by Jules Watson
Pain ripped through her belly, and then again. The patchwork of red sky, glowing fires, and dark shadows began to spin. When Maeve’s knees sagged, Levarcham’s arms came around her, their fingers knotted together.
“Come and sit,” the druid murmured.
Bending over, Maeve groaned. The scout was standing back now, his face a pale blotch in the gloom. Other passing warriors had also stopped to stare at her. Hard eyes, scorning her … always scorning her.
“Get me away from here,” she forced through her teeth. “I cannot sicken before them.”
Levarcham did not argue, holding Maeve around the waist and helping her stumble along into the trees at the edge of camp. When they were out of earshot, the druid said, “If you do not lie down and let me help you, the babe is certainly lost.”
Lost. All lost. Garvan. No tears came, just the pain that doubled her up, though not all of it was her belly.
“How long has it been hurting?” Levarcham asked.
Maeve blinked. She had not been able to separate this agony from all the others, her heart swamped by the death around her. “A day … two.”
Levarcham hissed under her breath, shaking her head.
“Not here,” Maeve gasped, her eyes watering. “Away from iron … and their voices. The woods. Quiet. And … water. Let me be by water.”
Levarcham peered at her face and nodded. “Let me get my bag and some furs, then.”
By the time she returned, the pains had subsided enough to allow Maeve to walk.
Every step labored, they left the camp on a track that wound out of the trees and skirted the bare slopes of the hill. Here, at last a bronze moon soared free of the horizon, and by its light they could just follow a path sheep had cut through the heather. Levarcham limped along, a bundle strapped to her back, her arms about Maeve.
“It is far enough,” Levarcham urged.
Maeve shook her head. “Farther.” She wanted to be by water that flowed into Connacht.
Around the shoulder of the slope, she knew the streams must drain west. Some water might seep away from these eastern hills, flowing through bog and lake and the broken rills that meandered over her kingdom’s green plains. Eventually, some drops might empty into the River Sinand … Connacht’s river. West, Sinand flowed, out into the sea, and there some trace of her might be carried by the waves to the Stone Islands. It was all that made sense to her at this moment.
Time slipped away, and every now and then a pain went through her.
They were the sword thrusts that her men had suffered.
The spear that broke Garvan’s back.
At first Ruán had been able to crawl to the water, then drag himself back to the little copse of trees to cover his body with fallen leaves at night.
The snapped bone had broken the skin of his thigh, though, and when his hands felt the wound, it was now growing hot. The pain began to gnaw, and he was no longer able to move that far. An arm of the river had caught in a bend, scattering itself into weedy puddles. He could only lie there among them in the mud, scooping water into his mouth and resting in between.
It was always dark now, an endless night.
Why will you not come to me? he called to the blackness, thick as pitch. The sídhe had saved him before—the Source connected them to everything. Help me. That plea was hard for his pride, even now.
The sun rose again and Ruán stretched his chin to the warmth. You walk your own path, they told him, many times. And he had stumbled, and fallen, and so they would not come. Perhaps they did not hear him any longer … or care.
He lifted his face to the sun, grasping at a spark of old humor to keep himself alert. Well, this is not your finest moment. I cannot say I blame them.
Then a wave of loneliness swept over him, and his bleak smile died. It was not a good end. He wanted to remember the moon-glow shining from the eyes of the sídhe, because it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. But he could not summon even that.
Ruán slipped into troubled dreams.
Maeve knelt behind him and curled her belly about his back. The great flame in her warmed his cold skin. She wrapped him in heat, her hands across his heart.
Farewell, she breathed in his ear.
He turned his chin to her, stifling a shiver. Why farewell?
She pressed her lips upon his, smoothed his brows with a finger. I do not know.
Ruán jerked awake. His hair was wet, his cheek pressed into cold mud. He rolled on his back, gripping his leg. The pain had become fire and ice at the same time.
At that moment he felt the throb from far away. It drove all the pain aside. His head lifted as he strained toward it. The pang came again, from outside of him.
