Heir to Sevenwaters

by Juliet Marillier

  “Here.” Mac Dara halted so abruptly that I walked into him. He put out a hand to steady me and I forced myself not to shrink away.

  “Where?” I said, looking around me and seeing nothing that resembled a dwelling or shelter.

  The Lord of the Oak pointed ahead. The path skirted a rock wall grown over with briars. In a curve of this wall the lantern light revealed a darker space: the entry to a cave. Something moved. I started, gasping with fright. A hooded figure stepped out of the shadows; a spear gleamed in a gauntleted hand. “All’s quiet, my lord,” a man’s voice said.

  “She can go in,” said Mac Dara. “Don’t disturb them before morning. Alert me if there’s any trouble.”

  “Yes, my lord.” The man retreated. I could see now that another, similarly clad, stood to the far side of the entry.

  “You keep your own son under armed guard?” I asked. “What are you afraid of?”

  “You’re wasting time,” Mac Dara said. “If you want what you came for, you’ll need to start working on him straightaway. Go in.”

  “Remember what I said. No spying.” Gods, I could not stop shaking. Cathal was in there, so close. My heart was ready to leap out of my breast.

  “Do you doubt Mac Dara’s word?” He sounded as if he was smiling. A moment later he turned on his heel and was gone, taking the lantern with him.

  My eyes were slow to adjust to the darkness. After a little, I discerned a faint, flickering light coming from within the cavern. Ignoring the guards, I put my hand against the wall to guide me and edged through the opening.

  A candle burned on a rock shelf not far inside, and another on a small table. Their fitful light illuminated a space that resembled more closely the cell of a druid or scholar than the habitation of a prince, or indeed a place of confinement. The shelf bed was narrow and looked hard; a blanket lay at its foot, folded with perfect precision. There was no hearth and the place was cold. A stone table had a stool set before it. Cathal was sitting there, his back to me, a parchment spread out before him, a quill and ink pot on the table to his right. He was clad in black, just like his father. “Go away,” he said without turning.

  “Cathal.” My voice came out as a nervous croak. “Cathal, I’m here.” Part of me longed to rush forward and throw my arms around him. A wiser part held me where I was.

  For the space of a breath he went completely still. He might have been turned to stone. Then he said, “A pox on my father. Can’t he think of something new? I said go. I don’t want you.” He could have been the Cathal of early spring, the one whose cruelly dismissive comments had so irked me.

  “Cathal. Turn around and look at me.”

  I saw him take a deep breath before he moved, as if to fortify himself. Perhaps there had been a whole string of women who looked like me, spoke like me, pretended they were Clodagh of Sevenwaters come back to fetch him as she had promised. Then he turned, stood, and looked into my eyes.

  “Go away,” he said. “You’re wasting my time.” He looked wretched; he looked years older than before. There were deep shadows around his eyes and his face was grooved by lines of sorrow. He was so thin—not the lean, fit warrior who had done battle with such skill and flair in the courtyard at Sevenwaters, but a pallid, sorrowful wraith of a man. My heart bled for him.

  I walked across and sat on the edge of the hard bed. “Then I will waste it until morning,” I said. “That’s the time I’ve been given by your father, no more, no less, and I don’t plan to head back home without making best use of what little he’s allowing me.” I struggled for an easy tone. The sight of him wrung my heart, and I could not keep the anguish from my voice. “Cathal,” I said, “in our world, the human world, only one day has passed since I left you in your father’s hall. I’m sorry it has been so long for you. I thought you knew me well enough to be sure I would come back, no matter how much time it took.” I must be careful, very careful. I did not for a moment believe Mac Dara would forego the chance to watch us and, if he could, to listen to every word. Such a man placed no value on promises.

  “Uh-huh,” said Cathal, folding his arms and leaning against the wall so his face was in shadow. His eyes were intent on me. On the table beside the writing materials, something was emitting a faint glow. Not a lamp; a flat object that I could not identify from where I was. There were a mortar and pestle there as well, and stalks of yarrow in a jar. Had Mac Dara’s son taken up divination? I took heart from the fact that he had been engaged in some activity, not sitting in the dark with his thoughts. Wretched as he seemed, perhaps he was not yet defeated.

