The Boar Stone: Book Three of the Dalriada Trilogy

by Jules Watson

  As the days unfolded, they discarded some combinations and refined others. They inflicted upon themselves nausea, retching, headaches, blurred vision, racing pulses, sleepiness and dry tongue. Nothing was severe, but it was taxing, and Minna saw how it was leaching the last dregs of Brónach’s health. However, the old woman would not let her bear the brunt of the testing. With that feverish light in her eyes, she only drove herself harder.

  Minna lay in bed at night too agitated to sleep, stroking her fingers through Orla and Finola’s hair as they curled into her side, staring at the roof. She asked for something to guide her, but would only wake unbearably thirsty, a lump of loneliness in her throat.

  By the seventh night they had six different draughts ready, one of each herb. Minna sat before Brónach’s fire with a line of glass flasks that were in turn lurid green, straw-hued, murky, or red-tinged. Behind her, Brónach was slumped on cushions against the bench, coughing. They had both reached the limits of their energy. The old woman’s skin was papery and white, every breath laboured. Her grey hair had fallen from its braids, and her robes were stained by plant juice and dirt.

  ‘I feel these are them,’ Minna murmured, rubbing the small of her back.

  The effect on Brónach was instant. ‘How do you know?’

  Minna couldn’t explain. When she passed her palms over a bottle it was like a string plucked on a harp, vibrating her hand, and together the six flasks sent a perfect, harmonic chord into her heart. ‘It just feels right,’ she said defensively. Their tempers were strung out now, along with their bodies.

  ‘I have no more ideas, anyway,’ Brónach whispered, her gaze boring into the vials. ‘That is all I have ever heard about.’

  ‘Well, I am sure of it.’

  ‘Then let us try it now.’ Brónach’s hand reached out, shaking with tremors.

  Minna instinctively blocked her. ‘No, we are both exhausted; we’re not thinking straight.’

  ‘We don’t need to think—’

  ‘Yes, we do! The wise-woman Darine told me that it wasn’t just about finding the saor. The taking of it is dangerous.’ She spread her hands. ‘I feel … inside … that we have to take the time to prepare. Sit quietly, breathe, call upon the goddesses.’ Her eye strayed to the line of little figurines. ‘Surely you must see that. We have to be calm and aware, open, ready—’

  ‘I am ready! And you will make me wait?’ Brónach dragged herself up by the hearth-bench, wheezing. She pointed a long, bony finger at Minna. ‘Do you have any idea,’ she hissed, ‘how hard I worked for all that you have gained so easily? The nights I fasted and went without sleep, dosing myself with any plant to try and see in the sacred pool, as my ancestresses did.’ She lifted her hands, twisted talons. ‘I brought this age on myself by pushing so hard. I nearly died from cold and lack of food, because I wanted to discover all the secrets of the old ways. I have spent my whole life searching for them, and all I get is fragments, glimpses!’ She swung to her workbench, raking fingers through her grey hair. ‘I nearly made it through the veil so many times. I was so close … I heard them … saw their faces.’ She stopped, sucked in a grating breath. ‘I need to see more now. I must.’

  ‘And you will, but not like this.’ Minna staggered to her feet. ‘It is too dangerous.’

  She heard the indrawn breath, and saw Brónach tense. Then the old woman whirled around and Minna was stunned to see, after all these careful days, every mask stripped from her wasted face. ‘What right do you have to command me? You, a foreigner, an ignorant, naïve nothing of a girl who gains visions without even trying, who senses the healing ways that I fought for years to unravel?’ She strode to Minna and gripped her chin. ‘And now you will keep me from what I have sought?’

  Bitterness flooded into Minna from her hand: the pain of a shrivelled womb; the trap of an austere life, offering neither escape nor belonging; the desperation to seek another way, though by then it was too late, for the bitterness had formed a dank prison too thick for vision to penetrate.

  ‘I’m not trying to keep you from anything except death!’ She twisted herself free and rubbed her aching jaw.