This time his spirit-self registered an even blacker agony than the one consuming his body.
Maeve … she was in danger.
Ruán’s head fell back in the reeds. In a burst of frustration, he struck the ground, and water splashed over his face. The stab of pain cleared his mind. It was in Maeve’s power to save the lives of many, the sídhe said.
It was in his power to reach her.
Damn it, Ruán. He had seen for himself how fear dimmed people’s soul-lights. He had let it conquer him so far … but he would not let it defeat him now. Maeve’s life was at stake. And those of others.
Ruán breathed deeply, filling his lungs. Either I perish here like a useless fool, or I gather what strength I have left and find a way to send it to her.
That was a better way to die.
He nodded, and carefully skewed his body with his arms, dragging his wounded leg behind him. He bit his lip until he tasted blood, focusing on hauling himself through the mire to the main channel of the river. The sídhe maiden said he would be on his own, that he would have to find courage.
She said he had the power.
He did. He knew he did. How could he forget it? His body might be trapped beside this river, but the spark of his soul was not.
Another creature had come into his mind, one that danced through water as freely as he danced through the bright motes of Source. And Erin was threaded with streams and soaked by rain, so the water-drops themselves must also be joined into one vast web. His will could surely shape the silver motes of Source, spinning a pattern of his own making—a vessel for his soul.
Maeve.
At last he allowed his heart free to reach for her. I want only you. I want to claim you for my own. I want to give you me.
He let his breast fill with the memory of her face in the sídhe vision, the sound of the smile in her voice, her hands upon him, gentle and absorbed. He let his loins burn again with the fire of their joining.
And so Ruán’s blindness at last lifted, as his spirit-sight flooded back. Looking down, he saw that the most intense flame around him was spilling from his own self.
He must expend all of it now, for her.
Dragging on his belly, Ruán forgot all his pain as he plunged his hands into the fast-flowing water in the shallows. There, he began to call to the Source, singing to it under his breath. Perhaps he only summoned one small flare in the great swirl that was Erin’s life, but it was enough.
Gradually, the Otherworldly light around him and the water droplets of Thisworld began winding together, both of them streams of silver glimmers. Between Ruán’s hands, woven by Ruán’s thoughts, the creature took shape that would hold the spark of his soul.
Long and sleek, its body curling along its spine. Snub head diving, tail rippling.
An otter, bright as moonlight.
Maeve collapsed on the banks of a slow-moving stream that formed pools glowing under the moon.
It reminded her of twilight on a lake.
A copse of hazels drooped over the water, their dying leaves rustling in a cold breeze. Levarcham built a tiny fire, helped Maeve take off armor and trews and wrapped her in furs. Then she felt Maeve’s belly over with a gentle touch, bending to place her ear on it and finally sitting with hands spread.
&n
bsp; Maeve watched Levarcham’s eyes moving behind her eyelids. “Is it … gone …?”
The druid lifted her hands, pulling down Maeve’s tunic. “No. There is only a little blood yet.” She drew the furs about Maeve’s bare legs.
Maeve curled on her side, shivering. She stared at the stream ripples breaking up the moon’s reflection. “What can you do?”
Levarcham sat back on her heels and sighed. “With a draft of herbs, it depends. Once the pains have been going that long, there is little to be done to calm the womb.”
Maeve’s lips parted. “I do not mean to hold the child in. I mean … make me well.” Well enough to fight to the end. That was all that remained: to raise a shield for those who were still left to her.
Levarcham hesitated. “I told you what I saw of the child—”
“And it is going to die anyway!” Another pain ripped through Maeve, and she cried out. “They are all dying. We are all lost.” A second stab drove her awareness from her body. Everything reeled about her: trees, moonlight, broken water. “H-He is lost. Lost.” Garvan.
And Ruán … her heart.
As the waves of agony broke over Maeve, so the stars kept wheeling above. They swung past her, turning time, even though she soon lost their rhythm as the night wore on.
