tell you what she has done,” Rioghan whispered. As they gathered close, she told them all that she had learned of Coiteann’s dark ritual and of the terrible binding curse she had placed on the amulet—and on Donaill.
“Only the deepest darkness could break such evil,” Rioghan said again, and closed her eyes.
“Not the deepest darkness—but indeed the most brilliant light,” said one of the soft voices surrounding her.
“Each of those three curses can be fought.”
“We will help you find a way.”
Rioghan looked up at their shadowed forms. “How?” she whispered.
The Sidhe turned to each other for a time, murmuring softly and exchanging whispered words and gentle touches and even signals made with hands and fingers. Then they came back to Rioghan and surrounded her again, standing in a half circle before her with hands folded beneath their gray cloaks.
“The power of light—the greatest power anyone can wield—will be needed to break this curse.”
“You must bring Donaill to the stone circle at sunrise on the winter solstice.”
“That is the most powerful place.”
“That is the most powerful time.”
“The sun returns at the winter solstice, and its rays are the most magical at dawn on that day.”
Rioghan shook her head. “He would never go with me to the stone circle. He might follow Coiteann, but she would never allow him to get near it.”
“You must find a way.”
“Or he must find a way.”
“Somehow he must get to the circle at dawn on the solstice, or he will remain as he is now for the rest of his life.”
Rioghan could only look at them. “If I could get him to the circle…what must I do then?”
“The blood that soaked the amulet, blood taken by force and without consent, can be washed away by tears.”
“Tears of sorrow, wept for his loss by one who loves him.”
“Your tears, Lady Rioghan, for you are the one whose love for him is true.”
The Sidhe spoke to each other for a moment, and then turned to Rioghan again.
“The final breath of a captive creature, forced to die in pain and fear, permeates this amulet.”
“The living breath of a free, wild thing will counteract it.”
“Bring a wild creature willingly to your side as you stand within the stone circle, and allow its breath to touch the amulet.”
Silence fell again. The only motion was the faint mist weaving among the trees down below. “And the final task?” Rioghan asked.
“The luaid
he stone was coated in ash, dead and dark and cold.”
“It needs the warmth of a flame started from the rays of the winter solstice sun.”
“A flame kindled with the crystal you wear over your heart, for a crystal is like a living piece of the earth. It has beauty, constancy, and longevity—just as a true love has.”
Rioghan could only look at them as the trembling began again. “I know you are right,” she said to them, “and yet I cannot think of how these things could possibly be done. For even if I could bring Donaill to the stone circle on the morning of the solstice, and lure a wild thing to my side, and kindle a sun-fire with my crystal…”
She shook her head. “I have no tears to give him. There is too much anger—at Coiteann for her cruelty and at Donaill for his carelessness. There is anger, and pain, and terrible loss…but there are no tears.”
She could not use the Sidhe’s advice.
Chapter Twenty
Ten nights went by, ten long, cold nights during which Rioghan could think of nothing else but Donaill—try as she might to push him from her mind. The Sidhe, kind as they were, had brought back the gold and bronze and crystal that they had hidden away from the invading men. It had once brightened the inside of her cave, and so they set it all out again in an effort to cheer her, but she could hardly bring herself to look at it. It only reminded her of how Donaill had come to Sion to help protect these same beautiful things, and now she despaired that he even remembered being here at all.
She felt torn in two, torn between wanting desperately to go to Cahir Cullen and do her best to persuade him to leave Coiteann of his own will…and fearing there was nothing she—or anyone—could do to break such a spell. She could not use the Sidhe’s method. Now that she knew what Coiteann had done, knew the darkness and cruelty that had gone into putting such a terrible curse on the amulet, she saw no way to overcome the curse without spells of far greater cruelty than even Coiteann had used.
And then she would think that perhaps Donaill deserved to stay where he was. He had allowed Coiteann close enough to him to drug him, curse him, and bind him to her forever. It had been his choice to spend time with her, even when he had just offered Rioghan a courtship and told her that he wanted only her.
Donaill had known very well what sort of woman Coiteann was. It would never have happened if he had simply stayed away from her. Perhaps it was better, Rioghan told herself, that she found out about him now…found that he was simply one of those men who would never give up the pleasure of other women’s company, no matter how devoted he claimed to be to one.
Yet even as she told herself these things, she would remember, again and again, his smiling face and laughing eyes…his great broad shoulders and boundless strength as she sat behind him on his horse…his determination in driving men like Beolagh away from Sion and from the Sidhe, even though they were his own men… And most of all, she recalled his gentleness, for all his great strength, when he had smiled at her and taken her hand and then bent down to kiss her.
Rioghan knew that she would never meet another man like Donaill.
The Sidhe told her that he still seemed to be himself when doing normal things among the other men: hunting, fishing, playing fidchell, or simply sitting outside and talking during the long, cold winter nights. But he looked at no woman but Coiteann’s, would speak only of Coiteann, insisted he would marry no woman but Coiteann.
His own people might be willing to leave him to his fate—but could Rioghan so coldly do the same?