  “How can I prove to you that it’s really me?” I asked him. “The marks on my face from when we crossed the river on the raft and watched Aidan fade into the mist behind us? The burns on my hands from trying to save Becan? Or should I sing the song?”

  “No!” he snarled. I saw him gather himself, then he said more quietly, “You are no different from the others. If not a woman of my father’s procurement, changed by his arts to resemble her, then a phantom from the recesses of my own mind. A dream sent to torment me. How many times must I say it? I will not play this game.”

  “It’s not the game you think,” I said softly.

  “Then what is it? I can never be free of this place; I can never be free of him. If you were really Clodagh”—his voice cracked as he spoke my name—“and if you had spoken to that man before you came to me, you would know that he will never release me. It’s in the charm, isn’t it? I knew what would become of me the moment I heard that old woman telling the story.”

  “There was guidance in all three of her tales,” I said. Best be careful with this particular thread of conversation, if Mac Dara was listening. “Clues. Answers. If I’d understood them, I could have stopped you from coming here at all, let alone stepping across your father’s threshold. Even the silly tale about the clurichaun wars had a message in it.” I twisted the green glass ring on my finger and saw his gaze sharpen.

  The object on the table glowed more brightly for a moment, then dimmed.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “Are you blind? It’s a mirror. As Mac Dara’s only son, I’m required to keep up appearances. No more throwing on an old cloak.”

  My heart did a peculiar somersault in my chest. He knew me. For all the outward defiance, it was in his choice of words, and it was in his eyes, careful as he was to mask the spark of recognition. Careful because he believed, as I did, that Mac Dara was watching every move and listening to every word. Perhaps Cathal had known me from the moment I came in here, when he had frozen at the sound of my voice. “If that’s your idea of keeping up appearances,” I said, “you’re not doing much of a job. Why don’t you let me attend to your hair, at least? It looks as if it hasn’t seen a comb since last spring.” I rose and approached the table.

  “No!” He edged back along the wall, out of my reach. “Don’t try your tricks on me!”

  “Look at it this way,” I said, glancing at the little round mirror on the table and seeing that this was indeed the source of the strange light that came and went. “If I’m a dream, I can’t do you any real harm, can I? And if I’m not, I’m an ordinary human girl, too powerless to have any effect on you, and certainly incapable of influencing such a mighty prince as your father. All I have is what you see before you.” I motioned to my own form in its plain homespun gown. “That’s what I have to trade, and that’s what I’m offering. Not forever; you’re right about that, he refused to allow it. Only for tonight. You called me beloved, once.” My voice shrank to a whisper, for this part of the game went very close to the bone. “For a little, I believed you thought me beautiful. Desirable. But perhaps I was fooling myself, as women do. We’re all too ready to believe the words of flattery men use to obtain what they want. To father the sons they want. I see in your eyes that you are as much of a liar as he is.”

  His mouth tightened. It hurt me to wound him. I was by no means sure that the two of us were playing the same game, only t
hat the intention was to deceive Mac Dara until we might evade his scrutiny for long enough to speak honestly. How might the Lord of the Oak be lulled? What would make him weary of watching us? Seeing my clumsy attempts at seduction fail, or the opposite? And how could I convey to Cathal that I, too, was playing a part for his father’s benefit?

  “Here,” said Cathal, taking a comb out of his pocket and putting it on the table. “You may as well make yourself useful. But no tricks. I know what you are. I know why he sent you. You’re doing a more convincing imitation than the ones before you, but I’m still not interested. All my father wants is to see me use a woman as casually and heartlessly as he did my mother. You speak of fathering sons. If I accepted what you seem, rather ineptly, to be offering, if I lay with you tonight in the knowledge that you’d be gone tomorrow and I would never see you again, I would prove the point you just made—that I am my father’s son not only in blood, but also in character and intentions.” He sat on the stool with his back to me, and I reached to gather the dark hair that came well below his shoulders now. Seven turnings of the moon? Or far longer? Mac Dara was full of lies.