Her skin ran with sweat, but at her core she was ice and her teeth chattered. Levarcham brewed something from her pouch of herbs and forced it down her. Maeve was barely aware of the bitterness on her tongue, the druid’s callused hand on her brow.
And Levarcham singing … not Ruán’s watery streams of sound. These were druid chants, low and earthy, calling the Mother to hold her.
Maeve’s smile cracked. The Mother saw no kinship in her, nothing to love.
The agony tore her in two—a punishment she deserved. She had not crooned to the babe as she longed to, stroking the sweet bud of it. Forgive me, I beg you.
The child was wrapped in her pain over Ruán. If she had given in to that love, held it close, gazed at her belly with soft eyes … then sorrow for Ruán would have risen up and weakened her beyond all repair. She would have failed everyone.
She had failed everyone.
On her side, Maeve curled her knees to her chest. Her arm fell out as if to touch the stream-water. The moonlight blurred on the surface and grew brighter. So beautiful. She wanted to sink into it and never surface. Be filled with sídhe light, blessed by it …
Not after all I have done.
Maeve whimpered. She tried to turn from that glory but found she could not move, captured by the silver on the water. The Great Mother was the vessel for the Source, Her face this moon that beckoned the tides of seeds, sap, blood, and oceans. Her eyes beheld all creatures of Thisworld with compassion, offering shelter and belonging.
Ruán had told Maeve this.
Adrift on pain, her mind kept spinning. No, she could not be drawn into the Mother’s arms. I abandoned them. The cramps in her belly spread to her breast. Finn and—She cut off that thought. I abandoned them.
As if answering her, the moonlight suddenly ignited into a brilliance that was blinding, penetrating Maeve’s half-closed eyelids. She gasped, shielding her face. But nevertheless the radiance overflowed, reaching for her.
She dropped her hand.
And so at last she saw in it the glints of Ruán’s eyes, the warmth of his smile. Ceara, he breathed. Come to me.
Maeve choked back an exclamation, as something stirred for the first time in her womb. A flutter. She dug her hands into the mud, forcing herself onto hands and knees and crawling to the banks of the stream. The furs fell from her and she was bare-limbed, her damp shift clinging to her thighs.
Behind her, Levarcham’s singing faltered, then resumed with greater force.
Maeve sprawled on the pebbles and thrust her hands into the stream, yearning for Ruán to bear her away into that light she had always sought. She lost the ache in her legs and the hurt in her body. Looking down, she saw ripples now in the brightness of the water, swirls and shining eddies, as if the droplets were being drawn to form a shape.
A creature of light.
Sleek and sinuous, he glided up to her, curling his long body in a spiral. Ruán.
The stones beneath Maeve disappeared, along with the murmurs of the trees, the icy water, and the cold wind. Only the flame of Ruán’s anam enveloped her. And then she felt she was somehow floating, the otter weaving about her. Where Ruán paused, curling around her belly, heat pooled there. She sensed his wonder, and a flicker of a different light deep inside.
Surrender the poison, ceara, and cradle what fills you now.
He said it to her the night she first lay with him in love—when she wept at an old black memory. The denial was swift. No! Too much. More memory would take her to even darker places.
Cold stone. Mossy walls. A cave from long ago.
When you hold this trapped in you, you cannot be anything else. Swim with me.
Sleek and bright, the otter looped circles about Maeve’s wrists and shoulders, pulling her farther into the stream. Come, ceara. With a tail-flick he swam downward, his glow disappearing fast.
Do not leave me! Without hesitating, Maeve slipped from the last vestiges of her body, abandoning it to dive after him. Love … my love. As a tiny spark of awareness, she plunged deep into the water.
Down there, the light began to fade. Maeve hesitated.
Turning, Ruán streaked back up to her, coiling about her once more, making the water swirl until she could see nothing. I said come with me. With one undulation he plunged again.
Leaving her behind.
Wait! Maeve cried. She grasped for Ruán, but he was nothing but a diminishing flame in the great darkness below. Spinning wildly, she sank, and the impenetrable black claimed her, and it was too late to flee the past now.