  ‘You are, you are!’ The last sense slipped from Brónach’s eyes, and they became wild and glazed. ‘You are trying to steal what is mine, my glory, my triumph, as you have stolen everything!’

  ‘This is not about glory; it’s about helping people—’

  ‘I will not let you take this from me as well!’

  The hatred almost flung Minna back against the wall. Had she been too preoccupied to see this unravelling before her very eyes?

  Brónach stiffened at her expression. ‘Oh Goddess … you pity me now? You?’ A bowl came to hand and, without warning, she threw it across the room so it shattered on the hearth, sending shards flying up. ‘I will not allow this! Get out of my house! Get out!’

  Minna slid along the wall to the door. ‘I will go outside,’ she said with barely restrained fury, ‘because we are weary and not in our right minds. But I’m coming back when our heads are clearer.’

  Yes, go.’ Contemptuously, Brónach turned her head. ‘I can no longer look upon your face.’

  Outside, Minna stalked down to the village gate and paced the walls, gulping down the night air. The warriors on guard peered at her in the faint starlight, then tipped their spears to their brows with respect. Even that barely penetrated her storm of frustration.

  In her anger she had taken no cloak, and the wind sliced straight through her thin shift until she began to shiver uncontrollably, hunching her shoulders. When she could stand the cold no longer she strode back, head up.

  She could not let Brónach get the better of her, or nothing would ever be resolved.

  When she flung up the door-hide of the house, she stopped as if she’d walked into a wall.

  Brónach was sprawled on the rug, her limbs splayed, her body spasming. Forgetting everything, she dropped to her knees and held her stiff shoulders. ‘Brónach?’ As she bent close Minna smelled the bitterness on the old woman’s breath and looked wildly around.

  By the glow of the dying fire she could still see the vials on the hearth-stone – empty. All the saor had been taken. She shook Brónach by the shoulders. ‘Wake up!’

  There was no answer. The old woman’s eyes rolled back, the whites showing as the spasms hit her. A trickle of bloody foam ran from the corner of her mouth. Minna raced to light the lamps on the workbench. She needed an emetic to expel the potion – the bitter plant with blue flowers that old women called purgeweed. She knocked pots and bottles in the rushes and scrabbled for the stoppers.

  Brónach was moaning now, grinding her teeth, and when Minna rushed to her side and tried to prise her jaw open it was rigid. She pinched her nose until her mouth gaped and poured the purgeweed down. The old woman gagged and writhed, but Minna grimly held her mouth shut. More went down.

  Suddenly Brónach went still. Minna piled cushions up and dragged the old woman over them onto her belly, gathering towels and an empty pot. She had counted through both sets of fingers four score times when the old woman’s torso suddenly stiffened. A ripple ran through her twisted body. As Minna grasped her shoulders, her mouth opened and a stream of vomit came gushing into the empty pot, sharp with bitterness.

  Brónach moaned, turning in her hands, but Minna held firm as another spasm came. There was no food in the bile – how could she have missed that Brónach was not eating?

  All of a sudden the old woman went limp, her chest deflating. Her rigid body became a dead weight in Minna’s arms, pulling her over so she was sprawled on the floor. Alarmed, Minna slapped her cheeks. ‘Brónach, stay here with me!’ In desperation, she thumped that bony chest.

  Brónach’s body spasmed again, the bitter vomit spattering Minna’s dress and bare arms, and then she fell limp once more. ‘Brónach!’ The old woman’s head lolled back, her neck nerveless.

  With a cry, Minna laid her down and pressed her head to her chest. There was only a last rattle, and
then no heartbeat. Nothing.

  She sat back on her heels, as silence descended over the room like a shroud. Slowly, she reached to touch the old woman’s waxy skin, her fingers quivering. Brónach had found a way to cross between the veils after all.

  Abruptly, Minna began to shake. Light and dark, Darine had said. Accept its light and dark both … She put her hands over her face.

  Chapter 44

  The Lady Brónach had a funeral as austere as her life had been.