  “You are his son, Cathal,” I said quietly. “That means I can never have you for my own. He told me so. As for my being a mere simulacrum of the woman you once loved, all I can say is, nothing here is what it seems.” I picked up the comb and began to draw it through his hair, working out the knots. I hoped he had understood me.

  “A wilderness, tangled and wild,” murmured Cathal.

  “It is not so bad that it cannot be set to rights,” I whispered, touching his neck with gentle fingers. Careful, careful; best if Mac Dara believed his son did not know me for who I was. If it seemed Cathal thought me yet another phantom conjured from his imagination, or some other woman charmed into the form of Clodagh, his father would be less likely to anticipate what was to come. We were still deep in Mac Dara’s realm, and there were only the two of us. I must tread with the utmost caution. I combed and combed, and as I did so I laid my hand on my dear one’s neck, feeling the blood pulsing beneath my fingers; I stroked his temple; I used both hands to ease the tight muscles of his shoulders and heard him suck in his breath at my touch. Now he did nothing to stop me, though his eyes, in the little mirror, were at the same time bright with desire and as wary as those of a wild creature hunted. The worst thing about it was that I did want him, I wanted to touch and kiss and caress, I wanted to be held and stroked and loved. Feelings coursed through my body more powerful than any I had experienced before, lovely, urgent feelings that pulled me toward him as a swift-flowing river might carry a drifting branch. To make a show of my desire for Mac Dara’s sake was wrong, all wrong. Yet if I wanted to save Cathal, that was what I must do. I must convince the Lord of the Oak that I was prepared to go through with his dark bargain.

  I gathered Cathal’s hair away from his neck and bent to touch my lips to the exposed skin.

  “Don’t,” he said, his tone harsh. “Don’t do this!”

  “He said you’d be incapable,” I murmured. “He explained to me that without desire a man cannot father a child.”

  “What—” He had spoken without thinking, caught off guard, and now he swallowed his words. “You would not lie with me if he were watching, surely,” he said. “Whatever you are, whoever you are, you must have some sense of modesty. He always watches. There is no way to prevent that.” His glance went to the little glowing mirror and immediately away.

  “So you haven’t availed yourself of the women he offered,” I said, trying not to stare at the disc of polished metal. “It would seem you’ve become a scholar instead.” Ciarán’s necklace was in the pouch at my belt. It would be easy enough to slip it around Cathal’s neck now. But not with Mac Dara looking on. If the Lord of the Oak saw me attempting this, he would know I wanted a great deal more than a night in his son’s bed.

  “It’s been a long time,” said Cathal, “and I’m not accustomed to being idle. I’ve worked on certain skills of which I had only the rudiments before.” He had his hands on the table before him; his first finger moved slightly, pointing toward the mirror. “One scarcely needs them in this place, but one must do something to fill in the time. I hope, one day, to make some kind of important discovery; something new to the craft of magic. But my progress is slow. My father finds that frustrating.”

  “Cathal,” I said, and put my arms around him from behind, laying my head on his shoulder.

  I felt his body tense, but he said nothing.

  “Please,” I said. “Please lie with me, just this once, just this one night, that’s all I’m asking. If we can’t be together as man and wife in the human world, at least I will have this to remember. I love you. I want you. You must know that.” And as I spoke, although it was a game, although it was a deception, I meant those words with every part of my being. My body ached for him; my heart longed for him. I heard how my desire throbbed in my voice.

  Cathal shook me off, getting to his feet. “No!” he said. “I won’t listen to you. You do a good job of imitating her; so good you almost fooled me for a moment. But I know you are not Clodagh. You can’t be. If she were here I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands off her. I would hold her so close she’d beg me to let her breathe. I’d kiss her so hard she’d plead for mercy. I’d unfasten her clothing and lie with her on that hard bed, and what was between us would be as far above the ordinary congress between man and woman as the stars are above their pale reflections in the lake below. I know you’re not Clodagh because when you touch me I feel nothing, you understand, nothing at all. You might as well be a creature made of twigs and leaves like that wretched changeling she so doted on. I want you to go now. For the love of all the gods, leave me alone.”