She was seventeen.
Her moan of pain echoed off the rock walls, the final one after so many agonized hours.
The narrow cave pressed in on the girl-Maeve, the weight of stone almost crushing her. Her throat ached from holding back the laboring screams. No one must hear.
Her old servant Brenna huddled between her legs, bony arms sticking out of ragged clothes. Tears ran from her eyes as she eased the child onto the blanket of fleece. Panting, Maeve hauled herself up on her elbows. “Light,” she croaked.
Brenna reached for the lamp with trembling hands, pulling it nearer. “A boy,” the old woman whispered. She rubbed him all over to make him breathe, wrapping him in an old tunic and resting him on Maeve’s belly. The rough handling made the little wet thing at last stir, though his cry was no more than a mew. Maeve drew him close, peeling back the bloody linen.
The cave was a hidden hole beneath a hillside near Cruachan. It was sacred to the sídhe, a doorway to the Otherworld, so she knew no one would come here. She had given birth among people’s offerings of dried flowers, rings and pins, and bones from sacrifices.
The power of the sídhe was supposed to help them.
“It was too soon.” Maeve turned her face to the rock. Moisture glinted on the thick moss. The cave wept. “It was the ride, so far … too fast.”
Brenna’s back was a hump of sorrow. She groped for Maeve’s hand. In the dim lamplight she looked like the gnarled hawthorns on the surface above, her faded hair tangled with leaf litter. Seventeen years before, she had brought Maeve into the world like this, on the night Maeve’s mother died.
Brenna was old now, though, her mind shrinking along with her wizened body. She knew nothing of kings, or why Maeve would be scared enough to gallop a horse across Erin with a belly so ripe.
Maeve looked down at the child. He stretched one hand and it touched her nose, then curled up. She clutched him to her. They can’t take you from me now. She gave herself those moments while she waited for the birth-cradle to be expelled, her cheek on the child’s wet head, her eyes closed. His breaths were tiny flutters, three to every one of hers, both of them still woven together.
&nbs
p; Shuffling, Brenna massaged Maeve’s belly, singing under her breath. Maeve bit her lip as she felt the second rush, and clambered to her knees, holding the baby with one hand. When the bloody cradle came, Brenna cut the cord and wrapped it in cloth. Normally it would be buried, but Maeve was already within the earth.
She bid Brenna curl up with the lamp, Maeve’s son nestled in her lap. And willing herself past the pain, Maeve crept deeper into the cave and left it as an offering to the goddesses. Reaching for a flask of water, she then cleaned herself up, binding two breechclouts on, one over the other. Wincing, she awkwardly drew on trews and tunic.
Brenna’s eyes were frightened. “You cannot go so soon.”
“I have to.” Maeve stuck a brooch through her cloak with shaking fingers. “They will come looking for me. Father’s trackers are the best in Erin.” She crawled to her pack. “Here are skins of goat-milk. And food for you. I brought as many furs as I could, and tallow—enough for a few nights.” During the day, light crept into the cleft from above. Maeve gripped the thin bones at Brenna’s shoulder. “I know I ask much of you, but it is the only way.”
Brenna’s smile was tremulous, her voice cracked with age. “You are my own child. My heart.”
Maeve cradled Brenna’s cheek, kissed the baby’s head, and trying to see through tears, hauled herself back up the cave and into the tangle of thorns that covered the entrance. She caught the reins of her pony and gritted her teeth as she lowered her raw loins onto the saddle and turned the horse into a walk toward Cruachan.
Giving herself up now was the only way to keep her father’s wolves from sniffing along the trail that led to her baby son.
When Maeve at last reached the king’s hall, she saw that her new husband, the Mumu prince Diarmait, had already arrived from his southern mountains. Diarmait’s banner flew from the gatepost along with the eagle standards of her father. She gingerly dismounted as the guards ran forward.
She was dragged before father and husband, biting the inside of her lip to drive away the cramps still gripping her. Eochaid leaped from his great chair and charged toward her.