  Few came to the burning at a remote beach, fewer expressed sadness. There was a turnout of nobles as befitted her rank, and the chief druid droned a blessing, sprinkled her forehead with sacred water and lit her pitch-soaked pyre with a rowan branch.

  Minna watched the flames licking about the old woman’s grave face. Now that her features had smoothed out she could perceive, perhaps, a hint of triumph at the edge of that thin mouth.

  Fear settled in her bones as she walked away from the smoke. Alone, she had to traverse that same path of death now. She had to know.

  With great deliberation, Minna remade each ingredient of the saor from her notes. It was a purification rite, she realized now, and must be done with sacred feeling, not hunger or frustration. With mindfulness.

  She set the goddess figurines in a circle around her and the purge-weed close by. She changed into a fresh robe and bathed her hands and face.

  Then she asked Keeva to take up a seat outside, and only disturb her if she had not appeared by moonrise.

  Keeva eyed her warily. ‘I will do that of course, but what if I hear nothing, and you are lying there … dying?’ No one knew exactly what had happened to Brónach, only that she had accidentally taken the wrong herbs and, sickened as she already was, succumbed, even though Minna tried to save her.

  Minna forced a brave smile she did not feel. ‘I will be very careful, and I am not sick, or old. If at moonrise it seems something has gone wrong, you will know by my face. Take the purgeweed and make me drink it, no matter what happens.’

  Keeva’s black eyes went wide. Her fear was at war with a desperate curiosity to know what she was doing. ‘As long as the king does not have my head.’ She sat down on the bench outside, grimly folding her arms.

  Cross-legged before the vials with her eyes closed, Minna wavered on the precipice for an endless time. This felt familiar, sitting in this quiet place, and she knew without forming the thoughts that she had to breathe from feet to head to relax her body into trance. But her heart pounded and raced, for she kept seeing Brónach’s death throes in her mind.

  She fought and wrestled with herself, with that fear, and understood then Darine’s warning: There must be skill, training, to ensure the silver cord of the spirit does not break and the body die. You must breathe life into the cord … breathe, and never let it break. At last her fingers closed about the first vial, the liquid dense and dark green, and she dipped her finger in to taste it. It was sour, and redolent of soil and rock. A thrill ran up her body: she knew the taste. She must trust.

  ‘I call on my Mothers to help me,’ she whispered. ‘My mother Rhiann of the Epidii, and the Great Mother of All, who sent me visions and looks down on me as the moon. Lend me your grace to mix this saor well, and conduct myself in a way that does you honour.’

  She smelled each vial one by one, deep into her belly where her instincts were strong. She breathed, slowing her racing mind, and, with her eyes closed, began mixing the herbs. Fingertips brushed glass, tingled when the right flask was found. Nostrils flared, drawing in scent, adjusting, stirring. Brónach did not do this, Minna kept telling herself. Brónach took all of it, in the wrong amounts and the wrong order. But she would feel her way through.

  She knew she was done when her hands hovered over the vials and then came to rest in her lap of their own accord. She opened her eyes and gazed into the cup. Saor. Her mother had taken it. It looked like nothing more than dirty pond water, but this was a tool, she understood now. Saor did not give the visions; it merely freed the spirit to see clearly through the veils, unhindered. One still had to have the courage to walk in the Otherworld, to pass through darkness.

  With fluttering fingers, she picked up the cup and, in one swift motion, drank it down.

  The saor was musty and grainy, unpleasant yet absolutely and impossibly familiar. Minna stretched out on the rug and waited. Nothing obvious happened, and it was only when she started that she realized she had been staring unblinking into the fire.

  Her limbs had gone numb. Her mind floated. She curled on her side, the movement making her aware of the odd sense of her body, as if it were only tenuously connected to her thoughts. Curious, she thought dreamily. But I really must …

  And she was falling.

  A light that was her rushed down a tunnel and flung itself out into night as a spirit taking wing. Silver cord. She heard the echo of Darine’s voice. Then, looking back, she saw that the spirit was a thread, not a point of light, unfettered and free to spin in the void. The silver thread of light wound back through the worlds, through the stardust and the veils of mist, to that body by the fire that was hers.