  If he was acting he was doing a fine job of it. His words made me sick with anguish. He had moved into the shadows by the wall again, his arms wrapped around himself, his eyes bright with pain.

  “I see,” I said, and my own voice was shaking with a hurt that was entirely real. “Well, that makes your position pretty clear. But I’m not going. The agreement is that I can stay until dawn, and that’s what I’ll be doing. So it looks as if I’ll sit on one side of the chamber and you’ll sit on the other, and we’ll ignore each other until it’s time for me to leave. That should be a fascinating way to pass the night. When he said you wouldn’t be capable I didn’t believe him for a moment. But it seems it’s true. Being here has unmanned you. And it’s blinded you. It’s as if he’s set a wall between you and what’s in front of you, a barrier you can’t see through to the truth.”

  I retreated to the bed again, seating myself upon it with my knees drawn up and my arms around them, my bag beside me. On the other side of the chamber, in the shadows, Cathal gave a strange little smile. “A wall to screen out truth,” he murmured. “You believe my father has the power to create such a charm?”

  No, I thought, doing my best not to look at the mirror. But maybe you do. Maybe that’s what you’re trying to tell me. Is that thing somehow connected with Mac Dara? He sees us through it? No; then all you’d need to do to shut him out is turn it upside down. Can it be that it shows you when he’s watching you and when he isn’t? Ciarán had implied that Cathal could learn to counter his father’s magic, given time. And Cathal had already possessed an exceptional talent at scrying, even before he entered the Otherworld. Could he have acquired sufficient knowledge to devise this powerful tool so quickly? But then, perhaps Mac Dara had lied. Perhaps I had been gone not months, but years. “Your father can do anything he wants,” I said. “Including what you seem incapable of. He promised me that if you couldn’t oblige me tonight, he will do so tomorrow.”

  He blanched. Eyes blazing with fury, he made to speak, then clamped his lips tight.

  “He did give you the chance to demonstrate your virility,” I made myself say. “But you won’t even try. I hate you, Cathal. I hate that you don’t know me, I hate that you don’t want me, I curse the day I met you. Now stop talking
and leave me alone.” I bent my head onto my knees, and although my speech was all pretense, the tears I shed were entirely real.

  And then we waited. I sat on the bed; he stood against the wall opposite. We tried not to look at each other, but the space between us was full of the cruel words we had spoken and the tender ones we could not speak. It was alive with my longing to touch him, to hold him, to cling to him and never let go. In the silence, I could hear Cathal’s words: I would kiss her until she begged for mercy. I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands off her. And though he held his expression cool and distant, a flame burned in his eyes. What if Mac Dara never turned away his gaze? We could not attempt an escape in full view. If morning came and we had not lain together, and Mac Dara argued that it was because Cathal could not perform the act, I would be obliged to share my bed with the Lord of the Oak tomorrow night. I could be condemned to give him my firstborn son. For that, Cathal would never forgive me. I would never forgive myself.

  A long time passed. My body was strung so tight with need that it drove everything else from my mind. I tried to breathe slowly, to relax, to work out a number of plans according to what happened next, but I could not. There was only me and Cathal and the aching distance between us.

  And then, much later, the glow from the mirror dimmed, and dimmed further, and went out, and the flickering candles were the only light in the little chamber. Cathal took two strides toward me. As I rose, his arms came around me, holding me so hard I struggled for breath.

  “Clodagh,” he whispered against my hair. “Clodagh, you’re really here, you came back at last, oh gods, it’s been so long . . .”

  I had no words. All I could do was press close, wind my arms around his neck, surrender to a kiss that was deep and hard and searching, feel his body against mine and know, without a doubt, that what Mac Dara had said about him was quite wrong, for it was plain as a pikestaff that Cathal wanted me as desperately as I wanted him. We fell to the bed in a tangle of arms and legs and garments, our breath coming fast and unsteady, our hands urgent, our bodies hungry. The mirror stayed dark; it seemed Mac Dara had found our long vigil poor entertainment. I fumbled with the fastenings of Cathal’s shirt. His knee was between my thighs, his hand pushing up the fabric of my gown.