At last it was the night of the dark of the moon. Rioghan stepped out of her cave, her heavy black cloak swinging about her feet. She looked up at the dark sky, shrouded in cloud, and wrestled with the thought that would not leave her mind. Despite what the Sidhe said, it seemed certain that only a power as dark at that used to curse the amulet could ever hope to break that same curse. But if she must do something so terrible to get Donaill away from another woman, was he really worth it?
Would anything be worth it? Rioghan had only to close her eyes to see his bright gaze and laughing face once again, and then would come the sickening vision of Donaill trapped at Coiteann’s side, his eyes dull and patient and his face as serious as that of a scolded child.
She could not leave him this way. No matter what. The realization came to her that there was nothing she would not do to bring him back to the way he was, even if he was no longer hers. No one deserved to live the way Donaill was living now. Trapped. Controlled. Entranced.
Rioghan looked out into the darkness of the surrounding pine forest. If she was going to use the power of dark magic to save Donaill, the time to gather the things she needed was now, at the dark of the moon. In a moment she found herself walking through the forest, alone in the dark, damp woods save for Scath and Cogar…and, she knew, a few of the ever-present Sidhe.
She walked slowly, almost reluctantly, keeping her eyes fixed on the ground. She was barely able to see anything in the faint light of the few stars that managed to shine down through the broken clouds, and as she walked farther and farther from the clearing she began to doubt she would find what was required.
Then something caught her eye.
Beneath the brush, hidden at the roots of one of the largest pines, lay something small and broken and dull white in color. Rioghan bent down to look closely at it and found bones—bones from some small creature, most likely a hare, which should be left to return in their own time to the earth, but which she could put to other use. The proper ritual would extract the last of the essence that had once inhabited them, and might release enough power to turn the will of a man under the darkest of curses.
As she gathered the bones, her fingers found something else within them: the rusted, broken blade of an iron dagger. At the cold bite of the metal she instantly dropped it, knowing that this was the weapon used to kill the wild hare whose bones she now hoped to use. But in a moment she lifted it up again, slowly and carefully, for this too would be a powerful talisman if used in the proper spell.
Once the bones and the iron blade were safely gathered up and placed in a small leather bag, she began to dig in the bare earth where the bones and blade had rested. Directly below she found a stone not quite as large as her fist, buried so deep in the earth that it had never seen the light of day. This, too, she placed in her leather bag.
Last of all she cut a piece of deep root from the ancient pine. This root was intended to feed nourishment to the tree, and though the tree would not die it would suffer some harm when its root was torn away—especially when that beneficial root was used to nurture dark power instead of growth and life.
She stood up again, brushing the damp earth and pine needles from the front of her black gown, feeling the very heavy weight of the leather bag that held her collection of dark, hidden, holding, binding things. Did she dare to hope that she could use such things to overpower Coiteann’s dreadful spell?
There was no answer for her now. Rioghan could only lift the heavy bag to her shoulder and turn back down the path that led to Sion—but just as she took the first step, Scath and Cogar shot past her in a mad race toward the clearing as if in answer to the frenzied barking that reached her through the pines.
The clouds closed in overhead, shutting out the starlight. Rioghan had no choice but to find her way in near-total darkness, picking her way along the path and searching out the familiar tree, the fallen log, the crooked boulder that showed her she was getting closer, even as her heart pounded and she wanted nothing more than to bolt through the darkness and get back to Sion.
Finally she could see spots of light ahead through the trees, as the barking of the dogs grew louder and louder. At last Rioghan raced out of the forest into the glaring torchlight of the clearing—and stopped dead at what she saw.
Chapter Twenty-One
The dogs were indeed barking fiercely, and doing all they could to attack the intruders, but their raging was for nothing. Every one of the animals, including Cogar and Scath, thrashed and
struggled within the entanglements of three heavy rope nets.
As before, Beolagh and his men had invaded the clearing, though this time they felt free to ride at their leisure or even walk on foot through the grass, since there were no warriors to defend Sion—and all of the dogs were now hopelessly trapped within heavy nets. And so, Rioghan saw with horror, were a few of the Sidhe.
The men of the Sidhe must have come running, as they always did, when the dogs sent up the alarm—but why would they have come out in the open to be get caught like animals in Beolagh’s nets?
Then she saw why. Within the cave, glaring torchlight created harsh moving shadows. The black cowhide hangings were ripped down and thrown aside, and two men walked out of her home with their arms piled high with every last item of value that had lined the walls of the cave.
“Stop!” Rioghan shouted, but her voice was lost amid the noise of her barking, shrieking dogs. She hurried toward the cave, but another movement toward the road forced her once again to stop.
Two men on horseback drove a group of Sidhe ahead of them at swordpoint—and every one of the Sidhe, men and women both, carried a pile of beautiful gold and crystal objects, shining bright in the flaring light of the torches.
“Kieran! Luath!” Rioghan cried, and started to go to them—but then one of the riders drove his horse across her path and dragged the animal to a stop right in front of her.
“Do not, my lady,” said the rider.
The voice was familiar. Looking up, blinking in the torchlight, Rioghan saw Airt looking down at her, holding his sword above her head.
“You?” she said, ignoring the upraised weapon. “You are a part of this?”
“Stay back,” he told her, as his horse swung around. “Stay out of the way and you will not be harmed. You have my word.”
Keeper Of The Light Page 19