  Minna felt as if she knew these things and was telling herself again.

  But, oh, her spirit soared, and it was such freedom to spin among the Otherworld stars, a joy like nothing she had known. For she was not one separate being, but joined with everything around her; part of the One when she had always felt so alone. A revelation. She was taken then with an unbearable temptation to let go of all thought and melt back into the All-That-Is, the everything, like the other lights dancing around her.

  It is always this way, her knowing said. But that is why you must remember who you leave behind, and what you need to do. You have to know yourself, that you have a human life to continue. She saw Cahir’s face now, pale and trickled with blood over one eye. That is why you must remember. You need to know if he will be safe.

  Soaring through the void, Minna struggled to remember the sacred breath. Breathe. She fought, then drew it in and released it again and again, and every time she drew in the Source and breathed it along the cord, the silver thread grew brighter and stronger.

  Yes. It was always the same fight: to hold to her will when she could give up and dissolve; to know when to surrender. To travel far, she must trust and let go, but to come back she also had to hold an image of who she was in this life, and how she wanted to return.

  It was hard. Sometimes the thread nearly broke – for she forgot life and Cahir and Minna, and longed to soar for ever – and sometimes she was being tugged back at dizzying speed to the firelit room and her body, because she grew afraid and faltered.

  But onwards, she must go. Onwards, to a place in a snowy wood set out of time. Summoning courage, she exerted all her will and held to the image in her heart.

  Her feet were on snow, running. Trees lifted black branches to an endless sky of no colour. Then the singing made her pause.

  It floated through the trees, one woman’s voice, earthy and rich. And as the notes wandered up and down, Minna’s mind was filled with waterfalls spilling down soaring mountain-sides, and ocean swells, crested with white foam. The singer’s thoughts, memories, sung into being.

  A loneliness more vivid than grief filled Minna and she ran faster, her breath in time with her heartbeat. The singing drew her on … Bracken blazing on a hillside; frozen pools on high moors; an eagle, circling.

  She finally stumbled into a snowy dell, recognizing it as the place she and Cahir had loved on Beltaine night. Now, the flowers were under snow, the birches as pale as the ground. In the hollow the woman had come to a halt with her face turned away, her cloak blue as violets against the white.

  The singing faded.

  Minna took a step, and then another. The woman was as still as the trees, as the birdless, empty sky. Minna plunged through snow to her side and, without thinking, took hold of the blue cloak. Then, and only then did the woman turn, and Minna was face to face at last with Rhiann.

&n
bsp; Her fine features and pale skin were framed by copper hair, wisps of it trailing across her cheeks. Her face was ageless, but her eyes … Minna could hardly look in them, for they opened on glittering clouds of the same stars through which she had journeyed.

  Then that faded, and they were just human, and tender, and Minna simply sank on her knees in the snow, burying her face in the scented folds of the cloak.

  A touch came on the crown of her head, a blessing. You had to seek me for yourself, and so it has made you strong.

  Minna crushed the cloth to her eyes. Mother. She smelled honey and soap, and something deeper that stirred an ancient memory. It was a voice singing in her ear, low and breathy. The scent of warm, milky skin. Come to me, it sang.

  ‘Then … it was you all along, drawing me on. And you who sang to me … I remember, when I was small … but it could not have been this life, not this time.’

  It was before, when I carried you up the mountain to the rowan.

  Minna’s mind was drowning in questions, but she wanted to stay here breathing in that smell, and do nothing else.

  A smile lightened the air. Now I am yours and you are mine, and Alba needs its priestesses once more. I sang to call you home.

  Chapter 45

  It was late in the night, and Fullofaudes sat with his officers around a table in the fort at Iscarium, the tribal capital of the Brigantes between the Wall and Eboracum. Along with his men, the Dux basked in the firelit warmth of the command quarters, letting the hum of laughter and thunk of cups flow over him as he read a secret dispatch that had just been brought to him. The words had been pressed into wax in a wood tablet so they could be erased.